📰 DRDO hands over 75 large oxygen cylinders for use in Delhi
Rajnath grants emergency financial powers to armed forces to speed up efforts to tide over COVID-19 crisis
•To meet the urgent requirement of oxygen in various parts of the country, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is arranging big size oxygen cylinders for fulfilling requirements of different hospitals.
•In a separate development, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh invoked special provisions and granted emergency financial powers to the armed forces to empower them and speed up their efforts to tide over the current COVID-19 situation.
•“In this regard, the DRDO has handed over 75 such cylinders to the Department of Health and Family Welfare, Government of NCT of Delhi on Thursday,” a DRDO statement said. Forty cylinders of same capacity were handed over to Cabinet Secretariat officials on Friday for utilisation at the Sardar Patel COVID Care Centre at Radha Soami Satsang Beas at Chhatarpur in New Delhi.
•These cylinders are of 80 litres water capacity each and can be pressurised up to 130 bar because of which each of these cylinders can store 10,000 litres of oxygen, the statement said.
•These cylinders are high pressure seamless cylinders certified by the Bureau of Indian Standards and approved by the Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO) and have been airlifted from Vadodara, Gujarat. Efforts are being made for arranging many more such cylinders for different hospitals, the DRDO added.
Emergency powers
•The emergency financial powers will help formation commanders to establish and operate quarantine facilities, hospitals and undertake procurement, repair of equipment, items, material and stores, besides provisioning of various services and works required to support the ongoing effort against the pandemic, the Defence Ministry said.
•Under these powers, Vice Chiefs of the armed forces, including the Chief Of Integrated Defence Staff to the Chairman Chiefs Of Staff Committee (CISC) and General Officer Commanding-in-Chiefs (GOC-in-Cs) and equivalents of all three Services have been given full powers, whereas Corps Commanders and Area Commanders have been delegated powers up to ₹50 lakh per case and Division Commanders, Sub Area Commanders and equivalents have been delegated powers up to ₹20 lakh per case. “These powers have been devolved initially for three months from May 1 to July 31, 2021. These are in addition to the emergency powers delegated to the medical officers of the armed forces last week,” the Ministry said.
Navy contingent
•The Navy has sent a 76-member medical contingent from five Naval hospitals around the country to bolster availability of trained manpower in the 900-bed COVID hospital in Ahmedabad.
•The Cantonment Boards have extended support to civil administration in various parts of the country to tide over the surge in cases. “Presently, 39 Cantonment Boards (CB) are maintaining 40 general hospitals with 1,240 beds. CB hospitals at Pune, Kirkee and Deolali with 304 beds have been designated as dedicated COVID hospitals.,” a Defence Ministry statement said.
•Cantonment General Hospitals of Kirkee, Deolali, Dehuroad, Jhansi and Ahmednagar have been designated as COVID care centres with 418 beds. “A dedicated COVID health centre at Dehuroad is ready and would become functional soon, while the ICU facility with six beds is being set up at CGH, Kirkee. Oxygen support is available in 37 CBs and presently they have a stock of 658 cylinders,” the Ministry added.
SC’s caution against harassing those needing help will deter ill-advised action
•The Supreme Court has issued a timely warning to the States against any attempt to clamp down on the dissemination of information about the serious health crisis besetting the country, or calls for help through social media from citizens affected by COVID-19. The comment, obviously in response to the utterly despotic threat issued by U.P. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath that those “spreading misinformation” or “rumour” would be detained under the National Security Act (NSA) and their property seized, will surely help prevent ill-advised action by the police and the administration to treat appeals concerning shortage of hospital beds, medical oxygen and vital drugs as attempts to bring the government into disrepute. The police in Amethi registered an FIR against a man who appealed on Twitter for an oxygen cylinder for a family member for allegedly circulating a rumour and seeking to cause fear and alarm. Mr. Adityanath appears quite convinced that complaints about oxygen shortage in his State are either imaginary or, worse, malicious, and wants to treat them as attempts to “spoil the atmosphere”. While it is entirely in order that the government has directed the police to crack down on the profiteering on medicines in the black market, it is quite a different matter if the administration starts seeing all appeals for help in a grave crisis as nothing more than activities aimed at tarnishing the government’s image.
•Given the propensity of such leaders to treat the voicing of grievances by citizens as a personal affront to their administrative capabilities, the Court’s warning that any attempt to stifle the people’s voices would attract action for contempt of court is quite timely and necessary. As Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, who heads the Bench, remarked, any clampdown on information is contrary to basic precepts. He underscored the significance and necessity for the free flow of information during a grave crisis by recalling the role it played in containing a famine in 1970. The Court was apparently drawing inspiration from the theory, articulated by economist Amartya Sen, that the fundamental attributes of democracy — such as a free press and the need to face the people at elections and respond to political criticism — help prevent famines. However, how far the present regime feels itself accountable to the people at large is now unclear. It faces criticism both within the country and from the international media that a major cause of the crisis is its reluctance to acknowledge its own failure to prepare for a calamitous second wave. Questions fired at it by High Courts are also on these lines. Any move to stifle such criticism or believe that this is a problem of managing perceptions will be of no avail if the infections and body count keep rising alarmingly and the health system draws close to a collapse.
📰 Do not clampdown on citizen’s SOS calls via social media: Supreme Court
Court warns of contempt action.
•The Supreme Court on Friday warned State governments and police against clamping down on the spread of information or calls for help through social media from citizens affected by COVID-19.
•A Special Bench of Justices D.Y. Chandrachud, L. Nageswara Rao and S. Ravindra Bhat said any move by any State to punish citizens who take to the social media to seek help for oxygen cylinders, COVID-19 drugs, beds, hospitalisation, etc, amid a rampaging second wave would attract contempt of court action.
•“We don’t want any clampdown of information. We will treat it as a contempt of court if such grievances is considered for action. Let a strong message go to all the States and DGPs of States. Clampdown of information is contrary to basic precepts,” Justice Chandrachud made a categorical statement in court.
•Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said the litigation was non-adversarial.
•“As an officer of the court, I fully agree with what Your Lordships have said,” Mr. Mehta agreed.
1970 famine
•Justice Chandrachud said free flow of information in the 1970 famine enabled the government to tackle problem effectively as compared to clampdown during the 1918 pandemic.
•Justice Rao reminded the States that this was a time of great crisis. The Bench said empathy and action should be the rule of the day.
•At one point, Justice Chandrachud questioned how the Centre intended to ensure registration for vaccines for illiterate people considering the fact that COWIN app registration was mandatory.
Vaccine price
•The Bench also asked how the Centre expected a sense of equity from the vaccine manufacturers.
•Justice Bhat pointed out that manufacturers were charging ₹150 from the Centre while vaccines to the States were priced at ₹300.
•“Why should we as a nation pay this? The price difference becomes ₹30 to 40,000 crore... AstraZeneca is providing vaccines at far lower price to the U.S. citizens then why should we be paying so much?” Justice Bhat asked.
•The Bench asked why the Centre had not considered using powers under Section 92 of Patents Act for compulsory licensing of the COVID-19 vaccines.
•The court asked why the Centre had not procured 100% of the vaccines and equitably distributed them across the country, but was instead leaving it to manufacturers. The court said the Centre could not possible enforce equity in vaccine distribution when it was itself buying only 50% doses.
•Vaccine manufacturing was publicly funded and vaccines were public property, the court noted.
•“Why cannot the government buy the entire doses of vaccines,” the court asked.
•The Bench asked whether, now, one State would get priority access over another in getting the vaccines. The court asked why the government could not follow a national immunisation programme policy with respect to vaccines.
•The court turned to the plight of medical workers, nurses and doctors. It said it was not enough to declare them ‘COVID Warriors’, what was being done for them on the ground.
•“What is being done for shortage of medical staff? How are doctors being safeguarded and treated for COVID-19,” Justice Chandrachud asked the government.
📰 The rising sun in India-Japan relations
New Delhi should be confident that Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is willing to accord primacy to bilateral ties
•Contrary to the expectations of many, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has turned out to be a true successor of his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, on the foreign policy front. His visit to the United States last month has set the agenda for the wider Indo-Pacific engagement of Tokyo and its evolving priorities.
Focus on China
•Right at the outset, it was clear that the crux of the discussions during this first in-person meeting between the newly anointed President of the United States, Joe Biden, and Mr. Suga would revolve around China. To begin with, Tokyo and Washington drilled down to brass tacks on their joint security partnership given the need to address China’s recent belligerence in territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas as well as in the Taiwan Strait. Both sides affirmed the centrality of their treaty alliance, for long a source of stability in East Asia, and pledged to stand up to China in key regional flashpoints such as the disputed Senkaku Islands and Taiwan. Reflecting the changed nature of conflict, both sides acknowledged the importance of extended deterrence vis-à-vis China through cooperation on cybersecurity and space technology.
•Discussions also touched upon Chinese ambitions to dominate the development of new age technologies such as 5G and quantum computing. Given China’s recent pledge to invest a mammoth $1.4 trillion in emerging technologies, Washington and Tokyo scrambled to close the gap by announcing a Competitiveness and Resilience Partnership, or CoRe (https://bit.ly/3eN6DlT). The two allies earmarked billions in funding for the deployment of secure 5G networks, committed to building digital infrastructure in developing countries and promised to collaborate on setting global digital standards. Both sides have also signalled their intent to continue the Trump-era policy of pressure on China to reform economic practices such as “violations of intellectual property rights, forced technology transfer, excess capacity issues, and the use of trade distorting industrial subsidies” (https://bit.ly/2Sbb81H).
•Tokyo and Washington also rallied around the standard of shared values. Both powers repeatedly emphasised their vision of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific that respects the rule of law, freedom of navigation, democratic norms and the use of peaceful means to settle disputes. In the aftermath of the successful Quad Summit (https://bit.ly/2Rfcp7n), both parties expressed their continued support for the four-nation grouping of the United States, India, Australia and Japan. China’s human rights violations in Xinjiang, its heavy-handed suppression of protests in Hong Kong and military aggression towards Taiwan came in for heavy criticism.
•Given that the Japanese premier plans to visit India as soon as the situation permits following the COVID-19 pandemic, his dealings with the U.S. are a preview of what New Delhi can expect from Tokyo.
A preview
•First, one can expect a continuation of the balancing security policy against China that began with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shinzo Abe in 2014. During a phone call with the Indian Prime Minister, Mr. Suga expressed concern over China’s “unilateral” actions in the East and South China Seas, Xinjiang and Hong Kong. Crucially, India’s clashes with China in Galwan have turned public opinion in favour of a more confrontational China policy.
•In just a decade, New Delhi and Tokyo have expanded high-level ministerial and bureaucratic contacts, conducted joint military exercises and concluded military pacts such as the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) logistics agreement. Further, no meeting would be complete without an affirmation of New Delhi and Tokyo’s support for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific and continued willingness to work with the Quad, which is fast emerging as a central pillar of the security strategies of both nations. A Modi-Suga meeting, accompanied by the planned 2+2 Ministerial meetings, will likely aim to take stock of the state of play in the security relationship while also pushing the envelope on the still nascent cooperation on defence technology and exports.
Technology partnership
•Second, the two powers will look to expand cooperation in sectors such as cybersecurity and emerging technologies. During the Shinzo Abe years, New Delhi and Tokyo put together a digital research and innovation partnership that ran the gamut of technologies from AI and 5G to the Internet of Things and space research. As with the U.S.-Japan summit, Mr. Suga and Mr. Modi may look to deepen cooperation between research institutes and expand funding in light of China’s aforementioned technology investment programme. It is yet unclear whether Mr. Suga will attempt to stir the pot and bring up the disagreements over India’s insistence on data localisation and continued reluctance to accede to global cybersecurity agreements such as the Budapest Convention.
•Third, economic ties and infrastructure development are likely to be top drawer items on the agendas of New Delhi and Tokyo. While Japan has poured in around $34 billion in investments into the Indian economy over the course of the last two decades, Japan is only India’s 12th largest trading partner (https://bit.ly/3xENISD), and trade volumes between the two stand at just a fifth of the value of India-China bilateral trade. A Modi-Suga summit will likely reaffirm Japan’s support for key manufacturing initiatives such as ‘Make in India’ and the Japan Industrial Townships. Further, India will be keen to secure continued infrastructure investments in the strategically vital connectivity projects currently under way in the Northeast and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Third country outlook
•Finally, a Suga-Modi Summit would undoubtedly devote much attention to evolving a joint strategy towards key third countries and multilateral bodies. In years past, New Delhi and Tokyo have collaborated to build infrastructure in Iran and Africa, provide vital aid to Myanmar and Sri Lanka and hammer out a common Association of Southeast Asian Nations outreach policy in an attempt to counter China’s growing influence in these corners of the globe. However, unlike previous summits, the time has come for India and Japan to take a hard look at reports suggesting that joint infrastructure projects in Africa and Iran have stalled with substantial cost overruns. Tokyo will also likely continue its charm offensive on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership in an attempt to get New Delhi to reverse its decision not to join the massive trade compact.
•Writing in 2006, Shinzo Abe, in his book, Utsukushii Kuni E (Toward a Beautiful Country), expressed his hope that “it would not be a surprise if in another 10 years, Japan-India relations overtake Japan-U.S. and Japan-China relations”. Thus far, New Delhi has every reason to believe that Japan’s Yoshihide Suga is willing to make that dream a reality.
