📰 BRICS seeks ‘inclusive’ intra-Afghan dialogue
5-member group adopts Counter Terrorism Action Plan.
•The 13th BRICS summit held virtually on Thursday, called for an “inclusive intra-Afghan dialogue” for stability in Afghanistan.
•The virtual summit, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was dominated by the developments in Afghanistan, and adopted the BRICS Counter Terrorism Action Plan.
•“We have also adopted the BRICS Counter Terrorism Action Plan. With the agreement on Remote Sensing Satellite Constellation between our space agencies, a new chapter of cooperation has begun,” Mr. Modi said, highlighting the key items on the agenda of the summit.
•The discussion on Afghanistan at the event attended by the leaders of India, Russia, China, Brazil and South Africa was held in the backdrop of the Taliban announcing an interim government in Kabul.
•The BRICS leaders called for “settling the situation by peaceful means” and condemned the terrorist attacks at the Hamid Karzai International Airport which killed at least 100 persons including several American military personnel.
•“We stress the need to contribute to fostering an inclusive intra-Afghan dialogue so as to ensure stability, civil peace, law and order in the country. We underscore the priority of fighting terrorism, including preventing attempts by terrorist organisations to use Afghan territory as terrorist sanctuary and to carry out attacks against other countries,” declared a joint statement issued at the end of the summit meeting.
•The document, titled the ‘New Delhi Declaration’, also called for addressing the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan and urged the need to uphold rights of women, children and minorities.
•The meeting gave an opportunity to the BRICS countries to discuss the situation in Afghanistan especially as two of the five members of the organisation — Russia and China — continue to have a diplomatic presence in Kabul where a Taliban interim government is expected to take formal charge in few days.
•BRICS countries are evidently divided on the issue of engagement with the Taliban with Russia and China adopting a proactive policy on the issue. A Russian media report informed that the Taliban has invited Turkey, Qatar, China and Iran to the upcoming swearing-in ceremony. China on Thursday extended an emergency aid of $31 million to Afghanistan to help the Taliban run the government.
•The summit emphasised the importance of the principle of “non-interference” in international affairs and said disputes and conflicts should be resolved by peaceful means.
•Explaining India's concerns, Secretary of the Ministry of External Affairs Sanjay Bhattacharya said, “There is a very strong consensus. Afghanistan should not become a reason for problems in the neighbourhood.”
•The summit meeting was also addressed by the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, and President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who remarked that Afghanistan has a new crisis.
•“The withdrawal of U.S. forces and its allies from Afghanistan has led to a new crisis, and it’s still unclear how this will affect global and regional security. It is for good reason that our countries have paid special attention to this issue,” said President Putin.
•Apart from Afghanistan, the BRICS leaders also took up the conflicts in Myanmar, Syria, the tension in the Korean peninsula, Israel-Palestine violence and other territorial disputes.
•“We underscore the inadmissibility of the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes and principles of the United Nations,” stated the New Delhi Declaration.
•The summit’also discussed the COVID-19 pandemic and the strategy to strengthen counter-pandemic cooperation and multilateral reform. The New Delhi Declaration called against playing politics with the pandemic and the COVID-19 virus and urged for a global effort to eradicate the virus.
•“We support science-based, inclusive of broad expertise, transparent and timely processes, free from politicisation or interference to strengthen international capabilities to better understand the emergence of novel pathogens and to help prevent future pandemics,” stated the Declaration. The summit called for reform of the UN Security Council and urged to “revitalise” of the UN General Assembly.
Carbon dating of rice with soil yields date of 1155 BC.
•A carbon dating analysis of rice with soil, found in a burial urn at Sivakalai in Thoothukudi district of Tamil Nadu, by the Miami-based Beta Analytic Testing Laboratory has yielded the date of 1155 BC, indicating that the Thamirabarani civilisation dates back to 3,200 years.
•Encouraged by this finding, Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on Thursday announced in the Assembly the establishment of Porunai Museum in Tirunelveli at a cost of ₹15 crore.
•“The finding has established that the Porunai river [Thamirabarani] civilisation dates back to 3,200 years. It is the government’s task to scientifically prove that the history of the Indian subcontinent should begin from the Tamil landscape,” he said in a suo motu statement.
•The Beta Analytic Testing Laboratory released the test report on August 27.
•Mr. Stalin said archaeological excavations would be carried out in other States and countries in search of Tamil roots. In the first phase, studies would be undertaken at the ancient port of Muziris, now known as Pattanam, in Kerala.
•“The research will be done jointly with Kerala archaeologists to establish the ancientness and culture of the Chera empire,” he said. Similar studies would be conducted at Vengi in Andhra Pradesh, Thalaikadu in Karnataka and Palur in Odisha.
•The Chief Minister said the Tamil Nadu Archaeology Department would conduct research at Quseir al-Qadim and Pernica Anekke in Egypt, which were once part of the Roman empire, as well as in Khor Rori in Oman, to establish the Tamils’ trade relations with these countries.
•“Potsherds bearing Tamil scripts have been found in these countries. The study will be conducted with the help of the archaeologists of these countries,” he said.
•Mr. Stalin said studies would also be conducted in Southeast Asian countries, such as Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam, where King Rajendra Chola had established supremacy.
•Recalling his visit to Keezhadi, where excavations had thrown up new findings, the Chief Minister said the carbon dating of the objects unearthed there had proved that the Tamil society had achieved literacy even in the sixth century BCE. “Keezhadi has united Tamils across the world.”
•He said Calcutta University Professor Susmita Basu Majumdar had concluded that the silver coin with sun and other symbols was pre-Mauryan. Rakesh Tewari, former Director-General of Archaeological Survey of India, had said the outcome of the excavations at Keeladi, Kodumanal and other sites in Tamil Nadu have corroborated the view that there might have been contacts between south India and north India as early as 600 BCE-700 BCE or even earlier.
📰 Catching up: On Production-Linked Incentive scheme for textile sector
The success of the PLI is likely to hinge on how entrepreneurs weigh the risk-reward equation
•The Cabinet’s approval of a Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for the textile sector that is expressly targeted at the man-made fibre (MMF) and technical textiles segments is a belated acknowledgment by the Government that the ground has inexorably shifted in the global textiles trade. A relentless shift in consumer preferences and fashion trends saw MMF surpass cotton as the fibre of choice in the 1990s, since vaulting its share in worldwide textile consumption to about 75%. India’s textile and clothing exports on the other hand have continued to remain dominated by cotton and other natural fibre-based products, with MMF having contributed less than 30% of the country’s $35.6 billion in overall sectoral exports in 2017-18. And MMF’s share remained relatively unchanged in the last fiscal as well when the sectoral exports were about $33 billion. While policy makers have been cognisant of the need to bolster support for the MMF segment, the task of crafting a meaningful initiative that would engender enhanced investment in capacity creation, leading to increased exports, has been a while in coming. Wednesday’s decision on the focused PLI scheme, with a budgeted outlay of ₹10,683 crore, is the second time in 11 months that the Cabinet has approved what is broadly the same plan, with the Government using the intervening period to incorporate amendments to the incentive structure based on industry feedback.
•The aim of the scheme is to specifically focus investment attention on 40 MMF apparel product lines, 14 MMF fabric lines and 10 segments or products of technical textiles. These 64 items have been chosen on account of being among the top-traded lines in the global market as well as India having less than a 5% share in each of them. The inclusion of intermediate products at industry’s request also reflects the Government’s keenness to ensure the scheme ultimately delivers on the broader policy objectives. The incentives have been categorised into two investment levels. Firms investing at least ₹300 crore into plant and machinery over two years for making a specified product would need to hit a minimum turnover of ₹600 crore before becoming eligible to receive the incentive over a five-year period, and at a second level an investment of ₹100 crore with a pre-set minimum turnover of ₹200 crore would enable qualification for the incentive. On the face of it, the scheme appears designed with a fair deal of thought, but its operational success is likely to hinge on how new entrepreneurs and existing companies weigh the risk-reward equation, especially at a time when the pandemic-spurred uncertainty has already made private businesses leery of making fresh capital expenditure.
📰 Why hasn’t marital rape been criminalised in India yet?
Parliament and courts have missed opportunities to bring in changes on this sensitive issue
•In 2017, the Supreme Court, in Independent Thought v. Union of India, refused to delve into the question of marital rape of adult women while examining an exception to Section 375 (rape) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) which allows a man to force sex on his wife. Recent rulings by High Courts have been contradictory — one backed marital rape as a valid ground for divorce, while another granted anticipatory bail to a man while concluding that forcible sex is not an “illegal thing”. Why do differences persist despite the Justice J.S. Verma Committee recommendation to criminalise marital rape? Shraddha Chaudhary and Manuraj Shunmugasundaram discuss why marital rape has not been criminalised in India yet, in a conversation moderated by Sudipta Datta. Edited excerpts:
Recent rulings by High Courts pointing out that any sexual act between a man and his wife, even if it involves force, is not rape perhaps highlights the lacuna in the IPC. Why does a provision like this exist in the IPC in the first place?
•Shraddha Chaudhary: Section 375 of the IPC defines the offence of rape. It lays down which physical acts are required to make out the offence, and it is a very broad definition. The second important element of this definition is consent. Where these acts are done without the consent of the woman, then the offence of rape is made out. This is the general rule, but there is an exception, which says that sexual acts by a husband with his wife, if she is 18 years of age and above, would not be rape. While the rest of the provision is centred on consent, this exception does not talk about consent at all. It creates the legal fiction that a wife always consents to her husband, which in effect means that her non-consent is irrelevant. It is of course possible for there to be reprieve for rape within a marriage, but not as rape. If there are physical injuries, then there can be reprieve for that separately. Marital rape may be recognised as a form of cruelty, it may be a ground for divorce, but it is not punished as rape, which is a very distinct wrong and has very distinct terms. That is where the lacuna in the law lies. Insofar as fixing it is concerned, either Parliament may legislate and remove this exception, or a constitutional court has to strike it down.
•Manuraj Shunmugasundaram: How did we end up here? Partly because we inherited an IPC prior to the enactment of the Constitution, but that doesn’t absolve us of the deficiencies in the present legal structure and ‘legal fiction’, as Ms. Chaudhary says. The so-called marital rape immunity or the exception to rape, as we have structured it in our penal code, has been done away with in other jurisdictions, and rightly so. Marital rape today exists in a very unique sort of stratosphere wherein it can be a ground for cruelty and therefore, for divorce under the personal laws, but it will not render the offender guilty of the offence itself.
Where does the fault lie?
•Shraddha Chaudhary: Primarily, it should have fallen on Parliament to legislate and remove this exception. But we should also keep in mind that courts have noted the cruelty of this exception and they have acknowledged its problems. They have not gone on to strike it down entirely. As far as Parliament is concerned, it is quite common to leave to the court legislation that may not give very good political returns. We saw this with Section 377 as well. It had to be struck down by the court finally.
Why were the Justice J.S. Verma Committee recommendations on marital rape not adopted when the criminal law was amended in 2013?
•Manuraj Shunmugasundaram: Parliament did miss an opportunity to enact changes, as recommended by the Justice Verma Committee. The official response was that they wanted further discussions around marital rape laws before they could enact it because it involves other questions of law as well. There might be some element of truth to that, but it exposes a vulnerability to issues that may not have political mileage or in fact may have other political ramifications. The Supreme Court missed a fantastic opportunity to go into these matters in the Independent Thought case in 2017. Under Article 142, the Supreme Court has powers almost equivalent to that of a lawmaking power. Like with the Navtej Johar case (2018) when the Supreme Court missed an opportunity to provide the entire spectrum of civil marital inheritance rights to non-heterosexual couples, the Supreme Court equally missed an opportunity during the course of the Independent Thought case to extend its remit to look at all forms of marital rape and not only that restricted to women below 18 years.
When the Supreme Court was reading down the exception to Section 375, shouldn’t it have afforded the same protection to adult women as well?
•Shraddha Chaudhary: The court made the conscious decision to restrict itself to the question of minors. The case was framed as a question of parity between the IPC on the one hand and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, on the other. I am sure a lot of constitutional commentators will talk about the merits of judicial restraint, and there is an argument to be made for that.
•The issue is sensitive and can be controversial because a lot of people, including educated, seemingly liberal people, still believe that criminalising marital rape will somehow threaten the ‘institution of marriage’ and will become some sort of a witch-hunt against husbands. These arguments channel the Victorian morality of the IPC, which we have tried to counter but have not quite done it fully, or as well as perhaps we would have liked to. That morality also captured the common law of coverture, under which women had no rights after marriage, their rights were to be exercised by their husbands, so they were completely reduced to the status of chattel, of property.
Judgments of courts around the world, such as the European Court of Human Rights, have stressed on the offence and violence of rape, rather than the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim. To what extent are these developments relevant to India?
•Manuraj Shunmugasundaram: They are extremely relevant in terms of how our own jurisprudence could evolve in the coming years. We have seen how LGBTQ jurisprudence over the last 15 years in other countries has impacted to some extent how India’s own jurisprudence from Navtej Johar has changed with regard to LGBTQ rights. Ultimately, the recognition of the perversity of the marital rape exception must come from within. For that we only need to look towards Article 14. The most compelling argument in support of the marital rape exception as it is prevalent in our statute today is that the institution of marriage is sacrosanct and that it should not be disturbed. But the Constitution places no importance on any particular institution; the Constitution is unequivocal in the significance given to the individual. A person deserves equality, equal protection and autonomy. Therefore, the exception to marital rape in itself is unconstitutional and violative of Article 14. Further, marital rape is an affront to the dignity of the individual, which is protected under Article 21. Just because the nature of the relationship between the victim and the offender is one of marriage, it does not absolve a person of the crime. The argument that is built around the institution of marriage and its sanctity needs to be broken, which is what has happened in other jurisdictions around us. Once we realise that, our society will have no choice but to remove the marital rape exception.
•Shraddha Chaudhary: We can also learn from the experiences of countries which have criminalised marital rape. It did not lead to a witch-hunt against husbands and definitely not to the destruction of marriage. There are socio-economic differences between India and some of the countries that have criminalised marital rape. I was reading that the government has used that as well as a rationale against criminalising marital rape, saying that the poverty, illiteracy and diversity in this country make the issue complex. But we need to question to what extent these factors map on to criminalising marital rape, and to what extent we can let them hamstring us.
What are the hurdles in reporting and prosecuting a crime like marital rape?
•Manuraj Shunmugasundaram: Most acts of sexual violence are away from eyewitnesses, and to lead evidence is a challenge in itself. I don’t see why marital rape should be more difficult to report or prove in court than any other sexual offence. The POCSO Act has been an important step in ensuring that there is justice for child sexual abuse victims. Now we know that most offenders of child sexual abuses are within the family, but we don’t give them immunity, right? We don’t say there’s an institution of family, so let’s protect offenders who are within the same family. We need to show that it is as absurd to ask for protection of a husband from marital rape as it is to ask for protection of a family member from child sexual abuse.
•Shraddha Chaudhary: The marital space does create issues in reporting and prosecuting crime — not because of the nature of the offence or what is being criminalised but because of the way that the functionaries in the criminal justice system think of these things. The police, judges, prosecutors and anyone with whom the complainant will have to interact — it is they who are likely to create, either unwittingly or intentionally, barriers in reporting and prosecution because in their minds, consent being presumed within a marriage may persevere, even if the law happens to have changed.
Would you agree that social structures that justify violence against women pose a challenge to the implementation of laws on rape. Even if laws are amended, have mindsets changed?
•Manuraj Shunmugasundaram: Societal change is very important. It is not only patriarchy or misogyny that needs to change, we need to challenge notions about the sanctity of marriage. We need to check ourselves every time we indulge in blaming the victim. We also need to challenge our conservative mindsets when it comes to discussing sexual offences or offences that take place within the family. Just going back to POCSO, till date, such crimes are largely under-reported, because most of the abuse is within the family.
•Shraddha Chaudhary: There have existed certain power structures in our society, typically based on caste and gender. When these power structures are challenged by laws, the rhetoric of misuse comes in. That is the strongest kind of weapon operationalised against the implementation of such laws. It’s important to counter such narratives as well as to establish that misuse is extremely unlikely. We must believe victims, complainants, and [see this] hullabaloo of misuse as a red herring. We need to counter this [misuse argument] strongly in politics, judgments, civil society.
•Manuraj Shunmugasundaram: The roadmap is readily available for either the constitutional courts or Parliament to act on this. We need to frame the discussion around rape as an offence against bodily integrity and we need to emphasise the importance of the rights of the individual, as laid down in Article 14. We need to tell people that every act must be protected with consent.
📰 The national security discourse is changing
Policymakers and practitioners are leading the emerging consensus on the need to fundamentally reassess assumptions
•The global security landscape is undergoing a churn, creating complexities and new realities unlike any time in the recent past. From a rising China to the pressures of climate change; from the challenges of counter terrorism to a seemingly never-ending COVID-19 pandemic (the four Cs), the old order is collapsing much faster than the ability of nations to create the foundations of a new one. National security debates and discourse are, quietly but surely, undergoing an almost revolutionary transformation. While the academic world has long talked about the need for a ‘holistic’ conception of national security, much of that debate was considered far too esoteric by practitioners. Today, it is the policymakers and practitioners themselves that are leading the emerging consensus on the need to fundamentally reassess our assumptions about national security thinking.
Change in the U.S.
•The U.S. policymakers have started changing their cognitive lens when it comes to national security policy making. A process that was started by former U.S. President Donald Trump has been taken forward with gusto by the Biden Administration. Asserting that “foreign policy is domestic policy and domestic policy is foreign policy,” U.S. President Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has suggested that his team’s task is to re-imagine American “national security for the unprecedented combination of crises we face at home and abroad: the pandemic, the economic crisis, the climate crisis, technological disruption, threats to democracy, racial injustice, and inequality in all forms”. He has gone on to argue that “the alliances we rebuild, the institutions we lead, the agreements we sign, all of them should be judged by a basic question. Will this make life better, easier, safer, for working families across this country?”
•The U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, too has reiterated this message in his comments that “more than at any other time in my career — maybe in my lifetime — distinctions between domestic and foreign policy have simply fallen away” and that “our domestic renewal and our strength in the world are completely entwined, and how we work will reflect that reality”.
•Both Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Blinken have taken their cue from their boss, President Biden, who had campaigned on a “foreign policy for the middle-class” and has been unabashed about the need for the U.S. “to invest in our people, sharpen our innovative edge, and unite the economic might of democracies around the world to grow the middle-class and reduce inequality and do things like counter the predatory trade practices of our competitors and adversaries”.
•There is a growing bipartisan acknowledgement in the U.S. today that if the requirements of American national security during the Cold War could be largely met by its fleets of bombers, nuclear missiles, aircraft carriers and overseas bases, today’s strategic environment requires a different response: one that shores up domestic industrial base, helps in maintaining pre-eminence in critical technologies, makes supply chains for critical goods more resilient, protects critical infrastructure from cyberattacks, and responds with a sense of urgency to climate change.
Not a novel idea
•The idea that foreign and domestic policies are tightly intertwined is not a novel one. All serious grand strategic thinking in democracies, at the end of the day looks for sustenance in popular public support. Mr. Trump’s rise and his ideas challenged both the liberals and the conservatives in the U.S. foreign policy establishment as they underscored the widening gulf between the policy community and the American hinterland. Mr. Biden and his team have learned their lessons. Mr. Sullivan is working towards integrating the National Security Council with the other components of the White House such as the National Economic Council, with the Domestic Policy Council, with the Office of Science and Technology Policy. This will inevitably present its own sets of challenges but there is no shying away from this new reality.
The Indian situation
•In India too, we have seen a greater recognition of the challenges emanating on national security from domestic vulnerabilities. One of the most significant consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, underscored by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, has been to reveal how deeply India has been dependent on Chinese manufacturing for critical supplies. At a time when Indian armed forces were facing the People’s Liberation Army across the Line of Actual Line, this exposed India to a new realisation that dependence on overseas supply chains is a national security challenge of the highest order, one that cannot be overlooked any more. India has since moved towards shoring up domestic capacities in critical areas and also started looking at free trade agreements through a new lens.
•The Indian Army chief, General M.M. Naravane, in his remarks, has also made it apparent that views of the military leadership in this country are also evolving. He has argued that “national security comprises not only warfare and defence but also financial security, health security, food security, energy security and environment security apart from information security” and suggested that instead of viewing national security “primarily from the perspective of an armed conflict, there is a need to take a whole-of-government approach towards security”.
Highlight the synergies
•In the post-pandemic world with a serious strain on national resources, it will be important for policymakers to underline the synergies between the civilian and the military spheres. The Army chief has rightfully pointed out a range of tangible and intangible ways in which investment in the armed forces contributes to the national economy such as indigenisation of defence procurement, providing an impetus to indigenous industries, aid to civil authorities or Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) operations protecting infrastructure, demand for hi-tech military products by the armed forces spurring entire industries, and transportation and logistics capacities of the armed forces acting as force enablers for the Government in times of emergencies.
•The Army leadership has done well to highlight the role of armed forces in sustaining a broader conception of national security than primarily focusing on war fighting. As nations across the world reconceptualise their strategic priorities to bring their ends, ways and means into greater balance, questions of resource allocation will become even more contentious and policymakers will need to think more creatively about the roles of various instruments of statecraft. National security thinking is undergoing a shift. India cannot be left behind.
