📰 PM Modi inaugurates ‘One Nation, One Fertilizer’ scheme
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday inaugurated 600 Kisan Samridhi Kendras and ‘One Nation, One Fertilizer’ scheme and said that these steps were being taken to modernise agriculture.
•The Kisan Samridhi Kendras would function as helping centres for farmers in this process, he added.
•The PM was speaking at a conclave of farmers and 1,500 start-ups in the agriculture sector, where he also released the 12th instalment of the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi. Under the scheme, ₹16,000 crore will be credited into the bank accounts of over 8.5 crore farmers. Over ₹2 lakh crore has been transferred to farmers, helping them manage costs, he said.
•The amount under the scheme would be credited directly into the accounts of farmers. “There will be no mediators for this,” Mr. Modi added.
•He said that earlier urea factories in the country were closed down to benefit importers and added that after 2014, the government took several steps and now the country was marching towards self sustenance in liquid nano urea production. “Nano urea will help farmers to address the issue of scarcity,” Mr. Modi said.
•He said fertilizers would be rebranded as “Bharat” to help farmers and it would reduce the prices of major fertilizers as transportation cost would be regulated.
•He added that as part of observing the Millets Year in 2023, the Centre would promote cultivation of millets. New varieties of seeds were also being produced to meet the challenges of climate change.
📰 Hindi imposition and its discontents
What are the reported recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee on Official Language? When did the linguistic row initially start? What is the history of the ‘anti-Hindi’ agitations in Tamil Nadu? How have regional leaders reacted?
•The reported recommendation of the Parliamentary Committee on Official Language to use Hindi as the medium of instruction in Central institutions of higher education in Hindi-speaking States and regional languages in other States has once again ignited controversy.
•At different points in time, leaders, starting from Jawaharlal Nehru in the mid-1950s, assured the people of Tamil Nadu that there would be no “imposition” of Hindi. However, in recent years, be it the National Education Policy or reports of English signage on National Highways in Tamil Nadu getting replaced with Hindi signage, the political class of the State had overwhelmingly expressed its reservations.
•If reports in sections of the media are an indication, English, as a medium of instruction in all technical and non-technical institutions, will be permitted only where it is absolutely essential, as the idea is to replace the language gradually with Hindi in those institutions.
The story so far:
•The reported recommendation of the Parliamentary Committee on Official Language to use Hindi as the medium of instruction in Central institutions of higher education in Hindi-speaking States and regional languages in other States has once again ignited a controversy over, what is called by critics of the BJP, an attempt to impose Hindi on non-Hindi speaking people. Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, M. K. Stalin and Pinarayi Vijayan have voiced their concerns over the recommendation.
What is the backdrop to the Hindi imposition row?
•The origin of the linguistic row goes back to the debate on official languages. In the Constituent Assembly, Hindi was voted as the official language by a single vote. However, it added that English would continue to be used as an associate official language for 15 years. The Official Languages Act came into effect on the expiry of this 15-year period in 1965. This was the background in which the anti-Hindi agitation took place. However, as early as in 1959, Jawaharlal Nehru had given an assurance in Parliament that English would continue to be in use as long as non-Hindi speaking people wanted it.
Why do many parties in Tamil Nadu stand against the recommendation?
•Tamil Nadu has had a long history of agitations against “Hindi imposition”. In August 1937, in the then Presidency of Madras, the regime headed by C. Rajagopalachari, also known as Rajaji or CR, decided to make Hindi compulsory in secondary schools. E.V. Ramasamy, or Periyar as he was known, who was still in the Justice Party at that time, had spearheaded an agitation against the move, marking the first such stir. A few months after CR’s resignation, the British government, in February 1940, made Hindi optional. In January 1965, the second round of agitations erupted in the wake of Hindi becoming the official language of the Union government coupled with the approach adopted by the Central government towards the whole issue.
•At different points in time, leaders, starting from Jawaharlal Nehru in the mid-1950s, assured the people of Tamil Nadu that there would be no “imposition” of Hindi. However, in recent years, be it the National Education Policy or reports of English signage on National Highways in the State getting replaced with Hindi signage, the political class of the State had overwhelmingly expressed its reservations. The reiteration of the age-old assurance by the Central government coupled with the promise of the promotion of other Indian languages have barely mollified the protesters.
•The essence of the Official Languages Act, 1963, is to provide something to each of the differing groups to meet its objections and safeguard its position. Whenever the parties in the State see any attempt to disturb this status quo, their reaction is always uniform — a virulent opposition.
What does the present proposal say?
•If reports in sections of the media are an indication, English, as a medium of instruction in all technical and non-technical institutions, will be permitted only where it is absolutely essential, as the idea is to replace the language gradually with Hindi in those institutions.
•While IITs, IIMs and All India Institute of Medical Sciences are considered technical institutions, Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalayas fall under the other category. Also, the committee has recommended the removal of English as one of the languages in examinations held for recruitment to the Central services. It has stated that the requisite knowledge of Hindi among candidates should also be ensured.
What is the alternative suggested by critics of the proposal ?
•Both Mr. Stalin and Mr. Vijayan have called for equal treatment to all the languages specified under the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. The Kerala Chief Minister has specifically stated that question papers for competitive examinations should be prepared in all the languages while his Tamil Nadu counterpart has urged the Centre to promote all languages and keep open the avenues of progress in terms of education and employment equal to speakers of all languages.
📰 Judicial comity over arithmetic
•A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court has unanimously held that a judgment delivered by a larger Bench will prevail over the decision of a smaller Bench, irrespective of the number of judges constituting the majority in the larger Bench.
•It is well-known in law that the decision of a superior court will always be binding on a lower court and that the decision of a larger Bench will always hold force over a smaller Bench of the same court. This canon of law seeks to ensure that there is stability and consistency in the decisions of the court. This principle stems from the assumption that a Bench with more strength is more likely to arrive at a correct decision.
Understanding Bench strength
•A vast majority of cases before the Supreme Court is heard and decided by a Bench of two judges (Division Bench) or three (full Bench). It is a settled position that a Bench of equal strength cannot overrule or reconsider a decision of a coordinate Bench; it can, at best, doubt the correctness of it. Whenever there is doubt or conflict between decisions of co-equal Benches, it is referred to the Chief Justice of India and this is where larger Benches are constituted. The larger Benches examine the question or correctness of the decision and the majority opinion expressed by them becomes the verdict, which is binding on the lower Benches.
•An anomaly here is that a majority decision is treated as the ruling of the entire Bench, including the dissenting judges, that examined the question. This is where the problem originates. If the correctness of a law laid down unanimously by a five-judge Bench is doubted, could it be overruled by four judges of a seven-judge Bench? Could it be said that the four judges of the larger Bench arrived at the correct decision and not the five judges of the smaller Bench?
•The Supreme Court, while considering the same question, held that if the number of judges is to have salience and not Bench strength, then every decision of a larger bench could be doubted and overruled on the ground of plurality of opinions, thereby toppling the certainty and stability of decisions. The observation holds some rationale, as even in a study, the one with the larger sample space (larger Bench) is assumed to reflect a correct outcome over a study with a smaller sample space. This is the underlying raison d'être for the Rule of Precedents.
•However, a blanket adherence to the Doctrine of Precedents as enunciated by the Supreme Court can have serious consequences, as the correctness of a decision would become a game of numbers rather than reasons. The Supreme Court justified the binding nature of the larger Bench’s view saying that this view was arrived at after deliberation by more judges. But just because a decision was considered by more judges does not mean that it is correct and it certainly would not be perceived to be correct. In fact, if a larger Bench arrived at a decision by a slim majority (say, 4:3 in a seven-judge Bench), its correctness would be all the more doubted on the presumption that had the Bench comprised different judges, the outcome might have been different. After all, it is natural that a decision by a larger majority is perceived to be correct over a decision considered by a larger number.
•Such an anomaly is usually avoided in the U.S. and in South Africa owing to the fact that any reconsideration of a precedent is a matter deliberated by the entire sitting strength of the court as opposed to division(s). While both the U.K. and Australia follow a system similar to that of India, the entire act of ‘reconsidering a precedent’ is viewed as a delicate and grave judicial responsibility in these countries. Rarely do precedents get re-decided more than once, unlike in India, in order to give quietus to litigation and in the limited occasion where a decision is reopened, the only requirement is that it would examined by a Bench of all ‘available judges’.
Recommendations
•If such conflicts are to be avoided by the Supreme Court of India, certain changes are required in terms of how larger Benches are constituted. It is recommended that the term ‘larger Bench’ be understood not in the strict sense of being merely greater in strength than the lower Bench. Instead, there should be an endeavour to have a quorum with a break-even or a greater majority than the lower Bench. Thus, if a five-judge unanimous decision is referred to a larger Bench, it should be considered by a nine-judge Bench rather than seven, so that it would in any case be decided by a majority of at least five judges. After all, correctness of a judicial decision has more to it than just the number of judges deliberating the vexed question of law. Otherwise, a lower number of judges holding a majority opinion could overrule a higher number of judges holding a majority opinion based on the sheer fact that the lower number of majority opinion judges was part of a larger bench. By permitting this possibility, the Supreme Court has opened up the likeliness of its decisions being criticised on the grounds of having a ‘narrow majority’ in comparison to its previous unanimous decisions.
📰 About 41.5 crore Indians out of multi-dimensional poverty since 2005-06
India has by far the largest number of poor people worldwide at 22.8 crore, followed by Nigeria at 9.6 crore. There were also 9.7 crore poor children in India in 2019-2021
•About 41.5 crore people exited poverty in India during the 15-year period between 2005-06 and 2019-21, out of which two-third exited in the first 10 years, and one-third in the next five years, according to the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) released on Monday.
•The report produced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) shows that the incidence of poverty fell from 55.1% in 2005-06 to 16.4% in 2019-21 in the country and that deprivations in all 10 MPI indicators saw significant reductions as a result of which the MPI value and incidence of poverty more than halved.
•Improvement in MPI for India has significantly contributed to the decline in poverty in South Asia and it is for the first time that it is not the region with the highest number of poor people, at 38.5 crore, compared with 57.9 crore in Sub-Saharan Africa.
•The report doesn’t fully assess the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on poverty in India as 71% of the data from the National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-2021) relied upon for MPI were collected before the pandemic.
•The global MPI constructs a deprivation profile of each household and person through 10 indicators spanning health, education and standard of living. All indicators are equally weighted within each dimension. The global MPI identifies people as multidimensionally poor if their deprivation score is 1/3 or higher.
•Bihar, the poorest State in 2015-2016, saw the fastest reduction in MPI value in absolute terms. The incidence of poverty there fell from 77.4% in 2005-2006 to to 34.7% in 2019-2021.
•Despite the strides made, the report notes that the ongoing task of ending poverty remains daunting. India has by far the largest number of poor people worldwide at 22.8 crore, followed by Nigeria at 9.6 crore. Two-third of these people live in a household in which at least one person is deprived in nutrition. There were also 9.7 crore poor children in India in 2019-2021 — more than the total number of poor people, children and adults combined, in any other country covered by the global MPI.
📰 Today’s weapon of choice, its expanding dimensions
•As the 21st century advances, a new danger — the cyber threat — is becoming a hydra-headed monster. It is hardly confined to any one domain though the military is the one most often touted. Rather, it is the civilian sphere where the cyber threat is becoming more all-pervading today and, in turn, a serious menace. It is beginning to have a cascading effect with questions being raised on how this would fit in with our belief in, and need for, a well-regulated world order.
•What is most unfortunate is that not enough attention is being bestowed on the ‘all-encompassing nature’ of the cyber threat. In the wake of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the world seems awash with papers on artificial intelligence (AI)-driven military innovations and ‘potential crisis hot zones’, along with stray references to new forms of hybrid warfare. But there is very little about the threat posed by cyber attacks. Ignored also is the new reality of the ‘weaponisation of everything’ which has entered the vocabulary of threats. The latter clearly demands a ‘proto-revolutionary’ outlook on the part of policymakers, which is evidently lacking. Lost in translation is also the nature of today’s weapon of choice, viz., cyber. This lack of awareness is unfortunate at a time when states clearly lack the necessary resilience to face a variety of multi-vector threats.
‘Grey zone operations’
•‘Grey Zone Operations’ which fall outside traditional concepts of conflicts have become the new battleground, especially in regard to cyber warfare. ‘Grey Zone Operations’ are already beginning to be employed to undermine the vitals of a state’s functioning, a trend likely to grow. The convergence of emerging technologies alongside new hybrid usages, pose several challenges to nations and institutions.
•Cyber space has been described by Lt. Gen. Rajesh Pant (retired), India’s current national cyber security coordinator, as a “superset of interconnected information and communication technology, hardware, software processes, services, data and systems”. Viewed from this perspective, it constitutes a critical aspect of our national power. Cyber threats are not confined to merely one set of conflicts — such as Ukraine, where no doubt cyber tools are being extensively employed — extending well beyond this and other conflicts of a varied nature. The cyber threat is in this sense all-pervading,embracing many regions and operating on different planes. Hence, dealing with the cyber threat calls for both versatility and imaginative thinking. Demands for a cyber command by the Indian military ignore the widely varying nature of the cyber threat. That a group of United Nations government experts have been deliberating endlessly on how to promote responsible behaviour of states in cyber space, without much success is testimony to the difficulties that prevail.
•With each passing day, we confront a new reality, viz., the extent to which exploitation of cyber space by criminally minded elements undermines our everyday world and beliefs. The recent arrest in India, of a Russian for hacking into computers involved in the conduct of examinations for entry into the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), is a reflection of how cyber criminals are significantly amplifying their ‘Grey Zone Warfare’ tactics. This is, perhaps, the tip of the iceberg for, as a general rule, it takes a long time for the general public to become aware of the nature and consequences of cyber attacks. At first these look like random accidents and it takes sophisticated cyber forensics to understand the contours of such attacks. It may surprise many that the IIT entrance examination should be an area for ‘Grey Zone Warfare’, but the real surprise should be that the perpetrators could succeed in compromising an examination software system deemed to be among the most secure across the world. Thus, ‘Grey Zone Warfare’ is set to become the predominant paradigm for the remainder of the century. This adds urgency to erecting proper defences against Grey Zone attacks.
•Distorting the entry-level results of the Joint Entrance Examination is a blow to the nation’s prestige, apart from creating chaos across the board, since entry into higher educational institutions and entry-level jobs in the country is driven by examinations which employ various kinds of technology. Till now, technology was perceived as a foolproof means to end malpractices, but the recent incident calls into question the veracity of such assumptions. What is even more consequential is that it significantly raises the bar as far as the intensity and scale of cyber attacks on other national assets and infrastructure are concerned, with many more of them coming under still more aggravated assaults.
•The extent to which the system has been compromised is terrifying to contemplate, even before the full facts are unearthed. Yet, it has grave implications for the entire spectrum of endeavours that are totally dependent on technologically-driven remote access functioning as a part of their everyday business activity. Niche solutions for such cyber intrusions are available (though little known or used) and it is important that those concerned undertake a leap of faith to install such solutions before the situation goes out of control.
Cyber space battles, dilemmas
•It can be argued that there may be nothing radically wrong in highlighting cyber space as essentially a locus of geo-political conflict — the Russia-Ukraine crisis being an instance — but there is much more to the cyber threat than this. In the case of the Russia-Ukraine war, cyber space has become an experiment for various players to try and support a weaker nation against a more powerful opponent, through distortion of information and communication flows, which are considered essential to the success or failure of any war strategy. While Russia may not publicly admit to the fact that it is hurting, with most global information networks being ranged against it and distorting realities, it has certainly added a new cyber dimension to the ongoing conflict. While its effect on the course of the conflict may not be decisive, the potential for mischief is immense. Additionally, distortion by private players of the concept of ‘the information super highway’ casts a dark shadow over the entire current systems of belief, providing a great deal of fuel for thought — more specifically when such influences turn out to be fake or distorted.
•All this again brings to mind shades of the past, when the Cambridge Analytica scandal erupted over the issue of its becoming involved in elections. Similar suspicions again surfaced regarding Facebook’s manipulation of personal data. Hence, it is evident that the cyber realm is no longer confined to events such as the Russia-Ukraine war and the battle is now in our own backyards, with several non-state actors engaging in hybrid warfare and distorting day-to-day practices, including examinations. These pose legal, ethical and real dilemmas. Left unchecked, the world may have to confront a new kind of Wild West, before states find a common denominator for regulating cyber space and lay down proper rules and practices to prevent anarchy and chaos.
While the fall of the rupee has been relatively moderate, the pace at which India’s foreign exchange reserves are dwindling are a cause for concern
•The rupee’s weakening exchange rate and the pace at which India’s foreign exchange reserves are dwindling are back in focus. The Ukraine crisis and the U.S. Federal Reserve’s aggressive monetary tightening have led the rupee to depreciate past the 82 per dollar mark, while India’s reserves have shrunk to a two-year low.
•Reserves include foreign currency assets, gold, special drawing rights with the International Monetary Fund, and reserve tranche position. These external assets, controlled by the monetary authority, are used to absorb shocks during times of crises; provide confidence to the market that external obligations can be met; and build capacity for intervention in foreign exchange markets.
•Forex reserves are a crucial indicator of a country’s economic health and its import capacity. As per a Bloomberg report, dwindling forex reserves have led to a shortage of dollars in many import-reliant economies. As a result, countries that are dependent on overseas food purchases are finding it hard to pay for commodities such as rice and wheat.
•The Fed’s steep increases in interest rates have made the dollar more attractive. Consequently, the dollar index has soared by 15% this year – a two-decade high – while other currencies have declined.
•Strong currencies such as the pound (-21.62%) and euro (-17%) have also weakened against the dollar. The Japanese yen, considered a safe haven, has slipped to a 24-year-low. Several currencies, like the rupee, have touched their all-time lows, but the fall of the rupee has been relatively more moderate. Chart 1 shows the change in a currency’s value against the dollar in 2022 (data till October 7).
•Central banks across the world have stepped in to defend their currencies. As a result, reserves have depleted by more than $100 billion each in China, Japan, Switzerland and Singapore. While Singapore’s reserves saw the sharpest decline in percentage terms, China’s fell the most in absolute terms. As the yen breached the 145 per dollar mark, Japan’s reserves fell by $54 billion in the last one month. Table 2 lists the drop in reserves in absolute terms and the percentage change in 2022. It also lists the total reserves available.
•In the last nine months, India’s reserve stockpile fell by $97 billion. This is significantly higher than the drawdown of reserves during the 2008 global financial crisis ($37.3 billion) and the period of the taper tantrum in 2013 ($16.6 billion). A crucial difference between this crisis and the other two has been the size of India’s reserves. While India has the fifth-highest reserves in the world, the pace at which they are depleting is causing concern. Reserves as of September 2022 were equivalent to nine months of import cover compared to more than 15 months in September 2021. Chart 3 shows the month-wise level of India’s forex reserves in 2008, 2013 and 2022. India’s reserves are by and large a product of capital flows (funds through foreign investments, borrowings) and not so much from the current account (net income earned through exports of goods and services and remittances), which is currently in deficit. As foreign investments eased, accumulation in India’s foreign reserves also dropped.
•With the dollar strengthening, the value of the euro, pound and yen (also part of India’s foreign reserves) took a beating. This too led to a reduction in India’s reserves. This is called a valuation loss.
•Chart 4 shows the change in India’s forex reserves due to two factors — through balance of payments (sum of India’s capital flows and current account deficit) and through valuation loss/gain.
