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General Studies – 1
Reference: A brief history of modern India by Spectrum Publishers.
Introduction
Wellesley’s policy of subsidiary alliance was an extension of ring fence—which sought to reduce states to a position of dependence on British Government in India. According to this system, every ruler in India had to accept to pay a subsidy to the British for the maintenance of British army. In return, British would protect them from their enemies which gave British enormous expansion.
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French used to provide their troops for the rent purpose to the native Indian state. Dupleix was the first who lend European troops to the Indian state. Later it was adopted at a large scale by Lord Wellesley who started it to make sure that no state in India
Key features of Subsidiary Alliance
- The allies of Indian state’s ruler were compelled to accept the permanent garrison of British Army within their territories and to pay a subsidy for its maintenance.
- An Indian ruler entering into Subsidiary Alliance with the British had to dissolve his own armed forces.
- He also had to pay for the British army’s maintenance.
- In return, the British would protect the Indian state against any foreign attack or internal revolt.
- The Britishpromised non-interference in internal affairs of the Indian state but this was rarely kept.
- The Indian state could not enter into any alliance with any other foreign power.
- He could also not employ any other foreign nationals other than Englishmen in his service. And, if he were employing any, on the signing of the alliance, he had to terminate them from his service. The idea was to curb the influence of the French.
- The Indian state could also not enter into any political connection with another Indian state without British approval.
- The Indian ruler, thus, lost all powers in respect of foreign affairs and the military.
- He virtually lost all his independence and became a British ‘protectorate’.
- A British Resident was also stationed in the Indian Court.
Impact of policy and British Expansion
- If a ruler failed to make the payment, a portion of his territory would be taken away and ceded to the British in the name of maintaining the troops.
- This was the outcome in most cases, as rulers fell into arrears and a part of their territory was taken.
- The subsidiary system was the Trojan horse tacticsin empire building. It disarmed the Indian states and threw British protectorate over them.
- The Governor Generalhad proxy in every Indian state that accepted the subsidiary alliance.
- Thus, it deprived the Indian princes of forming any confederacy against British.
- It enabled the company to maintain a large standing army at the expense of Indian princes.
- According to the Wellesley himself, “by the establishment of our subsidiary forces at Hyderabad and Poona, an efficient army of 22000 men are stationed within the territories or on the frontier of foreign states, and is paid by foreign subsidies. That army is constantly maintained in a state of perfect equipment, and is prepared for active service in any direction at the shortest notice” without any considerable increase to the permanent military expenses of the Government of India.”
- The stationing of the company’s troops in the capitals of the Indian princes gave the English thecontrol of the strategic and key positions in India without arousing the jealousy of other European nations.
- The subsidiary system helped the company to effectivelycounteract any possible French moves in India. The company required the subsidiary ally to dismiss all Frenchmen from his service.
- The British residentswielded considerable influence in the affairs of the Indian states. This placed great patronage into the hands of company’s authorities in India.
- The Company acquired territories in full sovereignty from Indian statesand expanded their dominions in India
- So, we can say that on one hand Subsidiary alliance helped company to reduce the threat of Napoleon/Frenchand on the other hand company could maintain a large army on the expenses of Indian states.
Conclusion
The native states, they virtually ceased to exist from the moment they became subsidiary to or protected by the Company. The conditions under which they were allowed to retain their apparent independence were at the same time, the conditions of permanent decay, and of an utter inability of improvement.
Reference: The Hindu
Introduction
Understanding the population of the society and the demographic is a major agenda of Census of India. It gives the socio-economic information on the Indian population. Such a data is tantamount for policy making especially for a welfare state like India.
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Issues concerning population data
- Caste is a major feature of Indian Society and socio-economic deprivations are directly linked to caste.
- Since Independence, aggregated Census data on the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes on certain parameters such as education have been collected.
- To capture contemporary Indian society and to understand and remedy inequalities caste census is important.
- While others believe that this large administrative exercise of capturing caste and its complexities is not only difficult, but also socially untenable.
- The SECC census has the potential to allow for a mapping of inequalities at a broader level. But this data has not been made available fully to the public yet.
- It would be disingenuous to ignore the emotive element of caste and the political and social repercussions of a caste census.
However, another factor is that whether caste alone can account the nuances that shape caste and simultaneously the ways in which caste shapes everyday life in India.
Demographic data capture roadmap
- Linking and syncing aggregated Census data to other large datasets such as the National Sample Surveys or the National Family Health Surveys that cover issues that the Census exercises do not, such as maternal health, would be significant for a more comprehensive analysis.
- Care must however be taken to ensure that digital alternatives and linking of data sources involving Census operations are inclusive and non-discriminatory, especially given the sensitive nature of the data being collected.
- The time lag between each Census, and the delay in the release of data must be remedied to use this for timely intervention.
- Eg: Ayushmaan Bharat scheme can become successful if benefits are provided to beneficiaries under latest data.
- A renewed discussion on the caste data that already exists, how it has been used and understood by the government and its various departments to grant or withdraw benefits, and also its utility for the important academic exercise of mapping social inequalities and social change, must be done.
Conclusion
Before another SECC or Census of India is conducted, a stocktaking of the previous exercise, of what has been learnt from it, and what changes are necessary, beyond changing exclusionary criteria for beneficiaries of state support, are crucial to enable the Census to facilitate effective policy work and academic reflection.
General Studies – 2
Reference: Indian Express
Introduction
Economic relations between USA and India have largely been frosty, despite the bonhomie between their leaders. With the new administration under Biden, India must renew its efforts for early conclusion of free trade agreement FTA to tap the potential of their complementarities.
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Need for India-USA FTA
· Share of Indian export to Asian countries has dropped in the past decade despite forging major free trade alliances but it has gone up in traditional markets like US and Europe.
- A major reason India has not lost out on its traditional markets like the US and the EU is the number of trade complementarities with these partner countries.
- For instance, the US’ major imports from the world comprise of machinery, mineral fuels, pharmaceuticals, organic chemicals, gems and jewellery, furniture etc., which are also India’s top export items.
- For the US, our untapped export potential as a percentage of the current exports is around 60 per cent, while for the EU, the number is a staggering 90 per cent. Hence the focus must be on deep bilateral FTA’s.
Possibility of India-USA Free Trade Agreement and issues
- India is seeking exemption from high duties imposed by the US on some steel and aluminium products.
- India also wants resumption of export benefits to certain domestic products under the GSP, and greater market access for its products from sectors such as agriculture, automobile, automobile components and engineering.
- On the other hand, the US wants greater market access for its farm and manufacturing products, dairy items and medical devices, apart from cut in import duties on some information and communication technology products.
- However, India cannot allow US Dairy, based on religious sentiments. The cow is bred on meat-based fodder, which goes against India’s beliefs. However, USA cannot be convinced on this point.
- Compulsory licensing in medical devices and recent steep cut in stent prices are sticky issues that USA will press for.
- There is concern on the US keeping certain Indian products (24 items) under TVPRA (Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act) list and designating them as ‘child labour sectors’, thereby denying them the opportunity to participate in supply contracts of US government agencies.
Conclusion
India and the US are negotiating a limited trade deal with a view to iron out differences on trade issues to boost economic ties. Trade should be reciprocal and now countries are moving towards balanced trade, and India will also have to engage with countries to expand trading relationships on its strengths and competitiveness.
General Studies – 3
Reference: The Hindu
Introduction
Recently, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has proposed a tighter regulatory framework for Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) by creating a four-tier structure with a progressive increase in intensity of regulation. If implemented, this could be the biggest overhaul of the regulatory framework for such finance companies (or shadow banks) in over two decades.
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NBFC: A Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC) is a company registered under the Companies Act, 1956 engaged in the business of loans and advances, acquisition of shares or bonds or securities issued by Government or local authority or other marketable securities of a like nature, leasing, hire-purchase, insurance business, chit business but does not include any institution whose principal business is that of agriculture activity or industrial activity.
RBI regulation on NBFC
The proposed framework is aimed at protecting financial stability while ensuring that smaller NBFCs continue to enjoy light regulations and grow with ease.
- The four-tiered regulation entails a largely laissez-faire approach for smaller NBFCs, plugging some of the arbitrages available to mid-sized NBFCs vis-à-vis banks, and imposing tougher ‘bank-like’ capitalisation, governance and monitoring norms for the largest players and those which could pose a systemic risk due to the nature of their operations.
- A top tier has been envisaged with even more scrutiny, but the RBI wants to ideally use this approach only when a certain large player poses ‘extreme risks’.
- Given the banking sector’s own woes over the past two years (PMC Bank, Yes Bank, Lakshmi Vilas Bank), a holistic reboot of the oversight mechanism for NBFCs and banks is critical to retain confidence and maintain financial stability
- RBI has also proposed classification of Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) of base layer NBFCs from 180 days to 90 days overdue.
Disadvantages
- Further regulations for NBFCs at this juncture could throttle a sector that has a critical role to play in the ongoing economic recovery.
- The very uniqueness of NBFC’s or shadow banking lies in its diversity, hence a one-size fits all approach may be counter-productive.
- Instead, RBI must more strictly monitor their compliance to ward off the systemic risks and build supervisory capacity.
Need for regulation
- The size of NBFC balance sheets is now more than a quarter of that of banks’ balance sheets, from just about 12% in 2010.
- In absolute terms, their balance sheets have more than doubled, from ₹20.7-lakh crore in 2015 to ₹49.2-lakh crore in 2020.
- It also manifested into a systemic risk and that risk was apparent when one of the largest infrastructure and investment-focused NBFC players, IL&FS, unravelled in 2018, with its payment defaults catalysing a crisis for the entire sector.
- The collateral damage meant NBFCs could not raise funds easily, and faced liquidity pressures that escalated to solvency concerns in some instances.
Conclusion
It is hoped that the blueprint for the regulation of NBFCs which can lend for activities banks often do not support, be it micro-loans or infrastructure projects, is formalised soon. This would ensure the fledgling economic recovery is not hampered by funding constraints.
Reference: orfonline.org
Introduction
In the extant ecosystem, rumors, fake news, propaganda and hate speech online coexist, and not necessarily in a linear fashion. From elections to politics and journalism, there is a business model that monetizes hate and capitalizes on polarizing opinions.
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Sources of Hate speech
- Communal Politics: Communal rhetoric during elections revives the centuries-old schisms that democracy has been unable to heal.
- Thus, election campaigns in India often focus on protecting or re-establishing community identity or on fomenting fear of its loss.
- Targeted propaganda: Democracy has been reduced to an advertisement campaign. The business conglomerates owned or tied up with political parties influence the views of the people by targeting their audience. Algorithmic filtering have created the cycle of enforcing and reinforcing belief systems and ensuring that we don’t open our minds to diverse opinions.
- Social Media: The phenomenal rise of Social Media (SM) platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and others is proving to be a double-edged sword in the functioning of democracies.
- Eg: DG Halli riots in Bangalore and Delhi riots in February 2020.
- Election Manipulation: The issue of fake news has turned out to be a global menace. It has its role in deciding result of elections (Example: USA) to polarization of societies to communal riots to even crumbling the economies. Tolerance and harmony are victims of the new social media age.
- Ineffective Model Code of Conduct: MCC says, “no party or candidate shall include in any activity which may aggravate existing differences or create mutual hatred or cause tension between different castes and communities, religious or linguistic”. However, this widely remains ineffective, as MCC is not justiciable.
Countering Hate Speech
- The lasting and most powerful antidote to rumours, fake news and hate speech is more speech. That is a strong logical counter-speech — a strong rebuttal of the rumours and real-time reassurance to the affected people by the state, the community, newspersons and the media.
- The current climate also underscores the importance of independent fact-checkers. They will help nurture a culture of fact-checking and an atmosphere where each individual will be more rigorous in their assessment when engaging with different types of information on different media and diverse platforms.
- Some solutions by internet giants, such as FiB, which focus on ensuring information is sourced from ‘reliable’ sources are in many ways looking to re-establish the old world order of trust in established/reputed institutions.
- Human editors are also an option and it is highly likely that any solution will have to incorporate some form of human input on a regular basis.
- There is also an effort being made to burst the filter bubbles of readers by showcasing to them news from across their reading spectrum. Projects such as Escape Your Bubble might possibly be the best way to tackle the problem as they focus on enlightening users with more varying information rather than trying to restrict or repudiate their views.
- The last gasp approach, however, might be to just censor news that is construed to be fake or misleading. This though would be a folly and would go against everything the Internet holds dear – primarily the freedom of speech. However, commercial institutions such as Facebook might find this the easiest way out as evidenced by their previous actions.
Conclusion
It is necessary to ensure that there is a regulatory mechanism that not only protects the right to free speech in a democracy but equally creates safeguards and curbs against amplification of hate speech from any source (social media, press, politicians, election-campaign) that can lead to real world violence.
Reference: Indian Express
Introduction
The protest by thousands of farmers at Delhi’s borders have brought to focus a range of issues in agriculture in India. The new farm bills will enable, according to the government, many private markets to be established and middlemen to disappear. Thus, farmers would be free to sell to any buyer and farmgate prices would rise.
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Current situation of land in agriculture:
Area under agriculture has been shrinking — it reduced from 159.5 million hectares (mn ha) in 2010-11 to 157 mn ha in 2015-16 — but the number of operational holdings has been rising (increased from 138.3 million to about 146 million). This reflects in the falling average landholdings’ size of farmers, which has come down from 1.2 ha to about 1.08 ha.
Concerns of the farmers
- Fear against the end of Mandi System
- The APMC regulates the mandi (marketplace) where farmers bring their produce, and therefore, guarantees that they receive the MSP.
- Since the state governments will not be able to regulate the trade outside the APMC markets, farmers believe the laws will gradually end the mandi system and leave farmers at the mercy of corporates.
- Fear over MSPs and procurement guarantee
- Farmers believe that dismantling the mandi system will bring an end to the assured procurement of their crops at MSP.
- Similarly, farmers believe the price assurance legislation may offer protection to farmers against price exploitation, but will not prescribe the mechanism for price fixation.
- Fear of Arhatiyas (Commission agents)
- On an average, at least 50-100 farmers are attached with each arhatiyas, who takes care of farmers’ financial loans and ensures timely procurement and adequate prices for their crop.
- Farmers believe the new laws will end their relationship with these agents and corporates will not be as sympathetic towards them in times of need.
- Fear over the end of subsidised electricity
- Farmers concerns are also fuelled by the proposed Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2020 which might end their access to subsidised electricity.
- The bill seeks to create an Electricity Contract Enforcement Authority (ECEA), a move aimed to further centralization.
- Another concern is the transfer of subsidies through DBT. Farmers will have to pay first from their own pocket, after which they will get subsidies.
- Fear over Contract Farming
- The FAPA Act formalizes contract cultivation through a “national framework” and explicitly prohibits any sponsor firm from acquiring the land of farmers through purchase, lease or mortgage.
- But farmers fear over the big corporate players’ monopoly over food processing industry and its supply chain dynamics.
- Fear over dispute resolution
- The FAPA Act provided for a three-level dispute settlement mechanism by the conciliation board, Sub-Divisional Magistrate and Appellate Authority.
- Since the highest level of appeal for the farmer against any private entity was the Appellate Authority, the farmer is effectively prevented from moving the Court.
- Thus, they claim that the Act was highly skewed in favor of private entity as the individual farmers did not have the resources that private companies had.
- Fear over EC Amendment Act
- The original EC Act de-regulated food items including cereals, pulses, potato, onion, edible oilseeds, and oils, and could only be regulated in the extraordinary circumstances.
- The new law states that government regulation of stocks will be based on rising prices.
- This stock-limiting puts farmers at the peril of the government and thus prevent them from making from any profit during any extra-ordinary circumstances as most of the time they only have to bear losses. (Ex. Onion farmers in Maharashtra).
Way forward
Reforms in agriculture have been overdue. There has been rhetoric in last 10 years in favour of agricultural but very few concrete steps have been taken. One rhetoric is very clear now. The APMC mandis were never filled with good samaritans and neither is the MSP religiously enforced everywhere.
- Just passing these laws won’t be enough. The success of liberalizing the farm market will hinge on effective implementation, constant monitoring and timely action.
- Accelerating research and academic excellence could bring in the ‘best in class’ technologies and can multiply farmers’ incomes.
- The Survey notes that agricultural income growth can be kick-started only by diversifying into high-value commodities like horticulture, pulses, oilseeds and livestock. This will allow farmers to tap into the higher growth in demand for these products and optimise resource usage.
- The Dalwai Committee found that by shifting from staples to horticulture, farmers can earn an additional income of `80,000 per hectare.
- As far as the APMCs and commission agents are concerned, the governments should work on a clear roadmap to modernize them by facilitating them in providing value-added services.
- They could be leveraged to set-up grading and sorting, warehousing, cold chains and food processing infrastructure. This way, it is a win-win-win for the state government, farmers and the commission agents.
- While taking the control away from these agents, the government must also ensure that the gap is filled with fool proof mechanisms to ensure timely payments to farmers to avoid any cash crunch.
Conclusion:
The governments must try to allay the fears of farmers over the Farm Bills and it is never too late to rethink. Unconditional talks with farmers would be an appropriate starting point. There is genuine uncertainty over what private procurement will mean. Leveraging the reforms and moving forward rather is the most feasible solution than to protest amid the pandemic. What farmers need and are asking for is legally guaranteed remunerative prices. If the Bills are perceived of good intent, then the government should not shy away from proper parliamentary scrutiny of all its details. Political parties that are opposing these Bills should coordinate better keeping farmers’ interests in the forefront, and not their party politics.
General Studies – 4
Reference: Indian Express
Introduction
Article 39A (Equal Justice and Free Legal Aid) of the Indian constitution, under the Directive Principles of State Policy reads ‘The State shall secure that the operation of the legal system promotes justice, on a basis of equal opportunity, and shall, in particular, provide free legal aid, by suitable legislation or schemes or in any other way, to ensure that opportunities for securing justice are not denied to any citizen by reason of economic or other disabilities.
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The apex court on Wednesday stayed the acquittal of the accused under POCSO
Concerns Raised:
- The incident reveals the lack of understanding and sensitivity among the judiciary of sexual violence against children even eight years after the Act was passed.
- It also highlights the danger of focusing only on “tougher sentences”, including mandatory minimum punishments, to address such crimes.
- Seeing the “stringent punishment” provided, the HC said “stricter proof and serious allegations are required”, thereby, like other courts, choosing to acquit and diminishing the act of sexual violence and trauma of a child, who has waited four years for justice, in the swoop of a pen.
- The state’s responsibilities cannot end with the passage of a law. Without training and sensitisation of stakeholders, even the best of laws will do little to advance justice.
The problems posed by this line of reasoning are manifold.
First, the interpretation of physical contact as meaning “skin-to-skin” contact is flawed and not in keeping with the spirit of the law. Second, it does not account for the effect of such contact—even through clothes—on the psyche of a child in her formative years. Third, it fails to consider the impact of this reading on male victims—while POCSO is gender neutral, Section 354 of IPC only applies to women, which would leave boys with no recourse against such sexual violence.
Conclusion
Judiciary and the government needs to put collaborative effort to plug the gaps in the management of the police, prisons, forensics and the filling up of vacancies. The efficient Indian Justice System will ensure the implementation of Article 14 (Equality before law), Article 22(1) (Protection against arrest and detention in certain cases), Article 39(A) (Free legal aid for poor) and Article 21 (Right to protection of life and personal liberty) of the Indian Constitution. It will also ensure SDG 16 which recognizes the need to ‘provide access to justice for all and to build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
