[Mission 2022] INSIGHTS DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS + PIB SUMMARY 10 FEBRUARY 2022

GS Paper 2:

Topics Covered: Functioning of the Parliament.

Context:

Congress Whip Jairam Ramesh has raised the issue of Cabinet ministers not responding to questions in the Rajya Sabha claiming it to be first such incident in 70 years.

MPs’ right to question:

In both Houses, elected members enjoy the right to seek information from various ministries and departments in the form of starred questions, unstarred questions, short notice questions and questions to private members.

How are questions admitted?

• Usually, MPs’ questions form a long list, which then go through a rigorous process of clearance.
• The admissibility of questions in Rajya Sabha is governed by Rules 47-50 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Council of States.
• Once a question that fulfils the conditions of admissibility is received, the Secretariat sends it to the ministry concerned. Once the facts are received from the ministry, the question is further examined for admissibility.
• A final list of questions is circulated to ministers, on the basis of which they frame their answers.

What are starred, unstarred and other categories of questions?

STARRED QUESTION: The member desires an oral answer from the minister. Such a question is distinguished by the MP with an asterisk. The answer can also be followed by supplementary questions from members.

UNSTARRED QUESTION: The MP seeks a written answer, which is deemed to be laid on the table of the House by the concerned minister.

SHORT NOTICE QUESTION: These are on an urgent matter of public importance, and an oral answer is sought. A notice of less than 10 days is prescribed as the minimum period for asking such a question.

QUESTION TO PRIVATE MEMBER: A question can be addressed to a private member under Rule 40 of Lok Sabha’s Rules of Procedure, or under Rule 48 of Rajya Sabha’s Rules, provided that the question deals with a subject relating to some Bill, resolution or other matter for which that member is responsible.

What kind of questions can be asked?

• In Rajya Sabha, among various norms, the question “shall be pointed, specific and confined to one issue only; it shall not bring in any name or statement not strictly necessary to make the question intelligible; if it contains a statement the member shall make himself responsible for the accuracy of the statement; it shall not contain arguments, inferences, ironical expressions, imputations, epithets or defamatory statements”.
• In Lok Sabha, questions that are not admitted include: those that are repetitive or have been answered previously; and matters that are pending for judgment before any court of law or under consideration before a Parliamentary Committee.

Insta Curious:

In both Houses, the first hour of every sitting is usually devoted to asking and answering of questions, and this is referred to as the ‘Question Hour’.

InstaLinks:

Prelims Link:

1. What is question hour?
2. What is zero hour?
3. What are starred questions?
4. What are unstarred questions?

Mains Link:

Discuss the significance of Zero hour in parliament.

Sources: Indian Express.

GS Paper 2:

Topics covered: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

Context:

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) recently informed the Rajya Sabha that it does not maintain a centralised data on the total number of detention centres in the country, as powers have been delegated to the State governments “to make necessary arrangements for detention centres/camps as per their requirement.”

What are detention centres?

They are places designated to keep illegal migrants (people who have entered a country without necessary documents) once they are detected by the authorities till the time their nationality is confirmed and they are deported to the country of their origin.

• Detention centres were set up in Assam after the Union government authorized the state to do so under the provisions of the Foreigners’ Act, 1946 and the Foreigners Order, 1948.

Foreigners Act, 1946:

It replaced the Foreigners Act, 1940 conferring wide powers to deal with all foreigners.

The act empowered the government to take such steps as are necessary to prevent illegal migrants including the use of force.

The concept of ‘burden of proof’ lies with the person, and not with the authorities.

• The act originally empowered the government to establish tribunals which would have powers similar to those of a civil court.
• Amendments (2019) to the Foreigners (Tribunals) Order, 1964 empowered even district magistrates in all States and Union Territories to set up tribunals to decide whether a person staying illegally in India is a foreigner or not.

Who is a declared foreigner?

A declared foreigner, or DF, is a person marked by Foreigners’ Tribunal (FT) for allegedly failing to prove their citizenship after the State police’s Border wing marks him or her as an illegal immigrant.

• People adjudged non-citizens are sent to detention centres.
• Such people are tried after the Assam police’s Border wing serve them notice on suspicion of being foreigners.

What is a Foreigners tribunal?

Foreigners’ Tribunals are quasi-judicial bodies established as per the Foreigners’ Tribunal Order, 1964 and the Foreigners’ Act, 1946.

Composition: Advocates not below the age of 35 years of age with at least 7 years of practice (or) Retired Judicial Officers from the Assam Judicial Service (or) Retired IAS of ACS Officers (not below the rank of Secretary/Addl. Secretary) having experience in quasi-judicial works.

Who can setup these tribunals?

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has amended the Foreigners (Tribunals) Order, 1964, and has empowered district magistrates in all States and Union Territories to set up tribunals (quasi-judicial bodies) to decide whether a person staying illegally in India is a foreigner or not.

• Earlier, the powers to constitute tribunals were vested only with the Centre.

Who can approach?

The amended order (Foreigners (Tribunal) Order, 2019) also empowers individuals to approach the Tribunals.

• Earlier, only the State administration could move the Tribunal against a suspect.

Insta Curious:

Which other states have Detention Centres apart from Assam? Reference: read this.

Did you know that Assam’s detention centres for foreigners and those declared such by specific tribunals have been renamed as transit camps in 2021?

InstaLinks:

Prelims Link:

1. Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) (IMDT) Act vs Foreigners Tribunal (Order) 1964.
2. Burden of proof under this order.
3. Powers to approach the tribunal and kind of cases to be decided by the tribunal.
4. Composition of the tribunal.
5. Refugee vs illegal Migrants.
6. Fundamental Rights available for Foreigners and other constitutional provisions wrt to Foreigners.
7. Human Rights vs Fundamental Rights.

Mains Link:

Discuss briefly the laws that are in place to tackle illegal non-citizens in the country. Why was the Foreigners (Tribunals) Order, 1964 amended? Explain.

Sources: the Hindu.

GS Paper 2:

Topics Covered: Separation of powers between various organs dispute redressal mechanisms and institutions.

Context:

The Supreme Court has made the following suggestions on the applicability and imposition of death Penalty in its recent judgment.

• The judgement came in the rape and murder of a seven-year-old. The court commuted the death penalty of the convict to life imprisonment.

What has the Supreme Court said?

• Trial judges should not be swayed in favour of death penalty merely because of the dreadful nature of the crime and its harmful impact on the society. They should equally consider the mitigating factors in favour of life imprisonment.
• The judgment referred to the evolution of the principles of penology. Though capital punishment serves as a deterrent and a “response to the society’s call for appropriate punishment in appropriate cases”, the principles of penology have “evolved to balance the other obligations of the society, i.e., of preserving the human life, be it of accused, unless termination thereof is inevitable and is to serve the other societal causes and collective conscience of society”.

How should the Courts decide on capital punishment impositions?

In the case of Bachan Singh (1980), the Supreme Court formulated a sentencing framework to be followed for imposing death penalty.

• It required the weighing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances relating to both the circumstances of the offence and the offender, to decide whether a person should be sentenced to death or given life imprisonment.
• According to the Bachan Singh judgment, for a case to be eligible for the death sentence, the aggravating circumstances must outweigh the mitigating circumstances.

What is collective conscience?

Collective consciousness (sometimes collective conscience or conscious) is a fundamental sociological concept that refers to the set of shared beliefs, ideas, attitudes, and knowledge that are common to a social group or society.

Evolution of collective conscience:

‘Collective conscience of society’ as a ground to justify death penalty was first used by the Supreme Court in the 1983 judgment of Machhi Singh v. State of Punjab. In that case, the court held that when “collective conscience of society is shocked, it will expect the holders of the judicial power centre to inflict death penalty”.

• It was, however, most famously used by the top court in its 2005 judgment in the Parliament attack case in which it awarded capital punishment to convict, Afzal Guru.
• Collective conscience found its most recent endorsement in the 2017 judgment of the Supreme Court in the December 2012 Delhi gang rape case of Mukesh v. State of NCT of Delhi.

Concerns:

Can the courts allow any kind of public outcry, sense of conscience, sentiment or feeling to even remotely influence their decisions, especially when it is a case of the death sentence? This is even more relevant in the times that we live in, when television and social media bombard us, creating and determining opinion.

Need of the hour:

Our Constitution is based on the principle of justice for the most marginalised, disfranchised, oppressed, unknown, unseen and ignored. This spirit demands that law cannot rely on or be influenced by any delusionary sense or mood of the people. We need in judges a liberal energy and the ability to be creative human beings.

Recommendations by law commission:

The Law Commission in 2015, headed by Justice A P Shah proposed to abolish capital punishments. However, the commission had made the proposal only to non-terrorism cases. According to the commission, India is one among few countries that still carry out executions. The other countries that practice executions include Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, China. By the end of 2014, 98 countries had abolished death penalty.

Insta Curious:

Penology is concerned with the effectiveness of those social processes devised and adopted for the prevention of crime, via the repression or inhibition of criminal intent via the fear of punishment.

InstaLinks:

Prelims Link:

1. Various benches of Supreme Court.
2. Law commission- composition, objectives and functions.
3. Appeals against capital punishment.
4. President’s pardoning powers.

Mains Link:

What is Collective conscience? How it influences the judgments of courts? Discuss.

Sources: the Hindu.

GS Paper 2:

Topics Covered: Important International institutions, agencies and fora, their structure, mandate.

Context:

UN peacekeepers and troops of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have increased patrols near the site of last week’s deadly raid on internally displaced persons (IDPs) in northeast Ituri province.

What’s the issue?

The UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC, known by its French acronym as MONUSCO, recently exchanged fire with members of the Cooperative for the Development of Congo (CODECO) militia. The clash occurred during an operation to cordon and search in the Uzi area of Ituri province.

• The Savo attack is the latest in a string of devastating raids by CODECO on sites for displaced people in Ituri, where ethnic tensions between the Hema and the Lendu communities have existed for years.

How are UN Peacekeeping operations funded?

• While decisions about establishing, maintaining or expanding a peacekeeping operation are taken by the Security Council, the financing of UN Peacekeeping operations is the collective responsibility of all UN Member States.
• Every Member State is legally obligated to pay their respective share towards peacekeeping. This is in accordance with the provisions of Article 17 of the Charter of the United Nations.

The top 5 providers of assessed contributions to United Nations Peacekeeping operations for 2020-2021 are:

1. United States.
2. China.
3. Japan.
4. Germany.
5. United Kingdom.

What is peacekeeping? It’s significance?

• United Nations Peacekeeping is a joint effort between the Department of Peace Operations and the Department of Operational Support.
• Every peacekeeping mission is authorized by the Security Council.

Composition:

1. UN peacekeepers (often referred to as Blue Berets or Blue Helmets because of their light blue berets or helmets) can include soldiers, police officers, and civilian personnel.
2. Peacekeeping forces are contributed by member states on a voluntary basis.
3. Civilian staff of peace operations are international civil servants, recruited and deployed by the UN Secretariat.

UN Peacekeeping is guided by three basic principles:

1. Consent of the parties.
2. Impartiality.
3. Non-use of force except in self-defence and defence of the mandate.

UNITE AWARE:

UNITE AWARE is a mobile tech platform developed by India to provide terrain-related information to the UN peacekeepers so as to ensure their safety. It is being developed in partnership with the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the Department of Operational Support. India has spent 1.64 million USD for this project.

Insta Curious:

Did you know that In 2007, India became the first country to deploy an all-women contingent to a UN peacekeeping mission? Know about the current 13 peacekeeping operations. Read Here.

InstaLinks:

Prelims Link:

1. Who funds peacekeeping operations?
2. Role of UNSC.
3. Composition of Peacekeepers?
4. Why peacekeepers are called as Blue Helmets?
5. Guiding principles of UN peacekeeping.
6. Ongoing peacekeeping missions.

Mains Link:

Write a note on UN Peacekeeping and its significance.

Sources: the Hindu.

GS Paper 2:

Topics Covered: Important International institutions, agencies and fora, their structure, mandate.

Context:

Delivering its judgement, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has awarded the DRC $225 million for damage to persons, which includes loss of life, rape, recruitment of child soldiers and displacement of civilians.

• Now, Uganda must pay the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) $325 million in reparations related to the brutal conflict between the two nations from 1998 to 2003.

What’s the issue?

The DRC initially filed the case with the ICJ in June 1999, citing acts of armed aggression perpetrated by Uganda on its territory “in flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter and of the Charter of the Organization of African Unity.”

• At the height of the war, more than nine African countries were drawn into the fighting.
• The Court ruled in December 2005 that Uganda had to make reparation to the DRC, but the sides could not reach agreement.

About ICJ:

• ICJ was established in 1945 by the United Nations charter and started working in April 1946.
• It is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, situated at the Peace Palace in The Hague (Netherlands).
• Unlike the six principal organs of the United Nations, it is the only one not located in New York (USA).
• It settles legal disputes between States and gives advisory opinions in accordance with international law, on legal questions referred to it by authorized United Nations organs and specialized agencies.

Structure:

• The Court is composed of 15 judges, who are elected for terms of office of nine years by the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council. These organs vote simultaneously but separately.
• In order to be elected, a candidate must receive an absolute majority of the votes in both bodies.
• In order to ensure a measure of continuity, one third of the Court is elected every three years and Judges are eligible for re-election.
• ICJ is assisted by a Registry, its administrative organ. Its official languages are English and French.

The 15 judges of the Court are distributed in following regions:

1. Three from Africa.
2. Two from Latin America and Caribbean.
3. Three from Asia.
4. Five from Western Europe and other states.
5. Two from Eastern Europe.

Independence of judges:

Unlike other organs of international organizations, the Court is not composed of representatives of governments. Members of the Court are independent judges whose first task, before taking up their duties, is to make a solemn declaration in open court that they will exercise their powers impartially and conscientiously.

Jurisdiction and Functioning:

• ICJ acts as a world court with two fold jurisdiction i.e. legal disputes between States submitted to it by them (contentious cases) and requests for advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by United Nations organs and specialized agencies (advisory proceedings).
• Only States which are members of the United Nations and which have become parties to the Statute of the Court or which have accepted its jurisdiction under certain conditions, are parties to contentious cases.
• The judgment is final, binding on the parties to a case and without appeal (at the most it may be subject to interpretation or, upon the discovery of a new fact, revision).

InstaLinks:

Prelims Link:

1. Differences between ICJ and ICC.
2. Geographical locations of these organisations and overview of surrounding countries.
3. Doha accord between US and Taliban.
4. What is Rome statute?

Mains Link:

Write a note on ICJ.

Sources: the Hindu.

GS Paper 3:

Topics Covered: Agriculture and farm subsidies.

Context:

The Congress manifesto for the UP polls promises waiver of farm loans within 10 days of coming to power and a subquota for the most backward classes (MBCs) within the other backward classes (OBC) quota to ensure maximum benefits, if voted to office Uttar Pradesh.

 Background:

To help the farm sector, state governments have time and again announced loan waiver schemes. Back in 2008-09, the then UPA government at the Centre had announced a loan waiver scheme for the entire country. States like Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and others have announced similar schemes in the recent past.

Drawbacks of loan waivers:

• Firstly, it covers only a tiny fraction of farmers. The loan waiver as a concept excludes most of the farm households in dire need of relief and includes some who do not deserve such relief on economic grounds.
• Second, it provides only a partial relief to the indebted farmers as about half of the institutional borrowing of a cultivator is for non-farm purposes.
• Third, in many cases, one household has multiple loanseither from different sources or in the name of different family members, which entitles it to multiple loan waiving.
• Fourth, loan waiving excludes agricultural labourerswho are even weaker than cultivators in bearing the consequences of economic distress.
• Fifth, it severely erodes the credit culture, with dire long-run consequences to the banking business.
• Sixth, the scheme is prone to serious exclusion and inclusion errors, as evidenced by the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) findings in the Agricultural Debt Waiver and Debt Relief Scheme, 2008.
• Lastly, schemes have serious implications for other developmental expenditure, having a much larger multiplier effect on the economy.

What needs to be done?

Proper identification: For providing immediate relief to the needy farmers, a more inclusive alternative approach is to identify the vulnerable farmers based on certain criteria and give an equal amount as financial relief to the vulnerable and distressed families.

Enhance non- farm income: The sustainable solution to indebtedness and agrarian distress is to raise income from agricultural activities and enhance access to non-farm sources of income. The low scale of farms necessitates that some cultivators move from agriculture to non-farm jobs.

Improved technology, expansion of irrigation coverage, and crop diversification towards high-value crops are appropriate measures for raising productivity and farmers’ income. All these require more public funding and support.

Observations made by RBI:

As per RBI, loan waivers not only inhibit investment in the farm sector but put pressure on the fiscal of states which undertake farm loan waiver.

• In every state election during the last five years, loan waiver promise made by one political party or other. Also, loan waivers, as the RBI has repeatedly argued, vitiate the credit culture, and stress the budgets of the waiving state or central government.

Way ahead:

The magic wand of a waiver can offer temporary relief, but long-term solutions are needed to solve farmer woes. There are many dimensions of the present agrarian crisis in India. The search for a solution therefore needs to be comprehensive by taking into consideration all the factors that contribute to the crisis. Furthermore, both short- and long-term measures are required to address the numerous problems associated with the agrarian crisis.

Insta Curious:

Did you know that the first nationwide farm loan waiver was implemented by V.P Singh led government in 1990?

Sources: the Hindu.

GS Paper 3:

Topics Covered: Biotechnology related issues.

Context:

Data from human trials of India’s first homegrown mRNA COVID-19 vaccine are likely to be presented to authorities for evaluation by the end of the month, and company officials are aiming to roll out the product before April.

• The mRNA vaccine being developed by Pune-based Gennova Biopharmaceuticals is currently in phase 2/3 trials to evaluate the safety, tolerability and immunogenicity of the candidate vaccine in healthy subjects.

Background:

Globally, mRNA vaccines have been at the vanguard of inoculation programmes in the United States and Europe because they exploit recent advances in molecular biotechnology and are said to be quicker to manufacture than older, well-established vaccine design principles.

What is this technology all about?

Messenger RNA or mRNA technology works by teaching our cells to recognize and protect us against infectious diseases. One of the challenges with this new technology is that it must be kept cold to maintain stability during transport and storage.

What are mRNA vaccines?

mRNA vaccines trick the body into producing some of the viral proteins itself.

• They work by using mRNA, or messenger RNA, which is the molecule that essentially puts DNA instructions into action.
• Inside a cell, mRNA is used as a template to build a protein.

How it works?

1. To produce an mRNA vaccine, scientists produce a synthetic version of the mRNA that a virus uses to build its infectious proteins.
2. This mRNA is delivered into the human body, whose cells read it as instructions to build that viral protein, and therefore create some of the virus’s molecules themselves.
3. These proteins are solitary, so they do not assemble to form a virus.
4. The immune system then detects these viral proteins and starts to produce a defensive response to them.

Significance of mRNA vaccines:

There are two parts to our immune system: innate (the defences we’re born with) and acquired (which we develop as we come into contact with pathogens).

• Classical vaccine molecules usually only work with the acquired immune system and the innate immune system is activated by another ingredient, called an adjuvant.
• Interestingly, mRNA in vaccines could also trigger the innate immune system, providing an extra layer of defence without the need to add adjuvants.

InstaLinks:

Prelims Link:

1. What is a vaccine?
2. How do vaccines work?
3. Working of the immune system.
4. What is mRNA?
5. Potential applications of mRNA vaccines.

Mains Link:

Discuss the benefits of mRNA vaccines. 

Sources: Indian Express.