Comprehensive Current affairs 16 October 2020

 Cengov. asks supreme court to strike balance between freedom of speech and contempt of court.

Indian Attorney General Venugopal yesterday told the Supreme Court that there is an urgent need to strike a balance between freedom of speech and contempt of court as the media is foraying into forbidden territory.

He added that a bail petition is filed in a court of law and TV channels go to town with private WhatsApp conversation messages of the accused. This is prejudicial to the rights of the accused and is very dangerous for the administration of justice.

Addressing the court on larger issues, the Attorney General told a bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar, B R Gavai and Krishna Murari that abuse of the right to freedom of speech had taken serious proportions today.

Mr.Venugopal said that electronic media and print media are commenting on cases which are pending and are seeking to influence the court, and in big cases when bail applications are about to come up for hearing, TV reports are aired which are very damaging for the accused who has filed the bail application.

Operation green provides 50% subsidy on transportation of crops including storage.

Ministry of Food Processing and Ministry of Railways directly provide subsidised rate of 50 per cent in freight for transportation of perishable surplus agriculture produce like Oranges and Vegetables by Railway.

• Operation Green is being implemented as part of Atmanirbhar program under the ageis of Ministry of Food Processing. Under this scheme, 50 per cent subsidy is given to the farmers for transporting the surplus produce of agricultural commodities like oranges and vegetables to the markets by rail.

50 per cent subsidy is also given for cold chain storage of agricultural commodities. However, in order to get this subsidy, farmers have to attach self-certified documents online on ‘Sampada’ portal of the Ministry of Food Processing.

• It has been suggested that the subsidy for the transport should be given to the farmers at the time of registration itself for rail transport. This suggestion was taken up by the Ministry of Railways and the Union Ministry of Food Processing Industries and a 50 per cent concession has been accepted in the railway transport of eligible agricultural produce.

• This step will enable farmers to register for railway transport at subsidized rates for agricultural produce and more farmers could avail this facility; it would provide better ticket fares to the railways and increase its profits.

Germany accuses turkey of escalating tensions between Greece & Cyprus.

Germany's foreign Minister criticized Turkey for unilateral steps in the eastern Mediterranean that are undercutting efforts to de-escalate tensions with Greece and Cyprus over sea boundaries and drilling rights.

 Heiko Maas said Yesterday said any attempt by a Turkish survey ship to begin prospecting for hydrocarbons in disputed waters around the Greek island of Kastellorizo would strike a serious blow to efforts at easing tensions and improving ties between the European Union and Turkey.

Ankara's redeployment of the Oruc Reis survey vessel for new energy exploration around Kastellorizo has reignited tensions over sea boundaries between Greek islands, Cyprus and Turkey's southern coast.

Turkey rebuffed international criticism of its research ship's redeployment, insisting that the Oruc Reis is operating in Turkish waters.

Omer Celik, spokesman for Turkish President RecepTayyipErdogan's ruling party, accused Greece of stirring up tensions and of trying to avoid negotiations by engaging in actions like military drills during Turkey's national day celebrations.

FATF's Asia Pacific Group keeps Pakistan on ‘enhanced follow-up list.

Pakistan is going to exit the Financial Action Task Force (FATF’s) greylist next week, when the plenary session of the Paris-based global terror-financing watchdog is held, after its latest evaluation saw it clear 21 of 27 action points, with six key areas outstanding where Pakistan has yet to show progress.

According to sources, there is still no consensus amongst the 39-member FATF, which includes the U.S., U.K., China and Russia, to blacklist Pakistan, despite its failure to meet its original deadline in September 2019, which would mean the group would maintain the status quo and continue Pakistan on the greylist until February 2021.

On Tuesday, the International Co-operation Review Group (ICRG) of the FATF held a meeting to discuss the final recommendation to the plenary session on October 21-23.

Earlier, Pakistan had requested for its ratings pertaining to targeted financial sanctions on terrorism and terrorist financing to be revised.The APG stated that the insufficient progress made by the country fails to justify a re-rating.

 The APG said, Pakistan will remain in the enhanced follow-up list and will have to continue to report back to the APG on progress to strengthen its implementation of comprehensive Anti-money Laundering and Terrorist Financing measures.

Centre allows open market borrowing for 20 states.

The Department of Expenditure in the Ministry of Finance yesterday granted permission to 20 States to raise an additional amount of 68 thousand 8 hundred 25 crore rupees through open market borrowings.

The Ministry of Finance said, additional borrowing permission has been granted at 0.50 per cent of the Gross State Domestic Product, GSDP to those States who have opted for Option- 1 out of the two options suggested by the Ministry to meet the shortfall arising out of GST implementation.

In the meeting of GST Council held on 27th August this year, these two options were put forward and were subsequently communicated to the States on 29th August. Twenty States have given their preferences for Option-1.

The facilities available to the States who choose Option-1 include a special borrowing window, coordinated by the Ministry of Finance to borrow the amount of shortfall in revenue through issue of debt.

The total shortfall in the revenue of the States on this account has been estimated at around 1.1 lakh crore rupees. Permission to borrow the final installment of 0.5 per cent of GSDP out of the 2 per cent additional borrowings permitted by the Government of India in view of the COVID pandemic, waiving the reforms condition.

The Department of Expenditure, on 17th May this year, had provided an additional borrowing limit of upto 2 per cent of GSDP to the States. The final installment of 0.5 per cent out of this 2 per cent limit was linked to carrying out at least three out of four reforms stipulated by the Government of India.

 

 

TRIPS Agreement.

India and South Africa, in a formal submission to the World Trade Organization (WTO), have sought a waiver on Sections 1, 4, 5, and 7 of Part II of the TRIPS Agreement that regulate intellectual property rights to speed up efforts to prevent, treat and contain the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Issues Raised by India and South Africa through submission:

• There were several reports about intellectual property rights hindering or potentially hindering timely provisioning of affordable medical products to COVID -19 patients and that a particular concern for countries with insufficient or no manufacturing capacity were the requirements of cumbersome and lengthy process of the import and export of pharmaceutical products.

• Many countries, especially the developing ones, may face institutional and legal difficulties when using flexibilities available in the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement).

• Beyond patents, other intellectual property rights may also pose a barrier, with limited options to overcome those barriers, noted the Submission.

• The Medical Products Companies Especially medicine and vaccine manufacturers want to profit from pandemic by keeping the monopoly rights through intellectual protection.

Importance of the Submission:

• In the Present Context of global emergency, it is important for WTO to ensure that intellectual property rights do not create barriers to timely access to affordable medical products, or to Scaling up research, development, manufacturing and supply of medical products essential to combat COVID-19.

• The waiver of TRIPS Obligation is a major initiative to ensure availability and affordability of medical products.

Sections 1, 4, 5, and 7 of Part II of the TRIPS Agreement:

• PART II of the TRIPS Agreement relates to Standards Concerning the Availability, Scope and Use of Intellectual Property Rights

1. Sections 1: Copyright and Related Rights.

2. Sections 4: Industrial Designs.

3. Sections 5: Patents.

4. Sections 7: Protection of Undisclosed Information.

Academic institutions to set up supercomputer infrastructure in the country.

Several premier academic institutions across the country will soon partner with indigenous assembling and manufacturing facilities to establish supercomputing infrastructure in the country at an affordable cost.

Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, C-DAC signed a total of 13 Memoranda of Understanding with the premier academic and R&D institutions for establishing Supercomputing Infrastructure under National Supercomputing Mission.

In a virtual ceremony yesterday, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Sanjay Dhotre said that these MoUs will help the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan. He expressed his satisfaction over the progress made in the National Supercomputing Mission.

Secretary of Department of Science and Technology Prof. Ashutosh Sharma said that major changes took place under the National Supercomputing Mission in the last five years where the emphasis was given on design and fabrication of hardware and software of the supercomputers.

Atal Innovation Mission to promote innovation across schools.

Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), NITI Aayog, has signed a Statement of Intent with CGI India in order to promote innovation across the schools.

 Atal Innovation Mission, AIM has collaborated with CGI India which is one among the largest IT and business consulting services firms, for creating a successful and innovative workforce from the Atal Tinkering Lab, ATL schools.

As part of the Statement of Intent, CGI has agreed to adopt 100 schools with ATLs across Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai to promote and train students. CGI volunteers will coach and mentor students at the ATLs to enhance technical literacy and provide immersive learning experiences to the students through hands-on experience using STEM tools.

CGI will also conduct training workshops for teachers at select schools on topics such as design thinking, computational thinking, robotics and coding.

Mission Director Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog R Ramanan said that the collaboration between AIM and CGI is crucial for ATLs and that it would prove of utmost benefit to both ATL students and teachers.

AIM is the flagship programme of the Government that promotes a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship across country. Its ATLs are accessed by over 2.5 million school kids in India. ATL is a dedicated innovation workspace set-up at schools where students get access to do-it-yourself (DIY) kits and learn to tinker and create innovative solutions using the latest technologies.

IgaSwiatek becomes new French open champion.

In Tennis, Polish teenager IgaSwiatek has become the new French Open Champion. She beat the American Australian Open winner Sofia Kenin in the Women Singles final by 6-4, 6-1.

The 19-year-old Swiatek will earn $1,900,000 for the incredible achievement and moves to 17th position in the world ranking.

Earlier, Sofia Kenin left the court due to injury and could not play her natural game after returning on the court.

 DAY-NRLM Special Package for J&K and Ladakh.

Recently, Indian Cabinet has approved a special package worth Rs. 520 crore in the Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh for a period of five years under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihood Mission (DAY-NRLM).

The decision is in line with Centre’s aim to universalise all centrally sponsored beneficiary-oriented schemes in J&K and Ladakh in a time-bound manner.

The package has been approved for a period of five years till the financial year 2023-24 and it has been decided to ensure funding on a demand-driven basis without linking allocation with poverty ratio during the extended period.

Around two-third rural women from the UTs will be covered and 10.58 lakh women will get the benefit from the special package.

The step was based on the outcomes of an evaluation pointing to the potential of the Mission to improve the quality of life of rural households and women empowerment under the changed circumstances in the recently downgraded territories of J&K and Ladakh.

• Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihood Mission is a centrally sponsored programme, launched by the Ministry of Rural Development in June 2011.

• It aims to eliminate rural poverty through the promotion of multiple livelihoods and improved access to financial services for the rural poor households across the country.

To reach out to all rural poor households and impact their livelihoods.

• It involves working with community institutions through community professionals in the spirit of self-help which is a unique proposition of DAY-NRLM.

• It impacts the livelihoods through universal social mobilization by inter alia organising one-woman member from each rural poor household into Self Help Groups (SHGs), their training and capacity building, facilitating their micro-livelihoods plans, and enabling them to implement their livelihoods plans through accessing financial resources from their own institutions and the banks.

• It is implemented in a Mission mode by special purpose vehicles (autonomous state societies) with dedicated implementation support units at the national, state, district and block levels, using professional human resources in order to provide continuous and long-term handholding support to each rural poor family.

• There were 63 lakh SHGs comprising seven crore women members in India which had been granted Rs. 3 lakh crore in loans and the non-performing assets (NPA) amounted to only 2.3%.

The outstanding loans were to the tune of Rs. 1 lakh crore.The government plans to take the scheme to 10 crore women.

Focus on mains:

Pakistan’s relection to the UNHRC.

Pakistan is currently serving on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) since 1st January, 2018. With its re-election, Pakistan will continue as a member for another three-year term commencing on 1st January, 2021.

A total of Fifteen countries were elected to the 47-nation council. Russia and Cuba were elected unopposed. Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Nepal and China were elected from the Asia-Pacific region.

Key Points

Pakistan has been re-elected despite the accusation by few groups over its human rights records which Pakistan is reported to have improved. This is the fifth time that Pakistan has been elected to the UNHRC.

Acoording to the British Government’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office Report titled ‘Human Rights and Democracy’, there were the report of few human rights concerns and violations in Pakistan in 2019, including restrictions on civic space and freedom of expression etc.

 

Concerns:

Countries with Dubious Record: With a number of countries with questionable rights records being elected, the current system of entry to UNHRC is in serious need of reform.

The election of states such as China and Russia “damages the reputation of the HRC, its standing within the international human rights committee and beyond”.

Non-competitive Elections: Problem of election without opposition.

For example, the Eastern European group had two available seats but only two countries were nominated to fill those positions, meaning there was no competition for the spots.

Except for the Asia-Pacific contest, the election of 15 members to the 47-member Human Rights Council was decided in advance because all the other regional groups had unopposed states.

The Other View: Electing nations with dubious human rights records has some positives.

There is a silver lining to repressive countries being elected to the council – their position as the supposed guardian of human rights makes it far more difficult for them to hide their own human rights abuses.

United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC)

It was established in 2006.

Headquarter: Geneva, Switzerland

Aim: Promoting and protecting human rights around the globe, as well as investigating alleged human rights violations.

Features: The UNHRC has 47 members elected for staggered three-year terms on a regional group basis from 5 groups.

Membership: To become a member, a country must receive the votes of at least 96 of the 191 states of the UN General Assembly (an absolute majority).

 

According to Resolution 60/251, which created the council, members are elected directly by secret ballot by the majority of the UN General Assembly. Membership has to be equally distributed geographically.

Five regional groups for membership: Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, Western Europe and Eastern Europe.

The members are elected for a period of three years, with a maximum of two consecutive terms.

Sessions: The UNHRC holds regular sessions three times a year, in March, June, and September.

The council also carries out the Universal Periodic Review of all UN member states, which allows civil society groups to bring accusations of human rights violations in member states to the attention of the UN.

Way Forward

The USA withdrew from the UNHRC in 2018 citing its ineffectiveness and bias. For India it is a testing time as Pakistan got re-elected may increase the tight vigelence over India’s recently downgraded and dubious status regarding human rights.

However, India’s commitment towards respecting institutions of global governance mandates to have a critical voice against some events instead of quitting the membership without reasons backed by principles.