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Hours after Minister for Urban Development Hardeep Singh Puri tweeted that all Rohingya migrants from Myanmar living in a camp in Delhi will be shifted to flats, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued a strong denial.
The Ministry also said that it had issued orders that the shanty town where the Rohingya were now living in be designated a “detention centre”, pending the deportation of all of the hundreds of people living there.
Mr. Puri called the plans to move the Rohingya to an apartment complex built for economically weaker sections (EWS), a “landmark decision” by the Narendra Modi government.
In a landmark decision, all Rohingya refugees will be shifted to EWS flats in Bakkarwala area of Delhi. They will be provided basic amenities, UNHCR (UN High Commission for Refugees) IDs & round-the-clock Delhi Police protection,” Mr. Puri tweeted, adding that India had always welcomed refugees.
After a storm of criticism from groups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Home Ministry denied any such plan had been cleared by the Centre, and also blamed the Delhi government for the proposal to move the Rohingya “illegal foreigners”, indicating it was not responsible for the decision.
In its response, the MHA said it “has not given any directions to provide EWS flats to Rohingya at Bakkarwala in New Delhi”.
The MHA has directed the government of Delhi to ensure that the Rohingya illegal foreigners will continue at the present location,” referring to the shanty town in Delhi’s Madanpur area where the Rohingya currently reside, adding that the “MHA has already taken up the matter of deportation of illegal foreigners with the country concerned through the Ministry of External Affairs [MEA].”
The Home Ministry also said that it had directed the AamAadmi Party (AAP) government of Delhi to declare the MadanpurRohingya area a “detention centre” immediately, which it has not done so far.
In response, AAP’s local MLA and spokesperson SaurabhBharadwaj told that declaring detention centres was the responsibility of the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO), which is under the MHA. Adding to the confusion is the fact that the Rohingya camp is at present built on land donated by the Zakat Foundation of India, after a previous camp was destroyed in a fire.
Editorial
The geopolitics of the Fourth Taiwan Crisis (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
At the 16th Supreme State Council Meeting on April 15, 1959, Mao Zedong told the delegates a story called ‘The Cocky Scholar Sitting at Night’. A young scholar was reading in his room.
A ghost, with its long tongue stretching out, appeared by the window. It wanted to scare the scholar. But the scholar took his ink brush, painted his face “as dark as that of Zhang Fei”, the dreaded third century Han dynasty general, and stared back at the ghost with his tongue reaching out.
The ghost eventually disappeared. Mao told this story to explain why he had ordered the shelling of the Kinmen and Matsu islands, lying along the mainland but governed by Taiwan, a year earlier.
The ghost in Mao’s story was the United States. “Never be afraid of the ghost. The more you are afraid, the more difficult it is to survive.
China’s response to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan on August 2 reminds one of Mao’s story. Its unprecedented military drills around the island and the repeated threats of using force for unification suggest that China’s views on the Taiwan issue and the U.S.’s role in it have not changed a bit over the years, even though it never managed to scare away the “ghost” and had to make several tactical retreats in the past.
Mao wanted to be the leader who achieved “national reunification”. But he knew that it was practically impossible for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which did not even have a proper navy in the early 1950s, to cross the Taiwan Strait and retake the island. Besides this, U.S. President Harry S. Truman’s decision to send the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet to the Strait had created a buffer between the communist-ruled mainland and Kuomintang-held Taiwan.
What he could do was to shell the Kinmen and Matsu islands, in 1954 and then in 1958, triggering the First and Second Taiwan Strait Crises. However, taking the island by force remained a distant dream.
By the time China started building military capacities (including a nuclear bomb), the geopolitical dynamics of the region had begun shifting. In the 1970s, faced with the Soviet problem, China’s focus shifted to bettering its ties with the U.S. and, later, on its own economic development. The Taiwan issue was put on the back-burner without making compromises on the goal of unification.
The issue would resurface in 1995 when Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui visited Cornell University in the U.S. China started military drills and missile tests in the Strait, triggering the Third Strait Crisis.
But U.S. President Bill Clinton responded by sending U.S. aircraft carriers to the Strait, eventually forcing Beijing to de-escalate. For China, it was another crude reminder of the gap between its objectives and actual strength. “The ghost” was still the king of the Taiwan Strait.
This maritime partnership is still a work in progress (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
The docking of the USNS Charles Drew, a United States Navy dry cargo ship, for repairs at an Indian facility in Chennai last week, marks an important first in the India-U.S. military relationship.
Although bilateral strategic ties have advanced considerably over the past decade, reciprocal repair of military vessels was still a milestone that had not been crossed.
With the arrival of Charles Drew at the Larsen and Toubro (L&T) facility at the Kattupalli dockyard, India and the U.S. seem to have moved past a self-imposed restriction.
As some see it, a renewed sense of optimism now drives India-U.S. relations. During the bilateral 2+2 dialogue held in April this year, the two countries agreed to explore the possibilities of using Indian shipyards for the repair and maintenance of ships of the U.S. Military Sealift Command (MSC).
In the weeks following that meeting, the MSC carried out an exhaustive audit of Indian yards, and cleared the facility at Kattupalli for the repair of U.S. military vessels.
The docking of a U.S. military vessel at an Indian facility has both functional and geopolitical implications. Functionally, it signals a more efficient leveraging of the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) — the military logistics agreement India signed with the U.S. in 2017.
Thus far, India-U.S. cooperation under the pact had largely been confined to the exchange of fuel and stores during joint exercises and relief operations.
With the arrival of a U.S. military vessel at an Indian dockyard, the template of logistics cooperation seems to have broadened. There is a good possibility now that India would seek reciprocal access to repair facilities at U.S. bases in Asia and beyond.
Many in India, meanwhile, are seeing the U.S. ship’s docking as a global endorsement of Indian shipbuilding and ship-repair capabilities. In recent years, New Delhi has sought to showcase its private shipyards, in particular the L&T, which has developed significant ship design and construction capability at its yards in Hazira (Gujarat) and Kattupalli.
At a time when the Indian Navy has taken delivery of the INS Vikrant, the country’s first indigenously constructed aircraft carrier, the spirits of Indian shipbuilders are already riding high. As Indian observers see it, the presence of the USNS Charles Drew in an Indian dockyard is a boost for ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ and ‘Make-in-India’.
OPED
Data opportunity at the G20 (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 3, Internal Security)
The global politics of data is rapidly evolving as leading and emerging digital economies like the European Union (EU), the U.S., India, Indonesia, and South Africa strive to protect, monetise, and leverage data collected within their territories for domestic purposes. The age of borderless data with limited or no government control, once an aspiration, appears behind us.
Increasing privacy and security concerns coupled with economic interests have compelled governments to institute rules and standards that govern and restrict cross-border flows with natural implications for negotiations on global trade and commerce.
Indeed, the sheer amount of data being generated and shared globally has necessitated governments to exert more control over the use, sharing, and cross-border flow of data.
According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), data localisation laws have more than doubled from 2017 to 2021, indicating that states seek and want increasing levels of regulatory control over data.
Data regulation efforts transcend data localisation. Relaxing its deference to self-regulation by firms, Joe Biden’s administration recently issued an executive order on promoting competition in the American economy that pushed for the use of antitrust policy to meet the challenges posed by the rise of dominant platforms, and surveillance.
European policymakers have introduced a bevy of digital rules that place individual userscentre-stage, and enhancing their data security. Through the proposed Data Act, the EU hopes to become an unparalleled data power by creating a single data market, setting robust standards and deploying the EU’s collective data for their own use.
As a rising ‘data market’ with critical stakes in multilateral and regional negotiations on data, how can India negotiate data when it assumes leadership of the G20?
The G20 appears as a viable platform to discuss data, particularly sharing and transfer, given seemingly converging positions on data governance amongst major G-7 powers and emerging economies as the state finds a greater role in regulating data.
Moreover, the G20’s track record as the apex forum to discuss global economic issues gives it legitimacy and having the top (digital) economies makes it an appropriate forum to discuss data. The G20 does not create binding rules but serves as a platform to catalyse and inject new thinking around critical current issues.
The Centre vs State tussle over IAS postings (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
It is now official. The Government of India (GOI) painfully admitted recently to what some of us already knew. Fewer and fewer All India Services (AIS) officers working in States were coming forward to opt for a tenure with the Centre. An overwhelming majority would like to be in the comfort zone of their State cadres and vegetate there rather than migrate — albeit even for one short spell of three to five years — to the country's capital and its neighbourhood to work for the Union Government.
This is no reflection on the Centre’s ability or willingness to offer incentives to maintain the morale of Indian Administrative Services (IAS) and Indian Police Service (IPS) officers who choose to work for it on deputation.
There are many positives in working for the GOI. These include a psychological satisfaction of contributing to the formulation of national policy on many critical issues, such as education, health care or preservation of the environment.
This throws up many opportunities for foreign travel and a chance to be deputed to work for international agencies. These prospects do not, however, seem to be attractive enough for many officers to crave for a posting in Delhi.
Several factors account for this reluctance. These include the rigour of the GOI routine — long hours of work and the need for extreme clinical care in the preparation and submission of reports going up the hierarchy — sometimes up to the Prime Minister himself.
Compound this with fewer creature comforts than what is available in a State environment as also the need to operate sometimes far away from one’s native State.
There are only a few who are fortunate enough to be allotted to their home State or closer. Not surprisingly, many willing to go to Delhi on deputation are those assigned to the Northeastern States.
Officers shying away from going to Delhi is not a new phenomenon, but is one that has lately assumed grave proportions. This is a serious situation if one reckons that the manpower demands of GOI ministries (at the level of Deputy Secretaries and Directors who generally come from the IAS) are growing.
There is no doubt now as there is a lateral entry scheme meant for qualified personnel from the public and private sectors. Their number is too small to make even a marginal difference to the deteriorating vacancy position at the Centre.
The case of the Indian Police Service (IPS) is equally bad. There are far too many vacancies in the Central Police Establishment comprising the paramilitary forces such as the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Border Security Force (BSF) and Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), and investigating agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and National Investigation Agency (NIA).
Text & Context
What is causing Arctic warming? (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Environmental Pollution & Degradation)
On August 11, Finnish Meteorological Institute researchers published their study in the Communications Earth & Environment journal, concluding that the Arctic is heating four times faster than the rest of the planet.
The warming is more concentrated in the Eurasian part of the Arctic, where the Barents Sea north of Russia and Norway is warming at an alarming rate — seven times faster than the global average.
Other studies in 2021 (the American Geophysical Union) and in 2022 ( Geophysical Research Letters) indicate that the Arctic amplification is four times the global rate.
While earlier studies have proved that the Arctic is warming two or three times faster, recent studies show that the region is fast changing and that the best of climate models may not be able to capture the rate of changes and predict it accurately.
Global warming, the long-term heating of the earth’s surface, expedited due to anthropogenic forces or human activities since pre-industrial times and has increased the planet’s average temperature by 1.1 degrees Celsius.
While changes are witnessed across the planet, any change in the surface air temperature and the net radiation balance tend to produce larger changes at the north and south poles.
This phenomenon is known as polar amplification; these changes are more pronounced at the northern latitudes and are known as the Arctic amplification.
Among the many global warming-driven causes for this amplification, the ice-albedo feedback, lapse rate feedback, water vapour feedback and ocean heat transport are the primary causes.
Sea ice and snow have high albedo (measure of reflectivity of the surface), implying that they are capable of reflecting most of the solar radiation as opposed to water and land.
In the Arctic’s case, global warming is resulting in diminishing sea ice. As the sea ice melts, the Arctic Ocean will be more capable of absorbing solar radiation, thereby driving the amplification.
The lapse rate or the rate at which the temperature drops with elevation decreases with warming. Studies show that the ice-albedo feedback and the lapse rate feedback are responsible for 40% and 15% of polar amplification respectively.
The extent of Arctic amplification is debated, as studies show various rates of amplification against the global rate. Studies have shown that the Arctic was warming twice the global rate prior to the beginning of the 21 st century.
With revised figures, the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change released a ‘Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate’ in 2019, which said that the “Arctic surface air temperature has likely increased by more than double the global average over the last two decades.”
News
Voters not looking for freebies: SC (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
Voters, if given a chance, will prefer to earn a dignified earning through welfare schemes such as MNREGA and create public assets in rural India. Freebies do not always decide the outcome of elections for political parties, the Supreme Court said.
A Bench led by Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana said there have been instances of parties losing elections in spite of their promises of freebies.
“I don’t think voters are looking for freebies. Given an opportunity, they (voters) will opt for dignified earning. For example, MNREGA offered dignified earning and also created public assets in rural areas. So, I don’t think promises alone decide the outcome of elections... There are instances of parties not being elected despite their promises,” Chief Justice Ramana said.
The court was hearing a petition to curb the practice of offering or distributing “irrational freebies” at the cost of public money, especially in debt-ridden States during the run-up to elections.
The court said its primary concern is about “the right way of spending public money”. The court indicated that promises of freebies come at a cost to the public exchequer. “At the end of the day, we must say there is no free lunch,” the Bench observed.
The court is dealing with rival contentions raised in the case. On one side that freebies are a waste of public money and a sure road to economic doom for the country, while on the other hand that these are incentives and schemes to ensure public welfare.
“But the question is what exactly qualifies as a ‘valid promise’? Can promise of subsidy on power, seeds and fertilisers to small and marginal farmers, free healthcare and drinking water be considered as freebies? Can we treat promises of consumer products, electronics free of cost for all as a welfare measure?” the court asked.
Chief Justice Ramana said freebies should not be confused with welfare schemes introduced by States. The CJI said Article 38 of the Constitution mandates that States should ensure the welfare of the people, “minimise inequalities in income and endeavor to eliminate inequalities in status, facilities and opportunities, not only amongst individuals but also amongst groups of people residing in different areas or engaged in different vocations”.
Business
Credit guarantee plan expanded to aid hospitality, related sectors (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved an enhancement in the Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS) of ₹50,000 crore, raising its limit to ₹5 lakh crore, with the additional amount being deployed for enterprises in hospitality and related sectors that were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As of August 5, loans of ₹3.67 lakh crore have already been sanctioned, under the ECLGS which was introduced to provide guarantees for additional credit requirements of businesses affected due to lockdowns and disruptions since the onset of the pandemic in 2020.
Acknowledging the severe disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on hospitality and related enterprises, the Cabinet decided that the additional amount of ₹50,000 crore would be made applicable to enterprises in hospitality and related sectors till March 31, 2023. This step was announced in this year’s Union Budget.
The enhancement is expected to provide much needed relief to enterprises in these sectors by incentivizing lending institutions to provide additional credit of up to ₹50,000 crore at low cost, thereby enabling these business enterprises to meet their operational liabilities and continue their businesses.
With high immunisation levels and unwinding of restrictions amid an ‘overall economic recovery, conditions are in place for sustained growth in demand for these sectors as well’, the Ministry said.
The pandemic had adversely affected contact-intensive sectors, and demand continued to be subdued for them even as other sectors returned to the recovery path faster.
Justifying the need for interventions for such businesses’ ‘sustenance and recovery’, the Ministry added that their revival was also necessary for supporting the overall ecomomic rebound, taking into account their high employment intensity and their direct as well as indirect linkages with other sectors.
India’s oil demand to rise 7.73% in 2022: OPEC (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
India's demand for petroleum products such as petrol and diesel will grow by 7.73% in 2022, the fastest pace in the world, an OPEC report said.
India's demand for oil products is projected to rise from 4.77 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2021 to 5.14 million bpd in 2022, OPEC said in its monthly oil report.
The growth in demand is the fastest in the world ahead of 1.23% of China, 3.39% of the U.S. and 4.62% of Europe.
India is the world's third largest oil importing and consuming nation behind the U.S. and China.
The demand for petroleum products in India is supported by the healthy economic growth of 7.1%, continuing economic reopening amid ease of COVID restrictions and easing of trade-related bottlenecks supporting both mobility and industrial sector activity.
The report said the oil demand will see a dip in the third quarter (July-September) due to the arrival of the monsoon but will pick up the following quarter on the back of the festival and holiday season.
"Overall, based on the most recent trends, demand for diesel and jet kerosene would likely account for a bigger part of the growth in demand in H2 as consumption of these two products had fallen sharply due to the pandemic.
India's crude imports edged higher averaging 4.7 million bpd in June, with Russian oil flows up 0.9 million bpd, the report said quoting secondary sources.
"In terms of crude imports by source, Kpler data shows Russia moving up to be the top supplier of crude to India in June, securing a 24% share. Iraq fell to second with a share of 21%, followed by Saudi Arabia which was stable at 15%," it said.
The report of OPEC - an organisation of the world's major oil exporting nations such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq, stated that India's crude imports are likely to remain close to current levels in July, with Russian inflows remaining above 1 million bpd and with expectations for slightly lower flows from elsewhere.
It saw India's economy continuing on a recovery path, supported by pent-up demand for services and higher industrial output.
Centre restores farm loan interest subsidy, approves fillip of ?34,856 crore (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Union Cabinet, at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi here on Wednesday, decided to restore the interest subvention on short-term agriculture loans to 1.5% for all financial institutions, including cooperative banks.
The Centre said the increase in interest subvention support requires an additional budgetary provision of ₹34,856 crore for the period of 2022-23 to 2024-25.
Explaining the rationale behind the decision, Union Minister Anurag Thakur said as the Reserve Bank of India had recently increased the repo rate and an intervention was necessary to keep the interest rate on short term agriculture loan at 7%.
He said the Centre’s support to banks for the interest subvention scheme was stopped in May 2020 as the banks were able to provide short term agriculture loan at 7% by themselves.
Thus, interest subvention of 1.5% will be provided to lending institutions (Public Sector Banks, Private Sector Bank, Small Finance Banks, Regional Rural Banks, Cooperative Banks and Computerized Primary Agriculture Cooperatives directly ceded with commercial banks) for the financial year 2022-23 to 2024-25 for lending short-term agri-loans upto ₹3 lakh to the farmers.
The Centre said the increase in interest subvention will ensure sustainability of credit flow in the agriculture sector as well as ensure financial health and viability of the lending institutions, ensuring adequate agriculture credit in rural economy.
Banks will be able to absorb increase in cost of funds and will be encouraged to grant loans to farmers for short term agriculture requirements and enable more farmers to get the benefit of agriculture credit.
This will also lead to generation of employment since short term agri-loans are provided for all activities including animal husbandry, dairying, poultry, fisheries.
Farmers will continue to avail short term agriculture credit at interest rate of 4% per annum while repaying the loan in time.