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Prime Minister Narendra Modi will install the Sengol, a sceptre given by the British to India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to represent the transfer of power in 1947, in the new Parliament building, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said.
The sceptre, kept in a museum in Prayagraj, formerly Allahabad, will be installed near the podium of the Lok Sabha Speaker.
“Sengol makes the spirit of August 15, 1947 unforgettable and the Parliament House is the most appropriate and sacred place to install it. “Transfer of power is not a mere exchange of documents; it is done when the government runs according to traditions and culture. Sengol in the new Parliament building indicates the sentiments espoused by Nehruji in 1947.”
It was originally used to mark the handing over of power from one king to another during the Chola dynasty in Tamil Nadu.
The five-foot-long intricately carved, unbending gold-plated silver sceptre, with a finial of Nandi (bull deity), was specially commissioned by the then Thiruvavaduthurai Adheenam (pontiff) and was handed over to Nehru.
The Thiruvavaduthurai math is located in Mayiladuthurai district of Tamil Nadu, at the heart of the erstwhile Chola kingdom.
All 20 Adheenam presidents will also be present to shower blessings in reminiscence of this sacred ritual. I am glad that 96-year-old Vummidi Bangaru Chettyji, associated with its construction, will also participate.
States
A ‘middle kingdom’ dawns on India’s west (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The 32nd Arab League Summit held in Jeddah was unique in multiple ways. After 12 years, all 22 Arab states got together again, with 17 of them represented at the head of state or government level.
The summit readmitted Syria and heard the Ukrainian President, a special invitee. The post-summit “Jeddah Declaration” was moderate in political optics and showed realism for the contemporary socio-economic challenges facing the Arabs.
Although it highlighted the staple pro-Palestinian agenda, it conspicuously refrained from mentioning Israel by name.
Similarly, all Iran-related issues were omitted. Instead, it called for “stopping foreign interference in the domestic affairs of Arab countries and categorically reject all support for the formation of armed groups and militias”. There was no mention of any non-Arab issue, including Ukraine and the oil market.
These subtle nuances would hint at the emergence of Saudi Arabia under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as the main arbiter of the Arab world’s agenda for the foreseeable future.
During the months of the run-up to this summit, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman took several steps to declutter the Kingdom’s regional agenda: he held triple summits in Riyadh with the Chinese President.
Relations with Iran were normalised, aiming to end nearly 45 years of hostility and geo-religious rivalry. This reduced the friction among their respective proxies in conflict such as Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
In particular, it has raised hopes of putting an end to the civil war in Yemen, the Kingdom’s “Vietnam” since 2015. On the other hand, ties with the United States have been stabilised.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 37, has adroitly chalked out a middle path to take the Arab world’s leadership, currently in a vacuum. Egypt, the usual pretender for Arab leadership, is in a precarious economic state as the Kingdom has curtailed its assistance, demanding greater financial accountability. Syria and Iraq are still battling their internal demons and Iranian interference.
Opinion
The fundamental value of the rupee
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The first thing that comes to mind when speaking of the value of a currency is the exchange rate it commands in international transactions.
For instance, we may ask how many cents is the rupee worth. Another is its purchasing power within an economy, i.e., whether it can buy the same basket of goods over time.
Inflation erodes the value of a currency over time. But there is a more fundamental sense in which the value of a currency is to be understood, and it has nothing to do with prices.
It has to do with the confidence that citizens have in its continued acceptance as a medium of exchange and store of value. This confidence is based on the trust that they repose in their monetary authority, which is the central bank.
On May 19, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced that the ₹2,000 note is being withdrawn from circulation but that it will remain legal tender.
At the same time, it advised the public to hand over their ₹2,000 notes, to be exchanged for lower denomination notes, by September 30. This advice is pregnant with the suggestion that the note would cease to be legal tender after that date.
The explanation for the move is that it is part of a ‘Clean Note Policy’. This does not wash, for if the objective was to remove soiled notes from circulation, the existing ₹2,000 note should have been made convertible into a fresh note of the same denomination.
Economists who align with the government of the day have rushed to support the RBI’s latest move. One argument is that a note of such high denomination is used only by a miniscule section of the population.
The other is that it will ensure that black money hoards will be extinguished. Actually, these arguments do not enhance the RBI’s reputation.
First, it should not have taken much for the RBI to recognise in 2016 that the ₹2,000 note, issued after notes of much lower denominations had been demonetised, was likely to be used by few people for the majority of transactions in India are of far lower monetary value.
With hindsight, it is believable that at the time there were not enough new currency notes to be exchanged for the demonetised notes, i.e., there was an unconscionable lack of preparation.
Text & Context
On copyright infringement and AI (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc. versus Goldsmith et al. has added more unpredictability to the process of being exempted from copyright infringement liabilities. The judgment is set to have implications for how we regulate a powerful form of artificial intelligence.
Copyright law protects the work of diverse artists, including photographers, and provides a set of exclusive rights for artists over their creative output.
This includes controlling the manner in which others reproduce or modify their work. However, these exclusive rights are balanced with the rights of the users of such work, including other artists who might want to build on or comment on them, with the help of diverse exceptions under the copyright law.
Different jurisdictions follow different approaches to exceptions. Some countries, particularly those in continental Europe, adopt the ‘enumerated exceptions approach’— the use in question needs to be specifically covered under the statute to be considered as an exception to copyright infringement.
Some others, including the U.S., follow an open-ended approach that does not specify exemptions beforehand, instead, they have guidelines about the types of uses that can be exempted.
The U.S. courts primarily consider four factors when determining whether a particular use can be considered to be an instance of fair use — the purpose and character of the use; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the portion taken by the defendant, and the effect of the use on the potential market of the plaintiff’s work.
Of these, the U.S. courts have been giving the highest importance to the first factor — whether the use of something can be considered “transformative” has often played the most critical role in determining the final outcome in a fair-use case.
News
Independence of judiciary is part of basic structure of Constitution: SC (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
The Supreme Court has held that the independence of district judiciary is part of the basic structure of the Constitution and judicial independence from the executive and the legislature requires the judiciary to have a say in matters of finances.
“The independence of the district judiciary must also be equally a part of the basic structure of the Constitution. Without impartial and independent judges in the district judiciary, justice, a preambular goal, would remain illusory.
The district judiciary is, in most cases, also the court which is most accessible to the litigant,” a three-judge Bench of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, Justices V. Ramasubramanian and P.S. Narasimha observed in a judgment.
The judgment, based on a petition filed by the All India Judges Association, gave a series of directions to amend the service rules of the district judiciary and for payment of arrears of pension, additional pension, gratuity and other retiral benefits.
The directions were based on the recommendations made in the report of the court-appointed Second National Judicial Pay Commission headed by Justice P.V. Reddi (retired) as its chairman with senior advocate R. Basant as its member.
The judgment records the crucial role played by the district judiciary in the justice administration system by recording the submissions made by its amicus curiae, advocate K. Parameshwar, that “on a single day, the district judiciary handled nearly 11.3 lakh cases”.
Justice Narasimha said the district judiciary was the backbone of the judicial system. “Vital to the judicial system is the independence of the judicial officers. To secure their impartiality, it is important to ensure their financial security and economic independence,” the top court noted.
Business
WTO reforms an urgent and top priority for India, says Minister Patel (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
There is an urgent need to address World Trade Organisation (WTO) reforms on a priority basis, said Anupriya Patel, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry.
India has been pitching for WTO reforms and also pressing for better dispute settlement mechanisms during G20 talks. The emphasis of these discussions would be on reaffirming WTO’s foundational principles, as embodied in the Marrakesh Agreement and its multilateral trade agreements, thus recognising the need for the open, fair, inclusive and transparent functioning of WTO.
There is an urgent need for addressing the World Trade Organisation reforms on a top priority basis as WTO assumes a vital role in ensuring fairness and transparency in global trade and forms the backbone of the multilateral trading system.
Som Parkash, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, remarked that India was aiming to emerge as the global leader in the international trade landscape, and that the country is already set to become the second-largest e-commerce market globally.