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Freedom of expression is being “misused” by extremists in Canada to legitimise terrorism. He reiterated India’s call for Canada to rein in pro-Khalistan elements who have circulated posters inciting violence against Indian diplomats in Canada, the U.S. and Australia ahead of an expected pro-Khalistan demonstration.
Mr. Bagchi’s remarks came soon after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada was taking steps to fight extremism without compromising on the freedom of expression.
These posters inciting violence against our diplomats and our diplomatic premises abroad are unacceptable and we condemn them in the strongest terms.
With respect to Canada, the matter has been strongly taken up with the Canadian authorities both in New Delhi and in Ottawa. We have called on the Government of Canada to ensure safety of our diplomats and our diplomatic missions in Canada.
The growing presence of pro-Khalistan elements in Canada, the U.K., the U.S. and Australia have been a nagging problem for India’s relation with these countries.
The matter acquired a new dimension last month when a float taken out in Canada to mark the 1984 Operation Blue Star depicted the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar earlier remarked that Canada had not been proactive in containing the Khalistan problem owing to “vote bank politics” as the Trudeau government relies on votes from the Sikh community.
As envoy says G-20 summit is key event for Russia, Putin visit now a possibility (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
The G-20 summit in India is one of the “most important” events for Moscow, said a senior Russian diplomat, indicating the possibility that Russian President Vladimir Putin could attend the summit, which would be the first time he would come face to face with Western leaders since the war in Ukraine began.
Answering questions at the weekly briefing, the External Affairs Ministry spokesperson too said the government “looks forward to welcoming Mr. Putin” at the G-20 summit in Delhi on September 9 and 10.
As far as the G-20 summit is concerned, we take it as one of the most important events this year, and all preparations are going on. Usually, plans of the President are announced in due course.
In 2022, Mr. Putin skipped the G-20 summit in Bali, given the war in Ukraine and threats from Western leaders to boycott him. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov participated in his place.
While Mr. Babushkin said Russia was “determined to support the Indian presidency to ensure the success of the G-20 Summit”, the diplomat did not hold out hope that Russia and China would agree to the draft statement — which could result in a failure to issue a joint communique, a first in the G-20 grouping’s history.
Ahead of next week’s G-20 Sherpa meeting in Hampi, where top negotiators led by India’s G-20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant will try to hammer out a consensus on a joint statement ahead of the summit, Mr. Babushkin said unless “all countries are on board”, there can be no consensus.
He said Russia and China’s stand against including the Ukraine war in the text, was understood by the other members of the G-20.
Asked why Russia and China were holding up consensus on the Delhi statement, given that they had signed on to similar paragraphs on Ukraine in the Bali summit statement, the envoy said it was the Western states that were “undermining” India’s presidency by “politicising” the G-20 that is meant to discuss economic issues.
Editorial
India needs a Uniform Civil Code (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
India, being a diverse nation, is home to many religions, each with its distinct personal laws governing marriage, divorce, adoption, inheritance and succession.
It would be accurate to say that the absence of a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) has only served to perpetuate inequalities and inconsistencies in our land of rich diversity.
In fact, this has been a hindrance in the nation’s progress towards social harmony, economic and gender justice. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had last week called for the enactment of a UCC, pointing out the anomaly of having varying laws for different categories of citizens.
The debate on the UCC goes back to the Constituent Assembly debates. In fact, one could assert that the legality of UCC is rooted in the Constitution of India, Constituent Assembly debates and also Supreme Court of India judgments.
Constituent Assembly debates shed light on the need and the objective behind promoting a common civil code. Babasaheb Ambedkar, the chief architect of the Indian Constitution, had made a strong case in the Constituent Assembly for framing a UCC. He stressed the importance of a UCC in ensuring gender equality and eradicating prevailing social evils.
We are having this liberty in order to reform our social system, which is so full of inequities, so full of inequalities, discriminations and other things, which conflict with our fundamental rights. It is, therefore, quite impossible for anybody to conceive that the personal law shall be excluded from the jurisdiction of the State.
Other distinguished and erudite members of the Constituent Assembly such as Alladi Krishnaswamy Ayyar and K.M. Munshi also advocated the enactment of a UCC.
Since a consensus on a UCC could not be reached in the Constituent Assembly, the subject found a place under Article 44 of the Directive Principles.
Thus, Article 44, in a sense, is the Constitutional mandate which requires the state to enact a UCC that applies to all citizens cutting across faiths, practices and personal laws.
Internationalising the rupee without the ‘coin tossing’ (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The government’s announcement of a long-term road map for further internationalisation of the rupee can turn out to be a positive exercise.
In the 1950s, the Indian rupee was legal tender for almost all transactions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar, with the Gulf monarchies purchasing rupees with the pound sterling.
In 1959, to mitigate challenges associated with gold smuggling, the Reserve Bank of India (Amendment) Act was brought in, enabling the creation of the “Gulf Rupee”, with notes issued by the central bank for circulation only in the West Asian region. Holders of the Indian currency were given six weeks to exchange their Indian currency, with the transition happening smoothly. However, by 1966, India devalued its currency, eventually causing some West Asian countries to replace the Gulf rupee with their own currencies.
Flagging confidence in the Indian rupee’s stability combined with an oil-revenue linked boom, slowly led to the introduction of sovereign currencies in the region. The move, in 2023, to withdraw the ₹2,000 note has also impacted confidence in the rupee.
The demonetisation of 2016 also shook confidence in the Indian rupee, especially in Bhutan and Nepal. Both countries continue to fear additional policy changes by the RBI (including further demonetisation). The rupee’s internationalisation cannot make a start without accounting for the concerns expressed by India’s neighbours.
The rupee is far from being internationalised — the daily average share for the rupee in the global foreign exchange market hovers around ~1.6%, while India’s share of global goods trade is ~2%.
India has taken some steps to promote the internationalisation of the rupee (e.g., enable external commercial borrowings in rupees), with a push to Indian banks to open Rupee Vostro accounts for banks from Russia, the UAE, Sri Lanka and Mauritius and measures to trade with ~18 countries in rupees instituted.
However, such transactions have been limited, with India still buying oil from Russia in dollars. Ongoing negotiations with Russia to settle trade in rupees have been slow-going, with Russia expected to have an annual rupee surplus of over $40 billion — reports indicate that Russian banks have been averse to the trade, given the risk of further currency depreciation and a lack of awareness among traders about local currency facilities. In short, there is very little international demand to trade in the Indian rupee.
Explainer
Understanding dark patterns (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Internal Security)
The Department of Consumer Affairs and the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) recently held a joint consultation with stakeholders on the menace of ‘dark patterns’. The ASCI has come up with guidelines for the same, with the central government also working towards norms against ‘dark patterns’.
A dark pattern refers to a design or user interface technique that is intentionally crafted to manipulate or deceive users into making certain choices or taking specific actions that may not be in their best interest.
It is a deceptive practice employed to influence user behaviour in a way that benefits the company implementing it.
For example, a common dark pattern is the “sneak into basket” technique used on e-commerce websites. When a user adds an item to their shopping cart, a dark pattern may be employed by automatically adding additional items to the cart without the user’s explicit consent or clear notification.
This can mislead the user into purchasing more items than they intended, potentially increasing the company’s sales but compromising the user’s autonomy and decision-making.
Similarly, many of us have encountered pop-up requests for our personal information, where we have found it difficult to locate the ‘reject’ link.
It is challenging for customers to decline the acquisition of their personal data if they want to continue on a website because the choice to depart or reject is so subtly positioned.
By using such dark patterns, digital platforms infringe on the consumer’s right to full transparency of the services they use and control over their browsing experience.
Businesses are using various techniques and deceptive patterns to downgrade the user experience to their own advantage. Some of the common practices are — creating a sense of urgency or scarcity while online shopping; confirm shaming wherein a consumer is criticised for not conforming to a particular belief; the forced action of signing up for a service to access content; advertising one product or service but delivering another, often of lower quality, known as the bait and switch technique; hidden costs where the bill is revised or costs are added when the consumer is almost certain to purchase the product; disguised advertisements of a particular product by way of depicting it as news and many more.
Such deceptive patterns that manipulate consumer choice and impede their right to be well-informed constitute unfair practices that are prohibited under the Consumer Protection Act 2019.
News
SC asks NGO to move Centre against issue of sarpanch-patism in politics (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The Supreme Court said that the government, and not the judiciary, should look into the problem of men often wielding the actual power behind elected women who remain “faceless wives and daughters-in-law” in grassroots politics.
A Bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Sudhanshu Dhulia advised an NGO, Mundona Rural Development Foundation, to make a representation before the Ministry of Panchayati Raj on this issue.
The NGO, represented by advocate Swati Jindal, said that the phenomenon of unelected male relatives wielding political and decision-making power behind women amounted to a “sheer mockery of constitutional democracy”.
This is the situation 30 years after the Seventy-Third Constitution Amendment Act, 1992 provided a one-third quota for women in village, block and district levels of panchayat governance.
The amendments were inserted in the Constitution to help the women population at the grassroots level break cultural barriers and improve their socio-economic conditions through representative democracy.
However, State governments had not been able to prevent men from acting as “sarpanch-pati, sarpanch-devar, pradhan-pati” while wielding the actual political and decision-making power. The NGO termed this tendency among male relatives to exercise power, in lieu of the elected women, as “sarpanch-patism”.
India, France gear up for Modi’s visit, focus on key deals (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Co-development, rather than co-production, will be the focus of India-France ties, as the countries prepare to mark 25 years of strategic partnership next week, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi travels to Paris to attend France’s National Day parade.
National Security Adviser Ajit Doval received his French counterpart Emmanuel Bonne, diplomatic adviser to French President Emmanuel Macron, with the “main agenda” of making preparations for the visit.
“Defence, energy, space, new technologies and more: We are working on an ambitious agenda for the strategic partnership,” said a tweet from the French Embassy in Delhi.
According to sources aware of the plans, France hopes to see a number of contracts and agreements announced during Mr. Modi’s visit. Deals for Rafale-M (marine) planes for the Navy and the joint development of jet engines for fighter aircraft are on the table for the talks.
The discussion on jet engines — for an agreement between the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and French defence major Safran — is significant, as it comes on the heels of the GE-HAL MoU announced during Mr. Modi’s visit to Washington last month.
The sources pointed out that the Indo-French deal would not be simply to “transfer production” to India, but a partnership between engineers of both countries to research and develop technology for a new engine together.
The deal with Safran has been speculated about especially after the Prime Minister met with Safran group chairman Ross McInnes in Delhi in April to discuss possibilities in the Indian aviation market, defence and space.
India and France are also hoping to strengthen ties over collaboration in space. Apart from collaborations in launching satellites, the two sides are also looking at training astronauts and partnerships in space industrial engineering, it is learnt.
News
Chandrayaan-3 launch on July 14, lunar landing on August 23 or 24 (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
India’s much-awaited moon mission Chandrayaan-3 will be launched at 2.35 p.m. on July 14 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced.
On the sidelines of the G-20 Space Economy Leaders Meeting, ISRO Chairman S. Somnath told presspersons that if the launch took place as scheduled on July 14, the landing on the lunar surface would take place in the last week of August.
“If the launch takes place on that day, then we will be ready for landing on the moon possibly by the last week of August. The date (landing date) is decided when there is sunrise on the moon. When we are landing, sunlight must be there. So the landing will be on August 23 or 24.
The space agency chief said that if the landing did not take place as planned, then the ISRO would wait for another month to make a landing attempt in September.
The lander and the rover will stay on the moon for 14 days until sunlight is there. When there is no sunlight, a small solar panel which is on the rover will generate power to charge the battery for the next 14 days until light comes.
The temperature there goes down to minus-40 degrees Celsius, and in such an environment, there is no guarantee that the battery and electronics will survive, but we did some tests and have the feeling that they will survive.
The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft will be launched by the Launch Vehicle Mark-III (LVM3) and launch window for the mission is between July 12 and 19.
Chandrayaan-3 will demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface.
The mission has an indigenous lander module, a propulsion module and a rover with an objective of developing and demonstrating new technologies required for inter-planetary missions.
World
U.S. Treasury Secretary in China to soothe relations (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen arrived in Beijing for meetings with Chinese leaders as part of efforts to revive relations that are strained by disputes about security, technology and other irritants.
Ms. Yellen planned to focus on stabilising the global economy and challenging Chinese support of Russia during its invasion of Ukraine, Treasury officials in Washington told reporters ahead of the trip.
The Secretary was due to meet with Chinese officials, American businesspeople and members of the public, according to Treasury officials.
They gave no details, but said Ms. Yellen wouldn’t meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Ms. Yellen follows Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met Mr. Xi last month in the highest-level U.S. visit to Beijing in five years. The two agreed to stabilise relations but failed to agree on improving communications between their militaries.
Ms. Yellen earlier warned against economic decoupling, or disconnecting U.S. and Chinese industry and markets. Businesspeople have warned the world might split into separate markets, slowing innovation and economic growth, as both governments tighten controls on trade in technology and other goods deemed sensitive.
Ms. Yellen said earlier the two governments “can and need to find a way to live together” in spite of their strained relations over geopolitics and economic development.
The most recent flareup came after President Joe Biden referred to Mr. Xi as dictator. The Chinese protested, but Mr. Biden said his blunt statements about China are “just not something I’m going to change very much”.
Business
FinMin pushes for reforms to spur FDI (Page no. 18)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Finance Ministry has made a strong pitch for measures to facilitate Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows, that dipped last year and may remain subdued in the coming months.
It mooted greater attention from policymakers to resolve challenges faced by global investors, including last-mile infrastructure issues and difficulties in setting up large-scale factories.
Blaming the dip in FDI inflows in FY23 to inflationary pressures and tighter monetary policies, the Ministry noted that FDI flows may also be impacted by “political distance more than geographical distance” as “geopolitics has dominated geography.”
Gross FDI flows slid 16% last year from the record high of $84.8 billion in FY22, while net inflows fell a sharper 27.4%. In its annual economic review published, the Ministry said this phenomenon was “not unique to India” as net FDI inflows to emerging market economies declined 36% in 2022.
Identifying the external sector as a possible challenge for India’s growth outlook in FY24, the Ministry noted that “escalation of geopolitical stress, enhanced volatility in global financial systems, sharp price correction in global stock markets, a high magnitude of El-Nino impact, and modest trade activity and FDI inflows owing to frail global demand” could all constrain growth.
India needs to watch FDI data closely and continue to take measures to facilitate FDI inflows. Last-mile infrastructure issues, labour availability and measures to facilitate large capacity creation will be needed. This policy space may need India’s increasing attention in the coming months and years.
Friend shoring” of FDI by increasing investments in countries which are geopolitically aligned to each other was leading to a fragmentation in FDI flows across the globe, citing research from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Inflows from foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) into the Indian markets had become less volatile.