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The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved a scheme to add 10,000 e-buses to city bus services across the country, and to shore up urban infrastructure under green mobility initiatives with a focus on cities having no organised bus services.
An e-bus is any bus whose propulsion and accessory systems are powered exclusively by a zero-emissions electricity source.
The PM e-bus Sewa scheme will have an estimated cost of ₹57,613 crore, of which the Centre will provide ₹20,000 crore and the remaining will be borne by the States.
It will support bus operations for 10 years. The scheme will be implemented in two segments, Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said.
In 169 cities, 10,000 e-buses will be deployed using the public-private partnership (PPP) model; in 181 other cities, infrastructure will be upgraded under the green urban mobility initiatives.
For cities in the first segment, depot infrastructure will also be developed or upgraded to support the new e-buses, including the creation of behind-the-meter power infrastructure such as substations.
For those in the second segment, the initiatives will focus on bus priority, infrastructure, multimodal interchange facilities, automated fare collection systems, and charging infrastructure.
SC unveils handbook to eliminate gender stereotypes from law (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 1, Indian Society)
Career woman, fallen woman, faithful or obedient wife, eve-teasing, hermaphrodite: the Supreme Court has identified these words and many others as gender-unjust terms that are often heard in Indian courts.
In a new handbook released on Wednesday, the top court offered the correct terms that should be used instead: woman, woman, wife, street sexual harassment, inter-sex.
It aims to free the judiciary and the legal community from the mechanical application of gender stereotypical language in judgments, orders, and court pleadings.
Equitable society
Announcing its publication in open court, Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud said he hoped the handbook would mark a significant milestone in the journey towards a more just and equitable society.
In his foreword, the Chief Justice underscored the oft-forgotten fact that “predetermined stereotypes in judicial decision-making contravenes the duty of judges to decide each case on its merits, independently and impartially”.
Editorial
An Act to cement digital authoritarianism (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
“You may say that you want to be forgotten but the state does not want to forget you.” This chilling argument for dominance over every Indian’s life was rejected six years ago, in August 2017, by the Supreme Court of India in the first Puttaswamy decision.
The Court reaffirmed the fundamental right to privacy while requiring the Union Government to introduce a data protection law in Parliament, “as per this judgment”.
Instead, in 2023, the country has now got the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, or the Data Act. Its provisions, according to Amrita Johri and Anjali Bhardwaj (who are associated with the National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information and the Satark Nagrik Sangathan), “threaten the very foundations of transparency and accountability”.
And Professor Subhasis Banerjee (Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Delhi), says it “facilitates data collection and processing by the government and private entities rather than… data protection”.
The answer rests in total state control — a digital leash to yank us and make us stand in line than serve the preambular objectives of the Constitution of India.
Months after inaugurating the ‘Digital India’ programme in July 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was in Silicon Valley in September 2015, announced that “technology is advancing citizen empowerment and democracy that once drew their strength from Constitutions”.
The speech reveals a misplaced belief in the curative powers of techno-solutionism, and that all our problems will be fixed by the digital revolution rather than a transformative constitution.
This ideology requires a continuous expansion of state power that is the result of a tie-up between surveillance capital and surveillance welfare.
New Bills and a principled course for criminal law reforms (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
The recent introduction of three Bills transforming India’s criminal laws — the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita to replace the Indian Penal Code; the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita to replace the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Bharatiya Sakshya Bill to replace the Indian Evidence Act — has ignited a spectrum of reactions.
Amidst what is unfolding, the challenge lies in ensuring that there is debate which also leads to productive contributions. As the Bills have the potential to shape future criminal law, the issues of sustainability, efficacy, adherence to the rule of law and justice delivery capacity are paramount.
Principles of criminal law, in Alan Norrie’s words, are a “site of struggle and contradiction”. Capturing the collective public aspirations within criminal law reforms presents a formidable challenge.
The disparities between polarised popular opinions must be balanced with the state’s perspective. Criminal law is an instrument of social control. It moulds and guides us in more ways than one.
The conditioning of stakeholders and functionaries of the Macaulay-era criminal law for 163 years undeniably complicates the task of criminal law reforms .
It is too early to decide whether the Bills will cause large-scale changes in the legal landscape. The success or failure of criminal law reforms hinges on their inception, formulation, resilience, and far-sightedness.
The purported alterations pale in comparison to the deep-seated challenges besieging India’s criminal justice system. Seemingly, the Bills highlight an abundance of missed opportunities.
Opinion
The future will not forgive the govt. (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The day on which the Consultative Committee on Environment, Forest and Climate Change had an early morning meeting — August 2, happened to be the same day the Union government completed its process of passing the Forest Conservation (Amendment) Bill, 2023.
The previous day, the government completed the legislative formalities regarding the Biodiversity (Amendment) Bill, 2023 too. At the Consultative Committee meeting, Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupendra Yadav spoke of the importance of the conservation of wetlands in the country.
He told the members about the Ramsar Convention of 1971, considered to be a landmark initiative for biodiversity conservation and environmental protection.
The same afternoon, Mr. Yadav proposed a Bill which is set to become a disaster for the country’s forests and the forest-dependent people.
And, a government that has dealt fatal blows to each and every aspect of the environment, forest and biodiversity, will be put to trial by the coming generations.
The timing of the Bill has to be noted for it has been mooted in the run-up to the G-20 summit which is set to take place in India in September.
Climate change and the environment have been given due importance on the G-20 agenda. Moreover, as a signatory of the Paris Agreement, India has all along lectured about the necessity to protect the environment, forest and biodiversity.
But, by passing the above Bills on Biodiversity and Forest Conservation, the government is signalling that it can’t practise what it preaches.
Both these Bills collectively undermine the Forest Rights Act, 2006 which guarantees the rights of the tribals and other traditional forest dwellers.
The government is trying to push back India’s well-founded ideas on conservation going back to the Forest Conservation Act of 1980. Ease of doing business is the watchword of governance in the Modi era and the arithmetic and calculations of business guide the government in all its activities.
Explainer
Understanding the MoEFCC’s U-turn (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
In June, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) issued a notification quietly walking back on its move to establish integrated regional offices by merging offices of the Forest Survey of India (FSI), the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB), and the Central Zoo Authority (CZA), and thus bring them under the Ministry.
The idea for such reorganisation was announced during the COVID-19 lockdown and came under criticism from activists that it would render key environmental organisations “toothless”.
For example, in the existing structure, the NTCA can oppose a forest clearance for an infrastructure project for diverting Tiger Reserve areas.
The proposed merger would have rendered this difficult as the NTCA would have come under the Deputy Director General of Forests, who is in charge of the Integrated Regional Office and reports to the Ministry.
According to internal documents, accessed by an application filed under the Right to Information Act by Karnataka-based activist Ramprasad, the MoEFCC justified the merger for “ease of doing business” whereas the NTCA had opposed it, saying it could lead to “administrative confusion, chaos … loss of independence, undue interference in decision making, [and] loss of focus in discharging duties and responsibilities.”
Giridhar Kulkarni, a Belgaum-based wildlife conservationist, had filed a petition against this reorganisation plan in the Karnataka High Court in 2020, arguing that it would amount to a merger of entities and authorities that is impermissible in law.
The MoEFCC replied that the notification does not amount to a merger and that the intention was to get the various authorities to function at 19 regional offices, under one roof.
Following this assurance, the Karnataka High Court disposed of the petition but gave the petitioner the liberty to approach the Court if the merger was found to adversely affect the functioning of the various bodies.
Why is Bihar’s caste-based survey facing legal challenges? (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 1, Indian Society)
The Supreme Court is set to hear on August 18, petitions challenging the Patna High Court (HC)’s verdict upholding the Bihar government’s ongoing caste survey.
On January 7, the State government launched a two-phase caste survey in Bihar, stating that detailed information on socio-economic conditions would help create better government policies for disadvantaged groups.
Last year on June 6, the Bihar government issued a notification to this effect, following a State Cabinet decision on June 2, 2022.
The survey is estimated to collect the socio-economic data for a population of 12.70 crore in the 38 districts of Bihar. The first phase of the survey, which involved a house listing exercise, was carried out from January 7 to January 12.
The State was in the middle of the second phase, when the survey was halted due to a stay order from the HC on May 4.
However, a recent HC verdict dismissed all petitions opposing the move, and the government on August 2 resumed work on the second phase of the survey.
In the second phase, data related to castes, sub-castes, and religions of all people is to be collected. The final survey report can be expected in September, less than a year before the 2024 election.
The Census conducted at the beginning of every decade does not record any caste data other than for those listed as Scheduled Castes (SCs).
In the absence of such a census, there is no proper estimate for the population of OBCs, various groups within the OBCs, and others.
Despite this ambiguity, the Union government has categorically ruled out conducting a socio-economic caste census, saying it is unfeasible, ‘administratively difficult and cumbersome.’ Responding to a writ petition filed by the State of Maharashtra, the Centre in its affidavit said that excluding any castes other than the SCs and Scheduled Tribes was a ‘conscious policy decision’ adopted since the 1951 Census, and that there was a policy of ‘official discouragement of caste’.
News
Odisha government withdraws the controversial ‘deemed forest’ order (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The Odisha government has withdrawn a controversial order issued on August 11, which told district officials that ‘deemed forests’ as a category would cease to exist under the recently amended Forest Act.
‘Deemed forests’ are forests that aren’t classified so, by the Centre or States, in their records. However, a 1996 judgment of the Supreme Court in the Godavarman case entrusted States with identifying parcels of land “that conformed to the dictionary meaning of forest irrespective of ownership” and expanding protections available under the Forest Act to them too.
An updated Forest Act, passed by Parliament this month, said that only forests classified and recorded as such after 1980 would be protected.
Forest land officially diverted by the government for non-forestry purposes between 1980 and 1996 would also not be protected
However, Environment Ministry clarified to a Joint Parliamentary Committee, constituted to examine provisions of the Bill that the amendments did not fall afoul of the 1996 SC judgment.
Tracts of forest land or deemed forest lands, identified by the Expert Committee of the State, have been taken on record and hence the provisions of the Act will be applicable in such lands also.
Expansion of Digital India programme gets ₹14,903-crore outlay (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The Union Cabinet approved a five-year extension and expansion of the Digital India programme, including an expansion of the Computer Emergency Response Team, India (CERT-in). The expansion of the programme will have an outlay of ₹14,903 crore.
We need to build cybersecurity tools for small businesses, schools, hospitals, which have to focus on their work. Cybersecurity should be easily accessible, low cost and affordable.
Under the programme, 6.25 lakh IT professionals will receive upskilling and re-skilling training, and 2.65 lakh employees will receive information security training.
The Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance platform, which offers access to about 1,700 government services, will have 540 more services added to it.
DigiLocker, the online repository operated by the government for official documents, will be expanded to serve Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises, or MSMEs. This will make it easier for them to get verified documents for business loans.
‘Vishwakarma scheme will aid 30 lakh artisan families’ (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved the “PM Vishwakarma” scheme with an outlay of ₹13,000 crore.
The scheme, announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Independence Day speech, will be available for traditional craftspeople and artisans from 2023-24 to 2027-28.
The Centre said in a release that the scheme aims to strengthen and nurture the “Guru-Shishya parampara” (teacher student tradition) or the family-based practice of traditional skills by artisans and craftspeople working with their hands and tools.
The scheme also aims at improving the quality, as well as the reach of products and services of artisans and craftspeople and to ensure that the Vishwakarmas are integrated with the domestic and global value chains,” it said.
Eighteen traditional trades such as carpenter, boat maker, armourer, blacksmith, hammer and tool kit maker, locksmith, goldsmith, potter, sculptor, stone breaker, cobbler, mason, basket/mat/broom maker/coir weaver, traditional doll and toy maker, barber, garland maker, washerman, tailor and fishing net maker will be covered under the scheme.
Artisans and craftspeople will get PM Vishwakarma certificate and ID card, credit support up to ₹1 lakh (first tranche) and ₹2 lakh (second tranche) at a concessional interest rate of 5%.
Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said there will be two types of skilling programmes — basic and advanced under the scheme and a stipend of ₹500 per day will also be provided to beneficiaries while undergoing skill training.
Cabinet nod for 7 rail connectivity projects worth ₹32,500 crore (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Infrastructure)
With a view to improving rail connectivity and ease travel for commuters, the Union Cabinet approved seven railway projects estimated at around ₹32,500 crore.
Spanning 35 districts in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Odisha, Jharkhand, and West Bengal, the projects will add 2,339 km to the railway network.
The proposed doubling of the 96-km Gorakhpur Cantonment-Valmiki Nagar (Bihar) single-line section, at a cost of ₹1,269.8 crore, will save two to three hours in running time for trains to Assam, Tripura, north Bihar, and eastern Uttar Pradesh, and for passengers to and from Nepal, said Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.
Also, the doubling of the 239-km Guntur-Bibinagar (Telangana) single-line section at ₹3,238 crore will reduce the distance for trains running between Chennai and Secunderabad by 76 km.
The doubling of the Chopan-Chukar single-line section will enable faster connectivity for the mining area of Singrauli in Madhya Pradesh and cement industry of Chukar Churk region (Uttar Pradesh) to Varanasi, Lucknow and Delhi.
World
Ukrainian grain depots hit by Russian drones again (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Russian drones pounded grain storage facilities and ports along the Danube River that Ukraine has increasingly relied on as an alternative transport route to Europe, after Moscow broke off a key wartime shipping agreement using the Black Sea.
At the same time, a loaded container ship stranded at the Black Sea port of Odesa since Russia’s full-scale invasion more than 17 months ago set sail along a temporary corridor established by Ukraine for merchant shipping.
Ukraine’s economy, crunched by the war, is heavily dependent on farming. Its agricultural exports, like those of Russia, are also crucial for world supplies of wheat, barley, sunflower oil and other food that developing nations rely on.
A month ago, the Kremlin tore up an agreement brokered by the UN and Turkey to ensure safe Ukraine grain exports through the Black Sea.
Since then, Kyiv has sought to reroute transport, through the Danube, but transport costs are much higher and the Danube ports can’t handle the same volume as seaports.
Business
Textile exports continue to decline (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Exports of textiles and apparel declined 1.9% and 17.4%, respectively, in July compared with the same period the year earlier. Cumulative export of textiles and apparel for the April-July 2023 period slid 13.7% year-on-year.
Data from the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) showed that cotton yarn, fabrics, and made-ups registered 6.62% growth last month ($1,009 million) from July 2022 ($946.48 million). However, shipment of man-made yarn, fabrics, made-ups, jute products, carpets, and apparel items declined.
Textile products worth a total of $1,663 million were shipped last month compared with $1,695 million in July 2022. Apparel exports were $1,141 million last month versus $1,381 million in July 2022.
Sanjay Jain, Indian Chamber of Commerce’s chairman on textiles, said garment exports were at a “sustained low” for a year. In volume terms, the decline was sharp.
Retailers in the U.S. market were destocking and demand was expected to revive. India expects a good cotton crop next season. If cotton prices remain competitive, exports will revive.
Regarding cotton textile exports, the mood is cautiously optimistic, ED of Cotton Textiles Export Promotion Council. Demand looked better from China and if Indian cotton prices are reasonable, export of fabrics will look up.