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The ISIL and Al Qaida Sanctions Committee of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) has placed Abdul Rehman Makki, a fundraiser and key planner of the Pakistan-based terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), on its sanctions list.
The move was made possible after China withdrew the “technical hold” that it had imposed last June, when the U.S. and India - then a non-permanent member at the UNSC - tried unsuccessfully to get Mr. Makki on the global terror blacklist. Beijing has now argued that the blacklisting is in fact a “recognition” of Pakistan’s record of fighting terrorism.
Abdul Rehman Makki and other LET/JUD operatives have been involved in raising funds, recruiting and radicalizing youth to violence and planning attacks in India, particularly in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).
During India’s two-year tenure at the UNSC, New Delhi put forth a total of five names for designation under the ISIL and Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee including Abdul Rehman Makki (LeT), Abdul Rauf Asghar (Jaish-e-Mohammed), Sajid Mir (LeT), Shahid Mahmood (LeT), and Talha Saeed (LeT). All five faced a “technical hold” from China, while the other 14 members of the Security Council supported the listing.
Terrorism is the common enemy of humanity. The 1267 Committee is an important international counterterrorism mechanism,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, when asked about China’s U-turn and decision to lift its hold.
The listing of terrorists or terror organisations is conducive to enhancing international counterterrorism cooperation in response to terrorist threats.
The relevant people have been convicted and sentenced by Pakistan. The listing also shows Pakistan’s firm combat against terrorism. It is a recognition.
India and the United States have already listed Mr. Makki as a terrorist under their respective national laws and had jointly proposed that the UNSC’s Committee blacklist him on June 1, 2022.
When China blocked the move, India had responded by terming the development “extremely unfortunate.
Backing Sri Lanka, India sends financing assurances to IMF (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
India sent financing assurances to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Monday, becoming the first of Sri Lanka’s creditors to officially back the crisis-hit island nation’s debt restructuring programme.
The development comes days ahead of External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s scheduled visit to Colombo on January 19 and 20, and just as Sri Lankan leaders concluded talks with a visiting high-level delegation of the Communist Party of China.
The written financing assurances from India were sent to the IMF Monday evening,” a top official source in Colombo confirmed. This takes Sri Lanka one step closer to getting a crucial $2.9-billion package from the IMF, made contingent on “receiving financing assurances from Sri Lanka’s official creditors and making a good faith effort to reach a collaborative agreement with private creditors.
China, Japan, and India are Sri Lanka’s three largest bilateral lenders. With India getting on board, Sri Lanka’s chances of swiftly tapping IMF assistance now depend on similar assurances from Japan and China.
Sources familiar with Sri Lanka’s ongoing negotiations with creditors said that the Paris Club, of which Japan is a member, is likely to send its financing assurances “soon”.
Following the staff-level agreement with the IMF in September 2022, the Ranil Wickremesinghe government said that it would obtain IMF support before the end of the year.
However, as Sri Lanka’s negotiations with creditors dragged on, Chinese loans came under the spotlight, drawing criticism from both local politicians and international actors. In a parliamentary intervention, a prominent opposition legislator squarely blamed China for the delay.
More recently, the U.S. Ambassador to Colombo, in a media interview, asked China not to be the “spoiler” in Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring process.
The Chinese Embassy responded sharply, accusing the U.S. official of “hypocrisy” in a statement that pointed to private creditors from western countries, who hold about 40% of Sri Lanka’s debt.
Meanwhile, President Wickremesinghe on Tuesday told Parliament that ongoing discussions for economic recovery were “successful”.
“Currently, we are working to get our economy on the right track. Now we have to get India and China to consent to this debt restructuring.
Editorial
The illogical rejection of the idea of South Asia (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
It is an ill-wind that blows throughout the neighbourhood. A recent World Bank study on air pollution concludes that about two million people die prematurely in South Asia each year as particulate measure concentrations put nine South Asian cities among the world’s top 10 worst affected by air pollution.
The ill effects of this pollution, regardless of where it originates from, are clouding even the region’s once-pristine tourist destinations.
One surprising study in Bhutan found that the average PM 2.5 concentration from 2018-2020 was three times World Health Organization-prescribed limits.
Last week, the Maldives Meteorological Service warned that visibility had been reduced by 60% due to smog it has blamed on “winds from the Himalayan foothills”.
Not only that, it is clear from success stories in other parts of the world, including countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, European alpine nations and China, that the solution to the problems of air pollution lies in a “whole of region” approach, and is not one that any one country in the “air sheds” can resolve on its own.
The report ends by asking India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and all other South Asian countries to begin talks between scientists, officials and eventually ministers and leaders to create a mechanism for the cooperative management of the six air sheds the region is made up of.
That such a conversation does not exist or is even being contemplated is one more example of the rejection of the idea of South Asia that continues to bedevil a region refusing to see itself as one geographical unit.
This is particularly illogical when you consider that all South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) nations are members of the Group of 77 Developing countries, which under the chairpersonship of Pakistan last year, negotiated a breakthrough at the COP27 Climate Change summit at Sharm el-Sheikh, but are unable to convene a climate change conference for themselves.
The climate crisis is only one of the immediate challenges of the times where South Asia has failed to build a platform.
New free foodgrain scheme as an illusion, doublespeak (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Food Security)
In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, ‘Squealer, the small fat pig’ was a brilliant orator who always spoke to the hard-working animals about a ‘readjustment of rations’, but ‘never as a “reduction”’.
The Government’s latest announcement on free foodgrains is a case of similar doublespeak. The Cabinet has announced that under the new avatar of the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY), 810 million National Food Security Act (NFSA) beneficiaries will receive five kilos of free foodgrains every month in 2023.
But this quantum was already legally guaranteed under the NFSA law, the flagship entitlement of the earlier United Progressive Alliance government. The only difference is that in January 2023, a family of five can collect 25 kg for free.
Notably, this is a reduction by half of the 50 kg of rice (25 kg free under the earlier PMGKAY and 25 kg at ₹3 under the NFSA) they received in December 2022 from ration shops with a modest payment of ₹75.
So, a family will now have to purchase the remaining 25 kg from the market at the cheapest possible price of ₹450 — which implies an additional expense of ₹375 to their monthly budget (The calculation is 1 kg at ₹18, or 25kg for ₹450).
Of course, the earlier version of PMGKAY could not be extended indefinitely, especially since the procurement of food stocks from the 2022 kharif harvest was lacklustre. The repeated extensions, for 28 months, seemed to be with an eye on State elections.
The latest readjustment also seems politically motivated to appeal to voters in nine States that go to polls in 2023. Of course, this new giveaway is also likely to be again extended for another six months to cover the all-important 2024 general election.
But this subsidy is duplicitous. Just a few months ago, the Prime Minister had denounced the ‘revdi’ culture of the distribution of freebies for votes by Opposition parties.
Political scientist Steven Wilkinson argues that due to India’s ethnic heterogeneity and increasing electoral competition, all political parties prefer to differentiate themselves based on such patronage politics.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), too, continues to focus on clientelism. More than 20 central government programmes have been named or renamed to credit the ‘Pradhan Mantri’.
The PMGKAY’s real design flaw is its lack of universal coverage, especially as ration records have not been updated since the 2011 Census — as per estimates, more than 40% of India’s population is currently excluded from both the NFSA and PMGKAY.
Opinion
A case for reassigning GST to States (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Union government is endowed with more tax powers than the States, while the States are assigned more expenditure responsibilities than the Union government.
This gives rise to a vertical fiscal imbalance (VFI) between the Union and State governments. The main responsibility of the Finance Commission is to correct this, but this task remains unaccomplished. We look at this issue in the context of the Goods and Services Tax.
The Union and State governments concurrently levy GST on commodities with 50% as Central GST (CGST) and 50% as State GST (SGST). There is an Integrated GST (IGST) on inter-State trade, so that 50% of it goes to the final destination State.
The GST is a harmonised tax on commodities across the country. Individual States have little power to unilaterally change this tax.
Though conceptually, the Union government could not do so either, the GST Council gives the Union government a veto to thrust its preferences on the States.
The simplest of the many empirical measures of VFI is ‘VFI equals one minus the ratio of the State’s own revenue to own expenditure’.
If this VFI ratio is zero, the States have enough own revenue to meet their own expenditure and there is no need for financial transfers.
We can calculate the VFI ratio for each State and for all the States put together. If we look at the data for all the States over the periods of the last three Finance Commissions (2005-06 to 2020-21), the VFI ratio shows an increasing trend.
For the latest period of 2015-16 to 2020-21, the ratio was 0.530, which means that only 47% of the States’ own expenditure was financed by their own revenue in that period. In this period, four major changes took place.
First, the divisible taxes of the Union government expanded from two to all the Union taxes, thus enlarging the revenue base to be shared with the States. Second, fiscal responsibility legislation was implemented to constrain the fiscal deficits of the States. States directly borrow from the market subject to limits imposed by the Union government.
Third, the Union Planning Commission was dissolved, leading to the withdrawal of Plan grants. Fourth, GST was introduced in 2017.
These changes have considerably altered the States’ revenue structure. States have little revenue autonomy and are more dependent on the Union government.
For instance, if we consider the withdrawal of the Union government’s plan grants and loans to the States and their effect on States’ combined budget, the VFI ratio increased for the same period to 0.594 from 0.530, indicating that only 40% of the State’s own expenditure is financed by their own revenue.
Explainer
India’s new proposal for migrant voting (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The Election Commission of India (ECI) could not demonstrate a prototype of its new Remote Electronic Voting Machine (RVM), which would allow domestic migrants to vote in national and regional elections, after the Opposition raised concerns about the logistical and administrative challenges to remote voting.
The Congress had earlier urged the poll body to first “restore trust in the electoral system” and systematically address fears of the misuse of existing EVMs.
EVMs started being used on a larger scale in 1992 and since 2000, have been used in all Lok Sabha and State Assembly elections. There have been three iterations of the machine with improved features, the latest one being the M3 model which was manufactured from 2013 onwards.
Multiple political parties in 2010 approached the ECI to come up with a mechanism that could help verify that the EVM had recorded the vote correctly as intended by the voter.
The ECI, thus, developed along with two Public Sector Undertakings (PSU), the Voter Verified Paper Trail Audit (VVPAT) machine to have a paper trail in the voting process. The use of VVPATs has become universal in elections since mid-2017.
The current EVM setup has a Balloting Unit (BU) which is connected to the VVPAT printer, both of which are inside the voting compartment.
The VVPAT is connected to the Control Unit (CU), which sits with the Presiding Officer (PO) and totals the number of votes cast, on its display board. Only once the PO presses the ballot button on the CU, does the BU get enabled for the voter to cast her vote by pressing the key corresponding to the candidate on the ballot paper sheet pasted on the BU.
The VVPAT, which is essentially a printing machine, prints a slip with the poll symbol and candidate name, once the voter presses the key on the BU.
This slip is visible to the voter on the VVPAT’s glass screen for seven seconds after which it gets dropped off in a box inside the VVPAT. Once a vote is cast, the BU becomes inactive till the PO schedules the next vote by enabling it again from the CU.
Text & context
Decoding the legacy and complex politics of Subhas Chandra Bose (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 1, Personalities)
There is an element of intrigue that trails Subhas Chandra Bose’s persona, his life, disappearance and death. He was a dynamic personality of India’s freedom movement who inspired hundreds of Indians to join the struggle.
Books on Bose offer an insight into his beliefs and motivation. Not many definitive biographies of Bose have been written by Indian historians, and the most authentic narratives are from his family members and those who have had personal experiences of him, being associated with his Azad Hind Fauj.
Scholar and politician Krishna Bose, who is the wife of Bose’s nephew, Sisir Bose, travelled the world to piece his life from childhood to death.
A compilation of her findings, written in Bengali over six decades, has been edited and translated by her son Sumantra Bose. Published last August, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s Life, Politics and Struggle profiles Bose, and includes 95 images and letters from family albums and the Netaji Research Bureau archives.
Over the years, Krishna Bose researched and visited the Manipur battlefields where the Indian National Army (INA) waged its valiant war, the Andamans where Bose raised the national tricolour; Singapore, where the INA took shape; Vienna and Prague, his favourite European cities; and Taipei, where his life was said to have been tragically cut short.
She met Bose’s contemporaries; the women who fought in the Rani of Jhansi Regiment; Basanti Debi, the “formidable widow” of Netaji’s political guru Chittaranjan Das; spouse Emilie Schenkl; and leading soldiers of the Azad Hind movement. They all shared vital memories giving details about Netaji’s life.
In His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle Against Empire (2011), Sugata Bose, son of Krishna and Sisir Bose, analyses Bose’s life and legacy, tracing the intellectual impact of his years in Calcutta and Cambridge, the ideas and relationships that influenced him during his time in exile and his ascent to the peak of nationalist politics.
News
India, Russia begin manufacturing of AK¬203 assault rifles in U.P.’s Amethi (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
The joint venture between India and Russia, Indo-Russian Rifles Private Limited (IRRPL), has started producing AK-203 Kalashnikov assault rifles at Korwa in Uttar Pradesh, according to Alexander Mikheev, Director General of Rosoboronexport of Russia.
Korwa Ordnance Factory in Amethi, Uttar Pradesh, has produced the first batch of 7.62 mm Kalashnikov AK-203 assault rifles. The beginning of deliveries to the Indian Army is expected soon.
At the same time, the factory’s capacity makes it possible to fully equip the personnel of other law enforcement agencies in India with AK-203 assault rifles, which, due to their high adaptability, are suitable for various operators, he stated, adding that in addition, the joint venture will be able to export to third countries.
Gen. Pande said that the contract for over six lakh AK-203 rifles would be executed by the joint venture over a period of 128 months or close to 10 years.
Out of this, 70,000 is to come up in a matter of 32 months wherein the indigenous content is required to be in the range of 5% to 70%. Subsequently, we will have completely indigenous AK-203.
With the launch of series production of Kalashnikov AK-203 assault rifles, high-quality, convenient and modern small arms will begin to enter service with India’s defence and law enforcement.
The model combines excellent ergonomics, adaptability to different shooters and high performance characteristics, it is one of the best assault rifles in the world.
The joint venture plans to ensure 100% localisation of the production of AK-203 rifles in India and in future may also increase output and upgrade its production facilities to manufacture advanced rifles based on the Kalashnikov assault rifle platform.
The IRRPL was set up in 2019 jointly between with erstwhile OFB [now Advanced Weapons and Equipment India Limited (AWEIL) and Munitions India Limited (MIL)] of India and Rosoboronexport and Kalashnikov of Russia.