General Studies-03: Environment
1. SC urges Centre to transfer cheetahs to another location
The SC has asked the law officer to submit an affidavit on the death of cheetahs.
The Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday told the Union government that the deaths of 40% of the 20 cheetahs brought from South Africa and Namibia to the Kuno National Park (KNP) within a year does not present a good picture.
A Bench headed by Justice B.R. Gavai urged the government to move the big cats to a more conducive environment, if required, and not make it a “prestige issue”.
“Eight cheetahs dying out of a total 20 brought here in just one year does not present a good picture. Last week alone, two died. You should look at other possibilities, like transferring them to other sanctuaries irrespective of which State government is running them. Why are you making this a prestige issue,” the court asked the government.
Additional Solicitor-General Aishwarya Bhati, for the Centre, said the deaths, though unfortunate, were expected. She said there were several reasons leading to the deaths. The cheetah project was prestigious and the authorities are exploring various options for the well-being of the animals.
The court asked the law officer to file a detailed affidavit on the circumstances leading to the deaths and posted the case for further hearing on August 1.
On July 14, a male cheetah named Suraj, translocated from South Africa, died.
This took the total number of cheetah deaths at the park in Sheopur district since March to eight.
Another male cheetah, Tejas, brought from South Africa in February died on July 11.
General Studies-03: Agriculture
2. Centre bans export of non-basmati white rice to control price rise in India
Need of the hour: Export duty of 20% was imposed last year to lower the price and ensure availability in the country.
The Union government banned the export of non-basmati white rice on Thursday. The Directorate General of Foreign Trade under the Union Commerce Ministry announced in a notification that the ban would come into effect immediately and exemptions would be given only if the loading of non-basmati rice on the ship had commenced before the notification or the shipping bill was filed and vessels had already berthed or arrived and anchored in Indian ports.
The Union Food Ministry, in a statement, said the step was taken to ensure adequate availability of non-basmati white rice in the domestic market and to curb the price rise. Non-basmati rice was exported under the category ‘Free with export duty of 20%’. “The retail prices have increased by 11.5% over a year and 3% over the past month,” it added.
Export duty of 20% on non-basmati white rice was imposed last year to lower the price and to ensure availability in the domestic market. “However, the export of this variety increased from 33.66 lakh tonnes (September-March 2021-22) to 42.12 lt (September-March 2022-23) even after imposition of 20% export duty,” the Centre said, adding that in 2023-24, about 15.54 lt of this variety was exported against only 11.55 lt during 2022-23. “This sharp increase in exports can be ascribed to high international prices due to geo-political scenario, El Nino sentiments and extreme climatic conditions in other rice-producing countries, etc,” the Ministry said.
General Studies-01: Society
3. Fresh consultation on UCC was initiated considering its importance: Meghwal
The Law Commission has started fresh consultations on the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) due to the “relevance and importance” of the subject and various court orders on the matter, Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal informed the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.
In a written reply to a question, the Law Minister noted that the 21st Law Commission had issued a consultation paper on “Reform of Family Law” on August 31, 2018, but did not submit any report on the subject.
“Since more than four years have lapsed from the date of issuance of the said consultation paper, the 22nd Law Commission [the present panel] decided to solicit views and ideas of the public at large and religious organisations on June 14, bearing in mind the relevance and importance of the subject matter and also various court orders on the subject of uniform civil code,” he said.
Responding to another question on the modalities of the UCC, Mr. Meghwal said as the law panel was still in the process of holding consultations, “the question of modalities does not accrue at this stage”.
Seeking views
The 22nd Law Commission started a fresh consultation process on June 14 by seeking views from stakeholders on the politically sensitive issue of a UCC. Though the original deadline to submit responses was July 15, the panel has now extended it to July 28.
A UCC would bring in common personal laws for all citizens of the country, which are not based on religion. Personal laws related to inheritance, adoption and succession are likely to be covered by a common code. Currently, separate personal laws apply for the members of different major religions.
The promise to implement a UCC has been part of the BJP’s election manifestos. A panel was set up to formulate a common code in Uttarakhand, which is expected to come out with a draft law soon.
An MP asked whether the government planned to change the language of functioning of the courts from English to Hindi. The Law Minister replied in the negative.
The 21st law panel did not submit any report on ‘Reform of Family Law’, Minister tells Parliament
General Studies-02: Polity
4. First day of Monsoon Session a washout
Firm stance: Opposition MPs Sanjay Singh, Tiruchi Siva, Jairam Ramesh and other leaders speaking to the media on the first day of Monsoon Session, in New Delhi on Thursday.
Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha remained adjourned for most of the day as Opposition stayed firm on its demand that Prime Minister must make a statement during a debate on the ethnic strife in Manipur in Parliament; INDIA coalition parties decide that a joint delegation will visit the State
Parliament failed to function on the first day of the Monsoon Session, with the Opposition remaining adamant that the first order of business should be a debate on the violence in Manipur with a statement from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Though the government said it was willing to hold a discussion on the Manipur situation, Mr. Modi was only briefly present in the Lok Sabha, and both Houses were adjourned for most of the day, owing to protests by the Opposition.
The Rajya Sabha was adjourned for the first hour of the day, as a mark of respect to Hardwar Dubey, MP and BJP leader, who passed away last month. The ruckus began at noon when the House sat down for the business of the day. The Opposition moved eight adjournment notices under Rule 267 — that requires the business of the day to be suspended — to debate the Manipur situation.
Leader of the House Piyush Goyal said that the government was ready for a discussion on the subject and had no objection to admitting the notices. When the Chairman allowed the notices for a short-duration discussion, the Opposition rose in protest, pointing out the empty front seat, usually occupied by the Prime Minister.
“How the Leader of the House suddenly gets up and says we are ready for a discussion? We have given notices under Rule 267 for suspending all other business of the House and then take this up. Let Prime Minister give a statement and we will discuss,” Leader of the Opposition and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said. Opposition leaders accused the government of trying to dilute the debate by taking it up under a “softer” rule, which does not require the government to reply to the debate.
Trinamool Congress floor leader Derek O’Brien reiterated that the discussion on the Manipur situation should be taken up under Rule 267. “The Prime Minister has to speak on Manipur inside the house,” he said. The House was adjourned till 2 p.m.
‘Allow Kharge to speak’
When it reconvened, soon after papers were laid, Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar invited Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur to introduce the Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill. Protesting this, Opposition members asked the Chairman to allow Opposition leader Mr. Kharge, to speak.
Mr. Kharge said that he was feeling sorry that the Opposition’s adjournment motion under Rule 267 for a discussion on the Manipur violence was not taken up for discussion.
“I have made my full efforts to attract your attention and gave notice but unfortunately, I am not allowed to raise this under Rule 267. You know Manipur is burning, women are raped and paraded naked… and Prime Minister is keeping quiet. He is giving statement outside,” he said. As Opposition members started raising slogans, demanding Mr. Modi’s statement on the issue, Mr. Dhankhar adjourned the House for the day.
The Lok Sabha saw bleaker scenes. The House was adjourned till lunch to pay respects to two members who recently died. At 2 p.m., BJP MP Kirit Somaiya, who was in the Chair, said that the Speaker had dismissed all of the Opposition’s adjournment motions on Manipur. Papers were laid amid protests and sloganeering from the Opposition Benches.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi said that the government was ready to discuss Manipur in both Houses of Parliament and that Union Home Minister Amit Shah would reply to the discussion. As Opposition members continued raising slogans, Mr. Somaiya adjourned the House for the day.
INDIA bloc meeting
Earlier in the day, leaders of the new INDIA coalition had their first meeting to discuss their Parliamentary strategy, where they decided that the Opposition would not compromise on its position on Manipur.
The group also decided that a joint delegation, either comprising Chief Ministers of the States ruled by non-BJP parties or MPs, would visit Manipur. Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi led a party delegation to the State, and delegations from other parties have also visited the State in the past few weeks.
General Studies-01: International
5. Why is Kerch Bridge attack significant?
Broken relations: Kerch Bridge, linking the Russian mainland to the Crimean Peninsula, after an explosion. The Russians claimed that Ukrainian Waterborne drones struck the bridge, which is a vital supply link for the Russian troops in the south of Ukraine.
What is the strategic importance of the bridge? Is Ukraine behind this attack? How did Russia respond? What was the key objective of the Ukrainian counteroffensive? Why did Russia withdraw from a UN-brokered grain deal? What guarantees did Ukraine get from its Western allies at the NATO summit?
The Kerch Bridge, which links the Russian mainland to the Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea, came under attack last week. One section of the bridge was damaged in what the Russians called an attack by two Ukrainian sea drones. Ukraine hasn’t taken direct responsibility for the attack, but its security services SBU said details of what happened to the bridge would be revealed after “Ukraine has won the war”. In retaliation, Russia carried out a massive airstrike at the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa. Russia also announced, hours after the attack, that it was withdrawing from an UN-brokered deal that allowed Ukraine to export its grain via the Black Sea, where Russia has enforced a naval blockade.
What happened to the Kerch Bridge?
According to Russian authorities, one of the sections of the bridge was blown up killing two people and injuring a child. A video footage released by local media showed a portion of the bridge tilted and hanging down. The Kerch bridge, across the Kerch Strait, is 19 km long and has two parallel rail and roadways. It was opened in 2018 by Russian President Vladimir Putin with great fanfare, four years after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine through a contested referendum. Six hours after the attack, the rail service was restored, but the road remains shut. This is not the first time the bridge is being targeted. Last October, a massive truck bomb damaged the bridge and killed three people. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy later termed the attack on the bridge one of the successful operations of the Ukrainian forces.
Why is this bridge so important?
The bridge is important for Russia for symbolic, administrative and operational reasons. When Russia swiftly moved to annex Crimea in 2014, after a pro-Russian elected government in Kyiv fell amid West-backed anti-regime protests, there was no direct connectivity between the Russian mainland and Crimea. Mr. Putin immediately ordered the construction of the bridge. But the bridge remained a weak link as Ukraine grew in military strength, backed by the West, in the subsequent years. When Mr. Putin ordered a full-scale war on February 24, 2022 (what the Russians still call a ‘special military operation’), one of the military objectives, according to experts, was to secure a “land bridge” from mainland Russia to Crimea. Russia now has the land bridge extending from northeastern Ukraine through the Donbas and Kherson to Crimea, but it is not far from the frontline and well within the range of Ukrainian fire. So, the Kerch Bridge remains a critical logistical supply link for the Russian troops in the south. Last year, Ukraine targeted the Kerch Bridge when it was planning an offensive to retake kherson. The plan was to disrupt the supplies when Ukrainians attacked Russian troops on the western bank of the Dnieper River. The Russian troops withdrew from the kherson city in November to the eastern bank of the river. Last week’s attack came at a time when a Ukrainian counteroffensive was under way. One of the key goals of the counteroffensive, which began in early June, was to destroy Mr. Putin’s land bridge, according to the Western officials. Ukrainian troops want to make deep thrusts into the Russian-held territories of the southeast reaching the Sea of Azov coast, which would leave Crimea further vulnerable to future Ukrainian attacks, leaving the Kerch Bridge the only link between mainland Russia and the peninsula. Ukraine also wants to disrupt Russian supplies to southern Ukraine, which is the focal area of the counteroffensive.
Where does Ukraine’s counteroffensive stand?
Ukraine launched the counteroffensive with advanced weapons supplied by the West. Over the past several months, Mr. Zelenskyy has consistently campaigned for more advanced weapons from the West to fight the Russians. The U.S. and its European allies have supplied armoured vehicles, long range rockets, cruise missiles, main battle tanks and missile defence systems, besides artillery shells and ammunition. They also provide training to Ukrainian troops at different facilities in Europe and in the U.S. The U.S. alone has announced 42 aid packages for Ukraine since the Russian invasion began. In the latest package, the U.S. announced its decision to send cluster munitions, which have been banned by over 100 countries for the indiscriminate harm they cause to civilians, to Ukraine. Allies wanted Ukraine to make swift battlefield gains against Russia in the counteroffensive to put pressure on Mr. Putin. But after six weeks of fighting, Ukraine hasn’t taken any breakthrough victory. Kyiv says its troops have recaptured some 210 sq. km of territories since the counteroffensive began, mostly in the southeast. But these were ghost villages along the frontline. Ukraine made these limited gains at a high cost. According to an NYT report, which cites American and European officials, Ukraine lost 20% of the weaponry it sent to the battlefield, including West-supplied main battle tanks and armoured vehicles, in the first two weeks of the counteroffensive.
The battle lines moved substantially only twice this year — first in January when the Russians took Soledar and then in May when the Russians took Bakhmut. The Russians have built huge fortifications along the over 1000-km long frontline, with mines and tank traps, which seem to have slowed down the much-expected Ukrainian counteroffensive. This puts Ukraine under pressure. In the recently concluded NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, Ukraine got guarantees from its Western allies for more weapons and training. Kyiv also said the major thrust of the counteroffensive was yet to begin. Then came the attack on the Kerch Bridge.
THE GIST
The Kerch Bridge, which links the Russian mainland to the Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea, came under attack last week. Waterborne drones struck the sole bridge.
Ukraine hasn’t taken responsibility for the attack, but its security services SBU has said details of what happened to the bridge will be revealed after Ukraine has won the war.
The bridge is important to Russia for symbolic, administrative and operational reasons.
One of the key goals of the Ukrainian counteroffensive was to destroy the bridge, cutting off Russia from Crimea; it also wants to disrupt Russian supplies to southern Ukraine, which is the focal area.
General Studies-03: Security
6. India’s data protection law needs refinement
Shashank Mohan is Programme Manager at the Centre for Communication Governance, National Law University Delhi
India is no Europe, and this seems especially true in the face of a task such as drafting and conceptualising a data protection law for over 1.4 billion Indians. The European Union’s (EU) data protection law, i.e., the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), came into force in the middle of 2018 and achieved widespread popularity as arguably the most comprehensive data privacy law in the world. However, the GDPR has been saddled with challenges of implementation and risks being relegated to the status of a paper tiger. Although the EU’s challenges may be due to its unique legal structure, India must guard against the risks of enacting a law that is toothless in effect.
Issues around data use
This deliberation becomes increasingly relevant as the Indian government is likely to table India’s fresh data protection law in the ongoing monsoon session of Parliament (July 20-August 11). Late last year, the government released the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill, 2022 for public consultation. This is its third recent attempt at drafting a data protection law. While the draft released for public comments was not as comprehensive as its previous versions, news reports suggest that the government may present a Bill that is largely similar. Considering this, critical gaps remain in the DPDP Bill that would affect its implementation and overall success.
In its scope and definition, the DPDP Bill only protects personal data, that is any data that has the potential to directly or indirectly identify an individual. In the modern data economy, entities use various types of data, including both personal and non-personal data to target, profile, predict, and monitor users (non-personal data is typically anonymous data that does not relate to a particular individual — for example, aggregate data on products which numerous users look at between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Amazon). Often, this non-personal data when combined with other datasets can help identify individuals, and in this way become personal data, impacting user privacy.
For instance, anonymous datasets about individual Uber rides in New Delhi can be combined with prayer timings to identify members who belong to a certain community, which could include their home addresses. This process of re-identification of non-personal data poses significant risks to privacy. Such risks were accounted for in previous versions of India’s draft data protection Bill, in 2018 and 2019, but do not find a place in the latest draft. By not recognising these risks, the DPDP Bill is very limited in its scope and effect in providing meaningful privacy to Indians. A simple and effective solution — as in the earlier versions — would be to add a penal provision in the Bill that provides for financial penalties on data-processing entities for the re-identification of non-personal data into personal data.
Limited reach of data protection board
Another gap is the inability of the proposed data protection board to initiate a proceeding of its own accord. Under the Bill, the board is the authority that is entrusted with enforcing the law. The board can only institute a proceeding for adjudication if someone affected makes a complaint to it, or the government or a court directs it to do so. The only exception to this rule is when the board can take action on its own to enforce certain duties listed by the Bill for users. This is for the adjudication of disputes between the law and users — for example, an obligation on users not to register a false or frivolous complaint with the board, and not between users and data-processing entities.
In the data economy, users have diminished control and limited knowledge of data transfers and exchanges. Due to the ever-evolving and complex nature of data processing, users will always be a step behind entities which make use of their data. For example, a food delivery app can take all my data and sell it to data brokers in violation of my contractual relationship with them. Individually, I may have little resources or incentive to approach the data protection board.
The board, on the other hand, may be in a better position to proceed against the food delivery app on its own — on behalf of all such affected users.
This is not a novel suggestion. The Competition Commission of India, which is responsible for the enforcement of India’s antitrust law, has the power to initiate inquiries on its own (and utilises it frequently). Again, a simple way to do this would be to have a provision in the DPDP Bill that allows the data protection board to initiate complaints on its own.
These are not the only gaps in the DPDP Bill, but finding solutions to them would help address challenges in implementation in a significant way and make for a more future-proof legislation.
Changes can help make the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 ‘future-proof’ and ensure a better complaints mechanism
General Studies-02: Governance
7. No quick fix
India’s private sector must be incentivised to see value in invention
Among the most important pieces of legislation slated to be tabled in the current monsoon session of Parliament is the National Research Foundation (NRF) Bill, 2023. While a draft is not in the public domain, it envisages a new, centralised body to fund research, with a budget of ₹50,000 crore, over the next five years. The NRF draws on models such as the United States’s National Science Foundation whose nearly $8 billion budget is the major source of funding for college and university research, and the European Research Council, which funds basic and applied research. However, the NRF’s plan, going by public statements of administrators, is to draw the bulk of its budget — ₹36,000 crore — from the private sector. For many years, India’s spending on research has lagged between 0.6%-0.8% of GDP, or lower than the 1%-2% spent by countries with an economic base reliant on science and technology. In countries such as China, the U.S. and Israel, the private sector contributed nearly 70% of the research expenditure whereas in India, this was only about 36% of India’s total research expenditure — roughly ₹1.2 lakh crore — in 2019-20. Therefore, the Centre reasons, the way to galvanise university research in India would be to attract more private money. While that is a reasonable expectation, it is unclear how such a proposal can be executed. One of the suggestions is to have the funds private companies allot, as part of their annual corporate social responsibility (CSR) obligations, directed to the NRF. Data from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs show that during FY-2022, companies spent ₹14,588 crore as part of their CSR obligations. CSR trends suggest that nearly 70% of such funds were spent in education, health care, and sanitation projects. Moreover, many of the companies spend this on initiatives that are located within their own communities, with the government not having a say on how this must be spent. Whether the government can force, or offer tax benefits, to coax some of these funds into the NRF remains to be seen.
The relatively greater contribution of private sector research in many countries is because of sustained government support to universities and research institutions, that have then encouraged individuals to build companies, and institutions that saw value in investing in research and development. The challenge in India is not the absence of such companies but the fact that there are too few of them. Organisations such as the NRF should work to create conditions which incentivise the development of private sector organisations that see value in invention and developing proprietary technology. Philanthropy is unlikely to be the panacea.
