Read The Hindu Notes of 13th March 2019 for UPSC Civil Service Examination, State Civil Service Examination and other competitive Examination

The Hindu Notes for 13th March 2019
  • Topic Discussed: The Hindu Notes of 13th March 2019

    • In the pursuit of four freedoms

    The principles that inform a lived life of dignity must dictate choices in the great Indian election of 2019

  • The schedule for the 2019 general election has been announced, and the political arena has once again been transformed into a gigantic market place. In this space political parties proceed to outbid and undercut each other, often in shocking ways, as they desperately buy a commodity called state power. Every political party pursues state power as frantically as the Knights of King Arthur searched for the Holy Grail in medieval England. This is their project and their rationale for existence. Power saturates every site of social interaction, from the household to the workplace, but state power is unique because it is a condensate of all power. The state decides whether our lives are led in good, bad or ugly ways. The holders of state power resolve what sort of opportunities are offered by society and the economy, and whether we can participate in multiple social transactions as equals.
  • All that’s at stake
  • Understandably, politicians yearn to take over the state. Some of them might even agree to sell their souls, drive a Faustian bargain so that they can acquire, possess and relish power. We are a democracy, but citizens are unable to control the possession, exercise and implementation of power by their representatives.
  • A disturbing question haunts the corridors of our democracy. Are representatives responsive to their constituencies, to their wants, needs and aspirations? Or do they tend to subordinate the well-being of citizens to their own lust for office? The latter is painfully evident.
  • Democratically elected governments can and have divided society, kept people in penury, imprisoned and tortured civil liberty activists, destroyed civil societies, and threatened war against neighbours. Overt and covert violence stalks our heels. Violence may have become the new normal in India, but there is little that is noble about violence. “Each new morn” says Macduff of war in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “new widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows Strike heaven in the face, that it resounds.”
  • Today, new sorrows follow us around like Mary’s little lamb because the government refuses to respect our need for a decent life, lived with dignity and in peace. Consider the way the Indian government has responded to serious economic distress in the country. Refusing to address the grim crisis in the agrarian sector which has destroyed livelihoods and driven farmers to suicide, the government decides to offer petty pocket money to the agriculturalist. Instead of transforming educational institutions, or taking on the onerous task of creating jobs with some determination, the Modi government offers pitiful reservations to graduates and postgraduates who have been forced to compete for positions below their capabilities. Worse, our government refuses to count how many Indian citizens are unemployed. It just does not acknowledge that poverty created through job losses does not only breed distress, it produces and reproduces discontent and anger, resentment and violence. Our representatives have failed us.
  • For when we vote, we expect that our representative government will provide the basic preconditions of a good life. We do not expect it to tap petty passions and irrational emotions through incendiary rhetoric that targets communities, regions and other countries in the name of the nation. Cynics might wonder whether elections bring about change at all, or whether the outcome results in more of the same.
  • Freedom from fear
  • Nevertheless, elections are significant. The opportunity to vote offers us choices, we can vote for the same violence that has left us with bloodied hands and torn feet. Or we can vote for a party that offers us freedom. At stake in the 2019 election are four kinds of freedoms. The first is freedom from fear, from the haunting feeling that someone, somewhere is watching how we behave, and that someone is ready to penalise us through words and deeds if we dare question the mockery that democracy gives power to the religious majority. Our own people who belong to the minority community need to be reassured that they are citizens of this country by right, and no one has the right to make them feel that they are here on sufferance. All of us have to be free from the nagging worry that our neighbourhoods will be overrun by lumpens on their monstrous motorcycles baying for blood at the drop of a hat, that citizens of India will be lynched and left to die painfully on the mud tracks of our cities and villages. Above all, we have the right to vent criticism of representatives without being assaulted by crude, sexist abuse on social media that relentlessly intrudes into our everyday lives.
  • The second sort of freedom we should reinstall is freedom from want. Our farmers live in precarious conditions, our working class ekes out a bare existence steeped in misery and deprivation, our children are offered insecure and low paid jobs, and our minorities live under the constant threat that their livelihoods will be snatched from them. Seventy-one years after Independence, the government should be concerned about the quality of employment it offers our people, about suitable remuneration, about lives lived with dignity, and about the self-worth that people develop when they love what they do for a living.
  • It is not enough that the working classes are handed out a mere pittance instead of a living wage. It is not sufficient that our people work for a mess of porridge, or that they should merely have enough to eat. It is the task of a democratic government to provide for basic preconditions — health, education, employment and a sustainable wage — that enable people to stand up and speak back to a history not of their making. This is what democracy means, not a handout here and a handout there. For this, we need to ask why should people remain poor.
  • The third freedom that we have to re-capture is freedom from discrimination. Ironically, upper castes have mobilised against protections provided to one of the most vulnerable groups in human history, Dalits. It is paradoxical that reservations, which are meant to secure respect for those who are doubly disadvantaged by reasons of caste and class, are offered to the upper castes, which are already over-represented in the public sphere. Reservations have become a mockery, a charade, used as a deliberate ploy to delegitimise the project of social justice.
  • The fourth freedom is freedom from sexual violence, for women, for men, for transgenders, and for children. India must never witness with horror and pain another child mauled, raped and mutilated as in Kathua. We must never bear witness to the ignoble spectacle of lawyers demonstrating in favour of rapists. We must never again register the horrific phenomenon of women being beaten up merely because they wish to visit their god in a temple. If India cannot secure equality, which is the reason for democracy, let us at least opt for non-discrimination, a lesser form of equality.
  • A constitutional right
  • At stake in the elections that loom large on our collective imaginations is not delegation of power to representatives, so that they can live out their sick fantasies of controlling minds and bodies. We vote to recapture and protect the freedom that earlier generations fought for so strenuously. We vote because freedom is our constitutional right and we will reclaim it.

    • To serve the governed

    The Official Secrets Act has no place in a democracy, as the Goswami Commission had suggested in the late 1970s

  • The constitutional freedom to use and publicise information is directly affected by the provisions of the Official Secrets Act, 1923, which as with most of British India enactments followed the Official Secrets Act, 1920, passed by the British Parliament. It was strict enough then but after Independence in ‘free India’ we amended it and made it stricter in 1967, widening the scope of Section 5 (“Wrongful communication. etc., of information”) and enlarging the scope of Section 8 (“Duty of giving information as to commission of offences”).
  • Often misused
  • Whenever I think about the Official Secrets Act, 1923, I recall a scene from the son et lumière (sound and light show) at the Red Fort enacted almost every evening where 100 years of Indian history is brilliantly encapsulated in a one-hour show: in it the Emperor Aurangzeb (who reigned for 60 years) asks his courtiers, “What is this noise, that is troubling us from outside?” And the courtiers reply: “Your Majesty, it is music.” And Aurangzeb’s majestic response is: “Then bury it deep into the bowels of the earth.”
  • I always thought — un-majestically, but seriously — that this should have been the fate of the Official Secrets Act, 1923, which has been so frequently misused, that it ought to have been repealed when India got independence. In fact when the Janata government which came to power at the end of the Internal Emergency, and set up what was then known (and is now forgotten) as the Second Press Commission, it was chaired by a great and good judge, Justice Goswami of the Supreme Court of India, whose common sense approach to all subjects greatly attracted me to him.
  • L.K. Advani, then Minister for Information and Broadcasting, requested me to be a member of the Commission, and I agreed. The Commission proceeded in great earnestness for months, and ultimately, when its report was ready in December 1979, a report that implored the government of the day to immediately repeal the Official Secrets Act, 1923, it never saw the light of day. Indira Gandhi, who came back to power in January 1980, wrote to the members a polite letter of thanks for our deliberations and promptly dissolved and disbanded the Justice Goswami Commission. It was replaced by the now officially known Second Press Commission presided over by Justice K.K. Mathew. The Goswami Commission and all its deliberations had been obliterated by a stroke of the pen. If Mrs. Gandhi had returned to power a few months later and our report had been accepted by the previous government, concerns in the context of The Hindu’s exposé on the Rafale deal would probably not have arisen over what the Attorney General of India ought to have said or done or ought not to have said or done. The Official Second Press Commission (the Mathew Commission) did not recommend the repeal of the Official Secrets Act of 1923.
  • The press as champion
  • Since I still regard the press (and no longer the electronic media) as the champion of Article 19(1)(a) freedoms, I would like to say that the press must serve the governed, not those who govern. In his famous Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln described good governance as “of the people, by the people and for the people”. Centuries later we do understand the “of”, and are willing to tolerate the “by” but unfortunately we keep forgetting the “for”. If government is indeed for the people, it has a solemn obligation to keep the people well informed.
  • Fortunately, the modern trend in today’s world is towards less secrecy and more information. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations way back in 1966, specifically includes the right to freedom of expression, defined as “the freedom to seek, receive and impart the information and ideas of all kinds”.
  • The Janata government signed and ratified this Covenant in 1979, but none of the later Governments has lived up to its ideals. We have enacted Article 19(1)(a) in our 1950 Constitution with extremely limited restrictions — in Article 19(2) — but again only paid lip service to freedom of speech and expression.
  • I am proud that The Hindu has not just preached but stuck its neck out in support of this cardinal freedom of ours. Bravo.

    • The power of two

    Assembly election campaigns could have a bearing on the parliamentary polls

  • Parliamentary elections in India have increasingly been influenced by State-level political variables beyond the performance of the ruling parties and the Opposition at the Centre. And this factor is likely to be even more salient in the four States facing simultaneous elections to the Assemblies and the Lok Sabha: Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. In Andhra Pradesh, the two main rivals are regional forces, the Chandrababu Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party and the Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy-led YSR Congress Party. In 2014, the TDP had successfully fought elections in alliance with the BJP, and the Congress faced a backlash because of the bifurcation of the State during its tenure. This time, however, with the TDP having broken its alliance with the BJP, the regional parties are in a direct contest, and the national parties relegated to being minor players. Andhra Pradesh has faced acute fiscal concerns after bifurcation, and the TDP government would be keen to reassure voters over concerns about the State’s economy. It fared the best in the country on economic growth parameters, with a significant increase in per capita income during the last five years and successful delivery of irrigation schemes. On the flip side, delays in the construction of the new capital city and the ballooning public debt suggest that Andhra still has structural issues to overcome. The TDP and the YSRCP have tried a game of one-upmanship on relations with the Centre and the denial of “special category status” for the State, which it is argued is crucial to overcome fiscal issues. Both parties have significant support bases among OBCs and other landowning communities, and the lack of any substantive differentiation between them could make this a closely contested election. The two parties are also likely to be important players in a post-election scenario at the national level.
  • In Odisha, the Biju Janata Dal led by Naveen Patnaik has been in power for 19 years, having bucked anti-incumbency largely due to welfare-driven governance. Unlike in Andhra Pradesh, the Congress and particularly the BJP have a stronger presence. The BJP, buoyed by its performance in the 2017 local body elections, is expected to put up a stronger fight in the State’s Assembly and Lok Sabha polls. In fact, the BJP is keen to make up for expected losses in its strongholds in the north with gains in the east. India’s longest-serving Chief Minister, Pawan Kumar Chamling (in power since 1994), and his Sikkim Democratic Front are expected to face a more pronounced challenge from the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha and the new party launched by former footballer Bhaichung Bhutia, the Hamro Sikkim Party. In Arunachal Pradesh, the Permanent Resident Certificate issue will figure as a dominant narrative during the elections even as the ruling BJP seeks to link its campaign to the performance of the Central government.

    • Final showdown

    The IS is facing defeat, but the search for a political solution in Syria should continue

  • The Islamic State, which at its peak controlled territories straddling the Iraq-Syria border of the size of Great Britain, is now fighting for half a square kilometre in eastern Syria. The Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-led rebel group assisted by the U.S., has effectively laid siege to Baghouz, the eastern Syrian village where about 500 IS jihadists along with 4,000 women and children are caught. When the IS lost bigger cities such as Raqqa and Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, militants moved to Baghouz and the deserts in the south. After the SDF moved to Baghouz, several civilians fled the village. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates that nearly 59,000 people have left IS-held territory since December, and at least 4,000 jihadists have surrendered since February. Both President Donald Trump and the SDF commanders say victory against the IS is imminent. Victory in Baghouz will also mean the IS’s territorial caliphate is shattered. Since the battle for Kobane in 2015, which marked the beginning of the end of the IS, Syrian Kurdish rebels have been in the forefront of the war. Naturally, the SDF would claim the final victory against the IS.
  • However, the liberation of Baghouz or the destruction of the territorial caliphate does not necessarily mean that the IS has been defeated. It is basically an insurgent-jihadist group. It has established cells, especially in Syria and Iraq, which have continued to carry out terror attacks even as IS territories kept shrinking. The group has a presence in Syria’s vast deserts, a tactic its predecessor, al-Qaeda in Iraq, successfully used when it was in decline during 2006-2011 after its leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed by the U.S. When the Syrian civil war broke, the remnants of AQI found an opportunity for revival and rebranded themselves as the Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria. The IS was born when al-Nusra split. The U.S., the Kurdish rebels, the Syrian government and other stakeholders in the region should be mindful of the geopolitical and sectarian minefields that groups such as the IS could exploit for their re-emergence. Mr. Trump has already announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. The Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is wary of the rapid rise of the Syrian Kurds, who are organisationally and ideologically aligned with Kurdish rebels on the Turkish side. The Syrian regime, on its part, has vowed to re-establish its authority over the Kurdish autonomous region in the northeast. If Turkey and Syria attack Kurdish rebels, who were vital in the battle against the IS, that would throw northeastern Syria into chaos again, which would suit the jihadists. To avoid this, there must be an orderly U.S. withdrawal and a political solution to the Syrian civil war.

    • ‘India must work slowly on China so that it aligns itself with us on terror’

    The former diplomat on India’s next steps with Pakistan, the China-Pakistan relationship, and India’s evolving ties with China

  • As the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) deadline for allowing the listing of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar expires today, Gautam Bambawale, former Indian envoy to Pakistan and China, says it is important for India to keep focus on fighting terror from Pakistan, while keeping communication with China open. Excerpts:
  • In the immediate aftermath of the Pulwama terrorist attack and then the Indian Air Force strike in Balakot, the government has been garnering international support for its case against Pakistan and the need to take direct action against groups there. In the long run, what are the next steps for Indian diplomacy?
  • I think the focus lies in keeping the pressure going on Pakistan. In the next few months, we must ensure that pressure does not lessen. We should work to ensure that Masood Azhar is listed as a terrorist by the UNSC. We need to ensure that whatever steps Pakistan takes as a result of the pressure are real, not hogwash meant just to please public opinion. And we need to work with the Financial Action Task Force [FATF] to keep the lens on terror financing and choking off support that groups like the JeM and Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT] receive in Pakistan.
  • Do you think India often loses its focus on terror? Between the Uri and Pulwama attacks, for example, efforts to raise the Azhar issue waned. India didn’t raise it with China after the Wuhan summit.
  • No, I don’t think that is the case. Even after the Wuhan summit, we have repeatedly raised the Azhar issue with the Chinese government. At the end of the day, the UNSC listing of Azhar is just a facet of the many ways we must work to ensure our core focus: that of Pakistan ending cross-border terror. We cannot afford to lose focus on that.
  • In the past week, Pakistan has announced some measures against the JeM and the Jamaat-ud-Dawa. How do you suggest India ensures real action?
  • Look, there is no alternative but to keep working on Pakistan through the international community. Let us remember that after the Pulwama attack, almost all major nations recognised India’s right to protect itself and take action to prevent terror attacks on our soil wherever it is needed. In addition, it is the three Security Council members led by France that have taken up the listing of Azhar at the UNSC 1267 Committee again, and the case on terror funding at the FATF. This is the way forward.
  • Why is listing Azhar so important? LeT chief Hafiz Saeed was listed by the UNSC more than a decade ago and that has hampered neither his movements nor the LeT’s ability to carry out attacks in India.
  • It is important. Once a group or a leader is listed, the entire world treats them as terrorists, regardless of what Pakistan does.
  • What is China’s interest in ensuring that Azhar is not listed, and how can India get around it?
  • Yes, China has said in the past that it doesn’t have enough information to list Azhar, despite the fact that on each occasion we have provided more information of his links to terror attacks. I think we must keep trying as we have, and this time we are very close to having Azhar on the list. The truth is, China does take Pakistan’s interests into account, and that is the reason it has been hesitant to allow the listing. But this time the momentum is with us. I would also like to say that we must learn to be transactional with China, and see what it is that Beijing would like in return for support at the UN.
  • Are you saying that China’s support for Pakistan, or in this case Azhar, is not ideological, and hence can be negotiated?
  • I am saying that China’s objections are not insurmountable. Remember, we were able to bring China around to placing Pakistan on the FATF’s ‘grey list’ by being transactional about it.
  • And if China decides to veto the listing this time as well?
  • Then it would mean that on this particular issue, at this particular time, we and other countries have not been able to convince China that this is in their best interest. But that doesn’t mean we should stop trying.
  • How do you think the government should approach the China-Pakistan relationship?
  • Look, China has a very strong relationship with Pakistan, as it has had for decades: on strategic issues, their military relationship, and on economic issues. Even so, where terror is concerned, China is very clear about where its interests lie, and particularly given concerns over groups in Xinjiang, an area that connects it to Pakistan. So India’s approach must be to work slowly on China to align itself on terror with our concerns, and then for it to move Pakistan in the direction we want it to go.
  • So, do you think it is possible for China to effect the desired outcome from Pakistan?
  • Yes.
  • India has always said that international mediation is not acceptable. Do you think India should ask China to intercede on its behalf with Pakistan?
  • Well, that is the long-standing policy of India. But the fact is, just as we have received support from countries like the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and they have conveyed to Pakistan that it needs to crack down on terror groups there, we must also hope that China will do the same. China does not wish to be isolated from the rest of the world, especially on the issue of terror.
  • What kind of role have the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the UAE played in this?
  • A positive one. Clearly, after the strike on Balakot, and then the attempt by Pakistan to retaliate, they were concerned about the action-reaction process leading to escalation. I think they all must have brought a lot of pressure on Pakistan to bring down the tensions, and to return the IAF pilot. But in the long run, it is for Pakistan to understand that it cannot keep lighting fires in its neighbour’s territory and not be burnt by them itself. Even with these groups [JeM and LeT], it is only a matter of time before they turn on Pakistan and carry out attacks there.
  • You mentioned the concerns over escalation. Is one of India’s biggest challenges in fighting cross-border terror the fact that ultimately the international community’s focus shifts to reducing India-Pakistan tensions?
  • Yes, this is a constant challenge. But the fact remains that the international community has affirmed India’s right to protect its citizens from attacks planned across its borders. That is a net gain.
  • Do you think the support will continue should India react the same way in the event of another attaack?
  • I think as long as India carries out non-military strikes that don’t target military personnel and don’t cause any civilian casualties, India will receive that support.
  • Since the 2016 Uri attack, the Modi government has also pursued a policy of ‘isolating Pakistan’. How realistic is this idea?
  • We must understand that what the government means by isolating Pakistan is to isolate it on the issue of terrorism. This is not to say that countries should stop dialogue with Pakistan.
  • Is there any space for direct dialogue between India and Pakistan at present?
  • It is for the government to decide if it wishes to open a dialogue with Pakistan. At present, the government has taken the view that talks and terror don’t go together, and that is its prerogative. I can tell you this: the people of India are fully fed up with this issue. As we have shown in 2016 and 2019, we are willing to take action against those terror groups directly if Pakistan refuses to. So, Pakistan is left with only one choice if it wishes to avoid more such action: to stop the terrorist groups there.
  • When it comes to China, however, despite all that has happened, including the Doklam crisis, the government opted for talks. You were the Ambassador to Beijing last year. How did the Wuhan summit come about?
  • I think the important takeaway from the Wuhan summit was that two ancient civilisations in a relationship with major potential decided that it was important to find a way to talk to each other rather than past each other. With the Wuhan summit, the idea was to allow the two leaders [Prime Minister Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping] to talk for as long as possible on any number of issues between the two countries. And the main outcome of the summit was that they would increase ways of communicating with each other.
  • Does that mean that the kind of conflict we saw at Doklam will not recur? I ask especially since before your postings in Pakistan and China, you were India’s Ambassador to Bhutan.
  • Look, I don’t want to speak about the China-Bhutan boundary as that is not our issue. We must see the Doklam conflict in terms of the India-China boundary issue, where boundary lines have not been delimited yet. Add to that, Indian and Chinese military patrols are coming closer and closer to each other in terms of physical proximity, and all the boundary conflicts in previous years have been a result of this. If we want to avoid these kinds of incidents, we need more confidence-building measures, more SOPs [standard operating procedures]. Our ties with China have potential beyond these conflicts and we must seize this.
  • Why do you think it is possible to envisage this forward-looking relationship with China, while with Pakistan it is impossible to move beyond its sponsorship of terror?
  • I think we must realise the multi-faceted relationship that we have with China. We have problems, but we have also been able to make great strides in ties, particularly when we take our emotions out of the relationship and focus on our interests. With Pakistan, it is difficult to take the emotions out after we are hit with one terror attack after another. Still, I must say here that I believe it is necessary to separate some things. For example, I would advocate that we don’t boycott the ICC World Cup simply because we don’t want to play Pakistan, given that we have a good chance of winning. In such issues, it is best not to mix emotions and policy. We must find a way to tackle terrorism, to tackle our problems, but without mixing emotions in them. It is only when we think through the situation in a cool-headed manner that our responses will be most effective with Pakistan.

    • Pulwama and after

    India lost the battle of perceptions, but it won the war of interests

  • Something curious happened during the recent India-Pakistan crisis: India may have lost the battle of perceptions, but it still won the war of interests. Consider New Delhi’s performance. Its rhetoric was bombastic and at times sarcastic. It struggled to bring clarity to the conflicting details surrounding its retaliatory strike on Pakistan. And Prime Minister Narendra Modi never addressed the nation during India’s worst security crisis in years.
  • Now consider Islamabad’s performance. After India’s strike on Balakot (in picture), Pakistan responded swiftly with its own strike that generated little confusion. Soon thereafter, Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was front and centre during the entire crisis, called on Mr. Modi to “give peace a chance” and announced the release of the Indian pilot captured by Pakistan. Unsurprisingly, international media coverage described Mr. Khan as “deft and steely” and spoke of “clumsy Indian information management”.
  • Yet, for India, its interests have been ably served. The strike on Balakot was widely supported by the international community. Few countries expressed public opposition. Many governments are now calling on Pakistan to act more robustly against terrorist groups, and Islamabad has pledged to do so. While this promise, made many times before, will understandably be treated with scepticism in New Delhi, fresh global pressure may give India some new hope.
  • Meanwhile, except for a strongly worded statement from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, few countries, as Pakistan would have liked them to do, have pushed for a greater focus on Kashmir and how India’s brutal tactics there stir unrest, spark bilateral tensions, and help produce extremists. One possible factor behind this broad international support is the strong resonance of the Islamist terror threat around the world. In recent years, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and their affiliates have wreaked havoc globally. While both groups are now weakened, they remain potent — and the world doesn’t want to let down its guard, particularly with entities like the Jaish-e-Mohammad enjoying a resurgence. A second factor is Pakistan’s image problem. Though Islamabad has sought for years to get Kashmir on the agendas of nation states and international fora, it has had limited success, particularly in the West, outside of discussions at the UN and EU. India, meanwhile, has had no trouble getting countries and global groupings to amplify the problem of Pakistan-based terrorism.
  • In effect, Pakistan isn’t isolated, and it has powerful friends, but India has been more successful in getting the international community to support its interests. This, in part, can be attributed to India’s reputation overseas as a more responsible and credible global player than Pakistan.