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Editorial
The legacy of Dr B R Ambedkar becomes a mainstream topic of discussion every April. On Ambedkar Jayanti (April 14), hoardings and posters appeared all over our cities and were shared on social media capturing our headspace for the whole of Dalit History Month.
Beyond this month, sadly, his ideas, identity and images are relegated to “sarkari” offices. As I was writing this, I wondered how many of us truly keep Ambedkar alive in our consciousness.
He not only transformed caste from a tool of oppression to a symbol of strength for us Dalits, but also left a mark on all aspects of our lives, from economics to gender rights.
I sometimes wonder whether Babasaheb’s journey to becoming “Dr Ambedkar”, having come from the Mahar community, was a fruit of his own labour or just plain luck.
Individual merit and excellence are the result of several factors, a complex interplay of societal structures, cultural biases, and historical advantages.
The idea of meritocracy has become a kind of “civic religion” (Michael Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit) in modern societies, with the assumption that success and failure are solely the results of individual effort and ability.
However, this ignores the ways in which social and economic structures shape opportunities and outcomes and can lead to a sense of moral superiority among the winners of the meritocracy game.
Ideas page
No oxygen for fake news (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Internal Security)
The prime minister launched Digital India in 2015 to use the internet to bridge the distance between citizens and government and deliver responsive governance, a deep transformation from the corrupt and leaky governance that India faced for decades.
Over the last nine years, the internet in India has expanded significantly, making us the world’s largest connected democracy with over 83 crore people online.
Every Indian will be on the internet by 2025. Universal access is no small feat – but by combining that with the digitalisation of governance and digital public infrastructure, the transformation of Indian democracy and governance has become a beacon for the world. This has been acknowledged by the IMF and other multilateral institutions.
The internet has changed over the past decade and this change is defined by two trends. One, the presence of large platforms that have power over how users experience the web.
Two, the internet is also now a space for user harm, misinformation and toxicity that has outpaced good innovation. Misinformation operations for cyberwarfare by state and non-state actors have utilised social media platforms to create civic unrest and for radicalisation and terror recruitment.
This poses internal security and national security risks and can cause serious real-world harm. In 2019, a network of accounts and pages managed by Pakistan’s ISPR were detected engaging in malicious, coordinated activity against India on social media platforms.
These types of attacks have become more sophisticated. In recent times, Covid misinformation, fake cures, financial market misinformation and AI deep fakes have caused and will cause tremendous social and economic harm.
More recently, The Washington Post exposed Khalistani elements using bots to conduct misinformation operations against the Indian government, including giving calls to violence. Misinformation is not an outlier on the internet – rather, it’s being weaponised repeatedly against open democracies like India to create chaos by organised vested interests.
Explained
G20 and Ukraine War (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
The visit to New Delhi this week by the Ukrainian First Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzhaparova came at a time when her country faces an indefinitely stalemated war against Russia.
Ukraine believes it has to change military realities on the ground, which will persuade the Western alliance led by the United States to continue bankrolling its war effort — and ensure that it avoids defeat or is not forced to accept an unfavourable compromise on territory.
Dzhaparova, the first Ukrainian official to visit India after the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022, had a two-fold mission in New Delhi.
The first was to invite New Delhi to “restart” ties with Kyiv for a greater “balance” in its position on the war which, Dzhaparova conveyed politely, was pro-Russia from Ukraine’s point of view.
The Minister pointed to National Security Advisor Ajit Doval’s three visits to Moscow, and asked him to visit Kyiv to establish a“special security mechanism” between the two countries.
Amid the chill over India’s position on the Russian invasion — despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s advice to President Vladimir Putin that “today’s era is not an era of war”, India has refused to condemn Moscow’s actions — remarks by the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dymtro Kuleba in December that India was able to buy cheap Russian oil because Ukrainians were suffering and dying, did not go down well in New Delhi.
Dzhaparova’s public engagements at the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), and at another think tank were well received.
In SC: Maternity benefits for Adoptive mothers (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, Governments Policies and Interventions)
The Supreme Court agreed to hear a petition challenging the constitutional validity of Section 5(4) of the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, which states that a woman who legally adopts a child below three months old will be entitled to 12 weeks of maternity leave.
A bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud agreed to hear the Public Interest Litigation (PIL), filed by Karnataka-based Hamsaanandini Nanduri, on April 28. The petition challenges Section 5(4) of the Act on grounds of being “discriminatory” and “arbitrary’ towards adoptive mothers and orphaned children over three months.
What is this provision?
The original 1961 legislation did not have specific provisions for mothers who adopt, and these were inserted with the 2017 amendment to the Maternity Benefit Act.
According to Section 5(4) of the amended Act, “A woman who legally adopts a child below the age of three months or a commissioning mother shall be entitled to maternity benefit for a period of twelve weeks from the date the child is handed over to the adopting mother or the commissioning mother, as the case may be.
The term “commissioning mother” refers to a surrogate mother and has been defined as “a biological mother who uses her egg to create an embryo implanted in any other woman.” A woman adopting a child older than three months gets no benefits.