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AS PRIME Minister Narendra Modi leaves for the BRICS (a grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit in Johannesburg, all eyes are on a possible meeting between him and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
It would be their first scheduled bilateral meeting since the border standoff began in May 2020. Saying that the schedule is “still evolving”, officials did not rule out a meeting between the two leaders.
The BRICS summit is being held in-person this time, after three years of virtual meetings. Expansion of BRICS is a major item on the agenda. Around 23 countries are learnt to have submitted their applications for membership of the grouping.
Briefing reporters ahead of the visit, Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra said, “We have a positive intent and an open mind when it comes to BRICS expansion.”
He said the modalities for inclusion of new members into the BRICS are being discussed among the Sherpas of the grouping. “I would not want to prejudge the outcome of the discussions,” he said.
Govt. & Politics
Give tragets only for anti-graft cases: CBI director issues new probe guidelines (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
To improve the quality of investigations, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) director Praveen Sood has issued an order asking all heads of branches (HoBs) to give targets only for registration of cases pertaining to anti-corruption, and for special crimes, bank frauds and economic offences, they should be done keeping in mind with the available resources and other factors.
In an order issued on August 18, with a subject line on setting annual targets for individual branches by head office, Sood said, “As a routine, annual targets are given by the Head Office to individual branches with respect to registration of cases and disposal of under investigation/further investigation/pending trial cases.
While some times these targets are unachievable due to constraints of resources at the branch level, few other times, productivity of the branches gets constrained due to targets that are easily achievable.”
Sood issued the new guidelines after suppressing old practices. “Targets should only be given for registration of cases pertaining to anti-corruption.
For special crimes, bank frauds and economic offences, allocation of cases from the policy division unit should be done in line with resources and other factors in consultation with the director, CBI.
Last year, 946 regular cases/preliminary enquiries – 829 RCs and117 PEs – were registered by the CBI and 1,025 cases are pending till 2022. As many as 10,732 cases were pending under trial in various courts till December 31, last year.
“163 traps were laid for detection of bribery cases and 46 cases for possession of disproportionate assets were registered in 2022.
Out of 946 cases, 107 were taken up on the orders of constitutional courts, while 30 cases were initiated on references received from state governments/ Union Territories. Judgments were received in 557 court cases, including non-prevention of corruption Act cases, of which convictions were issued in 364, acquittals in 111, discharge in 13 cases, 69 were disposed of for other reasons,” an official said, adding that last year the conviction rate was 74.59% as compared with 67.56% of 2021.
Express Network
SC allows rape victim to terminate pregnancy (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
The Supreme Court took exception to the Gujarat High Court passing an order in a rape survivor’s plea for termination of her pregnancy after it had intervened in the matter on August 19.
Justice B V Nagarathna, presiding over a two-judge bench, termed it a “counterblast” to its order but Solicitor General Tushar Mehta submitted that it was only a “clarificatory” one.
In a special sitting on August 19, the SC had expressed displeasure over how the Gujarat High Court had proceeded with the case and said the valuable time had been lost until the HC listed it for hearing, more than a week after receiving the woman’s medical report on August 10.
The counsel representing the appellant had told the SC that the plea was filed before the HC on August 7 and it took it up the next day when it issued directions that a medical team be constituted to find out if abortion is possible.
The report was submitted to the Gujarat HC on August 10, and a day later, the court took it on record and adjourned it till August 23. However, it took up the matter on August 17 and dismissed the prayer for abortion.
Shortly after the August 19 SC order, the High Court also passed an order where it said that “it has come to the notice of this Court that there was an error in transcribing order dated 17.08.2023” and explaining the sequence of events.
Editorial
How to govern data (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
On August 9, 2023, the Rajya Sabha “unanimously” passed the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill (DPDP), 2023 and drew the curtains on a journey that began roughly a decade ago. In the process, it has predictably provoked mixed reactions.
One of the overarching goals of the legislation, by the government’s own admission, is to strike a balance between protecting personal data and enabling the processing of such data for lawful purposes, so as to enable innovation and promote economic growth. In doing so, the government has largely exempted itself from the purview of the law, in letter and spirit.
The Act declares that for the “security of the state, maintenance of public order or preventing incitement to any cognisable offence relating to any of these, and the processing by the central government of any personal data that such instrumentality may furnish to it”, the state falls outside its scope.
In other words, the state could, in theory, invoke national security to justify any action. Recall how President Donald Trump had controversially invoked national security to defend an increase in steel tariffs in the US in complete violation of all obligations made in the WTO.
The Act also provides that the central government notify a Significant Data Fiduciary (SDF), and impose obligations on it, including periodic audits and data protection impact assessments, among others.
While notifying such SDFs, the government will consider the volume and sensitivity of personal data processed, risks to the rights of the data principal (the individual who owns the data), the potential impact on the sovereignty and integrity of India, risks to electoral democracy, security of the state, and public order.
Ideas Page
Holes in financial safety net (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The pre-World War I period was characterised by free capital flows and fixed exchange rates linked to the gold standard. The success of the gold standard required cooperation among the major global economic powers of the time comprising countries of Europe and North America.
After the chaos of the interwar period, the gold standard of the pre-World War I phase was replaced by the post-1940s Bretton Woods system.
The landmark three-week conference at Bretton Woods gave birth to three major international financial institutions — IMF, World Bank, and later, GATT and WTO.
Until the 1970s, the global financial safety net (GFSN) was managed by the IMF through the relatively stable Bretton Woods system of semi-fixed exchange rates and controlled capital flows.
This system collapsed in the early 1970s when questions arose over the sustainability of the US dollar’s convertibility to gold at a fixed exchange rate and the availability of enough gold to match the increasing supply of US dollars.
From the debris of this collapse arose the current system of floating exchange rates with no link to gold, and relatively open capital accounts.
The 1980s and 1990s were then marked by frequent balance of payments crises and macro-economic instability in many emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs), with open capital accounts resulting in repeated capital flow volatility.
Consequently, the frequency and seriousness of financial crises increased significantly. Between 1970 and 2011, there were 147 systemic banking crises, 218 currency crises, and 66 sovereign debt crises, mostly in EMDEs.
The IMF continued to be the sole (unsuccessful) guardian of the GFSN. A great deal of change has taken place then, effectively transforming the global arrangements for addressing sovereign financial crises.
Explained
The crucial last 15 minutes (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The critical technical manoeuvre that the Chandrayaan-3 lander will have to perform on August 23 when it enters the final 15 minutes of its attempt to make a soft landing on the Moon will be to transfer its high-speed horizontal position to a vertical one — in order to facilitate a gentle descent on to the surface.
These final 15 minutes on Wednesday evening will determine the success of the mission. In July 2019, after the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) aborted the first attempt to launch the Chandrayaan-2 mission, K Sivan, then chairman of India’s space research body, had described this phase as “15 minutes of terror.
Dr Sivan’s description captured the essence of the complexity of the mission’s final phase — the one in which Chandrayaan-2 failed after the Vikram lander did not switch appropriately from the horizontal to the vertical position, and hurtled on to the surface of the Moon when it was entering the “fine braking phase” 7.42 km from the lunar surface.
Why global clothing retailers are exiting Myanmar (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The world’s second-largest clothing retailer H&M recently announced it would gradually phase out sourcing from Myanmar, days after an advocacy group revealed the increasing number of labour abuse cases in the country’s garment industry.
After careful consideration, we have now taken the decision to gradually phase out our operations in Myanmar,” H&M told Reuters in an email.
We have been monitoring the latest developments in Myanmar very closely and we see increased challenges to conduct our operations according to our standards and requirements.
Myanmar’s garment industry has been in a crisis since the military coup in February 2021. While numerous factories have permanently shut down, the working conditions have drastically deteriorated: wages have plummeted; working hours have spiked; labourers are being fired unfairly.
H&M isn’t the first brand to exit Myanmar due to the erosion of labour rights in the nation. Just weeks ago, Inditex, owner of the world’s biggest clothing retailer Zara, said it was in the process of stopping all purchases from the country. The announcement came after a vociferous campaign by the global workers’ union IndustriALL to convince companies to divest from Myanmar.
World
Saudi border guards killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants: Rights group (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
Saudi border guards are accused of the mass killing of migrants along the Yemeni border in a new report by Human Rights Watch.
The report says hundreds of people, many of them Ethiopians who cross war-torn Yemen to reach Saudi Arabia.
Migrants have told the BBC they had limbs severed by gunfire and saw bodies left on the trails. Saudi Arabia has previously rejected allegations of systematic killings.
The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, titled They Fired On Us Like Rain, contains graphic testimony from migrants who say they were shot at and sometimes targeted with explosive weapons by Saudi police and soldiers on Yemen's rugged northern border with Saudi Arabia.
Migrants contacted separately by the BBC have spoken of terrifying night-time crossings during which large groups of Ethiopians, including many women and children, came under fire as they attempted to cross the border in search of work in the oil-rich kingdom.
Luna-25 engine did not shut down in time: Roscosmos (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Russian spacecraft Luna-25 crash-landed on the moon because its engine did not shut off in time, and continued to work longer than it should have, Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted the head of country’s space agency as saying on Sunday.
Unfortunately, the engine shutdown did not occur normally, in accordance with the sequence diagram, but according to a time cutoff, and instead of the planned 84 seconds, it worked for 127 seconds.
This was the main cause of the accident of the apparatus,” Yuri Borisov, head of Roscosmos, said on Rossiya 24 TV channel.
Roscosmos had said the actual change in momentum of the spacecraft, as it was lowered into the pre-landing orbit, deviated from the calculated values, after which it crashed on the moon.
Luna-25 was modern Russia’s first attempt to land a spacecraft on moon, 47 years after Luna-24, launched by the then Soviet Union had made a successful landing. In fact, between 1966 and 1976, Soviet spacecraft made nine successful landings on the moon.
New finding throws light on life of slaves in ancient Pompeii (Page no. 16)
Archaeologists have discovered a small bedroom in a Roman villa near Pompeii that was almost certainly used by slaves, throwing light on their lowly status in the ancient world.
The room was found at the Civita Giuliana villa, some 600 metres (2,000 ft) north of the walls of Pompeii, which was wiped out by a volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago.
It contained two beds, only one of which had a mattress, two small cabinets and a series of urns and ceramic containers, in which the remains of two mice and a rat were found.
These details once again underline the conditions of precarity and poor hygiene in which the lower echelons of society lived during that time.
Materials such as furniture and fabric, covered by the devastating blast of rock fragments, gas, and ash from Vesuvius, decomposed over the years, leaving a void in the debris.
When filled with plaster, this void reveals the original shape and contours of the long gone material, including the outline of a crumpled blanket left on the bed netting.
Economy
Sharp rise in remittances for equity purchases, gifts under LRS in June (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Ahead of the deadline for the TCS (tax collected at source) which was supposed to come into effect from July this year, remittances by resident Indians to other countries jumped 35 per cent on a month-on-month basis in June 2023 and 96 per cent when compared to June 2022.
According to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data, fund outflow under the RBI’s Liberalised Remittances Scheme (LRS) shot up to $3.89 billion (Rs 32,000 crore) in June as against $ 2.88 billion (Rs 23,900 crore) in May this year. LRS outflows in June 2022 were just $ 1.98 billion (Rs 16,430 crore).
There was a significant rise in LRS outflows under the categories of equity/ debt investment, purchase of immovable property, overseas deposits and maintenance of relatives abroad.
The government had since then postponed the implementation of TCS on remittances to October 1, 2023. Under LRS, all resident individuals, including minors, can remit up to US $250,000 (approximately Rs 2.07 lakh crore) abroad per year without prior approval from the RBI.
While the total remittances under the LRS in the last five years were $ 91.98 billion (Rs 763,400 crore), the average outflow under LRS in FY2022-23 was $ 2.261 billion every month, aggregating $ 27.14 billion (Rs 225,200 crore) for the full year.
Cumulatively, for the April-June quarter this year, outward remittances rose to $9.1 billion, which is one-third of the total remittances in FY23.
The reason for the rise in outflows was because people seem to have remitted money abroad to avoid TCS payment from July 1, according to bankers.
India, ASEAN to conclude FTA review in 2025 (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
India and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) have agreed to conclude the review of the existing free-trade agreement (FTA) in goods by 2025, an official statement said on Monday.
The FTA between India and the 10-nation bloc came into effect 13 years ago. Indian businesses have long been pushing for its review.
The statement comes in the backdrop of the 20th Asean-India Economic Ministers’ meeting held on Monday in Semarang, Indonesia.
“The main agenda of this year’s meeting was the timely review of the Asean-India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA), which was signed in 2009. The meeting was preceded by an AITIGA joint committee meeting, which deliberated the road map for the review and finalised the term of reference and the work plan of the AITIGA review negotiations,” an official statement said.
“The ministers agreed to follow a quarterly schedule of negotiations and conclude the review in 2025,” the statement said, adding that the review was expected to enhance and diversify trade while addressing the “current asymmetry of bilateral trade”.