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World
EU agrees on new rules for hosting migrants seeks to reduce numbers (Page no. 2)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The European Union reached agreement early on Wednesday on new rules designed to share out the cost and work of hosting migrants more evenly and to limit the numbers of people coming in.
Representatives of the European Parliament and of EU governments reached an accord after all-night talks on EU laws collectively called the New Pact on Migration and Asylum that should take effect next year.
The laws cover screening irregular migrants when they arrive in the European Union, procedures for handling asylum applications, rules on determining which EU country is responsible for handling applications and ways to handle crises.
Migrant arrivals in the European Union are way down from the 2015 peak of more than 1 million, but have steadily crept up from a 2020 low to 255,000 in the year to November, with more than half crossing the Mediterranean from Africa to Italy or Malta.
Previous efforts to share out the responsibility of hosting migrants have foundered because eastern EU members in particular were unwilling to take in people who had arrived in Greece, Italy and other countries.
Front Page
Defining terror to death for lynching: LS nod for 3 bills on new criminal laws (Page no. 3)
(GS Paper 3, Internal Security)
From expanding detention in police custody from the current 15-day limit to up to 90 days, bringing terror, corruption and organised crime under ordinary legislation for the first time to decriminalising homosexuality and adultery, the Lok Sabha Wednesday passed three key Bills – Bharatiya Nyaya (Second) Sanhita, 2023; the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha (Second) Sanhita, 2023; and the Bharatiya Sakshya (Second) Bill, 2023 – to completely overhaul the country’s criminal laws.
Once enacted, these will replace the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860; The Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (originally enacted in 1898); and the Indian Evidence Act, 1872.
Piloting the Bills, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said these are aimed at indigenising laws originally enacted by the British.
According to the government, three specific provisions that have been symbols of colonial imprint in the IPC – sedition, criminalisation of homosexuality and adultery – have been repealed.
The fine print, however, shows that the offence of sedition, currently rendered inoperable by a Supreme Court order, has had a name change from ‘rajdroh’ to ‘deshdroh’.
Editorial
A moral failure (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
The suspension from the House of a large number of Opposition Members of Parliament in the Winter Session underlines the institutional weakening of our political system.
Parliament has been converted into a zone of conflict, where the established norms of discussion and deliberation are being conveniently sidelined.
The ruling party invokes the House rules to supersede the parliamentary customs and conventions simply to get rid of the Opposition while the Opposition uses the act of disruption as a legitimate political technique.
This government versus Opposition framework, however, should not be exaggerated. It is an outcome of a much deeper political crisis, which poses a serious challenge to our democratic values and egalitarian constitutional principles. In my view, there are four identifiable facets of this political crisis.
Ideas Page
Beyond App and coaching class (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, Education)
It is only during elections that the poor acquire bargaining power to get their immediate needs addressed. This explains the frenzy for freebies, handouts and guarantees — free bus rides for women, cash doles, free rice, subsidised cooking gas and free KG to PG education.
It is easy to fault the people for not being aspirational and demand income security, employment opportunities, good quality education and healthcare — basic entitlements that ought to matter. But people are wise.
They know that today’s governments seek lazy options and most often lack the drive to improve the quality of their lives.
Take, for example, the education sector which is in a state of crisis — in part due to reckless commercialisation and politicisation. It must be rebuilt with a step-by-step strategy and a national consensus that commits to insulate it from narrow political considerations.
This requires not falling into the temptation to seek easy solutions — for instance, technology as a substitute for solid investments that are required to provide “decent” education.
Explained
Greenwashing (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Earlier in December, the United Kingdom’s ad regulator banned advertisements from Air France, Lufthansa, and Etihad for allegedly misleading consumers regarding the environmental impact of air travel.
This isn’t the first time that airlines have come under fire for false advertising about their sustainability efforts and accused of ‘greenwashing’.
A case filed against Dutch airlines KLM for alleged greenwashing through one of their advertising campaigns went to trial in Amsterdam.
Here is a look at the advertisements, what greenwashing is, and how much the airline industry contributes to greenhouse gas emissions.
In July, Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) identified three Google ads that suggested the flights operated by Air France, Lufthansa, and Etihad were sustainable.
The nature of growth (Page no. 16)
At the start of the current financial year — that’s in April — there were very few takers of the RBI’s forecast of 6.5% GDP (gross domestic product) growth.
The GDP is essentially the total size of any economy and its annual growth rate tells us how that size is expanding from one year to another.
Most professional economists believed that India’s GDP growth would underwhelm and clock a little slower than 6.5%.
But right through 2023, India’s GDP growth has beaten street expectations — none more so when it clocked 7.6% in the quarter ending September 2023 (also referred to as the second quarter or Q2 of the current financial year).
On the face of it, India’s GDP growth in Q2 was pushed up by strong industrial growth especially in the manufacturing sector, which grew by almost 14% over the same quarter last year. It was not clear what had led to this massive jump in manufacturing output beyond the obvious low base effect.
Bihar to develop Sita’s birthplace: History and mythology of Mithila region (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 1, Culture)
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar recently launched a Rs 72-crore development plan for Goddess Sita’s birthplace at Punaura Dham in Sitamarhi. His party, JD(U), also slammed the Centre for “concentrating too much on the Ayodhya temple and Lord Rama, and doing little for Sita”. To understand this, it is imperative to understand Sita’s Bihar connections and her importance in the Bihari religious imagination.
Acharya Kishore Kunal, former IPS officer and ex-chairman of the Bihar State Board of Religious Trust, on whose report the Punaura Dham was included in the Centre’s Ramayana Circuit, spoke to The Indian Express on the history and mythology of Mithila in Bihar, and its indelible links to Sita.
As a researcher and scholar, I will first go by the source book, the Valmiki Ramayana, on which are based many subsequent versions of the Ramayana, including Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas.
Economy
Data protection rules likely by Jan end (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The final version of data protection rules are likely to be notified by the end of January next year, multiple sources told The Indian Express. Draft of the rules are expected to be released by the end of December.
During a meeting with the industry Wednesday, officials from the IT Ministry presented a draft of the rules, primarily centred around gathering parents’ consent for children to access online services.
Executives from Google, Meta and Snap attended the meeting which was chaired by Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar.
The government is attempting to operationalise the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, which was notified over four months ago in August.
At least 25 rules have to be formulated to operationalise the Act notified in August and the government has also been empowered to enact rules for any provision that it deems fit.
India, NZ trade ministers discuss public stockholding ahead of WTO conference (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The trade ministers of India and New Zealand met Tuesday to discuss a range of bilateral and multilateral issues. including the long-standing issue of Public Stock Holding (PSH), ahead of the World Trade Organisation’s 13th Ministerial Conference set to take place in February next year in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
This comes as New Delhi has begun building consensus among WTO members ahead of the ministerial in order to push for a permanent solution on PSH that would result in greater flexibility to provide higher farm support. India’s agriculture sector continues to be the largest employment generating sector in the country.
Union commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal and New Zealand’s trade minister Todd McClay discussed global trade dynamics and reaffirmed their support for a rules-based, transparent, and inclusive multilateral trading system.
They also briefly discussed issues related to the World Trade Organisation Ministerial Conference (MC) and assured each other of co-operation and mutual understanding for a positive approach to reach a decision on the long standing issue of Public Stock Holding during MC13.