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Govt & Politics
A year after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida came to India in the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine war, he will be in Delhi on Monday for bilateral talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Sources said that defence, security, economic ties, skill development and clean energy partnership are among the top issues on the agenda.
This meeting is being held at a significant time when India and Japan are holding the presidencies of the G20 and G7, respectively.
This visit, therefore, gives us an opportunity to cooperate and discuss how G20 and G7 can work together on converging our priorities on critical global issues including food and health security, energy transitions and economic security.
Modi is likely to travel to Hiroshima for the G7 leaders’ summit in May as a guest country, and Kishida is expected to extend a formal invitation during his visit.
The Russia-Ukraine war and its impact on geopolitics will be an important area of discussion, since there are divergences in approach between Delhi and Tokyo. Tokyo is firmly with the Western bloc, led by the US, on this issue.
But his headline speech in Delhi will be the unveiling of his new plan for a free and open Indo-Pacific.
Explained
A sweet export story (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Building export markets takes effort. Overseas buyers need to be convinced about the price competitiveness, product quality, and reliability of supplies from the exporting country.
One not-so-talked-about success story in recent years is of sugar exports from India. Between 2017-18 and 2021-22, these have soared from $810.9 million to $4.6 billion, and could cross $5.5 billion — or Rs 45,000 crore — in the fiscal year ending March 31.
The increase is even more significant in quantity terms. During the 2016-17 and 2017-18 sugar years (Oct-Sept), India’s shipments were a mere 0.46 lakh tonnes (lt) and 6.2 lt respectively. They had zoomed to 110 lt by 2021-22
Chart 2 shows India’s exports of both raw and white sugar. Raw sugar is what mills produce after the first crystallisation of juice obtained from crushing of cane.
This sugar is rough and brownish in colour, with an ICUMSA value of 600-1,200 or higher. ICUMSA, short for the International Commission for Uniform Methods of Sugar Analysis, is a measure of the purity of sugar based on colour. The lower the value, the more the whiteness.
Raccoon dogs (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Species in News)
A new analysis of genetic data collected from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, has linked coronavirus to raccoon dogs, adding evidence to the belief that the pandemic might have originated from the infected animals sold at the site.
An international team of experts said so on March 16, including Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona; Kristian Andersen, a virus expert at the Scripps Research Institute in California; and Edward Holmes, a biologist at the University of Sydney.
According to the Associated Press, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “These data do not provide a definitive answer to how the pandemic began, but every piece of data is important to moving us closer to that answer”.
The genetic data was gathered from swabs taken from in and around the market back in January 2020, shortly after the Chinese government had shut down the market because of suspicions that it was linked to the outbreak of a new virus.
A previous analysis of the same data was published last year, showing that it contained both Covid and human DNA. Moreover, Chinese researchers at the time denied that the samples consisted of any animal DNA.
20 years of Iraq war: not worth fighting, think Americans (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
March 19 marks 20 years of the invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies, in an attempt to overthrow the country’s dictator Saddam Hussein on the premise that his regime possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
By December 2003, the so-called “liberation” of the people of Iraq was complete. However, even after months of searching, the US and its allies could find no trace of Saddam’s WMDs.
Instead of the promised peace and prosperity, the war pushed Iraq into a cycle of brutal violence, heightened sectarianism and political instability that contributed to the rise of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group.
Speaking to Reuters, former US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who served under President George W Bush when the US invaded Iraq, recently said the war “might be as big a strategic error” as Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, which helped bring about Germany’s World War II defeat.
The roots of the Iraq invasion go back to 1990, when Saddam — a longtime ally of the Americans, especially after the Iranian revolution of the late 1970s — attacked Kuwait under the suspicion that the country was using slant drilling to steal oil out of Iraqi fields.
What does ICC’s arrest warrant mean Vladimir Putin? (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
The International Criminal Court on Friday issued an arrest warrant for war crimes for President Vladimir Putin and a second Russian official. Here’s a closer look at the court, the warrant and what it could mean for Russia’s leader.
The court says Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February last year.
The court also issued a warrant for Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, who has been the public face of a Kremlin-sponsored program in which Ukrainian children and teenagers have been taken to Russia.
The court said in a statement “that there are reasonable grounds to believe that each suspect bears responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population and that of unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”
The children described a wrenching process of coercion, deception and force. Russia has defended the transfers on humanitarian grounds.
Lawyers familiar with the ICC’s case recently said they expected prosecutors to proceed with the arrest warrants because there was a strong trail of public evidence.
The court said in a statement that it was mindful “that the conduct addressed in the present situation is allegedly ongoing, and that the public awareness of the warrants may contribute to the prevention of the further commission of crimes.”
Editorial
Renewing a Pledge (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
Today, as I embark on my second visit to India as Prime Minister of Japan, it gives me immense pleasure to return to the land where the dynamics of the world — the Pacific and the Indian Oceans — converge.
One year ago, the foundation of order in the international community was shaken by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Against such backdrop, on March 19, 2022, during my visit to India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and I affirmed that any attempt to unilaterally change the status quo by force is unacceptable not only in the Indo-Pacific but also in any region, and a peaceful resolution based on international law needs to be sought.
We affirmed that the current situation makes it more relevant to expedite efforts towards the realisation of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP)”.
I am convinced that the unwavering trust and the close coordination between India and Japan as leading democracies of Asia are the cornerstones of peace and prosperity in the region.
Today, the international community is at a historic turning point. Its impact, such as the food crisis and soaring fertiliser prices, are also being felt here in the Indo-Pacific region.
In order to respond effectively to the various challenges that the international community is currently facing, cooperation between the G7 and the G20 has greater significance. Such pressing challenges include food security, climate and energy, fair and transparent development finance.
As Japan and India assume the Presidencies of the G7 and the G20 respectively this year, I look forward to engaging in candid discussions with Prime Minister Modi on the roles that the G7 and the G20 should play in overcoming such challenges.
No case for discretion (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
In the ongoing disqualification proceedings against Maharashtra MLAs in the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud, heading the five-judge Constitution bench, dropped a bombshell with his hard-hitting remarks about the role and powers of a governor.
In the course of the arguments, the CJI severely criticised the Maharashtra governor’s actions and raised questions about the legitimacy and limits of a governor’s role in this case, though as obiter dicta.
The CJI observed that the “governor should not enter the political arena”, adding that a governor “cannot enter into any area by which his action would precipitate the fall of a government” and that unless this principle is maintained, it would be “very, very serious for our democracy”.
The crucial issue at hand is regarding the procedural and constitutional powers conferred on a governor. A governor who is expected to be non-partisan cannot function in a way that precipitates a crisis and leads to the toppling of a duly elected government.
Furthermore, being an executive appointee, the governor has no role to play in legislative issues, and if at all he does, we need to delineate the circumstantial constraints and exceptions that will legitimately allow his interference.
Ideas Page
Not with a rate hike (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
As the financial year 2022-23 draws to a close, India can feel proud that it will be clocking the highest economic growth rate amongst G20 countries.
The GDP growth rate may be between 6.8 to 7 per cent as predicted by the RBI and Ministry of Finance, respectively. That’s almost double the so-called “Hindu rate of growth” of 3.5 per cent that Raghuram Rajan, former Governor of RBI, recently quipped about saying that “India was dangerously close to Hindu rate of growth”.
The term “Hindu rate of growth” was coined by my teacher Raj Krishna at the Delhi School of Economics, indicating that the Indian economy moved at its own pace of about 3.5 per cent during 1947 to 1980 or so, no matter which government ruled.
But this trajectory has changed since the beginning of economic reforms in 1991. Over the last two decades, India registered a robust growth of more than 6.5 per cent, and chances are that it will continue to grow roughly at that pace for another decade or so.