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Govt & Politics
India has been elected to the UN Statistical Commission for a four-year term. A second candidate is yet to be decided between South Korea and China and the balloting process will resume later in the day (local time) for electing the remaining Asia Pacific states member, PTI reported from the UN.
India elected to the highest UN statistical body for a 4-year term beginning on 1 January 2024. India’s expertise in the field of statistics, diversity & demography has earned it a seat on the UN Statistical Commission.”
Sources said India won in the just-completed UN Statistical Commission election, securing 46 out of 53 votes, ahead of South Korea (23) China (19), and the UAE (15). “In brief, victory for India. This was a multi-cornered election (with) four candidates for two seats.
Editorial
Rebalance of power (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
Xi Jinping’s state visit to Russia from March 21 to 23 is of greater significance than is apparent in most analytical comments in India and abroad.
It carried forward the promise of the “no-limits partnership” and “no forbidden areas of cooperation” contained in the February 4, 2022, Sino-Russian Joint Statement issued during Russian President Putin’s visit to Beijing for the Winter Olympics.
That was before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine later that month. If there were doubts whether the promise of a more substantive strategic partnership between the two countries would survive the Ukraine crisis, the answer is clear.
The Ukraine war has not diminished Chinese commitment to such partnership; in fact, it has enhanced it. The reasons are two-fold.
One, China is convinced that the United States and its allies are determined to contain it. At the recently concluded session of the National People’s Congress, Xi Jinping said, “Western countries led by the US have implemented all round containment and suppression of China, which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to the country’s development.”
This is the first time that such a charge has been made at the highest level in China. Xi does not say that the US and the West are attempting to contain China but that they have already “implemented” such a policy and must therefore be countered.
In this context, the partnership with Russia, also subject to containment by the US and the West, becomes indispensable to pursuing a counter-strategy. In other remarks made during the visit, Xi conveyed this with even greater clarity, calling for an all-encompassing partnership and strategic interaction in a world threatened by acts of hegemony, despotism and bullying.
Explained
MediaOne: Supreme Court on freedom, national security (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The Supreme Court has ruled that the Centre’s refusal to renew the broadcast licence of Malayalam channel MediaOne amounted to restricting the freedom of the press, and that criticism of government policy does not constitute a “reasonable restriction” under Article 19(2) of the Constitution.
The court refused to accept the government’s national security argument to deny the licence; it said such a claim must be backed by material evidence.
The court also disapproved of the “sealed cover” procedure that it has criticised on several occasions recently, and said that a “less intrusive” public interest immunity proceeding could be the way out.
The channel got security clearance from the Home Ministry on February 7, 2011, when the UPA-2 government was in power. Subsequently, on September 30, the Information & Broadcasting Ministry gave Madhyamam Broadcasting Ltd (MBL), the company that runs MediaOne, permission to uplink for 10 years.
On January 31, 2022, the I&B Ministry revoked the permission after the Home Ministry refused to grant fresh security clearance. According to the Supreme Court judgment delivered on Wednesday, the MHA cited the channel promoters’ alleged links with the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind.
The channel challenged the Centre’s action before the Kerala High Court. The Centre submitted during the hearing that its decision was based on grounds of national security.
Trading forests for trees (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
On March 29, the government introduced The Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill, 2023 in Lok Sabha to make changes to The Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980.
The predominant idea of the proposed changes is to build forest carbon stock by raising plantations. The Bill also seeks to make land available for developers to meet their legal obligation towards compensatory afforestation in lieu of forest land diverted for development projects.
The Bill tries to achieve both these objectives by restricting the applicability of the FC Act, and by freeing up land that is currently locked up as unrecorded forests.
Following Independence, vast swathes of forest land were designated as reserved and protected forests and brought under state forest departments.
However, many forested areas were left out — and areas without any standing forests were included in ‘forest’ lands. The anomalies were supposed to be sorted out through extensive ground surveys — but the process remained incomplete.
In 1996, the Supreme Court suspended the felling of trees across the country, and ruled that the FC Act would apply to all land parcels that were either recorded as ‘forest’ or resembled the dictionary meaning of forest.
This sweeping order helped check rampant deforestation on land not recorded as ‘forest’, but it also came in the way of excluding from recorded forests vast areas that were already in use for agriculture or as homesteads.
The amendment Bill, instead of completing the demarcation process on the ground, seeks to limit the applicability of the FC Act only to land recorded as ‘forest’.
This will have the effect of removing the protection of the Act from millions of hectares of land that have the characteristics of forests, but are not notified as such.
Economy
Over Rs 40,700 crore sanctioned to 1.8 lakh accounts under Stand-Up India Scheme (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
As much as Rs 40,710 crore sanctioned to over 0.18 million accounts under the government’s flagship Stand Up India Scheme during the last seven years since its inception.
Of the funds sanctioned till March 21, 2023, about 80 per cent of the loans have been given to women entrepreneurs.
According to official data, Rs 33,152.43 crore was sanctioned to 0.14 million accounts of women while Rs 5,625.5 crore was sanctioned to 26,889 SC accounts. Just Rs 1,932.5 crore was sanctioned to 8,960 accounts of ST members.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi acknowledged the role that StandUp India initiative has played in empowering the SC/ ST communities and ensuring women empowerment.
The scheme was launched on April 5, 2016 to promote entrepreneurship amongst women, Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) categories and to help them in starting a greenfield enterprise in manufacturing, services or the trading sector and activities allied to agriculture.