1)Culture of Karnataka :-
Background – Address by the President of India at the second Annual Convocation of the Central University of Karnataka . Thought the address itself is not important , however he touched upon few things that are part of our course and culture.
- Karnataka is a historical land marked by its multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual nature. Buddhism, Jainism, Veera-shaivism or Lingayitism and Islam have flourished here
- The Vachana Movement, Sufi saints, Keertanakaras and the Thatva Padakaaras have shaped the hearts and minds of the people of this region. Urdu and Persian literatures have flourished here and so to Kannada folk literature, which gave this region its indigenous identity.
- It is the seat of two universities in the past – Anubhava Mantapa of Basavanna and Mahmud Gawan’s Madrsa – both of which attracted intellectuals from across the country and abroad.
- It is also worth mentioning about Sannati, an ancient Buddhist centre of learning, and Nagavi Ghatikasthan.
Lingayatism /Veera- Shaivism and Basavanna:-
It is a distinct Shaivite denomination practiced in India. It makes several departures from mainstream Hinduism and propounds monotheism through worship centered on Lord Shiva (formless, infinite god) in the form of Ishtalinga.
Contemporary Lingayatism is a rich blend of reform-based theology propounded by Basava and ancient Shaivite tradition and customs, with huge influence among the masses in South India, especially in the state of Karnataka
108 Feet Basava Statue at Bidar
Anubhava Mantapa was an academy of mystics, saints and philosophers of the Lingayat faith in the 12th century. It was the fountainhead of all religious and philosophical thought pertaining to the Lingayat.
It was presided over by the mystic Allama Prabhu and numerous Sharanas from all over Karnataka and other parts of India were participants. This institution was also the fountainhead of the Vachana literature which was used as the vector to propagate Lingayata religious and philosophical thought.
Other giants of Lingayat theosophy like Akka Mahadevi, Channabasavanna and Basavanna himself were participants in the Anubhava Mantapa. The Anubhava Mantapa was originally called the Shivanubhava Mantapa
Vachana Sahitya:-
Vachana sahitya is a form of rhythmic writing in Kannada that evolved in the 11th century C.E. and flourished in the 12th century, as a part of the Sharna movement. The word vachanas literally means “(that which is) said”.
Poets – Madara Chennaiah, Basava
Mahmud Gawan’s Madrsa:-
The Madrasa of Mahmud Gawan (Madrasa-e-Mahmud Gawan) is an ancient university located in Bidar – the City of Whispering Monuments. This heritage structure is placed under the list of monuments of national importance. Founded by the prime-minister of the Bahamani empire in the late 15th century, it bears testimony to the scholarly genius of Mahmud Gawan.
Mahmud reportedly built the madrasa with his own money and it functioned like a residential University
2)All that is to be understood about Syrian Crisis:-
3)All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) :-
The survey covers all the Higher Education (HE) institutions of the country including Universities, Colleges and Stand-Alone institutions. The entire survey has been voluntary, based on motivation of respondents; and without any statutory mandate in place for collecting information of this nature
The major findings of the AISHE 2014-15 are as follows –
- Increase in overall enrolment from 27.5 million in 2010-11 to 33.3 million in 2014-15
- Improvement in Gross Enrolment Ratio which is a ratio of enrolment in higher education to population in the eligible age group (18-23) years from 19.4% on 2010-11 to 23.6% in 2014-15
- Gender Parity Index (GPI), a ratio of proportional representation of female and male, has marginally improved from 0.86 to 0.93 to the corresponding period.
- Number of institutions of higher education listed on AISHE portal has also increased significantly
The Survey was initiated in the year 2011 to prepare a robust data-base on higher education. Keeping in view the usefulness of data collected during the very first year, Ministry decided to make this survey an annual exercise of data collection in higher education sector.
4)Insurance Cover to Unorganised Labourers –
The Government has enacted ‘Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008’ for the welfare of unorganised workers. The Act provides for formulation of suitable welfare schemes for unorganised workers on matters relating to:
(i) life and disability cover,
(ii) health and maternity benefits,
(iii) old age protection
(iv) any other benefit as may be determined by the Central Government through the National Social Security Board.
The Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) implemented by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is a health insurance scheme which provides health and maternity benefits to the unorganized workers, listed in the Schedule I of the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008.
For insurance against death and disability, Department of Financial Services implements schemes such as Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJJBY) and Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana (PMSBY)
Ministry of Labour and Employment implements Aam Aadmi Bima Yojana (AABY) which covers death and disability along with a scholarship component for 2 children studying in class 9th to 12th standard
5) T K Vishwanathan Committee recommendation on Bankruptcy Law:-
Background:-
These changes are much-needed in the Indian context where, in most cases of large corporate defaults, banks are sitting ducks when it comes to recovery of money like in the case of Rs 7,000 crore default by Vijay-Mallya owned Kingfisher Airlines.
When the recovery process gets delayed by several years, the value of the underlying assets deteriorates. Large corporate defaults, including those by willful defaulters (promoters and companies, which have the ability to repay but wouldn’t do) form a significant part of the Rs 300,000 crore gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of Indian banks.
According to a 2014 World Bank report, the average time to resolve insolvency is four years in India, compared with 0.8 in Singapore and one year in London. The Vishwanathan panel too has observed that, the loan recovery rates obtained in India are among the lowest in the world. When default takes place, broadly speaking, lenders seem to recover 20 percent of the value of debt.
The biggest challenge for the bankruptcy code to work, however, is the intervention of judiciary in the insolvency cases
Recommendations:-
- It proposes creation of an insolvency regulator and setting a time limit of 180 days (which can be 90 days in special cases) to deal with insolvency resolution cases
- If 75 percent of the creditors approve the plan, the insolvency resolution process can kick off. If not, the adjudicating authority can order liquidation of the company
- It also recommended an administrative mechanism for resolving financial distress of viable MSMEs
- Speedy judicial resolution
- Provide a predictable system for
- (a) takeover of management or assets by the company administrator as part of the rescue process, and
- (b) governing the interrelationship between such administrator, the managerial personnel and the shareholders in the event of such takeover.
- Provide an enabling provision for raising ‘rescue finance’ and granting super-priority to such financiers as part of a scheme of revival
Insolvency:-When an individual or organization can no longer meet its financial obligations with its lender or lenders as debts become due. Insolvency can lead to insolvency proceedings, in which legal action will be taken against the insolvent entity, and assets may be liquidated to pay off outstanding debts
Bankruptcy:-Bankruptcy is a legal status of a person or other entity that cannot repay the debts it owes to creditors. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor.
Bankruptcy is not the only legal status that an insolvent person or other entity may have, and the term bankruptcy is therefore not a synonym for insolvency. In some countries, including the United Kingdom, bankruptcy is limited to individuals, and other forms of insolvency proceedings (such as liquidation and administration) are applied to companies. In the United States, bankruptcy is applied more broadly to formal insolvency proceedings.
Bankruptcy vs Insolvency :-
A state of insolvency can lead to bankruptcy. However, it is also possible that the state of insolvency could be temporary and fixable. Thus, insolvency does not necessarily lead to bankruptcy, but all bankrupt legal entities or persons are deemed to be insolvent.
6)Lok Sabha passed the National Water Way Bill :-
Read complete analysis here- http://upsctree.com/2015/12/10/09-and-10-dec-2015/
Yet to cover:-
Currently Juvenile Justice Bill (Amendment) and Bankruptcy bills are tabled in parliament , once the process is over we will cover it and analyze it depending upon the outcome of these bills.
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The United Nations has shaped so much of global co-operation and regulation that we wouldn’t recognise our world today without the UN’s pervasive role in it. So many small details of our lives – such as postage and copyright laws – are subject to international co-operation nurtured by the UN.
In its 75th year, however, the UN is in a difficult moment as the world faces climate crisis, a global pandemic, great power competition, trade wars, economic depression and a wider breakdown in international co-operation.
Still, the UN has faced tough times before – over many decades during the Cold War, the Security Council was crippled by deep tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. The UN is not as sidelined or divided today as it was then. However, as the relationship between China and the US sours, the achievements of global co-operation are being eroded.
The way in which people speak about the UN often implies a level of coherence and bureaucratic independence that the UN rarely possesses. A failure of the UN is normally better understood as a failure of international co-operation.
We see this recently in the UN’s inability to deal with crises from the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, to civil conflict in Syria, and the failure of the Security Council to adopt a COVID-19 resolution calling for ceasefires in conflict zones and a co-operative international response to the pandemic.
The UN administration is not primarily to blame for these failures; rather, the problem is the great powers – in the case of COVID-19, China and the US – refusing to co-operate.
Where states fail to agree, the UN is powerless to act.
Marking the 75th anniversary of the official formation of the UN, when 50 founding nations signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945, we look at some of its key triumphs and resounding failures.
Five successes
1. Peacekeeping
The United Nations was created with the goal of being a collective security organisation. The UN Charter establishes that the use of force is only lawful either in self-defence or if authorised by the UN Security Council. The Security Council’s five permanent members, being China, US, UK, Russia and France, can veto any such resolution.
The UN’s consistent role in seeking to manage conflict is one of its greatest successes.
A key component of this role is peacekeeping. The UN under its second secretary-general, the Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjöld – who was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace prize after he died in a suspicious plane crash – created the concept of peacekeeping. Hammarskjöld was responding to the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which the US opposed the invasion of Egypt by its allies Israel, France and the UK.
UN peacekeeping missions involve the use of impartial and armed UN forces, drawn from member states, to stabilise fragile situations. “The essence of peacekeeping is the use of soldiers as a catalyst for peace rather than as the instruments of war,” said then UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, when the forces won the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize following missions in conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Central America and Europe.
However, peacekeeping also counts among the UN’s major failures.
2. Law of the Sea
Negotiated between 1973 and 1982, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) set up the current international law of the seas. It defines states’ rights and creates concepts such as exclusive economic zones, as well as procedures for the settling of disputes, new arrangements for governing deep sea bed mining, and importantly, new provisions for the protection of marine resources and ocean conservation.
Mostly, countries have abided by the convention. There are various disputes that China has over the East and South China Seas which present a conflict between power and law, in that although UNCLOS creates mechanisms for resolving disputes, a powerful state isn’t necessarily going to submit to those mechanisms.
Secondly, on the conservation front, although UNCLOS is a huge step forward, it has failed to adequately protect oceans that are outside any state’s control. Ocean ecosystems have been dramatically transformed through overfishing. This is an ecological catastrophe that UNCLOS has slowed, but failed to address comprehensively.
3. Decolonisation
The idea of racial equality and of a people’s right to self-determination was discussed in the wake of World War I and rejected. After World War II, however, those principles were endorsed within the UN system, and the Trusteeship Council, which monitored the process of decolonisation, was one of the initial bodies of the UN.
Although many national independence movements only won liberation through bloody conflicts, the UN has overseen a process of decolonisation that has transformed international politics. In 1945, around one third of the world’s population lived under colonial rule. Today, there are less than 2 million people living in colonies.
When it comes to the world’s First Nations, however, the UN generally has done little to address their concerns, aside from the non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007.
4. Human rights
The Human Rights Declaration of 1948 for the first time set out fundamental human rights to be universally protected, recognising that the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
Since 1948, 10 human rights treaties have been adopted – including conventions on the rights of children and migrant workers, and against torture and discrimination based on gender and race – each monitored by its own committee of independent experts.
The language of human rights has created a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the individual, the state and the international system. Although some people would prefer that political movements focus on ‘liberation’ rather than ‘rights’, the idea of human rights has made the individual person a focus of national and international attention.
5. Free trade
Depending on your politics, you might view the World Trade Organisation as a huge success, or a huge failure.
The WTO creates a near-binding system of international trade law with a clear and efficient dispute resolution process.
The majority Australian consensus is that the WTO is a success because it has been good for Australian famers especially, through its winding back of subsidies and tariffs.
However, the WTO enabled an era of globalisation which is now politically controversial.
Recently, the US has sought to disrupt the system. In addition to the trade war with China, the Trump Administration has also refused to appoint tribunal members to the WTO’s Appellate Body, so it has crippled the dispute resolution process. Of course, the Trump Administration is not the first to take issue with China’s trade strategies, which include subsidises for ‘State Owned Enterprises’ and demands that foreign firms transfer intellectual property in exchange for market access.
The existence of the UN has created a forum where nations can discuss new problems, and climate change is one of them. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 to assess climate science and provide policymakers with assessments and options. In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change created a permanent forum for negotiations.
However, despite an international scientific body in the IPCC, and 165 signatory nations to the climate treaty, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase.
Under the Paris Agreement, even if every country meets its greenhouse gas emission targets we are still on track for ‘dangerous warming’. Yet, no major country is even on track to meet its targets; while emissions will probably decline this year as a result of COVID-19, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will still increase.
This illustrates a core conundrum of the UN in that it opens the possibility of global cooperation, but is unable to constrain states from pursuing their narrowly conceived self-interests. Deep co-operation remains challenging.
Five failures of the UN
1. Peacekeeping
During the Bosnian War, Dutch peacekeeping forces stationed in the town of Srebrenica, declared a ‘safe area’ by the UN in 1993, failed in 1995 to stop the massacre of more than 8000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. This is one of the most widely discussed examples of the failures of international peacekeeping operations.
On the massacre’s 10th anniversary, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that the UN had “made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality”, contributing to a mass murder that would “haunt our history forever”.
If you look at some of the other infamous failures of peacekeeping missions – in places such as Rwanda, Somalia and Angola – it is the limited powers given to peacekeeping operations that have resulted in those failures.
2. The invasion of Iraq
The invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, which was unlawful and without Security Council authorisation, reflects the fact that the UN is has very limited capacity to constrain the actions of great powers.
The Security Council designers created the veto power so that any of the five permanent members could reject a Council resolution, so in that way it is programmed to fail when a great power really wants to do something that the international community generally condemns.
In the case of the Iraq invasion, the US didn’t veto a resolution, but rather sought authorisation that it did not get. The UN, if you go by the idea of collective security, should have responded by defending Iraq against this unlawful use of force.
The invasion proved a humanitarian disaster with the loss of more than 400,000 lives, and many believe that it led to the emergence of the terrorist Islamic State.
3. Refugee crises
The UN brokered the 1951 Refugee Convention to address the plight of people displaced in Europe due to World War II; years later, the 1967 Protocol removed time and geographical restrictions so that the Convention can now apply universally (although many countries in Asia have refused to sign it, owing in part to its Eurocentric origins).
Despite these treaties, and the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees, there is somewhere between 30 and 40 million refugees, many of them, such as many Palestinians, living for decades outside their homelands. This is in addition to more than 40 million people displaced within their own countries.
While for a long time refugee numbers were reducing, in recent years, particularly driven by the Syrian conflict, there have been increases in the number of people being displaced.
During the COVID-19 crisis, boatloads of Rohingya refugees were turned away by port after port. This tragedy has echoes of pre-World War II when ships of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were refused entry by multiple countries.
And as a catastrophe of a different kind looms, there is no international framework in place for responding to people who will be displaced by rising seas and other effects of climate change.
4. Conflicts without end
Across the world, there is a shopping list of unresolved civil conflicts and disputed territories.
Palestine and Kashmir are two of the longest-running failures of the UN to resolve disputed lands. More recent, ongoing conflicts include the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.
The common denominator of unresolved conflicts is either division among the great powers, or a lack of international interest due to the geopolitical stakes not being sufficiently high. For instance, the inaction during the Rwandan civil war in the 1990s was not due to a division among great powers, but rather a lack of political will to engage.
In Syria, by contrast, Russia and the US have opposing interests and back opposing sides: Russia backs the government of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whereas the US does not.
5. Acting like it’s 1945
The UN is increasingly out of step with the reality of geopolitics today.
The permanent members of the Security Council reflect the division of power internationally at the end of World War II. The continuing exclusion of Germany, Japan, and rising powers such as India and Indonesia, reflects the failure to reflect the changing balance of power.
Also, bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank, which are part of the UN system, continue to be dominated by the West. In response, China has created potential rival institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Western domination of UN institutions undermines their credibility. However, a more fundamental problem is that institutions designed in 1945 are a poor fit with the systemic global challenges – of which climate change is foremost – that we face today.