SCO And India :-
Background – Prime Minister Narendra Modi met President Xi Jinping of China on the sidelines of Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Tashkent . President Xi welcomed India’s accession to the SCO and said it would strengthen it. Prime Minister Modi thanked President Xi for China’s support to India’s membership of the SCO. Prime Minister Modi then spoke of the NSG Plenary Meeting in Seoul which is to discuss India’s membership of the NSG. The Prime Minister urged China to make a fair and objective assessment of India’s application and judge it on its own merit. He said China should contribute to the emerging consensus in Seoul.
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation :-
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), or Shanghai Pact, is a Eurasian political, economic, and military organisation which was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of the People’s Republic of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. These countries, except for Uzbekistan had been members of the Shanghai Five, founded in 1996; after the inclusion of Uzbekistan in 2001, the members renamed the organisation. On July 10, 2015, the SCO decided to admit India and Pakistan as full members.
India and SCO – Future Prospects:-
Challenges and Opportunities
India’s membership in the SCO will add significant heft and muscle to the Organization particularly in the backdrop of the anaemic international economy. India is the fastest expanding major global economy today, with annual GDP growth of 7.5 per cent. It represents the third largest economy (USD 8 trillion) in PPP terms and the seventh largest (USD 2.3 trillion) in nominal dollar terms.
It inspires confidence on other indicators like FDI, inward remittances, savings rate, pace of economic reforms, etc. Its large market, favourable demographics and technological prowess augur well for the other economies of the grouping. Its growing energy demand promises an assured market to resource rich (oil, gas, uranium, coal) Central Asia and Russia.
SCO will need to assume responsibility for providing security in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the withdrawal of US and NATO ISAF forces. India will be able to play its due role in stabilizing the situation in Afghanistan which is assuming disturbing proportions due to the Taliban’s increasing attacks.
Terrorism and radicalism are the most formidable challenges confronting the region and international community today. India has been a victim of terrorist attacks for the last 30 years. Battling with terrorism has provided invaluable perspicacity to the Indian security establishment in intelligence gathering, training, foiling terrorist operations, etc. The threat of terrorism to the SCO region is particularly grave on account of continuing violence in Afghanistan, which can embolden regional groups like the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, etc. to destabilize governments in Central Asia.
The scourge of radicalism also looms large over the region with the expanding influence of the Islamic State (IS) and the reported desertion of several members of the Taliban, Al Qaeda, etc. to join the IS ranks. Several hundred young men and women have fled their homes in Central Asia to bolster IS forces that are spreading to Central Asia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
India can share its experience of handling the twin scourges of terrorism and radicalism with SCO members to mutual benefit. India can also enhance its engagement with the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
Connectivity
Central Asia is part of India’s extended neighbourhood. But India and Central Asian countries have failed to realize the immense potential in promoting security, political, economic, trade, investment, energy ties because of the lack of common land borders. Another reason is the lack of frequent visits at the highest level to Central Asian States. SCO membership will provide a welcome opportunity for Indian Prime Ministers to meet the Presidents of Central Asian States regularly and frequently. India’s potential participation in the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) will add further value to the partnership.
To obviate the lack of direct land connectivity with Central Asia, and Pakistan’s refusal to provide access through its territory, India is actively collaborating to develop the Iranian seaport of Chabahar with possible financial and technical support from Japan. The agreement to develop Chabahar and associated rail-network at a cost of USD 500 million was signed by Prime Minister Modi with the Presidents of Iran and Afghanistan during his recent visit to Iran. India has also prioritized the construction of the International North-South Transport Corridor.
Central Asia represents the ‘’near-abroad’’ for Russia. Both India and Russia can collaborate for reciprocal benefit in several areas including agriculture, SMEs, pharmaceuticals, IT, etc. India has demonstrated its determination to strengthen its multi-faceted relations with Central Asia through Modi’s historic visit to the five Central Asian Republics in July 2015. Several Agreements were signed. The Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India (TAPI) gas pipeline whose construction commenced in December 2015, is a bright example of a mutually beneficial project.
Conclusion
Some commentators have expressed concern that the induction of India and Pakistan could shift the focus of SCO from Central Asia to South Asia and could disrupt the SCO’s smooth and consensual functioning through an emphasis on India-Pakistan bilateral disputes. This appears highly unlikely. India’s only objective is to engage with SCO members to promote peace, security, connectivity, energy trade, people-to-people contacts and economic development in the region.
Some Chinese analysts opine that the membership of India and Pakistan will provide a role for the SCO to mediate in their disputes. The argument advanced is that the SCO’s predecessor, the Shanghai Five, was established to demarcate boundaries between its member states. It successfully achieved this. This appears to be wishful thinking. India has made it abundantly clear that there is no role for third-party mediation in India-Pakistan conflict. A resolution is possible only when Pakistan stops using terrorism as an instrument of state policy.
India’s membership of the SCO is a win-win proposition for the Organization, for Central Asia, for Russia, for China as well as for India. Members will reap huge benefits if they conduct themselves with responsibility.
NATIONAL CONSUMER DISPUTES REDRESSAL COMMISSION
Background :-The National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission had ordered a hospital in Mumbai to pay Rs 12,000 to a patient who had contracted HIV 20 years ago after blood transfusion.Based on the data revealed by The National Aids Control Organisation, in India, at least 2,234 people are reported to have been infected with HIV while getting blood transfusions in the last 17 months.
NCDRC
It is a quasi-judicial commission set up in 1988 under the Consumer Protection Act of 1986.The commission is headed by a sitting or retired judge of the Supreme Court of India. Section 21 of Consumer Protection Act, 1986 posits that the National Consumer shall have jurisdiction:-
> To entertain a complaint valued more than one crore.
> It also has Appellate and Revisional jurisdiction from the orders of State Commissions or the District fora as the case may be.
> Section 23 of the Act provides that person aggrieved by an order of NCDRC, may Appeal to Supreme Court of India within a period of 30 days.
The Consumer Protection Act, 1986
> It is a benevolent social legislation that lays down the rights of the consumers and provides for promotion and protection of the rights of the consumers.
> The Act mandates establishment of Consumer Protection Councils at the Centre as well as in each State and District, with a view to promoting consumer awareness.
> The Central Council is headed by Union Minster In-charge of the Dept. of Consumer Affairs and the State Councils by the Minister In-charge of the Consumer Affairs in the State Governments.
> It also provides for a 3-tier structure of the National and State Commissions and District Forums for speedy resolution of consumer disputes.
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) :-
Background :-
The Union Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley, participated in the First Annual General Meeting of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) held at Beijing, China recently.
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) :-
Headquarters :- Beijing, China
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is an international financial institution that aims to support the building of infrastructure in the Asia-Pacific region.
The bank has 37 member states (all “Founding Members”) and was proposed as an initiative by the government of China.The initiative gained support from 37 regional and 20 non-regional Prospective Founding Members (PFM), all of which have signed the Articles of Agreement that form the legal basis for the bank.
The United Nations has addressed the launch of AIIB as having potential for “scaling up financing for sustainable development for the concern of global economic governance.The capital of the bank is $100 billion, equivalent to 2⁄3 of the capital of the Asian Development Bank and about half that of the World Bank.
Issues with LED :-
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Excessive blue light emitted by light emitting diodes (LED) can adversely impact human health, according to a report recently released by the American Medical Association (AMA) Council on Science and Public Health. The report looked at LED street lighting on U.S. roadways.
- The human eye perceives the large amount of blue light emitted by some LEDs as white. Blue light directly affects sleep by suppressing the production of the hormone melatonin, which mediates the sleep-wake cycle in humans.
- Compared with conventional street lighting, the blue-rich white LED street lighting is five times more disruptive to sleep cycle.
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The correlated colour temperature (CCT) of first-generation LEDs, which are currently used, is 4,000K. Higher CCT values indicate greater blue light emission, and in the case of 4,000K LED lighting, 29 per cent of the spectrum is emitted as blue light.
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However, at 3,000K, the blue light emitted is only 21 per cent and appears “slightly warmer in tone”. While discomfort and disability glare is reduced, there is only a 3 per cent drop in energy efficiency compared with 4,000K LED lighting.
Monetary Policy Committee :-
Background:-
Recently the Government amended the RBI Act to hand over the job of monetary policy-making in India to a newly constituted Monetary Policy Committee (MPC).
What is it?
The new MPC is to be a six-member panel that is expected to bring “value and transparency” to rate-setting decisions. It will feature three members from the RBI — the Governor, a Deputy Governor and another official — and three independent members to be selected by the Government.
A search committee will recommend three external members, experts in the field of economics, banking or finance, for the Government appointees. The MPC will meet four times a year to decide on monetary policy by a majority vote. And if there’s a tie between the ‘Ayes’ and the ‘Nays’, the RBI governor gets the deciding vote.
Why is it important?
Until recently, India’s central bank used to take its monetary policy decisions based on the multiple indicator approach. Its rate decisions were expected to take into account inflation, growth, employment, banking stability and the need for a stable exchange rate.
As you can see, this is a tall order. Thus, RBI (with the Governor as the focal point) would be subject to hectic lobbying ahead of each policy review and trenchant criticism after it. The Government would clamour for lower rates while consumers bemoaned high inflation. Bank chiefs would want rate cuts, but pensioners would want high rates. RBI ended up juggling all these objectives and focussing on different indicators at different points in time.
To resolve this, RBI set up an Expert Committee under Urijit Patel to revise the monetary policy framework, and it came up with its report in January 2014. It suggested that RBI abandon the ‘multiple indicator’ approach and make inflation targeting the primary objective of its monetary policy.
It also mooted having an MPC so that these decisions could be made through majority vote. Having both Government and RBI members on the MPC was suggested for accountability. The Government would have to keep its deficit under check and RBI would owe an explanation for runaway inflation.
The bottomline
The MPC may put a stop to the public skirmishes between the Government and the RBI. But with the RBI governor holding the casting vote, don’t expect controversies to die down.
National Mineral Exploration Policy (NMEP)
Background:-
The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has approved the National Mineral Exploration Policy (NMEP).The NMEP primarily aims at accelerating the exploration activity in the country through enhanced participation of the private sector.
Key Points:-
- The policy emphasizes on making available baseline geoscientific data of world standards in the public domain, quality research in a public-private partnership, special initiatives for search of deep-seated and concealed deposits, quick aerogeophysical surveys of the country, and creation of a dedicated geoscience database etc.
- The Ministry of Mines will carry out auctioning of identified exploration blocks for exploration by private sector on revenue sharing basis in case their exploration leads to auctionable resources.
- If the explorer agencies do not discover any auctionable resources, their exploration expenditure will be reimbursed on normative cost basis.
- Government will carry out a National Aerogeophysical Program for acquiring state-of-the-art baseline data for targeting concealed mineral deposits.
- A National Geoscientific Data Repository is proposed to be set up to collate all baseline and mineral exploration information generated by various central & state government agencies and also mineral concession holders and to maintain these on geospatial database.
- Government proposes to establish a not-for-profit autonomous institution that will be known as the National Centre for Mineral Targeting (NCMT) in collaboration with scientific and research bodies, universities and industry for scientific and technological research to address the mineral exploration challenges in the country.
- On the lines of UNCOVER project of Australia, the government intends to launch a special initiative to probe deep-seated/ concealed minerals deposits in the country in collaboration with National Geophysical Research Institute and the proposed NCMT and Geoscience Australia.
NIVARAN portal:-
Ministry of Railways has taken another seminal measure by launching ‘NIVARAN’, an online system for redressal of service related grievance of serving and former railway employees.
Railways being the single biggest civilian employer in the country with over 1.3 millions strong workforce, have created a well – structured multi layered enterprise wide mechanism for addressing staff matters.
This online system facilitates the employees to lodge their grievances and also monitor their progress. The system would also provide facility for lodging appeal to the higher authority in case the decision is not found satisfactory. Highest controlling authorities shall also be able to monitor the progress of grievance redressal by field offices.
The Application is developed by CRIS, the IT arm of Indian Railways, on the basis of process designed by Establishment directorate of Railway Board which deals with staff matters and technical guidance of Computerisation and Information System directorate.
Recent Posts
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.