President Outlines Eight Steps for a People Centric Partnership Between India and China:-
Background:- The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee delivered a lecture at Peking University.
Excerpt from the Speech :-
- At a time of global economic uncertainty, India and China, despite the pressure of having 40 per cent of the world’s human population, have managed to maintain unity and growth. The joint contribution of the two countries to world economy as well as regional and global stability, cannot be underestimated.
- India and China are poised to join the ranks of leading global powers. It is incumbent on the two countries, as emerging economic powers to remain equally focused on nurturing regional and global prosperity
- Both countries are at the threshold of an opportunity to join hands and create a resurgence, a positive energy, an “Asian Century”. This will not be an easy task. Obstacles need to be resolved with fortitude. The two countries must persevere to realise this dream. They must join hands in a durable friendship.
- To build a people-centric partnership, there must be mutual trust predicated on mutual respect and a better appreciation of respective political and social systems. This can be achieved by closer contacts at all levels. There is need to enhance and strengthen co-operation to the mutual benefit of both peoples.
- Underling the steps for people-centric India-China relations, the President said both India and China are ‘young’ societies. Our youth share common aspirations and perceptions. Their annual exchanges have been fruitful but both sides need to synergize their potential.
- In a digital age, joint film productions could be useful instruments for creating positive perceptions among our peoples. Greater exchanges between institutions of higher learning, more cultural festivals and joint research and scholarship programmes can help dispel the notion that we need to look to the West and not to each other to make progress in education, science & technology.
- Travel can also be a very important binding factor between the two countries. Indians would like to have more opportunities to travel to their holy sites in China and, in turn, welcome more Chinese visits to Buddhist pilgrimage centres in India.
- By pursuing sustainable solutions and sharing experiences, civil societies on both sides can collaborate – duly respecting the parameters in which they are required to operate in our respective countries.
- We can use multilateral fora including the G-20, BRICS, EAS, AIIB, SCO and the United Nations to enhance public awareness of the desire of both our countries for a shared future shaped by us together. Trade and commerce can also be the most powerful agents in reinforcing our complementarities. He called upon India-China entrepreneurs to jointly innovate to create a new model for business.
-
India and China are the inheritors of a great legacy – borne of our intensive intellectual and cultural contacts since the first millennium.
- We cannot imagine our common history without the central contribution of Kumarajiva or Bodhidharma or the records and experiences of XuanZangand Fa Xian from China.
-
There are, of course, periods of which we do not have much information – perhaps these were stretches of time when there was less direct contact. However, it is a matter of great satisfaction that as we pay tribute to the outstanding legacy of these masters, we also vigorously re-engage to revive and re-connect this most satisfying aspect of our people to people relations.
- In the early years of the last century, when India and China were engaged in a common struggle to break free of foreign domination and regain their rightful place in the world order, we had drawn strength and inspiration from each other. Indians fondly remember the solidarity and support extended by China’s leaders to our freedom movement.
- Similarly, the Chinese people recall, with appreciation, the 1925 Resolution of the Indian National Congress in support of China after British-Indian troops had been dispatched to suppress an anti-imperialist struggle in China.
- The Medical Mission led by Dr. Kotnis in 1938 was yet another example of the genuine bonds of friendship and humanity between our people. His contribution under difficult circumstances is remembered and commemorated till this day both in India and China.
- In the last seven decades, our bilateral relations have been tested by difficulties and challenges; but the determination of the Indian people to safeguard their friendship with the people of China has visibly endured.
- It was demonstrated in India’s early recognition of the People’s Republic of China in December 1949, the establishment of our diplomatic relations in April 1950 and India’s constant public support through the ‘60s and ‘70s for the admission of the People’s Republic of China to the UN and the restitution of its Permanent Membership of the UN Security Council.
- Through this period, our relations have witnessed significant expansion and diversification. Our shared civilisational past and our common Asian identity have been at the core of this aspiration . Today, as India and China pursue their respective developmental goals we both seek to live in friendship and realise our common dream of an Asian Century. Both our nations have reaped rich political and economic dividends from this wise and judicious approach.
Indian Coast Guard Ship ‘ARUSH’ Commissioned
The Indian Coast Guard ship ‘Arush’, the seventeenth in the series of twenty Fast Patrol Vessels (FPVs), designed and built by M/s Cochin Shipyard Limited, was commissioned recently.
The ship has been named ICGS ‘Arush’, literally meaning ‘first ray of sun’, and will be based at Porbandar under the administrative and operational control of the Commander, Coast Guard Region (North West).
NITI Aayog Launches 500 Tinkering Labs for Schools and 100 Incubation Centres
NITI Aayog is inviting applications from eligible schools/ organisations and individuals to apply for the three major schemes under Atal Innovation Mission: (a) establishing tinkering laboratories in schools (b) establishing new incubation centres and (c) scaling-up established incubation centres.
To foster creativity and scientific temper in students, Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) will establish 500 Atal Tinkering Laboratories in schools. It will provide one time establishment grant-in-aid of Rs. 10 lakh for establishing Atal Tinkering Laboratories (ATL) in schools (grade VI – XII) across India. Further, an amount of Rs. 10.0 lakh would also be provided for each ATL over a period of 5 years for operational expenses of ATLs. Thus, an amount of Rs. 20 lakhs per Atal Tinkering Laboratory in each selected school will be spent. Young children will get a chance to work with tools and equipment to understand the concepts of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). Competitions at regional and national scale will also be organised to showcase the innovations developed by the children.
SC erred in disaster relief order?
In a bid to protect lives of citizens reeling under severe drought in several states, the Supreme Court recently directed the centre to set up a National Disaster Mitigation Fund (NDMF) under a non-operational statutory provision.
What’s the issue now?
According to some experts, the court has committed a mistake by asking the centre to do so. For, Section 47 of the Disaster Management Act, which provides for setting up of NDMF for projects exclusively for the purpose of mitigation- measures aimed at reducing the risk of disaster, has not yet been notified.
As a result of this mistake, the SC ended up directing the Centre to implement a provision of law which for all practical purposes is non-existent.
Indian Ocean Rim nations to boost cooperation on SEZs
India and several other nations bordering the Indian Ocean have decided to evolve a regional mechanism for cooperation on Special Economic Zones (SEZ) – or duty-free enclaves with tax holidays — to boost exports.
This was decided at the recently held first-of-its-kind meeting between SEZ authorities from Indian Ocean Rim (IOR) nations at Chabahar, Iran. Notably, Chabahar houses a Free Trade Zone (FTZ) – a synonym for SEZs.
The meeting comes at a time of global economic and trade slowdown and attempts are being made by countries to boost growth through trade.
Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA):-
The Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), formerly known as the Indian Ocean Rim Initiative and Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC), is an international organisation consisting of coastal states bordering the Indian Ocean.
The IORA is a regional forum, tripartite in nature, bringing together representatives of Government, Business and Academia, for promoting co-operation and closer interaction among them.
It is based on the principles of Open Regionalism for strengthening Economic Cooperation particularly on Trade Facilitation and Investment, Promotion as well as Social Development of the region.
The Coordinating Secretariat of IORA is located at Ebene, Mauritius.
The organisation was first established as Indian Ocean Rim Initiative in Mauritius on March 1995 and formally launched in 1997 by the conclusion of a multilateral treaty known as the Charter of the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Co-operation.
The Association comprises 20 member states and 7 dialogue partners, the Indian Ocean Tourism Organisation and the Indian Ocean Research Group has observer status.
ISRO to test rocket that takes its fuel from air
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is planning to test an air-breathing propulsion system, which aims to capitalise on the oxygen in the atmosphere instead of liquefied oxygen while in flight.
Details:
Generally, vehicles used to launch satellites into space use combustion of propellants with oxidiser and fuel. However, the new Air breathing propulsion system aims to use oxygen present in the atmosphere up to 50 km from the earth’s surface to burn the fuel stored in the rocket.
Benefits:
This system would help in reducing the lift-off mass of the vehicle since liquefied oxygen need not be carried on board the vehicle.
This would also help increasing the efficiency of the rocket and also make it cost-effective.
It would also complement ISRO’s aim to develop a reusable launch vehicle, which would have longer flight duration.
Potassium bromate in same cancer class as coffee
According to a report by the Centre for Science and Environment, 84% of 34 bread types sold in India contain potassium bromate, a carcinogen. Potassium bromate is the chemical additive widely prevalent in bread and refined flour.Following this, food regulator FSSAI said it has decided to remove potassium bromate from the list of permitted additives.
A 1982 study in Japan stated that potassium bromate causes cancer. Following this, many countries including Japan, UK, China and Australian banned this compound.
Potassium Bromate:-
It is added to wheat flour to strengthen the dough and to allow it to rise higher. It bleaches the dough and increases its elasticity by making tiny bubbles that help the bread rise.
However, the real problem arises when bromate flour isn’t baked for long enough or at a high enough temperature, or if too much potassium bromate is added in the first place.
Health impacts:
- The chemical is said to cause renal tubular tumours (adenomas and carcinomas) thyroid follicular tumours peritoneal mesotheliomas in laboratory animals.
- Also, long-term carcinogenicity studies and in vivo and in vitro mutagenicity studies showed that potassium bromate was a “genotoxic carcinogen” or a chemical agent that damaged genetic information, causing mutations.
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.