News Snippet
News 1: Govt.’s SRI Fund commits ₹5,000 cr. to aid MSMEs
News 2: Make – II Project
News 3: The Harvest of Polluted Air
News 4: Governors and their removal
Other important news:
- China’s home-grown Beidou satellite system eyes global footprint
- SEWA
- Foreign Exchange Reserve
- Mathura-Vrindavan aims to become a carbon neutral tourist destination by 2041
News 1: Govt.’s SRI Fund commits ₹5,000 cr. to aid MSMEs
Background
Government-backed Self Reliant India Fund (SRIF) said it has committed more than ₹5,000 crore to help small businesses with growth capital in its first year of operations.
The fund, started as part of the government’s ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ programme, has provided approvals to 38 ‘daughter funds’ with a commitment amount of more than ₹5,000 crore.
Self-Reliant India Fund
Why was it needed?
MSME Sector is very important for the Indian economy in terms of contribution to GDP and employment generation.
India has over 6 Crores MSMEs across manufacturing and services sectors which employ over 11 Crores people.
However, one of the biggest challenges faced by MSMEs in India is the inadequate availability of capital.
MSMEs have limited access to external equity primarily because only a handful of players provide early-stage equity capital.
Even if the equity is made available, the uptake would remain low due to:
- Legal Structure of MSMEs prevents infusion of external equity;
- Smaller investment size per enterprise tends to increase transaction cost and management costs for equity investors making this segment relatively less attractive;
- Information asymmetry between promoters, investors and other stakeholders;
- Entrepreneur’s concern regarding control and management;
- Low probability of non-linear return discouraging the Venture Capital ( VC) funding.
Objective
SRI Fund, in the form of Category II Alternative Investment Fund (AIF), will be oriented towards providing funding support to the Daughter Funds for onward provision to MSMEs as growth capital, in the form of equity or quasi-equity.
Alternate Investment Fund
It refers to any privately pooled investment fund, (whether from Indian or foreign sources), in the form of a trust or a company or a body corporate or a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP). Hence, in India, AIFs are private funds which are otherwise not coming under the jurisdiction of any regulatory agency in India.
Alternative investment funds refer to funds that include hedge funds, venture capital, private equity, angel funds, real estate, commodities, collectibles, structured products, etc. Alternative investment funds are an alternative to traditional investment options (stocks, bonds, and cash).
News 2: Make – II Project
Background
The Army has approved five Project Sanction Orders (PSOs) for the development of niche technology by the Indian industry under the Make-II route of defence procurement.
It includes high-frequency man-packed software defined radios, drone kill systems, infantry training weapon simulator, medium-range precision kill systems and 155mm terminally guided munitions.
Make – II Project
The Make-II projects are essentially industry funded, involving design, development and innovative solutions by Indian vendors for development of prototypes. An assurance of order is given after successful prototype development
News 3: The Harvest of Polluted Air
Background
The haze and smoke over Delhi, which has become an annual event for about three weeks in October-November, has triggered a temporary ban on construction activities and the movement of trucks and diesel four-wheelers that do not comply with BS-VI norms.
Delhi pollution: Is agricultural burning the main culprit?
At this time of the year, the burning of agricultural waste in Punjab and Haryana is indeed the dominant reason for the smoke and haze over Delhi.
The particulate matter from the burning contributes 30-40% of the PM2.5 concentrations in Delhi’s air during this time. It is the single largest source of PM2.5 levels on most days during this period.
However, the weather plays a critical role as well — a 30-40% rise in pollutants at any other time of the year would not cause the same impact. Agricultural waste burning in Punjab and Haryana happens in the months of May and June as well, although at a smaller scale.
At that time, it accounts for about 15-20% of PM2.5 concentrations in Delhi’s air. But the air quality over the capital hardly ever becomes this bad.
The reason is the weather, or rather, heat. Hotter air rises higher above the surface, and takes the pollutants along with it. The polluting particles are lifted 2-3 km above the surface or even higher, before getting dispersed.
During October-November, however, the air is not that hot. The pollutants are trapped and tend to get concentrated at lower levels of the atmosphere, resulting in the smoke and haze situation that is being witnessed now.
But why is agricultural waste burned?
This waste is the remains of the paddy crop after it has been harvested. This kind of burning is not specific only to Punjab or Haryana. However, the scale of burning in these states is much bigger than elsewhere.
Even in these states, this practice is relatively new. Even 10 years ago, the crop-burning problem was not this acute.
The burning is necessitated by the need to prepare the fields for the next crop in a very short window of time. Due to a slight shift in the cropping pattern in these states, there is now very little time between the harvesting of one crop and the planting of the next crop.
The traditional method of manually uprooting, or cutting, the stumps of the previous crop is time-consuming, and can delay the sowing of the next crop. So farmers resort to the easier option of burning these remains.
So is there no remedy for this situation?
Several solutions have been suggested, and are being tried. These include suggestions to change the crop cycle, deployment of mechanised equipment for harvesting that would render burning unnecessary, and conversion of this waste into something more useful, like a source of energy, which can become an incentive for not burning.
Hundreds of crores have been allocated in the last few years to buy the necessary equipment or to try out the alternative methods of dealing with this problem. But clearly, these equipment and methods have not been deployed effectively.
Delhi: Would the ban on construction and diesel vehicles work?
Construction has a small contribution to PM2.5 concentration. The particles released from these activities are usually larger, and add to PM10 concentrations. Banning of construction, therefore, is unlikely to have any significant impact on the prevailing situation.
Diesel vehicles, particularly older trucks, are indeed important contributors to high PM2.5 levels. And a ban on their movement can help in improving the situation somewhat.
However trucks, which are the biggest generators of pollutants in the diesel vehicle segment, are not allowed to move inside Delhi during the day in any case. In fact, the movement of trucks only at night results in a significant variation in the PM2.5 levels between day and night times.
UPSC Mains 2015 Question GS Paper – I
Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata are the three mega cities of the country but the air pollution is much more serious problem in Delhi as compared to the other two. Why is this so?
News 4: Governors and their removal
Background
The DMK’s call for removal comes when Governors in several non-BJP-ruled states, including Kerala and Punjab, have expressed disagreements with the government on various issues.
Governor’s appointment, removal
Under Article 155 and 156 of the Constitution, a Governor is appointed by the President and holds office “during the pleasure of the President”. If this pleasure is withdrawn before completion of the five-year term, the Governor has to step down.
As the President works on the aid and advice of the Prime Minister and the council of ministers, in effect, the Governor can be appointed and removed by the central government.
Thus, a Governor is a representative of the Union government in states. Article 163 of the Constitution says the Governor will normally be aided and advised by the Council of Ministers except in those functions which require his discretion.
While the Governor’s duties and responsibilities lie in a particular state, there is no provision for impeaching the Governor.
Governor-state relations
Although envisaged as an apolitical head who must act on the advice of the council of ministers, the Governor enjoys certain powers granted under the Constitution, such as giving or withholding assent to a Bill passed by the state legislature, assenting to the convening of the state legislative assembly, determining the time needed for a party to prove its majority, and which party must be called first do so, generally after a hung verdict in an election.
All these powers have been flashpoints recently — to cite two instances, when the Maharashtra Governor had Devendra Fadnavis sworn in as the chief minister in 2019 amid a hung verdict, only for his government to fall in 80 hours; and when the Punjab Governor in September refused to allow a special session of the Assembly for a vote of confidence in the AAP government.
What happens in case of disagreements
There are no provisions laid down in the Constitution for the manner in which the Governor and the state must engage publicly when there is a difference of opinion. The management of differences has traditionally been guided by respect for each other’s boundaries.
What courts have said
Since the Governor holds office “on the pleasure of the President”, questions have been raised time and again on whether the Governor has any security of tenure, and if the President is obligated to show reasons for recalling a Governor.
In Surya Narain Choudhary vs Union of India (1981), the Rajasthan High Court held that the pleasure of the President was not justiciable, the Governor had no security of tenure and can be removed at any time by the President withdrawing pleasure.
In BP Singhal vs Union of India (2010), the Supreme Court elaborated on the pleasure doctrine. It upheld that “no limitations or restrictions are placed on the ‘at pleasure’ doctrine”, but that “does not dispense with the need for a cause for withdrawal of the pleasure”.
This ruling had come in response to a PIL filed by BJP leader BP Singhal, who had challenged the removal of the Governors of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana and Goa on May 2, 2004 by the President on the advice of the newly formed UPA government.
In its judgment, the Bench, while noting that the President can remove the Governor from office “at any time without assigning any reason and without giving any opportunity to show cause”, the power to remove can’t be exercised in an “arbitrary, capricious or unreasonable manner”.
The Bench held that the court will presume that the President had “compelling and valid” reasons for the removal but if a sacked Governor comes to the court, the Centre will have to justify its decision.
What various commissions have said
Over the years, several panels and commissions have recommended reforms in how Governors are appointed and how they function, such as the Administrative Reforms Commission of 1968, the Sarkaria Commission of 1988, and the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution, headed by retired CJI M N Venkachaliah, in 2001.
The Sarkaria Commission had recommended that Governors are not sacked before completing their five-year tenure, except in “rare and compelling” circumstances. Recommendations have also been made for a provision to impeach the Governor by the Assembly. However, none of these have been implemented.
Other important news
China’s home-grown Beidou satellite system eyes global footprint
China on Friday outlined plans to further expand the global reach of its home-grown Beidou satellite navigation system, billed as its alternative to the U.S.’s Global Positioning System (GPS).
Beijing has, since 2020, also made an outreach to South Asia and is already working, or in discussion with, a number of countries in the region, including Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, over adopting the Beidou satellite (BDS) navigation system.
Its application in China, now included use in guiding drones, autonomous cars, in agriculture and forestry, as well as launching with Chinese mobile phone companies, using Chinese chips, satellite-powered messaging for smartphones that provides for connectivity in remote areas even in the absence of ground reception.
SEWA
Elaben Bhatt, a legendary figure in post-Independent India pioneered SEWA (Self Employed Women’s Association) was one of the most innovative and successful experiments in India in the field of social development.
SEWA empowered women in India in the comprehensive sense of the term on a scale never witnessed before.
It simultaneously provided employment to women and promoted cooperative production, consumption and marketing of textiles which constituted the core of India’s industrialisation. It also decisively influenced the course of trade unionism and labour movement in India.
Foreign Exchange Reserve
Foreign Exchange reserves or Forex reserves are assets such as foreign currencies, gold reserves, treasury bills, etc retained by a central bank or other monetary authority that checks the balance payments and influences the foreign exchange rate of its currency and maintains stability in financial markets.
RBI is the custodian of the Foreign exchange reserves in India. In 2020, India’s forex reserves crossed the $500-billion mark for the first time in history due to higher foreign direct investment, foreign institutional investment. Low oil prices also helped reduce outflows. This gave India an adequate cushion to combat external shocks.
The biggest contributor to this reserve is foreign currency assets followed by the gold, SDR, and reserve with the International Monetary Fund.
Purpose of the Foreign Exchange Reserve:
- The most significant objective behind this is to ensure that RBI has backup funds if their national currency rapidly devalues or becomes altogether insolvent.
- If the value of the Rupee decreases due to an increase in demand of the foreign currency then RBI sells the dollar in the Indian money market so that depreciation of the Indian currency can be checked.
- A country with a good stock of forex has a good image at the international level because the trading countries can be sure about their payments.
- A good forex reserve helps in attracting foreign trade and earns a good reputation in trading partners.
Mathura-Vrindavan aims to become a carbon neutral tourist destination by 2041
Mathura-Vrindavan, one of India’s largest pilgrimage centres, aims to become a “net zero carbon emission” tourist destination by 2041, Uttar Pradesh government officials have told The Hindu.
This means that tourist vehicles will be banned from the entire Braj region, which includes famous pilgrim centres such as Vrindavan and Krishna Janmabhoomi. Instead, only electric vehicles used as public transport will be allowed into the area.
All 252 waterbodies and 24 forests in the area will also be revived, officials privy to the U.P. government’s draft redevelopment plan said.
According to the plan, the Braj region’s annual pilgrim-tourist footfall is expected to multiply from the current level of 2.3 crore to six crore by 2041.
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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.