[Mission 2023] INSIGHTS DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS + PIB SUMMARY 22 August 2022

GS Paper 2

Syllabus: International Relations, Challenges to the internal security of India (GS3)

Source: The Hindu

 Directions: Go through the article once, not directly relevant but linking issues (such as India’s laws about Refugees, and International Convention may be important)

Context: The Union Housing Minister tweeted that Rohingya refugees would be shifted to flats meant for economically weaker sections (EWS)

• The Minister said “India respects & follows the UN Refugee Convention 1951 & provides refuge to all, regardless of their race, religion or creed.

Rohingyas:

• Rohingya, an ethnic group, mostly Muslim, hail from the Rakhine province of western Myanmar and speak a Bengali dialect.
• Myanmar has classified them as “resident foreigners” or “associate citizens.
• They were forced to leave Myanmar in large numbers after several waves of violence, which first began in 2012.
  • • • The Rohingya first came to Delhi in 2012.

What is the process of deportation?

 Have any Rohingya been deported?

• Human Rights Watch (HRW) report: As per it, since October 2018, India has deported 12 Rohingya to Myanmar, “claiming that they left voluntarily.

 Status of Rohingya in India:

• Minister of State for Home: The then Minister of State for Home informed Parliament that there are around 40,000 Rohingya in India, of which around 5,700 are in Jammu and also in Telangana, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Rajasthan.
• UN refugee agency: Of these, only 16,000 are said to be registered with the UN refugee agency.
  • • • The MHA claimed that the exact number is not known as many of them enter the country clandestinely.

What is India’s stand on refugees?

• India is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol.
• All foreign undocumented nationals are governed as per:
  • • • The Foreigners Act, 1946
      • The Registration of Foreigners Act, 1939
      • The Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920
      • The Citizenship Act, 1955.

Illegal Migrants:

• Foreign nationals who enter the country without valid travel documents are treated as illegal migrants.

 Refugee:

• Under the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees and the subsequent 1967 Protocol, a refugee is any person who is outside their country of origin and unable or unwilling to return owing to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

Insta Links:

Rohingya

Foreigners Act, 1946

Mains links:

Link the issue with the debate around Human Rights Vs  National Security. Link it with Rights of Refugees and constitutional Provisions regarding it.   Also, controversy regarding Citizenship Act is important here.

Q. Analyze internal security threats and transborder crimes along Myanmar, Bangladesh and Pakistan borders including the Line of Control (LoC). Also, discuss the role played by various security forces in this regard. (UPSC 2020)

Prelims Links:

GS paper 2

Syllabus: Structure, organization and functioning of executive and judiciary, issues of money laundering and link with terrorism etc

Source: The Hindu

Directions: These topics are important- PMLA, right to privacy, court’s role in bail etc. Learn the crux of the issue.

Issue:

• SC (In the Puttaswamy Case (9 bench judge), 2017), while upholding the right to privacy, it overruled the decision in ADM Jabalpur v. Shivkant Shukla (1976).
  • • • ADM Jabalpur was a landmark and controversial case in which a 5 bench judge (including P N Bhagawati) ruled that “ a person’s right to not be unlawfully detained (i.e. habeas corpus) can be suspended”.
        • • Bhagwati later in 2011 agreed with the popular opinion that this judgement was short-sighted and apologised.
      • However, the recent decision of SC (in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary v. Union of India) upheld the constitutionality of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), is an injustice to the dictum of “bail and not jail”.

Draconian preconditions for bail in PMLA:

• Onus on accused: To be eligible for bail, the arrested person must persuade the court that he is not guilty of the money laundering offences brought by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
• Grounds for arrest: There is no definition of what qualifies as grounds for arrest and how detailed such grounds need to be.
• Confessional statement: The judgment considers the confessional statement to be admissible evidence, such evidence can be presented to the judge at a bail hearing as well.
• NIA v. Zahoor Watali (2019): For considering bail under UAPA, the court only has to see whether a prima facie case against the accused is made out.

Issues with the Vijay Madanlal Choudhary v. Union of India judgement:

• Crime of Money laundering under serious offences: The court overturned its decision in Nikesh Tarachand Shah v. Union of India (2017) that had directed treating the offence of ‘money laundering’ as less heinous and therefore differently a crime from ‘terrorism’ under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA).
• Money laundering covers other offences: The court ignored the fact that under the PMLA, money laundering also covers monies associated with offences relating to infringement of copyrights and trademarks, arts and antiquities, securities, information technology, companies, and air and water pollution.
• Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR): The court also declared that the ED does not need to share the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) with the accused.

• • • • The same notion of secrecy is not applicable to equivalent documents (FIRs) for agencies like the police and the Central Bureau of Investigation.

What is Bail:

• The CrPC does not define the word bail but only categories offences under the Indian Penal Code as ‘bailable’ and ‘non-bailable’.
• The CrPC empowers magistrates to grant bail for bailable offences as a matter of right.
• This would involve release on furnishing a bail bond, without or without security.
• In the case of Non-bailable offences, a magistrate would determine if the accused is fit to be released on bail.

Insta Links:

PMLA

Mains Link :

This article is linked to as much internal security as to polity. Do remember some provisions of PMLA and its mandate.

Q. India’s proximity to two of the world’s biggest illicit opium-growing states has enhanced her internal security concerns. Explain the linkages between drug trafficking and other illicit activities such as gunrunning, money laundering and human trafficking. What counter-measures should be taken to prevent the same? (UPSC 2018)

Prelims link:

GS Paper 3

Syllabus: Effects of liberalisation on the economy

Source: Indian Express

Direction: No so important article, but do keep a watch on the impact of US economic policies on the Indian Economy.

Context:  Normally when the US Fed (central Bank) raises its interest rate to control inflation, it raises the fear of recession as consumption and demand decrease (people have less money) and so unemployment surges. However this time the US economy is creating jobs even as the Fed is hiking rates.

Recent Trend:

Economic output in the US is contracting in line with the Fed’s rate-tightening. But companies are still hiring in droves.

• • • Over the past six months, jobs have been created in the US at the rate of nearly half a million a month.
    • Lowest unemployment: 5%, the unemployment rate is the lowest since 1970 in the US.

Reason for this Labour market paradox:

As against the previous crisis ( pandemic-induced 2020 recession, financial crisis of 2007-08, and the dot-com bust of 2000-01) have all been because of excessive debt-related built up in housing and Internet infrastructure, and it took nearly a decade for the economy to absorb them. By contrast, excess liquidity, not debt, is the most likely catalyst for a recession trend today. And so the economy is able to bounce back with more job creation.

Fed hikes’ impact elsewhere

A sharper-than-expected hike in rates in the US leads to:

• foreign investors leaving emerging markets like India and investing more in the US (greater interest rate)
• Impact on currency markets, stemming from outflows of funds: Depreciation of Rupee

What is a Recession?

It is a macroeconomic term that refers to a slowdown or a massive contraction in economic activities for a long enough period, or it can be said that when a recessionary phase sustains for long enough, it is called a recession.

Depression:

It is a deep and long-lasting period of negative economic growth, with output falling for at least 12 months and GDP falling by over 10% or it can be referred to as a severe and prolonged recession.

Insta Links

Link between rising food prices and central banks raising interest rates

Mains Link

Although the article is about US Economy, but link it with its impact on India including FII and FDI investment and depreciation of currency rate (thus making Indian import costlier). Now attempt the Qn.

Q. Analyse the impact of recent interest rate hike by US Federal Reserve (Fed)’s on Indian economy. (250 Words)

Prelims Link

GS Paper 3

Syllabus: Internal Security

Source: The Hindu

Direction: Those preparing for mains this time, plz have note ready on FRT, its working, its implications on individual rights and security of the nation. You may note down the points from it.

Context: Delhi Police using facial recognition technology

Facial recognition Technology is an automated process of comparing two images of faces to determine whether they represent the same individual. Also, recently DigiYatra (facial recognition technology) has been operationalised at many Indian airports.

Potential benefits in various aspects of law enforcement

• Helps in Finding missing people and identifying perpetrators.
  • Identification of Missing Children: In April 2018, the Delhi Police trial of a facial recognition system commissioned by the Delhi High Court helped correctly identify approximately 3000 missing children.
• Improving outcomes in the area of Criminal identification and verification.
  • Pehchaan citizen app in Uttar Pradesh: The app provides users with a confidence score of the likelihood that two faces belong to the same person by running the face against the All India Criminal Database.
• Better security measures in banks and airports.
  • The government‘s Digi-Yatra policy is to give a ―seamless, hassle-free, and paperless journey experience to every air traveller in India.
• Helps civilian verification when needed and helps in the reduction of fake IDs.
• Drastically reduces human touchpoints: Facial recognition requires fewer human resources than other types of security measures, such as fingerprinting.
• International usage: Several countries are already using FRT on a large scale for ease of internal security and in their criminal justice system e.g. China.

Issues associated with the use of FRT

• Accuracy rates fall starkly based on race and gender: This can result in a false positive, where a person is misidentified as someone else, or a false negative where a person is not verified as themselves.
  • Delhi Police treats matches of above 80% similarity generated by its facial recognition technology (FRT) system as positive results (as per RTI response).
• A greater threat to individual and societal privacy.
  • The FRT system violates the right to privacy: As per the Puttaswamy judgment, Privacy is a fundamental right, even in public spaces, Large-scale recordings, storing and analysis of images undermine this right because it means it won’t be possible to do anything in public without the state knowing about it.
• Issues of ‘Function Creep’: Delhi police widening of the purpose for FRT (from finding missing children to surveillance) demonstrates an instance of ‘function creep’ wherein a technology or system gradually widens its scope from its original purpose to encompass and fulfil wider functions.
• Violates personal rights: Can infringe on personal freedoms.
  • Informed consent: Facial recognition technology is typically deployed without consent, by both the private and public sectors.
• State surveillance: The technology makes it possible for Government and the law enforcement agencies to identify people who attend or participate in rallies or in any other form of political or social dissent and thereafter potentially put them under surveillance to track their movement.
  • g. Allegations of the Delhi Police were using FRT to surveil the anti-CAA protests in the 2019, 2020 northeast Delhi riots, the 2021 Red Fort violence, and the 2022 Jahangirpuri riots.
• Creates data vulnerabilities: There is also concern about the storage of facial recognition data, as these databases have the potential to be breached.
  • Provides opportunities for fraud and other crimes.
• Factors that could influence the efficacy, accuracy, and potential biases of FRT in India include skin colour, geography, religion, and caste.

Conclusion

With the right regulation and protections, facial recognition technology can make the world safer, more convenient and smarter.

Insta Links

FRT

Mains Links

This is an important having linkages to national security, fundamental rights, Governance as well ethics of surveillance. Do link it to various aspects of the syllabus. Attempt this Question.

Q. Do you think the recently proposed automated facial recognition system for improving outcomes in the area of Criminal identification and verification is opaque, vague and prone to misuse? Critically analyse. (250 words)

Prelims Link

GS Paper 4

What an Ideal Police System should be like?

Ideal Police System is:

• Where citizens are able to file their complaints without having to go to a police station.
• Where citizens got due service from the police without needing to visit the police station.
• Utilizing technology as it allows the citizen to interact with the police force — and even to lodge a complaint — from the comfort of his or her home and computer or mobile phone.

Indian Police Service is an important service

• IPS was one of the pillars of the national administrative system.
• As members of an all-India service, they would serve in individual states but represent a national idea.

What is its mandate?

• Their mandate was to uphold a common concept of the rule of law and the democratic polity and in that sense; they were guardians of not just the public order and honest conduct but of the majesty of the law.
• To discharge their duties without fear or favour, and without time delay.
• They should be unafraid to give the political executive honest and unbiased advice.
• Their holy book and the constant guide must be the Constitution.