20 Mar 2019: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

A. GS1 Related

Context

• GoMs on lynchings, harassment on hold
• A panel headed by Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba, which deliberated on measures to check incidents of lynching, had submitted its report to a Group of Ministers headed by Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

Recommendations

• Social media platforms needed to act in a “time bound” manner.
  • Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube and Twitter — would be made accountable for not blocking such malicious posts/videos when brought to their notice
  • FIR could be lodged against their country heads for non-compliance of government orders and they could be prosecuted under law.
• It suggested for tightening of law by inserting clauses in the Indian Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure through parliamentary approval.

B. GS2 Related

Introduction

• Self-defense is defined as act of protecting self, to prevent force or violence perpetuated by opposite forces to cause harm, by applying sufficient level of  counteracting force or violence
• In the words of Bentham, “The Right of Private Defence is absolutely necessary for the protection of one’s life, liberty and property
• Section 96 to 106 of Indian Penal Code, states the law relating to the right of Private Defence of person and property
• The law of private defence is based on two main principles-
  • Everyone has right to defend his own body and property and another’s body and property
  • The Right of Private Defence is not applicable in those cases where accused himself is an aggressive party
• The State is duty bound to protect public property. It implies that it is the fundamental duty of the state to protect its citizens and their property from any harm, and
  • In case the aid or help of state is not available and the danger is overhanging and is unavoidable at the moment then the person is authorized to use his force to protect himself from any harm or injury.

Context

• Supreme Court in its recent judgement has said “The right to self-defense extends not only to one’s own body but to protecting the person and property of another”

What did SC say?

• The right embraces the protection of property, whether one’s own or another person’s, against certain specified offences, namely, theft, robbery, mischief and criminal trespass”.
• The court explained that the right does not arise if there is time to have recourse to the protection of the public authorities. Nor does it extend to the infliction of more harm than is necessary.

Background

• Tamil Nadu forest ranger had shot dead a sandalwood “smuggler” in the Dharmapuri forest area in 1988.
• The trial court sentenced ranger Sukumaran to life in prison for murder.
• The Madras High Court reduced the term to five years.
• In appeal, the apex court concluded that Sukumaran had shot the “smuggler” Basha under threat to his own life and that of his driver, Chinnakolandai.

C. GS3 Related

• According to United Nations officials, cyclone Idai is a category 4 tropical storm, which hit southern Africa.
• The region has been hit by widespread flooding and devastation affecting Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi.
• Idai originated from a tropical depression that formed off the eastern coast of Mozambique.

India’s helping Hand

• The Indian Navy had launched a Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) operation in coordination with local officials to evacuate about 5,000 people stranded at Buzi near Port Beira in Mozambique
  • The Navy has made HADR assistance a major tool of its foreign cooperation initiative in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) which has a high incidence of natural disasters.
• Helicopter operations were also planned to assist the rescue efforts.
• Navy ships provided food, clothes, medicine and potable water to the affected people.

Context

• Forex swap for liquidity has been received well, says RBI Governor.
• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to inject rupee liquidity into the system through long-term foreign exchange buy/sell swap — a first-of-its-kind instrument used for liquidity management.

Details

• The swap is in the nature of a simple Buy/Sell foreign exchange swap with the RBI.
• Reserve Bank of India is using a new tool to enhance liquidity in the system through which it would buy as much as $5 billion from the banks in a swap deal that could inject nearly 35,000 crores into the system.
  • Banks would be required to park dollar funds with RBI with a deal to buy it back from the RBI after three years.
• A similar kind of swap was used in 2013 for banks to swap their dollars received in the FCNR (B) scheme but that was at a fixed rate.
• This scheme is through an auction and is open to all banks which want to swap their dollars for rupees.
• Minimum bid size for the auction is set at $25 million and banks will be allowed to submit multiple bids. However, the aggregate amount of bids submitted by single eligible entity should not exceed the notified amount of auction.

Significance

• According to bankers, the move is seen to lower the dependence on open market operations which have been a significant amount of the overall borrowing.
  • Higher OMOs can distort the rates curve.
• The move would boost RBI’s foreign exchange reserves.

D. GS4 Related

E. Editorials

Note to the Students:

The larger issue concerning the Forest Rights Act has been in the news for some time now. Keeping this in mind, the following editorial analysis takes into account some of the previous articles as well that have been featured in the Hindu newspaper. Here we take two articles into account- namely, “A fight for the forest”, and “Disempowering gram sabhas”.

Larger Background:

• India’s forests are home to lakhs of people, including the many Scheduled Tribes, who live in or near forest areas of the country.
• In 2006, the Forest Rights Act was passed to give legal rights to these forest dwellers, their homes, lands and livelihoods.
• The Act is crucial to the rights of millions of tribals and other forest dwellers spread across multiple states of our country, as it provides for the restitution of deprived forest rights.
• But several wildlife groups say the Act has encouraged further encroachment on the already battered forest lands.
• Challenging the constitutional validity of the Forest Rights Act, they filed several petitions in the apex court in 2008.
• In the long drawn case, the Supreme Court on February 13^th, 2019 directed 21 states to evict illegal forest dwellers whose claims over the land have been rejected by the authorities.
• The eviction order could have affected 11.8 lakh forest dwellers residing in different parts of the country.
• However, following the Centre’s appeal, the apex court has put on hold the eviction order passed on 13th February, 2019. This has proven to be a major reprieve for around 12 lakh forest dwellers and tribals. A two-judge bench comprising of Justices Arun Mishra and Naveen Sinha, had directed state Governments to file an affidavit, giving details about the process adopted in rejecting the claims of forest dwelling scheduled tribes and other traditional forest dwellers.

Action taken by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs:

–          On 27th February, 2019, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs moved the Supreme Court, seeking an urgent hearing. In its plea, the Ministry sought a modification of the previous order.

–          The Ministry also urged the Supreme Court to direct states to file detailed affidavits on procedure followed while examining claims and details regarding rejection.

–          Until this was done, the eviction of forest dwelling scheduled tribes and other traditional forest dwellers, was to be put on hold.

–          The Ministry also said that after examining the affidavits filed by the state governments, it could not ascertain if the rejection orders were passed after following due process and whether appeal mechanisms had been exhausted.

–          The Centre further added that it has been periodically monitoring the implementation of the Forest Rights Act by state governments.

–          Experts opine that the high rate of rejection of claims is mostly due to a wrong interpretation of the Forest Rights Act.

–          The Ministry also underlined the lack of awareness about filing claims among the Gram Sabhas.

–          In many cases, the reasons for rejection were not communicated to the claimants.

–          The Ministry of Tribal Affairs contended that as Forest Dwellers are poor and illiterate, it was difficult to substantiate their claims before competent authorities.

–          The apex court order on the 13th of February, 2019, came in a case challenging the constitutional validity of the Forest Rights Act of 2006.

–          A number of petitions were filed by an NGO named, Wildlife First, and a few retried forest officials, who argued that the Forest Rights Act has led to deforestation and encroachments of forest lands.

–          The petitioners sought recovery of forest land from the possession of forest dwellers.

–          The case has been going on in the Supreme Court since March 2008, and the next hearing will take place on the 10th of July, 2019.

A Brief Note on the Forest Rights Act:

• The Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, was passed on the 18th of December, 2006. This Act is also known as the Forest Rights Act.
• This is act was enacted to recognize and vest forest rights and occupation of forest land for scheduled tribes and other traditional forest dwellers.
• These people have been residing in forests for generations, but whose rights have not been recorded.
• The Act provides the right to hold and live in forest land for habitation or for self-cultivation for livelihood by a member or members of a Forest Dwelling Scheduled Tribe (FDSTs) or Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (OTFDs).
• It gives the right of ownership, access to collect, use and dispose of minor forest produce which has been traditionally collected within or outside village boundaries.
• The act also provides for community rights and rights of entitlement such as fish and other products of water bodies, etc.
• Habitat rights for primitive tribal groups and pre-agricultural communities.
• Right to Protect, regenerate or conserve any community forest resource, which they have been traditionally protecting and conserving for sustainable use.
• Right to in situ rehabilitation in cases of illegal eviction or displacement
• Rights of settlement and conversion of all forest villages, old habitation, etc. into revenue villages.
• However, conversion of forest villages into revenue villages is to be adjudicated by the Gram Sabha Sub-divisional level committee and the District Level Committee as per the procedure.

A Closer Perspective:

• On February 28, 2019, the Supreme Court stayed its order on the eviction of lakhs of Adivasis and other forest dwellers whose claims were rejected under the Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA).
• The Supreme Court of India has asked State governments for a detailed report on whether due process was followed by gram sabhas and authorities under the FRA before claims were rejected.
• For millions of Adivasis and forest dwellers, the stay offers only a temporary relief. But it provides an opportunity to figure out how conservation movements can advocate both nature and social justice in India.
• The petitioners had expressed concern over reports that showed deforestation and fragmentation of land after the FRA implementation began.
• But there is a lack of peer-reviewed studies that quantify the extent of deforestation caused by marginalised communities in comparison to large industrial and infrastructural projects.
• It is vital that scientists and conservationists take up this task, as it is well known that the state is bestowing large companies with kindness and second chances despite severe legal violations during the planning, construction and operation stages of projects.

Ignoring the bigger players:

• Objections to the FRA are often framed as an issue of wildlife conservation versus people’s rights, with no mention of these bigger players who might benefit from this framing.
• In a 2013 study, professor Prakash Kashwan noted how political this framing can be. He wrote that in 2006, well before the FRA implementation started, the Environment Ministry directed State governments to declare all existing Protected Areas as critical tiger habitats, so that they would not be controlled under this Act.
• It is important to note that in 2012, the Ministry tried to remove critical tiger habitats from the purview of the National Board for Wildlife, purportedly to make diversion of forest land easier.
• A question thus arises: Who gets access to forests when forest dwellers are evicted?
• Recently, the Environment Ministry “cancelled” community forest rights given to Adivasi communities in Chhattisgarh’s Hasdeo Arand forest and handed over 2,000 acres of this forest to a coal mining company.
• It is important to note that we have seen instances of forest dwellers protecting these lands from destructive industries and negligent state forces. This is not to claim that forest dwellers have no impact on forests, but the FRA provides for that through critical wildlife habitats (CWH), spaces that can be demarcated to be inviolate as long as people’s rights are settled elsewhere.
• The petitioners in the FRA case are right where they express concern about the lack of progress in demarcating CWHs.
• It is crucial for forest departments to initiate this process in a time-bound manner in the interest of conservation.

Conservation rooted in justice:

• However, for conservation to truly be effective in the long run, it must also be rooted in justice.
• In a paper published in Biological Conservation, John A. Vucetich and others explore how to make conservation not just effective but also just.
• To do this, they argue, conservation actions must be based on the same principles as social justice. Interestingly, the authors, all of whom are wildlife biologists, do not argue for an anthropocentric view of conservation.
• They rightly argue that if conservation calls for restriction of human activities in some way, that sacrifice must be made, except where doing so would result in injustice, especially to the most marginalised communities.

A Critical View of the Court’s Original Eviction Order:

• It is important to note that the court’s original eviction order had the potential to perpetrate such injustice.
• There are serious concerns about the rejection process, unfamiliarity with the language of the FRA, and outdated forest maps.
• The Ministry of Tribal Affairs has been urging district administrations to assist the process of granting rights by making maps and other data available to protect applicants from exploitation.
• Further, the eviction order would not only have alienated marginalised people from their lands, but made wildlife conservation a symbol of an oppressive state.
• It is important to note that large animals share areas with people outside Protected Areas too. Will people accept wildlife in their backyards without retaliation?
• We are not ready to handle the failure of shared spaces as a country, when only 5% of area is protected for wildlife and there is rampant land reallocation for non-forestry uses in other areas.

Editorial Analysis:

• Some experts point out that since 1980, through the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF) has “diverted for non-forest use” over 1.5 million hectares of forest.
• As a matter of fact, critics have raised questions: How many Adivasis and forest-dwellers have been evicted by this ‘lawful’ forest destruction?
• Experts have pointed out that stripping these forests have yielded thousands of crores of rupees for corporations to which a bulk of these forestlands were diverted, and for forest departments via compensatory funds.
• An important question arises: How have the original inhabitants of these forests, already among the most marginalised, coped with the loss of homes and livelihoods?
• On February 13, 2019, the Supreme Court of India ordered the eviction of 1.8 million Adivasi and forest-dwelling claimants under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, to stem supposed forest destruction. On February 28, 2019 it stayed the order until a July, 2019 hearing.
• Shouldn’t the destruction of over 1.5 million hectares of forest, and the misuse of the FCA, seize the court and petitioners? And how would the FRA perform on forest stewardship, where the FCA is failing?

Shredding a reform to bits:

It is important to note that the FRA was enacted to recognise the pre-existing rights of forest-dwellers. Recognising them as “integral to the survival and sustainability of the forest ecosystem,” the FRA gives their gram sabhas “the responsibilities and authority for sustainable use, conservation of biodiversity and maintenance of ecological balance.”

• A key 2009 regulation actualised gram sabha powers by mandating that all forest diversion proposals and compensatory and ameliorative schemes be presented in detail to the relevant gram sabhas to award or withhold its free, prior, informed consent, and also be preceded by the settlement of all rights under the FRA.
• This long overdue move created for the first time a space for forest communities to participate in decision-making around diversion proposals, making forest governance more accountable, ecologically informed and resource just.
• Experts opine that a decade afterwards, the state and corporations are shredding this reform to bits

Findings from a recent study:  

• In 2016, for instance, some experts studied a proposal whereby the Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC) sought 1,400 acres of forestland across seven Adivasi villages of Keonjhar in the ecologically sensitive Gandhamardan mountains, for an iron ore mine.
• The diversion proposal sent by the OMC and the Odisha government to the MoEF included seven copycat gram sabha resolutions, supposedly representing the seven villages.
• Each identical resolution depicted villagers, over 2,000 in all, as saying they were not using the forests for cultivation, house-building or any livelihood, had no individual or community claims to it, and that they “request” the government to implement the forest diversion.
• In the villages, these resolutions evoked shock and rage. Residents told the group of experts that the resolutions were fake.
• After the news report on the case in 2016, the MoEF asked the State government to probe the matter. What followed is a telling comment on forest governance. The probe report, neither shared with villagers nor made public, glossed over testimonies it gathered of 11 villagers.
• On how all seven gram sabha resolutions could be identical, officials said, “This may have been done as the same officials conducted the meetings in all villages, and the agenda of the meetings was also the same.”
• Critics allege that effectively, the OMC, abetted by officials, created resolutions tailored for forest diversion, thus emptying the gram sabhas’ free informed consent powers of any substantive meaning.
• Further, critics point out that in October 2018, despite letters by villages about the forgery and pending FRA claims, the MoEF issued permission to the OMC to destroy this stretch of forest.

Concluding Remarks:

Critics allege that the government has effectively ensured that forest diversion is a given, and the only sanctioned role for Adivasis and forest-dwellers is that of mute rubber stamps.

Critics point out that on February 26, 2019, the MoEF tried to formalise this travesty by writing to all States that FRA compliance is not needed for ‘in-principle’ approval for diversions. They assert that this violates the FRA, and that this move eliminates gram sabhas from decision-making, and makes diversion a violent fait accompli for forest-dwellers.

• However, communities are increasingly rejecting such disempowerment, evident from protests like a 30-km march days ago by villagers in Chhattisgarh’s Hasdeo Arand against the MoEF’s recent decision to divert over 2,000 acres of forests to a mine, despite gram sabha forgery complaints.
• Finally, the Supreme Court should examine this sabotage of the FRA that is damaging our forests and our democracy.
• Conservationists should stand up for the welfare of both wildlife and forest dwellers.
• This is the only way we can build an effective and equitable conservation movement.

2. What has changed post-Balakot?

Q1. Wagon tragedy is associated with

Q2. Consider the following about CoM:

Q3. Which of the following sectors come under the Champion Services Sectors?

Q4. National Productivity Council is a

Q5. Consider the following about Dokdo Islands: