IASbaba’s Daily Current Affairs (Prelims + Mains Focus)- 21st November 2017

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NATIONAL 

TOPIC: General Studies 2

• Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.
• Salient features of the Representation of People’s Act.

Bringing Transparency in Political Funding

Transparency in political funding is important:

Transparency in political funding is the global norm. The 255th Law Commission Report on Electoral Reforms observed that opacity in political funding results in “lobbying and capture” of the government by big donors.
The lower the transparency in political funding, the easier it is for the super-rich to buy the kind of government they want.

Issues with political funding:

Transparency in political funding in India is abysmal (very low).

• According to the NGO, Association of Democratic Reforms, 69% of the income of political parties is from unknown sources.
• Not only is the source unknown for the greater chunk of a party’s income, even the very existence of this income is ‘unknown’, as it is not captured in any official record — either with the Election Commission (EC) or with the IT department.

Declaration norms:

Declaration norms for political funding are traditionally governed by four legislations:

• The Representation of the People Act (RPA).
• The IT Act.
• The Companies Act, and
• The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA).

Any anonymous cash donation to a political party now is limited to Rs 2,000 — a sharp drop from the Rs 20,000 limit earlier.

Other rules and regulations:

• Companies have to declare in their profit and loss (P&L) statement the party-wise break-up of political donations.
• A company must be at least three years old to contribute to a party. Its contribution cannot be more than 7.5% of its average net profit in the three preceding years.
• Parties cannot accept foreign contributions.

Recent changes:

• The Finance Act 2016, amended the FCRA to allow political parties to accept donations from foreign companies.
• The Finance Act 2017 amended the RPA, the Companies Act, the IT Act and the Reserve Bank of India Act has been amended to enable the issuance of electoral bonds.

What are electoral bonds?

Electoral bonds are essentially bearer bonds that ensure donor anonymity. They are like cash, but with an expiry date. These would be sold through notified banks.
Let’s say company ‘X’ wishes to contribute Rs. 100 crore to political party ‘Y’. It could buy ten electoral bonds of Rs. 10 crore each from bank ‘A’. These bonds would carry only a serial number and not the identity of the buyer. X would have these bonds deposited in Y’s designated account with bank ‘B’. B would know that this money belongs to Y but it doesn’t record the fact that it has come from X.

Amendments made:

• The 7.5% cap on company donations has been eliminated (which means even loss-making companies can make unlimited donations).
• The requirement for a company to have been in existence for three years has been done away with (paving the way for fly-by-night shell companies).
• Companies no longer need to declare the names of the parties to which they have donated (so shareholders won’t know where their money has gone).

For political parties:

• They no longer need to reveal the donor’s name for contributions above Rs. 20,000, provided these are in the form of electoral bonds.
• In a nutshell, a foreign company can anonymously donate unlimited sums to an Indian political party without the EC or the IT department ever getting to know.

Danger to democracy:

The government’s stated rationale for introducing electoral bonds was that they would protect donors from harassment by enabling anonymous contributions.
The argument does not hold valid as only the government is in a position to harass, or alternatively, protect, donors from harassment by non-state harassers.

National Electoral Fund: An alternative

Former Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi has suggested an alternative- a National Electoral Fund.

• All donors can contribute to this fund.
• The funds would be allocated to political parties in proportion to the votes they get.

This would protect the identity of donors, and also weed out black money from political funding.

Conclusion:

Declaration to an institution is not the same as disclosure to the public. The reforms in political funding should be such that the system becomes transparent thereby helping tackle black money issue, building public faith and strengthening democracy.

Connecting the dots:

• Bringing transparency in political funding is a long-sought reform. Electoral bonds proposed by the government in this regard does little to bring the required transparency. Critically analyze.
• Which is a better alternative for bringing transparency in political funding- Electoral Bonds or National Electoral Fund.

Also read: Political funding in India: towards more transparency?

NATIONAL

TOPIC: General Studies 2:

• Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.
• Important aspects of governance

Digital divide: Reaching out to those who are at the bottom of digital pyramid

Background:

Digitization has received a significant policy push in India. There has been an emphasis on linking bank accounts and mobile number with Aadhaar, maintaining digital records, enforcing digital payments through demonetization or Aadhaar-enabled payments systems and making digitization as one of the core requirements in GST (goods and services tax) filings.

Preventing a digitally divided India:

The success of digitization crucially depends on its adoption by the majority of the population living in far-flung rural areas.
Without this, the result could be islands of the unempowered communities at the bottom of the digital pyramid with vast skill gaps risking a digitally divided India.

The challenges of digitization at the bottom of the digital pyramid:

• Smartphones are expected to share the bulk of the workload in digital India. However, their share currently is around 33% of the mobile users (expected to reach around 40% by 2019). The mobile phone internet user penetration among Indian population is still about 24% and even by 2020 is expected to reach just 35%.
• Financial exclusion-
  A recent study by Assocham and EY reports that 19% of the Indian population remains unbanked or financially excluded.
  Digital India programme without addressing issues like this will only magnify the digital inequality in the country.
• Uninterrupted access to power-
  Around 22% of rural households (roughly 40 million) across the country still do not have access to electricity. More than half of the rural households in states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are yet to have access to power.

What needs to be done?

Increasing absorptive capacity in rural areas:

• Training-
  Internet and mobile application training aimed at less educated and the low-income groups. Users with working knowledge of internet and smartphone applications are more likely to accept digitalization tools.
• Task-technology fit:
  Digitization tools and technology should meet the needs of people at the bottom of the digital pyramid which could get served by digitization. Task-technology fit is significant for continual usage of new-age digital devices.
• The service charges should be commensurate with the benefits of digitization. This becomes more important for people at the bottom of the digital pyramid who stay stretched to make both ends meet on a daily basis.
• Structural assurance-
  Existence of technological and legal institutions to ensure security would increase adaptability. Initial confidence in mobile-based banking can be secured through structural assurance.
  The right to privacy is the first step in that direction.
• Literacy-
  The aptitude to read, write, comprehend and communicate is a must to participate in the digitization movement. India’s current literacy rate is at 80%, and there are expectations of achieving 100% over the next five years. Literacy would lead to participation and empowerment in a digital India only when it can ensure lifelong reading ability.

Conclusion:
There is a need of further thoughts, plans, programmes and actions to touch the population at the bottom of the digital pyramid on a continuous basis to make a unified, powerful and an empowered Digital India.

Connecting the dots:

• Success of digitization crucially depends on its adoption by the majority of the population living in far-flung rural areas. Thus, there is an urgent need of increasing the absorptive capacity of people living in such areas. Discuss.

PRELIMS+MAINS FOCUS

 M-STRiPES

Part of: Main GS Paper III – Environment and Ecology, Biodiversity, Impacts of Climate Change

Key PT pointers:

• An app named M-STRiPES (Monitoring System For Tigers-Intensive Protection and Ecological Status) has beendeveloped by the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun.
• It will be used for the first time in the forthcoming All-India Tiger Estimation, to be taken up in December-January.
• The national tiger estimates is conducted once in four years, with the first conducted in 2006.
• It is a free app that will be made available to staff participating in the tiger census exercise, and they will feed in their observation during the carnivore sign survey and transect marking.
• Details such as pellet density, vegetation status and human disturbance, if any, will also be recorded.

Central focus:

• The use of the app would ensure a more robust estimate.
• With the availability of M-STRiPES, human error will be eliminated.
• The GIS-based app will give real-time data on forest habitats besides providing live update of monitoring and patrolling activities.

Article link: Click here

The Kaizala App

Part of: Mains GS Paper II- Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors.

Key Pointers:

• The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has come forward to extend its cooperation to Andhra Pradesh in achieving the Open Defecation Free (ODF) goal.
• Real time governance and 1,100 parishkara vedika- E-initiatives taken by the government were appreciated.
• Gates was impressed with the Kaizala app launched by the government. More than 30 departments and over 70,000 users in Andhra Pradesh government use Microsoft Kaizala for day-to-day work.

About the Kaizala app:

• Launched by technology giant Microsoft.
• It is a productivity app that has been designed to enhance the collaboration and communication experience for Indian enterprises.
• The ‘Made for India’ app is designed for large group communications and work management.
• It works even on 2G networks.
• The product will make it possible for organisations to interact with people within the organisation as well as outside like partners and vendors in a seamless manner.

The app has seen significant adoption among Indian organisations like Yes Bank, Apollo Telemedicine, Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan etc.

Article link: Click here

Deal for ATGM with Israel cancelled

Part of: Main GS Paper III – Internal Security

Key pointers:

• Defence ministry cancelled the nearly-done deal for Spike Anti-Tank Guided Missiles (ATGM) with Israel. raise questions about her claim.
• With the DRDO promising to provide a Man-Portable Anti-Tank Guided Missile (MPATGM) in the next four years, the ministry decided to retract the tender, thereby bringing the process to an end.

The withdrawal of the tender leaves the army in an uncertain state-

• The army is short of nearly 68,000 missiles and has zero stocks in the War Wastage Reserves (WWR) against a government stipulation of a minimum of 10 days of WWR stocks.
• Similar has been the state of modernisation of other arms of the army, whether it be Air Defence or Army Aviation or Engineers.
• As the armed forces are tasked to prepare for a two-front collusive threat — and with tensions with China rising after the Doklam face-off — such deficiencies cannot be allowed to continue.

The situation is complicated by the DRDO’s uninspiring track record in producing high-end weapons.

Article link: Click here

Usage of pellet guns resulting into enormous cost

Part of: Main GS Paper III – Internal Security

Key pointers:

• At least 2,524 people were injured by the use of pellet guns by security forces during the protests that rocked the Valley following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in July last year.
• The government’s data speaks of the enormous costs — social, political and economic — of the indiscriminate use of pellet guns.

What now?

• The governments, both in J&K and the Centre, must go beyond piecemeal efforts and formulate a comprehensive policy for compensation as well as re-examine the use of pellet guns.
• The decision to provide government jobs to those who have been blinded, apart from providing economic relief, could be a step towards giving the aggrieved and alienated a stake in the system.

Pellet guns were first introduced in the state after the 2010 protests, when 100 people were killed in firing by the security forces.

Article link: Click here

Moscow Declaration

Part of: Main GS Paper II – Social issue, Welfare and Health

Health ministers, NGOs, and private sector representatives from 120 countries adopted the Moscow Declaration.

Key PT pointers:

• The countries committed themselves to eliminating additional deaths from HIV co-infection by 2020 and achieving synergy in coordinated action against TB and non-communicable diseases.
• A co-infection is when a person suffers from two infections at the same time.
• Described as a milestone in the history of TB.
• India is among the signatories to the declaration.
• India’s decision to move to a daily drug regimen for TB won applause.

The declaration:

• The Moscow declaration emphasised the need for fixing multisectoral responsibility towards ending TB by 2035, the global target.
• The framework is critical to creating an enabling operational environment for multisectoral action, fast-tracking priority interventions, monitoring overall progress, and accelerating advocacy at all levels within different sectors, all of which is necessary to achieve committed milestones and the targets to end the TB epidemic.
• It said that multi-drug resistant TB would be tackled as a national public health crisis.
• A national inter-ministerial commission will be set up by 2018 to achieve “fast-tracking universal access to health care through all state and non-state care providers by adopting WHO-recommended TB diagnostics, drugs, technologies and standards of care, and ensuring attention to high-risk groups and vulnerable populations such as migrants, refugees and prisoners.”

Article link: Click here

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