DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS IAS | UPSC Prelims and Mains Exam –27th May 2024

Syllabus

• Prelims & Mains – Economy

Context: A tax package for the ultra-wealthy in India including an annual wealth tax and an inheritance tax for those with net wealth exceeding Rs 10 crore accompanied by redistributive policies has been proposed by a report of the World Inequality Lab.

Background:-

• Recently, the debate on inheritance tax had picked up after Sam Pitroda, a former adviser to Rajiv Gandhi and an associate of Rahul Gandhi, described the inheritance tax in the United States as an “interesting law”.

ABOUT WORLD INEQUALITY LAB (WIL)

• The World Inequality Lab (WIL) is a research organization that aims to promote understanding of global inequality dynamics.
• The lab gathers social scientists committed to helping everyone understand the drivers of inequality worldwide through evidence-based research.
• The WIL hosts and maintains the World Inequality Database, the most comprehensive open-access database on global inequality dynamics. One of WIL’s core mission is to maintain and expand the World Inequality Database.
• It works in close coordination with a large international network of researchers covering nearly seventy countries.
• The lab is involved in various projects such as the Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities project, the Climate Inequality Report, and the World Inequality Report.
• The WIL is based at the Paris School of Economics. It is committed to empowering civil society and reinforcing democracy, powered with data.

Key takeaways from the Report and associated note released by the researchers:

• India’s top 1 per cent income and wealth shares have reached historical highs and are among the very highest in the world.
• The report proposes an annual wealth tax and an inheritance tax for those with net wealth exceeding Rs 10 crore, equivalent to the top 0.04 per cent of the adult population (~370,000 adults), who currently hold over a quarter of the total wealth.
• It suggests raising phenomenally large tax revenues while leaving 99.96 per cent of the adults unaffected by the tax.
• Outlining a baseline scenario, the report said, a 2 per cent annual tax on net wealth exceeding Rs 10 crore and a 33 per cent inheritance tax on estates exceeding Rs 10 crore in valuation would generate a 2.73 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in revenues.
• An inheritance tax would directly tackle the unfair advantage that unearned dynastic wealth renders to individuals solely based on the accident of birth.
• However, the report noted that since the inheritance tax comes into force when wealth is bequeathed (i.e. upon the death of the dynast), hence, it delivers relatively small tax revenues on an annual basis.
• On the other hand, a small wealth tax would deliver significant annual revenues (given the larger base) while also dampening accumulation at the very top..
• The tax package needs to be accompanied by redistributive policies to support the poor, lower castes, and middle classes. The report cited an example of how the baseline scenario would allow doubling the current public spending on education, which has stagnated at 2.9 per cent of GDP over the past 15 years.

Source: Indian Express

Syllabus

• Mains – Disaster Management

Context: The Maharashtra government has ordered an investigation into Thursday’s chemical factory blaze which killed at least 11 people in an industrial complex in Thane and injured more than 60 others. By all accounts, the food colouring factory used highly reactive chemicals.

Background:

• The tragedy should draw attention to frequent industrial accidents, need to plug regulatory and knowledge deficits.

Key Takeaways

• India has witnessed a surge in severe fire and explosion-related accidents in industrial and commercial establishments, in recent years.
• India is among the top six chemical manufacturing countries in the world. Diverse industries — pharmaceuticals, pesticides, fertilisers, paints and petrochemicals — collectively account for more than 70,000 of the products that are made from chemicals. The sector contributes about 11 per cent of India’s exports and employs more than two million people.
• Although the country has 15 Acts and 19 rules governing different aspects of the chemical industry, none of them deals exclusively with the sector. At the same time, the overlapping jurisdictions of different ministries work to the detriment of effective regulation.
• NDMA estimates that the country reported 130 chemical accidents in the last decade, which claimed more than 250 lives. It, however, gives no details of these accidents.
• The horrors of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy in 1984 did lead to a rethinking on industrial safety, but accidents have not been followed by serious stock-taking — these include the Jaipur oil depot fire of 2009, Thane explosion of 2016, Visakhapatnam gas leak of 2020 and the blaze at a natural gas well in Tinsukia in 2020. A rapidly-industrialising country cannot afford such a knowledge deficit.

Changes in regulatory environment

• Significant changes in the regulatory environment made to enhance ease of doing business may have contributed to the problem of rising accidents.
• To simplify the conduct of business in the country, the central government diluted industrial safety laws, such as The Boilers Act, 1923 and Indian Boilers Regulation 1950 – vital regulations in the manufacturing sector.
• Earlier, the law required the boiler inspector to inspect factories periodically and certify the safety of boilers. This function was transferred to specialised ‘third-party’ agents with the requisite expertise.
• The reforms also changed the compliance requirement under the Factories Act, 1948 – the cornerstone of the edifice of labour regulation. The legal obligation was moved from mandatory inspection by government inspectors – with powers to penalise the owner/manager for violating the factory laws – to self-certification by the owner/manager.
• Therefore, the changed rules view a factory inspector as a facilitator of business, and not an enforcer of labour laws to protect the interests and safety of workers.

Source: Ideas for India

Syllabus

• Prelims – Current Event

Context: International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt its offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah and withdraw from the enclave, in a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide, citing “immense risk” to the Palestinian population.

Background:

• Friday’s decision marked the third time this year the 15-judge panel has issued preliminary orders seeking to rein in the death toll and alleviate humanitarian suffering in Gaza. While orders are legally binding, the court has no police to enforce them.

About International Court of Justice (ICJ)

• The ICJ is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations (UN). It is also known as the World Court.
• It was established in June 1945 by the Charter of the United Nations and began work in April 1946.
• The court is the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ), which was brought into being through, and by, the League of Nations, 1922.
• After World War II, the League of Nations and PCIJ were replaced by the United Nations and ICJ respectively.
• The PCIJ was formally dissolved in April 1946, and its last president, Judge José Gustavo Guerrero of El Salvador, became the first president of the ICJ.

Seat and role

• Like the PCIJ, the ICJ is based at the Peace Palace in The Hague.
• It is the only one of the six principal organs of the UN that is not located in New York City. (The other five organs are the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, and the Secretariat.)
• According to the ICJ’s own description, its role is “to settle, in accordance with international law, legal disputes submitted to it by States and to give advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by authorized United Nations organs and specialized agencies”. The court “as a whole must represent the main forms of civilization and the principal legal systems of the world”.
• English and French are the ICJ’s official languages.
• All members of the UN are automatically parties to the ICJ statute, but this does not automatically give the ICJ jurisdiction over disputes involving them. The ICJ gets jurisdiction only if both parties consent to it.
• The judgment of the ICJ is final and technically binding on the parties to a case. There is no provision of appeal; it can at the most, be subject to interpretation or, upon the discovery of a new fact, revision.
• However, the ICJ has no way to ensure compliance of its orders, and its authority is derived from the willingness of countries to abide by them.

Judges of the court

• The ICJ has 15 judges who are elected to nine-year terms by the UN General Assembly and Security Council, which vote simultaneously but separately.
• To be elected, a candidate must receive a majority of the votes in both bodies, a requirement that sometimes necessitates multiple rounds of voting. Elections are held at the UNHQ in New York during the annual UNGA meeting.
• A third of the court is elected every three years.
• The president and vice-president of the court are elected for three-year terms by secret ballot. Judges are eligible for re-election.
• Four Indians have been members of the ICJ so far.
• Justice Dalveer Bhandari, former judge of the Supreme Court, has been serving at the ICJ since 2012.

India at the ICJ

• India has been a party to a case at the ICJ on six occasions, four of which have involved Pakistan. They are:
  • Right of Passage over Indian Territory (Portugal v. India, culminated 1960);
  • Appeal Relating to the Jurisdiction of the ICAO Council (India v. Pakistan, culminated 1972);
  • Trial of Pakistani Prisoners of War (Pakistan v. India, culminated 1973);
  • Aerial Incident of 10 August 1999 (Pakistan v. India, culminated 2000);
  • Obligations concerning Negotiations relating to Cessation of the Nuclear Arms Race and to Nuclear Disarmament (Marshall Islands v. India, culminated 2016);
  • (Kulbhushan) Jadhav (India v. Pakistan, culminated 2019).

Source: Al Jazeera

Syllabus

• Mains – GS 2

Context: The Calcutta High Court has struck down a series of orders passed by the West Bengal government between March 2010 and May 2012 by which 77 communities (classes), 75 of which were Muslim, were given reservation under the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category.

Background:

• A division Bench found that religion had been the “sole” basis for the West Bengal Backward Classes Commission and the state government to provide reservation, which is prohibited by the Constitution and court orders.

Key Takeaways from judgement

• As with most cases where reservations have been challenged, the HC relied heavily on the Supreme Court’s judgment in Indra Sawhney v Union of India (Mandal judgment).A nine-judge Bench had held in 1992 that OBCs cannot be identified and given reservation only on the basis of religion. The SC also held that all states must establish a Backward Classes Commission to identify and recommend classes of citizens for inclusion and exclusion in the state OBC list.
• In the present case, both the Commission and the government submitted that the Commission had identified the 77 classes based on applications received from citizens, and then recommended their inclusion to the government.
• The HC noted that the Commission’s recommendation had been made with “lightning speed” after the then Chief Minister publicly announced a quota for Muslims (in February 2010), without using any “objective criteria” to determine the backwardness of these classes.
• “Religion indeed appears to have been the sole criterion for declaring these communities as OBCs”, and the reports that the Commission submitted were meant only to “curtain and hide such religion specific recommendations”, the court said.
• “This court’s mind is not free from doubt that the said community has been treated as a commodity for political ends”, and that the 77 classes identified were being treated as a “vote bank”, it said.

Sub-classification of OBCs

• The court also struck down portions of West Bengal’s 2012 Act, including (i) the provision that allowed the state government to “sub-classify” OBC reservations into OBC-A and OBC-B categories for “more backward” and “backward” classes respectively, and (ii) the provision allowing the state to amend the Schedule of the 2012 Act to add to the list of OBCs.
• The Commission conceded that the government did not consult it before creating the sub-classification within OBC reservations — but argued that such an action was outside its “purview”.
• The court held that the state government must consult the Commission to make a fair and impartial classification, including sub-classification.
• Sub-classification is meant to address the different levels of deprivation faced by different communities, which the court held could only be done by referring to material collected by the Commission.

Source: Indian Express

Syllabus

• Prelims & Mains – Environment

Context: Though the union government has pumped in almost Rs 40,000 crore into the flagship Namami Gange programme since 2014, several concerns – including dysfunctional sewage treatment plants and bad governance – abound.

Background:

• The Ganga – India’s longest river, and one that supports a population of around 400 million by one estimate – has been the target of cleaning programmes since the mid 1980s, due to the sewage and industrial effluents that find their way to the river

About Namami Ganga :

• Namami Gange Programme is an Integrated Conservation Mission, approved as ‘Flagship Programme’ by the Union Government in June 2014 with budget outlay of Rs.20,000 Crore to accomplish the twin objectives of effective abatement of pollution, conservation and rejuvenation of National River Ganga.
• union government launched the Namami Gange programme in 2014 as part of the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) under the Ministry of Jal Shakti’s Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation.
• Main pillars of the Namami Gange Programme are:-
  • Sewerage Treatment Infrastructure
  • River-Front Development
  • River-Surface Cleaning
  • Bio-Diversity
  • Afforestation
  • Public Awareness
  • Industrial Effluent Monitoring
  • Ganga Gram
• Its implementation has been divided into Entry-Level Activities (for immediate visible impact), Medium-Term Activities (to be implemented within 5 years of time frame) and Long-Term Activities (to be implemented within 10 years).

Shortcomings:

• STPs aren’t functioning to their designed capacities.
• The lack of flow in the river is not being addressed effectively.
• River linking projects such as the Ken-Betwa river linking project will spell doom for the flow of the Ganga because it will reduce water flow in the river. Both Ken and Betwa rivers  join the Yamuna along UP-Madhya Pradesh border, which in turn merges with the Ganga at Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh.
• Another concern are river tourism projects such as the tent cities in Ayodhya. These uber-luxury properties have been built on the floodplains of the river.
• Experts have also pointed out that the focus on cleaning up the main stem of the river has diverted attention away from the status of the smaller tributaries and streams that drain into the Ganga as it flows through the Gangetic river basin from Uttarakhand, to Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal.

Source: The Wire

Syllabus

• Mains – GS 4

Context: Media trial is a significant issue in India with serious ramifications

Background:

• The notion “Media Trial” or “Trial by Media” got its name in the United States of America during the period of 19th Century and became familiar with the Indian legal system in the famous, or rather, infamous case of “K.M Nanavati v. State of Maharashtra”. It is not a legal term that is defined in any statute or any legal glossary.

Media Trial:

• It is generally considered as the process in which media publishes their own versions of facts in newspapers, news websites, and news channels in order to sensationalize the case. This function of media is seen as an invasion of the domain of the judiciary by conducting indirect trials parallel with the courts.
• In some cases, it has also been noticed that irresponsible media briefings by police officers during ongoing investigations enable the process of media trials. E.g., statements made by the accused under Section 161 [before the police] and 164 [before a judicial magistrate] of the Criminal Procedure Code were released to the media.

Ethical Issues Involved in the Media Trial:

• It undermines the principle of innocent until proven guilty which advocates that every accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty by the law. E.g. Aarushi–Hemraj murder case.
• It also leads to contempt of court (disrespect or disobedience toward a court by entering into their domain).
• When sub-judice cases (cases under trial) are being discussed by experts in the media, their opinions can affect the perception of judges toward the accused/victim. E.g. Jasleen Kaur harassment case.
• It threatens the Right to Privacy as the identity/personal information of the accused and victim is revealed which can negatively affect the public image of an individual. E.g. in Sushant Singh Rajput case.
• It violates key principles of Media Ethics such as truth and accountability. It goes against the idea of responsible journalism.

Issues/Challenges in Controlling Media Trials:

• In India, organisations like the News Broadcasting and Digital Standards Authority (NBSA) and Broadcasting Content Complaints Council have been set up as internal self-regulatory mechanisms for television news and entertainment, respectively. This mechanism has not been very effective as these bodies lack statutory backing.
• Under Article 19 of the Constitution, media enjoys the freedom of expression, but it is at times misused when engaging in media trials. Also, for regulating agencies it becomes difficult to decide what constitutes a Media Trial as there is no clear definition or guidelines. E.g., in cases of investigative journalism.
• With the rise in internet penetration, social media has emerged as the new platform for media trials. E.g., sharing of sensationalized or fake posts to alter public opinion.

Way Forward:

• In sensitive cases, the media can delay reporting on certain aspects until the trial is over. In Sahara India Real Estate Corporation v SEBI (2012), the SC highlighted the need for a delicate balance between the rights of the accused and the media’s right to report.
• Organisations like the Broadcasting and Digital Standards Authority (NBSA) should create comprehensive guidelines, especially for sensitive cases such as national security issues like reporting of 26/11 attacks.
• Media should reveal facts/figures only after scrutinizing their authenticity.
• Media channels should regulate opinion-based reporting i.e. either favouring or defaming any person/party.
• The Press Council of India should emphasize and encourage the implementation of the Code of Journalistic Conduct (2010).
• Implementing the recommendation of the 200th Law Commission that includes a prohibition on the dissemination of material that is harmful to the accused, effective from the time of detention and the High Court should have the authority to order the delay of publishing or transmission in criminal cases.

Source: Livelaw

Q1.) Consider the following statements about International Court of Justice

1. It is also known as the world court.
2. It is the only one of the six principal organs of the UN that is not located in New York City.
3. All members of the UN are automatically partiesto the ICJ statute

How many of the statements given above are correct?

1. Only one
2. Only two
3. All three
4. None

Q2.) Which of the following organisation published the Climate Inequality Report 2023

1. World Inequality Lab
2. World Wide Fund for Nature
3. IUCN
4. UNEP

Q3.) Consider the following rivers

1. Gandak
2. Gomti
3. Koshi
4. Yamauna

How many of the rivers mentioned above are left bank tributaries of Ganga?

1. Only one
2. Only two
3. Only three
4. All four

Comment the answers to the above questions in the comment section below!!

ANSWERS FOR ’  27th  May 2024 – Daily Practice MCQs’ will be updated along with tomorrow’s Daily Current Affairs.st

Q.1) – c

Q.2) – c

Q.3) – d