General Studies Paper 2

Context

• China and Bhutan held their 25th round of boundary talks in Beijing and signed a Cooperation Agreement on the “Responsibilities and Functions of the Joint Technical Team (JTT) on the Delimitation and Demarcation of the Bhutan-China Boundary.”

Significance of the agreement

• This advances their 3-Step Roadmap initiated in 2021 for border resolution, building on the positive momentum since their last talks in 2016. The Boundary talks between Bhutan and China were held after a gap of 7 years and indicate significant progress has been made.

Bhutan and the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) share a contiguous border to Bhutan’s north and west

• Since 1984, Bhutan and China had held 24 rounds of talks to resolve the disputes until 2016, but the 25th round appeared to have been held up after the Doklam Standoff between Indian and Chinese armies in 2017, and then the COVID19 pandemic in 2019-21.
• However, the two sides used the pause to hold talks at other levels in rapid succession, especially after China threatened to open a new front for a border dispute to Bhutan’s east.

The 3 Step roadmap

• Bhutan and China don’t have diplomatic ties, as Bhutan has traditionally avoided diplomatic relations with all the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) permanent members (P5).
• The 3-Step Roadmap aims to draw a line clearly delineating Bhutanese and Chinese territory for the first time. It involves 3 subsequent phases:
• Agreeing to the border “on the table”
• Visiting the sites on the ground
• Formally demarcating the boundary

Significance for India:

• Given the breakdown in its ties with China over the standoff at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) from 2020 post-Galwan Valley clash, any hint of closer ties between China and one of its closest neighbours is a cause for worry for India.
• More specifically, New Delhi is watching the demarcation discussions over Doklam, as amongst the proposals China has placed on the table is an agreement to “swap” areas in Doklam under Bhutanese control with areas in Jakarlung and Pasamlung which China claims.
• Doklam trijunction cuts very close to India’s Siliguri corridor, a narrow area that connects the North Eastern States to the rest of India. India would not like to see China gain access to any area closer to it.
• Since the Doklam standoff in 2017, China has doubled down on its control of the Doklam plateau, and according to a recent Pentagon report, has continued to build “underground storage facilities, new roads, and new villages in disputed areas in neighbouring Bhutan,” erasing many of the strategic gains that New Delhi had hoped for after China agreed to step back from the standoff point in 2017.
• Finally, India’s worry is over China’s demand for full diplomatic relations with Bhutan, and opening an Embassy in Thimphu. Given India’s challenges with Chinese projects and funding in other neighbouring countries including Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, any Chinese presence in a small country like Bhutan would be problematic.

Conclusion

• However, Bhutan’s leadership has thus far said that all decisions would consider India’s interests and that it has always consulted India on issues of concern

General Studies Paper 3

Introduction

• In October 2023, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) stuck to its 6.5% GDP growth projection for the year, with risks from geopolitical tensions, economic fragmentation, volatile financial markets and an uneven monsoon, evenly balanced out by strengthening domestic demand.

New uncertainties

• There was a belief that a period of heightened uncertainties was ebbing but as the central bank Governor signalled last Friday, new uncertainties have emerged over the fortnight since.
• The Israel-Hamas conflict that erupted a day after the monetary policy review has widened, and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has flagged worries about implications on global food, fuel and fertiliser supplies.
• Given India’s dependence on fuel and fertiliser imports, disruptions or price spikes could hurt the macroeconomic framework, even if the government refrains from passing on higher prices to consumers and farmers in the election season.
• The RBI chief also pointed to rising U.S. bond yields, which hit a 16-year high of 5% this week, mixed data points and signals from central banks around the world, as the new unknowns — even as known unknowns such as financial market turmoil — have got more pronounced. A glimpse of this anxiety was visible this week, with the sharpest selloff on Indian bourses since July.

Finance ministry outlooks

• There is no certainty that the RBI would still uphold its ‘evenly balanced’ outlook towards the risks to growth. However, the Finance Ministry, while acknowledging that global uncertainties have compounded, seems largely sanguine for now in its outlook for the economy.
• Its monthly economic review released on Monday asserts that growth “remains on track”, inflation is eating after a “temporary ” seasonal surge in July August, consumption demand is strengthening and investment demand is “also firming up”.
• The weak foreign trade picture is expected to recover and industrial job creation prospects are high for the next two quarters, while higher demand for housing and vehicle loans reflects bolstered confidence levels in households, it added.
• India’s macro fundamentals may well hold up through the latest global storm, but the government would do well to drill a little deeper into consumption and hiring trends. The last quarter has seen a sharp slump in small car sales, consumer nondurables producers reporting weak rural demand and IT firms scaling down growth and hiring hopes.

Conclusion

• There is still much to be done to correct an uneven recovery, which would eventually hamper a broader investment revival.

General Studies Paper 3

Context:

• The recent glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) in Sikkim wreaked havoc along the Teesta river, bringing into focus the magnifying risk of climate change induced GLOF across the Indian Himalayan Region.

Glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF)

• GLOF is a type of outburst flood caused by the failure of a dam containing a glacial lake.
• A study published in Nature this year indicates that 90 million people across 30 countries live in 1,089 basins containing glacial lakes. Of these, one­ sixth live within 50 km of a glacial lake and 1 km of potential GLOF run-out channels.
• In mountains, hazards often occur in a cascading fashion — heavy rainfall triggers a landslide, which may in turn cause a glacial lake outburst and more landslides downstream, and create conditions for flash floods.
• Predicting this chain of events is difficult. Institutional awareness of these risks is increasing, but the challenge is to evolve a system to mitigate risks from such hazards, and provide early warnings.

Early warning systems

• The magnitude of the tragedy that occurred on October 3 at the South Lhonak glacial lake in Sikkim is still unfolding. Scientists are gravitating towards the view that the key trigger in the process chain of the disaster was the collapse of a huge mass of rock/moraine from the north­western bank of the lake. It displaced a significant volume of melt water, widening the river mouth at the eastern end, resulting in flash floods.
• The Himalayan Region is susceptible to a range of hydro­meteorological, tectonic, climate and human induced mountain hazards. Each of them requires an extensive set of monitoring, mitigation, and early warning strategies. The process chain of glacial melting is adequately mapped. However, the multitude of glaciers and temporal variations in glacial recession makes monitoring and estimation of the risk more difficult.
• National Remote Sensing Centre’s (NRSC) Glacial Lake Atlas of 2023 showed that 3 major river basins, of the Indus, Ganga, and Brahmaputra, are host to above 28,000 glacial lakes. Of these, 27% are in India, in six States and Union Territories. This region has witnessed catastrophic GLOF events in the past few decades.
• Many geo­technical solutions for mitigation of GLOFs have been tried globally, including excavating channels for regulated discharge, drainage using pipes and pumps, spillway construction, and setting up small catchment dams to cut the speed of outflow. These measures are arduous and labour intensive, yet need to be implemented across high­ risk lakes.
• The most significant risk of such a disaster is to downstream hill communities and authorities who get a very short lead time to respond. They stand to suffer serious damage to life, property, and livelihood.
• Risks from glacial melting, slope shifting, landslides, intense precipitation, and heatwaves, among other hydro meteorological and geo­physical hazards, are rising. While meeting the development needs of hill communities, disaster and climate resilience principles need to be assimilated into government policy and practice as well as private investment.

Multi­disciplinary effort

• This requires an integrated, multi­disciplinary effort across institutions. NRSC’s atlases have provided high resolution data via remote sensing, which allows for monitoring spatial change.
• Central Water Commission (CWC) is conducting hydro-dynamic assessments of high risk lakes, mapping water flow, height and routing simulations using digital elevation models.
• NDMA’s national guidelines (2020) provide States with a technical overview of the hazard and risk zonation and suggest strategies for monitoring, risk reduction and mitigation.
• A comprehensive GLOF risk mitigation plan is in the final stages of approval and will include installation of monitoring and end to end early warning systems at high risk glacial lakes. In this endeavour, all governments and scientific institutions need to come together to integrate resources and capacities in disaster risk reduction.

Conclusion:

• While appropriate synergies have been created, increased focus on prevention and mitigation will reduce loss and damage and bring stability into the lives of hill communities.

General Studies Paper 3

Introduction:

• India’s urban population is estimated to reach 675 million in 2035, the second highest in the world. Although there is widespread recognition that cities have been fuelling India’s rapid rise to economic superpower status, almost all are failing their inhabitants in terms of delivering on health, environmental and equity targets.

Urban India and multiple health risks

• India’s urban inhabitants experience multiscalar health risks including
• the world’s highest levels of air and noise pollution
• limited greenery
• lack of access to sidewalks and parks that limit active lifestyles
• archaic modes of transport that contribute to air pollution
• pernicious access to nutritionally dense unhealthy foods
• unprecedented exposure to toxic chemicals and heavy metals.
• This concatenation of exposures dramatically magnifies health risks for heart disease and diabetes, referred to as cardiometabolic disease, especially when combined with a lack of physical activity.
• Addressing the diverse and multiscaled social, environmental, and infrastructure risk factors that contribute to cardiometabolic risk in cities, by transforming the design of the built local environment as well as provisioning systems, represents a new paradigm for public health.
• Globally, there are seven key physical provisioning systems that provide food, energy, mobility, transportation, housing, green infrastructure, water and waste management that lie at the core of human health, wellbeing, equity and sustainability.
• Dysfunctional provisioning systems consume more than 90% of the world’s water and global CO2 emissions and facilitate an estimated 19 million premature deaths annually.
• Based on the primal importance of India’s cities for its future, a new narrative for improving health and wellbeing in cities is needed. This is reflected in several high level policy frameworks, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) framework, the New Urban Agenda, and the Health in All Policies approach

Double or triple duty actions

• Investments such as clean energy and electric mobility which are underway in India offer a once in a lifetime opportunity to improve health through their immediate and dramatic impact of air pollution levels, while also helping meet India’s climate and equity goals.
• While these developments are extraordinarily important, the magnitude of their impact on health outcomes is at risk of being limited, if not simultaneously accompanied by changes in other provisioning systems such as food, mobility and green infrastructure.
• Indeed, studies show that even small changes in the latter systems may have a large catalytic effect on health and productivity and serve as double duty or triple duty interventions. For example, making way for safe walking and biking lanes, pavements and no car zones, can help not only improve physical activity and reduce sedentary lifestyles but also reduce the risk from air pollution.
• Walking and biking on many Indian roads is not only hazardous but also nearly impossible, as sidewalks are overwhelmed by building and human waste, parked vehicles or street hawkers.

Towards holistic urban policy

• Studies that have modelled the economic and health impact of the clean energy transition in the transportation sector are currently based almost entirely on the reduction in air pollution and its associated health impact.
• Ensuring that the transition to electric cars also paves the way for active transport options such as walking paths and bicycling lanes may not only provide a mechanism to connect the “last mile” but the health and consequent economic benefits of active transportation accrue on top of the benefits of reducing air pollution, making such investments even more economically viable. Thus, increasing active transportation by any means must be a critical component of a clean energy policy.
• Similarly, policies that encourage fresh fruits and vegetables and limit sugars and salt in beverages, which may have the largest impact on health outcomes such as obesity, Type 2 diabetes (T2D) and cardiovascular disease, may help contribute to not only better health outcomes but also economic productivity.

Conclusion

• Unhealthy diets, reduced physical activity and air pollution in cities in India pose a greater risk to morbidity and mortality than most other risk factors combined including drugs, tobacco, alcohol and accidents. These need to be dealt with on a war footing if India is going to make progress in its fight against cardiovascular disease, obesity and T2D. This will necessarily entail a street fight.

General Studies Paper 3

Context

• The environmental devastation caused in the Himalayan States of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Sikkim has reinvigorated the debate on the “carrying capacity’ of the regions.

Carrying capacity

• The carrying capacity of a region is based on the maximum population size that an ecosystem or environment can sustainably support over a specific period without causing significant degradation or harm to its natural resources and overall health.
• It is crucial in understanding and managing the balance between human activities and the preservation of natural ecosystems to ensure long term sustainability.
• There have been initiatives by the Union government regarding overall development in the IHR. Some of them are the National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem (2010), the Indian Himalayas Climate Adaptation Programme, Secure Himalaya Project, and the recent guidelines on ‘Carrying Capacity in the IHR’ circulated on January 30, 2020.

Centre’s affidavit on carrying capacity:

• Supreme Court (SC), in response to a petition filed on the matter, has asked the Union government to suggest a way forward regarding the carrying capacity of the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR), which includes its towns and cities.
• The Union government’s affidavit (filed by the Ministry of Environment) states that the Director of the G.B. Pant National Institute of Himalayan Environment should be the lead in assessing carrying capacity and that the carrying capacity of all 13 Himalayan States and Union Territories (UT) should be determined.
• The affidavit further suggests that representatives of State disaster management authorities, the Geological Survey of India, Survey of India and member secretaries or nominees of the Central Pollution Control Board and Central Ground Water Board should also be its members.

What the Court must ensure

• Despite past initiatives especially since the January 2020 guidelines, hardly any progress has been made. The reasons are obvious. There is no report on the total number of States that have been able to prepare action plans on carrying capacity of their regions.
• Failures in the past have been on account of two major reasons. The recommendations made by the Ministry in forming such groups are flawed. The same set of people responsible for the havoc and devastation in the mountains are now being made responsible in finding solutions.
• The focus has to be on sustainable development that encompasses the larger canvas of carrying capacity, and the process should be people­centric.
• Given the importance of the resident population in the IHR living in towns and villages, the expert committee should not become a bureaucratic or technical group. Such a committee (at least a third) should include adequate citizen representation — from panchayats and other urban local bodies.
• In order to evaluate the social dimension of sustainability, it is necessary for the expert committee to direct each panchayat samiti and municipality to present its recommendations by responding to the population sustainability criteria which is well established and should be circulated immediately to each local government centre.

Conclusion:

• There is a wider and longer term need for assessing the overall sustainable capacity of the environment of the whole State (which includes all biological species, food, habitat, water including ecology and agriculture). The expert committee should be asked to focus on the social aspects or population sustainability of the respective States.

General Studies Paper 3

Context:

• Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) of 2022-23 revealed a strengthening of the labour market, with unemployment rates falling and labour force participation rates (LFPRs) rising.

Key findings

• Rural women’s LFPRs — for those aged 15 and above — rose from 19.7% in 2018-19 to 41.5% in 2022-23, a significant jump for a cohort that had long been on the margins of the labour market. These results were taken as examples of a robust post pandemic recovery for the Indian economy. Yet there are notes of caution.
• Much of the new employment generated for women has been in selfemployment. There has been a rise in the proportion of women working as unpaid family helpers, with the share of rural working women in this form of employment rising from 37.9% to 43% between 2018-19 and 2022-23. The share of women in regular wage work fell from 22% to 16%.
• Greater employment seemed to be coming at the cost of suitable working conditions, especially for women. While concerns regarding the forms of work have been extensively discussed, the aspect of earnings must also be examined to better understand the condition of the Indian labour market.
• While wages and earnings have increased, inflation has been high as well. If inflation is higher than earnings growth, real earnings reduce, reducing purchasing power.

The status of earnings

• Here we will examine the real earnings of the workforce between the quarters of April-June 2019 and April-June 2023, covering the period before the onset of the pandemic and the latest period for when data is available. The PLFS collects information on the earnings of regular wage workers, casual workers and the self employed (regular wage workers have fixed work hours and are paid on a regular basis; casual workers are employed on a daily basis on the availability of work and receive daily wages).
• We look at the monthly wage earnings of regular wage workers, and the gross earnings of the previous month for the self employed. For casual workers, average daily wages are converted to monthly figures. The average of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) across the months of April to June of 2019 and 2023 are taken to convert nominal figures into real terms.
• The earnings for urban and rural workers were deflated by the urban and rural CPI for those periods separately. Between 2019 and 2023, only casual workers — both men and women, across both rural and urban sectors — saw a net increase in their average real monthly earnings. Women casual workers experienced a 13% increase across the entire period, while male casual workers enjoyed a 10.33% increase.
• The only other cohorts which saw an increase in real earnings in 2023 as compared to 2019 were women in regular wage work — a 4.27% increase — and male self employed workers (6.9%).

Significant inflation

• over this period ate away at the gains of workers, resulting in lesser real earnings for most workers in 2023 as compared to the pre pandemic period. There are significant differences between urban and rural sectors. Urban male self employed workers saw a reduction in real earnings, while rural male self employed workers saw real earnings increase by roughly 14.67% in 2023 compared to 2019.
• However, the figure for gross earnings of the self employed do not include those who reported zero incomes, and hence these aggregate figures may not give a true picture of earnings for the entire population of the self employed.
• In the case of regular wage workers, urban women saw a reduction in earnings, with real incomes in 2023, 2.34% lesser than that in 2019. Rural women in regular wage employment earned the highest gains of all cohorts, their monthly real earnings 27.5% higher in the quarter of April-June 2023 as compared to April-June 2019. Yet this cohort makes up only 8% of the rural female workforce, and hence a smaller proportion of the aggregate workforce.

The impact of inflation

• On the other hand, the biggest declines were seen in the one cohort that showed a significant rise in employment: rural women in self employment. The share of the rural female workforce in paid forms of self employment rose from 22% to 28% between 201819 and 202223, yet their average monthly real gross earnings reduced by 7.72%, the largest reduction for any cohort.
• Large numbers of rural women have entered low paying, low productive jobs, perhaps to supplement household incomes in the wake of the pandemic — this does not indicate robustness of recovery. Note that this excludes women engaged as helpers in household enterprises, who, by definition, do not earn any income, and who form the largest proportion of rural working women.
• Wage workers — both casual and regular — did not see extensive gains, with only rural women in regular wage employment experiencing a 35.5% growth in real earnings.
• Urban men and women in regular wage employment experienced gains of 1.42% and 2.66% respectively. Conclusion While it is too soon to tell whether these gains indicate the beginning of a sustained recovery, the fact that every cohort — barring rural casual women workers — saw an increase in real earnings marks a distinct break from earlier periods. However, there is another problem.

Conclusion:

Wage workers as a whole have seen real earnings grow slower than output, indicating a reduction in the share of wages even though growth remains healthy. This serves as further evidence of the possibility of India experiencing a K shaped recovery in the wake of the pandemic.

General Studies Paper 2

Context

• Recently in 2023, a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) in North Sikkim’s South Lhonak Lake washed away one of the biggest hydropower projects in India, the Teesta III dam at Chungthang.

Status of dams in India

• India has almost 6,000 large dams and about 80% of them are more than 25 years old and carry safety risks. A new Dam Safety Act (DSA) was passed in late 2021.
• Reports since the Sikkim disaster revealed there were no early warning systems, no risk assessment or preventive measures in place as required under the Act.

Provisions of the Dam Safety Act (DSA), 2021

• It was enacted as a response to deficient surveillance and maintenance causing dam failure related disasters.
• The Act listed key responsibilities and mandated that national and State Level bodies be established for implementation.
• It said a National Committee on Dam Safety (NCDS) would oversee dam safety policies and regulations;
• A National Dam Safety Authority (NDSA) would be charged with implementation and resolving State­ level disputes
• The Chairman of the Central Water Commission (CWC) would head dam safety protocols at the national level
• A State Committee on Dam Safety (SCDS) and State Dam Safety Organisation (SDSO) would be set up.
• Provisions require States to classify dams based on hazard risk, conduct regular inspections, create emergency action plans, institute emergency flood warning systems, and undertake safety reviews and period risk assessment studies.
• States are to report and record incidents of dam failures.
• Failure to comply with any provision of the Act is punishable with imprisonment upto 2 years and/or fines.

Challenges to dam safety

• Experts say the Sikkim incident exemplifies blind spots in both legislation and implementation. The DSA does not promote risk based decision making and fails to incentivise transparency.
• The Act requires dam builders to conduct comprehensive dam safety evaluations, but there is no standardisation of how the failure is analysed and reported.
• The Sikkim GLOF reveals poor compliance at all levels, from the dam’s design to the spillway capacity (which controls the release of water from a reservoir).

Way forward for dam safety

• Hazard profiling and regular assessment are also mandated by the Act. Hazard risk fluctuates at the slightest touch, responding to climate change, urbanisation, and the way people/companies use water or where they are located.
• Periodic reviews are expected to bring forth fresh inundation maps and new rule curves (which determine the capacity of dam reservoirs), all of which contribute towards the safety of the downstream areas.
• Spillway capacity and other metrics should be reviewed every five years or so, but periodic reviews are often not conducted or if they are, their findings are not easily available in the public domain.

Conclusion

• Dam safety is a function of many parts: designing and constructing dams that adhere to safety margins, maintaining and operating them per guidelines, recording data in real­time in an accessible format, forecasting hazardous events and instituting emergency plans, to name a few.

General Studies Paper 2

Context:

• Recently in 2023, a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court (SC) declined to legalise same­-sex marriage, leaving it to Parliament to legislate on the subject.

What did the petitioners want?

• The petitioners had sought a ruling by which the Special Marriage Act (SMA), 1954, which provides for a civil marriage for couples who cannot marry under their personal law, should be interpreted as gender neutral, thus allowing same-­sex couples to marry under it.
• The SMA, they argued violated Articles 14, 15, 19, 21 and 25 by not allowing marriage between same-­sex, gender non-­conforming, LBGTQIA+ couples. They sought that the words “husband” and “wife” as well as any other gender­-specific term to be substituted by the word “party” or “spouse”.

The verdict:

• The Bench ruled that there is no fundamental right to marry, and the court cannot intervene. Though all five judges accepted that it was time to end discrimination against same­-sex couples, they failed to reach a consensus on giving queer couples the status of a legally recognised “civil union,” with a majority of three judges holding that any legal status to such a union can only be through enacted law.
• Supreme Court (SC) said it could not issue a mandamus writ to Parliament; it determined the scope and effect of certain fundamental rights, and then ruled that the Constitution does not recognise marriage as a fundamental right.

The minority opinion

• It included the opinion of Chief Justice of India (CJI), which said that the LGBTQIA+ community had a fundamental right to form relationships and that the state was obligated to recognise and grant legal status to such unions, so that same-­sex couples could avail the material benefits provided under the law.
• Queerness is a natural phenomenon, the CJI pointed out, which the Navtej Singh Johar case (which decriminalised homosexuality under section 377 of IPC) had clarified. The judgement in the NALSA case also explored the presence of the transgender identity and other forms of queerness.
• The Court said the consequence of the judgments on NALSA and Navtej Johar is that the members of the queer community are no longer second­ class citizens. But having said that, it stopped short of legalising same-­sex marriage.

Why did SC refuse to read down the SMA?

• The Court felt that if the SMA was held void for excluding same­sex couples, it would mean going back to a time when two persons of different castes and religions could not marry.
• Second, it said that if it were to read down — or up — provisions of the SMA, meaning add or delete words, this would be venturing into the realm of the legislature, which would amount to judicial legislation. The Court in the exercise of the power of judicial review must steer clear of matters, particularly those impinging on policy, which fall in the legislative domain.

Will the legislature be open to the idea?

• Throughout the hearings, the government held that it was against same-­sex marriage. It had also pointed out that judicial intervention would cause “complete havoc with the delicate balance of personal laws.”
• Activists and rights lawyers are not convinced whether the judiciary lobbing the issue back to the legislature will lead to any change. The Court has said the state must take “remedial action” because if it regulates marriage only for heterosexual couples, it “adversely impacts” the LGBTQIA+ community, resulting in their exclusion, and “denial of entitlements/benefits,” and that “this injustice and inequity results in discrimination.”

Way forward:

• The Court has set down a set of guidelines, from setting up a committee chaired by the Cabinet Secretary for the purpose of defining the scope of entitlements of queer couples who are in unions, to directing police stations to not harass the community.
• The Court said the state may choose from a number of policy outcomes: they may make all marriage and family related laws gender neutral, or they may create a separate SMA-­like statute in gender neutral terms. They may pass an Act creating civil unions, or a domestic partnership legislation, among many other alternatives.

General Studies Paper 2

Context:

• The recent tabling of Bills on criminal laws has become a causa celebre. In as much as they set overdue reforms into motion, the Bills do well to amend the substantive criminal law as codified in the Indian Penal Code (IPC), Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and Indian Evidence Act (IEA).

Special and Local Laws (SLLs)

• The offences and procedures outlined in the IPC or CrPC represent just one facet of a general criminal law and its vital to recognise that the most critical offences and procedures are encompassed within the Special and Local Laws (SLLs). Keeping SLLs away from the ongoing reform process is a major drawback.
• Cognizable crimes are categorised either under the ‘Indian Penal Code (IPC)’ or under the ‘Special and Local Laws (SLL)’. SLLs identify criminal activities that the state government frames for specific issues.
• SLLs have immense quantitative and qualitative relevance in the Indian criminal justice system. To illustrate, nearly 39.9% of all cognisable offences registered in 2021 were under SLLs.
• As per the Crime in India Statistics of 2021, of the total of nearly 61 lakh cognisable offences registered, 24.3 lakh offences were registered under SLLs alone.
• On the qualitative side, SLLs have given rise to several fundamental and pertinent debates, discourses and discussions regarding the limits on the state’s power of criminalisation especially in the context of violation of individual rights and liberties.

Need for reform in SLLs

• The substantive issues in SLLs are not only abundant but also varied. On the one hand, SLLs such as the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA) and the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 (MCOCA) suffer from glaringly deficient, ambiguous and vague definitions of offences and terms such as ‘terrorist act’, ‘unlawful activity’, ‘organised crime’, ‘organised crime syndicate’ etc.
• The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012 is increasingly being criticised for its applicability to consensual sexual activities between minors. Concerns have also been raised regarding criminalisation of such conduct through SLLs which would otherwise fall squarely within the domain of civil wrongs or at best, regulatory wrongs.
• Procedurally too, it is through SLLs that universally accepted due process values are increasingly being diluted. Increased powers of search and seizure under Section 43A of the UAPA and the admissibility of confessions recorded by police officers under Section 18 of the MCOCA are prime examples.
• The stringent provisions provided for under Section 43(D)(5) of the UAPA, Section 37 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985 and Section 45 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) 2002 make the grant of bail a near impossibility.

An all encompassing legal code

• Between the enactment of the IPC in 1860 and today, there has been a major shift in the canvas of criminal laws.
• The increasing enactments and application of SLLs represents an understanding of criminal laws which is out of sync with the original project of codification. The shift, in this sense, represents a major move from the idea of a complete codification of all criminal laws inspired by Bentham’s idea of a “Pannomion” — an all comprehensive collection of rules codified in a single place.
• The IPC was thus conceived to be more than just a legal digest — it was meant to contain within its pages all criminal laws of the time. At the time of its drafting, it was expected that the IPC would be suitably amended in situations requiring the creation of new offences, clarification of existing offences, and removal of inconsistencies.
• It is true that the IPC today is criticised for the retention of an archaic morality as well as the colonial roots which underpins many of its offences. The challenges to homosexuality under Section 377 in Navtej Johar versus Union of India (2018) and sedition under Section 124A in S.G. Vombatkere versus Union of India (2022) are all symbolic of the need to reform several aspects of our criminal laws.
• Nonetheless,it is hard to argue that as far as the idea of codification is concerned, the penal experiment in the form of IPC and CrPC has been unsuccessful. As successive governments place increasing reliance on the SLLs for a variety of reasons, it becomes imperative that the same should not be allowed to overpower the idea of codification of penal laws as imbibed in the IPC as well as the CrPC.
• All SLLs which criminalise/seek to criminalise a conduct should find a place as separate chapters within the larger structure of the penal code. All SLLs which create a separate procedure for reporting of offences, arrest, investigation, prosecution, trial, evidence and bail must be included either as separate procedures within the CrPC or as exceptions to the general provisions provided therein.

Conclusion

• Non-inclusion of the substantive and procedural aspects of the SLLs in the ongoing reform project is a serious limitation. It is imperative therefore that a second generation of reforms be brought in,in order to address the lacunae.

General Studies Paper 2

Context:

• By consistently championing the issue of having a caste census, various Opposition party leaders of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) have set the agenda on this one issue at least — which they have otherwise failed ever since Narendra Modi emerged on India’s national political scene.

Poverty as agenda

• From demonetisation to the idea of simultaneous elections, it is Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has established a monopoly over agenda setting in India’s political discourse. In response to the INDIA coalition’s persistent demand for a caste census, Mr. Modi has argued that he only believes in poverty as being the only caste and that serving the poor is his sole priority.
• According to scholars who work on Indian poverty, there are two kinds of poverty, i.e., economic and institutional. Caste plays a pivotal role in the perpetuation of institutional poverty because, historically, it determines occupation and skills.
• In the modern Indian economy, most occupations are network driven in which caste plays decisive roles in driving those networks, which is why a caste census is vital. This is also why Rahul Gandhi’s observation that such a census ‘is like the X-ray of India’ makes some sense. By not recognising that caste has bred poverty, Mr. Modi is turning a blind eye to a deeply painful reality of Indian society.
• It is not just Mr. Modi, but even the trickle down approach of the Nehru- Mahalanobis model of development did not recognise either. Therefore, nonrecognition of the organic relationship of caste and poverty has been a long neglected fact of Indian policy thinking.

Explaining the right’s reluctance

• However, the reason why Hindutva seems reluctant to have a caste census is because it believes it might open a Pandora’s box of claims and counter-claims relating to positions and power — about who got what, when and how. Such a census would serve as the enduring source for divisive politics and trigger a never ending process of social engineering that would upset Hindutva’s apple cart of Hindu majoritarian unity, which it has stitched together after decades of hard work through intense grassroot campaigns.
• Utilising the politics of religious polarisation, Hindutva forces are within striking distance of fulfilling their political dream of Hindu majoritarian unity, which appeared almost Utopian in the mid-1970s.
• On the other hand, secular political groups are also aware of the divisive potential of a caste census. For them, it is the most potent weapon among others to contain the growing electoral influence of Hindu majoritarian forces.
• The prospect for the revival of secular politics owing to a caste census is rather limited. It is a gamble from the point of view of a resurrection of secularism in India. It might contain the pace of Hindutva politics but is not the ultimate outcome that may lead to the establishment of a Hindu majoritarian political culture or a similar variant of state.
• The last time that a caste census was carried out was in 1931, a time when organised right groups were marginal players during India’s freedom movement. After Independence, there was a possibility for a caste census to be resumed in 1951. It is plausible that in the non resumption of caste census in 1951, the right might have played a crucial role.
• It will not be far-fetched to argue that there might be some overlap in the reasons behind why the word “secular” despite some effort was not included in the Indian Constitution, and the reason why a caste census was not resumed in 1951.

Conclusion

• Embedded right groups might have played their part at the time in their concerted resistance to India’s secular project. The present day resistance only echoes the same old reasoning but is much louder in volume, and more organised.