CURRENT AFFAIRS
21 December 2020
NATIONAL NEWS:
A) Farmers to step up stir, talk to NDA allies.
The leaders of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SMK), a joint front of farmer unions, on Sunday announced a further intensification of their agitation, including relay hunger strikes at protest sites and reaching out to constituents of the ruling-National Democratic Alliance (NDA). At a press conference in Singhu, a protest site at the Delhi-Haryana border, SMK leaders said they would reach out to the NDA constituents, appealing to them to compel the BJP to withdraw the three legislations. They also appealed to people across the country to hold a fast on December 23 as a mark of gratitude towards farmers, and to clang utensils on December 27 during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Mann Ki Baat” radio address, as a mark of protest. The SMK announced that toll plazas would be made free in Haryana for three days, from December 25 to 27. It said people in Punjab would gherao Income Tax offices to protest against the raids on the arthiyas (commission agents) in the State. Stating that people supporting the agitation, including artistes and singers, were being troubled, the farm leaders said the government should refrain from such action.
B) Farmers want better APMCs, not ‘mukti’ from them, says AIKMS.
In a related development, the Left-affiliated All-India Kisan Mazdoor Sabha (AIKMS) has released a document countering the claims of the Modi government on the three contentious farm laws, and stressing that the government’s arguments for not repealing the legislations were deceptive. It also accused the government of propagating falsehoods to claim that the laws would help farmers. In a 24-page document, the central executive committee of the AIKMS said the farmers had demanded improvement in the functioning of the mandis under the Agricultural Produce Market Committee Act and not mukti (freedom) from them. The government is trying to deny Minimum Support Price (MSP) at C2+50% [50% more than the weighted average cost of production] in the name of keeping food costs low for the poor. Giving C2+50% as MSP will not make food costly if input costs are decreased proportionally. This will afford savings for farmers and agriculture will become sustainable. But government wants to allow corporates to sell costly inputs and keep the food costs low by depriving peasants of profitable MSP. Thus, at both ends the peasant is squeezed and corporate profit is secured, the document said, adding that monopsony i.e. one buyer and many sellers, cannot create a condition for peasants to bargain and fix prices. On the government’s claim that farmers would not lose their land under the new laws, the document argued that Section 9 of Contract Act provides for peasants to take loans from other debt instruments, as separate and parallel deals. For making payment to the sponsor company for the inputs provided by it to the peasant, he will have to take loans and his land will be mortgaged, the AIKMS said.
C) BJP, TMC spar over Tagore as Shah visits Visva Bharati.
On Sunday, as Union Home Minister Amit Shah visited Visva Bharati, set up by Rabindranath Tagore in 1921 in Santiniketan, the Trinamool Congress held protests outside Jorasanko Thakurbari in Kolkata, alleging an insult to the revered poet. While Shah participated in a number of events at Visva Bharati, senior Trinamool Congress leader and Minister in West Bengal government Subrata Mukherjee held a press conference in Kolkata alleging that the BJP had disrespected the poet. Referring to some posters they had come up in Santiniketan on Saturday which showed Shah’s photograph positioned above a sketch of the poet, Mukherjee said the BJP has tried to demean the poet. The posters were removed after the placement of the photographs was pointed out. The BJP have demeaned Rabindranath, they are shocked and therefore, they wanted to protest. They will break statue of Vidyasagar and outsiders will come belittle Rabindranath. They cannot allow this. So several of their party supporters are protesting at Jorasanko Thakurbari, Mukherjee said. Morasko Thakurbari is the birth place of Rabindranath Tagore. Earlier in the day, interacting with journalists in Santiniketan, Shah had spoken of the rich literary and cultural legacy of Tagore, who had inspired both Gandhiji and Subhas Chandra Bose.
D) Vajpayee, Sharif spoke over phone in the midst of Kargil War, says book.
Former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif spoke to each other on the phone at least four to five times during the course of the Kargil War, with the former veering to the view that Sharif had been bamboozled by the Pakistani army (then headed by General Pervez Musharraf) into the conflict. A new book on the late Prime Minister’s tenure at the helm of affairs in India, called Vajpayee: The Years That Changed India, by former bureaucrat Shakti Sinha, goes on to say that the communication was kept up after a telling incident between Sharif and R.K. Mishra, former head of the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), the man selected for back channel talks to end the conflict. Sharif’s position was a tenuous one, and in a later meeting, he indicated to Mishra that they should take a walk in the garden, obviously suspecting that his own house was tapped. When Mishra reported this to Vajpayee, the latter took this as an indication that Sharif was more a prisoner of circumstances than anything else, says the book. Vajpayee must have spoken to Sharif 4-5 times during the one and a half month period from mid-May to 4th July when the Pakistani PM publicly committed to President Clinton that Pakistan would withdraw its forces to its side of the LoC, the book further states. One of these calls occurred in mid-June from Srinagar, after Vajpayee had made a visit to Kargil. “On his arrival in Srinagar Vajpayee asked me to connect him to Sharif. My small team and I tried but we just could not get through. Then one of the local officers present informed us that dialing Pakistan (+92) from Jammu and Kashmir was barred. The telecom authorities were told to open the facility for a short while, so that the two prime ministers could talk, says the book. Sinha had served as Vajpayee’s private secretary for many years, including in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) during the conflict. The book also talks about two telephonic recordings that Arvind Dave, chief of Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), India’s external intelligence agency, brought to Prime Minister Vajpayee. Arvind Dave, the R&AW chief, came up with two telephonic recordings between the Pakistani Army chief Pervez Musharraf, and his chief of general staff, Lt. Gen. Mohammad Aziz. It was clear that the Pakistan Army was involved, with the Mujahideen playing a minor role, if any, says the book. The tapes were shared with the media later, but were also smuggled into Pakistan for Sharif via the diplomatic route. The book offers an insider’s perspective on the eventful years when Vajpayee was Prime Minister.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
A) Nepal PM Oli recommends dissolution of Parliament, President Bhandari announces fresh election.
In an emergency Cabinet meeting held on Sunday morning, Nepal Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli recommended dissolution of the Parliament and called for a general election. The decision was ratified by President Bidhya Devi Bhandari in an official announcement in the afternoon. The President has called a two-phase election to be held on April 30 and May 10, 2021. The dramatic decision came after weeks of tension with challenger Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, who has been demanding that Oli change his style of governance. The decision was followed by the deployment of quick action forces across Kathmandu and other major Nepalese cities and towns. Oli’s government in recent weeks was unable to pass politically sensitive decisions because of the opposition in the Standing Committee of the Nepal Communist Party where Prachanda’s section is in majority. Sunday’s decision to dissolve the Parliament has drawn strong criticism from the Opposition and members of the ruling coalition. The decision is unconstitutional as there is no provision in our 2015 Constitution to dissolve a Parliament that is functioning perfectly well. The problem was inside the Nepal Communist Party and the Prime Minister cannot attack the Parliament for his inability to deal with intra-party dissidents, said Rajendra Mahto of Janata Samajvadi Party. Mahto said Nepal faces an uncertain future because of Oli’s decision. The decision amounts to a coup, he said. Political leaders, including former Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai, have cautioned about the future of Nepal in the backdrop of Sunday’s Cabinet decision. President Oli’s recommendation is extremely unfortunate and is against the interest of democracy. All political parties of Nepal must protest against this development, he said. Nepal held elections in November-December 2017 and the elected candidates in the Pratinidhi Sabha were expected to serve a full 5-year term.
B) India, U.S. mull over unfinished work.
With exactly a month left in U.S. President Donald Trump’s tenure, U.S. Ambassador to India Kenneth Juster has begun a series of calls on Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and NITI Aayog chief Amitabh Kant, as well as farewell discussions with the U.S.-India business chambers, USIBC and USISPF. The calls highlighted the achievements of the India-U.S. partnership in the past four years. While these include great strides in diplomatic, defence, commercial, energy and health areas, talks on waivers for possible sanctions, trade negotiations, and nuclear deals are in the category of unfinished business between the two countries. In a briefing this week, a U.S. official made it clear that despite hopes being raised in 2018 by the U.S. Congress’s amendment to the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), that allowed the U.S. President to waive sanctions on India’s purchase of the missile systems from Russia, Mr. Trump has not made the decision to give India a pass. Speaking about sanctions against Turkey for its purchase of the official said this should be seen as a warning to others hoping to acquire the system. However, asked about the latest U.S. comments, Indian officials dismissed the concerns. There will no issues in interoperability of the U.S. and Russian systems as they will be plugged into the Indian grid. Given that the Democrats had pushed for the CAATSA, the government will have to take its chances with President-elect Joe Biden in office providing the waiver once India takes delivery of the S-400 systems in 2021. Trade negotiations are another area where New Delhi hopes the Biden administration will pick up where it believes the Trump administration failed to deliver, particularly its failure to reverse the decision to revoke India’s Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) since June 2019 due to differences in the areas of medical devices, dairy and IT products. Meanwhile, officials hopeful of a commercial contract finally being finalized for the decade-old MOU between U.S. based Westinghouse Electric Company and Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL) to build six reactors in Andhra Pradesh the first since Mr. Modi and U.S. President Barack Obama announced the deal is done in 2015 have also been disappointed with the lack of progress.
C) Biden introduces his climate team, says no time to waste.
Just as the United States has needed a unified, national response to COVID-19, it needs one for dealing with climate change, President-elect Joe Biden said on Saturday as he rolled out key members of his environmental team. They literally have no time to waste, Mr. Biden told the reporters as introduced his choices. The approach is a shift from Donald Trump’s presidency, which has been marked by efforts to boost oil and gas production while rolling back government efforts intended to safeguard the environment. The incoming Biden team will try to undo or block many of the current administration’s initiatives. There also will be an emphasis on looking out for the low-income, working class and minority communities hit hardest by fossil fuel pollution and climate change. In his remarks, Mr. Biden stressed the diversity of an emerging team that he described as brilliant, qualified, tested and they are barrier-busting. Already there are more people of color in our Cabinet than any Cabinet ever, more women than ever,” said the former Vice-President, who has promised to assemble a group of department leaders who reflect the diversity of America. The nominees Mr. Biden introduced had compelling personal stories that they cited as guiding them if confirmed by the Senate.
