CURRENT AFFAIRS
22 January 2021
NATIONAL NEWS:
A) Farmer unions likely to reject government proposal of suspending agri laws for 18 months.
Rakesh Tikait, who heads one faction of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), said that the farm unions have decided to reject the government’s proposal. They don’t want a suspension of the three laws just for 1.5 years. They want a full repeal, Tikait told. However, a spokesperson for the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) emphasised that the joint leadership meeting is still ongoing, and no final decision has been taken yet. At the tenth round of talks on Wednesday, the Centre had offered to suspend three contentious farm reform laws for one and a half years, and asked the unions to return with a response on Friday. Asked if the unions would be more willing to accept the proposal if the government offered a longer suspension, of three years or more, Tikait said it would not make any difference. Suspension is not the same as repeal. Our demand has always been that the laws should be repealed, he said. He also added that the farmers’ demands went beyond the fate of the three laws and also included a legal guarantee for minimum support prices, which the government has not been willing to discuss. All the unions are agreed on this. You will see when we tell the government in the meeting tomorrow, said Tikait, who is leading a group of farmers, mostly from Uttar Pradesh, protesting on the Ghazipur border. Leaders from BKU (Ekta-Ugrahan) added that they were also not in favour of accepting the government’s proposal. Suspending the laws for a year or for a year and a half would cost the farmers dearly and the sword will keep hanging on them in the same way, said BKU-EU secretary Shingara Singh Mann, in a statement issued from the Tikri border. The government resorted to the Supreme Court to delay things under the absurd pretext of suspending the laws for a year and a half, but all the farmers of the country, under the leadership of the farmer’s organisations, are determined to fight till the laws are repealed. Additionally, the farmers demand to make MSP a legal right, said the BKU-EU statement. Mann added that preparations for a proposed tractor parade on January 26 in Delhi were going on in full swing in Punjab and Haryana. The parade will be a peaceful exhibition of unity on Republic Day, he said.
B) Rajiv Gandhi assassination case | Tamil Nadu Governor will decide on release of convicts in 3, 4 days.
Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit would take a decision in the next three or four days on the State government’s recommendation to release seven convicts, including A.G. Perarivalan, who is undergoing life imprisonment for the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta informed the Supreme Court on Thursday. The State Cabinet made its recommendation regarding all the seven convicts on September 9, 2018, Additional Advocate General of Tamil Nadu Balaji Srinivasan confirmed. The recommendation to remit their life sentences was advised by the Tamil Nadu Cabinet under Article 161 of the Constitution. The Governor will decide on the Cabinet’s recommendation as per the provisions of the Constitution in three or four days, Mehta, appearing for the Governor, informed a three-judge Bench led by Justice L. Nageswara Rao. Mehta’s submission came at the beginning of the court’s second day of hearing of a petition filed by Perarivalan, senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan and advocate Prabu Ramasubramanian, highlighting the long delay on the part of the Governor in deciding on the Cabinet recommendation. Other than Perarivalan, the other convicts are Nalini, Murugan, Santhan, Jayakumar, Ravichandran and Robert Pyas. On Wednesday, Justice Rao termed the Governor’s delay as extraordinary. The Bench, too, noted how a decision was not forthcoming despite the State government’s recommendation. The turn of events came as a surprise, as Additional Solicitor General K.M. Nataraj, for the Centre, had argued on Wednesday that the pleas for pardon and release should go to the President instead of the Governor. The Centre had, for the first time, raised the point about the Governor’s power to grant remission to Perarivalan under Article 161 in November last. But Sankaranarayanan had consistently argued that a convict was free to choose between the President and the Governor for pardon.
C) Five dead after major fire hits Serum Institute of India plant in Pune.
Five people have lost their lives to a major fire which erupted in an under-construction building of vaccine manufacturing major Serum Institute of India (SII)’s Gopal Patti plant in Pune on Thursday afternoon. Five charred bodies have been recovered from the building where fire broke out in afternoon. The fire is completely under control, said Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope. The fire broke out at around 2 pm in a newly constructed building. Work pertaining to rotavirus plant installation was underway. The fire was caused due to a welding spark, while inflammable material aggravated the fire. At least five fire tenders and three water tankers were rushed to the spot. It took about two-three hours to douse the fire. When authorities walked inside, five bodies were found, said Tope, adding that authorities would give updates on more casualties as and when information was received. It is believed that the five deceased were labourers, said Pune Mayor Murlidhar Mohol. Tope further said that the Covishield vaccine storage was far from the blaze and not been harmed by the fire. Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has directed the authorities to ascertain the cause of the blaze.
D) Study predicts sharp spike in child mortality and stunting post-Covid-19.
An additional 93 lakh children under five are likely to suffer from wasting, and 26 lakh more from stunting, while an estimated 1.68 lakh kids (under five years old) could die in the first three years of the post Covid-19 world, says a new study. The paper is an assessment of the combined effects of economic, food and health systems disruptions on multiple forms of maternal and child under-nutrition between 2020 and 2022. The study is authored by Saskia Osendarp from Micronutrient Forum, Jonathan Akuoku from World Bank, Robert Black, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Lawrence Haddad from Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, among others. It provides projections for three scenarios: optimistic, moderate and pessimistic. The study suggests that under a moderate scenario, a large chunk of the 1.68 lakh additional deaths are likely to be in South Asia (38,900) and Sub-Saharan Africa (57,200). The moderate scenario further estimates that an additional 2.1 million pregnant women will develop anemia in 118 countries in 2020-2022, compared to 2019. The Covid-19 pandemic has created a nutritional crisis in LMICs [Lower Middle Income Countries]. Without swift and strategic responses by sub-national, national, regional, and international actors, Covid-19 will reverse years of progress and exacerbate disparities in disease, malnutrition, and mortality, and jeopardise human capital development and economic growth for the next generation, observed the study, urging countries to remain committed to investing in nutrition.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
A) China defends new village in Arunachal Pradesh amid border construction push.
China on Thursday said its construction of a village across the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Arunachal Pradesh was beyond reproach because it had never recognised Arunachal. India’s Ministry of External Affairs said earlier this week it was aware of the construction along the LAC. This followed a report showing satellite images of the village, built between November 2019 and November 2020 and located a couple of kilometres across the LAC, beyond what India sees as the border separating Arunachal Pradesh and Tibet, on the banks of Tsari Chu river in Upper Subansiri district in Arunachal. Indian officials said this area has been under Chinese control since 1959. There are close to two dozen spots along the entire length of the LAC in all sectors where India and China do not agree on its alignment. Indian officials said China had earlier built a permanent construction of military barracks in this area. The construction of the village has been seen by analysts as a move to bolster China’s claim to the area, and part of a broader recent push by China to build civilian settlements in disputed frontier areas, which it has also done with Bhutan. The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Thursday said at a press briefing, to a question about the construction, that China’s position on Zangnan [or South Tibet, as China refers to Arunachal] region is consistent and clear. They never recognised the so-called Arunachal Pradesh, spokesperson Hua Chunying said. China’s development and construction activities within our own territory is normal. This is beyond reproach as it is in our territory. The site of the village is close to where China had attacked an Assam Rifles post in 1959, in what is known as the Longju incident, said south India-based Tibet scholar Claude Arpi. He said it is at least 2 km south of the McMahon Line, which China doesn’t recognise. After the 1962 war, India stopped patrolling the area. Arpi said the construction appeared to be part of a programme by China to build what it calls poverty alleviation villages. He estimates that under the initiative, launched after a Tibet economic work conference in 2015, some 600 villages have been built, of which around 100 are in border areas.
B) China calls for ‘better angels’ to prevail in reset with Biden’s U.S.
China on Thursday congratulated U.S. President Joe Biden on his inauguration and called for a reset in relations between Beijing and Washington after a corrosive period of diplomacy under Donald Trump. Beijing also welcomed news that the U.S. would rejoin the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accord. The ever-antagonistic Mr. Trump harangued China over trade, rights, the origins of the COVID-19 virus, tech and defence supremacy, prompting angry near-daily jousts between both countries’ diplomats. The new U.S. President is expected to remain tough on the superpower rival but soften the tone and commit to international cooperation after Mr. Trump’s divisive America First approach. With cooperation from both sides, the better angels in China-U.S. relations will beat the evil forces, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said. She said Mr. Biden had used the word unity several times in his inauguration speech, and that it was precisely what is needed currently in U.S.-China relations. The recent period has indeed been especially difficult, she added. Beijing also sanctioned former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, more than two dozen advisers and ex-officials in the former President’s administration. The officials and their family members will be prohibited from entering mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, the Foreign Ministry said. Over the past few years the Trump administration, especially Pompeo, has buried too many mines in U.S. China relations that need to be eliminated, burned too many bridges that need to be built, and destroyed too many roads that need to be repaired, said Ms. Hua.
C) Google, French press ink copyright payments deal.
Google and French newspapers said on Thursday they had signed an agreement aimed at opening the path to digital copyright payments from the online giant after months of heated negotiations. The accord signed with the APIG alliance of French dailies involves neighbouring rights, which call for payment for showing news content with Internet searches, a joint statement said. It said the agreement sets a framework for Google to negotiate individual licence agreements with newspapers on the payments and will give papers access to its new News Showcase programme, which sees it pay publishers for a selection of enriched content. Payments are to be calculated individually and will be based on criteria including internet viewing figures and the amount of information published. APIG head Pierre Louette said the deal amounts to the effective recognition of neighbouring rights for the press and the start of their remuneration by digital platforms for the use of their publications online. News outlets struggling with dwindling print subscriptions have long seethed at Google’s failure to give them a cut of the millions it makes from ads displayed alongside news search results.
