HGH LEVEL REASONING - https://unacademy.com/lesson/overview-in-hindi/jvr24716 100 PUZZLE - https://unacademy.com/lesson/overview-in-hindi/dw58kdqe CURRENT AFFAIRS - https://unacademy.com/lesson/overview-in-hindi/sukk7axz If you are getting Help From Banking Chronicle then Support BankingChronicle.co.in By Clicking 1 Ad Daily on The website Note: Only 1 Not more then 1 Plunger in a churn Nitish Kumar s manoeuvres have been forcing other parties in Bihar into realignments If politics in Bihar is in continual churn, then the plunger in the barrel is Nitish Kumar, the Chief Minister and leader of the Janata Dal (United). Each time Mr. Kumar ditches an old friend or chooses a new ally, the other parties are forced into a realignment. The latest to shift camps is Upendra Kushwaha s Rashtriya Lok Samta Party. After the BJP and the JD(U) reached an agreement on sharing an equal number of seats for next year s Lok Sabha election, the other allies of the BJP felt squeezed for space in the National Democratic Alliance. With the BJP, which won 22 of the 30 seats it contested in 2014, cutting down its own share of the seats in order to make room for the JD(U), both the RLSP, which won all its three seats in the last election, and the Lok Janshakti Party of Ram Vilas Paswan, which won six of its seven seats, were expected to do the same. But more than the LJP, the RLSP found the situation uncomfortable as Mr. Kushwaha had built his party in opposition to Mr. Kumar over the last five years. The BJP made no serious attempt to retain the RLSP within its fold, in a way glad that the pressure on the process of allocation of the 40 seats in Bihar would ease a bit. If the NDA got crowded after the entry of Mr. Kumar and the JD(U), the alliance led by the Rashtriya Janata Dal remained a mahagathbandhan only in name. Both Mr. Kushwaha and Hindustani Awam Morcha s Jitan Ram Manjhi, a former ally of the BJP, were easily accommodated by the RJD-Congress combine in the mahagathbandhan. In a way, the exit of Mr. Kushwaha has strengthened the bargaining power of Mr. Paswan and the LJP. The LJP seems unwilling to surrender any of its sitting seats to accommodate the JD(U). Like many of the other parties in Bihar, the LJP has switched sides often, choosing between the Congress and the BJP on the basis of how it reads the political winds. With the RJD steadfastly wooing the LJP, the BJP has been trying hard to keep the party within the NDA. The bilateral agreement with the BJP was a victory of sorts for the JD(U). It was very much the senior partner in the NDA right until 2013, when it broke away from the BJP, protesting against the nomination of Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial candidate. But since then the party appears to have conceded a lot of ground to the BJP.
Another change of alliance partners for the JD(U) is unlikely. As things stand, the RJD may not entertain such an option. The JD(U) has been the most important player in Bihar s politics in the last 13 years, but Mr. Kumar s room for political manoeuvre is now severely limited. The plunger might have just done its last churn in the barrel. Controversial exit Donald Trump s decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria has rattled his team and his allies President Donald Trump s decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria has predictably upset both the Washington establishment and America s global allies. Within a day of the announcement, Secretary of Defense James Mattis quit, while allies say the move would affect the battle against the Islamic State in Syria. Mr. Trump, however, appears unfazed. Bringing soldiers back to the U.S. was a campaign promise. Earlier this year he had wanted to exit Syria, but delayed the decision amid resistance within his cabinet. Now he claims that the physical infrastructure of the IS caliphate is destroyed and the U.S. can leave the war against the remnants of the jihadist group to the Syrian government and its main backers, Russia and Iran. On the face of it, there is a strategic argument in Mr. Trump s decision. The caliphate is actually destroyed the IS has lost 95% of the territory it once controlled and is now confined to narrow pockets on the Iraqi-Syrian border. The U.S. would also not like to get stuck in Syria forever. It is basically Russia s war. The U.S. is already stranded in Afghanistan (for 17 years) and Iraq (over 15 years) without a way out. After these interventions, Presidents have been wary of deploying boots on the ground in West Asia. Barack Obama had pulled back most U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Trump wants to get out of the Syrian theatre. But the ground reality is too complex and requires Mr. Trump to be more patient and strategic in his policymaking. The U.S. has only 2,000 troops in Syria. They were not directly involved in the ground battle, and were supporting the Syrian Democratic Forces, a rebel group led by Kurdish rebels who were in the forefront of the fight against the IS. The U.S. support for the Kurdish rebels has irked Turkey, which sees them as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party, the rebels on the Turkish side who have been fighting Turkish troops for decades. Turkey considers the military consolidation of Kurds as a strategic threat. In the past, Turkey had attacked Kurds in some pockets on the Syrian side, but was prevented from launching a full-throttle attack because of the U.S. presence. When Mr. Trump pulls out American troops, he would in effect be leaving the Syrian Kurds at the mercy of Turkish troops. A second risk factor will emerge if Turkey launches an attack on the Kurdish militants, which President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has vowed to do. The Kurds will then have to re-channel their resources to fight Turkish soldiers. This will weaken the ground resistance against the remaining IS militants on the southern side of the border. Mr. Trump would have done better to wait before deciding to pull out of Syria. He could have considered waiting for the conflict to de-escalate even further; also, he could have gained assurances from Turkey that it would refrain from attacking Kurdish troops. The cost of being so abrupt is that it leaves a dangerous vacuum in northeastern Syria.
Move fast and fix things Individual users privacy cannot be safeguarded on platforms such as Facebook without institutional reform Facebook s motto was to move fast and break things. By now we have all heard various variations of it to mock the social networking platform which is identified globally for privacy breaches and misinformation campaigns even interfering in the election processes of major democracies. The latest in this torrent of disclosures is the investigation by The New York Times documenting a range of private deals struck by Facebook for reciprocal sharing of user data with the knowledge of top management. Some deals permitted access even to private chats. But rather than merely documenting a violation of user trust by Facebook, which has received extensive commentary, let us focus on walking towards solutions. Here, it is important to consider how the underlying cause for our deficient national response is a lack of institutional capacity to respond to such challenges. It is instructive to take just data protection and privacy and go instance-by-instance to see how the government response is best summed up as, move slow and calm things. Scandals unnoticed Even prior to the disclosures by Cambridge Analytica, Indian civil society activists had fought against Facebook very publicly on net neutrality. The company had proposed to offer users without Internet on their phones a platform called Free Basics, with a bouquet of essential websites. In December 2015 it argued that by facilitating access to websites beyond Facebook, its intent was purely altruistic. This deal was opposed on grounds of net neutrality by those who recognised that Facebook would become a gatekeeper to the Internet. The opposition to Free Basics won, with a ban on it being imposed by the telecom regulator. However, one subsidiary argument which largely went unnoticed was that Facebook was not clearly stating how it would use the personal data of users on the Free Basics platform. While three years ago, when the net neutrality campaign was on, this may have seemed to be a distant fear, today there is a clear realisation that this would have been a reasonable inference to make. Then, as now, there is no data protection authority or an office of a privacy commissioner to investigate and independently audit platforms such as Free Basics. Undaunted, Facebook continued its corporate blitzkrieg, building a digital conglomerate. These were primarily through acquisitions but also data sharing practices, in which any application which got access to Facebook data had to share it back with Facebook. This practice of data hoarding became clear when after acquiring WhatsApp, it changed its privacy policy with effect from September 2016. It allowed sharing a user s metadata between WhatsApp and Facebook, without clearly explaining what was being shared and how it was being used. Changes to these terms of service were challenged in a public interest petition in the Delhi High Court, which dismissed this legal challenge, noting among other things that at the time the status of the fundamental right to privacy was disputed, based on an objection by the Central government.
This was appealed against in the Supreme Court. The apex court sensed the seriousness in this plea and announced that a Constitution Bench would be constituted. When in August 2017 the right to privacy judgment came, there was hope that it would lead to greater accountability with the horizontal application to private platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook. Instead, as documented in an order in September 2017, the Union government submitted it had constituted a data protection committee headed by retired Supreme Court judge, Justice B.N. Srikrishna, on the same issue. In a sense, this amounts to pushing for a deferral of the hearing. The WhatsApp-Facebook case is still pending in the Supreme Court. Cambridge Analytica alarm By March 2018 the Cambridge Analytica exposé gathered steam. Blockbuster reports by The New York Times and The Observer documented the compromising of personal data of Facebook users to micro-target them with subtle forms of political campaigning without their knowledge. This was reportedly aimed at influencing their voting preferences and the outcome of elections. This immediately acquired a cynical hue in India, with a whodunnit approach in which petty and personal allegations flew in television debates. Suspicion pointed to the Indian National Congress as per the statement of Christopher Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower. Meanwhile, the government, through the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, responded in two principal ways. First, it wrote to Facebook, with the complete text and responses not made public. Second, there were strongly worded press interactions, which included ministerial statements to summon Facebook s Mark Zuckerberg to India. Concurrently the Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT in April 2018 also started examining this issue. While it did invite public comments, its proceedings have not been disclosed. Subsequently, the matter at the ministerial level was referred to the Central Bureau of Investigation, which launched a preliminary investigation in September 2018. Till date, there is little public information on movement in this investigation. We know little on how Indians were impacted beyond the unexamined statistic that 562,000 Indians were impacted by Cambridge Analytica. High on emotion and rhetoric, there is little to show in terms of results. Public welfare, institutions Let us remember that many of these problems go much beyond Facebook, to the entire wave of digitisation from the big building blocks down to a fine grain of Indian society. Who will guarantee that such changes serve public welfare? Not Facebook. This task must fall to public institutions. This seems unlikely at present. Movement on a privacy law has become gridlocked in recent months. A draft law to safeguard it is beset with controversy in a closed drafting process without much transparency. It has no clear path to enactment, and is not listed for the ongoing winter session of Parliament. On the other hand, the government has prioritised more data collection and privacy-impairing legislation. These include the DNA Technology (Use and Application) Regulation Bill, which is listed for discussion and voting. Another instance is the political firestorm after Ministry of Home Affairs issued a notification authorising digital surveillance by 10 Central government agencies. Let us suppose that by a stroke of luck, we get a data protection law. What form it takes and the fine detail will be crucial. Will it protect us? Take, for instance, the transitory provisions (contained under Section 97 of the draft Data Protection Bill) which permit the government to delay notification for three years. Imagine a law passed by Parliament today completely coming into force only by the end of December 2021! It would be delaying the administration of a remedy despite a clear diagnosis.
The government must act with urgency. While we should continue focussing scrutiny on large platforms such as Facebook, it cannot be done just by the smarts and technical negotiations of everyday users. We also must not forget that Facebook, despite its unethical conduct, is of enduring value to millions of Indians. To properly harness digitisation, we now have the challenge of developing and prioritising institutions of governance to protect users. This must start immediately with a strong, rights-protecting, comprehensive privacy law. At present, despite having the second highest number of Internet users in the world, India has little to show as a country in investigatory outcomes, measured regulatory responses or parliamentary processes which safeguard users. Regretfully, unless things change dramatically even the most outrageous revelations will at best lead to statements of empty bombast and bluster. Now is the time to move fast and fix things. Island hopping After repairing ties with the Maldives, New Delhi should strengthen its Indian Ocean outreach On his first visit abroad, to New Delhi last week, as the President of the Maldives, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih appears to have struck the right notes. In India a month after assuming his new responsibility, Mr. Solih has assured New Delhi that the Maldives is pivoting to the India First policy. The five-year-long tenure of his predecessor, Abdulla Yameen, was marked by a serious deterioration in ties with India, as Mr. Yameen steadily took his nation towards authoritarianism and into a close embrace with China. Different vision Mr. Solih s government has adopted a different vision one anchored in decentralised and peoplecentric governance. India seems to enjoy a special place in his worldview. He stressed that it is our closest neighbour. President Ram Nath Kovind reciprocated by tweeting: India attaches the highest importance to its relationship with Maldives. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the only head of government present at Mr. Solih s inauguration, on November 17. The joint statement issued during Mr. Solih s visit reflects a fine balance between the interests of both countries. To help the Maldives address its budget deficit and development challenges, India has worked out a generous $1.4 billion assistance package. Its break-up and the period for which it is available have not been revealed yet. However, it is learnt reliably that much of the funding may be utilised for people-friendly projects in four domains: health care, education, water and sanitation. Besides, India has offered visa facilitation that will allow Maldivians to visit India easily (with reciprocal facilities for Indian visitors to the Maldives); 1,000 additional training slots for the next five years; close cooperation on political and diplomatic issues; and support to the Maldives as it seeks to rejoin the Commonwealth and its entry into the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA). The visit resulted in the conclusion of four agreements relating to cooperation for information technology, culture, agribusiness, and visa arrangements.
The new government in Male has also given assurances to be fully sensitive to India s security and strategic concerns, in the light of reports that China has gained access to one or more islands for military purposes. On the valid ground that the security interests of both countries are interlinked, India and the Maldives have agreed to be mindful of each other s concerns and aspirations for the stability of the region. The two governments now plan to enhance maritime security in the Indian Ocean Region. The expectation in Delhi is that the Indian Navy and Coast Guard will now be able to secure better cooperation from the Maldives for coordinated patrolling, aerial surveillance and capacity building. Besides, intelligence agencies hope to revert to nurturing better collaboration in combating terrorism and other non-traditional security challenges. This is significant, considering that radicalisation is a live issue there. A sizeable number of Maldivian young men are reported to have left to join the Islamic State in Syria. The trade and investment facet of the bilateral relationship is of a modest nature, given the country s small population. The annual value of bilateral trade is $200 million. India Inc., therefore, needs to be energised to increase its presence in the Maldivian market, despite the setback suffered by a private Indian firm when its contract was cancelled unceremoniously in December 2012. Mr. Solih did well by participating in a business event, hosted jointly by India s three apex industry chambers. His message was clear: the Maldives is open for business again. Indian Ocean stakes The deliberations in Delhi took place as China s footprint in South Asia has increased in recent years. There is a growing realisation that, owing to Beijing s strategic objectives, economic capability and assertive diplomacy, it is not feasible for India to supplant China in neighbouring countries. But India has its own advantages, assets and friends. The intention is to leverage them fully, deriving benefit from the neighbours essential thirst for maintaining balance in their external relations. The change in the Maldives has been followed by a re-assertion of democratic impulses in Sri Lanka, as symbolised by the return of Ranil Wickremesinghe as the Prime Minister. India enjoys close relations with Mauritius and the Seychelles. A new grouping of India, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Mauritius and the Seychelles, focussed on maritime security and economic development, looks attainable in the short term. In devising a smart action plan to implement the SAGAR, or Security and Growth for All in the Region, strategy, that was announced by Mr. Modi in March 2015, New Delhi should accord equal importance to its two key goals: address its neighbours concerns on security challenges; and harness enticing opportunities for the Blue Economy. Even others such as South Africa, whose President is due to visit India in January next year, and Kenya, much enthused from having hosted recently the first global conference on the sustainable Blue Economy, may be happy to join.