Daily CURRENT AFFAIRS

Daily Current Affair - UPSC/KAS Exams - 12th Jan 2022

WHAT

• Speech/words whose intent is to create hatred towards a particular group, that group may be a community, religion or race.
• May or may not have meaning, but is likely to result in violence.

IN INDIA

• Hate speech is neither defined in the Indian legal framework
• Supreme Court, in Pravasi Bhalai Sangathan v. Union of India (2014), described hate speech as “an effort to marginalise individuals based on their membership in a group” and one that “seeks to delegitimise group members in the eyes of the majority, reducing their social standing and acceptance within society.”
• The High Court of Karnataka, in Campaign Against Hate Speech v. The State of Karnataka (2020), was of the opinion that the Indian Penal Code illegalises speeches that are intended to promote enmity or prejudice the maintenance of harmony between different classes
• Sections 153A of the IPC - penalises promotion of enmity between different groups
• Sections 153B of the IPC - punishes imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration
• Sections 505 of the IPC - punishes rumours and news intended to promote communal enmity
• Sections 295A of the IPC - criminalises insults to the religious beliefs of a class by words with deliberate or malicious intention, contribute to combating hate speeches.
• The Supreme Court has upheld the view that the objective behind such provisions is to “check fissiparous communal and separatist tendencies and secure fraternity so as to ensure the dignity of the individual and the unity of the nation”.

WHY CHECK HATE SPEECH

• The Supreme Court, in State of Karnataka v. Praveen Bhai Thogadia (2004), emphasised the need to sustain communal harmony to ensure the welfare of the people.
• In the Pravasi Bhalai Sangathan case, the Supreme Court underlined the impact hate speech can have on the targeted group’s ability to respond and how it can be a stimulus to further attacks.
• The Madras High Court has on several instances dealt with the issue of hate speech, characterising it as small spark capable of merely lighting a lamp to destroying a forest.
• In G. Thirumurugan Gandhi v. State (2019), the Madras High Court explained that hate speeches cause discord between classes and that responsibility attached to free speech should not be forgotten.
• Summing up these legal principles, in Amish Devgan v. Union of India (2020), the Supreme Court held that “hate speech has no redeeming or legitimate purpose other than hatred towards a particular group”.

POLICY PRESCRIPTIONS

• The Law Commission of India, in its 267th report, recommended the insertion of two new provisions to criminalise and punish the propagation of hate speech: Section 153C and Section 505A of IPC.
• Section 153C was drafted to cover an offence committed when any person uses threatening words which are intended to cause fear, or commends hatred for the purpose of inducing violence through words, spoken or written, visible representation or signs on the grounds of race, caste, religion, sex, gender identity and other characteristics.
• Section 505A was to include provisions penalising causing of fear, alarm, or provocation of violence.
• Furthermore, the 189th Report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, in 2015, recommended the incorporation of separate and specific provisions in the Information Technology Act to deal with online hate speech.
• None of the recommendations have been acted upon and this has partly given rise to ambiguity in construing hate speech by various constitutional courts.

NEED OF THE HOUR

• Much of the existing penal provisions deal with hate speech belong to the pre-Internet era.  Need of the hour is specialised legislation that will govern hate speech propagated via the Internet and, especially, social media.
• Reference can be drawn to the Australian federal law called the Criminal Code Amendment Act, 2019, which imposes liability upon Internet service providers if such persons are aware that any abhorrent violent material, which is defined to include material that a reasonable man would regard as offensive, is accessible through the service provided by them.
• Taking cue from best international standards, it is important that specific and durable legislative provisions that combat hate speech, especially that which is propagated online and through social media, is enacted by amending the IPC and the Information Technology Act.

Ultimately, this would be possible only when hate speech is recognised as a reasonable restriction to Free speech

NEWS

Haryana government invoked the Essential Services Maintenance Act after the Outdoor Patient Department services across the State were crippled due to a day-long strike by the doctors in support of their demands.

ESMA, 1968

• Established to ensure the delivery of certain services, which if obstructed would affect the normal life of the people.
• These include services like public transport (bus services), health services (doctors and hospitals).
• Gives police right to arrest without a warrant anybody violating the Act’s provisions.
• Implementation:
  • The ESMA is a law made by the Parliament of India under List No. 33 in Concurrent List of 7th Schedule of Constitution of India.
  • Although it is a very powerful law, its execution rests entirely on the discretion of the State government. Each state in the union of India, hence has a separate state Essential Services Maintenance Act with slight variations from the central law in its provisions. This freedom is accorded by the central law itself.

NEWS

Vodafone Idea has opted to convert its adjusted gross revenue dues into equity, resulting in the government owning 35.8 per cent of the total outstanding shares of the company.

What is Adjusted Gross Revenue

• Usage and licensing fee that telecom operators are charged by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
• Divided into spectrum usage charges and licensing fees, pegged between 3-5 percent and 8 percent respectively.
• How is it calculated : As per DoT, the charges are calculated based on all revenues earned by a telco – including non-telecom related sources such as deposit interests and asset sales.

Issues associated

• The telecom sector was liberalised under the National Telecom Policy, 1994 after which licenses were issued to companies in return for a fixed license fee.
• However, to provide relief from the steep fixed license fee, the government in 1999 gave an option to the licensees to migrate to the revenue sharing fee model.
• Under this, mobile telephone operators were required to share a percentage of their AGR with the government as annual license fee (LF) and spectrum usage charges (SUC). License agreements between the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the telecom companies define the gross revenues of the latter.
• The dispute between DoT and the mobile operators was mainly on the definition of AGR.
• The DoT argued that AGR includes all revenues (before discounts) from both telecom and non-telecom services. The companies claimed that AGR should comprise just the revenue accrued from core services and not dividend, interest income or profit on sale of any investment or fixed assets.

NEWS

India Tests Advanced 'Sea-To-Sea' Variant Of BrahMos Missile From INS Visakhapatnam

DETAILS

• Naval variant of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile
• Extended range of 350 to 400-km
• By Defence Research and Development Organisation
• India-Russian joint venture
• Supersonic cruise missile that can be launched from submarines, ships, aircraft, or land platforms.
• Flies at a speed of 2.8 Mach or almost three times the speed of sound.
• As per obligations of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).
• Range would be extended to 450 km and to 600km at a later stag

NEWS

UK firm Henley & Partners released its latest global passport ranking index recently

2022 RANKINGS

India ranks at 83rd position ( 90th rank 2021)

Japan and Singapore top the index

India shares the position with Sao Tome and Principe in Central Africa, behind Rwanda and Uganda.

HOW INDIA IMPROVED

• India now has visa-free access to 60 destinations worldwide with Oman and Armenia being the latest additions.
• India has added 35 more destinations since 2006.

ABOUT THE INDEX

• Global ranking of countries according to the travel freedom for their citizens.
• Started in 2006 as Henley & Partners Visa Restrictions Index (HVRI) and was modified and renamed in January 2018.
• Based on: The ranking is based on exclusive data from the International Air Transport Association(IATA) which maintains the world’s largest and most accurate database of travel information and research by the Henley & Partners Research Department.

NEWS

High court of Calcutta has imposed More curbs for Ganga Sagar mela 2022

ABOUT

• Religious festival celebrated on Sagardwip (Sagar Island) in the West Bengal state of India.
• Second biggest fair in India after Kumbha Mela of India.
• Six-day fair held in the month of January and on the day of Makar Sankranti.
• Ritual of pilgrims taking bath in holy water and visiting the nearby famous Kapil Muni Temple is performed.
• Ganga Sagar is the largest village of Sagar Island , Sunderbans, West Bengal, where the River Ganga meets the Bay of Bengal.

High court’s instructions

• Directed the state government for constituting a three-member panel containing the leader of opposition at the state assembly, chairman of West Bengal Human Rights Commission, and representative of the state. The panel will ensure compliance of Covid-19 measures in the Gangasagar Island.
• State have been asked to ensure that all persons and pilgrims at the Gangasagar Mela ground wear masks, adhere to social distancing norms and use sanitisers.
• Set up five RT-PCR testing facilities along with some rapid antigen testing centres, at all entry points, including Howrah and Sealdah railway stations.

NEWS

Birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda celebrated

ABOUT

• True luminary, credited with enlightening the western world about Hinduism.
• Ardent disciple of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa
• Major force in the revival of Hinduism in India.
• Pushed for national integration in colonial India, and his famous speech remains as the one that he gave in Chicago in 1893 (Parliament of the World Religions).
• Born in Kolkata on January 12, 1863 in Kolkata (In 1984 the Government of India declared that 12 January, the birthday of Swami Vivekananda, will be celebrated as National Youth Day)
• Known as Narendra Nath Datta in his pre-monastic life.
• Known to have introduced the Hindu philosophies of Yoga and Vedanta to the West.
• Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose had called Vivekananda the “maker of modern India.”
• In 1893, he took the name ‘Vivekananda’ after Maharaja Ajit Singh of the Khetri State requested him to do so.
• Formed the Ramakrishna Mission in 1897 “to set in motion a machinery which will bring noblest ideas to the doorstep of even the poorest and the meanest.”
• In 1899, he established the Belur Math, which became his permanent abode.
• Preached ‘neo-Vedanta’, an interpretation of Hinduism through a Western lens, and believed in combining spirituality with material progress.
• Books written by him:‘Raja Yoga’, ‘Jnana Yoga’, ‘Karma Yoga’

January 10 is observed as World Hindi Day or Vishwa Hindi Diwas every year to commemorate one of the world' most widely spoken languages. The permanent delegation of India to UNESCO yesterday announced that on the  occasion of World Hindi Day, UNESCO's World Heritage Centre has agreed to publish Hindi descriptions of India's UNESCO World Heritage Sites on WHC website.