Daily Mains Practice Questions 12-04-2023

KEY POINTS

·        The Supreme Court’s observation that preventive detention laws are a colonial legacy and confer arbitrary powers on the state is one more iteration of the perennial threat to personal liberty that such laws pose.

·        For several decades now, the apex court and High Courts have been denouncing the executive’s well-documented failure to adhere to procedural safeguards while dealing with the rights of detainees.

·        While detention orders are routinely set aside on technical grounds, the real relief that detainees gain is quite insubstantial.

·        Failure to provide proper grounds for detention, or delay in furnishing them, and sometimes giving illegible copies of documents are other reasons.

·        In rare instances, courts have been horrified by the invocation of prevention detention laws for trivial reasons  one of the strangest being a man who sold substandard chilli seeds being detained as a ‘goonda’.

·        Across the country, the tendency to detain suspects for a year to prevent them from obtaining bail is a pervasive phenomenon, leading to widespread misuse.

·        Preventive detention is allowed by the Constitution, but it does not relieve the government of the norm that curbing crime needs efficient policing and speedy trials, and not unfettered power and discretion.

KEY POINTS

·        India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. According to EY forecast, India is expected to be a $26 trillion economy (in market exchange terms) by 2047.

·        The per capita income is expected to increase to $15,000, putting the country among the ranks of developed economies. However, to become a global economic powerhouse, several actions need to be taken.

·        The number of inhabitants in Indian cities is estimated to have increased almost fourfold between 1970 and 2018, from 109 million to 460 million.

·        While these are important steps, one aspect that is completely left out from our city planning is to make the cities cope with climate risk.

·        IPCC projections suggest that the likelihood of events like extreme precipitation are bound to happen more frequently with climate change.

·        AI based modelling is probably the right approach to build scenarios for the medium, long term on these aspects.

·        These may be linked to a city based economic model to quantify the likely cost in the event of occurrence of climate-led disaster in a megacity.

·        An upfront number incorporating all aspects of cost is an important component of an adaptation assessment plan as policymakers could visualise the potential cost of no-action.

KEY POINTS

·        News is, more often than not, information relating to public good/interest which governments could conceal, suppress or distort.

·        Investigating agencies, punitive laws and other methods are deployed to this end. They simultaneously try and co-opt journalists to paint a more favourable picture about them.

·        Therefore, they are partisan entities in the ebb and flow of news  and not impartial observers who can accord to themselves the role of judging the veracity of news.

·        Social media companies will have to take down the content or risk losing their “safe harbour” protections which allow intermediaries to avoid liabilities for what third parties post on their websites. This bypasses provisions in the IT Act on takedown orders.

·        The Minister for IT & Electronics Rajeev Chandrashekhar has said that the mainstream media is already regulated by laws, including defamation.

·        The intermediary can then be asked to take it down. The government should not be playing the role of judge, jury and executioner, without scope for appeal.

·        In the digital age, it amounts to suppressing news. Journalists’ associations have been right in calling it out as censorship and curbs on media freedom. The government must rethink the amended rules.