The Hindu Editorial Analysis- 29th January, 2022 | Current Affairs: Daily, Weekly & Monthly - CLAT PDF Download

1. At the Centre: India must stay in step with the changes in the Central Asian region

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GS 2: IR

Context: The first India-Central Asia Summit hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the Presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, officials said on Thursday.

• As the joint statement at the end of the India-Central Asia virtual summit noted, ties between India and the region have been historically close, with “civilisational, cultural, trade and people-to-people linkages”, but the lack of access to land routes, and the situation in Afghanistan are among the biggest challenges.
• It was a first dialogue held with the Presidents of the 5 CARs(Central Asian Republics), building on years of dialogue.
• The summit also came after the meeting of NSAs in Delhi, where they built on several common themes of concern and priority.

The Challenges of trade & Connectivity

• Small trade volume — a paltry $2 billion, spent mostly on Kazakhstan’s energy exports to India. In comparison, China’s CAR trade figures have exceeded $41 billion — they could double by 2030 — apart from the billions of dollars invested in the Belt and Road Initiative.
• There is the problem of routing trade: With Pakistan denying India transit trade,
• US Sanctions on Iran: New Delhi’s other option is to smoothen the route through Iran’s Chabahar port, but that will involve greater investment in rail and road routes to Iran’s northern boundaries with the CARs, something India is hesitant to do in the face of U.S. sanctions.
• INSTC not complete: A third option is to use the Russia-Iran International North-South Transport Corridor via Bandar Abbas port, but this is not fully operational and at least two CARs (Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) are not members.
• The TAPI Challenge: India too, has dragged its feet over TAPI gas pipeline plans (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India), due to supply guarantees, given the tensions with Pakistan.
• The Afghanistan Challenge: the tenuous link between Central Asia and South Asia, where after the Taliban takeover, there is no official government, a humanitarian crisis is building, and there are worries of terrorism and radicalism spilling over its boundaries.

Topics of Discussion

• Each theme has been outlined in the summit joint statement as areas to work upon. They have also agreed to more structured engagement, including the setting up of joint working groups, on Afghanistan and Chabahar, and more educational and cultural opportunities.
• “Main issues of discussion”: Overcoming the lack of land connectivity between India and Central Asia’s landlocked countries.
• Concerns over Afghanistan: sharing the “same concerns and same objectives” in broader terms and agreed to setting up a Joint Working Group (JWG) of senior officials, said Reenat Sandhu, Secretary (West) in the Ministry of External Affairs.
• Listing those concerns as the need for immediate humanitarian assistance, ensuring the formation of a truly representative and inclusive government, combating terrorism and drug trafficking, and preserving the rights of women, children and minorities.

The Strategic competition for South Asia

• While the attempt by India to institutionalise exchanges and press the pedal on trade, investment and development partnerships with the CARs is timely, it is by no means the only country strengthening its ties here.
• While Russia is the most strategic player, China is now the biggest development and infrastructure partner to the countries. The CAR Presidents held a similar virtual summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier.
• Pakistan has also increased its outreach to the CARs, signing transit trade agreements, offering trade access to the Indian Ocean at Gwadar and Karachi.
• India will need to move nimbly to ensure it stays in step with the changes, and to make certain the future of ties more closely resembles the deep ties of the distant past.

Final outcomes

• More meetings proposed: Mr. Modi also proposed a number of high-level exchanges between the two sides, including biannual summits and annual meetings of the Foreign, Trade and Cultural Ministers and Secretaries of Security (National Security Advisers) to “strengthen cooperation in the areas of political and development, partnership, trade and connectivity, culture and tourism and security".
• They also announced two “Joint Working Groups” on Afghanistan and the Chabahar port project.
• Delhi Declaration: the “Delhi Declaration” joint statement issued at the end of the 90-minute summit emphasised that "Further development of mutual connectivity is essential for enhanced trade and commerce between India and Central Asian countries in the context of their landlocked nature and lack of overland connectivity with India." 

2. To the poll booth, with no donor knowledge: Worries over the electoral bond scheme go beyond its patent unconstitutionality — it befouls democracy and elections

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GS 2: Representation of Peoples' Act

Context: Late last year, the Union government authorised the SBI to issue and encash a new tranche of electoral bonds, the 19th such parcel since the scheme’s notification in 2018.

• The timing of the announcement was predictable, with elections slated to be held to five different State Assemblies beginning next month. 
• Now, as a result, voters in those States will go to the ballot box with no knowledge about the donors backing the various contestants.

About the Electoral bond Scheme

• It is designed to allow an individual, or any “artificial juridical person”, including body corporates, to purchase bonds issued by the State Bank of India during notified periods of time.
• These instruments are issued in the form of promissory notes, and in denominations ranging from ₹1,000 to ₹1 crore.
• Once purchased, the buyer can donate the bond to any political party of their choice and the party can then encash it on demand.
• The purchasers are not obliged to disclose to whom they presented the bond, and a political party encashing a bond is compelled to keep the donor’s identity secret.

Anything but transparent

• Electoral bonds are Opaque.
• Transparency is an essential feature of a democracy.
• In this time, the Supreme Court of India has paid scant attention to the issue. It has allowed the scheme to continue unabated and has denied an interim stay on its operation without so much as conducting a full-fledged hearing.
• But Bonds are not fully anonymous according to the court: Voters interested in finding out the identity of political donors, the Bench said, could simply perform what the order described as “match the following.”
• Parties have no obligation: There is no attendant obligation on political parties to provide details to the public on each donation received by them through electoral bonds.
• Companies are also under no obligation to disclose the name of the party to whom they made the donation.
• Therefore, this “match the following” exercise apart, from being impossible to perform, will also do nothing to pierce the veil concealing the bonds.

It allows donation from shell companies

• What is more, a series of restrictions that were in place before the scheme’s introduction have now been done away with. For example,
• amendments have been made removing a previous prohibition that disallowed a company from donating anything more than 7.5% of its net profits over the course of the preceding three years.
• Similarly, a mandate that a company had to have been in existence for at least three years beforeit could make donations (a requirement that was aimed at discouraging persons from using shell corporations to funnel money into politics) was also lifted.
• Thus, through its very architecture, the electoral bond scheme permits unlimited and anonymous corporate funding of political parties.

In its defence, the Government says two things

• Voters have no fundamental right to know how political parties are funded and
• The scheme helps eliminate the role of black money in funding elections.

Both these arguments are not tenable

• The Supreme Court has consistently held that voters have a right to freely express themselves during an election and that they are entitled to all pieces of information that give purpose and vigour to this right. Surely, to participate in the electoral process in a meaningful manner and to choose one’s votes carefully, a citizen must know the identity of those backing the candidates.
• As affidavits filed by the Election Commission of India in the Supreme Court have demonstrated, the scheme, if anything, augments the potential role of black money in elections — it does so by, among other things, removing existing barriers against shell entities and dying concerns from donating to political parties.
• Moreover, even if the bonds were meant to eliminate the presence of unaccounted currency, it is difficult to see what nexus the decision to provide complete anonymity of the donor bears to this objective. Indeed, it is for this reason that the RBI reportedly advised the Government against the scheme’s introduction.

Major worries

• The worries over the electoral bond scheme, however, go beyond its patent unconstitutionality.
• This is because in allowing anonymity it befouls the basis of our democracy and prevents our elections from being truly free and fair.
• A delay in adjudication by the SC, invariably presents a fait accompli. There are, therefore, few issues of greater moral urgency than this that are awaiting the Supreme Court’s consideration. Yet, despite challenges to the scheme having been launched quickly on the heels of its notification in 2018, the Court has failed to hear and decide on the programme’s validity.

Conclusion

Justice P.B. Mukharji of the Calcutta High Court used language that was stronger still. “To induce the Government of the day by contributing money to the political funds of political parties, is to adopt the most sinister principle fraught with grave dangers to commercial as well as public standards of administration,” he wrote. “…The individual citizens although in name equal will be gravely handicapped in their voice because the length of their contribution cannot ever hope to equal the length of the contribution of the big companies.”