 Welcome to the Hindi News Analysis by Shankar Ayes Academy. The list of topics chosen for today's discussion along with the page numbers is given here for your reference. Let us take up this news article from page one of today's newspaper. It talks about a report filed by Comptroller and Altar General, that is CAG, about Rafale deal. As we all know, Rafale is a twin jet fighter aircraft manufactured by Dassault Aviation which is a French aerospace company. In 2016, India signed an agreement with Dassault to procure 36 Rafale jets. The deal is worth around 60,000 crores. And in July 2020, the first batch of five Rafales arrived in India. Many of you might have seen the video of Rafales landing in India in social media. And today's news article is mainly about Offset Clause in Rafale deal. See the Rafale deal comes with 50% of offset clause, which means that Indian companies will get business worth over 3 billion euros. So 50% offset deal means the French companies involved in this Rafale deal has to invest 50% of contract value around 30,000 crores back to India. And as for today's news article, Dassault has proposed to discharge 30% of their offset obligation by offering high technology to DRDO. So consequently, DRDO identified six new technologies and one of them was to obtain technical assistance for indigenous development of Kaveri engine. And the CAG report says that, till date there is no confirmation from Dassault on this. So in this context, let us try to understand the concept of offset clause, its significance and finally about the Kaveri engine. See in the defense sector, the concept of offset primarily aims to provide additional benefits to buyer of a product from the foreign supplier. In our case, India is the buyer and supplier is Dassault deviation. As we all know, India is one of the world's largest importer of defense goods. So the potential value of offset is very high. So the main objective of India's defense offset policy is to make defense sector self-sufficient and not dependent on imports. But in order to manufacture indigenously, Indian industries need access to modern technology. So this is where the significance of offset condition comes. If implemented correctly, offset conditions can change the indigenous defense industry and provide a much needed boost to R&D sector. So the defense offset guidelines of Ministry of Defense give multiple ways of discharging or agreeing to offset obligations. Some of them are direct purchase of eligible products or services, which means Dassault company directly purchasing from India or foreign direct investment in joint ventures and investment towards equipment and transfer of technology. For example, under Rafale deal, Dassault reliance Aerospace Limited to focus on manufacturing of aerospace related components. Another one is technology acquisition or transfer to the DRDO in areas of high technology. As per offset guidelines, the foreign original equipment manufacturer, here Dassault, is free to select any Indian company as its offset partner. And other avenues for discharging offset obligations is given here for your reference. Next, let us focus on Kaveri engine. So as we understood what is offset clause, now we can relate the offset clause to technical assistance for the indigenous development of Kaveri engine. See Kaveri engine is a low bypass twin spool turbofan engine. It is designed and developed to propel Indian light combat aircraft Tejas. The twin lane authority with full digital engine control with an adequate manual backup is a salient design feature of Kaveri engine. So both digital as well as manual controls are possible with Kaveri engine. Know that gas turbine research establishment is interested with the design and development of Kaveri engine. See GTRE is one of the pioneering R&D organizations under Ministry of Defense. It focuses on design and development of gas turbine engines for military applications. Even though the Kaveri project was initiated four decades back, the success of Kaveri engine to install it in LCA Tejas is a failure. Because thrust provided by Kaveri engine is not sufficient to propel Tejas LCA. So as of now the indigenously developed Tejas aircraft is using an engine sourced from America. So simply put the CAG report said that even though DRDO has requested Dassault aviation for technology transfer to develop Kaveri engine indigenously, there is no agreement regarding such technology transfer or technology acquisition. So this is all about the discussion of this news article wherein we have talked about Rafale deal offset clause and Kaveri engine. Now let us take up this op-ed column which talks about the plight of people excluded from Assam's NRC that is National Register of Citizens. In this context we will discuss in brief the three generations of human rights that is how the human rights are evolved and also the important points discussed by the author. The relevant syllabus is given here for your reference. First let us understand in brief the NRC that is National Register of Citizens. So what is the legal basis for creating an NRC? See the citizenship act of 1955 empowers the central government to compulsorily register every citizen of India and issue national identity cards. The act also provides that the central government may maintain a national register of Indian citizens. So immediately after the independence the first NRC was prepared after the census of 1951 and as you all know the NRC was updated for the state of Assam last year. The objective was to segregate the citizens of India from those who illegally entered from neighboring countries mainly from Bangladesh. The final NRC was published on 31st August last year. Out of 3.3 crore applicants 3.11 crore figured in the final list. Which means around 19 lakh people were left out of NRC. So it means that they are not citizens of India. However they can approach tribunals to prove their identity with India. So next let us discuss how the concept of human rights evolved. The evolution of human rights can be classified into three generations and these three generations align with the three tenets or the principles of French revolution. Many of us might know the liberty equality and fraternity are the three principles of French revolution and even our constitution also enshrined these three principles in the preamble. The first generation which are called civil and political rights deal with liberty and participation in political life. They are strongly individualistic which means individual centric and negatively constructed to protect the individual from state. Negatively constructed means these rights put limitations on the state so the state cannot enter into private life of individual and individuals enjoy some amount of liberty from the arbitrary actions of state. So when individual rights are granted then world started talking about next generation of rights which are socio-economic human rights. So these guarantee equal conditions and treatment. So they are not rights directly possessed by individuals but constitute positive duties upon the government to respect and fulfill them. So unlike first generation rights these rights require government to guarantee equal conditions and treatment to the public. So after giving civil, political rights, socio-economic rights then the world started talking about third generation rights which are called collective developmental rights. So these are rights of people and groups and are held against their respective states and align with the final principle of French Revolution which is fraternity. So what is fraternity? So it means brotherhood. So this category of rights is also called solidarity rights because these rights cannot be accepted by an individual but only by collective groups of people. So first generation is about civil and political rights, second generation is about socio-economic rights and third generation is about collective developmental rights. So keep these basic rights in mind. Now let us discuss important points from the opiate column. See the author cites the views of Hannah Arendt who is an influential political philosopher of 20th century. See most of the evolution of human rights happened in 19th and 20th centuries. So the Hannah Arendt had a very different view of human rights and is very relevant in the contemporary world. So author says that Hannah Arendt challenged the framework which made access to citizenship the sole prerogative of state. So citizenship can be granted only by the state that is government and Hannah Arendt challenged this framework. Because under such framework the ideas of ethnical and racial homogeneity were propagated. For example in 1947 when partition of India happened some amount of communal homogeneity that is religion based homogeneity propagated both in India and Pakistan. And if you see during world war Germany tried to maintain racial homogeneity. Only Aryans are treated as citizens and other people especially Jews were persecuted and were kept in detention camps. So the concept of rights bearing individual changed to concept of citizenship. So previously an individual had rights because he or her is a human. Later it turned into the concept of citizenship. It means only if you are citizen only then you can enjoy rights. So where we are seeing this is because whenever a person is guaranteed rights there should be some remedy measures when those rights are violated. For example in India whenever fundamental rights are violated we have some mechanism to approach court of law. Even our fundamental rights other than article 15, 16, 19, 29 and 30 are even guaranteed to foreigners. But what about stateless people. If a person does not belong to any state what about his or her rights. Who will enforce his rights. Who will provide remedies if the rights of those persons are violated. So this is the main problem of stateless people. For example you can take Rohingyas who were forcibly pushed out of Myanmar. So now they are in some type of camps in India and Bangladesh. So if their rights are violated who will provide remedies to enforce their rights. Further according to author Hannah Arendt believed that universal declaration of human rights was inefficient. See in 1948 UN came up with a declaration of human rights which guaranteed human rights across the world. But the problem here is even in order to enjoy basic human rights a person is required to be something more than just a human being. That is the person must be a member of political community which is nothing but citizenship. So it is clear that right to inclusion in a political community is essential to enforce civil, socioeconomic and even political rights. So only if you are a citizen then you can enjoy other rights. So which Arendt called it as right to have rights. So first if you have right to citizenship then you can enjoy other rights. So right to have rights. So this is what worsens the plight of stateless nationless people. As they are not citizens they lack remedy to enforce their rights. The authors relate this with plight of 19 lakh people excluded from the NRC. Since they are stripped from citizenship they automatically get stripped of their rights as well. So they face twin issues. First is a community which will not accept them unless their country of origin is proved. So Indians do not accept them until they are proved that they are belonging to India. Second is the impracticability of the rightless claim to a community from which they have been willfully excluded which means the people who are left out of NRC they don't have rights. How can they claim to be part of India when they are intentionally excluded from citizenship. So first the people of country won't accept. On the other hand the impracticality of rightless who claims to be part of India from which they are excluded. So these are twin problems facing by stateless people. So once the foreigners tribunal decides that an individual is a foreigner he or she is sent to a detention camp. So until their country of origin accepts them back they will be kept there without the rights guaranteed by the India. So now the question is is it wise to consider citizenship only basis for granting human rights. This question needs a lot of deliberations and we need to rethink whether rights of individual come first or the concept of citizenship comes first. This is all about the discussion of this news article wherein we have talked about the evolution of human rights and the problems faced by stateless people. Let us take up these two news articles. One is editorial another is lead column from editorial page. This discussion is going to be very comprehensive and we are going to continue our philosophical discussion of quality similar to that of last news article discussion. So if you have understood how the human rights evolved in the last news article this discussion is going to be very simple. In the first part of lead column the author tries to explain the philosophical aspects of what determines the functioning and performance of democracy. By explaining these concepts the author discusses the present state of Indian democracy. The relevant syllabus is given here for your reference. First the author lists out the textbook characteristics of democracy like multi-party elections with universal adult suffrage nothing but voting right to every adult person. Then smooth change over in government after elections the existence of independent press and judiciary and the guarantee of civil rights justifiable in courts of law. But these characteristics are partial indicators of democracy which determine if a country is democratic or not. It is here the author discusses the actual determinants of performance in a democracy that determines if a country is actually democratic or not. So simply put other than the textbook characteristics discussed above there are actual determinants which determine if a country is really democratic or not. According to the author the socio-economic outcomes are the factors which determine the performance of democracy. Socio-economic outcomes nothing but the second generation rights which we discussed in the last news article. First generation civil and political rights nothing but the textbook characteristics where you have talked about universal adult suffrage and socio-economic outcomes means second generation rights. So here people satisfaction is a way to know whether the desired socio-economic outcomes are achieved or not. But as per UN's World Happiness 2020 report India is ranked 144th out of 153 countries evaluated in terms of happiest countries. The western world democracies from Europe, North America performed better and were in top of this list. So from this report we can say that people satisfaction in their life is very low in India due to poor socio-economic outcomes. So in this context the author speaks about the importance of democracy. In a democracy it is important to create institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman. Here what matters is who are going to build these institutions is it the government or anyone else. So this is the philosophical aspect that has been discussed by the author. Here it tells that it is the people themselves build the institutions so that they lead a fulfilling life. But for the people to build these institutions they need some basic support from the state that is government. So the state has a role in supporting the people. So the next question is what is the role of state in supporting the people? First state must ensure that laws are not constraining or restricting the liberty of individuals in building the institutions not constraining not restricting nothing but first generation of human rights. So when we say institution you can relate with either cooperatives or self-affiliated groups. Nothing but we are talking about empowerment of public where people come together to improve their lives. Second the state has an obligation to build the capabilities of individuals so that they can pursue the things they wish to do in this instance to build the institutions. So what are the inputs which the individuals require to build their capabilities? We said that individuals need some capabilities to build the institutions. So what are they? As per the author one is individuals health and the other is individuals education. So the state has an obligation to provide necessary support and assistance in the schemes and programs to provide these inputs so that the individuals become able enough to build and possess a set of capabilities. So what do we are talking about? We are talking about second generation of human rights. In the last news article we talked about socio-economic human rights as second generation of human rights that is what we are talking right now. See it is very essential for a country like India where there is high level of socio-economic divide for example in terms of cost, money, other inequalities due to which there is no equality in the opportunity. Even today some costs of people are not allowed to enter some professions. What we have spoken so far is nothing but human development. We have talked about education, health and other factories standard of living. But India is performing poor in this aspect as well which is clear as per UN's Human Development Index. In 2019 India ranked 129th out of 189 countries. So we are not just lacking in world happiness report we are also lacking in Human Development Index. So from this we can say that India has a huge challenge in terms of human development which is very instrumental in developing a healthy democracy. So from the discussion so far the concept which we can conclude is liberty and capability together are ultimate aspirations in a democracy which has to be supported by the state to the people so that they build the institutions of democracy to achieve socio-economic outcomes for a fulfilling life. So the role of state here is facilitate the people. By facilitating we mean not restricting the liberties and providing inputs in education and health to build the capabilities. For example you can talk about states of Kerala Tamil Nadu which are already providing education and health infrastructure. So when talking about India where does India stand what is the present state of India's democracy this is the second part of this lead column. Here author tells that so far India has been keen on building the procedures of democracy only and this did not in any way support the goal of fulfilling life when we say procedures of democracy we talked about multi-party elections smooth change over in government independent judiciary so these are the procedures of democracy and as just said these are not going to be support the goal of fulfilling life. Here one main issue an example given by author himself is the under investment in public health system this has been exposed due to present COVID-19 pandemic. So the state has neglected one of its responsibilities which is to provide inputs in health so when government is not providing the capabilities properly to the public how public can lead a fulfilled life not just that one more issue here is that if an individual questions this inaction of the state then they are subject to repressions like arrest threat to life etc. For example a doctor in Andhra Pradesh who questions the government for poor handling of COVID-19 pandemic and unavailability of PPE kits the person was publicly humiliated by the police and even he was declared mentally unfit a lot of repressions were forced upon him so what is happening is most of the individuals are not questioning the inaction or poor action of the state fearing the repression from the state in other words put simply the public are blindly submitting to the authority of the state so this is the present condition of Indian democracy here author sees a dystopia in India's democracy see dystopia means an imagined state or a society in which there is great suffering or injustice the political concept of dystopia means when any type of political party organization or even an ideology takes over where the state ends up becoming an authoritarian state authoritarian state acts upon the principle of blind submission to authority as opposed to individual freedom of thought and action in a healthy democracy so the author ends this news column with a question whether India is nearing to become an authoritarian state see this news article takes the extreme happenings in the country and questions the nature of the country itself but we need to be very balanced in understanding all the news articles as well as writing our answers in the main section and this next editorial can be seen with the help of one of the concepts which we discussed just now which is liberty this editorial analyzes the approach of government in tackling the problems of unlawful content and disinformation in digital media which is causing lot of harm to Indian society the central government is preferring the regulation of web-based media instead of self-regulatory mechanism as proposed by the supreme court in the recent sudarshan tv case so the government wants to bring a regulatory mechanism to web-based digital media instead of a self-regulatory mechanism this is because the government finds that digital media can spread venomous hatred terror and even violence see we all know that internet is a place where there is free sharing of information and ideas but in the recent times internet has become a space where finding truthful facts are often challenging many lives have been lost to violence filled by disinformation in india in recent years but will all these issues be solved by bringing in more rules that is a regulatory mechanism proposed by center the author tells that more rules is a fanciful idea why because one biggest fear is that more rules indirectly implies more censorship and this affects the freedom of speech and expression of the individuals so this is going to curtail their liberties nothing but curtailing the first generation of human rights so author emphasizes that attempts at making new rules need to be well thought out and measured in the most practical manner if the rules are too strict they are going to enforce indirect censorship so this is all about the discussion of these two news articles in fact total three news articles first we have talked about the human rights then the state of democracy in india and then we have talked about rules to regulate the web-based digital media next let us take up this comment column from editorial page which talks about women empowerment and women's participation in decision making it primarily discusses about the leadership attributes of women perception of society on female leadership and also the political status of women in india so in this context let us discuss the article in detail with focus on representation of women in indian politics the relevant syllabus is given here for your reference see in any political system presence of women is very low compared to men in many countries women had to wage long battles to get right to vote and also to get elected today the percentage of women as voters has increased considerably but their political participation is still low so therefore women are unable to get an equal share in decision making process here we should note that political participation means not only exercising the right to vote but also leadership and decision making at all levels of governance and as we all know politics at every level of participation is dominated by men so author continues by pointing out at the inherent biases and perceptions about female effectiveness in leadership roles the author notes that there is a perception in society that female leaders lack efficiency but he's of the opinion that female leaders have the same line of efficiency as the male counterparts he takes the example of a recent study conducted in new years to effectively prove the efficiency of female leaders the study reported that states which have female governors in america had fewer covid-19 related deaths and this was because female governors acted more effectively by issuing earlier stay-at-home orders the author also talks about examples of germany taiwan new zealand which all have women heads all these nations have managed the pandemic much better than their neighbors so this is a global scenario what about india what is the status of women in indian politics see firstly let us talk about right to vote see we know that the indian women as early as 1917 raised the issue of universal adult franchise during home role movement followed by ncm the 1935 government of india act provided for right to vote for all women about 21 years of age and who fulfilled the conditions of property and education and when we became independent and when our constitution came into force that is in 1950 we granted universal adult franchise to all its citizens so according to author india performed well compared to many so-called mature democracies of the west where it took several decades of struggle before women were allowed to vote even in the so-called the oldest democracy that is the usa the right to vote for women was granted only in 1920 so what about the participation of women in political decision-making see here author talks about 73rd and 74th constitutional amendment acts yes we are talking about local governments the panchayats and municipalities they provide for the reservation of not less than one third of total number of seats for women in both panchayats and municipalities here author points out how the acts gave women an opportunity to provide their leadership quality and according to the author the female leaders performed significantly better than men in implementing policies which promote the interests of women for example if we talk about rural infrastructure investments a study found that the grand panchayats headed by women invested more in drinking water sanitation which served the interests of women so in one sense this led to emancipation or liberation of women but at the same time we all should notice that the representation of women in our least led to bodies that is assemblies and parliament is very low see even though we had charismatic female leaders like Indira Gandhi, Sushma Swaraj, Jai Lalitha, Maya Vati our nation has given far less importance to female representation even if we take the current example of all the states only West Bengal is headed by a female chief minister next author talks about the representation of women in Lok Sabha the representation of women in Lok Sabha is just over 14 percent of total strength and also notice that in the women in parliament 1995 2020 report of inter parliamentary union India performed low with the rank of 120 out of 172 countries interestingly the tiny state of Rwanda in central Africa has stopped this list with the highest female representation in central lace leisure and coming to current government women make up only 10 percent of total ministerial strength even though the women population is around 48 percent in the country the representation in lace leisure and ministries is very low around 10 to 14 percent so in this context the demand for 33 percent of reservation for women in lace leisure has attained even more significance here if you see there is a reservation factor for women in local governments that is panchayats, municipalities, etc but the same kind of reservation is not there in assemblies and parliament even though attempts have been made to extend quotas for women in Lok Sabha and state assemblies the attempts have failed because of poor support from government and as recently as in 2010 Rajya Sabha has passed the 33 percent reservation for women bill but the Lok Sabha and state assemblies have failed to give them their consent so thereby we can understand that for true emancipation of women the women should be brought to parliament and assemblies but a society like India where even today patriarchy is existing we need to provide reservation to improve the participation of women in decision-making process the author also opines for increased participation of women in policy making and also in governance hopefully then the perception of women as ineffective leaders will be gradually eliminated so this is all about the discussion of this news article wherein we have talked about the current status of political participation of women in India let us move on to practice questions discussion session consider the following statements with reference to inter-parliamentary union three statements are given statement one it is the global organization of national parliaments yes the statement one is correct so you can eliminate option c statement 2 the organization has a permanent observer status in united nations statement 2 is also correct so you can eliminate option b as well statement 3 all the member states of union are members of this organization know the statement is incorrect because as of now there are around 179 member parliaments in inter-parliamentary union while the member states in union is around 195 so the correct answer is option a one and two only next question with reference to kawari engine often seen in news consider the following statements it is an indigenously developed low bypass twin spool turbofan engine to propel indian light combat aircraft yes statement one is correct statement 2 it is designed and developed by gas turbine research establishment under ministry of heavy industries and public enterprises no this statement is incorrect because gt re comes under dr do which in turn is under ministry of defense so correct answer is option a one only now let us take up this previous year question in the context of quality which one of the following would you accept as the most appropriate definition of liberty as you can see four options are given here protection against tyranny of political rulers option b absence of restraint option c opportunity to do whatever one likes option d opportunity to develop oneself fully actually there was a lot of confusion between options b and d however the official upsc key released last month the answer is declared as option d so we will see why there was a confusion between options b and d see there are two dimensions of freedom freedom as the absence of external constraints and freedom as the expansion of opportunities to express oneself so in political theory the first one that is absence of constraints is called a negative liberty while the second one opportunities to express oneself is called positive liberty see negative liberty seeks to define and defend an area in which individual would be inviolable which means this is an area in which no external authority can interfere and positive liberty is concerned with looking at the conditions and nature of relationship between individual and society and of improving these conditions such that there are fewer constraints to the development of individual personality so while negative liberty means absence of constraints while positive liberty means opportunities to develop oneself fully as you can info negative liberty is only concerned with inviolable area of non-interference and not with the conditions in society while positive liberty recognizes that one can be free only in society and hence tries to improve the society as a whole to enable the development of individual so the best answer here is option d that is opportunity to develop oneself fully next question see this question is framed based on this news article which talks about a kag report the report was in regard with the damage caused to the artifacts in the Indian Museum of Kolkata during the renovation works let us see the question now consider the following statements with reference to Indian Museum which is in Kolkata statement one the foundation of museum was laid in 1814 by British India Association this statement is incorrect why because the Indian Museum was founded in 1814 but not by British India Association but by Asiatic Society of Bengal see the British India Association was formed only in the year 1851 by merging landholder society and Bengal British India Society so if you know the fact that British India Association was found after 1850s you can easily eliminate statement one statement two it is the largest multipurpose museum in the Asia Pacific region of the world yes this statement is correct this museum is the earliest and the largest multipurpose museum not just in Indian subcontinent but also in the Asia Pacific region of the world this museum was known in the beginning as Asiatic Society Museum and subsequently came to be known as Imperial Museum and later got the name Indian Museum and the museum is more familiar by the name Jadugar or Azhagar among the visitors and note that this museum is under the control of ministry of culture so the correct answer is option b 2 only next question which of the following is not a characteristic feature of Indian democracy four options are given here Indian judiciary universal suffrage without an age limit rule of law smooth change over of the governments as you all know answer is option b this is not feature of Indian democracy because in India universal suffrage has a age limit of 18 years only if a person is 18 years old he or she is entitled to right to vote next let us take up this main question the question says government of the people by the people and for the people is an ideal which remains unachieved or underachieved in light of the above statement discuss the status of political participation of women in India this is a ten marks question and the word limit is 150 as many of you might know that first statement that is government of the people by the people and for the people is given by former American president Abraham Lincoln so in the light of this statement we have to discuss the political participation of women in India try to give two to three examples and post your answers in the comment section with this we conclude today's news analysis if you like today's session click on the like button show your appreciation in the comment section and don't forget to subscribe to Shankar A.S. Academy's youtube channel and we hope to see you in our next video thank you