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CURRENT AFFAIRS (04.06.2013)

1. Political parties come under ambit of RTI Act

In a landmark judgment, the Central Information Commission (CIC) has ruled thatpolitical parties come under the ambit of the Right to Information Act. The CIC

order said, We have no hesitation in concluding that INC/AICC, BJP, CPI(M),CPI, NCP and BSP have been substantially financed by the Central government

and, therefore, they are held to be public authorities under Section 2(h) of the RTI

Act. The full bench of the commission, comprising Chief Information

Commissioner Satyananda Mishra and Information Commissioners M.L. Sharmaand Annapurna Dixit, argued: It would be odd to argue that transparency is good

for all State organs but not so good for political parties, which, in reality, control

all the vital organs of the State. The criticality of the role being played by thesepolitical parties in our democratic set-up and the nature of duties performed by

them also point towards their public character, bringing them in the ambit ofsection 2(h). The constitutional and legal provisions discussed herein above also

point towards their character as public authorities, the commission held. Theorder came after activists Subhash Chandra Aggarwal and Anil Bairwal of the

Association of Democratic Reforms approached the CIC, requesting that politicalparties be declared as public authorities. They had asked the six political parties to

make available details of voluntary financial contributions received by them and

the donorsnames and addresses. The political parties, with the exception of the

CPI, however, refused to give away information, claiming that they do not comeunder the RTI Act. The commission then directed the presidents and general

secretaries of the six political parties to designate CPIOs and the AppellateAuthorities at their headquarters in six weeks time. The CPIOs so appointed willrespond to the RTI applications extracted in this order in four weeks time.

2. One big step towards peace

Secretary John Kerry has demonstrated courage and wisdom in abandoning his

predecessors insistence on President Bashar al-Assads departure as a

precondition to talks for a political solution to the Syrian crisis, thereby bringingthe American position closer to that of Russia and many others, including India. Hehas to go a step further and drop objection to Irans participation in the Geneva II

conference. Iran has more than convincingly established its potential to prolong theconflict; it should be given an opportunity to play a constructive role. When theArab Spring sprouted some shoots in Syria in the spring of 2011, it was

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immediately seized upon by Israel, the United States and SyriasSunni neighbours

to get rid of the Assad regime the first set of countries to break the Tehran-Damascus axis and the neighbours to replace a Shia dispensation in Damascus by a

Sunni one, however fundamentalist. There was thus congruence a term muchin use these daysof interests among regional and extra-regional players.

Israel & Iran

For Israel, the ouster of the regime in Damascus would be of immense benefit. Itwould greatly weaken Irans clout in the region. Anything that debilitates Iran is of

enormous importance to Israel, given the portrayal of Iran as posing an existential

threat to the Jewish state. Hizbullah, with its massive arsenal of missiles androckets which can reach Tel Aviv, will have its lifeline disrupted, if not irreparably

breached; one of the main reasons for Israels restraint in dealing with Irans

nuclear threat is the capability of Hizbullah to inflict considerable damage to Israelin the event of an Israeli attack on Iran. For Syrias neighbours, it was an

opportunity, not to be missed, to tilt the regional sectarian balance decisivelyagainst the Shias. The loss of the Alawite regime would be a huge psychological

blow to Shias and an equal boost to Sunnis everywhere. For that very reason, thetwo Shia regimes in the region, Iran and Iraq, were always expected to do their

utmost to send succour to the Assad regime. The Hizbullah, which has everythingto lose in the event of Mr. Assads fall has, unsurprisingly, decided to jump into

the fray. The Shia-Sunni sectarian divide, ever present but significantly reignited

since the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003, has attained a level of intensity

which will be extremely difficult to contain in the years ahead. All of Syriasneighbours, including Israel, have become involved, and not necessarily againsttheir wishes.

These developments, including the very real possibility of hard line Islamist groupsgaining power in Damascus in the post-Assad scenario, were easily anticipatable,

and were anticipated by this writer and many others. But the temptation to get ridof Mr. Assad was so great that any price was worth it, including the contingency of

having to live with an Islamist government in Damascus. No doubt, the West

likewise knew how events would unfold, though now it would like us to believethat things have not turned out as per its calculations. The most inexcusable

mistake the western countries made was to assume that the Assad regime wouldfall within weeks of the beginning of the protests. Was this wishful thinking? Or,

were they victims of their own propaganda? The Russian decision to send missilesand other military equipment to Syria should not have surprised anyone. Several

Sunni states have been openly arming the rebels since almost the beginning, with

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the approval of the international community; why should the Russian action to

help the other side in the civil war be treated differently? Civil wars have alwaysattracted external players to back opposing sides; why should Syria be an

exception? It did not call for great analytical skill to recognise that making

diplomatic initiatives conditional on the prior departure of Mr. Assad was nevergoing to work. The rebels could be excused for sticking to this line, since their

strategy was to get the West more actively engaged on their side, such as byenforcing a no-fly zone, sending material and even men to the war zones, etc. (This

was exactly the strategy of the Bosnian Muslims during the Bosnian civil war.)Syrias Sunni neighbours also were not prepared to countenance the idea of talks

with the Damascus regime for sectarian reasons. But if the concern of other

external players with the huge loss of lives in Syria was genuine, they had everyreason not to insist on the precondition for Mr. Assads departure, as well as topersuade the rebels and their regional supporters not to insist on it.

Use of nerve gas

Carla del Ponte, member of the U.N. commission of inquiry on Syria, said a few

weeks ago that there was strong, concrete suspicion that the rebels had used nervegas sarin. The western countries were understandably disappointed by the

statement of Ms del Ponte and largely ignored it; had she said the same about theAssad regime, the uproar, and clamour for strong action against the regime by the

U.S., whose President had repeatedly said that the use of this weapon would be a

game changer, can easily be imagined. This is merely to point out the obvious and

not to criticise anyone of practising double standards, since every country is guiltyof it sometime or the other. There is a civil war within civil war in Syria. The

Grand Coalition, cobbled together at the command of the former Secretary ofState, was never going to present a unified and effective leadership. Various militia

groups are fighting among themselves. Mr. Assad, who is enjoying relative

military advantage at present, is making belligerent statements. He should know

that great powers do not blink for a moment before deciding to reverse theirpositions; they really do not have permanent friends. The Lavrov-Kerry call for

Geneva II offers the only realistic chance to work for a political settlement, since it

leaves open the possibility for both principal Syrian parties to participate. Thedifficulty is more on the rebel side, since there are nearly 150 rebel groups

involved in the civil war, the most effective and disciplined of which are diehard

islamists and al Qaeda-affiliated. The Syrian national coalition is a house divided,with different factions unable to reach a consensus on whether and who should

participate in Geneva. The hardliners are insisting on prior departure of Mr. Assad,which even the U.S. has wisely decided not to insist on. Secretary Kerry is making

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strenuous effort to persuade the coalition to attend Geneva. The Damascus regime

has already indicated its willingness to do so. Refusal by the rebels will give anenormous political advantage to the regime as well as to Russia and Iran.

The bitter pill

The rebels are hesitating because as of present, the regime has gained an upper

hand in the fighting; no one wants to negotiate from a position of weakness. Onbalance, the coalition can be expected to swallow the bitter pill and decide to go toGeneva for one simple reason. If it does not, it will forfeit the possibility of getting

enhanced military assistance. If it can demonstrate in Geneva the skill to put the

blame for the likely failure of the talks on the regime, it will have a far betterprospect of benefiting from the European decision to lift the arms embargo and

Americans willing to supply lethal equipment. Zvi Barel, an Israeli expert on such

matters, wrote recently: the Syrian civil war is likely to continue for years andlead to violent spillovers to neighbouring countries the initiative to determine

when and if to set off the regional powder keg has fallen into Assads hands. Thisis the reason, Barel suggests, the U.S. has agreed to leave Mr. Assad in power as

long as negotiations will be conducted with the rebels. If Geneva II happens, Indiashould ask to be invited. Our participation would be in line with our official line

that the solution should be political and Syrian owned. We will be in goodcompany and we would be seen to be active in a region where we have vital

interests.Geneva II, in which both principal parties to the Syrian conflict can

participate, offers the only realistic opportunity to work for a political settlement

3. A race towards climate catastrophe

When Brian Lara scored a scintillating 400 not out in Antigua in April 2004, itseemed his score would remain unchallenged for the foreseeable future. But we

now have another player on the scene who has scored 400, and threatens to go past

that number effortlessly carbon dioxide (CO{-2}); CO{-2}levels in theatmosphere touched 400 parts per million (ppm) on May 9. Its symbolicsignificance is huge, its actual import is even bigger, for three reasons.

Impact on life cycles

One, the recent pace at which CO{-2}levels have been rising to reach 400 ppm.

When Charles Keeling [the worldsleading authority on atmospheric greenhousegas accumulation and climate science pioneer] began measuring atmospheric CO{-

2}in March 1958, and through the 1960s, CO{-2}emissions were found to berising at a little over half a ppm a year. The world economy was at a much lower

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level than today notwithstanding post-War growth, and carbon emissions were

commensurately lower. By the late 1990s this had changed, spurred primarily, butnot exclusively, by the shifting of manufacturing to China, and capitalisms desire

to cut costs of energy inputs and labour. CO{-2}rise in the first decade of this

century made the collective jaw of climate scientists drop. Despite the worldeconomic crisis since 2007, annual carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil

fuels have been rising in recent years, to 32 billion tonnes (plus another four billiontonnes from deforestation and even more of other gases). Eight billion tonnes of

CO{-2}in the atmosphere equals 1 ppm. So even though the Earth absorbs isbeing forced to absorb twice as much CO{-2}(roughly 17-18 billion tonnes a

year currently) as it used to 50 years ago, atmospheric CO{-2}levels have been

galloping three times as fast, at a little over two ppm a year for the last decade.This is 20,000 times the long-term natural rate at which carbon dioxide has gone

into and out of the atmosphere as part of the carbon cycle. A consequence, usually

rendered invisible as we tend to be so anthropocentric, is the oceans getting moreacidic, with harmful effects on corals and some marine species. This pace ofemissions and consequent warming is also making it increasingly difficult for

ecosystems and species to adapt. A metasurvey by Prof. Camille Parmesan

[University of Texas, Austin] of 866 published studies reported species across theworld struggling to cope with disruptions in the life cycles of predators and prey,

of insect pollinators and flowering plants. Birds are laying their first eggs earlier.

As their habitat gets warmer, other species are trying to move away from theEquator or climb higher. Consequently, mountaintop and polar species have

suffered contractions in their range or been the first groups in which whole

species have gone extinct due to recent climate change. Two, as we reach 400ppm and beyond, we are going farther away from safe levels of CO{-2}. Albeit a

minority view, but a growing one, safe has been deemed as 350 ppm or lower. Inits first articulation in 2008, [leading climate scientist] James Hansen and others

wrote that if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which

civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, CO{-2}will need

to be reduced to at most 350 ppm, but likely less than that (TargetAtmospheric CO{-2}: Where Should Humanity Aim?, The Open Atmospheric

Science Journal , 2008, 2, pp. 217-31). This paper provides the intellectual basis

for the worldwide campaign to reduce CO{-2}, headed by the organisation,350.org.

Temperature regulator

Three, the influence of CO{-2}levels on the Earths temperatures and henceclimate over the past 50 million years should give us pause. In The Long Thaw

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(Princeton 2009), Professor David Archer, who works on the global carbon cycle

at the University of Chicago, writes: The similarity between CO{-2}andtemperature in [the] Antarctica is jaw-dropping, a causal link he says thats even

stronger than that between smoking and lung cancer, kind of a gold standard in

the medical world. Falling CO{-2}levels contributed to the formation of ice capson the Antarctic 34 million years ago. As CO{-2}levels fell further, to roughly 240

ppm three million years ago, temperatures fell in their wake sufficiently for ice toform in the Arctic. Thats why Arctic ice is now the first to go. I have not come

across any work on the potential impact of ice-free Arctic summers on Indiasclimate, but you can bet your last rupee they will be considerable. CO{-2}was also

one of two big factors in the Earth moving in and out of Ice Age glacials over the

past 2.5 million years. It is this regulator of the Earths temperature that we havebeen shortsightedly fiddling with, and pushed beyond the realms of human

experience. We dont want to go much beyond 400 ppm. CO{-2}has one quality of

the other great batsman of the last 25 years longevity. A significant portion ofCO{-2}emitted remains in the atmosphere for several millennia. Climate change isalso largely irreversible for a thousand years after emissions stop. The Earth is now

in uncharted territory as atmospheric carbon dioxide has shot past the 400 ppmmark. There is no more room for manoeuvre

4. He put India on the open software map

Atul Chitnis, technology expert and founder of one of Indias earliest Linux

technology conferences, FOSS.in, insisted that Open Source was not philosophy,

ideology or politics, but simply about technology and hacking. His passing inBangalore, at 51, on Monday of intestinal cancer brought tributes for his role in

making Linux popular for a range of users: from the military to the smallentrepreneur. The Berlin-born technologist, who grew up in Belgaum, Karnataka,

was a passionate advocate of open source software, and inspired scores of Linux

enthusiasts. His lasting achievement was to convince PC Questmagazine to carry

the first ever Linux distribution in India on its cover CD in 1996. This, for mostIndians, was their first introduction to Linux. Its easy to underestimate the value

of this, said Kiran Jonalagadda, founder of HasGeek in Bangalore. The Linux

distribution was put out there, for people to use, and the cover story offered adetailed guide on installing it. This was the first time users got to know about

Linux, as something that wasnt just being worked on by geeks in the U.S. He also

wrote passionately about it from operating systems to setting up mail servers.As a columnist and consulting editor with PC Quest through the 1990s, Chitnis

witnessed a time when India was still finding its way in the digital space, and homeusers were slowly logging on. Prasanto K. Roy, who worked with him atPC Quest

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,calls him a super-guru. The entire project, where the magazine gave away Linux

distribution package CDs once a year, was driven by him. His biggest contributionwas that he was keen on presenting technology and technology literature in assimple and user-friendly a manner as possible.

FOSS.in

What he wrote on Linux, on modems and BBS (bulletin board system) was verypopular. A lot of it became the biggest source of information and referencematerial for those who were trying to set up anything in that era. Chitnis was a key

member of the Bangalore Linux Users Group, which organised offline meets in

early 1999. These passionately organised events laid the foundation for LinuxBangalore in 2001 later renamed FOSS.in a well-attended technology

conference which turned 10 in 2010. Talk is cheap. Show me the code, was

Chitnis refrain to friends and adversaries. He was quoting Linus Torvalds. In a2009 interview, he told The Hindu that the biggest achievement of FOSS.in (for

Free and Open Source Software) was that it was able to change Indias image frombeing a mere consumer of software to a producer. In his last Tweet, posted two

days ago, he randomly mentions Pink Floyds Shine on you crazy diamond, atribute song written by the band members to their former mate Syd Barret. Music

lover, amateur musician and a part of a Bangalore-based internet radio station,Chitnis leaves behind a young legacy of software activism. FOSS.in founder

ensured that Linux reached a wide audience, enthusing professional and amateur

users

5. Bank aspirants get more time to set up holding company

Will provide sufficient time for promoters to comply with various stipulations

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on Monday, said that it had decided to extend

the validity period of the in-principle approval for setting up of the Non-OperativeFinancial Holding Company (NOFHC) from one year to 18 months. It is expected

that this would provide sufficient time for the promoters/promoter group to complywith the various stipulations in the guidelines and the terms and conditions that

would be set out while granting the in-principle approvals to successfulapplicants, said RBI while issuing clarifications to queries on new banking

licenses. The RBI had released guidelines for licensing of new banks in the privatesector last February . The queries received from applicants brought out several

complex issues pertaining to the re-organisation of the existing corporate structure,restructuring of businesses and meeting the regulatory requirements.

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The RBI further said that NOFHC is to be wholly-owned by the promoters or

promoter group and it cannot be a listed company. If the promoter group, whichhas the financial services company listed or otherwise, wishes to set up a bank, it

must transfer all its regulated financial services business to a separate company and

transfer the shareholding in such companies to the NOFHC. After it wastransferred, the regulated financial services business will cease to be a financial

services company and it can set up a NOFHC provided the public shareholding init is not less than 51 per cent, said RBI.RBI also said that if a housing finance

company plans to have an NOFHC, the lending activities must be conducted frominside the bank. Therefore, RBI said the housing finance activity of the HFC

should be transferred to the bank under the NOFHC. The financial sector regulatedentity which holds the HFC substantially will have to come under the NOFHC.

On rural branches

PTI reports:

The RBI sought to allay apprehensions over the lack of level playing field onissues such as rural branch presence and foreign holdings between the existing

lenders and the new ones who are to be granted licences. Replying to a specific

query on the lack of level playing due to the insistence on having 25 per centpresence in rural areas, the RBI said all the incremental branches by the existing

players are opened in the same proportion. With a view to enhancing financial

inclusion, the conditions relating to the branch network are specifically prescribed

at 25 per cent for unbanked rural centres... this norm has been extended to theexisting banks also and they are required to comply with this stipulation while

opening new branches, the regulator said.To a query on ceiling of 49 per centequity for the first five years on foreign holding, the RBI said it has been done to

encourage more domestic investors getting in. After expiry of five years, theaggregate foreign shareholding in the bank would be allowed as per the extant FDI

policy, the RBI said in the over 160-pages clarifications it issued on Monday. Thecentral bank also clarified that the new banks will have to abide by the existing

requirements on the cash reserve ratio or the ratio deposits to be parked with the

RBI, the government bond holding or statutory liquidity ratio and the prioritysector lending requirements, which have been kept at par with an existing lender.

There will no regulatory forbearance in any of the matters, it said. It said non-banklenders (NBFCs) can convert their presence in tier-II to tier-VI cities into bankbranches once they are selected to enter the fray.

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However, for lucrative Tier-I cities, the Reserve Bank said, the conversion can be

done, but would be deducted from the particular applicant NBFCs (non bankfinance company) quota of Tier-I branches. All NBFC branches in Tier-1 centres

which would carry out banking business may be permitted to be converted into

bank branches and the excess over the entitled number of Tier-1 branches would beadjusted against the future entitlements of the new bank within a maximum three

years from the date of commencement of business by the bank, it said. The RBIadded that the branches of NBFCs and the bank should be distinct and separate.

Additionally, once a NBFC branch is converted into a bank branch, it cannotconduct business of the NBFC, it added. The Reserve Bank explained that the new

entrants have been disallowed getting into newer areas for three years because itwants them to get on sound footing before diversification.