Table of Contents

Impatient move

- The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, as approved by the Lok Sabha, sought to give statutory form to the Supreme Court ruling of 2017 that declared talaq-e-biddat as illegal.
- The Bill made this form of divorce punishable by a three-year prison term and a fine.
- In the face of Opposition concerns, the government proposed significant changes to water down the provisions relating to the treatment of talaq-e-biddat as a criminal offence.
- Despite a notice for these amendments being given, the matter was not taken up in the Rajya Sabha in the last session due to a lack of consensus.

Bill deferred to the next session of Parliament.
Union Cabinet: ordinance route
Sign of undue impatience?

Civil matter into criminal?
If its illegal and not valid then the marriage continues.

Triple talaq is criminal offence
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday cleared an ordinance that makes talaq-ebiddat, or instant triple talaq, a criminal offence that will attract a maximum jail term of three years. President Ram Nath Kovind later in the day gave his assent.
The new law, however, incorporates safeguards, including a provision for bail to an accused before the start of the trial.
While instant triple talaq will continue to be a “non-bailable” offence — the police cannot grant bail at the police station — the accused can approach a magistrate for bail even before trial.
“There was an overpowering urgency and a compelling necessity to bring the ordinance as the practice continued unabated despite the Supreme Court’s order last year,” Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters.
He said 201 cases had been reported from across the country after the Supreme Court banned triple talaq in August 2017. Since January 2017, 430 cases had been reported until September 13 this year. “What is important is that the practice of triple talaq continues in spite of the Supreme Court having annulled it and the Lok Sabha having passed a Bill that is pending in the Rajya Sabha. We have all the evidence and a series of papers in this regard,” Mr. Prasad said. • Ban in force in Sri Lanka, Pakistan • India and 22 other countries have banned it.

Upping the ante

The rules-based world order for international trade appears to be in for a rougher ride.
USA: slapping $200-billion worth of Chinese exports with 10% tariff, ratcheting it up to 25% by the year-end.
China: retaliatory taxes to the tune of $60 billion.
Chinese imports to the U.S., nearly 4% of world trade, will come under the tax net.
Over the longer term, a reversal of the globalisation of supply chains may take place — perhaps that is the very aim of the Trump administration.
WTO and a myriad other multilateral rulemaking bodies will wither away, losing their authority.

Bringing data under the rule of law

It is the law that provides people, especially the weaker sections, various protections and ensures justice.
In a digital society, as data mirror and help organise all aspects of social, economic and political life, data need to be subject to the rule of law.
For the law to apply to something, it should normally be able to access and act upon it. Our data should be protected from foreign entities who don’t allow us to access data.
As privacy is a right, it is primarily the state’s responsibility to protect our personal data. But it can mostly do so only if the data are within its reach.
Srikrishna Committee on data protection authority: it should be made a constitutional authority.
Data, and digital intelligence derived from it, are universally acknowledged as the key economic resources in the digital society.
Data are of many kinds —

there is news and information; personal, community and corporate data; data concerning common business activities, military, banking, health, education and agriculture; and so on.

Community data & private yet public interest data.
Uber
Some of these data are very sensitive, some are needed for effective regulation, some for governance and policymaking, and some for economic development, infrastructure and sharing.
It is therefore a matter of what kind of data requires what kind of regulatory regime – localisation, global free flow, or various shades of grey in-between, rather than a sterile binary of whether data localisation is good or bad, which is what the debate has been reduced to unfortunately.

The death of a tigress

Supreme Court dismissed the plea filed by Earth Brigade Foundation (EBF) to overturn the order to shoot a 5-year-old tigress from Pandharkawada in Maharashtra.
This tigress, which is raising 2 cubs, has been accused of killing

— and even eating

— more than a dozen people over the last two years.

All the kills have taken place within designated forest areas or on their periphery.
What is the objective?

Is it to make forests safe for humans, or for wildlife?

The term “man-eater” is the legacy of the British Raj.
With the court upholding the shoot order, this tigress, who has done nothing different from any other mother who would kill to protect her children and her home, is paying for it with her life.

➢ Encroachment

➢ Scant food

➢ Illegal grazing

Important News

- Artists weave life back into the antique shawl
- Once sought after by Mughal emperors for their finesse, Kashmir’s master darners, known as rafugars, have become an endangered species.
- The Jammu & Kashmir government is now making efforts to revive this dwindling breed of craftsmen whose rare ability to repair expensive antique shawls is in great demand across the country and abroad.
- J&K’s Department of Archives, Archaeology and Museums and the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) have decided to identify and expose these traditional Valley darners to the market.
- J&K’s Handicraft Department says, of the 56 traditional skills (such as wood-carving), only 26 are practised today.
- One indicator of the decline: a post for ‘Darner Instructor’ in the department has been lying vacant for many years.
- “Among the surviving skills is rafugari, which is also dying. Darners from Kashmir once impressed the Mughal emperors, who hired them to keep their shatoosh and pashmina shawls intact,” said Saleem Beg of INTACH’s J&K chapter. The workshop, Mr. Beg said, was aimed at transmitting the art to the next generation. The museum has displayed 63 rare shawls, many dating back to 1893, including one with a map of Srinagar on it.
- Master darner Muhammad Rafiq Kozghar, in his mid-50s, has been repairing antique shawls and sarees for 40 years now. “I picked up the skill from three teachers in Srinagar. All of them have passed away. I am the only student alive, taking it forward.
- Darning requires fine hands and eyesight. A darner dies once his eyesight fails him,” said Mr. Kozghar, who works in Delhi.
- Can’t curb liberty on conjecture, says SC
- Personal liberty cannot be sacrificed at the altar of conjecture, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud of the Supreme Court told the Maharashtra government, which kept insisting that there was nothing ‘hanky-panky’ in the arrests of rights activists in the Bhima-Koregaon violence case.
- Afghanistan Ambassador to India quits
- Dr. Abdali, who took over in July 2012, said he was returning to Afghanistan to address the deteriorating situation and to serve his “people and country.”
- NRC to process claims from September 25 • Exercise will continue for 60 days: SC
- Woman gang-raped by 4 men in Ballabgarh
- With Modi, Ghani raises issues of IS, Pak. Terrorists
- Growing presence of the IS (Da’esh) in Afghanistan, and the continuing influx of terrorists from Pakistan, during his day-long visit to Delhi, government sources said.
- National Investigation Agency (NIA) has announced that Kabul has deported an Indian national who had travelled to Afghanistan in an attempt to join the Islamic State (IS).
- “Taliban are part of our society. Foreigners, members of Da’esh, these international networks are different. So we need to devise a way to separate what is internal to what is regional and global,” he said, making a strong pitch for talks with the Taliban, something India had traditionally opposed.
- ‘S. Korea wants to elevate ties with India’
- One of the major foreign policy initiatives of President Moon Jae-in of South Korea is the government’s ‘New Southern Policy’, with a goal of deepening ties with South East Asian nations as well as India, and building an inclusive regional architecture in Asia, said an expert.
- South Korea, as part of this strategy, wants to build stronger ties with ASEAN and India on multiple fronts — economic, bilateral and strategic. India and South Korea have agreed to boost bilateral trade to $50 billion by 2030 from $20 billion now.

Rationalisation of CS schemes mooted
Several Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS) are just boutique in nature with ‘dubious’ outcomes, the 15th Finance Commission of the Union Government has noted while calling for urgent rationalisation of the CSSs.
The pruning of such schemes would give the State governments greater measure of flexibility in financing, Commission Chairman N.K. Singh said.
“There are far too many of these boutique schemes with dubious outcomes in the States. Even the ones which are operational do not justify the high establishment cost being incurred on them,” he told reporters.
The proliferation of the CSSs was debatable until the Ninth Five-Year Plan, when the total number of schemes shot up to 360, accounting for about 60% of Central assistance.
In 2013, the Planning Commission announced the merger of several CSSs, reducing the count to 66. These were further pruned to 27 following the report of a committee of CMs led by Shivrajsingh Chauhan recently.
14th Finance Commission had recommended devolution of a significantly higher share of 42% of the divisble pool to States compared with the 32% recommended by the Thirteenth Finance Commission