(VIDEO) South China Sea : Sea of Troubles - Rajya Sabha TV Big Picture Debate
Topic of Discussion: South China Sea : Sea of Troubles - Rajya Sabha TV Big Picture Debate Expert Panel Name : K.P. Nayar, Strategic Analyst; Raviprasad Narayanan, Associate Professor, Centre for East Asian Studies, JNU; Commodore (Retd.) Abhijit Singh, Head, Maritime Policy Initiative, ORF;Frank Rausan Pereira (Anchor)
(VIDEO) Tackling Cyberbullying - Rajya Sabha TV Big Picture Debate
Topic of Discussion: Tackling Cyberbullying - Rajya Sabha TV Big Picture Debate Expert Panel Name : Harsh Kumar, Secretary, National Council of Educational Research and Training; Aprajita Gautam, President, Delhi Parents Association; Karnika Seth, Cyber law expert;Frank Rausan Pereira (Anchor)
Limits of the Right to Religious Freedom - Nanak Shah Case : Important Topics for UPSC Exams
News:
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to stop screening of the national award winning movie Nanak Shah Fakir, prima facie rejecting a plea by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) that a movie on Guru Nanak was violative of the community’s right to worship and was against a religious edict that no human being would ever portray any of the gurus or their families.
Constitutional provisions regarding Right to religious freedom and non discrimination on the basis of religion
Equality & Non-Discrimination: emphasize complete legal equality of its citizens irrespective of their religion and creed and prohibit any kind of religion-based discrimination between them.
Article 14 - The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or equal protection of the laws.
Article 15- The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth, or any of them
Article 16- There shall be equality of opportunity for all citizens in the matter of employment or appointments under the State and no citizen shall, on grounds only of religion be ineligible for, or discriminated against, in respect of any employment or office under the State.
Article 17- The traditional religious concept of 'untouchability' stands abolished find its practice in any form IN .strictly forbidden.
Article 23(2)- If the State imposes compulsory service on citizens for public purposes no discrimination shall be made in this regard on the ground of religion only
Article 25(1)- All persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion.
Article 26- Every religious denomination or any section thereof has the right to manage its religious affairs; establish and maintain institutions for religious and charitable purposes; and own, acquire and administer properties of all kinds
Article 27- There shall be freedom as to payment of taxes for promotion of any particular religion by virtue of which no person shall be compelled to pay any taxes the proceeds of which are specifically appropriated in payment of expenses for the promotion or maintenance of any particular religious denomination.
Article 28- No religious instruction is to be provided in the schools wholly maintained by State funding; and those attending any State recognized or State-aided school cannot be required to take part in any religious instruction or services without their (or if they are minor their guardian's) consent.
Article 29 - Any section of the citizens having a distinct language, script or culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same.
Article 30 - Religious and linguistic minorities are free to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice, which shall not be discriminated against by the State in the matter of giving aid or compensation in the event of acquisition.
(VIDEO) Pollution Alert - Rajya Sabha TV Big Picture Debate
Topic of Discussion: Pollution Alert - Rajya Sabha TV Big Picture Debate Expert Panel Name : Prof. C.K. Varshney, Former Dean, School of Environment Sciences JNU ; Ajay Shankar, Distinguished Fellow, The Energy and Resources Institute ; Ragini Bhuyan, Staff writer; Mint Polash Mukerjee, Researcher, Air Pollution, Centre for Science and Environment;Frank Rausan Pereira (Anchor)
Data Protection - Technology and Privacy : Important Topics for UPSC Exams
News:
A global data analytics company Cambridge Analytica was involved in the data breach regarding the Facebook user’s details . This was used to build psychological profiles of more than 50 million individuals during US presidential elections. Data of more than 5 lakh Indian citizens was also compromised.
What are the implications
Individual users are increasingly viewed as legitimate targets for mining personal and metadata. As elsewhere, data mined from Indian users of social media analysed in bulk can provide an intimate psychological profile including ideological preferences that together help campaign managers target communications and forecast voter behaviour.
Risks to the very health of democracy stem from the dominance of social media platforms, which not only deliver personalised content to users, but in many cases privilege content based on engagement rather than quality. This limits users’ access to information, which in turn leads to political polarisation and the spread of fake news.
Monopoly nature of certain big tech giants can further compound the concerns.
This can threaten the very fabric of democracy through foreign interference in domestic elections as is alleged to be happened in USA.
Challenges with data protection in India
Data centers of the major tech giants are situated outside India and hence outside the ambit of Indian jurisdiction.
India lacks a dedicated institutional and legislative infrastructure to tackle such issues.
(VIDEO) Taxing Fuel - Rajya Sabha TV Big Picture Debate
Topic of Discussion: Taxing Fuel - Rajya Sabha TV Big Picture Debate Expert Panel Name : Arvind Virmani, Former Chief Economic Advisor, GoI; Sushil Chandra Tripathi, Former Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas; A.K. Bhattacharya, Editorial Director, Business Standard;Frank Rausan Pereira (Anchor)
Call to action: on India's air pollution crisis : Important Topics for UPSC Exams
Why in News?
Latest report released by WHO highlights the issue of widespread air pollution in urban India as well as deficient air quality monitoring.
Aboutthe Report
The report, which summarised 2016 data for 4,300 cities, ranks 14 Indian cities among the 20 most polluted ones globally.
Poor Monitoring in Indian Cities
Kanpur, Faridabad and several other pollution-choked cities have only one PM 2.5 monitoring station each, while Delhi has several.
Out of the 5,000 odd cities and towns in India, monitoring is being done in only 307 cities moreover, most of this is manual monitoring that reports data with considerable time lag.
WHO researchers get around this problem by using alternative data sources such as satellite remote sensing and chemical transport models, along with ground-monitoring stations.
(VIDEO) India Electrified - Rajya Sabha TV Big Picture Debate
Topic of Discussion: India Electrified - Rajya Sabha TV Big Picture Debate Expert Panel Name : Anil Razdan, Former Secretary, Ministry of Power; Arun Kumar Verma, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Power; Subhomoy Bhattacharya, Consulting Editor, Business Standard;Frank Rausan Pereira (Anchor)
Wisdom at Wuhan - On the Modi-Xi meeting : Important Topics for UPSC Exams
Why in News?
An ‘informal’ summit meeting (with no predefined agenda) between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan was recently concluded.
Significance of the Summit
India-China relations have been under great stress in recent year and the 2017 military standoff at the Doklam tri-junction and the war of words that followed vitiated a relationship that was already reeling under a great deal of pressure.
Summit was a much-needed one and will help in bringing the bilateral relations between the two Asian giants back on track and Wuhan was about the desire to return to the negotiating table, not about negotiating anything specific.
India’s neighbourhood policy is in doldrums, India-Pakistan relationship nowhere normal and at the same time unsuccessful China Policy will prove to be the complete failure of Neighbourhood policy.
It was informal, so no documentary significance was required for any agreement of great significance and thus Wuhan was chosen as a place for the summit to take place otherwise it would have been Beijing or Shanghai in case of Formal Meeting.
Timeline of the events
After the Doklam standoff, in December 2017, the two Foreign Ministers met in New Delhi followed by a meeting between China’s then state councilor Yang Jiechi and Mr. Modi’s National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, again in New Delhi.
In February 2018, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale visited China.
The Wuhan summit was preceded by the visits of Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to China for Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meetings.
(VIDEO) Representation in Judiciary - Rajya Sabha TV Big Picture Debate
Topic of Discussion: Representation in Judiciary - Rajya Sabha TV Big Picture Debate Expert Panel Name : M.Afzal Wani, Chairman, Law Department, I.P. University; Diksha Sanyal, Research Fellow, Vidhi Centre For Legal Policy ; Madhavi Divan, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court; Siddharth, Advocate on Record, Supreme Court; Henri Tiphagne, Director, People's WatchFrank Rausan Pereira (Anchor)