UPSC Key—6 September, 2023: Same-Sex Marriage, ASEAN, East Asia Summit, Bharat and India

Hong Kong top court orders legal framework for same-sex unions

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance

Main Examination: General Studies II: Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests, Indian diaspora.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story- HONG KONG’S top court ruled on Tuesday that the government should provide a framework for recognizing same-sex partnerships in a landmark decision for the city’s LGBTQ+ community.

• What is same-sex marriage?

• What exactly is the case?

• What HONG KONG’S top court ruled?

• For Your Information-Currently, Hong Kong only recognizes same-sex marriage for certain purposes such as taxation, civil service benefits and dependent visas. Many of the government’s concessions were won through legal challenges in recent years and the city has seen a growing social acceptance toward same-sex marriage.
Surveys showed 60% of the respondents showed support for same-sex marriage in 2023, up from 38% in 2013, according to a report issued by researchers at The University of Hong Kong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of North Carolina School of Law in May.
The court decision was an important step for equality for the LGBTQ+ community in Asia, said gender studies scholar Suen Yiu-tong at the Chinese University. But Suen admitted he was disappointed that the court did not recognize same-sex marriage.

• Does this indicate that same-sex marriage is now legal in Hong Kong?

• What is the global acceptance of same-sex marriages?

• Same-Sex Marriage and India-what is India’s stand so far?

• How are same-sex marriages seen in India?

• What has the Indian government said about this?

• What Supreme Court of India has said for the same?

• Why Centre is urging the court to leave the issue to Parliament?

• “Decriminalisation of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code is one thing and same sex marriage is another thing”-discuss

• Why same-sex wedding is not legal in India?

• How same sex marriage can be legalised in India?

• What are the issues associated with the legalisation of same sex marriage in India?

• What is the Special Marriage Act (SMA), 1954?

• The legal recognition for same sex marriage is a little more complex-why?

• What is the Concept behind marriages in Indian Subcontinent or in the Indian Society?

• The Institution of Marriage-Why marriage is referred as an institution?

• Influence of Legislations like the prevention of Sati Act, 1829, The Hindu widow Remarriage Act, 1856, The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 and The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961 on Hindu Marriage-Know in detail

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍The 360° UPSC Debate: Same-Sex Marriage in India – Urban Elite Concept Or Integral Right?

Blow to junta: Myanmar barred from leading ASEAN in 2026

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Mains Examination: General Studies II: Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story-Southeast Asian leaders decided Tuesday that Myanmar won’t take over the rotating leadership of their regional bloc as scheduled in 2026, in the latest blow to efforts by its ruling generals to gain international recognition after violently seizing power in 2021. Western governments led by the United States have condemned the Myanmar army’s ouster of Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government in 2021 and have demanded her immediate release from yearslong detention along with other officials. Resistance to the military takeover has escalated into what some U.N. experts have described as a civil war. The Philippines agreed to take over the regional bloc’s chairmanship in 2026 at an ASEAN summit hosted by Indonesia on Tuesday, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said in a statement, citing what he told fellow leaders in the closed-door meetings.

• Southeast Asian leaders have decided that Myanmar will not take over the rotating leadership of their regional bloc as scheduled in 2026-why?

• Why Western governments are condemning Myanmar?

• Who is Myanmar junta?

• Who is in charge of Myanmar now?

• What International organisations is Myanmar part of?

• Why is Myanmar important?

• Since coup in Myanmar, How most of the countries has taken diplomatic approach on Myanmar?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍Myanmar’s violent chaos

FRONT PAGE

President of Bharat, Prime Minister of Bharat now official, Govt says India name change talk a rumour

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Indian Polity and Governance-Constitution, Political System, Panchayati Raj, Public Policy, Rights Issues, etc.

Mains Examination: General Studies II: Indian Constitution—historical underpinnings, evolution, features, amendments, significant provisions and basic structure.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story- Barely two weeks before Parliament meets for a special session, the agenda of which is still under wraps, a political row erupted Tuesday over the name of the country after the government sent out a G20 Summit dinner invitation in the name of the “President of Bharat”, and not the President of India. As the Opposition attacked the ruling BJP, a government booklet on the Prime Minister’s visit to Indonesia for the 20th ASEAN-India Summit and the 18th East Asia Summit referred to Narendra Modi as the “Prime Minister of Bharat”. It was tweeted by BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra who too mentioned “Prime Minister of Bharat”.

• President of Bharat and the President of India-What is the issue exactly?

• What is “India, that is, Bharat, shall be a Union of States”?

• What are the various arguments on ‘Bharat’ or ‘India’?

• For Your Information-The first debate on Article 1 was to begin on November 17, 1948. However, on the suggestion of Govind Ballabh Pant, the discussion on the name was postponed to a later date. On September 17, 1949 Dr B R Ambedkar presented to the House the final version of the provision, which included both ‘Bharat’ and ‘India’. Several members expressed themselves against the use of ‘India’, which they saw as a reminder of the colonial past.
Seth Govind Das from Jabalpur preferred to place Bharat over India. A popular demand by several members was also to underline that India was a substitute for Bharat in “English language”.
“India, that is, Bharat” are not beautiful words for, the name of a country. We should have put the words “Bharat known as India also in foreign countries,” he said.
Hari Vishnu Kamath used the example of the Irish Constitution to argue that the word ‘India’ was only a translation of Bharat.
“If honourable colleagues in the House would take the trouble of referring to the Irish Constitution passed in 1937, they will see that the Irish Free State was one of the few countries in the modern world which changed its name on achieving freedom; and the fourth article of its Constitution refers to the change in the name of the land,” he said.
“The Constitution of the Irish Free State reads: “The name of the State is Eire, or, in the English language, Ireland,” Kamath said. Hargovind Pant, who represented the hill districts of the United Provinces, made it clear that the people of Northern India “wanted Bharatvarsha and nothing else”.
Pant argued: “So far as the word ‘India’ is concerned, the Members seem to have, and really I fail to understand why, some attachment for it. “We must know that this name was given to our country by foreigners who, having heard of the riches of this land, were tempted towards it and had robbed us of our freedom in order to acquire the wealth of our country. If we, even then, cling to the word ‘India’, it would only show that we are not ashamed of having this insulting word which has been imposed on us by alien rulers.”

• Where does the name ‘Bharat’ come from?

• What about ‘India’ and ‘Hindustan’?

• How did ‘Bharat’ and ‘India’ come into the Constitution?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍India, that is Bharat: how Constituent Assembly decided

📍A short history of the nation’s names, from Rig Veda to the Constitution

G20 IN NEW DELHI

From sanitary pads to basic facilities, women in jail suffer more than men: SC panel

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Indian Polity and Governance-Constitution, Political System, Panchayati Raj, Public Policy, Rights Issues, etc.

Mains Examination: General Studies II: Structure, organization and functioning of the Executive and the Judiciary-Ministries and Departments of the Government

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story- Only jails in Goa, Delhi, and Puducherry allow female prisoners to meet their children without any bars or glass separation. Importantly, less than 40% of prisons in the country provide sanitary napkins for female inmates. Moreover, 75% of female wards in prisons have to share kitchens and common facilities with male wards. These are some of the key findings of the Supreme Court-appointed committee looking into prison reforms.

• What do you mean by prison reforms?

• What is the Status of Prison Administration in India?

• What are the problems faced by female prisoners in India?

• What are the rights of women prisoners in India?

• What is Criminal Justice System in India?

• Which committee is related to reforms in Criminal Justice System of India (CJSI)?

• What are the stages of the criminal justice system?

• Why there is a need for Reforms in criminal justice system?

• Know Malimath Committee’s Report in detail

• Do You Know- The first legislation that governed the management and administration of prisons in India was the Prisons Act, of 1894. It defined a “prison” as “any jail or place used permanently or temporarily under the general or special orders of a State Government for the detention of prisoners”, excluding police custody and subsidiary jails. Further, it demarcated prisoners into three different categories according to the nature of their crimes, such as “criminal prisoner”, “convicted criminal prisoner” and “civil prisoner”. The 1894 Act dealt with provisions for accommodation, food, clothing, bedding segregation, and the discipline of prisoners, including solitary confinement. It also laid down provisions for the prisoners’ employment, health, and visits. However, the act had no provisions for reformation or rehabilitation and permitted “whipping, provided that the number of stripes shall not exceed thirty,” albeit for only male prisoners. Moreover, this Act did not apply to “civil jails in the State of Bombay, outside the city of Bombay, and those jails administered under the provisions of Sections 9–16 of the Bombay Act, 1874. Thus, the Prisoners Act 1900 was introduced with the objective of consolidating the “several acts relating to prisoners” and replacing the “separate enactments by a single act, expressed more simply and intelligibly.” The Act dealt with the prisoners within presidency towns and those outside; it also included provisions on how to deal with lunatic prisoners and allowed prisoners to be removed from prisons on conditions like receiving death sentences and maintaining good behaviour within prisons. Besides these, there were other legislations, like the Transfer of Prisoners Act, 1950, which also provided for the removal of prisoners from one state prison to another.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍Speedy trial can become effective tool to address overcrowding in jails, says SC panel on prison reforms

THE IDEAS PAGE

North & South, East vs West

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Mains Examination: General Studies II: Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story-C Raja Mohan writes: It can now be said plainly. Post-Cold War multilateralism is past its peak — at both the global and regional levels. This week’s East Asia Summit in Jakarta and the G20 summit in Delhi highlight the deep and arguably irreversible crises in the old multilateral order. The dying embers of old multilateralism are marked less by the absence of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping at both summits than by their deepening conflicts with the rest of the world. Russia is locked in a war with the West over Ukraine, and China is at odds with many of its Asian neighbours, including India, Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam, as well as the US.

• What is the ASEAN and East Asia Summit?

• What is the rationality behind the ASEAN and East Asia Summit?

• What is Post-Cold War multilateralism?

• What do you understand by the term ‘multilateralism’?

• What is the concept of multilateralism?

• What is the purpose of multilateralism?

• Unilateralism and Multilateralism in international relations-know in detail

• Do you think that the multilateralism declining?

• ‘As India’s bilateral challenges with China multiply, regional and global multilateralism has emerged at the core of India’s national security and international relations’-Discuss

• What are the four features of India’s new multilateralism stand out at the Jakarta and Delhi summits?

• For Your Information-First, in Jakarta, Modi will underline that the Quad is not in competition with the ASEAN but will complement its efforts to promote regional stability through more bilateral and minilateral security cooperation to deter and limit unilateralism and territorial expansionism.
Second is India’s focus on what External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar calls a “re-globalisation” “that is more diversified, more democratic, where there would be multiple centres of production, not just of consumption.” Put simply, globalisation can’t be tethered to China’s factories and Beijing’s political fancies.
Third, India is not walking away from finding collective solutions despite the current crisis in multilateralism. India has put in much effort in the last nine months not to tie the fate of the G20 to just a few issues like Ukraine but to pursue agreements on a range of consequential issues, like modernising the global tax regime and reforming the multilateral development banks.
Finally, putting the concerns of the Global South on the G-20 agenda is likely to be a lasting contribution to India’s new multilateralism. Although widely misunderstood as a return to the old confrontational politics of the NAM in the 1970s, Delhi’s current emphasis is on building bridges between developing and developed countries. Many in the developed world are waking up to the importance of greater cooperation between the North and the South amidst the breakdown of relations between the East and the West.

• Map Work-East Asian Countries and ASEAN

• For Your Information-The East Asia Summit (EAS) is the Indo-Pacific’s premier forum for strategic dialogue. It is the only leader-led forum at which all key Indo-Pacific partners meet to discuss political, security and economic challenges facing the region, and has an important role to play in advancing closer regional cooperation. Australia participated, as a founding member, in the inaugural EAS held in Kuala Lumpur on 14 December 2005.

• Who is hosting the East Asia Summit 2023?

• What is the significance of East Asia Summit?

• The ASEAN and EAS-connect the dots?

• The ASEAN and EAS and India-Connect the dots

• When and Where the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, was established?

• What was Bangkok Declaration?

• Who were the Founding Fathers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and East Asia Summit?

• Which are the current members of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)?

• Know the ASEAN-led Forums name and their objectives

• ASEAN and EAS commands greater influence on Asia-Pacific trade, political, and security issues, together they contributes what percentage to world economy?

• Know the Economic relations between India and ASEAN in detail

• ‘In Asia, the ASEAN-led regional institutions struggle to cope with China’s aggressive territorial expansionism’-How far you agree?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍PM leaves for ASEAN, East Asia summits today

📍What is ASEAN?

EXPLAINED

WHAT IS THE BLACK SEA GRAIN DEAL—AND WHY IS IT SIGNIFICANT?

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Mains Examination: General Studies II: Important International institutions, agencies and fora- their structure, mandate.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story-Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Monday (September 4) said he was confident Russia would “soon” revive the Black Sea grain deal, which was signed in July 2022 and assured safe passage to ships carrying grain from Ukraine. In July this year, Russia refused to extend the deal. Since then, Turkey has repeatedly pledged to renew it to help avoid a food crisis in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, however, said the deal will not be restored until the West meets its obligations to facilitate Russian agricultural exports. The comments came after they held talks on Monday at the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.

• What is the Black Sea grain deal?

• What’s the deal?

• Map Work-Black Sea

• Why grain deal is rebuked by Russia?

• Why did Russia refuse to renew it?

• What has been exported?

• How might the agreement change?

• Has it alleviated the food crisis?

• Has it driven down global wheat prices?

• What about sea mines?

• What is G7 group?

• Who are the members of G7?

• Know the name of G7 countries

• Map Work-G7 Countries

• The G7 countries Global GDP-know the data

• How did G7 become G8 and again G7-Reasons

• G7, Ukraine, Russia and India-Know in Brief

• Know the difference between G7 and G20

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍Explained: What’s the significance of UN-backed grain export deal signed by Ukraine, Russia?

ECONOMY

How the latest tech tweak could push RBI’s digital rupee pilot among users, merchants

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Economic and Social Development-Sustainable Development, Poverty, Inclusion, Demographics, Social Sector Initiatives, etc.

Mains Examination: General Studies III: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization, of resources, growth, development and employment.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story-With banks enabling the interoperability of Unified Payments Interface’s (UPI) Quick Response (QR) code with their central bank digital currency (CBDC) or e₹ application, users of retail digital rupee will be able to make transactions by scanning any UPI QR at a merchant outlet. Merchants can also accept digital rupee payments through their existing UPI QR codes. This integration of UPI and CBDC is part of the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) ongoing pilot project on pushing the retail digital rupee (e₹-R).

• What is interoperability?

• For Your Information-Interoperability is the technical compatibility that enables a payment system to be used in conjunction with other payment systems, according to the RBI. Interoperability allows system providers and participants in different systems to undertake, clear and settle payment transactions across systems without participating in multiple systems. Interoperability between payment systems contributes to achieving adoption, co-existence, innovation, and efficiency for end users. Interoperability of UPI with the digital rupee means all UPI QR codes are compatible with CBDC apps. Initially, when the pilot for the retail digital rupee was launched, the e₹-R users had to scan a specific QR code to undertake transactions. However, with the interoperability of the two, payments can be made using a single QR code. The digital rupee issued by the RBI, or the CBDC, is a tokenised digital version of the rupee. The e₹ is held in a digital wallet, which is linked to a customer’s existing savings bank account. UPI is directly linked to a customer’s account.

• What is UPI QR code-CBDC interoperability?

• How will it benefit customers and merchants?

• What is a QR code?

• How will interoperability help in increasing CBDC adoption?

• How many banks have enabled UPI and CBDC interoperability?

• What is CBDC or the digital rupee?

• Do You Know-CBDC is a legal tender issued by the RBI in digital form. It is the same as the fiat currency, and is exchangeable one-to-one with the fiat currency. Only its form is different — it is not paper (or polymer) like physical cash. It is a fungible legal tender, for which holders need not have a bank account. CBDC will appear as ‘liability’ (currency in circulation) on the RBI’s balance sheet.

• What is the need for digital rupee?

• What was the need to introduce the e-rupee?

• Digital rupee and Cryptocurrency-how they are different?

• How digital rupee will help Indian Economy?

• How digital currency will impact citizens?

• Central bank digital currency (CBDC)-Meaning, Issues and Challenges

• How is RBI introducing the CBDC?

• How can an individual use the e-rupee?

• How is this different from other wallets?

• How does CBDC help in cross-border payments?

• What are the types of e-rupee?

• Will CBDC work in offline mode?

• Is it vulnerable to cyber-attacks?

• Digital rupee and Cryptocurrency-how they are different?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍Explained: What is the Digital Rupee announced by Sitharaman in Budget?

📍Explained: CBDC, the ‘digital rupee’ that RBI could introduce this year, and how it will help

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