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CATEGORY: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
- Supply Chain Resilience Initiative
THE ISSUE IN NEWS
Japan recently mooted the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative cause of Covid-19 and trade tensions between China and the United States are threatening supply chains
- (SCRI) as a trilateral approach to trade, with India and Australia as the key partners.
Min Points
Supply Chain Resilience:
- supply chain resilience(In the context of international trade) is an approach that helps a country to ensure that it has diversified its supply risk across a clutch of supplying nations instead of being dependent on just one or a few.
- Importance: In unanticipated events -whether natural, such as volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes or even a pandemic; or manmade, such as an armed conflict in a region — that disrupt supplies from a particular country or even intentional halts to trade, could adversely impact economic activity in the destination country.
Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI):
- it aims to reduce the dependency on a single nation (at present China).
- SCRI is a direct response to individual companies and economies concerned about Chinese political behaviour and the disruption that could lead to the supply chain.
- This initiative wasfirst proposed by Japan with India and Australia as partners, potentially see other Asian and Pacific Rim nations later.
Objectives:
- To attract foreign direct investment to turn the Indo-Pacific into an “economic powerhouse”.
- To build a mutually complementary relationship among partner countries.
- To work out a plan to build on the existential supply chain network. Japan and India, for example, have an India-Japan competitiveness partnership dealing with locating the Japanese companies in India.
Reasons behind the Initiative:
- Covid-19 Realization: With spread of Covid-19 globally, it has been realized that dependence over a single nation is not good for both global economy and national economies:
- USA-China Trade Tensions: The tensions began when the United States and China both applied tariff sanctions on each other.
- India as an Emerging Supply Hub: The businesses have started seeing India as a “hub for supply chains”.
Chinese Imports to India:
- As per the Confederation of Indian Industry, China’s share of imports into India in 2018 (considering the top 20 items supplied by China) stood at 5%.
- Chinese supplies dominate segments of the Indian economy.
- Sectors that have been impacted by supply chain issues arising out of the pandemic include pharmaceuticals, automotive parts, electronics, shipping, chemicals and textiles.
- In areas such as Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients for medicines such as paracetamol, India is fully dependent on China. In electronics, China accounts for 45% of India’s imports.
Indo-Japan Trade Relationship:
- Japan is the fourth-largest investor in India with cumulative foreign direct investments touching USD 33.5 billion in the 2000-2020 period accounting for 7.2% of inflows in that period, according to quasi government agency India Invest.
- Imports from Japan into India more than doubled over 12 years to USD 12.8 billion in FY19.
- Exports from India to Japan stood at USD 4.9 billion for FY19.
- India is carrying forward the sentiments of self-reliance focussing on less dependence on China which is one of the reasons behind SCRI.
- Further, India and Japan are a part of QUAD (also includes the USA and Australia) and malabar (naval) exercise (also includes the USA).
Suggestions
- India needs to enhance self-reliance against China, so that it could build resilience into the economy’s supply networks. Economic measures are of real value in this regard.
- Ease of Doing Business: While India appears an attractive option for potential investors both as a market and as a manufacturing base, it needs to accelerate progress in ease of doing business and in skill building.
- Tax incentives: These will help in attracting investments from China and other attractive locations like Vietnam and the Philippines.
- Boost Domestic Manufacturing: India’s strategy should be to boost manufacturing competitiveness and increase its share in world trade.
- Infrastructure Boost: In this pursuit, there is a need to create an infrastructure that raises the competitiveness of India’s exports.
- Removing Structural Bottlenecks: There is a need to push through long-pending legislation that aims to address the structural bottlenecks (in 4Ls: Land, Labour, Law, Liquidity) that continue to plague and hinder domestic competitiveness.
CATEGORY: GOVERNANCE
- UN : Principles for People with Disabilities
THE ISSUE IN NEWS
Recently The United Nations (UN) has released its first-ever guidelines on access to social justice for People with Disabilities (PwD) to make it easier for them to access justice systems around the world.
The guidelines outline a set of 10 principles and detail the steps for implementation.
Main Points
10 Principles:
- Principle 1: PwD shall not be denied access to justice on the basis of disability.
- Principle 2: Facilities and services must be universally accessible without discrimination of PwD.
- Principle 3: PwD, including children with disabilities, have the right to appropriate procedural accommodations.
- Principle 4: PwD have the right to access legal notices and information in a timely and accessible manner on an equal basis with others.
- Principle 5: PwD are entitled to all substantive and procedural safeguards recognized in international law on an equal basis with others, and States must provide the necessary accommodations to guarantee due process.
- Principle 6: PwD have the right to free or affordable legal assistance.
- Principle 7: PwD have the right to participate in the administration of justice on an equal basis with others.
- Principle 8: PwD have the right to report complaints and initiate legal proceedings concerning human rights violations and crimes.
- Principle 9: Effective and robust monitoring mechanisms play a critical role in supporting access to justice for PwD.
- Principle 10: All those working in the justice system must be provided with awareness-raising and training programmes addressing the rights of PwD.
Definition of Person with Disability acc. to UN:
- UN Convention on the Rights of PwD, which was adopted in 2006, defines persons with disabilities as those “who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others”.
- India ratified the Convention in October 2007.
- The Parliament enacted the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 with a view to fulfilling the obligations under the UNCRPD.
- Around 15% of the world’s population, or estimated 1 billion people, live with disabilities. They are the world’s largest minority. In India4 % of males are disabled and 2% of females from all age groups are disabled.
India’a Efforts towards Persons with Disability
Constitutional Provisions:
- Article 41 of the Directive Principles of State Policy (DPSP) states that the State shall make effective provision for securing right to work, to education and to public assistance in cases of unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement, within the limits of its economic capacity and development.
- The subject of ‘relief of the disabled and unemployable’ is specified in the state
- list of the Seventh Schedule of the constitution.
Legislation for Disabled – Right of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016:
- The Right of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 replaces the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995.
- “Person with disability” means a person with long term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which, in interaction with barriers, hinders his full and effective participation in society equally with others.
- “Person with benchmark disability” means a person with not less than 40% of a specified disability where specified disability has not been defined in measurable terms and includes a person with a disability where specified disability has been defined in measurable terms, as certified by the certifying authority.
- The types of disabilities have been increased from 7 to 21.
- The Act added mental illness, autism, spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, chronic neurological conditions, speech and language disability, thalassemia, hemophilia, sickle cell disease, multiple disabilities including deaf blindness, acid attack victims and Parkinson’s disease which were largely ignored in earlier Act. In addition, the Government has been authorized to notify any other category of specified disability.
- It increases the quantum of reservation for people suffering from disabilities from 3% to 4% in government jobs and from 3% to 5% in higher education institutes.
- Every child with benchmark disability between the age group of 6 and 18 years shall have the right to free education.
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