CURRENT AFFAIRS – MARCH 2017
PAPER – II
1 POLITY
2 GOVERNMENT POLICIES, BILLS AND INTERVENTIONS
2.1 Maternity Benefit Bill
2.2 Mental Healthcare Bill
2.3 The Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill
2.4 Medical Termination Of Pregnancy Act
2.5 Inter-State Water Disputes (Amendment) Bill, 2017
2.6 Companies Amendment Bill
2.7 Draft Trafficking of Persons Bill
2.8 National Health Policy 2017
2.9 SDMC’s Order
2.10 Banning Cow Slaughter
2.11 Ban on Liquor Vends
2.12 Mandatory Aadhaar
2.13 BBC Documentary on Kaziranga Tiger Reserve
2.14 NO-FLY List
2.15 Censor Board
2.16 Moral Policing -Anti-Romeo Squads
1 POLITY
1.1 Hung Assembly -Goa & Manipur
1.2 Demanding St Status –Narikuravars
1.3 Vote Tampering in EVMS
1.4 Electoral Bonds
1.5 Special Category Status
1.6 Babri Masjid Issue
2 GOVERNMENT POLICIES, BILLS AND INTERVENTIONS
2.1 Maternity Benefit Bill
2.2 Mental Healthcare Bill
2.3 The Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill
2.4 Medical Termination Of Pregnancy Act
2.5 Inter-State Water Disputes (Amendment) Bill, 2017
2.6 Companies Amendment Bill
2.7 Draft Trafficking of Persons Bill
2.8 National Health Policy 2017
2.9 SDMC’s Order
2.10 Banning Cow Slaughter
2.11 Ban on Liquor Vends
2.12 Mandatory Aadhaar
2.13 BBC Documentary on Kaziranga Tiger Reserve
2.14 NO-FLY List
2.15 Censor Board
2.16 Moral Policing -Anti-Romeo Squads
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GOVERNMENT POLICIES, BILLS AND INTERVENTIONS
2.1 MATERNITY BENEFIT BILL
Why in news?
LokSabha recently passed The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 2016.
Why in news?
LokSabha recently passed The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 2016.
What are the salient features of the bill?
- The bill to amend the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961.
- It increases the paid maternity leave for pregnant women working in the organised sector from 12 weeks to 26 weeks.
- The 26 weeks of leave will be for the first two pregnancies.
- For the third child, it will be of 12 weeks and 6 weeks for the fourt.
- It allows 12 weeks of paid maternity leave to mothers who are adopting a child below the age of three months and also to commissioning mothers who opt for surrogacy.
- It mandates employers to allow a woman to work from home.
- Organisations which employ more than 30 women (or 50 people, whichever is less) will now have to provide a rèche.
- The mother is allowed to visit the crèche four times during the day.
- The enhancement of paid maternity leave for women is a progressive step.
- India is in third place, only Canada and Norway, in the level of maternity benefits such as paid time off work extended to women.
- The amendment is in line with several expert recommendations including that of the World Health Organisation, which recommends exclusive breastfeeding of children for the first 24 weeks.
- Giving benefits to adoptive mothers as well as women who get children using embryo transfers signals India is in step with social changes.
- The amended law covers only women in the organised work sector i.e only 1.8 million women, a small subset of women in the workforce.
- It ignores roughly 90% of the Indian women who are employed in the unorganised sector i.e shops, small service providers and cottage industries, in households as domestic helps etc.
- The only support available to them is a small conditional cash benefit of ₹6,000 during pregnancy and lactation offered under the Maternity Benefit Programme.
- The Bill exclude spaternity leave. Therefore the benefit burden may discourage employers to hire women.
- Demands for inclusion of a non-discrimination clause in the bill were also made to ensure that no person is discriminated against for having availed any parental benefits.
What is the present condition of women in India?
What should be done?
- India lags far behind when it comes to maternal and infant mortality indicators.
- Every third woman in the country is undernourished and every second woman is anaemic.
- An undernourished woman is most likely to give birth to a low-weight baby.
- The UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2014 states that India recorded the highest number of maternal deaths,and accounted for 17% of global deaths due to pregnancy and childbirth-related complications.
- The Infant Mortality Rate is 40 per 1,000 live births.
- As per UNDP‘s Human Development Report 2015, women clock 297 minutes of unpaid work daily, compared to just 31 minutes for men.
What should be done?
- The income guarantees during the 26-week period should be ensured through a universal social insurance system.
- Such a policy would harmonise the varying maternity benefit provisions found in different laws that govern labour at present.
- Paternity leave should be included to stop discrimination against women in recruitment by employers who currently have to factor in benefit payments.
- Also the effectiveness of the revised Maternity Benefit Act depends on its proper implementation.
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2.2 MENTAL HEALTHCARE BILL
2.2 MENTAL HEALTHCARE BILL
Why in news?
The Mental Healthcare Bill, 2016 was recently passed by Parliament.
The Mental Healthcare Bill, 2016 was recently passed by Parliament.
What are the provisions of the bill?
- Definition -It defines ―mental illness‖ as a substantial disorder of thinking, mood, perception, orientation or memory that grossly impairs judgment, behaviour, capacity to recognise reality or ability to meet the ordinary demands of life.
- It also includes mental conditions associated with the abuse of alcohol and drugs.
- It does not include mental retardation which is a condition of arrested or incomplete development of mind of a person, characterised by sub-normality of intelligence.
- Rights -It ensures every person shall have a right to access mental health care and treatment from mental health services run or funded by the appropriate government.
- It assures free treatment for homeless or people Below Poverty Line, even if they do not possess a BPL card.
- It ensure right to live with dignity and there shall be no discrimination on any basis including gender, sex, sexual orientation, religion, culture, caste, social or political beliefs, class or disability.
- A person with mental illness shall have the right to confidentiality in respect of his mental health.
- Advance Directive -A person with mental illness shall have the right to make an advance directive i.e how he wants be treated for the illness & who his nominated representative shall be.
- This should be certified by a medical practitioner.
- If a mental health professional/ relative/ care-giver do not wish to follow the directive,he can make an application to the Mental Health Board to review the advance directive.
- Mental Health Authority-The Bill empowers the government to set-up Mental Health Authority at national and state levels.
- Every mental health institute and mental health practitioners will have to be registered with this Authority.
- A Mental Health Review Board will be constituted to protect the rights of persons with mental illness and manage advance directives.
- Mode of treatment - A medical practitioner shall not be held liable for any unforeseen consequences on following a valid advance directive.
- A person with mental illness shall not be subjected to electro-convulsive therapy without the use of muscle relaxants and anaesthesia.
- Also, electro-convulsive therapy will not be performed for minors.
- Sterilisation will not be performed on such persons.
- They shall not be chained under any circumstances.
- They shall not be subjected to seclusion or solitary confinement.
- Physical restraint may only be used, if necessary.
- Suicide -A person who attempts suicide shall be presumed to be suffering from mental illness at that time and will not be punished under IPC.
- The government shall have a duty to provide care, treatment and rehabilitation to a person, having severe stress and who attempted to commit suicide, to reduce the risk of recurrence of attempt to commit suicide.
2.3 THE SURROGACY (REGULATION) BILL
What is Surrogacy?
When an another woman carries and gives birth to a child for a couple who want to have a baby but are unable to do so, because of infertility or some other problem, it is called surrogacy. This has been in the grey legal area in India.
What is the need for the bill?
What is Surrogacy?
When an another woman carries and gives birth to a child for a couple who want to have a baby but are unable to do so, because of infertility or some other problem, it is called surrogacy. This has been in the grey legal area in India.
What is the need for the bill?
- In 2002, India became the first country to legalise commercial surrogacy.
- By 2012, India had become the ̳surrogacy capital‘ of the world with surrogacy tourism valued at approximately $500 million annually.
- Surrogate mothers practice it as a way of earning livelihood and are often abused.
- Legal issues also emerge
- e.g In 2008, a Japanese couple began the process with a surrogate mother in Gujarat, but before the child was born they split and there were no takers for the child.
- In 2012, an Australian couple commissioned a surrogate mother, and arbitrarily chose one of the twins that was born.
- So the 228th report of the Law Commission of India recommended prohibiting commercial surrogacy.
What is the aim of the bill?
What are the features of the Bill?
What are the shortcomings?- It aims to prevent exploitation of women, especially those in rural and tribal areas.
- It prohibits couples who already have biological or adopted children from commissioning babies through surrogacy.
- It ensures parentage of children born out of surrogacy is ―legal and transparent.
What are the features of the Bill?
- The bill was introduced in LokSabha in November 2016.
- It bans commercial surrogacy.
- Commercial surrogacy will result in a jail term of at least 10 years and a fine of up to Rs 10 lakh.
- The commissioning couples should be Indians, should have been married for at least five years and should have ̳proven infertility‘ are candidates.
- Only a married blood relative to the commission parents can be a surrogate mother. She must have herself borne a child, and should not be a NRI or a foreigner,
- Under no circumstances money shall be paid to her, except for medical expenses.
- She can be a surrogate only once in her lifetime.
- Overseas Indians, foreigners, unmarried couples, single parents, live-in partners and gay couples are barred from commissioning the services of surrogate mothers.
- In essence, the Bill limits the practice of surrogacy to heterosexual Indian couples who have been married for five years, have no children, and are able to persuade a relative to become a surrogate altruistically for them.
- The Bill will apply to the whole of India, except Jammu and Kashmir.
- Disqualifying on the basis of nationality, marital status, sexual orientation or age, is against the right to equality.
- The right to life includes the right to reproductive and right to parenthood. So the state should not decide the modes of parenthood
- Sudden interruption would just push the $400 million industry underground. Thus the very purpose of the bill-to protect surrogate mothers from exploitation would be defeated.
- Fertility specialists and attached business would suffer.
- Commissioning mothers, who are carrying a child, would be left in a limbo.
- Restricting only a blood relative to be a surrogate mother is illogical and unreasonable.
2.4MEDICAL TERMINATION OF PREGNANCY ACT
Why in news?The Supreme Court recently declined a woman‟s plea to abort her 26-week-old foetus detected with Down‘s Syndrome.
What was the court’s rationale?
Why in news?The Supreme Court recently declined a woman‟s plea to abort her 26-week-old foetus detected with Down‘s Syndrome.
What was the court’s rationale?
- It was contended that the congenital abnormality found in the woman‘s foetus and the woman‘s anguish about the future were the reasons for her decision of abortion.
- It was also argued that it was the woman‟s constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy.
- The court refused permission bycalling the foetus „a life‟.
- It cited that the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1971 places a 20 -week ceiling on termination of pregnancy.
- Abortion in India is legal only up to twenty weeks of pregnancy under specific conditions and situations.
- One, the continuance of the pregnancy would involve a risk to the life of the pregnant woman or of grave injury of physical or mental health, or
- Two, there is a substantial risk that if the child were born, it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.
- On 2015, a 14-year-old rape victim sought and received permission from the Supreme Court to abort after the 20 weeks deadline had passed.
- Her petition was treated as a ―special case, meaning it could not be used as a precedent.
- On January 2017, the Judges had relaxed the 20-week cap to permit another woman to terminate her 24-week pregnancy.
- In that case the foetus was diagnosed with anencephaly a congenital defect in which the baby is born without parts of the brain and skull.
- The court had said that the abortion was necessary to preserve the woman‟s life.
- In the case of the foetus with Down‘s Syndrome, the court said the foetus posed no danger to the woman‘s life.
What the draft MPT bill 2014 provides?
- The draft MTP increased the legal limit for abortion from 20 weeks to 24 weeks.
- It provides for abortion beyond 24 weeks under defined conditions.
- The Bill amends Section 3 of the 1971 Act to provide that ―the length of pregnancy shall not apply in a decision to abort a foetus diagnosed with ―substantial foetal abnormalities or if it is ―alleged by the pregnant woman to have been caused by rape.
- It also takes into account the reality of a massive shortage of both doctors and trained midwives, and seeks to allow Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha practitioners to carry out abortions
Why is it essential to change the MTP law?
2.5 INTER-STATE WATER DISPUTES(AMENDMENT) BILL, 2017
- Foetal abnormalities show up only by 18 weeks,so just a two-week window after that is too small for would-be parents to take the difficult call on whether to keep their baby.
- Even for the medical practitioner, this window is too small to exhaust all possible options before advising the patient.
- There is an urgentneed to empower women with sexual rights, legal protrction against sex crimes and sex choices both in their own interest and for the sake of reducing the fertility rate as a whole.
- The lack of legal approval moves abortion to underground and they are done in unhygienic conditions by untrained proffessionals.
2.5 INTER-STATE WATER DISPUTES(AMENDMENT) BILL, 2017
Why in news?
The Inter-State River Water Disputes (Amendment) Bill, 2017 was introduced in the LokSabha.
The Inter-State River Water Disputes (Amendment) Bill, 2017 was introduced in the LokSabha.
What are the problems in present set-up?
- With increasing demand for water, inter-state river water disputes are on the rise.
- The present Inter State River Water Dispute Act, 1956 that provides the legal framework to address such disputes has many drawbacks.
- Under the present Act, a separate Tribunal has to be established for each dispute.
- There are eight inter-state water dispute tribunals, including the Ravi and Beas Waters Tribunal and Krishna River Water Dispute Tribunal. But only three of the eight tribunals have actually given awards accepted by the states.
- There is no time limit for adjudication or publication of reports.
- Tribunals like those on the Cauvery and Ravi Beas have been in existence for over 26 and 30 years respectively without any award.
- There is no upper age limit for the chairman or the members.
- The bill proposes a single standing tribunal with multiple benches instead of multiple tribunals that exist at present.
- The total time period for adjudication of dispute has been fixed at maximum of 4.5 years.
- The decision of the Tribunal shall be final and binding with no requirement of publication in the official gazette
- As per the proposed bill, the Tribunal shall have one chairperson, one vice-chairperson and not more than six other members.
- It limits the tenure of the chairperson to five years or till attain the age of 70, whichever is earlier.
- It also proposes to introduce mechanisms to resolve disputes by negotiations through a Dispute
- Resolution Committee (DRC) before a dispute is referred to the tribunal
- DRC to be established by the central government consisting of experts.
- It also provides for a transparent data collection system at the national level for each river basin.
- It calls for the appointment of assessors to provide technical support to the tribunal.
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