22 Jan 2024 : The Hindu Editorial

Topic 1 : Democratic backsliding: On the state wielding the FCRA as a weapon.

Context: Curbs on financing of civil society bodies denote eroding civil liberties

Introduction

• Civil society organizations (CSOs) are non-governmental, non-profit organizations that operate independently of the government and the business sector.
• These organizations play a crucial role in advocating for social change, promoting civic engagement, and addressing various issues at local, national, and international levels.
• CSOs are diverse in their missions, goals, and activities, but they generally focus on advancing the interests and well-being of citizens.

Types of CSOs

• Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs): NGOs are perhaps the most well-known type of civil society organization. They can operate in various sectors, including health, education, environment, human rights, and more. NGOs often work on the ground to implement projects and programs that address specific social issues.
• Advocacy Groups: These organizations work to influence policies and decisions made by governments and other institutions. They may focus on issues such as human rights, environmental protection, gender equality, or social justice.
• Community-Based Organizations (CBOs): CBOs operate at the grassroots level and are typically formed by community members to address local issues. They often work closely with the communities they serve and play a vital role in community development.
• Trade Unions: While primarily focused on representing the interests of workers in relation to their employers, trade unions also contribute to civil society by advocating for labor rights, fair wages, and improved working conditions.
• Social Movements: These are informal groups of individuals who come together to promote a specific cause or address a particular issue. Social movements can be powerful agents of change, advocating for social, political, or environmental reforms.

Cancelling FCRA license

• Less than a year after suspending the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) licence of the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), the Government of India has cancelled its FCRA licence.
• The justification for this move — CPR’s publications have been equated with current affairs programming, prohibited for an entity using FCRA funds — is nothing if not farcical.
• As a premier think tank, the CPR has been around for more than half a century, during which it has been an exemplar of public-spirited scholarship feeding into an ecosystem of governance and policy-making where multiple stakeholders and their often divergent interests need consensus-building through informed debates — the hallmark of a democracy.
• A decision to effectively shut down such an institution by crippling its finances is bound to send the message that India is no longer open to the free flow of knowledge and ideas. The move also fits into a broader, and sadly, by now all-too-familiar, pattern of the state wielding the FCRA as a weapon to silence entities whose work is not to its liking — typically those working on environmental issues, civil liberties and human rights.

FCRA Amendment

• When the latest round of amendments was passed in 2020, the International Commission of Jurists denounced it as “incompatible with international law” and warned that it would “impose ... extraordinary obstacles on the capacity of … civil society actors to carry out their important work”. It appears as though the government has been working hard to prove the ICJ right.
• Even before dust could settle on the FCRA cancellation of CPR, World Vision India, which works with children, has had its FCRA cancelled. On the one hand, India seeks recognition as a ‘Vishwaguru’. Its calling card as the G-20 host was ‘Mother of Democracy’.
• The government is hypersensitive to rankings on international indices, yet unwilling to acknowledge the link between perception and reality.
• When the U.S.-based non-profit, Freedom House, in its Democracy Index, downgraded India to an “electoral autocracy”, a reason it cited was erosion of civil liberties.

Conclusion

• Shutting off the finances of civil society organisations on flimsy grounds is a textbook example of civil liberties erosion, guaranteed to amplify the narrative of democratic backsliding.
• It would then be pointless to complain about bias or invoke “conspiracies” to tarnish India’s image when these actions get reflected in India’s downgrading in global indices of freedom and democracy.

Topic 2 : Asia ascendant: On the new Space Race

Context: After Japan’s partially successful moon-landing, the new Space Race has Asian countries in the lead.

Introduction

• On January 19, the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) spacecraft of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), launched in September, was expected to soft-land on the moon.
• Japan attempted a soft Moon landing once before with the Hakuto-R mission, a private commercial endeavor that failed earlier in 2023.
• With a dry weight of about 190 kg, SLIM is a prime example of precision technology. Its goal is to land within 100 meters of the equatorial Shinoli crater, which is its target site.

About SLIM

• Shortly after the stipulated time, reports from JAXA indicated the lander had touched down but its solar panels were not producing power, forcing the craft to bank on its batteries.
• However, SLIM, it said, appeared to be transmitting data, and checks of its other components did not indicate any damage — meaning Japan had become the fifth country to soft-land a robotic spacecraft on the moon.
• SLIM, like Chandrayaan-3, was tasked with a lunar soft-landing and deploying a rover mission (with two small rovers) but its primary mission was pioneering.
• Thus far, interplanetary spacecraft to the moon and Mars have been assigned suitable landing areas several hundred metres wide.
• SLIM however was designed to land within a 100 sq. m area, and thus its nickname “moon sniper”. In a press conference in which they confirmed the controlled descent, JAXA officials also said it could be a month before they could ascertain if SLIM had successfully executed its pinpoint landing.
• SLIM’s partial success (for now) comes a day after a moon-landing mission built by Astrobotic, a private U.S. company, and funded by NASA, reentered the earth’s atmosphere following a propellant leak.
• SLIM also happened roughly a month ahead of a landing attempt by another American company and four ahead of China’s ambitious sample-return mission from the moon’s far-side.

Lessons & India-Japan collaboration

• JAXA’s lessons from SLIM are expected to inform the planned Lunar Polar Exploration Mission, an India-Japan collaboration with India expected to provide the lander.
• Precision landing is valuable because it allows lunar missions to begin closer to a place of interest, where there may be a smaller patch suitable for landing, instead of landing further away and roving to the area.
• And the moon’s surface around its south pole is mostly rough terrain. There are now five countries with the demonstrated ability to land robotic spacecraft on the moon. These plus the European Space Agency are the world’s major spacefaring entities.

Conclusion

• No other such entity has a robotic lunar mission planned in the near future. Both the U.S. and Russia also last demonstrated their abilities in a bygone era, although the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services programme will be making frequent attempts, as with the Astrobotic mission. As such, the new Space Race is currently being led by Asian countries.