Vocabulary Of The Day(FEB 1st Hindu Editorial)

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                     TOPIC 1:Gujarat must give up terror bill

            Gujarat should give up its persistent efforts to get the controversial Gujarat Control of Terrorism and Organised Crime Bill, 2015, approved by the President. First moved by Narendra Modi in 2003 when he was Chief Minister of the State, the Bill has been facing objections on the ground that it contains some draconian provisions. The Centre refused to clear the Bill three times when the United Progressive Alliance was in power. The Union Home Ministry has now recalled the Bill from the office of the President, to whom it had been sent for assent. The reason appears to be that it wants the Bill to be reworked based on additional inputs from the State government. The controversial nature of the GCTOC Bill became apparent after A.P.J. Abdul Kalam as President objected to a clause that made evidence based on interception of communication admissible in court. His successor, Pratibha Patil, too declined assent. In March 2015, the Assembly passed the Bill and sent it a fresh to the Centre for presidential assent. The Centre ultimately prevailed in having the clause that permitted the State Home Secretary to authorise the interception of telephone calls on his own dropped. Under the Indian Telegraph Act, State Home Secretaries do authorise telephone taps, but using power delegated to them by the Centre. The watered-down Bill was sent last September to the President for his assent. It has been recalled now, possibly because of fears that President Pranab Mukherjee might refuse assent again.

            India’s repeated experiments with anti-terrorism laws have been, by and large, unsuccessful. The Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, 1985, a law considered as draconian as the Rowlatt Act of the colonial era, and its latter-day version, the Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2003, had been allowed to lapse after it was found that they were prone to persistent misuse. However, with the substantive amendments made to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in 2012, the country does have an effective law to curb modern-day terrorism. The Gujarat law is modelled on the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, but that does not make it any more acceptable. The Maharashtra law itself has not achieved any remarkable success in curbing organised crime. When it was invoked recently in a cricket spot-fixing case in Delhi, it failed miserably during trial, demonstrating how such laws can be reduced to a mockery through improper application. The GCTOC Bill also has provisions similar to earlier anti-terrorism laws, such as making confession to a police officer of the rank of Superintendent of Police admissible in court, and allowing 180 days, instead of the usual 90, for the filing of a charge sheet. There is really no need for more State-level laws of such a nature. Police investigators need better resources and training to combat organised crime and terror, and not laws that abridge and modify conventional criminal procedure to the detriment of human rights.

VOCABULARY:

1. persistent :continuing to exist or occur over a prolonged period.

2.controversial : giving rise or likely to give rise to controversy or public disagreement.

3.objections : the action of challenging or disagreeing with something.

4.draconian : (of laws or their application) excessively harsh and severe.

5. provisions : the action of providing or supplying something for use.

6.assent :the expression of approval or agreement

7.clause : a particular and separate article, stipulation, or proviso in a treaty, bill, or contract.

8.interception : the distance from the origin to a point where a graph crosses a coordinate axis.

9.admissible : acceptable or valid, especially as evidence in a court of law

10. declined : politely refuse (an invitation or offer)

11.prevailed: persuade (someone) to do something.

12.Disruptive : causing or tending to cause disruption.

13.lapse : pass gradually into (an inferior state or condition).

14.prone : likely or liable to suffer from, do, or experience something unpleasant or regrettable

15.substantive : having a separate and independent existence.

16.curb: a check or restraint on something

17.invoked : call on (a deity or spirit) in prayer, as a witness, or for inspiration.

18.miserably : Causing or accompanied by great discomfort or distress

19.mockery:teasing and contemptuous language or behaviour directed at a particular person or thing.

20.confession : a formal statement admitting that one is guilty of a crime.

21.abridge : shorten (a book, film, speech, etc.) without losing the sense.

22.detriment : the state of being harmed or damaged.

                           TOPIC2 : Push for IMF reform

            Finally, the International Monetary Fund has made country quota reforms agreed by the G20 in 2010 a reality. One could imagine a collective, global sigh of relief as the chief objector to the changes, the U.S. Congress, dropped its intransigence in December and allowed the multilateral lender to adopt a country quota distribution that better reflects the power balance of emerging markets in the global economy. With this structural shift, more than 6 percentage points of the quota, including both the Fund’s capital and its proportionate voting rights, have been transferred from developed to emerging economies. The greatest gains from the reforms accrue to the IMF itself, as the combined capital that its 188 member-countries contribute will increase to approximately $659 billion from nearly $329 billion. Other winners are India and China, who have respectively increased their voting shares by 0.292 and 2.265 percentage points. The emerging economies wrested a 2.6 percentage points increase. The developed nations have had a haircut in their voting share, somewhere between 0.2 and 0.5 percentage points. Consequently, India, China, Brazil, and Russia will be among the 10 largest members along side large advanced economies. As IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said, it is appropriate to “commend [the IMF] for ratifying these truly historic reforms”. But the reforms have come so late and after so much wrangling that, similar to its crisis-lending policies, they leave a bitter taste in the mouth.

            Back in May 2011, the Fund’s Executive Directors from the BRICS economies openly revolted against the prospect of the position of Managing Director reverting to a European, deepening the woes of an organisation that had been rocked by the resignation of Dominique Strauss-Kahn following sexual assault allegations. At the time, Arvind Virmani, Executive Director, from India, argued that the 2008 global financial crisis erupted in developed countries and its provenance “underscored the urgency of reforming international financial institutions so as to reflect the growing role of developing countries in the world economy”. Multi-year Republican Party obstructionism in the U.S. meant that the negotiations were dragged into the mud of dirty domestic politics, with some threatening to veto them unless President Barack Obama’s landmark health-care reform was repealed. Law-makers relented only after years of persuasion made them realise that their inaction was hurting U.S. diplomacy. Even so, they extracted their pound of flesh, and the final reform plan acquiesces to their demand to rescind the “systemic exemption” loophole, which allowed the Fund to lend to Greece in 2010. It is also a shame that BRICS nations had to launch their own bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, before the high priests of the Fund felt the need to modernise their quota structure. Despite all these push-factors, the process of governance restructuring at the IMF has not ended; it has only just begun.

VOCABULARY:

1.intransigence : characterized by refusal to compromise or to abandon an extreme position or attitude.

2.lender :  an organization or person that lends money.

3.emerging : move out of or away from something and become visible.

4.proportionate : another term for proportional ( equal ratio).

5.accrue  : (of a benefit or sum of money) be received by someone in regular or increasing amounts over time.

6.wrested : forcibly pull (something) from a person's grasp.

7.ratifying : sign or give formal consent to (a treaty, contract, or agreement), making it officially valid.

8.wrangling : have a long, complicated dispute or argument.

9.revolted : take violent action against an established government or ruler; rebel.

10.prospect : the possibility or likelihood of some future event occurring.

11.reverting : return to (a previous state, practice, topic, etc.).

14.woes : things that cause sorrow or distress; troubles.

15.allegations :  a claim or assertion that someone has done something illegal or wrong, typically one made without proof.

16.erupted : break out suddenly and dramatically.

17. provenance : the place of origin or earliest known history of something.

18.obstructionism : the action of obstructing or the state of being obstructed.

19.veto : a constitutional right to reject a decision or proposal made by a lawmaking body.

20.repealed : revoke or annul (a law or act of parliament).

21.relented  : abandon or mitigate a severe or harsh attitude, especially by finally yielding to a request.

22.persuasion  :  a belief or set of beliefs, especially religious or political ones

23. acquiesces : accept something reluctantly but without protest.

24.rescind : revoke, cancel, or repeal (a law, order, or agreement).

25.priests : an ordained minister of the Catholic, Orthodox, or Anglican Church, authorized to perform certain rites and administer certain sacraments.

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