Current Affairs – 29th July 2023

DAILY ENRICHMENT PROGRAMME

Today Topics List:

1. China – India: The history of Stapled Visas

2. Wajid Ali Shah – Awadh

3. Stapled Visa: Issues with China

4. What is Sam Altman’s biometric project?

INDIAN HISTORY HERITAGE & CULTURE

China – India: The history of Stapled Visas

• • There is a long history of conflict between India and China with respect to Arunachal Pradesh, South Tibet and the issue of Stapled Visas.
    • State run Chinese media began to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “South Tibet” from 2005 onward.
    • In 2006, China refused a visa to an Indian Government official serving in Arunachal Pradesh.
    • Thereafter, the Chinese government started issuing stapled Visas to Indian Citizens from the state.
  • The stapled Visas for Jammu and Kashmir started around 2008-09.
    • In 2010, the Chinese refused a visa to northern Army Commander Lt Gen B S Jaswal to attend an official meeting on the ground that he serves in “sensitive” Jammu and Kashmir.
    • In 2011,, the junior External affairs Minister told Rajya Sabha that Indian Government was aware that despite strong protest, the Chinese embassy in India had issued stapled visas to the people of J&K.
    • An official from the Indian weightlifting Federation (IWF) and a noted weightlifter were not allowed to board a flight to Beijing because they had stapled visas.
    • India’s position that there should be no discrimination against visa applicants of Indian nationality on grounds of domicile and ethnicity has been clearly conveyed to the Chinese Government.
    • It includes during the visit of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao n December 2010.
    • An advisory has also been issued on November 12,2009, cautioning citizens that Chinese stapled Visas were not valid.
  • In 2011, five karatekas from Arunachal Pradesh, and in 2013, two young women archers from the state were issued Stapled visas by the Chinese.
  • In 2016, the manager of the Indian badminton team said he did not get a Chinese visa because he was from Arunachal Pradesh.

Wajid Ali Shah – Awadh

NEWS:

• • • JULY 30, was the 201st birth anniversary of Wajid AliShah, the last Nawab on the throne of Awadh.

Story of Wajid Ali Shah:

• The first part of Wajid AliShah’s story— that of his dethronement in 1856 on charges of misgovernance and debauchery. While, this is the British version of events.
  • In reality, the nawab had tried to reform his administration but was hamstrung by the British
  • His generous and refined patronage of the arts, his poetic talents, have also been acknowledge.
  • But the last 30 years of his life, spent in Calcutta,best highlight the unique character of Wajid Ali Shah, who never forgot he was king, and neverlet the British forget it.

Exile and Imprisonment:

• After Awadh was taken over by the company, the Nawab decided to plead his case directly before the Queen Victoria.
  • He went to Calcutta and was allotted a residence in Garden reach.
  • Soon after, the revolt of 1857 broke, he was imprisoned to be released only after two years.
  • Now, he decided to establish a faux version of the Kingdom he had had to give up, ironically getting the British to finance some of it.

Creation of a Ghost court:

• Garden reach, is an area where high ranking officials of company had built country homes.
  • Nawab was allotted a Bunglow no. 11 along with a monthly pension of Rs. 1 lakh.
  • He was followed by a large no of his wives and children, ministers, body guards, tradesmen, cooks, tailors, attenders, entertainers, performers and so on, who lived in the garden reach during the Nawab’s imprisonmen.
  • Soon they all built up houses in the garden and the adjoining properties were also rented for the same, which eventually had to be bought by British for the nawab.
  • The remodelingwas done with dovecotes, parrot houses, and a large menagerie with tigers and leopards.
• He also brought back the elaborate dance, Music, and poetry events of Lucknow and was credited with popularising in Bengal Kathak and Biryani with Potato.
• Nawab also bought gem studded utensil, shawls, jewellery through agents who inflated prices for profits.
  • The Nawab’s pension was not sufficient for this and he fell in debt and was sued by the traders.
  • He had to be rescued by British, by enacting a legislation shielding Nawab from legal cases.

Why did British Bail out the Nawab?

• It was due to a combination of factors that include the unfair annexation of the Kingdom, and the realisation that the nawab still carried emotive appeal.
  • While they looked down upon the oriental arts he patronised and exaggerated his alleged debauchery, till his death, the British feared that public humiliation or physical assault of the nawab could incite a rebellion.
• But the most important factor was the personality of Wajid Ali itself, he refused to acknowledge that his reduced circumstances required a change in his behaviour.
  • His spending was not only his pretension to royalty, he carried on with his court, paying salaries to thousands of people.
  • He allowed a rich cultural life to flourish around him.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Stapled Visa: Issues with China

News:

• India withdrew its eight athlete wushu contingent from the summer world University games that began in Chengdu, China, after China issued stapled Visas to three athletes from the Indian team who belongs to Arunachal Pradesh.
• What is stapled Visa?
• It is an unstamped piece of paper that is attached by a pin or staples to a page of the holder’s passport, and can be torn off or detached at will.
  • This is different from a regular visa that is either a stamp put in the passport by the issuing country, or a document that is affixed to the passport.
• China has made it a practice to issue stapled visas to Indian nationals from Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.
  • It says the visas are valid documents, but the Govt of India has consistently refused to accept this position and protested strongly.

Why does China do this?

• China disputes the legal status of the MCMahon line, the boundary between Tibet and British India that was agreed at the Simla Convention of 1914 and India’s internationally accepted sovereignty over Arunachal Pradesh.
  • It claims some 90,000 sq.km of Arunachal Pradesh as its territory.
  • It calls the area “Zangnan” in the Chinese language and make repeated references to South Tibet.
  • Chinese maps show Arunachal Pradesh as a part of China, and sometimes parenthetically refer to it as “So-called Arunachal Pradesh”.
• China makes periodic efforts to underline this unilateral claim to Indian territory, releasing the lists of Chinese names for places in Arunachal Pradesh.
  • It had issued three such lists since 2017 and taking steps such as issuing stapled visas.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY & HEALTH

What is Sam Altman’s biometric project?

News:

• Open AI CEO Sam Altman took to twitter on July 24^th to formally re-introduce World coin, a project of his that was eclipsed by the popularity of Chat GPT.

World coin:

• It is an initiative to create a digital network in which everyone can claim some kind of stake, and join the digital economy.
  • It uses a device called “orb”.
  • Orb Operators scan a person’s iris pattern to collect their biometric data and help them get a world ID through the World app.

How does it work?

• Volunteers sign up to be orb volunteers in their locality and receive basic training and a biometric device with which to scan irises.
  • Orb operators can even rent out the orb to others to let the scan eyeballs as well.
  • Those who got their irises scanned can get the World ID and can use this to claim the WLD crypto, which they may use for transactions or hold on to the asset in the hope that its price might rise.
• However, users can also buy or sell WLD without getting scanned or using the app.
  • In return for signing up more people to the Worldcoin network, Orb operators get WLD, which is a token based on the Ethereum blockchain.
  • Ethereum has a native coin, ether, which is the second largest crypto by market capitalisation.
  • However, anyone can create a token which runs on Ethereum blockchain.
  • WLD is one such crypto currency.

Why Scan irises?

• World coin explained that it wanted to include everyone in its network and that using biometric information to avoid duplication was a valid method for this.
  • The company claimed that India had “proven the effectiveness of biometrics” through its Aadhaar system.
  • World Coin notes that Aadhaar IDs stopped people from signing up multiple times to benefit from social welfare schemes.
• The company says, it uses Zero knowledge proofs to maintain users’ privacy and that it is fully complaint with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
  • Individuals who want to receive a World ID are not required to share their name, phone number, Email Address, or home address, or home address.
  • Images collected by the Orb are used to generate a unique iris code.
  • By default, these images are immediately deleted once the iris code is created, unless the user opts in to Data custody.

Criticism:

• World coin was criticised long before its re-launch, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden pointed out that even if a person’s biometric scans were deleted for privacy reasons, the unique identifier for the scan would match future scans of the same person’s eyes.