Editorial 1:Regressive move

Introduction

One of the guidelines issued by the West Bengal government calls for minimising night duty for women. How will this dictum — “wherever possible, night duty may be avoided for women to the extent possible” — secure safety at the workplace?

Concerns faced by women due to night shifts

• Regressive Move: It will end up removing women from the workforce, instead of ensuring a stop to violence.
• Periodic Labour Force Survey’s With the labour force participation rate for urban women in India, ages 15 and above, pegged at an abysmal 25.2% in April-June 2024.
• Duty of the Centre and States: They must ensure that women, employed as health-care professionals, gig and factory workers, call centre staff, auto drivers, hotel duties and journalists, are able to work safely, anywhere, and at anytime.
• Reducing their time at work: It will only lead to women losing jobs and their financial independence.
• Rattirer Shaathi (helpers of the night) guideline: It include the call for separate rest rooms and toilets for women, creating safe zones with CCTVs, and a special mobile phone app — measures which should have been already in place. 

The Supreme Courts Activism

• Suo Moto Cognisance: The Supreme Court, taking suo motu cognisance of the Kolkata case, in its hearing on Tuesday announced a national task force to look into the safety of doctors and medical professionals.
• Gender violence: It should be a matter of serious concern in every sphere, not least the informal sector, where women are employed in large numbers.
• Tough laws and strict punishments: The sweeping changes brought into the system after the 2012 Delhi rape, such as harsher laws and stringent punishment, have not been enough.
• Crime Reports: The National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) annual report of 2022, the latest one available, shows that 4.45 lakh cases of crimes against women were registered, equal to nearly 51 FIRs every hour.

Conclusion

Justice R. Banumathi in Nirbhaya case, 2017, had said that apart from effective implementation of laws, a change in the mindset of the society at large and creating awareness in the public on gender justice would go a long way to combat violence against women. Campaigns led by women after the R.G. Kar rape, to “reclaim the night” in Kolkata and other parts of the country, should serve as wake-up calls to governments, and society, to do it right by women., The Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud rightly claimed, Protocols cannot be just on paper. It is time for society-administration-government along with judiciary to take proactive steps.

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Editorial 2:West Asia crisis spells tough choices for China, Russia

 

Introduction

The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, chief of Hamas’s Politburo and the group’s negotiator, in central Tehran, in July, has pushed Israel and Iran to the brink of a full-scale war. The region is bracing for an Iranian response that is expected to be more violent than the exchange between the two foes in April. However, despite tensions, Iran’s closest partners, Russia and China, have maintained a curious level of distance and ambiguity.

The Gaza War

• Competition between Global powers: The war in Gaza is a regional flashpoint and has been so for decades. But, in 2024, it has also been subsumed into a larger big-power competition between the United States and its western partners on the one side, and a China-led grouping on the other, which, loosely, includes Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
• Role of Iran: It has played a central role in this construct, from providing military technical capacity to Moscow in the form of drones for its frontline against Ukraine, and cheap oil for Beijing, which it has used to top-up its strategic reserves. 

 

The ‘influence architecture’ 

• Individualistic aims of Russia and China: Tehran getting bogged down by a conventional conflict across the region will mean that its capacities will also need bolstering — may take help from  Moscow and Beijing.
• Common Enemy United States: While the two powers have a common aim of undermining, and even dispelling, the U.S.’s hold on West Asian security.
• Individual Aims:  They have also individually built their own influence architectures which operate less as a collective, and more at an individual level. 
• China’s Diplomacy: By playing a mediator’s role in the normalisation of ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran and hosting a group of Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Fatah.
• Beijing’s Palestinian cause: Beijing supports Palestinian cause as it was an injustice perpetuated by western colonisation, and second, a general support for Arab positions. In the Chinese press for example, one outlet highlighted Haniyeh as a “pacifist”. 
• Russian Scenario: Moscow has been militarily embroiled in the Syrian conflict since 2015 when the Arab state’s embattled leader, Bashar al-Assad, requested military support to ward off the threat posed by the so-called Islamic State.
• Russian bases: Moscow has maintained permanent bases around Latakia province, which also provide it critical access to the Mediterranean.
• Iran safety measures: to safeguard the Assad regime, and in return strengthened a web of proxies across the country to secure its own strategic aims. 

 

The issue of Iran’s nuclearisation 

• The China- Russia-Western Alignment: Against that of a potential nuclearization of Iran. Iran is viewed as a threshold nuclear state, i.e., being very close to attaining weapons capability.
• Successful election of Masoud Pezeshkian: A now tempered moderate President, and his selection of some reformists including familiar names such as Abbas Araghchi as Foreign Minister, may raise hope in the P5+1 capitals that nuclear negotiations could be brought back to life.
• China would like an Iranian leader: Who maintains the country’s anti-West and anti-U.S. position, but perhaps not one that prioritises crossing the proverbial red-line and attaining nuclear weapons. 

 

Regional realities 

• The Russia-West differences: Russians are already more ingrained and aggressive in tactically undermining western power compared to a still risk-averse Beijing.
• Global South relations: Moscow has managed well with the Global South in maintaining a workable position regarding Ukraine,
• African presence: Russia’s intelligence and military apparatus has mobilised in areas such as western Africa to challenge a long-standing American and European presence.
• West Asian Presence: In West Asia, recent reports have suggested a Russian intelligence presence in Yemen, to help the Houthis as they disrupt global trade traversing through the Red Sea where even India had to deploy a significant naval presence to protect its ships.
• US equations with Syria and Iraq regions: These are the regional realities as to why the U.S. remains adamant in preserving its small deployments on the ground in Syria and Iraq. An exit now would look like ceding one of its final bastions of power projection in the region. 

Conclusion

For the chaos mentioned above to continue to deliver for China and Russia, it would be important for Iran not to get embroiled in a traditional war with Israel. However, it may well be difficult for Tehran not to respond to Haniyeh’s killing. This is not only because it would make it look weak, but also because those proxies fighting on its behalf for years, including the likes of Hezbollah in Lebanon, are going to demand that the Iranian leadership perform a strong response.