Nobel Prize in Literature for 2023

GS Paper - 1 (Personality)

Norwegian novelist and dramatist Jon Fosse has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for the year 2023, the Swedish Academy announced on 5 October 2023. Fosse has been awarded the Nobel Prize “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”. The 64-year-old author writes the least common of the two official versions of Norwegian.

More about the Prize

• The Nobel Prize Academy honoured Fosse’s body of work written in Norwegian Nynorsk including several plays, novels, poetry collections, essays, children’s books and translations.
• The prize is worth 10 million Swedish krona ($915,000) and is regarded widely as the world’s most prestigious literary award.
• The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded 116 times to 120 Nobel laureates between 1901 and 2023.
• While Fosse is today one of the most widely performed playwrights in the world, he has also become increasingly recognised for his prose, the Academy said.
• In recent years, the prizes have gone to French author Annie Ernaux (2022), Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah (2021), American poet and essayist Louise Glück ( 2020) and Austrian writer Peter Handke ( 2019).

Flashback

• The list of famous winners from yesteryears includes: WB Yeats (1923), GB Shaw (1925) Herman Hesse ( 1946), TS Eliot( 1948), Pablo Neruda ( 1971) and Gabriel García Márquez (1982).
• Each year, since 1901, the Nobel Prize has been announced for achievements in the sciences, literature and peace.
• The Prize was established in the will of Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite.

‘Dynamic injunction’ against illegal broadcast

GS Paper - 3 (IPR)

The Delhi High Court restrained nine websites from illegally broadcasting the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023 matches. The court passed a “dynamic injunction” in favour of the cup’s broadcaster, Star India Private Limited, before the Cup’s commencement.

What is a dynamic injunction?

• An injunction is an official order given by a law court, usually to stop someone from doing something. However, in most cases, such injunctions are granted by the court only after the court identifies the work and determines the plaintiff’s copyright in that work.
• To avoid this cumbersome process and grant protection to copyrighted works in a timely manner, courts sometimes rely on the concept of “dynamic” injunctions.
• A dynamic injunction is passed to protect copyrighted works even before they are publicly released, distributed, or created.
• It ensures that no irreparable loss is caused to its authors and owner, owing to the imminent possibility of such works being uploaded on rogue websites or their newer versions immediately after their creation or release, given the challenges posed by online piracy.

Flashback

• This is not the first time that the Delhi High Court has passed a “dynamic injunction”.
• In August, the court observed that given the nature of the “illegalities that rogue websites indulge in”, there is a need to pass injunctions which are also “dynamic’ as once a film or series is released, it might be immediately uploaded on the rogue websites, causing severe and instant monetary loss to its creators.
• The Delhi HC in its 2019 ruling in UTV vs. 1337x.to introduced the concept of “dynamic” injunctions for the first time.
• Similarly, the present plea filed by Star India stated that given the exclusive rights they had acquired from ICC, they enjoyed broadcast reproduction rights which are contemplated under Section 37 of the 1957 Copyright Act.

Caste data in Census

GS Paper - 2 (Polity)

The Bihar government has released the results of its concluded survey of castes in the state, which reveals that Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs) constitute more than 63% of the population of Bihar.

What kind of caste data is published in the Census?

• Every Census in independent India from 1951 to 2011 has published data on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, but not on other castes. Before that, every Census until 1931 had data on caste.
• However, in 1941, caste-based data was collected but not published. M W M Yeats, the then Census Commissioner, said a note: “There would have been no all India caste table… The time is past for this enormous and costly table as part of the central undertaking…” This was during World War II.
• In the absence of such a census, there is no proper estimate for the population of OBCs, various groups within the OBCs, and others.
• The Mandal Commission estimated the OBC population at 52%, some other estimates have been based on National Sample Survey data, and political parties make their own estimates in states and Lok Sabha and Assembly seats during elections.

How often has the demand for a caste census been made?

• It comes up before almost every Census, as records of debates and questions raised in Parliament show.
• The demand usually comes from among those belonging to Other Backward Classes (OBC) and other deprived sections, while sections from the upper castes oppose the idea.
• This time, however, things have been quite different. With Census 2021 delayed several times, the Opposition parties have made the loudest cry for a caste census as they seem to have converged on “social justice” as their slogan and glue.