đŸ’„Join UPSC 2027,2028 Mentorship (July Batch) + XFactor Notes & Microthemes PDF
Talk to Mentor

Civilsdaily

Login

GS Paper: GS3

  • What is Pravaig Field Pack?

    A Bengaluru-based venture has produced a rugged tactical battery that it is now planning to sell to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) forces in Europe.

    Pravaig Field Pack

    • It is a heavy-duty power bank that is portable and weighs 14 kilograms.
    • It is of great utility to the digitally connected modern military and Special Forces personnel who have to operate in high-risk zones while using gadgets that require constant power back-up.
    • These batteries are designed, engineered and made in India.
    • The field pack can be used to charge a MacBook 60 times.

    Significance of Pravaig

    • This supply marks a major shift in the defense landscape of India — a tipping point in the reversal of India’s high technology defense industry, from users to developers, from importers to exporters.
    • The field pack can be used to energize a military person’s field duties and it can be used to deploy remote sensors.
    • A powerful tactical battery can be used even to operate larger military equipment such as drones and it can even help coordinate tactical operations which involve multiple weapons systems.

     

    UPSC 2023 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

  • Devastation in Dima Hasao and its after-effects

    Disaster struck Dima Hasao, central Assam’s hill district, in mid-May after incessant heavy rainfall.

    Impacts of the disaster

    • The 170 km railway line connecting Lumding in the Brahmaputra Valley’s Hojai district and Badarpur in the Barak Valley’s Karimganj district was severely affected.
    • The Assam government and Railway Ministry’s assessments said the district suffered a loss of more than â‚č1,000 crore, but ecologists say the damage could be irreversibly higher.

    How severe has the rain been in Assam?

    • Assam is used to floods, sometimes even four times a year, resultant landslides and erosion.
    • But the pre-monsoon showers this year have been particularly severe on Dima Hasao, one of three hill districts in the State.
    • Landslips have claimed four lives and damaged roads.
    • The impact has been most severe on the arterial railway, which was breached at 58 locations leaving the track hanging in several places.
    • The disruption of train services, unlikely to be restored soon, has cut off the flood-hit Barak Valley, parts of Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura.

    Why is the railway in focus post-disaster?

    • Dima Hasao straddles the Barail, a tertiary mountain range between the Brahmaputra and Barak River basins.
    • The district is on the Dauki fault (the prone-to-earthquakes geological fractures between two blocks of rocks) straddling Bangladesh and parts of the northeast.
    • British engineers were said to have factored in the fragility of the hills to build the railway line over 16 years by 1899.
    • The end result was an engineering marvel 221 km long over several bridges and through 37 tunnels, laid along the safer sections of the hills.

    A faulty experiment

    • A project to convert the metre gauge track to broad gauge was undertaken in 1996 but the work was completed only by March 2015 because of geotechnical constraints and extremist groups.
    • The broad-gauge track was realigned to be straighter, but a 2009-10 audit report revealed that the project had been undertaken without proper planning and visualisation of the soil strata behaviour.
    • The report gave the example of the disaster-prone Tunnel 10 on the realigned track that was pegged 8 meters below the bed of a nearby stream.

    Is only the railway at fault?

    • There is a general consensus that other factors have contributed to the situation Dima Hasao is in today.
    • Roads in the district, specifically the four-lane Saurashtra-Silchar (largest Barak Valley town) East-West Corridor, have been realigned or deviated from the old ones that were planned around rivers and largely weathered the conditions.
    • The arterial roads build over the past 20 years often cave in and get washed away by floods or blocked by landslides.
    • Shortened cycles of jhum or shifting cultivation on the hill slopes and unregulated mining have accentuated the “man-made disaster”.
    • Massive extraction of river stone, illegal mining of coal and smuggling of forest timbe has led to the disaster.
    • These activities have increased water current besides weakening either side of riverbanks.

    How vital are the rail and highway through Dima Hasao?

    • Meghalaya aside, Dima Hasao is the geographical link to a vast region comprising southern Assam’s Barak Valley, parts of Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura.
    • Moreover, this track is vital for India’s Look East policy that envisages shipping goods to and from Bangladesh’s Chittagong port via Tripura’s border points at Akhaura and Sabroom.
    • These are the last railway station near the Feni River that serves as the India-Bangladesh border.

     

    UPSC 2023 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

  • Government lacking a coherent policy of food security

    Context

    The Government of India announced a sudden ban on export of wheat on May 13, 2022, a few days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had stated that “at a time when the world is facing a shortage of wheat, the farmers of India have stepped forward to feed the world”.

    What led to the sudden wheat export ban?

    • Low public procurement: The sudden turnaround in the export policy appears to be on account of fears that low public procurement would affect domestic food security.
    • This summer, procurement of wheat by the Food Corporation of India (FCI) has been very low.
    • Last year, the FCI and other agencies procured 43.34 million tonnes of wheat.
    • For the current season, procurement has only been 17.8 million tonnes, as of May 10, 2022.
    • Given the low levels of procurement, the Government has reduced the procurement target for the current season from 44.4 to 19.5 million tonnes.
    • Low production: While wheat production this year has been lower than estimated on account of high heat and other factors in March, there is not a big shortfall in production relative to previous years.
    • Wheat production was 103.6 million tonnes in 2018-19, 107.8 million tonnes in 2019-20, and 109.5 million tonnes in 2020-21.
    • The most recent estimate of production for 2021-22, revised downwards from the earlier estimate, is 105.

    Public procurement in India

    • The system of public procurement has been in place since the mid-1960s, and has been the backbone of food policy in India.
    • As part of the liberalisation policy, many other economists suggested that food stocks be run down in India and that needs of food security be met through world trade and the Chicago futures market.

    Need for effective PDS

    • Higher than buffer stock norm: Stocks of wheat in the central pool as of April 30, 2022 were 30.3 million tonnes, much lower than the 52.5 million tonnes of last year, but comfortably higher than buffer stock norms.
    • While the Government procurement in this marketing season has been lower than the previous two years, the stock position so far is similar to 2019, when we had 35.8 million tonnes of stock in April.
    • An important role in pandemic: In the two COVID-19 years (2020-21 and 2021-22), the Public Distribution System (PDS) played a stellar role, and, its role showed the wisdom of not dismantling it.
    • Total offtake of rice and wheat was 102.3 million tonnes in 2021-22 when distribution through the PDS and other welfare schemes is combined.
    • It is essential that the PDS and open market operations be used to cool down food price inflation.
    •  While most States have high inflation rates, States with better PDS, such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu, have low inflation rates.

    Way forward

    • Provide remunerative prices: To promote production, a key aspect of food policy in India has been to provide remunerative prices to farmers.
    • As is well known, after the reports of the National Commission on Farmers, the announced minimum support price (MSP) for wheat has often been inadequate to cover costs of cultivation for several regions and classes of farmers, especially if comprehensive costs (or Cost C2) are taken as the base. 
    • Over the last two years, costs of production have risen sharply, one important component being the spiralling price of fuel.

    Conclusion

    India’s flip-flop on the export of wheat is an example of the Government lacking a coherent policy of food security.

    UPSC 2023 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

  • Agri-exports

    Context

    In the fiscal year 2021-22 (FY22), agri-exports scaled an all-time high of $50.3 billion, registering a growth of 20 per cent over the preceding year.

    What are the contributing factors?

    • The all time high agri-export was made possible largely by rising global commodity prices, but also by the favourable and aggressive export policy of the Ministry of Commerce and its various export promotion agencies like APEDA, MPEDA, and commodity boards.
    • Sustainability issue: From a strategic point of view, an important question that arises is how sustainable is this growth in agri-exports, given India’s resource endowments and the country’s domestic needs?
    • To answer this question rationally, let us first look at the composition of agri-exports.

    Composition of agri-exports

    • Among the several agri-commodities exported in FY22, rice ranks first with exports of $9.6 billion in value (with 21.2 million metric tonnes (MMT) in quantity).
    • It is followed by marine products worth $7.7 billion (1.4 MMT), sugar worth $4.6 billion (10.4 MMT), spices worth $3.9 billion (1.4 MMT) and bovine (buffalo) meat worth $3.3 billion (1.18 MMT) (see figure).
    • Concerns with Rice and Sugar: Of these, two commodities, rice and sugar, are water guzzlers and serious thought should be given to their global competitiveness and environmental sustainability.

    Competitiveness and environmental sustainability concerns with Sugar and Rice cultivation

    • India’s exports of 21 MMT constituted 41 per cent of a global rice market of 51.3 MMT.
    • Low export price: When most of the other commodity prices were surging in global markets, the price of rice (Thailand supplies 25 per cent) collapsed by about 13 per cent from $484/tonne in April 2021 to $429/tonne in April 2022, largely due to India’s massive exports.
    • This means that India had to export a greater quantity of rice to get the same amount of dollars.
    • In trade theory, it is a classic case for levying the optimal export tax of 5 to 10 per cent.
    • Optimal export: India should optimally not go beyond 12 to 15 MMT of rice exports, else the marginal revenue from exports will keep falling.
    • Subsidised water: Taking an average of about 4,000 litres of water per kg of rice, and assuming that half of this percolates into groundwater, exporting 21MMT of rice would mean the virtual export of 42 billion cubic meters (m3) of water.
    • Sugar is another water guzzler, whose exports touched 10.4 MMT in FY22.
    • Subsidies crossing WTO limits: It was backed partly by subsidies (including export subsidy) that crossed the 10 per cent limit mandated by the World Trade Organisation, bringing India into a dispute with other sugar exporting countries at the WTO.
    • However, from a sustainability point of view, we must note that exporting one kg of sugar amounts to roughly exporting 2,000 litres of virtual water.
    • That means in FY22, India exported at least 20 billion m3 of water through sugar exports.
    • So, by exporting 21 MMT of rice and 10 MMT of sugar in FY22, India exported at least 62 billion cubic meters of virtual water.
    • Much of this water is extracted from groundwater — as is being done in much of the Punjab and Haryana belt (for rice), where the water table is receding by 9.2 metres and 7 metres over the last two decades (2000-19), and in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh for sugar.
    • This can lead to a water disaster. 
    • Anthropogenic methane emission: Rice production systems are among the most important sources of anthropogenic methane emissions, contributing to 17.5 per cent of GHG emissions generated from agriculture (2021).
    •  This is all because of the distortionary policies of free power and highly-subsidised fertilisers, especially urea.

    Way forward: Support farmers smartly

    • AWD and DSR: Innovative farming practices such as alternate wetting drying (AWD), direct seeded rice (DSR) that can save up to 25-30 per cent water and micro-irrigation that can save up to 50 per cent irrigation water, could be game-changing technologies in reducing the crop’s carbon footprint.
    • Switching to other crops: The real solution lies in incentivising the farmers to switch some of the area under rice and sugar cultivation to other, less water-guzzling crops.
    • Haryana has come up with two schemes, Mera Pani, Meri Virasat and Kheti Khaali, Fir Bhi Khushali.
    • A closer evaluation of non-basmati rice exports brings out another interesting fact.
    • The unit value of these exports was just $354/tonne, which is below the MSP of rice ($390/tonne).
    • One possibility is that a substantial part of the supplies through the PDS and PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) are leaking out and swelling rice exports.
    • Introduce the option of direct cash transfer: From a policy angle, it may be high time to introduce the option of direct cash transfers in lieu of almost free grains under the PDS and PMGKAY.
    • This will help plug leakages as well as save costs.

    Conclusion

    The best way to tackle this upcoming environmental disaster would be to support farmers smartly, by giving them aggregate input subsidy support on a per hectare basis and freeing up the input prices of fertilisers and power to be determined by market forces and their costs of production.

    UPSC 2023 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

  • Hyper-accumulator Plants for Soil Detox

    A study published in the JNKVV (Jawaharlal Nehru Krishi Vishwavidyalaya) research journal concluded that heavy metal pollution of soil is “emerging at a speedy rate” in India due to industrialisation.

    How does soil get contaminated?

    • Soil contamination can happen due to a variety of reasons, including manufacturing, mineral extraction, accidental spills, illegal dumping, leaking underground storage tanks, pesticide and fertiliser use etc.
    • These toxic heavy metals are then absorbed by food crops and other plants before they eventually make their way into our food chain, directly affecting human life along with ecology.

    Detoxing the soil

    • Many technologies have emerged to remediate this soil pollution.
    • But these methods have been deemed lacking in terms of sustainability as they come with a large cost and have adverse effects themselves.

    Novel technique: Hyperaccumulators

    • Turning toward more sustainable and eco-friendly technologies, scientists have developed methods of “Phytoremediation”.
    • It is a remediation method that uses living organisms like plants, microalgae, and seaweeds.
    • One particular way to remove toxic heavy metals from the soil includes the use of “hyperaccumulator” plants that absorb these substances from the soil.

    What are hyperaccumulator plants?

    • Phytoremediation refers to the usage of “hyperaccumulator” plants to absorb the toxic materials present in the soil and accumulate in their living tissue.
    • Most plants do sometimes accumulate toxic substances.
    • Hyperaccumulators have the unusual ability to absorb hundreds or thousands of times greater amounts of these substances than is normal for most plants.
    • Most discovered hyperaccumulator plants typically accumulate nickel and occur on soils that are rich in nickel, cobalt and in some cases, manganese.

    Where are they found?

    • These hyperaccumulator species have been discovered in many parts of the world.
    • They include the Mediterranean region (mainly plants of the genus Alyssum), tropical outcrops in Brazi, Cuba, New Caledonia (French territory) and Southeast Asia (mainly plants of the genus Phyllanthus).

    How can they be used to remove toxic metals from the soil?

    • Suitable plant species can be used to ‘pick up’ the pollutants from the soil through their roots and transport them to their stem, leaves and other parts.
    • After this, these plants can be harvested and either disposed or even used to extract these toxic metals from the plant.
    • This process can be used to remove metals like silver, cadmium, cobalt, chromium, copper, mercury, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, lead and zinc; metalloids such as arsenic and selenium; some radionuclides; and non-metallic components such as boron.
    • But it cannot be used to remove organic pollutants from the ground due to metabolic breakdown.

    Advantages of phytoremediation with hyperaccumulators

    • One of the primary advantages of phytoremediation is the fact that it is quite cost-effective in comparison with other remediation methods.
    • The only major costs attached are related to crop management (planting, weed control, watering, fertilisation, pruning, fencing, harvesting etc.).
    • This method is also relatively simple and doesn’t require any new kinds of specialised technology.
    • Also, no external energy source is required since the plants grow with the help of sunlight.
    • Another important advantage of this method is that it enriches the soil with organic substances and microorganisms which can protect its chemical and biological qualities.
    • Also, while the plants are growing and accumulating toxic heavy metals, they protect the soil from erosion due to wind and water.

    Limitations of hyperaccumulators

    • For all its advantages, this kind of phytoremediation with hyperaccumulators has a big drawback: it is a very slow and time-consuming process.
    • The restoration of an area with this process can take up to 10 years or more.
    • This comes with a large economic cost, proportional to the size of the area under rehabilitation.
    • The plants to conduct this rehabilitation must be carefully selected based on a large number of characteristics or they could act as an invasive species.
    • They could grow out of control and upsetting the delicate ecological balance of not just the area under rehabilitation, but also the entire region it is part of.

    What can be done for their better utilization?

    • Due to this reason, scientists only propose using species that are native to the region where the phytoremediation project is undertaken.
    • This also has other benefits: these plants will already be acclimatised to the region and there will be no legal problems concerning the procurement, transport and use of seeds.

     

     

    UPSC 2023 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

  • What are Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chips?

    Market leader Nvidia recently announced its H100 GPU (graphics processing unit), which is said to be one of the world’s largest and most powerful Artificial Intelligence (AI) accelerators, packed with 80 billion transistors.

    What are AI chips?

    • AI chips are built with specific architecture and have integrated AI acceleration to support deep learning-based applications.
    • These chips, with their hardware architectures and complementary packaging, memory, storage and interconnect technologies, make it possible to infuse AI into a broad spectrum of applications.
    • There are different types of AI chips such as application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), central processing units (CPUs) and GPUs, designed for diverse AI applications.

    What is Deep Learning?

    • Deep learning, more commonly known as active neural network (ANN) or deep neural network (DNN), is a subset of machine learning and comes under the broader umbrella of AI.
    • It combines a series of computer commands or algorithms that stimulate activity and brain structure.
    • DNNs go through a training phase, learning new capabilities from existing data.
    • DNNs can then inference, by applying these capabilities learned during deep learning training to make predictions against previously unseen data.
    • Deep learning can make the process of collecting, analysing, and interpreting enormous amounts of data faster and easier.

    Utility of AI chips

    • The adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) chips has risen, with chipmakers designing different types of these chips to power AI applications such as:
    1. Natural language processing (NLP)
    2. Computer vision
    3. Robotics, and
    4. Network security across a wide variety of sectors, including automotive, IT, healthcare, and retail

    Are they different from traditional chips?

    • When traditional chips, containing processor cores and memory, perform computational tasks, they continuously move commands and data between the two hardware components.
    • These chips, however, are not ideal for AI applications as they would not be able to handle higher computational necessities of AI workloads which have huge volumes of data.
    • Although, some of the higher-end traditional chips may be able to process certain AI applications.
    • In comparison, AI chips generally contain processor cores as well as several AI-optimised cores that are designed to work in harmony when performing computational tasks.
    • The AI cores are optimised for the demands of heterogeneous enterprise-class AI workloads with low-latency inferencing, due to close integration with the other processor cores.

    What are their applications?

    • Use of AI chips for NLP applications has increased due to the rise in demand for chatbots and online channels such as Messenger, Slack, and others
    • They use NLP to analyse user messages and conversational logic.
    • Then there are chipmakers who have built AI processors designed to help customers achieve business insights at scale across banking, finance, trading, insurance applications and customer interactions.

    What firms are making these chips?

    • Nvidia Corporation, Intel Corporation, IBM Corporation, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., and Apple Inc. are some of the key players in the AI chip market.

    Major breakthroughs

    • Nvidia, which dominates the market, offers a wide portfolio of AI chips including Grace CPU, H100 and its predecessor A100 GPUs.
    • It is capable of handling some of the largest AI models with billions of parameters.
    • The company claims that twenty H100 GPUs can sustain the equivalent of the entire world’s internet traffic.
    • IBM’s new AI chip, announced last year, can support financial services workloads like fraud detection, loan processing, clearing and settlement of trades, anti-money laundering and risk analysis.

    Scale of global market

    • The Worldwide AI chip industry accounted for $8.02 billion in 2020.
    • It is expected to reach $194.9 billion by 2030, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37.4% from 2021 to 2030.

    What can be expected in the future?

    • AI company Cerebras Systems set a new standard with its brain-scale AI solution, paving the way for more advanced solutions in the future.
    • Its CS-2, powered by the Wafer Scale Engine (WSE-2) is a single wafer-scale chip with 2.6 trillion transistors and 8,50,000 AI optimised cores.
    • The human brain contains on the order of 100 trillion synapses, the firm said, adding that a single CS-2 accelerator can support models of over 120 trillion parameters (synapse equivalents) in size.
    • Another AI chip design approach, neuromorphic computing, utilises an engineering method based on the activity of the biological brain.
    • An increase in the adoption of neuromorphic chips in the automotive industry is expected in the next few years.

     

    UPSC 2023 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

  • What is ‘Storage Gain’ in Wheat?

    Punjab’s state procurement agencies (SPAs) are seeking a waiver of ‘storage gain’.

    What is ‘storage gain’ in wheat?

    • Wheat, considered a ‘living grain’, tends to gain some weight during storage.
    • This is known as ‘storage gain’ and it mostly happens due to absorption of moisture.
    • There are three parts of the grain — bran (outer layer rich in fibre), germ (inner layer rich in nutrients) and endosperm (bulk of the kernel which contains minerals and vitamins).
    • The moisture is mostly absorbed by the endosperm.

    Who compensates whom for ‘storage gain’?

    • State procurement agencies, which purchase and store wheat at their facilities, are required to give one kg wheat extra per quintal to the Food Corporation of India (FCI).
    • While 20% of wheat, procured by the FCI and the SPAs, is moved immediately after procurement.
    • It is usually on the remaining 80%, which is moved out after July 1 every year that storage gain has to be accounted for due to longer storage duration.

     

    UPSC 2023 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

  • SC tests phones for Pegasus Spyware

    The Supreme Court has said its technical committee had so far received and tested 29 mobile devices suspected to be infected by Pegasus malware.

    Why in news?

    • It was alleged that the government used the Israel-based spyware to snoop on journalists, parliamentarians, prominent citizens and even court staff.

    What is Pegasus?

    • Pegasus is a spyware developed by NSO Group, an Israeli surveillance firm that helps spies hack into phones.
    • In 2019, when WhatsApp sued the firm in a U.S. court, the matter came to light.
    • In July 2021, Amnesty International, along with 13 media outlets across the globe released a report on how the spyware was used to snoop hundreds of individuals, including Indians.
    • While the NSO claims its spyware is sold only to governments, none of the nations have come forward to accept the claims.

    Threats created by Pegasus

    • What makes Pegasus really dangerous is that it spares no aspect of a person’s identity.
    • It makes older techniques of spying seem relatively harmless.
    • It can intercept every call and SMS, read every email and monitor each messaging app.
    • Pegasus can also control the phone’s camera and microphone and has access to the device’s location data.
    • The app advertises that it can carry out “file retrieval”, which means it could access any document that a target might have stored on their phone.

    Dysfunctions created

    • Privacy breach: The very existence of a surveillance system, whether under a provision of law or without it, impacts the right to privacy under Article 21 and the exercise of free speech under Article 19.
    • Curbing Dissent: It reflects a disturbing trend with regard to the use of hacking software against dissidents and adversaries. In 2019 also, Pegasus software was used to hack into HR & Dalit activists.
    • Individual safety: In the absence of privacy, the safety of journalists, especially those whose work criticizes the government, and the personal safety of their sources is jeopardised.
    • Self-Censorship: Consistent fear over espionage may grapple individuals. This may impact their ability to express, receive and discuss such ideas.
    • State-sponsored mass surveillance: The spyware coupled with AI can manipulate digital content in users’ smartphones. This in turn can polarize their opinion by the distant controllers.
    • National security: The potential misuse or proliferation has the same, if not more, ramifications as advanced nuclear technology falling into the wrong hands.

    Snooping in India:  A Legality check

    For Pegasus-like spyware to be used lawfully, the government would have to invoke both the IT Act and the Telegraph Act. Communication surveillance in India takes place primarily under two laws:

    1. Telegraph Act, 1885: It deals with interception of calls.
    2. Information Technology Act, 2000: It was enacted to deal with surveillance of all electronic communication, following the Supreme Court’s intervention in 1996.

    Cyber security safeguards in India

    • National Cyber Security Policy: The policy was developed in 2013 to build secure and resilient cyberspace for India’s citizens and businesses.
    • Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In): The CERT-In is responsible for incident responses including analysis, forecasts, and alerts on cybersecurity issues and breaches.
    • Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C): The Central Government has rolled out a scheme for the establishment of the I4C to handle issues related to cybercrime in the country in a comprehensive and coordinated manner.
    • Budapest Convention: There also exists Budapest Convention on Cybercrime. However, India is not a signatory to this convention.

    Issues over government involvement

    • It is worth asking why the government would need to hack phones and install spyware when existing laws already offer impunity for surveillance.
    • In the absence of parliamentary or judicial oversight, electronic surveillance gives the executive the power to influence both the subject of surveillance and all classes of individuals, resulting in a chilling effect on free speech.

    Way forward

    • The security of a device becomes one of the fundamental bedrock of maintaining user trust as society becomes more and more digitized.
    • Constituting an independent high-level inquiry with credible members and experts that can restore confidence and conduct its proceedings transparently.
    • The need for judicial oversight over surveillance systems in general, and judicial investigation into the Pegasus hacking, in particular, is very essential.

    Conclusion

    • We must recognize that national security starts with securing the smartphones of every single Indian by embracing technologies such as encryption rather than deploying spyware.
    • This is a core part of our fundamental right to privacy.
    • This intrusion by spyware is not merely an infringement of the rights of the citizens of the country but also a worrying development for India’s national security apparatus.

     

    UPSC 2023 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

  • Project WARDEC: India’s upcoming AI-powered Wargame Centre

    The Army Training Command signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Gandhinagar-based Rashtriya Raksha University (RRU) to develop a ‘Wargame Research and Development Centre (WARDEC)’ in New Delhi.

    What is Project WARDEC?

    • The project ‘WARDEC’ will be a first-of-its-kind simulation-based training centre in India that will use artificial intelligence (AI) to design virtual reality war-games.
    • The Wargame Research and Development Centre will be used by the Army to train its soldiers and test their strategies through “metaverse-enabled gameplay”.
    • The wargame models will be designed to prepare for wars as well as counter-terror and counter-insurgency operations.

    Where will the centre come up and when?

    • The centre will come up in a military zone in New Delhi, confirmed RRU officials privy to the development.
    • The RRU will join hands with Tech Mahindra to develop the centre in the coming three to four months.
    • The RRU, an institute under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), specialises in national security and policing.
    • Located in Gandhinagar’s Lavad village, it is an “institute of national importance” – a status granted to it by an Act of Parliament.

    How will these simulation exercises play out?

    • Soldiers will test their skills in the metaverse where their surroundings will be simulated using a combination of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).
    • In metaverse, the players will get a realistic experience of the actual situation.
    • If a weapon weighing 5 kg drops or the air pressure falls, they will feel it like anyone would in a live situation, real-time.
    • The game would play out player versus player, player versus computer or even computer versus computer.

    How will the centre help the Army?

    • The Army intends to use the war-game centre to train its officers in military strategies.
    • Indian Army will provide data to set the backdrop of the gameplay, so that participants get a realistic experience.
    • In Army, it is often said that the enemy can ambush you from 361 directions, where 360 sides are around the soldier, and one is above in case there is an airdrop.
    • So, wargame simulation helps the Army think of all possible scenarios.

    What promise does AI-based wargame simulation hold?

    • Apart from the armed forces, the BSF, CRPF, CISF, ITBP and SSB can also use the metaverse-enabled simulation exercises for better training.
    • The use of AI can provide a totally immersive training experience as it can simulate a battlefield close to reality and map several eventualities in the probable event of a war.

    How many countries use such wargaming drills?

    • Since the 9/11 attacks, use of information technology-enabled wargaming is preferred by several countries like the US, Israel, the UK to prepare for possibilities in case of terror attacks or war.
    • In March 2014, several world leaders, including former German chancellor Angela Merkel, former US president Barack Obama and Chinese president Xi Jinping had played a war simulation game.
    • It was during the Hague Summit about how to react in case of a nuclear attack.
    • In that case, the target of the nuclear attack was a fictional country named Brinia.

     

    UPSC 2023 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)

  • States have equal powers to make GST-related Laws: SC

    The Supreme Court has held that Union and State legislatures have equal, simultaneous and unique powers to make laws on Goods and Services Tax (GST) and the recommendations of the GST Council are not binding on them.

    What is the case?

    • The apex court’s decision came while confirming a Gujarat High Court ruling that the Centre cannot levy Integrated Goods and Services Tax (IGST) on ocean freight from Indian importers.

    Key takeaways of the Judgment

    • The recommendations of the GST Council are the product of a collaborative dialogue involving the Union and the States.
    • They are recommendatory in nature. They only have a persuasive value.
    • To regard them as binding would disrupt fiscal federalism when both the Union and the States are conferred equal power to legislate on GST.

    Basis of the Judgment

    • The court emphasised that Article 246A of the Constitution gives the States power to make laws with respect to GST.
    • It treats the Union and the States as “equal units”.
    • It confers a simultaneous power (on Union and States) for enacting laws on GST.
    • Article 279A, in constituting the GST Council, envisions that neither the Centre nor the States are actually dependent on the other.

    What are the articles added/modified to the Constitution by the GST Act?

    (1) Article 246A: Special Provision for GST

    • This Article was newly inserted to give power to the Parliament and the respective State/Union Legislatures to make laws on GST respectively imposed by each of them.
    • However, the Parliament of India is given the exclusive power to make laws with respect to inter-state supplies.
    • The IGST Act deals with inter-state supplies. Thus, the power to make laws under the IGST Act will rest exclusively with the Parliament.
    • Further, the article excludes the following products from the scope of GST until a date recommended by the GST Council:
    1. Petroleum Crude
    2. High-Speed Diesel
    3. Motor Spirit
    4. Natural Gas
    5. Aviation Turbine Fuel

    (2) Article 269A: Levy and Collection of GST for Inter-State Supply

    • While Article 246A gives the Parliament the exclusive power to make laws with respect to inter-state supplies.
    • The manner of distribution of revenue from such supplies between the Centre and the State is covered in Article 269A.
    • It allows the GST Council to frame rules in this regard. Import of goods or services will also be called as inter-state supplies.
    • This gives the Central Government the power to levy IGST on import transactions.
    • Import of goods was subject to Countervailing Duty (CVD) in the earlier scheme of taxation.
    • IGST levy helps a taxpayer to avail the credit of IGST paid on import along the supply chain, which was not possible before.

    (3) Article 279A: GST Council

    • This Article gives power to the President to constitute a joint forum of the Centre and States called the GST Council.
    • The GST Council is an apex member committee to modify, reconcile or to procure any law or regulation based on the context of GST in India.

    (4) Article 286: Restrictions on Tax Imposition

    • This was an existing article which restricted states from passing any law that allowed them to collect tax on sale or purchase of goods either outside the state or in the case of import transactions.
    • It was further amended to restrict the passing of any laws in case of services too.
    • Further, the term ‘supply’ replaces ‘sale or purchase’.

    (5) Article 366: Addition of Important definitions

    Article 366 was an existing article amended to include the following definitions:

    1. GST means the tax on supply of goods, services or both. It is important to note that the supply of alcoholic liquor for human consumption is excluded from the purview of GST.
    2. Services refer to anything other than goods.
    3. State includes Union Territory with legislature.

    Back2Basics: GST Council

    • The GST Council is a federal body that aims to bring together states and the Centre on a common platform for the nationwide rollout of the indirect tax reform.
    • It is an apex member committee to modify, reconcile or to procure any law or regulation based on the context of goods and services tax in India.
    • The GST Council dictates tax rate, tax exemption, the due date of forms, tax laws, and tax deadlines, keeping in mind special rates and provisions for some states.
    • The predominant responsibility of the GST Council is to ensure to have one uniform tax rate for goods and services across the nation.

    How is the GST Council structured?

    • The GST is governed by the GST Council. Article 279 (1) of the amended Indian Constitution states that the GST Council has to be constituted by the President within 60 days of the commencement of the Article 279A.
    • According to the article, the GST Council will be a joint forum for the Centre and the States. It consists of the following members:
    1. The Union Finance Minister will be the Chairperson
    2. As a member, the Union Minister of State will be in charge of Revenue of Finance
    3. The Minister in charge of finance or taxation or any other Minister nominated by each State government, as members.

    Terms of reference

    • Article 279A (4) specifies that the Council will make recommendations to the Union and the States on the important issues related to GST, such as the goods and services will be subject or exempted from the Goods and Services Tax.
    • They lay down GST laws, principles that govern the following:
    1. Place of Supply
    2. Threshold limits
    3. GST rates on goods and services
    4. Special rates for raising additional resources during a natural calamity or disaster
    5. Special GST rates for certain States

     

    UPSC 2023 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)