Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Return on Equity
Mains level: Paper 3- 4 point agenda for banks to deal with the fallout of the pandemic successfully
The article suggest 4 imperatives to the banks in India to emerge successful from pain inflicted by the pandemic.
Impact of pandemic on banking industry
- Unlike other shocks, covid is not a banking crisis; it is, instead, a crisis of the real economy.
- Globally, the average return on equity (RoE) for banks could go below 1.5% in 2021 before recovering to the 2019 pre-crisis levels of 9% by 2024
- This is effectively a loss of five years for the banking industry.
- This will likely play out in two stages:
- 1) Loan loss provisions over a period of 12-18 months.
- 2) Followed by a period where banking revenue growth lags gross domestic product growth, or GDP.
Important role played by banks in pandemic
- India has entered this crisis well-capitalized.
- Their provision coverage ratios improved to 65% in 2019-20, compared to 41% in 2016-17, and RoE (return on equity) has turned positive to 2.5% after two years of negative readings.
- The banking system is playing a critical role in the economic recovery by supporting businesses and individuals.
- New challenges, however, continue to emerge. These, if left unmitigated, will lead to severe losses in efficiencies gained.
4 Imperative to tackle the emerging challenges to banking
1) Need to increase productivity
- Indian banks start at a materially higher cost-to-assets ratio of 2.2% versus 1.4% globally.
- Regaining pre-covid RoE levels and negating higher risk costs and margin compression will, however, require that Indian banks improve productivity by over 30%.
- The Indian banking sector lagged in efficiency improvements; other industrial peers have leveraged a combination of digital adoption and analytics, and strong governance.
Suggestions for productivity transformation
- The productivity transformation will comprise multiple agendas.
- To start with, there will be a branch format and network re-configuration for custormers who has shifted to online mode.
- To drive a permanent digital shift, banks will need to accelerate digital engagement via contact centre transformations.
- In conjunction, there will be the equally important need to create minimum viable support functions (zero-based operations, demand management across human resources, finance, marketing).
- And, finally, there will be the need to re-skill the workforce for digital operations.
2) Pre-emptive risk management
- The second imperative is pre-emptive risk management.
- Banks must rapidly rewire their policies and analytical models such that they reflect fast- moving indicators of risk.
- This means investing in self-serve channels, digital nudges and frictionless journeys across payments, settlements and recoveries.
- The overall collections strategy will have to be underpinned by micro-segmentation, and also leverage analytical models to drive efficiency.
3) Technology imperative
- The third is the technology imperative that must scale with demand and analytical complexity.
- Banks are required to handle high digital traffic and process enormous data sets, and regulators getting increasingly sensitive on downtimes.
- This will requires modernizing core banking platforms, creating the data architecture that supports the analytics life-cycle, instituting modern engineering practices and moving towards automated infrastructure.
4) Capital management
- Banks with exposure to hard-hit sectors will face more of a challenge.
- And existing risk models are unlikely to be tuned to the differentiated impact the pandemic has had on various sectors.
- Risk teams will need to review critical models and add overlays to account for different credit risk in each sector.
- Scenario planning, stress testing and balance sheet optimization will need to become core to planning and management decisions.
Conclusion
In its own way, the pandemic has given banks a glimpse into the art of the possible. Banks should take this opportunity to embed their newfound speed and agility, reinvent their business model, and collaborate with the communities they serve to recast their contract with society.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Various parliamentary committees and their functions
Mains level: Paper 2- Importance of scrutiny of the Bills at committee level
The article explains in detail the functioning of committees in the scrutiny of the Bills and underscores the importance of scrutiny of the Bills at the committee levels.
Growing trend of bypassing the scrutiny at committee level
- Data show that very few Bills are referred to the Parliamentary Committees now.
- Ministers are generally reluctant to send their Bills to the committees because they are in a hurry to pass them.
- They often request the Presiding Officers not to refer their Bills to the committees.
- But the Presiding Officers are required to exercise their independent judgment in the matter and decide the issue.
- They need to keep in mind the fact that the Bills which the government brings before the Houses often have serious shortcomings.
Why scrutiny by the House committee matters
- The demand for the repeal of the laws passed by Parliament only recently essentially points to a serious lapse in the management of the legislative work in Parliament.
- Parliament has put in place a large machinery of committees to scrutinise the Bills which are brought before it by the government as a part of its legislative programme.
- Rules of the Houses leave it to the Speaker or the Chairman to refer the Bills to the Standing Committees for a detailed scrutiny thereof.
- After such scrutiny, the committees send their reports containing their recommendations on improvements to be made in the Bills to the Houses.
- While undertaking such scrutiny, the committees invite various stakeholders to place their views before them.
- Only after elaborate consultation do the committees formulate their views and recommendations.
- Free India’s Parliament established a vast network of committees to undertake scrutiny of various aspects of governance including the Bills.
- Prior to the formation of Standing Committees, the Indian Parliament used to appoint select committees, joint select committees, etc. for detailed scrutiny of important legislative proposals of the government.
- With the formation of standing committees, the occasions for appointing select or joint select committees are few.
Example of the Bills made better by suggestions of committe
- The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Bill was introduced in 1999 in the Lok Sabha and was immediately referred to a joint committee of both Houses.
- This Bill was meant to develop new varieties of plants and protect the rights of farmers and breeders.
- The committee completed its work in eight months and made many improvements by way of bringing greater clarity into various terms and concepts.
- The Seeds Bill, 2004 was referred to the Standing Committee on Agriculture which obtained the views from diverse sources.
- Through the process of consultation with a wide range of experts and research organisations and farmers, the committee made significant improvements in the Bill; as a result, there was a better law on seeds.
- It was the same case with the Companies (Amendment) Bill, the Information Technology Bill, and the Goods and Services Tax Bill.
- The Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill which was introduced in the Lok Sabha in 2011, which was referred to the Committee, was again referred to a Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha when it was transmitted to that House after being passed by the Lok Sabha.
- Thus, this Bill underwent double security by two committees of Parliament.
Conclusion
Our Parliamentary Committees have a tradition of working in a non-party manner. The reports of these Committees are based on consensus. It may be a bit difficult for people to believe that the instrumentalities of Parliament could rise above parties. But that is how they function.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Paris Agreement
Mains level: Paper 3- Net zero emission targets and issues with it
Climate Ambition Summit was held on the 5th anniversary of the Paris Agreement. The article takes stock of the progress made on climate action in the last 5 years.
The Paris Agreement
- The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. It was adopted by 196 Parties at COP 21 in Paris, on 12 December 2015 and entered into force on 4 November 2016.
- Its goal is to limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.
- To achieve this long-term temperature goal, countries aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible to achieve a climate-neutral world by mid-century.
- It is a landmark process because, for the first time, a binding agreement brings all nations into a common cause to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects.
How does it function?
- Implementation of the Paris Agreement requires economic and social transformation, based on the best available science.
- The Agreement works on a 5- year cycle of increasingly ambitious climate action carried out by countries.
- By 2020, countries submit their plans for climate action known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
NDCs
- In their NDCs, countries communicate actions they will take to reduce their Greenhouse Gas emissions in order to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement.
- Countries also communicate in the NDCs actions they will take to build resilience to adapt to the impacts of rising temperatures.
Long-Term Strategies
- To better frame the efforts towards the long-term goal, the Paris Agreement invites countries to formulate and submit by 2020 long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies (LT-LEDS).
- LT-LEDS provide the long-term horizon to the NDCs. Unlike NDCs, they are not mandatory.
- Nevertheless, they place the NDCs into the context of countries’ long-term planning and development priorities, providing a vision and direction for future development.
Progress made after 5 years
- All states have submitted their national contributions to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
- However, these contributions are radically insufficient to reach the “well below 2 degrees Celsius” limit and are even further from the “1.5 degrees Celsius” temperature limit identified in the Paris Agreement.
- This initial shortfall was expected — the logic of the Paris Agreement relied on iterative scaling up of national targets over time to bridge the gap.
Are countries scaling up the targets
- Although 151 states have indicated that they will submit stronger targets before December 31, only 13 of them, covering 2.4 per cent of global emissions, have submitted such targets.
- While states have been slow to update their national contributions for 2025-2030, several have announced “net zero” targets in the recent past.
- All G-7 states except the US and 11 G20 members have mid-century (2050 or 2060) net zero targets -carbon dioxide or other GHGs.
- The Joe Biden administration is also expected to join this group.
Issues in Net Zero targets
1) Credibility of the commitments
- First, the credibility check — are these long-term net zero goals aligned with short-term actions, policies and measures?
- The IPCC 1.5 degrees Celsius Report indicated that to stay within a reasonable chance of achieving 1.5 degrees Celsius, global carbon dioxide emissions have to fall by 45 per cent from the 2010 levels by 2030.
- Current national contributions are not on track for such a fall.
- For many there is a mismatch between short-term actions and long-term commitments.
- Further, there is a significant “overshoot” in terms of GHGs in the short and medium-term, and a reliance on negative emissions technologies to get there in the long-term.
2) Fixing accountability
- Many net zero goals have not yet been embedded in national contributions and long-term strategies under the Paris Agreement.
- In any case, accountability under the Paris Agreement is limited. States are not obliged to achieve their self-selected targets.
- There is no mechanism to review the adequacy of individual contributions.
- States are only asked to provide justifications for the fairness and ambition of their targets.
- The transparency framework does not contain a robust review function, and the compliance committee is facilitative and limited to ensuring compliance with a short list of binding procedural obligations.
- Accountability, therefore, has thus far been generated by non-state actors outside the UN regime rather than in the regime.
3) Fairness of climate action
- The issue of equity and fairness, side-stepped in the Paris Agreement, is emerging in climate litigation before national and regional courts.
- In the landmark Urgenda case (2019), the Dutch Supreme court considered “fair shares” when identifying benchmarks against which the Netherland’s national effort could be judged in the context of a collective action problem.
- Issues of fairness and justice, both between and within generations, are “unavoidable”.
India’s commitment
In 2015, ahead of the UN significant climate conference in Paris, India announced three major voluntary commitments called the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC):
- Improving the emissions intensity of its GDP by 33–35% by 2030 over 2005 levels
- Increasing the share of non-fossil fuels-based electricity to 40% by 2030 and
- Enhancing its forest cover, thereby absorbing 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide
A success (?)
- The Environment Minister said that we have achieved 21% of its emissions intensity reduction target as a proportion of its GDP in line with its pledge to a 33-35% reduction by 2030.
- India was the only major G20 country that was on track towards keeping to its nationally determined commitments to halt runaway global warming.
Conclusion
Credible short-term commitments, with a clear pathway to medium-term decarbonisation, that take into account the multiple challenges states face, such as on air pollution, and development, might well be the more defensible choice for some.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Paris Agreement
Mains level: Progress of global climate action
This week marks the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, where formidable climate diplomacy ushered 196 rich and poor countries into a legally binding treaty seeking to hold global heating below 2°C at this century’s end.
Try this PYQ first, then head with the news:
Q.With reference to the Agreement at the UNFCCC Meeting in Paris in 2015, which of the following statements is/are correct?
- The Agreement was signed by all the member countries of the UN and it will go into effect in 2017.
- The Agreement aims to limit the greenhouse gas emissions so that the rise in average global temperature by the end of this century does not exceed 20C or even 1.50C above pre-industrial levels.
- Developed countries acknowledged their historical responsibility in global warming and committed to donate S 1000 billion a year from 2020 to help developing countries to cope with climate change.
Select the correct answer using the code given below.
(a) 1 and 3 only
(b) 2 only
(c) 2 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3
The Paris Agreement
- The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. It was adopted by 196 Parties at COP 21 in Paris, on 12 December 2015 and entered into force on 4 November 2016.
- Its goal is to limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.
- To achieve this long-term temperature goal, countries aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible to achieve a climate-neutral world by mid-century.
- It is a landmark process because, for the first time, a binding agreement brings all nations into a common cause to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects.
How does it function?
- Implementation of the Paris Agreement requires economic and social transformation, based on the best available science.
- The Agreement works on a 5- year cycle of increasingly ambitious climate action carried out by countries.
- By 2020, countries submit their plans for climate action known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
NDCs
- In their NDCs, countries communicate actions they will take to reduce their Greenhouse Gas emissions in order to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement.
- Countries also communicate in the NDCs actions they will take to build resilience to adapt to the impacts of rising temperatures.
Long-Term Strategies
- To better frame the efforts towards the long-term goal, the Paris Agreement invites countries to formulate and submit by 2020 long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies (LT-LEDS).
- LT-LEDS provide the long-term horizon to the NDCs. Unlike NDCs, they are not mandatory.
- Nevertheless, they place the NDCs into the context of countries’ long-term planning and development priorities, providing a vision and direction for future development.
India’s commitment
In 2015, ahead of the UN significant climate conference in Paris, India announced three major voluntary commitments called the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC):
- Improving the emissions intensity of its GDP by 33–35% by 2030 over 2005 levels
- Increasing the share of non-fossil fuels-based electricity to 40% by 2030 and
- Enhancing its forest cover, thereby absorbing 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide
A success (?)
- The Environment Minister said that we have achieved 21% of its emissions intensity reduction target as a proportion of its GDP in line with its pledge to a 33-35% reduction by 2030.
- India was the only major G20 country that was on track towards keeping to its nationally determined commitments to halt runaway global warming.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Indian Monsoon, ENSO, Planetary Winds
Mains level: Determinants of Indian Monsoon
Droughts in India have historically been associated with El Nino, anomalous warming of the equatorial Pacific, but Indian scientists have found some relevance in Rossby Waves.
Q.The determinants of Indian Monsoon are no more limited to the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. Discuss.
El-Nino alone do not cause drought
- The study says that nearly six out of 10 droughts, in non-El Nino years occurred during the Indian summer-monsoon season in the past century.
- They may have been driven by atmospheric disturbances from the North Atlantic region.
- In an El Niño year, abnormally warm equatorial Pacific waters pull moisture-laden clouds away from the subcontinent.
- But the IISc Bangalore study shows that in non-El Nino years, these droughts are a consequence of a sudden and steep drop in rainfall in late August.
Then, how were droughts induced?
- In an El Nino year, the rainfall deficit departure from a long-term average set in early around mid-June and progressively worsen.
- Researchers tried to trace this drought back to a forcing agent or system that influences the behaviour over India.
- They found, the winds that were prevalent in these non-El Niño drought years.
Another factor: The Rossby Waves
- The researchers noted that winds in the upper atmosphere are interacting with a deep cyclonic circulation above the abnormally cold North Atlantic waters.
- The resulting wave of air currents called a Rossby wave, curved down from the North Atlantic squeezed in by the Tibetan plateau and hits the subcontinent around mid-August.
- This has a suppressing effect on rainfall and throws off the monsoon that was trying to recover from the June slump.
Now scratch your basics on Planetary Winds. “Go back to the NCERTs !”
What are Rossby Waves?
- They are giant meanders in high-altitude winds that have a major influence on the weather.
- They are influenced by the Coriolis force and pressure gradient.
- The wave’s usual course is to go from west to east, but not towards the equator.
Points to be noted ……
- The Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean seem to be at the forefront of all discussions surrounding Indian monsoon droughts.
- Thus beyond looking at the Pacific Ocean it is important to consider other influences on the Indian monsoon from outside the tropics.
- It is perhaps time to focus just as much on mid-latitude influences, which might aid in getting a better handle on enhanced predictability of monsoon variability.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: 7th Schedule
Mains level: Federalism issue raised by the Agricultural Bills
Fifteenth Finance Commission chairman N.K. Singh has called for a fresh look at the Constitution’s Seventh Schedule, which forms the basis for allocating subjects to the Centre and States.
Try this PYQ:
Q.Which of the following provisions of the Constitution of India have a bearing on Education?
- Directive Principles of State Policy
- Rural and Urban Local Bodies
- Fifth Schedule
- Sixth Schedule
- Seventh Schedule
Select the correct answer using the codes given below:
(a) 1 and 2 only
(b) 3, 4 and 5 only
(c) 1, 2 and 5 only
(d) 1, 2, 3 4 and 5
Why such calls by Mr NKS?
- Singh said these issues needed urgent consideration to reinforce trust in fiscal federalism.
- He urged a review of both the Seventh Schedule and Article 282 of the Constitution so as to give more flexibility to States in implementing centrally sponsored schemes.
- Many have argued that the trust between various forms of government is waning.
- Since the farmers’ agitation, these are seen through the prism of suspicion and mistrust.
Q. The federal organisation of powers under the Constitution’s Seventh Schedule needs review. In light of this, examine the problems faced by the distribution and suggest the challenge the review would face.
What is the Seventh Schedule?
- This Schedule of the Indian Constitution deals with the division of powers between the Union government and State governments.
- It defines and specifies the allocation of powers and functions between Union & States. It contains three lists; i.e. 1) Union List, 2) State List and 3) Concurrent List.
The Union List
- It is a list of 98 (Originally 97) numbered items as provided in the Seventh Schedule.
- The Union Government or Parliament of India has exclusive power to legislate on matters relating to these items.
The State List
- It is a list of 59 (Originally 66) items.
- The respective state governments have exclusive power to legislate on matters relating to these items.
The Concurrent List
- There are 52 (Originally 47) items currently in the list.
- This includes items which are under the joint domain of the Union as well as the respective States.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: CITES
Mains level: Exotic species trade
Last month, the Supreme Court upheld an Allahabad High Court order granting immunity from investigation and prosecution if one declared illegal acquisition or possession of exotic wildlife species.
Q.What are Zoonotic Diseases? Discuss how the illicit trade in wildlife has resulted in the spread of zoonotic diseases of the scale of the ongoing COVID-19?
Voluntary disclosure scheme
- The MoEFCC has come out with an advisory on a one-time voluntary disclosure amnesty scheme.
- It allows owners of exotic live species that have been acquired illegally, or without documents, to declare their stock to the government between June and December 2020.
- The scheme aims to address the challenge of zoonotic diseases and regulate their import. In its current form, however.
- It shall develop an inventory of exotic live species for better compliance under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
- However, the amnesty scheme is just an advisory, not a law
What kind of exotic wildlife is covered?
- The advisory has defined exotic live species as animals named under the Appendices I, II and III of the CITES.
- It does not include species from the Schedules of the Wild Life (Protection) Act 1972.
- So, a plain reading of the advisory excludes exotic birds from the amnesty scheme.
Why need such a scheme?
- The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), which enforces anti-smuggling laws, says India has emerged as a big demand centre for exotic birds and animals.
- There has been an increase in smuggling of endangered species from different parts of the world.
- Most of these exotic wildlife is imported through Illegal channels and then sold in the domestic market as pets.
- The long international border and air routes are used to source consignments from Bangkok, Malaysia and other top tourist destinations in South East Asia, as well as from Europe into India.
Back2Basics: CITES
- CITES stands for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
- It is as an international agreement aimed at ensuring “that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival”.
- It was drafted after a resolution was adopted at a meeting of the members of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 1963.
- It entered into force on July 1, 1975, and now has 183 parties.
- The Convention is legally binding on the Parties in the sense that they are committed to implementing it; however, it does not take the place of national laws.
- India is a signatory to and has also ratified CITES convention in 1976.
CITES Appendices
- CITES works by subjecting international trade in specimens of selected species to certain controls.
- All import, export, re-exports and introduction from the sea of species covered by the convention has to be authorized through a licensing system. It has three appendices:
- Appendix I includes species threatened with extinction. Trade-in specimens of these species are permitted only in exceptional circumstances.
- Appendix II provides a lower level of protection.
- Appendix III contains species that are protected in at least one country, which has asked other CITES Parties for assistance in controlling trade.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: QKD
Mains level: Quantum Mechanics and its development in India
The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has successfully demonstrated communication between its two labs using Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) technology.
Q. What is Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) Technology? Discuss how it enables secure communication networks. (150W)
What is QKD Technology?
- Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a secure communication method which implements a cryptographic protocol involving components of quantum mechanics.
- It enables two parties to produce a shared random secret key known only to them, which can then be used to encrypt and decrypt messages.
- It gives the ability of the two communicating users to detect the presence of any third party trying to gain knowledge of the key.
- This is a result of a fundamental aspect of quantum mechanics: the process of measuring a quantum system, in general, disturbs the system.
- By using quantum superposition or quantum entanglement and transmitting information in quantum states, a communication system can be implemented that detects data leak.
How does it work?
- In the QKD, encryption keys are sent as qubits in a fibre optic cable. Time-bin encoding is used to encode qubit on a photon.
- Quantum computing uses qubits as basic resources, similar to how bits are used as basic resources in classical computing.
- The QKD is designed in a way that if an illegitimate entity tries to read the transmission, it will disturb the qubits – which are encoded on photons.
- This will generate transmission errors, leading to legitimate end-users being immediately informed.
Advantages of using QKD
- It allows the detection of data leak or hacking because it can detect any such attempt.
- It also allows the process of setting the error level between the intercepted data in dependence.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Plasmodium parasite
Mains level: Malaria in India
A not very common type of malaria, Plasmodium Ovale, has been identified in a jawan in Kerala.
Try this PYQ:
Q. Widespread resistance of malarial parasite to drugs like chloroquine has prompted attempts to develop a malarial vaccine to combat malaria.
Why is it difficult to develop an effective malaria vaccine?
(a) Malaria is caused by several species of Plasmodium
(b) Man does not develop immunity to malaria during natural infection
(c) Vaccines can be developed only against bacteria
(d) Man is only an intermediate host and not the definitive host
What is Malaria?
- Malaria is caused by the bite of the female Anopheles mosquito if the mosquito itself is infected with a malarial parasite.
- There are five kinds of malarial parasites — Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivax (the commonest ones), Plasmodium malariae, Plasmodium ovale and Plasmodium knowlesi.
- Therefore, to say that someone has contracted the Plasmodium ovale type of malaria means that the person has been infected by that particular parasite.
- Malaria is treated with prescription drugs to kill the parasite. Chloroquine is the preferred treatment for any parasite that is sensitive to the drug.
Plasmodium Ovale
- P ovale rarely causes severe illness and there is no need for panic.
- Symptoms include fever for 48 hours, headache and nausea, and the treatment modality is the same as it is for a person infected with P vivax.
- P ovale is no more dangerous than getting a viral infection.
- It is termed ovale as about 20% of the parasitised cells are oval in shape.
Burden of Malaria in India
- In 2018, the National Vector-borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP) estimated that approximately 5 lakh people suffered from malaria.
- 63% of the cases were of Plasmodium falciparum.
- The recent World Malaria Report 2020 said cases in India dropped from about 20 million in 2000 to about 5.6 million in 2019.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Digital Voter ID
Mains level: Election reforms
The Election Commission (EC) is keen to make the Elector’s Photo Identity Card or EPIC available in electronic form.
Try this PYQ:
Q.Regarding DigiLocker, sometimes seen in the news, which of the following statements is/are correct?
- It is a digital locker system offered by the Government under Digital India Programme.
- It allows you to access your e-documents irrespective of your physical location.
Select the correct answer using the code given below.
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) Neither 1 nor 2
Digital Voter ID Card
- The digital voter card is not expected to look too different from its physical form.
- It will be available as a PDF file and can be downloaded on one’s phone or computer.
- The soft copy may also have a QR code that will carry the voter’s enrolment details such as name and date of birth and address.
- This is still just a proposal and needs to be approved by the Election Commission.
How to avail it?
- To avail this facility, an eligible voter will have to provide her mobile number or email address to the EC machinery at the time of applying for enrolment in the voters’ list.
- Once her name is included in the electoral roll, she will be intimated through an SMS or email.
- The new voter can then download the Voter Card through OTP (One Time Password) authentication.
- Existing voters may have to re-verify their details with the EC (similar to the Bank KYC process) and provide their email or mobile phone number to get their cards in the electronic form.
Benefits offered
- An electronic card will help the EC save costs on printing and distributing a hard copy of EPIC.
- The EC feels that voters too will find it useful to have the PDF file of her voter card on her phone.
- This will do away with the necessity of first producing a voter’s slip on the day of voting.
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