💥UPSC 2027,2028 Mentorship (May Batch) + Access XFactor Notes & Microthemes PDF
Talk to mentor

Civilsdaily

Login

Archives: News

  • Higher Education – RUSA, NIRF, HEFA, etc.

    Branch campuses in India, prospects and challenges

    op-ed snap | Governance | Mains Paper 2: Health & Education

    Context

    India, after half a century of keeping its higher education doors closed to foreigners, is on the cusp of opening itself to the world.

    Higher education reforms

    • Currently, India does not allow the entry and the operation of foreign university branch campuses.
    • The NEP 2020 was a turning point for the entry of foreign universities as it recommended allowing foreign universities ranked in the “top 100” category to operate in India — under somewhat unrealistic conditions.
    • Internationalism: The wide-ranging National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 promises higher education reforms in many areas, and internationalisation is prominent among them.
    • Strengthening India’s soft power: Among the underlying ideas is to strengthen India’s “soft power” through higher education collaboration, bringing new ideas and institutions from abroad to stimulate reform and show “best practice”, and in general to ensure that Indian higher education, for the first time, is a global player.
    • In February 2022, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her Budget speech, announced that “world-class foreign universities and institutions would be allowed in the planned business district in Gujarat’s GIFT City”
    •  It was reported that in April 2022, the University Grants Commission (UGC) formed a committee to draft regulations to allow foreign institutions in the “top 500” category to establish campuses in India — realising that more flexibility was needed
    • Bringing global experience to India: Establishing branch campuses of top foreign universities is a good idea as this will bring much-needed global experience to India.

    Challenges

    • Globally, branch campuses, of which there are around 300 now, provide a mixed picture.
    • Many are aimed at making money for the sponsoring university — and this is not what India wants.
    • It will not be easy to attract foreign universities to India and even more difficult to create the conditions for them to flourish.
    • Many of those top universities are already fully engaged overseas and would likely require incentives to set up in India.
    • Further, there are smaller but highly regarded universities outside the ‘top 500’ category that might be more interested.
    • Universities around the world that have academic specialisations focusing on India, that already have research or faculty ties in the country, or that have Non-Resident Indians (NRI) in senior management positions may be easier to attract.
    • What is most important is to prevent profit-seekers from entering the Indian market and to encourage foreign institutions with innovative educational ideas and a long-term commitment.
    • Many host countries have provided significant incentives, including building facilities and providing necessary infrastructure.
    • Foreign universities are highly unlikely to invest significant funds up front.
    • A big challenge will be India’s “well-known” bureaucracy, especially the multiple regulators.

    Opportunities

    • India is seen around the world as an important country and an emerging higher education power.
    • It is the world’s second largest “exporter” of students, with 4,61,792 students studying abroad (according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics).
    • And India has the world’s second largest higher education system.
    • Foreign countries and universities will be eager to establish a “beachhead” in India and interested in providing opportunities for home campus students to learn about Indian business, society, and culture to participate in growing trade and other relations.
    • Benefits of branch campuses: International branch campuses, if allowed, could function as a structurally different variant of India’s private university sector.
    • Branch campuses, if effectively managed, could bring much needed new ideas about curriculum, pedagogy, and governance to Indian higher education — they could be a kind of educational laboratory.

    Current initiatives

    • There has been modest growth of various forms of partnerships between Indian and foreign institutions.
    • The joint PhD programmes offered by the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay-Monash Research Academy and the University of Queensland-Indian Institute of Technology Delhi Academy of Research (UQIDAR), both with Australian partners, are some examples.
    • Another example is the Melbourne-India Postgraduate Academy (MIPA). It is a joint initiative of the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur with the University of Melbourne.
    • MIPA provides students with an opportunity to earn a joint degree accredited both in India and Australia: from the University of Melbourne and one of the partnering Indian institutions.
    • These partnerships suggest that India could offer opportunities for international branch campuses as well.

    Challenges

    • Globally, branch campuses, of which there are around 300 now, provide a mixed picture.
    • Many are aimed at making money for the sponsoring university — and this is not what India wants.
    • It will not be easy to attract foreign universities to India and even more difficult to create the conditions for them to flourish.
    • Many of those top universities are already fully engaged overseas and would likely require incentives to set up in India.
    • Further, there are smaller but highly regarded universities outside the ‘top 500’ category that might be more interested.
    • Universities around the world that have academic specialisations focusing on India, that already have research or faculty ties in the country, or that have Non-Resident Indians (NRI) in senior management positions may be easier to attract.
    • What is most important is to prevent profit-seekers from entering the Indian market and to encourage foreign institutions with innovative educational ideas and a long-term commitment.
    • Many host countries have provided significant incentives, including building facilities and providing necessary infrastructure.
    • Foreign universities are highly unlikely to invest significant funds up front.
    • A big challenge will be India’s “well-known” bureaucracy, especially the multiple regulators.

    Conclusion

    After examining national experiences elsewhere, clear policies can be implemented that may be attractive to foreign universities. Once policies are in place, the key to success will be relationships among universities.

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

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor

  • Health Sector – UHC, National Health Policy, Family Planning, Health Insurance, etc.

    ASHA workers earn WHO’s global plaudits

    | Governance | Mains Paper 2: Health & Education

    The country’s frontline health workers or ASHAs (accredited social health activists) were one of the six recipients of the WHO’s Global Health Leaders Award 2022 which recognises leadership, contribution to the advance of global health and commitment to regional health issues.

    Who are ASHA workers?

    • ASHA workers are volunteers from within the community who are trained to provide information and aid people in accessing benefits of various healthcare schemes of the government.
    • The role of these community health volunteers under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) was first established in 2005.
    • They act as a bridge connecting marginalised communities with facilities such as primary health centres, sub-centres and district hospitals.

    Genesis & evolution

    • The ASHA programme was based on Chhattisgarh’s successful Mitanin programme, in which a Community Worker looks after 50 households.
    • The ASHA was to be a local resident, looking after 200 households.
    • The programme had a very robust thrust on the stage-wise development of capacity in selected areas of public health.
    • Many states tried to incrementally develop the ASHA from a Community Worker to a Community Health Worker, and even to an Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM)/ General Nurse and Midwife (GNM), or a Public Health Nurse.

    Qualifications for ASHA Workers

    • ASHAs are primarily married, widowed, or divorced women between the ages of 25 and 45 years from within the community.
    • They must have good communication and leadership skills; should be literate with formal education up to Class 8, as per the programme guidelines.

    How many ASHAs are there across the country?

    • The aim is to have one ASHA for every 1,000 persons or per habitation in hilly, tribal or other sparsely populated areas.
    • There are around 10.4 lakh ASHA workers across the country, with the largest workforces in states with high populations – Uttar Pradesh (1.63 lakh), Bihar (89,437), and Madhya Pradesh (77,531).
    • Goa is the only state with no such workers, as per the latest National Health Mission data available from September 2019.

    What do ASHA workers do?

    • They go door-to-door in their designated areas creating awareness about basic nutrition, hygiene practices, and the health services available.
    • They focus primarily on ensuring that pregnant women undergo ante-natal check-up, maintain nutrition during pregnancy, deliver at a healthcare facility, and provide post-birth training on breast-feeding and complementary nutrition of children.
    • They also counsel women about contraceptives and sexually transmitted infections.
    • ASHA workers are also tasked with ensuring and motivating children to get immunised.
    • Other than mother and child care, ASHA workers also provide medicines daily to TB patients under directly observed treatment of the national programme.
    • They are also tasked with screening for infections like malaria during the season.
    • They also provide basic medicines and therapies to people under their jurisdiction such as oral rehydration solution, chloroquine for malaria, iron folic acid tablets to prevent anaemia etc.
    • Now, they also get people tested and get their reports for non-communicable diseases.
    • The health volunteers are also tasked with informing their respective primary health centre about any births or deaths in their designated areas.

    How much are ASHA workers paid?

    • Since they are considered “volunteers/activists”, governments are not obligated to pay them a salary. And, most states don’t.
    • Their income depends on incentives under various schemes that are provided when they, for example, ensure an institutional delivery or when they get a child immunised.
    • All this adds up to only between Rs 6,000 to Rs 8,000 a month.
    • Her work is so tailored that it does not interfere with her normal livelihood.

    Success of the ASHAs

    • It is a programme that has done well across the country.
    • In a way, it became a programme that allowed a local woman to develop into a skilled health worker.
    • Overall, it created a new cadre of incrementally skilled local health workers who were paid based on performance.
    • The ASHAs are widely respected as they brought basic health services to the doorstep of households.
    • Since then ASHA continues to enjoy the confidence of the community.

    Challenges to ASHAs

    • The ASHAs faced a range of challenges: Where to stay in a hospital? How to manage mobility? How to tackle safety issues?
    • There have been challenges with regard to the performance-based compensation. In many states, the payout is low, and often delayed.
    • It has a problem of responsibility and accountability without fair compensation.
    • There is a strong argument to grant permanence to some of these positions with a reasonable compensation as sustaining motivation.
    • Ideally, an ASHA should be able to make more than the salary of a government employee, with opportunities for moving up the skill ladder in the formal primary health care system as an ANM/ GNM or a Public Health Nurse.

    Way forward

    • The incremental development of a local resident woman is an important factor in human resource engagement in community-linked sectors.
    • It is equally important to ensure that compensation for performance is timely and adequate.
    • Upgrading skill sets and providing easy access to credit and finance will ensure a sustainable opportunity to earn a respectable living while serving the community.
    • Strengthening access to health insurance, credit for consumption and livelihood needs at reasonable rates, and coverage under pro-poor public welfare programmes will contribute to ASHAs emerging as even stronger agents of change.

     

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

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor

  • Parliament – Sessions, Procedures, Motions, Committees etc

    Centre reconstitutes Inter-State Council (ISC)

    | Polity | Mains Paper 2: Federalism

    The Inter-State Council, which works to promote and support cooperative federalism in the country, has been reconstituted with PM Modi as Chairman and CMs of all States and six Union Ministers as members.

    What is Inter-State Council (ISC)?

    Genesis of ISC

    • The Constitution of India in Article 263, provides for the establishment of Inter-State Council (ISC).
    • The objective of the ISC is to discuss or investigate policies, subjects of common interest, and disputes among states.

    Temporary or permanent?

    • The articles says that ISC may be established “if at any time it appears to the President that the public interests would be served by the establishment of a Council”.
    • Therefore, the constitution itself did not establish the ISC, because it was not considered necessary at the time the constitution was being framed, but kept the option for its establishment open.

    Establishment as permanent body

    • This option was exercised in 1990.
    • The ISC was established as a permanent body on 28 May 1990 by a presidential order on the recommendation of the Sarkaria Commission.
    • It had recommended that a permanent Inter-State Council called the Inter-Governmental Council (IGC) should be set up under Article 263.
    • It cannot be dissolved and re-established.
    • Therefore, the current status of ISC is that of a permanent constitutional body.

    Aims of the ISC

    • Decentralisation of powers to the states as much as possible
    • More transfer of financial resources to the states
    • Arrangements for devolution in such a way that the states can fulfil their obligations
    • Advancement of loans to states should be related to as ‘the productive principle’
    • Deployment of Central Armed Police Forces in the states either on their request or otherwise

    Composition

    The Inter-State Council composes of the following members:

    • Prime Minister, Chairman.
    • Chief Ministers of all states.
    • Chief Ministers of the union territories having legislative assemblies.
    • Administrators of the union territories not having legislative assemblies.
    • 6 Union Cabinet Ministers, including Home Minister, to be nominated by the Prime Minister.
    • Governors of the states being administered under President’s rule.

    Standing Committee

    • Home Minister, Chairman
    • 5 Union Cabinet Ministers
    • 9 Chief Ministers

     

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

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor

  • Foreign Policy Watch: India-United States

    Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF)

    IOCR | International Relations | Mains Paper 2: Bilateral, Regional and Global Groupings and agreements involving India

    India has signalled its readiness to be part of a new economic initiative led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) by the US for the region.

    What is IPEF?

    • The grouping, which includes seven out of 10 members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), all four Quad countries, and New Zealand, represents about 40% of global GDP.
    • The negotiations for the IPEF are expected to centre around four main pillars, including trade, supply chain resiliency, clean energy and decarbonisation, and taxes and anti-corruption measures.
    • Countries would have to sign up to all of the components within a module, but do not have to participate in all modules.
    • The “fair and resilient trade” module will be led by the US Trade Representative and include digital, labor, and environment issues, with some binding commitments.
    • The IPEF seeks to strengthen economic partnership amongst participating countries with the objective of enhancing resilience, sustainability, inclusiveness, economic growth, fairness, and competitiveness in the Indo-Pacific region.

    Features of IPEF

    • US officials made it clear that the IPEF would not be a “free trade agreement”, nor are countries expected to discuss reducing tariffs or increasing market access.
    • The IPEF will not include market access commitments such as lowering tariff barriers,
    • In that sense, the IPEF would not seek to replace the 11-nation CPTPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) that the US quit in 2017, or the RCEP, which China, and all of the other IPEF countries (minus the US) are a part of.
    • Three ASEAN countries considered closer to China — Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos — are not members of the IPEF.

    Four pillars of IPEF

    1. Trade that will include digital economy and emerging technology, labour commitments, the environment, trade facilitation, transparency and good regulatory practices, and corporate accountability, standards on cross-border data flows and data localisations;
    2. Supply chain resiliency to develop “a first-of-its-kind supply chain agreement” that would anticipate and prevent disruptions;
    3. Clean energy and decarbonisation that will include agreements on “high-ambition commitments” such as renewable energy targets, carbon removal purchasing commitments, energy efficiency standards, and new measures to combat methane emissions; and
    4. Tax and anti-corruption, with commitments to enact and enforce “effective tax, anti-money laundering, anti-bribery schemes in line with [American] values”.

    Reasons for creation of IPEF

    • The IPEF is also seen as a means by which the US is trying to regain credibility in the region after former President Donald Trump pulled out of the Trans Pacific Partnership TPP).
    • Since then, there has been concern over the absence of a credible US economic and trade strategy to counter China’s economic influence in the region.
    • China is an influential member of the TPP, and has sought membership of its successor agreement Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement on Trans Pacific Partnership.
    • It is also in the 14-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, of which the US is not a member (India withdrew from RCEP).
    • The Biden Administration is projecting IPEF as the new US vehicle for re-engagement with East Asia and South East Asia.

     

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

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor

  • Urban Floods

    Devastation in Dima Hasao and its after-effects

    | Enviro & Biodiversity | Mains Paper 3: Disaster Management

    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 ₹1,000 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)

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor

  • Food Procurement and Distribution – PDS & NFSA, Shanta Kumar Committee, FCI restructuring, Buffer stock, etc.

    Government lacking a coherent policy of food security

    op-ed snap | Agriculture | Mains Paper 3: PDS, Buffer Stock & 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)

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor

  • Agricultural Sector and Marketing Reforms – eNAM, Model APMC Act, Eco Survey Reco, etc.

    Agri-exports

    | Agriculture | Mains Paper 3: Agriculture and related issues

    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)

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor

  • Soil Health Management – NMSA, Soil Health Card, etc.

    Hyper-accumulator Plants for Soil Detox

    | Enviro & Biodiversity | Mains Paper 3: Conservation, Environmental Pollution & Degradation, Eia

    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)

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor

  • Innovations in Sciences, IT, Computers, Robotics and Nanotechnology

    What are Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chips?

    | Science Tech | Mains Paper 3: Awareness in various sc and tech fields

    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)

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor

  • Police Reforms – SC directives, NPC, other committees reports

    What are Look Out Circulars (LOCs)?

    | Governance | Mains Paper 2: Civil Service

    The Punjab and Haryana High Court has held that a Look Out Circular (LOC), which prevents one from travelling abroad, must be supplied to the person at the time of being stopped at the airport and that the reasons should be communicated to the affected party.

    What is a Look Out Circular?

    • It is a notice to stop any individual wanted by the police, investigating agency or even a bank from leaving or entering the country through designated land, air and sea ports.
    • Immigration is tasked to stop any such individual against whom such a notice exists from leaving or entering the country.
    • There are 86 immigration check posts across the country.

    Who can issue LOCs?

    • A large number of agencies which includes the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Enforcement Directorate, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), Income Tax, State police and intelligence agencies are authorised to generate LOCs.
    • The officer should not be below the rank of a district magistrate or superintendent of police or a deputy secretary in the Union Government.

    What are the details required to generate an LOC and who issues it?

    • According to a 2010 official memorandum of the Ministry, details such as First Information Report (FIR) number, court case number are to be mandatorily provided with name, passport number and other details.
    • The BOI under the MHA is only the executing agency.
    • They generate LOCs based on requests by different agencies.
    • Since immigration posts are manned by the BOI officials they are the first responders to execute LOCs by stopping or detaining or informing about an individual to the issuing agency.
    • The LOCs can be modified; deleted or withdrawn only at the request of the originator.
    • Further, the legal liability of the action taken by immigration authorities in pursuance of LOC rests with the originating agency.

    How are banks authorized?

    • After several businessmen including liquor baron Vijay Mallya, businessmen Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi fled the country after defaulting on loans, the MHA in 2018 brought changes to the 2010 guidelines.
    • It authorised the chairman, managing director and chief executives of all public sector banks to generate LOCs against persons who could be detrimental to economic interests of the country.

    Is there any other clause under which any individual can be stopped?

    • The 2010 Ministry guidelines give sweeping powers to police and intelligence agencies to generate LOCs in “exceptional cases” without keying in complete parameters or case details.
    • This was against suspects, terrorists, anti-national elements, etc. in larger national interest.
    • After the special status of J&K under Article 370 was abrogated in 2019, LOCs were opened against several politicians, human rights activists, journalists and social activists to bar them from flying out of the country.
    • The number of persons and the crime for which they have been placed under the list is unknown.

    Are individuals entitled to any remedial measures?

    • Many citizens have moved courts to get the LOC quashed.
    • As per norms, an LOC will stay valid for a maximum period of 12 months and if there is no fresh request from the agency then it will not be automatically revived.
    • The MHA has asserted that LOCs cannot be shown to the subject at the time of detention nor can any prior intimation be provided.
    • The Ministry recently informed the Punjab and Haryana HC that the LOC guidelines are a secret document and the same cannot be shared with the ‘accused’ or any unauthorised stakeholder.
    • It cannot be provided or shown to the subject at the time of detention by the BOI since it defeats the purpose of LOC and no accused or subject of LOC can be provided any opportunity of hearing before the issuance of the LOC.

    Precedence set by the Judiciary

    • In January this year, Delhi HC quashed an LOC against a Delhi businessman generated at the instance of the Income Tax department.
    • The court said no proceedings under any penal law had been initiated against the petitioner” and the LOC was “wholly unsustainable.”
    • It said that there cannot be any unfettered control or restriction on the right to travel and that it was part of the fundamental rights.
    • Delhi HC has also asked the Director of the CBI to tender a written apology.

     

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

    Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor

Join the Community

Join us across Social Media platforms.