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  • 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.

     

     

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  • 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.

     

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  • 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.

     

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

    India Hypertension Control Initiative (IHCI)

    | Governance | Mains Paper 2: Health & Education

    The IHCI project has demonstrated that blood pressure treatment and control are feasible in primary care settings in diverse health systems across various States in India.

    India Hypertension Control Initiative (IHCI)

    • It is a multi-partner initiative involving the Indian Council of Medical Research, WHO-India, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and State governments.
    • It aims to improve blood pressure control for people with hypertension.
    • The project initiated in 26 districts in 2018 has expanded to more than 100 districts by 2022.
    • More than two million patients were started on treatment and tracked to see whether they achieved BP control.

    The project was built on five scalable strategies:

    1. Simple treatment protocol with three drugs was selected in consultation with the experts and non-communicable disease programme managers.
    2. Supply chain was strengthened to ensure the availability of adequate antihypertensive drugs.
    3. Patient-centric approaches were followed, such as refills for at least 30 days and assigning the patients to the closest primary health centre or health wellness centre to make follow-up easier.
    4. The focus was on building capacity of all health staff and sharing tasks such as BP measurement, documentation, and follow-up.
    5. There was minimal documentation using either paper-based or digital tools to track follow-up and BP control.

    Prevalence of hypertension in India

    • Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the leading cause of death among adults in India.
    • One of the major drivers of heart attack and stroke is untreated high blood pressure or hypertension.
    • Hypertension is a silent killer as most patients do not have any symptoms.
    • India has more than 200 million people with hypertension, and only 14.5% of individuals with hypertension are on treatment.

    Success of IHCI

    • Blood pressure treatment and control were feasibly controlled in primary care settings in diverse health systems across various States in India.
    • Before IHCI, many patients travelled to higher-level facilities such as community health centres (block level) or district hospitals in the public sector for hypertension treatment.
    • Over three years, all levels of health staff at the primary health centres and health wellness centres were trained to provide treatment and follow-up services for hypertension.
    • Nearly half (47%) of the patients under care achieved blood pressure control.
    • The BP control among people enrolled in treatment was 48% at primary health centres and 55% at the health wellness centres.

    Contributing to its success: A data-driven approach

    • One of the unique contributions of the project was a data-driven approach to improving care and overall programme management.
    • The list of people who did not return for treatment was generated through a digital system or on paper by the nurse/health workers.
    • Patients were reminded either over the phone or by home visit (if feasible).
    • This strategy motivated a large number of patients to continue treatment.
    • In addition, programme managers reviewed aggregate data at the district and State levels to assess the performance of facilities in terms of follow-up and BP control.
    • Patients were provided generic antihypertensive drugs costing only ₹200 per year.
    • In addition, E-Sanjeevani, a telemedicine initiative, facilitated teleconsultations.

    Back2Basics: Hypertension

    • Hypertension also known as high blood pressure (HBP), is a long-term medical condition in which the blood pressure in the arteries is persistently elevated.
    • High blood pressure usually does not cause symptoms.
    • Long-term high blood pressure, however, is a major risk factor for stroke, coronary artery disease, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, peripheral arterial disease, vision loss, chronic kidney disease, and dementia.
    • High blood pressure is classified as primary (essential) hypertension or secondary hypertension.
    • For most adults, high blood pressure is present if the resting blood pressure is persistently at or above 130/80 or 140/90 mmHg.

     

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  • Foreign Policy Watch: India-China

    Illegal fishing by China in the Indo-Pacific

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

    In order to check China’s illegal fishing in the Indo-Pacific region, the Quadrilateral Security Alliance (Quad) has planned to launch a satellite-based surveillance initiative.

    What is the news?

    • The leaders of Quad are reported to be getting ready to unveil a maritime surveillance initiative to protect exclusive economic zones in the Indo-Pacific against environmental damage.

    How will the proposed maritime surveillance system work?

    • The initiative will use satellite technology to connect existing surveillance centres in India, Singapore and the Pacific.
    • This will help establish a tracking system to combat illegal, unregulated and unprotected (IUU) fishing.
    • The satellite-enabled dragnet will track IUU fishing activities from the Indian Ocean and South-east Asia to the South Pacific.
    • The idea is to monitor illicit fishing vessels that have their AIS (automatic identification system) transponders turned off to evade tracking.
    • The move by the Quad security group is also seen to be aimed at reducing the small Pacific island nations’ growing reliance on China.

    Why is illegal fishing seen as such a big threat?

    • The unregulated plunder of global fishing stock poses a grave threat to the livelihood and food security of millions of people.
    • Globally, fish provide about 3.3 billion people with 20% of their average animal protein intake.
    • According to an FAO report, around 60 million people are engaged in the sector of fisheries and aquaculture.
    • While the economic loss from illegal fishing has been difficult to precisely quantify, some estimates peg it around USD 20 billion annually.

    Threats posed by IUU Fishing

    • Illegal fishing has now replaced piracy as a global maritime threat.
    • In the Indo-Pacific region, like elsewhere, the collapse of fisheries can destabilise coastal nations.
    • It poses a much bigger security risk, as it can fuel human trafficking, drug crime and terror recruiting.

    Why is China in the dock?

    • The 2021 IUU Fishing Index, which maps 152 coastal countries, ranked China as the worst offender.
    • China is considered responsible for 80% to 95% illegal fishing in the region after having overfished its own waters.
    • It, in fact, is known to incentivise illegal fishing with generous subsidies to meet its growing domestic demand.

    China and distant-water fishing (DWF)

    • China’s DWF fleet has almost 17,000 vessels and is the largest in the world.
    • Vessel ownership is highly fragmented among many small companies and the fleet includes vessels registered in other jurisdictions.

    Issues with Chinese IUU Fishing

    • Chinese are often accused of pillaging ocean wealth with great sophistication and with little regard for maritime boundaries.
    • China also uses them to project strategic influence and to bully fishing vessels from weaker nations.
    • China uses destructive practises such as bottom trawling and forced, bonded and slave labour and trafficked crew, alongside the widespread abuse of migrant crewmembers.

     

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  • Minimum Support Prices for Agricultural Produce

    What is ‘Storage Gain’ in Wheat?

    Prelims Only | Agriculture | Mains Paper 3: Transport & Marketing Of Agricultural Produce

    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.

     

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  • As Indian economy grows, Centre and states must work together

    op-ed snap | Polity | Mains Paper 2: Federalism

    Context

    The ongoing discords between the Centre and states over issues ranging from the allocation of financial resources to fixing of GST rates has once again brought to the fore issues pertaining to our federal structure, the resolution of which is essential for the country’s growth.

    Combination of cooperative and competitive spirit

    • Positive competition: It is undeniable that cooperation is key to the smooth functioning of federal design.
    • However, if it is coupled with positive competition among the states, then the overall result would be large-scale economic development across the country.
    • The competitive aspect of federalism can positively be harnessed by encouraging states to adopt each other’s best practices.
    • Exclusivity and mutualism: Indian federalism today enables the Centre and states to function with both exclusivity and mutualism.
    • Vertical and horizontal level: Cooperation between the Centre and states is required at both vertical (between Centre and states) and horizontal (among states) levels and on various fronts.
    • What does it mean? This includes fine-tuning of developmental measures for desired outcomes, development-related policy decisions, welfare measures, administrative reforms, strategic decisions, etc.

    Steps in the direction of cooperation

    • Recent efforts in this direction, such as according greater leeway to states in the functioning of the NITI Aayog, frequent meetings of the prime minister with chief ministers as well as with chief secretaries and district magistrates, periodic meetings of the President of India with governors, and the functioning of “PRAGATI” to review the progress of developmental efforts have generated the requisite synergy between the Centre and states.
    • Positive efforts of states towards attracting investment can create a conducive environment for economic activities in urban and backward regions alike.
    • Healthy competition coupled with a transparent ranking system would ensure the full materialisation of the vast but least utilised potential of the federal framework.
    • Sector specific indices: In this direction, NITI Aayog’s initiatives such as launching sector-specific indices like the School Education Quality Index, Sustainable Development Goals Index, State Health Index, India Innovation Index, Composite Water Management Index, Export Competitiveness Index, etc. could prove to be a great contribution.
    • Central efforts toward synchronisation of cooperation and competition can be observed in the implementation of the 14th and 15th Finance Commission reports, which have greatly contributed to resource devolution.
    • Recent reform measures in the form of the New Labour Code and other amendments/enactments by the legislature also exhibit this trend.

    Conclusion

    The rising stature of the Indian economy on the world stage can only be strengthened by a tailored approach to cooperation and competition. The mandate to marry the two would inevitably be the collective responsibility of the Centre and the states. Any ideological differences between them will have to be inevitably put on the backburner for the great Indian federal structure to succeed and prosper.

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  • Panchayati Raj Institutions: Issues and Challenges

    Structural interventions by state governments that can create higher-wage jobs

    op-ed snap | Governance | Mains Paper 2: Governance, Transparency & Accountability, Citizens Charters

    Context

    The recent decision to deduct off-budget borrowings from state borrowing limits reminds chief ministers to be good policy ancestors.

    Financing welfare state

    • In A Brief History of Equality, economist Thomas Piketty suggests that “the world of the early 2020s, no matter how unjust it may seem, is more egalitarian than that of 1950 or 1900, which were… more egalitarian than those of 1850 or 1780”.
    • But how the welfare state is financed matters.
    • Changes in state borrowing limits: Adjusting state borrowing limits for their off-budget borrowings leads to transparency because they are routinely breached through vehicles for schemes whose bill comes due far in the future.
    • The confiscation of future spending — interest payments crowd out expenditure and revenue expenditure crowd out capex — matters because our prosperity problem is productivity, wages, not jobs.

    5 Structural interventions that can create high wage jobs

    1] Reduce regulatory hurdles

    • States control 80 per cent of India’s employers’ compliance ecosystem of 67,000+ compliances, 6,500+ filings and 26,000+ criminal provisions.
    • State governments that rationalise, decriminalise, and digitise their compliance ecosystem will reap lower corruption and higher formality.

    2] Fix government schools

    • The most powerful tool for social mobility and employability is free and quality school education.
    • State governments that undertake a significant overhaul of school performance management (the fear of falling and hope of rising for teachers) and governance (the allocation of decision rights around resources and hiring) will create an unfair advantage in human capital.

    3] Converge education and employability

    • States should set up skill universities that create qualification modularity (between certificates, diplomas, advanced diplomas, and degrees), delivery flexibility (equate online, apprenticeships, on-site and on-campus classrooms), and pray to the one god of employers.
    • Degree apprentices innovate at the intersection of employment, employability and education.
    • State governments that remove barriers in their path will see their population of employed learners exceed full-time learners.

    4] Devolution of money and power

    • Cities drive productive job creation — New York City’s GDP is higher than Russia’s.
    •  It took 70 years after 1947 for the budget of 28 states to cross the central government’s budget.
    • The combined budget of state governments now exceeds Rs 45 lakh crore, but 2.5 lakh municipalities and panchayats have a budget of only Rs 3.7 lakh crore.
    • Governments that devolve money and power from state capitals to their towns will avoid the curse of megacities and create the competition that drove China’s growth (they have 375 cities with more than a million people versus our 52).

    5] Civil service reforms

    • State governments must sell their 1,500+ loss-making public sector units, cut civil service compensation to less than 40 per cent of budget spending, and replace expenditure with capex.
    • Moving from outlays to outcomes needs a new human capital regime for civil servants via seven interventions; structure, staffing, training, performance management, compensation, culture, and HR capabilities.

    Shifting resources to protective and productive  version of states

    • Nobel Laureate James Buchanan said any state had three versions — the protective state (police, rule of law, defence, courts), the productive state (common goods like roads, power, health, education, etc.), and the redistributive state.
    • Too many state governments accept the status quo in the first two and “innovate” in the third version.
    • It’s time to shift resources to the first two.

    Conclusion

    Chief Ministers ought to create high wage jobs, and not borrow money future generations will have to repay.

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  • Cyber Security – CERTs, Policy, etc

    SC tests phones for Pegasus Spyware

    | Security Issues | Mains Paper 3: Cyber Security

    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.

     

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  • Indian Army Updates

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

    Prelims Only | Security Issues | Mains Paper 3: Various Security Forces, Agencies & Their Mandates

    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.

     

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