Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: RIMPAC
Mains level: Paper 2- AUKUS
Context
The trilateral security agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States (AUKUS) continues to be in the news.
Implications for ASEAN
- There is also the matter of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) disunity over the emergence of AUKUS.
- While AUKUS is clearly an attempt by the U.S. to bolster regional security, including securing Australia’s seaborne trade, any sudden accretion in Australia’s naval capabilities is bound to cause unease in the region.
- Even though Australia has denied that AUKUS is a defence alliance, this hardly prevents China from exploiting ASEAN’s concerns at having to face a Hobson’s choice amidst worsening U.S.-China regional rivalry.
- AUKUS is based on a shared commitment of its three members to deepening diplomatic, security and defence cooperation in the Indo-Pacific to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
- Even though this has not been stated explicitly, the rise of China, particularly its rapid militarisation and aggressive behaviour, is undoubtedly the trigger.
Relations of AUKUS members with China
- The AUKUS joint statement clearly acknowledges that trilateral defence ties are decades old, and that AUKUS aims to further joint capabilities and interoperability.
- For three nations, their relations with China have recently been marked by contretemps.
- Australia, especially, had for years subordinated its strategic assessment of China to transactional commercial interests.
- Much to China’s chagrin, its policy of deliberately targeting Australian exports has not yielded the desired results.
- Instead of kow-towing, the plucky Australian character has led Canberra to favour a fundamental overhaul of its China policy.
- The transfer of sensitive submarine technology by the U.S. to the U.K. is a sui generis arrangement based on their long-standing Mutual Defence Agreement of 1958.
- Elements in the broader agenda provide opportunities to the U.S., the U.K. and Australia to engage the regional countries.
AUKUS engagement with regional countries
- All three nations will also play a major role in U.S.-led programmes such as Build Back Better World, Blue Dot Network and Clean Network, to meet the challenge of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
- The Quad and AUKUS are distinct, yet complementary. Neither diminishes the other.
- Whereas the Quad initiatives straddle the Indian and the Pacific Oceans, a Pacific-centric orientation for AUKUS has advantages.
- Such a strategy could potentially strengthen Japan’s security as well as that of Taiwan in the face of China’s mounting bellicosity.
- Shifting AUKUS’s fulcrum to the Pacific Ocean could reassure ASEAN nations.
- It could also inure AUKUS to any insidious insinuation that accretion in the number of nuclear submarines plying the Indo-Pacific might upset the balance of power in the Indian Ocean.
Conclusion
There are limited options in the economic arena with China already having emerged as a global economic powerhouse. AUKUS, though, provides an opportunity to the U.S. to place proxy submarine forces to limit China’s forays, especially in the Pacific Ocean.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Issue of misuse of UAPA
Context
In Thwaha Fasal vs Union of India, the Court has acted in its introspective jurisdiction and deconstructed the provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) with a great sense of legal realism. This paves the way for a formidable judicial authority against blatant misuse of this law.
Background of the case
- In this case from Kerala, there are three accused.
- The police registered the case and later the investigation was handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
- During the investigation, some materials containing radical literature were found, which included a book on caste issues in India and a translation of the dissent notes written by Rosa Luxemburg to Lenin.
- Thus, the provisions of the UAPA were invoked.
- After initial rejection of the pleas, the trial judge granted bail to both the accused in September 2020.
- The Supreme Court was emphatic and liberal when it said that mere association with a terrorist organisation is not sufficient to attract the offences alleged.
- Unless and until the association and the support were “with intention of furthering the activities of a terrorist organisation”, offence under Section 38 or Section 39 is not made out, said the Court.
Issues with UAPA
- Section 43D(5) of the UAPA says that for many of the offences under the Act, bail should not be granted, if “on perusal of the case diary or the report (of the investigation), there are reasonable grounds for believing that the accusation is prima facie true”.
- Thus, the Act prompts the Court to consider the version of the prosecution alone while deciding the question of bail.
- Unlike the Criminal Procedure Code, the UAPA, by virtue of the proviso to Section 43D(2), permits keeping a person in prison for up to 180 days, without even filing a charge sheet.
- Prevents examination of the facts: The statute prevents a comprehensive examination of the facts of the case on the one hand, and prolongs the trial indefinitely by keeping the accused in prison on the other.
- Instead of presumption of innocence, the UAPA holds presumption of guilt of the accused.
- In Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali, the Court said that by virtue of Section 43D(5) of UAPA, the burden is on the accused to show that the prosecution case is not prima facie true.
- The proposition in Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali is that the bail court should not even investigate deeply into the materials and evidence and should consider the bail plea, primarily based on the nature of allegations, for, according to the Court, Section 43D(5) prohibits a thorough and deeper examination.
- The top court has now altered this terrible legal landscape.
Key takeaways from the judgement
- The text of the laws sometimes poses immense challenge to the courts by limiting the space for judicial discretion and adjudication.
- The courts usually adopt two mutually contradictory methods in dealing with such tough provisions.
- One is to read and apply the provision literally and mechanically which has the effect of curtailing the individual freedom as intended by the makers of the law.
- In contrast to this approach, there could be a constitutional reading of the statute, which perceives the issues in a human rights angle and tries to mitigate the rigour of the content of the law.
Conclusion
The judgment should be invoked to release other political prisoners in the country who have been denied bail either due to the harshness of the law or due to the follies in understanding the law or both.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Greater global cooperation
Context
Our thinking about the international system is focussed on a new era of great power competition. An assertive China is seeking to refashion the international order and exercise greater regional hegemony.
Refashioning the international order
- Recently, Secretary Antony Blinken outlined the US approach to China: “Competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be, and adversarial when it must be.”
- This pretty much describes the approach of every country in the world to this geopolitical moment.
- The big question is whether the competitive and adversarial dynamics are now so deep that the space for “collaboration” is diminishing fast.
- There is now bipartisan consensus in the US that China needs to be contained; just as China is convinced that the US will not only not tolerate China’s further rise.
Great power competition between the US and China
- Two dynamics were supposed to counteract the risks of great power competition.
- Global economic interdependence: The first was global economic interdependence.
- Global trade has rebounded to its pre-pandemic levels.
- The logic of interdependence is now under severe ideological stress.
- Interdependence has not led to greater convergence on political values or a more open global political order.
- Common challenges fostering global cooperation: The second dynamic counteracting competition was the idea that common challenges like climate change, the pandemic and the risks posed by technology will foster greater global cooperation.
- All the global crises that should have been occasions for global cooperation have become the sites for intensifying global competition.
Climate and global health: Indicator of lack of global cooperation
- It is hard to convince anyone that most countries of the world were willing to treat the pandemic as a global public health crisis.
- The shift in the climate change discourse is about intensifying technological competition and maintaining national economic supremacy, rather than solving a global problem.
- It is not entirely clear that all the innovations induced by this competitive dynamic will, in fact, limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
- It also leaves the question of a modicum of justice in the international order entirely unresolved.
- We have also learnt over the last couple of decades that the international system, and all global public goods, including security, can be made extremely vulnerable even by small groups carrying a sense of grievance.
- So, the distribution of technology, finance, and developmental space will matter.
- India, in the context of what other countries are doing, takes a very well-judged stance at the international level.
- But it is difficult not to wonder whether a country that lets its citizens breathe the foulest air, and cannot get its head around a solvable problem of stubble burning, can project seriousness.
- So, climate and global public health, rather than acting as a spur to global cooperation are going to be symptoms of a deep pathology.
Global risks and declining multilateral institutions
- Areas where global risks are increasing include-Cyber threats, the possible risks of unregulated technology, whether in artificial intelligence or biological research, competition in space, a renewed competition in nuclear weapons and an intensifying arms race.
- In not a single one of these areas is there a serious prospect of any country thinking outside of an adversarial nationalist frame.
- The old multilateral system was undergirded by, and partially an instrument for, US power.
- The term multilateral has also been deeply damaged by a cynical use, where it simply refers to a group of countries rather than a single or a couple of countries acting together.
- It is high time the term be used only in a context where there is agreement on global rules or an architecture to genuinely solve a global public goods problem.
- These may still reflect power differentials, but at least they are oriented to problem-solving at a global level.
- In this sense, one would be hard-pressed to find any genuinely multilateral institutions left.
Consider the question “What are the challenge facing global order in the present context? Suggest the measures to preserve the global order aimed towards greater global cooperation.”
Conclusion
The real choice for the world is not just navigating between China and the United States. It is fundamentally between an orientation that is committed to global problem-solving rather than just preserving national supremacy.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: SECI
Mains level: Paper 3- Challenges facing discoms
Context
The power sector in India is at an inflection point. Three developments are triggering a shift across the power chain, generation and distribution in particular, and are in the process deepening existing faultlines, and exacerbating the distress.
Three changes driving the shift in power sector
1) Central government’s approach towards distribution segment
- Till recently, the Centre had preferred to incentivise states, nudging them to address the issue that lies at the heart of the power sector’s woes — turning around the operational performance and financial position.
- However, despite multiple attempts, not much has changed.
- But over the past few months, the Centre appears to have changed tack.
- The Centre no longer appears content to simply nudge states into acting.
- This change in stance is evident from enforcing the tripartite agreement to recover the dues owed to power producers like NTPC by discoms in Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka to now regulating coal supplies to states where power generating companies have been delaying payments.
2) Covid impact on government finances and ability to support discoms
- Notwithstanding buoyant tax revenues this year, Covid has wreaked havoc on government finances.
- The general government debt stands at 90 per cent of GDP.
- Add to this demands for greater welfare spending, uncertainty over state government finances once the five year GST compensation period ends next year, and the limits to which states can continue to support discoms will increasingly be tested.
- To what extent accounting jugglery can be used once again to clean up discom debt is debatable.
- After all, even the liquidity facility arranged by the Centre to help discoms pay off their obligations will have to be paid back.
3) Loss of monopoly and shift towards renwable
- Until now, consumers had little recourse to alternate sources of supply.
- Consequently, discoms, which are essentially geographical monopolies, were able to charge higher tariffs from commercial and industrial consumers to cross-subsidise agricultural and low-income households.
- But the situation appears to be changing.
- Migration of high tariff paying consumers through open access and investments in captive power plants is gaining traction, driven in large part by the emergence of solar as an alternative at seemingly competitive tariffs.
- This reduced reliance of high tariff paying consumers on discoms will only exacerbate their already precarious financial position.
- The pace at which this transition is occurring will only accelerate in the coming years.
- On the supply side, at the global and the national level, there is a push towards cleaner fuel, solar in particular.
- Flowing from this — though with debatable relevance given the current levels of per capita emissions — is the domestic policy thrust towards renewables.
- Solar, in particular, benefits from both explicit and implicit subsidies — land at concessional rate, exemption from interstate transmission charges, discounted wheeling charges, cross-subsidies for open access, SECI taking on counterparty risk, and others.
- It also enjoys “Must Run” status.
- On the demand side, at current tariffs, solar is emerging as an attractive alternative for the high tariff paying commercial and industrial consumers.
- On their part, discoms are trying to salvage a losing situation.
- To stem the flow of high paying customers, some have begun levying an additional surcharge on whoever opts for open access to lower the cost differential.
- Others are shifting from net metering to gross metering — essentially charging consumers higher tariffs — above particular consumption levels.
Conclusion
Continuously subsidising discoms for their AT&C losses (operational inefficiencies), and for not supplying power at commensurate tariffs to low-income households and agricultural customers (for political considerations) will become fiscally untenable.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: COP26
Mains level: Paper 3- India needs climate laws
Context
The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26, from October 31 to November 12, 2021), at Glasgow, Scotland is important as it will call for practical implementation of the 2015 Paris Accord, setting the rules for the Accord.
Indian proposals
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced, on November 1 at Glasgow, a ‘Panchamrit solution’ which aims at reducing fossil fuel dependence and carbon intensity.
- This also includes ramping up India’s renewable energy share to 50% by 2030.
- Union Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav has reasserted the call for the promised $100 billion a year as support (from the developed world to the developing world).
- But as we consider new energy pathways, we must also consider the question of climate hazard, nature-based solutions and national accountability.
- This is the right time for India to mull setting up a climate law while staying true to its goals of climate justice, carbon space and environmental protection.
Why India needs climate law
- There are a few reasons for this.
- Existing laws not adequate: Our existing laws are not adequate to deal with climate change.
- We have for example the Environment (Protection) Act (EPA), 1986, the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981 and Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974.
- Yet, climate is not exactly water or air.
- The Environment (Protection) Act is grossly inadequate to deal with violations on climate. Clause 24 of the Act, “Effect of Other Laws”, states that if an offence is committed under the EPA or any other law, the person will be punished under the other law (for example, Code of Criminal Procedure).
- This makes the EPA subordinate to every other law.
- There is a need to integrate climate action: Integration includes adaptation and mitigation — and monitoring progress.
- Comprehensive climate action is not just technological such as changing energy sources or carbon intensity, but also nature-based such as emphasising restoration of ecosystems.
- India’s situation is unique: Climate action cannot come by furthering sharpening divides or exacerbating poverty, and this includes our stated renewable energy goals.
- The 500 Gigawatt by 2030 goal for renewable can put critically endangered grassland and desert birds such as the Great Indian Bustard at risk, as they die on collision with wires in the desert.
Suggestions on climate law
- A climate law could consider two aspects.
- Commission on climate change: Creating an institution that monitors action plans for climate change.
- A ‘Commission on Climate Change’ could be set up, with the power and the authority to issue directions, and oversee implementation of plans and programmes on climate.
- The Commission could have quasi-judicial powers with powers of a civil court to ensure that its directions are followed in letter and spirit.
- System of liability and accountability: We need a system of liability and accountability at short-, medium- and long-term levels as we face hazards.
- This also means having a legally enforceable National Climate Change Plan that goes beyond just policy guidelines.
- A Climate Commission could ideally prevent gross negligence in fragile areas and fix accountability if it arises.
Conclusion
We have an urgent moral imperative to tackle climate change and reduce its worst impacts. But we also should Indianise the process by bringing in a just and effective law — with guts, a spine, a heart, and, most importantly, teeth.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Marrakesh Agreement
Mains level: Paper 3- MC12
Context
The World Trade Organization (WTO)’s 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) is being convened in Geneva, Switzerland at the end of this month.
Ministerial Conferences
- The topmost decision-making body of the WTO is the Ministerial Conference, which usually meets every two years. It brings together all members of the WTO, all of which are countries or customs unions.
- The Ministerial Conference can take decisions on all matters under any of the multilateral trade agreements
The task ahead for MC12
- Recent WTO estimates show that global trade volumes could expand by almost 11% in 2021, and by nearly 5% in 2022, and could stabilise at a level higher than the pre-COVID-19 trend.
- The MC12 needs to consider how in these good times for trade, the economically weaker countries “can secure a share in the growth in international trade commensurate with the needs of their economic development’, an objective that is mandated by the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization.
- Some of the areas are currently witnessing intense negotiations, these include adoption of WTO rules on electronic commerce, investment facilitation, and fisheries subsidies.
Following issues will form the basis of MC12 discussions
1) IPR waiver for Covid-19 related technologies
- Pharmaceutical companies have used monopoly rights granted by their IPRs to deny developing countries access to technologies and know-how, thus undermining the possibility of production of vaccines in these countries.
- To remedy this situation, India and South Africa had tabled a proposal in the WTO in October 2020, for waiving enforcement of several forms of IPRs on “health products and technologies including diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccines, medical devices.
- This proposal, supported by nearly two-thirds of the organisation’s membership, was opposed by the developed countries batting for their corporates.
- The unfortunate reality of the current discussions is that an outcome supporting affordable access to COVID-19 vaccines and medicines looks distant.
2) Fisheries subsidies
- Discussions on fisheries subsidies have been hanging fire for a long time, there is considerable push for an early conclusion of an agreement to rein in these subsidies.
- The current drafts on this issue do not provide the wherewithal to rein in large-scale commercial fishing.
- Large scale commercial fishing is depleting fish stocks the world over, and at the same time, are threatening the livelihoods of small fishermen in countries such as India.
3) E-commerce
- Discussions on e-commerce are being held in the WTO since 1998, wherein WTO members agreed to “continue their practice of not imposing customs duties on electronic transmissions”.
- The more substantive outcome was the decision to “establish a comprehensive work programme” taking into “account the economic, financial, and development needs of developing countries”.
- However, in 2021, a key focus of the 1998 e-commerce work programme, namely “development needs of developing countries”, is entirely missing from the text document that is the basis for the current negotiations.
- On the negotiating table are issues relating to the liberalisation of the goods and services trade, and of course guarantee for free flow of data across international boundaries, all aimed at facilitating expansion of businesses of e-commerce firms.
- In fact, the decision on a moratorium on the imposition of import duties agreed to in 1998 has become the basis for a push towards comprehensive trade liberalisation — a perfectly logical way forward, given that the sole objective of the negotiations on e-commerce is to facilitate expansion of e-commerce firms.
4) Investment facilitation
- Inclusion of substantive provisions on investment in the WTO has been one of the more divisive issues.
- In 2001, the Doha Ministerial Declaration had included a work programme on investment, but developing countries were opposed to its continuation because the discussions were geared to expanding the rights of foreign investors through a multilateral agreement on investment.
- An investment facilitation has reintroduced the old agenda of concluding such an investment agreement.
Issues with the negotiations
- The negotiations on e-commerce and investment facilitation are being conducted not by a mandate given by the entire membership of the WTO in a transparent manner.
- Instead, these negotiations owe their origins to the so-called “Joint Statement Initiatives” (JSI) in which a section of the membership has developed the agenda with a view to producing agreements in the WTO.
- This entire process is “detrimental to the very existence of a rule-based multilateral trading system under the WTO”, as India and South Africa have forcefully argued in a submission against the JSIs early this year.
Conclusion
Current favourable tidings provide an ideal setting for the Trade Ministers from the WTO member-states to revisit trade rules and to agree on a work programme for the organisation, which can help maintain the momentum in trade growth.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3- Dealing with the structural limitations of policy
Context
Policy differences between parties and coalitions arouse heated debates in legislatures and at political rallies. But relatively scant attention is paid to whether the stated policy or enacted law — of any persuasion — delivered the intended outcomes/results.
Issues with annual budget modalities
- There are limitations in the structural design of the Union and the state governments of India, which either cause or enable inefficient translation of policy intent to semi-realised outcomes.
- Nowhere is this more obvious than in the annual budget modalities followed by the Union and state governments.
- The final accounts (FA) for a financial year are generally presented to the legislative body between 18 and 24 months after that year’s budget is approved, most often as a minor artefact along with the main attraction of the budget for the upcoming year and the minor attraction of the Revised Estimate (RE) for the year in progress.
- In effect, a small fraction of the attention paid to intent (budget) is paid to the outcome (FA) which is only known many months after the year is over.
- Governments in India adhere to the archaic cash accounting as opposed to accrual accounting, which is the norm for most companies and governments which introduces some strange incentives and behaviours, especially towards the end of the year.
- As a result, even the final account is not what it seems, with the possibility that significant funds which have been presented to the legislature as spent are still held in off-balance-sheet accounts not visible to the government’s finance department.
Way forward: Lessons from Tamil Nadu government
- This structural limitation was the basis for the initiative to identify and retrieve unutilised funds that the Tamil Nadu government.
- New procedures and systems will ensure that such moving/parking of funds (especially as the year ends) cannot happen outside of the finance department’s oversight.
- On another front, the data-integrity project undertaken to support (among other reasons) the crop and jewel loan waiver poll promise has also produced remarkable results.
- Many instances of ghost pension recipients and free-rice-entitled category of ration card holders and malfeasance in crop and jewel loan sanctioning have come to light.
- The rectification of such anomalies will save the government a significant amount of funds, but, more importantly, enable fairer societal outcomes.
- Tamil Nadu is diligently following the five-step approach: Collect and analyse data to develop a deeper understanding, disseminate results into the public domain and generate a public debate, receive feedback from the debate and inputs from experts, use these inputs to design policies and put into execution, constantly seek feedback and course correct when needed.
Conclusion
We need the thoughtful design of policies and schemes, and their execution, which are vital to achieving our intended goal of benefiting all citizens in a fair and inclusive manner.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- India-US trade and climate partnership
Context
The fate of the grand strategic ambitions of the Indo-US relationship may depend substantially on how well they collaborate in two areas to which their joint attention is only belatedly turning — climate and trade.
Importance of climate change and trade to India-US partnership
- Strategic partnerships capable of re-shaping the international global order cannot be based simply on a negative agenda.
- Shared concerns about China provide the U.S.-India partnership a much-needed impetus to overcome the awkward efforts for deeper collaboration that have characterised the past few decades.
- What risks being lost is a reckoning with how interrelated climate and trade are to securing U.S.-India leadership globally, and how their strategic efforts can flounder without sincere commitment to a robust bilateral agenda on both fronts.
India-US collaboration on climate change and challenges
- India and the U.S. are collaborating under the Climate and Clean Energy Agenda Partnership.
- In parallel, there are hopeful signs that they are now prioritising the bilateral trade relationship by rechartering the Trade Policy Forum.
- At COP26 in Glasgow India announced a net zero goal for 2070, it has called for western countries to commit to negative emissions targets.
- Challenges: India’s rhetoric of climate justice is likely to be received poorly by U.S. negotiators, particularly if it aligns with China’s messaging and obstructs efforts to reach concrete results.
Collaboration on trade
- The failure of the U.S. and India to articulate a shared vision for a comprehensive trade relationship raises doubts about how serious they are when each spends more time and effort negotiating with other trading partners.
- Protectionist tendencies infect the politics of both countries these days, and, with a contentious U.S. mid-term election a year away, the political window for achieving problem-solving outcomes and setting a vision on trade for the future is closing fast.
Climate-trade inter-relationship
- Climate and trade are interrelated in many ways.
- If governments, such as India and the U.S., coordinate policies to incentivise sharing of climate-related technologies and align approaches for reducing emissions associated with trade, the climate-trade inter-relationship can be a net positive one.
- India and the U.S. could find opportunities to align their climate and trade approaches better, starting with a resolution of their disputes in the World Trade Organization (WTO) on solar panels.
- The two countries could also chart a path that allows trade to flow for transitional energy sources, such as fuel ethanol.
- Shared strategic interests will be undermined if India and the U.S. cannot jointly map coordinated policies on climate and trade.
- The most immediate threat could be the possibility of new climate and trade tensions were India to insist that technology is transferred in ways that undermine incentives for innovation in both countries or if the U.S. decides that imports from India be subject to increased tariffs in the form of carbon border adjustment mechanisms or “CBAMs”.
Conclusion
Concerted action on both the climate and trade fronts is mutually beneficial and will lend additional strength to the foundation of a true partnership for the coming century.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3- Recovery momentum
Context
We are now at that point in the cycle where all central banks — the RBI, the US Fed, the European Central Bank, Bank of England and others — have begun to signal, a process of normalisation from the unprecedented loose monetary policy stimulus post the onset of the pandemic in early 2020.
Recovery momentum
- Surveys and data prints are now signalling that the recovery momentum in the first half of 2021 is decelerating in many countries, although the direction and momentum may vary.
- The RBI Governor notes that “the external environment, which had been supportive of aggregate demand over the past few months, may lose momentum for a variety of reasons”.
- China — its policy and economy — is the most salient risk for a sustained global recovery.
- The Chinese authorities’ seeming determination to push ahead with structural reforms, de-carbonising initiatives, and curbs on real estate appear designed to sacrifice some short-term growth for medium-term efficiencies, and reduce financial risks and inequality.
- Inflation in almost all major economies continues to remain high.
- The US Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) survey measure of core inflation is running over 4 per cent.
- The story is similar in Europe.
Assessing India’s growth recovery
- India’s growth–inflation dynamics are also becoming favourable, but are still subject to multiple risks.
- In assessing India’s growth recovery, a risk of the global economy going into “stagflation”, going by US signals seems to be that if at all, it is likely to be mild.
- The recovery of economic activity continues, although the high-frequency indicators we track suggest that the momentum observed in July and August has moderated.
- Electricity consumption growth is also down from August levels, but part of this can be explained by both cooler, rainy weather, as well as coal shortage related cutbacks in many electricity-intensive manufacturing.
- The residential real estate is reportedly doing exceptionally well, with low-interest rates on home loans, cuts in stamp duty and registration charges, and indeed behavioural shifts towards own home ownerships with hybrid and work from home shifts.
- Even the commercial real estate sector is reviving.
- The Union government also has large unspent cash balances, which can be judiciously deployed to boost both capex and consumption.
- The overall inflation trajectory suggests a gradual glide path towards the 4 per cent target by March 2023 or a bit beyond.
- There are risks of overshooting this forecast trajectory, despite a benign outlook on food prices.
- This emanates from global metals, minerals, crude oil prices, and from supply bottlenecks persisting till well into 2022.
Conclusion
In summary, the growth–inflation signals remain mixed. Multiple episodes of global spillovers in the past couple of decades have taught us that imminent normalisation will have implications for all emerging markets.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Right to privacy and judicial review
Mains level: Paper 2- Balancing the fundamental rights of the citizens with national security concerns
Context
When the bench of the Chief Justice of India passed an order appointing a committee in the Pegasus matter, it served the interest of every Indian.
What led to the appointment of committee by the Supreme Court
- Pegasus has allegedly been used against politicians and individuals across the globe, including against politicians, journalists and other private individuals in India.
- The issue rocked Parliament, but the government was not willing to share any information pertaining to the software or its use, citing national security as a reason.
- The alleged victims of the software turned to the Supreme Court, and prayed for setting up of an independent enquiry.
- The government, on being called upon by the Supreme Court, cited national security, contending that any information it let out would become a matter of public debate, which could be used by terror groups to hamper national security.
- Its unrelenting stand left the court with no option but to take a call on whether to blindly accept the government’s refusal to share no information whatsoever, or lean in favour of a citizen’s right to privacy, a fundamental right guaranteed under the Constitution.
- The Supreme Court chose the latter course.
Balancing the fundamental rights nad judicial review with national security
- The Supreme Court has observed that “the state cannot get a free pass every time the spectre of national security is raised”.
- It goes on to say that national security “cannot be the bugbear that the judiciary shies away from, by virtue of its mere mentioning. Although this court should be circumspect in encroaching upon the domain of national security, no omnibus prohibition can be called for against judicial review”.
Conclusion
The Pegasus order upholding the individual’s right to a life of dignity and privacy, is music to the ears of those who believe in constitutional values and rule of law.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3- Coal shortage issue
Context
The blame cannot be placed on the doors of any one entity or ministry for the shortage of coal.
Ministries linked with coal shortage issue
- The Ministry of Coal and Coal India must certainly accept that they slipped up somewhere — whether in managing the production process, planning supplies or leaving vacant crucial leadership positions.
- The Ministry of Power/NTPC should also accept responsibility as they allowed coal inventories to fall below the recommended minimum in an effort to better manage their working capital.
- But they can claim they had no other option because the state government electricity distribution companies do not pay their dues on time or fully.
- The discoms will point a finger at their political bosses, who compel them to sell electricity to residential and agricultural sector consumers at subsidised tariffs.
Structural issues
- There is no one public body at the central or state government level with executive oversight, responsibility and accountability for the entirety of the coal value chain.
- This is a lacuna that afflicts the entire energy sector.
- It will need to be filled to not only prevent a recurrence of another coal crisis but also for the country to realise its “green” ambition.
- The word “energy” is not part of the political or administrative lexicon.
- At least not formally. As a result, there is no energy strategy with the imprimatur of executive authority.
- The NITI Aayog may well challenge this statement.
- For they have produced an energy strategy.
Suggestions
- Energy act: The government should pass an Act (possibly) captioned “The Energy Responsibility and Security Act.”
- This Act should elevate the significance of energy by granting it constitutional sanctity; it should embed in law, India’s responsibility to provide citizens access to secure, affordable and clean energy.
- The law should lay out measurable metrics for monitoring the progress towards the achievement of energy independence, energy security, energy efficiency and “green” energy.
- Ministry of energy: Towards the fulfillment of this mandate, the government should redesign the existing architecture of decision-making for energy.
- Preference would be for the creation of an omnibus Ministry of Energy to oversee the currently siloed verticals of the ministries of petroleum, coal, renewables and power.
- The department would have a narrower remit than the other energy departments but by virtue of its location within the PMO, it would, de facto, be the most powerful executive body with ultimate responsibility for navigating the “green transition”.
Benefits
- It is important to stress the positive impact the above redesign will have on investor sentiment.
- Several corporates have signaled their intent to invest mega bucks in clean energy.
- Reliance has committed $10 billion, Adani $ 70 billion over 10 years; Tata Power, ReNew Power and Acme Solar have also placed their stakes in the ground.
Conclusion
Energy sector will be immensely benefited if the current fragmented and opaque regulatory, fiscal and commercial systems and processes were replaced by a transparent and single-point executive decision-making body for energy.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Pegasus software
Mains level: Paper 2- Pegasus issue
Context
The Supreme Court of India appointed an independent committee to inquire into charges that the Union government had used the mobile phone spyware Pegasus to invade, access, and snoop into devices used by India’s citizens.
Background
- The petitioners before the Supreme Court relied on an investigation conducted by a consortium of global media.
- These reports revealed that hundreds of phone numbers from India had appeared on a global list of more than 50,000 numbers that were selected for surveillance by clients of the Israeli firm, the NSO Group.
- The NSO has since confirmed that its spyware is sold only to governments, chiefly for the purposes of fighting terrorism.
Government’s defence
- In response to the allegations made against it, the Government invoked national security.
- What is more, according to it, the very adoption of this argument virtually forbade the Court from probing further.
- In matters purportedly involving national security, the Court has shown an extraordinary level of deference to the executive.
- The cases also posed another hurdle: a contest over facts.
- The petitioners were asserting the occurrence of illegal surveillance.
- The Government was offering no explicit response to their claims.
- Now, to some degree, in its order appointing a committee, the Court has bucked the trend of absolute deference.
- The Court has held that there is no magic formula to the Government’s incantation of national security, that its power of judicial review is not denuded merely because the state asserts that the country’s safety is at stake.
Accountability on part of the government
- The order recognises, correctly, that spying on an individual, whether by the state or by an outside agency, amounts to an infraction of privacy.
- This is not to suggest that all surveillance is illegal.
- In holding thus, the Court has effectively recognised that an act of surveillance must be tested on four grounds:
- First, the action must be supported by legislation.
- Second, the state must show the Court that the restriction made is aimed at a legitimate governmental end.
- Third, the state must demonstrate that there are no less intrusive means available to it to achieve the same objective;
- Finally, the state must establish that there is a rational nexus between the limitation imposed and the aims underlying the measure.
- The test provides a clear path to holding the Government accountable.
Way forward
- The absence of a categorical denial from the Government, the order holds, ought to lead to a prima facie belief, if nothing else, that there is truth in the petitioners’ claims.
- Having held thus, one might have expected the Court to frame a set of specific questions demanding answers from the state.
- If answers to these questions were still not forthcoming, elementary principles of evidence law allow the Court to draw what is known as an “adverse inference”.
- A party that fails to answer questions put to it will only risk the Court drawing a conclusion of fact against it.
- If, on this basis, the petitioners’ case is taken as true, there can be little doubt that there has been an illegitimate violation of a fundamental right.
- It is, therefore, unclear why we need a committee at all.
- Ultimately, in the future, the Court must think more carefully about questions of proof and rules of evidence.
Conclusion
Ad hoc committees — sterling as their members might be — cannot be the solution. Far too many cases are consigned to the back burner on the appointment of external panels, and, in the process, civil liberties are compromised.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Mismatch between education aspirations and job availability
Context
There is a huge pool of unemployed university graduates with unfulfilled aspirations. This group of dissatisfied, disgruntled youth can lead to disastrous consequences for our society.
Enhanced enrollment
- Reservation: The extension of reservations to OBCs and EWS increased the enrollment of students from these socio-economic backgrounds.
- Increased education institutions: In addition, the massive increase in the number of higher education institutions has led to an enlargement of the number of available seats — there are more than 45,000 universities and colleges in the country.
- The Gross Enrollment Ratio for higher education, which is the percentage of the population between the ages of 18-23 who are enrolled, is now 27 per cent.
Issues of employment opportunities
- Unfortunately, the spectacular increase in enrollment in recent years has not been matched by a concomitant increase in jobs.
- Employment opportunities in the government have not increased proportionately and may, in fact, have decreased with increased contractualisation.
- Even in the private sector, though the jobs have increased with economic growth, most of the jobs are contractual.
- Worse, the highest increase in jobs is at the lowest end, especially in the services sector — delivery boys for e-commerce or fast food for instance.
- Thus what we see is a huge pool of unemployed university graduates with unfulfilled aspirations.
- This group of dissatisfied, disgruntled youth can lead to disastrous consequences for our society, some of which we are already witnessing.
Way forward
- A reduction in the rate of increase of universities and colleges might not be politically feasible given the huge demand for higher education.
- Increase vocation institutions: A concurrent increase in the number of high-quality vocational institutions is something that can be done.
- There are upwards of 15,000 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) in the country currently.
- Upgrading the existing ITIs, opening many more new ones with high-quality infrastructure and updated curriculum is something which should be done urgently.
- There is a scheme to upgrade some ITIs to model ITIs.
- However, what is required is not a selective approach but a more broad-based one that uplifts the standards of all of them besides adding many more new ones.
- Industry might be more than willing to pitch in with funding (via the CSR route) as well as equipment, training for the faculty and internships for students.
Conclusion
These steps could help mitigate the mismatch between employment opportunities and the increasing number of educated youth in the country.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Equality in democracy
Context
The sharp turns away from democracy seen recently in the country must jolt citizens into stopping the descent.
Equality in democracy
- The central edifice of a democracy, or what makes it a revolutionary idea, is equality, or that it accords an equal status to all its people.
- The promise of the far-sighted Indian Constitution was of equal rights to all.
- If any benefit was accorded to smaller groups, religious or linguistic minorities or Dalits, it was in order to achieve substantive equality.
Faith as a differentiator
- The basis of citizenship under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019, allowing for non-Muslims from three countries to fast-track their citizenship, was the most serious push to introduce religion into citizenship.
- Impact on marital choice: In terms of marital choices, laws in the country in States where the national ruling party holds sway have drawn harsh attention on inter-faith couples.
- The Gujarat law criminalising inter-faith marriages has been called out by the Gujarat High Court.
- But the ordinance introduced in Uttar Pradesh (Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020) is now a law.
- Food has been criminalised: Stringent laws on cattle end up penalising those who have a certain diet, namely beef. The mood in the country created and abetted by people close to the powers that be, has led to lynchings.
- State governments and the Union government have mostly ignored the Supreme Court’s directions in 2018 to set up fast track courts, advice to take steps to stop hate messages on social media, or compensation to victims, or bringing in an anti-mob lynching law.
- Circumscribe where on can reside: The Gujarat Prohibition of Transfer of Immovable Property and Provision for Protection of Tenants from Eviction from Premises in Disturbed Areas Act, popularly known as the Disturbed Areas Act, circumscribes where one can reside.
- The act was brought in an atmosphere where there was communal rioting and forced displacement, to ostensibly protect communities from distress sales, the twist accorded to it over the years firmly makes the forced separation of communities. evident.
Hostile environment
- Scholars like Thomas Blom Hansen and Paul Brass have unhesitatingly pointed to the role of violence that has historically been acceptable in Indian society and politics.
- Scholars like Christophe Jaffrelot have pointed out that there will not be a seamless transition to an “ethnic democracy”.
- The Indian nation is one formed on the promise of shared and participatory kinship, which recognised Indian nationalism as being distinct from the faith you practised at home.
- Prioritising any one identity will have disastrous consequences and history provides enough evidence of this.
Conclusion
The mobs read together with actions of the Union government and that of State governments mark a sharp turn away from the democracy India claims it is. That must jolt us into recognising the distance we have already travelled down the wrong path. That may be the first step to try to wrest the descent into the darkness of an apartheid state.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3- Designing technology with public in mind
Context
Despite the push for the adoption of digital technologies, large segments of Indians still can’t access or haven’t learned to trust digital artefacts.
Issue of exclusion
- Recognising the power of technology to drive inclusion at a massive scale, the state is doubling down on technology to reach more citizens and serve them better.
- However, often the paradigm of technology for such services is built around the “elite” citizen, who is comfortable with technology.
- Often, this imagined citizen is male, urban, upper class.
- Large segments of Indians still can’t access or haven’t learned to trust digital artefacts.
- Many among marginalised groups struggle to access digital civic platforms, and instead rely on trusted human intermediaries.
Suggestions to make digital space truly public
1) Design with the citizen
- Encouraging human-centric design, and mandating user-assessments prior to roll out of GovTech platforms should be a key priority.
- This is a shift from the default “build first and then disseminate” approach.
- For example, formative research and human-centric design was informative in the creation of the first UPI payments app, BHIM.
- BHIM’s simple interface and onboarding, use of relatable iconography and multi-language capabilities played an important role in early adoption of UPI among non “digital natives”.
- Similarly, as the “Human Account” project demonstrated, it is possible to start with users in designing pro-poor fintech products, like the “Postman Savings” product which India Post Payments Bank designed for the rural poor.
2) Harness trusted human interface to serve those who are not comfortable with technology
- Local intermediaries, such as formal and informal community leaders and civil society organisations, can play a key role in bridging the digital divide.
- Working with existing networks (for example ASHAs) or carefully setting them up (such as the Andhra Pradesh Ward Secretariat programme), where pre-existing trust, community knowledge, and embeddedness can play a significant role, should be prioritised.
3) Institutionalise an anchor entity that brings together innovators, policy makers and researchers
- Such an entity will help to push the frontier on citizen-centricity in GovTech.
- Such a platform — like the Citizen Lab in Denmark — can play a role in generating formative research.
- Embedding this research in practice by partnering with the government as well as market innovators, and working with civil society organisations to enhance access to GovTech.
Conclusion
As India makes rapid strides in its digitalisation journey, it is timely to invoke Gandhiji’s talisman and ensure that GovTech can serve its highest and greatest purpose, that is, serving those who are last in line.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3- Start-up ecosystem in India
Context
Three acts of entrepreneurship from five years ago — Jio, UPI, and GST — have converged to accelerate our startup ecosystem.
Let’s look at each in more detail
- Impact of JIO: India’s per GB internet data costs are just 3 per cent of those in the US.
- A bold and risky $35 billion bet made by a private company transformed Indians from being data deprived to data-rich; consumption has jumped 15 times because costs fell by over 90 per cent.
- The addition of millions of consumers and smartphones since Jio’s delightful five-year disruption of the market has exploded the most important universal metric in startup valuation — addressable market.
- Affordable digital connectivity is transforming 75 crore of them into consumers, entrepreneurs, employees, and suppliers.
- Role of UPI: Google’s letter to the US Federal Reserve suggesting America learn from India’s Universal Payments Interface (UPI) acknowledged that our real-time, low-cost, open-architecture payment plumbing is a public good.
- UPI’s mobile-first architecture is a key pillar of the paperless, presenceless, and cashless framework of the Aadhaar-seeded India Stack.
- Impact of GST: GST attacked complexity and incentivised law-abiding supply and distribution chains.
- It was long in the making but going live needed the risk-taking of starting with a second-best architecture, accepting some unjustifiable rates, and state revenue guarantees.
- The doubling of indirect tax registered enterprises since GST creates a virtuous economic cycle of higher total factor productivity for enterprises and employees.
Flourishing startup ecosystem
- India now has the highest ratio of unlisted to listed companies with a $1 billion valuation.
- Initial public offering documents filed by early startups like Nykaa, Paytm, Zomato and PolicyBazaar roughly average a 10x valuation rise since the triad did IPO.
- Estimates suggest India’s startup ecosystem valuation will explode from $315 billion today to $1 trillion by 2025.
Conclusion
Gandhiji’s notion of democracy — where the weakest have the same opportunity as the strongest — needs an economic meritocracy only possible when entrepreneurs have all the ingredients in the right proportions.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- National Water Policy
Context
Over a period of one year, the committee set up to draft the new National Water Policy (NWP) received 124 submissions by state and central governments, academics and practitioners. The NWP is based on the striking consensus that emerged through these wide-ranging deliberations.
Major suggestion in NWP
Demand-side: Diversification of public procurement operations
- Irrigation consumes 80-90 per cent of India’s water, most of which is used by rice, wheat and sugarcane.
- Thus, crop diversification is the single most important step in resolving India’s water crisis.
- The policy suggests diversifying public procurement operations to include nutri-cereals, pulses and oilseeds.
- This would incentivise farmers to diversify their cropping patterns, resulting in huge savings of water.
2) Reduce-Recycle-Reuse
- Reduce-Recycle-Reuse has been proposed as the basic mantra of integrated urban water supply and wastewater management, with treatment of sewage and eco-restoration of urban river stretches, as far as possible through decentralised wastewater management.
- All non-potable use, such as flushing, fire protection, vehicle washing must mandatorily shift to treated wastewater.
3) Supply-side measure: Using technology to utilised stored water in dams
- Within supply-side options, the NWP points to trillions of litres stored in big dams, which are still not reaching farmers.
- NWP suggests how the irrigated areas could be greatly expanded at very low cost by deploying pressurised closed conveyance pipelines, combined with Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems and pressurised micro-irrigation.
4) Supply of water through “nature-based solutions”
- The NWP places major emphasis on supply of water through “nature-based solutions” such as the rejuvenation of catchment areas, to be incentivised through compensation for ecosystem services.
- Specially curated “blue-green infrastructure” such as rain gardens and bio-swales, restored rivers with wet meadows, wetlands constructed for bio-remediation, urban parks, permeable pavements, green roofs etc are proposed for urban areas.
5) Sustainable and equitable management of groundwater
- Information on aquifer boundaries, water storage capacities and flows provided in a user-friendly manner to stakeholders, designated as custodians of their aquifers, would enable them to develop protocols for effective management of groundwater.
6) Rights of Rivers
- The NWP accords river protection and revitalisation prior and primary importance.
- Steps to restore river flows include: Re-vegetation of catchments, regulation of groundwater extraction, river-bed pumping and mining of sand and boulders.
- The NWP outlines a process to draft a Rights of Rivers Act, including their right to flow, to meander and to meet the sea.
7) Emphasis on water quality
- The new NWP considers water quality as the most serious un-addressed issue in India today.
- It proposes that every water ministry, at the Centre and states, include a water quality department.
- The policy advocates adoption of state-of-the-art, low-cost, low-energy, eco-sensitive technologies for sewage treatment.
- Widespread use of reverse osmosis has led to huge water wastage and adverse impact on water quality.
- The policy wants RO units to be discouraged if the total dissolved solids count in water is less than 500mg/L.
- It suggests a task force on emerging water contaminants to better understand and tackle the threats they are likely to pose.
8) Reforming governance of water
- The policy makes radical suggestions for reforming governance of water, which suffers from three kinds issues: That between irrigation and drinking water, surface and groundwater, as also water and wastewater.
- Government departments, working in silos, have generally dealt with just one side of these binaries.
- Dealing with drinking water and irrigation in silos has meant that aquifers providing assured sources of drinking water dry up because the same aquifers are used for irrigation, which consumes much more water.
- And when water and wastewater are separated in planning, the result is a fall in water quality.
9) Creation of National Water Commission
- The NWP also suggests the creation of a unified multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder National Water Commission (NWC), which would become an exemplar for states to follow.
- Governments should build enduring partnerships with primary stakeholders of water, who must become an integral part of the NWC and its counterparts in the states.
Conclusion
The new National Water Policy calls for multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder approach to water management.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: ABHIM
Mains level: Paper 2- ABHIM
Context
The Pradhan Mantri Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission (ABHIM), announced recently, seeks to realise greater investment in the health system as proposed in the Budget, implement the Fifteenth Finance Commission recommendations such as strengthening of urban and rural primary care, stronger surveillance systems and laboratory capacity.
Measures of ABHIM
- It will support infrastructure development of 17,788 rural health and wellness centres (HWCs) in seven high-focus States and three north-eastern States.
- In addition, 11,044 urban HWCs will be established in close collaboration with Urban Local Bodies.
- The various measures of this scheme will extend primary healthcare services across India.
- Areas like hypertension, diabetes and mental health will be covered, in addition to existing services.
- Support for 3,382 block public health units (BPHUs) in 11 high-focus States and establishment of integrated district public health laboratories in all 730 districts will strengthen capacity for information technology-enabled disease surveillance.
- To enhance the capabilities for microbial surveillance, a National Platform for One Health will be established.
- Four Regional National Institutes of Virology will be established.
- Laboratory capacity under the National Centre for Disease Control, the Indian Council of Medical Research and national research institutions will be strengthened.
- Fifteen bio-safety level III labs will augment the capacity for infectious disease control and bio-security.
Way forward
- There is a need to train and deploy a larger and better skilled health workforce.
- We must scale up institutional capacity for training public health professionals.
- Private sector participation in service delivery may be invited by States, as per need and availability.
- ABHIM, if financed and implemented efficiently, can strengthen India’s health system by augmenting capacity in several areas and creating a framework for coordinated functioning at district, state and national levels.
- Many independently functioning programmes will have to work with a common purpose by leaping across boundaries of separate budget lines and reporting structures.
- That calls for a change of bureaucratic mindsets and a cultural shift in Centre-State relations.
Conclusion
The ABHIM can fix the weaknesses in India’s healthcare system.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Energy partnership with Russia
Context
With its abundant energy sources and appetite for trade diversification, Russia could be an ultimate long-term partner of India as it tries to diversify its trade relations.
Energy partnership
- Indian Prime Minister in a virtual address at 6th Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Russia’s Vladivostok said that “India-Russia energy partnership can help bring stability to the global energy market.”
- Indian and Russian Energy Ministers announced that the countries’ companies have been pushing for greater cooperation in the oil and gas sector beyond the U.S.$32 billion already invested in joint projects.
- India’s Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri referred to Russia as the largest investor in India’s energy sector.
- One of the examples of cooperation between the two countries in energy transformation is the joint venture between India’s Reliance Industries Ltd. and Russia’s Sibur, the country’s largest petrochemicals producer.
- Apart from accounting for most of the Indian butyl rubber market, Reliance Sibur Elastomers exports its products to Asia, Europe, the United States, Brazil and other countries.
- A few years ago, Rosneft invested U.S.$12.9 billion in India’s second-largest private oil refiner, Essar Oil, renamed Nayara Energy, marking it one of the most significant foreign investments in years.
- Partnership in renewable: In efforts to transition to green energy, India has recently achieved a significant milestone of completing the countrywide installation of 100 gigawatts of total installed renewable energy capacity, excluding large hydro.
- A recent Deloitte report has forecasted that India could gain U.S.$11 trillion in economic value over the next 50 years by limiting rising global temperatures and realising its potential to ‘export decarbonization’.
- Unknowns of climate change and threats of a new pandemic suggest that the country should accelerate its energy transition. Russia, one of the key global players across the energy market, could emerge as an indispensable partner for such a transition.
- Partnership in nuclear energy: Russian companies have been involved in the construction of six nuclear reactors in the Kudankulam nuclear power project at Tamil Nadu.
- India and Russia secure the potential of designing a nuclear reactor specifically for developing countries, which is a promising area of cooperation.
- India’s nuclear power generation capacity of 6,780 MW may increase to 22,480 MW by 2031, contributing to the country’s efforts to turn to green energy.
Way forward
- In September, almost all of Russia’s major energy companies were interested in projects in India, Russia’s Energy Minister said at the Vladivostok forum in September, adding that he sees prospects for energy cooperation in all areas.
- However, the current bilateral exchange rate needs to accelerate for India to grasp its potential from energy transformation.
Conclusion
To meet its growing energy demand and succeed in green transformation, India needs approximately U.S.$500 billion of investments in wind and solar infrastructure, grid expansion, and storage to reach the 450 GW capacity target by 2030. Therefore, more efforts are needed to expand cooperation with such partners as Russia.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Pegasus
Mains level: Paper 2- Pegasus issue
Context
The Supreme Court of India has appointed a committee presided by Justice (Retd.) R V Raveendran to inquire into the Pegasus revelations.
Terms of reference
- The court’s terms of reference include queries on, “What steps/actions have been taken by the Union of India after reports were published in the year 2019 about hacking of WhatsApp accounts”, and, “Whether any Pegasus suite of spyware was acquired by the Union of India, or any State Government, or any central or state agency for use against the citizens of India”.
- The constitution of this committee marks an important step towards accountability for the victims and the larger public on the use of Pegasus.
Significance of the committee on Pegasus issue
1) Transparency and disclosure
- The order of the court constituting the committee attains significance for three clear reasons.
- The first is the court’s continuing insistence on transparency and disclosure by the Union government.
- The only filing made in court by the government was a limited affidavit, containing short paragraphs of generalised denials and the sole annexure of a statement by the Minister for Electronics and IT before Parliament.
- Immediately, the Supreme Court pointed out that these are inadequate and provided further time.
2) The SC’s approach towards national security
- The second reason is the Supreme Court’s firm approach towards the national security submissions by the Union government.
- The court correctly applied the settled convention on legal pleadings and affidavits by asking the government to, “necessarily plead and prove the facts which indicate that the information sought must be kept secret as their divulgence would affect national security concerns.”
- The second aspect of the national security argument is how the court balances it with the fundamental right to privacy.
- Here, drawing from the framework of the K S Puttaswamy judgment the court specifically states that, “national security cannot be the bugbear that the judiciary shies away from, by virtue of its mere mentioning” and, “mere invocation of national security by the State does not render the Court a mute spectator”.
- These are significant observations that, when followed as precedent, will bolster confidence in constitutional adjudications especially when courts demand evidence on arguments of “national security” to avoid generalised statements made to evade accountability.
3) Rejection of the suggestion by the Solicitor-General to constitute a government committee of experts
- The court correctly notes that even though the Pegasus revelations were first made on November 1, 2019, there has been little movement on any official inquiry.
- It also records the genuine apprehension of the petitioners, many of whom are victims of Pegasus, that since the sale of this malware can only be made to governments, they fear the involvement of state agencies.
Challenges
- These include the functioning of the committee and the cooperation of government witnesses, the publication of the report so as to ensure public confidence and, ultimately, the directions and remedy provided by the Supreme Court.
Conclusion
Hence, the constitution of this committee provides hope. At the same time, any honest assessment should consider the more challenging tasks ahead.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now