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Nuclear Diplomacy and Disarmament

Stand-off over North Korea reinforces the hollowness of the doctrine of deterrence

op-ed snap | International Relations | Mains Paper 2: International Institutions
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: Light water reactor

Mains level: Paper 2- North Korea's nuclear program

Context

The resumption of North Korea’s largest fissile material production reactor, has sparked speculation about its real and symbolic significance.

Background of North Korea’s nuclear weapons development

  • In 1994, Pyongyang barred IAEA access to the Yongbyon complex amid suspicions that the country was generating plutonium from spent fuel.
  • 1994 Agreed Framework, an executive agreement signed by President Bill Clinton, required Pyongyang to freeze all nuclear activity and allow inspection of its military sites in return for the construction of two light water reactors.
  • The accord broke down in 2002.
  • In June 2008, in order to express its denuclearisation commitment to the U.S. and four other countries, Pyongyang blew up the cooling tower at the Yongbyon complex.
  • A few months in 2008, Pyongyang barred IAEA inspectors access to its reprocessing plant in the Yongbyon complex and eventually expelled them the following April.
  • In November 2010 American scientist Siegfried Hecker confirmed accounts that North Korea had rapidly built a uranium enrichment plant at Yongbyon.

Why does resumption nuclear reactor matter?

  • The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has underlined that the restart of activity in Yongbyon constitutes a violation of UN Security Council resolutions.
  • Reprocessing of fuel: The reactor at the Yongbyon complex has been central to the North Korean reprocessing of spent fuel rods to generate plutonium.
  • Enrichment of fuel: Besides the production of highly enriched uranium for the development of atomic bombs.

Way forward

  • Negotiations: The Biden administration has adopted a pragmatic path of declaring its readiness to resume negotiations with Pyongyang.
  • UN treaty on complete abolition of nuclear arms: The UN treaty on complete abolition of atomic arms, whose deliberations were boycotted by all nuclear weapons states, is the morally superior alternative.

Conclusion

The protracted stand-off over North Korea reinforces the hollowness of the doctrine of deterrence and begs the question whether proliferation can ever be prevented just because nuclear weapons states want to perpetuate their dominance.

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Back2Basics: IAEA

  • The International Atomic Energy Agency is the world’s central intergovernmental forum for scientific and technical co-operation in the nuclear field.
  • It works for the safe, secure and peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology, contributing to international peace and security and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
  • The IAEA was created in 1957 in response to the deep fears and expectations generated by the discoveries and diverse uses of nuclear technology.
  • The Agency’s genesis was U.S. President Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” address to the General Assembly of the United Nations on 8 December 1953.

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

National Edible Oil Mission (OP)

op-ed snap | Economics | Mains Paper 3: Issues Related To Farm Subsidies & Msp
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: National Edible Oil Mission-Oil Palm (NEOM-OP)

Mains level: Edible oil scarcity in India

Last week, the government announced the minimum support prices (MSP) of rabi crops for the marketing season 2022-23.

Key Highlight: Hike for Oilseeds MSPs

  • The MSP for wheat is up by 2 per cent while that of rapeseed-mustard is up by 8.6 per cent.
  • This indicates that the government wants to focus more on edible oils/oilseeds than on wheat.
  • It is important to note that PM recently announced a Rs 11,000-crore National Edible Oil Mission-Oil Palm (NEOM-OP), as a part of the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan.

About NEOM-OP

  • This is a bold step to augment domestic edible oil supplies, given that 60 per cent of the edible oil consumed in the country is imported — more than half of this is palm oil followed by soybean and sunflower.
  • In FY 2020-21, edible oil imports touched $ 11 billion or about Rs 80,000 crore (for 13.5 million tonnes).
  • Despite these imports, edible oil inflation remains very high (July 2021 was 32.5 per cent).
  • Against this backdrop, the move to promote oil palm is a step in the right direction.

Reasons for oil price hikes

  • Effective duty for rapeseed and cottonseed oils ranges from 38.5 per cent for crude and 49.5 per cent for refined oils.
  • It’s this high import duty, at a time when global edible oil prices have gone up by almost 70 per cent (y-o-y), that has caused high domestic inflation (32.5 per cent) in edible oils.

Why Oil Palm?

  • It is the only crop that can give up to four tonnes of oil productivity per hectare under good farm practices.
  • But it is a water-guzzling crop, loves humidity (requires 150 mm rainfall every month) and thrives best in areas with temperatures between 20 and 33 degrees Celsius.
  • The National Re-assessment Committee (2020) has identified 28 lakh hectares suitable for oil palm cultivation in the country — the actual area under oil palm cultivation, as of 2020, is only 3.5 lakh hectares.
  • Much of this (34 per cent) is in the Northeastern states, including Assam, followed by Andhra Pradesh (19 per cent) and Telangana (16 per cent).
  • A large potential is thus waiting to be tapped.

No reasons for farmers to switch

  • The government has a massive procurement programme for wheat, but a very meagre one for rapeseed-mustard even when the prices rule below MSP.
  • This relative incentive structure remains in favour of wheat.
  • So, we doubt if farmers will switch from wheat to mustard in any meaningful manner to bridge the edible oil deficit.

What can be done to make NEOM-OP more effective?

The NEOM-OP intends to focus on productivity and area expansion by supporting the farmers in the following ways:

(A) Financial assistance

  • Input assistance for planting material, additional assistance to cover maintenance/opportunity costs of farmers, with no limits on acreage.
  • Big-budget assistance to industries that plan to set up a five tonnes/hour processing unit.
  • Such a comprehensive assistance package will attract farmers as well as incentivize the industry to work with agriculturists and augment domestic edible oil production.

(B) Pricing mechanism for OP

  • There will be no MSP, but the FFB price for farmers would be fixed at 14.3 per cent of average landed crude palm oil price of the past five years, adjusted with the wholesale price index.
  • This is the most critical part of the pricing policy and the formula needs to be carefully calibrated.
  • However, the litmus test of pricing will be dovetailing it with the import tariff policy to protect the farmers in case landed prices fall below the cost of production.

Way forward

(1) Rationalizing import duties

  • The Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP, which recommends MSP) recommended that India should keep an import duty trigger at $800/tonne (say).
  • If the import price falls below $800/tonne, the import tariff needs to go up in countercyclical manner.
  • Thus, import duty needs to be in sync with rational domestic price policy.
  • It is a necessary condition to give a fillip to aatmanirbharta in edible oils.

(2) Neutral incentive structure

  • But the sufficient condition would be revisiting the existing incentive structure that unduly favours rice, wheat and sugarcane through heavy subsidisation of power, fertilisers and open-ended procurement.
  • The need is to devise a crop-neutral incentive structure where cropping patterns are aligned with demand patterns, and the crops are produced in a globally competitive manner.

Conclusion

  • There is a huge deficit in edible oil production in the country.
  • Achieving self-sufficiency in edible oil production through the other oilseeds complex would require adding about 45 million hectares under oilseed cultivation.
  • This is not possible without drastically cutting down the area under cereal crops.
  • The best alternative is, therefore, to ensure proper care of palm oil crops, provide good planting material, better irrigation management, fertilizers and other inputs to raise productivity to four tonnes of oil/hectare.

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Economic Indicators and Various Reports On It- GDP, FD, EODB, WIR etc

Why we must focus on Human Development not GDP growth?

op-ed snap | Economics | Mains Paper 3: Indian Economy
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: GDP computation and various terminologies

Mains level: Growth vs Development debate

The much-anticipated estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) for the first quarter of the fiscal year 2021-22 were released on 31 August. This has seen an unprecedented decline in GDP at 24.4%.

Why debate this?

  • An increasing GDP is often seen as a measure of welfare and economic success.
  • However, it fails to account for the multi-dimensional nature of development or the inherent short-comings of capitalism, which tends to concentrate income and, thus, power.
  • The real issue thriving the Indian Economy is the relevance of GDP estimates as the sole or most important indicator of a recovery.
  • Our economy was slowing down even before the pandemic and was then devastated by it.

GDP as an indicator

  • Economic growth assesses the expansion of a country’s economy.
  • Today, it is most popularly measured by policymakers and academics alike by increasing gross domestic product or GDP.
  • This indicator estimates the value-added in a country which is the total value of all goods and services produced in a country minus the value of the goods and services needed to produce them.
  • It is common to divide this indicator by a country’s population to better gauge how productive and developed an economy is – the GDP per capita.

A brief history of Growth and GDP

  • The concept of economic growth gained popularity during the industrial revolution, when market economies flourished.
  • In the 1930s, Nobel laureate, Simon Kuznets wrote extensively about national statistics and propagated the use of GDP as the measure of the national income of the US.
  • Against the backdrop of a bloody world wars, governments were on the look for analytical tools to raise taxes to finance the newly minted war machine.
  • It was at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference that GDP became the standard tool for measuring a country’s economy.
  • Right from the classicals to the neo-classicals, the idea of development was intertwined with economic growth, i.e. accumulation of wealth and production of goods and services.

Prominence of GDP today

  • GDP as a measure of economic growth is popular because it is easier to quantify the production of goods and services than a multi-dimensional index can measure other welfare achievements.
  • Precisely because of this, GDP is not, on its own, an adequate gauge of a country’s development.
  • Development is a multi-dimensional concept, which includes not only an economic dimension, but also involves social, environmental, and emotional dimensions.

Limitations of GDP

  • One of the limitations of GDP is that it only addresses average income, failing to reflect how most people actually live or who benefits from economic growth.
  • There is also a possibility that the wealth of a society becomes more concentrated and why this is counterproductive to development.
  • If left unchecked, growing inequalities can not only slow down growth, but also generate instability and disorder in society.

Therefore, a growing GDP cannot be assumed to necessarily lead to sustainable development.

Relevance since COVID times

(a) Failure to capture informal economy

  • A decline in economic activity, as captured by GDP data, is only one part of the distress caused by the slowdown and covid.
  • GDP estimates hardly capture the extent of depressed economic activity in the informal sector.
  • This makes it irrelevant to the cause of understanding the changing fortunes of workers and others who are dependent on these activities.
  • India’s informal sector is not only a significant part of the overall economy but is crucial for generating broad demand, given the significantly large proportion of our population that depends on it.

(b) Rise in distress employment

  • Most worrisome is a reversal of the trend of non-farm diversification due to reverse migration.
  • After more than five decades, we have seen an actual increase in the proportion of workers employed in agriculture.

(c) Farmers losses

  • Farmers have fared badly. Already suffering from low output prices, the majority of farmers have seen incomes decline as input costs rose (such as on diesel and fertilizers).
  • Even though our farm sector appears relatively unaffected by covid, the ground reality of farmer incomes is at complete variance with the aggregate statistics from the national accounts.
  • The failure to capture livelihood and income losses in the informal sector is only one aspect of our GDP data inadequacy.

GDP can never account this

  • This failure to reflect the economic conditions of our population’s majority is partly a result of the way data on GDP is calculated, but also due to infirmities of the database itself.
  • But its limitations at the conceptual level are far more serious.

Alternate measures

  • One expanded indicator, which attempts to measure the multi-dimensional aspect of development, is the Human Development Index (HDI) by UNDP.
  • It incorporates the traditional approach to measuring economic growth, as well as education and health, which are crucial variables in determining how developed a society is.
  • In 2018, the World Bank launched the Human Capital Index (HCI).
  • This index ranks countries’ performances on a set of four health and education indicators according to an estimate of the economic productivity lost due to poor social outcomes.

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Back2Basics:

National Income Accounting

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Terrorism and Challenges Related To It

Two decades of 9/11

op-ed snap | International Relations | Mains Paper 2: Bilateral, Regional and Global Groupings and agreements involving India
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: Not much

Mains level: US and the global war on terror

Twenty years later, the 9/11 terror attacks look a lot less epochal than they seemed in the heat of the moment.

Why was 9-11 a major breakthrough?

  • One major inference in the wake of 9/11 was about the power of non-state actors — demonstrated by al Qaeda’s massive surprise attack on the world’s lone superpower at its zenith.
  • Al Qaeda’s rise seemed to fit in with the age of economic globalization and the internet, which heralded the weakening of the state system and the arrival of a borderless world.
  • Two decades later, though, the system of nation-states looks quite robust after enduring the challenge from international terrorism.

Implications of the attack

  • The state system adapted quickly to the disruptions created by 9/11.
  • There was much anxiety about terror groups gaining access to weapons of mass destruction or leveraging new digital technologies to increase their power over states.
  • The state system has succeeded in keeping nuclear weapons and material away from terrorists.
  • It has also become adept at using digital tools to counter extremism.
  • If 9/11 made air travel risky, the states quickly developed protocols to de-risk it.

Humiliating end for the US everywhere

  • Marking the 20th anniversary of 9/11 days after the humiliating US retreat from Kabul and domestic turmoil might suggest that Al-Qaeda and its associates did succeed in ending America’s unipolar moment.
  • The choice of targets in the 9/11 attacks — the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — was not accidental.
  • They were designed to strike at the very heart of American capitalism and its famed military power.
  • American capitalism met its greatest threat not in 2001 but in the 2008 financial crisis that was triggered by the reckless ideology of deregulation.
  • America lost in Afghanistan and the Middle East because it over-determined the terror threat and put security approaches above political common sense.

Today’s agenda for terror

  • And the ambition of the jihadists — who organized the 9/11 attacks, to destroy America has risen to a higher extent:
  1. To overthrow the Arab regimes
  2. Unleash a war with Israel
  3. Pit the believers against the infidels
  • To be sure, terrorist organizations and the religious extremism that inspires them to continue to be of concern.

Age of ideological warfare

  • Sectarian schisms, ideological cleavages, internecine warfare, and the messiness of the real world have cooled the revolutionary ardor that the world was so afraid of after 9/11.
  • In the battle between states and non-states, the former have accumulated extraordinary powers in the name of fighting the latter.
  • All nations, including liberal democracies, have curtailed individual liberty by offering greater security against terrorism.
  • Abuse of state power has inevitably followed.

Security narratives by the US since then

  • After 9/11, President George W Bush turned his attention to confronting an imagined “global axis of evil” — Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.
  • None of the three countries was involved in 9/11.
  • And the US rewarded Pakistan with billions of dollars in military and economic assistance that actively nurtured the Taliban and succeeded in bleeding and defeating the US in Afghanistan.

Threats earned by the US

  • This blinded the US to an emerging challenger — China — on the horizon. Washington’s obsession with the Middle East gave Beijing two valuable decades to consolidate its rise without any hindrance.
  • Although America’s unipolar moment may have ended, the US will continue to remain the most powerful nation in the world, with the greatest capacity to shape the international system.

What about the jihadist agenda for the Middle East?

  • The Islamist effort to destroy the Gulf kingdoms spluttered quite quickly as the Arab monarchs cracked down hard on the jihadi groups.
  • Many Arab states do not see al Qaeda and its offshoots as existential threats.
  • They worry more about other Muslim states like Turkey, Qatar, and Iran that seek to leverage Islam for geopolitical purposes.
  • These fears have pushed smaller Gulf kingdoms towards Israel and shattered the jihadi hope to trigger the final Islamic assault on the Jewish state.
  • Developments in China and Pakistan reinforce the proposition that politics among nation-states is more significant than the power of the transcendental religious forces.

How did India Respond?

  • India has been facing the problem of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism since 1989.  Unfortunately, the USA and the UK sided with Pakistan during this time.
  • However, this changed after India’s 2nd nuclear test and the 9/11 attack in the USA. Though the USA continued to rely on Pakistan, it considered Pakistan as an unreliable partner. This was further proved when Osama bin Laden was found hiding in Pakistan.
  • Indian response to terror attacks had been that of “strategic restraint”.
  • It was limited to diplomatic actions. This was evident in attacks on the Indian Parliament (December 2001) and the Kaluchak massacre (May 2002).
  • However, now we witness that India has adopted a policy of imposing costs on Pakistan by striking across the border, e.g. Balalkot airstrikes.
  • This capacity of India has been built over its strong economy and strong global linkages. Despite the economic disaster of 1991, India emerged stronger after LPG reforms.

Conclusion

  • The trans-national nature of the new terror groups is now countered by better border controls and greater international cooperation on law enforcement.
  • However, in the subcontinent, as elsewhere, violent religious extremism thrives only under state patronage.
  • The answers to the challenges presented by the return of the Taliban and the likely resurgence of jihadi terrorism are not in the religious domain but in changing the geopolitical calculus of Pakistan’s deep state.

B2BASICS

Violent Non-state actors

  • In international relations, violent non-state actors (VNSA), also known as non-state armed actors or non-state armed groups (NSAGs), are individuals and groups that are wholly or partly independent of governments and which threaten or use violence to achieve their goals.
  • VNSAs vary widely in their goals, size, and methods. They may include narcotics cartels, popular liberation movements, religious and ideological organizations, corporations (e.g. private military contractors), self-defence militia, and paramilitary groups established by state governments to further their interests.

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Foreign Policy Watch: India-Afghanistan

The fall of Afghanistan, the fallout in West Asia

op-ed snap | International Relations | Mains Paper 2: India & Its Neighborhood - Relations
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: Not much

Mains level: Geopolitical dynamics with Taliban's formation of legitimate govt

Three weeks after they walked into Kabul without any resistance, the Taliban now has announced an interim Council of Ministers.

Chord with Pakistan: Crowing of its puppets

  • Pakistan appears to have got its way. This government formation has tightly controlled the head of its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
  • Afghanistan’s acting PM is Mullah Hassan Akhund, a close associate of former Taliban founder Mullah Omar.
  • Abdul Ghani Baradar is his deputy, but again, this could be a token position.
  • Baradar had been arrested in 2010 by the Pakistanis for pursuing a dialogue with the Hamid Karzai government without Pakistani sanction and jailed for eight years.
  • Pakistan’s true proteges are Sirajuddin Haqqani, the acting interior minister, and Mohammed Yaqoob, the acting defence minister, a son of Mullah Omar, who is also close to Haqqani.

The West Asian players

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran have been direct role-players in Afghan affairs for over 25 years.

  • Sheikhdom involvement: In the 1990s, the first two were supporters and sources of funding for the Taliban, while Iran was an antagonist. After 9/11, all three countries became deeply involved with the Taliban. Since 2005, the Gulf sheikhdoms have contributed millions of dollars to different Taliban leaders and factions.
  • Iran’s defiance of the US: Iran began a substantial engagement with various Taliban leaders from 2007 and provided funding, weapons, training and refuge when required. It wanted the Taliban to maintain pressure on the U.S. forces to ensure their speedy departure from the country.
  • Regional competition: In the 2010s, when the US began to engage with Iran on the nuclear issue, Saudi Arabia became more directly involved in Afghan matters to prevent Iran’s expanding influence among Taliban groups. Thus, besides Syria and Yemen, Iran and Saudi Arabia have also made Afghanistan an arena for their regional competitions.
  • Earliest acknowledgment of the Taliban: In 2012, Qatar, on U.S. request, allowed the Taliban to open an office in Doha as a venue for their dialogue with the Americans. This has made Qatar an influential player in Afghan affairs, with deep personal ties with several leaders, many of whom keep their families in Doha.

Competitions for influence

The low-key reactions of the Gulf countries to recent developments in Kabul reflect the uncertainties relating to the Taliban in power.

Nature of the govt: Their ability to remain united, their policies relating to human rights, and, above all, whether the Taliban will again make their country a sanctuary for extremist groups.

Fractionalization within terror groups: The country already has several thousand foreign fighters, whose ranks could swell with extremists coming in from Iraq and Syria, and threaten the security of all neighbouring states.

Three sets of regional players are active in Afghanistan today:

  1. Pakistan-Saudi coalition: This has been the principal source of support for the Taliban-at-war. They would like to remain influential in the new order, but neither would like to see the Taliban revert to their practices of the 1990s that had justifiably appalled the global community.
  2. Turkey and Qatar: They represent the region’s Islamist coalition and, thus, share an ideological kinship with the Taliban. Both would like to see a moderate and inclusive administration.
  3. Iran: While many of its hardliners are overjoyed at the U.S. “defeat”, more reflective observers recall the earlier Taliban emirate which was viscerally hostile to Shias and Iran. Iran also sees itself as the guardian of the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara minorities in the country.

Options Available: The outlook for security

Linking with Israel-Palestine Conflict: The region now has two options: one, an Israel-centric security order in which the Arab Gulf states would link themselves with Israel to confront Iran. This is being actively promoted by Israeli hawks since it would tie Israel with neighbouring Arab states without having to concede anything to meet Palestinian aspirations.

Comprehensive regional security arrangement: The other option is more ambitious: The facilitators and guarantors of this security arrangement are likely to be China and Russia: over the last few years, both have built close relations with the major states of the region. i.e., Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Consensus to ward away the US

  • The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states led by Saudi Arabia lifted the over three-year blockade of Qatar.
  • The discussions between Iran and Saudi Arabia and plans are in place for the next meetings.
  • Turkey has initiated diplomatic overtures towards Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
  • None of these initiatives involves the Americans.

Conclusion: A new order is in making

  • These developments suggest that the germ of a new regional security order in West Asia is already sown in fertile ground.

Way forward for India

  • The Indian policies are at a crossroads. Continued bandwagoning with the US makes no sense.
  • Indian diplomacy should harmonize with the regional capitals, including Beijing, which can be a natural ally on issues of terrorism.
  • The bottom line is that India’s vital interests remain to be secured.
  • Demonizing the Taliban can only be counterproductive.

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Foreign Policy Watch: India – Germany

 How India and Germany can work together to tackle climate change?

op-ed snap | International Relations | Mains Paper 2: Bilateral, Regional and Global Groupings and agreements involving India
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: Not much

Mains level: India-Germany relations

Both nations, India and Germany with innovative economies and many highly-trained people can tackle the climate challenge.

India-Germany Relations: A backgrounder

Freedom struggle: Subhas Chandra Bose, a prominent freedom fighter for Indian independence, made a determined effort to obtain India’s independence from Britain by seeking military assistance from the Axis powers. The Indische Legion was formed to serve as a liberation force for British-ruled India principally made up of Indian prisoners of war.

Diplomacy: India maintained diplomatic relations with both West Germany and East Germany and supported their reunification in 1990. Contrary to France and the UK, Germany has no strategic footprint in Asia.

Past contentions: Germany condemned India for liberating Goa from Portuguese rule in 1961 and supported Portugal’s dictatorial regime under Salazar against India. It was critical of India for intervening in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.  It rejected India’s 1998 nuclear tests.

Quest for UNSC: India and Germany both seek to become permanent members of the UNSC and have joined with Japan and Brazil to coordinate their efforts via the G4 collective.

Cultural ties: Germany has supported education and cultural programs in India. Germany helped establish the IIT Madras after both governments signed an agreement in 1956 and increased its cooperation and supply of technology and resources over the decades to help expand the institution

Trade and investment: Germany is India’s largest trading partner in Europe. Germany is the 8th largest foreign direct investor (FDI) in India.

Common concerns

  • In South Asia and Europe, we have become used to extremely hot weather, flooding, dramatic depletion of groundwater tables, and drought.
  • The EU has adopted an ambitious Green Deal to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and to decouple economic growth from the consumption of natural resources.

Why the two?

  • India is one of few countries that looks set to deliver on the national goals it set itself as part of the Paris agreement.
  • Compared to other G20 countries, its per capita emissions are very low.
  • Germany recently adopted laws on reducing greenhouse gases more quickly, achieving climate neutrality by 2045 and stopping the use of coal for electricity production by 2038.

Collaborated efforts to date

  • In 2015, India’s PM and Germany’s Federal Chancellor agreed to further strengthen the two countries’ strategic partnership.
  • On this basis, Germany and India have succeeded in building up a cooperation portfolio worth almost 12 billion euros.
  • Already, nine out of 10 measures support climate goals and SDGs together.

Indo-German development cooperation focuses on three areas:

  1. Transition to renewable energies
  2. Sustainable urban development and
  3. Sustainable management of natural resources

What does Germany have to offer?

  • As a pioneer of the energy transition, Germany is offering knowledge, technology transfer, and financial solutions.
  • The pandemic has shown global supply chains are vulnerable.
  • Yet, when it comes to agriculture and natural resources, there are smart solutions that are being tested in India and Germany for more self-reliance, including agroecological approaches and sustainable management of forests, soils, and water.
  • Experience in India has shown that these methods also boost incomes for the local population and make them less dependent on expensive fertilizers, pesticides and seeds.

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

How India’s food systems must respond to the climate crisis

op-ed snap | Economics | Mains Paper 3: Agriculture and related issues,PDS, Buffer Stock & Food Security
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: EAT-Lancet diet

Mains level: Paper 3- Food system issues

Context

This month, the UN Secretary-General will convene the Food Systems Summit. There is a proposal to have an International Panel on Food and Nutritional Security (IPFN) — an “IPCC for food,” similar to the panel on climate change.

Issues with India’s agriculture?

  • What is a food system? According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), food systems encompass the entire range of actors involved in the production, aggregation, processing, distribution, consumption and disposal of food products.
  • Effects of Green Revolution: The Green Revolution succeeded in making India food sufficient, however, it also led to water-logging, soil erosion, groundwater depletion and the unsustainability of agriculture.
  • Deficit mindset: Current policies are still based on the “deficit” mindset of the 1960s.
  • Biased policies: The procurement, subsidies and water policies are biased towards rice and wheat.
  • Three crops (rice, wheat and sugarcane) corner 75 to 80 per cent of irrigated water.
  • Lack of diversification: Diversification of cropping patterns towards millets, pulses, oilseeds, horticulture is needed for more equal distribution of water, sustainable and climate-resilient agriculture.

Issues with various elements of India’s food system

1) Changes needed in India’s agriculture

  • The narrative of Indian agriculture has to be changed towards more diversified high-value production, better remunerative prices and farm incomes.
  • Inclusive: It must be inclusive in terms of women and small farmers.
  • Similarly, women’s empowerment is important particularly for raising incomes and nutrition.
  • Women’s cooperatives and groups like Kudumbashree in Kerala would be helpful.
  • Small farmers require special support, public goods and links to input and output markets.
  • Better remunerative prices: Farmer producer organisations help get better prices for inputs and outputs for small-holders.
  • The ITC’s E-Choupal is an example of technology benefiting small farmers.
  • Innovation: One of the successful examples of a value chain that helped small-holders, women and consumers is Amul (Anand Milk Union Ltd) created by Verghese Kurien.
  • Such innovations are needed in other activities of food systems.

2) Hunger and malnutrition in India

  • The NFHS-5 shows that under-nutrition has not declined in many states even in 2019-20. Similarly, obesity is also rising.
  • A food systems approach should focus more on the issues of undernutrition and obesity.
  • Safe and healthy diversified diets are needed for sustainable food systems.
  • The EAT-Lancet diet, which recommends a healthy and sustainable diet, is not affordable for the majority of the population in India.
  • Animal-sourced foods are still needed for countries like India. For instance, per capita consumption of meat is still below 10 kg in India as compared to 60 to 70 kg in the US and Europe.

3) Ensuring sustainability of food system

  • Estimates show that the food sector emits around 30 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases.
  • Sustainability has to be achieved in production, value chains and consumption.
  • How to achieve sustainability? Climate-resilient cropping patterns have to be promoted.
  • Instead of giving input subsidies, cash transfers can be given to farmers for sustainable agriculture.

4) Health and social protection

  • Food systems also need health infrastructure.
  • The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the weak health infrastructure in countries like India.
  • Inclusive food systems need strong social protection programmes.
  • India has long experience in these programmes. Strengthening India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, public distribution system (PDS), nutrition programmes like ICDS, mid-day meal programmes, can improve income, livelihoods and nutrition for the poor and vulnerable groups.

5) Role of non-agriculture

  • Some economists like T N Srinivasan argued that the solution for problems in agriculture was in non-agriculture.
  • Reduce pressure on agriculture: Therefore, labour-intensive manufacturing and services can reduce pressure on agriculture.
  • Income from agriculture is not sufficient for smallholders and informal workers.
  • Strengthening rural MSMEs and food processing is part of the solution.

Conclusion

India should also aim for a food systems transformation, which can be inclusive and sustainable, ensure growing farm incomes and nutrition security.

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Renewable Energy – Wind, Tidal, Geothermal, etc.

Green hydrogen, a new ally for a zero carbon future

op-ed snap | Economics | Mains Paper 3: Awareness in various sc and tech fields,Conservation, Environmental Pollution & Degradation, Eia
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: Pink hydrogen

Mains level: Paper 3- Green hydrogen

Context

The forthcoming 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow from November 1-12, 2021 is to re-examine the coordinated action plans to mitigate greenhouse gases and climate adaptation measures.

How Green hydrogen as a fuel can be a game changer?

  • Hydrogen is the most abundant element on the planet, but rarely in its pure form which is how we need it.
  • High energy density: It has an energy density almost three times that of diesel.
  • ‘Green hydrogen’, the emerging novel concept, is a zero-carbon fuel made by electrolysis using renewable power from wind and solar to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
  • Best solution to remain under 1.5° C: The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts the additional power demand to be to the tune of 25%-30% by the year 2040.
  • Thus, power generation by ‘net-zero’ emission will be the best solution to achieve the target of expert guidelines on global warming to remain under 1.5° C.
  • Untapped potential: Presently, less than 0.1% or say ~75 million tons/year of hydrogen capable of generating ~284GW of power, is produced.

Challenges: Production and storage cost

  • The challenge is to compress or liquefy the LH2 (liquid hydrogen); it needs to be kept at a stable minus 253° C.
  • This leads to its ‘prior to use exorbitant cost’.
  • The ‘production cost’ of ‘Green hydrogen’ has been considered to be a prime obstacle.
  • The production cost of this ‘green source of energy’ is expected to be around $1.5 per kilogram (for nations having perpetual sunshine and vast unused land), by the year 2030; by adopting various conservative measures.

Experiments in India

    • The Indian Railways have announced the country’s first experiment of a hydrogen-fuel cell technology-based train by retrofitting an existing diesel engine; this will run under Northern Railway on the 89 km stretch between Sonepat and Jind.
  • The project will not only ensure diesel savings to the tune of several lakhs annually but will also prevent the emission of 0.72 kilo tons of particulate matter and 11.12-kilo tons of carbon per annum.

Way forward for India

  • India is the world’s fourth-largest energy-consuming country (behind China, the United States and the European Union), according to the IEA’s forecast, and will overtake the European Union to become the world’s third energy consumer by the year 2030.
  • It is high time to catch up with the rest of the world by going in for clean energy, decarbonising the economy and adopting ‘Green hydrogen’ as an environment-friendly and safe fuel for the next generations.

Conclusion

In order to achieve the goal of an alternative source of energy, adopting a multi-faceted practical approach to utilise ‘Green hydrogen’ offers a ray of hope.

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Needed: A tribunal for CAPF

op-ed snap | Security Issues | Mains Paper 3: Various Security Forces, Agencies & Their Mandates
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: Security Force Court

Mains level: Paper 3- Tribunal for CAPF

Context

There have been numerous cases of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) officers overstaying leave. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to issue orders to the CRPF headquarters to “include the provisions of Security Force Court (SFC), for initiating disciplinary action against the delinquent officers.

Departmental enquiries Vs SFC

  • The SFC is a purely judicial process where the guilt must be proved beyond reasonable doubt and the charged official is at liberty to engage a legal practitioner to defend him.
  • Departmental enquiry is a quasi-judicial proceeding where the mere element of the preponderance of probability is enough to determine guilt.
  • Though the Central Reserve Police Force Act of 1949 provides for conducting judicial trial by a Commandant in his capacity as a Magistrate, seldom is it exercised as it gets into the realm of the judicial process.
  • Hence, the conduct of a departmental enquiry is the better option.

What leads to delay in departmental enquiries against gazetted officers?

  • CRPF rules lay down the procedure for the conduct of departmental enquiries against non-gazetted ranks, and in normal circumstances, the departmental enquiries are completed within three to six months.
  • But when gazetted officers are charge-sheeted, the time taken to order the enquiries is longer.
  • Delay due to getting the views of other institutions: In the case of a gazetted officer, the other institutions like the Union Public Service Commission, the Central Vigilance Commission, the Department of Personnel and Training, and the MHA are also roped in for their views and legal opinion.
  • Dealy due to postponement: When the delinquent officers appear before the inquiring authority presence of the presenting officer and the defence assistant of the charged official is also required.
  • Even if one of them fails to appear for the hearing, the conduct of enquiry must be postponed.
  • Procedural delay: Often, the enquiry is conducted ex parte (without the presence of the charged official), so the recorded statements and other documents must be sent to the charged official.
  • Quite often, delays occur in providing certain prosecution documents to the charged official who may demand them for preparing his own defence.
  • Postal delays further aggravate the matter.
  • Since most officers are busy with operational matters, which gain priority over everything else.

Way forward

  • Appoint retired officers as inquiring authorities: The solution lies in appointing retired officers as inquiring authorities, who can afford to devote their time to the conduct of enquiries as is being done in most departments of the government.
  • Tribunal for CAPF: With increasing cases being filed in the High Courts across the country in service matters, it is high time the government considered the setting up of tribunals for the CAPFs on the lines of the Armed Forces Tribunal for defence services.
  • Retired officers of the rank of Inspectors General and Additional Directors General from the CAPFs could be part of these tribunals along with retired judges of High Courts.

Conclusion

Taking the steps suggested here would ensure the speedy delivery of justice and reduce the burden of the High Courts.

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The economic reforms — looking back to look ahead

op-ed snap | Economics | Mains Paper 3: Effects Of Liberalization On The Economy, Changes In Industrial Policy and their effects on Industrial Growth
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: HRC

Mains level: Paper 3- Reforms to deal with the issues after 1991 reforms

Context

The economic reforms, so far, have been more focused on the technical nature of the economy than the system, process and people. The fundamentals need to be set right with a focus on human capital, technology readiness and productivity.

Benefits and limits of economic reforms of 1991

  • Economic reforms of 1991 — and from time to time, subsequent interjections for liberalisation of economy and trade — have enabled some credible gains for the country.
  • Benefits: Foreign exchange reserves (over $600 billion), sustained manufacturing contribution in GDP, increased share in global exports (from 0.6% in the 1990s to 1.8%), robust software exports, and sustained economic growth in the range of 6%-8% are clear indicators of its success.
  • Limits: Primary drivers of the economy — human capital, technology readiness, productivity, disposable income, capital expenditure, process innovation in setting up businesses, and institutional capacity — have not got enough recognition.

Issues affecting the Indian economy

1) Lack of Human resource capital formation

  • The human resource capital (HRC) formation, a good determinant of labour productivity, has been missing over the entire period of reforms.
  • The HRC rank for India stands at 103; Sri Lanka is at 70, China at 34, and South Korea at 27, as brought out by the Global Human Capital Report, 2017.
  • Factors responsible for low HRC: The lack of quality education, low skilled manpower, and inadequacies in basic health care have resulted in low HRC.

2) Low disposable income

  • The World Bank database on GDP for 2019 indicates the low per capita GDP in India, at $2,104 (at $6,997 in PPP terms, ranked 125th globally) against the world average of $11,429 (at $17,678 in PPP terms).
  • Low per capita GDP has direct links to low per capita family income.
  • Low wages: The report by Deloitte (Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index in 2016) reflects that the hourly wages in India have been $1.7; they are $38, $24, $20.7, and $3.3 for the United States, Japan, South Korea, and China, respectively.
  • Low wages have a direct bearing on the disposable income of families, affecting demand.

3) Low R&D expenditure

  • India’s research and development expenditure stand at 0.8% of GDP, for other fast-emerging economies such as South Korea, it is (4.5%), China (2.1%), and Taiwan (3.3%).
  • Reduced technology readiness: This low expenditure is resulting in lower capacity for innovation in technologies and reduced ‘technology readiness’, especially for manufacturing.

4) Low labour productivity: Result of low HRC and lack of technology readiness

  • The lack of HRC and low technology readiness have impacted labour productivity adversely.
  • World Bank publication of 2018 indicates that India’s labour productivity in manufacturing is less than 10% of the advanced economies including Germany and South Korea, and is about 40% of China.
  • Low productivity has unfavourable consequences for competitiveness, manufacturing growth, exports and economic growth.

5) Long time and more cost in setting up a business

  • There are difficulties in acquiring land for businesses, inefficient utilization of economic infrastructure, and in providing business services.
  • This results in a long time and more cost in setting up enterprises, resulting in a loss of creative energy of entrepreneurs.

Way forward

  • Investment in human capital and technology: First, to attract large investment in manufacturing and advanced services, at a basic level, investment in human capital and technology is a prerequisite.
  • Technology readiness: The reports by McKinsey and the World Economic Forum on advanced manufacturing suggest that Industry 4.0 will be defined by new technologies such as robotics, 3-D printing, artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of things (IoT), etc.
  • Consequently, efforts for technology readiness are very essential to stay competitive.
  • It demands enhancing public research and development expenditure to 2% of GDP over the next three years.
  • Strategies to enhance per capita income: There is a need to work on strategies to enhance per capita income by more wages for workers through higher skills and enhancing minimum wages, besides improving the social security net.
  • Promote business-centric approach: Using insights from the work of Nobel laureate (1993) Douglass C. North, it is necessary to build the capacity of public institutions to create a good environment for business and industry.
  • Policy reforms should lay an emphasis on process innovation and promote a business-centric approach to create a friendly ecosystem and for efficient internal supply chain management to integrate with the global supply chain.
  • Innovative nature in public policymaking: The future of the economy should be particularly viewed in the backdrop of a significant and irreversible shift in terms of reliance on the global supply chain as a result of the knowledge-intensive nature of businesses and exponential effects caused by advanced technologies under Industry 4.0, since the 2010s.
  • Therefore, the strategies adopted since the 1990s till now may not ensure adequate returns and call for innovative approaches in public policymaking.

Consider the question “The economic reforms, so far, have been more focussed on the technical nature of the economy than the system. This resulted in fundamental deficiencies. Suggest the way forward to deal with these deficiencies.”

Conclusion

In sum, it necessitates a systemic approach for policy reforms for setting the economic fundamentals right and to achieve higher growth.

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PPP Investment Models: HAM, Swiss Challenge, Kelkar Committee

Consequences of asset monetisation on ordinary citizens

op-ed snap | Economics | Mains Paper 3: Indian Economy
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: NMP

Mains level: Paper 3- Asset monetisation issues

Context

In the Budget for 2021-22, the Finance Minister had announced the Government’s decision to monetise operating public infrastructure assets. The National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) was unveiled, which shows that the Government intends to raise ₹6-lakh crore over the next four years by monetising several “core assets”.

Four issues with NMP

1)  Assets transferred would be performing assets and not idle asset

  • Strategic and significant asset: The Government has identified “performing assets” to transfer to private entities and these are both strategic and significant.
  • These include over 26,700 kilometres of highways, 400 railway stations, 90 passenger trains etc.
  • Moreover, existing public sector infrastructure in telecoms, power transmission and distribution and petroleum, petroleum products and natural gas pipelines are included in the NMP.
  • Under the NMP, the Government intends to lease or divest its rights over these assets via long-term leases against a consideration that can be upfront and/or periodic payments.

2) Consequences for ordinary citizens

  • There are two dimensions about the impact on common citizens.
  • Public as a stakeholder: The assets have all been created through substantial contribution by the tax-paying public, who have stakes in their operation and management.
  • Double taxation: These assets have, until now, been managed by the Government and its agencies,  which operate in public interest.
  • Therefore, charges borne by the public for using these assets have remained reasonable.
  • With private companies getting the sole responsibility of running all these assets, prices of these services will go up, as resutl the citizens of this country would be double-taxed.
  • First, they paid taxes to create the assets, and would now pay higher user charges.
  • Concern: Therefore, as the Government prepares to transfer “performing assets” to the private companies, it has the responsibility to ensure that user charges do not price the consumers out of the market.

3) Are there other avenues to plug the revenue gap?

  • Increase tax revenue: One possibility was to increase the tax revenue, for at 17.4% in 2019-20, India’s tax to GDP ratio was relatively low, as compared to most advanced nations.
  • Improvements in tax compliance and plugging loopholes have long been emphasised as the surest way to improve tax revenue, but little has been done, as the following example shows.
  • Since 2005-06, the Government has been providing data on the profits declared and taxes paid by companies that file their returns electronically.
  • Data shows that India’s large companies have been exploiting the loopholes for reporting lower profits and to escape the tax net.

4) Efficiency issue

  • According to NITI Aayog, the “strategic objective of the Asset Monetisation programme is to unlock the value of investments in public sector assets by tapping private sector capital and efficiencies”.
  • The NITI Aayog objective assumes that public sector enterprises are inefficient, which is contrary to the reality.
  • In 2018-19, while 28% of these enterprises were loss-making, the corresponding figure for large companies was 51%.

Consider the question “How asset monetisation is different from the privatisation? What are the issues with the National Manetisation Pipeline that seeks to monetise the assets?”

Conclusion

The government should address the issues mention here associated with the roll out of the National Monetisation Pipeline to make it a success.

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Parliament – Sessions, Procedures, Motions, Committees etc

Spirit of federalism lies in consultation

op-ed snap | Polity | Mains Paper 2: Federalism
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: Concurrent List

Mains level: Paper 2- Federalism and Concurrent List

Context

Recently, various State governments raised concerns about Central unilateralism in the enactment of critical laws on subjects in the Concurrent List of the Seventh Schedule.

Objection of the state against Centre legislating on the subject in Concurrent List without consulting States

  • Unilateral legislation on subjects in Concurrent list: Kerala Chief Minister stated that it is not in the essence of federalism for the Union government to legislate unilaterally, on the subjects in the Concurrent List.
  • Encroaching on powers of States: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister raised the issue by calling on other Chief Ministers against the Union government encroaching on powers under the State and Concurrent Lists.
  • The Kerala Legislative Assembly unanimously passed a resolution against the Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2020.
  • The Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly passed a resolution against the controversial farm laws.

Background of the Concurrent List

  • The Concurrent List gives the Union and the State Legislatures concurrent powers to legislate on the subjects contained in it.
  • Purpose of Concurrent List: The fields in the Concurrent List were to be of common interest to the Union and the States, and the power to legislate on these subjects to be shared with the Union so that there would be uniformity in law across the country.

Union government extending its control on subjects in the Concurrent List and State list

1) Farm laws: Encroaching on the powers of States

  • Parliament passed the farm laws without consulting the States.
  • State List subject: The laws, essentially related to Entry 14 (agriculture clause) belonging to the State List.
  • However, Parliament passed the law citing Entry 33 (trade and commerce clause) in the Concurrent List.
  • Against legal principle set by the Supreme Court: The Supreme Court, beginning from the State of Bombay vs F.N. Balsara case, said that if an enactment falls within one of the matters assigned to the State List and reconciliation is not possible with an entry in the Concurrent or Union List after employing the doctrine of “pith and substance”, the legislative domain of the State Legislature must prevail.

2) Major Port Authorities Act 2021 and Indian Ports Bill: Centre taking away the power of State

  • The Major Ports Authorities Act, 2021, was passed by Parliament earlier this year.
  • Goa objected to the law, stating that it would lead to the redundancy of the local laws.
  • Concurrent List subject: When it comes to non-major ports, the field for legislation is located in Entry 31 of the Concurrent List. 
  • The Indian Ports Act, 1908, presently governs the field related to non-major ports.
  • As per the Indian Ports Act, 1908, the power to regulate and control the minor ports remained with the State governments.
  • The new draft Indian Ports Bill, 2021, proposes the Maritime State Development Council (MSDC), which is overwhelmingly controlled by the Union government.

3) Electricity (Amendment) Bill,2020: Centre taking away powers of State

  • Various States like West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala have also come forward against the Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2020.
  • The field related to electricity is traceable to Entry 38 of the Concurrent List.
  • The power to regulate the sector was vested with the State Electricity Regulatory Commissions (SERCs), members of which were appointed by the State government.
  • The proposed amendment seeks to establish National Selection Committee, dominated by members nominated by the Union government that will make appointments to the SERCs.
  • The amendment also proposes the establishment of a Centrally-appointed Electricity Contract Enforcement Authority (ECEA).
  • In effect, the power to regulate the electricity sector would be taken away from the State government.

Way forward

  • Consultation with States: The National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (NCRWC), or the Venkatachaliah Commission, had recommended that individual and collective consultation with the States should be undertaken through the Inter-State Council established under Article 263 of the Constitution.
  • Coordination of policy and action in concurrent jurisdiction: The Sarkaria Commission Report had recommended that there should be a coordination of policy and action in all areas of concurrent or overlapping jurisdiction through a process of mutual consultation.
  • Limit powers to ensuring uniformity: The Sarkaria Commission further recommended that the Union government, while exercising powers under the Concurrent List, limit itself to the purpose of ensuring uniformity in basic issues of national policy and not more.
  • Responsibility of Centre: The Supreme Court itself had held in the S.R. Bommai vs Union of India case, the States are not mere appendages of the Union.
  • The Union government should ensure that the power of the States is not trampled with.

Consider the question “There has been instances of protest by the State government against Centre legislating unilaterally on subjects in Concurrent List. What are the implications of this for the federalism? Suggest the way forward.”

Conclusion

The essence of cooperative federalism lies in consultation and dialogue, and unilateral legislation without taking the States into confidence will lead to more protests on the streets.

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Disinvestment in India

National monetisation pipeline has narrow outlook

op-ed snap | Economics | Mains Paper 3: Indian Economy
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: NMP

Mains level: Paper 3- Issues with National Monetisation Policy

Context

Recently, FM announced the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) to lease a slew of “brownfield” (already developed) but underutilised public sector assets to the private sector with the objective of raising Rs 6 lakh crore.

About the NMP

  • The assets identified for lease include roads, railways, ports, power, mining, aviation, oil and gas pipelines, warehouses, hotels and even two sports stadia.
  • The idea is to create “structured public-private partnerships” to unlock value from public sector assets and to recycle the revenues so raised into new infrastructure.
  • But the move raises several concerns.

3 concerns with NMP

1) Government is preferring financial value of assets over public welfare

  • The design of the NMP is out of sync with existential challenges — global warming, pandemics, geopolitical chaos and fundamentalism.
  •  The assets are valued on the basis of conventional financial metrics (enterprise value, book value, net present value, the costs of comparable assets).
  • The model seemingly absolves the government from the responsibility to unlock the intrinsic “social” (to include “smart” and “clean” ) value of these assets.

2) It will lead to concentration of capital

  • NMP is designed to attract deep-pocketed financial institutions (PE firms) and industrial conglomerates.
  • This is because the valuations are so high that few other entities will have the resources or the risk carrying capacity to respond.
  • The result will be a deepening of the concentration of capital and existing inequalities.
  • There will be economic and social implications.

3) Addressing the system problem

  • The government should have asked itself a fundamental question before placing a substantial share of public assets on the block:
  • Why have these assets been so poorly managed?
  • Was it because of bad leadership, inadequate talent within the PSEs, and/or systemic and structural shortcomings?
  • If the reason for low productivity was poor leadership or lack of talent, the transfer of these assets to a different, private sector-led organisational and investment structure would make sense.
  • Structural issues: But if the reason had to do with structural impediments, then such a change may not be warranted, at least not in the first instance.
  •  The example, gas pipelines GAIL are hugely underutilized, but this is not because of the “inefficiency” of GAIL, the PSE operator.
  • It is because of structural factors such as the shortage of domestic gas supplies; the regressive taxation system; the relatively uncompetitive price of gas and the perennial tussle between the Centre and state governments over land access.
  • A similar point can be made about most of the other assets identified for monetisation.
  • Their low productivity is because their PSE operators have faced a combination of systemic hurdles related to weak dispute resolution mechanisms; regulatory miasma; lack of transparency in governance; pricing distortions and intrusive bureaucratic intervention.
  • Way forward: So, until and unless these systemic problems are addressed, the private sector will find it difficult to harness the full value of these assets and the transfer of operatorship to them will offer at best a partial palliative.

Conclusion

Private-public investment structures make sense, but they must be modeled to also generate social value. In today’s world, there are no shortcuts to sustainable development.

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Hunger and Nutrition Issues – GHI, GNI, etc.

The nutrition-hygiene link

op-ed snap | Governance | Mains Paper 2: Health & Education
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: Environmental enteropathy

Mains level: Paper 2- Addressing the nutrition problem through WASH

Context

A recent UNICEF report stated that nearly 12 lakh children could die in low-income countries in the next six months due to a decrease in routine health services and an increase in wasting. Nearly three lakh such children would be from India.

Problem of nutrition in India and factors responsible for it

  • The National Family Health Survey (NFHS 5) indicates that since the onset of the pandemic, acute undernourishment in children below the age of five has worsened.
  • According to the latest data, 37.9 per cent of children under five are stunted, and 20.8 per cent are wasted — a form of malnutrition in which children are too thin for their height.
  • Comparison with other countries: This is much higher than in other developing countries where, on average, 25 per cent of children suffer from stunting and 8.9 per cent are wasted.
  • Factors: Inadequate dietary intake is the most direct cause of undernutrition.
  • Several other factors also affect nutritional outcomes, such as contaminated drinking water, poor sanitation, and unhygienic living conditions.
  • According to the World Health Organisation, 50 per cent of all mal- and under-nutrition can be traced to diarrhoea and intestinal worm infections.
  • Nutrition and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) are intricately linked, and changes in one tend, directly or indirectly, to affect the other.
  • Poor hygiene and sanitation in developing countries lead to a sub-clinical condition called “environmental enteropathy” in children.
  • Environmental enteropathy is a disorder of the intestine which prevents the proper absorption of nutrients, rendering them effectively useless.
  • Childhood diarrhoea is a major public health problem in low- and middle-income countries, leading to high mortality in children under five.
  • According to NFHS 4, approximately 9 percent of children under five years of age in India experience diarrhoeal disease.

Way forward

  • Investment in WASH: The link between WASH and nutrition suggests that greater attention to, and investments in, WASH are a sure-shot way of bolstering the country’s nutritional status.
  • Addressing nutrition sanitation problems together: Both WASH and nutrition must be addressed together through a lens of holistic, sustainable community engagement to enable long-term impact.
  • One of the first instances of the link between WASH and nutrition appeared in the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, which urges states to ensure “adequate nutritious foods and clean drinking water” to combat disease and malnutrition.
  • Safe drinking water, proper sanitation, and hygiene can significantly reduce diarrhoeal and nutritional deaths.
  • Multistructural approach: What we require is a coordinated, multisectoral approach among the health, water, sanitation, and hygiene bodies, not to mention strong community engagement.
  • WHO has estimated that access to proper water, hygiene, and sanitation can prevent the deaths of at least 8,60,000 children a year caused by undernutrition.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, all sides are working towards a common goal: A safe and healthy population and the hope that the 75th year of Independence becomes a watershed moment in India’s journey.

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BRICS Summits

BRICS

op-ed snap | International Relations | Mains Paper 2: Bilateral, Regional and Global Groupings and agreements involving India
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: BRICS summits headed by India

Mains level: Paper 2- BRICS and challenges

Context

The 13th BRICS summit is set to be held on September 9 in digital format under India’s chairmanship

Challenges and opportunities for BRICS

  • The importance of BRICS is self-evident: it represents 42% of the world’s population, 30% of the land area, 24% of global GDP and 16% of international trade.
  • Weathering geopolitical challenges: Member states have been carrying BRICS forward in an era of complex geopolitics.
  • They have bravely continued holding dozens of meetings and summits, even as India-China relations were strained after Galwan valley incident.
  • Internal challenges: There is also the reality of the strained relations of China and Russia with the West, and of serious internal challenges preoccupying both Brazil and South Africa.
  • On the other hand, a potential bond emerged due to the battle against COVID-19.
  • Challenges to trade ties: BRICS has been busy deepening trade and investment ties among its member states.
  • The difficulty stems from China’s centrality and dominance of intra-BRICS trade flows.
  • How to create a better internal balance remains a challenge, reinforced by the urgent need for diversification and strengthening of regional value chains.
  • China’s aggression: Beijing’s aggressive policy, especially against India, puts BRICS solidarity under exceptional strain.
  • Lack of support: BRICS countries have not done enough to assist the Global South to win their optimal support for their agenda.

Does BRICS truly matter?

  • The grouping has gone through a reasonably productive journey.
  • Acts as a bridge: It strove to serve as a bridge between the Global North and Global South.
  • It developed a common perspective on a wide range of global and regional issues.
  • It established the New Development Bank; created a financial stability net in the form of Contingency Reserve Arrangement; and is on the verge of setting up a Vaccine Research and Development Virtual Center.

Immediate goals: 4 priorities

  • As the current chair, India has outlined four priorities.
  • Reforms of multilateral institutions: The first is to pursue reform of multilateral institutions ranging from the United Nations, World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to the World Trade Organization and now even the World Health Organization.
  • Reform needs global consensus which is hardly feasible in the current climate of strategic contestation between the U.S. and China and the devastation caused by COVID-19.
  • Nevertheless, Indian officials rightly remind us that BRICS emerged from the desire to challenge dominance (by the U.S.) in the early years of the century, and it remains committed to the goal of counter-dominance (by China) now.
  • Combating terrorism: Tragic developments concerning Afghanistan have helped to focus attention sharply on this overarching theme, stressing the need to bridge the gap between rhetoric and action.
  • China, for example, feels little hesitation in supporting clear-cut denunciations of terrorist groups and supports Pakistan, which is host to several international terrorist groups.
  • BRICS is attempting to pragmatically shape its counter-terrorism strategy by crafting the BRICS Counter Terrorism Action Plan.
  • Counter Terrorism Action Plan contains specific measures to fight radicalisation, terrorist financing and misuse of the Internet by terrorist groups.
  • Technology and digital solution: Promoting technological and digital solutions for the Sustainable Development Goals and expanding people-to-people cooperation are the other two BRICS priorities.

Conclusion

It is necessary for leaders, officials and academics of this grouping to undertake serious soul-searching and find a way out of the present predicament.

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Food Safety Standards – FSSAI, food fortification, etc.

Why India’s Steady Exports Are At A Record High?

op-ed snap | Economics | Mains Paper 3: Indian Economy
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: NMP

Mains level: Paper 3- Need for export facilitation

Context

First-quarter growth in India’s gross domestic product (GDP) stands at 20.1 %. This however still means that GDP in the first quarter was 9.2 % below its level two years ago.

Export: Challenges

  • The key driver of growth in the coming quarters will be exports riding on the rapidity of recovery in major markets.
  • There are two serious worries here.
  • 1) Bullwhip element: This could cause an immediate ramp-up in demand for steel and other such upstream elements in global supply chains, with a corresponding damp down in the months to come.
  • In this connection, although the rates under the scheme for remission of duties and taxes on exported products (RODTEP) were finally notified in mid-August.
  • Steel, pharma and chemicals get no rebate at all, although many products using these inputs do.
  • The scheme looks like a subsidy to selected sectors disguised as duty rollback, which can get India into trouble at the World Trade Organization (WTO).
  • These excluded products need the rebate if they are to survive in a fiercely price-competitive global market in the months to come.
  • 2) Container shortage: A crippling shortage of sea-borne containers has afflicted key large-volume products in the Indian export basket (tea, basmati rice, furniture, garments).
  • Sea-freight subsidy: At a time when container rates have shot up, there is surely a case for a sea-freight subsidy (for a limited period).
  • Even more urgently, the estimated 25,000-30,000 containers locked up at different ports owing to customs disputes need to be unloaded into warehouses and these containers freed.

Can National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) spur growth?

  • Even if the expected ₹88,000 crore of revenue under NMP is realized during the current year, it is intended to feed only a small part of the infrastructure expenditure budgeted for the year.
  • It is the latter that will have to drive growth. Monetization is merely a funding source.
  • The scheme offers a participation incentive to states with a 33% matching transfer from the Centre for revenues that states realize under the scheme.
  • This matching transfer could well have the perverse consequence of states under-achieving the potential value realizable. 
  • Volume II of the NMP document refers to the Scheme for Special Assistance to States for Capital Expenditure announced in October 2020.
  • It offered states an interest-free loan with bullet repayment after 50 years to complete stalled capital projects, or settle the outstanding bills of contractors.
  • The NMP demands clear and well-thought-through processes, with sufficient transparency and safeguards in the form of regulatory structures.

Conclusion

For now, the need of the hour is export facilitation.

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Foreign Policy Watch: India-Afghanistan

Afghan exit- not the end of the road for the U.S.

op-ed snap | International Relations | Mains Paper 2: Bilateral, Regional and Global Groupings and agreements involving India
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: Not much

Mains level: Paper 2- Implications of Afghanistan exit for the US

Context

The debate has abruptly shifted to the future of the United States after its withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Background of the US presence in Afghanistan

  • The terrorist attacks of 9/11, which was a game-changing global experience, led the U.S. to enter Afghanistan.
  •  The terrorist attacks transformed the geopolitics of the world.
  • The most powerful country in the world, which had the capacity to destroy the world many times over, became powerless before a few terrorists.
  •  Once the responsibility of the attack was traced to Osama bin Laden and the terrorists in Afghanistan, it was imperative for the U.S. to retaliate by overthrowing the Taliban regime.

How US presence in Afghanistan benefited the region

  • After accomplishing its mission the US was not able to withdraw because the Afghanistan government was unable to withstand the onslaught of the Taliban and other terrorist groups.
  • Even neighbouring countries, including India, were strongly in favour of continuing the American presence.
  • The US presence helped to provide a certain stability for Afghanistan.
  • The result of their presence was the prevalence of relative peace in the region except that Pakistan fattened the Taliban with American largesse.
  • The U.S. presence in Afghanistan had succeeded in containing the dangers of terrorism for two decades.

Way forward for the US and the rest of the world

  • The US is still the most powerful economic and military power around which the whole constellation of the world rotates.
  • Democratic world leadership: The world has a stake in ensuring that a democratic nation leads the world rather than an expansionist dictatorship which has no public opinion to restrain it.
  • Maintain the US leadership: The free world has a responsibility to maintain the American leadership of the world till a wiser and more benign alternative is found.

Conclusion

Much has been written about a post-American world for some years now. But it looks that the demise of America, as Mark Twain said about the reports of his own death, is greatly exaggerated.

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Hydel projects in Ganga-Himalayan basin

op-ed snap | Enviro & Biodiversity | Mains Paper 3: Conservation, Environmental Pollution & Degradation, Eia
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: Main Central Thrust

Mains level: Paper 3- Rethinking the hydroelectric projects in Himalayas

Context

The affidavit filed recently by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) in an ongoing matter in the Supreme Court of India has recommended the construction of seven partially constructed hydroelectric projects in the Uttarakhand Himalaya.

Background

  • After the Kedarnath tragedy of 2013, an expert body (EB-I) was constituted to investigate whether the hydro-power projects in the State of Uttarakhand was linked to the disaster.
  •  In its findings, EB-I said there was a “direct and indirect impact” of these dams in aggravating the disaster.
  • The Ministry formed another expert body (EB-II; B.P. Das committee) whose mandate has been to pave the way for all projects through some design change modifications
  • This affidavit, dated August 17, reveals that the government is inclined towards construction of 26 other projects, as in the recommendation of the expert body (EB-II; B.P. Das committee). 
  • Ministry’s own observations and admissions given in its earlier affidavit dated May 5, 2014 admitted that hydroelectric projects did aggravate the 2013 flood.

Concerns

  • Sustainability: The sustainability of the dams in the long term is highly questionable as hydropower solely relies on the excess availability of water.
  • Temperatures across the region are projected to rise by about 1°C to 2°C on average by 2050.
  • Retreating glaciers and the alternating phases of floods and drought will impact the seasonal flows of rivers.
  • Sediment hotspots: The most crucial aspect is the existence of sediment hotspot paraglacial zones, which at the time of a cloud burst, contribute huge amounts of debris and silt in the river.
  • The flash floods in these Himalayan valleys do not carry water alone; they also carry a massive quantity of debris.
  • This was pointed out by EB-II alongside its recommendation not build any projects beyond 2,000 metres or north of the MCT, or the Main Central Thrust (it is a major geological fault).
  • Externalities:  Though hydropower is renewable source, there are contentious externalities associated with the construction of dams such as social displacement, ecological impacts, environmental and technological risks.
  • Climate change: these projects exacerbate ecological vulnerability, in a region that is already in a precarious state.
  • The intense anthropogenic activities associated with the proliferation of hydroelectric projects in these precarious regions accelerate the intensity of flash floods, avalanches, and landslides.
  • Failure of mountain slopes: The construction and maintenance of an extensive network of underground tunnels carrying water to the powerhouses contribute to the failure of mountain slopes.
  • Aggravating the disaster: The Rishi Ganga tragedy and the disasters of 2012 (flashfloods), 2013 are examples of how hydroelectric projects which come in the way of high-velocity flows aggravate a disaster and should be treated as a warning against such projects.

Conclusion

Considering the environmental and cultural significance of these areas, it is imperative that the Government refrains from the construction of hydroelectric projects and declares the upper reaches of all the headstreams of the Ganga as eco-sensitive zones. It must allow the river to flow unfettered and free.

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Back2Basics: Main Central Thrust (MCT)

  • The Main Central Thrust is a major geological fault where the Indian Plate has pushed under the Eurasian Plate along the Himalaya.
  • The fault slopes down to the north and is exposed on the surface in a NW-SE direction (strike).
  • It is a thrust fault that continues along 2200 km of the Himalaya mountain belt

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Issues related to Economic growth

How to unleash the entrepreneurial power of 1.3 billion Indians

op-ed snap | Economics | Mains Paper 3: Indian Economy
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: SEZ Act

Mains level: Paper 3- Learning from the success of IT industry in India

Context

Last Independence Day, the PM announced that 15,000 of our current 69,000+ employer compliances and 6000+ filings have been identified for removal.

Why India is a development economics outlier?

  • Software industry despite being low-income country: Few models predict a $2,500 per-capita income country with five million people writing software and internet data costs per GB at 3 percent of US levels.
  • Digital identity: In India there are1.2 billion people empowered with paperless digital identity verification.
  • Digital economy: India also witnesses 3.5 billion real-time monthly digital payments.
  • Attraction for Investment: $10 billion in private equity raised in July, and a $3 trillion public market capitalization.
  • Harvard’s Ricardo Hausman believes, the only sustained predictor of sustained economic success is economic complexity and suggests that India’s prosperity is less than our economic complexity would predict.

India’s software industry

  • Our software industry is an oasis of high productivity — 0.8 per cent of India’s workers generate 8 percent of GDP.
  • The mandatory global digital literacy program and digital investment super-cycle sparked by Covid will double our software employment in five years.
  • Our software industry’s talent, alumni, and global engagement — 50,000 tech startups that have raised over $90 billion since 2014 from 500+ institutional investors.
  • India’s software services industry and tech startups are each estimated to be worth about $400 billion today which is expected to grow to $1 trillion by 2025.

Why did India’s manufacturing sector fail to perform while its software industry flourished?

  • One of the reasons is the different regulatory thought worlds of the Software Technology Parks India rules of 1991 (STPI) and the Special Economic Zones Act of 2005 (SEZ).
  • STPI’s genius was simplicity. It allowed rebadging existing assets, embraced trust over suspicion, and adopted self-reporting that was largely paperless, presence less, and cashless.
  • SEZs largely replicated the regulatory cholesterol and distrust that has made India unfavorable for employment-intensive industries.

Way forward

  • Productivity: Raising per-capita needs high productivity manufacturing and domestic services firms that disrupt our low-level equilibrium of labor handicapped without capital and capital handicapped without labor.
  • Opportunities for India: Until recently, China’s tech industry seemed unstoppable — half of their 160 unicorns operate in AI, big data, and robotics. But this is changing.
  • Over 50 recent regulatory actions against China’s tech industry have already cost investors over $1 trillion.
  • This offers an opportunity for India due to its attractiveness to factories, multinationals, startups, venture capital, and pension funds.
  • Replicate regulatory trust and simplicity offered to the technology industry to other sectors: India’s global soft power by reaching revenue and valuation possibilities that felt unimaginable — have come before physical infrastructure, farm employment reduction, and higher women’s labor force participation.
  • Massifying our prosperity needs massive formal, non-farm job creation.
  • Creating the productive firms that will offer these jobs to our young needs replicating the regulatory trust and simplicity that our technology industry enjoys in the rest of our economy.

Conclusion

Imagine India@100 if we cut regulatory cholesterol today and spent the next 25 years unleashing the entrepreneurial energies of 1.3 billion Indians — 65 percent of whom are below 35 years old.

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Climate Change Impact on India and World – International Reports, Key Observations, etc.

India must commit to net zero emissions

op-ed snap | Enviro & Biodiversity | Mains Paper 3: Conservation, Environmental Pollution & Degradation, Eia
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: Net zero emission issue

Mains level: Paper 3- Net zero emission commitment

Context

The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in November in Glasgow is shaping up to be the most important climate meeting since the Paris Agreement in 2015.

What are net-zero emissions?

Carbon neutrality refers to achieving net-zero carbon dioxide emissions. This can be done by balancing emissions of carbon dioxide with its removal or by eliminating emissions from society.

Increase in pace and scale of climate action

  • Over 50% of the global economy is already committed to net zero emissions by 2050.
  • Over 100 countries have already committed to net zero emissions by 2050, with more expected at COP26.
  • The pace and scale of climate action are only set to increase, with the recent IPCC report unequivocal on the need for urgent and stronger responses.
  • It is not only governments that are increasing climate action. The business world is too, not just to protect themselves against the risks of climate change but also to take advantage of the massive opportunities arising as the global economy shifts to net-zero emissions.

Why India should commit to a net-zero target

  • National interest due to vulnerability: India itself has a national interest in ambitious global and national climate action.
  • It is among the most vulnerable countries to climate change and, therefore, should be among the more active against the threats.
  • Influence as a rising power: Second, as a rising power, India naturally seeks stronger influence globally.
  • Being an outlier on the global challenge facing our generation does not support this aim.
  • Drag on international diplomacy: India’s reluctance to commit to net-zero will become a significant drag on India’s international diplomacy.
  • This applies not just to key relationships like with the U.S., but also with much of the Group of 77 (G77) states, who are increasingly concerned to see climate action, and in multilateral groupings such as the United Nations and ASEAN-APEC.
  • Interconnected with the economy: There is no longer a trade-off between reducing emissions and economic growth.
  • For example, the U.K. has reduced emissions by over 40% and grown its economy by over 70% since 1990.
  • Solar energy costs have fallen 90% in recent years, providing the cheapest electricity in India ever seen.
  • Also, given the negative impacts, addressing climate change in India’s economic development is now central to success, not an added luxury to consider.
  • The transition of the global economy to net zero emissions is the biggest commercial opportunity in history.
  • In just the energy sector alone, an estimated $1.6 to $3.8 trillion of investment is required every year until 2050.

India’s climate actions

  • India is set to significantly exceed its Paris Agreement commitment of reducing the emissions intensity of its GDP by 33-35% below 2005 levels by 2030.
  • Emphasis on renewable: India is impressing the world with its leading roll-out of renewable energy and target for 450GW by 2030, linked to its leadership on the International Solar Alliance and recent national hydrogen strategy.
  • Corporates: Indian corporates are also stepping up, with the Tata Group winning awards on sustainability, Mahindra committing to net-zero by 2040, and Reliance by 2035.
  • Notwithstanding reasonable arguments about historical responsibility, per capita emissions, and equity, India’s national interests in climate action are now engaged in ways that go significantly beyond waiting for donor support to drive ambition.

The way forward: International cooperation

  • The world needs to work together for success in the form of stronger political engagement, policy support in areas of mutual challenge such as energy policy, carbon markets, and economic recovery.
  • Practical support and cooperation in areas like renewable energy and integrating it with the national grid, zero-emissions transport, decarbonising hard to abate sectors like steel, cement, and chemicals, and decarbonising agriculture offer significant scope to raise ambition.
  • As does working with India on innovative green financing for decarbonizing investment.

Conclusion

India’s tryst with destiny rests in its own remarkable hands, as it always has been. In a land where the earth is called mother, and Mahatma Gandhi, major religions, and the Constitution enshrine environmental care, commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 should almost be foretold.

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