Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Regulatory challenges faced by civil society organisations
Context
Recently, the Missionaries of Charity established by Nobel Laureate Mother Teresa was in the news for the cancellation of its permission under the FCRA.
Detailed scrutiny delaying permission for grant
- The levels of due diligence and the information sought on the one hand and the annual declarations to be given by the board members of civil society organisations on the other have increased significantly.
- The mandatory opening of bank accounts for foreign contributions has been centralised in one branch of the State Bank of India.
- The linking of Permanent Account Number (PAN), Aadhaar number and mapping it with the bank account/s of the individual board members are happening.
- The registrations under Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) have been long necessitated in order to undertake due diligence of the causes for which the organisation is working for and also to have a handle on the traceability of funds.
- The dashboard shows a little under 17,000 active organisations — which have either got permission or will know their fate by March 2022, while around 33,000 organisations have either lost their permission or it has expired.
Various restrictions
- Restriction on sub-grant: In the past, the amendments in the FCRA that restricted the ability to sub-grant, killed many of the niche organisations working in very remote areas which had no direct access to international funding but were doing it through larger non-governmental organisations.
- Restriction on administrative expenses: The other amendment restricting the proportion of expenses on administration almost choked organisations that worked for the rights of the disposed.
- The increasing level of surveillance type of data sought has resulted in many organisations losing people on their governance structure and resulting in problems in funding.
Why do we need Civil Society Organisations?
- We need them because they usually work on what can be called an unreasonable agenda.
- This unreasonableness falls in three large verticals.
- [1] Ensuring efficiency and accountability from state: The first is that they ask for greater efficiency, delivery and accountability from the state.
- Whether is it about rehabilitation and compensation in the case of land acquisition or setting up a great accountability framework as was done through the movement led by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan for the Right to Information.
- [2] Correcting extractive nature of market: The second vertical is in correcting the extractive nature of markets.
- The groups asking for environmental accountability are looking at inter-generational justice on a matter that is not very precisely measurable but is palpable.
- [3] Picking up niche causes: The third is basically picking up causes that are so niche that it is beyond the capability of the state to come up with such initiatives.
- For example, a drama school set up in a village called Heggodu, Karnataka, or an idea of distributing clothing for work as done by Goonj.
- These initiatives cannot be put into specific business plans, spreadsheets or government schemes.
- They, therefore, need a grant-based, cause-based revenue stream model.
Should these organisations accept foreign funding?
- Causes have no boundaries: “Causes” have no boundaries and funding for such socially desirable belief systems could come from beyond borders.
- Some causes carried out by organisations such as Doctors Without Borders, or Reporters Without Borders are by definition international in nature.
- Similar is the case with the Jaipur foot provided by the Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti.
- The humanitarian work by the Missionaries of Charity is beyond the capability of a state.
- Such causes do not have a rational basis to be explained in terms of a financial model; how do you put a price tag to press freedom?
- The niche funding will happen from agencies that may be beyond the borders.
- The duality of welcoming foreign investments (which takes away capital gains and dividends) while actively discouraging foreign aid to charities is staring us in the face.
Conclusion
The government needs to ensure that the regulations do not create hurdles for the civil society organisations in their functioning and receiving fundings.
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: Commitment to net-zero emission targets
Mains level: Paper 3- Transition towards clean energy
Context
At a time when our planet faces an existential crisis, there is little doubt that we need innovative, scientific and urgent steps to secure humanity’s future.
India’s climate commitment
- We need to act decisively to reach global net-zero, restricting future cumulative emissions to the remaining carbon budget — as COP26 noted — if the rise in temperature is to remain within the limits of the Paris Agreement.
- At COP26, India announced its climate commitments — the “Panchamrit”, including a commitment to reach net-zero by 2070.
- India’s announcement of its net-zero goal is a major step considering that our country is not the cause of global warming.
- Its historical cumulative emissions are a mere 4.37 per cent of the world’s total.
India’s steps to achieve the targets
[1] India’s renewable energy targets and achievements
- India’s renewable energy targets have steadily become more ambitious, from the 175 GW by 2022 declared at Paris, to 450 GW by 2030 at the UN Climate Summit, and now 500 GW by 2030, announced at COP26.
- India has also announced the target of 50 per cent installed power generation capacity from non-fossil energy sources by 2030, raising the existing target of 40 per cent, which has already been almost achieved.
- Renewable technologies: India will not lag in terms of new cutting-edge renewable technologies and has already announced a Hydrogen Energy Mission for grey and green hydrogen.
- In energy efficiency, the market-based scheme of Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) has avoided 92 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions during its first and second cycles.
[2] India’s E-mobility transtion
- FAME: India is accelerating its e-mobility transition with the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles Scheme to support the electric vehicle market development and enable its manufacturing ecosystem to achieve self-sustenance.
- Incentives for customers and companies: The government has also announced a slew of incentives for customers and companies to promote e-vehicles.
- Adoption of BS-VI: India leapfrogged from Bharat Stage-IV (BS-IV) to Bharat Stage-VI (BS-VI) emission norms by April 1, 2020.
- Scrapping policy: A voluntary vehicle scrapping policy to phase out old and unfit vehicles now complements these schemes.
- Electrification of railway routes: Indian Railways is charging ahead, targeting the full electrification of all broad-gauge routes by 2023.
[3] Ujjwala Yojana and UJALA
- The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana has benefitted 88 million households with LPG connections.
- More than 367 million LED bulbs have been distributed under the UJALA scheme, leading to energy savings of more than 47 billion units of electricity per year and a reduction of 38.6 million tonnes of CO2 per year.
- With these and many other initiatives, India has already achieved a reduction of 24 per cent in the emission intensity of its GDP between 2005 and 2016, and is on track to meet its target of 33 to 35 per cent by 2030.
Role of private sector
- Since industries also contribute to GHG emissions, any climate action will need to reduce or offset emissions that emerge from industrial and commercial activity.
- The public and private sectors in India are already playing a key role in meeting the climate challenge, helped by growing customer and investor awareness, as well as increasing regulatory and disclosure requirements.
- Enterprises are well-positioned to not just adapt to but also gain from the low-carbon transition.
- The low-carbon transition challenge is bigger for companies that are largely coal-powered and contribute more than half of our country’s emissions.
- The business fraternity must make the best possible use of this opportunity to invest in climate technologies and expand the use of renewable energy sources.
- The Indian cement industry has taken pioneering measures and achieved one of the biggest sectoral low carbon milestones worldwide.
Way forward
- India’s journey on the low-carbon pathway towards net-zero requires the active participation of all stakeholders.
- Sustainable lifestyles and climate justice are at the core of this journey.
Conclusion
With cooperation from the private sector, India will be able to responsibly use its fair share of the global carbon space and contribute to reaching the global net-zero goal to build a more environmentally sustainable planet.
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- Capex boom in India
Context
Economists are predicting a potential virtuous capital investments (capex) cycle to kick in globally as we emerge from the pandemic.
Why do analysts think that capital investment cycle is about to start?
- Less leveraged: Corporates are less leveraged today compared to 2008.
- Indian corporates repaid debts of more than Rs 1.5 trillion.
- Fiscal and monetary support: Companies are also more confident of durable fiscal and monetary support.
- Increased savings: Households have large excess savings built during Covid — $1.7 trillion in the US and roughly $300 billion in India as per a UBS report.
- Cash: Lastly, corporates are sitting on a large cash pile – S&P 500 firms’ cash has soared from $1 trillion pre-pandemic to $1.5 trillion now.
Why capex wave is difficult in India?
- Fall in capital formation: India’s fixed capital formation rate has steadily fallen from 36 per cent of GDP in 2008 to 26 per cent in 2020.
- For a set of 718 listed companies for which data is consistently available from 2005, the capex growth rate has decreased from 7 per cent in 2008 to around 2 per cent in 2020.
- Low return on invested capital: The return on invested capital in FY21 is still low at 2-3 per cent compared with 16-18 per cent returns in 2005-08.
- Structural issues: Land acquisition is still tough, changes to labour laws have been slow, and reform uncertainty has resurfaced with the rollback of the agriculture reform laws.
- Discouraging current data: As per CMIE data, the quarter ending in June 2021 saw Rs 2.72 lakh crore worth of new projects announced. This fell to Rs 2.22 lakh crore for the September 2021 quarter.
- This is much below the average of Rs 4 lakh crore a quarter of new project announcements during 2018 and 2019.
- Further, new projects are concentrated in fewer industries (power, and technology) with the top three accounting for 44 per cent of the total of new projects announced.
- Low capacity utilisation: At the same time, capacity utilisation for corporate India is at an all-time low.
- From a peak of 83 per cent in 2010, when capex was running hot, utilisation levels declined to 70 per cent just before the pandemic, and further to 60 per cent in June 2021 as per the RBI’s latest OBICUS data.
- Capex is funded either from fresh debt or equity issues or from accumulated cash. Large firms are repaying debt.
Conclusion
It is too early in the cycle to predict anything with confidence, but we need more evidence to predict a capex cycle.
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's engagement with the world
Context
In 2021, Indian diplomacy was characterised by a readiness to deal with friends and foes alike.
Challenges faced by India diplomacy in 2021
- The US leadership change: Coping with the change from President Donald Trump to President Joe Biden and the consequent changes in U.S. policy were big enough to keep the world leaders on tenterhooks.
- Pandemic: With the increased onslaught of the pandemic, India suddenly became the epicentre of the tragedy.
- The exposure of the inefficiency of India’s health system and put the country in the defensive and weakened its credibility as it tried to contribute to the resolution of global issues.
- Aggression by China: For India, the biggest preoccupation of 2021 was the effort to get China to disengage in areas in Ladakh.
- Dialogue, military preparedness and economic pressure met with limited success.
- Afghanistan crisis: Afghanistan turned out to be a bigger crisis than expected, with the Taliban’s walkover in Kabul.
- Bringing some civility to the Taliban in Kabul became a high priority in the face of a Pakistan-China-Taliban axis with some support from Russia and Iran.
- Issue of permanent membership of the UN Security Council: Unprecedented in the history of the UN, an event at the Security Council was chaired by the Prime Minister.
- Significant inputs were provided during discussions on issues like maritime security, peacekeeping and anti-terrorism for active consideration in the future.
- Although it is illusory to believe that the way has been cleared for India’s permanent membership of the Security Council, India’s diplomatic capabilities and its commitment to the UN have demonstrated yet again.
What marks the change in the style of Indian diplomacy?
- From selective alignment, India moved to universal engagement, even to the extent of convening meetings with antagonists.
- Engagements with the U.S. went beyond familiarisation with the new government to increased commitment to Quad and acceptance of AUKUS and formation of the ‘western Quad’, with the U.S., Israel and the UAE.
- Engagement with Russia: Major agreements were signed with Russia, despite the American threat of CAATSA against S-400 missiles and the Russian inclination to align with China in the days to come.
- The engagement with China at the level of commanders and diplomats was intense, and ministerial interaction continued even when China tore up many fundamental agreements that sustained the dialogue for many years.
- Patience, diligence and firmness: India attended a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting, where a sub-group led by China took its own decisions on Afghanistan.
- We also attended a meeting of Russia, China and India.
- Perhaps because of the unique geopolitical situation, India gave particular importance to its presidency of the UN Security Council in August 2021.
- Engagement with Myanmar: The Foreign Secretary’s visit to Myanmar to engage the military junta at a time when opposition leaders are in prison may raise eyebrows in many countries, but this is another instance of India’s readiness to engage those in power to explore possibilities of friendship and co-operation.
- The intention is to prevent China from having a field day in Myanmar.
Conclusion
Sadly, the extraordinary efforts made by India have not been fruitful in the cases of China and Afghanistan. But India’s new style of diplomacy will have an impact in shaping the world of the future.
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- Challenges in transition to clean energy
Context
Political leaders find themselves currently amid a messy reality. The seemingly “irresistible force” for clean energy has met, it would appear, the “immovable object” of an embedded fossil fuel energy system.
Changes in the energy sector in 2021
- Commitment to Net-zero: One hundred and thirty-three countries pledged to a “net-zero carbon emissions date” and most governments, corporates and civic entities have shown determination to “phase down” and eventually phase out fossil fuels from their energy basket.
- Price volatility: The petroleum market seesawed and was expectedly volatile.
- High price: Natural gas prices reached stratospheric levels as demand exceeded supplies and geopolitics compounded the imbalance.
Five trends that will shape the emergent energy landscape
[1] Transition to clean energy will be long and expensive
- Redesign and rebuilding: The fossil fuel-based economic system will have to be redesigned and, in parts, rebuilt for clean energy to achieve scale.
- The process will take decades and require massive capital infusion.
- No country or multilateral institution can finance this transition individually.
- The world needs to collaborate: The world will have to collaborate and if it fails to do so, the financing deficit will push back the transition even further.
[2] Fossil fuels will dominate the energy basket during the transition
- Fossil fuels will dominate the energy basket during this transition phase.
- Contributing factors: As has been the case so far, its market will be defined by the “fundamentals” of demand, supply and geopolitics and the “non-fundamentals” of exchange rates and speculative trade.
- The price movements will be sharp, volatile and unexpected.
[3] The resurgence of market influence of OPEC plus after private companies move beyond fossil fuel
- The “ OPEC plus” will resurge in market influence.
- The low-cost, high resource petrostates (Saudi Arabia, the Gulf nations, Iraq, Iran, Russia) will, in particular, gain greater control over the petroleum market as private companies move beyond fossils under pressure from shareholders and regulators.
[4] Transition will create new centres of energy power
- The Democratic Republic of Congo controls, more than 50 per cent of the global supply of cobalt; Australia holds a comparably large share of the lithium market; and China controls the mining, processing and refining of rare earth minerals.
- It is difficult to tell how and when these countries will exercise their market power but it is clear that the “green transition” will create new centres of energy power.
[5] Nationalism and political opportunism will influence energy policy
- The US and China are currently embroiled in a “Cold War” over technology, trade, cyber issues and the South China Sea.
- The US and China appear to be in a similar face-off. But that has not come in the way of their energy relations.
- A few weeks ago, the two countries decided to coordinate the release of oil stocks from their strategic reserves to cool off the oil market.
- The underlying reality is that national self-interest and short-term political ambition will be the defining determinant of future energy supply relations cutting across values and rhetoric.
Suggestions for India
- Nurture relations with traditional suppliers: India must assiduously nurture relations with our traditional suppliers of oil and gas.
- It must not assume their role in the energy market will diminish.
- Increase storage capacity of strategic reserves: It should accelerate the build-up of the storage capacity for oil and gas; the latter to hold strategic oil reserves, the former to store gas for inter alia conversion to blue hydrogen.
- Ecosystem for search and development of minerals required for clean energy: It must create a facilitative ecosystem for the search and development of the minerals and metals required for clean energy.
- Clean energy supply chain: It should create a “clean energy aatmanirbhar supply chain”.
Conclusion
The green transition must not lead to import dependency on raw minerals and manufactured inputs, especially from China. The current policy to incentivise the manufacture of semiconductors is a step in the right direction.
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- Powers of Election Commission
Context
Ever since the Allahabad High Court urged the Election Commission of India to consider banning all political rallies or postponing the upcoming Assembly elections due to the increasing threat of Omicron, the focus of debate has shifted to the EC.
Why and when does the Election Commission clubs the elections?
- To avoid the influence of result: As per practice, the EC clubs all elections that are so close to each other to ensure that the results in one state do not influence the voters in the state going to the polls soon after.
- Earliest date: The earliest due date of a state determines the poll dates for all the clubbed states.
- No delay allowed: The EC cannot delay an election even by a day, although it can advance it by up to six months.
- The Assembly elections of five states are due in the early months of 2022, four of these in March itself — Goa (by March 15), Manipur (March 19), Uttarakhand (March 23) and Punjab (March 27).
- The fifth — UP — is due by May 14.
- Goa being the earliest, we must have all five elections completed before March 15.
Why EC cannot postpone the elections?
- Violation of Constitution: Postponing elections is not in the Election Commission’s hands at all and would be a violation of the constitutional mandate that gives every Vidhan Sabha a fixed term.
- As soon as the term is over, the House stands dissolved automatically.
- The term of the House cannot be extended except in an emergency declared by Parliament, which the Constitution restricts to only two situations — war and breakdown of law and order.
- In the seven decades of our electoral history, this has happened only three times — in Assam, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir — in insurgency situations.
Way forward: Strict enforcement of guidelines
- Before the Bihar elections of 2020, the EC had issued detailed guidelines based on its observation of other countries that conducted elections that year, like South Korea and Sri Lanka.
- Reduction of the number of electors: These guidelines included the reduction of the number of electors per polling booth from 1,500 to 1,000, to prevent over-crowding, which required the addition of 33,797 auxiliary polling stations.
- Covid-sensitive capacity building: The guidelines also included Covid-sensitive capacity-building of election officials.
- Postal ballot option: The ECI also extended the postal ballot option to senior citizens over the age of 80, Covid-positive patients, persons with disabilities and voters in essential services.
- Virtual campaigning: Virtual campaigning was also encouraged to stop election rallies contributing to Covid.
- Besides the standard social distancing and sanitising norms, voters were provided with gloves to touch the EVMs.
- To avoid crowding at the counting centres, the counting tables were reduced from 14 to seven per assembly constituency.
Consider the question “What are the challenges in postponing the Assembly elections beyond the fixed terms of the Assembly? Suggest the way forward.”
Conclusion
This election is an opportunity for the EC to redeem its image. More importantly, it must guard itself against the trap of postponing the polls under any persuasion.
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: Summit for Democracy
Mains level: Paper 2- Challenges facing democracy
Context
President Joe Biden-led Summit for Democracy was held on December 9-10. The summit was driven by the idea that in the face of populism, authoritarianism it is critical to keep the “democratic” flock together.
The salience of Summit for Democracy
- As a goal in itself: The salience of this summit lies in a deeper understanding that democracy is not just a form of government, it is a goal in itself, a value that must be cherished, preserved and celebrated.
- Democracy as a way of life: Unlike other political systems, democracy is also a way of life — a work in progress that needs sustained attention and careful nurturing to make it more resilient.
Taiwan as a desired partner of like-minded democracies
- Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy (NSP) was launched in 2016 to bring Asia closer to Taiwan and vice-versa.
- The NSP is aimed to be a pivotal tool to engage like-minded democracies in the region.
- Role in the post-pandemic world: The post-pandemic world would be more invested in some of these areas — for example, health diplomacy and collaboration in the medical sector, climate change mitigation, and developing sustainable and resilient supply chains.
- Platform for semiconductor industry: Taiwan is already proving its efficacy as a viable platform for the semiconductor industry.
- Resilient supply chain mechanism: The US and its friends in the region, particularly India, Japan and Australia, have been proactively exploring possibilities of creating resilient supply chain mechanisms.
- With its technological knowhow, and shared interests and concerns, Taiwan fits perfectly in this agenda.
- EU’s renewed interest in Indo-Pacific: Greater interactions between Taiwan and EU on the technology cooperation front, stimulated by the latter’s renewed interest in the Indo-Pacific region, makes Taiwan a desired partner of fellow democracies.
- As an industrialised democracy, Taiwan could play an important role, especially since countries are trying to reduce dependence on China and establish supply chain resilience.
Conclusion
It is important for liberal democracies to acknowledge that they are facing similar challenges and view Taiwan as an indispensable partner. Deft diplomacy is in order since transnational challenges demand joint efforts by liberal democracies.
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- Digital diplomacy
Context
India is pioneering the concept of digital public goods, with it, there is an opportunity for India to embark on digital diplomacy.
Digital public goods in India
- Built on the foundation of Aadhaar and India Stack, modular applications, big and small, are transforming the way we make payments, withdraw our PF, get our passport and driving licence and check land records, to name just a few activities.
- There is an opportunity for India to embark on digital diplomacy — to take its made-in-India digital public goods to hundreds of emerging economies across the world.
How Digital Diplomacy can help India?
- This could be a strategic and effective counter to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
- Enhancing the productivity of emerging economies: Emerging economies are characterised by gross inefficiencies in the delivery of government services and a consequent trust deficit.
- Digital public goods spread speed, transparency, ease and productivity across the individual-government-market ecosystem and enhance inclusivity, equity and development at scale.
- Acceptance in emerging economies: India’s digital diplomacy will be beneficial to and welcomed by, all emerging economies from Peru to Polynesia, from Uruguay to Uganda, and from Kenya to Kazakhstan.
- Goodwill: It will enable quick, visible and compounding benefits for India’s partner countries and earn India immense goodwill.
Benefits of Digital diplomacy
- Reusability: The code is highly reusable
- Low cost: The cost of setting up an open source-based high school online educational infrastructure, to supplement the physical infrastructure, for an entire country is less than laying two kilometres of high-quality road.
- No debt trap: The investments required for transporting digital public goods are minuscule in comparison and there is no chance of a debt trap.
- Short gestation period: Unlike physical infrastructures such as ports and roads, digital public goods have short gestation periods and immediate, and visible impact and benefits.
- It plugs leaks: Digital infrastructure plugs leaks.
- It eliminates ghost beneficiaries of government services, removes touts collecting rent, creates an audit trail, makes the individual-government-market interface transparent and provides efficiencies that help recoup the investments quickly.
- Processes get streamlined and wait times for any service come down dramatically.
- Increases productivity: Productivity goes up and services can be scaled quickly.
- Benefits can be rapidly extended to cover a much larger portion of the population.
- Compounding instead of depreciation: Above all, the digital public goods infrastructure compounds while physical infrastructure depreciates.
Three ways in which digital public goods infrastructure compound
- Compounding happens for three reasons.
- [1] Growth of technologyy: Chips keep becoming faster, engines more powerful, and gene-editing technology keeps improving.
- [2] Network effect: As more and more people use the same technology, the number of “transactions” using that technology increase exponentially — be it Facebook posts or UPI transactions.
- [3] Rapid creation of new layers of technology: For example, the hypertext protocol created the worldwide web.
- Then the browser was built on top of it, which made the worldwide web easier to navigate and more popular.
- Thousands of new layers were added to make it what it is today.
- Growth of UPI in India: To give an example, consider the surge in UPI-based payments in India.
- This kind of growth doesn’t happen with a few entitled and privileged people using UPI more and more; it happens with more and more people using UPI more and more.
- Use of Diksha: The use of Diksha, the school education platform built on the open-source platform Sunbird, has followed the same trajectory — today close to 500 million schoolchildren are using it.
Conclusion
Made in India digital tools can help other emerging economies deal with economic, governance challenges.
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- Palk Bay conflict
Context
The arrest of 68 Indian fishermen by the Sri Lankan authorities between December 18 and 20 and the impounding of 10 boats for “poaching” in the territorial waters of Sri Lanka has flared up the conflict between the two countries.
About Palk Bay
- Palk Bay is home to diverse resources including 580 species of fish, extends from Point Calimere of Nagapattinam district to Mandapam-Dhanushkodi of Ramanathapuram district over about 250 km.
- Source of dispute: It is an important marine zone between south-eastern India and northern Sri Lanka, has been a source of dispute for long.
About the conflict
- Negotiations: The genesis of the dispute can be traced to the October 1921 negotiations between representatives of the Governments of Madras and Ceylon, on the need for the delimitation of the Palk Strait and the Gulf of Mannar.
- Delimitation: It was in the mid-1970s that two agreements were signed by India and Sri Lanka, under which the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) came into being.
- Instead of settling the issues, the pacts gave way to new problems, including the recurring incidents of Tamil Nadu fishermen crossing the IMBL and getting caught by the Sri Lankan authorities.
Cause of the problem
- Different fishing practices: The asymmetric nature of fishing practices in Tamil Nadu and the Northern Province of Sri Lanka is said to be the cause of the problem.
- While Tamil Nadu’s fishing community uses mechanised bottom trawlers, its counterpart uses conventional forms of fishing, as trawling is banned in Sri Lanka.
- Difference in resources: The fishermen of Tamil Nadu continue to cross the IMBL, as the Sri Lankan side of the Bay is considered to have more fishery resources than the Indian side.
Way forward
- Weak away fishermen from trawling: The deep-sea fishing project, to wean away the fishermen of Tamil Nadu from bottom trawling, launched in July 2017, has not yielded the desired results.
- Relaxation of norms of the project is under the consideration of the Union Government, to draw greater response from the fishermen.
- Motivation for deep-sea fishing: Given the fact that deep sea fishing takes longer duration and has a higher recurring cost per voyage than what the fishing community experiences currently, the need for providing continuous motivation to the fisherfolk assumes critical importance.
- Other strategies: Various strategies, including the promotion of seaweed cultivation, open sea cage cultivation, seaweed cultivation and processing, and sea/ocean ranching should be adopted.
- Forming FPOs: There is a view that if the community is encouraged to form fish farmer producer organisations, it may take to sustainable fishing practices.
- Institution of stakeholders: A section of specialists favours the creation of an international institution of stakeholders for regulating the fishing sector in the Bay.
Consider the question “What leads to the dispute between India and Sri Lanka over the Palk Bay? Suggest the way forward for fishermen in Tamil Nadu.”
Conclusion
For all this to happen, sustained public pressure and political will are a must.
UPSC 2022 countdown has begun! Get your personal guidance plan now! (Click here)
Back2Basics: What is bottom trawling?
- A bottom trawl consists of a large tapered net with a wide mouth and a small enclosed end.
- The mouth of a trawl net has two weighted doors that serve not only to keep the net open, but also to keep the net on the ocean floor.
- These doors can weigh several tons.
- In addition to the heavy doors, the bottom of the net is a thick metal cable (footrope) studded with heavy steel balls or rubber bobbins that effectively crush everything in their path.
- As the net drags along the seafloor, living habitat in its path is crushed, ripped up, or smothered as the seabed is turned over.
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- Importance of middle powers in Arab Gulf
Context
On December 19, Pakistan hosted a special session of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to address the crisis in Afghanistan.
The humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and how regional countries are responding to it
- The humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is peaking with no basic amenities available for its population and a harsh winter ahead.
- While Pakistan hosted the OIC, India played host to foreign ministers of Central Asian states where Afghanistan topped the agenda as well.
- All the attending countries — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan — also OIC members, chose to prioritise deliberations with New Delhi.
Qatar’s growing influence in Afghanistan and implications for the region
- Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Pakistan were the only three countries that had officially recognised the previous Taliban government in 1996, until its fall in 2001.
- Fast forward to the 2010s, and it was the small but rich state of Qatar that became the mediating force on Afghanistan.
- Doha hosted the official Taliban political office from 2013 to allow negotiations with the U.S.
- Qatar’s new role on Afghanistan gave it significant diplomatic and political visibility the world over.
- In West Asia, Qatar’s growing influence was causing unease in the traditional power centres in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, specifically on issues such as the Qatari leadership’s support for political Islam and organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
Fundamental changes
- Economic blockade: In 2017 the UAE and Saudi Arabia initiated an economic blockade against Doha in the hope of reigning the Kingdom in and disallowing it from pursuing its geopolitical designs that were challenging the long-held power status quos.
- This four-year long impasse ended in 2021.
- These four years created fundamental changes within the larger Arab Gulf construct.
- Qatar mitigated risk and moved closer towards Turkey and Iran.
- Today, both Qatar and Turkey are bidding to operate a landlocked Afghanistan’s airports under the Taliban regime.
- For the Gulf specifically, Qatar’s punching-above-its-weight approach in geopolitics was also making it more powerful and influential with Washington D.C.
- To mitigate this, the Saudis played a central role during the recent OIC special session.
- They repaired their broken relationship with Pakistan.
Way forward for India
- Over the past decade, India has recognised the importance of middle powers in the Arab Gulf to a fast-evolving global order, from fighting against terrorism to newer diplomacy challenges such as Afghanistan.
Conclusion
The Arab Gulf is poised to become an important player once again in Afghanistan under the shadow of the Taliban.
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- Dealing with Covid
Context
The Government must make COVID-19 data including that for vaccine regulatory approvals and policy available.
Kay decisions
- On December 25, the Prime Minister of India announced two key decisions.
- Vaccination of children: All children in the 15-17 age bracket will be eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines from January 3, 2022.
- Third shot: All health-care workers, frontline workers and the people aged 60 years and above (with co-morbidities and on the advice of a medical doctor) can get a third shot, or ‘precaution dose’.
- The eligibility for the precaution dose will be on the completion of nine months or 39 weeks after the second dose.
- Teenage children whose birth year is 2007 or before will be eligible for COVID-19 vaccines.
- Children will receive Covaxin, the reason being (according to the note) it is the only emergency use listed (EUL) World Health Organization vaccine available for use in this age group in India.
Issues with the decision
- Lack of scientific evidence: The decision is said to be based on ‘advice of the scientific community’.
- A few members of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI) in India, have written or spoken publicly about not having enough scientific evidence to administer booster doses and vaccinate children in India.
- Successive national and State-level sero-surveys have reported that a majority of children in India had got natural infection, while staying at home and thus developed antibodies.
- The studies have shown that children rarely develop moderate to severe COVID-19 disease.
- Targeted vaccination approach not adopted: Most public health and vaccine experts favour a ‘targeted vaccination approach’ by prioritising high-risk children for COVID-19 vaccination.
- However, such an approach is likely to face an operational challenge in the identification of the eligible children.
- Consultation cost: A majority of the elderly have one or other comorbidities. Of the 14 crore elderly population in India, an estimated 7 to 10 crore people could have co-morbidities.
- If they have to seek advice from a physician, in order to get vaccinated, this essentially means that there would be up to 10 crore of medical consultations, which would come at a cost — all of which is avoidable.
Suggestions
- Do away with prescription: The conditionality of comorbidities and the need for advice/prescription by a doctor for ‘the precaution shot’ in the elderly should be done away with.
- Third dose to all immunocompromised adults: There is scientific evidence and consensus on administering the third dose for immunocompromised adults.
- The Indian government should urgently consider administering a third dose for all immunocompromised adults, irrespective of age.
- Third dose on a different vaccine platform: Studies have found that a heterologous prime-boost approach — third shot on a different vaccine platform — is a better approach.
- Identify policy questions: Various pending policy questions on COVID-19 vaccine need to be identified urgently.
- The technical expert should be given complete access to COVID-19 data for analysis and to find answers to those scientific and policy questions.
- Vaccine supply and stock management: Vaccination for teenage children, exclusively with Covaxin (which means 15 crore doses for this sub-group) has other implications.
- Covaxin will also be needed for people coming for their first shot, returning for their second shot, and then for their ‘precaution dose’ if a third shot of the same vaccine is allowed.
- Focus on primary vaccination: The precaution dose and vaccination for children should not divert attention from the task of primary vaccination, which continues to be an unfinished task in India; 46 crore doses are still needed for the first and second shots.
- Make data public: It is time the Union and State governments in India make COVID-19 data — this includes clinical outcomes, testing, genomic sequencing as well as vaccination — available in the public domain.
- This would help in formulating and updating COVID-19 policy and strategies and also assess the impact of ‘precaution dose’ as well as vaccination of children.
Conclusion
The Indian government urgently needs to make COVID-19 data available, including the one used for regulatory approvals of vaccines and for vaccine policy decisions. This will bring transparency in decision making and increase the trust of the citizen in the process.
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- Aadhar-voter ID linking issue
Context
The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 which facilitates amendment to the Representation of People’s Act, is a step toward implementing online-based remote e-voting for which the use of Aadhaar will be the primary identity.
Objectives of linking
- The linking of Aadhaar with one’s voter ID was primarily to build a biometric dependent voting system from the very beginning.
- The change could help fight fraud and duplicates in the electoral rolls.
About the pilot programmes on linking the voter id
- In 2014, the Election Commission of India (ECI) conducted two pilot programmes on linking the voter id with Aadhaar in the districts of Nizamabad and Hyderabad.
- Based on the effectiveness, the ECI called for a National Consultation on Aadhaar and voter id linking.
- The ECI launched the National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP) on April 1, 2015, which had to be completed by August 31, 2015.
- After a Supreme Court of India order on August 11, 2015, it was announced that this NERPAP would be shut down.
- But as Telangana and Andhra Pradesh were early adopters of this programme since 2014, both States have nearly completed linking Aadhaar and voter id for all residents.
- Methodology is unknown: The methodology followed by the ECI to find duplicate voters using Aadhaar is unknown to the general public.
- SRDH data used: In a letter from the CEO Andhra Pradesh (then for Telangana and Andhra Pradesh) to the ECI, it is clear that the State Resident Data Hub (SRDH) application of the Government of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh was used to curate electoral rolls.
- The SRDH has data on residents of the State which is supplied by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) or collected further by the State governments.
- While the UIDAI was constrained not to collect data on caste, religion and other sensitive information data for Aadhaar, it recommended to the States to collect this information, if required, as part of Aadhaar data collection; it termed the process as Know Your Resident (KYR) and Know Your Resident Plus (KYR+).
- It is these SRDH applications that the ECI used to curate electoral rolls which resulted in the deletion of a sizeable number of voters from the list in Telangana in 2018.
Concerns
- Disenfranchisement: The role of the ECI to verify voters using door-to-door verification (in 2015) has been subsumed; a software algorithm commissioned by the Government for purposes unknown to the public and maintained by a private IT company is in control now.
- Subjecting key electoral rolls to surveillance software damages the concept of universal adult suffrage.
- What the experience in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh highlights is voter suppression and disenfranchisement.
- Issue of ensuring electoral integrity: In a situation where the role of money makes a mockery of the democratic process, linking Aadhaar will be futile.
- Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), if foolproof, put an end to the days of booth capturing prevalent in the days of paper ballots.
- E-voting can also be gamed using malware to change the outcome of an election.
- While the Bill does not look into large-scale e-voting, there is an issue of ensuring electoral integrity.
- Voter profiling: An Aadhaar-voter ID linkage will also help political parties create voter profiles and influence the voting process.
- Online trends on the day of voting and micro-targeting voters using their data will make it easier for political parties in power to use data for elections.
Consider the question “What are the objectives of Aadhar-Voter Id linking? What are the concerns associated with such linking?”
Conclusion
The linking of Aadhaar with voter ID will create complexities in the voter databases that will be hard to fix. This process will introduce errors in electoral rolls and vastly impact India’s electoral democracy.
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: EPR
Mains level: Paper 3- Regulations on EPR and issues with them
Context
In October, the Environment Ministry published draft regulations on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), set to come into effect by the end of this year. These regulations denote a backslide, particularly with respect to integration of the informal sector.
What is EPR?
- Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) requires the manufacturer of a product, or the party that introduces the product into the community, to take responsibility for its life cycle.
- An FMCG company should not only account for the costs of making, packing and distributing a packet of chips, but also for the collection and recycling/reuse of the packet.
Shortcomings in the guidelines
The guidelines fall short in three areas: people, plastics and processing.
[1] Integration of informal sector is lacking
- By failing to mention waste pickers or outlining mechanisms for their incorporation under EPR, the guidelines are retrogressive.
- For decades, waste pickers, working in dangerous and unsanitary conditions, have picked up what we throw away.
- Besides, by diverting waste towards recycling and reuse, waste pickers also subsidise local governments responsible for solid waste management.
- Further, they reduce the amount of waste accumulating in cities, water bodies and dumpsites and increase recycling and reuse, creating environmental and public health benefits.
- Between 1.5 and 4 million waste pickers in India work without social security, health insurance, minimum wages or basic protective gear.
- Suggestions: An effective EPR framework should address the issue of plastics and plastic waste management in tandem with the existing machinery, minimise duplication and lead to a positive environmental impact, with monitoring mechanisms including penalties for non-compliance.
- EPR funds could be deployed for mapping and registration of the informal sector actors, building their capacity, upgrading infrastructure, promoting technology transfer, and creating closed loop feedback and monitoring mechanisms.
[2] The scope of plastic covered need to be altered
- The EPR guidelines are limited to plastic packaging.
- There are other multi-material plastic items like sanitary pads, chappals, and polyester that pose a huge waste management challenge today, but have been left out of the scope of EPR.
- Three categories of plastic packaging: Plastic packaging can be roughly grouped into three categories: recyclable and effectively handled by the informal sector, technologically recyclable but not economically viable to recycle, technologically challenging to recycle (or non-recyclable).
- [1] Rigid plastics like PET and HDPE are effectively recycled.
- Suggestion: The government could support and strengthen the informal recycling chain by bridging gaps in adequate physical spaces, infrastructure, etc.
- [2] Typically flexible plastics like LDPE and PP bags are recyclable, but due to their contamination with organic waste, lightweight, and high volume, the costs of recycling are prohibitively expensive relative to the market value of the output.
- Suggestion: Market value for these plastics can be increased by increasing the demand for and use of recycled plastics in packaging, thus creating the value to accommodate the current costs of recycling.
- [3] Multi-layered and multi-material plastics are low weight and voluminous, making them expensive to handle and transport.
- Since they are primarily used in food packaging, they often attract rodents, making storage problematic.
- Even if this plastic is picked, recycling is technologically challenging as it is heterogeneous material.
- The Plastic Waste Management Rules mandated the phase-out of these plastics.
- However, in 2018, this mandate was reversed.
[3] Processing technologies need to be closely evaluated
- Not all processing is recycling.
- Processes like waste-to-energy, co-processing and incineration have been proven to release carbon dioxide, particulate matter, harmful dioxins and furans which have negative climate and health impacts.
- While the environmental impact and desirability of these processes continues to be debated, the draft regulations legitimise them to justify the continued production of multi-layered plastics.
- Technologies like chemical recycling and pyrolysis are capital-intensive, yielding low returns and running into frequent breakdowns and technological problems.
- They also release carbon dioxide and other pollutants.
- These end-of-life processes are economically, environmentally and operationally unsustainable.
- A number of gasification, pyrolysis and other chemical recycling projects have figured in accidents such as fires, explosions and financial losses.
Way forward
- Address issues of the informal sector: The consultation process should involve informal workers.
- Alter the scope of plastics covered: The scope of plastics covered by the guidelines could be altered to exclude those plastics which are already efficiently recycled and to include other plastic and multi-material items.
- Processing technologies should be closely evaluated: And end-of-life processing technologies should be closely evaluated, based not only on their health and environmental impacts, but also on the implications for continued production of low-quality and multi-layered plastics.
Consider the question ” The Environment Ministry published draft regulations on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). Examine the issues with the regulations and suggest the way forward”
Conclusion
In conclusion, the government should redo the consultation process for the draft guidelines.
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-Myanmar relations
Context
The recent short visit to Myanmar by India’s Foreign Secretary had a clearly-etched mandate: to deepen cooperation with an important neighbour. His mission succeeded to a large extent, but challenges remain.
Background of the current political scenario in Myanmar
- Transition to democracy and derailment: Since the military coup on February 1, 2021, the international community has stayed divided on how to address the derailment of Myanmar’s transition to democracy.
- For a decade, the country’s system based on power-sharing between the military and elected representatives ran well enough.
- An overwhelming electoral victory of the National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in November 2020, unnerved the military leadership.
- The Tatmadaw (Myanmar’s military) moved faster, seizing power in violation of the Constitution and putting down the Opposition with an iron hand.
- Global reaction: Global dismay was evident in the western sanctions, but others such as Russia saw the opportunity to strengthen ties with the new rulers.
- China took urgent steps to stabilise and expand cooperation with the military regime.
- The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) first showed creativity through its ‘Five-Point Consensus’ formula, but later its unity stood damaged once Myanmar’s top leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing refused to cooperate.
India’s position and bilateral concerns
- In Indian foreign Secretary Mr. Shringla visit he succeeded in holding substantive discussions with various stakeholders.
- India’s position: India’s position, as conveyed to Myanmar, is similar to and supportive of ASEAN: release of political prisoners; resolution of issues through dialogue; cessation of “all violence”; and full cooperation with ASEAN.
- Assistance for capacity building: In recent years, India has assisted Myanmar through capacity-building programmes for strengthening the transition to democracy.
- This assistance remains available, but it is not an offer of mediation by India in the military-NLD conflict.
- This burden will have to be borne by ASEAN.
- India’s concerns: India’s principal concerns pertaining to border security and stability in its neighbourhood were clearly conveyed, especially the noticeable escalation of activities of anti-India insurgent groups.
- Refugee issue: The second issue — the outcome of Myanmar’s instability — is that of refugees. Several thousands of Myanmar people have sought shelter in Mizoram.
- This will only be reversed by a political settlement in Myanmar, through dialogue.
- Economic cooperation: Economic cooperation has always been a major agenda item in all bilateral discussions with Myanmar.
- Central to this is India’s long-delayed commitment to “expeditious implementation” of mega initiatives such as the Trilateral Highway and Kaladan projects.
Way forward
- China is not the only friend: India continues to have high equity in Myanmar, which it must now carefully leverage.
- It is reflected in the special gesture made by Senior General Min Aung Hlaing to receive Mr. Shringla and hold detailed discussions in Yangon. This is unusual.
- The protocol departure for Mr. Shringla revealed current political realities which should be carefully factored in against the argument that China is the only friend Myanmar has.
- Leverage the gainst of the visit: India can leverage the gains of this visit and keep up the momentum by inviting Myanmar’s Foreign Minister at an appropriate time as well as other important stakeholders to India for deliberations with their counterparts here.
Conclusion
The single goal should be to put Myanmar back on the path of becoming “a stable, democratic and federal union.
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- Extending coverage to OP care
Context
Over the past two decades, initiatives announced to extend health care coverage to the indigent sections have come under criticism due to their near-exclusive focus on hospitalisation (inpatient, IP) care.
Significance of outpatient health care
- What is outpatient health care: Outpatient (OP) health care, mainly comprising doctor consultations, drugs, and tests, can be called ‘the elephant in the room’ of Indian public health care policy.
- OP expenses have the majority share in total out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure on health.
Why do we need to extend OP care coverage?
- How IP care differs from OP care? IP care comprises high-impact and unavoidable episodes that are less prone to misuse than OP care, for which demand is considerably more sensitive to price and is thus more prone to overuse under health insurance.
- IP insurance prioritised: This logic, among other reasons, has led to IP insurance schemes being prioritised.
- [1] OP care and preventive care is neglected: While a price-sensitive demand for OP care entails that it could be misused under insurance, it also means that OP care is the first to come under the knife when there is no insurance.
- In India, where there are many public IP insurance schemes but no OP coverage, this incentive is further amplified.
- The mantra of ‘prevention is better than cure’ thus goes for a toss.
- [2] Against economic sense: It defies economic sense to prioritise IP care over OP care for public funds.
- Preventive and primary care services which often come with externalities, elicit little felt need and demand, and must therefore be the primary recipients of public investment.
- Not conducive to epidemiological profile: Greater investments in IP care today translate to even greater IP care investments in future, further reduction in primary care spending, and ultimately lesser ‘health’ for the money invested.
- None of these are conducive to the epidemiological profile that characterises this country.
Issues with using private commercial insurance to extend OP care coverage nationwide
- Some recent policy pronouncements by the Centre have conveyed an inclination to expand healthcare coverage with little fiscal implications for the government.
- Challenges:
- [1] The OP practices are under-regulated and there is a lack of standards.
- [2] The difficulty to monitor OP clinical and prescribing behaviours and the concomitant higher likelihood of malpractices.
- [3] Low public awareness of insurance products and a low ability to discern entitlements and exclusions.
- [4] Add to it the inexperience that a still under-developed private OP insurance sector brings.
- All these entail tremendous and largely wasteful costs and administrative complexity, and it would be of little help even if the government was to step in with considerable subsidies.
Suggestion
- Need for fiscal and time commitment: Significant improvements in healthcare are implausible without significant fiscal and time commitments.
- No perfect model: There is no ‘perfect’ model of expanding healthcare — the emphasis must be on finding the best fit.
- Implementing even such a best fit could involve adopting certain modalities with known drawbacks.
- Expand public spending: The focus must be on expanding public OP care facilities and services financed mainly by tax revenues.
- For India, wisdom immediately points to successful countries that are (or were, at one point) much closer to its socioeconomic fabric, such as Thailand, than countries like the U.S. which we currently look to emulate.
- Now, the sparse number and distribution of public facilities offers various modes of rationing care, and their expansion is likely to result in a considerable spike in demand.
- Contracting with private players: Contracting with private players based on objective and transparent criteria would also be called for, with just enough centralised supervision to deter corruption while preserving local autonomy.
- To deter supply-side malpractices, low-powered modes of provider payment, such as capitation, may be considered for private providers wherever possible.
Conclusion
There are several compelling reasons for extending outpatient health care coverage even though there are several challenges to overcome to achieve this.
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
Context
The dramatic changes in technology have created new challenges for the law, lawmakers, courts and lawyers to confront.
Challenges posed by technological transformation
- Technology has outpaced the law, and lawmakers are being challenged by how quickly “we the people” have embraced technological transformations.
- Challenges of regulation: Challenges include regulation of digital media platforms, censorship of Over The Top (OTT) streaming services, fixing accountability for procuring and deploying spyware like Pegasus, dealing with the bias within artificial intelligence etc.
- Regulation of cryptocurrencies: In probably no other area are lawmakers required to appreciate science and technology than in cryptocurrency.
- With 10 crore users of cryptocurrency and crypto assets in India, this ever-expanding market is almost entirely unregulated.
Practices or legislative models that have been adopted the other countries for regulation of cryptocurrencies
- KYC, AML and CFT: Countries where cryptocurrencies and crypto-assets are legal have frameworks that mandate KYC (know your customer), AML (Anti-Money Laundering) mechanisms and demand adherence to CFT (Combating Financing of Terrorism) requirements.
[1] How Singapore regulates crypto-currencies?
- Singapore adopted the approach which favours strong regulation rather than ban.
- Common law to regulate traditional and cryptocurrencies: Singapore has the Payments Services Act, 2020 that has streamlined both traditional and cryptocurrencies under one law.
- Provision for licences: The law also provides a framework to obtain licences to operate crypto businesses.
[2] How Switzerland regulates cryptocurrencies?
- Switzerland has also favoured the strong regulation model overseen by an already established financial regulator.
- Provision for licences: The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) that oversees the country’s financial markets mandates that all virtual asset service providers, including cryptocurrency exchanges must be licenced.
- KYC, AML and CFT procedures must be strictly complied with. These are the checks on the use of cryptocurrencies and crypto assets that could facilitate criminal enterprise.
[3] Approach adopted by the US
- Crypto exchanges to be transmitters: The US does not consider cryptocurrency to be legal tender but defines cryptocurrency exchanges to be money transmitters.
- Cryptocurrencies as property: The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) treats cryptocurrency as property for US federal taxation purposes.
- Exchanges must obtain requisite licences from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and implement the standard AML and CFT requirements that have become the norm in most jurisdictions that regulate cryptocurrencies.
- Revenue potential: One of the most important lessons to absorb from the US is the revenue potential of cryptocurrencies and crypto assets.
Conclusion
In India, the need of the times is thoughtful legislation and rigorous regulation of cryptocurrencies and crypto-assets that are already here and being used.
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: ECI and SECs
Mains level: Paper 2- Electoral reforms
Context
The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill that seeks to link the electoral rolls with the Aadhaar database has been passed by both the Houses of the parliament.
Three electoral reforms
- A wide range of electoral reform proposals has been pending with the government, several of them for over two decades.
- The three reforms — common electoral rolls for Vidhan Sabha and panchayat elections, extending the qualifying date for registration of young new voters, and linking of Aadhaar with electoral rolls — taken up by the Union Cabinet on December 15 are, therefore, significant.
[1] Common electoral rolls
- For years, the ECI has been advocating a common electoral roll for all elections.
- Currently, separate electoral rolls are maintained for elections to the Lok Sabha, Vidhan Sabha and local government bodies (panchayats or municipal).
- Role of ECI and SECs: There are two types of election management bodies in the country — the ECI that conducts the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections and SECs that conduct panchayat and municipal elections.
- The process for making electoral rolls is laid down in the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.
- The SECs have the option of either adopting the electoral rolls created by the ECI or preparing such rolls on their own.
- Most prefer to use the rolls prepared by the ECI.
- Some states, however, develop their rolls independently.
- These are Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Odisha, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
- Considering that a voter for all three tiers of elected bodies is the same, why is it that she finds her name missing from one of the rolls, mostly the panchayat rolls?
- This is particularly surprising when the officials responsible for making both these rolls are the same.
- A common electoral roll is thus a logical solution.
Benefits of common electoral rolls
- Tackling stuffing voters: A common experience has been the stuffing of bogus voters in the panchayat/municipal rolls.
- Corrupt practices are proportionately higher in PRI polls.
- Avoid the involvement of teachers in the non-teaching work: The process of making electoral rolls is usually done by the schoolteachers.
- Their involvement in non-teaching work takes its toll.
- Cost-saving: A common electoral roll will obviate the need for deploying them repeatedly, besides saving enormous costs.
Suggestions for preparation of common electoral rolls
- Issue joint instructions: The ECI and SECs can issue joint instructions for preparing the common rolls. The roll-making machinery stays the same.
- Pilot studies may be conducted in random constituencies to identify the discrepancies between two sets of rolls and their reasons.
What are the constitutional and legal changes required?
- Amendment in Article 243K and 243ZA: The SECs derive their powers to supervise local body elections from Articles 243K and 243ZA of the Constitution.
- Changes in State laws: All state governments would have to change their electoral laws to adopt ECI electoral rolls for local elections.
[2] Eligibility date of new voters
- According to Section 14(b) of the Representation of People Act of 1950, only those who have turned 18 on or before January 1 of the year are to be registered.
- This implies that all those who turn 18 between January 2 and December 31 of a year must wait till the next year.
- This technicality results in the exclusion of a large section of 18-year-olds.
Suggestion by ECI on eligibility date
- The ECI had sent a letter to the Law Ministry on November 4, 2013, which recommended the issuing of a voter card to an individual ideally on their 18th birthday, or updating voter rolls every month or quarter.
- A committee of the Ministry of Law and Justice under Sushil Kumar Modi has proposed quarterly cut-off dates for voter registration — January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1.
[3] Aadhar linking
- The proposal to link electoral rolls with Aadhaar was first mooted by the ECI in 2015 but work on it had to be stopped when the Supreme Court ruled that Aadhaar cannot be used except voluntarily for beneficiary-oriented schemes.
- Benefits of linking: The linking will help in identifying duplicate voters, something that ECI has been desperately attempting for years using various “de-duplication” software with limited success.
Consider the question “What are the concerns with linking of Aadhar and electoral rolls? Suggest the way forward.”
Conclusion
Any progress in addressing the vexed issue of electoral reform — even in a piecemeal manner — is welcome. The time has, however, come for the government to consider the 40-plus pending proposals, instead of selectively going for some reforms.
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- Linking Aadhar with electoral roll
Context
The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 was passed in the Lok Sabha recently. It seeks to link electoral rolls with the Aadhaar ecosystem.
What are the concerns with linking of Aadhar with electoral roll?
[1] Aadhar is not proof of citizenship
- Aadhaar is not meant to be a citizenship proof but only a digital identity for all residents.
- Residence of 182 days can make even a non-citizen eligible for an Aadhaar ID.
[2] Aadhar is not address proof
- According to public statements by several government functionaries, Aadhaar was only meant to be identity proof but not address proof.
- Electoral roll is based on Aadhar: In contrast, the RER clearly stipulates address to be a key index for electoral rolls.
- Different enrollment process: Moreover, the enrolment processes for voters’ lists and Aadhaar are completely different.
- Whereas Aadhaar enrolment is based on production of existing documents and the “introducer system”, voter enrolments involve physical verification and “house visits” by a registration officer or representative.
[3] No audit report on the efficacy of Aadhaar deduplication or on the authenticity of the Aadhaar database
- Even the Supreme Court accepted the Unique Identification Authority of India’s (UIDAI) claims on the integrity of the Aadhaar database at face value without any scrutiny.
- Risk of exclusion error: Using Aadhaar to clean the electoral rolls involved the risk of disenfranchisement, especially of the marginalised communities.
- It is to be noted that there is ample publicly documented evidence of large-scale exclusion in PDS and welfare disbursal due to Aadhaar.
[4] Conflict of interest
- UIDAI is under government control: Maintenance of the voters’ lists is a primary responsibility of the ECI, which is an independent constitutional body, whereas Aadhaar is a government instrument and UIDAI is under government control.
- Since the ECI has no control on either enrolment or deduplication in Aadhaar, it appears inappropriate — and a potential conflict of interest — to use Aadhaar for electoral rolls.
- In particular, since Aadhaar is directly used for disbursal of welfare and direct benefit transfers, linking it with voter ID may provide a direct method for the government to influence and manipulate voters.
[5] Risk of profiling and targeting of voters
- Aadhaar is a ubiquitous ID that is used in a variety of applications.
- Linking it with the voter ID will open up avenues for profiling and targeting of voters.
- No audit for purpose limitation: This is of particular concern because neither the UIDAI nor the ECI have publicly audited architectures for purpose limitation and protection against insider attacks.
- While profiling using public data is not illegal according to current laws, both the electorate and Parliament need to clearly understand the risks of such profiling.
- It is far easier to win elections through digital analysis of electoral rolls than through attacking the electronic voting process, especially when election results are available at booth-level granularity
- Both privacy and integrity of the electoral rolls are of paramount importance in the digital age, and the clear tension between the two makes the problem challenging.
Way forward
- Use of cryptography: The RER of 1960 clearly opted for transparency as a means to the integrity of the electoral rolls, thereby ensuring that all additions and deletions can be publicly audited.
- However, with the possibility of digital processing of electoral data, the risks associated with such complete transparency have increased manifold.
- Yet, there are several modern techniques from cryptography and computer science that may help mitigate the risks by enabling both privacy and public auditability.
Consider the question “The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 enable the linking of electoral rolls with the Aadhaar ecosystem. What are the objectives of such linking and concerns raised against it?”
Conclusion
An electoral reforms bill at the onset of 2022 needed to explore and address these issues head-on.
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: Article 370
Mains level: Paper 2- J and K issue
Context
The article deal with the impact of the passage of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act of 2019 on Ladakh’s autonomy or participatory democracy.
What has changed?
- Hill Councils: The Autonomous Hill Development Councils of Leh and Kargil read along with the framework of J&K’s special status and its bicameral legislative system gave Ladakh autonomy and participatory democracy.
- The Hill Councils had the powers over land in Ladakh while the majority of the bigger concerns regarding land remained protected under Article 370 and J&K’s robust land protection laws.
- Power to recruit the officers: Gazetted officers were recruited through the State Public Service Commission.
- The District Service Selection Board made recruitments at the district level.
- But today, there is no Public Service Commission in Ladakh and the Hill Councils’ power to make recruitments at the district level has also been affected by the Lieutenant Governor (LG)’s presence.
- No law to protect the jobs: Technically, there also exists no law in Ladakh now that protects the land or even the jobs.
- Loss of representation: the Reorganisation Act has taken away the six seats of the Members of Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council and wakened the functioning of the Hill Councils.
- The only elected representation from Ladakh outside of Ladakh is a lone MP.
Conclusion
Steps need to be taken to address the issues related to the lack of representation in Ladakh in the wake of the passage of the Reorganisation Act of 2019.
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's relations with Central Asian countries
Context
The government is inviting the leaders of the five Central Asian countries — Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan — as guests for Republic Day on January 26.
Significance of Central Asian region for India
- Return of Taliban in Afghanistan: The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan has made Central Asia a region where great contestations for influence are unfolding.
- There is a growing awareness that for leveraging influence in Kabul and harvesting that influence in the form of material gains, a firm footing in Central Asia is a prerequisite.
- Economic dimension: Given the vast untapped mineral wealth of the region encompassing the five Central Asian countries and Afghanistan — estimated to be worth a few trillion dollars — there is a significant economic dimension to the unfolding saga.
- Geopolitical angle: Washington hopes to create in Central Asia a vector of its Indo-Pacific strategy to contain China and Russia. At the same time, governments in Moscow and Beijing are circling the wagons.
Suggestions for India
- India needs to work on an intricate network of relationships with the regional states while remaining mindful of the “big picture”.
- Delhi’s non-aligned mindset needs to be turned into a strategic asset to navigate its long-term interests.
- India’s membership of the BRICS and SCO will help.
- Cooperation of Russia and China: The deepening of the traditional Indo-Russian mutual understanding has injected dynamism into Delhi’s regional strategy on the whole.
- It is bound to have a calming effect on India’s tensions with China.
- Delhi cannot have an effective Central Asia strategy without the cooperation of these two big powers.
- Regional connectivity: India can use the card of regional connectivity to stimulate partnerships.
- The time may have come to reopen the files on the TAPI and IPI gas pipeline projects. Both involve Pakistan.
- Normalisation of India-Russia ties: Russia is well-placed to act as guarantor and help build both these pipelines, while China too will see advantages in the normalisation of India-Pakistan ties.
New geoeconomic partnership
- Recently concluded third meeting of the India-Central Asia Dialogue in Delhi served a purpose to sensitise the Central Asian interlocutors that it attaches primacy to geoeconomics.
- But India will have a challenge on its hands to flesh out the “4Cs” concept that External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar presented at the event — commerce, capacity enhancement, connectivity, and contact being the four pillars of a new geoeconomic partnership.
- The key areas are transit and transport, logistics network, regional and international transport corridors, free trade agreements, manufacturing industry and job creation.
- They ought to be front-loaded into India’s Central Asian strategy.
- Certainly, the EAEU integration processes must be speeded up.
Consider the question “With changing geopolitical scenario, India’s stake in Central Asia has drastically increased. In the context of this, examine India’s outreach efforts toward the region and the challenges it faces in it.”
Conclusion
A host of new possibilities open up if India’s initiative on Central Asia runs on a parallel track with an improvement in relations with China.
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
