Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: BECA
Mains level: Paper 2- India-U.S. relations and implications for relations with other countries
The article analyses the impact of India’s growing engagement with the U.S. on relations on India’s foreign policy.
What signing of BECA mean
- The centrepiece of the third 2+2 dialogue was the signing of the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA) for Geo-Spatial Cooperation.
- With the signing of BECA, India is now a signatory to all U.S.-related foundational military agreements.
- Built into the agreements are provisions for a two-way exchange of information.
- India had signed the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), in 2016, and the Communications, Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA), in 2018.
- By appending its signature to BECA, India is in a position to specifically receive sensitive geo-spatial intelligence.
- The foundational military pacts effectively tie India to the wider U.S. strategic architecture in the region.
Issues with signing BECA
- With the signing of these agreements, India’s claims of maintaining strategic autonomy will be doubtful.
- By signing BECA, India has signed on to becoming part of the wider anti-China ‘coalition of the willing’ led by the U.S.
- By signing on to BECA at this juncture, India has effectively jettisoned its previous policy of neutrality, and of maintaining its equi-distance from power blocs.
Impact on relations with China
- China-India relations have never been easy.
- Since 1988, India has pursued, despite occasional problems, a policy which put a premium on an avoidance of conflicts with China.
- This will now become increasingly problematic as India gravitates towards the U.S. sphere of influence.
- India’s willingness to sign foundational military agreements with the U.S. would suggest that India has made its choice, which can only exacerbate already deteriorating China-India relations.
Impact on the relations in the region
- India needs to pay greater attention at this time to offset its loss of influence in its immediate neighbourhood (in South Asia), and in its extended neighbourhood (in West Asia).
- Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh, normally perceived to be within India’s sphere of influence, currently seem to be out of step with India’s approach on many issues.
- At the same time, both China and the U.S. separately, seem to be making inroads and enlarging their influence here.
- The Maldives, for instance, has chosen to enter into a military pact with the U.S. to counter Chinese expansionism in the Indian Ocean region.
- India needs to ensure that the latest UAE-Israel linkage does not adversely impact India’s interests in the region.
- India must also not rest content with the kind of relations it has with Israel, as Tel Aviv has its own distinct agenda in West Asia.
- Furthermore, India needs to devote greater attention to try and restore India-Iran ties which have definitely frayed in recent years.
India’s role in Afghanistan
- India must decide on how best to try and play a role in Afghanistan without getting stuck.
- India had subscribed to an anti-Taliban policy and was supportive of the Northern Alliance (prior to 2001).
- The new policy that dictates India’s imperatives today, finds India not unwilling to meet the Taliban.
- India must decide how a shift in policy at this time would serve India’s objectives in Afghanistan, considering the tremendous investment it has made in recent decades to shore up democracy in that country.
India’s role in SCO and NAM
- SCO, which has China and Russia as its main protagonists — and was conceived as an anti-NATO entity — will test India’s diplomatic skills.
- Even though India currently has a detached outlook, vis-à-vis the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), and has increasingly distanced itself from the African and Latin American group in terms of policy prescriptions, matters could get aggravated, following India’s new alliance patterns.
- It would be a rude awakening for India, if it is seen as no longer a stellar member of NAM.
Impact on relations with Russia
- The impact of India signing on to U.S.-related foundational military agreements, cannot but impact India-Russia relations.
- India-Russia relations in recent years have not been as robust as in the pre-2014 period, but many of the edifices that sustained the relationship at optimum levels, including annual meetings between the Russian President and the Indian Prime Minister have remained.
- It is difficult to see how this can be sustained, if India is seen increasingly going into the U.S. embrace.
- Almost certainly in the circumstances, India can hardly hope to count on Russia as a strategic ally.
- This is one relationship which India will need to handle with skill and dexterity, as it would be a tragedy if India-Russia relations were to deteriorate at a time when the world is in a state of disorder.
Consider the question “What are the implications of India’s signing of foundational military agreements with the U.S. for India’s relations with the other countries”
Conclusion
While India moves towards more robust engagement with the U.S., it must also consider impact of such move on the relations with the other countries.
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: Bulk Drugs
Mains level: India's pharma sector
Himachal Pradesh is one of the states vying for the allotment of a bulk drug park under a central government scheme announced earlier this year for setting up three such parks across the country.
Try this question:
Q.The drug pricing system in India is an indirect outcome of the growing dependence on China for APIs. Discuss.
What are Bulk Drugs or APIs?
- A bulk drug also called an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), is the key ingredient of a drug or medicine, which lends it the desired therapeutic effect or produces the intended pharmacological activity.
- For example, paracetamol is a bulk drug, which acts against pain.
- It is mixed with binding agents or solvents to prepare the finished pharmaceutical product, ie a paracetamol tablet, capsule or syrup, which is consumed by the patient.
- APIs are prepared from multiple reactions involving chemicals and solvents.
- The primary chemical or the basic raw material which undergoes reactions to form an API is called the key starting material, or KSM.
- Chemical compounds formed during the intermediate stages during these reactions are called drug intermediates or DIs.
Why is India promoting bulk drug parks?
- India has one of the largest pharmaceutical industries in the world (third largest by volume) but this industry largely depends on other countries, particularly China, for importing APIs, DIs and KSMs.
- This year, drug manufacturers in India suffered repeated setbacks due to disruption in imports.
- Factories in China shut down when the country went into a lockdown, and later, international supply chains were affected as the Covid pandemic gripped the entire world.
- The border conflict between India and China exacerbated the situation.
What is the Centre’s scheme?
- The Centre’s scheme will support three selected parks in the country by providing a one-time grant-in-aid for the creation of common infrastructure facilities.
- The grant-in-aid will be 70 per cent of the cost of the common facilities but in the case of Himachal Pradesh and other hill states, it will be 90 per cent.
- The Centre will provide a maximum of Rs 1,000 crore per park.
- A state can only propose one site, which is not less than a thousand acres in area, or not less than 700 acres in the case of hill states.
What does a bulk park offer?
- A bulk drug park will have a designated contiguous area of land with common infrastructure facilities for the exclusive manufacture of APIs, DIs or KSMs, and also a common waste management system.
- These parks are expected to bring down manufacturing costs of bulk drugs in the country and increase competitiveness in the domestic bulk drug industry.
Why Himachal?
- Himachal already has Asia’s largest pharma manufacturing hub, that is the Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh industrial belt, and the state produces around half of India’s total drug formulations.
- Himachal offers power and water at the lowest tariffs in the country, and the state also has an industrial gas pipeline.
- It jumped nine places in this year’s ease-of-doing-business rankings declared by the Centre last month, securing the seventh position in the country.
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: Nyay Kaushal Centre
Mains level: Transparent and accessible judicial proceedings
CJI has inaugurated the first-ever e-resource centre and virtual court for traffic and transport to enable speedy justice for litigants, called ‘Nyay Kaushal’, at Nagpur.
Must read edition:
[Burning Issue] Judiciary in Times of COVID-19 Outbreak
Nyay Kaushal Centre
- It is a first of its kind e-resource centre in India that will facilitate electronic filing of cases in the Supreme Court, High Courts and district courts across the country.
- It is meant to be a step at mitigating various inequalities, being connected to the Supreme Court, the High Courts and the Taluka Courts.
- It will provide the easiest way of filing court matters by utilising technology. It will provide benefits in saving time, avoidance of exertion, travelling long distances, and a saving in costs.
- The virtual court will be working from Katol in Nagpur district.
It’s working
- The virtual court can deal with all traffic challan cases from every corner of Maharashtra online.
- It will be possible for the litigants to pay the fine and get the traffic challan case disposed of with the click of a button on a smartphone or a computer.
Why need such a mechanism?
- The biggest problem that came with the pandemic was that access to justice became conditional on access to technology.
- This has ended up creating a divide between the ones who can afford technology and ones who cannot.
- With the aid of virtual courts, our system of justice does not suffer and the rule of law continues to be maintained.
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: PM-SVANIDHI Scheme
Mains level: Welfare of the street vendors
Recently PM distributed loans to nearly 300,000 street vendors under the PM SVANidhi scheme.
Q. Discuss how Street-vending accounts for significant non-agricultural urban informal employment in India. Also, discuss how the PM SVANidhi scheme will help street vendors.
SVANidhi scheme
- The SVANidhi ensures a working capital loan up to Rs 10,000 for vendors and rewards digital transactions.
- All street vendors who have been in the business on or before March 24, 2020, are eligible to avail the benefits.
- For this scheme launched in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic, the Centre has earmarked a stimulus package of Rs 5,000 crore for nearly 50 lakh vendors.
Street vendors in India
- There are estimated 50-60 lakh street vendors in India, with the largest concentrations in the cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Ahmedabad.
- Most of them are migrants who typically work for 10–12 hours every day on average. Anyone who doesn’t have a permanent shop is considered a street vendor.
- According to government estimates, street-vending accounts for 14 per cent of the total (non-agricultural) urban informal employment in the country.
- The sector is riddled with problems. Licence caps are unrealistic in most cities — Mumbai, for example, has a ceiling of around 15,000 licences as against an estimated 2.5 lakh vendors.
- This means most vendors hawk their goods illegally, which makes them vulnerable to exploitation and extortion by local police and municipal authorities.
Identifying street vendors
- The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 was enacted to regulate street vendors in public areas and protect their rights.
- The Act defines a “street vendor” as a person engaged in vending of articles… of everyday use or offering services to the general public, in…any public place or private area, from a temporary built-up structure or by moving from place to place”.
- The Act envisages the formation of Town Vending Committees in various districts to ensure that all street vendors identified by the government are accommodated in the vending zones subject to norms.
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: D614G mutation
Mains level: Not Much
While novel coronavirus is undergoing many mutations, one particular mutation called D614G, according to a study, has become the dominant variant in the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Try this PYQ:
Q.Which one of the following statements is not correct?
(a) Hepatitis B virus is transmitted much like HIV.
(b) Hepatitis B, unlike Hepatitis C, does not have a vaccine.
(c) Globally, the number of people infected with Hepatitis B and C viruses is several times more than those infected with HIV.
(d) Some of those infected with Hepatitis B and C viruses do not show the symptoms for many years.
D614G mutation
- When the virus enters an individual’s body, it aims at creating copies of itself. When it makes an error in this copying process, we get a mutation.
- In this case, the virus replaced the aspartic acid (D) in the 614th position of the amino acid with glycine (G). Hence the mutation is called the D614G.
- This mutated form of the virus was first identified in China and then in Europe. Later it spread to other countries like the U.S. and Canada and was eventually reported in India.
Threats posed
- This particular mutation aids the virus in attaching more efficiently with the ACE2 receptor in the human host, thereby making it more successful in entering a human body than its predecessors.
- D614G show increased infectivity but it also displayed greater ability at attaching itself to the cell walls inside an individual’s nose and throat, increasing the viral load.
How prevalent is it in India?
- A study (reveals that the D614G was one of the most prevalent spike mutations even during the initial phase of the pandemic.
- Since then, D614G mutation’s ‘relative abundance’ has increased over time to 70% and above, in most states except Delhi.
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: Asteroids, Bennu, Psyche
Mains level: Not Much
A recent study has found that asteroid 16 Psyche, which orbits between Mars and Jupiter, could be made entirely of metal and is worth an estimated $10,000 quadrillion.
A NASA mission has recently landed on and collected samples from an asteroid. Do you remember that? Yes. Its the Asteroid Bennu
16 Psyche
- Located around 370 million km away from Earth, asteroid 16 Psyche is one of the most massive objects in the asteroid belt in our solar system.
- The somewhat potato-shaped asteroid has a diameter of around 140 miles.
- It was first discovered on March 17, 1853, by the Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis and was named after the ancient Greek goddess of the soul, Psyche.
- Unlike most asteroids that are made up of rocks or ice, scientists believe that Psyche is a dense and largely metallic object thought to be the core of an earlier planet that failed in formation.
- Its surface may mostly comprise iron and nickel, similar to the Earth’s core, according to a study.
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: Mansar Lakes, Ramsar Sites
Mains level: Wetland conservation in India
Mansar Lake Development Plan is getting fulfilled after a long wait of 70 years.
Try this PYQ:
Q.With reference to a conservation organization called Wetlands International, which of the following statements is/are correct?
- It is an intergovernmental organization formed by the countries which are signatories to Ramsar Convention.
- It works at the field level to develop and mobilize knowledge, and use the practical experience to advocate for better policies.
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) Neither 1 nor 2
About Mansar Lake
- Situated at about 37 km from Jammu, Mansar is a lake fringed by forest-covered hills, over a mile in length by half-a-mile in width.
- Surinsar-Mansar Lakes are designated as Ramsar Convention in November 2005.
- With all religions belief and heritage behind the Mansar Lake is also picking up its fame among the tourists with all its flora & fauna.
- The lake has cemented path all around with required illumination, with projected view decks to enjoy flickering of seasonal birds, tortoise and fishes of different species.
- There is a wildlife Sanctuary housing jungle life like Spotted Deer, Nilgai etc. besides other water birds such as Cranes, Ducks etc.
Back2Basics: Ramsar Convention
- The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (better known as the Ramsar Convention) is an international agreement promoting the conservation and wise use of wetlands.
- It is the only global treaty to focus on a single ecosystem.
- The convention was adopted in the Iranian city of Ramsar in 1971 and came into force in 1975.
- Traditionally viewed as a wasteland or breeding ground of disease, wetlands actually provide freshwater and food and serve as nature’s shock absorber.
- Wetlands, critical for biodiversity, are disappearing rapidly, with recent estimates showing that 64% or more of the world’s wetlands have vanished since 1900.
- Major changes in land use for agriculture and grazing, water diversion for dams and canals and infrastructure development are considered to be some of the main causes of loss and degradation of wetlands.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now