Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Reforming medical education in India
The article highlights the issue of shortage of doctors in India and issues with the involvement of private sector in it.
Government approach
- Market-oriented approach towards medical education: NITI Aayog’s proposal of allowing private entities to take over district hospitals for converting them into teaching hospitals with at least 150 MBBS seats.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Al-Aqsa Mosque
Mains level: Paper 2- Israel-Palestine conflict
The article discusses the types of response the recent violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict would invoke across the world and also explains the perils of ignoring the conflict.
Three types of responses
- The deadly riots in Israel and the war in Gaza, is likely to evoke three kinds of responses: The indifferent, the imperial, the humanitarian.
1) Moral indifference
- Instead of becoming the symbol of the unfinished tasks of decolonisation, and a human rights catastrophe, the Palestinian question is now mostly an occasion to vent cynicism.
- The moral questions the oppression of Palestinians poses is avoided by claiming that in this conflict we can assigning rights and wrongs equally to both sides.
- There is the spectacle of civilians on both sides living in terror.
- There is the fanaticism of the right-wing in Israel and there is the fanaticism of Hamas and Fatah.
- Blaming both sides also whitewashes the fact that there is a monumental injustice to the Palestinians at the heart of the problem.
2) The imperial response
- The events leading up to the recent clashes at the Al-Aqsa Mosque can be seen as part of a long pattern of pushing out Palestinians from territory Israel wants to claim.
- American administration has not been able to significantly roll back this project of pushing the Palestinians out.
- Palestine will once again be the site where the Biden administration’s liberal internationalism will face challenge.
3) Humanitarian response
- This third response is to dig beneath the politics and find bridges in shared humanity and suffering.
- This is also the tack of the peace movements that use culture and a history of shared suffering to build bridges.
- They emphasise that dispossession and exile is something both communities share; they, of all the people, should be able to understand each other.
- Humanity and culture, even when deeply internalised, collapse quickly when subject to fear.
- And they always fall short of acknowledging the core issue at stake: Political equality between two peoples.
Geopolitical implications of conflict
- The violence of Israel will beget more terrorist violence of Hamas and Fatah, with every world power from Russia to Iran influencing the chaos.
- Israel needs to be reminded of the blowback of imperial politics: The ultimate consequence of trying to dominate a people is that you end up destroying the moral legitimacy of your own claims.
- No amount of military capacity can compensate for the images of lynching, rioting, and provocations that we have seen this week.
Conclusion
We continually risk conflict if the Palestinian question is simply treated as an object of geo-political opportunism, not as a question of basic dignity and justice.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Remittances received by India
Mains level: Paper 3- Remittances received by India bucks pandemic effect
What the World Bank report says
- India received over USD 83 billion in remittances in 2020, according to a World Bank report.
- In 2019, India had received USD 83.3 billion in remittances.
- The report said India’s remittances fell by just 0.2 per cent in 2020.
- Much of the decline was due to a 17 per cent drop in remittances from the United Arab Emirates, which offset resilient flows from the United States and other host countries.
- The World Bank, in its latest Migration and Development Brief, said despite COVID-19, remittance flows remained resilient in 2020.
Trend analysis
- China, which received USD 59.5 billion in remittances in 2020 against USD 68.3 billion the previous year, is a distant second.
- India and China are followed by Mexico (USD42.8 billion), the Philippines (USD34.9 billion), Egypt (USD29.6 billion), Pakistan (USD26 billion), France (USD24.4 billion) and Bangladesh (USD21 billion).
- Remittance outflow was the maximum from the United States (USD68 billion), followed by UAE (USD43 billion), Saudi Arabia (USD34.5 billion), Switzerland (USD27.9 billion), Germany (USD22 billion), and China (USD18 billion).
- The relatively strong performance of remittance flows during the COVID-19 crisis has also highlighted the importance of timely availability of data.
- Given its growing significance as a source of external financing for low- and middle-income countries, there is a need for better collection of data on remittances, in terms of frequency, timely reporting, and granularity by corridor and channel.
B2BASICS
Remittances
- Remittances are usually understood as financial or in-kind transfers made by migrants to friends and relatives back in communities of origin.
- These are basically sum of two main components – Personal Transfers in cash or in kind between resident and non-resident households and Compensation of Employees, which refers to the income of workers who work in another country for a limited period of time.
- Remittances help in stimulating economic development in recipient countries, but this can also make such countries over-reliant on them.
Remittance and the Indian Economy
Benefits
- Increased inward remittance is a boon for the economy at both macro and micro levels.
- At the macro level, remittances contribute to maintaining stable foreign reserves.
- Remittances help Indian Rupee hold its value against the US dollar and forms a significant part of the GDP.
- On a micro level, remittances have shown a positive impact on healthcare, entrepreneurship, education, and overall economic development of the recipient families.
Issues
An increase in outward remittances however, raises an alarm. It causes the rupee to weaken against the dollar, which in return impacts the businesses exposed to foreign exchange, and the economy overall.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- App to watch live proceedings of the Supreme Court
App to view virtual proceedings
- Chief Justice of India launched a mobile app that would allow media persons to view the Supreme Court’s virtual proceedings live on their mobile phones.
- The role of the media assumes importance in the process of disseminating information.
- Justice A.M. Khanwilkar said the facility, which is now temporary, could be made permanent in the future depending on the operational issues.
‘Indicative Notes’ on the SC website
- The CJI also launched a new feature in the Supreme Court’s official website called ‘Indicative Notes’.
- This feature is aimed at providing concise summaries of landmark judgments in an easy-to-understand format.
- This will serve as a useful resource for media persons and the general public who wish to be better informed about the rulings of the court.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Difference between OCI and NRI
Mains level: Paper 2- Issues faced by OCI
About notification
- The Home Ministry’s March 4 order that required professional Overseas Citizens of India (OCIs), such as journalists, engineers and researchers, to notify the Ministry about their activities in India.
- The notification said that OCIs shall be required to obtain a “special permission or a special permit” from the competent authority or the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) or the Indian mission “to undertake research, missionary or Tabligh or mountaineering or journalistic activities or internship in any foreign diplomatic missions
- The Ministry issued a gazette notification that OCI cardholders could claim “only NRI (Non-Resident Indian) quota seats” in educational institutions.
Issues with the notification
- This will place undue burden on scientific, pharmaceutical, medical, biotechnology and other research fields.
- Even if an OCI student has secured a high rank in an exam like NEET, several institutions of repute do not have NRI seats.
- The exorbitantly high fees under the NRI quota cannot be afforded by many OCIs as they live and work in India.
- India-domiciled OCI students are deprived of domicile status both in India [country of residence] as well as the country of their citizenship.
- The notification equates India-domiciled OCIs with a foreigner.
About OCIs
- OCIs are of Indian origin but hold foreign passports.
- India does not allow dual citizenship but provides certain benefits under Section 7B(I) of the Citizenship Act, 1955 to the OCIs.
- So far, 37.72 lakh OCI Cards are said to have been issued.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Cluster of cases and community transmission classification of WHO
Mains level: Paper 2- Why community transmission tag matters
How other countries are classifying themselves
- Inspite of adding the highest number of cases in the world every day, India continues to label itself as a country with no community transmission (CT) according to the latest weekly report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on May 11.
- India opts for the lower, less serious classification called ‘cluster of cases’.
- Countries such as the United States, Brazil, United Kingdom, France have all labelled themselves as being in ‘community transmission.
- Among the 10 countries with the most number of confirmed cases, only Italy and Russia do not label themselves as being in community transmission.
- Both countries have been on a declining trajectory for at least a month and together contribute less than 20,000 cases a day — about 5% of India’s daily numbers.
- India, since the beginning of the pandemic has never marked itself as being in community transition.
Understanding the classification
- Broadly, CT is when new cases in the last 14 days can’t be traced to those who have an international travel history, when cases can’t be linked to specific cluster.
- Instead, the classification, ‘cluster of cases’ says “Cases detected in the past 14 days are predominantly limited to well-defined clusters that are not directly linked to imported cases”.
- The WHO guidelines further suggest four subcategories within the broader definition of CT.
- CT-1 implying “Low incidence of locally acquired, widely dispersed cases…and low risk of infection for the general population.
- The highest, a CT-4 suggests very high incidence of locally acquired, widely dispersed cases in the past 14 days.
- Very high risk of infection for the general population.
Why right classification matters
- If cases were still a cluster, it would mean that the government ought to be prioritising testing, contact tracing and isolating to prevent further infection spread.
- CT, on the other hand meant prioritising treatment and observing advisories to stay protected.
- CT — far from being stigmatic or an indicator of failure — has a bearing on how authorities addressed a pandemic.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Drugs and Cosmetics Act
Mains level: Paper 2- Blackmarketing during pandemic
The article highlights the issue of black-marketing of drugs during the pandemic and the factors responsible for it.
Problem of fake and sub-standard drugs
- There have been reports of fake remdesivir amid the Covid pandemic.
- It is difficult to quantify the morbidity and mortality effects of fake or sub-standard drugs, but they are substantial.
- Legally, the Drugs and Cosmetics Act (DCA) has different categories of misbranded, adulterated and spurious drugs.
- In 2003 Mashelkar Committee noted that although the Drugs and Cosmetics Act has been in force for the past 56 years, but the level of enforcement in many States has been far from satisfactory.
- The committee also noted that the problems in the regulatory system in the country were primarily due to inadequate or weak drug control infrastructure at the State and Central level.
Steps taken to deal with the issue
- Assistance has also been provided under the World Bank assisted Capacity Building Project to upgrade testing facilities and to establish new drug testing laboratories.
- The Drugs & Cosmetics Act, 1940 has recently been amended in 2008 for providing more stringent penalties to those involved in the trade of spurious drugs.
- There are specially designated courts and regulatory infrastructure has been strengthened.
- There is also a whistle-blower scheme.
Distinction between hoarding and black-marketing
- A hoarder is anyone who stocks up items.
- The crime isn’t hoarding per se but of selling a drug without a licence.
- Data on prosecutions, and convictions when prosecuted, of crimes under Drugs and Cosmetics Act, are not encouraging.
- Incidentally, courts have ruled police officers can’t register FIRs, arrest and prosecute (for cognisable crimes) under this law.
- That’s the job of drugs inspectors.
- The notion of a black market is different, though the two can be related.
- In this context, it means charging a premium when there is a shortage.
- A black market occurs when the price at which a product is sold is higher than an administratively determined price.
Conclusion
Action not taken in the best of times now strikes back at us in the worst of times.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Need for ethics policy in EdTech
The article highlights the privacy concerns associated with EdTech apps in the absence of a regulatory framework.
Privacy risks associated with EdTechs
- Since the onset of the pandemic, online education has replaced conventional classroom instruction.
- This has given rise to several EdTech apps which have become popular.
- To perform the process of learning customisation, the apps collect large quantities of data from the learners through the gadgets that the students use.
- These data are analysed in minute detail to customise learning and design future versions of the app.
- The latest mobile phones and hand-held devices have a range of sensors like GPS, gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer and biometric sensors apart from the camera and microphones.
- These provide data about the learner’s surroundings along with intimate data like the emotions and attitudes experienced and expressed via facial expressions and body temperature changes.
- In short, the app and device have access to the private spaces of the learner that one would not normally have access to.
Informed consent in research
- Researchers dealing with human subjects need to comply with ethics rules along with global standards.
- One of the cardinal rules that should never be broken is informed consent.
- Before any research on human subjects is undertaken, researchers have to submit detailed proposals to their respective ethics committees and obtain their permissions.
- Further, a researcher working with children, for example, would also have to convince schoolteachers, parents, and school managements about the nature of the research to be undertaken, type of data to be collected, method of storage, the potential harmful effects of such data, etc.
Minimal safeguards in EdTech
- The safeguards that traditional researchers are subject to are either missing or minimal in research that the EdTech industry promotes.
- The concept of informed consent is not meaningful since there are no proper primers to explain to stakeholders the intricacies in layperson terms.
- Since India does not have protection equivalent to the GDPR, private data collected by an EdTech company can be misused or sold to other companies with no oversight or protection.
Way forward
- Given these realities, it is necessary to formulate an ethics policy for EdTech companies.
- Such a policy draft should be circulated both online and offline for discussions and criticism.
- Issues of fairness, safety, confidentiality and anonymity of the user would have to be dealt with.
- EdTech companies would have to be encouraged to comply in the interest of a healthier learning ecosystem.
Consider the question “What are the challenges associated with the adoption of online education mode? Suggest the ways to deal with these challenges.”
Conclusion
The lack of a regulatory framework in India along the lines of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe could impinge on the privacy of students. What we need is ethics policy in online education space.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: ICAI
Mains level: Paper 2- MoU between ICAI and QFCA
Signing of MoU
- The Union Cabinet approved the signing of a pact between the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) and the Qatar Financial Centre Authority (QFCA)
- The ICAI has more than 6,000 members in the Middle East.
Increase opportunities and enhance cooperation
- The MoU would enhance cooperation between the institutes to work together to strengthen the accounting profession and entrepreneurship base in Qatar.
- The MoU would provide the ICAI members in the entire Middle East better recognition, together with working to support Indian businesses desirous of doing business in Qatar
- The MoU will endeavour to increase opportunities for ICAI members to provide professional services in Qatar in the areas of assurance and auditing, advisory, taxation, financial services and allied areas.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: GSM-21
Mains level: Paper 2- GSM-21
Fostering relations with maritime neighbours
- Towards fostering friendly relations with its maritime neighbours, Indian Navy hosted ‘GMS-21’.
- The event for the first time was hosted in virtual mode, with online participation of Naval representatives from 13 Indian Ocean Littoral countries.
- The 13 countries included India, Bangladesh, Comoros, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritius, Myanmar, Seychelles, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
- The theme for GMS-21 was focused on “Maritime Security and Emerging Non-Traditional Threats: A Case for Proactive Role for IOR Navies,” with emphasis on capacity building amongst the IOR Navies to tackle emerging common maritime threats.
Bringing together the stakeholders
- With the Indian Ocean becoming the locus of 21st century strategic landscape, the symposium will play a constructive role in bringing together the stakeholders who have a role in evolving strategies, policies and implementation mechanisms on the issues of common interest in maritime domain.
- In addition to presenting cooperative strategies for enhancing interoperability among partner maritime agencies, the event provided a forum for articulation of views on the crucial maritime issues, followed by theme based discussions.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: MLA-LAD scheme
Mains level: Paper 2- Using MLA-LAD funds for Covid vaccination
MLA-LAD Fund for buying vaccine
- As part of the efforts to mobilise financial resources for COVID-19 vaccination, Rajasthan Chief Minister has approved a proposal to provide ₹3 crore each from the MLA Local Area Development (LAD) Fund.
- For meeting the expenses, the fund for each legislator has been increased from ₹2.25 crore to ₹5 crore a year.
- The 200 MLAs in the State will contribute a total of ₹600 crore to the vaccination fund account under the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund.
- From the remaining ₹2 crore in the MLA-LAD Fund, ₹1 crore will be spent on strengthening the medical infrastructure, purchase of equipment and setting up of model community health centres.
About MLA-LAD Fund
- Member of Legislative Assembly Local Area Development is a scheme that enables each MLA to undertake small developmental works in his/her constituency.
- The MLALAD Scheme is intended to be utilised for small but essential projects/works based on the felt needs of the local public.
- Under this scheme, funds will be provided in the State’s Plan Budget every year.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Managing the strategic competition with China
The article highlights the need for a critical assessment of the stand-off with China last year and offers key lessons in managing the strategic competition with China.
Year after stand-off
- After over a year, the stand-off between Indian and Chinese troops in eastern Ladakh shows no signs of resolution.
- More broadly, the India-China bilateral relationship has ruptured.
- Reversing a long-held policy, India will no longer overlook the problematic border dispute for the sake of a potentially lucrative wider relationship.
- Even if disengagement continues, the relationship will remain vulnerable to destabilising disruptions.
- Therefore, the Ladakh crisis offers India three key lessons in managing the intensifying strategic competition with China.
Three key lessons
1) Military strategy based on denial are more useful
- Military strategies based on denial are more useful than strategies based on punishment.
- The Indian military’s standing doctrine calls for deterring adversaries with the threat of massive punitive retaliation for any aggression, capturing enemy territory as bargaining leverage in post-war talks.
- But this did not deter China from launching unprecedented incursions in May 2020.
- In contrast, the Indian military’s high-water mark in the crisis was an act of denial — its occupation of the heights on the Kailash Range on its side of the LAC in late August.
- This action served to deny that key terrain to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and gave the Indian Army a stronger defensive position.
- A doctrinal focus on denial will give the Indian military greater capacity to thwart future land grabs across the LAC.
- Over time, improved denial capabilities may allow India to reduce the resource drain of the increased militarisation of the LAC.
2) Political cost matters more
- China is more likely to be deterred or coerced with the threat of political costs, rather than material costs.
- The material burden of the crisis would not disrupt its existing priorities.
- In contrast, India successfully raised the risks of the crisis for China through its threat of a political rupture, not military punishment.
- A permanently hostile India or an accidental escalation to conflict were risks that China, having achieved its tactical goals in the crisis, assessed were an unnecessary additional burden.
- The corollary lesson is that individual powers, even large powers such as India, will probably struggle to shift Beijing’s calculus alone.
- Against the rising behemoth, only coordinated or collective action is likely to be effective.
3) India should accept more risk on LAC
- India should consider accepting more risk on the LAC in exchange for long-term leverage and influence in the Indian Ocean Region.
- From the perspective of long-term strategic competition, the future of the Indian Ocean Region is more consequential and more uncertain than the Himalayan frontier.
- At the land border, the difficult terrain and more even balance of military force means that each side could only eke out minor, strategically modest gains at best.
- In contrast, India has traditionally been the dominant power in the Indian Ocean Region and stands to cede significant political influence and security if it fails to answer the rapid expansion of Chinese military power.
Conclusion
As these three lessons show, the future of the strategic competition is not yet written. If India’s leaders honestly and critically evaluate the crisis, it may yet help to actually brace India’s long-term position against China.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Juvenile Justice law
Mains level: Paper 2- Child adoption procedure
The Covid pandemic has orphaned many children. As a consequence there has been an increase in pleas on social media for adoption. However, such pleas go against the legal provisions. The article deals with the issue.
Legal provisions for protection of children
- Today, some people are offering infants for instant adoption by stating how the children have lost their parents to pandemic.
- However, such adoptions are illegal.
- The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) law was enacted in 2015.
- The Juvenile Justice Act is a secular law, all persons are free to adopt children under this law.
- The Juvenile Justice Rules of 2016 and the Adoption Regulations of 2017 followed to create the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA).
- CARA is a statutory body for the regulation, monitoring and control of all intra-country and inter-country adoptions.
- CARA also grants a ‘no objection’ certificate for all inter-country adoptions, pursuant to India becoming a signatory to the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoptions.
- India is also a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
- Thus, protections afforded to children became a legal mandate of all authorities and courts.
- Persons professing the Hindu religion are also free to adopt under the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act of 1956.
- Rehabilitation of all orphaned, abandoned and surrendered children is regulated by the strict mandatory procedures of the Adoption Regulations.
Procedure for adoption
- The eligibility of prospective adoptive parents living in India, duly registered on the Child Adoption Resource Information and Guidance System (CARINGS), irrespective of marital status and religion, is adjudged by specialised adoption agencies preparing home study reports.
- The specialised adoption agency then secures court orders approving the adoption.
- All non-resident persons approach authorised adoption agencies in their foreign country of residence for registration under CARINGS.
- Their eligibility is adjudged by authorised foreign adoption agencies through home study reports.
- CARA then issues a pre-adoption ‘no objection’ certificate for foster care, followed by a court adoption order.
- A final ‘no objection’ certificate from CARA or a conformity certificate under the adoption convention is mandatory for a passport and visa to leave India.
Way forward
- CARA must conduct an outreach programme on social media, newspapers and TV, warning everyone not to entertain any illegal adoption offers under any circumstances whatsoever.
- The National and State Commissions for Protection of Child Rights must step up their roles as vigilantes.
- Social activists, NGOs and enlightened individuals must report all the incidents that come to their notice.
- Respective State Legal Services Authorities have the infrastructure and machinery to stamp out such unlawful practices brought to their attention.
- The media must publicise and shame all those involved in this disreputable occupation.
- At the same time, the police authorities need to be extra vigilant in apprehending criminals.
Conclusion
Tough times call for tough measures. This business of criminal trading of children must be checked with an iron hand.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Mucormycosis
Mains level: Paper 2- Mucormycosis infection risk in Covid-19 patients
About mucormycosis
- Mucormycosis is a fungal infection that has a high mortality rate of 50 per cent.
- An increasing number of Covid-19 patients have been developing this infection while still at the hospital or after discharge.
- The disease often manifests in the skin and also affects the lungs and the brain.
- Some of the common symptoms include sinusitis, blackish nasal discharge, facial pain, headaches, and pain around the eyes.
Who is at risk
- Patients who have been hospitalised for Covid-19 and particularly those who require oxygen therapy during Covid-19 illness are at a much higher risk of mucormycosis.
- However, there are some cases of mucormycosis in patients with asymptomatic Covid-19 infection.
- Before the pandemic, patients with uncontrolled diabetes were at a higher risk of mucormycosis.
- The risk of mucormycosis rises for these patients for two reasons.
- First is that Covid-19 further impairs their immune system.
- Second, they are given corticosteroids for their treatment it leads to a rise in their blood sugar level thus increasing their risk of mucormycosis.
Treatment
- Today, we have a number of drugs and anti-fungal medicines that can treat mucormycosis.
- These are given by IV or taken orally.
- Surgery is needed to remove the affected dead tissues along with antifungal therapy.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Advance Chemical Cell batter
Mains level: Paper 3- PLI scheme for ACC battery
About the scheme
- The Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister has approved the proposal of Department of Heavy Industry for implementation of the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme ‘National Programme on Advanced Chemistry Cell (ACC) Battery Storage’.
- Each selected ACC battery Storage manufacturer would have to commit to set-up an ACC manufacturing facility of minimum five (5) GWh capacity and ensure a minimum 60% domestic value addition at the Project level within five years.
- Furthermore, the beneficiary firms have to achieve a domestic value addition of at least 25% and incur the mandatory investment Rs.225 crore /GWh within 2 Years (at the Mother Unit Level) and raise it to 60% domestic value addition within 5 Years, either at Mother Unit, in-case of an Integrated Unit, or at the Project Level, in-case of “Hub & Spoke” structure.
- The scheme will help in achieving manufacturing capacity of Fifty (50) Giga Watt Hour (GWh) of ACC and 5 GWh of “Niche” ACC with an outlay of Rs.18,100 crore.
About ACC
- ACCs are the new generation of advanced storage technologies that can store electric energy either as electrochemical or as chemical energy and convert it back to electric energy as and when required.
Benefits of the scheme
- Setup a cumulative 50 GWh of ACC manufacturing facilities in India under the Programme.
- Direct investment of around Rs.45,000 crore in ACC Battery storage manufacturing projects.
- Facilitate demand creation for battery storage in India.
- Facilitate Make-ln-lndia: Greater emphasis upon domestic value-capture and therefore reduction in import dependence.
- Net savings of Indian Rs. 2,00,000 crore to Rs.2,50,000 crore on account of oil import bill reduction during the period of this Programme due to EV adoption as ACCs manufactured under the Programme is expected to accelerate EV adoption.
- The manufacturing of ACCs will facilitate demand for EVs, which are proven to be significantly less polluting.
- As India pursues an ambitious renewable energy agenda, the ACC program will be a key contributing factor to reduce India’s Green House Gas (GHG) emissions which will be in line with India’s commitment to combat climate change.
- Import substitution of around Rs.20,000 crore every year.
- The impetus to Research & Development to achieve higher specific energy density and cycles in ACC.
- Promote newer and niche cell technologies.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3- Report on ‘Connected Commerce: Creating a Roadmap for a Digitally Inclusive Bharat’
About the report
- NITI Aayog and Mastercardtoday released a report titled ‘Connected Commerce: Creating a Roadmap for a Digitally Inclusive Bharat’.
- The report identifies challenges in accelerating digital financial inclusion in India and provides recommendations for making digital services accessible to its 1.3 billion citizens.
- The report highlights key issues and opportunities, with inferences and recommendations on policy and capacity building across agriculture, small business (MSMEs), urban mobility and cybersecurity.
- This report looks at some key sectors and areas that need digital disruptions to bring financial services to everyone.
Key recommendations in the report include:
- Strengthening the payment infrastructure to promote a level playing field for NBFCs and banks.
- Digitizing registration and compliance processes and diversifying credit sources to enable growth opportunities for MSMEs.
- Building information sharing systems, including a ‘fraud repository’, and ensuring that online digital commerce platforms carry warnings to alert consumers to the risk of frauds.
- Enabling agricultural NBFCs to access low-cost capital and deploy a ‘phygital’ (physical + digital) model for achieving better long-term digital outcomes.
- Digitizing land records will also provide a major boost to the sector.
- To make city transit seamlessly accessible to all with minimal crowding and queues, leveraging existing smartphones andcontactless cards, and aim for an inclusive, interoperable, and fully open system such as that of the London ‘Tube’.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Growing inequality in access to health and education
Impact of pandemic
- The novel coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the use of digital technologies in India, even for essential services such as health and education, where access to them might be poor.
- Economic inequality has increased: people whose jobs and salaries are protected, face no economic fallout.
- Well-recognised channels of economic and social mobility — education and health — are getting rejigged in ways that make access more inequitable in an already unequal society.
Growing inequality in access to education
- According to National Sample Survey data from 2017, only 6% rural households and 25% urban households have a computer.
- Access to Internet facilities is not universal either: 17% in rural areas and 42% in urban areas.
- Surveys by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the Azim Premji Foundation, ASER and Oxfam suggest that between 27% and 60% could not access online classes for a range of reasons: lack of devices, shared devices, inability to buy “data packs”, etc.
- Further, lack of stable connectivity jeopardises their evaluations.
- Besides this, many lack a learning environment at home.
- Peer learning has also suffered.
Inequality in access to health care
- India’s public spending on health is barely 1% of GDP.
- Partly as a result, the share of ‘out of pocket’ (OOP) health expenditure (of total health spending) in India was over 60% in 2018.
- Even in a highly privatised health system such as the United States, OOP was merely 10%.
- Moreover, the private health sector in India is poorly regulated in practice.
- Both put the poor at a disadvantage in accessing good health care.
- Right now, the focus is on the shortage of essentials: drugs, hospital beds, oxygen, vaccines.
- In several instances, developing an app is being seen as a solution for allocation of various health services.
- Digital “solutions” create additional bureaucracy for all sick persons in search of these services without disciplining the culprits.
- Platform- and app-based solutions can exclude the poor entirely, or squeeze their access to scarce health services further.
- In other spheres (e.g., vaccination) too, digital technologies are creating extra hurdles.
- The use of CoWIN to book a slot makes it that much harder for those without phones, computers and the Internet.
Issues with the creation of centralised database
- The digital health ID project is being pushed during the pandemic when its merits cannot be adequately debated.
- Electronic and interoperable health records are the purported benefits.
- For patients, interoperability i.e., you do not have to lug your x-rays, past medication and investigations can be achieved by decentralising digital storage say, on smart cards as France and Taiwan have done.
- Given that we lack a data privacy law in India, it is very likely that our health records will end up with private entities without our consent, even weaponised against us.
- For example, a private insurance companies may use health record to deny poor people an insurance policy or charge a higher premium.
- There are worries that the government is using the vaccination drive to populate the digital health ID database.
Way forward
- Unless health expenditure on basic health services (ward staff, nurses, doctors, laboratory technicians, medicines, beds, oxygen, ventilators) is increased, apps such as Aarogya Setu, Aadhaar and digital health IDs can improve little.
- Unless laws against medical malpractices are enforced strictly, digital solutions will obfuscate and distract us from the real problem.
- We need political, not technocratic, solutions.
Conclusion
Today, there is greater understanding that the harms from Aadhaar and its cousins fall disproportionately on the vulnerable. Hopefully, the pandemic will teach us to be more discerning about which digital technologies we embrace.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- US withdrawal from Afghanistan and its implications for the region
The article highlights the important role played by the US in the geopolitics of the region and the impact of the US retreat on the region foreign policy landscape.
How the US shaped the regional politics of South Asia
- Since it replaced Britain as the major external power in Greater Middle East half a century ago, America has been the pivot around which the regional politics has played out.
- Many regional actors sought alliances with America to secure themselves against ambitious or troublesome neighbours.
- Others sought to balance against America.
- Israel’s security, ensuring oil supplies, competing with other powers, making regional peace, promoting democracy, and stamping out terrorism are no longer compelling factors demanding massive American military, political and diplomatic investments in the region.
Region now has to learn to live with neighbours
- As America steps back from the Middle East, most regional actors either need alternate patrons or reduced tensions with their neighbours.
- Although China and Russia have regional ambitions, neither of them bring the kind of strategic heft America brought to bear on the Middle East all these decades.
- Turkey has figured that its troubled economy can’t sustain the ambitious regional policies.
- After years of challenging Saudi leadership of the Islamic world, Erdogan is offering an olive branch to Riyadh.
- After years of intense mutual hostility, Saudi Arabia and Iran are now exploring means to reduce bilateral tensions and moderate their proxy wars in the region.
- Saudi Arabia is also trying to heal the rift within the Gulf by ending the earlier effort to isolate Qatar.
- These changes come in the wake of the big moves last year by some Arab states — the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — to normalise ties with Israel.
How India’s approach helped maintain ties in the region
- India’s emphasis on good relations with all the regional actors without a reference to their conflicts has been vindicated by the turn of events.
- Barring Turkey, which turned hostile to India under Erdogan, India has managed to expand its ties with most regional actors.
- Hopefully, the new regional churn will encourage Turkey to take a fresh look at its relations with India.
Effect on India-Pak relations
- The regional reset in the Middle East has coincided with efforts by Delhi and Rawalpindi to cool their tensions.
- The ceasefire on the Line of Control in Kashmir announced at the end of February appears to be holding.
- The US withdrawal from Afghanistan poses major challenges to the Subcontinent.
- India and Pakistan, for very different reasons, would have liked to see the US forces stay forever in Afghanistan.
- For India, American military presence would have kept a check on extremist forces and created conducive conditions for an Indian role in Afghanistan.
- For Pakistan, American military presence in Afghanistan keeps the US utterly dependent on Pakistan for geographic access and operational support.
Challenge of terrorism
- The prospect of trans-border links between the Taliban and other extremist forces in the region is a challenge that South Asian states will have to confront sooner than later.
- Soaring levels of violence in Afghanistan and attack on the former president of Maldives, underlines South Asia’s enduring challenges with terrorism.
- Unless the South Asian states collaborate on countering extremism and terrorism, every one of them will be weakened.
Consider the question “How US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan will influence the regional geopolitics of the region?”
Conclusion
The region needs to focus on the peace and harmony in the region while resolving the bilateral issues through dialogue.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Asteroid Bennu
Mains level: Paper 3- OSIRIS-REx starts journey back to the earth
On May 11, NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft will depart asteroid Bennu, and start its two-year-long journey back to Earth.
About OSIRIS-REx
- OSIRIS-REx is NASA’s first mission to visit a near-Earth asteroid, survey its surface and collect a sample from it.
- The mission was launched in 2016, it reached its target in 2018 and since then, the spacecraft has been trying to match the velocity of the asteroid using small rocket thrusters.
- It also utilised this time to survey the surface and identify potential sites to take samples.
- In October 2020, the spacecraft briefly touched asteroid Bennu, from where it collected samples of dust and pebbles.
- Once the surface was disturbed, the spacecraft’s robotic arm captured some samples.
- The spacecraft’s engineers have also confirmed that shortly after the spacecraft made contact with the surface, it fired its thrusters and “safely backed away from Bennu”.
About Bennu
- Bennu is considered to be an ancient asteroid that has not gone through a lot of composition-altering change through billions of years, which means that below its surface lie chemicals and rocks from the birth of the solar system.
- Around 20-40 percent of Bennu’s interior is empty space and scientists believe that it was formed in the first 10 million years of the solar system’s creation, implying that it is roughly 4.5 billion years old.
- Bennu is a B-type asteroid, implying that it contains significant amounts of carbon and various other minerals.
- Because of its high carbon content, the asteroid reflects about four percent of the light that hits it, which is very low when compared with a planet.
- Bennu is named after an Egyptian deity.
- The asteroid was discovered by a team from the NASA-funded Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research team in 1999.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: al-Aqsa mosque
Mains level: Paper 2- Israel-Palestine conflict
Context
On Monday, Israeli police stormed the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in East Jerusalem, leaving a reported 300 people injured. The stand-off came at the end of a week of tensions over the eviction of Palestinian residents from two neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, to make way for Jewish settlers.
Cause of the clashes
- The Al-Aqsa is located on a plaza at Temple Mount, which is known in Islam as Haram-e-Sharif.
- The Mount is also Judaism’s holiest site.
- The most imposing structure on the compound is the Dome of the Rock, with its golden dome.
- The Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall sacred to Jews, is one side of the retaining wall of the Al-Aqsa compound.
- Soon after the 1967 Six-Day War ended, Israel gave back to Jordan the administration and management of the Al-Aqsa compound.
- While non-Muslims have not been allowed to worship at Al-Aqsa, Jewish individuals and groups have made repeated attempts to gain entry to the Mount Temple plaza.
- Since the late 1990s, around the time of the first intifada, such attempts began occurring with a regularity as Jewish settlers began claiming land in East Jerusalem and surrounding areas.
- It has led to repeated clashes and tensions at Al-Aqsa.
Rival claims over Jerusalem
- Both Israel and Palestine have declared Jerusale their capital.
- In July 1980, the Israeli Parliament passed the Jerusalem Law declaring it the country’s capital.
- Palestinians declared Jerusalem the capital of the putative state of Palestine by a law passed by the Palestinian Authority in 2000.
- The 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence also declared Jerusalem as the capital.
- For the present, the Palestinian Authority has its headquarters in Ramallah.
How the world is reacting
- The Security Council held a meeting on the situation in Jerusalem, but did not make any statement immediately.
- Last Friday, the US said it was “extremely concerned” .
- The UAE, which recently recognised as Israel as a state and sealed a historic peace agreement to normalise relations with it, has “strongly condemned” the clashes and the planned evictions in Jerusalem over the past week.
- Saudi Arabia said it “rejects Israel’s plans and measures to evict dozens of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem”.
- Pakistan Prime Minister also condemned Israel for violation of international law.
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