Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Emission intensity of GDP
Mains level: Paper 3- India is right on the path to achieve NDC under Paris Agreement
Context
Despite accomplishments, global pressures are intensifying on India to commit more towards the Conference of the Parties (COP26), scheduled for November 2021 in Glasgow.
India’s accomplishments
- At the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (December 2020), India was the only G20 nation compliant with the agreement.
- India has been ranked within the top 10 for two years consecutively in the Climate Change Performance Index.
- The Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All (UJALA) scheme is the world’s largest zero-subsidy LED bulb programme for domestic consumers.
- India provided leadership for setting up the International Solar Alliance, a coalition of solar-resource-rich countries, and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure.
Why it is unfair to pressure India on climate action
We can attempt to answer the question by comparing the achievements of other countries vis-à-vis India’s performance.
- Historical perspective: World Bank data for CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita) over two decades since the Kyoto protocol informs that at the current rate, both China and the U.S. could emit five times more than India in 2030.
- The U.K.’s emission levels could be more than 1.5 times that of India.
- Brazil, with its dense forests, may end up at similar levels.
- Latest efforts: Last year, China, the world’s largest GHG emitter, joined the ‘race to zero’ and targets carbon neutrality by 2060.
- Interestingly, it hopes to peak CO2 emissions by 2030 for bending the emissions curve.
- Recently, the U.S. rejoined the Paris Agreement and committed to reducing emissions by 50%-52% in 2030 and reaching net-zero emissions economy-wide by 2050.
- The French government, during the novel coronavirus pandemic, set green conditions for bailing out its aviation industry.
- However, the analysts say that no baseline for reducing emissions from domestic flights was fixed.
- In Australia, complicated domestic politics prevented them from addressing the problem, despite the country being vulnerable, and stretches of the famous Great Barrier Reef having died in recent years.
India’s performance
- Exceeding the NDC commitment: India is on track (as reports/documents show) to meet and exceed the NDC commitment to achieve 40% electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel-based sources by 2030.
- Reduction in emission intensity of GDP: Against the voluntary declaration for reducing the emission intensity of GDP by 20%-25% by 2020, India has reduced it by 24% between 2005-2016.
- More importantly, we achieved these targets with around 2% out of the U.S.$100 billion committed to developing nations in Copenhagen (2009), realised by 2015.
- Renewable energy expansion: India is implementing one of the most extensive renewable energy expansion programmes to achieve 175 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2022 and 450 GW by 2030.
- Investment in green measures: As part of the fiscal stimulus after the pandemic, the Government announced several green measures, including:
- a $26.5-billion investment in biogas and cleaner fuels,
- $3.5 billion in incentives for producing efficient solar photovoltaic (PV)
- and advanced chemistry cell battery, and $780 million towards an afforestation programme.
- India’s contribution to global emissions is well below its equitable share of the worldwide carbon budget by any equity criterion.
Conclusion
To sum up, India has indeed walked the talk. Other countries must deliver on their promises early and demonstrate tangible results ahead of COP26.
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- Enduring features of international politics
Context
As the last American soldiers fly out of Kabul airport and the world adapts to the return of the Taliban, three uncomfortable but enduring features of international politics have come into sharp focus.
1) The normalisation of the Taliban by the International community
- That victories on the battlefield have political consequences is one of the fundamental features of international politics.
- There is no reason for India to be surprised at the rapid normalisation of the Taliban by the international community.
- Whether it likes the new and victorious sovereign or not, a government has the obligation to secure its national interests — ranging from the protection of its citizens and property to maintaining the regional balance of power.
- India is not immune to this essential principle of international relations and will find ways to protect its stakes in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
2) Future U.S. relations with the Taliban
- The second enduring feature of world politics — that there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.
- Convergence of interests: The US would want to explore if the Taliban can help secure long-term American interests in preventing a regrouping of international terror outfits like the al Qaeda and ISIS in Afghanistan.
- The Taliban on the other hand would want American and Western support in rebuilding Afghanistan.
- It is by no means clear if such a deal can be clinched, given the big risks it presents to both sides.
- The US engagement with the Taliban to counter the ISIS-K has been met with derision across the world.
- Critics say all these groups are part of the same school of terror, driven by similar religious zeal and nurtured in Pakistan’s sanctuaries.
3) Exploit the differences between adversaries: Way forward for India
- The third feature of international politics is that differences even among the closest of friends are natural and always offer openings to adversaries.
- For India, the main interest is in preventing Afghan soil from being used by anti-India terror groups.
- At least a section of the Taliban is eager to continue political and commercial engagement with India.
- This is part of a natural quest for a diversified set of international partnerships.
- India would be right to wait patiently on the Taliban’s ability to deliver on these promises and stand up against the Pakistan army’s pressures to keep India out.
- Exploit the contradictions: India should not rule out contradictions between Pakistan and the terror groups it has nurtured as well as among various jihadi organisations.
- Despite its powerful appeal, religious ideology has failed to build durable political coalitions within and across nations.
Conclusion
Given this history, it is unwise for Delhi to paint the external challenges arising from the Afghan tumult as a single coherent force. The Panchatantra has a more sensible strategy to offer — try and divide your potential adversaries and strengthen your internal unity.
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: NMP
Mains level: Paper 3- National Monetisation Pipeline
Context
The Government has launched a National Monetisation Pipeline, or NMP to sell the revenue streams of public assets over the next four years.
About NMP
- Financing infrastructure: As outlined in the Union Budget, the NMP aims to mobilize resources for financing infrastructure.
- Type of assets: The pipeline mostly includes railway stations, freight corridors, airports, and renovated national highway segments amounting to ₹6-lakh crore, or 3% of GDP in 2020-21.
- The other two methods of raising resources are: setting up a development finance institution (DFI) and raising the share of infrastructure investment in the central and State Budgets.
Concerns
1) Not different from Disinvestment-Privatisation (D-P)
- Asset monetization as defined in NMP is the same as the net present value (NPV) of the future stream of revenue with an implicit interest rate (whether it is a sale or lease of the asset).
- Missed targets: Since D-P proceeds (revenues) have seriously missed the targets almost every year, how believable are the NMP targets? And how are they likely to perform differently?
- If the NMP attempt to shore up public finances, such distress (fire) sale would find it difficult to obtain a “fair value” for public assets.
- Would the market not factor in the dire state of the economy in beating down the prices, as in any distress sale?
- The NMP document seems silent on how to overcome past mistakes.
2) PPP mode of implementation
- The NMP outlines mainly two modes of implementing monetization: public-private partnership (PPP) and “structured financing” to tap the stock market.
- PPP in infrastructure has been a financial disaster in India, as evident from what happened after the economic boom of 2003-08.
- After the 2008 financial crisis, many PPP projects failed to repay bank loans leading to the piling up of non-performing assets (NPAs) of banks.
- Further, the bulk of the lending was too politically connected to corporate houses and firms.
- India is still reeling from the legacy of that period without any easy and credible solutions in sight.
3) Stock market crash threatens the success of InvIT
- An Infrastructure Investment Trust (InvIT) is being mooted as an alternative means of raising finance from the stock market.
- In principle, InvIT is much like a mutual fund, whose performance is largely linked to stock prices.
- The disinvestment process began in 1991 in which the bundles of shares of public sector enterprises (PSEs) were sold by UTI in the booming secondary stock market to realize the best price.
- However, as the market crashed in the wake of the Harshad Mehta scam, stalling and discrediting the disinvestment process for almost the entire decade.
- Hence, it may be worth learning the lessons from the historical missteps before exploring the idea all over again by the current stock market boom
- At present, the U.S. Fed committed to reducing its assets purchase program (known as quantitative easing), the “hot money” inflow that has fuelled Indian stock prices may dry up throwing up nasty surprises.
Thus, it seems unwise to anchor the acutely needed investment revival strategy on a discredited PPP model or on fickle Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) investment in a frothy stock market.
Suggestion: Monetise debt
- With the financial system flush with liquidity with no takers for bank credit, finance the proposed investment — as envisaged in the Budget — by government borrowing.
- With a negative 0.4% real interest rate (real interest rate is nominal interest rate minus inflation rate), domestic borrowing in home currency is a steal.
- No Crowding out: Chances of crowding-out private investments are remote with a liquidity overhang in the market.
- Low inflation risk: Inflation risk is also limited with little aggregate demand pressures (barring temporary bottlenecks due to localized lockdowns).
- Rating downgrade risk: If the debt is productively used to expand GDP (the denominator), rating downgrade risk due to the rising Debt-GDP ratio seems minimal.
- Moreover, rising external debt by fickle portfolio investors perhaps carries a greater risk to external instability.
Consider the question “How the National Monetisation Pipeline seeks to implement the asset monetisation? What are the challenges in asset monetisation?”
Conclusion
If reviving investment demand quickly is the real goal, debt monetisation seems a better option than asset monetisation.
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: Forex reserves
Mains level: Balance of Payment/Trade
India’s foreign exchange reserves rose by $835 million to touch a record high of $612.73 billion in the week ended July 16, 2021, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data showed.
Forex Reserves
India’s forex reserves cover:
- Foreign Currency Assets (FCAs) (rose by $463 million to $568.748 billion)
- Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) (up by $1 million at $1.548 billion)
- Gold Reserves (up by $377 million to $37.333 billion)
- Reserve position with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (up by $1 million at $1.548 billion)
(Note the descending order of the shares of various components of forex reserves. UPSC can go factual here.)
What is Foreign Exchange Reserve?
- Foreign exchange reserves are important assets held by the central bank in foreign currencies as reserves.
- They are commonly used to support the exchange rate and set monetary policy.
- In India’s case, foreign reserves include Gold, Dollars, and the IMF’s quota for Special Drawing Rights.
- Most of the reserves are usually held in US dollars, given the currency’s importance in the international financial and trading system.
- Some central banks keep reserves in Euros, British pounds, Japanese yen, or Chinese yuan, in addition to their US dollar reserves.
Countries with the highest foreign reserves
Currently, China has the largest reserves followed by Japan and Switzerland. India has overtaken Russia to become the fourth largest country with foreign exchange reserves.
- China – $3,349 Billion
- Japan – $1,376 Billion
- Switzerland – $1,074 Billion
- India – $612.73 Billion
- Russia – $597.40 Billion
Why are these reserves so important?
- All international transactions are settled in US dollars and, therefore, required to support India’s imports.
- More importantly, they need to maintain support and confidence for central bank action, whether monetary policy action or any exchange rate intervention to support the domestic currency.
- It also helps to limit any vulnerability due to sudden disturbances in foreign capital flows, which may arise during a crisis.
- Holding liquid foreign currency provides a cushion against such effects and provides confidence that there will still be enough foreign exchange to help the country with crucial imports in case of external shocks.
Initiatives taken by the government to increase forex
- To increase the foreign exchange reserves, the Government of India has taken many initiatives like AatmaNirbhar Bharat, in which India has to be made a self-reliant nation so that India does not have to import things that India can produce.
- Other than AatmaNirbhar Bharat, the government has started schemes like Duty Exemption Scheme, Remission of Duty or Taxes on Export Product (RoDTEP), Nirvik (Niryat Rin Vikas Yojana) scheme, etc.
- Apart from these schemes, India is one of the top countries that attracted the highest amount of Foreign Direct Investment, thereby improving India’s foreign exchange reserves.
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: School bubbles
Mains level: Not Much
The Karnataka government has proposed the ‘school bubble’ concept to mitigate the spread of the disease among children (aged below 18) attending offline classes at schools and pre-university colleges across the state.
It takes a village to raise a child.
-Anonymous
What are school bubbles?
- School bubbles are physical classifications made between groups comprising a small number of students.
- As per the concept, each such bubble will include students who tend to remain as a group during school hours throughout the term or an academic year.
- The concept would help managements easily isolate a fewer number of students in case anyone gets infected.
- For instance, a school bubble can include 30 students. If one among them gets infected, the others can self-isolate but the school need not be closed completely.
- This would allow uninterrupted learning to others as well.
Why are school bubbles significant?
- The concept of school bubbles, experts feel, will be more relevant to students studying in primary school or below.
- These students will have more chances of peer-to-peer interactions on a daily basis.
- With school bubbles in place, the risk assessment process to identify close contacts of a Covid-positive student will also get easier.
Is this concept completely new?
- This has been successfully implemented at schools in the United Kingdom.
- The government there has further relaxed social-distancing measures for students within a particular school bubble.
- However, all members of the bubble are mandatorily subjected to RT-PCR tests if a student is infected.
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: Leaded Petrol
Mains level: Not Much
The use of leaded petrol has been eradicated from the globe, a/c to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
What is Leaded Petrol?
- Tetraethyl-lead (TEL) is a petro-fuel additive, first being mixed with petrol beginning in the 1920s as a patented octane rating booster that allowed engine compression to be raised substantially.
- This in turn caused increased vehicle performance and fuel economy.
- The practice of adding tetraethyl lead to petrol had spread widely to all countries soon after its anti-knock and octane-boosting properties were discovered.
- TEL is still used as an additive in some grades of aviation gasoline.
Issues with leaded petrol
- Lead is toxic, affects multiple body systems and is particularly harmful to young children.
- It affects the brain, liver, kidneys, and bones. Lead is measured in the blood to understand exposure.
- Lead in bone is released into the blood during pregnancy and becomes a source of exposure to the developing foetus.
- More recent research has indicated that lead can damage the infant brain even at blood levels as low as 5 microunits per decilitre (μ/dl).
India’s tryst with leaded petrol
- India was among those countries that took early action to phase out leaded petrol. The process of phase down that had started in 1994, got completed in 2000.
- Initially, low-leaded petrol was introduced in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai in 1994, followed by unleaded petrol in 1995.
- The entire country got low-leaded petrol in 1997 while leaded fuel was banned in the National Capital Territory of Delhi.
- The final introduction of unleaded petrol in the entire country was mandated in April 2000.
- This decision was also catalyzed by the Supreme Court order that had directed the introduction of unleaded petrol to enable the adoption of catalytic converters in petrol cars.
Significance of phasing out
- It is a milestone that will prevent more than 1.2 million premature deaths and save world economies over $2.4 trillion annually.
- It has taken 100 years to stop the use of leaded fuel finally.
Try answering this PYQ:
Q.Lead, ingested or inhaled, is a health hazard. After the addition of lead to petrol has been banned, what still are the sources of lead poisoning? (CSP 2012)
- Smelting units
- Pens pencils
- Paints
- Hair oils and cosmetics
Select the correct answer using the codes given below:
(a) 1, 2 and 3 only
(b) 1 and 3 only
(c) 2 and 4 only
(d) 1, 2, 3 and 4
Post your answers here.
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: Milky Sea Phenomenon
Mains level: NA
Some researchers would use satellites to study the elusive milky sea phenomenon.
What is the Milky Sea?
- Milky seas, also called mareel, is a luminous phenomenon in the ocean in which large areas of seawater appear to glow translucently (in varying shades of blue).
- Such occurrences glow brightly enough at night to be visible from satellites orbiting Earth.
- They are a rare nocturnal phenomenon in which the ocean’s surface emits a steady bright glow.
Why do they glow?
- Luminous bacteria cause the particles they colonize to glow.
- The purpose of this glow could be to attract fish that eat them.
- These bacteria thrive in the guts of fishes, so when their populations get too big for their main food supply, a fish’s stomach makes a great second option.
How do they occur?
- It is typically caused by Noctiluca scintillans (popularly known as “sea sparkle”), a dinoflagellate that glows when disturbed and is found in oceans throughout much of the world.
- Once their population gets large enough – about 100 million individual cells per millilitre of water – a sort of internal biological switch is flipped and they all start glowing steadily.
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