Day: December 25, 2021

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RBI Notifications

India needs thoughtful legislation on digital currency

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

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.

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Food Procurement and Distribution – PDS & NFSA, Shanta Kumar Committee, FCI restructuring, Buffer stock, etc.

[pib] Centre declares Soya Meal as an Essential Commodity

| Governance | Mains Paper 2: Governance, Transparency & Accountability, Citizens Charters
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: Regulation of Essential Commodities

Mains level: Essential Commodities Act

In a bid to cool down the domestic prices of Soya Meal, Government has notified order under the Essential Commodities Act to declare ‘Soya Meal’ as Essential Commodities under the Essential Commodities Act, 1955.

Essential Commodities Act

  • The ECA, 1955 was established to ensure the delivery of certain commodities or products, the supply of which, if obstructed due to hoarding or black marketing, would affect the normal life of the people.
  • The list of items under the Act includes drugs, fertilizers, pulses, and edible oils, as well as petroleum and petroleum products.
  • The Centre can include new commodities as and when the need arises, and takes them off the list once the situation improves.
  • Additionally, the government can also fix the maximum retail price (MRP) of any packaged product that it declares an “essential commodity”.

How ECA works?

(1) Centre notifying stock limit holding

  • If the Centre finds that a certain commodity is in short supply and its price is spiking, it can notify stock-holding limits on it for a specified period.
  • The States act on this notification to specify limits and take steps to ensure that these are adhered to.
  • Anybody trading or dealing in the commodity, be it wholesalers, retailers or even importers are prevented from stockpiling it beyond a certain quantity.

(2) States can opt-out

  • A State can, however, choose not to impose any restrictions.
  • But once it does, traders have to immediately sell into the market any stocks held beyond the mandated quantity.

What happens for non-compliance?

  • As not all shopkeepers and traders comply, State agencies conduct raids to get everyone to toe the line and the errant are punished.
  • The excess stocks are auctioned or sold through fair price shops.
  • This improves supplies and brings down prices.

Ex: The Union Government has brought masks and hand-sanitizers under the ECA to make sure that these products, key for preventing the spread of Covid-19 infection, are available to people at the right price and in the right quality. Later this move was reverted.

What about Food Items?

(1) Items covered:

Rice, wheat, atta, gram dal, arhar dal, moong dal, urad dal, masoor, dal, tea, sugar, salt, Vanaspati, groundnut oil, mustard oil, milk, soya oil, palm oil, sunflower oil, gur, potato, onion and tomato.

(2) Price Stabilization Fund (PSF):

The government utilizes the buffer of agri-horticultural commodities like pulses, onion, etc. built under Price Stabilization Fund (PSF) to help moderate the volatility in prices.

Recent amendments to the ECA

In 2020, the EC Act was amended for the stock limit to be imposed only under exceptional circumstances such as famine or other calamities.

  • Exceptional circumstances: It allowed the centre to delist certain commodities as essential, allowing the government to regulate their supply and prices only in cases of war, famine, extraordinary price rises, or natural calamities.
  • Commodities de-regulated: The commodities that have been deregulated are food items, including cereals, pulses, potatoes, onion, edible oilseeds, and oils.

Exceptions provided:

  • The government regulation of stocks will be based on rising prices, and can only be imposed if there is
  1. A 100% increase in retail price in the case of horticultural produce and
  2. A 50% increase in retail price in the case of non-perishable agricultural food items
  • These restrictions will not apply to stocks of food held for public distribution in India.

 

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Judicial Reforms

Plea in Supreme Court seeks ‘Uniform Judicial Code’ for HCs

| Polity | Mains Paper 2: Executive & Judiciary
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: Not much

Mains level: Uniform Judicial Code

A petition was filed in the Supreme Court to implement a “Uniform Judicial Code (UJC)” for High Courts across the country to adopt a uniform set of procedures, especially for virtual courts.

What is the PIL about?

  • The petition urged the apex court to take appropriate steps to adopt uniform procedure for case registration, use common judicial terms, phrases and abbreviations and make the court fee uniform.
  • It has, alternatively, sought a direction to the Law Commission of India to prepare a report in consultation with the HC in this regard.

Why need UJC?

  • Matter of Equality: Judicial equality is a matter of constitutional right, its differentiation based on the jurisdiction of courts violates the right to equality.
  • Different nomenclatures: All the 25 High Courts have different usage of the phrases when it comes to identifying different cases.
  • Diverse procedures: The PIL plea highlighted how different High Courts follow different procedures in matters pertaining to virtual courts, started during the pandemic.
  • Different fees: Unequal court fees in different states discriminate among citizens based on their place of birth and residence. Moreover, it promotes regionalism; hence it is a clear violation of Articles 14-15.

Way forward: Bringing in digitized Judiciary systems

  • The judiciary needs to develop a well-defined framework supported by an accessible platform and direct e-court system in India.
  • It also needs to harp on advanced infrastructure to run an e-court system that eradicates the digital divide, simultaneously upping judicial functioning.
  • While the digitized judicial systems give some semblance of convenience for the people who interact with the court, digitization also brings threats of intrusion etc.

 

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International Space Agencies – Missions and Discoveries

How James Webb Telescope seeks to unlock Universe’s Secrets

Prelims Only | Science Tech | Mains Paper 3: Conservation, Environmental Pollution & Degradation, Eia
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: JWST

Mains level: Not Much

Today, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the largest and most powerful space telescope ever built, will be launched from French Guiana, on the northeast coast of South America on the European Ariane 5 rocket.

James Webb Space Telescope

  • JWST is a space telescope jointly developed by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
  • It is planned to succeed the Hubble Space Telescope as NASA’s flagship astrophysics mission.
  • It will conduct a broad range of investigations across the fields of astronomy and cosmology, including:
  1. Observing some of the most distant events and objects in the universe such as the formation of the first galaxies
  2. Detailed atmospheric characterization of potentially habitable exoplanets

How is it different from other telescopes?

  • JWST is much more powerful and has the ability to look in the infrared spectrum, which will allow it to peer through much deeper into the universe, and see through obstructions such as gas clouds.
  • As electromagnetic waves travel for long distances, they lose energy, resulting in an increase in their wavelength.
  • An ultraviolet wave, for example, can slowly move into the visible light spectrum and the infrared spectrum, and further weaken to microwaves or radio waves, as it loses energy.
  • Hubble was designed to look mainly into the ultraviolet and visible regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.
  • JWST is primarily an infrared telescope, the first of its kind.

Special features of JWST

(1) Time machine in space

  • Powerful space telescopes, like JWST or the Hubble Telescope, are often called time machines because of their ability to view very faraway objects.
  • The light coming from those objects, stars or galaxies, which is captured by these telescopes, began its journey millions of years earlier.
  • Essentially, what these telescopes see are images of these stars or galaxies as they were millions of years ago.
  • The more distant the planet or star, the farther back in time are the telescopes able to see.

(2) Farthest from Earth

  • JWST will also be positioned much deeper into space, about a million miles from Earth, at a spot known as L2.
  • It is one of the five points, known as Lagrange’s points, in any revolving two-body system like Earth and Sun, where the gravitational forces of the two large bodies cancel each other out.
  • Objects placed at these positions are relatively stable and require minimal external energy to keep them there. L2 is a position directly behind Earth in the line joining the Sun and the Earth.
  • It would be shielded from the Sun by the Earth as it goes around the Sun, in sync with the Earth.

(3) Engineering marvel

  • JWST has one large mirror, with a diameter of 21 feet (the height of a typical two-storey building), that will capture the infra-red light coming in from the deep universe while facing away from the Sun.
  • It will be shielded by a five-layer, tennis court-sized, kite-shaped sunscreen that is designed to block the heat from Sun and ensure the extremely cool temperatures that the instruments are built to operate at.
  • Temperatures on the sun-facing side can get as high as 110°C, while the other side would be maintained at –200° to –230°C.
  • The extremely cold temperatures are needed to detect the extremely faint heat signals from distant galaxies.
  • The mirror as well as the sunscreen is so large they could not have fit into any rocket. They have been built as foldable items and would be unraveled in space.

 

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Swachh Bharat Mission

Meendum Manjappai Scheme

Prelims Only | Enviro & Biodiversity | Mains Paper 3: Conservation, Environmental Pollution & Degradation, Eia
Note4Students

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :

Prelims level: Meendum Manjappai Scheme

Mains level: Not Much

Tamil Nadu CM has launched the ‘Meendum Manjappai’ Scheme to promote the use of cloth bags by the public and discourage the use of plastic bags.

Meendum Manjappai Scheme

  • This awareness campaign on using ‘yellow’ cloth bag or ‘manjapai’ as it is called in Tamil, is aimed at encouraging the people to return to the use of this eco-friendly bag and discard the plastic bags.
  • Manjal means turmeric in Tamil which has curative power. The manjapai was an integral part of daily life in the past.
  • Traditionally the manjapais were used for shopping, carrying books, ration and even cash.
  • The state government had enforced a ban on the production, use, storage, distribution, transportation or sale of 14 types of plastics with effect from January 1, 2019.

 

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