Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Gold monetisation scheme
Mains level: Paper 3- Gold demand in India
Context
Gold’s appeal as a safe haven is only rising: as tensions escalate in Ukraine, its price is approaching records.
Factors explaining demand for gold in India
- India is the world’s second-largest market for the yellow metal, behind China, though it produces almost none at home.
- This is partly driven by tradition.
- Brides are given jewellery as part of their dowry and it is deemed auspicious to buy bullion around certain religious festivals.
- It is a handy store of undeclared wealth, too, often stashed in wardrobes or under the mattress.
- But the pandemic has also affirmed an investment advice passed on over generations: park savings in gold as a rainy-day fund.
Concerns with such a high demand
- Vast gold imports can destabilise the economy.
- During the 2013 “taper tantrum”, when India’s foreign-exchange reserves were lower than they are now, a rush of gold imports helped push the current-account deficit to 4.8% of GDP and fuelled worries of a currency crisis.
- Savings stashed away as idle gold could be put to more productive use elsewhere.
- Indian households hold 22,500 tonnes of the physical metal—five times the stock in America’s bullion depository .
Policy measures by the government
- Import duties hover around 10%, even after cuts in last year’s budget aimed at keeping smuggling in check.
- The central bank has ramped up issuance of sovereign gold bonds, which are denominated in grams of gold.
- Of the 86 tonnes’ worth issued since 2015, about 60% were sold after the pandemic began.
- And the gold monetisation scheme, which allows households to hand gold over to a bank and earn interest, was revamped last year to reduce limits on the size of deposits.
- Lockdowns inadvertently helped the state’s agenda.
- Mobile payments platforms like PhonePe and Google Pay reported rising appetite for digital gold, which is sold online and stored by the seller.
- Money also rushed into gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
- Their assets hit 184bn rupees ($2.5bn) in December, a 30% rise in a year.
Conclusion
Still, only a sliver of the population, mostly well-off urban types and millennials, invest in complex financial products. A large part of India’s demand for physical gold comes from rural areas, where it seems in no danger of losing its lustre.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: EPR design
Mains level: Paper 3- Issues with the nuclear energy
Context
A fire broke out near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine (Europe’s largest) during the course of a military battle. Had the fire affected the cooling system, the plant’s power supply, or its spent fuel pool, a major disaster could have occurred.
Issues with India’s nuclear expansion plans
- On December 15, 2021, the Indian government informed Parliament that it plans to build “10 indigenous reactors… in fleet mode” and had granted “in principle approval” for 28 additional reactors, including 24 to be imported from France, the U.S. and Russia.
- Capital intensive: Nuclear power plants are capital intensive and recent nuclear builds have suffered major cost overruns.
- Decreasing cost of renewable: In contrast, renewable energy technologies have become cheaper.
- The Wall Street company, Lazard, estimated that the cost of electricity from solar photovoltaics and wind turbines in the U.S. declined by 90% and 72%, respectively, between 2009-21.
- Recent low bids are of ₹2.14 per unit for solar power, and ₹2.34 for solar-wind hybrid projects; even in projects coupled with storage, bids are around ₹4.30 per unit.
- Global trend suggests declining use of nuclear energy: In 1996, 17.5% of the world’s electricity came from nuclear power plants; by 2020, this figure had declined to just around 10%.
- Safety concerns: In a densely populated country such as India, land is at a premium and emergency health care is far from uniformly available.
- Local citizens understand that a nuclear disaster might leave large swathes of land uninhabitable — as in Chernobyl — or require a prohibitively expensive clean-up — as in Fukushima, where the final costs may eventually exceed $600 billion.
- Indemnity clause: Concerns about safety have been accentuated by the insistence of multinational nuclear suppliers that they be indemnified of liability for the consequence of any accident in India.
- India’s liability law already largely protects them.
- But the industry objects to the small window of opportunity available for the Indian government to hold them to account.
- Climate concerns: Climate change will increase the risk of nuclear reactor accidents.
- Recently, a wildfire approached the Hanul nuclear power plant in South Korea and President Moon Jae-in ordered “all-out efforts” to avoid an accident at the reactors there.
- In 2020, a windstorm caused the Duane Arnold nuclear plant in the U.S. to cease operations.
- The frequency of such extreme weather events is likely to increase in the future.
Consider the question “What are the concerns with the nuclear energy expansion plans of India? Suggest the way forward.”
Conclusion
Given the inherent vulnerabilities of nuclear reactors and their high costs, it would be best for the Government to unambiguously cancel its plans for a nuclear expansion.
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Back2Basics: What is EPR (nuclear reactor)
- The EPR is a third generation pressurised water reactor design.
- It has been designed and developed mainly by Framatome (part of Areva between 2001 and 2017) and Électricité de France (EDF) in France, and Siemens in Germany.
- In Europe this reactor design was called European Pressurised Reactor, and the internationalised name was Evolutionary Power Reactor, but it is now simply named EPR.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Electoral and non-electoral aspects of democracy
Context
The recently concluded assembly elections have some larger implications that we need to take note of. The consequences are not confined to the five states where the electoral battle was fought.
Undermining of non-electoral dimensions of democracy
- In much of the world, the electoral aspects of democracy are now being used to undermine the non-electoral dimensions of democracy.
- Today, such contradictions exist in Turkey, Poland, Hungary, Russia, to name just a few countries.
- A freely conducted vote can thus be used to cripple the other freedoms that modern democracies also value.
How electoral democracy can be a vehicle of assault on constitutional democracy
- The triumph of such politics can now be used in three ways — in executive decrees, in legislative chambers to formulate laws, and on the street via vigilante forces.
- Though minority rights are enshrined in India’s Constitution, election victories can now be used to create laws, or government policies that begin to attack precisely those rights.
- Role of judiciary: The courts are the final custodian of constitutional proprieties in a democracy and can frustrate a legislative or executive attack on the Constitution.
- But that depends on whether the judiciary is willing to play its constitutionally assigned role.
- Judicial interpretation can go either way – in favour of the government or against it.
Contradictory aspects of democracy from other parts of the world
- These contradictory aspects of democracy do have older roots.
- We can go all the way back to some tendencies that emerged in the democracy of America’s southern states in the 1880s, which lasted till the 1960s.
- America’s Blacks lost their equality as well as franchise, and the courts did not invalidate a majoritarian attack on their rights.
- The history of 1930s Germany is also viewed as an example of how democracy undermined democracy.
- As early as the 1950s, Sri Lanka imposed a “Sinhala only” policy on the Tamil minority of the country.
- In the 1980s, a civil war was born as a consequence.
- In Malaysia, following roughly similar policies, the Malay majority sidelined the Chinese minority.
- Internal tensions and aggravations rose but, unlike Sri Lanka, a civil war did not.
- The minorities pursued their interests by entering into coalitions with political parties within the larger parameters of the polity.
Consider the question “How the electoral aspect of the democracy can affect the non-electoral aspect of the democracy. What are the implications of such phenomenon for the democracy?”
Conclusion
This process can be called the battle between electoral democracy and constitutional democracy. Processes internal to the democratic system can severely weaken democracy itself, even causing its collapse.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: NA
Mains level: Manual scavenging in India
Three laborers in Mumbai, allegedly hired for manual scavenging, died after inhaling toxic fumes in a septic tank.
What is Manual Scavenging?
- Manual scavenging is the practice of removing human excreta by hand from sewers or septic tanks.
- India banned the practice under the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 (PEMSR).
- The Act bans the use of any individual for manually cleaning, carrying, disposing of or otherwise handling in any manner, human excreta till its disposal.
- In 2013, the definition of manual scavengers was also broadened to include people employed to clean septic tanks, ditches, or railway tracks.
- The Act recognizes manual scavenging as a “dehumanizing practice,” and cites a need to “correct the historical injustice and indignity suffered by the manual scavengers.”
Why is it still prevalent in India?
- Low awareness: Manual scavenging is mostly done by the marginalized section of the society and they are generally not aware about their rights.
- Enforcement issues: The lack of enforcement of the Act and exploitation of unskilled labourers are the reasons why the practice is still prevalent in India.
- High cost of automated: The Mumbai civic body charges anywhere between Rs 20,000 and Rs 30,000 to clean septic tanks.
- Cheaper availability: The unskilled labourers, meanwhile, are much cheaper to hire and contractors illegally employ them at a daily wage of Rs 300-500.
- Caste dynamics: Caste hierarchy still exists and it reinforces the caste’s relation with occupation. Almost all the manual scavengers belong to lower castes.
Various policy initiatives
- Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation (Amendment) Bill, 2020: It proposes to completely mechanise sewer cleaning, introduce ways for ‘on-site’ protection and provide compensation to manual scavengers in case of sewer deaths.
- Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013: Superseding the 1993 Act, the 2013 Act goes beyond prohibitions on dry latrines, and outlaws all manual excrement cleaning of insanitary latrines, open drains, or pits.
- Rashtriya Garima Abhiyan: It started national wide march “Maila Mukti Yatra” for total eradication of manual scavenging from 30th November 2012 from Bhopal.
- Prevention of Atrocities Act: In 1989, the Prevention of Atrocities Act became an integrated guard for sanitation workers since majority of the manual scavengers belonged to the Scheduled Caste.
- Compensation: As per the Prohibition of Employment of Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation (PEMSR) Act, 2013 and the Supreme Court’s decision in the Safai Karamchari Andolan vs Union of India case, a compensation of Rs 10 lakh is awarded to the victims family.
Way forward
- Regular surveys and social audits must be conducted against the involvement of manual scavengers by public and local authorities.
- There must be proper identification and capacity building of manual scavengers for alternate sources of livelihood.
- Creating awareness about the legal protection of manual scavengers is necessary.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC)
Mains level: Not Much
India has emphasized on following the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) at the UNSC meeting on Ukraine.
Why in news?
- The meeting came after a request from Russia, who claimed that the US is involved in bioweapon manufacture in war-torn Ukraine.
- However, Washington has strongly dismissed this claim.
What is BTWC?
- The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) was the first multilateral treaty categorically banning a class of weapon.
- It is a treaty that came into force in 1975 and prohibits the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and use of biological weapons.
- A total of 183 countries are party to the treaty that outlaws bioweapons, including US, Russia and Ukraine.
Obligations of the treaty
- The treaty prohibits the development, stockpile, production, or transfer of biological agents and toxins of “types and quantities” that have no justification for protective or peaceful use.
- Furthermore, the treaty bans the development of weapons, equipment, or delivery systems to disseminate such agents or toxins.
- Should a state possess any agent, toxin, or delivery system for them, they have nine months from entry into force of the treaty to destroy their stockpiles, or divert them for peaceful use.
- The convention stipulates that states shall cooperate bilaterally or multilaterally to solve compliance issues.
- States may also submit complaints to the UNSCR should they believe another state is violating the treaty.
Issues with the treaty
- There is no implementation body of the BTWC, allowing for blatant violations as seen in the past.
- There is only a review conference that too every five years to review the convention’s implementation, and establish confidence-building measures.
Signatories to the BTWC
- The Convention currently has 183 states-parties, including Palestine, and four signatories (Egypt, Haiti, Somalia, and Syria).
- Ten states have neither signed nor ratified the BWC: Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Israel, Kiribati, Micronesia, Namibia, South Sudan, and Tuvalu.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: BrahMos Missile
Mains level: Not Much
India has acknowledged a malfunction led to accidental firing of a missile, which Pakistan says landed in its territory.
Conducting Missile Tests: NOTAM and NAVAREA Warnings
- Under the pre-notification of flight testing of ballistic missiles agreement signed in 2005, a country must provide the other an advance notification on flight test it intends to take for any land or sea launched, surface-to-surface ballistic missile.
- Before the test, the country must issue Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) or Navigational Warning (NAVAREA) to alert aviation pilots and seafarers, respectively.
- Also, the testing country must ensure that the launch site is not within 40 km, and the planned impact area is not within 75 km of either the International Boundary (IB) or the Line of Control (LoC).
- The planned trajectory should not cross the IB or the LoC and must maintain a horizontal distance of at least 40 km from the border.
Pre-notifications to the neighbours
- The testing country must notify the other nation “no less than three days in advance of the commencement of a five day launch window within which it intends to undertake flight tests.
- The pre-notification has to be conveyed through the respective Foreign Offices and the High Commissions, as per the format annexed to this Agreement.
What is the recent case of misfire?
- Neither country has spelt this out; Pakistan has only called it a “supersonic” missile.
- Some experts have speculated that it was a test of one of India’s top missiles, BrahMos, jointly developed with Russia.
- Their assessment is based on information that it travelled 200 km, manoeuvred mid-air and travelled at 2.5 times to 3 times the speed of sound at an altitude of 40,000 feet.
| Note: BrahMos has a top speed of Mach 3, a range of around 290 km, and a cruising altitude of 15 km (around 50,000 feet). It can be fired from anywhere, is nuclear-capable, and can carry warheads of 200-300 kg. |
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Sohrai Murals
Mains level: NA
Santhali communities of Odisha and Jharkhand are changing their ways of painting traditional Sohrai murals to modernity.
What is Sohrai?
- Sohrai is a harvest festival of the Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and West Bengal.
- It also called cattle festival. It is celebrated after harvest and coincide with festival of Diwali.
What are Sohrai Murals?
- Sohrai Mural is an indigenous art form is practised by the women of Santhal Community.
- Ritualistic art is done on mud walls to welcome the harvest and to celebrate the cattle.
- The women clean their houses and decorate their walls with murals of Sohrai arts.
- This art form has continued since 10,000-4,000 BC. It was prevalent mostly in caves, but shifted to houses with mud walls.
Features of this art
- This Sohrai art form can be monochromatic or colorful.
- The people coat the wall with a layer of white mud, and while the layer is still wet, they draw with their fingertips on it.
- Their designs range from flowers and fruits to various other nature-inspired designs.
- The cow dung that was earlier used to cake the walls of the house is used to add colour.
- The dark outline is visible due to the previously applied contrasting white mud coat.
- The artists are spontaneous in their drawing. The designs are usually drawn from the artist’s memory.
- The personal experience of the artist and their interaction with nature are the biggest influence.
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