General Studies Paper 3

Introduction

• Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) refers to a bouquet of mechanisms that enables disputing parties to resolve their differences amicably, without the intervention of courts. Given the delays in Indian court proceedings and increasing cost of litigation, the significance of ADR in India cannot be understated.

About

• In the recent monsoon session of Parliament, both Houses passed The Mediation Bill, 2023, and upon receiving the assent of the President of India, is referred to as the Mediation Act, 2023 (“the Act”).
• The Indian legal framework already encourages courts to refer the disputing parties to ADR procedures, including mediation, if there were elements of settlement which the parties may accept.
• The Act will take this encouragement a step forward. Irrespective of a prior mediation agreement, it will obligate each party to take steps to settle their dispute through pre-litigation mediation before approaching an Indian court.
• To facilitate this process, the Act will also require courts and relevant institutions to maintain a panel of mediators.

Many benefits

• This requirement is expected to reduce the filing of frivolous claims before Indian courts.
• Owing to the confidentiality of a mediation, it may also mitigate the risk of deterioration of the parties’ relationship due to a publicly fought dispute.
• Yet, at the same time, concerns are raised about the feasibility of a mediation conducted under the sword of an obligation as opposed to a sincere desire to arrive at an amicable resolution.
• In the latter scenario, this may empower a recalcitrant defendant to delay a genuine claim.
• Subject to an extension by the parties, they must also complete the mediation within 180 days from the parties’ first appearance.
• On the other hand, the Act will not remove the refuge of Indian courts entirely.
• A party may, in exceptional circumstances, seek urgent interim reliefs from a court before the commencement or during the continuation of a mediation.
• These provisions prioritise expertise and efficiency, while ensuring that the obligation of pre-litigation mediation is not weaponised.
• The aim is to create a balanced framework which encourages the parties to focus more on their commercial dealings and less on their disputes.

The aspect of mediation and arbitration

• The Act will effectively position mediation similar to commercial arbitration in India. The similarities between their respective supporting pieces of legislation are obvious.
• Both pieces of legislation impose stringent timelines for the conduct of proceedings, mandate confidentiality, obligate Indian courts to refer the parties to mediation or arbitration, provide a default mechanism for the appointment of a mediator or arbitrator, and prescribe the procedure for the termination of their mandate.
• Likewise, both ensure the enforceability of a mediated settlement agreement and an arbitral award, respectively.
• The establishment of a Mediation Council of India equally mirrors the proposal in 2019 to establish an Arbitration Council of India.
• Parliament’s message to Indian industry is clear — in commercial matters, courts must no longer be the default venue for dispute resolution.
• Parties are expected to resolve their dispute amicably through mediation, and, alternatively, through commercial arbitration.
• While the doors of Indian courts are open if required, this access must be perceived as a matter of last resort.

Way forward

• Similar to how the recent amendments to the A&C Act prioritised institutional arbitration of disputes, the Act also places emphasis on institutional mediation in India.
• It envisages “mediation service providers” to provide not only the services of a mediator but also all the facilities, secretarial assistance, and infrastructure for the efficient conduct of mediation.
• India is already home to experienced arbitration institutions, some of which provide mediation services that are on a par with global best practices.
• Only then would India become a global hub not only for arbitration but also for all aspects of commercial dispute resolution.

General Studies Paper 2

Context

• At the G-20 summit in New Delhi earlier this month, United States President Joe Biden and others unveiled a U.S.-backed infrastructure project to connect India, West Asia and Europe with shipping lanes, rail networks, pipelines and data cables.

Two-part policy

• Biden’s West Asia strategy has two parts. One is the continuation of the Trump-era policy of bringing America’s two pillars in the region — the Gulf Arabs and Israel — closer to meet their common geopolitical challenges such as Iran’s rise.
• The second part of Mr. Biden’s approach is to reassure America’s friends and allies that the U.S. is not exiting West Asia.
• In 2012, leaders of India, Israel, the U.S. and the UAE held a virtual summit of what is now called the I2U2 minilateral.
• The idea behind I2U2 is to create a new platform that could expedite economic integration between West Asia and South Asia and offer economic and technological solutions to the problems faced by the Global South.
• India’s presence in a grouping of the Abraham Accords countries was seen as a legitimate recognition of India’s presence in the region.
• The India-Middle East-Europe Corridor, announced at the G-20 summit enhances New Delhi’s standing.
• It seeks to build an economic corridor from India’s western coast, through the Gulf (the UAE and Saudi Arabia), Jordan and Israel, to the Mediterranean, bringing India and Europe closer.
• If this project takes off, the U.S. hopes that it could retain its channels of influence in West Asia, control the major shipping lanes and reassure its allies of its staying capacity.
• America’s answer to this challenge is to forge closer ties between its allies in the region and strengthen the U.S. security architecture, and bring India in as a bigger, stable partner to write the new rules of economic engagement and integration, competing with China. India seems willing to take this bet.

Multiple avenues for India

• For India, the U.S.-China competition in West Asia opens new avenues of engagement.
• The U.S. sees India, with its size, the size of its economy and the legacy of its historical engagement and cultural connect with the region, as an important partner in its bid to continue to shape West’s Asia’s geopolitics.
• India should welcome the moment but should not look at it through the prism of another Cold War — or it should not put all its eggs in one basket as it did in Afghanistan.
• It is already part of the near-functional International North-South Transport Corridor that connects India to Russia through Iran and Central Asia.
• The ‘Middle East Corridor’ would open another economic channel.

Way forward

• India’s overall policy towards the region should stay anchored in this idea of multi-engagement — not in appeasing or containing any great power.
• With or without the U.S., or irrespective of China’s presence in the region, India should strive to play a major geopolitical role in West Asia, its extended neighbourhood, without upsetting its traditional balance.

General Studies Paper 3

Context

• The lessons from India’s LED revolution can help the country’s growing ceiling fan market.

The LED bulb story

• Even in the humid weather of August and September, as in the dry heat of May, the ceiling fan continues to provide comfort to many in India.
• The ceiling fan market is undergoing a churn too, driven by policy imperatives and a regulation change.
• But the fan market must learn from the successes and hiccups of the light-emitting diode (LED) bulb story.
• The policy imperative driving the change in the fan market is energy transition in a world that must grow sustainably with changing climate.
• India’s goal of reducing harmful emissions per unit of GDP, by 45% by 2030, relative to 2005, requires a sharp reduction in the energy consumed for economic activity.
• Households account for nearly a third of all electricity consumed in India, and ceiling fans, used by 90% of households, as per a Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) survey of 2020.
• The India Cooling Action Plan projects that the number of fans in use in India could grow to a billion by 2038, from about 500 million now, as incomes grow along with average temperatures.

The ‘star rating’ programme

• Given the importance of fans, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), India’s energy efficiency regulator under the Union Ministry of Power, made the Standards and Labelling (S&L) programme, popularly known as the ‘star-rating’ programme, mandatory for ceiling fans in May 2022.
• But ‘5-star’ fans (the star rating) cost twice as much as typical unrated fans — not a small barrier to adoption in India’s price-sensitive market.
• To tackle this, Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) is planning a demand aggregation programme to sell 10 million ‘5-star’ ceiling fans.
• The programme hopes to transform the fans market much like it did for LED lamps under the famous Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All (UJALA) programme.
• The UJALA programme, launched in 2015, helped reduce the price of LED lamps from ₹400 to ₹90 in a span of three to four years.

Steps to a transformation

First is to maintain a technology-agnostic policy.

• Demand aggregation is most effective when a single technology specification is procured in bulk.
• In the case of LEDs, it was the nine-watt white light LED bulb. But fans have a wider spectrum of technology, each with its own trade-offs.
• A policy that covers more than one specification would be more cost-effective in the long run.
• A typical ceiling fan uses the time-tested induction motor, which is rugged but may have limits on energy performance.
• The newer kid on the block, the brushless DC (BLDC) motor, is the only commercially available technology so far that meets the ‘5-star’ performance benchmark.

Second, manage the balance between price reduction and quality.

• The intense pressure on price on LEDs during the UJALA programme led to lower-quality products entering the market, with higher failure rates.
• While replacing a bulb is easy and cheap, replacing a ceiling fan is inconvenient and costly.
• Low-quality products could lead to a deficit of consumers’ trust in the new technology, prompting them to revert to the old.

Third, foster high-quality domestic manufacturing capacity for high-efficiency fans.

• While the growth of the LED market spawned new manufacturers and brands, India arguably missed the bus on maintaining the quality of local manufacturing and reducing import dependence for components.
• India can leverage its massive domestic market to achieve economies of scale for finished products and components, and expand into the export market.
• Indian quality and performance standards must be updated to align with international ones to ensure that manufacturers are competitive.

And, finally, dedicate resources to strengthening the standard and labelling programme.

Conclusion

• Fans are undergoing their first major phase of disruption in decades. Energy-efficient fans can not only help the vulnerable population get access to a critical service for coping with events of extreme heat with lower electricity bills, but are also central to India’s clean energy transition and can play a part in its economic growth.

General Studies Paper 3

Introduction

• The conventional way to assess a country’s economic situation is to look at the quarterly (three-month) and annual (12-month) GDP (gross-domestic-product) growth rate and compare it to previous quarters as well as years. In the quarterly release of GDP figures by the NSO (National Statistical Office), the country’s performance is likened to reviewing a report card of its economic performance.

GDP growth rate

• The Q1 data covering the GDP growth rate from April to June of FY24 boasts a nominal growth rate of 8% and a real growth rate of 7.8%.
• The growth story currently posits that the numbers reflect an uptick in the agriculture sector growing at 3.5%, unlikely to be sustained due to pressure from the El Niño phenomenon, and the services industry, with financial, real estate and professional services growing at 12.2%.

Calculating GDP

• The first factor to consider is that calculating the GDP growth rate involves many complex statistical choices and sophisticated statistical operations.
• One such decision the NSO made while conducting their research was to use the income approach of calculating GDP rather than the expenditure approach.
• The income approach involves summing up all national incomes from the factors of production and accounting for other elements such as taxes, depreciation, and net foreign factor income.
• However, the expenditure approach dictates headline growth to be 4.5% rather than 7.8% which is a large discrepancy.
• Moreover, another essential statistical operation is the adjusting for inflation using the price deflator.
• Typically, the deflator is meant to adjust growth figures when they are overstated by inflation.
• In this case, deflation due to falling commodity prices, reflected in the wholesale price index, has worked to overstate the real growth.
• Furthermore, there is a base effect from the COVID-19 degrowth period, which continues to plague India’s growth figures.
• Although less pronounced in FY24, the base effect has a role in comparative statistics due to sporadic growth in the years following FY20-21.
• Additionally, one must consider whether the proposed, supposedly cooled, inflation rate calculated through the consumer price index can be sustained at current levels with the impending depreciation of the Indian rupee against the dollar due to capital outflow pressures resulting from the RBI’s reluctance to raise interest rates.

Revenue from taxes

• Moreover, the government’s tax revenue from direct taxes has weakened over the previous quarter while the indirect tax revenue remained strong, indicating a K-shaped pattern.
• The income streams from progressive taxation seem to be a laggard compared to its regressive counterpart.
• A muted growth of direct tax collected in an economy boosted by the services industry is a statistical discrepancy which remains unexplained in the proposed GDP growth story.

A nuanced approach

• In conclusion, after a meticulous analysis of India’s Q1 FY24 economic transcript, it becomes palpable that the reported growth narrative might be somewhat over embellished.
• The divergence in growth figures brought forth by the income and expenditure approaches manifest a significant disparity, raising fundamental questions about the veracity of the promulgated optimistic narrative.
• Moreover, the underpinnings of this growth story, nuanced by inflationary adjustments and conspicuous fluctuations in tax revenue streams, signal a cautious trajectory.
• Additionally, the apprehensive outlook on the agriculture sector and potential fiscal constraints paint an arguably more restrained picture than initially portrayed.

Conclusion

• Therefore, it seems prudent to assert that India’s economic performance, although showing signs of resilience, does not quite emerge as the unequivocal success story depicted in initial observations, urging a more nuanced and critical approach in assessing the trajectory ahead.

General Studies Paper 3

Context

• Enormity of climate change is no excuse to resort to risky mitigation strategies.

About

• India had its rain-wise driest August in a century this year.
• While scientists are yet to link this anomaly with the chaotic effects of climate change, it underscores the constant threat of disrupted weather, the resulting consequences for the economy, and the importance of climate mitigation.
• One of the more desperate, and dangerous, ideas to have emerged from this impetus is solar radiation management (SRM)

SRM

• It is to block some of the incoming solar radiation to cool the earth’s surface.
• SRM’s dangers emerge from the fact that it interferes with natural mechanisms with unavoidable planet-wide effects.
• For example, if an SRM experiment by one country leads to more rain over the Horn of Africa than expected, it could trigger a locust swarm that eventually destroys crops in Pakistan and India.
• There is currently no mechanism that holds a geoengineering government accountable to consequences beyond its borders nor through which affected countries can appeal for restitution.
• There has also been little research on understanding how the world’s myriad weather systems affect each other and their relative sensitivities to interventions such as SRM.

The issues

• This is why the report of the Climate Overshoot Commission, released last week, calls for more research to close crucial scientific and governance gaps before any deliberations on the implementation of SRM-like technologies.
• The commission was constituted by geoengineering researchers to assess ways to accelerate emission cuts.
• But while the report is careful to acknowledge that the scientific community does not understand SRM enough to attempt a deployment, even in experimental fashion, it also argues for retaining SRM in the mix of potential climate mitigation solutions.
• This is buttressed by appeals to lack of time as the earth’s surface is poised to warm past the 1.5°C threshold enshrined in the Paris Agreement in the next decade.
• This is a precarious suggestion because even less controversial, but nonetheless problematic, mitigation technologies such as carbon capture take resources, focus, and political will away from the most effective strategy — cutting emissions — and increase emissions limits.
• SRM will only amplify this dilution. The commission also errs by claiming to act for the interests of developing countries at a time when corporate and political actors have hijacked their ‘room to develop’ to pursue economic growth at the expense of climate justice.

Way forward

• The enormity of climate change requires quick and decisive action, but when better solutions have not been implemented as well as they can be, and while there is still time to do so, it is disingenuous to contend that more high-risk solutions should remain on the table.

General Studies Paper 2

Context

• The Women’s Reservation Bill must be implemented without delay.

The Women’s Reservation Bill

• The passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Lok Sabha almost three decades after it was first tabled in Parliament is a welcome move that can finally shatter a political glass ceiling.
• With women Members of Parliament comprising only about 15% of the strength of the Lok Sabha, the gender inequality in political representation is stark and disturbing.
• The 128th Constitution Amendment Bill, or the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, seeks to amend this by reserving a third of the seats in the Lok Sabha and legislative Assemblies for women.
• It has a 15-year sunset clause for the quota, that can be extended.
• Considering the fraught history of the struggle for women’s reservation, and several false starts despite the Rajya Sabha passing it in 2010, it is laudatory that the first Bill to be introduced in the new Sansad Bhavan has been passed in the Lok Sabha.
• But its implementation will be delayed as it has been tied to two factors, delimitation and the Census, and therein lies the rub.
• It is unfortunate that implementation is being linked to delimitation, for the principle of having a third of seats reserved for women has nothing to do with the territorial limits of constituencies or the number of Assembly or Lok Sabha constituencies in each State.
• Women will thus not have access to 33% reservation in the 2024 general election.
• The Bill also mandates that as nearly as one-third of the seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes will be set aside for women.
• The Opposition is demanding an internal quota for women of Other Backward Classes, but this should not be used as a ruse to delay implementation.
• In the meantime, proposals should be fine tuned to ensure that when it becomes an Act, it is not mere tokenism for women’s political representation.
• It is a fact that local bodies are better represented, with the share of women in panchayati raj institutions well above 50% in several States.

Suggestions

• Lessons must be imbibed on how women at the grassroots level have broken all sorts of barriers, from patriarchal mindsets at home to not being taken seriously in their official duties, and made a difference.
• Women struggle on so many other counts: they have uneven access to health, nutrition and education, there is a lack of safe places, women are also falling out of the workforce.
• Among the G-20 countries, India’s female labour force participation is the lowest at 24%.

Conclusion

• India, which gave women voting rights at the very outset, should not falter when it comes to ensuring better political representation for women. For growth, and instituting change in key areas, women need to have their say.

General Studies Paper 3

Introduction

• The environment, from an academic point of view, has for centuries been understood from the lens of science. Scholars and experts have explored issues related to ecology and the environment through a utilitarian understanding of nature. While studies around the relationship between humans and nature have been more forthcoming in the last few decades, the field of environmental humanities is relatively recent.

Bias against ‘soft sciences’

• Positioning themselves as scholars working on environmental humanities in a science and technology institute where the discipline of humanities and social sciences is part of their coursework.
• The authors explain how the mere introduction of humanities as a chapter would not help remove the dichotomy between the sciences and the bias against the “soft sciences”.
• The authors explain that instead of looking at science as the only solace to providing solutions to environmental issues, disciplines of humanities and social sciences must also be taken seriously to understand indigenous epistemologies that broaden our understanding of nature.
• The nationalist project such as the Indian Knowledge Systems is dangerous as it is a mere replacement for the Western understanding of nature.
• It lacks the multitude of narratives and perspectives from various social and marginalised groups that discuss the entanglement of human beings with the environment.

The nation and nature

• In India, nature has been considered intrinsically connected to society and culture.
• The nation is seen through the lens of nature, ecology or as a sense of place.
• There are two dominant understandings of a nation. The first one considers the nation as one place where nature is universal to its citizens as an ecological reality.
• Ecological nationalism is used to justify the utilisation or restriction of nature.
• The second understanding goes beyond the unitary sense of nation or nationalism and finds multiple perspectives that define the nation in connection to nature — as the affiliation to a piece of land and to its people who have various cultural identities. It is a sense of belonging, despite diverse notions about the ecology and environment.
• In looking at the environment as a physical entity meant to be exploited according to man’s wishes, neo-liberal establishments have separated people’s indigenous experiences and narratives from our understanding of nature.
• The dominant understanding of the environment while using gender, caste and tribal experiences as case studies, still largely remains androcentric and Brahminical, according to the authors.

Indigenous narratives on nature

• The relationship that Dalits or tribal communities have with the environment is complex and much deeper than dominant narratives.
• While they have been given limited access to space, land and water due to the exclusionary practices that persist, owing to the caste system, they have a stronger connection with nature as they consider the environment to have agency and influence.
• Such narratives reject the reductionist attitude towards ecology/ environment that exists among mainstream understandings of the concept.
• Therefore, it is essential to incorporate the perspectives of different marginalised communities, such as those based on gender, caste, and tribal identities, into discussions within academic and policymaking circles to challenge the monopolistic understanding of the environment.

Way forward

• Environmental humanities is an open-ended discipline that constantly evolves and continually redefines the perception of the environment.
• In incorporating narratives about the interplay between nature and diverse communities through stories of rivers, landscapes, plants, animals, and the communities’ perspectives and ecological wisdom, the discipline enriches our understanding of the environment and helps us re-evaluate conventional notions of nature.

General Studies Paper 2

Introduction

• Even though the movement to specify frameworks for higher education qualifications had gained momentum across the world in the late 1990s, India remained without a National Higher Education Qualifications Framework (NHEQF) until recently. The idea was deliberated at the 60th meeting of the Central Advisory Board of Education in 2012, which assigned the responsibility to the University Grants Commission (UGC).

The problem of plenty

• Globally, higher education qualification frameworks include details of the definition and requirements of credits.
• The UGC has chosen to prescribe two separate frameworks — the NHEQF and the National Credit Framework.
• Higher educational institutions are separately required to implement the Academic Bank of Credits as a mandated modality for recognising, accepting, and transferring credits across courses and institutions.
• Additionally, there are many other regulations that impinge on higher education qualifications. All of these could have been integrated into the NHEQF. This defeats the purpose of prescribing a qualification framework
• After all, a qualification framework must minimise ambiguities in comprehending qualifications in a cross-cultural context.

The importance

• By definition, a national higher education qualification must encompass all disciplines and must clearly provide for the eligibility conditions for the entry into, and completion of, all programmes of studies.
• The NHEQF does provide exit requirements, but eligibility conditions and pathways through which a student can enter a programme at a particular level are alluded to vaguely.
• Besides, higher education qualifications awarded by disciplines such as agriculture, law, medicine, and pharmacy are conspicuous by their absence.
• The higher education system in India is far more diverse and complex than the European Higher Education Area.
• It warrants much wider and more intense consultations with the States. Doing this could have substantially enriched the NHEQF.
• The process of formulating the NHEQF should have duly recognised the sheer size of the higher education system and the variations in it, as well as the federal structure, constitutional provisions that put education on the Concurrent List, and the fact that States spend a lot more on education than the Centre.

Difficulties in implementation

• At a practical level, there might be some serious difficulties in implementing the NHEQF.
• The document places all higher education qualifications on a continuum of 4.5 to 10.
• The framework equates postgraduate diplomas with four-year undergraduate programmes.
• This poses a problem in determining the level of such undergraduate degrees that are pursued after another-undergraduate degree, like B.Ed.
• Further, the idea that a B.Ed could be completed in one, two or four years is confusing.
• The credit framework document of the UGC mandates that each semester must have a minimum of 20 credits.
• Higher educational institutions with minimal infrastructure and meagre faculty resources may find this daunting.

Conclusion

• The mystery of the learning outcomes borrowed liberally from the Dublin descriptors remains unaddressed. Whether generic or specific to a discipline, learning outcomes may vary significantly across disciplines. Besides, they may not be measurable by the same yardstick across disciplines.

General Studies Paper 3

Context

• The Digital India Programme had three main vision areas:
• Connectivity,
• Software and services on demand and
• Digital empowerment of citizens.
• Fortunately, the connectivity landscape has been transformed in the last seven years due to multiple factors like the boom in mobile telephony, 4G coverage, significant reduction in tariffs and increased smartphone penetration.

Recent rise in digitisation across different sector and concern

• Along with significant rise in digital connectivity and technologies, government’s enabling policies like Net Neutrality and focus on building Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), particularly Digital ID and UPI, have further contributed to the Digital India vision, resulting in a massive increase in digital transactions.
• However, this growth has also been accompanied by a huge surge in demand for data.
• Today, India’s per capita data consumption stands at a whopping 19.5 GB per month and the total data volume transported by mobile networks is more than the mobile networks of US and China combined
• Thus, the gap between demand and affordable supply still remains quite wide, especially for poor households and rural India.

Government’s initiatives to promote digital data availability (PM-WANI)

• The creation of inter-operable public Wi-Fi hotspots was one such idea proposed by TRAI in which would foster a shared infrastructure as a last-mile distribution of broadband in sachet-sized packages of Rs 5-10.
• The idea was successfully piloted and submitted to the Department of Telecom (DOT) as Wi-Fi Access Network Interface (WANI), in March 2017.
• As a result, government launched PM-WANI scheme. In this No licence or permit was needed for operations to start.
• Start-ups who had participated in the initial pilot started work. Then Covid brought everything to a grinding halt. Now, the operators, called Public Data Office Aggregators (PDOAs), have started work again.
• It has been a game changer as In the last year alone, more than 1.5 lakh Wi-Fi hotspot have been installed by Public Data Office Aggregators (PDOAs) and more than a million people are getting unlimited internet daily by paying just Rs 5-10.

PM-WANI is gong to strengthen the India’s digital infrastructure

• By introducing various entities such as PDO, PDOA, app providers, and a central registry, an open and scalable framework has been created.
• In the way UPI transformed the financial space in India, PM WANI is going to become a unique Digital Public Infrastructure in connectivity.
• This framework offers a compelling business opportunity for aggregators as it allows unbundling of internet distribution at the last mile, eliminating the need for additional licensing fees.
• It provides a robust foundation for delivering affordable internet access to a significant portion of society. Currently, India’s home broadband penetration is one of the lowest in the world.
• PM-WANI presents a golden opportunity to accelerate high-speed unlimited internet penetration, bridging the digital divide and empowering communities nationwide.
• Moreover, many large Internet Service Providers are hesitant to enter underserved areas. This presents a golden opportunity for the PM-WANI framework to flourish. It also benefits ISPs and Telcos as they end up selling more bandwidth by making their end customers retailers.
• Therefore, by creating a win-win situation for all key stakeholders, PM-WANI also nurtures the growth of local nano entrepreneurs. These last-mile providers, found in small shops, local establishments, and even households, augment their monthly earnings while promoting internet usage.

Conclusion

Therefore, PM-WANI needs to be promoted by all stakeholders. It is uniquely Indian in its approach of interoperability, openness, and scalability. Hopefully, it will accelerate like UPI and the other DPIs being built in our country.

General Studies Paper 2

Context

• Historically, India has been the pivot of connectivity from ancient Red Sea route, Rome to Indian Ocean and Punjab that was significant from socio-culture, economic and connectivity point of view.
• And , recently, On September 10 in New Delhi, the Prime Minister of India, President of the United States, Chancellor of Germany, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, President of UAE, Prime Minister of Italy, and the President of the EU unanimously agreed to establish the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC).

About India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) and its

• The IMEC will be a route in the historic sense of the word (with the geopolitical and economic significance that entails), providing transport connectivity to accelerate the development and integration of Asia, the Arabian Gulf, and Europe as a new locus of global power.
• MEC is envisioned two corridors
• An eastern corridor linking India to the Arabian Gulf and a northern corridor linking the Arabian Gulf to Europe. Both ends have robust port, rail, and road infrastructure.
• India, whose connectivity infrastructure has helped it become the world’s fastest-growing major economy, has a massive, well-integrated railroad network, mega ports, and highways on the eastern end of IMEC.
• Mega infra projects for augmenting capacities — dedicated rail freight corridors, highways, expressways and ports — are at various stages of development.
• On the western end of IMEC, beyond Haifa, the sea route across the Mediterranean is also a well-charted path to Greece, Italy, France, and Spain, and well served by hinterland connectivity to Europe by rail and roads.

Importance of IMEC

• Promote better connectivity: It envisions a reliable, cost-effective railway and ship-to-rail transit network to supplement maritime and road routes, enabling goods and services to move between India, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and the EU. IMEC is India’s moment.
• Development and employment generation in the region due to infrastructure development.
• It will also be the cornerstone of economic progress across the region by supercharging regional trade, and connecting Asia with Europe through a region that has never, since the ancient Red Sea route, been considered for such connectivity despite its game-changing potential in terms of shorter transits, accessibility, and multimodal connectivity.
• It will save time compare to existing one route:
• The maritime corridor between Asia and Europe currently remains rooted in the saturated Suez Canal and Mediterranean shipping routes despite being longer and involving additional logistics costs.
• It takes 11 days to sail from JNPT in Maharashtra to Suez port, and six days to Dammam. An additional 24-hour transit by railway could land consignments at Haifa, saving three to four days of transit.
• It will strengthen the supply chain among the partner nations.
• IMEC, which promises shorter routes. It links major ports of western India including JNPT, Kochi, Kandla and Mundra with major shipping ports of the Gulf, including Jebel Ali, Fujairah, Ras Al-Khair, Dammam, Duqm, and Salalah
• It will help in countering the China’s hegemony of Belt and Road Initiative in the Asia and European region.

Way forward

• As commitment of resources from stakeholders and multinational financial institutions like the World Bank will not be an issue as the financial returns on investments promise to be high.
• The green and sustainable growth corridor will envisage the laying of cables for electricity and a pipeline for transporting clean hydrogen. The greening of this project will contribute to the global effort to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
• IMEC has incredible potential to integrate India, West Asia, and Europe on a collective path to growth at an unprecedented scale.
• And it is a historic moment for India as a regional leader that can bring up an entire regional economy through the combination of its technical leadership and outward-looking approach.
• As the next step, a working group of experts from the railway sector, ports and shipping, and communications needs to develop a plan of action to address physical and non-physical barriers, design, financing, legal and other regulatory requirements.

Conclusion

• A mega global initiative like IMEC is only the beginning. As a strategic catalyst for a new way of thinking about collective growth, globalisation, and connectivity — Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam in the truest sense , this new corridor will trigger regional and global cooperation initiatives for socio-economic development across continents, benefitting millions.