General Studies Paper 3

Introduction

• Seeking to further tackle the menace of cybercrimes and financial fraud, Union Minister for Telecommunications Ashwini Vaishnaw introduced two reforms. These entail a revision of norms for bulk procurement of SIM cards and registering the final point of sale (PoS) by the licensees (or providers). The reforms are meant to strengthen the citizen-centric portal Sanchar Saathi that was launched in May this year with the same objective.

Sanchar Saathi

• Broadly, the citizen-centric portal allows citizens to check the connections registered against their names, block mobile phones which are stolen or lost, report fraudulent or unrequired connections and verify the genuineness of a device (before a purchase) using the IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity).
• Sanchar Saathi has, till date, analysed 114 crore active mobile connections.

The reforms on PoS

• From now on, it will be mandatory for franchisee, agents and distributors of SIM cards — all PoS — to be registered with the licensees or the telecom network operator.
• The onus would be on the operator to carry out an “indisputable” verification of the PoS.
• Importantly, police verification (of the dealer) is mandatory.
• Existing SIM card providers have been given 12 months to comply with the registration requirements.
• If the PoS is found to be involved in any illegal activity, the agreement would be terminated with the entity being blacklisted for three years. It would also draw a penalty of ₹10 lakh.
• The DoT holds that these provisions would help in identifying, blacklisting and eliminating rogue PoS, from the licensees’ system and provide and encouragement to the upright PoS.

About  bulk SIM cards

• Broadly, the latest provisions would replace the system of ‘bulk procurement’ of SIM cards (by businesses, corporates or those meant for specific events) with a system of entailing ‘business’ connections — sizeable procurement by a registered business entity or enterprise.
• Elaborating on the premise, 20% of bulk-procured SIMs were misused.
• In the guise of bulk connections, a lot of SIMs would be procured and then they would make automated calls using a SIM-box.
• The minister added that another mechanism entailed using a certain number of SIMs from the bulk procurement to make a certain number of calls, destroying them and then using another batch.
• The latest reforms would endeavour to address these issues. The new norms maintain that though businesses can procure any number of connections, it would be subject to completing KYC requirements for all end-users.
• In other words, the final user— the executive who would be holding the connection — would have to undergo the KYC procedure.
• In order to prevent the misuse of printed Aadhaar, the provisions mandate that demographic details would be required by scanning the QR code of the printed Aadhaar. Subscribers would also have to undergo the entire KYC procedure for replacing their SIM; for a period of 24 hours, all outgoing and incoming SMS facilities would be barred.

Conclusion

• Thus, it would be essential to determine if they possess adequate infrastructure to carry out the entire process and more importantly have the necessary safeguards while dealing with such sensitive data.

General Studies Paper 3

Context

• In a move to check domestic rice prices and ensure domestic food security, the Indian government has prohibited the export of white rice, levied a 20% export duty on par-boiled rice and permitted the export of Basmati rice.

Rice production estimate

• According to the third Advanced Estimate of the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, during the Rabi season 2022-2023, rice production was 13.8% less, during Rabi 2021-2022.
• Kharif sowing data show that rice is sown on 384.05 lakh hectares this year compared with 367.83 lakh hectares during the same period last year.
• But, in States such as Tamil Nadu where the Samba crop sowing starts usually in August in the Cauvery delta area, a section of farmers says there will be delayed sowing due to a shortfall in the south west monsoon.
• Trade and rice millers say that new season crop arrivals will start after the first week of September and that El Nino effects are likely to impact arrivals to some extent.

Rice exports

• India is the largest rice exporter globally with a 45% share in the world rice market.
• Overall rice exports in April-May of 2023 were 21.1% higher compared with the same period last financial year.
• Export of Basmati rice was 10.86% higher than its exports in May 2022. Non-Basmati rice shipments were 7.5% more, despite the government introducing a 20% export duty on white rice and prohibiting the export of broken rice last September.
• The shipment of non-Basmati rice has been on the rise for the last three years and the export of Basmati rice in 2022-2023 was higher than the previous year.
• The data shared by the government says that total rice exports (except broken rice) were 15% more against the 6.3 the corresponding period last year.
• Trade sources add that Thailand expects nearly 25% lower production in 2023-2024; Myanmar has stopped raw rice exports; and the crop is said to be hit in Iraq and Iran as well.

State of the farmers

• The government has increased the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for rice, and the paddy procured now by rice millers are at a price higher than the MSP.
• The prices will not decline for farmers. The restrictions on exports will ensure that there is no steep climb in rice prices in the market.
• When the benchmark price set by the government is high, the farmers will realise better prices, say trade sources.
• For domestic consumers, though there is a slight increase in rice prices at present, in the long run, availability is secured, and prices are not expected to spiral.

The overall situation

• Prices of Indian par-boiled rice in the international market is competitive even with the levy of a 20% duty.
• Countries such as Indonesia, which are rice exporters, are looking at imports (raw rice) now.
• When the global rice market is bullish, it will absorb volume in high prices too.
• The government should look at classifying rice as common rice and speciality rice for export policy decisions rather than classifying as Basmati and non-Basmati.
• As many as 12 varieties of rice have Geographical Indication (GI) recognition and these should be insulated from general market interventions.

Conclusion

• Since Indian rice quality and the consistency in supply is good, export demand for Indian rice went up. Basmati is a speciality rice and new crop arrivals will start soon and there is no need for restrictions.

General Studies Paper 3

Introduction

• The Y chromosome is a never-ending source of fascination (particularly to men) because it bears genes that determine maleness and make sperm. It’s also small and seriously weird; it carries few genes and is full of junk DNA that makes it horrendous to sequence.

Making baby boys

• We have known for about 60 years that specialised chromosomes-determine birth sex in humans and other mammals.
• Females have a pair of X chromosomes, whereas males have a single X and a much smaller Y chromosome.
• The Y chromosome is male-determining because it bears a gene called SRY, which directs the development of a ridge of cells into a testis in the embryo.
• The embryonic testes make male hormones, and these hormones direct the development of male features in a baby boy.
• Without a Y chromosome and a SRY gene, the same ridge of cells develops into an ovary in XX embryos. Female hormones then direct the development of female features in the baby girl.

A DNA junkyard

• The Y chromosome is very different from X and the 22 other chromosomes of the human genome.
• It is smaller and bears few genes (only 27 compared to about 1,000 on the X).
• These include SRY, a few genes required to make sperm, and several genes that seem to be critical for life – many of which have partners on the X.
• Many Y genes (including the sperm genes RBMY and DAZ) are present in multiple copies.
• Some occur in weird loops in which the sequence is inverted and genetic accidents that duplicate or delete genes are common.
• The Y also has a lot of DNA sequences that don’t seem to contribute to traits.
• This “junk DNA” is comprised of highly repetitive sequences that derive from bits and pieces of old viruses, dead genes and very simple runs of a few bases repeated over and over.
• This last DNA class occupies big chunks of the Y that literally glow in the dark; you can see it down the microscope because it preferentially binds fluorescent dyes.

Y chromosome is weird!

• We have a lot of evidence that 150 million years ago the X and Y were just a pair of ordinary chromosomes (they still are in birds and platypuses).
• There were two copies – one from each parent – as there are for all chromosomes.
• Then SRY evolved (from an ancient gene with another function) on one of these two chromosomes, defining a new proto-Y.
• This proto-Y was forever confined to a testis, by definition, and subject to a barrage of mutations as a result of a lot of cell division and little repair.
• The proto-Y degenerated fast, losing about 10 active genes per million years, reducing the number from its original 1,000 to just 27.
• A small “pseudoautosomal” region at one end retains its original form and is identical to its erstwhile partner, the X.
• There has been great debate about whether this degradation continues, because at this rate the whole human Y would disappear in a few million years (as it already has in some rodents).

Spoiler alert

• The Y turns out to be just as weird as we expected from decades of gene mapping and the previous sequencing.
• A few new genes have been discovered, but these are extra copies of genes that were already known to exist in multiple copies.
• The border of the pseudoautosomal region (which is shared with the X) has been pushed a bit further toward the tip of the Y chromosome.
• We now know the structure of the centromere (a region of the chromosome that pulls copies apart when the cell divides), and have a complete readout of the complex mixture of repetitive sequences in the fluorescent end of the Y.

Conclusion

• The most important outcome is how useful the findings will be for scientists all over the world. It’s a new era for the poor old Y.

General Studies Paper 2

Context

• Of late, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has been a focal point of differences between the government and the judiciary. This time, the clash of opinions is over its appointment.

Recent judgment

• The Supreme Court of India, in a judgment, directed that the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and the Election Commissioners (EC) will be appointed by the President of India based on the advice of a committee made up of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha or the leader of the single largest Opposition party and the Chief Justice of India (CJI).
• This judgment of the Constitution Bench was a major step towards broad basing the ECI and enhancing its constitutional status.
• Article 324 of the Constitution contains a provision for such a law to be enacted by Parliament.

The significance

• The significance of this judgment also lies in the fact that this was a unanimous judgment of a five-judge Bench.
• So far, the top officers of the ECI have been appointed by the President of India on the advice of the central government.
• The Bill seeks to replace the Chief Justice of India from the high-powered selection committee, meaning the committee will be made up of the Prime Minister (Chairperson), Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha (Member) and a Union Cabinet Minister to be nominated by the Prime Minister (Member).
• Experience and research show that incumbent governments, especially those with authoritarian streaks, do not usually do away with democratic institutions but, instead, relentlessly work towards making them pliant.
• The institutional structures remain but are drained of their substance. And, in this case, one is dealing with a matter of electoral winnability and a consolidation of state power.

An issue that has seen much debate

• The procedure of appointments of the CEC and the ECs has seen much debate in policy and political circles ever since the Constituent Assembly debates and much has been written about it.
• A suggestion during the Constituent Assembly Debates was that the appointment of the CEC should be subject to confirmation by two-thirds majority in a joint session of both Houses of Parliament (Constituent Assembly debates, June 15, 1949). However, Parliament was entrusted with the charge of making appropriate laws on the matter.
• The V.M. Tarkunde Committee appointed by Jayaprakash Narayan in 1975, the Dinesh Goswami Committee on electoral reforms set up by the then Prime Minister, V.P. Singh, in the 1990s, and the second Administrative Reforms Commission in its fourth report in 2009 among others made recommendations that the appointments of members of the ECI should be more broad based (through a collegium) than leaving this solely to the government on whose advice the President made these appointments.

Held in high regard

• The ECI has been held to be a reliable, responsible and trustworthy institution by the people of India.
• Handling elections that involve about 900 million voters (2019 election data) through a machinery of 11 million personnel in a setting of economic hardship and inequalities is a remarkable feat.
• However, going soft on the ruling party or its ideology, as the perception is, whether this has to do with election schedules, electoral speeches, alleged hateful propaganda, electoral rolls or other kinds of malpractices, is eroding not only its own autonomy but also people’s trust.

Conclusion

• Nevertheless, the point remains that the present regime still sees the ECI as an institution with autonomy. And this autonomy does not gel with its goals. It would instead like a firmer grip on the ECI through statutory means.

General Studies Paper 3

Context

• A group of news media organisations, including The New York Times, Reuters, CNN and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, recently shut off OpenAI’s ability to access their content.

About

• The development comes in the wake of reports that The New York Times is planning on suing the artificial intelligence (AI) research company over copyright violations, which would represent a considerable escalation in tensions between media companies and the leading creator of generative artificial intelligence solutions.

OpenAI

• The company is best known for creating ‘ChatGPT’, which is an AI conversational chatbot.
• Users can ask questions on just about anything, and ChatGPT will respond pretty accurately with answers, stories and essays.
• It can even help programmers write software code. The hype around ChatGPT — specifically, the breathtaking advancements in the field of AI required to create it — has propelled OpenAI into becoming a $30 billion company.

The face-off between news outlets and OpenAI

• Software products like ChatGPT are based on what AI researchers call ‘large language models’ (LLMs).
• These models require enormous amounts of information to train their systems.
• If chat bots or digital assistants need to be able to understand the questions that humans throw at them, they need to study human language patterns.
• Tech companies that work on LLMs like Google, Meta or Open AI are secretive about what kind of training data they use.
• But it’s clear that online content found across the Internet, such as social media posts, news articles, Wikipedia, e-books, form a significant part of the dataset used to train ChatGPT and other similar products.
• This data is put together by scraping it off the Internet. Tech companies use software called ‘crawlers’ to scan web pages, hoover up content and put it together in a dataset that can be used to train their LLMs.
• This is what news outlets took a stand against last week when The New York Times and others blocked a web crawler known as GPT bot, through which OpenAI used to scrape data.

Other media companies

• Search engines like Google or Bing also use web crawlers to index websites and present relevant results when users search for topics.
• The only difference is that search engines represent a mutually beneficial relationship.
• Google, for instance, takes a snippet of a news article (a headline, a blurb and perhaps a couple of sentences) and reproduces them to make its search results useful. And while Google profits off of that content, it also directs a significant amount of user traffic to news websites.
• OpenAI, on the other hand, provides no benefit, monetary or otherwise, to news companies. It simply collects publicly available data and uses it for the company’s own purposes.
• But it’s also true that some news outlets probably view ChatGPT as a potential competitor that will profit off their journalism.

Way forward

• Tech gurus like to argue that the value of online content only exists in the aggregate.
• Or in other words, ChatGPT could still exist as a high-quality product without CNN’s reporting. But all media publications across the world refused to provide access to OpenAI, it’s likely that the final product would be of lower quality.
• And, of course, if every single creator of online content turned down OpenAI, then ChatGPT would almost certainly not exist.

General Studies Paper 3

Introduction

• Tiny wires inside computers and cell phones dissipate heat, draining the batteries in the process. So it is natural that scientists are looking for materials that can conduct electricity without resistance, especially for applications where heat loss is a deal-breaker.

An elusive material

• More than a century ago, scientists discovered that many metals become superconducting – i.e. allow current to flow with zero resistance – if cooled to below -250º C.
• This gave birth to a big physics puzzle about superconductor. The breakthrough came in the 1950s and 1960s, when scientists developed a theory of superconductivity.
• With this theory, they found that superconductors aren’t just materials with zero resistance: they have a remarkable new quantum state in which the electrons in the material work together.
• Several fantastic properties of superconductors then came to light, opening the door to new technologies – including advanced medical imaging, ‘maglev’ trains, and quantum computers.
• However, superconductivity also remained an extremely-low temperature-phenomenon for a long time.
• It was only in the mid-1980s that scientists discovered copper-oxide superconductors, whose transition temperature was higher than -200º C.
• But to this day, scientists haven’t made significant progress to elevate this figure to at or near ambient conditions.
• One of the highest transition temperatures has been found in a sulphide compound, but it needs to be placed under extreme pressures – like that found at the centre of the earth!
• The all-important discovery of an ambient-condition superconductor, which can herald radical new technologies, has eluded several generations of scientists.

Surprise and scepticism

• In July 2023, a group of scientists in South Korea uploaded two preprint papers claiming that a lead apatite material was an ambient condition superconductor.
• Apatites are materials that have a regular arrangement of tetrahedrally shaped phosphate ions (i.e. one phosphorus atom and four oxygen atoms).
• When lead ions sit in between these phosphate motifs, it is lead apatite.
• The novelty of the South Korean group’s work was to replace 10% of the lead ions in lead apatite with copper, to produce the supposed wonder material that they had christened LK-99 (after their own last names).

Independent verification

• In their papers, the group described subjecting their LK-99 samples to a variety of tests. They measured the material’s electric resistance, which seemed to drop below a certain temperature.
• They showed that the low resistance state vanished when a sufficiently strong magnetic field was applied.
• In their second paper, the team had provided instructions to synthesise LK-99.
• Researchers in Australia, China, India, the U.S., and several European countries followed them and tried to replicate the South Korean team’s findings – but no one found conclusive evidence of superconductivity in their samples.
• In fact, the Indian group, from the CSIR-National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi, was one of the first to report that it didn’t find any signs of superconductivity in LK-99.
• Some of the most recent work also tried to produce LK-99 using alternative methods. At least one group was able to make a highly pure crystal – where all the ions are regularly arranged in space.
• It had a brownish-purple hue and was transparent, which was unusual for a superconductor.
• More remarkably, this single crystal behaved like an insulator, showing no signs of superconductivity from low temperatures up to 800º C.
• Researchers also found that it was ferromagnetic – i.e. it could be magnetised by, say, rubbing a magnet on it. Superconductors cannot have this property.

Science in action

• The South Koreans had made lead sulphate react with copper phosphide to produce polycrystalline LK-99 (i.e. small crystallites randomly arranged in space, unlike in a single crystal, where the atoms are arranged regularly over very large distances) and some by-products.
• One of the important by-products was copper sulphide, which could have become embedded in the LK-99 matrix.
• Independent researchers confirmed this by using X-rays to ‘look’ inside the crystal.
• Researchers also found a more mundane way to explain the levitation: that the LK-99 sample also contained impurities (other by-products) that were diamagnetic, i.e. materials that could be magnetised but whose magnetic field is the opposite direction of the applied field. Diamagnetic materials can also partially levitate above magnets as a result.

Conclusion

• The current evidence suggests that LK-99 is not a superconductor. Even as the replication efforts were underway, some scientists also made models of LK-99’s quantum properties. They found that if copper atoms replaced a certain set of lead atoms in LK-99, the material would have some electronic states that are very interesting in that their kinetic energy could take on very restricted values. These are called flat-band systems. Electrons in flat-bands can interact strongly with each other and are predicted to form superconducting phases, but only at very low temperatures.

General Studies Paper 2

 Context

• Recently, 15th BRICS summit was hosted by South Africa in Johannesburg.
• The summit end with major decision of invite six countries — Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE — to join BRICS as full members and keep its doors open for further expansion.

BRICS 2.0 will have global repercussions

• At Johannesburg, BRICS increased its membership to represent a larger share of world population, global GDP and international trade by invite six countries
• The accommodation was important, given that at least 23 countries of the Global South had conveyed interest in seeking BRICS membership. This was a recognition of the grouping’s values
• Therefore, it will also have global repercussions on the
• role of the US-led Western alliance centred around G7
• emerging economies and developing countries, and
• the engagements between the two worlds.

The significance of adding new countries

• The new BRICS-XI will have more political influence and the extent of its increased influence will depend on building inner unity
• BRICS 2.0 will also have six of the top 10 oil-producing countries of Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, UAE, Brazil, and Iran — a definite global power shift and one not defined by the West
• Along with, the joint statement made during the summit stated that that the grouping will encourage local currencies in trade and financial transactions “between BRICS as well as their trading partners” and for “fast, inexpensive, transparent, safe and inclusive payment systems.
• Therefore, it will also widen the areas of trade and commerce, bilateral and multilateral relation among the countries.

Strengthening the voice for UNSC

• At Johannesburg, the leaders decided to direct the foreign ministers to “further develop the BRICS partner country model”. In line for admission are Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Mauritius, Nigeria, Kenya, and a Latin American country.
• Johannesburg Declaration.: The immediate rebalancing focus is UNSC membership for the original BRICS members India, Brazil, and South Africa articulated in Paragraph 7 of the Johannesburg Declaration.
• This requires the support of the permanent members, China and Russia, or it will further expose their doublespeak on this issue.

From India’s perspective

• Both UNSC membership and local currency trade are welcome to India. Two other possibilities discussed are favourable too.
• First, it was reiterated that G20 is the premier multilateral forum for “international economic and financial cooperation”. China and Russia conveyed their support for the successful hosting of successive G20 presidencies by India, Brazil, and South Africa.
• This generates hope that these two states may become a little more conciliatory, and a consensus-based Delhi Declaration is delivered at the G20 summit in September.
• Second, the meeting between President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the summit’s side lines, may offer fresh impetus for expediting a workable resolution of the border issues in the western sector of Ladakh.

Conclusion

• BRICS faces a changed world in which its two members Russia and China are heavily involved in confrontation with the US-led West.
• The other BRICS members do have differences with the existing global order, but they prefer reform through dialogue. As the six new members join BRICS, these inner dynamics will evolve further.
• However, India will have a seminal but challenging role, given its growing cooperation with the West on the one hand and its active articulation and pursuit of the interests of the Global South on the other.

General Studies Paper 3

Introduction

• Wonder-struck by the beauty and the magnificence of the Himalaya, the snow-covered peaks, though increasingly diminishing, may still awaken the poet in us, but the barrenness of the hills below tell us the real story — that of steady environmental depredation.

About

• Today, the repeated tragedies of bridges, roads and buildings being swept by raging rivers in the hill States of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, epitomise a flawed developmental paradigm institutionalised in an eco-fragile region.
• Blocked roads after a landslide at Chamoli and sinking in Joshimath in Uttarakhand, road caving in Chamba in Himachal, accidents on the Char Dham routes, and deaths on the all-weather road are reports that have become everyday news from “Devbhoomi” (land of the gods).

Road project, bypassing the rules

• In 2016, the Chardham Mahamarg Vikas Pariyojna, a massive infrastructure project of road widening to double-laning with a paved shoulder (DLPS) design  was implemented in the Garhwal region and a short stretch of Kumaon in Uttarakhand.
• The project has claimed lakhs of trees and acres of forest land, many human and animal lives, and also the fertile topsoil of the fragile Himalaya.
• By law, a project of more than 100 km needs environmental clearance. But ambitious projects for tourism and plans that are the result of election agendas are time bound.
• All laws of land are bypassed. In this case, this massive project was broken up into 53 small projects, each less than 100 km long, thus by-passing environmental impact assessment (EIA) requirements.
• The dense forests around Chamba, Agrakhal Maletha, Shivpuri, Rudraprayag, Chamoli, Agustmuni, Karnaprayag and Kund (all Uttarakhand) and other such lush green sites are vanishing.
• Amid the rapacious nature of the Chardham Mahamarg Vikas Pariyojna, only one pristine patch, i.e., the Bhagirathi Eco Sensitive Zone (BESZ), remains.
• BESZ has the only natural free flow that is left of the Ganga river and was declared a protected site in December 2012 under the Environment Protection Act, 1986.

The underlying issue

• BESZ stretch is of approximately 100 km could not be touched by the Chardham Mahamarg Vikas Pariyojna project without an approved zonal master plan (ZMP) and a detailed EIA.
• To facilitate the Chardham Mahamarg Vikas Pariyojna, the ZMP was given hasty approval, negating the directions of even the Supreme Court of India.
• The mandatory and detailed EIA was not done. And, finally, the BESZ monitoring committee’s approval was overseen by most of the State officials on the committee without any discussion or suggestions being made.
• While experts have repeatedly pointed out that the Chardham shrines of Uttarakhand are already overburdened, their carrying capacities have been increased ignoring all scientific rationale to blindly boost the tourism sector and perhaps to justify the excessively road widening that the government is pursuing in the most vulnerable section of Himalaya.
• However, after the recent warning signals by mother nature, the State governments of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh propose a reassessment of carrying capacity.
• The Supreme Court too is setting a committee for the same, but the larger question is whether the recommendations will be implemented or not.

Saving the Gangotri, need for regulation

• One of the most challenging issues for the Ganga’s rejuvenation is conservation of the Gangotri glacier, which is also the fastest receding glacier.
• With an increase in vehicular movement and episodes of forest fires, black carbon deposits (carbon plus soot) are rising on the glacier, escalating its melting.
• Black carbon absorbs more light and emits infra-red radiation that increases the temperature. Therefore, an increase in black carbon in the high Himalaya contributes to the faster melting of glaciers.
• In the persistent debate of environment versus development of the hills, there is a very simple solution to all the chronic and acute problems that the hills face — regulation.
• In BESZ, the upgradation of roads to an intermediate road width, that will have minimal environmental impact, is the only possible and sustainable solution.

Way forward

• If reducing a few metres of road width helps ensure the conservation of the only pristine stretch of the Ganga and protection of the Himalaya, then we must make sincere efforts to amend the plan.
• Most importantly, no development can be sustained if it ends up destroying the main lifeline for millions of people and future generations.

General Studies Paper 2

Context

• BRICS found new purpose with expansion; but contradictions too.

BRICS Summit

• If there was any doubt about the relevance of the BRICS grouping (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa), which held its 15th Summit in Johannesburg this week, the massive global interest in its outcomes should have put those to rest.
• Ever since the grouping, set up as a coalition of emerging economies, said last year that it was open to new members, as many as 40 countries from the global south have evinced interest in joining, with at least 22 formal applications.
• The decision to more than double its membership overnight, from 5 to 11, by inducting four major middle eastern players, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Ethiopia and Argentina, from Africa and South America, respectively, is significant.

Significance of the grouping

• The enthusiasm is obvious. BRICS has weathered several storms and is today seen, if not as any alternative, as a counter-narrative creator to the western-led G-7 club on diverse issues: from climate change commitments and UN reform to its rejection of unilateral western sanctions against Iran, Russia and Venezuela.
• By also creating the New Development Bank, which has funded nearly 100 projects so far, instituting a Contingent Reserve Arrangement, and other institutional mechanisms, the BRICS countries have also shown their ability to work on practical initiatives.
• While the grouping may not yet rival the wealth of the G-7, it does now rival its share of the global GDP (approximately 30% each), and represents a more equitable representation across 40% of the world’s population to the G-7 countries that make up just 10%.
• Once the new members join, six of 10 of the biggest global oil suppliers will be BRICS countries, giving BRICS new heft in the field of energy.

The shortcomings

• While the battle of proving its raison d’être may have been substantially won, the BRICS countries still fall short in showing a coherence of purpose, and are still mired by inner contradictions.
• The rivalry between India and China has no doubt slowed the grouping down and the induction of arch rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia-UAE, despite their recent détente, could well create similar issues for the group in the future.
• In addition, any overtly political, anti-western stance by BRICS will make India, and other countries in the grouping who walk a tightrope between the global powers, including Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Brazil, uncomfortable.
• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine too has caused uneasiness, and BRICS members did not vote as a bloc on any of the UN votes; nor did any of the other members support Russia’s actions.

Way forward

• Above all, any attempts by China to overpower the group with its strategic or economic vision will require a firm pushback if the foundational idea of BRICS, to assert the strategic autonomy of its members, is to be followed.
• Eventually it is the promise of shared prosperity and a more democratic model of global governance that attracts so many in the global south to the grouping, and will provide the mortar for an expanded line-up of BRICS countries.

General Studies Paper 2

Context

• A ‘holding together federation’ with a built-in unitary bias, the Indian Constitution was the contextual product of centrifugal forces and fissiparous tendencies in the run-up to Independence.

About

• It has journeyed over 73 years with remarkable resilience. Even so, the emerging dynamics of India’s fiscal federalism needs some rethinking.
• The paradigm shift from a planned economy to a market-mediated economic system, the transformation of a two-tier federation into a multi-tier fiscal system following the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments, the abolition of the Planning Commission and its replacement with NITI Aayog, the passing of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act, with all the States forced to fall in line, the Goods and Services (GST) Act with the GST Council holding the controlling lever, the extensive use of cess and surcharges which affect the size of the divisible pool and so on have altered the fiscal landscape with varying consequences on India’s federalism.

Issues.

• India’s intergovernmental transfer system should be decidedly more equity-oriented. Although the natural proclivity of any market-mediated growth process is to work in favour of the propertied class, the actual experience in India has been astounding.
• indeed, equity should be the overarching concern of the 16th Finance Commission and that HDI could be considered as a strong candidate in the horizontal distribution of tax devolution.
• There is a case for revisiting Article 246 and the Seventh Schedule for a denovo division of powers, functions and responsibilities for a variety of reasons.
• India is no longer the one-party governance of post-Independence times. It has become a truly multi-party system. The nature of polity, society, technology, demographic structure and the development paradigm itself have significantly changed.
• Under the changing dispensation, several pieces of central legislation such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009, the National Food Security Act 2013 and many others impose an extra burden on the States.
• At the time of constitution-making, we never asked the pertinent question of who should do what and who should tax what. We borrowed copiously from the Government of India Act 1935 and failed to apply the subsidiarity principle, viz., that whatever could be done best at a particular level should be done at that level and not at a higher level, in the division of functions and finance.
• Although the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments provided an opportunity to re-examine the issue, nothing was done.

A respectable place for the third tier

• The persistent failure to place the third tier properly on the fiscal federal map of India is a serious issue.
• The absence of a uniform financial reporting system comprising all levels of government is a major deficit which the coming Union Finance Commission may be required to address.
• Although the Constitution refers to the third tier as ‘institutions of self-government’, policymakers, experts and even the UFCs generally refer to them as ‘local bodies’ and have not given the respect and the handholding they deserve.
• It is well-recognised that the prime objective of our federation with deep heterogeneity is to provide basic services of standard quality to every citizen irrespective of her choice of residence and they have a critical role to play.

Review off-Budget borrowing

• There is a great need to review the off-Budget borrowing practices of both the Union and the States.
• Off-Budget borrowings mean all borrowings not provided for in the Budget but whose repayment liabilities fall on the Budget.
• They are generally unscrutinised and unreported. That all income and expenditure transactions should fall under some Budget head or other is a universal principle.
• State public sector undertakings and special purpose vehicles raise resources from the markets, but their servicing burden often falls on the State government.
• In cases where the government is the ultimate guarantor, the burden of repaying the debt also falls on the State.
• Although the States are disciplined through Article 293(3) by the Union and through the FRBM Act, the Union often escapes such controls.
• The liberal utilisation of the National Small Saving Fund (NSSF) for extra-budgetary financing of central public sector undertakings and central ministries by way of loans is not reflected in the Union fiscal deficits.
• This is because only the Consolidated Fund of India balance is considered for calculating fiscal deficit, and items in public accounts such as the NSSF are kept out. While the borrowing space of States is restricted, the Union escapes such discipline.
• There is also a huge area of special banking arrangements using public sector banks to facilitate cash and credit flow outside the budgetary appropriations to help various agencies involved in quasi-fiscal operations with the government.
• Transparency guarantees and public accountability demand that the Union, States and local governments come clean and bring all extra-budgetary transactions to the public domain.

Conclusion

• In sum, the dynamics of the emerging fiscal federalism of India entails significant rethinking especially in the context of the 16th Finance Commission