General Studies Paper 2

CONTEXT

• Master Plans may not be the panacea. India must reimagine spatial planning to address the growing and emerging governance challenges of urbanisation.

ABOUT

• Amitabh Kant, India’s G20 Sherpa, stressed at a recent Urban-20 City Sherpas’ meet that a master plan is crucial for any city to manage urbanisation. There have been similar calls in the past.
• A master plan is an instrument of governance for urban local bodies (ULBs).
• It has recently received extensive attention in national policy discussions, and rightly so.
• The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has recommended that master plans in cities should be revisited for the improved governance of cities.
• The National Mission for Clean Ganga has been advocating such a step to protect urban water bodies; yet, the idea has not advanced beyond exhortations.
• Much needs to be understood, for the scholarship on master plans is puzzlingly shallow.
• Statutory and spatial
  • The renewed focus on the concept of a master plan is to be welcomed. But few acknowledge its distinct status as the sole statutory instrument of governance.
  • Many plans to improve sanitation, infrastructure and social inclusion are dependent on particular programmes, but these are at best ephemeral and incremental as they are centrally funded.
  • The discourse tends to blur this distinction and, as a result, obscures the significance of the master plan as the instrument of governance.

AN ARCHAIC CONCEPT

• A further complication is that the master plan is an archaic concept whose sales-pitch is more spectacular than its performance. There are at least four reasons for this.
• First, the master plan instrument is dated.
  • The concept, configuration and rationalities of this instrument as well as the institutional structures surrounding it are conceived by template legislations drafted in the 1950s. These were then replicated by States as laws of town planning.
  • While this is a central legislation focused on industrial pollution, the legal and institutional frame of the master plan remained unchanged with its archaic conceptions of land development for urban service rationalities.
• Second, a master plan is simply a spatial plan of land-use allocation supported by bye-laws and development control regulations. Thus, it essentially embodies a spatial vision for cities.
• Third, this spatial vision is at the core of institutional structures, cultures and practices of ULBs.
• The edifice of urban governance is built around this spatial vision and provision of urban services.
• The ULBs are cultivated and shaped by the agenda of regulating spatial growth and remain slaves to these ideas and conceptions.
• As a result, the demands imposed on them by the new visions (of programmatic plans) suffer.
• Fourth, the statutory and spatial nature of the master plan can pose constraints on the programmatic plans, especially the spatially associated ones such as the plans for protection of water bodies.
• Most water-body related projects negotiate the challenges of encroachment of floodplains as encroachments in ex-post.

REIMAGINE SPATIAL PLANNING

• Urban planning in India must be reimagined urgently. First, we must acknowledge that the master plan instrument may be limited by its archaic conceptions and entrenched institutional cultures. To assume that it would serve the expanded scope of urban governance is far-fetched and can be self-defeating.
• Second, there is no need to go far for lessons to do this. Indian cities offer enough experiences to learn from. For instance, many States have tried supplementing the inadequacies of the master plan with innovative bye-laws. Much of this experimental and experiential understanding is, however, dispersed, and is restricted to the domain of praxis.
• Third, the incapacities in urban planning and governance highlighted by the 2021 report of the NITI Aayog must receive priority. And it should begin with an elevated attention to the spatial (town) planning profession and education.

WAY FORWARD

• The era of planetary urbanisation brings spatial planning into sharp focus, and calls for reimaging the spatial planning framework in India.
• Recent moves such as Gati Shakti and Model Rural Transformation Acts are a reflection of this growing demand. But these are too feeble, remote and limited.
• The Centre must work with the States to reconsider the spatial planning framework in India.

General Studies Paper 2

Context

The Tamil Nadu Governor’s move to ‘dismiss’ a Minister highlights the point that the pleasure of the Governor under the Constitution of India insofar as it relates to Ministers is not the same as that of the colonial Governor.

The underlying issue

This unprecedented and deliberately provocative act of dismissing a Minister of a government which enjoys an absolute majority in the State legislature, without the recommendation of the Chief Minister of the State, is going to set a dangerous precedent and has the potential to destabilise State governments putting the federal system in jeopardy.

If Governors are allowed to exercise the power of dismissal of individual Ministers without the knowledge and recommendation of the Chief Minister, the whole constitutional system will collapse.

 The powers

• What needs to be examined first is whether Governors have the power to dismiss an individual Minister without the advice of the Chief Minister.
• Under Article 164 of the Constitution, the Chief Minister is appointed by the Governor without any advice from anyone.
• But he appoints the individual Ministers only on the advice of the Chief Minister.
• The Article implies that the Governor cannot appoint an individual Minister according to his discretion. So, logically, the Governor can dismiss a Minister only on the advice of the Chief Minister.
• The reason is simple. The Chief Minister alone has the discretion to choose his Ministers. He decides who the Ministers of his Council will be. He also decides who will not remain as a Minister in his Council.
• This is a political decision of the Chief Minister, who is ultimately answerable to the people. The Constitution has not transferred the discretion of the Chief Minister to the Governor.
• Articles and clarity
• This point would become absolutely clear on looking at the Government of India Act, 1935 which says that the Governor’s Ministers shall be chosen and summoned by him, shall be sworn as members of the council and shall hold office during his pleasure.
• The Section in the Act makes it clear that the Ministers shall be chosen by the Governor. So, they hold office during his pleasure.
• Further, sub-section of the Section 51 says that the functions of the Governor under this section with respect to the choosing and summoning and the dismissal of Ministers and with respect to the determination of their salaries, shall be exercised by him in his discretion.
• A mere constitutional head
• Independent India has a constitutional system under which a Governor is a mere constitutional head and he can act only on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers headed by the Chief Minister.
• R. Ambedkar had stated unambiguously in the Constituent Assembly that there is no executive function which a Governor can perform independently under the Constitution.
• It is true that the pleasure doctrine has been brought into the Constitution of India from the Government of India Act, 1935. But these words simply refer to the formal act of issuing the order of dismissal which is to be done by the Governor, but only on the advice of the Chief Minister.
• Judicial clarification
• The position of the Governor in India’s Constitutional setup has been clarified by the Supreme Court of India in a number of cases.
• In Shamsher Singh and Anr vs State Of Punjab (1974), a seven- judge Constitution Bench declared that the President and Governor, custodians of all executive and other powers under various Articles, shall exercise their formal constitutional powers only upon and in accordance with the advice of their Ministers.
• Similarly, in Nabam Rebia vs Deputy Speaker, a Constitution Bench of five judges reaffirmed the law laid down in Shamsher Singh and further held that the discretionary powers of the Governor are limited to the postulates of Article 163(1).

Conclusion

• In sum, the dismissal of a Minister of the Tamil Nadu Government by the Governor of the State without the advice of the Chief Minister is constitutionally wrong. Newspaper reports suggest that the Governor later held back his order of dismissal for legal consultation. But the issue of dismissal of a Minister without the advice of the Chief Minister is one which clearly destabilises the constitutional system.

General Studies Paper 2

Introduction

• There is a slow realisation that Africa, a continent, accounting for nearly 17% of the world’s population today and reaching 25% in 2050, needs to be studied closely because India’s rise as a global player is inevitably linked to the kind of partnership it enjoys with Africa.

The Background

• In the past 15 years and especially since 2014, India- Africa relations have developed steadily but more progress is achievable.
• In this context, the 20-member Africa Expert Group (AEG), established by the Vivekananda International Foundation, recently presented the VIF Report entitled ‘India-Africa Partnership: Achievements, Challenges and Roadmap 2023’.

Africa in transition

• The report examines the transitions unfolding in Africa: demographic, economic, political and social.
• From this blend of changes, stamped by the adverse impact of the pandemic and complicated geopolitics, emerges a continent that is set to transform itself.
• It is slowly heading toward regional integration and is devoted to democracy, peace and progress, even as Ethiopia, Sudan, the Central African Republic and other countries continue to battle with the challenges posed by insurgency, ethnic violence and terrorism.
• Superimposed on this landscape is the sharpening competition among at least half a dozen external partners such as China, Russia, the United States, the European Union, Japan, Türkiye and the United Arab Emirates for strengthening their relations with parts of Africa to ensure market access, gain energy and mineral security, and increase political and economic influence.
• The VIF report notes that India has a substantive partnership with Africa and a rich fund of goodwill, but it is essential for New Delhi to review its Africa policy periodically, stay resilient by making the required changes, and place a razor-like focus on its implementation.

Gist of recommendations

• The central part is ‘Roadmap 2030’, a set of nearly 60 policy recommendations that are designed to deepen and diversify the India-Africa partnership. They cover four areas.
• First, political and diplomatic cooperation should be strengthened by restoring periodic leaders’ summits through the medium of the India-Africa Forum Summit; the last summit was in 2015.
• Another recommendation relates to forging consensus among G-20 members on the AU’s entry into the G-20 as a full member.
• Action is now under way, following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent communication to G-20 leaders requesting support for this proposal.
• Second, on defence and security cooperation, the government needs to increase the number of defence attachés deployed in Africa, expand dialogue on defence issues, widen the footprint of maritime collaboration, and expand lines of credit to facilitate defence exports.
• Third, India-Africa trade touching $98 billion in FY22–23 is an encouraging development. This figure can go up if access to finance through the creation of an Africa Growth Fund (AGF) is ensured.
• A special package of measures to improve project exports and build up cooperation in the shipping domain has been suggested.
• Fourth, socio-cultural cooperation should be increased through greater interaction between universities, think tanks, civil society and media organisations in India and select African countries.
• Setting up a National Centre for African Studies will be the right step. Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) and Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) scholarships awarded to Africans should be named after famous African figures.
• Visa measures for African students who come to India for higher education should be liberalised.

Way forward

• Finally, the report suggests a special mechanism for implementing the ‘Roadmap 2030’. This can best be secured through close collaboration between the MEA and the National Security Council Secretariat through a team of officials working under the joint leadership of the Secretary, Africa in the MEA, and a designated Deputy National Security Adviser.

General Studies Paper 2

Introduction

• India is said to be among the least obese countries in the world, with an average Body Mass Index (BMI) of less than 22.BMI –the ubiquitous tool believed to measure fat and fitness – would classify most Indians as healthy. But more Indians than ever are at risk of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Obesity, experts warn, isa “ticking time bomb”.

BMI

• The paradox is built within the tool of choice – the BMI, a simple calculation that divides an individual’s weight in kilograms by the square of their height in meters.
• The most-repeated myths about fitness are “the lower the BMI, the healthier you are…or that obesity happens only when you’re not eating well or exercising regularly”. Both claims are misleading and untrue.
• BMI is one method of tracking your weight and identifying potential weight-related problems.  Like a Rapid Antigen Test for COVID-19, it may help screen for chronic health conditions without promising the accuracy of an RT-PCR test.

A product of bias

• Some 200 years ago, a Belgian astronomer and statistician Adolphe Jacques Queenlet wanted to study humans and develop ‘social laws’, like the laws of physics.
• He pored through available datasets to find the ‘average man’, using the height and weight of Caucasian, middle-aged men from France and Scotland.
• The Queletet’s Index, the first iteration of the BMI, helped identify a type of perfection and intended for it to be a population-level tool only, cautioning its use on individuals.

A complex science

• Mounting evidence since has led people to reconsider the logic of BMI.
• For one, BMI doesn’t-understand weight entirely, is unable to distinguish between muscle mass and body fat.
• Muscle and bone are denser than fat and thus weigh more; explaining why people with larger body frames (like athletes) have a higher BMI and older adults (who lose muscle mass) tend to rank lower.
• BMI clumsily threads the needle between obesity and mortality, mistaking correlation for causation.
• People who are obese have a high BMI, but it is not necessarily true that a high BMI implies obesity.
• The science around ‘fat’ is constantly evolving. It is known that excess body fat increases the risk of non-communicable diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, heart conditions and 13 types of cancers.
• An analysis in Science journal, however, found ‘obese’ people (with a BMI of 30 or more) carried a lower cardiovascular risk, and those in the ‘normal’ range were metabolically unhealthy and had a higher mortality risk – what it called the “obesity mortality paradox”.

More findings

• Research has found at least 59different types of obesity, making one measure of ‘body fat’ impractical.
• The measure also relies only on self-reported weight and height, disregarding other influences such as bone density, muscularity, sex, age, genetic differences, per a-study in the International Journal of Obesity.
• Social factors such as poverty and educational so influence weight and obesity.
• Body fat also varies across ethnic and racial groups. Asian Indians, for instance, suffer from the Y-Y paradox, i.e at the same BMI, we have more visceral fat — the fat inside the stomach — than Europeans do.
• Since Indians are prone to abdominal obesity, they are at higher risk of type 2 diabetes and heart diseases, studies show.
• WHO notes that BMI underestimates health risks for or South Asians, and the optimal health for Indians would then be a low BMI.

Conclusion

• The American Medical Association (AMA) on June 14 this year accepted that BMI was an imperfect way to measure body fat for it does not account for differences across race/ethnic groups, sexes, genders, age-span and had caused historical harm.
• AMA’s decision echoed a longstanding consensus among experts and activists that BMI is flawed, discriminatory and takes away targeted attention from health crises such as the alarming prevalence’ of non-communicable diseases.

General Studies Paper 3

Context

• The Food Corporation of India’s imposed quantity restrictions followed by the refusal to allow States to procure the two food grains through its Open Market Sale Scheme.

Aftermath

• States have been looking at alternative ways of procuring wheat and rice in the after the Food Corporation of India’s (FCI) imposed quantity restrictions followed by the refusal to allow States to procure the two food grains through its Open Market Sale Scheme (OMSS).
• The Centre has made it clear that the reason for restricting supplies per bidder and eventually excluding states from procuring through auctions was to curb inflation and regulate supply,
• States such as Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have criticised the government for engaging in “politics” at the expense of marginalised beneficiaries of State welfare schemes.

Open Market Sale Scheme

• Under the Open Market Sale Scheme, the FCI from time to time sells surplus food grains from the central pool especially wheat and rice in the open market to traders, bulk consumers, retail chains and so on at pre-determined prices.
• The FCI does this through e-auctions where open market bidders can buy specified quantities.
• States are also allowed to procure food grains through the OMSS without participating in the auctions, for their needs beyond what they get from the central pool to distribute to NFSA (National Food Security Act) beneficiaries.

Centre’s revised version of OMSS

• The Centre decided to restrict the quantity that a single bidder can purchase in a single bid under the OMSS.
• While the maximum quantity allowed earlier was 3,000 metric tonnes (MT) per bid for a buyer, it will now range from 10-100 metric tonnes.
• The FCI claims that the quantities have been reduced this time to accommodate more small and marginal buyers and to ensure wider reach of the scheme.
• The objective behind the move is also to curb retail prices as allowing smaller bids should ideally break monopolies of bulk buyers, allowing more competitive bids by small buyers.

Features of OMSS

• The FCI conducts weekly auctions through e-auctions in the open market to sell surplus stocks of wheat and rice.
• The reserve price of wheat and rice for sale under OMSS is fixed by the Department of Food and Public Distribution (DFPD) every year.
• The reserve price is kept uniform throughout the country without adding any further freight to facilitate buyers to lift stocks from any place at ease.
• The sale of wheat and rice under OMSS is undertaken throughout the year in the non-procuring states and during the non-procurement period in the procuring states.
• The quantum of wheat and rice for sale under OMSS is decided by the DFPD based on the availability and demand of food grains.
• The surplus procuring states (paddy/rice) are not allowed to participate in e-auction for the purchase of rice for their state schemes and they are advised to retain stocks under the state pool for their schemes.

Significances of OMSS

• Enhance the supply of food grains
• Prevent wastage and deterioration of food grains
• Provides an alternative source of food grains
• Generates revenue for the FCI

Challenges faced by OMSS:

• Low demand from the buyers
• Logistical challenges
• Limited impact on stabilizing the market prices
• Does not address the structural problems

Way forward for OMSS

• Revising the reserve prices of food grains
• Improving logistics and quality management
• Diversifying product portfolio
• Coordinating with state governments
• The FCI should also ensure transparency and accountability in its operations under OMSS.

Conclusion

• OMSS is a useful tool for managing excess stocks of food grains in India. It has several features, significances, advantages and disadvantages. It also faces some challenges that need to be addressed. By adopting some measures to improve its functioning, OMSS can play a vital role in ensuring food security and price stability in the country.

General Studies Paper 3

Context

• Almost four years after its first unsuccessful attempt to make a spacecraft land on the Moon, Isro will launch its third moon mission, Chandrayaan-3 (Ch-3), on July 12, with the primary objective of executing a precise landing on the celestial body.
• In 2019, the lander and rover of the Chandrayaan-2 mission malfunctioned in the final moments and crash-landed, getting destroyed in the process.
• The Chandrayaan-2 mission was launched on July 22, 2019,
• Vikram lunar lander crashed on the Moon during the early hours. Its debris was later found by NASA around three months later.
• Despite the setback, the mission wasn’t a complete failure as its Orbiter part kept on working normally and gathered a wealth of new information that added to our knowledge about the Moon and its environment.

What was the Chandrayaan-2 mission?

• Although the most talked about objective of the Chandrayaan-2 was to demonstrate the ability to soft-land a lander and rover on the unexplored south pole of the Moon, it also had other goals.
• The mission was “designed to expand the lunar scientific knowledge through a detailed study of topography, seismography, mineral identification and distribution, surface chemical composition, thermo-physical characteristics of topsoil and composition of the tenuous lunar atmosphere, leading to a new understanding of the origin and evolution of the Moon.
• As in 2021, the space agency revealed that the mission’s Orbiter had produced a handsome amount of data about the Moon.
• This helped in building upon existing knowledge of the celestial body in terms of its surface, sub-surface and exosphere.
• For instance, a key outcome from Chandrayaan-2 was the exploration of the permanently shadowed regions as well as craters and boulders underneath the regolith, the loose deposit comprising the top surface extending up to 3-4m in depth.

What went wrong with the Chandrayaan-2’s Vikram lander?

• The landing of Vikram was targeted for a plane about 600 km from the south pole of the Moon. However, ISRO lost contact with their lander shortly before the scheduled touchdown on September 7.
• When contact was lost, it was travelling at 50 to 60 metres per second (180 to 200 km per hour). It was decelerating, but not fast enough to slow down to a speed of 2 metres/second (7.2 km/hr) that was required for a safe landing.
• As Vikram was designed to absorb the shock of an impact even at 5 metres/second (18 km/hr). At the rate it was decelerating, it could not even have attained a speed of 5 metres/second before touchdown. It hit the Moon at a far greater speed, damaging itself and the instruments on board.

About Chandrayaan-3 Mission:

• Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface. It consists of Lander and Rover configuration. It will be launched by LVM3 from SDSC SHAR, Sriharikota.
• Lander payloads:
• Radio Anatomy of Moon Bound Hypersensitive ionosphere and Atmosphere (RAMBHA)
• Chandra’s Surface Thermo physical Experiment (ChaSTE)
• Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA)
• Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA) Rover:
• Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS)
• Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) Propulsion Module:
• Spectro-polarimetry of HAbitable Planet Earth (SHAPE)
• The mission objectives of Chandrayaan-3 are:
• To demonstrate Safe and Soft Landing on Lunar Surface
• To demonstrate Rover roving on the moon and
• To conduct in-situ scientific experiments

Chandrayaan-3, a way forward to Chandrayaan-2 Mission:

• The most obvious miss was the opportunity to demonstrate the technology to make a soft landing in outer space.
• Isro scientists at the time said the accident was caused by a relatively small error that had been identified and corrected. The soon-to-be-launched Chandrayaan-3 mission will demonstrate this technology, hopefully, without any glitches.
• The lander Vikram and rover Pragyaan were carrying instruments to carry out observations on the surface. These were supposed to pick up additional information about the terrain, composition and mineralogy.
• With the support of the Orbiter, Vikram and Pragyaan would have provided two diverse sets of data that could have helped prepare a more composite picture of the Moon.

General Studies Paper 2

Introduction

• The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), adopted by the Ministry of Education to rank institutions of higher education in India, shows a noteworthy feature of Tamil Nadu. Specifically, the 2023 NIRF ranking of the top 100 colleges in India reveals the consistent success of Tamil Nadu in providing higher education that is both of good quality and inclusive. The Tamil Nadu experience, in congruence with the State’s motto of development with social justice, offers an important insight for other States.

National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF)

• The NIRF employs a ranking metric comprising five parameters with varying weightage to assess the quality of colleges: Teaching, Learning and Resources (40%), Graduation Outcome (25%), Research and Professional Practices (15%), Outreach and Inclusivity (10%) and Perception (10%).
• Each of these parameters has several components, which again have varying weightage. Though far from perfect, the metric is reasonably robust as it uses broad-based and curated parameters.
• The number of colleges participating in the NIRF ranking has grown from 535 in 2017 to 2,746 in 2023.
• This five-fold increase notwithstanding, the participating colleges constitute only a paltry proportion of the actual number of colleges in India.
• Since NIRF ranking has already gained wide traction and credibility, it is likely that many good-quality colleges participate in the exercise.
• A place in the top 100 would bring them repute and increase demand for admission. On the contrary, the non-participating colleges are likely to be poor in quality and seriously lacking in most of the parameters of the ranking metric.
• Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that many good-quality colleges participate in the ranking.

Share of colleges

• Of the top 100 NIRF-ranked colleges in 2023, Tamil Nadu has the largest share (35). Delhi (32) comes next, followed by Kerala (14) and West Bengal (8).
• These four States collectively contribute to 89% of the top colleges, which speaks volumes about other regions.
• Bigger States such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Odisha do not have a single college in the top 100. Even the share of the other southern States is abysmal.
• The share of Tamil Nadu (35%) is more than double the combined share of the other four southern States (17%).

The Tamil Nadu Model

• The NIRF ranking of colleges since 2017 reveals that Tamil Nadu has been consistent as the lead contributor of top-ranking colleges in India.
• Tamil Nadu is one of the most literate states in India. The state’s literacy rate is 80.33% in 2011, which is above the national average.
• Chennai accounts for only nine (26%) colleges. Coimbatore, with an equal share, competes with Chennai quite consistently. Tiruchirappalli, with five colleges (14%), is next.
• This broad pattern was seen in other years too. The largest beneficiaries from Chennai, Coimbatore, and Tiruchirappalli are likely to be urban dwellers. Yet, it is also likely that the top-ranked 23 colleges from these three cities, which belong to three different regions, might be equally serving the poor and disadvantaged social groups both from these regions as well as those contiguous to them.
• This is because Tamil Nadu not only has one of the highest reservation quotas, but also has been quite effective in its implementation of the reservation policy.
• Additionally, since more than one-third of the top-ranked colleges are dispersed across places, they not only cater largely to the rural and under-served areas, but also provide an opportunity for quality education for students from poor and disadvantaged social groups who do not have the economic resources and social networks to study in colleges from Chennai, Coimbatore, and Tiruchirappalli.
• Thus, the colleges based out of Chennai in general and other districts in particular promote both quality and inclusion, and thereby contribute to the goal of development with social justice.

Way forward

• Tamil Nadu’s impressive and consistent performance in higher education shows that quality and inclusion can be achieved together and consistently.
• This finding should prompt other southern States, which also have a reasonably inclusive and effective social welfare architecture, to introspect why they lag far behind and inspire them to take action to rectify issues.

General Studies Paper 3

Context

• During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s U.S. state visit, cooperation on technology emerged as a prominent talking point and yielded some of the most substantive outcomes, according to Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra.

The current status of India-U.S. technology trade

• Notably, in FY2023, the U.S. emerged as India’s biggest overall trading partner with a 7.65% increase in bilateral trade to $128.55 billion in 2022-23.
• However, digital or technology services did not emerge as one of the sectors at the forefront of bilateral trade.
• The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) headquartered in Washington DC points out in its report that “despite the strength of the U.S. digital services export sector and enormous growth potential of the online services market in India, the U.S. ran a $27 billion deficit in trade in digital services with India in 2020”.
• In the recent past, however, the two countries have been ramping up their tech partnership through moves like the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) announced by President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year.
• Additionally, under the iCET, India and the U.S. also established a Strategic Trade Dialogue with a focus on addressing regulatory barriers and aligning export controls for smoother trade and “deeper cooperation” in critical areas.

Concerns of U.S. tech firms

• The CCIA, while appreciating the reinvigorated efforts to ramp up trade through bilateral initiatives, has flagged in its note, the “significant imbalance” and “misalignment” in the U.S.-India economic relationship.
• They also addressed that the S.’s extension of market access, trade and openness to Indian companies to operate and succeed in the U.S. has not been reciprocated by the Indian side.
• Adding that the Indian government has deployed a range of tools to champion their protectionist industrial policy tilting the playing field away from U.S. digital service providers in favour of domestic players.
• To describe these discriminatory regulation and policies, it cites the example of India’s guidelines on the sharing of geospatial data, which it accuses of providing preferential treatment to Indian companies.
• It has also expressed discontent over India’s veering away from longstanding democratic norms and values, and seeking greater government censorship and control over political speech which it argues has made it extremely challenging for U.S. companies to operate in India.

Concerns of taxation measures

• One of the taxation tools that U.S. tech firms have long taken exception to is the expanded version of the “equalisation levy” that India charges on digital services.
• India in 2016, with the goal of “equalising the playing field” between resident service suppliers and non-resident suppliers of digital services imposed a unilateral measure to levy a 6% tax on specific services received or receivable by a non-resident not having a permanent establishment in India, from a resident in India who carries out business.
• The equalisation levy, when it was first introduced in 2016, led to double taxation and further complicated the taxation framework.
• Besides, it also raised questions of constitutional validity and compliance with international obligations. The 2020 amendment again led the levy to become sweeping and vague in its scope.

India’s IT Rules 2021

• The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, has been flagged by the consortium of foreign tech firms under the some of the most “problematic policies”.
• The IT Rules place compliance burden on social media intermediaries (SMIs) and platforms with five million registered users or more, which means several U.S. firms end up falling under the ambit.

Suggestions

• The IT Rules require intermediaries to take down content within 24 hours upon receiving a government or court order.
• The platforms are also required to appoint a local compliance officer.
• Moreover, with the amendments made to the Rules late last year, SMIs are now obligated to remove, within 72 hours, information or a communication link in relation to the six stipulated prohibited categories of content as and when a complaint arises.
• There is also major criticism against the government’s institution of the three-member Grievance Appellate Committees (GAC), which will hear user complaints about the decisions of SMIs regarding their content-related issues and have the power to reverse those decisions.
• The CCIA argues that instead of taking this “opaque” approach, the law could be strengthened by “proactively supporting cross-border data flows through certifications, standard contractual clauses and binding corporate rules”.

Conclusion

• India, with more than 759 million active internet users representing more than 50% of its population is a gold mine for data. The country is also planning to become a hub for data processing, wanting to host data centres and cloud service providers. This means that India’s policy on the flow of data across borders will impact the same on a global level, as was seen with the European Union’s landmark General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

General Studies Paper 3

Context

• The proposed ‘Digital India Bill’ holds out the promise of not only upgrading the current legal regime but also redefining the contours of how technology is regulated.

Background

• The Ministry of Electronics and IT has been actively organising consultations on the proposed “Digital India Bill” to build conceptual alignment on a new law that will replace India’s 23-year-old Information Technology (IT) Act.
• The goal is to upgrade the current legal regime to tackle emerging challenges such as user harm, competition and misinformation in the digital space.
• This is a much-anticipated piece of legislation that is likely to redefine the contours of how technology is regulated, not just in India but also globally.

The present regime

• The current IT Act defines an “intermediary” to include any entity between a user and the Internet, and
• the IT Rules sub-classify intermediaries into three main categories: “Social Media Intermediaries” (SMIs), “Significant Social Media Intermediaries” (SSMIs) and the recently notified, “Online Gaming Intermediaries”.
• SMIs are platforms that facilitate communication and sharing of information between users, and SMIs that have a very large user base (above a specified threshold) are designated as SSMIs.
• However, the definition of SMIs is so broad that it can encompass a variety of services such as video communications, matrimonial websites, email and even online comment sections on websites.
• The rules also lay down stringent obligations for most intermediaries, such as a 72-hour timeline for responding to law enforcement asks and resolving ‘content take down’ requests.

The lacunae

• Unfortunately, ISPs, websites, e-commerce platforms, and cloud services are all treated similarly.
• Treating these intermediaries like conventional social media platforms not only adds to their cost of doing business but also exposes them to greater liability without meaningfully reducing risks presented by the Internet.
• The European Union’s Digital Services Act is probably one of the most developed frameworks for us to consider.
• It introduces some exemptions and creates three tiers of intermediaries — hosting services, online platforms and “very large online platforms”, with increasing legal obligations.
• Australia has created an eight-fold classification system, with separate industry-drafted codes governing categories such as social media platforms and search engines.
• Intermediaries are required to conduct risk assessments, based on the potential for exposure to harmful content such as child sexual abuse material (CSAM) or terrorism.

Focus areas for India

• While a granular, product-specific classification could improve accountability and safety online, such an approach may not be future-proof.
• As technology evolves, the specific categories we define today may not work in the future.
• What we need, therefore, is a classification framework that creates a few defined categories, requires intermediaries to undertake risk assessments and uses that information to bucket them into relevant categories.
• Given the lower risks, the obligations placed on intermediaries that are not communication services should be lesser, but they could still be required to appoint a grievance officer, cooperate with law enforcement, identify advertising, and take down problematic content within reasonable timelines.
• Intermediaries that offer communication services could be asked to undertake risk assessments based on the number of their active users, risk of harm and potential for virality of harmful content.
• The largest communication services (platforms such as Twitter) could then be required to adhere to special obligations such as appointing India-based officers and setting up in-house grievance appellate mechanisms with independent external stakeholders to increase confidence in the grievance process.
• Alternative approaches to curbing virality, such as circuit breakers to slow down content, could also be considered.

Way forward

• For the proposed approach to be effective, metrics for risk assessment and appropriate thresholds would have to be defined and reviewed on a periodic basis in consultation with industry.
• In doing so, it could help create a regulatory environment that helps achieve the government’s policy goal of creating a safer Internet ecosystem, while also allowing businesses to thrive.

General Studies Paper 3

Context

• Fibonacci spirals are so common in plants today that they are believed to represent an ancient and highly conserved feature, dating back to the earliest stages of plant evolution and persisting in their present forms. But a new study, based on 407-million-year-old fossils, challenges this.

About

• What ties all of these botanical features together is their shared characteristic of being arranged in spirals that adhere to a numerical sequence called theFibonacci sequence.
• These spirals, referred to as Fibonacci spirals for simplicity, are extremely widespread in plants and have fascinated scientists from Leonardo da Vinci to Charles Darwin.
• Such is the prevalence of Fibonacci spirals in plants today that they are believed to represent an ancient and highly conserved feature, dating back to the earliest stages of plant evolution and persisting in their present forms.
• However, our new study challenges this viewpoint. Recently scientists examined the spirals in the leaves and reproductive structures of a fossilised plant dating back 407 million years and surprisingly discovered that all of the spirals observed in this particular species did not follow this same rule.
• Today, only a very few plants don’t follow a Fibonacci pattern.

Fibonacci spirals

• Spirals occur frequently in nature and can be seen in plant leaves, animal shells and even in the double helix of our DNA.
• In most cases, these spirals relate to the Fibonacci sequence – a set of numbers where each is the sum of the two numbers that precede it (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 and so on).
• These patterns are particularly widespread in plants and can even be recognised with the naked eye.
• At first, you may only spot spirals in one direction. But look closely and you can see both clockwise and anticlockwise spirals.
• In a study that analysed 6,000 pinecones, Fibonacci spirals were found in 97% of the examined cones.
• Fibonacci spirals are not just found in pine cones. They are common in other plant organs such as leaves and flowers.
• Due to their frequency in living plant species, it has long been thought that Fibonacci spirals were ancient and highly conserved in all plants.
• However in a study it was found that non-Fibonacci spirals were the most common arrangement.
• The discovery of non-Fibonacci spirals in such an early fossil is surprising as they are very rare in living plant species today.

Distinct evolutionary history

• These findings change our understanding of Fibonacci spirals in land plants.
• They suggest that non-Fibonacci spirals were ancient in clubmosses, overturning the view that all leafy plants started out growing leaves that followed the Fibonacci pattern.
• Furthermore, it suggests that leaf evolution and Fibonacci spirals in clubmosses had an evolutionary history distinct from other groups of living plants today, such as ferns, conifers and flowering plants.
• It suggests that Fibonacci spirals emerged separately multiple times throughout plant evolution.

Conclusion

• Knowing of this study would help in the common understanding of plant evolution and its characteristics.