Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

India is moving faster than any other country towards a green transition, Petroleum Minister says at Davos

• Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas stated that India will emerge as the leader of green hydrogen

Hydrogen

• Hydrogen is one of the most abundant elements on earth for a cleaner alternative fuel option.

Type of hydrogen depends up on the process of its formation:

• Green Hydrogen: Green hydrogen is produced by electrolysis of water using renewable energy (like Solar, Wind) and has a lower carbon footprint. Electricity splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. By Products: Water, Water Vapor.
• Brown hydrogen is produced using coal where the emissions are released to the air.
• Grey hydrogen is produced from natural gas where the associated emissions are released to the air.
• Blue hydrogen is produced from natural gas, where the emissions are captured using carbon capture and storage.

Uses:

• Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source and can deliver or store a tremendous amount of energy.
• It can be used in fuel cells to generate electricity, or power and heat
• Due to their high efficiency and zero-or near zero-emissions operation, hydrogen and fuel cells have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emission in many applications.

Green Hydrogen Policy (GHP)

• Recently, the Ministry of Power (MoP) announced a Green Hydrogen Policy (GHP).
• The policy has set a target of 5 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of green hydrogen production by 2030, more than 80% of the current hydrogen demand in the country.
• Under the policy, the government is offering to set up manufacturing zones for production, connectivity to the ISTS (Inter-State Transmission System) on priority basis, and free transmission for 25 years if the production facility is commissioned before June 2025.
• Producers will be allowed to set up bunkers near ports for storage of green ammonia for export by shipping.
• Manufacturers of Green hydrogen and ammonia are allowed to purchase renewable power from the power exchange or set up Renewable Energy (RE) capacity themselves or through any other developer, anywhere.

Significance of the Policy

• India’s largest oil refiner, Indian Oil Corp (IOC) estimates that GHP measures will reduce the cost of green hydrogen production by 40-50%.
• Fuels like Green Hydrogen and Green Ammonia are vital for any nation’s environmentally sustainable energy security.
• India has already committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2070, and green hydrogen will play a significant role as a disruptive feedstock in India’s transition from oil and coal.
• The GHP lays a solid foundation for developing a competitive green hydrogen sector in India.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recognized the contribution of India’s 1 million Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) during the Covid-19 pandemic.

• It is acknowledged that ASHAs facilitate linking households to health facilities, and play pivotal roles in house-to-house surveys, vaccination, public health and Reproductive and Child Health measures.

Genesis & evolution of the ASHA programme

• The ASHA programme was based on Chhattisgarh’s successful Mitanin programme, in which a Community Worker looks after 50 households.
• The National Health Mission was launched to provide effective health care to the entire rural population in the country – The core strategy of the mission is to provide well trained female health activist (Accredited Social Health Activist- ASHA) in each village (1/1000 population) to fill the gap of unequal distribution of health services in rural area.
• Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) is a trained female community health activist.
• Selected from the community itself and accountable to it, the ASHA will be trained to work as an interface between the community and the public health system.
• At present there are over 9 Lakh ASHAs.

Roles and responsibilities

• The role of an ASHA is that of a community level care provider.
• This includes a mix of tasks: facilitating access to health care services, building awareness about health care entitlements especially amongst the poor and marginalized, promoting healthy behaviours and mobilizing for collective action for better health outcomes and meeting curative care needs as appropriate to the organization of service delivery in that area and compatible with her training and skills.

Success of the programme

• The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recognized the contribution of India’s 1 million Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) during the Covid-19 pandemic.
• ASHAs facilitate linking households to health facilities, and play pivotal roles in house-to-house surveys, vaccination, public health and Reproductive and Child Health measures thus help in keeping track and monitoring of diseases, outbreak, MMR and IMR etc
• In many states, ASHAs are involved in national health programmes
• With newly acquired skills in health care and the ability to connect households to health facilities, ASHAs were able to secure benefits for households.
• In a way, it became a programme that allowed a local woman to develop into a skilled health worker.

Issues

• They get performance-based payments, not a fixed salary like government servants. There have been agitations demanding employee status for ASHA workers.
• In many states, the payout is low, and often delayed.
• The original idea was never to deny the ASHA a compensation that could be even better than a salary — it was only to prevent “governmentalisation”, and promote “communitisation” by making her accountable to the people she served.
• There is a strong argument to grant permanence to some of these positions with a reasonable compensation as sustaining motivation.

Way forward

• It is important to ensure that compensation for performance is timely and adequate.
• Provide opportunities for moving up the skill ladder in the formal primary health care system as an ANM/ GNM or a Public Health Nurse
• Upgrading skill sets and providing easy access to credit and finance will ensure a sustainable opportunity to earn a respectable living while serving the community.
• Strengthening access to health insurance, credit for consumption and livelihood needs at reasonable rates, and coverage under pro-poor public welfare programmes will contribute to ASHAs emerging as even stronger agents of change.

National Health Mission

• National Health Mission (NHM) was launched by the government of India in 2013 subsuming the National Rural Health Mission and the National Urban Health Mission.
• The main programmatic components include Health System Strengthening in rural and urban areas for – Reproductive-Maternal- Neonatal-Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCH+A), and Communicable and Non-Communicable Diseases.
• The NHM envisages the achievement of universal access to equitable, affordable & quality health care services that are accountable and responsive to people’s needs.

The National Health Mission seeks to ensure the achievement of the following indicators:

• Reduce Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) to 1/1000 live births
• Reduce Infant Mortality rate (IMR) to 25/1000 live births
• Reduce Total Fertility Rate (TFR) to 2.1
• Prevention and reduction of anemia in women aged 15–49 years
• Prevent and reduce mortality & morbidity from communicable, non-communicable; injuries and emerging diseases
• Reduce household out-of-pocket expenditure on total health care expenditure
• Reduce annual incidence and mortality from Tuberculosis by half
• Reduce the prevalence of Leprosy to <1/10000 population and incidence to zero in all districts
• Annual Malaria Incidence to be <1/1000
• Less than 1 percent microfilaria prevalence in all districts
• Kala-azar Elimination by 2015, <1 case per 10000 population in all blocks.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 1

In West Bengal, the unveiling of a statue at Raja Ram Mohan Roy Library Foundation, Salt Lake, by Minister of Culture, will mark the inauguration of the Centre’s celebration plans.

About Raja Ram Mohan Roy

• Raja Ram Mohan Roy was the father of Modern India’s Renaissance and a tireless social reformer who inaugurated the age of enlightenment and liberal reformist modernization in India

His Life

• Raja Ram Mohan Roy was born on 22 May 1772 in an orthodox Brahman family at Radhanagar in Bengal.
• Ram Mohan Roy’s early education included the study of Persian and Arabic at Patna where he read the Quran, the works of Sufi mystic poets and the Arabic translation of the works of Plato and Aristotle. In Benaras, he studied Sanskrit and read Vedas and Upanishads.
• Returning to his village, at the age of sixteen, he wrote a rational critique of Hindu idol worship.
• From 1803 to 1814, he worked for East India Company as the personal diwan first of Woodforde and then of Digby.
• In 1814, he resigned from his job and moved to Calcutta in order to devote his life to religious, social and political reforms.
• In November 1830, he sailed for England to be present there to counteract the possible nullification of the Act banning Sati.
• Ram Mohan Roy was given the title of ‘Raja’ by the titular Mughal Emperor of Delhi, Akbar II whose grievances the former was to present before the British king.

Ideology

• Ram Mohan Roy was greatly influenced by western modern thought and stressed on rationalism and modern scientific approach.
• He believed that religious orthodoxies have become causes of injury and detrimental to social life and sources of trouble and bewilderment to the people, instead of tending to the amelioration of the condition of society.
• Raja Ram Mohan Roy concluded that religious reform is both social reform and political modernisation.
• Ram Mohan was attracted to Islamic monotheism. He said that monotheism is also the fundamental message of Vedanta.
• His idea of single, unitarian god was a corrective to the polytheism of orthodox Hinduism and to Christian trinitarianism. He believed that monotheism supported one universal model for humanity.
• He believed in social equality of all human beings and thus was a strong opposer of the caste system.

Brahmo Samaj

• Raja Ram Mohan Roy founded Brahmo Sabha in 1828, which was later renamed as Brahmo Samaj.
• Its chief aim was the worship of the eternal God. It was against priesthood, rituals and sacrifices.
• It focused on prayers, meditation and reading of the scriptures. It believed in the unity of all religions.
• It was the first intellectual reform movement in modern India. It led to the emergence of rationalism and enlightenment in India which indirectly contributed to the nationalist movement.
• It was the forerunner of all social, religious and political movements of modern India.

Contributions

Social reforms:

• He founded the Atmiya Sabha in 1814, the Calcutta Unitarian Association in 1821, and the Brahmo Sabha in 1828 which later became the Brahmo Samaj
• He campaigned against the caste system, untouchability, superstitions and use of intoxicants.
• He was well known for his pioneering thought and action on the emancipation of women and especially on the abolition of sati and widow remarriage.
• He attacked child marriage, illiteracy of women and the degraded state of widows and demanded the right of inheritance and property for women.
• It was his relentless advocacy alongside contemporaries such as Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar that finally led to the abolition of Sati under the governor generalship of William Bentinck in 1829.

Educational reforms:

• He supported David Hare’s efforts to find the Hindu College in 1817, while Roy’s English school taught mechanics and Voltaire’s philosophy.
• He followed it up with the Anglo-Hindu School in 1822 and, in 1830, assisted Alexander Duff to set up the General Assembly’s Institution, which later became the Scottish Church College.
• In 1825, he established Vedanta College where courses in both Indian learning and Western social and physical sciences were offered.

Literary Works of Raja Ram Mohan Roy

• Tuhfat-ul-Muwahhidin (1804)
• Vedanta Gantha (1815)
• Translation of an abridgement of the Vedanta Sara (1816)
• Kenopanishads (1816)
• Ishopanishad (1816)
• Kathopanishad (1817)
• A Conference between the Advocate for, and an Opponent of Practice of Burning Widows Alive (Bengali and English) (1818)
• Mundaka Upanishad (1819)
• A Defence of Hindu Theism (1820)
• The Precepts of Jesus- The Guide to Peace and Happiness (1820)
• Bengali Grammar (1826)
• The Universal Religion (1829)
• History of Indian Philosophy (1829)
• Gaudiya Vyakaran (1833)

Religious reforms:

• Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s first published work Tuhfat-ul-Muwahhiddin (a gift to deists) published in 1803 exposed irrational religious beliefs and corrupt practices of the Hindus as the belief in revelations, prophets, miracles etc.
• In 1814, he founded Atmiya Sabha in Calcutta to campaign against idolatry, caste rigidities, meaningless rituals and other social ills.
• He criticized the ritualism of Christianity and rejected Christ as the incarnation of God. In Precepts of Jesus (1820), he tried to separate the moral and philosophical message of the New Testament.
• Rabindranath Tagore called him a Bharatpathik by which he meant to say that Ram Mohan combined in his person the underlying spirit of Indic civilisation, its spirit of pluralism, tolerance and a cosmic respect for all forms of life

Political and Economical Reforms

• Through his writings and activities, he supported the movement for free press in India.
• When press censorship was relaxed by Lord Hastings in 1819, Ram Mohan found three journals- The Brahmanical Magazine (1821); The Bengali weekly, Samvad Kaumudi (1821); and the Persian weekly, Mirat-ul-Akbar.
• Administrative reforms: He demanded the Indianisation of superior services and separation of the executive from judiciary. He demanded equality between Indians and Europeans.
• Roy condemned oppressive practices of Bengali zamindars and demanded fixation of minimum rents. He also demanded the abolition of taxes on tax-free lands.
• He called for a reduction of export duties on Indian goods abroad.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) stated that all logistics and connectivity infrastructure projects, entailing an investment of over ₹500 crore will route through the network planning group (NPG) constituted under the PM GatiShakti initiative.

• The DPIIT said that the move will bring down the logistic cost and promote effective and efficient planning of infrastructure projects.
• The DPIIT said that all the departments will approach the NPG first for approval before making a DPR (detailed project reports) at the planning stage, adding after the NPG’s clearance, the project would follow the normal procedure of approval by the finance ministry and the Cabinet, depending upon the projects

PM GatiShakti Initiative

• The government of India has launched the ambitious Gati Shakti scheme or National Master Plan for multi-modal connectivity plan, with the aim of coordinated planning and execution of infrastructure projects to bring down logistics costs.
• The Gati Shakti scheme subsumed the Rs 110 lakh crore National Infrastructure Pipeline that was launched in 2019.
• Besides cutting logistics costs, the scheme is also aimed at increasing cargo handling capacity and reducing the turnaround time at ports to boost trade.
• It also aims to have 11 industrial corridors and two new defence corridors – one in Tamil Nadu and other in Uttar Pradesh.
• Integrated Approach: It intends to bring together 16 infrastructure related Ministries.
• Implementation framework includes Empowered Group of Secretaries (EGOS), Network Planning Group (NPG) and Technical Support Unit (TSU) with required technical competencies.
• NPG consists of heads of the network planning wing of respective infrastructure ministries and it will assist the empowered group of secretaries (EGOS), which is headed by the cabinet secretary.
• EGOS consist of secretaries of 18 ministries as members and Head of Logistics Division, under the DPIIT, as member convenor.
• Further, in view of the complexities involved in overall integration of networks, enhancing optimization to avoid duplication of works for holistic development of any region as well as reducing logistics costs through micro-plan detailing, the Technical Support Unit (TSU) is approved
• TSU shall have domain experts from various infrastructure sectors as Aviation, Maritime, Public Transport, Rail, Roads & Highways, Ports, etc. and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

Conclusion

The PM GatiShakti NMP is intended to break Departmental Silos and bring in more holistic and integrated planning and execution of projects with a view to address the issues of Multi Modal connectivity and last mile connectivity. This will help in bringing down the logistics cost. This will translate into enormous economic gains to consumers, farmers, youth as well as those engaged in businesses.

yllabus: General Studies Paper 3

The Union government announced a reduction in the excise duty on petrol and diesel by Rs 8 per litre and Rs 6 per litre respectively.

• Alongside, the government also reduced the customs duty on raw materials and intermediaries for plastic products and iron and steel.

Reason for reduction

• These decisions are driven by the desire to cool the surge in inflation — recent data showed that retail inflation had risen to an eight-year high of 7.9 per cent in April, while wholesale inflation has been in double digits for 13 consecutive months.
• As per some analysts the cut in fuel taxes could help reduce inflation directly by around 20 basis points in June
• This is the second time in the recent past that the Centre has cut fuel taxes. In November last year, the Centre had lowered the excise duty on petrol by Rs 5 and by Rs 10 on diesel.

The entire burden of the tax cuts will be borne by the Centre

• Union Finance Minister said that the entire duty reduction in petrol and diesel announced has been done out of the Road & Infrastructure Cess (RIC) component of the taxes levied on petroleum products so the entire burden of the tax cuts will be borne by the Centre,
• Allaying concerns that the duty cuts will lower the devolution of taxes to States, Finance Minister said that the basic excise duty on petro products, which is sharable with States, has not been touched.

Taxes levied on Petrol and Diesel

• The total taxes levied on petrol and diesel include a Basic Excise Duty (BED), a Special Additional Excise duty (SAED), the Road & Infrastructure Cess (RIC) and the Agriculture & Infrastructure Development Cess (AIDC), of which only the BED is sharable with States
• The two cuts announced (November and the present one) is from Road & Infrastructure Cess (RIC) component of the taxes levied on petroleum products

Excise Duty and Custom Duty

• Excise duty is a form of tax imposed on goods for their production, licensing and sale.
• It is the opposite of Customs duty in sense that it applies to goods manufactured domestically in the country, while Customs is levied on those coming from outside of the country.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

The adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) chips has risen, with chipmakers designing different types of these chips to power AI applications.

What are AI chips?

• AI chips are built with specific architecture and have integrated AI acceleration to support deep learning-based applications.
• These chips, with their hardware architectures and complementary packaging, memory, storage and interconnect technologies, make it possible to infuse AI into a broad spectrum of applications to help turn data into information and then into knowledge
• There are different types of AI chips such as application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), central processing units (CPUs) and GPUs, designed for diverse AI applications.

How are they different from traditional chips?

• When traditional chips, containing processor cores and memory, perform computational tasks, they continuously move commands and data between the two hardware components
• These chips, however, are not ideal for AI applications as they would not be able to handle higher computational necessities of AI workloads which have huge volumes of data.
• Although, some of the higher-end traditional chips may be able to process certain AI applications
• In comparison, AI chips generally contain processor cores as well as several AI-optimised cores (depending on the scale of the chip) that are designed to work in harmony when performing computational tasks.
• The AI cores are optimised for the demands of heterogeneous enterprise-class AI workloads with low-latency inferencing, due to close integration with the other processor cores, which are designed to handle non-AI applications.

What are their applications?

• AI chips are used for a multitude of smart machines and devices, including ones that are said to deliver the performance of a data centre-class computer to edge devices.
• Some of these chips support in-vehicle computers to run state-of-the-art AI applications more efficiently.
• AI chips are also powering applications of computational imaging in wearable electronics, drones, and robots.
• The use of AI chips for NLP (Natural Language Processing) applications has increased due to the rise in demand for chatbots and online channels such as Messenger, Slack, and others.
• They use NLP to analyse user messages and conversational logic.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

What is Governance?

Governance consists of the traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised.  This includes the process by which governments are selected, monitored and replaced; the capacity of the government to effectively formulate and implement sound policies; and the respect of citizens and the state for the institutions that govern economic and social interactions among them.

What are World Governance Indicators?

• Released by the World Bank.
• WGI provide a ranking of 215 countries based on six dimensions of governance:

1. ‘Voice and Accountability’.
2. ‘Political Stability and Absence of Violence’.
3. ‘Government Effectiveness’.
4. ‘Regulatory Quality’.
5. ‘Rule of Law’.
6. ‘Control of Corruption.’

Sources: These aggregate indicators are based on over 30 individual data sources produced by a variety of survey institutes, think tanks, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), international organizations, and private sector firms such as Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project and Freedom House, etc.

Significance: WGI plays a key role in deciding the sovereign credit rating of any country.

Concern of the Indian government:

• World Governance Indicators (WGI), according to the government, are based on impressions from the Western press or tiny polls of NGOs and a handful of academics, many of whom lack an India specialist.
• There would be a decline in WGI results as a result of these institutes’ critical comments towards India. This could result in India’s sovereign rating being downgraded.

India’s score in the latest WGI:

India’s WGI score is much below the BBB Median on all six indicators.

• While BBB is an investment-grade rating issued by global rating agencies such as S&P and Fitch.
• A WGI score below BBB Median would suggest that India falls below the middle when the scores of countries are arranged in a descending order.

 Major Incidents Which Hugely Affected India’s WGI Rank:

• Kashmir issue.
• Harassment of Activists.
• Sedition laws.
• Cancellation of NGO licences.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

SpaceX recently launched a rocket carrying 53 satellites for the Starlink internet constellation from California Onboard Falcon 9 rocket.

• SpaceX has already launched more than 2,500 Starlink satellites to date but plans to loft many more.

What is the Starlink project?

The Starlink network is one of several ongoing efforts to start beaming data signals from space.

• Under the project, the company intends to evolve into a constellation of nearly 12,000 satellites.
• The aim is to provide low-cost and reliable space-based Internet services to the world.

What are the benefits of LEO satellites based internet?

• LEO satellites are positioned around 500km-2000km from earth, compared to stationary orbit satellites which are approximately 36,000km away.
• As LEO satellites orbit closer to the earth, they are able to provide stronger signals and faster speeds than traditional fixed-satellite systems.
• Because signals travel faster through space than through fibre-optic cables, they also have the potential to rival if not exceed existing ground-based networks.

Challenges:

LEO satellites travel at a speed of 27,000 kph and complete a full circuit of the planet in 90-120 minutes. As a result, individual satellites can only make direct contact with a land transmitter for a short period of time thus requiring massive LEO satellite fleets and consequently, a significant capital investment.

 Criticisms of LEO satellites:

• The balance of power has shifted from countries to companies since most of these are private companies run projects. As a result, there are questions related to who regulates these companies, especially given the myriad of nations that contribute to individual projects.
• Complicated regulatory framework:
• Stakeholders in these companies are from various countries. Thus it becomes challenging to receive requisite licences to operate in each country.
• Satellites can sometimes be seen in the night skies which creates difficulties for astronomers as the satellites reflect sunlight to earth, leaving streaks across images.
• Satellites travelling at a lower orbit can also interrupt the frequency of those orbiting above them.
• Those objects, colloquially referred to as ‘space junk,’ have the potential to damage spacecraft or collide with other satellites.

Potential:

LEO satellite broadband is preferable in areas that cannot be reached by fibre and spectrum services. The target market will therefore be rural populations and military units operating away from urban areas.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

The India Child Protection Forum [ICPF] has opposed the move to raise the marriage age of women.

• ICPF is an umbrella body of child rights organisations launched by Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi.
• It recently appeared before the parliamentary panel studying the Bill on raising the age of marriage for women to 21 from 18 years.

 Why ICPF is against raising the age?

• Because, raising the age of marriage for women to 21 will result in criminalising young adults entering into wedlock, especially those who marry against the consent of their parents.
• It will empower the patriarchal violence against women’s autonomy” when they exercise their choice to marry.

The Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill 2021

It proposes to raise the age of marriage for women to 21 from 18 years,

The Bill would amend:

1. The Indian Christian Marriage Act, 1972.
2. The Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, 1936.
3. The Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937.
4. The Special Marriage Act, 1954.
5. The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955.
6. The Foreign Marriage Act, 1956.

What the law says?

Currently, the law prescribes that the minimum age of marriage is 21 and 18 years for men and women, respectively.

The minimum age of marriage is distinct from the age of majority, which is gender-neutral.

• An individual attains the age of majority at 18 as per the Indian Majority Act, 1875.
• For Hindus, Section 5(iii) the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 sets 18 years as the minimum age for the bride and 21 years as the minimum age for the groom Child marriages are not illegal but can be declared void at the request of the minor in the marriage.
• In Islam, the marriage of a minor who has attained puberty is considered valid under personal law.
• The Special Marriage Act, 1954 and The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006 also prescribe 18 and 21 years as the minimum age of consent for marriage for women and men respectively.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Finland and Sweden have formally applied for membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the US-led security alliance forged during the Cold War to defend its members from Soviet expansion.

Transforming Europe

• The war in Ukraine has already changed the geopolitics of Europe and the world.
• The admission of Finland and Sweden to NATO would bring about a transformation in the continent’s security map by giving NATO a contiguous long frontier in western Russia. Finland and Russia share a 1,300-km border and doubling it from the present 1,200 km, parts of it in northern Norway, Latvia and Estonia, and Poland and Lithuania.
• In addition, Sweden’s island of Gotland in the middle of the Baltic Sea would give NATO a strategic advantage.
• Furthermore, when Sweden and Finland join NATO, the Baltic Sea — Russia’s gateway to the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean — would be ringed entirely by members of the western security alliance – Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Denmark and Sweden.

Neutrality history

• In seeking NATO membership, Sweden and Finland have abandoned their long history of neutrality, when their foreign policy and security priority was to stay out of superpower rivalry during the Cold War, and maintain cordial ties with both blocs.

Opposition

• At the moment the main obstacle to their applications is Turkey, a member since 1952 and which has NATO’s second largest army after the US.
• Turkey’s president has objected to their applications on the ground that the two countries had provided safe haven to the leaders of the Kurdish group PKK, an armed movement fighting for a separate Kurdistan, comprising Kurdish areas in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.
• Membership of NATO is open to all European nations that fulfil certain criteria that include “a functioning democratic political system based on a market economy; fair treatment of minority populations; a commitment to resolve conflicts peacefully; an ability and willingness to make a military contribution to NATO operations; and a commitment to democratic civil-military relations and institutions”.
• New members are admitted with the unanimous consent of all members.

What is NATO?

• North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a military alliance established by the North Atlantic Treaty (also called the Washington Treaty) of April, 1949, by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.
• There are currently 30 member states.
• Its original members were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
• Joining the original signatories were Greece and Turkey (1952), West Germany (1955, from 1990 as Germany), Spain (1982), the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland (1999), Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (2004), Albania and Croatia (2009), Montenegro (2017), and North Macedonia (2020).
• Headquarters: Brussels, Belgium.
• Headquarters of Allied Command Operations: Mons, Belgium.

What are the Objectives of NATO?

• NATO’s essential and enduring purpose is to safeguard the freedom and security of all its members by political and military means.
• Political objectives: NATO promotes democratic values and enables members to consult and cooperate on defense and security-related issues to solve problems, build trust and, in the long run, prevent conflict.
• Military Objectives: NATO is committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes. If diplomatic efforts fail, it has the military power to undertake crisis-management operations.
• These are carried out under the collective defence clause of NATO’s founding treaty Article 5 of the Washington Treaty or under a United Nations mandate, alone or in cooperation with other countries and international organisations.
• NATO has only once invoked Article 5, on September 12, 2001 following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in the US.

How does NATO Function?

• NATO has an integrated military command structure but very few forces or assets are exclusively its own.
• Most forces remain under full national command and control until member countries agree to undertake NATO-related tasks.
• All 30 allies have an equal say, the Alliance’s decisions must be unanimous and consensual, and its members must respect the basic values that underpin the Alliance, namely democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.
• NATO’s protection does not extend to members’ civil wars or internal coups.
• NATO is funded by its members. The U.S. contributes roughly three-fourths of NATO’s budget.