Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context

• The Quad Ministerial meeting in Melbourne, meant to set the stage for a meeting by the leaders of Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. later this year in Tokyo, ended with outcomes that showcased its “positive agenda” in the Indo-Pacific region.

Positive Outcomes of Ministerial Meeting

• From plans to deliver more than a billion vaccine doses — India-made with U.S. funding and distributed through Japanese and Australian networks — and donate another 1.3 billion doses around the world;
• to prepare for an Indo-Pacific Clean Energy Supply Chain Forum to tackle climate change;
• to further a “Quad vision” for technology governances and safe and transparent 5G systems,
• and to launch humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations, the Quad is, in the words of the joint statement issued, “more effective in delivering practical support to the region”.
• India was also able to insert a reference to fighting “cross-border” terrorism, and condemnation of the 26/11 attack and Pathankot attacks.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Context

• Finance Secretary recently accused ratings agencies of “double standards” when assessing emerging markets and developing economies.
• He was responding to ratings agencies’ terming the country as the most indebted emerging market and the claim that the latest budget did not provide clarity on fiscal consolidation plans.

What did the rating agencies say?

• Fitch, a rating agency, had stated that higher deficits and continued lack of clarity on medium-term consolidation plans in the recent Union Budget was its rationale for projecting of a downward trajectory in the country’s debt/GDP.
• Another agency, Moody’s, said the Union Budget was growth-oriented, credit positive for many issuers but the budgetary provisions posed fiscal challenges. Focus on capital expenditure, it said, supported near-term growth but challenged long-term fiscal consolidation. Additionally, the budget projected only a slight narrowing in the central government deficit.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Context

Cyber attacks may be a relatively new phenomenon, but in a short time frame have come to be assessed as dangerous as terrorism.

Cyber attacks in recent years:

• The world was possibly made aware of the danger and threat posed by cyber weapons with the advent of theStuxnet Worm in 2010, which resulted in large-scale damage to Iran’s centrifuge capabilities.
• Two years later, in 2012, abank of computers belonging to the Saudi Aramco Oil Company were targeted, reportedly by Iranian operatives, employing malware that wiped out data on 30,000 computers.
• A few weeks later, Iranwas again believed to have been behind a targeted attack on the Qatari natural gas company, RasGas.
• The string of instances appear to have provoked then United States Defence Secretary, Leon Panetta, to utter the warning that the world had to prepare for a kind of ‘cyber Pearl Harbour’,highlighting a new era of potential vulnerabilities.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Context

• Two recent achievements have taken us a step closer to the dream of creating an artificial sun.
• China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) sustained the plasma at 70 million degrees Celsius for 1,056 seconds in January 2022.
• In February 2022, the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion experiment in Oxfordshire, U.K., produced 59 megajoules (MJ) of energy from thermonuclear fusion.
• These are dress rehearsals for the upcoming International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a global experiment to generate 500 MW of power by fusing hydrogen atoms into helium atoms by 2035.

The thermonuclear fusion:

• In a thermonuclear fusion reaction, lighter atoms like those of hydrogen fuse to produce slightly heavier atoms like that of helium.
• The mass of combination of Hydrogen atoms reduces to form energy:
  • The mass of one hydrogen atom is 1.007825 Atomic Mass unit (AMU).
  • When four hydrogen atoms are combined, it transmutes into a helium atom. The sum of the mass of four hydrogen atoms is 4.03130 AMU, while the mass of one helium atom is just 4.00268 AMU.
  • As we know, matter is neither created nor destroyed; hence the mass difference 0.02862 AMU is converted into pure energy by way of Einstein’s famous formula E=mc2.
• If we fuse four grams of hydrogen into helium, about 0.0028 grams of mass would be converted to 2.6×10^11 joules; with that energy, we can light a 60-watt light bulb for over 100 years! 600 million tons of hydrogen are fused every second in the Sun, producing 596 million tons of helium. If one-thousandth of a gram of mass can create energy to power a 60W bulb for a hundred years, imagine the amount of energy the remaining four million tons of hydrogen unleash every second by the Sun.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context

• The Government has issued a slew of rules for the media under a new policy on accreditation for journalists. The Central Media Accreditation Guidelines-2022 have outlined the conditions for withdrawal of accreditation if a journalist acts in a manner prejudicial to the country’s security, sovereignty and integrity, friendly relations with foreign states, public order or is charged with a serious cognisable offence.
•  Most of the provisions are drawn from Article 19(2) of the Constitution which prescribes the restrictions to free speech guaranteed to every citizen of the country and are understood to serve as guidelines for the press and media.

How is this different from the past?

• The guidelines prepared by the Ministry of Information and Broadcastingare more in the nature of proscriptions rather than prescriptions.
• In laying down the conditions for withdrawal of accreditation, they serve more as censorship rules rather than guidelines.
• Previous guidelineswere more general in nature and did mention that accreditation would be withdrawn if found to be misused. In the new guidelines, there are 10 provisions under which accreditation to a journalist can be withdrawn.
• Accreditation of Journalists, to the PIB, a process that is completed after a mandatory security check from the Ministry of Home Affairs:
  • A journalist with aminimum of five years as a full-time working journalist can apply for accreditation to the PIB.
  • Anyjournalist working with a newspaper which has a daily circulation of 10,000;
  • news agencies with at least 100 subscribersand digital news platforms with 10 lakh unique visitors can apply.
• Accreditation helps in access to government offices and to special events and functions organised by the Government of India. Some Ministries like Home and Defence and Finance allow access only to accredited journalists.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context

• The advent of social media has no doubt changed how diplomacy is conducted between countries.
• Recently several Multinational consumer brands – particularly Korean carmaker Hyundai and Kia, and American food chain KFC – faced a big social-media backlash over tweets and Instagram/Facebook post sent out by their dealers and outlets in Pakistan, talking about “Kashmir Solidarity Day” and “right to freedom”.
• The posts, that appeared to be part of a coordinated exercise sponsored by the Pakistani establishment, were put out on February 5 — marked in Pakistan as “Kashmir Solidarity Day” — and contained what New Delhi termed as highly offensive messages calling for “Kashmiri liberation”.
• The Government’s outrage was valid, given that these companies, including Hyundai, Toyota, KFC, Pizza Hut, and pharma major Schwabe, also have flourishing businesses in India, and it was strange that private MNCs would post such politically charged messaging at all.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Context

• While the overall budgetary allocation towards the agricultural sector has marginally increased by 4.4% in the Union Budget 2022-23, the rate of increase is lower than the current inflation rate of 5.5%-6%.
• The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report for 2001 to 2019 shows that, globally, India is among the top 10 countries in terms of government spending in agriculture, constituting a share of around 7.3% of its total government expenditure.
• However, India lags behind several low-income countries such as Malawi (18%), Mali (12.4%), Bhutan (12%), Nepal (8%), as well as upper middle-income countries such as Guyana (10.3%) and China (9.6%).

India’s low rank in Agriculture Orientation Index (AOI)

• It was developed as part of the Goal 2 (Zero Hunger) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015. The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 emphasizes an increase in investment in rural infrastructure, agricultural research and extension services, development of technology to enhance agricultural productivity and eradication of poverty in middle- and lower-income countries.
• The AOI is calculated by dividing the agriculture share of government expenditure by the agriculture value added share of GDP.
  • In other words, it measures the ratio between government spending towards the agricultural sector and the sector’s contribution to GDP.
• India’s index is one of the lowest, reflecting that the spending towards the agricultural sector is not commensurate with the sector’s contribution towards GDP.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context

• Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister recently met his counterpart in New Delhi, as part of the ongoing high-level, and increasingly frequent, bilateral engagement between the neighbours.
• New Delhi’s economic assistance to Colombo in recent weeks has made a “world of difference”.
• There have been significant developments in the relations in recent times.

India’s assistance

• Beginning January 2022, India has been providing crucial economic support to the island nation in the grip of a severe dollar crisis that, many fear, might lead to a sovereign default, and a severe shortage of essentials in the import-reliant country.
  • Basil sort emergency assistance from India when Sri Lanka’s foreign reserves dropped to $1.6 billionin November 2021, leaving no dollars for importing essentials, or meeting debt obligations.
• The relief extended by India from the beginning of this year totals over $1.4 billion
  • a $400 million currency swap,
  • a $500 million loan defermentand
  • a $500 million Line of Creditfor fuel imports.
  • Sri Lanka is further negotiating $1 billionassistance from India to help the near 22 million-strong country as it faces an unprecedented economic crisis.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Context

• Recently, Philippines signed a $374.96 million deal with BrahMos Aerospace Pvt. Ltd. for the supply of shore based anti-ship variant of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile.
• The Philippines contract includes delivery of three BrahMos missile batteries, training for operators and maintainers as well as the necessary Integrated Logistics Support (ILS) package. The coastal defence regiment of the Philippine Marines, which is under the Navy, will be the primary employer of the missile system.
• This is the first export order for the missile which is a joint product between India and Russia and also the biggest defence export contract of the country.
• This adds impetus to the efforts to boost defence exports and meet the ambitious target set by the Government to achieve a manufacturing turnover of $25 billion or ₹1,75,000 crore including exports of ₹35,000 crore in aerospace and defence goods and services by 2025.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Context:  

• Despite the cancellation of the Twelfth Ministerial Conference (MC12) of the WTO late last year (November -December, 2021) due to COVID-19, digital trade negotiations continue their ambitious march forward.
•  On December 14, Australia, Japan, and Singapore, co-convenors of the plurilateral Joint Statement Initiative (JSI) on e-commerce, welcomed the ‘substantial progress’ made at the talks over the past three years and stated that they expected a convergence on more issues by the end of 2022.
• Given the increasingly fragmented global trading landscape and the rising importance of the global digital economy, can India tailor its engagement with the WTO to better accommodate its economic and geopolitical interests?

Holding out:

• The JSI members account for over 90% of global trade, and the initiative welcomes newer entrants. However, over half of WTO members (largely from the developing world) continue to opt out of these negotiations. They fear being arm-twisted into accepting global rules that could etiolate domestic policymaking and economic growth.
• India and South Africa have led the resistance and been the JSI’s most vocal critics. India has thus far resisted pressures from the developed world to jump onto the JSI bandwagon, largely through coherent legal argumentation against the JSI and a long-term developmental vision.