Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context

The inaugural India-Central Asia Summit, the India-Central Asia Dialogue, and the Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan in New Delhi — all held over the past four months — collectively indicate a renewed enthusiasm in New Delhi to engage the Central Asian region.

• India has limited economic and other stakes in the region, primarily due to lack of physical access.
• And yet, the region appears to have gained a great deal of significance in India’s strategic thinking over the years, particularly in the recent past.
• India’s mission Central Asia today reflects, and is responsive to, the new geopolitical, if not the geo-economic, realities in the region.
• More so, India’s renewed engagement of Central Asia is in the right direction for the simple reason that while the gains from an engagement of Central Asia may be minimal, the disadvantages of non-engagement could be costly in the longer run.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Context

• Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget announcement that the Government proposes to conduct the “required spectrum auctions” in 2022 to facilitate the roll-out of 5G mobile phone services in fiscal 2022-23 has understandably triggered speculation including about the feasibility of the timeline.
• Commenting on the Budget announcement, Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said TRAI was expected to submit its recommendations on the spectrum to be set aside for 5G by March, adding that the auction for the airwaves would be held soon after.
• While last week’s flurry of announcements have raised the possibility that the next auction of telecom spectrum may be held within the next few months, there is little clarity on the approach the Government plans to take with regard to the crucial issues surrounding the introduction of 5G services.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Context

• Finance Minister , in her Budget 2022 speech on Tuesday (February 1), announced a 30 per cent taxon income from virtual digital assets.
• As per the minister, the phenomenal rise in such transactions and the magnitude and frequency of these transactions has made it imperative to provide for a specific tax regime.
• Additionally, a TDS on payment made in relation to the transfer of virtual digital assets at 1 per cent above a monetary threshold is also proposed.

More on the news

• In short, the finance minister has proposed a flat 30 per cent tax on digital asset gains regardless of any long-term or short-term holding by the investor.
• Additionally, if a virtual digital asset investor incurs losses during the transaction, it can’t be set off against any other income.
• The gifting of virtual digital assets has also been proposed to be taxed in the hands of the recipient.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 1

Context

• The Union government informed the Delhi High Court earlier this week that it was having a relook at its position spelt out over five years ago.
• In 2017, the Government had opposed the removal of the statutory exception in Section 375 of the IPC for rape committed by a husband on his wife, if she is not below 18 years of age.
• The remarks of the Union Minister for Women and Child Development, Smriti Irani, in Parliament also do not throw much light on the matter.
  • She merely said the Government was engaged in a process to introduce comprehensive amendments to criminal law, indicating perhaps that the criminalising of marital rape is unlikely to be taken up in isolation.
  • She observed that it would not be advisable to condemn every marriage as a violent one, and every man a rapist.

• One can only interpret this as a sign that the Government is quite wary of agreeing with the body of opinion that favours recognising rape as something that could happen within a marriage too.
• In 2016, the Government hadrejected the concept of marital rape, saying it “cannot be applied to the Indian context due to various factors like level of education/illiteracy, poverty, myriad social customs and values, religious beliefs and the mindset of the society to treat marriage as a sacrament”.
• The Delhi government recently informed the High Courtthat marital rape is already covered as a crime of cruelty under section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). It also said that the courts have no power to legislate any new offence.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 1

Context

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi is going to inaugurate the Statue of Equality, a gigantic statue of Ramanujacharya, on February 5 on the outskirts of Hyderabad.

About Ramanujacharya

• Born in 1017 in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu, Ramanujacharya is revered as a Vedic philosopher and social reformer.
• He travelled across India, advocating equality and social justice.
• Ramanuja revived the Bhakti movement, and his preachings inspired other Bhakti schools of thought.
• He is considered to be the inspiration for poets like Annamacharya, Bhakt Ramdas, Thyagaraja, Kabir, and Meerabai.
• From the time he was a young budding philosopher, Ramanuja appealed for the protection of nature and its resources like air, water, and soil.
• He wrote nine scriptures known as the navaratnas, and composed numerous commentaries on Vedic scriptures.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context

• Recently, India announced a diplomatic boycottof the Beijing Winter Olympics.
• By doing so, India has joined a growing list of countries that will not send government delegations to the Chinese capital for the Winter Olympics.
• In December, the United States had announced a diplomatic boycottof the event. The United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and the Netherlands, among others, followed the US’s lead and made a similar decision.
• Moreover, Doordarshan’s has also decided to not telecast live the opening and closing ceremonies of the Winter Games. The announcement had come after the Indian government refused to send its envoy to the opening or closing ceremonies.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Context

• Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are considered as a gateway to a future written in chrome, operating on a virtual cloud.
• This techno-optimism underpinned 2022 budget speech, where AI was described as a sunrise technology that would “assist sustainable development at scale and modernise the country.”
• While there is an allure to national dreams of economic prosperity and global competitiveness, underwritten by AI, there is an environmental cost and — like any issue at the nexus of technology, development, growth and security — a cost that comes with being locked into rules about said environmental impact set by powerful actors.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 1

Context

Ethnocentrism broadly refers to ethnic self-centredness and self-importance. This attitude could lead an individual to believe that their own culture or way of life is the correct way of living. It could also result in hostility towards other cultures.

• Ethnocentrism is therefore the tendency to view one’s own group, the ‘in-group’, as the archetype and all other groups, the ‘out-groups’, with reference to this ideal.
• The in-group’s boundaries are defined by one or more observable characteristics such as language, accent, physical features or religion, indicating common descent.
• While initially used in anthropology, the term is now used widely in sociology, psychology, political science, economics and markets, among other disciplines.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context

• The Covid pandemic has amply demonstrated the health sector’s direct and indirect intersectoral impacts and its devastating power in creating disruption. It was, therefore, not surprising to see its imprint on the Economic Survey.
• Given the learnings of the pandemic, it was reasonable to expect a “health-centered” budget.
• Instead, the budget’s main focus is on increasing capital expenditures for expanding the economic infrastructure under the PM Gati Shakti scheme. Growth numbers no meaning for the millions who have been impoverished by the pandemic-induced income losses, hunger, sickness and trauma.

Covid impact

• Inequalities have widened. An estimated Rs 70,000 crore have been spent by the people out-of-pocket in this short time for medical treatment that the government ought to have provided.
• Spending at a time when earnings were down, pushed millions below the poverty line and hunger has emerged as a major issue placing India low on the malnutrition and hunger index rankings.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Context

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s fourth successive budget, while common-sensical in its approach, is not exactly bubbling with new ideas.

Highlights of the budget:

• The Minister acknowledges the role public capital expenditure could play in crowding-in private investment at a time when “private investments seem to require that support” and help to ‘pump-prime’ demand in the economy, the Budget outlay of ₹7.50 lakh-crore for the capital account marks 24.4% increase from the revised estimate of ₹6.03 lakh-crore for the current fiscal.
• The Budget speech highlights the PM Gati Shakti, a “transformative approach for economic growth and sustainable development” that is to be powered by the ‘seven engines’ of roads, railways, airports, ports, mass transport, waterways, and logistics infrastructure.
• ‘Master Plan for Expressways’ that will be formulated in 2022-23 under the scheme.
• It projects the addition of 25,000 kilometres of roads to the National Highways network.
• The talk of enabling seamless multimodal movement of goods and people and providing multimodal connectivity between mass urban transit systems and railway stations, however, all sound a familiar refrain from past speeches.