Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context:

India’s boundary dispute with China is intrinsically linked to Tibet. New Delhi’s recognition of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet was contingent upon China’s acceptance of Tibetan autonomy. 

• The Dalai Lama gave up the quest for independence in exchange for genuine autonomy. Beijing has squashed autonomy and has not kept its side of the bargain with Tibet and India.
• Beijing has squashed autonomy and has not kept its side of the bargain with Tibet and India. 
• In 1965, Prime Minister LalBahadurShastri had informed the Tibet Government in Exile (TGE) that he would recognise it, but he died prematurely. 
• But the original sin was committed by India’s failure to prevent the annexation of Tibet, India’s vital area. 

Background:

• Following a brief military conflict between China and Tibet at the start of the 20th century, Tibet declared itself as an independent nation in 1912. 
• It functioned as an autonomous region until 1950. 
• In 1949, the Communists under Mao Zedong’s leadership gained power and in 1950 seized control of Tibet. 
• In 1951, the Dalai Lama’s representatives signed a seventeen-point agreement that granted China sovereignty over Tibet for the first time. 
• The Chinese claim that this document is proof of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet while Tibet says that it was coerced into signing this document.
• When China invaded Tibet on October 7, 1950, to incorporate Tibet into the just proclaimed People’s Republic of China, it presented India with an acute dilemma – what should newly independent India do?
  • The 17-point agreement signed between Tibet and China on May 23, 1951, ended any hopes of genuine autonomy for Tibet. 
  • Further, the signing of the 1954 India-China agreement symbolised the complete formalisation of all developments since the invasion of Tibet by China and the total elimination of Indian political influence in Tibet.
  • For the first time ever, India, in a formal document, recognised Tibet as an integral part of China.

Chinese strategy

• Negotiations between India and China on relations between India and Tibet opened in Beijing on December 31, 1953. 
• China had suggested in September 1951 that India’s position in Tibet should be regularised and the ‘boundary with Tibet stabilised’. 
• China wanted to redefine the boundary with India. 
• India was clearly inviting trouble when it was decided that the border issue would not figure in the negotiations on Tibet. 
• Responding positively to the Chinese move for an agreement on Tibet was seen essentially as a means of reducing Chinese pressure on the border, and as ‘helping’ the Tibetans within a larger policy framework of coaxing the Chinese out of their isolation.
• The Indian government had made it clear in Parliament that not only the direct frontier with Tibet, but also the frontiers of Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim, should remain unchanged. 

India’s stand on the issue

• Tibet had become more a ‘psychological’ buffer from a political one during British rule — psychological because Nehru was convinced that any military attack on India from Tibet was not feasible. 
• For him, the status of Tibet and Tibetan autonomy, as also Indian interests in Tibet inherited from the British were issues for discussion with China.
• The problem lay in the fact that, except for Sikkim, the border had not been demarcated — jointly with China — on the ground; the boundary in the western and middle sectors had not been defined in detail by treaty. 
• The McMahon Line was shown only on a map that the Chinese government had initialled in 1914 but not subsequently accepted. 
• Wrong advice: K.M. Panikkar, the then Indian Ambassador to China, advised that the issue would pose no difficulty. 
  • He suggested that the political office in Lhasa should be regularised by its transformation into an Indian Consulate-General. 
  • Other posts and institutions like the telegraph lines set up in the British era, the military escort at Yadong in the Chumbi Valley, ‘were to be abolished quietly in time’.
  • It was an obsession with the big picture of two big Asian nations forging deeper understanding and cooperation. It was a strategic miscalculation that would have serious consequences.
  • It was assumed by India that there was no territorial dispute between India and China.
• While negotiations for an agreement between India and China on Tibet were necessary, they should have also included a border settlement. There should have been a quid pro quo for India’s recognition of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 1

Context:

The recent Global Hunger Report (GHR) 2021 ranks India at 101 out of 116 countries, with the country falling in the category of having a ‘serious’ hunger situation. 

• India is also among the 31 countries where hunger has been identified as serious. 
• India ranked 94 among 107 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2020, released last year.
• The ranks are not comparable across years because of various methodological issues and so it is wrong to say that India’s standing has fallen from 94 (out of 107) in 2020. 
• The Government of India refuted the GHI, claiming that it is ‘devoid of ground reality’ and based on ‘unscientific’ methodology. 

Background:

Global Hunger Index (GHI)

• Annual Report: Jointly published by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe.
• Aim: To comprehensively measure and track hunger at the global, regional, and country levels.
• Calculation: It is calculated on the basis of four indicators
  • Undernourishment (percentage of undernourished in the population (PoU))- it refers to the share of the population of a country that has an insufficient calorie intake. (weight of one-third each)
  • Child wasting – it refers to the share of children under the age of five who have comparatively low weight for their height which reflects acute undernutrition. (one-sixth weightage)
  • Child stunting – refers to the share of children under the age of five who have a low height for their age. This reflects chronic undernutrition among them. (weight of one-third each)
  • Child mortality – it is the mortality rate of children in a country under the age of five. (one-sixth weightage)

Scoring methodology

• The global hunger index determines the score of a country based on the above 4 indicators 100 point scale where zero is the best possible score reflecting no hunger 100 is the worst situation.
• Every country’s GHI score is classified by severity from low to extremely alarming.
• Each indicator is standardised based on thresholds set slightly above the highest country-level values.

Government’s objection

• The Government’s objection to the methodology is that the assessment is based on the results of a ‘four question’ opinion poll, which is not based on facts. 
• But the report is based on the percentage of undernourished in the population -PoU data  of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
  • PoU is an estimate of the proportion of the population whose habitual food consumption is insufficient to provide the dietary energy levels that are required to maintain a normal active and healthy life. 
  • PoU is estimated taking into account a number of factors such as food availability, food consumption patterns, income levels and distribution, population structure, etc. 
• In the absence of food consumption data in most countries, this indicator is an estimate based on a modelling exercise using available data; therefore, there is some margin of error. 
• Most of the criticism of the FAO’s PoU data has been about how it underestimates hunger rather than over. 

Therefore, while there is scope for a valid discussion on the GHI methodology and its limitations, this objection by the Government is not warranted.

Concerns for India

• Slow rate of progress: India shows a worsening in PoU and childhood wasting in comparison with 2012. It is the PoU figure of 15.3% for 2018-20 that the Government is contesting.
  • Comparable values of the index have been given in the report for four years, i.e., 2000, 2006, 2012 and 2021. 
  • While the GHI improved from 37.4 to 28.8 during 2006-12, the improvement is only from 28.8 to 27.5 between 2012-21. 
  • The partial results of the National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-20) also show that stunting and wasting indicators have stagnated or declined for most States for which data is available. 
  • The leaked report of the consumption expenditure survey (2017-18) also showed that rural consumption had fallen between 2012-18 and urban consumption showed a very slight increase.
    • The Survey Collects information on the consumption spending patterns of households across the country, both urban and rural.
    • It is conducted by the National Sample Survey Office – NSSO Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.

COVID-19 impact

• It must also be remembered that all the data are for the period before the COVID-19 pandemic. 
• The situation of food insecurity at the end of the year 2020 was concerning, and things are most likely to have become worse after the second wave. 
• Many of these surveys find that over 60% of the respondents say that they are eating less than before the national lockdown in 2020. 
• Services such as the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) and school mid-day meals continue to be disrupted in most areas, denying crores of children the one nutritious meal a day they earlier had access to. 

• Cuts for schemes: The only substantial measure has been the provision of additional free food grains through the Public Distribution System (PDS). 
  • It leaves out about 40% of the population, many of whom are in need and includes only cereals. 
  • Inflation in other foods, especially edible oils, has also been very high affecting people’s ability to afford healthy diets. 
  • On the one hand, while we need additional investments and greater priority for food, nutrition and social protection schemes, Budget 2021 saw cuts in real terms for schemes such as the ICDS and the mid-day meal.
    • Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) is an Indian government welfare programme that provides food, preschool education, and primary healthcare to children under 6 years of age and their mothers.
    • The Midday meal scheme (under the Ministry of Education) is a centrally sponsored scheme that was launched in 1995.

• It is the world’s largest school meal programme aimed to attain the goal of universalization of primary education.
• The national Mid-Day Meal Scheme in government and aided schools popularly will now be known as PM POSHAN Scheme and will also cover students of balvatikas or pre-primary classes

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context:

The chief of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) Authority has accused the U.S. of sabotaging the multi-billion dollar project, the economic lifeline of Pakistan.

Background

• The ambitious CPEC was launched in 2015 when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Pakistan. 
• It aims to connect western China with the Gwadar port in southwestern Pakistan through a network of roads, railways and other projects of infrastructure and development.

Key Points

• From the Pakistan point of view of the emerging geostrategic situation, one thing is clear: the United States supported by India is inimical to CPEC.  
• Islamabad is the seventh-largest recipient of Chinese overseas development financing with 71 projects worth $27.3 billion underway as part of the CPEC.
• The U.S. and India continue to “make attempts to manoeuvre Pakistan out of” China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) under which the Chinese government has been investing heavily in about 70 countries.

Significance of Belt and Road Initiative 

• In the wake of the global slowdown, BRI offers a new model of development to China to maintain its economic growth. OBOR envisions building networks of roadways, railways, maritime ports, power grids, oil and gas pipelines, associated infrastructure projects which helps the Chinese economy.
• BRI has a domestic and international dimension: as it visualises a shift from developed markets in the west to developing economies in Asia, Africa And a shift in China’s development strategy concentrating on provinces in central and western China instead of the developed east coast region.
• Strategically important as China utilizes its economic clout to build its soft power.

Criticism and Issues with Belt and Road Initiative 

• Debt-trap diplomacy of China where BRI projects are pushing recipient countries into indebtedness and do not transfer skills or technology. For instance, Hambantota port, where Sri Lanka was forced to lease the port to China for 99 years. Also, there has been rethinking of projects in Malaysia, Maldives, Ethiopia and even in Pakistan.
• BRI represents the political and economic ambitions of China, making countries like the US, Japan, Germany, Russia, and Australia unhappy about the impact of Beijing’s moves on their own economic and political interests.
• China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), an important component of BRI, passes through Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, which is the main reason for India signalling its displeasure over BRI and not participating in both the BRFs.

Context:

• Kerala and Uttarakhand are reliving their flood nightmares of recent years.
  • Over 80 people have lost their lives in these two States, with crops and property worth thousands of crores being destroyed.

Background

• In 2018, Kerala lost nearly 500 people to floods, while in Uttarakhand a greater number of pilgrims were washed away in the swirling waters of the Bhagirathi, Mandakini and Alaknanda in 2013.
• These might have been epochal disasters, but cloudbursts, flash floodsand very heavy rain in September and October have become the norm.
  • It coincides with the now-destructive retreating Southwest monsoon and cyclones originating in both the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea.

Impacts 

• This is leading to crop losses as well.
• The ‘unseasonal’ rain could impact the output of tea, coffee, rubber, and cardamom in Kerala, besides West Bengal’s premium rice variety, Gobindobhog.
• It is expected to have damaged soybean, onion, urad, moong and cotton crops in central India.
• Climate change is here; scientists attribute the extreme weather events to the warming of our oceans, the Arabian Sea in particular in recent times.
• Its economic effects cannot be wished away any more.

India is in an advanced stage of drawing up the contours of the structure and processes of the “theatre command” to bring integration and coordination of all the three services.

• The timeline for operationalising this is yet to be made public.

Key Points

• Defence Minister recently cited on “Synergised Objectives”,organised to mark 50 years of victory in the India-Pakistan War in 1971,
  • He stated that the theatre integration would be ensured following the creation of Chief of Defence Staff and Department of Military Affairs in the Defence Ministry. Chief of the Defence Staff detailed the work done on theatrisation so far.
• Recalling the integrated efforts of the three services in bringing victory in the India-Pakistan War in 1971 and leading to the biggest surrender of troops after the Second World War, they emphasised the need for integration in the changing situation.
• In the coming days as a forward process, theatre integration will be ensured.
• Integration will be in procurement, indigenisation and prioritising capability development.”
• Borrowing from the best
  • India had extensively studied the theatre command models of the U.S., the U.K., Russia and China to adopt some of the best practices.
  • We will adopt atailor-made model to meet our national security.
  • We are moving forward with maritime theatre command, joint air defence structure and land-centric theatre command.
  • The concept of theatrisation is being progressed on a consensus-based approach at various levels.
  • To bring about greater synergy and bring down redundancy, the service chiefs are likely to retain operational control.
• Identification of theatre command, would be based on the tasks, threats, opportunities and assets.
• After the proposal was examined and finalised by the chiefs of staff committee, it would be operationalised by the Government.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context:

• The winter is setting in in the icy cold deserts of Ladakh and there is no respite for Indian and Chinese soldiers who will remain deployed against each other. 
  • Even if it is a period of calm at the tactical level, the rarefied atmosphere, low temperatures and high altitude take their toll on both men and materiel. 
  • In the last 10 months, the Chinese Western Theatre Command has seen four commanders, two of them- both ‘rising stars’ of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) — moved out for serious health issues.

More in News

• An aggressive focus on India: This ought to have raised wider concerns in the PLA about the health and well-being of its men in the theatre, leading to quick deinduction of its forces from eastern Ladakh. 
  • However, going by the obstinate Chinese stance in recent weeks, the PLA seems singularly uninterested in ending the prolonged deployment. 
• The verbal attacks have been matched by massive infrastructure construction, induction of a large quantity of modern equipment, and a sharp increase in the number of military exercises directed towards India. 
  • These actions are not limited to Ladakh but have also been initiated in the middle and eastern sectors of the 3,488-kilometre long Line of Actual Control (LAC).

India’s Status

• India has correspondingly readied contingency plans to deal with any security challenges in the region. Marginal increase in Chinese patrolling in eastern sector across LAC: Army Commander
• The PLA incursion into Barahoti in Uttarakhand in August was a significant pointer to the renewed Chinese aggression against India. 
• Even though Barahoti is a disputed area between the two sides, it has been a demilitarised zone. No persons in uniform enter the area. 
  • This was violated when PLA soldiers came deep into Indian territory in uniform and damaged some infrastructure. 
• The forays of Chinese patrols in Arunachal Pradesh have also increased in frequency and duration, denoting the PLA’s intention to keep the Indian military under pressure. 
• Such hostility carries the risk of triggering an unintended escalation, as was the case after 200 PLA soldiers were stopped by an Indian patrol in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang earlier this month.

Concerns

• Western scholars with Chinese connections point to two major drivers for the PLA’s aggressive approach against India.
• The first is its institutional interest as the ‘army of the revolution’ which is now losing its primacy to the PLA Air Force and PLA Navy when it comes to Taiwan or the South China Sea. 
  • With China having resolved its boundary disputes with most countries, the only major adversary available for the PLA to reassert its importance is India. 
  • Even under President Xi Jinping, the PLA remains a major actor in the Chinese political system and can promote actions that further its institutional interests.
• The second driver is the PLA’s view that the Indian military has been registering a greater presence on “Chinese territory” in the border areas in the last 10-12 years. 
• After the United Progressive Alliance government decided to build infrastructure and raise additional forces for the China border, a larger number of Indian patrols have been going more frequently into areas which they would rarely, if ever, visit. 
• The Doklam stand-off of 2017, when Indian soldiers walked onto Bhutanese territory claimed by China, was a turning point in the PLA’s appreciation of Indian designs, reinforcing its apprehensions about territorial losses. 
• Western scholars say that there is a strong constituency in the PLA that wants to put India in its place, evoking an eerie parallel to the discourse in Mao’s China after 1959.

New Delhi’s response

• In response to the PLA’s actions on the LAC, the Indian military has also inducted more modern military platforms and systems on the China border which has been backed by infrastructure construction. 
• Despite these accretions, the quantitative and qualitative asymmetry with the Chinese has widened in the past 20 months. 
  • Senior Indian commanders hope that this gap can be offset to some extent by the vast operational experience of Indian troops in hostile climactic and terrain conditions but recognise the very formidable nature of Chinese challenge.
• The Indian military always maintained a defensive deterrence against the PLA which worked for nearly three decades before breaking down completely in 2020. 
• The new troop deployments and equipment inductions, along with infrastructure creation — showcased extensively to the Indian media — are trying to reconstruct that deterrence. 
• India’s advantage in dissuading a major military conflict with China is that as a lesser power, it has to only deny an outright military victory to the PLA for the top Chinese leadership to lose face. 
• Only time will tell whether this reconstructed deterrent will work for India but a lot will depend on factors that are beyond the remit of the Indian military.

Recent Developments 

• The foremost Impact on modernisation is the sharp decline in the Indian economy after demonetisation, further battered by the Government’s poor handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic. 
  • It means that New Delhi is unable to generate enough resources for military modernisation. 
  • It was calculated in 2016 that the Indian Air Force (IAF) would need about 60 fighter jet squadrons by 2020 for a serious two-front threat from China and Pakistan but is down to 30 and losing numbers sharply. 
  • The Indian Navy Chief’s pleas for another aircraft carrier have been rebuffed for want of funds. 
  • The parliamentary standing committee on defence has repeatedly warned about the abnormally high share of vintage equipment in the Indian Army’s profile. 
  • So rapidly is the technological asymmetry with the PLA increasing, that in a few years it is feared that India and China will be fighting two different generations of war.
• The second factor is the increasingly divisive majoritarian politics practised by the ruling party that has left India vulnerable. 
  • The ruling ideology has also held captive the country’s foreign policy in the neighbourhood, adversely affecting Indian interests. 
  • The United Arab Emirates-brokered backchannel deal with Pakistan fell through apparently because of New Delhi’s policies in Kashmir, reactivating the challenge of a two-front collusive military threat. The ceasefire on the Line of Control is barely holding up, with infiltration from the Pakistani side adding to the local Kashmiri youth willing to pick up the gun, opening another half-front for the military. 
  • The recent fracas with Bangladesh on the treatment of religious minorities or the ongoing turmoil over the influx of Myanmar refugees in Mizoram has left India, internally unbalanced, weaker in the region to deal with China. 
• The third is the geopolitics arising out of the great power competition in the Indo-Pacific. 
  • Many strategic commentators in India had pinned their hopes on the external rebalancing via the Quad (India, the United States, Australia, Japan) but the grouping does not have a ‘hard power’ agenda yet. 
    • That role seems to have devolved upon the AUKUS (the trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States). 
  • Closer ties between Washington DC and New Delhi, short of an alliance, leave the questions of actual support during a Sino-India military crisis unanswered. 
• Finally, the lack of institutional checks and balances on the political executive, which imposes an even bigger cost in decision-making on national security issues. 
  • In the Ladakh border crisis, the Government and its supporters were in denial about the Chinese ingress into Indian territory for months, including the Prime Minister’s statement that no one had entered Indian territory. 
  • Use of euphemisms like ‘friction points’ for places of Chinese ingress or the removal of an official report about Chinese presence across the LAC from the Defence Ministry’s website or non-acknowledgement of Indian soldiers in Chinese captivity after the Galwan clash have been done to evade political accountability. 
  • Parliament has not been allowed to ask questions or seek clarifications; nor has the parliamentary standing committee deliberated upon the issue. 
  • Large sections of Indian media have been complicit in this cover up, keeping the public in the dark and blocking the feedback loop that keeps democratic governments honest and responsive. 
  • The costs and consequences of a government taking decisions after buying its own spin on national security issues will be inconceivable for India.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Context:

During the recent G-20 ministerial meeting in Italy, the Commerce Minister made a pitch for deepening India’s trade ties with several countries. 

• India is negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs) with several countries. 
• However, rising trade protectionism at home, demonstrated by several examples, could throw a spanner in the works.

Challenges for international trade in India

• Rising tariffs: The simple average of India’s tariffs that stood at 8.9 per cent in 2010-11 has increased by almost 25 per cent to 11.1 per cent in 2020-21. 
  • The proportion of tariff lines with rates above 15 per cent in 2020-21 stood at 25.4 per cent, up from 13.6 per cent in 2014-15. These increases in tariff rates have reversed the political consensus on tariff liberalisation that India followed since 1991. 
  • Tariffs are used to restrict imports. Simply put, they increase the price of goods and services purchased from another country, making them less attractive to domestic consumers.

• India is the highest initiator of anti-dumping measures aimed at shielding domestic industry from import competition. 
  • According to the WTO, from 2015 to 2019, India initiated 233 anti-dumping investigations, which is a sharp increase from 82 initiations between 2011 and 2014 (June). 
  • The anti-dumping initiations by India from 1995 (when the WTO was established) till 2020 stand at 1,071. 
  • This is higher than the anti-dumping initiations by the US (817), the EU (533), and China (292), despite India’s share in the global merchandise exports being far less than these countries.
  • The government imposes anti-dumping duty on foreign imports when it believes that the goods are being “dumped” – through the low pricing – in the domestic market. 
  • Anti-dumping duty is imposed to protect local businesses and markets from unfair competition by foreign imports.
• India recently amended Section 11(2)(f) of the Customs Act of 1962, giving the government the power to ban the import or export of any good (not just gold and silver, as this provision applied earlier) if it is necessary to prevent injury to the economy. 
  • The power to ban the import or export of gold and silver is consistent with WTO regime, provided the ban is not applied in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner. 
  • However, expanding the scope to cover any good is inconsistent with India’s WTO obligations. 
  • WTO allows countries to impose restrictions on imports in case of injury to domestic industry, not to the “economy”. 
  • However, these trade remedial measures can be imposed only if certain conditions are satisfied and after an investigation. India already has laws to impose these trade remedial measures. 
  • Additionally, countries can also impose restrictions on trade on account of balance of payment difficulties and national security purposes. 
  • However, section 11(2)(f) of the Customs Act does not talk of any of these grounds to restrict trade, thus is unnecessary.
• India amended the rules of origin requirement under the Customs Act. Rules of origin determine the national source of a product. 
  • This helps in deciding whether to apply a preferential tariff rate (if the product originates from India’s FTA partner country) or to apply the most favoured nation rate (if the product originates from a non-FTA country). 
  • But India has imposed onerous burdens on importers to ensure compliance with the rules of origin requirement. 
  • The intent appears to be to dissuade importers from importing goods from India’s FTA partners.
• The call given by the Prime Minister to be “vocal for local” (giving preference to domestically made goods) is creating an ecosystem where imports are looked at with disdain, upsetting competitive opportunities and trading partners. 

International trade is not a zero-sum game. India can’t maximise its interests at the expense of others. Its experiment with trade protectionism in the decades before 1991 was disastrous. We should recall Winston Churchill’s warning: “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”

Context:

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs decided to extend the Border Security Force (BSF’s) jurisdiction from 15 km to 50 km inside the international border along Punjab, West Bengal and Assam.

Rationale behind the move

• The Ministry stated that it was amending an earlier notification of 2014 on jurisdiction of the BSF to exercise its powers in states where it guards the international border.
• The Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan has revived serious threats of cross-border infiltration from Pakistan, while China has been increasingly aggressive over the past year.
• The BSF’s powers have not altered, only its jurisdiction has changed from 15 to 50 kilometres and that is for the purposes of uniformity.

• It outlined the new jurisdiction as the whole of the area comprising the States of Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya and Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
• Incidentally, the BSF’s jurisdiction in the international border along Gujarat has been reduced from 80 km to 50 km.
• A Union Home Ministry stated that the changes were made under the Border Security Force Act of 1968, following suggestions from the BSF.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Context:

As the global recovery gains strength, the price of crude oil is nearing its highest level since 2018, while the price of natural gas and coal are hitting record highs amid an intensifying energy shortage.

Reason behind the fuel price rise

• The price of Brent Crude breached the $85 per barrel mark, reaching its highest level since 2018 on the back of a sharp increase in global demand as the world economy recovers from the pandemic.
• Key oil producing countries have kept crude oil supplies on a gradually increasing production schedule despite a sharp increase in global crude oil prices.
• The price of Brent crude has nearly doubled compared to the price of $42.5 per barrel a year ago.
• Recently, the OPEC+ group of oil producing countries reaffirmed that they would increase total crude oil supply by only 400,000 barrels per day in November 2021 despite a sharp increase in prices.
• The output of the top oil-producing countries – Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, UAE and Kuwait — would still be about 14 per cent lower than reference levels of production post the increase in November 2021.
• OPEC+ had agreed to sharp cuts in supply in 2020 in response to Covid-19 global travel restrictions in 2020 but the organisation has been slow to boost production as demand has recovered.
• India and other oil importing nations have called on OPEC+ to boost oil supply faster, arguing that elevated crude oil prices could undermine the recovery of the global economy.
• Supply side issues in the US including disruptions caused by hurricane Ida and lower than expected natural gas supplies from Russia amid increasing demand in Europe have raised the prospect of natural gas shortages in the winter.
  • International coal prices have also reached all-time highs as China faces a coal shortage that has led to factories across China facing power outages.
  • A faster than expected recovery in global demand has pushed the price of Indonesian coal up from about $60 per tonne in March to about $200 per tonne in October.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Context:

• • China in August tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide vehicle that circled the globe before speeding towards its target.

• Hypersonic speeds are 5 or more times the speed of sound.

More in News

• The vehicle was launched on a Long March rocket, which is used for the space programme.
• The Chinese military launched a rocket that carried a hypersonic glide vehicle, which flew through low-orbit space before cruising down towards its target. 
• The test has raised new questions about why the US often underestimated China’s military modernisation

Technology used:

• The exact details on the technology used by China in this particular test are not known through media sources. But most hypersonic vehicles primarily use scramjet technology.

Concerns and implications for India and the world:

• The weapon could, in theory, fly over the South Pole. That would pose a big challenge for the US military because its missile defence systems are focused on the northern polar route.
• India is especially concerned with the latest developments considering relations with China in the recent past. Such capabilities highlight the threat for our space assets along with the surface assets.

Global Status regarding hypersonic weapons

• The US, Russia and China are all developing hypersonic weapons, including glide vehicles that are launched into space on a rocket but orbit the earth under their own momentum.
• India’s DRDO tested a hypersonic vehicle in September last year.