General Studies Paper 2

Context:

• Upon dropping a series of Chinese-led infrastructure projects due to sustainability and geopolitical concerns, the Philippines is now redirecting its attention to Japan and India as alternative sources of development and security.

India and Philippines strategic ties

• Manila now shows the desire to deepen and broaden its security and economic partnerships with like minded partners amidst Beijing’s growing unwillingness to act and behave like a responsible neighbour.
• Under the leadership of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Philippines has been steadfast in securing its sovereignty and sovereign rights in the West Philippine Sea against China’s revisionist interests in the Indo-Pacific (IP) Region.
• Accordingly, Manila’s attribution of both Tokyo and New Delhi as important partners allows all three democracies to explore new opportunities for multifaceted strategic cooperation.
• Bilateral partnership between the Philippines and India has witnessed noteworthy advancements as Manila is now more willingly incorporating New Delhi in its strategic calculations.
• The recent signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Philippine and Indian Coast Guards will allow both sides to improve their interoperability, intelligence sharing, and maritime domain awareness. India has also offered to supply the Philippine Coast Guard with seven indigenously manufactured helicopters based on a soft loan agreement with extended payment terms. This comes at the heels of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile delivery to the Southeast Asian country later this year.
• Thus, Japan and India’s bolstered engagements in Southeast Asia complement the interest of resident countries like the Philippines to lessen their susceptibility to China’s expanding economic clout and deepening power projection capabilities.
• Forging robust ties with friendly regional powers is crucial to Southeast Asian countries’ hedging strategies, especially as the U.S.-China competition continues to intensify.
• As per the State of Southeast Asian Survey of 2023, Japan and India are the top two choices of Southeast Asian countries for alternative Indo-Pacific strategic partners. Therefore, the contemporary structural conditions serve as an opportunity for Japan and India to operationalise their shared vision for the IndoPacific.

India-Japan Special Strategic and Global Partnership

• is best defined through the robust ties they share. In terms of security, New Delhi and Tokyo constantly engage in varied platforms ranging from regular bilateral military exercises and 2+2 meetings to multilateral frameworks such as the Quad and the G20.
• Both countries share similar threat perceptions — an increasingly assertive and disruptive China. Beyond defence cooperation, New Delhi and Tokyo have also embarked on a third country cooperation model in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.

Asia Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC): an example of third country cooperation model:

• In 2017, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his former counterpart Shinzo Abe welcomed collaborative efforts in establishing industrial growth and development networks across Asia and Africa, creating the AAGC.
• While the project eventually slowed down due to geopolitical turbulence and the economic constraints posed by the COVID19 pandemic, both countries have recently explored new third country cooperation models throughout the region.
• Among them are the emerging trilateral partnerships between India, Japan, and Bangladesh and a similar framework between India, Japan, and Sri Lanka.

Conclusion

• As India is significantly deepening and broadening its ties with Southeast Asian countries, such as the Philippines, New Delhi should consider taking its third country developmental model with Tokyo into the subregion of the greater IndoPacific at a time when resident countries are looking for alternative sources of development and security amidst the polarising dynamics of the U.S. China power competition.

General Studies Paper 2

Context:

• As India gets ready for the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP28), it is important to examine how climate change affects the country’s health.

Climate change and health systems in India

• India’s inadequate health systems make our population particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate risks on health. Climate change affects health directly, causing more sickness and death. In more indirect ways, it affects nutrition, reduces working hours, and increases climate induced stress.
• All nations during the Paris Agreement agreed to cap the rise in temperature at 1.5°C. Clearly, we have failed. The year 2023 saw the highest temperatures and heat waves in recorded history.
• Climate emergencies — extreme heat, cyclones, floods — are expected to occur with increasing regularity. These will interfere with food security and livelihoods and sharpen health challenges.
• As per the latest report of UNFCCC (2023), the world is already on the path to cross the Paris climate deal threshold soon. One estimate suggests that if global temperature were to rise by 2°C, many parts of India would become uninhabitable.

Double burden

• The double burden of morbidity that India faces from communicable and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) will be worsened by climate change. Heat also alters the virulence of pathogens.
• It could facilitate the growth of vectors such as mosquitoes, sandflies, ticks, and as yet unknown ones, and change the seasonality of infection through changes in their life cycle. It could also facilitate the introduction of vectors and pathogens into areas where they did not exist before, such as mosquitoes in the Himalayan States.
• Reduced availability of food and water and the decrease in nutritional value of food increases vulnerability to diseases. Epidemics commonly occur after floods, but extended warm periods also promote the proliferation of water and foodborne pathogens and diseases.
• Less well recognised is the impact of climate change on NCDs and mental health, both of which are poorly managed in India. Heat, physical exertion, and dehydration, a constant state for labourers, could lead to kidney injuries, which are rising in India due to uncontrolled diabetes. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases are exacerbated by increased and extended episodes of air pollution.
• Depression, aggravated by stress generated by the change in weather conditions, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) invariably accompany a climate emergency.

Climate change and urban India

• India is urbanising at a rapid pace, in an unplanned manner. Urban areas, not tempered by urban greenery and open spaces and filled with asphalt roads and heat retaining buildings that physically block air circulation, bear the worst ill effects of climate change due to the urban heat island effect. (Urban areas are warmer than surrounding rural areas, especially at night).
• Climate change puts further pressure on the weak urban primary health system, already suffering the ill effects of air pollution; urban planning that discourages physical activity; and work related and cultural stress.

 Way forward: Mitigation efforts

• It begins with understanding the direct and indirect pathways by which climate change impacts health and assessing the burden. Currently, the health information systems are not modified to gather this data.
• Since the impact is accentuated by socioeconomic conditions, having systems in place for social support and health services will reduce the impact.
• We need to take interventions that focus on better urban planning, green cover, water conservation, and public health interventions will be much larger — not only for health but for many determinants of health.
• Action to control climate change needs to happen at global, regional, and local levels. Pathways of climate change and their impact will determine the appropriate area of intervention. To achieve this, India has to recognise climate change and its impact on health as a problem that can be and needs to be addressed.

Conclusion

• National, State, and local governments have to decide to act on the policy options that have been generated by research. Only when the three streams of problematisation, policy options, and political decision making come together is meaningful change likely to happen

General Studies Paper 3

Introduction:

• Emerging technologies, an euphemism for capabilities that rely on a combination of cyber technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI), unmanned systems, and advanced computing, is in vogue among most militaries.

Emerging technologies for Indian armed forces:

• Recently, the Chief of the Army Staff said that the Army had identified 45 niche technologies in the field of military applications.
• Similarly, under ‘UDAAN’, the Indian Air Force (IAF) is using AI, cyber and virtual reality to address its operational, logistical, and training needs.
• Indian Air Force (IAF) Centre of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence (CoE for AI) under the aegis of UDAAN (Unit for Digitisation, Automation, Artificial Intelligence and Application Networking) was inaugurated in 2022.
• The Navy, too, says that it is moving forward with emerging technologies, which includes an Integrated Unmanned Roadmap, while also encouraging indigenisation under project ‘Swavlamban’, Indian Navy’s Maiden Naval Innovation and Indigenisation Seminar.
• Not to be left out, the Defence Ministry, through ‘AIDef’- ‘Artificial Intelliegnce in Defence’ (AIDef) symposium and exhibition- has showcased its initiatives in this realm, which includes the Defence AI Council and the Defence AI Project Agency. Both these efforts are aimed towards incorporating AI into various allied organisations, such as Defence PSUs (Public Sector Undertakings) and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

A long way to go

• For these initiatives to be successful, the military must be cognisant that technology is not a silver bullet and should not be imagined as a ‘plug and play’ — readily adjusted to existing practices. Instead, it needs to be accompanied by organisational and doctrinal changes and a willingness to share data with the civilian environment.
• To some, emerging technologies is just the latest fad. Indeed, most accounts of the Russia-Ukraine war attest to the old fashioned dominance of the artillery, manoeuvre warfare, and infantry tactics.
• But emerging technologies represent a dilemma that militaries have faced since time immemorial — how to best respond to change. Effectively integrating emerging technologies requires the military to work more closely with civilians than ever before.
• Some call it “collaborative defence”, whereby the military partners with scientists, academics, technologists, entrepreneurs and the wider industry, as critical in incorporating such capabilities. From that perspective, India’s defence organisations and the military still have some way to go.
• To be fair, the Indian military’s focus on these emerging technologies is not new. India’s first drone platforms were inducted in the late 1990s by the Army followed by more procurements in the 2000s by the IAF and Navy.
• Military leaders have recognised the cyber threat for some time, pointing to issues such as ‘information warfare’. Through its indigenous space programme, India has launched communication satellites to improve its military communications capabilities.

Way forward: Change in approach

• First, jointness, defined as interoperability between the three services, remains problematic. Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) has an explicit mandate to create joint theatre commands (JTCs). While the strategic community waits for such a development, the need for interoperability is essential especially among the host of emerging technologies.
• Second, there is a need to revisit existing human resources practices in armed forces. For the most part, the Indian military prioritises generalisation over specialisation. This might work in conventional operations, but specialised technology requires greater technical expertise. The services should therefore give extended tenures and create promotion pathways for officers intellectually inclined towards this domain.
• Third, both civilian defence organisations and the military needs to be more open with sharing data, especially to fully realise the promise of AI. Traditionally, secrecy concerns have stymied data availability. However, one can create a structure with adequate safeguards, which allows civilians to work alongside the military to overcome such concerns.
• Fully realising the potential of emerging technologies requires altering existing organisations and approaches. Such changes should begin from the Defence Ministry. Instead of letting its efforts be led by generalist officers, the Ministry should be more open to incorporating technocrats and qualified personnel, if necessary, from the private sector and wider industry.

Conclusion

• The current efforts in defence reforms in India has put the military on the road to perhaps its biggest transformation yet. Realising the promise of this vision would require greater willingness to engage with the talent that resides outside existing defence organisations.

General Studies Paper 3

Context

• By proposing that Indians work longer to achieve a larger national output, N.R. Narayana Murthy, the founder of India’s iconic business house, Infosys, has issued something akin to a challenge to his compatriots. He proposed a 70 hour work week. To strengthen his case he has pointed to the experience of Japan and Germany after the Second World War, when citizens worked longer hours than we do on average in India today.

Output, demand and labour

• Ever since the Keynesian Revolution in economics, we know that output is determined by aggregate demand (AD), which is the demand for the total volume of goods and services produced in an economy

(AD- AS Model)

• The demand for labour is entirely dependent upon this demand. There is no demand for labour independent of the demand for goods. Firms that employ more labour while aggregate demand has not increased will find themselves with unsold goods.
• So, an offer by workers to work longer hours will not ensure that they will find employment so long as firms are unwilling to hire them. Firms are guided by the profit motive and will employ more labour only if there is increased demand for their product. Unemployment reflects just that — workers willing to work but firms unwilling to employ them for it would be unprofitable for them.
• The role of demand for goods and services in determining the demand for labour may be seen in the layoffs in the ‘tech’ sector globally at the beginning of this year. Since then, Google and Amazon have shed hundreds of employees hired during the COVID19 pandemic, when the demand for their products was high due to the lockdown or the work from home (WFH) arrangement.
• In a variant of the ‘just in time’ strategy, whereby manufacturing firms are hesitant to hold an inventory of materials for long, software services companies optimise the number of employees ‘on the bench’, i.e., waiting to be deployed in production. So, when there is unemployment, to exhort workers to work longer hours is somewhat irrelevant, even when it is not meant to be callous.

The case of South Korea :

• South Korea was recovering from a war, though a different one from world war, and its resurgence was supported by considerable foreign aid received from the U.S., of which it was an ally. However, a strong nationalistic element accompanied their postwar reconstruction after a shared catastrophe imposed by ‘foreigners’.
• There was an additional dimension in Korea though — a dictatorship that saw the commandeering of able bodied men to work in the countryside on large scale projects of preparing the land for raising agricultural productivity.
• There is insufficient recognition of the fact that the manufacturing success of the east is underpinned by prior success in agriculture. The high working hours that contributed to this are unlikely to have been witnessed in a system in which labour was allocated according to consideration of profit.
• The case of high working hours in Germany and East Asia in the middle of the last century, backed by public funding and coercion, is not an experience helpful to understanding the present in India (a market economy where firms are driven by consideration of profit and coercion is ruled out).

Economic strategies for India

• Does it mean, then, that there is an iron law of the market pinning us down helplessly to high unemployment through low aggregate demand in India? Not at all. There are two strategies economic policy here can attempt.
• The first is to use the global market or world demand to grow the domestic economy, but India’s goods would have to be globally competitive. Here, the experience of South Korea is relevant.
• As most of the produced inputs into production are available to all countries via trade, a country’s competitiveness is ultimately determined by the productivity of its workforce and the physical infrastructure that complements labour. The strength and dexterity of a workforce, manifested as productivity, is related to its health and skill. In both these categories, India’s workers are at a disadvantage compared to the most successful economies of Asia.
• A second route to greater output and employment is to expand the domestic market — and thus aggregate demand. To see how this can be done, recognise that the economy produces both food and non- agricultural goods and services. These are placed differently in relation to our consumption needs.
• If food can be produced at lower cost, the real income of the majority of Indian households would rise. They would now have more to spend on non-agricultural goods and services having satisfied their need for food. This would generate the demand needed to spur production in the rest of the economy. And with this, output will also grow, and in turn employment, with or without the longer hours in question.

Conclusion:

• The proposal that Indians work for 70 hours a week is surely meant for those in the formal sector, where specified work hours and a minimum wage stipulation exist. Ethnographic studies of India’s informal sector show that in some of its segments, unorganised workers are already labouring this long at very low wages and without any such protection.
• Here, the challenge is to activate the long arm of the law to ensure acceptable working conditions that encompass fewer hours, higher wages, and more equipment to lessen the physical burden of labouring.

General Studies Paper 3

Introduction

• Each year, 3 lakh people are estimated to be killed on the road in India, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The number of people suffering life altering injuries in road crashes is exponentially higher even than that.

World Day of Remembrance

• As the planet commemorated the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims on November 19 to provide a platform for road traffic victims and their families to remember, support and act, such figures should serve as a wakeup call to all of us. We need immediate, coordinated and evidence based interventions to boost road safety and drastically reduce the daily human tragedies behind the alarming statistics.
• This will require strategic investments in road safety measures, concerted political will at the national, State and local levels, and a change of collective mindset — after all, every one of us is a road user in some way — to understand and tackle the scale and importance of the challenge.

Road accidents in India

• In India, road crashes are estimated to cost between 5% and 7% of national GDP. Road safety is a global problem, with 1.3 million people killed in road crashes every year. But almost one in every four road deaths around the world takes place in India. Last week, the Government released a report that 2022 was the most fatal year for traffic crashes in India.

Focus areas for better safety

• Priority areas must include enforcing the use of seatbelts not just for drivers but also for their passengers. Wearing a seatbelt reduces the risk of death among drivers and front seat occupants by upto 50%, and among rear seat occupants by 25%.
• Similarly, helmet use must be enforced among motorcyclists as well as their pillion passengers. Correct helmet use can lead to a 42% reduction in the risk of fatal injuries. Indeed, vulnerable road users, who include pedestrians, cyclists and the riders of two wheelers, account for almost three quarters of road deaths in India. And passengers unbelted in the back seat are not only risks to themselves upon impact but also to those in the front seat.
• Speeding must be reduced and there can be no tolerance for drink driving; a recent report by the Government revealed that speeding led to 70% of India’s road crash deaths.
• Road infrastructure should be enhanced — too many roads are not in a safe condition, although government programmes in recent years have led to rapid improvements.
• Large scale public awareness campaigns such as the new UN global campaign for road safety #MakeASafetyStatement, involving international celebrities, must be undertaken to secure behavioural changes.
• The call to action is not new. The Sustainable Development Goals, created in 2015, include a target (SDG 3.6) to halve the number of global deaths and injuries from road crashes and a call (SDG 11.2) to make public transport safer, more affordable and more accessible to all. The good news is that we are already seeing steps in the right direction in India.
• The national government’s implementation of the Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act, 2019, and enhanced data collection from road crashes, are impactful measures that will help experts better understand where and why crashes are occurring, and, therefore, how to reduce them.

The UN helmet

• Police in the major cities, such as the capital, New Delhi, are adopting modern technologies such as intelligent traffic management systems to effectively regulate traffic flows in a much better way and minimise the potential for collision.
• To help increase access to safe helmets, the Special Envoy has worked with helmet producers to produce a low cost ventilated United Nations standard helmet, for under $20, including here in India.
• Your chances of surviving a road crash can vary enormously depending on what State you live in and what access you have to high quality emergency care services and proper aftercare.
• We also need to look increasingly at international best practices and successes and then adapt them to India’s specific needs and circumstances.
• Road safety is a complex and multidimensional challenge, but the benefits that come with addressing it can be equally profound. What we need is a comprehensive safe system approach as envisaged in the UN’s Second Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030, and full implementation of the MVA (Amendment) Act 2019.

Conclusion

• Ending the silent pandemic of road injuries will not only save lives but also strengthen the economy and improve the quality of life for everyone.

General Studies Paper 2

Context

• A recent study by IIM Ahmedabad’s Right to Education Resource Center confirmed that parents lack trust in government schools due to poor quality of education and prefer to admit their children into private schools even if that means spending significantly more on tuition and other fees.

Case study

• However, the Odisha government’s revolutionary reforms in the State’s public education sector through the Odisha Adarsha Vidyalayas (OAV), the ‘Mo School’ Abhiyan, and the 5T High School Transformation Programme are on their way to making government schools better than private schools in all parameters — infrastructure, affordability and quality.

English medium education

• Education World India School Rankings 2022-23 ranked the OAV in Polasara block of Ganjam district the 5th best school in the government run day school category, and two more OAVs among the top 10.
• In order to address the struggle faced by students in securing admission to the Kendriya Vidyalaya (KV) schools after the first standard, the OAVs provide admission at the secondary stage.
• Odisha’s OAV model aims to bridge the rural urban gap by providing accessible, qualitative and affordable English Medium education. There are 315 English medium coed OAVs in all 314 blocks in rural and semi urban areas of Odisha as of now. They ensure representation for Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, and female students through reservations. This has led to a higher enrolment of female students compared to males.
• Many vulnerable children who had been victims of child abuse, trafficking, child labour, and child marriage were rescued and prepared for the OAV entrance in 2021. OAVs also provide different types of coaching facilities to enable students to crack national level tests.
• OAVs have promoted social equity by providing a level playing field to students from rural and poor socioeconomic backgrounds. To address pedagogical gaps, the OAV model focuses on continuous teacher education programmes and maintains a teacher pupil ratio of 1:25.
• It has also leveraged digital technology to enhance the accountability and transparency of the system. The Enterprise Resource Planning system and OAV Sangathan website help track the academic and nonacademic progress of each child alongside monitoring the performance of each school, enabling timely strategic interventions.
• Plans are afoot to transform the OAVs into scientifically upgraded Centres of Excellence (CoEs) to foster an ecosystem of innovation and inquiry driven learning.

The alumni connect

• In 2017, Odisha launched the Mo School Abhiyan, a one-of-its-kind initiative that strives to motivate and mobilise the alumni community to contribute towards revamping the government schools in Odisha.
• Founded on five pillars — connect, collaborate, contribute, create and celebrate — the programme connects the schools with alumni from various fields and promotes alumni mentorship for the students. School Adoption Programme (SAP), under the above programme, enables the alumni to make financial contributions to the schools adopted by them.

High school transformation

• The 5T High School Transformation Programme is rooted in the 5T concept of transparency, technology, teamwork, and timeliness leading to transformation. Launched in 2021, the programme focuses on the adoption of educational technology, in the form of smart and digital classrooms, elibraries, modern science laboratories, improved sanitation facilities, and sports facilities in all high schools.
• The programme also caters to the needs of specially abled children. It provides assistive devices and tailored teaching learning materials for students with autism, cerebral palsy, and intellectual disabilities.
• The government has also launched campaigns like ‘Mo School Hockey Clubs’ and ‘Football for All’, thus enabling holistic development of students’ personalities.
• This proactive approach to transforming the education system has led to an unprecedented shift in enrolment patterns. In 2019-20, private schools had 16 lakh students; in 2021-22, this number dwindled to 14.6 lakhs. Currently, 81% of students in the State are studying in government schools.

Conclusion

• The interventions by the Odisha government have ensured that education is treated as a public good in essence and spirit and have created a strong legacy of an education model founded on equality and excellence. This model can be followed at the national level.

General Studies Paper 3

Context:

• In its semiannual report, World Economic Outlook, ‘Navigating Global Divergences’ October 2023, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has revised its projected GDP growth rate for India for 2023-24 to 6.3%, up from the earlier 6.1%. For India’s policymakers, it is a vindication of their short term economic management. Official spokespersons have sought the IMF’s endorsement to silence its critics.

Performance of Indian economy

• That the economies that were worst affected during the COVID19 pandemic were also the ones to record a steep recovery is widely acknowledged. India, which was one of the worst affected, has followed the pattern.
• During the second quarter of 2020, India’s GDP contracted by 25.6%, quarter on quarter, the worst among the world’s major economies in 2020. Taking a slightly longer view, India’s real (inflation adjusted) annual GDP growth rate slowed down from 6.8% in 2016-17 to 2.8% in 2019-20, immediately prior to the pandemic.
• Real per capita income level in 2021-22, at ₹1.09 lakh, was higher than that in 2019-20 by about ₹600. In the following year, 2022-23, recovery gained momentum as domestic supplies were restored and global supply chains were straightened out.

Effects are cause for concern

• Surely, output recovery is welcome, yet its effects on employment, its quality and persistence of inflation of essential food items affecting the poor the most remain causes of concern — as many critics have highlighted. However, even focusing on output recovery, a sectoral view with trade dimension, would perhaps expose chinks on the armour.
• Policymakers need to temper their optimism by taking a slightly longer view with a wider angle — appreciating the fast changing geopolitical underpinnings of economic policy making. It perhaps bears repetition that 2022-23 heralded the end of globalisation as we knew it (since the Berlin Wall’s collapse in 1989) with tectonic shifts in the world geopolitical order, revealing India’s persistent vulnerabilities of oil and food shocks.

Growing deficit with China

• However, the immediate concern is India’s susceptibility to its soaring deficit with China. India’s economic frailty has increased even as the net exports (exports minus imports) to GDP ratio has declined sharply.
• India’s dependence on Chinese imports of manufactures seems structural, and not easily corrected by changes in relative prices. In May 2020, the government initiated the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan, amidst the Galwan crisis to curb Chinese imports of critical industrial products. China accounts for: 15%- 16% of India’s imports and a third of India’s trade deficit.
• Willy nilly, India undid many import restrictions, as domestic production was getting throttled for lack of critical Chinese inputs. Industrial growth rates as per the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), despite its limitations, shows an alarming regression over a longer period. During the boom period (2004-05 to 2013-14), manufacturing grew at an annual average rate of 5.7%.
• From 2011-12 to 2021-22, gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) to GDP ratio at current prices, declined steadily from 34.3% to 28.9% — an unprecedented fall in post independent India. And its public sector share has remained constant at 8% (National Accounts).
• Net foreign direct investment (FDI excluding disinvestment and outward foreign direct investment), to current GDP ratio fell from 3.6% in 2008 to 2.4% in 2022 (World Development Indicators). The official optimistic picture of public investment growth since FY22, based on budgetary statistics, seems suspect.

Public investment has three parts:

• Investment by government
• Central public sector undertakings (PSUs)
• State PSUs
• Public investment by State governments, based on the Centre’s loans and advances to States, is conditional upon policy reforms. The widely reported rise in the Centre’s investment is apparently due to the merging of extrabudgetary borrowing by central PSUs with the Centre’s own Budget. Hence, the projected boost in public investment seems illusory. Combining the three items, public investment seems around 6% of GDP — perhaps similar to its pre-COVID-19 levels.

Credibility of the HDI

• On social development, official spokespersons and critics have battled over the veracity of multidimensional poverty measure (MPI), and the unrepresentativeness of the Global Hunger Index (GHI). Instead, the UN Development Programme’s Human Development Index (HDI) may be more credible and an acceptable measure.
• The value of India’s HDI index moderated from 0.645 in 2018 to 0.633 in 2021; and, its global rank went down by one rank during 2015 to 2021 — meaning that other countries have performed better than India.

Concerns

• To sum up, our economic recovery is weak with following concerns:
• Strategic threat posed by an unrelenting rise in trade deficit with China, despite government’s best efforts
• Its mirror image is a decline in industrial output growth rates, especially capital goods’ decimation
• A decade long, unprecedented, decline in the economy’s fixed investment rate; with an unchanging public sector’s share in it,
• India’s HDI ranking slipping

Conclusion

• Official commentators would perhaps do well to engage with its critics in appreciating the gravity of economic setbacks in recent years than scoring brownie points over the IMF’s short term growth projections.

General Studies Paper 3

Introduction:

• The United States, the reigning superpower of the region since the end of the Second World War, had begun shifting its strategic focus to more conventional rivals such as Russia and China. But, to maintain its hold over and interests in the region, what the U.S. sought to do was to bring two of the pillars of its regional policy, Israel and the Gulf Arabs, closer. The Abraham Accords were a result of this policy.

A common Jewish-Arab front

• In a relatively peaceful West Asia, a common front would allow the U.S. to free up resources from the region which it could use elsewhere. On the other side, the U.S.’s deprioritisation of West Asia led Gulf Arabs to make their own tactical changes in foreign policy for a more predictable and stable relationship in the region. This opened an opportunity for China.

Role of China

• China, which has good ties with countries across the Gulf, played the role of a peacemaker. The result was the Iran-Saudi reconciliation agreement. The U.S.’s response to the Saudi- Iran détente was to double down on the Abraham Accords.
• The Biden administration invested itself in talks between the Saudis and the Israelis. It was so confident about prospects of a deal that it unveiled the India-Middle EastEurope Economic Corridor (IMEC) proposal earlier this year, which hinged on Arab-Israel peace deal, and sold it as an alternative to China’s outreach into the region, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Then came the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel

Re-regionalisation of Palestine

• Hamas, a Sunni Islamist militant group which has been controlling Gaza since 2007, looked at these two realignments differently. For Hamas, the coming together of Iran, a Shia theocratic republic which also has been its patron for years, and Saudi Arabia, a Sunni monarchy that has been wary of the Hamas brand of political Islam, is a welcome development. But Hamas saw Saudi Arabia normalising ties with Israel, which has been occupying Palestinian territories at least since 1967, as a setback.
• In 1978, when the Camp David Agreement was reached, Egypt got the Israelis to sign the Framework For Peace Agreement, which became the blueprint for the Oslo process in the 1990s. Jordan signed its peace treaty with Israel only after the first Oslo Accord was signed in 1993.
• But when the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Morocco signed the Abraham Accords in 2020, Israel did not make any concessions for the Palestinians. This was the clearest sign yet that Arabs were ready to delink the Palestine question from their engagement with Israel, which boosted Tel Aviv’s efforts to localise the Palestine issue — to treat it as a mere security nuisance while continuing the occupation without consequences.
• When Saudi Arabia and Israel were in talks, nobody expected the Benjamin Netanyahu government, the most far right government in Israel’s history, to offer concessions to the Palestinians. So, understandably, one of the goals of the October 7 Hamas attack was to break the walls of localisation, re-regionalise the Palestine issue, and thereby scuttle the Saudi-Israel peace bid.
• Israel’s vengeful onslaught on the Gaza Strip, which followed the Hamas attack, killing at least 11,500 Palestinians, a vast majority of them women and children, made sure that Hamas met its goal, at least for now.

The way Arabs see it

• Both the Arabs and Israel were ready to sidestep the Palestine question and chart a new course of partnership. But new regional realities emerged after October 7. The Palestine issue has now come back to the fore of the West Asian geopolitical cauldron.
• Second, Israel’s disproportionate and indiscriminate attack on Gaza has triggered massive protests across the Arab Street, mounting enormous pressure on monarchs and dictators.
• Third, there is always the Iran factor. Ever since the Palestine issue got re-regionalised, Iran has stepped up its proPalestine rhetoric and called for collective action against Israel, while its proxies, the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, have launched limited attacks on Israel. Iran is trying to claim the leadership of the Islamic world, bridging the ShiaSunni divide.
• Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi Crown Prince, has relinked the Palestine issue with peace talks with Israel. This is a setback for both America and Israel. The U.S. might still hope that the situation would be conducive to reboot the Abraham Accords once the dust settles. This is entirely possible.
• But a key challenge is that it is still not clear what Mr. Netanyahu’s endgame is in Gaza. He has already signalled that Israeli troops would continue to play an overall security role in the enclave — which means, Israel would reoccupy the territory from where it withdrew in 2005.
• The U.S. had proposed that post the war, the Palestinian Authority, which runs parts of the West Bank with limited powers, should take over Gaza as well. But Mr. Netanyahu has shot down that proposal.
• So, if Israel reoccupies the territory, home to 2.2 million people living in distress and misery, the current wave of violence would only be the beginning of a long spell.

Regional dynamics

• The Iran-Saudi reconciliation, under Chinese mediation, itself was a setback for the U.S. In recent years, Arab countries have also shown an increasing hunger for autonomy. The UAE and Saudi Arabia refused to join American sanctions against Russia after the Ukraine war.
• Saudi Arabia continued its Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Plus cooperation with Moscow, defying Washington’s requests and diktats.
• China is playing an increasingly greater role in the Gulf, which includes secret plans to build a military facility in the UAE. The current crisis is expediting these changes in the regional dynamics

Conclusion

• The situation in Gaza is effectively back to the pre-2005 days, but the geopolitical reality is entirely different from the early 2000s when the U.S. was the sole superpower in the region. Russia and China may not replace America in West Asia in the near future given the U.S.’s huge military presence, but the growing footprint of other great powers is offering space for better manoeuvrability for regional players.

General Studies Paper 3

Context:

• Recently, the world’s first vaccine for chikungunya was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. The vaccine has been manufactured by Valneva under the brand name Ixchiq. It has been approved for administration in people who are 18 years or older, and are at increased risk of exposure to the virus.
• Ixchiq is administered as a single dose by injection into the muscle. It contains a live, weakened version of the chikungunya virus and may cause symptoms in the vaccine recipient similar to those experienced by people who have the disease.

About chikungunya

• Chikungunya, is characterised by severe joint pain and impaired mobility, and comes with fever. It is a viral infection (CHIKV) transmitted primarily by the Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes and has been described as “an emerging global health threat.”
• The WHO fact sheet says Chikungunya is prevalent in Africa, Asia, and the Americas; but sporadic outbreaks have been reported in other regions. As per the National Centre for Vector Borne Diseases Control, India had above 93,000 suspected chikungunya cases until September in 2023.
• Since 2004, outbreaks of CHIKV have become more frequent and widespread, partly due to viral adaptations allowing the virus to be spread more easily by the Aedes albopictus mosquitoes.
• The joint pain is often debilitating and varies in duration; it can last for a few days, but also be prolonged over months. Other symptoms include joint swelling, muscle pain, headache, nausea, fatigue and rash.
• While severe symptoms and deaths from chikungunya are rare and usually related to other coexisting health problems, it is believed that the numbers are generally underestimated, because chikungunya is often misdiagnosed as dengue or zika, as symptoms can seem similar.
• As of now, there is no cure, only symptomatic relief, with analgesics to help with the pain, antipyretics for the fever, rest, and adequate fluids. Prevention includes mosquito control activities, primarily falling under public health outreach and routine civic maintenance. Individuals are also advised to use medicated mosquito nets and ensure that there is no water stagnation in any containers at home, in order to prevent the breeding of mosquitoes.

Indian Government Initiative to Control Chikungunya

• National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP) is a comprehensive programme for prevention and control of vector borne diseases namely Malaria, Filaria, Kala-azar, Japanese Encephalitis (JE), Dengue and Chikungunya. It works under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
• Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) launched during 12th Plan (2012–17) under the National Health Mission, sets up a Central Surveillance Unit (CSU) at Delhi, State Surveillance Units (SSU) at all State/Union Territories (UTs) head quarters and District Surveillance Units (DSU) at all Districts. Its objectives are to strengthen/maintain decentralized laboratory based and IT enabled disease surveillance systems for epidemic prone diseases to monitor disease trends, to detect and respond to outbreaks in the early rising phase through trained Rapid Response Teams (RRTs).

Conclusion

• Hopefully, inspired by the FastTrack pathway drawn up by research into COVID, this approval will fast track the roll out of vaccines in countries where chikungunya is more prevalent, including Brazil, Paraguay, India and parts of western Africa.

General Studies Paper 2

Introduction:

• Civil society has been campaigning for long to empower the voter by improving her access to background information on the candidates in the electoral fray, and to bring about greater transparency in the obscure domain of political funding.
• In this, the instrument of public interest litigation (PIL) has been deployed to good effect. The campaign is premised on the citizen’s democratic right to information (RTI), which is integral to the fundamental right to speech and expression under the Constitution.

A veil over the corporate donor

• Electoral Bond Scheme (EBS) was touted as a sincere effort to clean up electoral democracy by incentivising political donations through banking channels.
• To begin with, the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) was retrospectively amended through the Finance Act of 2016 to permit Indian subsidiaries of foreign companies to donate to political parties. This was followed by an overhaul of the regulatory framework comprising the Representation of the People Act (RPA), the Companies Act, 2013, the Income Tax (IT) Act and the RBI Act through the Finance Act of 2017, despite strident protests from the RBI, the Election Commission of India (ECI) and Opposition parties.
• The device of incorporating the amending Bills in the Finance Bill effectively short circuited the consideration of the legislative proposals by the Rajya Sabha and ensured their smooth passage.
• Months before the EBS was promulgated, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Common Cause filed a PIL to challenge the constitutionality of the amendments made in the Finance Act of 2017. The petition contended that these amendments infringed the citizen’s fundamental ‘Right to know’ under Article 19(1)(a), and were not saved by any of the permissible restrictions under Article 19(2).
• The petition held that the impugned amendments jeopardised the country’s autonomy, militated against transparency, incentivised corrupt practices by lifting the caps on corporate donations and allowing contributions by loss making and shell companies. Consequently, the nexus between politics and big business was rendered more opaque.
• The instrument would enable special interest groups, corporate lobbyists and foreign entities to secure a stranglehold on the electoral process and influence the country’s governance to public detriment.
• By relieving the political parties of the duty to disclose the particulars of their donors, the amendments eroded the ECI’s constitutional role and deprived citizens of vital information concerning electoral funding. Further, the recourse to a money bill to amend the relevant laws subverted the legislative scheme envisaged in the Constitution.

Bonds, the favoured mode

• Over time, electoral bonds have become the favoured mode of political donation. Bonds worth ₹13,791 crore have been sold in 27 tranches until July 2023. The ADR’s research has shown that electoral bonds accounted for 55.9% of the donations.
• As per ADR report, BJP got the lion’s share of 74.5% of electoral bonds redeemed until 2020-21. INC was a distant second, at 11%, followed by the Biju Janata Dal, the YSR Congress Party and the Trinamool Congress.
• Over 94% of the electoral bond sales are in the denomination of one crore rupees — a sum beyond the capacity of individual donors. Moreover, particulars of individuals contributing ₹20,000 and above are duly disclosed in party accounts.
• The expenditure on the last general election to the Lok Sabha has been estimated at between ₹55,000 to ₹60,000 crore. Most dealings of political parties continue to be in cash, but the receipts from electoral bonds enable them to meet their transactions with the formal economy, such as the costs of infrastructure expansion, equipment and publicity in the print, electronic and digital media. This gives them an enormous advantage over their rivals in influencing voter behaviour and electoral outcomes.
• Meanwhile, a general election to the Lok Sabha and 30 elections to State Assemblies have been held. In most of these contests, the political formations in power have enjoyed the advantage of augmented inflow of corporate contributions, thanks to the EBS that inherently favours the incumbent.
• Supreme Court (SC) of India did not take kindly to the petitioners’ repeated pleas to stay the impugned scheme, pending determination of the weighty issues raised in their petition. Solicitor General has argued that anonymity is central to the right to privacy of political donors, even though this fundamental right is not available to artificial legal persons.

Conclusion:

• Based on the Supreme Court’s stellar record in expanding the scope of the right to freedom of speech and expression and empowering the voter to make an informed choice, one may hope that the next round of elections will be contested on a reasonably level playing field.