General Studies Paper 2

CONTEXT

• Diabetes mellitus is a major risk factor that increases the incidence and severity of tuberculosis. Also tuberculosis co-infections adversely affect tuberculosis treatment outcomes in a patient. Among people with TB, the prevalence of DM was found to be 25.3% while 24.5% were pre-diabetic.

THE DOUBLE BURDEN

• Long before COVID-19 devastated us, India has been experiencing the double burden of two debilitating and severe epidemics – type 2 diabetes (a.k.a. diabetes mellitus, DM) and tuberculosis (TB).
• Currently, India has around 74.2 million people living with diabetes while TB affects 2.6 million Indians every year. Yet few know how deeply these diseases are interlinked.
• The evidence is clear: DM increases the risk of developing respiratory infections.
• We also know DM is a major risk factor that increases the incidence and severity of TB.
• Also, DM and TB co-infections adversely affect TB treatment outcomes in a patient.
• The worry is that among people with TB, the prevalence of DM was found to be 25.3% while 24.5% were pre-diabetic, in a 2012 study in tuberculosis units in Chennai.

DM INCREASES RISK OF TB

• DM not only increases the risk of TB, it also delays the sputum smear and culture conversion of an individual affected by both diseases.
• DM impairs cell-mediated immunity; uncontrolled DM affects the cytokine response and alters the defences in the alveolar macrophages.
• As people with diabetes have already compromised immune function, the risk of TB infection is high. They will also have a higher bacterial load.
• Individuals with TB and DM are more likely to have cavitary lesions in lower lung fields.
• A 2016 study revealed that the TB-DM group showed reduced lung functioning after TB treatment completion compared with the TB non-DM group.
• DM also increases the likelihood of unfavourable TB treatment outcomes, such as treatment failure, relapse/reinfection, and even death.
• So people with DM and TB suffer more severely and must fight harder to survive – illustrating the greater impact of the twin burden of DM and TB not just on patients but also on the healthcare system, their families, and their communities.

DM MAKES TB DIFFICULT TO CURE

• In individuals affected by both diseases, the lungs are severely affected.
• Persistent inflammation has also been seen in people with DM and TB – even after they have completed their TB treatment.
• Experts have reported that TB-related respiratory complications have been a common cause of death among people with TB and DM, but which wasn’t the case with people with TB only.
• DM directly affects the outcomes of those affected by both diseases. A higher fraction of unfavourable TB treatment outcomes occurred among people with low body-mass indices and with low glycated haemoglobin levels (better known as HbA1c) compared to people with low BMI and high HbA1c.
• This indicates that one’s nutritional status is important for favourable TB treatment outcomes.
• It also showed that the most common cause of deaths were respiratory complications (50%) followed by events related to cardiovascular disease (32%) in those affected with TB DM as compared to TB only (27% and 15%).

SUGGESTIONS

• For starters, we need to provide integrated and patient-centred (i.e. more individualised) care for people suffering from both TB and DM, as well as other comorbidities.
• It is time to turn to evidence from studies to establish mechanisms to coordinate DM and TB diagnosis and treatment, including bidirectional screening of TB and DM, patient education and support, and DM treatment in new TB cases.
• An important part of this is to improve the nutritional status of people with TB as well as DM, as this can help increase the chances of favourable TB-treatment outcomes.
• It is important to intensify high-quality care for TB, DM and other associated comorbidities as part of holistic treatment plans, and to strengthen individual programmes for TB and DM as a priority.
• We need to build and scale up resilient and integrated health systems.
• This will require increased commitment from stakeholders, develop stronger policy guidance as well as the mobilisation of additional resources to be able to support the development of such systems.
• Also we need to build on the TB-DM research literature, since better decision-making will require access to better data.

WAY FORWARD

• Studying the nature of interactions between the two diseases and developing appropriate response strategies must be a priority for health professionals, and will benefit patients suffering from both diseases as well as help make communities at large more aware of the impact of their interrelated impact.

General Studies Paper 3

CONTEXT

• Last week, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) sought inputs on whether it would be possible to have “selective” app bans instead of internet shutdowns, in order to reduce the impact that a wholesale communications lockdown can entail.

INTERNET SHUTDOWNS IN INDIA

• Internet shutdowns are imposed in States and districts across India from time to time in order to prevent the rapid spread of provocative content during communally charged periods.
• The Indian government considers Internet shutdowns a legitimate tool of maintaining law and order.
• Shutdowns can be prolonged, with access to education, work, banking, and information strained.
• As such, the government has sought to stay the course on imposing restrictions but not at the scale of a shutdown.
• In Jammu and Kashmir as well as in Manipur, authorities and courts have gradually loosened long-term restrictions by allowing wired internet connections and limited wireless internet access.

THE TRAI

• The approach suggested by TRAI would require telecom operators and messaging app firms like WhatsApp to cooperate with each other and stop access to services during a shutdown.
• The telecom regulator has sought inputs on licensing messaging apps in India, which may require firms to be subjected to surveillance and blocking requirements.
• In 2015 and 2018, the TRAI had held consultations on regulating messaging apps, a process that led to wide-ranging protections for net neutrality — the concept that all internet traffic should be treated equally.
• Telecom operators had then called for regulation because they argued that messaging apps provide the same service without going through the stringent security and surveillance regulations that telecom operators go through.
• Telcos were also wary of their revenues being undercut by online calls and messages, which were cheaper than calling and SMS rates then.
• However, from 2016 onwards, the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) and the TRAI have rejected this argument, holding that telcos cannot discriminate between categories of data used by consumers.
• Since then, regulating messaging apps has become more a matter of security and policing.
• Seeking a deterrent against communal misinformation and provocative content spreading online, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology added a requirement of ‘traceability’ to the IT Rules, 2021, wherein one can find the original sender of a forwarded message.
• However, civil society groups and tech firms said that such requirements were impossible without breaking end-to-end encryption.

VPNS

• It is possible to block websites and certain apps by ordering telecom operators to do so.
• However, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) make these blocks trivial to bypass.
• VPNs tunnel a user’s internet traffic through another server. While these tools are mostly used for completely innocuous purposes, the government has been showing a growing distrust of VPNs.
• This is because VPNs are often encrypted, leaving the government with little visibility into what goes on in users’ connections.
• VPN firms usually route data through servers located in another country, and frequently cycle the IP addresses these servers use to evade detection and blocking.
• Some VPN firms promise that they do not maintain logs of their customers’ usage.
• Since the government has not publicly stated what procedural safeguards it exercises when intercepting web traffic of users, these services are used by both privacy-conscious users and, the government argues, terrorists and cybercriminals.

CONCLUSION

• Internet rights activists say that blocking VPNs would be a damaging move for online privacy. VPNs help secure digital rights under the Constitution of India specially for journalists, whistle-blowers and activists. The encrypted nature of information transfer over VPNs allows them to not only secure confidential information but also to safeguard their own identity, thus protecting them from surveillance and censorship.

General Studies Paper 2

CONTEXT

• The relationship between brain development and low income is relatively well-established, but the role of anti-poverty policies in this relationship is not. A recent study, based on the brain scans of over 10,000 children aged 9-11, located in 17 U.S. states, filled this gap.

POVERTY’S EFFECT ON THE BRAIN

• In 2015, three studies reported that human children and young adults growing up in low-income families had lower cortical volume and did relatively poorly in tests for academic performance. The cortex is the outer layer of the brain.
• Together with the cortex, one of the 2015 studies focused on another area: the hippocampus and found that the volume of this deep-seated convoluted structure, widely regarded by scientists as the “seat for learning and memory”, correlated positively with a family’s socioeconomic status, but not parental income.
• Now, a study by researchers from Harvard University and Washington University, published in May 2023 in the journal Nature Communication, has demonstrated that children growing up in low-income families indeed risk a smaller hippocampus and showed that generous anti-poverty policies substantially lower this risk.
• The finding highlights how state-level public policies can potentially address the correlation between brain development and low income and how Children from low-income families might have a smaller hippocampus, which in turn might relate to later inequities in [their] physical and mental health outcomes.

THE STUDY

• The researchers found that the hippocampal volume was indeed larger for participants belonging to families with relatively higher income.
• Impaired hippocampal development has been associated with higher risk of psychopathologies, such as major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
• So the researchers also tested the relationship between family income and the incidence of internalising (e.g. depressive disorders, anxiety, etc.) and externalising psychopathologies (e.g. drug abuse, violent behaviour, etc.) in children.
• They found that family income was “negatively associated” with the incidence of these psychopathologies: higher the family income, lower the incidence of internalising and externalising psychopathologies in the children.
• So the study found that poverty could shape biological properties, like brain development, and highlighted the role governments and public policy could have in ameliorating the biological effects of poverty.

WELFARE CAN HELP!

• The brain is a complex and adaptable organ, and compensatory mechanisms can sometimes mitigate these effects. According to the new paper, more generous anti-poverty policies could amplify or reduce stressors associated with low income.
• That is, having access to more financial resources could shield families from experiencing some of the chronic stressors associated with low income that can influence hippocampal development.
• Finally, generous’ anti-poverty policies don’t just increase family income; they can also allow families to make decisions that lead to a decrease in wages but that also reduce stress, such as working fewer hours.

CONCLUSION

• The study also illustrated how investments in social safety net programs could lower the high cost of addressing mental health, educational, and economic challenges resulting from socioeconomic disparities in neurodevelopment tomorrow.

General Studies Paper 3

Introduction

• Every year, the entire country awaits the onset and evolution of monsoon with baited breath. Each year tends to be different, and this year has managed to produce a rather unique onset and evolution thus far. The onset this season was delayed by unforeseen interactions between typhoons and cyclones. Cyclone Biparjoy was born after the onset and lingered for longer than normal to delay the arrival of monsoon over Mumbai by nearly two weeks. For the first time in over half a century, the city saw monsoon arrive together with Delhi. The monsoon trough thus ended up with an exaggerated curvature over northwest India.

Monsoon Distribution

• The deficit due to the delayed onset has been all but wiped out but the distribution of rainfall remains as patchy as ever, with excess rainfall over the northern Western Ghats into northwest India and deficits extending in a horseshoe pattern from Uttar Pradesh into Odisha and back to the east into Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra. Extreme heat has also been reported in parts of Himachal Pradesh, even as some areas of the State received heavy rainfall.

Climate change and Monsoon

• The impact of climate change has always been of great interest, but it is worth remembering that everything today happens in a warmer world that is also more humid.
• With global warming, a warm and humid atmosphere acts like a steroid for the weather. Every weather event now has some contribution from global warming.
• At the same time, one must also pay close attention to weather patterns that emerge due to other factors.
• While the El Niño has been grabbing many headlines this year, it is not yet clear how much the current monsoon mayhem has had to do with the El Niño.
• Additionally, wildfires thus far this year have burned over three-times the normal area and have also emitted about three times as much carbon dioxide. This has also had a contribution to the warming.

Other Factors

• The Indian subcontinent is like a popcorn kettle that gets heated up as the Sun crosses over into the northern hemisphere in March.
• Rainfall is like the kernels of corn popping randomly around the kettle. That is, monsoon rainfall distribution always tends to be patchy.
• Excess rainfall over northwest India is consistent with the Arabian Sea having warmed by about 1.5 degrees Celsius since January.
• The instabilities in the atmosphere that drive convection are not strong enough to drive large-scale rainfall during the pre-monsoon season.
• Rainfall this pre-monsoon was above normal due to a combination of the warm Arabian Sea and an unusually high number of western disturbances.
• As a result, soils were left moister than normal, which in turn affected the evolution of the monsoon.
• However, the mystery is that, despite averaging rainfall over a month, a season or even multiple seasons, rainfall distribution remains uneven.
• Di uniform terrain and heterogeneous land-use patterns are the likely culprits.
• The Atlantic Ocean and the upper atmospheric circulation also tinker with the monsoon.
• The entire Atlantic Ocean has been warmer than normal since March. While the so-called Atlantic Niño, with a warm tropical Atlantic, generally tends to suppress monsoon rainfall, it is not clear what the impacts are when the entire Atlantic is as warm as it has been this year.
• The strongest winds that occur in the upper atmosphere can spontaneously break into clockwise and anticlockwise patterns, especially when they run into mountainous terrain, such as the Himalaya.
• Strong clockwise winds, with air flowing out from the centre, in the upper atmosphere demand an anticlockwise circulation near the surface, in order to feed the upper-level outflow. Such a convergence near the surface can drive excess rainfall.
• Finally, the warming over the Himalaya has not been uniform either. Some parts of the mountain chain are amplifying global warming, leading to rapid local warming.
• Irregular weather patterns during the monsoon superpose on these local features as a result of the winds expanding or compressing as they race up and down the narrow valleys.
• The results can be cloudbursts, heavy rains or even heatwaves — depending on the local flow patterns.

Conclusion

• The conclusion is that the Indian subcontinent is a veritable popcorn kettle that can throw up many surprises.
• Everything is not directly attributable to global warming — even as every little weather event is happening in a warmer and wetter world.
• Only improved forecasts with sufficient granularity in space and time can reduce the element of surprise resulting from these weather monsters

General Studies Paper 1

Context

• The passage of World Population Day (July 11) is also a time to look at how India’s demographic journey has changed the lives of its citizens, particularly its women.

The Statistics

• India’s population grew from about 340 million at Independence to 1.4 billion.
• In 1941, male life expectancy was about 56 years; only 50% of boys survived to age 28.
• Today, life expectancy for men is 69 years, and nearly 50% live to see the ripe old age of 75.
• This rapid decline in mortality took parents by surprise, who no longer needed to have four children to ensure that at least two would survive, causing population growth until fertility decline caught up with the mortality decline, and the Total Fertility Rate fell from 5.7 in 1950 to 2.1 in 2019.
• Women’s childhood, adulthood, and old age have been transformed over the course of demographic transition, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively.

Change for Indian women

• As families began having fewer children, ensuring at least one son became more difficult.
• With four children, the chance of not having a son was barely 6%, but with two children, it grew to 25%.
• Social norms and patrilocal kinship patterns combined with lack of financial security reinforce a preference for sons.
• The India Human Development Survey (IHDS) found that 85% of women respondents expected to rely on their sons for old age support, while only 11% expected support from their daughters.
• Hence, parents who want to ensure that they have at least one son among their one or two child family, resorted to sex-selective abortion, and, in some cases, the neglect of sick daughters.
• Consequently, the number of girls per 100 boys, ages under five dropped from 96 to 91 between 1950 and 2019.
• With a fertility decline, active mothering occupies a smaller proportion of women’s lives, creating space for education and employment.
• While women’s educational attainment increased, with over 70% of girls enrolling in secondary education, early marriage and childbearing remain the predominant forces defining women’s lives.
• Early motherhood, perhaps, explains why lower fertility does not translate into higher labour force participation for women.
• Women need to establish secure connections to the labour market and gain work experience if they are to get skilled jobs.
• By the time peak childcare demands end, they have missed the window for occupations that require specific skills; only unskilled work is open to them.

Affect women older ages

• Demographic shifts also affect women’s lives at older ages.
• With rising life expectancy, the proportion of the female population aged 65 and above increased from 5% to 11% between 1950 and 2022, and is projected to reach 21% by 2050.
• While the proportion of older men will also increase, aging for women has unique implications.
• Women generally marry men who are older and are more likely to outlive their husbands. The 2011 Census shows that while only 18% of men above age 65 are widowed, about 55% of the women are widowed.
• For widowed women, the lack of access to savings and property results in dependence on children, mainly sons, bringing the vicious cycle of son preference to full circle.

Harnessing gender dividend

• Changing patriarchal norms may take a long time. Meanwhile, enhancing women’s access to employment and assets will reduce their reliance on sons and could break the vicious cycle of gendered disadvantage, stretching from childhood to old age.
• However, early marriage and childbearing remain central to Indian women’s lives. Hence, any efforts at improving women’s labour force participation must be accompanied by access to safe and affordable childcare.
• A World Bank evaluation based on a randomised controlled trial in Madhya Pradesh found that the expansion of Anganwadis to include a crèche led to an increase in the work participation of mothers.

Way forward

• The best solution would be to make staffing crèche an acceptable form of work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS).
• The burgeoning self-help group movement can be harnessed to set up neighbourhood child-care centres in urban and rural areas.
• Obtaining the much hoped for demographic dividend cannot be done without fully harnessing the gender dividend.
• Improving access to childcare is an important component of achieving this.

General Studies Paper 2

Context

• Wastewater surveillance for known or new health threats offers many benefits for enhancing public health efforts.

A public health tool revisited

• This hypothetical scenario is now a tangible reality. A recently published study in The Lancet Global Health reiterated the promise of using wastewater for public health surveillance.
• This strategy, originally proposed more than 80 years ago to monitor the spread of poliovirus within communities, played a role in confirming India’s victory over poliovirus.
• It gained fresh relevance during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it was identified as an approach for tracking the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

Wastewater surveillance

• Wastewater surveillance for known or new health threats offers many benefits for enhancing public health efforts.
• It is a cost-effective approach that does not rely on invasive samples from individuals with clinical symptoms.
• While our public health surveillance system has improved in recent years, it still faces many implementation challenges.
• For instance, according to a recent report by Niti Aayog, the system grapples with issues like uneven coverage and siloed disease-specific efforts.
• Incorporating wastewater surveillance will not fix these issues, but it could help reduce the reliance on any one source of data.
• In practical terms, wastewater surveillance in India could involve systematic sampling and analysis of samples from varied sources such as wastewater ponds in rural areas and centralised sewage systems in urban localities.
• These samples would undergo testing at designated laboratories to identify markers of disease-causing agents, such as genetic fragments of bacteria or viruses.
• These data could be compiled together with other source of health data to provide real-time insights into community-level disease patterns, sometimes earlier than clinical data.
• The integration of wastewater surveillance with existing surveillance mechanisms could help amplify India’s epidemiological capabilities and could strengthen the capacity to detect diseases at an early stage, including in areas where access to healthcare facilities and diagnostic testing might be limited.
• Additionally, the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, which aims to create a seamless online platform for healthcare services, offers an opportunity for the integration of wastewater surveillance.
• Successful integration will rely on public health professionals trained not only in traditional epidemiological methods, but also in the management and interpretation of data derived from wastewater surveillance.

Data sharing

• The promise of wastewater surveillance hinges on data sharing.
• This is not just a domestic issue, but also an international consideration.
• It is crucial to cultivate an environment of accessibility and cooperative strategies among appropriate agencies, within and beyond borders.
• Internally, providing access to wastewater surveillance data to health departments at all levels of government can amplify our capabilities for disease monitoring and response.
• Sharing wastewater surveillance data with global health agencies could foster collaborative efforts in disease tracking and mitigation.
• This can be a key element in building a robust global health infrastructure capable of rapidly responding to public health threats.

Political backing and funding

• It is encouraging that India has already championed public health surveillance and mobilised resources accordingly.
• Current discussions have noted the importance of innovation and implementation.
• The integration of wastewater surveillance is fully aligned with Niti Aayog’s current vision.
• Other innovative forms of disease surveillance include social media surveillance and occupational health surveillance.

Way forward

• India’s leadership at international platforms like the G20 could serve as an opportunity to elevate the significance of innovative approaches to disease surveillance.
• With the world’s attention focused on global health security in the wake of recent pandemics, these forums provide an opportunity to advocate for enhanced public health surveillance that integrates wastewater sampling as an essential component of health infrastructure.
• Through strategic collaborations and proactive leadership, India can lead the way in integrated public health surveillance, offering a model that is alert, predictive, responsive, and robust.

General Studies Paper 2

Context

• The unwillingness of many leading countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to stand with NATO over the war in Ukraine has brought to the fore once again the term “Global South.”

Global South

• The term “Global South” is not geographical. Rather, its usage denotes a mix of political, geopolitical and economic commonalities between nations.
• It refers to various countries around the world that are sometimes described as ‘developing’, ‘less developed’ or ‘underdeveloped’.
• Many of these countries — although by no means all — are in the Southern Hemisphere, largely in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
• In general, they are poorer, have higher levels of income inequality and suffer lower life expectancy and harsher living conditions than countries in the “Global North” — that is, richer nations that are located mostly in North America and Europe, with some additions in Oceania and elsewhere.

Going beyond the ‘Third World’

• The term Global South appears to have been first used in 1969 by political activist Carl Oglesby.
• But it was only after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union — which marked the end of the so-called “Second World” — that the term gained momentum.
• Until then, the more common term for developing nations — countries that had yet to industrialise fully — was ‘Third World’.
• The term ‘First World’ referred to the advanced capitalist nations; the ‘Second World’, to the socialist nations led by the Soviet Union; and the ‘Third World’, to developing nations, many at the time still under the colonial yoke.
• Eventually ‘Third World’ became a synonym for banana republics ruled by tinpot dictators — a caricature spread by Western media.
• The fall of the Soviet Union — and with it the end of the so-called Second World — gave a convenient pretext for the term ‘Third World’ to disappear, too.
• Meanwhile ‘developed’, ‘developing’ and ‘underdeveloped’ also faced criticism for holding up Western countries as the ideal, while portraying those outside that club as backwards.
• Increasingly the term that was being used to replace them was the more neutral-sounding “Global South.”

Geopolitical, not geographical

• The term ‘Global South’ is not geographical. In fact, the Global South’s two largest countries — China and India — lie entirely in the Northern Hemisphere.
• Rather, its usage denotes a mix of political, geopolitical and economic commonalities between nations.
• Countries in the Global South were mostly at the receiving end of imperialism and colonial rule, with African countries as perhaps the most visible example of this.
• It gives them a very different outlook on what dependency theorists have described as the relationship between the centre and periphery in the world political economy — or, to put it in simple terms, the relationship between “the West and the rest.”
• By 2030 it is projected that three of the four largest economies will be from the Global South — with the order being China, India, the U.S. and Indonesia.
• Already the GDP in terms of purchasing power of the the Global South-dominated BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — surpasses that of the Global North’s G-7 club. And there are now more billionaires in Beijing than in New York City.

Conclusion

• Countries in the Global South are increasingly asserting themselves on the global scene — be it China’s brokering of Iran and Saudi Arabia’s rapprochement or Brazil’s attempt to push a peace plan to end the war in Ukraine.
• One thing is for sure: the Global South is flexing political and economic muscles that the ‘developing countries’ and the ‘Third World’ never had.

General Studies Paper 3

CONTEXT

• Multiple outages plagued the platform while billionaire owner Elon Musk cited data scraping by other organisations as his reason for limiting the number of tweets both paying and non-paying accounts could view every day. In response to complaints,

THE THREADS

• Launched by Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp-parent Meta on July 5, Threads is a text-based public conversation app that was built by the team behind the photo-sharing app Instagram.
• Both iOS and Android users in over 100 countries could access the app this week.

WORKING

• Threads is part of a user’s Instagram account.
• Threads users will need to sign up through Instagram, and can cross over with their original username and the accounts they were following on Instagram. A number of settings such as blocking, restricting users, and hiding words are synced between the two platforms.
• However, if a user decides they don’t like Threads, they can only deactivate the account.
• Deleting Threads would mean deleting their Instagram account as well.
• There are also plans to let users choose to see only the accounts they follow. There is also no way to privately message others on Threads yet.
• According to Google’s Play Store, Threads can collect data such as a user’s location, their personal information, financial information, health and fitness, messages, photos and videos, files and documents, calendar events, and more.

SIMILARITY BETWEEN THREADS AND TWITTER

• Threads is similar to Twitter in terms of its user interface and basic features.
• Threads users can make posts and comment in response. They can also heart posts, repost and quote them, or share posts on Instagram, Twitter, and other platforms.
• News organisations and other professionals often rely on Twitter for instant updates and official statements or comments.
• However, Threads does not yet support the keyword searches which are necessary for these users. Threads also does not display trends in the way Twitter does.
• Threads does not have advertisements yet. It remains to be seen how the platform will evolve in response to user and advertiser demands.

CONCERNS

• Meta’s Threads app, designed to provide a platform for discussions and community engagement, is currently not being launched in the EU.
• The company’s decision stems from regulatory concerns regarding compliance with the DMA, a framework introduced to address the dominance of large digital platforms and ensure fair competition within the digital market.

UNDERSTANDING THE DIGITAL MARKETS ACT

• It applies to the ‘gatekeepers’ in the online space. These companies will have to comply with the new rules.
• The Digital Markets Act (DMA) entered into force in the European Union (EU) on November 1 2022.
• It introduces quantitative thresholds and penal provisions to keep a check on large digital platforms.
• It opens up possibilities of an equal market – based on the merits of their products and services.
• As for consumers it ensures access to a wider array of options as well as a lower price of services by enforcing competition and de-exclusivities.
• The Act designates companies with sizeable dominance in any of the ‘core platform services’ as ‘gatekeepers’.
• These services include app stores, online search engines, social networking services, certain messaging services, video sharing platform services, virtual assistants, web browsers, cloud computing services, operating systems, online marketplaces and advertising services.

CONCLUSION

• With the new evolving apps it is not only for the individuals but even for the enterprises – social media policies must be used and prepared, and third-party experts must be hired to monitor their employees’ online activities.
• When somebody has access to an individual’s social media accounts, the potential for abuse and invasion of privacy is simply too high.
• The use of social media can reveal information that may lead to privacy violations if not properly managed by the user which could have a devastating impact for the employer.

General Studies Paper 3

CONTEXT

• Tropical areas lost 4.1 million hectares of forest cover – equivalent to losing an area of 11 football fields per minute – in 2022, new research quoted by the World Resources Institute’s (WRI) Global Forest Watch has said.

THE PRIMARY FORESTS

• Primary forests are mature, natural forests that have remained undisturbed in recent history.
• They often store more carbon than other forests and are rich sources of biodiversity.
• Primary forest loss is almost irreversible in nature: even if the green cover regrows, a secondary forest is unlikely to match the extent of biodiversity and carbon sequestering capabilities of a primary forest.
• Rainforests are also called “Primary Forests” thanks to their pristine untouched vegetation because unaffected by any human activity.
• As the population of the country grows, there is more demand for food, which in turn is leading to an expansion of area under agriculture and encroachment of land hosting primary forests.
• Primary forests are burned for short-term cultivation and then left fallow for regeneration of soil nutrients.

DISTRIBUTION

• Tropical rain forests can be found in Asia, Australia, Africa, South America, Central America, Mexico, and several Pacific Islands, all of which are around 28 degrees north or south of the equator.
• They cover about 6-7 percent of the earth’s surface and are home to half of the planet’s biodiversity.
• Brazil (South America), the Democratic Republic of Congo (Africa), and Indonesia are home to the world’s largest rainforests.
• South America’s Amazon rainforest is the world’s largest, occupying an area almost two-thirds the size of the continental United States.

GLOBAL FOREST WATCH FINDINGS

• According to Global Forest Watch, India lost 43.9 thousand hectares of humid primary forest between 2021 and 2022, which accounts for 17% of the country’s total tree cover loss in the period.
• The total global tree cover loss in 2022 declined by 10%. This includes primary, secondary, and planted forests.
• This decrease, according to Global Forest Watch, is a direct result of a decrease in fire-related forest losses which decreased 28% from 2021. Non-fire losses in 2022 increased by slightly less than 1%.
• Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo are the two countries with the most tropical forest cover, and both registered losses of this resource in 2022.

SUGGESTIONS

• We need to reduce global deforestation by at least 10% every year to meet the 2030 target. In 2022, although the global deforestation rate was 3.1% lower than the baseline from 2018-2020. This puts the world off track to meet the 2030 goal.
• To meet the target of restoring 350 mha of forests globally by 2030, the world needs to increase tree cover by 22 mha per year, between 2021 and 2030.
• Reducing deforestation will strengthen the resilience of the Amazon rainforest and safeguard its threatened areas.
• The Brazilian government’s current administration is in the spotlight, and it is being urged to implement a zero-deforestation policy to change the situation.
• Constructing knowledge about the role of trees in the Amazon ecosystem and creating awareness among students and youths of the importance of trees to the Amazon ecosystem.
• To protect them, it is also necessary to limit global greenhouse gas emissions.
• Corporates are required to follow corporate responsibility guidelines which bans them from taking part in endeavours that harm Amazon.

CONCLUSION

• The solution of saving Tropical forests must be based on what is feasible, not overly idealistic, and depends on developing a conservation approach built on the principle of sustainable use and development of rainforests.

General Studies Paper 3

CONTEXT

• Recently, India is aiming to make the rupee a global currency.
• In order to internationalisation of the rupee, the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) inter-departmental group (IDG) said that India remaining one of the fastest-growing countries and showing remarkable resilience in the face of major headwinds and the rupee has the potential to become an internationalised currency.
• And These recommendations are significant, in light of the economic sanctions imposed by the US on Russia for invading Ukraine and the growing clamour for finding an alternative to the US dollar for international transactions.

WHAT DOES INTERNATIONALISATION OF THE RUPEE MEAN?

• Internationalisation is a process that involves increasing the use of the rupee in cross-border transactions.
• It involves promoting the rupee for import and export trade and then other current account transactions, followed by its use in capital account transactions. These are transactions between residents in India and non-residents.
• The internationalisation of the currency, which is closely interlinked with the nation’s economic progress, requires further opening up of the currency settlement and a strong swap and forex market.
• More importantly, it will require full convertibility of the currency on the capital account and cross-border transfer of funds without any restrictions. But currently. India has allowed only full convertibility on the current account as of now.
• Currently, the US dollar, the Euro, the Japanese yen and the pound sterling are the leading reserve currencies in the world. China’s efforts to make its currency renminbi has met with only limited success so far.

THE RELEVANCE OF INTERNALISATION OF RUPEE

• Currently, the US dollar is said to enjoy an ‘Exorbitant Privilege’, which refers to the innumerable benefits that accrue to the US on account of all other countries of the world are using US dollar as their currency in most of their international transactions, among global currencies.
• The dollar’s position is supported by a range of factors, including the size of the US economy, the reach of its trade and financial networks, the depth and liquidity of US financial markets, and a history of macroeconomic stability and currency convertibility.
• Dollar dominance has also benefited from the lack of viable alternatives.
• According to the RBI’s working group, the obvious challenger to the US dollar dominance is the Chinese Renminbi.
• However, its ability to rival the US dollar will depend on future policies in both the US and China and the ability of the Chinese economy and its financial system to demonstrate the same long-term resilience, integrity, transparency, openness and stability, which are characteristics of the US economy.
• In the wake of the sanctions imposed on the Russian government, its public sector and even individuals linked to the government, many countries have become cautious of the price they may have to pay if they are subjected to similar sanctions by the Western government
• They are making effort to reduce their reliance on the US dollar and its financial markets as well as their dependence on dominant international payment mechanisms based on the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) messaging system.
• Even the Asian crisis of 1997-1998 underscored the necessity of emerging market economies having strong foreign exchange reserves to manage external shocks, in an increasingly polarised world, it no longer seems a sufficient defence against the threat of economic sanctions.

ADVANTAGES OF INTERNATIONALISATION OF THE RUPEE

• The RBI-appointed group feels that it is imperative for India to continue exploring alternatives to both the USD and the Euro.
• The use of the rupee in cross-border transactions mitigates currency risk for Indian businesses.
• Therefore, Protection from currency volatility not only reduces the cost of doing business but also enables better growth of business, improving the chances for Indian businesses to grow globally.
• While reserves help manage exchange rate volatility and project external stability, they impose a cost on the economy.
• Internationalisation of the rupee reduces the need for holding foreign exchange reserves. Reducing dependence on foreign currency will make India less vulnerable to external shocks.
• As the use of the rupee becomes significant, the bargaining power of Indian businesses would improve, adding weight to the Indian economy and enhancing India’s global stature and respect.

The major recommendation made by the working group for internalisation of rupee: (Way forward)

• The working group, headed by RBI Executive Director Radha Shyam Ratho, has recommended a slew of short to long term measures to accelerate the pace of internationalisation of the rupee.
• For the short term, the group has suggested adoption of a standardised approach for examining the proposals on bilateral and multilateral trade arrangements for invoicing, settlement and payment in the rupee and local currencies, encouraging the opening of the rupee accounts for non-residents both in India and outside India and integrating Indian payment systems with other countries for cross-border transactions.
• Strengthening the financial market by fostering a global 24×5 rupee market and recalibration of the FPI (foreign portfolio investor) regime.
• Over the next two to five years, the group has recommended a review of taxes on masala (rupee-denominated bonds issued outside India by Indian entities) bonds, international use of Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) for cross-border trade transactions and inclusion of Indian Government Bonds in global bond indices.
• For the long term, the group has recommended that efforts should be made for the inclusion of the rupee in IMF’s (International Monetary Fund) SDR (special drawing rights).
• The SDR is an international reserve asset created by the IMF to supplement the official reserves of its member countries. The value of the SDR is based on a basket of five currencies ; the U.S. dollar, the euro, the Chinese renminbi, the Japanese yen, and the British pound sterling.

CONCLUSION

• Therefore, Internationalisation of Indian rupee will help in mitigates currency risk for Indian businessmen and will also provide protection from currency volatility which will not only reduces the cost of doing business but also enables better growth of business, improving the chances for Indian businesses to grow globally.
• However, there is need for delicate balance to trade off rupee convertibility for exchange rate stability.