Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context

• The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) presented a policy proposal named “Draft India Data Accessibility & Use Policy, 2022” on February 21, 2022, which was endorsed by the Cabinet. The initiative intends to “fundamentally change India’s ability to exploit public sector data,” according to the government.
• Proposals contained in the Draft Data Accessibility Policy have come under scrutiny since they would allow the government to licence and sell publicly available data to the commercial sector, which would be a first in the world.

Why has the Draft Data Accessibility Policy been proposed?

• It is expected that the creation of citizen data would expand rapidly over the next decade, becoming the cornerstone of India’s $5 trillion-dollar digital economy in the long run. It is primarily commercial in nature, which is consistent with the rationale of the National Economic Survey, 2019, which at Chapter 4 noted the commercial benefits of government data exploitation, notably, “The private sector may be granted access to select databases for commercial use.,” and “The private sector may be granted access to select databases for commercial use.” As a result, it is only reasonable to tax the private sector for the use of this data, given that it has the potential to derive enormous benefits from it.” Its goal is to maximise the economic value of the data that has been created.
• There is also a lack of openness, as seen by the absence of a consultation document or the revelation of the list of stakeholders who have been consulted, which according to a public notification by MEITY includes “academics, industry, and the government.”

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context

• After a fast tracked three month negotiation between India and UAE, both countries on February 18 signed an FTA pact, during a virtual summit.
• India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) inked a trade pact, Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) during a virtual summit led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
• India has been part of global trade organisations like the WTO but this latest trade pact is unique and has broader implications.

Details of pact

• The Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement is a bilateral trade pact that will cover over a period of time 90% of India’s exports.
  • This will include leather, processed agriculture and dairy products, handicrafts, gems and jewellery, furniture, pharmaceuticals, food and beverages, engineering products and nearly the entire spectrum of items produced by the Indian economy.
  • Apart from the goods sector, it will also include the services sector. Indian officials said that they expect the services sector to boom by $15 billion in the coming five years.
• The deal has strong anti-dumping measures integrated into it which will prevent any country from dumping its products into the Indian market by using the route of the UAE.
• The document has very strong rules of origin clauses that will disallow any country to export goods to India taking advantage of relaxed tariff on the Indian side.
  • India wants 40% value addition into a product from a third country before it could be exported to India through UAE.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Context

• Non fungible tokens (NFTs) have, thanks to their ability to assign value to everything from art to music to a simple selfie, taken the world by storm.
• The sales of NFTs surged $25 billion in 2021 as the crypto asset exploded in popularity, fuelled by the rising interest of celebrities and tech evangelists, according to market data tracker DappRadar data analytics.

What are NFTs?

• Anything that can be converted into a digital form can be an NFT. Everything from your drawings, photos, videos, GIF, music, in-game items, selfies, and even a tweet can be turned into an NFT, which can then be traded online using cryptocurrency.
• NFTs are unique from other digital forms as they are backed by Blockchain technology.
  • Blockchain is a distributed ledger where all transactions are recorded. All the transactions are transparent and can be seen by anyone and cannot be changed or modified once recorded.
• NFTs are gaining massive popularity now because they are becoming an increasingly popular way to showcase and sell your digital artwork.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Context

• The recent publication of The Lancet’s global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance — an elaborate and studied estimate validated by using counterfactual analysis for the first time — comes at a time when the world, weary with battling COVID-19, seems to have lost steam to mount a robust AMR policy.
• But the report makes it clear that no slacking can be allowed on this front any longer; it estimated that 4.95 million deaths were associated with bacterial AMR in 2019 alone.
• It also identified the pathogens and pathogen-drug combinations that cause such resistance.

Bacterial Antimicrobial Resistance

• Bacterial AMR occurs when the drugs used to treat infections become less effective, as a result of the pathogens becoming resistant to the drugs.
• This happens due to
  • indiscriminate use of antibiotics,
  • availability of antibiotics over the counter,
  • poor hygiene and sanitation,
  • antimicrobial use in the farming and poultry industry,
  • lack of vaccines and newer antibiotics, and
  • poor infection control practices in hospitals.
• While data on exact number of deaths might not have been available, there was no doubt about the alarming nature of associated mortality and morbidity. And yet, few nations have a policy to counter this pernicious problem.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context

• The Supreme Court has recently asked the Punjab and Haryana High Court to decide within four weeks the validity of the Haryana law mandating 75% reservation for local candidates in private sector jobs that pay up to ₹30,000 a month.
• The apex court set aside an interim stay order granted by the High Court, because the stay was granted without assigning reasons.
  • It is a settled principle that legislation cannot be stayed unless there is a preliminary finding that it is unconstitutional or suffers from any glaring illegality.
• Other states with similar bills-Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand have also introduced such laws, while the ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu had promised 75% reservation in its election manifesto for last year’s Assembly polls.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Context

• The Centre on recently notified the green hydrogen and green ammonia policy aimed at boosting the domestic production of green hydrogen to 5 million tonnes by 2030and making India an export hub for the clean fuel.

Types of hydrogen

• Green hydrogen is hydrogen gas produced through electrolysis of water — an energy intensive process for splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen— using renewable power to achieve this.

• Brown hydrogen is produced using coal where the emissions are released to the air.
• Grey hydrogen is produced from natural gas where the associated emissions are released to the air.
• Blue hydrogen is produced from natural gas, where the emissions are captured using carbon capture and storage.

Policy set to boost domestic production of green hydrogen

• The new policy offers 25 years of free power transmission for any new renewable energy plants set up to supply power for green hydrogen production before July 2025.
  • This means that a green hydrogen producer will be able to set up a solar power plant in Rajasthan to supply renewable energy to a green hydrogen plant in Assam and would not be required to pay any inter-state transmission charges.
  • The move is likely going to make it more economical for key users of hydrogen and ammonia such as the oil refining, fertiliser and steel sectors to produce green hydrogen for their own use. These sectors currently use grey hydrogen or grey ammonia produced using natural gas or naphtha.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context

There is an imbalance now which the Supreme Court of India needs to address by empowering High Courts again

• India is a union of States. The Supreme Court of India has held that the federalist nature of our country is part and parcel of the basic structure of the Constitution.
• Much has been written about the federal structure in relation to the legislature and the executive. There is a need to examine the Indian judiciary and the need to strengthen the federal nature of our judiciary.

Integrated system

• Federalism is a midpoint between unitarism which has a supreme centre, to which the States are subordinate, and confederalism wherein the States are supreme, and are merely coordinated by a weak centre.
• An integral requirement of a federal state is that there be a robust federal judicial system which interprets this constitution, and therefore adjudicates upon the rights of the federal units and the central unit, and between the citizen and these units.
• The federal judicial system comprises the Supreme Court and the High Court in the sense that it is only these two courts which can adjudicate the above rights.
• The Supreme Court was created under the Constitution, and is a relatively new court. On the other hand, some of the High Courts in our country have been in existence since the 1860s (and some existed even before that, in their earlier avatars as supreme courts of the Presidencies).

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Context

• The date, February 15, 2021 will be regarded as a watershed moment when new guidelines took effect to completely de-regulate the geospatial sector for Indians.
• As we celebrate the first anniversary of this moment, it is time to look back and assess its impact and identify the bottlenecks so that the full potential of the geospatial sector can be realised.

Not much of a percolation

• India has a robust ecosystem in geospatial, with the Survey of India (SoI), the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), remote sensing application centres (RSAC)s, and the National Informatics Centre (NIC) in particular, and all ministries and departments, in general, using geospatial technology.
• However, the full benefits have yet to percolate to the public; neither is there much contribution to the nation’s GDP.

New interest and developments

• Since the declaration of the guidelines, there has been a lot of hype and hoopla about the geospatial sector.
• The media too published many articles projecting the market to some ₹1 lakh-crore by the year 2029 with 13% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR). Consequently, the geospatial sector, is seeing new interest.
• The last year has also witnessed some activity on the ground. The most noticeable was the over subscription of the initial public offering of MapmyIndia.
• The other noticeable activity was the launching of a city mapping programme by Genesys International in India.
• Such an aggressive stance by investors for geospatial was not seen in the earlier regime; it is certain that the new guidelines have played a role. Today, there is a positive mood in the private industry, which is no more apprehensive and conservative like it was in previous years.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Context

• The amendments proposed to Rule 6(1) of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) (Cadre) Rules of 1954, which seek to empower the Central government to unilaterally order the Central deputation of IAS officers without the consent of the State governments or the officers concerned, have provoked controversy.
• The Centre has justified them on the ground that the States are not meeting their Central Deputation Reserve (CDR) obligations.
  • As a result, Centre is suffering from an acute shortage of mid-level IAS officers, especially Deputy Secretaries and Directors.
• However all the States, including the BJP-ruled ones, not meeting CDR obligations indicates that their reluctance to forward names to the Centre is not the real problem.
• There can be simpler, more effective and less contentious solutions to the shortage than the proposed amendments.

In fact, once the root causes of the shortage are identified, the solutions suggest themselves.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Context

• At a time when India is poised to breach the annual $400-billion target for exports, the move to change laws governing the Special Economic Zones Act comes as a big boost for the sector.
• This transformative announcementwill enable states to become partners in the Development of Enterprise and Service Hubs.
• As the finance minister observed, the move would enable all large industrial enclaves to optimally utilise the available infrastructure, thereby pushing up competitiveness of exports.

Current scenario

• In the April-December 2021 period, exports from SEZs increased by 25% to $93 billion; these were $102.3 billion in 2020-21.
• About 270 SEZs are currently operational, though many more have been notified.