Context: Pandemic has been ravaging the economies across the globe but digital services have escaped the onslaught and are thriving. 
For India, this could be an opportunity. This article highlights the importance of the sector and how some proposed measures could have an adverse impact on the sector.
Background
Pandemic crisis:

• The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in drastic drops in economic growth rates globally and the competition for foreign investment is intensifying, spurred on by national campaigns to shift supply chains.
• Foreign direct investment (FDI) is falling. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, in its latest World Investment Report, has projected that FDI to developing Asian economies could drop by as much as 45%.

Key Points

Why digital services would beat this trend

• Digital services have become critical to every 21st century economy.
• Digital services are filling gaps when national or global emergencies interrupt more traditional modes of commerce.
• It enables access to and delivery of a wide array of products across multiple sectors.

How it matters for India

• India offers undeniable potential for innovative homegrown start-ups.
• India has a huge and increasingly digitised population.
• Indian government policies will be key determinants in how quickly and at what level the economy attracts new investment.
• Fostering innovation, and expanding its exporting prowess will also matter.

Pending Measures
Currently, there are three pending reform measures under consideration that are likely to affect India’s growth trajectory in digital services for years to come — the Personal Data Protection Bill (PDPB), the e-commerce policy, and the Information Technology Act Amendments.
The policy would have to delicately balance the following aspects:

• Protecting the domestic market for domestic companies while encouraging FDI into India.
• Prioritising government access to data while promoting data privacy.
• It should promote innovation through increased competition and create an environment that is friendly towards start-ups.

Issues with these measures

• These regulatory reforms seem to emphasise a focus on protecting the domestic market for domestic companies.
• It also prioritises government access to data.
• It may be difficult to reconcile these approaches with India’s strong interest in i) promoting data privacy ii) protecting its democratic institutions iii) encouraging FDI and India’s position as a global leader in information technology.

India-US trade relationship issue

• The India-U.S. trade relationship is uncertain.
• The bilateral relationship is an important factor for greater trade and investment in digital services.
• India and the U.S. are yet to conclude negotiation on a bilateral trade agreement that could address some digital services issues.
• The U.S. just initiated a “Section 301” review.
• The review seeks whether digital services taxes in 10 countries constitute “unfair” trade measures, including India’s equalisation levy.

Road Ahead'

• Indian government policies will be key determinants to attract new investment, foster Indian innovation, and expand its exporting prowess and cement India’s position as a global leader in information technology.
• Post-COVID-19 international cooperation and approaches to good governance in the digital sphere will be top-priority initiatives. The steps India takes now could well establish itself as a true global leader.

Context: Pandemic has made it necessary to digitise procedures and lower human intervention to facilitate trade across borders. Recognizing digitisation of procedures and lower human intervention as the two major pillars that drive trade across borders, India has embarked on multiple reforms.
Steps taken by government to digitise cross border trading

• Post India’s ratification of the Trade Facilitation Agreement of the World Trade Organization in April 2016, following reforms focused on infrastructural upgradation, digitisation and automation.

Direct Port Entry and Direct Port Delivery
Radio Frequency Identification system and Single Window Interface

• The Port Community System: It is aimed at seamlessly integrating all maritime trade-related stakeholders on a single platform.
• e-SANCHIT (e-Storage and computerised handling of indirect tax documents): Aimed at reducing human intervention.Pandemic effect:

India’s exports in April 2020 have contracted by 60% year-on-year.

• There has been a drastic drop in the cargo handled by the Jawaharlal Nehru Port in April 2020 as compared to April 2019 which is indicative of the drop in India’s trade.
• The slump in international trade due to the pandemic is understandable. As countries slowly emerge out of this, new demand and supply chains will form, which will be located in countries that re-orient their existing trade structures.
• The significance of a more digitised trading environment, with minimal manual touchpoints, will increase.
• With the current crisis, there will be the demand for a greater leap in trade facilitation measures to expedite the movement, release and clearance of goods.

Challenges

• While different interventions of the government have positively developed the logistics sector, there are still some gaps that need to be bridged.
• Some of the delays in moving to a paperless trade ecosystem can be attributed to gaps in the effective implementation of digital platforms. The shortcomings in the functionality of the digital system and technical glitches result in limited use of the system.
• The lack of connectivity/message exchanges between different stakeholders’ systems results in delayed cargo clearance.
• The lack of awareness, acceptability and adaptability of new initiatives among the users is a concern, due to issues with respect to training and capacity building amongst the users, restricting the optimal utilisation of digital platforms.
• There is also the issue of standardisation and coordination of processes across ports.

Suggestion

• The present crisis presents an opportunity to develop new systems and enhance existing platforms.
• Measures to facilitate and expedite the clearance process to make it more automated, online and paperless should be promoted.
• There is a need to further augment the digital infrastructure in the trade ecosystem.
• Enhanced integration of systems and coordination between the different stakeholders with the sharing of input data between them on a real-time basis should be promoted.
• Promoting the use of a multi-stakeholder single platform like the Port Community System can streamline EXIM procedures.
• These efforts will be instrumental towards improving India’s trading ecosystem and achieving the desired target of Ease of Doing Business (ranking under 50). The more digitised our trade facilitation infrastructure, the more immune we will be to future disruptions.

Context: According to the statistics of CMIE rural unemployment rate in the last week of June inched up from 7.26 per cent in the previous week, urban unemployment rate eased from 11.19 per cent.
Key Points

• The urban unemployment rate continued to remain in double-digits at 10.69 per cent and the rural unemployment rate was recorded at 7.62 per cent.
• While the rural unemployment rate in the last week of June was 7.26 per cent and the urban unemployment rate was  11.19 per cent. 
• The first week of June had seen the unemployment rate at 17.51 per cent for the country, with the rural unemployment rate at 17.71 per cent and the urban rate at 17.08 per cent.
• There was an improvement in the rural rate of unemployment due to the Kharif sowing and higher MGNREGA activities to engage the migrant labourers who have returned.

Reasons for percentage increase in urban unemployment

• The labour-intensive manufacturing and heavy machine segments are not functioning with their optimal resources, the demand in the market is low and the support supply chain is structurally weak now. 
• MSMEs are in bad shape and formal sectors are shedding jobs for survival.
• All this will have an impact on urban unemployment and the urban joblessness is likely to be between 10% and 15% for the next few months.

About Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy( CMIE)

• It is a privately owned and professionally managed business information company head-quartered at Mumbai.
• It was established in 1976, primarily as an independent think tank.
• It has a presence over the entire information food-chain from large scale primary data collection to information product development through analytics and forecasting.
• Functions- It provides services to the entire spectrum of business information consumers including governments, academia, financial markets, business enterprises, professionals and media.
• CMIE produces economic and business databases and develops specialised analytical tools to deliver these to its customers for decision making and for research. It analyses the data to decipher trends in the economy.
• It conducts the largest survey to estimate household incomes, the pattern of spending and savings.

Context: Recently, the Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI) has launched the PM Formalization of Micro Food Processing Enterprises (PM FME) scheme as a part of ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan’.
Background

• The unorganised food processing sector faces a number of challenges which limit their performance and their growth.
• These challenges include lack of access to modern technology & equipment, training, access institutional credit, lack of basic awareness on quality control of products; and lack of branding & marketing skills, etc.
• The unorganized food processing sector comprising nearly 25 lakh units contributes to 74% of employment in the food processing sector.
• Nearly 66% of these units are located in rural areas and about 80% of them are family-based enterprises supporting the livelihood of rural household and minimizing their migration to urban areas.
• These units largely fall within the category of micro-enterprises.

About the PM FME Scheme

• The scheme was launched as part of the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan.
• It is proposed as a Centrally Sponsored scheme.
• The objective of the scheme is to support local unorganized food processing units in the country.
• Scheme aims to providing financial, technical and business support for up gradation of existing micro food processing enterprises.
• It will be Implemented over a period of five years from 2020-21 to 2024-25 with an outlay of Rs 10,000 crore.

The expenditure under the scheme would to be shared in:

• 60:40 ratio between Central and State Governments
• 90:10 ratio with North Eastern and Himalayan States
• 60:40 ratio with UTs with legislature
• 100% by Centre for other UTs.

The Scheme adopts One District One Product (ODOP) approach to reap benefit of scale in terms of procurement of inputs, availing common services and marketing of products.

• The States would identify food product for a district keeping in view the existing clusters and availability of raw material.
• Existing individual micro food processing units desirous of upgrading their unit can avail credit-linked capital subsidy @35% of the eligible project cost with a maximum ceiling of Rs.10 lakh per unit.
• Seed capital @ Rs. 40,000/- per SHG member would be provided for working capital and purchase of small tools.
• FPOs/SHGs/producer cooperatives would be provided credit-linked grant of 35% for capital investment along the value chain.
• Support would be provided through credit-linked grant @ 35% for development of common infrastructure including common processing facility, lab, warehouse, cold storage, packaging and incubation centre through FPOs/SHGs/cooperatives or state-owned agencies or private enterprise to use by micro-units in the cluster.
• Support for marketing & branding would be provided to develop brands for micro-units and groups with 50% grant at State or regional level which could benefit a large number of micro-units in clusters.
• The Minister also announced the extension of Operation Greens from TOP (tomato-onion-potato) to all perishable fruits and vegetables. 

About Operation Green

• It is a price fixation scheme that aims to ensure farmers are given the right price for their produce.
• It aims to promote Farmer Producers Organizations (FPO), Agri-logistics, processing facilities and professional management of agri-produce.
• It focuses on organized marketing of Tomatoes, Onions and Potatoes (TOP vegetables) by connecting farmers with consumers.
• State Agriculture and other Marketing Federations, Farmer Producer Organizations (FPO), cooperatives, companies, Self-help groups, food processors etc. can avail the financial assistance under it.
• To help in the structural and infrastructure part of the scheme, agriculture market committee (APMCs) promoted markets will be connected to the e-NAM platform.
• The government will also help in development of 22,000 agricultural markets.

Additional Facts

• E-NAM (e-National Agriculture Market) is an important initiative of GoI to use pan-India electronic trading portal for bidding and network the existing APMC mandis to create a unified national market for agricultural commodities.
• Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) is a statutory market committee constituted by a State Government in respect of trade in certain notified agricultural or horticultural or livestock products, under the Agricultural Produce Market Committee Act issued by that state government.

Context: Recently, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) ordered the scrapping of a Rs 1,950 crore tender for the BharatNet project in Tamil Nadu.
Key Points

• It is a flagship mission implemented by Bharat Broadband Network Ltd. (BBNL).
• It is a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) set up by the Government of India under the Companies Act, 1956 with an authorized capital of Rs 1000 crore.
• Initially, it was under the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, which was bifurcated into the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in July 2016.
• Currently, it is being implemented by the Department of Telecommunication under the Ministry of Communications.
• National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) was launched in October 2011 and was renamed as Bharat Net Project in 2015.

National Optical Fibre Network

• It was envisaged as an information superhighway through the creation of a robust middle-mile infrastructure for reaching broadband connectivity to Gram Panchayats.
• The Ministry of Communications has launched the National Broadband Mission that will facilitate universal and equitable access to broadband services across the country, especially in rural and remote areas.

Aim:

• To facilitate the delivery of e-governance, e-health, e-education, e-banking, Internet and other services to rural India.
• To connect all the 2,50,000 Gram panchayats in the country and provide 100 Mbps connectivity to all gram panchayats.
• To achieve this, the existing unused fibres (dark fibre) of public sector undertakings (PSUs) (BSNL, Railtel and Power Grid) were utilised and incremental fibre was laid to connect to Gram Panchayats wherever necessary.
• Non-discriminatory access to the NOFN was provided to all the service providers like Telecom Service Providers (TSPs), Cable TV operators and content providers to launch various services in rural areas.
• The entire project is being funded by the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF), which was set up for improving telecom services in rural and remote areas of the country.

Implementation

• The project is a Centre-State collaborative project, with the states contributing free Rights of Way for establishing the Optical Fibre Network.

The three-phase implementation of the BharatNet project is as follows:

• First Phase: Provide one lakh gram panchayats with broadband connectivity by laying underground optic fibre cable (OFC) lines by December 2017.
• Second Phase: Provide connectivity to all the gram panchayats in the country using an optimal mix of underground fibre, fibre over power lines, radio and satellite media. It is to be completed by March 2019.
• Third Phase: From 2019 to 2023, a state-of-the-art, future-proof network, including fibre between districts and blocks, with ring topology to provide redundancy would be created.
• The participation of states became important in the second phase which involved laying of OFC over electricity poles.
• This was a new element of the BharatNet strategy as the mode of connectivity by aerial OFC has several advantages, including lower cost, speedier implementation, easy maintenance and utilization of existing power line infrastructure.

About Dark fibre

• It is an unused optical fibre that has been laid but is not currently being used in fibre-optic communications. Since fibre-optic cable transmits information in the form of light pulses, a ‘dark’ cable refers to one through which light pulses are not being transmitted.
• Companies lay extra optical fibres in order to avoid cost repetition when more bandwidth is needed.
• It is also known as unlit fibre.

About Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade

• The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) has been renamed as the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade.

Mandate for the Newly Named Department

• The newly named department will work under the Union Ministry of Commerce.
• The order issued by the President states that the department would deal with matters related to start-ups, facilitating ease of doing business among others.
• The subject matter of internal trade which was under the ambit of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs has been transferred to the newly named department.
• With this new mandate, both internal and external trade has been brought under a single Ministry (Ministry of commerce and industry).
• This will ensure better coordination and help in promoting the growth of both segments of the trade.

Why the new mandate?

• For a long time Confederation of All India Traders Association (CAIT) was demanding for a separate Ministry of Internal Trade. CAIT sees the creation of a separate department by merging Internal and external trade is a step forward in the creation of a separate Ministry.

Functions

• With progressive liberalisation of the Indian economy, initiated in July 1991, there has been a consistent shift in the role and functions of this Department.
• From regulation and administration of the industrial sector, the role of the Department has been transformed into facilitating investment and technology flows and monitoring industrial development in the liberalised environment.

Context: Recently, RBI announced another ‘operation twist’, also known as open market operations (OMO), under which it conducts simultaneous sale and purchase of bonds.
Key Points

• Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced fresh Open Market Operations (OMO) for the sale and purchase of Government Securities.  
• The RBI will conduct the sale and purchase of government securities on July 2, 2020 of Rs 10,000 crore each. The RBI took the decision after considering the current liquidity and market situation. 
• In order to participate in the OMO, bidders and participants need to submit their bids on the E-Kuber system (Core Banking Solution) of the RBI in electronic format
• RBI has decided to conduct simultaneous purchase and sale of government securities under OMO for Rs 10,000 crore each.
• The RBI undertakes operation twist to manage yields in the bond market.
• Rationale behind the plan is to raise short-term yields and lower long term yields.

Open Market Operations (OMO)

• It is one of the Quantitative (to regulate or control the total volume of money) Monetary policy tools which is employed by the central bank of a country to control the money supply in the economy.
• OMOs are conducted by the RBI by way of sale or purchase of government securities to adjust money supply conditions.
• The central bank sells government securities to remove liquidity from the system and buys back government securities to infuse liquidity into the system.
• These operations are often conducted on a day-to-day basis in a manner that balances inflation while helping banks continue to lend.
• RBI carries out the OMO through commercial banks and does not directly deal with the public.
• The RBI uses OMO along with other monetary policy tools such as repo rate, Cash Reserve Ratio(CRR) and Statutory Liquidity Ratio(SLR) to adjust the quantum and price of money in the system.

Why RBI conducts the OMO?

The RBI conducts the OMO to manage the liquidity situation in the economy. Have a look at the motive behind the conduct of Open Market Operations:

• When there is excess liquidity --> Sale of Government Securities --> To drain liquidity off the market
• When there is Liquidity Crunch --> Purchase of Government Securities --> To infuse liquidity in the market

What are Government Securities?

• Government Securities are financial instruments or bonds - securities that are issued at face value by the Central Government for raising a loan from the public. The Government Securities are issued to finance important projects and manage budget deficits.

Operation Twist

• Operation Twist is when the central bank uses the proceeds from the sale of short-term securities to buy long-term government debt papers (Long term securities), leading to easing of interest rates on the long term papers.

Context: Recently, RBI announces special liquidity scheme for NBFCs and HFCs through a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to avoid any potential systemic risks to the financial sector.
Key Points

• RBI will provide funds for the Scheme by subscribing to government guaranteed special securities issued by the Trust.
• Government of India will provide an unconditional and irrevocable guarantee to the special securities issued by the Trust.
• The Scheme is being launched through a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) in the form of SLS Trust set up by SBI Capital Markets Limited (SBICAP).
• The proceeds of sale of such securities would be used by the SPV to acquire short-term debt of NBFCs/HFCs.
• The Scheme will be administered by the Department of Financial Services (Ministry of Finance).

To be eligible under the scheme, RBI laid out the conditions

• The Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFCs), including Microfinance Institutions that are registered with the RBI, under the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, excluding those registered as Core Investment Companies
• Housing Finance Companies that are registered under the National Housing Bank Act, 1987
• CRAR/CAR of NBFCs/HFCs should not be below the regulatory minimum, i.e., 15% and 12% respectively as on March 31, 2019
• The net non-performing assets should not be more than 6% as on March 31, 2019
• They should have made net profit in at least one of the last two preceding financial years (i.e. 2017-18 and 2018-19)
• They should not have been reported under SMA-1 or SMA-2 category by any bank for their borrowings during last one year prior to August 01, 2018
• They should be rated investment grade by a SEBI registered rating agency.
• They should comply with the requirement of the SPV for an appropriate level of collateral from the entity, which, however, would be optional and to be decided by the SPV.

Benefits

• Unlike the Partial Credit Guarantee Scheme, NBFCs/ HFCs do not have to liquidate their current asset portfolio under this scheme.
• Current assets are all the assets of a company that are expected to be used as a result of standard business operations over the next year.
• The scheme would also act as an enabler for the NBFC to get investment grade for bonds issued.
• The Scheme would benefit the real economy by augmenting the lending resources of NBFCs/HFCs/MFls.
• This facility would supplement the liquidity measures taken so far by the Government and RBI.

Financial implication

• The direct financial implication for the Central government is Rs. 5 crore, which may be the equity contribution to the SPV.
• Beyond that, there is no financial implication for the government until the guarantee involved is invoked.
• However, on invocation, the extent of government liability would be equal to the amount of default subject to the guarantee ceiling, which has been set at Rs. 30,000 crore.

Context: Recently, the Prime Minister extended PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana for five months till November-end for distributing free foodgrains to the poor.  
Key Points

• The government will keep providing free foodgrains to the poor section of society due to the increased need during the festivals. 
• The government will incur an additional expenditure of Rs  90,000 crore to provide 5 kg of rice or wheat and 1 kg gram every month to the poor. 
• A total of 116.02 lakh metric tonnes (LMT) of food grains have been lifted under the scheme. 
• In April, 93% of the food grains allotted to the States were distributed targeting 74.05 crore beneficiaries.
• In May, the distribution stood at 91% reaching 72.99 crore beneficiaries and in June 2020, 71% per cent of allocated food grains have been distributed to 56.81 crore beneficiaries so far.

About PM Gareeb Kalyan  Anna Yojna

• Under this  Yojna, people below the poverty line will get  5 kg foodgrain (rice or wheat) and 1 kg Gram per month for a period of three months between April and June 2020, which has now been extended for five more months.
• It aimed to ensure sufficient foods with the poor and needy amid the coronavirus crisis. 
• The foodgrains are distributed to all the beneficiaries under the targeted public distribution system (TPDS) for Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) and priority household (PHH) ration cardholders. 

Road Ahead

• The food grain provided under the scheme must continue until the impact of Covid-19 pandemic is not reduced. The impact of Covid-19 pandemic is still continuing, many economic activities have not been able to start in their full capacity, and a large number of people are unemployed.
• India has large buffer stocks of food grains that are maintained precisely for meeting emergencies like Covid-19. What is required is a universal Public Distribution System (PDS) to ensure that nobody is excluded.

Context: Recently, the Government of India, the Government of Tamil Nadu and the World Bank signed legal agreements to help low-income groups in the state of Tamil Nadu get access to affordable housing.
Key Points

• The legal agreements were signed for two projects – $200 million First Tamil Nadu Housing Sector Strengthening Programme and $50 million Tamil Nadu Housing and Habitat Development Project – to strengthen the state’s housing sector policies, institutions, and regulations.
• Nearly half of Tamil Nadu’s population is urban, and this is expected to increase to 63 percent by 2030. An estimated 6 million people are currently living in slums (representing 16.6 percent of the state’s urban population).

First Tamil Nadu Housing Sector Strengthening Programme

• This programme supports the government’s ongoing efforts to increase the availability of affordable housing by gradually shifting the role of the state from being the main provider to an enabler.
• It will also aim to unlock regulatory barriers and incentivise private sector participation in affordable housing for low-income families.

Tamil Nadu Housing and Habitat Development Project

• This project will support innovations in housing finance and strengthen housing sector institutions in the state.
• It will finance the newly created Tamil Nadu Shelter Fund (TNSF) – an innovation in housing finance in India – by providing an equity contribution of $35 million.
• This initial support to TNSF will enable cross-subsidisation opportunities where higher returns from commercial and high-income developments will compensate for lower returns from affordable housing.
• This will make affordable housing commercially viable for potential investors.
• The project will also strengthen the capacity of key housing institutions including the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board, the state’s main provider of affordable housing; Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority, the land use planning authority for the Chennai Metropolitan Area; and Tamil Nadu Infrastructure Fund Management Corporation Limited, the asset management company of TNSF.
• The loans of $200 million and $50 million from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) have a maturity of 20 years including a grace period of 3.5 years.

Context: Recently, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has observed an increase in ozone (a harmful pollutant) levels in the several cities of the country.
Key Points

• The pandemic-led change in air quality has helped researchers understand summer pollution.
• The characteristics of summer pollution are different: there are high winds, intermittent rains and thunderstorms, and high temperature and heat waves.
• The analysis was based on Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) data from 22 cities in 15 States in lockdown days.
• It has also observed that the particulate matter and nitrous oxide levels fell during the lockdown to control Covid-19 outbreak.

About Surface level Ozone/Bad Ozone

• Surface level Ozone is a harmful pollutant. In the Earth’s lower atmosphere (troposphere) near ground level, ozone is formed when pollutants emitted by cars, power plants, industrial boilers, refineries, chemical plants, and other sources react chemically in the presence of sunlight.
• Ozone gas is not emitted directly into the air, but is created by chemical reactions between oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOC) in the presence of sunlight.
• Emissions from industrial facilities and electric utilities, motor vehicle exhaust, gasoline vapours, and chemical solvents are some of the major sources of NOx and VOC.
• Ozone pollution can be curtailed only if gases from all sources are controlled.
• Ozone pollution is a concern during the summer months because strong sunlight and hot weather result in harmful ozone concentrations in the air we breathe.
• Ozone is a highly reactive gas. Even short-term exposure of an hour is dangerous for those with respiratory conditions and asthma. Repeated exposure may permanently scar lung tissue.
• That’s why an eight-hour average is considered for ozone instead of the 24-hour average for other pollutants.
• It damages crops, trees and other vegetation.
• It is a main ingredient of urban smog.

About Ozone 

• It occurs naturally in the Earth’s upper atmosphere (Stratosphere) where it forms a protective layer that shields us from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. This is known as Good Ozone.
• Good Ozone is gradually being destroyed by man-made chemicals referred to as ozone-depleting substances (ODS), including chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), halons, methyl bromide, carbon tetrachloride, and methyl chloroform.
• Ozone depletion can cause increased amounts of UV radiation to reach the Earth which can lead to more cases of skin cancer, cataracts, and impaired immune systems. Overexposure to UV is believed to be contributing to the increase in melanoma, the most fatal of all skin cancers.

Road Ahead

• The government needs to take active steps to mitigate primary pollutants, which lead to ground ozone formation. These steps involved curbing private vehicle usage, increasing electric mobility, scaling up public transport and pedestrian infrastructure, deploying citywide parking management, and aggressively controlling industrial emissions.

Context: Due to anthropogenic activities India’s 1.34 billion people exert a heavy pressure through encroachment, raising commercial plantations.
Key Facts our Ecosystem

• India has about 8 percent of the world’s biodiversity on 2 percent of the earth’s surface, making it one of the 12 mega-diversity countries in the world. 
• Of about 1.75 million species globally identified, around 1,26,188 species have been reported so far from India. 
• The species recorded include flowering plants (angiosperms), mammals, fish, birds, reptiles and amphibians, constituting about 17.3 percent of the total, whereas fungi and insects make up nearly 60 percent of India’s bio-wealth. 
• This diversity can be attributed to the great variety of natural ecosystems due to the varied physical and climatic features found in India.
• India ranks tenth in the world both in respect of richness of flowering plants (17,500 spp.) and mammals (350 spp.) and fourth in Asia in plant diversity. India is also a centre of crop diversity, a homeland of as many as 167 species of crops and 320 species of wild crop relatives.
• The country has 10 different bio geographic zones and 26 biotic provinces gifted with unique and rare species of flora and fauna.

Key Points

• India is known for its rich biological diversity due to the presence of large numbers of plant and animal species. It is one of the top-ranking, mega-diverse countries of the world.
• Our cultural diversity has played a key role in conserving floral and faunal diversity. Having said that, this diversity is now in danger.
• Take for instance, trees. In spite of their valuable services to humanity, trees are being ruthlessly destroyed because of developmental projects and increased dependence.
• While several species are facing threats from anthropogenic pressure, many are threatened due to invasive alien species and climate change.

Challenges to tree species in the Western Ghats

• India’s 1.34 billion people exert a heavy pressure through encroachment, raising commercial plantations and other developmental activities. 
• Due to anthropogenic activities like excessive harvesting and habitat destruction, many of the economically important tree species are under serious threat.
• Syzygium travancoricum, an economically important tree species, is reported to exist with a population size of only 15-20 individuals. 
• Similarly, Dipterocarpus bourdillonii, another endangered species has only 14 individuals occurring in three patches in the Kodagu district of Karnataka.
• Since tree species require decades for regeneration of the optimum population, if there is lack of regeneration or habitat, their present population cannot be considered healthy.
• Increased inbreeding because of limited pollen and seed dispersal flow caused by fragmentation of populations can impact regeneration of the species. 
• In case of Dysoxylum malabaricum, an endangered tree species in the Western Ghats, inbreeding between related individuals has caused reduced regeneration.
• Hence, if urgent action is not taken to restore the population of these species, they may be irrecoverably lost. In India, recovery programmes for a few plant species have been taken up.
• For instance, Paphiopedilum druryi, a slipper orchid, has multiplied through tissue culture and has been reintroduced in the Agasthiamalai hill ranges of the southern Western Ghats.
• Out of the 387 Indian plants listed under the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List, 77 have been enlisted as ‘critically endangered’, six are ‘extinct’ and two are ‘extinct’ in the wild. 
• The IUCN is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. 
• The 77 critically endangered species can be prioritised for recovery programme and the balance can be taken up subsequently. 
• A systematic species recovery programme is thus the need of the hour to restore the populations of these species.

Global Initiative

• Many countries have initiated plans to address the resurrection of the RET species. Species recovery programmes have been carried out successfully in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia.
• In the United States, there is special legislation such as the Endangered Species Act, 1973, (ESA) for carrying out species recovery programmes. The Act, that was implemented in 1973, has provisions for listing the species as ‘endangered’, developing recovery plans for each species and designating critical habitats.

India initiative

• While taking earnest measures for conservation and recovery of RET species, collection of data about their population sizes, identification of the specific threats and developing mitigation strategies are to be attempted systematically.
• So far, 47 species have been stabilised through different recovery processes and have been excluded from the recovery programmes. A gradual increase in the population size, habitat restoration and captive breeding or population stabilisation have been achieved through recovery programmes.
• The Vallanadu Black Buck Sanctuary and the Grizzled Giant Squirrel Wildlife Sanctuary in Tamil Nadu; Aghanashini Lion-tailed Macaque Conservation Reserve in Karnataka and Gibbon Sanctuary in Assam have been established for conserving specific taxa.
• But, till date, no area has been specifically protected for any single endangered plant species, except for species groups like the Varsey Rhododendron Sanctuary in Sikkim and the Sessa Orchid Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh.
• Combined and collective efforts are required on the part of the forest department as well as the forest stakeholders.
• Promulgation of specific acts and framing of rules and regulations are urgently needed to protect the threatened species by reaching an agreement between the department and the stakeholders.
• Documentation of the RET species, their threatened status, surveying all known populations and mapping their locations, identifying the extrinsic and intrinsic factors that drive the species to threatened status and assessing the genetic variability of the species are to be carried out scientifically on war footing.
• Based on the above strategies, long-term monitoring programmes are to be developed for assessing the population changes periodically.

Legislation for Protecting Endangered Species

• Considering the importance of flora and fauna, there are major national and international efforts to protect and conserve the rich biodiversity and endangered species of wildlife and flora.
• The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), 1973, is a significant step in this direction. The convention recognized that wild fauna and flora in their many beautiful and varied forms are irreplaceable parts of the natural systems of the earth, which must be protected by all means.
• The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity 1992 is another milestone.
• The Biological Diversity Bill, 2000, which is in the offing, also interalia, strives to protect and conserve the biodiversity and endangered species in India.

Context: Extensive biodiversity loss in the past decades has spared neither developed nor developing countries. This has led to pacing up of global biodiversity governance.
The begining

• Rapidly accelerating biodiversity loss led to a series of introspections and eventually a worldwide catharsis among countries that resulted in them coming together at the Rio Summit in 1992.
• Here major legally binding conventions for the protection of nature — including the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) were adopted.
• More than 25 years have passed since 197 countries became a party to CBD, with several of them taking significant steps to protect their biodiversity.

Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)

• The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a legally binding treaty to conserve biodiversity has been in force since 1993.

It has 3 main objectives

• The conservation of biological diversity.
• The sustainable use of the components of biological diversity.
• The fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources.

Nearly all countries have ratified it (notably, the US has signed but not ratified).

• The CBD Secretariat is based in Montreal, Canada and it operates under the United Nations Environment Programme.
• The Parties (Countries) under Convention of Biodiversity (CBD), meet at regular interval and these meetings are called Conference of Parties (COP).
• On 29 January 2000, the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP5) adopted a supplementary agreement to the Convention known as the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. It came into force on 11 September 2003.
• The Protocol seeks to protect biological diversity from the potential risks posed by living modified organisms resulting from modern biotechnology.
• The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization (ABS) to the Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted on 29 October 2010 in Nagoya, Japan at COP10. It entered into force on 12 October 2014.
• It provides a transparent legal framework for the effective implementation of one of the three objectives of the CBD: the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources.
• It not only applies to genetic resources that are covered by the CBD, and to the benefits arising from their utilization but also covers traditional knowledge (TK) associated with genetic resources that are covered by the CBD and the benefits arising from its utilization.
• Along with Nagoya Protocol on Genetic Resources, the COP-10 also adopted a ten-year framework for action by all countries to save biodiversity.
• Officially known as “Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020”, provide a set of 20 ambitious yet achievable targets (divided into 5 sections: A to E), collectively known as the Aichi Targets for biodiversity.

The Aichi Biodiversity Targets are

• Strategic Goal A: Address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss by mainstreaming biodiversity across government and society
• Strategic Goal B: Reduce the direct pressures on biodiversity and promote sustainable use.
• Strategic Goal C: To improve the status of biodiversity by safeguarding ecosystems, species and genetic diversity
• Strategic Goal D: Enhance the benefits to all from biodiversity and ecosystem services
• Strategic Goal E: Enhance implementation through participatory planning, knowledge management and capacity building.
• India enacted Biological Diversity Act in 2002 for giving effect to the provisions of the CBD.
• The National Biodiversity Authority is a statutory body, which was established by the Central Government in 2003 to implement India’s Biological Diversity Act (2002).
• It performs facilitative, regulatory and advisory functions for the Government of India on issues of conservation, sustainable use of biological resources and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising out of the use of biological resources.
• The NBA is headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu.
• International Biological Diversity Day is observed on 22 May. Theme for 2018: "Celebrating 25 Years of Action for Biodiversity".
• United Nations General Assembly had declared the period 2011-2020 to be the “United Nations Decade on Biodiversity”.

 The two major protocols under CBD

• CBD has two supplementary agreements – Cartagena Protocol and Nagoya Protocol.
• The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety is an international treaty governing the movements of living modified organisms (LMOs) resulting from modern biotechnology from one country to another.
• The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization (ABS) is a supplementary agreement to the Convention on Biological Diversity.
• Access to genetic resources rested with the national government and was subject to national legislation, according to CBD.

Success of CBD

• The CBD, in its spirit, laid the foundation for ethics taking priority over mindless exploitation and constantly sounded a reminder to the international community in the form of Article 15 and Article 8 (j).
• Article 15 of the CBD recognised the right of states to their genetic resources and Article 8 (j) recognised the rights of communities to their traditional knowledge.
• With these guidelines in mind, most countries that signed the CBD met again at Nagoya in Japan in 2010 and adopted the Nagoya Protocol that aimed to give effect to the fair and equitable sharing provisions of the CBD.

The 12 National Biodiversity targets of India are

• By 2020, a significant proportion of the country’s population, especially the youth, is aware of the values of biodiversity and the steps they can take to conserve and use it sustainably.
• By 2020, values of biodiversity are integrated into national and state planning processes, development programmes and poverty alleviation strategies.
• Strategies for reducing the rate of degradation, fragmentation and loss of all natural habitats are finalized and actions put in place by 2020 for environmental amelioration and human well-being.
• By 2020, invasive alien species and pathways are identified and strategies to manage them developed so that populations of prioritized invasive alien species are managed.
• By 2020, measures are adopted for sustainable management of agriculture, forestry and fisheries.
• Ecologically representative areas under terrestrial and inland water, and also coastal and marine zones, especially those of particular importance for species, biodiversity and ecosystem services, are conserved effectively and equitably, based on protected area designation and management and other area-based conservation measures and are integrated into the wider landscapes and seascapes, covering over 20% of the geographic area of the country, by 2020.
• By 2020, genetic diversity of cultivated plants, farm livestock, and their wild relatives, including other socio-economically as well as culturally valuable species, is maintained, and strategies have been developed and implemented for minimizing genetic erosion and safeguarding their genetic diversity.
• By 2020, ecosystem services, especially those relating to water, human health, livelihoods and well-being, are enumerated and measures to safeguard them are identified, taking into account the needs of women and local communities, particularly the poor and vulnerable sections.
• By 2020, an effective, participatory and updated national biodiversity action plan is made operational at different levels of governance.
• By 2020, national initiatives using communities’ traditional knowledge relating to biodiversity are strengthened, with the view to protecting this knowledge in accordance with national legislation and international obligations.
• By 2020, opportunities to increase the availability of financial, human and technical resources to facilitate effective implementation of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and the national targets are identified and the Strategy for Resource Mobilization is adopted.

Steps taken by India

• India — a key mega-biodiversity country — adopted the Biological Diversity Act (BD Act) in 2002 to halt and reverse effects of diversity loss.
• The BD Act was hailed as an important step towards preserving our vast biodiversity.
• It was considered pioneer legislation as it recognised the sovereign right of countries over their natural resources.
• It also put restrictions on the access of bio-resources by user countries.
• The BD Act was a game-changer, ensuring the conservation and sustainable use of resources, leading to proper sharing of benefits to local populations.

BD Act in action

• Under the BD Act, an important regulatory mechanism was the emphasis on access and benefit-sharing (ABS) to local populations
• Having integrated ABS within a decade of CBD, India came to be regarded as a pioneer country: Only 105 of 197 countries that signed CBD formed national legislation for regulatory use of bio-resources.
• This initial initiative taken by the Union government went a long way in strengthening the case of securing benefits for its rightful owners for the coming decades.
• The BD Act seeks to address issues of managing bio-resources in the most decentralized manner possible without compromising on the sovereignty of the country or community’s rights over these resources.
• The act lists conditions under which persons, commercial firms and other institutions can access biological resources and the knowledge associated with them.
• It created three structures: The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) at the national level, the state biodiversity boards (SSBs) at the state level and biodiversity management committees (BMCs) at the local level.

Adopting ABS

• With the adoption of the BD Act, the focus shifted on actualizing the tenets of CBD.
• It was felt that an efficient mechanism — acceptable to all countries and a reference point for issues of bio-resources — needs to be adopted.
• For a process that began in 1992 with the CBD, the detailed action points were adopted under the Nagoya Protocol.
• Almost immediately, countries began the process of implementing national legislation to adopt the regulatory frameworks and India, again, took the lead and adopted the ABS guidelines in 2014.
• India’s stand leading upto the negotiations that finally led to the adoption of the Nagoya Protocol was of intense negotiations.

Benefit for India

• India was a victim of misappropriation or bio-piracy of our genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, which were patented in other countries.
• Well-known examples of this include neem and turmeric.
• India and other developing countries fought hard in several international negotiations to correct the historical wrong of being victims of bio-piracy and succeeded in scoring a major victory.
• It is expected that the Nagoya Protocol on ABS, a key missing pillar of the CBD, addressed this concern.

Context: Recently, a team of researchers rediscovered a rare and critically endangered plant species called Globba andersonii from the Sikkim Himalayas near the Teesta river valley region.

• The plant, known commonly as ‘dancing ladies’ or ‘swan flowers’ was thought to have been extinct for more than 135 years.

About Globba Andersonii

• Globba is a genus of plants in the ginger family.
• It contains about 100 species, native to China, the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia, New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and Queensland.
• Globba andersonii are characterised by white fowers, non-appendaged anthers, and a yellowish “lip”.
• Globba andersonii is Classified by IUCN as Critically endangered and “narrowly endemic” and the species is restricted mainly to Teesta River Valley region which includes the Sikkim Himalays and Darjeeling hill ranges.
• As no live collections were made for the last 136 years, it was considered as presumably extinct in the wild.

About Teesta River

• Teesta river is a tributary of the Brahmaputra (known as Jamuna in Bangladesh), flowing through India and Bangladesh.
• It originates in the Himalayas near Chunthang, Sikkim and flows to the south through West Bengal before entering Bangladesh.
• Originally, the river continued southward to empty directly into the Padma River (main channel of Ganga in Bangladesh) but around 1787 the river changed its course to flow eastward to join the Jamuna river.
• The Teesta Barrage dam helps to provide irrigation for the plains between the upper Padma and the Jamuna.
• Teesta river water conflict is one of the most contentious issues between India and Bangladesh.

Context: Recently, the Arctic Circle has recorded temperatures reaching over 38 degrees Celsius in the Siberian town of Verkhoyansk, likely an all-time high. The temperatures seem to have been 18 degree Celsius higher than normal in June a/c to the BBC.
Issue

• The recorded temperature at 38 degrees is around 18°C higher than the normal temperature for this time of the year for the place.
• The town is in the Guinness book of world records for the largest temperature range it experiences — from some -67 °C to some 37°C.
• This new record has an imprint of global warming and the impact of such warming can be witnessed even here in India.
• The new high shows temperature swings may be increasing.

Are Arctic heatwaves common?

• This is not the first time that rising temperatures in the Arctic have created alarm.
• The rising temperatures are attributed to large-scale wind patterns that blasted the Arctic with heat, the absence of sea ice, and human-induced climate change, among other reasons.
• There has been an increase of heatwave occurrences over the terrestrial Arctic. These frequent occurrences have already started to threaten local vegetation, ecology, human health and economy.

A cause of worry for all

• Warming in the Arctic is leading to the thawing of once permanently frozen permafrost below ground.
• This is alarming scientists because as permafrost thaws, carbon dioxide and methane previously locked up below ground is released.
• These greenhouse gases can cause further warming, and further thawing of the permafrost, in a vicious cycle known as positive feedback.
• The higher temperatures also cause land ice in the Arctic to melt at a faster rate, leading to greater run-off into the ocean where it contributes to sea-level rise.

Western disturbances

• The impacts of a warming Arctic are not limited to the region but can be felt even in India.
• Ex: western disturbances respond to the pressure variations associated with the jet stream swings.
• The western disturbances are extra-tropical storms that originate in the Mediterranean and travel to India on the sub-tropical jet stream.
• They cause rainfall in north west, northern and north eastern India during the winter and spring months and snowfall in the high altitude regions.
• This year, they were particularly active and caused heavy rainfall in March, April and May over northern and north western India.
• These rains, moisture and the vegetation they produced was partly responsible for the early locust attacks in Rajasthan this year which spread as far east as Chhattisgarh for the first time in decades.

Context: Recently, NITI Aayog and Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) released a report namely “Towards a Clean Energy Economy: Post-COVID-19 Opportunities for India’s Energy and Mobility Sectors”.
Key Points

• The NITI Aayog and RMI report advocates for stimulus and recovery efforts that work towards building a clean, resilient, and least-cost energy future for India.
• These efforts include electric vehicle, energy storage, and renewable energy programs.
• The report identifies how Covid-19 is beginning to influence the clean energy transition in India, specifically for the transport and power sectors, and recommends principles and strategic opportunities for the country’s leaders to drive economic recovery and maintain momentum towards a clean energy economy.

Way Forward for India’s Clean Energy:

• Clean energy will be a major driver of India’s economic recovery and international competitiveness, and working to leverage India’s domestic innovation ecosystem will bring value to the country and industry.

The report lays out four principles as a framework for policymakers and other key decision-makers considering programmes to support India’s clean energy future:

• Invest in least-cost-energy solutions,
• Support resilient and secure energy systems,
• Prioritize efficiency and competitiveness, and
• Promote social and environmental equity.
• India needs to identify strategic opportunities for economic recovery in the short, medium, and long terms that can translate challenges posed by the pandemic into clean energy transition opportunities.

Opportunities in Transport and Power Sector

• Opportunities in the transport sector include making public transport safe, enhancing and expanding non-motorized transport infrastructure, reducing vehicle kilometres travelled through work-from-home where possible, supporting national strategies to adopt electric vehicles in the freight and passenger segments, and making India an automotive export hub.
• The report states that India’s transport sector can save 1.7 gigatonnes of cumulative carbon dioxide emissions and avoid about 600 million tonnes of oil equivalent in fuel demand by 2030 through shared, electric, and connected passenger mobility and cost-effective, clean, and optimized freight transport.
• In the power sector, opportunities include improving the electricity distribution business and its operations, enabling renewables and distributed energy resources, and promoting energy resilience and local manufacturing of renewable energy and energy storage technologies.

Context: Recently, the revised guidelines published by the Central Pollution Control Board on June 10, 2020, stresses the concerns over biomedical waste generated by treating COVID-19 patients.
Key Points

• The guidelines add to existing practices under the Biomedical Waste Management Rules, 2016.
• It addresses the safety of waste handlers and sanitation workers associated with such healthcare facilities.
• It must be followed by all stakeholders including isolation wards, quarantine centres, sample collection centres, laboratories, Urban Local Bodies and common biomedical waste treatment and disposal facilities.
• General solid waste like medicine wrappers and cartons, syringes, fruit peels, empty bottles, discarded paper and other items not contaminated by patients’ secretions and body fluids must be collected separately.
• Foot-operated lids in colour-coded bins must be introduced to avoid contact.
• Wet and dry solid waste bags must be securely tied and handed over to waste collectors authorised by ULBs daily.
• Non-disposable items must not be disposed of as much as possible and should, instead, be cleaned and disinfected keeping hospital rules in mind.
• Left-over food, disposable plates, glasses, used masks, tissues, toiletries, etc used by COVID-19 patients were classified as biomedical waste and should be put in yellow-coloured bags, while used gloves should be put in red bags.
• Designated nodal officers for biomedical waste management in hospitals must be made responsible for training waste handlers about infection prevention measures.
• Nodal officers need to be trained by health departments and professional agencies in association with the state pollution control boards or pollution control committees.
• It is the responsibility of people operating quarantine camps, homes or homecare facilities to hand over general municipal solid waste to waste collectors identified by ULBs.

About Biomedical waste 

• It comprises human & animal anatomical waste, treatment apparatus like needles, syringes and other materials used in health care facilities in the process of treatment and research.
• This waste is generated during diagnosis, treatment or immunisation in hospitals, nursing homes, pathological laboratories, blood bank, etc.
• Scientific disposal of Biomedical Waste through segregation, collection and treatment in an environmentally sound manner minimises the adverse impact on health workers and the environment.

About Bioremediation

• Bioremediation is defined as the methodology to remove or neutralizes waste and toxic substances in the environment with the help of microorganism and plants.
• In other words, it is the process to detoxify the pollution from the environment with the help of microorganisms, plants, or microbial or plant enzymes.

There are two types of bioremediation

• In situ Bioremediation: When the detoxification of waste is done at the original site of the contamination is called In situ Bioremediation and is mainly used to treat contaminations in soil and ground water.
• Ex situ Bioremediation: In this method, detoxification of waste is done away from the original site of the contamination. In this process, the contaminants are unearthed from the original site and then treated in the controlled environment.eg; composting
• Legacy Waste: Legacy wastes are the wastes that have been collected and kept for years at some barren land or a place dedicated for Landfill.

Context: Recently, the Environment Ministry has reconstituted the Central Zoo Authority (CZA) to include an expert from the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, and a molecular biologist.
What is a zoo?

• As per Section 2 (39) of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, Zoo means an establishment, whether stationary or mobile, where captive animals are kept for exhibition to the public and include a circus and rescue centres but do not include an establishment of a licensed dealer in captive animals.

About CZA

• The CZA is the body of the government responsible for oversight of zoos constituted under the section 38A of Wild Life (Protection) Act 1972.
• The main objective of the authority is to complement the national effort in the conservation of wildlife.
• Standards and norms for housing, upkeep, health care and overall management of animals in zoos have been laid down under the Recognition of Zoo Rules, 1992.

Roles & Functions

• The Authority’s role is more of a facilitator than a regulator.
• It, therefore, provides technical and financial assistance to such zoos which have the potential to attain the desired standard in animal management.
• Primary function– grant of recognition and release of financial assistance.
• It also regulates the exchange of animals of endangered category Listed under Schedule-I and II of the Wildlife (Protection) Act among zoos.
• Exchange of animals between Indian and foreign zoos is also approved by the Authority before the requisite clearances under EXIM Policy and the CITES permits are issued by the competent authority.
• The Authority also coordinates and implements programmes on capacity building of zoo personnel, planned breeding programmes and ex-situ research including biotechnological intervention for the conservation of species for complementing in-situ conservation efforts in the country.

Composition

• Apart from the chairman, it consists of 10 members and a member-secretary.
• Almost all of them are officials in the Environment Ministry and NGO experts are those who are wildlife conservationists or retired forest officers.

Context: Recently, India’s marine fish production registered a marginal increase of 2.1% in 2019 compared to the previous year.
Key Points

• According to the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI), the country recorded 3.56 million tonnes in total landings during the year.
• Tamil Nadu took the first position in landings with 7.75 lakh tonnes, followed by Gujarat (7.49 lakh tonnes) and Kerala (5.44 lakh tonnes).
• Indian mackerel, which was in the first spot in 2018, suffered a setback with the landings declining by 43% during last year.
• While States such as West Bengal (55%), Andhra Pradesh (34%), Odisha (14.5%), Karnataka (11%) and Tamil Nadu (10.4%) recorded an increase in landings, the fish catch decreased in Maharashtra, Goa and Kerala compared to the previous year.

Challenges of sustainability currently faced by India’s fisheries sector

• Unsustainable fishing practices: The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s report notes that nearly 90 per cent of the global marine fish stocks have either been fully-exploited or over-fished or depleted to an extent that recovery may not be biologically possible.
• Low productivity: The productivity of inland fishery and fish farming sectors is low — in terms of per fisherman, per boat and per farm. In Norway, a fisherman/farmer catches/produces 250 kg per day while the Indian average is four to five kg.
• Lack of modern equipments: Marine capture fishery comprises largely of small fishermen who operate traditional boats — either non-motorised vessels or boats with a basic outboard motor. These vessels cannot operate beyond near shore waters. While the near-shore coastal waters are highly overfished, the high value fish stock proliferates in the deep sea.
• Lack of variety: Limited number of species grown, mainly due to weak linkages between research and development and fish farmers’ community. High value species such as tuna cannot be caught by fishermen

Blue revolution can overcome the challenge of sustainability and has achieved some success:

• Adopts a two-pronged approach: Sustainable capture fishery to harness marine and inland water resources and expanding the horizon of fish farming through increased coverage, enhanced productivity, species diversification and better market returns.
• Productivity of brackish water coastal aquaculture has touched 10 to 12 metric tonnes per hectare — a sharp increase from the previous two to four tonnes per hectare.
• Thirty thousand hectares have been added to the area under fish farming. The government has invested in hatcheries to meet the ever-increasing demand for good quality fish seed.
• The introduction of cage culture in reservoirs and other open water bodies has led to an increase in output. Nearly 8,000 cages have been installed and even though a cage gives a modest yield of three tonnes of fish, this translates into a more than 1,000 per cent increase in productivity.
• The new National Policy on Marine Fisheries talks of introducing deep-sea fishing vessels and assisting fishing communities to convert their vessels and gears for the waters beyond.
• Innovative practices such as recirculatory aquaculture system aim to realise the goal of more crop per drop. As a result, the productivity of freshwater fish farms has gone up to more than 3 metric tonnes per hectare from the 2.5 tonnes per hectare.

Additional Facts
Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY)

• The scheme intends to address critical gaps in fish production and productivity, quality, technology, post-harvest infrastructure and management, modernization and strengthening of value chain, traceability, establishing a robust fisheries management framework and fishers’ welfare.
• The Scheme will be implemented during a period of 5 years from the Financial Year (FY) 2020-21 to FY 2024-25.

Aims and objectives of PMMSY

• Harnessing of fisheries potential in a sustainable, responsible, inclusive and equitable manner
• Enhancing of fish production and productivity through expansion, intensification, diversification and productive utilization of land and water
• Modernizing and strengthening of value chain – post-harvest management and quality improvement
• Doubling fishers and fish farmers’ incomes and generation of employment
• Enhancing contribution to Agriculture GVA and exports
• Social, physical and economic security for fishers and fish farmers
• Robust fisheries management and regulatory framework

Implementation
It will be implemented as an umbrella scheme with two separate Components namely;

• Central Sector Scheme (CS)
• Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS)
• Majority of the activities under the Scheme would be implemented with the active participation of States/UTs.
• For optimal outcomes, ‘Cluster or area-based approach’ would be followed with requisite forward and backward linkages and end to end solutions.

Context: Recently, Researchers analysed simulations of this(Last Glacial Maximum) past climate and predicted that the ongoing climate change could reawaken an ancient climate pattern of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).
Background

• About 19,000-21,000 years ago, there was a peak of ice age conditions called the Last Glacial Maximum.
• Around this time, ice-sheets covered North America and Eurasia, and sea-levels were much lower, with Adam’s Bridge exposed so that the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka were contiguous. 
• By studying microscopic zooplankton called foraminifera, the team had published a paper in 2019 which first found evidence from the past of an Indian Ocean El Niño. 
• Foraminifera builds a calcium carbonate shell, and studying these can tell us about the properties of the water in which they lived. 
• The team using this property was able to reconstruct the sea surface temperature conditions of the past.

Key findings of the Study

• Researchers analyzed simulations of this earlier climate and predicted that the current climate change could reawaken an ancient climate pattern of the Indian Ocean.
• They found that this could be similar to the El Niño phenomenon of the Pacific Ocean which will bring more frequent floods and droughts to countries around the Indian Ocean. 
• Look at the current warming scenario, the pattern could emerge by 2050.

The Last Glacial Maximum

• The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) was the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period that ice sheets were at their greatest extent.
• Vast ice sheets covered much of North America, Northern Europe, and Asia and profoundly affected Earth’s climate by causing drought, desertification, and a large drop in sea levels.
• Growth of ice sheets commenced 33,000 years ago and maximum coverage was between 26,500 years and 19–20,000 years ago, when deglaciation commenced in the Northern Hemisphere.
• It caused an abrupt rise in sea level.

About El Nino

• It is a climate cycle in the Pacific Ocean with a global impact on weather patterns. 
• The cycle begins when warm water in the western tropical Pacific Ocean shifts eastward along the equator toward the coast of South America. 
• Normally, these warm water pools near Indonesia and the Philippines.
• Its most direct impacts are droughts in normally damp places in the eastern Pacific, such as parts of Indonesia and Australia, while normally drier places like the west coast of South America suffer floods.
• But the changes affect the global atmospheric circulation and can weaken the Indian monsoon and bring rains to the western US.

About Indian Ocean Dipole

• Sustained changes in the difference between sea surface temperatures of the tropical western and eastern Indian Ocean are known as the Indian Ocean Dipole or IOD. 
• It is an irregular oscillation of sea surface temperatures in which the western Indian Ocean becomes alternately warmer (positive phase) and then colder (negative phase) than the eastern part of the ocean.
• Positive Phase leads to better Indian Monsoon, Neutral has little effect and the negative phase weakens the monsoon and causes drought. 

Context: Recently, Researchers from GNS Science in New Zealand announced that they'd mapped the shape and size of the continent in unprece dented detail. They put their maps on an interactive website so that users can virtually explore the continent, with an aim to raise awareness about it in public.
Background 

• Zealandia is a 2 million-square-mile continent east of Australia, beneath modern-day New Zealand. Scientists discovered the sprawling underwater mass in the 1990s, then gave it formal continent status in 2017. 
• Reaching a significant milestone to the quest that began in 2017, scientists have now mapped the submerged landmass of the eighth continent, Zealandia.

94% of Zealandia is submerged

• According to reports, at least 94 per cent of Zealandia’s two million square miles are underwater. Therefore, the mapping of the entire continent was a challenge for researchers across the world. 
• The scientists at GNS have contributed to the global effort of researchers to map the entire ocean floor of the world by 2030 including the depiction of coastlines and territorial limits. 

Key Points

• Zealandia continent doesn't appear on most conventional maps because almost 95% of its landmass is submerged thousands of feet beneath the Pacific Ocean. 
• The new maps reveal Zealandia's bathymetry (the shape of the ocean floor) as well as its tectonic history, showing how volcanism and tectonic motion have shaped the continent over millions of years. 
• These maps to provide an accurate, complete and up-to-date picture of the geology of the New Zealand and southwest Pacific area, better than before.

About Zealandia continent 

• Zealandia, also known as the New Zealand continent or Tasmantis, is an almost entirely submerged mass of continental crust that subsided after breaking away from Gondwanaland 83–79 million years ago. 
• It has variously been described as a continental fragment, a microcontinent, a submerged continent, and a continent. 
• Compression across the boundary has uplifted the Southern Alps, although due to rapid erosion their height reflects only a small fraction of the uplift. 
• Volcanism on Zealandia has also taken place repeatedly in various parts of the continental fragment before, during and after it rifted away from the supercontinent Gondwana. 
• Zealandia consists of islands such as New Zealand, New Caledonia, Norfolk Island, Lord Howe Island Group, Elizabeth and Middleton Reefs.

Context: Recently, the World Meteorological Organization  (WMO) declared that Brazil recorded a lightning strike that travelled a distance of 709 kilometres, while Argentina recorded a strike that lasted for 16.73 seconds.
Key Findings

• Brazil recorded a lightning strike that travelled a distance of 709 kilometres in 2018.
• The previous record for the longest detected distance for a single lightning flash was for 321 km on June 20, 2007, across the US state of Oklahoma.
• Brazil has the highest incidence of lightning in the world — an average of 77.8 million strikes per year.
• Argentina recorded a strike that lasted for 16.73 seconds in 2019.
• The previous record was a single lightning flash that lasted continuously for 7.74 seconds on August 30, 2012 over Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France.
• The lightning flashes that have now entered the record books are known as ‘Megaflashes’ in scientific parlance.

Lightning strikes in India:

• Bihar is second after Uttar Pradesh with the maximum number of deaths due to lightning.
• At least 170 people died in Bihar due to lightning in 2019 between April 1 and July 31.
• The number of lightning days across India have been increasing significantly every month.
• Lightning strikes kill morepeople in India than any other extreme weather event.

About the Lightning

• Lightning is a naturally occurring electrostatic discharge during which two electrically charged regions in the atmosphere or ground temporarily equalize themselves, causing the instantaneous release of as much as one gigajoule of energy.
• This discharge may produce a wide range of electromagnetic radiation, from very hot plasma created by the rapid movement of electrons to brilliant flashes of visible light in the form of black-body radiation. 
• Lightning causes thunder, a sound from the shock wave which develops as gases in the vicinity of the discharge experience a sudden increase in pressure. 
• Lightning occurs commonly during thunderstorms and other types of energetic weather systems, but volcanic lightning can also occur during volcanic eruptions.

How does it strike?

• The base of these clouds typically lies within 1-2 km of the Earth’s surface, while their top is 12-13 km away. Temperatures towards the top of these clouds are in the range of minus 35 to minus 45 degrees Celsius.
• As water vapour moves upward in the cloud, the falling temperature causes it to condense.Heat is generated in the process, which pushes the molecules of water further up.
• As they move to temperatures below zero degrees celsius, the water droplets change into small ice crystals. They continue to move up, gathering mass — until they are so heavy that they start to fall to Earth.
• This leads to a system in which, simultaneously, smaller ice crystals are moving up and bigger crystals are coming down.
• Collisions follow, and trigger the release of electrons — a process that is very similar to the generation of sparks of electricity. As the moving free electrons cause more collisions and more electrons, a chain reaction ensues.
• This process results in a situation in which the top layer of the cloud gets positively charged, while the middle layer is negatively charged. The electrical potential difference between the two layers is huge — of the order of a billion to 10 billion volts. In very little time, a massive current, of the order of 100,000 to a million amperes, starts to flow between the layers.
• An enormous amount of heat is produced, and this leads to the heating of the air column between the two layers of the cloud. This heat gives the air column a reddish appearance during lightning. As the heated air column expands, it produces shock waves that result in thunder.

How does this current reach the Earth from the cloud?

• While the Earth is a good conductor of electricity,it is electrically neutral. However, in comparison to the middle layer of the cloud, it becomes positively charged. As a result, about 15%-20% of the current gets directed towards the Earth as well. It is this flow of current that results in damage to life and property on Earth.
• There is a greater probability of lightning striking tall objectssuch as trees, towers or buildings. Once it is about 80-100 m from the surface, lightning tends to change course towards these taller objects. This happens because air is a poor conductor of electricity, and electrons that are travelling through air seek both a better conductor and the shortest route to the relatively positively charged Earth’s surface.

Safety Measures During the Calamity

• One must avoid open areas and stay away from isolated trees, towers or electrical poles as lightning tends to strike the tallest object in an area.
• One must stay away from conductors such as fences and wires.  These objects act as a conductor to the lightning to distant areas.
• In a situation where a sturdy building is difficult to locate nearby, a hard-topped metal vehicle with closed windows must be used as a shelter.
• One must stand away from electrical equipment and wiring. Also, corded phones must not be used during a thunderstorm.
• Water pipes also conduct electricity, so taking a shower or using the plumbing must be avoided during a storm.
• One must avoid being stuck in a crowd and must spread out. This would help to avoid multiple casualties in case of a lightning strike.
• If someone is struck by lightning, urgent medical attention must be provided. Cardiac arrest is the immediate cause of death in most of these situations. Hence, the victim must be moved quickly to a safer place. Also, CPR and Automatic External Defibrillator must be given.

Context: Recently, International Energy Agency (IEA) and Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas jointly organized a webinar on “Building a Natural Gas-Based Economy in India Amidst a Changing Global Gas Market Landscape’’. 
About the Workshop

• The workshop is the first collaborative activity between the IEA and the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas in the realm of a gas-based economy.

The collaboration of India and IEA in the natural gas sector are intended - 

• To develop relevant knowledge sharing and experiences on a range of issues including natural gas infrastructure, regulation and gas hub development 
• To help facilitate India’s national efforts to increase the share of natural gas in the energy mix and strengthen India’s energy security

India’s association with IEA

• India and IEA have been cooperating across a range of areas, including oil security, energy efficiency, statistics and technology since 2017 when India became Associate Country of IEA. 
• The genesis of this collaboration can be linked to the launch of first In-depth Review of India’s Energy Policies by IEA in January 2020 in which it had lauded Government of India’s efforts to increase the share of Gas in India’s energy mix.

India’s Gas Sector

• India has set a very ambitious target of increasing the share of natural gas from 6 % to 15 % by 2030 in India’s energy mix.

As per experts India will emerge as pioneer in Gas Based economy as focus is being given - 

• To enhance domestic gas production
• On expeditious development of gas infrastructure as well as development of the Gas market by providing open access to gas infrastructure.
• On creation of a free gas market, the Government is progressively moving towards a marketing and pricing freedom regime in the country.
• Gas grid is being expanded to new markets in eastern and north-eastern part of the country with Government’s support of capital grants for Pradhan Mantri Urja Ganga (PMUG) and Indradhanush North Eastern Gas Grid projects.
• Coverage of City Gas projects is being expanded to 232 Geographical Areas (GAs) spread over more than 400 districts, with a potential to cover about 53% of the country’s geography and 70% of the country's population.

Efforts are underway to rationalise gas pipeline tariff structure as - 

• The present zonal tariff structure leads to additive tariffs for usage of multiple pipelines to transport natural gas from the distant gas supply sources. 
• It causes wide disparity in pipeline tariffs particularly for the buyers located distant from the gas sources, thereby hindering the development of new gas markets/ demand centres in far flung and remote areas. 

Benefits of Rationalised Tariff

• It will facilitate in creating a single gas market by attracting investment to complete the Gas Grid, thereby ensuring equitable access to natural gas across the country. 
• It will create a level playing field among gas consumers located in far/remote areas
• It will improve Gas affordability throughout the country.
• It will encourage gas industries to utilize the opportunity of procuring their gas requirement through the Gas Trade Exchange(s) platform based on market mechanisms. 
• Level playing field will reduce the cost of industries and make them more competitive at Global level. 

About International Energy Agency

• It is a Paris-based autonomous intergovernmental organization established in the framework of the Organisation for Economic Co operation and Development (OECD) in 1974 in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. 
• The IEA was initially dedicated to responding to physical disruptions in the supply of oil, as well as serving as an information source on statistics about the international oil market and other energy sectors.
• Now the agency’s mandate has broadened to focus on the "3Es" of effectual energy policy: energy security, economic development, and environmental protection.
• The IEA acts as a policy adviser to its member states, but also works with non-member countries, especially China, India, and Russia. 
• The IEA has also been criticized for failing to create a 1.5°C scenario and place it centrally in its annual World Energy Outlook report.

Context: Recently, Raksha Mantri launched a new web portal for issue of No Objection Certificate (NOC) for power projects.
Key Points

• The new portal was launched for the issue of No Objection Certificate (NOC) for power projects and Research Survey Exploration Exploitation (RSEE) activities in the Indian Territorial Waters (TW) and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
• The Ministry of Defence (MoD) accords security clearances to various private/Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs)/Government organisations for power/wind/solar projects in areas nearby defence installations and also RSEE activities in the Indian TW and EEZ for applications received through different Ministries like Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), Ministry of Power, Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, Ministry of Shipping, Director General of Hydrocarbons, etc.
• To ensure ease of business and transparency in issuing NOC for such projects, the Ministry has developed the online application portal with the assistance of National e-Governance Division (NeGD), Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG) and National Informatics Centre (NIC).
• The newly developed MoD web portal will facilitate the applicants in submitting their proposals online for seeking MoD Security Clearance for undertaking Power Projects/RSEE activities.
• The Online System will establish an effective, speedy and transparent mechanism to process these proposals.
• The Ministry had earlier launched a similar portal for grant of NOC for aerial survey.

About Exclusive Economic Zone

• An EEZ is a sea zone prescribed by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) over which a sovereign state has special rights regarding the exploration and use of marine resources, including energy production from water and wind.
• It stretches from the baseline out to 200 nautical miles (nmi) from its coast.
• The term does not include either the territorial sea or the continental shelf beyond the 200 nmi limit.
• The territorial sea confers full sovereignty over the waters, whereas the EEZ is merely a sovereign right which refers to the coastal state’s rights below the surface of the sea.

Context: A lack of new oil discoveries in India coupled with a long lead time to begin production from discovered wells has led to a steady decline in India’s crude oil production.
Key Facts

• India’s crude oil production fell 7.1% in May 2020 compared to May 2019 on the back of low demand due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
• Domestic production of crude has, however, been falling every year since FY 2012.
• Annual crude oil production has fallen at a compounded annual rate of 2.1% since to 32,169.3 thousand Metric Tonnes (TMT) in FY 2020 from 38,089.7 TMT in FY 2012.
• This has led to a steady climb in the proportion of imports in domestic crude oil consumption from 81.8% in 2012 to 87.6% in 2020

Why is production falling?

• Experts say that most of India’s crude oil production comes from aging wells that have become less productive over time.
• A lack of new oil discoveries in India coupled with a long lead time to begin production from discovered wells has led to a steady decline in India’s crude oil production making India increasingly dependent on imports.
• The output of these aging wells is declining faster than new wells can come up according to experts. Domestic exploration companies are attempting to extend the life of currently operational wells.
• Crude oil production in India is dominated by two major state-owned exploration and production companies, ONGC and Oil India.
• These companies are the key bidders for crude oil block auctions and end up acquiring most of the blocks that are put up for auction in India, according to experts.

Why are there not more private players?

• While there are some private players in the upstream oil sector including Cairn India and Hindustan Oil Exploration Company there has been a lack of interest in exploration and production in India from major private players, particularly those based abroad.
• According to experts, this is because of long delays in the operationalisation of production even after an oil block is allotted due to delays in approvals.
• Some of the key approvals which are required to begin production include, environmental clearances and approval by the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons after the allottee completes a seismic survey and creates a field development plan.
• “The best-case scenario from allotment to production is at least 5-7 years,” said an industry expert noting that in many cases it was delayed beyond this timeline particularly in the case of public sector companies.

What policy changes could help?

• Existing public and private sector players have asked for reduced levies of oil production including oil cess, royalties, and profit petroleum especially when crude oil prices are below $45/barrel.
• Experts say the requirement to pay royalties to the government at low crude prices can make it unviable for these companies to invest in further exploration and production.
• The government introduced the Open Acreage Licensing Programme (OALP) in 2019 to allow companies to carve out blocks that they are interested in and with lower royalties and no oil cess.
• However, existing players are calling for a relaxation of royalties and oil cess on block allotted under previous policies.
• One expert pointed out that the Chinese government offered a floor price to oil producers insulating them somewhat from any sharp falls in international crude prices.
•  “This kind of policy at least allows for a company to have a fixed worst-case scenario for the sale of crude oil,” said an expert noting that this incentivised more investment in exploration and production.

Context: Recently, Indian Oil Corporation Limited and Sun Mobility announced the launch of a battery swapping facility for electric vehicles at IOC petrol pumps, offering to replace discharged batteries with fully charged ones within minutes.
Key Points

• IOC will begin with a pilot project of battery swapping called Quick Interchange Station (QIS) at one of its outlets in Chandigarh and gradually scale it up to 20 stations.
• Battery swapping technology offers the best alternative to no or slow charging options and can help EV drivers make optimum use of their operational hours.
• Indian Oil would consider various aspects of the battery-swapping technology for scaling up its presence in the EV infrastructure business.
• The battery swapping model is initially targeted at commercial vehicles such as electric autos, rickshaws and electric two-wheelers and EVs that are either factory fitted or retrofitted.

Significance

• Battery swapping facilities and technologies could go a long way in reducing range-related concerns in EVs.
• Range anxiety is one of the major stumbling blocks towards the mass adoption of EVs around the world.
• It refers to the number of kilometres a vehicle can travel before requiring a charge.

Benefits of Battery Swapping technology
User benefits:

• It is quick (≤ 3 mins) and makes the experience as convenient as refuelling at a petrol pump.
• It gives the option of selling the car separate from battery thereby reducing the cost by almost 30-50% since the battery is the most expensive part in it.
• Battery Swapping Operators are more in control of batteries and will ensure maximum battery usage and proper disposal.

DISCOM benefits:

• This will increase revenue for DISCOMs by providing additional demand from reliable commercial end-users.
• It can be flexible in terms of charging (can be done during non-peak hours), hence balancing the peak load of the grid.

Energy operator benefits:

• This will ensure better utilization of the land as swapping requires a fraction of land needed compared to the charging station.
• This will be an attractive option for urban areas and reduce the financial burden for the energy operators and will provide new business opportunities.

Context: Recently, the World Bank has approved a five year loan (for the second phase) to the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) or Namami Gange Project worth Rs.3,000 crore to help stem pollution in the Ganga river basin.
Key Points

• The First Phase: The Namami Gange has already received Rs. 4,535 crore from the World Bank as part of the first phase (valid until December 2021) of the National Ganga River Basin.

The Second Phase:

• Hybrid Annuity Projects: The loan would fund three new ‘Hybrid Annuity Projects’ in Agra, Meerut and Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh for the tributaries of the Ganga.
• Cleaning Projects: Some of the projects include spillover projects from the first phase of the mission as well cleaning projects in tributaries such as the Yamuna and Kali rivers.
• DBOT Projects: Rs.1,209 crore is provided for the ongoing DBOT (Design, Build, Operate and Transfer) projects in Buxar, Munger, Begusarai in Bihar.
• Other Initiatives: It would include institutional development, improving investment resilience to Covid-19 like emergency situations, performance based incentive for Urban Local Bodies and communication and management programmes.

Associated Challenges
Pollution

• Most of the Ganga is polluted and it is due to presence of five states on the river’s main stem i.e. Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal.
• Industrial pollution from tanneries in Kanpur, distilleries, paper and sugar mills in the Kosi, Ramganga and Kali river catchments are major contributors.
• Violation of e-Flow Norms According to the Central Water Commission (CWC), 4 of the 11 hydro power projects on the upper reaches of the river Ganga’s tributaries are violating Ganga ecological flow (e-flow) norms which is further interrupting the natural flow of the river.
• Illegal Construction: The problem of illegal and rampant construction near river beds has become a major hurdle in cleaning the river.
• Poor Governance: There is less utilisation of funds allotted under the programmes due to lack of monitoring and superviison.

Additional Facts

• National Ganga River Basin project: It is a World Bank assisted project approved in the year 2011.
• Aim: To help rejuvenate the Ganga River by helping stem river pollution, and strengthening the management of the river basin.
• Namami Gange: It was launched in 2014.It is an Integrated Conservation Mission under the Ministry of Jal Shakti.
• Aim: To achieve effective abatement of pollution, conservation and rejuvenation of National River Ganga.
• Main Pillars: a) Sewerage Treatment Infrastructure b) River surface Cleaning c) Afforestation d) Industrial Effluent Monitoring, e) River-Front Development f) Biodiversity g) Ganga Gram and h) Public Awareness.
• National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG): It has been established as an Authority under National Council for River Ganga (Rejuvenation, Protection and Management) Act, 2016.
• It is the implementing agency of the Namami Gange Programme at the national level.

Context: Recently, “Nasha Mukt Bharat: Annual Action Plan (2020-21) for 272 Most Affected Districts’ was e-launched by Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment on the occasion of “International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking”

• Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment observes 26th June every year as “International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking”. 
• It is the nodal Ministry for drug demand reduction which coordinates and monitors all aspects of drug abuse prevention which include assessment of the extent of the problem, preventive action, treatment and rehabilitation of addicts, dissemination of information and public awareness.

Key Points

• The Nasha Mukt Bharat Annual Action Plan for 2020-21 would focus on 272 most affected districts.
• The plan aims to launch a three-pronged attack combining efforts of the Narcotics Control Bureau, Outreach/Awareness by Social Justice and Treatment through the Health Department.

The Action Plan has the following components:

• Awareness generation programmes
• Focus on Higher Educational institutions
• University Campuses and Schools
• Community outreach and identification of dependent population;
• Focus on Treatment facilities in Hospital settings and
• Capacity Building Programmes for Service Providers.

Based on the finding of the National Survey on Extent and Pattern of Substance Use in India and list of districts which are vulnerable from the supply point of view provided by Narcotics Control Bureau, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment would undertake intervention programmes in vulnerable districts across the country with an aim to: 

• Reach out to Children and Youth for awareness about ill effect of drug use; 
• Increase community participation and public cooperation; Supporting Government Hospitals for opening up De- addiction Centers in addition to existing Ministry Supported De-addiction Centers (IRCAs); and  
• Conducting Training programme for participants.

Taking cognizance of the fact that addressing the problem of drug abuse requires concerted action at different levels of the Government, the Ministry has asked the State Governments to plan and take specific initiatives, taking into account their local considerations and devise specific and suitable strategies for drug demand reduction in their identified areas. 

• The State Governments have also been involved in the monitoring process for programmes under the NAPDDR in order to ensure its effective implementation.
• Global Initiatives: The United Nations with the aid of its anti-drug abuse arm, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) spreads awareness, urges governments to avoid stimulating the Narco economy and deal with the Illicit trafficking of drugs in the disguise of legal pharmaceutical businesses.

Challenges to Curb the Drug Menace

• Related Data: The findings of the “Magnitude of Substance Abuse in India” report 2019, revealed the estimated 16 crore alcohol consumers in the 10-75 years in the country, as many as 19% of them were dependent on alcohol.
• Legally Available Drugs: Such as tobacco is a huge problem which is usually seen as a gateway drug which children take just to experiment with.
• Lack of Availability of Rehabilitation Centres: There is a lack of rehabilitation centres. Also, NGOs operating de-addiction centres in the country, have failed to provide the required kind of treatment and therapy.
• Smuggling of Drugs: Smuggling of drugs through the states like Punjab, Assam and Uttar Pradesh which share the border with neighbouring countries.

Additional Facts
National Action Plan for Drug Demand Reduction(NAPDDR), 2018-2025:

• The plan was drafted by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.
• The Action Plan includes components for preventive education and awareness generation, capacity building, treatment and rehabilitation, setting quality standards, focussed intervention in vulnerable areas, skill development, vocational training and livelihood support of ex-drug addicts, State/UT specific interventions, surveys, studies, evaluation and research etc.
• A steering committee under the chairmanship of the secretary, Social Justice Ministry monitors the implementation of the Action Plan.

Narcotics Control Bureau: It is the nodal drug law enforcement and intelligence agency of India. It functions under the Ministry of Home Affairs.It was established in 1986 under the NDPS Act,1985.It is headquartered in New Delhi.

Context: Recently, India and Bhutan signed the pact for construction of the 600 MW Kholongchhu project, the first hydropower joint venture project in Bhutan’s less developed eastern region of Trashiyangtse.
About Kholongchhu project

• It is India-Bhutan’s first hydropower joint venture project in Bhutan’s less developed eastern region of Trashiyangtse.
• Kholongchhu project is one of four additional projects agreed to in 2008, as a part of India’s commitment to help Bhutan create a total 10,000 MW of installed capacity by 2020.

Key Points

• It is the first time an India-Bhutan hydropower project will be constructed as a 50:50 joint venture, not as a government-to-government agreement.
• Once the project is commissioned, the JV partners will run it for 30 years, called the concession period, after which the full ownership will transfer to the Bhutan government.
• It is considered a milestone in the India-Bhutan partnership, under which four hydropower projects have been built in the last 30 years totalling a capacity of 2,100 MW, and another two are under construction.

Road-blocks

• The inter-governmental agreement for the Kholongchhu project was signed after prolonged negotiations on the structure of the joint venture, in April 2014, and the foundation stone was laid when Prime Minister Narendra Modi travelled to Thimphu.
• Progress on preparing the site ground to a halt in December 2016 over India’s new power tariff guidelines (on Cross Border Trade of Electricity – CBTE), until the government amended its guidelines after negotiations with the Bhutan government.
• However, according to the agreement finalised, the project would be completed in the second half of 2025.

Understanding the background of problem

• In wake of custodial deaths in Tamil Nadu, the debate on Roman dilemma: “Who will guard the guardians” rises again. Torture is anathema to democracy and cannot be tolerated in a civilized society.
• Answer to prevention of torture can be found in multiple sources like Royal Commissions in the UK, Law Commission report and Police Commission reports in India and also Supreme Court’s progressive case law, like Joginder Kumar (1994) and Nilabati Behera (1993).
• However, the basic loophole which exists even today is that most torture is done before the arrest is recorded by the police. Safeguards obviously kick in only after the arrest is shown. This is a perennial, insoluble dilemma and all devious police forces globally use it.

Supreme Court judgement in DK Basu case

• The DK Basu judgment since 1987 is crucial in dealing with issue of custodial deaths.
• The judgement has origin from a letter complaint in 1986, which was converted into PIL. 4 crucial and comprehensive judgments — in 1996, twice in 2001 and in 2015 — lay down over 20 commandments, forming the complete structure of this judgement.

Details of judgment:
First 11 commandments in 1996, focused on vital processual safeguards:

• All officials must carry name tags and full identification, arrest memo must be prepared,containing all details regarding time and place of arrest, attested by one family member or respectable member of the locality.
• The location of arrest must be intimated to one family or next friend, details notified to the nearest legal aid organisation and arrestee must be made known of DK Basu judgement.
• All such compliances must be recorded in the police register, arrestee must get periodical medical examination, inspection memo must be signed by arrestee also and all such information must be centralised in a central police control room.
• Breach to be culpable with severe departmental action and additionally contempt also, and this would all be in addition to, not substitution of, any existing remedy.
• All of the above preventive and punitive measures could go with, and were not alternatives to, full civil monetary damage claims for constitutional tort.

8 other intermediate orders till 2015 sought:

• Precise detailed compliance reports of above orders to be submitted by all states and UT and any delayed responses looked into by special sub-committees appointed by state human rights body.
• Also where no SHRC existed, the chief justice of the high courts to monitor it administratively.
• It emphasised that existing simple but potent powers for magisterial inquiries under the CrPC were lackadaisical and must be completed in four months, unless sessions court judges recorded reasons for extension.
• It also directed SHRCs to be set up expeditiously in each part of India.

The third and last phase of judgment ended in 2015:

• Stern directions were given to set up SHRCs and also fill up large vacancies in existing bodies.
• The power of setting up human rights courts under Section 30 of the NHRC Act was directed to be operationalized.
• All prisons had to have CCTVs within one year.
• Non-official visitors would do surprise checks on prisons and police stations.
• Prosecutions and departmental action to be made unhesitatingly mandated.

Where do we lack?

• In operationalising the spirit of DK Basu judgment, in punitive measures, in last mile implementation, in breaking intra-departmental solidarity with errant policemen and in ensuring swift, efficacious departmental coercive action plus criminal prosecution.
• A 1985 Law Commission report directing enactment of section 114-B into our Evidence Act, raising a rebuttable presumption of culpability against the police if anyone in their custody dies or is found with torture, has still not become law, despite a bill introduced as late as 2017.
• We still have abysmally deplorable rates of even initiating prosecutions against accused police officers. Actual convictions are virtually non-existent.

Road Ahead

• Monitoring and implementation of DK Basu by independent and balanced civil society individuals at each level, under court supervision, is sufficient to minimise this scourge. It is high time we take actions in this direction.

Context: Recently, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has constituted a national level committee for reform in criminal law.
Key Points
Committee For Reform In Criminal Law

• The committee has been constituted under Ranbir Singh and several other members.
• The committee would be gathering opinions online by consulting with experts and collating material for their report to the government.
• The consultation exercise would start on 4th July 2020 and go on for the next three months.

Background of Criminal Justice System

• The codification of criminal laws in India was done during the British rule, which more or less remains the same even in the 21st century.
• Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay is said to be the chief architect of codifications of criminal laws in India.
• Criminal law in India is governed by Indian Penal Code, 1860, Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, and Indian Evidence Act, 1872, etc.

Need for Reforms

• Colonial Era Laws: The criminal justice system is a replica of the British colonial jurisprudence, which was designed with the purpose of ruling the nation and not serving the citizens.
• Ineffectiveness: The purpose of the criminal justice system was to protect the rights of the innocents and punish the guilty, but nowadays the system has become a tool of harassment of common people.
• Pendency of Cases: According to Economic Survey 2018-19, there are about 3.5 crore cases pending in the judicial system, especially in district and subordinate courts, which leads to actualisation of the maxim “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
• Huge Undertrials: India has one of the world’s largest number of undertrial prisoners.
• According to NCRB -Prison Statistics India (2015), 67.2% of our total prison population comprises undertrial prisoners.
• Investigation: Corruption, huge workload and accountability of police is a major hurdle in speedy and transparent delivery of justice.
• Madhav Menon Committee: It submitted its report in 2007, suggesting various recommendations on reforms in the CJSI.
• Malimath Committee Report: It submitted its report in 2003 on the Criminal Justice System of India (CJSI).
• The Committee had opined that the existing system “weighed in favour of the accused and did not adequately focus on justice to the victims of crime.”
• It has provided various recommendations to be made in the CJSI, which were not implemented.

Suggestions for Reforms
Criminal law is considered to be the most apparent expression of the relationship between a state and its citizens. Therefore, any revision to the CJSI needs to be done while keeping several principles in mind, which are:

• The reason for victimization ought to be given a major thrust in reforming laws to identify the rights of crime victims.
• For Example: Launch of victim and witness protection schemes, use of victim impact statements, increased victim participation in criminal trials, enhanced access of victims to compensation and restitution.
• The construction of new offences and reworking of the existing classification of offences must be guided by the principles of criminal jurisprudence which have substantially altered in the past four decades.
• For Example: Criminal liability could be graded better to assign the degree of punishments. New types of punishments like community service orders, restitution orders, and other aspects of restorative and reformative justice could also be brought in its fold.
• The classification of offences must be done in a manner conducive to management of crimes in the future.
• Many chapters of the IPC are overloaded at several places. The chapters on offences against public servants, contempt of authority, public tranquility, and trespass can be redefined and narrowed.
• Guiding principles need to be developed after sufficient debate before criminalising an act as a crime.
• Unprincipled criminalisation not only leads to the creation of new offences on unscientific grounds, but also arbitrariness in the criminal justice system.
• The discretion of judges in deciding the quantum and nature of sentence differently for crimes of the same nature should be based on principles of judicial precedent.

Context: Recently, the Amendments in the Indian Stamp Act, 1899 brought through Finance Act 2019 and Rules made thereunder will come into effect from July 2020.
Indian Stamp Act

• Indian Stamp Act, 1899 is an in-force Act of the Government of India for the charging of stamp duty on instruments recording transactions.
• The Regulators are: Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and they have been have been authorized by the Government to issue clarificatory circulars/ operational guidelines on the Amendments made to the Indian Stamp Act.

Need for Amendments to the Indian Stamp Act

• The present system of collection of stamp duty on securities market transactions led to multiple rates for the same instrument.
• This had resulted in jurisdictional disputes and multiple incidences of duty, thereby raising the transaction costs in the securities market and hurting capital formation.

Purpose of amendments

• The legal and institutional mechanism is in place to enable states to collect stamp duty on securities market instruments at one place by one agency (through Stock Exchange or Clearing Corporation authorized by it or by the Depository) on one Instrument.
• It places a mechanism to facilitate ease of doing business and to bring in uniformity of the stamp duty on securities across States and thereby build a pan-India securities market.
• It also includes a mechanism for appropriately sharing the stamp duty with relevant State Governments has also been developed which is based on the state of domicile of the buyer.

Benefits of the Amendment

• This rationalized and harmonized system through centralized collection mechanism is expected to ensure minimize cost of collection and enhance revenue productivity.
• Further, this system will help develop equity markets and equity culture across the length and breadth of the country, ushering in balanced regional development.

Context: Recently, a five-judge Review Bench upholding the September 2018 Constitution Bench judgment has dismissed the review petitions.
Background

• The original judgment of the September 2018 Constitution Bench had held that Section 497 (adultery) of the Indian Penal Code cannot “command” married couples to remain loyal to each other for the fear of penal punishment and had struck adultery out of the penal statute book.
• The then Chief Justice had opined that two individuals may part if one cheats, but to attach criminality to infidelity was not right.
• Adultery was considered not a crime if the cuckolded husband connives or consents to his wife’s extra-marital affair.
• Section 497 treats a married woman as the commodity of her husband, the Bench had held.
• The court had reasoned that there was no data whatsoever to support claims that the abolition of adultery as a crime would result in “chaos in sexual morality” or an increase of divorce.

Key Points

• A five-judge Review Bench upholding the September 2018 Constitution Bench judgment has dismissed the review petitions.
• Adultery is not a crime if the cuckolded husband connives or consents to his wife’s extra-marital affair. Section 497 treats a married woman as her husband’s “chattel”. The provision is a reflection of the social dominance of men prevalent 150 years ago.
• “Husband is not the master… Obituaries should be written of these historic perceptions,” then chief justice Misra had observed.
• The Bench had also held that Section 198 (2) of the CrPC, which gave the cuckolded husband the exclusive right to prosecute his wife’s lover, was manifestly arbitrary.
• Adultery can however be a ground for civil remedy like dissolution of marriage, the 2018 verdict had said.

What is a review petition and when can it be filed?

• Under Article 137, the Supreme Court has the power to review any of its judgments or orders.

Scope for review

• When a review takes place, the law is that it is allowed not to take fresh stock of the case but to correct grave errors that have resulted in the miscarriage of justice.
• The court has the power to review its rulings to correct a “patent error” and not “minor mistakes of inconsequential import”.
• In a 1975 ruling, Justice Krishna Iyer said a review can be accepted “only where a glaring omission or patent mistake or like grave error has crept in earlier by judicial fallibility”.

In a 2013 ruling, the Supreme Court has laid down three grounds for seeking a review of a verdict it has delivered:

• The discovery of new and important matter or evidence which, after the exercise of due diligence, was not within the knowledge of the petitioner or could not be produced by him.
• Mistake or error apparent on the face of the record.
• Any other sufficient reason. It means a reason that is analogous to the other two grounds.
• In 2013 Union of India v. Sandur Manganese & Iron Ores Ltd) case, the court laid down nine principles on when a review is maintainable.

Who can file a review petition?

• As per the Civil Procedure Code and the Supreme Court Rules, any person aggrieved by a ruling can seek a review. However, the court exercises its discretion to allow a review petition only when it shows the grounds for seeking the review.

Time- period within which a review petition should be filed?
As per 1996 rules framed by the Supreme Court:

• A review petition must be filed within 30 days of the date of judgment or order. While a judgment is the final decision in a case, an order is an interim ruling that is subject to its final verdict.
• In certain circumstances, the court can condone a delay in filing the review petition if the petitioner can establish strong reasons that justify the delay.

The procedure to be followed:

• The rules state that review petitions would ordinarily be entertained without oral arguments by lawyers. It is heard “through circulation” by the judges in their chambers.
• Review petitions are also heard, as far as practicable, by the same combination of judges who delivered the order or judgment that is sought to be reviewed.
• If a judge has retired or is unavailable, a replacement is made keeping in mind the seniority of judges.
• In exceptional cases, the court allows an oral hearing. In a 2014 case, the Supreme Court held that review petitions in all death penalty cases will be heard in open court by a Bench of three judges.

Context: Recent, Manipur Speaker’s decision to disqualify some MLAs ahead of the Rajya Sabha election has raised questions once again on the Speaker’s powers to disqualify under the tenth schedule of our Constitution.
About Tenth Schedule

• The anti-defection law, referred to as the Tenth Schedule, was added to the Constitution through the Fifty-Second (Amendment) Act, 1985 when Rajiv Gandhi was PM.
• It lays down the process by which legislators may be disqualified on grounds of defection by the Presiding Officer of a legislature based on a petition by any other member of the House.
• A legislator is deemed to have defected if he either voluntarily gives up the membership of his party or disobeys the directives of the party leadership on a vote.
• This implies that a legislator defying (abstaining or voting against) the party whip on any issue can lose his membership of the House.
• The law applies to both Parliament and state assemblies.

Exceptions under the law

• Legislators may change their party without the risk of disqualification in certain circumstances.
• The law allows a party to merge with or into another party provided that at least two-thirds of its legislators are in favour of the merger.
• In such a scenario, neither the members who decide to merge nor the ones who stay with the original party will face disqualification.

Is there any time limit to decide on the matter?

• The law does not specify a time period for the Presiding Officer to decide on a disqualification plea.
• Given that courts can intervene only after the Presiding Officer has decided on the matter, the petitioner seeking disqualification has no option but to wait for this decision to be made.

Under debate: Speaker’s power

• The power for this disqualification is vested in the Speaker, who is usually a nominee of the ruling party.
• Since no action was taken by the Speaker on the disqualification petitions, a writ petition was filed before the High Court of Manipur in Imphal seeking directions to decide on the petition.

However, the court did not pass an order.

• It said that the larger issue of whether a High Court can direct a Speaker to decide a disqualification petition within a certain timeframe is pending before a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court.
• The parties are left with the option to move the apex court or wait for the outcome of the cases pending before it.

The apex court’s reluctance to intervene

• In 2018, however, the High Court, refusing the preliminary objections of the Speaker, decided to hear the case on merits.
• It reasoned that since the remedy under Tenth Schedule is an alternative to moving courts.
• It said that if the remedy is found to be ineffective due to deliberate inaction or indecision on the part of the Speaker, the court will have jurisdiction.
• However, the High Court again did not pass orders since the larger issue is pending before the Supreme Court.

The apex court recommends-

• The apex court has expressed its displeasure with the Speaker’s lack of urgency in deciding the disqualification petitions.
• A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court ruled that Speakers of assemblies and the Parliament must decide disqualification pleas within a period of three months except in extraordinary circumstances.
• This settled the law for situations where the timing of the disqualification is meddled to manipulate floor tests.
• The court also recommended that the Parliament consider taking a relook at the powers of the Speakers citing instances of partisanship.
• The court suggested independent tribunals to decide on disqualification

Road Ahead

• Impartiality, fairness and autonomy in decision-making are the hallmarks of a robust institution. It is the freedom from interference and pressures which provide the necessary atmosphere where one can work with an absolute commitment to the cause of neutrality (as a Constitutional value).
• At a time when India’s rank has fallen in the latest Democracy Index (2019), it is expected from Parliament to take steps to revamp and strengthen the institution of the Speaker.
• Further, the structural issues regarding the manner of appointment of the Speaker and his tenure in office needs an urgent redressal.

Context: Recently, Uganda has become the first African country to submit results for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Key Points

• REDD+ is a mechanism developed by the parties to the UNFCCC to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
• The results submitted by Uganda to the UNFCCC has paved the way for results-based payments to the country.
• Results-based payments comprise the final REDD+ phase. It provides financial incentives to developing countries that prove they stopped deforestation during a certain period.
• Uganda’s forest cover had depleted to 8 per cent from 24 per cent in the 1990s, largely attributed to human encroachment, including for charcoal, timber and agriculture.

Significance for Africa

• The submission of the results will encourage other African countries to reduce carbon emissions by decreasing deforestation and forest degradation.
• Achieving REDD+ results in the continent is challenging, as there are other development priorities — with agriculture, mining, energy and forestry — driving deforestation.
• Africa had the greatest annual rate of net forest loss, at 3.9 million ha, across the world in this decade.
• It is a climate change mitigation solution developed by Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), that incentivizes developing countries to keep their forests standing.

About UN-REDD Programme

• United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation is a collaborative programme of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), created in 2008 in response to the UNFCCC decisions on the Bali Action Plan and REDD at COP-13.
• The Programme supports nationally led REDD+ processes and promotes the indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent communities, in national and international REDD+ implementation.
• It releases an annual Programme Progress Report and a Semi-Annual Report in the public domain.

Goal

• The overall development goal of the Programme is to reduce forest emissions and enhance carbon stocks in forests while contributing to national sustainable development.

Difference between REDD+ and the UN-REDD Programme

• REDD refers to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation while REDD+ refers to the conservation of forest carbon stocks, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.
• REDD+ is a voluntary climate change mitigation approach that has been developed by Parties to the UNFCCC.

About Uganda

• Uganda is a landlocked country in East-Central Africa.
• It is in the African Great Lakes region. Uganda also lies within the Nile basin, and has a varied but generally a modified equatorial climate.
• It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania.
• The southern part of the country includes a substantial portion of Lake Victoria, shared with Kenya and Tanzania.

Context: Recently, the 36th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit was held via video conference to focus on the Covid-19 pandemic response, post-pandemic recovery and further cooperation with partner countries.

• The theme for the Summit was "Cohesive and Responsive ASEAN".
• The Summit was chaired by Vietnam which is also holding the chairmanship of ASEAN currently.

Background

• China has been pushing its presence in the Exclusive Economic Zones of other countries while claimant countries have been preoccupied in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.
• China has been stepping up its activity in the disputed South China Sea during the coronavirus pandemic.
• Vietnam and the Philippines had raised protests with China in April 2020 after China unilaterally declared the creation of new administrative districts on islands in the South China Sea to which Vietnam and the Philippines also have competing claims.
• In early April 2020, Vietnam claimed that one of its fishing boats was sunk by a Chinese maritime surveillance vessel.

Key Points

• Leaders of Vietnam and the Philippines argued that international institutions and international law had been seriously challenged during the global crisis.
• Vietnam and the Philippines have warned of growing insecurity and instability in Southeast Asia and have called upon countries to refrain from escalating tensions and abide by responsibilities under international law.

About ASEAN Covid-19 Response Fund

• The summit has decided to establish the ASEAN Covid-19 response fund with a reserve for medical supplies to meet urgent needs during epidemics.
• A special ASEAN meeting convened in April to tackle the pandemic had failed to agree on an emergency fund.
• It has also decided to build the ASEAN standard procedures of epidemic response in case of health emergencies.

About ASEAN

• It is a regional grouping that promotes economic, political, and security cooperation. It was established in 1967 in Bangkok, Thailand, with the signing of the ASEAN Declaration (Bangkok Declaration) by the founding fathers of ASEAN, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
• Currently, it consists of ten members namely, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
• Chairmanship of the group rotates annually, based on the alphabetical order of the English names of Member States.

Its objectives are

• to accelerate economic growth, social progress and cultural development,
• to promote regional peace and stability,
• to promote active collaboration and mutual assistance on matters of common interest in the economic, social, cultural, technical, scientific and administrative fields. 

Context: Israel’s aim to annex parts of the occupied West Bank was clearly illegal, the UN’s human rights chief said, warning that the consequences could be “disastrous”
Background

• The UN Secretary General’s alarm has been sounded in the context of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reported plan to annex on July 1 around 30% of the Occupied West Bank.
• It will include annexation of all the existing (post-1967) settlements in addition to areas surrounding them and access roads.
• The UN Secretary General called upon Israel to abandon its annexation plans and asked the Middle East Quartet (the US, Russia, the European Union and the UN) to resume its mandated mediatory role.

Whether the annexation is a violation of International law?

• Annexation: It is forcible acquisition of territory by one state at the expense of another state as per international law.
• Violation of inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force: It will be illegal if such an act is sanctified by Israel and according to some experts is the accepted position of all international legal bodies including the International Court of Justice.

Position by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN Human Rights)

• It described the annexation of occupied territory as a serious violation of the Charter of the UN and the Geneva Conventions and contrary to the fundamental rule affirmed many times by the UNSC and the General Assembly that acquisition of territory war or by force is inadmissible.
• Human rights violation: It pointed out that the 53-year-old Israeli occupation is a source of profound human rights violations of the Palestinian people and these would only intensify after annexation.
• It would lead to a separate territory for Palestinian with islands of disconnected land completely surrounded by Israel and no territorial connection with the outside world.
• 21st century Apartheid: The annexation would solidify an already unjust reality: two peoples living in the same space ruled by the same state but with profoundly unequal rights.

The effect of the plan

• Consequences: There are no fixed understandings about the effect of plan on the status of private property owned by Palestinians (owns 23% of its land), rights to Palestinians with respect to Israeli Arabs of Palestinian origin (Muslim, Christian and Druze) who together constitute about 20% of Israel’s population etc.
• Effect on self-determination: There are question marks whether it will take away from the Palestinians right to have their own state under the right of national self-determination recognised at times without number by the international community.
• Demographic consequences: By its foundation, Israel is not a Jewish state only because most of its inhabitants are Jews but It is a state for the Jews wherever they may be and for any Jew who wishes to be there. The plan will have effect on non-Jews peoples.
• Changing ground realities: Since the 1967 war, the Israeli effort has been to procrastinate a settlement. Now, Israel is a member of the international community and succeeded in normalising its relations with a wide range of countries. It also includes observance of globally accepted norms of state conduct. Israel did not fulfill it with the support of powerful friends and imperatives of geopolitics.

India and Road Ahead

• India’s amity with the Palestinian people and its principled support to their cause predates India’s own independence.
• India needs to ask itself whether it supports the Israeli annexation plan that is in contravention of international legality.

Context: According to a Brookings India study, most South Asian nations are now largely dependent on China for imports despite geographical proximity to India.
Key Points

• As India-China border tensions continue to fester, a hegemonic China, as part of its global expansionism, is chipping away at India’s interests in South Asia.
• Several foreign policy experts argue that India’s strategic dealing with China has to begin with South Asia by reinvigorating SAARC, which has been inactive since 2014.

China’s contemporary relations with India’s neighbors

• China’s proximity to Pakistan has been strengthened by the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project.
• Nepal is also moving closer to China for ideational and material reasons. 
• China is wooing Bangladesh by offering tariff exemption to 97% of Bangladeshi products
• China has also intensified its ties with Sri Lanka through massive investments. 

Ignoring SAARC

• Isolating Pakistan: India has been trying hard to isolate Pakistan internationally for its role in promoting terrorism in India.

Alternatives to SAARC

• India started investing in other regional instruments such as BIMSTEC but it cannot replace SAARC for reasons such as lack of a common identity and history among all BIMSTEC members.
• As BIMSTEC’s focus is on the Bay of Bengal region, it is an inappropriate forum to engage all South Asian nations.
• Many foreign policy experts argue that India’s strategic dealing with China has to begin with South Asia.

Infusing life in SAARC by reviving the process of South Asian economic integration

Trade

• South Asia is one of the least integrated regions in the world with intra-regional trade teetering at 5% of total South Asian trade as compared to 25% of intra-regional trade in the ASEAN region.

Trade treaties

• While South Asian countries have signed trade treaties, the lack of political will and trust deficit has prevented any meaningful movement.
• India should take the lead and work with its neighbours to slash the tariff and non-tariff barriers.

Investments

• There’s a need to rejuvenate the negotiations on a SAARC investment treaty which has been pending since 2007.
• According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development, intra-ASEAN investments constitute around 19% of the total investments in the region.
• The SAARC region can likewise benefit from higher intra-SAARC investment flows.
• There are certain domestic issues of India in reviving SAARC.

Domestic challenges in revitalising SAARC
Ideological reasons

• There has been an anti-Pakistan and Bangladesh migrant rhetoric due to ideological reasons and to reap political dividends.
• Denting soft power: Majoritarian politics dents India’s soft power of being a liberal and secular democracy which gives moral legitimacy to India’s leadership in the region.

Complexity in the economic vision:

• There is a lack of clarity on the slogans of atma nirbharta (self-reliance) and ‘vocal for local’ mean.
• Protectionism: The government is stating that India needs to cut down its dependence on imports which signal a return to the obsolete economic philosophy of import substitution. This questions India’s interests in deepening South Asian economic integration.

Context: Recently, North and South Korea separately marked the 70th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, a conflict that killed millions of people and is technically yet to end.
Current Scenario

• In recent years North Korea has accelerated its nuclear programme by increasing its nuclear stockpile, withdrawn from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has tested nuclear explosives multiple times.
• USA has deployed THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) in South Korea to counter increasing missile adventurism of North Korea.
• North Korea recently demolished the Inter-Korean Liaison Office in Kaesong, which was established in 2018. In the absence of formal diplomatic relations, the building functioned as a de facto embassy and provided a direct communication channel for the two nations.

About Korean war (1950-53)

• After World War II, the Korean peninsula was divided along the 38th Parallel by American administrators.
• The northern part of the country was occupied by Soviet troops and the southern part was occupied by troops from the United States.
• During the late 1940’s Northern Korea established a communist government and the 38th Parallel became a political border between the two sides.
• North Korea wanted to expand its borders and sought assistance from both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China to mount an assault against South Korea.
• China committed supporting the leader of North Korea and on June 25, 1950, North Korean troops advanced across the 38th Parallel.
• The Korean War (1950-1953) began when the North Korean Communist army crossed the 38th Parallel and invaded non-Communist South Korea.
• As Kim Il-sung’s North Korean army, armed with Soviet tanks, quickly overran South Korea, the United States came to South Korea’s aid.
• Although Korea was not strategically essential to the United States, the political environment at this stage of the Cold War was such that policymakers did not want to appear soft on Communism.
• The Korean War halted following the signing of an armistice agreement in July 1953.

Consequences

• There were several casualties on both sides, though the exact figure is unknown.
• The Korean War created more friction between the United States and the Soviet Union.
• War made the United States truly aware of the falling domino effect of communism.
• South Korea became an important US military base with thousands of American troops stationed there.
• North Korea has carried out a controversial nuclear test and several ballistic missile tests, keeping South Korea, Japan, USA (Hawaii) and China in their missile range.

Role of India

• After the Armistice agreement in 1953, India sent Custodian Forces to the Korean Peninsula for the protection and repatriation of prisoners of war.
• The war resulted in large numbers of prisoners of war on either side who needed to be returned to their country of origin.
• A final operation- Operation Big Switch, occurred between August and September 1953, where North Korean, Chinese and UN Command prisoners of war were returned.
• The Neutral Nations Repatriation Committee (NNRC) was set up, with India at the helm, to put the prisoners of the Korean War who refused to return to their countries under the protection of the NNRC.
• India was tasked with sending a Custodian Force comprising military and civilian personnel who would ensure the welfare of all prisoners of war who did not wish to be repatriated.

Context: Recently, a commemorative declaration marking the 75th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations (UN) Charter was delayed as member states could not reach an agreement on phraseology.
Background

• This objection comes at a time when China’s relationships with many countries including India, Australia and the U.S., are strained. 
• China’s refusal to allow investigation in COVID-19 breakout from Wuhan Lab, its aggression in the South China Sea and recent stand-off with India in Galwan valley are the reasons behind the strained relations. 

About the delay

• The Five Eyes countries namely the U.S., the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and Canada along with India, objected to the use of a phrase “shared vision of a common future”, with associates with China. 
• The phrase, “community with a shared future for mankind” is closely associated with the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) and especially Chinese President as an articulation of the country’s vision for the world and has become a matter of objection. 
• The ‘silence’ process (a procedure by which a resolution passes if no formal objections are raised within a stipulated time) was broken at the request of the U.K.’s UN Ambassador. 

Silence process

• With this objection, the ‘silence’ process (a procedure by which a resolution passes if no formal objections are raised within a stipulated time) has been broken.
• However, China, on behalf of itself and Russia, Syria and Pakistan raised objections to the silence being broken.

What the countries demand?

• There is a demand of the resolution to be read  as “We will work together with partners to strengthen coordination and global governance for the common good of present and future generations and to realize our shared vision for a better future as envisaged in the preamble of the UN Charter.”

About UN75 declaration

• This declaration is meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of UN on 24th October. 
• The UN is marking its 75th anniversary at a time of great disruption for the world, compounded by an unprecedented global health crisis with severe economic and social impacts. In these hard times, the role and responsibility of the UN increase more than ever. 
• Since January 2020  the UN is holding a people’s debate UN75, through which it aims to encourage people to put their opinions together to define how enhanced international cooperation can help realize a better world by 2045.

About  Five Eyes

• It is an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. These countries are parties to the multilateral UKUSA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence.
• Origins: It began in 1946 when the United States and the United Kingdom agreed to an open exchange of intelligence on the communications of foreign nations. It was expanded when Canada joined the alliance in 1948, followed by Australia and New Zealand in 1956.

Context: In a bid to revive the Independence-era spirit of the ‘Lal-Bal-Pal’, named after nationalists Lala Lajpat Rai, ‘Lokmanya’ Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal, and to mark the death centenary of Tilak.

• Pune-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) ‘Sarhad’ will launch a series of literary and cultural programmes to strengthen connections between Maharashtra and West Bengal.

Rationale behind the event

• Punjab, Bengal and Maharashtra have played significant roles during the struggle for Indian Independence. The historical association and cultural bonds among the three States was solidified in the modern era by the trinity of ‘Lal-Bal-Pal’.
• After Independence, while the socio-cultural bonds between Maharashtra and Punjab have grown stronger, Maharashtra’s ties with Bengal have somewhat weakened, despite a rich pedigree of literary and cultural affinity in the past.

Key points

• It will be a two-year-long event and is named ‘Maharashtra-Bengal friendship chapter’.
• It is envisioned as a people’s cultural revivalist movement in these two States.
• It will commence on Tilak’s death centenary (August 1, 1920-August 1, 2020) and will go on till August 15, 2022 to mark the 150th birth anniversary of the great philosopher, Sri Aurobindo Ghosh.

Brief overview of contributions made by Lal- Bal- Pal:

• The triumvirate had played a stellar role in the second phase of the Swadeshi movement which gathered momentum after the partition of Bengal by Lord Curzon in 1905, and which called for the boycott of all imported items and the use of Indian-made goods.
• Lal-Bal-Pal mobilized Indians across the country against the Bengal partition, and the demonstrations, strikes and boycotts of British goods that began in Bengal soon spread to other regions in a broader protest against the Raj.
• The nationalist movement gradually faded with the arrest of its main leader Bal Gangadhar Tilakand retirement of Bipin Chandra Pal and Aurobindo Ghosh from active politics.

Key Facts

• In 1895, Lal started the Punjab National Bank—the first Indian bank to begin solely with Indian capital, and that continues to function till date.
• In 1917, Lal founded the Indian Home Rule League of America there.
• In 1884, Tilak founded the Deccan Education Society in Pune, and under the banner, opened the New English School for primary studies and Fergusson College for higher education.
• Bipin Chandra Pal was of a strong opinion that a mass reliance on Swadeshi goods would help people get rid of their poverty.

About ‘Lokmanya’ Bal Gangadhar Tilak

• Bal Gangadhar Tilak or Lokmanya Tilak was an Indian nationalist and social reformer.
• Tilak was born in Maharashtra in 1856.
• He was also called the ‘Father of Indian Unrest’.
• He joined the Indian National Congress (INC) in the year 1890.
• He started two newspaper, ‘Kesari’ in Marathi and ‘Mahratta’ in English.
• He was one of the first advocates of Swaraj or self-rule.
• He is also famous for the slogan: “Swarajya is my birthright and I shall have it!”
• Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai and Bal Gangadhar Tilak together called the ‘Lal-Bal-Pal’ triumvirate.
• He was one of the founders of the All India Home Rule Leaguein 1916, along with Annie Besant and G S Khaparde.

Context: A gas leak at Sainor Life Sciences Pvt Ltd, Jawaharlal Nehru Pharma City, in Visakhapatnam has claimed two lives and injured four people.
Key Points

• Hydrogen sulphide vapours leaked from the reactor of a pharmaceutical company’s plant.
• According to the Commissioner of Police, the leak has been brought under control.
• This is the second incident in the Sainor Life Sciences plant since it began operations at JNPC.
• In September 2015, two workers were charred to death and five others injured in a reactor blast.
• Cases were booked against the company and it was allowed to resume operations only after the management paid a hefty fine.
• There have been about 40 industrial accidents in Visakhapatnam district, over 20 in pharma and chemical units alone, since 1997. About 130 lives have been lost and hundreds injured.

About Hydrogen Sulfide

• Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is a colourless chalcogen hydride gas with a characteristic foul odour.
• It is very poisonous, corrosive, and flammable.
• The gas can irritate the eyes, nose, throat, and lungs.
• Too much H2S can halt the breathing centre in the brain, which can cause death.
• It dissolves in water and oil, and it may be released when these liquids are heated, depressurized, or agitated. Because it is heavier than air, it may settle in low spots.
• It occurs in volcanic gases, natural gas, and in some sources of well water.

Uses

• Hydrogen sulfide is used primarily to produce sulfuric acid and sulfur.
• It is also used to create a variety of inorganic sulfides used to create pesticides, leather, dyes, and pharmaceuticals.
• Hydrogen sulfide is used to produce heavy water for nuclear power plants.

Context: Recently, Defence Acquisition Council(DAC) chaired by Defence Minister has cleared several proposals worth close to Rs 39,000 crore that will boost the combat capabilities of all three services—Army, Navy and the Air Force.
Key Points

• The indigenous content in some of these projects is up to 80 per cent of the project cost. 
• A large number of these projects have been made possible due to Transfer of Technology (ToT) by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to the indigenous industry. 
• These include Pinaka ammunitions, BMP armament upgrades and software defined radios for the Indian Army, Long Range Land Attack Cruise Missile Systems and Astra Missiles for the Indian Navy and Indian Air Force (IAF). 
• Further, addressing the long felt need of the IAF to increase its fighter squadrons, the DAC also approved the proposal for procurement of 21 MIG-29 along with upgradation of existing 59 MIG-29 aircraft and procurement of 12 Su-30 MKI aircraft. 

Benefits  

• While acquisition of Pinaka missile systems will enable raising additional regiments over and above the ones already inducted, addition of Long Range Land Attack Missile Systems having a firing range of 1,000 kilometres to the existing arsenal will bolster the attack capabilities of the Navy and the Air Force. 

Missile and Aircrafts

• Astra Missile for Navy and Air Force: It is a Beyond Visual Range Air-to-Air Missile(BVRAAM) developed by DRDO. It is designed to be mounted on fighter aircraft to engage and destroy supersonic aircraft with a range of over 70 km.
• Pinaka Missile system for Army: It is an all-weather artillery rocket system developed by DRDO. It has the capability of accurately striking against a variety of targets such as exposed enemy troops, armored vehicles, communication centers and air terminal complexes.
• Long-Range Land Attack Cruise Missile Systems(LRLACM) for Navy and Air Force:  It is aimed at enhancing India’s firing range from between 400 km and 500 km of the Brahmos to 1000 km.
• MIG-29 from Russia: It is a twin-engine, multirole fighter jet developed by the Soviets since the 1970s, but has been upgraded since.
• Sukhoi Su-30MKI: It is a twinjet multirole air fighter developed by Russia’s Sukhoi and built under licence by India’s Hindustan Aeronautics Limited(HAL) for the Indian Air Force (IAF)

About Defence Acquisition Council  

• Defence Acquisition Council (DAC), under the Defence Minister was constituted for overall guidance of the defence procurement planning process.
• The composition of the DAC is as follows – Defence Minister: Chairman; Minister of State for Defence: Member; Chief of Army Staff: Member; Chief of Naval Staff: Member; Chief of Air Staff: Member etc. It decides on the new policies and capital acquisitions for the three services (Army, Navy and Air Force) and the Indian Coast Guard. 
• It was formed, after the Group of Ministers recommendations on ‘Reforming the National Security System’, in 2001, post Kargil War (1999). 
• The objective of the Defence Acquisition Council is to ensure expeditious procurement of the approved requirements of the Armed Forces in terms of capabilities sought, and time frame prescribed, by optimally utilising the allocated budgetary resources. 

Functions of the DAC 

• In-principle approval of 15 Year Long-Term Integrated Perspective Plan for Defence Forces; 
• Accord of Acceptance of Necessity to acquisition proposals; 
• Categorisation of the acquisition proposals relating to ‘Buy’, ‘Buy & Make’ and ‘Make’; 
• Issues relating to Single vendor clearance; 
• Decision regarding ‘offset’ provisions in respect of acquisition proposals above Rs. 300 crores; 
• Decisions regarding Transfer of Technology under ‘Buy & Make’ category of acquisition proposals; and 
• Field Trial evaluation. 

Context: Recently, Russia has promised to accelerate deliveries of some defence contracts with India, in a meeting of Indian Defence Minister and  Russian Deputy Prime Minister.
About S-400

• The S-400 Triumph  is an air defence missile system developed by Almaz Central Design Bureau of Russia. 
• The S-400 replaced the S-300P and S-200 air defence systems of the Russian Army.

Features: It is designed to destroy aircraft, cruise and ballistic missiles, including medium-range missiles, and can also be used against ground installations.

• The S-400 can engage targets at a Range of 400 km and At an altitude of up to 30 km.
• The S-400 Triumph air defence system integrates a multifunction radar, autonomous detection and targeting systems, anti-aircraft missile systems, launchers, and command and control centre. 
• It provides four different types of layered air defence.
• The system can simultaneously engage 36 targets.
• The missiles are launched by a 6×6 tractor truck Transporter-Erector-Launcher (TEL) vehicle. The TEL vehicle can carry up to four launch tubes holding a mix of missiles.
• It can also be integrated into the existing and future air defence units of the air force, army and navy.

Key Points

• India’s Defence Minister has requested Russia to speed up deliveries of the S-400 long range air defence system along with spares and support for military hardware.
• India’s Defence Minister is on a three-day trip to Russia to attend the 75th Victory Day which marks the end of World War II and the victory of the Allied Forces in 1945. Russia celebrates Victory Day on May 9 while Europe and USA celebrate it on May 8.
• S-400 deal: In 2018, India signed the deal worth $5.43-billion to buy five Russian S-400 Triumf missile shield systems.
• Booster to the Indian Air Force: Acquiring the missile system will help repulse the air attacks by India's adversaries, especially Pakistan and China.
• US opposition: The Trump administration had threatened to impose sanctions on the states that are acquiring weapons and military hardware from Russia under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, CAATSA.

Major  Weapon  Systems  Purchased  from  Russia

• Su-30MKI  multi-role  fighter  aircraft
• Il-78 tanker aircraft to be used as platform for Airborne Warning and Control System(AWACS)
• Mi-17-IV military transport helicopters
• R-77 air-to-air missiles
• Kilo  class/type  877E  submarines,  frigates
• Ka-31  Helix  airborne  early warning helicopters,
• Aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov (INS Vikramaditya)
• MiG-29K, including MiG-29KUB version for use on aircraft carrier 
• Ka-27PL(Ka-28  version)  and  Ka-31  helicopters
• T-90  tanks

Major Joint Military Programme between India & Russia

• BrahMos cruise missile programme
• 5th generation fighter jet programme
• Sukhoi Su-30MKI fighter jet programme (230+ to be built by Hindustan Aeronautics)
• Ilyushin/HAL Tactical Transport Aircraft
• KA-226T twin-engine utility helicopters
• India entered into a joint venture with Russia to manufacture the legendary Kalashnikov assault rifles in India.

Context: Recently, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) released a report ‘Commodities at a glance: Special issue on strategic battery and minerals’.

• The report facilitated research into battery technologies that depended less on critical raw materials and had the potential to provide higher energy density.
• Energy density is the amount of energy that can be stored in a given mass of a substance or system, i.e. a measure of storage of energy.

Key Points

• Uncertain Supply: The report highlighted that the supply of raw materials to produce rechargeable batteries is uncertain.
• Lithium, natural graphite and manganese are critical raw materials for the manufacture of rechargeable batteries.

Rising Demand:

• Integration of EVs: There has been a rapid growth in demand for rechargeable batteries due to the gradual integration of electric vehicles (EVs) in global transportation.
• The sales of electric cars have increased by 65% in 2018 from 2017 to 5.1 million vehicles and it will reach 23 million in 2030.
• Increased Use of Raw Material: With the increasing number of EVs, the demand for rechargeable batteries and the raw materials used in them have also increased.
• The worldwide market for cathodes for lithium-ion batteries was estimated at $7 billion in 2018 and is expected to reach $58.8 billion by 2024.
• The demand for raw materials used to manufacture rechargeable batteries will grow rapidly as other sources of energy lose their importance.

Concerns:

• Limited Suppliers: The security of supplies is a concern for all stakeholders because the production of the raw materials is concentrated in a few countries.
• Over 60% of the world’s Cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo while over 75% of global Lithium is mined in Australia and Chile.
• Prone of Volatility: Any disruption to supply might lead to tighter markets, higher prices and increased costs of rechargeable batteries.
• In 2018, the demand for cobalt surged by 25% from 2017 to 125,000 tonnes, of which 9% accounted for the EV battery sector.
• Cobalt demand would reach 185,000 tonnes by 2023, with about 35% accounting for the EV battery sector, the report said.
• Growth in demand for lithium had been significant since 2015, increasing by 13% per year.

About Li-ion Batteries

• A lithium-ion battery or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery.
• Li-ion batteries use an intercalated (Intercalation is the reversible inclusion or insertion of a molecule into materials with layered structures) lithium compound as one electrode material, compared to the metallic lithium used in a non-rechargeable lithium battery.
• The battery consists of electrolyte, which allows for ionic movement and the two electrodes are the constituent components of a lithium-ion battery cell.
• Lithium ions move from the negative electrode to the positive electrode during discharge and back when charging.
• They are one of the most popular types of rechargeable batteries used for military, EVs and aerospace applications.

Road Ahead

• Alternative sources of energy such as electric batteries are becoming more important as investors become sceptical of the future of the oil industry.
• There is a need to make a strategy for dynamic monitoring of the raw material cycles, from mining through processing, refining and manufacturing to recycling.
• It will facilitate early detection of supply risks and also enable the development of mitigation strategies at either company or national level.

Context: Recently, the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), has launched a scheme called Accelerate Vigyan (AV) to strengthen scientific research mechanisms in the country.
Key Points

• Objective: To give more thrust on encouraging high-end scientific research and preparing scientific manpower, which can lead to careers in research and knowledge-based economy.
• Vision: To expand the research base, with three broad goals i.e. consolidation/aggregation of all scientific programs, initiating high-end orientation workshops, and creating opportunities for research internships.

About the Scheme

• The objective of this scheme is to give more thrust on encouraging high-end scientific research and preparing scientific manpower.
• The aim is to expand the research base in the country, with three broad goals.
• Consolidation / aggregation of all scientific training programs.
• Initiating High end Orientation Workshops
• Creating opportunities for Research Internships.
• Scheme primarily focuses on young potential researchers with an aim to give an opportunity to them to spend quality time in the pre-identified premier institution, labs / organizations and empower them through best practices and environment.

Programmes under the Scheme

ABHYAAS

• It aims to boost research and development in the country by enabling potential PG/PhD students by means of developing their research skills in selected areas across different disciplines.

It has two components: High-End Workshops (KARYASHALA) and Research Internships (VRITIKA).

• This is especially important for those researchers who have limited opportunities to access such learning capacities / facilities / infrastructure.

SAMMOHAN

• It aims to encourage, aggregate and consolidate all scientific interactions in the country under one common roof.

It has been sub-divided into SAYONJIKA and SANGOSHTI.

• SAYONJIKA (chronicle) is an open-ended program to catalogue the capacity building activities in science and technology supported by all government funding agencies in the country.
• SANGOSHTI (Seminar or Symposia) is designed to facilitate the scientific community to establish an interaction with other individuals and research groups to enhance knowledge exchange.

Implementation

• SERB will centrally coordinate with the other ministries/departments/organizations for achieving the three goals of AV.
• An Inter-Ministerial Overseeing Committee (IMOC) is constituted to help and support SERB in implementing the scheme.

Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB)

• SERB was established under the Science and Engineering Research Board Act, 2008.
• It is a statutory body with requisite financial and administrative autonomy for performing its mandated functions.
• It was set up for promoting basic research in science and engineering and to provide financial assistance to scientists, academic institutions, R&D laboratories, industrial concerns and other agencies for such research.
• It is Chaired by Secretary, Department Of Science And Technology (DST).

Context: Recently, the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research and the Goa University have successfully synthesized gold nanoparticles (GNPs) using psychrotolerant Antarctic bacteria through a non-toxic, low-cost, and eco-friendly way.
Key Points

• The study has established that 20-30-nm-sized spherical-shaped GNPs could be synthesized in a controlled environment.
• These GNPs can be used as a composite therapeutic agent in clinical trials, especially in anti-cancer, anti-viral, anti-diabetic, and cholesterol-lowering drugs.
• The NCPOR-GU study revealed the genotoxic effect of GNPs on a sulphate reducing bacteria (SRB).
• The GNPs displayed enough anti-bacterial properties by inhibiting the growth of SRB and its sulphide production by damaging the genetic information of the DNA of the bacterial cell.
• Genotoxicity describes the property of a chemical agent that is capable of damaging the genetic information of DNA and thus causing a mutation of the cell, which can lead to cancer.

About Gold Nanoparticles (GNPs)

• Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) are small gold particles with a diameter of 1 to 100 nm which, once dispersed in water, are also known as colloidal gold.
• GNPs are found to have greater solar radiation absorbing ability than the conventional bulk gold, which makes them a better candidate for use in the photovoltaic cell manufacturing industry.
• GNPs have unique optical properties too. For example, particles above 100 nm show blue or violet colour in water, while the colour becomes wine red in 100 nm gold colloidal particles. They can thus be used in therapeutic imaging.
• GNPs also have unique physicochemical properties. Their biocompatibility, high surface area, stability, and nontoxicity make them suitable for various applications in therapeutic use including detection and diagnosis of diseases, bio-labelling, and targeted drug delivery.
• As nano-carriers, GNPs are capable of transferring various drugs made out of peptides, proteins, plasmid DNAs, small interfering RNAs, and chemotherapeutic agents to target diseased cells of the human body.
• GNPs are also found to be useful in the electronics industry.
• Scientists have constructed a transistor known as NOMFET (Nanoparticle Organic Memory Field-Effect Transistor) by embedding GNPs in a porous manganese oxide as a room temperature catalyst to break down volatile organic compounds in air and combining GNPs with organic molecules.
• NOMFETs can mimic the feature of the human synapse known as plasticity, or the variation of the speed and strength of the signal going from neuron to neuron.
• These novel transistors can now facilitate better recreation of certain types of human cognitive processes, such as recognition and image processing and have their application in artificial intelligence.

Context: Recently, the heavy engineering division of Larsen & Toubro Ltd (L&T) despatched a giant Cryostat lid, the most complex and final assembly of Cryostat, the largest stainless-steel, high-vacuum pressure chamber in the world, to International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) site in France from its Hazira unit in Gujarat.
Key Points

• “This is an important milestone in the global nuclear fusion arena as well as a moment of pride for the Make in India initiative.

About ITER Project

• ITER is international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject, which will be the world’s largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment.
• The goal of ITER is to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy for peaceful use.
• The project is funded and run by seven member entities—the European Union, India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
• The EU, as host party for the ITER complex, is contributing about 45 per cent of the cost, with the other six parties contributing approximately 9 per cent each.
• Construction of the ITER Tokamak complex started in 2013 and the building costs were over US$14 billion by June 2015.

How does it work?

• ITER is the most complex science project in human history. The ITER aims to use a strong electric current to trap plasma inside a doughnut-shaped enclosure long enough for fusion to take place.
• Hydrogen plasma will be heated to 150 million degrees Celsius, ten times hotter than the core of the Sun, to enable the fusion reaction.
• The process happens in a doughnut-shaped reactor, called a tokamak 1, which is surrounded by giant magnets that confine and circulate the superheated, ionized plasma, away from the metal walls.
• The superconducting magnets must be cooled to -269°C (-398°F), as cold as interstellar space.
• Scientists have long sought to mimic the process of nuclear fusion that occurs inside the sun, arguing that it could provide an almost limitless source of cheap, safe and clean electricity.
• Unlike in existing fission reactors, which split plutonium or uranium atoms, there’s no risk of an uncontrolled chain reaction with fusion and it doesn’t produce long-lived radioactive waste.

About Nuclear fusion 

• It is the process of making a single heavy nucleus (part of an atom) from two lighter nuclei. This process is called a nuclear reaction.
• The nucleus made by fusion is heavier than either of the starting nuclei. It releases a large amount of energy.
• Fusion is what powers the sun. Atoms of Tritium and Deuterium (isotopes of hydrogen, Hydrogen-3 and Hydrogen-2, respectively) unite under extreme pressure and temperature to produce a neutron and a helium isotope.
• Along with this, an enormous amount of energy is released, which is several times the amount produced by fission.
• Scientists continue to work on controlling nuclear fusion in an effort to make a fusion reactor to produce electricity.

How it is different from nuclear fission?

• Simply put, fission is the division of one atom into two (by neutron bombardment), and fusion is the combination of two lighter atoms into a larger one (at a very high temperature).
• Nuclear fission takes place when a large, somewhat unstable isotope (atoms with the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons) is bombarded by high-speed particles, usually neutrons.

Context: Recently, the Uttarakhand State Wildlife Advisory Board has permitted proposals on the transfer of forest land in Gangotri National Park for development of roads.
Key Points

• The wildlife clearance proposal has been given for three roads passing through Gangotri National Park which includes an 11.85 km long road from Sumla to Thangla for which transfer of 30.39 hectares of forest land was approved.
• The second road is a 6.21 km long road from Tripani to Rangmachagar for which transfer of 11.218 hectares of forest land was approved.
• The third road is a 17.60 km long road from Mandi to Sangchokla for which transfer of 31.76 hectares of forest land was approved.
• The road proposals include preserving the Gartang Gali road in the Uttarkashi district, an ancient road between India and Tibet.
• These proposals will now be sent to National Board for Wildlife for final approval.

Significance

• These roads are important from the national security point of view as they connect the base camps of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) set up near China border in Uttarkashi district.
• Under these proposals, a total of 73.36 hectares of forest land at three different sites of Gangotri National Park will be required to be transferred for construction of separate roads, totalling 35.66 km in length.
• Gangotri National Park is a protected area and forest land chosen is near the international border with China.
• These routes are very important for national security because they will make the movement of Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnel near the China border far easier.
• Now, the proposals regarding the land transfer for these roads will be sent to the National Wildlife Board.

Challenges

• As per the state government, the area where the roads will be constructed is at a height of 15,000 feet from sea level and have complete barren lands with no trees.
• But experts fear that for the construction of roads, agencies might have to opt for blasting, which will disturb the mountains and can trigger tremendous landslides.
• If motorable roads are made at such places without giving importance to the ecological effect and a landslide occurs, then the road will be blocked.
• These areas are part of the catchment area for the Indo-Gangetic plains, which is home to 40% of India’s population.
• If the ecology of such an area is disturbed, then the impact percolates down to other states also.

About Gangotri National Park

• It is located in the in Uttarkashi District of Uttarakhand.
• Gangotri National Park established in 1989.
• It is located in the upper catchment of Bhagirathi River.
• The Gaumukh glacier, the origin of river Ganga, is located inside the park. 
• The park area forms a viable continuity between Govind National Park and Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary. 
• The park is home to the snow leopard blue sheep, Himalayan Tahr, musk deer and snow leopard etc.

About Indo-Tibetan Border Police

• One of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF), it was raised on 24th October 1962.
• ITBP is deployed on border guarding duties from Karakoram Pass in Ladakh to Jachep La in Arunachal Pradesh covering 3488 km of Sino-India Border.
• ITBP is a specialized mountain force and most of the officers and men are professionally trained mountaineers and skiers.
• Being the first responder for natural disasters, ITBP has been carrying out numerous rescue and relief operations across the country.
• Headquarters: New Delhi.
• In November 2019, the Ministry of Home Affairs proposed to merge the Assam Rifles with the ITBP.

Context: In the backdrop of troublesome territorial assertions, the South Asian region needs to be rethought of as a region of regions.
Ongoing territorial assertions:

• Kalapani dispute between India and Nepal
• Ladakh – Galwan valley dispute between India and China

Issues witnessed in solving the territorial dispute

• State-centrism: State-centrism, within the assumption of a South Asia, has given the state structure the propriety to be the sole arbiter of disputes, if any, among communities and regions falling within the territorial limits of nation states. This means that territorial boundaries are valued more than lives, livelihoods and the well-being of the people located at the edges of nation states.
• Region is contested idea: The term “region” seems to be a contested idea in a South Asian context as none of the South Asian states has ever recognized and respected the idea of regional identity or regional politics. South Asia needs to be rethought, not as a region of states, but as a region of regions.

Reason for equating South Asia as region of region:

• Lifestyle of people: The people living at the edges of nation states within South Asia does not actually belong to any of the two nation states. Or in other words, they belong to both the states at the same time as they frequently move from one nation to other for economic livelihood, to meet their ethnic relatives etc.
• Success of regional groupings: The state centric view of nations and mere rhetoric of regional cooperation is going to endanger the future of other regional experiments such as the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) or the Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal (BBIN) sub-regional initiative.

Road Ahead

• Both India and Nepal as well as other South Asian countries need to rethink South Asia as a region of regions before they submit to the enticements of a new language of “regional cooperation” to solve existing issues and for peace in region.

Context: The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the unsatisfactory state of India’s data collection and processing system.
Importance of Data Sharing

• Optimal Use: Easy access to government data will encourage more extensive use of a valuable public resource for the benefit of the community.
• Avoiding duplication: By sharing data the need for separate bodies to collect the same data will be avoided resulting in significant cost savings in data collection.
• Better Decision making: Ready access to quality information will help in better decision making, evidence-based policy and better targeting of welfare programmes.
• Accountability in public services: Sharing non-sensitive government data with public will ensure accountability in public services.

Government Initiatives for Data Sharing

• National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP): Launched in 2012, it aims to promote data sharing and enable access to Government of India owned data for national planning, development and awareness.
• Open Government Data (OGD) initiative: launched in 2012, allows citizens to access a range of government data in machine-readable form in one place. The portal allows union ministries and departments to publish datasets, documents, services, tools and applications collected by them for public use.

Issues with Covid-19 data sharing by Indian government

• The Indian government did not release district-wise, demographic-wise case statistics and anonymous contact traces in the public domain. This hindered reliable model forecasts of disease spread and targeted regional lockdown protocols.
• Further, violating the NDSAP guidelines, OGD portal provides COVID-19 data only as a graphic image unsuitable for any analysis.
• Other government sources such as Indian Council of Medical Research and mygov.in, have also not provided district-wise statistics, and the available data are not in usable formats.
• Lack of accessible data has obstructed data-driven research, innovation and useful outcomes.

Suggested Reforms

• The government should share unreleased Census and socio-economic data, publicly funded research data, and scientific data to foster data-driven research and innovation
• While making data a public good, the government must consider the privacy implications and inherent fairness of data being used.
• The government must provide the impetus and incentive to exploit this voluminous data by invigorating the dated national data portal.
• Every department must be mandated to share substantive data respecting privacy concerns.
• The government should look within for examples of creative outcomes of opening up the database.
• Start-ups have built novel applications using Indian Railways data to provide ticket confirmation prediction and real-time train status.

Road Ahead

• Sharing public data is a way to create beneficial social impact. So, the government must ensure the implementation of policy measures and encourage the analysis of public data to come at the informed policy decision.

Context: Recently, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) has published an extract of the final award of the ad-hoc tribunal constituted to settle disputes related to the United Nations Convention for the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) regarding Italian marine Case between India and Italy.
Background

• The decision pertains to an incident of the year 2012 when two Italian marines fired shots while on-board an Italian vessel, Enrica Lexie killing two Indian fishermen aboard an Indian vessel, St. Anthony.
• The two marines were released from India and sent to Italy through orders passed by the Supreme Court.
• The dispute between the two countries as regards which country will try the two marines was before the PCA.

Key Points

• The PCA has ruled that Italy would have jurisdiction to decide on the question of immunity for the marines. Thus, India is precluded from exercising its jurisdiction.
• The PCA also ruled that while India’s conduct has not been in breach of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Italy breached provisions of the Convention by intercepting the navigation of India’s vessel.
• Italy is, as a result, liable to pay compensation to India. And both the nations are required to hold consultations in order to arrive at the amount of compensation to be paid to India.

Judgements in Favour of India

• The tribunal held that the actions of the Italian military officers breached India’s freedom of navigation under UNCLOS Article 87(1)(a) and 90.
• The tribunal also held that India is entitled for payment of compensation in connection with loss of life, physical harm, material damage to property and moral harm suffered by captain and crew of ‘St Antony’, the Indian vessel.

Judgements in Favour of Italy

• India had called on the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) UNCLOS tribunal to adjudge and declare that PCA has no jurisdiction with respect to the case submitted to it by Italy. However, a majority of the court's five- member bench ruled 4-1 that it had jurisdiction in the matter.
• Italian position that the marines, being members of the Italian armed forces in the official exercise cannot be tried by Indian courts, was held and immunity was granted to Italian marine officials.

Basis of the Judgement

• The tribunal observed that India and Italy had concurrent jurisdiction over the incident and a valid legal basis to institute criminal proceedings against the marines.
• However, it also observed that the immunities enjoyed by the marines as State officials operate as an exception to the jurisdiction of the Indian courts and, hence, preclude them to judge the marines.

About International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS)

• International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) is an independent judicial body established by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to adjudicate disputes arising out of the interpretation and application of the Convention.
• The Tribunal is composed of 21 independent members, elected from among persons enjoying the highest reputation for fairness and integrity and of recognized competence in the field of the law of the sea.
• The Tribunal has jurisdiction over any dispute concerning the interpretation or application of the Convention, and over all matters specifically provided for in any other agreement which confers jurisdiction on the Tribunal.

About United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)

• It is the international agreement defining the rights and responsibilities of nations with respect to their use of the world’s oceans, establishing guidelines for businesses, the environment, and the management of marine natural resources.
• UNCLOS replaces the older ‘freedom of the seas’ concept, dating from the 17th century: national rights were limited to a specified belt of water extending from a nation’s coastlines according to the ‘cannon shot’ rule.
• All waters beyond national boundaries were considered international waters: free to all nations, but belonging to none of them.

About Permanent Court of Arbitration

• The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) was established in 1899 and headquartered at the Hague in Netherlands.
• It is an intergovernmental organization dedicated to serve the international community in the field of dispute resolution and to facilitate arbitration and other forms of dispute resolution between States.
• It has a Financial Assistance Fund which aims at helping developing countries meet part of the costs involved in international arbitration or other means of dispute settlement offered by the PCA.

Context: Recently, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in its 2020 World Drug Report, has highlighted the possible consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on Illegal Drug Production, Supply and Consumption.
Key Points

• Report analyzes the wide range of possible consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on illegal drug production, supply and consumption.
• The measures taken by governments to counter the pandemic inevitably had double-edged consequences on large-scale drug supply.

Positives of Covid-19 

• The lockdown could hinder the production and sale of opiates in major producing countries.
• The key months for the opium harvest in Afghanistan are March to June and given the fact that 2020’s harvest took place during the pandemic would have lead to major reduction in production and supply.
• Some countries, such as Italy, the Niger and countries in Central Asia, have experienced a sharp decrease in drug seizures, amid reports that drug traffickers have diverted their attention to other illegal activities, including cybercrime and trafficking in falsified medicines.
• Other countries, including Morocco and Iran, have reported huge drug seizures, indicating large-scale drug trafficking, while some have reported an increase in interdiction resulting from increased controls.

Maritime Routes:

• The recent heroin seizures in the Indian Ocean could be interpreted as an indication of an increase in the use of maritime routes for trafficking heroin to Europe along the ‘southern route’.
• While border measures appear to be hindering trafficking in opiates, large shipments of cocaine are still being trafficked but by alternative means, via sea routes.

Concerns

• The report expresses concern over the adverse impact of the economic hardship caused by the pandemic. This could lead to an increase in the number of people resorting to illicit activities linked to drugs to make a living.
• The 2008 economic crisis resulted in reductions in drug-related budgets of the governments and there was an overall increase in drug use, with a shift towards cheaper and more harmful drugs.

India and Illicit Drug Trade

• Major Hub of Illicit Drug Trade: According to a report by the United Nation Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), India is one of the major hubs of illicit drug trade ranging from age-old cannabis to newer prescription drugs like tramadol, and designer drugs like methamphetamine.
• Drug Trafficking Routes: India is in the middle of two major illicit opium production regions in the world, the Golden Crescent (Iran-Afghanistan-Pakistan) in the west and the Golden Triangle (South-East Asia) in the east.

Associated Challenges:

• Easy Borders: The borders are porous and difficult to control in the lower Mekong region so cross-border movements in many places are not significantly hindered by Covid-19 measures.
• Evolving Ways of Trafficking: The methods of containerised trafficking, couriers and body-packing have reduced due to shutting down of borders and trade. However, dealers might come up with other ways limiting the impact of reduced trade.
• Limited Control: There is limited government control in the Golden Triangle, trafficking would continue at high volumes.
• Unaffected Supply: The supply of precursor chemicals is not likely to be disrupted because major organised crime groups source chemicals through direct diversion from industry and not diversion from illicit overseas trade channels.

Road Ahead

• The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on illegal drug production, supply and consumption and there have been reports on change in strategy of the drug trafficking organisations.
• Therefore, use of maritime trafficking routes from Myanmar along the Andaman Sea, some of which cross Indian territorial waters must be strategically observed by India to curb the trafficking.
• Appropriate corrections in government policies are necessary to counter the threat posed by drug trafficking.

Context: The recent death of a father-son duo from Tamil Nadu, allegedly due to custodial violence, has sparked anger across India.

• Custodial violence primarily refers to violence in police and judicial custody. It includes death, rape and torture.

Key Points

• According to the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), this incident revealed a broken criminal justice system and highlighted the need for police reforms and the ratification of the United Nations Convention Against Torture (UNCAT).
• Custodial violence primarily refers to violence in police and judicial custody, it includes death, rape and torture. 
• According to the National Campaign Against Torture’s report, 1,731 people had died in custody in 2019.
• According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, between 2001 and 2018, only 26 policemen were convicted of custodial violence. 

Reasons behind the Custodial Violence

• Absence of Strong Legislation India lacks anti-torture legislation and the criminalisation custodial violence is yet to be done. 
• Lack of transparency and inherently opaque prison system in India with many pending prison reforms. 
• India has signed the United Nations Convention against Torture in 1997 its ratification still remains. 

Provisions available in India

• Protection from torture is a fundamental right enshrined under Article 21 (Right to Life) of the Indian constitution.
• The right to counsel is a fundamental right under Article 22(1) of the India constitution.
• Section 41 of Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) was amended in 2009 to include safeguards under 41A, 41B, 41C and 41D, so that arrests and detentions for interrogation have reasonable grounds and documented procedures, arrests are made transparent to family, friends and public, and there is protection through legal representation.

Important Observations and  guidelines for police reforms

• National Police Commission observation: The National Police Commission recorded a back in 1979 that “the present culture of the police system appears a continuation of what obtained under the British regime when the police functioned ruthlessly as an agent for sustaining the government in power” and mentioned that“police find it difficult to play their lawful role and make their performance acceptable to the people at large”.
• The Supreme Court issued a set of directions in 2006 to state governments with a view to transforming the ethos and working philosophy of the police.
• Setting up the State Security Commission: The SC’s most important direction was about setting up of a State Security Commission with a view to insulate the police from external pressures.
• It is true that several states have enacted laws purportedly in compliance with the Supreme Court’s orders.
• Recommendation not supported in letter and spirit: But these acts, as their critical examination reveals, violate the letter and spirit of the judicial directions. The old order continues for all practical purposes
• Implementation of Law Commission of India’s 273rd Report: It recommends that those accused of committing custodial torture – be it policemen, military and paramilitary personnel – should be criminally prosecuted instead of facing mere administrative action establishing an effective deterrent.

About UN Convention against Torture

• It is an international human rights treaty, under the review of the United Nations, that aims to prevent torture and other acts of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment around the world.
• The Convention requires states to take effective measures to prevent torture in any territory under their jurisdiction, and forbids states to transport people to any country where there is reason to believe they will be tortured.
• It was signed in 1984 and came into force in 1987.
• It has 170 members including Pakistan and China while India is not a member (as it is only a signatory but has not ratified).

Context: Recently, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) designated nine more individuals linked to separatist Khalistani groups as “terrorists” under the amended UAPA Act.

• The UAPA as amended in 2019 gave the MHA the power to designate individuals as terrorists.

What is Khalistan movement?

• The Khalistan movement is a Sikh separatist movement seeking to create a homeland for Sikhs by establishing a sovereign state, called Khalistan in the Punjab Region.
• The proposed state would consist of land that currently forms Punjab, India and Punjab, Pakistan along with other areas of both countries, including Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Sindh in Pakistan; and Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and parts of Jammu and Kashmir, and Rajasthan in India.

History

• The declaration of the Khalsa by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699 and the religio-political vision that came with it fired the Sikh imagination with the belief that it was their God-given right to rule the Punjab.
• In 1710, under the leadership of Banda Singh Bahadur Sikh forces captured Sirhind, the most powerful Mughal administrative center between Delhi and Lahore.
• After the subsequent rapid decline of the Khalsa Raj and its final loss to the British (1849), many Sikhs still hope that the Khalsa Raj would yet return in some form.
• In the protracted negotiations that preceded the partition of the Punjab in 1947 the idea of an independent Sikh state figured prominently.
• The Sikh population’s lack of numerical strength in relation to other residents of the Punjab made this an unviable proposition, but it has resurfaced in various forms since.
• In the 1970s and ’80s a violent secessionist movement to create Khalistan paralyzed the Punjab for a decade.

Attached violence

• The movement reached its zenith in the late 1970s and 1980s when the secessionist movement caused large-scale violence among the local population, including the assassination of PM Indira Gandhi and the bombing of Air India Flight 182 which killed 329 passengers.
• There is some support within India and the Sikh diaspora, with yearly demonstrations in protest of those killed during Operation Blue Star.

Operation Blue Star

• Operation Blue Star was the codename of an Indian military action carried out between 1 and 8 June 1984 to remove militant Sikh leader Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers from the buildings of the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) complex in Amritsar, Punjab.
• The decision to launch the attack rested with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
• The military action in the temple complex was criticized by Sikhs worldwide, who interpreted it as an assault on the Sikh religion.
• Many Sikh soldiers in the army deserted their units, several Sikhs resigned from civil administrative office and returned awards received from the Indian government.
• Five months after the operation, on 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards.

Unlawful Activities Prevention Amendment Bill, 2019

• The original Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967, dealt with “unlawful” acts related to secession; anti-terror provisions were introduced in 2004.
• It provides special procedures to deal with terrorist activities, among other things.

Key Provisions of the Amendment
The Bill amends the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA) and additionally empowers the government to designate individuals as terrorists on the same grounds.
Under the Act, the central government may designate an organisation as a terrorist organisation if it:

• commits or participates in acts of terrorism
• prepares for terrorism
• promotes terrorism
• is otherwise involved in terrorism
• The word “terror” or “terrorist” is not defined.

However, a “terrorist act” is defined as any act committed with the intent –

• to threaten or likely to threaten the unity, integrity, security, economic security, or sovereignty of India
• to strike terror or likely to strike terror in the people or any section of the people in India or in any foreign country
• The central government may designate an individual as a terrorist through a notification in the official gazette.
• The Bill empowers the officers of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), of the rank of Inspector or above, to investigate cases.
• Under the Act, an investigating officer can seize properties that may be connected with terrorism with prior approval of the Director General of Police.

Some Concerning Points about designation of someone as terrorist

• The government is not required to give an individual an opportunity to be heard before such a designation.
• At present, legally, a person is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty.
• In this line, an individual who is convicted in a terror case is legally referred to as a ‘terrorist’.
• And those suspected of being involved in terrorist activities are referred to as ‘terror accused’.
• The Bill does not clarify the standard of proof required to establish that an individual is involved or is likely to be involved in terrorist activities.
• The Bill also does not require the filing of cases or arresting individuals while designating them as terrorists.

How can the names be removed?

• Application: The Bill seeks to give the central government the power to remove a name from the schedule when an individual makes an application.
• The procedure for such an application and the process of decision-making will also be decided by the central government.
• If an application filed is rejected by the government, the Bill gives the person the right to seek a review within one month of rejection.
• Review committee: Under the amendment Bill, the central government will set up a review committee.
• It will consist of a chairperson (a retired or sitting judge of a High Court) and 3 other members.
• It will be empowered to order the government to delete the name of an individual from the schedule that lists “terrorists”, if it considers the order to be flawed.
• Apart from these two avenues, the individual can also move the courts challenging the government’s order.

Context: Recently, the World Bank board has approved a project worth $500 million to improve the learning outcome and governance of government schools through the project STARS.
Background

• According to WB, India has made significant strides in improving access to education across the country. 
• Between 2004-05 and 2018-19, the number of children going to school increased from 219 million to 248 million.
• However, the learning outcomes of students across all age groups remain below par.

About Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States Program (STARS)

• It will be implemented through the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, the flagship central scheme of India.
• Its funding is done by World Bank (approved $500 million).

Coverage Area

• Six states included in the project are Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, and Rajasthan.
• More than 52% of children in government-run schools in the six project states belong to vulnerable sections, such as Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and minority communities.

Benefits

• The project will help improve the learning assessment systems, strengthen classroom instruction, and remediation, facilitate school-to-work transition, and strengthen governance and decentralized management.
• It will also address “the ‘learning outcome’ challenge and help students better prepare for the jobs of the future.
• STARS will aid India’s response by strengthening implementation at the local level, investing in teacher capacity, and ensuring that no child of any background is left behind from the right to education.

STARS Programme-India

• The programme was launched in 1994. The World Bank through the programme has helped India achieve its vision of “Education for All”.
• Prior to STARS, the World Bank had provided 3 billion USD to help India achieve its above vision.

About Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan
The Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan is an integrated programme for school children. It benefits students from pre-school to Class XII. There are three schemes under the programme. They are as follows

• Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan
• Rashtriya Madyamik Shiksha Abhiyan
• Teacher Education

The scheme aims to ensure inclusive and equitable education to all children in accordance to Sustainable Development Goals

Sustainable development Goals

• The SDG-4.1 aims to provide free and quality education to all boys and girls. The SDG-4.5 aims to eliminate gender disparities in education.

Context: Recently, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has released its State of the World Population 2020 report with titled ‘Against my will: defying the practices that harm women and girls and undermine equality’.
About the Report

• The report examines the issue of missing women by studying sex ratio imbalances at birth as a result of gender-biased sex selection as well as excess female mortality due to deliberate neglect of girls because of a culture of son preference.
• Sex ratio measures the number of females born for every 1,000 males.
• Excess female mortality is the difference between observed and expected mortality of the girl child or avoidable death of girls during childhood. It is calculated as a difference between observed and expected mortality rates for girls below age 5.

Key Points
Global Data

• The number of missing women has more than doubled over the past 50 years, who were at 61 million in 1970.
• Missing females/women: These are women missing from the population at given dates due to the cumulative effect of postnatal and prenatal sex selection in the past. The phrase was coined by Amartya Sen.
• In Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan excess female mortality of girls below 5 years of age was under 3%.
• Excess female mortality: It is the difference between observed and expected mortality of the girl child or avoidable death of girls during childhood.
• According to estimates averaged over a five year period (2013-17), annually, there were 1.2 million missing female births, at a global level.

India Specific Data

• One in three girls missing globally due to sex selection, both pre- and post-natal, is from India, i.e. 46 million out of the total 142 million.
• India has the highest rate of excess female deaths at 13.5 per 1,000 female births or one in nine deaths of females below the age of 5 due to postnatal sex selection.
• In India, around 460,000 girls went missing at birth, which means they were not born due to sex-selection biases, each year between 2013 and 2017.
• India (40%) along with China (50%) account for around 90% of the estimated 1.2 million girls lost annually to female foeticide.

Female Genital Mutilation

• It involves the partial or total removal of external female genitalia or other injuries to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.
• The practise has no health benefits for girls and women and can cause severe bleeding, problems in urinating, cysts, infections, as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths.
• An estimated 4.1 million girls will be subjected to female genital mutilation in 2020.

Extreme Bias against Daughters, in favour of sons

• An extreme and continuing preference for sons over daughters in some countries has fuelled gender-biased sex selection or extreme neglect which leads to girls’ death as children, resulting in missing females.
• The report examines the issue of missing women by studying sex ratio imbalances at birth as a result of gender-biased sex selection as well as excess female mortality.
• The advent of technology and increased access to ultrasound imaging allow parents to terminate a foetus after knowing its gender.
• Due to this, the number of girls missing due to female foeticide exceed those that are missing because of postnatal sex selection.

These skewed numbers change the population proportions and result in ‘marriage squeeze’.

• Marriage squeeze: It happens when prospective grooms far outnumber prospective brides, which further results in human trafficking for marriage as well as child marriages.
• These violations result in fewer choices for females and putting them under the sexual, economic and legal control of men, curbing their human rights.

Child Marriage

• Every day, around 33,000 girls under age 18 are forced into marriage, usually to much older men.
• In India, child marriage is directly linked to poverty, poor education and geographic location and the rural and urban divide.

Covid-19 Induced Challenges

• The economic disruptions and income-loss because of the Covid-19 pandemic are likely to increase violence against girls and women due to intensified unwantedness of daughters and gender discrimination.
• The Covid-19 pandemic threatens to reverse the progress made in ending some harmful practices worldwide.
• In India, Covid-19 has reduced access to contraception and abortion services, which is likely to lead to an increase in unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions.

Initiatives Appreciated

• The report pointed out that successful education-related interventions include the provision of cash transfers conditional on school attendance or support to cover the costs of school fees, books, uniforms and supplies.
• The report took note of the successful cash-transfer initiative such as ‘Apni Beti Apna Dhan’ in India.

About United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)

• The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) (UNFPA because it was formerly the United Nations Fund for Population Activities) – is a UN organization working for improvement of reproductive health; including creation of national strategies and protocols, and birth control by providing supplies and services.
• The organization has recently been known for its worldwide campaign against child marriage, obstetric fistula and female genital mutilation.
• UNFPA is the world’s largest multilateral source of funding for population and reproductive health programs.

Context: Recently, Union Minister of Minority Affairs has  inaugurated “Sanskritik Sadbhav Mandap” at Rampur, Uttar Pradesh.
About Sanskritik Sadbhav Mandap

• It is being constructed with the cost of Rs 92 crore by Union Minority Affairs Ministry under Pradhan Mantri Jan Vikas Karykram (PMJVK).
• This community centre will be utilized for various socio-economic-cultural activities, skill development training, coaching, relief activities during disaster such as Corona and different sports activities.
• It is constructed under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Vikas Karykram (PMJVK)

About Pradhan Mantri Jan Vikas Karykram

• The erstwhile Multi-sectoral Development Programme (MsDP), a centrally sponsored scheme has been restructured and renamed as Pradhan Mantri Jan Vikas Karyakram.
• MsDP, a centrally sponsored scheme, launched to address the development deficits in 90 minority concentration districts in the country to address the development deficits.
• It has been identified as one of the Core of the Core Schemes under National Development Agenda.
• It aims at improving the socio-economic parameters of basic amenities for improving the quality of life of the people and reducing imbalances in the Minority Concentration Areas.
• Minority Concentration Areas have been identified based on both population data (25% of the total population belongs to minority communities) and backwardness parameters of Census 2001 of these areas.

The backwardness parameters are:-

Religion-specific socio-economic indicators at the district level –

• Literacy rate;
• Female literacy rate ;
• Work participation rate; and
• Female work participation rate; and
• Basic amenities indicators at the district level –
• Percentage of households with pucca walls‘
• Percentage of households with safe drinking water &
• Percentage of households with electricity

The projects considered are additional class rooms, laboratories, school buildings, hostels, toilets, buildings for Polytechnics, ITIs, Community Health Centres, Primary Health Centres / Sub-centres, Anganwadi Centres, Rural Housing etc.

• Education, Health and Skill are the priority under MsDP.
• The projects are funded in the ratio of 60:40 and for NE and Hilly States at 90:10 between the Centre and States.

Other schemes which aim at the inclusive growth of the minority communities:

• Seekho Aur Kamao.
• Usttad.
• Garib Nawaz Kaushal Vikas Yojana.
• Nai Manzil.
• Nai Roshni.
• Begum Hazrat Mahal Girls scholarships.

About Minorties in India

Constitutional Provisions: The term "Minority" is not defined in the Indian Constitution. However, the Constitution recognises only religious and linguistic minorities.

• Article 29: It provides that any section of the citizens residing in any part of India having a distinct language, script or culture of its own, shall have the right to conserve the same.
• It grants protection to both religious minorities as well as linguistic minorities.
• However, the Supreme Court held that the scope of this article is not necessarily restricted to minorities only, as use of the word ‘section of citizens’ in the Article that include minorities as well as the majority.
• Article 30: Under the article, all minorities shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice.
• The protection under Article 30 is confined only to minorities (religious or linguistic) and does not extend to any section of citizens (as under Article 29).
• Article 350-B: Originally, the Constitution of India did not make any provision with respect to the Special Officer for Linguistic Minorities. However, the 7th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1956 inserted Article 350-B in the Constitution.

Context: Recently, the Assam government  decided to promulgate a law to make the Assamese language compulsory in all schools, both public and private, including the Kendriya Vidyalayas, from Classes I to X.
Exempted Area

• The law will not be applicable in Barak Valley, Bodoland Council and other Sixth Schedule areas, where Bengali, Bodo and other indigenous languages will take precedence.

Data and Marginalisation

• Statistical data have often been used as a tool to construct the linguistic hierarchy and homogenisation in a region marginalizes languages. (For e.g., census driven split of Hindi-Urdu – marginalised languages such as Magadhi, Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Garhwali with their rich literary and linguistic traditions as mere dialects of the Hindi language.)

Assam’s case of marginalisation

• Census data are often used to portray a ‘danger’ to the Assamese language — the ‘infiltration’ of Bengali-speaking communities is considered to be the primary reason.
• The number of Assamese speakers as per the 2011 Census has decreased by more than 10% from 1971.
• While considering the reduction in Assamese speaker, it has to be noted that most tribal communities speak Assamese but return their own respective languages as their mother tongues.

Impact on tribal languages

• The imposition of Assamese has had adverse effects on tribal languages, especially on those which do not enjoy any constitutional protection.
• Tribal languages are generally on a steady decline, e.g., Mising tribe, Deoris and Dibongiya have faced enormous decline in the rate of increase of speakers.
• Other tribes such as the Sonowal-Kacharis and Tiwas have almost completely lost their languages.

Demand and opposition

• Tribal communities since long have been demanding linguistic and territorial protection and attention from the State government.
• Tribal communities have always resisted attempts of forced homogenisation.
• Khasi along with other tribal communities started protesting after the Official Language Bill in 1960 was passed by Assam Government, which lead to the formation of Meghalaya.
• The Bodo movement for autonomy also finds its roots in this bill.
• Tribes have often highlighted that the ‘Assamese nationalism’ discourse was narrow and rarely included other communities.
• Tribes such as the Misings, Deoris, Rabhas, etc. have still consistently supported the Assamese movement against the imposition of Bengali language or Hindi in Assam.

The CAA factor

• The anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) movement could have been a point of departure in the ‘Assamese Nationalism’ discourse.
• Demands were raised for protection of indigenous land, culture and languages during the course of the struggle.
• Such fear and insecurity have an immanent tendency to straitjacket heterogeneous aspirations and scuttle the inclusive nature of the movement.

Road Ahead

• While the tribes acknowledge the threat that infiltration poses to local languages and culture, they are also wary of the Assamese hegemony and homogeneity.
• This law will only increase the marginalisation of these communities, triggering social conflicts once again.
• It is time for progressive sections in Assam to go beyond the politics of fear and assert the inclusive ethos of Assam.

Context: Recently, the Indian Home Ministry is thinking of commissioning transgender people as officers in the various security and paramillitary forces in India.
Key Points

• The ministry is at the concluding stage of consultations with central paramilitary forces—BSF, CRPF, ITBP, CISF and SSB—on incorporating ‘transgender’, along with male and female, in the rules for the recruitment examination for assistant commandants in central forces, starting 2020.
• The move follows enactment of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, in December that prohibits discrimination of a transgender person in education, employment, healthcare services, accommodation, right to acquire property and other public services and facilities.
• The department of personnel and training had requested all central ministries and departments to modify examination rules and provide for inclusion of ‘transgender’ as a separate category of gender, in conformity with the Act.
• The MHA move can be expected to spur recruitment of transgender persons in other areas, including the armed forces and state police organisations.

About Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016

• The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016, defines a transgender person as one who is partly female or male; or a combination of female and male; or neither female nor male.
• Additionally, the bill states that the person’s gender must not match the assigned gender at birth.
• Every transgender person in the country must obtain an identity certificate which will be used as the proof of recognition of identity as a transgender person and to avail all the rights under the Bill.
• The identity certificate would be granted by the District Magistrate on the recommendation of a Screening Committee.
• The screening committee for recommending the certificate would comprise a medical officer, a psychologist or psychiatrist, a district welfare officer, a government official, and a transgender person.
• The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016 prohibits discriminating with transgender people in education, employment, healthcare and other areas.
• The Bill directs the central and state governments for providing welfare schemes to the Transgender community in these areas.
• The Bill also provides for the punishment of up to two years’ imprisonment and a fine for offences like compelling a transgender person to beg, denial of access to a public place, physical and sexual abuse, etc.

Context: Recently, a clash took place between Van Gujjars and the Uttarakhand forest officials in the Rajaji National Park.
Van Gujjar Community

• Van Gujjars are nomadic buffalo-herders inhabiting the foothills of Himalayan states like Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
• They are deep dependent on wild habitats in India and for them, transhumance (the practice of moving livestock from one grazing ground to another in a seasonal cycle) has been a way of life for centuries.
• The idea of home for Van Gujjars has been made precariously tentative because they are repeatedly displaced off their lands and livelihoods.

The plight of the community

• The forests that fall in the boundaries and buffers of the Corbett and Rajaji Tiger Reserves have been the winter grazing grounds for the buffalo-rearing Gujjars for a hundred years.
• But once the parks were notified and the area under the tiger reserves kept being enlarged, the spaces for the pastoralists have been shrinking.
• The Van Gujjars in both parks have faced tremendous repression and harassment at the hands of the forest department.
• 1,000 Van Gujjar families have had no choice but to accept relocation from the Rajaji Reserve.
• In March 2017, the National Tiger Conservation Authority issued an order disallowing recognition of rights under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA) in Tiger Reserves.

About Rajaji National Park

• Rajaji National Park is an Indian national park and tiger reserve that encompasses the Shivaliks, near the foothills of the Himalayas.
• The park is spread over 820 km2 and three districts of Uttarakhand: Haridwar, Dehradun and Pauri Garhwal.
• In 1983, three wildlife sanctuaries in the area were merged into one to constitute the park.
• The park has been named after C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji), a prominent leader of the Freedom Struggle, the second and last Governor-General of independent India and one of the first recipients of India’s highest civilian award Bharat Ratna (in 1954).
• The Park is also home to the Great Pied Hornbill, Himalayan Pied Kingfisher and the fire tailed sunbird.
• This area is the first staging ground after the migratory birds cross over the Himalayas into the Indian subcontinent.   
• In 2015, Rajaji National Park was notified as a tiger reserve by the central government. Benefits of Tiger Reserve - Protected area for Tigers, Tourist attraction, Huge Development fund for the Park, Eco-Tourism development.

Other Protected Areas in Uttarakhand

• Jim Corbett National Park (first National Park of India).
• Valley of Flowers National Park and Nanda Devi National Park which together are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• Govind Pashu Vihar National Park and Sanctuary.
• Gangotri National Park.
• Nandhaur Wildlife Sanctuary.