Editorial Analysis CompilationsJune

INSIGHTSIAS
IA SIMPLIFYING IAS EXAM PREPARATION
INSTA EDITORIAL
COMPILATIONS
JUNE 2023
www.insightsactivelearn.com | www.insightsonindia.com
Table of Content:
GS1:
Geography
1. How does a cyclone affect the monsoon’s onset?
GS2:
Polity:
1. Strike a fine balance, have a just civil code
2. Sedition — illogical equation of government with state
3. The Delhi ordinance is an unabashed power-grab
4. A parliamentary democracy or an executive democracy
International Relations:
1. Tracing the arc of American ‘exception-ism’ for India
2. Making of a high point
3. A rising India, in waltz dance steps with the U.S
4. Outreach to diaspora and statesmanship
5. More HIT than miss in India-Nepal ties
6. A pragmatic approach, for better India-Nepal ties
7. In the short term, stabilize the Line of Actual Control
8. Central Asian foreign policy multi-vectorism pays off
Social justice:
1. A doorway to an entrepreneurial university
2. Amplify the subject of adolescent girl nutrition
GS3:
Economy:
1. The next Finance Commission will have a tough task
2. Tax law in the shadow of the higher judiciary
3. International trade has a carbon problem
Ecology and environment:

1. Responsibility and the complexities of climate leadership
Science and technology:

1. Laying the foundation for a future-ready digital India
2. Reflections on Artificial Intelligence, as friend or foe
3. E-education platforms, their Generative AI chapter
Security:
1. A global order as technology’s much needed pole star
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
How does a cyclone affect the monsoon’s onset?
Source: The Hindu
■ Prelims: Current events of national and international importance(cyclone,

Monsoons, Pacific ocean, Southern ocean, super cyclonic storm, cyclone Mawar,
Biparjoy, and Guchol etc
■ Mains GS Paper III: Geographical features and their locations- change in critical
geographical features etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ The impact of global warming on the monsoons are manifest in the onset,
withdrawal, its seasonal total rainfall, and its extremes.
■ India, with nearly 18% of the world’s population, occupies about 2.4(two
point four)% of the total geographical area and consumes 4% of total
water resources.
INSIGHTS ON THE ISSUE

Context
Tropical Cyclones:
● They are violent storms that originate over oceans in tropical areas and
move over to the coastal areas bringing about large scale destruction caused
by violent winds, very heavy rainfall and storm surges.
● Tropical Cyclones are one of the most devastating natural calamities in the
world.
● Tropical cyclones originate and intensify over warm tropical oceans.
● The conditions favorable for the formation and intensification of tropical
storms are:
○ Large sea surface with temperature higher than 27° C.
○ Presence of the Coriolis force.
○ Small variations in the vertical wind speed.
○ A pre-existing weak low- pressure area or low-level-cyclonic
circulation.
○ Upper divergence above the sea level system.
Nomenclature of Tropical Cyclones:

● The process of naming cyclones involves several countries in the region
and is done under the aegis of the World Meteorological Organization
(WMO).
● For the Indian Ocean region, a formula for naming cyclones was agreed
upon in 2004.
● Eight countries in the region - Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Myanmar,
Oman, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Thailand - all contributed a set of names which
are assigned sequentially whenever a cyclonic storm develops.
Climate change and Indian Monsoons:
What does global warming do?

● Global warming affects the cyclones over the Indian Ocean and the typhoons
over the northwestern Pacific Ocean.
Factors Affecting cyclone and monsoon formation:

● cyclone formations in the pre-monsoon cyclone season, closer to the
monsoon onset, are due to the influence of a warmer Arctic Ocean on winds
over the Arabian Sea.
● The monsoon is also affected by the three tropical oceans – Indian,
Atlantic, and Pacific
● The ‘atmospheric bridge’ from the Arctic
● The oceanic tunnel as well as the atmospheric bridge from the Southern
Ocean (a.k.a. the Antarctic Ocean).
○ Bridge refers to two faraway regions interacting in the atmosphere
while a ‘tunnel’ refers to two remote oceanic regions connecting within
the ocean.
Why does a cyclone’s position matter?

● Some cyclones in the North Indian Ocean have had both positive and
negative impacts on the onset of the monsoon.
● Since the circulation of winds around the cyclones is in the anticlockwise
direction, the location of the cyclone is critical as far as the cyclone’s impact
on the transition of the monsoon trough is concerned.
○ The monsoon trough is a low-pressure region that is a characteristic
feature of the monsoons.)
● For example, if a cyclone lies further north in the Bay of Bengal
○ The back-winds blowing from the southwest to the northeast can pull
the monsoon trough forward, and assist in the monsoon’s onset.
Cyclone Mocha:
● It developed in the first half of May and intensified briefly into a ‘super
cyclonic storm’, before weakening rapidly upon landfall.
● Mocha’s northwest to east trajectory over the Bay was the result of
unusual anticyclones (which rotate clockwise) that have been parked over
the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal since March.
● Mocha dissipated on May 15 and the back-winds helped the monsoon set in
on time over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Cyclone Mawar, Biparjoy, and Guchol:

The late-season cyclone Biparjoy:
○ It is chugging along in the warm Arabian Sea and may well rapidly
intensify – i.e., have its wind speeds increase by 55 kmph within 24
hours – before making landfall.
● Cyclone Biparjoy is not interacting much with the monsoon trough at this
time.
○ Its late birth as well as the late onset of the monsoon are both closely
related to typhoons in the northwestern Pacific Ocean.
Typhoon Mawar:
● Mawar qualified as a ‘super typhoon’ and is thus far the strongest typhoon to
have taken shape in May.
● It is the strongest cyclone of 2023 so far.
● Mawar pulled winds across the equator into the North Indian Ocean,
setting up southwesterly winds over parts of the Arabian Sea and the Bay of
Bengal.
○ ‘Southwesterly’ means blowing from the southwest.
Tropical storm Guchol:

● It is active just to the east of the Philippines and is likely to continue
northwest before veering off to the northeast.
Southwesterly winds over the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal:

● Arabian Sea:They bring large quantities of moisture onto the Indian
subcontinent.
● Southwesterly winds over the Bay of Bengal:
○ The monsoon winds over the southern Bay of Bengal sweep in from
the southwest and west, but they turn around and head northwest
towards India from the southeast.
Way Forward
■ Winds were southwesterly over the entire Bay when Mawar was active.
○ This continues to be the case now due to Guchol, which has become
a ‘severe tropical storm’ now.
○ Winds have been blowing strongly towards the northeastward
over the Bay, a key reason why the monsoon trough has been
struggling to reach Kerala.
■ The strong southwesterly winds over the Bay of Bengal can be imagined
to be a very large highway with heavy traffic heading from the southwest,
over southern peninsular India and Sri Lanka, towards the South China Sea
and the northwestern Pacific Ocean, feeding the monstrous typhoons there.
■ The complicated dance of global warming affecting cyclogenesis over the
Pacific and North Indian Oceans, the warming over the North Indian Ocean
and the late pre-monsoon cyclones and typhoons is together just another
wrench in the dynamics of the monsoons
○ Also in the predictions of the monsoon’s onset and its evolution
through the season.
■ A late monsoon onset does not necessarily indicate a monsoon deficit.
○ This year is unique, with an impending El Niño.
■ The nation waits and watches for the arrival of the monsoon – as always
hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.
QUESTION FOR PRACTICE

Q. Troposphere is a very significant atmospheric layer that determines weather
processes. How?(UPSC 2022)
(200 WORDS, 10 MARKS)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
Strike a fine balance, have a just civil code
Source: The Hindu
■ Prelims: Uniform civil Code, Directive Principles of State Policy etc

■ Mains GS Paper II: Government policies and interventions for development of
various sectors, weaker sections of society and interventions for their
development etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ The Law Commission of India decided to solicit views and proposals from
the public about the Uniform Civil Code (UCC).
○ Previously the Commission had concluded that the ‘UCC is neither
necessary nor desirable.

Context
Uniform Civil Code:
● It provides for one law for the entire country, applicable to all religious
communities in their personal matters such as marriage, divorce, inheritance,
adoption etc.
● Article 44: It lays down that the state shall endeavor to secure a UCC for the
citizens throughout the territory of India.
Autonomy versus authority:

● Religious autonomy versus the state’s authority: The question of
personal laws is the question of personal and familial relations.
● Each religious group has cultural autonomy, it is thus being argued that
the community should itself come forward to seek reforms.
● The Special Marriage Act, 1954 and the Indian Succession Act, 1925 are
examples of voluntary adoption of the UCC.
● Love jihad laws: By prohibiting inter-faith marriages violate the spirit of the
Special Marriage Act.
Regional differences:
● Kerala had abolished the Hindu Joint Family in 1975
● Muslim marriage and divorces are to be registered in Bengal, Bihar, Odisha,
Jharkhand under the 1876 law, and in Assam under 1935 law
● Adoption was permissible to Kashmiri Muslims.
How Personal laws govern different communities?

● Muslims, Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs, Parsis, and Jews are governed
by their own personal laws.
● It is the religious identity that determines which personal law would apply
to a group of individuals.
● Reformed Hindu Personal Law under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955
insist on solemnization of marriage, through saptapadi (seven steps around
fire) and datta (invocation before fire).
○ Section 7(2) of the Act(like Manusmriti (8.227)): provides that
marriage is completed on the seventh step.
○ Sapinda relationship, adoption and Hindu Joint Family rules are
based on the Hindu Personal Law.
● When two Hindus marry under the Special Marriage Act, 1954 (Section
21A inserted in 1976), they continue to be governed by Hindu Personal Law
○ If two Muslims marry under this legislation, the Muslim Personal
Law (MPL) would no longer govern them.
● A person who renounces Hinduism too continues to be governed by the
Hindu Personal Law.
What should the Commission do?

● The Commission must bear in its recommendation that for a diverse and
multicultural polity such as India
● The proposed UCC must be emblematic of India’s ‘mosaic model’ of
multiculturalism.
● A homogenizing lithification of identities must not become a mirage for
flourishing diversity (something that has consistently remained peculiar to
the American model of multiculturalism).
● Prominent scholars on multiculturalism such as Rochana Bajpai
suggest: Indian Constitution offers two major approaches with respect to
accommodation of difference — integrationist and restricted
multiculturalism.
○ The Affirmative action policies largely land in the first approach’s
camp.
○ Ms. Bajpai: state assistance to minority cultures has been seen as an
illegitimate concession and is often termed as ‘appeasement of
minorities’.
○ Through These approaches the Constitution makes way for cultural
accommodation and a celebration of group differences.
● 21st Law Commission (2015-18) had boldly favored equality between men
and women in communities rather than aiming for equality between
communities.
● A just code should be the primary goal as just laws are more important
than a mere one uniform law.
● Right to cultural-relativism cannot justify continuation of unjust and
discriminatory personal laws.
○ Such provisions of the personal laws must be made consistent with
substantive equality and gender justice goals espoused in the
Constitution.
Arguments in favour of UCC:

● Uniformity in cases: India does have uniformity in most criminal and civil
matters like the Criminal Procedure Code, Civil Procedure Code etc
● Gender Justice: If a UCC is enacted, all personal laws will cease to exist. It will
do away with gender biases in existing laws.
● Secularism: A secular nation needs a common law for all citizens rather than
differentiated rules based on religious practices.
● Various communities in India: Example: All Hindus are not governed by a
homogenous personal law even after the enactment of the Hindu Code Bill.
● Shariat Act: There is no uniform applicability when it comes to the Muslim
personal law or the Shariat Act 1937.
● Hindu Marriage Act of 1955: It prohibits marriages amongst close relatives
but they are considered auspicious in the south of India.
● Hindu Succession Act of 1956: Wives are not coparceners(a person who
shares equally with others in the inheritance of an undivided estate) nor do
they have an equal share in inheritance.
Arguments against UCC:

● Plurality in already codified civil and criminal laws: So concept of ‘one
nation, one law’ cannot be applied to diverse personal laws of various
communities.
● Constitutional law experts: Framers did not intend total uniformity.
○ Example: Personal laws were placed in Concurrent List(power to
legislate being given to Parliament and State Assemblies).
● Customary laws: Many tribal groups in the country, regardless of their
religion, follow their own customary laws.
● Communal Politics: The demand for a uniform civil code is considered to be
framed in the context of communal politics.
● Article 25: It seeks to preserve the freedom to practice and propagate any
religion.
Supreme Court judgements about implementation of UCC:
Way Forward
■ Despite secularism being a fundamental tenet governing the Indian polity.
○ India decided not to adopt the French model of laïcité, which
strictly prohibits bearing any religious outfit or marker in public
○ Indian society ‘accommodates’ and not just ‘tolerates’ the wide array
of group and ethnic differences.
■ The Law Commission of India would not contribute to the rise of reactive
culturalism amongst different communities in India, including Muslims.
■ The Muslim community too must understand that the MPL and Islam are
not one and the same.
○ The MPL is a jurist given law and is not entirely divine.
○ It was derived from the erroneously translated secondary
sources rather than the Koran and Sunna of the Prophet.
■ Let the Muslim clergy come forward and lead the MPL reform process by
identifying the discriminatory and oppressive issues and adopt the views of
progressive jurists.
■ The Commission proposal for overhauling secularization of various
socio-religious-cultural practices that have been the mainstay of thousands
of religious and ethnic communities since times immemorial.
○ The path ahead is not going to be free from hurdles.
■ Political philosopher Iris Young: as the value of social difference is more
relational and is itself a product of social processes.
○ It will be incumbent upon the Commission to strike a fine balance as
it should aim to eliminate only those practices that do not meet the
benchmarks set by the Constitution.

Q. Constitutional Morality’ is rooted in the Constitution itself and is founded on its
essential facets. Explain the doctrine of ‘Constitutional Morality’ with the help of
relevant judicial decisions. (UPSC 2021)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
Sedition — illogical equation of government with state
Source: The Hindu
■ Prelims: Current events of national importance, sec 124A, Law Commission,

IPC, democracy, covid, elections etc
■ Mains GS Paper I and II: Important aspects of governance, transparency and
accountability, institutions and other measures etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ In its 279th Report, the Law Commission of India has recommended the
retention of Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code which contains the Law
of Sedition.

Context
Section 124A:
Law Commission recommendation:

● 279th Report, the Law Commission of India has recommended the
retention of Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code which contains the Law
of Sedition.
● It has recommended enhanced punishment for this offense in the name of
national security.
● The Law Commission has suggested that the tendency to incite disorder
should be incorporated in Section 124A.
● The commission defines tendency as a slight inclination.
● It is a policeman who will detect the tendency to incite disorder in a speech
or article, and the citizen will be behind bars for seven years or even for life.
Background:
● Section 124A provides for a minimum imprisonment of three years, the
commission recommends a minimum of seven.
● Section 124A was incorporated in the Indian Penal Code in 1870.
● The purpose was to suppress the voice of Indians who spoke against the
British Raj, as the government did not want any voice of dissent or protest.
● Section 124A clearly reveals the intention of the colonial government.
● Sedition is an offense against the government and not against the country.
● The offense is in bringing or attempting to bring in hatred or contempt or
exciting or attempting to excite disaffection towards the government
established by law.
● The offense is committed by spoken or written words, by signs or by any
other means.
● The gist of the offense is bringing a government into hatred or contempt or
causing disaffection towards the government of the day.
Use during British rule:

● The law of sedition was defined and applied in two different ways during
the British period:
○ Queen Empress vs Bal Gangadhar Tilak 1897 in which the Bombay
Court found Bal Gangadhar Tilak guilty of sedition for writing a couple
of articles in Kesari, a Marathi weekly, invoking Shivaji, which was
interpreted as exciting disaffection towards the British government.
○ Niharendu Dutt Majumdar And Ors. vs Emperor:
■ Acquitting the accused Majumdar
■ Sir Mauris Gwyer, Chief Justice:“Public disorder or the
reasonable anticipation or likelihood of public disorder is thus
the gist of the offense.”
Interpretation of sedition law by British court:
● Sedition as disaffection: which was interpreted as ‘political hatred of
government’ and comes within the mischief of sedition.
● The offense is committed only when there is incitement to violence or
disorder.
Privy Council(the highest appellate court of that time):

● It approved the law stated by Justice Stratchy in Tilak’s case.
● The law declared by the Privy Council was final, according to which even a
gesture which indicates political hatred towards the government comes
within the mischief of sedition.
Court’s stand:
Interpretation of sedition by court in Kedarnath vs State of Bihar (1962):
● Kedarnath decided the constitutionality of sedition.
● It is constitutionally valid for two reasons:
○ Sedition, though an offense against the government, is against the
state.
■ The government is a visible symbol of state and the existence
of the state will be in jeopardy if the government is subverted.
○ Article 19(2) imposes restrictions in the interest of the security of
the state which has wider amplitude and which includes the law on
sedition.
○ Sedition is an offense against the government.
○ Anyone who causes disaffection towards the government is liable to
be prosecuted under this law.
○ Disaffection: It is ‘political hatred’ towards the government.
Issues with sedition:
● Article 19(1)(a): It clearly violates the fundamental right to freedom of
speech and expression.
● In a democratic republic where people have the freedom to change a bad
government, disaffection towards a government cannot be an offense.
● Making it an offense directly conflicts with the fundamental rights of
citizens.
● We cannot expect citizens to have any affection towards a bad government.
Why did the Court want to retain sedition?

● It was genuinely worried about an imminent communist revolution in the
country, which Kedarnath, a local communist in BeguSarai in Bihar was
advocating.
Issue with retention:
● The position taken by the court in Kedarnath is not radically different
from Tilak.
● A tendency to incite disorder would amount to sedition, and actual disorder
need not occur.
○ There is not much difference between Kedarnath and Tilak.
S.G. Vombatkere vs Union of India(2022):

● The Supreme Court had ordered a stay on all existing proceedings and on
the registration of fresh cases under sedition upon the Union Government
assuring the Court of a review of this law at the earliest.
● The Court’s stay order was in consideration of the fact that this law was
widely misused by the law enforcement authorities.
Way Forward
■ The Kedarnath judgment did not soften the law on sedition.
○ It has brought it closer to the judgment in Tilak without mitigating the
rigor of the law.
■ The recommendation for the enhancement of punishment defies
common sense when there is a universal demand for the scrapping of this
law.
■ The commission needs to see the absurdity of a law which punishes
citizens of a democratic country for making comments which may cause
disaffection towards a government which they have the power to remove.
■ The Law Commission failed or did not want to see the fallacy in the
Kedarnath judgment which did not in effect soften this harsh law but declared
that it is constitutionally valid.
■ Kedarnath equates government with state, which is illogical in the context
of a democratic republic.
○ Its attempt to bring sedition within the framework of reasonable
restriction under Article 19(2) is constitutionally impermissible.

Q. On what grounds a people’s representative can be disqualified under the
Representation of People Act, 1951? Also mention the remedies available to such
person against his disqualification.(UPSC 2019)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
The Delhi ordinance is an unabashed power-grab
Source: The Hindu

■ Prelims: Anti-defection law, Article 123, Article 74, Article 368, Tenth schedule,
Article 239AA, powers of speaker etc
■ Mains GS Paper II: State legislature- functioning, role and conduct of business,
role of judiciary in checks and balances etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ The Union government promulgated an ordinance to amend the
Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCTD) Act, 1991 that
effectively nullified the Supreme Court judgment on the powers over
bureaucratic appointments in Delhi.

Context
Article 239AA:
Article 123:
● It grants the President certain law-making powers to promulgate
ordinances during the recess of Parliament.
● These ordinances have the same force and effect as an Act of Parliament
but are in the nature of temporary laws.
● Governors of a state can issue ordinances under Article 213 of the
Constitution, when the state legislative assembly (or either of the two Houses
in states with bicameral legislatures) is not in session.
● The ordinance making power is the most important legislative power of
the President and the Governor.
○ It has been vested in them to deal with unforeseen or urgent situations.
Background:
● Five-judge Constitution Bench: It unanimously held that the elected
government of Delhi had legislative and administrative powers over
“services”.
Issues with the ordinance:

● The ordinance negates a Constitution Bench judgment of the Supreme
Court that brought “services” under the Government of National Capital
Territory of Delhi (NCTD).
● The ordinance removes Entry 41 (services) of the State List from the
Delhi government’s control and creates a National Capital Civil Service
Authority, consisting of the
○ Chief Minister
○ Chief Secretary
○ Principal Secretary-Home, to decide on service matters in Delhi.
● Decisions of the Authority will be made through majority voting, which
means that two Union-appointed bureaucrats could overrule the Chief
Minister.
● The ordinance provides that if a disagreement arises between the Authority
and the Lieutenant Governor (LG), the decision of the LG shall prevail.
● The ordinance raises multiple legal and political questions regarding
federalism, democracy, bureaucratic accountability, executive law-making,
and judicial review.
● Congress leader said: “cooperative federalism principles don’t fit” Delhi
since it is the “National Capital”.
India’s federal constitutional scheme:

● The Supreme Court noted that the addition of Article 239AA in the
Constitution accorded the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCTD) a “sui
generis” status.
● The Court held that there is no “homogeneous class” of Union Territories
and States.
○ India’s Constitution has several examples of special governance
arrangements which treat federal units differently from each other.
● Special provisions for States under Article 371 are in the nature of
“asymmetric federalism” made for “accommodating the differences and the
specific requirements of regions”.
● India’s federal system. It has been described as asymmetric due to the
special status it accorded Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 (before its
dilution) and special protections under Article 371, and 5th and 6th Schedule
Areas.
What is striking about the Court’s judgment?

● It is that it used the asymmetric federalism framework to clarify the
position of the NCTD in India’s federal scheme.
● It remarked that though NCTD is not a full-fledged State, since its
Legislative Assembly is constitutionally entrusted to legislate upon subjects in
the State and Concurrent Lists.
○ The insertion of Article 239AA created an “asymmetric federal model”
for the NCTD.
○ The NCTD remains a Union Territory, the “unique constitutional
status conferred upon it makes it a federal entity”.
Why is the invocation asymmetric federalism?

● The Court was a mute spectator when this idea was annihilated in Jammu
and Kashmir.
● The Court noted that the principles of federalism and democracy are
interlinked since the States’ exercise of legislative power gives effect to
people’s aspirations
○ Federalism creates “dual manifestation of the public will'' in which
the priorities of the two sets of governments “are not just bound to be
different, but are intended to be different”.
● A clear expression of the federal principle punctures hollow exhortations
of “cooperative federalism” that have been weaponized to centralize Indian
politics.
Problems with the presidential ordinance:

● Government’s swift and brazen act of undoing a Constitution Bench
judgment does not augur well for judicial independence.
● The legislature can alter the legal basis of a judgment, it cannot directly
overrule it.
● Executive law-making through an ordinance, as the Supreme Court held in
D.C. Wadhwa (1987), is only to “meet an extraordinary situation” and cannot
be “perverted to serve political ends”.
● Adding an additional subject of exemption (services) to the existing
exemptions (land, public order, and police) of Delhi’s legislative power listed
in Article 239AA, without amending the Constitution, is arguably an act of
constitutional subterfuge.
● Creating a civil services authority where bureaucrats can overrule an
elected Chief Minister destroys long-established norms on bureaucratic
accountability.
Way Forward
■ The ordinance is a direct assault on federalism and democracy.
■ Unabashed power-grab by the Union government needs to be opposed by
all who care for the future of India as a federal democracy.
■ As the foundations of India’s constitutionalism are threatened, we need a
new politics of federalism that reflects and articulates the underlying values
of federalism consistently.
■ The Union of India’s decision to prefer review (Article 137) and
promulgate an ordinance (Article 123) simultaneously is ill-conceived.
○ If the ordinance is challenged, the Union of India is unlikely to
succeed through either route to wrest power of “services” in Delhi.
■ Krishna Kumar Singh vs State of Bihar (2017): The Court held that the
satisfaction of the President under Article 123 is not immune from judicial
scrutiny.
○ The powers under Article 123 are not a parallel source of law making
or an independent legislative authority.
○ Court is empowered to look into the relevance of material placed
before the President, but not its sufficiency or adequacy.

Q. Discuss the procedures to decide the disputes arising out of the election of a
Member of the Parliament or State Legislature under The Representation of the
People Act, 1951. What are the grounds on which the election of any returned
candidate may be declared void ? What remedy is available to the aggrieved party
against the decision? Refer to the case laws.(UPSC 2022)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
A parliamentary democracy or an executive democracy
Source: The Hindu

■ Prelims: Parliament-Structure, organization and functioning, whip etc
■ Mains GS Paper II: Parliamentary democracy, functions of whip etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ The exclusion of the President from the new Parliament
inauguration(formal head of the executive) and the symbolism around the
Sengol(a scepter originally used to signify the transfer of power between
Chola rulers) generated significant debate.

Context
Parliamentary System of Government:
There are two executives:
● The nominal executive is the head of state e.g. President while the real
executive is the Prime Minister, who is the head of government.
● The role of president or monarch is primarily ceremonial and the Prime
Minister along with the cabinet wields effective power.
● Countries with such a system include Germany, Italy, Japan, United
Kingdom, Portugal etc .
● The Constitution of India provides for a parliamentary form of
government, both at the Center and in the States.
● Articles 74 and 75 deal with the parliamentary system of government at the
Union level and Articles 163 and 164 contain provisions with regard to the
States.
● Executive is responsible to the legislature for its policies and acts.
Presidential System of Government:

● There is only one executive.
● In this system, the President is both head of state and government, e.g.
USA, South Korea etc.
● The executive is not responsible to the legislature for its policies and acts, and
is constitutionally independent of the legislature in respect of its term of
office.
Safeguards parliamentary democracies put in place against executive

dominance or abuse:
● The executive must command a majority in Parliament: This opens up the
space for intra-party dissent, and an important role for ruling party
parliamentarians — who are not members of the cabinet — to exercise a
check over the executive.
● Ruling party backbenchers can join forces with the Opposition to defeat
unpopular Bills (as was the case with various Brexit deals in the U.K. House of
Commons between 2017 and 2019).
● The Opposition is granted certain rights in Parliament, and certain limited
control over parliamentary proceedings, in order to publicly hold the
executive to account.
● The interests of Parliament against the executive are meant to be
represented by the Speaker, a neutral and independent authority.
● Certain parliamentary democracies embrace bicameralism: i.e., a second
“Upper House” that acts as a revising chamber, where interests other than
those of the brute majority are represented (in our case, that is the Rajya
Sabha, acting as a council of states).
Issues:
● The possibility of intra-party dissent within Parliament has been
stamped out by virtue of the Tenth Schedule to the Constitution, popularly
known as the “anti-defection law”(Constitutional amendment in 1985.
○ The Tenth Schedule penalizes disobedience of the party whip with
disqualification from the House altogether.
○ The Tenth Schedule has failed to fulfill the purpose for which it was
enacted, i.e., to curb horse-trading and unprincipled floor-crossing.
○ It has strengthened the hand of the party leadership — which, in
the case of the ruling party, is effectively the cabinet/executive —
against its own parliamentarians.
○ Intra-party dissent is far more difficult in disqualification from
Parliament.
● The Indian Constitution did not carve out any specific space for the political
Opposition in the House.
○ There is no equivalent of the Prime Minister’s questions.
■ where the Prime Minister has to face direct questioning of
their record from the Leader of the Opposition as well as by
other politicians.
● The manner of proceedings in Parliament are under the complete control
of the executive, with no real constitutional checks upon how that control is
exercised.
● Speaker, in our system, is not independent.
○ The Speaker is not required to give up membership of their
political party, and is not constitutionally obligated to act impartially.
○ This has led to an increasing trend, at both the central and the State
levels, of Speakers acting in a blatantly partisan manner.
■ He advances the interests of the executive over the interests
of the House.
○ This affects the quality of the deliberations in the lower house (as
the Speaker has control over the conduct of the House)
○ It has a knock-on effect on the Upper House:
■ Example: when the ruling party wishes to avoid effective
scrutiny in the Rajya Sabha over Bills
■ The Speaker classifies the Bill as a “money bill”, thus depriving
the Rajya Sabha of the right to make amendments.
■ Example: In the case of the Aadhaar Act, where Rajya Sabha
scrutiny was avoided in this precise manner
■ Rights-protecting amendments could not be passed.
● Ordinance power: An ordinance is an executive legislation meant to be used
only for an emergency, while Parliament is not in session
○ It is used as a parallel process of law-making.
○ The executive uses it to bypass the Upper House altogether, at least
for a period of time,
Features:
Reasons for Diminishing democracy:
Way Forward
■ Only effective check upon the executive is one where the electorate has
thrown up a fractured mandate and the ruling party is forced to govern in a
coalition with allies with whom it does not always see eye-to-eye.
○ Coalition partners can exercise something of a check upon the
executive in Parliament.
■ The quality of parliamentary deliberations has declined: it is simply a
mirror of Parliament’s own structural marginalization under the Constitution.
○ We have greater executive power: a situation that resembles
presidential systems with strong executives
○ without the checks and balances and veto points that those systems
have; in effect, the worst of all worlds.
■ India can continue to be called a parliamentary democracy, or whether
we have gradually morphed into an executive democracy.
○ To return to parliamentarianism, there’s a need for constitutional
changes and reforms.

Q. To what extent, in your view, the Parliament is able to ensure accountability of
the executive in India?(UPSC 2021)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
Tracing the arc of American ‘exception-ism’ for India
Source: The Hindu
■ Prelims: Current events of international importance(India-US relations),

disputes with China(Mapping) etc
■ Mains GS Paper II: Bilateral, regional and global grouping involving India,
Significance of Indo-Pacific for India etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ The relationship between India and the United States is often traced from
25 years ago, when the U.S. imposed sanctions against India (and Pakistan)
after they tested their nuclear weapons in May 1998.

Context
India-US Relations:
● India-U.S. bilateral relations have developed into a “global strategic

partnership.
● Relationship is based on:
○ Shared democratic values
○ Increasing convergence of interests on bilateral, regional and global
issues.
Areas of Cooperation:
Background of relationship development between India and US:

● Clinton-Vajpayee-era: It gave impetus to summit-level diplomacy in the
relationship
● The Manmohan-Bush and Manmohan-Obama relationship: It highlighted
nuclear diplomacy
● Modi-Obama and Modi-Trump worked on trade and military diplomacy.
Recent developments:
● Technology diplomacy: The unprecedented new promise of Transfer of
Technology (ToT) from the U.S.
○ It was a result of the Memorandum of Understanding between
General Electric (GE) Aerospace and Hindustan Aeronautics
Limited (HAL) “to produce fighter jet engines for the Indian Air Force”.
The civil nuclear deal

● In 1998, the U.S. imposed sanctions on India mandated by the Arms Export
Control Act.
● The US signed a waiver to the sanctions on both India and Pakistan.
● The Bush administration’s push for civil nuclear exemptions, resulted in
the India-U.S. Joint Statement in 2005.
● A waiver under the Non-Proliferation Act, the Henry Hyde Act and the 123
Agreement with India.
○ It also led to an India-specific exemption at the Nuclear Suppliers
Group in 2008.
● The Obama visit to Delhi in 2010: Implementation of all the waivers of the
previous decade.
○ It was another set of exceptions for India on export controls and
high technology trade
○ Transfers under the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (EAR)
and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).
The significance of these exceptions:

● NPT: They were made despite India never joining the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation (NPT) Treaty regime, nor did it sign the Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.
● These were “India-specific” waivers not available to other non-NPT
countries such as Pakistan.
○ They were crucial indicators of the shift in U.S. alignment in South
Asia.
The Russian angle and exemptions for India:

● The U.S's waivers(regulations dealing with Russia)such as the Countering
America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) of 2017.
● The Trump administration avoided sanctioning India for the (Russian S-
400 missile system.
○ It sanctioned Turkey and China for the same purchases.
● In 2022, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the “[Ro] Khanna
amendment”: It would exempt India entirely from CAATSA sanctions.
● Russian war in Ukraine: The U.S. has ruled out secondary sanctions against
India for its considerable oil imports or defense engagement from Russia.
○ Sanctions were imposed on German entities for the Nord Stream 2
pipeline.
● The recommendations from the U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom to place India on a list of “Countries of Particular
Concern” which includes China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and
Myanmar.
○ The State department has not complied.
What has been India’s stand to exceptions?

● India didn’t cut ties with the adversaries
● Not withdrawing from groupings such as the SCO, BRICS that pose a
challenge to the U.S.-Europe world order
● No commitments to join U.S. military operations against them.
Why has the U.S. institutionalized a broad based waiver policy for India?
● Promise of ties with India:
○ The world’s most populous nation, that has been an inclusive
○ Pluralistic democracy for most of its history as a republic with a record
in non-proliferation.
● India’s attractiveness as an economic market and a military buyer.
● India’s geography in Asia, and its boundary problems from China.
○ It could make it a more dependable partner than European allies in
providing a counter to China.
● Both US and India acknowledged the Indian-American diaspora, that has
distinguished itself as a professional, law-abiding, prosperous and
unproblematic community, and is the biggest votary of better India-U.S. ties.
Way Forward
■ The biggest challenges to this relationship’s lie precisely in the
mechanism used to strengthen it.
○ The exceptions made for India, which can be reversed at any time.
■ Former close partners of the U.S., such as Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi
Arabia and even China, today complain about the “fickleness” of American
foreign policy towards them.
■ Despite India’s growth story, the relationship remains largely one-
directional on issues such as investment, hardware or technology transfer.
○ It requires the U.S. to “give” and India to “take” more than the other
way around, at a timetable decided by the U.S.
■ The GE-HAL deal took more than 13 years after the U.S. had in principle
cleared India’s access to high-tech transfers.
○ The next big leaps in high-tech co-production, clean energy
transitions, semiconductor technology, and Artificial Intelligence will
also go on a case-by-case basis, at an unpredictable pace.
■ The geopolitical context of ties, driven by a desire to counter China, or
rein in Russia is also essentially an American construct, not one followed by
India.
■ India is a potential node in the diversification of supply chains.
○ The US government is going out of its way to signal to the private
sector to look at India seriously.

Q. The USA is facing an existential threat in the form of China, that is much more
challenging than the erstwhile Soviet Union.” Explain.(UPSC 2021)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
Making of a high point
Source: Indian Express

disputes with China(Mapping) etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ The PM marked the beginning of his first State visit to the US, which he said
“will reinforce ties based on shared values of democracy, diversity and
freedom”.
■ The Prime Minister will have three meetings with President Joe Biden
○ A private engagement at the White House
○ bilateral meeting in the Oval Office
○ A State dinner at the White House.
Context
India-US Relations:

partnership.
issues.
The striking thing about the current visit:

● The US is offering high-end technology and co-production possibilities
with a power that is not an ally.
● It is framing this relationship as a long-term partnership where India
becomes important to US supply chains.
● India leverages these relationships to create a manufacturing eco-system.
Challenge for India and USA's stand:

● India has shown little capability of pushing back China.
○ The situation on the border with China is nowhere near inching back
to status quo ante.
● The US is going out of the way to bring India into the tent.
Challenges for US:

● The US is facing a hostile Russia, China and Iran.
○ Even the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Israel, is slipping
into potentially adversarial territory for the US.
● Much of Asia, with the possible exception of Singapore, is still hedging.
● Europe is diverging from America’s approach to China.
● The Russian economy has proved more resilient than the US hoped.
Puzzles of international relations:

● If China is really interested in challenging the US, it would have made
peace with India.
● If China were more cautious on support to Pakistan, and less assertive on
a border dispute with India that brings China few material gains.
○ It would have made America’s global standing even more vulnerable.
● The US investment in India: In the long run, the US will need to ensure India
is not closer to any other power.
Reasons why India’s low effort and power projection capabilities against
China are being ignored:
● To bring India into the US military industrial complex.
○ Keeping India out of that complex during the Cold War simply
pushed it into the hands of US competitors.
● The US defense industry also needs the Indian market.
● It is in US interest that India’s dependence on Russia is reduced.
Challenges:
● The promise of a broad-based technology partnership.
○ But this is also a promissory note.
● The US approach to climate change has never included taxes and finance.
○ It is betting that the Inflation Reduction Act produces innovations
that lower the cost of climate-friendly technologies.
Way Forward
■ India will have to play a key role in the diffusion of technologies.
■ India is a potential node in the diversification of supply chains.
○ The US government is going out of its way to signal to the private
sector to look at India seriously.
■ The US is asymmetrically signaling that it wants India to be on its side.
○ The symbolism of the signal is important.
■ It is a very low cost (in material and financial terms) signal for the US
right now to ensure that a major power like India, while it retains its strategic
autonomy, does not actively cause more issues for it in the global order.
■ There is little evidence that India’s domestic policies will allow it to redeem
the scale of this promise.

Q. The USA is facing an existential threat in the form of China, that is much more
challenging than the erstwhile Soviet Union.” Explain.(UPSC 2021)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
A rising India, in waltz dance steps with the U.S
Source: The Hindu

PRAGATI, Parivahan system etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ PricewaterhouseCoopers: India took 63 years to reach $1 trillion GDP,
seven years to hit $2 trillion, three years to hit $3 trillion, and is estimated
to reach $25 trillion by 2047.)

Context
India-US Relations:
partnership.
issues.
Background:
● In 1700, India accounted for over 35% of global GDP, making it the world’s
biggest
○ By the time of the economic crisis in 1991, it was down to almost
1%.
● Today, it is at around 4%-5% and rising.
Future:
● By 2030, India will have a working population of one billion, which is more
than the entire G-8 population;
○ It has Internet coverage almost equal to it.
● India’s per capita mobile data consumption was one of the lowest in the
world (122nd), and today it is ranked at one, more than that of the U.S. and
China combined.
Achievements:
● Infrastructure spend has shot up, while fiscal prudence has been
maintained.
● Fiscal expansion and yet fiscal prudence are a very tough act to pull off
and the Finance Ministry has done well.
● Combination of carbon tax on fuel coupled with a coal cess and an
infrastructure development cess.
○ It has found enough savings to fund at least a part of the rail, roads
and ports expansion.
○ It was “green”, for the infrastructure being built was green-friendly
and the tax was on non-green items.
● The fuel subsidy has come down from about ₹50,000 crore in 2015 to just
₹7,000 crore now.
● PRAGATI, or Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation: The
monthly review of every Union, State government stakeholder by the Prime
Minister).
○ It makes officials issue long-pending government orders or
clearances, and generally positively smoothens the system to
‘debottleneck’ infrastructure.
● GatiShakti: Geospatial Information Systems overlayer powerful tool prevents
unnecessary and random cutting of roads and forests, saving time and
resources.
● Private sector was allowed into commercial coal mining, leading to Odisha,
West Bengal and Chhattisgarh, all non National Democratic Alliance States,
reaping huge rewards.
● While no new oil exploration contracts were awarded between 2010-17,
by 2023-end: 5 lakh square kilometers will be under exploration contracts.
Steps for transparency and efficiency:

● Public Financial Management System: It is a centralized transaction system
to improve the transparency, accountability, and efficiency in government
financial spending and to plug waste and leakages.
○ A centralized core database integration of different platforms with
banks, thereby enabling direct payments to beneficiaries, reducing
time and cost while enhancing efficiency.
● Parivahan system, which is a one-stop system for transport across 1,400
transport offices.
○ It enables leakage proof revenue collection of ₹4,000 billion
through the registration of about 350 million vehicles and 150 million
licenses.
Way Forward
■ India’s global rise is largely because of the PM’s personal outreach and
ability to build strategic friendships with world leaders, quickly and with
mutual value.
■ External Affairs Minister’s understanding and articulation of India’s
position on global stages.
■ India needs to give up its non-alignment hang-ups of the past and
measure each situation on its merit and national interest, like it did with
Russian oil.
○ India got oil at a competitive price and did the deal, refined, and sold
a “Made in India” product back to the Europeans.
■ India needs greater digitalisation of internal processes and better
services delivery using India Stack, revive stalled agriculture reforms, build
up supply chain capability.
○ move manufacturing to India as companies look for other homes
outside China, and carry out deeper judicial reforms, to name a few.
■ Almost 50% of India is still stuck in agriculture and manufacturing
remains stuck at 14%-15% of GDP.
○ U.S. capital and technology can help in many of these areas.
■ As India completes 75 years of Independence, it needs critical U.S. help to
modernize and build its own capabilities too.
■ Stephen Cohen often said: The journey from friendship to ally is a short one
and needs to be walked by both sides, here and now.
■ India-U.S. cooperation can advance at a measured pace, to enable
sustainable long-term civilian and military space partnerships.

Q. Discuss India’s achievements in the field of Space Science and Technology. How
the application of this technology has helped India in its socio-economic
development?(UPSC 2016)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
Outreach to diaspora and statesmanship
Source: The Hindu
■ Prelims: Current events of national and international importance(Diaspora,

NRI, OCI, PIO etc)
■ Mains GS Paper III: Bilateral, regional and global grouping involving India,
Inclusive growth and issues arising out of it etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister said in Tokyo that the Government of
Tamil Nadu would protect the Tamil diaspora that has spread far and wide
in search of education, business, and employment.

Context
Diaspora:
● It traces its roots to the Greek diaspeiro, which means dispersion.

● The Indian diaspora has grown manifold since the first batch of Indians
were taken to counties in the eastern pacific and the Caribbean islands under
the ‘Girmitiya’ arrangement as indentured laborers.
Classifications:
● Non-Resident Indians (NRI): NRIs are Indians who are residents of foreign
countries. A person is considered NRI if:
○ She/he is not in India for 182 days or more during the financial
year Or;
○ If he/she is in India for less than 365 days during the 4 years
preceding that year and less than 60 days in that year.
● Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs): PIO refers to a foreign citizen (except a
national of Pakistan, Afghanistan Bangladesh, China, Iran, Bhutan, Sri Lanka
and Nepal) who:
○ At any time held an Indian passport
○ or who or either of their parents/ grandparents/great
grandparents was born and permanently resided in India as defined
in the Government of India Act, 1935
○ or who is a spouse of a citizen of India or a PIO.
○ The PIO category was abolished in 2015 and merged with the OCI
category.
● Overseas Citizens of India (OCIs): A separate category of OCI was carved
out in 2005. An OCI card was given to a foreign national:
○ Who was eligible to be a citizen of India on January 26, 1950
○ Was a citizen of India on or at any time after January 26, 1950
○ or belonged to a territory that became part of India after August 15,
1947.
○ Minor children of such individuals, except those who were a citizen
of Pakistan or Bangladesh, were also eligible for OCI cards
Diaspora facts:
● Among the Indian diaspora, Tamils constitute a substantial number.
● They form the majority of the Indian population in Malaysia, Singapore,
and Sri Lanka.
● They are in good numbers in Myanmar, Mauritius, South Africa, the
Seychelles, the Reunion Islands, Fiji, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname,
Australia, New Zealand, the Gulf countries, the United States and Canada,
Britain and the European countries.
These dynamic groups have three identities:

● Tamil identity
● Indian identity
● Identity of the countries in which they have settled.
Phenomenon of the diaspora:

● From Fiji, Malaysia, and Singapore, the Indian diaspora is migrating to
greener pastures such as Australia, Canada, and the U.S.
● Bharati Mukherjee(diasporic writer): “I am a woman with a series of
countries. It is necessary for me to put down roots wherever I land and
wherever I choose to stay.”
Reasons for the Problems they face:

● Nature of their migration
● Their numerical numbers
● Their educational and professional attainments
● Their economic clout
● Majority-minority syndrome in the host countries.
The Tamil diaspora:

● They have excelled in politics, economics, literature, the fine arts, sports,
and science.
● A few names that shine include Dr. Chandrasekhar, Monty Naicker,
Sambandan, Janaki Thevar, T.S. Maniam, Saumiyamoorthy Thondaman, S.R.
Nathan, Muthiah Muralitharan, Nagamattoo, Indira Nooyi, Sundar Pichai,
Raghuram Rajan and Kamala Harris.
Host country policies, their impact:

● The first legislative enactment of Ceylon, soon after independence, was to
render the Indian Tamils(taken to Ceylon under the protective umbrella of
the British Government, to provide labor in the tea plantations).
○ Nehru’s principled stand:Who considered Ceylon to be their home
and have stayed there for long should be conferred citizenship.
○ Ceylon argued that it was its sovereign right to introduce citizenship
regulations.
● The Burmese government never granted citizenship to thousands of Indian
Tamils and expelled them.
○ On the eve of their departure, the Burmese currency was demonetised.
India’s policy towards Sri Lanka:
● To improve political relations India on some occasions, was willing to
sacrifice the interests of the Indian diaspora.
● The Sirimavo-Shastri Pact of 1964: India adopted the policy of give and
take and converted the Indian Tamil community into merchandise to be
divided between the two countries.
● All important leaders of the Madras Presidency, Rajagopalachari, Kamaraj
Nadar, C.N. Annadurai, P. Ramamurti, and Krishna Menon were opposed to
the agreement.
What Steps need to be taken to protect the Indian Diaspora?

● Improve relations with governments, politically, economically, and
culturally.
● Protect and foster the interests of Indian minority groups.
Way Forward
■ The policy towards the Indian diaspora comes under the exclusive
jurisdiction of the central government.
○ State governments can influence policies by building public opinion.
■ The Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), could have used the term
‘persecuted minorities’.
○ The CAA also does not include Sri Lanka, where ethnic fratricide has
compelled many Tamils to come to Tamil Nadu as refugees.
○ India terms Sri Lankan Tamil refugees as illegal immigrants and
argues that they must go back to Sri Lanka.
■ Instead of trying to have cordial relations with the central government, a
policy of confrontation by Tamil Nadu would be self-defeating.
■ The need of the hour is for the state and central government to come
together and arrive at an amicable solution.
○ This calls for statesmanship, not political opportunism.

Q. Indian Diaspora has an important role to play in South East Asian countries
economy and society.Appraise the role of Indian Diaspora in South-East Asia in this
context.(UPSC 2017)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
More HIT than miss in India-Nepal ties
Source: The Hindu
■ Prelims: Current events of international importance(India-Nepal ties, India-

Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship, Seti River (SR6) projects etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ Nepal Prime Minister ‘Prachanda’ described India’s visit as “successful”.
○ This is Prachanda’s third stint as Prime Minister and compared to his
earlier official visits in 2008 and 2016.
■ India and Nepal reviewed the entire spectrum of the bilateral agenda
covering political, economic, trade, energy, security and developmental
cooperation.
Context
India-Nepal ties:
● Nepal occupies a special significance in India’s foreign policy because of
the geographic, historical, cultural and economic linkages/ties that span
centuries.
● India and Nepal share similar ties in terms of Hinduism and Buddhism with
Buddha’s birthplace Lumbini located in present day Nepal.
● The two countries have close bonds through marriages and familial ties,
popularly known as Roti-Beti ka Rishta.
● The India-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1950 forms the
bedrock of the special relations that exist between India and Nepal.
India Nepal Border dispute:
What is the Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1950?

● The treaty talks about the reciprocal treatment of Indian and Nepali
citizens in the two countries, in residence, property, business and movement.
● It establishes national treatment for both Indian and Nepalese businesses
(i.e., once imported, foreign goods would be treated no differently than
domestic goods).
● Weaponry access: It also gives Nepal access to weaponry from India.
Political developments in Nepal:

● Prachanda was sworn in as Prime Minister and revived his earlier alliance
with former Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, who heads the CPN (Unified
Marxist–Leninist).
India’s stand:
● The Prime Minister had invoked ‘neighborhood first’ to denote a new
beginning in relations.
● To highlight the focus on connectivity, he coined the acronym HIT,
covering Highways, Infoways, and Transways.
● Relations took a downturn in 2015 with the economic blockade.
● Repairing the relationship has been a slow process but results are now
visible, leading PM to recall and revive the old acronym.
Hydropower cooperation:
● Nepal is endowed with an economically viable potential of 50,000 MW of
hydropower.
● It had an installed capacity of barely 1,200 MW, making it dependent on
electricity imports from India.
● Nepal has an installed capacity of 2,200 MW, and in season, can export
power to India.
● A 400 KV transmission is now operational.
● In 2021, Nepal made a modest beginning by exporting 39 MW
● The following year it went up to 452 MW, earning Nepali rupees 11 billion in
export earnings.
● Nepal does import power from India but its dependence has dropped from
20% to 10% during the last five years.
India and Nepal hydroelectric agreements:

● Long-term power trade agreement targeting the export of 10,000 MW
within a 10-year time frame.
● The 900 MW Arun III project started in 2018 by the SJVN (formerly the
Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam) will be operational later this year.
● A memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the 695 MW Arun IV project.
● The National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) signed two
projects last year — a total of 1,200 MW.
● SJVN signed the 669 MW Lower Arun project and the NHPC Limited, the
480 MW Phukot-Karnali projects.
● Work has begun on a second high voltage transmission line between
Butwal and Gorakhpur
○ Line of credit of $679 million.
● By agreeing to the Nepali demand for the facility to export electricity to
Bangladesh using the Indian grid
○ India has highlighted the prospects for sub-regional cooperation.
To facilitate the movement of goods and people:

● The Rupaidiha-Nepalgunj Integrated Check Post
● Sunauli-Bhairahawa integrated check post
● MoU signed for another at Dodhara Chandani.
● Plan to extend the Jaynagar-Kurtha railway line
● Motihari-Amlekhgunj petroleum pipeline was operationalised in 2019,
Extension to Chitwan
● MoU for a new pipeline between Jhapa and Siliguri signed, which includes
terminals and other infrastructure.
Difficult issues and solutions:

■ Agnipath scheme that impacts the recruitment of Gurkha soldiers into the
Indian Army’s Gurkha regiments, a practice that began in 1816 by the British
Indian Army.
○ The Agnipath revision of the terms needs to be discussed between
the two armies and the defense and finance officials concerned.
○ A resolution is possible given the traditional ties between the two
Services.
■ Kalapani boundary issue that was deliberately stoked as a nationalist cause
by Mr. Oli in 2020, when his position as Prime Minister was under threat.
○ A constitutional amendment was pushed through and Nepal’s map
changed unilaterally.
○ A lasting solution will need political wisdom and understanding.
Developments during Visit of Nepal PM:

● Hydropower projects to supply energy to India (and eventually to
Bangladesh)
● Infrastructure
● Access to Indian river transport
● Innovative tourism circuits
● Better connectivity.
Steps already taken:

● Renewed high-level commitment to bilateral cooperation on multiple
fronts, with improved deliveries, was necessary.
● Unprecedented cross-party consensus for:
○ Mahàkali Treaty
○ Pancheshwar Multipurpose Project (PMP)
○ Power stations of equal capacity on both banks of the river.
● The finalized Detailed Project Report (DPR) will be submitted to both
governments expeditiously, finances arranged and modalities of
implementation concluded within one year after their approval of the DPR.
India-Nepal Projects:
● Mahakali Treaty (6,480 MW)
● Upper Karnali Project (900 MW)
● Arun Three projects (900 MW)
● Seti River (SR6) project
Way Forward
■ Both sides successfully avoided controversial issues and public
disagreements went a long way in keeping the focus on economic ties and
ensuring that the Prachanda visit was successful.
■ The legacy issue is the India–Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship of
1950: In Nepal, conviction has taken root that the Treaty is unfair as it was
imposed somehow.
○ Treaty enables Nepali nationals ‘equal treatment in terms of
employment and permits them to apply for any government job.
■ Nepali nationals work in the Indian private and public sector, have
joined the revenue services, and in the Army, have risen to become two-star
generals.
■ Some of the cobwebs of history need to be cleared so that discussions can
take place in an objective manner that addresses the concerns of both
countries.
■ The real challenge for Nepal is to depoliticise cooperation with India,
especially in water resources cooperation, improve the quality of democracy
and governance at home, and check unbridled corruption, which is alarming
even by South Asian standards.

Q. Project ‘Mausam’ is considered a unique foreign policy initiative of the Indian
Government to improve relationships with its neighbors. Does the project have a
strategic dimension? Discuss. (UPSC 2015)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
A pragmatic approach, for better India-Nepal ties
Source: The Hindu
■ Prelims: Current events of international importance(India-Nepal ties, India-

Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship, Seti River (SR6) projects etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ The Prime Minister of Nepal made a first bilateral visit to India since
assuming office in the current term.
■ India and Nepal reviewed the entire spectrum of the bilateral agenda
covering political, economic, trade, energy, security and developmental
cooperation.
Context
India-Nepal ties:
● Nepal occupies a special significance in India’s foreign policy because of
the geographic, historical, cultural and economic linkages/ties that span
centuries.
● India and Nepal share similar ties in terms of Hinduism and Buddhism with
Buddha’s birthplace Lumbini located in present day Nepal.
● The two countries have close bonds through marriages and familial ties,
popularly known as Roti-Beti ka Rishta.
● The India-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1950 forms the
bedrock of the special relations that exist between India and Nepal.
India Nepal Border dispute:

What is the Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1950?
● The treaty talks about the reciprocal treatment of Indian and Nepali
citizens in the two countries, in residence, property, business and movement.
● It establishes national treatment for both Indian and Nepalese businesses
(i.e., once imported, foreign goods would be treated no differently than
domestic goods).
● Weaponry access: It also gives Nepal access to weaponry from India.
Political developments in Nepal:

● Prachanda was sworn in as Prime Minister and revived his earlier alliance
with former Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, who heads the CPN (Unified
Marxist–Leninist).
The stand of PM Prachanda:

● Prachanda has shown political courage to extract solutions to irritants
such as:
○ The 1950 Treaty
○ Border differences
○ India’s reluctance to receive the report of the Eminent Persons Group
(EPG) set up by the two governments.
● Focus: He listened to the few voices of reason and moderation, and to focus
on opportunities to build a better future.
● He gave India a few rude shocks, crossing red lines by insisting on visiting
China first, or dismissing the Army chief, considered to be a palace loyalist.
● India reaction: Sending a Prime Ministerial special envoy to urge Madheshi
parties not to support Prachanda in order to save his government.
○ The Prime Minister reassured Prachanda that differences on the
border issue would be resolved to mutual satisfaction.
Developments during Visit of Nepal PM:

● Hydropower projects to supply energy to India (and eventually to
Bangladesh)
● Infrastructure
● Access to Indian river transport
● Innovative tourism circuits
● Better connectivity.
Steps already taken:

● Renewed high-level commitment to bilateral cooperation on multiple
fronts, with improved deliveries, was necessary.
● Unprecedented cross-party consensus for:
○ Mahàkali Treaty
○ Pancheshwar Multipurpose Project (PMP)
○ Power stations of equal capacity on both banks of the river.
● The finalized Detailed Project Report (DPR) will be submitted to both
governments expeditiously, finances arranged and modalities of
implementation concluded within one year after their approval of the DPR.
Potential areas:
● Cooperation in the power sector with the transmission passage (trilateral
power transaction) from Nepal to Bangladesh through India.
● Cooperation for payment, technologg: The MoU between the National
Payments Corporation of India and the Nepal Clearing House Ltd. for
facilitating cross-border digital payments
● Indian offer to create a ground station and supply 300 user terminals to
offer the services of the South Asia Satellite to Nepal under grant assistance.
○ It will promote:
■ Regional cooperation in the space sector
■ Space technology applications in:
● telecommunication and broadcasting
● tele-medicine
● tele-education
● e-governance
● banking and ATM services
● meteorological data transmission
● disaster response
● networking of academic and research institutions.
India-Nepal Projects:
● Mahakali Treaty (6,480 MW)
● Upper Karnali Project (900 MW)
● Arun Three projects (900 MW)
● Seti River (SR6) project
Way Forward
■ The real challenge for Nepal is to depoliticise cooperation with India,
especially in water resources cooperation, improve the quality of democracy
and governance at home, and check unbridled corruption, which is alarming
even by South Asian standards.
■ For India, it is necessary to address the perception in Nepal that it is no
longer a foreign policy priority,
■ India should give a sense of ownership, equality and credit for major
forward movement in sectors such as hydropower to parties across the
political spectrum, rather than only to the government of the day.
■ India and Nepal are uniquely positioned, because of the breadth and depth
of ties between them, to jointly rethink economic governance with a view to
enhancing human welfare.

Q. Project ‘Mausam’ is considered a unique foreign policy initiative of the Indian
Government to improve relationships with its neighbors. Does the project have a
strategic dimension? Discuss. (UPSC 2015)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
In the short term, stabilize the Line of Actual Control
Source: The Hindu
■ Prelims: Current events of international importance(LAC, Macmohan line, Galwan,

1962 war etc)
■ Mains GS Paper II: Bilateral, regional and global grouping involving India, Significance
of Indo-Pacific for India etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ The situation on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) has continued to remain
extremely tense.
○ It has stopped short of a war, with the Doklam and Galwan crises.

Context
Background:
● In 2020, the older arrangements, shaped by the agreements of 1993, 1996,
2005, and 2013, came apart in Ladakh after the Chinese massed troops in Tibet
○ They established blockades at six points on the Line of Actual Control (LAC)
to prevent Indian troops from patrolling the border.
● A clash at Galwan in June 2020 led to the deaths of 20 Indian and four Chinese
soldiers, the first such losses on the LAC since 1975.
● The Sino-Indian clash(2022) at Yangtse, north-east of Tawang, suggests that new
measures may be needed across the LAC, and not just in Ladakh.
Dispute between India and China in 1950’s:(territorial dispute):

● Whole of Aksai Chin claimed by India
● Whole of NEFA (now Arunachal Pradesh) is claimed by China.
Present disputes:
● Western sector (Ladakh)(China is seeking claims).
○ Trig Heights in the Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO) area
○ Demchok in the south
○ The Depsang Bulge
○ Galwan
○ Pangong Lake and Hot Springs
● Middle (central sector):
○ Barahoti pasture north of Chamoli in Uttarakhand
● Eastern sector (Arunachal Pradesh):
○ The international boundary and the LAC are defined by the 1914 McMahon
Line
○ China seeks to make inroads:
■ Tawang sector
■ Upper Subansiri region
■ Tri-junction with Myanmar.
Need for stability:

● There has also been an increase in rhetoric and jingoism in both countries, calling
for more aggression.
● India’s External Affairs Minister:“the situation along the LAC in Eastern Ladakh
remains very fragile and quite dangerous in terms of military assessment”.
○ This state of affairs is not sustainable: It can trigger a major conflict,
thereby destabilizing the entire region and adversely impacting the world,
politically and economically.
● It is in everyone’s interest that the LAC is made stable and the two giant neighbors
see a benign rise.
The complexity of the India-China border:.

● Chinese territorial claims include the entire Arunachal Pradesh and the occupied
Aksai Chin.
● No Chinese government is likely to tone down the narrative that has been built
over a long time
○ which claims Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh as two of the five fingers
that are attached to the Tibetan Palm.
● The Indian political establishment is not in a position to make any concessions to
facilitate a mutually acceptable border settlement.
● For India:It is important that LAC disputes do not escalate into full-fledged conflicts.
○ There is no surety that the results of war will be favorable to us.
Agreements
● The India-China engagement got an impetus after the visit by then Indian Prime
Minister to China in December 1988.
● Four agreements have been signed between the two countries (in 1993, 1996,
2005 and 2013) to maintain peace along the LAC
● The agreements laid the framework for dealing with the border issue and
covering the spectrum of engagement from the highest levels of government to
border personnel meetings in the field.
● For more than two decades, these arrangements have served their purpose well.
Inadequacies:
● The agreements are based on the premise that the LAC is mostly defined and
understood by both parties.
○ However, this is not the case and there are large segments which lack clarity.
● Article I of the 1993 Agreement stipulates the creation of joint mechanisms to
verify and settle LAC-related disputes.
○ WMCC: After 19 years, the Working Mechanism for Consultation and
Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) was created in 2012.
○ It meets twice in a year but has little to show in terms of results on the
ground.
● The 3,488 kilometer-long LAC has only four Border Personnel Meeting (BPM)
points
○ The Lipulekh BPM Point which was proposed in the Article V of the 2005
Protocol has not been established till now.
○ The paucity of BPM points precludes constructive engagement between the
troops on the ground resulting in the escalation of disputes.
● A mutually agreed reduction and redeployment of forces along the LAC, as in
Article II of the 1993 Agreement and Articles II and III of the 1996
○ Agreement has not seen any progress.
Reasons for increasing clashes:
● The current mindset among the Indian security establishment is to be
“unyielding” with China as it is felt that the “salami slicing tactics ” of the Chinese
must be halted.
● The quantum jump in surveillance technology provides visibility of movement of
opposing forces in areas that were blind spots earlier.
● Increased troop density, better roads, improved logistics
● Availability of aviation assets enhance the reaction capability.
LAC:
● The LAC between India and China, is frequently open to challenge by either side.
● Areas along the LAC have been patrolled by both sides in the past.
● The Chinese ingress in Sumdorong Chu valley in the Tawang sector in 1986-87
resulted in a close confrontation that lasted eight years.
● In 1995, two sides pulled back: India relocating its Jaya and Negi posts on the
south side of the Hathungla-Lungrola ridgeline.
Way Forward
■ It is better that both sides consider taking short-term but effective and pragmatic
steps to stabilize the LAC, reducing the possibilities of a conflict.
■ There is also a need to identify the reasons for rising clashes on the LAC and
working on solutions.
■ The situation needs to be brought under control and chances of a full-fledged
conflict minimized.
○ These steps are recommended to usher peace and stability on the LAC.
■ Convert the LAC into a Line of Control (LC) by delineating it on the map and on
the ground without prejudice to border claims.
○ This will reduce the urge among the forward troops to inch forward.
○ It can be implemented with a display of maturity by both sides and with
the use of technology.
■ The disputed areas on the LAC can be treated as no entry zones; alternatively,
both sides should be allowed to patrol these areas as per a mutually agreed
frequency.
■ Joint patrolling of the disputed areas must also be explored as this can result in
the maintenance of status quo and an increase in confidence.
■ Existing Confidence Building Measures and engagement mechanisms need to
be strengthened by providing more teeth to the WMCC and establishing more BPM
points so that local issues can be resolved quickly.

Q. Quadrilateral Security Dialogue is transforming itself into a trade block from the military
alliance, in present times. Discuss (UPSC 2020)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
Central Asian foreign policy multi-vectorism pays off
Source: The Hindu

■ Prelims: Current events of international importance, decolonisation, ASEAN,
NATO, etc.
■ Mains GS Paper II: Bilateral, regional and global grouping and agreements
involving India or affecting India’s interests.
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ China hosted what was called the “C+C5 summit”, in the city of Xi’an which
saw the participation of the leaders of five Central Asian countries
(Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan).

Context
India-Central Asia:
● India’s relation with Central Asia has a long history.
● The two regions have shared deep cultural linkages with each other over
two millennia in terms of people to people contact, trade, and commerce.
● The close trade and cultural linkages between the Indian subcontinent and
Central Asia can be traced to the Indus valley civilization, tapered after
India’s partition in 1947.
● Goods from India bound for the Central Asian region, instead of going
through Pakistan and Afghanistan, would have to take much longer routes
which usually involved the sea route to Iran and then overland through Iran,
rendering New Delhi’s exports to the region less competitive.
Geo Strategic importance of Central Asia

● Central Asia is strategically positioned as an access point between Europe
and Asia and offers extensive potential for trade, investment, and growth.
● Central Asia is not a part of India’s immediate neighborhood and
therefore it doesn’t share borders with India, the issue of connectivity
between the two regions becomes of paramount importance.
Geo economic Importance of Central Asia:

● The region is richly endowed with natural resources like crude oil, natural
gas, gold, copper, aluminum, and iron.
C+C5 summit:
● The six countries jointly signed the ‘Xi’an Declaration’ and issued a
blueprint for the future development of China-Central Asia relations.
● The countries focused on the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road
cooperation to be a ‘new starting point’.
● In focus also were people-to-people exchanges, a ‘Cultural Silk Road’
programme, and issues of regional terrorism and extremism.
● The China-Central Asia Summit mechanism was officially inaugurated,
which paves the way for future biennial summits between these countries.
The next summit will be held in Kazakhstan in 2025.
Impact:
● Summit is testament to an ever-expanding Chinese influence in the region,
which poses a challenge to Russia’s ambitions.
● It partly reflects regional complexities and shifting dynamics.
● The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace(2022) Russian
President had held more than 50 meetings (both online and in person) with
Central Asian leaders.
○ All five Central Asian Presidents visited Moscow for the Victory Day
parade:
■ It indicates that former Soviet republics intend to maintain
balanced regional and international engagements.
Stand of Central Asian Countries:

● Central Asian countries have been able to successfully implement a multi-
vectored foreign policy that stretches beyond the Russia-China axis.
● The summit implies stronger economic and political ties with other
centers of power.
● The European Council President’s visit to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan:
political signal of the EU’s commitment to the region and of the EU’s wish to
strengthen ties and bolster interregional cooperation’.
○ The EU also attended the first high-level meeting with the Central
Asian leaders, which was held in Astana.
Foreign Policy:
Turkmenistan:
● The basic parameter of Turkmenistan’s foreign policy since its
independence in 1991 has been the country’s official status of ‘neutrality’.
● Turkmenistan’s new President, his country ‘will continue the policy of
neutrality based on good neighborliness, equality and mutually beneficial
cooperation with all the countries of the world’.
Uzbekistan:
● The main priority of its foreign policy is regional security in Central Asia,
which includes the precarious environment in Afghanistan.
● Other priority directions cover relations with the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS) member-states, Russia, China, the United States, the
European Union (EU), Turkey, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia,
Singapore, and Vietnam.
Kyrgyzstan:
● Economic and security concerns have been the decisive factor in
formulating the foreign policy strategies of Kyrgyzstan in the post-
independence era.
● After his election in 2021: Russia remains the main security partner for
Bishkek, which hosts Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)
troops at the Kant military airbase.
● Multilateral engagement: Kyrgyzstan is a member of the Eurasian Economic
Union (EEU), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, CSTO, and the
Organization of Turkic States.
Tajikistan:
● The foreign policy of Tajikistan is ‘open doors’ and a peace-seeking policy.
● Readiness to build friendly relations with all countries and recognize
shared interests based on reciprocal respect and equality’.
Way Forward
■ The foreign policy trajectories in Central Asia highlights their common
characteristics, i.e., multi-vectorism.
■ The pragmatic approach certainly pays off, as it provides the benefits of
maintaining friendly ties with multiple players, including Russia.
■ The Central Asian republics could serve as a relevant example for other
post-Soviet countries, e.g Georgia and Moldova.
○ Their long-term aspirations for EU/North Atlantic Treaty
Organization membership should not be fulfilled at the expense of
workable relations with Russia.
○ This prospective membership would hardly guarantee absolute
security due to the spread of unconventional warfare, which is more
difficult to detect and counter.
■ Though Georgia and Moldova have legitimate reasons not to trust their
neighbor, a multi-vectored foreign policy should be viewed as the only
optimum solution for a lasting peace in the region.
○ Anything short of this would perpetuate an unstable environment,
with the constant threat of escalation and a greater sense of insecurity.

Q. How will I2U2 (India, Israel, UAE and USA) grouping transform India's Position in
global politics?(UPSC 2022)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
A doorway to an entrepreneurial university
Source: The Hindu

■ Prelims: Current events of national importance(Different social service
Schemes, NEP, Qs ranking, THE ranking etc)
■ Mains GS Paper I & II: Social empowerment, development and management of
social sectors/services related to Education etc.
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ The modern university system is a result of large efforts to institutionalize
and scale up research and study in many disciplines, and keeps evolving.
■ Over the years, multidisciplinary studies have seen new disciplines such as
biochemistry and computing science.
○ They are spawning dozens of new sub-disciplines including the
current rage, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Generative AI.

Context
University Grants Commission (UGC)
● It is a Statutory body, Set up in 1956
● It is charged with coordination, determination and maintenance of
standards of higher education.
● It provides recognition to universities in India, and disburses funds to
such recognized universities and colleges.
Entrepreneurial universities:
● This joint enterprise of academia and industry, for creating innovations has
led to new products, services, platforms and patents.
● This is a provocative idea.
● One school of academia Universities should be the foundation of new
knowledge and research, and any attempt at a commercialisation of this
vision should not be allowed.
● Global thinking among new-age universities, and ‘educational
entrepreneurs’ is to ensure a fine balance between education and
enterprise, where learners pay an optimal price of attaining knowledge,
gaining employable skills, or pursuing serious research.
The UGC’s push:

● University Grants Commission (UGC)’s initiative to institutionalize the
concept of ‘Professor of Practice’ is a right pointer towards an
entrepreneurial university.
● It shows how universities are best positioned to foster innovation, simply
because of the flow of new sets of bright minds, seeking to push the frontiers
of knowledge further.
Professor of Practice (PoP):

● It is to enhance the quality of higher education by bringing practitioners,
policymakers, skilled professionals, etc. into the higher education system.”
● The initiative wants to bring industry and other professional expertise
into academic institutions through a new category of positions viz. PoP.
● This will help take real world practices and experiences into classrooms
and also augment faculty resources in higher education institutions.
● Industry and society will benefit from trained graduates who are equipped
with the relevant skills.
● PoP is an individual with significant experience in their industry, appointed
to a faculty position at a university to share his/her practical knowledge and
skills with students.
● Unlike traditional academic professors: PoPs are often hired from outside
academia, and may not be required to have a PhD or other advanced research
degree.
● Based on their expertise and experience in a specific profession or
industry, they are expected to bring real-world insights and perspectives to
the classroom.
● PoPs can be found in fields that include business, engineering, law,
journalism, and the arts.
● Example: In the field of engineering,a PoP can teach courses that focus on
practical, real-world applications and share their insights in applied learning.
● They can serve as mentors for student projects
● Develop new courses that are more aligned to industry trends
● Collaborate with other faculty on research projects and point to ways of
converting patents into commercial products (which they do regularly in the
industry).
● PoPs can serve as ambassadors for their universities, building
relationships with industry partners and helping to connect students with
internship and job opportunities.
● They can participate in professional organizations and conferences to
stay up-to-date on industry trends and best practices.
● PoPs can reshape a university’s commercial thinking and energize the
actions that add vividity to a university’s culture.
Recent Initiatives taken by the Government:
Constitutional Provisions related to education:

● The 42nd Amendment to the Constitution in 1976 moved education
from the State to the Concurrent List.
● Article 21A: It provides free and compulsory education of all children in
the age group of six to fourteen years as a fundamental Right.
● Article 39(f): It provides that children are given opportunities and facilities
to develop in a healthy manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity
● Article 45: The State shall endeavor to provide, within a period of ten years
from the commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory
education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years.
● ARTICLE 46: The State shall promote with special care the educational and
economic interests of the weaker sections of the people.
Way Forward
■ The modern university system has accelerated the growth and the rise of new
disciplines across the globe.
○ Innovations that bring together academic and industrial research
work are creating economic and intellectual value for universities.
■ There is a definite need to create instruments and pathways that foster
research and lead to a commercialisation of research output, so that the
university system can capitalize the intellectual value of a new product or
processes.
■ Teaching and research were the foundational pillars of a university in the
industrial era.
○ In today’s post-knowledge societies, innovation is the third pillar in
universities. This should also be a continuous activity.
■ When this innovative culture sets in strongly, every academic will be able
to synthesize ideas and spin out start-up enterprises.
■ These university-based start-ups would not only incubate ideas but also
convert ideas into patents and transform patents into commercial products.
■ PoPs will lead to a new generation of ‘entrepreneurs in residence’,
showing the way for bright students to create the next Google on campus.

Q. National Education Policy 2020 is in line with the Sustainable Development
Goals-4 (2030). It intended to restructure and re-orient the education system in
India. Critically examine the statement(UPSC 2020)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
Amplify the subject of adolescent girl nutrition
Source: The Hindu

■ Prelims: Current events of national importance(Different social service
Schemes,micronutrients, Anemia FAO, GHI, NFHS-5, POSHAN, ICDS, Mid-day
meal scheme etc)
■ Mains GS Paper I & II: Social empowerment, development and management of
social sectors/services related to Health.
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ India has to prioritize the health and nutrition of its adolescent girls.
■ National Family Health Survey-5 data shows that every second Indian
woman is anemic, every third child is stunted and malnourished, and every
fifth child is wasted.
○ According to an FAO Food Security Report for 2021, India ranks 101
out of 116 countries in the Global Hunger Index 2021.

Context
Malnutrition:
● Malnutrition is the condition that develops when the body is deprived of
vitamins, minerals and other nutrients it needs to maintain healthy tissues
and organ function.
● Malnutrition occurs in people who are either undernourished or over
nourished.
Importance of nutrition during adolescence period:

● Adolescence is a pivotal period of cognitive development.
● It improves the access to nutrition during this “second window of
opportunity of growth”.
● It compensates for any nutrient deficiencies acquired during early
developmental stages in the girl child.
● Adolescent health is a significant indicator of women’s labor force
participation in India in the long term.
○ As better nutrition improves every young girl’s prospect to
participate in productive activities.
Nutritional concern of adolescent girls:

● Adolescent girls are particularly vulnerable to undernutrition and anemia
due to the onset of menstruation.
● National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-21) 59.1(fifty nine point one)%
of adolescent girls were found to be anemic.
● NFHS-4 reported over 41.9(forty one point nine)% of school-going girls as
underweight.
● Factors that affect the nutrition uptake in adolescent girls:
○ Environmental conditions
○ Cultural norms that lack a gender-neutral environment within a
household.
Impact of poor nutrition:

● Poorly balanced and insufficient diets can lead to cognitive impairments
that affect one’s academic performance.
● It can result in lower educational attainment, which can limit
opportunities for employment and economic self-sufficiency later in life.
● Undernourished adolescent girls are at a higher risk of chronic diseases
and pregnancy complications
● It can lead to a higher health-care burden on both families and
communities, potentially leading to financial instability and increased
poverty.
● They are less likely to participate fully in society, whether through work,
politics, or community involvement.
What steps need to be taken?

● Redefine interventions such that we not only center it around good
nutrition but also adopt a life-cycle approach, ensuring that no girl gets left
behind.
● Investment can help break the intergenerational cycle of poverty, as
well-nourished girls are more likely to have healthy babies and provide better
care for their families.
● Few strategic modifications to existing interventions can significantly
expand the scope of its outcomes.
● The convergence of various government initiatives:
○ Scheme for Adolescent Girls (SAG) within the umbrella of the Prime
Minister’s Overarching Scheme for Holistic Nutrition programme
(POSHAN) 2.0 is a step in the right direction.
● Targeted adolescent-oriented schemes such as the Rashtriya Kishor
Swasthya Karyakram (RKSK) could include even stronger awareness and
nutrition education programmes that would help sustain beneficiary
compliance.
● Targeted and regionally contextualized Social and Behaviour Change
Communication (SBCC) efforts around adolescent girls’ nutrition are sure to
generate greater demand and the adoption of good practices.
● It is imperative for effective convergence and collaborations among all
the relevant departments, in a way that fosters a collective endeavor.
● Routine training of health workers for effective implementation and
monitoring of various schemes, and to adapt with an evolving landscape, is
also a crucial step in this process.
Anemia:
● The condition of having lower than normal number of red blood cells or
quantity of hemoglobin.
● It can make one feel tired, cold, dizzy, and irritable and short of breath,
among other symptoms.
● A diet which does not contain enough iron, folic acid or vitamin B12 is a
common cause of anemia.
Iron deficiency anemia:

● It is a common cause of too few healthy red blood cells in the body (anemia).
● In a pregnant woman: iron deficiency puts the baby at risk of developmental
delays.
● World Health Organization (WHO): Iron deficiency anemia is responsible
for 3.6(three point six)% of disability-adjusted life years or DALYs (years of
life lost due to premature mortality and years lived with disability).
PM POSHAN:
Way Forward
■ India beholds a colossal opportunity to add to its nation’s demographic
dividend by investing in nutrition interventions in adolescent girls.
■ Progress has been made in improving crucial health indicators in the
form of various government initiatives that have successfully achieved
optimum coverage.
○ It is essential to acknowledge that current health interventions do
not specifically focus on the nutritional statuses of adolescent girls.
■ Investing in girls’ nutrition is not only the moral obligation of the state
but also an economic one, with potential returns in the form of greater and
more sustainable economic growth of the nation.
■ A holistic narrative on adolescent girls’ nutrition, explaining its linkages
with overall mental and physical well-being, individual productivity and
overall economic growth of the country is needed.
■ Evidence/data that effectively appeals to all, to those outside the technical
community, and must be framed to make it actionable.
■ Amplify vital discourse on nutrition, to work towards protecting and
improving the nutritional status of adolescent girls in our country.
■ Investment: Tackling the complex issue of nutrition among adolescent girls
is not just a health concern, but is an investment in the future of the nation.
■ There is enormous responsibility, as well as a tremendous opportunity, to
ensure the welfare and the upliftment of the nation by prioritizing the
nutritional needs of India’s girls.

Q. Can the vicious cycle of gender inequality, poverty and malnutrition be broken
through microfinancing of women SHGs? Explain with examples.(UPSC 2021)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
The next Finance Commission will have a tough task
Source: The Hindu
■ Prelims: Current events of national importance(Federalism, Finance

Commission, Cess and Surcharges, NITI Ayog, etc)
■ Mains GS Paper II & III: Functions and responsibilities of the union and the
states, issues and challenges pertaining to the federal structure etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ The government will appoint a Finance Commission to determine how much
of the Centre’s tax revenue should be given away to States (the vertical
share) and how to distribute that among States (the horizontal sharing
formula).

Context
Finance Commission:
Background:
● In the pre-reform period: The Finance Commission recommendations were
not that critical.
○ Because the Centre had other ways to compensate States, or indeed
to play favorites, through plan financing and public sector undertaking
(PSU) investments.
● Post-reforms, fresh PSU investments have thinned out and the Planning
Commission was abolished in 2014.
○ The Finance Commission remains virtually the sole architect of
India’s fiscal federalism.
○ Its responsibility and influence are, therefore, much larger.
Issue about horizontal distribution:

● The Centre gives away 41% of its tax pool to the States:
○ States will demand that this proportion be raised.
○ But there is not much room for stretching this further given the
Centre’s expenditure needs and the constraints on its borrowing limit.
● Previous Finance Commission(appointed in 2017):
○ It was asked to take into account the 2011 population figures in
determining the expenditure needs of a State.
○ This was a departure from the standard practice until then of
mandating Finance Commissions to use the 1971 population numbers.
○ Not to give a perverse incentive to States to neglect family planning
with an eye on a higher share of devolution.
○ States which had done well in stabilizing population growth
rates(southern States) protested against this change in the base year,
calling it a ‘penalty for good performance’.
● Conflict over revenue deficit grants:
○ Finance Commission awards to States which remain in deficit on the
current account even after tax devolution.
○ Revenue deficit grants have a rationale that every State in a country
should be able to provide a minimum level of service to its residents
even if it involves an element of cross-subsidisation.
● Finance Commissions have struggled to determine how much a State’s
deficit is due to its fiscal incapacity and how much is due to fiscal
irresponsibility.
○ They have tried to tweak the distribution formula to support deficit
States without penalizing responsible States.
○ Every horizontal distribution formula has been criticized as being
inefficient or unfair or both.
● The fault lines across States have deepened in recent years along political,
economic and fiscal dimensions.
Issues Finance Commission should focus on:

● Practice by the Centre of increasingly resorting to a levy of cesses and
surcharges rather than raising taxes.
○ A white paper by the Tamil Nadu government: The proportion of
cesses and surcharges in the Centre’s total tax revenue had nearly
doubled from 10.4(ten point four)% in 2011-12 to 20.2(twenty
point two)% in 2019-20.
● Centre raises the additional rupee by way of a surcharge, it gets to keep
all of it.
● When the Constitution was amended in the year 2000 giving States a
share in the Centre’s total tax pool.
○ Centre will resort only sparingly to cesses and surcharges, and not
as a matter of routine as has become the practice.
● States have felt cheated out of their legitimate share of national tax
revenue: The next Finance Commission should lay down guidelines for when
cesses and surcharges might be levied.
○ Suggest a formula to cap the amount that can be raised.
● Government spending on freebies: All political parties are guilty on this
count, some more than others, but trying to apportion blame will be a wrong
start.
○ The Finance Commission should formalize a mechanism for a
restraint on freebies.
Way Forward
■ In a poor country, where millions of households struggle for basic
human needs, it sounds cruel to argue against safety-nets for the poor.
○ We need to be more circumspect about freebies.
■ The restraints imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget
Management (FRBM) Act should have acted as a check on such populist
spending, but governments have found ingenious ways of raising debt
without it appearing in the budget books.
■ The next Finance Commission should bite the bullet in the interest of long-
term fiscal sustainability and lay down guidelines on the spending on
freebies.

Q. How far do you think cooperation, competition and confrontation have shaped
the nature of federation in India ? Cite some recent examples to validate your
answer.(UPSC 2020)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
Tax law in the shadow of the higher judiciary
Source: The Hindu

■ Prelims: Indian Economy(Fiscal Policy, GST, Article 265,
■ Mains GS Paper III: Fiscal policy, GST Council, Cooperative Federalism etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ In the recent rulings, in ITO vs Vikram Sujitkumar Bhatia: The question
before the Court concerned whether an amendment to a provision of the
Income Tax Act, 1961, could have retrospective effect in the absence of
legislative mandate.

Context
Direct and Indirect Taxes in India:
Income Tax Act 1961:

● It is an act to levy, administrate, collect & recover Income-tax in India.
● It came into force from 1st April 1962.
● The Income-tax Act, 1961 is the charging Statute of Income Tax in India.
● The Government of India brought a draft statute called the “Direct Taxes
Code” intended to replace the Income Tax Act,1961 and the Wealth Tax Act,
1957.
● The Income-tax Act has provided separate provisions with respect to levy of
tax on income received in advance as well as the income with respect of
which the amount has not yet been received.
● A person also has to keep track of his TDS deducted while calculating his
final tax liability at the end of the year.
○ However, the bill was later scrapped because of the wealth tax act
being repealed.
India’s law of taxation is built on two central precepts.:

● On the idea captured in Article 265: tax may be imposed only with the
authority of law.
● On a principle of sureness, that any levy ought to be clear, consistent, and
predictable.
● Both precepts emanate out of a larger commitment to the rule of law, in
particular to values of legality and certainty.
Cases of Supreme Court enacting into existence taxes that lack legislative
support:
ITO vs Vikram Sujitkumar Bhatia:
● Issue: Whether an amendment to a provision of the Income Tax Act, 1961,
could have retrospective effect in the absence of legislative mandate.
What Section 153C of the Act says?

● It stipulates the conditions under which a search made on a person’s
premises could result in the opening of proceedings against other persons
and entities.
● Before an amendment(2015): Section 153C allowed the Revenue to
proceed against third parties to a search, if material seized (such as money,
bullion, jewelry, or books of accounts) “belongs or belong to” a person other
than the one who was subject to the search.
Amendment in 2015:
● Section 153C: It stipulated that assessments could be made against third
parties to a search.
○ Even if the material seized — in the case of documents and books
of accounts — “pertains or pertains to” the person or if information
contained in those items “relates” to the person.
○ The amendment was not made expressly retrospective.
Ruling of different High Courts:

● For incriminating material found during a search to serve as a basis for
assessing persons alien to the search, that material must not merely relate to,
or pertain to, such person but must “belong” to them.
● A mere reference to a person’s name would not by itself satisfy the law.
○ There must be evidence that the material in question is the person’s
property.
Gujarat High Court:
● Application would impinge on rights that had vested on persons through
the previous stipulation.
● If a law was merely procedural in nature, it would apply retrospectively
only if it did not take away any substantive rights conferred on a person.
● Court found that the amendment was bringing into the fold of Section 153C
a new class of assessees, who were previously excluded.
Reasons why Supreme Court reversed this verdict:

● The old Section 153C had been replaced by amendment.
○ The words “belongs or belong to” had been substituted by “pertains
or pertain to.
○ One must presume that the unamended provision never existed in
law, not even before the date of the amendment.
● The new law is declaratory, in that it seeks to explain an earlier provision,
and is hence retrospective.
Court should act as maker, not interpreter:

● Section 153C may have been amended through substitution.
● The phrase “belongs to” continues to remain in the provision.
○ It added an additional stipulation: That even material — in the case
of books of accounts and documents — that “pertains or pertain to” a
person can serve as a ground for fresh proceedings.
● The amendment by no means seeks to expand the law’s domain with an eye
to the future.
● It will apply to past searches, has acted not as an interpreter of the law but
as a maker of the law.
● Union of India vs Ashish Agarwal:
● The Court resuscitated notices of reassessment that had been issued
by the Revenue without any sanction of law.
● It not only reversed the Allahabad High Court’s judgment that had
been carried to it on appeal.
○ It has verdicts rendered by at least seven different High Courts
that were not before it.
Issues and High court’s stand:

● Parliament had enacted a new regime to govern reassessments of
completed income-tax proceedings.
○ Despite the change in law, the Revenue continued to issue notices
under a repealed provision.
● It derives authority from executive notifications that extended timelines
during the COVID-19-inflicted period.
● The High Courts declared these notices invalid, but also pointed out that
the Income-Tax Department, if it so desired, was at liberty to invoke the new
law, if the statute of limitation so permitted.
● Quashing these notices would have some effect on the revenue.
● There have been cases where limitation had expired, leaving the authorities
with no choice but to drop any proposal for reassessment.
Way Forward
■ The Court seems to be encroaching on legislative functions along with
striving to give life to what were otherwise entirely illegitimate actions.
■ The Court also invoked its power under Article 142: It allows it to pass
orders for “doing complete justice to a cause”.
○ This power ought not to be applied in breach of statutory law.
○ In this case, Court not only resuscitated actions that lacked any
legislative support but also reversed judgments that were simply not
on appeal before it.
■ Article 265 forbids taxation without legislation.
○ Courts should not diverge into the legislative zone.

Q. Explain the rationale behind Goods and Services Tax(Compensation to states)act
of 2017.How has COVID-19 impacted the GST compensation fund and created new
federal tensions?(UPSC 2020)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
International trade has a carbon problem
Source: The Hindu
■ Prelims: Current events of international importance, carbon tax, EU, CBAM,

emissions trading system (ETS), COP, G20 etc
involving India or affecting India’s interests, Important international
institutions etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ The European Union’s (EU) key climate law, the Carbon Border
Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), has spooked India.
○ India fears that CBAM will cripple the export of its carbon-intensive
products to the EU.

Context
Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM):
Challenges associated with CBAM:

● India’s exports may be limited to aluminum, iron, and steel, and affect only
1.8(one point eight)% of its total exports to the EU
● Protectionism: India has reportedly decried CBAM as being protectionist
and discriminatory.
● WTO: It allows countries to adopt unilateral measures for safeguarding the
environment
○ environmental protection should not become a smokescreen for
trade protectionism.
Background of ETS and CBAM :

● In 2005, the EU adopted a climate change policy known as the Emissions
Trading System (ETS).
● ETS is a market-based mechanism that aims at reducing greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions by allowing bodies emitting GHG to buy and sell these
emissions amongst themselves.
○ It has a mechanism for its domestic industries
○ Emissions embedded in products imported from other countries
may not be priced in a similar way due to a lack of stringent policies or
due to less stringent policies in those countries.
● The impacted industries in the EU receive free allowances or permits
under the ETS.
● The EU apprehends the phenomenon of ‘carbon leakage’, that is, due to
the application of ETS, European firms operating in carbon-intensive sectors
might possibly shift to those countries that have less stringent GHG emission
norms.
CBAM:
● It is aimed at addressing this quagmire(leveling the playing field for the EU
industries).
● Imports of certain carbon-intensive products, namely cement, iron and
steel, electricity, fertilizers, aluminum, and hydrogen, will have to bear the
same economic costs borne by EU producers under the ETS.
● The price to be paid will be linked to the weekly average of the emissions
priced under the ETS.
● However, where a carbon price has been explicitly paid for the imported
products in their country of origin, a reduction can be claimed.
CBAM and WTO:

● A cornerstone principle of WTO law is non-discrimination.
● Countries are required to accord equal treatment to ‘like’ products
irrespective of their country of origin (most-favored nation treatment) and to
treat foreign-made ‘like’ products as they treat domestic ones (national
treatment principle).
● CBAM’s design is origin-neutral in appearance.
○ It discriminates between goods from different countries on account
of:
■ An inadequate carbon pricing policy
■ Due to onerous reporting requirements that importers would
be subject to.
Challenges:
● Whether the carbon-intensive products to which the CBAM applies are
‘like’.
● While steel products may appear similar.
○ The process by which electric arc furnaces produce steel is less
carbon-intensive than the steel produced in blast furnaces.
● Products that are not ‘like’, the rules on non-discrimination would have
little application in such a case.
WTO jurisprudence:
● CBAM violates WTO law for discriminating between EU and foreign
products covered by CBAM based on the embedded emissions.
● General Exceptions clause(Article XX):There could be a claim for justifying
it under the General Exceptions clause given in Article XX of the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
○ Under Article XX, measures taken by countries that otherwise violate
GATT obligations are permitted if:
■ They fall under one of the listed policy grounds
■ They satisfy the requirements of the introductory clause of
Article XX, known as the chapeau.
● One of the listed policy grounds in Article XX is ‘conservation of
exhaustible natural resources’.
○ CBAM would fall under this category.
Way Forward
■ CBAM only considers ‘explicit’ carbon prices, not ‘implicit’ costs (non-
price-based costs) borne by products originating in certain countries.
○ Accordingly, it arbitrarily or unjustifiably discriminates between
countries where the same environmental conditions exist.
■ CBAM is an important issue in the ongoing India-EU free trade
agreement negotiations: India should work with the EU to secure gains on
CBAM and ensure smooth onboarding for Indian exporters to maximize the
benefits of a bilateral deal, even as the possibility of a WTO challenge remains
open.

Q. Describe the major outcomes of the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties
(COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
What are the commitments made by the India conference? (UPSC 2021)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
Responsibility and the complexities of climate leadership
Source: The Hindu
■ Prelims: Current events of international importance, COP, IPCC, G20 etc

involving India or affecting India’s interests, Important international
institutions etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ A letter from United States and European parliamentarians calling for
removal of President-Designate of COP28, Minister Sultan Al Jaber on the
grounds that he is CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

Context
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC):
● It is the international body for assessing the science related to climate
change.
● It was set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO)
and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to provide
policymakers with regular assessments of the scientific basis of climate
change, its impacts and future risks, and options for adaptation and
mitigation.
● IPCC assessments provide a scientific basis for governments at all levels
to develop climate related policies, and they underlie negotiations at the UN
Climate Conference – the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Bangladesh and the Maldives:

● Representatives of developing countries in the climate change front line,
i.e., and as leaders of the Climate Vulnerable Forum.
○ A group of 58 of the world’s most climate vulnerable countries.
● Climate-related economic losses of $500 billion in the last two decades
alone.
Journey towards a clean energy future:
● Fossil fuel-dependent economies are critical to these efforts
● Avoid division and continue to engage fellow parties at COP28 and
elsewhere on the best way forward for their economies and for the planet.
● Sultan Al-Jaber has led Masdar: Renewable energy company made huge
investments in solar and wind projects.
● The UAE’s Barakah nuclear power plant generates 6 gigawatts of clean
power.
● Masdar and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) signed
an agreement aiming to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030.
Finance for COP28:

● Climate Prosperity Plans, including the Mujib Climate Prosperity Plan
adopted in Bangladesh: It seeks to generate inward investment of tens of
trillions of dollars in building clean energy infrastructure.
● Climate prosperity agenda recognises that economic growth for the poorest
countries is non-negotiable,
What developing nations are seeking?

● Seeking electricity, transport and industry, all of which can now be
increasingly delivered with clean energy.
● Seek the UAE’s leadership in helping secure investments supported by
sovereign wealth funds and multilateral development banks.
○ It can deliver a huge boost in climate prosperity.
Why Debt is a barrier?

● Many of the nations are crippled by unsustainable debts.
● It includes debts which are becoming unplayable due to climate damages
largely caused by emissions elsewhere.
● There is a need for a collective approach which recognises the debt
problem and the barrier it now poses to clean energy investment and climate
adaptation.
● Sovereign wealth funds and multilateral development banks (MDBs): It
could assist in de-risking restructured debts and insuring re-issued climate
bonds.
Loss and damage:
● It refers to costs the rich and developed countries, who are majorly
responsible for industrial emissions, should pay to poorer nations(made
negligible contribution to pollution) but are more vulnerable to extreme
climate events -
○ For example: the devastating floods in Pakistan recently.
● Polluter Pays” principle: It makes the polluter liable for paying not just for
the cost of remedial action, but also for compensating the victims of
environmental damage caused by their actions.
● Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) for Loss and Damages(2013):
It was the first formal acknowledgment of the need to compensate developing
countries struck by climate disasters.
Way Forward
■ The Loss and Damage fund secured in Sharm El-Sheikh must not be just
another empty bank account.
○ Fossil fuels-dependent economies can demonstrate their
commitment to a shared future by making subscriptions to support
funding for climate damages in the most vulnerable countries, well in
advance of the COP.
■ There are no winners and losers in a global climate breakdown, the oil
industry included.
○ Representatives of the most climate vulnerable developing nations
should call on American and European parliamentarians to reconsider
their position.
■ Holding COP28 in the UAE(Sultan Al-Jaber as COP President-Designate):
It may be an opportunity to engage the fossil fuels industry to make some
significant and quantifiable commitments to emissions cuts and climate
action in general.
■ We all need to work together to save the 1.5(one point five)°C Paris target
before it is too late.

Q. Describe the major outcomes of the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties
(COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
What are the commitments made by the India conference? (UPSC 2021)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
Laying the foundation for a future-ready digital India
Source: The Hindu

■ Prelims: 4G, 5G, Governance(Adhar, UIDAI, KYC,Bharatnet, CSCs, drones.
■ Mains GS Paper II: Digital India, Important aspects of governance(e
governance, accountability),
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ The Ministry of Electronics and IT has been organizing consultations on the
proposed “Digital India Bill” to build conceptual alignment on a new law that
will replace the Information Technology (IT) Act.

Context
Digital India:
● It is an umbrella program to prepare India for a knowledge-based
transformation.
● It weaves together a large number of ideas and thoughts into a single
comprehensive vision so that each of them is seen as part of a larger goal.
● It has been launched by the Ministry of Electronics and Information
Technology (Meity).
Vision of Digital India:

1. Digital infrastructure as Utility to Every Citizen
2. Governance and services on demand
3. Digital empowerment of citizens
Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000:
Goal of new bill:

● Upgrade the current legal regime to tackle emerging challenges such as
user harm, competition and misinformation in the digital space.
● It is likely to redefine the contours of how technology is regulated, not just
in India but also globally.
Changes proposed:
● Categorisation of digital intermediaries into distinct classes such as e-
commerce players, social media companies, and search engines to place
different responsibilities and liabilities on each kind.
The current IT Act:

● It defines an “intermediary” to include any entity between a user and the
Internet
● IT Rules sub-classify intermediaries into three main categories:
○ Social Media Intermediaries” (SMIs)
○ Significant Social Media Intermediaries” (SSMIs)
○ Online Gaming Intermediaries”.
● The rules lay down stringent obligations for most intermediaries, such as a
72-hour timeline for responding to law enforcement requests and resolving
‘content take down’ requests.
○ ISPs, websites, e-commerce platforms, and cloud services are all
treated similarly.
Issues:
● Platforms such as Microsoft Teams or customer management solutions
such as Zoho: By virtue of being licensed, these intermediaries have a closed
user base and present a lower risk of harm from information going viral.
● Treating intermediaries like conventional social media platforms not
only adds to their cost of doing business.
○ It exposes them to greater liability without meaningfully reducing
risks presented by the Internet.
Global standing:
● The European Union’s Digital Services Act is probably one of the most
developed frameworks for us to consider.
○ It introduces some exemptions and creates three tiers of
intermediaries — hosting services, online platforms and “very large
online platforms”, with increasing legal obligations.
● Australia:
○ It created an eight-fold classification system, with separate
industry-drafted codes governing categories such as social media
platforms and search engines.
○ Intermediaries are required to conduct risk assessments, based on
the potential for exposure to harmful content such as child sexual
abuse material (CSAM) or terrorism.
Social Media Intermediaries(SMIs):

● SMIs are platforms that facilitate communication and sharing of information
between users
● SMIs that have a very large user base (above a specified threshold) are
designated as SSMIs.
● SMIs can encompass a variety of services such as video communications,
matrimonial websites, email and even online comment sections on websites.
Focus areas for India:

● A granular, product-specific classification could improve accountability
and safety online, such an approach may not be future-proof.
● We need a classification framework that creates a few defined categories,
requires intermediaries to undertake risk assessments and uses that
information to bucket them into relevant categories.
● The goal should also be to minimize obligations on intermediaries and
ensure that regulatory tasks are proportionate to ability and size.
● Exempt micro and small enterprises, and caching and conduit services
(the ‘pipes’ of the Internet) from any major obligations.
○ Clearly distinguish communication services (where end-users
interact with each other) from other forms of intermediaries (such as
search engines and online-marketplaces).
● Given the lower risks, the obligations placed on intermediaries that are
not communication services should be lesser.
○ They could still be required to appoint a grievance officer,
cooperate with law enforcement, identify advertising, and take down
problematic content within reasonable timelines.
Way Forward
■ Intermediaries that offer communication services could be asked to
undertake risk assessments based on the number of their active users, risk of
harm and potential for virality of harmful content.
■ The largest communication services (platforms such as Twitter) could
then be required to adhere to special obligations such as appointing India-
based officers.
○ Setting up in-house grievance appellate mechanisms with
independent external stakeholders to increase confidence in the
grievance process.
■ Alternative approaches to curbing virality, such as circuit breakers to slow
down content, could also be considered.
■ For the proposed approach to be effective, metrics for risk assessment and
appropriate thresholds would have to be defined and reviewed on a periodic
basis in consultation with industry.
■ Framework could help establish accountability and online safety, while
reducing legal obligations for a large number of intermediaries.
○ It could help create a regulatory environment that helps achieve the
government’s policy goal of creating a safer Internet ecosystem, while
also allowing businesses to thrive.

Q. What are the different elements of cyber security ? Keeping in view the challenges
in cyber security, examine the extent to which India has successfully developed a
comprehensive National Cyber Security Strategy. (UPSC 2022)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
Reflections on Artificial Intelligence, as friend or foe
Source: The Hindu

■ Prelims: Science and technology, Artificial intelligence(AI), Generative AI, Big
Data, GANs, ChatGPT1 tool, DALL.E2 etc
■ Mains GS Paper III and IV: Significance of technology for India, AI,
indigenisation of technology and development of new technology.
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ The Association for Computing Machinery released a statement on
‘Principles for Responsible Algorithmic Systems’, a broader class of
systems that include AI systems.
■ There have been different cautionary messages about AI, issued by the
Future of Life Institute, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial
Intelligence and the Center for AI Safety.

Context
Artificial intelligence(AI):
● It is a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent
behavior in computers.
● It describes the action of machines accomplishing tasks that have
historically required human intelligence.
● It includes technologies like machine learning, pattern recognition, big data,
neural networks, self algorithms etc.
● E.g: Facebook’s facial recognition software which identifies faces in the
photos we post, the voice recognition software that translates commands we
give to Alexa, etc are some of the examples of AI already around us.
AI innovations:
● GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks)
● LLMs (Large Language Models)
● GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformers)
● Image Generation to experiment
● Create commercial offerings like DALL-E for image generation
● ChatGPT for text generation.
○ It can write blogs, computer code, and marketing copies and even
generate results for search queries.
Areas of use, limitations and AGI:

● AI systems are capable of exhibiting superhuman performance on
specific or “narrow” tasks.
○ Example: In chess, Go (a game several orders harder than chess)
○ In biochemistry for protein folding.
● The performance and utility of AI systems improve as the task is
narrowed, making them valuable assistants to humans.
● Speech recognition, translation, and even identifying common objects
such as photographs, are just a few tasks that AI systems tackle, even
exceeding human performance in some instances.
Limitations:
● Their performance and utility degrade on more “general” or ill-defined
tasks.
● They are weak in integrating inferences across situations based on the
common sense humans have.
● Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
○ It refers to intelligence that is not limited or narrow.
○ There are no credible efforts towards building AGI yet.
● Common sense will make a human save his life in a life-threatening situation
while a robot may remain unmoved.
Release of ChatGPT:
● It is a generative AI tool that uses a Large Language Model (LLM) to generate
text.
● LLMs are large artificial neural networks that ingest large amounts of
digital text to build a statistical “model”.
● Several LLMs have been built by Google, Meta, Amazon, and others.
● ChatGPT is generating flawless paragraphs that caught the world’s attention.
○ Writing could now be outsourced to it.
● “sparks of AGI” in GPT-4; AGI could emerge from a bigger LLM in the near
future.
Limitations of LLM:
● At the basic level, LLMs merely predict the most probable or relevant word
to follow a given sequence of words, based on the learned statistical model.
● They are just “stochastic parrots,” with no sense of meaning.
● They “hallucinate” facts, confidently (and wrongly) — awarding Nobel
prizes generously and conjuring credible citations to non-existent academic
papers.
What is the future of AGI?

● Machines outperform humans in every physical task today and AGI may
lead to AI “machines” bettering humans in many intellectual or mental tasks.
● Bleak scenarios of super-intelligent machines enslaving humans have
been imagined.
● AGI systems could be a superior species created by humans outside of
evolution.
● AGI will indeed be a momentous development that the world must
prepare for seriously.
Where the dangers lie?
● Superhuman AI: The danger of a super intelligent AI converting humans to
slaves.
● Malicious humans with powerful AI:
○ AI tools are relatively easy to build.
○ LLMs can generate believable untruths as fake news and create deep
mental anguish leading to self-harm.
○ Public opinion can be manipulated to affect democratic elections.
○ AI tools work globally, taking little cognancy of boundaries and
barriers.
○ Individual malice can instantly impact the globe.
○ Governments may approve or support such actions against
“enemies”.
● Highly capable and inscrutable AI:
○ They may end up harming some sections more than others
unintentionally, despite the best intentions of their creators.
○ These systems are created using Machine Learning from data from
the world and can perpetuate the shortcomings of the data.
○ They may introduce asymmetric behaviors that go against certain
groups.
○ Camera-based face recognition systems have been shown to be
more accurate on fair-skinned men than on dark-skinned women.
■ Such unintended and unknown bias can be catastrophic in AI
systems that steer autonomous cars and diagnose medical
conditions.
● Privacy is a critical concern as algorithmic systems watch the world
constantly.
○ Every person can be tracked always, violating the fundamental right
to privacy.
● Who develops these technologies and how:
○ Most recent advances took place in companies with huge
computational, data, and human resources.
○ Commercial entities with no effective public oversight are the centers
of action.
■ Example:ChatGPT was developed by OpenAI which began as a
non-profit and transformed into a for-profit entity.
Uses of AI:
● AI can simulate the potential effects of laws.
○ For example, various datasets such as the Census, data on household
consumption, taxpayers, beneficiaries from various schemes, and
public infrastructure can be modeled.
● AI can uncover potential outcomes of a policy.
● It can also help in flagging laws that are outdated in the present
circumstances and which require amendment.
○ For example, ‘The Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897’ failed to address
the COVID-19 pandemic situation when the virus seemed to have
overwhelmed the country.
Ethical Issues with AI:

Way Forward
■ Everything that affects humans significantly needs public oversight or
regulation.
■ AI systems can have a serious, long-lasting negative impact on individuals.
■ We need to talk more about the unintentional harm AI may inflict on
some or all of humanity.
○ These are solvable, but concerted efforts are needed.
■ India: We need systematic evaluation of western efficacy and shortcomings
in Indian situations.
■ We need to establish mechanisms of checks and balances before large-
scale deployment of AI systems.
■ AI holds tremendous potential in different sectors such as public health,
agriculture, transportation and governance.
○ As we exploit India’s advantages in them, we need more discussions
to make AI systems responsible, fair, and just to our society.
■ The European Union is on the verge of enacting an AI Act that proposes
regulations based on a stratification of potential risks.
○ India needs a framework for itself, keeping in mind that regulations
have been heavy-handed as well as lax in the past.

Q. What are the different elements of cyber security ? Keeping in view the
challenges in cyber security, examine the extent to which India has successfully
developed a comprehensive National Cyber Security Strategy.(UPSC 2022)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
E-education platforms, their Generative AI chapter
Source: The Hindu

■ Prelims: Science and technology, Artificial intelligence(AI), Generative AI, e-
education, ChatGPT etc
■ Mains GS Paper III and IV: Significance of technology for India, AI,
indigenisation of technology and development of new technology.
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ The Khan Academy’s online education videos attracted thousands of
learners in 2008.
○ Khan’s not-for-profit enterprise is funded by the Gates Foundation,
Google and Elon Musk.
○ The academy has 130 million learners from across the world, ranging
from school-goers to graduate-level learners

Context
Artificial intelligence(AI):
● It is a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent
behavior in computers.
● It describes the action of machines accomplishing tasks that have
historically required human intelligence.
● It includes technologies like machine learning, pattern recognition, big data,
neural networks, self algorithms etc.
● E.g: Facebook’s facial recognition software which identifies faces in the
photos we post, the voice recognition software that translates commands we
give to Alexa, etc are some of the examples of AI already around us.
Generative AI:
● It is a cutting-edge technological advancement that utilizes machine
learning and artificial intelligence to create new forms of media, such as text,
audio, video, and animation.
● With the advent of advanced machine learning capabilities: It is possible
to generate new and creative short and long-form content, synthetic media,
and even deep fakes with simple text, also known as prompts.
Massive Open Online Courses’ (MOOCs):

● MOOCS have been around since 2008.
● Their institutional origins can be traced to three free online courses offered
by Stanford University in 2011.
● Peter Norvig, Sebastian Thrun, Jennifer Widom and Andrew Ng
conducted these courses.
● Thrun launched his online education outfit, ‘Udacity’, in late 2011 as a for-
profit company.
● Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller followed suit with their venture ‘Coursera’,
which was also registered as a ‘for-profit’ company.
● MIT and Harvard joined forces to create ‘edX’ in May 2012, as a non-profit
MOOCS Company.
● According to ‘Class Central’, the number of MOOCS learners in the world
(excluding China) was 220 million in 2021.
● Coursera accounted for 97 million learners, while edX and India’s SWAYAM
had enrolments of 42 million and 22 million, respectively.
India and MOOCS:
● Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and the Indian Institute of
Management Bangalore have been the early movers .
○ Both institutions offer a variety of MOOCS courses through the edX
platform.
● India’s ‘Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds’
(SWAYAM) launched in 2017 by the Ministry of Education, Government of
India.
○ It is one of the world’s largest learning e-portals.
Why Generative AI?

● The financials of MOOCS platforms are fragile.
● The operating expenses of a MOOCS platform are high
○ partly due to maintenance expenses associated with the LMS tech
stack
○ partly due to steep marketing costs incurred for enlarging the
learner base.
● On the revenue side, the practice of offering entry-level courses gratis (or at
low fees) aggravated the financial crunch faced by these platforms.
● MOOCS platforms, by and large, rely on degree-earning courses to earn
revenue, such courses have few takers.
● A key metric that determines learner enrolments for MOOCS is the
probability of potential learners discovering LMS platforms through web-
based search engines.
● Even when a learner stumbles on a platform of her choice, she would still
struggle to locate courses that suit her needs from the crowded portfolios of
Coursera, edX and Udacity.
● High rate of dropouts by entry-level learners.
○ In turn, drop-outs reduce the catchment of learners for degree granting
programmes.
● edX’s Chat GPT plug-in helps aspiring learners to successfully locate
platforms and courses that suit their requirements.
● The Khan Academy’s chat box ‘Khanmigo’ challenges learners with
thought-provoking questions
● edX’s ‘edX Xpert’ and Coursera’s ‘AI Coursera Coach’ function as virtual
assistants that:
○ answer queries
○ provide feedback on assignments
○ generate quick summaries of voluminous content
○ swiftly turn out exam scores.
● As learning gets interesting and engaging, drop-outs are bound to come
down, resulting in more learners progressing to degree granting
programmes.
Ethical Issues with AI:
SWAYAM:
Way Forward
■ The SWAYAM-user community will drastically scale up by 2025, when
India’s active Internet users become 900 million strong.
○ This rapid scale up will necessitate the utilization of AI-based
learning and teaching services by institutes affiliated to the platform.
■ Unlike the United States and Europe-based platforms, SWAYAM is
publicly funded and is driven by the National Education Policy’s tenets of
inclusivity and cross-disciplinary learning.
■ The drift of SWAYAM courses is more likely in the direction of cross-
disciplinary course offerings that utilize unstructured data.
○ SWAYAM is thus ideally positioned to derive benefits from the
evolving semantic web.

Q. What are the different elements of cyber security ? Keeping in view the
challenges in cyber security, examine the extent to which India has successfully
developed a comprehensive National Cyber Security Strategy.(UPSC 2022)
EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
A global order as technology’s much needed pole star
Source: The Hindu
■ Prelims: Dot com, G20, meta platforms, blockchain, crypto currency, Voice
Technology (VT), 5G etc
■ Mains GS Paper III: Linkage of organized crimes with terrorism, implications of
cybercrimes on security etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
■ Since the burst of Dot-com bubble 2000, the rapid scale and pace of
development of technology have radically and disruptively transformed our
societies and daily lives.

Context
Dot com Bubble:
● The dot-com bubble or Internet Bubble was a speculative bubble during
the 1995–2000 with a climax in 2000.
● The stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise
rapidly from growth in the Internet sector and related fields.
● Reason: steady commercial growth of the Internet with the advent of the
world wide web.
Challenges to notion of nation-state with present technology:

● The fundamental notion of a nation-state of a geographical unit in which
citizens live is undergoing a massive change because of technology.
● There are several externalities occurring across the borders of nation-
states, i.e. cyber-attacks,
○ They have a ripple effect on the physical boundaries to challenge
their socio-economic and political existence.
● The advent of Web3, massive peer-to-peer networks and blockchains
has allowed actors(state and non-state) to influence areas such as trade,
commerce, health and education even while remaining outside of financial
and judicial scope.
● Geography-based rules are no longer easily enforceable simply because of
the declining significance of conventional geographical borders in the era of
high technology.
● Any form of “virtual activity” is not confined to the realms of the borders of
a country
○ Data travels on the chain of the world wide web and spreads across
the world at speed hitherto unimaginable.
● When any activity falls foul of the laws of a particular geographically-
determined nation-state.
○ It is extremely difficult in the absence of a globally-accepted norm
■ To enforce the law in that particular geography and book the
recalcitrant actors under the laws of the nation-state.
○ It is difficult to collect incontrovertible evidence without
cooperation from other geographies.
● The national sovereignty of countries is challenged by activities beyond
their physical boundaries.
○ Their existing constitutionally set-up institutions comprising the
executive, legislature and judiciary proves inadequate in tackling them.
● It is also difficult to establish applicability of any country-specific
legislation due to the universal q1 nature of technology, leading to problems
in enforceability.
● The emergence of newer technologies has exposed the incapacity and
inability of the government of the nation-state to administer and regulate
these technologies.
● The nation-state is no longer the only conduit through which
multinational corporations, non-governmental organizations and
supranational organizations, both legitimate and illegitimate, state and non-
state actors, need to operate.
○ These entities have transcended physical boundaries to
collaborate with the rest of the world, independent of traditional
administrative and regulatory institutions.
○ For example: topographical maps, which used to be produced by
public and military institutions, are now available entirely by private
non-state actors, such as Apple or Google Maps.
Challenges on the economic side:

● With a valuation of more than $4,100 billion, the five largest American
tech companies (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft) have
surpassed Germany’s GDP (the world’s fourth largest economy) in terms of
valuation”.
● Important levers of these companies are data and their use.
Data:
● Data has become the most important raw material of our times, and only
a handful of companies now hold unparalleled economic power and influence
over it.
● Meta-platforms: their huge size allows them to constantly increase the
amount of information they analyze and refine the algorithms they use to
influence, if not control, us and our activities”.
Way Forward
■ India at various international fora: The borderless nature of technology,
and anonymity of actors involved, have challenged the traditionally accepted
concepts of sovereignty, jurisdiction/regulation, and privacy”.
○ A principle-based global order for technology would help in:
■ streamlining the enforceability challenges in the adoption and
diffusion of technology.
■ Providing guidance to emerging economies on how to deal
with the evolving definitions of their sovereignty.
■ As In case of the COVID-19 pandemic, the way forward in managing future
global pandemics is probably by the adoption of digital health.
■ India needs a data transfer and data privacy law: But these laws, in
isolation, will only be able to do so much unless a global principle-based
regulation architecture trusted by all countries facilitates it.
■ Finance Minister while addressing a meeting with the International
Monetary Fund on the guidelines of a G-20 event on virtual private digital
assets
○ Emphasized the need to have a globally-coordinated approach to
the regulation of digital assets such as crypto-currencies, given the
potential risks they pose to the world’s financial ecosystem.
■ With India, as the current chair of the G-20, this is the perfect opportunity
to take leadership in this as it has done earlier in green initiatives such as the
International Solar Alliance or the Coalition for Disaster Resilient
Infrastructure.

Q. Discuss different types of Cybercrimes and measures required to be taken to fight
the menace.(UPSC 2020)

Editorial Analysis CompilationsJune

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INSIGHTSIAS

IA SIMPLIFYING IAS EXAM PREPARATION

Ecology and environment:

Science and technology:

Source: The Hindu

■ Prelims: Current events of national and international importance(cyclone,

INSIGHTS ON THE ISSUE

Nomenclature of Tropical Cyclones:

Climate change and Indian Monsoons:

What does global warming do?

Factors Affecting cyclone and monsoon formation:

Why does a cyclone’s position matter?

Cyclone Mawar, Biparjoy, and Guchol:

Tropical storm Guchol:

Southwesterly winds over the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal:

QUESTION FOR PRACTICE

Source: The Hindu

■ Prelims: Uniform civil Code, Directive Principles of State Policy etc

INSIGHTS ON THE ISSUE

Autonomy versus authority:

How Personal laws govern different communities?

What should the Commission do?

Arguments in favour of UCC:

Arguments against UCC:

Supreme Court judgements about implementation of UCC:

QUESTION FOR PRACTICE

Source: The Hindu

■ Prelims: Current events of national importance, sec 124A, Law Commission,

INSIGHTS ON THE ISSUE

Law Commission recommendation:

Use during British rule:

Privy Council(the highest appellate court of that time):

Why did the Court want to retain sedition?

S.G. Vombatkere vs Union of India(2022):

QUESTION FOR PRACTICE

Source: The Hindu

INSIGHTS ON THE ISSUE

Issues with the ordinance:

India’s federal constitutional scheme:

What is striking about the Court’s judgment?

Why is the invocation asymmetric federalism?

Problems with the presidential ordinance:

QUESTION FOR PRACTICE

Source: The Hindu

INSIGHTS ON THE ISSUE

Presidential System of Government:

Safeguards parliamentary democracies put in place against executive

Reasons for Diminishing democracy:

QUESTION FOR PRACTICE

Source: The Hindu

■ Prelims: Current events of international importance(India-US relations),

INSIGHTS ON THE ISSUE

● India-U.S. bilateral relations have developed into a “global strategic

Background of relationship development between India and US:

The civil nuclear deal

The significance of these exceptions:

The Russian angle and exemptions for India:

What has been India’s stand to exceptions?

QUESTION FOR PRACTICE

Source: Indian Express

■ Prelims: Current events of international importance(India-US relations),

● India-U.S. bilateral relations have developed into a “global strategic

The striking thing about the current visit: