28 Sep 2021: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

B. GS 2 Related

Category: POLITY AND GOVERNANCE

1. PM launches health ID for every citizen

Context:

The Prime Minister launched the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission.

The mission’s nationwide deployment coincides with the National Health Authority’s (NHA) third anniversary of the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY).

Details:

• Under the mission, every citizen would get a digital health ID and their health records would be digitally protected.
• The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission would connect the digital health solutions of hospitals across the country with each other.
• It will create a seamless online platform by providing a wide range of data, information, and infrastructure services while leveraging open, interoperable, standards-based digital systems.
• It is expected to bring about a revolutionary change in India’s health facilities.
• The mission would not only make the processes of hospitals simplified but also increase ease of living.

Read more on this topic covered in Sep 27th, 2021 CNA.

E. Editorials

Category: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

1. The Quad could end up running out of steam

Issue:

• With the announcement of the new Australia-U.K.-U.S. (AUKUS) trilateral security partnership, Quad faces the danger of becoming irrelevant if it does not shape up.
• The announcement of the AUKUS and the recent outcome of the Quad summit indicate that AUKUS will go on to form a key security arrangement of the Indo-Pacific region.
• This might potentially push the Quad to the background in a struggle for attention, political will, and resources.

AUKUS:

• The U.S. President announced the new Australia-U.S.-Britain (AUKUS) defence alliance, extending U.S. nuclear submarine technology to Australia as well as cyber defence, applied artificial intelligence and undersea capabilities.
• AUKUS is a trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
• The United States and the United Kingdom will help Australia to develop and deploy nuclear-powered submarines, adding to the Western military presence in the Pacific region.

This issue has been covered in Sep 17th, 2021 CNA.

Implications of AUKUS on the Quad:

• AUKUS may not replace the Quad and yet it appears that AUKUS has ventured where the Quad has been reluctant to make forays into — the military domain.
• AUKUS also exposes the inherent, also self-imposed, limits of the Quad, i.e., its inability and lack of desire to give itself any military role.
• The focus of the recently-held Washington summit, on challenges ranging from COVID-19 to climate, shows that the Quad is unlikely to take a security-dominated turn.
  • This is precisely the vacuum AUKUS seeks to fill.
• AUKUS seems to have taken the focus away from the Quad.

This issue has been covered in  Sep 26th, 2021 CNA.

Is QUAD losing its steam?

• AUKUS may have further shrunk the potential space available for the Quad, and India, to play a serious role in the region’s security architecture.
• Quad seems to offer no clear purpose which, as a result, leads to too many items crowding the agenda.
• It neither has a secretariat or a charter, like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), nor a clear set of activities such as AUKUS.
• The ever-growing list of focal areas of the Quad will eventually make it a less than useful deliberative forum.
• While the Quad members have security/military considerations in mind vis-à-vis China while engaging the Quad platform, no one seems to be keen on framing it in such a manner.
• There is little interest in properly institutionalising the Quad nor has the objective for ‘Quad Plus’ been purposefully pursued.

Given this context, if AUKUS potentially overshadows the enthusiasm around the Quad, it would be disadvantageous to India’s interests in the Indo-Pacific region.

Way Forward:

• Indo-Pacific is of great importance to India.
• Given the continental challenges it faces including from the new developments in Afghanistan, India should focus on shifting some attention to the maritime sphere as well.
• At a time when India is continentally in a difficult situation, an opportunity has presented itself for India — in the form of growing global interest in the Indo-Pacific — to be at the centre of a new geopolitical churning which it must make use of for its own security and prosperity.
• QUAD is a major way of bringing together like-minded states to check Chinese hegemony in the region.
  • Other Quad countries are either on the AUKUS or are alliance partners; India is neither.
• It is possible to explore military utility for the Quad without making it a formal military alliance. More so, exploring mutually beneficial military and security cooperation within the Quad framework need not contradict the principles of strategic autonomy.

Category: DISASTER MANAGEMENT

1. High water

Context:

Cyclone Gulab hit Andhra Pradesh near Kalingapatnam and has ravaged two districts.

Cyclone Gulab:

• The deep depression over the Bay of Bengal intensified into cyclone Gulab.
• Cyclone Gulab crossed the north Andhra Pradesh and south Odisha coast triggering widespread rain in the region.
• This is the third cyclone of 2021 after Tauktae and Yaas.
• Gulab however, appears to have been less intimidating than cyclones Yaas and Tauktae, although it continued to keep the seas unsafe for fishermen all along the coastline north of Andhra Pradesh, after moving overland.

Issue:

• Tropical cyclones have the propensity to inflict heavy damage to lives and property.
• They are laden with moisture and with accumulated energy, they pose a growing challenge to India.
• There have been some distressing deaths and inevitable material losses for many.
• Financial arrangements to insure the population against material losses also remain weak.
• Earlier experiences have shown that relief measures can easily fall victim to corruption.
• In the recovery phase of COVID-19, cyclones have upended life for many, disrupting key inter-State road links and leading to the cancellation or diversion of several trains.
• The northern Indian Ocean, of which the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal are a part, experiences only a minority of tropical storms annually (about 7% of worldwide events).
  • However, their destructive impact on the subcontinent is severe due to a dense population and poor capacity to absorb large quantities of rainfall dumped in a short period over cities and towns.
• Research evidence shows more cyclones forming over the Arabian Sea when compared to the Bay of Bengal.
  • Overall there were eight storms of concern to India in 2019, and five in 2021, Amphan being a super cyclone.
• The influence of climate change on cyclone characteristics in a world that is heating up due to the accumulation of greenhouse gases is an ongoing topic of study.
• The IPCC, in its scientific report on 1.5° C warming, said with a high degree of confidence that changes in the climate system, including the proportion of tropical cyclones, would experience a larger impact from increasing warming.

Way Forward:

• The focus must now be on relief and rehabilitation.
• The imperative is to reach out to those affected by Gulab with food, shelter and healthcare support.
• There is an immediate need for deploying the many administrative capabilities acquired during the pandemic with the same speed.
• The welcome concern for public health and economic security must lead to stronger institutional responses to natural disasters too.
• The Centre and all States cannot afford to allow large-scale losses to communities to continue each year.
• Going beyond disaster response, the government must put in place institutional structures and insurance systems for financial protection.
• Cities must prepare to harvest every flood that brings vast quantities of water, which is vital to sustaining mass populations.
• In a nutshell, India must create a social safety net to manage the fallout of cyclonic storms.

Category: ECONOMY

1. Revitalising PM-KUSUM

Context:

The Union Minister of Power, New and Renewable Energy recently reviewed the progress of the PM-KUSUM scheme and reaffirmed the government’s commitment to accelerating solar pump adoption.

Details:

PM-KUSUM:

• The Central Government announced the Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan or KUSUM scheme in 2019.
• This scheme was launched by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) for the installation of solar pumps and other renewable power plants across the nation.
• It aims at furthering the production of solar power in India and also gives the benefits of solar farming to farmers.
• It aims to help farmers access reliable day-time solar power for irrigation, reduce power subsidies, and decarbonise agriculture.
• PM-KUSUM provides farmers with incentives to install solar power pumps and plants in their fields. They can use one of three deployment models:
  • off-grid solar pumps
  • solarised agricultural feeders
  • grid-connected pumps

Issue:

• Pandemic-induced disruptions, limited buy-in from States, and implementation challenges have all affected the scheme’s roll-out.
• Off-grid pumps have been the most popular, but the nearly 2,80,000 systems deployed fall far short of the scheme’s target of two million by 2022.
• Barriers to adoption include limited awareness about solar pumps and farmers’ inability to pay their upfront contribution.
• Progress on the other two models has been rather poor due to regulatory, financial, operational and technical challenges.
• Only a handful of states have initiated tenders or commissioned projects for solar feeders or grid-connected pumps.

How to Revitalise the PM KUSUM Scheme?

• The scheme’s timeline must be extended.
  • Most Indian discoms have a surplus of contracted generation capacity and are cautious of procuring more power in the short term.
  • Extending PM-KUSUM’s timelines beyond 2022 would allow discoms to align the scheme with their power purchase planning.
• A level playing field must be created for distributed solar plants.
  • Selling surplus power to discoms is one of the main attractions of grid-connected models. Yet, discoms often find utility-scale solar cheaper than distributed solar due to the latter’s higher costs and the loss of locational advantage due to waived inter-State transmission system (ISTS) charges.
  • To tackle the bias against distributed solar, there is a need to:
    • address counter-party risks and grid-unavailability risks at distribution sub-stations.
    • standardise tariff determination to reflect the higher costs of distributed power plants.
    • do away with the waiver of ISTS charges for solar plants.
  • Land regulations must be streamlined through inter-departmental coordination.
    • Doing so will help reduce delays in leasing or converting agricultural lands for non-agricultural purposes such as solar power generation.
  • There is a need to support innovative solutions for financing farmers’ contributions.
    • Many farmers struggle to pay 30-40% of upfront costs in compliance with scheme requirements.
    • They cannot access bank loans without collateral.
    • Out-of-the-box solutions like Karnataka’s pilot of a farmer-developer special-purpose vehicle to help farmers install solar power plants on their farms are needed.
  • Extensively experiment grid-connected solar pumps.
    • Current obstacles to the adoption of grid-connected solar pumps include concerns about their economic viability in the presence of high farm subsidies and farmers’ unwillingness to feed in surplus power when selling water or irrigating extra land are much attractive prospects.
    • Also, the grid-connected model requires pumps to be metered and billed for accounting purposes but suffers from a lack of trust between farmers and discoms.
  • Adopting solutions like smart meters and smart transformers and engaging with farmers can build trust.
    • However, testing the model under different agro-economic contexts will be critical to developing a strategy to scale it up.

The scheme, if implemented successfully, can generate thousands of jobs, reduce the carbon footprint of agriculture, and result in oil import savings.

H. UPSC Prelims Practice Questions

Q.1 Which of the following statements is/are correct?

1. Article 30 of the Constitution of India deals with the right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions.
2. It applies to both religious and linguistic minorities.
3. The right of such educational institutions to receive government aid is a fundamental right.

Options:

1. 1 only
2. 1 and 2 only
3. 1 and 3 only
4. 1, 2 and 3

CHECK ANSWERS:-

Answer: b

Explanation:

• Article 30 of the Constitution of India deals with the right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions. It applies to both religious and linguistic minorities.
• In a recent ruling, the Supreme Court made it clear that the right of educational institutions whether run by a majority or minority community to receive government aid is not a fundamental right.
• It said that if the government made a policy call to withdraw aid, an institution cannot question the decision as a matter of right.

Q.2 Recently the term ‘Akash Prime’ was seen in the news. What does it refer to?

1. A collaboration between Amazon Prime and the Education Ministry to run online classes
2. A new version of the Akash surface-to-air missile developed by the DRDO
3. A weather monitoring system deployed by India Meteorological Department
4. An earth-observation satellite launched by ISRO for military applications

CHECK ANSWERS:-

Answer: b

Explanation:

• ‘Akash Prime’ is a new version of the Akash surface-to-air missile developed by the DRDO.

Q.3 Which of the following statements is/are correct?

1. The Cauvery river dispute is between Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
2. The sharing of the waters should be as per the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal’s decision of 2007, which was modified by the Supreme Court in 2018.
3. The Central Government has notified the Cauvery Water Management Scheme which constitutes the ‘Cauvery Water Management Authority’ and the ‘Cauvery Water Regulation Committee’ to give effect to the court’s decision.

Options:

1. 1 only
2. 1 and 2 only
3. 2 and 3 only
4. 1, 2 and 3

CHECK ANSWERS:-

Answer: d

Explanation:

• The Cauvery river dispute is a water-sharing dispute between Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
• The sharing of the waters should be as per the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal’s decision of 2007, which was modified by the Supreme Court in 2018.
• The Central Government has notified the Cauvery Water Management Scheme which constitutes the ‘Cauvery Water Management Authority’ and the ‘Cauvery Water Regulation Committee’ to give effect to the court’s decision.

Q.4 The Taiwan Strait connects –

1. Strait of Malacca with Gulf of Thailand
2. South China Sea with East China Sea
3. Andaman Sea with Gulf of Thailand
4. Indian Ocean with Pacific Ocean

CHECK ANSWERS:-

Answer: b

Explanation:

The Taiwan Strait connects the South China Sea with the East China Sea.

Q5. Which of the following are the reasons/factors for exposure to benzene pollution?

1.  Automobile exhaust
2.  Tobacco smoke
3.  Wood burning
4.  Using varnished wooden furniture
5.  Using products made of polyurethane

Select the correct answer using the given code below – [UPSC 2020]

1. 1, 2 and 3 only
2. 2 and 4 only
3. 1, 3 and 4 only
4. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5

CHECK ANSWERS:-

Answer: d

Explanation:

Benzene is an organic chemical compound (C₆H₆). Benzene is formed from both natural processes and human activities. Natural sources of benzene include volcanoes and forest fires.

Following are the reasons/factors for exposure to benzene pollution:

•  Automobile exhaust
•  Tobacco smoke
•  Wood burning
•  Using varnished wooden furniture
•  Using products made of polyurethane