As we step into the month of September 2023, the world of civil services aspirants is abuzz with anticipation. September promises to be a month of dynamic and evolving currents, laden with events and developments that hold immense significance for the aspirants preparing for the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination. From international geopolitics to domestic policy shifts, economic transformations, and socio-cultural advancements, the canvas of current affairs in September is both broad and intricate. In this monthly current affairs update, we aim to be your compass in navigating this complex landscape, offering insightful analysis and summaries of the most pivotal events that could shape your understanding and preparation for the UPSC examination. Join us on this journey through the currents of September 2023, as we decode the key happenings that are bound to influence the path to India’s esteemed civil services.

Polity 

Gap Between Law and Justice

Tag: GS Paper-2: Judiciary; Government Policies & Interventions. 

Exam View:

Criminal laws in India; Basis of criminal laws: Universal individualism; Ignored in criminal laws: Social production; Need for reimagining the criminal justice system; Way forward. 

Context:

The Indian Penal Code, 1860 will be replaced by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Bill, 2023, the Criminal Procedure Code, 1898 will be replaced by the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita Bill, 2023 and the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 will be replaced by the Bharatiya Sakshya Bill, 2023. 

Decoding the editorial: Criminal laws in India 

• Strengthening law and order is the intended aim of the new bills, according to the statement of objects and reasons. 
• The Bills assume that the law can maintain “public order” by reducing crimes. 

Basis of criminal laws: Universal individualism 

• The system of criminal law in India is premised on the idea of Universal individualism.  
• Under this, the responsibility for crimes lies solely with individual offenders. 
• It universally ascribes free will and complete autonomy to all individuals over their decisions, irrespective of their social context. 
• But the role of criminal law in achieving this goal is often exaggerated.  
• With its exclusive focus on blaming and punishing individual offenders for crimes, criminal law obscures the socially rooted nature of crimes.  

Ignored in criminal laws: Social production 

• A person’s decision making process and their ability to cope with risks is greatly influenced by their environmental factors. 
• Environmental factors like socio-economic status, social upbringing, education, family and friendships, interact with individual psychological and biological factors and influence individual responses to different situations. 
• Understanding the dynamics of the social production of crime raises difficult questions about the obsessive and singular focus of criminal law on individual criminal responsibility.  
• In fact, the continued prevalence of many crimes is deeply influenced by the socio-cultural realities of our society.  
• For instance, the rape culture in our society is a constant and violent reminder of this dynamic.  

Need for reimagining the criminal justice system 

• The main purpose of the law and order discourse is “demonstrative rather than substantive.”  
• Adopting the legislative reform route offers the illusion of strict action from the state without any worthwhile and long-term efforts towards addressing real problems that plague the criminal justice system.  
• The potential of criminal law is grossly overstated as it routinely blames individual for crimes. 
• It also hides the operations of power that characterise criminal justice administration. 
• Along with selective criminalisation and arbitrary application, the disproportionate impact of the force of criminal law on the poor, the vulnerable and the powerless is well-documented across the world and India is no exception to that.  
• Therefore, any claims about the neutrality of criminal law and its administration is suspect.  
• The strenuous tensions between law and justice play out in violent terms in the context of criminal law. 

Way forward 

• Invoke the framework of “criminal justice” rather than the significantly narrower idea of “criminal law”. 
• The legislative reforms can play an extremely limited role in preventing crimes and strengthening law and order.  
• The law, by itself, can deliver very little of the reforms we need.  
• Fundamentally reconfigure institutions that play a role in delivering criminal justice. 
• A reconfiguration that is sufficiently invested in fairness, justice, and being effective for both victims and accused persons.  
• Our system fails victims and survivors as much as it fails accused persons and mere legislative changes will not change that.  
• The institutional imagination of our police, investigation mechanisms, criminal courts, prosecution and defence services, prisons, and support services in criminal justice administration needs urgent and fundamental reconsideration if we are truly interested in an “overhaul”. 

Apart from that widespread textual borrowing, there is no overhaul in the approach to criminal law or criminal justice that the new Bills seek to usher in. The empty rhetoric of “overhaul” and “decolonisation” seek to convey something that these Bills come nowhere close to delivering. 

The Indian Express

Subverting the idea of India 

Context:

For the first time a high-level committee headed by a former President of India, has been set up to examine the proposal of simultaneous elections. The government’s ‘simultaneous elections’ agenda goes much further than the other ideas of ‘oneness’ it propounds; it will spell a deepening of centralisation. 

Decoding the editorial: Simultaneous elections  

• While several committees since 1999 have examined the proposal, the push to introduce and make permanent simultaneous polls once every five years has come over the past decade.  
• This, however, is perhaps the first time that a high-level committee is headed by a former President of India, a most unusual appointment that is meant to impose a stamp of legitimacy on the recommendation. 

The selling of a simplistic idea 

• It is part of the “One India” agenda of the current government. 
• It will save expenditure and help avoid the disruption of administration during elections.  
• Evidence from one study conducted of voting percentages between 1971 and 2004 showed that voter turnout in the States is lower when Assembly elections are held separately from those to the Lok Sabha.  

The truth 

• The burden of government expenditure on elections is not so large. Governance does indeed become affected when  
• The party holding office in New Delhi is forever in an election mode.  
• The ruling party or coalition at the Centre refuses to take national decisions fearing what impact it will have in one State or the other.  
• The ruling party sees every election from a municipal election upwards as a must-win poll.  
• Disrupting the basic structure 
  • A higher voter participation should be increased through other means rather than with a set of measures that will turn parts of the Constitution upside down. 
  • A number of scholars and commentators have also pointed out that one way or the other, major constitutional changes will need to be made to the constitutional terms of the legislature and rules for unseating a government.  
  • After the first round of curtailing/extending the tenure of elected State governments, making simultaneous polls a permanent feature will require either fixed-term governments, or the end of no-confidence motions, or “super-majorities” to unseat governments, or greater powers in the hands of the President/Governors, or a combination of such drastic changes.  
  • The alterations will in effect change the Basic Structure of the Constitution. 
• A project to wipe out diversity 
  • The entire “One Nation, One X” agenda is part of a political project with the message that only one government, one political party and one leader can deliver and will transform India.  
  • The “One Nation, One Election” agenda goes much further than “One Nation, One Tax”, “One Nation, One Ration Card” and the like in imposing this “oneness”.  
  • If implemented, it will permanently increase the administrative and political centralization of power in the hands of the Union Government and correspondingly weaken the States. 
  • All of this will reduce the importance of State governments, with the idea of federalism being given a body blow.  
  • There will be a corresponding concentration of power in New Delhi. 
  • There is the larger well-known ideological agenda of denying India its strength in heterogeneity. 

As Y.V. Reddy, the chairman of the Fourteenth Finance Commission, pointed out, elections are meant to hold governments accountable for their record of governance, and yet when they turn out to be frequent they are being faulted for disrupting governance. Only the electorate that now has the power to decide if they want to live with this particular idea of “One India”.

The Hindu

One Health 

Tag: GS Paper-2: Health; Government Policies & Interventions. 

Exam View:

Climate change, more infections; Surveillance and reporting; One Health. 

Context: In its latest report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) delivers a stark warning that climate change heightens the global risk of infectious diseases.  

Decoding the editorial: Climate change, more infections 

• Mosquito-borne disease outbreaks:  
  • The periodicity no longer follows expected patterns.  
  • Dengue manifests in two to three peaks throughout the year.  
  • Variability in temperature, precipitation, and humidity disrupt disease transmission cycles.  
  • These also alter the distribution of the vectors and animal reservoirs that host the parasite.  
  • Heat has been proven to interfere with the genomic structure of pathogens, changing their infectivity and virulence. 
• Human-animal interaction:  
  • Habitat loss forces disease-carrying animals to encroach upon human territory, increasing the risk of human-animal interaction and the transfer of pathogens from wildlife to humans.  
  • Viruses which do not harm animals can be fatal for humans.  
  • Nipah virus, which has been causing outbreaks in Kerala for many years now, is a good example.  
• Infectious diseases: 
  • An analysis of 2022 published in Nature Climate Change warns that humans now face a broader spectrum of infectious agents than ever before.  
  • Over half of all-known infectious diseases threatening humans worsen with changing climate patterns.  
  • Diseases often find new transmission routes, including environmental sources, medical tourism, and contaminated food and water from once-reliable sources.  
• Invasive species: 
  • While ecosystems shape local climates, climate change is transforming ecosystems.  
  • This dynamic introduces invasive species and extends the range of existing life forms.  
  • Both these trigger upheavals in ecosystems that are complex and confound ecologists and epidemiologists to predict outbreaks.  

Surveillance and reporting 

Over the past two decades, India has improved its reporting of outbreaks.  

• The Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP)  
  • It was rolled out in a few States in 2007.  
  • From reporting 553 outbreaks in 2008, it last reported 1,714 in 2017.  
• The Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP)  
  • IDSP was phased out in favour of a new, web-enabled, near-real-time electronic information system called IHIP. 
  • It was launched in seven States in 2018.  
  • It added 20 additional disease conditions over IDSP’s 13 and could present disaggregated data to its users.  
• Tragically, the programme, which would have enabled real-time tracking of emerging disease outbreaks, has not delivered on expectations. 
• The current design of surveillance is not adequate for the emerging disease scenario.  

One Health 

• Meaning: 
  • A unified approach, termed One Health which integrates monitoring human, animal, plant, and environmental health, recognises this interconnectedness.  
• Objective: 
  • This approach is pivotal in preventing outbreaks, especially those that originate from animals.  
  • It encompasses zoonotic diseases, neglected tropical diseases, vector-borne diseases, antimicrobial resistance, and environmental contamination. 
• India’s strategy for one health: 
  • India must launch One Health and infectious disease control programmes by building greater synergies between the Centre and States and their varied specialised agencies.  
  • Animal husbandry, forest and wildlife, municipal corporations, and public health departments need to converge and set up robust surveillance systems.  
  • They will need to build trust and confidence, share data, and devise logical lines of responsibility and work with a coordinating agency.  
  • So far, the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Prime Minister has been taking this lead but with new World Bank and other large funding in place, this will need greater coordination and management. 

Globally, there is an obsession with the enigmatic “disease X,” but it is the familiar annual cycles of known agents such as influenza, measles, Japanese encephalitis, dengue, diarrhoea among others that will continue to test the public health system. The re-emergence of Nipah in Kerala is a wake-up call, that mere biomedical response to diseases is inadequate. Embracing the One Health paradigm is our best defence. 

The Hindu

Economy and Agriculture 

State of Working India (SWI 2023) report 

Tag: GS Paper – 3: Employment; Growth & Development; Skill Development; Human Resource. 

Exam View:

State of Working India (SWI 2023) report; The findings; The 2017-2021 period; India’s growth strategy.  

Context:

A new report is out called the State of Working India (SWI 2023) and it has used official employment and unemployment data to understand how economic growth impacts employment. 

Decoding the editorial: State of Working India (SWI 2023) report 

• It has been brought out by the Centre for Sustainable Employment within the Azim Premji University (APU). 
• The report stands out because APU academics and researchers have used official employment and unemployment data to arrive at the results. 
• This is the fourth edition of SWI and it focuses on “a long-run view of India’s structural transformation experience and its implications for three key social identities: caste, gender, and religion”.  
• SWI 2023 analyses data from 1983 to 2023 and uses a whole host of official data sources including  
• Periodic Labour Force Surveys (PLFS),  
• National Family Health Surveys (NFHS),  
• Census 2011 

• Economic Census 201

The findings 

• The impact of economic growth on employment in the aggregate. 
• A good way to measure this relationship is to look at employment elasticity of growth.  

• As can be seen in TABLE 1, employment elasticity has consistently fallen between 1983 and 2017, showing that a 1% increase in GDP leads to a less than 1% increase in employment. 
• The table shows that since the 1980s, non-farm output, that is GDP from sectors other than agriculture, consistently grew much faster than non-farm employment. 
• The impact of economic growth on different segments of the Indian economy. 
• As data shows, factors such as caste, religion, age and gender tend to have a considerable impact on how the benefits of growth get distributed in the economy. 
• The need to appreciate the quality of the jobs being created.  
• For instance, providing “casual labour” at an MGNREGA worksite or a construction worksite or working part-time in one’s family enterprise without any pay (“self-employment”) are very poor substitutes for holding a job that provides a regular wage. 

The 2017-2021 period 

• The employment elasticity went up sharply during this period. However, this simple observation can be misleading, as observed by APU. 
• There has been a fall in output growth. 
• The non-farm employment growth rate improved during this period, but 
• The non-farm output growth (the denominator in this formula) also fell quite sharply. 
• The quality of jobs has fallen.  
• When the economy does well and employers find it worthwhile to create new jobs, the kind of jobs that are created are regular wage jobs or, at least, casual labour jobs.  
• But instead, what has been created in this phase is self-employment. 
• This is the kind of work that pays no regular wage with the remuneration distinctly below other categories of jobs.  
• Between 2017 and 2021, there was a slowdown in overall regular wage job creation but formal jobs (with a written contract and benefits) as a share of all regular wage work rose from 25% to 35%.  
• In 2020-21 (pandemic year) regular wage employment fell by 2.2 million.  
• The biggest losers in the process were the women. 
• While half of the lost employment is accounted for by women, only a third of the increase in formal employment accrued to women.  
• So in net terms, women lost out on formal employment in this period. Not only that, there was a shift towards self-employment due to distress. 

India’s growth strategy 

• Different experts have different solutions for India 
• Doubling down on boosting labour-intensive manufacturing, even if it is for just domestic consumers.  
• Shifting to “green” manufacturing can provide India with an opportunity to redo the industrial revolution. 

• A framework for a National Employment Policy was outlined in the previous (2021) SWI report. 

The Indian Express

Creative industries can boost economies 

Tags: GS Paper – 3 – Growth & Development. 

GS Paper – 2 – Government Policies & Interventions 

Exam View:

Creative industry in India; Boosting economies: India and the UK. 

Context:

Arts and culture exchanges between India and the UK contribute to economic growth and foster understanding between cultures. 

Decoding the editorial: Creative industry in India 

• Prime Minister (PM) in his opening address to the G20 Culture Ministers’ summit in Varanasi spoke of the value artists and craft workers contribute to the economic success of creative industries.  
• The G20 Leaders Declaration emphasizes how culture is a key driver of the SDGs.  
• The Nataraja, a statue of Hindu lord Shiva as the cosmic dancer, installed next to ‘Bharat Mandapam’, the main venue of the G20 Summit, is pictured in Delhi. 

Boosting economies: India and the UK 

• Cultural exchange: Arts and culture make tangible the “living bridge” between these countries.  
• India’s Symphony Orchestra is touring concert halls across the UK later this year.  
• The renowned Aditi Mangaldas dance company is premiering its new dance show at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London in October. 
• Aakash Odedra from Leicester, UK will be performing in Delhi as part of a new series of events led by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. 
• The recent partnerships with the UK’s science museum group and the National Council for Science Museums for an exhibition on vaccines and their evolution.  
• It shows how the mutual exchange of skills, talent, and creativity can enrich lives in India and the UK. 
• It is a first-of-its-kind creative fellowship for skills exchange to develop young art talent in Scotland and India between Edinburgh Printmakers and Flow India, the Natural History Museum, and the Bihar Museum. 
• The “Econario” sculpture graces the G20 Together We Art exhibition. 
• Economic benefits: The contribution of the individual artists and those who support them to the economy should not be underestimated.  
• In the pre-Covid period, India’s creative industries contributed 2.5% to India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the UK’s creative industries contributed 6% to the UK’s GDP. 
• The UK’s creative industries have grown 1.5 times faster than other industry sectors in the past decade.  
• In Bengaluru and Hyderabad, the growth in tech, arts, gaming, and Artificial Intelligence coupled with India’s rapid digital transformation over the last five years has led start-ups to scale up.  
• This is echoed in the UK government’s vision for creative industries which aims to add one million jobs in MSMEs and creative start-ups by 2030, an increase of 43%. 
• Collaborations:  
• The UK can learn from the sustainable practices of the Indian arts sector and from the cultural practices in Indian cities. 
• The India-UK collaboration in the creative sectors has great potential to inform cultural policy development for the future. 
• The British Council is enabling enduring connections between both countries catalyzing this exchange. 
• The UK minister of arts and heritage, had met cultural policymakers, artists, and arts sector leaders in Delhi before heading to the G20 Culture Ministers meeting in Varanasi in August.  

The creative economy is set to get a huge boost with the culture ministry’s G20 vision for One Family working together to deepen opportunities for all through the cultural industries and the UK’s longstanding commitment to India. 

Hindustan Times

Fortified rice: Solution to Hidden Hunger 

Tag: GS-3 Food security and related issues 

Exam View:

About Food Fortification and Hidden Hunger; Malnutrition trends in India; Advantages of food fortification as a measure to address hidden hunger; Government’s Initiatives to tackle hidden hunger; Challenges 

Context:

Hidden hunger is a serious malnutrition condition caused by insufficient intake or absorption of micronutrients. India has embraced food fortification as a strategic approach to tackle hidden hunger. 

About Food Fortification and Hidden Hunger:  

• Food Fortification refers to the practice of deliberately increasing the content of one or more micronutrients (i.e., vitamins and minerals) in a food or condiment to improve the nutritional quality of the food supply and provide a public health benefit with minimal risk to health.  
• Examples of Food fortification are Salt iodization, Rice fortification, Wheat flour fortification, Edible oil fortification, Milk fortification etc.  
• In 1950s vegetable oil fortification and salt iodization was carried out. In the 2000s, the government introduced fortification of other staples like rice and wheat. 
• Hidden Hunger is the presence of multiple micronutrient deficiencies (particularly iron, zinc, iodine and vitamin A), which can occur without a deficit in energy intake as a result of consuming an energy-dense, but nutrient-poor diet. Over 50% of the Indian population is affected by hidden hunger. It can lead to anaemia, stunting, impaired cognitive development, blindness, and even death. 

Malnutrition trends in India:  

• Malnutrition in adults: According to the Tata-Cornell Institute report of 2020, approximately 194 million people in the country were still undernourished during 2016-18, representing only a slight 8% decrease from 1990-92 levels. 
• Inadequate nutrition: According to Social Progress Index (SPI) 2022, in Aspirational Districts only about 12.32% of children aged 6-23 months receive adequate nutrition. Over 690 districts have less than 30% of children receiving proper nutrition and 17 districts have over half their children suffering stunting. 
• Prevalence of anaemia among women and children is 61.20% on average, while in 67 Aspirational Districts, less than 12% of children receive an adequate diet.  
• Poor dietary habits also contribute to malnutrition and higher risks of chronic diseases, as India’s average daily calorie consumption falls below the recommended 2,503 kcal per capita per day. 
• Inadequate protein intake is another concern, with only 6-8% of calories coming from protein sources.  

• Preference for processed foods over fruits and excessive cereal consumption compounds the issue. 

Advantages of food fortification as a measure to address hidden hunger:  

• Cost-effectiveness: Food fortification has a high benefit-to-cost ratio. This has been a driving factor in faster adoption of fortification to tackle hidden hunger.  
• Additional costs for fortified rice range from 1% to 10% of the retail price, i.e. Rs 0.45 per kg to the consumer. 
• Socio-cultural acceptability: Fortification does not require any changes in food habits and patterns of people. It is a socio-culturally acceptable way to deliver nutrients to people. 
• No alteration of food characteristics: It does not alter the characteristics of the food like the taste, aroma or the texture of the food. 
• Quick implementation: It can be implemented quickly and shows results in improvement of health in a relatively short period of time. 
• Wider reach: Since the nutrients are added to widely consumed staple foods, fortification is an excellent way to improve the health of a large section of the population, all at once. 

Government’s Initiatives to tackle hidden hunger: 

• Rice fortification: Government is aiming to fortify rice in all social safety net schemes by 2024, with the program’s cost borne by it. 
• PM Poshan and Anaemia-Mukt Bharat: Such schemes have been launched which underscore the importance of food fortification and supplementation. 
• Fortification standards by FSSAI for rice, wheat flour, edible oil, double fortified salt (DFS) and milk. 
• The creation of a Food Fortification Resource Centre and introduction of the ‘+F’ logo to identify fortified foods has helped food producers join the action. 
• Wheat fortification: The decision on fortification of wheat was announced in 2018 and is being implemented in 12 states under India’s flagship Poshan Abhiyaan to improve nutrition among children, adolescents, pregnant mothers and lactating mothers. 
• Milk Fortification: Fortification of milk was started in 2017 under which the National Dairy Development Board of India (NDDB) is pushing companies to add vitamin D. 
• Mandating use of fortified staples such as DFS and fortified edible oil in safety net programmes. 

Challenges:  

• Raising awareness about the benefits of fortification among the public and food industry 
• Managing costs and ensuring the widespread availability of fortified rice 
• Fostering better coordination among stakeholders, such as the government, food industry, and civil society organisations 

Live Mint

Propelling India’s development 

Tag: GS Paper – 3: Employment; Growth & Development; Poverty; Education; Skill Development; Human Resource. 

Exam View:

Aiming for the moon; Criticism of the moonshot development strategy; Inequalities, a hurdle for progress; Reinstate state support. 

Context:

India must redouble efforts to make economic growth more inclusive and broad-based.  

Decoding the editorial: Aiming for the moon 

The momentous steps India had taken in the decades immediately after Independence may be characterised as a ‘moonshot’ approach to development deploying, modern industrialisation to shake off the ills of the past.  

• Space research: When India started space research in the 1960s, many thought it was being reckless as India was sinking some of its limited resources in a highly uncertain enterprise.  
• This year, India became the first nation to land a rover on the south pole of the moon, followed up with a mission to study the sun.  
• Technical institutes: Between 1951 and 1961, India established five Indian Institutes of Technology, which in no time grew into globally respected academic centres.  
• The first two Indian Institutes of Management were inaugurated in 1961.  
• Public Sector Industries: During the two decades of the 1950s and 1960s, a number of public sector units were established in diverse areas of industrial production. 
• It included steel, fertiliser, machine tools, electric machinery, drug production, and petrochemicals. 
• Private enterprises: The technological capabilities built through state support provided the base for the flourishing of private enterprise in many sectors.  
• Professionals, who were earlier trained in India’s public universities, have found leadership positions globally, which has deepened India’s strategic importance. 

Criticism of the moonshot development strategy 

• The time needed for a new technology to come to fruition is too long.  
• It is not only that the benefits from a technology are long in coming, but they are also difficult to be kept exclusive for private profiteering.  
• Its heavy reliance on public investment. 
• It is precisely because of the ‘public good’ nature of technologies that public sector support becomes crucial for developing them. 
• Even the Internet emerged from a research programme funded by the United States government, with military objectives, in the late 1950s. 
• However, this investment did not waver for lack of short-term commercial viability. 
• The investments being ‘misdirected’.  
• Being a labour surplus country, India should have stuck to its comparative advantages in labour-intensive industries, such as garments or footwear. 

Inequalities, a hurdle for progress 

The lacklustre record for India’s development strategy was not on account of the government doing too much in the area of technology building. It was because the state or the government could not intervene effectively to reduce inequalities.  

• Unsuccessful land reforms: Ownership of assets continues to be very low among the socially oppressed communities, including Dalits or the Scheduled Caste (SC) population.  
• Lack of access to education:  The lack of assets translate into hurdles in acquiring education, given that India has consistently underinvested in basic education for the masses.  
• Unequal labour market: The historically determined inequalities in the social spheres get replicated in the labour market.  

• In 2021-22, 38.2% of all SC workers were ‘casual’, earning their livelihoods mostly out of hard manual labour; the corresponding proportion was 11.2% for workers belonging to the (‘other’) general category castes (Periodic Labour Force Survey data).  

Lopsided industrial and economic growth: 

• Domestic demand comes largely from the upper income classes, who constitute only a small, though substantial in absolute numbers, segment of the population.  
• This has slowed down the growth of manufacturing of high-quality, mass-consumption goods, including food products and garments.  
• Entrepreneurship too has emerged from a narrow social base. 

Reinstate state support 

• India must reinstate technological efforts to stand a chance in fast-growing economic fields, be it semiconductors or biotechnology.  
• India must reinstate support for its industries. 
• After 1991, India abandoned planning for industrial growth assuming, mistakenly, that there is no role for industrial policy in a globalised economy.  
• Both the United States and China are lavishing government support for their industries.  

The Hindu

Ridding India of food insecurity 

Tag: GS Paper-3: Food security. 

Exam view:

Food insecurity; Failed macroeconomic policy; The significance of the Green Revolution; Initiatives to work on. 

Context:

Ensuring that Indians have permanent access to a healthy diet is the most important task of economic policy today. 

Decoding the editorial: Food insecurity 

• The ‘State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World’ of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates the figure for India in 2021 is devastating: 
• An estimated 74% of the population cannot afford a healthy diet.  
• Given a population of 1,400 million, this makes for approximately one billion Indians.  
• The trend in the price of food in Mumbai city over 2018-2023 found that while the cost of preparing a thaali at home has risen by 65%, in this period, the average wage of a manual worker rose by 38% and that of a salaried worker by 28%.  
• The implied reduction in purchasing power is considerable, and it would be reasonable to expect that food consumption has been impacted.  
• The latest National Family Health Survey undertaken over 2019-21 reported a rise in the prevalence of anaemia, mostly induced by nutrient deficiency, which is in line with the above findings. 
• This suggests that the FAO’s finding, that over half of India cannot afford a healthy diet, is plausible.  

Failed macroeconomic policy 

• It relied on controlling inflation, which has proved to be useless in the context.  
• The Reserve Bank of India has failed in this task, with the inflation rate mostly higher than the target for four years by now.  
• Its approach of contracting output when the inflation rate rises, misleadingly termed “inflation targeting”, does nothing to manage food inflation stemming from the supply side.  
• It is necessary to intervene on the supply side to ensure that food is produced at a steady price by raising the yield on land. 

The significance of the Green Revolution 

• The government engineered a Green Revolution in the 1960s, which orchestrated a supply-side response by providing farmers with high-yielding seeds, cheap credit, and assured prices through procurement.  
• Some mistakes were made: 
• The rampant use of chemical fertiliser, fuelled by subsidy, which degraded the soil. 
• There was also the reliance on procurement prices rather than productivity increase to ensure farm incomes, which fuelled inflation.  
• The policy was almost exclusively focused on cereals rather than pulses, the main source of protein for most Indians.  
• India should be focused on correcting these mistakes now and lowering the cost of producing food.  
• The first Green Revolution had a specific agenda of making India self-sufficient in food.  
• A second agricultural revolution is needed now to contain the rising price of food. 
• Procurement prices, cash transfers, the Public Distribution System, and priority lending required of public sector banks are not sufficient.  
• Yield increasing interventions on the farm are needed to at least contain the cost of production, if not to actually lower it.  

Initiatives to work on 

• Attention is needed to extend irrigation to 100% of the net sown area. 
• Increased public expenditure on irrigation is not reflected in an increase in irrigated area, whether due to waste or the diversion of funds has not been established. 
• An end to restrictions on leasing of land. 
• The ongoing fragmentation of already small land holdings lowers the capacity for productivity-enhancing capital investment, for which leasing is a solution. 
• A quickening of agricultural research. 
• India’s network of public agricultural research institutes needs to be energised to resume the sterling role they had played in the 1960s. 
• The re-institution of extension. 
• Finally, extension has now more or less vanished from where once the gram sevak was a familiar figure in the village, playing a crucial role in the dissemination of best practices. It must be revived. 
• Promoting cooperative federalism.  
• In the 1960s, the States that were chosen for the spread of the new technology worked closely with the central government.  
• This would have to be replicated with the central government taking the States along in a spirit of cooperative federalism.  
• At the same time, it may be asked if the States are playing their part to enhance agricultural productivity rather than relying on food allocations to their Public Distribution System from the central pool. 

In order to ensure that all Indians have permanent access to a healthy diet, no approach consistent with ecological security must be off the table. 

The Hindu

PM-PRANAM 

Context:

Promoting PRANAM will help the government reduce subsidy bills and fiscal deficits if it picks up. 

Decoding the editorial: PM-PRANAM 

• Union Budget 2023–24 launched the PM-PRANAM (PM Programme for Restoration, Awareness, Nourishment and Amelioration of Mother Earth). 
• Its objective is to promote the balanced use of chemical and alternative fertilizers, generating awareness of regenerative agriculture (RA). 
• It has no separate budget. A 50 percent subsidy savings will be provided to States/UTs.  
• Most of it will likely be used for infrastructure creation and (green) technology innovation.  
• The rest will be paid as incentives to farmers, panchayats, FPOs, and SHGs who can help reduce input costs and generate awareness toward RA adoption. 

Regenerative agriculture 

It is an outcome-based food production system that  

• Nurtures and restores soil health;  
• Protects the climate; 
• Restores the water resources and biodiversity; and  
• Enhances farms’ productivity and profitability. 

Plusses and minuses 

• Minus: The subsidy burden on chemical fertilisers is high. 
• It is at about ₹2.25-lakh crore for FY 2022-23, which is 39 percent higher than FY 2021-22’s figure (₹1.62-lakh crore). 
• The subsidy bill has increased significantly even though fertiliser consumption shows that nitrogenous fertiliser consumption, especially urea, has not declined from 2012-13 until 2021-22 (P).  
• Plus: Promoting PRANAM will help the government reduce subsidy bills and fiscal deficits if it picks up.  

• Minus: The low efficacy of alternative fertilisers to enhance crop yield could slow its adoption.  
• Plus: A gradual phase-out of subsidies on chemical fertilisers can stimulate alternative or bio-fertiliser adoption. 
• The retention pricing scheme, which safeguards chemical fertiliser (urea) manufacturers, can be phased out to promote alternative fertiliser production.  
• Minus: Knee-jerk reaction of chemical fertiliser firms. 
• A 12 percent return on the fertiliser (chemical) firms fixed under the retention scheme will disappear, possibly resulting in a knee-jerk reaction of chemical fertiliser firms for their survival. 
• Plus: Farmer fertiliser cooperatives can exploit this as an opportunity since they have been into biofertilizer production, although on a small scale, since 2009-10.  
• PRANAM can increase its economies of scale and help the existing distribution network stock alternative fertilisers.  
• However, the margin on bio-fertiliser sales should be worked out to incentivise sales and distribution networks. 
• Minus: Awareness regarding alternative fertilisers is low. Demonstrating alternative fertilisers on farmer fields is critical, especially after the Sri Lankan food crisis, to showcase higher productivity, and certification of such products can help farmers or their organisations realise a remunerative price. Plus:  
• Plus: To this end, 10,000 Bio-Input Resource Centres will be set up over the next three years, creating a national-level distributed micro-fertiliser and pesticide manufacturing network. 

The Hindu

Green path to G20 development goals 

Tag: GS Paper – 3: Environmental Pollution & Degradation; Disaster Management; Food Security. 

Exam View:

The Leaders’ Declaration; Green Development Pact; Foundations of the Pact; The four-part relay. 

Context:

The new GDP, Green Development Pact, can serve as a bridge between the Global South and the North.  

Decoding the editorial: The Leaders’ Declaration 

• In the G20 Leaders’ Summit, the adoption of the Leaders’ Declaration on the first day. 
• It is a sign that India could bridge divisions and deliver a cooperative and collaborative outcome, rather than a combative stalemate, at a time when multilateralism seemed particularly fractured. 
• The 83-paragraph Declaration, with consensus among all member countries, underscores peace, prosperity, people and the planet, and bringing it all together is an important pact. 

Green Development Pact 

• The G20 comprises the world’s largest economies accounting for over 80% of global gross domestic product (GDP).  
• Through the Leaders’ Declaration, however, New Delhi has given “GDP” a new meaning, a Green Development Pact. 
• This does not choose between development and environment but seeks to align people-centric growth with planetary sustainability. 

Foundations of the Pact 

• It focuses on resource efficiency and sustainable consumption.  
• The G20 unanimously adopted the High Level Principles on Lifestyles for Sustainable Development.  
• It’s a push for sustainable lifestyles to lower our resource footprints and it sends out the signal to create circular economies at scale, from metals and minerals to plastics and packaging.  
• The emphasis on an inclusive energy transition.  
• This is crucial for bringing the energy transition closer to people.  
• The pact endorses a target to triple renewable energy capacity and notes the voluntary action plan to double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency by 2030.  
• It announces a Global Biofuels Alliance.  
• It seeks transparent and resilient global markets for hydrogen.  
• And it calls for diversified and responsible supply chains for critical minerals and semiconductors. 
• It focuses on climate and sustainable finance.  
• The Leaders’ Declaration finally endorses the need for trillions of dollars for the billions of people living in the Global South, in particular $5.9 trillion needed by developing countries to achieve their climate targets by 2030, as well as $4 trillion needed per year for clean energy.  
• Recognising the importance of leveraging the role of multilateral development banks, the pact calls for blended finance and risk-sharing facilities.  
• It links the triple planetary crises by drawing attention not only to the climate crisis but also reducing plastic pollution and preserving biodiversity.  
• These include the G20 Global Land Initiative to reduce land degradation, the HighLevel Principles for a Sustainable and Resilient Blue/Ocean-based Economy, and sharing of best global practices on water.  
• It focuses on building disaster-resilient infrastructure.  
• India introduced a Disaster Risk Reduction Working Group into the G20.  
• It will be incumbent on member countries, all of whom have faced weather extremes, to ensure robust early warning systems and include people as stakeholders in and enablers of resilient infrastructure. 

The four-part relay 

• While there is a language to phase down unabated coal power, efforts to get an agreement on a phase-down of all fossil fuels could not get consensus.  
• If these seeming contradictions have to be squared, the G20 Leaders’ Summit must be viewed as the first leg of a four-part relay.  
• India has kicked off this race with a comprehensive Leaders’ Declaration, which includes the Green Development Pact.  
• The next leg is the UN General Assembly and the UN SDG Summit next week, when non-G20 leaders can propose their visions for doubling down on the energy transition and climate sustainability.  
• Next, the baton will pass to the World Bank annual meetings in Marrakech in October.  
• G20 leaders have called for the reform of the MDBs.  
• Close to $200 billion of additional lending could be possible with the proposed reforms. 
• The anchor of the race will be the COP28 climate meetings in Dubai in November-December.  

There is a need for effective multilateralism and hard resources to show solidarity with the vulnerable and commit to the planet. 

Hindustan Times

Make agriculture less damaging 

Tag: GS Paper-2: Government policies and interventions; Bilateral groupings and agreements. 

GS Paper-3: Growth and development. 

Exam View:

Agriculture Working Group (AWG) of G20; India’s role in Global South. 

Context:

India with its G20 presidency can benefit the masses in the Global South for whom food and nutritional security is still a challenge, one made worse by climate change.  

Decoding the editorial: Agriculture Working Group (AWG) of G20 

• The AWG of G20 highlighted priority areas in agriculture.  
• Encourage diversification in agriculture.  
• Promoting sustainable agriculture. 
• Channelling financial resources towards environmentally conscious and climate-resilient farming. 
• Climate-smart farming practices and precision technologies for agricultural production to withstand climate fluctuations. 
• Food and nutritional security via higher investment in agri-R&D, especially bio-fortification. 
• Strengthening a rules-based, open, predictable, transparent, non-discriminatory, inclusive, equitable and sustainable multilateral trading system.  
• Strengthening local, regional, and international agri-food value chains.  
• A sustainable multilateral trading system with the WTO at its core, can increase market predictability and boost business confidence. 
• The Deccan High-Level Principles as outlined in the ‘Outcome Document and Chair’s Summary’ of the AWG of G20 nations at Hyderabad are: 
• Facilitate humanitarian assistance to countries and populations in vulnerable situations;  
• Enhance availability and access to nutritious food and strengthen food safety nets;  
• Strengthen policies and collaborative actions for climate-resilient and sustainable agriculture and food systems;  
• Strengthen resilience and inclusivity in agriculture and food value chains;  
• Promote the one health approach;  
• Accelerate innovation and the use of digital technology, and  
• Scale-up responsible public and private investments in agriculture. 

India’s role in Global South 

• India can develop technologies to help farmers of the Global South overcome challenges of extreme weather events. 
• It could be on the same lines as the application of precision technologies in space that India used in Chandrayaan-3, while spending a fraction of the cost that the US would incur for the same feat. 
• The ultimate goal is to enhance the efficiency and resilience of agri-value chains and promote digitisation as a catalyst for agricultural transformation. 
• This includes the establishment of standardised agricultural data platforms as digital public goods and harnessing novel digital technologies to revolutionise the agri-food sector.  
• Sensor-equipped drips, drones and LEOs (Low Earth Orbits), for instance, can be used in agriculture to get “more from less”, saving the planet’s scarce resources. 
• India can disseminate its research in bio-fortification to farmers in the Global South to achieve nutritional security. 
• ICAR scientists have already demonstrated that even basic staple crops such as wheat, rice, maize, and millet can be bio-fortified with enhanced iron, zinc, and even anti-oxidants.  
• ICAR has created 87 varieties of climate-resistant and nutritious crops.  
• These crops were developed as a result of collaboration between national and international organisations.  
• India released zinc-rich rice and wheat, which can be shared with countries of the Global South.  
• Bio-fortification is much more cost-effective compared to supplementing rice with nutrients, say iron, in our public distribution system.  
• But India spends only 0.48 percent of agri-GDP on agri-R&D. This needs to be doubled, if the country has to play the role of a leader. 
• India could bring millets to the fore, even on the dining tables of G20 members. 
• But much more product innovation and dissemination is needed to make it a part of global cuisine, akin to say quinoa. 
• India needs to re-purpose its agri-policies.  
• Current policies of open-ended and assured procurement with Minimum Support Price (MSP) for paddy and wheat, coupled with massive subsidies on fertilisers, power, and irrigation, have caused damage to our natural resources, especially soil, water, air, and biodiversity.  

Time is running out and the G20 needs to work closer, faster, and smarter with demonstrable results by 2030 to feed this world and also save the planet, by making it green and clean. 

The Indian Express

International Relation 

G-20 diplomacy and shifting world order 

Tag: GS Paper-2: Global groupings; Important International Institutions; Groupings & Agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests. 

Exam view:

India’s successes in G20; China’s perception, need for caution; Emerging world disorder. 

Context:

Euphoria about the G-20 outcome under India’s presidency needs to be tempered given the many dark clouds on the global horizon despite India’s amazing success in producing a consensus Declaration. 

Decoding the editorial: India’s successes in G20 

• Consensus on the Russia-Ukraine war. 

• Consensus on the Ukraine conflict became possible with the West agreeing to ‘climb down’ from its demand not to point fingers at Russia for the Ukraine conflict, and giving up on the insistence to proclaim Russia as guilty.  
• The difference between two Declarations is that while Bali was accusatory in tone, New Delhi sought a resolution to the conflict.  
• Russia and China have since hailed the New Delhi Declaration in sharp contrast to their criticism of the Bali Declaration. 
• The New Delhi Declaration has something for everyone. 
• The establishment of an India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor Plan. 

India, as the host, could rightfully take a large measure of credit for this result. However, India, for its own sake, has to be wary, given the fluid situation across the globe with China’s perception and the return of two blocks. 

China’s perception, need for caution 

• G20 is not a platform for resolving geo-political and security issues. 
• China might have welcomed the Delhi Declaration, but there is inherent foreboding in its affirmation that the G-20 was intended to be a ‘forum for economic cooperation’.  
• India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor Plan should not become a geo-political tool. 
• While welcoming the establishment of an India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor Plan, China has sent an implicit warning that it should ‘not become a geo-political tool’.  
• India remains an obvious target for China and is in its ‘cross-hairs’. 
• While many in the West view China’s situation of ‘debt deflation and demographic decline’ as an opportunity, they remain oblivious to the reality of China’s known capacity to resort to various means to overcome its problems.  
• The West’s acknowledgment of India’s growing economic strength, and India’s membership of the Quad, call for abundant caution on India’s part, since China is unlikely to take kindly to either. 

Emerging world disorder 

• The ‘rules-based world order’ has become a ‘catch-all phrase’ of merely one segment. 
• There is a return of two antagonistic blocs, and shrinking space for the non-aligned.  
• The U.S. is strengthening and expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). 
• It has been encouraged by the stalemate in the Ukraine conflict and the eclipse of Russia’s hope of a quick walkover in Ukraine. 
• A new NATO is set to become even more dependent on the U.S. for military supplies and capabilities.  
• Outside Europe, a number of non-NATO allies are being inveigled to join a U.S.-led alliance to counter ‘authoritarianism’ (represented by Russia and China).  
• Russia and China, in turn, are deepening their ‘strategic alignment’.  
• Countries such as North Korea are cementing their relations with this bloc.  
• China is exploiting its frontage in the Pacific Ocean to openly challenge U.S. naval power here.  
• Russia and Türkiye have deepened their relationship based on shared interests.  
• Russia is once again seeking to expand its footprint in Africa, and Russia’s recent agreement to supply food grains to African States at subsidised prices, or even for free, is aimed towards this end. 
• Fading non-alignment 
• It is proving increasingly difficult for countries to remain non-aligned in the truest sense of the word.  
• Even existing formations such as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are tending to find the situation untenable.  
• Given the multiplicity of relationships and the ‘lattice work’ of security agreements that have emerged, the space for non-alignment has dramatically shrunk. 

With the strengthening of rival camps holding divergent visions of the international order, the world confronts a dismal future.  

The Hindu

India-Middle East-Europe Corridor: Catalyst to new world order 

Tag: GS-2 Global Trade and International Relations 

Exam View:

About IMEC; Movement of Goods through IMEC; Significance of IMEC 

Context:

The signing of MoU for development of India-Middle East-Europe Corridor during G20 has been a landmark event. It has immense potential to put India, Middle East and Europe on collective path to growth, triggering regional and global cooperation 

About India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC): 

Features	Description
Name	India-Middle East-Europe Corridor
Type	Multimodal trade and transit corridor
Objective	Promote trade and investment between India, the Middle East, and Europe
Route	The corridor will connect India to Europe through the Middle East. The exact route is still being finalised, but it is expected to pass through countries such as Iran, Turkey, Greece, and Bulgaria.
Modes of transport	The corridor will use a mix of road, rail, and sea modes of transportation.
Status	The corridor is still under development. However, a number of projects have been completed or are underway, such as construction of new roads & railways.
Key projects	The Chabahar Port in Iran The International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline Jordan-Haifa Land Route

Movement of Goods through IMEC: 

• India to Arabian Gulf (Sea Route): IMEC links major ports of western India including JNPT, Kochi, Kandla and Mundra with major shipping ports of the Gulf, including Jebel Ali, Fujairah, Ras Al-Khair, Dammam, Duqm, and Salalah.  
• Gulf ports to West Asian ports on the Mediterranean (Land Route): From these ports, cargo will be transported by the Saudi rail network on their north-south line to the port of Haifa in Israel through Jordan.  
• Mediterranean Ports to European Ports (Sea Route): Haifa, being a deep seaport, can handle bulk container trains and carry cargo to European ports like Piraeus, Kavala (Greece), Trieste, La Spezia (Italy), Marseille-Fos (France), Barcelona, and Valencia (Spain).  
• European Ports to hinterlands of Europe (Land Route): Road container trailers or container cargo trains will thereafter transport goods across Europe. 

Significance of IMEC: 

• Economic Benefits: IMEC is expected to boost trade and investment between India, the Middle East, and Europe, leading to economic growth and job creation. 
• Reliable and Cost Effective transport solution: It envisions a reliable, cost-effective railway and ship-to-rail transit network to supplement maritime and road routes, enabling goods and services to move between India, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and the EU. 
• Reduce transportation time due to shorter routes as compared to Suez Channel route, making it more efficient to move goods and services between these regions. 
• Development of Infrastructure: This proposed economic corridor project would help deal with the lack of infrastructure needed for growth in lower and middle-income nations 
• Promotion of Intra-regional Connectivity: It will promote Intra-regional connectivity and enhance trade, prosperity and connectivity. 
• Geopolitical Benefits: IMEC provides connectivity to accelerate the development and integration of Asia, the Arabian Gulf, and Europe as a new locus of global power. 
• IMEC will also enhance India’s strategic position in the region, giving it a greater say in global affairs. 
• Reduction of dependence on Suez Canal, a major chokepoint in global trade. 
• Counter to Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI): India Middle East Europe Corridor (IMEC) is an ambitious counter to China’s BRI project. 
• Geopolitical Stability in Middle East: This Corridor will help to bring countries in the Middle East together and establish that region as a hub for economic activity instead of as a “source of challenge, conflict or crisis” 
• Environmental benefits:  

• Hydrogen Fuel pipelines: IMEC, envisages the laying of cables for electricity and a pipeline for transporting clean hydrogen. The greening of this project will contribute to the global effort to lower greenhouse gas emissions. 
• Reduced fuel usage due to decreased travel time because of shorter routes and consequently lesser pollution. 

Challenges for IMEC  

• Non-binding MoU: The MoU of IMEC does not create any rights or obligations under international law, and is only a political commitment. 
• Implementation challenges: Early implementation and construction of the corridor is a challenge due to the need to develop and commit to an action plan with relevant timetables. 
• Financial Sourcing: The corridor would require massive finance for its construction, which is a challenge considering the recession and difficulty in mobilization of private sector finance. 
• Chinese resistance: The corridor faces the challenge of Chinese pushback as China has already invested heavily in the BRI project and is making considerable investments in the Middle East. 

The Indian Express

End of Old Multilateralism and Rise of New World Order 

Tag: GS-2 International relation- Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests. 

Exam View:

Multilateralism; Multilateralism in in Post-Cold War world; End of traditional multilateralism; Impact to China’s aggressive policies on multilateralism; Features of New Multilateralism 

Context:

Post Cold-War multilateralism, characterised by global cooperation and coordination on issues such as trade, security, human rights, and environmental protection, has reached its lowest point. This is being witnessed in the declining cooperation in East Asia Summit in Jakarta and G20 summit in Delhi. 

Decoding the Editorial: About Multilateralism: 

• Multilateralism can be defined as a philosophy of increased regional and global cooperation and coordination in the period after the end of the Cold War in 1991.  
• This was facilitated by the absence of major conflicts between the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, and their respective allies. 

Multilateralism in in Post-Cold War world 

• End of Cold War: It facilitated in creating favourable conditions for an intensive phase of multilateralism.  
• Evolution of European Union: Europe moved towards rapid regional economic integration and expansion under the banner of the European Union. 
• Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Asia, provided the framework for intensifying regional economic and political cooperation. 
• End of Power Rivalry between Europe and Asia: Increased regional cooperation and growth in multilateralism in Europe and Asia was facilitated by the end of the great power rivalry in both continents. 
• Engagement of Russia with Western countries: Russia was drawn into the Group of Seven leading Western countries, making it the G8 and also engaged in consultations with NATO. 
• China-USA partnership: China became a close partner for the US on economic and political fronts. Integration of China into the WTO in 2001 gave a huge boost to Beijing’s economy. 

End of traditional multilateralism:  

• Russia’s annexation: Russian occupation and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 marked the first major crisis of the post-Cold War security order in central Europe. 
• The current Russia- Ukraine conflict has further been a huge blow to the multilateral philosophies. 
• China’s aggressive border policy: Over the last decade, China’s growing unilateral efforts to alter the borders with neighbours has created suspicion and reduction in trust for multilateral policies to continue.  
• Economic Leverage: China has tried to use the world’s dependence on its economy for political and strategic gains, causing distrust. 
• Shift in Chinese policies: Xi Jinping’s reversal of policies from the 1980s, which aimed for a peaceful periphery and shared prosperity, has negatively impacted regional and global institutions. 

Impact to China’s aggressive policies on multilateralism: 

• Rise of new security institutions like the Quad, the AUKUS that brings together Australia, Britain, and the US, and the trilateral compact in Northeast Asia between the US, Japan and South Korea. 
• Decline in centrality of ASEAN: ASEAN-led regional institutions struggle to cope with China’s aggressive territorial expansionism. Furthermore rise of security institutions raises questions about continuing centrality of the ASEAN in shaping the regional order in Asia 
• Economic Diversification: Nations like Japan and the US are trying to reduce their economic dependence on China by diversifying trade partnerships. 
• Increased engagement of India with USA: It became clear that it was in the interest of India to have a “unipolar world” led by the US, rather than a “unipolar Asia” dominated by Beijing. 

Features of New Multilateralism 

• Regional stability through Quad Collaboration: At the Jakarta meeting, India emphasised that Quad is not in competition with ASEAN but will complement its efforts to promote regional stability through more bilateral and minilateral security cooperation. 
• Re-globalization: India is focusing on a diversified and democratic globalisation characterised by multiple centres of production and not just of consumption. 
• Push for collective solutions despite crisis in multilateralism: India’s G-20 efforts to pursue a range of consequential issues, like modernising the global tax regime and reforming the multilateral development banks.  
• Voice of Global South: India prioritises the concerns of the Global South in the G-20 agenda, aiming to enhance cooperation between developed and developing nations, rather than reviving old confrontational politics. 

The Indian Express

Environment 

Striking a Green Balance  

Tag: GS Paper-3 Environment 

Exam View:

About the Carbon Trading Network; Significance of Carbon Credit System; Initiatives of Indian Government towards Carbon Credit trade; Benefits of setting up Indian Carbon Market 

Context:

As India develops its economy to meet the growing needs of its people, the country faces a challenge of balancing its climate goals and developmental goals. There is need to curb carbon emissions and adopt practices to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through carbon trade. 

Decoding the editorial: The Carbon Trading Network 

• Carbon trading network is a market-based approach to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It allows companies that have low or no emissions to sell credits to companies that have high emissions. This offsets the emissions of the polluting company and helps to reduce overall GHG emissions. 
• Carbon credits are permits that represent one ton of carbon dioxide or the equivalent amount of another greenhouse gas. They are created to offset the emissions of companies or individuals. 
• This mechanism allows a company with low or no emissions to sell credits in the market via a carbon trading framework or carbon exchange.  

Significance of Carbon Credit System:  

• Carbon credits can assist companies in meeting sustainability targets. These outfits can purchase credits or fund programmes that create carbon credits. 
• Mobilisation of resources through transferring of capital from carbon emitters to those who invest in reducing carbon footprints.  
• Limited decarbonization avenues for some industries such as cement, chemicals, iron and steel production and non-ferrous metals which have limited scope for decarbonization. Carbon credits can help these companies to meet the requirements in the initial stages of transformation. 

Initiatives of Indian Government towards Carbon Credit trade:  

• The Centre is planning to set up the Indian Carbon Market (ICM) by establishing a national framework that will help in decarbonising the domestic economy by pricing GHG emissions via trading in carbon credit certificates. 
• Carbon credits can assist companies in meeting sustainability targets where outfits can purchase credits or fund programmes that create carbon credits. 
• The draft framework for the Indian Carbon Credit Scheme 2023 was recently notified by the Union government. The Bureau of Energy Efficiency functioning under the Ministry of Power has been tasked to develop the Carbon Trading Scheme in tandem with MoEFCC.  

Benefits of setting up Indian Carbon Market: 

• Investment Mobilisation: ICM will help mobilise investments for the transition to a low-carbon ecosystem. It will also help India lower the emissions intensity of its GDP by 45% by 2030 compared to the 2005 levels. 
• Fillip to Energy Transition: India does have an energy savings-linked market mechanism. However, carbon credit trading will give a fillip to energy transition due to its greater scope for covering the country’s potential energy segments. 
• Sectoral emission targets and benchmarking: ICM would help in setting GHG emissions intensity targets and establish sectoral benchmarks in sync with the domestic emissions trajectory, according to the climate goals.  
• Flexibility to specific sectors: Although the ICM would be regulated, it will offer flexibility to companies in hard-to-abate segments to augment their GHG emission efforts through carbon market credits. 
• Incentivise technological upgrade: The mechanism could help attract finance and technology for sustainable projects that can generate carbon credits. The ICM can be an effective channel in mobilising a major proportion of funds required for the low-carbon transition. 
• Nudge Effect: The Centre’s decision will also create more awareness, change and innovation across hard-to-abate industries. Placing a price tag on carbon footprints would have a direct impact on industries. 
• Aligning with national and international requirements: Carbon-related tariffs such as CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) will start influencing trade directly, businesses would need to factor in both national and international implications. ICM can facilitate such integrations. 

The Indian Express

The complex path of biofuel Sustainability 

Tag: GS-3 Environmental Pollution & Degradation 

Exam View:

About Biofuels; About Global Biofuel Alliance; Challenges to scaling up of Biofuel in India; Measures for decarbonization of transportation. 

Context:

While electric vehicles are being rapidly adopted, use of biofuels is also being promoted for addressing environmental concerns. The Global Biofuels Alliance formed at the G-20 Summit is expected to strengthen the development of sustainable biofuels, in addition to promoting ethanol uptake. 

About Biofuels:  

• Biofuels are the fuel derived from the biomass of plants or animal wastes. It is commonly produced from corn, sugarcane and animal waste like cow dung. These come under renewable energy as its sources are renewable unlike fossil fuels. 
• These can be used to replace or can be used in addition to diesel, petrol or other fossil fuels for transport, stationary, portable and other applications. 
• There are different generations of biofuels based on the source of their production. 

Limitations of Electric Vehicles:  

Certain limitations of EV require complementary biofuel strategy for decarbonization of transportation: 

• Capital Intensive transition: for a transition to EVs, existing internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles and the supporting infrastructure need to be replaced entirely, which is capital intensive. 
• Mining of minerals: the required batteries and critical minerals used in them need to be imported, adding to environmental concerns on how these minerals are mined, among other issues. 
• Biofuels, on the other hand, can be used in existing ICE engines and infrastructure with little to no modifications (depending on the blending rates) and offer import independence. 

About Global Biofuel Alliance:  

• Global Biofuel Alliance is being established by India, Brazil and US which together account for 85% of global Ethanol Production. It will be an international platform for sharing best practices, promoting sustainable biofuel development and enhancing its application.  
• It aims to impact global energy architecture and achieve the target of net-zero emissions. 
• Objectives of Global Biofuel Alliance are:  
• Promotion of International collaboration and cooperation to encourage the acceptance and utilisation of biofuels. 
• Development of robust markets for biofuels and facilitating global trade in biofuels. 
• Intensification of the use of sustainable biofuels in the transportation sector. 
• Development of concrete policy lesson-sharing and provision of technical support for national biofuels programs worldwide. 

Challenges to scaling up of Biofuel in India: 

• Use of 1^st Generation biofuel: 1^st generation biofuel sourced from food crops, are primarily used in India. The policy target of achieving 20% ethanol blending (E20) by 2025-26 is also expected to be met by 1G ethanol putting stress on agricultural produce. 
• Groundwater depletion could triple during 2040-81. This could be partly attributed to increase in crop water requirements. Thus producing fuel from food crops would become unsustainable. 
• Stagnation of crop yield: India’s crop yields have already stagnated, and global warming is expected to reduce yields. So, the strategy to meet blending targets cannot depend on surplus crop production. 
• GHG emissions from agriculture sector: Agriculture sector has high direct GHG emissions. Thus depending on a sector with high GHG emissions to decrease emissions from the transport sector is a not beneficial balancing loop. 

Measures for decarbonization of transportation: 

• Use of Biomass: Biomass should be prioritised for sectors where there are limited low-carbon alternatives. Long-haul aviation and road freight segments, wherein complete electrification might take longer to achieve, could use biomass as an alternative energy source. 
• Increasing production of 2G biofuels: For net zero by 2050, biofuel production needs to be tripled by 2030. 2G ethanol could be counted as a sustainable fuel, especially if the production is decentralised, i.e., crop residues do not have to be transported large distances to a central manufacturing plant 
• Global Biofuels Alliance could help drive innovation and technology development in establishing an efficient biomass supply chain and smaller-scale decentralised biofuel production units. 

The Hindu

Climate Phenomenon and Food Security 

Tag: GS-3 Climate Change and Conservation 

Exam View:

El Nino and El Nino Southern Oscillation; El Nino Phase and Climate Change; El Niño and food security; Response to Climate Change phenomenon 

Context:

There has been a series of disruptive weather and climate phenomena in India this year, demonstrating the complexity of our precipitation system. Western disturbance, which usually brings rain and moisture to the western Himalayas parts of northern India during winters, has remained active late into the summer. 

About the El Nino and El Nino Southern Oscillation [ENSO]: 

• El Niño is a climate pattern that describes the unusual warming of surface waters in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. 
• In a normal year, a surface low pressure develops in the region of northern Australia and Indonesia and a high-pressure system over the coast of Peru. As a result, trade winds over the Pacific Ocean move strongly from east to west. 
• The easterly flow of the trade winds carries warm surface waters westward, bringing convective storms to Indonesia and coastal Australia. Along the coast of Peru, cold bottom cold nutrient-rich water wells up to the surface to replace the warm water that is pulled to the west. 
• In an El Niño year, air pressure drops over large areas of the central Pacific and along the coast of South America. 
• There is a weak high in the western Pacific. This change in pressure pattern causes the trade winds to be reduced intensity and sometimes it might even get reversed. 
• This reduction allows the equatorial counter-current to accumulate warm ocean water along the coastlines of Peru and Ecuador. This prevents upwelling of cold deep ocean water along the coast of Peru and brings drought to Indonesia and Australia along with rains in South America 
• The formation of an El Niño is linked with the Pacific Ocean circulation pattern known as the southern oscillation. El Nino and Southern Oscillation coincide most of the time hence their combination is called ENSO – El Nino Southern Oscillation. 

Impact of El Nino Phase on Climate:  

• Droughts and water scarcity in South East Asia and Australia. It leads to water scarcity in many parts of India and adversely affects agriculture, causing a decrease in crop yields. 
• Forest fires: During El Niño years, drier conditions may increase the likelihood of forest fires, especially in regions prone to such disasters. 
• Climate extremes: El Niño can contribute to other climate extremes in India, such as heatwaves and intense cyclones.  
• Climate induced disasters: Landslides and flooding in the western Himalaya and northern India leads to destruction of infrastructure and loss of life. 
• Inter annual Variability in rainfall: 65% of the inter-annual variability of the southwest monsoon, over many decades, can be attributed to the combined effects of ENSO and the IOD. 

Impact of El Niño on food security: 

• Affects agricultural processes: El Nino and associated phenomenon affects rain fed agriculture by delaying the start of rains, affecting sowing, hot temperatures negatively influence plant growth and soil moisture. 
• Unirrigated lands: More than 50% of agricultural land is unirrigated. Thus any delays in monsoon affects crop growth severely.  
• Erratic Monsoons: Breaks in monsoon, delays in its advent and disproportionate rainfall in different regions affects growth of crops and hampers food security.  
• Dependence on green water irrigated regions: Even in irrigated areas, many dominant crops require green water (Green water is rain-fed soil moisture tapped by food and cash crops, eventually transpiring into the atmosphere) to different extents. For example, in kharif season, rice paddy under irrigation uses green water to the tune of 35%. 
• Growth of Rabi crops: Contributions of green water from northeast monsoon in southeast India and Western disturbance in north plays significant roles in determining the fate of Rabi crops. 

Impact of El Nino on northeast monsoon:  

• Central India’s highlands, encompassing 36 districts in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Maharashtra, which are emerging as climate change hotspots critical for our water, food and ecological security.  
• NE Monsoon feeds headwaters for five of India’s 10 major river basins thus playing an important role in India’s water security. 

Response to Climate Change phenomenon: 

• Reducing dependence on water-intensive crops: With introduction of millets agriculture is shifting to less water-intensive crops which may reduce vulnerability of our food systems to phenomena like El Niño.  
• Adaptations and alternative crop strategies like shifting to millets and alternative varieties of dominant cereals and advisories to farmers to switch to crops with shorter growing cycles. 
• Alternative short-term and long-term management of our dams and reservoirs is required to reduce the risk of dam-based flood disasters and ecological damage to aquatic ecosystems. 

The Hindu

Women-led climate action 

Tag: GS Paper-2: Issues related to women. GS Paper-3: Growth & Development. 

Exam View:

Impact of climate change on women; Way forward. 

Context:

Women in the emerging countries are more vulnerable to climate change because of their dependence on natural resources and labour-intensive work.  

Decoding the editorial: Impact of climate change on women 

• Women across the world face severe risks to their health, safety, and quality of life.  
• Women are more likely to live in poverty than men. It is just one of several social, economic, and cultural variables that makes them more susceptible to the effects of climate change.  
• According to estimates, 130 million people could be pushed into poverty by 2050 due to climate change risks, natural disasters, and food inflation, impacting women’s inequality.  
• Women in developing and less developed countries are more vulnerable. 
• It is because of their dependence on natural resources and labour-intensive work for their livelihood.  
• According to the ILO, over 60% of working women in southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are still in agriculture, where they are often underpaid and overworked.  
• Women in low-income countries engaged in climate-vulnerable occupations such as farming face further issues. 

• Women own only about 10% of the land used for farming. 
• Women engaged in agriculture do not have access to quality inputs and possess low education and technical knowledge.  
• Heat stress affects workers a lot in this sector, especially in South Asia and Africa.  
• Changing precipitation patterns and more frequent extreme weather events are just the beginning of the problems. 
• Their effects on crop production and food security fall disproportionately on these people, who already face significant challenges in obtaining resources, expertise, and technology.  
• Women from low-income households are more at risk. 
• It is because they are more responsible for food, water, and other homely unpaid work. 
• Women in rural areas are impacted disproportionately by climate change. 
• Due to the climate crisis, more time and effort are needed to obtain basic necessities.  
• Rural women often shoulder the burden of ensuring access to clean water, adequate cooking fuel, and nutritious food for their families.  
• Women may be at increased risk for health and safety because they must travel long distances every day to collect water and fuel.  
• Women are more likely to be displaced by climate-related disasters. 
• According to a UN study, most (80%) of those displaced by climate-related disasters are women and girls. 
• Women, especially those from vulnerable communities, face particular difficulties during and after natural disasters.  
• When women are uprooted, they are more susceptible to prejudice and exploitation. 
• For instance, after the earthquake in Nepal in 2015, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) found women were more exposed to trafficking and exploitation.  
• Separation from social networks, a higher risk of gender-based violence, and decreased access to employment, education, and essential health services, such as sexual and reproductive health care and psychosocial support, are just some gender-specific issues women face. 

Way forward 

• Invest in women’s education, training 
• Investments in women’s education, training, and access to resources are essential if we are to be resilient to the impact of climate change.  
• The negative impacts of climate change on people’s living standards can be reduced by teaching them how to practise sustainable agriculture, water management, and energy generation.  
• For example, in India, the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) teaches women farmers how to respond to shifting climate patterns to support themselves better financially.  
• Therefore, it is essential to support groups that educate the public, train people to adapt to climate change and invest in women’s education and training in environmentally-friendly farming methods. 
• Women’s participation in climate policy decision-making at all levels 
• As women face greater risks in climate change, gender parity in decision-making bodies is essential.  
• One such programme in South Asia is the Gender and Climate Change Development Programme, which aims to increase women’s influence in policy making by providing them with a stronger voice.  

Gender equality and environmental goals are mutually reinforcing and create a virtuous circle that will help accelerate the achievement of the SDGs. 

The Hindu

Cleantech 

Tags: GS Paper – 3: Solar Energy; Renewable Energy. 

GS Paper – 2: Government Policies & Interventions. 

Exam view:

Green economy; Cleantech solutions for the hinterlands; Steps to scale up. 

Context:

Cleantech can deliver on development and climate action in the country’s rural areas. 

Decoding the editorial: Green economy 

• The green economy paradigm provides an optimistic pathway to align development and environmental outcomes.  
• Building a solar park or an electric vehicle charging station helps expand the much-needed infrastructure in a developing economy while furthering climate action.  
• Reviving millets helps improve farm incomes in rain-fed areas while making our agriculture climate resilient.  
• But the critical issue is taking this green economy paradigm to the heart of our development needs in the form of youth looking for jobs, women seeking income opportunities, or farmers waiting to diversify their incomes. 

Cleantech solutions for the hinterlands 

• India’s rural economy that comprises 120 million farmers and 34 million micro-enterprises often struggles with unreliable electricity access and a dependence on expensive and imported diesel. 
• Cleantech solutions that are powered by renewable energy can help India reduce its diesel imports, avoid the loss of perishable food and enhance rural livelihood opportunities while posing an investment opportunity worth $50 billion for investors and financiers. 
• Examples from recent years 
• Solar dryers converting throwaway tomatoes into sun-dried ones in Andhra Pradesh,  
• Biomass-powered cold storages helping farmers in Maharashtra selling lemons make a gain that is three to five times that of the original price, or  
• Solar silk reeling machines reducing drudgery for thigh-reelers and doubling their income in Odisha. 
• Research at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) shows that just 12 such cleantech solutions have the potential to impact at least 37 million livelihoods or about 16% of our rural population. 

But this silent revolution now needs a structural boost. There needs to be a three-fold approach to traverse this journey from 50,000-plus to tens of millions. 

Steps to scale up 

• Leverage existing government programmes supporting livelihoods.  
• For instance, the Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana can be used to enable the adoption of cleantech solutions.  
• The Pradhan Mantri Formalisation of Micro food processing Enterprises (PM-FME) scheme can be used to unlock support for solutions such as a solar dryer, an energy-efficient multipurpose food processor or a solar grain mill. 
• The Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana can be leveraged towards adopting solar refrigerators and dryers for fishing communities.  
• The Agriculture Infrastructure Fund, which has only seen a 15% fund utilisation against a target of ₹1,00,000 crore, can support the adoption of biomass-powered cold storage and beyond. 
• Enable large-scale financing of cleantech solutions.  
• It requires supporting bankers’ capacity on credit assessment for cleantech because they have not come across such solutions and the associated cash flows before to make an informed assessment.  
• Their risks need to be hedged in the initial stages of the market through partial guarantees.  
• Adopting some of these principles helped ‘Powering Livelihoods’, a CEEW-Villgro initiative, unlock 300-plus loans for cleantech solutions to women, self help groups, farmer producer organisations and individual micro-entrepreneurs in rural areas. 
• Enable multi-actor partnerships.  
• The challenges faced include  low product awareness, high customer acquisition cost as users need to touch and feel these products before adoption, low density of customers for such products in a given area, and limited after-sales service and market linkage of the final processed products. 
• A holistic ecosystem where distributors work with manufacturers to enable technology access at the last mile, service providers ensure after-sales services, and market-linkage players enable the connection to the market to create a thriving ecosystem for cleantech to impact rural livelihoods at scale.  
• For instance, there are solar dyer companies that are not only deploying dryers but are also enabling financing for users to adopt the dryers and buying back the final produce from them to ensure market linkages.  

By focusing on cleantech for livelihoods and jobs, especially in rural areas, we can make that green future inclusive. 

The Hindu

The complex path of biofuel Sustainability 

Tag: GS-3 Environmental Pollution & Degradation 

Exam View:

About Biofuels; About Global Biofuel Alliance; Challenges to scaling up of Biofuel in India; Measures for decarbonization of transportation. 

Context:

While electric vehicles are being rapidly adopted, use of biofuels is also being promoted for addressing environmental concerns. The Global Biofuels Alliance formed at the G-20 Summit is expected to strengthen the development of sustainable biofuels, in addition to promoting ethanol uptake. 

About Biofuels:  

• Biofuels are the fuel derived from the biomass of plants or animal wastes. It is commonly produced from corn, sugarcane and animal waste like cow dung. These come under renewable energy as its sources are renewable unlike fossil fuels. 
• These can be used to replace or can be used in addition to diesel, petrol or other fossil fuels for transport, stationary, portable and other applications. 
• There are different generations of biofuels based on the source of their production. 

Limitations of Electric Vehicles:  

Certain limitations of EV require complementary biofuel strategy for decarbonization of transportation: 

• Capital Intensive transition: for a transition to EVs, existing internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles and the supporting infrastructure need to be replaced entirely, which is capital intensive. 
• Mining of minerals: the required batteries and critical minerals used in them need to be imported, adding to environmental concerns on how these minerals are mined, among other issues. 
• Biofuels, on the other hand, can be used in existing ICE engines and infrastructure with little to no modifications (depending on the blending rates) and offer import independence. 

About Global Biofuel Alliance:  

• Global Biofuel Alliance is being established by India, Brazil and US which together account for 85% of global Ethanol Production. It will be an international platform for sharing best practices, promoting sustainable biofuel development and enhancing its application.  
• It aims to impact global energy architecture and achieve the target of net-zero emissions. 
• Objectives of Global Biofuel Alliance are:  
• Promotion of International collaboration and cooperation to encourage the acceptance and utilisation of biofuels. 
• Development of robust markets for biofuels and facilitating global trade in biofuels. 
• Intensification of the use of sustainable biofuels in the transportation sector. 
• Development of concrete policy lesson-sharing and provision of technical support for national biofuels programs worldwide. 

Challenges to scaling up of Biofuel in India: 

• Use of 1^st Generation biofuel: 1^st generation biofuel sourced from food crops, are primarily used in India. The policy target of achieving 20% ethanol blending (E20) by 2025-26 is also expected to be met by 1G ethanol putting stress on agricultural produce. 
• Groundwater depletion could triple during 2040-81. This could be partly attributed to increase in crop water requirements. Thus producing fuel from food crops would become unsustainable. 
• Stagnation of crop yield: India’s crop yields have already stagnated, and global warming is expected to reduce yields. So, the strategy to meet blending targets cannot depend on surplus crop production. 
• GHG emissions from agriculture sector: Agriculture sector has high direct GHG emissions. Thus depending on a sector with high GHG emissions to decrease emissions from the transport sector is a not beneficial balancing loop. 

Measures for decarbonization of transportation: 

• Use of Biomass: Biomass should be prioritised for sectors where there are limited low-carbon alternatives. Long-haul aviation and road freight segments, wherein complete electrification might take longer to achieve, could use biomass as an alternative energy source. 
• Increasing production of 2G biofuels: For net zero by 2050, biofuel production needs to be tripled by 2030. 2G ethanol could be counted as a sustainable fuel, especially if the production is decentralised, i.e., crop residues do not have to be transported large distances to a central manufacturing plant 
• Global Biofuels Alliance could help drive innovation and technology development in establishing an efficient biomass supply chain and smaller-scale decentralised biofuel production units. 

The Hindu

Science and Technology 

India’s role in democratising space 

Tag: GS Paper – 2: Government Policies & Interventions; Effect of Policies & Politics of Countries on India’s Interests. 

GS Paper – 3: Scientific Innovations & Discoveries; Space Technology. 

Exam View:

Is Outer Space a “Global common”?; Space Race; India’s role. 

Context:

With the success of Chandrayaan 3, India must pursue contributing towards the framing of an international space resource-management framework that balances competing objectives in pursuit of the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes. 

Decoding the editorial: Is Outer Space a “Global common”? 

• “Global commons” is a concept built upon the legacy of Grotius’s idea of mare liberum (free sea), an idea that aimed to preserve the freedom of access and benefit of all.  
• The term is used typically to describe supra-national and global resource domains in which common-pool resources are found.  
• The UN identifies four “global commons”, namely  
  • the high seas,  
  • the atmosphere,  
  • Antarctica and  
  • outer space.  
• When rooted in geopolitical or military relevance, “global common” is generally viewed as an enabling concept.  
• Security establishments across the world recognise domains beyond the national jurisdictions as vital connecting channels for the international order.  
• Others recognise outer space as a vital operational domain for keeping their nation safe while upholding international law.  
• If outer space as a “global common” were rejected, high seas would not continue to be regarded as one.  A collective regional security initiative like the QUAD would be unable to continue its call for the freedom of navigation. 
• When rooted in economic and commercial implications of shared resources, “global common” is generally seen as a constraining concept.  
• “Commons” is seen as constraining because it is associated with notions of shared ownership, public governance or limitations on use. 
• “Commons” is sometimes also associated with the “common heritage of mankind” (CHM) concept. 
• It has been expressed in the Moon Agreement, 1979.  
• CHM was a new concept that created a territorial status in which the Moon and celestial bodies are themselves not subject to national appropriation, but the fruits and resources of which are also deemed to be the property of mankind at large. 
• CHM is not limited to outer space.  
• The 1970 UN General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution that “the seabed and ocean floor, and the subsoil thereof, beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, as well as the resources of the area are the common heritage of mankind.”  
• After the Moon Agreement, this principle was codified as Article 136 of the United Convention on Law of the Seas, 1982.  

Space Race 

• In 1957, after Sputnik was launched, geopolitical expediency led the only space-faring superpowers, the US and the USSR to ensure the adoption of UN General Assembly Resolutions 1721 A&B (XVI).  
• All space-faring nations have continued to conform and adhere to that settled precedent.  
• Over decades of consistent state practice, the principles of the Outer Space Treaty, 1967, have transformed into rules of customary international law.  
• Today, outer space is a democratised domain.  
• Over 80 countries access outer space, deriving benefits from space-based satellite services for every aspect of their national life, even though there are only 11 space-faring nations (including ESA). 

India’s role 

• India’s successes in 2023 
• India is now a signatory to the US Artemis Accords. 
• The deepening of US-India engagements, particularly iCET. 
• The establishment of the US-India Civil Space and Commercial Space Working Groups has met with excitement and expectations. 
• The Chandrayaan 3 landing.  
• India can play a significant part in determining the content and contours of a future international framework for the management of space resources.  
• It must necessarily involve a close examination of the Moon Agreement 1979 (MA) which came into force in 1984.  
• It will require a comprehensive understanding of the range of directly and indirectly applicable international law and other frameworks.  
• It will also require the participation of all government institutions.  

India has had and continues to have robust international cooperation space programmes, including multilateral and bilateral engagements with advanced space powers, and with those looking forward to advancing theirs. 

The Indian Express

In case you still have your doubts, contact us on 9811333901. 

For UPSC Prelims Resources, Click here

For Daily Updates and Study Material:

Join our Telegram Channel – Edukemy for IAS

• 1. Learn through Videos – here
• 2. Be Exam Ready by Practicing Daily MCQs – here
• 3. Daily Newsletter – Get all your Current Affairs Covered – here
• 4. Mains Answer Writing Practice – here

Visit our YouTube Channel – here