Important topics and their relevance in UPSC CSE exam for March 11, 2024. If you missed the March 8, 2024 UPSC CSE exam key from the Indian Express, read it here

FRONT PAGE

$100 bn, 10 lakh jobs in 15 yrs: India seals trade pact with Europe group

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Mains Examination: General Studies II: Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story-India and the four-nation European Free Trade Association (EFTA), an intergovernmental grouping of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, signed a trade pact Sunday that will see the EFTA countries committing to invest $100 billion in India and aiming to generate 10 lakh jobs over a 15-year period in exchange for tariff concessions for their pharma, chemical products and minerals, among other items.

• India and the four-nation European Free Trade Association trade pact-Know key highlights

• Map Work-European Free Trade Association Countries

• European Free Trade Association-Know in detail

• What is the difference between EU and EFTA?

• What does the European Free Trade Association do?

• Where is the headquarters of the European Free Trade Association?

• EFTA members are not part of the EU Customs Union-True or false?

• Why is the timing of the signing crucial for India?

• For Your Information-The India-EFTA deal has gone through a decade after negotiations were abandoned in 2013 due to differences between the two partners after as many as 13 rounds of talks. However, major geo-political shifts and a common goal to divert the economies away from their dependence on China helped India seal its first trade agreement with European countries. The India-Oman trade deal, where discussions are at an advanced stage, is set to follow soon.

“It’s for the first time that we are inkling a free trade agreement with a binding commitment to invest $100 billion in India from EFTA countries on the back of a solid foundation that has been laid in India. There are big opportunities in businesses in the pharma sector, medical devices, food, research and development which can offer…This partnership will create 10 lakh jobs in India,” Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said at the India-EFTA press briefing.

The official text in the “investment promotion and cooperation” chapter reads that the pact “shall aim to increase foreign direct investment” from investors of the EFTA states into India by $50 billion within 10 years from the entry into force of this agreement and an additional $50 billion in the next five years.

The agreement also said that the EFTA states “shall aim to facilitate the generation of 1 million jobs within 15 years in India from the entry into force of this agreement, resulting from inflows of foreign direct investment from investors of the EFTA States into India”.

A government official clarified that the investment will come from the private sector in EFTA, and not from the pension funds in the EFTA region (as was earlier expected and being negotiated from India’s side), and that mechanisms are in place to facilitate the investment within the deal. However, the official indicated that India can “withdraw tariff concessions” if expected investment commitments don’t come in.

Meanwhile, the EFTA countries are set to see steep reduction in tariffs in India after the deal comes into effect. According to the Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (or TEPA, as the deal is being called) signed on Sunday, the agreement will lead to elimination of duties on most industrial goods “currently exported to India by EFTA companies”, such as for example pharmaceutical products, machinery, watches, fertilizers, medicines, chemical products, minerals, as well as fish. While most agricultural items were kept out of the deal, the agreement provides for “meaningful tariff concessions on both basic and processed agricultural products.”

India-EFTA two-way trade was $18.65 billion in 2022-23 compared to $27.23 billion in 2021-22. The trade deficit for India was $14.8 billion in the last fiscal. Switzerland is the largest trading partner of India, followed by Norway in the bloc.

• Why did India push for investment commitment in the EFTA deal?

• Which Indian sectors could EFTA investment benefit?

• Why will it be difficult for India to access the EFTA market?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

????India signs trade agreement with EFTA: What is the significance of the deal?

Day after, Opp asks: Did EC Goel quit over differences, will he contest elections?

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Indian Polity and Governance-Constitution, Political System, Panchayati Raj, Public Policy, Rights Issues, etc.

Main Examination: General Studies II: Appointment to various Constitutional posts, powers, functions and responsibilities of various Constitutional Bodies.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story-BARELY days before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections are expected to be announced, Election Commissioner Arun Goel resigned Saturday leaving the three-member Election Commission, that already had one vacancy, down to a single office-bearer, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar.

• How Election Commissioner will be selected especially after new law on appointment of CEC and ECs ?

• For Your Information-According to the new law on appointment of CEC and ECs brought last year, a selection committee headed by the Prime Minister and comprising a Union Cabinet Minister to be nominated by the PM and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha or the leader of the single-largest opposition party in the House picks a name. This came months after the Supreme Court had ruled that a three-member panel headed by the PM and comprising the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha and the Chief Justice of India would select the CEC and EC until a new law was enacted by Parliament.

Goel was appointed Election Commissioner in November 2022 and since then has been part of the conduct of at least eight Assembly elections. His tenure at EC was until December 5, 2027, and he would have become Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) after incumbent Kumar retired in February next year.

This isn’t the first instance of the EC being left with only one Election Commissioner. In April 2015, when Nasim Zaidi took over from HS Brahma as the Chief Election Commissioner, he was the sole remaining member in the three-member panel since the government, at that time, had not appointed VS Sampath and HS Brahma’s successor after their retirement. The EC functioned as a one-man body for almost a month until the government appointed AK Joti as an Election Commissioner in May 2015 and OP Rawat in August 2015.

Goel’s resignation as Election Commissioner is only the third instance in the poll watchdog’s history. In 1973, Chief Election Commissioner Nagender Singh resigned before completing his term at the poll panel to become a judge at the International Court of Justice.

The second resignation happened recently in August 2020 when Ashok Lavasa quit to join the Asian Development Bank (ADB) as vice-president. Lavasa, like Goel, had more than two years left in his term and would have retired as CEC in October 2022. Goel, a former IAS officer, took office as Election Commissioner on November 21, 2022. His appointment as EC led to some controversy as he was Union Heavy Industries Secretary when he took voluntary retirement from the IAS on November 18, 2022. A day later he was appointed to the Commission. His appointment was challenged in the Supreme Court by the Association for Democratic Reforms.

• “The Lok Sabha polls can be conducted by a one-member EC in case no fresh appointments are made before the Model Code of Conduct kicks in”-True or False?

• The Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Bill, 2023-Know key provisions of the bill

• Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Bill, 2023-what are the issues and challenges?

• Quick Recall-In March 2023, the Supreme Court stepped in to check what it called the “pernicious effects of the exclusive power being vested with the Executive to make appointment to the Election Commission” and ordered that the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and Election Commissioners (ECs) shall be appointed on the advice of a committee comprising the Prime Minister, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha and Chief Justice of India. Ruling on petitions seeking an independent mechanism to appoint the CEC and ECs, a five-judge Constitution Bench presided by Justice K M Joseph said where no Leader of Opposition is available, the committee will include the leader of the largest Opposition party in Lok Sabha in terms of numerical strength. A five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court had ruled that the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and Election Commissioners (ECs) should be appointed by a committee comprising the Prime Minister, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, and the Chief Justice of India (CJI).

The Constitution lays down no specific legislative process for the appointment of the CEC and ECs. As a result, the central government has a free hand in appointing these officials. The President makes the appointments on the advice of the Union Council of Ministers headed by the Prime Minister.

The Supreme Court, however, made it clear that its order would be “subject to any law to be made by Parliament”. Consequently, the government brought The Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Bill, 2023, which proposed a committee comprising the PM, Leader of Opposition and, instead of the CJI, a Cabinet Minister nominated by the PM.

This Bill also proposed giving the CEC and ECs the same salary, perks, and allowances as that of the Cabinet Secretary. The Bill would replace The Election Commission (Conditions of Service of Election Commissioners and Transaction of Business) Act, 1991, under which the CEC and ECs have the same salary as that of a Supreme Court judge.

• Why was the Bill criticised?

• “There is allegation that the proposed bill seeks to downgrade the service conditions of the three election commissioners and, consequently, threatens to erode their authority”-how far you agree?

• “Over the past few years, the EC’s credibility is increasingly being called into question, with allegations of bias in the scheduling of elections and arbitrary deletion of names of registered voters, ignoring blatant violations of the model code”-Comment

• Who appoints Chief Election Commissioner of India?

• How Chief Election Commissioner of India and other Election Commissioners are appointed?

• Election Commission of India and Article 324 of the Constitution-Know in detail

• Do You Know- As of now, the CEC and ECs are appointed by the government as per Article 324(2) of the Constitution which states: “The Election Commission shall consist of the Chief Election Commissioner and such number of other Election Commissioners, if any, as the President may from time to time fix and the appointment of the Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners shall, subject to the provisions of any law made in that behalf by Parliament, be made by the President”.

• The independent and impartial functioning of the Election Commission-How it is ensured?

• Election Commission of India- Powers and Functions

• Chief Election Commissioner and the two other Election Commissioners have equal powers-True or False?

• In case of difference of opinion amongst the Chief election commissioner and/or two other election commissioners, the matter is decided by the Supreme Court of India-Right or Wrong?

• In March 2023, the Supreme Court stepped in to check what it called the “pernicious effects of the exclusive power being vested with the Executive to make appointment to the Election Commission” and ordered something-can you recall that?

• What experts and scholars are saying about the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Bill, 2023?

• “Over the past few years, the EC’s credibility is increasingly being called into question, with allegations of bias in the scheduling of elections and arbitrary deletion of names of registered voters, ignoring blatant violations of the model code”-Comment

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

????ECI members to have same status as SC judges: Why Govt has chosen to make U-turn on proposed Bill

????Centre’s new Bill on Election Commission members’ appointments: How it plans to amend the process

????EC quits, Commission down to one; PM panel to meet next week to fill vacancies

THE EDITORIAL PAGE

Standing up for the voter

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Indian Polity and Governance

Main Examination: General Studies II: Important aspects of governance, transparency and accountability

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story-Upendra Baxi Writes: The unanimous decision by the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, written by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud (with Justices Sanjiv Khanna, B R Gavai, J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra), is a landmark decision for Indian democracy.

• What exactly Supreme Court’s five-judge Constitution bench, headed by Chief Justice of India said?

• First of all, what are electoral bonds?

• Why and when electoral bonds were introduced?

• Electoral Bonds-Key Features

• “Holding the scheme “violative” of the constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression and right to information, the court did not agree with the Centre’s contention that it was meant to bring about transparency and curb black money in political funding”- How it is “violative” of the constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression and right to information?

• For Your Information-The outcome renders unconstitutional the Electoral Bond Scheme (EBS) introduced by the Finance Act, 2017, which removed the cap on donations to political parties, enabled donations through anonymous promissory notes issued by recognised banks, and released corporate donors from any duties to disclose the donations in their balance sheets. The verdict underscores the need for disclosure in corporate election funding by recognising the rights enshrined in and flowing from Article 14 (right to equality) and Article 19 (1)(a) (right to information). Further, under the EBS, political parties were released from any obligation to maintain a record of contributions thus received, thereby accentuating the asymmetry of information and facilitating the deeper penetration of big money into electoral politics.

The issue of whether the Speaker of the Lok Sabha may characterise just any Bill as a “money bill”, thus disempowering the Rajya Sabha from voting, is still to be decided. But considerable guidance now flows from the EBS decision’s insistence that not every legislative determination becomes a “financial” or “economic development” decision, thereby attracting the presumption of constitutionality and a relaxed constitutional judicial review. The individual voter’s right to equality of information and influence repels the astonishing argument of the learned Attorney General, who insisted that democratic citizens have no right to know how parties are funded.

As per the verdict, the issuance of electoral bonds is discontinued with immediate effect and the interim order passed on April 12, 2019, shall be in full force since that date. Further, all agencies — political parties, the State Bank of India, the Reserve Bank of India and the Election Commission of India — were directed to follow disclosure of information since that date. The SBI moved the Court to extend the deadline for the disclosure from March 6 till the end of June, citing various difficulties in data collection. This is despite the Court reiterating that its remedies for the violation of fundamental rights begin from the day it passed the interim orders.

The petitioners have now moved a contempt petition against the SBI. The Court has not asked for any complex details, merely directing that the SBI must disclose the date of purchase of each electoral bond, name of the purchaser and denomination of the electoral bond purchased, as well as details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties, date of encashment, and denomination of the bonds. It remains to be seen whether the Court will resile from the proposition that the judgment is a self-contained law, declaring as null the non-disclosure of all relevant information about corporate funding of elections.

• “The power of imposing reasonable restrictions is well analysed under the newly-fangled doctrine of proportionality”-What is doctrine of proportionality?

• What has the ECI’s stance been?

• What has the Centre’s stance been?

• What Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) data says about Electoral Bonds?

• Why are electoral bonds being so vehemently opposed by transparency activists?

• How popular are electoral bonds as a route of donation?

• What does the Supreme Court have to say on electoral bonds previously?

• What is the Election Commission’s stand on electoral bonds?

• Reserve Bank of India on electoral bonds scheme?

• Do you think that the Electoral Bond Scheme is arbitrary, unconstitutional and problematic?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

????Supreme Court strikes down electoral bonds scheme: ‘unconstitutional’, ‘arbitrary and violative of Article 14’

EXPLAINED

Why safari parks may be a double-edged sword for big cats

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: General issues on Environmental ecology, Bio-diversity and Climate Change – that do not require subject specialization.

Main Examination: General Studies III: Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story- On March 6, the Supreme Court said it was “inclined to approve the establishment of the Tiger Safari at Pakhrau” in the buffer area of Corbett tiger reserve. However, safari parks are meant only for “injured, conflicted, or orphaned” local tigers, and not those sourced from zoos, the court said, and constituted a committee to frame guidelines for such facilities within three months.

• What is the case concerning Pakhrau safari?

• What does a “tiger safari” really mean?

• For Your Information-Tiger safari is not defined under The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 which says “no construction of commercial tourist lodges, hotels, zoos and safari parks shall be undertaken inside a sanctuary except with the prior approval of the National Board” [for Wildlife] constituted under the Act.

The concept of a tiger safari in the wild was first envisaged in the Guidelines for Tourism issued by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) in 2012, which provided for such establishments in the buffer areas of tiger reserves “which experience immense tourist influx in the core/ critical tiger habitat for viewing tigers”.

Four years later, the NTCA issued guidelines to establish “Tiger Safaris” in the buffer and fringe areas of tiger reserves for injured, conflicted, or orphaned tigers, while underlining that no tiger shall be obtained from a zoo. In 2019, however, the NTCA allowed animals to be brought from zoos for tiger safari parks, and gave the Central Zoo Authority (CZA) the power to select such animals.

Housing zoo tigers or other captive animals in a tiger habitat is obviously a bad idea, which would put wild tigers and other wildlife at risk of disease. Fittingly, the top court held that the NTCA’s understanding that tiger safaris are merely zoos built inside tiger reserves, “would be totally contrary to the purpose of the Tiger Conservation”.

• Why build a tiger safari in a forest?

• What is the counter-argument?

• National Tiger Conservation Authority is a statutory body under which Ministry?

• Who is the Chairman of National Tiger Conservation Authority?

• What is the ground reality in Corbett and elsewhere?

• What is the road ahead for safari parks in tiger reserves?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

????SC sets up panel to look into tiger safaris, ecological damage at Jim Corbett: What was the case

Harnessing the value of dung

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Economic and Social Development-Sustainable Development, Poverty, Inclusion, Demographics, Social Sector Initiatives, etc.

Mains Examination: General Studies III: Economics of animal-rearing

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story-From a distance, it looks like any CNG (compressed natural gas) outlet. But the one on the Deesa-Tharad highway in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district, catering to 90-100 vehicles daily, is India’s first and only gas-filling station based on dung from cattle and buffaloes. The ‘BioCNG’ outlet in Dama village of Deesa taluka, belonging to the Banaskantha District Co-operative Milk Producers’ Union, sells 550-600 kg of gas per day generated from 40 tonnes of dung at an adjoining four-acre plant.

• How is cattle dung useful?

• ‘Income generation and nutritional security through dung for Indian farmers’-Analyse

• ‘Livestock based integrated farming system is one of the important agriculture systems developing in India’-How far you agree?

• ‘Animal Husbandry sector provides large self-employment to millions of households in rural areas’-Comment

• ‘The rural women have a special place in the animal husbandry sector’-Do you agree?

• For Your Information-An average adult bovine animal discharges 15-20 kg of fresh dung daily, while calves give out 5-10 kg. Fresh dung contains 80-85% water; one kg weighs hardly 200 grams on drying.

A biogas plant requires fresh dung, which contains methane along with water. The methane is produced by bovines inside their rumen (first of four stomach compartments), where the plant material they eat gets fermented or broken down by microorganisms before further digestion. Carbohydrate fermentation leads to production of carbon-dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen. These are used by archaea (bacteria-like microbes in the rumen) to produce methane, which the animal expels either as gas or in the dung.

The dung left to dry in the open releases both water and methane. To realise its fuel value, the dung has to, therefore, be collected and delivered in fresh form at the biogas plant. “We purchase about 40,000 kg daily from 2,700-2,800 animals of 140-150 farmers. The farmers are from five villages within 10 km of our plant,” said Priyank Mehta, Senior Executive (BioCNG) at the Banaskantha Union.

The union — India’s largest dairy concern, which procured an average 72.03 lakh kg per day (LKPD) of milk in 2022-23, including 5.74 LKPD from outside Gujarat — is paying farmers Rs 1/kg and bearing the cost of transporting the dung by five tractor-trolleys doing two trips a day.

The raw dung unloaded at the BioCNG plant is mixed with an equal quantity of water. The resultant slurry is then pumped into an anaerobic digester.

Anaerobic digestion is a process by which the complex organic matter in dung is broken down in the absence of oxygen to produce biogas. The digestion, taking place in a 3,000 cubic-meter sealed vessel reactor, involves four successive stages: hydrolysis (break-down of organic matter into simple molecules), acidogenesis (their conversion into volatile fatty acids), acetogenesis (production of acetic acid, CO2 and hydrogen) and methanogenesis (biogas generation).

“The slurry, formed by mixing the dung with water for 2-3 hours, ensures proper hydrolysis in the digester over 35 days. From 40 tonnes of dung, we get 2,000 cubic meters of raw biogas containing 55-60% methane, 35-45% CO2, and 1-2% hydrogen sulphide (H2S) and moisture,” explained Mehta.

The raw gas is purified for removing CO2 (through vacuum pressure swing adsorption or VPSA process), H2S (using activated carbon filter) and moisture (with air dryer separator). The end-product, purified (to 96-97% methane, 2-3% CO2 and below 0.1% H2S and moisture) and compressed, is stored in cascades. This compressed biogas (CBG), conveyed through pipelines to the dispensers at the fuel station, is what’s being sold as BioCNG at Rs 72/kg.

The slurry, from mixing 40,000 litres of water with 40,000 kg of dung, is a source of bio-fertiliser. This residue of 75,000-78,000 kg, coming out after anaerobic digestion and biogas production, undergoes dewatering in a solid-liquid separator. The separated solid (6,000-8,000 kg) is decomposed in aerobic condition (presence of oxygen) for sale as PROM (phosphate-rich organic manure, incorporating rock phosphate and phosphate solubilising bacteria) or compost (after adding neem and castor cake, sugarcane press mud and microbial consortia). Out of the liquid part, 30,000-35,000 litres is re-used for mixing in the digester and the balance sold as liquid fermented organic manure.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

????India announces mandatory biogas blending for domestic use from 2025-26

WHAT IS PI, THE ‘KIND’ CHATBOT THAT RECENTLY GOT AN UPGRADE

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Mains Examination: General Studies III: Science and Technology- developments and their applications and effects in everyday life.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story- In less than a week, two Large Language Models (LLMs) have been launched that are closer to or even better at tasks than OpenAI’s GPT-4. After Anthropic’s Claude 3 captured the attention of the AI community, Inflection AI launched its latest LLM, Inflection 2.5, an upgrade to its model that powers its friendly chatbot Pi personal assistant.

• What is Inflection 2.5?

• What is the Pi chatbot?

• For Your Information-Pi is an AI chatbot with which one can have deep and meaningful conversations. To access the chatbot, one needs to log on to Inflection.AI, click on Meet Pi, and simply start talking to the chatbot right away. Pi was launched at a time when the world was marvelling at OpenAI’s sensational ChatGPT. While ChatGPT offered human-like responses, Pi came with a radically different vigour. Pi is more humane and has been promoted as a chatbot that has a personality. In other words, Inflection AI dubbed it as a chatbot that is “supportive, smart, and there for you anytime”. While ChatGPT and Gemini were mostly personal assistants that were useful at work, Pi is more like a companion to humans and is free to use. The chatbot comes with a voice, in six distinct voices, to choose from adding life to conversations.

On the technical side, for training purposes, the chatbot has been shown billions of lines of text on the open web. This allows Pi to have conversations with users and answer a wide variety of questions, according to the company. Incidentally, the name Pi stands for personal intelligence and it offers infinite knowledge according to a user’s need.

Upon its launch, Pi was powered by Inflection’s proprietary LLM Inflection-1 which was trained on thousands of NVIDIA H100 GPUs on a very large data set.

Based on the evaluations, Inflection-1 was ranked the best model in its compute class outdoing the likes of GPT-3.5, LLaMA, and PaLM-540B on a wide range of benchmarks. In 2022, the company launched its new model Inflection-2, which was trained on 5,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs.

Inflection-2 outclassed Google’s flagship LLM PaLM 2 on various benchmarks including MMLU (massive multitask language understanding), TriviaQA (a realistic text-based question-answering dataset), HellaSwag & GSM8k. HellaSwag is a challenging dataset for evaluating common sense NLI (natural language interpretation) that is typically hard for state-of-the-art AI models. GSM8K stands for Grade School Math 8K and is a dataset of 8,500 high-quality grade school mathematical word problems that require multi-step reasoning.

• How is Inflection-2.5 different?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

????ChatGPT, but with a persona: Inflection AI unveils Pi chatbot, a ‘kind’ personal assistant

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