Important topics and their relevance in UPSC CSE exam for February 14, 2024. If you missed the February 13, 2024 UPSC CSE exam key from the Indian Express, read it here

THE WORLD

US Senate okays Ukraine aid Bill, but path ahead unclear

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Mains Examination: General Studies II: Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests, Indian diaspora.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story-The Democratic-led U.S. Senate on Tuesday passed a $95.34 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, although it faced an uncertain path ahead in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

• Why $95.34 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan?

• Why is Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan are important to the US?

• How does the US benefit from helping Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan?

• For Your Information-Ukraine leadership sees the funding as crucial as it continues to repel Russian attacks and tries to keep its battered economy going as the war nears its third year. U.S. President Joe Biden has been pushing Congress to pass more aid for Ukraine for months, but has faced opposition from Republican hardliners, particularly in the House. The House has not passed major assistance for Ukraine since Republicans took control of the chamber in January 2023. The Senate vote occurred before sunrise, after eight hardline Republican opponents of Ukraine aid held a marathon of speeches that dominated the chamber floor from Monday afternoon into the early hours on Tuesday. The package also includes funds for Israel, humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza and funds to help Taiwan and other U.S. partners in the Indo-Pacific stand up against China.

• What is the current status of the war between Russia and Ukraine?

• Russia Ukraine war and humanitarian tragedy-Know in detail

• What has been the US’s Response?

• What has been India’s Stand?

• How India can help to maintain ‘Peace’ in Ukraine-Russia Conflict?

• Indian stance on Ukraine-Analyse India’s Stand on Ukraine-Russia Conflict

• Role of United Nations in Ukraine-Russia Crisis-Analyse

• Ukraine-Russia War-Try to understand the changing dynamics in diplomatic relations and its impact on India

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

????Stopping the war

EXPLAINED

MSP issue: what govt committee set up in 2022 has done so far

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Economic and Social Development

Main Examination: General Studies III: Issues related to direct and indirect farm subsidies and minimum support prices

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story-A major demand of the farmers who broke through police barricades and braved tear gas on their way to Delhi on Tuesday (February 13) is for the enactment of a law to guarantee minimum support prices (MSP) for all crops, as per the formula recommended by the Dr M S Swaminathan Commission.

• Sanjay Agrawal committee-Know its key highlights

• What was the purpose of the committee?

• For Your Information-The committee, which was set up to “promote Zero budget based farming, to change crop pattern keeping in mind the changing needs of the country, and to make MSP more effective and transparent”, was notified by the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare on July 18, 2022. The committee, which has 26 members, is headed by Sanjay Agrawal, a former agriculture secretary.

Its other members are (i) NITI Aayog member (Agriculture) Ramesh Chand, (ii) two agricultural economists, (iii) an award-winning farmer, (iv) five representatives of farmers’ organisations other than the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), (v) two representatives of farmers’ cooperatives/ groups, (vi) one member of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), (vii) three persons from agricultural universities and institutions, (viii) five secretaries of the Government of India, (ix) four officers from four states, and (x) one joint secretary from the Agriculture Ministry.

Under the category of farmers’ representatives, the committee had three positions for members of the SKM, the umbrella body of farmers’ unions that had spearheaded the 2020-21 agitation, but they did not join the committee. The SKM has not joined the ongoing protest so far. The farmers currently marching to Delhi belong to the Kisan Mazdoor Morcha (KMM) and Samyukta Kisan Morcha (non-political), a breakaway faction of the SKM.

• Why farmers are protesting now?

• What do they want?

• ‘Legal guarantee of minimum support price (MSP) for all the crops’-Comment

• MSP (minimum support price) and effectiveness of MSP implementation-discuss

• Which are the Crops Covered under MSP?

• How MSP is calculated (paid out costs, labour etc.) and Crops covered under the MSP

• The Commission for Agricultural Costs & Prices (CACP)-Know in Detail

• The Commission for Agricultural Costs & Prices (CACP) and Minimum support prices (MSP)-Connect the dots

• How Government fix MSPs of crops before every planting season?

• What are the demands by Farmers in the context of MSP in the recent scenario?

• “Right to MSP”-is it possible to implement and if not, then what are the issues and Challenges?

• Kharif, Rabi crops, MSP and Doubling Farmers Income-How they are interconnected?

• Recommendation of Ashok Dalwai Committee and M. S. Swaminathan Committee on MSP-Key highlights

• What do you understand by the term ‘comprehensive cost of production of a crop’?

• Demand for legal guarantee for MSP-Pros and Cons

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

????Explained: What is minimum support price (MSP), and how is it fixed?

????The 360° UPSC Debate | Should Minimum Support Prices Be Made A Legal Right?

High in sky, a new-gen eye

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance

Main 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-Last week, the Bengaluru-based National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) successfully flew a prototype of a new-generation unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is being seen as a huge technology breakthrough. It was no ordinary UAV. This one can fly at great heights, about 20 km from ground, runs entirely on solar power, and can remain in the air for months on end. Such UAVs belong to a class of flying objects called HAPS, or high-altitude pseudo-satellite vehicles, or HALE, that is high-altitude long-endurance vehicles.

• What are unmanned aerial vehicles?

• Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)-Know in detail

• What is high-altitude pseudo-satellite vehicles, or HALE?

• What is the primary utility of HAPS vehicles?

• What is the need for such UAVs?

• Do You Know-The primary utility of HAPS vehicles is in the field of surveillance and monitoring, but there are other situations, like disaster management, wherein it can be very useful. HAPS technology is still under development. Several countries, and companies, have developed and flown such vehicles with encouraging success, but none has mastered the technology yet. The world record for a vehicle of this class is held by the Airbus-manufactured Zephyr, which flew continuously for 64 days in August 2022 before crashing.

The prototype tested by NAL last week spent eight and a half hours in the air. Next month, NAL, a unit of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), plans to keep it in flight for at least 24 hours. The full-scale machine that NAL is trying to build, by 2027, would be aiming to remain in the air for 90 days at a stretch.

The kind of jobs that HAPS are meant to do are currently done by UAVs and satellites, but both have certain limitations. The normal UAVs, or drones as they are commonly called, are mostly battery-powered and cannot remain in the air beyond a few hours. Continuous monitoring is not something these can do very effectively. In addition, they fly at relatively low levels, because of which their vision is restricted to small areas.

Satellites can observe much larger areas, but the ones in low-earth orbits are continuously moving with respect to Earth. They cannot be constantly keeping an eye on the target area. Geostationary satellites, located at a height of about 36,000 km above the ground, can keep a constant gaze over one area. But these are fairly expensive, and once deployed, cannot be repurposed or reoriented. HAPS are meant to overcome all these shortcomings, and do more.

“These stratospheric vehicles (flying about 20 km above the ground) are designed to loiter over a region. By standards of flying objects, and in comparison to UAVs for example, they move really slow, at just about 80-100 km per hour. That kind of slow speed 20 km above the ground means that objects on the ground pretty much don’t move for it. You can easily keep an eye over 200 sq km of area. In fact, you can observe everything even over a 400 sq km area with a five metre resolution. If you want to focus only at one sq km, for example, you can get a resolution as high as 15 cm,” said Dr L Venkatakrishnan, chief scientist and head of Experimental Aerodynamics Division at NAL, who is leading the development of HAPS.

“HAPS can be a very powerful solution for this kind of work. They work like geostationary satellites but with added flexibility. They can be easily redeployed over another location, or can be reequipped with a different payload, something that is not possible with a geostationary satellite,” Venkatakrishnan said.

• What are the engineering challenges of HAPS?

• India and the HAPS-Connect the dots

• For Your Information-For India, HAPS is another technology area where it is entering the race at a relatively early stage. In the last few years, there has been great emphasis on promoting research in emerging technologies, so that the country is not dependent on others for critical technologies of the future. Joining technology development at an early stage also results in capacity building, early adoption of technologies, control over patents, business opportunities and spin-off technologies.

Venkatakrishnan said India had moved into HAPS technology development at the right time, and the successful test flight showed that it had capabilities similar to some of the other countries trying to develop this technology. “We are not playing catch-up. We are not the leaders, for sure, at this moment, but we can confidently say that we have lead runners firmly in sight. We are very much in the race,” he said. “For example, none of the advanced HAPS options, including Zephyr, has flown in tropical areas, which offer a much bigger challenge, because of the presence of jet streams in upper atmosphere. We probably have an advantage here,” he said.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

????Meet HAPS: India’s very own UAV that can fly 20 km high and float for months

What Did Trump Say About NATO Funding And What Is Article 5?

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-Former US President Donald Trump raised a storm of criticism from the White House and top Western officials for suggesting he would not defend NATO allies who failed to spend enough on defence and would even encourage Russia to attack them.

• What is NATO?

• What did Trump say about NATO?

• North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-Know the historical background and current Status

• What are the origins of NATO?

• How is NATO funded?

• How many NATO members meet the defence spending target?

• What is important about NATO’s collective defence?

• What is Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty (Collective Security)?

• What is Article 4 of NATO’s Founding Treaty?

• Do You Know-Founded in 1949 to counter the Soviet Union with Cold War tensions rising, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a political and military alliance of countries from North America and Europe. Enshrined in Article 5 of its founding treaty is the principle of collective defence – the idea that an attack on one member is considered an attack on all of them.

NATO takes decisions by consensus but the political and military strength of the United States means that it is by far the most powerful country in the alliance, with its nuclear arsenal seen as the ultimate security guarantee. NATO currently has 31 members – most of them European nations, plus the United States and Canada.

The newest member is Finland, which joined last April in reaction to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Sweden applied to join along with Finland but is waiting for Hungary to ratify its application as the final major step before membership. During the Cold War, NATO’s main focus was protecting Western Europe from the Soviet Union. After the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO expanded to take in former communist bloc countries from Central and Eastern Europe. NATO’s members range from large countries such as Britain, France, Germany and Turkey to small nations such as Iceland and Montenegro.

According to NATO estimates from July last year, 11 members were expected to meet the 2% target in 2023. Those members were Poland, the United States, Greece, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Romania, Hungary, Latvia, Britain and Slovakia. Germany, Europe’s economic heavyweight, was estimated at 1.57%. But German officials have said they expect to meet the 2% target this year, partly thanks to a special 100-billion-euro fund established in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The lowest spenders as a share of national GDP were Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg, according to the NATO figures. NATO is expected to release updated figures in the coming days that will show more allies meeting the 2% target, according to people familiar with the data. In Article 5 of the founding treaty, NATO members declared that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America “shall be considered an attack against them all”. They agreed they would “assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force”.

However, Article 5 stops short of a commitment to an automatic military response to help an ally under attack. That means the strength of Article 5 depends on clear statements from political leaders that it will be backed up by action. This is one reason Trump’s comments caused such a furore, particularly as they came at a time of heightened alarm in NATO about Russia’s intentions, following its invasion of Ukraine. By suggesting he would not take military action to defend an ally, Trump undermined the assumptions that give Article 5 its power. “Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the U.S., and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Sunday.

• Why India never joined North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

????Everyday Global: What is NATO, and why is Russia so insecure about Ukraine joining the US-led alliance?

FRONT PAGE

India, UAE ink pacts on linking digital payment platforms, trade, energy

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Economic and Social Development

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

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story-AS PRIME Minister Narendra Modi met UAE’s President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, India and the UAE signed pacts on bilateral investment promotion, port infrastructure development, power trade, interlinking of digital payment platforms like the UPI, credit and debit cards, and an intergovernmental framework agreement on the India-Middle East Economic Corridor.

• India and UAE-Know the historical background

• India-UAE Economic Relations-Key Points

• What is the Economic Significance of the UAE for India?

• India and the UAE diplomatic relations established when?

• For Your Information-The India-UAE partnership was forged first on the trade of traditional items, and then strengthened with oil. It found a formal dimension after the creation of the UAE Federation in 1971, and then accelerated in the 1990s, when a liberalised India embraced the opportunity to export to the UAE and markets beyond. The emergence of the UAE as India’s third-largest trading partner has only underlined the positive outlook the two countries share towards economic cooperation.

• What is India’s Middle East policy?

• ‘During his two-day visit to UAE, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the BAPS Swaminarayan temple in Abu Dhabi, the first Hindu temple in the Gulf nation’-What is BAPS?

• How did the demand for such a temple come up? Does Abu Dhabi have a big Swaminarayan community?

• What are the features of the temple?

• What are the key architectural features?

• What is the significance of the temple?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

????An Arabian Valentine

????India-UAE, a decade of successful engagement

????Rajasthan stone, Ganga waters: Abu Dhabi temple steeped in symbolism

ECONOMY

‘India susceptible to trade disputes without permanent solution for food security’

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 interest

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story-India will be susceptible to trade disputes at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and face increased push back over food subsidies if it fails to achieve a permanent solution on public stockholding for food grains at the 13th ministerial conference in Abu Dhabi later this month, according to senior trade experts and former negotiators.

• What is the WTO and the Ministerial Conference?

• For Your Information-The World Trade Organization is the only international organization that deals with the rules of trade between countries. Founded in 1995, the WTO is run by its 164 members, and according to its rules, all decisions are taken through consensus and any member can exercise a veto.

Its aim is to promote free trade, which is done through trade agreements that are discussed and signed by the member states. The WTO also provides a forum for countries to negotiate trade rules and settle economic disputes between them. The Ministerial Conference is the WTO’s top decision-making body and usually meets every two years. All members of the WTO are involved in the MC and they can take decisions on all matters covered under any multilateral trade agreements.

• “The public stockpiling of food grain is the longest pending issue”-Why?

• What is India’s stand?

• ‘Peace clause’ agreed during the Bali ministerial in 2013-What was that?

• Dispute settlement mechanism (DSM)-what you about the same?

• What happened in the 12th WTO ministerial meeting?

• “A permanent solution at WTO will give India and a coalition of developing countries the flexibility to give out higher farm support”-Analyse

• “Giving out higher farm support could land India into legal disputes at WTO on account of distorting global trade”-Discuss

• Why India is very keen on a permanent solution?

• For Your Information-A permanent solution at WTO will give India and a coalition of developing countries the flexibility to give out higher farm support. This assumes special significance as farmers are holding yet again protests in the national capital seeking a law to guarantee minimum support price (MSP) for all crops. Several farmers groups have long held the opinion that India should walk out of WTO.

However, giving out higher farm support could land India into legal disputes at WTO on account of distorting global trade. India is already facing pushback from the Cairns Group — a group of agricultural exporting countries that include Australia, Brazil and Canada who claim that India’s public stockholding (PSH) programme is highly subsidised, especially for rice, and that this is affecting food security of other countries.

“The main reason why India is very keen on a permanent solution is that some of the provisions in the peace clause are ambiguous. So we don’t know how those provisions will be interpreted by a WTO panel. That creates uncertainty and unpredictability for us. Our invoking the peace clause from 2020 onwards has been subjected to detailed questioning by many countries. The objective is to make the peace clause more restrictive,” Abhijit Das, expert on international trade and former head, Centre for WTO Studies said.

India has invoked the ‘peace clause’ several times at the WTO for breaching the prescribed 10 per cent subsidy ceiling on rice procurement. India’s subsidy on rice had exceeded the threshold on multiple occasions forcing it to invoke the ‘peace clause’ agreed during the Bali ministerial in 2013 which allows developing countries to breach the 10 per cent ceiling without invoking legal action by members.

“Cairns Group is also pushing all countries to cut agriculture support by 50 per cent by 2030 which will result in countries such as India making huge sacrifices compared to developed countries,” Das said. He added if a scheme was not existing in 2013 then that can be implemented but the products benefiting for the scheme cannot exceed the 10 per cent subsidy ceiling. This means that for those products, the peace clause will not be applicable.

“The peace clause says that you are distorting trade due to your subsidies but nobody will sue you provided you meet certain conditions. The conditions include that a country should not hurt the food security of other countries or be trade distorting. These conditions are vague in nature and that is why India can be taken to dispute. This is the reason why India and other developing nations are pushing for a permanent solution,” Ranja Sengupta, Senior Researcher with the non-profit international research body Third World Network (TWN) said on Thursday.

Government officials had earlier said that India will not discuss any other issues on agriculture as long as the issue of permanent solution is not resolved. Developed and developing nations continue to differ on the subject of domestic support for farmers so much so that the WTO Director-General, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in November last year said that ongoing agriculture negotiations have “failed to achieve” the progress WTO members have called for.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

????How to restore WTO’s authority

For any queries and feedback, contact priya.shukla@indianexpress.com The Indian Express UPSC Key is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel and stay updated with the latest Updates.