Whatsapp 93125-11015 For Details
India’s digital public infrastructure (DPI), loosely the India Stack and more, is a marvel of our times, shaped in a unique partnership between governments (Union and States), regulators, the private sector, selfless volunteers, startups, and academia/think tanks.
Engendering sustained collective action at scale between so many disparate entities itself is magical and the outcomes are India’s answer to Web 3, perhaps even superior in many ways.
Much has been spoken and written about India’s DPIs, and as such, this article does not seek to repeat all of that, but instead about what is coming next, and who is driving it.
What began as a foundation with Aadhaar created by Nandan Nilekani and R.S. Sharma in 2009 has led to many more Lego blocks, coming on top of it, and on its side, to create a superstructure which delivers consistent, affordable, and across-the-board value to citizens, government and the corporate sector — wherever it gets used imaginatively.
The rebirth of Aadhaar happened in 2014 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave it a canvas far wider and bigger than what was originally envisaged, and enabled it to become the rocket ship to launch good governance on. Today, over 1,700 Union and States government schemes ride atop it.
The judgment of the Supreme Court of India had affirmed privacy to be sacrosanct, and led to an unintended slowdown of the opening of Aadhaar to the private sector to unlock its value even further.
The rapid adoption and attendant visible ease of doing business in day-to-day transactions for citizens, has now led to a gradual opening of Aadhaar, beginning with voluntary usage, for various private sector applications.
Aadhaar holders can voluntarily use their Aadhaar for private sector purposes, and private sector entities need not seek special permission for such usage.
Also, between government departments (intra- and inter-State) Aadhaar data can be shared, but with the prior informed consent of the citizen.
Banks and other regulated entities can store Aadhaar numbers as long as they protect it using vault and other similar means, as in Unique Identification Authority of India security regulations. A new private sector-friendly UIDAI is racing ahead to incentivise Aadhaar usage, to become richer and more meaningful.
Explainer
Understanding the Russia-Belarus nexus (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
In the latest escalation to the Russia-Ukraine war, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced last Saturday that Russia plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. Tactical nuclear weapons refer to small nuclear warheads and delivery systems meant for use on the battlefield or for limited strikes.
Mr. Putin said the announcement was prompted by the U.K.’s decision last week to supply armour-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium to Ukraine.
Depleted uranium munitions augment the ability to overcome defences on tanks and have been described by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as “chemically and radiologically toxic heavy metal”.
Russia claims that the positioning of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus by Russia does not violate any international agreements that Moscow has signed because the control over the weapons would remain with Russia just as the U.S. retains control over its nuclear weapons on its allies’ territories.
Moreover, there have been no arms control agreements between the U.S. and Russia on tactical nuclear weapons unlike in the case of strategic nuclear weapons.
As Mr. Putin has said, “The U.S. has been doing this for decades. They have long placed their tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of their allies”, referring to U.S. nuclear weapons stationed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey.
Interestingly, the announcement contradicts the joint statement made by Mr. Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping last week where they asked nuclear states to refrain from deploying nuclear weapons abroad.
Russia has already helped Belarus upgrade its warplanes so that they can carry nuclear weapons. It is for the first time ever that Russia is deploying nuclear weapons outside its borders. Stationing such weapons in Belarus will enable Russia to carry out strikes easier and faster.
How to manage India’s solar PV waste problem? (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
There has in the last few years been a concerted push from policymakers in India to transition to a circular economy and to, among other things, enable effective waste management. But waste management in the solar photovoltaic (PV) sector still lacks clear directives.
Globally, India has the world’s fourth highest solar PV deployment. The installed solar capacity was nearly 62GW in November 2022.
This augurs a colossal amount of solar PV waste. According to a 2016 report by the International Renewable Energy Agency, India could generate 50,000-3,25,000 tonnes of PV waste by 2030 and more than four million tonnes by 2050.
India’s solar PV installations are dominated by crystalline silicon (c-Si) technology. A typical PV panel is made of c-Si modules (93%) and cadmium telluride thin-film modules (7%).
A c-Si module mainly consists of a glass sheet, an aluminium frame, an encapsulant, a backsheet, copper wires, and silicon wafers. Silver, tin, and lead are used to make c-Si modules. The thin-film module is made of glass, encapsulant, and compound semiconductors.
As these panels near expiration, some portions of the frame are extracted and sold as scrap; junctions and cables are recycled according to e-waste guidelines; the glass laminate is partly recycled; and the rest is disposed of as general waste.
Silicon and silver can be extracted by burning the module in cement furnaces. According to a 2021 report, approximately 50% of the total materials can be recovered.
India’s challenge is the growing informal handling of PV waste. Only about 20% of the waste is recovered in general; the rest is treated informally.
As a result, the waste often accumulates at landfills, which pollute the surroundings. Incinerating the encapsulant also releases sulphur dioxide, hydrogen fluoride, and hydrogen cyanide into the atmosphere.
Text & Context
How caste discrimination permeates the language of meritocracy on campus (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 1, Social Issues)
“People think casteism only comes in the form of beatings or open abuse, but nowadays, it also comes in the form of subtle gestures,” Dr. Lakshmanan, an associate professor at the Madras Institute for Development Studies, tells me while discussing the nature of caste discrimination in higher education institutions.
N. Sukumar too writes about the diverse manifestations of caste discrimination in his book, Caste Discrimination and Exclusion in Indian Universities: A Critical Reflection.
He documents how professors threaten to cut Dalit students’ attendance and coerce them into doing domestic chores, among many other practices that cannot always be proven to be caste discrimination.
This invisibility frequently creates silos of suffering, in which Dalit students are gaslit into thinking that their struggles are unreal, and that these institutions are too modern for something as regressive as casteism to exist within their walls. Collectivity is snatched, and caste-based structural inequalities are disguised as individual, subjective experiences.
Higher education institutions are frequently portrayed as being immune to caste. Upper-caste students and faculty are assumed to be casteless by virtue of their modernity.
But casteism has also reinvented itself, in large part through the language of meritocracy. The social logic of merit is arranged in a way that the same groups of people benefit from it that are already empowered by the caste system.
In her book The Caste of Merit, an ethnographic study of IIT Madras, Ajantha Subramanian writes that the relationship between individual merit and caste networks often go unnoticed.
In this context, she writes, opening up institutions such as IITs is met with opposition not in the name of caste, but in the name of preserving merit. Merit offers caste a new path, because of which caste is only seen through reservations while the privilege that dominant castes possess is unrecognised as capital.
In his recently published These Seats are Reserved, advocate Abhinav Chandrachud describes reservations as unique legal provisions that emerged out of India’s social context. He traces the history of the need for reservations and the social life of these legal provisions.
He notes that the opposition to reservations in the Indian Constituent Assembly was primarily on two grounds: first, that it works against efficiency, and second, that it was regressive to claim that caste still exists in a free, modern nation.
News
Army to get satellite, will help provide mission-critical data (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has signed three contracts worth ₹5,400 crore — two with Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) worth ₹2,400 crore for procurement of Automated Air Defence Control and Reporting System ‘Project Akashteer’ for the Army and Sarang Electronic Support Measure (ESM) systems for the Navy.
Another ₹2,963-crore contract is with NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), a Central Public Sector Enterprise under the Department of Space, for an advanced communication satellite, GSAT 7B, for the Army.
The geostationary satellite, being a first-of-its-kind in the five-tonne category, will be developed indigenously by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
The satellite will considerably enhance the communication capability of the Indian Army by providing mission critical beyond line of sight communication to troops and formations as well as weapon and airborne platforms.