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The Taiwan-based Hon Hai Technology Group, better known as Foxconn, on Monday pulled out of a $19.5-billion semiconductor joint venture with the Vedanta Group to “explore more diverse development opportunities”.
Under the joint venture, the two firms were to invest in a semiconductor fabrication plant in Gujarat, which would make 28 nanometre semiconductors.
In order to explore more diverse development opportunities, according to mutual agreement, Foxconn has determined it will not move forward on the joint venture with Vedanta,” the company said in a statement.
States
Madras HC to quash criminal cases against minor boys for consensual relationships with minor girls (Page no. 4)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
The Madras High Court has decided to quash criminal cases registered against minor boys for having consensual relationships with, or having eloped with, minor girls, if it finds that these cases would harm the interest and the future of the children involved, besides being an abuse of the process of court or of law.
Justices N. Anand Venkatesh and Sunder Mohan have also decided to put an end to the two-finger test conducted on victims of sexual offences and the archaic potency test conducted on the suspects by collecting their sperm.
The judges have directed the police to come up with a standard operating procedure to conduct a potency test by merely collecting blood samples.
The interim orders were passed on a habeas corpus petition filed in 2022 with respect to a missing minor girl in Cuddalore district.
After finding it to be a case of elopement, the judges recorded the submission of the police that they had already filed a closure report before the Juvenile Justice Board after finding that no offence had been committed.
However, when the judges’ attention was drawn to a similar case of two minor children having eloped from Dharmapuri district to Chennai, where they had rented a house, the Bench found that the personnel of an All-Women Police Station had registered a case against the minor boy under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012.
Further, a Block Development Officer (BDO) had taken away the minor girl and lodged her in a private home for over a month. She was not allowed to go with her parents despite being pregnant.
The minor boy, too, was detained at a ‘place of safety’, as defined under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act of 2015, for nearly 20 days.
Pointing out that the boy and the girl involved in such incidents would fall under the definition of the term, ‘child’ (any person below the age of 18), as defined under the POCSO Act, the judges expressed shock at the police having treated the minor girl in the case as a victim, and the minor boy as a child in conflict with the law.
Editorial
AI’s disruptive economic impact, an India check (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Little did we know that beyond the automated factory machines, self-driving cars, and robocops, Artificial Intelligence (AI) would one day crash into our lives, authoring poems, tipping us with pickup lines, and passing the toughest examinations.
The recent rise of Large Language Models and Generative AI has sparked more interest in the progress of AI across the globe. ChatGPT was running with its servers crammed for months, and Twitter feeds were filled with quirky ChatGPT quotes followed by threads shedding light on the versatile application of such chatbots.
Ethical debates on the use of generative AI have subsided in the realisation that users will have a ‘productivity-powered’ upper hand over a non-user.
The subjects of worker replacements and economic growth with the rise of AI have entered the spiral that the Internet once went through.
There is broad consensus on increasing productivity by adopting AI in producing goods and services. In a study called “Generative AI at Work” (involving over 5,000 customer support agents in the Philippines), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) economists showed that AI tools boosted worker productivity by 14% and improved consumer satisfaction, leading to better treatment of customer service agents and increased employee retention.
Experts suggest that generative AI may not replace employees, but employees using generative AI will replace those who do not upskill.
A recent survey among employees of LinkedIn’s top 50 companies in the United States shows that almost 70% of them found AI helping them to be faster, smarter, and more productive.
Another 32% were of the opinion that while AI’s current impact may be modest, they anticipate larger gains over the next five years.
Professor Erik Brynjolfsson of the MIT suggests that restructuring business processes and increased investments are essential to fully leverage AI’s productivity potential.
Women’s reproductive autonomy as the new catchword (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The theme of this year’s World Population Day, i.e., ‘Unleashing the power of gender equality: Uplifting the voices of women and girls to unlock our world’s infinite possibilities’, could not be more apt for India.
When we unlock the full potential of women and girls, encouraging and nurturing their desires for their families and themselves, we galvanise half the leadership, ideas, innovation, and creativity available to societies.
In India, the world’s most populous nation, the template for women-led development, be it in science, technology, agriculture, education or health care, must also include reproductive autonomy at its core.
For far too long the world has been obsessed with population numbers and targets. Instead of ensuring reproductive autonomy for each woman, we are obsessed with total fertility rates; instead of ensuring that family planning services reach all those who want it, we are obsessed with what the ideal population size of a family, a community, a country and even the world ought to be. It is important to understand that there are no ideal numbers or figures.
Population stability comes when reproductive and sexual health decisions are free of discrimination, coercion and violence, that reproductive and sexual health services are affordable, acceptable, accessible and of high quality, and that women and couples are supported to have the number of children they want, when they want them.
On World Population Day (July 11), India deserves to be commended for its family planning initiatives, where despite the many challenges, the aim is to provide an increasingly comprehensive package of reproductive health services to every potential beneficiary — with a focus on the provision of modern short and long-acting reversible contraceptives, permanent methods, information, counselling, and services, including emergency contraception.
Opinion
Don’t waste the wastewater (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, Economy)
John Snow, a physician in London, found himself in the middle of a devastating cholera outbreak in 1854. In a painstaking investigation in the densely populated Soho district, he traced the source of the epidemic to a contaminated water pump on Broad Street, before knowledge of the causative organism. The epidemic subsided when the pump handle was subsequently removed.
This hypothetical scenario is now a tangible reality. A recently published study in The Lancet Global Health reiterated the promise of using wastewater for public health surveillance.
This strategy, originally proposed more than 80 years ago to monitor the spread of poliovirus within communities, played a role in confirming India’s victory over poliovirus. It gained fresh relevance during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it was identified as an approach for tracking the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
Wastewater surveillance for known or new health threats offers many benefits for enhancing public health efforts. It is a cost-effective approach that does not rely on invasive samples from individuals with clinical symptoms.
While our public health surveillance system has improved in recent years, it still faces many implementation challenges. For instance, according to a recent report by Niti Aayog, the system grapples with issues like uneven coverage and siloed disease-specific efforts.
Incorporating wastewater surveillance will not fix these issues, but it could help reduce the reliance on any one source of data.
In practical terms, wastewater surveillance in India could involve systematic sampling and analysis of samples from varied sources such as wastewater ponds in rural areas and centralised sewage systems in urban localities.
These samples would undergo testing at designated laboratories to identify markers of disease-causing agents, such as genetic fragments of bacteria or viruses.
These data could be compiled together with other source of health data to provide real-time insights into community-level disease patterns, sometimes earlier than clinical data.
Explainer
The Global South, origins and significance (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The unwillingness of many leading countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to stand with NATO over the war in Ukraine has brought to the fore once again the term “Global South.”
But what is meant by that term, and why has it gained currency in recent years? The Global South refers to various countries around the world that are sometimes described as ‘developing’, ‘less developed’ or ‘underdeveloped’.
Many of these countries — although by no means all — are in the Southern Hemisphere, largely in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
In general, they are poorer, have higher levels of income inequality and suffer lower life expectancy and harsher living conditions than countries in the “Global North” — that is, richer nations that are located mostly in North America and Europe, with some additions in Oceania and elsewhere.
The term Global South appears to have been first used in 1969 by political activist Carl Oglesby. Writing in the liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal, Oglesby argued that the war in Vietnam was the culmination of a history of northern “dominance over the global south.”
But it was only after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union — which marked the end of the so-called “Second World” — that the term gained momentum.
Until then, the more common term for developing nations — countries that had yet to industrialise fully — was ‘Third World’.
That term was coined by Alfred Sauvy in 1952, in an analogy with France’s historical three estates: the nobility, the clergy and the bourgeoisie.
The term ‘First World’ referred to the advanced capitalist nations; the ‘Second World’, to the socialist nations led by the Soviet Union; and the ‘Third World’, to developing nations, many at the time still under the colonial yoke.
Text
The need for strengthening palliative care in the face of non-communicable diseases (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
India is home to nearly 20% of the world’s population, two-thirds of which reside in rural areas. Apart from a rising population, India has experienced a steep rise in the burden of lifestyle-related non-communicable diseases.
Nearly 1.4 million people are diagnosed with cancer in India every year while diabetes, hypertension, and respiratory diseases are also on the rise. All these diseases need palliative care sooner or later in the disease trajectory.
Palliative care is the branch of medicine focusing on improving the quality of life and preventing suffering among those with life-limiting illnesses.
It aims to identify patients at risk of over-medicalisation at the expense of quality of life and financial burden on the family. It is often misinterpreted as end-of-life care.
However, palliative care aims to improve the quality of life by addressing the physical, psychological, spiritual, and social domains of the health of people suffering from life-limiting diseases like heart failure, kidney failure, certain neurological diseases, cancer, etc.
According to Vandana Mahajan, a palliative care counsellor in Delhi, a palliative care team supports the affected families in a way that focuses on the person as a whole, not just the disease.
Palliative care in India has largely been available at tertiary healthcare facilities in urban areas. Due to skewed availability of services, it is accessible to only 1-2% of the estimated 7-10 million people who require it in the country.
According to Aju Mathew, a medical oncologist from Kerala, as many as 7 out of the 10 patients he sees daily need palliative care.
News
Centre instructs Manipur, Mizoram to record biometrics of ‘illegal migrants’ by September (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Internal Security)
Days before ethnic violence erupted in Manipur, the Union Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla had asked the State governments of Manipur and Mizoram to capture the “biographic and biometric details of illegal migrants”. The biometric information will include retina, iris and fingerprint scans.
Mr. Bhalla chaired a meeting on collating information pertaining to illegal migrants in the two States, which share a border with Myanmar.
Ethnic violence between the Meitei and Kuki communities erupted in Manipur on May 3, leading to the killing of more than 140 people and internal displacement of over 54,000 people.
After a military coup in Myanmar in February 2021, over 40,000 refugees from the neighbouring country have taken shelter in Mizoram and around 4,000 refugees are said to have entered Manipur.
The refugees belonging to the Kuki-Chin-Zo ethnic group comprising the Lai, Tidim-Zomi, Lusei and Hualngo tribes are closely related to the communities in Mizoram and Manipur.
India and Myanmar share a 1,643-km border and people on either side have familial ties. The Mizoram government arranged relief camps for the refugees.
Dilution of Article 370 led to unprecedented era of peace in J&K, Centre informs SC (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The Centre filed a fresh affidavit in the Supreme Court claiming that Jammu and Kashmir is witnessing an “unprecedented era of peace, progress and prosperity” after the dilution of Article 370 in 2019.
The affidavit has been filed a day before a Constitution Bench is scheduled to hear a series of petitions challenging the dilution of Article 370, which deprived Jammu and Kashmir of its special privileges and led to the bifurcation of the State in 2019.
Life has returned to normalcy in the region after over three decades of turmoil,” the Home Ministry announced in the 20-page affidavit.
The Ministry said the “street violence”, which was engineered by terrorists and secessionist networks, had become a “thing of the past”.
Organised stone-throwing incidents, linked to the terrorism-separatist agenda, had come down from 1,767 in 2018 to zero in 2023, the Centre said.
Bandhs and hartals had also become a distant memory. “Resolute anti-terror actions” had dismantled the “terror ecosystem” which led to a significant drop in terror recruitment from 199 in 2018 to 12 in 2023 till date. The government said it had “encouraged policies to mainstream youth” to “wean them away from militancy”.
Import of urea may ease by 2025, alternative forms will replace it, says Mandaviya (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers Manukh Mandaviya says a special package estimated at ₹3.7 lakh crore for farmers have to be brought in as the use of fertilizers has become unbalanced in the country.
The balance of the soil has been damaged and production has become saturated as a result. Soil health, human health, animal health, and environmental health are connected with one another. To promote one health package, we brought this scheme.
Mr. Mandaviya, however, said the Centre is in no hurry to shift to natural farming. “Overuse of fertilizers, according to a study, resulted in a 16% decrease in production in Punjab despite a 10% increase in the use of fertilizers in the State during the same period. This is leading to the deterioration of soil health over a period of time.
It is clear that balanced use of fertilizers is needed for steady production, food security, and for helping farmers too. He mentioned that there is no move to stop the consumption of chemical fertilizers completely.
“The country is moving towards natural farming and organic farming, step by step. We cannot go to organic farming suddenly which could lead to a Sri Lanka-like situation.
Our attempt is to end import dependence on urea by 2025 and replace it with nano urea and other alternative forms of urea,” Mr. Mandaviya said. Nano urea too will not fully replace conventional urea.
Rafales, Scorpenes and jet engine development on the agenda of PM’s France trip (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Paris later this week as chief guest at the Bastille Day parade, deals for Rafale-M fighters and three more Scorpene-class submarines for the Navy and co-development of a fighter jet engine are on the agenda.
Ahead of this, the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) is expected to hold a crucial meet in the next couple of days where it is likely to take a call on the procurement of 26 Rafale-M fighters for the Navy’s aircraft carriers and the proposal for additional Scorpene submarines that is in the pipeline.
The Rafale-M proposal has been cleared by the Defence Procurement Board (DPB) for the Navy’s carrier jet race in which Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet has also competed.
The DPB decision clears the process for the case to be put for a decision by the DAC, the highest decision-making body in the Defence Ministry.
There is still a long process which includes price negotiations and in the final step, it goes to the Cabinet Committee on Security for approval before the deal can be signed.
World
Solomon Islands and China sign deals on police, economy, tech (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Leaders of the Solomon Islands and China promised to expand relations that have fuelled unease in Washington and Australia about Beijing’s influence in the South Pacific.
Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare met Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the country’s No. 2 leader, Premier Li Qiang. Mr. Sogavare and Mr. Li presided over the signing of agreements on police, economic and technical cooperation.
The Solomon Islands, 2,000 kilometres northeast of Australia, has been China’s biggest success in a campaign to expand its presence in the South Pacific.
Mr. Sogavare’s government switched official recognition in 2019 to Beijing from Taiwan, the self-governed island democracy claimed by the mainland’s ruling Communist Party as part of its territory.
The Solomon Islands signed a secretive security agreement with Beijing that might have allowed Chinese military forces in the South Pacific. However, Mr. Sogavare rejected suggestions his government might give Beijing a foothold in the region.
Business
FPIs not having to disclose final owner is challenge in Adani-Hindenburg case: SEBI (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on Monday informed the Supreme Court that the “challenge” to its enquiry into the Hindenburg-Adani allegations case lay in the fact that the requirement to disclose the “last natural person” or the ultimate owner of Foreign Portfolio Investors remains non-existent.
The markets regulator clarified that, unlike what the Supreme Court-appointed Justice A.M. Sapre expert committee had concluded in its 173-page report in May, the essential “challenge” to the SEBI enquiry did not emanate from the repeal of the “opaque structure” provisions from the Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPI) Regulations in 2019. SEBI also denied the committee’s conclusion that securities’ violations have “sky-rocketed”.
In its May report, the Justice Sapre committee had said the regulator drew a blank in its investigation into the Hindenburg allegations against the Adani group.
The committee had found the SEBI in a “chicken-and-egg situation” in its investigation into the “ownership” of 13 overseas entities, including 12 FPIs.
But the regulator identified its difficulties to the existence of thresholds for determination of beneficial owners (BO) of these FPIs.
In addition, the SEBI said, the core problem lay in the fact that there had never been any requirement to disclose the “last natural person above every person” owning economic interest in the FPI.