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The multi-train collision in Balasore on June 2, allegedly caused by tampering of signalling equipment, may have led the Railways to think of speeding up the overhaul of signalling systems at all stations, but the current plan still has a time horizon of six years.
The overhaul involves converting the system from conventional relay interlocking to electronic interlocking technology, which is harder to tamper with.
In the 12 years since the electronic interlocking technology was introduced in the country, less than 40% of the 7,325 railway stations have made the switch.
After a recent high-level meeting on increasing the pace of the revamp, held in the aftermath of the Balasore accident, top Ministry officials told that they aimed to overhaul the remaining stations in about six years.
However, even this timeline may be challenging, given the capacity constraints of the companies manufacturing and setting up the new systems. Representatives of these firms attended the high-level meeting.
Depending on a station’s size, the cost of revamping ranges between ₹5 crore and ₹20 crore. Entire sections of railway track need to be shut down for the work.
The system can be overhauled in not more than 500 stations each year. With work pending in 4,437 stations as on December 2022, by the latest figures available, the six-year goal set by officials may be too ambitious.
The Balasore accident occurred due to manual tampering of signalling equipment involving multiple copper wires. A top Ministry official said the revamp would involve replacing the copper cables, used in electromechanical systems, with optical fibre, used in completely electronic systems.
While copper cables are used for electricity to pass through it with ease, optical fibres transmit light signals over long distances, eliminating the need for manual handling at multiple points.
Another Ministry official confirmed that the overhaul would involve installing computer chip-based controls known as “solid state point object controllers”, which would substantially reduce the risk of accidents similar to the one in Balasore.
States
Telangana to give ₹1 lakh assistance to minorities with 100% subsidy (Page no. 5)
(GS Paper 2, Social Justice)
The Telangana government has decided to provide ₹1 lakh financial assistance with 100% subsidy to minorities on the lines of a scheme for the backward classes. This is a one-time grant extended to the beneficiary to take up any income-generating activity.
Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao took a decision to this effect and the State government has issued orders on extending financial assistance to minorities on Sunday.
Minorities Welfare secretary Syed Omar Jaleel said applications that were received in the financial year 2022-23, but which were pending, would be considered for the current financial year for sanction of 100% direct subsidy.
Fresh applications would be called for from Christian applicants and the scheme would be executed through the Telangana State Minorities Finance Corporation. The subsidy would be applicable to one beneficiary from each family that is covered under the scheme.
Selection of the beneficiaries would be completed by the district level monitoring committee/district level screening-cum- selection committee headed by the district collector.
The district collectors should take the approval of the district in-charge minister for the district as a whole and the list of selected beneficiaries should be displayed in the TSMFC website.
Announcing the scheme, the CM the government’s commitment to work for poverty alleviation cutting across caste and religious lines. The government had launched several schemes in the interest of different communities.
It was committed to ensure the development of minority communities on education, employment and other sectors. The schemes launched by the Government to continue the “Ganga Jamuna Tehjeeb” were yielding fruitful results and their effective implementation would continue in future too.
Editorial
Dilemmas of India’s great power ambitions (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
There are those who argue that India should aspire to be a great power and assert its growing power internationally; others argue that India should focus on the uplift of millions of its people above the poverty line, improve governance and reconcile within the country before venturing into making a better world.
Notwithstanding the (equally faulty) hyper-nationalist and deeply-pessimistic narratives, the story of the rise of India, and the attendant challenges, must be proactively and critically engaged — for the kind of power India would become will not only define the future of the world in important ways, but, most definitely, shape the destiny of its 1.4 billion (and growing) citizens.
Ignoring or dismissing the global consequences of a rising India’s power is unwise, but doing so without being rooted in the realities of the country’s inherent limitations would be a strategic blunder.
Let us start with the India of 1991 — a weak, poor, and deeply beleaguered country with a foreign exchange reserve of $5.8 billion and a nominal GDP of $270.11 billion.
For a population of 846 million, around 50% of whom were poor, those were miserable figures. Despite efforts to diffuse fears of a nuclear war, prospects of an India-Pakistan clash loomed, and violence in Kashmir was at its peak.
The collapse of India’s trusted partner, the Soviet Union on the one hand, and strained relations with the United States on the other further weighed on the country’s ruling elite.
American officials kept a close watch on India and Pakistan and their nuclear plans, and occasionally travelled to the subcontinent to counsel the cantankerous neighbours.
Fast forward three decades to 2023. India’s foreign exchange reserve has grown to around $600 billion, and a war with Pakistan is not something Indian leaders lose sleep over — China has taken that place though — and there is a general sense of foreign policy optimism. The reforms initiated after the 1991 economic crisis not only led to higher GDP growth but also significant poverty reduction.
Ranked as the world’s fifth largest economy, India’s nominal GDP could soon touch $4 trillion; it has one of the largest militaries in the world with over a hundred nuclear weapons.
The U.S. is now one of India’s closest friends, and New Delhi enjoys strong relationships with several powerful states around the world. The visionary investments made over the past several decades are now beginning to bear fruit with a permissive external atmosphere for the country’s rise.
A case for a new pronoun for AI (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots are having a seminal moment. Large Language Models (LLMs) are fuelling chatbots that converse like human experts, sometimes doing a better job than the best of us in summarising a complex idea or writing an essay. ChatGPT’s bulleted response reminds us of examination answers by A-grade students.
While Internet search required us to learn the art of keywords, LLMs require us to master prompts. Prompts are archetype user-generated questions as well as instructions by software programmers which elicit a desired response from the algorithm. Prompt engineering is becoming a sought-after job to train Chatbots to act more like efficient human beings.
Computer scientist Alan Turing had proposed an imitation game to test a machine’s ability to demonstrate intelligent behaviour that is indistinguishable from that of a human.
In our willing suspension of disbelief, will we forget that we are conversing with a machine? Yes, on some occasions, we will anthropomorphise the model.
On other occasions, we will simply not know, and the machine would have passed the Turing test. Even if we do not fall into an emotional or financial trap, anthropomorphous chatbots will muddy our sense of reality.
Lawmakers are divided over the question of attributing a legal personhood to AI. This becomes more complicated with autonomous machines.
But there is consensus that misrepresentation of identity by AI feels like manipulation. Experts suggest that restricting AI from using first person pronouns as well as other human pronouns may reduce cases of AI’s mistaken identity.
This way, it would be easier to identify text entirely produced by a machine. This is important because pronouns have everything to do with identity today.
Writers like me struggle with using pronouns for AI in their writing. I tend to use the inanimate pronoun ‘it’, even as ‘it’ is no longer strictly used for inanimate nouns.
Explainer
On ED’s power to arrest and seek custody (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
In a major setback to Tamil Nadu Minister V. Senthilbalaji, the Madras High Court on July 14 upheld the legality of his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and his subsequent remand in judicial custody in a money-laundering case linked to a cash-for-jobs scam.
Justice C.V. Karthikeyan, in his order as the third judge after a two-member Bench gave a split verdict, ruled that the ED can subject any person accused in a case booked under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, to custodial interrogation and that the Minister can be taken into custody even after the expiry of 15 days from his arrest. Mr. Balaji and his wife have since then moved the Supreme Court to challenge the HC verdict upholding his arrest.
The central question of the case was whether the ED has the power to seek custody of a person arrested. The judge accepted senior advocate Kapil Sibal’s argument on behalf of the petitioner that ED officials are not police officers as per the law laid down by the Supreme Court in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary versus Union of India (2022).
However, he noted that the sessions judge remanded Balaji to judicial custody as per Section 167 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC).
Since Section 65 of the PMLA stipulates that the provisions of the CrPC shall apply subject to the condition that the same are not inconsistent with those of the PMLA, Section 167 CrPC should be applicable mutatis mutandis (making necessary changes without altering the essence) and that the word ‘police’ has to be read as Investigating Agency or the Enforcement Directorate.
It was also observed that the Court designated ED officials to not be police officers only for the reason that the statements given to the latter in any criminal case would not be admissible in evidence before the trial court under the CrPC, whereas statements given to the former were admissible in evidence under the PMLA. However, this observation could not be stretched to the extent of denying the ED an opportunity to subject the accused to custodial interrogation for unearthing crucial facts related to the alleged crime, the judge added.
Will generic supply of bedaquiline be accessible? (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
Bedaquiline has now become the cornerstone to cure drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB). Last week, a major barrier for drug resistant TB care ended, when Johnson & Johnson’s patent on bedaquiline expired on July 18.
This long-awaited expiry will allow generic manufacturers to supply the drug, but J&J appears intent on maintaining its monopoly over the bedaquiline market.
J&J has filed secondary patents over bedaquiline till 2027, which were granted in 66 low-and middle-income countries. It includes 34 countries with high burden of TB, multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), and TB/HIV.
Over the past week, J&J has faced public outrage for seeking to extend its patent on bedaquiline. A first of its kind deal between J&J and the Global Drug Facility (GDF), a non-profit distribution agency housed in the WHO, could expand access to the drug. Researchers estimate that, with the introduction of competition from India, the price of bedaquiline will reduce in the range of $48-$102 for a six-month treatment course — which is three to six times lower than the current globally negotiated price paid by countries ($272) when it is procured through the GDF.
Tuberculosis was the world’s deadliest infectious disease, as declared by the WHO, before COVID-19 swept the world. Each year, nearly half a million people develop drug-resistant TB and nearly 10.4 million people develop drug-sensitive TB.
One-third of the world’s population has latent TB, a version of the disease that can turn active as immunity falls. Nearly 2.8 million patients, the most in the world, live in India making it a national public health emergency. Globally, DR-TB is a major contributor to antimicrobial resistance and continues to be a public health threat.
Janssen Pharmaceutical (a subsidiary of J&J) made bedaquiline around 2002. Several of the phase I and II clinical trials — where the safety and efficacy of the drug is established before the drug’s registration—were sponsored by public and philanthropic organisations such as the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the TB Alliance.
News
Japanese Foreign Minister to visit India this week, discuss vision for Global South (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi will visit India later this week as part of a six-nation tour in Asia and Africa, where he plans to focus on Japan’s cooperation with the Global South and the Indo-Pacific policy unveiled by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during his visit in March.
Mr. Hayashi, who also travelled to Delhi earlier to attend the Quad Foreign Minister’s meeting, is expected to hold meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, business, and academic delegations.
He will discuss bilateral ties, as well as continue efforts to coordinate priorities of Japan’s Presidency of the G-7 with India’s Presidency of the G-20.
At a press conference in Tokyo, Mr. Hayashi said that his focus during the visit to India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, South Africa, Uganda, and Ethiopia was on enhancing ties with “South West Asia and Africa”.
Strengthening relationships with international partners, including those in the Global South, is something that Japan attaches great importance to at this year’s G-7 Presidency, and this round of visits is one such initiative.
In addition, the Government of Japan intends to further strengthen relations with the countries of South West Asia and Africa toward the realisation of a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’, and we would like to hold discussions with these countries from this perspective,” he added.
In the Indo-Pacific policy address Mr. Kishida made in Delhi, he had emphasised a special focus on South Asia, including assisting Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring process in a “fair and transparent” manner, as well touting Japanese cooperation with India and Bangladesh for the Bay of Bengal-Northeast India “industrial value chain concept” to foster growth in the region.
Mr. Hayashi’s visit to India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives is expected to focus on development initiatives undertaken by Japan in the region.
His visit to Africa will also look at projects under consideration, while his visit to South Africa, which comes a month before the BRICS summit of emerging economies there, is expected to see significant announcements.