Whatsapp 93125-11015 For Details
Data on Swachhata Abhiyaan, a mobile app of the Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry, identify 6,253 cases of manual scavenging in India. But the Ministry is not sure if the numbers are authentic.
A note prepared for it in the Supreme Court said the app was launched on December 24, 2020 to capture the data of insanitary latrines still existing and the manual scavengers associated with them.
Anyone could upload the data on the mobile app, which would then be verified by the district administration concerned.
As per the data collected on the app, the total identified cases of manual scavenging come up to 6,253. A physical verification was carried out by the Programme Monitoring Unit team of the Ministry to validate the authenticity.
However, not a single insanitary latrine has been confirmed so far. Uploaded photographs on the portal show that the people have uploaded other details but not regarding insanitary latrine or practice of manual scavenging,” the note said.
States
U.P. unveils CM’s Command Centre, launches dashboard (Page no. 3)
(GS Paper 2, Social Justice)
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath inaugurated the Chief Minister’s Command Centre and also launched the CM Dashboard, describing them as effective steps taken in providing timely solutions to the problems of common people and ensuring better implementation of government schemes.
In line with CM Yogi’s visionary approach focusing on the welfare of 24 crore people of U.P., the performance of officials of the police administration, municipal corporations, development authorities, universities, and various government schemes will be evaluated through monthly rankings and grading. With the assistance of the CM Dashboard, real-time monitoring will be carried out,” read a statement, issued by the U.P. government.
The Command Centre is equipped with an integrated dashboard, video wall, videoconferencing facility, call centre, and discussion, training, and technical rooms with world-class amenities.
Currently, 588 schemes of 53 departments are registered. A performance index has been developed based on the information received from departments on the CM Dashboard, and accordingly, monthly State-level grading will be issued.
A data quality index has been developed to ensure that the quality of departmental data, and its monthly evaluation will also be displayed.
Editorial
Bitter truths in Maharashtra’s sugar fields (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The High Court of Bombay has recently taken suo motu cognisance of the exploitation of the intra-State workforce that migrates seasonally from the drought-affected and water-scarce regions of Marathwada to the sugar-belt region of western Maharashtra.
Maharashtra is one of the top sugar producers in India. According to the Maharashtra Sugar Commissioner, in 2022-23, the net area under sugar cane was 1.487 million hectares, and there were 203 crushing factories in the State that were expected to produce 138 lakh metric tons of sugar.
Though intra-State migrant workers form the backbone of the sugar cane industry and economic growth, they have remained critically marginalised and oppressed for several decades.
Considering the precarity of this migrant workforce, the High Court asked the Maharashtra government to form a committee of officers from various departments (with one nodal officer) to address their issues.
Against this background, it would be critical to examine how ‘seriously’ the State develops policies and consistently implements strategic measures and existing labour laws for the effective inclusion of this precarious migrant group.
To deal with the prolonged unemployment after the sowing of rabi crops, millions of small and marginal peasant households from Beed, Jalna, Osmanabad, Latur, Nanded and Parbhani districts of the Marathwada region migrate to the sugar-belt districts such as Sangli, Kolhapur, Pune, Satara, Solapur and Ahmednagar to work in sugar cane harvesting and factories.
Prolonged drought conditions, repeated crop failure, debt, and acute unemployment create an end-most situation for Marathwada’s rural labour, and, ultimately, they have to migrate seasonally.
Therefore, there needs to be a long-term and comprehensive policy to address their vulnerability at both the source and destination.
The State government has to intervene in the prevalent exploitative structure of recruiting migrant workers in the sugar cane industry filed through the ‘Mukadam’ (labour contractor).
Opinion
A crisis of academic ethics in India (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 4, Ethics)
The world has long recognised India as a major player in intellectual pursuits including scientific research. Bose-Einstein statistics, the Raman effect, the Ramachandran plot, and the Raychaudhuri equations are all examples of path-breaking work in India in the 20th century.
More recently, with a new National Education Policy and India’s presidency of the G20, calls have been made for the country to “step up” and take its position on the global stage.
However, there is an obstacle holding the nation back. This is the reality of unethical academic practice, which is still widely tolerated.
While this is a global phenomenon, institutions in many countries have kept this practice significantly in check through systematic preventive and punitive action.
When research is not ethically grounded, there is no value in its outcome. We cannot trust a medicine or a nuclear reactor whose efficacy has been “proved” by manipulating data.
Every academic should feel compelled to weed out ethical malpractices from the system, but this is not happening in India.
The websites of almost all academic institutions in India reveal the absence of an ethical code and a robust investigation procedure to deal with misconduct allegations. (The guidelines of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and some bio-ethics codes are welcome exceptions.) Suggestions to run ethical training modules for students and faculty are met with no response.
Academic bodies which are alerted to data manipulation and even sexual misconduct by their members make vague promises, but take no action.
A few institutions have taken a strong principled stand, but their actions seem to have little impact on the community at large. Several years ago, the Principal Scientific Advisor circulated a draft National Policy on Academic Ethics, but it has not been formally approved.
Explainer
States’ lax response to lynching (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
The Supreme Court has asked the Ministry of Home Affairs and the governments of Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana to respond to a petition by the National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW).
The petition questions their inaction against mob violence and lynching of Muslims by cow vigilantes over the past five years, despite a previous Supreme Court judgment in Tehseen Poonawala versus Union of India in 2018 against vigilantism.
The NFIW seeks an examination of police apathy, constitutional violations, and a breach of "duty of care" towards the victims, along with immediate interim compensation and a "minimum uniform amount" for the victims of such violence.
The judgment of the Supreme Court authored by Justice (now retired) Dipak Misra held that it was the “sacrosanct duty” of the State to protect the lives of its citizens.
It said spiralling incidents of lynchings, and the gruesome visuals aired through social media have compelled the court to reflect on “whether the populace of a great Republic like ours has lost the values of tolerance to sustain a diverse culture”.
Bystander apathy, numbness of the mute spectators of the scene of the crime, the inertia of the law enforcing machinery to prevent such crimes and nip them in the bud and grandstanding of the incident by the perpetrators of the crimes, including in the social media, aggravates the entire problem, the court noted.
The court declared that the authorities of the States have the “principal obligation” to see that vigilantism, be it cow vigilantism or any other vigilantism of any perception, does not take place.
The judgment warned that vigilantes usher in anarchy, chaos, disorder and, eventually, there is an emergence of a violent society. “Vigilantism cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be given room to take shape”.
What is Sam Altman’s biometric project? (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
On July 24, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took to Twitter to formally re-introduce Worldcoin, a project of his that was eclipsed by the popularity of ChatGPT.
The Worldcoin venture runs on a simple model: allow your eyes to be scanned in order to prove your human uniqueness, and receive some crypto and an ID (called a World ID) in exchange.
Worldcoin claims it is building the “world’s largest identity and financial public network” open to people worldwide.
Worldcoin is an initiative to create a digital network in which everyone can claim some kind of stake, and join the digital economy.
Using a device called “Orb,” Worldcoin volunteers known as ‘Orb operators’ scan a person’s iris pattern to collect their biometric data and help them get a World ID through the World app.
The users need to be willing to scan irises and/or get their own irises scanned. Volunteers sign up to be “Orb operators” in their locality and receive basic training and a biometric device with which to scan irises.
Orb operators can even rent out the Orb to others to let them scan eyeballs as well. Those who have their irises scanned and collect a World ID can use this to claim the WLD crypto, which they may use for transactions or hold on to the asset in the hope that its price might rise, as it did after launching.
However, users can also buy or sell WLD without getting scanned or using the app. In return for signing up more people to the Worldcoin network, Orb operators get WLD, which is a token based on the Ethereum blockchain.
Text
Post-quantum cryptography: securing data in the age of quantum computers (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Computation pervades today’s world. From banking, to romance, to shopping, and even warfare, computers form one of the pillars of human civilisation. However, there has been a lot of worry about quantum computing and its potential impact on computer security.
Governments and organisations across the world are rushing to develop quantum computing platforms and advanced security algorithms to defend against such machines.
One prominent example of the latter is the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardisation project.
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently announced collaborations with the U.S. in quantum computing and launched the National Quantum Mission.
But, there is still much work to be done, both by the government and the industry. Data, as they say, is the new oil, and unless we protect ours, others will use it for their profit.
Much of our current security is based on techniques such as RSA, elliptic curves, Diffie-Hellman key exchange and almost all of them rely on a few “hard” mathematical problems, such as factorisation and the discrete logarithm problem.
Unfortunately, in 1994, Peter Shor developed a quantum algorithm that (with certain modifications) can break all of these with ease.
Unless we find an unyielding barrier to the development of quantum computers, our security measures will eventually be broken.
News
Two Indian military aircraft visit Australia’s strategic Cocos Islands (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
Expanding the strategic reach of the Indian military and improving interoperability with Australia, an Indian Navy Dornier maritime patrol aircraft and an Indian Air Force (IAF) C-130 transport aircraft visited Australia’s Cocos (Keeling) Islands (CKI) in the Southern Indian Ocean, close to Indonesia and strategic maritime choke points earlier this month, diplomatic and official sources confirmed.
Cocos can be an important base for refuelling and operational turnaround for the Indian military, especially once the runway there is expanded to accommodate large aircraft like the P-8 long range maritime patrol aircraft.
According to diplomatic sources, the aircraft were at Cocos for close to a week. Neither the Navy nor the IAF responded to questions.
In a July 7 article published by The Strategist, the commentary and analysis site of Canberra-based think tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, David Brewster and Samuel Bashfield wrote that this week, several aircraft from the Indian Navy and the IAF made a “ground-breaking visit” to Australia’s CKI.
This is the latest in a series of India’s growing military-to-military engagements, deepening interoperability broadly in the region and especially with Australia.
In February, in another first, an Indian Navy Kilo class conventional submarine, INS Sindhukesari, which was on operational deployment, travelled through the Sunda Strait and docked in Jakarta, Indonesia for operational turnaround.
News
PSLV puts 7 satellites in orbit; four more missions this year (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Sunday successfully launched the PSLV-C56 carrying Singapore’s DS-SAR and six other satellites.
“PSLV-C56 carrying seven satellites including the primary satellite DS-SAR and six co-passengers has been successfully placed in the right orbit.
The DS-SAR satellite is developed under a partnership between the DSTA (representing the Government of Singapore) and ST Engineering.
The co-passengers on the missions were VELOX-AM, a 23-kg technology demonstration microsatellite; Atmospheric Coupling and Dynamics Explorer (ARCADE), an experimental satellite; SCOOB-II, a 3U nanosatellite flying a technology demonstrator payload; NuLIoN by NuSpace, an advanced 3U nanosatellite enabling seamless IoT connectivity in both urban and remote locations; Galassia-2, a 3U nanosatellite that will be orbiting on a low-earth orbit; and ORB-12 STRIDER, a satellite developed under an international collaboration.
After the launcher placed all the seven satellites into a 535-km circular orbit, the PS4 stage was brought back to a lower orbit of 295 km x 300 km.
The stage is purposefully manoeuvred to a 295 km x 300 km orbit. It now spends significantly less time in space, reducing its duration from over two decades to less than two months, before re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. ISRO and India remain committed to reduced space debris and sustainable use of space for the benefit of all.
World
African leaders leave Russia summit without grain deal (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
African leaders are leaving two days of meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin with little to show for their requests to resume a deal that kept grain flowing from Ukraine and to find a path to end the war there.
Mr. Putin, in a press conference late on Saturday, following the Russia-Africa summit, said Russia’s termination of the grain deal earlier this month caused a rise in grain prices that benefits Russian companies. He added that Moscow would share some of those revenues with the “poorest nations.”
That commitment, with no details, follows Mr. Putin’s promise to start shipping 25,000 to 50,000 tons of grain for free to each of six African nations in the next three to four months — an amount dwarfed by the 725,000 tons shipped by the UN World Food Program to several hungry countries, African and otherwise, under the grain deal. Russia plans to send the free grain to Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, Eritrea and Central African Republic.
Fewer than 20 of Africa’s 54 heads of state or government attended the Russia summit, while 43 attended the previous gathering in 2019, reflecting concerns over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine even as Moscow seeks more allies on the African continent of 1.3 billion people.
Mr. Putin praised Africa as a rising centre of power in the world, while the Kremlin blamed “outrageous” Western pressure for discouraging some African countries from showing up.