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India’s wholesale prices remained in deflationary mode for the seventh month in a row in October, with the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) reflecting an inflation of -0.52% from -0.26% in September.
Wholesale price inflation stood at 8.4% in October 2022, creating a high base effect for last month’s index. On a month-on-month basis, the WPI was up 0.4% in October.
The wholesale food index was up 1.07% in October compared to last year, with food prices up 1% sequentially from September levels as well.
But the trends within the food basket were divergent and runaway prices of some items like onions and pulses pose risks to the retail inflation trajectory.
Editorial
A Norwegian perspective of India’s digital journey (Page no. 6)
(GS paper 3, Science and Technology)
‘Leaving no one behind’. This is the powerful but challenging promise that United Nations member-states have pledged to work towards in the pursuit of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
India has discovered some of the ways to move closer to this promise. With a vast and diverse population of 1.4 billion people, the progress made in the past decade to reach out and give social protection to every Indian has been impressive.
One of India’s most powerful tools in this journey has been Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). As the Norwegian Minister of International Development, I am impressed by the development benefits of the use of digital public goods.
Aspiring to leave no one behind, India has been able to issue digital identities to almost all its citizens. In turn, this has provided them access to social services, the digital economy, government support services and more. These lessons can be used as a blueprint to maximise international development efforts.
Opinion
The Qatar death row and India’s options (Page no. 7)
(GS paper 2, International Relation)
On October 26, Qatar’s local court handed down the death penalty to eight former Indian Navy officers. The case has garnered international attention.
In August 2022, the eight officers were detained in Doha by Qatari intelligence authorities. They worked for Dahra Global Technologies and Consultancy Services, which served Qatar’s defence and security agencies.
Legal proceedings encountered delays, including the rejection of the initial bail plea one month after the arrest. The first trial was held in March 2023.
In October, consular access was granted, and the Indian Ambassador met the detainees. But the situation took a grim turn on October 26 with the local court’s verdict.
The case shares similarities with other incidents involving the arrest of Indian nationals by foreign authorities. For instance, Kulbhushan Jadhav, an Indian national, was sentenced to death in 2017 in Pakistan on charges of espionage and sabotage.
Pakistan accused him of acting at the behest of India’s intelligence agency, which India denies. The case proceeded in a military court with no transparency.
India moved the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which found that Pakistan had breached Article 36 of the Vienna Convention requiring immediate notification of an arrest to the national’s consulate.
It ordered Pakistan to review the process of Jadhav’s trial and conviction, and provide India with consular access.
Text & Context
The economy of a world without work (Page no. 8)
(GS paper 3, Science and Technology)
At the recently concluded Bletchley Park summit on Artificial Intelligence (AI), in an interview with the U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, billionaire Elon Musk highlighted the disruptive potential of AI.
Mr. Musk conceived of a future where AI would substitute for all human labour — both physical and cognitive — and hence individuals would face no pressing need for a job, but would only seek work for personal fulfilment.
While AI may substitute for certain jobs, it generates new jobs in turn, for instance AI programmers. A future where AI has eliminated the need for all forms of work is one where AI has become self-aware — where AI software can not only take on the task it was designed for, but can also design AI to undertake new tasks, and operate and maintain itself. Such a future may be theoretically possible, but practically improbable.
The history of economic thought reveals different ways in which a human’s relation with work has been theorised. Here one looks at two thinkers with diametrically opposite views on the nature of work — John Maynard Keynes and Karl Marx.
Keynes was a liberal thinker who extolled capitalism but wished to save it from its worst excesses. He believed that at its heart, work represented a form of drudgery, and a world in which the hours of work could be reduced was one that unequivocally increased welfare.
Keynes theorised that technological change under capitalism would eventually lead to a reduction of working hours. Mr. Musk’s comments can be seen as an extension of Keynes’ thinking, where improvements in technological change, if taken to its theoretical extreme, could eliminate the need for work altogether, representing an unambiguous positive outcome.
How does an electric battery work and what are the different types? (Page no. 9)
(GS paper 3, Science and Technology)
The electric battery has increased the penetration of motorisation and the lack of wires in our lives. Electric batteries hold and release electrical energy that they have acquired by converting other forms of energy.
As portable sources of electric power, batteries are at the foundation of what convenience means today in industrialised societies.
Innovations to improve the efficiency with which they handle electric energy will determine what such convenience as well as sustainability mean tomorrow.
All chemical reactions are fundamentally about how the electrons in the bonds between atoms are rearranged. The bridge between this fact and the electrochemical cells that were the precursors of modern batteries is most apparent in an experiment that Luigi Galvani conducted in 1780.
Galvani touched together two plates of different metals and then touched both at the same time to a frog’s leg. He found that the leg contracted but couldn’t say why.
The next major pre-industrial innovation on this front was the voltaic pile built by Alessandro Volta in 1800. This cell consisted of copper and zinc plates arranged in alternating fashion, separated by sheets of paper soaked in salty water.
News
Parliamentary panel on criminal law Bill leaves decision on death penalty to Centre (Page no. 10)
(GS paper 2, Governance)
The proposed Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) Bill, 2023, which seeks to replace the British-era Indian Penal Code (IPC), has increased the number of crimes which can attract the death penalty from 11 to 15, says a parliamentary panel report published last week.
The report adds that the domain experts consulted by the committee “deliberated at great length about the need to abolish death penalty”.
India has in the past voted against a United Nations General Assembly’s draft resolution on the abolition of the death penalty.
A study conducted by the National Law University, Delhi — the Annual Statistics Report 2022, published by Project 39A — shows that till December 31, 2022, as many as 539 prisoners had been on death row in India, the highest since at least 2016.
The parliamentary panel, headed by BJP member Brij Lal, recommended that the matter be left to the Union government to consider.
The committee, after considering the submissions regarding the death penalty, has understood that the reason for a passionate argument against death penalty is that the judicial system can be fallible and to prevent an innocent person from being wrongly sentenced to death.
World
World is severely off track to limit planet-heating emissions, says UN (Page no. 13)
(GS paper 3, Environment)
The world is “failing to get a grip” on climate change, the UN warned, as an assessment of current climate pledges shows only minor progress on reducing emissions this decade.
In a report released just weeks before high-stakes climate negotiations, the United Nations climate change organisation said the world was failing to act with sufficient urgency to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
With temperatures soaring and 2023 expected to become the warmest year so far in human history, scientists say the pressure on world leaders to curb planet-heating greenhouse gas pollution has never been more urgent.
The UN found that combined climate plans from nearly 200 nations would put the world on a path for 2030 carbon emissions just 2% below 2019 levels.
That is far short of the 43% fall that the UN’s IPCC climate panel says are needed to limit warming to the Paris deal target of 1.5o C since the preindustrial era.
“Every fraction of a degree matters, but we are severely off track. COP-28 is our time to change that,” UN Climate Change chief Simon Stiell said.
Scientists have warned that humanity is dangerously close to blowing past the 1.5o C global heating limit.
Business
Centre to invite bids for 20 critical mineral blocks (Page no. 14)
(GS paper 3, Economy)
The government will invite bids for 20 critical mineral blocks, including lithium and graphite mines, in the next two weeks, Mines Secretary V.L. Kantha Rao told reporters here.
“We are almost ready to issue the auction notice and in two weeks’ time we will be issuing a notice for auctioning about 20 blocks that are related to critical minerals like lithium and graphite,” he said.
The secretary said 10-12 players in the country have the technology to produce and process critical minerals. Post this auction notice, he said, stakeholders will be brought together and a national-level strategy on mining and processing of critical minerals will be made.
Last month, the Centre had approved royalty rates of 3% each for lithium and niobium and 1% for Rare Earth Elements (REEs). Critical minerals have become important for the nation’s economic development and national security.
Lithium and REEs have gained significance, keeping in mind India’s commitment to energy transition and achieving net-zero emissions by 2070.
India can be an alternative to China in manufacturing (Page no. 14)
(GS paper 3, Economy)
During COVID-19, for us, it was very busy time. After that, I would characterise it as three things. First, we are seeing normalisation of freight rates, particularly ocean freight.
Second, it is the impact of rising interest rates across major economies. The third element is e-commerce transition, which is fully intact.
India wants to capitalise on the China Plus 1 opportunity. Does it have the potential to be a viable alternative?
I think India has all the potential. It has also the potential to become a manufacturing location.
The Indian government has taken very positive steps in terms of investment in infrastructure which is conducive to business.
Now, if you want to be a player in global manufacturing, it needs openness to trade, the ability to import goods, because initially you can not localise the entire supply chain.
So, a choice has to be made whether to rely on local consumption or to become a global manufacturing hub through openness.
Science
What India can expect from the ‘Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar’ awards (Page no. 20)
(GS paper 3, Science)
Recently, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research announced the winners of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (SSB) awards for 2022.
The announcement was highly anticipated not only due to the nearly year-long delay in declaring the results, but also because it came amid the government’s plans for a major revamp of the structure of science and medicine awards.
In September 2022, the Ministry of Science and Technology discontinued nearly 300 existing science awards –with the exception of the SSB awards – while reports emerged of a draft plan to replace them with a smaller set of “highly deserving” awards.
The new system, called the ‘Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar’ (RVP), includes a bouquet of awards: Vigyan Shri, Vigyan Yuva-Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar, Vigyan Team, and Vigyan Ratna. The government has expressed an intention to keep the RVP at par with the Padma and other national awards.
The new awards will be open to an expanded group of “scientists, technologists and innovators (or teams) working in government, private sector organisations or individuals working outside any organisation”.
The RVP will be given across 13 scientific domains, including basic sciences, applied sciences, medicine, and engineering. The award announcement stated that “representation from each domain/field, including gender parity will be ensured”.