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India has succeeded as a democratic republic because many creeds and languages have united and not divided the country, President Droupadi Murmu said on Wednesday, in her address to the nation on the eve of its 74th Republic Day.
That is the essence of India. That essence was at the heart of the Constitution, which has withstood the test of time.
Lauding the architects of the Constitution, Ms. Murmu said India’s transformation from a largely poor, illiterate nation into a confident one would not have been possible but for the “collective wisdom” of the Constitution makers.
While Babasaheb Ambedkar and others gave us a map and a moral framework, the task of walking that path remains our responsibility. We have largely remained true to their expectations, and yet we realise that much remains to be done to realise Gandhiji’s ideal of sarvodaya, the upliftment of all.
Editorial
India’s juggernaut of censorship (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has blocked over 50 tweets on Twitter that carried a link to the BBC documentary, “India: The Modi Question”.
In an order on January 20, 2023, the government used emergency powers under the Information Technology Rules, 2021 and Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 to direct Twitter and YouTube to disable access to the documentary within India and prevent its re-upload.
Limited information about the blockage is available coming primarily from statements made by officials and reporting by Twitter to the Lumen Database that tracks takedown requests.
There are concerns over natural justice, the constitutionality of the direction, and how the IT Rules that are in a perpetual state of proposed amendment.
Natural justice is a fundamental principle in public law when decisions affect fundamental rights such as the freedom of speech.
The Supreme Court of India, in the case of Cricket Association of Bengal, recognised that, “[t]he right to receive and impart information is implicit in free speech”.
Therefore, any restriction must ordinarily issue a show cause notice, provide the opportunity of defence to the author, and record reasons in an order that is made publicly.
Providing reasons allows for the author or publisher, as well as the recipient of the information, to seek judicial remedies and act as a check for constitutionally permitted censorship.
Such practice is contrary to the directions of the Supreme Court in the case of Shreya Singhal vs Union of India. In the case it upheld that blocking powers under Section 69A subject to “reasons have to be recorded in writing in such blocking order so that they may be assailed in a writ petition”.
However, blocking orders are marked as “secret” or “confidential”, then transmitted directly to service providers, making it difficult for the authors an opportunity of defence and the general public to challenge them.
This is why Twitter has approached the High Court of Karnataka. This is also why movie critic Tanul Thakur, whose satirical website was blocked, approached the High Court of Delhi and was able to obtain a copy of the blocking order.
Instead, press releases are selectively issued instead of disclosing the text of orders. This type of “transparency when convenient” becomes a form of opacity.
Torpedoing a submarine rumour (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
Speculation abounds that the Indian Navy could cancel Project-75 India (I)-class for submarine production and instead acquire more Scorpene (Kalvari class) submarines — the fifth submarine from this class, INS Vagir, was commissioned into the Navy on January 23.
A media report last week claimed that the Navy, faced with a single vendor option in Project-75I — with a South Korean company the only bidder in the fray with a proven fuel cell-based air-independent propulsion (AIP) system — may place a repeat order for Scorpene-class submarines to be built at Mazagon Docks Limited (MDL).
According to the report, the Navy plans on installing the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)’s still-to-be-developed AIP on the new submarines, impelled in no small measure by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy’s advance in the Indian Ocean.
There are many things wrong with the report. First, it is based almost entirely on conjecture, seemingly intended to dub Project 75I as impractical and “unviable.” There are no indications that the Navy considers the P-75I to be unfeasible. In December 2022, when the Navy Chief, Admiral R. Hari Kumar, mentioned that the follow-on project for submarines would be cleared by 2023, there were no signs of the Navy’s lack of confidence in the P-75I.
While the Navy has had issues, with many design collaborators withdrawing their tenders for various reasons, there has never been a sense of doom about the project.
In fact, German shipbuilder TKMS, which had earlier withdrawn its bid, has even indicated its willingness to remain in the fray, provided the Indian Navy tempers its expectations.
The most difficult of the Navy’s conditions for foreign collaborators is the requirement that the AIP be a proven system. So, except for the South Korean firm Daewoo, no vendor that bid for the P-75I has a proven AIP system.
Ironically, the DRDO’s AIP is itself unproven. Back in March 2021, the DRDO tested a land-based prototype of the AIP but has reportedly made little progress since.
The expectation that the DRDO’s AIP will be installed on the first Kalvari-class submarine when it comes in for refit in 2024 is unrealistic given that it has yet to be tried in field conditions.
The Navy is reportedly in the process of designating a Kilo-class submarine as a “test bed” for the indigenous AIP, but the process of installation and testing at sea is likely to be protracted.
Opinion
Contesting the hegemony of the dollar (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The fact that the multipolar international system is fast unfolding is reinforced by clear trends in polycentric global geoeconomics.
There is significant trade within the Global South; currency swap agreements; trade in national currencies bypassing the dollar; steps towards trading oil and gas in national currencies; the promotion of such arrangements by regional organisations; the setting up of special accounts for internationalising national currencies; and the setting up of financial communications systems.
Countries outside the West say they are operating in a multipolar system and are developing mechanisms for alternate currency exchanges to reduce risks and their dependence on the dollar.
Trade wars against China since 2018 have set China on this path. The Russia-Ukraine war has hastened this development since Russia trades oil and commodities in ruble and national currencies, in a model similar to the rupee-rouble trade of earlier years.
The steady but unequal growth of the ‘emerging economies’ is the base for economic diversification. For example, the combined GDP of China, India, Russia, South Africa, Indonesia, Brazil, Iran and Turkey exceeds that of the G7.
Inter-Asian consumption is driving high levels of trade between Asian countries. India’s trade with Asian countries is higher than with the West.
China’s trade with Asian countries more than doubled in the last few years, beating its trade with the West. The UAE, Iran, Turkey, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia are trading in local currencies with regional partners.
Bilateral currency swaps among ASEAN countries, China, Japan, South Korea are $380 billion and rising. Similarly, the South African rand is used by several African countries. The Latin American countries are moving towards greater inter-regional trade.
With high exchange rates of the dollar, emerging economies have initiated trade in national currencies bypassing the dollar.
Asian central banks have over $400 billion of local currency swap lines and trade amongst themselves. Since 2019, India has been paying Russia for fuel, oil, minerals and specific defence imports in rupees on an informal basis.
It has worked out local currency trade with the UAE, Japan, Turkey, Korea and South Asian countries. In July 2022, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) unveiled a rupee settlement system for international trade by allowing special vostro accounts in designated Indian banks, a step towards internationalising the rupee.
A brief history of artificial intelligence (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
How rapidly the world has changed becomes clear by how even recent computer technology feels ancient to us today. Mobile phones in the 1990s were big bricks with tiny green displays.
Two decades before that, the main storage for computers was punch cards. In a short period, computers evolved so quickly and became such an integral part of our daily lives that it is easy to forget how recent this technology is. The first digital computers were only invented about eight decades ago.
Since the early days of this history, some computer scientists have strived to make machines as intelligent as humans.
The first system is the Theseus. It was built by Claude Shannon in 1950 and was a remote-controlled mouse that was able to find its way out of a labyrinth and could remember its course. In seven decades, the abilities of AI have come a long way. The language and image recognition capabilities of AI systems have also developed rapidly.
The plotted data stem from a number of tests in which human and AI performance were evaluated in five different domains, from handwriting recognition to language understanding.
Within each of the five domains the initial performance of the AI system is set to -100, and human performance in these tests is used as a baseline that is set to zero.
This means that when the model’s performance crosses the zero line the AI system scored more points in the relevant test than the humans who did the same test.
Just 10 years ago, no machine could reliably provide language or image recognition at a human level. But as the chart shows, AI systems have become steadily more capable and are now beating humans in tests in all these domains.
Outside of these standardised tests, the performance of these AIs is mixed. In some real-world cases, these systems are still performing much worse than humans.
On the other hand, some implementations of such AI systems are already so cheap that they are available on the phone in your pocket: image recognition categorises your photos and speech recognition transcribes what you dictate.
Chart 3 showed the rapid advances in the perceptive abilities of artificial intelligence. AI systems have also become much more capable of generating images.
Explainer
The next leg of the Russia-Ukraine war (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
As Russia’s Ukraine invasion enters its 12th month, all sides are gearing up for a major escalation in the conflict. Russia, which suffered some setbacks last year after its initial thrust into Ukraine, is trying to build battlefield momentum with minor advances.
Ukraine, whose troops are struggling to defend the frontlines in the east and south, is asking for heavier weapons from its NATO allies.
While Germany’s early resistance to sending its Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine created a rift within NATO, it has now finally agreed to send the tanks and allow other countries to re-export German-built tanks to Ukraine. The U.S., after initial reluctance, is also sending its M1 Abrams tanks to Kyiv.
After Ukraine, which launched a counteroffensive in September, recaptured swathes of the Kharkiv Oblast in the northeast and Kherson city in the south, (the only provincial capital the Russians had taken since the war began) the conflict had turned into a war of attrition — until recently.
Russian troops, predominantly the private military Wagner Group, have been trying to seize Bakhmut, a city in Donetsk in the Donbas region which Moscow now claims as its own, for the past six months.
As those efforts did not bear fruit, in recent weeks, Russia’s focus shifted to Soledar, a town that lies just 18 km from the city of Bakhmut. Russian troops tore through the Ukrainian defences in Soledar rather quickly, taking the town, and making further advances towards Bakhmut.
In the south, Moscow claimed that its troops have pushed through the frontlines in Zaporizhzhia, one of the four Ukrainian provinces Russian President Vladimir Putin unilaterally annexed in September.
As of now, Russia controls only parts of the Zaporizhzhia province, including its eponymous nuclear plant, Europe’s largest. But by pushing through the frontlines in the east and the south, Russia is mounting enormous pressure on Ukraine’s army, which set alarm bells ringing in Kyiv and western capitals.
Supplies from the West are vital for Ukraine in the conflict. The U.S., Ukraine’s largest defence supplier, has committed to sending Kyiv more than $27 billion in military aid since the war began.
It is sending ammunition, howitzers, helmets, Humvees and HIMARS rocket systems. The U.S. has also promised to send Stryker combat vehicles and deploy a Patriot missile defence battery.
News
Media Authority of Egypt, Prasar Bharati to exchange content (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
India and Egypt signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to facilitate content exchange, capacity building, and co-productions between Prasar Bharati and National Media Authority of Egypt.
The agreement was signed by Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Singh Thakur and Sameh Hassan Shoukry, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Government of Egypt, exchanged between the two countries in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Egyptian President Abdel Fateh el-Sisi following the delegation-level talks between the two.
The MoU is part of the efforts by Prasar Bharati to expand the reach of DD India channel to showcase the country’s progress through programmes focused on economy, technology, social development and also the rich cultural heritage.
Under its ambit, both the broadcasters will exchange their programmes of different genres like sports, news, culture, entertainment and many more areas on bilateral basis. The programmes will be broadcast on their radio and television platforms.
Valid for three years, the agreement will also facilitate co-productions and training of the officials of both the broadcasters in the latest technologies.
Prasar Bharati has 39 MoUs with foreign broadcasters for cooperation and collaboration in the field of broadcasting. They provide for exchange of programmes in the field of culture, education, science, entertainment, sports and news, among others.
The MoUs also facilitate co-production opportunities related to themes of mutual interest and knowledge sharing through training, said the government.
412 gallantry awards and other defence decorations announced on eve of R-Day (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
President Droupadi Murmu has approved 412 gallantry awards and other defence decorations to armed forces personnel and others on the eve of the 74th Republic Day.
Major Shubhang and Naik Jitendra Singh will receive the Kirti Chakra while Commander Nishant Singh from the Navy, who lost his life in a MiG-29K fighter crash, will be remembered with the Nao Sena Medal (Gallantry).
The awards include six Kirti Chakras (four posthumous), 15 Shaurya Chakras (two posthumous), 93 Sena Medals (Gallantry) (four posthumous), one Nao Sena Medal (Gallantry) posthumous, seven Vayu Sena Medals (Gallantry), 29 Param Vishisht Seva Medals, three Uttam Yudh Seva Medals, 53 Ati Vishisht Seva Medals, 10 Yudh Seva Medals, 40 Sena Medals (Devotion to Duty), 13 Nao Sena Medals (Devotion to Duty) (five of them posthumous), 14 Vayu Sena Medals (Devotion to Duty) and 128 Vishisht Seva Medals.
Two of the Kirti Chakras and seven of the Shaurya Chakras were for Army personnel. The President has also awarded one President’s Tatrakshak Medal for distinguished service, three for gallantry and one for meritorious service to Indian Coast Guard personnel.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has approved 62 Mentioned in Despatches to armed forces personnel.
These include 55 Chief of Army Staff Recommendations: 27 for Operation Rakshak, 13 for Operation Snow Leopard, two for Operation Orchid, six for Operation Rhino, one for Operation Nongkee and six others. This also includes seven Chief of Air Staff Recommendations.
Major Shubhang is from the Dogra Regiment and was with 62 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) and Naik Jitendra Singh is from Rajput Regiment and with 44 RR. Their awards will recognise counterinsurgency operations in Kashmir.