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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said the collective efforts of all the States in the spirit of cooperative federalism was the force that helped India emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Addressing the 7th meeting of the NITI Aayog Governing Council, the Prime Minister said that during the pandemic every State played a crucial role by focussing on the grassroots delivery of public services through cooperation across political lines. In that process, India emerged as an example for the developing nations to look up to as a global leader.
Telangana and Bihar Chief Ministers K. Chandrasekhar Rao and Nitish Kumar did not participate in the meeting, which was attended by 23 other Chief Ministers, three Lieutenant-Governors and two Administrators and Union Ministers.
Through a four-page letter to the Prime Minister, Mr. Rao had earlier conveyed that he would stay away from the meeting “as a mark of strong protest against present trend of the Union government to discriminate against the States and not treating them as equal partners”.
NITI Aayog termed the decision “unfortunate”, while Union Minister Piyush Goyal had on Saturday said the boycott showed that the Telangana Chief Minister had lost interest in the development works for the country's growth.
This year, the Governing Council discussed four key issues: crop diversification and achieving self-sufficiency in pulses, oilseeds and other agri-commodities; implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) in school education; implementation of the National Education Policy in higher education; and urban governance.
In his inaugural address, the Prime Minister stressed the need to focus on modernised agriculture, animal husbandry, and food processing to become self-sufficient and a global leader in the agriculture sector.
He said rapid urbanisation could be turned into a strength by using technology to ensure ease of living, transparent service delivery and improvement in the quality of life.
Satellites launched by SSLV in ‘wrong orbit, not usable’ (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Sunday said the satellites onboard its maiden Small Satellite Launch Vehicle “are no longer usable” after the SSLV-D1 placed them in an elliptical orbit instead of a circular one.
The space agency said a committee would analyse and make recommendations into Sunday’s episode and with the implementation of those recommendations “ISRO will come back soon with SSLV-D2.”
“SSLV-D1 placed the satellites into 356 km x 76 km elliptical orbit instead of 356 km circular orbit. Satellites are no longer usable. Issue is reasonably identified.
Failure of a logic to identify a sensor failure and go for a salvage action caused the deviation,” ISRO said in an update on its official Twitter handle.
In its maiden SSLV mission, the launch vehicle carried The Earth Observation Satellite EOS-02 and the co-passenger student satellites AzaadiSAT.
SSLV had suffered ‘data loss’ in its terminal stage, after performing “as expected” in all stages. It had earlier after lifted off from the spaceport.
The Earth Observation Satellite EOS-02 and the co-passenger student satellites AzaadiSAT are the major payloads for the SSLV.
The EOS-02 is an experimental optical remote sensing satellite with a high spatial resolution. It is to realise and fly an experimental imaging satellite with a short turnaround time and to demonstrate launch-on-demand capability. EOS-02 belongs to the microsatellite series of spacecraft.
The AzaadiSAT is a 8U CubeSat weighing around 8 kilograms. It carries 75 different payloads each weighing around 50 grams. Girl students from rural regions across the country were provided guidance to build these payloads.
The payloads are integrated by the student team of 'Space Kidz India'. The ground system developed by 'Space Kidz India' will be utilised for receiving the data from this satellite.
Editorial
Tapping technology to check minor mineral plunder (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
With the increase in the pace of development, the demand for minor minerals such as sand and gravel has crossed 60 million metric tons in India. This also makes it the second largest extractive industry on the planet, after water.
However, while laws and monitoring have been made stringent for the mining of major minerals consequent to the unearthing of several related scams across the country, the fact is that rampant and illegal mining of minor minerals continues unabated.
In many instances, one comes across gravel being removed from agricultural lands or fallow lands of the government near major highways or construction projects, as the contractor finds it easier and cheaper to do so even though the estimates for such work include the distance (called ‘lead’) to transport such gravel from authorised quarries.
Unlike major minerals, the regulatory and administrative powers to frame rules, prescribe rates of royalty, mineral concessions, enforcement, etc. are entrusted exclusively to the State governments.
The Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notifications of 1994 and 2006 made environmental clearance compulsory for mining in areas more than or equal to five hectares.
However, the Supreme Court of India after taking cognisance of a report by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change on Environmental Aspects of Quarrying of Minor Minerals (2010) directed all State governments to make the requisite changes in the regulatory framework of minor minerals, requiring environmental clearance for mining in areas less than five hectares.
Consequently, the EIA was amended in 2016 which made environmental clearance mandatory for mining in areas less than five hectares, including minor minerals.
The amendment also provided for the setting up of a District Environment Impact Assessment Authority (EIAA) and a District Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC).
Focused on inflation plunder (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee on Friday raised the benchmark interest rate for a third straight meeting as policymakers battle to rein in inflation that has persistently ‘remained at or above’ the prescribed upper tolerance threshold for six months.
The 50 basis points raise takes the policy repo rate to 5.4%, and, more significantly, to a level last seen in the pre-pandemic second quarter of fiscal 2019-20, when a growth slowdown and retail inflation of about 3.2% warranted a rate cut.
As the MPC’s Jayanth Varma had pointed out in June, when the MPC had recommended a 50 basis points increase, the impact of the 90 basis points total increase from May still left the real policy rate at the time lagging behind the RBI’s 100 basis points increase in retail inflation projection for the year — from 5.7% to 6.7%.
It is only now that the cumulative increase totals 140 basis points, and puts the central bank slightly ahead of the curve. Still, as Governor Shaktikanta Das acknowledged, consumer price inflation, even if off April’s eight-year high, remains ‘uncomfortably high’ with inflationary pressures broad-based.
And with the MPC’s own forecasts for the second and third quarter pegging retail price gains well above the upper tolerance mark of 6%, at 7.1% and 6.4%, respectively, the rate setting panel had little option but to continue the withdrawal of monetary accommodation to prevent inflation expectations from getting unmoored and stymieing growth by retarding consumption.
From an external sector and exchange rate perspective as well, globalised inflationary surges are prompting policy tightening in advanced economies that is in turn roiling currency markets including appreciably weakening the rupee and adding imported inflation to the mix.
Noting that ‘successive shocks to the global economy’ had led multilateral institutions including the IMF to lower their global growth projections and ‘highlight the rising risks of recession’, “disquietingly, globalisation of inflation is coinciding with deglobalisation of trade”.
India, democracy and the promised republic (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Within a few days, India will complete 75 years as an independent political entity. The event is not without historical significance, for among the countries that emerged from Britain’s vast South Asian empire in 1947, India alone has maintained some stability.
Stability, however, would be a low standard by which to judge India’s journey since 1947. So, how should it be judged, then? A recent commentator has argued that India may not have succeeded in economic terms but has remained a democracy, which is something to be proud of.
But, surely, democracy is not only about the protocols of governance but as much about the outcomes that it produces. Thus, while the idea of democracy being ‘government by discussion’ establishes the norm that decision-making under a democracy ought to be participatory, this representation loses sight of democracy’s central aim.
The significance of democracy is that it aims to empower the individual to lead the kind of life that he or she values.
With this understood, on its 75th anniversary India must be judged by the extent to which it has advanced human development.
When the economy is viewed as an ecosystem for enabling human development, the extent to which it has succeeded must be part of the assessment of democracy itself.
This was implicit in Jawaharlal Nehru’s message to the nation on August 15, 1947. Nehru had first queried, rhetorically, “Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour?”, and answered this as follows: “To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India.
To fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease. To build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions that will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.”
This understanding of the goal of Indian independence by the most consequential Indian of the moment was shared by millions of his compatriots who had participated in the movement for national independence.
OPED
Reaching out to Pasmanda Muslims (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 1, Indian Society)
At the Bharatiya Janata Party’s national executive meeting in Hyderabad recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi advised the party workers to reach out to the marginalised and weaker sections of the minorities.
This was also the party’s first official attempt to win over the Pasmanda Muslim community. This was predictably welcomed by sundry Pasmanda Muslim leaders in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, but sent more than just ripples across the Muslim community.
Many read in it the government’s attempt to break the unity of India’s largest minority. Some scoffed at the thought of caste-based divisions in the community, pointing out that there is no caste system in Islam and that attempts to ameliorate the lot of the deprived are mere tactics to augment the party’s vote bank.
On paper, their claims are borne by the tenets of Islam. It was the casteless, classless society that Islam offered that attracted many lower caste Hindus to Islam. Indeed, Islam recognises no distinctions based on birth, caste or class; the accent all along is on universal egalitarianism.
The Prophet in his last sermon told his audience, “An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab or a White over Black, except by deeds of piety”. To this day, Muslims stand together in a prayer, shoulder to shoulder, in mosques across the world.
Who stands to one’s left or right or in front is immaterial. The imam too can be from any segment of society. The differences of race or creed never overpowered unity.
As the famous poet Muhammad Iqbal, who penned Saare Jahan Se Achcha, wrote on the subject, “ Ek hi saff main khade ho gaye Mahmood-o-Ayaz/ Na koi banda raha, na koi bandanawaz (Sultan and slave stood side by side/ Then there was no servant nor master, nothing did them divide)”.
There is a Hadith which says all Muslims are like a body: if any part hurts, the whole body should feel the pain. The Quran’s Surah Al-Hujurat, verse 10, calls believers as brothers and encourages them to settle quarrels, if any.
Explainer
The workings of the Supreme Court collegium (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
The Chief Justice of India (CJI) N.V. Ramana’s tenure is drawing to an end in a few days. The Ramana Collegium has been particularly successful.
Meeting frequently and working quickly, they took the perennial problem of judicial vacancies by its horns and turned it around.
The collegium, as a united front, was able to recommend numerous judicial appointments and scripted history by getting nine Supreme Court judges appointed in one go. Of the nine, Justice B.V. Nagarathna, is in line to be the first woman CJI in 2027.
The collegium system was born out of years of friction between the judiciary and the executive. The hostility was further accentuated by instances of court-packing (the practice of changing the composition of judges in a court), mass transfer of high court judges and two supersessions to the office of the CJI in the 1970s.
The Three Judges cases saw the evolution of the collegium system. In the First Judges case, the court held that the consultation with the CJI should be “full and effective”.
The Second Judges case introduced the collegium system in 1993. It ruled that the CJI would have to consult a collegium of his two senior-most judges in the apex court on judicial appointments.
The court held that such a “collective opinion” of the collegium would have primacy over the government. It was the Third Judges case in 1998, which was a Presidential reference, that expanded the judicial collegium to its present composition of the CJI and four of his senior-most judges.
The collegium of the CJI and four senior-most judges of the Supreme Court make recommendations for appointments to the apex court and High Courts. The collegium can veto the government if the names are sent back by the latter for reconsideration.
The basic tenet behind the collegium system is that the judiciary should have primacy over the government in matters of appointments and transfers in order to remain independent.
However, over time, the collegium system has attracted criticism, even from within the judicial institution, for its lack of transparency.
It has even been accused of nepotism. The government’s efforts to amend the Constitution and bring a National Judicial Appointments Commission was struck down by a Constitution Bench.
The Great Barrier Reef ’s recovery and vulnerability to climate threats (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The highest levels of coral cover, within the past 36 years, has been recorded in the northern and central parts of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR), according to the annual long-term monitoring report by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS).
The researchers behind the report have warned, however, that this could be quickly reversed owing to rising global temperatures. This came after the reef experienced a mass coral bleaching event in March this year.
Corals are marine invertebrates or animals which do not possess a spine. They are the largest living structures on the planet. Each coral is called a polyp and thousands of such polyps live together to form a colony, which grow when polyps multiply to make copies of themselves.
Corals are of two types — hard corals and soft corals. Hard corals extract calcium carbonate from seawater to build hard, white coral exoskeletons.
Hard corals are in a way the engineers of reef ecosystems and measuring the extent of hard coral is a widely-accepted metric for measuring the condition of coral reefs.
Soft corals attach themselves to such skeletons and older skeletons built by their ancestors. Soft corals also add their own skeletons to the hard structure over the years. These growing multiplying structures gradually form coral reefs.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest reef system stretching across 2,300 km and having nearly 3,000 individual reefs.
It hosts 400 different types of coral, gives shelter to 1,500 species of fish and 4,000 types of mollusc. Coral reefs support over 25% of marine biodiversity even as they take up only 1% of the seafloor.
The marine life supported by reefs further fuels global fishing industries. Besides, coral reef systems generate $2.7 trillion in annual economic value through goods and service trade and tourism.
In Australia, the Barrier Reef, in pre-COVID times, generated $4.6 billion annually through tourism and employed over 60,000 people including divers and guides.
Text and Context
Why are regulators swooping down on stablecoins? (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
In early July, the Financial Stability Board (FSB), a body which advises major economies on international finance, promised to push for stablecoin regulation, citing “recent turmoil” in the cryptocurrency market.
The international body said it is “Working to ensure that crypto-assets are subject to robust regulation and supervision.” The group is slated to report in October to G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors on regulatory and supervisory approaches to stablecoins and other crypto-assets.
The FSB is not the only organisation seeking to regulate stablecoins. Last month, the European Commission and EU-based lawmakers agreed on the Markets in Crypto-Assets, or MiCA law, to enforce strict controls on the companies distributing the cryptocurrencies classified as stablecoins.
A stablecoin is a digital currency whose value is pegged to a ‘stable’ asset, such as the U.S. dollar or gold. The best-known stablecoin in the crypto ecosystem today is arguably
Tether (USDT), whose market cap is close to $66 billion, putting it below Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency in existence.
1 USDT is meant to be worth 1 USD, though market factors can take prices slightly above or below this mark. Other stablecoins such as USD Coin (USDC) and Binance USD (BUSD) are also pegged to the U.S. dollar and are known for their high market cap values. Tether also recently launched a stablecoin pegged to the British pound.
Stablecoins are not authorised for use by a country’s lawmakers or central bank. That means investors take on considerable legal and financial risk to hold them.
For a cryptocurrency trader, tracking stablecoin flows can help them gauge the state of the market, or even make educated guesses about future cryptocurrency price movements.
For example, when the stablecoin supply on crypto exchanges spikes, it might be a sign that investors are cashing in their stablecoins to buy cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), or even other alt coins.
Many traders believe this can lead to upward price moves. On the other hand, if the stablecoin supply on crypto exchanges suddenly drops, one might conclude that traders are buying these relatively steadier assets. This could mean traders want to hedge against future risk and volatility, or are driven by fear.
News
India begins cooperation with Bahrain-based Combined Maritime Forces (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
Last month, India formally commenced cooperation with the Bahrain-based multilateral partnership, Combined Maritime Forces (CMF). However, the modalities of the exact nature of cooperation are being worked out, according to official sources.
At the India-US 2+2 in April this year, India had announced that it would join the CMF as an Associate Partner, which Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had then said will strengthen cooperation in regional security in the Western Indian Ocean.
Joining the CMF is the latest in a series of multilateral engagements by the Indian Navy as part of India’s widening military diplomacy.
End of July, Deputy Chief of Naval Staff (DCNS) Vice Adm. Sanjay Mahindru visited the headquarters of CMF, which the Navy said marks “the initiation of the Indian Navy’s ‘Associate Support’ to CMF in keeping with India’s commitment to the collective responsibility of maritime security in the Indian Ocean.”
Commitments to resources and personnel are limited for Associate membership and it will be cooperative engagement based on the needs and requirements. The modalities for this are being worked out.
Indian Navy could be contributing a warship when required, however, there is no deployment as of now. Indian Navy has a Liaison Officer posted at the US Central Command (CENTCOM) in Bahrain who will also function as the point person for cooperation with the CMF.
CMF is a multi-national naval partnership to promote security, stability and prosperity across approximately 3.2 million square miles of international waters, which encompass some of the world’s most important shipping lanes.
The 34 nation grouping is commanded by a U.S. Navy Vice Admiral, who also serves as Commander U.S. Naval Forces CENTCOM and U.S. Fifth Fleet.
All three commands are co-located at U.S. Naval Support Activity Bahrain. In the immediate neighbourhood, Pakistan is a full member of CMF.
It is comprised of three task forces: CTF 150 (maritime security and counter-terrorism), CTF 151 (counter piracy) and CTF 152 (Arabian Gulf security and cooperation).