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Online fact-checking platforms could be required to obtain a registration from the Centre, as part of a government plan to seek greater accountability from them.
The measure is currently being considered as a key provision under the upcoming Digital India Bill, successor to India’s core Internet law.
The registration plan could be carried out in phases, with fact-checking units of “legacy and reputed” media companies being allowed to seek registration in the first phase.
The Digital India Bill is expected to classify various types of online intermediaries, including fact-checking portals.
Editorial
Who pays for the clean up? (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Historically, the primary responsibility for climate change been with the advanced economies, and their process of industrialisation. The contribution of the poorer countries (the Global South) was negligible.
The Kyoto Protocol recognised the “common but differentiated responsibilities” in the fight against climate change. Its successor, the Paris Agreement, asked countries to set voluntary emission targets but required the richer countries to make financial transfers to the developing economies for the latter to cope (that is to reduce emissions and adapt to the negative effects of climate change) with the problem.
It set a floor of $100 billion per year for these transfers. This was supposed to be over and above 0.7 per cent of their national income which was the overseas development aid.
In the definition of climate finance, commercial loans should not be counted. Countries of the Global South were already under the cosh, servicing their external debt, exacerbated by the pandemic.
To pile climate change borrowing on top of it is unconscionable. In 2020, $83 billion was paid into the climate finance fund to be transferred to the countries of the Global South, of which less than $25 billion was in the form of grants. The industrialised countries have not walked the talk.
Ideas Page
The majoritarianism slur (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Majoritarianism is defined as that form of legitimate political authority which expresses the will of the majority. In a democracy governed by a constitution, the document typically prescribes the manner of expression of majoritarian will, and also circumscribes its limits.
In other words, expression of the will of the majority within constitutional limits is constitutional. To what extent can the majority alter the very constitution itself and to what extent can such an exercise be interfered with by an unelected yet constitutional organ such as the judiciary is a topic for another day.
For now, I will limit the scope of the discussion to the contemporary casual and pejorative use of “majoritarianism” in Bharat as a catch-all term to gaslight Hindus.
First, to cry “majoritarianism” in a democracy, without making out a case of unconstitutionality, is to question the majority principle which forms the very basis of a democracy. Second, in the context of Bharat, “majoritarianism” has become a code to insinuate “Hindu majoritarianism” because obviously Hindus commit the continuing sin of existing and that too in a (dwindling) numerical majority despite the best intentions and endeavours of organised, monotheistic, iconoclastic, expansionist, and colonising worldviews.
Therefore, to atone for that sin, Hindus must constantly and unequivocally express contrition through cession of cultural, political, constitutional, and ultimately physical spaces.
By not doing so, Hindus endanger the sense of safety and dignity of certain groups which pass off as “national minorities” despite being in the majority in certain states where Hindus are in the minority.
Explained
Why jet engine is a big deal (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
A landmark agreement to facilitate the transfer of at least 11 critical jet engine technologies is likely to be announced during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ongoing official State Visit to the United States.
It is anticipated that a deal will be announced between the American multinational corporation General Electric (GE) and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) for the manufacture under licence in India of GE’s F414 engine for the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas Mk2.
The likely agreement for transfer of technology was discussed in the talks between Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in New Delhi earlier this month, and was a key highlight of National Security Advisor Ajit Doval’s meeting with his American counterpart Jake Sullivan in February, when the US-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) was operationalised.
World
US likely to impose new sanctions on Myanmar's state banks (Page no. 18)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The U.S. plans to levy new restrictions this week to cut off finances to Myanmar’s military junta, according to sources with knowledge of the matter and Thai news outlets.
The Thai reports, published on Tuesday, said the U.S. would announce new sanctions on Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank and Myanmar Investment and Commercial Bank.
Two people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters the reports were accurate. The U.S. Embassy in Thailand did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The U.S and other Western nations have imposed multiple rounds of sanctions on Myanmar’s military leaders since they seized power in a coup in 2021, overthrowing the democratically elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi and killing thousands of opponents in a crackdown.
Economy
IRDAI allows combi products under use-and-file system (Page no. 19)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
In a significant move, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has allowed insurance companies to launch individual and group ULIPs (unit linked insurance plans) and combi plans — combination of life and health insurance plans — without seeking prior approval from the regulator.
Combi products will be offered under the use-and-file procedure without the prior nod of the insurance regulator.
According to IRDAI, in combi products, life insurer is a lead insurer and such Combi products should comply with the extant norms.
Based on the feedback from Industry and in order to facilitate the insurance industry to promote insurance penetration, it has been decided to further expand the scope of current use-and-file procedure.