Whatsapp 93125-11015 For Details
India’s first private rocket that was launched Friday crossed the edge of space before splashing back into the Bay of Bengal, in a successful pilot run that heralds the entry of the private sector into the country’s space activities and sets the stage for more such launches.
The small 6-metre tall Vikram S suborbital vehicle, developed by a four-year-old startup called Skyroot Aerospace, reached an altitude of 89.5 km around 2.5 minutes after the launch from the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) sounding rocket facility at Sriharikota.
The target for the rocket was to reach space, which begins at an altitude of around 80 km, and to attempt touching the Karman Line located at around the 100-km altitude mark.
The Karman Line is the point where Earth’s atmosphere ends but satellites cannot be stably put into orbit.To compare, most commercial flights travel at an altitude of around 10 km.
The mission, named Prarambh, would have been considered a success even at an altitude of 50 km, considering its main goal — checking most of the subsystems that will be used in the company’s first orbital flight using the Vikram-1 vehicle, scheduled for next year.
In fact, the three customer payloads on-board — including SpaceKidz India’s FunSat — were non-deployable. They carried sensors and instruments to validate the flight-worthiness and payload integration process for Vikram-S.
Skyroot is developing a series of rockets, all of them named after Vikram Sarabhai, the founder of the Indian space programme.
With a height of just 6 metres and a diameter of nearly 380 mm, the rocket looked tiny compared to the ones used by ISRO.
Impose cost on nations which back terror: PM targets Pakistan, China (Page no. 5)
(GS Paper 3, Internal Security)
In remarks aimed at Pakistan and China, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday that while some countries support terrorism “as part of their foreign policy”, others do so by “blocking action against terrorists”.
Asking the world to unite against such “overt and covert backing of terror”, Modi said a “cost” must be imposed on such countries.
Speaking at the third “No Money for Terror” conference here, attended by delegations from 72 countries and 15 international organisations, Modi also obliquely criticised the West for being focussed on terror groups with global outreach.
Saying that the “reaction” to a terror attack “cannot vary based on where it happens”, he called for a “uniform, unified and zero-tolerance” approach.
“It is well known that terrorist organisations get money through several sources. One source is state support. Certain countries support terrorism as part of their foreign policy.
They offer political, ideological and financial support to them. International organisations must not think that the absence of war means peace. Proxy wars are also dangerous and violent.
There must be a cost imposed upon countries that support terrorism. Organisations and individuals that try to create sympathy for terrorists must also be isolated.
There can be no ifs and buts entertained in such matters. The world needs to unite against all kinds of overt and covert backing of terror.
In the backdrop of China blocking several attempts by India and the US to blacklist Pakistan-based terrorists under the sanctions committee of the UN Security Council, Modi said: “Sometimes, there are indirect arguments made in support of terrorism to block action against terrorists.
There is no place for an ambiguous approach while dealing with a global threat. It is an attack on humanity, freedom and civilisation. It knows no boundaries. Only a uniform, unified and zero-tolerance approach can defeat terrorism.”
New draft privacy law eases cross border flow of data,hikes penalties for breach (Page no. 5)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Easing cross-border data flows, hiking penalties for data breaches and non-compliance, allowing the government to exempt state agencies from the law in the interest of national security: these are among the key provisions of the revamped data protection Bill released by the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY).
The draft was out three months after the Government withdrew an earlier version that had triggered a pushback from Big Tech and sections of the civil society.
The new draft, now called the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022, has provisions on “purpose limitations” around data collection; specified grounds for collecting and processing of personal data; penalties ranging from Rs 50 crore to Rs 500 crore and a Data Protection Board as the adjudicating body to enforce the provisions of the Bill.
The draft is up for public consultation until December 17 and the final version is expected to be tabled in the Budget session of Parliament next year.
The new Bill had 30 provisions while the previous one had more than 90. The revamped Bill, however, has left a number of crucial details on its provisions to be made in subsequent rules.
The new draft offers significant concessions on cross-border data flows, in a departure from the previous Bill’s contentious requirement of local storage of data within India’s geography. According to the new draft, the Centre will notify regions to which data of Indians can be transferred.
Sources said the conditions for selecting such regions would be based on their data security landscape and if the government can access data of Indians from there.
Under the previous Bill, businesses were supposed to store a copy of certain “sensitive personal data” of citizens like health and financial data within India, and the export of undefined “critical” personal data from the country was prohibited.
It was among the biggest issues flagged by technology companies, with firms like Meta having said that it could have an impact on its services in India.
Editorial
Filling the holes in safety nets (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Earlier this year,the G20/OECD released a draft of the proposed revisions to their 2011 High-level Principles on Financial Consumer Protection (FCP).
In October, the fourth finance ministers and central bank governors meeting endorsed these principles. The 2011 principles covered 10 thematic areas reflecting the market and consumer issues, including equitable and fair consumer treatment, disclosures and transparency, and financial education.
In 2022, two additional principles were included — access and inclusion and quality financial products. The updated principles also recommend intervention by regulators in certain high risk products, cultivating appropriate firm culture and using behavioural insights to better consumer outcomes.
These principles deal with three cross-cutting themes — financial well-being, digitalisation and sustainable finance. We focus on these themes as this approach has been used by the G20/OECD for the first time for FCP.
First, FCP policies must contribute to overall financial well-being and resilience of consumers. OECD’s working definition of “individual financial well-being” refers to being in control, feeling secure and having freedom about one’s own current and future finances.
An effective FCP regime must ensure adequate and easy to understand disclosures to consumers. However, an information dump for mere compliance defeats this purpose, especially in India where financial literacy is not pervasive.
Therefore, regulators such as SEBI prescribe certain financial service providers to assess customer suitability and undertake risk profiling before providing services.
Countries such as the UK and New Zealand have introduced guidance to identify and provide fair treatment to “vulnerable financial consumers”. At present, India does not recognise this concept. Going forward, faced with challenges like financial illiteracy and economic hardship, it may be worth considering.
Second, FCP must factor in the increasing number of digital channels consumers use to interact with financial products and services and the impact of greater use of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.
Ideas Page
Global Task on India’s table (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
The global economic recession of 2008 had catapulted the otherwise obscure grouping of finance ministers of influential countries into a summit level gathering of G20 nations. In the last 14 years, economy and development was the primary preoccupation of G20 summits.
The summit at Bali earlier this week was also meant to be so. But the long shadow of the Ukraine war fell on it. Though security issues were not supposed to be discussed at these summits, Ukraine kept entering the discussions in different ways — food security, supply-chain disruption, economic downturn and the threat to peace. In the end, all the countries had their say in the matter.
The Americans were happy that they managed to push a strong statement on the war, sufficient enough to hog global headlines. Since a direct condemnation was not possible, the G20 statement took the UN resolution route.
The long 52-paragraph statement began with a reference to the UNGA resolution adopted by a majority vote in March this year, which “deplores in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine and demands its complete and unconditional withdrawal from the territory of Ukraine”.
The Chinese were unhappy that “some Western countries led by the US” tried to hype the topic, which was “irrelevant to the economic cooperation at the G20 summit”. Global Times, the Communist Party of China mouthpiece, fumed that they were using “a geopolitical crisis to further sabotage the unity of the international community”.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi referred to the Ukraine crisis primarily in the context of the supply-chain disruptions it was causing and the impact that had on the poor.
He pointed out that with global supply chains in ruins, a crisis of essential goods was brewing all over the world. “The challenge for the poor citizens of every country is more severe.
Everyday life was already a struggle for them. They do not have the financial capacity to deal with the double whammy,” he warned. His statement that “today’s fertiliser shortage is tomorrow’s food crisis” became one of the quotable quotes of the summit.
Pick the winners (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
As I have been an advocate for industrial policy for many decades, even when many of my economist friends were gung-ho liberalisers on trade policy, I am now often asked about my opinion on the industrial policy being currently adopted by the Indian government.
While in the past I had studied, with some appreciation, the experience of industrial policy in East Asia (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and later China), my advocacy of it in countries like India has all along been somewhat qualified by healthy skepticism about its implementation by a heavy-handed bureaucracy.
First of all, the industries need to be very carefully selected. Many of the industries currently chosen to be under PLI (production linked incentives) are highly capital- and skill-intensive.
So the goal of job creation for our massive numbers of unskilled workers is unlikely to be met. Even in Japan and South Korea, where industrial policy has been otherwise successful, it has often mainly helped large firms. But for creating jobs, the focus has to be on small and medium-scale firms.
Of course, job creation or even economic growth may not always be the main goal of industrial policy. In a world of geo-political conflicts and supply chain disruptions, national security is often considered a major goal.
But even in view of this goal, I think the plan of giving a 50 per cent subsidy (amounting to $10 billion) to Vedanta-Foxconn for fabricating chips is difficult to justify.
Processing silicon downstream would have been more consistent with India’s productive capacity and would have also created more jobs.
A world without nukes (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
Our most eminent jurist, Fali Nariman, has drawn urgent attention, in the context of threats to deploy nuclear weapons in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, to the advisory opinion tendered “nearly three decades ago” by the International Court of Justice in the Hague on the compatibility of such threats with international humanitarian law.
While he says the overwhelming majority opinion “permitted a state to use nuclear weapons in self-defence when its survival was at stake”, this is qualified earlier in the sentence by the phrase, “in view of the current state of international law”.
This is further qualified by the end of the sentence which explains that in the absence of a definitive law on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, the ICJ “cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful”.
In other words, the court did not endorse the use of or even possession of nuclear weapons; it only pointed to the absence of a law on the subject.
That was the position in 1996. Now, in 2022, we do have an international law in the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), passed in January 2021.
It now constitutes the law on the subject. It was passed by 122 members of the UN General Assembly — a clear majority — and has entered into force after its ratification by 50 member-States of the UN.
The number of signatories has since risen to 91. Thus, a treaty with binding force has now become part and parcel of international law on the subject. Any threat or use of nuclear weapons is now a clear violation of international law.
This last view has not yet been referred to the ICJ to ascertain whether in their view legislation passed by the UN by an overwhelming majority, and now ratified by more than the required number to enter into force, would over-rule the three-decades old opinion of the International Court, which was not unanimous and did not represent the views of the developing world.
Explained
Narco test (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
A court in Saket, New Delhi, has allowed Delhi Police to conduct a narco test on Aaftab Poonawalla, the 28-year-old man accused of killing his 27-year-old live-in partner Shraddha Walkar in May this year.
Poonawalla allegedly chopped up Walkar’s body in many pieces, and disposed of them in a wooded area in South Delhi over several weeks.
After police moved court seeking permission for the test, Poonawalla consented, telling the judge he was aware of the consequences.
In a ‘narco’ or narcoanalysis test, a drug called sodium pentothal is injected into the body of the accused, which transports them to a hypnotic or sedated state, in which their imagination is neutralised. In this hypnotic state, the accused is understood as being incapable of lying, and is expected to divulge information that is true.
Sodium pentothal or sodium thiopental is a fast-acting, short duration anaesthetic, which is used in larger doses to sedate patients during surgery.It belongs to the barbiturate class of drugs that act on the central nervous system as depressants.
Because the drug is believed to weaken the subject’s resolve to lie, it is sometimes referred to as a “truth serum”, and is said to have been used by intelligence operatives during World War II.
A polygraph test is based on the assumption that physiological responses that are triggered when a person is lying are different from what they would be otherwise.
A polygraph test does not involved injecting drugs into the body; rather instruments like cardio-cuffs or sensitive electrodes are attached to the suspect, and variables such as blood pressure, pulse rate, respiration, change in sweat gland activity, blood flow, etc., are measured as questions are put to them.