The Indian Express’ UPSC weekly news express covers some of the important and burning topics of current affairs news from this week to help you prepare for UPSC-CSE. Try out the MCQs and check your answers provided towards the end of the article. China releases third list of names for places in Arunachal Pradesh Why in news? — China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs put out names of 11 places in Arunachal Pradesh in Chinese, Tibetan and pinyin characters, acting in accordance with regulations on geographical names issued by the State Council, the equivalent of the Chinese Cabinet. — As per an ANI report, these places include two land areas, two residential areas, five mountain peaks and two rivers. It also listed the category of places’ names and their subordinate administrative districts. — This isn’t the first time that China has done something like this. It released two different sets of “standardised” names of places in Arunachal Pradesh back in 2017 and 2021. — The Indian authorities on Tuesday (April 4) said they rejected the move “outright”. In a statement, India’s Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi categorically stated that “Arunachal Pradesh is, has been, and will always” be an integral part of India. — Meanwhile, the US has recognised Arunachal Pradesh as an integral part of India and strongly opposes any unilateral attempts to advance territorial claims by renaming localities, the White House has said. KEY TAKEAWAYS Why is China giving names to places that are in India? — China claims some 90,000 sq km of Arunachal Pradesh as its territory. It calls the area “Zangnan” in the Chinese language and makes repeated references to “South Tibet”. Chinese maps show Arunachal Pradesh as part of China, and sometimes parenthetically refer to it as “so-called Arunachal Pradesh”. — China makes periodic efforts to underline this unilateral claim to Indian territory. Giving Chinese names to places in Arunachal Pradesh is part of that effort. Which places were featured in the previous lists? — The first list came out on April 14, 2017, containing six places in the state. China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs had said at the time that it was releasing a “first batch” of “standardised” names. “According to relevant regulations on the management of place names, the department has standardised some place names in China’s South Tibet region. We have released the first batch of the place names in South Tibet (six in total),” the Chinese government had said. — The six names on that list then, written in the Roman alphabet, were “Wo’gyainling”, “Mila Ri”, “Qoidengarbo Ri”, “Mainquka”, “Bumo La” and “Namkapub Ri”. — The latitude and longitude listed with the names showed those places as Tawang, Kra Daadi, West Siang, Siang (where Mechuka or Menchuka is an emerging tourist destination), Anjaw, and Subansiri respectively. — These six places spanned the breadth of Arunachal Pradesh — “Wo’gyainling” in the west, “Bumo La” in the east and the other four located in the central part of the state. — Once the first list was released, India didn’t mince any words and condemned the Chinese act. The spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs had said “renaming or inventing names of states of your neighbour do not make illegal occupation as legal.” — Then, four and a half years later, China put out another set of names for places in the state. This included eight residential areas, four mountains, two rivers, and a mountain pass, according to the state-run Global Times. This time too, it had provided the latitudes and longitudes of these places. — Strongly reacting to the release of the second list, India at the time said Arunachal Pradesh was, is, and will always be an integral part of India and the “standardised” names were a Chinese invention. This is exactly what the country has reiterated after the Chinese authorities on Sunday (April 2) put out another set of names of places in the state. What is China’s argument for claiming these areas? — The People’s Republic of China disputes the legal status of the McMahon Line, the boundary between Tibet and British India that was agreed at the Simla Convention — officially the ‘Convention Between Great Britain, China, and Tibet’ — of 1914. — China was represented at the Simla Convention by a plenipotentiary of the Republic of China, which had been declared in 1912 after the Qing dynasty was overthrown. (The present communist government came to power only in 1949, when the People’s Republic was proclaimed.) The Chinese representative did not consent to the Simla Convention, saying Tibet had no independent authority to enter into international agreements. — The McMohan Line, named after Henry McMahon, the chief British negotiator at Shimla, was drawn from the eastern border of Bhutan to the Isu Razi pass on the China-Myanmar border. China claims territory to the south of the McMahon Line, lying in Arunachal Pradesh. China also bases its claims on the historical ties that have existed between the monasteries in Tawang and Lhasa. — In 2017, Lu Kang, then spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, had said: “China has a coherent and clear standpoint of the border between China and India. It is proper action to announce those Chinese place names to the public, as it is according to regulations established by the State Council.” What does China seek to gain from making these claims? — As stated earlier, it is a part of the Chinese strategy to assert its territorial claims over Indian territory. As part of this strategy, China routinely issues statements of outrage whenever an Indian dignitary visits Arunachal Pradesh. — Beijing keeps harping on its “consistent” and “clear” position that the Indian possession of Arunachal Pradesh, though firmly established and recognised by the world, is “illegal”, and asks New Delhi to stop taking actions to “complicate” the border issue. — The “first batch” of renaming in 2017 had come days after the Dalai Lama visited Arunachal Pradesh, against which Beijing had lodged a strong protest. Spokesperson Lu had, however, claimed that the “standardisation” was necessary since all names used in “southern Tibet” were inherited through word-of-mouth for generations by minority ethnic groups. — “These names reflect and indicate from one aspect, that China’s proposal on the sovereignty claim of South Tibet region has a prominent historical, cultural, administrative and jurisdictional basis,” Lu had said. — Speaking to The Indian Express at the time, Wang Dehua, then director of the Institute for South and Central Asia Studies in Shanghai, had claimed that through this move, China wanted to prove its territorial jurisdiction over Arunachal Pradesh. — Laying aggressive claims to territories on the basis of alleged historical injustices done to China is a part of Beijing’s foreign policy playbook. — The claim on Taiwan is one such example, as are the consistent efforts to change the “facts on the ground” in several disputed islands in the South China Sea. The aggression is at all times backed in overt and covert ways by the use of China’s economic and military muscle. (Source: China releases third list of names for places in Arunachal Pradesh: What is the strategy behind this?) Point to ponder: India must be alert to China’s cartographic deception in Arunachal Pradesh. Discuss. 1. MCQ: Which one of the following pairs of States of India indicates the easternmost and westernmost State? (2015) (a) Assam and Rajasthan (b) Arunachal Pradesh and Rajasthan (c) Assam and Gujarat (d) Arunachal Pradesh and Gujarat MediaOne Case Why in news? — The Supreme Court, on Wednesday (April 5), set aside the orders passed by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (MIB) on January 31, 2022, and the Kerala High Court on March 2, 2022, refusing to renew Malayalam news channel Media One’s broadcast license. — In doing so, a bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justice Hima Kohli upheld the appeal filed by media one’s parent company, Madhyamam Broadcasting, in the case of “Madhyamam Broadcasting Limited vs Union of India & Ors”. — In its ruling, the top court said, “MIB shall now proceed to issue renewal permissions in terms of this judgment within four weeks and all other authorities shall co-operate in issuing necessary approvals. The interim order of this Court shall continue to operate until the renewal permissions are granted”. KEY TAKEAWAYS Khadija Khan Explains: What is MediaOne case? — The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, on January 31, 2022, refused to renew the broadcast license of the Malayalam channel MediaOne on the ground that the Ministry of Home Affairs had declined to grant it security clearance while considering its request for renewal of license. — The MHA had cited alleged links between the channel’s promoters Madhyamam Broadcasting Limited and Jamaat-e-Islami Hind for denying the security clearance to Media One. Following this, the channel was taken off the air. — This led to the channel approaching the Kerala High Court against the Centre’s action. During the hearing in the HC, the Centre told HC that the decision to revoke the license was based on grounds of national security. On February 9, 2022, a single bench of the HC upheld the ban on the channel. On appeal, a division bench of the High Court, on March 2, upheld the order of the single judge. — However, on March 15, last year, the Apex Court stayed the Kerala High Court order and allowed the channel to resume operations. In the hearing before the SC, the channels’ promoters argued that they were not given a chance to defend themselves as the national security reasons cited to deny renewal of their license were submitted to the HC in a sealed cover. — Further, it was contended that the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression, which includes press freedom, can be restricted only on the grounds enumerated under Article 19(2) and there was no allegation that the channel violated the Programme and Advertising Code prescribed under the Cable Television Networking (Regulation) Act 1995 and the 1994 Rules. — In March 2022, the SC granted Media One temporary relief, and permitted it to resume operations. Why the apex court ruled in favour of Media One? — In its 134-page judgment, the Supreme Court upheld Media One’s appeal on two procedural grounds, namely, principles of natural justice and proportionality. Principles of Natural Justice — The bench allowed the challenge to the order of the MIB and judgment of the High Court on account of the principles of natural justice constitutionalized by its judgment in its 1978 ruling in “Maneka Gandhi vs Union of India”. — The Court observed that “that there is an inherent value in securing compliance with the principles of natural justice independent of the outcome of the case.” Actions which violate procedural guarantees can be struck down even if non-compliance does not prejudice the outcome of the case, the court held. It also stated that “the core of the principles of natural justice breathes reasonableness into procedure”. — Additionally, the court clarified that in the present case, the burden is on the claimant to prove that the procedure followed infringes upon the core of procedural guarantees. — In its judgment, the court also observed that the duty to act fairly that is derived from common law is not exhaustively defined in a set of concrete principles, and courts, in India and abroad, have demonstrated considerable flexibility in the application of the principles of natural justice by fine-tuning them to different situations. — However, the court also added that such a concept of natural justice “cannot be put into a ‘straitjacket formula’” and is “incapable of a ‘precise definition’”. — The Court asserted that Media One had proved that MBL’s right to a fair hearing “was infringed by the unreasoned order of the MIB dated 31 January 2022” and “the non-disclosure of relevant material to the appellants, and its disclosure solely to the court.” — In such a situation, the burden shifts on the Centre to prove that the procedure that was followed was reasonable and in compliance with the requirements of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution, the court noted while adding that the standard of proportionality was used to test the reasonableness of the procedure in the present case. — Finally, the court upheld its judgments in Ex-Armymen’s Protection Services and Digi Cable Network to hold that while “principles of natural justice may be excluded when on the facts of the case, national security concerns overweigh the duty of fairness”, “the state has been unable to prove that these considerations arise in the present factual scenario.” The Court added that though confidentiality and national security are legitimate aims for the purpose of limiting procedural guarantee, a “blanket immunity from disclosure of all investigative reports cannot be granted.” Proportionality — The judgment went on to explain that the validity of the claim of involvement of national security considerations must be assessed on the test of (i) whether there is material to conclude that the non-disclosure of information is in the interest of national security; and (ii) whether a reasonable prudent person would draw the same inference from the material on record; — “Even assuming that non-disclosure is in the interest of confidentiality and national security, the means adopted by the respondents do not satisfy the other prongs of the proportionality standard,” the Court noted. The top court then reiterated that courts can assess the validity of public interest immunity claims albeit based on the “structured proportionality standard”. — On the practice of sealed covers, the court observed that “the power of courts to secure material in a sealed cover when contradistinguished with the scope of assessment of public interest immunity claims is rather unguided and ad-hoc.” Additionally, the Court said that “while public interest immunity claims conceivably impact the principles of natural justice, sealed cover proceedings infringe the principles natural justice and open justice.” — It also suggested that the court could have taken the course of redacting confidential portions of the document and providing a summary of the document’s contents. — “The challenge to the order of MIB is allowed on substantive grounds. The non-renewal of permission to operate a media channel is a restriction on the freedom of the press which can only be reasonably restricted on the grounds stipulated in Article 19(2) of the Constitution. — The reasons for denying a security clearance to MBL, that is, its alleged antiestablishment stance and the alleged link of the shareholders to JEI-H, are not legitimate purposes for the restriction of the right of freedom of speech protected under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. In any event, there was no material to demonstrate any link of the shareholders, as was alleged,” the court said allowing the appeal. (Source: ‘Natural Justice’ and ‘Proportionality’: Why Supreme Court ruled in Media One’s favour by Khadija Khan) Point to ponder: Instant justice is not the way of a civilised society. Comment. 2. MCQ: Which of the following are regarded as the main features of the “Rule of Law”? (2018) 1. Limitation of powers 2. Equality before law 3. People’s responsibility to the Government 4. Liberty and civil rights Select the correct answer using the code given below : (a) 1 and 3 only (b) 2 and 4 only (c) 1, 2 and 4 only (d) 1, 2, 3 and 4 LIGO-India Why in news? — The government has given the final go-ahead to India’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, project, clearing the way for the construction of the country’s biggest scientific facility that will join the ongoing global project to probe the universe by detecting and studying gravitational waves. KEY TAKEAWAYS Amitabh Sinha Explains: What is LIGO? — LIGO is an international network of laboratories that detect the ripples in spacetime produced by the movement of large celestial objects like stars and planets. Spacetime, postulated first in Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, encapsulates the current understanding of how gravitation works. — LIGO-India will be located in Hingoli district of Maharashtra, about 450 km east of Mumbai, and is scheduled to begin scientific runs from 2030. Here’s what you need to know about gravitation, Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, and the purpose and significance of the LIGO project. Newton’s law of gravitation — Almost everyone with a high-school background would be familiar with Newton’s law of gravitation. The English mathematician Sir Issac Newton (1643-1727) had postulated that the force that makes any object fall to the ground was also the one that makes heavenly bodies go around in their orbits. — Newton proposed that this was due to the fact that every celestial body exerted an attractive force on every other body in the universe. He worked out a mathematical formulation to calculate the strength of this attractive force which, he found, was directly proportional to the masses of the two bodies and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. — For more than two centuries, this remained the best understanding of gravitation. It could explain the motion of all celestial objects, and the mathematical framework was able to produce results that matched precisely with the observations. Newton’s law of gravitation is an integral part of elementary science education even today, and its mathematics continues to be applied in a wide variety of modern-day scientific investigations with a remarkable degree of accuracy. Deficiencies in Newton’s law — Its success notwithstanding, the theory suffered from a couple of major deficiencies, one of which was evident even during Newton’s time. Newton himself acknowledged it, and his contemporaries were aware of it. The theory did not explain the reason for the existence of the attractive force between any two bodies. Why should every piece of matter feel attracted towards everything else? — The second problem became apparent much later, at the start of the 20th century, as a consequence of Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. Special Relativity, published in 1905, established that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light. But the gravitational force seemed to be propagating instantaneously, over any large distance, without any delay at all. Time does not even figure in Newton’s gravitational equation. — The LIGO Laboratory operates two detector sites, one near Hanford in eastern Washington, and another near Livingston, Louisiana. This photo shows the Livingston detector site.General Theory of Relativity — Ten years later, Einstein altered our understanding of gravitation with his General Theory of Relativity. He had already shown, with Special Relativity, that space and time were not independent entities but had to be woven together as spacetime. With General Relativity, which is essentially a new theory of gravitation, Einstein took a huge leap of thought. — He proposed that spacetime was not just a passive backdrop to the events happening in the universe. It was not a mere transparent, inert, and static medium. Instead, spacetime interacted with matter, was influenced by it, and in turn, itself influenced events. It was like a soft fabric that responds to a heavy object placed on it, and curls around it. — The curvature in spacetime so produced was the reason other smaller bodies in the vicinity felt the gravitational pull. The heavier the mass in the centre, the greater is the curvature in spacetime, and stronger the gravitational force. — With one mind-bending idea, Einstein was able to explain the origin of the gravitational force, and also the reason for perpetual, near-circular, motion of all heavenly bodies. As physicist John Wheeler described very succinctly, matter tells spacetime how to curve and spacetime tells matter how to move. Gravitational waves — General Relativity also predicted that moving objects would produce gravitational waves in spacetime, just like a moving boat produces ripples in water. Because these are ripples in spacetime itself, gravitational waves have the effect of causing a temporary deformation in a body when it comes in contact. — This effect is similar to a ball being slightly squeezed along any of its diameters. The ball flattens a bit in the direction of pressure that is applied, while it bulges out in the perpendicular direction. When a gravitational wave passes the Earth, for example, the Earth gets similarly squeezed in one direction, and bulges in the perpendicular direction. — Because gravity is the weakest of all natural forces, the deforming effect of gravitational waves is extremely tiny, the reason why it could not be experimentally verified for 100 years even though many other predictions of General Relativity were tested repeatedly during this period. How LIGO works — It is to measure these tiny effects of gravitational waves that scientists have set up the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), one of the most complex pieces of scientific equipment ever built. The observatory comprises two 4-km-long vacuum chambers, built perpendicular to each other. Highly reflective mirrors are placed at the end of the vacuum chambers. — Light rays are released simultaneously in both the vacuum chambers. They hit the mirrors, get reflected, and are captured back. In normal circumstances, the light rays in both the chambers would return simultaneously. But when a gravitational wave arrives, one of the chambers gets a little elongated, while the other one gets squished a bit. In this case, light rays do not return simultaneously, and there is a phase difference. The presence of a phase difference marks the detection of a gravitational wave. — The precision of the measurements required to detect gravitational waves is mind-boggling. At a 4-km scale, the changes in distance that light has to travel because of the gravitational wave are 10,000 times smaller than the width of the proton, and LIGO instruments are designed to pick this up. According to the LIGO website, this is similar to measuring the distance to a neighbouring star 4.2 light years away with an accuracy smaller than the width of human hair. — The first ever detection of a gravitational wave happened on September 14, 2015, by the two US-based LIGO detectors. These gravitational waves were produced by the merger of two black holes, which were about 29 and 36 times the mass of the Sun, 1.3 billion years ago. Black hole mergers are the source of some of the strongest gravitational waves. But even these are extremely feeble to detect. Scientists checked the results for four months before announcing their result in February 2016. — This achievement was promptly rewarded with the Nobel Prize in 2017. Since then, nine more gravitational wave events have been detected by the four observatories in the United States, Europe and Japan. (Source: What is LIGO-India, the Indian node in the global network of labs to detect and study gravitational waves? by Amitabh Sinha) Point to ponder: Why LIGO India matters? 3. MCQ: Consider the following phenomena (2018) (1) Light is affected by gravity. (2) The Universe is constantly expanding. (3) Matter warps its surrounding space-time. Which of the above is/are the prediction/predictions of Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, often discussed in media ? (a) 1 and 2 only (b) 3 only (c) 1 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3 Repo Rate pause Why in news? — In a surprise move that went against the street expectations of a 25 basis points rate hike, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday kept the repo rate unchanged at 6.5 per cent amid concerns over the global banking crisis. — Even as the central bank expects retail inflation to moderate to 5.2 percent in FY 2023-24, it pointed out that core inflation — non-food, non-fuel component — could stay elevated due to lagged pass-through of input costs. KEY TAKEAWAYS Hitesh Vyas , Aanchal Magazine Explains: The decision to hold — The decision to keep the repo rate unchanged was taken unanimously by the six-member Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). In the past few policies, the MPC members had differences of opinion on the rate action. — In the February 2023 monetary policy, while Ashima Goyal and Jayanth R Varma voted against the repo rate hike, Shashanka Bhide, Rajiv Ranjan, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das and Deputy Governor Michael Debabrata Patra voted for a hike in the repo rate by 25 bps. In December 2022 policy, except for Varma, all other members voted to increase the repo rate by 35 bps. What is the stance and the impact? — The MPC decided by a majority of five out of six members, to remain focused on withdrawal of accommodation to ensure that inflation progressively aligns with the target, while supporting growth. — The MPC’s decision to pause in its first meeting of the current financial year will give relief to borrowers as the external benchmark based lending rate (EBLR), which are linked to repo rate, will not increase. — The RBI has raised the repo rate by 250 basis points (bps) since May 2022, thereby increasing the EBLR by 250 bps. Banks have also raised the lending rate linked to marginal cost of funds based lending rate (MCLR) in the past 11 months. What is the reasons for the pause? — The RBI underlined risks from protracted geopolitical tensions, tight global financial conditions and global financial market volatility to its monetary policy outlook. “Global financial market volatility has surged, with potential upsides for imported inflation risks,” it said. — Concerns over slowing consumption and tepid private investment have been emerging in policy quarters, with many seeing high interest rates as a crucial factor in dampening demand. — The pause by the RBI will help favour the growth-inflation tradeoff towards the former. This comes in the backdrop of many global agencies lowering India’s growth forecasts for this financial year amid expectations of global economic slowdown and monetary tightening by other countries. — However, in February, after the RBI’s central board meeting, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das had justified the rate hikes saying that the real interest rates had just turned positive after being in the negative territory for the last three years and that the RBI’s rate actions have been in line with its objective of maintaining price stability, as has been “mandated under the law”. — Das had also said that negative real interest rates — a situation where the inflation rate is higher than the nominal interest rate — for a prolonged period of time “can create instability in the financial system”. — The government has been leaning in favour of a benign pace of rate hikes by the RBI, citing the need for a de-linking of monetary policy stance from that of central banks of developed economies. In September last year, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said policy actions of the RBI may not be synchronised as much as developed central banks What is the growth projection? — The RBI has projected real GDP growth for 2023-24 at 6.5 per cent. This is higher than the forecast of 6.4 per cent made in the February 2023 policy. — While the change is marginal, it suggests an improvement in economic conditions. However, there are downside risks to this forecast. As per other estimates, growth is likely to slow down sharply from 7 per cent in 2022-23. For instance, the World Bank has recently pegged the Indian economy to grow at 6.3 per cent in 2023-24, while others such as Crisil expect it to be lower at 6 per cent, as global growth slows down and the full impact of higher domestic rates is felt across the economy. The scope for further hikes will depend on how the growth-inflation dynamics evolve. — The RBI Governor said the country’s real gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to have recorded a growth of 7 per cent in 2022-23. What is the inflation forecast? — Assuming an annual average crude oil price (Indian basket) of $ 85 per barrel and a normal monsoon, the RBI has projected CPI inflation to be at 5.2 per cent for 2023-24, lower than the expectation of 5.3 per cent announced in the February 2023 policy. (Sources: What is behind the RBI’s unexpected repo rate pause? Express View: Reading RBI’s call to ‘pause’ interest rate hikes.) Point to ponder: What are the pros and cons of raising interest rates? 4. MCQ: If the RBI decides to adopt an expansionist monetary policy, which of the following would it not do? (2020) (1) Cut and optimize the Statutory Liquidity Ratio (2) Increase the Marginal Standing Facility Rate (3) Cut the Bank Rate and Repo Rate Select the correct answer using the code given below: (a) 1 and 2 only (b) 2 only (c) 1 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3 ANSWERS TO MCQs: 1 (d), 2(c), 3(d), 4 (b) (The UPSC Essentials Indian Express is now on Telegram. Click here to join our YouTube channel and stay updated with the latest updates. Subscribe to The Indian Express UPSC Key and prepare for the Civil Services and other competitive examinations with cues on how to read and understand content from the most authoritative news source in India. Note: Catch the UPSC Weekly Quiz every Saturday evening and brush up on your current affairs knowledge.) Share your views, answers and suggestions in the comment box or at manas.srivastava@indianexpress.com
