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Important topics and their relevance in UPSC CSE exam for April 26, 2023. If you missed the April 25, 2023 UPSC key from the Indian Express, read it here
Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Indian Polity and Governance-Constitution, Political System, Panchayati Raj, Public Policy, Rights Issues, etc.
Main Examination: General Studies II: Structure, organization and functioning of the Executive and the Judiciary—Ministries and Departments of the Government; pressure groups and formal/informal associations and their role in the Polity.
Key Points to Ponder:
• What’s the ongoing story– Terming the allegations of sexual harassment against Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) president and BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh “serious” in nature, the Supreme Court Tuesday issued a notice to Delhi Police on a petition filed by seven wrestlers seeking registration of an FIR against him.
• This came on a day a stream of leaders of political parties and farmers’ organisations, including former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, reached Jantar Mantar to express solidarity with top wrestlers, who have been holding a sit-in protest for the past three days to demand action against Brij Bhushan.
• What is POSCO Act?
• How does the issue connects to Sports Ethics and Acccountability?
From Explained:
• What are the protesting wrestlers demanding?
The wrestlers are demanding that an FIR be registered against Brij Bhushan on the basis of their police complaint, and that he be arrested under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act as one of the complainants is a minor. They have also demanded that he should be removed as the WFI president, and that the federation should be dissolved
• How has the WFI responded to the protests?
Brij Bhushan has rubbished the allegations of sexual harassment. In January, he said he was “willing to be hanged” if proven guilty. He has not been responding to calls seeking his comments on the ongoing protests. The WFI has denied claims of financial mismanagement and arbitrariness in its functioning.
• What steps has the government taken?
In January, the government persuaded the wrestlers to call off their protest by forming an Oversight Committee, which was tasked with looking into the allegations against Brij Bhushan as well as managing the day-to-day affairs of the WFI.
The six-member committee, headed by boxing legend MC Mary Kom, was given four weeks to come up with its findings. However, it submitted its report only in the first week of April. The committee has since been disbanded.
Following the fresh protests, the government declared the ongoing process for the WFI elections, which were scheduled for May 7, null and void. It also instructed the IOA to form an ad hoc panel that would conduct the elections within 45 days, and manage the WFI’s everyday affairs until the new members take charge.
• What are the findings of the Oversight Committee?
The report is still being “examined”, and has not been made public. However, the Sports Ministry on Monday shared the “major findings” following preliminary scrutiny of the report. The key points stated by the government were:Absence of a duly constituted Internal Complaints Committee under the Prevention of Sexual Harassment Act, 2013, and lack of an adequate mechanism for awareness building among sportspersons, for grievance redressal, etc;
Need for more transparency and consultation between the Federation and the stakeholders, including the sportspersons;
Need for effective communication between the Federation and sportspersons.
• Though women have converted challenges into opportunities in the sports sector, certain hurdles still remain. Do you agree?
Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:
📍What the law says about filing of FIR in sexual harassment cases
Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Indian Polity and Governance-Constitution, Political System, Panchayati Raj, Public Policy, Rights Issues, etc.
Mains Examination: General Studies II: Indian Constitution—historical underpinnings, evolution, features, amendments, significant provisions and basic structure.
Key Points to Ponder:
• What’s the ongoing story– On the 50th year of the “basic structure” doctrine that restricts the power of Parliament to alter the fundamental features of the Constitution, veteran senior advocate Fali S Nariman expressed confidence that the doctrine is here to stay. In an interview to The Indian Express, Nariman said that even if tested again, the Supreme Court will defend the basic structure doctrine, which is now “cemented” in the Constitution.
• What is 99th Constitution Amendment Act?
• Who was the Kesavananda Bharati?
• What is Doctrine of the ‘basic structure’?
• “Basic structure doctrine has mostly invoked the test to strike down an amendment when the Parliament has tinkered with judicial review and independence of the judiciary.” Comment.
• What are the features of the ‘Basic Structure of Constitution’?
• What power is granted by Article 368 of the Indian Constitution?
• Why is the doctrine criticised?
Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:
📍Kesavananda: case and its legacy
📍SC has used doctrine sparingly, pushed back against attempts to shackle judicial review
Previous year UPSC Mains Question Covering Basic Structure Theme:
📍Starting from inventing the ‘basic structure’ doctrine, the judiciary has played a highly proactive role in ensuring that India develops into a thriving democracy. In light of the statement, evaluate the role played by judicial activism in achieving the ideals of democracy. (GS-2, 2014)
Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.
Mains Examination: General Studies II: Important International institutions, agencies and fora- their structure, mandate.
Key Points to Ponder:
• What’s the ongoing story– The visit of Chinese and Russian defence ministers to attend a ministerial meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation this week in Delhi is drawing much attention. India, which is chairing the Eurasian regional forum this year, will have a range of bilateral problems to discuss with its fellow SCO members. These include the disengagement and de-escalation of the border confrontation with China and Moscow’s supply of spares to the large inventory of Russian arms amidst the war in Ukraine.
• What is SCO? Who are its members and possible future members?
• Main objective of the SCO: to promote peace in Eurasia, its ability to cope with the intra-state and inter-state conflicts among the member states is now under scrutiny.
• What are the issues which India has to face while chairing SCO?
• SCO’s ‘paradox’: Even as the Eurasian forum looks attractive to a growing number of regional states, its internal contradictions are casting a shadow over its strategic coherence.
“If Russia is a protector of the Central Asian regimes, it could also be a potential predator. Russian leaders have often dismissed Central Asian states as artificial nations. President Vladimir Putin’s vision of a “Russkiy Mir” – or the Russian world – underlines Moscow’s special responsibility to protect Russian minorities beyond its formal borders. Unsurprisingly, no Central Asian neighbour has endorsed the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
To be sure, Russia is deeply entrenched within the Central Asian state system with strong ties to local elites and security establishments. Many Central Asians work in Russia and send valuable remittances home. Yet after Ukraine, the Central Asian states are looking to intensify their diversification strategies to reduce their reliance on Russia.”
• What about China’s growing interest?
1. Some observers argue that China’s growing regional influence will come at Russia’s expense, as Beijing becomes the senior partner in the bilateral relationship with Moscow after Ukraine.
2. Others point to the fact that Russia and China have drawn closer than ever before and that they have little reason to quarrel over Central Asia. Moscow’s muscle and Beijing’s money provide a sensible basis for their strategic division of labour in Central Asia to keep the Western powers out of the region.
3. A third argument agrees that China has no reason to replace Moscow as the main power in Central Asia in the near term, but it warns against underestimating Beijing’s long-term ambitions in the region. One straw in the wind is Beijing’s explicit support of the sovereignty of the Central Asian states.
• For Your Information- Delhi’s engagement with the SCO all these decades was premised on Russian primacy in the region and Moscow’s support of India’s regional interests. For India, a strong and independent Russia is critical for maintaining the inner Asian balance. But Delhi is in no position to ensure Moscow’s strategic autonomy from Beijing; that depends on Russian strategic choices. Delhi’s burden in SCO must now be to protect its own interests amidst a rapidly changing regional power distribution in China’s favour. That India does not have direct geographic access to the landlocked region makes that challenge a demanding one.
• What is India’s regional interest?
• What is the way forward for India?
Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:
📍SCO meet: India must not miss an opportunity to improve relations with Pakistan
Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.
Mains Examination: General Studies III: Science and Technology- developments and their applications and effects in everyday life.
Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.
Mains Examination: General Studies III: Science and Technology- developments and their applications and effects in everyday life.
Key Points to Ponder:
• What’s the ongoing story– Aditya Nath Jha writes: Technology will change the way we look at labour, capital and skills.Employees will question the company’s impact on the environment, gender parity, wealth sharing and other social issues. The business of business will no longer be limited to business.
• Catchy Intro: If Marx were alive today and playing with GPT4, he would have been the first to notice that the nature of labour has morphed drastically since the mid-19th century — from body to skill to brain.
• What is a brain economy? How is it brain labour different from physical labour?
• What has been the impact of technology in our lives?
• Trade offs in the brain economy-
To facilitate a meaningful dialogue around the trade-offs in the brain economy, we need to first abandon outdated stereotypes of evil corporations, sinful profits and inhuman technology. The accompanying myth of man vs machine, created when labour meant the human body, needs to be laid to rest. Technology doesn’t destroy jobs — it creates jobs, liberates people and drives social progress. Whether we like it or not, advances in technology in the brain economy will always be a couple of steps ahead of politicians, bureaucrats, policies and laws. We will have to learn to deal with it.
• What are the issues that need to be addressed?- Greedy corporations, ethical dilemmas, technology illiteracy (elaborate).
• How can the obstacles be converted to opportunities?
• What will give rise to “societal brain”?
• For your information:
The relationship between capital and labour will change. Capital exploited physical labour and invested in skills. It will now chase and partner with the brains. The balance of power between capital and labour will become more symmetric. But markets will create inequality by assigning exponentially differential values to body, skill and brain.
In a country the size of India, it’s impossible to transition everyone to the brain economy overnight. The biggest component of the body economy in India is agriculture. We need our agriculture to be technology-enabled, not body driven. Inequality will remain, but it’s better to be unequally well off than to be equally poor.
But the bigger issue of inequality is the inequality between nations. In the brain economy, the alternative to technology and innovation is total irrelevance. To be a globally relevant player, India needs to embrace the concept of this new world of the brain economy, adapt its mindset and appropriate its resources accordingly.
Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:
📍The brilliance and weirdness of ChatGPT
Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.
Mains Examination: General Studies III: Science and Technology- developments and their applications and effects in everyday life.
Key Points to Ponder:
• Why in news?– Last week, India decided to join in this global effort in a big way, by setting up a Rs 6,000 crore National Mission on Quantum Technologies and Applications. Development of homegrown quantum computers is one of the major objectives of the mission.
• Historical Tidbit: “Nature isn’t classical, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, you’d better make it quantum mechanical, and by golly it’s a wonderful problem because it doesn’t look so easy,” remarked Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist with a cult status, at a lecture at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 1982. This lecture — later published as a paper under the title ‘Simulating Physics with Computers’ — in which Feynman proposed the development of different, more powerful computers by utilising the quantum mechanical properties of matter, is often considered the original idea behind quantum computers.
• Quantum computers Versus Conventional computers: What is ‘qubit’?
• Why are Quantum computers not perfect?
• Why is the scientific community excited by this mission?
The excitement in the scientific community about the Quantum Mission is because it allows India to join a global technology development race when it is still in the nascent stages. “We are in the game. We have rarely been in the game (with regard to other technologies). Work on quantum technologies has been going on in India for the past 10 years, more vigorously in the last four-five years, whereas groups in some other countries have been working for close to three decades. We have some catching up to do, but this mission will help us do that. We have a fairly large pool of people with the right skills,” said Rajamani Vijayaraghavan of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) who will play an important role in the computing node of the mission.
Knowledge nuggets:
— The mission involves a cost of Rs 6,003.65 crore from 2023-24 to 2030-31, and aims to put India among the top six leading nations involved in the research and development in quantum technologies.
— NQM will mainly work towards strengthening India’s research and development in the quantum arena alongside indigenously building quantum-based (physical qubit) computers which are far more powerful and are able to perform the most complex problems in a highly secure manner.
— It will target developing intermediate scale quantum computers with 50-1000 physical qubits in eight years in various platforms like superconducting and photonic technology.
— Satellite based secure quantum communications between ground stations over a range of 2000 kilometres within India, long distance secure quantum communications with other countries, inter-city quantum key distribution over 2000 km as well as multi-node Quantum network with quantum memories are among the other objectives of the mission.
— The mission will help develop magnetometers with high sensitivity in atomic systems and Atomic Clocks for precision timing, communications and navigation.
— It will also support design and synthesis of quantum materials such as superconductors, novel semiconductor structures and topological materials for fabrication of quantum devices. Single photon sources/detectors, entangled photon sources will also be developed for quantum communications, sensing and metrological applications.
— Four ‘Thematic Hubs’ (T-Hubs) will be set up in top academic and national R&D institutes in the domains of quantum computing, quantum communication, quantum sensing and metrology, and quantum materials and devices. The hubs will focus on generation of new knowledge through basic and applied research as well as promote R&D.
— Addressing a press conference, Jitendra Singh, Minister (Independent charge), Department of Science and Technology (DST), said, “ The National Quantum Mission will help India take a quantum leap in this area of research. It will have wide-scale applications ranging from healthcare and diagnostics, defence, energy and data security.”
— DST will lead this national mission, supported by other departments. Presently, R&D works in quantum technologies are underway in the US, Canada, France, Finland, China and Austria.
MCQ:
With reference to National Quantum Mission, consider the following statements:
1. India has joined research and development works in quantum technologies which are underway in six nations US, Canada, France, Finland, China and Austria.
2. Indian Institute of Science will lead this national mission focusing on four broad themes — Quantum Computing, Quantum Communication , Quantum Sensing and Metrology and Quantum Material and Devices.
Which of the above statements are not correct?
(a) Only 1
(b) Only 2
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) Neither 1 nor 2
Other Important Article Covering the same topic:
Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.
Mains Examination: General Studies III: Infrastructure
Key Points to Ponder:
• Why in news?– Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday (April 25) inaugurated the first phase of the Kochi Water Metro — a first of its kind public boat service in India integrated with a metro rail network.
• What is the Kochi Water Metro?- The Kochi Water Metro is a project being implemented by Kochi Metro Rail Corporation Limited (KMRL) with the assistance of a German funding agency, Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau.
• What all does the Water Metro include?
• It will operate in the backwaters of Kerala’s commercial capital. What are backwaters? How is it different from lagoon?
Other Important Article Covering the same topic:
📍Connecting India by inland waterways: what changes in century-old vessels law
Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Indian & World Geography – Physical, Social, Economic Geography of India & the World.
Mains Examination: General Studies I: Important Geophysical phenomena such as earthquakes, Tsunami, Volcanic activity, cyclone etc., geographical features and their location-changes in critical geographical features (including water-bodies and ice-caps) and in flora and fauna and the effects of such changes.
Key Points to Ponder:
• Why in news?– At 12:17 pm on Tuesday (April 25), Bengaluru experienced a ‘Zero Shadow Day’, when vertical objects appear to cast no shadow. This was because the sun was at its zenith, and so the shadow was directly under the object.
• What is Zero Shadow Day and why does it happen?
• What are Uttarayan and Dakshinayan?
For your information:
Ramanujam explained that the Sun’s location moves from 23.5°N to 23.5°S of Earth’s equator and back. All places whose latitude equals the angle between the Sun’s location and the equator on that day experience zero shadow day, with the shadow beneath an object at local noon.
“We have all studied in school that the Earth’s rotation axis is inclined at 23.5 degrees to the plane of its revolution around the Sun, which is why we have seasons. This also means that the Sun, in its highest point of the day, will move from 23.5 degrees south of the celestial equator to 23.5 degrees north of the equator (Uttarayan), and back again (Dakshinayan), in a year. Of course, the northern most and southern most points are the two solstices, and the crossing of the Sun across the equator are the two equinoxes,” the ASI says on its website.
For any queries and feedback, contact manas.srivastava@indianexpress.com
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