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Kindly note that this UPSC KEY curates the articles from The Indian Express dated December 8, 2023 (Friday).
EXPRESS NETWORK
SC asks Centre and Assam govt to file affidavit on illegal immigrants
Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.
Mains Examination: General Studies II- Polity
Key Points to Ponder
• What is the ongoing story? The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Centre and Assam government to provide details on the “estimated inflow of illegal migrants” to Assam and other Northeastern states after March 25, 1971, and the status of border fencing.
While hearing petitions challenging the constitutional validity of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955, a five-judge Constitution bench, presided by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud, directed the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to file the affidavit on or before December 12.
• What you should know? Signed in 1985, between the Rajiv Gandhi government and the All Assam Students’ Union, the Accord culminated a six-year-long agitation against the entry of migrants from Bangladesh into Assam.
• For your information: What is the challenge?
The plea before the Constitutional bench challenges one of the core elements of the Accord — which determines who is a foreigner in the state. This was also the basis of the final National Register of Citizens in Assam, published in 2019.
Clause 5 of the Assam Accord states that January 1, 1966 shall serve as the base cut-off date for the detection and deletion of “foreigners” but it also contains provisions for the regularisation of those who arrived in the state after that date and up till March 24, 1971.
Section 6A of the Citizenship Act was inserted as an amendment to accommodate this. It effectively establishes March 24, 1971 as the cut-off date for entry into the state, meaning that those entering the state after that would be considered “illegal immigrants”.
While those who came to Assam on or after January 1, 1966, but before March 25, 1971 from Bangladesh will be detected as “foreigners”, they would have the opportunity to register themselves according to rules made by the Central Government. Except for being included in electoral rolls, they would be granted the same rights and obligations as Indian citizens for a period of 10 years from the date they were detected as foreigners. At the end of this ten-year period, however, they would be deemed citizens.
• Make a note for Prelims, Mains and Personality Test: Why is Section 6A under challenge?
• What did the SC bench say while hearing the petition?
• Must read: Who is a citizen, who is an ‘illegal immigrant’: Questions before SC in Assam Citizenship Act case.
EXPLAINED
Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.
Mains Examination: General Studies III: Developing new technology.
Key Points to Ponder
• What is the ongoing story? Google Gemini, a new multimodal general AI model, which the tech giant calls its most powerful yet, is now available to users around the world through Bard, some developer platforms, and even the new Google Pixel 8 Pro phones. The flexible AI model, which comes in three sizes — Ultra (which is yet to be launched), Pro, and Nano — is being seen as Google’s answer to ChatGPT, which has been ahead of the game so far when it comes to generative artificial intelligence (GenAI).
• What is GenAI?
• How is Gemini different from ChatGPT?
For your information:
• Eli Collins, VP, Product, Google DeepMind, told The Indian Express that while they have done a lot of work on improving factuality in Gemini, the LLM can still hallucinate. “When we integrate these models with products like Bard, we have additional techniques to improve the accuracy of responses.” On safety, Google said it is adding “new protections to account for Gemini’s multimodal capabilities”, and is considering potential risks and working to test and mitigate them at each stage of development. The company claims it has the “most comprehensive safety evaluations of any Google AI model to date, including for bias and toxicity”. It is also working with a diverse group of external experts and partners to stress-test models across a range of issues.
Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.
Mains Examination: General Studies II: International organisations
Key Points to Ponder:
• What is the ongoing story? Amid Israel’s ongoing military attacks on the Gaza Strip, particularly in its southern region, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter in a bid to establish a ceasefire.
• What is UNSC and who are its members?
• For your information:
Article 99 states: “The Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.”
It is seen as a discretionary power. A 1945 report of the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations said of the Article: “…The responsibility it confers upon the Secretary-General will require the exercise of the highest qualities of political judgment, tact and integrity.” According to the UN, the President of the Security Council is under the obligation to call a meeting of the Council if the Secretary-General brings to the attention of the Council any matter under Article 99.
• When has Article 99 been invoked in the past?
• What else you should know — ‘Could the invocation impact the conflict?’
According to Reuters, the United Arab Emirates gave the UNSC a brief draft resolution based on this letter, demanding an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in the conflict. “Diplomats said the UAE aims to put the text to a vote on Friday when the council is due to be briefed by Guterres on Gaza. To be adopted, a resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the five permanent members – the United States, Russia, China, France or Britain,” it said.
However, it is unlikely that the vote will see permanent members’ unanimous support. The US and Britain have expressed support for Israel’s military actions since October 7.
Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.
Mains Examination: General Studies II: International Relations
Key Points to ponder
• What is the ongoing story? Last week, the hashtag #Melodi trended widely on social media, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi responded to a post on X by his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni. Meloni had posted a selfie with Modi, taken on the sidelines of the COP28 meet in Dubai, saying “Good friends at COP28”. Meloni also added #Melodi, a combination of the two leaders’ names. Modi reposted the picture, writing: “Meeting friends is always a delight.”
• Historical Titbit:
India and Italy are ancient civilisations with links going back 2,000 years. Italian port cities were important trading posts on the spice route. The Venetian merchant Marco Polo traveled to India in the 13th century and wrote about his experiences.
In the last century, Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore visited Italy in May-June 1926, a visit arranged by Carlo Formichi, a Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Rome.
Mahatma Gandhi visited Rome in December 1931 on his way back from the Round Table Conference in London. Leaders of the Indian freedom struggle read the works of the Italian revolutionary Mazzini.
Indian troops, serving with the British Indian Army, were deployed in Italy during World War II, fighting against the Germans and Mussolini’s forces.
After Independence, political relations between India and Italy were established in 1947. Since then, there has been a regular exchange of visits at political and official levels between both countries, including several visits by Heads of States.
• What have been some of the setbacks and repair in India-Italy ties?
• For your information:
India has opposed the BRI since its inception, since it violated India’s territorial integrity by crossing through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
In 2019, during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Rome, Italy became the first G7 country to join the BRI, in the hopes of China serving as a market for Italian products and Chinese investment boosting Italian infrastructure.
But the BRI would not meet Italian hopes and expectations. “Since Italy joined the BRI, its exports to China have increased from 14.5 billion euros to 18.5 billion euros, while Chinese exports to Italy have grown far more dramatically, from 33.5 billion euros to 50.9 billion euros. Similarly, Chinese FDI in Italy also dropped from $650 million in 2019 to just $33 million in 2021,” an assessment by David Sacks, a fellow for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), said in August this year.
For the past year, Meloni has indicated that joining the BRI was a “big mistake” that she intended to correct. With its five-year memorandum of understanding up for renewal in March 2024, Italy has officially conveyed its position to Beijing.
Thus, while Delhi and Rome view Beijing from different prisms and vantage points, India-Italy ties have found another strategic glue: that Beijing is no benevolent and benign power.
The improvement in ties is music to the ears of both New Delhi and Rome. And while the melody is most apparent under Meloni’s term, the long and arduous process was set in motion under Conte and Draghi.
• Mains Practice Question: Why Italy wants to leave BRI? What it means for India?
Another related article: Italian Ambassador writes: India, a partner in an uncertain world
EDITORIAL
Syllabus:
Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.
Mains Examination: General Studies III: Conservation, Environmental Pollution and Degradation, Environmental Impact Assessment.
Key Points to Ponder
• What is the ongoing story? COP28 is underway in Dubai and the global focus is on climate change. A debate on fossil fuels has been raging at the climate meet. Air pollution’s relationship with climate change is complex and as a result, there is often less engagement with the former. However, if humans keep burning fossil fuels and biofuels, air pollution will worsen and so will climate change. At the end of the day, cleaner air will lead to a healthier planet. It should be a global priority.
• Basics: What is AQI? Why and How of Delhi Pollution?
• ‘The climate meet (COP28) is equally relevant for the air quality community and people as a whole.’ Discuss the relevance of COP28.
• Weather pattern as the answer:
The answer lies in unintended shifts in weather patterns. In India and across the globe, unusual natural changes are wreaking havoc on communities that previously never faced such events. Climate scientists call it a “new normal” but I will call it the new abnormal. Although more research is needed to firmly establish such connections, there are enough indications to believe that the new trends not only in Delhi’s air quality but across India have links with climate change. More complex is the fact that these natural shocks are not uniform and their impact differs from one climatic zone to another.
Although terms like ENSO, La Nina or El Nino are talked about in the context of the monsoon, their applications are broadening of late. In 2022, the unprecedented triple dip in La Nina played a decisive role in preventing North India from undergoing winter stagnation conditions because of which pollutants get trapped in air — the air quality improved as a result, and the city experienced its cleanest winter in nearly a decade. This year has seen the opposite so far. La Nina has gone, and we have entered the El Nino period. We are not sure what surprises are in store.
Contrary to last year, Delhi witnessed relatively calm wind conditions during November 2023 with limited and weaker western disturbances not having much impact beyond two to three days. There were no frequent spells of rain, unlike in earlier years. This, coupled with the mainly dry weather, helped in the accumulation of pollution with little dispersion. The north-north-west wind speed for a prolonged period facilitated the transport of biomass-burning particles into Delhi and surrounding regions.
Once the pollution particles were in Delhi, the holding capacity was at an all-time high due to the cooler, dryer and calmer local environment. This does not mean that the impact of other sources was insignificant. The best indigenous AQ model data suggests that on average, the transport sector contributed about 30 per cent of PM2.5 in November 2023 and around 43 per cent from other internal sources.
• BTW:
From Express Network: COP28 enters 2nd week
After a week of high-decibel declarations, pledges and speeches, Conference of the Parties (COP28) climate meeting entered the second week of negotiations Thursday with all difficult issues pending to be resolved.
So far, there has been only one draft on the Global Stocktake (GST), the review exercise mandated by the 2015 Paris Agreement to be carried out this year, which is the most important agenda of this meeting. The GST is meant to decide on the enhanced climate actions to be taken henceforth to make up for the lack of adequate effort till now.
It is under this GST that all the contentious issues — fossil fuel phase-out, renewable energy tripling, methane emission reductions and several others — are all supposed to be discussed. As of now, there were wide divergence in the positions of countries on each of these issues. Though Thursday is officially an off day, negotiators will continue to work informally, and a new draft is expected on Friday. Ministerial interventions are expected to be sought immediately thereafter to resolve the key differences.
Hosts UAE managed to get a few things moving in the first week, the most important of them being the operationalisation and initial capitalisation of the Loss and Damage Fund that is meant to help developing countries recover from climate disasters. UAE has also been making a big deal of the nine pledges that have been made so far on different issues, including one on tripling of global renewable energy capacity by 2030, and another on climate change and health. These pledges are voluntary associations of countries and do not have any legal sanctity. Such pledges at previous COPs have not had much impact in accelerating the pace of climate action.
But UAE has had some more concrete success in mobilising money for different climate-related purposes. At least US$ 83 billion has been promised in the first week, including a US$ 30 billion private investment vehicle unveiled UAE for financing a “new climate economy” that aims to mobilise US$ 250 billion in investments by 2030.
Importantly, US$ 3.5 billion have been announced for the Green Climate Fund at this COP taking the second round of capitalisation of this largest and most important climate-specific funding instrument to US$ 12.8 billion to be spent on green projects over the next four years.
However, this is still a small fraction of the money required for all sorts of climate actions that is estimated to be in the range of a several trillions of dollars every year. The developed countries are now claiming that they have met the US$ 100 billion per year target last year. By next year, the developed countries have to come an agreement on a new climate finance goal, larger than US$ 100 billion per year, that has to be delivered from 2025 onwards.
• Another relevant article : How India and UK can do more at COP28
For any queries and feedback, contact manas.srivastava@indianexpress.com
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