PM IAS DEC 07 NEWS ANALYSIS

India-Central Asia meeting of NSAs

In News

• India’s National Security Advisor recently chaired the first India-Central Asia meeting of NSAs and Secretaries of Security Councils in Delhi

More about the meeting

• About first India-Central Asia meeting of NSAs:
  • The meeting was the outcome of the India-Central Asia virtual summit held in January 2022, where Indian Prime Minister hosted leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and agreed to have security chiefs meet on a regular basis to discuss India’s “extended neighbourhood.”
  • Participants:
    • The NSAs of India, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan participated in the meeting.
      • Turkmenistan was represented by its ambassador in New Delhi. 
• Highlights of the meeting:
  • Situation in Afghanistan & A joint communique:
    • A joint communique issued after the meeting said that the Security Advisors discussed the current situation in Afghanistan and its impact on the security and stability of the region. 
    • They also reiterated strong support for a peaceful, stable and secure Afghanistan, emphasising respect for its sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity and urging non-interference in its internal affairs.
    • Countries spelled the need to ensure that terrorist groups don’t find safe haven there.
  • Transport & Connectivity:
    • Chabahar port & NSTC:
      • The participants supported India’s proposal to include the Chabahar port within the framework of the International North-South Transport Corridor that connects Iran to Russia via Central Asia, 
    • Uzbekistan’s Termez Transport and Logistics Hub:
      • The communique noted Uzbekistan’s creation of the “Multifunctional Transport and Logistics Hub” in Termez that helped channel aid to Afghanistan.
  • TAPI Project:
    • Turkmenistan made a push for the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan- India (TAPI) pipeline that was launched in 2016.
    • TAPI pipeline project has run into trouble over the Afghan conflict, and breakdown of India-Pakistan ties, and the NSAs agreed on the importance of TAPI in expanding connectivity.
  • Addressing individual efforts:
    • The countries gathered also noted
      • India’s special conferences involving UNSC and NMFT (No Money for Terror) on countering terror financing, 
      • Kazakhstan’s work on the International Agency for Biological Safety, 
      • Kyrgyzstan’s efforts on climate change, and the 
      • Dushanbe declaration on border security cooperation to prevent terrorist movements.
  • Push for the adoption of UN-CCIT:
    • The communique also called for the early adoption of the UN Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT), which India had first proposed in 1996, but has been held up for decades, primarily over differences on the definition of terrorism. 

Significance:

• First of its kind:
  • It is the first time that India is hosting the top security officials of the central Asian countries.
    • The NSAs will be meeting again under the rubric of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in India next year as well.
• India’s relations with Central Asian countries:
  • India considers the Central Asian countries as the heart of Asia. 
  • The meeting coincides with the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between India and the Central Asian countries.
  • These counties are also members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
    • This communique shows India’s efforts in taking forward this regional cooperation in a comprehensive manner.
• Connectivity:
  • Central Asian countries remain a key priority for India to invest and build connectivity in the region. 
  • While expanding connectivity it is important to ensure that connectivity initiatives are transparent and participatory, with respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries.
• Central Asia as a Land bridge:
  • Central Asia for India serves as a land bridge between Asia and Europe and is rich in natural resources. 
• Importance of Afghanistan for India:
  • India has intensified its engagement with the Taliban regime, with the head of the Indian Mission in Kabul meeting with its “Interim” Ministers to discuss restarting Indian projects in Afghanistan.
• UN-CCIT:
  • India is expected to make a push for the CCIT and other formulations on terrorism this month as it ends its two-year tenure as member of the UN Security Council.

Challenges 

• Geographic non-accessibility: 
  • India’s major limitation in this strategically important region is geographic non-accessibility. India does not share borders with the CARs.
• Lack of mutual trust: 
  • Land-locked Central Asian countries can benefit immensely by connecting with India’s vast market. 
  • Unfortunately, many connectivity options are not open to them due to the lack of mutual trust. 
• Tensions with Pakistan and China: 
  • India’s  tensions with Pakistan mean there is no viable land route towards Central Asia.
• Instability in Afghanistan: 
  • The takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban has severely set back India’s plans in Central Asia.

Way ahead:

• India is committed to taking its ties with Central Asia to the next level and floated a ‘four C’ approach focusing on commerce, capacity enhancement, connectivity, and contacts to further expand the cooperation between the two sides.

Do you Know?The Central Asia region (CA) comprises the countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. It is a diverse region with a mix of upper-middle and low-income countries with major strategic importance due to their geographic location and natural resource endowments.

Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of the US

In News

• The European Union has recently expressed its concerns regarding the USA’s new green energy subsidy package.

What is the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act?

• It is a $430 billion package of federal spending, tax breaks, credits, and levies that are aimed at fighting climate change and reducing healthcare costs and making large corporations pay their fair share in taxes.
  • It is a scaled-down version of USA’s Build Back Better plan which did not get approval.
• It aims atbringing down inflation.
  • It is the biggest climate action package in U.S. history for climate-focused funding and investments aimed at cutting emissions by around 40% below 2005 levels by 2030.
• Healthcare-related provisions: the Act extends expiring Medicare subsidies to 13 million Americans and aims to bring down the cost of prescription drugs for which Americans pay two to three times more than citizens of other countries.
• Tax code: The Act also aims to make the U.S. tax code fairer and points out that the top 1% of earners are estimated to evade $160 billion in taxes each year.
  • The IRA imposes a minimum tax of 15% on America’s wealthiest and most profitable corporations.
• IRA combines climate action goals with industrial policy aiming to transition to clean energy by incentivizing local manufacturing of renewable energy components.
  • It also seeks to reduce American reliance on China for materials and components for the clean energy industry.
• Electric Vehicles (EVs): Transportation accounts for a quarter of America’s greenhouse emissions.
  • To promote the use of electric vehicles and to secure domestic supply chains for their manufacturing, the federal tax incentive policy for EVs has been changed.
    • Now, only passenger EVs assembled in North America (U.S., Canada, and Mexico) are eligible for a $7,500 tax credit incentive. 
• Renewable energy: It provides a tax credit of 30% of the cost of building or upgrading factories for renewable energy components and gives extended new production and investment credits for renewable energy generation from sources such as solar, wind, hydrogen, and nuclear technologies.
• Power costs: The package offers 10 years of consumer tax credits to make American homes energy efficient and clean energy dependent, making heat pumps, solar panels, and so on affordable.

Challenges and Concerns  

• UN climate targets: Europe’s high energy dependence on Russia led to energy shocks in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war which is leading to energy shortages, and skyrocketing power prices.
  • EU countries also need to meet their declared UN climate targets.
• Discriminatory Act: IRA tax credits and subsidies to EVs and other green product makers in North America and free-trade partner countries put European companies at a disadvantage and may push them to move critical parts of their supply chains to America.
• Components: EU countries are worried their companies will suffer because of U.S. tax breaks for components used in renewable energy technologies like electric cars on condition they are made in North America.
• Violation of WTO rules: EU countries consider that 200 billion euros of the U.S. subsidies are tied to locally produced content provisions that potentially violate World Trade Organization (WTO) rules.
• EU state aid rules in their current form prevent member countries from offering similarly generous tax breaks to companies looking to set up factories. 
• Other markets: South Korea is also concerned that its carmakers will not be eligible for the U.S. tax breaks.

Conclusion and Way forward

• Exemptions: The need of the hour is to secure exemptions along the same lines as those already granted to Canada and Mexico.
• There is a possibility of solutions through the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council meeting.
• Europe can file a complaint at the WTO: But there is resistance from traditionally free-trade-friendly nations such as the Netherlands and Sweden.
• Recovery fund: There are around 200 billion euros in EU pandemic recovery funds which are available and could be repurposed to support industry.
• Cross-border projects: European governments can also pool resources to subsidise cross-border projects deemed to be in the broader EU interest. 
• Fit for 55: The EU’s own new green plan ‘Fit for 55’ is targeting to cut CO2 emissions from cars by 55% and vans by 50% by 2030 and all emissions from cars by 2035. For this, it will need to significantly increase its uptake of electric vehicles

17th Asia and the Pacific Regional Meeting (APRM)

In News

Recently, International workers’ groups criticised India’s labour policies, including four new labour codes, at the 17th Asia and the Pacific Regional Meeting (APRM) of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) held at Singapore.

Key Points Highlighted 

• India’s new labour codes violates the tripartite agreements — between workers, employers and the government — and gives a free hand to employers.
  • The power of inspection has been left with employers through the new codes, and it will threaten the tripartite system in the country. 
  • Trade unions in India have been opposing such policies.
• Other Challenges 
  • India has the largest youth population in the world.
  • The country is observing a technological and entrepreneurial boom with start-ups and small businesses mushrooming across the country. 
  • 90% of the workforce belongs to the unorganised sector and there are persistent challenges of low-paid jobs and poor working conditions.
  • Declining productivity growth has a negative impact on workers, on the sustainability of enterprises — especially micro, small and medium-sized enterprises — on economies, and on communities. 

Asia and the Pacific Regional Meeting (APRM)About: It brings together representatives of governments, employers’ and workers’ organisations from Asia, the Pacific and the Arab states. The 17th APRM comes at an important juncture for the world of work as the region faces multiple challenges, including the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic compounded by the global food, energy and finance crises. The Meeting offers a timely opportunity to reconfirm decent work and social justice as the driving forces for a human-centred recovery that is inclusive, sustainable and resilient. 2022 APRM will discuss action to enhance job-rich growth that is inclusive and transformative, as well as measures to strengthen regional cooperation and multilateralism on world of work issues. It will also help forge commitment among the tripartite constituents on common priorities for action that will help shape ILO’s work in both regions for years to come.4 key Thematic Areas:Thematic area 1: Integrated policy agenda for a human-centred recovery that is inclusive, sustainable and resilientThematic area 2: Institutional framework to support transitions towards formality and decent workThematic area 3: Strong foundations for social and employment protection and resilienceThematic area 4: Revitalising productivity growth and skills for more and better jobs

Suggestions

• Enhancing productivity will be critical to economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work. 
• Recognising persisting skills challenges and that effective and demand-driven skills development.
• Lifelong learning benefits governments, employers and workers by advancing and promoting employability, sustainable development, productivity growth and economic prosperity. 
• Digital skills, core skills, entrepreneurial skills and soft skills should be better harnessed.
• Identifying workers in the unorganised sector and prioritising their needs through platforms like the E-Shram portal 
• Extending health coverage through ESIC, to extend universal social security that is leading to reduction in inequality.
  • Till date, about 29 crore unorganised sector workers have been registered on the E-Shram portal in our country.

Best Practice: The Progressive Wage Model (Singapore)The approach provides a roadmap to raise lower-wage workers’ wages at a sustainable pace, avoiding job losses, which could hurt workers’ livelihoods. This is done by raising wages in tandem with productivity growth achieved through upskilling workers and transforming businesses. By 2023, the Progressive Wage Model will be expanded to cover more than 8 in 10 full-time lower-wage workers.This approach has helped to raise real income at the 20th percentile of full-time employed residents by 2.7% per annum from 2016 to 2021, compared to the median income growth of 2.1% per annum, helping to reduce the income gap.

Google’s New Anti-misinformation Project

In News

Google’s Jigsaw subsidiary is launching a new anti-misinformation project in India, aimed at preventing misleading information that has been blamed for inciting violence.

Key Points

• About the Initiative:
  • Cutting at root: The initiative will use “prebunking” videos – designed to counter false claims before they become widespread – circulated on the company’s YouTube platform and other social media sites.
  • Collaboration: Working in collaboration with the Alfred Landecker Foundation, a pro-democracy organization based in Germany, the philanthropic investment firm Omidya Network India, and a number of smaller regional partners, Jigsaw has produced five videos in three different languages.
  • Awareness: After watching the videos, viewers will be asked to fill in a short multiple-choice questionnaire, designed to gauge what they have learned about misinformation. 
  • Anticipated results: The company’s recent research on the subject suggested viewers were 5% more likely to identify misinformation after watching such videos. Results are expected to be published in summer 2023.
• Experiment in Countries:
  • Europe: Google recently conducted an experiment in Europe where it sought to counter anti-refugee narratives online in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
  • India: The experiment in India will be bigger in scope as it will deal with multiple local languages — Bengali, Hindi and Marathi — and cover diverse sections of a country populated by over a billion people.
    • Like other countries, misinformation spreads rapidly across India, mostly through social media, creating political and religious tensions.
• Government of India’s Actions:
  • Blocking channels: 
    • The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) has repeatedly invoked “extraordinary powers” to block YouTube channels, and some Twitter and Facebook accounts, allegedly used to spread harmful misinformation.
  • Messaging services: 
    • Inflammatory messages have also spread via Meta’s messaging service Whatsapp, which has more than 200 million users in India. 
    • In 2018, the company curbed the number of times a message could be forwarded, after false claims about child abductors led to mass beatings of more than a dozen people, some of whom died.

About Misinformation /Fake News (Yellow Journalism)

• It refer to false propaganda published under the guise of authentic news.
• It is deliberately created to misinform the readers.
• Fake news can be propagated through any media: print, electronic and social.

Effects 

• It is a potential disaster.
• It can be used to influence public opinions.
• It polarizes public opinion and affects political institutions
• It affects social & communal harmony .

Challenges in controlling

• No standard definition
• Lack of regulation
• Difficult to achieve balance

Way Ahead

• The government should bring out a draft seeking an opinion from stakeholders regarding issues of controlling fake news.
• Social media houses should also come forward to bring in measures to curb the menace of fake news such as Facebook recently announced that it has tied up with Boom Live, an Indian fact-checking agency, to fight fake news during the Karnataka elections.
• People must be made aware of the menace of fake news, its dissemination.

International Year of Millets

In News

• The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi conveyed his message at the opening ceremony of the International Year of Millets at the headquarters of the Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome, Italy. 

About International Year of Millets

• The United Nations General Assembly has declared the year 2023 as the  ‘International Year of Millets’. 
• It is the Prime Minister’s vision and initiative that led to this United Nations Resolution being adopted with support from more than 70 nations across the globe. 
• It will help in creating awareness throughout the world about the significant role of millet in sustainable agriculture and its benefits as a smart and superfood.
• India is poised to become the global hub for millets with a production of more than 170 lakh tonnes which makes for more than 80 % of the millets produced in Asia. 
• The earliest evidence for these grains has been found in the Indus civilization and was one of the first plants to be domesticated for food. 
• It is grown in about 131 countries and is the traditional food for around 60 crore people in Asia & Africa.
• Objectives: The Government of India has declared to celebrate IYOM, 2023 to make it a people’s movement so that the Indian millets, recipes, and value-added products are accepted globally.

ChatGPT

In News 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) research company OpenAI announced ChatGPT,

About  ChatGPT 

• ChatGPT is a prototype dialogue-based AI chatbot capable of understanding natural human language and generating impressively detailed human-like written text.
• It is the latest evolution of the GPT – or Generative Pre-Trained Transformer – family of text-generating AIs.
•  It is trained using a machine learning technique called Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF),
• It can simulate dialogue, answer follow-up questions, admit mistakes, challenge incorrect premises and reject inappropriate requests.

Usage 

• A tool like ChatGPT could be used in real-world applications such as digital marketing, online content creation, answering customer service queries or as some users have found, even to help debug code.
• The bot can respond to a large range of questions while imitating human speaking styles.

Limitation

• OpenAI claims ChatGPT will occasionally produce inaccurate information and that its knowledge is restricted to global events that occurred before 2021.
• AI technology can also perpetuate societal biases like those around race, gender, and culture. 

Armed Forces Flag Day

In News 

Every year on December 7, India commemorates Armed Forces Flag Day

About Armed Forces Flag Day

• The Defense Minister’s Committee on August 28, 1949, created the Armed Forces Flag Day Fund. 
• In 1993, the Defense Ministry of India amalgamated all relevant welfare funds, including funds for war victims, the Kendriya Sainik Board Fund, the ex-welfare servicemen’s fund, and other units, to establish the Armed Forces Flag Day fund.
• It aims to raise donations for the welfare of the Armed Forces Staff. 
• This day is observed to honour Indian soldiers, sailors, and pilots. 
• The day also pays tribute to hundreds of thousands of men who have died protecting the country.
• Significance: This day is observed to encourage public engagement and support across the country for the following goals:
  • To provide rehabilitative assistance to the relatives of war victims.
  • To take initiatives to safeguard the well-being of service members and their families.
  • To assist former service veterans and their families with their welfare and resettlement.