UPSC Key | Internal Security, Air pollution, Cabinet Committees and more

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Nine internal security challenges

UPSC Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance

Mains Examination: GS-III: Internal Security

What’s the ongoing story- Prakash Singh writes: “The dust of elections has settled… The government should have a well-orchestrated plan for the next five years. On internal security, the following nine points should merit serious attention.”

Prerequisites:

— What is the Left-wing Extremism (LWE)?

— What is the role of the Intelligence Bureau and CBI?

— What are the Central Armed Police Forces?

Key takeaways: 

— “One, internal security doctrine. Ideally, the country should have a national security doctrine (NSD). The National Security Advisory Board has, from time to time, worked on it and prepared drafts. For inexplicable reasons, those were never approved.”

— “Two, Internal Security Ministry. The Ministry of Home Affairs has become much too heavy and therefore unwieldy. Internal security matters, which demand immediate attention, quite often do not get the prompt and thorough attention they deserve.”

— “Three, Jammu and Kashmir. The state is far from normal in spite of the Home Minister’s claim that terror incidents are down by 66 per cent since the abrogation of Article 370…The government must take early steps to reorganise the security grid, restore statehood to J&K and hold elections for the Assembly.”

— “Four, the Northeast… Five, the naxal problem…Six, Intelligence Bureau/CBI… Seven, state police… Eight, Central Armed Police Forces… Nine, technology. There is enormous scope for technological inputs into the functioning of police in the country.”

— “A country projects its strength at the international level in direct proportion to its internal cohesion, its ability to resolve the differences within and not have any swamps where terrorists or extremists of any shade can breed. The internal security scenario of the country would be much better if action on the above lines is initiated with foresight and imagination.”

For Your Information:

— “The strength of a chain, as they say, is determined by its weakest link, and the weakest link today is the police station. Visit any police station and the stark reality hits you. Leaving aside the model police stations and some in the metro cities, the average police station presents a dismal picture — dilapidated building…”

— “According to the Status of Policing in India Report 2019, police in India work at 77 per cent of their sanctioned strength and these personnel work for 14 hours a day on average. There are 70 police stations which have no wireless, 214 police stations that have no telephone and 240 police stations that have no vehicles. Housing facilities are unsatisfactory.”

Points to Ponder: 

— What is the importance of the National Security Doctrine (NSD)?

— What are the internal security issues in the border states?

— How the Police system can be reformed?

Post Read Question:

Winning of Hearts and Minds’ in terrorism-affected areas is an essential step in restoring the trust of the population. Discuss the measures adopted by the Government in this respect as part of the conflict resolution in Jammu and Kashmir. (UPSC CSE 2023)

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

Prakash Singh writes: Conference of top cops, attended by PM Narendra Modi, must not ignore basic policing problems

Express Network

Air pollution behind 7% of deaths in 10 cities: Lancet study

UPSC Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Environment

Mains Examination: GS-II, III: Government policies and interventions, Environment and Pollution

What’s the ongoing story- About 11.5 per cent of deaths in Delhi every year, roughly 12,000 deaths, can be attributed to air pollution, the highest for any city in the country, a first-of-its-kind multi-city study in India, published in the Lancet, has revealed.

Prerequisites:

— What are the causes of air pollution in India?

— What are the constituents of air pollution?

Key takeaways: 

— Across 10 cities — Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, Shimla and Varanasi — more than 33,000 deaths could be attributed to air pollution every year on an average, the study said.

— Shimla has the lowest mortality burden among these cities, with only 59 deaths every year, about 3.7 per cent of its total, that could be attributed to pollution.

— Together, about 7.2 per cent of all deaths in these cities, amounting to about 33,000 deaths every year, could be said to be caused by air pollution every year, the study said.

— The study found 1.42 per cent rise in mortality for every increase of 10 micrograms/cu metre in the PM2.5 levels when all the ten cities were taken together. There was large variation among the cities, with Delhi showing a rise of 0.31 per cent in mortality while Bengaluru having an increase of 3.06 per cent. This suggested that people living in less polluted cities carried a higher risk of mortality due to increase in pollution than those living in polluted cities.

— “In our results, we see that cities such as Bengaluru and Shimla which have relatively lower levels of air pollution showed stronger effects. This is likely due to the sharp increase in risk at lower levels of exposure which plateaus at higher levels which are unlikely to be experienced in these cities,” Dr Siddharth Mandal of the Centre for Chronic Disease Control, one of the co-authors of the study, said.

For Your Information:

— Air pollution has caused 8.1 million deaths around the world in 2021 with  China and India accounting for more than half of the global burden at 2.3 and 2.1 million deaths respectively, according to the recently released State of Global Air Report.

Points to Ponder: 

— Why does controlling air pollution continue to be a challenge for the government?

— What are the impacts of air pollution?

— What are the key initiatives taken by the government to control air pollution?

(Thought Process: Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), BS VI, System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR) Portal and more.)

Post Read Question:

Prelims

In the cities of our country, which among the following atmospheric gases are normally considered in calculating the value of Air Quality Index? (UPSC CSE 2016)

1. Carbon dioxide

2. Carbon monoxide

3. Nitrogen dioxide

4. Sulfur dioxide

5. Methane

Select the correct answer using the code given below:

(a) 1, 2 and 3 only

(b) 2, 3 and 4 only

(c) 1, 4 and 5 only

(d) 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5

Mains

Describe the key points of the revised Global Air Quality Guidelines (AQGs) recently released by the World Health Organisation (WHO). How are these different from its last update in 2005? What changes in India’s National Clean Air Programme are required to achieve revised standards? (UPSC CSE 2021)

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

Air pollution killed 8.1 million globally, 2.1mn in India in 2021: Report

Large gap to bridge in quantum capabilities: Report

UPSC Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance

Mains Examination: GS-III: Science and technology

What’s the ongoing story- India may have done the right thing by launching a Rs 6,000 crore-worth National Quantum Mission to develop some of the most sought-after technologies for the future, but it would have to overcome a significantly large gap that currently exists between its capabilities and those of other leading countries…

Prerequisites:

— What is the National Quantum Mission (NQM)?

— What are Quantum technologies?

Key takeaways: 

— The assessment by Itihaasa, a non-profit that studies the evolution of technology and business domains in the country, shows that India was just one among 17 countries to have a dedicated government programme to back research in quantum technologies, and one of the 12 to have committed separate investments for the purpose.

— India’s Rs 6,000 crore translates to about USD 0.75 billion over five years…India was far behind of the United States and China in terms of patents obtained in quantum technologies till now, and in publications in top journals.

— Quantum technologies exploit the extremely weird and counter-intuitive — but very special nonetheless — properties of sub-atomic particles like an electron to develop processes and devices with capabilities and efficiencies that are impossible to achieve with classical, non-quantum, systems.

— A quantum computer, for example, can perform certain tasks that a normal computer, however fast or powerful it may be, might not be able to finish in any useful amount of time.

— India’s National Quantum Mission, launched last year, aims to develop capabilities in four areas – quantum computing, communications, sensors and metrology (the science of measurements), and materials.

— It said that the government should explore the possibility of facilitating a dedicated science and technology cadre in each of the four areas identified for National Quantum Mission, similar to the dedicated cadres in India’s space and nuclear sectors.

For Your Information:

— Small particles, the size of atoms or its constituents like protons or electrons, exhibit a number of strange properties that go entirely against our everyday experiences. For example, these particles can exist at multiple locations at the same time, a phenomenon called superposition, but only till no one is looking.

—  The moment they are observed at one place, they cease to exist at all other places. Then there is the property of entanglement, the ability of a particle to instantaneously influence the behaviour of another with whom it had an earlier ‘interaction’, even when they are separated by arbitrarily great distances.

Points to Ponder: 

— What is ‘qubit’?

— How quantum computers are different from traditional computers?

— What is the significance of the National Quantum Mission?

— What are the advantages and disadvantages of the Quantum technology?

Post Read Question:

Consider the following statements:

1. The property of entanglement is the ability of a particle to instantaneously influence the behaviour of another with whom it had an earlier ‘interaction’.

2. Superposition makes it possible for the quantum bit to exist in both 0 and 1 state simultaneously.

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 Articles Covering the same topic:

What is the Rs 6,000 crore national quantum mission, and what it means for science in India

Economy

In ‘integrated partnership’ of global AI group with OECD, some trade-offs for India

UPSC Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Economy

Mains Examination:  GS-II, III: Government policies and interventions, Science and Technology

What’s the ongoing story- During the sixth ministerial council meeting of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), representatives of the grouping announced an “integrated partnership” with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to bring “OECD members and GPAI countries on equal footing, under the GPAI brand” – but to arrive at this consensus, some trade-offs had to be made behind the scenes, The Indian Express has learnt.

Prerequisites:

— What is the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI)?

— What is the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)?

— What is the Artificial Intelligence Governance (AIGO)?

Key takeaways: 

— There were also concerns that because India, and a large part of the developing world, is not a member of the OECD, if the GPAI was to go under the AIGO, it would reduce the space for them to raise issues relevant to the AI-related discourse in their respective nations.

—  There have been trade-offs, especially on where the secretariat of the GPAI would be hosted. It is understood that since India took over the presidency of the GPAI, it had been pushing for an independent secretariat, to essentially take the grouping outside of the OECD’s purview. This has not come to fruition, as the GPAI’s secretariat is expected to continue with the OECD.

— Launched in June 2020 with 15 members, GPAI is the fruition of an idea developed within the G7. Today, GPAI’s 29 members are Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, the Republic of Korea, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union.

For Your Information:

— India is a founding member of GPAI, having joined the multi-stakeholder initiative in June 2020.  The initiative aims “to bridge the gap between theory and practice on AI by supporting cutting-edge research and applied activities on AI-related priorities.”

— It also brings together people involved in the fields of science, industry, and civil society, along with governments, international organisations and academia for greater international cooperation. The first three GPAI summits were held in Montreal, Paris and Tokyo, respectively.

Points to Ponder: 

— What is the significance of the GPAI?

— What has been the global conversation around regulating AI so far?

— What is the need for regulating AI?

Post Read Question:

Prelims

With the present state of development, Artificial Intelligence can effectively do which of the following? (UPSC CSE 2020)

1. Bring down electricity consumption in industrial units

2. Create meaningful short stories and songs

3. Disease diagnosis

4. Text-to-Speech Conversion

5. Wireless transmission of electrical energy

Select the correct answer using the code given below:

(a) 1, 2, 3 and 5 only

(b) 1, 3 and 4 only

(c) 2, 4 and 5 only

(d) 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5

Mains

Introduce the concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI). How does Al help clinical diagnosis? Do you perceive any threat to privacy of the individual in the use of Al in healthcare? (UPSC CSE 2023)

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

What to expect as India hosts Global Partnership on AI Summit today

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