23-Feb-2024

#GS2 –01. Red Sea Crisis

Almost 80% of all exports, as much as $8 billion a month, to Europe passes through the Red Sea. In fact, 25% of India’s foreign trade uses this route. Sustained disruption could hurt India’s merchandise exports in 2023-24. According to India Ratings & Research, freight rates For Indian companies have seen a jump of 150% in the last 45 days. Higher freight costs are making Indian players uncompetitive in select sectors, and they are losing out to competitors who are located closer to the buyer.
– Commentary in News

#GS3 — 02. Brahmos

Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) has accorded approval for procurement of more than 200 Brahmos supersonic cruise missiles and associated equipment for the Indian navy at a cost of around ₹19,000 crore.

Proposal approved by the CCS entails the acquisition of a mix of Brahmos missiles having a range of around 290km and the latest extended range variant of the weapon with a range of around 450 km. Brahmos Aerospace Pvt Ltd, an India-Russia joint venture, produces the super-sonic cruise missiles that can be launched from submarines, ships, aircraft, or land plat-forms.

Brahmos missiles fly at a speed of 2.8 mach or almost three times the speed of sound.

Key Terms/Issues : CCS, Mach

– Commentary in News

#GS3 –03. Hybrid Vehicles

Hybrids combine a gasoline engine with b a t t e r y power and generally get far better gas mileage than the cars and trucks. Hybrid makers led by Toyota Motor argue that the vehicles’ popularity is something to celebrate and “an important solution toward achieving carbon neutrality. Toyota says the rare minerals used in car batteries are in limited supply, and hybrids use those minerals more sparingly. With hybrids, it says, more gasoline-only vehicles can be taken off the road.

Activists and some regulators, say hybrids aren’t good enough if the world hopes to meet ambitious carbon-reduction targets.

Research shows that hybrid Models typically pump less carbon dioxide into the at mosphere than cars powered solely by gasoline. EVs don’t emit any carbon dioxide while being driven, but in the U.S., the electricity to charge the musually is generated at least in part by power plants burning natural gas or coal. Also, more emissions are produced when manufacturing EVs and their batteries than when manufacturing gasoline-only cars.
EVs produce annual emissions that heat the planet to the same extent as 2,727 pounds of carbon dioxide. That compares with 6,898 pounds for hybrids and12,594 pounds for gasoline-only cars.
– Commentary in News

Key Terms/Issues : Hybrid Vehicles

#GS3 — 04.Solar Power

India has reported a 44% fall in solar installations at 7.5 gigawatt (GW) in 2023 due to land acquisition-related issues. A total of 13.4 GW solar capacity was installed in the country in 2022. As of December 2023, the cumulative installed solar capacity stood at 72 GW. of which utility-scale projects accounted for 85.4%, and rooftop solar accounted for14.6%. Rajasthan followed by Karnataka, and Gujarat were the top three states for cumulative large-scale solar capacity, accounting for 54.8% of installations in the country as of December 2023. India’s large- scale solar project

pipeline stood at 105.3 GW, with another 70.6 GW of projects tendered and pending auction. Solar energy projects accounted for 48.5% of all new power capacity installed last year.

-Research firm Mercom Capital

#GS1 — 05. Capitalism

In their Introduction to the much-cited volume on Varieties of Capitalism, Hall and Soskice classified capitalist countries into two broad groups: Liberal market economies (LMEs) such as the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and coordinated market economies (CMEs) such as Germany, France, Japan, Sweden and Austria. In LMEs, firms coordinate their interaction with each other and other stake holders through hierarchies and the market. In CMEs, firms rely more heavily on non-market institutions to coordinate their interactions. LMEs and CMEs are polar models. Capitalist countries in the real world lie along a spectrum between these two ends, yielding intermediate models such as Mediterranean capitalism, East Asian capitalism, Social capitalism, state-guided capitalism, etc.

Auseful way to sub-classify a capitalist economy is to map its enterprises by nested dualisms that assess their size, degree of formality, political linkages and exposure to market competition

– CDS Chairman Sudipto Mundle

Key Terms/Issues : LMEs, CMEs

#GS3 –06. MSP

Genesis of the MSP demand can be traced to the inefficiency of the farm sector, which needs urgent reforms. It is heavily concentrated in terms of its regional expanse, with intervention in a few surplus states and that too mostly in rice and wheat. Are formed MSP system that meaningfully applies across all 23 crops with MSPs would expand cover- age across states and farmers. Most millets, pulses and oil seeds are grown by modest-level farmers in rain-fed and dry regions of the country, as they require less capital and inputs. Remunerative prices for farm produce in India’s agriculturally backward states would be good from an equity perspective and also necessary to boost incomes and thus demand for non-farm goods in the economy. At a time of rural distress amid declining cultivation incomes and wages, this will help revive the rural as well as the broader economy.

An intervention when market prices are lower than MSP will allow the government to provide price support to farmers, but the farm produce procured can also be used to step up supply when prices are higher than MSP. In the long run, a well-designed MSP system is likely to serve as a complementary inflation management tool, along with monetary policy instruments. It will require the government to invest in creating marketing, storage and transportation structures, which are any way necessary expenditures for higher value addition in agriculture. As investment in the sec- tor has been growing at the slowestin10 years, this is an opportunity to boost it.

abroad-based MSP system will also be crucial in fighting climate change and encouraging better natural resource management. With MSPs only available effectively for rice and wheat, it has led to a decline in the water table, and in turn rising input and energy costs. Covering edible oils, pulses and millets could encourage farmers to diversify crops and manage weather risks better. It will also save foreign exchange, given the economy’s large dependence on imports of edible oils and pulses. It will also help insulate the economy from international price transmissions in agricultural crops.

-JNU Associate Professor Himanshu

#GS2 –07.Onion Sweetner

Onions possess anti-diabetic properties and the country consumes an estimated 1.3-1.7 million tonnes of them on average e very month. In the2023rabiseason, onion production was estimated at 22.7 million tonnes. A mid a rising burden of diabetes, the consumer affairs ministry is reportedly working on a plan to launch a sweetener extracted from onion waste. n a country where an estimated101 million people are found to be living with diabetes, and many others may not even know they have it, the health motive of the project is impressive. The typical Indian diet is carbohydrate-heavy, which worsens the risk of diabetes. It is not a life style illness of just the well-off, and those who get it must watch their sugar intake.