28-Feb-2024

#GS3 –01.Plastic Pollution

Global leaders at WTO highlighted the need to reduce the trade in plastics citing greenhouse emissions from its use. They also emphasized the need to rationalize, phase out or eliminate harmful fossil fuel subsidies through existing or new mechanisms. The global trade in plastics reached over $1.2 trillion during 2022, as per UN data, with the agency predicting that 19% of greenhouse gas emissions would come from plastics by 2040. As many as 78 members— excluding India—are participating in the Plastics Pollution Dialogue, representing 85% of the global trade volume. The Dialogue on Plastic Pollution and Environmentally Sustainable Plastics Trade seeks to get WTO members to reduce plastics pollution and promote environmentally sustainable trade in plastics.

During the dialogue, members of participating countries stressed increasing transparency of trade flows of plastics, given that single-use plastics, plastic films and hard-to-recycle plastics as well as those embedded in traded goods are not captured by trade data.

Though India is not part of the group, the country has taken several measures to reduce plastic usage, including imposing a ban on single-use plastic in 2022.As things stand, India is the fifth-highest generator of plastic waste in the world.

– Commentary in News

#GS1 – 02. Krishnagiri : A case study

Krishnagiri is among Tamil Nadu’s most underdeveloped districts and ranks poorly on almost all social parameters. There is a deep-rooted belief that men are superior.

Investments in manufacturing have changed the lives of 40,000 women in Krishnagiri and its neighbouring districts. Today, there are more jobs for women than the district can fill.

Industrialization has brought about a change in attitudes. The community now respects women—their newfound financial independence has given them a say in family affairs.

– Commentary in News

#GS2 –03. Minimum Government, Maximum Governance

I want to take the government out of the lives of people. Especially, I don’t approve of government interference in the lives of the middle-class. What is the need of the government everyday and at every step? We should create such a society where government interference is minimal.

– PM Modi This is reminiscent of Rajiv Gandhi’s observation of welfare leakages, which squarely focused re for mist minds on state inefficiency. Modi’s words focus attention on another aspect of our lived reality in India: the Big State. While “Minimum government, maximum governance” is an oft-cited mantra and ‘Ease of living’ has been a catch-phrase for the administration, his promise will resonate with anyone who has had sarkari encounters.

The Aadhaar system was meant to subsume other requirements, but a fixation with identity verification seems to have led to a proliferation of paper work needed for asset ownership. Instead of a digital pivot easing lives, files get jammed between old and new systems. The state must also commit itself to staying out of the private lives of people. Posts on the micro blog platform X suffer excessive over-sight, with suspension orders issued every now and then, even as New Delhi’s push against chat encryption jars with the right to privacy. Technology enables an invasive state, but that’s no reason to have one, especially since a colonial law on sedition that survives in a new guise could be misused to stifle dissent, without which democracy can turn dysfunctional

– Commentary in News

#GS3 — 04.Equity Investments in India

A part of the Premium collected by insurers from households is invested in stocks. Data from Bloom berg suggests that Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India had investments in close to 300 stocks as of December 2023. Along with this, private insurance companies also invest in stocks. Second, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) invests a Part of the contributions made by individuals in stocks. In August 2022, the government had stated in the Lok Sabha that 85% of the contributions are invested in debt instruments and 15% in exchange traded funds (ETFs), which invest in stocks that makeup indices like the BSES en sex and NSE Nifty. outstanding investments in MFs in 2019-2020 had stood at 5.9% of India’s gross domestic product (GDP), jumping to 8.7% in 2022-23,after touching a high of 9.2% in 2021-22. Some of this jump is because of investors investing more money in equity MFs—except for the pandemic year of 2020-21. Further, from April 2020 to March2023, investors on the whole With drew money from open-ended income/debt MFs. Investments in life insurance funds have gone up from 19.3% to 22.2%. Investments in pension funds have gone up from 2.9% of GDP in 2020-21 to 3.3% in 2022-23 (data for 2019-20 isn’t available).Of course, along with fresh investments, rising stock prices have also contributed to the jump. Meanwhile, outstanding investments in bank fixed deposits shrank from 48.2% in 2019-20 to 46.6% in 2022-23.So, clearly, house holds are holding a greater proportion of their savings in stocks than before, albeit indirectly, and a lot of it, though not all, is held through MFs.

-’Bad Money’ Author Vivek Kaul

#GS3 — 05. DPI in Private Sector

The trajectory of digital public infrastructure (DPI) in India has undergone a significant shift, transcending its conventional role as a government service delivery mechanism to act as an important factor of production (just as physical infrastructure is counted as capital) in the economy and an instrument for societal transformation. This evolution, characterized by cost savings, trust in open architecture and a culture of innovation, attracts startups and other private businesses to rely on DPI, with India’s ₹1 trillion research-and-innovation corpus for deep technology announced in the interim budget likely to fuel ambitions across the country.

In the early stages of DPI deployment, the basic purpose was to reduce leakages in government welfare delivery. However, it also paved the way for hundreds of fin tech firms, new-age stock broking enterprises and digital lenders by reducing the cost of customer acquisition and pushing global tech companies to create products and services built on DPI. The open architecture of DPI has served as a growth propellent for our startup ecosystem.

– Commentary in News

#GS3 –06. AI Regulation

In India, Gemini ran into problems of a somewhat different ilk. When asked to opine on the political ideologies of our elected representatives, its answer provoked the ire of the establishment. In short order, the government announced that the output of this AI model was in violation of Indian law and that attempts at eluding liability by claiming that the technology was experimental would not fly.

There is little doubt that Gemini, as released, is far from perfect. This has now been acknowledged by the company, which has paused the image generation of people while it works out how to improve accuracy. The concerns of the Indian government have also been addressed, even though the company continues to reiterate that Gemini is just a creativity tool that may not always be reliable when asked for comments on current events, political topics or evolving news.