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The Union government has constituted a new internal oversight mechanism for official data, revamping a Standing Committee on Economic Statistics (SCES) set up in late 2019, soon after the findings from the last round of household surveys on consumption expenditure and employment were junked over “data quality issues”.
In an order issued, the Statistics Ministry said that the SCES, which was tasked with examining economic indicators only, will now be replaced by a Standing Committee on Statistics (SCoS) which has a broader mandate to review the framework and results of all surveys conducted under the aegis of the National Statistical Office (NSO).
Pronab Sen, former Chairman of the National Statistical Commission (NSC), has been named the chair of the new panel.
The SCoS — with “enhanced terms of reference” vis-à-vis the SCES, “to ensure more coverage” — has 10 official members, and four non-official members who are eminent academics. It can have up to 16 members, as per the order issued by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.
The development comes amid sharp critiques of India’s statistical machinery by members of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, including its chairperson Bibek Debroy.
He had mooted an overhaul of the system, and contended that the Indian Statistical Service has “little expertise in survey design”.
The term of the SCES was coming to an end in any case, so it was decided to expand the committee’s mandate beyond economic data and advise the Ministry on technical aspects for all surveys, such as sampling frame, design, survey methodology and finalisation of results.
Apart from addressing issues raised from time to time on the subject, results and methodology for all surveys, the terms of reference of the SCoS include identification of data gaps that need to be filled by official statistics, along with a strategy to plug those gaps.
It has been mandated to explore the use of administrative statistics to improve data outcomes. While the panel will help finalise survey results, the NSC will have the ultimate authority to approve the publication of those results.
States
China event raises concern over India’s only ape (Page no. 4)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The conservation status of India’s only ape was a cause for concern at a global event on gibbons held a week ago in China.
Gibbons, the smallest and fastest of all apes, live in tropical and subtropical forests in the southeastern part of Asia. The hoolock gibbon, unique to India’s Northeast, is one of 20 species of gibbons on Earth. The estimated population of hoolock gibbons is 12,000.
Like all apes, they are extremely intelligent, with distinct personalities and strong family bonds. Unfortunately, the current conservation status of gibbon species is alarming – all 20 species are at a high risk of extinction.
Since 1900, gibbon distribution and populations have declined dramatically, with only small populations in tropical rainforests,” the Global Gibbon Network (GGN), which had its first meeting at Haikou in China’s Hainan province from July 7-9.
Dilip Chetry, a senior primatologist who heads the primate research and conservation division at Aaranyak, an Assam-based non-profit conservation organisation, gave an account of the conservation status of the hoolock gibbon in India.
The hoolock gibbon faces threat primarily from the felling of trees for infrastructure projects. GGN was founded with a vision to safeguard and conserve a key element of Asia’s unique natural heritage – the singing gibbon and their habitats, by promoting participatory conservation policies, legislations, and actions.
American naturalist R. Harlan was the first to describe the hoolock gibbon, characterised by their vigorous vocal displays, from Assam in 1834.
India’s conglomerates are getting too big for comfort (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Nothing, not even Hindenburg Research, seems to stop the advance of Indian big business. The Adani Group continues with its acquisitions, even if at a slower pace, and has been able to persuade financial markets to lend it more money, notwithstanding assessments that it is over-dependent on debt.
Reliance Industries Limited has announced the demerger of its financial services arm to establish a new entity, which media speculation sees as a bid by the group to establish a dominant presence in the financial services industry.
The demerger is being seen as a repeat of the strategy adopted by the group in areas stretching from telecommunications and the retail trade to the media and entertainment businesses. Other business groups such as the Tatas and the Aditya Birla empire seem to also be performing well. The biggest of India’s big businesses seem to be thriving.
But this assessment is not true of all of business in India. It is not just that small- and medium-scale firms, not to mention the large mass of informal enterprises, are not doing well and are yet to recover their COVID-19-inflicted losses.
Many established big business names do not share the good fortune of the big few. A former Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor and his co-author report in a much-cited paper that the share of assets in the non-financial sectors owned by the Big-5 business groups has risen from 10% in 1991 to nearly 18% in 2021, whereas the share of the next five has fallen from 18% to less than 9%.
While their claim that increased concentration is contributing to inflation has been challenged, the evidence they provide of significantly increased concentration has not.
The dangers of such a rapid rise in industrial concentration have been flagged in the past across the world. The process feeds on itself by using market power to stifle competition.
It results in profit inflation or profiteering, through the manipulation of costs and prices. In the process it fosters extreme asset and income inequality.
It triggers efforts to influence institutions of democracy and, through means such as the capture of the media, it dilutes the role that civil society can play as a countervailing power.
In time, it leads to undue corporate influence over political processes and the formulation of policy, with tendencies bordering on state capture.
The Ukraine counter-offensive, a reality check (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Reationl)
After months of speculation as to when and where the Ukrainian counter-offensive against Russia would begin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy finally stated on June 10 that the offensive had begun.
It must be assumed that the lack of fanfare attending this event was because the assault until then had not proved as successful as anticipated.
While United States National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is no doubt correct that ‘this is a story that continues to be written day by day’, Ukrainian losses are presumed heavy in men and material as Kiev probed for weakness in the Russian defence lines stretching 1,000 kilometres in the east and south east of Ukraine.
Both sides acknowledge that fighting was intense, especially as Ukraine’s initial efforts were to drive through Russian positions to reach the Sea of Azov and deprive Russia of its land access to Crimea. It can be assumed that this strategy had been anticipated by the Russian side.
Ukraine has assembled large quantities of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-supplied weaponry and a great number of its troops for the offensive, and much of these are already committed in battle.
Losses on both sides are confirmed in both capitals. After six weeks of fighting it appears that the bravado in the western media about the counter-offensive has diminished to a point where it is rarely discussed.
Kiev evidently does not have the air supremacy against Russian defences that can facilitate advances on the ground, and the revolt against Russian military commanders by the para-military mercenary Wagner Group under the renegade, Yevgeny Prigozhin, which was a huge embarrassment for the Kremlin, has not delivered the advantage anticipated by Ukraine on the front lines.
The second major Ukrainian thrust seems to be in the Bakhmut region to negate the Russian gains of earlier months. This enterprise seems to be meeting some success, though it is slow and localised.
The Ukrainian recapture last year of Kharkiv and Kherson along with significant territory might be harder to replicate now, since in those sectors the Russians chose to withdraw in the face of Ukrainian attacks, but they are now dug in with heavily mined forward positions and holding their ground.
Text & Context
How gaps in cloud system configuration could expose sensitive user data (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
According to a 2023 survey by Thales Cloud Security, which included responses from nearly 3,000 IT and security professionals across 18 countries, 35% of organisations in India note that their data was breached in a cloud environment last year.
Moreover, 68% of businesses in India, and 75% globally, say that more than 40% of data stored in the cloud is classified as sensitive.
In June, a bot on the messaging platform Telegram allegedly returned the personal data of Indian citizens who registered with the CoWIN portal.
The country’s Health Ministry denied reports of any data leak and said that the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) was reviewing the existing security infrastructure of the portal.
Earlier, in January, reports emerged that HR management portal myrocket.co allegedly exposed personal information of employees and job candidates.
Later, in separate breaches, in April and May, the ICICI Bank’s and university admission platform Leverage EDU’s data were also allegedly leaked.
While these breaches were fixed after the organisations and authorities were notified, even momentary exposure of personal user data can have far-reaching consequences.
In particular, personally identifiable information can be used by threat actors to target individuals’ financial assets and online accounts.
Cloud storage is a method through which digital data, including files, business data, videos, or images, are stored on servers in off-site locations.
These servers may be maintained by the companies themselves or by third-party providers responsible for hosting, managing, and securing stored data.
These servers can be accessed either by the public or through private internet connections, depending on the nature of the data.
News
SC Collegium’s quiet transparency is driving change (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
The Supreme Court Collegium under Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud has quietly and transparently streamlined the appointment process of judges to the constitutional courts while adding a deft mix of merit and seniority in the judicial ranks through a selection procedure which involves “meaningful discussion on and assessment of candidates’ judicial acumen”.
The once-constant tide of barbs from the government about the “opacity” of the collegium system has died off with the change of guard at the top in the Law Ministry. Recommendations made by the collegium for judicial appointment are now notified within days by the government.
Since early this year, the collegium’s resolutions have embraced transparency. They have publicly laid bare the requirements for candidates in the zone of consideration for appointments to the top court and the High Courts.
Of primary concern for the collegium is the quality of judgments of the candidates. For this, their judgments are circulated among the members of the collegium, well in advance.
The Centre for Research & Planning of the court also prepares a compilation of “relevant background material to assist the collegium”.
There is also a Judgment Evaluation Committee which goes through the judicial work of the candidates with a fine-tooth comb. The judgments are graded, with the very best receiving an “outstanding” grade.
This procedure of circulating the judgments of prospective candidates and making an objective assessment of their relative merit was introduced for the first time at a collegium meeting held on September 26 last year.
While proposing Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and S. Venkatanarayana Bhatti for Supreme Court appointments on July 5, the collegium listed out the three basic criteria which guide its selection process to the top court.
Lightning not a natural disaster, says Centre (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Disaster Management)
The Union government is not in favour of declaring lightning a natural disaster as deaths caused by it can be prevented by making people aware of safety steps, a senior government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
India is among only five countries in the world that has an early warning system for lightning — the forecast is available from five days to up to three hours.
The States such as Bihar and West Bengal have been demanding that lightning deaths be covered as a natural disaster. Once this is notified, the victims will be entitled to compensation from the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF). The Centre makes 75% of the contribution to the SDRF.
Cyclone, drought, earthquake, fire, flood, tsunami, hailstorm, landslip, avalanche, cloudburst, pest attack, frost and cold wave are now considered disasters under the SDRF.
Bihar’s Disaster Management Minister Shahnawaz Alam told that Bihar is one of the most vulnerable States and as many as 107 had died after being struck by lightning till July 6.
“In the past few years, there has been a spurt in deaths due to lightning. It is possible that climate change is one of the reasons. In the past five years, more than 1,500 people have lost their lives in Bihar.
He said he had raised the issue at the July 13 meeting of State Ministers of Disaster Management that was chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Delhi.
The Minister said that timely alerts were sent out to people and pamphlets were distributed at the panchayat level to make people aware of the dangers associated with lightning.
World
U.K. formally signs up to trans-Pacific trading bloc (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The U.K. government hailed what it said was its biggest trade deal since Brexit, as it formally signed a treaty to join a major Indo-Pacific bloc.
Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch signed the accession protocol for the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in New Zealand.
It makes the U.K. the first new member and first European nation to join the bloc since it was created in 2018.
The CPTPP comprises Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
Dangerous heatwaves felt across globe as wildfires rage (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Disaster Management)
Scorching weather gripped three continents, whipping up wildfires and threatening to topple temperature records as the dire consequences of global warming take shape. Predictions of historic heat hung over swathes of Asia, Europe and the U.S.
Japan issued heatstroke alerts to tens of millions of people in 20 of its 47 prefectures as near-record high temperatures scorched large areas and torrential rain pummelled other regions.
The United States National Weather Service reported that a powerful heatwave stretching from California to Texas was expected to witness its peak during an “extremely hot and dangerous weekend”.
California’s Death Valley, often among the hottest places on Earth, is also likely to register new peaks on Sunday, with the mercury possibly surpassing 54 degrees Celsius.
Southern California is fighting numerous wildfires, including one in Riverside County that has burned more than 3,000 hectares and prompted evacuation orders.
In Europe, Italians were warned to prepare for “the most intense heatwave of the summer and also one of the most intense of all time”.
The thermometer was still climbing after predictions of historic highs on Tuesday led the Health Ministry to sound a red alert for 16 cities including Rome, Bologna and Florence.