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Delegates at the U. N. climate conference in Sharm El-Sheikh continue to negotiate a final agreement, with the latest draft suggesting the creation of a fund to compensate a section of developing countries for the damage already done by disasters linked to climate change.
Country representatives at the 27 th Conference of Parties (COP27) of the U. N. Framework Convention on Climate Change are expected to convene again at a closing plenary session in the Egyptian resort town that is to commence late Saturday night by Indian time.
Loss and Damage (L&D) compensation has been part of COP deliberations for over a decade, with calls by island nations and developing countries to establish a dedicated fund and a clear financing scheme to compensate countries that are bearing the brunt of climate-linked calamities.
This was the first COP to formally include L&D as an agenda item. With little agreement among countries on other issues such as a call to eliminate all forms of fossil fuel or deliver on climate finance to developing countries, clarity on an L&D fund was widely perceived as a successful, tangible outcome from COP27.
The United States is reportedly working to find a way it can agree to proposals put forward, a source told Reuters. Another U. S. source familiar with the negotiations said the U. S. had been “deeply involved” in the negotiations on the ‘loss and damage’ deal.
Maldives Environment Minister Aminath Shauna said that an agreement had been reached. “There is an agreement on loss and damage,” which is what negotiators call the concept.
States
Great knot sighting untangles a migration mystery (Page no. 5)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Unveiling yet another mystery of avian migrations, a great knot from Russia, belonging to the endangered Calidris tenuirostris, has found its way to Kerala’s coast, flying over 9,000 km for a winter sojourn.
The migratory bird that traversed the Central Asian Flyway (CAF) is only one of the two — the other has been sighted at Jamnagar in Gujarat — great knots to be re-sighted in India among the nearly thousand ones tagged with MOSKVA rings in the Kamchatka peninsula in eastern Russia.
The bird was sighted by birdwatchers P.P. Sreenivasan, KaleshSadasivan and Samkumar P.B. while on a coastal migrant bird watching expedition on the Chavakkad beach in Thrissur district on November 15.
It came calling in a flock of 14 great knots and about 150 migratory waders, including a rare straggler Caspian plover, grey plover, whimbrel, sanderling, lesser sand plover and about a hundred seagulls.
According to Mr. Sreenivasan, a veteran birder who has been monitoring the Thrissur coasts for over two decades, the engraving on the bird’s ring that read TC 32469 MOSKVA provided a vital clue on its Russian connection.
Mr. Samkumar and Dr. Sadasivan, who represent the Birders Sans Borders and the Travancore Natural History Society, nature conservation groups based in Thrissur and Thiruvananthapuram respectively, then managed to establish contact with Dmitry Dorofeev, whose team has been counting and ringing shorebirds in the estuary of the Khairusova-Belogolovaya River in Kamchatka.
The Russian scientists confirmed the juvenile great knot had been tagged in the estuary with a marked ring on its leg on August 12.
These long-distance migrants stay at the Yellow Sea region and Thailand in southeast Asia before proceeding to their southerly winter grounds,including Peninsular India along the CAF, one of the nine most important flyways of migratory birds.
The migratory route suggested the bird that flew to Thrissur travelled over 9,000 km. Another bird that was tagged 6Z has been sighted at Jamnagar for the past three consecutive years.
Editorial
Charting the economic journey ahead (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The big question before India is where its economy will be 25 years from now. By 2047, India will complete 100 years after Independence.
By that time, will India achieve the status of a developed economy, which means achieving a minimum per capita income equivalent to $13,000? We also need to know what the global situation would be like because India cannot be decoupled from the rest of the world.
India’s economic journey started with Independence. It is not realised often that India’s economic progress in the first half of the 20th century under British rule was dismal.
According to one estimate, during the five decades, India’s annual growth rate was just 0.89%. With the population growing at 0.83%, per capita income grew at 0.06%. It is not surprising that immediately after Independence, growth became the most urgent concern for policymakers.
In the early period, India’s strategy of development comprised four elements — raising the savings and investment rate; dominance of state intervention; import substitution, and domestic manufacture of capital goods.
To some extent, policymakers in India in the 1950s and 1960s were handicapped. At that time, there was no clear model available for accelerating growth in developing countries.
State intervention on an extensive scale seemed to be appropriate, even though there were some critics even at that time.
However, by the end of 1970s, it was becoming clear that the model India had chosen was not delivering and that it needed modification.
By that time, there were many more critics of the Indian strategy. But India’s policymakers refused to recognise this. It was around that time China made a big change.
It was the crisis of 1990-91 that compelled the policymakers to turn to an ‘idea whose time had come’. The break with the past came in three important directions: first, in dismantling the complex regime of licences and permits; second, in redefining the role of state; and third, in giving up the inward looking trade policy.
A place for all refugees under India’s welfare umbrella (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 1, Social Issues)
This month marks yet another annual “16 Days of Activism” against gender-based violence, even as the world is faced with a global increase in reported domestic violence, child marriage, trafficking, sexual exploitation and abuse.
The coup in Myanmar, a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — that have all occurred in the last 18 months — have each underscored the fact that women bear a disproportionate burden in conflict, especially those forced to flee their homes and seek refuge in other countries.
Economic stressors resulting from COVID-19 exacerbate the situation. Important markers in gender equality and the protection of civilians have been reversed in many countries.
The global theme for this year’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence is “UNITE! Activism to end violence against women and girls”, a much-needed call to action that all of us must work towards, in order to ensure that we reverse gender and protection deficits.
Uniting to end violence against women and girls and empowering them to stand up for themselves and their communities, and supporting men to become agents of change, must remain the priority.
The 16 Days of Activism run annually from November 25, which is International Day Against Violence Against Women, to December 10, which is International Human Rights Day.
I anticipate invigorated actions by all of us to support the global peace and security agenda, especially for the marginalised such as refugees and other displaced persons.
The thought that I am writing this in one of the largest economies in the world, which has championed programmes based on the rights and the development of women and girls, suggests that we can all learn from how far India has progressed in protecting her daughters since Independence 75 years ago.
Opinion
The threat to federalism in agricultural education (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
In a judgment this week, a two-judge bench of the Kerala High Court set aside the appointment of the Vice-Chancellor of the Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies (KUFOS).
The court upheld the academic qualifications of the Vice-Chancellor but ruled that the appointment violated the procedures in the University Grants Commission (UGC) Regulations of 2018.
It listed two specific violations: (a) the search committee recommended a single name and not a panel of three names; and (b) in the search committee, the State government included the Director-General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) instead of a nominee of the UGC.
Given the history of agricultural education in India, the judgment is deeply worrying on at least two counts. First, it weakens the principle of federalism in higher education by dismantling the role of State governments in the establishment and functioning of State Agricultural Universities.
Second, it raises an existential threat for the facilitator of agricultural education in India – the ICAR – by creating a false equivalence between the university system under the UGC and the agricultural university system under the State governments.
The evolution of agricultural education in India after independence dovetailed the exclusive role bestowed by the Constitution to the States in the management of agriculture.
Explainer
A first look at the new data protection Bill (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The story so far: The latest draft of the data protection law — the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 (DPDP Bill, 2022) — has now been made open for public comments and the government is expected to introduce the Bill in Parliament in the budget session of 2023.
This is the fourth iteration of a data protection law in India. The first draft of the law — the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018, was proposed by the Justice Srikrishna Committee set up by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) with the mandate of setting out a data protection law for India.
The government made revisions to this draft and introduced it as the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 (PDP Bill, 2019) in the Lok Sabha in 2019.
On the same day, the Lok Sabha passed a motion to refer the PDP Bill, 2019 to a joint committee of both the Houses of Parliament.
Due to delays caused by the pandemic, the Joint Committee on the PDP Bill, 2019 (JPC) submitted its report on the Bill after two years in December, 2021.
The report was accompanied by a new draft bill, namely, the Data Protection Bill, 2021 that incorporated the recommendations of the JPC.
However, in August 2022, citing the report of the JPC and the “extensive changes” that the JPC had made to the 2019 Bill, the government withdrew the PDP Bill.
Constant interactions with digital devices have led to unprecedented amounts of personal data being generated round the clock by users (data principals).
When coupled with the computational power available today with companies (data fiduciaries), this data can be processed in ways that increasingly impair the autonomy, self-determination, freedom of choice and privacy of the data principal.
Text & context
What does the latest FTX fallout mean for the crypto currency? (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
On November 11, FTX filed for bankruptcy protection. One of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges collapsed after reports emerged about the platform’s CEO Sam Bankman-Fried using customers’ deposits to trade on behalf of FTX’s sister firm Alameda Research.
The bushy-haired co-founder of both the exchange and the trading unit apologised and resigned after a potential takeover deal by rival exchange Binance failed to materialise.
The 30-year-old billionaire’s crypto empire collapse is so significant that it dragged Bitcoin’s price to a two-year low.
Once the darling of the crypto industry with a valuation of $32 billion in January, FTX is now a cautionary tale. It is accused of financial fraud and misuse of customer funds.
Mr. Bankman-Fried admitted he was ignorant of his platform’s true liquidity and leverage levels when customers requested for “roughly” $5 billion in withdrawals in one day.
Mr. Bankman-Fried was a former quants trader at the global trading firm Jane Street. By the end of 2017, when Bitcoin’s price breaches $1,000 after years of price fluctuations, he moves base to Hong Kong to set up investment fund Alameda Research to trade in crypto tokens and derivatives.
The skyrocketing rise of the de facto crypto benchmark asset sets off a new bull run for cryptocurrency. But the digital coins were not traded at the same price on different exchanges.
Mr. Bankman-Fried sees an arbitrage opportunity from this inherent volatility in the crypto ecosystem. Two years later, in April 2019, when Bitcoin once again loses its sheen, Mr. Bankman-Fried launches FTX as a platform which traders can use to buy and sell crypto assets and derivatives.
FTX is set up as two verticals. One can be accessed by global users, and the other is specifically built in compliance with U.S. law.
The latter, FTX.US, catered to U.S. residents as they could not legally trade on the FTX International platform. FTX claimed to have over one million customers in 2021.
FTX International offered investors an option to trade in tokenised stocks, which are digital coin-based derivatives of shares of actual companies. It also allowed users to bet on expected valuations of pre-IPO companies. Such features attracted users to the platforms.
News
India has given 15$ as soft loan to neighbors (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The volume of India’s soft loans to neighbouring countries has increased from about $3 billion to almost $15 billion in the last eight years, former foreign secretary and G-20 chief coordinator Harsh Vardhan Shringla said.
Speaking at the PurvottarSwabhiman Utsav organised by the Army’s Eastern Command in Guwahati, he said the Asian Development Bank had once marked South Asia as the least integrated region on earth.
In order to change the perception, India replaced the Look East policy with the Act East policy to incorporate neighbouring countries such as Bangladesh, Myanmar and Nepal in the plan to develop infrastructure and connectivity.
As part of this policy, there is an ambition to upgrade the infrastructure, rail, telecom, power and waterways to strengthen our economic, technological, political and security ties with South East Asia, the fastest-growing region in the world beyond the northeast.
He said India has significantly ungraded investment in terms of outreach to the neighbours and beyond to the east of the country. This, he added, has been in keeping with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s view of developing the northeast as a gateway to South East Asia.
One important statistic in this regard is that our lines of credit extended to our immediate neighbourhood has increased from $3 billion in 2014 to close to $15 billion today. We are providing soft loans to our neighbours to develop infrastructure for improved connectivity with us.
We do this because, by connecting the region, we can bring in development and benefits to our own country in general, and the northeast in particular.
Mr. Shringla said India is poised to become a $5 trillion economy by 2030. “We are the fastest-growing large economy in the world.
From that point of view, we have to make sure that our neighbours grow with us. Otherwise, you will have issues which will hamper your own development and growth.
States check, verify data of PM Kisan beneficiaries: Ministry (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Welfare Schemes)
In a response to The Hindu report published on Sunday that the number of farmers who received the 11th instalment of funds from the Prime Minister’s Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) had fallen by 67%, the Union Agriculture Ministry said it was an erroneous reflection on the functioning of the PM Kisan scheme and argued that the responsibility of maintaining the data of beneficiaries, remained with the States.
The Ministry said PM Kisan was one of the largest Director Benefits Transfer schemes in the world and certain higher income categories of farmer families were excluded from the benefits.
The Scheme extensively uses digital technologies to verify eligibility of farmers. States/ UTs upload the data of eligible farmers after verification of the farmers, in terms of eligibility and exclusion criterion prescribed under the scheme.
The data of farmers so uploaded by States goes through several validations, through the portals of UIDAI, PFMS, Income Tax Portal and NPCI.
It, however, did not say as to why only about three crore farmers had received all the 11 instalments.It claimed that for each instalment, the benefits were processed only after the Request for Fund Transfer (RFT) were signed by the States/ UTs with the list of eligible farmers and after Fund Transfer Order (FTO)/ Sanction was successfully generated by the PFMS. “The eligibility of a farmer is dynamic in nature.
The States/ UTs check, verify, stop, and upload the data of farmers for transfer of benefits, each time an instalment is released to the registered beneficiaries.
This helps in weeding out beneficiaries who have passed away, farmers who have sold their land and those falling in the exclusion criteria.
However, if a State holds the data of a farmer, due to any concern related to eligibility criterion and later on releases after satisfactory verification, then all payment due to that farmer should be given to him from the date of registration.
It said the registration of the farmers on the PM Kisan portal and their verification for assessing eligibility was a continuous process.