DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS IAS | UPSC Prelims and Mains Exam – 1st October 2024

 Syllabus

• Mains – GS 1 AND GS 4

Context: Ukraine’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba invoked the legacy of Gandhi to seek India’s support for the freedom and independence of Ukraine.

Background: –

• Gandhi’s philosophy and practice of ahimsa is insurmountable in any discourse of peace. However, like any political philosophy, Gandhi’s idea of non-violence was not unchallenged. His conversation with his contemporary, Narayana Guru, helps elucidate the intricacies of Gandhi’s creed of ahimsa

Gandhi and Guru

• Gandhi could not separate religion from politics. He cherished the religious doctrines of truth and non-violence in spiritualising his political mission.
• Similarly, Guru, the spiritual leader and social reformer in Kerala, could not detach his actions and thoughts from the issues of worldly life. For him, worldly life and its complexities were not mere illusions but an essential part of his spirituality. That is why he equated social discrimination against fellow beings with the rejection of God.
• Thus, both Gandhi and Guru set similar goals but walked through different paths. An analysis would reveal that the distinction between politics and religion is blurring between and within their thoughts.
• Despite differences on some issues, both Gandhi and Guru agreed on the necessity of cherishing the value of non-violence for spiritual well-being and human welfare.
• When Gandhi preaches values of truth, ahimsa, and love in politics, Guru’s notion of compassion assembles all these virtues in the duties of an Advaiti. Advaita is a Sanskrit word that means “not two” or “no second.” It refers to the philosophical concept in Advaita Vedanta.

Unraveling misunderstandings

• A misunderstanding arose between Gandhi and Guru following the latter’s interview on the Vaikom satyagraha. The Vaikom Satyagraha was the first among many temple entry movements in India, which foregrounded the issue of untouchability and caste oppression.
• Guru’s interview on the movement was published in Malayalam weekly Deshabhimani. In this, Guru was cited as saying, “Volunteers should scale over the barricades, and not only walk along the prohibited roads but enter all temples including the Vaikom temple. It should be made practically impossible for anyone to observe untouchability.”
• Guru’s statements irked the supporters of Gandhian non-violence, while Gandhi perceived these comments as a rejection of his most sacred method of ahimsa or as support for ‘open violence’.

Clarifying misunderstandings

• The person who informed about Guru’s comments to Gandhi urged him to instruct the Congress to call off the Satyagraha. But Gandhi refused to intervene. Instead, he expressed his displeasure over Guru’s comments, labeling them as the ‘reverse of Satyagraha’, a call for ‘open violence’ and an example of ‘imposing force’ in his weekly journal, Young India.
• Guru wanted to resolve the misapprehension. Guru wrote to Gandhi and categorically stated that ‘any method of work that may be adopted for eradicating the evil of untouchability must be strictly non-violent’. Gandhi published Guru’s letter in Young India.
• What Guru had expressed through his comments was not a call for physical force but his moral outrage and sarcastic contempt for social inequalities and discriminatory practices. It was not a refutation of the Vaikom Satyagraha or its non-violent methods. On the contrary, it rejected discriminatory thoughts through his unique means of sarcasm.
• The debate on the method of non-violence did not end with Guru’s clarification letter. It continued when Gandhi met Guru in Kerala in 1925. He sought Guru’s opinion on non-violent Satyagraha and the futility of using physical force in a movement to attain rights. Guru replied that he did not think that violent force was good.

Compassion and nonviolence

• For Guru, non-violence is the fundamental nature of a follower of Advaita philosophy. In Atmopadesa Satakam, Guru writes that whatever one does for the happiness of oneself should cause happiness to others. If one’s action causes harm to others, it reflects a form of self-loathing. This is the rationale of Guru’s ahimsa.
• Guru emphasises the importance of avoiding pain to others’ bodies, minds and souls by one’s words, deeds and thoughts.

Commitment to non-violence

• Compassion (anukampa) is the ultimate value that helps contain the potential for violence against others. For Guru, a religion sans compassion is not a religion at all. His philosophical teaching that views harm to others as a form of self-loathing constitutes the core of his ‘religion of compassion’.
• Non-violence need not be referred to as an independent category – it is immanent in Guru’s philosophy, especially in the virtue of compassion.
• Being a social reformer and sage, Guru saw no distinction between spiritual goals and social action aimed at the welfare of humanity. Similarly, in Gandhi’s political thought, religion and politics were inseparable entities.

Gandhi’s ahimsa and Guru’s non-violence

• Gandhi evaluated political morality against his absolute doctrine of ahimsa (non-violence). A ‘living faith in God’ was the essential part of Gandhi’s ahimsa, as he could not conceive of non-violence as a creed without this condition of indomitable faith in God.
• For Gandhi, violence was the negation of the highest spiritual force, and non-violence was path to God. This is where Guru’s idea of non-violence and non-dualism meet with Gandhi’s creed of ahimsa. Both have blurred the rigid boundaries between spiritual and temporal life, suggesting that rejecting non-violence in worldly life leads to the negation of God.
• But Gandhi and Guru differed over the centrality of compassion in their idea of non-violence. For Guru, compassion was the essential virtue of an Advaiti, and it encompassed all duties and values, including non-violence. In his philosophy, non-violence was an integral part of his broader creed of compassion.
• Gandhi, however, viewed compassion as just one of the many virtues associated with a practitioner of non-violence. For him, non-violence stood as an independent and ultimate virtue of ideal human. While Gandhi acknowledged that non-violence encompassed virtues of love, compassion, and forgiveness, he argued that compassion alone cannot qualify one to be a practitioner of non-violence.

Source: Indian Express

 Syllabus

• Prelims & Mains – NATIONAL

Context: India’s plans to get into the manufacturing value chain of Small Modular Reactors (SMR) are yielding some positives with a handful of private players learnt to have shown interest in deploying these at their captive site.

Background: –

• The SMR push comes at a time when the global nuclear power sector is faced with a general decline in output, with its share dropping to the lowest point in nearly four decades due to a combination of factors — national policy pivots, economic viability issues, safety concerns and the rapid growth of renewable energy alternatives.

About Small Modular Reactors (SMR)

• SMRs are small reactors offering 30-300 MWe power output per unit, and are seen as effective in not just producing base load power, but also amongst renewables as a more carbon-neutral source.
• SMRs are conceptualised in such a way that their systems and components are manufactured in a controlled factory environment and then transported straight to the project site to be installed, which optimises the construction lead time and cuts down the cost of these projects — two concerns with regard to traditional large reactor projects.
• They have potential deployment advantages like reduced size of the Emergency Planning Zone (ring fenced areas around the project site) and passive safety system, rendering them relatively safer than larger reactor-based projects.

Additional Information

• SMRs are increasingly seen as important for nuclear energy to remain a commercially competitive option in the future.
• India is pushing for a leadership slot in this small reactor space, both as a way of fulfilling its commitment to clean energy transition, and bundling SMRs as a technology-led foreign policy pitch.
• These reactors are important in offering base load power that could give grid operators some degree of operational flexibility. This is seen as significant since SMRs, when pooled together, can produce a meaningfully large amount of electricity and help meet the challenge of inducting more base load power to balance out the vagaries of renewable power output. While thermal generation is seen as important in this regard, nuclear energy offers a more carbon-neutral base load generation option.
• Though India’s civil nuclear programme has progressively upscaled its reactor sizes, from the earlier 220MWe reactors to the latest 700MWe PHWRs (pressurised heavy water reactors), the country does have an edge in producing and commercially operating small reactors.
• In the civil nuclear sector, New Delhi is pushing SMRs as a technology of promise that can help in industrial decarbonisation, and is hard selling its ability to take some kind of a leadership role in the dissemination of this technology.

Source: Indian Express

 Syllabus

• Prelims & Mains – Economy

Context: Output levels in India’s core sectors slipped to a nine month low in August, even as year on year growth slipped 1.8%, marking the first contraction in three and a half years.

Background:

• The Index of Core Industries (ICI), which constitutes about 40% of the broader index of India’s industrial output (IIP), stood at 155.8 in August, marking a third consecutive month of sequential decline.

About Index of Industrial Production (IIP)

• The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) is a key measure used in India to gauge the growth and performance of various industrial sectors over time. It tracks changes in the production volume across different sectors of the economy, providing insights into the overall industrial health of the country.
• It is compiled and published monthly by the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) six weeks after the reference month ends.

Key Features of the IIP:

• Base Year: The IIP is calculated with reference to a base year, which was last updated to 2011-12. The base year serves as the point of comparison to measure growth in industrial output.
• Sectors Covered: The IIP comprises three major sectors:
  • Manufacturing: This sector constitutes about 77.6% of the total weight of the index, reflecting the importance of manufacturing in India’s economy.
  • Mining: Accounts for 14.37% of the IIP’s weight.
  • Electricity: Comprises 7.99% of the IIP’s weight.
• Use-Based Classification:
  • Primary goods: Basic goods used in the production process.
  • Capital goods: Goods used for further production (e.g., machinery, tools).
  • Intermediate goods: Goods used as inputs in other products.
  • Infrastructure/Construction Goods: Goods used in infrastructure projects and construction, like steel and cement.
  • Consumer Durables: Final goods that have a long-term use, such as refrigerators, washing machines, and vehicles.
  • Consumer Non-Durables: Final goods for short-term use, like food items, beverages, and textiles.

About Index of Core Industries (ICI)

• The Index of Core Industries (ICI) is a crucial economic indicator that measures the performance of eight core industries in India. These industries are fundamental to the economy and have a significant impact on overall industrial performance.
• The ICI includes the following eight core industries:
  • Coal (weight: 10.33%)
  • Crude Oil (weight: 8.98%)
  • Natural Gas (weight: 6.88%)
  • Refinery Products (weight: 28.04%)
  • Fertilizers (weight: 2.63%)
  • Steel (weight: 17.92%)
  • Cement (weight: 5.37%)
  • Electricity (weight: 19.85%)
• Weightage: The ICI tracks the performance of eight core industries, which together account for around 40.27% of the IIP.
• Base Year: The base year for the ICI is 2011-12, which is the same as the base year for the IIP.
• ICI for a reference month is released with a time lag of one month on the last day of the next month, which is about twelve days prior to the release of Index of Industrial Production (IIP) for the reference month.
• The ICI is released by the Office of the Economic Adviser, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce & Industry.

Source: The Hindu

 Syllabus

• Prelims & Mains – CURRENT EVENT

Context: Actor-politician Mithun Chakraborty will receive the Dadasaheb Phalke Award.

Background: –

• Mithun Chakraborty will be the 54th winner of the Dadasaheb Phalke Award.

About Dadasaheb Phalke Award 

• The Dadasaheb Phalke Award is India’s highest award in the field of cinema.
• It is named after Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, popularly known as Dadasaheb Phalke, who is regarded as the “Father of Indian Cinema” for directing India’s first full-length feature film, Raja Harishchandra in 1913.
• Purpose: The award honors individuals for their outstanding contribution to the growth and development of Indian cinema.
• Instituted: The award was instituted in 1969 by the Government of India to commemorate Dadasaheb Phalke’s contribution to Indian cinema.
• The recipient of the Dadasaheb Phalke Award receives: A Swarna Kamal (Golden Lotus) medallion, A shawl, A cash prize of ₹10 lakh .
• Selection Process: The recipient is selected by a committee consisting of eminent personalities from the Indian film industry
• Ceremony: The award is presented annually at the National Film Awards ceremony by the Directorate of Film Festivals, an organization set up by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

Source: Hindustan Times

 Syllabus

• Prelims – ECONOMY

Context: India’s current account deficit (CAD) widened marginally to $ 9.7 billion (1.1% of GDP) in Q1:2024-25 from $8.9 billion (1.0% of GDP) in Q1:2023-24 according to data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)

Background: –

• The widening of CAD on a year-on-year (y-o-y) basis was primarily due to a rise in merchandise trade deficit to $ 65.1 billion in Q1:2024-25 from $56.7 billion in Q1:2023-24

About Current Account Deficit (CAD)

• The Current Account Deficit (CAD) is a key economic indicator reflecting a country’s international trade and financial health.
• CAD occurs when a country’s total imports of goods, services, and transfers exceed its total exports. A CAD means the country is a net borrower from the rest of the world.

Components of the Current Account:

• Trade Balance (Exports – Imports of Goods)
• Services Balance (Exports – Imports of Services, e.g., IT, tourism)
• Income Account (investment income)
• Net Transfers (One-way transfers like foreign aid, remittances)
• When the sum of the above components is negative, it results in a Current Account Deficit.

Reasons for CAD:

• High imports relative to exports.
• Increased foreign borrowing or payments, like interest on foreign loans.
• Structural issues, such as a lack of competitiveness in exports, over-reliance on imports, and an undervalued services sector.

Implications of CAD:

• Depreciation Pressure on Currency: A large CAD can weaken the domestic currency as demand for foreign currency increases to pay for imports.
• Inflationary Pressures: A weak currency can make imports expensive, driving up domestic inflation.
• Dependence on Foreign Capital: Countries with a CAD often need to attract foreign investment or borrow from external sources, which can increase external debt.
• Impact on Foreign Exchange Reserves: A persistent CAD can deplete foreign reserves, leading to a balance of payments crisis if not managed effectively.

Factors Affecting CAD:

• Crude Oil Prices: India, being a major importer of oil, is significantly affected by global oil price fluctuations.
• Gold Imports: High demand for gold in India contributes to a widening CAD.
• Export Competitiveness: India’s performance in sectors like IT services, textiles, and pharmaceuticals helps reduce the CAD, but manufacturing exports need more focus.
• Global Economic Conditions: A global slowdown can reduce demand for India’s exports, worsening the CAD.

Measures to Control CAD:

• Boosting Exports: Encouraging sectors like manufacturing, agriculture, and services can help improve the trade balance.
• Reducing Non-Essential Imports: Policies to curb gold imports or incentivize the domestic production of goods (such as the Make in India initiative) can help.
• Promoting Foreign Investment: Attracting more Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) can provide the necessary capital inflows to cover a CAD.
• Diversifying Energy Sources: Reducing dependency on imported oil by promoting renewable energy can mitigate the impact of global oil price fluctuations.

Source: The Hindu

 Syllabus

• Mains – GS 2

Context: NITI Aayog, the top think tank of the government, had opposed some of the provisions of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, and particularly red-flagged the changes proposed to the Right to Information (RTI) Act that could “weaken” the legislation.

Background: –

• In simple words, what the data protection law proposed is an amendment to a section in the RTI Act with such effect that disclosure of personal information about public officials would not be allowed even when these are justified in larger public interest.

Digital Personal Data Protection Act:

• It is a comprehensive privacy and data protection law that provides guidelines on processing, storing, and securing personal data.
• It aims to regulate the processing of digital personal data while ensuring individuals’ right to protect their data and the need to process it for lawful purposes.
• It protects digital personal data by providing:
  • The obligations of Data Fiduciaries (that is, persons, companies, and government entities who process data) for data processing (that is, collection, storage, or any other operation on personal data);
  • The rights and duties of Data Principals (that is, the person to whom the data relates);
  • Financial penalties for breach of rights, duties, and obligations.

Salient Features of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act:

• It applies to the processing of digital personal data within India where such data is collected in digital form or non-digital form and digitised subsequently.
• It empowers individuals with the right to know and control their personal data. This includes rights to access, correction, and erasure of their data, giving citizens greater control over their personal information.
• It mandates that personal data may be processed only for a lawful purpose after obtaining the consent of the Data Principal (who shall have the right to withdraw consent at any time). For a child or a person with a disability, consent will be provided by the parent or legal guardian.
• It makes provisions to enhance data security and facilitate easier enforcement of data protection laws as certain types of sensitive personal data are required to be stored and processed within India.
• It establishes a Data Protection Board of India (DPBI) to oversee compliance and handle grievances. It is responsible for adjudicating disputes and imposing penalties for violations.
• It mandates organisations to notify individuals and the Data Protection Board of any data breaches that may compromise personal information. It aims to ensure transparency and prompt action in the event of data leaks.
• It specifies penalties for various offences such as up to Rs 200 crore for non-fulfilment of obligations for children, and Rs 250 crore for failure to take security measures to prevent data breaches.

Issues with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act:

• It violates the fundamental right to privacy as it provides exemptions for the State. Using exemptions, a government agency may collect data about citizens to create a 360-degree profile for surveillance.
• It does not provide enough safeguards regarding the transfer of personal data outside India as it may not ensure adequate data protection standards in the countries where the transfer of personal data is allowed.
• It has removed Section 43A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, which mandated companies to compensate users in case of mishandling their data.
• It has provided a complicated approach to grievance redressal as aggrieved individuals are required to first approach the data fiduciary’s redressal mechanism.
• It proposes that the personal information of public officials will not be disclosed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, which could aid corrupt practices by not disclosing assets, liabilities, etc.
• It provides that the data fiduciary will not undertake any processing that has a detrimental effect on the well-being of a child. However, there is no definition of detrimental effect or any guidance for determining such effect.
• It does not grant the right to data portability and the right to be forgotten to the data principal.

Source: Indian Express

Q1.) With reference to the Current Account Deficit (CAD), consider the following statements:

1. A country experiences a CAD when its total imports of goods exceed its total exports of services.
2. CAD leads to an outflow of foreign exchange from the country.
3. A high CAD can result in depreciation of the domestic currency.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 and 2 only
(b) 2 and 3 only
(c) 1 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2, and 3

Q2.) With reference to the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, consider the following statements:

1. The award is named after Dadasaheb Phalke, who directed India’s first full-length feature film, Raja Harishchandra.
2. The Dadasaheb Phalke Award was instituted in 1969.
3. TheDadasaheb Phalke Award is India’s highest award in the field of cinema.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 only
(b) 1 and 3 only
(c) 2 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2, and 3

Q3.) With reference to the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) and the Index of Core Industries (ICI), consider the following statements:

1. The manufacturing sector has the highest weightage in the IIP.
2. The Index of Core Industries (ICI) covers eight industries, which together account for more than 50% of the weightage in the IIP.
3. The base year for both the IIP and ICI is the same.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 and 3 only
(b) 1 only
(c) 2 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2, and 3

Comment the answers to the above questions in the comment section below!!

ANSWERS FOR ’  1st October 2024 – Daily Practice MCQs’ will be updated along with tomorrow’s Daily Current Affairs

Q.1) –  a

Q.2) – a

Q.3) – c