The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 17 January 2023

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis for UPSC

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 14 January 2023

The Hindu Editorial Today

• However, some users have been testing the bot’s capability to do nefarious things. Illicit actors have tried to bypass the tool’s safeguards and carry out malicious use cases with varying degrees of success.
• Research outlet ArsTechnica shared some exchanges between several forum users and ChatGPT. These users claimed the chatbot helped them write malicious code even though they claimed to be amateurs.
• ChatGPT is programmed to block obvious requests of writing phishing emails or code for hackers.
• OpenAI notes that asking its bot for illegal or phishing content may violate its content policy. But for someone trespassing such policies, the bot provides a starting point.
• Cybersecurity firm Check Point’s researchers tested the bot by asking it to draft a phishing email for a fictional web-hosting firm. In response, ChatGPT gave an impressive ‘phishing email’.
• The generated reply included a warning that read: “This content may violate our content policy. If you believe this to be in error, please submit your feedback — your input will aid our research in this area.”

• The mandatory address the Governor of a State makes under Article 176 is about only the policies and the programmes of the elected government, so wilfully not reading certain portions goes against the mandate of the said Article.
• The paragraph in question referred to the Dravidian model of governance which has great political and cultural significance especially in Tamil Nadu.
• Article 176 of the Constitution requires the Governor to mandatorily address the Members of legislature at the commencement of the first session of each year and to inform them of the causes of its summons. Clause two says that the legislature will discuss the matters referred to in such an address. The “address” here means the complete address and not a truncated or garbled version. Therefore, what the Governor reads before the legislators is a complete address whose entire contents are to be mandatorily discussed by the legislators in the House.
• It will become more clear when we consider Article 175 which says that the Governor may address the legislature and for that purpose require the attendance of the members. The Governor’s address under Article 175 is not a mandatory address unlike under Article 176.
• Article 175 does not speak about any discussion of the content of such an address; but Article 176 requires a discussion on the matters contained in the Governor’s address.
• The reason behind the Constitution making such a distinction in two addresses by the same constitutional authority, namely the Governor, to the same Members of the legislature, is that the address under Article 176 contains the policies and programmes of the elected government of the State which is accountable to the legislature.
• Executive accountability to the elected representatives of the people is the essence of parliamentary democracy.
• Article 200 requires the Governor to either give assent or withhold assent or send the Bill back to the Assembly for reconsideration, in which case if the Assembly passes it again in the same form without any change the Governor has to give assent to it. He can also send the Bill for the consideration of the President in some rare cases.
• Thus, Article 200 clearly shows that the Governor cannot sit on a Bill and thus frustrate the legislative exercise done by the Assembly. In Britain it is unconstitutional for the King to withhold assent to a Bill passed by Parliament.
• R. Ambedkar said in the Constituent Assembly: “If the Constitution remains in principle the same, as we intend that it should be, that the Governor should be a purely constitutional Governor, with no power of interference in the administration of the province, ….”
• The Supreme Court had in Shamsher Singh said, “The Constitution does not aim at providing a parallel administration within the State by allowing the Governor to go against the advice of the Council of Ministers.”

• The Government’s summit for developing nations, called the “Voice of the Global South Summit”, as its first big leadership-level G20 event, is an extremely important signal.
• It is also a departure from New Delhi’s looking towards the “high-table” of global leadership, involving its relationship with the UNSC P5 and G-7 (the most developed economies), to focusing on a more just view of the world and how the developing world is being affected by global inequities.
• Over 10 different sessions, India and representatives of 125 countries, of the 134 that make up the G-77, agreed that the key issues include the fragmentation of the international landscape, shortages in grain exports, oil and gas, and fertilizer as a result of the Ukraine war, and terrorism.
• The summit appears to mark a reset in India’s foreign policy outlook in its year as G20 president: one which has made the Government reclaim the true meaning of non-alignment, in the wake of the Ukraine war where it refused to take sides.

About the Summit:

• India hosted the summit in a bid to articulate the views of the developing countries regarding the effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
• The event has planned eight ministerial sessions including finance, energy, education, foreign affairs, and commerce.

Theme:

• It was held under the theme – ‘Unity of Voice, Unity of Purpose’ – essentially envisages bringing together countries of the global south and sharing their perspectives and priorities on a common platform across a whole range of issues.

• The Union Cabinet’s recent decision to earmark ₹2,600 crore for providing banks with an incentive to promote digital payments has focused attention on India’s welcome push to broaden and deepen alternatives to the most widely accepted method of payment worldwide, cash.
• The Reserve Bank of India’s ‘Payments Vision 2025’ document observes that ‘payment systems foster economic development and financial stability’ while supporting financial inclusion.
• The adoption of digital payment methods, while accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has also been enabled by the widening number of banks which have backed the UPI system, as well as the indigenous RuPay credit and debit cards.
• Policymakers need to urgently ring-fence the wealth of individual spending data being generated and constantly enhance security to safeguard the payments system from cyberthreats.

Unified Payments Interface (UPI):

• UPI is a technology that consolidates various bank accounts into a single mobile app (of any participating bank) –
• Providing an instant real-time payment system,
• Allowing users to transfer money across multiple bank accounts without revealing details of one’s bank account to the other party.
• It was launched by the NPCI in 2016 in conjunction with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Indian Banks Association (IBA).

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)

• It is an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India. It is an initiative of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) under the provisions of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007.
• It has been incorporated as a “Not for Profit” Company under the provisions of Section 25 of Companies Act 1956 (now Section 8 of Companies Act 2013).
• The ten core promoter banks are State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Citibank and HSBC. In 2016 the shareholding was broad-based to 56 member banks to include more banks representing all sectors.

• As the number of COVID-19 cases subsided, 2022-23 was expected to be a normal year. However, this hope was shattered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The supply of critical imports was disrupted and, as a consequence, the prices of such imports increased sharply, derailing many economies. Growth slowed down, and India was affected too. While India’s performance was relatively better than many other countries, the return to normalcy has been delayed.
• Fiscal support to growth would call for continuing emphasis on capital expenditure.
• A careful calibration would be required for limiting revenue expenditure growth in order to retain space for capital expenditure to grow adequately

• In a letter, Law Minister seeks formation of a search-and-evaluation panel, which will have govt. representatives, to shortlist and suggest names to collegiums for judgeships in constitutional courts;
• The four-page letter has raised a long list of complaints and sought the formation of a search-and-evaluation committee, which will have government representatives, to suggest names to the collegiums for appointment as judges in constitutional courts.
• The letter is a fresh salvo by the Law Minister after recent statements by the Vice-President and the Lok Sabha Speaker against the collegium system. The letter coincides with the fact that Collegium recommendations for appointment of five Supreme Court judges lie pending with the government.

• ISRO’s Venus mission, Shukrayaan I, was expected to be launched in December 2024. The idea was born in 2012. Five years later, ISRO commenced preliminary studies after the Department of Space received a 23% increase in the 2017-18 Budget.
• He said both the U.S. and the European space agencies had Venus missions planned for 2031 — referring to VERITAS and EnVision, respectively — while “China might go anytime: 2026, 2027, whenever they want to go”.
• ISRO had originally hoped to launch Shukrayaan I in mid-2023 but cited the pandemic when it pushed the date to December 2024. Other ISRO missions, including Aditya L1 and Chandrayaan III, have also been affected by manufacturing delays and commercial launch commitments.
• Shukrayaan I will be an orbiter mission. Its scientific payloads currently include a high-resolution synthetic aperture radar and a ground-penetrating radar. The mission is expected to study Venus’s geological and volcanic activity, emissions on the ground, wind speed, cloud cover, and other planetary characteristics from an elliptical orbit.

• The Supreme Court on Monday said it will begin hearing a series of petitions seeking to criminalise marital rape from March 21.
• A three-judge Bench led by the Chief Justice of India, D.Y. Chandrachud, directed the Union of India to file its response in an affidavit. The Centre, represented by Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta, said the case not only has legal ramifications but also widespread social impact. He said the Centre even invited the States to give their views two or three months ago.
• The Karnataka High Court had earlier held that a man was liable to be charged for rape under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) if he had forcible sex with his wife. The Karnataka government had supported the High Court judgment in an affidavit in the apex court subsequently.
• Exception Two to Section 375 of the IPC decriminalises marital rape and holds that sexual intercourse by a man with his wife, who is not under 18 years of age, without her consent, is not rape.

Q) Which one of the following is the best description of ‘Chunyun’, that was in the news recently?

1. Earth observation satellite launched by China recently.
2. Ethnic tribal group in Peru.
3. Tribal dance form in Northeast India.
4. Lunar New Year holiday in China.

निम्नलिखित में से कौन सा ‘चुन्युन’ का सबसे अच्छा वर्णन है, जो हाल ही में समाचारों में था?

1. हाल ही में चीन द्वारा लॉन्च किया गया पृथ्वी अवलोकन उपग्रह।
2. पेरू में जातीय जनजातीय समूह।
3. पूर्वोत्तर भारत में जनजातीय नृत्य रूप।
4. चीन में चंद्र नव वर्ष की छुट्टी।

Explanation :
Considered the largest annual human migration across the world, “chunyun” kicked off in China recently with Beijing bidding farewell to its strict zero-COVID policy, after almost three years of the pandemic.

What is Chunyun?

• Chunyun is simply the period around the Chinese New Year, based on the Lunar Calendar.
• It is a period of travel in China with an extremely high traffic load around the time of the Chinese New Year.
• There is no fixed date for the New Year, with the date being arrived at based on the moon’s position.
• It begins with the first new moon of the lunar calendar and ends on the first full moon of the lunar calendar, 15 days later.

Q) With reference to the MAARG platform, consider the following statements:

1. It is the National Mentorship Platform.
2. The NITI Aayog is the nodal agency of this platform.

Which of the above statements is/are correct?

1. 1 only
2. 2 only
3. Both 1 and 2
4. Neither 1 nor 2

MAARG प्लेटफॉर्म के संदर्भ में निम्नलिखित कथनों पर विचार कीजिये:

1. यह नेशनल मेंटरशिप प्लेटफॉर्म है।
2. नीति आयोग इस प्लेटफॉर्म की नोडल एजेंसी है।

उपरोक्त कथनों में से कौन-सा/से सही है/हैं?

1. केवल 1
2. केवल 2
3. 1 और 2 दोनों
4. न तो 1 और न ही 2

Explanation :

The Union Commerce and industry minister will launch the mentorship, advisory, assistance, resilience and growth (MAARG) platform on 16th January 2023 in New Delhi.

• It is the National Mentorship Platform by Start-up India to help and guide new start-ups to grow and flourish.
• It is a one-stop platform to facilitate mentorship for start-ups across diverse sectors, functions, stages, geographies, and backgrounds.
• Nodal Ministry: Launched by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade(DPIIT) under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

What are the objectives?

• To provide sector-focused guidance, handholding, and support to start-ups throughout their lifecycle.
• To establish a formalized and structured platform that facilitates intelligent matchmaking between the mentors and their respective mentees.
• To facilitate efficient and expert mentorship for start-ups and build an outcome-oriented mechanism that allows timely tracking of mentor-mentee engagements.

Q) With reference to the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), consider the following statements:

1. This group was launched by signing the Bangkok Declaration.
2. Pakistan is one of the founding members of this group.

Which of the above statements is/are correct?

1. 1 only
2. 2 only
3. Both 1 and 2
4. Neither 1 nor 2

बहु-क्षेत्रीय तकनीकी और आर्थिक सहयोग के लिए बंगाल की खाड़ी पहल (BIMSTEC) के संदर्भ में निम्नलिखित कथनों पर विचार करें:

1. बैंकॉक डिक्लेरेशन पर हस्ताक्षर कर इस ग्रुप की शुरुआत की गई।
2. पाकिस्तान इस समूह के संस्थापक सदस्यों में से एक है।

उपरोक्त कथनों में से कौन-सा/से सही है/हैं?

1. केवल 1
2. केवल 2
3. 1 और 2 दोनों
4. न तो 1 और न ही 2

Key facts about BIMSTEC?

• The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation is a regional grouping started in 1997.
• Member countries: Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal.
• This group was launched by signing the Bangkok Declaration.

Q) Sagar Island, recently seen in the news, lies in which state?

1. Odisha
2. West Bengal
3. Tamil Nadu
4. Maharashtra

हाल ही में खबरों में रहा सागर द्वीप किस राज्य में स्थित है?

1. ओडिशा
2. पश्चिम बंगाल
3. तमिलनाडु
4. महाराष्ट्र

Explanation :

West Bengal ministers have demanded National Mela status for Gangasagar mela as record pilgrims have come to the mela this year claiming that the annual pilgrimage was turning out to be the biggest religious gathering in the country. The mela is held at Sagar Island.

Where is Sagar Island Located?

• Sagar Island, westernmost island of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta lies in West Bengal state.
• It lies at the mouth of the Hugli (Hooghly) River, an arm of which separates it from the mainland to the east.

Q) Which one of the following is the best description of ‘ACE2’, that was in the news recently?

1. It is an enzyme that generates small proteins.
2. It is a geospatial exploration undertaken in the arctic region.
3. Military exercise between Australia and India.
4. It is a surface to air missile.

निम्नलिखित में से कौन सा ‘ACE2’ का सबसे अच्छा वर्णन है, जो हाल ही में समाचारों में था?

1. यह एक एंजाइम है जो छोटे प्रोटीन उत्पन्न करता है।
2. यह आर्कटिक क्षेत्र में किया गया एक भू-स्थानिक अन्वेषण है।
3. ऑस्ट्रेलिया और भारत के बीच सैन्य अभ्यास।
4. यह सतह से हवा में मार करने वाली मिसाइल है।

What is ACE2:

angiotensin converting enzyme-2, or ACE2.

• It is a protein on the surface of many cell types and tissues including the lungs, heart, blood vessels, kidneys, liver and gastrointestinal tract.
• It is an enzyme that generates small proteins – by cutting up the larger protein angiotensinogen – that then go on to regulate functions in the cell.
• ACE2 is present in all people but the quantity can vary among individuals and in different tissues and cells.
• It is present in epithelial cells, which line certain tissues and create protective barriers.

Mains Practice Question:

Q) Discuss the desirability of greater representation to women in the higher judiciary to ensure diversity, equity and inclusiveness. (2021) (250 words)

विविधता, समानता और समावेश सुनिश्चित करने के लिए उच्च न्यायपालिका में महिलाओं के अधिक प्रतिनिधित्व की वांछनीयता पर चर्चा करें। (2021) (250 शब्द)

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