UPSC Key—26th March, 2024: Smart Meter National Programme, New Collective Quantified Goals and India-Pakistan trade

US abstains, allows UNSC to pass Gaza ceasefire resolution

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Mains Examination: 

• General Studies II: Important International institutions, agencies and fora- their structure, mandate.

• General Studies II: Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story-The United Nations Security Council on Monday demanded an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages after the United States abstained from the vote.
The remaining 14 council members voted for the resolution, which was proposed by the 10 elected members of the body.

• The Security Council resolution says what?

• Why U.S. abstained from the vote?

• What about India?

• What has the UN done and said on the Israel-Palestine conflict so far?

• Why U.N. Security Council failed again to address the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza?

• What UN chief Antonio Guterres said?

• “It is important to also recognise the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation”-Comment

• “The grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas”-elaborate

• How does the United Nations see Israel-Palestine?

• United Nations-what all you know about this organisation?

• What is United Nations Relief and Works Agency?

• How United Nations Relief and Works Agency helping Palestinian refugees?

• What is the international law of Refugees?

• What is the 1951 international refugee law?

• Is Palestine subject to international law of Refugees?

• Do You Know-It is interesting to note that of the 193-member UN General Assembly, 14 countries, including the US, voted against the Jordan-drafted resolution calling for immediate and sustained truce. The 44 abstentions include Canada, Germany, Japan, UK and India. The US veto is understandable. The US wants to leave Israel free to “finish” the job of “eliminating” Hamas, irrespective of how long it might take and how many lives might get lost. All wars end. This one will too. When and how, it is too early to guess. Israel will keep fighting and bombarding until it achieves its stated goal, unachievable as it is. At some time, it might unilaterally declare that it has succeeded in wiping out Hamas, and claim victory.

What happens after Hamas has been “eliminated”? For sure, Israel would not want to reoccupy the Gaza Strip, it would be a death trap for them. Much as the ordinary people of Gaza might want to get rid of Hamas rule, they would be even more resentful of Israelis in Gaza. Hand over Gaza to Egypt to administer it for some time? “No, thank you” would be Egypt’s response. Invite the Palestine Authority (PA), based in Ramallah in the West Bank, to return to Gaza and restore its authority which they had lost in 2006? (It is pertinent to recall that Hamas had fairly and squarely won a democratic election in 2006, but it was not recognised by the democratic West.) This would seem to be the only practicable solution. PA President Mahmoud Abbas might be tempted to welcome it. On paper at least, the Palestinian movement would have unified. However, he is most unpopular in the West Bank for corruption and for collaborating with Israel. He will lose all credibility among his people. It would be something like what happened in Afghanistan in 1979 when Babrak Karmal came on a Soviet tank and assumed presidency; he received no support from the people or internationally.

But even that would not reassure the people of Israel about their security. The “international community” keeps talking of a two-state solution, like a mantra. But the same international community knows, or ought to know, that the two-state solution is a chimaera. A state to become a state, must have land. Where is the land for a future Palestinian state? The West Bank is heavily populated by Israeli settlers, by some accounts more than 7,00,000 of them, who will never return to Israel. Whatever land is left is like Swiss cheese, dotted with innumerable settlements. The current Prime Minister will never agree to a Palestinian state, however truncated. He had opposed the Oslo accords which envisaged a future Palestinian state.

Just as the British dumped the Palestine issue on the United Nations in 1947, this time too, the matter will have to be dealt with by the UN. After the Anglo-French-Israeli attack on Egypt following President Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez canal in 1956, a UN peacekeeping force, called UNEF — United Nations Emergency Force, was deployed to keep peace between Egypt and Israel. In the same manner, a UN peacekeeping force can be deployed along the Israeli-Gaza border, with an effective and implementable mandate to monitor all movements of people and supplies. This can only be done with Israel’s consent. Israel, at present, is most unhappy with the United Nations, but it should remember that it owes its very birth to the same United Nations. The establishment and deployment of a peacekeeping force will be the responsibility of the Security Council where Israel’s staunch ally, the US, wields enormous power and influence and will go to any length to fully protect Israel’s interests.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍UN Security Council again fails to address Israel-Hamas war

THE EDITORIAL PAGE

The Bhutan model

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Mains Examination: General Studies II: India and its neighbourhood- relations.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story- Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Bhutan last week underlines the special importance of the Himalayan Kingdom for India’s foreign policy.

• Why Bhutan is for India’s foreign policy?

• Map Work-Bhutan

• India and Bhutan-What is the nature of Bilateral relations?

• India and Bhutan-What are the areas of cooperation?

• What are the issues and challenges in the India-Bhutan Relations?

• What is the importance of Bhutan to India?

• What is the importance of India to Bhutan?

• What are the recent developments in China-Bhutan relations?

• China-Bhutan and India-Know in detail

• For Your Information-The economic rise of China and its growing political assertiveness over the last few decades has allowed Beijing to contest India’s natural primacy in the Subcontinent.

With China’s economy now more than four times larger than India’s, Beijing’s capacity to deploy financial resources in South Asia has become much bigger. Even when China’s economy was weaker than India’s, Beijing focused on strategic economic cooperation with the Subcontinent. As the world’s second-largest economy and neighbour to the subcontinent, China’s economic salience in South Asia is now powerful and enduring.

China’s wealth has generated a variety of tools to enhance its political and diplomatic clout in other nations. Beijing’s influence and operations to capture critical elements of the elites and set favourable narratives have been visible all around the world. It is no surprise that India’s smaller neighbours find it hard to resist these pressures. Nowhere are they more consequential than in Bhutan, nestling in the sensitive eastern Himalayas, where the frontiers of Bangladesh, India and its north-eastern provinces, Nepal and Tibet converge around the sensitive Siliguri Corridor. China-controlled Tibet’s Chumbi Valley on the western flank of Bhutan is positioned like a dagger down the throat of the narrow Siliguri Corridor that connects India’s mainland with its north-eastern provinces.

China’s growing activity in this region led to serious military tensions between Delhi and Beijing in Bhutan’s disputed Doklam plateau during the summer of 2017. To be sure, Bhutan is India’s most steadfast South Asian partner in the subcontinent, and it has no formal diplomatic relations with China. Yet Beijing has been mounting relentless pressure on Thimphu for a favourable border settlement and demanding a bilateral relationship equal to that with Delhi.

As External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar puts it, India had long neglected the nature of China’s growing South Asian challenge in the name of building good relations with Beijing. Delhi is now realistic enough to recognise that it can’t sustain its historic primacy over South Asia by mere fiat. It also knows it can’t keep China, the world’s second most powerful nation, out of the Subcontinent.

Delhi’s focus now is on offering deeper economic cooperation to its neighbours, treating them as sovereign equals, and developing mutually beneficial security cooperation. PM Modi’s visit to Bhutan is about translating that framework into concrete reality. The joint statement issued after the PM’s visit said, “Bharat for Bhutan and Bhutan for Bharat is an abiding reality of the region”.
Delhi and Thimphu backed up this claim with strong commitments to greater consultation and coordination on security issues and building transformative economic connectivity, both physical and digital. Although each of India’s relations with its neighbours has a unique complexity, getting Bhutan right could provide a productive template for the rejuvenation of India’s rocky relations with other neighbours.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍PM Modi bestowed Bhutan’s highest civilian award ‘Order of the Druk Gyalpo’

ECONOMY

Centre’s `3 lk cr smart metering push: Why states are now raising concerns

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Mains Examination: General Studies III: Infrastructure: Energy, Ports, Roads, Airports, Railways etc.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story- Kerala’s move towards an alternate model for the rollout of smart electricity meters, effectively jettisoning the Centre’s Rs 3 lakh crore smart meters project, comes as a spanner in the works for the Union Government scheme that aims to replace 250 million conventional meters with smart meters across all households by March 2025.

• What is the Smart Meter National Programme?

• What is smart electricity metering?

• What is total expenditure, including capital expenditure and operational expenditure model (TOTEX)?

• The functional effectiveness of smart metering depends on several assumptions-What are they?

• For Your Information-Globally, wherever smart meters have been installed by power distribution utilities, the aim has been to improve the effectiveness of the Time of Day (ToD) pricing of electricity, for which smart meters are essential. ToD pricing essentially refers to differential electricity pricing at the consumer end across peak and non-peak hours. In contrast, in India, smart metering is being driven primarily by the desire to lower distribution losses and accordingly the smart meters incorporate remote disconnection features. But there are question marks over the willingness or ability of most state-owned discoms to disconnect errant connections.

The second issue is the recovery of the costs. The meters, according to a person directly involved in the implementation of the scheme at the state level, have three cost components – the fixed cost comprising the cost of the meter, installations, including the meter reading software, and the recurring billing cost. The meters are to be procured by the discoms on a hybrid totex model, where a part of the fixed cost is paid upfront and the rest is paid out along with the monthly billing. It is unclear how viable the cost recovery of these new meters would happen given the precarious financial position of most public monopoly distribution companies. Analysts say given the challenges, a more appropriate strategy would have been to limit smart metering to higher-value consumers, which would make cost recovery amortisation more feasible.

The Union Ministry of Power is learnt to have “reviewed” Kerala’s proposal for an alternate model of implementation of smart meters seeking financial aid and the state has been asked to submit a “detailed proposal” and “the implementation and roll out plan” for further examination.

The Centre’s scheme is being pushed on a Design-Build-Finance-Own-Operate-Transfer (DBFOOT) model by private operators across states through totex (capex plus opex) contracts, which offer a part of the meter cost in the form of upfront payment while the rest is to be amortised in the monthly bills. Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL) has been designated the nodal bulk procurement agency for smart meters and the programme is being funded as part of the Centre’s Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS), with an incentive grant of Rs 900-1350 per meter.

Before the Centre’s nationwide metering push, the Central Electricity Authority — the central planning body in the power sector — had amended its metering regulations to define an electricity consumer meter itself as a “smart meter with prepayment mode” instead of the generic “meter used for accounting and billing of electricity supplied to the consumer”. The electricity meter thereby becomes a bi-directional smart meter that both relays consumption data and allows for disconnection of service.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍Power play: Kerala govt to scrap Centre’s prepaid smart meter project

EXPLAINED

How much should developed countries pay for climate action?

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: General issues on Environmental ecology, Bio-diversity and Climate Change – that do not require subject specialization.

Mains Examination: 

• General Studies II: Important International institutions, agencies and fora- their structure, mandate

• General Studies III: Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story- The 2022 climate change conference in Sharm el-Sheikh decided to set up a Loss and Damage Fund to help developing countries recover from climate disasters. The Dubai conference last year was all about Global Stocktake, or GST, a review of ongoing climate action, which resulted in the first ever explicit acknowledgment of the need to “transition away” from fossil fuels, and a promise to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030.

• What will COP29 focus on?

• What is new collective quantified goals (NCQG)?

• For Your Information-NCQG is a convoluted way to describe the new amount that must be mobilised by developed countries every year from 2025 onward to finance climate action in developing countries. This new amount has to be higher than the $100 billion that developed countries, collectively, had promised to raise every year from 2020, but had failed to deliver.
NCQG is extremely important for developing countries, and discussions on this new amount have been ongoing for a couple of years at least. At a two-day meeting that concluded in Copenhagen, Denmark, on March 22 — the first minister-level climate meeting for this year — some technical work to arrive at the NCQG was finalised.

• How much money is required to ensure effective climate action?

• What are the prospects for a realistic new annual climate finance target?

• How will this money be used?

• ‘Common but differentiated responsibilities’ (CBDR)-Know in detail

• What are climate negotiations?

• What are the major climate change agreements?

• What is climate change ‘Loss and Damage’?

• How is climate change causing loss and damage?

• What is the extent of loss and damage?

• So why “climate disasters” and “climate negotiations” are much talked terms?

• “The demand for loss and damage finance is quite old, but it has faced strong resistance from the rich and developed countries”-Why?

• What was the rationale behind the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM)?

• How does the Paris Agreement address the loss and damage associated with climate change?

• What is the meaning of climate finance?

• What is the financial mechanism? What are the other funds?

• In accordance with the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities” set out in the Convention, developed country Parties are to provide financial resources to assist developing country Parties in implementing the objectives of the UNFCCC- discuss the objective behind this step?

• What is the Standing Committee on Finance? What is the long-term finance process?

• Green finance and climate finance-Compare

• Have we lost the fight?

• For Your Information-If it is about meeting 2030 emission reduction targets, consistent with 1.5 or even 2 degree Celsius pathways, the fight is as good as over. Governments, international bodies, and even scientists, would like to focus on the theoretical possibilities that are still open, but it is extremely improbable that these targets would be met. Even historically, no climate target has ever been met.

As mentioned in the Emissions Gap Report, there have been 86 days already this year when daily temperatures exceeded pre-industrial averages by more than 1.5 degree Celsius. And now, at least two days have been more than 2 degrees warmer. The year 2023 is set to emerge as the warmest ever, surpassing the record of 2016, and it would not be surprising if it breaches the 1.5 degree threshold for the annual average. According to a World Meteorological Organisation assessment, it is almost certain that this threshold would be breached in the next four years.

There are still possibilities of a pull-back through technological interventions like carbon dioxide removal, though these technologies are far from becoming mainstream and economical. But every climate scenario beyond 2040 relies heavily on these technologies to reduce the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and bring down temperatures rapidly.
Crossing the 1.5 degree threshold does not necessarily spell doom. It would not be a very different world from the one we are living in. But there is no doubt that, progressively, life would get tougher for more and more people. Eventually, countries would learn to minimise loss of lives in disasters, at least from the predictable events, but there would be more frequent disruptions, loss of livelihoods, supply chain shocks, and communication outages. As happens in any such situation, the poor and the weak would suffer the most.

That said, adversity can induce resilience in populations, and as such, talks of extinction of the human race or an end to life on the planet might be vastly exaggerated.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍1st time, compensating poor nations for climate disasters on the table

Archaeological Survey of India will ‘delist’ some ‘lost’ monuments. What’s happening, and why?

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: History of India

Mains Examination: General Studies I: Indian culture will cover the salient aspects of Art Forms, literature and Architecture from ancient to modern times.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story-The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has decided to delist 18 “centrally protected monuments” because it has assessed that they do not have national importance. These 18 monuments are part of an earlier list of monuments that the ASI had said were “untraceable”.

• What exactly does the “delisting” of monuments mean?

• For Your Information-The ASI, which works under the Union Ministry of Culture, is responsible for protecting and maintaining certain specific monuments and archaeological sites that have been declared to be of national importance under the relevant provisions of The Ancient Monuments Preservation Act, 1904 and The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958 (AMASR Act).

Delisting of a monument effectively means it will no longer be conserved, protected, and maintained by the ASI. Under the AMASR Act, any kind of construction-related activity is not allowed around a protected site. Once the monument is delisted, activities related to construction and urbanisation in the area can be carried out in a regular manner.

The list of protected monuments can grow longer or shorter with new listings and delistings. ASI currently has 3,693 monuments under its purview, which will fall to 3,675 once the current delisting exercise is completed in the next few weeks. This is the first such large-scale delisting exercise in several decades.

Section 35 of the AMASR Act says that “If the Central Government is of opinion that any ancient and historical monument or archaeological site and remains declared to be of national importance…has ceased to be of national importance, it may, by notification in the Official Gazette, declare that the ancient and historical monument or archaeological site and remains, as the case may be, has ceased to be of national importance for the purposes of [the AMASR] Act. The gazette notification for the 18 monuments in question was issued on March 8. There is a two-month window for the public to send in “objections or suggestions”.

• What does it mean when the ASI says a monument is “untraceable”?

• How many historical monuments have been lost in this way?

• Was 2022 the first time that the disappearance of these monuments was noticed?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍Our vanishing monuments

Pakistan may ‘seriously examine’ resuming trade with India: Why it paused, what it constituted

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Mains Examination: General Studies II: India and its neighbourhood- relations.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What’s the ongoing story-Pakistan’s Foreign Affairs Minister Ishaq Dar said on Saturday (March 23) that the country will “seriously examine” the question of resuming trade with India. Bilateral trade between India and Pakistan has been halted since 2019.

• Why was India-Pakistan trade paused?

• What was the composition of India-Pakistan trade?

• What was the fallout?

• Has anything changed since then?

• Why might Pakistan be reconsidering trade with India?

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

📍Pakistan to ‘seriously’ consider restoring trade ties with India: Foreign Minister Dar

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