News 1: Employment Survey

Background

Manufacturing continues to be the largest institutional employer in the country, employing about 38.5% of the workers, according to the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES), which is a part of the All-India Quarterly Establishment based Employment Survey (AQEES).

Data

1. Education, manufacturing, trade and financial services together accounted for 84% of the total estimated units.
2. Manufacturing sector accounts for the largest percentage (38.5%) of the total number of workers, followed by education sector with 21.7%, IT/BPO sector with 12% and health sector 10.6%.
3. The participation of women workers witnessed a marginal increase.
4. However, women workers constituted about 52% of the workforce in the health sector, while the corresponding percentages in education, financial services and IT/ BPO sectors stood at 44%, 41% and 36%, respectively.
5. It is noteworthy that in financial services, women far outnumber men among self-employed persons.

All India Quarterly Establishment based Employment Survey (AQEES)

1. Ministry: Ministry of Labour and Employment
2. The AQEES will provide quarterly updates about the employment in 9 sectors in both organized and unorganized segments.
3. The nine selected sectors are Manufacturing, Construction, Trade, Transport, Education, Health, Accommodation & Restaurant, IT/BPO and Financial Services.

News 2: Indian Tourism statistics

Background

• The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting restrictions saw foreign tourist arrivals in India dip by almost 45% in 2021.
• The arrival of NRIs, however, increased by 53% in 2021 compared with 2020.
• In 2021, the top 15 countries from which foreign tourists arrived in India included the U.S., the U.K., Bangladesh, Canada, Nepal, Afghanistan and Australia. These nations accounted for nearly 81% of foreign tourist arrivals in India last year.
• Interestingly, the number of Indian nationals departing the country saw a rise in 2021 as compared to 2020.
• The UAE was the top destination for Indians in 2021, followed by the U.S., Qatar, Oman and the U.K.

News 3: PM Modi in Tokyo to attend Shinzo Abe’s Funeral

Background

Mr. Modi, along with several heads of state and government, attended Mr. Abe’s funeral in the Nippon Budokan arena, where Mr. Kishida and his predecessor, Yoshihide Suga, offered emotional tributes to their former leader.

India – Japan relations

Genesis

Exchange between Japan and India is said to have begun in the 6th century when Buddhism was introduced to Japan. Indian culture, filtered through Buddhism, has had a great impact on Japanese culture, and this is the source of the Japanese people’s sense of closeness to India.

India’s earliest documented direct contact with Japan was with the Todaiji Temple in Nara, where the consecration or eye-opening of the towering statue of Lord Buddha was performed by an Indian monk, Bodhisena, in 752 AD

Japan and India signed a peace treaty and established diplomatic relations on 28th April 1952. This treaty was one of the first peace treaties Japan signed after World War II.

In the post-World War II period, India’s iron ore helped a great deal Japan’s recovery from the devastation. Following Japanese Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi’s visit to India in 1957, Japan started providing yen loans to India in 1958, as the first yen loan aid extended by Japanese government.

Diplomatic Relations

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori’s visit to India in August 2000 provided the momentum to strengthen the Japan-India relationship. Mr. Mori and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee decided the establishment of “Global Partnership between Japan and India“. Since Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visit to India in April 2005, Japan-India annual summit meetings have been held in respective capitals.

When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Japan in December 2006, Japan-India relationship was elevated to the “Global and Strategic Partnership“.

In September 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid an official visit to Japan and had a summit meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. They concurred to upgrade the bilateral relationship to “Special Strategic and Global Partnership”

In December 2015, Prime Minister Abe paid an official visit to India and had a summit meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The two Prime Ministers resolved to transform the Japan-India Special Strategic and Global Partnership into a deep, broad-based and action-oriented partnership, which reflects a broad convergence of their long-term political, economic and strategic goals.

They announced, “Japan and India Vision 2025 Special Strategic and Global Partnership Working Together for Peace and Prosperity of the Indo-Pacific Region and the World”, a joint statement that would serve as a guidepost for the “new era in Japan-India relations.”

In the Japan-India Vision Statement issued during Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Japan in October 2018, two leaders reiterated their unwavering commitment to working together towards a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific”.

Cooperation in security fields

During Prime Minister Singh’s visit to Japan in October 2008, two leaders issued “the Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation between Japan and India”. There are also various frameworks of security and defense dialogue between Japan and India including Foreign and Defense Ministerial Meeting (“2+2” meeting), annual Defense Ministerial Dialogue and Coast Guard-to-Coast Guard dialogue.

On September 9th, 2020, the Agreement between the Government of Japan and the Government of the Republic of India Concerning Reciprocal Provision of Supplies and Services between the Self-Defense Forces of Japan and the Indian Armed Forces (so-called “Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement” or ACSA) was signed. ACSA came into force on July 11th, 2021.

India and Japan have participated in multiple bilateral and multilateral exercises such as DHARMA GUARDIAN and MALABAR exercises.

Economic relations

The volume of trade between the two countries has increased. India was the 18th largest trading partner for Japan, and Japan was the 12th largest trading partner for India in 2020. Also, direct investment from Japan to India has been increased, and Japan was the 4th largest investor for India in FY2020. 

At recent summit meetings, two leaders reconfirmed commitment to synergizing India’s demographic dividend and Japan’s capital and technology to realize the true potential of the Japan-India economic partnership for a prosperous future.

In this regard, two leaders welcomed the agreement to conclude a Bilateral Swap Arrangement of USD 75 billion, the launching of a comprehensive Japan-India Digital Partnership, and other cooperation and initiatives.

News 4: The NASA’s DART

Background

• NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft collided with the space rock Dimorphos (just 160 metres wide). NASA has confirmed that the collision of the auto-rickshaw sized 600 kilogram weighing DART, on the football stadium-sized Dimorphos, about five billion kilogram in mass (orbiting around the 780 metres wide primary asteroid Didymos), has deflected the trajectory of the pair of space rocks.

What are asteroids?

1. As per NASA, Asteroids, sometimes called minor planets, are rocky, airless remnants left over from the early formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.

1. Asteroids are small, rocky objects that orbit the Sun. Although asteroids orbit the Sun like planets, they are much smaller than planets.
2. There are lots of asteroids in our solar system. Most of them are located in the main asteroid belt – a region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
3. Some asteroids go in front of and behind Jupiter. These are called Trojan asteroids.
4. Asteroids that come close to Earth are called Near Earth Objects, NEOs for short.

Features of asteroids

1.  Asteroids aren’t all round like planets. They have irregular shapes.
2.  Some asteroids are hundreds of miles in diameter, but many more are as small as pebbles.
3. Most asteroids are made of different kinds of rocks, but some have clays or metals, such as nickel and iron.
4. Since asteroids formed at the same time as other objects in our solar system, these space rocks can give scientists lots of information about the history of planets and the sun.
5. About 66 million years ago, an asteroid about 10-15 kms struck earth. The tsunami, volcanic eruptions and thick dust clouds ensuing from the blow decimated dinosaurs and nearly 75% of all species.
6. What happened in the past can occur in the future. The chances of a giant asteroid striking earth are small; however, if it did occur, the devastation would be cataclysmic, wiping out the entire human civilization. NASA tracks and keeps a close watch on the nearly 26,115 asteroids whose orbits are dangerously close to earth.

What was NASA’s mission?

NASA, to put it simply, undertook the ‘kick’ technique. Compared to the massive Dimorphous, DART is a tiny Goliath. Yet crashing at a breakneck speed of 23,760 kilometres per hour, the momentum is adequate to slash the angular momentum of Dimorphos, making it speed up and move closer to Didymos. The pair’s trajectory is thus deflected as the net result of these dynamics.

What has been the impact assessment?

The DART craft carried a high-resolution DRACO (Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation) camera to observe the collision and its consequences. The close-up images until its fatal crash are being analyzed. Italian Space Agency-built Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube) took a ride with the DART.

The CubeSat was released and deployed two weeks before the impact. Hovering 50 kilometres from the asteroid, the two cameras aboard the CubeSat have captured the plume of the debris ejected by the collision.

What are the other possibilities of this technique?

1. At the heels of NASA, China is set to deflect a 40m diameter earth-crossing asteroid called 2020 PN1 sometime in 2026.
2. While the drive comes from the desire to protect earth from killer asteroids, perhaps the lure of space mining lurks behind.
3. If one can tug a mineral-rich asteroid near the Moon or establish a space mining factory between the orbits of earth and Mars, precious mineral resources needed for decades could be easily sourced.
4. The ‘kick’ technique that deflects asteroids can then be used to move a small asteroid into a convenient position for space mining.
5. For developing green energy technologies — electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, and energy storage devices — and ushering in the low carbon economy of the future, rare earth elements such as yttrium, niobium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium and scandium are critical. They are short in supply, and asteroid mining, it is believed, could solve the rare earth supply problem.

Space missions

From the robotic Soviet Luna 16 in the 1970s to U.S. Apollo missions and China’s first lunar sample-return mission, Chang’e 5 — all have brought back lunar soil.

NASA’s Stardust spacecraft returned a canister full of dust from comet Wild-2 captured by an aerogel-based sample collector in 2004. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)’s Hayabusa 1 to 25143 Itokawa, the Hayabusa 2 to 162173 Ryugu, and NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex to near-earth asteroid Bennu are missions to extract and return samples from asteroids.

News 5: Jaldoot – App to capture data on groundwater levels

Background

With the rapidly declining water table threatening to push many regions into drought, the Union government launched a mobile application — Jaldoot — jointly developed by the Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Ministries to monitor the groundwater levels across the country.

Central Ground Water Board

1. Ministry: Ministry of Jal Shakti
2. Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) was constituted under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 for the purposes of regulation and control of ground water development and management in the country. The Authority is engaged in various activities related to regulation of ground water development to ensure its long-term sustainability.

News 6: DoT – IMEI registration by phone makers a must

Background

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has made it mandatory for mobile phone manufacturers to register the international mobile equipment identity (IMEI) — the 15-digit number that uniquely identifies each mobile device — of all handsets made in India with the government. Importers, too, will have to register with the government the IMEI of each phone before importing it.

What is an IMEI?

1. The IMEI is a unique number that is used to identify a device on a mobile network. It has 15 digits and is like a phone’s unique identity. The number is used to verify the identity of a device when a user uses the Internet or places a call through it.
2. Phones with a dual-SIM option has two IMEI numbers, one for each SIM. The IMEI number can help network providers track down a device in case it gets stolen or is lost. Once such loss or theft is reported, the carriers can deny the device access to the cellular network even with a new SIM card.

Why there is a need for compulsory registration?

In a bid to curtail the rampant cloning and theft of mobile phones across, the Communications Ministry had earlier rolled out a Central Equipment Identity Register. The identity register categorizes mobile phones based on their IMEI status in three lists — white, grey and black.

Mobile phones with IMEI numbers in the whitelist are permitted for use, while those in the blacklist are the ones that are reported stolen or lost and are not be allowed to access the network. Devices with IMEI numbers in the Grey list do not conform to standards but are permitted to connect under supervision. The register also allows the DoT to carry out IMEI-based “lawful interception”.

In 2017, the government had notified rules to prevent tampering of IMEI numbers of phones by making it a punishable offence which could also attract a jail term.

News 7: Ocean Warming and horrifying hurricane and cyclone

Background

As Earth’s climate warms, more storms like Hurricane Ian are undergoing this kind of rapid intensification, growing quickly from relatively weak tropical storms to Category 3 or higher hurricanes in under 24 hours, sometimes stunning forecasters and giving residents little time to prepare.

Warming oceans fuel higher winds and winds intensify more rapidly

1. More than 90% of the excess heat from human-caused global warming over the past 50 years has been absorbed by the oceans.
2. Since 1901, sea surface temperatures have risen an average of 0.14 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.
3. That’s crucial, because storms gather strength over the ocean. And the warmer the water, the more power they pick up. Higher surface temperatures allow hurricanes to reach higher levels of maximum sustained wind, a common metric used to describe the intensity of a storm.
4. Not only do warmer oceans make storms stronger, but they also make the rate of intensification more rapid.
5. Researchers have found that the likelihood of a hurricane undergoing rapid intensification has increased to 5% from 1% since the 1980s.

Different names of tropical cyclone across the world

Other important news

Direct tax and Indirect tax

Direct tax:

Direct tax is a type of tax where the incidence and impact of taxation fall on the same entity.

In the case of direct tax, the burden can’t be shifted by the taxpayer to someone else. These are largely taxes on income or wealth. Income tax, corporation tax, property tax, inheritance tax and gift tax are examples of direct tax.

Indirect tax:

In the case of indirect tax, the burden of tax can be shifted by the taxpayer to someone else. Indirect tax has the effect to raising the price of the products on which they are imposed. Customs duty, central excise, service tax and value added tax are examples of indirect tax.

Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)

1. Ministry: Ministry of Personnel
2. CBI is the Central police investigating agency of India and provides assistance to Central Vigilance Commission and Lokpal.  It is also the nodal police agency in India, which coordinates investigation on behalf of Interpol Member countries.
3. The CBI is not a statutory body but derives its power to investigate from the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946.
4. The establishment of the CBI was recommended by the Santhanam Committee on Prevention of Corruption (1962–1964).
5. CBI derives power to investigate from the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946 Section 2 of the Act vests DSPE with jurisdiction to investigate offences in the Union Territories only.
6. However, the jurisdiction can be extended by the Central Government to other areas including Railway areas and States under Section 5(1) of the Act, provided the State Government accords consent under Section 6 of the Act.
7. As per Section 3 of the Act, Special Police Establishment is authorized to investigate only those cases, which are notified by the Central Government from time to time.

Theory of the Malthusian trap

The Malthusian trap or Malthusian check refers to the theory that as the human population grows there is increasing pressure on earth’s resources, which in turn acts as a check on the further rise in population.

It is named after English economist Thomas Malthus who elaborated on the concept in his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, which quite famously inspired Charles Darwin.

Malthus argued that while rise in food production in a country can lead to improved living standards for the general population, the benefit is likely to be temporary. This is because, Malthus argued, increasing availability of food would encourage people to have more kids since they could afford to feed them now, thus leading to a rise in the total population and a drop in per capita income levels.

Malthus, in other words, believed that there was an inverse relationship between human population and living standards with rising population leading to lower living standards. In the pre-modern age, whenever there was a rise in food production due to whatever reason, this caused per capita income to rise for a while as long as population levels remained stable.

However, the population of the country increased quite quickly which ensured that per capita income returned to its historical trend. Whenever food production dropped on the other hand, there was famine which caused the death of a large number of people. The drop in human population continued until the country’s per capita income rose to subsistence levels. Either way, resource constraints kept a check on human population.

Criticism

Critics of the Malthusian trap believe that the industrial revolution decisively refuted Malthus as human population levels and living standards have risen in tandem ever since the event

According to critics, there may be no strict inverse correlation between population growth and the living standards of people. As long as human beings can find ways to use earth’s resources more efficiently, their population can grow without compromising their living standards even in the long-term.

In fact, some argue that as human population rises, the chances of breakthrough innovations happening rise manifold as there would be more human minds working on solving humanity’s problems.