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The Fact Check Unit as proposed in the Information Technology Rules, 2021, is likely to have four members — a representative from the IT Ministry and one from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, a “media expert” and a “legal expert”.
A senior government official said this composition would likely assuage concerns from critics about the Fact Check Unit’s potential lack of expertise. The unit will be supported by designated nodal officers from other ministries.
According to the official, the government is close to finalising the contours of the Fact Check Unit and its interplay with social media sites like Meta, YouTube and Twitter.
The unit will uphold the highest levels of professional and ethical standards to ensure trustworthiness and neutrality in the identification of potentially misleading or fake content.
The FCU is expected to require platforms to “prominently display” when they take content down on the basis of the unit’s inputs, allow for an appeal process with a government committee, and maintain a public database of content it deems as misleading.
Further, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) is also learnt to have finalised the broad-level processes that the FCU will follow, including granting it suo motu powers to identify potentially misleading content, corroborating evidence across various ministries and departments, and communicating its conclusion to social media platforms.
Last week, MeitY notified amendments to the Information Technology Rules, 2021, creating a regulatory regime that will allow a fact check body it appoints to label content related to the government on online platforms as “fake” or “misleading”.
Content marked as such by the body will have to be taken down by online intermediaries if they wish to retain their ‘safe harbour,’ which is legal immunity they enjoy against third-party content.
Govt allows PACS to convert wholesale consumer pumps into retail outlets (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Agriculture)
The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas agreed to convert existing Wholesale Consumer Licensed Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) into retail outlets.
The existing PACS will be given a one-time option to convert their wholesale consumer pumps into retail outlets, provided they fulfil all the requirements for setting up retail outlets in rural areas, including statutory approvals and other permissions.
The statement came after Cooperation Minister Amit Shah held a meeting with Petroleum Minister Hardeep Puri. On the initiative of the Ministry of Cooperation, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has taken several steps to strengthen PACS and cooperative sugar mills, such as PACS will be given priority in allotment of new petrol/diesel dealerships – this will strengthen cooperative movement.
The grandnephew of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Satyaki Savarkar, moved a court in Pune with a criminal defamation complaint against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, accusing him of making false malicious allegations against Savarkar at an event during his recent visit to the UK.
While talking at event in London, Rahul Gandhi has said that (Vinayak Damodar) Savarkar has penned a book in which he has written that he (Savarkar) and five-six of his friends were beating up a Muslim and felt delighted about what was happening. Rahul Gandhi then went on to ask whether this was not a cowardly act.
Ideas Page
Wages of distress (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
India’s most important economic indicator is also the most neglected — the growth of real wages. The Statistical Appendix of the latest Economic Survey, for instance, goes on for well over 200 pages without mentioning wages at all.
Nor are wages mentioned anywhere in the Union Finance Minister’s latest Budget speech, or in last year’s speech for that matter.
Even in public debates on economic policy, very little attention tends to be paid to real wages. Instead, there are endless discussions of comparatively useless data on “unemployment”.
The unemployment figures are not particularly relevant to poor people. In India, poor people are rarely unemployed, because they cannot afford to do nothing.
If they are unable to get a good job, they do their best to survive from fallback activities such as selling eggs on the street or pulling a rickshaw.
Most of them are not counted as unemployed in household surveys. Their problem is more “underemployment” than unemployment, but underemployment is not measured in these surveys. Indeed, it is hard to measure.
Real wages, on the other hand, are quite informative. If real wages are rising, workers are likely to be earning more and living better.
A sustained rise in real wages is a good sign that economic growth is translating into better jobs. Stagnation of real wages, on the other hand, would be a major concern from the point of view of poverty reduction.
Aadhar for land (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
In March, there was a national conference on Bhu-Aadhaar. With “bhu” meaning earth/land, Bhu-Aadhaar is good coinage. More people may recognise this as Unique Land Parcel Identification Number (ULPIN). On the occasion, Giriraj Singh, Union Minister of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, mentioned some figures.
Once the digitisation process of land records and registration is complete, it will help mitigate the huge pendency of court cases involving land disputes.
The GDP loss to the country’s economy is about 1.3 per cent due to projects being stalled over litigation involving land disputes, he said. A study says, 66 per cent of all civil suits in India are related to land or property disputes, and the average pendency of a land acquisition dispute is 20 years.
The study mentioned is the 2017 “Access to Justice Survey” by Daksh. Just so that we are clear, 66 per cent of all civil suits aren’t necessarily related to land or property.
That will require hard objective data. Daksh’s survey is a perception-based one, administered to a sample size of 50,000. There is a difference between subjective perceptions and hard data.
Indeed, 66 per cent of civil cases, perception-wise, concern land/property and as per the Daksh survey, that figure is almost constant across income groups.
Explained
Juice Mission (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
The European Space Agency (ESA) is all set to launch the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or Juice, mission from its spaceport in French Guiana on an Ariane 5 launcher. Planned to reach Jupiter in 2031, the mission aims to carry out a detailed exploration of the Solar System’s largest planet and its icy moons, which potentially have habitable environments.
Juice has been constructed by an industrial consortium led by Airbus Defence and Space — a division of the Airbus group responsible for the development and manufacturing of the corporation’s defence and space products — based on the parameters provided by the ESA.
Only two other spacecraft have ever examined Jupiter: the Galileo probe, which orbited the gas giant between 1995 and 2003, and Juno, which has been circling the planet since 2016.
Notably, by the time Juice reaches Jupiter, another spacecraft, NASA’s Europa Clipper, would already be orbiting the planet — scheduled to be launched in October this year, Europa Clipper would arrive at Jupiter in 2030 and aims to study its Europa moon.
According to ESA’s website, the Juice “will make detailed observations of the giant gas planet and its three large ocean-bearing moons — Ganymede, Callisto and Europa”, by using remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments.
Scientists for quite some time have known that these three moons of Jupiter possess icy crusts, which they believe contain oceans of liquid water underneath, making them potentially habitable.
Juice will help probe these water bodies by creating detailed maps of the moons’ surfaces and enable the scientists, for the first time, to look beneath them.
SC Agnipath ruling: What is promissory estoppel? (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
The Supreme Court dismissed petitions challenging the Delhi High Court judgment which upheld the Agnipath scheme for recruitment to the armed forces. Some of the petitioners included candidates who were shortlisted in the earlier recruitment process to Army and Air Force.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan who appeared for some of these candidates told the apex court that their names appeared in a provisional list for recruitment to Air Force but the recruitment process was cancelled when Agnipath scheme was notified. He argued that the government must be directed to complete the old process citing the doctrine of promissory estoppel.
Bhushan argued that there was written exam, physical test, medical exam conducted under the old recruitment process after which a provisional selection list was published with the ranks.
Thereafter for more than one year, every three months they kept saying that appointment letters were going to be issued, however they were postponed due to Covid-19, etc, in the meantime they did recruitment rallies for the same posts claiming it was for fast-track recruitments to address the demographic imbalance to recruit tribal people, etc.
He added that these candidates had got jobs in BSF and other paramilitary organisations, but had refused as they were told that Air Force recruitment letters will be issued.
They didn’t say the issue of letters being postponed due to Agnipath, adding there was the issue of promissory estoppel.