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Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for a global framework to ensure the ethical use of artificial intelligence (AI) as he flagged concerns over algorithmic bias and its disruptive impact on society.
Emphasising the need to deepen mutual trust and cooperation between countries, Modi called for a similar, integrated approach to deal with issues related to cryptocurrencies.
The Prime Minister was speaking at the Business 20 (B20) Summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), ahead of the G20 Summit next month.
Days after the BRICS Summit, Modi also reiterated the importance of India’s role in setting up resilient and inclusive global supply chains.
Noting the excitement around AI, Modi pointed out some ethical considerations. “The world has to come together to solve the challenges of skilling and reskilling, and algorithmic bias and its impact on society.
Global business communities and governments have to ensure the expansion of ethical AI across different sectors, the disruption is beyond our thinking, and we have to create a global framework,” he said.
Govt & Politics
Next week SC to hear pleas against provisions of PMLA (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
A year after the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of anti-money laundering laws and powers of the Enforcement Directorate (ED), a fresh batch of petitions challenging provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, are lined up before the court next week.
In July 2022, a three-judge bench comprising Justices A M Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and C T Ravikumar had upheld the PMLA and the vast powers of the ED.
However, the bench had left the validity of amendments to the PMLA through the Money Bill route open for a larger Constitution bench to hear.
The petitions include those filed by Congress MLA and Madhya Pradesh Leader of Opposition Govind Singh, Congress MP Karti Chidambaram and former ICICI Bank CEO Chanda Kochar, among others. Singh’s fresh plea filed this year was tagged with several other petitions seeking a review of the 2022 ruling.
These essentially challenge Section 50 of the PMLA that gives the ED powers to summon individuals and their statements are treated as evidence in court.
While a larger bench is yet to hear the Money Bill aspect which impacts several other cases, the fresh batch of cases seeks to question the correctness of the 2022 verdict.
Ukraine conflict India’s UNSC aspirations in BRICS declaration no mention of Afghanistan (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
Afghanistan is missing from the BRICS declaration, but the document mentioned the “legitimate” aspirations of India, Brazil and South Africa to be part of the UN Security Council, acknowledged G20 as a premier multilateral forum and called the Russia-Ukraine war a “conflict” this time instead of “situation”.
These are some of the key takeaways emerging from the BRICS leaders’ summit in Johannesburg as tough diplomatic negotiations and the informal meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping played out in the run-up to the declaration.
On UN Security Council reforms, the BRICS declaration introduced the phrase “legitimate aspirations” and the word “democratic” in the paragraph.
Last year, BRICS had merely talked about “aspirations” of India, Brazil and South Africa and making the UNSC “representative, effective and efficient”.
It said: “We support a comprehensive reform of the UN, including its Security Council, with a view to making it more democratic, representative, effective and efficient, and to increase the representation of developing countries in the Council’s memberships so that it can adequately respond to prevailing global challenges and support the 3 legitimate aspirations of emerging and developing countries from Africa, Asia and Latin America, including Brazil, India and South Africa, to play a greater role in international affairs, in particular in the United Nations, including its Security Council.
Lander reports variation in lunar surface temperature (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
ISRO released a graph of the temperature variation on the lunar surface and a senior scientist of the space agency expressed surprise over the high temperature recorded on the Moon.
The national space agency said Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE) payload onboard Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander measured the temperature profile of the lunar topsoil around the pole to understand the thermal behaviour of the Moon’s surface.
“Here are the first observations from the ChaSTE payload onboard Vikram Lander. ChaSTE (Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment) measures the temperature profile of the lunar topsoil around the pole to understand the thermal behaviour of the moon’s surface,” ISRO said in an update on social media platform ‘X’.
Speaking about the graphic illustration, ISRO scientist B H M Darukesha told PTI: “We all believed that the temperature could be somewhere around 20 degree centigrade to 30 degree centigrade on the surface but it is 70 degree centigrade.
This is surprisingly higher than what we had expected.” The space agency said the payload has a temperature probe equipped with a controlled penetration mechanism capable of reaching a depth of 10 centimetres beneath the surface.
Ideas Page
Let’s debate basic structure (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
Does a free nation have the right to shape its present and determine its future, unhindered by some “universal” values of external provenance, and unshackle itself from the “mind-forged manacles” of received ideas?
The debate, which had raised great passions in 1951 during the discussion on the First Amendment of the Constitution has now been resuscitated by the assertion of Ranjan Gogoi that the “Basic Structure Doctrine” has “a very debatable jurisprudential basis”.
The depiction of his maiden speech in the Rajya Sabha by this newspaper (‘MP Gogoi v Justice Gogoi’ IE, August 9) as merely “partisan” (Gogoi, a former Chief Justice of the Indian Supreme Court was nominated to the Rajya Sabha by the NDA government) needs careful questioning. It is this form of censorship that stymies debate on the proper functioning of the Constitution.
The issue that led to the debate in the Rajya Sabha concerns the competence of the Union executive, acting through Parliament, to curtail the power of the Delhi Government over services.
With its adverse effect on the federal balance — a key component of the Basic Structure Doctrine — the Bill appeared to contravene current judicial practice.
As such, though it was ultimately passed — the Union government had the numbers — its legitimacy remains compromised by a soupcon of constitutional impropriety.
The significance of the larger issue can hardly be overstated, particularly at the current conjuncture in Indian politics.
Those who underestimate the significance of the issue would do well to remember that the Supreme Court will revisit this spot once the hearings on the abrogation of Article 370 and the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act 2019 gather steam.
World
How indigenous techniques saved a community from wildfires (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The wildfire was blazing a clear path toward a Canadian lakeside tourist spot in British Columbia with a population of 222,000 people.
The fire advanced on the city of Kelowna for 19 days — consuming 976 hectares, or about 2,400 acres — of forest. But at the suburban fringes, it encountered a fire prevention zone and sputtered, burning just a single house.
The fire prevention zone — an area carefully cleared to remove fuel and minimize the spread of flames — was created by a logging company owned by a local Indigenous community.
And as a new wildfire has stalked the suburb of West Kelowna this month, its history with the previous one — the Mount Law fire, in 2021 — offers a valuable lesson: A well-placed and well-constructed fire prevention zone can, under the right conditions, save homes and lives.
It’s a lesson not only for Kelowna but also for a growing number of places in Canada and elsewhere threatened by increased wildfire amid climate change.
“When you think about how wildfire seasons are playing out, if we invested more into the proactive, then we would need less of that reactive wildfire response,” said Kira Hoffman, a wildfire researcher at the University of British Columbia. Wildfires are an essential component of the natural cycle of forests, but in recent years, more of them have grown so big that containment is nearly impossible.
Fire prevention zones — created in the offseason — can help slow approaching blazes so that people can escape, and can also enable firefighters to gain control over some areas.
The creation of these zones is being greeted with renewed interest in parts of Canada, including in the western provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. Interest has peaked in Indigenous communities, which have been most affected by the country’s wildfires.
Express Network
Battered by rains & landslides, Shimla is on a slippery slope; here’s why (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The morning of August 24 saw multi-storey buildings fold like a pack of cards in Kullu district as heavy rain triggered another round of landslides in Himachal Pradesh.
About 200 km away, state capital Shimla had witnessed similar scenes between August 14 and 17. Twenty-seven deaths were reported during this period from Shimla, including seven from one family in a cloudburst incident at Shiv Bawadi temple. Nine buildings and a section of the Kalka-Shimla railway track had also collapsed during this time.
Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu had blamed these disasters on unchecked construction, inadequate drainage systems and excessive rain.
People construct houses without applying scientific methods. In recently made buildings, the drainage system is very poor.
People believe they are draining the water without knowing that water is going nowhere but into the hills, making them fragile. Shimla is more than one and a half century old, and its drainage system is excellent. Now there are buildings in the nallas (runlets). The houses which are collapsing these days have not gone through the standards of structural engineering.”
This was an admission — at the highest levels of the government — of a problem that has stared in the face of every visitor to Shimla and every resident of the hill town since late 2000s.
While the CM blamed faulty structural design and indiscriminate construction work for the recent destruction faced by his state, much of the blame for Shimla’s unchecked growth lies at the doors of governments past and present.
Explained
Dengue vaccines under development in India: a status report (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
With the expanding geography of dengue infections — in India as well as the world — an increasing need has been felt for an effective vaccine that can protect against all four serotypes. Nearly half the population of the world lives at risk of the disease at present.
The disease in India has spread from just eight states and union territories in 2001 to all states by 2022 — Ladakh was the last bastion from where two infections were reported last year.
There have been 31,464 cases and 36 deaths due to dengue reported across the country till the end of July this year, as per the latest available data.
There are several efforts ongoing within the country to develop an effective vaccine against the mosquito-borne disease that can lead to internal bleeding, circulatory shock, and death.
At present, there are three vaccine candidates that are being tested in humans in India.
First, a vaccine developed by Panacea Biotec based on live weakened versions of the four dengue serotypes developed by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the United States.
4 astronauts from 4 nations reach ISS: The crew the mission (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Four astronauts from four countries, including the US, Denmark, Japan, and Russia, launched aboard a SpaceX rocket towards the International Space Station (ISS) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
This was the first US take-off in which all the astronauts atop the spacecraft belonged to a different country — until now, NASA had always included two or three of its own on its SpaceX flights.
Known as Crew-7, the mission includes NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov.
They are expected to reach the ISS on Sunday, replacing four astronauts living up there since March. The fresh batch of astronauts will stay at the ISS for the next six months and will conduct a host of different experiments.
Born in Germany and raised on New York’s Long Island, Moghbeli is the daughter of an Iranian couple who had to flee their country during the 1979 revolution.
The first-time space traveller earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering with information technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, following which she joined the Marines and flew attack helicopters in Afghanistan.
Economy
Uptick in petroleum exports help refiners maintain high run rates (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
With domestic demand for fuels and other petroleum products witnessing a slump due to the monsoon rains, India’s refined products exports has witnessed an uptick, helping the country’s refiners keep refinery runs high at a time when refining margins are robust globally, shows an analysis of data shared by commodity market analytics and intelligence firm Kpler.
The cumulative clean product exports from India in August have so far been the highest since May 2022, with jet fuel exports at a historic high. In oil industry parlance, clean products refer to the class of petroleum products that are uncontaminated and not previously used in any application.
Most major crude oil-based fuels like diesel, petrol, jet fuel, kerosene, and naphtha are categorised as clean products. Dirty refined products refer to the likes of fuel oil, low sulphur waxy residue, and carbon black feedstock.
So far in August, India’s jet fuel exports have averaged at a record high of 242,382 barrels per day (bpd), Kpler data shows. The previous peak of 206,871 bpd was in June 2018.
Last month, India’s jet fuel exports were 198,968 bpd. In June, which marked the onset of the southwest monsoon, jet fuel exports stood at a robust 183,661 bpd.
As for cumulative clean products, India exported 1.29 million bpd in August, the highest since May last year when the export volumes stood at 1.32 million bpd, as per Kpler. In July and June, India’s clean product exports were also strong at 1.21 million bpd and 1.20 million bpd, respectively.
India – UK bilateral investment treaty to differ from 2015 model (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
As India and the UK inch closer towards finalising a free trade agreement, the contours of the much-debated and contentious bilateral investment treaty are likely to be finalised around the same time as the FTA and are expected to vary significantly from the model BIT of 2016, changes for which would require approval of the Cabinet.
We cannot be closer to the model BIT because that is from 2016 and as it is it has not found many takers. In today’s times, the demands of many countries are far removed from the BIT, so we cannot stick to the model format of the treaty,” a person aware of the matter said, adding that changes to the investment treaty will be sent to the Cabinet for approval.
The investment treaty has been seen as one of the sticky points in the ongoing negotiations of the FTA between the two countries, raising concerns if both the agreements would come through at the same time.
A separately revised investment treaty for the UK could set the stage for revision of investment modalities with other countries going ahead.
The European Union has already stated that it has proposed an investment court system for dispute resolution and is awaiting India’s response for its proposal for dispute resolution under the bilateral investment protection pact that is being negotiated along with the FTA between the two countries.