GS PAPER: II

Message to New Delhi from the Red Sea

Why in the news?

Recently Red Sea has seen so many changes:

• The Houthi terror attacks on MV Chem Pluto, an oil and chemical tanker, on its way to the New Mangalore port from the Al Jubail port in Saudi Arabia and MV Sai Baba, a Gabon-owned, Indian-flagged crude oil tanker
• Indian crew forced India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar to rush to Tehran to persuade the principal Houthi sponsor to help cease the attacks.
• India’s military response to the red sea situation has also been swift: the Indian Navy deployed the guided missile destroyers, INS Mormugao, INS Kochi and INS Kolkata in the broader region.
• The Houthi attack on commercial ships in the Red Sea and the fragility of order and stability in the Indo-Pacific, a direct result of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, is also a reminder of the rough weather ahead in the Indo-Pacific in general and India’s maritime space in particular.
• For India, the Houthi challenge may soon pass, given New Delhi’s ties with Tehran.

What are the major Challenges ahead?

• India do not have a maritime grand strategy that goes beyond occasional fire-fighting, naval exercises with friendly nations and a snail-pace increase of the budget allocation for the Indian Navy.
• India’s long-term vision for the Indo-Pacific is missing
• India’s assessment about China’s strategy to contain India in the continental space in South Asia is not a misplaced one, but is definitely an insufficient one. China is parallelly attempting to contain India in the larger maritime theatre as well.
• Beijing’s attempt is to influence, among others, those spaces and countries that India has historically engaged with.
• While the IOR was India’s traditional sphere of influence until the Chinese came in with goodies, the far-off regions such as Africa had historical, cultural and political links with India. In that sense, it appears to be a zero-sum game — China’s gain is India’s loss.

What is new two front situations?

• Having an aggressive and rising China attempting to contain India on its continental and maritime fronts is a classic two-front situation.
• While India has been allowing itself to be obsessed with the Line of Control with Pakistan in the west, defending the Line of Actual Control with China in the north, and picking needless quarrels with its neighbors.
• Beijing was quietly building its empire of influence in the eastern, southern and western oceanic planks.
• For decades, Beijing (by arming Pakistan) ensured that India is boxed in in South Asia, ignoring the China challenge.
• By the time New Delhi put its unresolved conflicts with Pakistan in cold storage and shifted gears to the China challenge on the LAC, the game had already gotten bigger.

China position in compare to India?

• While the People’s Liberation Army keeps up the pressure on the LAC, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has been increasing its presence in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) at an alarming rate.
• Chinese Navy which is perhaps the largest in the world today: according to one account, it has “an overall battle force of over 370 ships and submarines, including more than 140 major surface combatants”.
• This number is expected to jump to 435 ships by 2030. By way of comparison, the Indian Navy today has 132 warships.
• China’s push for overseas military bases.
• Beijing today has a military base in Djibouti.
• Growing Chinese activities in Pakistan’s Gwadar and Sri Lanka’s Hambantota should worry Indian strategists, even if they are not yet military bases.
• In Myanmar, the Kyaukpyu port which China is constructing will enable PLAN to inch closer to the Indian Navy in the Bay of Bengal — a maritime space India hereto enjoyed unrivalled.
• Beijing is reportedly expanding an artificial island in Maldives and the China-Maldives strategic partnership is bound to increase due to tensions between Male and New Delhi.
• One had the visit of the anti-India Maldivian President to China recently.
• China is also exploring strategic investment options in the Seychelles, and is also building a naval base in Ream, Cambodia.
• The small Indian Ocean Island nation of Comoros is the latest to join China’s fan club in the Indo-Pacific.
• The emerging picture is this: from the Horn of Africa (Djibouti) to Myanmar, Sri Lanka, the Seychelles, the Maldives in the Indian Ocean to Gwadar in the Arabian Sea.

What should be India’s Focus?

• India should use the growing global attention on the Indo-Pacific which is easily the most consequential geopolitical construct of our times.
• The Indian Ocean is too important for the rest of the world to let China take over.
• If China poses a challenge to India’s regional security and interests in the broader IOR, it also poses a challenge to the commercial and security interests of the United States and its allies.
• Every major country is today interested in the Indo-Pacific and its future trajectory as is India, which provides an opportunity for New Delhi to make coalitions with like-minded countries especially at a time Beijing has little great power backing in the maritime theatre.
• Second, India cannot balance against the growing Chinese power in the Indian Ocean all by itself.
• India occupies a pivotal location in the Indo-Pacific moment just as it is the heart of the Chinese attempts to create an empire of influence. Creating, and enhancing, partnerships with like-minded countries is perhaps an important way forward.
• While Quad and Malabar are useful initiatives, they are at best a modest response to a grand futuristic challenge that is unfolding quickly.
• For sure, New Delhi already has several pieces of what could constitute the elements of a maritime grand strategy, but they need to be put together in a purposeful and cohesive manner.

GS PAPER – II

Pradhan Mantri Suryodaya Yojana

Why in the news?

• Recently Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the ‘Pradhan Mantri Suryodaya Yojana’, a government scheme under which one crore households will get rooftop solar power systems.

Previous Scheme to promote rooftop solar energy

• In 2014, the government launched the Rooftop Solar Programme that aimed to achieve a cumulative installed capacity of 40,000 megawatts (MW) or  40 gigawatts (GW) by 2022.
• However, this target couldn’t be achieved. As a result, the government extended the deadline from 2022 to 2026. The Pradhan Mantri Suryodaya Yojana seems to be a new attempt to help reach the target of 40 GW rooftop solar capacity.

About Pradhan Mantri Suryodaya Yojana

• It is a scheme that will involve installing solar power systems at rooftops for residential consumers.
• The scheme would help not only reduce electricity bills of the “poor and middle class”, but also push India’s goal of becoming self-reliant in the energy sector.

India’s current solar capacity

• According to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy’s website, solar power installed capacity in India has reached around 73.31 GW as of December 2023. Meanwhile, rooftop solar installed capacity is around 11.08 GW as of December 2023.
• In terms of total solar capacity, Rajasthan is at the top with 18.7 GW. Gujarat is at the second position with 10.5 GW. When it comes to rooftop solar capacity, Gujarat tops the list with 2.8 GW, followed by Maharashtra by 1.7 GW.
• Notably, solar power has a major share in the country’s current renewable energy capacity, which stands at around 180 GW.

Need of expansion 

• India is expected to witness the largest energy demand growth of any country or region in the world over the next 30 years, according to the latest World Energy Outlook by the International Energy Agency (IEA).
• To meet this demand, the country would need a reliable source of energy and it can’t be just coal plants. Although India has doubled down on its coal production in recent years, it also aims to reach 500 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030.
• Therefore, it is essential to expand solar power capacity — the country has increased it from less than 10 MW in 2010 to 70.10 GW in 2023, as mentioned before.

GS PAPER – I

Bharat Ratna to Jannayak Karpoori Thakur

Why in news?

• The Centre announced it would award the Bharat Ratna posthumously to Karpoori Thakur, former chief minister of Bihar.

Life and career

• Thakur was born in village Pitaunjhia (now known as Karpoori Gram), in the Samastipur district of Bihar. He participated in the freedom struggle and was also jailed for it. In independent India, he was voted in as an MLA in 1952.
• He remained an MLA till his death in 1988, except when he became an MP in 1977 and when he lost an Assembly election in 1984, amid the sympathy wave for Congress after Indira Gandhi’s assassination.
• Thakur was education minister of Bihar from March 5 1967 to January 28, 1968.
• He became the state’s chief minister in December 1970 with the Samyukta Socialist Party, but his government fell after six months.
• He came to the post again in June 1977, but could not finish a full term, losing power in about two years. 

Major policy decisions

• Thakur is known for many of his decisions — removing English as compulsory subject for the matriculation examinations; prohibition of alcohol; preferential treatment for unemployed engineers in government contracts, through which around 8,000 of them got jobs and a layered reservation system.
• It was this last decision that went on to have the loudest impact for Bihar as well as the country.
• In June 1970, the Bihar government appointed the Mungeri Lal Commission, which in its report of February 1976 named 128 “backward” communities, 94 of which were identified as “most backward”.
• The Janata Party government of Thakur implemented the recommendations of the Commission. The ‘Karpoori Thakur Formula’ provided 26% reservation, of which OBCs got a 12% share, the economically backward classes among the OBCs got 8%, women got 3%, and the poor from the “upper castes” got 3%.

GS PAPER – II

Maldives rules out research by Chinese vessel

Why in news?

• The Government of Maldives has said Chinese research vessel Xiang Yang Hong 03 will not be carrying out research in Maldivian waters, but will arrive for a port call.

About the news

• The Chinese vessel Xiang Yang Hong 03, which is en route to the Maldives, will only make a port call “for rotation of personnel and replenishment” while in its waters.
• Such vessels are not officially military ships but India and other countries worry about the military use of their oceanographic research.
• Its presence is likely to raise concern in New Delhi, which has previously viewed such vessels close to its shores as problematic.
• The Maldives has always been a welcoming destination for vessels of friendly countries, and continues to host both civilian and military vessels making port calls for peaceful purposes
• Permission to allow the ship to dock could further vex the ties between traditional friends New Delhi and Male, which have soured since President Mohamed Muizzu took office in November promoting an India Out campaign.
• Both New Delhi and Beijing vie for influence on the tiny Indian Ocean nation but the new government in Male is pivoting towards China and has asked India to withdraw its nearly 80 troops stationed there.
• New Delhi has in the past flagged similar visits by other Chinese research vessels with its neighbour Sri Lanka, which has denied permission for such vessels to dock at its ports since 2022.
• Chinese state media has said research by such vessels should not be called threatening.

GS PAPER – II

Dr. Homi J. Bhabha death anniversary

Why in news?

• Dr. Homi Bhabha was born in Mumbai on October 30, 1909, to a prominent Parsi family.
• Homi Bhabha is regarded as the father of India’s nuclear programme. Bhabha was a physicist before becoming a prominent atomic expert globally.
• On January 24, 1966, Homi Bhabha passed away in a mysterious aircraft crash. 

Personal life and education?

• He attended Cathedral School and later joined Elphinstone College.
• He continued his education at the Royal Institute of Science, Bombay, and later enrolled at Cambridge University in 1927 to study mechanical engineering.
• Under the influence of Paul Dirac, Bhabha developed a passion for theoretical physics and switched his focus to theoretical physics at Cambridge.
• He achieved a first-class grade in mathematics at Tripos in 1932 and later graduated with a doctorate in nuclear physics from Cambridge in 1934.

Contribution of the Homi Bhabha:

• Theory of production of an electron and positron showers in cosmic rays, i.e. Bhabha-Heitler theory
• His speculation about the Yukawa particle later brought his suggestion of the name meson.
• Prediction and forecast of relativistic time dilation effects in the decaying of meson.
• He established the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and Atomic Energy Establishment Trombay.
• He is also regarded as the father of the nuclear program in India or a renaissance man.
• He aggressively called for the use of nuclear weapons as a defence in India. This led to controversial opinions regarding his campaign and call for nuclear power.
• Homi Bhabha served as the President of the United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in 1955 and as the president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics from 1960 to 1963.

Contribution to India’s Nuclear Program

• The Indian Space Research Organisation was founded by Vikram Sarabhai with the help of Dr. Homi Bhabha played an indispensable role in laying the foundation and charting the course for India’s nuclear ambitions.
• His major contributions are listed below
• Three-Stage Nuclear Power Program
• APSARA (India’s first research reactor)
• Atomic Energy Act, 1948
• Representation of India at IAEA