India’s Leadership in Digital Public Goods (DPGs)
India’s Leadership in Digital Public Goods (DPGs)
Why in news?
- Digitization initiatives in India and the work with digital public goods have been extraordinary, said Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella.
Context
- India’s digital infrastructure has not only changed how Indians live and operate but it has also caught the fancy of other countries around the world.
- In this article, we will focus on a global technology commons that has the ability to address some of the world’s toughest challenges which India has much to contribute.
What are Digital Public Goods (DPGs)?
- Digital public goods are public goods in the form of software, data sets, AI models, standards or content that are generally free cultural works and contribute to sustainable national and international digital development.
- Several international agencies, including UNICEF and UNDP, are exploring DPGs as a possible solution to address the issue of digital inclusion, particularly for children in emerging economies.
How is it different from physical public good?
- Abundance: The nondepletable, nonexclusive, and nonrivalrous nature of digital public goods means the rules and norms for managing them can be different from how physical public goods are managed.
- Everlasting: DPGs can be infinitely stored, copied, and distributed without becoming depleted, and at close to zero cost.
- Inclusiveness: DPG is a good that is both non-excludable (no one can be prevented from consuming this good) and non-rivalrous (the consumption of this good by anyone does not reduce the quantity available to others).
Examples of DPGs
- Wikipedia
- DHIS2, an open source health management system.
- Free and open-source software (FOSS), since FOSS is licensed to allow it to be shared freely, modified and redistributed, it is available as a digital public good.
- Open educational resources, which by their copyright are allowed to be freely re-used, revised and shared.
Digital public goods in India
- Aadhaar: Built on the foundation of Aadhaar and India Stack, modular applications, big and small, are transforming the way we make payments, withdraw our PF, get our passport and driving license and check land records, to name just a few activities.
- Unified Payment Interface (UPI): To give an example, consider the surge in UPI-based payments in India. This kind of growth doesn’t happen with a few entitled and privileged people using UPI more and more; it happens with more and more people using UPI more and more.
- DIKSHA Portal: The use of DIKSHA, the school education platform built on the open-source platform Sunbird, has followed the same trajectory — today close to 500 million schoolchildren are using it.
Key Indian initiative: ‘India Stack’
- India Stack is a set of (application programming interface) APIs that allows governments, businesses, startups and developers to utilize a unique digital Infrastructure to solve India’s hard problems towards presence-less, paperless, and cashless service delivery.
- The Open API team at iSPIRT has been a pro-bono partner in the development, evolution, and evangelization of these APIs and systems.
APIs included in India Stack:
The following APIs are considered to be a core part of the India Stack-
- Aadhaar Authentication
- Aadhaar e-KYC
- eSign
- Digital Locker
- Unified Payment Interface (UPI)
- Digital User Consent – still work in progress.
- GSTN –Goods and Services Tax Network
- BBPS –Bharat Bill Payment System
- ETC – Electronic Toll Collection (known under the brand FASTag)
Why need DPGs?
- Cost Effectiveness: The cost of setting up an open source-based educational infrastructure, to supplement the physical infrastructure, for an entire country is less than laying two kilometers of high-quality road.
- Lower investment required: The investments required for transporting digital public goods are minuscule in comparison and there is no chance of a debt trap. Also, the code (platform) is highly reusable.
- Instantly visible outcomes: Unlike physical infrastructure such as ports and roads, digital public goods have short gestation periods and immediate, and visible impact and benefits.
- Faster service delivery: Processes get streamlined and wait times for any service come down dramatically. Issuances of passports, PAN cards and driving licences are such examples.
- Plugging the leakages: It eliminates ghost beneficiaries of government services, removes touts collecting rent, creates an audit trail, makes the individual-government-market interface transparent and provides efficiencies that help recoup the investments quickly.
- Wider outreach: Productivity goes up and services can be scaled quickly. Benefits can be rapidly extended to cover a much larger portion of the population.
Most significant utility of DPGs: Digital Diplomacy
(1) Boost India’s Image as a leading technology player
- It will take made-in-India digital public goods across the world and boost India’s brand positioning as a leading technology player in the digital age.
- India’s digital diplomacy will be beneficial to and welcomed by, all emerging economies from Peru to Polynesia, from Uruguay to Uganda, and from Kenya to Kazakhstan.
(2) Enhancing the productivity of emerging economies
- Emerging economies are characterized by gross inefficiencies in the delivery of government services and a consequent trust deficit.
- Digital public goods spread speed, transparency, ease and productivity across the individual-government-market ecosystem and enhance inclusivity, equity and development at scale.
Challenges associated with DPG Diplomacy
- Privacy issues: Potential violations of privacy and possible weaponization of data is a primary issue related to such digital initiatives.
- Increase in Inequalities: Success in the digital provision of services is dependent on many underlying factors, including digital literacy, education and access to stable and fast telecommunication services.
- Cybersecurity threats: While channels and databases used by the Government for transmission and storage are usually secure, other players in the ecosystem may not possess the requisite expertise or security to prevent and respond to breaches.
- Unserved remote areas: With digital services not being uniformly distributed, communities in remote areas often require on-ground staff to deploy and supplement digital tools.
Global liaison over DPGs: Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA)
- The DPGA is a multi-stakeholder initiative with a mission to accelerate the attainment of sustainable development goals in low- and middle-income countries by facilitating the discovery, development, use of, and investment in digital public goods.
- It is a UN initiative launched in 2019.
Way Forward
- Data localization: India needs to ensure that digital goods diplomacy doesn’t become an exercise to gather data and provisions must be made for data localization.
- Training of Individuals: Individuals across the countries need to be trained in cyber security for successful digital goods diplomacy. A lead can be taken up by CERT-In.
- No Authoritative nature: India needs to ensure that data with the state doesn’t lead to authoritarianism in these countries. Decentralized and distributed storage using Blockchain technology can be used by India.
- Ensuring Inclusivity: Digital ecosystems should be guided by factors of availability, accessibility, affordability, value and trust.
- Citizen-Centralism: There is a need to ensure the design is citizen-centric and ensures inclusive access to services at the last mile will help drive adoption and sustain these ecosystems.
- Data privacy robustness: Designing privacy-protection and secure databases are critical. It is, therefore, imperative that regulations governing any digital initiative must take into account provisions of the Personal Data Protection Bill.
Spy balloons spotted over US airspace
Days ahead of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s planned visit to China, the Pentagon alleged that a Chinese spy balloon the size of “three buses” was spotted over US airspace, adding further tension to increasingly fraught ties between the two superpowers. In the age of high-tech drone-based aerial reconnaissance and spy satellites, a spy balloon does come off as an unorthodox choice for espionage, but the use of high-altitude balloons for surveillance is a tried-and-tested method that goes back over a century.
What exactly is a spy balloon?
- A spy balloon or an observation balloon is, as the name suggests, a hot air balloon purposed for surveillance.
- While earlier observation balloons would have men in binoculars carrying out manual reconnaissance, modern-day observation balloons typically carry espionage equipment such as cameras and other sensors.
- They typically operate at altitudes of 80,000-120,000 feet, well above the altitudes at which commercial airlines operate.
When did spy balloons come into use?
- First used during the Battle of Fleur in the French Revolutionary Wars, observation balloons came into mainstream military use during the American Civil War in the 1860s.
- A little over half-a-century later, the use of observation balloons for military purposes peaked as both sides in World War I resorted to the widespread use of these devices for guiding long-range artillery.
- During World War II, the Japanese weaponised hot air balloons to drop incendiary bombs on US territory. While the experiment proved successful, the outcome wasn’t ideal: the Japanese failed to destroy military targets and instead left civilian casualties.
- After the end of World War II, despite the advent of increasingly advanced forms of aerial surveillance, the US revived their interest in observation balloons, leading to a series of large-scale missions dubbed Project Genet.
- Observation balloons were also used for espionage during the earlier years of the Cold War, before more advanced forms of aerial reconnaissance became mainstream.
Why use spy balloons over spy satellites?
- While observation balloons aren’t as sophisticated or versatile as spy satellites, they do offer some considerable advantages over their advanced successors.
- The lack of sophisticated technology in observation balloons makes them a far cheaper alternative to spy satellites.
- Further, while spy satellites can be used to survey territory with extreme accuracy, observation balloons are able to scan wider swathes of territory over longer periods of time, and from a lower altitude, as per a US Air Force report from 2009.
Government on track to fiscal deficit targets
In the Union Budget for 2023-24, the Finance Minister chose the path of relative fiscal prudence and projected a decline in fiscal deficit to 5.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) in FY24, compared with 6.4% in FY23. The government planned to continue on the path of fiscal consolidation and reach a fiscal deficit below 4.5% by 2025-26.
Direction on fiscal deficit given in the Budget
- In the Union Budget 2023-24, the fiscal deficit to GDP is pegged at 5.9% in FY24. This ratio has declined from 6.4% in 2022-23 (revised estimate) and 6.7% in 2021-22 (actual).
- In the revenue budget, the deficit was 4.1% of GDP in 2022-23 (revised estimate). In the Union Budget 2023-24, revenue deficit is 2.9% of GDP.
- If interest payments are deducted from fiscal deficit, which is referred to as primary deficit, it stood at 3% of GDP in 2022-23 (RE).
- The primary deficit, which reflects the current fiscal stance devoid of past interest payment liabilities, is pegged at 2.3% of GDP in Union Budget 2023-24.
Allocations for some sectors
- The major allocations that have been pared down are food, fertilizer and petroleum subsidies.
- The food subsidy in 2022-23 (RE) was ₹2, 87,194 crore. In 2023-24, it was reduced to ₹1, 97,350 crore.
- The fertilizer subsidy in 2022-23 was ₹2, 25,220 crore (RE); it has been reduced to₹1, 75,100 crore for FY24.
- The petroleum subsidy in 2022-23 was ₹9,171 crore (RE); it has declined to₹2,257 crore in 2023-24 (Budget estimate/BE).
- It is a laudable decision to extend food security to the poor for one more year amid rising inflation.
- Rationalisation of subsidies is important so that the government can move towards reaching a fiscal deficit target of 4.5% by 2025-26.
For maintaining growth:
- The interest rate management by the RBI through inflation targeting alone cannot effectively control inflation, given the supply side shocks. Therefore, fiscal policy measures are crucial to tackle mounting inflation.
- The RBI has been increasing policy rates to tackle mounting inflation. But a high interest rate regime can hurt the economic growth process.
- The fiscal policy needs to remain “accommodative” with focus on gross capital formation in the economy with enhanced capital spending, especially infrastructure investment.
- In Budget 23-24, capital spending is expected to rise to 3.3% of GDP. The interest-free loan of ₹1.3 lakh crore for 50 years provided to States should help them spend and boost growth.
- It has been stressed that infrastructure investment has a larger multiplier effect on economic growth and employment.
Government stick to fiscal consolidation:
- The Government has not deviated from the path of fiscal consolidation. In Union Budget 2023, the medium-term fiscal consolidation framework stated that there is a need to reduce the fiscal deficit-GDP ratio to 4.5% by 2025-26 from the current 6.4%.
- It is due to revenue uncertainties in post-pandemic times and also geopolitical risks, mounting inflation, supply chain disruptions and energy price volatility.
- The Government has kept the fiscal policy “accommodative”, and has undertaken capital spending to support economic growth recovery.
- The predominant mode of financing fiscal deficit in India is through internal market borrowings. It is also to be financed through securities against small savings, provident funds and an insignificant component of external debt.
- In Union Budget 2023, India’s external debt is pegged at₹22,118 crore of the total fiscal deficit of ₹17, 86,816 crore in 2023-24 (BE), which is approximately about 1%.
- In Union Budget 2023, it is also stated that the States will have to maintain a fiscal deficit of 3.5% of GSDP of which 0.5% will be tied to power sector reforms.
Ladakh and the Sixth Schedule
Sonam Wangchuk completed his five-day “climate fast”, in an effort to draw the attention of Indian leaders to the region’s fragile ecology and to secure its protection under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution.
About Sonam Wangchuk:
- He is an education reformist and an engineer, and is known for taking on multiple challenges to improve the lives of the people of Ladakh and to protect the region’s ecosystems.
- He has received various prizes, including the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay award. He is also the founding director of HIAL (Himalayan Institute of Alternatives).
Ladakh’s fragile ecology:
- Due to melting glaciers in the Ladakh region and the resulting effects on the region’s ecology, Ladakh and the Himalayas form the ‘third pole’ of the world and are among its few frozen freshwater sources.
- The Himalayas, along with all glaciers and river basins, are also called the “water tower of Asia”.
- Glaciers in Ladakh have been melting at an alarming rate. According to a study published in 2021, glaciers in the Pangong region retreated around 6.7% between 1990 and 2019.
Impacts:
Ladakh is a cold desert and extremely sensitive to climate change. People of the region depend on glaciers to fulfil their water needs.
The melting of glaciers has three effects on the lives of Ladakh’s people:
- They lose potable water; agriculture practices specific to the region are threatened; and sustainable practices that support life in the region, like surviving on a minimal quantity of water, are slowly eroded.
- Loss of sustainable practices due to scarcity of water may also affect the livelihoods of locals and their cultural heritage, and force them to migrate.
Impact on biodiversity of the area:
The flora and fauna of Ladakh are highly evolved to survive in harsh climatic conditions and will be threatened due to changes in the local ecosystems.
Climate change and rainfall:
- It is possible climate change will lead to excessive rainfall in Ladakh by around 2045 due to global warming. An increase in temperature has a direct impact on precipitation in an area, which changes agriculture practices.
- Unabated development in sensitive areas can also lead to land subsidence like we recently witnessed in Joshimath since Ladakh is even more fragile than Chamoli district.
Sixth Schedule of the Constitution:
- The Sixth Schedule of India’s Constitution protects tribal populations and provides autonomy to communities to frame laws on land, public health, agriculture, etc.
- Currently, ten Autonomous Development Councils exist in the tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, and Mizoram.
- Ladakh was previously protected under Article 370, but the Indian government’s revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status removed the provisions for Ladakh as well. Ladakh became a Union Territory.
- In response to a report tabled by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs in Rajya Sabha, the Home Ministry said in December 2022 that the main objective of including tribal population under the Fifth/Sixth Schedule is to “ensure their overall socio-economic development, which the UT Administration has already been taking care of since its creation. Sufficient funds are being provided to Ladakh to meet its overall developmental requirements.
- The standing committee recommended the inclusion of Ladakh in the Sixth Schedule because its tribal communities account for 79.61% of its total population.
Jupiter beats Saturn with most moons
Astronomers have discovered 12 new moons around Jupiter, putting the total count at a record-breaking 92. That’s more than any other planet in our solar system. Saturn, the one-time leader, comes in a close second with 83 confirmed moons.
More about the news:
- The Jupiter moons were added recently to a list kept by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Centre.
- They were discovered using telescopes in Hawaii and Chile in 2021 and 2022, and their orbits were confirmed with follow-up observations.
- These newest moons range in size from 0.6 miles to 2 miles (1 kilometer to 3 kilometers).
- Jupiter’s newly discovered moons have yet to be named. The only halves of them are big enough — at least 1 mile (1.5 kilometers) or so — to warrant a name.
- All the newly-discovered moons are small and far away from Jupiter, taking more than 340 days to orbit the gas giant.
- Many of these moons have a retrograde orbit, meaning that they orbit in the opposite direction of the inner moons. This hints at the fact that Jupiter probably captures these moons.
- Only five of these moons are larger than 8 kilometres. It is likely that the smaller moons were probably formed from larger objects fragmented by collisions.
- The European Space Agency is sending a spacecraft to Jupiter to study the planet and some of its biggest, icy moons.
- Next year, NASA will launch the Europa Clipper to explore Jupiter’s moon of the same name, which could harbor an ocean beneath its frozen crust.
- Jupiter and Saturn are loaded with small moons, believed to be fragments of once bigger moons thatcollided with one another or with comets or asteroids. The same goes for Uranus and Neptune, but they’re so distant that it makes moon-spotting even harder.
- For the record, Uranushas 27 confirmed moons, Neptune 14, Mars two and Earth one. Venus and Mercury come up empty.