12 December 2022

DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS ANALYSIS

1 – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY RULES 2021: GS II – Government Policies and Interventions

 Why:

• On charges of disseminating false and unfounded information in order to incite fear, create communal discord, and destabilise the country’s public order.

Legal groundwork:

• The move was carried out under emergency powers under Rule 18 of the IT Rules, 2021.

Here are the IT guidelines for 2021:

• It creates a grievance redress procedure for over-the-top (OTT) and digital portals in the country. This is critical for social media users to express their displeasure with the misuse of the platform.
• Significant social media firms must hire a chief compliance officer and keep a nodal contact person on hand 24 hours a day, seven days a week to communicate with law enforcement agencies.
• Social media sites would employ a grievance officer who would be in charge of registering issues within 24 hours and resolving them within 15 days.
• Removal of content: If users complain about exposed private parts, nudity, sexual acts, impersonation, or other content that violates the dignity of users, particularly women, social media platforms are required to remove it within 24 hours of receiving the complaint.
• They’ll also have to provide a monthly report on the amount of complaints they’ve received and how far their remedies have progressed.
• The three tiers of supervision for news publishers will be self-regulation, a self-regulatory body led by a retired judge or a prominent person, and oversight from the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, which will include codes of practise and a grievance committee.

What is a well-known social media intermediary, and what are the benefits of employing it:

• Social media companies with more than 50 lakh registered members would be classified as “major social media intermediaries” under the new laws.

If you don’t obey the rules, you’ll face the following consequences:

• Companies including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp Messenger may face a ban if they do not comply with the new Information Technology rules.
• They risk losing their status as “intermediaries” if they do not comply with the updated regulations, and they may face criminal charges.

Source The Hindu

 2 – DEFENCE ACQUISITION PROCEDURE: GS III – Internal Security

 2020 DAP:

• The new policy took effect on October 1 and superseded the 2016 Defense Procurement Procedure.
• The DAP offers policies and methods for purchase and acquisition from the MoD’s capital budget in order to modernise the Armed Forces, including the Coast Guard.

The following are some of the new policy’s highlights:

• Reservations for indigenous firms: In a number of procurement sectors, the policy creates allowances for indigenous businesses.
• A “Indian vendor” is defined under DAP 2020 as a company owned and controlled by Indian citizens with less than 49 percent foreign direct investment (FDI).

New Buy (Worldwide–Manufactured in India):

• This requires at least half of the entire contract value of a foreign acquisition made with the aim of constructing it in India with knowledge transfer to be indigenized.
• It encourages more indigenous content in military procurements, including equipment made in India under licence. In most purchase categories, DAP-2020 stipulates a 10% increase in indigenization over DPP 2016.
• List of prohibited imports: Last month, the government announced a “import embargo list” of 101 items, which has been specifically included in DAP 2020. (An embargo is a government decree that prohibits trade with a specific country or the exchange of specific items.)
• If a deal is made through an intergovernmental agreement (IGA), a government-to-government agreement, or an ab initio single vendor agreement, the government has chosen not to include an offset clause.
• Under the offset clause, a foreign vendor must invest a portion of the contract value in India.

Source The Hindu

 3 – SELF-REPLICATING M-RNA COVID VACCINES: Prelims Specific Topic

Benefits:

• It protected against severe Covid-19 infection 95% of the time and Covid infection 55% of the time.

How do mRNA vaccines operate and what are they:

• In an mRNA vaccination, the coronavirus spike protein is encoded by messenger RNA.
• If and when an infection occurs, the mRNA orders the cell to make copies of the spike protein, which the immune system will recognise and respond to.

Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech are two examples.

mRNA vaccines that self-amplify are exactly what they sound like:

• A self-amplifying mRNA vaccine is an advancement over traditional RNA vaccinations.
• It also encodes four additional proteins that facilitate amplification of the original strand of RNA once inside the cell, in addition to the vaccine antigen. The main advantage is that it requires a lower dosage.

Source The Hindu

 4 – ABOUT THE KURIL ISLANDS: Prelims Specific Topic

• According to Japan’s Diplomatic Bluebook for 2022, Russia’s “illegal occupation” of the Kuril Islands (known in Japan as the Northern Territories and in Russia as the South Kurils) is “illegal.”
• This is the first time in two decades that Japan has used this phrase to characterise the Kuril Islands issue.

Kuril Islands/Northern Territories:

• These four islands are situated between the Sea of Okhotsk and the Pacific Ocean in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost prefecture.
• Despite the fact that the islands have been under Russian control since the conclusion of WWII, Moscow and Tokyo both claim possession.

The varied claims are based on the following:

• According to Tokyo, the Shimoda Treaty of 1855, the 1875 Treaty for the Exchange of Sakhalin for the Kuril Islands (Treaty of St. Petersburg), and the Portsmouth Treaty of 1905, signed following Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05, all establish Japan’s sovereignty over the islands.
• Russia, on the other hand, claims that the Yalta Agreement (1945) and the Potsdam Declaration (1945) establish its sovereignty, and that Japan’s acceptance of Russian sovereignty over the islands is established by the San Francisco Treaty of 1951.

Source The Hindu