Headlines

Cauvery water issue- Page No.1 , GS 2

No Governor’s assent; Manipur Assembly session a non-starter - Page
No.1 , GS 2
The BRICS test for India’s multipolarity rhetoric - Page No.6 , GS 2
The Saudi Arabia-UAE divide becomes public - Page No.6 , GS 2
The superpower of OTT platforms - Page No.7 , GS 2
Text and Context - On smartphone manufacturing in India
Text and Context - What are the concerns about drilling in the North Sea?

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Pg no. 1 GS 2
• Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud on Monday assured Tamil
Nadu that he would constitute a Bench to hear the State’s plea for
the release of its allotment of Cauvery river water for August.
Lawyers of the State told The Hindu that the Bench had not been
formed yet, and it might be done on Tuesday.

• Tamil Nadu has moved the Supreme Court seeking a direction to

Karnataka to release 24,000 cusecs of Cauvery water forthwith from
its reservoirs at Billigundulu for the remaining period of the month,
starting from August 14.

• The State said the release of water was a dire necessity to meet the
pressing demands of the standing crops.
• Cauvery Water Dispute
• The dispute is related to a long-standing conflict over the sharing of water from
the Cauvery River.
• It involves 3 states and one Union Territory: Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and
Puducherry.
• The dispute revolves around how the river water should be distributed among
these states for various uses, including irrigation, drinking water, and industrial
purposes.

• Background
• This dispute originated for the first-time way back in 1892 at the time of Britishers
between the Presidency of Madras and Princely state of Mysore.
• In 1924 Mysore and Madras reached into an agreement which will be valid for 50
years. Hence, it ceased to be enforced in 1974.
• Since 1974, Karnataka started diverting water into its four newly made reservoirs,
without the consent of Tamil Nadu.
• This resulted in dispute in post independent India.
• Formation of Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal and its final award
• In accordance with Section 4 of the Inter-State Water Disputes Act,
1956, the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWDT) was formed in
June 1990.
• After 17 years, the CWDT issued its final award in February 2007,
specifying the amount of water that each state should receive
during different periods of the year.

• The government again took 6 year and notified the order in 2013 on
the direction of the Supreme Court.
• Later, Tamil Nadu government had approached the Supreme Court.
Pg no. 1 GS 2
Pg no. 6 GS 2
• The 60-member Manipur Assembly failed to hold a Special Session
on Monday to discuss the ethnic violence in the State as the Raj
Bhavan did not issue a notification to convene it despite a
recommendation from the State Cabinet.

• An official statement on August 4 said the Cabinet had

recommended to Governor Anusuiya Uikey the summoning of the
fourth session of the 12th Manipur Legislative Assembly on August
21. This followed a similar request from the government on July 27.

• The next session has to be held before September 2. Article 174 of

the Constitution says: “The House or Houses of the Legislature of
the State shall be summoned to meet twice at least in every year,
and six months shall not intervene between their last sitting in one
session and the date appointed for their first sitting in the next
session.”
• It is unlikely that the Governor is unaware of the constitutional
position that she is bound by the advice of the government with
regard to summoning the Assembly. A Constitution Bench had
made this clear in Nabam Rebia (2016).
Pg no. 6 GS 2
• The upcoming BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa)
summit in South Africa, from August 22 to August 24, will be an important
stress test for Indian diplomacy, and a harbinger of the shape of
geopolitics to come.

• BRICS, after all, is also more globally represented than the UN Security
Council (UNSC) and the G-7, though less than the G-20 which is
dominated by the West.

• That 40-odd countries have formally or informally expressed interest in

joining an expanded BRICS, just five countries today, is reflective of the
deeply-held sense of angst and anger in the global South countries about
their place in the world.

• Not that BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) will lead
to truly democratic global governance or multipolarity (perhaps nothing
can); these forums too are replete with competing interests and
calculations including inbuilt or unsaid hierarchies.
• For one, where does India belong in the global geopolitical
landscape? There is, for instance, a tendency in the West to view
India’s membership of BRICS and the SCO in the context of the
Ukraine war and the United States/West versus the standoff
with Russia. An oft-repeated question is: “How can India be a
part of the Quad [Australia, Japan, the U.S., India], G-20, G-7 and
BRICS, SCO and global South at the same time?”

• Developmentally, historically and geographically, India belongs to

BRICS, SCO, and the global South. But India does not only belong to
them.

• Multipolarity, in the Indian historical imagination, is about equity,

inclusion and representation, not bloc rivalry, ideological or
otherwise. However, even if New Delhi vehemently opposes bloc
politics, it will continue to get drawn into it.
• The question that New Delhi must ask every step of the way as it
pursues a multipolar world and alternative mechanisms for
global governance is whether (or not) it helps boost the rise of
China globally.

• India must, therefore, keep its eyes firmly fixed on its goal: promote a
more representative and equitable global governance on the one
hand and ensure that such an order does not end up undercutting its
own national interests.

• The geopolitical predicament this poses before New Delhi is hardly

an easy one to navigate: asserting itself in non-western global forums
such as BRICS and the SCO, checking the steadily growing Chinese
influence in them, and dealing with western normative expectations
while negotiating a place for itself in Eurocentric forums such as the
UNSC and the G-7. It must do all this simultaneously.
Pg no. 6 GS 2
• Competition rather than cooperation is likely to define the ties between
the two neighbours in political, economic and logistical areas

• They were partners in the war in Yemen, worked together to strengthen al-
Sisi’s regime in Egypt, viewed Iran as a regional threat, disliked the
Muslim Brotherhood, and then collaborated closely to implement the
blockade of Qatar.

• In July 2017, the UAE abruptly rejected the proposal to cut oil production
put forward by “OPEC +” on the ground that its base production needed
to be significantly increased.

• The UAE also expanded its maritime footprint in the region by taking
control of Yemeni ports and Socotra Island in the Gulf of Aden, and Perim
Island at the mouth of the Bab al-Mandab.
• The UAE also normalised ties with Israel in August 2020, thus
publicly dumping the Saudi-sponsored Arab Peace Initiative that
requires Israel to accommodate Palestinian interests before
Arab states normalise relations. Later, the kingdom initiated the
readmission of Syria into the Arab League in May this year, but
MbZ failed to attend the summit.

• In Sudan, the two Gulf neighbours are now backing different

generals — while the kingdom supports Army chief al-Burhan,
the UAE is backing militia leader Dagalo, thus prolonging the
destructive civil conflict.
Pg no. 7 GS 2
• On August 8, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan launched the ‘State of
Elementary Education in Rural India’ report which shows that schoolchildren
spend most of their screen time playing games, watching movies or listening
to songs. Accessing study materials and online tutorials featured way down
the order.

• Of the 49.3% of parents whose children used gadgets, 76.7% said that their children
mainly used mobile phones to play video games, over 56% said that their children
used phones to watch movies, 35% said they used phones to access online materials,
and only 19% said they used phones to attend online tutorials.

• Instead of seeing this trend as a cause for concern, it can be viewed as a promising
opportunity where education meets entertainment.Traditional media consumption
has increasingly transitioned to OTT platforms, which have the ability to make
meaningful contributions to reading literacy and language learning.
• Around five years ago, the Government of India decided it
wanted more companies to make things in India. It has therefore
introduced a key set of incentives through the production-linked
incentives (PLI) scheme. Here, the government gives money to
foreign or domestic companies that manufacture goods here.

• The industry that has shown the most enthusiasm for the PLI
scheme is smartphone manufacturing. And with the scheme,
mobile phone exports jumped from $300 million in FY2018 to an
astounding $11 billion in FY23.

• However, the former RBI governor contends that while imports

of fully put-together mobile phones have come down, the
imports of mobile phone components have shot up between
FY21 and FY23.
• U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently backed plans for new fossil fuel
drilling off Britain’s coast, worrying environment experts.

• Drilling in seas and oceans for fossil fuels not only aggravates the threat of
climate change but also warms oceans and raises sea levels.

• In its March 2023 Progress Report to the U.K. Parliament, the Climate Change
Committee (CCC), said that the U.K. has not adequately prepared for climate
change under the second National Adaptation Programme.

• The 1958 Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf was the first
international legislation to establish the rights of countries over the
continental shelves adjacent to their coastlines and paved the way for
exploration in the North Sea.
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