General Studies-02: Indian Culture

1. Supreme Court stays ASI scientific till tomorrow evening survey at Gyanvapi mosque

Security personnel outside the mosque on Monday.

The Supreme Court on Monday ordered the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to maintain status quo till 5 p.m. on Wednesday, giving the Gyanvapi mosque management “breathing time” to approach the Allahabad High Court against an order of the Varanasi District Court last Friday to conduct a scientific survey of the mosque premises located next to the Kashi Vishwanath Temple.

A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud asked the High Court registry to place the appeal, if filed by the mosque management, for hearing before an appropriate Bench before the stay order expired on Wednesday evening.

The court took note of the urgent oral mentioning of the management, represented by senior advocate Huzeifa Ahmadi, that the District Court had ordered the “scientific survey” at 4.30 p.m. on Friday. Mr. Ahmadi said the Allahabad High Court had earlier suspended a controversial archaeological survey of the premises to determine whether a Hindu temple was partially razed to build the 17th-century mosque.

“The survey started on Monday. What is the hot haste now? This mosque has been a place of worship since the 1600s… They want to know if there was any pre-existing structure of a Hindu temple… No time was given for us to even file an appeal. The order specifically says scientific investigation/survey/excavation of the property in question… An excavation would amount to contempt of the Supreme Court orders in the case,” Mr. Ahmadi submitted.

General Studies-02: Economy

2. Social security for gig workers in Rajasthan

Sacked Congress Minister Rajendra Singh Gudha leaves after being suspended from the Assembly in Jaipur on Monday.

Assembly passes Bill; after becoming an Act, this will be the first legislation in the country outlining welfare measures for platform-based workers

The Rajasthan Assembly on Monday passed a Bill extending social security to gig workers and creating a regulatory framework for aggregators along with the setting up of a welfare board for the unorganised segment not covered under existing labour laws. After becoming an Act, this will be the first legislation in the country outlining welfare measures for platform-based workers.

The Rajasthan Platform Based Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Bill, 2023, was passed in the House with a voice vote without any debate amid noisy scenes. There was a rumpus as sacked Minister Rajendra Gudha confronted Parliamentary Affairs Minister Shanti Dhariwal and other Congress MLAs. The Bill was taken up for consideration after an adjournment during Zero Hour.

Through the new legislation, the Congress government in the State intends to establish a welfare board and set up a welfare fund for gig workers, register these workers and aggregators and facilitate the guarantee of social security to them.

The Bill has also made provisions for charging and collection of gig worker welfare fee from the aggregators.

Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot had made an announcement on the Bill during his budget speech earlier this year.

Mr. Gehlot pointed out that while the gig economy was continuously growing in the State and the number of gig workers had increased to nearly 4 lakh, aggregators had not made any arrangements for their social security. Young workers were engaged on contract on per transaction basis, he said.

Amid loud protests by Opposition BJP MLAs following Mr. Gudha’s eviction from the House, the Speaker and the ruling party rushed through four legislations, including the Bill for gig workers. Minister of State for Labour Sukhram Bishnoi first proposed a debate on the Bill in the House and later its passage, when the debate could not take place.

The three other Bills passed amid the din included one on the establishment of Gandhi Vatika Trust for promotion of Gandhian thought and activities and two on the creation of Development Authorities for Udaipur and Kota cities.

In addition to making provisions for welfare measures, the Bill seeks to create an effective dispute resolution mechanism for conflicts between gig workers and platforms. The welfare board, comprising State officials, five representatives each from gig workers and aggregators, and two others, will take up various tasks and ensure action for social security. It will submit an annual report to the State government, which will be tabled in the Assembly.

The Bill mandates charging of a welfare fee for gig workers from the aggregators, which will be a percentage of the value of each transaction. The value of each transaction will not include any tax paid or payable.

Penalties clause

The Bill also allows for penalties. If the aggregator violates any of the clauses, the Bill empowers the State government to impose a fine of up to ₹5 lakh for the first contravention and up to ₹50 lakh for subsequent violations.

The Suchana Evum Rozgar Adhikar Abhiyan, which staged a prolonged dharna in the State capital on public issues recently, welcomed passage of the Bill, saying it would protect the workforce of the new digital economy.

General Studies-02: Science And Technology

3. ISRO to launch PSLV-C56 carrying Singapore’s new imaging satellite

Space bound: Preparations on for the launch of PSLV-C56 carrying Singapore’s DS-SAR satellite along with 6 other satellites.

The launch vehicle is configured in its core-alone mode, similar to that of C55; it will launch DS-SAR, a 360 kg satellite into a near-equatorial orbit; the Synthetic Aperture Radar payload in the satellite will provide all-weather day and night coverage

The Indian Space Research Organisation on Monday announced that the PSLV-C56 carrying Singapore’s DS-SAR satellite will be launched on July 30 from Sriharikota.

The PSLV-C56 carrying DS-SAR satellite will be launched along with six other satellites. According to ISRO, the PSLV-C56 is configured in its core-alone mode, similar to that of C55. It would launch DS-SAR, a 360 kg satellite into a near-equatorial orbit at 5 degrees inclination and 535 km altitude. It added that the satellite is developed under a partnership between DSTA (representing the Government of Singapore) and ST Engineering. It will be used to support the satellite imagery requirements of various agencies within the Government of Singapore.

DS-SAR carries a Synthetic Aperture Radar payload developed by Israel Aerospace Industries. This allows the DS-SAR to provide for all-weather day and night coverage and is capable of imaging at 1m resolution at full polarimetry.

The other satellites are VELOX-AM, a 23 kg technology demonstration microsatellite; Atmospheric Coupling and Dynamics Explorer (ARCADE), an experimental satellite; SCOOB-II, a 3U nanosatellite flying a technology demonstrator payload; NuLIoN by NuSpace, an advanced 3U nanosatellite enabling seamless IoT connectivity in both urban and remote locations; Galassia-2, a 3U nanosatellite, which will be orbiting at low earth orbit; and the ORB-12 STRIDER, which is a satellite developed under an International collaboration.

General Studies-02: International Relations

4. ASEAN, a persistence with dialogue, on a trodden path

Rajiv Bhatia is Distinguished Fellow, Gateway House. A former Ambassador and author, he is a commentator on developments in the Indo-Pacific.

If Southeast Asia is the heart of the Indo-Pacific, the 56th Foreign Ministers Meeting (FMM) of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the post-ministerial conferences and other related regional meetings, held in Jakarta, Indonesia in mid-July, 2023, are the best barometer to check on the region’s latest dynamics. An elaborate institutional architecture created by ASEAN has become an inclusive platform that draws nations from near and far, as also all major players (the United States, China, India, Japan and Russia) engaged in shaping the strategic contestation in a vast region stretching from east Africa to the South Pacific.

Vision and challenges

An in-depth study of various outcome documents, particularly the joint communiqué of the FMM, is indicative of ASEAN’s brave attempts to navigate through transformative changes in the present decade: the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic slowdown, the Ukraine war, climate change, and, above all, the Cold War-type confrontation between the United States and China. As the current chair, Indonesia has portrayed ASEAN as “the Epicentrum of Growth”. It is a well-chiselled vision with three inter-related dimensions: creating a political community that ensures regional peace and a just, democratic and harmonious environment; an economic community focused on achieving a well-integrated and connected regional economy within the global economic system; and a socio-cultural community to enhance the quality of life of ASEAN’s citizens as well as sustainable development of the region.

Addressing fellow Foreign Ministers on July 11, Retno Marsudi, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Indonesia and chair, argued that ASEAN’s ability to manage regional and global dynamics depended on two critical ingredients that promote its unity and centrality. First, it should maintain its credibility by adhering to the ASEAN Charter, and second, it should stay in the driver’s seat while navigating regional dynamics. Laudable as these goals are, they are becoming less achievable. ASEAN’s internal differences on issues such as Myanmar keep surfacing in public. Its desire to lead the region and shape its agenda stands jeopardised by the strained relationship between the U.S. and China.

China enjoys close political and economic relations with the ASEAN states, and at least three of them, i.e., Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar, are its virtual dependencies. While the Philippines has become more assertive of late in its claims in the South China Sea, the central players, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, are all favourably disposed towards Beijing. This explains why none of them raises its voice against China’s delaying tactics in negotiating an enforceable code of conduct concerning the South China Sea. For many years, ASEAN and China have called for “an early conclusion of an effective and substantive” code of conduct; they did it this year too, but are content to leave the matter there. No indication of a timeline is given. It is hard to find a similar example of diplomatic doublespeak.

ASEAN also watches helplessly the acrimonious debate between the U.S. and Chinese governments, despite Washington’s recent attempts to revive constructive discussions through high-level visits. The Chinese argument is that the U.S. is solely responsible for poor relations because it steadily refuses to accept and accommodate itself to China’s ‘peaceful rise.’ The U.S., on the other hand, is no longer willing to turn a blind eye to Chinese aggressiveness and coercion in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. The latest manifestation of this thinking appeared in North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Vilinius summit communiqué which stated, “The People’s Republic of China’s stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values.”

Anxious over “the intensifying geopolitical tensions in the region,” ASEAN prefers to promote the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP). Its four identified areas ( maritime cooperation, connectivity, UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and economic cooperation) make much sense to the region. Predictably though, despite ASEAN partners reaffirming support for the AOIP, its actual implementation remains a worry.

ASEAN reiterated its centrality, but it appears vulnerable when the grouping is unable to forge unity on a most sensitive issue, the Myanmar situation, which has led ASEAN to bar a member-state (Myanmar) from all its political-level discussions. In the run-up to the FMM, Thailand, defying ASEAN’s official policy, ran its own dialogue with the military government which permitted the Thai Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister to have a meeting with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, much to the discomfiture of Indonesia, the ASEAN chair. The split in ranks was acknowledged in the joint communiqué. This disunity could not be concealed by a routine reaffirmation of the Five-Point Consensus (5PC) forged in April 2021. Without unity, ASEAN centrality loses much of its credibility.

India’s role

The significance of the ASEAN meetings to India is apparent when viewed in the context of External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar preferring to represent India at the post-ministerial conference and other regional dialogues, instead of accompanying the Prime Minister on his visits to France and the United Arab Emirates earlier in July. He pointedly referred to the importance of a “strong and unified” ASEAN in the emerging dynamic of the Indo-Pacific, and highlighted the convergence between the AOIP and India’s Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative. To build on the comprehensive strategic partnership between India and ASEAN, he suggested that the two sides work in “newer areas such as cyber, financial and maritime security domains.

Though it appeared that ASEAN did not make much progress, and no new ground was broken, its persistence with dialogue, internally and externally, prevents geopolitical temperatures from rising. The next ASEAN summit will be held in Jakarta in September 2023. Hopefully, this will bring greater clarity on the way to tackle challenges confronting the region.

Without unity, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ centrality loses much of its credibility

General Studies-02: International Relations

5. Still incomplete

India’s ties with Sri Lanka are bound by the Tamil question

With a joint statement on economic cooperation, India and Sri Lanka outlined a forward-looking vision for their relations. The statement, entitled “Promoting Connectivity, Catalysing Prosperity: India-Sri Lanka Economic Partnership Vision”, released after talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe in Delhi last week, lays out the vision in five areas: maritime, air, energy, trade and people-to-people initiatives. New investments in maritime and air connectivity will involve developing ports and airports in Sri Lanka, resuming ferry services and expanding flight networks to connect Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka’s Northern and Eastern Provinces. A major surge in energy connectivity will include developing renewable energy wind and solar plants in Sri Lanka. Both hope to increase trade, and continue Indian support for Sri Lanka’s economy that crashed last year and is slowly working out its debt restructuring process. A memorandum of understanding was signed to operationalise UPI digital payments in Sri Lanka and to designate the Indian Rupee as currency for trade. They also agreed to explore ways of enhancing tourism and cultural and religious travel, and educational collaboration.

While the vision statement revealed a comprehensive plan for the future, what it lacked was conspicuous: none of the written documents released during Mr. Wickremesinghe’s visit acknowledged previous commitments by Sri Lanka on honouring the 13A constitutional amendment for devolution of powers to the North and Eastern provinces, and for resolving the long-pending issues over arrest of Indian fishers. It was left to Mr. Modi to make a sharp appeal in his speech for devolution and the conduct of Provincial Council elections, and he emphasised the need to ensure a “life of respect and dignity” for the Sri Lankan Tamil community. In Colombo, the ruling SLPP that provides support for President Wickremesinghe made it clear that his government lacks the “electoral mandate” to discuss these issues, for long the cause of tensions between India and Sri Lanka. The fact that neither Mr. Wickremesinghe’s comments in Delhi, nor the joint statement referred to such crucial issues may be the bigger message from the meeting: that despite Sri Lanka’s other dependencies on New Delhi, the Indian government is no longer welcome to bring its historical concerns over the Tamil issue into bilateral negotiations. Regardless of the strong familial bonds between India and Sri Lanka, history has tripped up ties in the past, and any vision for the future that does not include an amicable resolution of these issues will be considered incomplete.

General Studies-01: Culture

6. House panel expresses concern over slow documentation of antiquities

Lost and found: Two of the trafficked antiquities handed over by the U.S. government to India recently.

A Parliamentary Standing Committee has expressed dismay at the slow pace of documentation of antiquities noting that this was critical in proving ownership and reclaiming stolen heritage items. The government has been intent on securing the repatriation of stolen Indian artefacts from abroad.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture noted in its report submitted in the Rajya Sabha on Monday that the National Mission on Monuments and Antiquities (NMMA), which is mandated with documenting the country’s monuments and antiquities, has only been able to document 16.8 lakh antiquities out of a total of 58 lakh which is just about 30%. It says that the Committee was informed by Director General of Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) that the figure of 58 lakh antiquities is only an estimate and there may well be many more.

“If so, it makes the slow pace of documentation under NMMA all the more alarming”, it says.

The NMMA was launched in 2007 to document the country’s monuments and antiquities. This will help in the creation of a database of all antiquities and can be referred to readily in case of fraudulent dealings or theft. It was initially set up for a period of five years from 2007. It was extended for a further five years till 2017 and later merged with the ASI.

Indian heritage items and cultural repositories all over the country come under the purview of various agencies. Some are protected by the ASI, some are under the State government and some are under trusts, local authorities and private ownership.

“A big chunk of movable heritage is scattered all over the country without any vigilance. While theft of antiquities from Centrally Protected Monuments/sites under the ASI and under State governments is immediately reported and FIRs lodged, theft of unprotected antiquities makes retrieval very difficult,” according to the Culture Ministry.

Therefore, the documentation of all such antiquities in the form of digitised records along with maintenance and periodic auditing of inventory is the first step to ensure the safeguarding of India’s tangible cultural heritage.

Last week, the U.S. handed over 105 trafficked antiquities to India.

General Studies-03: Technology

7. Semiconductors: what exactly is India going to manufacture?

A macroshot of a silicon wafer. Each cell is a chip with transistors. 

While advanced nodes range from 10 nm to 5 nm, India’s current focus is around 28 nm or higher. This does not mean we’re attempting to develop outdated chips. While the most advanced nodes are used in devices like smartphones, many applications require legacy nodes

Sand plays a vital role in our daily lives. Used in its raw form, it is the foundation material for building homes. Purify the sand a little more and it becomes the foundation of the semiconductor industry.

India is currently waking up to its opportunities vis-à-vis semiconductors: access to the underlying technologies has been a long-standing dream of our nation. Success on this front would place India among a small, elite group of nations that have access to the tech as well as provide thousands of highly skilled jobs.

In a major setback, however, Foxconn Technology Group recently withdrew its support from its joint venture with Vedanta, Ltd. to establish a semiconductor manufacturing plant in Gujarat. The Indian government has also introduced incentives to catalyse this sector but only time will tell if they will bear fruit.

Initially, the plan was to establish a manufacturing unit for a 40-nm node. After Foxconn’s withdrawal, Vedanta has maintained that it acquired the relevant technologies from another major company. It is also in the process of acquiring the technologies for the 28-nm, 63-nm, and 90-nm nodes.

As a result, the term “semiconductor node” has become the talk of the town. What does it mean exactly?

What is a semiconductor chip?

At its core, a semiconductor chip is composed of transistors, which in turn are meticulously crafted from a specially selected material, typically silicon. One major function of a transistor is to encode information in the form of 0s and 1s, and to manipulate them to produce new information.

These transistors have three parts: the source, the gate, and the drain (or the sink).

The flow of current between the source and the drain points is regulated by the voltage applied to the gate. This arrangement gave rise to the specific meaning of ‘gate’ in computing – analogous to a physical gate, but operating with electrical means rather than mechanical ones.

By manipulating the gate to ‘open’ or ‘close’, the transistor stores and manipulates the data in a semiconductor chip. The semiconductor stores information in the form of bits. Each bit is a logical state that can have one of two values (represented by voltage levels) at a time. The more bits a semiconductor can store and the more quickly it can manipulate them, the more data transistors can process.

The three parts of a transistor are connected to multiple metal layers on top of them that apply voltages, forming a complex mesh of electrical connections with the transistors. The metal layers allow selective access to a transistor and provide the versatility required for the chip to execute multiple tasks.

What does node number mean?

Through history, the names of semiconductor nodes have been based on two numbers: the length of the gate and the distance between adjacent metal strips connected to the gate; the latter, when measured centre to centre, is called the pitch. These dimensions were often equal. For example, the 500-nm node featured a gate length and metal half-pitch of 500 nm. This naming convention started with the invention of the transistor in 1960, with the 50,000 nm (50 microns) node, up to the 350-nm node of the 1990s.

The size of transistors has progressively shrunk over the years. The smaller a transistor becomes, the more of them can be fit on a semiconductor chip, the more data the chip can store, the more computing power there will be. For a sense of scale: in the early 1970s, the transistor density per sq. mm on a chip was around 200 – whereas a chip within an iPhone has around 100 million transistors per squared millimetre. This is the incredible progress researchers and engineers have made in the last half-century.

Yet as transistors continued to become smaller, researchers spotted a discrepancy between the gate length and the metal pitch, rooted in the fact that while smaller transistors generally resulted in faster operation, reducing the size of metal wires created different problems, including not being able to transport data fast enough.

In 1997, a 250-nm semiconductor node hit the market – and also broke the naming convention. Its metal half-pitch contributed to the name, but its gate length, which had been reduced to 200 nm, didn’t. Since then, as the miniaturisation continued, both the half-pitch and gate length ceased to contribute to the node name.

For example, in the 130-nm node, the half-pitch measured 150 nm while the gate length measured 65 nm. Today’s state-of-the-art 7 nm node in fact has no physical parameters that come close to 7 nm. This is because it’s impossible to reliably fabricate features around 7 nm with existing technologies.

From a technical standpoint, node names hold no significance vis-à-vis the actual physical dimensions. Instead, marketers use them to mean one node is better than a previous iteration.

In fact, different companies have also been using “nm” in the name to mean different things. Intel’s 10-nm node and Global Foundry’s 7-nm node have similar gate length (around 54 nm), metal pitch (around 40 nm), and working efficiency. The only information that can be derived from the node number of a particular company is that it is an improvement on its predecessor.

Does India need legacy nodes?

The choice of nodes, just like our choices in life, involve compromises. While advanced nodes range from 10 nm to 5 nm, India’s current focus is around 28 nm or higher. However, this doesn’t mean we are attempting to develop outdated chips. Starting with legacy nodes can offer numerous advantages, including equipping us for long-term success.

While the most advanced nodes are used in devices like smartphones and laptops, many applications require legacy nodes, including robotics, defence, aerospace, industry automation tools, automobiles, Internet of Things, and image sensors – because they are more cost-effective.

The principal revenue source for any fabrication facility, or ‘fab’, is its most advanced node. But almost every commercial fab also maintains the production of legacy nodes to fulfil demands in the aforementioned areas. For example, in 2022, half of the revenue of Taiwan Semiconductors was from 5 and 7 nm. The other half was from 16-250-nm nodes. The revenue from 40 nm alone accounted for 8%.

Indeed, as the demand for electric cars – together with the ever-increasing demand for complementary electronics in the car, like music players – increases, the demand for legacy nodes will also increase. According to an October 2022 report by McKinsey, the value of semiconductor technologies in automobiles in the “user experience and infotainment” category could increase from $11 billion in 2019 to $30 billion in 2030.

Given these facts, the Indian government and private players are sensible to begin their semiconductor journey with the legacy nodes, improving their game over time. Who knows – maybe one day India will be the semiconductors hub of the world.

Awanish Pandey is a senior fellow at CERN and has worked at an associated lab of IMEC, a semiconductor foundry, in Belgium.