11 OCTOBER 2023

Topic 1 : Multimodal artificial intelligence

Why in news: For anyone curious about what the next frontier of AI models would look like, all the signs are pointing towards multimodal systems, where users can engage with AI in several ways.
 

About multimodal AI

• Multimodal AI is artificial intelligence that combines multiple types, or modes of data to create more accurate determinations, draw insightful conclusions or make more precise predictions about real-world problems.
• Multimodal AI systems train with and use video, audio, speech, images, text and a range of traditional numerical data sets.

• At its core, multimodal AI follows the familiar AI approach founded on AI models and machine learning.
• AI models are the algorithms that define how data is learned and interpreted, as well as how responses are formulated based on that data.
   

How does multimodality work?

• The past couple of years have seen a stream of multimodal AI systems being released like:
  • OpenAI’s text-to-image model, DALL.E, upon which ChatGPT’s vision capabilities are based, is a multimodal AI model that was released in 2021.
• DALL.E system looks for patterns in visual data that can connect with data of the image descriptions.
• This enables these systems to generate images according to the text prompts that users enter.
• For multimodal audio systems, GPT’s voice processing capabilities are based on its own open-source speech-to-text translation model, called Whisper.
  • Whisper can recognise speech in audio and translate it into simple language text.
     

Applications of multimodal AI

• Automatic detection of hateful memes:
  • In 2020, Meta was working on a multimodal system to automatically detect hateful memes on Facebook.
• Predicting dialogues:
  • Google researchers published a paper in 2021 about a multimodal system they had built to predict the next lines of dialogue in a video.
• MultimodalSensory data:
  • Meta announced a new open-source AI multimodal system called ImageBind that had many modes — text, visual data, audio, temperature and movement readings.
  • It is speculated that future multimodal models could add other sensory data to them, like touch, speech, smell, and brain fMRI signals.
• Pharma industry:
  • Industries like medicine are inherently multimodal.
  • Processing CT scans, or identifying rare genetic variations all need AI systems that can analyse complex datasets of images, and then respond in plain words.
• Speech translation:
  • AI models that perform speech translation are another obvious segment for multimodality.
  • Google Translate uses multiple models as do others like Meta’s SeamlessM4T model.
    • The model can perform text-to-speech, speech-to-text, speech-to-speech and text-to-text translations for around 100 languages.Topic 2 : Electoral bonds scheme

Why in news: The Supreme Court said that it will hear petitions challenging the electoral bonds scheme.
 

What is the electoral bonds scheme?

• Announced in the 2017 Union Budget, electoral bonds are interest-free bearer instruments used to donate money anonymously to political parties. Simply put, anyone can donate money to political parties through them.
• Such bonds are sold in multiples of Rs 1,000, Rs 10,000, Rs 1 lakh, Rs 10 lakh, and Rs 1 crore.
• These can be bought from authorised branches of the State Bank of India (SBI).
• As such, a donor is required to pay the amount via a cheque or a digital mechanism (cash is not allowed) to the authorised SBI branch.
• The political parties can choose to encash such bonds within 15 days of receiving them and fund their electoral expenses.
• There is no limit on the number of bonds an individual or company can purchase.
• If a party hasn’t enchased any bonds within 15 days, SBI deposits these into the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund.

Why is the scheme facing a legal challenge?

• No transparency:
  • The scheme have been challenged as an obscure funding system which is unchecked by any authority.
  • The anonymity of donors under the scheme further makes the process opaque instead of meeting its aim of bringing about transparency.
• Unlimited funding:
  • Before the electoral bonds scheme was announced, there was a cap on how much a company could donate to a political party: 7.5 per cent of the average net profits of a company in the preceding three years.
  • However, the government amended the Companies Act to remove this limit, opening the doors to unlimited funding by corporate India.
  • The amendments to the Companies Act 2013 will lead to private corporate interests taking precedence over the needs and rights of the people of the State in policy considerations.
• Arbitrary instrument in hands of government:
  • It has been claimed that because such bonds are sold via a government-owned bank (SBI), it leaves the door open for the government to know exactly who is funding its opponents.
  • This, in turn, allows the possibility for the government of the day to either extort money, especially from the big companies or victimise them for not funding the ruling party — either way providing an unfair advantage to the party in power.
• No benefit to common man:
  • One of the arguments for introducing electoral bonds was to allow common people to easily fund political parties of their choice but more than 90% of the bonds have been of the highest denomination (Rs 1 crore) as of 2022.

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Topic 3 : India-Maldives ties

Why in news: Following the results of Presidential elections, there has been intense focus on what Muizzu’s win means for Maldives-India relations, as well as the country’s foreign policy.
 

About the ties between the two countries:

• Bilateral Assistance
  • India is a leading development partner of Maldives and has established many of the leading institutions of Maldives including:
    • the Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital (IGMH),
    • Faculty of Engineering Technology (FET) and
    • Faculty of Hospitality & Tourism Studies (IMFFHTS
    • Technology Adoption Programme in Education Sector in Maldives Composite Training Centre for MNDF
    • Coastal Radar system
    • Construction of National Police Academy (ISLES) Construction of new Ministry of Defence Headquarters
• Economic and Commercial relations
  • India and Maldives signed a trade agreement in 1981, which provides for export of essential commodities.
  • India-Maldives bilateral trade now stands at Rs.700 crores.
  • Indian exports to the Maldives include:
    • agriculture and poultry produce,
    • sugar,
    • fruits and vegetables,
    • spices,
    • rice,
    • wheat flour (Atta),
    • textiles,
    • drugs and medicines,
    • a variety of engineering and industrial products,
    • sand and aggregate,
    • cement for building etc.
  • India imports primarily scrap metals from the Maldives.
• Cultural relations
  • The India Cultural Center (ICC), established in Male in July 2011, conducts regular courses in yoga, classical music and dance.
• Indian Community
  • Indians are the second largest expatriate community in the Maldives with approximate strength of around 22,000.
  • Indian expatriate community consists of workers as well as professionals like doctors, teachers, accountants, managers, engineers, nurses and technicians etc.
  • Of the country’s approximately 400 doctors, over 125 are Indians.
  • Similarly around 25% of teachers in Maldives are Indians, mostly at middle and senior levels.

Several concerns in Maldives-India relations:

• Concerns over Indian helicopters in Maldives:
  • The first is the long-standing controversy over the two Dhruv Advanced Light Helicopters (ALF), based in Addu Atoll and Hanimaadhoo, that were given by India to the Maldives in 2010 and in 2015.
  • They have been used for maritime weather surveillance, ocean search-and-rescue operations, and for airlifting patients between islands.
  • According to the terms of bilateral agreements between the two countries, Indian officers had been sent to the Maldives to train the Maldives National Defence Force, under whose command these helicopters operate.
  • While these helicopters were for humanitarian purposes, supporters of the anti-India campaign have claimed that by giving the aircraft, India was attempting to create a military presence in the country.
  • The ‘India Out’ campaign was rooted in this controversy surrounding the ALF choppers and India’s reported refusal to take them back.
• Lack of transparency:
  • Another recurring complaint by supporters of the ‘India Out’ campaign has been the “lack of transparency” in agreements signed between the Solih government and India, claiming they have not been shared and discussed in the Maldives Parliament citing national security.

Concerns for India:

• Cancellationof agreements:
  • Cancelling bilateral agreements with India would require the Maldives to cough up financial compensation running into millions of dollars, which it may not be in a position to make.
  • In a report published in 2022, the World Bank had said that although the Maldives was not at immediate risk of a crisis, the country needs to raise revenues and implement several expenditure and debt reforms to avoid an economic crisis in the future.
  • Even if the new goverment reviews agreements signed previously, it will be compelled to turn to other allies for assistance to fill the subsequent gap.
• Pro-china policy:
  • Another concern in India has been about Muizzu’s strong pro-China tilt.
     

Way forward:

• From the perspective of the Maldives, one way to achieve good relations with India would be that both countries have clear and open communication channels to address any misunderstandings.
• They should ensure that the actual impact on Maldives-India relations is based on concrete actions rather than speculative narratives.
• While the ‘India Out’ campaign has claimed it is protesting Indian military presence, the name has been interpreted as singling out and targeting the country.
• This had a butterfly effect, impacting all aspects of exchanges between the two countries.Topic 4 : Baiga tribal group gets habitat rights

Why in news: In Chhattisgarh, the Baiga Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) became the second to get habitat rights in the state, after the Kamar PVTG.
 

About the Baigas:

• The Baiga is one of the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs).
• The Baiga are an ethnic group found in central India.
• The Baiga tribes practice shifting cultivation, called ‘bewar’ or ‘dahiya’.Who are the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups 
• Particularly vulnerable tribal group (PVTG) is a sub-classification of Scheduled Tribe, who are most vulnerable in certain parameter then the other Scheduled Tribe community.
• Government of India created PVTG list with the purpose of enabling improvement in the conditions of those communities in priority basis.
• During the fourth Five Year Plan a sub-category was created within Scheduled Tribes to identify groups that considered to be at a lower level of development.
  • This was created based on the Dhebar Commission report and other studies.
  • This sub-category was named “Primitive tribal group“.
  • The features of such a group include a pre-agricultural system of existence, that is practice of hunting and gathering, zero or negative population growth, extremely low level of literacy in comparison with other tribal groups.
  • Groups that satisfied any one of the criterion were considered as PTG.
• There are total of 75 PVTGs in India.
• No new group was declared as PTG on the basis of the 2001 census.
• In 2006 the government of India renamed “Primitive tribal group” as Particularly vulnerable tribal group.
• Criteriafor identifiaction of PVTGs:
  • Pre-agricultural level of technology
  • Low level of literacy
  • Economic backwardness
  • A declining or stagnant population.
• The government of India initiated the identification of these PVTGs in 1975, and an additional 23 groups were added to the category in 1993.
• Need for identification:
  • Due to their vulnerability, PVTGs require greater support and development compared to other tribal groups.
  • The more developed and assertive tribal groups often receive a larger portion of tribal development funds, leaving PVTGs in need of more targeted support. 

What are habitat rights?

• Habitat rights recognition provides the community concerned rights over:
  • their customary territory of habitation,
  • socio-cultural practices,
  • economic and livelihood means,
  • intellectual knowledge of biodiversity and ecology,
  • traditional knowledge of use of natural resources,
  •  protection and conservation of their natural and cultural heritage.
• Habitat rights safeguard and promote traditional livelihood and ecological knowledge passed down through generations.
• They also help converge different government schemes and initiatives from various departments to empower PVTG communities to develop their habitats.

What does ‘habitat’ mean, under what law are such rights granted?

• Habitat rights are given to PVTGs under The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 also known as the Forest Rights Act (FRA).
• According to FRA, Habitat includes the area comprising the customary habitat and such other habitats in reserved forests and protected forests of primitive tribal groups and pre-agricultural communities and other forest dwelling Scheduled Tribes.

Can habitat rights be used to stop activities like mining?

• The habitat rights will help the PVTG protect their habitat from developmental activities harmful to them.
• The title may not be an ownership title in the nature of a private property owner, but consent and consultation of the gram sabha will be needed for any developmental activity.
• Grant of habitat rights under the Forest Rights Act provide an additional layer of legal protection.
• If any kind of development activity is hampering their habitat rights, the tribal group concerned can take up the matter with the administration under the Forest Rights Act, and if not resolved, the matter can be taken to court.

How many states have recognised habitat rights?

• Out of 75 PVTG in India, only three have habitat rights:
  • The Bharia PVTG in Madhya Pradesh was the first,
  • the Kamar tribe and
  • the Baiga tribe in Chhattisgarh.

How many PVTGs does Chhattisgarh have?

• There are seven PVTGs in Chhattisgarh. These are:
  • Kamar, Baiga, Pahadi Korba, Abujhmadiya, Birhor, Pando and Bhujia.
  • While the first five tribes have been declared PVTG by the central government, the remaining two, Pando and Bhujia, have been given the tag by the state government.
• The total population of PVTG tribes in Chhattisgarh as per the 2015-2016 survey is 2.50 lakh while the population of tribals in Chhattisgarh as per the 2011 census is 78.22 lakh.Topic 5 : Economics Nobel 2023
   (updated from 10^th October 2023)

Why in news: Recently, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences for 2023 was being awarded to Harvard University Professor Claudia Goldin for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes.
 

Key details:

• Her work is the first comprehensive account of women’s earning and labour market participation through the centuries.
• Professor Claudia Goldin is only the third women to have won the prize (for Economics) and the first to do it solo.
• Goldin’s pathbreaking work has shed light on the participation of women in the labour market over the past 200 years.
• She also explained why the pay gap between men and women refuses to close even as many women are likely to be better educated than men in high income countries.
• While her research focused on the US, her findings are applicable to many other countries.

Key findings:

• Professor Goldin trawled through the archives of about 200 years of the United States to demonstrate how and why gender differences in earnings and employment rates have changed over time.
• The most significant of her observations was that female participation in the labour market did not exhibit an upward trend over the entire period, but rather a U-shaped curve.
• In other words, economic growth ensuing in varied periods did not translate to reducing gender differences in the labour market.
• Several factors have historically influenced and still influence the supply and demand for female labour. These include:
  • opportunities for combining paid work and a family,
  • decisions (and expectations) related to pursuing education and raising children,
  • technical innovations,
  • laws and norms, and
  • the structural transformation in an economy.
• Older data gave more perspective
  • Goldin reached back to older data to reveal that before industrialisation, more women were likely to have been involved in economic activity related to agriculture and various cottage industries.
  • With greater industrialisation, work was concentrated in factories, and women found it difficult to leave their homes and travel to work.
  • This trend reversed in the early 20th century, with the growth of the services sector.
• The limitations of marriage
  • Goldin’s work found that by the beginning of the 20th century, while around 20 per cent of women were gainfully employed, the share of married women was only five per cent.
  • Goldin noted that legislation known as “marriage bars” often prevented married women from continuing their employment as teachers or office workers
  • Goldin also demonstrated that there was another important factor in the slow reduction of the gap between men’s and women’s rates of employment, namely women’s expectations for their future careers.
    • Women’s expectations were based on the experience of their mothers, and thus their educational and professional decisions were not taken with the expectation of having a long, uninterrupted, and fruitful career.
• Contraceptive pills
  • By the end of the 1960s, as easy-to-use contraceptive pills became more popular, women could exercise greater control over childbirth and actually plan careers and motherhood.
  • Women also ventured beyond the services sector, studying subjects like law, economics, and medicine.
  • Now, women were catching up in terms of education and fields of employment.
  • However, one glaring gap still remained and continues to this day — the gender-based pay gap.
• Pay gap and parenthood
  • Till the time men and women worked in factories, where the pay depended on the day’s countable output, the pay gap was not too high.
  • It became wider when monthly pay contracts came into the picture.
  • One factor significantly impacted how men were paid versus women — childbirth.
    • Once a child was born, they were also punished for this at the work front in terms of a slower rise on the payscale.

How did female participation move between agrarian and industrial era?

• The participation of married women decreased with the transition from an agrarian to an industrialised society in the early nineteenth century.
• It started to increase again with the growth of the services sector in the early nineteenth century.
• Incorrect assessment of data:
  • The first of Professor Goldin’s observations was about how female participation in labour force was incorrectly assessed and thereby, (incorrectly) stated in Censuses and public data.
  • For example, a standard practice entailed categorising women’s occupation as “wife” in records.
  • This was incorrect because the identification did not account for activities other than domestic labour such as working alongside husbands in farms or family businesses, in cottage industries or production setups at home, such as with textiles or dairy goods.
  • Correcting the data about female participation established that the proportion of women in the labour force was considerably greater at the end of the 1890s than was shown in the official statistics.
  • They enumerate that the employment rate for married women was three times greater than the registered Census.
• Impact of industrialisation:
  • Prior to the advent of industrialisation in the nineteenth century, women were more likely to participate in the labour force.
  • This was because industrialisation had made it harder for married women to work from home since they would not be able to balance the demands of their family.
  • Even though her research held that unmarried women were employed in manufacturing during the industrial era, the overall female force had declined.
• These two factors combined form the basis of the claim that there is no historical consistency between female engagement in the overall labour force and economic growth.

What made the curve move upwards?

• The beginning of the twentieth century marked the upward trajectory for female participation in the labour force.
• Technological progress, the growth of the service sector and increased levels of education brought an increasing demand for more labour.
• However, social stigma, legislation and other institutional barriers limited their influence.
• Two factors are of particular importance here, namely:
  • marriage bars (the practice of firing and not hiring women once married)
    • It peaked during the 1930s’ Great Depression and the ensuing years — preventing women from continuing as teachers or office workers.
  • prevalent expectations about their future careers.
    • Women at varied points were subject to different circumstances when deciding on their life choices.
    • Their decisions could be based on an assessment of expectations that might not come to fruition.
• The exit for an extended period after marriage also explains why the average employment level for women increased by so little, despite the massive influx of women into the labour market in the latter half of the century.

When did pay discrimination start?

• Pay discrimination (that is, employees being paid differently because of factors such as colour, religion or sex, among others) increased significantly with the growth of the services sector in the twentieth century.
• This was surprisingly at a time when the earnings gap between men and women had decreased and when piecework contracts were being increasingly replaced with payments on monthly basis.
• Thus, the expectations paradigm emerged again, as employers would prefer employees with long and uninterrupted careers.About the Economics Nobel
• A Nobel Prize in Economics was not part of Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will that established the other prizes.
• The prize is based on a donation received by the Nobel Foundation in 1968 from Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden’s central bank), on the bank’s 300th anniversary.
• It is formally called the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
• Goldin is only the third woman to win this honour.
• In 2009, Elinor Ostrom got the award along with Oliver E Williamson.
• In 2019, Esther Duflo shared it with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer.Topic 6 : What is Hamas, the Palestinian militant group?

Why in news:  Hamas carried out its largest attack on Israel from Gaza, killing at least 900 people and leaving the bloodiest blow to Israel in decades. In response, Israel has declared war on the outfit.
 

Origin of the group:

• The roots of Hamas go back to the Muslim Brotherhood.
• The Brotherhood, established by Egyptian Islamist Hasan al-Banna in 1928, made a presence in the British-ruled Palestine in the 1930s.
• Its focus had been on reorienting Muslim society.
• During this time, Israel established contacts with the Brotherhood leadership in the occupied territories.
• Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, cleric of the Brotherhood, established al-Mujamma’ al-Islam (The Islamic Centre) in 1973.
• Israel recognised the Centre first as a charity and then as an association, which allowed Yassin to raise funds, build mosques and set up educational institutions, including the Islamic University of Gaza.

The rise of Hamas

• Hamas was established after the first intifada broke out in 1987.
• The Israeli occupied territories were swept by a mass uprising.
• The Brotherhood found it an opportunity to enter the struggle against the occupation.
• Hamas issued a charter on August 19, 1988 which was studded with anti-Semitic remarks.
• It opposed the Oslo agreement, which allowed the formation of the Palestinian Authority.
• In the 2006 legislative elections in the Palestinian territory, Hamas won 74 out of the 132 seats.
• This led to violent clashes between Fatah (opposition) and Hamas.
• Fatah ousted Hamas from the West Bank and Hamas ousted the former from Gaza in 2007.
• Since then, Hamas is the government in Gaza.
• In 2017, it adopted a new charter from which the anti-Semitic remarks of the original charter were expunged.
• The new document stated Hamas is not seeking war with the Jewish people — but with Zionism that drives the occupation of Palestine.Topic 7 : A-HELP programme

Why in news: The Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying launched the ‘A-HELP’ programme at Jharkhand.

About the programme:

• Nodal ministries:
  • Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying and the Ministry of Rural Development.
• Aim and purpose:
  • To empower women by engaging them as trained agents who contribute significantly to:
    • disease control,
    • artificial insemination
    • animal tagging, and
    • livestock insurance.
• A-HELP’ are community-based women activists who assist in implementing various schemes and in providing information to the farmers at the grassroots level