Answers: Mains Marathon – UPSC Mains Current Affairs Questions – July 24, 2018

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Q.1) How Artificial Intelligence (AI) based healthcare solutions can help in making healthcare services more proactive? What are the challenges that may prove to be disruptive in development of India as an AI powerhouse? (GS-3)

Answer: AI is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to natural intelligence displayed by humans and other animals.

AI can be used to develop many solutions for development, one of them being healthcare. Healthcare is one of the most dynamic, yet challenging, sectors in India.

How they help in proactive healthcare services

Services:

1. healthcare: augment the scarce personnel and lab facilities
2. hospital access: overcome the barriers to access and solve the accessibility problem
3. robotic surgeries: for complex cancers and surgeries which require more precision
4. diagnostics: with less cost and more access

Research:

1. disease monitoring and surveillance:
2. disease predictions and analysis:

Challenges that prevent India as AI powerhouse

1. Lack of enabling data ecosystems
2. Low intensity of AI research
3. Core research in fundamental technologies
4. Transforming core research into market applications
5. Inadequate availability of AI expertise, manpower and skilling opportunities
6. High resource cost and low awareness for adopting AI in business processes
7. Unclear privacy, security and ethical regulations
8. Unattractive Intellectual Property regime to incentivise research and adoption of AI.

Q.2) Cauvery water dispute is a long standing one and still a major bone of contention between neighbouring states. Provide a brief account of Cauvery water issue. What are issues that despite Supreme Court’s intervention, issue has not resolved yet? (GS-2)

Answer: The sharing of Cauvery water has been the source of a serious conflict between the two states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

History of the conflict

1. The genesis of the conflict is from agreements in 1892 and 1924 between the Madras Presidencyand Kingdom of Mysore.
2. Based on the inflow Karnataka is demanding its due share of water from the river. It states that the pre-independence agreements are invalid and are skewed heavily in the favour of the Madras Presidency, and has demanded a renegotiated.
3. Tamil Nadu pleads that it has already developed lot of land and is heavily dependent on the existing pattern of usage. Any change in this pattern will adversely affect the livelihood of millions of farmers in the state.
4. A tribunal was constituted in 1990 to look into the matter. The tribunal delivered its final verdict in 2007. It allocated 419 TMCof water annually to Tamil Nadu and 270 TMC to Karnataka; 30 TMC of Cauvery river water to Keralaand 7 TMC to Puducherry. Karnataka was ordered to release 192 TMC of water to Tamil Nadu in a normal year from June to May.

SC intervention

In 2018, Supreme Court reduced 14.75 tmc water allocation to Tamilnadu and now Karnataka is to release only 177 tmc of water to Tamilnadu for next 15 years. It also mandated to formally constitute the Kavery river management board by the union government

Issues not settled

1.  Centre has failed to comply with the apex court’s order to set up the Cauvery Management Board 
2. lack of neutral experts to ensure parity in the distribution of water. 
3. appeals and delays from the states and centre is making it a political process.
4. constitution of a single permanent tribunal whose verdict will be binding on all parties in river water disputes.

Q.3) Although Swadeshi movement was able to draw the hitherto untouched section into active participation in national politics but still a large section remained out of it. Discuss and bring out the reasons of decline of Swadeshi movement. (GS-1)

Answer: Swadeshi movement that began with the protest against Bengal partition is the first national level mass movement in the Indian freedom struggle.

Untouched sections who participated:

1. The social base of the national movements now extended to include a certain zamindari section
2. lower middle class in the cities and small towns
3. school and college students
4. Women came out of their homes for the first time and joined processions and picketing
5. working class – for the first time, an attempt was made to give a political direction to the economic grievances of the working class.

Sections remained out:

1. unable to make much headway in mobilizing the peasantry especially its lower rungs
2. it was not able to gamer the support of the mass of Muslims: British policy of divide and rule was to a large extent responsible for this
3. some of the forms of mobilization adopted by the Swadeshi Movement had certain unintended negative consequences; traditional popular customs, festivals and institutions for mobilizing the masses affected the turnout

By mid-1908, the open phase of the Swadeshi movement with its mass character had suffered several setbacks.

Reasons for decline:

1. government came down with a heavy hand. Repression took the form of controls and bans on public meetings, processions and the press Eg., brutal suppression of Barisal conference
2. internal squabbles leading to the 1907 split in the Congress weakened the movement
3. though the Swadeshi Movement had spread outside Bengal, the rest of the country was not as yet fully prepared to adopt the new style and stage of politics.
4. it failed to give an effective organization and party structure to various techniques ranging from passive resistance to non-violent non-cooperation
5. the very logic of mass movements means that they cannot be sustained endlessly at the same pitch of militancy and self-sacrifice

Q-4) Discuss the major contributions and factors that led to the failure of Ghadar movement.

Answer: The Ghadar is among the significant revolutionary movement at the time of First World War. It was planned by Indians settled abroad to free their motherland.

Contributions of the movement:

1. The entire nationalist critique of colonialism was carried in a powerful and simple form, to the mass of Indian immigrants.
2. Ghadar and other publications was strongly secular in tone. Leaders belonging to different religions and regions were accepted by the movement.
3. It helped in the creation of a truly internationalist outlook among the Ghadar revolutionaries.
4. its contribution to the politicization of the Punjabi peasant community.
5. brought back within themselves a newly awakened political awareness fueled by their experiences as Indian emigrants in the white man’s dominions.
6. made an attempt to utilise the British vulnerability during world war and revived revolutionary terrorism in India.

Reasons for failure of Ghadar movement:

1. they completely under-estimated the extent of preparation necessary at every level before an attempt at an armed revolt.
2. They underestimated the strength of the British in India, both their aimed and organizational might as well as the ideological foundations of their rule
3. failed to generate an effective and sustained leadership that was capable of integrating the various aspects of the movement.
4. it’s almost none existent organizational structure-the Ghadar Movement was sustained, more by the enthusiasm of the militants than by their effective organization.
5. Punjabi peasants lack of support – In 1915, there were few men who were prepared to stake their prosperity against the chancy outcome of the Ghadar rebellion.