Daily UPSC Mains Question – July 4/2020

GS – 2

Illegal firearms in the state are a serious concern. Explain in detail with respect to UP’s gun problem.150 Words

In the News:

• At least eight UP police personnel, including a DSP, were killed in an encounter with criminals in Kanpur.
• The encounter took place when the police team was on its way to arrest Vikas Dubey, a history sheeter facing 60 criminal cases.

Access to illegal guns:

• With such cases peaking up in the society, it shows that access to illegal guns, especially in the UP-Bihar belt, has become a real problem.
• While Bihar’s Munger region has long been known for manufacture of illegal guns, over the last few years the trade has slowly shifted to UP’s Meerut area due to sustained police crackdown in Munger.
• This brings the hub of illegal firearms manufacturing closer to the national capital. In fact, such is the illegal gun problem in the country that in more than 90% of homicides committed using guns, illegal firearms are involved.

Illegal gun trade:

• India has more than 71 million firearms, the second highest in the world after the US. But only about 10 million of these are licensed and registered. Which means that despite having one of the strictest gun control laws in the world; around 86% of civilian firearms in the country are illegal.
• Unlike the US, India’s law enforcement mechanism is weak, particularly in a state like UP which is too big for effective administration. And a thriving illegal gun industry further challenges the law and order machinery, allowing criminality to pervade other facets of public life like politics.
• The UP government must redouble its efforts to bust the state’s illegal gun trade, before it gets completely out of hand.

GS – 4

Banning Chinese applications was a start. With the current context, explain in detail about defending India’s tech sovereignty. 250 Words

In the News:

• India’s trade deficit with China is $48.5 billion, on the back of China’s near-complete domination of India’s consumer electronics market.
• The resulting economic upside is significant enough to fund China’s entire military expenditure on the Indian border.
• The decision by the Indian government to ban 59 Chinese apps including TikTok and WeChat is a significant statement of intent.
• Section 69A of the Information Technology Act allows the government to block access to any content on the internet if protection of Indian sovereignty requires such blocking.

Privacy policy:

• While any direct connections between companies which own the blocked apps and the Chinese government are difficult to detect, by virtue of China’s national intelligence law every technology company in the country is under a legal obligation to “assist and cooperate with state intelligence”.
• Further, according to China’s cybersecurity law, all companies “must accept supervision from the government”.
• When that government wages war on India’s borders, a strong case exists to follow due procedure and block these applications.
• The privacy policy allows the company to take large amounts of data of Indians including metadata pertaining to location, mobile carrier, browsing history and share it with law enforcement, including in China. This is war by other means.

India’s sovereignty:

• India’s sovereignty is questioned on a daily basis. To chat, we use Whats App, an American app; to make video calls we use Zoom, an American company owned by a Chinese-origin American.
•  To recover lost digital territory, putting shadowy foreign apps under strict scrutiny is only an opening salvo.
• To meaningfully assert our sovereignty, there needs to be constructive focus on select areas which launch India to global technology leadership. India must urgently start three missions to embark on its journey for self-reliance – in solar and battery energy, consumer electronics and AI.
•  Indigenisation of these sectors with world-beating quality and price will be the only way to reduce our trade deficit with China and match its military might. Ultimately, in technology as in the economy; we need to learn from our soldiers on the front.
• We need to steel ourselves for a few years of hardship with knowledge and belief that we will overcome.