PSIR 4 IAS

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  Abraham Accord Abraham Accord = UAE and Israel signed a US-brokered agreement aiming to establish formal relations between the two countries UAE and Israel would establish formal diplomatic relations and in exchange, Israel would suspend its plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank.  With this, UAE will become the 1st Gulf country to establish diplomatic and economic relations with Israel and 3rd Arab nation to recognise Israel after Egypt (in 1979) and Jordan (1994) Gulf countries are the 7-Arab states bordering the Persian Gulf = Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE.  For decades, there has been a consensus among many Arab and Muslim-majority states that they will not end a state of hostility with Israel until it agrees to a deal granting statehood to the Palestinians. About Arab-Israel Conflict Hussein-McMahon (1915) correspondence contained British support of an independent Arab state for Arab assistance in opposing the Ottoma...

India-Vietnam 17th meeting of bilateral Joint Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technological Cooperation Economic and defence engagement: To explore closer cooperation in civil nuclear energy, space, marine sciences and new technologies.India had earlier announced a LoC of US$500 million for procurement of defence equipment from India. Vietnam is negotiating with India for both BrahMos and Akash missiles.  Cooperation at Multilateral and Regional forums including at the UNSC where both are elected to be non-permanent members in 2021, based on their strong convergence of views on many global and regional issues.  Both agreed to step up cooperation and coordination at important regional forums under the ASEAN framework.  Vietnam has supported India's bid to become a permanent member of the UNSC and APEC. Both agreed to enhance their bilateral cooperation in line with India's Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI) and the ASEAN's Outlook on Indo-Pacif...

India-Maldives India announced a slew of new connectivity measures for the Maldives to help the island nation deal with the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic  It include:  An “air bubble agreement ” for travel, a direct ferry service and a submarine cable for telecom connectivity . US $500 million assistance for the Greater Male Connectivity project (GMCP) to connect Male to three neighbouring islands - Villingili, Thilafushi and Gulhifahu islands. GMCP would be the largest civilian infrastructure project in Maldives.  US $400 million LoC comes in addition to a previous LoC of $800 million that was announced in 2018. Strategic Importance of Maldives : Maldives lies in close proximity to the west coast of India and have the potential to allow a 3rd nation’s naval presence in the area Maldives is situated at the hub of commercial sea-lanes running through the Indian Ocean. More than 97% of India’s international trade by volume and 75% by value passes ...

  Japan’s Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI) With COVID-19 and trade tensions between China and the United States threatening supply chains or actually causing bottlenecks, Japan has mooted the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI) as a trilateral approach to trade, with India and Australia as the other two partners. The initiative is at the strategy stage and has some way to go before participants can realise trade benefits. What does supply chain resilience mean? In the context of international trade, supply chain resilience is an approach that helps a country to ensure that it has diversified its supply risk across a clutch of supplying nations instead of being dependent on just one or a few. Unanticipated events — whether natural, such as volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes or even a pandemic; or manmade, such as an armed conflict in a region — that disrupt supplies from a particular country or even intentional halts to trade, could adversely impact economic ac...

  Qn 16. Comment on the decline of political parties and examine whether new social movements shall be an alternate strategy for establishing link between government and society. (2016/II/Q.1b/10m) Political parties are organisations seeking government office. New social movements are group phenomenon articulating specific post-materialist interests. In the modern age, changing roles of political parties and social movements can be linked. A political party  is an organised group with similar political aims and opinions, that seeks to influence public policy, by getting its candidates elected to public office. Decline of political parties  principally stems from the evidence of their decline as agents of representation and as effective links between the government and the people. Reasons  can be— Parties are viewed as political professionals, pursuing power, high office and corruption, and not ‘of the people’ real or perceived oligarchical character (being viewed as ...

  Qn 15. Are the pressure groups in India in a position to fully protect or promote the interests of their members? (2015/II/Q.1c/10m) Pressure groups are a manifestation of group behaviour. In India, as per the context, motive and opportunity, various pressure groups operate. Pressure groups  are forms of organisations, which exert pressure on the political or administrative system of a country to extract benefits out of it and to advance their own interests. These are political actors and sometimes also referred to as civil society organisations, interest groups or catalytic groups. Genesis of pressure groups:  Pressure groups have been in existence in different forms ever since governmental machinery assumed both welfare role and discretionary authority. They took more concrete form in the wake of the industrial revolution and market-oriented economies. In India, pressure groups germinate and function as per their context. Types and operations of pressure groups in Ind...

  Qn 14. Party system in India is neither western nor indigenous. Explain. (2014/II/Q.1a/10m) Party system  refers to the set of all the significant parties in a country, their interactions and the electoral system and voter loyalties that produce it. Party system in India has evolved as a hybrid, with neither purely Indian characteristics, nor western. Party system in India, being neither western nor indigenous,  can be studied by comparing its features: One party dominance : Although Indian polity accommodates a multi-party system, often a single party has dominated. This seems counter to the plural character of India. Also, it is different from the two-party systems of Britain and USA, and the multi-party model in most of western Europe (e.g. in France, Italy etc). In India, the Congress, which was a nationalist movement pre-independence, emerged post-independence as a dominant political party. Morris Jones described the Indian party system as a ‘one party dominance’ s...

“While some measures can be taken, several Chinese investments are quite substantive. It is not possible to fully block them. A worrisome factor is that these Chinese companies have linkages of some sort with the Chinese military,” one government official said on condition of anonymity. In June 2017, China passed a national intelligence law, which gave Beijing powers over Chinese companies’ overseas investments as well — “Military and Security Developments involving the People’s Republic of China 2019”, requires Chinese companies, such as Huawei, ZTE and TikTok to support, provide assistance, and cooperate in China’s national intelligence work, wherever they operate. Moreover, Article 7 of the law states, “Any organisation or citizen shall support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the law... The state protects individuals and organisations that support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence work.” It has direct security implications for...

Qn 13. Examine the comparative advantage of democracy and autocracy in restraining violence. Do you think that autocratic societies are more prone to political violence? Illustrate your answer with a comparative study of a few societies. (2009/II/Q.4/60m) Democracy is a political system where majority rules. Autocracy is a political system where one person governs. Political violence is violence used to achieve political goals. Democracies and autocracies have variable relations with political violence. Etymologically  – ‘demos’ (Greek) meaning ‘people’ and ‘kratos’ (Greek) meaning ‘power’ or ‘authority’.  Examples  - ancient Greece, USA, India, England, France, Italy, Poland etc. Thus,  Democracy is  a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives. Citizens exercise power directly or elect representatives from among themselves to form a governing body (such as a parliament). Politi...