Edutorial 1: The New Abnormal: Global institutions, consensus are fraying under pressure from protectionism
Context:
- In the recent times, there is continuous rise in de-globalisation and protectionism in the world.
- While it is natural for countries to prioritise their interests, the environment of growing distrust and reactionary policy actions is worrying. The public posturing of leadership, without fully comprehending the consequences, is even more concerning.
It compromises the open and fair-trade practices as per the WTO rules:
- The supply-side disruptions during the last three years have wreaked havoc on the world economy.
- To demonstrate resilience, countries have been racing to adopt policies that ostensibly build self-reliance and self-sufficiency.
- Some policies also aim at exploiting the opportunity and becoming a part of the disrupted global supply chains. Many such policies run contrary to the WTO rules.
Protectionist policies of Major economies of the World:
- In the world’s largest economy, “America first” policies are directed at protecting US producers from foreign competition. The Inflation Reduction Act smacks of protectionism.
- The European Commission has reacted to the Inflation Reduction Act by presenting its own Green Deal Industrial Plan with state aid to help Europe in clean tech products manufacturing.
- The EU has also come out with Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism to protect its industries from imports from jurisdictions with “less stringent” climate policies.
- High global inflation is another unusual phenomenon. For many decades in the pre-Covid era, central banks in the West struggled to increase inflation to near 2 per cent.. Some are even contemplating increasing the inflation targe
India’s trade policy position:
- India stayed away from many important regional pluralistic trade agreements and other free trade agreements in the name of “national interest”.
- This inward-looking stance contradicts our aspiration to be a part of global value supply chains. It is only recently that we have expressed our eagerness to finalise long-pending trade agreements.
- to restrict trade with and investments from China hasn’t worked. And considering China’s share in the world economy and global export market, it isn’t likely to work.
- However, India’s programme; atmanirbharta has kept import tariffs high. These further fuels the high-cost economy besides bringing in production inefficiencies.
- The existing PLI scheme should be critically reviewed and its objectives spelt out. Any industry in which India lacks the basic global comparative advantage or whose survival without government support is doubtful in the medium term, shouldn’t be considered under this scheme
Conclusion:
- The basic structure of the world order, established over decades through trust, multilateral institutions and mutually beneficial and well-intentioned global negotiations in various fora, is under a cloud.
- The theme of India’s G20 presidency — Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam or One earth, one family, One future – frames a difficult task.
- The good news is that the major actors involved in or responsible for global chaos are members of this group and will come together at the discussion table in the coming months.
- And recently G20 Finance Ministers ending without a communique is not a good sign, However global efforts need to me made at multilateral and global platform like WTO for fair and open trade and services among the global economies.
Editorial 2: What is ALMA telescope, that will soon get a ‘new brain’?
Recent Context:
- Recently, the journal Science reported that The Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) — a radio telescope comprising 66 antennas located in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile is set to get software and hardware upgrades that will help it collect much more data and produce sharper images than ever before,
- The most significant modernisation made to ALMA will be the replacement of its correlator, a supercomputer that combines the input from individual antennas and allows astronomers to produce highly detailed images of celestial objects
About Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA)
- ALMA is a state-of-the-art telescope that studies celestial objects at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths. They can penetrate through dust clouds and help astronomers examine dim and distant galaxies and stars out there. It also has extraordinary sensitivity, which allows it to detect even extremely faint radio signals.
- the telescope consists of 66 high-precision antennas, spread over a distance of up to 16 km
- Each antenna is outfitted with a series of receivers, and each receiver is tuned to a specific range of wavelengths on the electromagnetic spectrum.
- The antennas can be moved closer together or farther apart for different perspectives – like the zoom lens of a camera. The result is magnificent, never-before-seen imagery of deepest, darkest space,” according to a report published by Science Node. Producing a single image from all the antennas is done by the correlator
- Fully functional since 2013, the radio telescope was designed, planned and constructed by the US’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Over the years, it has helped astronomers make groundbreaking discoveries, including that of starburst galaxies and the dust formation inside supernova 1987A.
Why is ALMA located in Chile’s Atacama Desert?
- ALMA is situated at an altitude of 16,570 feet (5,050 metres) above sea level on the Chajnantor plateau in Chile’s Atacama Desert as the millimetre and submillimetre waves observed by it are very susceptible to atmospheric water vapour absorption on Earth.
- Moreover, the desert is the driest place in the world, meaning most of the nights here are clear of clouds and free of light-distorting moisture — making it a perfect location for examining the universe.
- “For travelling from Japan, it takes 40 hours to get to the ALMA site in Chile including connection time. In spite of such a long distance, the selected site is still the ultimate observing site on Earth with ideal conditions for the ALMA telescope”,
Science goals of ALMA:
- Star formation, molecular clouds, early Universe.
What are some of the notable discoveries made by ALMA?
- With ALMA’s capability of capturing high-resolution images of gas and dust from which stars and planets are formed and materials that could be building blocks of life, scientists are trying to find answers to age-old questions of our cosmic origins.
- One of the earliest findings came in 2013 when it discovered starburst galaxies earlier in the universe’s history than they were previously thought to have existed. “These newly discovered galaxies represent what today’s most massive galaxies looked like in their energetic, star-forming youth”
- N, ALMA provided detailed images of the protoplanetary disc surrounding HL Tauri — a very young T Tauri star in the constellation Taurus, approximately 450 light years from Earth — and “transformed the previously accepted theories about the planetary formation”
- In 2015, the telescope helped scientists observe a phenomenon known as the Einstein ring, which occurs when light from a galaxy or star passes by a massive object en route to the Earth, in extraordinary detail.
- More recently, as part of the Event Horizon Telescope project, a large telescope array consisting of a global network of radio telescopes, it provided the first image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy. The image was unveiled by scientists in May 2022.