Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE
Topics Covered
- Fundamental Duties
- Blockchain Technology
- Facts for Prelims
1 . Fundamental Duties
Context : The Supreme Court asked the Union and the State governments to respond to a petition to enforce the fundamental duties of citizens, including patriotism and unity of the nation, through “comprehensive, well-defined laws”.
About the Case
- A Bench led by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul issued notice in a petition filed by Durga Dutt.
- According to the petition the need to enforce fundamental duties arises from a new illegal trend of protest by protesters in the garb of freedom of speech and expression, by way of blocking of road and rail routes in order to compel the government to meet their demands
- Petition took a leaf from the erstwhile Soviet Constitution and pointed to China’s advent as a “superpower” while arguing that the “need of the hour” is to remind citizens that fundamental duties are as important as fundamental rights under the Constitution.
- Though it agreed that the 11 fundamental duties listed in Article 51A of the Constitution were basically “moral obligations” on citizens, the petition used the prefix “sacrosanct” to define these obligations.
- “It said the time has come to balance rights, liberties and freedoms and obligations. Fundamental duties instil a “profound sense of social responsibility towards the nation”.
- “In the erstwhile USSR Constitution, the rights and duties were placed in the same footing. There is a pressing need to enforce and implement at least some of the fundamental duties.” the petition urged.
- The petition said fundamental duties were “brazenly flouted” by people. These duties were an important tool to protect unity and integrity. Every citizen should know how to respect institutions in this country, it argued.
About Fundamental Duties
- The Fundamental Duties were incorporated in Part IV-A of the Constitution by the Constitution 42nd Amendment Act, 1976, during Emergency under Indira Gandhi’s government.
- Today, there are 11 Fundamental Duties described under Article 51-A, of which 10 were introduced by the 42nd Amendment and the 11th was added by the 86th Amendment in 2002, during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government.
- These are statutory duties, not enforceable by law, but a court may take them into account while adjudicating on a matter.
- The idea behind their incorporation was to emphasise the obligation of the citizen in exchange for the Fundamental Rights that he or she enjoys.
- The concept of Fundamental Duties is taken from the Constitution of Russia.
What are the Fundamental Duties?
The 11 Fundamental Duties are:
- To abide by the constitution and respect its ideals and institutions, the National Flag and the National Anthem
- To cherish and follow the noble ideals which inspired our national struggle for freedom
- To uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India — it is one of the preeminent national obligations of all the citizens of India.
- To defend the country and render national service when called upon to do so
- To promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities; to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women
- To value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture — our cultural heritage is one of the noblest and richest, it is also part of the heritage of the Earth
- To protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wild life and to have compassion for living creatures
- To develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform
- To safeguard public property and to abjure violence
- To strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity so that the nation constantly rises to higher levels of endeavour and achievement
- Who is a parent or guardian to provide opportunities for education to his child or, as the case may be, ward between the age of six and fourteen years.
Note : It is the one on children’s education that was added in 2002 by the 86th Amendment that provided for the Right to Free and Compulsory Education for children in the age group 6-14, with the insertion of Article 21A. It also cast an obligation on parents to provide such opportunities under Article 51A(K).
2 . Blockchain
Context : The Centre has no intent to bar the use of blockchain technologies for functions other than those related to payments and the creation of crypto assets, a Finance Ministry official said on Monday, allaying fears stemming from the government’s ambiguous stance on the legitimacy of crypto assets.
What is Blockchain?
- Blockchain is a system of recording information in a way that makes it difficult or impossible to change, hack, or cheat the system.
- A blockchain is essentially a digital ledger of transactions that is duplicated and distributed across the entire network of computer systems on the blockchain. Each block in the chain contains a number of transactions, and every time a new transaction occurs on the blockchain, a record of that transaction is added to every participant’s ledger. The decentralised database managed by multiple participants is known as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).
- Blockchain is a type of DLT in which transactions are recorded with an immutable cryptographic signature called a hash.
- This means if one block in one chain was changed, it would be immediately apparent it had been tampered with. If hackers wanted to corrupt a blockchain system, they would have to change every block in the chain, across all of the distributed versions of the chain.
3 . Facts for Prelims
Exclusive Economic Zone
- An Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) is a concept adopted at the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (1982), whereby a coastal State assumes jurisdiction over the exploration and exploitation of marine resources in its adjacent section of the continental shelf, taken to be a band extending 200 miles from the shore
- The Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) comprises an area which extends either from the coast, or in federal systems from the seaward boundaries of the constituent states (3 to 12 nautical miles, in most cases) to 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres) off the coast.
- Within this area, nations claim and exercise sovereign rights and exclusive fishery management authority over all fish and all Continental Shelf fishery resources.
Endemic
- Endemic means that the virus will continue circulating in the population and there will be periodic ups and downs when the conditions are favourable to the virus and less favourable to humans. Take, for example, flu which goes up in the winters and when the season is changing because of lower immunity in people or dengue which goes up after monsoons because of the availability of vectors. Covid-19 also may become seasonal and cause disease in the vulnerable
- An important determinant for whether we can “technically” say that the disease is endemic would be a representative sero-survey (population-level survey of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2) and laboratory susceptibility studies
- Disease is endemic only after we see that a majority of the people have immunity against the infection either through previous exposure or vaccination. If a representative sero-survey shows over 90% positivity, we can assume that. But we also need to see whether these antibodies can effectively protect against the current variants and a neutralisation study would tell us that