THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 21 March 2020 (Information war (Indian Express))

Information war (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 2:International Relations 
Prelims level:  Infowar
Mains level:Outcome of the infowar between states 

Context:

• The Covid-19 pandemic has done nothing to improve intellects, and the usual suspects are still up to no good. 
• The relatively insignificant OpIndia attributes the spread of infection in Southeast Asia to Muslim evangelism, while applauding Hindus there for continuing to observe festivals undeterred by the peril.

Background:

• The two great powers have barely put a trade war behind them, and now Covid-19 has sparked off an unprecedented infowar in which journalists are cannon fodder. 
• A month ago, the US authorities designated Chinese news organisations as foreign missions – an euphemism for propaganda units. 
• Operationally, it only means that they must provide staff lists and cannot buy property without prior permission, but the message has been delivered. 
• The affected bodies include the Xinhua news agency and the China Global Television Network, Beijing’s face to the world.

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Unprecedented infowar: 

• A war on information is a self-goal for all because there is a huge deficit of knowledge on which action against the pandemic and the management of its economic, social and political fallout can be reasonably based.
• Nations are taking extraordinary steps, and preparing to deliver emergency funding that is often in the tens of billions, if not more. 
• The US has invoked wartime provisions to harness private plant capacity for the public good, and the EU has liberalised access of companies to government funds. 
• Populations under isolation are dealing with restrictions not seen since the Great War, which will have wide-reaching economic effects. 
• But initiatives for containment are actuated largely by prudence, rather than knowledge of the behaviour of the virus.
• Perhaps influenced by the message from the WHO, the media has focused on the need for testing.

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Way forward:

• India is being lauded for widening the ambit of testing to patients with atypical pneumonia, for instance. But the samples are not wholly random – they are drawn from a small fraction of the population who report illness – and has sampling bias built in. 
• To estimate the development of the pandemic and its effects on nations, whole populations would have to be randomly sampled. 
• Only the smallest nations have the wherewithal to do that. Liechtenstein, maybe, but not India or Russia. Besides, statistics indicates probabilistic ranges, not absolute figures. 
• Going by the present data, the death rate could be far lower than that of the annual influenza, or very much higher. Also, terminal health data generally features confusing signal to noise ratios, because there is rarely a single cause of death.

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Prelims Questions:

Q.1) Consider the following statements about the Essential Commodities Act 1955:
1. It controls the production, supply and distribution of, and trade and commerce, in certain commodities.
2. The government can also fix the maximum retail price (MRP) of any packaged product that it declares an essential commodity.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) Neither 1 nor 2

Answer..............................

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Mains Questions:
Q.1)How the covid-19 has sparked off an unprecedented infowar in which journalists are cannon fodder? Comment.