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China’s satellite tracking vessel Yuan Wang 5 on August 16 arrived at Sri Lanka’s southern Hambantota Port, despite India and the U.S. voicing concern with Colombo over the military ship’s visit.
Hours after the vessel reached the Sri Lankan port, China said the “marine scientific research” activities of the vessel were “consistent with international law” and did not impact “any other country’s security interests”.
According to Colombo-based official sources, both India and the U.S. had conveyed their apprehensions to the Sri Lankan Government at the highest level, citing the vessel’s “military capabilities” while in the Indian Ocean Region.
Apparently addressing the concerns, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on August 16 said, “I want to stress again that the marine scientific research activities of the Yuan Wang 5 ship are consistent with international law and international common practice. They do not affect the security and the economic interests of any country and should not be obstructed by any third party.
China earlier slammed New Delhi’s apprehensions as “unjustified” and “morally irresponsible”, and “urged” New Delhi to “not disturb normal exchanges” between the two countries. New Delhi “rejected insinuations” that Sri Lanka was pressured.
Although the vessel’s arrival was deferred by a few days subsequent to Colombo’s request, the ship will be docked at Hambantota for a week as was earlier planned. “It will take some time for the Yuan Wang 5 research ship to complete the replenishment of necessary supplies,” Mr. Wang said at the daily briefing in Beijing.
China, he said, is ready to work with Sri Lankan side to “consolidate political mutual trust, deepen win-win cooperation and promote sound and steady development of bilateral relations”.
Sri Lanka has maintained strong ties with China over the years. Colombo recently said it firmly backs the ‘One China Policy’, and asked countries to “refrain from provocations”, just after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit to Taiwan.
Further, the Sri Lankan Government is counting on China to help in the island’s efforts to restructure its external debt, to be eligible for crucial IMF support amid an agonising economic downturn. Chinese loans account for about 10% of Sri Lanka’s total foreign debt.
China extended about $2.8 billion to Sri Lanka soon after the pandemic hit but has not stepped in much this year, even as the island’s economy collapsed rapidly.
Beijing, which announced a $74 million grant in May, is yet to respond to Colombo’s request for bridge financing, reportedly totally $4 billion. India has extended about $3.8 billion this year to help Sri Lanka cope with its economic crisis.
Explainer
Stepping back from an ecological abyss (Page no: 8)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Chipko. Silent Valley. Narmada. Koel-Karo. Growing up in the 1970s and the early 1980s, many of us who were passionate about environmental issues were inspired by these and other movements.
As the government too responded with a series of forest, wildlife, environment-related laws and policies, there was hope that India would be able to balance its development needs with the sustenance of its ecological foundations.
The prospects today seem far gloomier than they did in the 1980s. Four hundred and eighty million Indians face the world’s most extreme air pollution levels.
According to NITI Aayog, “600 million people in India face high to extreme water stress... with nearly 70% of water being contaminated; India is placed at 120th amongst 122 countries in the water quality index”.
Land degradation and desertification are taking place over 30% of our land, according to the Indian Space Research Organisation. Average levels of land productivity are one-fourth or one-fifth of what they could be; pumping in artificial fertilizers restores a bit, but at the cost of pushing the soil further towards death.
Food items in most cities have pesticide residues well above human safety levels. The World Bank — itself partly responsible for pushing India into unsustainable pathways — reported in 2013 that India was losing 5.7% of GDP due to environmental damage.
The latest global environmental ranking by Yale and Columbia Universities puts India at the bottom among 180 countries; while flawed in many respects, including how it lets rich countries off the hook, it is nevertheless reflective of what is happening on the ground.
All this evidence has still not penetrated the minds of politicians and economists setting development priorities. The obsession with economic growth — despite growing evidence of GDP being a very poor indicator of human well-being — treats the natural environment (and related livelihoods) as fodder for exploitation.
Despite public posturing about the Sustainable Development Goals, the natural elements without which we would all be dead — land, water, biodiversity, air — continue to be ignored or mauled.
In fact, the Government is dismantling environmental and social security policies to favour corporate access to land and natural resources, such as the latest proposals to amend forest and environment laws, and the Environment Impact Assessment notification.
Its priority programmes include building massive physical infrastructure that only disrupts the natural infrastructure we desperately need to protect. For instance, the 2022-23 Budget has an allocation for highways that alone is 40 times greater than the Budget of the Ministry for Environment, Forests and Climate Change. Of what use is faster and faster mobility, if at the end of the journey we still have air and water and food that are killing us?
High points in science, technology and innovation (Page no: 8)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Reflecting on 75 years of Independence makes one proud of the socio-economic developments of our country. The long period of colonial rule had robbed India of most of its wealth, and, more importantly, the skills required to sustain economic growth.
Starting off as a poor country in 1947, with its GDP a mere ₹2.7 lakh crore, and food grain production a meagre 50 million tonnes, the challenges of educating the people, feeding the population, implementing democracy, promoting industry and trade, and ensuring the country’s security remained daunting.
It is against this backdrop that the responsibility of developing the science, technology and innovation ecosystem fell upon the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), which had been founded in 1942.
The immediate priority of the CSIR was to establish a number of national laboratories under its umbrella, and also promote similar organisations independently.
The CSIR started five of its own laboratories with support from the government and industry and raising resources through crowdsourcing.
Similarly, in collaboration with the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and the Government of Bombay, the Government of India (through the CSIR) started the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, with the CSIR providing substantial financial support in the initial years.
Among the first examples of finding science and technology-based solutions was the harmonisation of existing varied calendar systems.
A committee under the Chairmanship of MeghnadSahawas formed to address this issue. The committee’s report was published by the CSIR in 1955, which then led to its acceptance as the national calendar, now one of the national identity elements.
Another example in the early years of Independence was to address the challenges in conducting democratic elections — preventing frauds, including double voting by the same person.
The CSIR’s National Physical Laboratory developed the indelible ink made up of silver nitrate to address this concern. The indelible ink is used even today and exported to many countries, undoubtedly remaining one of the prized gifts of the CSIR to the nation.
At the time of Independence, India did not have well-established industries in many sectors. The informal work sector was also highly unorganised without their skills being developed for any particular industrial segment.
A key mandate of the CSIR was, therefore, to help develop local industries by making contemporary technologies available and training requisite manpower.
Text and Context
A probe into the Nehruvian pledge (Page no: 9)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
Bliss was the night when I, along with the hostel students of St. Berchmans College, Kerala, proudly donning Gandhi caps and carrying crackers, waited to ring in August 15, 1947. With no radio around, we missed the historic speech of Jawaharlal Nehru, who said: “Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge... of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity... The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity.”
Seventy-five years on, it is instructive to ask how far we have redeemed the pledge. Economists in general have not examined this question. But three books by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, written over 18 years, comprehensively examined the transformative process within their freedom-capability perspective keeping in mind the larger context of the demands of democracy and social justice.
This article reviews the pledge of ending inequality of opportunity made at the time of Independence under three broad heads: gender inequality, social inequality and the practice of democracy.
Let me hasten to add, I do not berate India’s achievements as an economic power, its progress in literature, science, technology, knowledge diffusion, innovation achievements, distinctions in music, films, market sophistication, and so on. But the compulsions of our history and public reason demand clarity regarding objectives and instruments, ends and means.
At midnight, we shouted the slogan, ‘Bolo Bharat Mata Ki Jai’, blissfully unaware of the unfreedoms of women in those days. Today, one will be shocked to find that the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) in 456 out of 640 districts is above 140 per lakh live births; in Assam, it is 215.
That it is eminently better in the southern States shows not only the vast disparities in the health systems of States, but also the loss of freedom of millions to live long. Considering the global Sustainable Development Goals target, all countries are expected to have a MMR that is below 70.
Reducing the inequality between men and women in their access to resources and opportunity is an important metric of civilisation. The Global Gender Gap Index, produced by the World Economic Forum, with a stable methodology using four sub-indices — economic participation, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment — based on 14 indicators, provides a snapshot of where men and women in India stand globally.
The coming 75 years (Page no: 9)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
As India celebrates 75 years of Independence, it is apt to imagine what the next 75 years will look like. Can our nation, obsessed with politics, Bollywood, and cricket, aspire to make the next 75 years an enviable era with a higher standard of living for every citizen? Yes, India can, and will, provided there is a shift in focus to science and technology.
But how will India make this happen, given that it spends a meagre 0.7% of its GDP on research and development (R&D)? It needs to make some fundamental policy changes to facilitate the transition.
These include increasing the R&D budget to 4% of the nation’s GDP, ensuring that individual institutions implement processes to accommodate the large budget, encouraging individual entrepreneurs and linking science with society.
First, spending 4% of the national GDP on R&D is required to drive science and innovation. Israel and South Korea are prime examples that drive their respective economies by spending nearly 5% of their GDP on R&D.
However, an increase in the science budget to innovate must precede appropriate macro-level policy changes on how and where the money needs to be spent. A part of this increase needs to be earmarked for building physical and intellectual infrastructure across the country, especially in the universities.
A first-class infrastructure must be accompanied by well-trained, globally competitive institutional administrators and processes. India cannot compete on a global stage unless the dwindling infrastructure of its universities is upgraded.
Second, before any policy changes take effect, individual institutions must implement processes to accommodate the large budget.
This requires standardising procedures across institutions and borrowing the best practices from some global counterparts.
For example, when the government encourages public-private partnerships, each grant-receiving institution must have internal procedures to handle their scientists’ requests to facilitate effective academia-industry collaboration.
Although there is a well-defined system to disburse research grants to scientists through their institutions, it is mired in inefficiencies.
Inadequate staffing at funding agencies, lack of transparency in fund disbursal, lack of a rigorous international standard review and feedback process, excessive delay in fund disbursal, and an outdated appraisal system are holding our scientists back.
News
Understanding ethanol blending (Page no: 10)
(GS Paper 3, Environmental Pollution & Degradation)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India has achieved its target of blending 10% sugarcane-extracted ethanol in petrol, ahead of schedule.
Addressing the nation from the Red Fort on the 76th Independence Day, he rooted for energy independence stating that, “we need to be Aatmanirbhar (self-sufficient) in our energy sector”. India is one of the world’s biggest oil importing nations.
Blending ethanol with petrol to burn less fossil fuel while running vehicles is called ethanol blending. Ethanol is an agricultural by-product which is mainly obtained from the processing of sugar from sugarcane, but also from other sources such as rice husk or maize.
Currently, 10% of the petrol that powers your vehicle is ethanol. Though we have had an E10 — or 10% ethanol as policy for a while, it is only this year that we have achieved that proportion. India’s aim is to increase this ratio to 20% originally by 2030 but in 2021, when NITI Aayog put out the ethanol roadmap, that deadline was advanced to 2025.
Ethanol blending will help bring down our share of oil imports (almost 85%) on which we spend a considerable amount of precious foreign exchange. Secondly, more ethanol output would help increase farmers’ incomes.
The NITI Aayog report of June 2021 says, “India’s net import of petroleum was 185 million tonnes at a cost of $55 billion in 2020-21,” and that a successful ethanol blending programme can save the country $4 billion per annum.
With an aim to augment ethanol supplies, the government has allowed procurement of ethanol produced from other sources besides molasses — which is first generation ethanol or 1G.
Other than molasses, ethanol can be extracted from materials such as rice straw, wheat straw, corn cobs, corn stover, bagasse, bamboo and woody biomass, which are second generation ethanol sources or 2G.
While inaugurating the Indian Oil Corporation’s (IOC) 2G ethanol plant last week, Mr. Modi referred to not only the prospect of higher farmer income but also dwelt upon the advantages of farmers selling the residual stubble — left behind after rice is harvested — to help make biofuels. This means lesser stubble burning and therefore, lesser air pollution.
Though the U.S., China, Canada and Brazil all have ethanol blending programmes, as a developing country, Brazil stands out. It had legislated that the ethanol content in petrol should be in the 18-27.5% range, and it finally touched the 27% target in 2021.
At the time of the NITI Aayog report in June last year, the industry had committed to the government to make all vehicles E20 material compliant by 2023.
This meant that the petrol points, plastics, rubber, steel and other components in vehicles would need to be compliant to hold/store fuel that is 20% ethanol. Without such a change, rusting is an obvious impediment.
Practice of talaq-e-hasan not so improper: Supreme Court (Page no: 14)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The Supreme Court on August 16, 2022, prima facie observed that the Muslim personal law practice of talaq-e-hasan is "not so improper".
Talaq-e-hasan is a form of divorce by which a Muslim man can divorce his wife by pronouncing talaq once every month over a three-month period.
A Bench led by Justice Sanjay KishanKaul said a Muslim woman has the option to divorce by the process of khula by returning the dower ( mahr) or something else that she received from her husband or without returning anything, as agreed by the spouses or Qadi's (court) decree depending on the circumstances.
"Prima facie this ( talaq-e-hasan) is not so improper. Women also have an option. Khula is there. Prima facie I do not agree with the petitioner. I do not want this to become an agenda for any other reason," Justice Kaul remarked orally.
The court's prima facie remarks came while hearing a petition filed by journalist BenazeerHeena, represented by senior advocate Pinky Anand and advocate Ashwani Kumar Dubey.
The petitioner argued that talaq-e-hasan and "other forms of unilateral extra judicial talaq is an evil plague similar to sati".
"Talaq-e-hasan is arbitrary, irrational and contrary to Articles 14, 15, 21 and 25 and international conventions on civil rights and human rights," the petition submitted.
It said there should be a "gender neutral, religion neutral, uniform grounds of divorce and uniform procedure of divorce for all citizens".
The petitioner argued that the practice in question was "neither harmonious with the modern principles of human rights and gender equality nor an integral part of Islamic faith".
Ms. Anand said the apex court, while striking down triple talaq in the ShayaraBano case, did not address the issue of talaq-e-hasan. She said the practice discriminated against Muslim women as they cannot resort to it against their husbands. Ms. Anand said the unilateral practice of divorce was "abominable".
The Bench however said the court has granted couples who cannot live with each other divorce on the ground of irretrievable breakdown of marriage. It asked whether the petitioner was willing to explore this option if the issue of meharwas taken care of.
Child mortality has dipped to 35 per 1,000 births: Minister (Page no: 14)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
India has taken rapid strides in reducing child mortality since 2014 from 45 per 1,000 live births to 35 per 1,000 live births in 2019.
Dr. Pawar was speaking after the virtual launch of the ‘Paalan 1000’ National Campaign and Parenting App at the Early Childhood Development Conclave in Mumbai.
‘Paalan 1000’ focuses on the cognitive development of children in the first two years of their life. The app will provide practical advice to caregivers on what they can do in their everyday routine and will help clear doubts.
Highlighting the importance of the early phases of a child’s life as their impact can last a lifetime, Dr. Pawar said, “A baby’s brain development begins during pregnancy and is influenced by the pregnant woman’s health, nutrition and environment.”
“The first 1,000 days encompasses conception as well as the first two years of a growing child’s life and during this period, the child needs the right nutrition, stimulation, love and support. The first 1,000 days establishes a solid platform for a child’s physical, mental, emotional, cognitive and social health,” she said.
The app combines coaching for parents, families and other caregivers with services designed to meet the families’ basic needs. The programme is aligned with the mission of the RashtriyaBalSwasthyaKaryakram (RBSK), emphasising responsive care and focused interventions during the first 1,000 days.