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City
The Delhi government announced a draft ‘Motor Vehicle Aggregator Scheme 2023’ aimed at regulating cab aggregators and delivery service providers in the city.
Chief Minister said the scheme aims to achieve the twin objectives of prioritising the safety of passengers while promoting the use of electric vehicles to reduce pollution.
A draft of the scheme was approved by the CM on Wednesday and sent to the Lieutenant-Governor for approval.
The scheme will make it mandatory for aggregators to install a panic button in all vehicles and integrate it with the ‘112’ Delhi Police emergency helpline.
It will also force aggregators and delivery service providers to gradually switch from conventional to electric vehicles so that by April 1, 2030, they stop using vehicles running on conventional fuel sources.
The scheme will include a mechanism to ensure the timely redressal of consumer grievances by service providers and allow for remedial training of drivers whose performance is rated poor.
Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot said the scheme will lay the foundation to regulate bike taxis (two-wheeler ride-hailing services) and rent-a-bike services.
It will ensure that all bike taxis and two-wheeler renting services in the city solely use electric vehicles in line with the 2020 Delhi EV policy.
The Chief Minister said it was for the first time that a State government was planning to enforce the transition of commercial vehicles towards electric transportation.
Switching to electric vehicles will reduce pollution and create new employment and economic growth opportunities.
Editorial
A ground view of the Indian Space Policy 2023 (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
On April 20 this year, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) released the Indian Space Policy 2023 that had been in the works for some years.
The document has been received positively by industry. However, it needs to be followed up with suitable legislation, accompanied by clear rules and regulations.
Just preceding this, this writer wrote the article, “Awaiting lift-off into the Second Space Age” (April 10, 2023), which said that India’s modest entry into the First Space Age followed by its many gains should be used to help the country tap the vast potential in the Second Space Age.
Until the early 1990s, India’s space industry and space economy were defined by ISRO. Private sector involvement was limited to building to ISRO designs and specifications.
The Second Space Age began with the licensing of private TV channels, the explosive growth of the Internet, mobile telephony, and the emergence of the smartphone.
Today, while ISRO’s budget is approximately $1.6 billion, India’s space economy is over $9.6 billion. Broadband, OTT and 5G promise a double-digit annual growth in satellite-based services.
It is estimated that with an enabling environment, the Indian space industry could grow to $60 billion by 2030, directly creating more than two lakh jobs.
Yet, it is the enabling policy environment that has proved elusive. The first satellite communication policy was introduced in 1997, with guidelines for foreign direct investment (FDI) in the satellite industry that were further liberalised but never generated much enthusiasm.
Today, more than half the transponders beaming TV signals into Indian homes are hosted on foreign satellites, resulting in an annual outflow of over half a billion dollars.
The fallout of Putin helping make NATO ‘great again’ (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has almost doubled its borders with Russia with the addition of Finland as its 31st member in April 2023.
Sweden will become a member eventually, once the ratification process gets over, which will swell NATO’s territorial expanse like never before, and also make the Baltic Sea a NATO lake. The accession of Finland was the fastest on record.
For long, Nordic countries Finland and Sweden had refused to take sides, maintaining military non-alignment and being focused more on their internal socio-economic development, thus making them models of modern welfare states.
Their relations with Russia were moderate at best, if not deep enough. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine changed the way they had viewed their eastern neighbour and the predictability of its leader, Vladimir Putin. For sure, Mr. Putin’s actions have brought certain changes in the regional security dynamics of Europe.
First, engaging Russia has never been so easy for the European Union, mostly because of differences among member-states. Some European countries such as Germany and France had a soft corner for Russia, unlike some Baltic states such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania which have been in favour of treading a cautious path.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has not only brought back war to the European realm in the post-Second World War era, but is also a blow to the EU’s image as an actor, having failed to avert the war in its neighbourhood.
An interesting outcome in this adverse situation is that Russia’s actions have now united European countries more than ever before.
Second, Mr. Putin might not have expected that Finland and Sweden would give up their neutrality so soon. Their membership will also mean more expenditure, militarily, and restructuring apart from a stationing of NATO forces under the new command structure.
As a response, Russia will also build its military presence in the adjoining northern areas and the Kaliningrad exclave. Bordering Finland, these northern areas (starting from St. Petersburg to Murmansk) come under the Russian Core region, which is strategically and economically important for Russia. Having NATO at its Finnish door will further fuel Russian anxiety.
Opinion
Pokhran-II: A moment of profound epiphany (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Nuclear Technology)
Twenty-five years ago, on May 11 and 13, 1998, India carved out a new future for itself. No other event — save the fall of Dhaka in 1971 — did more for India’s self-esteem and its place in the world, and no other policy decision had greater consequences for its national security.
In the previous two decades, the military aspects of India’s nuclear policy and programme were shrouded in a veil of ambiguity and opaqueness.
There had been little reliable information available since May 18, 1974, the day India conducted its first nuclear test and termed it a “peaceful nuclear explosion.”
On May 11, 1998, the veil was finally lifted. After conducting three underground tests at Pokhran, followed by two more on May 13, the Government of India was unusually candid in its statements.
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was explicit: “Our intentions were, are, and will always be peaceful but we do not want to cover our action with a veil of needless ambiguity. India is now a nuclear weapons state...”
The 1998 tests unleashed a fury of events and catapulted India into probably its worst confrontation with the United States. On May 13, Washington imposed sanctions against New Delhi under the Glenn Amendment; Pakistan conducted a series of nuclear tests on May 28 and 30; and China castigated India for what it saw as an “outrageous contempt for the common will of the international community.” Domestically, the Congress and the Left criticised the decision to test.
But in 2023, it is evident that the nuclear tests reflected a moment of profound epiphany: an awakening of India’s self-confidence and an awareness of its potential. India’s status, security, and ability to influence the international system received arguably the greatest fillip then, since independence, and unarguably the strongest boost since the end of the Cold War.
Explainer
The troubles of India’s aviation industry (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
After low-cost carrier GoFirst’s insolvency filing last week, the aviation safety regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Monday, May 8, directed the airline to stop selling air tickets immediately.
The DGCA issued GoFirst a showcause notice for its “failure to continue the operation of the service in a safe, efficient and reliable manner”, giving it 15 days to reply before the regulator decides on revoking the airline’s permit to offer commercial flights.
The unprecedented distress call by the airline that rebranded itself just two years ago raises concerns about the health of the Indian aviation industry already reeling from pandemic losses.
The country’s domestic air traffic has been recovering in the past few months after being severely hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
In March, domestic carriers flew 13 million passengers, which according to the DGCA was 11% more than the same month in the pre-pandemic years of 2018 and 2019. As per the Civil Aviation Ministry, India will have more than 140 million passengers in FY2024 alone.
The CAPA-Centre for Aviation projects India to handle over 1.3 billion passengers annually in the next 20 years. There are currently 148 airports in the country and it is the third-largest domestic market in the world in terms of seat capacity.
As of March 2023, IndiGo remained the domestic market leader with 56.8% of the market share, followed by Vistara (8.9%) and Air India (8.8%). AirAsia had 7.6% of the market, while GoFirst was at 6.9%, followed by SpiceJet at 6.4%. The newest player AkasaAir, which began operations in August 2022, managed to capture a 3.3% share.
Text & Context
The uprising of 1857, and Meerut’s role in the first war for India’s Independence (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 1, History)
Alamgirpur in Meerut district should have been enough to provide the township in western Uttar Pradesh a passport to fame. It was the eastern most settlement of the Harappa civilisation, and was excavated by Y.D. Sharma.
According to professors Katta Narasimha Reddy, E. Siva Nagi Reddy and Krishna Naik, the shape of the pottery of this region was comparable to that of Lothal, Ropar and Rangpur etc.
“Kilnbricks are in evidence; large platters and trough with open base have also been found as also beads of steatite and semi-precious stones. Terracotta cakes are met in large numbers,” write the authors in Kalyan Mitra: Volume 1: Archaeology.
Yet Meerut’s fame rests not on beads and terracotta cakes no matter how ancient, but on bullets and blood, more accurately cartridges with possibly cow and pig fat, and rifles with which began India’s First War of Independence on May 10, 1857.
The British were well and truly in the saddle in the 19th century. A year after muskets were introduced in 1856, Lord Canning was planning to send back the 84th Regiment of the Army to Burma, when news came of a serious outbreak in Meerut which was, as G.W. Forrest writes in A History of the Indian Mutiny (published by William Blackwood), “situated 36 miles from the Imperial City of Delhi...traversed by two main roads, the one from Ghaziabad to Roorkee, and the Mall, lined with a fine avenue of lofty trees. On the north of the Mall are lines of barracks for the accommodation of a brigadier of artillery, a European cavalry corps and a regiment of European infantry.
News
Study on sludge finds high potential for use as fertilizer after treatment (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
A first-of-its-kind analysis of the sludge found in Indian sewage treatment plants (STP), set up to treat polluted water from the Ganga, found that most of it had “high potential” for use as fertilizer, but required treatment before it could be used unrestricted on farms or as a potential biofuel.
An emerging initiative of the National Mission for Clean Ganga, a flagship programme of the government to establish treatment facilities and prevent pollution of the river, is to derive livelihood opportunities from the river rejuvenation programme.
One of the measures under this, “Arth Ganga” (economic value from Ganga), is to “monetise” and reuse treated wastewater and sludge.
This means converting sludge — a thick residue that while rich in organic chemicals is also a repository of heavy metals, industrial effluents and bacterial contaminants — into usable products such as manure and bricks.
Treated sludge can be classified as class A or B — as per the standards of the United States Environment Protection Agency — with class A being safe to be disposed of in the open and useful as organic fertilizer.
Class B means that the sludge can be used in “restricted” agricultural applications, the edible parts of the crop not be exposed to the sludge-mixed soil, and animals and people not come into extensive contact. India does not yet have standards classifying sludge as class A or B.
A study by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee found that most of the sludge analysed after drying fell into the class B category. Nitrogen and phosphorous levels — the basic soil nutrients — were higher than those recommended by India’s fertilizer standards (FCO, 2009).
However, potassium levels in some samples were less than recommended. The total organic carbon was more than 16%, again higher than FCO recommendations, but the degree of pathogens as well as heavy metal contamination was above the recommended standard.