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Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated India’s new Parliament building, and called it a symbol of the “aspirations” of 140-crore citizens and a vehicle that will drive India in the next 25 years towards its goal of becoming a “developed country” to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the nation’s Independence.
The thrust of the Prime Minister’s 35-minute address was about casting a “new India” that had left behind a “slave mentality” and was moving forward. The word “new” figured more than 40 times in his speech.
It is not only a building. It is a reflection of the aspirations and dreams of 140 crore Indians. This is the temple of our democracy giving the message of India’s determination to the world.
Mr. Modi said there came a time in the history of every country when consciousness was awakened anew; the last such phase was 25 years before India gained Independence.
In 25 years, India will complete 100 years of its Independence. Together, we have to make India a developed nation in these 25 years. In the next 25 years, the new laws to be made in this new building of Parliament will make India a developed India.
The new Parliament House will be a witness to the rise of an “atmanirbhar bharat” (self-reliant India), he said, adding that the new building was an example of the coexistence of the ancient and the modern.
The inaugural ceremony was conducted in two phases. In the morning, Mr. Modi — dressed in a dhoti and kurta and accompanied by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla — offered floral tributes to the Mahatma Gandhi statue on the premises.
Then, amid Vedic chants by priests, he performed Ganapati homam. After prostrating before the Sengol, he sought blessings from the high priests of various adheenams in Tamil Nadu with the sceptre in hand.
He carried the Sengol in a procession to the new Parliament building, amid tunes of nadaswaram and chanting of Vedic mantras, and installed it in a special enclosure on the right side of the Speaker’s chair in the Lok Sabha chamber.
City
To free up prison spaces, authorities weigh plan to pay for undertrials’ bail (Page no. 3)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
To ease the burden on Delhi’s three prison complexes, officials of the Prisons Department said they are working on a proposal to create a special fund to provide monetary assistance to undertrial prisoners (UTPs) who are unable to afford a lawyer or pay the bail amount.
According to a senior official, the proposal is at an early stage and, if approved by the Delhi government, could help decongest prisons by at least 20%. Another official pegged the number at “30-40%”.
Official data showed that the three prison complexes — Tihar, Mandoli and Rohini — currently hold nearly 20,500 inmates; more than twice their total sanctioned strength of 10,026 prisoners.
Sources said this has caused many problems, such as crowded cells, fights among prisoners, unhygienic conditions, ineffective monitoring of inmates and failure to conduct reformation activities.
Many inmates who secure bail [in court] spend months in jail as they cannot afford to pay the bond of ₹10,000-20,000.
Our argument is: if the State is anyway spending on a prisoner for however long they are in jail, why don’t we pay the bond if they have secured bail? We believe it will be less than what we spend on keeping an inmate for months.
Whenever a prisoner applies for monetary help, we will conduct a proper background check, visit their house and then decide if monetary assistance should be given.
States
Shrinking snow cover continues to haunt Himachal Pradesh (Page no. 4)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The trend of gradual reduction in snow cover in ecologically fragile Himachal Pradesh continues to haunt the hill State. Also, the mean maximum and minimum average temperature is on the rise in the Himalayan region.
In the past decade, Himachal Pradesh has been witnessing an erratic, inconsistent and decreasing trend of snowfall, besides a shift in its pattern and precipitation, triggered by climate change.
In the 2022-23 winter period (October-April), there was an overall reduction of about 14.05% in the total area under snow cover in Himachal Pradesh in comparision to 2021-22.
This has been revealed in the latest scientific report conducted jointly by the Himachal Pradesh’s State Centre on Climate Change (HIMCOSTE) and the Geo-Sciences, Hydrology, Cryosphere Sciences Applications Group (GHCAG) and the Space Applications Centre (SAC-ISRO).
Himachal Pradesh receives winter precipitation in the form of snow in the higher altitudes. About one-third of the total geographical area of the State remains under thick snow cover during the winter season. Most of the major rivers like the Chenab, Beas, Parvati, Baspa, Spiti, Ravi, Satluj and their perennial tributaries originating from the Himalayas, depend on the seasonal snow cover for their discharge dependability.
Given the importance of seasonal snow cover as a major input in controlling the hydrology of the river basins, seasonal snow cover assessment in terms of its spatial distribution was carried out in different river basins during the winter season of 2022-23 from October to April. The total area under snow cover was estimated using Advanced Wide Field Sensor (AWIFS) satellite data during 2022-23.
The study under the title — ‘Seasonal Snow Cover Variations in Himachal during 2022-23 and its comparative analysis with reference to 2021-22’ — showed that during 2022-23, there was early snowfall in October and November, resulting in positive trends in some basins.
Editorial
A belligerence towards Beijing that is unsettling (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The intensifying head-to-head clash between the United States and China has set alarm bells ringing. Beginning with a trade war in 2018, U.S. policy towards China has morphed into a draconian technology denial regime aimed at hobbling China’s rise.
Simultaneously with a view of preventing any Chinese military venture to capture Taiwan, the U.S. has taken major steps across the Indo-Pacific to shore up its military edge.
The belligerence towards Beijing is a bit unsettling. This was a quasi-ally whose friendship cemented the rise of China, but, today, Washington wants to stop it on its tracks.
For several years, its own allies such as Japan and the European Union (EU) resisted U.S. pressure to follow its new course, but the war in Ukraine and the very obvious Chinese support for Russia seem to have settled the debate.
The recent G-7 summit put forward a united West plus Japan view on China. Besides condemning its “economic coercion” and “militarisation activities”, it created a new group to deal with hostile economic actions, mainly by China, to coerce nations. On the table was a more draconian measure to review all outbound investment to China on the issue of security.
At the end of the G-7 meeting, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that he expected to soon “see a thaw” but the relationship is hardly heading for any kind of a détente.
Both countries are jostling for power and influence across the world. “Extreme competition” over technologies may have initiated the conflict, but their insecurities are increasingly bringing their military and nuclear instruments to the fore.
Mr. Biden is outlining what is called the new Washington Consensus designed to re-establish U.S. hegemony. The old one, which was based on free markets, embraced China with the hope it would, over time, integrate into the American-led liberal international order. But China, in a sense, went rogue.
Technology denial to China is one aspect of the strategy. The other is to turn the old Consensus on its head by protectionism and a new industrial policy based on state subsidies.
At Hiroshima, Japan’s moment to reinforce partnerships (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The G-7 Hiroshima Summit is the first hosted by Tokyo since the 2008 summit and comes at a time when the world is faced with enervating challenges such as the war in Ukraine, the threat of nuclear proliferation, rapidly transpiring impacts of climate change, economic security, unstable supply chains and the impact and regulation of sensitive technologies.
While the agenda for the Summit was expansive and ambitious, the imperative for the G-7 countries, led by Japan, appeared to be centered around the means to consolidate approaches toward the most pressing global issues while walking respective geopolitical tightropes.
For Tokyo, the Summit was driven, in large part, by the need to define and devise the means of navigating the complex geopolitical landscape of the Indo-Pacific in order to enable collaborations that would be functional as well as act as bulwarks.
It was a moment to reinforce partnerships in a region that has become laden with security risks and is a key theatre for great power competition while simultaneously being the principal geography on which the trajectory of the rest of the world’s fortunes depends.
Issues that weighed heavily on the agenda of the Hiroshima Summit included Russia’s aggression in Ukraine which is now more than a year old and shows little signs of abating; a China that is increasingly on the offensive with an ever-active military and nuclear modernisation plan; China’s growing military pressures on Taiwan; and the dangers posed by North Korea’s increasingly volatile nuclear posturing and nuclear weapons programme.
While all of these issues are of great significance globally, for the Indo-Pacific and for Japan in particular, these are vital given the country’s geographical location in close proximity to China, Russia, and North Korea.
Concurrently, both in the weeks leading up to the Summit and during it, Tokyo sought to step up collaboration in science and technology and progressed its objective of reinvigorating the country’s chip industry.
Security, nevertheless, informed much of the agenda at the Summit. The war in Ukraine has had a significant impact on Japan’s national security strategy. In the wake of the invasion, Japan has announced a number of changes to its defence policy, including plans to increase its defence spending and acquire new weapons systems.
Opinion
Menstrual health is a public health issue (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
In a recent incident, a man from a city in Maharashtra allegedly killed his 12-year-old sister because he mistook period stains on her clothes as a sign of a sexual relationship. The incident is indicative of the extent of misinformation about periods in India’s urban locales.
In urban India, girls and women navigate a good part of their life in the public domain — a young working woman travels for hours by public transport, a teenager living in slums makes her way to school through narrow lanes, a sanitation worker begins her day before dawn cleaning the city, a vegetable vendor spends hours by her stall, and a nurse works busy 12-hour shifts.
Their lives are very different, but they all navigate public spaces on a daily basis while dealing with a private aspect of their lives: their periods.
Periods are normal, but continue to be shrouded by shame, stigma and discrimination. Consequently, people face barriers in getting accurate information about periods and related products, using toilets, and seeking help when needed.
The popular belief is that rural areas are hubs for ‘period poverty’ — backward, steeped in superstitions and unsafe practices — while urban areas are progressive, with access to modern period products and related necessities. However, the lived experiences of many urban dwellers show otherwise.
The sanitation worker may not know much about her body or periods. She uses waste cloth during her periods and often throws away the cloth after one use as she cannot wash, dry and reuse the cloth hygienically.
The teenager wears sanitary pads for 10-12 hours at a stretch. Both may not have a toilet in their homes, and use a community toilet or go to a secluded spot early in the morning or late at night.
The community toilets close by 11 p.m. and are often unclean. During summer, the water supply is limited, and bathing daily may not be possible. The working woman wears extra pads as she may not have the time or a clean or separate toilet at work to change.
Explainer
Why is the 1.5 degree Celsius target critical? (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released two reports titled “Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update 2023-2027” and “State of Global Climate 2022.”
The decadal predictions of the WMO said that the annual mean global surface temperature between 2023 and 2027 will be 1.1-1.8 degree Celsius higher than the baseline temperature of 1850-1900 or pre-industrial levels. In 2022, it was 1.15 degrees above the baseline, and by 2027, the average will exceed 1.5 degrees, a critical point beyond which there may be no return.
The 1.5 degree Celsius target is the global climate target that aims to limit warming to said level by 2100, in order to prevent the planet from slipping into further climate crises.
For decades, 2 degree was an acceptable level of warming. The idea of 1.5 degree was perceived as unrealistic and unachievable. However, the 2 degree target was unacceptable to small island countries as it implied that their survival was compromised.
In 2010, at the Cancun COP16 , countries agreed to limit the global average warming to below 2 degree Celsius. In 2015, the parties to the Paris Agreement pledged to limit the average temperature rise to below 2 degree, while actively aiming for 1.5 degree above pre-industrial levels.
This was endorsed as a global target by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2018 and since then has been pursued in all climate dialogues.
In 2018, the IPCC released a special report on the impact of global warming when temperature reaches 1.5 degree Celsius above baseline. It also drew a comparison with the effects of 2 degree Celsius warming.
It was estimated that anthropogenic activities would have already caused 1 degree of warming, likely to reach 1.5 degree between 2030 and 2052 at the current rate. Frequent and intense heat waves, droughts, heavy precipitation, an additional 10-centimetre rise in sea level, destruction of ecosystems and mostly irreversible changes can be witnessed at the 2 degree level.
However, discussions on the average temperature rise do not imply that the current warming is uniform across the planet. For example, warming greater than the global average is being experienced in the Arctic, with the term ‘polar amplification’ gaining more traction.
The regional differences and the vulnerability factors spell more urgency for climate action which must limit the average planetary warming to 1.5 degree.
News
India sees reduction in stunting; but wasting, obesity are concerns: report (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Commensurate with global and regional trends, India continues to show a reduction in stunting and recorded 1.6 crore fewer stunted children under five years in 2022 than in 2012, according to the Joint Malnutrition Estimates released by the UNICEF, the WHO and the World Bank.
However, wasting continues to remain a concern and so does growing levels of obesity. Stunting among children under five years in India dropped from a prevalence rate of 41.6% in 2012 to 31.7% in 2022 with the numbers dropping from 52 lakh to 36 lakh. This was accompanied by India’s share of the global burden of stunting declining from 30% to 25% in the past decade.
The overall prevalence of wasting in 2022 was 18.7% in India, with a share of 49% in the global burden. The prevalence of obesity marginally increased in a decade from 2.2% in 2012 to 2.8% in 2022 with the numbers growing to 31.8 lakh from 27.5 lakh, thereby contributing to 8.8% of the global share. But the overall classification for obesity is low and much lower than the global prevalence of 5.6%.
Globally, stunting declined from a prevalence rate of 26.3% in 2012 to 22.3% in 2022. There was no improvement on the weight issue worldwide, as its prevalence rate grew from 5.5% to 5.6%.
There was a global prevalence of 6.8% in 2022, but there is no comparison available for past years as it is based on national-level country prevalence data.
The JME report says there is insufficient progress to reach the 2025 World Health Assembly global nutrition targets and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 targets and only about one-third of all countries are ‘on track’ to halve the number of children affected by stunting by 2030. Even fewer countries are expected to achieve the 2030 target of 3% prevalence for overweight.
The decline in stunting in India is commensurate with National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5 (2019-2021) data which estimated its prevalence at 35.5% as against 38% in NFHS-4 (2016) and 48% in NFHS-3 (2006).
“This is the first time I noted in a global report that the problem has started to shift from South Asia. The relative contribution of India’s global burden from 29 to 24 was interesting.
NFHS-5 showed evidence of continued reduction of stunting and instances of underweight children, though anaemia was disappointing.
Delhi HC sets up panel to implement Centre’s rare diseases policy (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
The Delhi High Court has set up a five-member panel to implement the Centre’s rare diseases policy in an efficient manner and ensure that its benefits reach patients.
The National Rare Diseases Committee will also look into the case of these patients, enrolled with the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, and the manner in which their treatment can begin.
Under the National Policy for Rare Diseases, 2021, hundreds of patients — mostly children — are registered with the “digital portal for crowdfunding and voluntary donations for patients of rare diseases by the Union Health Ministry.
However, the government has been unable to fully finance their treatment due to high costs, resource constraints, and competing health priorities.
Under the current framework, the Centres for Excellence are not centrally coordinated, leading to lack of timely availability and adequate therapies for patients with rare diseases.
The court ordered the panel to explore procurement of therapies and drugs, and the creation of associated logistical framework to administer treatment.
It has been hearing a batch of petitions by rare disease patients and their caretakers, which contend that medicines and therapies are exorbitantly expensive.
Over the years, the number of patients on the Health Ministry’s list has risen to 574, but mere registration does not guarantee timely treatment.