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The Rajya Sabha passed the women’s reservation Bill unanimously with Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying that the unanimity will instil confidence among the public.
The Constitution (128th Amendment) Bill, or the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, and its six clauses were passed with all 214 members present in the Upper House voting in favour of them.
“A historic achievement,” said Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar after passage of the Bill. The members welcomed the announcement of the passage of the Bill by thumping on the desks.
Amendments moved by some Opposition members against the provision that the law will come into force only after a census and delimitation exercise were defeated in a voice vote as none of the members demanded a ‘division’ on the amendments. The Lok Sabha had passed the Bill on Wednesday.
A total of 72 speakers participated in the debate that was marked with poetry and couplets.
Visa service paused amid Canada tussle (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Normal functioning of Indian missions in Canada has been affected because of “security threats” faced by Indian diplomats and they are therefore “temporarily unable” to issue visas, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) announced here.
MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi also said India would prefer “parity” in posting of diplomats in each other’s missions, saying the number of Canadian diplomats in India is expected to be reduced.
He further said New Delhi had not received any evidence from the Trudeau government regarding alleged Indian hand in the killing of Khalistan Tiger Force chief Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey on June 18.
He urged Canada to uphold the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations by ensuring safety of Indian diplomats.
These have disrupted their normal functioning. Accordingly, our High Commission and consulates are temporarily unable to process visa applications. We will be reviewing the situation on a regular basis.
SC not to intervene in water release order (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
The Supreme Court refused to intervene either in favour of Karnataka or Tamil Nadu in the Cauvery water dispute.
Instead it banked on the combined expertise of the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee (CWRC) and the Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA) to manage the water sharing between the two neighbouring States.
The CWRC had earlier directed Karnataka to release 5,000 cusecs a day to Tamil Nadu.
A three-judge Bench headed by Justice B.R. Gavai said the CWMA and the CWRC, both represented by Additional Solicitor-General Aishwarya Bhati, were regularly meeting every 15 days to review the water flow with due regard to the distress faced by both the States.
The Bench, also comprising Justices P.S. Narasimha and P.K. Mishra, expressed satisfaction that the CWRC and the CWMA had considered all the factors, especially the drought situation, before fixing the water release by Karnataka at the rate of 5,000 cusecs a day to Tamil Nadu.
Editorial
Propelling India’s development the right way (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
‘Aim for the moon’ is a byword for any venture marked by extreme ambition bordering on the foolhardy. When India started space research in the 1960s, many thought it was being reckless: a struggling, young nation sinking some of its limited resources in a highly uncertain enterprise.
Today, however, even the last of the naysayers must be convinced. In a matter of a few days, India became the first nation to land a rover on the south pole of the moon, followed up with a mission to study the sun.
Even before the government set up the Indian Space Research Organization in 1969, the country was having a significant research programme in space science.
It was then coordinated by the Department of Atomic Energy, which itself had been founded in the early 1950s. These were certainly not isolated initiatives. Between 1951 and 1961, India established five Indian Institutes of Technology, which in no time grew into globally respected academic centres.
The first two Indian Institutes of Management were inaugurated in 1961. During the two decades of the 1950s and 1960s, a number of public sector units were established in diverse areas of industrial production that included steel, fertilizer, machine tools, electric machinery, drug production, and petrochemicals.
Silent killer (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
Globally, hypertension affects one in three individuals and four out of five do not have it adequately controlled, according to the first World Health Organization (WHO) report on hypertension released on September 19.
It is a grim reminder that countries have done little to keep the biggest risk factor for death and disability under check despite the easy availability of inexpensive medicines.
Uncontrolled blood pressure (over 140/90) is a main risk factor for cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks and stroke, and the most common cause of disease and death.
It is important to note that health risks associated with hypertension do not begin at over 140/90. Instead, they operate in a continuum even below what is classified as clinical hypertension, especially in people who are diabetic, are obese, and those who consume tobacco and alcohol.
Hence, reports on hypertension levels in the population underestimate the cumulative risk of high blood pressure. In the WHO report that relies on 2019 data, 188 million Indians adults aged 30-79 years have hypertension.
Of them, the condition has been diagnosed only in 37%, 30% are treated and a meagre 15% of people have hypertension under control. Women appear to be marginally better than men in having the condition diagnosed, treated and controlled.
Based on sketchy data from parts of India, stroke incidence was found to be 108-172 per 1,00,000 people per year and the one-month case fatality rate was 18%-42%, as per a February 2022 study. In the Global Burden of Disease report, in 2019, heart attack was the leading cause of death and disability in India.
Text & Context
Tracking India’s growth trajectory (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The conventional way to assess a country’s economic situation is to look at the quarterly (three-month) and annual (12-month) GDP (gross-domestic-product) growth rate and compare it to previous quarters as well as years.
In the quarterly release of GDP figures by the NSO (National Statistical Office), the country’s performance is likened to reviewing a report card of its economic performance. However, a critical difference between reviewing a report card and India’s economic figures is that the latter tells a far more nuanced story.
The Q1 data covering the GDP growth rate from April to June of FY24 boasts a nominal growth rate of 8% and a real growth rate of 7.8%.
The growth story currently posits that the numbers reflect an uptick in the agriculture sector growing at 3.5%, unlikely to be sustained due to pressure from the El Niño phenomenon, and the services industry, with financial, real estate and professional services growing at 12.2%.
Moreover, there is also talk of sustaining a close to 6.5% growth rate for the current financial year. However, a closer look at the numbers provides a far more interesting interpretation of the growth.
The first factor to consider is that calculating the GDP growth rate involves many complex statistical choices and sophisticated statistical operations.
One such decision the NSO made while conducting their research was to use the income approach of calculating GDP rather than the expenditure approach.
The income approach involves summing up all national incomes from the factors of production and accounting for other elements such as taxes, depreciation, and net foreign factor income. The assumption generally is that both methods lead to similar results.
News
China, U.S. and India, top in emissions, absent at Climate Ambition Summit (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The Climate Ambition Summit (CAS) in New York, as part of the United Nations General Assembly, that concluded on Thursday, was marked by the absence of major economies whose actions significantly influence the future of global emissions.
China, the U.S. and India — which collectively account for about 42% of global greenhouse gas emissions and are the top three emitters in that order — were all absent from the summit that was designed, according to the U.N., to “showcase leaders who are movers and doers ... and have credible actions, policies and plans to keep the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal of the Paris Agreement alive and deliver climate justice to those on the front lines of the climate crisis”.
In the run-up to the summit, nearly 100 heads of state had written in response to a call from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to ramp up action to address the climate crisis. However, Only representatives from 34 states and seven institutions were given the floor on the day of the summit.
India’s neighbours Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan were among the listed speakers and emerging economies such as South Africa and Brazil were also on the list. The European Union, Germany, France and Canada were also on the podium.
ISRO hoping to wake up Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram and Pragyan (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is looking to wake up the Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander and Pragyan rover as dawn will break on the moon. The lander and the rover went to sleep after the end of one lunar day (14 earth days).
On September 2, the Pragyan was put in sleep mode and on September 4, the space agency put Vikram too in sleep mode with its payloads switched off. Both Vikram and Pragyan’s receivers, however, have been kept on.
Once the sun sets on the moon after the completion of one lunar day, temperature could plunge below minus 200°C.
If the ISRO manages to wake up Vikram and Pragyan it would be a bonus for the space agency as it would be hoping to carry out more experiments on the moon.
World
‘China, Russia must deepen cooperation’ (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Beijing’s top diplomat told President Vladimir Putin that China and Russia must work to strengthen cooperation in the face of a “complex international situation”, Chinese state media reported.
Speaking at a meeting with Mr. Putin in St Petersburg, at which the Russian leader accepted an invitation to visit China next month, Wang Yi said the “world is rapidly moving toward multipolarity”, according to a readout by Xinhua news agency.
Mr. Putin, in response, told Mr. Wang “our positions coincide regarding the emergence of a multipolar world”, according to a readout from the Kremlin.
Business
‘Purchases of homes, vehicles have dented savings, not distress’ (Page no. 18)
(GS Paper 2, Social Justice)
The Finance Ministry dismissed “critical voices” about household savings having fallen to a multi-decade low on account of economic distress and asserted that households were now adding lesser financial assets than in the past as they had started taking loans to buy real assets such as homes and vehicles.
This was “not a sign of distress but of confidence in their future employment and income prospects,” the ministry added in a statement on X.
Data released by the Reserve Bank of India this week showed net household financial savings slid to 5.1% of GDP in 2022-23, reckoned to be the lowest since 1976-77, from 7.2% in 2021-22.
This, coupled with an increase in households’ financial liabilities to 5.8%, from 3.8% of GDP in 2021-22, had prompted concerns that the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic was still incomplete for many households and that high inflation had dented savings.
Asserting that “the correct position with true facts and right inferences” of data indicated that changing consumer preference for different financial products was the “real reason for the [decline in] household savings,” the ministry said: “between June 2020 and March 2023, the stock of Household Gross Financial Assets went up by 37.6%, and the stock of Household Gross Financial Liabilities went up by 42.6% — no big difference between the two”.
Science
Lurking blood pressure poses a huge health risk in India
(GS Paper 2, Health)
High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is often called the “silent killer” because it often goes unnoticed until it triggers severe health complications such as strokes, heart attacks, kidney damage, and heart failure.
According to medical standards, the reading on a doctor’s BP monitor going above 140/90 accounts for hypertension. The World Health Organization (WHO) released its first-ever report on the global impact of hypertension this Tuesday, highlighting the devastating consequences of this wide spread, yet often neglected condition.
The WHO report reveals that hypertension affects one in three adults worldwide, making it a significant global health concern.
It is a condition that knows no boundaries, affecting people across age groups and geographical regions. The number of people living with hypertension has doubled from 650 million in 1990 to a staggering 1.3 billion in 2019, with nearly half of these unaware of their condition.
According to the WHO report, nearly four out of five people with hypertension are inadequately treated. Scaling up coverage could avert 76 million deaths between 2023 and 2050.
The report reveals a doubling of hypertension cases from 1990 to 2019, with over three-quarters of affected adults in low- and middle-income countries.
“Diagnosing and treating hypertension is the simplest and most basic care even a nurse could give in the absence of a doctor at a primary health facility, there is no excuse for any country failing to scale up.