4 April 2024, The Hindu
SC to list before polls pleas to verify count in all EVMS
(Page No 1)
(GS Paper 2, Structure, organisation and functioning of the Executive and the Judiciary)
- The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to list ahead of the Lok Sabha election a series of petitions seeking a directive to the Election Commission to mandatorily cross-verify the vote count in all electronic voting machines (EVMs) by counting all voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) slips.
- The current practice is verification of votes cast in only five polling stations of each Assembly constituency through the slips.
- Justice Sanjiv Khanna, who heads the Bench, assured senior advocates Kapil Sibal, advocate Prashant Bhushan, senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, and advocate Neha Rathi, all appearing for various petitioners, including the Association for Democratic Reforms, that the case would be listed the week after next.
Turning the spotlight on the urban poor
(Page No 6)
(GS Paper 2: Poverty and hunger)
- The India Employment Report (IER) 2024 by the Institute for Human Development and International Labour Organization poses questions on the trickle-down effect of benefits to the working class in the backdrop of a 5.4% average real economic growth, from 2015-16 to 2022-23.
- It also shows a divergent trend between rural and urban areas in terms of employment and income. It demonstrates a relatively higher unemployment rate in urban areas, at 4.8% in 2000 over the 1.5% in rural areas.
- However, average monthly earnings are higher by 76% for self-employed, 44% for regular employed and 22% for casual labour in urban areas in 2022.
- The coexistence of higher unemployment and wages requires further investigation to understand its implications for the urban poor. This article looks at the dynamics of employment and wages in pockets of deep urban poverty, such as slums, and juxtaposes these with the findings of the IER 2024.
Systems science for a better future
(Page No 6)
(GS Paper 3: Science and Technology)
- The Pew Research Center surveyed the citizens of many countries in 2023 to gauge how many prefer authoritarian rulers to multi-party democracy.
- The numbers choosing dictators will dismay democrats. In the Global South: India (85%), Indonesia (77%), South Africa (66%) and Brazil (57%). In the West: the United Kingdom (37%) and the United States (32%), which are significant numbers too.
- China and Russia were not surveyed.
- Citizens of democratic countries have lost trust in their governments’ economic policies.
- Average incomes may be rising but the very rich are becoming much richer, faster.
- Large corporations and financial institutions are compelling governments to set the rules of the game in their favour by reducing taxes for them, emasculating labour institutions, and exploiting the natural environment for their profit.
Fiscal battle
(Page No 6)
(GS Paper 2: devolution of powers and finances up to local levels (local self government))
- The Supreme Court of India order referring a suit filed by Kerala, challenging the Centre’s decisions curtailing its borrowings, to a Constitution Bench is a welcome development.
- The Court declined to grant an interim order to restore the position prior to the imposition of borrowing limits by the Centre, but the referral will give a larger Bench an opportunity to examine the extent to which the Union government may regulate a State’s borrowings.
- The litigation is much more than a tussle over the Centre’s charge of fiscal mismanagement against the Left Front regime in the State.
- The Court has recognised that it is also a constitutional question on Centre-State relations: an apparent conflict between efforts to maintain the country’s fiscal health on the one hand and moves that undermine the fiscal space of States on the other.
- At the heart of this dispute is Article 293, which confers executive power on the States to borrow money within limits prescribed by the State legislature.
- It also allows the Union to extend loans and guarantees to the States, and requires the Centre to give its consent and impose conditions for States to raise further loans while earlier ones are outstanding.
- Kerala contends that the Article does not confer on the Centre any power to regulate all State loans and that it can impose conditions only on borrowings from the Centre.
Living wills implementation lags in India
(Page No 7)
(GS Paper 2: Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources)
- In early March this year, 30 people in Thrissur in Kerala executed living wills.
- Living wills have been legal since 2018, when the Supreme Court of India created a process to allow terminally-ill patients, with no hope of a cure, to withhold or withdraw treatment and die with dignity.
- Since patients may not be able to communicate their wishes for a variety of reasons, including being unconscious or suffering from dementia, living wills allow them to make choices about future medical care.
- Six years after the judgment, however, the Court’s process is unavailable in most of India.
- Officials remain unlikely to implement the procedure without direct orders and guidance from State governments.
How firms without profits donated through bonds
(Page No 7)
(Prelims syllabus: Current events of national and international importance)
- The sources of funds of at least 45 companies that donated electoral bonds to various political parties (and whose financials could be matched with data from the CMIE Prowess IQ Database) are found to be suspect based on a joint analysis by The Hindu and an independent research team.
- These 45 companies are subdivided into four categories (A, B, C & D).
- 33 companies donated an aggregate sum of ₹576.2 crore in EBs, out of which ₹434.2 crore (nearly 75%) was encashed by the BJP. These companies had negative or near zero profit after tax in aggregate over seven years, from 2016-17 to 2022-23.
- The aggregate net losses of these 33 companies were over ₹1 lakh crore.
- 16 out of these 33 companies (category A) paid zero or negative direct taxes in aggregate. That these loss-making companies made such substantial donations indicates they could be acting as fronts for other firms or have misreported their profits and losses raising the possibility of money laundering.
Should State Governments borrow more?
(Page No 8)
(GS Paper 2: Functions and responsibilities of the Union and the States)
- The financial relation between the Union and various State governments has been a matter of vigorous debate.
- In a recent development, the Government of Kerala has approached the Supreme Court for a resolution of the following question: how much can the State government borrow from the market to bridge the excess of its expenditures over receipts?
- The Union government says that the borrowing should be limited to 3% of the State’s income or Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP). Kerala contends that by curtailing its borrowing powers, the Centre is undermining the State’s ability to fulfil some of its basic financial commitments and violating the principle of federalism.
Smaller citizens: how to bridge the gaps in India's education system
(Page No 8)
(GS Paper 2: development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health)
- In the Annual Status of Education Report, titled ‘ASER 2023: Beyond Basics’, released in January, a survey by civil society organisation Pratham among rural students aged 14 to 18 years found that more than half struggled with basic mathematics, a skill they should have mastered in Classes 3 and 4.
- The household survey conducted in 28 districts across 26 States assessed the foundational reading and arithmetic abilities of over 30,000 students and discovered that about 25% in this age group could not read a Class 2 level text in their vernacular.
- As they grew older, the rate of dropouts increased. While 3.9% of 14-year-olds were not in school, the figure climbed to 32.6% for 18-year-olds.
- Also, only 5.6% had opted for vocational training or other related courses.
- Subsequent surveys, including the recent India Employment Report 2024, prepared by the Institute for Human Development and the International Labour Organization, show that while access to education has improved for all social groups, “hierarchy between social groups persists; Scheduled Tribes are still the most disadvantaged.”
Nuclear power is key to development, says study
(Page No 12)
(GS Paper 3: Indian Economy - Infrastructure - Energy, Ports, Roads, Airports, Railways etc)
- For India to be a developed country by 2047 and be on track to achieve net zero or effectively zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2070 — it must signicantly prioritise investments in nuclear energy and expand related infrastructure, says a study by academics at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
- The results of the study, funded by the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India, were made public on Wednesday.
- Currently, nuclear energy makes up only 1.6% of India’s energy mix.
India rejects report on abusive conditions at shrimp hatcheries
(Page No 12)
(GS Paper 3: Indian Economy)
- India, the biggest supplier of shrimp, U.S.’s favourite seafood, has strongly refuted allegations of human rights and environmental abuses raised by a Chicago-based human rights group.
- Top Commerce Ministry officials will meet seafood exporters on Thursday to discuss efforts to scotch such attempts at maligning its global reputation.
- In 2022-23, India’s seafood exports stood at $8.09 billion, or ₹64,000 crore, and shrimps accounted for a bulk of these exports at $5.6 billion.
- India has emerged as one of the world’s largest shrimp exporters and its share in the U.S. market has risen from 21%, or $1.3 billion, to 40% in 2022-23, with shipments worth $2.4 billion, far ahead of rivals such as Thailand, China, Vietnam, and Ecuador.
India among countries mulling telescopes on, around the moon
(Page No 18)
(GS Paper 3: General awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, Robotics, Nanotechnology, bio-technology)
- Astronomers are looking forward to opening a new window on the universe by posting high-resolution telescopes on the moon and in orbit around it.
- There are numerous proposals to do this from astronomers around the world, including one from India called PRATUSH.
- On the earth, optical telescopes (which collect visible light at longer wavelengths) and radio telescopes (which collect radio waves with the shortest wavelengths) have to peer through layers of the planet’s atmosphere.
- While it is becoming increasingly difficult for optical instruments to see through the polluted skies, radio telescopes also contend with radio and TV signals adding to the cacophony of the electromagnetic ‘hiss’ from the communications channels used by radar systems, aircraft, and satellites.
- It also does not help that the earth’s ionosphere blocks radio waves coming from outer space.
