The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 16 March 2023

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis for UPSC

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 15 March 2023

• The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that Governors seriously undermine democracy if they use their constitutional office to call for a trust vote, citing dissension within a ruling political party, and precipitate the fall of a legitimately established and functioning government.
• “A Governor must be aware of the fact that his very calling for a trust vote may precipitate the loss of majority for a government. Calling for a trust vote may itself lead to the toppling of a government… Governors must not lend their offices for effectuating a particular result… The Governor cannot enter into any area by which his action would precipitate the fall of a government,” Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, heading a Constitution Bench, observed.
• The Bench was referring to then Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari’s call for a trust vote in the Assembly, which eventually led to the fall of the Uddhav Thackeray government and the appointment of Eknath Shinde as the Chief Minister in June 2022.

 The Hindu Editorial Today

• The year 2023 marks a high point in India’s diplomacy, with its presidentship of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the G-20.
• As two neighbouring and ancient civilisations, with a combined population of 2.8 billion, China and India are representatives of developing countries and emerging economies. India and China are both in the process of national rejuvenation and a crucial period of modernisation where challenges need to be overcome and problems need to be solved. China and India have far more common interests than differences.

Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)?

• SCO is a permanent intergovernmental international organization.
• It’s a Eurasian political, economic and military organization aiming to maintain peace, security and stability in the region.
• It was created in 2001.
• The SCO Charter was signed in 2002, and entered into force in 2003.

Genesis:

• Prior to the creation of SCO in 2001, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan were members of the Shanghai Five.
• Shanghai Five (1996) emerged from a series of border demarcation and demilitarization talks which the four former Soviet republics held with China to ensure stability along the borders.
• Following the accession of Uzbekistan to the organization in 2001, the Shanghai Five was renamed the SCO.
• India and Pakistan became members in 2017.

• Given the many socio-economic barriers that adolescent girls confront from their earliest years, we believe that the work to cultivate their agency — for education systems to expose them to new age skill sets, critical thinking, and leadership qualities — must begin early.
• India, home to one of the largest generations of girls and young women, has undertaken wide-ranging initiatives across the critical domains of education, health, digital and financial inclusion, leadership building, and have established feasible frameworks to help in the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 5, which envisions the world to be a more gender equal place by 2030.
• The World Bank notes that over 43% of Indian STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) graduates are women. However, not all of them are represented in the workforce and tech leadership.
• It is crucial for us to recognise, reduce and redistribute unpaid care and domestic work, so that women may enjoy economic opportunities and outcomes on an equal footing to men. Policies that provide services, social protection and basic infrastructure, promote sharing of domestic and care work between men and women, and create more paid jobs in the care economy, are urgently needed to accelerate progress on women’s economic empowerment.
• A multi-pronged approach across enhancing employability, sport for leadership, digital innovations and learning, and bodily autonomy is the key to strengthening leadership abilities among adolescent girls and young women.
• Nurturing girls’ leadership abilities is our collective first step towards breaking down restrictive gender norms and barriers for truly gender transformative growth and accelerating girl-and-women-led progress across the Sustainable Development Goals for India and the world.

• For every one rupee that Tamil Nadu gives the Centre, it gets back 29 paise. On the other hand, Uttar Pradesh gets ₹2.73, and Bihar gets back ₹7.06.
• The Centre’s tax collections are pooled-in from States and a part of it is distributed among them, based on the Finance Commission’s (FC) formula. The Fifteenth Finance Commission’s (XVFC) formula is skewed in favour of some States, resulting in wide inter-State variations.
• As population is given a higher weightage, it tilts the balance in favour of some northern States. This has been a bone of contention between the Centre and the affected States.
• The XVFC had arrived at the States’ share in the divisible pool of taxes based on each State’s needs (population, area and forest and ecology), equity (per capita income difference) and performance (own tax revenue and lower fertility rate).
• The weight assigned to needs was 40%, equity 45%, and 15% for performance. This formula meant that Uttar Pradesh and Bihar got 17.9% and 10%, respectively in the XVFC. Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu got 3.65%, 1.93% and 4.08%, respectively.
• Notably, the XVFC introduced the fertility rate in the formula to reward States which had reduced the fertility levels. While this does favour the developed States which have pushed their TFR below replacement rate as shown in chart 3, the weightage given to the component is relatively lower than equity and need.

• The first photographic record of an elusive semi-aquatic carnivorous mammal has indicated that not all is lost for a Jammu and Kashmir stream.
• Apart from putting an end to doubts about the animal’s presence in the upper Chenab catchment, their findings have confirmed that some stretches of the Neeru remain unpolluted. The Neeru is a tributary of the Chenab river.
• Eurasian otter — classified as ‘near threatened’ on the IUCN Red List — is regarded as a flagship species and indicator of high-quality aquatic habitats, its presence is encouraging for the health of the Neeru stream

• In 1931, in their letter to the British Prime Minister, submitting the official memorandum jointly issued on the status of women in the new Constitution by three women’s bodies, leaders Begum Shah Nawaz and Sarojini Naidu wrote, “To seek any form of preferential treatment would be to violate the integrity of the universal demand of Indian women for absolute equality of political status.”
• For instance, the Committee of the Status of Women in India, set up in 1971, commented on the declining political representation of women in India.
• The National Perspective Plan for Women recommended in 1988 that reservation be provided to women right from the level of the panchayat to that of Parliament.
• These recommendations paved the way for the historic enactment of the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution which mandate all State governments to reserve one-third of the seats for women in Panchayati Raj Institutions and one-third of the offices of the chairperson at all levels of the Panchayati Raj Institutions, and in urban local bodies, respectively.
• Only about 14% of the members in Indian Parliament are women, the highest so far. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, India has a fewer percentage of women in the lower House than its neighbours such as Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh — a dismal record.

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