The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 22 September 2023

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis for UPSC

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 21 September 2023

• The Rajya Sabha passed the women’s reservation Bill unanimously on Thursday 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.

 The Hindu Editorial Today

• 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.

• 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 on Thursday.
• 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.

• The Inter-State River Water Disputes are one of the most contentious issues in Indian federalism today.
• The recent cases of the Krishna Water Dispute, Cauvery Water Dispute and the Satluj Yamuna Link Canal are some examples.
• Various Inter-State Water Disputes Tribunals have been constituted so far, but they had their own problems.

Constitutional Provisions:

• Entry 17 of the State List deals with water i.e., water supply, irrigation, canal, drainage, embankments, water storage and hydro power.
• Entry 56 of the Union List empowers the Union Government for the regulation and development of inter-state rivers and river valleys to the extent declared by Parliament to be expedient in the public interest.
• According to Article 262, in case of disputes relating to waters:
• Parliament may by law provide for the adjudication of any dispute or complaint with respect to the use, distribution or control of the waters of, or in, any inter-State River or river valley.
• Parliament may, by law, provide that neither the Supreme Court nor any other court shall exercise jurisdiction in respect of any such dispute or complaint as mentioned above.

• As per Article 262, the Parliament has enacted the following:
• River Board Act, 1956: This empowered the GoI to establish Boards for Interstate Rivers and river valleys in consultation with State Governments. To date, no river board has been created.
• Inter-State Water Dispute Act, 1956: In case, if a particular state or states approach the Centre for the constitution of the tribunal, the Central Government should try to resolve the matter by consultation among the aggrieved states. In case, if it does not work, then it may constitute the tribunal.
• Note: Supreme Court shall not question the Award or formula given by tribunal, but it can question the working of the tribunal.

Ponzi Scheme

• An actor faces scrutiny over his alleged involvement in a Rs.1,000 crore Ponzi scheme with 2 lakh investors.
• A Ponzi scheme is a type of investment fraud that promises high returns with little or no risk to investors.
• These are investment operations that pay returns to old investors from the money garnered from new investors.
• It is named after Charles Ponzi, an Italian businessman who ran such a scheme in the 1920s.
• Ponzi schemes do not fall under the regulatory purview of Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI).
• In India, Ponzi schemes are banned under the Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Act, 2019 and Prize Chit and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, 1978 .

• 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.
• The persistence of inequalities has negatively impacted industrial and economic growth in India. Domestic demand has been lopsided, coming as it does largely from the upper income classes, who constitute only a small, though substantial in absolute numbers, segment of the population.
• At the same time, India must redouble efforts to make economic growth more inclusive and broad-based. Education, especially higher education, should be accessible to all, including the dispossessed.

• India’s goal of reducing harmful emissions per unit of GDP, by 45% by 2030, relative to 2005, requires a sharp reduction in the energy consumed for economic activity.
• Households account for nearly a third of all electricity consumed in India, and ceiling fans, used by 90% of households, as per a Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) survey of 2020, represent about a quarter of household electricity consumption.
• The India Cooling Action Plan projects that the number of fans in use in India could grow to a billion by 2038, from about 500 million now, as incomes grow along with average temperatures.
• Given the importance of fans, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), India’s energy efficiency regulator under the Union Ministry of Power, made the Standards and Labelling (S&L) programme, popularly known as the ‘star-rating’ programme, mandatory for ceiling fans in May 2022.
• Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) is planning a demand aggregation programme to sell 10 million ‘5-star’ ceiling fans. The programme hopes to transform the fans market much like it did for LED lamps under the famous Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All (UJALA) programme.
• The UJALA programme, launched in 2015, helped reduce the price of LED lamps from ₹400 to ₹90 in a span of three to four years. But ceiling fans are a more complex appliance than LEDs.
• nergy-efficient fans can not only help the vulnerable population get access to a critical service for coping with events of extreme heat with lower electricity bills, but are also central to India’s clean energy transition and can play a part in its economic growth.

• 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.
• 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.
• Studies have shown that excess salt consumption (over five grams a day) is responsible for 17%-30% of hypertension. While member States are required to achieve a 30% relative reduction in mean population intake of salt by 2025, India is yet to implement many components of WHO’s prescription to cut down salt intake.

• 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”.
• India last updated its climate pledges in 2022 of reducing emissions intensity — or the volume of emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) — by 45% from 2005 levels by 2030, a 10% increase from what it agreed to in 2015.
• The government committed to meet 50% of its electric power needs from renewable, non-fossil fuel energy sources — up from 40% committed at the Paris agreement. It promised to create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of Co2-equivalent [GtCO2e] through additional forest and tree cover by 2030.

Sharing is caring!