Himachal floods, a man-made disaster? (GS Paper 3, Disaster Management)
Why in news?
- The recent Flash floods have caused unprecedented damage to both lives and assets in Himachal Pradesh.
- Although climate change is expected to have played a hand in causing the high precipitation leading to these flash floods, human induced disasters resulting from planned development have played a significant role in causing such colossal losses.
Is climate change the only reason for the rain and floods?
- The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) VI report has clearly stated that the Himalayas and coastal regions of India will be the hardest hit by climate change.
- In the Himalayas, there is a noticeable pattern of increased precipitation occurring in shorter periods of time. The India Meteorological Department data shows that the normal rainfall during this period is expected to be between 720mm and 750 mm. However, in certain instances, it has exceeded 888 mm in 2010 and 926.9 mm in 2018.
- In 2023, the precipitation so far has been attributed to the combined effect of the south-west monsoon with western disturbances. The total rainfall from June to date was 511 mm.
Should the development model be reworked?
- Apart from climate change, anthropogenic factors have also significantly contributed to the disaster. The State’s development model initiated after it came into being in 1971 had been successful in transforming Himachal Pradesh into an exemplar of development for mountain States.
- This model, known as the Dr. Parmar model (named after the founding Chief Minister, Dr. Y.S. Parmar), focused on exemplary land reforms, robust state-led investment in social welfare, and a strong emphasis on human resources. These efforts resulted in Himachal Pradesh ranking second in social development indices.
Impact of stringent fiscal reforms by Union Government:
- The exploitation of natural resources, including forests, water, tourism, and cement production, became a major focus for development.
- This led to the rapid construction of hydropower projects, often causing damage to rivers and their ecosystems, widening of roads without proper geological and engineering assessments, expansion of cement plants altering land use patters, and a shift in agricultural practices to cash crop economies that affected the landscape and river systems.
Is building hydropower projects wrong?
- One of the main reasons for the devastating impact of floods in the region is the uncontrolled construction of these hydropower projects, which have essentially transformed mountain rivers into mere streams.
- The technology employed, known as “run of the river” dams, diverts water through tunnels burrowed into the mountains, and the excavated material (muck) is often disposed of along the riverbeds.
- During periods of higher precipitation or cloudbursts, the water returns to the river, carrying the dumped muck along with it. This destructive process is evident in rivers like Parvati, Beas and Sutlej, as well as many other small hydropower dams.
- Moreover, long tunnels spanning 150 km have been planned or commissioned on the Sutlej river causing significant harm to the entire ecosystem.
- Currently, there are 168 hydropower projects in operation, generating 10,848 MW of electricity. Looking ahead, it is projected that by 2030, 1,088 hydropower projects will be commissioned to harness 22,640 MW of energy.
What about tourism?
- The development-driven road expansion is aimed at promoting tourism and attracting a large number of visitors.
- The road-widening projects, often carried out by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), involve transforming two-lane roads into four-lane roads and single lanes into two- lane roads.
- The development model follows a public-private-partnership (PPP) approach, emphasising the need to complete these projects rapidly. However, this has resulted in bypassing essential geological studies and mountain engineering skills.
- Traditionally, mountainous regions are not cut with vertical slits but are terraced, minimising the damage to the environment. Unfortunately, in both the four-lane projects in Manali and Shimla, the mountains have been cut vertically, leading to massive landslides and damage to existing roads.
- The establishment of massive cement plants and extensive cutting of mountains in districts like Bilaspur, Solan, Chamba have resulted in significant land use changes that contribute to flash floods during rainfall.
- The cement plants alter the natural landscape, and the removal of vegetation leads to reduced capacity of land to absorb water.
How have crop patterns changed?
- A silent transformation is occurring in agriculture and horticulture patterns, leading to significant shift in both landholdings and produce.
- More farmers are now embracing a cash crop economy over traditional cereal farming. However, this shift has implications for the transportation of these crops to markets within a short timeframe owing to their perishable nature.
- In response to this need, roads are being constructed hastily without considering essential land cutting and gradient requirements.
What is the way out?
- A Commission of Inquiry must be instituted to bring the major stakeholders on board and discuss both the policy framework failures, as well as the peculiar aspects of the projects undertaken.
- A new architecture is required to empower local communities over their assets. The losses faced in the forms of culverts, village drains, small bridges, schools, other social infrastructure must be compensated; and this can be done if the assets are insured and the custodians are local communities. This will help to rebuild the assets quicker.
Full-reserve banking, where banks act solely as custodians of customers’ money
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Context:
- Under a 100% reserve banking system, banks are prohibited from creating loans without actual cash in their vaults to back these loans. However, opponents believe that such a banking system unnecessarily restricts bank lending.
What is Full-reserve banking?
- Full-reserve banking, also known as 100% reserve banking, refers to a system of banking where banks are not allowed to lend out money that they receive from customers in the form of demand deposits.
- Demand deposits are deposits that customers can withdraw from the bank at any point in time without any prior notice. So, under full-reserve banking, banks are mandated to hold all money that they receive as demand deposits from customers in their vaults at all times.
- In this case, banks simply act as custodians to depositors’ money and may charge a fee from depositors for the service of safekeeping that they offer to the depositors. This is in contrast to today’s banking system in which banks pay interest to customers on their demand deposits.
- The banks are expected to hold reserves backing 100% of their liabilities in the form of demand deposits.
(Un)conditional lending:
- Under a full-reserve banking system, banks can only lend money that they receive as time deposits from their customers. Time deposits are deposits that customers can withdraw from the bank only after a certain period of time that is agreed upon between the bank and its customers.
- This arrangement gives banks the time to lend these deposits to borrowers at a certain interest rate, collect repayments from the borrowers, and finally repay depositors their money along with a certain amount of interest.
Fractional-reserve banking system:
- In the banking system that exists today, also known as the fractional-reserve banking system, banks predominantly do not lend money in the form of physical cash. So the cash deposits that they receive from their customers, whether as demand deposits or as time deposits, mostly stay in their vaults.
- Still, banks face the risk of a depositor run for a different reason, banks lend more money than the cash they have in their vaults. This is made possible because most lending to various borrowers happens in the form of electronic money.
- A bank that wants to lend money can simply open a loan account in its books under the name of a certain borrower and credit the account with electronic money equivalent to the loan amount.
- In fact, the value of such electronic loans created by banks out of thin air can turn out to be many times the actual amount of cash in the banks’ vaults. So, if borrowers decided to withdraw in the form of cash all the money that was loaned to them electronically by the bank. This can cause a run on the bank as the bank has created loans far exceeding the amount of actual cash in its vaults.
Pros of full-reserve banking system:
- Supporters of full-reserve banking argue that since banks will not be able to create money out of thin air in a full-reserve banking system, their influence on the economy’s money supply will become severely restricted.
- This will prevent artificial economic booms and busts that are said to be the consequence of changes in money supply.
Bill introduced in LS to allow use of birth certificate as single document
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Why in news?
- Recently, a bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha with an aim to allow use of birth certificate as single document.
Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Bill, 2023:
- The Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Bill, 2023 will also help create a national and state-level database of registered births and deaths which eventually would ensure efficient and transparent delivery of public services and social benefits and digital registration.
- The Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969 (18 of 1969) (the Act) was enacted to provide for the regulation of registration of births and deaths and for matters connected therewith.
- The Act has not been amended so far since its inception and in order to keep pace with the societal change and technological advancements during the period of its operation and to make it more citizen friendly, there is a need to amend the Act.
Key Highlights:
- The bill will facilitate insertion of provisions for digital registration and electronic delivery of certificate of births and deaths for the benefit of public at large, to create a national and state-level database of registered births and deaths which would help in updating other databases resulting in efficient and transparent delivery of public services and social benefits.
- The legislation will provide for use of the birth certificate as a single document to prove the date and place of birth of a person born on or after the date of commencement of the Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Act, 2023, for admission to an educational institution, issuance of a driving licence, preparation of a voter list, registration of a marriage, appointment to a post in central or state government or a local body or public sector undertaking or in any statutory or autonomous body under the central or state government.
- It will provide for issuance of a passport, issuance of an Aadhaar number and any other purpose as may be determined by the central government in order to enhance the public convenience and to avoid multiplicity of documents to prove date and place of birth in the country.
- The bill provides for change of the ordering authority from magistrate of the first class or presidency magistrate to district magistrate or sub-divisional magistrate or an executive magistrate authorised by the district magistrate in the case of delayed information of any birth or death to the registrar after one year of its occurrence and submission of self-attested document instead of an affidavit made before a notary public in the case of delayed information of any birth or death to the registrar after 30 days but within one year of its occurrence.
- The bill provides for facilitating registration process of adopted, orphan, abandoned, surrendered, surrogate child and child to a single parent or unwed mother, to make it mandatory for all medical institutions to provide a certificate as to the cause of death to the registrar and a copy of the same to the nearest relative.
Sub-registrars:
- It provides for appointment of special "sub-registrars" in the event of disaster or epidemic for speedy registration of deaths and issue of certificates, to collect Aadhaar numbers of parents and informant, if available, in case of birth registration.
- The bill will also ensure addressing the grievances of general public aggrieved by any action or order of the registrar or district registrar and to enhance the penalties provided in the Act.
What’s next?
- The bill was later introduced by a voice vote. The bill will be considered for debate and passage at a later date.
