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The formal launch of the Indian Oil Corporation’s patented solar cook-stove at the India Energy Week 2023 (February 6-8, 2023 in Bengaluru as part of the G-20 calendar of events) by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi must be looked at closely from the point of view of India’s national energy story.
While Mr. Modi claimed the stove would soon reach three crore households within the next few years, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri called it a “catalyst in accelerating adoption of low-carbon options” along with biofuels, electric vehicles, and green hydrogen.
These pronouncements have followed a 99% cut in the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) subsidy (from the 2022-23 revised estimates) to low-income households in the 2023 Budget even as international fuel prices remain high.
The government has claimed that the stove — priced at an eye-watering ₹15,000 — will transform cooking practices, save thousands of crores in LPG cost and forex, cut carbon dioxide emissions, and yield marketable carbon credits.
While past governments have failed to convince women to transform their household energy use through technical innovation, today, we are at an unprecedented crossroads in India’s renewable energy history.
The quest for renewable and decentralised technology in poor households has closely followed energy crises. Among the government’s earliest attempt to transform household energy consumption was the solar cooker of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), fabricated in the early 1950s, in a period of great uncertainty in food security and energy self-sufficiency. The Nehru government’s gambit on state-led hydroelectric power generation was a response to this crisis, but it failed to address the household energy consumption of the rural poor.
The solar cooker was met with international press coverage and newsreels in the cinema. But the ‘indigenous’ device, based on a 19th century innovation, was dead in the water. Apart from its prohibitive price, it cooked very slowly.
As mathematician and historian D.D. Kosambi quipped, “Tried by ordinary mortals away from newsreel cameras, [the cooker] just refused to work.”
Opinion
Towards transparency in OTT regulation (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
It has been two years since the government issued the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules through which the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) was given the task of regulating content on OTT and online platforms.
India’s approach can be termed as a light-touch ‘co-regulation’ model where there is ‘self-regulation’ at the industry level and final ‘oversight mechanism’ at the Ministry level.
The Rules provide for a grievance redressal mechanism and a code of ethics. They mandate access control mechanisms, including parental locks, for content classified as U/A 13+ or higher and a reliable age verification mechanism for programmes classified as ‘A’ (18+).
A survey of OTT regulation in different countries suggests that most of them are yet to come up with a clear statute-backed framework.
Few of them such as Singapore and Australia stand out. In Singapore, the Infocomm Media Development Authority is the common regulator for different media.
Aside from instituting a statutory framework and promoting industry self-regulation, its approach to media regulation emphasises on promoting media literacy through public education.
Though the OTT Rules were notified in 2021, there is little awareness about them among the general public. The Rules mandate the display of contact details relating to grievance redressal mechanisms and grievance officers on OTT websites/interface.
However, compliance is very low. In many cases, either the complaint redressal information is not published or published in a manner that makes it difficult for a user to notice easily.
In some cases, the details are not included as part of the OTT app interface. This underlines the need for ensuring uniformity in the way OTT publishers display key information relating to their obligations, timelines for complaint redressal, contact details of grievance officers, etc.
The manner, text, language and frequency for display of vital information could be enshrined in the Rules. The OTT industry associations could be mandated to run periodic campaigns in print and electronic media about the grievance redressal mechanism.
Explainer
The sophisticated anatomy of heat waves (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Last week, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) warned that the maximum temperatures over northwest, west, and central India would be 3-5°C higher than the long-term average. On February 21, the national capital recorded its third hottest February day (33.6° C) in more than five decades.
According to the IMD, a region has a heat wave if its ambient temperature deviates by at least 4.5-6.4°C from the long-term average. There is also a heat wave if the maximum temperature crosses 45°C (or 37°C at a hill-station).
Heat waves are expected to become longer and more intense and frequent over the Indian subcontinent. In 2022 itself, the heat waves started early and were more numerous.
They also extended further south into peninsular India due to a north-south pressure pattern set up by the La Niña, a world-affecting weather phenomenon in which a band of cool water spreads east-west across the equatorial Pacific Ocean.
The last three years have been La Niña years, which has served as a precursor to 2023 likely being an El Niño year. (The El Niño is a complementary phenomenon in which warmer water spreads west-east across the equatorial Pacific Ocean.)
As we eagerly await the likely birth of an El Niño this year, we have already had a heat wave occur over northwest India. Heat waves tend to be confined to north and northwest India in El Niño years.
Heat waves are formed for one of two reasons — warmer air is flowing in from elsewhere or it is being produced locally. It is a local phenomenon when the air is warmed by higher land surface temperature or because the air sinking down from above is compressed along the way, producing hot air near the surface.
A study published on February 20, 2023, in Nature Geoscience offers explanations as to how different processes contribute to the formation of a heat wave. (The study’s findings have been adapted here to the Indian context.)
First of all, in spring, India typically has air flowing in from the west-northwest. This direction of air-flow is bad news for India for several reasons.
In the context of climate change, West Asia is warming faster than other regions in latitudes similarly close to the equator, and serves as a source of the warm air that blows into India.
Likewise, air flowing in from the northwest rolls in over the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, so some of the compression also happens on the leeward side of these mountains, entering India with a bristling warmth.
Are menstrual leave policies implemented globally? (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 1, Social Issues)
On February 24, the Supreme Court refused to entertain a PIL about menstrual leave for workers and students across the country, calling it a policy matter. It highlighted that there were different “dimensions” to menstrual pain leave.
Menstrual leave refers to all policies that allow employees or students to take time off when they are experiencing menstrual pain or discomfort. In the context of the workplace, it refers to policies that allow for both paid or unpaid leave, or time for rest. More than half of those who menstruate experience pain for a couple of days a month; for some it is debilitating enough to hamper daily activities and productivity.
A 2017 survey of 32,748 women in the Netherlands published in the British Medical Journal found that 14% of them had taken time off from work or school during their periods.
The researchers estimated that employees lost around 8.9 days’ worth of productivity every year due to menstrual-cycle related issues.
Not everyone — not even all those who menstruate — is in favour of menstrual leave. Some believe that it is not required and that it will backfire and lead to employer discrimination against women.
For example, in response to the plea filed in the Supreme Court, a caveat was filed by law student Anjale Patel, represented by advocate Satya Mitra, highlighting a potential issue with menstrual leave.
The law student says that if you compel employers to grant menstrual pain leave, it may operate as a de facto disincentive for employers to engage women in their establishments. This has a policy dimension.
On February 16, among a host of other sexual health rights, Spain became the first European country to grant paid menstrual leave to workers. Workers now have the right to three days of menstrual leave — expandable to five days — a month.
In Asia, Japan introduced menstrual leave as part of its labour laws in 1947, after the idea became popular with labour unions in the 1920s. At present, under Article 68, employers cannot ask women who experience difficult periods to work during that time.
Text &Context
The multi-year cyber-attack on GoDaddy servers and its impact (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Cyber Security)
On February 16, an unauthorised third-party gained access to GoDaddy servers in its cPanel shared hosting environment, the company shared in a blog post.
Attackers installed malware on servers causing intermittent redirection of customer websites to malicious sites leading to increased chances of successful phishing campaigns. Attackers also obtained pieces of code related to some services used by the company.
GoDaddy is one of the largest domain registrar and web hosting platforms. The company offers services like eCommerce solutions, SSL certificates, professional business emails, web servers, and website builders.
Its WordPress shared hosting services allow users to manage and build websites using plug-ins and themes. According to its latest SEC filing, GoDaddy currently has 1.5 million paying customers with $4 billion in revenues.
Redirect, redirecting, or URL forwarding is a method used to ensure that web pages with more than one URL can be accessed by users who do not have the precise or all the existing URLs.
Redirects are predominantly used when a site is shifted to a new domain where multiple URLs are available for the same webpage.
Or, when two or more websites are merged, and when a web page is removed and users are sent to a new page to ensure continued services.
Setting up a server-side redirect, the kind used by threat actors in the attack on GoDaddy servers requires access to server configuration files or setting the redirect headers with server-side scripts.
End-users are mostly unaware when they are being redirected to a new web page unless the web browser they use notifies them.
However, redirects can be used by threat actors to get unsuspecting users to visit, interact and share information on malicious web pages.
The attack on GoDaddy servers was reported on February 16, 2023. It was first discovered in December 2022 after the company investigated customer complaints about their sites being used to redirect to random domains.
News
SC intrigued by the lack of ‘protection officers’ for domestic violence cases (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 1, Social Issues)
The Supreme Court has sought more information from the government about ‘Mission Shakti’, an umbrella scheme for the safety, security, and empowerment of women, intrigued by a possible chronic shortage in ‘protection officers’ to deal with domestic violence cases.
A government document in the top court shows that 4.4 lakh cases of domestic assault are pending across a sample 801 districts.
Though most of these districts have ‘one-stop centres’, established under ‘Mission Shakti’ to receive victims, there is still a lack of clarity about how many of them actually employ protection officers to effectively help the traumatised survivors.
Appointment of protection officers is mandated under Section 8 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005.
Protection officers, who should ideally be women, have a pivotal role under the law. They help victims file complaints, give information to the police, provide immediate protection and support, inform victims about their legal rights and support them through the court proceedings.
Protection officers — like the Magistrates — who are tasked with the implementation of the enactment, have been conceived as the backbone to effectuate the law, enacted with laudable objectives, by Parliament.
Taking on record the government’s figures, a Bench of Justices S. Ravindra Bhat and Dipankar Datta recently calculated that with 4.4 lakh cases pending in 801 districts, a protection officer in each of these districts would be saddled with more than 500 cases.
There is an urgent necessity to have more protection officers or the anti-domestic violence law would be reduced to a dead letter, the court indicated.
As part of Banjara community outreach, Union govt. to mark Sant Sevalal Maharaj Jayanti (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 1, Population)
In a first, the Union government on Sunday kicked off year-long celebrations to mark the 284th birth anniversary of SanthSevalal Maharaj, a spiritual and religious leader of the Banjara community, a nomadic community that has been declared a Scheduled Tribe (ST) in a few States of India.
This comes within weeks of efforts from an RSS-linked outfit to cement the community’s inclusion in the Hindu fold – a move that has irked some within the community who have said that these efforts amounted to “Hinduisation” of their culture, which had nothing to do with Hinduism.
The Banjara community have been declared as ST in five States (Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand), Scheduled Caste in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka, and Other Backward Class (OBC) in Chhattisgarh, Daman and Diu, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand.
The Union Ministry of Culture on Sunday kicked-off the celebrations at Dr. BR Ambedkar International Centre in New Delhi, where cultural and dance programmes will be performed along with an exhibition of Banjara art for two days (February 26 and 27).
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, along with MoS Culture Meenakshi Lekhi, are expected to attend the event on Monday along with other Cabinet Ministers.
eSanjeevani is a great boon, shows power of digital India: Modi (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in the 98th episode of his radio address Mann Ki Baat, said experiments such as the eSanjeevani application had ensured medical services to people living in far-flung areas of the country. He said the Mann Ki Baat had been a wonderful platform as an expression of public participation.
Every month, in millions of messages, the Mann Ki Baat of lots of people reaches me. You know the power of your mind... Similarly, how the might of the country increases with the strength of society. This we have seen and understood in different episodes of Mann Ki Baat and I have experienced it — have also accepted it.
Talking about the eSanjeevani app, he said the power of Digital India was visible in every corner. “Through this app, tele-consultation, that is, while sitting far away, through videoconferencing, you can consult a doctor about your illness.
Till now, the number of tele-consultants using this app has crossed the figure of 10 crore.
Talking to a doctor and a patient who use the application in the programme, he said eSanjeevani was becoming a life-saving app for the common man of the country, for the middle class, for the people living in hilly areas.