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The new triangular Parliament House, built to fit the three-sided plot of land on which it stands, faces the old circular structure, both dressed in red sandstone for continuity.
Their interiors though, are a study in contrast. Noida-based sculptor Ram Sutar’s 16-foot-high bronze Mahatma Gandhi sits in between, the silent arbitrator between the past and the present.
In place of the “disappearing dome” over the central hall, visible to visitors only once they step in, the new building is flat-roofed and fitted with a golden spire, much like those in temples and gurdwaras.
Where the old building, opened in 1927, had wooden panelling and high ceilings, the new four-storey structure has lights embedded into ceilings of gold.
Peacock feather motifs are emblazoned on both the ceiling and carpet in the Lok Sabha, and lotus motifs in the Rajya Sabha. The tradition of red upholstery, carpeting and wall cladding for the Upper House and green for the Lower continues.
Now, there is no central hall that was used for joint parliamentary sessions a few times a year — a space that also turned into a lounge for members to gather and dissolve party differences. In its place is an open-to-the-sky courtyard and three cafes as a neutral ground.
With any large project, there is bound to be some controversy. With the new Parliament, it’s the 22 parties boycotting the inauguration, which will see a puja, a havan (fire ritual) and the installation of a sengol (sceptre) behind the Lok Sabha Speaker’s chair.
With the old, it was the fact that British architect Herbert Baker imagined it as a triangular building with chambers of varying shapes within.
The new Lok Sabha can seat 888 members, with the capacity to expand it to 1,272 during joint sessions of Parliament, while the Rajya Sabha will seat 384. Both chambers are roughly three times bigger than those in the old Parliament.
The old Lower House chamber had a significantly inadequate 148-member capacity at inception, necessitating remodelling for expansion in the 1950s, with the first floor added in the 1960s. The increased floor space came at the cost of aesthetics and convenience, with many seats placed behind the 12 pillars that hold up the building.
States
Telangana’s gongadi shawls refashioned into shoes (Page no. 4)
(GS Paper 1, Culture)
For generations, the rough wool of the sturdy Deccani sheep has been handcrafted by the Kuruma and Kuruba — pastoral communities spread across the Deccan plateau — into a tough, all-weather shawl called a gongadi in Telangana.
Now, this resilient fabric has been repurposed into all-weather shoes for farmers by three alumni of the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.
The romantic notion of being barefoot is very dangerous. When we met farmers, cracked feet, fungal infections and snake bites were the norm for them.
We wanted to do something about it and the result is this shoe, who started his career as a transportation designer aspiring to work for the likes of Ferrari and Lamborghini before he turned to an exigent problem faced by farmers.
For a short time, I worked to design an indigenous wheelchair. Then my friends and I realised that design thinking can be used to solve real-world problems and not just to design Ferraris and Lamborghinis.
We spent 1.5 years in various places in rural Maharashtra to understand the problems faced by farmers. We shortlisted the problem of shoes and started working on it,” says Mr. Kocherlakota.
Nakul Lathkar, who worked on an electric car design for a European company, and Vidyadher Bhandare, who was designing seats for Indian Railways, also pooled their resources and enthusiasm to listen to farmers and understand their needs
Their first batch of 30 shoes sold out in just five days in Mr. Bhandare’s Kolhapur village. But once they got ₹10 lakh as incubation funding from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, the team got to work in earnest and the result is footwear that would not be out of place in any shoe boutique in the world.
The team tested 40 prototypes, including some made with jute, banana fibre, cotton, screwpine fibre and even water hyacinth fibre, before identifying the Deccani wool.
The shoes are now being cross-subsidised, with a price tag of ₹2,500 for coloured models sold in urban areas, allowing farmers to buy the undyed black version for just ₹900.
News
U.K. Minister Tariq begins India visit (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
U.K. Minister of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs Tariq Ahmad began a visit to India on Saturday, in the first such senior-level visit since tensions over violent pro-Khalistan protests outside the Indian High Commission in London in March.
The four-day visit also follows days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak met warmly in Hiroshima, indicating the détente in ties.
Mr. Ahmad, called “Lord Ahmad” in the U.K., who deals with South Asia among other regions, began his trip from Jodhpur. He will also visit Delhi and Hyderabad and is expected to focus on technology and innovation projects in India.
Building on the 2030 road map for India-U.K. future relations, we are deepening our collaboration on science and technology, bringing new innovations to both our nations.
During his tour, he will visit both cultural sites and high-tech research facilities, to “accelerate U.K.-India collaboration on science, technology and health”, including technology start-ups at the innovation campus in Hyderabad, a space launch vehicle company and the National Institute of Animal Biotechnology.
World
Iraq unveils $17-bn project linking Europe, West Asia (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Iraq presented an ambitious plan to turn itself into a regional transportation hub by developing its road and rail infrastructure, linking Europe with the Middle East.
Once completed, the $17-billion project known as the “Route of Development” would span the length of the country, stretching 1,200 kilometres from the northern border with Turkey to the Gulf in the south.
Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani announced the project during a conference with Transport Ministry representatives from Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey and the UAE.
This project acts as a pillar of a sustainable non-oil economy, a link that serves Iraq’s neighbours and the region. The project could be completed in “three to five years”.
Work has already started to increase capacity at the commercial port of Al-Faw, on the shores of the Gulf, where cargo is to be unloaded before it embarks on the new road and rail links.
The project also includes the construction of around 15 train stations along the route, including in the major cities of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and up to the Turkish border.
Science
Cheetahs introduced without considering spatial ecology: study (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Almost 70 years after Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus)went extinct in India, eight cheetahs from Namibia and 12 from South Africa were introduced into the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh in September 2022 and February 2023, respectively.
The intent was to establish a free-ranging population of cheetahs belonging to the sub-species,Acinonyx jubatus.
Now, three scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany, have pointed out serious shortcomings in the reintroduction plan.
The cheetahs have been introduced in an unfenced area of about 750sq kmin the Kuno National Park. This area is surrounded by villages with livestock farmers.
Using only the prey density in the national park, the carrying capacity for cheetahs was calculated to be 21, which translates into three cheetahs per 100sq km.
Writing in the journal, Conservation Science and Practice, the researchers point out that such “high cheetah densities have not been recorded for other free-ranging African cheetah population roaming in unfenced areas”.
Instead, just one cheetah is present per 100sq kmof unfenced area. Even in prey-rich landscapes such as the Maasai Mara in Kenya, the cheetah density is just about one per 100sq km.
Iron fortification: health risks of excessive iron intake (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
Iron is an essential mineral required for many bodily functions, including the formation of haemoglobin, but can be harmful when taken in excess. One of the methods suggested for the treatment of iron deficiency anaemia is fortification of food with iron.
Typically, a chosen food staple such as wheat, rice, or even salt, is fortified to provide up to two-thirds (10 mg/day) of the iron requirement of adult women, and almost the entire daily requirement of men.
Thus, excess consumption of iron can occur if one habitually consumes a balanced quality diet to begin with or exceeds limits for consumption of the fortified food.
There is a defined level of iron intake beyond which the risk of adverse events begins to increase. This is called the ‘tolerable upper limit’ of intake, and is set at 40 mg/day.
It will especially be deleterious for populations who have iron overload states like patients with thalassemia.
Once iron is absorbed, it is thought that its excretion is steady and very small, except when bleeding takes place, as with menstrual bleeding.
Thus, women can excrete iron from the body but men cannot. This makes men vulnerable to excess iron intake.
Recent studies showed that with fortification, there is an increased excretion of iron in children. It is not known exactly how or through what route this extra excretion takes place.
It is likely that the extra iron is lost through the intestine, where cells of the intestinal lining exfoliate or drop off, and thereby deposit their iron into the intestine lumen for excretion, or through the urine.
FAQ
How can citizens file Census details online? (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
India had conducted the Census every 10 years since 1881, but in 2020, the decennial exercise for Census 2021 had to be postponed due to the pandemic.
Though the government has not announced fresh dates for the Census, the groundwork is being laid and details are emerging about some of the features.
It will be the first digital Census giving citizens an opportunity to “self-enumerate”. The NPR (National Population Register) has been made compulsory for citizens who want to exercise the right to fill the Census form on their own rather than through government enumerators. During self-enumeration, Aadhaar or mobile number will be mandatorily collected.
A January 2 notification extending the deadline for the freezing of administrative boundaries in States till June 30 has ruled out the exercise at least till September.
As preparation and training takes at least three months, the Census will have to be pushed to next year. Around 30 lakh government officials will be assigned as enumerators and each will have the task to collect the details of 650-800 people through both online and offline mode, covering an estimated population of 135 crore people.
The Lok Sabha election is due in April-May 2024 and it is unlikely that the Census will be carried out before that since the same workforce will be dedicated to the elections.
The completion of both the phases of the Census will take at least 11 months, even if done at an accelerated pace from October 1.
One reason which is holding up the exercise is the amendments proposed to the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969.
The government wants to have a centralised register of births and deaths that can be used to update the population register, electoral register, Aadhaar, ration card, passport and driving licence databases.
The centrally stored data will be updated in real time without human interface leading to addition and deletion from electoral rolls when an individual turns 18 and after an individual’s death respectively.
Will AI tools help detect telecom fraud? (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
To weed out rampant cases of fraudulently procured SIM cards being used across the country for financial and other cyber scams, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has begun using an artificial intelligence-based facial recognition tool named ‘Artificial Intelligence and Facial Recognition powered Solution for Telecom SIM Subscriber Verification’ or ASTR. ASTR has already been used in multiple States such as Haryana, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala.
On May 25, the Punjab police said it had blocked 1.8 lakh SIM cards allegedly activated using fake identities, out of which 500 connections were obtained using one person’s photo but different accompanying KYC (Know Your Customer) parameters such as names, address proofs, and so on. India is the second-largest telecom ecosystem in the world, with about 117 crore subscribers.
While manually identifying and comparing the vast number of subscriber verification documents such as photographs and proofs is a massive exercise, the DoT says it aims to use the facial recognition-based “indigenous and NextGen platform” ASTR to analyse the whole subscriber base of all telecom service providers (TSPs).
Besides, it points out, that the currently available conventional text-based analysis is limited to finding similarities between the proof of identities and verifying whether such information is accurate but it cannot trawl photographic data to detect similar faces.
Facial recognition is an algorithm-based technology which creates a digital map of the face by identifying and mapping an individual’s facial features, which it then matches against the database to which it has access.