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The Union government is set to launch an initiative under which women-only courts will be set up at the village-level as an alternative dispute resolution forum for issues such as domestic violence and property rights, and to counter the patriarchal system.
The scheme will be launched on a pilot basis in 50 villages each in Assam and Jammu and Kashmir in August and extended to the rest of the country over the next six months. Detailed standard operating procedures have been prepared for all the States, which will be released next week.
The Nari Adalat (women’s court) of each village will have seven to nine members – half of which would be the elected members of the gram panchayat while the other half will include teachers, doctors and social workers – who would be nominated by the villagers.
This platform will leverage their potential as advisers and leaders within their communities, functioning as a pressure group,” a senior official in the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
The court will not only address individual cases of women and girls within the local community who require assistance or have grievances, but also raise awareness of government schemes and the legal rights and entitlements of women. The Nari Adalat will, however, not hold any legal status.
News
U.S. sends top human rights official to Delhi (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Close on the heels of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to the U.S., the Biden administration’s top official on human rights issues is visiting India and Bangladesh for talks with a number of senior government officials, civil society activists. The official will also meet Tibetan Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, in a visit loaded with messaging for the region.
Announcing her travel, U.S. Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights and U.S. Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues Uzra Zeya, who was scheduled to land in Delhi, said she hoped to “advance shared solutions to global challenges” during her meetings here. She will be accompanied by the State Department’s point person for South Asia, U.S.
This is the first senior U.S. delegation to travel to India after Mr. Modi’s meetings with President Joe Biden in June, which resulted in a number of major agreements being signed, but also saw several U.S. lawmakers express concerns over democracy and human rights in India.
Ms. Zeya is expected to meet Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra and other External Affairs Ministry officials during her visit.
In India, will meet with senior government officials to discuss the deepening and enduring U.S.-India partnership, including advancing shared solutions to global challenges, democracy, regional stability, and cooperation on humanitarian relief,” the State Department said in a press statement, indicating that in both Delhi and Dhaka, she would meet civil society organisations working on media freedom, gender equality, restrictions on NGOs and “marginalised religious and ethnic minorities”.
World
‘U.S. and China should work together on climate change’ (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged closer communication between China and the United States on Saturday to improve economic decision-making and challenged China to join global initiatives to help poorer nations address climate change.
Despite bilateral tensions, record-high U.S.-Chinese trade last year showed there was “ample room” to engage in trade and investment, and it was critical to focus on areas of common interest and address disagreements through dialogue, Ms. Yellen told Chinese Premier He Lifeng at the start of a meeting that a Treasury official said would last for more than three hours.
Ms. Yellen’s visit through Sunday is Washington’s latest attempt to repair ties between the world’s two biggest economies, battered over issues from Taiwan to technology that have drawn their allies into their rivalry.
Amid a complicated global economic outlook, there is a pressing need for the two largest economies to closely communicate and exchange views on our responses to various challenges. He, China’s recently appointed economy czar.
Doing so could “help both sides more fully understand the global economic outlook and make better decisions to strengthen our economies.
At the same time, Ms. Yellen reiterated Washington wanted to ensure healthy competition with a “fair set of rules” that would benefit both countries over time.
Science
Evidence for high annual rainfall 66 million years ago found (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
A team of scientists from IIT Kharagpur and Academia Sinica, Taipei has indeed found evidence of very high annual rainfall during the catastrophic volcanism that formed the Deccan Traps in India about 66 million years back.
They used a new technique — Nanoscale Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry — to analyse three isotopes of oxygen (Oxygen-16, 17, and 18) in fossil trees of the Cretaceous period and measure the isotopic composition of the lake water derived from rainfall.
The depleted values of the oxygen isotopes suggest a higher tropical rainfall in India during the terminal Cretaceous period.
The increase in rainfall and its waning in the early Palaeocene closely follows change in palaeo-atmospheric (paleo carbon dioxide) suggesting a possible underlying link. Results were published in the Journal of Chemical Geology.
The available records of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and temperature over both land and ocean during the time of Deccan Trap eruption were analysed. Deccan trap lavas were erupting, spewing huge amount of carbon dioxide thus increasing the then atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration to as high as 1,000 ppm (parts per million).
Excepting the arid/semi-arid regions, the modern annual rainfall over large parts of peninsular India on an average is about 1,000-1,200 mm.
Our data suggested that these fossil trees recorded 1,800-1,900 mm rainfall per year. This is exactly what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts in case of a future extreme 4 degree C warming of the planet.
Fossil fuel emission has increased the carbon dioxide from pre-industrial level of 280 ppm to about 420 ppm in 2023. Climate models suggest that a doubling of carbon dioxide will intensify the atmospheric circulation and consequently the rainfall.
The 2023 AR6 report by the IPCC warns if the carbon dioxide emission continues unabated, annual wettest day precipitation will increase by manifold across all continents.
Rainfall associated with tropical cyclones over India will also increase by 40%. These predictions are made through climate models, they can only be tested by studying the rainfall record in the past when the earth went through a natural warming phase due to high carbon dioxide emission.
Moderate alcohol consumption has no health benefits (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
Can consuming small amounts of alcohol daily help to keep the heart in good shape is a common question faced by many doctors across the country.
The presumed benefit of moderate alcohol use was first published in 1926 as a book by American biologist Raymond Pearl based on multiple patient case histories.
He describes the effect of alcohol consumption — from none to heavy drinking on human survival as a J-shaped curve.
The J-curve suggested that when people drank no or very less alcohol (represented by the portion to the left of tipping point of J) they experienced lower survival rate, as did those who drank heavy alcohol (represented by the portion of the right J-point), while those who consumed ‘modest’ amounts of alcohol lived longer.
The study and its conclusions gave birth to the myth that moderate alcohol consumption was beneficial. Multiple studies on further cohorts of patients, the J-shaped curve and its persistent conclusion that moderate alcohol consumption improved survival stood the test of time.
Scientists got on top of it and found an answer to this question — a particular type of heart condition called ischemic heart disease (IHD) in which the arteries that supply the heart become narrowed leading to muscle damage and poor pumping capacity reduced with moderate alcohol use.
If IHD was reduced with modest alcohol use, there had to be another reason behind it. A group of doctors from the Maastricht University, Netherlands who began studying it found the answer.
In a study published in March 2023 in Cardiovascular Diabetology, they concluded that modest alcohol consumption led to a reduction in damage to tiny vessels that regulate blood flow into heart muscles, called microvascular dysfunction that was responsible for IHD.
A group of researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital found (Journal of the American College of Cardiology) that improved heart health was due to reduction in the stress-related brain network activity with modest alcohol use.
FAQ
Why is China limiting exports of raw materials? (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
On July 3, in what is being seen as the country’s retaliatory move in the ‘chip war’, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced that it would implement export controls on items related to gallium and germanium. It said that the controls were being imposed “in order to safeguard national security interests”.
The announcement led to a spike in the prices of essential raw materials with companies rushing to secure their supplies. The regulations will be enforced from August 1.
The Chinese Ministry of Commerce, in a bid to restrict the export of the two raw materials, ordered that export operators would now have to acquire a specific licence.
The primary contention lies with the application process that requires operators to list the importers, end-users and end use. They would also have to produce the export contract in the original.
Exporting without permission would constitute a violation — calling for administrative penalties. It would also be deemed a crime with the exporter being held “criminally responsible”.
Gallium is used to make gallium arsenide which forms the core substrate for semiconductors. They are used to manufacture semiconductor wafers utilised in integrated circuits, mobile and satellite communications (in chipsets), and LEDs (in displays). It also used in automotives and lighting, and for sensors in avionic, space and defence systems.
According to the European industry body, Critical Raw Materials Alliance (CRMA), 80% of gallium production takes place in China.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) had noted earlier, while talking about low-purity gallium production outside China, that producers have “most likely restricted output owing to China’s dominant production capacity”.
China also commands 60% of the total production of germanium. The element is used in fibre-optic cables, infrared imaging devices (used by enforcement agencies for surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance, particularly in the dark) and optical devices (to improve the ability to operate weapon systems in harsh conditions). They are also used in solar cells for their ability to withstand heat and higher energy conversion efficiency.
The European Commission, whose import dependency on China stands at 71% and 45% for gallium and germanium respectively, has recognised it as a ‘critical raw material’.
In India, the Ministry of Mines identified the two elements to be crucial for the country’s economic development and national security.
Why are India-Russia trade payments in crisis? (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
As India continues to import oil from Russia, it is getting tougher for the country to pay for it. On the one hand, it faces repercussions of breaching the oil price cap of $60 a barrel put in place by the U.S. and European nations as Russia offers lower discounts on its crude.
On the other hand, using currencies like the Chinese yuan for payments, which India has already started doing, has its own geopolitical ramifications amid strained ties with Beijing.
Until a year ago, most of India’s oil imports came from West Asia, the U.S., and West Africa but today, a bulk of crude unloading at India’s ports is likely to be coming from Russia.
In February 2023, Russia surpassed Saudi Arabia to become the second biggest exporter of crude oil to India in FY23. Since the start of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Moscow has been hit by Western banking and economic sanctions.
Against this backdrop, it found a ready market for its goods, especially crude oil, in India and offered steep discounts. India, meanwhile, unlike the West, chose to not join the list of countries formally imposing sanctions on Moscow.
As a result, India’s imports of crude oil from Russia increased nearly 13 times in 2022-23 to over $31 billion from less than $2.5 billion in 2021-22.
Russia is now the largest supplier of oil to India, displacing traditional players such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and UAE. In the four-month period between November 2022 and February 2023, Russia took over the top spot from Iraq.
An analysis by Reuters showed how India accounted for more than 70% of the seaborne supplies of Russian-grade oil under $60 dollars a barrel in May.
For starters, as part of war-induced sanctions on Moscow, the U.S., the EU, and the U.K. have blocked multiple Russian banks from accessing the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a global secure interbank system.
An estimated $500 million is pending for goods already shipped by Indian exporters to Russia and it is now not possible to get the payments through the SWIFT channel.