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Prime Minister Narendra Modi has cautioned against irresponsible financial policies and populism, saying that these measures may give political results in the short term, but will extract “a great social and economic price in the long term” with the most consequences for the “poorest and most vulnerable”.
Mr. Modi said that India had been sensitive to neighbours such as Sri Lanka which were going through such a crisis, and mentioned the domestic situation.
Whether it is at the national conference of Chief Secretaries or any such platform, I have said that financially irresponsible policies and populism may give political results in the short term but will extract a great social and economic price in the long term.
In a strong statement on reaction from countries such as Pakistan and China to meetings held in Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh in the run-up to the G-20 Summit in New Delhi. Ours is such a vast, beautiful and diverse nation.
He said that when it came to energy security the world was veering towards India’s position that there was no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution.
Our principle is simple — diversity is our best bet, whether in society or in terms of our energy mix... Given the different pathways countries are on, our pathways for energy transition will be different.
Despite having 17% of the world’s population, India’s historic share in cumulative emissions has been less than 5%. Yet, we have left no stone unturned in meeting our climate goals.
Editorial
Court’s order and the ASI survey are flawed (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
In its judgment dated November 9, 2019, a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court of India, comprising the Chief Justice of India (CJI), Ranjan Gogoi, and Justices S.A. Bobde, Dr. D.Y Chandrachud (as he was then), Ashok Bhushan, and S. Abdul Nazeer interpreted the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 in the case of M Siddiq (Dead) Through Legal Representatives vs Mahant Suresh Das and Ors. (Ram Janmabhoomi temple case).
The Court gave a binding declaration of the law interpreting the Act, which, under the constitutional scheme, becomes the law of the land and binds all courts within the territory of India under Article 141 of the Constitution of India.
Its decisions must be followed by all courts (even the top court) in subsequent cases following the Doctrines of “Precedent” and stare decisis. The rationale is that the law by which the citizens are governed should be fixed, definite, and known.
The Preamble to the Act states: “An Act to prohibit conversion of any place of worship and to provide for the maintenance of the religious character of any place of worship as it existed on the 15th day of August 1947, and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.”
The five judges who authored the judgment collectively in the Ram Janmabhoomi temple case defined the Act thus: “The law has been enacted to fulfil two purposes.
First, it prohibits the conversion of any place of worship. In doing so, it speaks to the future by mandating that the character of a place of public worship shall not be altered.
Second, the law seeks to impose a positive obligation to maintain the religious character of every place of worship as it existed on 15 August 1947 when India achieved independence from colonial rule.”
Opinion
Measuring hunger across States (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Despite being a major food producer with extensive food security schemes and the largest public distribution system in the world, India still grapples with significant levels of food insecurity, hunger, and child malnutrition.
The Global Hunger Index (GHI), 2022, ranked India 107 among 121 countries, behind Nigeria (103) and Pakistan (99).
The GHI provides a composite measurement and tracks undernourishment and hunger at the national level across three dimensions: calorie undernourishment, child malnutrition, and under-five mortality.
According to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report of 2022, India is home to 224.3 million undernourished people.
Disparities are evident among States. Leveraging subnational data that encompasses the three dimensions of the GHI enables the development of an India-specific hunger index at the level of States and Union Territories.
This plays a pivotal role in evaluating the extent of undernourishment at a more localised scale, which is critical for meeting the Sustainable Development Goals of eradicating hunger and malnutrition.
The GHI is computed using four indicators — the prevalence of calorie undernourishment; and of stunting, wasting, and mortality among children below the age of five; and under-five mortality rate.
The State Hunger Index (SHI) is calculated using the same indicators except calorie undernourishment, which is replaced by body mass index (BMI) undernourishment among the working-age population, as data on calorie undernourishment are not available since 2012.
Text & Context
Status of the Right to Information Act (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
For 13 years, the Right to Information Act, 2005, helped citizens obtain information and data from Central and State institutions that are not readily available in the public domain.
The RTI Act allows any citizen to make requests for access to data, documents, and other information in the government’s possession.
India’s RTI Act has been commonly cited as among the most comprehensive public records access legislations in the world. In recent years, though, activists worry that the system is being made less and less effective, shutting off a crucial means to hold public officials accountable.
Apart from allowing certain information to be kept secret for national security and sovereignty reasons, the RTI Act makes one exemption — it prohibits the personal data disclosure of citizens by the government, unless there is an overriding public interest in doing so.
The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, amended this qualified prohibition into a total prohibition. However, the National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information (NCPRI) argued that it would make ‘social audits’ in ration distribution impossible to carry out.
In social audits, a community member gets a list of ration beneficiaries through an RTI request, and individually verifies that the beneficiaries got what they appear to have received on paper.
There are also concerns that powerful public officials would evade accountability by invoking this blanket ban on disclosing personal information.
Past amendments to the RTI Act have also raised concerns. The Right to Information (Amendment) Act, 2019 gave the Union Government unilateral power in deciding how long information commissioners, who hear appeals against unsatisfactory or absent RTI responses, can serve, and what their salaries are.
What is the debate around ‘one nation, one election’? (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
On September 1, the Central government set up a panel headed by former President Ram Nath Kovind to explore the feasibility of the ‘one nation, one election’ (ONOE) plan.
The idea of ONOE centres around the concept of synchronising the timing of Lok Sabha and State Assembly elections across all States to reduce the frequency of polls throughout the country.
After the enforcement of the Constitution on January 26, 1950, the first-ever general elections to Lok Sabha and all State Assemblies were conducted simultaneously in 1951-1952.
The practice continued into the three subsequent Lok Sabha elections until 1967, after which it was disrupted. The cycle was first broken in 1959 after the Centre invoked Article 356 (failure of constitutional machinery) of the Constitution to dismiss the then-Kerala government.
Subsequently, due to defections and counter-defections between parties, several Legislative Assemblies dissolved post-1960, which eventually led to separate polls for Lok Sabha and State Assemblies.
Currently, the assembly polls in the States of Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha are held together with the Lok Sabha elections.
In August 2018, the Law Commission of India (LCI), chaired by Justice B. S. Chauhan, released a draft report on simultaneous elections, wherein the constitutional and legal questions related to the issue were analysed.
Notably, the Commission submitted that simultaneous elections are not feasible within the existing framework of the Constitution.
It said that the Constitution, the Representation of the People’s Act 1951 and the Rules of Procedure of Lok Sabha and State Assemblies would require appropriate amendments to conduct simultaneous polls.
News
‘GDP-centric view changing to human-centric one’ (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks on G-20, fiscal responsibility, renewable energy and the challenge of debt restructur- ing, which has become a problem for the Global South. Edited excerpts:
The genesis of the G-20 was at the end of the last century. The major economies of the world got together with a vision of a collective and coordinated response to economic crises.
Its salience grew even more during the global economic crisis in the first decade of the 21st century. But when the pandemic struck, the world understood that in addition to the economic challenges, there were also other important and immediate challenges impacting humanity. By this time, the world was already taking note of India’s human-centric model of development.
India’s response to the pandemic through a clear and coordinated approach, direct assistance to the most vulnerable using technology, coming up with vaccines and running the world’s largest vaccine drive, and sharing medicines and vaccines with nearly 150 countries — these were noted and well appreciated.
Many positive impacts are coming out of India’s G-20 Presidency. The effort towards greater inclusion for the Global South, especially Africa in global affairs has gained momentum. India’s G-20 Presidency has also sowed the seeds of confidence in the countries of the so-called ‘Third World’.
Aditya-L1 ‘healthy’, in new orbit: ISRO (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) performed the first earth-bound firing to raise the orbit of Aditya-L1, India’s first solar observatory mission, which was launched.
The ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network Work (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru performed the manoeuvre.
The satellite was “healthy” and operating nominally, the ISRO posted on the X platform (formerly Twitter). The new orbit attained was 245 km x 22,459 km.
After the successful launch, the ISRO said that Aditya-L1 started generating power as the solar panels were deployed.
Aditya-L1 will stay on earth-bound orbits for 16 days, during which it will undergo five manoeuvres to gain the necessary velocity for its journey.
Subsequently, Aditya-L1 undergoes a Trans-Lagrangian1 insertion manoeuvre, marking the beginning of its 110-day trajectory to the destination around the L1 Lagrange point.
Upon arrival at the L1 point, another manoeuvre binds Aditya-L1 to an orbit around the L1, a balanced gravitational location between the earth and the sun.
The satellite spends its whole mission life orbiting around L1 in an irregularly shaped orbit in a plane roughly perpendicular to the line joining the earth and the sun.
MeitY to integrate AI-enabled learning in DIKSHA 2.0 (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Education)
The National e-Governance Division (NeGD) of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is set to integrate Personalised Adaptive Learning (PAL) into its existing Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing (DIKSHA) platform.
The PAL’s software-based approach is expected to allow each student to have an individualised learning experience over the course of the curriculum based on their unique needs and abilities.
DIKSHA, which comes under the Education Ministry, provides e-content for schools by an online portal and a mobile application.
It has embedded assistive technologies for learners with visual or hearing challenges. However, DIKSHA is a static content repository.
DIKSHA features digitised National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks used by national and State Boards.
Apart from this, DIKSHA hosts 2.43 lakh contributions by 11,624 academics by way of teaching videos, explainers, and practice questions. Currently, all these contributions are scattered across the platform.
The NCERT has sought the MeitY’s expertise in facilitating the PAL’s integration into DIKSHA. In an example of how it works, if a student of Class 9 is learning the Pythagoras theorem and makes a calculation mistake, the AI learning system flags it and loops the student back to a basic video of how to make the calculation.
World
Ahead of talks on grain deal, Russia attacks Ukraine port (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Russian drones targeted Ukraine’s southern Odesa region in the early hours of Sunday, with Moscow hitting a Danube port on the border with NATO member Romania in an attack condemned by Bucharest.
Moscow has hit Ukrainian port infrastructure on the Black Sea and on the Danube for weeks, since exiting a key deal that allowed the safe passage of ships carrying grain.
The attack came on the eve of a summit in Russia between Vladimir Putin and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who hopes to revive the grain deal.
The Odesa region attacks also came as Kyiv has claimed some successes in its counter-offensive on the southern front this week.
Ukraine said Russia had hit the Odesa region with a barrage of Iranian-made Shahed drones, saying it downed 22 of them.
But Kyiv also said that some of the drones hit the Danube area, saying that at least two persons were wounded in attacks on “civilian industrial” infrastructure.
The Russian Army said it had targeted “fuel storage” facilities in the Ukrainian port of Reni, which lies on the Danube river that separates Ukraine from Romania.