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Less than 5% of Indians are now expected to be below the poverty line, and extreme destitution has almost gone away, a top government official asserted, citing the findings of the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) for 2022-23. Retail inflation has also likely been overstated in recent years.
Dismissing the narrative that rural economy is weak and India’s growth story is “restricted to a few people”, B.V.R. Subrahmanyam, chief executive officer of the Centre’s think tank NITI Aayog, averred that growth is “broad-based” with rural Indians’ incomes and spends rising faster than their urban peers.
The urban-rural consumption divide has narrowed to 71% in 2022-23 from a peak of 91% in 2004-05, so inequality is declining, the official said, even as rural households’ spending on food has dropped below 50% of total expenditure for the first time.
Uttarakhand govt. to bring in damage recovery Bill (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The Pushkar Singh Dhami government is set to introduce the Uttarakhand Public and Private Property Damage Recovery Bill during the Budget Session of Assembly.
The Bill provides for recovery of cost of damage to public and private property during protests from those involved in the incidents. Similar laws have been enacted in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.
An official involved in the drafting of the Bill said a tribunal, headed by a retired judge, would investigate the charges against the accused. It would handle assessments and orders for damage recovery after detailed discussions with the affected parties.
States
Discovery of temples in Telangana shows spread of Chalukya reign (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 1, Culture)
The distance between Mudimanikyam in Telangana and Badami in Karnataka is nearly 500 km. But a recent discovery shows that the village of Mudimanikyam on the banks of river Krishna was part of the kingdom ruled by Badami Chalukyas.
And long after the demise of the kingdom that ruled the present-day Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, the area continued to have a thriving community that prayed to Hindu gods Vishnu and Shiva.
While the Jogulamba temples at Alampur and the submerged Yeleswaram sites were the furthest reach of Chalukya Badami kingdom, this new information expands the historical extent of that realm.
Editorial
A chilling effect on the freedom to love (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
On February 7, 2024, the Uttarakhand Assembly passed the Uniform Civil Code of Uttarakhand Bill, 2024, which purportedly consolidates a common law on marriage and property inheritance.
The Bill only awaits the President’s assent to become enforceable law. A problematic feature of the Bill is the mandatory requirement of registration of a live-in relationship and its criminalisation, if certain conditions are not complied with.
With this mandate, the proposed law will become the foremost weapon of the state to penalise consensual relations and violate individual autonomy.
The Bill, requires live-in partners to submit a ‘statement’ to the Registrar concerned. The Registrar has the powers to examine the statement and conduct an inquiry into the relationship.
From a reading of the Bill, it appears that anyone can inform the Registrar of a live-in relation, which she can then act upon. She is empowered to examine the consent of parties, marital status, and the age of partners.
Moreover, partners can be required to make a personal appearance and the Registrar can also refuse to register the relationship. Termination of a relationship also requires notice to be submitted.
Another dangerous feature of the Bill, however, is the criminal penalty — of imprisonment or fine (or both) — if this statement is not filed. The couple will be penalised for the submission of false information.
The Registrar will inform the details of the live-in relations to the police station whose jurisdiction governs the couple.
Opinion
A disservice to the education sector (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Education)
The Interim Budget featuring a substantial cut of over 60% in allocations to the University Grants Commission (UGC) serves as a scathing reminder of Jacob J. Lew’s proposition that “the budget is not just a collection of numbers, but an expression of our values and aspirations”.
The grant for higher education has suffered a ruthless reduction of ₹9,600 crore from the preceding fiscal year’s revised estimate, with a second consecutive year of slashes in allocations for institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology and and the Indian Institutes of Management.
This budgetary trend raises questions about its alignment with the overarching objectives of ‘Education 2023: Incheon Declaration,’ championed by India, seeking inclusive, equitable, and quality learning for all though a targeted allocation of 4-6% of the nation’s GDP.
The Interim Budget marks a retrenchment from the lofty ambitions of the Incheon Declaration, with the current allocation standing at approximately 2.8% of the GDP.
Text & Context
Why were surrogacy rules modified? (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The Union government on February 21 modified the Surrogacy (Regulation) Rules, 2022, to permit married couples to use donor eggs or donor sperm for surrogacy — a move that provided a big relief to those with medical complications.
This revoked a previous amendment made in March 2023 that banned the use of such donor gametes. The modification in the surrogacy rules came more than a month after Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati apprised the Supreme Court that the government was considering changes in the amendment brought in last year to allow married couples to use donor gametes for surrogacy in case they suffered from medical ailments that made it difficult to conceive.
On March 14 2023, Form 2 (Consent of the Surrogate Mother and Agreement for Surrogacy) of the Surrogacy Rules read with Rule 7 was amended to stipulate that donor eggs could not be used for gestational surrogacy of an intending couple.
This has now been amended by a notification of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare allowing married couples to use a donor gamete on the condition that a District Magistrate Board certifies that either the husband or the wife suffers from a medical condition.
Can the IMEC address the Red Sea crisis? (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
As the Red Sea crisis enters its fourth month, global supply chains are increasingly grappling with inflated freights, delayed vessel schedules, and product shortages.
It has once again brought to the fore the vulnerabilities of global supply chains, highlighting the need to revisit alternate routes for global trade.
The Red Sea owes its strategic importance for global trade to the Bab el-Mandab Strait which lies between Yemen and Djibouti. It is one of the world’s busiest cargo and oil transit points with almost 12% of international merchandise trade passing through it.
An immediate consequence of the Red Sea conflict has been that major container and oil carriers have been forced to re-route shipments via the Cape of Good Hope.
The re-routing has led to rising ocean freight, inflated insurance costs, and longer voyage times leading to delays and shortage of products.
It has also driven up transportation costs. The higher shipping costs will be passed onto consumers in the form of increased commodity prices.
News
IGNCA’s ‘language atlas’ to shine a light on India’s linguistic diversity (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 1, Culture)
As India makes efforts towards imparting education in the mother tongue, especially at the primary level, a crucial question remains on the actual number of languages that can be considered to be “active” in the country.
A proposed linguistic survey across the country by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), which aims to enumerate how many languages are spoken and in which States and regions, can provide the answer. The IGNCA is an autonomous body under the Union Culture Ministry.
India recognises 22 languages officially, which are part of Schedule 8 of the Indian Constitution. According to Census data, 97% of the Indian population speaks one of these languages.
There are an additional 99 non-scheduled languages included in the Census, and according to the 2011 Census, around 37.8 million people identify one of these non-Scheduled languages as their mother tongue.
Science
Ahead of Gaganyaan, ISRO’s CE-20 engine already has a notable legacy (Page no. 20)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
On February 21, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) reported it had successfully completed human-rating the CE-20 rocket engine ahead of its use in an important test flight later this year of the country’s mission to launch an Indian astronaut to space onboard an Indian rocket.
The CE-20 is an indigenous cryogenic engine ISRO developed to use with the GSLV Mk III, now called the LVM-3, launch vehicle.
It represents an improvement on the CE-7.5 cryogenic engine and is instrumental to ISRO successfully realising its human spaceflight, a.k.a. Gaganyaan, mission.
Engineers prefer to use liquid fuels for rocket motors because they are less bulky and flow better than solid fuels. Using hydrogen as fuel is also desirable because when it is combusted, it generates the highest exhaust velocity.
For example, combusting hydrogen with oxygen as the oxidiser results in an exhaust velocity of 4.5 km/s whereas that produced by unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide — the combination used by the second stage of the PSLV rocket, e.g. — is around 3.4 km/s. This is why hydrogen is a desirable fuel for rocket motors.