9 April 2024, The Hindu
Households’ debt surged to new high by Dec. 2023
(Page 1)
(GS 3: Indian Economy)
- In what may be construed as a sign of rising financial distress, India’s household debt levels are reckoned to have touched an all-time high of 40% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by December 2023, while net financial savings had likely dropped to their lowest level at around 5% of GDP, as per a research report from leading financial services firm Motilal Oswal.
- In September 2023, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) estimated that households’ net financial savings had dropped to 5.1% of GDP in 2022-23, a 47-year low, triggering a furry of criticism that the Finance Ministry had refuted sharply.
- It had argued that households are adding fewer financial assets than in the past because they were taking loans to buy real assets such as homes and vehicles which is “not a sign of distress but of confidence in their future employment and income prospects”.
Innovations in traditional methods revolutionising farming in Rajasthan’s parched Shekhawati
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(GS 3: Agriculture)
- Neat rows of vegetable and fruit plants in a portion of the 4.50-hectare agricultural land, a 3.3-KV solar power panel running pumps and other electrical appliances, slim polyethylene hoses for drip irrigation, and uniformly spaced trees form part of some innovative practices adopted by farmer Bhanwar Lal Meel at Lalasi village in Rajasthan’s Sikar district.
- Mr. Meel, 41, who has studied till Class 12, has made innovations in traditional practices and adopted new techniques to turn farming on his ancestral land into a profitable venture amid the decline in the groundwater level and erratic rainfall.
- A pond constructed in his field last year, utilising the subsidy under the Prime Minister’s Krishi Sinchayee Yojana, provides an additional support to farming by storing rainwater.
Indian aviation, a case of air safety at a discount
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(GS 3: Indian Economy)
- The oft-repeated statements by the Union Minister for Civil Aviation, Jyotiraditya Scindia, and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), that, first, ‘safety is paramount’ and, second, ‘India has one of the fastest growing aviation sectors’, are ones that are at complete variance with each other when there are two very serious safety issues staring at aviation in India.
- In June 2023, the Minister had written to the Kerala government implying that the safety of passengers was being gravely compromised due to the non-provision of the Runway End Safety Area at Kozhikode’s Karipur airport.
- The provision of this safety feature was explicitly recommended by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) after its investigation and recommendations following an air crash at the airport on August 7, 2020.
- The Minister said that the Ministry would be “left with no choice but to proceed with the necessary action of curtailing the runway length for safe aircraft operations at Calicut airport from 01.08.2023 unless the land is handed over to the AAI [Airports Authority of India] immediately”.
Marching ahead with technology absorption
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(GS 3: Achievements of Indians in science & technology)
- The Indian Army is observing the year 2024 as the ‘Year of Technology Absorption’.
- This theme underscores the Army’s steadfast focus on embracing technology to transform itself so as to keep ahead of adversaries in the context of the evolving character of warfare.
- The means and end in this regard are visualised under the umbrella of Atmanirbharta.
- The absorption will be mainly in terms of disruptive technology (DT) comprising artificial intelligence, autonomous weapon systems such as drones, sensors, robotics, space technology, and hypersonic weapon systems.
- Several nations, led by the United States and China, have remarkable accomplishments in the field of DTs.
- The strategic competition and engagements in the future are going to be inevitably decided by the edge a nation possesses in absorbing these technologies.
Perverse intent
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(GS 2: Indian Constitution)
- Offering citizenship to migrants who have fled their countries of origin because of persecution and have stayed a sufficient time in their adopted country, is a humane endeavour by any nation-state and should be generally welcomed.
- But by limiting this measure only to migrants from an arbitrary group of neighbouring nations and to narrow the definition only to “religious persecution”, and to further constrict this to not include Muslims, atheists, and agnostics among others, would suggest that the reasoning to provide this citizenship has less to do with humanitarianism and more to do with a warped and perverse understanding of Indian citizenship.
- By its very intent, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, whose rules were notified by the Ministry of Home Affairs last month, over four years since the Act was passed in Parliament, goes against the ethos of the Indian Constitution.
- It is a short-sighted piece of legislation in its understanding that only religious persecution merits a reason for providing asylum and citizenship. It is fairly evident that persecution can be due to other reasons as well, such as linguistic discrimination in the case of Sri Lanka in recent years, and erstwhile East Pakistan from which Bangladesh was born
A new methodology with some issues
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(GS 3: Indian Economy)
- The National Sample Survey (NSS) Office released the key results of the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) 2022-23 in late February.
- These primarily include all-India estimates of the average household monthly per capita consumption expenditure (MPCE) for rural and urban areas, its distribution by broad item groups for food and non-food categories, the variation in the average MPCE of households with different standards of living (by appropriately grouping them into 12 ‘fractile classes’ of MPCE), and the trend in the composition of MPCE since the 1999-2000 survey (55th round of the NSS).
- So far as the State-level estimates are concerned, the factsheet gives only estimates of average MPCE — total of food and non-food items — for each State and Union Territory (UT) for rural and urban areas.
Heat affects India’s aim to move from coal to renewables
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(GS 3: Environment- Conservation)
- In what many would have hoped was a Fool’s Day joke, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on April 1 that India will have more than the ‘usual’ number of days with heat waves in the forthcoming summer.
- The forecast comes against the backdrop of an impending water crisis in the south, Lok Sabha polls, and rising food ination.
- Higher heat is bad for crop yield (to different degrees depending on the crop), agricultural workers’ productivity, and the availability of water.
- Maps 1A and 1B depict the probability of maximum and minimum temperatures, respectively, the IMD expects for April-June 2024.
- It predicted “above-normal” temperatures for the month, with a 55%-65% probability in one half of the country and over 65% in the other half. Very few parts are likely to record normal or below normal temperatures.
Understanding the science behind the functioning of a mosquito bat
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(GS 3: Science and Technology)
- As the winter months fall behind us and summer heat starts to rise, we have some visitors in our midst: the all-pervading mosquitos. Everywhere and anywhere, we find these creatures hovering all around us.
- So among all the electronic and chemical technologies humans have ever developed to battle them, perhaps the most impressive is the ‘electric tennis bat’.
- While someone unaware may mistake it as one of the pieces of sports equipment Indians love, this single-player game is a pleasure to play.
- You chase and hit an airborne mosquito with the bat. If you succeed, you will hear the sweet sound of the blood-sucker’s body crackling to death.
Right against climate change a fundamental right, says SC
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(Prelims syllabus: General issues on Environmental Ecology, Biodiversity and Climate Change)
- The Supreme Court has recognised a much-felt, but less-articulated right against the adverse effects of climate change as a distinct fundamental right in the Constitution.
- “It is yet to be articulated that the people have a right against the adverse effects of climate change.
- This is perhaps because this right and the right to a clean environment are two sides of the same coin.
- As the havoc caused by climate change increases year-by-year, it becomes necessary to articulate this as a distinct right.
- It is recognised by Articles 14 (right to equality) and 21 (right to life),” the Supreme Court observed in a judgment released on April 6.
Strong link between high glycaemic index diet and diabetes, says study
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(GS 2: Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services)
- The findings of an international study suggest that consuming low glycaemic index and low glycaemic load diets might prevent the development of type 2 diabetes.
- They also found a strong association between glycaemic index (GI) and the risk of type 2 diabetes among individuals with a higher Body Mass Index (BMI).
- In a paper published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology last week, the authors say: “The association between the glycaemic index and the glycaemic load [GL] with type 2 diabetes incidence is controversial.”
- They found that diets with a high GI and a high GL were associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes in the study that spanned five continents.
