10 April 2024, The Hindu
SC questions Centre’s rigid position on industrial alcohol
(Page 4)
(GS 2: issues and challenges pertaining to the federal structure)
- A nine-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on Tuesday questioned the Centre’s rigid position to have exclusive control over industrial alcohol without giving States even the opportunity to regulate its inflow and clandestine conversion to potable liquor for human consumption, posing a grave threat to public health.
- “There is a strong possibility of denatured spirit or industrial alcohol being misused for the purpose of human consumption. The State is the guardian of public health. States are concerned about liquor tragedies happening within their jurisdictions. You (Centre), on the other hand, are a disconnected entity. You are not going to be concerned with what happens in a district or a collectorate. Why can’t the State make regulations to prevent the misuse of industrial alcohol?” Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre.
India likely to record normal monsoon this year, says Skymet
(Page 6)
(Prelims syllabus: Indian and World Geography)
- India is likely to experience a normal monsoon this year, the private weather forecasting agency Skymet said on Tuesday and forecast more rainfall in the second half of the season.
- Scientists at the India Meteorological Department (IMD) have also detected early signs of a favourable monsoon this year with fading El Nino conditions and reduced snow cover over Eurasia.
- The Met office will issue a monsoon forecast later this month.
However, normal cumulative rainfall does not mean uniform temporal and spatial distribution of rain across the country, with climate change further increasing the variability of the rain-bearing system.
The climate crisis is not gender neutral
(Page 8)
(Prelims syllabus: General issues on Environmental Ecology, Biodiversity and Climate Change)
- The climate crisis is already here and does not impact everyone equally.
- Women and girls experience disproportionately high health risks, especially in situations of poverty, and due to existing roles, responsibilities and cultural norms.
- According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), women and children are 14 times more likely than men to die in a disaster.
- The Supreme Court of India has just ruled that people have a right to be free from the adverse effects of climate change, and the right to a clean environment is already recognised as a fundamental right within the ambit of the right to life.
- Agriculture is the most important livelihood source for women in India, particularly in rural India.
- Climate-driven crop yield reductions increase food insecurity, adversely impacting poor households that already suffer higher nutritional deficiencies.
- Within small and marginal landholding households, while men face social stigma due to unpaid loans (leading to migration, emotional distress, and sometimes even suicide), women experience higher domestic work burdens, worse health, and greater intimate partner violence. In fact, when compared to districts without droughts in the past 10 years, National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 4 and 5 data showed that women living in drought-prone districts were more underweight, experienced more intimate partner violence and had a higher prevalence of girl marriages..
The corridor of Kolkata’s bypass urbanism
(Page 8)
(Prelims syllabus: Economic and Social Development)
- Urbanisation in India is shaped by three important factors.
- First, colonialism played a catalytic role in creating urban spaces, which continued even after Independence until the 1960s.
- Second and third, the Green Revolution and neo-liberalisation in the 1970s and 1990s have consolidated these urban spaces into concrete enclaves.
- Metropolitan cities such as Chennai, Mumbai, and Kolkata, which are products of colonial urbanism, metamorphosed radically in later years.
- These cities have expanded quite substantially and witnessed rapid urbanisation to accommodate more people and their demands.
- The wealth generated due to the Green Revolution and neoliberal policies has further accelerated urban expansion, albeit in an unequal manner.
- Newer forms of consumer culture have seeped effortlessly into these urban spaces, thus bringing revolutionary changes in the housing, health, and education sectors.
The ‘import restrictions’ on solar PV cells
(Page 10)
(GS 3: Indian Economy)
- India is overwhelmingly import dependent to meet its demand for solar cells and modules — with China and Vietnam being the country’s major suppliers.
- Following measures, such as the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, India’s domestic sector has boosted its production capacities and bettered price competitiveness to meet local demand.
- The government’s ambitious target of 500 GW of installed capacity from non-fossil fuels by 2030 is the main driver to scale solar power in India.
- India also accounts for the fastest rate of growth for demand of electricity through 2026 among major economies, according to the IEA.
Onion export prices must not be compared with Dubai retail prices: NCEL
(Page 12)
(GS 3: Indian Economy)
- The National Co-operative Exports Limited (NCEL), entrusted with channelling onion exports to select countries as approved by the government, asserted that it was not practical to compare retail prices of onions in importing nations with the wholesale import prices, adding that concerns about the prices of recent shipments to the UAE being low were ‘grossly unwarranted’ and stemmed from vested interests.
- The price of $550 per metric tonne (MT) for recent shipments to the UAE was annexed by a committee of the multi-State co-operative body’s promoters, keeping local market trends in Dubai and the government’s intent to support food security needs of importing nations in mind, stressed an NCEL official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Health sector can’t ignore green gains from telemedicine: study
(Page 18)
(GS 2: Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources)
- Telemedicine is a patient-friendly means of healthcare service delivery.
- It is relevant to India, where 70% of the population lives in villages.
- A hospital visit requires expensive travel to urban centres, which creates its own carbon footprint.
- India’s healthcare sector emitted 74 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2014.
- And since emissions would have increased with the demand for health services since then, the impact on health will also have grown.
- Using teleophthalmology every rural patient saved ₹370 and each urban patient ₹8,339 on travel.
- When costs like food and lost wages were factored in, total savings among rural patients ballooned to ₹29,100 and ₹3.45 lakh among their urban counterparts.
