29 April 2024, The Hindu
NHRC accreditation status faces review in Geneva this week
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GS 2: International Relations- Important International institutions, agencies, their structure and mandates
- The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) is preparing to defend the government’s human rights processes at a meeting in Geneva this week, where a decision on whether India’s human rights body will retain its “A status” is expected to be made.
- The NHRC’s ratings were put on hold in 2023 over concerns on its composition procedure, the presence of police personnel in human rights investigations, and the lack of gender and minority representation, and the decision over whether the NHRC is given an A rating or a B rating would affect its ability to vote at the UN Human Rights Council and some UNGA bodies.
Dip in demand for its famed glass bangles sees Firozabad embrace all glassware
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GS 3: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilisation of resources, growth, development and employment
- In the back lanes of Firozabad’s Imam Bara bangle mandi (market) in western Uttar Pradesh, a dozen clay bhattis (furnaces) burn inside the Nadar Bux & Co. glass factory.
- Built by Aijaz Azeem’s grandfather in 1948, it has a capacity to hold 80 kg of recyclable waste glass piled in glistening mounds — golden-brown, yellow, red — along with a concoction of sand, soda, chemicals, and colouring agents.
- The bhattis burn round the clock at 1,200 degrees Celsius. Azeem, who is in his sixties, says, “People of my generation just took on what our parents had started. My children don’t want to work here. There just isn’t enough money anymore.”
- In the rudimentary factory, open from all four sides, men called gulliwalas carry red hot gobs of glass on long metallic pipes.
- They walk them across the mud-and-brick floor of the karkhana casually, either taking the glass to the fire or carrying it away to dump onto the small glass hills.
- Amid the din, rhythmic bustle and heat, some pull out the molten glass from inside the furnace and hand it over to the karigars, who wrap it like a thick wire around a muttha (iron rod) and skilfully rotate it on a motor to form glass coils. Each muttha will yield 368 bangles.
- Every day, Azeem’s factory churns out 38,000 to 64,000 bangles, going over 1.5 lakh bangles during festivals.
Palace to unveil true copy of Ravi Varma’s Indulekha
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GS 1: Indian Culture – Salient aspects of Art Forms, Literature and Architecture
- The first true copy of the painting Indulekha by legendary artist Raja Ravi Varma will be unveiled at the Kilimanoor Palace, where the eminent artist was born in 1848, on the occasion of his 176th birth anniversary celebrations.
- The unreleased painting of Indulekha, the protagonist of the first modern novel in Malayalam literature by O. Chandu Menon published in 1889, emerged in the public domain in 2022 and evoked a great sense of enthusiasm among the art fraternity.
Inequality can no longer be ignored
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GS 1: Society: population and associated issues
- The Congress’s party’s election manifesto, the Nyay Patra, has triggered a debate on inequality, concentration of wealth and the measures to address these.
- The Prime Minister, with his misleading comments on what the Congress manifesto contains, has also managed to provoke a discussion on wealth redistribution. There is ample evidence to show that inequality in India has been rising.
- The World Inequality database found that in 2022-23, 22.6% of the national income went to the top 1%, the highest ever since 1922. Wealth inequality is even more stark with the top 1% population having 40.1% share in wealth.
- It is clear that inequality can no longer be ignored and justified as a collateral to growth. The cost of such unequal growth must be interrogated.
Turnout and tropes
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GS 2: Salient features of the Representation of People’s Act (RPA)
- A comparative assessment of polling in the second phase of the general election on Friday, for 88 seats from 13 States/Union Territories, shows that high turnout (more than 70%) in the East and the North East (Assam, Manipur, Tripura, and West Bengal) and low turnout (less than 60%) in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have followed earlier trends.
- The turnout seems to be lower in Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan too, but any parsing of the reasons should wait for comprehensive post-poll surveys.
- That said, voter turnout has indeed reduced in comparison to 2019 in the first phase as well, compelling the Election Commisssion of india to look into whether the Heat-wave conditions in many states were responsible.
- That could be a factor but one cannot rule out the notion that voters seem to be less compelled about their choice this time in comparison to 2019.
- Considering the fact that the BJP won a comfortable majority and its highest vote share in 2019 coinciding with the higher voter turnout, a lower turnout could be a sign of worry for it, even if, conventionally, a higher turnout has generally been a message about anti-incumbency in earlier polls before the BJP became the pole of the Indian party system.
Towards green growth
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GS 3: Environment- Conservation
- A notable feature of the Reseve Bank Of India’s (RBI’s) latest Monetary Policy Report (included in its April Bulletin) is the primacy given to "extreme weather events" and "climate shocks" affecting not only food inflation but also likely having a broader impact on the natural rate of interest, thereby influencing the economy’s financial stability.
- Natural, or neutral, rate of interest refers to the central bank’s monetary policy lever, which allows it to maintain maximum economic output, while keeping a check on inflation.
- The report mentions a “New-Keynesian model that incorporates a physical climate risk damage function” being used to estimate the “counterfactual macroeconomic impact of climate change vis-à-vis a no climate change scenario”.
- The report’s authors go on to warn that the “long-term (economic) output” could be lower by around 9% by 2050 in the absence of any climate mitigation policies.
- They ominously add that ‘if inflation hysteresis gets entrenched, it may lead to a de-anchoring of inflation expectations, and the undermining of the central bank’s credibility would warrant higher interest rates to curb inflation, leading to greater output loss’.
Making space for migrants in manifestos
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GS 1: Society: population and associated issues
- An election manifesto is a public document outlining a political party’s vision, intention, and promises.
- For the first time, the BJP and Congress have expressed concern for migrants, in their manifestos for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
- The COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent lockdowns brought attention to migrants and made them visible to the state and policymakers.
- There are an estimated 600 million internal migrants in India and they contribute significantly to the economy.
- Yet, they remain highly vulnerable and disenfranchised.
- In this context, it is important to examine the promises made by the two main political parties to effectively include the huge migrant population.
India’s Chinese import bill up 2.3 times in 15 years
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GS 3: Indian Economy (international trade)
- India’s imports from China crossed $101 billion in 2023-24 from about $70 billion in 2018-19, and the country’s share of India’s industrial goods imports has risen from 21% to 30% over 15 years, according to a report by the Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI) which reckoned that Chinese imports will rise sharply in coming years.
- Goods imports from China have risen 2.3 times faster than India’s total imports over 15 years, the GTRI study noted, adding that China is the top supplier in eight major industrial sectors, including machinery, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and textiles, belying the general perception that Chinese imports are high only in the electronics sector.
