29 July 2024, The Hindu
Waterlogging woes continue as Delhi relies on 1976 master plan
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Prelims syllabus: Current events of national and international importance
- As both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) continue to blame each other for the death of three students in the basement of a coaching centre that was inundated following rain, at the centre of the issue is the struggling drainage network of the national capital.
- On Saturday, the Pusa observatory of the India Meteorological Department (IMD), located close to the Rau’s IAS Study Circle in Old Rajinder Nagar, recorded only 26.5 mm of rainfall from 2.30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. and 31.5 mm of rainfall between 5.30 p.m. and 8.30 p.m.
Recasting care models for mental illness, homelessness
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GS 2: Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources
- Socio-normative representations of homeless persons living with a mental illness (HPMI) have ubiquitously ascribed them to the role of refuge seekers.
- This has resulted in rescue missions that are singularly focused on transferring them, volitionally or coercively, to mental hospitals, shelter homes, beggars’ homes and even prisons.
- The primary assumption that HPMIs must be displaced from the streets because of the many risks that it poses, while valid, is also contestable.
- As a mental health professional and bureaucrat, respectively, our perspective was similarly limiting over two decades ago, when we prioritised shelter and treatment over agency, choice and place-making.
The right way to counter a poor Covaxin safety study
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GS 2: Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources
Planning better
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GS 3: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilisation of resources, growth, development and employment
- With 10 State and Union Territory representatives skipping the ninth Governing Council meeting of the NITI Aayog chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi — seven of them boycotted it — the think tank’s role has been called into question.
- The Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Telangana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jharkhand did so because of concerns with the perceived lack of allocations and projects to their States in the Union Budget.
- But the boycott and, later, the walkout by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, suggest that the role of the think tank, limiting itself to an advisory body to the Union Government, has led to disenchantment among States, even if the protests were limited to leaders belonging to the political opposition.
- Constituted by the NDA government in its first term, the NITI Aayog was to replace the Planning Commission, doing away with the “top-down” approach of the earlier body, and to focus on “cooperative federalism”.
Plastic mess
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GS 3: Environmental pollution and degradation
- India, like other large economies, faces a significant plastic waste problem.
- According to a 2020-21 report by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), four million tonnes of plastic waste are generated annually.
- Unfortunately, only a quarter of this waste is recycled or treated, with the rest ending up in landfills or being disposed of unsustainably.
- Since 2016, the Plastic Waste Management Rules have mandated that users of plastics are responsible for collecting and recycling their waste.
- These requirements, or the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) rules, were initially voluntary but are now enforced through an online EPR trading platform.
- The EPR system involves packagers, importers, and large industrial users of plastic packaging, as well as professional recyclers, registering with the CPCB. Recyclers, who have networks to collect plastic waste, recycle the waste and receive validated certificates for each tonne recycled.
Defending disability reservations
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GS 2: mechanisms, laws, institutions and Bodies constituted for the protection and betterment of vulnerable sections
- The recent controversy involving Puja Khedkar, who allegedly faked her disability and caste to obtain benefits, has ignited a debate on the reservations granted to persons with disabilities (PwDs).
- The issue gained further traction when a former chief executive officer of NITI Aayog tweeted that reservations for PwDs need to be reviewed.
- Although he later clarified that he was referring only to mental disabilities (thereby drawing an unnecessary and baseless wedge between physical and mental disabilities), his statement, along with similar comments from other civil servants, raises troubling questions about societal attitudes towards disabilities and reservation policies.
On reservations and the OBC creamy layer
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GS 2: mechanisms, laws, institutions and Bodies constituted for the protection and betterment of vulnerable sections
- The allotment of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) to Puja Khedkar as an Other Backward Class (OBC) Non-Creamy Layer (NCL) candidate coupled with multiple disabilities has raised issues surrounding the creamy layer in OBC reservation.
- Articles 15 and 16 guarantee equality to all citizens in any policy of the government and public employment respectively.
- In order to achieve social justice, they also enable special provisions for the advancement of socially and educationally backward classes or OBC, Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST).
- Reservations for SC and ST are fixed at 15% and 7.5% respectively, in jobs, educational institutions and public sector undertakings (PSU) at the central level.
What is South Africa’s new law on climate change?
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Prelims syllabus: Current events of national and international importance
- South Africa’s President, Cyril Ramaphosa, signed into law a piece of legislation that will impose mandatory curbs on the emissions from large, fossil-fuel heavy industries and, require climate-adaptation plans from towns and villages.
- The President said this would enable South Africa to meet its emissions reduction commitments under the Paris agreement.
- The Climate Change Bill was approved by South Africa’s National Assembly last November. South Africa relies on coal as its primary fuel source for electricity generation and is one of the world’s top 15 greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters.
- According to an official estimate, net emissions in 2017 were estimated at 512 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2e), an increase of 14% from 2000.
- In 2022, this fell to 405 Mt CO2e, a 3% fall from 2021, according to Statista.
What are the various efforts being taken to mitigate caller ID spoofing?
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GS 3: Internal Security- Basics of cyber security
- Several friends and family members of mine received a call from a North American (+1) phone number which played a pre-recorded message informing them of a supposed court summons.
- I happened to receive a call from a +1 number too. I had also missed a domestic call shortly before the international one.
- While these automated calls are part of a well-known scam, looking at the phone numbers, I noticed that the Indian and North American phone numbers were identical to each other, save for their country codes.
- The Indian number was +91 98199 69857, and the American number was +1 (981) 996-9857.
CITES eases norms for agarwood export; move to benefit lakhs of farmers from the Northeast
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GS 3: Indian Economy (international trade)
- India has successfully prevented inclusion of Aquilaria malaccensis (agarwood) in the Review of Significant Trade (RST) of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
- The CITES also notified a new export quota of highly valuable and aromatic resinous wood and oil of Aquilaria malaccensis (agarwood) from India from April 2024.
