1 August 2024, The Hindu
Heavy evening rainfall causes chaos, brings Delhi to its knees
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GS 3: Disaster Management
- Heavy rainfall brought the national capital to a screeching halt on Wednesday evening, inundating large parts of the city, choking key stretches with unending traffic, and leaving people stranded as roads turned into rivers.
- Education Minister Atishi said that schools would remain shut on Thursday.
- “In light of very heavy rainfall today evening and forecast of heavy rainfall tomorrow, all schools — government and private — will remain closed tomorrow, 1st August,” she posted on X late Wednesday night.
The global struggle for a pandemic treaty
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GS 2: Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources
- After great fanfare and over two years of political negotiations, 194 World Health Organization (WHO) member states failed to finalise a historic Pandemic Agreement, an international treaty designed to fortify global pandemic preparedness, implement mechanisms for prevention of the same, and reduce unconscionable inequities that were painfully obvious during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The 77th World Health Assembly, or WHA (May 27-June 1, 2024), in Geneva, witnessed two significant developments for global health governance.
- First, it agreed on a package of amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) 2005, drawn from 300 proposals for reform by governments of both the global north and south, and extensively negotiated over the last two years.
- The IHR amendments aim to enhance the ability of countries to prepare for and respond to Public Health Emergencies of International Concern (PHEIC) and introduce a new category for urgent international response — a Pandemic Emergency (PE).
AI needs cultural policies, not just regulation
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GS 3: General awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, Robotics, Nanotechnology, bio-technology
- The future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will not be secured by regulation alone.
- To ensure safe and trustworthy AI for all, we must balance regulation with policies which promote high-quality data as a public good.
- This approach is crucial for fostering transparency, creating a level playing field, and building public trust.
- Only by giving fair and wide access to data can we realise AI’s full potential and distribute its benefits equitably.
- Data are the lifeblood of AI. In this regard, the laws of neural scaling are simple: the more, the better.
- The more volume and diversity of human-generated text is available for unsupervised learning, for example, the better the performance of Large Language Models (LLMs) will be.
- Alongside computing power and algorithmic innovations, data arguably are the most important driver of progress in the field.
Unnatural disaster
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GS 3: Disaster Management
- Climate change can encourage unprecedented weather, precipitating natural disasters of magnitudes that may surprise local responders.
- The calamitous landslides in Wayanad district in Kerala on July 30 are not necessarily such disasters.
- Parts of Kerala have been bearing the brunt of heavy rains during the southwest monsoon and landslides are a yearly affair.
- But deadly landslides are new. This week, heavy rains triggered multiple landslides that have killed 200 people and laid waste to a few villages.
- The region is a tourist destination and incentivises infrastructure development to maximise revenue potential.
- The Chaliyar river here springs from an altitude of around 2 km and flows in a sheer path down towards Vellarmala, bringing fast waters that also sweep relatively more sediment downstream.
Problem power
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GS 3: Indian Economy - Infrastructure – Energy, Ports, Roads, Airports, Railways etc.
- The Indian government is planning to team up with the private sector to study and test small modular reactors (SMRs).
- Nuclear energy is an important power source in the world’s energy mix as it waits for the development and maturation of (other) renewable energy technologies while fossil-fuel-based sources, especially coal, continue to remain relevant and more affordable.
- Nuclear power offers a sufficiently high and sustainable power output, even if externalised costs like those of building safe and reliable reactors and handling spent nuclear fuel complicate this calculus.
- Indeed, cost and time estimates that expand to nearly twice as much as at the point of a project’s commissioning are not unheard of.
- The nuclear power tariff is thus higher from ‘younger’ facilities, even if they also fill gaps that haunt power from renewable sources.
- SMRs, of 10 MWe-300 MWe each, are smaller versions of their conventional counterparts.
Early detection of lung cancer can save lives
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GS 2: Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources
- The insidious nature of lung cancer has made it one of the most formidable public health challenges of our time.
- Lung cancer was first discovered in the early 1900s in autopsies.
- Later advances in imaging technologies, bronchosopy, and molecular diagnostics helped diagnose it more frequently and reliably in the 20th century.
- As we confront this growing epidemic on August 1, observed as World Lung Cancer Day, understanding the multifaceted aspects of lung cancer — from its risk factors to the critical importance of early detection — becomes paramount.
On discarding indexation for LTCG
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GS 3: Indian Economy - Government Budgeting.
- Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s announcement in the Union Budget about doing away with indexation for computing long-term capital gains (LTCG) tax has not drawn much enthusiasm.
- She had proposed that long-term gains on all financial and non-financial assets would now be taxed at 12.5% instead of a tiered structure, albeit abandoning indexation.
- A memorandum explaining the provisions of the Finance Bill (2024), stated that this was to “ease computation of capital gains for the taxpayer and tax administration”.
- Imagine, an individual buys a house for ₹10 lakh in 2001. For reasons such as inflation and/or a vibrant property market, they are able to sell the same property in 2021 at ₹75 lakh. Here, it may appear that they gained ₹65 lakh and should be taxed accordingly.
Centre plans stricter norms for disability certificates; activists fear fresh hurdles
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GS 2: mechanisms, laws, institutions and Bodies constituted for the protection and betterment of vulnerable sections.
- In a bid to tighten the requirements for obtaining a disability certificate, the Union government on Wednesday published draft amendments to the Rules of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (RPwD Act) of 2016.
- The proposed changes — including mandatory identity proof, medical authority involvement, and a longer process — come in the wake of the row over Puja Khedkar, a dismissed IAS probationer accused of faking her disability certificate, among other transgressions.
- Government sources told The Hindu that this controversy was among the factors considered while drafting the amendments.
India, China hold 30th round of border talks; both agree to uphold peace, tranquility
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GS 2: International Relations- India and its neighbourhood
- India and China on Wednesday held the 30th meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) in New Delhi during which the discussion was “in-depth, constructive and forward-looking”, and both sides agreed to maintain the momentum through established diplomatic and military channels, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said.
- The talks come amid indications that the two countries are making efforts to resolve the stand-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.
Railways forms panel to decide on working hours of loco pilots
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GS 3: Indian Economy - Infrastructure – Energy, Ports, Roads, Airports, Railways etc.
- The Railways has constituted a high-level committee to decide on the working and rest hours of loco pilots and assistant loco pilots.
- The move comes in the backdrop of a series of train accidents resulting in the deaths of several passengers and railway employees across the country.
- In many cases, the loco pilots were accused of violating safety rules and held responsible for the accidents.
IAF’s largest multilateral exercise to begin this month
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GS 3: Various Security forces and agencies and their mandates
- The Indian Air Force is all set to host its largest multilateral exercise, Tarang Shakti, in two phases in August and September.
- Eighteen countries, 10 of them with air assets, will join the exercise which will see a total of 150 aircraft, both foreign and IAF, soar into the skies over Sulur and Jodhpur.
- The exercise will be a landmark event and has no particular nation or theme “in mind”, Air Marshal A.P. Singh, Vice-Chief of Air Staff, said on Wednesday.
- “Invitations have been extended to 51 countries. Ten countries will be participating with assets and 18 as observers with one more country likely to join,” Air Marshal Singh said while briefing the media.
- “The aim is to foster interoperability and share best practices and also to showcase indigenous defence industry.”
