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Pushing for speedy environmental clearances for infrastructure and developmental projects, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday blamed “Urban Naxals’’ and “some global institutions and foundations’’ for stopping “modern infrastructure’’ projects that can raise the standard of living of people in the country.
He also cautioned against getting caught in the “conspiracies of such people” who, he said, have been able to influence “even the World Bank and higher judiciary”.
The Prime Minister was addressing via video link a conference hosted by Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav for state environment ministers and officials on “Environment, Forests and Climate Change” at Ekta Nagar in Narmada district, the site of the SardarSarovar dam that had faced years-long protests.
I have seen that in the name of environmental clearance, how the establishment of modern infrastructure is hindered. Where you all are today — in Ekta Nagar — is an eye-opening example of this.
How Urban Naxals, those who are anti-development, had stopped such a big project, the SardarSarovar dam. You will be surprised to know that the foundation of the dam was placed right after Independence.
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel played a big role. Pandit Nehru had laid the foundation. But then the Urban Naxals arrived, so did people from across the world, and there was a lot of discussion on how this was an anti-environment project. This was the ‘abhiyan’ that was started, and this project was repeatedly stopped.
The SardarSarovar dam was the focal point of the Narmada BachaoAndolan, which was spearheaded by MedhaPatkar and Baba Amte along with groups of farmers, tribals, environmentalists and rights activists.
To stop the development of India, many global institutions and foundations latch on to such issues and create controversies in collaboration with Urban Naxals — and our projects get stopped.
Without compromising the protection of the environment, we need to think in a balanced manner and not get caught in the conspiracies of such people who have been able to influence even the World Bank and the higher judiciary.
Our attempt should be that we should not unnecessarily use the excuse of the environment to create obstacles in the path of ease of living and ease of business.
Rupee breaches 81, policy challenge: let it find its value or burn forex, hike rates (Page no. 3)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
As the rupee breached the 81-mark to the US dollar intra-day Friday, policy makers in New Delhi are in a dilemma with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) having burnt forex reserves at a dramatic pace this calendar year to prevent exchange rate volatility – an intervention which many in the market believe is to defend the currency at a particular level.
In just eight months between mid-January and mid-September this year, forex reserves have depleted by almost $90 billion, or approximately an average of $11 billion a month.
For the week-ended September 16, India’s forex reserves stood at $545.65 billion compared with $634.97 billion in the week-ended January 14.
“How long?” asked the CEO of a foreign institutional investor (FII), who did not wish to be named. While sustained high inflation of 7 per cent plus has prompted the RBI to hike policy rates, the government is keen to preserve GDP growth and create more jobs as several big states head for polls over the next 12-18 months.
With several agencies cutting the GDP growth forecast to 7 per cent and lower, the Union finance ministry is in a dilemma whether an aggressive tightening of the monetary policy is the appropriate strategy for India, which faces challenges that mayrequire a different response than the western countries.
In this context, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has already said that “RBI may not be as much synchronised as the western countries would do” – in other words, hiking policy rates may not be the best thing for India.
Policy makers in the government as well as the RBI are convinced that a large part of inflation is “imported”. They are discussing relative advantages and disadvantages of an “overt” action such as an interest rate hike versus “covert” gradual depreciation of the rupee.
Unlike monetary tightening through rate hikes, which is akin to the use of a sledgehammer, letting the rupee find its level, is a better tool to rein in demand,” said an official, who did not wish to be named. A depreciating rupee makes imports more expensive, and curbs demand.
According to RBI’s monetary policy report of April 2022, a 5 per cent depreciation in rupee could result in inflation edging up by 20 basis points while the GDP growth could be higher by 15 basis points. In 2022 so far, the rupee has depreciated by 8.2 per cent in 2022 against the US dollar.
Policy makers in New Delhi seem to be veering around the view that the RBI should not hold any particular level sacrosanct. This (gradual weakening of rupee) covert measure is better than an overt monetary policy action of hiking rates.
Express Network
SC to hear pleas against Article 370 abrogation after Dussehra break (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The Supreme Court said it will take up petitions challenging the changes made to Article 370 of the Constitution which granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir as well as those on the former state’s reconstitution into the Union territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh for hearing after the Dussehra break.
The matter was mentioned before a three-judge bench presided by Chief Justice of India U ULalit. “We will certainly list it,” the CJI told the counsel who submitted that it is an important constitutional matter and has been pending for a long time.
The bench said it will be taken up when the court reopens after the Dussehra recess. The apex court will be on Dussehra break from October 3 and will reopen on October 10.
Petitions challenging the August 2019 decision of the Union government last came up in the Supreme Court on March 2, 2020, when a five-judge bench presided by Justice N V Ramana rejected the prayer to refer the petitions to a larger bench.
The court, however, made it clear that its order “is confined to the limited preliminary issue of whether the matter should be referred to a larger Bench” and “have not considered any issue on the merits of the dispute”.
The other members on the bench were Justices Sanjay KishanKaul, R Subhash Reddy, B R Gavai and Surya Kant. Justice Reddy retired in January this year while Justice Ramana retired as Chief Justice of India last month.
Consequently, the bench will now have to be reconstituted. There are as many as 23 petitions pending before the court. They challenge the Presidential Orders of August 5 and 6, 2019 as well as ‘The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019.’
MoD inks Rs 1,700-cr pact for dual-role BrahMos missiles (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
The Ministry of Defence signed aRs 1,700-crore deal with BrahMos Aerospace Private Limited (BAPL) for acquisition of dual-role capable surface-to-surface BrahMos missiles for deployment on warships of the Indian Navy.
“Providing further impetus to atmanirbharta (self-reliance) in defence production, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) signed a contract with BAPL for acquisition of additional dual-role capable surface-to-surface BrahMos missiles at an overall approximate cost of Rs 1,700 crore under the ‘buy-Indian’ category.
Induction of these dual-role capable missiles is going to significantly enhance the operational capability of Indian Navy fleet assets,” said a statement from the MoD.
A combination of the names of Brahmaputra and Moskva rivers, BrahMos missiles are designed, developed and produced by BrahMos Aerospace, a joint venture company set up by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Mashinostroyenia of Russia.
The first test launch of the initial version of Brahmos took place in 2001. Various types of the BrahMos, including those which can be fired from land, warships and the Sukhoi-30 fighter jets, have already been developed and successfully tested and inducted since then.
The MoD further said: “It is notable that BAPL is making crucial contribution to augment the new generation surface-to-surface missiles with enhanced range and dual-role capability for land as well as anti-ship attacks.
This contract is going to give further boost to indigenous production of critical weapon system and ammunition with active participation of indigenous industry.”
BrahMos is a two-stage missile with a solid propellant booster engine. Its first stage brings the missile to supersonic speed and then gets separated.
The liquid ramjet or the second stage then takes the missile closer to three times the speed of sound in cruise phase. The missile has a very low radar signature, making it stealthy, and can achieve a variety of trajectories.
The ‘fire and forget’ type missile can achieve a cruising altitude of 15 km and a terminal altitude as low as 10m to hit the target. The enhanced range version of the missile has a range of 4,000km, as compared to the original range of 290km.
Cruise missiles such as BrahMos, called ‘standoff range weapons’, which are fired from a range far enough to allow the attacker to evade defensive fire from the adversary. These weapons are in the arsenal of most major militaries in the world.
Burning fuel to carry fuel: Govt’s ethanol programme to face transport challenges (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
India’s ethanol production for blending with petrol has soared from 38 crore litres in 2013-14 to an estimated 450 crore litres in the current 2021-22 supply year (December-November).
And with supplies for achieving 20 per cent blending by 2025-26 projected at 1,016 crore litres by NITI Aayog, a new logistics challenge is emerging — moving this alternative fuel from distilleries to blending depots and retail points.
Currently, the entire quantity of ethanol is being transported by road on truck-tankers. Carrying 1,016 crore litres would require about 3.5 lakh tankers at an average 29 kilolitres capacity.
Not only is this costly, but will amount to burning fuel to move fuel and result in greenhouse gas emissions of around 76 million tonnes,” said AkhileshGoyal, managing director of the Madhya Pradesh-based Maarewa Sugars Pvt. Ltd.
According to Goyal, the government should consider alternative options for ethanol movement, including through dedicated pipelines, rail tank wagons and ferries/steamers in coastal areas.
They can also look at the RORO (roll-on/roll-off) model of moving ethanol truck-tankers themselves by rail,” he said at a recent conference on sugar and ethanol organised by the Indian Sugar Mills Association and the Brazilian agri-consultancy firm DATAGRO.
PlinioNastari, president of DATAGRO, said that Brazil (which produces 3,500 crore litres of ethanol annually) has 14 oil refineries and 354 ethanol distilleries that supply to 170 fuel depots all over the country.
The movement of fuel and ethanol to the depots is entirely through pipelines, rail or coastal ships. Transport by truck-tankers happens only in the last leg, from the depots to 41,700 retail outlets.
Nastari felt that there was no need for dedicated pipelines to transport ethanol. “In the last 40 years, we have been using multi-product pipelines for movement of diesel, gasoline (petrol) and ethanol,” he said. Nastari, however, advocated some precautions on account of ethanol being a solvent that dissolves the gums formed in gasoline and accumulated in tanks.
Having filters in the fuel hose pipes can ensure that this gum (which comes from gasoline and not ethanol) will not cause problems to the vehicles.
India’s ethanol output of 38 crore litres could enable only 1.53 per cent blending with petrol in 2013-14. The current supply year’s production of 450 crore litres — 370 crore from sugarcane-based distilleries and 80 crore litres from those using grain feedstock — will help achieve 10 per cent blending.
Editorial Page
A scheme for teachers (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Education)
The Union Cabinet’s approval of the PM SHRI schools scheme comes at a time when the schooling system is in disarray. Teachers seem to be caught in a time warp after the pandemic and the anxieties of children are increasing because of the switch to online classes during the public health emergency and then the pivot back to regular schooling.
Confused school managements and parents are finding it difficult to address learning gaps. Where do we go from here? Perhaps towards a pedagogy based on activities, toys, art and projects and inclusive learning methods that incorporate sports and give vocational learning its due.
Four national curriculum frameworks have emphasised inquiry, creativity, discovery, problem-solving, decision making and joyful learning. How do the NEP 2020 and the new NCF that is likely to come into play soon differ from the earlier initiatives? Essentially in the weightage they accord to the above elements of classroom learning.
The 14,500 PM SHRI schools could become the agencies for the change envisaged by the new policies. But that will require commitment, hard work and progressive thinking.
These schools will need to find ways to reverse learning losses and ensure life outcomes that have a positive bearing on the nation’s economy — especially in the ways the country uses its demographic dividend.
We need to find new ways to understand not just what the children learn but also how they learn. In India, 250 million children are out of classrooms and several million are in school, but unable to learn.
Hopefully, the PM SHRI schools will attract large investments from the Centre as well as state governments, apart from the separate budget allocated to them to upgrade their facilities.
These schools promise to encompass all aspects of the NEP. Every region will have PM SHRI schools that will handhold and mentor other schools in their vicinity.
A wide range of learning experiences, good physical infrastructure and appropriate resources will be available to students.
A variety of pedagogies and assessment systems will be used along with the introduction of vocational education. Linkages with skill counsellors and local industry will be established to provide employment opportunities to students graduating from these institutions.
The schools will be energy-efficient with natural farming patches, they will be equipped with rainwater harvesting systems and will enable the study of traditional environment-friendly practices.
The community and alumni will be involved in activities such as career guidance and mentoring. Parents too will be trained to become home mentors.
The school will become community centres after the regular hours and converge with existing schemes including PM Poshan, SamagrahShiksha and Ayushman Bharat.
Idea Page
Renewing our cities (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Infrastructure)
It took just one day of heavy rainfall in Delhi-NCR to bring back the familiar sights of water-logged streets, crawling traffic, broken-down vehicles and citizens wading in knee-deep water with their two-wheelers in tow.
Power outages, crumbling walls and deaths due to electrocution compound citizens’ woes. A fortnight ago, 126 of Bengaluru’s lakes had overflown, with water logging reported in Mahadevpura, Bellandur, Bommanahalli, Munnekolalu and other parts of the city.
Over 2,000 houses were flooded and 10,000 homes isolated from the rest of the city — in many places, including posh localities, there were instances of lack of drinking water and electricity.
It is a recurring phenomenon each year, across all major Indian cities. Our cities are being laid low, by small encroachments, made over the past few decades.
This harrowing situation is an indication of the lack of urban planning — while every major city in India has sanitised enclaves (civil lines, cantonments), areas with economic vitality have sprung up with limited civic infrastructure.
Our cities routinely neglect key elements of urban planning — stormwater drains are ignored and lakes and rivers are neglected while concretising urban spaces. Indian cities, by and large, are very poor in executing urban projects.
Bengaluru scored 55.67 out of 100 in the Quality-of-Life metric in the Centre for Science and Environment’s Ease of Living Index 2020. Delhi — with the added benefit of being the nation’s capital — scored 57.56, while Bhubaneswar could tally 11.57 on the Economic Ability parameter of the index.
Master plans, where they have been developed, are detailed documents, with limited urban planning flexibility. Little thought is given to how market forces and migration will impact the plans.
In the West, the Garden City movement (initiated by Ebenezer Howard in 1898) sought to decentralise the working environment in the city centre with a push for providing healthier living spaces for factory workers.
The ideal garden city was planned on a concentric pattern with open spaces, public parks and boulevards, housing 32,000 people on 6,000 acres, linked to a central city with over 50,000 people.
Once a garden city reached maximum capacity, another city would be developed nearby. In the US, the garden city movement evolved into the neighbourhood concept, where residential houses and streets were organised around a local school or community centre, with a push for lowering traffic and providing safe roads.
London has a metropolitan green belt around the city, covering 5,13,860 hectares of land, to offset pollution and congestion and maintain biodiversity.
Undoing of Colonial legacy (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 1/2, Art & Culture and Governance)
Rajpath, the 1911-vintage Kingsway built to welcome King George V, became Kartavya Path. A tall black-stone statue of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, described by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the “first Pradhan of united India”, was installed under the canopy where King George V’s statue stood.
This is New India’s final push for dismantling colonial-era remnants. At the unveiling function, Modi described Rajpath as a symbol of slavery and hoped that Kartavya Path would motivate people’s representatives toward India’s “democratic past and universal ideals”.
India’s Independence movement was inspired not just by the desire to replace the British with Indian rulers but by the passion to return to its civilisational glory.
LalaLajpat Rai, Madan Mohan Malviya, Bal GangadharTilak, V D Savarkar, Sri Aurobindo and M K Gandhi — many leaders were committed to that ideal. Even Jawaharlal Nehru, the Cambridge-educated young man whom Gandhi affectionately described once as “our Englishman”, was so determinedly anti-British that he threatened to resign from Congress in 1928 when the Nehru Committee, headed by his father Motilal Nehru, recommended that India may accept the British offer of dominion status. Nothing short of “PoornaSwaraj” — total independence — junior Nehru insisted.
Sadly though, those motivations waned when independence dawned. In 1948, India decided to join the so-called Commonwealth. Most of these Commonwealth countries have nothing in common except their colonial past — nor any wealth — yet India continues to be a member.
The silver lining is that unlike countries like Canada, Australia and New Zealand, India didn’t remain under British dominion after independence.
Some half-hearted efforts were made after Independence to remove the symbols of colonialism. Names of some roads and buildings were changed. But the statue of King George V remained on Rajpath for a full two decades until a public agitation forced the government in 1968 to shift it to another venue.
The canopy remained empty because the leadership was undecided over who should occupy it. Gandhi’s name was proposed several times but turned down during the regimes of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.
In the 75th year of independence, Modi is giving a new thrust to that effort. The new parliament building, Kartavya Path, National War Memorial and the statue of Netaji are all the new symbols of a decolonising India.
Some found the installation of Netaji’s statue on Kartavya Path less convincing. India’s identity from its Independence was that of non-violence, they argue.
Explained Page
Carbon dating (Page no. 20)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
A district court in Varanasi allowed a petition seeking carbon dating of the structure inside the Gyanvapi mosque that the Hindu side has claimed is a ‘Shivling’. The court has issued notices to other parties wanting to know whether they have any objection to carbon dating.
Carbon dating is a widely-used method applied to establish the age of organic material, things that were once living. Living things have carbon in them in various forms.
The dating method makes use of the fact that a particular isotope of carbon called C-14, with an atomic mass of 14, is radioactive, and decays at a rate that is well known.
The most abundant isotope of carbon in the atmosphere is carbon-12 or a carbon atom whose atomic mass is 12. A very small amount of carbon-14 is also present. The ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 in the atmosphere is almost static, and is known.
Plants get their carbon through the process of photosynthesis, while animals get it mainly through food. Because plants and animals get their carbon from the atmosphere, they too acquire carbon-12 and carbon-14 isotopes in roughly the same proportion as is available in the atmosphere.
But when they die, the interactions with the atmosphere stops. There is no further intake of carbon (and no outgo either, because metabolism stops). Now, carbon-12 is stable and does not decay, while carbon-14 is radioactive.
Carbon-14 reduces to one-half of itself in about 5,730 years. This is what is known as its ‘half-life’.
So, after a plant or animal dies, the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 in the body, or its remains, begins to change. This change can be measured and can be used to deduce the approximate time when the organism died.
Though extremely effective, carbon dating cannot be applied in all circumstances. Specifically, it cannot be used to determine the age of non-living things, like rocks, for example.
Also, the age of things that are more than 40,000-50,000 years cannot be arrived at through carbon dating. This is because after eight to ten cycles of half-lives have been crossed, the amount of carbon-14 becomes almost negligible and undetectable.
What banking system liquidity going into ‘deficit mode’ means (Page no. 20)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
For the first time since May 2019, the banking system liquidity situation turned into a deficit mode of Rs 21,873.4 crore on September 20, 2022. By comparison, the liquidity surplus was to the tune of Rs 8 lakh crore in November 2021 as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was providing liquidity support to the economy, which was dealing with the after-effects of the Covid pandemic.
On September 20, 2021, the liquidity surplus was Rs 6.7 lakh crore. Multiple factors are at play here: an uptick in the bank credit, advance tax payments by corporates, and also incremental deposit growth not keeping pace with credit demand.
Liquidity in the banking system refers to readily available cash that banks need to meet short-term business and financial needs.
On a given day, if the banking system is a net borrower from the RBI under Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF), the system liquidity can be said to be in deficit and if the banking system is a net lender to the RBI, the system liquidity can be said to be in surplus. The LAF refers to the RBI’s operations through which it injects or absorbs liquidity into or from the banking system.
Economists say that there are various factors over the last few months that have led to the current situation. If an improvement in demand for credit has led to the same, the recent advance tax outflow, which is a quarterly phenomenon, has further aggravated the situation.
Besides, there is the continuous intervention of the RBI to stem the fall in the rupee against the US dollar.The deficit in the liquidity situation has been caused by an uptick in the bank credit, advance tax payments by corporates, intervention of the RBI into the forex market, and also incremental deposit growth not keeping pace with credit demand.
According to the latest RBI data, the outstanding bank credit stood at Rs 124.58 lakh crore as on August 26, 2022 and has increased by 4.77% (Rs 5.7 lakh crore) from Rs 118.9 lakh crore as on March 25, 2022.
However, deposit growth was just 3.21% (Rs 5.3 lakh crore) at Rs 169.94 lakh crore as on August 26, 2022, from Rs 164.65 lakh crore as on March 25, 2022.
A tight liquidity condition could lead to a rise in the government securities yields and subsequently lead to a rise in interest rates for consumers too.
Why India wants war to end (Page no. 20)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
Forty years ago, on September 21, 1982, India and the Soviet Union agreed that the primary task before the world was to avert a nuclear war. Meeting in the Kremlin, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev agreed on the need to reduce tension by strengthening detente and promoting trust.
While the Indian PM called upon the superpowers to desist from stockpiling weapons, Brezhnev proposed that the NATO and the Warsaw Pact declare that they would refrain from extending their sphere of activity to Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Russian news agency TASS described the talks as ”warm and friendly,” and said the two leaders ”are against the setting up of foreign military bases on the territory of Asian states, against military, political and economic pressure on sovereign states.”
Gandhi, who declared that India is a nonaligned state, had not condemned the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.Interestingly, in the same meeting, the then-Indian PM announced that two test pilots of the IAF have been selected for the coveted Indo-Soviet space flight in 1984, which included Squadron leader Rakesh Sharma and Wing Commander Ravish Malhotra.
On September 16, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Russian President Vladimir Putin on the margins of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Samarkand in Uzbekistan.
At the beginning of the meeting, Modi had told Putin: “I know that today’s era is not of war and we have spoken to you many times on the phone that democracy, diplomacy and dialogue are such things that touch the world.
Today, we will get a chance to discuss how we can move forward on the path of peace in the coming days. I will also get an opportunity to understand your viewpoint.”
Putin responded to Modi: “I know your position on the conflict in Ukraine, your concerns that you constantly express.”
Modi’s comment has caught the world’s attention, seven months into the war.
The Indian PM — who has steadfastly stayed away from criticising Putin — has articulated what is music to the ears of Western powers.