Whatsapp 93125-11015 For Details
The Maharashtra Assembly unanimously passed the Maharashtra Lokayukta Act, 2022. The Act was passed after the opposition boycotted the Assembly proceedings.
The Act will give additional powers to the Lokayukta to direct state agencies to probe public servants, including the chief minister and state ministers.
Thanking all the members for passing the Act unanimously, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said it would have been great had the opposition not boycotted the House.
Fadnavis said his government has accepted all the recommendations made by the committee led by social activist Anna Hazare, who has been demanding a strong Lokayukta in Maharashtra. The Act will now be presented in the Legislative Council for approval.
The Act, Fadnavis said, will give additional powers to not only recommend action but also direct state agencies to undertake investigation.
As per the Act, any present or former chief minister of Maharashtra can be investigated by the Lokayukta only if the motion for the same is passed by the Legislative Assembly by a two-thirds majority.
Approval of the governor and views of the group of ministers appointed by the governor is required to conduct an inquiry into present or former ministers.
Similarly, the approval of the Council chairperson or Assembly speaker is required to probe the Legislative member. The Lokayukta will require approval from the minister concerned to probe even the municipal corporator or sarpanch.
The draft has even brought IAS officials under the scope of the probe but the Lokayukta will require the approval of the chief minister and the views of the chief secretary to initiate the probe.
Editorial page
Where china is headed (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
Globally, the most significant geopolitical event of 2022 was the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But the Ukraine war is not simply a geopolitical clash; it also dealt a massive blow to globalisation.
As the energy and grain markets were disrupted, an old contradiction, first noted by John Maynard Keynes, returned. In 1914, the world economy was more integrated than ever before, but a World War erupted, severely undermining the decades-long international economic integration.
Economic globalisation and major wars, Keynes suggested, simply could not go together. In our times, too, so long as wars were confined to Iraq and Afghanistan, globalisation proceeded apace.
But as Russia brought war next to the heart of Europe, the logic of security triumphed over the logic of economics. That, by creating interdependence, trade generates peace is a theory once again in ruins.
Speaking potentially to the same theme, the second most important development of 2022 was the re-coronation of Xi Jinping for a third term as President of the People’s Republic of China.
The appointment broke two interconnected norms of post-Mao China: Collective responsibility (replacing the idea of concentration of power in a single leader as during the Maoist era), and term limits for the party’s and nation’s head. For Xi, no one is ruling out a further, even life-long, extension in power.
This is important for two reasons. Unlike Russia, the 11th largest economy of the world in December 2021, whose international economic role is primarily confined to energy markets, China is the second largest economy and market of the world, the largest foreign trader and one of the biggest receivers of foreign investment.
Should a clash between security and economics arise, China’s capacity to throw the international economy into disarray will go far beyond natural gas, oil and food grain.
Unlike Ukraine, Taiwan is a first-world economy. In December 2021, Ukraine’s per capita income was a little less than $5,000, Taiwan’s was over $35,000.
Signs of uptick (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The health of the banking system in India has shown steady improvement, according to the Reserve Bank of India’s latest report on trends in the sector.
From capital adequacy ratio to profitability metrics to bad loans, on each of these indicators, both public and private sector banks have shown visible improvement.
And as credit growth has also witnessed an acceleration in 2021-22, banks have seen an expansion in their balance sheet at a pace that is a multi-year high.
At a time when both household and government balance sheets remain under stress, this report indicates that the twin balance sheet crisis — of an over-leveraged corporate sector and a banking system saddled with bad loans — that acted as a drag on the Indian economy for years is no longer an impediment to growth.
After years of sluggish growth, credit growth has risen to a 10-year high at the end of September 2022. The disaggregated data shows that both working capital and term loans have seen an uptick. This is a healthy sign.
While the public sector banks have lost market share to their private sector counterparts, PSBs still account for a lion’s share of the consolidated bank balance sheet — they account for 62 per cent of total outstanding deposits and 58 per cent of advances of the banking sector at the end of 2021-22.
The report also points out that both public and private sector banks have seen a steady improvement in their capital position, their asset quality, and their leverage and liquidity positions.
Capital adequacy of banks, as measured by the capital to risk weighted assets ratio, rose from 14.1 per cent in 2021 to 15.7 per cent in 2022, and further to 16 per cent in September 2022.
Banks have witnessed a sharp decline in their gross non-performing loans or bad loans — from the peak of around 11 per cent in 2017-18 to around 5 per cent at the end of September 2022.
This decline has been driven by a combination of factors — lower slippages, recoveries and write-offs. Bad loans, though, remain higher among the bigger industries as compared to the MSMEs.
Explained
1.5-degree warmer world looms, but it’s not the end (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
This year’s climate change conference in Egypt, COP27, was hailed as ‘historic’ for its decision to create a fund to help developing countries recover from climate-induced disasters.
While the decision undoubtedly addressed a long-pending demand of the developing countries, there was little else in the final outcome of the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting that can be seen as a half-adequate response to, what according to science is, an extremely urgent global climate emergency.
But this is not the first time that the annual climate conference has underperformed. COPs, especially the ones in the past 15 years, have been major underachievers.
While they have managed to bring climate change to the forefront of the global agenda, the response, in terms of effective climate action, has never been commensurate with the scale of the problem. In fact, the way the Paris Agreement is designed — with every country being asked to come up with what it thinks is its best effort — it can only lead to a suboptimal outcome.
The result has been that the world is now almost certain to miss the 1.5 degree Celsius target. The Sharm el-Sheikh outcome acknowledges that global greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced by at least 43 per cent from 2019 levels by the year 2030, if hopes of keeping the temperature within 1.5 degree Celsius from pre-industrial times are to remain alive. The problem is that this reduction has not even started.
In fact, greenhouse gas emissions are still on the rise. Latest estimates suggest that the emissions for 2021, still to be calculated, would be higher than 2019, and a new record.
In the meanwhile, the world has already warmed by more than 1.1 degree Celsius. According to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the year 2022 is likely to end up being about 1.15 degree Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times.
It could have been even hotter if not for the cooling effect of the unusually prolonged La Nina event, which has entered its third year now. The warmest year on record, 2016, was about 1.28 degree Celsius hotter than pre-industrial times.
In a report published in May this year, the WMO said there was a 50 per cent chance of the 1.5-degree Celsius warming mark getting breached in the next five years, even though temporarily. And it was almost certain (93 per cent probability) that one of the next five years would be warmer than 2016.
How are disputes among states resolved? (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The border dispute between Maharashtra and Karnataka is intensifying, with both states hardening their stance. On December 27, both Houses of the Maharashtra Assembly passed a unanimous resolution to support a legal battle to resolve the dispute.
This came just days after the Karnataka Assembly passed a resolution reiterating Karnataka’s position on the issue.
The border dispute over Belagavi, Karwar and Nipani in North Karnataka is long-standing. When state boundaries were redrawn on linguistic lines as per the States Reorganisation Act of 1956, Belagavi became part of the erstwhile Mysore state.
Maharashtra claims that parts of Belagavi, where Marathi is the dominant language, should remain in Maharashtra.
In October 1966, the Centre set up the Mahajan Commission, led by former Chief Justice of India Mehr Chand Mahajan, to resolve the border dispute in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala.
The Commission recommended that Belgaum and 247 villages remain with Karnataka. Maharashtra rejected the report, and in 2004, moved the Supreme Court.
Attempts are often made to resolve inter-state disputes with the cooperation of both sides, with the Centre working as a facilitator or a neutral mediator.
If issues are resolved amicably, Parliament can bring a law to alter state boundaries, such as the Bihar-Uttar Pradesh (Alteration of Boundaries) Act of 1968 and the Haryana-Uttar Pradesh (Alteration of Boundaries) Act of 1979.
In the Belagavi issue, Union Home Minister Amit Shah met Chief Ministers Basavaraj Bommai and Eknath Shinde and asked them to form a six-member team, comprising three ministers from each side, to address all boundary issues.There are other formal methods in the Constitution to resolve inter-state disputes.
The Supreme Court in its original jurisdiction decides imputes between states. Article 131 of the Constitution reads: “Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, the Supreme Court shall, to the exclusion of any other court, have original jurisdiction in any dispute
Article 263 of the Constitution gives powers to the President to set up an Inter-state Council for resolution of disputes between states. The Council is envisaged as a forum for discussion between the states and the Centre.
In 1988, the Sarkaria Commission suggested that the Council should exist as a permanent body, and in 1990 it came into existence through a Presidential Order.