Whatsapp 93125-11015 For Details
Ineligible individuals getting on the potential list of beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana-Gramin (PMAYG) across West Bengal, shouldn’t have come as a surprise — especially to those whose job was to monitor this process.
For, exactly two months ago to date, Nagendra Nath Sinha, Secretary, Union Ministry of Rural Development, the nodal ministry for the scheme, had sent a letter to P Ulaganathan, Secretary, state Panchayat and Rural Development Department.
Calling on the state to “scrupulously” follow the implementation framework, Sinha underlined the need for “zero tolerance against any allegation of bribery or corruption”.
He also asked the state government to ensure that districts form “special teams of senior officers including engineers to verify veracity of allegations relating to bribery/ corruption and take strict legal action if found guilty”.
That verification would, perhaps, have averted a situation like the one in Masjidpara village of Madarhat Gram panchayat under the Baruipur block in South 24 Parganas where the list of potential beneficiaries includes Jehangir Sheikh — and seven of his relatives.
Jehangir is a contractual staffer at the local panchayat office and a TMC worker, and he stays in a pucca house as do his relatives who live in the same neighborhood.
The scheme only covers those with conditions of poverty, destitution and kutcha or dilapidated housing — not those who already own pucca houses.
Clearly, the lists are work in progress and will further delay the implementation. Progress was stalled last financial year over a tussle on the name of the project — the state wanted to call the rural scheme also as “BanglarAwas Yojana” or “Banglar Bari”.
In its letter to the state, the Centre underlined that it had sanctioned Rs 8,200 crore to build 11,36,488 houses under the scheme in the state between 2022 and 2023.
Still, in December, weeks after the Centre’s letter, the state started the inspection process for the scheme even as protests broke out in several districts, such as North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Murshidabad and Malda, against ineligible individuals finding their way into the potential beneficiary list.
In Murshidabad for instance, shaken by resentment on the ground, 17 panchayat members of the TMC resigned — prompting the party to engage in a damage-control exercise and reject the resignations.
WHO warns 5 billion people are still unprotected from trans-fats and can have heart disease(Page no. 2)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
Five billion people globally remain unprotected from harmful trans-fat, a new status report from the World Health Organisation (WHO) has found, increasing their risk of heart disease and death.
Since WHO first called for the global elimination of industrially produced trans-fat in 2018 — with an elimination target set for 2023 — population coverage of best-practice policies has increased almost six-fold.
Forty three countries have now implemented best-practice policies for tackling trans fat in food, with 2.8 billion people protected globally. India is among the top implementers in the middle-income countries category, according to the release.
Despite substantial progress, however, this still leaves 5 billion worldwide at risk from trans fat’s devastating health impacts with the global goal for its total elimination in 2023 remaining unattainable at this time.
Industrially produced trans fat (also called industrially produced trans-fatty acids) is commonly found in packaged foods, baked goods, cooking oils and spreads. Trans fat intake is responsible for up to 500 000 premature deaths from coronary heart disease each year around the world.
Trans fat has no known benefit, and huge health risks that incur huge costs for health systems,” said WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, “By contrast, eliminating trans fat is cost effective and has enormous benefits for health. Put simply, trans fat is a toxic chemical that kills, and should have no place in food. It’s time to get rid of it once and for all.”
Currently, nine of the 16 countries with the highest estimated proportion of coronary heart disease deaths caused by trans fat intake do not have a best-practice policy. They are Australia, Azerbaijan, Bhutan, Ecuador, Egypt, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan and the Republic of Korea.
Best-practices in trans fat elimination policies follow specific criteria established by WHO and limit industrially produced trans fat in all settings.
There are two best-practice policy alternatives: 1) mandatory national limit of 2 grams of industrially produced trans fat per 100 grams of total fat in all foods; and 2) mandatory national ban on the production or use of partially hydrogenated oils (a major source of trans fat) as an ingredient in all foods.
Progress in eliminating trans fat is at risk of stalling, and trans fat continues to kill people,” said Dr Tom Frieden, president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives.
Express Network
Indian field gun to replace British-era 25-pounder(Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
The Army’s British-era 25-pounder guns—which traditionally offered the symbolic 21-gun salute to the President of India and the National Flag on Republic Day—will be replaced by the indigenous 105-mm Indian Field Guns (IFG) this year as part of efforts to drop colonial-era vestiges, and showcase only indigenous equipment and weapon systems.
The World War II vintage ’25-pounders’ were designed and made in the 1940s by the British and were put to action in the 1965 and 1971 wars with Pakistan.
The guns—which were considered versatile and accurate by the Army—were decommissioned in early 1990s and were since used only for ceremonial purposes.
However, this year, the efforts are to showcase all indigenous equipment and thus the 105mm IFG will offer the 21-gun salute to the President. The ammunition of the 105mm IFG is also made in India.
The 21-gun salute begins when the sword of the Commandant of President’s Body Guards (PBG) comes down at the shout of ‘Rashtriya Salute’ for the President and is carried out through the duration the National Anthem is played.
No shells are fired, and a specifically-designed cartridge—commonly referred to as blank round—is used to create the sound of firing.
With a focus on self-reliance in defence, all Army equipment on display at the Republic Day parade will be indigenous, the Army said while addressing the media.
At the 90-minute-long Republic Day parade that will march from Vijay Chowk to the Red Fort through the Kartavya Path, the Army will be represented by Mounted Columns of 61 Cavalry comprising 51 horses; nine Mechanised Columns comprising three MBT Arjun MK I; one BrahMos missile; two Akash missile systems among others; six marching contingents, and helicopters of Army Aviation as part of a 50-aircraft-strong flypast.
The Egyptian Army will participate in the parade as a foreign contingent. The President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, will be the special guest for the parade.
A senior Army officer said preparations for the Republic Day parade started way back in September, and the drills comprise intense practices for the contingent, as well as for the equipment, some of which need to be painted afresh with special paints. The Egyptian contingent, too, has also been rehearsing since their arrival, the officer added.
Overall, there will be 16 marching contingents and 23 tableaux of various states, ministries and departments. There will be a veterans’ tableau as well at the parade as part of the Army’s marching contingent.
President Murmu confers Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar 2023(Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The President of India, DroupadiMurmu, conferred the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar, 2023 to 11 selected children in an award ceremony on. January 23. The award ceremony held at Vigyan Bhawan.
After the award ceremony today, Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi will interact with Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar awardees on January 24, 2023.
This will be followed by a meeting with the Minister of Women and Child Development, Smriti Zubin Irani, and Minister of State, MunjparaMahendrabhai.
The awards are conferred upon children in the age group of 5–18 years. These awards are given to selected students for their excellence in six categories — art and culture, bravery, innovation, scholastic, social service and sports.
This year, four students are being awarded in the art and culture category, one for bravery, two for innovation, one for social service and three children have been selected for sports category.
Meanwhile, a nationwide painting competition will be held in 500 KendriyaVidyalayas across the country to mark the birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, which is observed as ParakramDiwas.
INS Vagir commissioned into the Indian Navy(Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
The Indian Navy commissioned the fifth diesel-electric Kalvari-class submarine Vagir. It is among the six submarines being built by the Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL), Mumbai, in collaboration with the French M/s Naval Group under Project 75. Four of these submarines have already been commissioned into the Navy and a sixth will be commissioned next year.
The induction of Vagir is another step towards the Indian Navy consolidating its position as a builder’s Navy, as it also reflects MDL’s capabilities as a premier ship and submarine building yard.
The Indian Express takes a look at the newly commissioned Vagir and what are the capabilities of these Kalvari-class submarines and their strategic importance.
The latest submarine gets its name from the erstwhile Vagir, a submarine which served the Navy between 1973 and 2001 and undertook numerous operational missions.
The construction of the new Vagir began in 2009 and it took its maiden sea sortie in February last year. Also known as Sand Shark, the submarine was delivered to the Indian Navy in December 2022.
According to a government press release, Vagir represents stealth and fearlessness, as it comes with features like an advanced acoustic absorption technique.
Vagir will boost the Indian Navy’s capability to further India’s maritime interests and is capable of undertaking diverse missions including anti-surface warfare, anti-submarine warfare, intelligence gathering, mine laying and surveillance missions.
Vagir is a Kalvari-class submarine, which includes other vessels, such as the INS Kalvari, INS Khanderi, INS Karanj, INS Vela and INS Vagsheer.
Of these, Kalvari and Khanderi were commissioned in 2017 and 2019, and Vela and Karanj were inducted in 2021. Vagir has now been commissioned and Vagsheer was launched in 2022 and is expected to be inducted next year.
The submarines in the current Kalvari-class take their names from erstwhile decommissioned classes of submarines named Kalvari, which included Kalvari, Khanderi, Karanj and Vela classes — comprising Vela, Vagir, Vagshir.
The now-decommissioned Kalvari and Vela classes were one of the earliest submarines in the post-independence Indian Navy, which belonged to Soviet origin Foxtrot class of vessels.
The Idea Page
Job Data and its Discontent(Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
It is said that data is the new oil. Given this reality, data is the new politics, especially when official data are not present. There is considerable interest, and therefore a virtual cottage industry in comparing the GDP and employment outcomes between the last pre-Covid year 2019 and the first post-Covid year 2022.
As acknowledged by virtually all international organisations, Indian GDP growth, at 7 per cent, is expected to be the fastest among the G20 economies.
There is an equal interest in comparative (and absolute) performance in terms of job growth. For most economies, it is too early to tell. But there are pointers.
Employment recovery in the US has surprised many, and in 2022, employment in the US averaged 152 million a month, up marginally from its 2019 level of 150.9 million.
US GDP was 3.7 per cent above the 2019 level, compared to India’s 8.4 per cent. Comparing with 2019 is correct — neither 2020 nor 2021 would be appropriate years of comparison since both years suffered from Covid effects.
Unfortunately, while employment is a very important policy concern, data in India is scarce. Profound changes in fertility, workforce, income generation and labour force participation of women are happening.
But we don’t know because government data is being released on a delayed and irregular basis. In 2017-18, the NSO launched its periodic labour force survey (PLFS) with the promise that a timely quarterly employment series would be made available for urban areas, and an annual all-India series made available, after the completion of the July-June agricultural year.
Unfortunately, this promise has not been kept, despite India being amongst the top two economies in the world for computer software, and the leading economy in terms of financial payments technology.
The introduction of computer tablets over the years has considerably lessened, if not removed, concerns about the timeliness of data input. The time taken from the end of survey collection to tabulation/publication has been reduced to less than a month.
Yet MOSPI is finding it difficult to release collected and processed data on time (“normal” MOSPI lag is six to nine months).
Hence, the last available urban PLFS survey results (and these also in the form of a press release) are for the period July-September 2022; a quarterly bulletin with survey details is awaited, as well as the annual report, and data, for 2021-22.
Economy
Co-location case: SAT sets Sebi’s payback order aside(Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) on Monday set aside the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (SEBI) Rs 625 crore disgorgement order against the National Securities Exchange (NSE), its ex-CEOs Chitra Ramkrishna and Ravi Narain, in the co-location scam.
In its order, SAT pulled up the market regulator, asking, “how SEBI directed NSE to conduct an investigation against itself.”
The tribunal also directed NSE to deposit Rs 100 crore to the Investor Protection and Education Fund (IPEF) created by the SEBI.
The amount will be adjusted by the capital markets regulator from the deposits already made by NSE in 2019 and 2021, the order read.The excess amount along with interest accrued shall be refunded by the SEBI within six weeks.
The direction to disgorge 25 per cent of the salary from Ravi Narain and Chitra Ramkrishna is set aside. The direction prohibiting Narain and Ramkrishna from associating with any listed company or a market infrastructure institution or any other market intermediary for a period of five years is set aside and substituted for the period undergone by them.
In our opinion, considering the gravity of the alleged charges, SEBI should have itself conducted an investigation/enquiry instead of delegating it to NSE to conduct an investigation.
It is strange and it does not stand to reason as to how SEBI directed NSE to conduct an investigation against itself. It is clear that a casual approach was adopted.
The co-location scam refers to giving preferential access to NSE’s trading platform to high-frequency traders and brokers.
In April 2019, Sebi had directed NSE to disgorge Rs 624.89 crore along with interest at the rate of 12 per cent per annum from April 1, 2014 onwards to IPEF.
SAT further said quashed the SEBI’s direction of prohibiting Narain and Ramkrishna from associating with any listed company or a market infrastructure institution or any other market intermediary for a period of five years is set aside and substituted for the period undergone by them. The order upheld the SEBI’s direction to NSE for initiating inquiry against its employees.
The tribunal said violations committed by OPG as found by SEBI is affirmed. However, the direction of the markets regulator directing OPG and its directors to disgorge Rs.15.57 crore along with interest at the rate of 12 per cent from April 7, 2014 onwards is set aside.
The matter, SAT order said, is remitted to SEBI to decide the quantum of disgorgement afresh. It gave four months’ time to the market regulator for calculation.
Explained Page
Kerala’s man-elephant conflict(Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The Kerala forest department captured a rogue tusker that had been raiding villages in Palakkad district for over a year. Another had been sedated on January 9; this one had attacked a person in SulthanBathery in Wayanad.
And demands are getting louder for capturing an elephant that has responded to overenthusiastic tourists in Munnar by thwacking a few vehicles since December.
Yet, the magnitude of Kerala’s human-elephant conflict — projected as acute enough to trigger even political agitations — is not commensurate with the state’s relative abundance of wild jumbos.
Of the estimated nationwide population of 30,000 wild elephants in 2017, Kerala had about 5,700, or 19%. Between 2018-19 and 2021-22, elephants killed 2,036 people in India, data collected by the central government show. Kerala accounted for only 81 (4%) of these deaths. (Field data add up to 92 deaths.)
Clearly, the conflict in Kerala is not comparable to the situation in, say, North Bengal or Odisha, where smaller jumbo populations are blamed for much bigger human casualties.
But Kerala has seen a relative spike in the conflict in recent years. In 2021-22, the number of human deaths scaled a new high of 35.
Assessment of Kerala’s jumbo conflict depends on who one asks — the tribal populations of the Western Ghats, or the settlers who came there from the central and southern parts of the state.
Kerala has a history of settler-agriculture since pre-Independence days, and state policy continues to allow such migration. The tribal and the elephant are seldom in conflict, but their ways are alien to the settler who must outcompete both to gain control of the land. Their (settlers’) panic at the so-called conflict is often just optics,” said a sociologist who has worked in the Wayanad hills.
An elephant on the road is neither an imminent threat nor an idle curiosity. All one needs to do is keep calm and allow it space. But people blow horns impatiently and try to drive the animal away.
Tourists crowd around, and even approach (the elephant) on foot for selfies. The moment the animal decides it has had enough, it becomes a ‘marauder’ or a ‘terror’ in the media,” veteran wildlife crime investigator Jose Louise said.
Immune Imprinting(Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
Since last September, countries like the UK and the US have rolled out variant-specific or bivalent boosters, in the hope that they would provide better protection against the coronavirus infection in comparison to the original vaccine.
However, a slew of recent studies has shown that a phenomenon in our bodies, called immune imprinting, might be making these new boosters far less effective than expected.
Two papers, published earlier in January in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), pointed out that bivalent boosters — made to counter both the Omicron strains and the original Covid-19 strain — don’t generate significantly greater antibody responses than an additional dose of the original mRNA vaccines.
The observed ineffectiveness of the bivalent or variant-specific boosters might be due to immune imprinting, scientists of both studies concluded.
Immune imprinting is a tendency of the body to repeat its immune response based on the first variant it encountered — through infection or vaccination — when it comes across a newer or slightly different variant of the same pathogen.
The phenomenon was first observed in 1947, when scientists noted that “people who had previously had flu, and were then vaccinated against the current circulating strain, produced antibodies against the first strain they had encountered”, according to a report published in the journal Nature. At the time, it was termed the ‘original antigenic sin’ but today, it’s commonly known as imprinting.
Over the years, scientists have realised that imprinting acts as a database for the immune system, helping it put up a better response to repeat infections.
After our body is exposed to a virus for the first time, it produces memory B cells that circulate in the bloodstream and quickly produce antibodies whenever the same strain of the virus infects again.
The problem occurs when a similar, not identical, variant of the virus is encountered by the body. In such cases, the immune system, rather than generating new B cells, activates memory B cells, which in turn produce “antibodies that bind to features found in both the old and new strains, known as cross-reactive antibodies”, the Nature report said.
Although these cross-reactive antibodies do offer some protection against the new strain, they aren’t as effective as the ones produced by the B cells when the body first came across the original virus.