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The government on Tuesday brought The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-eighth Amendment) Bill, 2023 to provide 33 per cent reservation to women in Lok Sabha and state Legislative Assemblies.
Attempts to create a quota for women have been ongoing since the mid-1990s. In March 2010, Rajya Sabha passed The Constitution (One Hundred and Eighth Amendment) Bill, 2008, but the legislation was not taken up by Lok Sabha.
Even if the Bill tabled on Tuesday is passed speedily by both Houses of Parliament, it may be a while before it can be implemented.
According to The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-eighth Amendment) Bill 2023, “as nearly as maybe, one-third (including the seats reserved for women belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) of the total number of seats to be filled by direct election to the House of People shall be reserved for women”.
Govt brings bill with 33% quota for women in SC/ST (Page no. 1)
GS Paper 2, Social Justice)
In a move set to have a wide impact on Indian electoral politics, the Narendra Modi government Tuesday introduced the 128th Constitutional Amendment Bill, 2023, to bring in 33% reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and all state Legislative Assemblies. The Bill extends the quota to the seats reserved for SC/STs.
Calling himself “the chosen one for empowering and strengthening women”, Prime Minister Modi urged the five-day special session of Parliament – that met in the new building– to pass the Bill, dubbed by the government as the ‘Narishakti Vandan Adhiniyam’, unanimously.
The reservation for women, however, will kick in only after the completion of the delimitation exercise based on the first Census conducted after the passage of the Bill, which puts off its date to around 2029.
The Bill mandates women’s reservation for 15 years from the commencement of the Act, with Parliament empowered to extend it further. Rotation of seats reserved for women will happen only after subsequent delimitation exercises, to be determined by Parliament by law.
The Bill introduced in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday is similar to the legislation passed by the Rajya Sabha in March 2010 under the Congress-led UPA government on all aspects but this – its linking to the delimitation process.
The Opposition seized on this, accusing the government of “fooling the people” by not bringing in the reservation immediately, and introducing the Bill solely with an eye on the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Talking about the Bill, which will be taken up by the House on Wednesday, Modi said in the Lok Sabha: “On this historic occasion in the new Parliament building, as the first agenda on the first day, we have made a call for transformation. We, all the MPs, should come together to open the doors for the empowerment of Nari Shakti.”
WHO red flag: Only 37% Indians with high BP diagnosed, 30% get treaqtment (Page no. 1)
GS Paper 2, Health)
At least 4.6 million deaths in India can be prevented by 2040 if half its hypertensive population controls its blood pressure, according to the first-ever report released by WHO on the global impact of hypertension.
It estimates that 31 per cent of the country’s population or 188.3 million people are living with the condition currently.
Considering high blood pressure (140/90 mmHg or higher) leads to stroke, heart attack, heart failure, kidney damage and many other health problems and is preventable, the WHO flags problem areas.
Only 37 per cent of Indians with hypertension are diagnosed and only 30 per cent get treated. At present, only 15 per cent of those with hypertension in the country have it under control, the report says.
In fact, it adds, more than half of all the deaths in the country (52 per cent) due to cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack can be attributed to elevated blood pressure.
In Parliament
Old Parliament building renamed Samvidhan Sadan notifies speaker (Page no. 6)
GS Paper 2, Governance)
The old Parliament building will now be known as ‘Samvidhan Sadan’, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla said as the functioning of Parliament shifted to its new building here.
Earlier, at a function held in the Central Hall of the old Parliament building, Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggested that the iconic building should be renamed “Samvidhan Sadan”.
The Speaker, Lok Sabha is pleased to notify the building previously known as Parliament House and situated on Plot Number 116, New Delhi with Lok Sabha Marg to the north-west and Rajya Sabha Marg to the south-west, to be, hereon, designated as the Samvidhan Sadan.
Modi noted that the shift to the new Parliament building was happening on the auspicious day of Ganesh Chaturthi.
Express Network
Aditya L1 spacecraft embarks on 110 day journey to L1 point (Page no. 8)
GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Off to Sun-Earth L1 point!” said the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Tuesday as an early morning manoeuvre by the Aditya-L1 spacecraft put it in a trajectory towards the point 1.5 million kilometres away from where it will continuously study the Sun.
The spacecraft will remain in the Trans-Lagrangean Point 1 trajectory for 110 days before being inserted into an orbit around the point where the gravitational pull of the Sun and Earth on the spacecraft will be completely balanced.
This is the fifth consecutive time ISRO has successfully transferred an object on a trajectory toward another celestial body or location in space.
After travelling for nearly four months to the L1 point, covering a distance that has not been covered by any other Indian spacecraft, the Solar observatory will park itself in a halo orbit around the L1 point and study the Sun.
In fact, this is the first mission by India where the spacecraft will get into an orbit around a point and not a celestial body like Earth, Moon, or Mars.
Mission director Nigar Shaji earlier told Indian Express: “This halo orbit insertion at L1 is something that ISRO has not done so far.”
The L1 point that lies at only 1% of the distance between Earth and the Sun has been selected as it allows for an unobstructed view of the Sun as no celestial body can come in between to cause an eclipse.
The point also allows us to study the Sun without interference of the dust found in the Earth’s atmosphere or the atmosphere and magnetic fields itself that do not allow some of the harmful radiations like UV radiation from the Sun to enter the Earth.
Explained
Road ahead on women’s quota (Page no. 9)
GS Paper 2, Social Justice)
The government on Tuesday brought The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-eighth Amendment) Bill, 2023 to provide 33 per cent reservation to women in Lok Sabha and state Legislative Assemblies.
Attempts to create a quota for women have been ongoing since the mid-1990s. In March 2010, Rajya Sabha passed The Constitution (One Hundred and Eighth Amendment) Bill, 2008, but the legislation was not taken up by Lok Sabha.
Even if the Bill tabled on Tuesday is passed speedily by both Houses of Parliament, it may be a while before it can be implemented.
According to The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-eighth Amendment) Bill 2023, “as nearly as maybe, one-third (including the seats reserved for women belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) of the total number of seats to be filled by direct election to the House of People shall be reserved for women”.
How Iran and US successfully swapped prisoners (Page no. 9)
GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Iran and the U.S. were to swap five detainees each on Monday after Qatar mediated a deal between the arch foes that also unfroze $6 billion of Tehran's funds.
Implementation of the deal was triggered when Qatar confirmed that the funds had been transferred to bank accounts in Doha.
Under the deal, the five Americans with dual nationality are expected to leave Tehran for Qatar's capital Doha and then fly to the United States. In return, five Iranians held in the U.S. will be released.
Editorial
Age of ambition (Page no. 10)
GS Paper 2, Governance)
The transition to a new Parliament building is one more marker in India’s new Age of Ambition. Amid all the immediate dangers our democracy faces, it is sometimes easy to miss that the dominant emotional register of our times is national ambition.
Everything has to be imagined in terms of the “new”, a break with a recent past whose greatest sin was its lack of ambition. Time has to be redefined, not in terms of a few years, but in terms of whole eons.
This is the inauguration of Amrit Kaal. Scale has to be redefined. It is all too easy to dismiss the relentless public construction as authoritarian kitsch. But often, time consecrates aesthetics as much as taste.
But this fascination with modernist infrastructure, too, is tapping into a revolt against a previous kind of mediocrity, the low ambition of India’s Public Works Department.
Our command over history is now stamped through a new infrastructural nationalism. The excessive use of Vishwaguru or the “Mother of Everything” may border on historical inanity. But its function is to keep the emotional furnace of national ambition burning.
It is important to register this dominant mood. It is a political reality that cannot be wished away. To be politically successful at this moment, to capture the imagination in democracy will require stoking this ambitious impulse.
It will require painting a canvas of success, literally stamping it all around us. This is exactly the impulse that Prime Minister Modi is a master at tapping, that sense of elevation he constantly produces.
It is true this sense of elevation is much like the effect of a conjurer’s trick. But its ability to tap into a disposition for vicarious pride is unmatched.
Ideas Page
A more welcome house (Page no. 11)
GS Paper 2, Governance)
Last year, during one of my field trips to Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh to identify the role of self-help groups in empowering women in rural and semi-urban settings, I had the opportunity to meet women leaders and politicians.
Among them were sarpanches, block pramukhs, and zila parishad members. Along with them, naturally, I also met several pradhan patis, parishad patis, et al.
The answer I was looking for came not from one, but several such women leaders, and it was unequivocal. Of course, our husbands/ fathers/ brothers attend the meetings, as proxies for us when we hold office.
Of course, we would not have had the chance to hold these positions had the seats not been reserved for women. But, they went on to add, holding these positions has ensured that we are now treated with respect in our households and neighbourhoods.
Our husbands have stopped beating us, and when one woman holds such a position, others in the household and community are listened to more, and their grievances are met with consideration, not contempt.
The future is Eurasia (Page no. 11)
GS Paper 2, International Relation)
At the G20 Summit, President Joe Biden, joined by the leaders of India, Saudi Arabia, UAE, France, Germany, Italy, and the European Commission, unveiled the multi-modal India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC).
This economic Corridor comprises an eastern route, facilitating India’s connection to the Arabian Gulf via sea lanes, and a northern route, linking Saudi Arabia to Europe through Jordan and Israel.
The combined GDP of the IMEC nations (including the EU as a bloc) is roughly $47 trillion, representing about 40 per cent of the world’s total GDP.
The IMEC embodies a collective vision for the broader Eurasian supercontinent, extending beyond trade, energy and digital resilience.
The Corridor aims to forge a path towards an increasingly interwoven transoceanic system that extends from the Mediterranean region through West Asia to the expansive Indo-Pacific.
Furthermore, the IMEC serves as an implicit acknowledgment, on the part of Washington and Brussels, of the palpable ramifications of the rise of non-Western powers and the undeniable shift of the economic and geopolitical centre of the world further east.
The IMEC underscores the necessity of ceding more substantial global leadership roles to India, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, the actors at the forefront of reconfiguring the future of the economic and geopolitical system in Eurasia.
Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, New Delhi, and other emergent powers in Eurasia will wield substantial sway in recalibrating the broader power dynamics across the supercontinent.
Salute the women who fought (Page no. 11)
GS Paper 2, Social Justice)
When a government makes a mystery thriller of the parliamentary agenda, you can be pretty sure that event managers have been put to work to generate an added dhamaka.
For many of us who have been part of the struggle for the women’s reservation Bill, it is indeed unfortunate that what we have fought for almost three decades should be reduced to being an instrument to divert attention from a government’s failures.
The reason I say this is because the passage of the Bill at this late stage will make not a jot of difference to the composition of the 18th Lok Sabha.
The draft of the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Eighth Amendment) Bill being circulated makes this clear enough.
It has been linked to the Census, which is yet to begin, the delimitation process and also requires ratification by at least half the state assemblies, so the one-third reservations for women in Parliament and state assemblies will come into effect maybe by 2027.
The BJP made an electoral promise in 2014 to the women of this country that a vote for the BJP would ensure at least one-third women’s representation.
It did not implement the promise in its first term because of which there was no reservation of seats for the 17th Lok Sabha which has just 14 per cent women.
In its second term, after having repeated its promise in its 2019 election manifesto, it did not list the Bill even once in the last four years and brings it only at the fag end of its term, ensuring that the 18th Lok Sabha will also reflect inequality in representation. The Modi government is responsible for this.
World
Azerbaijan launches military operation in Nagorno – Karabakh (Page no. 12)
GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Tensions in the South Caucasus have been high for months around the breakaway region, recognised internationally as part of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan and Armenia last went to war three years ago.
In a statement on Wednesday morning, Azerbaijan's defence ministry said military equipment belonging to the Armenian armed forces had been "neutralised", including military vehicles, artillery and anti-aircraft missile installations.
Nagorno-Karabakh authorities say 27 people have been killed, including two civilians, and many more wounded since the offensive began.
Baku has said it is prepared for talks, but insists "illegal Armenian military formations must raise the white flag" and dissolve their "illegal regime".
US and Saudi in talks for defence treaty modelled after Asian pacts (Page no. 12)
GS Paper 2, International Relation)
American and Saudi officials are discussing terms of a mutual defence treaty that would resemble the robust military pacts that the US has with its close allies Japan and South Korea, a central component in President Biden’s high-stakes diplomacy to get Saudi Arabia to normalise relations with Israel, according to US officials.
Under such an agreement, the US and Saudi Arabia would generally pledge to provide military support if the other country is attacked in the region or on Saudi territory.
The discussions to model the terms after the treaties in East Asia, considered among the strongest the US has outside of its European pacts, have not been previously reported.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmanregards a mutual defence deal with the US as the most important element in his talks with the Biden administration about Israel, current and former US officials said. Saudi officials say a strong defence deal would help deter potential assaults by Iran or its armed partners even as the two regional rivals re-establish diplomatic ties.
Prince Mohammed is also asking the Biden administration to help his nation develop a civilian nuclear programme, which some US officials fear could be cover for a nuclear weapons programme to counter Iran.
Economy
Govt to discuss transition timeline, consent mechanism with industry (Page no. 13)
GS Paper 3, Economy)
Almost a month after the data protection Act was notified into law, the Centre will kick start discussions on contours of subsequent rules which are crucial for its operationalising.
Officials from the IT Ministry will meet representatives of top tech companies such as Meta Google, Apple and Amazon today (September 20) to discuss issues including the timeline for compliance, contours of specific rules and whether all entities will be given the same amount of time to adhere to the law.
The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, even though notified as law, depends heavily on subordinate legislation – at least 25 rules have to be formulated to operationalise the Act, and the government has also been empowered to enact rules for any provision that it deems fit. A senior government official told this paper that most of the rules are already ready.
Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who will chair the meeting, had earlier told The Indian Express that the government will follow a graded approach in the way the data protection Act will be implemented for different entities.
The government will implement the law first for big tech companies and offer a longer transition timeline for its own agencies and departments, smaller entities, and start-ups.
Bima Sugam: Is it a UPI moment for the insurance sector? (Page no. 13)
GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) claims that the proposed Bima Sugam is a “game changer” and a “UPI moment” for the insurance segment, with ambitions of becoming the largest online market for insurance products and services which has not been practiced anywhere in the world.
The proposed platform is expected to help customers identify the right scheme from a maze of hundreds of products and services, with reduced paperwork.
It’s an online platform where customers can choose a suitable scheme from multiple options given by various companies. All insurance requirements, including those for life, health, and general insurance (including motor and travel) will be met by Bima Sugam.
This platform will help in the settlement of claims, whether it’s health coverage or death claims, in a paperless manner on the basis of policy numbers.
Details about insurance schemes are expected to be stored in the platform through the insurance repository initially. This will be followed by a listing of policies.
The overall budget for Bima Sugam has been hiked to Rs 200 crore from around Rs 85 crore. IRDAI has appointed a committee for the creation of the platform and now plans to go for requests for proposals (RFPs) soon to appoint a service provider for the platform.
The service providers will be the technological partners for creating and running a platform to provide all the services in one place.