16 September 2024, The Indian Express
‘One nation, one poll in this term; coalition won’t stall reforms’
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GS2- Electoral reforms
- Despite the BJP being in a minority, the NDA government will implement “one nation, one election,” in its current tenure, a top government functionary said Sunday. This, even as he insisted that “there should be no confusion about the sthayi niti (policy stability) under a government elected for a third successive term after 60 years.”
- The functionary said that there is no area where the NDA government, which completed 100 days of its third term Sunday, has not taken policy decisions to continue the work it had initiated 10 years ago: “Whether it is defence, space, external and home affairs, education, Digital India and making India a manufacturing hub, spending Rs 11 lakh crore annually on building infrastructure, mahila-yuva-garib-kisan (welfare of women, youth, poor and farmers), we are continuing with and taking forward the work that was started in 2014. Even our foreign policy has a reedh ki haddi (backbone) today, which it didn’t have under previous governments”.
In ‘last stage’ of LWE fight, Govt doubles road funds
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GS3- Linkages between development and spread of extremism
- The Centre has doubled the allocation of funds under the Road Connectivity Project for Left Wing Extremism Affected Areas (RCPLWEA) for financial year 2024-25, days after Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced that Left Wing Extremism will be “completely eradicated” in the country before March 2026.
- The RCPLWEA, a separate vertical under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), is aimed at providing all-weather road connectivity with culverts and cross-drainage structures in 44 worst-affected Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) districts and adjoining districts in nine states, which are “critical from security and communication point of view”.
Powering ahead with competition
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GS3- Infrastructure: Power Sector
- Two decades ago, India introduced competitive bidding for electricity power procurement, which has yielded significant results in the form of greater competition and increased investments.
- Competitive bidding based price discovery leveraged rapid technological advancements to achieve efficient pricing for solar power. Tariffs fell from Rs 15/kWh in the initial bidding rounds of 2010 to Rs 2.80/kWh by 2018. About 27 GW of capacity was added, driven by the private sector. In the wind space, competitive bidding led to tariffs falling from Rs 5.30/kWh to Rs 2.50/kWh in just two years. The benefits of competitive procurement extended to smaller projects as well.
Giving farms their due
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GS3- Agriculture
- Even before the parliamentary elections were held in 2024, the Narendra Modi government had asked all secretaries to prepare a policy agenda to be announced in the first 100 days of Modi 3.0. They were pretty sure that the BJP was coming back with a thumping majority. The actual results of the parliamentary elections were humbling for the party, as it fell way short of its target of 370. Yet, the enthusiasm of the first 100 days has not waned.
- The BJP now is running a coalition government, and therefore it will have to accommodate the demands of its major allies, especially N Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar so that the government can continue to do its job without much difficulty. What has it done differently? While there is an overall thrust to manufacturing, especially high-tech chip making, etc, there are also many changes in other sectors. I cannot cover all that here in this column, nor do I have the expertise to analyse and assess the efficiency of the steps being undertaken in those areas. I would limit myself to agriculture and rural development space which affects the welfare of the masses most.
Low- & high-skilled jobs: Gap rising as manufacturing stagnation continues
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GS3- Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization, of resources, growth, development and employment
- Over the past two decades, India’s economic growth has increasingly been driven by the services sector, particularly in Information Technology (IT), banking, and finance. But the expansion of the services sector since the turn of the century has coincided with a noticeable decline in traditional industries such as apparel and footwear, which provide livelihoods for millions of low-skilled workers. The stagnation in manufacturing, which continues to remain at around 14 per cent and well short of the targeted 25 per cent, has exacerbated the divide between high-skilled and low-skilled jobs.
- Although job creation and income levels for a large pool of qualified IT professionals have increased, particularly with multinational companies establishing data analytics and software development hubs known as Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India, the country’s manufacturing weaknesses have caused it to fall behind Bangladesh in textiles, Thailand in machinery, and Vietnam in electronics. This has led to a consistent decline in the creation of low-skilled jobs across the country.
More women in medicine field than ever, but basic facilities and safe spaces a distant dream for them
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GS1- Role of women: their problems and their remedies
- During her residency in 1992, it was not unusual for Dr Arpita Ray Chaudhury, 56, who currently heads the nephrology department at Siliguri-based North Bengal Medical College and Hospital, to nap in the deserted seminar hall at 2 am while on night shift “since it had tables and chairs”. The only woman in a team of five men at Kolkata’s Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital then, she says her colleagues would use the seminar hall to “sleep, study or even take breaks before the start of their long hours of ward duties”.
- On August 9, the body of a junior doctor was found in the fourth-floor seminar hall of Kolkata’s R G Kar Hospital, one of India’s oldest medical colleges established in 1886. The doctor was allegedly raped and murdered inside the hospital that sees a footfall of nearly 4,500 patients daily in the OPD. On August 18, a woman doctor was allegedly assaulted by a drunk patient and his family at Mumbai’s Sion Hospital around 3.30 am.
Study shows how AI can trigger rethink on conspiracy theories
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GS3- Science and Technology- developments and their applications and effects in everyday life
- A chatbot with the ability to call out fake news and misinformation was able to persuade participants in a study to have second thoughts about their beliefs — which suggests that artificial intelligence (AI) can be used as a tool to combat conspiracy theories and disinformation.
- The chatbot presented participants with comprehensive answers and detailed arguments, following which they found themselves thinking differently — a change that lasted for several weeks. (‘Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI’: Science, September 13, Thomas H Costello and others)
Behind Typhoon Yagi becoming the most powerful storm in Asia this year
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GS1- Important Geophysical phenomena such as cyclone
- Millions of people in Southeast Asia continue to struggle with torrential rains, floods, and landslides triggered by Typhoon Yagi — the strongest tropical cyclone Asia has seen this year and the second most powerful storm in the world so far this year after Hurricane Beryl.
- While Typhoon Yagi has severely impacted multiple countries, including the Philippines, China, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand, it has hit Vietnam the hardest, where the death toll stands at around 233. The overall toll across these countries has crossed 300 as of last week. As many people are still missing, it is expected to rise further.
A new dilemma: food vs cars
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GS3- Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization of resources
- “Food versus fuel” is a familiar debate in the context of sugarcane, rice, maize, palm or soyabean oil being diverted for the production of ethanol and biodiesel.
- But there’s also a looming “food versus cars” dilemma, which is linked to phosphoric acid — the key ingredient in di-ammonium phosphate (DAP), India’s second most consumed fertiliser after urea — increasingly finding its way into the production of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs).
