Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Article 311 of the Indian Constitution
Mains level: Read the attached story
A suspended Maharashtra police officer was dismissed from service by Mumbai Police Commissioner under Article 311 (2) (b) of the Indian Constitution without a departmental enquiry.
What is Article 311?
- Article 311 says that no government employee either of an all India service or a state government shall be dismissed or removed by an authority subordinate to the owner that appointed him/her.
- Section 2 of the article says that no civil servant shall be dismissed or removed or reduced in rank except after an inquiry in which s/he has been informed of the charges and given a reasonable opportunity of being heard in respect of those charges.
Various safeguards under Art. 311
- Article 311 is meant to act as a safeguard for civil servants that give them a chance to respond to the charges in an enquiry so that he/she is not arbitrarily dismissed from service.
- The article also provides exceptions to these safeguards under subclause 2 provision b.
- It states “when an authority empowered to dismiss or remove a person or to reduce him in rank is satisfied that for some reason, to be recorded by that authority in writing, it is not reasonably practicable to hold such enquiry”.
What is the process of a departmental enquiry?
- In a departmental enquiry, after an enquiry officer is appointed, the civil servant is given a formal chargesheet of the charges.
- The civil servant can represent himself/herself or choose to have a lawyer.
- Witnesses can be called during the departmental enquiry following which the enquiry officer can prepare a report and submit it to the government for further action.
Are there other exceptions where a person can be dismissed without departmental enquiry?
- As per Article 311 subclause 2 provision a, if a government employee is convicted in a criminal case, he can be dismissed without DE.
- Apart from this, under 311 (2) (c), a government employee can be dismissed when the President or the Governor, as the case may be, is satisfied in the interest of the security of the state.
Can the dismissal under section 311 (2) be challenged by the government employee?
- Yes, the government employee dismissed under these provisions can approach either tribunal like the state administrative tribunal or the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) or the Courts.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Tropical cyclones
Mains level: Frequent landfalls of tropical cyclones in India
Cyclone Tauktae (pronounced Tau-Te), classified as a very severe cyclonic storm (VSCS) and developed in the Arabian Sea, is wreaking havoc all across the Indian Coast.
Don’t you think?
In recent years, strong cyclones have been developing in the Arabian Sea more frequently than earlier.
Cyclone Tauktae
- Tauktae is a currently active and strengthening tropical cyclone threatening the state of Gujarat in India and impacting the states Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra.
- It is the fourth cyclone in consecutive years to have developed in the Arabian Sea, that too in the pre-monsoon period (April to June).
- All these cyclones since 2018 have been categorised as either ‘Severe Cyclone’ or above.
- Once Tauktae makes its landfall, three of these will have hit either the Gujarat or Maharashtra coast.
- After Cyclone Mekanu in 2018, which struck Oman, Cyclone Vayu in 2019 struck Gujarat, followed by Cyclone Nisarga in 2020 that struck Maharashtra.
What is aiding such rapid intensification?
- Any tropical cyclone requires energy to stay alive.
- This energy is typically obtained from the warm water and humid air over the tropical ocean.
- Currently, seawater up to depths of 50 metres has been very warm, supplying ample energy to enable the intensification of Cyclone Tauktae.
- The more the heat released through condensation of water vapour, the steeper the drop in pressure.
- A low-pressure system undergoes multiple stages of intensification to form cyclones.
Not a rare phenomenon
- Typically, tropical cyclones in the North Indian Ocean region (the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea) develop during the pre-monsoon and post-monsoon (October to December) periods.
- May-June and October-November are known to produce cyclones of severe intensity that affect the Indian coasts.
Is the Arabian Sea becoming cyclone-friendly?
- Annually, five cyclones on average form in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea combined.
- Of these, four developments in the Bay of Bengal, which is warmer than the Arabian Sea.
- In the Arabian Sea, cyclones typically develop over the Lakshadweep area and largely traverse westwards, or away from India’s west coast.
- However, in recent years, meteorologists have observed that the Arabian Sea, too, has been warming. This is a phenomenon associated with global warming.
Back2Basics: Tropical Cyclone
- A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure centre, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rains.
- Depending on its location and strength, a tropical cyclone is referred to by different names, including hurricane, typhoon, tropical storm, cyclonic storm, tropical depression, or simply cyclone.
- A hurricane is a tropical cyclone that occurs in the Atlantic Ocean and the northeastern Pacific Ocean, and a typhoon occurs in the northwestern Pacific Ocean.
- In the south Pacific or the Indian Ocean, comparable storms are referred to simply as “tropical cyclones” or “severe cyclonic storms”.
Also read:
[Burning Issue] Tropical Cyclones and India
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Tianwen 1 and various Mars missions
Mains level: Mars mission worldwide and their success
China landed a spacecraft on Mars carrying its first Mars rover in a big boost to its space ambitions.
UPSC may ask an MCQ asking: Which of the following is/are the space missions related to Mars? It may throw up 4-5 options (which we all get confused at after few months) like Cassini , InSight , Messanger, Voyager etc.
Tianwen-1 Mission
- The mission is named after the ancient Chinese poem ‘Questions to Heaven’, the Tianwen-1.
- It is an all-in-one orbiter; lander and rover will search the Martian surface for water, ice, investigate soil characteristics, and study the atmosphere, among completing other objectives.
- It will be the first to place ground-penetrating radar on the Martian surface, which will be able to study local geology, as well as rock, ice, and dirt distribution.
- The lander descended successfully onto the surface of the red planet carrying a rover named Zhurong, named after a god of fire for a planet known in Chinese as the planet of fire.
- Only the Soviet Union and the United States had previously carried out a successful landing on Mars.
Back2Basics: Various missions on Mars
- The USSR in 1971 became the first country to carry out a Mars landing– its ‘Mars 3’ lander being able to transmit data for 20 seconds from the Martian surface before failing.
- The country made it’s second and Mars landing two years later in 1973.
- The second country to reach Mars’s surface, the US, holds the record for the most number of Mars landings.
- Since 1976, it has achieved 8 successful Mars landings, the latest being the ‘InSight’ in 2019 (launched in 2018).
- India and the European Space Agency have been able to place their spacecraft in Mars’s orbit.
- India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) or ‘Mangalyaan’ was able to do so in September 2014, almost a year after its launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh.
- The Chinese mission now is expected to take off around the same time when NASA is launching its own Mars mission– the ambitious ‘Perseverance’ which aims to collect Martian samples and bring them back.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Mucormycosis
Mains level: Post covid hazards
Hospitals across the country have started to report a number of cases of Mucormycosis, an invasive fungal infection affecting patients who have recently recovered from COVID-19.
What is Mucormycosis?
- Mucormycosis is an aggressive and invasive fungal infection caused by a group of moulds called micromycetes.
- It can affect various organs but is currently manifesting as invasive rhino-orbito-cerebral disease, crawling through the sinus and working its way to the brain, affecting the ear, nose, throat, and mouth.
- While it is not contagious, it can cause a lot of damage internally and can be fatal if not detected early.
- It is an old disease; perhaps new and concerning is the sudden increase in the invasive form of the sinus variant, which involves the orbit, and at times the brain, leading to blindness, stroke or death.
What causes the disease?
- Diabetes mellitus is the most common underlying cause, followed by haematological malignancies and solid-organ transplants.
- Diabetes mellitus was reported in 54% to 76% of cases, according to a report.
- What seems to be triggering Mucormycosis in patients post COVID-19 is indiscriminate use of a high dose of steroids in COVID-19 patients, sometimes even in minimally symptomatic patients.
- This leads to spikes in the sugar level among diabetics, which, in turn, renders them vulnerable.
Symptoms
- The symptoms to watch out for are a stuffy nose, bloody, blackish, or brown discharge from the nose etc.
- Other symptoms include blackish discolouration of the skin, swelling or numbness around the cheek, one-sided facial pain, toothache or jaw pain, drooping of the eyelids or eyelid swelling, double vision, redness of eyes, and sudden decrease in vision.
Treatment
- The mainline of treatment is an anti-fungal drug called amphotericin B, which is given over an extended period of time under the strict observation of a physician.
- Rational use of steroids is necessary, and constant monitoring of sugar levels and resorting to insulin use to control these levels if required is essential.
- Surgery to remove the fungus growth might also be warranted.
Preventive measures
- It is important to keep blood sugar levels under control and ensure that appropriate calibration of oral drugs or insulin is done from time to time.
- Further, recognising the symptoms and seeking treatment early if there are two or three symptoms at a time is key.
- Like most illnesses, if detected early, Mucormycosis can be cured.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: 2DG
Mains level: COVID-19 Treatment
Defence Minister has released the first batch of the indigenously developed anti-Covid-19 drug, 2-deoxy-D-glucose or ‘2-DG’.
What is the news?
- The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) had cleared the formulation on May 1 for emergency use as an adjunct therapy in moderate to severe Covid-19 patients.
What is 2-DG?
- 2-DG has been developed by the Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS), New Delhi, a lab of the DRDO in collaboration with Hyderabad-based pharma company Dr Reddy’s Laboratories (DRL).
- The 2-DG anti-Covid drug is expected to reduce dependence on medical oxygen in Covid-19 infected patients.
- The pseudo glucose molecule in the drug stops the virus in the tracts.
- Hence, it has been prescribed for Coronavirus infected patients requiring critical medical oxygen.
How does it work?
- Clinical trial data show that the molecule helps in faster recovery of patients hospitalized with Covid-19, and reduces their dependence on supplemental oxygen.
- The drug accumulates in virus-infected cells, and prevents the growth of the virus by stopping viral synthesis and energy production.
- Its selective accumulation in virally-infected cells makes this drug unique.
Advantages
- 2-DG being a generic molecule and an analogue of glucose, it can be easily produced and made available in large quantities.
- The drug is available in powder form in a sachet, and can be taken orally after dissolving in water.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Disproportionate burden of pandemic on women
The article highlights the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women and suggests measures to soften the impact.
Widening gender employment gap
- Even prior to 2020, the gender employment gap was large.
- Only 18% of working-age women were employed as compared to 75% of men.
- Reasons include a lack of good jobs, restrictive social norms, and the burden of household work.
- The nationwide lockdown hit women much harder than men.
- Data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Pvt. Ltd. show that 61% of male workers were unaffected during the lockdown while only 19% of women experienced this kind of security.
- Men who did lose work were able to regain it, even if it was at the cost of increased precarity or lower earnings, because they had the option of moving into fallback employment arrangements.
- Even as new entrants to the workforce, women workers had poorer options compared to men.
- Women were more likely to enter as daily wage workers while men found avenues for self-employment.
- So, not only did women enter into more precarious work, it was also likely to be at very low earnings compared to men.
Growing domestic work
- With schools closed and almost everyone limited to the confines of their homes, household responsibilities increased for women.
- The India Working Survey 2020 found that among employed men, the number of hours spent on paid work remained more or less unchanged after the pandemic.
- But for women, the number of hours spent in domestic work increased manifold.
- This increase in hours came without any accompanying relief in the hours spent on paid work.
Way forward
- The following measures are needed now:
- The National Employment Policy, currently in the works, should systematically address the constraints around the participation of the women’s workforce.
- Expansion of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and the introduction of an urban employment guarantee targeted to women as soon as the most severe forms of mobility restrictions are lifted.
- There is a need for coordinated efforts by States to facilitate the employment of women while also addressing immediate needs through the setting up of community kitchens, the opening of schools and anganwadi centres, and engagement with self-help groups for the production of personal protective equipment kits.
- Further, a COVID-19 hardship allowance of at least ₹5,000 per month for six months should be announced for 2.5 million accredited social health activists and Anganwadi workers, most of whom are women.
- The pandemic has shown the necessity of adequate public investment in social infrastructure.
- The time is right to imagine a bold universal basic services programme that not only fills existing vacancies in the social sector but also expands public investments in health, education, child and elderly care, and so on, to be prepared for future shocks.
Consider the question “Examine the impact of the pandemic on women. Suggest the measures to mitigate the impact.”
Conclusion
As the country meets the challenge of the second wave of the pandemic, it is crucial to learn lessons from the first wave to chart the policy path ahead.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Inflation
Mains level: Paper 3- Role of RBI in taming inflation
The article highlights the need for the RBI to focus on inflation instead of pursuing elusive growth.
Is inflation at a level to be concerned about?
- Due to the devastation caused by the pandemic, MPC kept its stance to ‘look through’ the sustained rise in prices through much of last year.
- The release of the consumer-price inflation number for April 2021 (4.3%) might seem to validate their decision.
- But there are many reasons why the MPC should be concerned.
- To start with, the April print carries little validity since the base for comparison (April 2020) has been rubbished by RBI in the past on the grounds that it relates to the first month of the lockdown.
Inflation comes down but after causing devastation
- Through a combination of the base effect (high level of inflation in the previous comparable period), belated but inevitable monetary policy action and a fall in demand that more than offsets the disruption in supply, inflation will come down.
- However, before inflation comes down, it brings untold misery to the public at large.
- In a country where close to 20% of the population lives below the poverty line and food is a major item of their consumption basket, any rise in inflation, especially food inflation, hurts the poor disproportionately.
- Add to that the distress caused by job losses on account of the pandemic, and this time round, the pain is likely to be magnified many times over.
What is causing inflation?
- Monetary policy acts with long and indeterminate lags.
- Far from spurring credit offtake through low interest rates excess liquidity has spilled over into price pressures in India.
- Wholesale price inflation at 7.4% (March 2021) was the highest in 8 years, while it would be naïve to take any solace from the latest consumer price index number.
- The RBI needs to be appreciated for doing its bit to keep the wheels of our economy moving during the pandemic.
- However, its failure to shift gear in the face of mounting evidence of inflation cannot be neglected.
- When inflation was breaching the upper end of RBI’s target band for months on end, the message should have been clear.
US recovery and its impact on Indian economy
- Globally, commodity prices are already on the rise.
- Not without reason, it would seem, as borne out by 12 May’s inflation print of 4.2%, America’s highest in 12 years
- Part of the reason is the excessive easing of US monetary and fiscal policies.
- Rising US inflation has huge implications for countries like India that are at the receiving end of US policies.
- As the US economy recovers, the dollar strengthens and US interest rates rise, the rupee is bound to weaken in response, adding to inflationary pressures here.
Consider the question “What are the factors stoking inflation in the pandemic? How far the monetary policies pursued by the central bank is responsible for it?”
Conclusion
When the MPC meets next in early June, it must re-order its priorities. Instead of chasing elusive growth, it must revert to its swadharma, own dharma, and focus instead on inflation.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Tribunals
Mains level: Paper 2- Need for the National Tribunals Commissions
Context
- The Centre has abolished several appellate tribunals and authorities and transferred their jurisdiction to other existing judicial bodies through the Tribunals Reforms (Rationalisation and Conditions of Service) Ordinance 2021.
Issues with the abolitions of tribunals
- The Ordinance has met with sharp criticism for not bypassing the usual legislative process.
- Several tribunals such as the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal were abolished without any stakeholder consultation.
- Despite the Supreme Court’s direction in Rojer Mathew v. South Indian Bank (2019), no judicial impact assessment was conducted prior to abolishing the tribunals through this Ordinance.
- While the Ordinance has incorporated the suggestions made in Madras Bar Association v. Union of India (2020) on the composition of a search-cum-selection committee.
- But it has disregarded the court’s direction in Madras Bar Association v. Union of India (2020) for fixing a five-year term.
No NCT constituted
- Further, the Centre is yet to constitute a National Tribunals Commission (NTC), an independent umbrella body to supervise the functioning of tribunals, appointment of and disciplinary proceedings against members, and to take care of administrative and infrastructural needs of the tribunals.
- The idea of an NTC was first mooted in L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India (1997).
- Developing an independent oversight body for accountable governance requires a legal framework that protects its independence and impartiality.
- Therefore, the NTC must be established vide a constitutional amendment or be backed by a statute that guarantees it functional, operational and financial independence.
- As the Finance Ministry has been vested with the responsibility for tribunals until the NTC is constituted, it should come up with a transition plan.
Advantages of NTC
- The NTC would ideally take on some duties relating to administration and oversight.
- It could set performance standards for the efficiency of tribunals and their own administrative processes.
- It could function as an independent recruitment body to develop and operationalise the procedure for disciplinary proceedings and appointment of tribunal members.
- Giving the NTC the authority to set members’ salaries, allowances, and other service conditions, subject to regulations, would help maintain tribunals’ independence.
Consider the question “What are the issues with Tribunals Reforms (Rationalisation and Conditions of Service) Ordinance 2021? How the constitution of the National Tribunals Commission would help to improve the role played by tribunals?”
Conclusion
The way to reform the tribunal system is to look at solutions from a systemic perspective supported by evidence. Establishing the NTC will definitely entail a radical restructuring of the present tribunals system.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now