Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Reservation debate
The article highlights the issues with Maratha reservation judgement delivered by the Supreme Court which rejected the positive discrimination of lower classes of dominant caste.
About the verdict
- The Supreme Court rendered a unanimous verdict on the validity of the SEBC Act, 2018 that was to grant reservation to Marathas.
- The court held that the classification of Marathas as a socially and educationally backward class was unreasonable.
- Court held that Maratha belonged to a politically dominant caste with significant economic resources.
Justification for 50% limit
- The court also concluded that the majority opinion in the Indra Sawhney case was correct and that the limit of 50 per cent for caste-based reservation did not need consideration by a larger bench.
- The court justified the fixed quantitative limit on caste-based reservation by postulating that it was intrinsic to the fundamental principle of equality.
- The court highlighted the need to safeguard the interests of unreserved sections and said that all sections have progressed after 70 years of independence.
- Based on this, the court rejected the state’s argument that the breach of the limit was necessitated by the fact that the population of backward classes was over 80 per cent.
Missed opportunity to acknowledge growing socio-economic differentiation within the dominant castes
Growing income difference
- If in 2011-12, the average per capita income of the Marathas was second only to the Brahmins at Rs 36,548, against Rs 47,427.
- Their highest quintile -20 per cent of the caste group- got 48 per cent of the total income of the Marathas with a mean per capita income of Rs 86,750.
- The lowest quintile earned 10 times less (Rs 7,198) and the 40 per cent poorest got less than 13 per cent of the total income of the caste — and were lagging behind the Scheduled Castes elite.
- In fact, the mean incomes of the highest Dalit quintile, Rs 63,030, and that of the second-highest, Rs 28,897, were above those of the three lowest quintiles of the Marathas.
What explains growing income difference
- This is partly due to changes on the education front.
- The percentage of graduates among Dalits in 2004-05 was 1.9 per cent and has more than doubled to 5.1 per cent in 2011-12.
- The corresponding figure for the OBCs was 3.5 per cent and has doubled to 7.6 per cent, while for the Marathas it was 4.6 per cent in 2004-05 and has come up to 8 per cent in 2011-12.
- Correlatively, the percentage of salaried people among the Dalits was about 28 per cent in Maharashtra in 2011-12, as against 30 per cent among the Marathas.
Issues with the Maratha quota judgment
- The Court refused to recognise the need for positive discrimination of the lower classes of the dominant castes which continue to be seen as a dominant bloc.
- It fails to admit the complexity that the role of class has introduced in post-liberalisation India.
- This is unequivocal confirmation of a dated approach to social realities and a purely arithmetic limit that finds no expression in the Constitution.
- The judgement also raises the issue of judicial supremacy in the broad area of social policy as it could lead to undesirable exclusion of beneficiaries.
- The court seems to have forgotten its own observation in NM Thomas case that functional democracy postulates participation of all sections of the people and fair representation in administration is an index of such participation.
Conclusion
The Supreme Court has rejected the determination of Marathas as backward by holding that their relative deprivation and under-representation with regard to other sections of the general category did not entitle them to affirmative action.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: JAM trinity
Mains level: Paper 3- Digital payment boom in India
The article takes an overview of the progress made by India in the financial inclusion and role played by JAM trinity in it.
What is financial inclusion?
Financial inclusion is defined as the availability and equality of opportunities to access financial services. It refers to a process by which individuals and businesses can access appropriate, affordable, and timely financial products and services. These include banking, loan, equity, and insurance products.
Growing adoption of digital payment in India
- India overtook China to register the highest number of countrywide digital payments.
- Real-time transactions crossed 25 billion, much higher than China’s 15 billion in 2020, as per the report of ACI Worldwide.
- The report also stated that digital payments in India are set to account for 71.7 per cent of all payments by volume by the year 2025.
- The digital payment boom is indicative of a larger paradigm shift in the ease of access to financial services.
What are the contributing factors
- More and more people, across all strata, are adopting digital payments as it is convenient, safe and limits exposure.
- It is also a result of the nudges and diligent policy and technology frameworks created by the central government in the last few years.
- By building the Jan-Dhan-Aadhar-Mobile (JAM) and Universal Payment Interface (UPI) platform, the government has been creating the ground for greater financial inclusion.
Significance of JAM trinity
- While Jan Dhan was the first pillar of the ambitious JAM trinity, Aadhaar card seeding and bank account linkages to mobile numbers have empowered people in hitherto unimagined ways.
- The JAM trinity has helped people know their account status, receive scholarships and fellowships, get fertiliser and LPG subsidy, disability pensions and farm income support — directly into their accounts.
- The trinity also helped eliminate middlemen, frauds, and leakages due to corruption.
- In the past one year alone, Rs 4.3 lakh crore was transferred, in over 477 crore transactions under 319 schemes.
- With an estimated saving of Rs 1.8 lakh crore, the success of DBT is a big thumbs up for the central government.
- The aid that reached people during the pandemic under the PM Garib Kalyan package is indicative of the success of the government’s financial inclusion and digitisation efforts.
Conclusion
The unmissable digital and financial revolution that has been unleashed is hard to miss for anyone. The digital journey, however, is long and one hopes to see the positive trends sustaining given their transformative impact on the lives of Indians.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: GSAP
Mains level: Read the attached story
In a bid to infuse more liquidity in the market, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced undertake Government Securities Acquisition Program (G-SAP) 2.0 during the second quarter of FY22 and conduct secondary market purchase operations of Rs 1.20 lakh crore.
Answer this PYQ in the comment box:
Q.Consider the following statements:
- The Reserve Bank of India manages and services the Government of India Securities but not any State Government Securities.
- Treasury bills are issued by the Government of India and there are no treasury bills issued by the State Governments.
- Treasury bills offer are issued at a discount from the par value.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
(a) 1 and 2 only
(b) 3 Only
(c) 2 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3
What are Government Securities?
- These are debt instruments issued by the government to borrow money.
- The two key categories are:
- Treasury bills (T-Bills) – short-term instruments which mature in 91 days, 182 days, or 364 days, and
- Dated securities – long-term instruments, which mature anywhere between 5 years and 40 years
Note: T-Bills are issued only by the central government, and the interest on them is determined by market forces.
Why G-Secs?
- Like bank fixed deposits, g-secs are not tax-free.
- They are generally considered the safest form of investment because they are backed by the government. So, the risk of default is almost nil.
- However, they are not completely risk-free, since they are subject to fluctuations in interest rates.
- Bank fixed deposits, on the other hand, are guaranteed only to the extent of Rs 5 lakh by the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC).
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Hailstorms
Mains level: NA
To help out horticulturists who face crop damage due to hailstorms, the Himachal Pradesh government will be testing the use of indigenously developed ‘anti-hail guns’.
What are anti-hail guns?
- An anti-hail gun is a machine that generates shock waves to disrupt the growth of hailstones in clouds, according to its makers.
- It comprises a tall, fixed structure somewhat resembling an inverted tower, several metres high, with a long and narrow cone opening towards the sky.
- The gun is “fired” by feeding an explosive mixture of acetylene gas and air into its lower chamber, which releases a shock wave (waves that travel faster than the speed of sound, such as those produced by supersonic aircraft).
- These shock waves supposedly stop water droplets in clouds from turning into hailstones, so that they fall simply as raindrops.
Answer this PYQ in the comment box:
Q.During a thunderstorm, the thunder in the skies is produced by the
- meeting of cumulonimbus clouds in the sky
- lightning that separates the nimbus clouds
- violent upward movement of air and water particles
Select the correct option using the codes given below:
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 and 3 only
(c) 1 and 3 only
(d) None of the above
How do they ‘prevent’ a hailstorm?
- It is this hail formation process that the shock waves from anti-hail guns try to disrupt in a radius of 500 meters, so that the water droplets fall down before they can be lifted by the updrafts.
- The machine is repeatedly fired every few seconds during an approaching thunderstorm.
- However, the effectiveness of anti-hail guns has remained a contentious issue.
How do Hailstorms occur?
- Hail is produced by cumulonimbus clouds, which are generally large and dark and may cause thunder and lightning.
- In such clouds, winds can blow up the water droplets to heights where they freeze into ice.
- The frozen droplets begin to fall but are soon pushed back up by the winds and more droplets freeze onto them, resulting in multiple layers of ice on the hailstones.
- This fall and rise is repeated several times, till the hailstones become too heavy and fall down.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Echolocation
Mains level: NA
A technique used by animals such as dolphins, whales, and bats to navigate their surroundings can also be used by blind people to get around better and have greater independence and well-being, researchers at Durham University in the UK have shown.
What is Echolocation?
- Echolocation, also called biosonar, is a biological sonar used by several animal species.
- Echolocating animals emit calls out to the environment and listen to the echoes of those calls that return from various objects near them.
- They use these echoes to locate and identify the objects.
What has the new study found?
- The same technique can help blind people locate still objects by producing clicking sounds from their mouth and hands.
- The researchers organized a 10-week training programme, in which 12 blind and 14 sighted volunteers aged between 21 and 79 were taught click-based echolocation.
- The volunteers were trained in distinguishing between the size of objects, orientation perception and virtual navigation.
- At the end of the training, the participants had been able to improve their ability to navigate using clicking noises either from one’s mouth, walking cane taps or footsteps.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: CIBER 2 Mission
Mains level: NA
A NASA-funded rocket’s launch window will open at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, USA. The aim of this mission is to count the number of stars that exist in the Universe.
Answer this PYQ from CSP 2020 in the comment box:
Q.“The experiment will employ a trio of spacecraft flying in formation in the shape of an equilateral triangle that has sides one million kilometers long, with lasers shining between the craft.” The experiment in question refers to
(a) Voyager-2
(b) New horizons
(c) Lisa Pathfinder
(d) Evolved LISA
What is CIBER-2?
- In order to roughly estimate the number of stars in the Universe, scientists have estimated that on average each galaxy consists of about 100 million stars, but this figure is not exact.
- The figure of 100 million could easily be an underestimation, probably by a factor of 10 or more.
- To put this into perspective, an average of 100 million stars in each galaxy (there an estimated 2 trillion of them as per NASA), would give a total figure of one hundred quintillion stars or 1 with 21 zeroes after it.
- NASA notes that if this figure is accurate, it would mean that for every grain of sand on Earth, there are more than ten stars.
- But this calculation assumes that all stars are inside galaxies, which might not be true and this is what the CIBER-2 instrument will try to find out.
How will CIBER-2 count stars?
- NASA notes that the instrument will not actually count individual stars but it will instead detect the extragalactic background light
- It is all of the light that has been emitted throughout the history of the Universe.
- From all of this extragalactic background light, the CIBER-2 will focus on a portion of this called cosmic infrared background, which is emitted by some of the most common stars.
- Essentially, this approach is aiming to look at how bright this light is to give scientists an estimate of how many of these stars are out there.
- The ESA infrared space observatory Herschel also counted the number of galaxies in infrared and measured their luminosity previously.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: SAGE Initiative
Mains level: Old age security
The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has launched the SAGE (Seniorcare Aging Growth Engine) initiative and SAGE portal for elderly persons.
SAGE Initiative
- The SAGE will be a “one-stop access” of elderly care products and services by credible start-ups.
- The start-ups will be selected on the basis of innovative products and services.
- Their products should be able to provide across sectors such as health, housing, care centers, apart from technological access linked to finances, food and wealth management, and legal guidance.
- The start-ups who have applied will be selected by an independent screening committee of experts.
- A fund of upto Rs.1 crore as one-time equity will be granted to each selected start-up.
Why need such initiative?
- India’s elderly population is on the rise as per surveys.
- The share of elders, as a percentage of the total population in the country, is expected to increase from around 7.5% in 2001 to almost 12.5% by 2026, and surpass 19.5% by 2050.
- There is an urgent need to create a more robust eldercare ecosystem in India, especially in the post-COVID phase.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: SPAG9
Mains level: NA
The National Institute of Immunology (NII) has received a trademark for India’s First Indigenous Tumor Antigen SPAG9.
About SPAG9
- India’s first indigenous tumor antigen SPAG9 was discovered by Dr Anil Suri in 1998 who is heading the Cancer Research Program at NII.
- In a recent development, the SPAG9 antigen has received the trademark ASPAGNII-TM.
- Currently, ASPAGNIITM is being used in dendritic cell (DC) based immunotherapy in cervical, ovarian cancer and will also be used in breast cancer.
What is immunotherapy?
- Immunotherapy is a new approach that exploits the body’s inner capability to put up a fight against cancer.
- With this approach, either the immune system is given a boost, or the T cells are “trained’’ to identify recalcitrant cancer cells and kill them.
- In this personalized intervention, those patients expressing SPAG9 protein can be treated with DC-based vaccine approach.
- In DC-based vaccine, patient’s cells called monocytes from their blood are collected and modified into what are called dendritic cells.
- These dendritic cells are primed with ASPAGNIITM and are injected back to the patient to help the ‘fighter’ cells, or T-cells, in the body to kill the cancer cells.
Why need such therapy?
- DC-based immunotherapy is safe, affordable and can promote antitumor immune responses and prolonged survival of cancer patients.
- The ASPAGNIITM is a true example of translational cancer research and the Atmanirbhar Bharat spirit.
- This will be a real morale boost in affordable, personalized, and indigenous products for cancer treatment.
Answer this PYQ in the comment box:
Q.‘RNA Interference (RNAi)’ technology has gained popularity in the last few years. why?
- It is used in developing gene silencing therapies
- It can be used in developing therapies for the treatment of cancer
- It can be used to developer hormone replacement therapies
- It can be used to produce crop plants that are resistant to viral pathogens
Select the correct answer using the code given below.
a) 1, 2 and 4
b) 2 and 3
c) 1 and 3
d) 1 and 4 only
The burden of cancer in India
- Cancer kills 8.51 lakh people in India every year (International Agency for Research on Cancer, 2020).
- As per World Health Organization (WHO), one in 10 Indians will develop cancer during their lifetime, and one in 15 will die of cancer.
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