Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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ILO report flags wage inequality in India

News:

• Real average daily wages in India almost doubled in the first two decades after economic reforms, but low pay and wage inequality remains a serious challenge to inclusive growth, the International Labour Organization warned in its India Wage Report.

Findings:

• The ILO has called for stronger implementation of minimum wage laws and strengthening of the frameworks for collective bargaining by workers. This is essential to combat persistent low pay in some sectors and to bridge the wage gaps between rural and urban, male and female, and regular and casual workers.
• Overall, in 2009-10, a third of all of wage workers were paid less than the national minimum wage, which is merely indicative and not legally binding. That includes 41% of all casual workers and 15% of salaried workers.
• In 2011-12, the average wage in India was about ₹247 rupees a day, almost double the 1993-94 figure of ₹128. However, average labour productivity (as measured by GDP per worker) increased more rapidly than real average wages.
• Thus, India’s labour share or the proportion of national income which goes into labour compensation, as opposed to capital or landowners  has declined.
• The rise in average wages was more rapid in rural areas, and for casual workers. However, these groups started at such a low base that a yawning wage gap still remains. Thus, the average wage of casual workers who make 62% of the earning population was only ₹143 a day.
• Daily wages in urban areas (₹384) also remain more than twice as high as those in rural areas (₹175), the report said. Regional disparities in average wages have actually increased over time, with wages rising more rapidly in high-wage States than in low-wage ones.
• The gender wage gap decreased from 48% in 1993-94 to 34% in 2011-12, but still remains high by international standards. And of all worker groups, the average wages of casual rural female workers was the lowest, at just ₹104 a day.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

SC moots steps to clean up politics

News

• The Supreme Court proposed to make political parties accountable for criminalising politics by welcoming in “crooks” who may later win elections on party ticket and grab power.

Beyond News

• The five-judge Constitution Bench, suggested it could direct the Election Commission to insist that parties get new members to declare in an affidavit their criminal antecedents and publish them so that the “entire country knows how many criminals there are in a party.” The court demonstrated that the EC could de-register a party or withdraw its symbol if it refused to comply.
• The suggestion was made by the Bench in a bid to prevent criminals from entering politics or later contesting elections to become parliamentarians, State legislators and Ministers. The court is hearing a batch of petitions to ban persons charged with heinous criminal charges from contesting elections.
• The law, presently, bars only convicted persons from fighting elections or continuing as law makers. A person is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
• The suggestion from the Bench faced stiff opposition from the government. Attorney-General said the court’s proposal amounted to disqualifying a prospective candidate.
• The Bench has been steadfast during the past days that it cannot legislate and change the written law.
• The Bench, based its proposal on the power of the Election Commission to conduct an election and register/de-register political partiesunder Article 324 of the Constitution and Section 29A of the Representation of the People Act of 1951, respectively.
• The court invoked The Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order of 1968 to clothe the Commission with the power to withdraw a reserved party symbol.
• Chief Justice pointed to how Section 29A requires a political party to swear to uphold the principles of socialism, secularism, democracy, sovereignty, unity and integrity of India.

 ‘Opening up trade with India priority for the U.S.’

News

• Opening up trade with India is a key priority of the Trump administration, a senior official of the U.S. State Department has said.

Beyond News

• Briefing reporters on the administration’s Asia-Pacific policy, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs, Alice G. Wells the highest ranking official for the region  also welcomed Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s statement in support of peace in South Asia.
• Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs will be participating in the Indian Ocean Conference in Vietnam’s capital Hanoi on August 27-28, organised by think tank India Foundation.
• Delegates from 43 countries, including China, India, Singapore, Australia and Vietnam, are scheduled to participate in the event.
• This annual conference hosted by the India Foundation and partners in Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh has become an important touchpoint for nations bordering the Indian Ocean, and it showcases India’s rising leadership role in the region.
• With respect to Indo-American cooperation, they see trade with India and opening up trade with India as a key strategic objective for this administration, the official said, pointing out that bilateral trade is now at about $126 billion, an increase of more than $10 billion from last year.
• Talking on the progress of the Trump administration’s new South Asia policy, the official said that,Pakistan obviously has a critical role to play in the stabilisation of Afghanistan.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

Chandrayaan-1 data confirms presence of ice on Moon: NASA

News

• Scientists have found frozen water deposits in the darkest and coldest parts of the Moon’s polar regions using data from the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft that was launched by India 10 years ago, NASA said.

Beyond News

• With enough ice sitting at the surface within the top few millimetres water would possibly be accessible as a resource for future expeditions to explore and even stay on the Moon, and potentially easier to access than the water detected beneath the Moon’s surface.
• The ice deposits are patchily distributed and could possibly be ancient, according to the study.
• At the southern pole, most of the ice is concentrated at lunar craters, while the northern pole’s ice is more widely, but sparsely spread.
• Scientists used data from NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument to identify three specific signatures that definitively prove there is water ice at the surface of the Moon.
• M3, aboard the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, launched in 2008 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), was uniquely equipped to confirm the presence of solid ice on the Moon.
• It collected data that not only picked up the reflective properties we would expect from ice, but was also able to directly measure the distinctive way its molecules absorb infrared light, so it can differentiate between liquid water or vapour and solid ice.
• Most of the new-found water ice lies in the shadows of craters near the poles, where the warmest temperatures never reach above minus 156 degrees Celsius.
• Due to the very small tilt of the Moon’s rotation axis, sunlight never reaches these regions.
• Previous observations indirectly found possible signs of surface ice at the lunar south pole, but these could have been explained by other phenomena, such as unusually reflective lunar soil.
• Learning more about this ice, how it got there, and how it interacts with the larger lunar environment will be a key mission focus for NASA and commercial partners, as humans endeavour to return to and explore the Moon.

First galaxies discovered

News

• A Mexican astrophysicist has identified some of the first galaxies in our universe together with a team of researchers.

Beyond News

• The National Autonomous University of Mexico said that the newly-identified galaxies are: Segue-1, Bootes I, Tucana II and Ursa Mayor I. All were formed more than 13 billion years ago.
• The Mexican scientist Carlos Frenk Mora is one of the world’s best known astronomers for his theories on dark matter and its role in the formation of galaxies.
• His discovery backs a current evolutionary model of the universe, called the Lambda Cold Dark Matter Theory, which maintains that the elementary particles that make up dark matter drive cosmic evolution.
• The most weak galaxies near the Milky Way were considered unworthy subject for study by scientists a decade ago, but new researches have revealed treasures for us to learn about the primitive universe.

WhatsApp CEO gets India’s wish list

News

• Stepping up efforts to clamp down on the spread on “sinister” messages through WhatsApp, the Union government asked the instant messaging platform to implement three measures in India: set up a local corporate entity; appoint a grievance officer in India; and find a solution to trace the origin of a fake message.

Beyond News

• This was conveyed to the newly appointed WhatsApp CEO, Chris Daniels, during a meeting with Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
• Electronics and IT Minister stressed that the Facebook-owned company needed to comply with Indian laws and set up a local corporate entity.
• Additionally, WhatsApp has been asked to work out a “detailed mechanism to trace the origin of a sinister message.”
• WhatsApp, which has been earlier sent notices by the government to check misuse of its platform, had previously expressed its inability to trace the origin of messages citing privacy of consumers.
• On the impending roll-out of WhatsApp’s payments services, the Minister said the IT Ministry has flagged some issues to the RBI. One was financial data must be stored in India. The RBI is working on the guidelines and WhatsApp CEO had assured him that whatever guidelines the RBI came out with, WhatsApp would comply with that.

Centre rules out total ban on firecrackers

News

• The Centre ruled out a national ban on firecrackers and suggested the production of “green crackers”, community cracker bursting in major cities and a freeze on the production of series crackers or larisas alternative measures to curb pollution during Diwali.

Beyond News

• The Centre told the Supreme Court that crackers could even be burst in areas pre-designated by the State governments.
• The Supreme Court was hearing a bunch of applications seeking a complete nationwide ban on the use, manufacture, licensing, sale, resale or distribution of firecrackers and sparklers of any kind in a bid to combat pollution on an emergency basis.
• The Union Ministry of Environment submitted a five-page affidavit to the Supreme Court suggesting ways to deal with the pollution problem and chalking out short-term measures to combat pollution during Diwali.
• The Centre suggested working together with institutions like the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, National Environment Engineering Research Institute, Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO), Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to deal with Diwali pollution.
• It suggested setting up of Raw Material Characterisation Facilities to check the presence of high contents of unburned material, partially combusted material or poor quality of raw material in gun powder in firecrackers.
• The Centre proposed use of “reduced emission firecrackers or improved firecrackers”. These are “low emission sound and light emitting functional crackers with PM reduction by 30-35% and signifcant reduction in nitrogen oxide and sulpher dioxide due to in-situ water generation as dust suppressant and low cost due usage of low cost oxidants”.
• The government said PESO could be approached to ensure that fireworks with permitted chemicals and decibel levels are used. PESO could run tests for banned ones like lithium, arsenic, antimony, lead, mercury.
• CPCB and respective state pollution control boards shall carry out short-term monitoring in their cities for 14 days (commencing from seven days prior to Diwali and ending seven days after Diwali for parameters namely Aluminium, Barium, Iron apart from regulatory parameters against short term ambient air quality proposed by CPCB with regard to bursting of firecrackers.
• The Supreme Court is hearing a bunch of applications seeking a complete nationwide ban on the use, manufacture, licensing, sale, resale or distribution of firecrackers and sparklers of any kind in a bid to combat pollution on an emergency basis.

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