Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

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India urges dialogue after US withdraws from Iran n-deal

News:

• India called for “diplomacy and dialogue” to resolve the Iran nuclear issue and asked for recognising the country’s right to produce nuclear energy.

Beyond News

• The External Affairs Ministry issued a statement in this matter after U.S. President Donald Trump of the United States withdrew from the multiparty nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that was signed during the previous Obama administration.
• The statement reflects India’s traditional concern for resolving the nuclear issue with Iran peacefully without letting it spiral out of control because of regional rivalries in the Gulf among the major powers.
• India’s statement however, does not refer to Mr. Trump’s announcement on re-imposing sanctions on Iran.
• India had welcomed the conclusion of the deal in 2015 as a ‘success of diplomacy’.
• Urging for a cooperative approach, the Official Spokesperson said, “All parties should engage constructively to address and resolve issues that have arisen with respect to the JCPOA.”

Even so, India could face the impact of the U.S. decision on the deal as well as instituting the “highest level of economic sanctions” in several ways:

• Oil prices: The impact on world oil prices will be the immediately visible impact of the U.S. decision. Iran is presently India’s third biggest supplier (after Iraq and Saudi Arabia), and any increase in prices will hit both inflation levels as well as the Indian rupee, which breached ₹67 to the U.S. dollar this week. In the past week alone, crude prices have crossed $70/bbl (barrel) level, touching a four-year high.
• Chabahar:India’s moves over the last few years to develop berths at the Shahid Beheshti port in Chabahar was a key part of its plans to circumvent Pakistan’s blocks on trade with Afghanistan, and the new U.S. sanctions could slow or even bring those plans to a halt depending on how strictly they are implemented. India has already committed about $85 million to Chabahar development with plans for a total of $500 million on the port, while a railway line to Afghanistan could cost as much as $1.6 billion.
• INSTC: Beyond Chabahar, India has been a founder of the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC) since it was ratified in 2002. It starts from Iran and aims to cut right across Central Asia to Russia over a 7,200-km multi-mode network, cutting down transportation and time taken by trade by about 30%. New U.S. sanctions will affect these plans immediately, especially if any of the countries along the route or banking and insurance companies dealing with the INSTC plan also decide to adhere to U.S. restrictions on trade with Iran.
• Shanghai Cooperation Organisation: India joined the SCO along with Pakistan last year, and both will be formally admitted in June 2018. This year, Chinese officials say they will consider inducting Iran into the 8-member Eurasian security organisation. If the proposal is accepted by the SCO, which is led by China and Russia, India will become a member of a bloc that will be seen as anti-American, and will run counter to some of the government’s other initiatives, for eg. the Indo-Pacific quadrilateral with the U.S., Australia and Japan. The move may also rile other adversaries of Iran, like Saudi Arabia, UAE and Israel, with whom the government has strengthened ties in an effort to balance its West Asia policy.

Rules-based order: India has long been a proponent of a “rules-based order” that depends on multilateral consensus and an adherence to commitments made by countries on the international stage. By walking out of the JCPOA that was signed by the Obama administration, the U.S. government has overturned the precept that such international agreements are made by “States” not just with prevailing governments or regimes. This could also impact all agreements India is negotiating both bilaterally and multilaterally with the U.S., and the government will have to choose its future course factoring in the new U.S. behaviour, especially after Mr. Trump withdrew from the U.N. Climate Change treaty (Paris Accord), and the Trans-Pacific Partnership with East Asian trading partners.

SC pulls up ASI for failing to take steps to protect Taj Mahal

News:

• The Supreme Court came down heavily on the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) for its failure to take appropriate steps to protect and preserve the iconic Taj Mahal.

Beyond News:

• The court also expressed concern over Taj Mahal being infected by insects, and asked the authorities, including the ASI, what steps they had taken to prevent this.
• Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) was considering the court’s suggestion to appoint international experts to look into the issue of protection and preservation of Taj Mahal.
• Counsel for ASI told the court that the problem of insects was due to stagnation of water of the Yamuna.
• In March this year, the court asked the Uttar Pradesh government to place before it a draft of vision document on protection and preservation of the Taj and the environment in the Taj Trapezium Zone, which is an area of about 10,400 sq km spread over the districts of Agra, Firozabad, Mathura, Hathras and Etah in Uttar Pradesh and Bharatpur in Rajasthan.

Higher fine, prison term for minimum wage denial

News:

• Employers who fail to pay the minimum wage to their workers will now face a fine of up to ₹50,000 as well as a three-year prison term, with the Delhi government’s long-pending proposal for enhanced punishments being notified recently.

Beyond News:

• The Minimum Wages (Delhi) Amendment Act, 2017, which was passed by the Delhi Assembly on August 10, 2017, was notified on May 4 after President Ram Nath Kovind gave his assent to the Bill on April 26, according to the gazette notification.
• The Delhi government had first passed a Bill to increase penalties for denial of minimum wages on December 3, 2015. However, the legislation went back and forth between the Centre and the State.
• Finally, after some changes, including the definition of the term Delhi government, the Bill was again introduced and passed in 2017.
• With the amendment notified, the punishment under the Minimum Wages Act, 1948 for failure to pay minimum wages was increased from a fine of ₹500 to ₹50,000 and/or a prison term of six months to three years.
• The punishment for other offences under the Act were enhanced from a fine of ₹500 to ₹20,000 and/or one-year imprisonment.
• With several Bills of the Delhi Assembly pending final approval from the Centre, the notification of the minimum wages amendment was welcomed by the government.

Govt approves green licence plates for e-vehicles

News:

• To promote electric vehicles in India, the government has approved green licence plates bearing numbers in white fonts for private e-vehicles and yellow for taxis, Union Minister said .

Beyond News:

• The government also plans to allow youth in the age bracket of 16-18 years to drive electric scooters, besides mandating taxi aggregators to have a certain percentage of e-vehicle fleet.
• The purpose behind distinctive number plates is their easy identification for preferential treatment in parking, free entry in congested zones besides other proposed benefits like concessional toll.
• The measure is aimed at promoting e-vehicle’s use and the government is considering exemption from permits for such vehicles.
• E-rickshaw growth is attributable to the permit exemption and there is scope to extend the exemption to the e-buses, e-taxis, e-autos and e-bikes. E-auto and e-buses may have a big impact since getting a new permit is extremely difficult, the minister said.
• The proposals include bringing down the GST on batteries to 12 per cent at par with the GST on EVs.
• As per an estimate, India at present has 1 to 1.5 lakh electric vehicles and it is projected to grow to about 5 per cent of the total vehicles in the next five years, an official said.
• Of the about 24 million vehicles sold in India in 2017-18, electric vehicles accounted for barely about 1 per cent, the official added.
• India, currently, has four kinds of number plates white licence plates with numbers on black font for private cars, yellow plates with fonts in black for commercial vehicles, black plates with yellow font letters for self-driven rental vehicles and blue plates with white font letters for Embassies and High Commissions.
• Army vehicles on the other hand follow a different registration system given by the Defence Ministry, while vehicles of the President and governors have red licence plates with the national emblem.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

Commission approves modern animal-free testing for drugs

News

• In a step that would spare animals from suffering due to drug experiments, the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission has approved modern, animal-free tests for drug manufacturers.

Beyond News

• In the 2018 edition of Indian Pharmacopoeia, that provides guidelines on tests for drugs manufactured and marketed in India, the IPC has replaced the pyrogen test carried out on rabbits and the abnormal toxicity test carried out on guinea pigs and mice with tests that can be done in test tubes.
• The guidelines in the edition will come into effect from July 1.
• The pyrogen test is carried out to check impurity or substance that can can cause adverse side-effects. For the test, the drug is injected into a rabbit and the animal is closely observed for feverish symptoms.
• This batch test is done before the product is approved for marketing. In this, mice or guinea pigs are injected with the vaccine. The scientists observe if there is death of any animal.
• With the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission’s new mandate, the pyrogen test will be replaced by a bacterial endotoxin test or a monocyte activation test which can be carried out in test tubes. Vaccine manufacturers can apply for waiver for the abnormal toxicity test by getting a compliance certificate from the National Control Laboratory instead.
• People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India has been pushing for doing away with the cruel methods of testing on animals for the past several years.

Only 20% of Clean Ganga Mission funds spent till March 2018

News

• Only about a fifth of ₹20,000 crore allotted for the National Clean Ganga Mission (NCGM) have been utilised till March 2018.

Beyond News

• That is roughly the same proportion of the sanctioned money utilised the same time last year.
• A financial account from the NCGM says that as of March 2018, ₹20,601 crore had been sanctioned for 193 projects. So far, only ₹4,254 crore had actually been spent on their implementation.
• About half the money, or ₹2,814 crore, had been spent on establishing sewage infrastructure. Only 24 of the 65 ‘entry-level’ projects meant for cleaning the ghats and establishing new ones and cleaning the river front and the river surface  had been completed. They had been allotted ₹492 crore.
• About 12,000 MLD of sewage is emptied into the Ganga across 11 States, from Uttarakhand to West Bengal. At present, the capacity for sewage treatment is just 4,000 MLD; of this, 1,000 MLD is functional.
• Coursing 2,500 km, the Ganga is the longest river within India’s borders. Its basin constitutes 26% of the country’s land mass (8,61,404 sq. km.) and supports 43% of its population.
• Even as the basin spreads across 11 States, five States are located along the river’s main stem: Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal. Much of the river’s pollution load chemical effluents, sewage, dead bodies, and excreta  comes from these States. Though the industrial pollution, volume-wise, accounts for about 20%, its toxic and non-biodegradable nature has a disproportionate impact.
• The municipal sewage, at a billion litres a day, accounts for 80% of the pollution load.

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