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  • Centre eases CRZ rules for ‘Blue Flag’ beaches

    The MoEFCC has relaxed Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) rules that restrict construction near beaches to help States construct infrastructure and enable them to receive ‘Blue Flag’ certification.

    Why such move?

    • The Blue Flag certification, however, requires beaches to create certain infrastructure — portable toilet blocks, grey water treatment plants, a solar power plant, seating facilities, CCTV surveillance and the like.
    • However, India’s CRZ laws don’t allow the construction of such infrastructure on beaches and islands.
    • The new order allows for some constructions subject to maintaining a minimum distance of 10 meters from HTL (High Tide Line).

    Blue Flag certification

    • The ‘Blue Flag’ beach is an ‘eco-tourism model’ and marks out beaches as providing tourists and beachgoers clean and hygienic bathing water, facilities/amenities, a safe and healthy environment, and sustainable development of the area.
    • The certification is accorded by the Denmark-based Foundation for Environment Education.
    • It started in France in 1985 and has been implemented in Europe since 1987, and in areas outside Europe since 2001, when South Africa joined.
    • It has 33 stringent criteria under four major heads for the beaches, that is, (i) Environmental Education and Information (ii) Bathing Water Quality (iii) Environment Management and Conservation and (iv) Safety and Services.

    Blue Flag beaches

    • Japan and South Korea are the only countries in south and southeastern Asia to have Blue Flag beaches.
    • Spain tops the list with 566 such beaches; Greece and France follow with 515 and 395 Blue Flag beaches, respectively.

    In India

    • Last year, the Ministry selected 13 beaches in India to vie for the certificate.
    • The earmarked beaches are — Ghoghala beach (Diu), Shivrajpur beach (Gujarat), Bhogave beach (Maharashtra), Padubidri and Kasarkod beaches (Karnataka), Kappad beach (Kerala), Kovalam beach (Tamil Nadu), Eden beach (Puducherry), Rushikonda beach (Andhra Pradesh), Miramar beach (Goa), Golden beach (Odisha), Radhanagar beach (Andaman & Nicobar Islands) and Bangaram beach (Lakshadweep).

  • [op-ed of the day] Economic reforms are best done brick by boring brick

    Context

    Rather than big bang measures or a stealthy agenda, India can count on small but significant improvements.

    Reforms only in crisis or by stealth

    • The accepted conventional wisdom is that economic reforms in India happen only in a crisis or by stealth.
    • Reforms in the crisis
      • Reforms of 1991 : The big example of the former are the 1991 reforms.
      • In 1991 the country faced a huge foreign exchange crisis, resulting partly from the fiscal profligacy of the previous decade.
      • 1999 telecom sector reforms: Another example is from 1999 when the telecom sector was in near bankruptcy, and that crisis led to the shift away from fixed fee for spectrum to revenue sharing.
      • The situation of no other choice: In both cases, there was considerable opposition to those reforms, but they were pushed through because the crisis left no other choice.
    • Reform by stealth: Other than a crisis, more often than not, it has been economic reform by stealth.
      • In the form of executive orders: These reforms are often in the form of an executive decision rather than legislation. Following are the examples of it-
      • Expansion of the list under licence: The expansion of the list of items under the Open General Licence for imports, which is a reform of protectionism, or the reduction in the set of industries reserved for small-scale businesses.
      • Electoral bond introduction: A more recent example of stealth reform was the insertion of an electoral bond scheme in the Finance Bill of 2018.
      • Advantages of going stealth: Reform by stealth offers the advantage of going in either direction.
      • In 2013, faced with a potential currency crisis, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) quietly retracted the limits on the liberalized remittance scheme (LRS).
      • Problem with stealth reforms: Stealth reforms are introduced stealthily but when they do not yield the desired result they are rolled back unpredictably, increasing uncertainty in policies of the government.

    Persistent, encompassing, creative incrementalism in reforms

    • The Economic Survey of 2015 pretty much ruled out Big Bang reforms in India, calling instead for “persistent, encompassing, creative incrementalism” on them.
    • This is the right mantra.
    • What incrementalism means: It implies continuity, not slowness, a sustainable speed that gives reforms predictability and stability. Following are its examples of it-
    • Reform in food subsidy: Example of incrementalism could be reforms that are being carried out in food subsidies.
      • First: Reduce the leakages of the subsidy to non-farmers.
      • Thus, when procurement is done, payments go directly to their Aadhaar-linked accounts.
      • This will lead to non-farmers getting eliminated,
      • Second-Pay subsidy only to the poor: It will lead to subsidy savings, allowing us to limit the subsidy only to poor farmers.
    • Sovereign gold bond scheme: The use of paper gold greatly reduces imports of the physical metal and outgoes of foreign exchange.
      • The sale of these bonds is being expanded, and they would eventually be everywhere, even at post offices.
    • Aggregate licence by RBI: The next example is from a new category called account aggregators licensed by RBI.
      • It allows users’ control over the digital data trail that their transactions generate, and they can monetize it or use it to enhance their creditworthiness.
      • This is an incremental reform with huge ramifications.

    Conclusion

    • The reforms cited above are incremental, not a big bang, persistent but not slow, open and not by stealth, and finally, imaginative too, since they respond to real needs.
    • Effective reforms are those that are done brick by brick, the boring measures that chip away at everything that constrains high, inclusive and sustainable growth.

     

  • Police Commissionerate System

    The UP Cabinet has approved the Commissionerate system of policing for state capital Lucknow, and Noida.

    The Police Commissionerate System

    • The system gives more responsibilities, including magisterial powers, to IPS officers of Inspector General of Police (IG) rank posted as commissioners.
    • Under the 7th Schedule of the Constitution, ‘Police’ is under the State list, meaning individual states typically legislate and exercise control over this subject.
    • In the arrangement in force at the district level, a ‘dual system’ of control exists, in which the Superintendent of Police (SP) has to work with the District Magistrate (DM) for supervising police administration.
    • At the metropolitan level, many states have replaced the dual system with the commissionerate system, as it is supposed to allow for faster decision-making to solve complex urban-centric issues.

    Additional powers to Police

    • In this system, the Commissioner of Police (CP) is the head of a unified police command structure, is responsible for the force in the city, and is accountable to the state government.
    • The office also has magisterial powers, including those related to regulation, control, and licensing.
    • The CP is drawn from the Deputy Inspector General rank or above, and is assisted by Special/Joint/Additional/Deputy Commissioners.

    Where is the system in force?

    • Previously, only four cities had the system: Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai.
    • However, with rapid urbanisation, states felt an increasing need to replicate the system in more places.
    • The sixth National Police Commission report, which was released in 1983, recommended the introduction of a police Commissionerate system in cities with a population of 5 lakh and above, as well as in places having special conditions.
    • Over the years, it has been extended to numerous cities, including Delhi, Pune, Bangalore and Ahmedabad. By January 2016, 53 cities had this system, a PRS study said.
    • Depending on its success, the policing system may gradually be implemented in other districts as well.

  • Fastest growing cities in India

     The Economist has put Malappuram at the top of the “Top ten fastest-growing cities” in the world.

    Anomalies in the data

    • The total fertility rate (TFR, the number of children a woman is likely to have in the childbearing age of 15-49) in Kerala is 1.8 as per NITI Aayog data from 2016 — below the replacement rate of 2.1.
    • Another Kerala city, Thrissur, is No. 13, and the capital Thiruvananthapuram is No. 33 on the UN list.
    • Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu — which has an even lower TFR of 1.6 — is No. 30.
    • Surat in Gujarat (TFR of 2.2) is No. 27. There is no representation on the list from high population growth states like Bihar and UP.

    What does “fastest growing” refer to? How is a “city” defined?

    • The list based on data from the UN Population Division refers to “urban agglomerations” (UA), which are extended areas built around an existing town along with its outgrowths — typically villages or other residential areas or universities, ports, etc., on the outskirts of the town.
    • The Census defines a UA as “a continuous urban spread consisting of a town and its adjoining urban outgrowths or two or more physically contiguous towns together”.
    • The NCT of Delhi is a UA that includes the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) areas, as well as 107 “Census towns” — erstwhile surrounding villages where more than 75% of the population is now engaged in non-agricultural pursuits.

    A pace of urbanization

    • The Economist has listed the rate at which the populations of the UAs are expected to increase between 2015 and 2020.
    • Since data on India and many other countries were not available for 2015 (the last Census in India was in 2011), the UN report used projections of UAs’ populations — estimates based on past population growth data.
    • The rate of growth between 2015 and 2020 thus calculated provides a measure of the pace of urbanisation.

    How does urban population grow?

    • Urban populations can grow when the birth rate exceeds the death rate when workers migrate to the city in search of jobs; when more areas get included within the boundaries of the city; or when existing rural areas are reclassified as urban.
    • The low fertility rate in Kerala means the increase in the population of Malappuram and other cities is not because women are having more children; rather it is because more villages are being transformed into towns, and city borders are expanding.
    • According to the Census definition, an urban area is either a census town (CT) or a statutory town (ST). An ST is any place with a municipal corporation, municipal council, or cantonment board.
    • A CT can be a village with “urban characteristics” — a population more than 5,000, population density more than 400 people per sq km, and with more than 75% of the population not engaged in agriculture for their livelihood.
    • When a village becomes a CT, its population is included in the urban population of the district.

    Could migration have caused the increase?

    • Migration can either increase or decrease the population of a town.
    • Kerala sees both emigration — migration from the state to other places — and immigration — the migration of workers to the state.
    • Also the remittances that emigrants send allow the residents of villages to move away from agriculture, which changes the status of a village to census town.

    Why these cities are growing so fast?

    • These cities are seeing rapid urbanisation, and the main reason is the inclusion of new areas in the UA’s limits.
    • In 2001, there were two municipal corporations within the UA of Malappuram. In 2011, the number of municipal corporations had doubled to four, and an additional 37 CTs were included within Malappuram.
    • The population of the UA (excluding the residents of the outgrowths) increased almost 10 times in the same period — from 1,70,409 to 16,99,060 — obviously because of the inclusion of existing urban areas in the town.
    • Similarly, Kollam UA grew from one municipal corporation in 2001 to 23 CTs, one municipal corporation, and one municipal council in 2011.
    • Its population increased by 130%, even though the population of the original ST of Kollam actually decreased by 4%.

    Why is this not seen elsewhere in India?

    • In Kerala, urbanisation is driven by a move away from agriculture, which leads to a change in a village’s Census classification status.
    • This is evident from the large number of CTs that were included in the UAs of the state since the last Census. On the other hand, except Delhi, the more populous cities in the North had fewer CTs in 2011.
    • While the pace of urbanisation has been slower in the North, some unnaturally high increases in the population can be expected after the 2021 Census — because in some cases, villages on the peripheries were brought within the administrative boundaries of the cities.

    Is it good for the economy?

    • Urbanisation leads to the growth of cities, which are sites of infrastructure like universities, hospitals, and public transport facilities.
    • There are more opportunities for the youth, which is why they attract young people and entrepreneurs.
    • In India, people moving to cities leave behind (to some extent) caste and class divisions that dominate life in the villages, and can hope to climb up the social ladder.
    • However, unplanned urbanisation can be “exclusionary”, making it difficult for migrants to live there given the high cost.
    • Unregulated housing, lack of reliable public transport, and longer commutes within these towns puts a strain on the meagre resources of migrants.

  • Virtual human’ NEON

    NEONs are being called the world’s first artificial humans. They look and behave like real humans, and could develop memories and emotions — though from behind a 4K display.

    NEON

    • Star Labs is headed by India-born scientist Pranav Mistry who underlines that what was showcased at CES was the product of just four months’ work.
    • The company says NEONs are computationally created virtual humans — the word derives from NEO (new) + humaN.
    • For now, the virtual humans can show emotions when manually controlled by their creators.
    • But the idea is for NEONs to become intelligent enough to be fully autonomous, showing emotions, learning skills, creating memories, and being intelligent on their own.
    • Star Labs thinks they can be “friends, collaborators, and companions”, but all that is a few years away.

    How does it work?

    There are two core technologies behind his virtual humans.

    • First, there is the proprietary CORE R3 technology that drives the “reality, real time and responsiveness” behind NEONs.
    • It is the front-end reality engine that is able to give you that real expression.
    • The company claims CORE R3 “leapfrogs in the domains of Behavioral Neural Networks, Evolutionary Generative Intelligence and Computational Reality”, and is “extensively trained” on how humans look, behave and interact.
    • But in the end, it is like a rendition engine, converting the mathematical models to look like actual humans.
    • The next stage will be SPECTRA, which will complement CORE R3 with the “spectrum of intelligence, learning, emotions and memory”.
    • But SPECTRA is still in development, and is not expected before NEONWORLD 2020 later this year.

    How could NEONs be used?

    • NEONs are the interface for technologies and services.
    • They could answer queries at a bank, welcome you at a restaurant, or read out the breaking news on television at an unearthly hour.
    • This form of virtual assistance would be more effective, for example, while teaching languages, as NEONs will be capable of understanding and sympathizing.

    How are they different from Virtual Assistants?

    • Virtual Assistants now learn from all the data they are plugged into. NEONs will be limited to what they know and learn.
    • Their leaning could potentially be limited to the person they are catering to, and maybe her friends — but not the entire Internet.
    • They will not be an interface for you to request a song, rather they will be a friend to speak to and share experiences with.
    • Currently, its developer doesn’t want NEONs to have collective memory, or to share data among themselves.

  • Explained: Doctrine of ‘Presumption of Constitutionality’

    Recently the Supreme Court declined urgent hearing on a plea seeking to declare the CAA as constitutional and said that there was already a “presumption of constitutionality” to a law passed by Parliament.  CJI has said that the court’s role was to examine the validity, and not declare a law constitutional.

    Doctrine of Presumption of Constitutionality

    • The term ‘presumption of constitutionality’ is a legal principle that is used by courts during statutory interpretation — the process by which courts interpret and apply a law passed by the legislature, such as Parliament.
    • In the 1992 Supreme Court case ‘ML Kamra v New India Assurance’, Justice K Ramaswamy said: “The court ought not to interpret the statutory provisions, unless compelled by their language, in such a manner as would involve its unconstitutionality.
    • The legislature of the rule making authority is presumed to enact a law which does not contravene or violate the constitutional provisions.
    • Therefore, there is a presumption in favour of constitutionality of a legislation or statutory rule unless ex facie it violates the fundamental rights guaranteed under Part III of the Constitution.
    • If the provisions of a law or the rule is construed in such a way as would make it consistent with the Constitution and another interpretation would render the provision or the rule unconstitutional, the Court would lean in favour of the former construction. ” (“ex facie” meaning ‘on the face’)

    When does this apply?

    • It is a cardinal principle of construction that the Statute and the Rule or the Regulation must be held to be constitutionally valid unless and until it is established they violate any specific provision of the Constitution.
    • Further it is the duty of the Court to harmoniously construe different provisions of any Act or Rule or Regulation, if possible, and to sustain the same rather than striking down the provisions out right.
    • The presumption is not absolute, however, and does not stand when there is a gross violation of the Constitution.

    Limitations to the doctrine

    • A three-judge Bench in ‘NDMC v State of Punjab’ (1996) spoke of the limitations to the doctrine.
    • The Bench observed that the Doctrine is not one of infinite application; it has recognised limitations.
    • The Court has consistently followed a policy of not putting an unnatural and forced meaning on the words that have been used by the legislature in the search for an interpretation which would save the statutory provisions.

  • Private Property is a Human Right: Supreme Court

    The right to property is a human right, the Supreme Court has recently ruled.

    What did the court say?

    • A citizen’s right to own private property is a human right. The state cannot take possession of it without following due procedure and authority of law, the Supreme Court has held in a recent judgment.
    • The state cannot trespass into the private property of a citizen and then claim ownership of the land in the name of ‘adverse possession’.
    • Grabbing private land and then claiming it as its own makes the state an encroacher.
    • Article 300A required the state to follow due procedure and authority of law to deprive a person of his or her private property, the Supreme Court reminded the government.

    Adverse possession

    • A welfare state cannot be permitted to take the plea of adverse possession, which allows a trespasser i.e. a person guilty of a tort, or even a crime, to gain legal title over such property for over 12 years.
    • The State cannot be permitted to perfect its title over the land by invoking the doctrine of adverse possession to grab the property of its own citizens.

    Back2Basics

    Right to Property

    • The Constitution of India originally provided for the right to property under Articles 19 and 31.
    • Article 19 guaranteed to all citizens the right to acquire, hold and dispose of property.
    • Article 31 provided that “no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law.” It also provided that compensation would be paid to a person whose property has been taken for public purposes.
    • The 44th Amendment of 1978 removed the right to property from the list of fundamental rights.
    • A new provision, Article 300-A, was added to the constitution, which provided that “no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law”.

    What if one is deprived of his/her properties?

    • Thus, if a legislator makes a law depriving a person of his property, there would be no obligation on the part of the state to pay anything as compensation.
    • The aggrieved person shall have no right to move the court under Article 32.
    • Thus, the right to property is no longer a fundamental right, though it is still a constitutional right. If the government appears to have acted unfairly, the action can be challenged in a court of law by aggrieved citizens.

  • Artemis Mission

    NASA wants to send the first woman and the next man to the Moon by the year 2024, which it plans on doing through the Artemis lunar exploration program. An Indian American astronaut named Raja Chari is set to accompany the crew in this mission.

    Artemis Mission

    • In 2011, NASA began the ARTEMIS (Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence, and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun) mission using a pair of repurposed spacecraft and in 2012 the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft studied the Moon’s gravity.
    • For the program, NASA’s new rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS) will send astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft a quarter of a million miles away from Earth to the lunar orbit.
    • The astronauts going for the Artemis program will wear newly designed spacesuits, called Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or xEMU.
    • These spacesuits feature advanced mobility and communications and interchangeable parts that can be configured for spacewalks in microgravity or on a planetary surface.

  • Kaziranga National Park

    Kaziranga, home of the world’s most one-horned rhinos, has 96 species of wetland birds — one of the highest for wildlife preserves in India.

    Kaziranga National Park

    • It is a protected area in the northeast state of Assam.
    • Spread across the floodplains of the Brahmaputra River, its forests, wetlands and grasslands are home to tigers, elephants and the world’s largest population of Indian one-horned rhinoceroses.
    • Much of the focus of conservation efforts in Kaziranga are focused on the ‘big four’ species— rhino, elephant, Royal Bengal tiger and Asiatic water buffalo.
    • The 2018 census had yielded 2,413 rhinos and approximately 1,100 elephants.
    • The tiger census of 2014 said Kaziranga had an estimated 103 tigers, the third highest population of the striped cat in India after Jim Corbett National Park (215) in Uttarakhand and Bandipur National Park (120) in Karnataka.
    • Kaziranga is also home to nine of the 14 species of primates found in the Indian subcontinent.

  • Person in news: Swami Vivekananda

    January 12 is the birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda, the famous spiritual leader and intellectual from the late 19th century. In his honour, the government of India in 1984 declared his birthday as National Youth Day.

    Swami Vivekananda early life

    • Vivekananda was born in Kolkata on January 12, 1863, as Narendra Nath Datta.
    • From an early age, he nurtured an interest in Western philosophy, history, and theology, and went on to meet the religious leader Ramakrishna Paramhansa, who later became his Guru.
    • He remained devoted to Ramakrishna until the latter’s death in 1886.
    • In 1893, he took the name ‘Vivekananda’ after Maharaja Ajit Singh of the Khetri State requested him to do so, changing from ‘Sachidananda’ that he used before.
    • After Ramakrishna’s death, Vivekananda toured across India, and set after educating the masses about ways to improve their economic condition as well as imparting spiritual knowledge.

    The Chicago address

    • Vivekananda is especially remembered around the world for his speech at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago in 1893.
    • The speech covered topics including universal acceptance, tolerance and religion, and got him a standing ovation.
    • He began delivering lectures at various places in the US and UK, and became popular as the ‘messenger of Indian wisdom to the Western world’.

    Return to India

    • After coming back to India, he formed the Ramakrishna Mission in 1897 “to set in motion a machinery which will bring noblest ideas to the doorstep of even the poorest and the meanest.”
    • In 1899, he established the Belur Math, which became his permanent abode.

    His legacy

    • Through his speeches and lectures, Vivekananda worked to disseminate his religious thought.
    • He preached ‘neo-Vedanta’, an interpretation of Hinduism through a Western lens, and believed in combining spirituality with material progress.
    • ‘Raja Yoga’, ‘Jnana Yoga’, ‘Karma Yoga’ are some of the books he wrote.
    • An important religious reformer in India, Swami Vivekananda is known to have introduced the Hindu philosophies of Yoga and Vedanta to the West.
    • Subhas Chandra Bose had called Vivekananda the “maker of modern India.”