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  • How marriage age and women’s health are linked?

    PM had announced a panel to fight malnutrition in young women and ensure they get married at the right age. Take a look at how the two are linked:

    How prevalent is underage marriage?

    • Data show that the majority of women in India marry after the age of 21.
    • Chart 1 shows the mean age of women at marriage is 22.1 years, and more than 21 in all states. This does not mean that child marriages have disappeared.
    • The latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) found that about 26.8% of women aged 20-24 (Chart 2) were married before adulthood (age 18).

    Try this question for mains:

    Q. Discuss how marriage age and women’s health are linked with each other?

    How does the age of marriage correlate with health?

    • Preventing early marriage can reduce the maternal mortality ratio and infant mortality ratio.
    • At present, the maternal mortality ratio — the number of maternal deaths for every 100,000 children born — is 145.
    • India’s IMR shows that 30 of every 1,000 children born in a year die before the age of one.
    • Young mothers are more susceptible to anaemia. More than half the women of reproductive age (15-49 years) in India are anaemic.

    What delayed marriage can alter?

    • Poverty, limited access to education and economic prospects, and security concerns are the known reasons for early marriage.
    • If the main causes of early marriage are not addressed, a law will not be enough to delay marriage among girls.

    What do the data show?

    • Women in the poorest 20% of the population married much younger than their peers from the wealthiest 20% (Chart 5).
    • The average age at marriage of women with no schooling was 17.6, considerably lower than that for women educated beyond class 12 (Chart 6).
    • Almost 40% of girls aged 15-18 do not attend school, as per a report of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.
    • Nearly 65% of these girls are engaged in non-remunerative work.
    • That is why many believe that merely tweaking the official age of marriage may discriminate against the poorer, less-educated and marginalised women.

  • [pib] Cultural heritage of Hyderabad

    Ministry of Tourism’s DekhoApnaDesh Webinar Series in its 50th session held a webinar on “Cultural heritage of Hyderabad”.

    Note various cultural sites mentioned in the newscard. The entire DekhoApnaDesh series is a potential hotspot for the coming Prelims.

    The story of Hyderabad City

    • Hyderabad is popularly known as the “City of Pearls” and the “City of Nizams”, and has been the centre of a vibrant historical legacy, ever since its inception by the Qutub Shahi dynasty.
    • The city was later conquered by Mughal Empire and finally falling in the hands of Asaf Jahi dynasty.
    • Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah established Hyderabad in 1591 to extend the capital beyond the fortified Golconda. In 1687, the city was annexed by the Mughals.
    • In 1724, Mughal governor Nizam Asaf Jah I declared his sovereignty and founded the Asaf Jahi dynasty, also known as the Nizams.
    • Hyderabad served as the imperial capital of the Asaf Jahis from 1769 to 1948.
    • As capital of the princely state of Hyderabad, the city housed the British Residency and cantonment until Indian independence in 1947.

    Cultural sites of Hyderabad:

    1) Golconda Fort, Hyderabad: A massive fortress whose ruins stand proudly even today displaying the glory of its rich past and some untold sagas of the city’s history. The place oozing charm is a must visit historical place in Hyderabad. Mohammed Quli understood the need of a new City and made Bhagnagar (after the name of his beloved Bhagmati) with Charminar in its centre.

    2) Chowmahalla Palace: Once the seat of the Asaf Jahi Dynasty, the Chowmahalla Palace was built in Hyderabad and is located near the famous monument, Charminar and Laad Bazar. The palace is designed very intricately and holds that Nawabi Charm in itself. Palace, the seat of power of Nizams, has bagged the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Merit Award for Culture Heritage Conservation.

    3) Charminar: The monument was erected when Quli Qutab Shah shifted his capital from Golconda to Hyderabad. The monument got its name from its structure as it consists of four minarets.

    4) Mecca Masjid: One of the oldest and the largest mosques of India is the grandest historical places in Hyderabad was completed by Aurangzeb in 1693.The bricks used here are believed to be from Mecca, and hence the name.

    5) Paigah tombs: Located in the suburbs of Pisal Banda in Hyderabad, Paigah Tombs are a group of tombs of the Paigah royal family. Although now in a derelict and dilapidated state, the tombs still boast of striking architecture and marvellously carved marble panels.

    6) Salar Jung Museum: Is an art museum established in the year 1951 and located at Dar-ul-Shifa, on the southern bank of the Musi River in the city of Hyderabad. The Salar Jung family is responsible for its collection of rare art objects from all over the world. The family is one of the most illustrious families in Deccan history, five of them having been prime-ministers in the erstwhile Nizam rule of Hyderabad-Deccan.

    7) Warangal Fort: This fort appears to have existed since at least the 12th century when it was the capital of the Kakatiya dynasty. The fort has four ornamental gates, known as Kakatiya Kala Thoranam, that originally formed the entrances to a now ruined great Shiva temple.

  • Festival in news: Nuakhai Juhar

    The PM has greeted the people on the auspicious occasion of Nuakhai Juhar.

    Try this PYQ:

    Q.Consider the following pairs:

    Tradition State
    1. Chapchar Kut festival : Mizoram
    2. Khongjom Parba ballad : Manipur
    3. Thang-Ta dance : Sikkim

    Which of the pairs given above is/are correct? (CSP 2018)

    a) 1 only

    b) 1 and 2

    c) 3 only

    d) 2 and 3

    Nuakhai Juhar

    • Nuakhai or Nuakhai is an agricultural festival mainly observed by people of Western Odisha and Southern Chhattisgarh.
    • It is celebrated at the time when the newly grown Kharif crop (autumn crop) of rice started ripening.
    • According to the calendar it is observed on Panchami tithi (the fifth day) of the lunar fortnight of the month of Bhadrapada or Bhadraba (August–September), the day after the Ganesh Chaturthi festival.
    • This is the most important social festival of Western Odisha and adjoining areas of Simdega in Jharkhand, where Odia culture is much predominant.

  • [pib] Highlights of the Swachh Survekshan 2020

    Image Source: TH

    Indore was declared the cleanest city in India for the fourth consecutive time in the Swachh Survekshan, 2020 — India’s annual survey on cleanliness.

    Note the following things about Swachh Survekshan:

    1) Nodal Ministry (It is Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs)

    2) Authority carrying out the survey

    3) Various parameters of the survey

    Swachh Survekshan

    • It is an annual survey of cleanliness, hygiene and sanitation in cities and towns across India.
    • It ranks India’s cities, towns and states based on sanitation, waste management and overall cleanliness.
    • It was launched as part of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, which aimed to make India clean and free of open defecation by 2 October 2019.
    • The first survey was undertaken in 2016 and covered 73 cities; by 2019 the survey had grown to cover 4237 cities and was said to be the largest cleanliness survey in the world.

    Survey methodology

    • The surveys are carried out by the Quality Council of India. The criteria and weightage for different components of sanitation-related aspects used for the survey were:

    a) Municipal documentation (solid waste management including door-to-door collection, processing, and disposal, and open defecation free status. These carried 45 per cent of the total 2,000 marks.

    b) Citizen feedback – 30 per cent (450 + 150 marks)

    c) Independent observation – 25 per cent (500 marks)

    Highlights of the 2020 Rankings

    • Surat in Gujarat and Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra bagged the second and third spot respectively among the cleanest cities with more than a million populations.
    • Maharashtra’s Karad, Saswad and Lonavala bagged the first three positions for cities having a population less than one lakh.
    • Among the cities with a population between one and 10 lakh, Chhattisgarh’s Ambikapur was declared the cleanest, followed by Mysore in Karnataka.
    • In fact, Chhattisgarh has ranked the cleanest state in the category of states having more than 100 Urban Local Bodies (ULB). It was followed by Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.
    • In 2019, Chhattisgarh was in the third position in the category. The survey found that Chhattisgarh is the first and only state where every city achieved Open Defecation Free (ODF)++ status.

  • Tornado’s dynamics and its India connection

    Babu ChunderSikur Chatterjee’s paper was the earliest record of a tornado’s dynamics in the history of meteorology, according to a study.

    Try this PYQ:

    Q. In the South Atlantic and South-Eastern Pacific regions in tropical latitudes, cyclone does not originate. What is the reason? (CSP 2015)

    (a) Sea surface temperatures are low

    (b) Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone seldom occurs

    (c) Coriolis force is too weak

    (d) Absence of land in those regions

    What is a Tornado?

    • A tornado is a rapidly rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud.
    • The windstorm is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone winds blow counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern.
    • Tornadoes come in many shapes and sizes, and they are often visible in the form of a condensation funnel originating from the base of a cumulonimbus cloud, with a cloud of rotating debris and dust beneath it.
    • It is generally accompanied by extreme weather such as heavy downpours, hail storms, and lightning.

    Who was Babu ChunderSikur Chatterjee?

    • Chatterjee was an Indian scientist employed with the Surveyor General of India during the British colonial era.
    • He was likely the first person to scientifically document a tornado’s path in 1865, a study from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, has claimed.
    • Chatterjee had published his findings in a journal named Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, in a paper titled ‘Note on a whirlwind at Pundooah’, near Hooghly.
    • The paper described a tornado’s dynamics in meticulous detail and was accompanied by a sketch that mathematically depicted its scale, track and rotation.

    His work

     

    • Chatterjee quantitatively mapped the entire trail of á tornado’s destruction.
    • He benefited from the rare opportunity to observe a tornado passing through a railway track where there were conveniently placed markers at predefined locations.
    • This enabled him to observe and make clear measurements of the tornado’s direction, dynamics and path.

    Back2Basics

  • In news: Lingaraj Temple

    The Odisha government has announced to give a facelift to the 11th century Lingaraj Temple, akin to its pre-350-year structural status.

    Try this PYQ:

    Q. Building ‘Kalyaana Mandapas’ was a notable feature in the temple construction in the kingdom of- (CSP 2019)

    (a) Chalukya

    (b) Chandela

    (c) Rashtrakuta

    (d) Vijayanagara

    About Lingaraj Temple

    • Lingaraja Temple is a temple dedicated to Shiva and is one of the oldest temples in Bhubaneswar, Odisha.
    • It represents the quintessence of the Kalinga Architecture and culminating the medieval stages of the architectural tradition at Bhubaneswar.
    • The temple is believed to be built by the kings from the Somavamsi dynasty, with later additions from the Ganga rulers.
    • It is built in the Deula style that has four components namely, vimana (structure containing the sanctum), jagamohana (assembly hall), natamandira (festival hall) and bhoga-mandapa (hall of offerings), each increasing in the height to its predecessor.

    • Bhubaneswar is called the Ekamra Kshetra as the deity of Lingaraja was originally under a mango tree (Ekamra) as noted in Ekamra Purana, a 13th-century Sanskrit treatise.
    • The temple has images of Vishnu, possibly because of the rising prominence of Jagannath sect emanating from the Ganga rulers who built the Jagannath Temple in Puri in the 12th century.

  • Census 2021 and the long-pending reforms

    • In all likelihood, the February 2021 Census will have to be rescheduled to ensure comparability with earlier censuses.
    • This will also affect the National Sample Surveys and others that use the census as the sampling frame.
    • The delay can, however, be used to introduce much-needed reforms to this gigantic exercise whose roots go back to the late 19th century.

    Try this question for mains:

    Q.The Census of India needs a basic overhaul beyond its procedural digitization. Critically analyse.

    Background: Census of India

    • The decennial Census of India has been conducted 15 times, as of 2011.
    • While it has been undertaken every 10 years, beginning in 1872 under British Viceroy Lord Mayo, the first complete census was taken in 1881.
    • Post-1949, it has been conducted by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India under the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.
    • All the censuses since 1951 were conducted under the 1948 Census of India Act.
    • The last census was held in 2011, whilst the next will be held in 2021.

    Census 2021

    • The Census 2021 will be conducted in 18 languages out of the 22 scheduled languages (under 8th schedule) and English, while Census 2011 was in 16 of the 22 scheduled languages declared at that time.
    • It also will introduce a code directory to streamline the process
    • The option of “Other” under the gender category will be changed to “Third Gender”.
    • There were roughly 5 lakh people under “other” category in 2011.
    • For the first time in the 140 year history of the census in India, data is proposed to be collected through a mobile app by enumerators and they will receive an additional payment as an incentive.
    • The Census data would be available by the year 2024-25 as the entire process would be conducted digitally and data crunching would be quicker.

    Issues with the Census

    (1) Data quality issues

    • The past four decades have seen a decline in the quality of data and growing delays in its release despite technological innovations.
    • The use of census data in delimitation and federal redistribution has been questioned on grounds of poor quality, while the Covid-19 pandemic revealed the obsolete and poor quality of data on internal migration.

    (2) No major reforms

    • The legal foundation of the census has remained largely unchanged since newly independent India enacted permanent census legislation in 1948.
    • Despite sustained problems, the census has not seen any major reform after 1994 when both the Census Act, 1948 and Census Rules, 1990 were amended.

    (3) Old methods and questionnaire

    • The methodological core – extended de facto (synchronous) canvasser-based enumeration – too has remained intact even though the length and layout of schedules changed quite a bit.
    • The Household Schedule, for instance, grew with the footprint of the state, from 14 questions in 1951 to 29 questions in 2011.

    (4) Workforce issues

    • Data collection has not kept pace with improvements in data processing technology due to the lack of motivated and adequately trained enumerators.
    • Given the high salaries of school teachers, the modest honorarium paid for census work does not cover the opportunity cost of conducting the door-to-door enumeration.

    Understand the ‘purpose’ of the census

    Reforms should begin with the design of schedules based on a clear understanding of two essential functions of the census:

    (a) Resource allocations

    • First, census facilitates the rule-based distribution of power and resources through constitutionally mandated redistribution of taxes, delimitation of electoral constituencies and affirmative action policies.
    • It is also used in routine policy-making across tiers of government.

    (b) Population projections

    • Second, census serves as the sampling frame for surveys and is also the basis of population projections.
    • Other routine policies require distribution of the headcount by households, marital status, age, sex, literacy, migrant status, and mother tongue.
    • Put together, these variables are sufficient for choosing representative samples for surveys.

    What can be done?

    1.Cut the questions

    • Nearly half of the ‘Houselisting and Housing Schedule’ of the census is devoted to questions on household amenities and assets.
    • These questions can be dropped because the information can be more appropriately collected through sample surveys and administrative statistics.

    Why put fewer questions?

    • Cutting down the length of unwieldy schedules has several advantages.
    • First, it will improve data quality by reducing the workload of enumerators.
    • Second, it will also free up senior census officials and help revive the earlier tradition of producing detailed administrative and other reports crucial for understanding the context of data.
    • Third, shorter schedules will seem less invasive and assure respondents uncomfortable with sharing too many details.
    • Fourth, it will cut down processing time and help in reducing delays in the release of data.

    2.Dealing with data manipulation

    • There is poor accounting of migrants that distorts estimates of urbanisation as well as the inter-state distribution of the population.
    • There exists grassroots manipulation of data-driven by political and economic considerations.
    • There is a need to demystify census operations and build trust in the impartiality of the exercise, better scrutiny of electoral records and welfare schemes to weed out bogus beneficiaries.

    Conclusion

    • These reforms are essential to ensure that the census exercise is able to fulfil its constitutional, policy and statistical obligations and also clear the ground for debates on the future of census in the digital era.

  • Story of our National Flag

    The final design of the Indian National Flag, hoisted by PM Nehru on August 16, 1947, at Red Fort, had a history of several decades preceding independence.

    Note various personalities involved in the development of our National flag. It may be no wonder to accept a personality-based question on such topics.

    Story of our National Flag: A timeline

    (1) Public display for first time

    • Arguably the first national flag of India is said to have been hoisted on August 7, 1906, in Kolkata at the Parsee Bagan Square (Green Park).
    • It comprised three horizontal stripes of red, yellow and green, with Vande Mataram written in the middle.
    • Believed to have been designed by freedom activists Sachindra Prasad Bose and Hemchandra Kanungo, the red stripe on the flag had symbols of the sun and a crescent moon, and the green strip had eight half-open lotuses.

    (2) In Germany

    • In 1907, Madame Cama and her group of exiled revolutionaries hoisted an Indian flag in Germany in 1907 — this was the first Indian flag to be hoisted in a foreign land.

    (3) During the Home Rule Movement

    • In 1917, Dr Annie Besant and Lokmanya Tilak adopted a new flag as part of the Home Rule Movement.
    • It had five alternate red and four green horizontal stripes, and seven stars in the saptarishi configuration.
    • A white crescent and star occupied one top corner, and the other had Union Jack.

    (4) Final version by Pingali Venkayya

    • The design of the present-day Indian tricolour is largely attributed to Pingali Venkayya, an Indian freedom fighter.
    • He reportedly first met Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa during the second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), when he was posted there as part of the British Indian Army.
    • Years of research went into designing the national flag. In 1916, he even published a book with possible designs of Indian flags.
    • At the All India Congress Committee in Bezwada in 1921, Venkayya again met Gandhi and proposed a basic design of the flag, consisting of two red and green bands to symbolise the two major communities, Hindus and Muslims.

    (5) During Constituent Assembly

    • On July 22, 1947, when members of the Constituent Assembly of India, the first item on the agenda was reportedly a motion by Pandit Nehru, about adopting a national flag for free India.
    • It was proposed that “the National Flag of India shall be horizontal tricolour of deep saffron (Kesari), white and dark green in equal proportion.”
    • The white band was to have a wheel in navy blue (the charkha being replaced by the chakra), which appears on the abacus of the Sarnath Lion Capital of Ashoka.

  • Making sense of population growth of India

    The article analyses and explains the declining trend in India’s total fertility rate. The aspirational revolution in the parents explains such decline. 

    What the projections say

    • A new study was published in The Lancet, and prepared by the Seattle-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).
    • It argues that while India is destined to be the largest country in the world, its population will peak by mid-century.
    • And as the 21st century closes, its ultimate population will be far smaller than anyone could have anticipated, about 1.09 billion instead of approximately 1.35 billion today.
    • It could even be as low as 724 million, the study projects.
    • Until 2050, the IHME projections are almost identical to widely-used United Nations projections.
    •  It is only in the second half of the century that the two projections diverge with the UN predicting a population of 1.45 billion by 2100, and the IHME, 1.09 billion.

    Present trends in India’s fertility rate

    •  In the 1950s, India’s Total fertility rate (TFR) was nearly six children per woman; today it is 2.2.
    •  Between 1992 and 2015, it had fallen by 35% from 3.4 to 2.2.
    • It is even below the replacement rate in 18 States and Union Territories.

    What explains the trends

    • One might attribute it to the success of the family planning programme.
    • But family planning has long lost its primacy in the Indian policy discourse.
    • Punitive policies include denial of maternity leave for third and subsequent births, limiting benefits of maternity schemes and ineligibility to contest in local body elections for individuals with large families.
    • However, these policies are mostly ignored in practice.

    Aspirational revolution

    •  It seems highly probable that the socioeconomic transformation of India since the 1990s has played an important role.
    • Over the years parents began to rethink their family-building strategies.
    • Smaller families when compared with a bigger family with same income level, invest more money in their children by sending them to private schools and coaching classes.
    • It is not aspirations for self but that for children that seems to drive fertility decline.

    Consider the question “Examine the factors responsible for the declining trends in the total fertility rate for India. What are its implications for country?”

    Conclusion

    Demographic data suggest that the aspirational revolution is already under way. What we need to hasten the fertility decline is to ensure that the health and family welfare system is up to this challenge and provides contraception and sexual and reproductive health services that allow individuals to have only as many children as they want.

  • Hindu Women’s Inheritance Rights

    The Supreme Court has expanded a Hindu woman’s right to be a joint legal heir and inherit ancestral property on terms equal to male heirs.

    What is the ruling?

    • The SC Bench ruled that a Hindu woman’s right to be a joint heir to the ancestral property is by birth and does not depend on whether her father was alive or not when the law was enacted in 2005.
    • The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 gave Hindu women the right to be coparceners or joint legal heirs in the same way a male heir does.
    • Since the coparcenary (heirship) is by birth, it is not necessary that the father coparcener should be living as on 9.9.2005, the ruling said.

    What is the 2005 law?

    • The Mitakshara school of Hindu law codified as the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 governed succession and inheritance of property but only recognised males as legal heirs.
    • The law applied to everyone who is not a Muslim, Christian, Parsi or Jew by religion.
    • Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains and followers of Arya Samaj, Brahmo Samaj are also considered Hindus for the purposes of this law.
    • In a Hindu Undivided Family, several legal heirs through generations can exist jointly.

    Background

    • Traditionally, only male descendants of a common ancestor along with their mothers, wives and unmarried daughters are considered a joint Hindu family.
    • The legal heirs hold the family property jointly.
    • Women were recognised as coparceners or joint legal heirs for partition arising from 2005.
    • The 174th Law Commission Report had also recommended this reform in Hindu succession law.
    • Even before the 2005 amendment, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu had made this change in the law, and Kerala had abolished the Hindu Joint Family System in 1975.

    What did the law bring in?

    • Section 6 of the Act was amended that year to make a daughter of a coparcener also a coparcener by birth “in her own right in the same manner as the son”.
    • The law also gave the daughter the same rights and liabilities “in the coparcenary property as she would have had if she had been a son”.
    • The law applies to ancestral property and to intestate succession in personal property — where succession happens as per law and not through a will.

    How did the case come about?

    • While the 2005 law granted equal rights to women, questions were raised whether the law applied retrospectively and if the rights of women depended on the living status of their father.
    • Different benches of the Supreme Court had taken conflicting views on the issue. Different High Courts had also followed different views of the top court as binding precedents.
    • The Prakash v Phulwati (2015) case held that the benefit of the 2005 amendment could be granted only to “living daughters of living coparceners” as on September 9, 2005 (the date when the amendment came to force).
    • In February 2018 a bench headed by Justice A K Sikri held that the share of a father who died in 2001 will also pass to his daughters as coparceners during the partition of the property as per the 2005 law.

    The present case

    • These conflicting views led to a reference to a three-judge Bench in the current case.
    • The ruling now overrules the verdicts from 2015 and April 2018.
    • It settles the law and expands on the intention of the 2005 legislation to remove the discrimination as contained in section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956.
    • It gave equal rights to daughters in the Hindu Mitakshara coparcenary property as the sons have.

    What was the government’s stand?

    • The solicitor argued in favour of an expansive reading of the law to allow equal rights for women. He referred to the objects and reasons of the 2005 amendment.
    • The Mitakshara coparcenary law not only contributed to discrimination on the ground of gender but was oppressive and negated the fundamental right of equality guaranteed by the Constitution.