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  • Railway Reforms

    What did it take for the Indian Railways to achieve 100% punctuality?

    | Economics | Mains Paper 3: Infrastructure: Energy, Ports, Roads, Airports, Railways Etc.

    The Indian Railways has announced that it achieved 100 per cent punctuality of its passenger trains on July 1, a never-before feat.

    Try this question:

    Q.Discuss various issues crippling the punctuality of the Indian Railways.

    A big achievement for Railways

    • Usually, the Indian Railways run over 13,000 passenger trains and over 8,000 freight trains every day.
    • It is important to remember the context – very few trains are running now, and the punctuality of the Railways can hardly be compared with its own performance on this count in pre-COVID times.
    • The 100 per cent punctuality has been achieved when the network is running just 230 passenger trains – along with about 3,000 loaded freight trains and 2,200 empty ones.
    • This is no mean achievement – it is indeed not an easy task given all the constraints that the Railways usually face while running a train on its designated path and time slot.

    Why do trains get delayed in India?

    • There are a number of reasons, which is also why the achievement of the Railways is significant.
    • There are unforeseen situations such as a failure of assets like the signalling system and overhead power equipment.
    • Several types of breakdowns can occur, related to rolling stock, tracks, etc., that make a train lose time along the way.
    • Then there are external unforeseen problems like run-over cattle and humans, agitations on the tracks, and the like.

    And what have the Railways been doing right?

    • The maintenance of tracks was carried out in a quick time during the COVID period in various critical sections, so the average speed increased, and stretches of slowing down were minimized.
    • Better and modern signalling is also making an impact.
    • Another reason is better planning and operations analysis.

    How do the delays impact the overall system?

    • In normal times, these failures take away a lot of scheduled time when the train is detained even for a short time because making up the lost time during the remainder of the journey is a tricky business.
    • It’s not as though a train can just run faster to make up for a lost time. In a network chock-a-block with trains, a train hardly ever has such leeway built into its pre-set path.
    • Any train that gets delayed inordinately due to whatever reason during the journey theoretically eats into the “path” – or time slot allotted on the track – of another train.
    • It then becomes a matter of which train to prioritise. Conventionally, Rajdhanis and premium trains get priority of path over ordinary mail/express trains.
    • Freight trains, whose runs are not exactly time-sensitive, are usually held up to make way for passenger trains.

    But why do the Railways have to juggle operations in this way?

    • It’s a constantly dynamic scenario in which railway operations professionals take calls all the time.
    • At the heart of the problem are network capacity constraints. It basically means that there are more trains than the network can handle in a given time bracket.
    • Around 60 per cent of all train traffic is on the Golden Quadrilateral, even though it represents just about 15 per cent of the total network.
    • There are projects to enhance capacity by building additional lines and modernizing signalling systems, etc.

    Minimizing the delays

    • The Railways are working on what is called a “zero-based timetable”.
    • In this concept, which is to be introduced soon, every train that enters the network is justified based on needs and costs.
    • It is expected to make train operations more seamless.

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  • ISRO Missions and Discoveries

    Phobos: The closest and biggest moon of Mars

    | Science Tech | Mains Paper 3: Awareness in various sc and tech fields

    The Mars Colour Camera (MCC) onboard ISRO’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) has captured the image of Phobos, the closest and biggest moon of Mars.

    Try this question from CSP 2017:

    Q.Which region of Mars has a densely packed river deposit indicating this planet had water 3.5 billion years ago?

    (a) Aeolis Dorsa (b) Tharsis (c) Olympus Mons (d) Hellas

    About Phobos

    • Phobos is the innermost and larger of the two natural satellites of Mars, the other being Deimos.
    • Both moons were discovered in 1877 by American astronomer Asaph Hall.
    • Phobos is a small, irregularly shaped object with a mean radius of 11 km and is seven times as massive as the outer moon, Deimos.
    • Phobos is largely believed to be made up of carbonaceous chondrites.
    • The violent phase that Phobos has encountered is seen in the large section gouged out from a past collision (Stickney crater) and bouncing ejecta.

    Back2Basics: Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM)

    • The MOM also called Mangalyaan is a space probe orbiting Mars since 24 September 2014. It was launched on 5 November 2013 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
    • It aims at studying the Martian surface and mineral composition as well as scans its atmosphere for methane (an indicator of life on Mars).
    • It is India’s first interplanetary mission and it made it the fourth space agency to reach Mars, after Roscosmos, NASA, and the European Space Agency.
    • It made India the first Asian nation to reach Martian orbit and the first nation in the world to do so on its maiden attempt.
    • It was initially meant to last six months, but subsequently, ISRO had said it had enough fuel for it to last “many years.”

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  • Swachh Bharat Mission

    Prerak Dauur Samman

    PIB | Governance | Mains Paper 2: Governance, Transparency & Accountability, Citizens Charters

    The Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA) announced a new category of awards titled ‘Prerak Dauur Samman’ as part of Swachh Survekshan 2021.

    Try this question:

    Q. The Prerak Dauur Samman recently seen in news is related to:

    a) Swachh Bharat b) Literature c) Health Services d) Visual Arts

    Prerak Dauur Samman

    • The Prerak Dauur Samman has a total of five additional subcategories -Divya (Platinum), Anupam (Gold), Ujjwal (Silver), Udit (Bronze), Aarohi (Aspiring) – with top three cities being recognized in each.
    • In a departure from the present criteria of evaluating cities on ‘population category’, this new category will categorize cities on the basis of six select indicator wise performance criteria which are as follows:

    1) Segregation of waste into Wet, Dry and Hazard categories

    2) Processing capacity against wet waste generated

    3) Processing and recycling of wet and dry waste

    4) Construction & Demolition (C&D) waste processing

    5) Percentage of waste going to landfills

    6) Sanitation status of cities

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  • Modern Indian History-Events and Personalities

    What is the Hagia Sophia?

    Prelims Only | History | Mains Paper 1:

    Turkey’s highest court this week convened to decide whether Istanbul’s iconic Hagia Sophia museum can be turned into a mosque.

    Try this question:

    Q. The iconic Hagia Sophia, a UNESCO World Heritage site was recently in news. It is situated in:

    a) Greece b) Turkey c) Israel d) Iran

    What is the Hagia Sophia?

    • The construction of this iconic structure in Istanbul started in 532 AD during the reign of Justinian I, the ruler of the Byzantine Empire when the city was known as Constantinople.
    • The structure was originally built to become the seat of the Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church and remained so for approximately 900 years.
    • In 1453, when Constantinople fell to Sultan Mehmet II’s Ottoman forces, the Hagia Sophia was ransacked by the invading forces and turned into a mosque shortly after.
    • For a long time, the Hagia Sophia was Istanbul’s most important mosque.
    • The 1,500-year-old structure, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, was originally a cathedral before it was turned into a mosque.

    What is the controversy about?

    • In the 1930s, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, shut down the mosque and turned it into a museum in an attempt to make the country more secular.
    • There have been calls for long from extremists groups to convert the Hagia Sophia back into a mosque.

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  • Judicial Reforms

    Making justice accessible through live streaming

    | Polity | Mains Paper 2: Executive & Judiciary

    Livestreaming of the judicial proceeding goes a long way in increasing the access of justice which is granted under Article 21. This article examines the evolution in judiciary and making justice accessible.

    Judiciary adapting to changes

    •  As the lockdown began, the Court had to quickly find the technology and create protocols for virtual courts and e-hearings.
    • Before this, there was an open courtroom that the public could access.
    • This protected the right to access justice, guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution.

    Access to justice without physical classroom

    • Now that the Court is proactively adopting technology, it must expand the right of access to justice by live-streaming proceedings.
    • Further, court proceedings must also be documented and preserved for future generations.
    • Both audio-visual recordings and transcripts of oral arguments should be maintained for this purpose.

    Evolution of access to court

    • The Supreme Court maintained no public record of its own proceedings in the past.
    • Nor were its proceedings broadcast live for public viewing.
    • Over time, security concerns meant that the public could only enter courtrooms in the SC with a pass.
    • Due to space constraints, law students were not permitted to enter courtrooms on Mondays and Fridays when the Court heard fresh matters.

    A case that led to live broadcast of the proceedings

    • In its 2018 judgment in Swapnil Tripathi v Supreme Court of India, the Court recommended that proceedings be broadcast live.
    • The SC held that live streaming proceedings is part of the right to access justice under Article 21 of the Constitution.
    •  Justice DY Chandrachud noted that open courts help foster public confidence in the judiciary.
    • Further, publishing court proceedings is an aspect of Article 129, per which the Supreme Court is a court of record.
    • Journalists, young lawyers, civil society activists and academics would all benefit from live streaming, the Court opined.
    • The guidelines proposed live-streaming cases of constitutional and national importance as a pilot project including Constitution Bench cases.
    • Matrimonial cases and those involving national security could be excluded.

    Recording the proceedings- Examples

    • Internationally constitutional court proceedings are recorded in some form or the other.
    • In Australia, proceedings are recorded and posted on the high court’s website.
    • Proceedings of the Supreme Courts of Brazil, Canada, England and Germany are broadcast live.
    • The Supreme Court of the US does not permit video recording, but oral arguments are recorded, transcribed, and available publicly.
    • Democracies aside, in China, court proceedings are live streamed from trial courts up to the Supreme People’s Court of China.

    India stands alone

    • India stands alone amongst leading constitutional democracies in not maintaining audio or video recordings or even a transcript of court proceedings.
    • Court hearings can be turning points in the life of a nation: ADM Jabalpur comes readily to mind.
    • More recently, there are a number of cases where the Supreme Court’s judgments have changed citizens’ lives — Aadhaar, Section 377, Sabarimala, NRC and the triple talaq judgments are among them.

    Steps to make justice accessible

    • The Court started providing vernacular translations of its judgments.
    • Non-accredited journalists were permitted to live-tweet court proceedings.
    • During the lockdown, journalists have been permitted to view virtual court proceedings in real time.
    • If that technology is available, it could be extended to members of the public, who can then view court proceedings themselves.
    • Due to pandemic for the next few years, Indian courts will have to adopt a combination of virtual and in-person hearings.

    Consider the question “Live-streaming and recordings of the court proceeding helps in reinforcing the public faith in the judiciary. Comment.”

    Conclusion

    Openness and transparency reinforce the public’s faith in the judicial system. Livestreaming and recording of the proceeding will open the door to ensure the same.

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  • India’s Bid to a Permanent Seat at United Nations

    In an uncertain world a seat at the UNSC

    op-ed snap | International Relations | Mains Paper 2: Bilateral, Regional and Global Groupings and agreements involving India

    As a non-permanent member of the UNSC for the next two years, India will have to navigate through a tumultuous world. Anti-terrorism will be top priority for India.

    India at UNSC

    • India will be back in the United Nations Security Council for a two-year term beginning January 1, 2021.
    • Two-year term will be a critical time in the history of the UN.
    • It is hoped that by then COVID-19 will have subsided, a U.S. President will have been elected.
    • And the contours of a new world order may have emerged.

    How elections take place

    • The basic contest for the non-permanent seats takes place in the respective regional groups and their sub-groups.
    • Voting in the General Assembly is to fulfil the requirement of countries having to secure a two-thirds majority of the member states.
    • But regional endorsement is becoming difficult.
    • Last time, it was Kazakhstan which vacated the place for India.
    • This time, it was Afghanistan. India could not have got the endorsement without such gestures from friendly countries.

    What will be India’s priorities as a member of UNSC

    • India will continue to provide leadership and a new orientation for a reformed multilateral system.
    • How far the UN will be able to reform itself in the new situation remains uncertain.
    • The UN did not succeed in either defining terrorism or in adopting the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism.
    • Counter-terrorism will be one of the highest priorities for India at the UNSC.

    Permanent member of India issue

    • India’s election as a non-permanent member has understandably ignited the hope that its quest for permanent membership.
    • Nothing is farther from the truth.
    • Seeking to amend the Charter to add new permanent members is difficult task.
    • None of the proposals has the possibility of securing two-thirds majority of the General Assembly and the votes of the five permanent members.
    • A majority of the UN members are against the privileges of the permanent members, particularly the veto.
    • India’s performance in the Council will not lead to its elevation to permanent membership as the opposition to any expansion is not India-specific.

    Role of India as non-permanent member

    • The non-permanent members have a collective veto over every resolution in the Council.
    • As a part of collective veto, India will have a higher profile at the UN for the next two years
    • Permanent members can prevent the adoption of resolutions by themselves through veto.
    • But they need at least nine votes to get a resolution passed.
    • India will also have a rare peep into the consultations chamber of the UNSC, which is closed to non-members of the Council.
    • India will get involved in many issues in which it may not have any direct interest.
    • Since India does not have a veto, it shall have to proceed cautiously not to offend anyone.

    Consider the question “India has been chosen as the non-permanent member of the UNSC and will be there at the critical time in the history of the UNSC. What should be India’s priority and approach as a member of the UNSC?”

    Conclusion

    India’s mission in New York has earned a reputation that it is next only to the permanent members in influence. But whether it will be able to deal with traditional challenges in novel ways will depend on the turns and twists in an uncertain world.

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  • MGNREGA Scheme

    Safety net of income post Covid

    op-ed snap | Economics | Mains Paper 3: Issues relating growth and development, employment

    Providing a minimum basic income post-Covid will require some novel approach. This article proposes an approach with the mix of direct cash transfer and changes in the employment guarantee scheme.

    Non-universal targeted programs

    •  It is true that a universal schemes are easy to implement.
    • Non-universal targeted programmes face the problem of identification.
    • Narrowly-targeted programmes will run into complex problems of identification.
    • And the problem of identification gives rise to exclusion and inclusion errors.

    How to solve identification problem

    • There are three proposals which meet the objective of providing a minimum basic income.
    • 1) Give cash transfers to all women above the age of 20 years.
    • 2) Expand the number of days provided under MGNREGA.
    • 3) Have a national employment guarantee scheme in urban areas.
    • In all the three proposals, there is no problem of identification.
    • A combination of cash transfers and an expanded employment guarantee scheme can provide a minimum basic income.

    1) Cash transfer to all women

    • One way of doing it will be to give it to all women say above the age of 20.
    • This is an easily identifiable criterion because the Aadhaar cards carry the age of the person.
    • The female population above the age of 20 is around 42.89 crore.
    • Making available a minimum of Rs 4,000 annually as a cash transfer to all of them will cost Rs 1.72 lakh crore.
    • Which is 0.84 per cent of GDP.
    • The cost of the scheme to the government will be less if the well-off women choose not to take the cash transfer.

    2) Expanding MGNREGA

    • The Act guarantees 100 days of employment.
    • At present, MGNREGA is availed of only for 50 days of employment.
    • One way to help the poor and informal workers is to strengthen it.
    • The government needs to increase the number of days under the scheme from 100 to 150 in rural areas.

    3) Employment guarantee scheme for urban areas

    •  Introducing Employment Guarantee Act in urban areas would help also provide income.
    • Providing employment for 150 days instead of 100 days will also prove beneficial.

    Some facts and figures

    • In 2019-20, the government spent Rs 67,873 crore for providing 48 days of employment to 5.48 crore of rural households.
    • Out of this, the wage expenditure was Rs 48,762 crore.
    • The government has increased the per day wage rate from Rs 182.1 in 2019-20 to Rs 202.5 in 2020-21.
    • So, the estimated expenditure for 150 days of employment to 5.48 crore households in rural areas and 2.66 crore households in urban areas — together they account for 33 per cent of total households in the country.
    •  The additional expenditure needed for the new proposal proposal is Rs 1.9 to 2.5 lakh crore.
    • This additional expenditure is around 1 to 1.22 per cent of GDP.
    •  The total cost of the three proposals would be Rs 4.9 lakh crore or 2.4 per cent of GDP.

    But the total cost could be lower

    •  As the Employment Guarantee Programme is a demand-based programme, the number of days availed could be lower.
    •  This is happening even now.
    • Second, on cash transfers, some women, particularly from richer classes, may voluntarily drop out of the scheme.
    • Alternatively, we can provide that everyone receiving cash transfer must declare that her total monthly income is less than Rs 6,000 per month.

    Where the additional money will come from

    • Removing all exemptions in our tax system would give enough money.
    • Tax experts advocate removing exemptions so that the basic tax rate can be reduced.
    • Perhaps, out of the Rs 4.2 lakh crore which is needed, Rs 1 lakh crore can come out of phasing out of some of the expenditures.
    • While another Rs 3 lakh crore must come out of raising additional revenue.
    • Some of the non-merit subsidies, another item of expenditure, can be eliminated.

    Consider the question “What are the issues non-universal schemes faces? Suggest the ways to do with the issue of identification which such schemes face.”

    Conclusion

    In the post-COVID-19 situation, we need to institute schemes to provide a minimum income for the poor and vulnerable groups and trying the mixed approach of cash transfer to women and modification of Employment Guarantee Acts could do that.

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  • Wildlife Conservation Efforts

    Biodiversity Governance: The agreements and laws that help enforce it

    IOCR | Enviro & Biodiversity | Mains Paper 3: Conservation, Environmental Pollution & Degradation, Eia

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  • Nuclear Energy

    International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) Project

    | Science Tech | Mains Paper 3: Achievements Of Indians In S&T

    The heavy engineering division of L&T dispatched a giant Cryostat lid, to International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) site in France from its Hazira unit in Gujarat.

    Try this MCQ:

    Q.With reference to International science projects, consider the following:

    1. Large Hadron Collider (LHC)– The God Particle
    2. Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT) – The World’s Most Advanced Telescope
    3. International-Thermonuclear-Experimental-Reactor (ITER) – Fusion Energy
    4. Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) – Antiproton and Ion Research

    Which of the above projects have India’s active participation?

    a) 1 only

    b) 2 and 3 only

    c) 1, 3 and 4 only

    d) All of them

    ITER Project

    • ITER is international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject, which will be the world’s largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment.
    • The goal of ITER is to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy for peaceful use.

    Minutes of the project

    • The project is funded and run by seven member entities—the European Union, India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
    • The EU, as host party for the ITER complex, is contributing about 45 per cent of the cost, with the other six parties contributing approximately 9 per cent each.
    • Construction of the ITER Tokamak complex started in 2013 and the building costs were over US$14 billion by June 2015.

    How does it work?

    • ITER is the most complex science project in human history. The ITER aims to use a strong electric current to trap plasma inside a doughnut-shaped enclosure long enough for fusion to take place.
    • Hydrogen plasma will be heated to 150 million degrees Celsius, ten times hotter than the core of the Sun, to enable the fusion reaction.
    • The process happens in a doughnut-shaped reactor, called a tokamak 1, which is surrounded by giant magnets that confine and circulate the superheated, ionized plasma, away from the metal walls.
    • The superconducting magnets must be cooled to -269°C (-398°F), as cold as interstellar space.
    • Scientists have long sought to mimic the process of nuclear fusion that occurs inside the sun, arguing that it could provide an almost limitless source of cheap, safe and clean electricity.
    • Unlike in existing fission reactors, which split plutonium or uranium atoms, there’s no risk of an uncontrolled chain reaction with fusion and it doesn’t produce long-lived radioactive waste.

    Back2Basics: Nuclear Fusion

    • Nuclear fusion is the process of making a single heavy nucleus (part of an atom) from two lighter nuclei. This process is called a nuclear reaction.
    • The nucleus made by fusion is heavier than either of the starting nuclei. It releases a large amount of energy.
    • Fusion is what powers the sun. Atoms of Tritium and Deuterium (isotopes of hydrogen, Hydrogen-3 and Hydrogen-2, respectively) unite under extreme pressure and temperature to produce a neutron and a helium isotope.
    • Along with this, an enormous amount of energy is released, which is several times the amount produced by fission.
    • Scientists continue to work on controlling nuclear fusion in an effort to make a fusion reactor to produce electricity.

    How it is different from nuclear fission?

    • Simply put, fission is the division of one atom into two (by neutron bombardment), and fusion is the combination of two lighter atoms into a larger one (at a very high temperature).
    • Nuclear fission takes place when a large, somewhat unstable isotope (atoms with the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons) is bombarded by high-speed particles, usually neutrons.

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  • Coronavirus – Health and Governance Issues

    What are Containment Zones?

    | Governance | Mains Paper 2: Health & Education

    In the current pandemic, all interventions are primarily geared towards reducing people-to-people contact, and thus breaking the chain of transmission to the extent possible. The demarcation of containment zones, which works at a more micro level, is likely to remain as long as the disease is spreading.

    Practice question for mains:

    Q.Discuss how the preemptive lockdowns imposed during earlier phases of coronavirus pandemic has led to reduced casualties in India.

    What are Containment Zones?

    • The lockdown, implemented in five phases, worked at the national level, while the classification of red, orange and green districts operated at the state and inter-district levels.
    • Demarcation of containment zones is done within a town, village, or municipal or panchayat area.
    • Neighbourhoods, colonies, or housing societies where infected people live are sealed, and access is restricted.
    • Containment zones are where the restrictions on movement and interaction are the most severe.
    • In many cities, the entire demarcated area is barricaded and the entry and exit points closed. Only the very basic supplies and services are allowed inside.

    Who defines the containment zones?

    • It is the district, town or panchayat authorities that decide which areas have to be marked as containment zones, how large they would be, and what kind of restrictions would apply.
    • The rules for the national lockdown, for example, were set by the central government, while the state governments decided what restrictions to impose on districts.
    • The district administration, Municipal Corporation or panchayat bodies exercise a great deal of discretion in the demarcation of containment zones.
    • The definition and time period vary and are continuously reviewed and updated.

    How are they demarcated?

    • The parameters used are similar, but the exact criteria applied to vary, and usually depends on local conditions. These have also evolved with time, and are under constant review.
    • In general, containment zones are getting smaller with time as the number of cases is increasing — from entire localities to colonies or neighbourhood, to streets and lanes, to particular buildings, and now just particular floors.
    • As of now, in Delhi, a containment zone is declared if three or more infections are detected.
    • The perimeter of the containment zone is also different in different cities.

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