28 JULY 2023

Topic 1 : Sage Portal And Sacred Portal

Context: Minister of State for Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment informed the Rajya Sabha about the portals.
 

About the Portals: 

• SAGE Portal:
  • The SAGE (Seniorcare Aging Growth Engine) initiative and SAGE portal is for elderly persons.
  • The portal would encourage entrepreneurs and start-ups to enter the “silver economy” and thereby promote business innovation.
  • It will provide a “one-stop access” of elderly care products and services by credible start-ups.
• SACRED Portal:
  • The Senior Able Citizens for Re-Employment in Dignity (SACRED) Portal was launched allowing citizens above 60 years of age to register on the designated portal and to find jobs and work opportunities.
  • It will thus bring people together by virtual matching of preferences by providing the senior citizens a platform to connect with the private enterprises for certain positions.

Senior Citizens in India:

• As per Census Report-2011, population of senior citizens is 10.38 crore, amounting to 8.6% of the total population of the country.
• Government of India’s National Commission on Population’s Report of the Technical Group on Population Projections (2011-2036) for India and States, released in July 2020, states that population of senior citizens in 2036 will be 22.7 Crore i.e., 15% of the total population of India.Topic 2 : Mission Vatsalya Scheme

Context: Minister of Women and Child Development informed the Rajya Sabha about Vatsalya Scheme.
 

About the scheme:

• Mission Vatsalya Scheme is a roadmap to achieve development and child protection priorities aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
• It lays emphasis on child rights, advocacy and awareness along with strengthening of the juvenile justice care and protection system with the motto to ‘leave no child behind’.
• The Scheme is implemented as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme.
• Funding:
  • Funds under the Mission Vatsalya Scheme are released according to the requirements and demands made by the States/UTs.
  • The fund sharing pattern is in the ratio of 60:40 between Centre and State & Union Territories with Legislature respectively.
  • The fund sharing pattern between Centre and State is in the ratio of 90:10 for the North-Eastern States.
  • For Union Territories without Legislature, it is 100% central share.
• Mission Vatsalya scheme supports the children through Non-Institutional Care under Private Aided Sponsorship wherein interested sponsors can provide assistance to children in difficult circumstances.Topic 3 : The Holocaust

Context: A recently released film has caused an uproar for its insensitive use of the Holocaust as a metaphor for a troubled relationship.
 

About the Holocaust:

• The Holocaust refers to the systematic state-sponsored persecution and murder of some six million European Jews by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime, between 1933 and 1945.
• The word ‘holocaust’ comes from the Greek holokauston, meaning an offering consumed by fire.
• Why Jews?
  • The Jews were a small minority in Germany (less than one per cent of the country’s population) but were wealthier than most Germans.
  • Hitler’s ideology deemed Jewish people to be the villains in Germany’s downfall: from its loss in the World War I to the economic precarity that Germans faced in the 1930s.
  • He passed a number of laws restricting Jewish people’s civil and political rights and let Nazi party hoodlums run amok, terrorising Jewish communities.
  • In 1939 Hitler undertook the infamous Kristallnacht – where mobs of Nazi thugs destroyed thousands of Jewish buildings and synagogues, and beat up and killed Jewish people across Germany and occupied Austria in 1938.
  • Hitler invaded Poland, beginning what would become World War II.
  • This was a part of Hitler’s expansionist policy to provide the Germanic races with lebensraum or “living space”.
• The Final Solution
  • This was a plan for the systematic rounding up and genocide of millions of Jews.
  • This began with increasing ghettoisation of Jewish people, which was followed by forced deportations.
  • Millions were sent to concentration camps where they were made to do forced labour and kept in appalling conditions.
  • Some of these camps were also equipped with sophisticated gas chambers which were used for the collective murder of Jews and other “undesirable” population groups.
  • The largest and most infamous of such camps was Auschwitz, located in occupied Poland.
  • The camp was finally liberated by the Red Army in 1945.

This day is commemorated since 2005 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

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Topic 4 : The anatomy of the Yamuna floodplains

Context: The water levels of Yamuna hit a 60-year-high and waters advanced towards the Taj Mahal for the first time in half a century.

What is a floodplain?

About the River and its significance:

• The Yamuna is the second-largest tributary of the Ganges by discharge and the longest tributary in India.
• It originates in the Yamunotri Glacier on the southwestern slopes of Bandarpunch peaks of the Lower Himalaya in Uttarakhand.
• It merges with the Ganges at Triveni Sangam, Allahabad.
  • This is a site of the Kumbh Mela, a Hindu festival held every 12 years.
• Yamuna is a lifeline to five States, and its floodplains are a charging point.
• As part of river systems, floodplains slow water runoff during floods, recharge groundwater and store excess water, replenishing the city’s water supply.
• When you have sluggish flow, the surplus water stored in the floodplain is released back during the non-monsoon season.
• Delhi recorded similarly devastating floods in 1978, 1988 and 1995 which inundated floodplains, adversely impacting their health.

Settlements on these floodplains:

• The first major non-agriculture settlements appeared after Independence when refugees from Western Punjab fled to Delhi.
• The planning era propelled urbanisation in the 1950s and ‘60s, witnessing the construction of the first thermal power plant (employing people as labourers to unload coal from trains and clear fly ash), the Ring Road and Rajghat Samadhi.
• The 1982 Asian Games brought more than one million migrant labourers from neighbouring States.
  • Workers eventually settled on the open plain along the western embankment after the Games.
• The population boom outpaced Delhi’s ability to build a proper sewage network and spiked Yamuna’s pollution.
• The Delhi High Court in 2004 ordered eviction of “unauthorised” settlements on the floodplains, demolishing shanties and evicting more than two lakh people.

Delhi’s Master Plan outline

• The Yamuna floodplain was designated as a protected area free from construction in the Delhi Masterplan of 1962.
• The Central Ground Water Authority in 2000 also notified the floodplains as ‘protected’ for groundwater management.
• The draft Master Plan For Delhi 2041 divides Delhi into 18 zonal areas, designating Yamuna’s floodplains as ‘Zone O’, delineated in two parts:
  • river zone (active floodplain) and
  • riverfront (regulated construction is allowed).
    • The latter is where structures such as Akshardham Temple and Commonwealth Village have been built.

Various Warnings:

• The South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) in 2020 found large parts of the Yamuna floodplains and riverbed were grossly abused due to lax implementation.
  • The creation of new embankments, guide bunds are fragmenting the floodplain, promoting encroachments, and also leaving a trail of construction and demolition debris into riverbed and floodplains.
• An Expert Committee in 2012 formed to examine Delhi’s Riverfront Development Scheme warned against any construction on floodplains.
  • The areas proposed under the Yamuna Riverfront Development (YRDF) plan — which proposes biodiversity parks and ‘recreational’ activities — were within the active floodplain.
  • It could affect the topography, increase pollution and affect flood-carrying capacity.

Impact of encroachments:

• Impact on groundwater recharge:
  • If there is building activity on areas reserved for recharge, groundwater is lost.
  • The layers of sediments of floodplains create aquifers contributing to the river channel, which in turn rejuvenates the groundwater.
  • But encroachments stop this two-way exchange.
  • The river is unable to transport flood waters downstream during monsoons, wet the lands or deposit soil along its banks to preserve the riverine ecosystem.
• Less protection against floods:
  • Floodplains also protect against devastating flash floods by allowing excess water to spread out and storing that surplus.
  • However, encroachments restrict the river to a small channel.
  • Any intense rainfall activity (India received 26% more rainfall in July than expected) swells the river, expanding in height not in width, eventually spilling over with devastating intensity.
  • Climate change has intensified rains in frequency and severity, and seen in the Yamuna floods, runoff water comes as a huge gushing flow in a small span of time.

Way forward:

• A model draft Bill for defining floodplains and zoning was circulated in 1975.
• Only four States have drafted a National Floodplains Zoning Policy so far.
• It is reductive to locate floodplains as a site of conflict between development and nature.
• Instead, action can be focused on creating climate-resilient infrastructures, de-silting drains, creating green areas and improving drainage systems.
• The Yamuna rejuvenation should follow the total no-go logic for the floodplains.
• All proposed projects should also be rapidly re-examined.
• Freeing the floodplains can ride the appetite for bold urban shifts towards sustainability and lifestyles that are pro-environment.Topic 5 : Scheme for financial assistance to veteran artists

Context: Financial assistance is given by the Ministry of Culture to the artists who are facing difficulties due to old age.

Key details:

• The Ministry of Culture administers a Scheme by the name of “Scheme for Financial Assistance for Veteran Artists”.
• This is for senior artists aged 60 years and above who have contributed significantly in their specialized fields of performing arts and culture, but are facing financial difficulties due to old age.
• Under the scheme, financial assistance of Rs. 6000/- per month is given to the selected artists aged 60 years and above.
• Their annual income is not more than Rs. 48,000/- upon receipt of Digital Life Certificate once in a year and annual income certificate once in every Five years.
• It is a Central Sector Scheme under which financial assistance is provided to the beneficiaries directly and is not routed through the States or Union Territories.

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Topic 6 : Stapled visa

Context: India withdrew its eight-athlete wushu contingent from the Summer World University Games beginning in Chengdu after China issued stapled visas to three athletes from the team who belong to Arunachal Pradesh.
 

About stapled visa

• A stapled visa is simply an unstamped piece of paper that is attached by a pin or staples to a page of the passport and can be torn off or detached at will.
• This is different from a regular visa that is affixed to the passport by the issuing authority and stamped.
• China has made it a practice to issue stapled visas to Indian nationals from Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.
• It says the visas are valid documents, but the Government of India has consistently refused to accept this position.
   

Significance of passports and visas:

• Passports, visas, and other kinds of immigration controls reiterate the idea of a nation-state and its sovereignty which is inalienable and inviolable.
• A passport is the certificate of its holder’s identity and citizenship.
• Since nation-states reserve the right to control and regulate who enters or leaves their borders, a passport and visa entitle their holders to travel freely and under legal protection across international borders.

Reason behind China’s Move:

• China disputes India’s unequivocal and internationally accepted sovereignty over Arunachal Pradesh.
• It challenges the legal status of the McMahon Line, the boundary between Tibet and British India that was agreed at the Convention Between Great Britain, China, and Tibet at the Simla Convention of 1914.
• It is this disagreement that lies at the heart of Chinese claims over the position of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), and its repeated transgressions into Indian territory.
• China claims some 90,000 sq km of Arunachal Pradesh as its territory.
• It calls the area “Zangnan” in the Chinese language and makes repeated references to “South Tibet”.
• Chinese maps show Arunachal Pradesh as part of China, and sometimes parenthetically refer to it as “so-called Arunachal Pradesh”.
• China makes periodic efforts to underline this unilateral claim to Indian territory, and to undermine the sovereignty of India over parts of Indian territory.
• As part of these efforts, it issues lists of Chinese names for places in Arunachal Pradesh and takes steps such as issuing stapled visas.Topic 7 : Circular Economy

Context: Resource Efficiency Circular Economy Industry Coalition (RECEIC) was recently launched on the sidelines of the fourth G-20 Environment and Climate Sustainability Working Group (ECSWG) and Environment and Climate Ministers’ meeting.
 

Circular Economy

• Circular Economy aims to eliminate all forms ofjunk from the market.
  • Junk refers to any inefficient utilization of resources or assets.
• It is a restorative approach to production and consumption that involves redesigning, recovering, and reusing products and materials to reduce environmental impacts.
• Circular models seek to eliminate four different kinds of waste:
  • Wasted Resources:
    • Materials and energy that cannot be effectively recycled over time
  • Wastage Capacities:
    • Products and assets that are underutilized
  • Wasted Lifecycles:
    • Products that prematurely end due to planned obsolescence or a lack of second-life options
  • Wasted Embedded Values:
    • Components, materials, and energy not retrieved from waste streams

Significance of Circular Economy

• The transition to a circular economy could result in an additional US$ 4.5 trillion in global economic output by 2030.
• India’s circular economy development route might generate an annual value of US$ 218 billion (Rs 14 lakh crores) by 2030 and US$ 624 billion (Rs 40 lakh crores) by 2050.
• By 2030, India is expected to be the world’s third-largest economy, accounting for approximately 8.5% of the global GDP.
• The recycled Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) plastic industry in India is estimated to be worth around US$ 400-550 million.
  • In India, PET is recycled at a rate of 90%, which is higher than in Japan (72%), Europe (48%), and the United States (31%).
  • Thus, there are enormous opportunities for a circular economy in India. 

What India can achieve through circular economy?

• Leading hub for technology and innovation
  • With its existing IT dominance and pool of tech talent, India is well-positioned to use digital technology to create innovative and cutting-edge circular businesses.
  • This has the potential to accelerate India to the forefront of the global circular economy revolution.
• Early success compared to global economies
  • India is one of the fastest developing economies and can easily take up opportunities to use circular methods of production, building sustainable designs.
  • As mature economies have a linear lock-in and switching costs would be costly and time-taking.
  • Therefore, as an emerging nation, India has a competitive advantage over mature economies.

• Easy acceptance of circular products
  • Several circular aspects are ingrained in Indian mindsets like vehicle over-utilization and repair or extensive recovery and recycling of post-use materials at the household level.
  • Thus, this widespread cultural acceptance makes India a larger marketplace.
• Cost-centric Market
  • The cost of providing services to consumers will be cheaper for those who would take the circular path than that of the traditional take-make-waste model.
  • Incorporating circular practices in India could result in US$ 624 billion in savings across construction, food and agriculture, and mobility by 2050.
  • This will contribute to widespread adoption, particularly among India’s cost-conscious consumers.

Government Initiatives

• E-Waste Management Policy

Year	Title	Objective	Applicability
2008	Guidelines for Environmentally Sound Management of E-Waste	It categorized e-waste based on its numerous constituents and compositions and placed a strong emphasis on E-waste management and treatment procedures.The policy included ideas like Extended Producer Responsibility.	Producer and end-of-line player in the supply chain
2011	The E-waste (Management and Handling) Rules	The terms “electrical and electronic equipment” and “e-waste” refer to waste electrical and electronic equipment, whole or in part, or rejects from their manufacturing and repair process, which are intended to be thrown away.	Producer, consumer or bulk consumer, collection centre,dismantler and recycler
2016	E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2016	Electrical and electronic waste, including both whole and unfinished discarded equipment from their manufacture and repair processes, is referred to as “e-waste” and “electrical and electronic equipment.	Expanded to the manufacturers, dealers, refurbishers, and Producer ResponsibilityOrganization (PRO)

• Plastic Waste Management (Second Amendment) Rules, 2022
  • The Union Environment Ministry has launched this policy to mandate to increase in the thickness of plastic carry bags to over 120 microns and the phase-out of some single-use plastic products.
• Swachh Bharat Mission – Urban 2.0 (SBM-U2.0)
  • It aims to achieve the objective of safe sanitation in urban areas by making all cities “Garbage Free,” guaranteeing grey and black water management in all cities.
  • It also aims at making all urban local bodies open defecation free (ODF+) and those with a population of less than 1 lakh as ODF++.
  •  In order to effectively manage solid waste, the mission will concentrate on source segregation of trash, using the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) as a guideline, scientific processing of all sorts of municipal solid waste, and repair of former dumpsites.
• City Investments to Innovate, Integrate and Sustain (CITIIS) 2.0:
  • The Government launched the City Investments to Innovate, Integrate and Sustain (CITIIS) 2.0 to promote circular economy in 18 smart cities to be selected through a competition.
  • The total funding for the scheme will come from loans and a grant of Rs 106 crore from the European Union.
  • The programme starts this year and will run until 2027, with the support of the National Institute of Urban Affairs.

Benefits of Circular Economy

• Protection of the environment:
  • By lowering emissions, consuming fewer natural resources, and producing less trash.
• Benefits for the local economy:
  • By encouraging production models that rely on the reuse of nearby waste as raw material.
• Drives employment growth:
  • It fosters the development of a new, more inventive, and competitive industrial model, resulting in higher economic growth and more employment.
• Promotes resource independence:
  • Reusing local resources can reduce reliance on imported raw materials.
     

Concerns:

• Despite the Government’s policy efforts the progress has been underwhelming.
• One of the major contributing factors is lack of a clear vision towards the end-goal of India’s circular economy mission and gaps in actual implementation of the policies.
• Industry is also reluctant in adopting the circular economy model due to:
  • supply chain limitations,
  • lack of incentives to invest,
  • complex recycling processes and
  • lack of information to support participation in reusing/ recycling/re-manufacturing processes.
• Efforts are made at the very end of value chains, resulting in sub-optimal economic and environmental outcomes.
   

Way forward:

• Changes in Legislation:
  • legislative mandates for the procurement of recycled/ secondary raw materials in the initial stages of the production cycle,
  • developing a unified legislation addressing the circular economy from a regulatory perspective.
• A streamlined framework:
  • A streamlined framework on circular economy reporting, clarifying the mechanism surrounding trading of extended producer responsibility certificates and providing fiscal incentives to businesses to complete the supply chain will also help.
• Industry collaboration:
  • The government’s initiatives need to be in conjunction with implementable actions with industry collaboration to reap the benefits of the circular economy.
  • A combination of the government’s current efforts along with relevant implementation strategies will instil a sense of confidence in businesses to adopt the circular model of production.
• Need for formalization:
  • More than 90% of the e-waste generated is handled by the unorganized informal sector.
  • With the right technology and a combination of multiple waste streams in an integrated recycling facility, 98-99% recovery is possible. 
• Critical metals:
  • Circular economy in critical metals is going to be one of the major contributors in India achieving its net-zero target even as industries such as EVs, renewable energy and electronic equipment prosper.