Current Affairs - 10th June 2023 - Sarat Chandra IAS Academy

DAILY ENRICHMENT PROGRAMME (DEP)

Today Topics List:

1. El Nino: The Warming of Pacific Ocean

2. Allotment of Houses in Lutyens’ Delhi

3. POCSO and the Kerala High Court

4. MSP Hike and its impact

5. Government will regulate AI if it brings harm to its users

6. Piped potable water – Diarrhoea deaths

El Nino: The Warming of Pacific Ocean

- News:National Oceanic and atmospheric Administration of USA has announced El Nino is back in Pacific Ocean after 7 years i.e., 2016.

El Nino: What is this phenomenon?

El Nino which means ‘Little boy’ in Spanish, is a climate pattern that develops along equatorial Pacific Ocean.
- It is a recurring phenomenon and occurs in intervals ranging from 2 to 7 years.
In the central east and central Pacific, the Ocean experiences unusual warming between International Date line (180^oLongitude) to the west of Galapagos Island in South America.
In the neutral phase of El Nino Southern oscillations (ESNO) ,
- the trade winds blow west along equator and take the warm waters from south America towards Asia i.e., Easterlies (Winds that come from east)
During El Nino, these trade winds weaken and blow from west to east i.e., becomes westerlies.
- This leads the masses warm water to central eastern equatorial pacific ocean and warmer than average sea surface temperatures along the equatorial pacific ocean.

Impact of El Nino:

Globally, It is associated with severe heat waves, floods and droughts in the past.
- In India, over the last 100 years, we have 18 drought years, out of which 13 were associated with El Nino.
- Hence, there is a correlation between El Nino and poor rainfall in India.
While there were 7 El Nino’s between 1900-1950, the frequency has increased to 15 during 1951-2021.
- Of the 15 El Nino’s 9 summer monsoon seasons over the country recorded deficient rain by more than 90 % of the Long period average (LPA).

Allotment of Houses in Lutyens’ Delhi

- News:AAP political party’s Member of Parliament Raghav Chadha, went to court after Rajya Sabha secretariat cancelled the allotment of his official bungalow in New

Delhi, a type which is not usually allotted to first time MPs.

The first time MPs were allotted a type V accommodation
The MPs who are former MLAs, ministers of state, Deputy speaker of Loksabha, Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha, Nominated members, floor leaders of parties, MPs who have completed atleast one term in Parliament were allotted type VI or twin flats accommodation.
Type VII are meant for MPs who are former Cabinet ministers ,former chief ministers, Governors and speaker of Lok Sabha.

Different types of Government Accommodations:

In the Lutyens’ Bungalow zone(LBZ), there were around 600 single storey standalone buildings categorized from Type I to Type VIII.
- Type VIII are the largest and most prestigious, are given to those mentioned under Type VII plus former chief Election commissioners.
- There are 520 Type VI and Type VII bungalows.
The properties are placed under ‘pools’ all maintained by Central Public works Department (CPWD):
- Lok Sabha
- Rajya Sabha
- Supreme Court
New occupants can renovate only the interiors but not the exteriors as LBZ is a regulated Zone for development.
- The renovations will be carried out by CPWD as per the occupant’s requirements.

Who allots houses for whom?

The directorate of estates in Union Housing and Urban affairs Ministry allots houses to
- Union ministers
- Eligible Central Government officers
- Heads of National Commissions
The Secretariats of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha are responsible for allotment to their MPs.
- Both houses have their own House committees, which approve allotments and cancellations.

Deviation in case of Raghav Chadha:

The house committee chairman is authorized to make exceptions on case-to-case basis.
- Raghav has made representation to the Chairman of Rajya Sabha, when the Chair of the house committee is vacant between July 2022 – November 2022.
- This representation was approved by Rajya Sabha Chairman.

POCSO and the Kerala High Court

The case:

In June 2020, a women rights activist posted a video on social media showing her two children aged 14 and 8, painting on her “semi nude torso” with a hash tag “Body Art and Politics”
- The women was charged with an offence of subjecting her children to an obscene act under Protection of children from sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012.
Section 9 (n) read with section 10, involves ‘sexual assault’ by child’s relative.
Section 13-14, using children for pornographic purposes and its punishment
Section 15, punishment for storing child pornographic material.
- The Woman was also charged under Information Technology Act, 2000 and Juvenile Justice Act, 2015.
Section 67B (a),(b) and (c) of the IT Act, 2000, punishment for publishing or electronically transmitting obscene material, which depicts children in sexually explicit acts.
Section 67B(a), when the material depicts children engaged in sexually explicit Acts.
Section 67B(b), when children are depicted in an obscene, indecent, and sexually explicit manner.
Section 67 B (c), is about the cultivation, enticement, or induction of children into online relationships for sexually explicit acts.
Section 75 of the JJ Act, 2015, punishment for cruelty to children, includesassaulting, abandoning, abusing, exposing, or willfully neglecting them to cause unnecessary mental or physical suffering.
- Kerala HC said, Section 7 of the POCSO Act says sexual assault requires “sexual intent” which includes,
  - Touching child’s private parts or making the child touch private parts of other persons and any other act with sexual intent involving physical contact without penetration.
  - In the case, there is absence of sexual intent and stated that the relationship between mother and children is one of the most solen and pious and that the mother is only sensitizing her children regarding viewing nude bodies as normal.

Definition of Obscenity and corresponding court cases:

“It is an act which is extremely offensive under contemporary community standards of morality and decency; grossly repugnant to the generally accepted notions of what is appropriate”- Black’s law dictionary.
In Ranjit D Udeshi Vs State of Maharashtra (1965) Supreme court followed ‘Hicklin test’ laid out in Queen Vs Hicklin ruling of UK in 1868.
The court held H Lawrence’s book Lady Chatterley’s lover, to be obscene under section 292 of Indian penal code,1860.
- The test is whether the “tendency of the matter charged as obscene must be to deprave and corrupt those, whose minds are open to such immoral influences and into whose hands a publication of the sort may fall”
In 2014, in Aveek Sarkar Vs State of Bengal, the top court applied contemporary community standards test, which says,
- Obscenity should be gauged according to standards that reflect the sensibilities and tolerance levels of an average reasonable person.
In 1996, In Bobby art international Vs Om pal singhhoon and others, depicting nudity and sexual violence in the film Bandit Queen does not amount to obscenity as it underscores social reality. It must be considered in the context of the message

Kerala HC said, nudity and obscenity are not always synonymous and it was wrong to consider nudity immoral. Kerala is a state where women of certain lower castes fought for right to cover their breasts, we have murals, deities displayed in the semi nude in ancient temples , which are considered artistic or even holy.

MSP Hike and its impact

- News: Centre has announced Minimum Support price to 17 crops in this Kharif season. MSP is not just important for farmers but also consumers hence occasionally politicized.
  - The MSP for this Kharif season will go up by an average of 7%.
  - This is the highest MSP increase in the last five years and second highest in the decade.
  - But, it is not as high as pre-election year hikes (34.1% , 19.6 %, 15.2 % ) in the last 3 pre-election years.
  - But, as the cost of cultivation has also increased, hence this spike would ensure less distress in farm sector.

What is MSP:

It is a support price announced by central government to provide safety net to farmers.
- Sometimes, states also add additional bonus to the amount.
Farmers in India has limited bargaining power in market due to lack of warehousing and cold storages and climate related calamities.
- If market prices are < cost of production – Farmer distress.
- Farm distress could cut the production of certain crop for which loss has occurred the coming year.
- This will reduce the supply, there by increasing prices which will affect consumers.
MSP is a promise by the government that it will procure the produce at announce prices, which include, basic cost of cultivation.
It is also a tool in the hands of policy makers to tweak the production pattern.
- It can increase or decrease production of a particular crop by increasing or decreasing MSP.
It is to be noted that, Government only buys few crops and from only few states not all the crops from all the states.
- While 45% of paddy is procured, only 25 % in case of cotton and 1-3% of pulses.
- It is concentrated in the states of
Punjab, Haryana, Western Uttara Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana for Paddy;
Telangana and Maharashtra for cotton;
Maharashtra and Karnataka for pulses.

Economic and political aspects of MSP:

The farm economy, does not follow market principles due to
- the strategic concern for food security
- Involvement of large population in farming which renders it less remunerative.
Politically, it aids government in power to win over farmers through announcement of higher MSPs.
Economically, it is not just confined to farmers but also consumers,
- While higher MSPs cools down farm distress it increases food inflation.
The trade off between the interests of farmers and consumers makes it difficult to decide.

Impact on Government Finances:

With higher MSPs and more procurement leads to higher storage and disbursal of subsidized food grains, this can lead to increase in food subsidy budgeting.

Way Forward: Though seems populist in nature in the pre-election year, the hike is sufficient to cover the increase in cost of production and reduce the farm sector distress to a large extent while the world is reeling under several economic constraints.

Government will regulate AI if it brings harm to its users.

- Artificial intelligence usersgenerally imply machines exhibiting human intelligence that includes
  - observing, reasoning, rationalizing,
  - decision making, manipulations,
  - learning from behavior and patterns,
  - communicating, analysing complex situations and performing tasks to achieve goals and targets.
- Sub fields of Artificial Intelligence:
  - Machine learning: in which computers are given the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed.
  - Autonomous systems: A system that learns on its own to perform various tasks
  - Language processing: The field of interaction between machines and human languages.
  - Robotics: While entirely is not just AI but there is a field of AI powered robots.

News on Regulation of AI in India:

Any regulation of AI in India would be done through the “prism of user harm”. Said Minister of state for electronics and information technology.
- While there is skepticism about AI applications in their current form that it can be disruptive and lead to job losses, minister says AI is very task oriented, reason or logic oriented at this stage yet.
- The Government said, it will not let platforms that harm the digital citizens operate in India, If they want to operate they must mitigate those harm”.
- The toxicity, illegality and criminality and user harm has been unfettered and the provision of safe harbour clause in 2008 in Information technology Act, 2000 is stated to be one of the reason for this.
Safe harbour refers to a legal immunity a platform holds for content posted by its users.
- The government is working on Digital India bill, touted as modern replacement of IT Act, 2000 which will be a way forward in addressing such concerns, says the minister.

Piped potable water – Diarrhoea deaths

- A World health Organization (WHO) study revealed that the success of Jal Jeeval mission in India, to provide piped drinking water to all of India would avert 4 Lakh deaths from diarrhoea.
  - This would also avoid 14 million Disability adjusted life years (DALY).
- DALY represents loss of the equivalent of one year of full health and are a way to account for the years of life lost due to premature mortality, and the years lived with disability, due to prevalent cause of a disease or health condition in a population.
  - Save close to 101 bn $
  - Save 66.6 million hours every day of time otherwise spent by women – collecting water

India – Piped water status:

Currently, there are 12.3 crore rural households or 62% having piped water from 3.2 crore (16.6% ) in 2019.
A fully functional tap water connection is defined as a household getting atleast55litres of per capita per day of potable water all through the year.
- Currently, potable water is being provided every second.
- Five states including Gujarat, Telangana, Goa, Haryana and Punjab and 3 UTs, Andaman Nicobar, Daman Diu Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Puducherry reported 100 % coverage.
Way Forward: Every dollar invested in sanitation interventions gives a $4.3 return in the form of reduced health care costs and the country through its Jal Jeevan Mission is heading towards the right direction.

Current Affairs – 10th June 2023