CURRENT AFFAIRS
TOPICS
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India’s changing goal posts over coal
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Needed, education data that engages the poor parent
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Indus Water Treaty
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Q4 GDP growth decelerates to 4.1%
India’s changing goal posts over coal
- Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said India’s transition away from coal as a fuel for power would be hampered by the Russia Ukraine war.
Why is the ‘move away from coal’ so important
- About 80% of the world’s energy requirements are met by coal, natural gas and oil
- However, the worst culprit of them all is coal, which emits nearly twice as much carbon dioxide as natural gas and about 60% more than oil, on a kilogram to kilogram comparison
- Global warming
- Unprecedented natural calamities.
- Climate change
- Respiratory disorders
- The power sector in India accounts for 49% of total carbon dioxide emissions, compared with the global average of 41%.
What is the extent of India’s dependence on coal?
- Coal is still inexpensive compared with other sources of energy
- Coal can give you power on demand
- According to the IEA’s Coal Report 2021, India’s coal consumption will increase at an average annual rate of 3.9% to 1.18 billon tonnes in 2024.
- As of February 2022, the installed capacity for coal based power generation across the country was 2.04 lakh megawatt (MW). This accounts for about 51.5% of power from all sources
- Natural gas as fuel accounted for 6.3% and Renewable energy sources accounted for 27% of all installed capacity
RETIRED VS NEW COAL BASED POWER PLANTS
- Even though government of India taking steps to stop giving permissions to new coal based power plants but this is the position in ground level
- India addedn6,765 MW power capacity based on coal as fuel. But only 2,335 MW was retired. ( For FY20 )
- Due to population explosion and industrialisation power consumption is increasing over 4% every year, so coal based energy still plays important role in present and future as well.
How has war made India’s move away from coal difficult
- The international cost of natural gas has zoomed in the recent past
- While renewable energy sources are cheaper than coal, their ability to generate power consistently is subject to the whims of nature — the wind and the Sun.
- Storage technologies are still not mature enough to help renewable energy sources become reliable generators of power.
Is there a coal availability crisis that is exacerbating our problems?
- Covid-19 lock down
- Policy changes (privatisation of coal mining)
- Coal India, the country’s largest supplier of the dry fuel is set to import coal for the first time since 2015.
- The aim of the exercise is to avoid a repeat of the power outage crisis that India faced recently.
Needed, education data that engages the poor parent
Context:
- Very poor state of government school infrastructure and not much Involvement of poor parent in the school education leading to abysmal quality education among children.
Importance of data
- Data on school education is collected to measure and monitor, fix flaws and reward achievements at the State and the national levels.
- Despite near consensus among policymakers and those who produce the data, that parents are one of the key constituencies of school data, and efforts to disseminate data among them not properly addressed.
- The poor will speak when the data speaks to them and they can speak to the authorities empowered to act.
What needs to be done
- To inspire transformation, data has to be linked with a vision of school education which addresses the anxieties and aspirations of the children and parents.
- Community based consultative bodies such as the school management committees and parent teacher committees could become platforms to facilitate this.
- Strengthening teacher capacity for multilingual classrooms.
- Vision of schooling will balance immediate, tangible, popularly understandable objectives such as reading, writing as well as livelihood relevant skills and knowledge.
- Vision will include long term and abstract objectives such as peer connections, negotiating social diversity, and curiosity for new knowledge and experiences.
What we lack and need is data which can hold the local vision of education and local actors accountable as much as the one we have right now, which focuses on the national one
Indus Water Treaty
Context:
- Recently Indian and Pakistani negotiators ended another round of talks as part of the Indus Water Treaty on “cordial” terms.
About the treaty
- Indus Waters Treaty, treaty, signed on September 19, 1960, between India and Pakistan and brokered by the World Bank.
- The Treaty gives control over the waters of the three “eastern rivers” — the Beas, Ravi and Sutlej to India.
- Three “western rivers” — the Indus, Chenab and Jhelum to Pakistan.
- The treaty allows India to use the western river waters for limited irrigation use and unlimited non-consumptive use for such applications as power generation, navigation, fish culture, etc.
- It lays down detailed regulations for India in building projects over the western rivers
Success of the treaty
- India and Pakistan have not engaged in any water wars, despite engaging in several military conflicts.
- Most disagreements and disputes have been settled via legal procedures, provided for within the framework of the treaty.
- The Indus Waters Treaty is considered one of the most successful water sharing endeavours in the world today
Q4 GDP growth decelerates to 4.1%
Context:
- India’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth slowed to a four quarter low of 4.1% during the January-March period, from 5.4% in the preceding quarter.
Reasons:
- Manufacturing output decreased (0.2% decreased)
- The contact dependent and employment intensive trade, hotels, transport, communication & services related to broadcasting sector continued to languish below pre pandemic levels.
- High commodity prices and inflation.
- Contribution of net exports to real GDP growth was negative
- Sri Lanka economic crisis.
- Russia Ukraine war (global supply chain disruptions)
Bright spots
- Private consumption is increased
- Investment rate in the economy rose to 33.6% in Q4, the highest since Q3 of 2019-20.
- India’s core sector output expanded 8.4% in April except steel and crude oil remaining six sectors are growing positively for example electricity growth rate is 10.7% year on year.
- Fiscal deficit improved to 6.71% of the FY22 GDP over the revised budget estimate of 6.9% mainly on account of higher tax realisation.
UPSC Civil Services Daily Current Affairs 1st June 2022
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