The Hindu - 13 July 2022 - Daily Current Affairs

Tnpsc Salem

July 13, 2022

Daily Current Affairs for TNPSC Group Exams, Upsc Exams, SSC, RRB, BANK & All Government Exams – The Hindu – 13 July 2022

1. Slash GST on single-use plastic alternatives

Page 3.
Govt Policies and Interventions, Environment, Conservation.
The Delhi government on Tuesday wrote to the Centre, requesting a reduction in GST rates on raw materials used for manufacturing alternatives to single use plastic (SUP) items. Reducing GST rates on the alternatives and their raw materials will encourage producers and consumers to switch to alternatives.
Also, it will facilitate better implementation of single-use plastic ban on the ground and encourage availability of these alternatives for the banned items in the supply chain.

2. Create more jobs, revamp employment policy

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Human Resources, Employment, Govt Policies and Interventions.
The Government of India has recently announced its plan to create 10 lakh government jobs in the next 18 months. Of about 40 lakh sanctioned posts, 22% posts are now vacant and the Government will fill these posts in 18 months.
Though the announcement has been called a “historic step in the interest of the youth” and as “raising a new hope and confidence among youth” by some top Government leaders, the plan has serious problems.

3. The scale of municipal finances is inadequate

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Local Self Governance, Constitution.
The health of municipal finances is a critical element of municipal governance which will determine whether India realises her economic and developmental promise. The 74th Constitution Amendment Act was passed in 1992 mandating the setting up and devolution of powers to urban local bodies (ULBs) as the lowest unit of governance in cities and towns. Constitutional provisions were made for ULBs’ fiscal empowerment.

4. A guarantor of free speech

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Constitution, Govt Policies and Interventions, Fundamental Rights.
The Indian Constitution is fundamentally liberal. There is no stipulation that makes contempt of the Constitution a serious felony. The Constituent Assembly, which drafted the Constitution, borrowed heavily from the Government of India Act, 1935, which was introduced and used by the British for over 12 years in this country.
The Constitution is not a holy scripture, but an organic document. Deviating from the constitutional norm of rendering affirmative justice to the socially and educationally backward classes, it introduced the 103rd Amendment to provide reservation for economically poorer sections.

5. Slow Wheels of Justice

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Judiciary.
More than 4 crore cases are pending in the lower courts of India, of which about 25% have been pending over 5 years.
Because of the incessant delays, undertrials as a share of total prisoners have peaked at 76% in 2020.

6. Mediation Bill: Not getting the Act together

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Constitution, Governance, Govt Policies and Interventions.
The Bill recognises that mediation has come of age and needs to be treated as a profession, which is a huge improvement over the part-time honorarium basis it had in the court- annexed mediation schemes. The governing mechanism, which is the Council, has three members: a retired senior judge, a person with experience of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) law and an academic who has taught ADR. It does not have even one single mediator in the body.
While the government has called for comments on the draft Bill,
what is missing is the element of focused and engaged discussion after comments are sent.

7. Centre has no new data on child labour

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Issues Relating to Children, Fundamental Rights, Constitution, Govt Policies and Interventions.
The Centre does not have any data on child labour in the country and a reason for this is the drying up of budgetary provisions meant for the National Child Labour Project (NCLP), which had been monitoring the issue for about three decades.

8. NASA telescope dives deep into the universe

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Science, Space and Technology, Growth and Development.
NASA on Tuesday unveiled images from the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most powerful orbital observatory ever launched. The image was a “deep field” photo of a distant galaxy cluster, SMACS 0723, revealing the most detailed glimpse of the early universe recorded to date. Among the other Webb subjects were two enormous clouds of gas and dust blasted into space by stellar explosions to form incubators for new stars — the Carina Nebula and the Southern Ring Nebula, each thousands of light years away from Earth.
The collection also included fresh images of another galaxy cluster known as Stephan’s Quintet, first discovered in 1877.