CLAT

The International Day of Forests celebrated on Thursday was marked by planting of saplings in Trichy and neighbouring Perambalur districts. Awareness on the need to conserve forests were driven home to students here on the occasion.

The Forest Department here celebrated the day by planting saplings inside the Tropical Butterfly Conservatory at Srirangam. Students of Government School at Melur village near Srirangam were taken on a visit to the conservatory in connection with the celebration.

Drawing, quiz and essay competitions were conducted for the students on topics related to forest and environment at the butterfly conservatory. Chief Conservator of Forests, Tiruchi T.V. Manjunatha while addressing the students emphasised the need to conserve forests and the importance of planting saplings to improve green cover.

He distributed prizes to students who emerged winners in various competitions. The District Forest Officer, Tiruchi, D. Sujatha and senior officials of the department participated. In neighbouring Perambalur, Collector V. Santha planted saplings at the Collectorate campus on the occasion.

Notable as important nineteenth-century novels by women, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights treat women very differently. Shelley produced a “masculine” text in which the fates of subordinate female characters seem entirely dependent on the actions of male heroes or anti-heroes. Bronte produced a more realistic narrative, portraying a world where men battle for the favors of apparently high-spirited, independent women. Nevertheless, these two novels are alike in several crucial ways. Many readers are convinced that the compelling mysteries of each plot conceal elaborate structures of allusion and fierce, though shadowy, moral ambitions that seem to indicate metaphysical intentions, though efforts by critics to articulate these intentions have generated much controversy. Both novelists use a storytelling method that emphasizes ironic disjunctions between different perspectives on the same events as well as ironic tensions that inhere in the relationship between surface drama and concealed authorial intention, a method I call an evidentiary narrative technique.

India’s high-profile Swachh Bharat programme has won it plaudits globally for its goal of providing sanitation to all, but as new survey data from the National Statistical Office (NSO) show, it remains a work in progress. The quest to equip houses in the countryside with a toilet has led to an expansion, but there was a deficit of about 28% as of October last year and not 5% as the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Gramin) had claimed. The declaration that the country has ended ___(1)___ in its rural areas, made to international acclaim on Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, must return to the wish list, going by this survey. It is extraordinary that many States that were declared to be free of open defecation simply did not qualify for the status, according to the NSO data. The Centre has disputed the survey results, but it should ideally treat it as a fresh assessment of how much ground is yet to be covered. The data could help it review performance in staes such as Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan, where the lack of toilets is reported to be higher than the national average. More fundamentally, the survey provides an opportunity to review other social determinants such as education, housing and water supply which have a strong influence on adoption of sanitation. It would be pointless to pursue sanitation as a separate ideal, if communities are unable to see its benefits due to overall deprivation.
Q. The government has decided to merge the National SampleSurvey Office (NSSO) with the What should come in place of blank ?

Read the passage given below and answer the questions based on it.

The European Parliament (EP) is the legislative branch of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union, it adopts European legislation, normally on a proposal from the European Commission. The Parliament is composed of [X] members (MEPs), intended to become 705 starting from the 2019–2024 legislature because of specific provisions adopted about Brexit. The Parliament represents the second-largest democratic electorate in the world [after the Parliament of (1)] and the largest trans-national democratic electorate in the world (375 million eligible voters in 2009).
EU Parliament intend to move a draft resolution on the CAA. The CAA is a matter that is entirely internal to India. Moreover, this legislation has been adopted by due process and through democratic means after a public debate in both Houses of Parliament,” sources in the government said.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) enables migrants/foreigners of six minority communities from three specified countries who have come to India because of persecution on grounds of their religion to apply for Indian citizenship.
The European Commission Vice-President/High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HR/VP) Josep Borell will first deliver a statement on “India's Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019”, the published plenary agenda says. The EU parliament had discussed developments in Jammu and Kashmir in September 2019, but had not ended in a vote. In October 2019 the government had even facilitated a visit by 22 EU MEPs to Delhi and Srinagar, but the effort doesn’t appear to have had the desired effect on the European Parliament.
Sources said the issues had been discussed when Mr. Borrell met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on the sidelines of the Raisina Dialogue conference earlier this month. The sources indicated that a visit by European Union envoys to Jammu and Kashmir, that has been discussed for several weeks, has now been put off until March this year, after the EU-India summit is held on March 13, but didn’t specify reasons for the delay.

Q. Which of the following acts also got amended along with citizenship act of 1955?

DIRECTIONS: Each passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.

Passage: Shark Research Institute (SRI) is a multidisciplinary non-profit scientific research organization that sponsors and conducts research on sharks and promotes the conservation of sharks. Founded in 1991 at Princeton, New Jersey, USA, SRI has field offices in Canada, the Galapagos Islands, Honduras, Mexico, South Africa, Taiwan and the Seychelles. The SRI works to correct misperceptions about sharks and stop the slaughter of 100 million sharks annually.

The shark has been a magnificent creation— perfectly adapted for a life of hunting food in the world’s oceans. It is almost certain that man first encountered the shark not long after he first began using the sea for food-gathering. The fact that sharks are absent from Egyptian and biblical records is no mystery. Given that, even today, much remains to be discovered about the shark, it is not surprising that the Greek word ketos, and the Hebrew word tannin were used to describe any great fish in these times. The earliest known writings specifically about sharks are to be found in Greek records. Herodotus described shark attacks in 492 BC, and Aristotle was able to distinguish between species by 355 Bc) It was only when Europeans first entered the Indian and Pacific oceans that they began to encounter the shark on a regular basis. Until the 1560s the shark was generally known as tiburon—a Spanish word.

The English word 'shark', which appeared at about this time, may have come from the German word schurke, meaning Villain. It was in the South Pacific islands where the shark gained its god-like status. The Polynesian people lived on and from the sea, and had plenty of opportunity for gaining fairly intimate knowledge of the creature’s habits. Tales of the shark began to be told. The most well-known is that of Kamo-hoa-lii, the shark-god who lived under the island of Hawaii in great submarine caverns. He occasionally liked to swim in a secluded pool in the Waipo valley. Here he first saw the human girl, Kalei. She was the most beautiful human girl he had ever seen, and he fell in love with her. Summoning all his magical powers, he transformed himself into a hand­some young man. He successfully courted and wed her. Just before the birth of their son he warned her that the child must never be fed meat. The boy, named Nanaue, was born healthy and normal—except for a shark’s mouth on his back between his shoulder blades. This his mother disguised with a cloak which he wore at all times. When he grew old enough to have to eat with the men, he accidentally ate some roast pork, and developed a craving for meat. He also found that he could turn himself into a shark at will. This helped him hunt fish whose bodies assuaged his craving for fresh flesh. And so he grew to be a man. He was talked about behind his back. People found the fact that he was reclusive and never removed his strange cloak, but they never attributed the occasional disappearance of a vil­lager from their favourite bathing pool to him. It was only when he was conscripted to work on one of the royal plantations that his secret was discovered. Some young men began teasing him about wearing the cloak even when working hard in the hot, tropical sun. One thing led to another and the cloak was torn from his back revealing the snapping shark jaws between his shoulder-blades. He managed to escape the horrified villagers, leapt into the sea where he turned into a great shark and swam away, never to be seen again.

The tale exists in many forms. In one version he is captured, bound and dragged up Kain-alu hill where he was incinerated on a pyre made of bamboo from the sacred grove. The bamboo in the sacred grove had always made the sharpest knives. But the god Mohoalii was so angered by the desecration of the bamboo that he took away its hardness. To this day the bamboo on Kain-alu hill, now known as Puumano or Shark Hill, on Molokai is the softest and weakest in the Hawaiian Islands.

By the early nineteenth-century, shark worship was well established in the Hawaiian Islands. Each island worshipped a certain species of shark and interisland wars often broke out if islanders mistakenly killed another island's god-shark species. There were even shark-human gladiatorial contests.

According to the passage, which of the following is true in the context of sharks:

The Centre‘s decision to postpone the first phase of the 2021 Census, earlier planned to start on April 1, was expected in view of the C OVID-19 outbreak that has brought life to a standstill in India and across the world. The Census is a massive exercise, which involves mass contact and diversion of resources.
According to the original schedule, the first phase, from April to September, would have included house listing and updating of the National Population Register, and the second phase, in February 2021, would have been population enumeration. The Centre has done well by putting off the first phase until further orders. The unexpected suspension of the Census operation also opens a fresh window, and an entirely new context, for reconciliation between the Centre and States on the exercise itself. Several State governments had made their opposition clear to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, and the additional questions in the NPR pro forma that many fear is a prelude to something more cynical and divisive that is based on some quaint ideas of nationhood.

Q. The Census 2021 will be conducted through _____?

Section 306 of the IPC states that where the accused by his acts or by a continued course of conduct creates such circumstances that the deceased was left with no other option except to commit suicide, an “instigation” may be inferred. The offence of abetment to suicide under Section 306 of IPC is endowed with twin essential ingredients:

A person commits suicide; and,

Such suicide was abetted by the accused.

The offence of abetment to suicide involves a mental process of instigating a person or intentionally aiding a person to commit suicide. To hold a person liable for abetting suicide active role of that person (abettor) is required to be established.

Suicide has not been declared as a crime by the IPC obviously because once a person successfully commits suicide, that person is no longer alive to be prosecuted and the crime abates with him. However, an attempt to commit suicide is punishable under Section 309 of the IPC. To make a case of “abetment”, there must be instigation by the accused, that is, provoking, inciting and/or encouraging a person to do an act. The offence of “abetment” must conform to the definition of the term given in Section 107 of the IPC, that is to say that, there must be instigation, co-operation and/or intentional assistance given to a person to do an act.

More often than not, proving the offence of “abetment to commit suicide” is a difficult task much because according to law, it should be proved beyond reasonable doubt that the abettor intended that the victim should end his life by committing suicide. That, ordinarily, to prove the intention coupled with positive acts on the part of the accused/ abettors vis-à-vis the causation of suicide by the victim is an uphill task.

In the case of Ude Singh & Ors V/s State of Haryana it was held that mere allegation of harassment of the deceased by another person would not suffice unless there be such action on the part of the accused which compels the person to commit suicide; and such an offending action ought to be proximate to the time of occurrence. The question of mens rea on the part of the accused in such cases have to be examined with reference to the actual acts and deeds of the accused and if the acts and deeds are only of such nature where the accused intended nothing more than harassment or snap-show of anger, a particular case may fall short of the offence of abetment of suicide. However, if the accused kept on irritating or annoying the deceased by words or deeds until the deceased reacted or was provoked, a particular case may be that of abetment of suicide.

The unanimous ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), on the prevention of alleged acts of genocide against Rohingya Muslims has finally pinned legal responsibility on Myanmar’s government for the military’s large-scale excesses of 2017. Crucial is the Hague court’s stipulation that the civilian government of Ms. Suu Kyi submit an update, within four months, of the steps it has taken to preserve evidence of the systemic brutalities. Yangon has also been asked to furnish six-monthly reports thereafter, until the conclusion of the case, which relates to genocide accusations. The court has further emphasized that an estimated 600,000 Rohingya resident in Myanmar still remained highly vulnerable to attacks from the security forces. The ruling vindicates findings by the UN and human rights groups on the prevalence of hate speech, mass atrocities of rape and extra-judicial killings, and torching of villages in Myanmar’s Rakhine province, leading to the forced migration of thousands to Bangladesh. The ruling pertains to the Gambia’s suit on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), alleging that the brutalities by the defence services amounted to crimes of genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention. Arguing the defence in person during the three-day public hearings last month, Ms. Suu Kyi, who was elected in 2016, insisted that the 2017 violence was proportionate to the threat of insurgency. She even questioned the Gambia’s standing to bring the suit, saying that there was no bilateral dispute.

Rejecting the ICJ’s ruling, Myanmar’s Foreign Ministry has accused rights groups of presenting the Court with a distorted picture of the prevailing situation. In a statement, it defended the army’s action as a legitimate response to violations of the law by the insurgent Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. However, the above claim is at odds with the findings this week of an Independent Commission of Enquiry established by the government. The Commission acknowledged that war crimes had indeed been committed during the military campaign, when about 900 people were killed. But there was nothing to back the assertions of gang-rape, or evidence to presume any intent of genocide, it held. Although it could take years before the court pronounces the final verdict in the genocide case, injunction is an important victory for the refugees languishing in Bangladeshi camps. It empowers the UN Security Council to prevail upon Myanmar to take appropriate measures for the rehabilitation and repatriation of displaced communities. As the biggest regional player, China could play a constructive role to ensure a speedy return to normalcy in its neighbourhood. India has its own interests in an amicable resolution of Myanmar’s internal dispute. Above all, finding closure to the current dispute would mark the completion of Myanmar’s return to civilian rule.

Four legal approaches may be followed in attempting to channel technological development in socially useful direction: specific directives, market incentive modifications, criminal prohibitions, and changes in decision-making structures. Specific directives involve the government’s identifying factors controlling research, development, or implementation of a given technology. Market incentive modifications are deliberate alterations of the market within which private decisions regarding the development and implementation of technology are made. eg Imposing taxes to cover the costs to society, granting subsidies to pay for social benefits, or easing procedural rules to enable the recovery of damages to compensate for harm caused by destructive technological activity. Criminal prohibitions may modify technological activity in areas impinging on fundamental social values, or they may modify human behavior likely to result from technological applications. Alteration of decision-making structures includes all possible modifications in the authority, constitution, or responsibility of private and public entities deciding questions of technological development and implementation.

Effective use of these methods to control technology depends on whether or not the goal of regulation is the optimal allocation of resources. When the object is optimal resource allocation, that combination of legal methods should be used that most nearly yields the allocation that would exist if there were no external costs resulting from allocating resources through market activity. There are external costs when the price set by buyers and sellers of goods fails to include some costs, to anyone, that result from the production and use of the goods. Such costs are internalized when buyers pay them.

Air pollution from motor vehicles imposes external costs on all those exposed to it, in the form of soiling, materials damage, and disease: these externalities result from failure to place a price on air, thus making it a free good, common to all. Such externalities lead to non optimal resource allocation, because the private net product and the social net product of market activity are not often identical. If all externalities were internalized, transactions would occur until bargaining could no longer improve the situation, thus giving an optimal allocation of resources at a given time.

The Department of School Education and Literacy under the Ministry of Education and World Bank have signed the Strengthening Teaching-Leaning and Results for States Program. The Union Cabinet has approved a project partially funded by the World Bank to carry out a reform agenda in the governance of school education, and improve data and assessment systems at the national level, as well as teaching and learning outcomes in six States, especially for early childhood and vocational education.

The Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States (STARS) project will have a total project cost of ₹5,718 crore, with the World Bank’s support amounting to about ₹3,700 crore ($500 million), said the statement.A major component of the project is the establishment of PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review, and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development) as a National Assessment Centre. Included in the National Education Policy 2020, this autonomous institution under the Union Education Ministry will set norms for student assessment and evaluation for all school boards across the country, most of which currently follow norms set by State governments. It will also guide standardised testing to monitor learning outcomes at the State and national levels, according to the NEP.

The other major initiative at the national level is to strengthen the Education Ministry’s data systems to capture information on the retention, transition and completion rates of students. At the State level, the project seeks to improve education outcomes and school-to-work transition strategies for better labour market outcomes in Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala and Odisha. A similar project to be funded by the Asian Development Bank will cover Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Assam and every State will partner with one other State to share best practices, said the statement.

In the US, geothermal electricity accounts for only 0.4 percent of net generation, but there is potential for it to provide 100 Gigawatts or 10 percent of the national total. Tapping that resource means America would keep its place as world leader in the field, but it requires renewed investment in enhanced geothermal systems (EGS). Geothermal plants are normally built where fault lines in the Earth’s crust give access to natural reservoirs of hot underground water. Drilling wells into these reservoirs, holding water hotter than 302 Fahrenheit (150 Celsius) can provide enough recyclable steam and water to drive generation turbines for decades. Not every geothermal plant has the helpful geology of The Geysers–highly volcanic, spacious reservoir and permeable rock–so technological innovation is needed. Just as fracking has exploited hidden gas reserves by pumping liquids at high pressure into rock to release them, EGS use water to fracture rock and increase through flow to generate electricity. Heat is captured from its passage through the rock and the heated water converted into electricity. Cooled water is then recycled and pumped back to gather more heat. EGS technologies will open up many more sites for geothermal energy. ""You can effectively put a power plant anywhere,” said Will Pettit, director of the Geothermal Resources Council. “All you have to do is drill deep enough and you will find hot rock.” Binary cycle plants are the growth technology because they can operate at lower water temperatures and more diverse geographical locations. Now a new supercharged technique that uses special properties of water at temperatures in excess of 750 F (400 c) is promising to release a gargantuan amount of energy reserves. Water at this temperature and pressure is found at depths greater than 1.9 miles (3 km). To access it requires upgraded drilling technology and materials, but at this depth the water acts as a supercritical liquid that can potentially produce ten times more energy than conventional geothermal wells. Geothermal plants already emit 11 times less carbon dioxide per unit of electricity than the average US coal power plant, making them environmentally sound. Unlike solar and wind farms they can also operate 24 hours a day to provide a solid base load for homes and businesses. There are downsides too. Seismic activity around drilling wells is a factor, as are potential for gas emissions such as SO2 (causing acid rain), and water pollution. High investment costs are another.

The government and the Opposition are headed on a collision course in the Budget session of Parliament, with the latter planning to move a joint motion demanding a repeal of the three laws that are agitating farmers in much of the country. The confrontation over these laws is a legacy of the last session when they were passed without detailed and proper consultation with political parties, experts and farmer representatives. The session began with around 20 Opposition parties boycotting the President’s address to a joint sitting of Parliament. BSP President Mayawati belatedly announced her party’s decision to also stay away as a mark of protest. The delay clearly outlined her intention to keep a distance from the Opposition bloc, which among others has the Congress and the Samajwadi Party. The boycott indicated a worsening of the relationship between the government and the Opposition. In January 2020, the Opposition had attended the President’s address wearing black bands. The last time the Opposition boycotted the President’s Address was in November 2019 to commemorate the Constitution Day. President Ram Nath Kovind said the government would keep the farm Bills on hold as per a Supreme Court directive but did not indicate any rethink.

The government has advantages over the Opposition, in terms of the numerical strength in both Houses of Parliament. With the Tamil Nadu and West Bengal Assembly elections round the corner, two key Opposition parties, the DMK and the Trinamool Congress, are expected to be largely absent, further reducing the Opposition’s strength. The Opposition, despite its united front on the first day of the session, has a record of disintegrating in the face of the BJP’s manoeuvring in previous sessions. There will be discussion on the Motion of Thanks to the President and later on the Budget. As of now there are no indications of the Opposition skipping these events. In legislative business, recent ordinances such as the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020, which has provisions to deal with domestic and international arbitration and defines the law for conducting conciliation proceedings, and the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Amendment) Ordinance, 2021, which is for merging the J&K cadre of All India Services Officers such as the IAS, IPS and the Indian Forest Service with the Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram Union Territory (AGMUT) cadre, will have to get a parliamentary nod. The government draws its legitimacy from a parliamentary majority, but democratic conduct is more than enforcing the will of the majority. The government’s conduct in Parliament and outside, where its critics are facing the strong arm of the state machinery, should meet the high standards India has set for itself as a democracy.

In the first week of the IPL, it is the stories around the tournament that might turn out to be more significant than the accounts of matches lost and won. As the number of COVID-19 cases in India keeps rising, cricket will have to look beyond the boundary if television is to survive. Hence the importance of the agreement between the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the Emirates Cricket Board (ECB) to “boost cricketing ties.

We know about the agreement, thanks to a tweet from the BCCI secretary Jay Shah. The BCCI probably thinks what is good enough for President Trump is good enough for its office-bearers – social media news-dispensation. This probably means India is looking to the UAE to help honour their international commitments. In January-March next year, India is scheduled to play England at home. Is this series being shifted to the UAE? India is reluctant to give up the home advantage but that could change. These are early days yet.

If the BCCI has worked out an understanding, then it must be commended for foresight and keenness to avoid last-minute confusion. This is, of course, assuming that things don’t get worse in either country, and the tour goes ahead. The same applies if the “boosting” means UAE might host next year’s IPL too. At the time of writing, India has nearly 56 lakh cases and 89 thousand deaths.

The UAE has 85 thousand cases and 405 deaths. As the IPL progresses, both cricket boards will learn how well the bio-secure system in the UAE has worked. There is no need to rush to a decision on either England's tour or the IPL, but it is not a bad idea while hoping for the best to prepare for the worst. In times of uncertainty, beacons of possibility are comforting. The UAE – for a decade Pakistan’s ‘home’ ground, and later for a while Afghanistan’s too – thus emerges as the cricket world’s favourite substitute venue, now including India’s. Twice now India has taken the IPL there, earlier in 2014 owing to the general elections.

Another significant take-away from the current tournament is the sense that large stadiums exclusively for cricket might soon be a thing of the past. For one, packed houses can no longer be guaranteed. And for another, telecast of matches, with ambient crowd noises in empty stadiums has shown that auricular illusions are possible. It needs fine tuning but there is promise.

Technology is already telling us if a batsman is in or out when there is an appeal for a run-out; technology is also telling us that it doesn’t matter if the audiences are in or out, it is the sound they might have made that lends texture to a telecast.

The United Kingdom has invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend the G7 summit that is scheduled to be held in June. Apart from India, Australia and South Korea are also invited to participate in the proceedings of the summit as “guest countries”.

“U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson will use the first in-person G7 summit in almost two years to ask leaders, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to seize the opportunity to build back better from coronavirus, uniting to make the future fairer, greener and more prosperous,” a statement issued by the British High Commission announced on Sunday. The G7 summit will be held in (A) from June 11 to 13. Mr. Modi participated in the Biarritz G7 summit in 2019 when French President Emmanuel Macron had invited India.

Addressing the member countries of G7, Mr. Johnson described the COVID-19 pandemic as the “most destructive” force that the world has seen in several generations. “It is only right that we approach the challenge of building back better by uniting with a spirit of openness to create a better future,” said Mr. Johnson.The invitation came days after Mr. Johnson had to cancel his visit to India in the last week of January because of a new wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Britain. He has said he will visit India “ahead” of the G7 summit. Cooperation between the U.K. and India is significant this year as India is a non-permanent member at the UN Security Council, where the United Kingdom will take over the presidency in February.

Steve Jobs himself said it: “It’s smart to take an existing idea and enhance it beautifully,” Apple did it and so did some of the most successful brands worldwide. To be successful, it is not essential to imovation’ which is a combination of innovation and imitation.

(A)  As an innovation is a standalone product in the market, it reaps in all the profit till the ‘innovators’ imitate it. ‘Imovation’, however, is not profitable as there are many imitated products in the market at the same time, all reducing each other’s profits.

(B) Brand X duplicated Brand Y’s mobile phones with exactly the same features and same price range but failed to make an impact in the market.

(C) No one remembers the innovators after some time because they did not turn their idea into success. On the other hands, the imitators did what they had to just at the right time.

(D)  While Sanfy invented portable MP3 players, it was Apple which enabled MP3 players to play videos and games at a fairly reasonable price, thus capturing the market.

(e) ‘Imovation’ is a lot less risky business venture. An imitator is already equipped with the analysis of how market received the innovation.

Q.
‘Blind imitation of a product can never be successful and sustainable. Which of the statements (A), (B), (C), (D) and (E) mentioned above proves the above statement most appropriately?

Marriage is necessarily the basis of social organisation and the foundation of important legal rights and obligations. The importance and imperative character of the institution of marriage needs no comment. In Hindu law, marriage is treated as a Samskara or a sacrament. The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 introduced monogamy as a law of marriage among Hindus by virtue of Section 5 clause (i) which is essentially the voluntary union for life of one man with one woman to the exclusion of all others. It enacts , “neither party must have a spouse living at the time of marriage”. The expression ‘spouse’ here used, means a lawfully married husband or wife. Before a valid marriage can be solemnised, both parties to such marriage must be either single or divorced or a widow or a widower and only then they are competent to enter into a valid marriage. If at the time of performance of the marriage rites and ceremonies, one or other of the parties had a spouse living and the earlier marriage had not already been set aside, the later marriage is no marriage at all. The Supreme Court in Bhaurao Shankar Lokhande v. State of Maharashtra, [AIR 1965 SC 1564 ] held, “Prima facie, the expression ‘whoever marries’ in Section 494 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (which defines the offence of bigamy) must mean ‘whoever marries validly’ or ‘whoever marries and whose marriage is a valid one’. If marriage is not valid according to the law applicable to the parties, no question arises of its being void by reason of its taking place during the life of the husband or wife of the person marrying. One of the conditions of a valid marriage under the Hindu Marriage Act , 1955 is that it must be ‘solemnised’. Further, Section 13 (2) of the Act provides for grounds of divorce to wife and states, “A wife may also present a petition for the dissolution of her marriage by a decree of divorce on the ground that in the case of any marriage solemnized before the commencement of this Act, that the husband had married again before such commencement or that any other wife of the husband married before such commencement was alive at the time of the solemnization of the marriage of the petitioner: Provided that in either case the other wife is alive at the time of the presentation of the petition”. 

Q. Which of the following statements correctly expresses the interpretation of the word ‘solemnise’ under Hindu law? 

Principle : Whoever, unlawfully or negligently does any act which is, and which he knows or has reason to believe to he, likely to spread the infection of any disease dangerous to life, shall be guilty of a negligent act likely to spread infection  into disease dangerous to life.

Facts : ‘K’, a person, knowing that he is suffering from Cholera, travels by a train without information the railway officers of his condition.

a) If only conclusion I is true

b) If only conclusion II is true

c) If either conclusion I or II is true

d) If neither conclusion I nor II is true 

e) If both the conclusions I and II are true

Statements: A>B=C; E=F; E ³ D>C

Q. Conclusions:  I. C<F     II. A>C

Indians comprise not just the second largest population in the world, but also the largest population to be affected with mental health disorders globally. According to an estimate by the WHO, 1 in 7 people in this country have suffered from a range of mental health disorders; be it depression, anxiety, dementia, schizophrenia, or others between the years 1990 and 2017, making it 'the most depressing country' in the world. Moreover, it's not wholly or as much about the disorders themselves as it is about the societal stigma attached with it and the subsequent familial ignorance that comes from trying to shut one's eye to the immediate scrutiny surrounding the issue. With stats claiming that there are only 0.301 psychiatrists and 0.407 psychologists for every 1,00,000 mental health patients in India (WHO, 2011) it's only safe to state that mental health disorders are no short of, and possibly a greater epidemic in the country than the corona-virus.

'Anosognosia' is a condition where a severe lack of ability to comprehend or come to terms with one's own ailment makes the person affected reject diagnosis and treatments for it. It is a consequence of changes in overall brain chemistry at the frontal lobe (the part of our brain heavily involved with shaping up our self-image, memory, motivation and the daily tasks we perform as human beings), which disables a patient to believe that they suffer from a disorder altogether. It's most common in patients with bipolar-disorder and schizophrenia.

The country which proudly manufactures the world's doctors and engineers in bulk every year, with most of them being reluctant and dispassionate, and also disgustingly unhealthy due to the superfluous pressures of a severely backward mentality and a dis-concern for personal interests is also a matter of great concern as to how off-springs are conditioned to perform than to share, or to drive academic, and subsequent corporate results than to focus on emotional and financial literacy most of their lives.

Independence to live according to one's interests severely lacks in India, which also adds on to the agonizing surge in numbers of youngsters who succumb to self-harm through drug abuse or suicides every single day in the country. Moreover, the lack of 'love' among a family which has inadvertently been substituted with 'duty' has a lot to do [1] the collective familial ignorance when push comes to shove around mental health disorders to one or multiple members of a family.

Rats exposed to stress during early development inherit the effects of that stress to their offspring, largely expressed in behavior impairments but also characteristics of resilience. Providing environmental enrichment to the future mother rats had a remedial role on some of the negative effects.

The researchers studied 40 female rats weaned at 27 days of age. One group of these females -- the control group -- was then raised normally in individual cages; the second group was exposed to different stressors; the third was enriched; and the fourth group was both stressed and enriched. The matured rats were mated at 60 days, had normal pregnancies and births, and their offspring pups were divided into two groups -- one raised normally, and the other raised in an enriched environment, so that the effect of "therapy" on the next generation could also be evaluated. The offspring groups were then evaluated with respect to social interaction, anxiety levels, ability to learn and capacity to cope with fear.

The study's main findings showed that the early treatment of the mothers impacted their offspring behavior. Stress to the mothers reduced social interaction in their offspring, but improved their ability to learn to avoid distress. Male offspring were also better at coping with fear. ##Some of these changes were mitigated by enrichment to the mothers, so that stressed the mothers and then providing them with a "therapeutic" (enriched) environment, prevented some, but not all, of the effects in the next generation.## Providing enrichment to the offspring also offset some of the inherited effects.

According to the researchers, their study, with other evidence, suggests that evolution equipped the parent generation to sample its environment, and then, possibly via heritable epigenetic changes, to prepare the next generation to better cope with this environment, it is important to investigate whether stressful experiences at a young age affect the next generation, and whether therapeutic experiences can minimize the trans-generational effects in humans too. As study shows that the inheritance of the effects of adversity can be modified by timely intervention, this may have important educational and therapeutic implications.

Article 14 of the Constitution guarantees equality before law and equal protection of laws to everyone. Article 15(1) generally prohibits any discrimination against any citizen on the grounds of religion, caste, sex or place of birth.
The Delhi Government rolled out a travel scheme that offers free rides to women in over 5,500 state-run buses in the national capital. Freedom of movement is not only a human right - emphasized in the Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - but is also an economic imperative. It is important to note that restriction on movement of women is not limited to a legal imposition. When we have social and economic norms that make mobility to workplace difficult or fail to protect women from sexual harassment in public places, we are indeed restricting their freedom to move. We are ergo impairing them in terms of economics, freedom and human rights.
India ranks 121 among 131 countries in female labour force participation rate averaging at 23 per cent. At 17 per cent of GDP, the economic contribution of Indian women is less than half the global average. Women's workforce participation rate in Delhi is shamefully low at 11 per cent, which is even below the national average. Increasing this participation is paramount not only for gender equality but also for national economic progress. A prominent way to achieve this is through increasing freedom of mobility for women.
In a deeply unequal country like ours, where women still have to take money from their fathers, husbands and sons for every small expense, free bus travel will give women independence to move freely and save monetarily. These in turn increase women's decision-making abilities and empower them. The inclusion of bus marshals to ensure protection of the commuting women further advances their mobility.
While the United Nations Human Rights Committee concurred that "Liberty of movement is an indispensable condition for the free development of a person," the Delhi model has become one of the first 100 cities globally to apply this belief in a literal sense - in the transport sector for women. The rationale for doing so is simple and is printed on the 'pink ticket' in the hands of all women who have used buses in Delhi - "When women progress, the country progresses."

Q. Both spouses were sterile and wished to avail surrogacy services. They found two donors and commissioned a surrogacy and received a child. Decide.

One of the biggest casualties of the Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant lockdown has been institutionalised education. Schools have been shut to prevent the spread of the virus and this has given way to online classrooms, a very new concept in India even for the most sophisticated schools. It is commendable how easily some educational institutions have moved to virtual classrooms, all thanks to tools such as Zoom, Google Hangouts and Microsoft Teams. But there are some st ill struggling to get online. The online classes, whatever the enabling technology, is only as good as the teachers and the abilit y of the students to grasp the new teaching technique. One of the teachers felt students are actually more responsive and active in online classrooms, compared to when they are in physical ones. “This could be because this is a new concept and they are excited to explore it with the teachers. They also don‟t get distracted by their classmates, which frequently happens in a regular class.” Teachers do find the absence of a blackboard a disadvantage and network connectivity a constant problem. “We miss the clarity that a blackboard gives us, we are kind of making do with the virtual whiteboard on Zoom.” Shweta Kawatra, a parent who teaches in a New Delhi school, highlights that many students have not been able to take advantage of the virtual platform because they do not have a suitable device at home or lack a good internet connection. “It has its own share of disadvantages too. Too much screen time can be perilous for health. Prolonged online sessions can be overwhelming and may lead to problems related to vision, body posture and sleep disorder,” Kawatra adds.

The bench  of Dr DY Chandrachud and MR Shah, JJ has refused to transfer to CBI the criminal cases lodged against Republic TV Editor in-Chief Arnab Goswami for alleged defamatory news show telecast on April 21 in connection with the Palghar mob-lynching case. It also quashed all FIRs against Arnab Goswami except one which was filed in Nagpur and which has been transferred to Mumbai via order dated 24.04.2020.
Delivering the verdict, Just ice Chandrachud said, “ Article 32 of the Constitution constitutes recognition of the constitutional duty entrusted to this Court to protect the fundamental rights of citizens. The exercise of journalistic freedom lies at the core of speech and expression protected by Article 19(1)(a). The petitioner is a media journalist. The airing of views on television shows which he hosts is in the exercise of his fundamental right to speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a). India‟s freedoms will rest safe as long as journalists can speak truth to power without being chilled by a threat of reprisal…Free citizens cannot exist when the news media is chained to adhere to one position. Yuval Noah Harari has put it succinctly in his recent book titled “21 Lessons for the 21st Century”: “Questions you cannot answer are usually far better for you than answers you cannot question.”

Passage: In the second week of August 1998, just a few days after the incidents of bombing the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam, a highpowered, brain-storming session was held near Washington D.C., to discuss various aspects of terrorism. The meeting was attended by ten of America‘s leading experts in various fields such as germ and chemical warfare, public health, disease control and also by the doctors and the law- enforcing officers. Being asked to describe the horror of possible bio-attack, one of the experts narrated the following gloomy scenario. A culprit in a crowded business centre or in a busy shopping mall of a town empties a test tube containing some fluid, which in turn creates an unseen cloud of germ of a dreaded disease like anthrax capable of inflicting a horrible death within5 days on any one who inhales it. At first500,or so victims feel that they have mild influenza which may recede after a day or two. Then the symptoms return again and their lungs start filling with fluid. They rush to local hospitals for treatment, but the panic-stricken people may find that the medicare services run quickly out of drugs due to excessive demand. But no one would be able to realize that a terrorist attack has occurred. One cannot deny the possibility that the germ involved would be of contagious variety capable of causing an epidemic. The meeting concluded that such attacks, apart from causing immediate human tragedy, would have dire long-term effects on the political and social fabric of a country by way of ending people‘s trust on the competence of the government. The experts also said that the bombs used in Kenya and Tanzania were of the old-fashion variety and involved quantities of high explosives, but new terrorism will prove to be more deadly and probably more elusive than hijacking an aeroplane or a gelignite of previous decades. According to Bruce Hoffman, an American specialist on political violence, old terrorism generally had a specific manifesto-to overthrow a colonial power or the capitalist system and so on. These terrorists were not shy about planting a bomb or hijacking an aircraft and they set some limit to their brutality. Killing so many innocent people might turn their natural supporters off. Political terrorists want a lot of people watching but not a lot of people dead. ―Old terrorism sought to change the world while the new sort is often practised by those who believe that the world has gone beyond redemption, he added. Hoffman says, ―New terrorism has no long- term agenda but is ruthless in its shortterm intentions. It is often just a cacophonous cry of protest or an outburst of religious intolerance or a protest against the West in general and the US in particular. Its perpetrators may be religious fanatics or diehard opponent of a government and see no reason to show restraint. They are simply intent on inflicting the maximum amount of pain on the victim.

Q. In the context of the passage, the culprit‘s act of emptying a test tube containing some fluid can be classified as

Study the following information to answer the given questions:

A word arrangement machine when given an input line of words rearranges them following a particular rule. The following is an illustration of input and rearrangement.

Input: age road own wire tier ink pen uni dice eat

Step I: uni age road own wire tier ink pen eat dice

Step II: uni own age road wire tier ink eat pen dice

Step III: uni own ink age wire tier eat road pen dice

Step IV: uni own ink eat age wire tier road pen dice

And step four is the last step of the rearrangement.

As per the rules followed in the above steps, find out in each of the following question the appropriate step for the given input.

Input for the questions

Input: gem stat ace cast omit fan rate uncut era input

Q. 

Which of the following would be step VII?

Directions : Four alternative summaries are given below the text. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the text.

Physically, inertia is a feeling that you just can’t move mentally, it is a sluggish mind. Even you try to be sensitive, if your mind is sluggish; you just do not feel anything intensely. You may even see a tragedy enacted in front of your eyes and it will be able to respond meaningfully. You may see one person exploiting another, one group persecuting another, and not be able to get angry, your energy is frozen. You are not deliberately refusing to act; you don’t just have the capacity.

A. Inertia makes your body and mind sluggish. They become insensitive to tragedies, exploitation, and persecution because it freezes your energy and decapitates it.

B. When you have inertia you do not act although your see one person exploiting another or on group persecuting another. You do not get angry because you are incapable.

C. Inertia is of two types- physical and mental. Physical inertia restricts bodily movements. Mental inertia prevents response to events enacted in front or your eyes.

D. Physical inertia stops your body from moving: mental inertia freezes your energy and stops your mind for responding meaningfully to events, even tragedies, in front to you. 

PRINCIPLES: 1. If A is asked to do something by B, B is responsible for the act, not A.
2. If A, while acting for B commits a wrong, A is responsible for the wrong, not B.
3. If A is authorised to do something for B, but in the name of A without disclosing B’s presence, both A and B may be held liable.

FACTS: Somu contracted with Amar whereunder Amar would buy a pumpset to be used in Somu’s farm. Such a pumpset was in short supply in the market. Gulab, a dealer, had such a pumpset and he refused to sell it to Amar. Amar threatened Gulab of serious consequences if he fails to part with the pumpset. Gulab filed a complaint against Amar.

PROPOSED DECISION:

a. Amar alone is liable for the wrong though he acted for Somu.
b. Amar is not liable for the wrong, though he is bound by the contract with Somu.
c. Somu is bound by the contract and liable for the wrong.
d. Both Somu and Amar are liable for the wrong.

SUGGESTED REASONS:

i. Amar committed the wrong while acting for the benefit of Somu.
ii. Amar cannot do while acting for Somu something which he cannot do while acting for himself.
iii. Both Amar and Somu are liable since they are bound by the contract.
iv. Somu has to be responsible for the act of Amar committed for Somu’s benefit.

Your decision with the reason:

Religious admonitions against sexual relations between same-sex individuals (particularly men) long stigmatized such behaviour, but most legal codes in Europe were silent on the subject of homosexuality. The judicial systems of many predominantly Muslim countries invoked Islamic law (Shariat) in a wide range of contexts, and many sexual or quasi-sexual acts were criminalized in those countries with severe penalties, including execution.

Beginning in the 16th century, lawmakers in Britain began to categorize homosexual behaviour as criminal rather than simply immoral. In the 1530s, during the reign of Henry VIII, England passed the Buggery Act, which made sexual relations between men a criminal offense punishable by death. In Britain sodomy remained a capital offense punishable by hanging until 1861. In 1885, Parliament passed an amendment sponsored by Henry Du Pré Labouchere, which created the offense of “gross indecency” for same-sex male sexual relations, enabling any form of sexual behaviour between men to be prosecuted. Likewise, in Germany in the early 1870s, when the country was integrating the civil codes of various disparate kingdoms, the final German penal code included Paragraph 175, which criminalized same-sex male relations with punishment including prison and a loss of civil rights.

Before the end of the 19th century there were scarcely any “movements” for gay rights. Indeed, in his 1890s poem “Two Loves,” Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde’s lover, declared “I [homosexuality] am the love that dare not speak its name.” Homosexual men and women were given voice in 1897 with the founding of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee in Berlin. Their first activity was a petition to call for the repeal of Paragraph 175 of the Imperial Penal Code. The committee published emancipation literature, sponsored rallies, and campaigned for legal reform throughout Germany, as well as in The Netherlands and Austria, developing some 25 local chapters by 1922. Its founder was Magnus Hirschfeld, who in 1919 opened the Institute for Sexual Science, which anticipated by decades other scientific centres (such as the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, in the United States) that specialized in sex research. He also helped sponsor the World League of Sexual Reform, which was established in 1928 at a conference in Copenhagen. Despite Paragraph 175 and the failure of the WhK to win its repeal, homosexual men and women experienced a certain amount of freedom in Germany, particularly during the Weimar period, between the end of World War I and the Nazi seizure of power. In many larger German cities, gay nightlife became tolerated, and the number of gay publications increased; indeed, according to some historians, the number of gay bars and periodicals in Berlin in the 1920s exceeded that in New York City six decades later.

India is reportedly planning to launch its first coal trading platform on the lines of commodity or energy exchanges. According to the proposal, entire coal produced in the country would be traded on the Coal Exchange, The Economic

Times reported. Such an exchange would turn the coal sector into an open market with no barriers to free-market activity. The electronic system-based trading exchange is expected to pioneer the development of coal trading in India and provide an online platform to the various participants in the market.

With the Coal Exchange becoming reality, the fuel supply agreements of [X] are likely to end. However, the state-run [X] may continue to maintain its monopoly in the segment on account of its huge production target of one billion tonnes by 2024, the report also quoted an unidentified official as saying.

Meanwhile, the country's coal import fell by 20 per cent to 18.93 million tonnes (MT) last month, industry data showed. The government is planning to bring the country's 'avoidable coal imports' to zero by 2023-24.

The country's coal imports increased marginally by 3.2 per cent to 242.97 MT in 2019-20. [X], which accounts for over 80 per cent of the domestic fuel output, has been mandated by the government to replace at least 100 MT of imports with domestically-produced coal in the ongoing fiscal.

Coal Minister [Y] had recently written to state chief ministers asking them not to import coal and take domestic supply from [X], which has the fuel in abundance. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also given directions to target thermal coal import substitution, particularly when huge coal stock inventory is available in the country this year.