UPSC Daily Current Affairs- September 25, 2022 | Current Affairs & Hindu Analysis: Daily, Weekly & Monthly PDF Download

GS-I

Context

The Central government has announced a special tourist circuit encompassing five key sites associated with Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. 

• Activists have urged that Mahad, located in Raigad District of Maharashtra, famous for Mahad Lake Satyagraha should also be included in the proposed circuit.

About Ambedkar Circuit

• The five cities in the tourist circuit as announced are Mhow (his birthplace), London (where he resided and studied), Nagpur (also studied here), Delhi (where he passed away) and finally Mumbai (where he was cremated).
• With a special AC train, the government is looking to trace the footsteps of Ambedkar in India by giving better connectivity to four of these spots.
• The idea is to attract tourists beyond the Dalit community, who mostly visit these places as a pilgrimage.
• The journey will include meals, ground transportation, and entry to the sites.

About the sites

• Janma Bhoomi: Ambedkar’s birthplace in Madhya Pradesh’s Mhow
• Shiksha Bhoomi: The place in London where he stayed while studying in the UK
• Deeksha Bhoomi: The place in Nagpur where he embraced Buddhism
• Mahaparinirvan Bhoomi: The place of his demise in Delhi and
• Chaitya Bhoomi: The place of his cremation in Mumbai

Context

Indian urban centres need to plan for migration, climate change. Healthcare, affordable housing, sustainability and inclusion hold the key reimagining them.

What does urban planning mean?

• Urban planning encompasses the preparation of plans for and the regulation and management of towns, cities, and metropolitan regions. 
• It attempts to organize socio-spatial relations across different scales of government and governance.

What is a smart city?

• A smart city is one that uses information and communication technologies to enhance citizen engagement. It is a neo-vision which seeks to improve the delivery of services in urban areas. 
• The following story maps out the steps being taken by India to explore this concept in practice.

Global best practices in urban planning

• The Garden City movement: In the West, the Garden City movement (initiated by Ebenezer Howard in 1898) sought to decentralise the working environment in the city centre with a push for providing healthier living spaces for factory workers. The ideal garden city was planned on a concentric pattern with open spaces, public parks and boulevards, housing 32,000 people on 6,000 acres, linked to a central city with over 50,000 people. Once a garden city reached maximum capacity, another city would be developed nearby.
• Neighbourhood concept: In the US, the garden city movement evolved into the neighbourhood concept, where residential houses and streets were organised around a local school or community centre, with a push for lowering traffic and providing safe roads. London has a metropolitan green belt around the city, covering 5,13,860 hectares of land, to offset pollution and congestion and maintain biodiversity. Why can’t Indian cities have something similar, instead of ring roads and urban sprawls?
• La ville du quart d’heure: Paris has taken this forward with the “15-minute city” (‘la ville du quart d’heure’). The idea is rather simple, every Parisian should be able to do their shopping, work, and recreational activities and fulfil their cultural needs within a 15-minute walk or bike ride this means that the number of vehicular trips gets reduced significantly.
• Investment in pedestrian infrastructure and non-motorised transport zones: A city would then be planned for pedestrians, instead of cars and motors. This requires an extensive usage of mixed-use developments, along with investment in pedestrian infrastructure and non-motorised transport zones. Instead of widening highways, this approach would push for widening pedestrian walkways.

What should be adopted for India?

• Every Indian city should ideally have a Master Plan: A strategic urban planning document which would be updated every decade or two. The document would entail how a city is supposed to grow, vertically and horizontally, across zones, while offering a high quality of life in a sustainable manner. Such plans would also consider poverty mitigation, affordable housing and liveability for urban migrants.
• Urban land use needs to be better: One look at satellite map imagery will show that India’s urban growth is increasingly haphazard, with informal, unplanned and sprawling neighbourhoods developing in paddy fields and along linear infrastructure (arterial roads, open spaces). India’s hidden urbanisation, driven partly by our stringent definition of the word, along with weak enforcement of building codes, has meant that the local government is often playing catch-up, unable to provide urban services and infrastructure to keep up with growth.
• Public land availability: Meanwhile, in places where there are formally recognised towns and urban neighbourhoods, outdated planning practices have meant that land utilisation is poor. Consider the case of Mumbai, where almost 1/4th of the land is open public space while over half of it is the underutilised space around buildings, which is enclosed by walls and hived off from public access. Such open spaces, if available, would help cities like Mumbai achieve similar ratios as globally benchmarked cities (Amsterdam, Barcelona) in public land availability (typically above 40 per cent).
• India’s urban density will also need to be thought through: Dense construction on the peripheries of our major cities (for instance, dense construction in Delhi’s suburbs, like Noida and Gurugram) will inevitably mean that public services are stretched and emissions (due to transportation to the main city) remain high. Such urbanisation will unavoidably lock India into a high emissions future while making our cities prone to extreme heat and flooding.
• Then there is climate change: According to the World Bank, climate change may reduce India’s GDP by 3 per cent, while depressing the living standards of its citizens by 2050. Many urban experts cite technological solutions that may save our cities a chain of sea walls, river embankments and reclamations, for instance from such potential calamities. However, structural engineering simply may not be an economically and environmentally feasible option everywhere instead, our focus must be on conservation.
• Climate resilience perspective Bengaluru, with its network of interconnected lakes, could have considered Bangkok-style ferries instead of draining out its lakes. All ongoing and upcoming urban infrastructure projects must be reconsidered from a future climate resilience perspective does the ongoing sea reclamation for the upcoming coastal road in Mumbai make sense if sea levels are rising?
• Establishing a sense of cityhood: By making a push for a city as a co-created space will also require building up institutional capacity.
• Addressing lack of town planning education: India would ideally require 3,00,000 town and country planners by 2031 (there are just 5,000 town planners currently). Much of this problem is fundamentally due to a lack of town planning education in the country there are just 26 institutes that provide this course, producing 700 town planners each year. We already have a shortage of 1.1 million planners. More schools are needed, with a push for local IITs and NITs to have a standalone planning department. With over 8,000 towns and cities, there is a clear unmet need.

Conclusion

• Our policymakers also need to be cognisant of the historical context of our urban development a push for glass buildings or utilising granite may not always be suitable for our cities. 
• Why can’t our cities look distinctly Indian, inspired by our historical architecture? Renewing our cities will require us to rethink various urban topics, including urban design, urban healthcare, affordable housing, sustainability and inclusion among others. Our urban future depends on getting this right.

GS-II

Context

On the sidelines of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly, the G-4 countries highlight ‘urgent need’ for reform in U.N. Security Council (UNSC).

Who are the Group of Four(G-4) Countries?

• The G4 is a grouping of Brazil, Germany, India and Japan which are aspiring to become permanent members of the UNSC.
• The G4 countries are supporting each other’s bids for permanent membership of the UNSC.
• The G4 nations traditionally meet on the sidelines of the annual high-level UN General Assembly session.

What are the Key Highlights of the G-4 Meeting?

• They felt that the UN decision-making bodies needed to be urgently reformed as global issues were increasingly complex and interconnected.
• Further, they reiterated their joint commitment to work toward text-based negotiations that lead to Reformed Multilateralism.
• They highlighted that General Assembly did not make “meaningful progress” in the Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN) and lacked transparency.
• They reiterated their support for African countries being represented in a permanent and non-permanent capacity.
• The Ministers agreed on the need for enhanced role and presence of developing countries and of major contributors to the United Nations to enhance the capacity of the Council to respond effectively to the complex and evolving challenges on questions of international peace and security.

Why is there a Need for UNSC Reforms?

• UN represents a larger world and the irony is that it has only 5 permanent members in its important body.
• The current composition of the Security Council represents the post-World War II realities and thus is not in pace with the changing balance of power in the world.
• At the time of the formation of the UNSC, big powers were given privileges to make them part of the council. This was necessary for its proper functioning as well as to avoid failure like that of the organization ‘League of Nations.
• The regions like far East Asia, South America, and Africa have no representation in the permanent membership of the council.

Why is India Demanding the Permanent Membership of the UNSC?

• Overview
  • For the first 40 years of the UN Security Council's formation, India never asked for permanent membership.
  • Even in 1993 when India submitted its written proposal to the UN in response to the General Assembly resolution related to reforms, it did not specifically state that it wants permanent membership for itself.
  • It is only from the last few years that India has started asking for permanent membership in the council.
  • India deserves a permanent place in the council considering the size of its economy, population and the fact that it is the largest democracy in the world.
    • India has become a major player not only in Asia but also in the world.
    • The Security Council would be a more representative body if India would be there in it as a permanent member.
• Need
  • By having veto power, one can enjoy enormous powers.
    • Since 2009, India was trying to designate Masood Azhar as a global terrorist. One veto power of China kept delaying it.
  • India will be able to work better for its interests.
    • There was a time when the USSR actually started boycotting the UNSC and that was the time when US managed to get the resolution passed for the Korean War. From that time onwards USSR realized that it doesn’t make sense to boycott the UN. It needs to keep veto if at all resolution is against them.
  • India’s presence as a permanent member will be an acknowledgment of its rise as a global power, ready to play a key role in the council’s objectives of international peace and security.
  • India will be able to enjoy the 'prestige’ associated with the permanent membership of the council.

Context

Nepal is in a constitutional crisis with major organs of the state confronting each other as the Chief Justice is under undeclared house arrest and the PM openly criticizing the President.

Nepal polity in turmoil

• Prime Minister who is backed by the chiefs of four major coalition partners, is at loggerheads with President.
• The President might seek to rule as an extra-constitutional authority beyond the sanction and imagination of the Constitution that completed six years last week.

Genesis of the crisis: Row over Citizenship

• The current crisis began after President refused to ratify Nepal’s citizenship bill, which was sent to her twice after it was passed by both Houses of Parliament over the span of a month.
• The bill seeks to give citizenship by birth and by descent to an estimated 500,000 individuals.
• It was also sought to provide non-voting citizenship to non-resident Nepalis living in non-SAARC countries.

Why has the President refused to sign the Act?

• Bhandari is the first female President of Nepal.
• Her refusal to sign the Act has drawn attention to certain sections in the constitution that thrusts greater responsibility on women.
• For example, Article 11 (5) says that a person who is born to a Nepalese mother and an unidentified father can be granted citizenship by descent.
• Next, it says that in case the unidentified father turns out to be a foreigner, the citizenship by descent would be converted to naturalised citizenship.
• Furthermore, it supports punitive action against the mother if the father is found later.

Indian connection to the issue

• There is an unarticulated concern in the orthodox sections that Nepalese men, particularly from the Terai region, continue to marry women from northern India.
• These people feel that Nepalese identity would be undermined.
• Because of this “Beti-Roti” (Nepalese men marrying Indian women) issue, many women could not become citizens of Nepal.
• They were subjected to the infamous seven-year cooling off period before they could apply for citizenship in Nepal.
• As such women were stateless, children of such families were also often found to be without Nepalese citizenship.
• However, the new amendments have done away with the cooling off period for these stateless women.

GS-III

Banking System Liquidity

Context

For the first time Liquidity in the banking system has moved into deficit mode after remaining in surplus mode for almost 40 months for the first time since May 2019.

What is Banking System Liquidity?

• Liquidity in the banking system refers to readily available cash that banks need to meet short-term business and financial needs.
• On a given day, if the banking system is a net borrower from the RBI under Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF), the system liquidity can be said to be in deficit and if the banking system is a net lender to the RBI, the system liquidity can be said to be in surplus.
  • The LAF refers to the RBI’s operations through which it injects or absorbs liquidity into or from the banking system.

What has Triggered this Deficit?

• The change in the liquidity situation has come due to advance tax outflows. This also increases the call money rate temporarily above the repo rate.
  • Call money rate is the rate at which short term funds are borrowed and lent in the money market.
  • Banks resort to these types of loans to fill the asset liability mismatch, comply with the statutory CRR (Cash Reserve Ratio) and SLR (Statutory Liquidity Ratio) requirements and to meet the sudden demand of funds. RBI, banks, primary dealers etc are the participants of the call money market.
• Besides, there is the continuous intervention of the RBI to stem the fall in the rupee against the US dollar.
• The deficit in the liquidity situation has been caused by an uptick in bank credit, intervention of the RBI into the forex market, and also incremental deposit growth not keeping pace with credit demand.

How can a Tight Liquidity Condition Impact Consumers?

• A tight liquidity condition could lead to a rise in the government securities yields and subsequently lead to a rise in interest rates for consumers too.
• RBI may increase Repo Rate, which can lead to a higher cost of funds.
• Banks will increase their repo-linked lending rates and the marginal cost of funds-based lending rate (MCLR), to which all loans are linked to. This rise will result in higher interest rates for consumers.
  • The MCLR is the minimum interest rate that a bank can lend at.

Way Forward

• RBI’s actions will depend upon the nature of the liquidity situation. If the current liquidity deficit situation is temporary and is largely on account of advance tax flow, the RBI may not have to act, as the funds should eventually come back into the system.
• However, if it is long-term in nature then the RBI may have to take measures to improve the liquidity situation in the system.