Innholdsfortegnelse for November 22, 2021 i India Today

On the afternoon of November 3, images of Punjab chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi and PPCC (Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee) chief Navjot Singh Sidhu at the Kedarnath temple in Uttarakhand began doing the rounds. The ‘peace pilgrimage’ was organised by the Congress’s new in-charge Harish Chaudhary to allow the warring leaders to bury their differences and to send out a message to the Hindus in Punjab that the party was mindful of their sensitivities. Hindus constitute 38.5 per cent of the electorate in Punjab and are the biggest chunk of swing voters. There are 45 seats in which they are either in a majority or sizeable enough to influence results. In the past three decades, the 7-14 per cent Hindu swing vote has been a deciding factor in election outcomes.…

For his birthday (on November 7) this year, Trinamool Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee shed his political uniform—and was seen mingling with his fans and followers in a black tee and ripped jeans, affecting a boyish insouciance. Every year, he drives down to aunt and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s house, a stone’s throw away from his own, for her blessings. But this year, flanked by a cheering crowd, he chose to walk. A new fitness regimen maybe? Or call it walking that extra mile.…

We need a battery revolution of a different kind for the most promising source of renewable energy: solar. Under Modi’s leadership, India has ramped up its solar generation capacity from 2.6 GW in 2014 to around 40 GW currently and is targeting a phenomenal 280 GW by 2030. At Glasgow, Modi announced that India would meet 50 per cent of its energy requirements from renewable sources such as solar, hydro, wind and biomass. This would mean upping the non-fossil fuel energy capacity to 500 GW, with solar comprising 60 per cent. Meanwhile, India pushed through the International Solar Alliance at the Paris climate change summit that has seen over 100 nations collaborate to boost global solar power production. Solar energy, however, has major drawbacks, including supply being intermittent as it…

Despite being a major substitute for fossil fuel, nuclear power steadily declined in salience, barring in a few nations like France. Part of the reason was the backlash from the public and environmentalists after several nuclear accidents, including the one at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in 2011. Since then, the nuclear power establishment has been working hard on making reactor technology failsafe. Nuclear energy is making a strong comeback in many countries, including in India, after several reputable research institutes, including MIT, produced studies that showed the cost of clean fuel would quadruple if nuclear was not made part of the new energy mix. In India, nuclear power currently accounts for only 3.3 per cent of the energy mix. The government has recently sanctioned 10 additional 700 MW nuclear…

Among the major objectives of the Glasgow summit was to frame the foundation of an international carbon trading system listed in the Paris Agreement to achieve the target of net zero emissions by 2050. It would enable nations to transfer credits to each other and offset their GHG emission targets. Critics of the trading system, and there are many, say it would give leeway to developed countries and companies that are highly polluting to stave off making deeper cuts in their own emissions by buying credits from poorer countries at exploitative prices. There are also major differences over whether the new trading system will recognise historical emissions permitted under earlier protocols. Others want rules that permit double credits—for the nation funding a particular carbon reducing project, such as the regeneration…

1999: Dilip Singh Rathore, then a liquor contractor, builds a luxurious hotel, Fort Rajwada, in Jaisalmer 2008: Rathore secures a Rs 24 crore term loan from SBI in Jodhpur to build another hotel, Garh Rajwada, in Jaisalmer 2010: Dilip Singh passes away; his company, Hotel Gaudavan Pvt. Ltd, defaults on loan repayment; SBI declares the loan as NPA Sept. 30, 2013: Pratip Chaudhuri retires as SBI chairman. On October 23, process begins to recover the loan taken by Gaudavan Group by auction Mar. 2014: Alchemist Asset Reconstruction Company (AARC) gets both hotels for Rs 25 crore. The properties were estimated in distressed sale valuations in 2013 as worth around Rs 82 crore. Chaudhuri joins AARC as director in Oct. 2014. May 2015: Debt Recovery Tribunal in Jaipur and Debts Recovery…

Source: Jayadeva Ranade ◉ Beijing’s three-year plan unveiled in 2018 aims to build 628 model ‘well-off’ border defence villages in 21 border counties along the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) ◉ Around 62,160 households with 240,000 people to be provided with all amenities, including water, electricity, road and communication network ◉ Villagers to keep an eye on movement of Indians and activity across border ◉ Status and salaries of village-level cadre higher than average level in other TAR villages…

“Came in ’86/I was four, we was torn/It was me and Amma, Appa and my four/Older brothers, I was youngest and protected/In Montreal we landed/But Toronto made a home,” spits Tamil rapper Shan Vincent de Paul on the self-titled track from his latest album Made in Jaffna. Released in September, the album is an autobiographical effort, where the Jaffna-born artist sincerely raps about not just the trials and tribulations of his Tamil community during the Sri Lankan civil war, but also what he went through as a South Asian growing up in a western world. From producers like Santhosh Narayanan to rapper Navz-47, artist TiKa and his longtime collaborator, producer La+ch, Made in Jaffna sees de Paul open himself up to an unprecedented influence. “I’m not musically-trained, so I explain…

In the bustling heart of Goa’s Candolim is a four-room space that aims to offer tourists a glimpse of the state’s alcohol legacy. All About Alcohol (AAA) is a two-month-old museum that showcases part of businessman Nandan Kudchadkar’s collection of items—think chalices, record-holding shot glasses, a sugarcane crusher, glasses of all kinds, a wooden shot dispenser, snifters, a mortar and pestle used to crush gin botanicals, water goblets and more. This ‘encyclopaedia of alcohol’ is Kudchadkar’s attempt at opening “the only museum in the world dedicated to alcohol”. Expectedly in a state known for its GI-tagged colourless liquor, feni, the museum chooses to highlight that heritage, too. Spread across five sections and covering an area of 13,000 sq. ft., AAA has a feni still, a cellar stacked with garrafões (handblown…

The fifth edition of the ‘Deepotsav’, organised in Ayodhya on the occasion of Chhoti Deepavali, also had Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath issuing the clarion call for the 2022 assembly election from the stage. His words dispelled all doubt that the BJP campaign will have a keen Hindutva edge. Referring to an incident from November 2, 1990, when the Ram Janmabhoomi movement was at its peak and the police had fired on karsevaks after clashes in Ayodhya, he took a dig at the then chief minister and Samajwadi Party (SP) patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav: “The day is not far when he will stand in line along with his family for a karseva at the Ram temple being built in Ayodhya. Next time, when the karseva is held, not bullets…

On October 8, when the BJP announced candidates for the bypolls in Himachal, in Jubbal Kotkhai, a remote constituency in the Upper Shimla region, Chetan Bragta reportedly wept on stage, in full view of the public. The seat had fallen vacant after the death of his father, BJP veteran Narendra Bragta, in June due to post-Covid complications, and Chetan had been hoping to succeed him. The party high command, though, preferred to go with a lesser known leader, Neelam Seraik, even though Bragta Jr had the backing of Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur. In the bargain, Chetan turned a rebel Independent and cut into the BJP vote—to the benefit of Congress candidate Rohit Thakur, who won. Seraik forfeited her deposit. The party also lost the two other assembly bypoll seats,…

If running a three-party government wasn’t enough trouble already, Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren has a new problem on the family front. Sister-in-law and MLA Sita Soren has appealed to his father, the JMM (Jharkhand Mukti Morcha) chief Shibu Soren, to rid the party of ‘unscrupulous elements’. Sita is the wife of Hemant’s now deceased elder brother Durga Soren. Since the Sorens haven’t responded, Sita has upped the ante. Her daughters have set up a Durga Soren Sena and written to the CM seeking a reward for those who fought for statehood.…

With developed countries moving decisively towards carbon-free economies, developing nations left behind by the Industrial Revolution still depend heavily on oil and coal as the most cost-effective options for their energy needs. Despite the rapid expansion of its renewable energy capacity, fossil fuel sources, including coal-fired thermal power plants, still fulfil 80 per cent of India’s energy needs. Economic development necessitates a rise in per capita energy consumption, and India’s energy requirement is expected to grow five-fold by 2050. This means India will remain dependent on fossil fuels for decades. As an interim solution, experts are pressing for a fossil fuel that releases much less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, such as natural gas. In a seminal volume titled The Next Stop: Natural Gas and India’s Journey towards a Clean Energy…

While solar energy has grabbed the spotlight, wind power too has been making steady progress across the world and in India. With an installed capacity of 39,000 MW, accounting for 10 per cent of the country’s total generation, India is now among the top five wind energy-generating nations in the world. The wind of change has been in the design and construction of turbines, which will enable them to generate more electricity at a cheaper cost. The length of the turbine blades, which averaged around 20 metres (roughly the length of a cricket pitch), has now been extended to 50 metres or more. Many of them now have a wingspan of an average passenger jet plane. The greater the radius of the rotor blades, the better they can harness the…

Central to the climate accords since inception in 1992 is the fact that developed countries that had historically overloaded GHG emissions into the atmosphere must fund both mitigation and adaption measures to enable developing countries combat climate change. The “common but differentiated responsibilities” based on the principle that polluters must pay agreed upon in Rio was bypassed by the Paris Agreement that opted for voluntary nationally determined emission reduction measures that left the big historical polluters, including the US, off the hook. Now, a second major principle on which the Paris agreement rested has begun to unravel, with developed countries nowhere close to mobilising the $100 billion per year by 2020 agreed upon to support climate action in developing countries. A UN official said the commitment was meant “to be…

MEHEK ANAND, 16 Student, Vasant Valley School, Delhi “The cryptic cure to climate change has always been ‘consume less’. To many, it comes off as absurd—are we expected to live frugal, Gandhian lives? I believe that before making a purchase, we should remember to ‘consume mindfully’…. It all boils down to awareness and mindfulness. Students need to implement lifestyle changes by explaining to their families that individual health and the planet’s health are synonymous. The time to act is now. Stop saying tomorrow. It starts today.” ZENAB HABIB, 20 Student, B.Tech Computer Science & Communications Engineering, Bhubaneswar “A cradle of creation with warmth at its core… Earth is our mother and abode. Forgo the greed and conceit wreaking havoc upon our only home forever and a day. Pledge to turn…

₹8.35 lakh crore Total bad loans of banks as on March 31, 2021, from peak of Rs 10.36 lakh crore in March 2018 ₹1.26 lakh crore SBI’s gross NPAs as on March 31, 2021 65-67% Discount at which 15 loan accounts of defaulters were sold by SBI during Pratip Chaudhuri’s term as bank chairman (Business Today estimates) CREDIT CRISIS Loans extended to the industrial sector have fallen sharply over the past decade Source: RBI “This (arrest) sets a bad precedent and is very frivolous. Local law authorities are not equipped to handle such an investigation”NILESH SHAH MD, Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Company “The case has raised awareness about how judicial interventions can distort the working environment of bankers”SUBHASH CHANDRA GARG Former finance secretary…

On September 27, when Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray learned that the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) had issued summons to two of his top officials—chief secretary Sitaram Kunte and acting DGP (director general of police) Sanjay Pandey—in connection with a case filed against former home minister Anil Deshmukh, Thackeray’s response, sources say, was, “Give them a befitting reply.” The reply arrived in two parts. First, Kunte and Pandey refused to honour the three summons, which asked them to appear on September 29, October 2 and October 11, apparently because it departed from protocol in which senior officers under inquiry are questioned in their own offices. They asked the CBI to send its investigators to their offices instead; the central agency chose to email them its questions. The second part…

JINENDER SONI, 35 Founder, Mission Gyan Jaipur In 2019, Jinender Soni quit his Rs 5 lakh a month job as a mathematics teacher with a popular online coaching academy and built a similar facility for government school students in Rajasthan’s Jhunjhunu district. What aided his endeavour was the good availability of computer labs in the district’s government schools. The Covid lockdown last year prompted the Rajasthan government to urgently expand digital education for students, and Soni’s online teaching product came in handy. Soni raised resources through the C.M. Mundhra Memorial Charitable Trust, Cairn Foundation, corporates likes Padam Interiors and Kolors Switches and crowd-funding, and even put in his own funds, to meet the Rs 8 lakh monthly expenditure and slogged with his team of 40 teachers to create the first…

IN The Great Derangement—Amitav Ghosh’s earlier celebrated essay on climate change—the phenomenon is crisply explored through stories, history and politics. The Nutmeg’s Curse, in contrast, is ambulatory. In tracing the story of the nutmeg, Ghosh talks us through colonial genocide, eco-fascism, military emissions, philosophy of science. All the anecdotes and historical detail are amassed to make a single argument—colonial exploitation and global warming are bedfellows. Here colonial exploitation is not only material extraction of resources, but the shaping of thought to support this process. Celebrated philosophers John Locke and Francis Bacon are exposed as facilitators of the coming apocalypse. They developed and advocated an idea of civilisation characterised by the conversion of land into property and the use of mechanical devices to master nature. It is towards the end of…

Byelections in India typically favour the incumbent government, and are not generally considered a reliable barometer of the public mood. For instance, in the bypolls held in March 2018, the ruling BJP lost two Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, including Gorakhpur, the bastion of chief minister Yogi Adityanath. A year later, the saffron party stormed back to power, winning 303 seats across India, and 62 of 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh. Gorakhpur returned to the BJP fold. This is the reason political observers are not reading too much into the results of the recent bypolls held in 30 assembly and three Lok Sabha constituencies, where the BJP had an underwhelming outing. For the record, the BJP won just seven of the 23 assembly seats it contested and lost all…

On November 2, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced a revised Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) framework for all scheduled banks in India. The new framework modifies the PCA norms announced in 2017, taking into consideration changes in the banking environment over the past four years. The new norms will be effective January 1, 2022. The PCA framework is a mechanism that allows the RBI to detect signs of distress in Indian banks and to intervene when necessary. When their financials slide into a suspect zone, as mandated by the PCA framework, the RBI puts in place restrictions on their functioning. Depending on which threshold of risk has been violated, the bank may face restrictions on distributing dividends to shareholders or on branch expansion or even on capital expenditure. In…

How we move around is one of the major causes of carbon emissions. The transport sector accounts for close to 16 per cent of the world’s GHG emissions. Forty-eight per cent of this is generated by the 900 million passenger cars. However, a revolution is underway as cars powered by electricity and emitting zero carbon are hitting the road in larger numbers. The electric vehicle market has grown by over 40 per cent year on year in the past five years. Despite this phenomenal growth, the 8 million electric cars on the road account for less than one per cent of the world’s passenger car market. In India, while there are over a dozen electric vehicle manufacturers, electric cars are a fraction of the total passenger vehicles in the country.…

Most high school students would recall the simple science experiment of using an electric charge to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, a process called electrolysis. Few, though, would have seen it as the answer to the world’s quest for clean energy, particularly for heating buildings, long distance transport or generating high temperatures in heavy industries like cement, steel and aluminium. Strangely, for decades, 95 per cent of industrial hydrogen was derived from coal or natural gas that resulted in 12 tonnes of CO2 emission for every tonne of hydrogen produced. The shift from grey to (the less carbon-generating) blue hydrogen and now to the relatively more expensive green and clean fuel version began recently after countries clamped down on GHG emissions. Now, all the big daddies of business are…

Billionaire, philanthropist and now environment evangelist Bill Gates in his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, argues that “markets, technology and policy are three levers that we need to pull to wean ourselves from fossil fuels”. He advocates putting Green Premiums on all goods and services so that people adopt zero emissions to drive down premiums. Former Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia believes government policies and sensible fiscal incentives can accelerate the pace of transition to clean fuels. He says, “The EU has announced that cars with internal combustion engines will not be allowed for sale after 2035. India must do something similar for faster adoption of clean technology. A simple first step is for the central government to announce that all vehicles it buys or…

The Union finance ministry, on October 29, issued key norms to protect public sector bankers whose bona fide decisions could go wrong and lead to bad loans, or non-performing assets (NPAs), often inviting investigations from government agencies. The idea was to help public sector bankers take faster decisions on loans, especially to corporates, at a time when the economy needs huge investments in projects to shake off the impact of the pandemic. Two days later, the Rajasthan police arrested Pratip Chaudhuri, a former chairman of the State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest bank, with assets worth over Rs 5 lakh crore, in New Delhi on charges of alleged complicity in undervaluing and aiding the sale of two hotels belonging to a business group whose loan from the bank…

Until 2019, the area just north of Arunachal Pradesh’s Upper Subansiri district had been verdant forest. Last year, a concrete village of 100-odd houses appeared along the sliver of the Tsari Chu river—the neat grey-roofed structures were arranged like rows of white and grey terracotta warriors. Satellite images released this January by US-based private imaging firm Planet Labs showed the new village. The land the village stood on had once been part of India’s North East Frontier Agency (later renamed Arunachal Pradesh) until it was occupied by China in the late 1950s. Beijing’s explosive growth of military infrastructure—airfields and military bases on the Tibetan plateau—is now only matched by a simultaneous push to settle civilian populations in newly-constructed settlements like the one on the Tsari Chu river. Over the past…

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