House panel includes SEBI review in agenda, likely to summon Buch

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the parliamentary watchdog for government spending, has decided to include in its agenda for the year a review of the performance of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) whose chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch is at the centre of a political firestorm following allegations levelled against her by US-based Hindenburg Research. Sources said the parliamentary panel, which has notified its agenda, is likely to summon the current SEBI chief during the review process. The PAC, headed by Congress senior leader K C Venugopal, took the unusual step to include a suo motu subject – performance review of regulatory bodies established by Act of Parliament – at its last meeting on August 29. The agenda for the year was notified earlier this week.

Swach Bharat helped avert 60,000 infant deaths per year: study 

Access to toilets and better sanitation services under the government’s Swachh Bharat Mission may have averted around 60,000 to 70,000 infant deaths annually between 2014 and 2020, a study published in the journal Nature has found. Launched on October 2, 2014, over 11 crore household toilets were built under Swachh Bharat Mission-Grameen as of 2020, and over six lakh villages were declared Open Defecation Free, according to government data. Under Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban, over 63 lakh individual household toilets and 6.36 lakh community public toilets have been built.

The report, ‘Toilet construction under the Swachh Bharat Mission and infant mortality in India’, by Suman Chakrabarti, Soyra Gune, Tim A. Bruckner, Julie Strominger and Parvati Singh, published on September 2, took into account the infant mortality rate (IMR, or the number of deaths of children under one year of age per 1,000 live births) and the under-five mortality rate (U5MR) in 35 states and 640 districts between 2011 and 2020. 

Semiconductor pact among 4 signed by India and Singapore 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Singapore during the second leg of a two-nation trip to South-East Asia this week, having travelled to Brunei Darussalam in the first leg. It was the first visit by an Indian Prime Minister to Brunei, and Modi’s fifth trip to Singapore. Brunei is an important partner in India’s Act East Policy and Indo-Pacific vision, and the talks with Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah, the world’s longest reigning monarch, were focused on trade, defence, space and cultural ties. The Singapore leg of the Prime Minister’s visit was marked by agreements on semiconductors, digital technologies, health and skill development. The PM and his newly elected Singaporean counterpart Lawrence Wong witnessed the exchange of the Memorandum of Understanding on an India-Singapore Semiconductor Ecosystem Partnership. 

Law commission: its role, members and recommendations  

The Union government has notified the constitution of the 23rd Law Commission of India with effect from September 1. The commission, which was notified on September 2, will have a three-year term. The tenure of the previous Law Commission chaired by former Karnataka High Court Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi ended on August 31. The commission has been notified at a time when some key items on the BJP’s agenda, including the implementation of a Uniform Civil Code and holding simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and state Assemblies, were given a fresh push by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Independence Day address. The Law Commission is a non-statutory commission (not created by a law of Parliament) formed by the Union Ministry of Law and Justice through a gazette notification to help the government review functioning of laws, suggest repealing of obsolete legislation, and make recommendations on matters referred to it by the government. The commission is usually chaired by a retired judge of the Supreme Court or a High Court, and has legal scholars as members. Serving judges can also be appointed to the commission, according to the notification on the appointment of the new panel. 

Why saturn’s majestic rings will briefly disapperar in march 

There are few sights in the Solar System as majestic as the rings of Saturn. But in March 2025, these rings will “disappear” — though only briefly. Here is why. It is not as if the rings will cease to exist. Their “disappearance” — when viewed from Earth — will be an optical illusion. Saturn, which is tilted at an angle of 26.73 degrees, takes about 29.4 Earth years to complete a single orbit of the Sun. This means that for half of a Saturn year (roughly 15 years), the gas giant is tilted towards the Sun, and for the other half it is tilted away from it. Its rings too are tilted at the same angle, and as the planet revolves, they appear to change their orientation when viewed from Earth. Every 13 to 15 years, the edge of Saturn’s rings aligns directly with Earth. This is what will happen in March 2025 when only the edges of the ring will be visible from our planet. Since Saturn’s rings are very thin — just tens of metres thick in most places — at this position, they will reflect very little light, essentially making them invisible. (Imagine viewing the edge of a thin sheet of paper from a great distance.) But as Saturn continues to go around the Sun, its rings will gradually reappear.

This phenomenon last occurred in 2009.

MSMEs raise alarm over steel import duty hikes amid calls for more protection

As large steel producers push for protectionist measures citing a rise in Chinese steel imports, number of micro, small & medium enterprises (MSMEs) have flagged concerns over any hike in duties on steel inputs, which, they say, might potentially drive them out of business. This comes in the wake of assurances from Minister of Heavy Industries HD Kumaraswamy and Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, during events organised by the Indian Steel Association (ISA), that steps would be taken to restrict Chinese steel imports to protect the domestic steel industry. On Wednesday, Kumaraswamy said that he would request the Finance Ministry to raise the import duty from 7.5 per cent to 10-12 per cent. On Thursday, Goyal proposed working on a “border adjustment tax (BAT)” to curb Chinese steel imports, as steelmakers argued that imports were entering India at “predatory” prices.

No turning back

In 2022, following a Madras High Court order, the National Medical Commission (NMC) took welcome steps towards making the competency-based medical education (CBME) curriculum more progressive and non-discriminatory. It modified modules that characterised sodomy and “lesbianism” as unnatural sexual offences and removed the “two-finger test” as a test for virginity, among other changes. These modifications and deletions were seen as part of a wider move to afford all citizens, irrespective of their gender and sexuality, equality and dignity within the medical system. Which is why the decision to reverse those changes in August — rolled back on Thursday — bringing back definitions of virginity and “defloration”, removing the distinctions between consensual sex between queer individuals, adultery and offences like incest and bestiality, as well as doing away with a seven-hour training module on disability, were inexplicable and disheartening. 

From India to Global South

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at the inauguration of the Third Voice of Global South Summit (VoGSS), attempted to rebalance the terms of South-South engagement with a new conceptual framework that he described as a “Development Compact”. The idea behind the concept is to leverage five different modalities of engagement in a harmonised manner, where one reinforces the other. These are capacity building, technology sharing, trade for development, grants and the most important, concessional finance. If implemented well, India’s Development Compact would set a new baseline for wider engagement with the Global South. Due to imbalances in the modalities of engagement, a large section of the Global South has ended up in indebtedness of distressing proportions. The figures from UNCTAD (2023) say it all: Developing countries’ public debt in 2023 was $29 trillion; developing countries net interest payments on public debt was $847 billion; 54 developing countries spend more than 10 per cent of their revenues on net interest payments; and developing countries experienced a negative net resource transfer in 2022.