Monday, November 14, 2022

E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022

The Indian Government issued notification on E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022, which will come to effect from next financial year.

What is E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022?

The E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022 was published by the Ministry of Environment, forest and climate change on November 2, 2022.
The new rules will come to effect from April 1, 2023.
They will apply to all businesses and individuals involved in manufacturing, sales, transfer, purchase, refurbishing, dismantling, recycling and processing of e-waste or electrical and electronic equipment.
Under the new rules, the number of items that have been categorized as e-waste has been increased from 21 to 106.
It includes all electrical devices and radiotherapy equipment, nuclear medicine equipment and accessories, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), electric toys, air conditioners, microwaves, tablets, washing machine, refrigerator, iPad and others.
This includes electronic components, consumables, parts and spares that make the electronic products operational.
The new rules are not applicable for waste batteries, which are covered under the Battery Waste Management Rules, 2022.
It is also not applicable for packaging plastics, which are covered under the Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016.
It also does not apply for micro enterprises and radio-active wastes, which are covered under the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Act, 2006 and Atomic Energy Act, 1962 respectively.

What are the key features of the rules?

The rules restrict the use of hazardous substances for manufacturing electrical and electronic equipment. This comes in response to the deaths caused by exposure to radioactive materials.
Manufacturers of electronic equipment are mandated to reduce the use of lead, mercury, cadmium and other others that can harm human health and environment.
These materials can adversely affect brain, heart, liver, kidneys and skeletal system. It also causes harmful effects on neurological and reproductive systems.
Under the new rules, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) will conduct random sampling of electrical and electronic equipment placed in the market to monitor and verify compliance of reduced use of hazardous substances.
Manufacturers are required to use technologies and methods that make the end product recyclable. They are also required to ensure the compatibility of components or parts developed by different manufacturers. This will minimise the generation of e-wastes.
Imports or sales of new electrical and electronic equipment are allowed only if they comply with the government regulations. If the product does not comply with the rules, the manufacturer must withdraw all samples from the market.
It is the responsibility of the manufacturer to collect e-wastes generated during the manufacturing process and ensure that they are recycled or disposed as per the rules.

Current Affairs-November 13, 2022

INDIA

– PM Modi inaugurates Ramagundam Fertilizers & Chemicals Ltd in Telangana

– PM inaugurates onshore facilities of ONGC’s U-field in KG (Krishna Godavari) basin block in AP

– Public Service Broadcasting Day celebrated on Nov 12

– National Legal Services Authority observes Legal Services Day on Nov 9

– UGC notifies new regulations on PhD degrees; students completing 4-year undergraduate course eligible for direct admission

– Rajasthani writers Madhu Kankariya (2021), Madhav Hada (2022) awarded Bihari Puraskar in Udaipur

– Himachal Pradesh Assembly polls: 98% voter turnout at world’s highest polling booth (15,256 ft) in Lahaul & Spiti district

– 7th edition of Indo-French air exercise Garuda VII culminates in Jodhpur

– Padma Shri awardee mathematician R. L. Kashyap dies at 84

ECONOMY & CORPORATE

– MSCI includes 6 Indian stocks in its index

WORLD

– India, Cambodia sign four MoUs in areas of culture, wildlife and health following meeting between Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar and Cambodia’s PM Hun Sen in capital Phnom Penh

– Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agrees in principle to admit East Timor as the group’s 11th member at summit in Phnom Penh

– 9th ASEAN-India Summit organised in Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Indian delegation led by Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar

– World Pneumonia Day observed on Nov 12

– Father of modern election science, Sir David Butler, dies at 98 in UK; co-invented the swingometer, a graphics device used to show the shift of votes from one party to another

– China launches cargo spacecraft Tianzhou-5 for its Tiangong space station

– Fifth edition of Paris Peace Forum held; theme: “Riding out the multicrisis”

SPORTS

– Asian Boxing Championships in Amman, Jordan: India return with 12 medals: 4 gold, 2 silver, 6 bronze

– Greg Barclay of New Zealand re-elected as ICC (International Cricket Council) Chairman for two-year term

Economic & Political Weekly: Table of Contents

Vol. 57, Issue No. 46, 12 Nov, 2022

Commentary

Book Reviews

Making Sense of ‘New India’ - Rich Details but Confusing Frameworks

Suhas Palshikar

Scrutiny of the Union Government’s Performance

Ishan Anand

What Ails the Urban in the ‘Emerging Economies?’

Kanchan Gandhi

Special Articles

Consistency in NSSO Employment–Unemployment Estimates Using NSS 68th Round and PLFS Data

Jatinder S Bedi, Ajad Singh

Poverty Alleviation and Pro-poor Growth in Odisha - A Disaggregate Analysis

Priyabrata Sahoo, Asis Kumar Senapati

India’s Labour Reforms - The Informalisation of Work and Growth of Semi-formal Employment

Secki P Jose

Permacrisis: what it means and why it’s word of the year for 2022

The pandemic, war in Ukraine and more: digging into the philosophical roots of "crisis" reveals that a crisis is not necessarily awful, but may, in the long term, prove a necessary and beneficial corrective.

The Collins Dictionary’s word of the year for 2022 is “permacrisis”. As accolades go, the managing director of Collins Learning, Alex Beecroft, has said that this one “sums up quite succinctly how truly awful 2022 has been for so many people”.

The word, most widely understood as a portmanteau of “permanent” and “crisis”, has been in use for a little longer. In April 2021, policy analysts in Europe saw it as defining the era in which we live. Some in Britain inevitably ascribe the genesis of that era to Brexit. Others point to the pandemic.

For others still, it was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that made the word indispensable. As the writer, David Shariatmadari has put it: “Permacrisis” is a term that perfectly embodies the dizzying sense of lurching from one unprecedented event to another, as we wonder bleakly what new horrors might be around the corner.” This represents a shift from the way the notion of crisis has been defined until now. However, digging into the philosophical roots of the word reveals that a crisis is not necessarily awful, but may, in the long term, prove a necessary and beneficial corrective.

Crisis as necessary to progress

Philosophers have long defined a crisis as a situation that forces an individual or group to a moment of thoughtful critique – to a point where a new path is mapped out in relation to some issue of pressing concern. This definition stems from the ancient Greek term κρῐ́σῐς or krisis, which describes a medical or political moment of opportunity that bifurcates into life or death, victory or defeat.

However, as philosopher of history Reinhart Koselleck has shown, in modern philosophy, that ancient Greek notion of crisis undergoes a semantic shift. Its meaning changes radically, to refer to a contradiction between opposing forces that accelerates the transition of past into future. This can be seen in Karl Marx’s description of capitalism as a crisis-ridden economic system.

In struggling to tame its forces of production, labour and machinery, Marx contends, this system causes crises of overproduction: an excess of supply that cannot be met with an equivalent demand. These crises in turn foster opportunities for cultural, social and political innovation, the best 20th-century example of which is the creation of the welfare state.

“Crisis” is similarly defined in American philosopher Thomas Kuhn’s approach to the history of science. Kuhn views progress in modern research as driven by crises within existing scientific paradigms. The progressive shift from Newtonian to Einsteinian paradigms in 20th-century physics most neatly illustrates his thinking.

In both cases, “crisis” is linked to the idea – the ideal, even – of progress. Marx believed that, because the rate of profit has a tendency to fall, capitalism would meet a final crisis and that this would lead to the emergence of communism: an entirely new and, crucially, better socio-political situation.

“Permacrisis” represents the contemporary inversion of this conception. It is similar to Marx’s idea that human history will lead to a final crisis, only it precludes any idea of further progress. Instead of leading to something better, it denotes a static and permanently difficult situation.

A new realism

This concept of permacrisis has its roots in contemporary systems theory, which claims that a crisis can become so complicated that we can’t predict its outcome. In this regard, in his 2008 book, On Complexity, French philosopher Edgar Morin argues that humanity now resides within a network of interlocking systems and any crisis in one of those systems will engender a crisis in all the others.

Morin uses the word “polycrisis” to describe this situation. It is an idea that is also used in historian Adam Tooze’s work on crisis and disaster. As Tooze recently put it, when considering the sheer accumulation of problems the world currently faces – from conflict and the climate crisis to the pandemic and rising inflation – “the whole is even more dangerous than the sum of the parts”.

Interconnected microsystems, because of ever-shortening positive feedback loops, can very quickly trigger crisis, even catastrophe, in the wider macrosystem. Taking this one step further, the shift from “polycrisis” to “permacrisis” implies that we now see our crises as situations that can only be managed, not resolved. Indeed, “permacrisis” suggests that every decision to accelerate a difficult situation in order to come out on the other side of it risks something far worse.

Take the recent demise, in the UK, of the Truss administration. The decision to resolve an economic crisis only heightened a self-defeating political crisis – which then very rapidly further compounded the original economic crisis. Permacrisis signals not only a loss of faith in progress, but also a new realism in relation to what people can cope with and achieve. Our crises have become so complex and deep-seated that they can transcend our capacity to understand them.

Any decision to tackle them risks only making things worse. We are thus faced with a troubling conclusion. Our crises are no longer a problem. They are a stubborn fact.

Written by Neil Turnbull

The writer is Head of Department: English, Linguistics and Philosophy, Nottingham Trent

University Nottingham (UK)

Source: Indian Express, 13/11/22

On Children’s Day, can we imagine a system that values empathy, not just exams?

Education should be about cooperative growth, managing feelings and differences – not passing exams.

Some time ago, a group of high-school students were asked to name their greatest fear. “…being scolded for what I did accidentally,” “ …being rejected by friends,” “ that I’ll fail ,” “losing my temper,” “…disappointing my parents.”

Had these things had been discussed in class?

Silence.

Children need to share their worries and doubts, talk about why they get angry or cannot control themselves. Though every adult knows that an emotionally stable child will be a more focused student, such is the tyranny of expectation that most teachers are too hard worked and weary to tell their managements that a child’s understanding of himself is as important as his grasp of academic subjects.

When universal education based on textbooks was introduced into an oral and traditional culture like ours, it had no room for an attendant mentoring the development of a student’s personality. No one thought children needed anything other than order and discipline. The more the student studied the more distanced he became from his natural environment, community and native culture. This tradition has continued with the entire training between the child’s 5th and 15th years concentrated on the material world around her about which she is relentlessly tested. The higher order of thinking skills — dare one say spiritual growth, a zone of intimacy impossible to describe but in need of discussion — has faded. Education has become a way of life to pass examinations.

Over the last decade or so, as teenage suicides and child-against-child violence began to rise, a question has repeated itself:

On the road to academic excellence, did we miss something? We know that we cannot reverse this system but surely, we can modify it with the support of teachers and other stakeholders. In a civilised society (and we congratulate ourselves endlessly about our heritage) each generation is expected to make the society better and safer for the next one. Hence, the tremendous societal role schools have. Training in understanding the value of cooperative growth, empathy and managing feelings and differences has to start early. Countless hours have been spent discussing how personal and social transformation is possible through a well-designed course on social and personal ethics. Hardly anything is said about training the teachers, the agents of awakening.

Recently, I watched a video describing millennials and their socio-emotional disabilities. A chilling list of features: Entitlement, self-obsession, narcissism, low tolerance, inability to focus on anything for any length of time. This might well be true of some of them but not all of them. Many youngsters everywhere are responding warmly to outreach messages for help. Any request sent out on behalf of students in distress or appeals for food or donations to animal shelters is almost immediately met with a flood of calls and assurances. Some of the respondees are school goers.

What does that tell us? Someone inspired them. Something other than their textbooks brought out the best in them. A routine counter to the idea that values can be taught is that they can only be imbibed (“We learnt from our parents.”) But what if family members are too busy to spend time with children?

A policy to foster the idea and importance of the self in harmony with wider and wider circles can be implemented through schools to influence at least those children who get to attend school who will one day lead their communities and society; they will write and teach, build cities, patent new medicines and technologies; they will enact policies and laws.

This is especially important when millions of Indian children below the age of 10 have no hope of an education. Disadvantaged by illiteracy, they are vulnerable to all the negative forces around them. Doesn’t that leave the rest of us with a duty to overcome our limited knowledge based on traditions and prejudices? The intense competition that contemporary life fosters has already left many youngsters with no inner resources to counter anxiety, fear and rage. Some young children are so lonely and edgy they take their own lives when they fail entrance exams, do not get the kind of clothes they want or feel inadequate in English-language classes. It is clear that the skills necessary to manage feelings of anger and disappointment have become extremely urgent and are as important as academic achievement. No single plan of action will fit everyone. Each region, possibly individual schools in consultation with neighbouring institutions, will need to devise what works for them.

Educating for peace seeks to nurture a moral vision about the role of the self in the family, society, nation and the world. A six-year-old cannot understand the term social justice. A 14-year-old can and must. But the former can understand the idea of sharing and fairness, which in turn will develop into a grasp of what the latter understands in five seconds. An eight-year-old can only be told that he must not destroy leaves and plants for fun or stone a pup for fun. A 15- year-old understands that leaves, birds, insects, people and climate are all linked. If we are to survive on an impoverished planet that cannot manage its food-stocks or famines, its water resources or forests, we must, as quickly as possible, see ourselves as a global family and sensitise children to understand that what affects one group in one part of the world, will eventually affect everyone everywhere else. We have already learnt how to make children healthier but we have paid less attention to their hearts and minds.

Surely the goal of education is to equip people to lead meaningful lives and not only to make a living.

Written by Mini Krishnan

The writer was Editor, Translations, at Oxford University Press and Macmillan India and currently co-ordinates a project of translations for the Tamil Nadu Textbook & Educational Services Corporation.

Source: Indian Express, 14/11/22

Friday, November 11, 2022

Quote of the Day November 11, 2022

“Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally.”
David Frost

“यदि आपको सफलता की अपेक्षा है तो इसका लक्ष्य न बनाएं; अपितु वही करें जो आपको प्रिय है और विश्वास रखें और स्वाभाविक रूप से आप इसे हासिल कर सकेगें।”
डेविड फ्रास्ट

India’s First Sovereign Green Bonds Framework

What are Green Bonds?

Green bonds are financial instruments that generate proceeds for the investments in environmentally-suitable and climate friendly projects. These instruments have lower capital cost than regular bonds.

Indian Government announced at the Union Budget 2022-23 that it will issue its maiden sovereign green bonds in the present financial year. The government announced that it would auction Rs.16,000 worth of green bonds during the second half of FY2023. This accounts for a fraction of the Central Government’s borrowing programme for October-March.

What is Green Finance Working Committee?

The Indian Government had set up a Green Finance Working Committee headed by the Chief Economic Adviser to select eligible project for financing via green bonds. This does not include large hydropower plants. The committee will meet at least two times a year. It has members from relevant line ministries, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, NITI Aayog, and the Budget Division of the finance ministry’s Department of Economics and others.

About Green Bonds Framework

The Green Bonds Framework was released by the Indian Government on November 9, 2022.
As per this framework, the payments of principal and interest on the Green Bonds will not rely on the eligible projects’ performance. Therefore, the investors will not be adversely affected by any project-related risks.
The eligible expenditure are limited to government expenditures that occurred within 12 months before the issuance of the bond. All of the proceedings for the bond will be allocated to projects within 24 months after the issuance.
While the Union Ministry of Finance has the right to make any changes in the Green Bonds Framework, the modifications made will be reviewed by an independent organization. The framework was reviewed by the Norway-based CICERO Shades of Green – a firm that provides second opinions on green bond frameworks.
The framework has been rated “Medium Green” with a “Good” governance score by CICERO. The medium green rating is provided to projects and solutions that make significant stride towards long-term vision but not quite there yet.

Followers