‘Confidential’ report on Assam Accord released
Paper:
Mains: General Studies- II: Governance, Constitution, Polity, Social Justice and International relations.
Why in News:
The confidential report on Assam Accord was made public by the All Assam Students’ Union (a part of the Centre’s high-level committee on the implementation of Clause 6 of the Assam Accord) quoting the government’s disinterest in processing their recommendations.
Background:
- A high-power committee was constituted by the Centre in July 2019 with 14 members and justice Sharma as its chairman for the implementation of Clause 6 of the Assam Accord.
- It had submitted its report to the Chief Minister of Assam in February 2020.
Assam Accord:
- The Assam Accord (1985) was a Memorandum of Settlement (MoS) signed between representatives of the Government of India and the leaders of Assam on 15 August 1985.
- The Accord brought to an end six years of the Assam movement, an agitation in the state against undocumented immigrants.
What is Clause 6 of the Assam Accord?
- As per Clause 6, constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards, as may be appropriate, shall be provided to protect, preserve and promote the culture, social, linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people.
- It is one of the promises in the Assam Accord, a memorandum of settlement inked between the representatives of the All Assam Students’ Union, the Assam state government and the Government of India.
- The Clause that ended the anti-foreigners’ Assam agitation from 1979-1985.
- The bone of contention since the signing of the Accord was the definition of Assamese people. The committee tried to address this issue.
Daughters have equal right to inherit property, says SC
Paper:
Mains: General Studies- II: Governance, Constitution, Polity, Social Justice and International relations.
Why in News:
The Supreme Court has held that daughters have an equal birthright with sons to inherit joint Hindu family property.
SC landmark verdict:
- A three-judge bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra ruled that a Hindu woman’s right to be a joint heir to the ancestral property is by birth and does not depend on whether her father was alive or not when the law was enacted in 2005.
- The amended Hindu Succession Act gives daughters equal rights to ancestral property and will have a retrospective effect.
- SC agreed with lead arguments made by senior advocate Bishwajit Bhattacharya that the substituted Section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 confers the status of ‘coparcener’ to a daughter born before or after the amendment in the same manner as a son.
What is the 2005 law?
- The Mitakshara School of Hindu Law codified as the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 governed succession and inheritance of property but only recognised males as legal heirs.
- The law applied to everyone who is not a Muslim, Christian, Parsi or Jew by religion.
- Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains and followers of the Arya Samaj, the Brahmo Samaj are also considered Hindus for the purposes of this law.
- In a Hindu Undivided Family, several legal heirs through generations can exist jointly. Traditionally, only male descendants of a common ancestor along with their mothers, wives and unmarried daughters are considered a joint Hindu family.
- Women were recognised as coparceners or joint legal heirs for partition arising from 2005.
- Section 6 of the Act was amended in 2005 to make a daughter of a coparcener also a coparcener by birth, in the same manner as the son.
- The law applies to ancestral property and to intestate succession in personal property — where succession happens as per law and not through a will.
Some key terms and their meaning:
Coparcener: a person who shares equally with others in the inheritance of an undivided estate or in the rights to it (in the UK now as equitable interests).
- As per the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, any individual born in a Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) becomes a coparcener by birth.
- Both sons and daughters are coparceners in the family and share equal rights and liabilities over the property.
- A daughter remains coparcener even after marriage and her children become coparceners in her share after her death.
Hindu Undivided Family:
- An HUF is a family which consists of all persons lineally descended from a common ancestor, and also the wives and daughters of the male descendants.
- It consists of the karta, who is typically the eldest person or head of the family, while other family members are coparceners.
- The karta manages the day-to-day affairs of the HUF.
- Children are coparceners of their father’s HUF.
- Once a daughter gets married, she becomes a member of her husband’s HUF, while continuing to be a coparcener of her father’s HUF. Even Jain, Buddhist and Sikh families can have HUFs.
Debt revamp to prolong banks’ asset quality uncertainty: Fitch
Paper:
Mains: General Studies-III: Technology, Economic Development, Bio diversity, Environment, Security and Disaster Management
Why in News:
Recently Fitch Ratings said that, onetime debt restructuring allowed by India’s central bank to help lenders and borrowers amid the COVID19 pandemic will prolong uncertainty about the banking sector’s asset quality.
Key Details:
- RBI recently announced that it will allow restructuring of corporate and personal loans to ease debt strains on companies and lenders.
- Fitch said it believes that the scheme may be designed to give banks more time to raise capital, which remains challenging in the current environment, to address the impact of the crisis on loan portfolios.
- “The policy could open a window for banks to build capital buffers while putting off full recognition of the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on loan portfolios, but is reminiscent of a strategy adopted over 2010-2016 that delayed and exacerbated problems for the banks,” Fitch said.
- RBI has set up a committee to oversee restructuring plans involving creditors with more than ₹15 billion of debt.
- According to Fitch, lending to retail and small- and medium-sized firms is likely to account for a substantial portion of future pandemic-linked asset quality stress.
What Is a Credit Rating?
- A credit rating is a quantified assessment of the creditworthiness of a borrower in general terms or with respect to a particular debt or financial obligation.
- A credit rating can be assigned to any entity that seeks to borrow money—an individual, corporation, state or provincial authority, or sovereign government.
- Credit assessment and evaluation for companies and governments is generally done by a credit rating agency such as Standard & Poor’s (S&P), Moody’s, or Fitch.
- These rating agencies are paid by the entity that is seeking a credit rating for itself or for one of its debt issues.
A look at how the Idukki landslide occurred
Paper:
Mains: General Studies-III: Technology, Economic Development, Bio diversity, Environment, Security and Disaster Management
Why in News?
The landslide happened on August 6 at Pettimudi a hamlet in Rajamala ward under Munnar village panchayat in Kerala’s Idukki district.
Vulnerable area
- The location where the landslide was triggered, according to the Kerala Geology Department, has a 40° slope, and any slope above 20° is vulnerable to slipping during heavy rain.
- The soil has a high content of sand, which absorbs more water, takes a loose form, and is at risk of slipping down.
- An analysis of landslides in Idukki by the State Disaster Management Authority has shown that high-intensity rainfall saturates the soil on the slopes. Soil with higher clay content has high water retention capacity and low drainage capacity, leading to high water pressure in the slope material.
Other Reasons:
- Human interventions such as heavy loading on the slopes caused by buildings on cut-and-fill ground, without adequate protective measures on the uphill and downhill sides, have made the area particularly vulnerable.
- Frequent slides have resulted in blockage of river channels and changed the river’s course.
prevention and detection:
- At present, Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) is capable of issuing heavy rainfall warning only at district level which is insufficient for issuing landslide early warnings.
- In the state it is the Revenue Department that maintains data pertaining to disasters such as landslides. Apart from governmental departments and agencies, many newspapers keep archival data.
- It may be noted here that the reported occurrences of landslides are only a minor percentage of the actual happenings in the region.
- Normally the landslides with loss of life and property or considerable damage to public utilities like communication lines attract the attention of the authorities.
- Considerable part of the happenings in large scale plantations and forest land is not properly documented. These constrains limit the effective functioning of early warning systems.
Disaster Mitigation:
- Mainstreaming Disaster Mitigation in to Development Plans:
- The Disaster Management Act, 2005 (section 23.4.C) states that the State Disaster Management Plan shall include the manner in which the mitigation measures shall be integrated with the development plans and projects.
- The Eleventh Five Year Plan also emphasises the necessity of mainstreaming disaster management into development planning and requires that every development plan of a department should incorporate elements of impact assessment, risk reduction, and the ‘do no harm ‘approach.
- The Second Administrative Reforms Commission (SARC) has recommended that disaster plans should be included in the development plans of the line departments of State Governments and local bodies.
About landslides:
- A landslide is defined as the movement of a mass of rock, debris, or earth down a slope.
- Landslides are a type of mass wasting (a geomorphic process), which denotes any down-slope movement of soil and rock under the direct influence of gravity.
- Landslides can be triggered by many factors such as earthquakes, volcanic activity, soil erosion and slow weathering of rocks and heavy rainfall.
Major types of landslides:
- Falls: It happens due to the abrupt movements of masses of geologic materials, such as rocks and boulders that become detached from steep slopes or cliffs.
- Spread: It generally happens on very gentle slopes or flat terrain.
- Topples: It happens due to the forward rotation of a unit or units about some pivotal point, below or low in the unit, under the actions of gravity and forces exerted by adjacent units or by fluids in cracks.
- Slides: Here, rocks, debris or soil slide through slope forming material.
Landslide mitigation:
- Restriction or removal of population from landslide-prone areas.
- Restriction of certain types of land use where slopes are vulnerable.
- Installing early warning systems based on the monitoring of ground conditions like slope displacement, strain in soil and rocks, groundwater levels.
City banks on plasma banks in COVID fight
Paper:
Mains: General Studies-III: Technology, Economic Development, Bio diversity, Environment, Security and Disaster Management
Why in News:
- Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal asserts that plasma banks at the ILBS and Lok Nayak Hospitals had provided convalescent plasma to hundreds of patients across hospitals in the city free of cost.
- Till now, around 710 units of convalescent plasma had been provided by these banks to hospitals, including those administered by the Central and State governments, private and MCD.
Key Details:
- The first plasma bank was started at ILBS on July 2 followed by another at Lok Nayak Hospital.
- plasma therapy had shown encouraging results in the recovery of critically ill patients.
Some facts to ponder upon:
- 388 units of convalescent plasma have been issued to patients below 60 years of age.
- 322 units have been issued to patients above 60, who are at a high risk of getting critically ill.
- The youngest patient to receive plasma is 18 years
- the oldest patient is 94 years.
- Around 522 males and 188 female patients have been administered plasma therapy.
What is Plasma therapy and how it works?
- The convalescent plasma therapy aims at using antibodies from the blood of a recovered Covid-19 patient to treat those critically affected by the virus.
- Also known as convalescent plasma, the therapy involves blood plasma from people who have recovered from COVID-19 and infusing it into patients who currently have the disease.
- Plasma is the liquid portion of blood that remains when all red and white blood cells and platelets have been removed.
- the key component of plasma for treating infections is antibodies.
- Antibodies are Y-shaped proteins that are highly specific for whichever infection a person has previously encountered. They are produced in vast quantities by B cells in the immune system in order to bind to the invading virus and then target it for destruction.
- The concept of vaccination relies on stimulating antibody production to infections not yet met.
- In contrast, using convalescent plasma involves the transfer of antibodies from donors who have already mounted an immune response, thus offering immediate (but transient) protection to the recipient.
Risks involve
There are some risks associated with it:
- Transfer of blood substances:As the blood transfusion takes place, there are risks that an inadvertent infection might get transferred to the patient.
- Enhancement of infection:The therapy might fail for some patients and can result in an enhanced form of the infection.
- Effect on immune system:The antibody administration may end up suppressing the body’s natural immune response, leaving a Covid-19 patient vulnerable to subsequent re-infection.
Not the first time
This is not the first-time convalescent plasma therapy is being considered as a treatment for viral infections.
- In 2014, the World Health Organisation (WHO) had recommended the use of convalescent plasma therapy to treat patients with the antibody-rich plasma of those who had recovered from the Ebola virus disease.
- For the treatment of people infected with Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which is also caused by a coronavirus, a protocol for use of convalescent plasma was established in 2015.
- During the 1918 H1N1 influenza virus (Spanish flu)pandemic, the therapy was used experimentally.
- The plasma therapy was used as a treatment during the H1N1 infection of 2009.