India climbs eight places in global gender index

GS Paper - 2 (Social Issues)

India has ranked at 127 out of 146 countries in terms of gender parity — an improvement of eight places from last year — according to the World Economic Forum’s annual Gender Gap Report, 2023. The World Economic Forum (WEF) ranked India at 135 out of 146 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index in the report’s 2022 edition.

India’s position in report

• India has improved by 1.4 percentage points and eight positions since the last edition, marking a partial recovery towards its 2020 parity level. The country has attained parity in enrolment across all levels of education.
• India has closed 64.3 per cent of the overall gender gap, the report said. However, it underlined that India has reached only 36.7 per cent parity on economic participation and opportunity.
• The index ranked India’s neighbours Pakistan at 142, Bangladesh at 59, China at 107, Nepal at 116, Sri Lanka at 115 and Bhutan at 103.
• In India, while there has been uptick in parity in wages and income, the share of women in senior positions and technical roles have dropped slightly since the last edition.
• On political empowerment, India has registered 25.3 per cent parity, with women representing 15.1 per cent of parliamentarians — the highest for the country since the inaugural report in 2006.
• Out of the 117 countries with available data since 2017, 18 countries — including Bolivia (50.4 per cent), India (44.4 per cent) and France (42.3 per cent) — have achieved women’s representation of over 40 per cent in local governance.
• For India, the 1.9 percentage point improvement in sex ratio at birth has driven up parity after more than a decade of slow progress.
• However, it also said that for Vietnam, Azerbaijan, India and China, the relatively low overall rankings on the Health and Survival sub-index is explained by skewed sex ratios at birth.
• Compared to top scoring countries that register a 94.4 per cent gender parity at birth, the indicator stands at 92.7 per cent for India (albeit an improvement over last edition) and below 90 per cent for Vietnam, China and Azerbaijan.
• Overall,the Southern Asian region has achieved 63.4 per cent gender parity, the second-lowest of the eight regions.
• The score inSouth Asia has risen by 1.1 percentage points since the last edition on the basis of the constant sample of countries covered since 2006.
• Theimprovement is partially attributable to the rise in scores of populous countries such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
• In terms ofthe share of women in ministerial positions, 75 countries have 20 per cent or less female ministers.
• Populous countriessuch as India, Turkey and China have less than seven per cent women ministers while those like Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon have none.

Highlight of the report

• Iceland is the most gender-equal country in the world for the 14th consecutive year and the only one to have closed more than 90 per cent of its gender gap.
• Overall, the report said gender parity globally has recovered to pre-Covid levels but the pace of change has stagnated as converging crises slow progress.
• While no country has yet achieved full gender parity, the top nine countries have closed at least 80 per cent of their gap.
• The report found that the overall gender gap has closed by 0.3 percentage point from last year.
• The overall progress in 2023 is partly due to the improvement in closing the educational attainment gap, with 117 out of the 146 indexed countries now having closed at least 95 per cent of the gap.
• The report stated, “For the 146 countries covered in the 2023 index, the Health and Survival gender gap has closed by 96 per cent, the Educational Attainment gap by 95.2 per cent, Economic Participation and Opportunity gap by 60.1 per cent, and Political Empowerment gap by 22.1 per cent.”
• Parity has advanced by only 4.1 percentage points since the first edition of the report in 2006, with the overall rate of change slowing significantly.
• Closing the overall gender gap will require 131 years. At the current rate of progress, it will take 169 years for economic parity and 162 years for political parity.
• The Global Gender Gap Report, now in its 17th edition, benchmarks the evolution of gender-based gaps in four areas: economic participation and opportunity; educational attainment; health and survival; and political empowerment.

Centre withdraws draft live animal export Bill

GS Paper - 3 (Economy)

The central government has withdrawn the draft Livestock and Livestock Products (Importation and Exportation) Bill, 2023. If passed, it could reportedly have paved the way for the promotion of export of live animals.

What is the draft livestock and livestock products Bill?

• The Bill is meant to replace the Live-stock Importation Act, 1898, and the Live-stock (Amendment) Act, 2001. It frames guidelines for the import and export of live animals, which has raised concerns among animal lovers.
• The Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying (DAHD), which comes under the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, prepared the draft of the Live-stock and Live-stock Products (Importation and Exportation) Bill-2023 and released it in the public domain on 7 June 2023, seeking comments and suggestions.
• It is different from the existing law in three key aspects — it allows export of live animals, it widens the scope of animal import-export (including cats and dogs among ‘live-stock’), and takes away some powers of state governments to regulate this area.

Why was it withdrawn?

• The Live-stock Importation Act, 1898, being the pre-constitutional / pre-independence Central Act, a need has been felt to align it with the contemporary requirements and prevailing circumstances related to sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures, and its extant Allocation of Business Rules, 1961, the official order said.
• The Department of Animal Husbandry’s role, the order added, primarily pertains to offering support through upgraded livestock health facilities, hygiene etc., including animal welfare for the overall development of the animal husbandry sector.
• Representations had been made expressing concerns over the proposed draft. These involved matters of sensitivity towards and emotions for animal welfare, hence the Bill would need wider consultation, the order said.
• Considering the aforesaid views and with the approval of the competent authority, the proposed draft Bill stands withdrawn.
• The Bill had drawn strong objections from animal rights activists, right-wing groups and Jain religious leaders who demanded it be withdrawn for various reasons.

Titanic tourist submersible missing

GS Paper - 3 (Science and Technology)

Numerous complications could hinder the effort to rescue the five people aboard the deep-diving submersible Titan, which failed to return from a dive to the wreck of the Titanic on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. For any search and rescue operation at sea, weather conditions, the lack of light at night, the state of the sea and water temperature can all play roles in whether stricken mariners can be found and rescued. For a rescue beneath the waves, the factors involved in a successful rescue are even more numerous and difficult.

What

• The first and most important problem to solve is simply finding the Titan. Many underwater vehicles are fitted with an acoustic device, often called a pinger, which emits sounds that can be detected underwater by rescuers.
• Whether Titan has one is unclear. The submersible reportedly lost contact with its support ship an hour and 45 minutes into what is normally a 2 1/2-hour dive to the bottom, where the Titanic lies.
• There could be a problem with Titan’s communication equipment, or with the ballast system that controls its descent and ascent by flooding tanks with water to dive and pumping water out with air to come back toward the surface.
• An additional possible hazard for the vessel would be becoming fouled — hung up on a piece of wreckage that could keep it from being able to return to the surface.
• If the submersible is found on the bottom, the extreme depths involved limit the possible means for rescue.
• Human divers wearing specialized equipment and breathing helium-rich air mixtures can safely reach depths of just a few hundred feet below the surface before having to spend long amounts of time decompressing on the way back up.
• A couple of hundred feet deeper, light from the sun can no longer penetrate the water, and dark reigns.
• The Titanic lies in about 14,000 feet of water in the North Atlantic, a depth that humans can reach only while inside specialized submersibles that keeps their occupants warm, dry and supplied with breathable air.

India US Deal for Jet Engine

GS Paper - 2 (International Relations)

The American multinational corporation General Electric (GE) announced it has signed an agreement with India’s state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) to make fighter jet engines for the Indian Air Force (IAF).

More about the News:

• The deal will allow the manufacture under licence in India of GE’s F414 engine for the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas Mk2.
• Only a handful of countries — such as the US, Russia, the UK, and France — have mastered the technology and metallurgy needed to manufacture an engine that can power combat aircraft.
• India is not in this list — its push for self-reliance in manufacturing several critical technologies, including cryogenic rocket engines, notwithstanding.
• The countries that have the technology to manufacture advanced engines for fighter aircraft have been traditionally unwilling to share them.
• That is why the deal to manufacture GE’s F414s in India announced is path breaking.

Features of GE-414 military aircraft engine?

• The turbofan engine, part of GE’s suite of military aircraft engines, has been in use by the US Navy for more than 30 years.
• More than 1,600 F414 engines have been delivered, adding up to more than 5 million engine flight hours on a wide variety of missions.
• The engines are in the thrust class of 22,000 lb or 98 kN, and feature advanced technology such as Full Authority Digital Electronic Control (FADEC) — the latest aircraft ignition and engine control system that controls engine performance digitally — according to GE.

Changing relations of India- US

• India and the US have drawn each other in an increasingly close embrace from the initial years of this century, and in June 2016, Prime Minister Modi had told the US Congress that the two countries had overcome “the hesitations of history”, and called for ever-stronger economic and defence ties.
• Seven years later, the end of the “technology denial regime” and the overcoming of the “hesitations of history” have reached their logical and desired conclusion, the jet engine technology transfer agreement being one of the most important milestones on this journey.