aditya
14:05
Shankar IAS Target 2021 Government Schemes -II PDF
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Wednesday, September 22, 2021
The HINDU Notes – 22nd September 2021
aditya
13:55
📰 Fertility rates of Hindus and Muslims converging: study
India’s religious mix has been stable since 1951, says Pew Center study
•The religious composition of India’s population since Partition has remained largely stable, with both Hindus and Muslims, the two largest religious groups, showing not only a marked decline but also a convergence in fertility rates, according to a new study published by the Pew Research Center, a non-profit based in Washington DC.
•The study, based on data sourced from India’s decennial census and the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), looked at the three main factors that are known to cause changes in religious composition of populations — fertility rate, migration, and conversions.
•With regard to fertility rates, the study found that Muslims, who had the highest fertility rate, also had the sharpest decline in fertility rates. From 1992 to 2015, the total fertility rates of Muslims declined from 4.4 to 2.6, while that of Hindus declined from 3.3 to 2.1, indicating that “the gaps in childbearing between India’s religious groups are much smaller than they used to be.”
•The average fertility rate in India today is 2.2, which is higher than the rates in economically advanced countries such as the U.S. (1.6), but much lower than what it was in 1992 (3.4) or 1951 (5.9).
•The study notes that due to the “declining and converging fertility patterns”, there have been only marginal changes in the overall religious composition of the population since 1951, the year India conducted its first census as an independent nation.
Marked slowdown
•Although growth rates have declined for all of India’s major religious groups, the slowdown has been more pronounced among religious minorities, who outpaced Hindus in earlier decades.
•Between 1951 and 1961, the Muslim population expanded by 32.7%, 11 percentage points more than India’s overall rate of 21.6%. But this gap has narrowed. From 2001 to 2011, the difference in growth between Muslims (24.7%) and Indians overall (17.7%) was 7 percentage points. India’s Christian population grew at the slowest pace of the three largest groups in the most recent census decade — gaining 15.7% between 2001 and 2011, a far lower growth rate than the one recorded in the decade following Partition (29.0%).
•In terms of absolute numbers, every major religion in India saw its numbers rise.
•In percentage terms, between 1951 and 2011, Muslims grew by 4.4 percentage points to 14.2% of the population, while Hindus declined by 4.3 points to 79.8%. But all the six major religious groups — Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains — have grown in absolute numbers. The sole exception to this trend are Parsis, whose number halved between 1951 and 2011, from 110,000 to 60,000.
•Interestingly, out of India’s total population of 1,200 million, about 8 million did not belong to any of the six major religious groups. Within this category, mostly comprising adivasi people, the largest grouping was of Sarnas (nearly 5 million adherents), followed by Gond (1 million) and Sari Dharma (5,10,000).
•Observing that a preference for sons over daughters could play a role in overall fertility, the study noted that sex selective abortions have caused an estimated deficit of 20 million girls compared with what would naturally be expected between 1970 and 2017, and that “this practice is more common among Indian Hindus than among Muslims and Christians.”
•Cautioning that religion is by no means the only or even the primary factor affecting fertility rates, the study noted that women in central India tended to have more children, with Bihar and Uttar Pradesh showing a total fertility rate (TFR) of 3.4 and 2.7 respectively, in contrast to a TFR of 1.7 and 1.6 in Tamil Nadu and Kerala respectively.
•With regard to migration as a driver of change in religious makeup, the study says that since the 1950s, migration has had only a modest impact on India’s religious composition. More than 99% of people who live in India were also born in India, and migrants leaving India outnumber immigrants three-to-one, with “Muslims more likely than Hindus to leave India”, while “immigrants into India from Muslim-majority counties are disproportionately Hindu.”
Influx not apparent
•The study also cast doubt over the speculated numbers of undocumented immigrants in India, noting, “if tens of millions of Muslims from nearby countries had indeed migrated to India, demographers would expect to see evidence of such mass migration in data from their countries of origin, and this magnitude of outmigration is not apparent.”
•Religious conversion has also had a negligible impact on India’s overall composition, with 98% of Indian adults still identifying with the religion in which they were raised.
•These findings, which come as a complement to the Pew Center’s June 2021 report on religious tolerance and segregation in India, are significant in the context of two major issues that have occupied centre stage in recent times — the controversy over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC), which have been criticised by international human rights bodies as an attempt to manufacture ‘foreigners’ in India, and the spate of anti-conversion laws passed in several States, which, the study notes, “restrict proselytizing and conversion to Islam and Christianity”.
📰 Mechanism to induct women cadets into NDA will be ready in May 2022, Defence Ministry tells Supreme Court
End of Ease of Doing Business Index
aditya
07:54
Why in news?
After data irregularities and possible ethical matters involving bank staff on Doing Business were reported , World Bank said that it would discontinue the report.
What is the index about?
- Ease of doing business is an index published by the World Bank.
- It is an aggregate figure that includes different parameters which define the ease of doing business in a country.
- The study covers 11 indicator sets and 190 economies.
What is India’s rank in the report?
Insight IAS Prelims 2021 Subject wise Test 29 with Solution PDF
aditya
07:48
Insight IAS Prelims 2021 Subject wise Test 29 with Solution PDF
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Tuesday, September 21, 2021
Daily Current Affairs, 21st September 2021
aditya
17:29
1) International Day of Peace: 21 September
•Each year the International Day of Peace is observed around the world on 21 September. The UN General Assembly has declared this as a day devoted to strengthening the ideals of peace, through observing 24 hours of non-violence and cease-fire.
•The 2021 theme for the International Day of Peace is “Recovering Better for an Equitable and Sustainable World.” Celebrate peace by standing up against acts of hate online and offline, and by spreading compassion, kindness, and hope in the face of the pandemic, and as we recover.
2) World Alzheimer’s Day: 21st September
•World Alzheimer’s Day is observed globally on September 21 every year. The day aims to raise awareness about the stigma that runs around Alzheimer disease and related dementia. World Alzheimer’s Day was launched at the opening of ADI’s annual conference in Edinburgh on 21 September 1994 to celebrate our 10th anniversary.
•The theme for World Alzheimer Day 2021 is “Know Dementia, Know Alzheimer’s”.
3) International Week of Deaf People 2021: September 20 to 26
•Every year, the full week ending on the last Sunday of September is observed as the International Week of the Deaf (IWD). In 2021, IWD is being observed from September 20 to 26, 2021. The last Sunday of the month of September is celebrated as the World Day of Deaf or International Day of the Deaf (September 26, 2021). The theme of 2021 IWD is “Celebrating Thriving Deaf Communities”.
4) Iran becomes 9th member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
•Iran was officially admitted as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The decision to admit Iran as a full member was declared in the 21st summit of the SCO leaders in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. At the end of the 21st Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the leaders of the eight main members of the organisation agreed to change the membership of the Islamic Republic of Iran from an observer member to a full member and signed the relevant documents.
•Accordingly, the technical process of Iran becoming one of the main members of the organisation has begun and Iran will henceforth cooperate and interact with member countries as the main member of the important regional organisation.
5) FSSAI’s 3rd State Food Safety Index 2021 released
•Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Mansukh Mandaviya has released the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI)’s 3rd State Food Safety Index (SFSI) to measure the performance of States across five parameters of food safety. The Minister felicitated nine leading States/UTs based on the ranking for the year 2020-21 for their impressive performance.
•Minister also flagged off 19 Mobile Food Testing Vans (Food Safety on Wheels) to supplement the food safety ecosystem across the country taking the total number of such mobile testing vans to 109.
6) Geeta Samota becomes ‘Fastest Indian’ to Summit Two Peaks
•CISF official Geeta Samota became the “fastest Indian” to summit two peaks located in Africa and Russia. Earlier this month, Sub Inspector Geeta Samota had scaled Mount Elbrus in Russia, the highest peak in Europe. While Mt Elbrus (5,642 mts) is in Russia, the Kilimanjaro peak (5,895 mts) is located in Tanzania and is Africa’s highest peak.
•Samota works with the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), a central paramilitary force under the command of the Union home ministry. Geeta Samota joined CISF in 2011 and was in the unit in 2012. She has also scaled Mt Satopanth (7075 metres; located in Uttarakhand) and Mt Lobuche (in Nepal). She was also a team member of the Mt Everest expedition team of the CAPF.
7) Book title “The Three Khans: And the Emergence of New India” by Kaveree Bamzai
•A book has titled “The Three Khans: And the Emergence of New India” authored by Kaveree Bamzai. In the book, senior journalist, Kaveree Bamzai has juxtaposed the careers of the 3 Khans, Aamir, Shah Rukh, & Salman, with the most tumultuous times in the history of the republic. Art often responds to social and political dimensions,& in a country short of role models, film stars often play double roles.
8) India ranks 46th in Global Innovation Index 2021
•India has been ranked at 46th place in the Global Innovation Index 2021 released by World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). India has jumped 2 spots from last year’s ranking. Under the Lower middle-income category group, India has been ranked at the second spot after Vietnam. The Global Innovation Index 2021 captures the innovation ecosystem performance of 132 economies and tracks the most recent global innovation trends.
The HINDU Notes – 21st September 2021
aditya
17:16
📰 Done and dusted: On the National Register of Citizens process
The NRC process needs closure, not another reboot
•While there may have been lulls aplenty, the next twist or turn in the long-running saga of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) update for Assam is never far. The latest seeks to imbue a sense of finality to the exercise, though it has come from what is only a quasi-judicial body. A Foreigners’ Tribunal (FT) in Karimganj district of southern Assam, while removing the ambiguity around a man’s citizenship, has pronounced that there is no doubt that the NRC published on August 31, 2019, is the final one. The exercise left out over 1.9 million from a list of around 33 million applicants, whose citizenship would be determined at the FTs. The entire updating process was monitored by the Supreme Court and executed by the State’s administrative machinery. Unsurprisingly, its publication annoyed political parties across the ideological divide, with some alleging it victimised document-less Bengali Hindus and indigenous Assamese people and others that it targeted the State’s Bengali-origin Muslims. In the run-up to the publication of the final document, Assam and the Centre had petitioned the Supreme Court for re-verification of a sample of names included in the draft NRC — 20% in the border districts and 10% elsewhere — but this was dismissed after Prateek Hajela, the State NRC Coordinator, said re-verification of 27% names had been already done. In May this year, the State NRC authority, now led by Hitesh Dev Sarma, filed a petition in Supreme Court seeking re-verification of the August 31, 2019 list, citing inclusion of ineligible names and exclusion of eligible ones, and other errors. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is already on record as having said the State government wants 20% re-verification in the districts bordering Bangladesh and 10% in others.
•The crux of the matter is that post-publication progress on the NRC has been excruciatingly slow, and not just due to the pandemic. The new NRC Coordinator’s petition is still pending, as is another by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind. More crucially, on the execution side, the issuance of rejection slips to those left out of the NRC has not begun, a necessary step to file appeals in the FTs. Another iteration of the NRC, whether led by the judiciary or the executive, would rely on the same administrative set-up. The system has demonstrated dynamism: the list of excluded in the NRC draft released in July 2018 was nearly 4 million, an additional list in June 2019 left out 1,00,000 more, but the final draft absorbed 2.2 million of those. While a Registrar General of India notification has not conferred the stamp of legality on the NRC yet, that, along with kick-starting the appeals process, is perhaps the most prudent path ahead. Mounting another gargantuan exercise at a colossal cost may only yield a new set of discontents.
📰 The endgame: On the new 'bad bank'
APTI PLUS Current Affairs Monthly Magazine September 2021
aditya
08:11
APTI PLUS Current Affairs Monthly Magazine September 2021
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Insights IAS Prelims Exclusive 2021 Art & Culture-2 PDF
aditya
07:44
Insights IAS Prelims Exclusive 2021 Art & Culture-2 PDF
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