Daily News Digest 10 Feb 2024

Table of content

• The high-altitude pseudo satellite vehicle (HAPS)
• Bharat Ratna
• First-time voters
• The Annual Death Penalty Report, 2023
• Polygamy in India
• Cabinet nod to spectrum for railways

The high-altitude pseudo satellite vehicle (HAPS)

Time to Read :🕑 3 Mins

Why in news?

The National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) in Bengaluru successfully completed the first test flight of a solar-powered High Altitude Pseudo-Satellite (HAPS) on Monday.

About the high-altitude pseudo satellite vehicle (HAPS)

• HAPS, can fly at altitudes of 18-20 km from the ground, almost double the heights attained by commercial airplanes.
• Its ability to generate solar power, can remain in air for months, even years, offering it advantages of a satellite. 
• It does not require a rocket to get into space, the cost of operating HAPS is several times lower than that of a satellite that is usually placed at least 200 km from the earth.
• High-altitude flying instruments arose from the desire to have continuous surveillance of border areas to detect changes or movements.
• HAPS can remain in air for a limited period of time and can scan relatively smaller areas. 
• Satellites placed in low-earth orbits and meant to observe the Earth usually move in their orbits and are not watching constantly.
• HAPS in disaster situations,
  • It can even be used to provide mobile communications networks in remote areas, if the normal networks get damaged due to any calamity.

Bharat Ratna

Time to Read :🕑 3 Mins

Why in news?

PV Narasimha Rao, Chaudhary Charan Singh & Dr MS Swaminathan, all three of them to get the highest civilian award posthumously.

About

• Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan (7 August 1925 – 28 September 2023) was an Indian agronomist, agricultural scientist, plant geneticist, administrator, and humanitarian.
  • Swaminathan was a global leader of the green revolution.
  • He has been called the main architect of the green revolution in India for his leadership and role in introducing and further developing high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice.
• Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao, popularly known as P. V. Narasimha Rao (28 June, 1921 - 23 December 2004), was an Indian lawyer and politician who served as the 9th prime minister of India from 1991 to 1996. 
  • He is known for introducing various liberal reforms to India's economy.
• Chaudhary Charam Singh (23 Dec 1902 - 29 May 1987)
  • Chaudhary Charan Singh was an Indian politician and a freedom fighter.
  • He served as the 5th prime minister of India and 5th Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.

First-time voters

Time to Read :🕑 3 Mins

Why in news?

The Election Commission announced that a total of 96.88 crore voters are registered across the country, as per the finally published electoral roll. Around 1.85 crore of them are in the 18-19 age group.

About final published electoral roll

• As per the statement, the electors include 49.7 crore male and 47.1 crore female and 48,044 third gender electors, and is 6% higher as compared to the 91.19-crore figure in 2019. 
• The increase is even sharper in the number of electorates in the 18-19 age-group, which increased by 23.3 per cent to 1.85 crore in 2024 as compared to 1.5 crore in 2019. 
  • These young electors will vote for the first time in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
• Of the total electors, 20.38% (19.74 crore) are in the 20–29-age group and about 2% (1.86 crore) are above 80 years. 
  • In fact, 2.38 lakh electors are above 100 years of age. 
• The overall electors/population ratio stands at 66.76%. 
• The total electors also include 88.35 lakh PwD voters.
• As per the poll panel, the electoral roll gender ratio (the number of female electors per 1,000 male electors) has increased to 948 in 2024 from 940 in 2023. 
  • The elector gender ratio stood at 928 in 2019.
• More women have enrolled as new electors as compared to men.

The Annual Death Penalty Report, 2023

Time to Read :🕑 3 Mins

Why in news?

The 2023 edition of 'Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics' was released by Project 39A.

Kay highlight of the Annual Death Penalty Report, 2023

• Project 39A is a criminal justice initiative, based in the National Law University, Delhi.
• The Supreme Court and all the High Courts together — confirmed only one death sentence in 2023 while the rest were either commuted or saw the prisoners acquitted altogether.
• In 2022, HCs confirmed the death sentences of four convicts, five in 2021 and three in 2020. The dip was steep after 2019 when HCs confirmed death sentences of 26 convicts. 
  • In the previous years, the numbers remained in a similar range: 23 in 2018, 11 in 2017 and 16 in 2016.
• Under Section 366 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), all death sentences awarded by trial courts are to be confirmed by the concerned HCs, although both the conviction and the quantum of sentence are examined by the first appellate court.
• According to the report, the Acquittal and remand by the Supreme Court and the High Courts in 2023 indicate significant concerns with the quality of police investigations and appreciation of evidence by lower courts in cases.
• The sole confirmation was recorded at the Karnataka HC, which, in May, agreed with the death sentence awarded in a murder case.

Polygamy in India

Time to Read :🕑 11 Mins

Why in news?

On February 7, 2024, the Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly passed the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) Bill, 2024 by a voice vote. The bill, which brings uniformity in personal laws governing marriage, divorce, and inheritance across communities in the state (excluding tribals).

More details about news:

• Among other things, it extends the rule of monogamy to the Muslim community. One of the conditions for solemnising a marriage is that ‘neither party has a spouse living at the time of the marriage’. 
  • This clause already existed in the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955, but Muslim personal law hitherto allowed men to have upto four wives.

What is Polygamy?

• Polygamy is the practice of having more than one married spouse — wife or husband. The issue is governed both by personal laws and the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
• Traditionally, polygamy — mainly the situation of a man having more than one wife — was practised widely in India. 
• The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 outlawed the practice.

Is polygamy in India legal or illegal?

• IPC Section 494 (“Marrying again during lifetime of husband or wife”) penalises bigamy or polygamy. 
• The section reads: “Whoever, having a husband or wife living, marries in any case in which such marriage is void by reason of its taking place during the life of such husband or wife, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years, and shall also be liable to fine.” 
• This provision does not apply to a marriage which has been declared void by a court — for example, a child marriage that has been declared void. 
• The law also does not apply if a spouse has been “continually absent” for the “space of seven years”. This means a spouse who has deserted the marriage or when his or her whereabouts are not known for seven years, will not bind the other spouse from remarrying.

Polygamy in India-What data says?

• What the census data say
  • According to the census of 2011, there are 28.65 crore married men in India, compared to 29.3 crore married women. The difference between the two numbers — 65.71 lakh — can be explained either by the incidence of polygamy or men gone abroad.
  • The highest discrepancy in the population of married men and women can be found among Hindus (who make up the largest number of Indians), followed by Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Sikhs, and Buddhists. However, when compared to their respective shares in the total population, Muslims and Christians report the greatest difference (Table 1).
• NFHS-5
  • The most recent NFHS-5 (2019-21) sampled approximately 6.1 lakh households, less than 1% of the total number of households in India.
  • The last major government study on polygamy was conducted in 1974. It had found  that Buddhists, Jains and Hindus had higher rates of polygamy than Muslims.
• What NFHS data say
  • The NFHS-5 showed the prevalence of polygamy (the percentage of women who reported their husbands had other wives) was highest among Christians (2.1%), followed by Muslims (1.9%), and Hindus (1.3%), looking at religion. Overall, Scheduled Tribes reported the highest incidence at 2.4%.
  • A June 2022 study by the International Institute of Population Sciences (IIPS) titled Polygyny in India: Levels and Differentials analysed data from the NFHS-3 (2005-06), NFHS-4 (2015-16) and NFHS-5 (2019-21). It showed that polygynous marriages (one man married to more than one woman at a time) has decreased from 1.9% in 2005-06 to 1.4% in 2019-21, among the whole population.
  • Buddhists, who reported 3.8% incidence of polygyny in 2005-06, saw the sharpest dip of 65.79% to 1.3% in 2019-21. The incidence of polygyny in the total population fell by 26.31%.
• Limitations of the data
  • Government data on polygamy can be obtained from two main sources — the decadal census and the National Family Health Survey (NFHS). Both have certain limitations.
  • The census does not directly collect data on polygamy. Rather its incidence is inferred from the difference in the number of married men and the number of married women in the country. More married women than men points to prevalence of situations where men have married more than once.

Conclusion

It is important to remember that gender equality is a fundamental tenet of contemporary culture and our constitution. Today's circumstances differ from the past when these customs first appeared. Thus, this is the ideal moment to implement the required adjustments.

Cabinet nod to spectrum for railways

Time to Read :🕑 3 Mins

Why in news?

The Union Cabinet approved allocating 5G spectrum to the Railways to improve communication and passenger services.

Demand of spectrum from railways

• The Railways was only granted 5 Mhz of its original demand for 15 MHz in discussions post the Balasore tragedy.
• As a result, Railways had again asked for an additional 5 MHz of paired spectrum in the 700 MHz band.

• Additional spectrum for implementing several safety features such as,
  • The Modern Train Control System.
  • Train Collision Avoidance System.
  • Signal aspect in loco cabs, and emergency mobile communications. 
• Other advantages that the spectrum allocation could bring such as,
  • Increased speed.
  • Augmenting train’s running capacity.
  • Passenger security.
  • CCTV network like live feed at security control centres, video surveillance, video analytics, and asset reliability.