CURRENT AFFAIRS

Fifty years ago, India and the former Soviet Union had signed a Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation on August 9, 1971. Apart from changing the contours of South Asian and global politics, the treaty could also be seen as the harbinger of the idea of the Indo-Pacific between India and Russia.

Recently, the world has seen unexpected floods in Europe and China, record-breaking heat-waves in the United States, and deadly forest fires in Siberia, and Turkey and Greece. Amid gloomy predictions of a continued rise in the frequency and intensity of such extreme weather events, all attributable to global warming, scientists are set to present the most comprehensive health check-up of the Earth’s climate.

The Consumption Expenditure Survey (CES) which is conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSO) every five years has not released the data  since 2011-12. The CES of 2017-18 was not made public by the Government of India and a new CES is likely to be conducted in 2021-22.

Energy transitions are gaining momentum worldwide, and India is no exception. The country has achieved the remarkable double leapfrog of connecting nearly all households to electricity while also creating one of the world’s largest markets for renewable energy.

Independent charitable organisation Oxfam has said that ‘net zero’ carbon targets that many countries have announced may be a “dangerous distraction” from the priority of cutting carbon emissions.

United Nations World Day against Trafficking in Persons is observed recently on 30 july. According to a child rights non-governmental organisation (NGO), between April 2020 and June 2021, an estimated 9,000 children have been rescued after being trafficked for labour in India.

Himalaya is a zone that is culturally and linguistically diverse, sharing a common historical pool of resources, communities, cultures, civilisations and memories, and susceptible to climate change and ecological vulnerabilities.

India’s urban population will be doubled between 2018 and 2030 and New Delhi would become the most populous city on the planet by 2028. This large-scale migration to urban centres in India is bound to create pressure on housing markets.

The second wave of infections in India now largely subsided, thus economic activity in many sectors and geographies has recovered to pre-second-wave levels, with some segments doing better than even in February 2020.

In early June 2021, the Ministry of External Affairs invited public inputs to the Emigration Bill 2021.The Bill could be introduced in Parliament soon and presents a long overdue opportunity to reform the recruitment process for nationals seeking employment abroad.