1 April 2024

• Culture: Kerala Kalamandalam opens Mohiniyattam training to male dancers for the first time.
• History: The Vaikom Satyagraha completes 100 years. The movement pioneered the campaign against untouchability in princely Travancore.
• Polity: ADR data shows 44 per cent of sitting Lok Sabha MPs face criminal charges as the 2024 general election approaches.
• Governance: Parliament's Standing Committee on Finance recommends a dedicated Digital Competition Act to check Big Tech abuse.
• Environment: The Afar Triangle in East Africa may produce a new ocean basin in five to ten million years.

GS area: History (Modern India), Society

The Vaikom Satyagraha began on 30 March 1924 and ran until 23 November 1925 in Travancore, now Kottayam district of Kerala. Lower-caste communities were barred from walking on four roads around the Vaikom Mahadeva temple. The movement challenged that prohibition through sustained non-violent protest.

Key facts:

• The issue: Ezhavas and other oppressed castes were prohibited from using public roads near the temple, a practice the agitation set out to end.
• Leaders: T.K. Madhavan conceived the campaign. K.P. Kesava Menon and K. Kelappan (called the Kerala Gandhi) organised it on the ground.
• Periyar E.V. Ramasamy led satyagrahis from Tamil Nadu.
• Akali volunteers from Punjab arrived to run a community kitchen (langar) for protesters.
• Gandhi arrived in March 1925 and negotiated a partial compromise with the Travancore authorities.
• Outcome: Oppressed castes won the right to use the four roads. The temple itself remained closed to them until the Temple Entry Proclamation of 1936, issued by Maharaja Chithira Thirunal of Travancore.

The Vaikom Satyagraha was the first organised agitation against caste discrimination in the colonial period and set the template for later temple-entry movements across South India.

Static linkage: Indian national movement, social reform movements.

GS area: Polity (elections, accountability)

The Association of Democratic Reforms released its analysis of sitting Lok Sabha MPs ahead of the 2024 general election. The data:

• Criminal charges: 44 per cent of the 514 sitting MPs have at least one pending criminal case.
• Serious charges: 29 per cent face cases classified as serious, including murder, attempt to murder, and crimes against women.
• Murder cases: Nine sitting MPs have murder cases pending against them.
• Billionaires: Five per cent of sitting MPs declare assets exceeding one hundred crore rupees.
• Women: 15 per cent of sitting MPs are women.
• Education: 73 per cent hold graduate or higher qualifications.
• High-crime states: Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Himachal Pradesh each have more than half their MPs facing criminal charges.

ADR is a non-partisan organisation founded in 1999 by faculty of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. It tracks electoral and political reform, party finances, and candidate declarations.

The data comes from mandatory affidavits candidates file at the time of nomination. The Supreme Court has upheld voters' right to know this information through a series of rulings from 2002 onwards.

Static linkage: Elections and electoral process, role of Election Commission.

GS area: Governance, Economy (digital markets)

The United States Justice Department's antitrust case against Google has given other jurisdictions confidence to act against large technology platforms. India is among the countries moving in this direction.

Key facts:

• The Competition Commission of India launched a probe into Google's Play Store pricing practices.
• Parliament's Standing Committee on Finance submitted a report in December 2022 recommending India identify Systemically Important Digital Intermediaries (SIDIs) and enact a dedicated Digital Competition Act.
• The Competition Act, 2002 is the current framework. It is a general competition law not designed for digital markets where tipping and network effects produce natural monopolies.
• The European Union designated Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Microsoft, and Meta as "gatekeepers" under its Digital Markets Act of 2023.
• Self-preferencing: platforms favouring their own products in search results or app stores is the practice regulators most want to stop.

Static linkage: regulatory bodies (CCI), digital economy, governance.

GS area: Arts and Culture

The Kerala Kalamandalam, the deemed university for arts at Cheruthuruthy in Kerala, announced a policy change allowing male dancers to learn Mohiniyattam. The form had previously been restricted to women.

Key facts:

• Mohiniyattam is one of India's eight classical dance forms recognised by the Sangeet Natak Akademi.
• The form takes its name from Mohini, the female avatar of Vishnu.
• It originates in Kerala and is characterised by graceful, swaying movements, white-and-gold costume, and expressive abhinaya (emotion).
• The Kalamandalam has been the primary institution for its training since the twentieth century.
• The policy change is significant because Mohiniyattam has historically been defined as a feminine form in both performance tradition and institutional rules.

Static linkage: Indian art forms, Kerala culture.

GS area: Physical Geography

Scientists studying the East African Rift have confirmed that the Afar Triangle could produce a sixth ocean in the geological long term.

Key facts:

• Location: The Afar Triangle straddles Eritrea, Djibouti, and the Afar region of Ethiopia.
• The rift: Driven by the East African Rift system, where the African plate is pulling apart along two lines.
• Timeline: Geologists estimate the split could produce a new ocean basin within five to ten million years.
• Lake Assal: Inside the Afar Depression, this is Africa's lowest point.
• Significance for palaeontology: Fossil sites at Hadar and Dikika have yielded critical early hominin remains.
• The five existing oceans (Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern, Arctic) would be joined by a sixth if the African continent completes its split.

Static linkage: world geography, plate tectonics, African geography.

GS area: Internal Security, Polity

The Ministry of Home Affairs extended the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act in parts of Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh for a further six months.

Key facts:

• AFSPA (1958): An Act of Parliament conferring special powers on the armed forces in areas declared "disturbed." These powers include the authority to use force, arrest without warrant, and search premises without warrant.
• Disturbed area declaration: The central government or the concerned state government may declare an area disturbed under Section 3 of the Act.
• Current application: Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh (border areas), parts of Assam and Manipur.
• Controversy: The Act shields security forces from prosecution without prior central government sanction, which critics argue enables impunity.
• AFSPA and the northeast: The Act has been in continuous operation in parts of the northeast since 1958. Some areas of Assam and Tripura have been removed from the disturbed-area list in recent years.

Static linkage: internal security, federalism (Centre-State relations).

GS area: Environment, Economy (energy)

India erects over 300,000 housing units a year and the residential sector accounts for 33 per cent of the country's electricity consumption. The Bureau of Energy Efficiency has developed a metric to address this.

Key facts:

• RETV (Residential Envelope Transmittance Value): measures the rate of heat transfer through a building's walls, roof, and windows. Lower values mean less heat enters the home and less energy is needed to cool it.
• India Cooling Action Plan projects an eightfold surge in cooling demand between 2017 and 2037.
• Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC) blocks have the lowest RETV among common building materials and are the most thermally efficient option.
• Fly ash blocks also improve insulation and reduce embodied energy.
• Red bricks have the highest resource depletion and the longest construction time but remain dominant in informal construction.
• Eco-Niwas Samhita is the energy conservation code for residential buildings, notified by BEE.
• The building sector contributes about 21 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and 34 per cent of global energy demand, per the UNEP Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction 2024.

Static linkage: climate change, energy conservation, urban policy.

• 1MYAC: The One Million Youth Actions Challenge targets youth aged 10 to 30 and aims to mobilise one million actions for sustainability. It is a Swiss Agency for Development and UN CC:Learn initiative. The four target SDGs are clean water, responsible consumption, climate action, and life on land.
• Butterfly cicada discovered in Meghalaya: A new species of the genus Becquartina was recorded in India for the first time. The genus had previously been found only in China, Thailand, and Vietnam.
• AI and interest rates: The International Monetary Fund flagged that the demand for capital spending on AI data centres, semiconductor fabrication, and energy infrastructure could sustain higher real interest rates globally.