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Table of Contents

Our time begins now

Paris Agreement not enough to stop us hit 1.5° C
Nationally Determined Contributions would result in 3-5° C of warming.
Nature Climate Change: identifies India as the country with the most expected damage from rising levels of carbon dioxide.
USA is out of treaty, Australia and Brazil are planning to step out and few countries are not serious about it.
Kevin Anderson, University of Manchester: with aviation, shipping and trade counted, the U.K. has made no reduction to its greenhouse gas emissions.

Socio-Economic challenge of India

Poverty reduction, uplift people, fight carbon
364 million living in multidimensional poverty.
Nearly a third (27.5%) are multidimensionally poor and about a fifth (19.1%) are vulnerable to becoming poor.
Natural disasters are further pushing us into poverty.
Current rural distress + large youth population with few job prospects.
Economic growth has helped few: Rising inequality

Context-relevant modifications through local and institutional innovation may be more appropriate for a country of India’s size and ecological diversity.
renewable-based microgrids can become an important feature of electricity policy.
Jharkhand: 249 remote villages powered by solar microgrids
Harini Nagendra, Nature: strongly rooted cultural movement about sustainable living.
The 1.5° C report calls for societal transformation.
Recent events, however, show that we cannot trade off forests, urban water bodies, riverine ecosystems, waste management or groundwater as these come back to bite us as floods, landslides, droughts and infectious disease.
Agriculture, Industry, City commute.
Energy and livelihood gains from such alternative visions could be far more significant than conventional ways of replacing fossilfuelled infrastructure with renewables.
But they also involve a lot of learning-bydoing, living laboratories and innovation, practice, patience and support from government and academia.
We cannot be pressured from outside, but need to change from within.

Think small

Bad sanitation is India’s worst-kept secret
Uttar Pradesh: 87% of faecal sludge expelled from toilets in urban areas is untreated
The study in U.P. conducted by the Centre for Science and Environment has now exposed broken links, of faecal sludge and septage being collected from household tanks and simply discharged into drains, open land and wetlands.
United Nations, 2015: estimates that 65,000 tonnes of untreated faeces is introduced into the environment in India annually.
Immediate investments in decentralised sludge management systems would bring twin benefits:

of improving the environment
reducing the disease burden imposed by insanitary conditions

One immediate intervention needed is the creation of an inter-departmental task force to identify land to build small treatment systems for sludge, and to provide easily accessible solutions to houses that are currently discharging waste into open drains.
The business of emptying faecal material using tanker trucks needs to be professionalised and de-stigmatised.
Success here can transform lives.

Front Page news: Disqualification of T.N. MLAs upheld

Justice M. Sathyanarayanan, the Supreme Court-appointed third judge of the Madras High Court, on Thursday upheld the validity of an order passed by Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker P. Dhanapal on September 18, 2017, disqualifying 18 AIADMK MLAs owing allegiance to T.T.V. Dhinakaran under the anti-defection law.
In a split verdict, then Chief Justice Indira Banerjee (now a Supreme Court judge) had upheld the Speaker’s order while her companion judge, Justice M. Sundar, had set it aside on multiple grounds, including mala fide, perversity and non-adherence to the principles of natural justice.

Trial by voters

Madras High Court upholding the disqualification of 18 legislators for defection.
Tamil Nadu appears set to witness elections to 20 seats, including two rendered vacant by the death of the members
With this situation, the government of Edappadi K. Palaniswami hanging on for dear life.
AIADMK will need 6 seats to remain in power.
Stalin: Together with the DMK’s allies he has the support of 97 MLAs, but he needs to win all 20 to get a majority.
With film stars Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth already preparing the ground to mount a challenge in the Assembly election

Driven by notions of purity and impurity

A believer may indeed make an individual choice not to go to a temple when she is in her menstrual cycle, but how does that justify a ban on women’s entry?
Ms. Irani’s approach has less to do with religious belief and more to do with Manuvadi notions of purity and impurity, which hold Dalits and menstruating women to be equally impure.
Parliament: “temple of democracy”
For example, in the Sabarimala case, there was no blanket ban on women of fertile age going into the temple until 1991 when the Kerala High Court, acting on a complaint by an individual named S. Mahendran, gave an order that henceforth, no woman aged between 10 and 50 can go to the temple.
However, the judgment itself gave examples of how women, including the then Maharani of Travancore in 1940, had not only worshipped at the temple but participated in many temple ceremonies.
As far as women’s entry into temples is concerned, the hypocrisy is equally evident.

Important News

1,400 arrested for violence during Sabarimala protest
In a Statewide crackdown that began on Wednesday, the Kerala police have arrested 1,400 people in connection with the violent protests against the entry of young women into the Sabarimala temple earlier this month.
Police have filed 440 cases and issued lookout circular for 210 persons allegedly involved in the protests at Nilackal, Pampa and Sabarimala. Sources said 150 persons had already been identified.
Jagan injured in knife attack at Vizag airport
YSR Congress Party president Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy sustained an injury when a waiter at a restaurant stabbed him with a small knife at the VIP lounge of the airport on Thursday.
Muzaffarpur probe details scary, says Supreme Court
‘Neighbours often heard screams from the shelter home’
A CBI report before a Bench led by Justice Madan B. Lokur said the main accused, Brajesh Thakur, had access to a mobile phone in jail and was in constant touch with the outside world. The court asked him to respond why he should not be transferred to a facility outside Bihar.
Crowdfunding is a tradition in tribal village
In this hamlet in Andhra Pradesh, every marriage is sponsored by families in the community
Students’ body sniffs design in Tibet river breach
The barrels containing isocyanate — a toxic chemical — and suspected explosive material could mean that Chinese agencies were carrying out construction activities along or on the Tsangpo (the Chinese call it Yaluzangbu), the All Arunachal Pradesh Students’ Union said. The Tsangpo flows into Arunachal Pradesh as the Siang, which meets two other rivers to form the Brahmaputra in Assam downstream.

Aim and shoot for a citizen-science repository of Indian mammals
Scientists and researchers from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bangalore have come up with a new citizen-science repository on Indian mammals, called Mammals of India (MaOI), which is an online, peer-reviewed, freely-accessible portal that was launched late September 2018. By October 25, as many as 768 images of 161 species of mammals were uploaded.
India set to be third largest aviation market
India will be the third largest aviation market globally a year sooner than was earlier predicted. It is now expected to be among the top three countries by 2024 from its current seventh position, according to global aviation body IATA.
Digital boards will change education, says Javadekar
The launching of ‘Operation Digital Board’ across 15 lakh classrooms in the country in the next four years will change the face of education in the country, said Union Human Resource Minister Prakash Javadekar.

China, Japan to partner in building Asia infrastructure
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has arrived in China on a reset visit that is expected to trigger significant collaboration between Tokyo and Beijing in developing infrastructure in Asia.
“Japan and China are playing an indispensable role in the economic development of not just Asia but the world,” Mr. Abe said during his speech at the function.