[Mission 2023] QUED ( Questions from Editorials ) 30 December 2022

Solution: b)

Under Article 82, Parliament is to enact a Delimitation Act after every Census. Once the Act is in force, the Union government sets up the Delimitation Commission.

The Commission is supposed to determine the number and boundaries of constituencies in a way that the population of all seats, so far as practicable, is the same. The Commission is also tasked with identifying seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

The draft proposals of the Delimitation Commission are published for public feedback. The Commission also holds public sittings. After hearing the public, it considers objections and suggestions, and carries out changes, if any, in the draft proposal. The final order is published in the Gazette of India and the State Gazette concerned and comes into force on a date specified by the President.

How have previous delimitation exercises actually worked?

In the history of the Indian republic, Delimitation Commissions have been set up four times — 1952, 1963, 1973 and 2002 under the Acts of 1952, 1962, 1972 and 2002. There was no delimitation after the 1981, 1991 and 2001 Censuses.

However, the 2002 Act did not make any changes in total Lok Sabha seats or their apportionment between various states. It also left out a few states including Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Manipur from the exercise due to “security risks.” The central government reconstituted the Delimitation Commission for these four states as well as the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir on 6 March 2020.

Why have we not seen delimitation exercises after each census?

The last delimitation exercise that changed the state-wise composition of the Lok Sabha was completed in 1976 and done on the basis of the 1971 census (more than half a century ago at this point). The reason for not having more frequent delimitation processes is an unintended consequence of how the Constitution envisioned constituencies to be delimited.

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Solution: c)

Legal tender is anything recognized by law as a means to settle a public or private debt or meet a financial obligation, including tax payments, contracts, and legal fines or damages. The national currency is legal tender in practically every country. A creditor is legally obligated to accept legal tender toward repayment of a debt.

Solution: d)

The Group of Twenty (G20) comprises 19 countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, United Kingdom and United States) and the European Union. The G20 members represent around 85% of the global GDP, over 75% of the global trade, and about two-thirds of the world population.

Solution: a)

The NAI, which functions under the Ministry of Culture, is the repository of all non-current government records, holding them for the use of administrators and scholars. Originally established as the Imperial Record Department in 1891 in Calcutta, the capital of British India, the NAI is now located in Delhi. It keeps and conserves records of the government and its organisations only, and does not receive classified documents.

Officials claim the holdings in NAI are in a regular series starting from the year 1748, and the languages of the records include English, Arabic, Hindi, Persian, Sanskrit and Urdu.

Lately, NAI has also made efforts to make available all the records digitally — on the newly created Abhilekh Patal portal.

How it receives documents

As per the Public Records Act, 1993, various central ministries and departments are supposed to transfer records more than 25 years old to the NAI, unless they pertain to classified information. However, it is up to the respective ministries and departments to ascertain what is classified information, and that is where subjective opinions may kick in.

The NAI also holds regular exhibitions such as the display of declassified files on Subhas Chandra Bose in 2016 and the recent exhibition, ‘The Jammu and Kashmir Saga’, commemorating 70 years of Jammu & Kashmir’s accession to India. Between 1973 and 2015, the NAI has held 108 exhibitions on various themes.

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Solution: b)

Fiscal Deficit is “reflective of the total borrowing requirements of the Government”.

If the fiscal deficit ratio is too high, it implies that there is a lesser amount of money left in the market for private entrepreneurs and businesses to borrow.

Lesser amount of this money, in turn, leads to higher rates of interest charged on such lending.

So, simply put, a higher fiscal deficit means higher borrowing by the government, which, in turn, mean higher interest rates in the economy.

A high fiscal deficit and higher interest rates would also mean that the efforts of the Reserve Bank of India to reduce interest rates are undone.