- SDG 14 is ‘Life Below Water :Plastic pollution. Increasing levels of debris in the world’s oceans are having a major environmental and economic impact. Marine debris impacts biodiversity through entanglement or ingestion
- SDG 14 is ‘Life Below Water :Coastal waters are deteriorating due to pollution and eutrophication. Without concerted efforts, coastal eutrophication is expected to increase in 20 percent of large marine ecosystems by 2050.
- SDG 14 is Life Below Water :Ocean acidification has increased significantly in recent decades. Open Ocean sites show current levels of acidity have increased by 26 per cent since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
- SDG 14 is Life Below Water :Oceans absorb about 30 per cent of carbon dioxide produced by humans, buffering the impacts of global warming.
- SDG 14 is Life Below Water :Oceans provide key natural resources including food, medicines, biofuels and other products. They help with the breakdown and removal of waste and pollution, and their coastal ecosystems act as buf
Oh! Mp, My Mp!
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The one, among the major takeaways from the Budget 2018 is "salary Hikesof MPs." It was the 29th amendment to the bill.
"Finance Bill", which comes into effect from April 1st this year, propose ‘nearly 100%’ hike in emoluments of Members of Parliament and threefold increase for the President, Vice President and Governors of states. The bill also proposes ‘a machinery’to be put in place to ensure "automatic revision" of the salaries every 'five year' indexed to inflation.The bill reportedly till date, has never gone down well with the people, mostly because of MP hiking their own salaries.
First brought into effect in 1954, bill saw 28 amendments, before finallyceasing in this year. A little closer look, leads one to interesting facts and figures, according to the data released by a non-profit organisation 'PRS -Legislative Research' in ongoing session (16th) of LokSabha from 2014, only ’25 percent’ of the MPs have attended more than 90 percentage of the sittings, while the ‘national attendance average’ for lawmakers is 80 percent.Further, ‘22’ lawmakers from the house have attended only ‘half the sittings’ or fewer. AVeteran member of the parliament from Delhi, Karan Singh who bid farewell to the parliament on "January 4" this year, had mentioned in his speech on the day that “Parliament has evolved in the 50 years, but all the changes have not been positive, debates have become rare and disruptions have become more frequent”.
Moreover, the organisation(‘PRS legislative research’) also brings out that, the “time spent on discussing budgets” was reduced from “123” hours in1950s to “39” hours during last decade and the recently concluded session of Loksabha(15th) was the“least productive” one in house’s History.
It would, be apt to recall in the context that, unlike government jobs now, MPs enjoy the privileges as an Ex-MP once retired, which include perks like pension benefits, travel benefits and health benefits.
The bill for the hike in the salaries of MPs was pending, since the hike announced by the Pay commission last year for executives, some of top bureaucrats of the country are reportedly receiving salaries higher than that of the President.
Ujjwal Kumar