DailyOh! New Cabinet ministers take charge in Delhi, to the new lakes in Antarctica
On his very first day as the Information Technology Minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw shot off a warning to Twitter, asking to it abide by the new IT Rules.
The first Cabinet meeting of Ministers post the reshuffling has begun. This is the first mega Cabinet expansion since the Modi government came to power in 2019, and it saw a lot of new faces, and some old ones leaving. In all, 43 MPs took oath as ministers (in the second term) by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday. Of these, 36 including Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sarbanand Sonowal, Nisith Pramanik are new faces, while seven are sitting ministers.
Jyotiraditya Scindia has become the Civil Aviation minister — a post that his father, late Madhavrao Scindia, held in PV Narasimha Rao’s cabinet from 1991 to 1993. Call it Jyotiraditya’s big reward for delivering Madhya Pradesh to the BJP in the state Assembly by-elections last year.
Nisith Pramanik from Cooch Behar, West Bengal, is now the Minister of State in the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. He is the first-ever Central minister from the district of Cooch Behar. But the biggest distinction is that Pramanik is the youngest minister in the present Union Cabinet. He is 35.
But did you know who the youngest-ever Cabinet Minister was? Sushma Swaraj (also from BJP) was a minister in Haryana at the age of 25 in 1977.
The late External Affairs Minister held many other distinctions to her credit. She was the first female Spokesperson of a national political party in India, besides being BJP's first female Chief Minister, Union Cabinet Minister, general secretary, Spokesperson, Leader of Opposition and Minister of External Affairs — the portfolio she held until a little over two months before she died.
Coming back to the present Cabinet, the only other minister aged below 40 is Shantanu Thakur (38) from Bangaon in West Bengal. He is the Minister of State for Ports, Shipping and Waterways.
All this talk about Cabinet, but do you know what the word means? Our Word Of The Day is used to denote the committee of senior ministers (in the Commonwealth countries) responsible for controlling government policy. The word also means ‘a storage closet’ or a ‘cupboard’. But for our context here, we shall go with the former meaning. The word comes from the Medieval Latin word capanna that translates to “cabin”. How did a cabin come to denote a group of ministers? Because earlier, the ministers would be enclosed in a room (or a cabin) for long hours in meetings. Hence, a Cabinet of Ministers.
Back to the present, why was the Cabinet reshuffled and why now? Read this to understand the political math behind the Cabinet expansion.
Today, on his very first day as the new Information Technology Minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw shot off a warning to Twitter. The letter asked the social media company to follow the new IT Rules as the "law of land [is] supreme".
Vaishnaw seems to be on the path that was chartered by his predecessor Ravi Shankar Prasad. The warning comes amid the thickening tussle between the Centre and the social media giant. On that front, Twitter informed the Delhi High Court today that it will take another eight weeks to appoint a Resident Grievance Officer (RGO) in compliance with the IT Rules. In response, the Delhi HC said that Twitter will not receive legal protection if the Centre takes action against non-compliance with the Rules. The next hearing is on July 28.
Facebook, meanwhile, faced a setback in the Supreme Court today. SC ruled that Facebook officials will have to appear before the Delhi Assembly Committee to give answers in connection with the Delhi violence case.
Down South in Tamil Nadu, the state Minister for Fisheries-Fishermen Welfare and Animal Husbandry, Anitha Radhakrishnan, was carried by fishermen to save his slippers from getting wet! The minister was caught on camera doing so in Palaverkadu near Chennai, where he was to investigate sea erosion.
The video went viral on social media, where people are calling out the minister over VIP culture. Unfazed by the criticism, the minister asked India Today what was wrong with the gesture: "If they ask affectionately, we should climb on. It is wrong only if I demand to climb on their shoulders."
He added flippantly that "a Fisheries Minister can climb on a fisherman's shoulder only, who else's shoulder can he climb on?" (We don't feel the need to justify that with a response.)
While that was from Palaverkadu near Pulicat Lake in India, hidden lakes are being found in Antarctica at the southern end of the Earth.
The Antarctic ice sheet appears to be all calm and stable from above but is slowly losing its foundation and collapsing under its own weight. The culprit? The usual one — global warming and climate change, melting the ice at the poles. And the ice melting is creating lakes underneath the surface, which has formed a system of waterways eventually draining into the ocean.
Is it a cause of worry? Yes. Can you do something about it? Yes. Foremost, introspect your lifestyle choices and see what you can change for the sake of the planet.
And to help you introspect on all other matters, we recommend that you listen to progressive rock band Protocol's debut album — Friar's Lantern.
That is all from us today. See you tomorrow.
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