Comprehensive News Analysis - 09 September 2016

A. GS1 Related

B. GS2 Related

1. Delhi HC sets aside posts given to MLAs in Delhi assembly

Category: Polity and Governance     

Topic: Judiciary 

Key Points:

• The Delhi High Court set aside the AAP government’s order appointing 21 MLAs as Parliamentary Secretaries since it lacked the approval of the Lieutenant Governor (LG), the administrative head of Delhi.
• The court order came after the AAP government conceded that since the order was passed without the approval of the LG, it went against the August 4 order of the HC holding the LG’s approval to be mandatory.

2. Neatherlands to help India clean Yamuna

Category: International Relations     

Topic:  Agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests

Key Points:

• India is collaborating with the Netherlands to clean the Yamuna. A consortium of scientists from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D) and The Energy Resources Institute (TERI) are teaming up with their peers from the Delft University of Technology, Wageningten University and the Vrije Unversiteit in the Netherlands to set up a network of sewage treatment plants that will clean wastewater in Delhi’s Barapullah drain, which is reportedly responsible for 30 per cent of the pollution of the Yamuna. The pollution levels of the Barapullah drain are high and if the technology works well, it should bring the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) of the water down to 5 mg per litre. Currently, the BOD of the Barapullah drain water is 70 mg per litre
• The project, which is expected to reach full capacity within five years, can then clean up to a million litres of toxic drain water a day. The Rs. 21 crore project funded by Dutch government and industry and India’s Department of Biotechnology, is unique according to those involved as it will use filtration membranes developed by Indian scientists and employ a new anaerobic sewage treatment process.
• This is a 2-stage process of cleaning water. Netherlands has proven experience in this field. The demonstration plant would be designed and operated along the drain, and will produce biogas and generate water that can be used for agriculture.

3. 11th East Asia Summit

Category: International Relations

Topic:  Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests

Key Points:

• 11^th East Asia Summit (EAS) was held in Vientiane, Lao People’s Democratic Republic on 8 September 2016. EAS participating countries’ adhered to a rules-based regional and international order that upholds rights and privileges of all states. The summit emphasized the importance  of  advancing  the  nuclear  disarmament, non-proliferation and  peaceful  uses  of  nuclear  energy as  mutually  reinforcing pillars.
• It recalled the rights  of  all  states  to  develop  research,  production  of,  and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes consistent with international law, including obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
• Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi in his address at the East Asia Summit (EAS), without naming Pakistan directly said there was one country in our neighbourhood which produces and exports terror, and urged the international community to isolate and sanction this instigator. Mr. Modi further said, “The proliferation of terrorism is reducing space for peace and increasing space for violence and putting at risk peace and prosperity of all.”

Overview:

East Asia summit (EAS) – It is a forum held every year by leaders of the East Asian, Southeast Asian and South Asian regions. U.S. and Russia joined the EAS in 2011. Currently, it has 18 members. The first summit was held in 2005 at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

India is a full-time member of EAS.

4. 14th Indo – ASEAN summit

Category: International Relations    

 Topic:  Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests

Key Points:

• At the 14th ASEAN-India Summit at Vientiane, Laos Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi and ASEAN Leaders reviewed ASEAN-India cooperation and discussed its future direction under each of the three pillars of politico-security, economic and socio-cultural cooperation. They also exchanged views on regional and international issues of mutual interest and concern.
• 2017 will mark 25 years of India’s dialogue partnership with ASEAN, to celebrate which a number of commemorative activities was announced by the Indian Prime Minister.
• PM of India noted that growing radicalism through the ideology of hatred and spread of extreme violence was the other security threats. He expressed deep concern over the rising export of terror, in an apparent reference to Pakistan, saying it is a common security threat to the region and there was need for a coordinated response from the ASEAN member nations to combat the menace.
• ASEAN is central to India’s Act East policy and the engagement is being driven by common priorities, bring peace, stability and prosperity to the region

C. GS3 Related

1. India has not decided yet on ratifying Paris climate change pact

Category: Environment      

Topic:  Climate Change 

Key Points:

• India made it clear that no decision to ratify the Paris climate change agreement has been taken so far as its domestic processes in this regard were still underway.
• During the 2015 Paris climate meet, more than 190 nations had agreed on setting ambitious goals for capping global warming and funnelling trillions of dollars to poor countries facing climate catastrophe. The pact will come into force after it is ratified by at least 55 countries that account for 55 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
• While Western countries, including the S., has been supporting an early ratification of the pact, India has been seeking more time to complete its national processes as it fears that any hasty decision may impact its developmental projects.

2. GSLV F-05 and INSAT-3DR

Category: Science and Technology    

Topic:  Space

Key Points:

• ISRO’s rocket GSLV-F05 placed the INSAT-3DR, an advanced weather satellite with four payloads, into a precise Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO). This also marked a hat-trick of successful launches for the GSLV.
• The four payloads that the satellite carried – a multi-spectral Imager, which will generate images of the Earth from a geostationary altitude of 36,000 km every 26 minutes and provide information on parameters such as sea surface temperature, snow cover, cloud motion winds, among others; a 19 channel Sounder and a Data Relay Transponder for enhancing and augmenting the existing meteorological missions; the fourth was a Search and Rescue payload to pick up and relay alert signals originating from the distress beacons of maritime, aviation and land-based users.
• Application – The major users of the service will be the Indian Coast Guards, Airports Authority of India (AAI), Directorate General of Shipping, Defence Services and fishermen. The Indian service region will cover a large part of the Indian Ocean and will also include Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Seychelles, Sri Lanka and Tanzania for providing distress alert services.

Note –

ISRO’s future missions: The ISRO is mulling over missions to Venus or an asteroid, a second mission to Mars. ISRO also has a number of launches in the coming years including the Chandrayaan-2 and a joint mission with NASA. Following the successful launch of GSLV-F05, ISRO plans to launch at least two GSLV Mark II missions every year.

http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/isro-eyes-venus-mission/article9087070.ece

3. Supercomputing reforms in India

Category: Science and Technology      

Topic:  Developments

Key Points:

• Indian scientists are trying to develop a massive grid computer that will be accessible to any student in a remote town or village to solve complex science problems.
• While India’s current grid-connected system GARUDA (Global Access to Resource Using Distributed Architecture), which is spread across 17 cities, has been a great help, the proposed National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) will catapult India into the league of nations with the most powerful supercomputers. NSM, or GARUDA++ as it is being called by grid computing experts, will help in the complex analysis needed in fields as diverse as astrophysics, weather forecasting and drug discovery for neglected diseases. GARUDA++ can be used to give a push to Startup India, by developing analytics tools for them
• While GARUDA has 6,000 interconnected CPUs and offers a computing ability of half a petaflop, the proposed system will be far more powerful. Under NSM, Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, plans to deploy 70 interconnected supercomputers across India.
• NSM will have 73 supercomputers with a computational ability ranging in three levels – two or three of 10 to 20 petaflop range, 20 computers of half petaflop, and the lower range (50) of up to 100 teraflops.

D. GS4 Related

E. Important Editorials: A Quick Glance

1. Special package to Andhra

Category: Polity and Governance 

Topic:  Federalism, Govt. Interventions

Key Points:

How special can ‘special’ be? That Andhra Pradesh, post-bifurcation, needed a helping hand from the Centre was never in question. But the modalities of the special status the State wanted, needed to be worked out. Could it be declared a Special Category State, or was the right way to grant it a special financial package that did not require meeting the mandated requirements for Special Category status? A.P. does not qualify as a Special Category State; it has neither geographical disadvantages such as hilly terrain nor historical disadvantages such as socio-economic and infrastructural backwardness and unviable finances.

Eventually, when the Centre announced a special package, the emphasis was on assisting the State on the basis of the road map laid down in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, an oral commitment made in 2014 by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the report of the 14th Finance Commission and the recommendations of the Niti Aayog. The package, valid for five years till 2020, might not have everything that Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu had asked for, but meets most of the reasonable expectations of a State struggling to recover from bifurcation and dealing with the imminent loss of the capital city, Hyderabad. The Polavaram irrigation project was declared a national project; a railway zone was to be formed in the State and the Central Board of Direct Taxes was to issue two notifications on tax concessions. Special Category status could only have been a crutch; the package might be the stimulus that it needs after bifurcation. Under the circumstances, this is a good deal.

However, the political battle over the Special Category status is not going to get over soon. Opposition parties, led by the Congress and the YSR Congress, have targeted Mr. Naidu for failing to convince the Centre. That his Telugu Desam Party is in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party will invite charges of a sell-out of A.P.’s interests. Union Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu of the BJP, perhaps anticipating this reaction, indicated that the Centre’s support would be a continuous process. The TDP government must look ahead, and use the special package to boost growth and create conditions for employment generation. While concentrating resources on building the capital at Amaravati, Mr. Naidu must not lose sight of the immediate development goal: the livelihood concerns of ordinary people. That could be his political legacy: a Chief Minister who saw the State through a difficult phase and laid the foundation for a robust economy.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/andhra-pradesh/ap-has-got-much-more-than-special-status-venkaiah/article9087059.ece

2. Taking the Paris process forward

Category: International Relations       

Topic:   Agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests

Key Points:

The ratification of the Paris Agreement on climate change by the United States and China, which together account for 38 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, provides much-needed momentum for the global compact to be in force beyond 2020. As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has emphasised, 26 countries have already acceded to the accord; to reach the target of 55 per cent emissions, 29 more must come on board. For the U.S., this is a landmark departure from its long-held position of not accepting a binding treaty like the Kyoto Protocol, where emerging economies heavily reliant on fossil fuels have no firm commitments. The Paris Agreement addressed this issue by stipulating voluntary but verifiable emissions reduction goals for all parties, within the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities that underpin the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Contrary to the belief that a requirement to cut GHGs will make economies less competitive, a major section of global industry and business has reaffirmed the potential for trillions of dollars in green investments flowing from the ratification of the Paris Agreement by the U.S. and China. This is a clear pointer for India, which is estimated to have the third highest individual country emissions as of 2014.

There are distinct low-carbon pathways that India has outlined in its national plan submitted to the UNFCCC. Among these, the scaling up of renewable energy and non-fossil fuel sources to 40 per cent of installed power production capacity by 2030 is predicated on technology transfer and the availability of Green Climate Fund resources. Not much progress has been made in this area, and Minister of State for Environment Anil Madhav Dave confirmed recently that no contribution had been received from the Fund. Helping India lock in the right technologies in its growth trajectory is important for a global reduction in greenhouse gases. It is important for the U.S. to help accelerate this process in the area of power generation, following up on the assurances given by Secretary of State John Kerry during his recent visit on clean energy finance, technology, solar catalytic funding and help for power grid upgradation. India can, in parallel, do much more on domestic policy to achieve green and low energy intensive growth such as taxing fossil fuels, managing emissions from waste better and making low-carbon buildings mandatory. India joined other G20 countries at Hangzhou to commit itself to addressing climate change through domestic policy measures. For that to happen, the Centre must initiate a serious discussion with the States on the national imperatives.

F. Concepts-in-News: Related Concepts to Revise/Learn:

• UNFCCC
• Paris Agreement
• National Supercomputing Mission (NSM)
• GARUDA
• Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO)
• Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

G. BILLS/ACTS/SCHEMES/ORGS IN NEWS

H. Fun with Practice Questions 🙂

Question 1: Which city is called the Super-computer capital of India?

Question 2: The fuel used in the Cryogenic engine of GSLV – 

Question 3: Which of the following green house gases account for maximum global warming of earth?

Question 4: The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is an initiative of –

Question 5: 1st Indo - ASEAN commemorative summit was held in _____ at _____

I. Archives:

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