04 Apr 2018: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

A. GS1 Related

Nothing here for today!!!

B. GS2 Related

• The Supreme Court said its March 20 judgment, banning immediate arrest of a person accused of insulting or injuring a Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe member, is meant to protect innocents from arbitrary arrest and not an affront to Dalit rights.
• The government, despite an urgent and open court hearing of its review petition, failed to convince a Bench of Justices A.K. Goel and U.U. Lalit on Tuesday to stay its direction, considering the massive protests across the country which claimed nine lives on April 2.
• “An innocent should not be punished. There should not be terror in society… We do not want any member of the SC/ST to be deprived of his rights. We only want an innocent not to be punished,” Justice Goel observed.
• Justice Goel, who authored the verdict, said the judgment, in fact, fortifies the Dalit protection law – the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989.
• “Our judgment implements what is said in the Constitution. We are conscious of the rights of the underprivileged and place them at the highest pedestal but at the same time, an innocent person cannot be falsely implicated and arrested without proper verification. We have not stopped the implementation of the Act. Does the Act mandate the arrest of innocent persons? Our judgment is not against the Act,” Justice Goel addressed Attorney-General K.K. Venugopal, for the Centre.
• He called the judgment a ‘balance’ between Dalit rights and right of an innocent against arrest in a false case.
• The judgment directs a “preliminary enquiry” to be conducted on whether a complaint filed by a Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe member is frivolous or not. An FIR would be registered only after the probe officer, Deputy Superintendent of Police, authenticates the complaint of casteist slur or crime.

Verification of claims

• When Mr. Venugopal said such an enquiry would delay the grant of compensation mandated to victims under the Act, Justice Goel said grant of money from the public exchequer should be preceded by verification against false claims. This ‘preliminary enquiry’ serves that purpose.
• At one point, Justice Goel asked Mr. Venugopal how even the Attorney-General could function if made a victim of a false complaint.
• He said, “People who are agitating would not have read the order.”
• The court’s amicus curiae and senior advocate Amrendra Sharan indicated that vested interests were fuelling the protests.

• The Information and Broadcasting Ministry withdrew its order, issued on Monday, under which accreditation of any journalist found guilty of disseminating fake news could be cancelled.
• This came on directions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, after outrage from the media and the Opposition.
• The PM has directed that the press release on the fake news be withdrawn and the matter be addressed only by the Press Council of India (PCI). Mr. Modi was also of the view that the government should not interfere in the matter, the official added.
• Following the message from the PMO, the Ministry said in a statement that the guidelines to regulate fake news stands withdrawn.
• Announcing the norms on Monday night, the Ministry, headed by Smriti Irani, said accreditation of a journalist could be cancelled if the news reported by him/her was found to be fake.
• The notification, which did not define the phrase fake news, said complaints would be referred to the PCI if they pertained to the print media and to the News Broadcasters Association if they related to the electronic media.
• The regulatory agencies would have 15 days to dispose of a complaint. During the period of probe, the journalist’s accreditation would be suspended, the note said.

• The Central government has reportedly decided to emulate Telangana model of health coverage for its proposed universal health insurance scheme covering secondary and tertiary healthcare.
• Senior officials of the Union Health Ministry are understood to have informed the State government about their decision to utilise the Aarogyasri software for the proposed National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS), announced by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his budget speech on February 1.
• A request to this effect was communicated after a team of officials led by the Union Health Secretary visited the State and studied the implementation of the scheme.
• The NHPS, described as Modicare by the Union Finance Minister, envisages medical coverage of up to Rs. 5 lakh a year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation for 100 million financially vulnerable families.
• The government had not received the finer details of the proposed health scheme as clarity was yet to emerge on the date of launch of the scheme and the budgetary allocations.
• Officials clarified that the proposed Central scheme was different from the health profiling of all the citizens of the State announced by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao in the recently concluded budget session of the Legislature.
• The scheme proposed by the Centre envisages coverage for secondary and tertiary health care. The State’s scheme on the other hand deals with diagnostic tests.
• The Chief Minister is said to be particular that the scheme should be launched after a comprehensive study of how similar schemes are being implemented in Canada and the United Kingdom.

• India has welcomed the U.S.’s decision to designate Milli Muslim League (MML), the political arm of Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan led by Mumbai attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed, a terrorist organisation, calling it a vindication of India’s position that Pakistan’s action against terror groups is ineffective.
• The US’s move is also cognizance of the fact that terrorist individuals and entities are allowed to change names and continue to operate freely from territory under Pakistan’s control.
• The designation is a rejection of the attempts being made in Pakistan to mainstream terrorist individuals and entities, a day after the U.S. announced its decision to declare the MML and the Tehreek-e-Azadi-e-Jammu and Kashmir (TAJK), an LeT front organisation working as a charity, terrorist organisations.
• India had raised both issues at the global Financial Action Task Force plenaries in 2017 and February 2018, which also led to Pakistan’s grey listing.
• The U.S. order, designating the two organisations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) under Section 219 of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act, and as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) under Executive Order 13224, came concurrently with designations for the main leaders of the organisations, some of whom expect to stand for elections in Pakistan in 2018.
• U.S. Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the Department of State said that they take aim at Lashkar e-Taiba’s efforts to circumvent sanctions and deceive the public about its true character.
• The U.S. move comes on the back of a number of decisions taken by the Trump administration to put Pakistan on notice on the issue of terror groups operating there.
• In November 2017, the U.S. had criticised the release of Hafiz Saeed, convicted in India on terror charges, after 10 months under house arrest in Lahore, as well as the Supreme Court order that allowed the MML to be registered for the upcoming general elections.
• In January, the Trump administration decided to withhold all Coalition Support Funding and some Foreign Military Financing to Pakistan because of its lack of action against terror groups, especially the Haqqani network. In February, the U.S. pushed through a proposal to greylist Pakistan at the FATF.
• The U.S. decision will give a fillip to talks between Indian officials and U.S. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia Alice Wells in Delhi.
• Wells was in Pakistan over the weekend for discussions on Afghanistan and the U.S.’s specific expectations on Pakistan actions against designated terror groups.

C. GS3 Related

• Agriculture start-ups, which were hitherto overlooked by investors, are finally emerging as a promising segment in the Indian start-up ecosystem.
• Springing up of several incubators focusing exclusively on agri start-ups, changing preferences of investors, initiatives taken up by government bodies like Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and other developments are giving a fillip to agri start-ups.
• Increasing awareness among policy makers, financial planners and investors about the importance and potential of agriculture sector is helping agri start-ups to gain attention.
• Initially, the whole focus of incubators and investors was on startups related to IT and other allied sectors.Both start-ups and investors were chasing fancy valuations and glamour associated with start-up success stories.
• Mostly start-ups focused on copypaste models using IT, rather than getting on ground and trying to solve real problems of India. As a result, agri start-ups were neglected.
• While the failure rate among start-ups focusing on IT, e-commerce and other sought-after segments was huge and the investors started getting an idea of the real picture over the past two to three years, several start-ups in agri space have slowly but steadily grown and succeeded, thus drawing attention of investors towards them.
• Prakasam, who has invested in successful agri start-ups like Lumiere Organic Store, Fresh World and others, stressed that ICAR’s direction to more than 100 research and development institutes under its purview to offer technology transfer to startups has helped agri start-ups.
• Besides organisations like Acumen India and Villgro, initiatives of Central and several state governments is boosting the growth. Ministry of Agriculture has also launched Agriculture Grand Challenge.
• Agri start-ups have come a long way and have lot more support today. Initially, we got our seed funding from a-IDEA, an agri incubation centre, initiated by National Academy of Agricultural Research Management, Hyderabad.

• Apportioning blame to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) over the PNB loan fraud, Central Vigilance Commissioner K.V. Chowdary there had been no apparent audit by the central bank during the period of the scam.Mr. Chowdary stressed the need to put into place a more robust auditing system.
• The CVC exercises superintendence over the CBI which is looking into the over Rs. 13,000-crore Punjab National Bank fraud case.
• The RBI had the regulatory responsibility for the banking sector but any lack of integrity would be looked at by the Central Vigilance Commission. Mr. Chowdary said according to the RBI it had switched over from a periodic audit to a “risk-based” audit which is conducted when there is a financial risk involved.
• Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had in February slammed regulators for failing to detect the fraud, saying that unlike politicians, regulators were unaccountable. Mr. Chowdary pointed out that the RBI issues general guidelines as a regulator and also when foreign exchange is involved.

• Amazon is eyeing the opportunity of enabling small and large Indian businesses to sell products globally.Amazon Business announced the expansion of its ‘Global Selling’ programme by unveiling business-to-business selling for Indian exporters.
• The initiative would empower sellers, manufacturers and exporters to reach thousands of business customers across Amazon’s international marketplaces.
• More than 2,000 exporters have registered for the programme, which was started as a pilot in the country late last year. It aims to take the sellers in front of decision makers of Fortune 500 companies as well as small and medium corporations across the world.
• The programme is also present in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France and Japan. Indian business-to-business exporters can offer a range of products across categories such as home, personal computers and business.

• The whales are dying from collisions with ships and entanglements in commercial fishing gear, and the species might not survie.
• Despite eight decades of conservation efforts, North Atlantic right whales are facing a new crisis. The threat of extinction within a generation looms, and the movement to preserve the whales is trying to come up with new solutions.
• The whales are one of the rarest marine mammals in the world, numbering about 450. The 100,000-pound animals have been even closer to the brink of extinction before, and the effort to save them galvanised one of the most visible wildlife conservation movements in U.S. history.
• But the population’s falling again because of poor reproduction coupled with high mortality from ship strikes and entanglement. Scientists, environmentalists, whale watch captains and animal lovers of all stripes are rallying to renew interest in saving right whales, but many admit to feeling close to defeated.
• Charles “Stormy” Mayo, director of the right whale ecology programme at the Centre for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, and other scientists have said the species could be extinct as soon as 2041.
• Mayo, a ninth generation resident of Cape Cod whose ancestors harpooned whales in the 18th and 19th Centuries, now leads expeditions to find the animals and try to learn how to save them.
• Scientists are still trying to figure out why the whales have lost about 10 % of their population in just eight years, but one hypothesis places blame on the warming of the Atlantic Ocean.
• The whales migrate from Georgia and Florida to New England and Canada every year, seeking food. They are aided by a complex system of protected areas, shipping regulations and commercial fishing restrictions that try to ensure safe passage as they gorge on copepods, crustaceans the size of a flea.
• But as waters have warmed, the tiny organisms they need to survive appear to be moving, and the whales are following, sometimes putting themselves in harm’s way, said Mark Baumgartner, a scientist with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. They also just aren’t eating enough, he said.
• Last year, there were 17 confirmed right whale deaths: a dozen in Canada, the rest in the United States. Scientists haven’t observed a single new right whale calf this year, another dire development.
• Still, advocates see some reasons to be optimistic. Canada recently announced moves to protect the whales by changing the dates of the snow crab season and establishing a permanent speed limit in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
• And this winter, scientists observed a behaviour called a surface active group for the first time in a year. The whales gather at the surface for males to compete to mate with a female, which scientists hope augurs for a baby whale in the future.

NORTH ATLANTIC RIGHT WHALES

• These whales are one of the rarest marine mammals in the world, numbering about 450.
• The 1,00,000-pound animals have been closer to the brink of extinction before.
• The decline dates back to the whaling era of centuries ago, when they were targeted as the “right” whale to hunt because they were slow and floated when killed.
• They were harvested for their oil and meat, and might have dwindled to double digits until international protections took hold in 1935.
• Preserving the whales became an international cause, championed by environmentalists, scientists and the U.S. government, and their population grew to about 275 in 1990 and 500 around 2010.
• However, the whales have lost about 10 % of their population in just the last eight years, perhaps due to collisions with ships and entanglements in commercial fishing gear, and the warming of the Atlantic Ocean.

• Limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius will not prevent destructive and deadly climate impacts, as once hoped, dozens of experts concluded in a score of scientific studies released.
• A world that heats up by 2C – long regarded as the temperature ceiling for a climate-safe planet – could see mass displacement due to rising seas, a drop in per capita income, regional shortages of food and fresh water, and the loss of animal and plant species at an accelerated speed.
• Poor and emerging countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America will get hit hardest, according to the studies in the British Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions A.
• The 197-nation Paris climate treaty, inked in 2015, vows to halt warming at “well under” 2C compared to mid-19th century levels, and “pursue efforts” to cap the rise at 1.5C.
• With only one degree of warming so far, Earth has seen a crescendo of droughts, heatwaves, and storms ramped up by rising seas.
• Voluntary national pledges made under the Paris pact to cut CO2 emissions, if fulfilled, would yield a 3C world at best.

Among the conclusions found in the new studies:

• A draft special report by the UN climate science panel to be unveiled in October, obtained by AFP, concludes that holding warming at 1.5C by the end of the 21st century is extremely unlikely.
• At current rates, the greenhouse gas emissions putting that goal out of reach will have been released within 10 to 15 years.
• Meanwhile, CO2 emissions — after remaining stable for three years, raising hopes that they had peaked — rose by 1.4 percent in 2017, the International Energy Agency said this week.
• But every tenth-of-a-degree counts.Even if we can’t limit global temperature increase to 1.5C, but can limit it to 1.7C or 1.8C, this is still hugely more beneficial than just giving up.

• Fires on the edges of tropical forests and their alteration by land use makes these hot ecosystems lose their shape and stability bringing a sudden, even catastrophic, transformation of land from trees to grass, researchers have found.
• Tropical forests have been called the lungs of the planet. They soak up vast quantities of carbon dioxide, hold the world’s greatest diversity of plants and animals, and employ millions of people.
• The researchers, using high-resolution satellite data from protected forests in the savanna region of the Brazilian Cerrado, found that the shape of these natural forests follow a predictable mathematical relationship between a forest’s perimeter and its area-regardless of its climate region or its size.
• They call this a “3/4 power law” and it roughly means the forests all tend toward shapes that are neither skinny like a line, nor round like a circle.
• And an experiment the researchers ran on their model shows that the fate of forest patches over time – whether they expand or contract – is determined by their initial shape.
• Those with compact shapes of all sizes, over time, converge on the more octopus-like 3/4-power-scaling relationship, while those with skinny shapes and larger perimeter-to-area ratios collapsed, disappearing into grasslands or fragmenting into very small patches.

• India is among the countries which are at the greatest risk of food insecurity due to weather extremes caused by climate change, a global study suggests.
• Researchers led by the University of Exeter in the UK examined how climate change could affect the vulnerability of different countries to food insecurity – when people lack access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.
• The countries at the greatest vulnerability to food insecurity when moving from the present-day climate to 2 degrees Celsius global warming are Oman, India, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and Brazil, researchers said.
• Climate change is expected to lead to more extremes of both heavy rainfall and drought, with different effects in different parts of the world. Such weather extremes can increase vulnerability to food insecurity.
• Some change is already unavoidable, but if global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, this vulnerability is projected to remain smaller than at 2 degrees Celsius in approximately 76 per cent of developing countries.

• Astronauts aboard the ISS were set to receive 2,630 kg of research, crew supplies and hardware after NASA’s cargo provider SpaceX launched a commercial resupply mission.
• SpaceX Dragon lifted off on a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida with a delivery of experiments dealing with how the human body, plants and materials behave in space.
• The supplies will support dozens of the more than 250 investigations aboard the space station. The space station’s robotic arm will be used to capture Dragon on its arrival at the station on Wednesday.
• Among the research arriving on Dragon is a new facility to test materials, coatings and components, or other large experiments, in the harsh environment of space.
• The Materials ISS Experiment Flight Facility (MISSE-FF) provides a platform for testing how materials react to exposure to ultraviolet radiation, atomic oxygen, ionising radiation, ultra-high vacuum, charged particles, thermal cycles, electromagnetic radiation and micro-meteoroids in the low-Earth orbit environment.
• The Canadian Space Agency’s study “Bone Marrow Adipose Reaction: Red or White (MARROW)” will look at the effects of microgravity on bone marrow and the blood cells it produces — an effect likened to that of long-term bed rest on Earth.
• Understanding how plants respond to microgravity is also important for future long-duration space missions and the crews that will need to grow their own food.
• The Passive Orbital Nutrient Delivery System (PONDS) arriving on Dragon uses a newly-developed passive nutrient delivery system and the Veggie plant growth facility currently aboard the space station to cultivate leafy greens.

D. GS4 Related

E. Editorials

Context:

• Why measuring inequality is not the same as measuring changes in the level of poverty in India

Introduction

• As of late, there has been a great deal of discourse on expanding imbalance inside a few nations of the world, including India, especially after the distribution of Thomas Piketty’s book on disparity.
• Truly rising imbalance has unfavorable financial and social results.
• The Gini coefficient or different measures of disparity are being utilized to inspect slants in imbalance.
• In this segment, we inspect the patterns in disparity and demonstrate that the destitution proportion is similarly imperative as the Gini coefficient in dissecting issues identifying with development and dissemination.

 Consumption inequality

• All things considered the Gini coefficient, which lies in the region of 0 and 1, is used for evaluating uniqueness. The Gini coefficient of usage use for common zones declined scarcely between 1983-84 to 1993-94 (from 0.304 to 0.286) while it recorded a minor rising in the midst of the high advancement time of 2004-05 and 2011-12 (from 0.304 to 0.311).
• Because of urban regions, it continued as before from 1983-84 to 1993-94 (0.344) while it extended subtly from 2004-05 to 2011-12 (0.376 to 0.390).
• Using long time course of action since 1951, an examination exhibits that irregularity in nation districts declined while it extended in urban locales in the post-change period, particularly in the high advancement time allotment.
• One view is that awkwardness in use may be an under-measure as National Sample Survey (NSS) data may not get the usage of the rich adequately.
• The refinement between the usage use as showed by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) and national wage could be deficiently a result of this factor. In any case, there is no strong affirmation that underestimation in NSSO is simply relating to the upper-wage social events.
• In reality, the Rangarajan Committee assessed the issue of differentiations in use among NSSO and NSS.
• What is aggravating in India is that the differentiation among NAS and NSS is stretching out after some time.
• For example, the refinement was under 10% in the late 1970s; it rose to practically half in 2009-10. A couple of changes made in the report diminished the refinement from 45.8% to 32.5%. However in the meantime the qualifications are high.

 Income inequality

• Income and wealth inequalities are much higher than consumption inequality. According to some estimates, consumption Gini coefficient was 0.36 in 2011-12 in India.
• On the other hand, inequality in income was high with a Gini coefficient of 0.55 while wealth Gini coefficient was 0.74 in 2011-12.
• Thus, income Gini was about 20 points higher than consumption Gini while wealth Gini was nearly almost 40 points higher than consumption Gini.

NSSO surveys have been studied for long and have gone through critical analysis.

• The reasons for sharp differences between consumption Gini coefficient and income Gini coefficient have to be analysed.
• In some other countries, such differences are no more than 5-10 points.
• Also, using income tax data for computing income distribution has many problems. In India, only 3-5% of people come under the income tax net.

Trends in poverty ratio

• People require a specific least utilization of nourishment and non-sustenance things to survive.
• In any case, the recognition with respect to what constitutes destitution fluctuates after some time and crosswise over nations.
• By and large the approach is to take a gander at it regarding certain base utilization use on nourishment and non-sustenance things.
• Any family unit neglecting to meet this level of utilization consumption can be dealt with as a poor family unit.

In the pre-reform period

• Overall poverty declined marginally during 1983 to 1993-94. The rate of decline in poverty was 0.8 percentage points per annum.
• In fact, the number of persons below the poverty line stayed almost the same at 320 million during this period.
• The number of persons below poverty declined by 5 percentage points during 1983 to 1987-88 but rose by 4 percentage points during 1987-88 to 1993-94.
• Poverty declined faster in the post-reform period, particularly in the 2004-2012 period as compared to 1993-2005.

In the post-reform period

• Overall poverty as defined by the Tendulkar Committee declined faster from 45.3% in 1993-94 to 21.9% in 2011-12 – an annual decline of 1.3 percentage points.
• The first sub-period 1993-94 to 2004-05 recorded a decline of 0.75 percentage points per annum.
• But, poverty declined by 2.2 percentage points per annum during the period 2004-05 to 2011-12. This was the period of highest economic growth since Independence. It is the fastest decline of poverty compared to earlier periods.

Conclusions on the trends in poverty

1. World Bank Study (2016) mentioned above shows, poverty declined by 1.36 percentage points per annum post-1991 compared to 0.44 percentage points per annum prior to 1991. This study shows that among other things, urban growth is the most important contributor to the rapid reduction in poverty even in rural areas in the post-1991 period.
2. Within the post-reform period, poverty declined faster in the 2000s than in the 1990s. The official estimates based on Tendulkar poverty lines show that poverty declined much faster during 2004-05 to 2011-12 as compared to the period 1993-94 to 2004-05. Around 135 million people were lifted above the poverty line in the post-reform period.

Growth and distribution

• The patterns in neediness demonstrate that the pace of lessening was significantly higher in the post-change period especially amid high development period.
• The effect of higher development on destitution lessening can likewise be seen from the decile-wise development in per capita utilization use.
• An examination of the development rate of per capita utilization (in genuine terms) amid the periods 1993-94 to 2004-05 and 2004-05 to 2011-12 demonstrates that the normal development of per capita utilization of the main five deciles is more than that of the last five deciles.
• Notwithstanding, the proportion of the normal development rates of the two time frames is higher for the last five deciles when contrasted with the best five. It suggests that the development of utilization of the lower deciles of the populace was more than the upper deciles.

Conclusion

• There is most likely that imbalance in itself has a few bothersome results.
• It was Simon Kuznets who had contended in a renowned paper in 1955 that in the early time of monetary development dispersion of salary has a tendency to intensify, and that simply in the wake of achieving a specific level of financial advancement a change in the circulation of pay happens.
• In this unique situation, estimating imbalance isn’t the same as estimating the adjustments in the level of destitution.
• Regardless of whether the Gini coefficient continues as before or gets, the destitution proportion can be declining. This has been valid for India.
• The decrease in neediness is substantially higher especially in the period 2004-05 to 2011-12 disregarding ascend in disparity.
• Hence the progressions of the neediness proportion is a similarly essential marker to screen.

Nothing here for today!!!

Question 1. Consider the following statements about National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF):

1. NIRF has been launched by Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD).
2. Ranking of institutions of Higher Education will be an annual exercise.

Which of the above statements are correct?

1. 1 only
2. 2 only
3. Both 1 and 2
4. None of the above

See

H. UPSC Mains Practice Questions