05 Apr 2018: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

A. GS1 Related

Nothing here for today!!!

B. GS2 Related

Why in news?

• The Union Cabinet approved amendments to the human rights protection Bill that is aimed at strengthening human rights institutions in the country, such as the National Human Rights Commission and the state human rights commissions.
• The Protection of Human Rights (Amendments) Bill, 2018, was cleared in a Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A statement from the government said that the Bill had been given approval for better protection and promotion of human rights in the country.

What are the changes proposed?

• The Bill proposes enlarging the scope of eligibility and scope of selection of the chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission as well as the state human rights commissions.
• These amendments would strengthen the human rights institutions for effective discharge of their mandates, roles and responsibilities.
• It also proposes incorporating a mechanism to look into cases of human rights violation in Union Territories, to amend the term of office of the chairperson and members of the NHRC and SHRCs to bring them in consonance with the terms of the chairpersons and members of other commissions.
• The salient features of the proposed amendments include making the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights a deemed member of the NHRC, and adding a woman member in the composition of the commission.
• The statement said that the amended Act would be in line with agreed global standards and benchmarks towards ensuring rights relating to life, liberty, equality and dignity of the individual in the country.
• The amendment to the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 will make the NHRC and state human rights commissions more compliant with the Paris Principle concerning their autonomy.

Background: Paris Principles

• The Paris Principles are a set of international standards which frame and guide the work of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs)
• The internationally agreed Paris Principles define the role, composition, status and functions of national human rights institutions.
• The Paris Principles list a number of responsibilities for national institutions, which fall under five headings.
  • First, the institution shall monitor any situation of violation of human rights which it decides to take up.
  • Second, the institution shall be able to advise the Government, the Parliament and any other competent body on specific violations, on issues related to legislation and general compliance and implementation with international human rights instruments.
  • Third, the institution shall relate to regional and international organizations.
  • Fourth, the institution shall have a mandate to educate and inform in the field of human rights.
  • Fifth, some institutions are given a quasi-judicial competence.

• Senior diplomats of India, Japan and the U.S. held the 9th trilateral meeting, focussing on connectivity, counter-terrorism and other regional and global issues of common concern, a joint press release issued after the meeting, said.
• The officials reviewed the outcomes of the Trilateral Infrastructure Working Group that met in Washington in February and agreed to continue to collaborate to promote increased connectivity in the Indo-Pacific.
• It said the talks drew from the guidelines laid out by the Foreign Ministers of the three nations who met in New York on September 18, 2017, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session.

Enhanced cooperation

• The officials explored practical steps to enhance cooperation in the areas of connectivity and infrastructure development, counter-proliferation, counter-terrorism, maritime security, maritime domain awareness and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief.
• The meeting is crucial as it comes against the backdrop of the ongoing trade war between China and the Trump administration that erupted after both sides imposed tariffs on each other’s goods.
• Echoing India’s concern about maintaining freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and the western Pacific Ocean, the trilateral emphasised on importance of keeping the sea lanes open.
• All sides agreed to remain engaged and strengthen cooperation in support for a free, open, prosperous, peaceful and inclusive Indo-Pacific region through partnership with countries in the region.

C. GS3 Related

• In a major achievement, India has overtaken Japan to become the world’s second largest producer of crude steel in February, according to the Steel Users Federation of India (SUFI).
• At present, China is the largest producer of crude steel in the world, accounting for more than 50% of the production.
• India’s crude steel production stood at 93.11 million tonnes (MT) for the period April 2017 to February 2018. This had helped India to overtake Japan and become the second largest producer of crude steel in the world.
• India overtook the U.S. in 2015 to become the third largest producer of crude steel.
• The government has taken a host of steps to curb imports, push local demand with initiatives like ‘Make in India’, and implement GST and infrastructure projects, to encourage the domestic market.
• According to the World Steel Association, India produced 8.4 MT of crude steel in February 2018, up 3.4% over February 2017.Steel Ministry was working pro-actively to prepare a road map to achieve 300 MT by 2030.
• In addition, quick resolution of various big-ticket steel mills under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code and the National Company Law Tribunal is expected to further hasten the process of achieving higher capacity utilisation.

• Nearly a third of the companies have defaulted on the loans they have taken from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). These loans were extended on easy terms towards developing new technologies, and to encourage start-ups.
• They were awarded as part of an ongoing scheme since 2001, according to a response by Union Minister for Science and Technology Harsh Vardhan to a question in the Lok Sabha.
• The New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative (NMITLI), as the scheme is called, was rolled out in 2001; 45 companies have since received unsecured, soft loans at 3% interest per annum to develop prototypes as well as position them for emerging markets.
• As of March, nearly Rs. 298 crore has been disbursed since the scheme’s inception, of which about Rs. 92 crore has been classified as loans “in default” by 15 companies who have been labelled “defaulters.”
• The most prominent among them is Ghaziabad-based Samtel Colour, which received a Rs. 28 crore loan between 2007-2010 to develop a ‘Next generation plasma display technology: a 50” high definition (HD) TV prototype’.
• Another company, Encore Software, which received Rs. 3 crore from 2004-2005 to develop a ‘Cost effective Simple Office Computing (Sofcomp) platform to replace [the] PC (personal computer)’ has also been labelled a defaulter.
• A CSIR official said that there have been several successes and that 15 defaulters out of 45 loans was still an “acceptable” rate.
• CSIR does not write off a loan and all such cases are being pursued in the courts for recovery. However, in terms of successes, this is still a good rate compared with many other scientific departments.
• Some recipients of NMITLI’s loans, such as Mahindra Reva Electric Vehicles, which was tasked with making an electric car, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which received Rs. 8 crore to develop a bio-informatics-based application, have paid back their loan or are paying their instalments on time.
• The key principle of the NMITLI is to encourage entrepreneurs and technologists to try out novel, risky ideas with government support and mentoring.
• The criteria for selection of the project are based on the novelty of the proposal, potential technological benefits, and the ability of industry to capture those benefits.
• The technologies encompass a wide range of subjects — developing new drugs, making novel liquid crystal displays, innovating in low-cost computers and diagnostic devices.

• The government has set up an IT grievance redressal mechanism to address difficulties faced by taxpayers due to technical glitches in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) portal.
• GST Council has delegated powers to an IT Grievance Redressal Committee to approve and recommend to the GSTN the steps to be taken to redress the grievances and provide relief to the taxpayers.
• Under the new mechanism, if any taxpayer was unable to file a form or income tax returns by the due date owing to a technical glitch, he or she would be allowed to do so within a stipulated time period.
• In case any taxpayer could not complete the process of filing TRAN-1 (transitional credit form) in time due to the IT glitch, he or she would be allowed to complete the process by April 30.
• The filing of GSTR 3B returns for TRAN-1 will have to be completed by May 31, the Finance Ministry said. In case of any such issues, the taxpayers would have to approach field officers/nodal officers in regions where there was a demonstrable glitch on the common portal, due to which the due process could not be completed.
• The IT Grievance Redressal Committee shall examine and approve the solutions as may be necessary for an identified issue. According to the government, the decision, relating to filing of TRAN-1, will benefit 17,573 taxpayers who will consequently be able to avail of rs 25.82 billion as Central GST credit and Rs 11.12 billion as State GST credit.
• The move comes after long standing requests from stakeholders for such a redressal system. As early as June, within just weeks of the GST rollout, trade body the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) had demanded the setting up of an ‘impartial authority’ like an ombudsman or Lokpal, where businessmen could voice GST-related grievances and seek redressal.

• With the US and China escalating their tariff war through, stock markets in India and the world took another beating.
• The benchmark Sensex slumped more than 350 points, in line with wider global market meltdown following the two economic superpowers’ fresh round of import tariff announcements.
• The developments have brought investor sentiments plunging, especially since the last few weeks have seen some glimmers of hope that the acrimony would stop short of a trade war after China and the US began negotiations.
• However, with the US releasing its list of 1,300 Chinese products which will attract net extra tariffs worth around $50 billion on Tuesday, China retaliated with its own list of 106 new American products that will attract higher import duties.
• With the earlier list of 128 products, China’s announced import duties are estimated to be worth close to a cumulative $53 billion.
• The Sensex ended 351.56 points or 1.05 percent down at 33,019.07 after China’s announcement, while the Nifty closed at 10,128.40, down by 116.60 points, or 1.14 percent. The looming RBI monetary committee meet also dampened sentiments.
• Markets slid two percent from the day’s high due to looming trade war tensions and caution ahead of RBI policy meet. Global market volatility continued to give a ripple effect to the market despite gradual recovery in domestic economy and moderation in inflation.
• RBI’s policy is likely to support near-term sentiment while clarity on earnings growth and monsoon will give more transparency in direction.

• Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) will soon release a consultation paper on minimum Internet speed offered by telecom operators.
• The use of wireless technology in India is the prime reason for slow Internet speed. India requires more of fibre network to increase bandwidth delivery and better Internet speed.
• There has been reports that the government is likely to increase the speed requirement to 2 Mbps from the current 512 Kbps for Internet services to be classified as broadband. The announcement for this is expected to be made at the end of this month.
• TRAI had earlier recommended changing the definition of broadband in the present context. According to global Internet testing firm Ookla’s recent Speedtest Global Index, India ranked 67th in fixed broadband speed and 109th for mobile Internet speeds.
• Another report by OpenSignal said that 4G download speed in India is the slowest across 88 countries.
• Not just the Internet speed, India is also plagued by the call drop issue for quite some time.
• Under the new rules, telecom operators may face a maximum penalty of `10 lakh for call drops, which will now be measured at mobile tower level instead of the telecom circle level.
• As per reports, the Department of Telecom (DoT) might not go ahead with TRAI’s proposal on allowing mobile services onboard aircraft.
• A DoT standing committee, which evaluated the proposal, has said it is advisable to permit only Internet as in-flight connectivity in the Indian airspace at this stage.

• Whistleblower Arvind Gupta said the entire board of ICICI Bank should be made liable in the deepening ICICI-Videocon controversy. ICICI Chairman M K Sharma confirmed that Chanda Kochhar, CEO and Managing Director of ICICI Bank, had made all necessary disclosures.
• Gupta said Kochhar’s disclosures about the investments made by Venugopal Dhoot in NuPower, promoted by her husband Deepak Kochhar, make the board party to additional knowledge and that it should have exercised its powers to prevent the private lender from approving the loan to Dhoot’s Videocon.
• The entire board, including independent directors, should be liable. The board should always have followed some standards. When the loan was sanctioned to Videocon, while K V Kamath was the chairman, Kochhar was both in the risk committee and credit committee.
• The bottom line is, the money lent to companies belongs to stakeholders and as bankers, Kochhar and team should have thought a hundred times if a particular group will be able to repay or not.

Background

• Earlier this week, the CBI had initiated a preliminary enquiry (PE) to probe alleged irregularities between Deepak Kochhar, Chanda Kochhar’s husband, and the Videocon Group. The latter had availed Rs 3,250 crore loan from the bank, of which Rs 2,810 crore remained unpaid and was declared NPA in 2017.
• ICICI Bank was part of a consortium of 20 banks that granted loan to the Venugopal Dhoot-led Group to the tune of Rs 40,000 crore.
• However, the role of Chanda Kochar will also be examined if the enquiry leads to a nexus between the ICICI Bank’s grant of loan to Videocon Group and quid pro quo deals with her husband.
• Through the PE, the agency will enquire into the series of alleged transactions between Deepak Kochar and Videocon Group and any relation thereof with grant of loans to the Group by ICICI.
• The CBI officials enquiring into the issue claimed that the PE was registered some time ago and had nothing to do with recent media reports on deals between Deepak Kochar and the Videocon Group and the grant of a loan by ICICI to the Venugopal Dhoot-led Group.

• Intense X-ray radiation could eliminate the possibility of alien life on many Earth-like planets, by stripping away the ozone layer and rendering them uninhabitable, a study has found.
• Astronomers now know of around 4,000 planets in orbit around other stars. A handful of these are both Earth-sized and in the habitable zones of the stars they orbit, where the temperature is right for liquid water.
• However, many candidate Earth-sized worlds are in orbit around red dwarf stars, much smaller and cooler than our own. To be in the habitable zone, the planets need to be much closer to their stars than we are to the Sun.
• The problem, however, is that red dwarfs can produce significant X-ray emission, and often have large flares of radiation and eruptions of particles in so-called coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
• The astronomers are working to establish what the flare has done to the known giant planet and any hypothetical planets further out.
• According to researchers, these X-ray radiation would cut through the atmosphere and reach the surface of an Earth-like planet.
• Life on land would be badly affected by a stellar flare and might only survive in the oceans.
• Astronomers are mounting a global effort to find Earth-like worlds, and to answer the age-old question of whether we are alone in the universe.
• With sporadic outbursts of hard X-rays, planets around the commonest low-mass stars are not great places for life, at least on dry land.
• The next stage for the research group is to refine the details of their model. Some scientists suggest that giant radiation flares could deplete the ozone layer of a planet by 94 percent for two years and could even be fatal for all life. If they are right, then talk of ‘Earth 2.0’ may be premature.

• Over the last few months, over 200 Guiana dolphins have died in Brazil’s Sepetiba Bay due to viral infection. But now scientists wonder if there’s more to the tragedy than just a virus
• Something ominous was happening in the turquoise waters of Sepetiba Bay, a booming port outside Rio de Janeiro.
• Beginning late last year, fishermen were coming across scarred and emaciated carcasses of dolphins, sometimes five a day, bobbing up to the surface.
• Since then, scientists there have discovered more than 200 dead Guiana dolphins ( Sotalia guianensis ), a quarter of what was the world’s largest concentration of the species.
• The deaths, caused by respiratory and nervous system failures linked to a virus, have subsided, but scientists are working to unravel the mystery behind them.
• How, they ask, did a virus that might ordinarily have claimed a handful of dolphins end up killing scores of them. And does part of the answer lie in the bay itself?
• The dolphins are sentinels. When something is wrong with them, that indicates the whole ecosystem is fractured.
• The number of industries and ventures along Sepetiba Bay has been growing exponentially in recent years. What that generates is a greater concentration of pollutants in the seafloor and in the food chain.
• Scientists have attributed the rash of dolphin deaths to morbillivirus, an airborne virus from the family that causes measles in humans. They are now seeking to understand how the dolphins became so highly vulnerable to the virus, and are examining the role of pollution and environment degradation.
• The effects of the virus — rash, fever, respiratory infection, disorientation — suggest an agonising death.
• Dying dolphins were seen swimming sideways and alone. Some carcasses had deformations. Outbreaks have been reported among dolphins in other parts of the world, but this is the first for the species in the South Atlantic.
• The reality is that the mass death caused by morbillivirus is only the tip of the iceberg.
• The Guiana dolphin, a species found from Central America to southern Brazil, is considered a sentinel because, as a top predator and mammal, it is prone to disease linked to polluted waters.

• India emerged as the third most vulnerable country in terms of risk of cyber threats, such as malware, spam and ransomware, in 2017, moving up one place over previous year, according to a report by security solutions provider Symantec.
• In 2017, 5.09% of global threats detected were in India, slightly less than 5.11% in 2016. The U.S. (26.61%) was most vulnerable to such attacks, followed by China (10.95%), according to ‘Internet Security Threat Report’.
• The global threat ranking is based on eight metrics — malware, spam, phishing, bots, network attacks, web attacks, ransomware and cryptominers.
• As per the report, India continues to be second most impacted by spam and bots, third most impacted by network attacks, and fourth most impacted by ransomware.
• The report also pointed out that with the threat landscape becoming more diverse, attackers are working harder to discover new avenues of attack and cover their tracks while doing so.
• From the sudden spread of WannaCry and Petya/NotPetya, to the swift growth in coinminers, 2017 provided us with another reminder that digital security threats can come from new and unexpected sources.
• Cyber criminals are rapidly adding cryptojacking to their arsenal as the ransomware market becomes overpriced and overcrowded.
• Cryptojacking is a rising threat to cyber and personal security.The massive profit incentive puts people, devices and organisations at risk of unauthorised coinminers siphoning resources from their systems, further motivating criminals to infiltrate everything from home PCs to giant data centers.
• This coin mining gold rush resulted in an 8,500% increase in detections of coinminers on endpoint computers during the final quarter of 2017.
• While the immediate impact of coin mining is typically performance related — slowing down devices, overheating batteries and in some cases, rendering devices unusable— there are broader implications, particularly for organisations.
• Corporate networks are at risk of shutdown from coinminers aggressively propagated across their environment. There may also be financial implications for organisations who get billed for cloud CPU usage by coinminers.

D. GS4 Related

E. Editorials

Context:

• The plan to give select universities autonomy and create a multi-tier academe is a crisis for our democracy
• Moments of crisis often create moments for rethinking, when the basic concepts and institutions we employ are subject to critical scrutiny.
• Such an emergency frequents the possibility of the idea of the nation-state, the vision of democracy and, at another level, our model of the college.
• Such an emergency of progress additionally creates a mimicry of unique ideas, with average quality retailed as magnificence, status mistook for quality, and a couple of restricted markers characterizing the presence of the new worldview.
• Average quality in emulating magnificence subverts the very quintessence of the organization.
• One witnesses such tricks taking on the appearance of change as one watches the battle of the Indian college over the self-sufficiency issue.

The grammar of reform

• Protest must be accompanied by scholarship which exposes in detail the logic and mechanics of the rituals of appropriation.
• One witnesses three at the outset.

1. The first includes the endeavor to suitable the talk of grant and to coat it with a sheen of scientism, using rankings and markers. Quality is currently a numbers amusement assessed by a different directorate.
2. Second, ideas of opportunity, self-sufficiency, people in general great are bowdlerized and managerialised, changing scholarly realities into an arrangement of instrumentalities.
3. Third, people in general and the private are melded with no philosophical or moral verbal confrontation.

Privatization is of any help?

• One is opened up to privatisation under the claim that private institutions contribute to the public good.
• It narrows the notion of the public good from a democratic idea relating to welfare and justice to a market concept.
• The market replaces democracy as the grammar of this reform.

Stories and the morals

This brings to mind two stories.

1. The first is from the national movement. Patrick Geddes, the sociologist, biologist and polymath, designed one version of the ‘University of Benares’. Watching the outline unfold, people asked him out of curiosity where the administrative department was? He pointed to a little outhouse on the side and warned that if it got bigger, it would swallow the university. The prescient Geddes was warning against the bureaucratisation of the intellect and its great institution, the university. Today, sadly it is the bureaucracy that is defining the university, even dictating what autonomy means for us.
2. The second story is more apocryphal and is about the epidemic of rankings worldwide. The story goes that Snow White’s wicked stepmother went to consult the legendary mirror. When the queen asked, “Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” The mirror replied, “According to QS rankings, you are fourth in the list for beauty and third for intelligence.” The wicked queen was struck dumb with dismay and confusion.

The bureaucratic rituals around quality and autonomy

• Quality in this would get decreased to profitability.
• The normal procedure of research as learning, as a specialty amusement, with a feeling of play and experimentation is sidelined.
• A main researcher once revealed to me that PhDs get marked down and hazard taking as far as selection of subjects descends.
• The machine delivers more convergers than divergers.
• Dispute is at a rebate as one must hold fast to course book standards for ensuring high scores.

State’s abdication

• On the off chance that greatness is insignificantly characterized, self-sufficiency is diminished to a market instrument.
• The possibility of college as an open space, as a house where appropriations permitted marginals to take an interest in instruction with nobility, is lost.
• The market makes its own channels and gradually the poor lose section to a framework.
• This was the much censured and misjudged fight the understudies and staff of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi chose to battle.
• JNU as an open framework spoke to both quality and correspondence.
• The new ceremonies of self-governance, the staff contended, would put on a show to give it office on bureaucratic issues while denying it any genuine strengthening.
• Self-governance here turns into the privilege to play a run diversion as directed by the state.
• The privilege to majority, disagree, evaluate will diminish.
• There is also an illiteracy of history here as autonomy is regarded as some new invention when autonomy was always a part of the university tradition.
• The state might support a university while the rules of the craft were always in the hands of practitioners.
• The word peer group reflects solidarity, fraternity and a definition of quality in terms of collectively debated norms.
• Certification had an intellectual rather than clerical quality to it.

Indian Scenario

• What we at that point look in India is a part level world where the lion’s share of foundations experience the ill effects of disregard and unremarkableness, while a couple of parade their opulence as quality.
• It is an endeavor to uphold a Darwinism in training while at the same time professing to offer flexibility.
• The rich can make hostage organizations while the white collar class observes defenselessly as quality training in equitable spaces discharges out.
• The JNU fight is a battle to characterize one’s future without having it indicated to one for the sake of an artificial opportunity.
• Correspondingly, positioning is a demonstration of fetishism where quality gets characterized as an item than a procedure.
• The college loses its custom appropriate to start an understudy as far as the guidelines of the art.
• This universe of inventiveness vanishes as we instrumentalise training and decrease the college to an affirmation machine, a celebrated instructional exercise school.

2. Confidence in the House

Question 1. Consider the following statements :

Question 2. Consider the following statements about Crypto jacking:

1. Crypto jacking is defined as the secret use of your computing device to mine crypto currency.
2. Crypto jacking used to be confined to the victim knowingly installing a program that secretly mines crypto currency.

Which of the statements are correct?

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

See

Question 3. Consider the following statements about Sentinel species :

1. Sentinel species do not readily accumulate pollutants.
2. This species serve as indicators of ecosystem health.

Which of the statements are correct?

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

See

1. The India Pakistan Bangladesh relationship needs to move away from doubts, religion, and animosity to trust, culture and cooperation to establish regional stability and economic goodwill

1. Compensatory Afforestation Fund is a deeply flawed and unjust law for both forest dwellers and forest. Analyze.

Also, check previous Daily News Analysis

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