10 Apr 2019: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

A. GS1 Related

B. GS2 Related

Context:

The Centre has denied a Right to Information (RTI) request for details of the ongoing recruitment process for four vacancies in the Central Information Commission (CIC), despite a recent Supreme Court order mandating that such information be made public.

Appointment of CIC

• The CIC is the RTI Act’s highest appellate body.
• Section 12(3) of the RTI Act 2005 provides as follows:
• CIC and members are appointed by the President of India on the recommendation of a committee consisting of—Prime Minister as Chairperson, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha; a Union Cabinet Minister to be nominated by the Prime Minister.

Eligibility criteria:

• Section 12(5) of the RTI Act 2005 provides that the Chief Information Commissioner and Information Commissioners shall bepersons of eminence in public life with wide knowledge and experience in law, science and technology, social service, management, journalism, mass media or administration and governance.
• Section 12(6) of the RTI Act 2005 provides that Chief Information Commissioner or an Information Commissioner shall not bea Member of Parliament or Member of the Legislature of any State or Union Territory as the case may be, or hold any other office of profit or connected with any political party or carrying on any business or pursuing any profession.

Term of office for CIC

• Section 13 of the RTI Act 2005 provides that the Chief Information Commissioner shall hold office for a term of five yearsfrom the date on which he enters upon his office and shall not be eligible for reappointment.
• Section 13(5)(a) of the RTI Act 2005 provides that the salaries and allowances payable to and other terms and conditions of service of the Chief Information Commissioner shall be the same as that of the Chief Election Commissioner.

Details:

• “The judgment of the Honourable Supreme Court of 2018 is under consideration of the department,” said the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) in its reply to RTI activist Anjali Bhardwaj’s request for information on the number, names and particulars of applicants, the process being followed to short-list them, and any search committee that has been constituted to fill these vacancies.
• In an interim order in December 2018, as well as in its final order in the case on February, 2019, the SC had directed the Centre and States to pro-actively disclose all information regarding the recruitment advertisement, the particulars of the applicants, the search and selection committees and the criteria for short-listing candidates on their websites.

Way forward:

• There needs to be transparency at every stage of appointment and public scrutiny to prevent arbitrary processes.
• Centre and states to maintain transparency in appointments of Chief Information Commissioner and Information Commissioners and upload the details of search committees and applicants on website.

Context:

Sri Lanka has opened a new railway line, built with China’s assistance, connecting its coastal city of Matara and Beliatta in Hambantota.

Details:

• This move will boost passenger traffic into the island nation’s deep south.
• The 26.75-km long Matara-Beliatta railway extension is the first to be constructed in Sri Lanka since 1948, and it passes through the country’s longest and second-longest railway bridges.
• The railway extension was financed by the Export-Import Bank of China and the contract was awarded to the China National Machinery Import and Export Corporation.
• Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman termed it as a major Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project in Sri Lanka.

Concerns:

• China is Sri Lanka’s biggest lender. Sri Lanks’s envoy to China in February said Colombo will get a $1 billion loan from China and might sign a free trade agreement with Beijing.
• Sri Lanka is returning to normalcy after being hit by a deep political crisis last year that plunged the credit rating of the already-indebted country.
• Sri Lanka has been the major recipient of Chinese loans and investments in recent years, totalling over $8 billion. The heavy borrowing has raised concerns over Sri Lanka’s ability to repay, after Colombo handed over the Hambantota port to Beijing for a 99-year lease in 2017 as a debt swap.
• The Chinese have made deep inroads into the strategically located nation in the Indian Ocean.
• The acquisition of the port by China as a debt swap drew criticism from the US which termed the BRI projects as a debt trap specially for smaller countries.
• Beijing’s growing presence in Sri Lanka worries India which held considerable clout in the country.
• India has been looking on nervously, concerned that China is encroaching on its sphere of influence and eroding its commercial and cultural links with the island, some of whose Tamil minority are descendants of colonial-era indentured workers from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Way forward:

• Sri Lanka’s geography gives it an advantage disproportionate to its size. Sri Lanka is the pivotal point for a global grand strategy.
• As Sri Lanka looks for assistance to reboot its economy, a largely two-way tussle for influence in the country and, in turn, the region is on.
• India and China are Sri Lanka’s biggest import markets, count among the top three in terms of tourist inflows and provide significant share of the country’s foreign investment.
• Sri Lanka needs to develop its economy using both Indian and Chinese help. But China and India have not always been open to sharing influence, with both trying to leverage their “special relationship” with the island.
• The challenge is to find a balance between these two large countries and not take to one bloc.

C. GS3 Related

Context:

IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath revealed details about the global growth at the release of the World Economic Outlook 2019 April report, at the start of the World Bank IMF Spring Meetings.

Details:

• The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has projected that global growth will be 3.3% in 2019, down from 3.6% in 2018 and 4% in 2017.

What is the reason for slowdown of global economic growth?

This lower projection is due to lower global expansion in the second half of 2018 caused by

• S.-China trade tensions
• Macroeconomic stress in Turkey and Argentina
• Tighter credit policies in China and financial tightening
• A normalisation of monetary policy in advanced economies.

Global projections:

• The IMF expects growth to pick up in the second half of the year driven by an accommodative policy stance in advanced economies, the prospects of easing of trade tensions between the U.S. and China and ramped up fiscal and monetary stimulus by China to counter the trade war’s effects.
• Global growth is therefore expected to return to 3.6%, but this is subject to a rebound in Argentina and Turkey and certain emerging market risks not manifesting.
• Brexit uncertainties and China’s growth not being as high as expected (down from 6.6% in 2018 to 6.3% and 6.1% in 2019 and 2020 respectively) are risks that will impact these projections.
• Beyond 2020, global growth is expected to level out at 3.6% over the medium term, driven by a moderation in expansion in advanced countries (caused by weak productivity growth and slow labour force growth) and the stabilisation of emerging market expansion at 2020 levels.
• Advanced economies are expected to slow down to 1.6% growth by 2022 and remain at that rate thereafter.
• For emerging markets and developing countries, growth is expected to steady at 4.8% over the medium term and given that these groups are growing faster than advanced economies, their contribution to global growth is expected to increase from 76% to 85% over the next five years.
• However, there are “important differences” within emerging markets and developing economies.
  • For instance, China is expected to slow down to 5.5% by 2024 as it moves towards increasing private consumption and services and regulatory tightening.
  • India’s growth is expected to stabilise at 7.75% over the medium term, driven by structural reforms and the easing of infrastructure bottlenecks.

India:

• India’s growth is projected to pick up (from 7.1% in 2018) to 7.3% in 2019 and 7.5% in 2020, “supported by the continued recovery of investment and robust consumption amid a more expansionary stance of monetary policy and some expected impetus from fiscal policy,” the report said.
• Nevertheless, growth forecasts have been revised downward compared with October 2018 World Economic Outlook by 0.1 percentage point for 2019 and 0.2 percentage point for 2020, respectively. 

Further course of action for India as suggested by the IMF:

• In terms of policy priorities, the IMF has called for a “continued implementation of structural and financial sector reforms” in order to lower public debt and aid growth.
• A continued fiscal consolidation is needed to bring down public debt, strengthening goods and services tax compliance and lowering subsidies.
• The report also notes “important steps” taken to speed up the resolution of Non Performing Assets (NPAs) and a simplified bankruptcy framework — measures that can be reinforced by stronger governance of public sector banks.
• Laws need to be formulated around land reform to change, to expedite infrastructure development as well as changes to hiring and firing laws in order create jobs and absorb the country’s large demographic dividend.

Way forward:

• The IMF WEO 2019 also says, “ a social dialogue across all stakeholders to address inequality and political discontent will benefit economies”.
• Additionally, it calls for multilateral cooperation to address trade conflicts, climate challenges, cybersecurity issues and to enhance the effectiveness of the international tax system.

Context:

• India has marginally increased its gold holding in February.
• However, it maintains the tenth position among countries in terms of yellow metal reserves, as per latest data from the World Gold Council (WGC).
• Globally, gold reserves with central banks increased by a net 51 tonnes, highest since Oct. 2018

Details:

• Apart from India, only two other countries among the top 10 in terms of gold reserves increased their holdings in the month of February.
• India added 1.7 tonnes in February while most other countries, barring Russia and China, saw their reserves unchanged in the recent past.
• Incidentally, India’s overall ranking is pegged at 11 as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) occupies the third position after the U.S. and Germany.

Rankings of India’s neighbouring countries:

• Pakistan is ranked 45
• Sri Lanka 63^rd position
• Bangladesh 66^th
• Nepal 82^nd

World Gold Council (WGC)

• The World Gold Council is the market development organisation for the gold industry.
• It works across all parts of the industry, from gold mining to investment, and their aim is to stimulate and sustain demand for gold.
• They frequently publish research that demonstrates gold’s strength as a preserver of wealth – both for investors and countries.
• They also provide analysis of the industry, offering insights into the drivers of gold demand.
• They have also launched various products such as SPDR GLD and gold accumulation plans in India and China.
  • SPDR Gold Shares (also known as SPDR Gold Trust) is part of the SPDR family of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) managed and marketed by State Street Global Advisors.
  • For a few years, the fund was the second-largest exchange-traded fund in the world, and it was briefly the largest.
  • As of the close of 2014, it dropped out of the top ten.
• It helps to support its members to mine in a responsible way and developed the Conflict Free Gold Standard.
• It is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.

D. GS4 Related

E. Editorials

Note to the Students:

• In this article, Mr. Krishna Kumar, who is a former director of the NCERT, shares his thoughts on how EVM’s (Electronic Voting Machines) have changed the voting experience.
• Apart from writing answers for GS-2 (Polity) where questions on EVM’s and Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) can be featured, these points will also help students while writing essays.

Editorial Analysis:

• The saga of the EVM has started looking a bit tedious to many people.
• The Election Commission of India (ECI) itself seems frustrated with the continued suspicion of political parties in the integrity of the EVM system.
• The system that the EVM has replaced was vulnerable in many ways, such as by booth capturing. There were days when incidents of booth capturing were common.
• In the era of EVMs, booth capturing has lost its value, not just its possibility.
• Another constraint of the pre-EVM era was the high proportion of invalid votes. Many people found it difficult to put the stamp in the allocated space. The EVM has deleted the risk of invalidity.
• The linking of EVMs with a Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) is a fine mechanical response to the suspicion that EVMs can be manipulated.
• This doubt-removal machine offers a seven-second long image of the symbol and name chosen by the voter. One can say that a country of millions of smartphone users can be confident that its voters will look at the VVPAT screen during the given time-slot to satisfy themselves that their choice has been correctly recorded.
• Democracy is a modern faith. Its disruption must not be entertained, even as a passing thought. This is perhaps yet another demand that modernity is making on our old nation. Never mind that nations more advanced than us on the industrial path have not agreed to use EVMs for their elections. If we emulated their caution, there are many other encounters with modern science and technology we would have avoided. They have so far worked out for us, helping us to move forward. The EVM is one more step.

The new ethos

• One reads numerous articles and news items covering the debate over EVMs. Many articles discuss the rejection of EVMs in other democracies.
• They are technologically more advanced than India, then why did they reject EVMs? That train of thought would lead to doubt over one’s commitment to the nation and its progress. It is no longer a case of choice of machine or material for nation-building. The new nationalist ethos has no room for debate over anything, let alone the path of progress for the nation. One must pass an ideological fitness test before seeking the right to be given attention.
• In the context of technology, the digital kind has swept other choices aside. The philosopher of technology, the late Ursula Franklin, defined technology as ‘the way we do things here’.
• In our case, we have settled our mind over a narrower definition that accepts only digital machines as acceptable technology. The qualities they possess are accredited as the highest. Entertaining any doubt about their integrity is a waste of time. That, indeed, it is, considering that the decision has been taken, in every case.

Concluding Remarks:

• Now the ECI has said that if the proportion of EVMs whose vote count will be verified with the help of a VVPAT is increased substantially, the declaration of results will be delayed by up to six days. This should be quite acceptable.
• An election season that covers the whole of early summer can surely be allowed to take an extra week. The benefit of such an extension clearly outweighs the strain on public patience it might cause. The collective mind is in any case deeply stressed by the ethos that political life has created.
• To characterise it as the bustle of a healthy, relaxed democracy would stretch our caution against cynicism too far.

2. Closure on cynicism

Q1) National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) was launched by 

Q2) Consider the following statements about “Udyam Abhilasha”:

Q3) Consider the following statements:

Q4) Consider the following statements: