26 Aug 2019: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

A. GS1 Related

Context:

The 45th G7 summit is being held from August 24–26, 2019, in Biarritz, France.

Details:

• The G7 gathering is taking place against a backdrop of worries about a global economic downturn and coincides with an era of international disunity across an array of matters.
• Trump insisted that he was getting along well with leaders at a G7 summit in France, but rifts emerged with his Western allies on issues ranging from his trade war with China to Iran, North Korea and Russia.
• Tensions were quickly on show, however, as the first full day of talks between the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States got underway in Biarritz.
• Before leaving Washington, Mr. Trump stepped up his tariff war with Beijing in a battle between the world’s two largest economies and called on U.S. companies to move out of China.
• Underlining the multilateral discord even before the summit got underway, Mr. Trump threatened the meeting’s host, saying Washington would tax French wine unless Paris dropped a digital tax on U.S. technology companies.
• European Council President Donald Tusk, who takes part in the G7 discussions, warned the EU would respond “in kind” if Mr. Trump acted on his threat.
• Trump up-ended last year’s G7 meeting in Canada, walking out early and disassociating himself from the final communique.
• Looking to broaden the scope of the debate, French President Emmanuel Macron has invited several African leaders to discuss problems facing their continent, while leaders from India, Australia, Chile and Spain are due to attend a dinner on Sunday where the focus will be on the environment and other issues.
• Senior U.S. officials accused Macron of looking “to fracture the G7” by focusing on “niche issues” rather than major global concerns.

Differences over Iran, North Korea, Russia:

• Trump appeared to brush aside French efforts to mediate with Iran, saying that while he was happy for Macron to reach out to Tehran to defuse tensions he would carry on with his own initiatives.
• Trump appeared to brush aside French efforts to mediate with Iran, saying that he would carry on with his own initiatives.
• Trump also appeared at odds with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe over the seriousness of North Korea’s series of short-range missile launches.
• There was also disagreement over Trump’s calls for Russia to be readmitted to the group of advanced economies.
  • Russia was excluded from what used to be the G8 in 2014 after it annexed Ukraine’s Crimea and then backed an anti-Kiev rebellion in the industrial region of Donbas in eastern Ukraine.
• Macron added to the internal EU strains by unexpectedly threatening to block an EU trade deal with a group of South American states over Brazil’s handling of fires that are ravaging the Amazon rainforest.
• Germany and Britain both voiced deep concern about the fires, but said shooting down the ambitious Mercosur trade accord would not help save the Amazon.

C. GS3 Related

Category: ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY

1. PM calls for mass movement against single-use plastic from Oct 2

Context:

The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) has constituted an Advisory Board for Banking Frauds (ABBF) to examine bank fraud of over ₹50 crore and recommend action.

Details:

• The Advisory Board for Banking Frauds (ABBF) is headed by former Vigilance Commissioner T.M. Bhasin.
• The panel in its previous form was called the Advisory Board on Bank, Commercial and Financial Frauds.
• The ABBF is formed in consultation with the RBI.
• The tenure of the Chairman and members would be for a period of two years from August 21, 2019.
• The board is headquartered in Delhi.
• The Reserve Bank of India will provide required secretarial services, logistic and analytical support along with the necessary funding to the board.
• In a bid to check incidences of banking frauds, the government has already issued the ‘framework for timely detection, reporting, and investigation relating to large-value bank frauds’ to PSBs, which makes it clear that all accounts exceeding ₹50 crore, if classified as an NPA, should be examined by banks from the angle of possible fraud, and a report be placed before the bank’s Committee for Review of NPAs based on the findings of the investigation.
• Besides, the PSBs have been advised to obtain a certified copy of the passport of promoters/directors and other authorised signatories of companies taking loan facilities of more than ₹50 crore.

Functions of ABBF:

• It would function as the first level of examination of all large fraud cases before recommendations or references are made to the investigative agencies by the respective public sector banks (PSBs).
• The four-member board’s jurisdiction would be confined to those cases involving the level of officers of General Manager and above in the PSB in respect of an allegation of a fraud in a borrowal account.
• Lenders would refer all large fraud cases above ₹50 crore to the board and on receipt of its recommendation or advice, the bank concerned would take further action in such matter.
• The Central Bureau of Investigation may also refer any case or matter to the board where it has any issue or difficulty or in technical matters with the PSB concerned.
• The board would also periodically carry out frauds analysis in the financial system and give inputs for policy formulation related to the fraud to the RBI.

Context:

A Naga extremist group has for the first time said a “separate flag and Constitution” were necessary for an honourable solution to the 22-year-old Naga peace process.

Details:

• The demand comes less than a month after the Centre ended Jammu and Kashmir’s special status that allowed it to have its own Constitution and a flag.
• The Isak-Muivah faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-IM) has in a letter to the Prime Minister, said any solution to the Naga political issue would be far from honourable if the core issues are yet to be agreed upon.

Framework Agreement

• The Naga Movement is the oldest movement for self-determination in India and is also the longest surviving insurgency.
• The movement began during the British rule and continued after 1947. Even after the formation of a separate state of Nagaland in 1963, the movement didn’t die down.
• NSCN(IM) demands a Greater Nagalim comprising of all contiguous Naga areas spread across the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Manipur along with a large tract in Myanmar (before independence, the British demarcated Indo- Burma boundary. Due to which some Naga areas went into Myanmar).
• In August 2015, Government of India signed a Framework Agreement with National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) IM to resolve the long-standing Naga issue in a peaceful manner.
• The Framework Agreement was initiated and signed by former NSCN(IM) chairman Isak Chishi Swu. This is believed to have taken the peace process to a critical stage.
• Neither the Centre nor the outfit, however, has divulged the contents of the agreement.
• The Centre had a year ago insisted that the peace process would be incomplete if at least six other Naga extremist groups, some of whom are dormant, were not taken on board the negotiations.
• The Khaplang faction of the NSNC ceased to be a part of the peace process after it walked out of a 14-year-old truce in March 2015.
• The Khaplang faction is primarily based in Myanmar while most of the leaders and cadres of the Isak-Muivah group are from Manipur.

Context:

According to several sources, the Narendra Modi government is likely to withdraw the Special Protection Group (SPG) from former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s security detail shortly.

Details:

• The decision has reportedly been taken after a three-month review involving the Cabinet Secretariat and the Ministry of Home Affairs with inputs from intelligence agencies the Research and Analysis Wing and the Intelligence Bureau.
• According to the procedures laid down by the SPG Act, 1988, the government had renewed Dr. Singh’s SPG detail for a year after he demitted office in 2014, and subsequently, on an annual basis after reviewing the threats faced by him and his wife.
• The elite protection force of about 3,000 officers meant for the Prime Ministers, the former Prime Ministers and their families would now be tasked with protecting only Mr. Modi, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her children Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
• SPG cover would only be reduced on the basis of threat levels as defined in the SPG Act of 1988.
• The government is technically within the law to withdraw SPG protection to any former Prime Minister. However, the government had chosen not to do so for Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who demitted office in 2004 and had SPG protection until he passed away in 2018.

Concerns:

• Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination had brought much criticism to his successor V.P. Singh, whose government had withdrawn Mr. Gandhi’s SPG protection.
• Plans for the move raised some eyebrows within the security establishment.
• It is believed that Dr. Singh is more exposed, as he frequently travels for political engagements and is just re-elected a member of the Rajya Sabha.

Special Protection Group (SPG):

• The SPG was set up in 1985 after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
• The Parliament passed the SPG Act in 1988 dedicating the group to protecting the Prime Minister of India.
• At the time, the Act did not include former Prime Ministers, and when V.P. Singh came to power in 1989 his government withdrew SPG protection to the outgoing PM Rajiv Gandhi.
• After Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991 the SPG Act was amended, offering SPG protection to all former Prime Ministers and their families for a period of at least 10 years.
• During his tenure that began in 1999, PM Vajpayee’s government conducted a major review of the SPG’s operations, and decided to withdraw SPG protection to former PMs P.V. Narasimha Rao, H.D. Deve Gowda, and I.K. Gujral.
• In 2003, the Vajpayee government also amended the SPG Act to bring the period of automatic protection down from 10 years to “a period of one year from the date on which the former Prime Minister ceased to hold office and beyond one year based on the level of threat as decided by the Central Government.”

Context:

According to the IMF’s “Annual Observance Report of the Special Data Dissemination Standard for 2018”, India failed to comply with multiple requirements prescribed in the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) — a practice mandatory for all IMF members.

Concerns:

• The most recent data from the National Crime Records Bureau dates back to 2016 and accident statistics have not been updated since 2015.
• A recent report published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), shows that inconsistencies have crept into the dissemination of fiscal datasets as well.
• Also, India’s non-compliance in multiple categories in 2018 and to an extent in 2017 breaks with an otherwise near perfect dissemination record.
• India, in 2018, has deviated from the SDDS in at least one instance in all the data categories listed.
• In 2018, in at least nine data categories, India has not disseminated data. None of the other BRICS countries’ reports records missing data for the period.
• India’s non-compliance with IMF standards is a recent phenomenon. The “X”s for non-dissemination of data and “O”s for data categories missing from the ARC were few and far between in India’s reports in the 2006-2016 period. The graphic lists such instances since 2006.

Details:

• While India failed to comply with multiple requirements prescribed in the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS), comparable economies comprising the BRICS grouping of Brazil, China, South Africa and Russia, have maintained a near impeccable record in the same period.
• While the IMF acknowledged India’s deviations, it termed them “non-serious”.
• However, independent observers see these deficiencies as a result of indifference to data dissemination procedures.
• When the IMF was asked to explain why India’s non-observance was deemed as non-serious , their statistical department persisted that this was due to information availability in other government websites and National Summary Data Page (NSDP).

Importance of Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS):

• The IMF launched the SDDS initiative in 1996 to guide members to enhance data transparency and help financial market participants with adequate information to assess the economic situations of individual countries.
• India subscribed to the SDDS on December 27, 1996.
• The yearly observance report for each member country lists the compliances and deviations from the SDDS under each data category for that year.
• There are over 20 data categories which IMF considers for this report to capture a nation’s economic health including national accounts (GDP, GNI), production indices, employment, and central government operations.
• The report lists three types of deviations from SDDS.
  • The first deals with delays in data dissemination from the periodicity prescribed in the SDDS.
  • The second occurs when member countries do not list a data category in their Advance Release Calendars (ARC) despite the category being mandated by the SDDS.
  • The third deviation occurs when data is not disseminated at all for a particular period.
• The IMF document also states that, monitoring observance of the SDDS is central to maintaining the credibility of the IMF’s data standards initiatives and its usefulness to policymakers.
• It further states that if the IMF staff considers a non-observance as a “serious deviation” then procedures would be initiated against the member country.

Context:

A team of scientists at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Pune claim to have determined the atomic structure of McrBC — a complex bacterial protein which helps prevent viral infections in a bacterial cell and functions as a molecular scissor.

Details:

• The pathbreaking structure of the McrBC is said to be a major step towards understanding the working of the molecular scissors.
• This is the first report of the high-resolution structure from India determined using electron cryomicroscopy, commonly known as cryo-EM.
• It is believed that the determination of the McrBC’s structure has long-term implications in ‘phage therapy’ and could help combat drug-resistant infections in the future.
• Phages are groups of viruses that infect and kill bacterial cells and phage therapy is the therapeutic use of bacteriophages to treat bacterial infections.
• The main reason for the renaissance in phage therapy in the West and elsewhere is that antibiotics are losing ground.

Background:

• Pioneering work in the field of bacterial immunity against viruses was first undertaken by in the early 1950s renowned Italian microbiologist Salvador Luria.
• Luria discovered the phenomenon of host-controlled restriction and modification of a bacterial virus.
• The phenomenon that the Nobel Prize-winning Luria discovered was later found to be a result of the action of McrBC, which only cuts DNA that is labelled by a specific chemical mark.
• Interestingly, this chemical mark is also seen in human DNA that regulates the reading of the encoded genetic information.
• Consequently, McrBC is used as a laboratory tool to study the readability of human and other genomes.

How the ‘scissors’ work:

• Like the human immune system, which fights viruses, bacteria too have an elaborate defence system to combat phages (the viruses which infect bacterial cells).
• These phages inject their DNA into the bacterial cell, wherein they multiply and duplicate the virus that eventually bursts out of that cell to infect many more.
• To prevent infection, bacteria have specialised ‘molecular scissors’ which specifically cut the foreign DNA, thus preventing their multiplication in bacterial cells.
• The molecular scissors not only cut the viral DNA, but also regulate the entry of other foreign DNA that might host an antibiotic resistance gene.
• Understanding of the molecular scissors would aid in combating multidrug resistant microbes.
• The McrBC’s unique feature is that it requires to be powered by an inbuilt motor that uses GTP (guanosine triphosphate), an energy currency of the bacterial cell — as ‘fuel’ to cut the foreign DNA.
• It is important to know how the machinery works in order to be able to regulate it.
• If there is a drug-resistant strain in bacteria, it is often seen that this machinery is absent and they become resistant to antibiotics
• The technological revolution in the field of cryo-EM has allowed the determination of the three-dimensional position of every atom in biomolecules such as the McrBC.
• The atomic structure of McrBC reveals the details of its working parts and is a snapshot of the molecular machine designed by nature in action. Information derived from the 3D structure of proteins is integral to designing their activators and inhibitors.

D. GS4 Related

E. Editorials

The editorial talks about Press Council of India backing Kashmir restrictions

Issue:

The Press Council of India has moved the Supreme Court supporting the Centre and Jammu and Kashmir government’s decision to impose restrictions on communication in the state following the abrogation of Article 370. Issues are being raised about the Press Council of India (PCI)’s support of government restrictions on communication last week as brazenly contrary to its mandate and purpose.

Concerns:

• The PCI has justified restrictions on communication in J&K to be “in the interest of the integrity and sovereignty of the nation”.
• The notion that an open society, and an independent media, are somehow a threat to the nation’s integrity and sovereignty is nothing less than a rationale for despotism.
• That it is coming from a statutory, quasi-judicial, autonomous body whose mandate it is to protect and reinforce a professional and objective media is shocking.

Details:

• PCI has sought to intervene in a petition by Kashmir Times executive editor Anuradha Bhasin, pending before the apex court, seeking an end to the restrictions on communication in Jammu and Kashmir that were imposed before the Government’s decision on August 5 to revoke the special constitutional status of the erstwhile State.
• The petitioner has cited Articles 14 (equality before the law) and 19 (freedom of speech and expression) of the Constitution of India.
• The PCI explains its raison d’tetre as “rooted in the concept that in a democratic society the press needs at once to be free and responsible”.
• Freedom of expression like any other freedom is subject to reasonable restrictions. But the operative word is ‘reasonable’. “Where the norms are breached and the freedom is defiled by unprofessional conduct, a way must exist to check and control it. But, control by Government or official authorities may prove destructive of this freedom… Hence, the Press Council,” it says.
• The PCI’s track record may not have been stellar; nevertheless, its interventions occasionally held the mirror to deviant journalists and publications and, at the same time, sought to shield the profession and professionals from the highhandedness of the state and non-state actors.
• It supported the Punjab Press in its “efforts to inform the people truthfully and impartially” during the years of militancy in the early 1990s; around the same period, it pulled up several publications that showed communal bias in coverage of the Ayodhya agitation.
• The PCI considers “defaming a community a serious matter” and believes “ascribing to it a vile, anti-national activity is reprehensible and amounts to journalistic impropriety”.

Way forward:

• India is currently witnessing a disturbing debasement of standards in journalism, and the PCI’s legal and ethical obligation has never been so critical.
• Media is often called upon by the state to privilege a narrowly defined national interest over truthful reporting; professional media in a democracy must view truthful reporting in itself as in national interest.
• The PCI must play its mandated role and not kowtow to the government of the day.

2. Privacy no longer supreme – On Right to Privacy

Q1. Consider the following statements:

Q2. Consider the following statements:

Q3. Consider the following statements with respect to Special Data Dissemination Standard
(SDDS): 

Q4. As per the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, Blue Whales are classified as: