25 Sep 2018: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

Note to Students:

The issue of the Kerala Floods has been featured in The Hindu over the past few days now. In fact, this is a very relevant topic for students to prepare from the perspective of Disaster Management. Here we have suitably signposted the Editorial Analysis into multiple headings.

1. “Context”: The talks about the broader context of the issue, taking into consideration specific points that may have been featured in previous editions of The Hindu. The thought process behind including this section is to give a ‘storyline’ approach to an aspirant when he/she goes through this topic.

2. “Editorial Analysis”: This particular section gives an insight towards the specific points covered in the specific editorial that is the subject of our study.

3. “The Way Forward/Concluding Remarks”: This sections gives aspirants concluding points that are taken from the article in question as well as some forwarding looking points taken from other articles, as and when required.

The important aspect to note here is that the issue being discussed in the news assumes priority over just the article.

Context:

• This article assumes importance in the wake of the devastating floods that affected the state of Kerala.

• In particular, this article talks about how Kerala has a unique opportunity to put in place climate-resilient water management system.

• It is important to note that there were allegations of ‘human blunders’ while the government said that it couldn’t have done anything more.
  The fact of the matter is that India has not learnt its lessons from recent floods, in the states of Assam, Bihar and Tamil Nadu. Crucially, without addressing the underlying causes, history will repeat itself in another state of our country, if not in Kerala.   

The Underlying Causes:

• The first cause is that of ‘Reluctant dam managers’.
• In the state of Kerala, as is with the case of other states, more flooding was caused by emergency releases from dams that were full.
  In fact, according to a World Bank analysis, while preparing the National Hydrology Project (NHP) in 2015 showed that although weather forecasts are more accurate now, dam managers, who are especially bureaucrats are reluctant to authorise advance controlled releases.
  Why is this so?
• Experts believe that this is partly because of the fact that operating schedules are not based on predicted rainfall.
• Currently, the world has moved to dynamic reservoir operations based on weather forecasts.
• It is important to also mention that the political leadership and the bureaucracy too do not tolerate mistakes. As a consequence of this, dam managers are reluctant to risk their careers and order controlled releases in advance.
• The National Hydrology Project (NHP) is improving hydro-meteorological and weather forecasting systems across India. Having said this, it is felt that unless dam managers feel free to take credible risks, these will not be used for dynamic reservoir operations.
• It is increasingly felt by many experts that a ‘plan B’ is also needed for water scarcities such as basin-scale water modelling and analysis supporting contingency planning (inter-basin transfers, linking canals to intermediate storage structures, and water re-allocation to higher-priority uses). Unfortunately, none of these exist in India today.

The second cause is that of Blocked waterways.

• Unfortunately, the story across Kerala is that roads, railway lines and housing colonies are being laid and built without regard for natural water-ways, but with formal planning permission.
• Further, the State Department of Inland Waterways focusses on large waterways while district and local panchayats have no mandate or interest in maintaining these to reduce flood risk. The State Disaster Management Agency also ignores them.

The third is Unprepared populations.

• Inspite of the fact that India is a signatory to the UN’s Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, unfortunately, little has changed on the ground.
• In Kerala, most people were caught unawares by the ferocity of the flooding.
• Had information been disseminated and absorbed earlier, disaster risks could have been greatly reduced.

International Perspective:

Most modern cities have elaborate flood management plans (underground flood basins and spare riverbeds in the Netherlands).

Editorial Analysis:

• Weather disasters are being affected by climate change, which is in turn, being caused by humans.
• As a consequence of this, the devastation is worsened by the collective failure of governments and businesses to invest in building resilience despite the evidence on runaway climate change.
• From a historical perspective, we learn lessons from the recent Kerala floods, Hurricane Harvey (Houston, U.S., 2017) and Typhoon Haiyan (the Philippines, 2013).
  What we must take note of is that responses to disasters must be proactive, not just reactive.

The Way Forward:

• Firstly, reconstruction efforts must involve rebuilding in a better way.
• Experts believe that climate proofing in Kerala calls for structures to be built with wind- and water-resistant materials. It should be noted that the higher cost will be more than offset by avoided repairs. Secondly, people need to relocate out of harm’s way.
• Thirdly, early warning is vital. The importance of this is highlighted by the fact that because of investments in these systems, Cyclone Phailin (2013) claimed less than 40 lives in Odisha, whereas the superclyclone in 1999 in the State had killed 10,000 people.
• Unfortunately, in Kerala, there was no timely forecast from national weather services. Experts believe that the State needs a reliable flood forecasting capability.
• Fourthly, there needs to be tougher implementation of logging and mining regulations in fragile ecologies. It is important to note that deforestation worsened the effects of Kerala’s floods and mudslides, as the report of the Western Ghats ecology expert panel 2011 had warned.

• Further, it is suggested that River-basin specific flood inundation modelling with climate change simulations is a necessary first step to understand the full impact of potential unprecedented flooding.
• River-basin specific flood inundation modelling with climate change simulations includes worst-case scenarios such as twice the maximum historical rainfall.
• The next important aspect is that the local community should co-manage water resources with the government. This can be done by planning intermediate storage, drainage and emergency responses.
• Further, there must be massive awareness generation, to ensure that airports are not extended into river floodplains. This is an unfortunate situation witnessed with the  Chennai airport and the Adyar river.
• It is important to address issues such as  deforestation, encroachment and unplanned construction.
• India must use the best-available information for decision-making. This would include,
  a) improved hydromet systems and weather forecasts,
  b) robust modelling of catchment water flows with simulations of different climate-related scenarios,
  c) international norms for safety factors and building codes.
• India must also prioritise buffers, flexibility and adaptability. This includes:
  1. reviewing safety criteria of dams and canals,
  2. re-building these with higher safety factors,
  3. creating new intermediate storages, and introducing dynamic reservoir management.

• The Kerala floods are estimated to have cut off about 2.2% of the State’s GDP.
• Bolstering resilience must be made central to recovery.
• Lastly, multilateral agencies including the World Bank and Asian Development Bank may be well-positioned to provide financing. This is vital when budgets are stretched.
• We must also reduce the vulnerability of the poor who pay a disproportionately higher cost in calamities.

1. Female circumcision issue goes to Constitution Bench

• Bhagyanagar Utsav Samithi and the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) have discussed salvaging material from immersed idols next year onwards.

How it has to be done?

• They have to examine some of the samples that have been removed from the lakes to see what material can be salvaged.
• Following testing, those in the process of making idols have to be consulted to determine feasibility for reuse.

Background

• An estimated 75,000 idols of various sizes were immersed in Greater Hyderabad during the 10-day festivities this year.
• Attempts by municipal agencies to promote eco-friendly material like clay have seen limited success.

• The government has finalised the list of non-essential items on which it will be imposing import tariffs.
• The list will be notified soon, would include electronics, gems, select items of steel that are also manufactured in India, imported apples, and almonds, among others.
• The main issue under consideration was whether to include gold in it.

Significance

• The government had earlier this month, announced the easing of overseas borrowing norms for manufacturing companies, removal of restrictions on foreign portfolio investment in corporate bonds and tax benefits on masala bonds.
• The imposition of tariffs on the import of non-essential items is expected to bolster these efforts in stabilising the rupee’s levels.

• The monsoon will likely start withdrawing from the country by the last week of September, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has said in a forecast.
• Typically, the monsoon begins its withdrawal from the 1st week of September, but it has been delayed primarily due to the development of cyclonic conditions.
• Figures from the IMD say that India is facing a 9% rainfall deficit and 11 of India’s 36 subdivisions — spanning 29% of the country’s area — have seen a deficit of 29% in monsoon rains between 1st June and 23rd September.
• The maximum deficit has been in northeastern India — with Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Meghalaya recording a 32% and 28% shortfall in their monsoon quotas.
• Jharkhand, Bihar, Saurashtra and Kutch, Rayalseema and north interior Karnataka are among the subdivisions that have registered a deficit greater than 25%.

• A five-judge Constitution Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, is scheduled to pronounce its judgment on petitions to bar politicians facing charges of heinous crimes, such as murder, rape and kidnapping, from contesting elections.

Observations

• The Bench, including Justices A.M. Khanwilkar, Rohinton Nariman, D.Y. Chandrachud and Indu Malhotra, had made it clear that the Supreme Court could not legislate for Parliament.
• Chief Justice Misra had pointed out the urgency to do something to keep criminals at bay and prevent them from contesting elections.
• The Chief Justice had voiced the Supreme Court’s anguish at the helplessness of society to prevent criminalisation of politics at the very entry-point itself.
• The CJI had pointed out that Parliament was obliged under Article 102 (1) (e) (talks about disqualification to stand as a candidate for election to the Lok Sabha from a Parliamentary Constituency) to make a law.
• Attorney-General K.K. Venugopal had submitted that fast-track courts to try cases against politicians was the only solution.

Background

• Under the Representation of the People Act, convicted lawmakers are disqualified, but not those facing charges.

• The Centre has assured the Supreme Court that it and the State governments would, within a week, start broadcasting on radio and TV a stern message that mob lynching and violence would invite the wrath of law.

Background

• The Centre’s promise came in response to a query by a Bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra on whether the court’s directions on the matter had been complied with.
• On July 17, the Supreme Court directed the Union and the State governments to disseminate through radio, television and other media platforms, including the official websites of the Home Department and the State police forces, the message that lynching and mob violence of any kind shall invite serious consequences under the law.

Concerns

• Nothing appears to have been done on the ground.
• The court said eight States and Union Territories were yet to file reports indicating their compliance with the July 17 verdict.

Way forward

• People must be made to realise the gravity of their acts, and for this, they ought to dread the long arm of the law.
• An empowered Group of Ministers is considering a specific law against lynching.

• The Supreme Court is likely to pronounce its judgment on September 28 on whether to refer the question if a mosque as a place of prayer is an essential part of Islam in the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid appeals to a Constitution Bench.

Background

• A three-judge Bench of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Justices Ashok Bhushan and S. Abdul Nazeer had taken up the long-pending Ayodhya land title appeals against the Allahabad High Court judgment of 2010, which had ordered a three-way partition of the disputed land.
• Chief Justice Misra had in the beginning observed that the appeals would be decided like any other civil suit, shorn of any religious sentiments displayed by the parties.
• However, as the hearings progressed in the appeals, the Muslim appellants pressed that the place of a mosque in Islam and the importance of the practice of offering prayers inside a mosque should be first decided by a five-judge Bench.
• The bone of contention here is an observation made in a 1994 SC judgment in the Ismail Farooqui case that a mosque is not an essential part of the practice of religion of Islam and namaz (prayer) by Muslims can be offered anywhere.

• Statehood movements have gathered momentum across the Northeast, with a renewed push for Bodoland, a proposed State comprising areas beyond the four districts under the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC).
• Organisations such as All Bodo Students’ Union, Peoples’ Joint Action Committee for Bodoland Movement, and two factions of the National Democratic Front of Boroland organised a pro-Statehood rally at the BTC headquarters in Kokrajhar in western Assam.
• The Eastern Nagaland People’s Organisation, a tribal body with sway in four of Nagaland’s most backward districts, has stepped up its demand for the creation of the Frontier Nagaland State.
• The Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura, the BJP’s ally in Tripura, raised pro-Statehood slogans while observing the 10th Twipraland Demand Day on August 23. The demand for carving out a separate State has been intermittent since 1997.

• External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj kicked off her week-long diplomatic engagements at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and attended a special meeting on drugs.
• Swaraj’s meetings will focus on issues such as climate change, digital infrastructure, sustainability and South-South cooperation.

Background

• The 73rd UNGA is taking place against the backdrop of increased American hostility towards the world body in particular and multilateralism in general.

• Scientists have succeeded for the first time in wiping out an entire population of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in the lab using a gene editing tool to programme their extinction.
• Malaria affected more than 200 million people worldwide in 2016 and killed nearly 4,50,000. It remains one of the deadliest of infectious diseases.

How does it work?

• So-called gene drive technology works by forcing evolution’s hand, ensuring that an engineered trait is passed down to a higher proportion of offspring — across many generations — than would have occurred naturally.

The experiment

• In experiments with the species Anopheles gambiae, scientists at Imperial College London tweaked a gene known as doublesex so that more females in each generation could no longer bite or reproduce.
• After only eight generations, there were no females left and the population collapsed due to lack of offspring.
• The next step will be to test the technology in a confined laboratory setting that mimics a tropical environment.

Significance

• This breakthrough shows that gene drive can work, providing hope in the fight against a disease that has plagued mankind for centuries.

Context

• Governments have a right to request the data that is sensitive be stored in their own country so they can apply their own rules to that data, regional managing director of Amazon Web Services has said.

Background

• The statement comes amid opposition from experts and foreign firms over proposed data localisation norms in India.
• The draft ‘The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018’ proposes that critical personal data of Indian citizens be processed only in data centres located within the country, while personal data may be transferred outside India.
• However, at least one copy of the data will need to be stored in India. The proposal has been termed as regressive and a trade barrier by experts.

• The liquidity crisis at IL&FS, the quarter-end rush to dress up balance sheets by banks and redemption pressure on mutual funds (MFs) have all combined to trigger a liquidity deficit in the system which has led to short-term rates on commercial papers (CPs) rising up to 50 basis points (bps) within a week.
• The rate on three-month CPs is about 8.5%, up 40-50 bps as compared to a week ago. The rate on certificate of deposits of similar maturity is about 7.8%, up 20 bps.
• This prompted the Reserve Bank of India to announce that it will conduct an open market operation (OMO) to purchase government bonds to infuse liquidity worth ₹10,000 crore into the system.

NBFCs

• The ongoing concerns related to liquidity woes at non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) are affecting the broader market sentiment.

Impact

• Interest rate-sensitive sectors such as banking, realty and automobiles bore the maximum brunt with some of the sectoral indices losing in the range of 3-5% each.
• The overall market breadth was extremely negative with more than 2,100 stocks in the red on the BSE, as against only 500 gainers.

Concerns

• NBFCs were growing rapidly and if their ability to refinance gets impacted, then growth will ultimately be impacted.
• The recent events have impacted investor sentiment though the pre-emptive action by government and regulators has sent the message loud and clear that the situation is being watched.
• The fact that Indian markets have not reacted much to high oil prices and political uncertainty on account of national elections scheduled next year leads to a conservative view on the markets.

Factors responsible

• NBFCs and financials are getting impacted due to a combination of factors like concerns related to IL&FS, hardening of yields and the U.S. Fed meeting scheduled later this week.
• The larger market fall can be on the back of other macro headwinds such as higher crude and falling rupee. While valuations were expensive, the market was earlier supported by earnings growth.

Regulators step in

• According to market participants, the concerted efforts by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) over the week-end and the statement by Finance Minister has helped assuage the concerns to a large extent.
• The Government will take all measures to ensure that adequate liquidity is maintained/provided to the NBFCs, the Mutual funds and the SMEs, Arun Jaitley said.
• The RBI and the SEBI jointly said that they are closely monitoring the developments in the financial markets and are ready to act, if required.

• The Odisha government has decided to facilitate entry of more small and marginal farmers and share-croppers into the procurement fold by bringing changes in the norms of food and procurement policy for the Kharif Marketing Season (KMS) 2018-19.

Old practice

• The past practice was that of deducting towards personal consumption requirement at the rate of three quintals of paddy per member in the family of farmer for computation of marketable surplus of paddy.

Cabinet approval

• The Cabinet, which approved the food and procurement policy for KMS 2019 to regulate all aspects of paddy and rice procurement during the ensuing KMS, decided that paddy (Kharif crop) will be procured between November, 2018 and April, 2019.
• The paddy (Rabi crop) will be procured from May to June, 2019.
• A tentative target to procure 55 lakh tonnes of paddy from farmers has been fixed which will be around 37 lakh tonnes in terms of rice.
• Food Supplies & Consumer Welfare Minister has been authorised to revise the target if need arises.
• The farmers would be paid the Minimum Support Price (MSP) fixed by the Central government at ₹1,750 per quintal for the common variety of paddy and ₹ 1,770 for Grade-A variety.
• The money would be directly paid into the bank accounts of farmers within three days of the procurement.

MoU with Centre

• While 23 lakh tonnes of the procured rice will be pumped into the Public Distribution System in the State, the Food Corporation of India (FCI) will evacuate the remaining 14 lakh tonnes of rice to other States as per the MoU with the Centre.

Process of procurement

• Like previous year, paddy procurement process in all 308 procuring blocks will be conducted through paddy procurement automation system (P-PAS).
• All documents in connection with paddy procurement shall be generated from computer through P-PAS software to make the process hassle-free and transparent.

Way forward

• The State government should issue farmer identification cards to all farmers in order to bring more small and marginal farmers and share-croppers into the procurement fold.

G. Prelims Fact

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi has inaugurated the first airport in Sikkim.
• With this, the number of functional airports in the country went up to 100.
• The airport at Pakyong, about 30 km from Gangtok and surrounded by mountains, is a major boost to connectivity in the mountainous State.
• The airport has been constructed at an estimated cost of ₹605 crore.
• The airport would be linked to the Union government’s UDAN (Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik) regional connectivity scheme and the airfare for about an hour would come to ₹2,500.

The Pharmacy Council of India (PCI)

• The Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) is the statutory body of government of India also called as central council constituted under the Pharmacy Act, 1948.
• It works under the Ministry of Health Services and Family welfare.
• The Pharmacy Council of India is constituted by central government every five years.

Objectives

• The objectives of the PCI are to regulate the pharmacy education in the Country for the purpose of registration as a pharmacist under the Pharmacy Act.
• They also regulate the Profession and Practice of Pharmacy.

H. Practice Questions for UPSC Prelims Exam

1. It is the main deliberative, policy-making and representative organ of the UN.

2. It is the only principal organ of the United Nations (UN) in which all member nations have equal representation.

3. Its powers are to oversee the budget of the UN and appoint the non-permanent members to the Security Council.

Which of the above statement/s is/are correct?

I. Practice Questions for UPSC Mains Exam