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Comprehensive News Analysis - 15 March 2016

Table of Contents:

A. GS1 Related:

1. Tales decoded from medieval copper plates

B. GS2 Related:

1. ‘Empower local bodies to tackle surge in urban population’

2. India, Maldives to finalise pact to fight Islamic State

3. Myanmar Parliament to elect new President on Tuesday

4. Putin orders to start Russian military pullout from Syria

5. Interest of child comes first: SC

C. GS3 Related:

1. DRDO’s robot system can handle mines, IEDs from afar

2. Retail inflation at four-month low, spurs calls for a rate cut

D. GS4 Related:
E. Important Editorials: A Quick Glance

The Indian Express:

1. An anaemic prescription

The Hindu:

1. Getting smart with public transport

Others:

1. The Financial Express Editorial: Bottling the genie

F. Concepts-in-News: Related Concepts to Revise/Learn
G. Practice Questions
H. Archive

.

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Useful News Articles

A. GS1 Related

1. Tales decoded from medieval copper plates

Topic: History

Category: medieval history

Location: The Hindu, Page 20

Key points:

  • 3 Copper plates belonging to medieval south Indian dynasties decoded
  • Plate 1-Badami Chalukya dynasty(680A.D),pertains to gifting of a village in Bijapur to a scholar, languages used-Sanskrit and Kannada
  • Plate 2-Yadava dynasty of Devagiri(1254 A.D),pertains to gifting of a strip of land near Saundatti in Karnataka, languages used- Sanskrit and Kannada
  • Plate 3-Aravidu dynasty(Vijayanagara Empire)(1606A.D),pertains to land grants in the villages of Puliyendal and Randal in Karnataka
  • The engravings reveal a trend of regionalization and the growth of languages

 

B. GS2 Related

1. ‘Empower local bodies to tackle surge in urban population’

Topic: Polity

Category: Legislative Functions

Location: The Hindu, Page 9

health_2774590f

Key points:

  •  The study suggests that financial instability, frequent administrative reshuffles, inadequate human resources, high budget variance, poor track record of generating and releasing data are the main factors that hamper India’s urban progress
  • The State governments have to amend the Municipal Corporation Act and empower urban local bodies
  • Systems to track where the money is going must be put in place. With today’s technology, it is easy to geo-code projects at a city level and figure out where the money is being spent

 

2. India, Maldives to finalise pact to fight Islamic State

Topic: International Relations

Category: bilateral relations

Location: The Hindu

Key points:

  • India and the Maldives to finalize a “cross-border counter-terror mechanism” to deal with radicalization of citizens leading them to  join  the Islamic State
  • information sharing was the best way to prevent people from travelling to the IS-controlled areas.The Maldives, which believes about 40 of its citizens are currently fighting with the terror group in Iraq and Syria, wants to work closely with India and Sri Lanka, two countries that Maldivian citizens most travel to

 

3. Myanmar Parliament to elect new President on Tuesday

Topic: International Issues

Category: India’s neighbours

Location: The Hindu

Key points:

  • Myanmar’s parliament had set three groups representing the two houses and military member of parliament to nominate one candidate each for the presidential run
  • The 3 nominees for the post are U Htin Kyaw and U Henry Van Htee Yu of the National League for Democracy, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, and Lt Gen U Myint Swe (nominated by the army)
  • The Myanmarese Union Parliament will vote on 15th March to elect a new president of the country
  • The one who wins the most number of votes will be declared president, while the remaining two will be appointed vice presidents

 

4. Putin orders to start Russian military pullout from Syria

Topic: International Issues

Category: Syria war

Location: The Hindu

Key points:

  • President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial pullout of the Russian military from Syria
  • The Geneva negotiations gives an opportunity to end the 5 month long Russian campaign in Syria
  • But Putin made it clear that Russia will maintain its air base and a naval facility in Syria and keep some troops there
  • Putin said the Russian air campaign has allowed Assad’s military to gain ground and helped create conditions for peace talks

 

5. Interest of child comes first: SC

Topic: Polity

Category: Legislative functions

Location: The Hindu

SC_2774639a

Key points:

  • Supreme Court on Monday directed the Centre and the States to frame regulations under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act, 2015 to implement the new guidelines for in-country and inter-country adoption to make the process transparent, friendly and fool-proof

 

C. GS3 Related

1. DRDO’s robot system can handle mines, IEDs from afar

Topic: S&T

Category: defence

Location: The Indian Express

Key points:

  • The Electro-Mechanical Systems Group, Research and Development Establishment (R&DE), a laboratory of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) based in Pune has recently developed a Mobile Autonomous Robot System (MARS)
  • It is an intelligent and rugged robotic system that can handle mines and IEDs and can be controlled from very far distances while operating in hostile conflict conditions

 

2. Retail inflation at four-month low, spurs calls for a rate cut

Topic: Economy

Category: state of Indian economy

Location: The Hindu

Key points:

  • Consumer price index-based inflation decelerated to 5.2 per cent from 5.7 per cent in the preceding month
  • The data marks the first break after six-months of accelerating retail inflation
  • The annual rate of inflation, based on monthly WPI, stood at -0.91 per cent (provisional) for the month of February, 2016 (over February, 2015)
  • Food inflation in the CPI came in at 5.5 per cent in February compared with 6.7 per cent in January. In the WPI, the rate of inflation in food articles decreased to 3.35 per cent in February from 6 per cent in January
  • Industries expect RBI to lower rates following the deceleration.

 

D. GS4 Related
E. Important Editorials : A Quick Glance

The Indian Express:

1. An anaemic prescription

Topic: Governance

Category: health sector

Key points:

  • The budget did not address the health sector’s long standing needs; in terms of its meagre allocation and lack of detail, this was surely an anaemic budget
  • The specific allocations to the National Health Mission, the flagship programme for the public healthcare delivery system was an insignificant one
  • the absence of structural reform of the health insurance would mean that health insurances will continue to only insure in-patient care
  • There needs to be a strengthening of the mechanism to hold the private sector accountable or else even the increased insurance cover will be used for irrational and unethical medicine, led by unnecessary hospital admissions and procedures
  • Also if the health insurance scheme only targets those who live below the poverty line, the significant impact of health expenditure on the lives of those above this arbitrary line would see no change
  • Disappointments: very low contribution to health research in India, critically important investments needed to prevent chronic diseases are not mentioned apart from dialysis, beedis and high sugar food industry escaped taxation
  • There are no firm steps in terms of adequate financing or re-designing the architecture of the healthcare system

 

The Hindu

1. Getting smart with public transport

Topic: Governance

Category: transport sector

Key points:

  • Travellers want reliability, simplicity and legibility
  • Smart mobility is the answer
  • what if a traveller could see on her mobile phone when the next bus on a given route will arrive? Would it change her preference for the mode of travel?
  • apps help track a cab  until it arrives at the pick-up address. service expectations have gone up such that  State governments are unable to keep pace and introduce regulation
  • State govts have been slow to harness technologies like automatic vehicle location, Global Positioning Systems and mobile apps to serve the passenger
  • Investment in both buses and modern intelligent transport systems would make a big difference to such users
  • the Centre of Excellence in Urban Transport at IIT-Madras had made an algorithm that predict  the  time of arrival  of  a bus at a stop which can be implemented
  • there is an urgent need for standardization of IT architecture of  public transportation
  • Persuading commuters to move away from personal vehicles will also depend on smart moves such as improving the quality of travel
 Others:

1. The Financial Express Editorial: Bottling the genie

Topic: Banking sector

Category:

Key Points:

–  bankers turning risk-averse and not wanting to lend and  catching genuine malfeasance on part of the borrowers are both crucial problems

  • campaign against bank defaulters has spun out of control, the RBI Governor is trying his best to put the genie back in the bottle
  • Let a group of bankers assess whether there was malfeasance in decisions and then look for cash trails before going after anyone
  • Also, it is easy to criticise PSU banks for their large NPAs, the group should examine whether these high NPAs are due to the fact that few private banks lent as much to either industry or infrastructure
  • things would be very different if the legal process((insolvency laws) had been more helpful when it came to banks trying to enforce their rights

For more reading

The Economic Times: A strong ecosystem for egging on innovation in India will require participation of all stakeholders by Pranab Mukherjee

 

F. Concepts-in-News: Related Concepts to Revise/Learn:

I. RBI

II. National Health Mission

III. Myanmar Elections

IV. IS

V. Juvenile Justice Act

G. Fun with Practice Questions 🙂

 

Question 1: Which of the following are true about Indian Health sector?

 

1.Health is part of the Union List of the seventh schedule

2.National Health Scheme is the umbrella health scheme rolled out by the union government

a) 1only

b) 2 only

c) Both 1 and 2

d) Neither 1 or 2

 

Question 2:Which of the following countries border Syria?

1) Saudi Arabia

2) Jordan

3) Turkey

4) Iran

a) 1 only

b) 2 only

c) 2 and 3

d) 2, 3 and 4

Question 3: What is true about Juvenile Justice Act?

1) The bill mandates setting up Juvenile Justice Boards and Child Welfare Committees in every district

2) The bill also deals with adoption of children and lays down the eligibility criteria for adoptive parents

a) 1only

b) 2 only

c) Both 1 and 2

d) Neither 1 or 2

 

Question 4:What is true about Kaladan Multi-modal Transit Route

 

1.It will connect the eastern Indian seaport of Kolkata with Sittwe seaport in Myanmar and then finally connect Manipur

  1. This project will reduce the need to transport goods through the narrow Siliguri corridor

a) 1 Only

b) 2 Only

c) Both 1 and 2

d) Neither 1 nor 2

Question 5: Which of the statements below are true:

1.RBI controls the monetary policy in India

2.EXIM Bank promotes orderly development and maintenance of foreign exchange market in India

a) 1 only

b) 2 only

c) 1 and 2

d) Neither 1 nor 2

Check Your Answers

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