TABLE OF CONTENTS
A. GS1 Related B. GS2 Related POLITY AND GOVERNANCE 1. CIC gets four Information Commissioners 2. Triple talaq Bill likely to face stiff resistance in RS INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 1. Elections in Bangladesh C. GS3 Related ECONOMY 1. Robust GDP growth to continue: CII ENVIRONMENT 1. Micro factory can help recycle waste locally SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 1. Better patrolling, technology helped foresters nab golfer D. GS4 Related E. Editorials ECONOMY 1. Mind the gap POLITY 1. Navtej Johar case, a verdict for all times F. Tidbits 1. Space probe nears dark side of moon 2. Hard lesson: funds not enough to attract teachers to government schools G. Prelims Fact 1. Islands of the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago renamed H. UPSC Prelims Practice Questions I. UPSC Mains Practice Questions
A. GS1 Related
Nothing here today!!!
B. GS2 Related
Category: POLITY AND GOVERNANCE
1. CIC gets four Information Commissioners
Context: The government has appointed four new Information Commissioners in the Central Information Commission.
About CIC:
The Central Information Commission has been constituted with effect from 12-10-2005 under the Right to Information Act, 2005. The jurisdiction of the Commission extends over all Central Public Authorities.
Powers and Functions:
- The Commission has certain powers and functions mentioned in sections 18, 19, 20 and 25 of the RTI Act, 2005.
- Adjudication in second appeal for giving information.
- Direction for record keeping.
- Suo motu disclosures receiving and enquiring into a complaint on inability to file RTI, etc.
- Imposition of penalties and Monitoring and Reporting including preparation of an Annual Report.
- The decisions of the Commission are final and binding.
Composition:
- The Commission includes 1 Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) and not more than 10 Information Commissioners (IC) who are appointed by the President of India.
- 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.
2. Triple talaq Bill likely to face stiff resistance in RS
Context: The Centre is likely to face stiff resistance in its second attempt to ensure passage of the triple talaq Bill when it comes up in the Rajya Sabha.
The amended Bill, passed by the Lok Sabha, is listed in the business of the Upper House
In the last session, the earlier Bill could not be taken up in the Rajya Sabha due to a lack of consensus among political parties.
About Triple Talaq bill:
- The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2018 was introduced in Lok Sabha. It replaces an Ordinance promulgated on September 19, 2018.
- The Bill makes all declaration of talaq, including in written or electronic form, to be void (i.e. not enforceable in law) and illegal.
- It defines talaq as talaq-e-biddat or any other similar form of talaq pronounced by a Muslim man resulting in instant and irrevocable divorce.
- Talaq-e-biddat refers to the practice under Muslim personal laws where pronouncement of the word ‘talaq’ thrice in one sitting by a Muslim man to his wife results in an instant and irrevocable divorce.
- The Bill makes declaration of talaq a cognizable offence, attracting up to three years’ imprisonment with a fine. (A cognizable offence is one for which a police officer may arrest an accused person without warrant.) The offence will be cognizable only if information relating to the offence is given by the married woman (against whom talaq has been declared), or any person related to her by blood or marriage.
- The Bill provides that the Magistrate may grant bail to the accused. The bail may be granted only after hearing the woman (against whom talaq has been pronounced), and if the Magistrate is satisfied that there are reasonable grounds for granting bail.
- The offence may be compounded by the Magistrate upon the request of the woman (against whom talaq has been declared)
- A Muslim woman against whom talaq has been declared, is entitled to seek subsistence allowance from her husband for herself and for her dependent children. The amount of the allowance will be determined by the Magistrate.
- A Muslim woman against whom such talaq has been declared, is entitled to seek custody of her minor children. The manner of custody will be determined by the Magistrate.
C. GS3 Related
1. Robust GDP growth to continue: CII
Context: According to the Confederation of Indian Industry, India will continue to be the fastest-growing major economy, with robust GDP growth expected to continue through 2019 at 7.5%, based on strong drivers from the services sector, infrastructure activity and better demand conditions.
Factors sustaining the robust GDP growth:
- Better demand conditions
- Settled GST implementation
- Capacity expansion resulting from growing investments in infrastructure
- Continuing positive effects of the reform policies undertaken
- Improved credit off take especially in services sector at 24%
Key drivers of growth to be encouraged in 2019:
- Lowering the number of GST rate slabs
- Bolstering the insolvency and bankruptcy framework
- Simplifying business procedures
- Improving agricultural productivity
Category: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Context: Initial trends in the general elections for Bangladesh indicated an inclination towards the ruling coalition of the Grand Alliance led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League.
However, the Opposition’s rainbow coalition, the Jatiyo Oikya Front (JOF), led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has rejected the election and demanded a re-election under a neutral government.
Background:
- Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan in December 1971.
- It is the eighth most populous country in the world and the third largest Muslim-majority country.
- This is the 11th general election of Bangladesh.
- The Bangladesh parliamentary elections are being seen as a litmus test for the future of democracy in the world’s eighth-most populous country of over 170 million people.
- The last election in 2014 was boycotted by the BNP and shunned by international observers as “an electoral farce”. More than half the seats remained uncontested that year, giving Sheikh Hasina’s party a walkover.
- There are four major issues deciding the contentious election: the country’s economy, Hasina’s alleged authoritarianism, the gag on media freedom, and 1971 war crimes.
Impact on India
- Bangladesh and India share a 4,000-km long border that has been marred by ethnic conflicts. Its location is strategically important for India, and China has time and again tried to woo Dhaka. Overall, Bangladesh is a key component of India’s “Look East” policy.
- Under Hasina’s regime, New Delhi has seen improved bilateral ties and boundary disputes have been settled amicably, while strong security cooperation has been established and significant progress has been made in settling differences over the Teesta River water sharing.
- Bilateral trade and India’s investment in Bangladesh has also picked up.
- On the other hand, Zia had a strained relationship with India during her two tenures as prime minister. Her party has been called anti-India by critics and her government was accused of harbouring anti-India elements on Bangladeshi soil.
- Therefore, as fast growing economies both India and Bangladesh must look at opportunities that benefit them mutually and also equitably and promote activities that strengthen each other’s security as well as sovereignty.
Way Forward:
The Bangladesh 2018 election offers a good opportunity to both India and Bangladesh to end an arrangement that is unhealthy and mutually predatory and make a new beginning, working together towards lasting peace, security and prosperity of their people.
1. Micro factory can help recycle waste locally
Context: The world’s first e-waste micro factory for converting waste into quality finished products started recently in Sydney, Australia, heralding a new era in waste recycling.
Significance:
- E-waste micro factory can recycle waste plastics and make all kinds of innovative products.
- Micro factory is economically viable because it reduces the need for transport, and uses locally available waste material.
- Materials such as waste plastics, waste glass, waste furniture and waste textiles are being recycled here.
- For example, waste textile is used to make building panels, acoustic panels to help reduce noise pollution. Instead of painting, acoustic panels are put on the wall, for silent zone.
Opportunity for Micro factory
China being a major importer of waste has restricted imports of waste on environmental concerns. Since China has imposed this restriction, many countries now cannot send their waste to China and must think about solutions in their own backward to recycle that waste. Micro factory is the solution.
Way forward:
In India data can be collected and micro factory can be customized to process locally available waste. It can have a huge impact on our environment and change lives in India as well.
Category: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
1. Better patrolling, technology helped foresters nab golfer
Context: Golfer Jyoti Randhawa was arrested on charges of poaching and sent to jail. Since June 2018, over 90 people have been arrested in Dudhwa for wildlife offences, including poaching and illegal felling
How technology helped?
- As a result of months of surveillance and strategy, and support of a GPS-enabled app called M-Stripe it is becoming possible to nab poachers.
- Efforts are being made to make forest officials more accountable through technology.
- Equipping personnel with a mobile app, M-Stripe, used for surveillance and patrolling of tiger-populated areas has led to better enforcement of law.
What is M-stripe?
- The Indian Government launched M-STrIPES, a software-based monitoring system at tiger reserves across the country.
- M-Stripe is used for surveillance and patrolling of tiger-populated areas.
- It is built by the National Tiger Conservation Authority and the Wildlife Institute of India, the app has brought about a big change in patrolling.
- The GPS-enabled M-Stripe, which stands for Monitoring System for Tigers-Intensive Protection and Ecological Status, allows patrol teams to keep a better tab on suspicious activity while also mapping their own patrolling, location, routes and timings for better accountability.
- Accordingly forest guards in tiger reserves would be equipped with personal digital assistants (PDAs) and Geographical Positioning System (GPS) devices to capture data relating to tiger sightings, wild life crime, deaths and ecological monitors among others while patrolling. The software system would map the patrol routes of the forest guards and monitor distribution of different animal species among others.
D. GS4 Related
Nothing here for today!!!
E. Editorials
1. Mind the gap
Context:
- By November 2018, the Centre’s fiscal deficit has already overshot the full year’s budget estimate by as much as ₹92,349 crore with still four months to go.
- Even last year India missed its fiscal deficit target— the deficit in the revised estimates for 2017-18 was 3.5% of GDP, compared to the target of 3.2%.
- The concern is that repeated missing of fiscal targets might hurt the economy.
- The failure to meet the target has been due to several factors such as low GST collections, spike in oil prices and pressure to spend more due to upcoming elections.
Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, 2003
- The Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, 2003(FRBMA) is an Act of the Parliament of India to institutionalize financial discipline, reduce India’s fiscal deficit, improve macroeconomic management and the overall management of the public funds by moving towards a balanced budget and strengthen fiscal prudence.
- The main purpose was to eliminate revenue deficit of the country (building revenue surplus thereafter) and bring down the fiscal deficit to a manageable 3% of the GDP by March 2008. However, due to the 2007 international financial crisis, the deadlines for the implementation of the targets in the act was initially postponed and subsequently suspended in 2009.
- In 2011, given the process of ongoing recovery, Economic Advisory Council publicly advised the Government of India to reconsider reinstating the provisions of the FRBMA.
- In 2016, the government constituted the N K Singh committee to review the FRBM Act. The government believed the targets were too rigid. The committee recommended that the government should target a fiscal deficit of 3 per cent of the GDP in years up to March 31, 2020 cut it to 2.8 per cent in 2020-21 and to 2.5 per cent by 2023.
In Budget 2017, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley deferred the fiscal deficit target of 3% of the GDP and chose a target of 3.2%, citing the NK Singh committee report.
The Deficit Challenge
- While total expenditure growth has remained below the budget projection, worryingly growth inducing capital expenditure is set on an underwhelming trajectory. The 4% increase over the eight month period is less than half the 9.9% growth the Centre had budgeted for the year.
- However, the trends in revenue have given a cause for concern. The April-November revenue receipts and net tax revenue growth numbers are far from reassuring.
- If there is a silver lining on the revenue front, it is the increase seen in non-tax revenue, which has put the government comfortably on track to meet the budget estimate for a 3.9% increase.
- Still, nontax revenue is budgeted to account for just over a seventh of total revenue and it is hard to see it helping bridge anything more than the smallest of shortfalls in tax receipts.
- There is another factor to contend with in sizing up the fiscal calculus this year. With the general election only a few months away, the government needs to avoid the temptation to open the spigot with an eye on the political benefits that it may see accruing.
- Some of the expenditure plans it has committed to recently have either been factored in or will at most impact the margins — be it public sector bank recapitalisation or an increase in the quantum of incentives for the export of onions to reverse the slide in prices.
Concluding Remarks:
- But the bigger challenge remains in finding ways to rustle up the requisite revenue to keep the deficit from slipping for a second year running.
- The seven public sector enterprises that have been cleared by the Cabinet for share sales as part of the disinvestment programme are, at best, only likely to partly help meet the budgeted non-debt capital receipts target of ₹92,199 crore.
- As the Reserve Bank never tires of cautioning, the onus is on the government to avoid further fiscal slippage as it could hurt the economy by crowding out vital private investment. This at a time when it has just been showing signs of a revival.
1. Navtej Johar case, a verdict for all times
Context:
- Trapped in a frozen political process amidst heightened public passions, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) was out of sync with contemporary values on gender orientation. It is the courts that have been used as the key to unlock social progress.
- In a historic judgment, in Navtej Singh Johar Union of India (2018), the Supreme Court stepped into the public policy void created by the timidity of political parties to strike down Section 377 that had criminalised homosexuality as an unnatural offence.
Realigning public policy
- Such verdicts have shed light on the constitutional morality of contested and evolving social mores and the need to realign public policy to changing social contexts.
- The Supreme Court has emerged as the custodian of India’s collective constitutional conscience. A Constitution prescribes rules for the authoritative allocation of values. It strikes a balance of the different branches and layers of government, the liberty of citizens, the authority of the state, and the cohesiveness of society.
Correcting a basic error
- Instead of viewing prospective legislation as the solution, the court diagnosed the long history of legislative inactivity as the problem in the Section 377 case.
- Espousing the concept of the Indian nation and people as a pluralistic, diverse and inclusive modern society, the long operating colonial law was judged to abridge constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights and human dignity when applied to the private conduct of consenting adults.
- The burden of the penal law targeting sexual minorities was lifted.
- The reversal of the 2013 Koushal verdict by the Supreme Court in Navtej Johar corrected a basic error of constitutional reasoning.
- The understanding, sensitivity and expression of legal principle in the Navtej Johar judgment was greatly moving and uplifting.
- The vital point made was that for constitutional purposes, the LGBTIQ minority is part of, and incontestably included in, the diverse plural Indian nation.
- The 2013 Koushal verdict was contemptuous of the LGBTIQ minority. By contrast, the approach of the court in Navtej Johar was respectful and inclusive.
An affirmation of human dignity
- The Navtej Johar decision shows that laws such as Section 377 represent a serious overreach of criminal law.
- Such law is incompatible with constitutional notions of human dignity, equality and privacy. It deserves a rich tribute for its transformative constitutionalism.
F. Tidbits
1. Space probe nears dark side of moon
Context: For the first time a Chinese space probe is moving into position to land on the dark side of the moon.
Why in news?
To prepare for the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the moon, Chang’e-4, the probe entered a planned orbit.
What is dark side of the moon?
- The dark side of the moon is supposed to be the side we never see, the side that faces away from Earth. This side of the moon faces the cold, black expanse of space.
- The moon is tidally locked to Earth, rotating at the same rate that it orbits our planet, so the far side or the “dark side” is never visible from Earth.
2. Hard lesson: funds not enough to attract teachers to government schools
Context: A recent study conducted across six States finds that State governments have increased their budgets for school education in the past three years, but the allotment of funds has not been enough to attract permanent qualified teaching staff to government schools.
Background:
Child Rights and You (CRY) and the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) has jointly prepared a report which examines budgeting for school education in six States — West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra — during the 14th Finance Commission recommendation period, which started in April 2015.
Key Findings:
- There has been an overall increase in revenue with the States following the 14th Finance Commission recommendations as a result of an increase in the share of the States in the divisible pool of Central taxes from 32% to 42%.
- The States were forced to improve their tax revenue collection as a result of the reduction in the Union government’s contribution to the States for Central schemes in social sectors.
- According to the detailed demand for Grants and State Budget documents, between 2015-16 and 2017-18, there was a net decline in the share of school education budget in the total State Budget for three of the six States.
- The report examines whether the increase in the size of school education budget was more than the rise in size of the total budget, indicating a higher priority for the sector.
- All the six States showed an increase in the magnitude of per-child and per-student spending for education between 2014-15 and 2016-17.
- The report cites data from the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development to show that as on March 2017, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have from 19% to 34% of total teacher positions at the elementary level vacant. Despite a varying level of commitment towards school education across the six States, all of them struggle with a shortage of teachers.
- Data from the District Information System for Education show that at the upper primary level, there is a severe paucity of subject-specific teachers required under the Right to Education Act — 77% upper primary schools in Maharashtra, 46% in Uttar Pradesh, 40% in West Bengal and 37% in Bihar do not have subject teachers.
Issues:
- More than one lakh schools in India are run with only one teacher and all the six States surveyed have shown the number of such schools on the rise. The shortage of teachers is more acute at the secondary level — Bihar has 20,494 teaching posts vacant, Chhattisgarh 8,278 and Uttar Pradesh 12,008.
- The figures don’t entirely capture the severity of the shortfall as they do not reflect the shortage of subject teachers.
G. Prelims Fact
1. Islands of the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago renamed
Context: Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced renaming of three islands of the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago as a tribute to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
The Ross Island was renamed Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Dweep, the Neil Island as Shaheed Dweep and the Havelock Island as Swaraj Dweep.
H. Practice Questions for UPSC Prelims Exam
Question 1. Which of the following cities lies to the south of the equator?
- Yangon
- Kuala Lumpur
- Bandung
- Bangkok
See
(c)
Type: Geography
Explanation:
Question 2. Consider the following statements about geostationary satellites:
- A geostationary satellite is an earth-orbiting satellite, placed directly over the equator.
- It follows an inclined orbit with respect to the equatorial plane.
- It revolves in the same direction the earth rotates.
- Every geostationary satellite is a geosynchronous satellite
Which of the above statements is/are incorrect?
- Only 2
- 2 and 3
- 2, 3 and 4
- 1, 2, 3, 4
See
Question 3. Consider the following statements about Enforcement Directorate:
- It is a specialized financial agency, under the Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance.
- It is a statutory body formed under the FERA Act, 1947.
- It enforces FEMA, 1999 and PMLA, 2002.
- It has quasi-judicial powers.
Which of the following is/are correct?
- Only 1
- Only 1 and 3
- Only 1, 2 and 3
- Only 1, 3 and 4
See
Question 4. The recently launched postal stamps in Port Blair were inspired by which
famous freedom fighter?
- Veer Savarkar
- Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose
- Mahatma Gandhi
- Bal Gangadhar Tilak
See
Question 5. Which of the following has been included as a World UNESCO Heritage site
in 2018?
- The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier,Capital Complex of Chandigarh
- Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Ensembles of Mumbai
- The walled city of Ahmedabad
- Archaeological Site of Nalanda Mahavihara at Nalanda, Bihar
See
I. Practice Questions for UPSC Mains Exam
- Discuss the impact of e-waste recycle micro factories on our environment. (250 words)
- Critically analyze the growing influence of artificial intelligence worldwide. (250 words)
See previous CNA
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