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Friday, December 06, 2019

Daily Current Affairs, 06th December 2019

18:36


1) Nation pays homage to Dr BR Ambedkar on his 64th Mahaparinirvan Diwas
•The nation is paying homage to Bharat Ratna Dr BR Ambedkar on his 64th Mahaparinirvan Diwas (death anniversary) on 6 December. He was popularly known as Babasaheb Ambedkar and everyone knows that he was one of the architects of the Indian Constitution. He was a very well-known political leader, eminent jurist, Buddhist activist, philosopher, anthropologist, historian, orator, writer, economist, scholar and editor, too. He is a leader who dedicated his life to eradicating social inequality in India.

2) India’s 1st HAM project in “Sewerage Sector” inaugurated in Haridwar
•Union Minister for Jal Shakti Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat inaugurated the 14 MLD sewage treatment plant (STP) in Sarai village near Haridwar in the presence of Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia.

 •The Sarai STP is “the first-ever project in the country on a hybrid annuity PPP model (HAM)”. 34 STPs are being built in Uttarakhand at a cost of Rs 1,144 crore, besides crematoria and ghats on the Ganga. Of these, 23 have been completed. Once all the STPs become operational, there will be “considerable improvement in the water quality of Ganga,”.

3) Avantee mega Food Park inaugurated in MP’s Dewas
•The Union Minister for food processing inaugurated Avantee mega Food Park in Dewas, Madhya Pradesh. This first food park of central India is spread over 51 acres and has been constructed at a cost of about 150 crore rupees. About 5 thousand local people will get employment from this Mega Food Park. Processing of soybean, gram, wheat and other grains and vegetables will be done in the park. Warehouses will also be opened in Indore, Ujjain, Dhar and Agar in the next phases.

4) Piyush Goyal inaugurates 3rd edition of National Public Procurement Conclave
•Commerce and Industry Minister inaugurated the 3rd edition of National Public Procurement Conclave in New Delhi. The conclave has been organized by Government e-Marketplace, GeM in association with Confederation of Indian Industry. GeM epitomizes the speed, skill and scale which is essential in an e-marketplace platform. GeM rests on the three pillars of openness, fairness and inclusiveness and is a symbol of a truly transparent e-marketplace.

5) Exercise INDRA 2019
•Exercise INDRA 2019 a joint, tri-services exercise between India and Russia will be conducted in India from 10-19 December 2019 simultaneously at Babina (near Jhansi), Pune, and Goa. The contingents of both countries will share expertise and their professional experience. The esprit-de-corps and goodwill shall be the key areas during the exercise which will facilitate the further strengthening of bonds between the defence forces of India and Russia.

 •The INDRA series of exercise began in 2003 and the First joint Tri-Services Exercise was conducted in 2017, It will be a historic occasion for two of the world’s greatest Armed Forces to join hands and successfully conduct an exercise of this magnitude with professionalism, to imbibe the best practices from each other, jointly evolve and drills to defeat the scourge of terror under the United Nation mandate.

6) “Shilpa Shetty App” wins in 2019 Google Play Awards
•Bollywood actor Shilpa Shetty’s fitness app “Shilpa Shetty App” has been awarded Google Play’s Best Apps of 2019. The app was awarded in the category of ‘Personal Growth’.

7) NATO Summit 2019 in Watford, United Kingdom
•The United Kingdom(UK) hosted two days organised 2019 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Summit in London. The year 2019 marks the 70th anniversary of the summit. It was attended by NATO leaders and chaired by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. The purpose of the summit was to make the heads of state and heads of government of NATO member countries to evaluate and provide strategic direction for Alliance activities.

8) RBI releases “Guidelines for ‘on tap’ Licensing of SFB in the Private Sector”
•The Reserve Bank of India released guidelines for ‘on tap’ Licensing of Small Finance Banks in the Private Sector. Now payments banks willing to convert themselves into small finance banks (SFBs) can apply for such a licence only after 5 years of operations.

 •Existing payments banks (PBs), which are controlled by residents and have completed five years of operations, are also eligible for conversion into small finance banks after complying with all legal and regulatory requirements of various authorities and if they conform to these guidelines.

 •The licensing window will be open on-tap. The minimum capital for setting up an SFB has been mandated at ₹200 crores, adding for primary (urban) co-operative banks (UCBs), which wish to become SFBs, the initial requirement of net worth will be ₹100 crores, which will have to be increased to ₹200 crores within five years from the date of commencement of business. SFBs will be given scheduled bank status immediately upon commencement of operations.

9) 1st time India’s forex reserves cross $450 billion
•The country’s foreign exchange reserves crossed the $450-billion mark for the first time ever on the back of strong inflows which enabled the central bank to buy dollars from the market, thus checking any sharp appreciation of the rupee. India’s foreign exchange reserves were at $451.7 billion on December 3, 2019, an increase of $38.8 billion over end-March 2019.

 •The Reserve Bank has always maintained that it intervenes in the foreign exchange market to curb volatility and does not target a particular level of the exchange rate.

10) IIT researchers to create ‘Gandhipedia’
•The National Council of Science Museums (NCSM) and IIT (Indian Institutes of Technology) Gandhinagar and Kharagpur, have joined hands to develop Gandhipedia, an online repository of books, letters and speeches written by Mahatma Gandhi, to commemorate his 150th birth anniversary.

 •The entire project will be done with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In the first phase, over 40 books written by Mahatma Gandhi will be digitised and indexed and their portions which are to be completed by March 2020, and the remaining four phases will be worked on till March 2024. The books will be used to reconstruct the social network of the Mahatma, including those who had influenced him and people whom he had inspired. The aim of Gandhipedia is to reconstruct and remember the inspiring works of Mahatma Gandhi.

11) ‘Borderman’ yearly magazine released by Nityanand Rai
•The yearly magazine called ‘Borderman’ was released by Nityanand Rai, Minister of State for Home Affairs on the occasion of 55th raising day of BSF (Border Security Force) organized by the Ministry of Home Affairs. The 55th raising day of BSF (Border Security Force) was celebrated on the 1st of December 2019.

12) Roger Federer’s face to go on Swiss coin
•Tennis legend Roger Federer will become the first living person in Switzerland to have a coin minted in his honour. The Federal Mint, Swissmint, has created a 20-franc silver coin bearing Federer’s image. It’s the first time in its history that Swissmint has created a commemorative coin to honour a living person.
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The HINDU Notes – 06th December 2019

13:10





📰 Have electoral bonds made a bad system worse?

In disallowing voters from knowing the identity of donors, the scheme is even more opaque now

•Last month, an investigative series on electoral bonds by independent journalist Nitin Sethi, with the help of Right to Information (RTI) activist Commodore Lokesh Batra (retd), exposed how the BJP leadership misled the Election Commission (EC) and Parliament on key features of the electoral bonds scheme and overruled the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s objections in its hurry to implement it. In a conversation moderated by Anuradha Raman , Jagdeep Chhokar and Milan Vaishnav speak of the flawed design of the scheme. Edited excerpts:

The Modi government had introduced the electoral bonds scheme with the promise of bringing in transparency in political funding. But information under the RTI Act shows that it is anything but transparent. In a series of papers in 2017, you, Milan, had flagged several concerns, all of which have been proven true. Do you feel vindicated?

•Milan Vaishnav:I think we should start from the original premise that the introduction of electoral bonds was a victory for transparency. Actually, by their design, electoral bonds legitimise opacity in how elections are funded. There is concern that electoral bonds could become vehicles for money laundering for shell companies, for foreign donations, which are prohibited. We now know that the RBI and the EC shared those concerns. One of the big threats to electoral funding worldwide is that it becomes difficult for voters to hold their elected representatives accountable when they cannot see who is financing whom. That is the central flaw of this scheme.

How important is it for voters to know who is financing whom?

•Jagdeep Chhokar:This is the most fundamental piece of information that voters need to know. When persons who donate money are not philanthropists and are commercial profit-making entities, they donate only when there is a more-than-adequate rate of return. So, when a corporation donates money to a political party, there is obviously a quid pro quo, whether it is known or not. If voters do not know whose money a candidate is using to fund his or her election, they won’t know subsequently whether a decision made by the government is based on the interest of the constituents, in national interest, or in the interest of whoever donated the money.

Prior to electoral bonds, political parties had to maintain records of donations above Rs. 20,000. The cheque number and PAN card of the donor had to be provided to the EC, which put it out in public domain. But we know how parties and donors gamed the system. So, when electoral bonds were announced, did you see them as a ray of hope?

•MV:Far from it. This is an extremely regressive scheme. Essentially whatever modicum of transparency might have been under the previous system [is not there now]. Granted, [there was very little transparency then] because even though anything above Rs. 20,000 had to be disclosed, there were ways to circumvent that. Corporations/ individuals gave cheques/ payments that were Rs. 19,999! But be that as it may, there was limited transparency. Now, even the incentive to give through that route is gone because the government has essentially said it is perfectly legitimate for you to give anonymously any amount to any party from anywhere.

•JC:Former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said electoral bonds will be in the nature of bearer bonds and the identity of the donor will be anonymous. How do anonymity and transparency go together? They are the anti-thesis of each other.

Mr. Chhokar, did the earlier system provide a modicum of transparency in political funding?

•JC:Certainly not. But this is much worse. In that system, no company could donate more than 7.5% of its profits to a political party. Now that limit has been completely removed. Today, a company can donate 100% of its profits... I would imagine there is no bar if the company also decides to donate its capital. This opens up the possibility of any foreign company or entity opening a shell company in India, with the money coming to it through a banking channel from Costa Rica or wherever, and then giving [that money] to the political party in power. Therefore the possibilities of unaccounted, illegal money controlling the policies and decision-making of the Indian government is now alive.

•MV:I think any analysis of electoral bonds has to be viewed in the broader context of a number of legislative changes which were made. The first was the removal of the cap on corporate donations. The second was the elimination of the requirement that companies must disclose details of their political funding. And the third is the complete rewriting of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010, to redefine what a foreign firm is, and this is because both the Congress and the BJP have been guilty of taking donations from foreign firms. So, rather than confessing to their crimes, or being held accountable, they just decided to redefine what a foreign company was. All these three things go hand in hand with electoral bonds.

How concerned are you that the concerns of the RBI and the EC were swept away?

•MV:One of the biggest takeaways for me is how leading institutions seem completely unmatched when compared to the power of the executive. We know that the RBI, the EC and even Parliament had significant concerns. Those were dismissed in a variety of ways. And their concerns really match what groups like the ADR [Association for Democratic Reforms] had been saying, what independent analysts had been saying, which was that you are essentially going to create a system that is even worse than the status quo. Now, it is true that the executive has a lot of power, and it’s not clear what the EC could have done to stop it, but it surely could have done more than what it did in terms of going to the public raising concerns, even considering resignations.

Should the EC have done more?

•JC:First, the EC is a constitutional institution so it can’t be easily played around with. Second, the RBI Act under Section 31 says that any currency or similar documents or instruments can be issued only by the RBI. That bit was also changed to say that the State Bank of India will issue bonds. Lastly, the concerns of the RBI and EC were flippantly and irresponsibly undermined and overlooked.

•Now, could the EC have done more? I don’t think so. The EC is kind of hemmed in by Supreme Court decisions and the laws that Parliament makes. So, I think the EC in writing that letter did a wonderful job. Milan talks about commissioners resigning. Whether that achieves any purpose is questionable. If one person resigns, there are 20 more willing to be appointed and do the bidding of the government.

•MV:I think one has to separate two issues. Jagdeep and I agree that the design is fundamentally flawed. But there’s also the question of implementation. And I think what Nitin’s investigation has shown is that we have several fundamental issues with implementation. We know, for instance, that the Prime Minister’s Office intervened to go beyond the regulations to create new windows. We know that pressure was applied to encash expired bonds before State elections. The government has not even come close to answering the allegations on the table about the violation of regulations which they themselves had written.

So, in effect, what the government has managed to do is legalise a system that was seen as a corrupting influence on the democratic process of government formation?

•MV:That’s right. You could argue that we’re going to have too much money in politics and there’s little we can do to stop it. But if that’s your position, let’s at least try to allow voters to be able to connect the dots. If you really believe the rhetoric about the war on cash, why has the government not scrapped cash-giving altogether, which was in their power to do so? But of course, they chose not to do that because they’d like to have their cake and eat it too.

•JC:I don’t think the government legalised an illegal system. The point is that the system is not legal because the way electoral bonds were introduced as part of the Budget, as a Money Bill, was unconstitutional. We are hoping that as the whole scheme was pushed as a Money Bill, it will be struck down by the court.

Former Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Qureshi had suggested the setting up of a National Electoral Fund to address the issue of political funding. Do you think that could be a way out?

•JC:The problem is that if political parties are to be given money from the election fund in proportion to the number of votes that they have pulled in the previous election, then they would not be allowed to take money from anywhere else. I will bet whatever anybody wants, parties will not agree to the proposal. It is impractical simply on that count.

•MV:Not under the current status quo. I think injecting funds into the current opaque system would be throwing away good money. There has to be a grand bargain that if you want to put public funding on the table, you’re going to have to insist on much stricter norms and adherence to those norms by parties and candidates so that there should be a requirement that any funds raised be processed digitally. Second, there has to be an independent third party scrutiny of political party accounts. Third, the EC has to be given greater power and authority to go after wrongdoers.

•JC:There are two more things. Appointments of Election Commissioners have to be made non-partisan. And it is ridiculous that the EC has no power to de-register a political party.

What is the way out?

•JC:Political parties have to understand that they are also governed by the law. The Central Information Commission (CIC) says six national political parties are public authorities under the RTI. The Central Information Commission is the highest statutory authority for the RTI Act. But all the six parties have blatantly defied that. And the government has given an affidavit in the Supreme Court that political parties should not be under the RTI Act.

•MV:You can’t have a situation where six major political parties thumb their nose at the CIC saying, we reject your ruling that we are under your ambit and there’s nothing apparently anyone can do about it.

•But we also have to set the default position at a more transparent level, so that citizens, every time they want to know who’s funding whom, don’t have to submit an RTI. In the wake of demonetisation, the government asked every private citizen, companies, entrepreneurs to go digital and shun cash payments. Political parties weren’t asked to comply. There is a fundamental hypocrisy at work here that has to be rectified.

📰 India’s forex reserves cross $450 billion for the first time
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485 out of 812 candidates with Hindi medium passed civil services exam 2018, says govt

09:29




As per the government, Out of a total of 812 candidates, 485 candidates chose Hindi and the rest had opted for other regional languages as their mother tongue.

s per the government, 485 candidates who had chosen Hindi as mother tongue were selected through the civil services examination in 2018. A total of 812 candidates were recommended for central civil services on the basis of the 2018 test. Out of these, 485 chose Hindi and the rest had opted for other regional languages as their mother tongue.
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THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT ARTICLES 06.12.2019

09:20
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Thursday, December 05, 2019

Daily Current Affairs, 05th December 2019

16:46


1) International Volunteer Day: 5 December
•The International Volunteer Day (IVD) is observed across the world on 5 December every year. This year theme is ” Volunteer for an inclusive future”. This year’s theme highlighting Sustainable Development Goal 10 (SDG 10) and the pursuit of equality including inclusion through volunteerism.

2) World Soil Day: 5 December
•World Soil Day is celebrated annually on the 5th of December at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) headquarters in Rome, Italy. This year, by addressing the increasing challenges of soil management, the FAO campaign “Stop soil erosion, Save our future” aims to raise awareness of the importance of sustaining healthy ecosystems and human well-being. By encouraging people around the world to engage in proactively improving soil health, the campaign also aims to raise the profile of healthy soil.

 •The International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS), in 2002, adopted a resolution proposing the 5th of December as World Soil Day to celebrate the importance of soil as a critical component of the natural system and as a vital contributor to human well-being.

3) Fit India School Rating System launched as part of Fit India Campaign
•Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ and Minister of State for Youth Affairs & Sports Kiren Rijiju has jointly launched the Fit India School Rating System. The “Fit India School Rating System” has been launched as part of the Fit India Campaign. The Fit India school rating system as per certain parameters is expected to enhance the image of the schools.

 •Fit India program is an innovative initiative launched by the Prime Minister to increase the awareness among the masses and to encourage people to adopt healthy lifestyle.

4) India’s first maritime museum coming up at Lothal in Gujarat
•Government of India (GoI) & Portugal has decided to cooperate in the setting up of an India’s 1st National Maritime Heritage Museum at the ancient Indian site of Lothal in Gujarat with the aim to boost the underwater or marine archaeology. The Museum will showcase salvaged material from shipwreck sites in the Indian Ocean waters.

5) VP Naidu launches new Rotavirus vaccine: ROTAVAC-5D
•Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu launched the new Rotavirus vaccine: ROTAVAC-5D designed and developed by Bharat Biotech in New Delhi. ROTAVAC is an example of a true social innovation that was realized through a partnership between scientists from India and the USA. India is firmly committed to ending morbidity and mortality in children caused due to diarrhoea by 2022.

 •The first generation, Rotavirus vaccine, ROTAVAC developed under a Public-Private Partnership with the Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India, has put India on the global map for setting new standards in pharmaceutical Research and Development.

6) Odisha launches ‘Madhu’ app to help school students
•Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has launched ‘Madhu’ app. It is an e-learning mobile phone application which will help school students to understand their subjects in a better and most efficient way. The app is named after ‘Utkal Gourab’ Madhusudan Das. The app is developed by Ganjam district administration for school students.

 •Through this app, the students will be able access the video explanation of the topics they were taught in their classroom.

7) Chief of the air Staff participates in Pacific Air Chiefs’ Symposium 2019
•Chief of the Air Staff of India is participating in the Pacific Air Chiefs’ Symposium 2019 (PACS 2019) at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii. The theme for this year’s symposium is ‘A Collaborative Approach to Regional Security’.

 •The conference will bring together Air Chiefs from across the Indo-Pacific region who will provide perspectives on common challenges faced and on shared mutual interests while focusing on relevant topics like ‘Regional Security’, ‘Domain Awareness’, ‘Multi-Domain Awareness’, Ínteroperability’ and ‘HADR’. The symposium will also entail discourse and discussions on the combined effort required to maintain peace and security within the region.

8) Exercise Hand-in-Hand 2019
•The 8th India-China joint training exercise ‘HAND-IN-HAND 2019’ with the theme counter-terrorism under United Nations mandate is scheduled to be conducted at Umroi, Meghalaya from 07 to 20 December 2019.

 •The Chinese contingent from the Tibet Military command comprising of 130 personal and the Indian Contingent of similar strength will participate in the 14-day long training exercise. The aim of the exercise is to practice joint planning and conduct of counter-terrorist operations in semi-urban terrain.

9) Mumbai Central gets first ‘Eat Right Station’ certification from FSSAI
•The Mumbai Central station of Railways was conferred with the ‘Eat Right Station’ certification with four stars rating by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), as a part of ‘Eat Right India’ movement launched last year. The Mumbai Central Railway Station is the country’s first “Eat Right Station.”

 •Mumbai Central station has been judged on the basis of compliance of food safety and hygiene, availability of healthy diet, food handling at preparation, transhipment and retail/serving point, food waste management, promotion of local and seasonal food and creating awareness on food safety and healthy diet.

 •The focus of the movement is on improving the health and well-being of people by ensuring they eat healthily. ‘Eat Right India’ movement is built on two broad pillars of ‘Eat Healthy’ and ‘Eat Safe’. It aims to engage, excite and enable citizens to improve their health and well-being.

10) ET Lifetime of Public Service Award for Former FM (Late) Arun Jaitley
•Arun Jaitley former Finance Minister of India was bestowed with the Economic Times (ET) Lifetime Achievement Award for Public Service 2019. The award was received by Arun Jaitley’s spouse Sangeeta Jaitley.

 •Arun Jaitley was the former Finance Minister of India, he was also the Minister of Corporate Affairs from May 2014 to May 2019, Minister of Defence from March 2017 to September 2017, Minister of Information and Broadcasting from November 2014 to July 2016, Minister of Law and Justice from July 2003 to May 2004 and Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting from October 1999 to September 2000.

11) ‘Joker’ fame Joaquin Phoenix named 2019 ‘Person of the Year’ by PETA
•‘Joker’ fame Joaquin Rafael Phoenix, American actor from California, United States (US) has been bestowed with the PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) ‘Person of the Year’ Award 2019.

 •Joaquin Phoenix has been a vegan since the age of three and has been a supporter of PETA for a long time. He has recently appeared in an advertisement of PETA titled “We are all animals”, which was displayed in the Times Square and Sunset billboards to promote the prohibition of travelling wild-animal circuses.

12) Karnataka Vikas Grameena Bank signs MoU for bancassurance
•Karnataka Vikas Grameena Bank (KVGB) and Canara, HSBC, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Life Insurance Company Ltd. signed an MoU for bancassurance (for selling life insurance products through the branches of KVGB). As per the pact, KVGB will market wide range insurance products of the Canara HSBC through its 636 branches in 9 districts of Karnataka.

13) RBI keeps the repo rate unchanged at 5.15% in 5th Bi-Monthly Monetary Policy
In its 5th Bi-monthly Monetary Policy Committee meeting, the Reserve Bank of India has decided to keep the policy repo rate unchanged to 5.15%. The MPC has also decided to maintain the accommodative stance of monetary policy to revive growth, while ensuring that inflation remains within the target. The main decisions taken in the 5th Bi-Monthly Monetary Policy Committee meeting are:

 •The repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) left unchanged to 5.15%.

 •The reverse repo rate under the LAF stands same i.e. 4.90%.

 •The marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate also remains same i.e. 5.40%.

14) New Zealand wins MCC’s Spirit of Cricket award
•The New Zealand cricket team has been awarded the Christopher Martin-Jenkins Spirit of Cricket award. The team has been awarded for its exemplary show of sportsmanship during the final match of the ICC World Cup at Lord’s in July 2019, which it lost under controversial circumstances.

 •Martin-Jenkins was the former MCC president and BBC Test Match Special commentator.
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