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Wednesday, October 07, 2020

THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT ARTICLES 07.10.2020

UPSC Prelims 2020 Answer Key from various Institute

Vision IAS Prelims GS Paper 1 Analysis 2020 PDF

06:31

Vision IAS Prelims GS Paper 1 Analysis 2020 PDF

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Tuesday, October 06, 2020

Daily Current Affairs, 06th October 2020

19:54

 

1)  Wildlife Week is celebrated from 2nd to 8th October

•Wildlife Week is annually celebrated across India between 2nd to 8th October with an aim to protect and preserve the flora and fauna of India. The first Wildlife Week was observed in 1957. The Wildlife Week 2020 is celebrated from 2nd October to 8th October 2020. Wildlife Week 2020 marks the 66th Wildlife Week which is celebrated under the theme RoaR (Roar and Revive) – Exploring Human-Animal Relationships.

2)  Puducherry airport becomes AAI’s first 100% solar-powered airport

•The Puducherry airport has become the first airport of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) which is entirely solar-powered. The 500KWp ground-mounted solar power plant was commissioned on 2nd October 2020. The approx cost of the plant is Rs 2.8 crore. With becoming absolutely power-neutral, the Puducherry airport will be able to meet its entire power requirement through the solar power plant.

3)  CM Arvind Kejriwal launched ‘Yudh Pradushan Ke Virudh’ campaign

•Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal has announced the launch of the anti-pollution campaign ‘Yudh Pradushan Ke Virudh’ to reduce the pollution level in Delhi. An anti-dust campaign is being initiated by the Delhi government to settle the dust.


•As part of the campaign, a technology developed by Pusa Agriculture Institute would be used to curb the menace of stubble burning. The government will launch a photo-based app ‘Green Delhi’ for complaints related to pollution. This App will be launched for citizens before the end of this month.

4)  China to send first-ever ‘asteroid mining robot’ into space

•An IEEE Spectrum report, the Beijing-based company is set to send the world’s first mining robot named ‘asteroid mining robot’ into space by November 2020 to identify and extract resources. The mining robot will be launched into space by a Chinese Long March series rocket.


•The 30-gram spacecraft, NEO-1, is likely to be launched as a secondary payload on a Chinese Long March rocket. This company also has another mission, Yuanwang-1 (‘Look up-1’), nicknamed ‘Little Hubble’, which is to be launched by late 2021 or early 2022.

5)  DRDO successfully flight tests “Supersonic Missile Assisted Release of Torpedo”

•The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has successfully flight tested the “Supersonic Missile Assisted Release of Torpedo” (SMART) from Wheeler Island off the coast of Odisha. All the mission objectives including missile flight up to the range and altitude, separation of the nose cone, the release of Torpedo and deployment of Velocity Reduction Mechanism (VRM) have been met perfectly.

6)  IACC presents lifetime achievement award to Ratan Tata

•The Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IACC) has presented the lifetime achievement award to business icon Ratan Tata for his pioneering role in the Business Relations of India-USA and for his lifetime achievement in Global Leadership. This award was announced in the virtual event of IACC “COVID Crusader Award-2020”. This is the 1st time IACC conferred the Lifetime Achievement award to any individual.


•Tata, who grew the revenues for India’s largest conglomerate ‘The Tata Group’ to nearly USD 100 billion by 2011-12, remains an influential industrialist, philanthropist and humanitarian to the day.

7)  12th BRICS Summit to be held on 17 November virtually

•The 12th BRICS Summit is scheduled to be held on 17th November 2020 via video conference. This is the first time in the history of the forum that the meeting will be held virtually, due to the global COVID pandemic. The Summit is being held under the Chairmanship of Russia.


•The BRICS Summit will focus on further strengthening cooperation among the member states amid the Covid-19 crisis. The theme of the Meeting of the Leaders of BRICS countries is “BRICS Partnership for Global Stability, Shared Security and Innovative Growth”. During 2020, the five countries in the grouping continued their close strategic partnership on three major pillars: peace and security, economy and finance, cultural and people-to-people exchanges

8)  Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 announced

•The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 was divided, one half awarded to Roger Penrose for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity. The other half jointly to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy.


•The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden.

9)  Delhi’s Deputy CM Manish Sisodia launches a book “Bapu-The unforgettable”

•On the occasion of the 151st Birth Anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, Manish Sisodia has launched the coffee-table book titled “Babu – The Unforgettable” over the virtual event. This virtual event was organised by the Delhi Archives & Department of Art, Culture and Language, Government of Delhi. The department also organised a webinar on “Footprints of Gandhi Ji in Delhi”.

10)  “Baahubali” series author Anand Neelakantan pens debut kids’ book

•The author of Baahubali series, Anand Neelakantan has authored his first kid’s book titled “The Very, Extremely, Most Naughty Asura Tales for Kids”, published by Puffins Publishers Private Limited under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.

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The HINDU Notes – 06th October 2020

19:30

 

📰 An unconstitutional harvest

The best way forward for aggrieved States is to challenge the constitutionality of the new farm laws

•Since independence, Minimum Support Price (MSP) has served as an insurance to farmers, in the form of income security for their produce. As many as 23 vital farm products are supported by the MSP regime. Yet, it has no legislative backing.

•Recently, three laws were passed, which the Central government described as necessary farm reforms. Two of these are the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act (FPTC Act), and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act (FAPAFS Act). Unsurprisingly, none refer to the MSP. The stated object of these laws is to provide farmers an additional marketplace for selling their produce by institutionalising contract farming, whilst reducing the dependency on government-controlled APMC-designated mandis, where farmers are often forced to pay high commissions to intermediaries.

Abuse of federalism

•Agriculture falls within the exclusive legislative competence of State governments, through Entry 14 of the State List. However, the Acts in question have been enacted by Parliament, seemingly deriving the legislative competence to do so under Entry 33 of the Concurrent List, which deals with ‘trade and commerce’ of some products listed in that Entry. This inference is axiomatic as the FPTC Act (defining ‘farmers’ produce’), and the FAPAFS Act (defining ‘farming produce’), borrow the items enumerated in Entry 33. The list of items provided under Entry 33 is an exhaustive one. However, the two definitions take leaps beyond the exhaustive set of items enumerated in the said Entry, by also including what can practically be considered as the entirety of farming output — “...wheat, rice or other coarse grains, pulses, vegetables, fruits, nuts, spices, sugarcane and products of poultry, piggery, goatery, fishery and dairy...” — none of which find mention in Entry 33.

•The definitions of ‘farmer’ and ‘farming produce’ are at the heart of these laws, as they lay out the items in which any trade beyond the mandis can take place. Including the vast majority of agricultural produce in such definitions amounts to an egregious breach of legislative competence by the Union government as it is the States which are empowered to enact laws regulating ‘agriculture’.

•Despite this clear constitutional position, the statement of objects and reasons accompanied with these Acts attempts to give an impression of being intended towards reform in the agricultural sector while drawing upon purported powers under Entry 33, despite the Entry not explicitly including within its ambit the expansive definition of farming produce as referred to in the Acts. In short, this is a case of abuse of federalism.

The way forward

•States like Punjab are considering declaring all of their territory as ‘mandi’ to circumvent the effect of these laws. However, it is doubtful if their respective APMC Acts permit the same; and in any case such knee-jerk reactions would surely involve scrutiny from the courts. Constitutionally speaking, however, there exists a strong case for aggrieved State Governments to invoke Article 131 of the Constitution and file a suit challenging the vires of the two laws.

•Whilst doing so, State governments could also explore the potential of granting MSP a legislative backing, at least within the mandis, since any MSP is a matter of government largesse, and not a legally enforceable right with farmers. This move would incentivise farmers to sell their produce at the mandi at assured rates rather than expose themselves to the whims and caprices of private players. At the same time, demands from opposition parties to impose MSP upon private players could be at loggerheads with the free market economy principle enshrined under Article 301 of the Constitution. It is in view of these complexities that the best way forward for the States is to challenge the very constitutionality of these laws.

📰 Re-imagining education in an India at 100

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