aditya
19:10
GS SCORE Current Affairs April 2022 Week 4 PDF
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Saturday, April 30, 2022
Daily Current Affairs, 30th April 2022
aditya
19:01
1) World Veterinary Day 2022: 30th April
•World Veterinary Day is observed on the last Saturday of April every year. This year it falls on 30th April 2022. World Veterinary Association was established with an objective to provide global leadership for the veterinary profession and promote animal health and welfare and public health through advocacy, education, and partnership.
•The theme for World Veterinary Day 2022 is “Strengthening Veterinary Resilience”. This essentially means providing veterinary doctors with all kinds of help, and resources they require in their journey.
•The main objective of the World Veterinary Association is to promote animal health & welfare and eradicate issues related to animal safety and the environment. Veterinarians play the role of advocates for animal health and welfare. Every year, World veterinary day is celebrated to praise the veterinarians for their work.
2) International Jazz Day 2022 Observed on 30 April
•International Jazz Day is celebrated every year around the world on 30 April. This day is observed to promote Jazz and raise awareness about its significance. According to United Nations, Jazz is recogniSed for promoting peace, dialogue among cultures, diversity, and respect for human rights and human dignity, eradicating discrimination, promoting freedom of expression, fostering gender equality, and reinforcing the role of youth for social change.
International Jazz Day 2022: Theme
•The theme for International Jazz Day 2022 is ‘A Call for Global Peace and Unity’. It focuses on the importance of unity and peace through dialogue and diplomacy.
3) Mother’s Day 2022- History and Celebration
•A mother has different names like mommy, mom, and mamma, but every mother has the same role in our lives. She is a pillar of support for every family. She is the caretaker and gives unconditional love to all. The definition of a mother can be different for every individual, for someone she may be a caretaker, for someone she may be a best friend, and for someone, she is the best cook. We celebrate Mother’s Day to pay gratitude and appreciation to every mother in this world. A mother is such a great inspiration that only one day is not enough to appreciate the efforts of a mother.
•This year Mother’s day is on 8 March 2022. The first Mother’s Day was celebrated by Anna Jarvis in the year 1908 to honour her mother Ann Jarvis with a Memorial. Every mother deserves a day dedicated to her by her children and family. She works hard to put everyone together and encourages everyone. Only one day is not enough to celebrate a mother. Mother’s day is celebrated worldwide by expressing our love for our mother.
4) Maharashtra became India’s 1st state to develop Migration Tracking System app
•Maharashtra became the first state in India to develop a website-based Migration Tracking System (MTS) application to track the movement of migrant workers through individual unique identity numbers. The MTS project aims to ensure the continuity of Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) for migrant beneficiaries, such as children under the age of 18, lactating mothers, and pregnant women who are registered with Anganwadi centres.
•Migration workers will be tracked to ensure the portability of the ICDS for their families in their destination districts within or outside the state until their return to their native places. ICDS is a centrally sponsored scheme implemented by the Ministry of Women and Child Development. It was launched in 1975.
5) Telangana and Google have inked a MOU on Digital Economy for Young and Women entrepreneurs
•Google signed a MoU with the Telangana government to bring the benefits of the digital economy to the state’s young and women entrepreneurs, and officially off the construction of its three million square foot headquarters in the city from the ground up.
6) Air Asia to merge by Tata Group with Air India 2022
•The Tata Group has been attempting to improve Air India’s performance since its takeover in January 2022. That includes its on-time performance. The Tata’s most recent job is to consolidate their aviation operations. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has already been notified of Air India’s intention to merge with AirAsia India.
7) Ardeshir B K Dubash honoured with highest diplomatic award by Peru Government
•The former Honorary Consul of Peru in Mumbai, Ardeshir B.K. Dubash has received the Order of “Merit in the Diplomatic Service of Peru Jose Gregorio Paz Soldan” by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Peru. Ambassador of Peru in India, H.E. Carlos R. Polo has conferred the award to him. Dubash was designated as Honorary Consul of Peru in 1973. The Order of Merit was instituted in 2004, named after José Gregorio Paz Soldán.
•Dubash was designated as Honorary Consul of Peru on August 13th, 1973. His career as Honorary Consul, which spans almost half a century, has seen 14 Presidents of Peru and 15 Ambassadors of Peru to India.
8) US lists India, Russia and China on its intellectual property protection priority watch list
•India, China, Russia, and four other countries were added to the US’s annual ‘Priority Watch List’ for intellectual property protection and enforcement. Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, and Venezuela are among the other countries on the Office of the United States Trade Representative’s list.
9) New Space India Limited and OneWeb signed for satellite launches
•One Web, a Bharti group company, and New Space India Limited, the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation, have signed a satellite launch deal. The Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, is expected to launch New Space in 2022.
10) AAHAR 2022: Asia’s biggest international food and hospitality fair last day today
•The Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) in partnership with the India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO) is hosting Asia’s largest international food and hospitality fair, AAHAR-2022, at New Delhi’s Pragati Maidan. More than 80 exporters from various agricultural product segments, including geographical indication products, processed food, organic, and frozen food products, will attend the event, according to the Commerce and Industry Ministry.
11) BRO’s Atal Tunnel Receives ‘Best Infrastructure Project’ Award
•The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) engineering marvel, Atal Tunnel, built-in Rohtang in Himachal Pradesh, received the Indian Building Congress (IBC) ‘Best Infrastructure Project’ award in New Delhi. More than thirty state-of-the-art infrastructure projects were nominated for the award. The IBC jury selected the strategic tunnel as the ‘Best Project for Excellence in Built Environment’ in 2021.
12) Emmanuel Macron is elected as French President for another term
•Emmanuel Macron hopes to go right back to work on domestic and foreign policy after gaining another five years in the French presidential palace — but he will soon face vital parliamentary elections in which he may struggle to maintain his majority. The official results of the presidential election will be released by the Constitutional Council, and Macron will hold a Cabinet meeting.
Rau’s IAS Prelims Compass Polity and Governance 2022 PDF
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10:59
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INSIGHTS IAS PT Exclusive 2022 International Relations PDF
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10:53
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The HINDU Notes – 30th April 2022
aditya
10:47
📰 Heatwaves linked to man-made climate change: TNQ-Janelia webinar
The three millimetre rise in sea level could drive a greater number of extreme climate events such as floods that could devastate coastal India, warns scientist. However, nature-based solutions such as increasing forest area could be done as part of India’s climate adaptation program.
•India is gripped in the throes of a long spell of heatwaves and there is compelling evidence that a significant portion of it is due to human-induced climate change, said scientists who were part of an online webinar on climate change organised as part of the TNQ-Janelia Climate Change Summit on Friday.
•Three eminent scientists with expertise in how atmospheric, land and ocean systems were influenced by greenhouse gas emissions, drew upon their decades of research to explain how the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere exacerbated temperatures in the oceans and the land and caused increased glacier melt, heightened sea level rise and led to changes in the biosphere.
•Fiamma Straneo of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego drew upon her research in Greenland to demonstrate evidence of warming waters around glaciers and how it was heating even ice sheets, thereby accelerating warming.
•Though global sea-levels were rising only three millimetre a year, it would be a mistake, said Dr Straneo, to dismiss it as a minor rise because even those increases were responsible for driving greater numbers of extreme climate events such as floods that could devastate coastal regions, particularly in India.
•Her colleague at Scripps, Veerbhadran Ramanathan, referenced a simulation study jointly undertaken at the Princeton University, Columbia University and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that said if carbon emissions were unchecked, half the planet would be in severe drought by the century end. There was already a three-fold rise in extreme precipitation events in India, a decrease in rainfall in North India and increase in precipitation in south India, he said citing research out of India. Along with carbon dioxide emissions, pollution from biomass burning combined with this and caused 1.5 million deaths annually in India.
•“India could cut its pollution by half just by providing clean cooking fuel to rural households in the Indo-Gangetic plains. Societal transformation, mitigating carbon dioxide emissions and adaption were all necessary to buffer against climate change,” he added.
•The world would be “fooling itself” if it thought it could contain global temperature rise to 1.5C, as the Paris Agreement aspires, and India should prepare a 10-year plan to ensure that India’s poor, who stood to be most affected by climate change, were protected from heatwaves and wildfires, he opined.
•Yadvinder Malhi of the University of Oxford, and an ecologist, drew connections between the biosphere and its role in absorbing carbon dioxide emissions. Nearly a third of emitted carbon dioxide didn’t make it to the atmosphere as they were absorbed back into the soil by forests and other vegetation, thus slowing knock-on temperature rise. Therefore, nature-based solutions, such as increasing forest area, would be valuable to India’s climate adaptation programmes. India, because of its population density, would be hard-put to find regions where forests could be expanded, he said, citing research work conducted on land use change in India since the 1700s but there were regions in Central and Eastern India that could be employed for the purpose. “Nature-based solutions are not just for tackling climate change but also doing it in a way that is ethical, just and also increasing biodiversity,” said Malhi.
📰 A step that would trigger language phonocide
Friday, April 29, 2022
Rau’s IAS Prelims Compass Science and Technology 2022 PDF
aditya
12:08
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The HINDU Notes – 29th April 2022
aditya
11:59
📰 Are freebies affecting the economic growth of India?
There are subsidies that are productive and then there are those that are wasteful
•In an address delivered at the Delhi School of Economics last week, N.K. Singh, the chairperson of the 15th Finance Commission, warned about how the race to provide freebies to voters could be a “quick path to fiscal disaster”. He also noted that freebies could be harmful for the long-term economic growth of the country and emphasised the need to distinguish between productive and unproductive forms of welfare spending. In a conversation moderated by Prashanth Perumal, Renu Kohli and Himanshu examine whether there is a case for doing away with freebie culture. Edited excerpts:
Is there a trend of deterioration in the financial situation of States? Are freebies the reason for it?
•Renu Kohli: When the argument is framed as freebies versus fiscal stability, a binary answer is often not possible. So let me just clarify that there are different kinds of freebies. Some of them are extremely justifiable, some of them are not. As far as fiscal stability and financial deterioration is concerned, if we see the welfare spending of the States, and if it is sustainable and affordable, then that is fine as it is the prerogative of the political executive. Having said that, we must understand what exactly we mean by fiscal stability. Broadly speaking, in common parlance, fiscal stability is a situation in which the government is able to deploy its fiscal policy towards long-term economic objectives, which are high employment and growth rates. That leads us to measures of fiscal stability. If you see the study of the State finances conducted by the Reserve Bank of India, you find that from 2005 onwards, in aggregate, States have adhered to the limit in terms of their gross fiscal deficit, which is the gap between the total revenue of the State and the total expenditure.
•The mandate is under the ceiling of the fiscal responsibility legislation, which allows them to keep the gross fiscal deficit within an aggregate limit of 3% of GDP. The only years — apart from the pandemic years — when these limits were breached were 2009-10, 2015-16 and 2016-17. 2009-10 was a crisis year and 2015-16 and 2016-17 were years of power sector reforms in which power sector debt was taken over by the state governments. Secondly, what is the trajectory of the outstanding debt? Outstanding debt reduction has actually progressed quite well in the case of the States. From a high of 31% of GDP, it came down by almost 10 percentage points to about 22% of GDP by 2014-15. After that, it has inched up about five percentage points by FY 2020. If we compare this with the Central government’s track record, the Central government has never been able to adhere to fiscal deficit limits. Secondly, when it comes to debt reduction, the Central government’s debt-to-GDP limit is supposed to be 40%, but it has now crossed 90% of GDP. So, the problem of fiscal stability is more pressing at the level of the Centre.
•Himanshu: We need to look at the definition of freebies itself. The term “freebies” gives you an impression of something that is a dole or a gift given to the population. But then freebies can be of different varieties. Certain kinds of expenditure that are done under populist pressures or with elections in mind may be questionable. But given that in the last 30 years there has been rising inequality and also some level of distress in the last decade, some kind of relief to the population in the form of subsidies may not be unjustified. It may actually be necessary for the economy to continue on its growth path. On the fiscal front, given that after 2017, when we have the goods and services tax (GST) which is more or less taking away the power of the States to generate revenues and given that responsibility for the majority of the welfare expenditure lies in the domain of the States, the hands of the States are squeezed. So, fiscal stability is not just about expenditure but also about revenues. And mind you, the Centre also engages in giving out freebies not just to the poor people but also to a large number of corporations.
N.K. Singh claims that poverty reduction has accelerated under the Modi government. How much of this is due to growth versus the welfare measures taken by the Centre?
•Himanshu: We don't have official poverty estimates after 2011-12. The only estimates that we have are from a number of independent studies by private researchers. And I completely disagree with N.K. Singh’s claim that the rate of poverty reduction has doubled under the Modi government. None of the studies, including the IMF study, the World Bank study, or consumption surveys, confirm that. In fact, there is at least one study that concludes that the rate of poverty reduction has slowed down under the Modi government. There is also a consensus that the welfare measures such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and the public distribution system, have contributed to poverty reduction. The strengthening of these programmes has definitely contributed to poverty reduction. This does not mean that growth does not have a role to play in reducing poverty. If the growth during the Modi years was as good as it was before that, then probably the rate of poverty reduction may have been higher. So, I don't think this is a question of welfare versus growth. I'm a little hesitant to call welfare measures as freebies because they may be essential not just for poverty reduction but also for growth. Remember, we are in a slowdown simply because demand in the economy overall has collapsed. And I think welfare spending has been able to at least prevent consumption demand from falling any further.
•Renu Kohli: The very idea of estimating poverty on the basis of private final consumption on the basis of national accounts was rejected long ago. So, estimating poverty on this basis is simply unacceptable. There has also been no consumption expenditure survey. We have to question estimates of poverty coming from both the World Bank and the IMF. This is for two reasons. One is that at a time when the government is claiming that formalisation has increased, there's no basis to believe that income distribution has not worsened as an outcome of formalisation. Secondly, at a time when free food is being given, where is the proof that the underlying income of the poor has remained intact in the absence of any consumer expenditure survey? There's no way that this can be established. Also, the fact that the latest survey was junked and has never been published creates the suspicion that poverty may have risen.
What proportion of spending by States is productive rather than aimed simply at gaining votes in elections?
•Himanshu: Well, in a democracy where political parties try and get votes from every section of the population, there is obviously a tendency for State governments to try and provide some kind of relief to voters. I am certainly in favour of expanding, for example, the MGNREGA type of spending and subsidy in the form of food ration schemes. These go a long way in increasing the productive capacity of the population. So, they're not just doles. They build a healthier and a stronger workforce, which is a necessary part of any growth strategy. That is similar to a State spending on education or health. One can call these as an investment for the long-term, for improving the productive capacity of the population. But yes, there are obviously cases where State governments have gone astray and have gone into providing all sorts of freebies or gifts. But when it comes to simply giving away loan waivers, I am not in favour of these because they have undesired consequences such as destroying the whole credit culture and it blurs the very basic question as to why is it that a large majority of the farming community is getting into a debt trap repeatedly.
•We need to be talking about some of these issues in the larger context of whether they actually contribute to growth. Do they actually contribute to poverty reduction, or are these simply being done to get short-term benefits at the cost of long-term damage? We know about free electricity that is being given in various States to the rural communities which has sometimes led to disastrous consequences in terms of declining water table, wastage of electricity and various other things. There are nuances to the issue, and one will have to get into those nuances to take a final call on whether a certain welfare spending is necessary or not. Lastly, some people have been questioning subsidies going into education, such as for laptops and other things. Some of them have now become necessities for increasing productivity, knowledge, skills, and various other things. So, we need a more nuanced understanding of the issue.
•Renu Kohli: There is absolutely no justification for promising 200, 300 or whatever number of units of power to middle class or urban populations who are by and large regular income earners. I have a slightly different perspective on loan waivers in the light of agriculture being a very costly and extremely risky venture. It's one of the riskiest activities to undertake compared to, say, manufacturing or any of the services segment. And there are always ways to restructure bank loans to medium and small enterprises in the event of a downturn in the business cycle or any kind of extraordinary shock. Now, we can talk about loan waivers in the light of weather and other risks and also the fact that crop insurance has by and large always failed to offset shocks in agriculture. Also, we are in a position where direct benefits transfer can be used to deliver loan waivers directly to distressed farmers and the cost of the waiver is immediately taken on the government’s budget and financial intermediaries are not involved. Secondly, the tendency towards unproductive spending is not more pronounced at the level of the States as compared to the Centre. If we look at social sector expenditure, there is a rising trend at the level of the States, but then the rising trend at the level of the Centre is extraordinarily high. And if you look at the core sector schemes, then the revenue spending component is as high as 65-68%. So almost two-third of the expenditure is revenue expenditure. The issue of unproductive and productive spending should be looked at in this light and in the light of mounting interest payments.
📰 Revisiting death penalty jurisprudence
Rau’s IAS Prelims Compass International Relations 2022 PDF
aditya
07:20
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