aditya
07:40
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Tuesday, September 13, 2022
Monday, September 12, 2022
Daily Current Affairs, 12th September 2022
aditya
19:27
1) United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation: 12 September
•The United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation is observed annually on September 12 to highlight the importance of cooperation among people and countries in the global South. The day also aims at spreading awareness on the social, economic, and political developments made in the Southern region.
2) World First Aid Day 2022: “Lifelong First Aid”
•World First Aid Day is celebrated every year on the second Saturday of September. This year, World First Aid Day 2022 falls on 10 September 2022. The day is recognized worldwide to promote the significance of first aid, which is an important fundamental skill, and to create awareness on a global level about how it can save precious lives. The day was introduced first by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
World First Aid Day 2022: Theme
•According to the IFRC, with this year’s theme, ‘Lifelong First Aid’, we are putting forward the importance of having lifelong first aid learning. No matter the age, having first aid skills and knowledge helps create safer and healthier communities. Children, adults, or older adults should also be able to have a quality first aid education. A lifelong commitment to learning and providing first aid is what makes us more resilient.
3) PM Modi To Attend SCO Meeting With Putin And Xi
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi is all set to travel to Samarkand in Uzbekistan for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit on September 15 and 16. This will be the first in-person summit after June 2019 when the SCO summit was held in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The Prime Minister, sources said, is likely to reach Samarkand on September 14 and return on September 16, according to the current travel schedule.
4) India-Bangladesh Ties, A Model For Bilateral Relation
•India Bangladesh Relations: Ever since the Liberation War in 1971, Bangladesh and India have shared a special relationship not only due to their geographical boundaries, but also largely owing to their shared cultural, linguistic and historical connections. India, during the war for liberation of the Bangladeshi nation, provided much of the required humanitarian as well as militaristic support which was so duly needed at the time. Both the countries since then, have shared a gigantic 4000 km long border which makes Bangladesh India’s longest land sharing neighbour in the South Asian region.
5) Third stealth frigate of project 17A ‘Taragiri’ launched
•‘Taragiri’, the third stealth frigate of the Indian Navy’s Project 17A, was launched in Mumbai, the Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders (MDL) said. This ship has been built using an integrated construction methodology which involves hull block construction in different geographical locations and integration and erection on the slipway at the MDL, it said in a statement.
6) Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari appointed as chairman of PMLA appellate tribunal
•Chief Justice of Madras High Court, the Centre appointed Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari as the Chairman of the Appellate Tribunal under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). Justice Bhandari is due to retire on September 12. The order was issued by the Department of Revenue under the Ministry of Finance. The Tribunal for Forfeiture of Property under the SAFEMA and the PMLA Appellate Tribunal were merged in 2016 through the Finance Act, 2016. The post of the Chairperson of the Tribunal was vacant since September 2019.
•The President of India is pleased to appoint Hon’ble Mr Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari, Chief Justice, Madras High Court as Chairman, Appellate Tribunal under the Smugglers and Foreign Exchange Manipulators Act (SAFEMA) in the salary of Rs. 2,50,000/ -(Fixed) p.m., for a period of 04 years, or till attaining the age of seventy years, or until further orders, whichever is the earliest in terms of Tribunal (Conditions of Service) Rules, 2021 read with Tribunal Reforms Act, 2021.
7) Railway’s Revenue Up 38 % to Rs 95,486.58 Cr
•The overall revenue of Indian Railways at the end of August’22 stood at ₹95,486.58 cr, showing an increase of Rs. 26271.29 cr (38%) over the corresponding period of last year. The revenue from passenger traffic was Rs.25,276.54cr with an increase of ₹13,574.44 cr (116%) over the corresponding period of last year, according to official notes movers released by ministry of railways.
8) U.S. Marks The 21st Anniversary Of 9/11 Horrific Incident
•Americans remembered 9/11 on 11th Sept with readings of victims’ names, volunteer work and other tributes 21 years after the deadliest terror attack on US soil. A tolling bell and a moment of silence began the commemoration at ground zero in New York, where the World Trade Center’s twin towers were destroyed by the hijacked-plane attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Victims’ relatives and dignitaries also convened at the two other attack sites, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
9) North Korea passes law authorising nuclear strikes as form of defence
•North Korea passes law regarding Nuclear Strikes: North Korea has approved a law that gives it the authority to launch a nuclear attack in advance. With the recently passed law, North Korea’s status as a nuclear weapons state has become irreversible. North Korea, this year tested a record number of weapons, including an intercontinental ballistic missile.
10) SETU programme introduced in the US by Piyush Goyal
•SETU programme: To connect entrepreneurs in India with US-based investors, the commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal has created a programme called SETU (Supporting Entrepreneurs in Transformation and Upskilling). With SETU, mentors in the US who are eager to support entrepreneurship can connect with Indian firms that are just getting off the ground. The initiative was introduced during a discussion centred on particular concerns with India’s startup ecosystem.
11) Tokyo hosted India and Japan 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue
•India and Japan 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue: The second India-Japan 2+2 Foreign and Defence Ministerial Meeting was held in Tokyo on September 8, 2022, and was attended by the Indian Minister of Defence, Shri Rajnath Singh, the Indian Minister of External Affairs, Dr. S. Jaishankar, the Japanese Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Mr. HAYASHI Yoshimasa, and the Japanese Minister of Defense, Mr. HAMADA Yasukazu.
The HINDU Notes – 12th September 2022
aditya
16:13
📰 Third stealth frigate of Project 17A Taragiri launched in Mumbai
•Taragiri, the third stealth frigate of the Project 17A, was launched on Sunday by Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Ltd. (MDL) here.
•The ship has been built using integrated construction methodology which involves hull blocks construction in different geographical locations and integration/erection on slipway at MDL.
•The keel of Taragiri was laid on September 10, 2020, and the ship is expected to be delivered by August 2025.
•The vessel is being launched with an approximate launch weight of 3,510 tonnes and is designed by the Indian Navy’s in-house design organisation — the Bureau of Naval Design.
•The MDL had undertaken the detailed design and construction of the ship which was also overseen by the Warship Overseeing Team (Mumbai).
•The first ship of Project 17A, Nilgiri, was launched on September 28, 2019, and is expected to begin sea trials in the first half of 2024.
•According to the officials, the estimated cost of Project 17A is around ₹25,700 crore. The second ship of P17A class Udaygiri was launched on May 17 this year and is expected to start the sea trials during the second half of 2024. The keel of the fourth and the final ship was laid on June 28.
•The ship, 149.02 metre long and 17.8 metre wide, is propelled by a CODOG combination of two gas turbines and two main diesel engines which are designed to achieve a speed of over 28 knots at a displacement of approximately 6,670 tonnes.
•The steel used in the hull construction of P17A frigates is an indigenously developed DMR 249A which is a low carbon micro alloy grade steel manufactured by the SAIL.
•Officials said that the indigenously designed Taragiri will have a state-of-the-art weapons, sensors, an advanced action information system, an integrated platform management system, world class modular living spaces, a sophisticated power distribution system and a host of other advanced features.
•“It will be fitted with a supersonic surface-to-surface missile system and the ship’s air defence capability is designed to counter the threat of the enemy aircraft and the anti-ship cruise missiles would revolve around the vertical launch and long range surface to air missile system,” the officials added.
📰 This was Chile’s ‘disaster in the making’
There are lessons from the Chilean constitutional fiasco, and wiser counsel must prevail the second time around
•The overwhelming rejection of a new constitutional text by Chile’s electorate (over 60% voted against it) has made worldwide headlines. International public opinion is baffled. The Chilean constitutional process has been followed with great interest around the world. Although there were many protests in 2018 and 2019, both in Latin America and elsewhere, the only case in which these protests led to an institutionalised process to renew the country’s social contract was Chile.
A difficult phase
•This meant that, after the violent, unprecedented uprising that took place on October 18, 2019, that led to the burning of churches, looting of supermarkets and the destruction of 118 subway stations, a national agreement was signed by most political parties on November 15 of that year. This included a timeline on the way forward to a new Constitution to replace the one inherited from General Augusto Pinochet, a charter which, after 40 years, continues to rule Chile.
•This timeline included a plebiscite on whether to draft a new Constitution, and by whom; an elected Constitutional Convention (a first in Chilean history) that met for a year to do so; and a final plebiscite (on September 4) to ratify the new text. This period overlapped with the COVID-19 pandemic, which wrought havoc with the established schedule; a sharp recession; and a slew of additional municipal, regional, congressional and presidential elections. At the elections held in May 2021, there were 15,000 candidates on various ballots, in a country of 19 million people.
•Under these circumstances, the very fact that the Constitutional Convention managed to deliver a text within the established deadline, was a bit of a miracle. The fact that its delegates were elected on the basis of gender parity, and that there was a quota of 17 delegates for Chile’s long-ignored indigenous peoples (the 1980 Constitution does not even mention them, though they form 13% of Chile’s population, and two-thirds of Chileans are of mixed European-aboriginal descent), also marked a first. Chile is a highly conservative, patriarchal society that has for long ignored its indigenous roots.
The outcomes
•Yet, why was the new text rejected?
•And Chile is very much an outlier in this. In the past two centuries, 94% of all new constitutional texts submitted to the electorate have been approved. Also, in Chile, four out of five voters in 2020 supported a new fundamental charter. With Chile´s long-standing democratic institutions and civic traditions, it would surely manage this easily, and deliver a text that rose to the occasion, right? Wrong.
•And the reasons for this, and for why the country is now forced to go back to the drawing board, have as much to do with form as with substance, with processes, as with outcomes.
•In the October 2020 plebiscite, voters were asked to choose between a fully elected Constitutional Convention, and one where half the members would be elected, and the other half made up of MPs. Much as the electorate on that occasion voted overwhelmingly (80%) in favour of a new Constitution, it was also endorsed by almost the same majority, having a full, newly elected body to draft it. And this is how Constitutional Assemblies are supposed to work. The era of a small group of unelected white men in smoke-filled rooms writing made-to-measure charters for the government of the day (which is how Chile’s 1980 Constitution was written over seven years) is past.
•And then, a critical turning point was reached. When the time came to choose a formula to elect the delegates to the Constitutional Convention, Chile’s Congress did so along the lines of Congressional districts (thus the 155 delegates, which is the number of MPs in Chile’s Chamber of Deputies). Independents cried out, arguing that they would be at a disadvantage vis-à-vis candidates of political parties. Traditionally, independents have been accommodated in various ways, including allowing them to run as part of a political party.
•This time, however, the Chilean Congress, giving in to what it took to be the esprit du temps, made a cardinal mistake. In setting the election rules for the Constitutional Convention, it allowed independent candidates to form party lists (the ultimate oxymoron), and run under their banner. A motley crowd thus gathered under lists with picturesque names such as the “People’s List” and the “Non-Neutral Independents”.
•At a time when popular support for political institutions in general and political parties in particular were at an all-time low, these lists won many votes, while political parties did not do so well. Christian Democrats, who have had three Presidents in Chilean history, famously elected only one delegate.
•The net result of this misguided feat of electoral engineering was that the motley crowds that formed the lists of independents, plus other Left delegates, won a two-thirds majority in the Convention. This allowed them to elect the chair, to ignore the right-wing delegates and whatever they proposed, and otherwise engage in the sort of shenanigans individuals not accountable to anybody are bound to. One of them video-taped himself, while voting remotely, from the shower; another, who was almost elected as chair of the Convention, faked a non-existent cancer, which he parlayed not only to get votes but also to raise funds. Identity politics and victimhood took centre stage, while narcissism ran amok.
•The first three or four months of the convention were wasted in endless deliberations about the fate of the “political prisoners” (those in prison as a result of crimes committed during the social uprising ) and in extended exchanges on the Convention’s internal procedures. The media, never very fond of the whole exercise in the first place, had a feast. Amazingly, the Convention initially decided not to invite four of Chile’s former Presidents to the closing ceremony. Although the Convention began with high approval ratings, by the time it was done, public opinion had turned against it.
•Once the seven specialised committees began their work, time was short, and the text ended up being more an exercise in hopeful wishing than anything else. The abolition of Chile’s two-centuries old Senate, the weakening of the judiciary, and the establishment of a powerful “Congress of Deputies”, seemingly designed ex profeso to clash with the Executive, are part and parcel of an odd smorgasbord of offerings that betray little understanding of how political systems work.
Faultlines
•Yes, the 388-article, somewhat repetitive, text of the new Constitution, that would have been one of the longest in the world, left much to be desired. The shift from totally ignoring Chile’s aboriginal peoples, to proclaiming the country to be a “plurinational state” with separate judicial systems, was too much of a good thing. Ignoring the proposals of the Right, and not aiming for a charter that represents all Chileans was a cardinal sin.
•But the key lesson of the Chilean constitutional fiasco is a different one. Good intentions are fine and well, but procedures and professionalism matter. In fact, it may make the difference between failure and success. In twisting rules designed for political parties in order to favour independents who are accountable to no one, the Chilean Congress opened the door for the ‘disaster in the making’ that was Chile’s Constitutional Convention. Let us hope that the second time around wiser counsel prevails.
📰 India-Bangladesh ties, a model for bilateral cooperation
Sunday, September 11, 2022
UPSC CSE Prelims Previous Year Question Paper Download
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Saturday, September 10, 2022
Yojana Magazine September 2022 ( English ) PDF
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13:46
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The HINDU Notes – 10th September 2022
aditya
13:40
📰 Centre bans export of broken rice due to domestic demand
Rice production may fall due to a drop in paddy sowing area this kharif season
•The Centre has banned the export of broken rice, mostly used as animal feed and as a component for ethanol production, in view of the domestic demand and the production scenario of rice.
•The export of broken rice rose by 4,178% during April to August from the figure during the corresponding period in 2019.
•India exports broken rice mainly to China, Senegal, Vietnam, Djibouti and Indonesia. It exported about 21.31 lakh tonne of broken rice in the past five months.
•Justifying the reason to ban export, Sudhanshu Pandey, Secretary, Department of Food and Public Distribution, said on Friday that the move would ensure adequate availability of broken rice for the domestic poultry industry and for other animal feedstock and for producing ethanol under the ethanol blending programme.
•Mr. Pandey said the country was likely to witness a shortfall of about 6% in area and production of paddy during the ongoing kharif season.
•“The final area for kharif in 2021 was 403.58 lakh hectares. So far, an area of 325.39 lakh hectares has been covered. In domestic production, 60 to 70 lakh tonnes estimated production loss is anticipated but due to good monsoon rain in some pockets, the production loss may reduce to 40 to 50 tonnes. However, this would be at par with last year’s production,” Mr. Pandey said.
•“There has been a rise in global demand for broken rice due to geo-political scenario which has impacted price movement of commodities. The export of broken rice has increased by 43 times in the past four years,” he said, adding that about 21.31 lakh tonnes of broken rice was exported during April-August compared with just 0.41 lakh tonne in the corresponding period in 2018-19.
•He said in the current ethanol season year, against the contracted quantity of 36 crore litres, only 16.36 crore litres had been supplied by distilleries due to low availability of broken rice. Also, domestic price of broken rice, which was ₹16 per kg in the open market, had increased to ₹22 per kg because of higher international prices.
📰 End of an era
The Queen’s passing could have an impact on the mission, prospects of the Commonwealth
•The passing of Queen Elizabeth II, the United Kingdom’s longest serving monarch who reigned for over 70 years, marks the end of an era for British monarchy. Her tenure as Head of State began during the early post-War years and witnessed a paradigm-changing shift in the balance of political power from the British empire to the Commonwealth, and the emergence of free, post-colonial nations. During her time on the throne the Cold War came to an end and so too did the U.K.’s 47-year experiment as a member of the European Union. No fewer than 15 U.K. Prime Ministers came and went while she reigned, from Winston Churchill to Liz Truss. Her rule was not without controversy. On the personal front she suffered an “annus horribilis” in 1992, when the marriages of three of her children broke down and Windsor Castle was damaged by fire. In the aftermath of the death of King Charles’ former wife, Diana, in a car accident in Paris in 1997, criticism was levelled at the monarchy for shying away from public response. Despite these occasional setbacks, Queen Elizabeth has consistently enjoyed a high favourability rating among the British public, 75% according to a recent poll. Observers attribute this to her stubborn silence on political issues, a “closed book” approach that allowed subjects, critics, and outsiders to project onto her and the royal family, whatever they wished to.
•Her passing however raises complex questions regarding the state of the monarchy vis-à-vis the Commonwealth realms and the prognosis for the latter’s continuing evolution in a vastly different socioeconomic milieu compared to the Elizabethan era. Consider, for example, the debate in Australia, where there is a popular movement to reposition the country as a Republic, particularly in the context of the administration of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese being keen to set up a treaty with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. In 2021, Barbados became the 18th country to remove the British monarch from the role of head of state. Other than these two nations and the U.K., the British monarch remains the head of the state in Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, The Bahamas, and Tuvalu. At least six Caribbean nations have hinted at following the Barbados example. However, the broader Commonwealth group of 56 nations, of which India and other South Asian countries are members, remains intact, thanks in large part to the critical role that the Queen played in championing the organisation and maintaining its relevance. As epochal was her rule, so too could the impact of her passing be on the mission and prospects of the Commonwealth.
📰 The stark reasons why Bengaluru is sinking
