Online Current Affairs

NEWS

13 DECEMBER 2019

Daily Current Affairs based on ‘The Hindu’ newspaper as per the syllabus of UPSC Civil Services Examination (Prelims and Mains) Compiled by Mrs. Bilquees Khatri.

GS II: POLITY – BILL/ACT

Anti-CAB protests rage through Assam, 2 killed in police firing

• The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill got the assent of President Ram Nath Kovind, a late night notification said on Thursday, even as violent protests against it continued in several districts in the Brahmaputra Valley. An indefinite curfew was imposed in Guwahati, Dibrugarh and Tezpur.
• Two persons were killed in firing by security forces in Guwahati. Incidents of police firing were reported from several areas of the State capital, including Hatigaon, Lachitnagar, Bashishta, and Lalungaon. Sources at the Gauhati Medical College and Hospital said 11 people were brought with gunshot injuries.
• The government extended by 48 hours the suspension of mobile Internet and data services in the affected districts. As thousands of protesters took to the streets, crowds attacked the offices of the BJP, the RSS and the AGP, and the houses of MLAs belonging to the ruling coalition. BJP legislator Binod Hazarika’s house in Dibrugarh district was set on fire and Batadraba MLA Angoorlata Deka’s house in Morigaon district was damaged in stone-throwing.
• Five persons, including a police officer, sustained bullet wounds when a mob attacked the house of Adivasi BJP leader and Union Minister Rameshwar Teli in Duliajan late on Wednesday. Educational institutions in the affected districts have been closed till December 22.
• As the protests spiralled, the Centre repatriated senior IPS officer of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre G.P. Singh, posted at the National Investigation Agency. The orders from Home Minister Amit Shah came after his meeting with Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Wednesday night.
• Air, train and bus services were cancelled.
• A government order said Mr. Singh was posted as ADGP, Law and Order, pending repatriation from central deputation “in the interest of public service”.
• The State has indicated a crackdown on protesters with more than 5,000 paramilitary personnel, besides the Army, deployed in sensitive areas. It has also instructed the local authorities to take action.
• RTI activist and peasant leader Akhil Gogoi was arrested in Jorhat district as a preventive measure, officials said. A senior official of the Jorhat administration said Mr. Gogoi was taken into custody to avoid any “untoward incident” in the district, as well as other parts of the State by his supporters.
• As protests continued, Assam Assembly Speaker Hitendra Nath Goswami in statement said doubts over the CAB were not baseless, and there was a strong possibility of it creating divisions if implemented.
• A government order said Mr. Singh was posted as ADGP, Law and Order, pending repatriation from central deputation “in the interest of public service”.
• The State has indicated a crackdown on protesters with more than 5,000 paramilitary personnel, besides the Army, deployed in sensitive areas. It has also instructed the local authorities to take action.
• RTI activist and peasant leader Akhil Gogoi was arrested in Jorhat district as a preventive measure, officials said. A senior official of the Jorhat administration said Mr. Gogoi was taken into custody to avoid any “untoward incident” in the district, as well as other parts of the State by his supporters.
• As protests continued, Assam Assembly Speaker Hitendra Nath Goswami in statement said doubts over the CAB were not baseless, and there was a strong possibility of it creating divisions if implemented.

GS III: ECONOMY – INDICATORS

IIP shrinks again, inflation accelerates

• Industrial activity contracted for the third consecutive month in October by 3.8%, driven by a fall in activity across sectors, according to official data released on Thursday.
• Separate data showed that retail inflation had surged to a 40-month high of 5.54% in November, driven by rising food inflation.
• The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) had contracted by 4.3% in September and 1.1% in August.
• Growth in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) accelerated in November for the fourth consecutive month. It stood at 4.62% in October.
• This combination of contraction in industrial activity and rising inflation has led experts to fear that India is entering a phase of stagflation (a situation in which there is persistent high inflation combined with stagnant or declining demand).
• “The momentum of IIP remaining in the negative zone has continued while CPI inflation, led by food and vegetable inflation, has crossed 5.5%,” D.K. Srivastava, chief policy adviser at EY India, said. “This is developing into a classic situation of stagflation.”
• Within the IIP, the mining sector shrunk by 8% in October compared with a contraction of 8.5% in the previous month. The manufacturing sector contracted for the third consecutive month in October, by 2.1%, compared with a contraction of 3.9% in September.
• The electricity sector contracted sharply by 12.2%, compared with a contraction of 2.6% in the previous month.
• “The growth story is driven by a continuing fall in demand, and the inflation spike is driven by seasonal factors,” Mr. Srivastava added. “If the government had anticipated this, it should have filled in the gaps by imports and inflation would not have spiked.”
• Within the CPI, food inflation climbed to 8.66% in November compared with 6.93% in October, which itself was a 39-month high.

GS II: SOCIAL – RIGHTS

SC forms panel to probe Hyderabad ‘encounter’

• The Supreme Court on Thursday set up an inquiry commission led by its former judge, Justice V.S. Sirpurkar, to probe the circumstances of the police ‘encounter’ killing of four persons accused in the gang-rape and murder of a veterinarian in Hyderabad.
• A Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Sharad A. Bobde, asked the inquiry commission, which includes former Bombay High Court judge, Justice Rekha Baldota, and the former CBI Director, D.R. Karthikeyan, to complete its investigation in six months. Advocate K. Parameshwar was appointed the counsel for the Inquiry Commission. The commission will sit in Hyderabad.
• The apex court has, meanwhile, stayed the proceedings in the Telangana High Court and the NHRC into the incident.
• “We are of the considered view that there should be some enquiry,” CJI Bobde observed.
• The Telangana government, represented by senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, welcomed an impartial probe.
• The government said it had registered an FIR against the four dead accused for attempting to murder policemen. “We don’t think your trial for non-existing, dead accused will take you anywhere,” CJI Bobde drily dismissed the submission. In fact the court found an FIR against dead people “rather odd” as it was obvious that “no prosecution is contemplated against dead persons who can neither be tried nor convicted”.
• The four accused were taken to the scene of the crime around 60 km from Hyderabad in the early hours of December 6 for a re-construction of crime scene. The Telangana government stuck to its version that the accused men surprised their police escort there, grabbed their guns and tried to kill the policemen to escape custody.

GS II: POLITY – CAG

CAG hints at massive diversion of LPG

• The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, in a report on the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), has highlighted the risk of diversion of domestic LPG cylinders for commercial use, as 1.98 lakh beneficiaries had an average annual consumption of more than 12 cylinders.
• The CAG said this level of consumption seemed improbable in view of the BPL (below poverty line) status of such beneficiaries.
• “Similarly, 13.96 lakh beneficiaries consumed 3 to 41 refills in a month. Further, IOCL [Indian Oil Corporation Limited] and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) in 3.44 lakh instances issued 2 to 20 refills in a day to a PMUY beneficiary having single-bottle cylinder connection,” it said.
• The scheme was launched in May 2016 to safeguard the health of women and children by providing them with clean cooking fuel. Its target was revised to eight crore LPG connections.
• As on 31 March 2019, the oil marketing companies had issued 7.19 crore connections, which is about 90% of the target to be achieved till March 2020.
• To rule out existing LPG connections in beneficiaries’ household, de-duplication was to be carried out based on Aadhaar of all family members.
• “Audit noticed that out of 3.78 crore LPG connections, 1.60 crore (42%) connections were issued only on the basis of beneficiary Aadhaar which remained a deterrent in de-duplication,” said the report.
• Errors in identification
• The CAG said laxity in identification of beneficiaries was noticed as 9,897 connections were issued against Abridged Household List Temporary Identification Numbers (AHL TINs), where names of all family members and the beneficiary were blank in the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC)-2011 list.
• Lack of input validation check in the IOCL software allowed issue of 0.80 lakh connections to beneficiaries aged below 18. Data analysis also revealed that 8.59 lakh connections were released to beneficiaries who were minor as per the SECC-2011 data, which was in violation of PMUY guidelines and LPG Control Order, 2000.
• It also exposed a mismatch in the name of 12.46 lakh beneficiaries between the PMUY database and SECC-2011 data. The CAG, on field visits, also found that connections were given to “unintended” persons.
• The audit also highlighted the delay of more than 365 days in the installation of 4.35 lakh connections against the stipulated time period of seven days.

GS II: GOVERNANCE – POLICY

‘Lotus on passports is security feature’

• A day after Opposition members in the Lok Sabha raised the issue of the lotus being printed on new passports, the Ministry of External Affairs on Thursday said it was part of the enhanced security features to identify fake passports. The MEA said the measure would involve the use of other national symbols as well on rotation.
• Raising the issue during Zero Hour, M.K. Raghavan of the Congress said the matter had been highlighted in a newspaper report. He alleged that this was “further saffronisation” of the government establishment, with the lotus being the election symbol of the BJP.
• Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said, “This symbol is our national flower and is part of the enhanced security features to identify fake passports.”
• These security features have been introduced as part of the International Civil Aviation Organisation guidelines, he said.
• “Apart from the lotus, other national symbols will be used on rotation. Right now, it is lotus and then next month there will be something else. These are symbols connected with India, such as the national flower or the national animal,” he said.

GS I: GEOGRAPHY

IBM’s weather forecast system to tap users’ phones for data

• International technology company IBM plans to make a high-resolution weather forecast model that will also rely on user-generated data to improve the accuracy of forecasts available in India.
• IBM GRAF, as the forecast system is called, can generate forecasts at a resolution of 3 kilometres. This is a significantly higher resolution than the 12-kilometre models used by the India Meteorological Department to generate forecasts.
• These weather forecast techniques rely on dynamic modelling and collect a trove of atmospheric and ocean data, crunch it in supercomputers and generate forecasts over desired time-frames — three days, weekly or fortnightly. “From the tests we’ve done so far, our forecasts are 30% more accurate than those generated by 12-km resolution models,” Cameron Clayton, general manager, IBM Watson Media and Weather, said at a press conference here on Thursday.
• For its forecasts, IBM relies on a global network of sensors — automatic weather station, data bouys and barometric pressure data from cellphones of users who’ve downloaded the application. Weather forecasts will be available to individuals for free download and can be used by farmers.
• A study by IBM found that 72% Indians believed that the local economy had been disrupted by a severe weather event in the past year and 89% were concerned that climate change could negatively impact the economy.

GS II: SOCIAL – UNREST

SC dismisses 19 Ayodhya review pleas

• A five-judge Bench of the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sharad A. Bobde, on Thursday dismissed 19 petitions seeking a review of the court’s November 9 verdict permitting the construction of a temple on the land in Ayodhya where Babri Masjid stood before it was razed on December 6, 1992, by kar sevaks.
• “We have carefully gone through the review petitions and the connected papers filed therewith. We do not find any ground, whatsoever, to entertain the same. The review petitions are, accordingly, dismissed… Applications for listing of review petitions in open court are dismissed,” the Bench, which considered the review pleas in an in-chamber session, said. Review petitions are usually examined for merit in the chambers.
• If the judges find any reason for a review, they would order open court hearings, during which lawyers from both sides would present their arguments.
• ‘Several illegalities’
• Among the review petitions is one filed by Maulana Syed Ashhad Rashidi, president of the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind. He said the judgment rewarded “the several illegalities committed by the Hindu parties, particularly in 1934 [damaging the domes of the Babri Masjid], 1949 [desecrating the Babri Masjid] and 1992 [demolition of the Babri Masjid]”.
• A petition filed by 40 prominent persons said the verdict had a direct impact on the secular fabric of the country. They include Irfan Habib, Harsh Mander, Farah Naqvi, Nandini Sundar, Shabnam Hashmi, John Dayal and Jayati Ghosh, among others.
• The verdict had declined the Muslims’ claim of title over the disputed land but allowed them five acres somewhere else in the area as compensation.
• The unanimous judgment was originally delivered by a Bench of then CJI Ranjan Gogoi, Justices S.A. Bobde, D.Y. Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan and S. Abdul Nazeer. Interestingly, it did not carry the name of the judge who wrote it for the Bench.
• Justice Bobde succeeded Justice Gogoi as CJI on the latter’s retirement in mid-November and Justice Sanjiv Khanna replaced Justice Gogoi on the Review Bench.

GS II: POLITY – STATES – J&K

Article 370 petitioners seek a larger Bench

• The petitioners challenging the abrogation of special status of Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday urged the five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court to refer the case to a larger Bench.
• Appearing before the Constitution Bench led by Justice N.V. Ramana, senior advocate Dinesh Dwivedi, appearing for economist Prem Shankar Jha,, said there was a “direct conflict” of opinion between two judgments, one of 1959 and the other of 1970, about the nature and extent of Article 370. The President’s notification on August 5 abrogated the special status of J&K by blunting Article 370, which sources the privileges accorded to the erstwhile State in accordance with the assurances which was made in the Instrument of Accession signed between the J&K ruler and the Government of India.
• However, the two past judgments, both by five-judge Benches of the Supreme Court, gave contradictory viewpoints on Article 370. The 1959 one, Prem Nath Kaul versus State of Jammu and Kashmir, indicated that Article 370 was applicable only till the J&K Constitution was enacted on January 26, 1957. After that, no further changes could be made to the relationship between India and J&K.
• But the judgment reported in the 1970 Sampath Prakash versus State of Jammu and Kashmir case ignored the 1959 verdict and concluded that Article 370 was permanent in nature and a “perennial source of power” for the Centre to govern its relationship with the State of J&K.

GS II: INTERNATIONAL – USA

Trump signs order targeting anti-Semitism at universities

• S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday to prohibit federal funding for colleges and universities that allow anti-Semitism, but the move drew some criticism for potentially limiting free speech.
• The order would extend protections against discrimination under the 1964 Civil Rights Act to people subjected to anti-Semitism on college campuses.
• “This is our message to universities: If you want to accept the tremendous amount of federal dollars that you get every year, you must reject anti-Semitism. It’s very simple,” Mr. Trump said during a Hanukkah reception at the White House.
• Title 6 of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, colour, and national origin in programmes and activities receiving federal financial assistance. “This action makes clear that Title 6 of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits the federal funding of universities and other institutions that engage in discrimination, applies to institutions that traffic in anti-Semitic hate,” Mr. Trump said. J Street, a liberal Jewish-American lobbying group, criticised the order.
• “This executive order, like the stalled congressional legislation it is based on, appears designed less to combat anti-Semitism than to have a chilling effect on free speech and to crack down on campus critics of Israel,” it said in a statement.
• The Anti-Defamation League, which tracks acts of racism, welcomed the order.

GS II: INTERNATIONAL – ASIA

Fire on Russia’s only aircraft carrier kills one

• Russia’s only aircraft carrier suffered a massive fire on Thursday that killed one crew member, injured 11 people and significantly damaged the ship.
• The fire on the Admiral Kuznetsov broke out during welding work at a shipyard in the Arctic port of Murmansk and spread quickly through the carrier’s internal compartments. The ship’s crew and emergency teams spent the day battling the blaze.
• The military said one crew member died while battling the fire, and another one is missing.
• The Investigative Committee, the nation’s top state investigative agency, has opened a probe into a possible violation of safety rules.
• The Admiral Kuznetsov has been plagued by breakdowns and setbacks since its launch in 1985. The massive blaze follows a 70-tonne crane crashing onto the Admiral Kuznetsov’s deck in October 2018.
• Thursday’s fire will further push back the work to fit the ship with modern control systems and weapons.

GS III: ECONOMY – DISINVESTMENT

IOC, OIL in race for Bharat Petroleum’s Numaligarh unit

• Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. (IOCL) and Oil India Limited (OIL) are in the race to buy Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited’s (BPCL’s) 61.65% stake in Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL), according to sources in the know of the development.
• The strategic sale of the government’s 53.39% stake in BPCL would be done without NRL, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said last month. Hence, the government has to first demerge NRL from BPCL.
• NRL owns and operates a 3-million-tonne per annum (MTPA) refinery in Numaligarh in Golaghat district of Assam and has plans for a threefold growth in its refining capacity to 9 MTPA at an investment of ₹22,500 crore to meet the rising fuel demand in the North East.
• According to Moody’s Investors Service, the sale will reduce BPCL’s capital spending as it is one of the largest projects that the firm is working on.
• “We will definitely look at (NRL),” an IOCL board member said, without elaborating. BPCL holds 61.65% stake in the NRL while OIL and Assam Government hold 26% and 12.35%, respectively.
• Eyeing synergies
• For upstream OIL, NRL will be an opportunity to become an integrated energy company. Acquiring BPCL’s 61.65% stake will increase OIL’s stake in NRL to 87.25%.
• A senior OIL official told The Hindu, “Given an opportunity, we would like to buy BPCL’s stake in NRL as we already have 26% stake there. We both have a lot of synergies.” NRL recently acquired a participating interest in two oil blocks in Assam from OIL, marking NRL’s presence across all sectors — upstream, midstream and downstream.

13^th DECEMBER 2019

QUESTION BANK

(1 Question)

Answer questions in NOT MORE than 200 words each. Content of the answer is more important than its length.

Links are provided for reference. You can also use the Internet fruitfully to further enhance and strengthen your answers.

GS III: ENVIRONMENT

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/not-many-lessons-learnt-from-water-planning-failures/article30289651.ece

Q1. Discuss the pros and cons of the Jal Shakti Abhiyan.

Ans.

• Following the massive water crisis across India in the summer of 2019, the Central government launched the Jal Shakti Abhiyan (JSA), a time-bound, mission-mode water conservation campaign to be carried out in two phases, across the 255 districts having critical and over-exploited groundwater levels.

PROS

• It aimed to make water conservation a ‘people’s movement’ through ongoing schemes like the MGNREGA and other government programmes. The JSA is partly modelled and driven by some sporadic success stories such as NGO Tarun Bharat Sangh’s experiment in Alwar, Rajasthan and Anna Hazare-led efforts in Ralegan Siddhi, Maharashtra. These projects primarily involved building tanks and ponds to capture rainwater and building recharge wells to recharge groundwater.
• As on date, the JSA’s portal displays impressive data, images and statistics. For example, it claims that there are around 10 million ongoing and completed water conservation structures; 7.6 million recharge structures. The website also says that one billion saplings have been planted and that six million people participated in awareness campaigns.

CONS

• Water planning should be based on hydrological units, namely river basins. And, political and administrative boundaries of districts rarely coincide with the hydrological boundaries or aquifer boundaries. However, contrary to this principle of water management, JSA was planned based on the boundary of the districts, and to be carried out under the overall supervision of a bureaucrat. This resulted in the division of basins/aquifers into multiple units that followed multiple policies. There was no data on basin-wise rainfall, no analysis of run-off and groundwater maps were rarely used. As a result, one never came to know whether water harvested in a pond in a district was at the cost of water in adjoining districts.
• The JSA also fundamentally ignored the fact that most of India’s water-stressed basins, particularly those in the peninsular regions, are facing closure, with the demand exceeding supply. Hence, groundwater recharge happened at the cost of surface water and vice versa. This is where an absence of autonomous and knowledge-intensive river-basin organisations is acutely felt.
• The data displayed on JSA portal do not speak anything about the pre-JSA water levels, the monthly water levels and impact of monsoon on the water levels across the 255 districts with critical and over-exploited blocks. They also don’t convey anything about the quality of the structures, their maintenance and sustainability. It will require long-term monitoring of water level data to determine the actual impact of a measure like JSA. At present, there is no such parameter to measure the outcome of such a mission-mode campaign.
• It assumes that common people in rural areas are ignorant and prone to wasting water; on the contrary, they are the ones who first bear the brunt of any water crisis. The per capita water allocation to those living in rural areas is 55 litres, whereas the same for urban areas like Delhi and Bengaluru is 135-150 litres.
• The JSA’s move to reach out to poor people and farmers, asking them to ‘save water’, appears hypocritical, particularly when district administrations blatantly allow the sewage generated from towns and cities to pollute village water sources such as tanks, ponds and wells.
• Moreover, it is difficult to say whether measures like JSA can provide long-term solutions. Most of the farm bunds built with soil can collapse within one monsoon season due to rains and/or trespassing by farm vehicles, animals and humans. Further, there are issues like lack of proper engineering supervision of these structures, involvement of multiple departments with less or no coordination, and limited funding under MGNERGA and other schemes. Finally, there have hardly been many efforts undertaken to dissuade farmers from growing water-intensive crops such as paddy, sugarcane, and banana, when it is widely known that agriculture consumes 80% of freshwater.