Daily Current Affairs - Civil Services - 11-03-2021

Useful compilation of Civil Services oriented - Daily Current Affairs - Civil Services - 11-03-2021

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• SECTION 1 - TEN NEWS HEADLINES

1. People and Personalities - Elon Musk's 'wealth jump record' - Elon Musk's wealth jumped a record $25 billion in one day as electric vehicle maker Tesla surged nearly 20% on 09-03-2021, pushing the billionaire founder's fortune to $174 billion. Musk closed the gap with Jeff Bezos, the world's richest person with $180 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The top 10 largest wealth gainers added $54 billion combined. The jump, which added over $100 billion to Tesla's market capitalisation, stopped a five-day streak of losses for the company in a Nasdaq slump in which investors spooked by rising interest rates have abandoned growth stocks with heady valuations. Stock market fluctuations over the first few months of 2021 have been due to rising and falling fears of inflation making a comeback, and the prospects of economic recovery in Western markets. The stocks rise when inflation fears recede, and fall when new fears on inflation or economic recovery resurface.
2. Science and Technology - First military exercise in space launched - France has successfully launched the first military exercise in space. It will help the country in testing its abilities to protect its satellites as well as other defence equipment from other space forces. The exercise has been codenamed ‘AsterX’ and the German Space force and the US space force have also been participating in it. The French Space Forces Command was created in 2019 and is set to have 500 personnel by 2025. During the drill, the French military will monitor a potentially dangerous space object as well as a threat to its own satellite from another foreign power possessing a considerable space force. The French Air and Space Force (French: Armée de l'Air et de l'Espace, lit. 'Army of the Air and Space') is the air and space force of the French Armed Forces. The Space Command is a formation of the French Air and Space Force, which deals with space issues. It supersedes the Joint Space Command.
3. Governance and Institutions - TRAI suspends new SMS scrubbing norms - Combating spam proved costly. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) temporarily suspended the scrubbing of short message service or SMS by telecom service providers (TSP) for seven days. The action comes after the functioning of several SMS-based services of banks and e-commerce platforms was affected, as the TSPs implemented the second phase of SMS regulation. It was issued to “effectively deal with the nuisance of spam". Rules mandate telcos to verify the content of every SMS with the registered text before delivering it to consumers. This is called scrubbing, and was implemented after several delays. TRAI regulations for principal entities, which will be allowed to send SMSes to customers, seek registration of senders, telemarketers, headers, content, templates, consent templates and subscriber preference. The rules prohibit unregistered senders from initiating commercial messages, while registered companies are prevented from sending fraudulent messages to their customers. TRAI has released a framework under which telcos could use a distributed ledger technology or blockchain to verify the sender information and content of every commercial SMS before it was delivered on the user’s device.
4. Governance and Institutions - Vaccine Passports - Governments around the world are exploring the potential use of vaccine passports as a way of reopening the economy by identifying those protected against the coronavirus. A vaccine passport is an e-certificate that stores and records jabs and Covid-19 test status. It can be kept in a smartphone app or in other digital formats. Its contents can be flashed at security checkpoints when people travel across borders. The idea is modelled on the proof of vaccination that several countries required even before the pandemic. Travellers from many African countries to the USA or India are required to submit proof that they have been vaccinated against diseases such as yellow fever. In February 2021, Israel became the first country to introduce a certification system that allows those who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 to access certain facilities and events.
5. World Politics - Uighur Muslims issue - Several hundred Uighur Muslim women in Turkey staged an International Women’s Day march against the extradition agreement of Turkey with China and demanding the closure of mass incarceration camps in China’s Xinjiang Province. Earlier in 2020, the United States House of Representatives approved a legislation calling for sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for oppression of Uighur Muslims. The Uighurs are a predominantly Muslim minority Turkic ethnic group, whose origins can be traced to Central and East Asia. The Uighurs speak their own language, similar to Turkish, and see themselves as culturally and ethnically close to Central Asian nations. The Uighurs are considered to be one of the 55 officially recognized ethnic minority communities in China. However, China recognises the community only as a regional minority and rejects that they are an indigenous group. The largest population of the Uighur ethnic community lives in Xinjiang region of China. A significant population of Uighurs also lives in the neighbouring Central Asian countries such as Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Xinjiang is technically an autonomous region within China — its largest region, rich in minerals, and sharing borders with eight countries, including India, Pakistan, Russia and Afghanistan.
6. World Economy - World's largest palladium producer pays Rs. 14,000cr fine for diesel leak in Arctic - Russian mining giant Norilsk Nickel, world's largest palladium producer, has paid a $2 billion (over Rs. 14,000 crore) fine for an oil spill in the Arctic. In May 2020, 21,000 tonnes of diesel leaked from one of its storage tanks into rivers and lakes in Russia's Arctic north. President Vladimir Putin had declared a state of emergency after the spill. Palladium is a chemical element with the symbol Pd and atomic number 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by the English chemist William Hyde Wollaston. The largest use of palladium today is in catalytic converters. Palladium is also used in jewelry, dentistry, watch making, blood sugar test strips, aircraft spark plugs, surgical instruments, and electrical contacts. Palladium is also used to make professional transverse (concert or classical) flutes.
7. Defence and Military - Third indigenous submarine - A third Scorpene-class submarine INS Karanj of Project-75 was on 10-03-2021 commissioned into the Indian Navy. The submarine was launched in January 2018 for sea trials and will increase the strength and capability of the Indian Navy, said Chief of Naval Staff (CNS) Admiral Karambir Singh. Along with Singh, Admiral VS Shekhawat (Retired) was also present during the occasion. The Scorpène-class submarines are a class of diesel-electric attack submarines jointly developed by the French Direction des Constructions Navales (DCNS) and the Spanish company Navantia, and now by Naval Group. It features diesel propulsion and an additional air-independent propulsion (AIP).
8. Social Issues - Companies firing staff in large numbers - Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) refuted media reports which claimed that it had fired 300 executives, saying they were "baseless" and "speculative". It added that 48 white-collar associates were let go due to redundancies in the last one year and another 98 have been given six months to find a role. M&M clarified that no blue-collar workers were laid off. Pune-based employee union Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) filed a complaint with the Labour Commissioner's office alleging that Tata Technologies 'illegally' terminated over 800 employees. NITES President said the company "illegally terminated staff under the pretext of maintaining the profitability". The company had reportedly put 400 staff on furlough in June 2020. Meanwhile, the govt. informed the Parliament that approx. 10000 private limited firms had shut shop in past one year.
9. Indian Politics - Charges of corruption on Nitin Gadkari - Swedish truck and bus maker SCANIA was exposed by an investigation by three media outlets, including Swedish news channel SVT. The Swedish truck and bus maker, a unit under Volkswagen AG’s commercial vehicle arm Traton SE, started operations in India in 2007 and established a manufacturing unit in 2011. An investigation started by Scania in 2017 showed serious shortcomings by employees including senior management. The CEO Henrik Henriksson told SVT that bribes were paid to a local Minister (unnamed). Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari immediately denied reports that claimed Swedish manufacturer Scania gave a luxury bus to a company with connections to him that was intended for his daughter's wedding and was not fully paid for. Gadkari's office has termed the reports as "malicious, fabricated, and baseless". Scania earlier said an investigation into its Indian operations found evidence of misconduct.
10. World Economy - Richie Rich club - Investor Warren Buffett's net worth surpassed $100 billion on 10-03-2021 after the stock price of his company Berkshire Hathaway hit a record $400,000. With this, Buffett became the sixth member of the $100-billion club, a group including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Bill Gates, as per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Buffett owns around one-sixth of Berkshire. Among the richest are - Elon Musk (CEO and co-founder of Tesla; CEO, leader designer, and founder of SpaceX; CEO and founder of Neuralink; and founder of The Boring Company) with an estimated net worth of $197 billion; Jeff Bezos (the CEO and founder of Amazon, the world's largest retailer, and founder of Blue Origin) with a net worth of $182 billion; Bill Gates (the co-founder of Microsoft, the largest software company in the world, and the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) with a net worth is $132 billion; Bernard Arnault (the chairman and CEO of LVMH, the world's largest luxury goods business, and chairman of its holding company, Christian Dior SE) with a net worth of $109 billion; Mark Zuckerberg (CEO, chairman, and co-founder of Facebook, the world's largest social networking service, as well as co-CEO and co-founder of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative), with a net worth of $95.6 billion.

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• SECTION 2 - DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS

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• 1. ECONOMY (Prelims, GS Paper 3, Essay paper)

Gold standard 

• The news: An International Bullion Exchange is being established in Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT). Why was a need for establishing this exchange felt?
• The need: Due to the absence of spot market for gold in India, domestic stakeholders were forced to use prices traded on international exchanges for computing local prices. An MOU was signed between the leading stock and commodity exchanges and depository participants, paving the way for establishing the market infrastructure for the bullion exchange.
• India gold price determination: Today, there is no transparency in determining the local price of gold. It is decided by the Indian bullion and jewellers association based on buy and sell quotes from ten of its biggest dealers. These dealers then convert the international gold price to rupee, add taxes and their commission to quote the price. This method of price fixing is vulnerable to manipulation as witnessed in countries such as the UK.
• Now what: With the establishment of this exchange, transparency will get imparted in determining the local price of gold. Also a strong bullion exchange in the IFSC will help jewellers and retailers to buy gold directly from foreign traders instead of using banks as intermediaries.
• Benefits: In the international bullion market, India will soon become a price setter from being a price taker. The exchange will help in better price discovery of bullions, and will facilitate in trading the bullion spot delivery contract and spot depository receipt. It has Bullion vaulting services which facilitates in storing the gold traded at the offshore exchange. This can also become a future hub of gold trading if international traders are incentivised enough to shift part of their trading here.
• Regulation: In India, most of the spot commodity markets features in the State list and are beyond the purview of SEBI. So the International Financial Services Centres Authority has been given the responsibility of supervising the implementation and operations of the exchange. This is done according to the IFSCA (Bullion Exchange) Regulations, 2020.
• Issues: It is not easy to attract foreign companies who trade gold in other offshore centres to the domestic exchange. The IFSCA has to provide enough incentives -lower transaction cost and other benefits -to make them shift to the GIFT IFSC. There is no clarity whether retail clients can sell their gold at this exchange. If their participation is enabled, then gold assaying centres needs to be up at IFSC along with regulatory changes.

• Knowledge centre:

1. Indian gold market - India is the second largest consumer of gold globally with annual gold demand of approximately 800-900 tonnes, and it holds an important position in the global markets. However, the domestic market is currently plagued by challenges such as lack of quality assurance, weak price transparency and high market fragmentation. A gold spot exchange can address these challenges and eliminate resulting market inefficiencies.
2. World gold trading - The landscape for wholesale gold trading is quite complex and constantly evolving. The three most important gold trading centres are the London OTC market, the US futures market and the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE). These markets comprise more than 90% of global trading volumes and are complemented by smaller secondary market centres around the world (both OTC and exchange-traded). Other important markets include Dubai, India, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong. There are exchanges in all these markets offering a range of spot trading facilities or listed contracts but these have not attracted the liquidity seen on the market’s primary venues. Nonetheless, these markets play an important role to varying degrees in serving local demand or acting as regional trading hubs. For example, Hong Kong has long acted as a gateway to the Chinese market and Singapore is establishing itself as an important focal point for trading in the ASEAN region.
3. Drivers of gold price - Gold is often used as a safe-haven asset since Gold price performance often rallies during periods of uncertainty. Gold is both pro-cyclical and counter-cyclical. Investment drivers tend to influence heavily short- and medium-term gold price performance. But long-term price dynamics respond to consumer demand, long-term savings, central bank demand, and supply dynamics. The factors that influence gold can be grouped into four big themes: - (i) Currencies – strength and weakness of the US dollar and various currencies; (ii) Economic growth and market uncertainty – inflation, interest rates, income growth, consumer confidence, tail risks; (iii) Tactical flows – price momentum, derivatives positioning; (iv) Additional gold demand and supply dynamics – mine production, idiosyncratic demand-side shocks.

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• 2. ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY (Prelims, GS Paper 3, Essay paper

Mining in the Aravalli Hills - death-knell for ecology 

• Please let us mine: The Haryana government has appealed to the Supreme Court to permit it to resume mining in the Aravalli Hills on the grounds that the pandemic had grounded the State’s economy to a halt.
• Points to note: The Aravalli ranges stretch for a distance of about 720 km from Himmatnagar in Gujarat to Delhi, spanning Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Delhi. They date back to millions of years (~ 150 m) when a pre-Indian subcontinent collided with the mainland Eurasian Plate. Carbon dating has shown that copper and other metals mined in the ranges date back to at least the 5th century BC. The Aravallis of Northwestern India, one of the oldest fold mountains of the world, now form residual mountains with an elevation of 300m to 900m. The Guru Shikhar Peak on Mount Abu is the highest peak in the Aravalli Range (1,722 m). It has been formed primarily of folded crust, when two convergent plates move towards each other by the process called orogenic movement.

• Extension: The mountains are divided into two main ranges – the Sambhar Sirohi Range and the Sambhar Khetri Range in Rajasthan, where their extension is about 560 km. The hidden limb of the Aravallis that extends from Delhi to Haridwar creates a divide between the drainage of rivers of the Ganga and the Indus.

1. Significance - Aravalli hills check desertification. They act as a barrier between the fertile plains in the east and the sandy desert in the west. Historically, it is said that the Aravalli range checked the spread of the Thar desert towards the Indo-Gangetic plains, serving as a catchment of rivers and plains.
2. Rich in Biodiversity - Provides habitat to 300 native plant species, 120 bird species and many exclusive animals like the jackal and mongoose.
3. Impacts climate - Aravallis have an impact upon the climate of northwest India and beyond. During monsoons, it provides a barrier and monsoon clouds move eastwards towards Shimla and Nainital, thus helping nurture the sub-Himalayan rivers and feeding the north Indian plains. In the winter months, it protects the fertile alluvial river valleys from the cold westerly winds from Central Asia.
4. Recharges groundwater - Aravallis also functions as a groundwater recharge zone for the regions around that absorb rainwater and revive the groundwater level.
5. Checks pollution - This range is considered the “lungs” for the polluted air of Delhi–National Capital Region (NCR). For Haryana, having the lowest forest cover at around 3.59% of the total forest cover in India, the Aravalli range is the only saving grace, providing the major portion of its forest cover (2017 Report).
6. Threats - The Aravalli hills are an ecologically sensitive zone but have for years borne the brunt of quarrying and environmental degradation. A 2018 report by a Supreme Court-appointed Central Empowered Committee (CEC) found out that 25% of the Aravalli range has been lost due to illegal mining in Rajasthan since 1967-68. The consequences of the mining has been a destruction of aquifers and deforestation. Many rivers originating in the Aravalli like Banas, Luni, Sahibi and Sakhi, are now dead.

• Steps taken: Mining in the Aravalli region has been banned since 2002 under the Supreme Court orders, unless expressly permitted by the Union Environment Ministry. However, mining continues illegally. The green wall is being planned from Porbandar to Panipat which will help in restoring degraded land through afforestation along the Aravali hill range. Residents along with volunteers from "iamgurgaon", a citizen action group involved in the conservation of the Aravallis, were assisted by ecologists to create a self-sustaining Aravalli. This society driven model could be more effective to combat the degradation.

• Knowledge centre:

1. Orogeny - Orogeny is a mountain-building event, generally one that occurs in geosynclinal areas. It is usually accompanied by folding and faulting of strata, development of angular unconformities (interruptions in the normal deposition of sedimentary rock), and the deposition of clastic wedges of sediments in areas adjacent to the orogenic belt. Regional metamorphism and magmatic activity are often associated with an orogenic event as well.
2. Oldest mountains - The Barberton Greenstone Belt in South Africa, also known as the Makhonjwa Mountains, is formed of rocks dated as far back as 3.6 billion years. It was here that gold was first discovered in South Africa in 1875. The Makhonjwa Mountains have a maximum altitude of around 1,800 m (5,905 ft) above sea level.
3. Oldest mountains in India - While the Aravallis are considered the oldest, aged around 150 million years, there are older parts in India. The Indian Shield itself is part of the Indian Craton and occupies two-thirds of the southern Indian peninsula. This shield has remained relatively stable since its formation, over 3500 million years ago. The Indian Shield is part of the Indian Craton and occupies two-thirds of the southern Indian peninsula. The Dharwar or Karnataka Craton in South India, as part of the Indian Shield, it has been a relatively stable geologic terrain for several billion years. The bedrock in this region formed between 3.6 and 2.5 billion years ago. The Dharwar Craton lies roughly between Chennai, Goa, Hyderabad, and Mangalore in the Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh states.

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• 3. FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Prelims, GS Paper 3, Essay paper)

Sri Lanka at the UN Rights Council 

• SL at UNHRC: At the current session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Sri Lanka faces another resolution on human rights violations and war crimes.
• Why significant: Sri Lanka abruptly withdrew in 2020 from an earlier UNHRC resolution (Resolution 30/1) on war crimes. Under the resolution, it had committed, 5 years previously, to a time-bound investigation of war crimes that took place during the military campaign against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In this backdrop, the country faces another UNHRC resolution now.
• Do not interfere: Sri Lanka has described the resolution as “unwanted interference by powerful countries”. It has officially sought India’s help to gather support against the resolution. Whichever way it goes, the resolution is likely to resonate in India-Sri Lanka relations. For India internally, it will reflect in the run-up to the Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu.
• What does the resolution say: The draft resolution is based on a report by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN Human Rights). The report warned Sri Lanka on the failure to address human rights violations and war crimes committed in the past. It said that this had put the country on a “dangerous path” that could lead to a “recurrence” of policies and practices that gave rise to the earlier situation. The report flagged the “warning signs”: accelerating militarisation of civilian governmental functions, reversal of important constitutional safeguards, political obstruction of accountability, exclusionary rhetoric, intimidation of civil society, use of anti-terrorism laws, etc.
• Changing scenario in Sri Lanka: The report pointed to the appointment of at least 28 serving or former military and intelligence personnel to “key administrative posts.” It also mentioned the appointments of two senior military officials implicated in UN reports on alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the final years of the conflict. The report expressed concerns at these appointments. Also, the government had created parallel military task forces and commissions that encroach on civilian functions. It has reversed important institutional checks and balances, threatening democratic gains, the independence of the judiciary and other key institutions. The shrinking space for independent media and civil society, and human rights organisations are also themes in the report.

• What did the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights say: Michelle Bachelet has said that the government in Sri Lanka was “proactively” obstructing investigations into past crimes to prevent accountability. This had a “devastating effect” on families seeking truth, justice and reparations. UN member states “should heed the early warning signs of more violations to come.”

1. She also called for “international action” including targeted sanctions such as asset freezes and travel bans against “credibly alleged” perpetrators of grave human rights violations and abuses.
2. States should also pursue investigations and prosecution in their national courts of international crimes committed by all parties in Sri Lanka.
3. She has also asked the UNHRC to support “a dedicated capacity” by countries to collect and preserve evidence for future accountability processes.

• Knowledge centre:

1. Rajapaksa brothers - The Rajapaksas are a rural land-owning family from the village Giruwapattuwa in the southern district of Hambantota. The Rajapaksa family is a Sri Lankan political family, that became extremely powerful during Mahinda Rajapaksa's Presidency, where many members of the family occupied their senior positions in the Sri Lankan state. Then came the unexpected defeat of Mahinda Rajapaksa in the 2015 Presidential Election, they have been accused of authoritarianism, corruption, nepotism and bad governance. In the 2019 Presidential election Gotabaya Rajapaksa, brother of Mahinda Rajapaksa contested and won. The Rajapaksas enjoy great popularity among majority of Sinhala population because of the victory over the Tamil Tigers in 2009.
2. LTTE - The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were a militant separatist group fighting for an independent homeland for Hindu Tamils in Northeastern Sri Lanka. It was founded in the early 1970s by Velupillai Prabhakaran, who led the group until his death by Sri Lankan armed forces in May 2009. During the 1980s, the LTTE defeated a number of different Tamil militant groups, emerging as the dominant group by the end of the decade. The LTTE successfully carried out a number of high-profile attacks, including the assassination of two heads of state. The LTTE were also notorious for their use of suicide terrorism, perpetrated by their elite suicide bombing unit known as the Black Tigers. Starting in 1985, the LTTE began negotiations with the Sri Lankan government; however, multiple rounds of negotiations failed and were interrupted by bouts of violence and clashes between both sides. In March 2004, a large faction of the LTTE led by Colonel Karuna defected, significantly weakening the organization. In 2006, after another failed round of negotiations, the Sri Lankan government declared all-out war on the LTTE and the group was militarily defeated in May 2009.

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• 4. GOVERNMENT SCHEMES (Prelims, GS Paper 2, Essay paper)

Govt appoints GP Samanta as new CSI

1. Chiefly statistics: The government has approved the name of Dr GP Samanta to the post of chief statistician of India (CSI) for a period of two years. Samanta is currently serving as an advisor in the Reserve Bank of India’s Department of Statistics and Information Management. Samanta will replace 1986-batch civil servant Kshatrapati Shivaji who was holding additional charge of the post since September 2020
2. Background: He holds a Master of Statistics degree from Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) and a PhD in Economics from the University of Mumbai. Samanta is taking charge as the CSI at a time India’s statistical system has faced criticism from several quarters due to lack of transparency in data including withdrawal of the latest consumption expenditure survey (CES) 2017-18.
3. Criticism of govt. data management approach: The absence of consumption data not only makes it difficult to measure poverty, but also to reevaluate weights of inflation indices. In a report released 2020, the World Bank had said the decision of the government not to release the 75th round of the CES leaves an important gap in understanding poverty in India, South Asia, and the world in recent years. A new CES is expected to be conducted this year with a revised methodology at a time when the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will be reviewing the inflation targeting framework.
4. A new policy: The new chief statistician will also be in charge of formulating the National Policy on Official Statistics which is under preparation.

 

Autonomy of IIMs - A recurrent question

1. The story: IIM-Ahmedabad and IIM-Calcutta were surrounded by controversies which question the autonomy they posses.
2. What happened: At IIM-Ahmedabad, the Director has approved a PhD thesis of three essays which is based on electoral democracy. It is alleged that the thesis described political parties like BJP & BSP as ethnically constituted one and BJP as a pro-Hindu upper caste party. Later the Ministry of Education asked the Institute for a copy of the thesis after a MP sent letter to the Prime Minister. The MP urged that the thesis should be re-examined by independent professors and the PhD be kept on hold till the review is complete. But the director said that government is not an arbiter of complaints regarding PhD thesis and complaints should be raised in appropriate academic forums present in the Institute.
3. IIM Calcutta: There is a dispute between the Institute’s Director and the Chairman of the Board. The Board passed a resolution against the Director and stripped his key powers of making appointments and taking disciplinary action. The above instances raise questions on the autonomy which IIMs posses.
4. How was it earlier: Before the enactment of the IIM act in 2017, these IIMs functioned as Societies. They had a fair amount of autonomy in academic matters and other issues such as the fixing of fees. They were not dependent on the government for funds and were in a better position to assert their autonomy. But the appointment of Directors and Chairmen remained in the government’s hands and government often used this leverage to influence the IIMs.
5. Only till everyone agreed: This autonomy was only a product of convention and it functioned well as long as both sides respected it. When this respect was compromised, friction has occurred.
6. Other instances of friction: The IIMs tend to protect their autonomy and opposed government’s attempt to curtail their freedom.  In 2003-04, government issued an order which drastically reduced the admission fees in six IIMs from Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 30,000. A face-off existed between the government and the IIMs. It got resolved only after the government reversed the order.
7. Government funding: All over the world higher education system is supported by the government in one form or the other. Normally this should not impact the autonomy of universities. But government can interfere in their autonomy irrespective of whether these institutions are funded by the government or not. This was the case with IIM-A which is financially independent.
8. New Act: The new IIM Act has created a dramatic shift in power dynamics in these institutions. The government has relinquished control on paper. But the implementation of the Act will face issues as the Board assumes greater power in the functioning of the IIMs.

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• 5. POLITY AND CONSTITUTION (Prelims, GS Paper 2, GS Paper 3)

CBI Director - Appointment process 

• The story: A writ petition was filed in the Supreme Court seeking the appointment of a regular Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Director. The Director of the CBI is appointed as per section 4A of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act of 1946.
• Points to note: The CBI is headed by a Director. The Director of CBI as Inspector General of Police, Delhi Special Police Establishment, is responsible for the administration of the organisation. With the enactment of CVC Act, 2003, the superintendence of Delhi Special Police Establishment vests with the Central Government to save investigations of offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, in which, the superintendence vests with the Central Vigilance Commission. The Director of CBI has been provided security of two-year tenure in office by the CVC Act, 2003.

• Appointment: The Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act (2013) amended the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act (1946) and made the following changes with respect to appointment of the Director of CBI:

1. The Central Government shall appoint the Director of CBI on the recommendation of a three-member committee consisting of the Prime Minister as Chairperson, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the Chief Justice of India or Judge of the Supreme Court nominated by him.
2. Later, the Delhi Special Police Establishment (Amendment) Act, 2014 made a change in the composition of the committee related to the appointment of the Director of C.B.I.
3. It states that where there is no recognized leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha, then the leader of the single largest opposition party in the Lok Sabha would be a member of that committee.

• Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI): The CBI was set up in 1963 by a resolution of the Ministry of Home Affairs. Now, the CBI comes under the administrative control of the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) of the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions. The establishment of the CBI was recommended by the Santhanam Committee on Prevention of Corruption (1962–1964). The CBI is not a statutory body. It derives its powers from the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946. The CBI is the main investigating agency of the Central Government, and provides assistance to the Central Vigilance Commission and Lokpal. It is also the nodal police agency in India which coordinates investigation on behalf of Interpol Member countries.
• Summary: Instead of a regular appointment, the government has recently appointed an interim/acting CBI Director. The interim appointment through an executive order was not envisaged in the statutory scheme of the 1946 Act. The premier investigative agency should function independently outside the influence of the Executive or political powers. The Supreme Court in the past has made a significant effort to enhance the functional autonomy of the CBI and limit the extent of executive discretion in the matter of appointment of this key functionary. It must make sure that there is a mechanism to ensure that the process of selection of CBI Director is completed one or two months in advance of the retirement of the incumbent.

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• 6. SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (Prelims, Various GS Papers)

The origin of Cancers 

• Are old people more prone: There is no stronger risk factor for cancer than age. At the time of diagnosis, the median age of patients across all cancers is 66. That moment, however, is the culmination of years of clandestine tumor growth, and the answer to an important question has thus far remained elusive: When does a cancer first arise?
• Earlier start: At least in some cases, the original cancer-causing mutation could have appeared as many as 40 years ago, according to a new study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Reconstructing the lineage history of cancer cells in two individuals with a rare blood cancer, the team calculated when the genetic mutation that gave rise to the disease first appeared. In a 63-year-old patient, it occurred at around age 19; in a 34-year-old patient, at around age 9.
• Learning: The findings add to a growing body of evidence that cancers slowly develop over long periods of time before manifesting as a distinct disease. The results also present insights that could inform new approaches for early detection, prevention, or intervention. For both of these patients, it was almost like they had a childhood disease that just took decades and decades to manifest, which was extremely surprising. So that brings the original questions: when does cancer begin, and when does being healthy stop? It appears that it’s a continuum with no clear boundary, which then raises another question: When should we be looking for cancer?

• MPNs: Researchers focused on myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs), a rare type of blood cancer involving the aberrant overproduction of blood cells. The majority of MPNs are linked to a specific mutation in the gene JAK2. When the mutation occurs in bone marrow stem cells, the body’s blood cell production factories, it can erroneously activate JAK2 and trigger overproduction.

1. To pinpoint the origins of an individual’s cancer, the team collected bone marrow stem cells from two patients with MPN driven by the JAK2 mutation. The researchers isolated a number of stem cells that contained the mutation, as well normal stem cells, from each patient, and then sequenced the entire genome of each individual cell.
2. Over time and by chance, the genomes of cells randomly acquire so-called somatic mutations—nonheritable, spontaneous changes that are largely harmless. Two cells that recently divided from the same mother cell will have very similar somatic mutation fingerprints. But two distantly related cells that shared a common ancestor many generations ago will have fewer mutations in common because they had the time to accumulate mutations separately.

• Tracing footsteps: Analyzing these fingerprints, Hormoz and colleagues created a phylogenetic tree, which maps the relationships and common ancestors between cells, for the patients’ stem cells—a process similar to studies of the relationships between chimpanzees and humans, for example. Science can reconstruct the evolutionary history of these cancer cells, going back to that cell of origin, the common ancestor in which the first mutation occurred.

1. Combined with calculations of the rate at which mutations accumulate, the team could estimate when the JAK2 mutation first occurred. In the patient who was first diagnosed with MPN at age 63, the team found that the mutation arose around 44 years prior, at the age of 19. In the patient diagnosed at age 34, it arose at age 9.
2. By looking at the relationships between cells, the researchers could also estimate the number of cells that carried the mutation over time, allowing them to reconstruct the history of disease progression.

• Small to big: Initially, there’s one cell that has the mutation. And for the next 10 years there’s only something like 100 cancer cells! But over time, the number grows exponentially and becomes thousands and thousands. We’ve had the notion that cancer takes a very long time to become an overt disease, but no one has shown this so explicitly until now. The team found that the JAK2 mutation conferred a certain fitness advantage that helped cancerous cells outcompete normal bone marrow stem cells over long periods of time. The magnitude of this selective advantage is one possible explanation for some individuals’ faster disease progression, such as the patient who was diagnosed with MPN at age 34.
• A long term clinical approach: While the approach is generalizable to other types of cancer, MPN is driven by a single mutation in a very slow growing type of stem cell. Other cancers may be driven by multiple mutations, or in faster-growing cell types, and further studies are needed to better understand the differences in evolutionary history between cancers. The current efforts include developing early detection technologies, reconstructing the histories of greater numbers of cancer cells, and investigating why some patients’ mutations never progress into full-blown cancer, but others do. Even if we can detect cancer-causing mutations early, the challenge is to predict which patients are at risk of developing the disease, and which are not.

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• 7. SOCIAL ISSUES (Prelims, GS Paper 2)

NITI Aayog's new food security proposal - Potential peril for poor 

• Tackling hunger: For millions of poor households in India, subsidized food grains have been a lifeline, especially during the covid-19 pandemic. These subsidies, given under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), have earlier been said to cost the Centre around ?1 trillion a year. A recent proposal by the Niti Aayog reportedly aims to reduce the burden, and that could mean trouble. India made gains in reducing malnutrition, and the NFSA 2013 (National Food Security Act) is one reason for that. Any reduction in coverage of those legal entitlements, as recently proposed by the Niti Aayog, should ensure those gains are not lost.

• Details: In 2013, the NFSA made access to a designated quantity of foodgrains a legal entitlement. Up to 67% of the population—75% in rural areas and 60% in urban areas—is entitled to the scheme, which is about 813.5 million Indians according to 2011 Census data.

1. The Niti Aayog, in a discussion paper, has now proposed to lower the ratios to 50% in rural areas and 40% in urban areas.
2. Niti estimates annual savings of up to ?47,229 crore if these revised levels are applied to 2020 population estimates. If coverage remains at present levels for the 2020 population, food subsidies will increase by ?14,800 crore.
3. The Centre expects to spend ?2.43 trillion in 2021-22 on its food subsidy bill. This is over two times the average annual expenditure in recent years, but gives a much truer picture since the Centre has now moved certain off-budget borrowings to the Budget. The shift elevated the food subsidy bill for 2020-21 too, to ?4.22 trillion, though it was also in part due to expanded food entitlements as part of the covid-19 package.

• Not perfect even today: Even today, the scheme ails with concerns of exclusion. The number of beneficiaries is divided among states using the government’s Household Consumer Expenditure Survey of 2011-12. The number was frozen in 2013 and has not been updated, prompting the Centre to ask the Niti Aayog to formulate an alternative methodology. In a study in 2020, researchers estimated that using 2011 data even in 2020 excluded 100.8 million eligible Indians from the NFSA. The highest under-coverage was in Uttar Pradesh (30.6 million) and Bihar (17.5 million), which received huge numbers of returning migrants during the lockdown.

1. States have repeatedly urged the Centre to revise the coverage to the latest population estimates. While the latest Niti Aayog calculations consider the 2020 estimates, the proposed reduced coverage means the number of beneficiaries will fall to 716 million, according to the document.
2. The NFSA has been critical in reducing malnutrition. Data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) shows that between 2005-06 and 2015-16, the share of undernourished population fell from 44.3% to 21.2% at a national level. While this cannot be attributed to NFSA alone, it is likely that the scheme has improved access to foodgrains for the most vulnerable. However, poorer states such as Bihar (40.9%), Jharkhand (36.6%), and Uttar Pradesh (31.4%) continue to have a much larger proportion of undernourished population.

•  A bad indiator: These numbers combine the proportion of malnourished across men, women and children, and have been compiled by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative. NFHS 2018-19 has preliminary results for 22 states, including on nutrition for five of the 10 most populous states. While the numbers are not strictly comparable to the aggregate data from earlier rounds, the trends are mixed.

1. West Bengal and Maharashtra have shown an increase in the proportion of under-weight children between 2015-16 and 2018-19, but a fall in the share of undernourished among men and women. Karnataka and Bihar show a decline in the share of undernourished across all three groups.
2. According to the Household Consumption Survey of 2011-12, the latest round for which this data is publicly available, 45.9% of rural households and 23.3% of urban households reported consumption of rice from the public distribution system (PDS) in the 30 days prior to the survey. For wheat, it was 33.9% of rural households and 19% of urban households.
3. This is likely to have increased in the following years, partly due to the implementation of the NFSA. More significantly, the poorest households drew a higher proportion of their foodgrain consumption from the PDS.
4. The Niti Aayog report justifies lowering the coverage on the basis of “growth and development over the past decade", adding that savings from food subsidies could be used for health and education. However, given that a significant population is dealing with the economic fallout of the pandemic, lower coverage could stress them and reverse some of the malnutrition gains.

• Be careful: The govt. must be extremely cautious in heeding to Niti's fresh financial-concern-driven ideas, as millions of Indians may simply fall through the cracks that have emerged in the pandemic 2020.

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• 8. MISCELLANEOUS (Prelims, GS Paper 1, GS Paper 2)

China-Russia Planetary Pact 

• What it is: China and Russia have recently signed a planetary pact. This plan for a joint lunar space station was unveiled on March 9, 2021.
• Points to note: This pact was signed between the countries because Russia seeks to regain the glory of space pioneering which was there in the Soviet times while China geared up its own extra-terrestrial ambitions. Russia was once the one among the top countries of space travel. It has a record of sending the first man into space. But, the cosmic ambitions of Russia dimmed the glory because of poor financing and corruption. The glory of Russia has been captured by China and the United States. Both of these countries have achieved major success in space exploration and research.
• Russia-China collaboration: The Russian space agency Roscosmos stated that, it had signed a pact with the National Space Administration (CNSA) of China with the objective of developing a complex of experimental research facilities which have been created on either surface or in the orbit of Moon. Under the collaboration, Russia’s first modern lunar lander called “Luna 25” has been scheduled to launch on October 1, 2021.
• Manned Space flights: Russia will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of its first-ever manned space flight. The country had sent Yuri Gagarin into space in April 1961. In 1963, it again sent the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, into space. The United States also launched its first manned space flight following Russia in May 1961. Russia sent Alan Shepard into space on the Mercury-Redstone 3 flight.
• China’s biggest international pact: China has launched in 2020, the Tianwen-1 probe to Mars which is currently orbiting it. Again, in December 2020 it successfully brought the rock and soil samples from Moon back to Earth. In the line, this joint lunar space station pact is the largest international space cooperation project for China.

 

Aims to make automobile industry worth Rs.10 lakh crore

• New centres: Union minister Nitin Gadkari inaugurated two technology centres at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh. The technological centres should have coordination, cooperation and communication with the local industries, and also emphasised on the need to have a performance audit of all the technological and extension centres.
• Grand talk: Speaking about Indian automobile sector, he said, "The target is to make Indian automobile industry worth ?10 lakh crore in next five years from present ?4,50,000 lakh crore rupees". Around 2,50,000 students are getting training at these centres and the tool room works from normal designing to the area of robotics, minister of state for MSME Pratap Chandra Sarangi said.
• More: Gadkari also inaugurated three extension centres of big technological centres and seven mobile Udyam Express. Talking about the mobile Udyam Express, Sarangi said these mobile vans will go to the villages and make people aware about all aspects of entrepreneurship along with imparting training to them.

 

GST e-invoicing updates

• Tighter norms: Having been lenient to small tax payers by suspending many technology-enabled policing features of GST in the initial years of the tax reform in 2017, the authorities are now leveraging its full potential to widen and deepen tax base. The finance ministry has further widened the scope of e-invoicing requirement from 1 April as part of a drive to step up oversight of transactions and improve tax compliance.
• Who all covered: All business-to-business transactions above ?50 crore barring select services will need e-invoicing from the next fiscal year. E-invoicing entails uploading key transaction details to a government portal to generate a reference number on a real-time basis. It was made compulsory for businesses with ?500 crore sales since October 2020 and the threshold was lowered to ?100 crore from January 2021.
• Gradual: The government’s earlier idea was to extend the same to all businesses from April but it has now opted to go more gradually. State governments, too, will notify the change. The National Informatics Centre, the portal which generates the reference number, captures details of the buyer, seller, technical description of the item sold, sale value and the tax payable.
• More compliance: The move helps in greater oversight of the economic activities in real time and is set to improve tax compliance. Also, this will enable officials to trust the final sales figures reported by businesses in their income tax and goods and services tax (GST) returns and spare business of avoidable regulatory scrutiny. As per rules, any invoice that does not follow e-invoice requirement by a business that is required to generate e-invoice will not be counted as a valid. Experts said small businesses have to quickly get their act together.
• Missed out earlier, but not now: The move also shows that after showing lenience to small tax payers by suspending many of the technology-enabled policing features of GST in the initial years of the tax reform in 2017, the authorities are now leveraging its full potential to widen and deepen the tax base.

 

DPIIT to relax compliance burden

• Less load: The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has highlighted that the government is planning to ease and scrap the thousands of compliance burdens for the companies. It will be done in two phases by August 15, 2021.
• Background: In a webinar organised in the first week of March 2021, Prime Minister Modi had promised the industry leaders to reduce the India Inc’s burden by scraping the 6000 compliance requirements. The scrapping of the compliance burden is the part of government’s efforts to improve ease of doing business and ease of living in the light of Covid-19 pandemic. In order to achieve this, DPIIT is focussing on four issues namely - To relax the compliance burden, To remove the archaic laws, To decriminalising several civil offences and To simplify citizen-government interface.
• About the compliance: The DPIIT assessment highlights that around 4000 compliance requirements are in the states’ domain and while some 2000 compliance requirements are in centre’s domain. Under the first phase of the initiative those compliance needs would be taken up for which the abolition would not require any amendment in the laws or scrapped laws. First phase will be completed by March 31. While in the second phase, those compliance requirements would be taken up for which legislative changes are required to scrap them. This phase will be completed by August 15.

OECD interim ‘Economic Outlook’

• The story: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published its interim Economic Outlook on March 9, 2021. It has projected that the Indian economy will grow at the rate of 12.6% in Financial Year 2022. This will be the highest among G20 countries.
• Points to note: The economic outlook is aided by the additional fiscal support after covid-19 pandemic pushed Indian economy into recession after almost 40 years. The report highlights that, recovery in activity continued in fourth quarter of 2020 despite there were new virus outbreaks and tighter containment norms in some economies. The Global output was around 1% lower than it was before the covid-19 pandemic.
• Key findings: The report highlights that several large emerging-market economies are rebounding relatively fast. Strong fiscal & quasi-fiscal measures, recovery in manufacturing & construction and several other activities have moved above the pre-pandemic levels in Turkey, China and India. These activities have helped these economies in recovering. OEC has projected India’s growth will be increased by 4.7 percent from 7.9% in December 2020. For the financial year 2021, the report estimated a contraction in economy by 7.4 percent as opposed to 8 percent contraction estimated by the Indian government.
• Other reports on India’s growth: The rating agency Crisil Ltd has also projected that the Indian economy will grow at 11% in the Financial Year 2022. This growth will be driven by flattening of covid-19 affliction curve, vaccination programme and investment-focused government spending.
• World Economic Outlook: Economic Outlook is the twice-yearly analysis, published by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). It comprises of economic analysis and the forecasts for future economic performance of the member countries of OECD. The main version of the report is published in English however, it is also published in French and German languages. Apart from the economic outlook, OECD also publishes Monthly Economic Indicators to complement the Economic Outlook.

9.1 Today's best editorials to read

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• SECTION 3 - MCQs (Multiple Choice Questions)

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