A brief of newspaper articles for the day bearing
relevance to Civil Services preparation
National
[1]. Modi promises more resources for research
Context:-
Prime minister inaugurated the 103rd Indian Science congress in Mysuru on January 3rd.
Theme of the Meet: – Science and Technology for Indigenous Development in India.
Highlights:-
Auditing achievements:-
A “framework” for scientific departments to audit their achievements should be developed.
The 5Es:-
The ‘5 Es’ of Economy, Environment, Energy, Empathy, and Equity— are the talisman for scientists and technologists to ensure that their work has maximum societal impact.
Tribute to A.P.J Kalam:-
Former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was held as the symbol of a scientist and technologist devoted to the nation’s development.
Innovation:-
Innovation was not only for tackling climate change but also about delivering “climate justice.”
Low carbon future:-
Harnessing energy from the oceans as well as the use of geothermal energy and the recently-constituted International Solar Alliance — a global initiative of top industrialists from Bill Gates to Mukesh Ambani — were key measures to achieve a low-carbon, sustainable energy future.
Oceans for prosperity
Oceans will become important drivers of economies. Their sustainable use can bring prosperity; and, give us clean energy, new medicines and food security beyond just fisheries,
Initiatives:-
We have increased our focus on ocean or blue economy and have set up an advanced centre of research in marine biology and biotechnology.
We have entered into agreements on marine science and ocean economy with several countries and will also hold an international conference on “Ocean economy and Pacific Island Countries.
About the Indian Science Congress:-
The Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA) owes its origin to the foresight and initiative of two British Chemists, namely, Professor J. L. Simonsen and Professor P.S. MacMahon.
The first meeting of the Congress was held from January 15-17, 1914 at the premises of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta.
[2]. Pranab gives assent to 5 key laws
President gave nod to the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act; the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act; the Commercial Courts, Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of High Courts Act; The Atomic Energy (Amendment) Act; and the Payment of Bonus (Amendment) Act, 2015,
Nuclear collaboration:-
The Atomic Energy (Amendment) Act will allow state-run Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) to have collaboration with other public sector undertakings in the nuclear field.
The law amends the 1962 Atomic Energy Act to change the definition of “Government Company” in the Act with a view to expand its scope.
At present, only two PSUs — NPCIL and Bhartiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited, which are under the administrative control of the Department of Atomic Energy, operate nuclear power plants in the country.
[3]. Rs 2,000-crore Nuclear ` Liability Fund Okayed
Context:-
India has cleared the decks for setting up a Nuclear Liability Fund with a corpus of `. 2,000 crore that will allow the government to pitch in if damages resulting from a nuclear accident in the country exceed the limit specified for nuclear plant operators under the law. The operators will have to pay a levy of 5-10 paise per unit of electricity sold to the fund, which will be the biggest addition to the pool of compensation available for nuclear damages.
International Relations
[1]. ‘We are deepening engagement on Afghanistan’
Context:-
The article speaks about the new vistas of cooperation between India and china in the areas of counter terrorism and trade.
Afghanistan Engagement:-
India and China are deepening their engagement to facilitate Afghanistan’s political transition.
Both India and china have different approaches on issues and despite their differences the cooperation is on track.
Counter Terrorism:-
China has also agreed “to cooperate in areas like intelligence sharing”. “This is something new, which shows mutual confidence.
Paris terror attacks and the downing of the Russian airliner in Egypt have provided the impetus to step up the “security cooperation” between New Delhi and Beijing.
Decentralisation of Sino-Indian ties:-
A marked decentralisation of Sino-Indian ties, with Indian States and Chinese Provinces through Cooperative Federalism is playing a highly significant role in defining the relationship.
A stage has been set for the emergence of symbiotic economic relationship, where China’s focuses on a “new normal” economy dovetailed with India’s manufacturing centred ‘Make-in-India’ campaign.
Economic Digest
[1]. Sleeping with the enemy: big banks skirt confrontation to embrace fintech startups
Context:-
The author discusses how banks have stopped seeing startups with suspicion and are rather keen to utilise their technology to plug loopholes in delivering financial services.
Not disrupters anymore:-
Initially Fintech companies were treated as those who disrupt the financial services and banking industry.
Now big banks are partnering with them and are developing financially-focused software, and apps and systems to detect fraud.
Banks are hosting tech competitions and pouring in money into these young companies as they explore for innovations to meet new-age security, digital and regulatory challenges.
What are fintech companies?
The term financial technology can apply to any innovation in how people transact business.
With the rise of smart phones and always online culture these fintech companies help customers handle financial affairs easily and conveniently.
They are easing payment processes, reducing fraud and saving users’ money. They are also promoting financial planning, and ultimately moving a giant industry forward.
Fintech appstore:-
YES Bank recently introduced the first of its kind ‘Fintech App store’ for Indian fintech startups in association with software product think tank iSPIRT.
The app store will hold a governance structure making it easy for any startup to access it.
Why India Needs Fintechs?
About 60 per cent of Indians are unbanked and 90 per cent of small businesses have no links to formal financial institutions.
Yet 80 per cent of Indians own mobile phones, and 32 per cent will own smartphones by 2017.
Fintechs can play a crucial role in Financial Inclusion by bringing the excluded into the mainstream.
Fintech Boom:-
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently announced the introduction of a technology competition.
It has invited startups and individuals to build innovations to prevent fraud, bring convenience to customers and use emerging technologies for payments.
Fast growing fintech community:-
A “right innovation” has the potential to change the payment landscape of any country.
India’s fledgling financial technology area is also attracting the attention of global banks.
The challenge is fostering the development of the next generation of fintech solutions.
Fintech examples:-
Ezetap:-
Ezetap makes devices that can be plugged into any phone and convert it into a card-reader. This way, virtually anyone with a phone can accept cards – from merchants to pizza delivery boys, from cab drivers to hairdressers.
E-wallet:-
The app enables users to reduce dependence on cash and buy goods and services in neighbourhood shops through an e-wallet.
Capital Float:-
A fintech startup that uses technology to ensure that small and medium enterprises have access to collateral free working capital. It uses algorithms and sifts through data to find hidden insights in order to make lending decisions quickly. This ensures efficient and fast turn-around time.
Opinions & Editorials
[1]. All in the spirit of equality
Context:-
The article criticises the Supreme Court’s judgement concerned with prohibition in kerala. We will be seeing two reasons and their counter arguments.
Against 19(1)(g):-
The hotels submitted that in cancelling their bar licences, and in prohibiting them from serving and selling liquor on their premises, the State had infringed their right, under Article 19(1)(g), to practise any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business.
Subject to reasonable restrictions:-
This right is subject to reasonable restrictions that may be imposed by the state in the interest of the general public.
The Constitution itself, in Article 47, requires States to make an endeavour towards improving public health, including by bringing about prohibition of the consumption of liquor.
Res extra commercium:-
The State can prohibit completely the trade or business in potable liquor since liquor as beverage is res extra commercium (a thing outside commerce).
The State may also create a monopoly in itself for trade or business in such liquor
Res extra commercium cannot be the reason for unequal treatment:-
It does not give the state absolute power to make laws on the subject in violation of the guarantee of equal treatment.
While a law might represent a valid constraint on the freedom to trade, it nonetheless must confirm to other constitutional commands, including Article 14.
Against Article 14:-
In permitting those hotels of five stars or more, alone to serve liquor in public, the law had made an unreasonable classification, by treating persons on an equal standing unequally, and therefore violated Article 14 of the Constitution.
The Supreme Court had interpreted Article 14 threatens altogether any law that seeks to make distinctions based on class, except where reasonable classifications .
Two pronged test:-
The court also crystallised a basic two-prong test to determine what constitutes such a classification: there must be, it held, an intelligible differentia, which distinguishes persons or things that are grouped together from others left out of the group, and this differentia must have a rational relation to the object sought to be achieved by the law in question.
The law fails in the tests:-
The changes in the liquor policy were brought through with the view of promoting prohibition, and thereby improving the standard of public health in the State.
Now how can this special treatment of five-star hotels possibly help the Kerala government in achieving these objectives.
Classist:-
It is argued that the tariff of alcohol in Five Star hotels is usually prohibitively high, which acts as a deterrent to individuals going in for binge or even casual drinking.
The guests in Five Star hotels are of a mature age; they do not visit these hotels with the sole purpose of consuming alcohol.
Both these arguments are validation of a manifestly classist position
The court also used the State government’s excuse of tourism as a further ruse to defend the law.
[2]. In Paris, taking stock of the big challenges
Context:-
The article analyses the links between climate change and terrorism –two issues which are threatening the existence of the planet.
Resource constraints give rise to conflicts:-
Climate change has the potential to create instability and poverty in countries it affects the most, leading to discontent that pushes people to take up arms.
Both climate change and terror are consequences of the plundering of fossil fuels.
Nigeria as an example:-
Studies have drawn linkages between oil extraction activities around the Niger delta and the rise of extremist groups such as Boko Haram. “Nigeria is now called a terrorist country due to Boko Haram insurgency
Much of the insurgency exists in the region bordering Lake Chad which has shrunk 20 times its original size. Livestock cannot breed anymore in the lands around the lake… People have become destitute, [have] joined criminal gangs… insurgency and fundamentalism thrive, as it has become easier to recruit people.
The link:-
Linking climate change to terror is often viewed as an exaggeration, but failing to see the connections between the two would leave us blind to one of the most obvious existential crises in the world.
The “resource curse” phenomenon is very much at work in countries such as Nigeria, where the wealth of natural resources has not empowered the local communities, but has fuelled social conflict instead.
War for controlling natural resources:-
Though terrorist organisations trace their origins back to the Cold War days, what has aggravated tensions in the country of its origin today is the struggle over controlling natural resources.
Examples:-
Activists claimed that U.S. “war on terror” was essentially a war for controlling oil resources. Because of which the U.S. supports corrupt and brutal governments and is “opposing political or economic progress” in order “to protect its interest in Near East oil”.
China too has joined this race to plunder, taking major initiatives to develop the Amu Darya basin in Afghanistan, to be able to drill oil from the region
Such exploitation, without addressing the problems of corruption and the lack of government accountability, has directly aided the cause of terror.
Funding terror:-
Another concern is how revenues from oil are helping to fund terror, as is the case of the Syrian oil fields helping fund the IS.
Though the U.S. recently surpassed Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer of oil, it continues to depend on oil-rich countries for augmenting its fuel supplies. Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq figure in the top five countries from where the U.S. imports most of its oil.
The oil dependency of the world powers is, thus, not only brewing trouble in countries from where the fuel is being extracted, but also making them vulnerable to attack from militant groups.
The Paris agreement:-
The Paris Agreement is thus nothing but a diplomatic victory for world powers, as they can now mobilise the deal to work towards alternative pathways to energy production.
This will help reduce oil dependency in their economies, and also help devise methods to drive down the profitability of oil, which could dry up funding for terror as well.
[3]. From plate to plough: A new budget in the New Year:-
Context:-
The article discusses the urgent need for transformational changes to revive Agriculture.
Issues in agriculture:-
a) Farmers are under severe stress, with profitability in farming falling alarmingly.
b) Back-to-back droughts and tumbling commodity prices (except perhaps tur dal) have already broken farmers’ backs.
c) he FCI is demoralised due to mounting arrears that have crossed Rs 70,000 crore. The fertiliser industry is now almost sick, with no major fresh investments.
d) Production is stagnating and imports rising.
Reforms in PDS:-
The transformational changes were already suggested last year by the Shanta Kumar panel for food and fertiliser subsidies and restructuring the Food Corporation of India’s role .
The key recommendations were to move towards cash transfers and outsource much of the storage functions to the private sector
These reforms could have plugged massive leakages in the PDS, saved large resources that could have been ploughed back into irrigation, raised productivity and moved towards better drought-proofing
DBT in Food and Fertiliser Subsidy:-
Half of the Jan Dhan accounts don’t show any transactions, and the platform remains underutilised. The latest report on financial inclusion by the RBI, also talks of moving various farm subsidies towards DBT and going for more science-based crop insurance systems.
Crop Insurance reforms:-
The existing crop insurance system system isn’t serving peasants well.
Crop damages need to be assessed in a few days with the help of automatic weather stations (AWS), satellites, drones and low-earth orbits (LEOs).
Compensation should be sent directly to farmers’ accounts, with digitised farm records locked-in with Jan Dhan accounts, Aadhaar and mobile numbers.
Removing Stress on water:-
Water is going to be increasingly critical for drought-proofing Indian agriculture.
The time taken to complete major and medium irrigation schemes funded through the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF, under Nabard) is much less than for those funded by the state.
A transformational strategy could be doubling the allocation under the RIDF.
Agri-market reform is another transformational strategy that the government needs to work on for unifying markets.
Conclusion:-
All that is needed now is the courage to implement and to go beyond the courtesy of the consultative process.
[4]. New Year Postcard-3: Water crisis will define 2016
Context:-
The article enumerates the problems faced by farmers who are suffering drought and what they require from the government to run their lives.
Requirements:-
Reform the cooperative bank institutions as they are almost defunct. Banks neither have resources to give new loans nor is it easy to access funds.
Farm packages for crop losses must be more transparent and in keeping with real losses.
The government machinery needs to be more responsive.
Jalyukt Shivar programme for water conservation should be implemented.The project involves deepening and widening of streams, construction of cement and earthen stop dams, work on nullahs and digging of farm ponds
[5]. End of the oil age
Context:-
The article discusses how 2015 might be seen as the year the oil era entered the phase of terminal decline.
Start of the oil era:-
It has been in use for over 150 years but the decisive turn towards the “oil age” happened just over a hundred years back.
In 1911, Winston Churchill as minister of the navy decided to convert the British naval fleet from coal to oil.
Oil enabled an acceleration of speed; it was cleaner; it required less storage space; and it allowed for mid-ocean refuelling.
Later the superiority of the internal combustion engine pushed the world into the oil age.
Forces behind the decline of oil era:-
Global Consensus:-
The global consensus that oil (along with coal) is responsible for climate change is growing strong. The agreement in Paris is potentially game-changing.
Weak Petroleum industry:-
It is the shaky state of the petroleum industry business model. On the supply side, there is now no “easy oil” left to discover and the marginal cost of incremental barrels is increasingly higher.
On the demand side oil prices look as if they are on a secular downward curve.
The larger point is that companies are now confronting uncertain economics and the increasing probability of stranded assets.
Clean energy technology:-
Scientists are working hard to find the missing links required for commercialising and scaling up solar and wind energy and alternatives to diesel and gasoline as transportation fuels.
Public sentiment:-
The anti-fossil fuel lobby is no longer limited to environmental activists. As people choke on the smog of air pollution, public opinion is looking to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for environmental damage.
By: ForumIAS Editorial Team
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