Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 19 June 2017

::National::

The norms for no-fly list to rein in unruly passengers to be ready soon

• The norms for no-fly list to rein in unruly passengers are expected to be ready early next month, the government said amid a parliamentarian being barred by domestic airlines for allegedly creating ruckus.
• A revised Civil Aviation Requirement (CAR) is being finalised after receiving comments from the stakeholders. 
• The Civil Aviation Ministry has already come out with draft rules for a ‘national no-fly list’ of unruly passengers for all domestic carriers, under which the flying ban could extend from at least three months to an indefinite period.
• Lok Sabha member from TDP J.C. Diwakar Reddy was barred by major airlines after he allegedly created a ruckus at the Vizag airport when he was denied boarding by IndiGo.
• This is the second incident involving a Lok Sabha member after Shiv Sena’s Ravindra Gaikwad was banned by carriers for some time after he had assaulted an Air India staffer.

Central India to receive monsoon by 22nd June

• The monsoon system, forecast to establish itself over Central India by June 15, will be delayed by a week. This is unlikely to affect the overall rainfall in June and is seen as a part of the monsoon’s natural variability.
• There is moisture in the air and thunderstorm along with rain…but the monsoon has been delayed [over Central India] because of strong rain in the east.
• As of June 17, the country got 79.6 mm of rain, 9% more than the average 72.8 mm it receives in the first fortnight of June. Rain in Central India is 21% more than what is normal for this time.
• IMD said rainfall was likely to be 96% of the historical average in northwest India, 100% of the LPA (the 50-year average of the monsoon rains) over central India, 99% of the low pressure area (LPA) over the south peninsula, with a model error of plus or minus 8%.

National Mission for clean Ganga to decide about 400 tanneries from kanpur 

• Officials of the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) will meet Uttar Pradesh government officials to discuss the State’s decision to shift over 400 tanneries from Kanpur.
• The previous Samajwadi Party government had told the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in 2016 that the tanneries could not be shifted, for no land was available. The Yogi Adityanath government has reportedly identified fresh land.
• Were the tanneries to be shifted, it could affect nearly two million people dependent on them for their livelihood. It could also mean that alternative technologies — like the zero liquid discharge (ZLD) plant promoted by the CSIR-Central Leather Research Institute, Chennai — may not be implemented. 
• The tannery clusters at Jajmau employ over two million people; for long, tannery managers have argued that the new-technology effluent treatment plants are expensive. 
• Were the tanneries to shift, a new common effluent treatment plant would have to be developed.
• Central Pollution Control Board had informed the NGT that the Ganga, running 543 km between Haridwar and Kanpur, was affected by 1,072 seriously polluting industries that were releasing heavy metals and pesticides. 
• At present, 823.1 million litres per day (MLD) of untreated sewage and 212.42 MLD of industrial effluent flow into the river, while three of the four monitored sewage treatment plants do not comply with the set standards.
• The green panel has divided the cleaning work in segments — Gomukh-Haridwar (Phase-I); Haridwar-Unnao (segment B of Phase-I); Unnao-the border of Uttar Pradesh; the border of Uttar Pradesh-the border of Jharkhand; and the border of Jharkhand-the Bay of Bengal.

Bengal still tensed over Gorkhaland issue

• An eerie silence prevailed on Sunday in Singhamari, the stronghold of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM). Three people were killed allegedly in police firing during a violent agitation for a separate State of Gorkhaland.
• On the fourth day of the indefinite strike called by the GJM in Darjeeling hills, Singhamari, which has been the epicentre of the protests, wore a look of desolation and devastation. 
• Internet services were down and according to the protesters, this was a ploy of the administration and the police to counter the Gorkhaland movement.
• According to Col. Ramesh Allay (retd.), Deputy Chairman of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) and central committee member of the GJM, after “Saturday’s killings”, there is no going back in the agitation for Gorkhaland.

::International::

China included CPEC to scientific expedition of Tibet

• China has included the controversial $50 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor in its second scientific expedition to the 4,000-metre-high Qinghai-Tibet plateau to study changes in climate and environment over the past decades in the region.
• The expedition will also take scientists to the CPEC, which passes through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) over which India has conveyed its protests to China. The area covers the Karakoram mountain ranges, including the Siachen glacier. 
• The last expedition of similar scale in Qinghai-Tibet plateau, regarded as roof of the world, was conducted in the 1970s.
• This time, the expedition will last five to 10 years and the first stop will be Serling Tso, a 2,391-square-km lake that was confirmed to have replaced the Buddhist holy lake Namtso as Tibet’s largest in 2014.
• In the coming months, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) will take over 100 scientists to the lake area and the origin of the Yangtze. 
• They will be divided into four groups and make a comprehensive survey of the plateau glaciers, climate change, biodiversity and ecological changes, Yao Tandong, an academician with the CAS, was quoted as saying.

::Business and Economy::

Civil Aviation Ministry has recommended a rollback of an airport charge increase

• Airfares are set to become cheaper as the Civil Aviation Ministry has recommended a rollback of an airport charge increase, across all non-major airports operated by the Airports Authority of India (AAI), which came into effect December last year.
• The Aviation Ministry asked the AAI to take back the increase in aeronautical charges at non-major airports from July this year. In December, airport charges were raised by 10% — a first such hike in eight years. 
• This was followed by a subsequent hike by 5% in airport charges beginning April 1.
• The airport charge increase was applicable on non-major airports such as Amritsar, Nagpur, Bagdogra, Surat, Madurai, Vijayawada, Jammu, Varanasi, Vadadora, among others, which handle an annual traffic of less than 15 lakh.
• However, AAI, which is already facing a challenge to meet the expenses of flight operations from remote airports under the Centre’s regional connectivity scheme UDAN, has “strongly” opposed the move fearing an impact on its revenue.
• The AAI has told the Aviation Ministry that the move will lead to a revenue loss of Rs. 200 crore in 2017-18. 
• The passenger service fee, which is charged as a part of air ticket fare, was increased from Rs. 77 per passenger to Rs. 85 in December last year and then to Rs. 89 in April this year. 
• A passenger service fee is charged by the airport operator for providing services such as baggage trolleys, escalators, air conditioning at airport terminals, conveyor belt systems for baggage, wi-fi systems, public address systems and other facilities.
• Other expenses such as landing, parking and route navigation charges at all AAI airports were also increased by 10% in December which was to be paid by airlines to pass the cost burden onto the customers.

Lower Inflation may not translate to purchasing power

• It is not just RBI’s forecasters who are likely to be scratching their heads after the release of India’s latest retail inflation numbers for May 2017. Aam aadmi is quite bewildered too. 
• The data shows that the inflation rate, measured by the Consumer Price Index (Combined — new series) was 2.2% for May 2017, slipping from a 3% reading for April which everyone thought was the rock-bottom. 
• The food component of the index actually deflated by 1.1%.
• A CPI inflation rate below 2.5% is a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence in India. Looking back at the history of the CPI – Industrial Workers (the older avatar of the index which has a longer history), we find that India has registered CPI inflation of less than 2.5% only in 12 months in 20 years.
• But if retail inflation is at a stand-still, how come most of us don’t feel it? Shouldn’t this be boosting our purchasing power and visibly fattening our wallets?
• There are three reasons why your personal experience with price rise may not gel with the official reading.
• This is because the All-India CPI Combined is compiled by collecting town and village-level data on the prices of goods and services across States and then aggregating them.
• Now, all States and Union Territories do not get equal weighting in the total. The weights are decided by the consumption expenditure within each State relative to the all-India consumption basket. 
• While the State of Maharashtra gets a 13.2% weight in the all-India CPI (Combined), J&K weighs in with just 0.94%, Puducherry with 0.17% and Sikkim with 0.05%.
• In effect, price trends at Maharashtra carry nearly 260 times the influence that Sikkim carries in deciding the final CPI number. 
• Runaway inflation in India’s less populous low-spend States and Union Territories is unlikely to show up in the form of a big swing in the overall index. But even small blips in the States of Maharashtra (13.1% weight), UP (12.4%) and Tamil Nadu (7.3%) can swing the headline number.
• This is why, in May 2017, CPI inflation at J&K (6.3%), Delhi (5.1%) and Himachal Pradesh (4.7%) ruled at many times the all-India reading of 2.2%.
• In order to arrive at a CPI General Index that is representative of both India and Bharat, the statistics office assigns different weights to the different products and services. 
• These weights are derived from the actual spending patterns of rural and urban households as captured by the NSSO’s ground-level survey of expenditure patterns across India. The latest such survey was the 68th round conducted over 2011-12. 
• Because the majority of Indian households belong to lower-income strata, the CPI General Index thus carries a far higher weight to products than services.
• Services often witness higher price rise than products in the Indian context. But in practise, more affluent households will tend to spend a far lower proportion of their income on food and essentials and make a higher allocation to non-essentials and services.
• The official CPI print captures the point-to-point change in the index in the latest month, compared to the same month last year. This makes the number susceptible to distortions from one-off factors both in the base month and in the current one.
• The CPI inflation rate for May 2017 has, for instance, been suppressed by the base effect. As we know, a bountiful monsoon this year has led to a bumper production of pulses, oilseeds and horticultural crops. 
• But a fall in retail food prices at this time of the year is quite a one-off situation. Every year, food prices usually soar in the months of April-May as they represent the pre-monsoon months when food crops are in short supply. 
• In May last year, for instance, two consecutive poor monsoon years had fuelled a sharp flare-up in the prices of pulses, oilseeds, vegetables and spices. 
• In May 2016, therefore the item-wise breakdown of CPI showed the prices of pulses up 33% (year-on-year), vegetables higher by 10% and spices rising 9%.
• But in May 2017, the respective CPI index for vegetables was down by 13%, that for pulses had plunged 15% and fruits and oils were up by just 1-2% compared to the same time last year.
• In short, yes, inflation has moderated of late, but for most middle class folk, it is likely to be higher than 2.2%. 
• To get a real feel of your personal inflation rate, you should check out CPI trends in your State of residence, and in the products and services that make up the lion’s share of your budget.

Govt taking steps to reduce bad debt

• RBI said its internal advisory committee (IAC) had identified 12 accounts, which account for 25% of non-performing assets of the Indian banking system for immediate resolution under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC).
• The gross bad debt in the banking system as on March was Rs. 7.11 lakh crore, which means the 12 accounts contribute to about Rs. 1.78 lakh crore.
• A company is bankrupt if it is unable to repay debts to its creditors (banks, suppliers etc). The inability to repay debts by some of the Indian firms has resulted in a huge pile of non-performing assets for the banking system. 
• A mechanism to free up the money stuck as bad loans is one of the key for the banking system. IBC is seen as one such.
• While the names of the 12 accounts which have been referred have not been made public officially, the RBI had earlier hinted that stress was coming from sectors such as power, telecom, steel, textiles and aviation. 
• Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley later said the number of highly stressed accounts would be about 40-50.
• The government had recently amended the RBI Act, which gave powers to the central bank to direct banks to take punitive action against individual accounts under IBC.
• To being with any creditor including banks can start bankruptcy proceedings against defaulters by filing a petition with the National Company Law Tribunal.
• The committee should come up with a resolution plan (which may include selling off defaulted loans or liquidate the company outright). The resolution would require a nod from 75% of the creditors on the committee.
• The insolvency professional gets 180 days to come up with a feasible solution on the default issue. The timeline can be extended by another 90 days. If no solution is found within 270 days, a liquidator is appointed. 
• The company can also opt for voluntary liquidation by a special resolution in a general meeting.

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