Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 21 October 2017

::National::

Third and fourth railway lines from Thiruvananthapuram to Kasaragod

• The government will explore the feasibility of laying the third and fourth railway lines from Thiruvananthapuram to Kasaragod as part of improving the connectivity and operating more trains.

• Rail India Technical & Economic Services Ltd. (RITES), the public sector undertaking under Indian Railways, had been tasked to prepare the feasibility report of the third and fourth lines in the 574-km corridor.

• A decision to this effect was taken at a board meeting of Kerala Rail Development Corporation Limited (KRDCL), the joint venture between the State and the Railways for executing viable rail projects on 51:49 cost-sharing basis.

• The board tasked Konkan Railway Corporation Limited to prepare the Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the proposed rail corridor from Thalassery to Mysuru, conceived 58 years ago, based on the feasibility study carried out by Railways four years ago.

• The KRDCL would soon approach the KRCL and RITES to take up the work once minutes of the board meeting were approved, official sources told The Hindu .

• The decision to explore the possibility of the third and fourth lines comes in the wake of Railways’ tough stand that a dedicated line is needed for the Rapid Rail Transit System (RRTS) proposed along the 125.65-km

• Thiruvananthapuram Central-Chengannur corridor. The RRTS and the Thalaserry-Mysuru railway line figure as the first and second priority projects by the KRDCL to be taken up in Phase I.

• With the move for a third and fourth rail line, the take-off of the 430-km High Speed Railway (HSR) line between Kochuveli and Kannur, found viable by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), has further diminished.

• The decision to ask to prepare the DPR for the Thalaserry-Mysuru rail line is ignoring the feasibility report of the DMRC that has found the project unviable as only the people of north Kerala beyond Kuttippuram stand to gain.

• Finance Secretary Manoj Joshi; Transport Secretary and MD, KRDCL, K.R. Jyothilal; Secretary, IT and OSD to Chief Minister M. Shivasankar; and Project Director, RRTS, Tomy Cyriac; attended the meeting.

French defence minister to push for more Rafales

• India has a hectic diplomatic calendar next week with a series of high-profile visits scheduled. French Defence Minister Florance Parley will be in New Delhi on an official visit during which she is likely to make a strong pitch to sell additional Rafale fighter jets.

• “The two sides will discuss the progress of the implementation of the deal for 36 Rafale fighter jets,” one official said. The issue of additional Rafale jets and the Navy’s mega tender for a new line of submarines are likely to come up for discussion, the official added.

• “Ms. Parley will travel to Nagpur on October 27 to lay the foundation stone for a manufacturing facility being set up by Dassault and Reliance Defence as part of the offsets under the Rafale deal,” another official said.

• In September last year, India and France concluded a €7.87-billion government-to-government deal for 36 Rafale jets in flyaway condition scheduled to be delivered between 2019 and 2022. The deal has a 50% offset clause to be executed by Dassault and its partners in India amounting up to Rs. 30,000 crore.

• Following this, Dassault Aviation and Reliance Defence announced a joint venture called “Dassault Reliance Aerospace”, which is likely to execute a major part of the offsets.

• The Indian Air Force has stated its requirement for additional twin-engine fighter jets and has expressed its desire for more Rafale jets. However, with a depleting fighter strength and several squadrons of MiG-21s and MiG-27s to be phased out, the focus is now on procuring a single-engine fighter jet under the newly promulgated Strategic Partnership model.

• “Single engine is a priority ... Right now, we are trying to make up numbers with single-engine aircraft …,” Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa said earlier this month in response to questions on the IAF’s procurement plans.

• The IAF is operating 32 fighter squadrons against the sanctioned strength of 42, which is set to drop further in the coming years.

• One officer said the IAF would like to have additional Rafale jets. “The resources are limited and we need to prioritise,” he added.

MHRD to make financial transactions completely digital in all higher education institutions

• The Ministry of Human Resource Development aims to make financial transactions completely digital in all higher education institutions.

• “The HRD Minister is likely to write to the heads of all institutions to shift completely to digital transactions, preferably from December itself. Our vision is to have no cash transactions on these campuses,” said a senior official, who did not wish to be named.

• “The higher education regulators — University Grants Commission (UGC) and All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) — are also being taken on board to help facilitate the transition,” the official said.

• The move will bring within the digital ambit all such institutions — public and private — including Central and State universities, IITs, NITs, business schools, etc., Eventually, the Centre aims to fully digitise all campus processes — including admissions, assistance, assessments, result declaration, admission, etc. — with all these processes going on an integrated IT platform.

• HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar had in his presentation on higher education at the governors' conference, advocated that payments through digital mode be made mandatory in all institutions of higher education. In addition, he said, all in-house transactions, including in-campus canteens, would be made through the BHIM app.

• The Centre had launched the Vittiya Saksharta Abhiyan (VISAKA), meaning financial literacy campaign, for digital financial literacy early in 2017, enrolling lakhs of volunteers from among students to train families in their neighbourhood to conduct transactions through the BHIM app.

Rural development ministry to increase job creation for the rural youth

• The Rural Development Ministry, in a bid to addresss one of the biggest challenges for the Modi government, is in the midst of examining proposals that promises to leapfrog job creation for the rural youth.

• The proposals emerged from a two-day conclave the Ministry hosted last week, that was addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

• Several out of the box suggestions such as a migrant tracking system, low-cost accommodation for urban workers, and changing the word “labour” to “professional workers,” are now being compiled into a draft note that will eventually be sent to the Prime Minister’s Office.

• The note on skill development, points out that the Ministry’s flagship skill development programme — Deen Dayal Updadhaya Gramin Kaushal Yojana — needs to “reinvent itself to reach the next level.”

• Experts have suggested a cluster approach, where villages with similar socio-economic conditions should be clubbed and every village should have a gram vikas prerak (village development motivator), and call the “bottom of the pyramid as the foundation of the pyramid.”

• “Like a smart city index, we need to have a rural digital index,” the note points out and says skill development programmes of the government should work backwards from the future and link it to the market demands.

• Link skill to entrepreneurship development and do not over-emphasize wage employment,” reads one of the 18 recommendations that have so far been crystallized.

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::International::

Two former Presidents weighed in on the persisting political tensions in the United States

• Two former Presidents weighed in on the persisting political tensions in the United States and called for harmony at separate events.

• The 43rd President George W. Bush, making a rare political intervention, and the 44th one Barack Obama, appearing for the first time in a campaign event after he left the White House in January, made similar points — that the American identity is not, and cannot be defined by race or religion.

• The speeches were instantly and widely interpreted as a rebuke to President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and policy that often seeks to capitalise on social divisions, though neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Obama named the 45th President.

• Mr. Trump has personally attacked both former Presidents several times during his election campaign last year, and later as President.

• “People of every race, religion, and ethnicity can be fully and equally American. It means that bigotry or white supremacy in any form is blasphemy against the American creed,” Mr. Bush said, speaking at event at the George W. Bush Institute in New York.

• Mr. Obama, campaigning for the Democratic candidate for the Virginia governor election next month, told a crowd in Virginia that “instead of our politics reflecting our values, we’ve got politics infecting our communities.”

• Both former Presidents alluded to the August violence in Charlottesville where a white nationalist rally led to violence and the death of a counter protested

• If you have to win a campaign by dividing people, you’re not going to be able to govern them. You won’t be able to unite them later if that’s how you start,” Mr. Obama said.

• Mr. Bush underscored the importance of immigration to American identity, contradicting Mr. Trump’s politics.

• “Bigotry seems emboldened. Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication… We have seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty. At times, it can seem like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together,” he said, adding that “nationalism is distorted into nativism.”

• Mr. Obama had said he would wade into politics only when he sees “core values” challenged.

• Former presidents usually keep their interventions rare in order to allow the incumbent the space to govern and new leadership to emerge in their own party. An aide of Mr. Obama’s told ABC news that the latter had no plans to get highly active. “He is acutely aware that when he consumes political oxygen, it can stifle the attention that should be on current and emerging leaders in the party,” the aide said.

As IS looses its control other conflicts starts in Middle East

• U.S.-backed forces have barely begun to clear the land mines from Raqqa, Syria, after pushing the Islamic State from the city, the de facto capital of its self-declared caliphate.

• But the militants’ defeat there is already setting the stage for a new round of conflict and instability in Syria’s long civil war.

• Fleeing jihadists are regrouping in remote areas, rearming with the help of desert smugglers. Tensions are brewing over who will ultimately control Raqqa, where U.S.-backed Kurdish and Arab forces declared victory.

• And as the Islamic State threat wanes, the Syrian government is expected to return its military attention to the Syrian rebels, intensifying the kind of bombardment that has led to mass civilian casualties, with no sign of a political solution in sight.

• To defeat Islamic State, myriad international and Syrian combatants — many of them sworn enemies — banded together or put their conflicts on the back burner. Now, even as they close in on Islamic State’s last territories near the Iraqi border, their submerged tensions are rising to the surface.

• Raqqa was taken by a U.S.-backed militia made up of Syrian Kurds and Arabs. Soon after, celebrating Kurdish fighters raised flags adorned with the face of Abdullah Ocalan, a Kurdish militant leader. Many of Raqqa’s Arab residents, who consider Ocalan a terrorist, were appalled. Some are calling the Kurds new occupiers.

• Others downplayed the prospect of tensions between Arabs and Kurds. The U.S.-backed militia says it will soon hand formal control of Raqqa to a civilian city council made up of representative local residents.
  But the Syrian government has no intention of letting that arrangement stand.

• The government of President Bashar al-Assad now controls most of the country, having taken back much of the territory once held by rebel groups who took up arms after the government cracked down on protests in 2011.

• Backed by Russia and Iran, Mr. Assad has vowed to recapture all of Syria, including Raqqa and the areas beyond it where the Kurds have established a semi-autonomous zone. It remains unclear how far the U.S. would go to stop him.

• Pentagon officials say, for now, the U.S. military will continue to defend areas like Raqqa. In June, the military shot down two Syrian drones that U.S. officials said were threatening U.S.-backed troops.

• That posture has not changed, the officials said, and Syria experts say they expect it to continue for the next few months. What happens after that — and how willing the United States is to become engaged in a war against the Assad government and its international backers — is an open question.

• Trump administration officials acknowledge privately that the military campaign in Syria has by far outstripped the diplomatic campaign, to the point now where there is no real plan for what to do in a post-Islamic State Syria.

• That is not for lack of trying by John Kerry, the Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, who sought a political solution for a post-Islamic State Syria, and Brett H. McGurk, the Trump administration’s point man on Syria.

• With the Islamic State far from defeated the U.S.-backed coalition is “not quite ready to take their foot off the gas pedal yet,” said Eric Robinson, an analyst with RAND Corp.

• The militant group still controls close to 6,400 sq. km. of territory on either side of the Iraq-Syria border, harbouring an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 fighters.

• As its fighters are pushed out of their strongholds, many are going underground, vowing to continue their battle as hit-and-run insurgents. There are growing pockets of them in the eastern desert areas of at least three Syrian provinces, including many hiding in areas under government control, according to fighters and residents of the areas.

::Business and Economy::

GSTN released an offline facility that will allow taxpayers to finalise their GSTR-3B forms

• The Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) has released an offline facility that will allow taxpayers to finalise their GSTR-3B forms on their own computers before uploading it onto the portal.

• The deadline for the filing of the GSTR-3B form for September was October 20. Taxpayers have to file the summary GSTR-3B forms each month till January.

• “This facility will provide an opportunity to the taxpayer to verify the details of GSTR 3B before filing and minimise chances of error,” said Prakash Kumar, CEO of GSTN.

• “To make the process of filing returns simpler, an Excel based offline utility has been introduced for filing the GSTR-3B on the GST Portal,” the GSTN said in a release.

• The offline utility is designed to help taxpayers to prepare their GSTR-3B return on their computer system.The taxpayer can download the offline utility from the GST Portal under the Download Section.

• Taxpayers can open the GSTR-3B offline utility in their computer system, fill data and then create json file for uploading the same on GST Portal.

• The GSTN added that the offline functions work best on Windows 7 and above and Microsoft Excel 2007 and above. The offline functionality comes against the background of the GST portal crashing repeatedly during the previous filing deadlines

Banks to sell small savings schemes

• In order to encourage savings, the government has allowed banks, including top three private sector lenders, to accept deposits under various small savings schemes like National Savings Certificate (NSC), recurring deposits and monthly income plan.

• According to a recent government notification, banks can also sell National Savings Time Deposit Scheme 1981, National Savings (Monthly Income Account) Scheme 1987, National Savings Recurring Deposit Scheme 1981 and NSC VIII issue.

• As per the notification, all public sector banks and top three in the private sector — ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank — to receive subscription from the expanded portfolios.

Valuation services firms must register with the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India

• Individuals, partnership entities and companies rendering valuation services under the Companies Act have to be registered with the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) by March 31, 2018, the corporate affairs ministry said.

• Registered Valuers are also required to be members of the Registered Valuers Organisations recognised by the IBBI, it said in a statement.

• The Rules [The Companies (Registered Valuers and Valuation) Rules, 2017] provide for a transition period up to March 31, 2018 for registration of valuers with the authority... During this transition period, any person who may be rendering valuation services... may continue to render such services without getting registered under the Rules.

• The role and powers of the authority with regard to registration, recognition and ancillary matters have been provided in the Rules, the ministry said, adding that it had been proposed to specify IBBI as the authority under the Rules.

• The Rules, finalised after stakeholder consultation, have been issued, it said, adding that Section 247 of the Companies Act [on valuation by registered valuers] is effective October 18.

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