A meeting of writers, poets, lawyers and academicians of the city was organised under the aegis of Iqbal Academy Allahabad, to protest against the decision of the authorities of Union Public Service Commission to remove Arabic, Persian and Pali from its scheme of examinations. The meeting was chaired by SMA Kazmi, former advocate general UP and conducted by Prof AA Fatmi.

(Result) Prasar Bharati Examination - 2013

Coal block auction policy for private firms gets Govt nod

• The Cabinet, , approved the methodology for auctioning coal blocks, providing for upfront and production-linked payments and benchmarking of coal sale prices.
• Coal blocks will be put for auction after the Environment Ministry reviews them, and bidders have to agree to a minimum work programme, according to an official statement. “
• The methodology provides for auctioning the fully explored coal blocks, and also provides for fast-tracking the auction by exploration of regionally explored blocks,”
• The policy will ensure greater transparency.
• A source said six explored blocks would be auctioned first, with estimated reserves of over 2,000 million tonnes.
• The policy provides for production-linked payment on a rupee per tonne basis, plus a basic upfront payment of 10 per cent of the intrinsic value of the coal block.

Intrinsic value

• The intrinsic value would be calculated on the basis of net present value (NPV) of the block arrived at through the discounted cash flow (DCF) method, .
• “To benchmark the selling price of coal, the international f.o.b (freight-on-board) price from the public indices like Argus/Platts will be used by adjusting it by 15 per cent to provide for inland transport cost which would give the mine mouth price,”
• To avoid short-term volatility, the average sale price will be calculated by taking prices of the past five years.
• For the regulated power sector, a 90 per cent discount would be provided on the intrinsic value. This would help rationalise power tariffs, the government said.
• To ensure firm commitment, there will be an agreement between the Ministry and the bidder to perform minimum work programmes at all stages.
• There will be development stage obligations in terms of milestones to be achieved such as getting mining leases and obtaining environment/forest clearances, while the bidder will have to give performance guarantees.

In a society where lobbying is almost synonymous with bribery and where lobbyists often creatively couch themselves as political aides, public relations officers and advocates for policy change, the Disclosure of Lobbying Activities Bill, 2013 (DLA Bill/Bill) recently introduced in the Lok Sabha1 by a Member of Parliament can perhaps be seen as the first ever acknowledgement by a parliamentarian of India’s worstkept secret. This private member’s bill, introduced in the wake of the Nira Radia tapes scandal, and more recently, Walmart’s regulatory disclosure to United States authorities of having engaged in lobbying activities to secure enhanced access to Indian markets, the bill intends to procure transparency in the context of lobbying activity undertaken in India.

The DLA Bill is a significant step, as for the first time in the history of Indian lawmaking, a potential law recognises that lobbying is an integral part of democratic functioning.2 Whilst it remains to be seen whether or not the bill will ever translate into a law, it implicitly indicates lawmakers’ willingness to consider a proposal for a law, which requires them to shrug off years of denial of the omnipresent relationship between lobbying and lawmaking.

This article critically analyses the DLA Bill, identifies provisions thereof which will have an impact on stakeholders and highlights some conceptual and some not-soconceptual errors therein, which arouse suspicions about the genuineness and sincerity underlying its introduction.

Lobbyists Registration Authority

The DLA Bill requires the central government to set up a central authority for registration of lobbyists known as the Lobbyists Registration Authority (LRA). The bill, thus, deals with lobbying activity as an activity to be reported and disclosed from time to time. Interestingly, the bill fights shy of declaring that lobbying activity is legal in India as long as the requirements prescribed under the bill have been complied with. Admittedly, in light of the reporting provisions, a provision which expressly declares lobbying activity to be legal would be redundant. However, given that lobbying has been culturally and politically tabooed in India, it may be worthwhile considering making an express provision to this effect. The absence of such a provision is indicative of the political inhibitions and hesitation involved in making a declaration to this effect.

When Sir Elijah Impey enthroned himself on the coveted position of the Chief Justice of Supreme Court in 1773; the journey of the dispensation of justice in ‘modern’ India began. Obviously, this does not imply the nonexistence of justice, more so; propoor justice in pre-modern India. Who will not reminisce the evolution of the Indian Judicial system since the era of the nomadic communities in the Rig Vedic period to the individual brilliance of Jehangir in the form of Janzeer-i-adl. The Judicial system in India had been well structured, though at times reaching the zenith of glory or the abyss of disgrace during the periods of individual feudal lords, kings or emperors.

Nevertheless, till the advent of the concepts of Western Democracy and Justice, probably there was no serious thought regarding “Justice” to be ‘just’ !! Since antiquity, justice in India (if not in the rest of the world too) practically was viewed as the decrees bestowed on the society by a privileged lot, the lot being the Brahmins, the Kings, the Ulemas or the Badshahs, including the regional variations of these nomenclatures. Whether it was the Manusmriti or the Quran, whether it was the Temple Priest or the Qazi, on the majority of occasions, Justice in India had been the prerogative of a coterie.

So, when the Supreme Court in Calcutta (now Kolkata) was set up as one of the provisions of the Regulating Act (1773), it must have evoked a response of gayness, at least amongst the progressive denizens of the city. But soon it was to falter in its objective of being a “Court of Equity” as Nand Kumar was denied access to ‘just’ “Justice”. With time, Indians overcame the initial mesmerization regarding the British system of Justice when the Ilbert Bill was vehemently opposed and not put into effect! Hence historically, Justice was belied, if not denied, to the native Indians, probably because of racial arrogance of the Britishers or due to the very nature of Justice itself ! Indians at that period, meant Indians of all variety, whether rich or poor.

With the dawn of independence, the free Indians dreamt of a different society altogether, far from the clutches of foreign oppression and closer to the Utopia of social integration. But whether free India has really been able to cherish her dreams of pluralism and justice through its arduous journey in the last six decades still remains a matter of debate. Probably the starting point of the ‘goof up’ had been the rampant imposition of the British system of Justice on a society which was hardly aware of it, either from the point of view of the concept, or from the perspective of language.

Moreover, Indians never did a Phoenix act in regard to our struggle for independence which meant that the masses were in oblivion of the romantic ideas of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity and for that matter, Justice. Nor were we well accustomed to Socialism and Social Justice; the rights of the proletariat and the farmers being out of question.

U.S. may tighten L-1 visa rules to curb fraud

• With the dust yet to settle over the recently-proposed U.S Immigration Bill, widely-touted as detrimental for Indian IT firms, a U.S Government body has trained its guns on the L-1 visa programme, saying that without some changes, the programme is at risk for fraud and abuse.

• Currently, the largest users of the L-1 visa programme are either companies based in India, or those with operations here.

• A recently-released report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General (IG) lists a series of recommendations to curb potential abuse, including more rigorous consideration of new office petitions to reduce fraud and abuse and consistently applying anti- “job-shop” provisions to L-1 petitions.

The new note on Mint Street

• Expectations are running high about the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor-designate, Raghuram Rajan — unusually for an RBI governor, his appointment was not just reported by but also commented on editorially in the foreign press. Living up to these expectations will be a huge challenge for Dr. Rajan.

Three issues

• Dr. Rajan needs to tread warily on three issues in particular. One, whether the RBI’s mandate should be confined to price stability or whether it needs to pursue other objectives as well, such as growth, currency stability and financial stability.
• Two, whether corporate houses should be granted bank licences and based on what criteria.
• Three, the role of the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC).
• Begin with the mandate of the central bank. In its report in 2008, the Committee on Financial Sector Reforms (CFSR), that Dr. Rajan chaired, made its position clear.
• “This Committee feels that monetary policy should be reoriented towards focusing on a single objective, and there are good reasons why this objective should be price stability (defined as low and stable inflation).
• An exchange rate objective would limit policy options for domestic macroeconomic management and is not compatible with an increasingly open capital account.”

The tussle between government agencies’ need for a better, faster and real-time interception, surveillance and monitoring mechanism through the Central Monitoring System (CMS), on the one hand, and demands by privacy, civil rights and free speech activists, for ensuring higher privacy for citizens in view of CMS, on the other, is gaining ground. India today has nearly 900 million mobile subscribers, 160 million Internet users and close to 85 million citizens on social media. Internet and social media users are expected to double by 2015.

The discussions have been coloured by the startling revelation relating to the PRISM project which, if true, may have meant that the privacy of millions of Indian Internet users could have been compromised, in varying degrees.

Meanwhile, closer home, the CMS project, aimed at improving the capability of security agencies to protect national security and fight crime, including terrorism, has also raised serious privacy issues.

Shrouded in Secrecy

First, very little real information is available about the CMS working procedure, technical capabilities and privacy safeguards in the public domain. While governments worldwide remain reluctant to share information about their surveillance and monitoring systems, successive governments in India have fared no better.

Nature has unleashed its wrath on Uttarakhand. Hundreds of people have died and thousands are still stranded. It seems, the land of God has turned into the town of ghost. Although official figure of death toll in the catastrophe, caused by flash floods followed by landslides, is placed around 1,000 but in actual, it likely to cross over 5,000. More than 1000 roads, 90 bridges have been washed away in the monsoon mayhem in
Dev Bhoomi. Even, the holy shrine of Kedarnath has barely survived, it is buried deep in mud. But question is who is responsible for this catastrophe?

Uttarakhand tragedy, which seems to be a natural calamity, in fact is the man made disaster. Colossal greed of politicians and bureaucrats has eaten up the lives of thousands. The experts say that unplanned development and rampant destruction of forests is the some of the main reasons behind the nature’s fury. Then, unabated construction of hydro-electric (hydel) power projects, roads, hotels have also compounded the problem and made the State prone to such disaster.

It is one week since Uttarakhand’s worst disaster in living memory. Flash floods resulting from extremely intense rainfall swept away mountainsides, villages and towns, thousands of people, animals, agricultural fields, irrigation canals, domestic water sources, dams, roads, bridges, and buildings — anything that stood in the way. A week later, media attention remains riveted on the efforts to rescue tens of thousands of pilgrims and tourists visiting the shrines in the uppermost reaches of Uttarakhand’s sacred rivers. But the deluge spread far beyond the Char Dhams — Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath — to cover the entire State. The catchments of many smaller rivers also witnessed flash floods but the media has yet to report on the destruction there. Eyewitness accounts being gathered by official agencies and voluntary organisations have reported devastation from more than 200 villages so far and more affected villages are being reported every day. Villagers whose homes, lands and animals have been swept away by the floods are in a state of shock trying to imagine day-to-day survival without their basic livelihood assets.

Righting a wrong, RBI way

• The recent Reserve Bank of India notification on vendor subvention loans, zero-cost credit card EMI (equated monthly instalment) loans, and so on will go a long way to create an environment for truth-in-lending regulations.
• Truth-in-lending laws, found in many countries ensure that lenders make a truthful disclosure of their rates of interest, and do not try to attract borrowers with misleading rates of interest.
• Truthful disclosure of rates of interest is as important as fair disclosures made by a vendor selling goods.
• There was a time when there was no truth in lending in India at all.
• A lender could get away with disclosure of what was called ‘flat rate of interest’, which was almost like half of the actual interest rates. Leading housing finance lenders would show what was called ‘annually declining rate of interest’, which was also deceptively lower than the actual interest rates.
• It was in 2009 that the RBI required disclosure of the actual rates of interest in case of loan transactions.

Supplier subventions

• Most comments from the financial press on the recent RBI notification focused on the credit card EMIs.
• Credit card issuing banks quite often promise an interest-free EMI loan if a particular card is used for a particular purpose, say, travel booking.
• There are no free lunches in life; neither is there any interest-free credit in the world of banking. It is just that the bankers are getting merchant commissions from the respective merchants offering the services — in this, the airline or the travel company from which the interest is being made up.
• The arrangement is, when a bank or a non-banking financial company (NBFC) gives asset-based financing to a client, the supplier may provide a credit, or commission or both.
• Thus, the lender charges a lower interest rate from the borrower, and makes up for the same by way of credit, or commission or both.

The importance of JUDICIARY

• The Union Cabinet has decided on the composition of the proposed Judicial Appointments Commission an informed debate becomes possible. The commission will be presided over by the Chief Justice of India, and will include two Supreme Court judges.
• The “non-judges” will be the Law Minister, two eminent persons and the Justice Secretary, who will be the Member-Secretary.
• The Leader of the Opposition in either House will be part of a committee which nominates the eminent persons, the other members being the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice. Thus, all the organs of the State, as also the citizenry, will be represented. And the judges will be marginally outnumbered. This is as it should be.

Checks and balances

• The president of the Supreme Court Bar Association is reported to have said that “loading the Commission with more members from the Executive and including fewer members from the judiciary would curtail the independence of the judiciary” and that “the cure should not be worse than the disease.
• The Bar will not agree to transfer the power of appointment to the executive. The collegium system can be improved by making methods of selection more transparent”
• The Constitution functions under a system of checks and balances.
• Judges of the superior courts are given the power to strike down laws of Parliament and the State Legislatures, which in their view violate the provisions of the Constitution.
• The judiciary has, in addition, given itself the power to annul amendments to the Constitution if they violate the “basic structure” ( Kesavananda Bharati , 1973), and the political class has acquiesced.

Fuel for thought

• A decade ago, three Indian companies — Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL), Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC) — independently announced substantial gas discoveries in the Krishna-Godavari Basin in the Bay of Bengal.
• For a fuel-starved country, these discoveries were harbingers of hope and optimism.
• While crude imports would continue, we believed we could finally turn our back on polluting coal and transit to natural gas-based electricity generation.
• In fact, in Andhra Pradesh, four CCGT-based (combined cycle gas turbine) thermal generation plants came up in the wake of the announcement.
• Abundant domestic gas supplies also meant enhanced food security, since gas is the main feedstock for manufacturing fertilizers.
• India is surrounded by gas-rich neighbours — Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Yet, cross-border gas pipelines have eluded us till now.
• While the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline is said to be at a reasonably advanced stage of negotiation, its prospects are dogged by so many problems that until that pipeline actually materialises and the gas starts flowing, it would be premature to count on it.
• In the event, India’s hope of meeting burgeoning gas demand is only through import of natural gas in the form of LNG (liquefied natural gas).
• LNG is an excellent option for countries that cannot access piped gas.
• Even Europe, which is extravagantly served by gas pipelines from Russia, has built several LNG terminals to supplement Russian supplies.
• LNG requires substantial infrastructure, both at the dispatching and receiving ends.
• LNG is natural gas cooled at source to minus 161 degrees Celsius converting it into liquid form and shipped in cryogenic ships.
• The importing country needs cryogenic storage facilities as well as re-gasification terminals where LNG can be converted once again into gaseous form and sent through the domestic pipeline network.
• Setting up LNG terminals is a capital-intensive operation.
• India already has two operational LNG terminals on the Gujarat coast, and a third one in Kochi.
• More LNG capacities are being planned along our long coastline. With domestic gas production plummeting to record lows, some of these will get built in the next few years.
• LNG export prices to European destinations have been driven down by the shale glut in the U.S. However, Asian LNG prices tend to be aligned to the prices Japan is willing to pay for its LNG imports.
• Japan’s electricity generation is almost entirely LNG-based, and its desperation to keep the lights on has led to substantially higher prices for LNG in the Asia Pacific region.

• secrecy shrouds the price at which LNG is contracted by importing countries, including India. the future of LNG in India will critically depend upon a far-sighted proactive approach that ensures transparency, fairness and certainty for all stakeholders, most of all, for the beleaguered Indian gas consumer.

Rich world ‘fails’ U.N. scheme on Amazon park

• In a major example of how the rich world countries are refusing to put their money where their mouth is on climate change, a major U.N.-backed initiative that would have kept fossil fuels underground in the pristine forests of Ecuador has collapsed.
• three countries sharing the Amazon region — Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador — were discussing plans to improve monitoring of the world’s biggest rainforest, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa announced that his country was giving up a conservation scheme that would have paid the country not to drill for oil in the Amazon’s previously untouched parts of Yasuni National Park — the most diverse natural zone in the world.
• The far-reaching decision that would lead to the demise of the planet’s most creative and ambitious approach to biodiversity conservation, social development and climate change immediately sparked a fiery debate on the future of the world’s biggest eco-system,
• With only $13 million so far in actual donations, he said he had been forced to abandon the fund as “the world has failed us”.
• Mr. Correa, who had launched the scheme in 2010 with the aim of raising $3.6 billion, almost 50 per cent of the value of the reserves in the park’s Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) oil field, over 13 years.
• At that time, the ITT Initiative, as the project is known, was welcomed as an alternative to the efforts of the United Nations to deal with climate change and biodiversity loss as it promised to the keep carbon in the ground in a 2,00,000- hectare corner of the park and, in the process, help to redistribute wealth from rich nations to the developing world and wildlife.

Issue : September 2013
Size: 3.34 MB
File Type: Zipped PDF
Publisher : UPSCPORTAL.COM 

Table of Contents:

Articles:

• Natural Calamity or Manmade Disaster?
• Central Monitoring System Vs Civil Rights
• Justice Must Reach the Poor
• The Disclosure of Lobbying Activities Bill
• Urbanisation and its Hazards (2008)
• Selected Articles from Various Newspapers & Journals

A charter for the CBI

• “There is a distinction between the constitutional responsibility of the Minister for the exercise of executive power in respect of public order, police and enforcement of Criminal law on the one hand and statutory duties of the Police and Magistrate to exercise powers vested in them by the Police Acts and the Code of Criminal Procedure.
• It is the constitutional duty of the Minister, as head of the Department in charge of the police, who are instruments of maintenance of public order and enforcement of criminal law, to ensure that the Police discharge their functions and exercise their powers properly and diligently.
• But beyond that, the Minister cannot go and issue specific instructions as to the manner of exercise of their statutory powers. That would amount to interference.”
• The Home Minister is responsible to the legislature if there is “gross negligence or general failure or neglect to perform its statutory functions by the police in preventing the commission of offences or of bringing offenders to justice or there is a general failure to maintain law and order.”
• The very foundation of the rule of law, a part of the unamendable “basic structure” of the Constitution, is a police force which is free from political interference. British works on constitutional law discuss the constitutional status of the police; Indian works discuss the police only in the context of Centre-State relations.
• Justice Kapur cited the Calcutta High Court’s judgment in the famous “ gherao ” case which held that no government can interfere in the enforcement of the law of the land by the police whose powers are defined by the Cr.P.C. In a classic ruling, Lord Denning said, “I hold it to be the duty of the Commissioner of Police, as it is of every chief constable, to enforce the law of the land.
• He must take steps so to post his men that crimes may be detected, and the honest citizens may go about their affairs in peace.
• He must decide whether or not suspected persons are to be prosecuted and, if need be, bring the prosecution or see that it is brought, but in all these things he is not the servant of anyone, save of the law itself. No Minister of the crown can tell him that he must, or must not, keep observation on this place or that, or that he must, or must not, prosecute this man or that man. Nor can any police authority tell him so.
• The responsibility for law enforcement lies on him. He is answerable to the law and to the law alone.”
• The National Police Commission pointed out in its second report that, apart from the “political sources,” industrialists, businessmen et al also try to influence the police. S.3 of the Police Act, 1861 confers on the States powers of “the superintendence of the police force.”
• The commission noted that “in the guise of executive instructions… attempts have been made to subordinate police personnel to executive requirements.”
• Article 227 confers powers of “superintendence” over all courts and tribunals. It does not imply power to interfere unless the law is violated.

Where have all the women gone?

• Have women fared better than men, and girls better than boys in the last decade or so? In the din over a dramatic reduction in poverty in the period 2009/10-2011/12 that is unlikely to die down, deep questions about the discrimination and deprivation that women face from the womb to the rest of their lives are either glossed over or, worse, just ignored.

The Sen norm

• Amartya Sen sought to capture the cumulative impact of multiple forms of deprivation that women face over their lives in an intuitively appealing measure of “missing women.”
• It aims to capture women’s adversity in mortality and to better understand the quantitative difference between (1) the actual number of women, and (2) the number we expect to see in the absence of a significant bias against women in terms of food, and health care.
• First, the difference between the sex ratio norm of women per 1,000 males and actual sex ratio is computed. Second, multiplying it by the number of males, the number of missing women is obtained.
• This is an absolute measure. A relative measure requires division of missing women by surviving women. In the same way, absolute and relative estimates of missing girls are computed.
• Dr. Sen’s original estimate of missing women in India in the 1980s was 37 million in a global total of more than 100 million missing women.
• Another estimate is lower for India (23 million) in a total of 60 million in selected countries, based on the western demographic experience.
• More recent estimates point to higher numbers of missing women. The important point, however, is not that the differences are large but the fact that “gender bias in mortality takes an astonishingly high toll” .
• The sex ratio rose in India from 932.91 per 1,000 males in 2001 to 940.27 in 2011, implying a decadal growth of 0.70 per cent. Using the same norm that Dr. Sen used, our estimates of missing women rise from 46.35 million in 2001 to 49.73 million in 2011, an increase of 3.38 million.

• The decadal increase was thus 7.30 per cent. As the number of missing women depends on the difference between the sex ratio norm and the actual multiplied by the number of men, a narrowing of the difference between these ratios was more than compensated for by the larger number of men. However, as a share of surviving women, there was a reduction — from 9.33 per cent in 2001 to 8.48 per cent — implying a decadal reduction of 9.17 per cent.

Evidence that water once existed on Martian soil found

• In the first series of the Curiosity rover’s analysis of fine Martian soil samples, scientists have found that two per cent of it is water by weight.
• They have also found other evidence that hint at liquid water having once existed on the planet.
• Soil samples were picked up from a patch of sand, silt and dust called Rocknest. They were heated to 835 degrees Celsius and studied by instruments onboard the rover.
• “Analysis by the rover’s instruments found that, locked up in every cubic foot of Martian dirt, there were almost two pints of water.
• “That’s a real resource for future explorers. We can access it with just a little bit of heating,” she quipped.
• Because of similarities between the compounds in the soil and the atmosphere, the ‘dirt’ collected by the rover seems to have acted as a sponge for the atmosphere, which is where the volatile materials could be derived from.
• Thus, these minerals are constantly blown around by winds, and they mix with dust from other parts of the planet.
• This finding is supported by other papers in the report, which found most minerals to be of basaltic origins.

(Result) CISF (ACs) Ltd. Departmental Competitive Exam, 2013

On the basis of the results of the written part of CISF (ACs) Ltd. Departmental Competitive Exam, 2013 held by UPSC on 25.08.2013, the candidates with the under mentioned roll number have qualified for Physical Standards, Physical Efficiency and Medical Standards Tests. The candidature of all the candidates whose roll numbers are shown in the list is provisional.