(Current Affairs) National Events | April : 2017

National Events

Third quarter growth remained at 7% despite demonetisation

  • CSO has kept its January estimate for growth in GDP in 2016-17 unchanged at 7.1%, signalling that independent economic forecasters may have overstated the drag on the economy from the November withdrawal of high-value currency notes.
  • The CSO, which released its second advance estimates of economic growth, also provided GDP and Gross Value Added (GVA) figures for the third quarter, which showed GDP growth slowing to 7%, from 7.3% in the second quarter.
  • The numbers are vindication that demonetisation didn’t have a major impact on the economy. They have looked at all the numbers at their disposal and have come out with their estimate.”
  • The official figures peg GVA growth for the full year at 6.7% as against the 7% projected in the first advance estimates. For Q3, the GVA growth rate is estimated at 6.6%, down from the 7.1% reported in Q2.
  • The CSO also revised downward the GVA growth rates for the first two quarters to 6.9% in Q1 and 6.7% in Q2, from the 7.3% and 7.1% reported earlier.
  • The reason why GDP has maintained is because the reduction in GVA has been compensated for by an improved estimate in net indirect taxes.
  • The Election Commission had barred CSO from releasing State-specific data on economic growth projections, in view of the ongoing Assembly elections.The Commission gave a clearance to the release of only national level data.

IMD predicts above normal temperature across country

  • Prepare for a scorching summer as the India Meteorological Department has forecast “above normal” temperatures across most of the country.
  • Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir — or hill-station States popular among tourists wanting to escape the heat — are expected to be particularly hot with predicted temperatures, on average, likely to be well above 1 degree C above their normal summer temperatures.
  • Punjab, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha and Telangana are other States in the “core heat zone” that are likely to see significantly warmer temperatures.
  • The IMD weather model, used to prepare the forecast, shows a 47% probability of summer temperatures being above normal.
  • The summer forecast is in line with a generally warm trend over previous months. 2016 was the warmest year in a century, according to the IMD, with the country 0.91 C warmer than the 1961-1990 average.
  • The summer months of March-May last year were 1.36 C higher than historical average, making it the second-warmest since 1901.
  • The weather agency blames global warming. “Studies indicate increasing trends in the frequency and duration of heat waves over the country.”

India and US engage in issue of safety of Indians in US

  • Indian and U.S. officials are engaging on the issue of safety of Indians in America, the External Affairs Ministry said ahead of a visit by Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar to Washington.
  • It said there was no need for India to issue a “demarche” to the U.S. over the suspected racially motivated killing of an Indian engineer.
  • The statement came amid rising criticism in the U.S. and Indian media over the lack of a response from U.S. President Donald Trump on the killing, although White House spokesperson Sean Spicer did call details of the incident “disturbing”.
  • Meanwhile, hailing the talks between Mr. Jaishankar and Chinese Executive Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Zhang Yesui in Beijing last week as “positive and constructive”, the Ministry said that they had “addressed the full complexity of India-China relations”.
  • The official also said that “common ground” had been found during specific exchanges on Afghanistan, U.N., counter-terrorism and nuclear issues.

Law ministry asks for opinion about AIJS

  • The Union Law Ministry has sought an opinion from Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi and Solicitor-General Ranjit Kumar on the long-standing proposal for an all-India judicial service for the lower judiciary.
  • The decision was taken at a meeting chaired by Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on January 16. Various issues related to the proposal for a separate cadre for the lower judiciary were discussed.
  • However, several State governments and courts hold various views on the issue.
  • While in several states local languages are currently used for official works in the lower courts, candidates selected from one state might face difficulty in another state -- this is one of the unresolved problems.
  • It has also been argued that such an arrangement might lead to problems in the career progression of state judicial service officials.
  • The Law Commission has endorsed the idea of having a national-level judicial service on the lines of All-India Civil Services.
  • A department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, in its 15th report, has also recommended such a judicial service for the appointment of district-level judges.

President said “universities must engage in reasoned discussion and debate

  • Asserting that there should be “no room in India for the intolerant Indian”, President Pranab Mukherjee said it was tragic to see universities across the country “caught in the vortex of violence and disquiet”.
  • Delivering the K.S. Rajamony memorial lecture, Mr. Mukherjee said “universities must engage in reasoned discussion and debate rather than propagate a culture of unrest”.
  • The President’s suggestion comes in the wake of a raging debate on the freedom of expression following the violent clashes at Ramjas College of Delhi University.
  • Mr. Mukherjee said these temples of learning must resound with intellectual exercises, free thinking and free exchanges and creativity and that there should be space for legitimate criticism and dissent in the country.
  • The President pointed out that “India was a world leader in the field of education when our universities like Nalanda and Takshshila were at the height of their glory.
  • Nalanda and Takshshila are not mere geographical expressions but representations of the idea for free thought which flourished in these great universities of the past.
  • Our premier institutions of higher education are the vehicles on which India has to propel itself into a knowledge society,” he said.
  • India, said Mr. Mukherjee, has been since ancient times a bastion of free thought, speech and expression.

India and South East Asian countries wants discussion on an ‘Access to Medicines’ report

  • A month after the 140th World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Executive Board meeting, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) response has revealed that the United States government had opposed including agenda items proposed by India.
  • The Indian government — along with 11 South East Asian countries — had proposed a discussion on an ‘Access to Medicines’ report by the United Nations High Level Panel that had recommended reforms in the funding of biomedical research and development.
  • However, the set of documents released by Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), a not for profit organisation that gives technical advice to governments, reveals that both the United States and the WHO opposed including the proposal by India.
  • The 11 member-states — Bangladesh, Bhutan, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Timor-Leste — as well as Brazil, Iran, and South Africa supported the inclusion of the agenda item.
  • The delays by WHO to place the UN HLP recommendations on the agenda of the WHO’s EB and subsequently at the World Health Assembly have drawn widespread criticism from Asian civil society organisations.
  • “The U.N. report says there is a need for an RD treaty and it recommended reforms in the area of biomedical R&D. The U.S. government has a policy of blocking all reforms that would lead to funding the R&D system in a way that it prioritises diseases that kill millions of people in the developing world.
  • The U.N. Access to Medicines report had recommended solutions for remedying the policy incoherence between justifiable rights of inventors, trade rules and global public health targets.
  • The report recommended that “governments and the private sector must refrain from explicit or implicit threats, tactics or strategies that undermine the right of WTO Members to use TRIPS flexibilities.”

Odisha, Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand come together for elephant census

  • In what will probably be the first such attempt, the States of Odisha, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand have decided to conduct a synchronised elephant census between May 9 and 12.
  • The four States together have the maximum number of human-elephant conflict-prone regions in India.
  • The States will conduct the census based on an identical set of rules — using the direct and indirect counting methods.
  • The direct counting method is based on sighting of elephants while the indirect method uses the ‘dung decay’ formula, in which the the analysis of elephant dung is used to estimate the population.
  • As per the 2015 census, Odisha has 1,954 elephants while Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal had approximately 700, 275 and 130 elephants, respectively.
  • Earlier, field officials were deputed inside a forest area for direct counting. It was expected that the entire area would be covered. But, that is not possible because of many reasons.
  • As a result, the population was underestimated in some places while duplication was reported elsewhere. A simultaneous census will eliminate these factors.

EC rejected the “speculative, baseless and wide allegations” on EVM

  • Election Commission rejected the “speculative, baseless and wide allegations” of some political parties that Electronic Voting Machines had been tampered with, reiterating that the voting machines were fully tamper-proof.
  • The EC did not receive specific complaints or concrete material from political parties or candidates about the alleged tampering of EVMs during the recently held election process.
  • To enhance transparency, the EC has also introduced Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), which generates a paper slip bearing the name and the symbol of candidates along with the recording of vote in Control Unit.
  • So that in case of any dispute, paper slip can be counted to verify the result being shown on the EVM.
  • The EC used VVPAT in Nagaland by-election in 2013, which was a “great success”. The Supreme Court ordered introduction of VVPAT in phases and also asked the government to sanction funds for procurement.
  • In June 2014, the Commission proposed to implement VVPAT at every polling station in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, for which Rs. 3,174 crore has been sought.

Apart from zero-rated goods, four tax rates under GST

  • Apart from zero-rated goods, four tax rates of 5%, 12%, 18% and 28% have been proposed under the GST.
  • The cess is to be levied on four or five commodities and the caps have been approved by the Council. For instance, the Council has approved a cap of 15% cess on luxury cars, but that is only for empowerment.
  • A similar 15% cess cap has been approved for aerated drinks as well. The environment cess on coal, lignite and peat has been capped at the existing rate of Rs. 400 per tonne.
  • For pan masala, which currently face an effective tax rate of about 135%, the ceiling on cess has been kept at 135% on an ad valorem basis (value of the product).
  • For cigarettes, which currently face a specific duty of Rs 4,170 for every 1,000 sticks apart from VAT and other taxes, the ceiling has been kept at 4,170 for every 1,000 sticks and 290% on an ad valorem basis, with the option to levy a combination of both.
  • By the next weekend, officials are also expected to finalise four pending draft regulations relating to issues such as valuation under the GST regime, which will then be taken up by the GST Council at its thirteenth meeting on March 31 in the capital, the minister said.

Five cities across the country will be the first to start using plastic bank notes of Rs. 10

  • Five cities across the country with diverse geographical and climatic conditions will be the first to start using plastic bank notes of Rs. 10 denomination, with the Centre approving a field trial.
  • The plastic bank notes are considered to be cleaner than paper currency, will last longer and are difficult to counterfeit.
  • Meanwhile, the Finance Ministry has asked the Reserve Bank of India to go ahead with the procurement of the requisite plastic substrate material and approved the printing of Rs. 10 notes.

More than one crore face arsenic contamination in West Bangal

  • West Bengal has the highest number of arsenic-affected people in the country.
  • There are 83 blocks in eight districts — Bardhaman, Malda, Hooghly, Howrah, Murshidabad, Nadia, North and South 24 Paraganas — where ground water is affected by arsenic contamination.
  • Bengal topped the list with more than 1.04 crore arsenic-affected persons as on March 4, 2017. Bihar comes second with 16.88 lakh persons, with Assam in third spot with 14.48 lakh victims.
  • The total number of arsenic-affected people in the country is about 1.48 crore.
  • According to the WHO’s guidelines for drinking water quality (2011), the permissible limit of Arsenic in groundwater is .01 mg per litre. However, in India the permissible limit in drinking water has recently been revised from .05 mg per litre to .01 mg per litre.
  • The ruling Trinamool Congress had claimed in its 2016 election manifesto that 91% of the population of arsenic-affected areas in the State have been provided with clean drinking water.
  • The website of the PHE department also claims that arsenic contamination is “getting under control” and Bengal is expected to be “arsenic free” in another couple of years.

World Bank wants Indus water treaty issue to be resolved

  • World Bank CEO reiterated that the Bank was keen on resolving the disagreements between the two nations over the interpretation of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) following the construction by India of two hydroelectric power plants.
  • Though the two nations have had no fresh conflict over the sharing of river waters for more than five decades, differences cropped up after Pakistan opposed the construction of the Kishenganga (330 MW) and Ratle (850 MW) power plants.
  • These are constructed by India on the Jhelum and Chenab in Jammu and Kashmir, over which Pakistan has unrestricted rights under the treaty.
  • Even before Partition, the Indus had created problems among the states of British India. The problems became international after the creation of two nations as the political boundary was drawn right across the Indus basin.
  • The World Bank (then IBRD), under the presidency of Eugene Black, helped in 1952 to settle the dispute between the two nations on the sharing of the Indus river basin waters.
  • After eight years of hard negotiations, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and President Ayub Khan signed the IWT on September 19, 1960. The Bank is also a signatory to the treaty.
  • The IWT is a complex instrument, comprising 12 articles and eight annexures. It sets forth provisions of cooperation between the two countries in their use of the rivers, known as the Permanent Indus Commission (PIC).
  • According to the IWT, India has control over three eastern rivers of the Indus basin — the Beas, the Ravi and the Sutlej — and Pakistan has control over the three western rivers — the Indus, the Chenab and the Jhelum.
  • All six rivers flow from India to Pakistan. Among other uses, India is permitted to construct power facilities on these rivers subject to regulations laid down in the treaty.
  • India had asked the bank for appointment of a neutral expert following Pakistan’s objections to two projects, while Pakistan demanded the formation of a court of arbitration, alleging that India had violated the treaty.
  • In December 2016, the Bank announced a ‘pause’ and asked both parties to resolve the issue amicably by the end of January 2017.
  • India welcomed the Bank’s neutral stand, while Pakistan sought intervention of the Bank after being unable to find an amicable solution to the dispute through the commission.
  • Given that India has remained the Bank’s single largest borrower since its inception with cumulative borrowings from IBRD and IDA touching $103 billion, the bank did not perhaps want to upset it.
  • With buoyancy in foreign exchange reserves, the Bank needs India more than the other way round and this has created some anxiety in the Bank circles about the future direction of their relationship.
  • India and Pakistan are important partners and clients of the Bank. In South Asia, Pakistan ($2,280 million) received the highest lending from the Bank after India ($3,845 million) during the fiscal 2016.
  • Changing its stance, India has agreed to attend a meeting of the commission in Lahore next week. Like in the 1950s, Bank officials are again playing the role of mediator.

Tuberculosis control remains a major challenge in India

  • At the end of 50 years of tuberculosis control activities, the disease remains a major health challenge in India. As per new estimates, the number of new cases every year has risen to 2.8 million and mortality is put at 4,80,000 each year.
  • These figures may go up when the national TB prevalence survey is undertaken in 2017-18. Against this backdrop.
  • Govt in its national strategic plan for tuberculosis elimination (2017-2025), has set a highly ambitious goal of “achieving a rapid decline in burden of TB, morbidity and mortality while working towards elimination of TB by 2025.
  • Though the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) has treated 10 million patients, the rate of decline has been slow. Providing universal access to early diagnosis and treatment and improving case detection were the main goals of the national strategic plan 2012-17.
  • But RNTCP failed on both counts, as the Joint Monitoring Mission report of 2015 pointed out.
  • Going by the current rate of decline, India is far from reaching the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals — reducing the number of deaths by 90% and TB incidence by 80% compared with 2015.
  • Yet, the latest report for TB elimination calls for reducing TB incidence from 217 per 1,00,000 in 2015 to 142 by 2020 and 44 by 2025 and reduce mortality from 32 to 15 by 2020 and 3 per 1,00,000 by 2025.
  • Most importantly, the TB control programme plans to do away with the strategy of waiting for patients to walk in to get tested and instead engage in detecting more cases, both drug-sensitive and drug-resistant.
  • The emphasis will be on using highly sensitive diagnostic tests, undertaking universal testing for drug-resistant TB, reaching out to TB patients seeking care from private doctors and targeting people belonging to high-risk populations.
  • The other priority is to provide anti-TB treatment — irrespective of where patients seek care from, public or private — and ensure that they complete the treatment.
  • For the first time, the TB control programme talks of having in place patient-friendly systems to provide treatment and social support.
  • It seeks to make the daily regimen universal; currently, the thrice weekly regimen is followed by RNTCP, and the daily regimen has been introduced only in five States.
  • Though Bedaquiline, the drug for people who do not respond to any anti-TB medicine, is provided in six sites in the country, the number of beneficiaries is very small.
  • The report envisages a countrywide scale-up of Bedaquiline and Delamanid. In a marked departure, the report underscores the need to prevent the emergence of TB in susceptible populations.

India slipped down one place from 130 to 131 in Human development index

  • India slipped down one place from 130 to 131 among the 188 countries ranked in terms of human development, says the 2016 Human Development Report (HDR) released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
  • India’s human development index (HDI) value of 0.624 puts it in the “medium human development” category, alongside countries such as Congo, Namibia and Pakistan.
  • It is ranked third among the SAARC countries, behind Sri Lanka (73) and the Maldives (105), both of which figure in the “high human development” category.
  • The world’s top three countries in HDI are Norway (0.949), Australia (0.939) and Switzerland (0.939).
  • The HDI is a measure for assessing progress in three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge, and access to a decent standard of living.
  • The report says 1.5 million people worldwide still live in multidimensional poverty, 54% of them concentrated in South Asia. While poverty fell significantly from 1990 to 2015, inequalities sharpened in the region.
  • South Asia also had the highest levels of malnutrition in the world, at 38%, and the lowest public health expenditure as a percentage of the GDP (1.6%, 2014). India’s public health expenditure was even lower, at 1.4% of the GDP.
  • However, it did make some gains between 1990 and 2015, improving life expectancy by 10.4 years in this period. Child malnutrition also declined by 10 percentage points from 2015, and there was a modest gain in infant and under-five mortality rates.
  • The report noted with approval India’s progressive laws, especially the Right to Information, National Food Security, and Right to Education Acts.
  • Noting that women, on an average, have lower HDI than men across the world, the report pointed out that the largest gender disparity in development was in South Asia, where the female HDI value is 20% lower than the male value.
  • In South Asia, gender gaps in entrepreneurship and labour force participation caused an estimated income loss of 19%. “Between their first and fifth birthdays, girls in India and Pakistan have a 30% to 50% greater chance of dying than boys,” the report noted.
  • While India’s HDI value increased from 0.428 in 1990 to 0.624 in 2015, it still had the lowest rank among BRIC nations. However, its average annual growth in HDI (1990-2015) was higher than that of other medium HD countries.

Civil nuclear agreement between India and U.S. still in doubt

  • More than two years after India and the U.S. announced that the civil nuclear deal was “done,” its actual operationalisation is in doubt over a number of developments.
  • According to the agreement over liability issues and the negotiations that followed former U.S. President's visit to India in January 2015 and PM's visit to Washington in June 2016.
  • Two sides had agreed to “work toward finalising the contractual arrangements by June 2017” for six reactors to be built in Andhra Pradesh by Toshiba-owned Westinghouse and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL).
  • When completed, this was to be the first operationalisation of the Indo-U.S. civil nuclear deal, and proof that both sides have effectively sorted out all their issues, including over the liability that suppliers must accept in the event of an accident.
  • The reason for the concern is that the Indo-U.S. nuclear arrangement hinged on two major factors — the completion of the India-Japan Nuclear Cooperation Agreement (NCA).
  • While the NCA was signed in Tokyo in November 2016, it is yet to be ratified by the Japanese Diet (Parliament).

Attack on African nationals in Greater Noida took a diplomatic turn

  • The attack on African nationals in Greater Noida took a diplomatic turn after Nigeria summoned the Indian envoy and demanded immediate action against the culprits.
  • The summon, a rare occurrence in India’s bilateral ties with any African nation, happened even as India gave an assurance that the perpetrators would be punished while the Rajya Sabha condemned the attacks.
  • Mr Enikanolaiye, the senior-most diplomat of Nigeria, demanded that the perpetrators be prosecuted so that future attackers are deterred from carrying out similar assaults.
  • India’s assured of tough action saying that the law of the land would take its course.
  • External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, speaking in the Rajya Sabha, said a probe had been ordered and “once this probe is over, action will be taken as per its findings.”
  • Official spokesperson Gopal Baglay stopped short of terming the attack as racist and said the motive behind the attack was being investigated.

Lok Sabha cleared the finance Bill after it rejected five amendments of Rajya sabha

  • Finance Minister Arun Jaitley invited suggestions from the Opposition for clean and transparent funding of political parties, as the Lok Sabha cleared the finance Bill after it rejected five amendments recommended by the Rajya Sabha.
  • Opposition MPs accused the government of riding roughshod over Parliament over what they termed some “draconian provisions” in the Bill.
  • The Rajya Sabha’s amendments pertained to deleting the provisions relating to powers given to taxmen to requisition books of account, power to survey and other such discretionary powers.
  • The Upper House had also approved that there should be a cap of 7.5% of net profit of the last three financial years for donation to political parties.
  • It had also approved an amendment asking for the disclosure of donor names to political parties. These amendments were rejected in the Lok Sabha.
  • Rajya Sabha had approved the deletion of Clause 51 of Section 132a of the Income Tax Act — which deals with powers to taxmen for requisition of books of accounts. It was a “direct assault on the right of individual.”
  • Bhartruhari Mahtab of the Biju Janata Dal sought to know since when was there a provision in the Income Tax Act, 1961, that the person whose House was being searched, or raided was disclosed the reason.
  • Mr. Mahtab also questioned whether political parties should run with funding from the corporate sector. “The floodgates would be opened for corporate funding for political purposes,” he said.

Predictions by astrologers and analysts on results cannot be published says EC

  • Predictions by astrologers, tarot readers and political analysts on results cannot be published or broadcast by the media, bypassing the Representation of the People Act provision.
  • Provision bars exit polls during the conduct of elections, according to an Election Commission advisory issued.
  • The EC observed that despite its notification prohibiting exit polls from February 4 till March 9 evening, some TV channels aired programmes projecting the number of seats likely to be won by political parties in the recently concluded Assembly elections.

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