Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 20 DECEMBER 2018

::NATIONAL::

NITI Aayog demands 9% growth in order to generate jobs

•  A growth rate of 9% is essential to generate enough jobs and achieve universal prosperity, according to a vision document released by NITI Aayog on Wednesday.
•  Towards this, the ‘Strategy for New India @75’ document recommends a number of steps, including increasing the investment rate, reforming agriculture, and codifying labour laws
•  “This will raise the economy’s size in real terms from $2.7 trillion in 2017-18 to nearly $4 trillion by 2022-23,” it said. “Besides having rapid growth… it is also necessary to ensure that growth is inclusive, sustained, clean and formalised.”
•  On boosting economic growth, the vision document identified two key steps for increasing the country’s investment rate and the tax-GDP ratio.
•  “To raise the rate of investment (gross fixed capital formation as a share of GDP) from about 29% in 2017-18 to about 36% of GDP by 2022-23, a slew of measures will be required to boost both private and public investment,” it said.
•  India’s tax-GDP ratio of around 17% is half the average of OECD countries (35%) and is low even when compared to other emerging economies like Brazil (34%), South Africa (27%) and China (22%).

Surrogacy bill passed in Loksabha

•  The LokSabha on Wednesday passed a Bill banning commercial surrogacy with penal provisions of jail term of up to 10 years and fine of up to Rs. 10 lakh.
•  The Bill, which will become law once the RajyaSabha approves it, allows only close Indian relatives to be surrogate mothers and purely for “altruistic” reasons. It states an Indian infertile couple, married for five years or more, can go in for ‘altruistic surrogacy’ where the surrogate mother will not be paid any compensation except medical expenses and insurance.
•  Opening the debate, Mr. Nadda said India had become a hub of commercial surrogacy and surrogate mothers were being exploited. The Minister claimed that the Bill had the support of every section of society, besides political parties, the Supreme Court and the Law Commission.
•  “The hon. Supreme Court, Madam, has recently decriminalised Section 377 and the LGBT community has been accepted to be a part of the mainstream. So, we have same sex couples now. But, in this Bill, there is no mention of them,” she said. The Trinamool MP also called for stopping “fashion surrogacy”, alleging that some celebrities were opting for it as they did not want their figures destroyed.
•  SupriyaSule of the NCP urged the the government to expand its scope as “the Bill is a good Bill but not modern enough.” BJD’s BhartruhariMahtab pointed out that it does not define who is a close relative and asked why the government had not accepted all recommendations of the Parliamentary Standing Committee that had gone into aspects of the Bill.

::ECONOMY::

Centre issues mandatory order in terms of jute packaging

•  The Centre has mandated the packaging of 100% of foodgrain and 20% of sugar in jute bags for 2018-19 but has also left the window open for the dilution of the order. This includes a stipulation on placing 10% of the orders through reverse auction on the government e-marketplace.
•  The order follows the Jute Packaging Materials (Compulsory Use in Packing Commodities) Act (JPM), which was enacted in 1987 to protect the jute sector from the plastic packaging segment.
•  While West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh are the two largest jute goods producers, Punjab is the largest procuring State . It plans to initiate the procurement on a trial basis for 10% of the indents.
•  Gunny bags now account for about 63% of raw jute consumption, according to official statistics. The sector employs about 3.7 lakh mill workers directly besides supporting several lakh farmer families. Since 1987, the JPM Act has been mandating compulsory use of sacks in certain areas to bring buoyancy to the raw jute market.
•  While initially there was reservation for sugar, cement, fertiliser and foodgrain packaging over time, certain sectors have been taken out of the ambit for various reasons, including market demand for alternative packaging as there was seepage of materials through gunny sacks.

Former RBI governor warns on upside inflation

•  Former Reserve Bank of India Governor Urjit Patel as well as Deputy Governor Viral Acharyahave cautioned the government on the upside risks to inflation due to fiscal slippages, minutes of the December Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting showed.
•  Admitting the pace of inflation slowed in October, Dr. Patel highlighted several upside risks to inflation, including the risk of fiscal slippages at the Centre and/or State levels. “With the government [Centre plus States] fiscal deficit budgeted at about 6% of the GDP in 2018-19, the extant national fiscal stance continues to be more like a “shock amplifier” rather than a “shock absorber” for our macro economy,” Dr. Patel said.
•  All things considered, the time is apposite to strengthen domestic macroeconomic fundamentals; fiscal discipline is critical to create space for and crowd in private investment activity, he said.
•  Dr. Acharya, who is in charge of monetary policy, also said fiscal slippage was within the realm of reasonable possibility. Falling crude oil prices gave an opportunity for fiscal consolidation, he added.
•  While Dr. Acharya had said that since inflation had come down in a short period, it is important to ‘wait and watch.’ However, Dr. Patel indicated opening up of space for rate cuts.

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::INTERNATIONAL::

US begins troop withdrawal from Syria

•  United States has started to withdraw its troops from Syria. President Donald Trump in a tweet said they have defeated Islamic State group in Syria.
•  Soon after his tweet, the White House announced that the US troops have started returning from Syria. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement that five years ago, IS was a very powerful and dangerous force in the Middle East, and now the US has defeated its territorial caliphate.
•  However, she said these victories over IS in Syria do not signal the end of the Global Coalition or its campaign.
•  The Pentagon declined to give any comment immediately. Several US lawmakers warned the Trump Administration that this was a grave error. SenatorJeanneShaheen said the President's tweet is dangerous, premature and wholly inconsistent with the facts on the ground in Syria and the military's advice.
•  US troops have largely been stationed in the Kurdish region in northern Syria. A partnership with an alliance of Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, is credited with playing a major role in the virtual elimination of the Islamic State terror group.
•  The group overran large swathes of Syria four years ago, imposing brutal rule on almost eight million people in the country and neighbouring Iraq. However, the terror group has not disappeared entirely.

Facebook defends data sharing practices

•  Facebook offered a renewed defence on Wednesday of its data sharing practices after a report revealed that certain partners of the social media organisation had access to a range of personal information about users and their friends.
•  The New York Times late on Tuesday reported that some 150 companies — including powerful partners like Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix and Spotify — could access detailed information about Facebook users, including data about their friends.
•  The report marked yet another potential embarrassment for Facebook, which has been roiled by a series of scandals on data protection and privacy and has been scrutinised over the hijacking of user data in the 2016 U.S. election campaign.
•  According to documents seen by The Times , Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see names of Facebook users’ friends without consent and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read private messages.
•  While some of the deals date back as far as 2010, The Times said they remained active as late as 2017 and some were still in effect this year.

::SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY::

E-Drishti software launched

•  An ‘e-Drishti’ interface has been unveiled for the Union Railway Minister, Minister of State and Board Members. This software includes an interface which provides summary information on punctuality of trains for the previous day. There is also an interface which provides information on current train running on the Indian Railway network.
•  Punctuality of passenger carrying trains is being also monitored rigorously to improve punctuality performance on a daily basis at Divisional, Zonal and Railway Board levels by Divisional Railway Managers (DRMs), General Managers (GMs) and Railway Board Members and senior officers.
•  To ensure running of trains right time when pairing trains are running late, scratch rakes are inducted and rakes are standardized to the extent operationally feasible. Also various steps have been initiated to improve punctuality such as prioritization of preventive maintenance of assets to minimize asset failures, capacity enhancement projects by construction of additional loop lines at stations, doubling, construction of third line corridors, automatic signalling, construction of limited height subways to replace level crossings, Road Under Bridges (RUB) and Road Over Bridges (ROB) etc.
•  Besides, punctuality drives are launched from time to time and staff involved in train operations is sensitized. In addition, Zonal Railways have also been advised to have better coordination with Civil and Police authorities of states to deal with situations arising out of law and order problems.

::SPORTS::

ICC orders PCB to pay compensation

•  The International Cricket Council's (ICC) Dispute Resolution Panel on Wednesday ordered Pakistan to pay 60 per cent of the cost demanded by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
•  Earlier, the ICC rejected Pakistan Cricket Board PCB's compensation claim which blamed India for lack of bilateral series between the two nations.
•  Nearly a month after rejecting the PCB's compensation claim against India for allegedly failing to honour a Memorandum of Understanding on bilateral cricket, the ICC announced the costs award for the two Boards.
•  The ICC Committee said the fresh judgement is binding. The Panel orders the PCB to pay the BCCI sixty per cent of the claimed Costs, administrative costs and expenses of the Panel.
•  The BCCI, on the other hand, has been asked to pay 40 per cent of the administrative costs and expenses of the Dispute Resolution Committee (DRC)

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