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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 05 August 2014

English not to count for UPSC grades

In a bid to end the ongoing agitation against the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT), the Government said the English comprehension skills component of Paper II in the Civil Services (Prelims) should not be included for gradation or merit.
Also, an additional attempt should be given to those who took CSAT in 2011 in the Civil Services Examination (CSE) 2015.
Government’s opinion was based on consultations with Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) representatives and the three-member Committee set up to review the CSE pattern.
With the Government revealing its hand, the Department of Personnel and Training is expected to make necessary changes in the examination rules and notify them at the earliest. The UPSC will then operationalise the amended rules.

Driven substantially by the higher education sector, real estate deals and mining income, India’s black economy could now be nearly three-quarters the size of its reported Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
There were no “reliable” estimates of black money generated in India and held within and outside the country, the government commissioned the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) to estimate the black money in India and held overseas by Indians.
The capitation fees collected by private colleges, on management quota seats in professional courses, last year was around Rs 5,953 crore.

Government is formulating a new Education Policy aimed at meeting the challenges posed by lack of quality, research and innovation in educational institutions.
Education being a subject in the Concurrent List of 7th Schedule of the Constitution, the responsibility of education lies primarily with the State Governments.
However, all States will be advised to develop syllabi and Text Books keeping in view the New Education Policy, taking into consideration State specific concerns.
The National Policy on Education (NPE) 1986, as amended in 1992, has been the guiding document for the policies of the Central Government in the education sector.
In the last twenty years, the education scenario has been a monumental change with the emergence of several new paradigms like rights based approach to elementary education, the endeavour to extend universalization to secondary education, reshape the higher education scenario and its impact on the innovation environment and providing an impetus to skill development through vocational education.

The Government is planning to finalise and notify an upgraded penalty structure after its strategy of imposing fines on companies with unverified mobile phone subscribers paid marginal dividends.
The Department of Telecom (DoT) has been invoking licence conditions to impose penalties on companies slow in verifying whether subscribers have complied with the formalities of providing their residential address and other details.
The Department of Telecom has always drawn short when penalising private companies. Every year about two dozen telecom operators attract penalties for various offences but the actual money flowing to the Government Exchequer has hovered around the 15 to 20 per cent mark.
According to DoT, these phone companies have been unable to account for the identity and residence proofs of over 4.5 crore SIM cards. Companies should have paid heed to the country’s national security interests while competing with each other to enrol more customers.

Rescue workers in eastern India urgently evacuated tens of thousands of people after a deadly landslide in neighbouring Nepal blocked a river that could burst its banks and submerge scores of Indian villages.
Nepal’s army triggered three controlled explosions on Saturday to allow some water to flow out of the lake, but much of it remains trapped. Bihar Government has asked all government doctors and civil officials in threatened areas to cancel vacation plans. Soldiers, as well as air force helicopters and jets, were on standby for relief and rescue operations.
The local government also invoked a law allowing authorities to forcibly evacuate villagers who refuse to leave their homes and property and move to higher ground or government-run relief camps. The government has so far evacuated 60,000 people and set up 120 such camps.
The annual monsoon season, which runs from June through September, is vital for the largely agrarian economies of South Asia but every year also brings in floods and landslides that kill thousands and submerge hundreds of villages.

On August 4, the whole of Britain will be plunged in darkness for an hour in a Lights Out initiative to mark the centenary of the country’s entry into World War 1.
Several official and unofficial events that have been planned over the last year will mark the day. They reflect and reinforce a war memorial sentiment that appears as diverse as the forms that memorialisation are taking in this country.
All these will in different ways examine the legacy and lessons emerging from World War 1 (1914-1918), which claimed the lives of 10 million soldiers and impacted the lives of countless others.
Commonwealth British citizens have marshalled their own memories and histories of the war experience. The largest non-British component of the British fighting forces, and on which the imperial war machine heavily relied was from India. Nearly 1.5 million soldiers were drafted into the war effort. Of them 74,000 died.

Sources: Various News Papers & PIB

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