National Current Affairs – UPSC/IAS Exams- 1st July 2019

by Mentors4ias · July 1, 2019

National Registry of Citizen

Topic: Polity and Governance

In News: The Nagaland government is set to prepare a list of all indigenous inhabitants of the state. The exercise to prepare the Register of Indigenous Inhabitants of Nagaland (RIIN) will begin on July 10 and will be completed within 60 days.

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The exercise will be conducted through an extensive survey of residents in every village and ward in the state and will be based on existing official records, it said.
The survey will take into account whether an indigenous inhabitant is residing in his/her permanent residence or has moved elsewhere.
Aadhar numbers, wherever applicable, will be also recorded.
Once the data of all residents is compiled, provisional lists of indigenous inhabitants will be published and authenticated by village and ward authorities.
Once the process is complete, all indigenous inhabitants will be issued indigenous inhabitant certificates (IICs) and their existing IICs will become invalid.
No fresh IICs will be issued once the process is over and only new-borns of indigenous inhabitants will be given the said certificate and their names updated in the RIIN.

About Assam NRC:

In Assam, the process to identify and weed out illegal immigrants is being done by updating the NRC, which was first prepared in 1951. Only those people who were included in the 1951 NRC or were part of subsequent voter lists till March 1971 and their direct descendants are being included in the list.
The final draft of the NRC released in July last year had excluded 40 lakh of the total 3.23 crore applicants. Another 1 lakh names were excluded this month after inaccuracies were found in their records.
The final list, which is being monitored by the Supreme Court, will be published on July 31 this year.

Source: The Hindu

TRIFED and Tribal Crafts

Topic: Social Justice

In News: The Centre’s Tribal Cooperative Marketing Federation (TRIFED) signed an agreement to partner with the e-commerce giant Amazon’s Global Selling Programme.

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The traditional textiles are at the heart of TRIFED’s turnaround over the last two years. Earlier, the focus was on gift items and assorted handicrafts.But with urban Indian fashions increasingly embracing our traditional heritage, the market is much bigger for textiles. There has been a 360 degree change, with textiles making up 80% of the products now. Tribal jewellery was also popular.

About TRIFED:

The full form of TRIFED is ‘The Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India’. It was established in 1987. It became operational from April 1988. The basic objective of the TRIFED is to provide good price to the products made or collected from the forest by the tribal peoples.
For the first two decades of its existence, it bought tribal products in bulk from the market and sold them in its retail outlets. That was a loss-making proposition. Now it empanel tribal artisans and source directly from them and pay them a 30% profit, and then sell at an additional mark-up of 10-15% to account for administrative costs.
The strategy is paying off, with sales rising sevenfold over the last two years
More satisfying than the sales figures, however, was the generation of income and livelihood for tribal communities, increasing from less than 2 lakh mandays in 2016-17 to more than 13 lakh last year. The number of empanelled artisans has risen to more than three lakh, from 75,000.
The real objective is not to grow turnover, but livelihoods for as many tribal people as possible.

Vandhan Programme:

The next step for TRIFED is the ambitious Vandhan programme.
It aims to transform the ₹50,000 crore market for minor forest produce, ultimately putting control into the hands of Adivasi gatherers.
Today, tribal communities who hold the sole rights to gather such produce — such as mahua, imli, chironji, amchur, wild honey get a meagre 10% share of that pie, with the rest of the money going to middlemen.
Leveraging the existing self-help groups of the Aajeevika scheme, Vandhan will work through 60,000 SHGs, each with 20 members, who will be trained in value-addition, packaging, distribution and marketing.
Vandhan has a proposed ₹1,000 crore annual budget, with a quarter of the amount coming from State governments. The first phase of 600 units will start work by September, as most gathering takes place post-monsoon.

Model Mains Question: Comment on the journey of Tribal welfare in India. Where do you think we stand today?

Source: The Hindu

Rhino Protection Force

Topic: Environment and Ecology

In News: An 82-member special protection force trained to combat poachers and understand animal behaviour was deployed in the Kaziranga National Park (KNP).

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The SRPF is basically a tiger protection force named after the rhino since the threat of poaching is more for the one-horned herbivore. Their job profile includes protecting the striped cat since Kaziranga is also a tiger reserve.
Among the 82 personnel of the Special Rhino Protection Force (SRPF) are eight women.
The Assam government would be paying the salaries of the SRPF members and the amount would be reimbursed by the National Tiger Conservation Authority, which recommended setting up of the special force.

About Kaziranga National Park:

It is a national park in the state of Assam, India.It is a World Heritage Site.
The sanctuary hosts two-thirds of the world’s great one-horned rhinoceroses. Rhinos are listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red list of Threatened Species.
Tigers: Kaziranga is home to the highest density of tigers among protected areas in the world, and was declared a Tiger Reserve in 2006.
Fauna: The park is home to large breeding populations of elephants, wild water buffalo, and swamp deer.
Important Bird Area: Kaziranga is recognized as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International for conservation of avifaunal species.
When compared with other protected areas in India, Kaziranga has achieved notable success in wildlife conservation.
Located on the edge of the Eastern Himalaya biodiversity hotspot, the park combines high species diversity and visibility.
Flora: Kaziranga is a vast expanse of tall elephant grass, marshland, and dense tropical moist broadleaf forests, criss-crossed by four major rivers, including the Brahmaputra, and the park includes numerous small bodies of water.
The park celebrated its centennial in 2005 after its establishment in 1905 as a reserve forest.

Source: The Hindu

GST gains momentum

Topic: Economy

In News: The historical goods and services tax (GST) which was implemented across the country from July 1, 2017 is now two years old. India was not new to indirect tax levies, but consolidating Central and State levies and achieving uniformity was no joke. Credit is due to the Central Government as well as each and every State Government and officials who participated in this exercise.

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Industry’s Take Away:

The industry loves GST for harmonising taxes, elimination of cascading effect of tax, widening the scope of input tax credit and for achieving a uniform tax rate for a product or service across the country.
Tangible benefits include faster refunds, less interaction with tax authorities, abolition of checkposts, etc.
Under GST, a supplier can supply goods from any part of India and tax or input tax credit is no longer an arbitrage in competition.
The customer is now in a position to source from any supplier and the latter is in a position to access markets across India.
Industry gains include elimination or dismantling of structures created under the pre-GST era for tax purposes, supply-chain efficiencies, direct customer access, and a robust transparent trail for the movement of goods.
On the flip side, the industry is extremely unhappy with the massive increase in compliance requirements, frequent battles with the GST portal, wastage of manhours in dealing with technical glitches, and facing potential loss of ITC on account of supplier facing similar problems.
The industry is also not happy with frequent changes in law, including scenarios where the portal does not permit what the law permits.

Government’s Take away:

Monthly revenue from GST has crossed ₹1,00,000 crore, even though the GDP growth is low and the economy is witnessing a slump. GST has resulted in the widening of the tax base. Excellent data mining has resulted in identification of tax evasion at an early stage. E-way bill system has brought in an effective, transparent movement trail.
Higher tax collections even without intervention indicates compliance. As more and more vendors and service providers walk into GST, the formalisation of economy takes place.
The walk-in is voluntary and sometimes compelled by the bigger player, who prefers only registered compliant suppliers since ITC is linked with vendor compliance.
The natural corollary would be the increase in direct tax collections from these new assessees. Many manufacturing states had anticipated huge losses on account of GST compared to their pre-GST collections.
This has not happened probably due to significant consumption of services in such manufacturing States.
The government, however, is extremely unhappy with the fake invoice racket and rightly so. These players provide a disservice to the economy and also to honest tax payers. While action is welcome, the government should pursue the route of adjudication, prosecution and early conviction instead of the threat of non-bailable arrest provisions which have a potential for misuse.
Unlike many other countries which faced massive inflation on account of introduction of GST, India did not face any inflation. This was probably due to an effective rate of tax policy, as well as timely course correction.
The National Anti-Profiteering Authority had also played a role, but has outlived its objective. There was no necessity for a two-year extension. The consumer has gained the most in GST. From an era of cascading taxes, which had nearly 30% of taxes on goods; dual and multiple levies on services, the consumer is now seeing massive reduction in the rate of tax for goods and services.

Model Mains Question: The historical goods and services tax (GST) which was implemented across the country from July 1, 2017 is now two years old. Critically analyse the success of GST.

Source: The Hindu

Nuclear Energy Vs Ocean Energy

Topic: Science and Technology

In News: Nuclear energy is fast running out of sand, at least in India. And there is something that is waiting to take its place.

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India’s 6,780 MW of nuclear power plants contributed to less than 3% of the country’s electricity generation, which will come down as other sources will generate more.
Perhaps India lost its nuclear game in 1970, when it refused to sign – even if with the best of reasons – the Non Proliferation Treaty, which left the country to bootstrap itself into nuclear energy. Only there never was enough strap in the boot to do so.
In the 1950s, the legendary physicist Dr. Homi Bhabha gave the country a roadmap for the development of nuclear energy.

Is nuclear energy worth enough?

There have been three arguments in favour of nuclear energy: clean, cheap and can provide electricity 24×7 (base load). Clean it is, assuming that you could take care of the ticklish issue of putting away the highly harmful spent fuel.
But cheap, it no longer is. The average cost of electricity produced by the existing 22 reactors in the country is around ₹2.80 a kWhr, but the new plants, which cost ₹15-20 crore per MW to set up, will produce energy that cannot be sold commercially below at least ₹7 a unit.
Wind and solar power plants produce energy much cheaper, but their power supply is irregular. With gas not available and coal on its way out due to reasons of cost and global warming concerns, nuclear is sometimes regarded as the saviour. But we don’t need that saviour any more; there is a now a better option.

Ocean Energy:

The seas are literally throbbing with energy. There are at least several sources of energy in the seas.
One is the bobbing motion of the waters, or ocean swells — you can place a flat surface on the waters, with a mechanical arm attached to it, and it becomes a pump that can be used to drive water or compressed air through a turbine to produce electricity.
Another is by tapping into tides, which flow during one part of the day and ebb in another. You can generate electricity by channelling the tide and place a series of turbines in its path.
One more way is to keep turbines on the sea bed at places where there is a current a river within the sea. Yet another way is to get the waves dash against pistons in, say, a pipe, so as to compress air at the other end. Sea water is dense and heavy, when it moves it can punch hard and, it never stops moving.
Initially, ocean energy would need to be incentivised, as solar was. Where do you find the money for the incentives? By paring allocations to the Department of Atomic Energy, which got ₹13,971 crore for 2019-20.
Also, wind and solar now stand on their own legs and those subsidies could now be given to ocean energy.

Source: The Hindu

Black Money

Topic: Economy

In News: The Standing Committee on Finance recently came out with its report on the ‘status of unaccounted income and wealth both inside and outside the country’ in which, after consulting three premier think-tanks and doing multiple analyses using various methods, it came to the conclusion that there was no reliable way to quantify black money whether in India or abroad.

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There is no official definition of black money in economic theory, with several different terms such as parallel economy, black money, black incomes, unaccounted economy, illegal economy and irregular economy all being used more or less synonymously.
The simplest definition of black money could possibly be money that is hidden from tax authorities. That is, black money can come from two broad categories: illegal activity and legal but unreported activity.
The first category is the more obvious of the two. Money that is earned through illegal activity is obviously not reported to the tax authorities, and so is black.
The second category comprises income from legal activity that is not reported to the tax authorities.
Another major source of black money is income earned by companies that is routed through shell companies abroad, thereby evading tax authorities.

Why is it difficult to measure it?

The very definition of black money makes it extremely difficult to quantify. How is the government supposed to measure the economic activity that is actively being hidden from it? According to the Standing Committee’s report, the sectors that see the highest incidence of black money include real estate, mining, pharmaceuticals, pan masala, the gutkha and tobacco industry, bullion and commodity markets, the film industry, and educational institutes and professionals.
As the report also notes, neither are there reliable estimates of black money generation or accumulation and nor is there an accurate well-accepted methodology to make such an estimation.
Every estimate depends upon the underlying assumptions made by the designers of the measurement, and so far there is no uniformity in the assumptions made by the various agencies tasked with measuring the black economy.
The estimates of the black money in the system provided by the Standing Committee vary from 7% of GDP to 120% of GDP, highlighting the wide variance in the methods of estimation.

What are some of the methods used?

One of the more popular methods is the monetary method. This method assumes that the existence of and changes in the share of unaccounted income is reflected in the stock or flow of money in the system. In other words, track the money in the economy and you’ll get an idea of how much has not been accounted for.
Another method is the global indicator or input-based method. In this method, unaccounted income is modelled using a single universal variable with which it is assumed to be highly correlated, therefore these estimates are also called input-based estimates. Basically, the estimated level of activity in these indicators is compared to the reported level of GDP to arrive at an estimate of under-reporting.
One common input used in this method is the quantity of land freight transport. The idea is that matching the actual amount of freight transported in the country to the reported amount of economic activity in the related sectors could give an estimate of how much is not being reported.
A third method to measure black money is a straightforward survey. This one, however, requires voluntary information from people and businesses concealing their incomes and so is prone to inaccuracies.

How can the government curb black money?

There are several ways and the first is through legislative action. The government has already enacted several laws that seek to formalise the economy and make it necessary to report economic transactions.
These include the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, the various GST Acts at the State levels, the Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act, 2015, the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act, and the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act to name a few.
Another method employed by the government to make it harder for transactions to be hidden is to mandate the reporting of PAN for transactions of more than ₹2.5 lakh, and the prohibition of cash receipts of ₹2 lakh or more and a penalty equal to the amount of such receipts if a person contravenes the provision.
The Income Tax Department has also started monitoring non-filers of income tax returns using third-party information to identify persons who have undertaken high value financial transactions but not filed their returns.

Source: The Hindu

NASA’s PUNCH mission

Topic: Science and Technology

In News: NASA has selected Texas-based Southwest Research Institute to lead its PUNCH mission which will image the Sun.

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PUNCH, which stands for “Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere,” is focused on understanding the transition of particles from the Sun’s outer corona to the solar wind that fills interplanetary space.
PUNCH will consist of a ‘constellation’ of four suitcase-sized microsats that will orbit the Earth in formation and study how the corona, which is the atmosphere of the Sun, connects with the interplanetary medium. The mission is expected to be launched in 2022.
The mission will image and track the solar wind and also the coronal mass ejections – which are huge masses of plasma that get thrown out of the Sun’s atmosphere. The coronal mass ejections can affect and drive space weather events near the Earth.
Other missions such as NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and the ESA-NASA joint project, Solar Orbiter, which is due to be launched in 2020, can study the structures of the Sun’s atmosphere.
The PUNCH mission enhances these by tracking these structures in real time. Since the Sun’s corona is much fainter than its surface layers, it cannot be viewed by the instruments directly. So PUNCH will block out the light from the Sun to view its corona and the structures in it.

Indian Presence:

This is a landmark mission that will image regions beyond the Sun’s outer corona. Dipankar Banerjee, solar physicist from Indian Institute of Astrophysics is also a Co-Investigator of the PUNCH mission.
India is planning to send up its own satellite Aditya-L1, a mission to study the Sun’s corona, and Prof. Banerjee is the co-Chair of the Science Working Group.

Source: The Hindu