📰 Immigration from India is unpopular in U.K.: study
Only that from the U.S., Canada and Australia is tolerated
•Britons don’t want higher levels of immigration from India and many other non-EU countries even if it comes at the price of not securing a free trade agreement, new research in the U.K. has found.
•Only higher levels of immigration from the U.S., Canada and Australia would be tolerated in exchange for trade arrangements, polling carried out on behalf of the Henry Jackson Society, a neo-Conservative think tank, found. The research points to one of the tensions at the heart of Brexit: while the British government pushes its vision of a “global” Britain, reaching out beyond Europe, with public opinion stacked against immigration from beyond the EU as well as from within it, the government could struggle to reach deals to boost trade with these nations.
•Opinion polling conducted in early January, suggested that just 9% of the public were willing to accept significantly higher levels of immigration from India, with just 26% willing to accept slightly higher levels, according to the research. The same applies to a range of countries from South Africa, to China to Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Turkey, Russia, Japan and Saudi Arabia as well as to the EU and individual member states such as France, Germany and Italy.
Trading priorities
•Critics of the government’s approach to Brexit have long questioned its ability to forge trade deals with non-EU countries as it attempts to revamp its trading priorities following Brexit. While a trade deal with India has been repeatedly touted by the U.K. government, India has highlighted its concerns around Britain’s immigration policy, particularly towards students and professionals.
•“The U.K. has not really started to discuss what it is we are willing to give to others,” said David Henig, the U.K. director of the European Centre for International Political Economy and a former senior civil servant at the Department For International Trade.
•He pointed to another ongoing debate on whether Britain in its effort to gain a trade deal with the U.S. should be willing to concede to lower standards when it came to things like food. While the government’s immigration white paper had suggested that change was afoot, the willingness of the British public to support these was yet to be tested. Mr. Henig said it was “premature” to conclude from the initial white paper that Britain’s planned post-Brexit immigration regime would be in line with the asks of would be FTA partners such as India.
📰 Ayodhya title suit appeals: Supreme Court presses for compromise
Judge stresses that the mediation process, if ordered, should be done confidentially and there should be no reporting on it.
•The Supreme Court on March 6 pressed for a compromise on the Ayodhya title suits dispute, with Justice S.A. Bobde on a Constitution Bench, saying the court is only concerned about the present state of the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case and not the past history of Mughal invasion and conquests of Babur.
•Justice Bobde is part of the five-judge Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, which reserved for orders the question whether the decades-old dispute, primarily between the Hindu and Muslim communities, should be sent for mediation.
•To a lawyer appearing for one of the Hindu parties, who said the mediation effort was bound to fail as the dispute was about religious sentiments, Justice Bobde retorted, "Do you think we are not as religious as you... We may be more religious than you".
It's about religious sentiments: Justice Bobde
•Justice Bobde said, "Primarily this is not about the 1,500 sq. ft. of disputed land, but about religious sentiments. We know its impact on public sentiment, on body politic. We are looking at minds, hearts and healing, if possible."
•When the lawyer continued to press on the injustices meted out by "Muslim invaders", Justice Bobde shot back, "Don't give us any history. We have no control of the past. We had no control over Babur invading... What we have control of is the dispute now and here."
•The judge said the proposed efforts for mediation should not be pre-judged even before it started. "Are you not pre-judging the situation even before mediation has started" he asked the lawyer.
•The Hindu parties, however, seemed unconvinced about the court's suggestion for a negotiated compromise with the Muslim community. "The faith that Lord Ram was born there is not negotiable. But we are willing to crowd-fund a mosque somewhere else," senior advocate C.S. Vaidyanathan, for Ram Lalla, the deity, submitted. They said a public notice should be issued on the point whether the dispute should be sent for mediation.
•Even Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, on the Bench, expressed doubts about the binding nature of a compromise.
•"The Ayodhya dispute is not between two private parties and concerns two communities. How can we bind them under the mediated resolution, if any" he asked, though agreeing that a negotiated outcome would be desirable and even the best way out of the volatile dispute.
•But Justice Bobde intervened to observe that every community is represented by their respective bodies in the court in the Ayodhya dispute, which is originally in the nature of a representative suit.
•The judge said when communities were represented by parties, the outcome, whether it was by court proceeding or mediation, would be binding on the communities too. He stressed that the mediation process, if ordered, should be done confidentially and there should be no reporting on it.
•"When the Ayodhya mediation is on, it should not be reported on. It may not be a gag, but no motive should be attributed to anyone when the mediation process is on," he suggested.
Parameters have already been settled, says Subramanian Swamy
•Rajya Sabha member and BJP leader Subramanian Swamy submitted that the parameters of the Ram Mandir case have already been settled. The validity of the Ayodhya Act had been upheld by Supreme Court, he said.
•It is a clear decision of the then P.V. Narasimha government that in case a temple was found below the structure, land would be given to Hindus for construction of a Ram temple. The Archaeological Survey of India had found that a temple pre-existed and, thus, land should be given for making a Ram temple.
Order to be pronounced shortly
•The court considered the possibility of appointing more than one mediator and asked the parties to suggest names "in the event" it orders in favour of a mediation. It said an order would be pronounced "shortly".
•Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, for the Uttar Pradesh government, said the path of mediation was both "imprudent and inadvisable."
•But senior advocate Rajeev Dhawan, appearing for appellant M. Siddique, interjected and strongly objected to the presence of Mr. Mehta on the case. "This is unacceptable. He is the Solicitor General of India. He is the statutory receiver. It is on record that the U.P. govt is uninterested in the dispute," Mr. Dhawan protested.
•Under the Ayodhya Act of 1993, the Centre is holding the acquired land, which includes the disputed land, as a non-partisan, statutory receiver.
📰 Coming soon: the Indian museum of natural history
It will house the country’s geological wealth in one location
•From dinosaur fossils to pre-human skulls, India is home to a vast treasury of geological and palaeontological specimens that contain a wealth of scientific information about the planet and its history. But these rare specimens are scattered in different labs all over the country. So, to better conserve this prehistoric heritage, the government is planning to house them in one place — an ‘Earth Museum’.
•This museum will be modelled on the American Museum of Natural History, or the Smithsonian museum in the U.S. The museum, which will be set up as a public-private partnership, would be located somewhere in Delhi, Noida or Gurugram, said G.V.R Prasad, head of the Department of Geology, University of Delhi.
•K. VijayRaghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) to the Prime Minister, said at a press conference on Wednesday that such a repository was necessary to make people aware of India’s palaeontological and geological wealth. “There is a lot of history here, but somehow it hasn’t been communicated well,” he said. Another concern, he added, was that several collections of fossils and important geological specimens weren’t properly organised, and they survived only due to the efforts of individual researchers who maintained them within their labs. A single site, accessible to the public as well as researchers wanting to investigate rare and important finds, was necessary, Mr. VijayRaghavan said.
•The PSA led a meeting of the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC) last November, where the need for such a museum was endorsed. A meeting of experts from the U.S., the U.K, and South Korea is scheduled to be held in Delhi in early April, Mr. Prasad told The Hindu.
📰 Poorest of poor and uneducated women left behind in ICDS
•Anganwadi services have a poor reach among key beneficiaries – the poorest of the poor and uneducated mothers – according to a paper published in a WHO bulletin recently.
•The government’s Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) provides a package of six services at anganwadi or child-care centres to young children and pregnant women and lactating mothers. These services include supplementary nutrition, referral services, immunisation, health check-up, pre-school non-formal education and health and nutrition education.
•The study analyses the findings of the National Family Health Survey 2005-2006 and 2015-2016 to compare the coverage of ICDS over a 10-year period.
•During this time, the average respondents benefiting from these services increased from 9.6% to 37.9% for supplementary food, 3.2% to 21% for health and nutrition education, 4.5% to 28% for health check-ups and 10.4% to 24.2% for child-specific services over a period of 10 years.
•At the same time, the poorest of the poor or quintile 1, who were the largest beneficiaries in 2006, got left behind quintile 2 and quintile 3 by 2016 for all four indicators such as supplementary food, counselling on nutrition, health check-ups and early childhood services, shows the study authored by Suman Chakrabarti, Kalyani Raghunathan, Harold Alderman, Purnima Menon and Phuong Nguyen.
•For example, supply of food supplements in 2006 was the highest for the poorest quintile (11.7%). However, by 2016, they accounted for 34.8% of the respondents, behind quintile 2 (41.7%), 3 (45.5%) and 4 (39.7%).
•The study also said that mothers without any schooling were the lowest beneficiaries as compared to those with primary and secondary schooling in 2006, and they continued to be so in 2016.
📰 Back to life: on the belated acquittal of death row convicts
Belated acquittal of death row convicts highlights the need to junk the death penalty
•It is a tale of Kafkaesque horror. Six members of a nomadic tribe spent 16 years in prison in Maharashtra; three of them were on death row for 13 of these years, while the other three faced the gallows for nearly a decade. One of them was a juvenile at the time of the offence. And all this for a crime they did not commit. The only silver lining for the six convicts is that even though 10 years had elapsed since the Supreme Court imposed the death penalty on them, the sentence was not carried out. Hearing on their review petitions became an occasion for another Bench of the Supreme Court to revisit the 2009 verdict. A three-judge Bench has now found that unreliable testimony had been used to convict the six men. One of the two eyewitnesses had identified four others from police files as members of the gang that had raided their hut in 2003, but these four were not apprehended. The gang had stolen ₹3,000 and some ornaments, killed five members of the family, including a 15-year-old girl, who was also raped. It is possible that the heinous nature of the crime had influenced the outcome of the case. The belief that condign punishment is necessary for rendering complete justice could be behind courts brushing aside discrepancies or improvements in the evidence provided by witnesses. On a fresh hearing of the appeals, the court has concluded that the accused, who were roped in as accused in this case after being found to be involved in an unrelated crime elsewhere, were innocent.
•The case, in itself, holds a strong argument against the retention of the death penalty on the statute book. Had the sentence against these six been carried out, the truth would have been buried with them. In recent years, the Supreme Court has been limiting the scope for resorting to the death penalty by a series of judgments that recognise the rights of death row convicts. A few years ago it ruled that review petitions in cases of death sentence should be heard in open court. In a country notorious for “the law’s delay”, it is inevitable that the long wait on death row, either for a review hearing or for the disposal of a mercy petition, could ultimately redound to the benefit of the convicts and their death sentences altered to life terms. In a system that many say favours the affluent and the influential, the likelihood of institutional bias against the socially and economically weak is quite high. Also, there is a perception that the way the “rarest of rare cases” norm is applied by various courts is arbitrary and inconsistent. The clamour for justice often becomes a call for the maximum sentence. In that sense, every death sentence throws up a moral dilemma on whether the truth has been sufficiently established. The only way out of this is the abolition of the death penalty altogether.
📰 A strange paradox for Indian women
Better education is not leading to better job opportunities, marriage prospects or freedom of movement
•Abigail Adams, wife of the second President of the U.S. and mother of the sixth President, wrote to her husband, “If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion.” As last year’s #MeToo movement and Sabarimala protests showed, perhaps Indian women are echoing her and are ready to foment a rebellion.
Education and employment
•What fuels these movements? Could it be that the very success of India’s economic transformation brings with it a stark realisation that it has not paid particular care and attention to women? The most promising sign of the improving conditions of Indian women lies in declining inequality in education. In all villages and towns, mornings and afternoons are brightened by the smiling faces of girls and young women, dressed in their uniforms, walking to school. Almost all girls go to primary school and, according to the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) of 2011-12, 70% of girls aged 15 to 18 are still studying, only five percentage points less than boys. They frequently outperform boys. In 2018, in the Class XII CBSE examination, 88.31% girls passed, compared to 78.99% boys. However, in spite of rising education and rising aspirations, labour markets and social norms constrain women, almost as if they are all dressed up for a party with nowhere to go.
•Data from the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) and the IHDS show that education and employment have a U-shaped relationship. Illiterate women are most likely to participate in the workforce. Work participation drops sharply for women with primary and secondary education and rises only with college education. Research by Esha Chatterjee and colleagues in a paper published in the journal Demographic Research, using data from the IHDS, further documents that this relationship holds even after we take into account income of other members of the household, social background and place of residence.
•Employment opportunities that are open to their mothers, including farm labour and non-farm manual work in construction, hold little appeal to secondary school graduates who have invested their hopes in education. However, white-collar jobs are either not available or demand long hours and offer little job security in this time of a gig economy. NSSO data for 25- to 59-year-old workers in 2011-12 show that among farmers, farm labourers and service workers, nearly one-third are women, while the proportion of women among professionals, managers and clerical workers is only about 15%.
•Young men with Class 10 or 12 education find jobs as mechanics, drivers, sales representatives, postmen and appliance repairmen. Few of these opportunities are available to women. Whether employers choose not to hire women in these positions or working conditions make for an inhospitable environment for young women is not clear. Educated women’s main employment options lie in qualifying as a nurse or a teacher or looking for office jobs.
The importance of marriage
•If barriers to work participation are not enough, young women’s lives are also circumscribed by social norms that shape their family situation. Marriage remains the only acceptable fate for young women in India. Whereas a third of Japanese women and 11% of Sri Lankan women aged 30-34 are single, less than 3% of Indian women are single at that age. Moreover, women’s education does not seem to carry the same value in the ‘marriage market’ as caste, the family’s economic status and horoscope. Research from other countries shows that educated women marry similarly educated men. But in India, women frequently marry men with lower education than themselves. Zhiyong Lin and his colleagues at the University of Maryland find that whereas less than 5% women married men whose education was lower than themselves in the 1970s, the proportion has grown to nearly 20% recently.
•If rising education for women does not offer increasing income-earning opportunities or better marriage prospects, does it at least give women greater autonomy in other areas of their lives? Based on recent National Family Health Survey data, there seems to be little evidence that a moderate level of education offers women a greater say in household decisions or freedom of movement outside the home. College graduates fare slightly better, but even for them, the difference is relatively small. For instance, 48% of women with no schooling do not go to a health centre alone; the proportion for college graduates is only slightly lower at 45%. This is a strange paradox. Parents make tremendous sacrifices to educate their daughters, and young women joyously work hard at school in search of a better life, only to have their aspirations frustrated by economic and social barriers that restrict their opportunities. Is it surprising that periodically their frustration takes the shape of a social movement? What is surprising is that their demands are not more strident, and that no political party has chosen to espouse their cause.
Women’s vote
•If women were a caste, their cause would be championed by political parties now trying to mobilise caste-based vote banks. We would see proposals for women’s quota in government jobs and higher education. If women were an economic class, we would see subsidies and a variety of other economic incentives showered on them. However, our political process sees women as an extension of the men in their households and assumes that no special effort is needed to win their hearts and minds.
•Sociologist Raka Ray has presented a sophisticated analysis of the relationship between political parties and women’s movements. She has argued that in the 1980s and 1990s, the CPI(M) in West Bengal had an ambivalent relationship with its women’s wing, and domestic violence was seen as a function of class oppression, with frustrated, unemployed men beating up their wives. In more recent history, the discourse regarding marriage, divorce and inheritance has been co-opted by communal politics.
•As we head into an election season, perhaps it would be wise for political parties to remember that women form half the voting population. The American experience is salutary in this regard. The 2018 House of Representatives elections in the U.S. that brought victory to the Democrats were shaped by the Democrats winning women’s votes by an overwhelming margin. According to the PEW Research Centre, Democrats won 59% of women’s vote as opposed to 40% for Republicans; among men, they won 51% versus the 47% won by Republicans. Let us hope that some political party will figure out that women are not simply extensions of their husbands and fathers and campaign on a platform that focuses on creating economic and social opportunities for women.
📰 Tackling child malnutrition
Policy initiatives can be guided by collecting real-time data at the sub-district level
•Despite the National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS-4) showing an encouraging improvement in child nutrition, India continues to fare poorly in world rankings on child nutrition. What needs to be done, where, how and by whom are the questions we need answers to.
•The focus must be on the pregnant, breastfeeding mother and the child, especially in the first two years of the child’s life, which is the crucial phase for physical, mental and cognitive development. Given the size of the problem (38% of children under five years of age are stunted, according to UNICEF) and budgetary constraints, a targeted approach is needed.
•With the wealth of district-level data made available by NFHS-4, the focus districts can easily be identified. They are concentrated in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand. These States, and others such as Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Gujarat, should formulate policies to tackle high incidence of stunting in these districts and provide funds for the same. Even within these districts, pockets where child malnutrition is high should be identified, going down to the tehsil or taluka levels and further down to clusters of Anganwadis located in areas such as urban slums and those with high concentrations of disadvantaged populations. Policy initiatives can be guided by accurate real-time data at the sub-district level.
•We need more public programmes with a direct or indirect impact on nutrition in the selected areas. These should cover important nutrition-specific areas such as maternal nutrition, especially in the nine months of pregnancy and the six months of breastfeeding. They should also promote early and exclusive breastfeeding, proper feeding of the infant, and provide food security through a robust public distribution system.
•There should be support for healthcare for mothers — from the antenatal care visit in the first trimester of pregnancy until after delivery — and for children in their first few years of life. Messages should be spread on hygiene and sanitation, particularly the need to do away with open defecation practices. Similarly, education for girls should be advocated, as should the importance of enabling the financial independence of women through skilling and employment opportunities along with their inclusion in the formal financial network.
•Programmes will have an impact only when there are sound public service delivery mechanisms, especially in the nutrition, health and education sectors. Building a cadre of dedicated professionals in the government needs a high degree of political will and administrative commitment, centred around developing skills and knowledge and building motivation to stay the course.
📰 The Hindu Explains | How the model code of conduct evolved
What is the model code of conduct?
•The model code refers to a set of norms laid down by the Election Commission of India, with the consensus of political parties. It is not statutory. It spells out the dos and don’ts for elections. Political parties, candidates and polling agents are expected to observe the norms, on matters ranging from the content of election manifestos, speeches and processions, to general conduct, so that free and fair elections take place.
When was it introduced?
•The EC traces its introduction to the 1960 Assembly elections in Kerala. During simultaneous polls to the Lok Sabha and Assemblies in several States in 1962, the EC circulated the code to all recognised parties, which followed it “by and large”. In October 1979, the EC came up with a comprehensive code that saw further changes after consultations with parties.
When is the code enforced?
•The code comes into force on the announcement of the poll schedule and remains operational till the process is concluded, as provided in the notification. It is also applicable to a “caretaker” government on premature dissolution of a State Assembly, as was the case in Telangana.
How is it enforced?
•The EC ensures that ruling parties at the Centre and in States adhere to the code, as part of its mandate to conduct free and fair elections under Article 324 of the Constitution. In case of electoral offences, malpractices and corrupt practices like inducements to voters, bribery, intimidation or any undue influence, the EC takes action against violators. Anyone can report the violations to the EC or approach the court. The EC has devised several mechanisms to take note of the offences, which include joint task forces of enforcement agencies and flying squads. The latest is the introduction of the cVIGIL mobile app through which audio-visual evidence of malpractices can be reported.
What are the key malpractices?
•Any activity aggravating existing differences or creating mutual hatred or causing tension between different castes and communities, religious or linguistic, is a corrupt practice under the Representation of the People Act. Making an appeal to caste or communal feelings to secure votes and using places of worship for campaigning are offences under the Act. Bribery to voters is both a corrupt practice and an electoral offence under the Act and Section 171B of the Indian Penal Code. Intimidation of voters is also an electoral offence, while impersonating them is punishable under the IPC. Serving or distributing liquor on election day and during the 48 hours preceding it is an electoral offence. Holding public meetings during the 48-hour period ending with the hour fixed for the closing of the poll is also an offence.
What restrictions does the code impose?
•According to the EC, the code states that the party in power — whether at the Centre or in the States — should ensure that it does not use its official position for campaigning. Ministers and other government authorities cannot announce financial grants in any form. No project or scheme which may have the effect of influencing the voter in favour of the party in power can be announced, and Ministers cannot use official machinery for campaign purposes.
📰 U.K. top court rules in favour of Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seeker
Home Office had rejected his contention that he was tortured
•Britain’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled in favour of a Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seeker’s claim that the Home Office was wrong to reject his contention that he was tortured back in Sri Lanka, and asked the Upper Tribunal to look at the case afresh, in what is considered a landmark judgment.
•The Supreme Court, in its judgment, also pointed to “well established evidence” of “extensive torture” by Sri Lankan state forces in 2009.
•The individual – named as KV – arrived in the U.K. in 2011 and claimed asylum, alleging that he was tortured by Sri Lankan forces on suspicion of association with the LTTE. He had “five long scars on his back and two shorter scars on his right arm,” which were the clear “product of branding with a hot metal rod.”
•However, the tribunal that looked at the case concluded that the wounds were the result of “self-inflicted by proxy”(SIBP) and inflicted on him voluntarily in an attempt to “manufacture” evidence for an asylum claim, rejecting evidence on behalf of KV from a medical expert who said clinical findings – based on the Istanbul Protocol (the international guidelines on documenting torture) – were highly consistent with his account of torture. The Court of Appeal reached a similar conclusion.
Two possibilities
•In its judgment, the Supreme Court weighed two possibilities: that KV had been tortured and that the wounds had been inflicted by SIBP. “That there was extensive torture by state forces in Sri Lanka in 2009 was well established in the evidence before the tribunal,” the court said. “By contrast evidence of wounding SIBP on the part of asylum-seekers was almost non-existent.” Quoting a dissenting opinion by one of the judges in the initial appeal, the Supreme Court concluded that “very considerable weight should be given to the fact that injuries which are SIBP are likely to be extremely rare.”
•The court noted that a person would likely need the involvement of a qualified doctor who would have to have acted in breach of “the most fundamental and ethical standards,” while having access to the necessary medical equipment.
Judgment welcomed
•The judgment was welcomed by human rights campaigners, who said the court had reasserted the value of medical experts in torture claims as well as the “authoritative” status of the Istanbul Protocol when it came to assessing asylum claims. “Deplorable efforts by decision makers to dismiss this evidence are another symptom of the culture of disbelief that is the hallmark of the hostile environment,” said Sonia Sceats, chief executive of Freedom from Torture, one of three human rights organisations that submitted evidence to the court.
📰 Ministry plugs loophole that allowed plastic waste import
PET bottles imported for processing in SEZs had increased substantially
•The government has plugged a loophole that allowed the import of plastic waste into India for processing.
•“…Solid plastic waste has been prohibited from import into the country including in Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and by Export Oriented Units (EOU),” the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) Environment Ministry said in an order made public on Wednesday. The change in law was part of the Hazardous and Other Wastes (Management & Transboundary Movement) Amendment Rules, 2019.
•The Hindu had reported on January 21 that India, in spite of having a significant plastic pollution load of its own, and a ban on plastic waste imports, imported PET bottles from abroad for processing in Special Economic Zones (SEZ).
•The influx of PET bottles has quadrupled from 2017 to 2018, the Delhi-based environmentalist organisation, Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Smriti Manch (PDUSM) had pointed out in January.
•“Indian firms are importing plastic scrap from China, Italy, Japan and Malawi for recycling and the imports of PET bottle scrap & flakes has increased from 12,000 tonnes in FY 16-17 to 48,000 tonnes in FY 17-18 growing @ 290%. India has already imported 25,000 MT in the first 3 months of FY 18-19,” a note by the organisation revealed.
•India consumes about 13 million tonnes of plastic and recycles only about 4 million tonnes. To incentivise domestic plastic recycling units, the government had banned the import of plastic waste, particularly PET bottles, in 2015. In 2016, an amendment allowed such imports as long as they were carried out by agencies situated in SEZs.
•A senior MoEFCC official had told The Hindu that while the Ministry couldn’t vouch for whether such plastic imports had quadrupled, it was true that the imports had “substantially increased” and action was being contemplated.
•Lack of an efficient waste collection and segregation system is the root cause for much of the plastic not making to recycling centres.
📰 ISRO, French agency to set up maritime surveillance system
Plan to launch low orbiting satellites
•National space agency ISRO and its French counterpart CNES on Wednesday sealed an agreement to set up a joint maritime surveillance system in the country in May.
•The two nations will explore putting up a constellation of low-Earth orbiting satellites that will identify and track movement of ships globally – and in particular those moving in the Indian Ocean region where France has its Reunion Islands.
•Before that, they will initially share data from their present space systems and develop new algorithms to analyse them, according to the Paris based National Centre for Space Studies.
•The agreement comes a year after the broad collaboration plan the two governments initiated during French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit in March last 2018.
•K.Sivan, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation, and Jean-Yves Le Gall, President of CNES of France, signed the agreement in Bengaluru. “The CNES-ISRO agreement [intends] to supply an operational system for detecting, identifying and tracking ships in the Indian Ocean. [It] provides for a maritime surveillance centre to be set up in India in May this year; sharing of capacity to process existing satellite data and joint development of associated algorithms,” the CNES statement said.
•“For the next phase of the programme, studies for an orbital infrastructure to be operated jointly by the two countries are ongoing. CNES is working with its industry partners and with ISRO to devise the most appropriate technical solution.”
•The two agencies have put up two climate and ocean weather monitoring satellites Megha-Tropiques (of 2011) and SARAL-AltiKa (2013) that are considered a model.
•“This fleet will be augmented with the launch of Oceansat-3-Argos mission in 2020 along with a joint infrared Earth-observation satellite,” the CNES said.
📰 Wiggle space: on SEBI's new rules
SEBI’s new rules to protect those investing in liquid mutual funds are not tight enough
•According to new regulations issued by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), liquid mutual funds holding debt securities with a maturity term of more than 30 days will have to value these securities on a mark-to-market basis. Until now, liquid mutual funds could report the value of debt instruments with a maturity term of up to 60 days using the amortisation-based valuation method. Only debt securities with a maturity term of over 60 days were to be valued on a mark-to-market basis. So the new rule seemingly narrows the scope for amortisation-based valuation. Amortisation-based valuation, which is completely detached from the market price of the securities being valued, allowed mutual funds to avoid the volatility associated with mark-to-market valuation. SEBI’s new rules come in the midst of the crisis in Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) that led to various fund managers reporting the value of the same debt instruments issued by the infrastructure lender at vastly different levels. The chief financial markets regulator believes that mandating mutual funds to report the value of a greater share of their holdings on a mark-to-market basis can lead to a better and more objective valuation of these securities.
•By exempting securities with a maturity period of up to 30 days from mark-to-market valuation, however, SEBI may be doing no favour to individual investors. This is because the new SEBI rule gives a strong incentive for liquid mutual funds to invest more of their funds under management in securities with a maturity period of fewer than 30 days; this helps avoid the volatility of mark-to-market accounting and the need to provide a fair account of the value of their investments. What is likely is a decrease in the yields received on securities maturing in 30 days or less and an increase in the yields on debt instruments with a maturity period of 31 to 60 days. It will, however, do nothing to make investors in mutual funds become more informed about the real value of their investments. The latest SEBI rules are also in direct contrast to the usual accounting practices when it comes to the valuation of securities. Generally accepted accounting principles mandate securities with the least maturity to be reported on a mark-to-market basis while allowing the amortisation-based method to be employed to value other securities with longer maturity periods. This makes sense as the profits and losses associated with securities with shorter terms are closer to being realised by investors when compared to longer-term securities. SEBI would do well to mandate that all investments made by liquid mutual funds should be valued on a mark-to-market basis. Simultaneously, it should work on deepening liquidity in the bond market so that bond market prices can serve as a ready reference to ascertain the value of various debt securities.
📰 Wind energy capacity expansion to slow in next five years: Crisil
New bidding mechanism has resulted in low realisations
•Capacity addition in the wind energy sector will slow down over fiscal 2019 to 2023, with only 14-16 GW being added due to a decline in bid responses and profitability of original equipment manufacturers, according to a report by Crisil.
•“Crisil Research expects capacity addition to grow slowly over the next five years, driven by the allotment of central transmission utility’s (CTU) grid connected capacities,” Crisil said in the report.
•“The shift to a competitive bidding mechanism has slowed industry growth due to a significant fall in tariffs, triggering a decline in both bid response and profitability for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).”
•The shift to a competitive bidding mechanism in the wind energy sector has resulted in tariffs falling to Rs. 2.4-2.6 per unit, from Rs. 4-4.5 per unit under the feed-in tariff regime.
•According to Crisil, such low realisations are unviable for the entire value chain at current capital costs of Rs. 6.8-7.2 crore per MW.
•“Crisil Research expects capacity addition of 14-16 GW over fiscal 2019 to 2023, entailing investments of about Rs. 1,10,000 crore,” Crisil said in the report.
•“Capacity additions will primarily be driven by central government allocations with relatively stronger counterparties such as Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) and PTC India, reducing risk compared with direct exposure to state discoms.”
•State auctioning, on the other hand, has slowed as several States have signed power supply agreements (PSAs) with PTC and SECI to procure wind power under the schemes auctioned by them, to help fulfill their non-solar renewable purchase obligations (RPO) targets, according to Crisil Research.
📰 App managers, cybersecurity agencies grapple with data leak
Dubsmash, Armor Games and Coffee Meets Bagel are among the apps hacked
•If you love recording yourself on Dubsmash, play on Armor Games in your free time, or are looking for your soul mate on Coffee Meets Bagel, chances are your personal details may have been compromised.
•Indian cyber security agencies are tracking a massive leak of data from at least 16 online platforms — websites as well as apps — several of which are widely used by Indians. The National Computer Emergency Response Team (NCERT), in collaboration with global cyber intelligence agencies, are currently trying to gauge the extent of the damage.
•Speaking about the challenges, Special Inspector General of Police (Maharashtra Cyber) Brijesh Singh said it is next to impossible to estimate the number of users from any particular country or region, as such data is not made available to law enforcement agencies. Further, he said, not all the personal details entered by users are always authentic. The Maharashtra Cyber department is also the nodal office for the NCERT in the State.
•The leak was first flagged by news websites that track cyber security and cyber crime, after they noticed that accounts of users of several online platforms were on sale on the dark web. Further investigation reportedly revealed that details of over 600 million accounts stolen from 16 portals were on sale, with payment being accepted in bitcoins.
Email alert
•In the early hours of Wednesday, Armor Games sent an email to all its users confirming the leak. “We respect the privacy of our users which is why as a precautionary measure, we are writing to let you know of a data security incident that may involve your personal information,” the email said.
•It went on to describe how the matter was brought to their attention by a private cyber security agency, which was later verified and confirmed to be true. “The database affected primarily stores all our website users’ public profiles, login data, birthdays of our admin accounts, and information about our password protection processes at the time (including the password salt). We do not have (and thus, this incident does not involve) first or last names, credit card data, addresses, or phone numbers,” the email said.
•Mr. Singh said, “A lot of users connect to such portals using their email IDs and even the passwords that they use are recycled from old ones, making it easier for miscreants to compromise their accounts or devices. For example, if miscreants are able to gain access to your office computer, they can spread through the entire network through the WI-FI device that the computer is connected to.”
•Apart from Dubsmash, Armor Game and Coffee Meets Bagel, other portals reportedly affected include MyFitnessPal, MyHeritage, ShareThis, HauteLook, Animoto, EyeEm, 8fit, Whitepages, Fotolog, 500px, BookMate, Artsy and DataCamp.
•Cyber security agencies have urged users to immediately update their passwords not only on the compromised portals but on every portal in use by them to prevent a further breach of information.
