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Tuesday, November 05, 2019

Daily Current Affairs, 05th November 2019

17:19






1) World Tsunami Awareness Day: 5 November
•The World Tsunami Awareness Day was observed across the world on 5 November. The day is celebrated to spread awareness among people across the world in matters related to the dangers of tsunami. In December 2015, the UN General Assembly designated 5 November as World Tsunami Awareness Day. In 2019, World Tsunami Awareness Day promotes Target of the “Sendai Seven Campaign,” which focuses on reducing disaster damage to critical infrastructure and disruption of basic services.

 •World Tsunami Awareness Day was the brainchild of Japan, which due to it’s repeated, bitter experience has over the years built up major expertise in areas such as tsunami early warning, public action and building back better after a disaster to reduce future impacts.

2) First-ever movement of container cargo on Brahmaputra
•The first-ever containerised cargo movement via Indo-Bangladesh protocol route and Brahmaputra river will start from West Bengal’s Haldia. The vessel MV Maheshwari, carrying 53 containers of petrochemicals, edible oil and beverage will take 12-15 days to reach the IWAI terminal at Pandu in Assam’s Guwahati. National Waterway 2 (NW-2) is a section of the Brahmaputra River having a length of 891 km between the Bangladesh border near Dhubri and Sadiya in Assam.

3) Amarinder Singh launches first of its kind ‘Punjab job helpline’for job seekers
•The Punjab Chief Minister(CM) Amarinder Singh has launched a first of its kind job helpline number 76260-76260 for the unemployed youth of the state under ‘Ghar Ghar Rozgar’ programme. The objective of this helpline is to reach every house in Punjab and it can be contacted on 75 thousand mobile numbers daily. In this process, a 110-seat call centre of Punjab Job Helpline has also been created for the data to be prepared.

4) Guyana to be fastest growing country in the world next year at 86%
•According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Guyana’s GDP is expected to be more at 86% in 2020 after expanding 4.4% in 2019. This growth expectation had done after Exxon Mobil Corp.’s discovery of oil at Guyana. Guyana’s economy will grow more than three times within five years.

 •Guyana’ GDP is to get fourteen times as fast as China’s GDP in 2020. Guyana is projecting $300 million in petroleum revenue in 2020. It is a country of South America with 7,80,000 population and neighbour countries are brazil & Venezuela. The oil sector will represent about 40% of the economy within five years. It crosses $4billion annual Gross domestic product (GDP) and also it will expand to about $15 billion by 2024.

5) IFFCO introduces India’s first nanotechnology-based products for on-field trials
•The world’s largest fertilizer cooperative Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO) introduced India’s 1st nanotechnology-based product range by introducing Nano Nitrogen, Nano Zinc, Nano Copper for on-field trials at an event held at its Kalol unit in Gujarat.

 •The products were produced at IFFCO’s Nano Biotechnology Research Centre (NBRC) in Kalol unit. The first phase of the launch was tested with support from Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVK)/Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). These nanostructured formulations effectively deliver nutrients to the plants. Other benefits of these Nano-products include a reduction in the requirement of conventional chemical fertilizer by 50%, up to 15-30% increase in crop production, improvement in soil health, reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases.




6) Finance Minister launches two IT initiatives ICEDASH and ATITHI
•Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveiled two new IT Initiatives – ICEDASH and ATITHI for improved monitoring and pace of customs clearance of imported goods and facilitating arriving international passengers.

 •ICEDASH is an Ease of Doing Business monitoring dashboard of the Indian Customs helping the public see the daily Customs clearance times of import cargo at various ports and airports. The ATITHI app will facilitate hassle-free and faster clearance by Customs at the airports and enhance the experience of international tourists and other visitors at the airports.

7) Madhuri Vijay’s debut novel ‘The Far Field’ wins 2019 JCB prize for Literature
•U.S. based-Indian author Madhuri Vijay’s debut novel, “The Far Field” bagged this year’s JCB prize for Literature, the most expensive Indian award for writing. The novel, published by Fourth estate India , sets a complex personal story against the backdrop of the conflict in the 1990s in Kashmir. She also received the Rs 25 lakh as the prize money, a sculpture by Delhi artist duo Thukral & Tagra entitled Mirror Melting.

 •JCB prize is an annual Indian literary award instituted in 2018. It is awarded to a distinguished work of fiction by an Indian writer working in English or to a translated fiction by an Indian writer. The award is funded by English construction manufacturing group JCB, which established the JCB Literature Foundation to maintain this award. In 2018, the JCB Prize for Literature was awarded to Jasmine Days by Benyamin, translated from Malayalam by Shahnaz Habib.

8) Aditya Mishra appointed as chairman of Land Ports Authority of India
•Senior IPS officer Aditya Mishra was appointed as the chairman of the Land Ports Authority of India (LPAI). He is a 1989 batch IPS officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre. The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the appointment of Mishra as the chairman of the LPAI on the recommendations of a search-cum-selection panel. He has been appointed for a period of five years from the date of assumption of the charge.

 •LPAI develops, sanitises and manage the facilities for cross-border movement of passengers and goods at designated points along the international borders of India.

9) IndusInd Bank appointed Sumant Kathpalia as new MD & CEO
•A private sector lender, IndusInd Bank has appointed its consumer banking head Suman Kathpalia, as its new Managing Director (MD) and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). He will replace Romesh Sobti, who will be retired in March 2020. Before joining IndusInd Bank, Sumant Kathpalia headed consumer loans vertical at ABN Amro Bank and joined IndusInd Bank in 2008.

10) Sri Lanka hosts biennial Commonwealth Law Ministers Conference
•The biennial Commonwealth Law Ministers’ Conference is being held in Colombo, Sri Lanka from 4-7 November 2019. India will be represented at the conference by Union Minister for Law and Justice Ravi Shankar Prasad. The theme for the 2019 CLM Conference is ‘Equal Access to Justice and the Rule of Law’. The Conference seeks to address challenges faced by millions of people seeking to resolve legal disputes. These include barriers such as poverty, lack of legal aid, distrust of the justice system and corruption.
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The HINDU Notes – 05th November 2019

15:01





📰 India storms out of RCEP, says trade deal hurts Indian farmers

India storms out of RCEP, says trade deal hurts Indian farmers
India had made a strong case for an outcome which is favourable to all countries and all sectors.

•Seven years after India joined negotiations for the 16-nation ASEAN (Association for South East Asian Nations)-led RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) or Free Trade Agreement, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on Monday that India was dropping out of the agreement, citing its negative effects on “farmers, MSMEs and dairy sector”.

•“The present form of the RCEP Agreement does not fully reflect the basic spirit and the agreed guiding principles of RCEP. It also does not address satisfactorily India’s outstanding issues and concerns. In such a situation, it is not possible for India to join RCEP Agreement,” Prime Minister Modi told leaders of the other 15 nations at the RCEP summit in Bangkok.

•The summit included China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and the 10-nation ASEAN grouping.

•“When I measure the RCEP Agreement with respect to the interests of all Indians, I do not get a positive answer. Therefore, neither the talisman of Gandhiji nor my own conscience permit me to join RCEP,” Mr. Modi added, referring to the stakes of Indian farmers, traders, professionals and industrialists, all of whom have protested against the government’s decision to go ahead with the negotiations in the last few months.

•Later in the evening, a joint leaders’ statement indicated that despite India’s “unresolved” outstanding issues, other countries were prepared to go ahead with the RCEP agreement.

•“We noted 15 (of 16) RCEP Participating Countries have concluded text-based negotiations for all 20 chapters and essentially all their market access issues; and tasked legal scrubbing by them to commence for signing in 2020,” the statement issued at the end of the summit said.

•“India’s final decision will depend on satisfactory resolution of these issues,” the joint statement said.

•When asked whether India might consider joining RCEP at a later date, an MEA official said, “Not as the agreement stands today.”

•Sources said Indian officials, who had hoped for consensus on pushing the timelines on an agreement to next year, reacted angrily to the joint statement, and stormy scenes were reportedly witnessed over the wording of the statement.

•Officials present at the meetings said India had tried to negotiate “in good faith” but felt that their views “were not being accommodated”. They also accused the other nations of attempting to “gang up” in an attempt to force India to toe the line on issues like safeguards against flooding of Chinese goods, allowing Indian labour mobility to other countries for services, and agricultural and dairy tariffs. Since 2012, there have been 28 rounds of negotiations that went right down to the wire over the weekend at the RCEP ministerial meeting, which ended inconclusively for India.

•According to a government note, the outstanding issues included major trade deficits with all the countries in RCEP, lack of assurances on market access, and RCEP negotiators’ insistence on keeping 2014 as the base year for tariff reductions. The note, which was circulated to the media shortly before Mr. Modi went up on the dais to make his announcement, also said India was in the process of reviewing its Free trade Agreements with Japan, Korea and the ASEAN grouping, and discussing trade agreements with Europe and the U.S., while criticising the previous UPA government for “poor negotiations” in the past.

•The note called agreements like RCEP “in reality FTAs by stealth” with countries with whom India has a “huge trade imbalance” — a veiled attack against China with which India has a $53 billion deficit.

•The government denied reports that it had made any “last minute demands” at the ASEAN and East Asian Summits on RCEP.

•“Overall we are clear that a mutually beneficial RCEP, in which all sides gain reasonably, is in the interests of India and of all partners in the negotiation,” government sources said later in the afternoon. A few hours later, however, the mood had considerably changed, and India decided to walk out of the RCEP agreement altogether.

•RCEP negotiations were meant to create the world’s biggest free trade region that represented half the world’s population and one-third of the global GDP.

•The decision to join RCEP met with stiff resistance in India, however, from most industry and farmers’ bodies. The All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC), which represents about 10 lakh farmers, had called for an all-India protest on Monday against joining. Separately, the Confederation of All India Traders, which represents about seven crore traders, made several representations to the Commerce Ministry to keep steel and allied services, and dairy out of the purview of the RCEP agreement.

•However, while certain industries such as steel, agriculture, and dairy have been vocally against India joining RCEP, the Confederation of Indian Industry in a report on Monday said the naysayers had only taken the limited view of curbing imports from China and have not looked at the opportunities for export growth that India could exploit by joining RCEP.

📰 India, Russia to conclude mutual logistics agreement
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Forum IAS Content Building Program Book 5 Disaster Management PDF

06:57
Forum IAS Content Building Program Book 5 Disaster Management PDF





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THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT ARTICLES 05.11.2019

06:43
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Monday, November 04, 2019

West Bengal Civil Service exam 2020 notification released

18:44

West Bengal Civil Service exam 2020 notification released





WBPSC PCS 2020
West Bengal Civil Service (Exe) Examination: Important Dates

EventDate
Commencement of submission of online application05.11.2019
Closing date for submission of online application25.11.2019
Closing date for submission of fees through online25.11.2019
Closing date for submission of fees through offline26.11.2019

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Daily Current Affairs, 04th November 2019

17:08


1) Govt releases maps of newly-created UTs of Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh
•The Government of India released the maps of newly created union territories of Jammu-Kashmir and Ladakh and the map of India depicting these union territories. According to the Home Ministry, the new Union Territory of Ladakh consists of Kargil and Leh – two districts. The rest of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir is in the new Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The maps prepared by Survey General of India depicting the new UTs of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh, as created on October 31, 2019, along with the map of India.

2) AYUSH Minister Inaugurates (NRIUMSD)
•Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for AYUSH inaugurated National Research Institute of Unani Medicine for Skin Disorders (NRIUMSD) upgraded from Central Research Institute of Unani Medicine (CRIUM) at Erragadda, Hyderabad.

 •AYUSH Minister lauded the success of the CRIUM in the treatment of vitiligo and other chronic and stubborn diseases and it’s perhaps the only medical institution in the world which has treated more than 1.5 lakh patients of Vitiligo alone.

3) India-Uzbekistan 1st-ever joint military exercise Dustlik-2019 begins
•The first-ever India-Uzbekistan joint military exercise Dustlik-2019 begin at Chirchiq Training Area near Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The exercise, which will be focused on counter-terrorism, will continue till November 13. During the exercise, an Indian Army contingent will train along with Uzbekistan Army. The exercise will enable the sharing of best practices and experiences between the Armed Forces of the two countries and will lead to greater operational effectiveness.

4) Hardeep Singh Puri inaugurates Guru Nanak Chair at University of Birmingham
•Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs has inaugurated a new Guru Nanak Chair by the support of Indian government, at the University of Birmingham to enable research around the teachings of the founder of the Sikh religion. He announced the new Chair to mark the 550th Birth Anniversary of Guru Nanak.

5) Writer Anand selected for 27th Ezhuthachan Puraskaram 2019
•Noted writer Anand has been selected for the 27th Ezhuthachan Puraskaram 2019. This award is given by Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award and the Government of Kerala. He was chosen for his overall contributions to Malayalam language and Literature. His real name is P.Satchidanandan uses the pseudonym, Anand.

 •Anand retired as Planning director from the Central Water Commission in New Delhi. His native is Iringalakkuda, Thrissur at Kerala. His first novel was Alkkoottam. He is also a recipient of Vayalar Award and Yashpal Award.

6) Neeraj sharma wins ‘Early career researcher of the year 2019’ award
•Indian-origin researcher Neeraj Sharma has been given the ‘Early Career Researcher of the Year award’ by the Australian government. This award is given for developing next-generation battery systems such as a sodium-ion battery that will leave a minimal environmental impact. He is a professor at the University of South Wales (UNSW)’s School of Chemistry.

 •Neeraj Sharma, considered one of the global leaders in the use of neutron and X-ray scattering methods, is also exploring inherently safe solid-state batteries, energy-dense lithium-sulfur batteries, dual function solar batteries and methods for recycling.

7) Sudarsan Pattnaik selected for Italian Golden Sand Art Award
•International acclaimed Sand Artist Sudarsan Pattnaik who belongs to Odisha has been selected for the prestigious Italian Golden Sand Art Award 2019. He will be felicitated during the International Scorrana Sand Nativity festival in Italy which is to be held from November 13 to 18, 2019. He was honoured by the union government with the fourth highest civilian ‘Padma Shri’ award in 2014.

8) Siemens signs MoUs with NTPC, TERI on decarbonisation, energy transition
•Siemens Limited has signed a Memorandum of Understanding(MoU) with NTPC Limited to identify, evaluate and set up reference use cases of hydrogen sector-coupling for various upstream and downstream applications. The collaboration is aimed at developing innovative technologies, solutions and techniques to reduce the dependence on Hydrocarbons in India.

 •Siemens Limited has also inked a separate MoU with TERI for collaboration on technologies to support the energy transition in India including sector-coupling. Among the objectives of the MoU with TERI is realizing the research and technology development projects to enable energy transitions across the electricity, transport and industrial sectors.

9) Novak Djokovic won the Paris Masters 2019 title
•Novak Djokovic won the Paris Masters 2019 title. He won the title for the fifth time. He sealed his 34th Master’s title and fifth overall ATP victory of the year 2019. He defeated Canada’s Denis Shapovalov. He secured 6-3 6-4 to win the title.

10) South Africa wins Rugby World Cup 2019
•South Africa defeated England’s team by 32-12 scores in the final of the 9 edition of Rugby World Cup 2019 held at International Stadium, Yokohama, Japan. This was the 3 time the South African(SA) team reached the final of the World Cup and won the tournament. The SA team, which won the World Cup for the first time in 1995, also won the final in 2007. With this, the team also equalled New Zealand’s record of winning the World Cup three times.
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The HINDU Notes – 04th November 2019

13:44





📰 Intransigence as villain of the peace?

In Nagaland, aspirations of a new era can seldom be seen from an aging, fixed vision; the NSCN(IM) must recognise this

•It is fortunate that the peace talks between the Government of India and the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah), NSCN(IM), did not break down on October 31, the government’s deadline for concluding an accord. Although there are no specific details, both sides apparently agreed to step back a little from earlier stances and to sign a deal sometime soon. This delay, however, cannot be for long as other Naga groups have already been promised a settlement with or without the NSCN(IM) if the deadlock with it holds; going against this promise can result in complications.

Potential spoilers

•The deadlock was on the insistence for a separate flag and constitution by the NSCN(IM) to make way for India and Nagaland to be independent allies in a shared-sovereignty federal relationship. Conceding to this, especially after the abrogation of Article 370, would have been impossible for the Government. The uncertainty, however, was also on account of many other thorny internal contradictions — some old and some new; in the days ahead, they can show up to become spoilers.

•Call it determination or obduracy, the most pronounced of these is a seeming intransigence of vision on the part of the NSCN(IM), and a refusal to accept radical shifts in aspirations all around brought by new challenges and opportunities of a new era. Ernest Renan’s “a nation is a daily plebiscite” must be heeded by the nation and its challengers alike, for aspiration of any collective of people is a moving target which can seldom be hit from a fixed vision.

•The 70 years of struggle by the Nagas is heroic; so is the identity formation among these linguistically disparate tribes at constant war with each other in pre-modern times. There is now no lack of a sense of peoplehood around the Naga identity, and considering the germination of this identity is just about 100 years old, this is phenomenal. As many scholars have pointed out, the watershed years were the First World War. Tribesmen from these hills recruited in the British Labour Corps, discovered their commonness of destiny in Europe. The formation of the Naga Club upon their return, their memorandum to the Simon Commission in 1929 asserting their distinct identity and wish for self-determination, the formation of the Naga National Council and its decision under visionary leader A.Z. Phizo to take to armed struggle not long after Indian independence, etc., are well-documented. The grit and romance of this resistance was magnetic, and affiliation to the Naga identity expanded among more tribes in these hills, crossing established political boundaries, and in the process creating their shares of ethnic frictions.

Need for moderating notions

•Several decades down the line, the fight is getting weary. Obviously, no revolution can sustain on 70-year-old slogans. Moreover, this struggle has also seen violent splits, ugly divisive tribalism, fratricidal feuds and untold sufferings. These also have to be factored into this story of a unique history. If history is the record of a given state building project, and is blind to events which do not contribute this exercise and relies on memory and myths — as the Naga story often does — to reconstruct the past can be equally problematic. Memory too is extremely selective and chooses to forget events which go against the image of the past being constructed. It also often confabulates to fill gaps in the story. Therefore, all notions of unique histories and ancestral homelands will need moderation against this scale.

Decisive shifts

•Even in the last 22 years of Naga peace negotiations, radical shifts in perspective have been evident. For instance, when parleys began in 1997, it was exclusively with the NSCN(IM). In 2001, the NSCN’s other major faction led by the late S.S. Khaplang, NSCN(K), too entered into a ceasefire agreement with the Government, but they were not made part of the peace negotiations, ostensibly because of objections from the NSCN(IM), which instead offered amnesty to all other factions if they joined them. Expectedly, the NSCN(K) began showing signs of disintegrative pressures from within. By 2011, two important leaders, Kitovi Zhimomi and Khole Konyak, had left in moves allegedly engineered by Indian intelligence to separate the Myanmar Nagas from India in anticipation of a settlement. Khaplang is from Myanmar. In 2016, Khole Konyak formally joined the NSCN(IM).

•Erosion from within the NSCN(K) ranks continued and Khaplang, in June 2015, decided to abrogate the ceasefire agreement. Two months later, on August 3, the Government signed the Framework Agreement with the NSCN(IM). The latter continued to hold centre stage but not for long. Realising that the NSCN(IM) cannot be the sole representatives of the Nagas, in 2017 other Naga underground factions were also brought to the negotiating table, lowering the prestige of the NSCN(IM). Today there are seven of these factions under an umbrella organisation, the Naga National Political Groups (NNPG), taking part in the parleys, and they are willing to sign a peace pact under the Constitution, leaving other demands to be pursued later.

•The Framework Agreement envisaged a bilateral truce between “two entities”, but today it is set to be a multilateral one. Not only this, as a Ministry of Home Affairs spokesperson clarified through the Press Information Bureau on October 31 evening, the accord will only be concluded after consultations with Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh, all States which have a stake in the matter. Till date the talks were in complete secrecy, raising anxiety in these States.

•The other tangible mood in Nagaland is, if the settlement is for an Indian state and not a sovereign Naga homeland, they are happy with the present Nagaland State. The willingness of the NNPG, most of whose leadership are Nagaland based, to keep in abeyance demands such as for a Greater Nagaland, is an indication. There are now more urgent indicators. On October 25, a total of 17 leaders of the NSCN(IM) ditched the organisation to join the NNPG. All defectors are Nagaland based and most are from the Sema tribe. This is significant. When the NSCN(IM)’s respected Sema leader, Isak Chishi Swu died in June 2016, there was speculation this might erode the support base of the NSCN(IM) among Semas, thereby its foothold also in Nagaland, leaving it largely a Manipur-based organisation. Most of its other top leaders and cadres, including its supremo Thuingaleng Muivah, are from Manipur. Today this prophesy seems to be unfolding.

•There has also been a growing social movement in Nagaland for consolidation of Nagaland’s own people. The demand for a Register of Indigenous Inhabitants of Nagaland, and now the formation of the Nagaland Indigenous People’s Forum on October 28 (at its launch, former Nagaland Chief Minister and retired Governor of several States, S.C. Jamir, unambiguously reminded the Nagaland public that the State is already burdened with difficulties and should not take on more excess baggage) are some of these.

•A Nagaland-centred truce would indeed leave the NSCN(IM) in a bind. For then, from the lofty demand for a sovereign homeland, the people may be left to be content with territorial councils in Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. Even such a settlement will not be without resistance, as these States, most vocally Manipur, are unwilling to make compromises to their territorial integrity or administrative structures. Whatever is to be given to the Nagas in their State, they want it done via their existing State governments and institutions.

•It is not too late yet, but the NSCN(IM) leadership should have read the writing on the wall earlier to make way for aspirations of the new era. Shakespeare put it so well in King Lear: “What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure. Their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all.”

📰 NRC exercise only to update 1951 list: CJI
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