10 Apr 2019: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis TABLE OF CONTENTS A. GS1 Related B. GS2 Related POLITY AND GOVERNANCE 1. Centre denies RTI plea on CIC appointments INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 1. Sri Lanka opens China-financed railway line C. GS3 Related ECONOMY 1. IMF forecasts dip in global growth in 2019 2. India’s gold reserves increase marginally in February: WGC D. GS4 Related E. Editorials POLITY AND GOVERNANCE 1. Technology and the unhurried mind 2. Closure on cynicism 3. Is there a problem with the 10% quota? 4. The right to criticise INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 1. Brexit and the fragility of the U.K. F. Tidbits 1. India becomes YouTube’s largest and fastest growing market G. Prelims Facts 1. Impetigo 2. Eczematous dermatitis H. UPSC Prelims Practice Questions I. UPSC Mains Practice Questions A. GS1 Related Nothing here for today!!! B. GS2 Related Category: POLITY AND GOVERNANCE 1. Centre denies RTI plea on CIC appointments Context: The Centre has denied a Right to Information (RTI) request for details of the ongoing recruitment process for four vacancies in the Central Information Commission (CIC), despite a recent Supreme Court order mandating that such information be made public. Appointment of CIC The CIC is the RTI Act’s highest appellate body.
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
10 Apr 2019: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News
Analysis
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A. GS1 Related
B. GS2 Related POLITY AND GOVERNANCE
1. Centre denies RTI plea on CIC appointments
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
1. Sri Lanka opens China-financed railway line
C. GS3 Related ECONOMY
1. IMF forecasts dip in global growth in 2019
2. India’s gold reserves increase marginally in February: WGC
D. GS4 Related
E. Editorials POLITY AND GOVERNANCE
1. Technology and the unhurried mind
2. Closure on cynicism
3. Is there a problem with the 10% quota?
4. The right to criticise
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
1. Brexit and the fragility of the U.K.
F. Tidbits 1. India becomes YouTube’s largest and fastest growing market
G. Prelims Facts 1. Impetigo
2. Eczematous dermatitis
H. UPSC Prelims Practice Questions
I. UPSC Mains Practice Questions
A. GS1 Related
Nothing here for today!!!
B. GS2 Related
Category: POLITY AND GOVERNANCE
1. Centre denies RTI plea on CIC appointments
Context:
The Centre has denied a Right to Information (RTI) request for details of the ongoing recruitment process
for four vacancies in the Central Information Commission (CIC), despite a recent Supreme Court order
In this article, Mr. Krishna Kumar, who is a former director of the NCERT, shares his thoughts on
how EVM’s (Electronic Voting Machines) have changed the voting experience.
Apart from writing answers for GS-2 (Polity) where questions on EVM’s and Voter-Verifiable Paper
Audit Trail (VVPAT) can be featured, these points will also help students while writing essays.
Editorial Analysis:
The saga of the EVM has started looking a bit tedious to many people.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) itself seems frustrated with the continued suspicion of
political parties in the integrity of the EVM system.
The system that the EVM has replaced was vulnerable in many ways, such as by booth capturing.
There were days when incidents of booth capturing were common.
In the era of EVMs, booth capturing has lost its value, not just its possibility.
Another constraint of the pre-EVM era was the high proportion of invalid votes. Many people found
it difficult to put the stamp in the allocated space. The EVM has deleted the risk of invalidity.
The linking of EVMs with a Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) is a fine mechanical
response to the suspicion that EVMs can be manipulated.
This doubt-removal machine offers a seven-second long image of the symbol and name chosen by
the voter. One can say that a country of millions of smartphone users can be confident that its voters
will look at the VVPAT screen during the given time-slot to satisfy themselves that their choice has
been correctly recorded.
Democracy is a modern faith. Its disruption must not be entertained, even as a passing
thought. This is perhaps yet another demand that modernity is making on our old nation. Never
mind that nations more advanced than us on the industrial path have not agreed to use EVMs for
their elections. If we emulated their caution, there are many other encounters with modern science
and technology we would have avoided. They have so far worked out for us, helping us to move
forward. The EVM is one more step.
The new ethos
One reads numerous articles and news items covering the debate over EVMs. Many articles discuss
the rejection of EVMs in other democracies.
They are technologically more advanced than India, then why did they reject EVMs? That train of
thought would lead to doubt over one’s commitment to the nation and its progress. It is no longer a
case of choice of machine or material for nation-building. The new nationalist ethos has no room
for debate over anything, let alone the path of progress for the nation. One must pass an
ideological fitness test before seeking the right to be given attention. In the context of technology, the digital kind has swept other choices aside. The philosopher of
technology, the late Ursula Franklin, defined technology as ‘the way we do things here’.
In our case, we have settled our mind over a narrower definition that accepts only digital machines as
acceptable technology. The qualities they possess are accredited as the highest. Entertaining any
doubt about their integrity is a waste of time. That, indeed, it is, considering that the decision has
It sought to correct these problems by repairing components related to the printing spool of the
VVPAT machines.
The deployment of many corrected machines in the Assembly elections held recently in Madhya
Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh resulted in much reduced replacement rates (close to 2.5% in
Madhya Pradesh and 1.9% in Chhattisgarh).
This suggests that the EC is relatively better prepared to handle VVPAT-related glitches in the
upcoming Lok Sabha election, where the VVPATs will be deployed in nearly 10.5 lakh polling
stations nationwide.
Is the current rate of VVPAT recounts enough?
Political parties, primarily of the Opposition, have demanded a greater VVPAT recount than
the one booth per Assembly/Lok Sabha constituency rule that is now in place. The EC responded to a plea by the Opposition parties in the Supreme Court that there was a need for
50% VVPAT recount, saying such an exercise would delay the counting by six days.
Statistically speaking, it does not require a 50% sample to adequately match VVPAT tallies with
those of EVMs.
The Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, has presented a report on possible and appropriate VVPAT
counts to the EC, in which it said a sample verification of 479 EVMs and VVPATs of a total 10.35
lakh machines would bring the level of confidence in the process to 99.9936%.
The logic behind counting only one booth per constituency in each State stems from the
understanding that there are nearly 10.35 lakh polling stations and 4,125 Assembly constituencies in
the country.
By counting the slips in at least one VVPAT in each Assembly constituency, the EC argues, a
relatively high sample size of the EVMs (0.5%) is verified.
Critics have argued that this sample size is not enough to statistically select a potentially tampered
EVM within a high confidence level and adjusting for a small margin of error (less than 2%) as the
unit of selection must be EVMs in each State rather than the entire country as a whole.
One suggestion, by the former bureaucrat Ashok Vardhan Shetty, is for adjusting the VVPAT
counting process to factor in the size of the State, population of the constituency and turnout to
account for a higher confidence level and a low margin of error. This would entail the certain tallying of more than one VVPAT per constituency, in fact close to 30
per constituency in smaller States and less than five per constituency for larger States.
The Supreme Court has said the EC must increase the VVPAT count to more than the current
number.
Stringent trials
Since the last general election (2014), there have been allegations about the BJP hacking EVMs.
The EC has repeatedly challenged conspiracy theorists to demonstrate that EVMs can be hacked but
no party has accepted it.
This debate should have ended in October 2010 when the EC called an all-party meeting which
unanimously recommended the adoption of VVPATs, which was promptly accepted.
The two factories manufacturing EVMs were asked to develop VVPATs, and an independent
committee of professors from five Indian Institutes of Technology was requested to monitor the
process.
There were a series of trials, followed by two full-day election simulations in five cities across India
(with different climatic conditions) in 2011-12. Only after the VVPATs passed all the rigorous tests
(climatic endurance and technology) were they deployed, initially in 20,000 polling booths. As
manufacturing progressed, all constituencies were equipped with VVPATs.
In 2013, the Supreme Court lauded the EC’s initiatives, directing the government to release adequate
funds for procurement for all booths for the 2019 elections.
Since 2017, all elections have been held with VVPAT-attached EVMs. A total of 1,500 machines
Article 15 of the Constitution prohibits discrimination against any citizen on the grounds of race,
religion, caste, sex, or place of birth. However, the government may make special provisions for
the advancement of socially and educationally backward classes, or for Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes.
The Bill seeks to amend Article 15 to additionally permit the government to provide for the
advancement of “economically weaker sections”. Further, up to 10% of seats may be reserved for such sections for admission in educational
institutions. Such reservation will not apply to minority educational institutions.
Article 16 of the Constitution prohibits discrimination in employment in any government office.
However, the government can allow reservation for any “backward class of citizens”, if they
are not adequately represented in the services under the state. The Bill seeks to amend Article 16 to permit the government to reserve up to 10% of all posts for the
“economically weaker sections” of citizens.
The reservation of up to 10% for “economically weaker sections” in educational institutions and
public employment will be in addition to the existing reservation.
A Deeper Perspective:
For the first time, private higher education institutions, both aided and unaided, will have to reserve
10% seats for the economically weaker sections.
The Constitution (124 Amendment) Bill, 2019, provides for reservation for economically weaker
section of the society in higher educational institutions, whether aided or unaided by the state other
than the minority educational institutions referred to in Article 30 of the Constitution.
The bill, will for the first time bring in reservation even in private-unaided colleges and universities,
which constitute around 70% of institutions in the country.
India is home to around 50,000 institutions catering to more than 35 million students in higher
education.Possible Opposition:
Private education players feel it will have negative ramifications and argued that the proposed law
will face legal hurdles.
Experts have opined that the bill, in its present form, will face resistance from private education
providers as they do not reserve seats for Scheduled Caste (SC), Schedule Tribe (ST) or Other
Backward Classes (OBC) students.
Some private education players have remarked that the move will have four key ramifications on the
sector—quality, recruiters’ apathy, legal problems, and cost involved with it.
Some experts have pointed out that the bill may also open up avenues for caste-based reservations in
private educational institutions.
If the government mandates, then private players will have to abide by it, however, some experts
have opined that this may set the precedent for reservations of all kinds in the private sector.
A private university promoter has remarked that the biggest challenge will come from recruiters.
Currently, private universities don’t have government support like IITs (Indian Institutes of
Technology) or central universities.
A concern that has also been expressed by the private university promoter, is that if recruiters stay
away from the university because of quality dilution, then their survival will be at stake.
Perspective on Promotions
The 81st constitutional amendment was made to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision against the
‘carrying forward’ rule, which permitted the filling of unfilled reserved seats in subsequent
years. Similarly, the 85th constitutional amendment was passed in 2001 to restore consequential seniority to
promotee SC/ST employees as a ‘catch-up’ rule introduced by the court in Ajit Singh (1999) was
causing hardship to SC/ST employees.
In the month of March, 2019, the Narendra Modi government promulgated an ordinance to undo the
323 to 72 for SCs, and from 1,167 to 876 for OBCs. But the number of unreserved or general posts
would have gone up from 2,316 to 3,233.
Thus department-wise reservation was a sophisticated beginning of an end of reservation.
Some experts take the view that if SC/ST candidates do not become professors, they cannot become
vice-chancellors as only a professor with 10-year experience is eligible for this. In 2018, out of some
496 vice-chancellors of Central and State universities, there were just six SC, six ST and 48 OBC
vice-chancellors.
The government deserves appreciation for the ordinance, though the timing of it on the eve of the
elections is questionable.
What we need to do more is to improve diversity on our campuses with more SCs, STs, OBCs,
Muslims, persons with disabilities and sexual minorities being recruited as faculty as our campuses
do not reflect social diversity despite the university being a unit for reservation.
Let the score on the diversity index be a major criterion in giving grants to universities.
Editorial Analysis:
In January 2019, the Rajya Sabha passed the Constitution Amendment Bill guaranteeing 10% quota
in education and employment to economically weaker sections in the general category.
Families that earn an annual income of less than ₹8 lakh and do not possess agricultural land of five
acres or above are eligible for the quota. This includes 95% of Indian households.
Having said this, there are certain questions that emerge: Isn’t it strange that in a country which
claims to have lifted millions out of poverty, so many households fall in this category? What is more is that these households require reservation, nothing else, to enable them to be socio-
economically better off.
The Bill has served an unintended purpose, though: Reservation is no more the preserve of the so-
called merit-less.
Some experts believe that that proposed quota has transformed cynics of the reservation policy into
champions of it.
Examining two aspects:
A team of experts (Sunny Jose and Bheemeshwar Reddy who teach at the Birla Institute of
Technology and Science, Pilani, Hyderabad campus) examined the empirical foundation of two
aspects which are central to the policy but are absent from discussions on it.
The first is the rationale underlying the policy that economically weaker sections from the
general category remain “excluded from attending the higher education institutions” in India
“due to their financial incapacity”. Is that really the case?
The second is the fact that the Bill also brings private educational institutions under its ambit.
What is the representation of reserved category students in private educational institutions? The team of experts (Sunny Jose and Bheemeshwar Reddy who teach at the Birla Institute of
Technology and Science, Pilani, Hyderabad campus) decided to answer these two questions by
analysing data from the National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF). The Ministry of Human
Resource Development introduced a ranking of higher education institutions in India in 2016. A total
of 445 institutions were ranked under the NIRF in 2018.
The NIRF data provide the composition of ‘economically backward class’ (EBC) students and
The U.K. is not one nation but four: Wales was brought under English rule in the 13th
century; Ireland was incorporated by a combination of military force and political persuasion
in 1801; Scotland, though never militarily defeated, was persuaded to join the Union in 1707. Until they joined the U.K., Scotland and Ireland were governed by their own parliaments.
These were dissolved and power transferred to Westminster.
This transfer of power to London did not go unchallenged locally, and the embers of resistance were
never quite stamped out.
The Republic of Ireland eventually gained independence for most of the island, barring the Protestant
majority north, in 1922.
Scottish nationalism remained subsumed under the promise of Empire: Scotland had gained
power and wealth from the colonial enterprise, which tempered the loss of sovereignty to
Westminster.
View from Scotland:
Indeed, part of the reason that Scotland joined the Union in 1707 was because it was broke: the
kingdom had suffered heavy financial losses from a disastrous expedition to secure a trading base in
the late 17th century.
The failure of the Darien Scheme, as it was known, was caused in no small part by resistance from
Scotland’s southern neighbours who were protecting the trading rights of the East India Company.
Once within the Union, the colonial enterprise and then Empire offered not just wealth but all the
trappings of great power. The end of the Empire signalled Britain’s departure from the global stage.
The Suez crisis of 1956 confirmed its diminished status. And Brexit, Britain’s retreat from its
own continent, has completed the project. Little England has withdrawn into itself to protect mythical ideas of Englishness against the
supposed onslaught of waves of foreign immigration and EU rule.
The Scots are only too aware of this. Scottish nationalism has been simmering for years now,
only partly placated by the devolution of some domestic powers to a Scottish Parliament under
the Scotland Act of 1998. A referendum on Scottish independence in 2014 ended up being a closer call than had been
anticipated (55% vs 45%), though it was clear even then that part of the reason for remaining was
that the U.K. offered membership of the EU (which was not automatically on offer for an
independent Scotland).
Now, with Brexit looming, Scottish demands for independence resurface regularly.
A fragile peace:
The Northern Ireland question is even more intractable.
Brexit threatens the fragile peace imposed by the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which formally
ended the Troubles, or decades of bitter sectarian violence.
Between 1968 and 1998, the mainly Protestant Unionists were pitted against the mostly Catholic
Republicans, who wished for Northern Ireland to join the Republic of Ireland.
Paramilitary forces grouped on both sides, and the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary
(the police) were also pulled in. Indeed, the Troubles became the longest major campaign of the
British Army. The Good Friday Agreement has allowed the region to move forward.
It is, however, a fragile peace, comprising complex intertwined agreements between first, most of
Northern Ireland’s political parties; and second, the British and Irish governments to manage the
relationships between Britain and Ireland, and between Northern Ireland and the rest of Britain.
Underpinning all of this is the dismantling of the border infrastructure — watch-towers, fences,
checkposts — that had divided the island of Ireland.
This was only possible because both countries belonged to the EU.