Current affairs 19th April 2019
Current Affairs and Editorial discussion from various national daily newspapers
Current affairs 19th April 2019
Prelims
Awards to PM Modi
Why in news?
Modi is always in news :P
What are the major awards he received?
A number of prestigious awards have been conferred on PM Modi by various countries and UN bodies. He has received the King Abdullaziz Sash Award of Saudi Arabia, Amir Abdulla Khan Award of Afghanistan, Grand Collar of the State of Palestine, the UN Champions of the Earth award, Seoul Peace Prize 2018 and the Zayed Medal of UAE. The latest is the highest order of the Russian Federation, the Order of St Andrew the Apostle.
Four of these awards are the highest civilian awards of the respective countries, while the UN award is for PM Modi’s contribution to addressing climate change and the Korean award recognises his contribution to global peace. It is noteworthy that all four state awards are from Islamic countries.
Mains
Cross LOC trade
Why in news?
Cross-border trade across the Line of Control has been temporarily suspended. Government has decided to “suspend” this Kashmir-specific confidence building measure now on the ground that it was being misused to push drugs, weapons and counterfeit currency into the Valley from across the border, as well as for trade in goods excluded from the list meant for cross-LoC trade.
What is its value?
Cross LoC trade began in October 2008, just a month before the Mumbai terror attacks. That it was launched at all, and survived the deep freeze of India-Pakistan ties that followed 26/11, growing in value and symbolic importance to Kashmiris on either side of the LoC over the next decade, was due to the all around acknowledgment that Kashmir needs special specific confidence-building measures, and that these need to be kept separate from the India-Pakistan relationship. Cross LoC interaction carried huge symbolic value in Kashmir, even though the trade itself has been far below its actual potential, and was tied up with red tape and the absence of banking facilities and telephone connections. Moreover, it was being conducted through a barter system, as India and Pakistan could not reach agreement on currency transactions, even though its annual value grew from Rs 1 crore in 2008-09 to over Rs 3,000 crore at the present time.
How it could have been handled?
No trade routes into India are free from misuse. Hawala, despite a severe crackdown, continues to exist as a channel through which Indians continue to send and receive money from abroad. In the case of Kashmir, the absence of banking channels must have exacerbated the situation. If the government had apprehensions that the trade across the two sides of Kashmir was being used by terrorist benamis or other unscrupulous elements, the better course of action would have been to monitor the crossing points at Uri and Chakkan da Bagh through which it was taking place four times a week. This is all in a day’s work for customs and other enforcement agencies, and this is how drugs were caught being smuggled in trucks from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.
Tax regulation on MNCs
Why in news?
India’s tax authority is now considering a revamp of the rules for taxing multinational companies as well as digital firms, with a committee of the Central Board of Direct Taxes recommending changes to protect the country’s revenue interests. At the core of this move is the issue of taxation rights on income generated by global firms operating across various jurisdictions in an age of digitalisation and profit shifting or tax avoidance strategies marked by exploiting loopholes to transfer profits to low tax destinations.
What is the background?
The rise of the digital and the gig economy in particular, has made the concept of a physical presence as a threshold for taxation redundant, posing challenges to governments and fiscal experts. The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)/ G-20 Base Erosion and Profit Sharing Project recognises this situation and envisages a global consensus on tax rules by 2020. It has now forced governments to consider fundamental changes to taxation rules to ensure that tax revenues are not eroded. Indian authorities, like some of their peers globally, will now have to firm up their approach on profit attribution — the allocation of profits between jurisdictions where customers are located and where factors of production are located and where supply side activities are carried out. The OECD model tax convention favours granting taxation rights to the country of residence of the taxpayer, an approach which India and some other countries do not agree with. Rather, they argue taxation rights should be allowed in jurisdictions where value is created and which contributes to demand by economic activity. The other proposal which is now being considered is a formula for allocation of such taxes among countries based on sales, payroll or wages besides assets and property.
Indian authorities have argued rightly that adopting the OECD model will mean not just losing revenues but also taxing local firms, putting them at a disadvantage compared to their foreign firms, with an adverse impact on competitiveness, demand, revenues and profits. For a country like India, which needs greater inflow of capital to boost growth and create more jobs, what will count more is not the new formula or rules for taxing cross-broader activities, but the stability and predicatability of its tax regime. That’s what foreign investors fret about.
What is Base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS)?
Base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) refers to corporate tax planning strategies used by multinationals to "shift" profits from higher–tax jurisdictions to lower–tax jurisdictions, thus "eroding" the "tax–base" of the higher–tax jurisdictions.
Sachar Committee Report
Why in news?
Because April 20, 2019 marks the first death anniversary of this great judge and socialist. In his later life, Sachar was known primarily for the Sachar Committee Report.
What is Sachar committee report?
The committee, headed by Justice Sachar, was constituted in 2005 by the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with the aim to prepare a report about social, economic and educational status of the Muslim community in India.
The committee’s 403-page report was presented in the Lok Sabha on November 30, 2006. The findings and recommendations of the report immediately became a topic of sharp debate in political, social and intellectual circles. The report was considered a mirror that showed the true picture of the Muslim community. Consequently, it received praise from a large part of the intelligentsia as well as from political parties. Although there were some dissenting voices about the findings, recommendations and methodology of the report, it was well received by most people. After its publication, there were severe reactions as well.
The report brought attention for the first time to the ever-growing economic inequality and social insecurity and alienation of Muslims since Independence. It found, on the basis of official data, that the Muslim population, estimated at over 138 million in 2001, were under-represented in the civil services, police, military and in politics. Muslims were more likely to be poor, illiterate, unhealthy and to have trouble with the law in comparison to the other Indians. Thus the myth of “Muslim appeasement” was thoroughly exposed.
The report states that the minorities, especially the Muslims, have been the ignored factor in all central governments. Amongst the various recommendations, the Prime Minister’s High Level Committee Report had recommended the establishment of an Equal Opportunity Commission (EOC) as an instrument to prevent discrimination against minorities in the private sector in matters such as housing and employment. It was an important point, since courts cannot interfere in cases of discrimination in the private sector. This recommendation has been inexcusably sidelined. The EOC can be set up by the state governments without taking permission from the Centre.
A very urgent recommendation of the report dealt with the unfairness of divisions of electoral constituencies, which results in less number of Muslims in the legislature compared to their proportion in the population. This anomaly arises from the irrational demarcation of seats in the legislature.
Ganga has higher proportion of antibacterial agents
A study commissioned by the Union Water Resources Ministry to probe the “unique properties” of the Ganga found that the river water contains a significantly higher proportion of organisms with antibacterial properties.
Other Indian rivers also contain these organisms but the Ganga — particularly in its upper Himalayan stretches — has more of them, the study suggests.
Who conducted the study?
The study, ‘Assessment of Water Quality and Sediment To Understand Special Properties of River Ganga,’ began in 2016 and was conducted by the Nagpur-based National Environmental Engineering and Research Institute (NEERI), a CSIR lab.
How was the study conducted?
The NEERI team was tasked with assessing the water quality for “radiological, microbiological and biological” parameters in the Bhagirathi (a feeder river of the Ganga) and the Ganga at 20 sampling stations.
As part of the assessment, five pathogenic species of bacteria (Escherichia, Enterobacter, Salmonella, Shigella, Vibrio) were selected and isolated from the Ganga, Yamuna and the Narmada and their numbers compared with the bacteriophages present in the river water. Because bacteriophages are a kind of virus that kill bacteria, they are frequently found in proximity to each other.
In the river Ganga, the bacteriophages were detected to be approximately 3 times more in proportion than bacterial isolates.
Though it isn’t evident that there are bacteriophage species unique to the Ganga, the study suggests there are many more of them in the Ganga than in other rivers. Thus, samples drawn from the Ganga contained almost 1,100 kinds of bacteriophage, and proportionally there were less than 200 species detected in the samples obtained from the Yamuna and the Narmada.
Are the properties same across the length of Ganga?
These antibacterial properties varied widely along the length of the river. For instance, the stretch from Gomukh to Tehri had 33% more bacteriophage isolates than from Mana to Haridwar, and Bijnor to Varanasi. In the stretch from Patna to Gangasagar, the bacteriophages were only 60% of that in the Gomukh to Tehri stretch.
That the Ganga may contain unique microbial life, which makes it relatively more resilient to putrefaction, was suggested by British colonial scientists about 200 years ago.
The report asserts that the super-phage isolated from Ganga and decoded for its lysine gene and cloned to produce lysine protein at IIT Roorkee holds great potential as an antibacterial pharmaceutical.
Rise in measles cases
Why in news?
The number of cases of measles — one of the world’s most contagious diseases — is climbing, warned the World Health Organisation (WHO), stating that preliminary global data shows that reported cases rose by 300% in the first three months of 2019, compared to the same period in 2018.
In 2017, the most recent year for which estimates are available, it caused close to 1,10,000 deaths. Worse, in recent months, spikes in case numbers have also occurred in countries with high overall vaccination coverage, including the United States of America as well as Israel, Thailand, and Tunisia, as the disease has spread fast among clusters of unvaccinated people.
Why is measles dangerous?
According to WHO Measles has the potential to be extremely severe. Even in high-income countries, complications result in hospitalisation in up to a quarter of cases, and can lead to lifelong disability, from brain damage and blindness to hearing loss.
Countries with the most reported cases include Madagascar, Ukraine, India, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Chad, Myanmar, Thailand, the Philippines and Democratic Republic of the Congo.
What’s the case in India?
A senior Health Ministry official said that to “eliminate measles and control rubella, mass [over 95%] immunisation of children is required. In India, measles is still one of the leading causes of death in young children. About 15% of vaccinated children fail to develop immunity from the first dose, meaning that if only 80% are fully immunised, an outbreak is likely. We have to ensure herd immunity to stay ahead of the disease.’’
The disease is almost entirely preventable through two doses of a safe and effective vaccine. For several years, however, global coverage with the first dose of measles vaccine has stalled at 85%. This is still short of the 95% needed to prevent outbreaks, and leaves many people, in many communities, at risk. Second dose coverage, while increasing, stands at 67%.