Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams - 06 October 2017

::NATIONAL::

PM held discussions with Jaitley, Shah over economy slowdown

• After promising to take all necessary steps to revive the economy and fix the problems faced by businesses on account of the switchover to the Goods and Services Tax regime, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held extensive talks with BJP president Amit
• Shah and Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Arun Jaitley.
• The top-level discussions could be a precursor to some relief measures that may be announced when the GST Council meets in the capital, compelling Mr. Jaitley to skip the World Economic Forum’s India Economic Summit.
• Mr. Jaitley was scheduled to address about 450 delegates at the summit to discuss India’s economic, political and social outlook from 7.15 p.m. till 8 p.m.
• Incidentally, at least two of the co-chairs of the Summit voiced concern about the lack of jobs, layoffs among top firms and the lack of easy bank credit for small and medium enterprises.
• While Mastercard US president and CEO Ajay Banga said that jobs were the one challenge that India needed to address, Bharti Enterprises chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal voiced concern about ‘employment reduction’ by top 200 Indian firms and mooted a rethink on businesses’ approach to society.
• Mr. Shah also rushed to the capital for the meeting with the PM, abandoning his original schedule that included taking part in the politically significant Janaraksha Yatra in Kerala led by the State unit president Kummanam Rajasekharan over a stretch that includes the native place of the State’s Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
• While the RBI revised India’s growth projections for this year downwards from 7.3% to 6.7%, the PM had slammed critics for spreading pessimism about one bad quarter.
• The PM had asked the GST Council to review all the problems arising from the new indirect tax regime.
• He assured traders that the government was not opposed to necessary changes to simplify the system that had been beset with problems in IT infrastructure for filing returns, hold-ups in tax refunds and confusion about the constantly evolving rules of the game, since its rollout this July.

Doklam issue

• In the first formal statement from the military leadership after the disengagement at Doklam, Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa confirmed that Chinese troops were still present in the area.
• “Their [China’s] forces in the Chumbi Valley are still deployed, and I expect that they will withdraw as the summer exercise gets over,” he said, responding to questions at the annual press conference ahead of the Air Force Day on October 8.
• He said China holds military exercises every year in summer and so their forces were close by when the Doklam standoff happened. However, he added that there was no tension in the air, despite the faceoff on the ground. “There might have been a standoff on the ground. In the air, there was no standoff,” he said, as both countries respected the Confidence-Building Measures (CBM) in place.
• The two armies got into a standoff at Doklam near the India-Bhutan-China trijunction on June 16 after Indian soldiers prevented the Chinese from building a road in the disputed territory.

ILO’s modern slavery report

• The government has written to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) challenging a recent study on “modern slavery” conducted by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation (WFF) on behalf of the global body. The report does not mention India.
• The Labour Ministry shot off a strong letter to the ILO regarding its report titled ‘Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage 2017.’
• The report, released on September 19, does not contain any India-specific findings, barring a mention that 17,000 people were interviewed for the survey.
• The letter follows a missive from the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to the government about documentation by multiple international organisations on slavery in India that can hurt India’s image and exports.
• In a letter to the Prime Minister’s Office and Labour Ministry, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) mentioned the following reports — the 2016 United Nations Special Rapporteur Report on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences, the 2015 ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of
• Conventions and Recommendations on Forced Labour, the 2016 Global Slavery Index 2016 and ILO-WFF joint report of 2017.
• Union Labour Secretary M. Sathiyavathy wrote a letter to ILO Director General Guy Ryder doubting the authenticity of the survey. The letter accessed by The
• Hindu stated that “neither the Central government was consulted before the study nor its credibility has been established.”
• Although country-wise figures were not mentioned in the 2017 ILO-WFF report, the study said 40.3 million people were victims of ‘modern slavery’ in 2016.

SC to hear freedom of speech issue

• The Supreme Court referred to a five-judge Constitution Bench several issues such as whether a public functionary or a Minister could claim freedom of speech while expressing views on sensitive matters which were under investigation.
• A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra considered the questions framed on the issue by senior advocates Fali S. Nariman and Harish Salve and said, “We are sending it to a Constitution Bench”.
• The top court had taken note of a controversial statement of former Uttar Pradesh Minister Azam Khan that the Bulandshahr gangrape was part of a “political conspiracy”. Mr. Khan had tendered an unconditional apology which was accepted.
• The bench, comprising Justices A. M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud, also said besides the issues framed by the two lawyers, the Constitution Bench would also frame questions to be dealt by it.
• The court was hearing a plea filed by a man, whose wife and daughter were allegedly gang-raped in July last year on a highway near Bulandshahr, seeking transfer of the case to Delhi and lodging of an FIR against Mr. Khan.

Tripartite meeting

• The decision to create seven new districts in Manipur, which led to massive protests and blockade of national highways linking the State, will be reviewed at a tripartite meeting called by the Union Home Ministry.
• The representatives of the United Naga Council (UNC) and the Central and State governments will attend the meeting.
  The UNC, the apex political body of the Nagas residing in the hill districts of Manipur, staged protests after the districts were created, alleging that the measure would bifurcate the ancestral land of the Nagas. It demanded that the meeting be held in Senapati, its headquarters, and not in Imphal. It also demanded that the
• Centre send its representative to the meeting.
• In 2016, the organisation imposed an economic blockade for 139 days on National Highway-2 (Imphal-Dimapur) and National Highway-37 (Imphal-Jiribam), the lifelines of the landlocked Manipur. The blockade was withdrawn in March after the BJP came to power in the State and assured the UNC that its demands would be considered, the official said.

::INTERNATIONAL::

Dhaka in favor of China’s OBOR project

• Countries must not become “isolated in the name of sovereignty,” said Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque, striking a counter to India’s tough position against China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) Initiative during a discussion on Asian connectivity projects.
• “Economic issues now dictate how much sovereignty one should exert,” Mr. Haque said at the World Economic Forum in Delhi. “We cannot be isolated in the name of sovereignty…There are times when you have to put the sovereignty issue behind, in the back seat, to the economic benefits to your people.”
• ‘We in South Asia are the least integrated compared to ASEAN countries,” conceded Congress leader and Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs Shashi Tharoor, speaking during the discussion “Asia’s New Normal” at the WEF conference, but warned that while India could not “dictate” to its neighbours, they must see the high costs of the Belt and Road Initiative.
• “Chinese are now coming to build projects in Pakistan and in Sri Lanka they are increasingly seeing the exorbitant costs of Chinese aid. Many now call Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port project, a white elephant,” Mr. Tharoor added.
• Mr. Haque’s comments came in defence of Bangladesh’s decision to join the 60-nation connectivity project promoted by China, even as concerns grow over the“debt trap” that the massive infrastructure projects are leading smaller SAARC countries like Bangladesh, Maldives, and Sri Lanka into. In May, India had refused to attend China’s Belt and Road Forum.

ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY

Snow leopard captured in camera

• Scientists have obtained the first evidence of the elusive snow leopard in Arunachal Pradesh.
• Camera traps have captured images of the big cat at Thembang village’s Community Conserved Area, a community-owned reserve, in West Kameng district.
• The presence of the species outside a protected areas highlights the importance of community support for conservation as well as landscape-scale planning, says World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF-India), which conducted the camera trap study.
• The camera-trapping, part of a State-wide survey initiated in March 2017 by WWF-India in collaboration with the Arunachal Pradesh Environment and Forest Department, focused on unexplored snow leopard habitats.
• With only a small fraction of snow leopard habitats falling in the two protected areas (the Dibang Biosphere Reserve and Namdapha National Park) in the State, scientists tapped into the knowledge of locals — including herders and former hunters — to understand the current distribution of snow leopards and other mammals. Over 80% of the respondents confirmed the presence of snow leopards in their area.
• The research team deployed camera traps in select areas to document the species and obtained the photograph of a snow leopard in the Community Conserved Area (CCA).
• In 2004, WWF-India introduced the concept of CCAs in the State to empower local communities to become active decision-makers and implement conservation initiatives.
• Local communities in these CCAs form committees to undertake wildlife monitoring, patrolling and community-based tourism activities.
• Arunachal Pradesh is one of the 22 priority landscapes of the Global Snow Leopard Ecosystem Protection Program and while locals and researchers knew that there were snow leopards in the area, scientists had not been able to get photographs thus far.

Real time monitoring of drought to help policy makers

• Near real-time monitoring of drought at a 5-km scale that will help policy makers in water management at a district level is now possible, thanks to tools developed and made available online by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar.
• The researchers offer precipitation and temperature datasets and drought indicators available from 1980 to April 2017 covering the entire South Asian region. The data will be updated weekly. Besides drought, the datasets can also be used for monitoring heat and cold waves in South Asia.
• IMD [Indian Meteorology Department] provides daily rainfall data mainly during the monsoon season. There’s no real-time information at high-resolution about drought after the monsoon season.
• Also, IMD’s drought information is based only on rainfall data and does not incorporate the role of air temperature. But higher temperature after the monsoon season can cause drought-like situation due to increased evaporation and transpiration losses.
• The team wanted to provide information in near real-time on whether a region of interest is under drought and what part of a district or sub-basin is under drought.
• The emphasis was to develop a dataset at a finer resolution (5 km) as the data provided by IMD and other agencies is coarse (resolution of 25 km). The researchers used CHIRPS global rainfall data which are available at 5 km resolution and corrected the data for bias and errors.
• CHIRPS stands for Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station. “The corrected data compares well with the IMD data once we aggregate our data to the IMD scale,” says Prof. Mishra.
• The precipitation dataset at a finer resolution of 5 km over the entire South Asian region was evaluated against a standard rainfall database (APHRODITE) that is available for South Asia and satellite-based information. Earlier studies have shown that the Aphrodite database matches the IMD rainfall data quite well. The results
• were published in the journal Scientific Data .
• The drought indices — standardised precipitation index and standardised precipitation evapotranspiration index — were estimated using the bias-corrected, high-resolution data and evaluated against satellite-based drought products.
• The researchers used the drought indices to assess severity and extent of drought in 2015 for a four-month period from June to September. “The developed dataset and drought indicators performed well over the South Asian region. Apart from IMD, this is an additional effort to provide more real-time information on drought that can be used for decision-making,” says Prof. Mishra.

CULTURE

Where Kathak, qawwali and opera met

• Kathak and tap dancers, the sarod and the organ came together in a gala in central London as the Southbank centre hosted over 150 artists from across Britain and India for an event pegged as the highlight of the 2017 India-U.K. Year of Culture
   
•  Among the performers were the British opera singer Patricia Rozario, sarodplayer Soumik Datta, and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood.
• The push for a year-long celebration of Indian and British culture was agreed upon during Prime Minister Narenda Modi’s visit to Britain in 2015.
• Since its launch earlier this year, events have been taking place across the country, with many museums and institutions using the opportunity to create India-related events — from Kew Gardens’ annual orchid festival focussed around the Indian orchid to the Science Museum’s exhibition examining the place of India in the development of science and technology over the past 5,000 years.
• It also included a performance by an artist in a wheelchair, part of Step Change Studios, which aims to be an accessible dance platform.
• The evening concluded with a performance of Junun , an album of Sufi qawwals in Urdu and Hebrew, a collaboration between Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, Israeli composer Shye Ben Tzur and Indian musical group Rajasthan Express.

::BUSINESS::

WEF witnessed discussions on worrying job market

• In an unusual role reversal, the opening session of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) India Economic Summit was witness to industry representatives worrying about the job market amid layoffs by top firms while a Cabinet Minister termed the spate of ‘job reductions’ as a good omen for India’s youth as they strive to be job creators instead of job seekers.
• Flagging the rising inequality in society, Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal expressed concern about the ‘significant reduction’ in employment over the past few years by India’s top 200 companies.
• Mr. Goyal asserted that the Railways alone could create ‘not less than a million jobs’ in less than 12 months. These, he clarified, wouldn’t involve direct employment, but engagement in a variety of different areas in the ecosystem around the Railways.
• Mastercard U.S. president and CEO Ajay Banga also termed ‘jobs’ as the single key challenge on which he would like to see progress in India. “I think that’s where the focus has to be,” said Mr. Banga, who voiced alarm that women in some villages were not permitted to see a mobile phone and urged India to do away with khap panchayats which issue such diktats.
• Mr. Mittal made his comments in the context of the need for businesses to be a ‘force for good’ and pointed out that small and medium enterprises were struggling to get credit from banks.
• “The last decade has not been good for the business community — the disparities among the rich and poor has only widened,” he said. “The distribution of wealth has not reached all levels of society. All that is causing a lot of stress to the political system.”

SEBI proposes norms to curb fund diversion

• Audit committees should monitor the flow of funds to unlisted subsidiaries, including those established overseas, while listed entities should put in place proper regulatory framework while sharing unpublished price-sensitive information with promoters or any other significant shareholders, the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s panel on governance has proposed.
• Listed companies should also be required to have at least six directors on the board with a minimum of 50% representation of independent directors — including one woman director.
• Further, enhanced disclosure requirements related to abrupt resignation of independent directors and auditors should be put in place, according to recommendations by the Uday Kotak-headed committee on corporate governance set up by SEBI.
• The audit committee should also review the utilisation of funds of the listed entity infused into unlisted subsidiaries, including foreign subsidiaries,” the panel said, adding that the requirement be applicable in instances where the “total amount of loans/advances/investment from the holding company to the subsidiary exceeds Rs. 100 crore or 10% of the asset size of the subsidiary, whichever is lower.”
• The recommendation assumes significance in the wake of SEBI’s January order barring Vijay Mallya and six other entities from the securities market after a probe found that funds were diverted from United Spirits to group companies, including Kingfisher Airlines.
• Among recommendations related to the role of independent directors, the panel sought disclosure of the expertise of the directors being appointed, and capping the maximum number of directorships to seven by April 2020.
• Neeraj Gupta, partner and leader Risk Assurance Services, PwC India, said while the recommendations would strengthen corporate governance, implementation would require fundamental changes on multiple fronts.
• “The recommendations around having at least six directors...reducing the maximum number of listed company directorships and listing out competencies of every director on the board will impact the supply side,” said Mr. Gupta. “There could soon be a war for talent as corporate India embarks on the search for good independent directors,” he said.

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