Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams - 26 October 2017

::NATIONAL::

Deadline extended for mandatory linking of Aadhaar, bank accounts

• The government has proposed extending the deadline for mandatory linking of Aadhaar with bank accounts and mobile phones from December 31, 2017 to March 31, 2018, but only for those who are “willing to enrol for Aadhaar.”

• The proposal was contained in a one-page note that was passed on to a Bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra. The note, however, insisted that those who already have Aadhaar will be “required” to sync their numbers with SIM cards, bank accounts, PAN and “other schemes where Section 7 (Aadhaar Act) notifications have been issued.”

• The government’s suggestion created such a furore in the court that Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra had to ask the government to re-think its proposal and make linking voluntary for Aadhaar holders.

• The court asked Attorney General K.K. Venugopal, for the Centre, whether it can give an assurance that no “coercive action” would be taken against those who do not want to link their bank accounts and mobile phones with Aadhaar.

• “The way Aadhaar is spreading is unconstitutional. Now those who have Aadhaar are vulnerable. There have been reports of accounts being wiped out after linking with Aadhaar. People who have Aadhaar do not want to link. They have to share their one-time password...,” Mr. Divan said.

• He submitted that the petitions challenging Aadhaar had been “crying for a hearing” in the Supreme Court since 2014.

• Mr. Divan said the government’s attitude discriminated among those willing to enrol for Aadhaar, others without Aadhaar, and finally, a sizeable section of the population who have Aadhaar but are apprehensive about linking their bank accounts and mobile phones to it.

• Mr. Venugopal said the government-appointed Expert Committee on Data Protection Law, headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice B. Sri Krishna, had started working towards a robust data protection regime in accordance with a suggestion made by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud in his majority judgement for the nine-judge Constitution Bench that upheld privacy as a fundamental right on August 24.

• Mr. Venugopal said a final form of the law would be available by February 2018, and hence the proposal for a three-month extension in the Aadhaar linking deadline.

• The deadline for linking Aadhaar had earlier been extended from September 30, 2016 to December 31, 2017.

Ichthyosaurs’ fossil found

• A near-complete Jurassic-era fossil of an intriguing animal that looks like a mashup of a dolphin and lizard, and lived during the twilight of the dinosaurs, has been unearthed in Kutch, Gujarat.

• Ichthyosaurs, or ‘fish- lizards’ in Greek, were large reptiles that lived at the same time as dinosaurs. While many ichthyosaur fossils have been found in North America and Europe, the fossil record in the Southern Hemisphere has mostly been limited to South America and Australia.

• Guntupalli Prasad, a geologist at the University of Delhi, said when a fossil bone from the animal’s skeleton was first found by an Indo-German research team in Kutch in 2016, they suspected it to be a dinosaur. “But the bone was too long and later the whole skeleton was unearthed. It’s the first Jurassic ichthyosaur found in India,” he told The Hindu .

• The 5.5 metre-long skeleton is thought to belong to the Ophthalmosauridae family, which likely lived between 165 and 90 million years ago, when the arid Kutch was a sea.

• The remains were found among fossils of ammonites and squid-like belemnites, and the way the creature’s teeth were worn out suggest it ate animals with thick, bony coverings, the team of scientists report in the October 25 edition of PLOS ONE .

• Earlier too, researchers have discovered evidence of ichthyosaurs in prehistoric India. Remnants were reported from Ariyalur, Tamil Nadu in 2016 but these were only fossils of teeth and part of the vertebra. In Kutch, the team reported the finding of vertebral column, ribs, neural spines and a part of the snout. Some isolated teeth, vertebrae, jaw fragments, and other bone fragments were found scattered around the excavation site.

Kerala govt exploring health-care model in UK

• The Kerala government in collaboration with a United Kingdom university will revamp its health-care model to address issues surrounding capacity development for primary care, training, and research.

• The model will be inspired by the UK’s State-owned National Health Service (NHS), the largest and the oldest single-payer health-care system in the world that provides health-care benefits to every citizen.

• A delegation led by Health Minister K.K. Shylaja visited the University of Warwick in central England to explore how the general practitioner (GP) system had adapted to pressures caused by population changes, a university release said.

• Dean of Warwick Medical School Professor Sudhesh Kumar said his team was keen to assist the Kerala government to understand how it was tackling issues such as “capacity development for primary care, translating research into practice, and evaluating the impact of these interventions.

New policy to expand offshore e-commerce play

• The Union government is working on a new policy to expand the footprint of the Indian e-commerce sector to tap potential markets outside the country, including Africa and Southeast Asia.

• This is part of efforts to achieve the target of making India a trillion-dollar digital economy in the next seven years, a senior official of the Electronics and Information Technology Ministry told.

• There will be two aspects to it — one will focus on expansion within India, and the other on global expansion. The e-commerce economy should cross borders and capitalise on foreign markets.

• Currently, the Ministry is looking at tapping markets such as Southeast Asia, West Asia, SAARC countries such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, the Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and BRICS partners (Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa).

• The e-commerce economy is currently pegged at $30 billion, and the government expects it to grow at $150 billion by 2024-25.

• The Ministry says the digital economy in the country was forecast to generate employment for about 30 million people by 2024-25, “which is double than the current scenario”.

• While electronics, telecom and IT/ITeS sector will be the top three contributors with 8.9 million, 8.8 million and 6.5 million jobs, respectively, e-commerce is expected to create jobs for 6 million people. “e-commerce is set to grow 19-fold in generating employment,” the official said.

• The government is also working on a strategy to make India a hub for data analytics, cloud computing and financial technology, besides encouraging development of Internet of Things, to push the digital economy. “The national programme for developing 5 lakh resources for data analytics and AI [Artificial Intelligence] will be formulated and approved by the end of this year,” the official said.

• The official said the Data Protection Act, the draft of which is likely to be ready by December 2017, will provide a policy framework on digital economy, including social media. The government will also ready a security framework for mobile devices and the mobile application ecosystem by March 2018.

Centre’s attack on Calcutta High Court order

• Judges cannot decide on deployment of troops. It is the fundamental job of the government of the day, and not the judiciary, to decide on the placement of police and armed forces to secure the nation’s borders and maintain law and order internally, the Centre told the Supreme Court.

• The government’s sharp attack was directed at a recent Calcutta High Court order directing the Centre to retain all 15 companies of the Central Armed Police Forces, deployed in the restive districts of Darjeeling and Kalimpong in West Bengal, till October 27 or until further orders. The High Court had countermanded the Centre's directive to withdraw certain companies from the two districts.

• The [Calcutta High Court’s] direction ignores and virtually obliterates the very concept of separation of powers. The maintenance of order and the security of the country, which includes the deployment of police and armed forces, is a fundamental facet of the governance of the country, and is a core governmental function of the executive wing of the State. These matters cannot be the subject matter of judicial review, or adjudication by a court.

• The Centre mentioned the petition for urgent hearing before a Bench led by Justice J. Chelameswar, who agreed to refer it for listing before an appropriate Bench of the Supreme Court.

• The petition said the demands on the Central Police Forces were tremendous. “India has a long border and, in order to effectively prevent cross border infiltration of terrorists, the Central Police Forces are also deployed. Obviously, being a high priority consideration, the thinning of border deployment has serious national security implications,” the Centre explained.

• Noting that 61 officers of various Central police forces were martyred this year alone, the government pointed to the various high alert theatres like the Valley, the North East and the Red Corridor States affected by naxal extremism which require heightened presence of forces. Even natural disasters and the holding of elections would require the deployment of these forces.

• “It would be the exclusive domain of the Central government to decide on the most efficacious deployment of the limited police personnel and resources, to quell pressing situations, varying in gravity, that simultaneously arise in different parts of the country... There is no yardstick by which the Court could assess the need for deployment of Central Police Forces in different States,” the petition said.

• Following unrest in the two districts in West Bengal, the Centre had deployed a total of 15 companies of Central Police Forces in June-July 2017. It said the State’s own police force has 73403 personnel, followed by 20781 personnel in the State Armed Force, 15612 in Home Guards and two I.R. Battalions, besides the Rapid Action Force, Counter Insurgency Force, Eastern Frontier Rifles (EFR) and ‘STRACO’.

• The Centre submitted that its decision was taken after assessing the ground situation. The State government had also concurred.

Round the clock surveillance over Indian Ocean by Navy

• The Navy is institutionalising an experimental concept of round-the-clock surveillance of critical choke points in the Indian Ocean. The issue was reviewed at the ongoing biannual Naval Commanders Conference chaired by Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba.

• “The plan involves deploying mission-ready ships and aircraft along critical sea lanes of communications and choke points. These ships deployed are ready to meet any eventuality across the spectrum of operations ranging from acts of maritime terrorism and piracy to Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) missions. These deployments are aimed to be maintained 24/7 and round the year with ships being sustained and turned around on station,” a Navy source said.

• The new mission-based deployment concept was unveiled in the last Naval Commander’s Conference and was ratified for incremental implementation, in the backdrop of increased Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).

• As part of this, at least 12-15 major warships are on round-the-clock surveillance of critical choke points in the IOR, the official added.

• Of late, China has increased its presence in Indian Ocean in the name of anti-piracy operations.

::INTERNATIONAL::

Five year leadership line up unveiled by Xi

• Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled a new five-year leadership line-up, geared towards implementing a two-stage plan that aims to make China a leading developed country by the middle of the 21st century.

• In his opening remarks, Mr. Xi, flanked by his brand new team, underscored that China’s two centenary goals — a moderately prosperous society by 2021 and an advanced socialist country by 2050 — would guide policy and political conduct in the coming decades.

• Apart from Mr. Xi, who has started his second innings as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the members of the of the apex Standing Committee of the top decision-making body include Li Keqiang. Mr. Li has already served his first term as Premier, and headed the State Council — China’s Cabinet.

• Other leaders in the new line-up are — Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji and Han Zheng.

• Mr. Xi introduced all members of the apex body a day after the 19th Party Congress, held after a customary gap of five years, concluded at the Great Hall of the People. Mr. Li is expected to continue as Prime Minister for a second term. But the portfolios of the rest of the team are yet to be announced.

• Regarding specific portfolios, there is widespread expectation that Mr. Li Zhanshu, will take over as the head of China’s National People’s Congress (CNPC) — the country’s top legislative body.

• The decision would be in tune with Mr. Xi’s focus on cementing ‘rule of law’ in China, requiring extensive interaction with the CNPC.

• Mr. Wang Yang is likely to head the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the country’s top advisory body tasked with generating fresh ideas.

• All the members are above 60 when it comes to their age. Under the current rules, they would be too old to serve the customary two terms as the party’s leader after the next Congress in 2022.

• Commenting on the CPC’s decision not to announce a succession plan, the Hong Kong based South China Morning Post pointed out that Mr. Xi has made a decision of “far reaching consequences”. “This opens the way for China to rethink its power transition mechanism and to give several possible candidates time to prove themselves,” the daily observed.

• The new leadership is expected to advance, ‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era’. The CPC carried out an amendment that paired Xi Jinping’s ‘Thought’ with Mao Zedong’s and DengXiaoping’s theories — the only two other leaders whose theoretical contributions have been named after them in China’s Basic Law.

World’s most powerful passport is of Singapore

• Tiny Singapore now has the world’s most powerful passport, according to a new ranking, with its citizens able to travel to the greatest number of countries visa free.

• Passport Index, which keeps track of how usable such documents are, said the city-state grabbed the top spot after Paraguay removed restrictions for Singaporeans.

• That means the approximately 3.4 million holders of Singaporean passports can now travel to 159 countries either without a visa at all, or can have one issued on arrival. Germany came in second place, with its citizens able to visit 158 countries without a visa, while Sweden and South Korea tied for third.

• The U.S. passport was in sixth place, alongside Malaysia, Ireland and Canada.

• India ranked 75th

• India, which was listed 78th last year, has improved its ranking, figuring at 75th position with a visa-free score of 51. Afghanistan came bottom of the list with visa-free access to just 22 countries.

• Passport Index said the U.S. passport’s usefulness has fallen since President Donald Trump took office, with Turkey and the Central African Republic becoming the most recent countries to revoke their visa-free entry for holders.

• Passport Index ranks passports worldwide based on the cross-border access a holder has. It was developed by Canada-based global consultancy Arton Capital.

• For the first time ever, an Asian country has the most powerful passport in the world. It is a testament of Singapore’s inclusive diplomatic relations and effective foreign policy.

• Passport Index has become the most popular interactive online tool to display, sort and rank the world’s passports.

::SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ::

From 2019, the kilogram will become more accurate

• For 125 years, a salt-shaker-sized cylinder housed at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM), Paris and weighing exactly a kilogram served as the definition of the measure.

• India’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) too has a replica of this, since 1957, and it has served as the reference for a variety of industries to keep their weights accurate.

• However, an international conference of heads of metrology institutes decided,inSevres, France, that the kilogram will no longer be pegged to this cylinder made of 90% platinum and 10% iridium.

• In the last 60 years, several standard units — the second, metre, ampere, Kelvin, mole, candela and, the kilogram — have all ceased to be defined by physical objects.

• One metre, for instance, was a platinum-iridium bar of that measure. In 1960, the metre was defined as the distance travelled by light in vacuum in 1/299,792,458 seconds.

• In essence, the units were freed from being defined on the basis of artefacts, as these being objects, were subject to wear and tear and sources of eventual error. The new artefacts, according to the International Committee for Weights and Measures, ought to derive from the constants of nature that are all interdependent.

• These include constants such as the Planck constant — the ratio of the electromagnetic radiation from a photon to its frequency — and the charge of an electron.

• The kilogram was the only one among the units still pegged to a real object and now — after a formal vote in 2018 — the world is set to redefine the kilogram in terms of the Planck constant, the second and the metre.

• The undoing of the cylinder has been the Kibble balance.

• It is a set of scales, which uses the force produced by a current-carrying wire in a magnetic field to balance the weight of a mass.

• Through this, accurate measures of the Planck constant — the fulcrum of several of the standard units — can be made.

Monsoon prediction to become more accurate

• Scientists have developed a new tool for objectively defining the onset and demise of the summer monsoon — a colossal weather system that affects millions of people annually.

• The researchers from Florida State University in the U.S. developed a method that uses rainfall rates to mark the span of the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) at any given location throughout the affected region.

• For generations, scientists have struggled to produce a model for reliably defining the duration of the monsoon. No existing system has allowed researchers to reliably define the parameters of the season at this fine a scale, researchers said.

• The lack of a clear, granular and objective benchmark for ISM onset and demise for all areas of the country has been a long-time source of consternation for people, researchers said. In some parts of the country, the torrents of rain that characterise monsoon season account for more than 90% of the total annual precipitation, they said.

• Researchers said many rhythms of Indian political and agricultural life can be destabilised by dubious or false claims of monsoon onset.

• That leads to tremendous amounts of frustration and confusion for the general public and for the people who are trying to monitor the monsoon because nobody has really gotten down to do it at a granular scale.

• The new system, which ties the onset of the monsoon to location-specific rainfall thresholds, can work to allay that frustration.

• Up until now, regional meteorological departments have relied on their own ad hoccriteria for determining ISM onset, which can often lead to contradicting claims.

::BUSINESS AND ECONOMY::

RCom to close down its 2G business

• Debt-laden Reliance Communications (RCom) has decided to close down its 2G wireless business due to mounting losses.
  RCom has 81 million subscribers of which about 40 million use its 2G network.

• “The company’s 4G-led strategy will be executed as at present on the back of capital-light access to India’s most extensive 4G mobile network through already operational spectrum-sharing and ICR arrangements with Reliance Jio,” the spokesperson added, without elaborating.

• Its 2G subscribers give RCom an average revenue per user of less than Rs. 80 a month. Migrating to 4G would cost them at least Rs. 150 a month.

• The operator’s headcount has fallen to about 2,500 from 5,000 a year earlier. With the closure of the 2G business, an additional 1,000-1,200 employees may lose their jobs, said a source privy to the development. In June, RCom chairman Anil Ambani had said the ongoing stress in the sector would lead to a loss of 30,000-40,000 jobs this year.

• With a debt of Rs. 46,000 crore, RCom had a moratorium on servicing loans till December 2017 to repay Rs. 25,000 crore, failing which lenders may convert a part of the debt into equity.

• “RCom will look to merge its ILD voice, consumer voice and postpaid 4G dongle operations into its enterprise unit, provided it is profitable to do so,” a source in RCom said.

• It plans to close down all other parts of its business, with the exception of its towers unit, which has deals in place with other operators, such as Reliance Jio. RCom’s DTH television licence expires on Nov. 21. It does not plan to renew it.

Recapitalization bonds will be liquidity-neutral’

• The Centre’s move to infuse Rs. 2.11 lakh crore capital into public sector banks through recapitalisation bonds and budgetary support is a welcome step, according to Urjit Patel, Governor, Reserve Bank of India.

• He added the recapitalisation bonds will be liquidity-neutral for the government except for interest payment.

• The banks will be recapitalised over a period of two years through recapitalisation bonds and budgetary provision.

• Dr. Patel said a well-capitalised banking system was a pre-requisite for stable economic growth and this package to restore the health of the banking system was a monumental step forward in safeguarding the country’s economic future.

• The move will involve participation of private shareholders of public sector banks by requiring that parts of the capital needs be met by market funding, he said. The Governor said healthier banks with could get the capital first which will prompt others to also address the balance sheet issues.

• Last, but not the least, it will allow for a calibrated approach whereby banks that have better addressed their balance sheet issues and are in a position to use fresh capital injection for immediate credit creation can be given priority while others shape up to be in a similar position.

• The central bank Governor said for the first time in the last decade, there was a real chance that all the policy pieces of the jigsaw puzzle will be in place for a comprehensive and coherent, rather than piece-meal, strategy to address the banking sector challenges.

• Commenting that financial sector policies should support growth while maintaining financial stability, Dr. Patel said RBI is looking forward to working with the government in ensuring these plans reached their natural completion for the benefit of the broader Indian economy.

Railways floating a global tender

• In a first, the Ministry of Railways has floated a global tender to procure seven lakh tonne of rail, worth about Rs. 3,500 crore, instead of purchasing from the Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), in a bid to clear pending track renewal work.

• At present, the Railways procures rail solely from public sector SAIL which is the largest steel producer in the country. The move comes five months after the Union Cabinet approved a policy to provide preference to domestically manufactured iron and steel products in government procurement.

• The Ministry had decided that the rails earmarked for constructing new lines would be diverted for renewing tracks in accident-prone areas in the wake of rising derailment cases.

• SAIL had committed to supply 11.45 lakh tonne rail to the Railways in 2017-18, leaving a deficit of 3.14 lakh tonnes. A NITI Aayog report earlier this year raised concerns over delay in overdue track replacement that could likely lead to train accidents. In 2016-17, the Railways renewed 2,487 km tracks compared with 2,794 km in 2015-16 and 2,424 km in 2014-15.

• According to a ‘White Paper on Indian Railways’ published in February 2015, the Railways has a total track length of 1,14,907 km and on average, 4,500 km should be ideally renewed every year.

There won’t be any dilution in India, EU trade pact

• Even as India and the European Union are yet to finalise a date for re-launching their Free Trade Agreement negotiations stalled since 2013, both sides are not considering a scaled-down version of the pact with a view to somehow expedite the conclusion of the talks by lowering ambition, an EU official said.

• The negotiations on the Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement, had begun in 2007 in order to ensure greater access to “each other’s markets for goods, services and to public procurement contracts”, and establish “the framework for investment, including investment protection”.

• At a round table organised by The Hindu BusinessLine and Germany’s Bertelsmann Stiftung, Marika Jakas, Counsellor and Head of Trade and Economic Affairs, Delegation of the EU to India, said, “Our goal is to have a broad...comprehensive FTA. An early harvest scheme [to identify a limited number of areas pending the conclusion of FTA talks] is not... being considered.”

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