CIVIL SERVICES ACHIEVERS' POINT, GUWAHATI
THE ASSAM TRIBUNE ANALYSIS
Date – 15 & 16 October 2020
(For Preliminary and Mains Examination) As per New Pattern of APSC
(Also useful for UPSC and other State Level Government Examinations)
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CIVIL SERVICES ACHIEVERS' POINT, GUWAHATI
ANSWERS to MCQs of 14-10-2020
1. (b) Louis Gluck 2. (c) World Bank 3. (c) Stockholm Convention 4. (c) Mauritius 5. (d) All
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MCQs of 16-10-2020
1. Which country has partnered with 2. Which state has launched the Mukhya Mantri Meghalaya for setting up “ centre of Saur Swarojgar Yojana? Excellence” on high value vegetables? a) Bihar b) Uttarakhand a) France c) Uttar Pradesh b) Israel d) Jharkhand c) Singapore d) South Korea
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3. Which of the following has been 4. Which Bank has inked MoU with NABARD for awarded the Nobel peace Prize 2020? extending credit support to the agricultural a) World Food Programme organizations various projects? b) United Nations High commissioner for a) State bank of India Refugees b) Punjab National Bank c) Jacinda Ardern c) World Bank d) Greta Thunberg d) Asian Development bank
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5. What causes Crimean- Congo hemorrhagic fever? a) Food Contamination b) Tick- borne virus (Nairovirus) c) Zoonosis d) Fecal- oral
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CONTENTS
Nepal re-elected to UN human rights council WPI rises to 1.32 percent Cabinet okays new STAR project Great Barrier Reef has lost more than half of its corals in past 3 decades:study NRL, GAIL sign Pipeline Right to Use sharing pact India to gift submarine to Myanmar Bhanu Athaiya no more
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EDITORIAL
o Height of irony o NEP 2020 and language policy
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NEWS ARTICLES
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Nepal re-elected to UN human rights council (General Studies-2: International Relations)
o Nepal has been re-elected as a member of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in the elections held at UN Headquarters in New York.
o Currently serving as a member of the Council since January 2018, Nepal has been re-elected with 150 votes on Tuesday and will serve a consecutive three-year term of 2021-2023, Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Wednesday.
o In addition to Nepal, three countries from Asia Pacific region namely China, Pakistan and Uzbekistan were among the 15 Member States elected by a secret ballot in a plenary meeting of the 75th session of the UN GA.
o Envoy/Permanent Representative of Nepal to UN, Amrit Bahadur Rai, termed Nepal’s re- election as the “international community’s acknowledgement of our progressive journey.”
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WPI rises to 1.32 percent (General Studies-3: Economic Development)
o High prices of food products, primary articles and manufactured goods accelerated India’s September wholesale inflation. Consequently, the annual rate of inflation based on wholesale prices rose to 1.32 per cent in September from 0.16 per cent in August, and from (-)0.25 per cent in July.
o On a year-on-year (YoY) basis, the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) data furnished by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry has risen by only 0.33 percent as against the corresponding period of the previous year. “The annual rate of inflation, based on monthly WPI, stood at 1.32 per cent (provisional) for the month of September 2020 (over September, 2019) as compared to 0.33 per cent during the corresponding month of the previous year,” the ministry said in its review of ‘Index Numbers of Wholesale Price in India’ for September.
o On a sequential basis, the expenses on primary articles, which constitute 22.62 per cent of the WPI’s total weightage, increased 5.10 per cent from 1.60 per cent in August 2020. Join our Regular/Online Classes. For details contact 8811877068 CIVIL SERVICES ACHIEVERS' POINT, GUWAHATI
o The prices of food items remained at elevated levels with a rise of 6.92 per cent from 4.07 per cent reported for August.
o On commodity and sub-segment basis, potato price increased by 107.63 per cent in September while it was at 82.93 per cent during August 2020. Overall, vegetable prices in September rose 36.54 per cent against a rise of 7.03 per cent in August. Similarly, pulses became dearer by 12.53 per cent last month from 9.86 per cent in August.
o On a YoY basis, expenses on food items increased at a faster rate of 8.17 per cent from 7.54 per cent in the corresponding period of last year.
o Sub-segment of vegetable prices in September rose 36.54 per cent against the decline of 19.3 per cent in the same month a year ago.
o The cost of the fuel and power category declined (-)9.54 per cent against a rise of (-) 6.68 per cent YoY. Furthermore, the cost of the manufactured products category rose 1.61 per cent against a fall of (-)0.42 per cent YoY
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Cabinet okays new STAR project (General Studies-2: Governance, Social Justice)
o The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the STARS project under the New Education Policy to support states in strengthening the school education system, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said Wednesday.
o Addressing a press conference, Javadekar said the Modi government has started implementing the NEP-2020 and as part of the process it has approved the Strengthening TeachingLearning and Results for States (STARS) project.
o The centrally sponsored project will be implemented by the Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education. It will cover Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala and Odisha, he said.
o The World Bank-supported project is estimated to cost Rs 5,718 crore, he said. The project aims to support the states in developing and improving school education outcomes, the minister said.
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Great Barrier Reef has lost more than half of its corals in past 3 decades: study (General Studies-1: Geography of World)
o The Great Barrier Reef in Australia, which is the largest reef system in the world, has lost more than half of its coral population in the past three decades, according to a new study.
o The research, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, assessed coral communities and their colony size along the length of the Great Barrier Reef between 1995 and 2017, and found that small, medium, and large corals have all declined in the period.
o “We measured changes in colony sizes because population studies are important for understanding demography and the corals’ capacity to breed,” said Andy Dietzel, a co- author of the study from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoralCoE) in Australia.
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o “We found the number of small, medium and large corals on the Great Barrier Reef has declined by more than 50 percent since the 1990s,” said Terry Hughes, another co-author of the study from CoralCoE.
o According to the study, the decline occurred in both shallow and deeper water, and across virtually all species – but especially in branching and table-shaped corals.
o “These were the worst affected by record-breaking temperatures that triggered mass bleaching in 2016 and 2017,” Hughes said.
o Since the reefs are underwater ecosystems home to several interdependent species, the scientists said the loss of these corals means a loss of habitat, which in turn diminish fish abundance and the productivity of coral reef fisheries.
o Dietzel said one of the major implications of coral size is its effect on survival and breeding. A vibrant coral population has millions of small, younger corals, as well as several large ones, he said.
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o “Our results show the ability of the Great Barrier Reef to recover – its resilience – is compromised compared to the past, because there are fewer babies, and fewer large breeding adults,” Dietzel said.
o The scientists cautioned that better data on the demographic trends of corals is urgently needed.
o “If we want to understand how coral populations are changing and whether or not they can recover between disturbances, we need more detailed demographic data: on recruitment, on reproduction and on colony size structure,” Dietzel said.
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NRL, GAIL sign Pipeline Right to Use sharing pact (General Studies on Assam: Economic Development)
o A ‘Pipeline Right to Use (RoU) sharing agreement’ was inked between NRL and GAIL (India) Limited on Wednesday at New Delhi.
o The agreement, a win-win for both the sides, was signed by NRL GM (Project) PJ Sarma and GAIL GM (Projects) KK Sachdeva in the presence of NRL MD SK Barua and GAIL CMD Manoj Jain. Under the agreement, both the companies shall share a common RoU for laying their respective pipelines for a stretch of 550 km from Purnia in Bihar to Guwahati in Assam.
o GAIL is laying its Barauni-Guwahati pipeline, which is part of the Jagdishpur-Haldia and Bokaro-Dhamra Natural Gas pipeline project, popularly known as ‘Pradhan Mantri Urja Ganga’ extended up to Guwahati to supply natural gas to pipelines under the North East Gas Grid.
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o NRL is also laying its 1,630- km-long Paradip Numaligarh Crude Pipeline, originating from Paradip Port, traversing through the States of Odisha, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar and Assam and terminating at its refinery at Numaligarh.
o The pipeline project is part of the mega integrated refinery expansion project from 3 MMTPA to 9 MMTPA currently under implementation at a project cost of more than Rs 22,000 crore. (MMTPA - Million Metric Ton Per Annum)
o Both the pipelines share a common pipeline route from Purnia to a place near Guwahati for around 550 km.
o The sharing of the pipeline RoU will help in optimisation of land acquisition for pipeline laying. Both the companies will also be benefited in terms of resource sharing during execution and operation of the respective pipelines
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India to gift submarine to Myanmar Many NE-linked bilateral projects on the cards (General Studies-2: International Relations)
o India confirmed that it is gifting a submarine to Myanmar, the country’s first as part of its Saagar initiative.
o Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Anurag Srivastava said India will be delivering Kilo Class submarine INS Sindhuvir to the Myanmar Navy, which will be its first submarine. “This is in accordance with our vision of Saagar, which is security and growth,” he said.
o Meanwhile, India has received an invitation to participate in a donor conference on Rohingya refugees to be organised by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in which the US, UK and European Union countries are likely to participate.
o “India as a neighbour of both Bangladesh and Myanmar has high stakes and wants early and safe resolution of the displaced people in Rakhine State,” said Srivastava.
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o India has also given a grant of USD 2 million for construction of border haats between Chin State in Myanmar and Mizoram, the spokesman said.
o Sources said both sides have been in discussion to establish a high-capacity, high-voltage grid inter-connection between the Indian power grid and the Myanmar grid. Discussions were also held on low-voltage radial inter-connections between the Northeastern States and Myanmar.
o The sources said that the India-Myanmar Border Area Development MoU has yielded good results. The MoU that provides for USD 5 million each year over a period of five years has been extended till 2022.
o The projects, including those undertaken in Chin State and Naga self-administered zone, have been known to deliver enormous benefits to the people and empowering the local communities.
o India has also proposed to construct an oil refinery in Thanlyn region near Yangon. According to sources, the project would be a win-win arrangement for both the countries and it would involve an investment of about USD 6 billion. Join our Regular/Online Classes. For details contact 8811877068 CIVIL SERVICES ACHIEVERS' POINT, GUWAHATI
Bhanu Athaiya no more (General Studies-1: Culture)
o Costume designer Bhanu Athaiya, India’s first Oscar winner, died at her home on Thursday after prolonged illness, her daughter said.
o She was 91. Athaiya, who won an Oscar for her work in the 1983 film Gandhi, passed away peacefully in her sleep, her daughter Radhika Gupta said.
o The last rites took place at the Chandanwadi crematorium in South Mumbai. “She passed away early this morning. Eight years ago, she was diagnosed with a tumour in her brain. For the last three years, she was bedridden because one side (of her body) was paralysed,” her daughter said.
o Athaiya, who was born in Kolhapur, began her career as a costume designer in Hindi cinema with Guru Dutt’s 1956 superhit C.I.D. She won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi along with John Mollo.
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o In 2012, Athaiya returned her Oscar to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for safe-keeping.
o In a career spanning five decades and over 100 films, she won two National Awards – for Gulzar’s mystery drama Lekin (1990) and the period film Lagaan directed by Ashutosh Gowariker (2001)
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EDITORIAL
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Height of irony (General Studies-2: International Relations)
o The Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) was constituted in 2006 to replace a UN Human Rights Commission which faced criticism because some of its members had poor human rights records.
o Ironically, at the moment, the UNHRC itself is confronting the same criticism because it has recently elected as members some countries with dubious human rights records!
o One can appreciate this irony when considering that the UNHRC is mandated to highlight human rights abuses across the globe and periodically reviews human rights in every UN member country.
o The overt contradiction that the UN General Assembly has elected Russia, China and Pakistan, apart from 12 other countries, to serve as members of the UN Human Rights Council for three-year terms starting January 1, 2021, has not been lost on activists groups.
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o China, of course, is the biggest abuser of human rights among these newly-elected members. No other government in the world has perpetrated abuses such as detaining hundreds of thousands ethnic minorities for forced indoctrination.
o Provinces like Xinjiang, the north-western region that is home both to 13 million Muslim belonging to Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other minorities, have witnessed terrible atrocities which belie any claim China might make to a seat in the UNHRC.
o The Chinese Communist Party has a long history of attacking anyone who dares to challenge State repression as illustrated by its response to the Hong Kong protests.
o Russia’s record of tolerating civic activism too has been atrocious, the State attacking any opposition to the monopolistic regime with repressive laws, and showcase prosecutions.
o This was evidenced by the exclusion of opposition candidates from elections, and authorities responding with an overwhelming show of force, detentions, and rushed criminal prosecutions when thousands of people protested.
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o The recent instance of Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was poisoned while on a visit to Siberia, was an apt reminder of Moscow’s human rights track record. With the army maintaining tight control over the administration, in Pakistan the space for civil society to promote and defend human rights has noticeably shrunk.
o Not only have members of the political opposition been imprisoned in that country, religious minorities continue to be prosecuted under blasphemy laws and attacked. However, the height of irony has surely been reached by the US response to the fact that countries abusing human rights have secured seats on the UN’s premier human rights body.
o Reportedly, US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has slammed the UN for electing ‘authoritarian regimes’ like China, Russia and Cuba into the UN Human Rights Council, thereby inferring that America’s decision to withdraw from the Council has been validated.
o But human rights activists groups will argue to the contrary, considering that the ill- considered withdrawal of the US from the UNHRC has made that body vulnerable to the machinations of an abusive regime like the Chinese.
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NEP 2020 and language policy (General Studies-2: Governance)
o India certainly is one of the largest multilingual nations in the world. Therefore, the Indian education system is multilingual in its character in every sense of the word.
o The language issue in India has been one of the most sensitive and debated and, consequently, there are multiple problems in the implementation of language policy in Indian education system.
o The major controversy regarding the language policy in India relates to the medium of instruction and the languages the students have to learn in schools.
o Although the public elementary education system in India is largely moving towards a vernacular medium of instruction, the majority of the private sector schools provide education through English as the medium of instruction.
o About six million students from non-metropolitan India enter the system every year and fail to achieve their educational goals because they are unable to cope with learning English. Join our Regular/Online Classes. For details contact 8811877068 CIVIL SERVICES ACHIEVERS' POINT, GUWAHATI
o With the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 being approved by the Union Cabinet on July 29, 2020, there is a growing debate on how this will affect the language policy and the medium of instruction in different regions.
o On the question of medium of instruction, the NEP document states, “Wherever possible, the medium of instruction until at least Grade 5, but preferably till Grade 8 and beyond, will be the home language mother tongue/local language.”
o It indicates that this policy provides greater flexibility which allows states and institutions to decide on the implementation according to the needs of the children in that region. This would be a major shift away from the use of English or Hindi as medium of instruction.
o This was welcomed by many education experts who believe that using the regional language or home language as a medium of instruction in early years is more effective. The idea of using the mother tongue as the medium of instruction in primary school is not new to the Indian education system.
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o Article 350A of the Constitution states that every State and local authority should endeavour to provide “adequate facilities for instruction in the mother tongue at the primary stage of education to children belonging to linguistic minority groups”.
o The report of the Kothari Commission on education and national development (1964-66) suggested that in tribal areas, for the first two years of school, the medium of instruction and books should be in the local tribal language.
o The regional language should be taught separately and should become the medium of instruction by the third year.
o The Right to Education Act, 2009, also said that as far as possible, the medium of instruction in school should be the child’s mother tongue.
o However, considering the diversity of languages and dialects in India, opting for mother tongue as the medium of instruction may not be as simple as it sounds.
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o India has several languages; the 2011 Census listed 270 mother tongues. Of these, as per a 2017 study, 47 languages were used as mediums of instruction in Indian classrooms.
o It might not be possible for all languages to become the medium of instruction and it might not be possible for large parts of the country to implement this. Sometimes a school class may have students with 5/6 mother tongues. In such a situation, it is essential to train the teachers to deal with multilingual classes.
o Here, the suggestion is quite useful where it is said that the child’s language would not be the medium of instruction but the government would formally mandate that the mother tongue be used in the classroom by teachers and students.
o This would allow children to talk, debate and express themselves in their language while also learning the regional language or English.
o Despite the language of the policy document being ambiguous and rather directional, it is also a fact that the central schools and schools that get government funding would have to subscribe to their advice.
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o But the private schools without government funding on the other hand will have the freedom to choose as they wish, and are not obliged to follow the instructions in the NEP. Under such circumstances, it will not be possible for the State Government to compel the existing English medium private schools to change their medium of instruction.
o As the NEP has given flexibility to the States, the State Government must take a wise decision consulting with experts in the field concerned.
o The NEP 2020 shall continue with the three language formula which was first introduced to the country in 1968, with a major change. The three-language formula is a policy that was formulated by the Union Education Ministry in the 1968 National Policy Resolution.
o It provides that in all government schools across India, there shall be three languages to be taught: English, as a mandate; Hindi, too, is compulsory, both in Hindi-speaking States and non-Hindi-speaking States; and finally, the third language is the local language of the region where the school is located.
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o In the earlier policy, Hindi and English were heavily stressed upon in the central schools in most parts of the country, and were considered mandatory among the three languages to be taught. The third language would either be a regional language, a foreign language or a classical language like Sanskrit.
o The new three language formula is meant to be flexible, without imposing a specific language that the State does not want. Unlike the National Education Policy 1968 which mandated teaching of Hindi in non-Hindi-speaking States, the latest NEP does not explicitly mention that the ‘third’ language shall be Hindi.
o Instead, the policy noted that three languages learned by children will be the choices of the States and the students, provided the two languages must be native of India.
o This means, in Assam, apart from Assamese and English, students must learn any one of Indian languages. The policy also calls for a greater effort in investing in a large number of language teachers in all regional languages around the country.
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o Teachers will be encouraged to use a bilingual approach, including bilingual teaching- learning materials, with those students whose home language may be different.
o The implementation of the language policy as envisaged in NEP 2020 will need rigorous preparation and proper strategy plan on the part of the State Government.
In Assam, a high-level committee has already been constituted for the implementation of the NEP in the State.
o Hope the committee will be able to take a proper strategy in this regard. The policy also recommends that high-quality textbooks, including in science, will be made available in home languages and mother tongues.
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