June 2020 PRAYAS4 IAS यास सनु हर े भवय क Current Affairs Special Issue MCQs [email protected] www.theprayasindia.com/upsc An initiative for UPSC Aspirants S o u r c e s The Hindu | Live Mint | The Economic Times | The Indian Express | PRS PIB | PRS | ET | Government & World Reports (NITI, Aayog, Budget WEF Economic Survey etc.) | Hindu Business Line | NCERTs | All standard reference books The Prayas ePathshala www.theprayasindia.com/e-pathshala/ June (Week 1) Index Prelims Mains National GS I 1. Rajya Sabha elections 2. BHIM App 1. COVID-19 exposes fault lines in peri- 3. Cyclone Nisarga urban areas 4. PM SVANidhi 2. COVID-19 and our new normal 5. Essential Commodities Act 6. Inner Line permit 7. Kolkata Port GS II 8. SWADES 9. Amery Ice Shelf 1. Military bonding beyond borders 10. World Environment Day 2020 2. COVID-19: Exclusion, isolation of 11. TULIP differently abled 12. Nagar Van Scheme 13. Van Dhan Scheme International 1. Travel Bubble 2. Antifa 3. Line of Actual Control 4. G-7 5. The National Guard 6. THAAD Defence System www.theprayasindia.com/e-pathshala [email protected] +91-7710013217 / 9892560176 The Prayas ePathshala www.theprayasindia.com/e-pathshala/ Prelims NATIONAL Rajya Sabha elections (Source: The Hindu ) Context: The elections to 18 Rajya Sabha seats that were deferred owing to the lockdown will be held on June 19. How elections are conducted in Rajya Sabha? The Rajya Sabha or the Upper House of Parliament is modeled after the House of Lords in the United Kingdom. The Rajya Sabha currently has 245 members, including 233 elected members and 12 nominated. As per the constitutional limit, the Upper House strength cannot exceed 250. Nominated members of the Rajya Sabha are picked by the President of India. These MPs are luminaries from the world of economics, sports, literature, art, social service etc. The Vice-President is the chairperson of the Rajya Sabha, which is the final stop before a bill is sent for presidential assent. While Lok Sabha members are elected directly by the voters, Rajya Sabha members are elected indirectly by the people, that is, by the MLAs. How many Rajya Sabha members a state can send depends on its population. Hence, the number of elected seats too changes as states are merged, bifurcated or new ones are created. Every Rajya Sabha MP has a tenure of six years and elections to one-third seats are held every two years. According to Section 154 of the Representation of the People Act 1951, a member chosen to fill a casual vacancy will serve for the remainder of his predecessor's term of office. Members of a state's Legislative Assembly vote in the Rajya Sabha elections in what is called proportional representation with the single transferable vote (STV) system. Each MLA‘s vote is counted only once. In this system, MLAs don‘t vote for each seat. If that were the case, then only ruling party representatives would make it through. Instead, the MLAs are given a paper with the names of all candidates. They have to give their order of preference for each candidate, marking 1,2,3… against their names. If 10 or more members choose a candidate as their first choice, he/she gets elected. The political party that has a majority in the state Assembly normally gets to send the maximum number of MPs to the Rajya Sabha. Let‘s take a hypothetical example of a states which has three Rajya Sabha vacancies. Let‘s say Party A with 100 seats and Party B with 40 seats populate the 140-seat Assembly. Both parties can field three candidates each for the three Rajya Sabha seats. Now, to make it through, a candidate should get a certain number of votes. In this case, the total number of MLAs (140) is multiplied by 100. This number is divided by the number of vacancies (3) plus 1. That brings us to 3,500. This total number is added to 1. Since each MLA has 100 votes, a candidate would, in this case, need 3,501 votes or the backing of 36 MLAs to win. The formula simply is [(Number of MLAs X 100) / (Vacancies + 1)] + 1. Simply put, every candidate in the race requires one-fourth of the total number of votes plus one to get elected. Each voter ranks his preferences and if the candidate who is the first choice has enough votes already or no chance of being elected, the vote is transferred to the second choice and so on. www.theprayasindia.com/e-pathshala [email protected] +91-7710013217 / 9892560176 The Prayas ePathshala www.theprayasindia.com/e-pathshala/ BHIM App (Source: The Hindu ) Context: Following a report by security researchers alleging leak of personal data of millions of users of the BHIM payment application due to a website breach, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) recently denied the claim, asking ―everyone to not fall prey to such speculation‖. Details: The report by vpnMentor alleged that 409-gigabyte of data, comprising 7.26 million records, were leaked, and the trove included personal identifiable information such as Aadhaar details, residence proof, bank records and complete profiles. The vpnMentor‘s website claims it is the world‘s largest VPN review website and its research lab is a pro bono service that strives to help the online community defend itself against cyberthreats while educating organisations on protecting their users‘ data. The report claims that a website, http://cscbhim.in/, developed by CSC e-Governance Services, in partnership with the Indian government, was being used in a campaign to sign up users and business merchants to the BHIM app. All related data was being stored on a ‗misconfigured‘ Amazon Web Services S3 bucket and was publicly accessible. What is UPI? Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is essentially a single platform that merges different banking services and features under one umbrella. With a UPI-enabled bank account, you can simply create a UPI ID which can be used to send and transfer money. You can make real-time bank-to-bank payments, and even transact using Aadhaar number, mobile number or Virtual Payment Address (UPI ID). Cyclone Nisarga (Source: The Indian Express ) Context: Less than two weeks after a powerful cyclone passed through West Bengal on its way to Bangladesh, India is bracing to face another cyclone, this time on its western coast called Nisarga. Cyclones in Arabian Sea The strength of the cyclones are measured by the wind speeds they generate. At its strongest, Nisarga would be associated with wind speeds in the range 95-105 km per hour. Amphan, on the other hand, was classified as a super-cyclone, of category 5, though it had weakened to category 4, ‗Extremely Severe Cyclonic Storm‘, ahead of its landfall, at which time the wind speeds were in excess of 180 kph. www.theprayasindia.com/e-pathshala [email protected] +91-7710013217 / 9892560176 The Prayas ePathshala www.theprayasindia.com/e-pathshala/ Cyclones formed in the Bay of Bengal side of the north Indian Ocean are more frequent and stonger than those on the Arabian Sea side. Meteorologists suggest the relatively cold waters of the Arabian Sea discourage the kind of very strong cyclones that are formed on the Bay of Bengal side; Odisha and Andhra Pradesh face the brunt of these cyclones every year. Last year, however, was slightly unusual as the Arabian Sea saw the most frequent and intense cyclonic activity in more than 100 years, according to India Meteorological Department. Five cyclones originated in the area in 2019 — Vayu, Hikka, Kyarr, Maha and Pavan – when normally only one or two are formed. PM SVANidhi Context: The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has launched a Special Micro-Credit Facility Scheme – PM SVANidhi (PM ) – PM Street Vendor‘s AtmaNirbharNidhi, for providing affordable loans to street vendors. Details: The scheme is expected to help street vendors resume work and earn livelihoods in the light of the difficulties endured during the COVID-19 crisis and the lockdown. Over 50 lakh people, including vendors, hawkers, thelewalas, rehriwala, theliphadwala, etc. in different areas/contexts are likely to benefit from this scheme. o The goods supplied by them range from vegetables, fruits, ready-to-eat street foods, tea, pakodas, breads, eggs, textiles, apparel, footwear, artisan products, books/stationaries, etc. o The services include barber shops, cobblers, paan shops, laundry services, etc. Urban Local Bodies will play a pivotal role in the implementation of the scheme. This is for the first time in India‘s history that street vendors from peri-urban/rural areas have become beneficiaries of an urban livelihood programme. Features of the scheme: o The vendors can avail a working capital loan of up to Rs. 10,000, which is repayable in monthly instalments in the tenure of one year. o On timely/early repayment of the loan, an interest subsidy @ 7% per annum will be credited to the bank accounts of beneficiaries through Direct Benefit Transfer on six monthly basis. o There will be no penalty on early repayment of loan. It is for the first time that MFIs/NBFCs/SHG Banks have been allowed in a scheme for the urban poor due to their ground level presence and proximity to the urban poor including the street vendors. A digital platform with web portal/mobile app is being developed to administer the scheme with end-to- end solution. o The IT platform will also help in integrating the vendors into the formal financial system. o This platform will integrate the web portal/mobile app with UdyamiMitra portal of SIDBI for credit management and PAiSA portal of MoHUA to administer interest subsidy automatically.