Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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30 lakh reapply for inclusion in Assam NRC

News

• About 30 lakh of the 40.07 lakh people left out of the final draft of the updated National Register of Citizens (NRC) published five months ago have applied again for inclusion during the claims and objections round.

Beyond News

• During the phase, 600 objections also came in from those who doubted the citizenship of others included in the draft.
• The window for 40.07 lakh of the 3.29 crore applicants excluded from the complete draft was opened on September 25. It was to have closed on December 15, but the Supreme Court, which is monitoring the exercise, extended the last day to December 31 after the Assam government said the panchayat election, held on December 5 and 9, had robbed the people and officials of precious time.
• NRC officials said the pace of submission of claims had picked up in the last fortnight.
• There have been cases in which illiterate people, dependent on NRC Seva Kendras or cybercafe operators, used the same legacy person as others genealogically linked to someone else. While some cases were fraudulent, many were cases of the legacy person having the same name or belonging to the same area.
• A legacy person is one who figures in the NRC of 1951, which is being updated, the voters lists published up to March 24, 1971, and other documents, including refugee registration certificate.
• The deadline for completing the exercise after processing the claims and objections is June 2019. The service centres, officials said, would be open from January 2 to 31 for correction of the names published in the complete draft.

ASI declared 6 monuments of national importance in 2018

News

• The 125-year-old Old High Court Building in Nagpur, Maharashtra, and two Mughal-era monuments in Agra Haveli of Agha Khan and Hathi Khana are among the six monuments declared protected and of national importance by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in 2018.

Beyond News

• In 2016 and 2017, no new monument was included in the list of sites of national importance. The last monument to be included in the list, in 2015, was the Vishnu Temple in Nadavayal in Kerala’s Wayanad district.
• Ancient Monument means any structure, erection or monument, or any tumulus or place of interment, or any cave, rock-sculpture, inscription or monolith which is of historical, archaeological or artistic interest and which has been in existence for not less than 100 years.
• There were 3,686 centrally protected monuments/sites under the ASI in the country; the number has now increased to 3,693. Uttar Pradesh (745 monuments/sites), Karnataka (506) and Tamil Nadu (413) have the highest number of ASI-maintained sites.
• According to information available with the Ministry of Culture, 321 of these sites have been encroached upon.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

LS passes medical council Bill

News

• The Lok Sabha passed the Indian Medical Council (Amendment) Bill to allow a panel of eminent professionals to run the scam-tainted Medical Council of India (MCI) so that medical education can be regulated in the best manner.

Beyond News

• The Bill seeks to replace an ordinance issued in September 2018.
• This Bill superseded the MCI and the powers of the council had been vested in a Board of Governors (BoG). The BoG will have all eminent personalities and include directors of AIIMS and PGI, Chandigarh. This board will continue to perform till a council is constituted, according to Mr. Nadda.
• A separate Bill to replace the MCI with the National Medical Commission is pending in Parliament.

Pakistan shares with India list of nuclear installations

News

• Pakistan shared with India a list of its nuclear installations and facilities as per the provisions of a bilateral agreement.

Beyond News

• The list was handed over in accordance with Article-II of the Agreement on Prohibition of Attacks Against Nuclear Installations and Facilities between Pakistan and India, signed on December 31, 1988, the Foreign Office (FO) said in a statement here.
• Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi handed over the list of Indian Nuclear Installations and Facilities to a representative of the High Commission of Pakistan .
• The agreement, which was signed on December 31, 1988 and entered into force on January 27, 1991, provides, inter alia, that the two countries inform each other of nuclear installations and facilities to be covered under the agreement on the first of January of every calendar year.

537 Indian prisoners lodged in Pakistani jails: Foreign Office

News

• Pakistan shared with India a list of 537 Indian prisoners lodged in Pakistani jails as per the provisions of a bilateral agreement.

Beyond News

• They include 54 civilians and 483 fishermen, the Foreign Office (FO) said in a statement here.
• The step was taken under the Consular Access Agreement of May 21, 2008 between Pakistan and India, the FO said.
• According to the agreement, both countries are required to exchange lists of prisoners in each other’s custody twice a year.
• India will also share the list of Pakistani prisoners lodged in Indian jails with the High Commission of Pakistan in New Delhi.
• The two countries have adhered to the practice of exchanging the list of prisoners despite recurring tensions.
• It is one of the enduring Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) agreed upon when the two sides were trying to disentangle the complex relationship with the help of the composite dialogue process.
• Fishermen from Pakistan and India are frequently detained for illegally fishing in each other’s territorial waters since the Arabian Sea does not have a clearly defined marine border and the wooden boats lack the technology to avoid being drifting away.

First-ever list of forward castes soon

News

• The first-ever list of forward caste Hindus and Christians of the Kerala State will be out shortly.

Beyond News

• There are 83 Hindu and 20 Christian castes on the draft list drawn up by the Kerala State Commission for Economically Backward Classes among Forward Communities.
• The commission, which has placed the draft list within the public domain, is expected to finalise it after January 20. The list is being prepared as part of the exercise to identify the economically backward classes among the forward communities.
• Besides the 83 Hindu castes, there are 62 sub-castes, including 24 sub-castes of Nairs, on the list. The 14 sub-castes of the Ambalavasi Hindus and six for the Kshatriya caste are there on the list. From the Brahmin caste, 13 sub-castes have been identified by the commission.
• Christian communities numbering 20, including Chaldean Syrians, CSI, Evangelical, Basel Mission, Pentecosts, Marthomites, Malankara Catholic, and Jacobites are there on the draft list.
• The commission will also fix an annual income ceiling, akin to the creamy layer fixed for Other Backward Communities (OBC), as the benchmark for identifying the economically weaker sections among the forward communities. Even while preparing the caste database of these communities, the commission paid attention to the castes that were out of the ambit of the caste-based reservation.
• Though the communities together constitute 27.73% of the State’s population, no authentic data on these castes and population are available. Earlier, two attempts for a headcount of these castes were made at the national level. However, the Central government has not released the caste data so far.
• At the same time, the data on Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and OBCs, which enjoy the benefits of caste-based reservation, are readily available in the State.
• Interestingly, a few of the forward caste organisations have approached the commission with a request not to classify them as forward or upper caste communities as they feared such classifications would eventually deny them government aid.
• Instead, they preferred to be called communities which were out of the ambit of caste-based reservation in the State.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

NASA spacecraft breaks record for smallest space object ever orbited

News

• NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft broke a record after successfully entering into orbit around the asteroid Bennu the smallest cosmic object ever to be orbited by a spacecraft.

Beyond News

• While many on Earth prepared to welcome the New Year, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, 110 million kilometers away, carried out a single, eight-second burn of its thrusters, NASA said in a statement.
• The manoeuvre placed the spacecraft into orbit around the asteroid Bennu.
• Inching around the asteroid at a snail’s pace, OSIRIS-REx’s first orbit marks a leap for humankind. Never before has a spacecraft from Earth circled so close to such a small space object one with barely enough gravity to keep a vehicle in a stable orbit.
• The spacecraft will circle Bennu about 1.75 kilometres from its centre, closer than any other spacecraft has come to its celestial object of study.
• Previously the closest orbit of a planetary body was in May 2016, when the Rosetta spacecraft orbited about seven kilometers from the center of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
• The comfortable distance is necessary to keep the spacecraft locked to Bennu, which has a gravity force only 5-millionths as strong as Earth’s. The spacecraft is scheduled to orbit Bennu through mid-February at a leisurely 62 hours per orbit.

‘RBI reserves ratio among the highest’

News

• Analysis of the balance sheets of the central banks of 10 comparable economies shows that the RBI’s reserves as a percentage of its balance sheet is among the highest.

Findings

• The bulk of these reserves are notional and thus their value can only be unlocked when the underlying assets are sold, the report added. This makes transferring the excess reserves to the government all the more difficult.
• Finance Minister said that the government was not seeking the RBI’s surplus to meet its fiscal deficit needs.
• The analysis, which looked at the central banks of the BRICS countries, Fragile Five nations and three developed economies, found that the RBI’s reserves which a separate analysis shows was about ₹10.5 lakh crore form 26.2% its balance sheet. Only two central banks those of South Africa and Russia have a reserve ratio higher than this.
• The other two BRICS nations, China and Brazil, have reserve ratios of 1.7% and 0.2%, respectively.
• These gains from the currency exchange movement will be booked and the cash realised only when the assets are sold. As such, the RBI does not have very high free cash reserves that it can give back to the government, the report concluded.
• The report goes on to say that the RBI has a few options in front of it if the government does insist on the transfer of reserves. The first is for the central bank to sell its foreign bonds or government bonds, depending on how much the Centre asks for.
• Selling foreign bonds is easier done, but comes with the concomitant risk of this being viewed negatively by foreign investors as the RBI’s remaining foreign exchange assets might not be enough to handle the next financial crisis. The domestic market is not big or deep enough to absorb such a large amount of government bonds.

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