Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

Today’s Hindu Editorial analysis is provided separately | CLICK HERE 

Cattle smuggling goes on along Indo-Bangla border

News:

• Two Border Security Force (BSF) personnel have been killed, allegedly by cattle smugglers along the India-Bangladesh border, over the past two months.

Beyond News:

• The two deaths are an indication that cattle smuggling along the international border is a major challenge for security personnel guarding the border.
• BSF’s SBF(South Bengal Frontier ), which extends from West Bengal’s Sunderbans to Malda is considered most porous and vulnerable to cross border smuggling.

India-Bangla Border:

• Of the 918-km border, only a third is fenced and large parts of about 360 km is riverine, where rivers flowing between the two countries serve as the international border.
• India shares a 4,096-km border with Bangladesh along the States of West Bengal (the longest at 2,216 km), Tripura (856 km), Meghalaya (443 km), Mizoram (318 km) and Assam (263 km).
• Each State in the northeast has a dedicated BSF Frontier for managing security along the border. Illegal trade of cattle remains huge in terms of the numbers of cattle heads seized.

High margins:

• The margin for one smuggled cattle head may be as high as Rs. 10,000-Rs. 15,000, depending on the size of cattle.
• Figures indicate that over 5.32 lakh heads of cattle valued at valuing about Rs. 350 crore have been seized along the eastern theater since 2014.

‘Why exempt CBI from RTI Act?’

News:

A plea has been filed in the Supreme Court for an early hearing of a petition challenging a 2011 government notification, which includes the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on the list of “intelligence and security organisations” exempted from disclosing information to the public under the Right to Information Act.

Beyond News:

• Counsel Ajay Agrawal, in his petition, said the June 9, 2011 notification including the CBI in the Second Schedule of the Right to Information (RTI) Act of 2005 was arbitrary, especially when the organization was only an investigating agency and not a security or intelligence organization.
• This case had been transferred from the Delhi High Court to the apex court following the government’s claim of multiplicity of such petitions in several High Courts.

India gifts war memorabilia to Bangladesh

News:

India on Sunday gifted to Bangladesh Prime Minister the memorabilia of the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 when an estimated 10 million Bangladesh people took refuge in India and the two neighbours fought together to drive out the Pakistani occupation army.

Beyond News:

• It includes military equipment utilised by the joint forces of India and Bangladesh during the Liberation War as well as large number of artefacts and documents including historical photographs, archival audio and video clippings, maps, battle records, newspaper clippings, documentary films.
• The collection is proposed to be displayed at the Bangladesh National Museum in Shahbagh and the Museum of Independence in Suhrawardy Udyan in Dhaka.
• The memorabilia, handed over to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina by visiting Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

Today’s Hindu Editorial analysis is provided separately | CLICK HERE 

Bhitarakanika has reasons to cheer

News:

Forest authorities are excited over a slight increase in the number of tourists coming to see crocodiles basking on mudflats of the Bhitarakanika National Park in Odisha’s Kendrapara district during the month of September, considered an off-season.

Major attractions

• Apart from crocodiles, meandering water courses flanked by green mangrove forests and migratory birds flocking in search of prey in the swampy fields of Bhitarakanika are some of the major attractions.
• The forest department has come across 80 crocodile nests in their wild habitats in 2017 compared to 75 in 2016 and 70 in 2015.
• In September, 2,681 tourists, including nine foreigners, visited Bhitarakanika compared with 1,968 tourists in August during which 44 foreigners came for sightseeing.
• Recently, the Odisha government facilitated exposure visit of tour operators hoping that word-of-mouth marketing would pay good dividend.

Other animals

• According to the National Park authorities, mammals found in the place include leopards, wild boars, fishing cats, hyenas, sambar deer and Gangetic dolphins.
• Reptiles include olive ridley sea turtles, crocodiles, water monitors, pythons and king cobras.
• Around 166 species of birds have been spotted in the park.

Social media trends to help monitor security

News:

• Social media trends and data analytics will be used for the first time in monitoring security at the country’s airports, and nuclear and aerospace installations.

Beyond News:

• The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), tasked to secure these important assets, has created a maiden ‘media lab’ and social media monitoring control room — the Pattern Research For Institutional Social Media (PRISM) analytics
• Its base is in Arakkonam near Chennai.
• A special team of CISF agents has been trained in tracking social media trends, collate them and dish them out as vital pieces of “actionable intelligence” to various airports and other vital units.
• Platforms like Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube and Flickr will be used to check any suspicious and sabotage-like activity against the assets.

Govt. may have to foot bill for rail safety fund

News: The Indian Railways’ income stood at Rs. 80,519 crore till September compared with Rs. 76,405 crore till September last year.

Beyond News:

• The actual income was 8.45% lower than the targeted earnings till September this year.
• The Railways had set a target of earning Rs. 1.88 lakh crore in 2017-18 against Rs. 1.65 lakh crore in 2016-17.
• The Finance Ministry is scheduled to meet the officials of the Ministry of Railway on November 10 for pre-budget discussions to finalise the revised estimates for 2017-18 and budget estimates for 2018-19.

Background:

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced the setting up a special safety fund with a corpus of more than Rs. 1 lakh crore over a period of five years in Budget 2017-18. According to the plan, while the Finance Ministry would contribute Rs. 15,000 crore annually towards the fund, the Ministry of Railways would fund the balance Rs. 5,000 crore every year.

In the first six months of the current financial year, the Indian Railways had utilised a quarter of the safety fund as it had spent Rs. 5,031 crore from the RRSK. Although the Railways’ passenger and goods earnings had increased 4.5% and 8.4% respectively till September this year compared with the last year, its sundry earnings had declined sharply by 35.7% during this period

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