IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-01

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UK’s Labour Party manifesto pledges apology for Jallianwala Bagh massacre

News

• Britain’s Opposition Labour Party launched its manifesto for the December 12 General Election with a pledge to institute an audit into the country’s colonial past, which would include an apology to India for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar 100 years ago.

Apology

• Former British Prime Minister Theresa May had stopped short of a formal apology earlier this year when she expressed deep regret for the colonial era attack on Vaisakhi to coincide with its 100th anniversary this year.
• In the 107-page manifesto titled ‘It’s Time for Real Change’, launched by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, the party has pledged to go further on the issue and apologise. The document also commits Labour to constitute a judge-led inquiry into Britain’s “injustices of the past”, including a public review of the country’s role in Operation Blue Star referred to as the Amritsar massacre .
• In 2014, declassified UK government documents had revealed that British military advice was given to Indian forces prior to Indian Army intervention at the Golden Temple. There have been calls for a public inquiry into the exact nature of that advice from some British Sikh groups over the years.
• Further down the same section, the Labour Party goes on to elaborate its plans to prioritise conflict prevention and build peace and makes a specific reference to the Kashmir conflict in the sub-continent.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-02

UP law panel moots legislation to check religious conversions

News

• The Uttar Pradesh State Law Commission submitted a report to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, suggesting a new law to check forcible religious conversions.
• The report was submitted along with a draft legislation, Uttar Pradesh Freedom of Religion Bill, 2019.

Forcible religious conversions

• The report was prepared after going through pre- and post-independence laws in the country and neighbouring countries like Nepal, Myanmar, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
• The commission is of the view that existing legal provisions are not enough to check religious conversions and on this serious matter, a new law is needed like in 10 other states.
• The 268-page report included recent newspaper clippings regarding forcible conversions, international covenants on the right to religion, anti-conversion laws in neighbouring countries and India.
• It also deals with the constitutional framework of the right to freedom of religion in India, anti-conversion laws of various states along with a comparative study, recommendations of the law commission of India and extracts from important apex court and high court judgments, besides proceedings of the UP Legislative Assembly.

Mizoram Bru refugees to be resettled in Tripura

News

• The stand-off over 34,000 Mizoram Bru refugees in Tripura took a new turn with the Tripura government agreeing to rehabilitate them within the State.
• Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb has written to Union Home Minister Amit Shah to consider the proposal and sanction the necessary assistance to bring an end to a 22-year-old impasse.

Rehabilitation

• The issue of resettlement of the evacuees in Tripura gained strength after the latest repatriation arrangements under a Home Ministry-sanctioned rehabilitation package failed to take-off.
• Refugee leaders, who had signed a consent agreement after a four-corner meeting convened by the Home Ministry in New Delhi, backtracked citing continuation of an allegedly hostile environment in Mizoram.
• The Chief Minister asserted that the State government could make progress over the whole range of issues only with endorsement of the Central government.
• Thousands of Reang or Bru refugees took shelter in Kanchanpur of north Tripura in September 1997 to escape ethnic tension in Mizoram. At least seven repatriation attempts have failed in the past 22 years.

Union Cabinet approves import of 1.2 lakh tonnes onion

News

• The Union Cabinet gave its approval to the Food Ministry’s recent decision to import 1.2 lakh tonnes of onions in a bid to improve the domestic availability of the key kitchen staple and check prices.

Improve domestic availability

• The government is also facilitating private imports and also relaxed phytosanitary and fumigation norms till December.
• The move comes after the government’s various efforts to boost the domestic availability failed to cool down the retail prices significantly.
• Onion prices have come under pressure due to 26% fall in the production to 52.06 lakh tonnes during the kharif output late-kharif seasons of 2019-20.
• Besides easing norms for onion import, the government has taken several measures including ban on exports, stock limits on trade₹ and sale of the commodity stored as buffer, at a subsidised rate.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-03

Cabinet nod to reduce government stake in BPCL, Concor, SCI

News

• The Union Cabinet took several decisions that would see it significantly reducing its shareholding, and in some cases cede management control, in a number of public sector enterprises, Finance Minister announced.

Reduce shareholding

• The Cabinet approved the government’s proposal to reduce its shareholding in certain public sector enterprises to below 51% but still retaining management control on a case-by-case basis.
• The government had previously announced its decision to reduce its stake in some public sector companies while retaining management control through the shares in that company held by other PSUs.
• The Cabinet also gave its in-principle approval for the privatisation or stake sale in five public sector enterprises and also the handing over of management control of these companies to the buyers.
• The government will sell its entire 53.29% stake in Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited.
• BPCL’s 61.65% share in Numaligarh Refinery Limited will be transferred to a public sector company operating in the oil and gas space.
• The government will also sell its entire 63.75% stake in Shipping Corporation of India and will cede management control to the strategic buyer. Similarly, it will sell its 30.8% stake in the Container Corporation of India and hand over management control to the buyer.
• Finance Minister also announced that the government would sell its entire 74.23% stake in THDCIL and its 100% stake in North Eastern Electric Power Corporation to NTPC Ltd. Both firms will also see cede management control to NTPC.
• The Cabinet also approved the introduction of the International Financial Services Centres Authority Bill, 2019 in the Lok Sabha in the ongoing session of the Parliament. 
• If passed, the Bill will see the merging of eight different sector regulators for the international financial services centres into a single entity.

Great Indian Bustard habitats to be declared as conservation reserves

News

• Seeking to protect the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard (GIB), the Ministry of Environment has decided to declare their habitats as conservation reserves and asked power companies to consider placing high voltage lines under the ground as the birds have died after coming in contact with them.

Conservation reserves

• During a meeting held by a committee under the ministry, constituted in pursuance to the directions of the National Green Tribunal (NGT), it was also decided to have time bound action plan for the implementation of mitigation measures such as installation of bird diverters and their regular maintenance and monitoring by power agencies.
• As per a report by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), a statutory body under the Ministry of Environment, only 150 GIBs are left in India, out of which around 90% are found in Rajasthan and Gujarat.
• The committee, also directed the WII to furnish details about power lines identified for mitigation in the GIB habitat area along with details of power line owners to the ministries of power and non-renewable energy so that necessary action may be initiated.
• The GIBs are dying at the rate of 15% annually due to collision with high voltage power lines, the WII report had said, adding that their population has been reduced by 75% in the last 30 years.
• The issue came to light after a petition was filed in the NGT seeking conservation of GIB to save them from extinction.
• WII’s research has shown that power lines, particularly high voltage (33-440 KV) transmission lines with vertical alignment are the biggest threat to GIB as of now and their habitats have a high density of transmission lines because of the impetus on renewable energy production in GIB habitats of Rajasthan and Gujarat.
• The GIB is one of the heaviest flying birds endemic to the Indian subcontinent.
• They are primarily terrestrial birds with adult males as tall as 122 cm and weigh 11-15 kg and adult females reach up to 92 cm and weigh 4-7 kg.
• GIB lays one egg every 1-2 years and the success rate of these eggs is 60-70%. However, this rate has been reduced to 40-50% due to predators like fox and dogs.
• The government has already released ₹33 crore for the conservation of the GIB through a project, titled ‘Habitat Improvement and Conservation Breeding of Great Indian Bustard-An Integrated Approach’, for five years from the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) for conservation, breeding of the GIB with technical support from the WII.

U.S. State Department approves $1 billion arms sale to India

News

• The State Department has approved an arms deal valued at just over $1 billion, in which the S. could sell India up to 13 MK 45 5 inch/ 62 caliber (MOD 4) naval guns and related equipment, a press statement from the Department of Defense (DoD) said.

Arms sale

• The Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), the DoD body that implements the U.S.’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, delivered its certification of the proposed sale to the U.S. Congress, as per the statement.
• Congress has a thirty day window from when the certification is received to raise any objections to the sale.
• The MK-45 Gun System will provide the capability to conduct antisurface warfare and anti-air defense missions while enhancing interoperability with U.S. and other allied forces.
• The sale approval was in response to a Government of India request to buy the guns and 3,500 D349 Projectile, 5”/54 MK 92 MOD 1 Ammunition.
• The proposed sale will include ammunition, spare parts, training of personnel and equipment, technical data, publications, technical and logistical assistance and transport.

ISRO uses satellite data to gauge N. Korea’s 2017 nuclear test impact

News

• Scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have used a novel mathematical technique and analysed satellite images to estimate the strength of North Korea’s underground nuclear test of September 2017.
• Those tests are considered the most powerful thermonuclear devices to have been exploded by the country.

Satellite data

• • In the normal course, the detection and estimation of nuclear device explosions is based on the reading of earthquake monitoring sensors.
  • However, North Korea’s relative isolation has meant that there were no accessible seismic stations near the test site at Mount Mantap, Punggye-ri, to accurately gauge the intensity of the explosion, and how deep into the earth the device was detonated.
  • Such information is also important for determining the type of bomb, and consequently, the degree of know-how the detonating country possesses.
  • For the analysis, researchers used images of the location after the explosion, sourced from the ALOS-2, a Japanese satellite, and Sentinel 1B, a European radar imaging satellite.
  • InSAR refers to the interferometric synthetic aperture radar and is a radar technique used to generate maps of how a place would look after an earthquake, or a detonation.
  • While other groups have also used InSAR based approaches to estimate impact from a detonation, the ISRO group claims to have used a mathematical technique called Bayesian inversion that can correct for errors associated with InSAR data.
  • These estimates, of a yield of 250 kiloton, are in line with an assessment this June by U.S. scientists, who said that the 2017 test was about 10 times more powerful than the tests first conducted by North Korea in 2016.

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