IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-01

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Kethavaram caves set to get a facelift

News

• Kethavaram caves are all set to get a facelift for entering the prestigious list of world heritage sites of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) by next year.
• The caves, located at Kethavaram of Orvakal mandal, are home to rock art which dates to the Palaeolithic age.
• Paintings of deer, bulls, foxes, rabbits, and humans made by ancient inhabitants of the caves have been a hit among locals for a while now.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-02

DNA Technology Regulation Bill referred to parliamentary standing committee

News

• The DNA Technology Regulation Bill, which seeks to control the use of DNA technology for establishing the identity of a person, has been referred to a parliamentary standing committee for examination.

DNA Technology Regulation Bill

• The Bill that seeks to control the use and application of the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) technology for establishing the identity of certain categories of persons, including offenders, victims, suspects and undertrials, was passed by the Lok Sabha in July.
• The Bill has been referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment and Forests .
• A similar bill was passed in the Lok Sabha in January last year but it could not be cleared in the Rajya Sabha. The Bill had then lapsed with the dissolution of the previous Lok Sabha.
• The Bill provides for establishment of a national DNA data bank and regional DNA data banks.

In caste-sensitive Tamil Nadu, six communities want to be delisted from SC/ST list

News

• In an unusual development in a State that has witnessed violent agitations demanding reclassification of castes for acquiring benefits of communal reservations in jobs and college admissions, six communities have begun to build pressure on the Tamil Nadu government to delist them from the Scheduled Castes.

Scheduled Castes

• The six communities are Pallars, Kudumbar, Devendrakulathar, Pannadi, Mooppar and Kaladi. Their demand spearheaded, among others, by Puthiya Tamilagam founder K. Krishnasamy is that they must be grouped under the common name of ‘Devendrakula Vellalar’ and removed from the Scheduled Castes list. Members of these communities have a good presence in south Tamil Nadu.
• In the past, leaders of intermediate caste groups had led agitations seeking to be removed from the Backward Classes list and instead included in lower categories that would entail better representation in government jobs and college admissions. 
• The Vanniyar community, for instance, was about three decades ago reclassified from Backward Classes to Most Backward Classes. Likewise, there is a demand from the fishing community to be recognised as Scheduled Tribes.
• Presently, the Tamil Nadu government has constituted a committee to examine the demand. If accepted, this could be a rare instance of a reversal of a community from the SC list in post-Independent India.

Centre clarifies on definition of land as forest

News

• The States need not take the Centre’s approval to define what constitutes unclassified land as forest, the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) of the environment ministry, comprising independent experts and officials in the Centre’s forestry division, has clarified

Forest land

• Since 2014, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) has been considering evolving a legal definition of forest and reportedly prepared drafts as late as 2016. These, however, have never been made public and the FAC’s clarification officially signifies an end to such efforts.
• The freedom to define land, not already classified as forests by the Centre or state records, as forest has been the prerogative of the States since 1996 and stems from a Supreme Court order called the Godavarman judgement.
• The conundrum of defining forests has been around since the 1980s. The 1996 Supreme Court judgement expanded the definition of forest to include lands that were already notified by the Centre as forests, that appear in government records as forests as well as those that fell in the “dictionary definition” of forest.
• The latter clause allows the States to evolve their own criteria and define tracts of land as forest, and these would then be bound by forest conservation laws.
• Forests defined under this criteria constituted about 1% of the country’s forests and once so defined would be known as ‘deemed forests.’

Only 37% in Karnataka have verified their names in electoral rolls

News

• A mere 37% of the State’s total electorate of 510,69,354 have so far participated in the Election Commission’s 45-day Electors’ Verification Programme (EVP).
• Karnataka now stands in the 16th position in the country’s ranking on the EVP progress, with Goa topping the rank list.

Electors Verification Programme

• Goa’s progress is 95.3%, Mizoram and Rajasthan having touched 72.45% and 72.05% respectively are in the second and third position. EVP progress is less than 1% in Jharkhand, Kerala, Haryana, Maharastra, and Jammu and Kashmir.
• In Karnataka, the progress has been the lowest in BBMP areas along with Belagavi, Bagalkot, Dharwad, Ballari, Mysuru, and Kodagu. These districts have recorded less than 30% progress.
• Mandya has recorded the highest percentage (81%) followed by Chitradurga (63%), Haveri (60%), Hassan (56%) and Udupi (54%).
• Henceforth, authentication by one member of the family will do for verification of details of other family members too.
• People can also verify through the “Voter Helpline” mobile application, National Voters’ Service Portal, by visiting Common Service Centres (CSCs) in their vicinity, and by submitting hard copies of filled-in forms to the Electoral Registration Officer through their booth-level officers.

India still awaiting closed peacekeeping missions reimbursements from UN

News

• India has voiced concern over the UN’s inability to pay reimbursements for peacekeeping operations conducted by the country and other Troop Contributing Countries and said that the Secretary-General contributed to a “false sense” of financial soundness by using closed peacekeeping funds to pay staff salaries.

Crisis

• The UN is facing a “severe liquidity crisis”, reaching its deepest deficit of the decade and will not have enough cash by next month to cover payrolls.
• Several emergency measures have been put in place by the world organization to tide over the financial crunch.
• India is among the 35 UN member states who paid their regular budget dues in full and on time to the world organisation as at October 11, 2019. India paid $23.25 million in regular budget assessments by January 31, 2019, the 30-day due period specified as per the UN’s Financial Regulation rules.
• While it paid its dues on time, India voiced concern that the UN is yet to pay it and other Troop Contributing Countries (TCCs) reimbursements for peacekeeping operations.
• The UN owed India $38 million, among the highest it has to pay to any country, for peacekeeping operations as of March 2019.
• Only 131 members states have settled their regular budget assessments for the current year. While 63 member states owe $894 million for the current year, a total of 41 countries are yet to settle their dues from the previous years, which cumulatively stands at $310 million.
• Referring to the austerity measures announced by the Secretary-General last week in the wake of the financial crisis, Mr. Naidu said the measures nudge nations to judiciously use resources but also pose fundamental questions on the raison d’etre of the United Nations.
• Out of an approved budget of $6.5 billion, $3.3 billion is still outstanding and this does not include the $400 million that remains outstanding for decades for the closed peacekeeping missions.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-03

Mars once had salt lakes similar to those on Earth: Study

News

• Mars once had salt lakes that went through wet and dry phases similar to those on the Earth, according to a study which indicates that the red planet’s climate ‘dried out’ over a long time.

Salt lakes

• According to the researchers,liquid water on Mars may have become unsustainable and evaporated as the planet’s atmosphere became thinner, and the pressure at the surface became lesser.
• The study noted that over 3 billion years ago the lake that was present in Gale Crater an immense 95-mile-wide rocky basin that is being explored with the NASA Curiosity rover since 2012 underwent a drying episode possibly linked to the global drying of Mars.
• The Gale Crater formed about 3.6 billion years ago when a meteor hit Mars, the study noted.
• The researchers said that the salt ponds on Mars are similar to some found on the Earth such as those in a region called Altiplano near the Bolivia-Peru border.
• According to the researchers, the climate on Mars may have similarly fluctuated between wetter and drier periods.
• The study also noted the types of chemical elements present in the liquid water that was present at the red planet’s surface at the time, and the type of environmental changes any potential life forms on Mars may have had to cope with, had they existed.

Sri Lanka removed from FATF’s Grey List

News

• Sri Lanka has been removed from the “Grey List” of the international terror financing watchdog FATF.

Grey List

• The island nation will no longer be subject to the Financial Action Task Force’s monitoring under its ongoing global anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) compliance process.
• Sri Lanka made significant progress in addressing the strategic AML/CFT deficiencies identified earlier.
• In October 2016, the FATF announced that Sri Lanka will be subjected to a review of the International Cooperation Review Group (ICRG) of the terror financing watchdog to assess the progress of AML/CFT effectiveness in the country.
• The Paris-based organisation indicated Sri Lanka had not made sufficient progress in four parameters – international cooperation, supervision, legal persons and arrangements and targeted financial sanctions on proliferations (North Korea and Iran).
• At its meeting at Buenos Aires, Argentina in October 2017, the FATF listed Sri Lanka as a jurisdiction with strategic AML/CFT deficiencies which is more commonly identified as “Grey List” and provided a time-bound action plan, the report said.
• The FATF is an inter-governmental body established in 1989 to combat money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system.
• FATF warned Pakistan of getting blacklisted, if it does not control terror funding by February next year.
• According to an official statement, the FATF noted Pakistan addressed only five out of the 27 tasks given to it for controlling funding to terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Hizbul Mujahideen, responsible for a series of attacks in India.

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