UPSC Daily Current Affairs - 16th April 2023 | Current Affairs & Hindu Analysis: Daily, Weekly & Monthly PDF Download

GS-I

Ambedkar Circuit

Why in News?

The Bharat Gaurav Tourist train tour on Ambedkar Circuit was flagged from Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station.

About Ambedkar circuit

• The Ambedkar Circuit was the fourth in the list of special tourist circuits namely, the Ramayana Circuit, Buddhist Circuit, and North East Circuit.
• IRCTC in association with the Ministry of Tourism is operating its first tour on the Ambedkar circuit.
• The eight-day special tour will include visits to prominent places associated with the life of Dr. Ambedkar like New Delhi, Mhow, Nagpur, and the sacred Buddhist sites of Sanchi, Sarnath, Gaya, Rajgir, and Nalanda.

Need and Significance 

• Babasaheb worked all his life for equality and fraternity and the train is representative of that equality and the passengers traveling will come back with many memories and knowledge about the principles of Babasaheb Ambedkar.
  • It aims to attract a wider tourist base besides the Dalit community, who frequent these key destinations as a pilgrimage.

About ‘Bharat Gaurav Tourist Train’

• The Ministry of Railways is promoting the cultural and religious heritage of India through its fleet of Bharat Gaurav Tourist Trains which are being operated by Railways on various famous theme-based circuits to showcase the cultural heritage of this great nation.
• It is being operated under the ‘Dekho Apna Desh’ initiative which is aimed at promoting domestic tourism and is a joint collaboration between the Ministries of Tourism and Railways.

'Dekho Apna Desh' scheme

• The Ministry of Tourism launched the ‘Dekho Apna Desh’ initiative with the objective of creating awareness among the citizens about the rich heritage and culture of the country and encouraging citizens to travel within the country.
• The scheme aims to push people, especially middle-class citizens, to travel broadly in India rather than flying abroad. 
• The new tourism scheme will also likely expand employment prospects in the tourism industry and also boost the country's economy.

Source: The Hindu

GS-II

Why in News?

To ensure timely disposal of criminal cases, the Ministry of Home Affairs’ (MHA) e-prosecution portal has added a new feature that will also fix accountability of government lawyers. 

• The system will send alerts to senior officers whenever a public prosecutor seeks a stay in a criminal case more than twice.
• The e-prosecution module is part of the Interoperable Criminal Justice System (ICJS).

Inter-Operable Criminal Justice System (ICJS)

• About:
  • It is a national platform that helps in integrating the nation’s primary IT system for criminal justice delivery.
• Five Pillars:
  • The ICJS project aims to connect the five pillars of the system which are:
    • police (through Criminal and Crime Tracking and Network Systems),
    • e-Forensics for forensic labs,
    • e-Courts for courts,
    • e-Prosecution for public prosecutors,
    • e-Prisons for prisons.
• Implementing agency: 
  • National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) in collaboration with the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and it will be carried out in partnership with the union territories and the states.
• Phases: 
  • In Phase-I of the ICJS project (2018-2022), individual IT systems have been implemented and stabilized; also search of records have been enabled on these systems.
  • Under Phase-II (2022-23 to 2025-26), the system is being built on the principle of ‘one data one entry’ whereby data is entered only once in one pillar and the same is then available in all other pillars without the need to re-enter the data in each pillar.
• Significance:
  • This system connects more than 16,000 police stations across the country and has a database of 28.98 crore police records that can only be accessed by law enforcement agencies and the judiciary.
  • With the aid of the ICJS platform, the metadata of FIR and charge sheet can be accessed by all the High Courts and subordinate courts. Documents like FIR, case diary and charge sheet are uploaded by police in PDF format for utilization by the courts.

Source: The Hindu

Why in News?

Recently, in a rare instance, the Supreme Court collegium has recommended the appointment of a retired district judge as a judge of the Madhya Pradesh HC, citing legitimate expectation and delay in the selection process.

About Ad hoc judges:

• Constitutional Provisions: The appointment of ad-hoc judges has been provided in the Constitution under Article 224A (appointment of retired Judges at sittings of High Courts).
• Under this Article, the Chief Justice of a High Court for any State can request a person to act as a judge of the High Court.
• For this, the prior consent of the president is required.
• The person should have held the office of judge of that court or of any other High Court.
• Such a judge is entitled to allowances as determined by the President.
• He will also enjoy all the jurisdiction, powers and privileges of a judge of that high court.

The Chief Justice of a High Court may start the procedure of recommending a name if:

• The number of vacancies is more than 20% of the sanctioned strength.
• Cases in a particular class are pending for over five years.
• More than 10 % of pending cases are over five years old.
• Percentage of the rate of disposal is beneath the institution of the cases either in a particular subject matter or in the court.

Source: Times of India

GS-III

Why in News?

As per a recent study, flash droughts occurred more often than conventional 'slow' droughts in tropical places like India, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Amazon basin.

More about Study

• Flash droughts are fast becoming the 'new normal' making forecasting and preparing for their impact more difficult.
• Climate change has effectively speed up the onset of droughts.
• Reason: when the precipitation suddenly shuts off, hot, sunny and windy conditions can cause large amounts of water to evaporate quickly(i.e., high evapotranspiration)
• The trends varied from place to place, but, looked at globally, they show a shift toward more frequent and more rapid flash droughts. 

Flash Droughts

• About: 
  • A considerably long dry spell with significantly low precipitation anomalies during the monsoon results in an increase in air temperature. Increased air temperature and precipitation deficit together cause a rapid depletion of soil moisture leading to flash drought.
  • There is little known about flash droughts or ‘hidden hazards’ when compared to research available on long-term droughts.
• Occurrence:
  • Flash droughts can occur in the monsoon season as well, primarily caused by the monsoon breaks and these can also occur due to delayed onset of the summer.
• Duration:
  • Normally, developing drought conditions take months, but flash droughts could occur in weeks and stay on for months.
• Factors:
  • Atmospheric anomalies (variations), anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and ongoing climate change.
• Detection:
  • Early-warning systems (EWS), that could identify trends in climate and sources of water, are used to detect the emergence or probability of the occurrence of flash droughts.
  • Drought monitoring through use of remote sensing data and various indices for drought monitoring as well as through on-line help facilities.

Source: Indian Express

Why in News?

India’s overall exports are projected to scale new heights, growing at 13.84 percent during FY 2022-23.

Key Highlights 

• Goods exports and Trade deficit: 
  • India’s goods exports declined for the second successive month in March, falling a sharp 13.9% to $38.38 billion while imports dipped 7.9% to $58.11 billion. 
    • Total goods exports in 2022-23 rose 6.03% to $447.46 billion, while the import bill surged by a steeper 16.5% to $714 billion.
  • The goods trade deficit rose almost 40% to over $266 billion in 2022-23, compared to $190 billion in 2021-22. 
• Oil, electronics lead: 
  • India’s uptick in outbound shipments was largely led by petroleum, up 27% to $94.5 billion, followed by electronics goods which rose 7.9% to $23.6 billion. 
• The other three of India’s top five export items registered insignificant growth - Rice (up 1.5%), chemicals (1%), and drugs and pharmaceuticals (0.8%). Petroleum exports now account for 21.1% of total exports, up from 16% in 2021-22.
• Engineering goods, India’s mainstay in goods exports in recent years, shrank 5.1% to $107 billion, bringing down their share in total exports from $26.6% to 23.9%. 
• Russian imports surge
• Fuelled by discounted oil shipments, India’s imports from Russia grew almost 370% to over $46 billion in 2022-23. Russia’s share in imports leaped from 1.6% in 2021-22 to 6.5% last year, making it the fourth largest import source nation for India, behind China, UAE, and the USA.
• China’s share of goods imports dipped to 13.8% in the year gone by from 15.4% in 2021-22.
• Coal, and oil imports up: 
  • While petroleum imports jumped about 30% to nearly $210 billion in 2022-23, coal imports grew at a faster 57% to touch almost $50 billion.
  •  Gold imports, on the other hand, fell around 24% to $35 billion as global prices for the metal surged and the Rupee turned weaker.
• Export destinations: 
  • The USA remained India’s top export destination, followed by UAE, while the Netherlands emerged as the third largest goods buyer, displacing China to the fourth position in 2022-23. 
  • Netherlands’ share of Indian exports jumped from under 3% in 2021-22 to 4.7%, recording a staggering 66.6% uptick year-on-year. 
  • Bangladesh and Hong Kong remained in India’s top 10 export markets, although the value of shipments to their shores contracted by 27.8% and 9.9%, respectively.

Government Initiatives to boost exports and reduce trade deficit

• Foreign Trade Policy 2023: The government has launched the Foreign Trade Policy 2023.
  • The new policy has replaced the old policy that had been in place since 2015, the new policy kicks in from 2023-24 and aims to almost triple India’s goods and services exports to $2 trillion by 2030, from an estimated $760 billion in 2022-23.
• Interest Equalization Scheme on pre and post-shipment rupee export credit has also been extended up to 31-03-2024.
• Assistance is provided through several schemes to promote exports, namely, Trade Infrastructure for Export Scheme (TIES) and Market Access Initiatives (MAI) Scheme. 
• The rebate of State and Central Levies and Taxes (RoSCTL) Scheme to promote labor-oriented textile export has been implemented since  2019.
• The remission of the Duties and Taxes on Exported Products (RoDTEP) scheme has been implemented since 2021.A 
• A Common Digital Platform for certificates of Origin has been launched to facilitate trade and increase Free Trade Agreement (FTA) utilization by exporters.
• Champion Services Sectors have been identified for promoting and diversifying services exports by pursuing specific action plans.
• Districts as Export Hubs have been launched by identifying products with export potential in each district, addressing bottlenecks for exporting these products, and supporting local exporters/manufacturers to generate employment in the district.
• The active role of Indian missions abroad in promoting India’s trade, tourism, technology, and investment goals has been enhanced.
• The package was announced in light of the COVID pandemic to support the domestic industry through various banking and financial sector relief measures, especially for MSMEs, which constitute a major share of exports.

Future Outlook 

• Slackening external demand amid the global slowdown in the second half of last year, along with the moderation in global commodity prices hurt non-oil exports and these concerns are set to exacerbate this year.
  •  This could lead to a deeper contraction in merchandise exports in 2023-24, affecting manufacturing output and dragging down GDP growth.
• Moreover, with the Rupee seeing an appreciating tendency, the currency advantage would be weaker for exporters.
  •  Imports may slow a little due to domestic growth slowing down, but could keep putting pressure on the deficit that could increase if oil prices harden, he cautioned.

Source: The Hindu

Why in News?

Recently, the Solar Energy Corporation of India Limited (SECI) has been accorded the status of Miniratna Category-I Central Public Sector Enterprise (CPSE)

About Solar Energy Corporation of India:

• It is the primary implementing agency of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Govt. of India for Renewable Energy schemes/projects.
• It was established in the year 2011.
• It has awarded Renewable Energy (RE) project capacities of over 56 GW.
• It enjoys the highest credit rating of AAA by ICRA.
• Criteria for grant of Miniratna status to CPSEs
  • Miniratna Category-I status: The CPSEs which have made a profit in the last three years continuously, with a pre-tax profit is 30 crores or more in at least one of the three years and have a positive net worth are eligible to be considered for grant of Miniratna-I status.
  • Miniratna Category-II status: The CPSEs which have made a profit for the last three years continuously and have a positive net worth are eligible to be considered for grant of Miniratna-II status.
  • Miniratna CPSEs should have not defaulted in the repayment of loans/interest payments on any loans due to the Government.
  • Miniratna CPSEs shall not depend upon budgetary support or Government guarantees.

Source: The Hindu