Daily PIB Analysis For UPSC/IAS | 5th & 6th December 2018 -

Table of Contents

Digital Dandi March

Poorna Swaraj: complete freedom from foreign rule during the struggle for independence.
Poorna Swaraj is relevant today.
Digital age: dominated by 5 US-based singularities Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Amazon.
Then we have ever-growing Chinese counterparts.
“Good government is no substitute for self-government. ”
Digital sovereignty

A) To remain free
B) To makes sure our companies are globally competitive
C) To secure our citizens

For Digital sovereignty data localisation is must.
Mandatory physical storage

Internet traffic into India predominantly flows through a limited set of lines in shallow international waters.
Network security: international networks outside our control
Systematic compromise of Indian government, corporate, civic and citizen data at national scale.

PRISM programme is a good example of threat.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows all non-US national information to be collected or read and processed without individual consent.
All US based companies, such as Facebook, Amazon, etc are under legal obligation to share data of Indian nationals when required for intelligence purposes.
Chinese surveillance processes are even more extensive and opaque.
This is illegal as per the Indian Constitution.
Local data storage is central to ensuring the sanctity of the Indian Constitution and safeguarding our critical assets.
To enforce our Constitution and laws.
This does not in any way imply that the state should have unrestricted access to data outside the boundaries of law.

Vice President

Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu was addressing a gathering at Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) Camp
VP said that every citizen of the country must be made capable of saving others in times of life-threatening distress.
He urged the teaching community to inculcate the values of care, empathy and compassion among students from schooling to make them responsible citizenry.
Saying that 4280 per 1,00,000 population in India suffers it in comparison to 60-151 per 1,00,000 in the USA, the Vice President stressed the need to bring in a law to make CPR training compulsory in schools so that one can help the fellow human being in case of a sudden cardiac arrest.
Shri Naidu called upon companies and institutions in both public and private sector provide first response training to their employees such as CPR in the advent of cardiac arrest and first aid in case of accidents.
He opined that chance of survival of the distressed would increase manifold if they were provided CPR or first aid as every minute counts in resuscitation of such victims.

Department of Space

Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) heaviest and most-advanced high throughput communication satellite GSAT-11 was successfully launched from the Spaceport in French Guiana.
Ariane 5 is one of three launch vehicles operated by Arianespace along with Soyuz and Vega.
After a 30-min flight, GSAT-11 separated from the Ariane 5 upper stage in an elliptical Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit. The achieved orbit was very close to the intended one. Heaviest,Ø largest and most-advanced high throughput communication satellite of India
The 5,854-kg GSAT-11 will provide high data rate connectivity to users of Indian mainland and islands through 32 user beams in Ku-band and 8 hub beams in Ka-band.
“GSAT-11 will boost the broadband connectivity to rural and inaccessible Gram Panchayats in the country coming under the Bharat Net Project, which is part of Digital India Programme,” ISRO Chairman Dr K Sivan said.
The Bharat Net Project aims to enhance the public welfare schemes like e-banking, ehealth, e-governance among others.

Ministry of Finance

80th Session of the Policy Commission Meeting of the World Customs Organisations (WCO)
Government of India & Government of Peru: Co-operation and Mutual Assistance in Customs Matters
The Agreement provides a legal framework for sharing of information and intelligence between the Customs authorities of the two countries and will help in the proper application of Customs laws, prevention and investigation of Customs offences.

Ministry of Defence

Exercise Hand-in-Hand is conducted annually as part of military diplomacy and interaction between armies of India and China.
The joint exercise for the year 2018 will be conducted from 10 to 23 December 2018 at Chengdu, China.
The aim of the exercise is to build and promote close relations between armies of both the countries and to enhance ability of joint exercise commander to take military contingents of both nations under command.
The exercise will involve tactical level operations in an International Counter Insurgency/ Counter Terrorist environment under UN mandate.
Troops from the Indian side have been selected from 11 SIKHLI of Indian Army, while troops from a unit of Tibetan military district will be taking part.
Exercise Hand-in-Hand 2018 will go a long way to further cement relationship between both the nations and will act as a catalyst in bringing bonhomie at grassroots levels between the armies of both countries.
The exercise will be conducted from 11 December 2018 in which both the contingents will establish a Joint Command Headquarter and conduct joint exercise on anti-terrorist operations .
The opening ceremony for the exercise will be conducted on 11 December 2018 which will consist of a ceremonial parade and address by head of both contingents.

Ministry of Finance

RBI, has maintained status quo on all key policy rates in the fifth bi-monthly monetary policy review announced this afternoon.
The repo rate remains unchanged at 6.5 percent and the reverse repo rate at 6.25 percent.
Repo rate is the rate at which RBI lends to banks generally against government securities.
The six-member monetary policy committee headed by RBI Governor Urjit Patel unanimously voted to maintain status quo on policy rates.
In the last policy announced in October, RBI had kept all the policy rates unchanged.
RBI has lowered its inflation forecast based on moderation in food inflation and sharp decline in international crude oil prices.

Cabinet

The Union Cabinet today approved Agriculture Export Policy in line with the government’s commitment to double farmer’s income by 2022.
Minister for Commerce and Industry Suresh Prabhu said, farmers will get the benefit of export opportunities through a stable trade policy regime.
He said, the policy will remove export curbs on most organic and processed food and will also diversify farm product exports.
The Cabinet also approved 15 Technology Innovation Hubs, 6 Application Innovation Hubs and 4 Technology translation Research Hubs to be set up under National Mission on Interdisciplinary CyberPhysical Systems.
It also approved implementation of Shahpurkandi Dam on river Ravi in Punjab. The decision will help minimising some of the water of the River Ravi which at present is going waste downstream to Pakistan.
The Cabinet has also approved the Amendment of the Jallianwala Bagh National Memorial Act, 1951.

Refining customs

India is a signatory to WTO’s Trade Facilitation Agreement for cross-border commerce in goods.
‘Trading across borders’ category of the World Bank’s Doing Business (DB) ranking we are at ranks 80th, up from 146th.
GoI’s plan to recast the customs architecture to boost trade facilitation is sound.
Benefits: It will lower costs, improve business efficiency and shore up revenues for the government.
Assessments of import consignments will be centralised.
This means all shipments of cars that land, say, in Nhava Sheva, Mumbai, can be assessed in Chennai.
It is an established principle that centralisation of assessment improves efficiency and reduces disputes over product categorisation.
The idea is to ensure that the same product is given the same tax treatment across locations.
Incorrect classification also results in revenue losses for GoI.
The proposed changes also involve doing away with face-to-face interaction between tax officials and importers.
This will end the scope for arbitrariness, and rent-seeking opportunities.
There is a need to move away from physical checks to electronic filings and riskbased physical checks of goods.
The time-release study 2018 showed that the average time taken to clear import consignments stood at around 144 hours in 2018, compared to the target of 72 hours proposed in the National Trade Facilitation Action Plan.
Similarly, the average time taken to clear export consignment is about 84 hours, against the target of 48 hours.
Greater efficiency in cargo clearance and timely filing by traders will cut costs further.
India’s customs officials need intensive training to implement these reforms.