Daily CURRENT AFFAIRS

Daily Current Affair - UPSC/KAS Exams - 21st Oct 2021

What is in news : Honeywell Automation India Limited was selected to lead the Bengaluru Safe City project

Details :

• Initiative of the Ministry of Home Affairs
• Under the Nirbhaya Fund by the Government of India
• Aim - Create a safe, secure and empowering environment for women and girls in public places to enable them to pursue all opportunities without the threat of gender-based violence or harassment
• Honeywell
  • Will create an integrated command & control centre to manage a state-of-the-art video system that features more than 7,000 video cameras deployed at more than 3,000 locations across the city.
  • Upgrade the city police department's existing 'Suraksha' app to help improve incident response rate and citizen engagement.
• Bengaluru is among eight cities selected for the government's Safe City project, which involves identification of hot spots for crimes against women and deployment of various components, including infrastructure, technology adoption, and capacity building

What is in news : The 17th Lok Sabha which, more than two years after it was constituted in 2019, remains without a Deputy Speaker.

What does the Constitution say:

Article 93 says:  The House of the People shall, as soon as may be, choose two members of the House to be respectively Speaker and Deputy Speaker

Article 178 contains the corresponding position for Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of a state.

Is it mandatory under the Constitution to have a Deputy Speaker?

Constitutional experts point out that both Articles 93 and 178 use the words “shall” and “as soon as may be” — indicating that not only is the election of Speaker and Deputy Speaker mandatory, it must be held at the earliest.

What are the time-frame and rules for the election of the Deputy Speaker:

• All that the Constitution says is the election must be held as soon as possible.
• Generally speaking, the practice in both Lok Sabha and the state Legislative Assemblies has been to elect the Speaker during the (mostly short) first session of the new House — usually on the third day after oath-taking and affirmations take place over the first two days.
• The election of the Deputy Speaker usually takes place in the second session, even though there is no bar on having this election too in the first session of the new Lok Sabha/Assembly. But the election of Deputy Speaker is generally not delayed beyond the second session without genuine and unavoidable constraints.
• In Lok Sabha, the election of Deputy Speaker is governed by Rule 8 of The Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in Lok Sabha. According to the Rule, the election “shall be held on such date as the Speaker may fix”, and the Deputy Speaker is elected once a motion proposing his name is carried.
• There are similar provisions in the State Legislative Assembly Rules.
• Once elected, the Deputy Speaker usually continues in office until the dissolution of the House.
• Under Article 94 (Article 179 for state legislatures), the Speaker or Deputy Speaker “shall vacate his office if he ceases to be a member of the House of the People”.
• They may also resign (to each other), or “may be removed from…office by a resolution of the House of the People passed by a majority of all the then members of the House”.

Can courts intervene in cases of a delay in electing the Deputy Speaker?

A petition before the Delhi High Court has argued that the delay in the election of the Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker violates Article 93 of the Constitution. There is no precedent of a court forcing the legislature to elect the Deputy Speaker.

ENVIRONMENT & GEOGRAPHY

What is in news : The Centre has rechristened Mount Harriet, a historical tourist spot in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, as 'Mount Manipur'

What is Manipur’s connection to Mount Harriet: After the Anglo-Manipur War of 1891, several Manipuris who had fought the British in the war, including Maharaja Kulachandra Dhwaja Singh, were exiled to the British penal colony in the Andaman Islands. Since the cellular jail (Kalapani) was yet to be built, Kulachandra and the prisoners were kept on Mount Harriet, a hillock in what is now the Ferragunj tehsil of South Andaman district.

What set off the Anglo-Manipur War of 1891; why is it significant:

• Considered an epoch in the history of Manipur, the Anglo-Manipur War was fought between the kingdom of Manipur and the British over a month in 1891.
• The battle was triggered by a coup in the palace of Manipur, which had been marked by internal factionalism in the years leading up 1891. According to the Manipur State Archives website, the British government took advantage of the “internal dissension” among the princes of the royal family.
• In 1886, when Surchandra inherited the throne from his father Chandrakirti Singh, the kingdom of Manipur was not under the British rule but had links with the crown through different treaties.
• However, Surchandra ascension to the throne was controversial and his younger brothers — Kulachadra, Tikendrajit — revolted against him.
• In the first phase of the war, the British surrendered and their officers — including Quinton — were executed in public. In the second phase, the British attacked Manipur from three sides, and finally capture the Kangla Fort in Imphal. Prince Tikendrajit and four others were hanged by the British, while Kulachandra, along with 22 others, were banished to the Andaman Islands.
• Many say the war was described as a “blow to British prestige”. Despite their victory, it had led to the death of five important officers. In India, it was viewed as being part of the general uprising against British rule in the country, soon after after the Revolt of 1857.
• The war led to Manipur officially becoming a princely state under the indirect rule of the British crown.

Who was Mount Harriet originally named after?

Mount Harriet is the third highest peak in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and served as the summer headquarters of the Chief Commissioner during British Raj.

It is believed to be named after British artist and photographer, Harriet Christina Tytler, who was the wife of Robert Christopher Tytler, a soldier who served in the British Indian Army. Between 1862 and 1864, Tytler was the superintendent of the penal colony at Port Blair.

District officials from South Andaman said Mount Harriet houses a colonial bungalow, which now functions as a forest guest house. Close by is the Mount Harriet National Park known for its wide variety of birds.

What is in news : The IMD has also withdrawn the orange alert it issued for nine districts

Colour Coded Weather Warning

• Colour-coded warnings are issued by Indian Meteorological Department (IMD)
• Parent Ministry: Ministry of Earth Sciences.
• Objective: To alert people ahead of severe or hazardous weather which has the potential to cause damage, widespread disruption or danger to life.
• IMD uses four colour codes to indicate various categories of alerts
• Green (All is well): No action is required and No advisory is issued.
• Yellow (Be Aware): It indicates severely bad weather panning across several days. It also suggests that the weather could change for the worse, causing disruption in day-to-day activities.
• Orange / Amber (Be prepared): It is issued as a warning of extremely bad weather with the potential of disruption in commute with road and rail closures, and interruption of power supply.
• The sounding of the orange alert is a sign for people to prepare for evacuation, keep food packets ready and protect themselves and their family from bad weather.
• Red (Take Action): When the extremely bad weather conditions are certainly going to disrupt travel and power, and has significant risk to life, the red alert is issued. In this case, people must take all measures to protect their families and follow the instructions of local authorities and disaster-response teams

What is in news : Punjab farmers are creating bio-enzymes from kinnow fruit wastes

What are bio-enzymes:

Bio-enzymes are organic solutions produced through fermentation of organic waste including various fruits, vegetable peels and flowers, by mixing in sugar, jaggery/molasses and water. It takes 60-100 days to ferment organic waste. To fasten the fermentation, yeast can be used as culture to prepare it in 45-50 days.

Area under fruit crop in Punjab

• In Punjab, around 94,000 hectares are under various fruit crops including around 40,000 hectares (one lakh acres) under kinnow orchards in Hoshiarpur, Abohar, Fazilka, Mukatsar, Bathinda areas. On an average, 25-30 tonnes of kinnow are produced per hectare and nearly 10-11 lakh tonnes is the total production of the state.
• Kinnow is a year-long duration crop and the main harvesting period is from November-end to March, but some varieties of citrus fruit start coming into the markets in October. Horticulture department experts say nearly 15-20 per cent (1.5 lakh to 2 lakh tonnes) of the total kinnow production falls from the tree before and during the harvesting period.
• Experts say the fallen fruit is a major challenge for kinnow farmers in the state as one needs to dig up small pits to bury them, otherwise the fallen fruit rot and invite a fly attack on the healthy fruit still on the plants.
• But now, some farmers are using this waste kinnow to improve the pH level and soil fertility of their land by making BEs from this waste fruit.

Formula to prepare BEs

• Paramjit Singh said he purchased 40 plastic drums having 500 litres capacity each (a one-time investment) to which he added 99 kg kinnow, 33 kg jaggery and 330 litres water in each and tightened the lid, which needs to be loosened up for a few seconds every day for 30 days to release the gas due to fermentation process.
• After 30 days, the lid is opened in the same manner on a gap of two days for two weeks and then the drum is kept air-tight and opened occasionally. The bio-enzymes are finally ready in three and half months.

National security concepts have, in the two decades of the 21st century, undergone fundamental changes which reveal that a large country, in terms of size of geography, population and GDP, will not deter any country.

Cyber warfare has vastly reduced the deterrent value of these sizes since cyber weaponry will be available even to small island countries, and the capacity to cause devastation to a large nation by cyber warfare is within the reach of even small and poorer nations.

CYBER ATTACKS & SIZE OF COUNTRY

• With evolution over time, In the 21st century, the world is moving to cyber weapons-based warfare which will also immobilise current tangible advanced weapon systems in a war.
• After cybertechnology enters as an important variable in nations’ defence policies, the size of a country will cease to matter.
• Sri Lanka, or North Korea, empowered by cybertechnology, will be equal to the United States, Russia, India or China, in their capability to cause unacceptable damage. Weapons in the 21st century will merely mean a cyber button on the desk of the nation’s military and the leader of the government.
• Geographical land size or GDP size will be irrelevant in war-making capacity or deterrence.

INNOVATIONS & CYBER SECURITY

• These fundamental changes are entirely due to the earlier 20th century innovations in cybertechnology and software developments.
• Drones, robots, satellites and advanced computers as weapons are already in use. More innovations are around the corner. Some examples of further innovations are artificial intelligence and nanotechnology.
• Warfare, therefore, will be no more just mobilisation of weapons or be dependent on the size of the armed forces of men. It will be cyber warfare. From remote controlled drones to artificial intelligence driven weapons systems, etc., will matter in the 21st century.
• National security in the 21st century covers not merely the overt and covert operations but, more crucially, electronic operations from a remote centre beyond the front lines of ground forces or air power to track enemy assets by these newly weaponised cyber instruments of technology. Tracking those cyber warfare centres of the adversary will need a new national security policy.
• By credible accounts, China, recently, publicly cautioned Indians to sit up and take notice by using cybertechnology to shut down Mumbai’s electric supply in populated areas of the city, for a few hours. This was to overawe Indians as we were clueless for hours as to what went wrong till reports emerged about a possible cyberattack . Thus, each nation will have to prepare more for bilateral conflicts in the 21st century that are based on cyber warfare rather than in multilateral acts of conventional war or rely on military blocs for mobilisation.

DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL SECURITY

Objectives:

• Define what assets are required to be defended, the identity of opponents who seek to overawe the people of a target nation, by unfamiliar moves to cause disorientation of people.
• Novel coronavirus is a preview of the kinds of threats that await us in the coming decades which a national security policy will have to address by choosing a nation’s priorities.

Priorities:

• Priorities will require new departments for supporting several frontiers of innovation and technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells, desalination of seawater, thorium for nuclear technology, anti-computer viruses, and new immunity-creating medicines.
• New priority will require compulsory science and mathematics education, especially in applications for analytical subjects. Every citizen will have to be alerted to new remote controlled military technology and be ready for it.

Strategy:

• The strategy required for this new national security policy will be to anticipate our enemies in many dimensions and by demonstrative but limited pre-emptive strikes by developing a strategy of deterrence of the enemy.
• For India, it will be the China cyber capability factor which is the new threat for which it has to devise a new strategy.
• The agenda for the new strategy will be critical and emerging technologies, connectivity and infrastructure, cyber security and maritime security. But, alas, India by trying to befriend nations on both sides of the divide ended up with no serious ally internationally. The position of India is much like that of the bat species in the Panchatantra.

METHODS TO USE

The macroeconomics of resource mobilisation depends on whether a nation has ‘demand’ as an economic deficit or not. That means, for example, if demand for a commodity or service is in deficit or insufficient to clear the market of the available supply of the same, then liberal printing of currency and placing it in the hands of consumers is recommended for the economy to recover the demand supply parity. This then is one way of facilitating resource mobilisation in a demand supply balanced market.

A way to increase demand is by lowering the interest rate on bank loans or raising the rates in fixed deposits which will enable banks to obtain liquidity and lend liberally for enhancing investment for production.

If it is ‘supply’ that is short or in deficit compared to demand, then special measures are required to incentivise to encourage an increase in supply. The bottomline is that except for endowments of nature, a true economist adept in macroeconomics and inter-sectoral impact, will not despair for a lack of resources. Macroeconomics has many ways to generate resources without taxation. Printing of notes of currency is one way when there is a demand shortage.

• The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs headed by senior Congress leader Anand Sharma has decided to study “border management”, which will also entail deliberations on the contentious extension of jurisdiction of the Border Security force (BSF) up to 50 km inside the international borders in Punjab, West Bengal and Assam.
• The 72nd Inter-services Football Championship was held at Maharaja Stadium, Kochi between 15 - 20 Oct 21. Indian Navy, Army Red, Army Green and Indian Air Force teams participated in the four-day long championship conducted by Signal School under the aegis of the Southern Naval Command at Naval base, Kochi. The finals were played between Army Red and Air Force. Rear Admiral Antony George, Chief of Staff, Southern Naval Command was the Chief Guest for the finals and Closing Ceremony on 20th Oct 21. The championship was won by Indian Air Force.