Current affairs- April 23, 2016
Supreme Court stays Uttarakhand high court verdict
The Supreme Court has revived central rule in Uttarakhand by
staying the hard-hitting high court verdict until April 27 on the technical
ground that the written judgment wasn’t available.
Implications:
The decision provides the Centre a breather from the withering
criticism for alleged misuse of Article 356.
What else has the court said?
The court has forbidden the government from revoking Central rule
in Uttarakhand without informing it.
Way ahead:
The Supreme Court has asked the Uttarakhand high court to provide
the parties with the written judgment and has posted the Centre’s appeal for a
detailed hearing. The court has also indicated that it will examine the issues
on merit and determine whether the interim order staying the HC verdict is to
be continued or not.
‘Telcos may go intranet to bypass Trai’s order’
Existing and new 4G players are planning to offer content such as
movies and sports through private servers as they plan to take the intranet route to bypass Trai’s order banning differential tariffs
over the internet.
What is the issue?
New entrants in this sector are planning to take intranet route to
offer various services. The intranet route would be encouraged by the exemption
given to the channel in Trai’s order on differential tariffs.
- Telcos may attempt to monetize such an opportunity/regulatory exemption. The mobile operators could selectively choose data/content and charge carriage fees from content providers/ e-commerce players for providing them access on their intranet platforms.
Concerns:
- At present, telcos
monetize data connectivity and charge for data usage. But, 4G new entrants
are looking at leveraging intranet-based data offerings in an attempt to
take market share. They may disrupt the traditional data business model,
leveraging intranet-based data offerings.
- This would also severely
violate the tenets of net neutrality as the mobile companies – which will
include new ‘4G entrants’ – would subsidize the content, and may even
provide it for free, as they look for ways to capture customers.
- The 4G entrants may also attempt to tweak the traditional business model by providing more value to subscribers via aggregating movie and other content. So, 4G entrants may offer all such intranet-based content virtually free to subscribers in addition to their basic data plan.
Is it allowed under TRAI rules?
Trai’s suggestion that rules prohibiting differential pricing will
not be applicable to intranet-based offering, will allow telcos to have a B2B
model by charging content providers/e-commerce players a carriage fee and in
turn subsidizing subscribers’ data services.
What are intranet services?
Intranet services are a network based on internet protocols
belonging to an organization accessible only by that organization’s members,
employees and others with authorization. The essence of such services is that
they would not be available to the public from the internet.
- For telcos to provide such services, they will need to store all content on their servers and to avail themselves such offerings, subscribers will still need data connectivity. As data is stored on the servers of telcos, there will be a need for telcos to increase spend on data centers.
Limitations of Intranet:
There may be physical limitations, even with significant
investments in data centers. Social network sites may push daily updates;
e-commerce sites may push their deals and look for better conversion rates.
Movie-based content may have to be provided free by telcos to bring footfall to
intranet platform.
Primate species new to India discovered in
Arunachal Pradesh
A new primate species in India has been discovered by a team of
biologists and wildlife photographers during their bird watching trip to
Arunachal Pradesh’s Anjaw district.
- With this, White
Cheeked Macaque has become a new primate species in India.
Details:
- The White Cheeked Macaque,
hitherto unknown in India, was actually spotted by the team last year, but
it took almost a year to confirm.
- The White Cheeked Macaque
differs considerably from all macaque species such as Raesus Macaque,
Arunachal Macaque, Tibetan macaque and Assamese macaque.
- It has relatively hairless
short tail, long and thick hair on its neck and chin-whiskers creating a
white cheek, among other characteristics.
- White-cheeked macaques are
threatened by illegal hunting and potential habitat loss.
UDAY bonds fetch Rs.99,000 crore
Eight states have issued bonds worth over Rs 98,959.96 crore under
UDAY Bonds scheme in 2015-16, which is aimed at improving operational and
financial efficiency of state power distribution companies.
- As part of the scheme,
Reserve Bank had issued the special bonds (non-SLR special securities) on
behalf of eight state governments in the last fiscal.
- The securities have been
issued by the state governments under the Government Securities Act, 2006
and are eligible for market repo.
The state-wise issuance of UDAY Bonds during 2015-16 is as: Uttar
Pradesh (Rs 24,332.47 crore); Rajasthan (Rs 37,349.77 crore); Chhattisgarh (Rs
870.12 crore); Punjab (Rs 9,859.72 crore); Jammu & Kashmir (Rs 2,140
crore); Bihar (Rs 1,554.52 crore); Jharkhand (Rs 5,553.37 crore) and Haryana
(Rs 17,300 crore).
About UDAY:
The Power Ministry had launched UDAY (Ujwal DISCOM Assurance
Yojana) on November 20, 2015. The scheme is expected to help discoms save
around Rs 1.8 lakh crore in the next three years. The cumulative debt of
discoms is Rs 4.37 lakh crore.
- UDAY is an effort to make
these DISCOMs financially and operationally healthy, to be able to supply
adequate power at affordable rates, and enable the Governments to make
efforts towards 100% Village electrification and 24X7 Power For All.
- It envisages to reduce
interest burden, cost of power and AT&C losses. Consequently, DISCOM
would become sustainable to supply adequate and reliable power enabling
24×7 power supply.
- UDAY has inbuilt
incentives encouraging State Governments to voluntarily restructure their
debts. These incentives include taking over of DISCOM debt by the States
outside the fiscal deficit limits; reduction in the cost of power through
various measures such as coal linkage rationalization, liberal coal swaps
and priority/additional funding through schemes of MoP & MNRE.
- UDAY is different from
earlier restructuring schemes in several ways including flexibility of
keeping debt taken over outside fiscal deficit limit, reduction in cost of
power and a series of time bound interventions for improving operational
efficiency.
- UDAY also provides for
measures that will reduce the cost of power generation, which would
ultimately benefit consumers.
President nominated six members to Rajya Sabha
The President of India has nominated Shri Swapan Das Gupta, Shri
Navjot Singh Sidhu, Dr. Subramanian Swamy, Shri Narendra Jadhav, Sh. Suresh
Gopi and Ms. Mary Kom to the Rajya Sabha.
- 12 people can be
recommended to the Upper House. As of now, there are seven vacancies among
these 12, for which six names have been announced, and one kept in
abeyance.
Nominations to the Upper House:
The government recommends names of people having “special
knowledge or practical experience in literature, science, art and social
service”.
- As per Article 80 of the
Indian constitution, members are nominated by the President to the Upper
House on the recommendation of the government.
- The government recommends
members in this category at anytime and it is not bound to an electoral
cycle like the other seats.
Centre issues notification for protection of Good
Samaritans
The government has issued a notification for the protection of
Good Samaritans in the wake of the Supreme Court (SC) direction on helping
accident victims.
Background:
- The Supreme Court had
directed all the states to follow the Centre`s guidelines that encouraged
witnesses in road accidents to report to police and also help survivors
with medical treatment.
- The apex court had also directed the Centre to publish its guidelines notified last year to ensure that all those who help accident victims/survivors were not harassed by the police.
Standard operating procedure (SOP) for the
protection and examination of ‘Good Samaritans’:
The SOP was framed by the government on the orders passed by the
Supreme Court on a PIL plea filed by NGO SaveLIFE Foundation in 2012,
highlighting the fact that more lives of accident victims can be saved if a law
can be made to protect Good Samaritans from legal and procedural hassles at the
hands of police and hospitals.
- Following this, the Centre
issued a series of guidelines on May 12, 2015, to protect Good Samaritans.
These included assuring them anonymity and protecting them from any civil
or criminal liability for taking the victim to the nearest hospital. The
government had also indicated that an SOP should be further evolved in
this regard.
- In the January 16
notification, the government highlighted that bystanders or passers-by,
who chose to help a person in distress on the road, should be “treated
respectfully and without discrimination on the grounds of gender,
religion, nationality, caste or any other.”
- Other SOPs include
complete anonymity in case the Good Samaritan does not want to reveal his
name or details, use of video-conferencing in case of any further
interaction with him by the authorities and provision for the police to
examine him at his residence or office or any place of his convenience.
This should be done only once and in a time-bound manner.
RCEP draft moots tough curbs on cheap medicines
According to a report, the draft Regional Comprehensive Economic
Partnership (RCEP) agreement, being negotiated by 16 countries, in its current
form could reduce access to affordable medicines in many developing countries.
How?
The chapter on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) is part of the
RCEP agreement. This chapter contains proposals for patent extensions,
restrictive rules on exceptions to copyright, and dozens of other anti-consumer
measures.
- These provisions
illustrate the power of rights-holder groups to use secret trade
negotiations to influence democratic decisions that impact access to
knowledge, the freedom to innovate and the right to health in negative
ways.
India’s opposition to RCEP proposals is on:
- Patent extensions.
- Restrictive rules on
copyright.
- Anti-consumer measures.
Concerns:
The draft proposals will compel governments to commit to newer
Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights provisions like TRIPS
plus — including the Patent Law Treaty (Geneva, 2000), which involve
harmonisation in the examination of patent applications and requirements of
patentability.
About Regional Comprehensive Economic
Partnership:
The RCEP is among the proposed three mega FTAs in the world so far
– the other two being the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership, led by the US) and
the TTIP (Trans -atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the US and
the EU).
- The agreement (FTA) is
proposed between the ten member states of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) (Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam) and the six
states with which ASEAN has existing FTAs (Australia, China, India, Japan,
South Korea and New Zealand).
- RCEP negotiations were
formally launched in November 2012 at the ASEAN Summit in Cambodia.
- RCEP is viewed as an
alternative to the TPP trade agreement, which includes the United States
but excludes China.
Facts
Paris Agreement
As many as 175 countries, including India, China and the US,
signed the Paris Agreement on climate change at the UN headquarters in New York
on 22nd April, to coincide with ‘International Mother
Earth Day’.
- This was the first day of
the signing ceremony of the historic global deal. Union Environment
Minister Prakash Javadekar signed the agreement on behalf of India.
- The agreement aims to take
multiple measures to save the world from disastrous consequences of
climate change and was adopted by 195 countries in Paris on December 12,
2015.
- That such a large number
of countries signed the agreement in a single day is significant. The
previous record for the most countries to sign an international agreement
on one day was set in 1982, when 119 countries signed the ‘Law of the Sea
Convention‘.
- The agreement will be open
for signature for one year – till April 21, 2017. However, merely signing
the agreement will not make it operational. At least 55 countries, that
account for an estimated 55 per cent of the total global greenhouse gas
emissions will have to ratify the agreement before it enters into force.
