InstaLinks : help you think beyond the issue but relevant to the issue from UPSC prelims and Mains exam point of view. These linkages provided in this ‘hint’ format help you frame possible questions in your mind that might arise(or an examiner might imagine) from each current event. InstaLinks also connect every issue to their static or theoretical background. This helps you study a topic holistically and add new dimensions to every current event to help you think analytically
Content for Mains Enrichment (Essay/Ethics)
2. Turns Seaweed into 100% Dissolvable, Low-Cost Packaging
2. Climate Change altering Indian Monsoon
3. Global Registry of Fossil Fuels
5. ECI seeks restrictions on cash donations to political parties
6. MHA notification of Convicts Biometrics
11. Market-Based Economic Dispatch (MBED) Mechanism
13. Significance of India’s bans on broken rice export
Syllabus: Structure, organization and functioning of judiciary, appointment and removal of judges etc
Directions: Don’t focus on the contribution of individual Chief justices (unless you have law optional). Just notice the trend and evolution of the Indian Judiciary. Points from another related article in Indian Express by Fali S Nariman have been included in it.
Judiciary manifest its superior nature through:
Powers of CJI besides normal judicial duties:
‘Doctrine of Basic Structure’ was propounded by the Indian Judiciary on 24th April 1973 in the Keshavananda Bharati case to put a limitation on the amending powers of the Parliament so that the ‘basic structure of the basic law of the land’ cannot be amended in the exercise of its ‘constituent power’ under the Constitution.
The decision constitutes a high watermark in the assertion of the Court’s judicial power in the teeth of a determined majoritarian regime. Much later, in 2007, a different Bench of nine judges in I.R. Coelho vs. State of Tamil Nadu, in a unanimous decision, authoritatively upheld the narrow majority view (of 7:6) in Kesavananda Bharati and gave it permanent constitutional validity.
Q. Critically examine the Supreme Court’s judgment on ‘National Judicial Appointments Commission Act, 2014’ with reference to the appointment of judges of higher judiciary in India. (UPSC 2017)
Other than the Fundamental Rights, which of the following parts of the Constitution of India reflect/reflect the principles and provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1918)? (UPSC 2020)
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh has launched a web portal to enable people to redress their grievances and provide a platform to raise corruption-related issues.
Three phone numbers, including two meant for the anti-corruption cell, have been made available on the portal ‘CM da Haisi’ (Let’s inform the CM).
This will further enable us to bring transparency and accountability to governance and the delivery of public services.
After quitting her job at Google, Neha Jain launched Zerocircle, a startup that converts seaweed into low-cost, eco-friendly plastic alternatives for packaging and more.
Seaweed is considered a potential resource for making bioplastics because it comes with a low water footprint and land footprint.
Zerocircle uses largely red, brown, and green seaweed, which amounts to about 12,000 species.
After collecting the seaweed, it is dried and turned into a powder, which is then turned into the final material. With this, they make handbags, bags for clothes, film for food, and more plastic alternatives.
Most Indian villages do not have any waste management infrastructure, a study released by the non-profit Pratham Education Foundation.
Public waste bins were observed in only 36 per cent of the 700 villages across 15 states that were covered in the study. Just 29 per cent had a community waste collection vehicle, while less than half the villages had access to a sanitation worker or Safai Karamchari. These trends were observed across all states and districts.
Context: A tourism circuit connecting ‘Panch Teerth’ (five key sites associated with B R Ambedkar) will be drawn up by the government in order to improve connectivity, enhance tourism and brand the locations.
Other similar circuits: Ramayana and Buddhist Circuits
Context: As per recent studies, there has been a markable impact of climate change on the Indian Monsoon.
Context: Climate campaigners have launched the world’s first registry of fossil fuel reserves, production and emissions.
The Global Registry of Fossil Fuels is the first large-scale public database to track what is yet to be burned.
Carbon Tracker, a nonprofit think tank that researches the energy transition’s effect on financial markets, and the Global Energy Monitor, which tracks a range of global energy projects, jointly developed the registry.
These organizations hope the registry will empower groups to hold governments accountable in a range of scenarios, for example, when issuing licenses for fossil fuel extraction.
The inventory includes data from more than 50,000 oil, gas and coal fields in 89 countries, covering 75 per cent of global production.
With the Registry, it will be much easier to include expected future emissions into the analysis, and thus identify and prioritize the companies with the greatest risk of harbouring assets likely to become stranded.
Section 354 (3) of the CrPC, 1973: The courts are required to state reasons in writing for awarding the maximum penalty.
Bachan Singh vs State of Punjab (1980):
Machi Singh vs State of Punjab (1983):
Directions: See another article on authentication of biometrics below.
Context: Andaman and Nicobar (A&N) Islands have got India’s 1st Swachh Sujal Pradesh certification (by Jal Shakti Ministry).
The certification is provided for ensuring 3 things:
All the villages of A&N islands have received Har Ghar Jal Certification.
Context: SBM-Urban 2.0’s maiden edition of ‘Indian Swachhata League’ has mobilized half a million youths and celebrities toward making cities clean, green, and garbage free.
Direction: Not so important. Just glance through it once.
Context: Kazakhstan has invited Indian PM to the CICA summit (Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia)
It was founded in 1999 and is a multi-national forum of countries having a part of its territory in Asia. India is among its 27 members.
Context: The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) has amended the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) with the aim to hasten the changes and maximize recovery.
Context: In order to move towards a “One Nation, One Grid, One frequency, One Price” framework, the Ministry of Power has proposed a centralized power model using MBED.
Benefits: It will help in reducing power purchase costs, provide more flexibility and promotion of renewable energy.
Increasing losses of DISCOMS: As per a recent study by the RBI, a bailout of discoms in 18 large states is likely to impose a burden equivalent to around 2.3 per cent of the GSDP of these states.
Context: PM PRANAM (Promotion of Alternate Nutrients for Agriculture Management Yojana) has been planned to reduce the use of chemical fertilisers by incentivising states
Status of Fertilizer use and subsidy:
Significance of India’s bans on broken rice export
Direction: This is from the Explained article in yesterday’s The Hindu. Link it with the previous article on Rice and this FFP on Broken rice
Context: India has banned the export of broken rice and imposed a 20 per cent duty on exports of various grades of rice, except basmati.
Context: UIDAI has introduced a new security layer for the Aadhaar-enabled Payment System (AePS) to prevent the use of fake fingerprints to fraudulently withdraw money.
Liveness detection in biometrics is the ability of a system to detect if a fingerprint or face (or other biometrics) is real (from a live person present at the point of capture) or fake (from a spoof artefact or lifeless body part). The ‘liveness’ detection is based on (see diagram)
AePS (by National Payment Cooperation of India) is a bank-led model which allows online interoperable financial inclusion transactions at PoS (MicroATM) through the Business correspondent of any bank using the Aadhaar authentication. AePS allows you to do six types of transactions.
The only inputs required for a customer to do a transaction under this scenario are Bank Name, Aadhaar Number and Fingerprint captured during enrollment.
Context: It is a software upgrade to cut down energy consumption in the validation of the Ethereum (a cryptocurrency) blockchain and make it more secure.
‘The Merge,’ will cast aside the need for crypto miners and gigantic mining farms, who had previously driven the blockchain under a mechanism called ‘proof-of-work’ (PoW). Instead, it has now shifted to a ‘proof-of-stake’ (PoS) mechanism that assigns ‘validators’ randomly to approve transactions and earn a small reward.
Will Bitcoin switch to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism?
Highly unlikely! As they work differently.
Also, Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, explicitly stressed the importance of the “proof-of-work” mechanism to secure the blockchain.
Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capitalization. Ethereum was conceived in 2013 by programmer Vitalik Buterin.
What’s next for Ethereum?
Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin had said that post ‘The Merge’, the network will undergo further upgrades which he called the “surge,” “verge,” “purge,” and “splurge”.
Mnemonics to remember countries: (randomly sourced from the Internet)
Bordering Baltic Sea: SELLurRGD&PF (read it as SELL your RecurrinG Deposit & PF):
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