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National Democratic Alliance candidate and former West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar will be the 14 th Vice-President of the country. He secured 528 votes out of the 710 valid votes in the 16 th Vice-Presidential election held in Parliament.
The Opposition candidate and Congress leader, Margaret Alva, got 182 votes. Ms. Alva said by supporting Mr. Dhankhar “directly or indirectly”, some Opposition parties and their leaders had damaged their own credibility.
Secretary General of the Lok Sabha Utpal Kumar Singh, who was the Returning Officer of the election, told reporters that of the 780 electors comprising of elected and nominated members of the Rajya Sabha and elected members of the Lok Sabha, 725 MPs voted. The total elector turnout was 92.94%.
Out of the 725 votes, 15 were invalid and the total valid votes were 710, which is 97.93% of the total votes. The Opposition was expecting close to 200 votes based on the support announced by various Opposition parties.
Just two out of the 36 Trinamool Congress MPs turned up for voting. The Opposition party had announced that they will boycott the poll as they were not consulted before announcing Ms. Alva’s candidature.
Senior leaders congratulated Mr. Dhankhar over his victory. President DroupadiMurmu said the nation would benefit from his long and rich experience in public life.
My best wishes for a productive and successful tenure. Outgoing Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu said the nation would greatly benefit from Mr. Dhankhar’s vast experience and legal expertise. “My best wishes for a successful and fruitful tenure.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh met Mr. Dhankhar and congratulated him. “I am confident he will be an outstanding Vice-President. Our nation will gain tremendously from his intellect and wisdom,” Mr. Modi said.
China’s military exercisessimulating attack: Taiwan(Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
China continued its military exercises in six regions surrounding Taiwan for a third day, with the Chinese military saying it was testing its land strike and sea assault capabilities.
Taiwan said the drills were a “possible simulated attack” on the island. “Multiple PLA craft were detected around Taiwan Strait, some have crossed the median line, adding that it had deployed naval vessels and activated land-based missile systems in response. A record 68 Chinese aircraft and 13 warships had crossed the median of the Taiwan Strait.
China’s military drills, which will continue until Sunday, came as a response to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. The drills, Chinese anlaysts have said, could herald a new normal in China’s deployments around Taiwan.
Taking place in six regions surrounding the island, the exercises have placed an effective blockade on Taiwan’s waters and airspace, and also for the first time entered 12 nautical miles of the coast, into what Taiwan sees as its waters. China has also fired conventional missiles over the island.
Amid the tensions, Taiwan media reported on Saturday a top military official overseeing missile production died from a heart attack.
Ouyang Li-hsing, 57, deputy to the president of the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST), was in charge of supervising the manufacturing of missiles. Reports said he fell ill and was found in his hotel in Pingtung. A relative told the police that he had “a history of chronic coronary artery disease.
States
Sri Lankans’ job hunt in West Asia hurts prospects of NRIs (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The desperate migration of Sri Lankan youths to West Asian cities in search of jobs has created flutters in the overseas job market as it may affect the employment prospects of Indians, especially Keralites, who account for a major share of Indians who work in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.
According to statistics available by the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment Promotion (SLBFEP), as many as 1.56 lakh Sri Lankan youths have left for various countries, mainly West Asia, since January.
The Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) in GCC countries said the distressed migration from Sri Lanka had the potential to replace a section of the workforce from other countries, including from India, in the Gulf if the current trend continued. Compared to Indians, Sri Lankans were cheap alternatives for companies here as they could employ two or three Sri Lankans in place of an Indian, said Ibrahim Kaleel, State secretary, Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre (KMCC), Dubai, the NRI outfit of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML).
Among the countries which received the Sri Lankans, Kuwait accounts for the highest number of 39,216 people, followed by Qatar (36,229), Saudi Arabia (26,098), South Korea (3,219) and Japan (2,576).
Obviously, the Sri Lankan migration to GCC countries would have a ripple on the job markets in West Asia as largescale migration would often redefine the existing markets. And the chances were high if it was a distressed migration.
Earlier, female housemaids from Sri Lanka had mainly migrated to West Asian cities even as the educated people from that country were looking for commonwealth countries such as Australia or the U.K. for migration.
But the current spectrum of civil war coupled with political and economic uncertainty seemed to have driven the present distressed migration, said Muraleedharan Nair, former Indian diplomat in China.
G. Pramod Kumar, former senior advisor, United Nations Development Programme (Asia Pacific), said they did not have a legacy of skilled professional migration in West Asia.
In the past, women housemaids accounted for 80% of their migration to West Asia, which even created a lot of social issues in the island nation. But now, male constituted major share of their migration.
Though it would create some ripple effect in the job market in the initial days, it would not have a lasting effect as they did not have a legacy like Indians in GCC countries.
News
Foreign firms achieve only 82%target in defence deal offsets(Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
The total offset commitment by foreign defence companies to be fulfilled in India for various defence deals during the last 15 years, was $6.83 billion till August 01, 2022 of which they fulfilled offset claims worth 82.13% or about $5.61 billion.
Expressing concern over the shortfall, MP Kunwar Danish Ali who raised this question said this “huge money could revive MSME (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) sector and create a lot of jobs.
“Total 15 companies have missed the first deadline set for implementation of their defence offset commitment. Further details being strategic and sensitive in nature, cannot be disclosed.
For unfulfilled offset obligations, penalty as applicable has been imposed on the defaulting vendors as per the governing Defence Offset Guidelines.
Further, in genuine cases, re-phasing of offset obligations has been allowed to enable vendors to discharge the pending offset obligations, Mr. Bhatt stated, detailing the steps taken by the Defence Ministry to prevent default or delay in implementation of offset commitments by vendors.
Defence offset policy was promulgated under Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) 2005 with the objective that it would bring in high-end technology into the country and build the domestic defence industry.
Under offset clause, a foreign company which wins a defence deal is supposed to invest back a part of the contract value in the country thus developing skills and bringing in technology while also generating employment.
It’s so unfortunate that Government is not seriously implementing defence offset agreements with various foreign companies worth $6.83 billion.
This huge money could revive MSME sector and create a lot of jobs. I will demand a short duration discussion in the next session of Parliament,” Mr. Ali said on Twitter, on Saturday.
As per DPP 2006, offset value has been fixed at 30% of defence deals above ₹300 crore which was revised to ₹2000 crore in DPP 2016 for full import deals. The first offset contract was signed in 2007.
In Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020, the Government has removed the requirement of offset clause in Inter Governmental Agreements like the Rafale deal.
The offset guidelines have also been revised in DPP 2020 wherein preference will now be given to manufacture of complete defence products over components and various multipliers have been added to give incentivisation in discharge of offsets.
Auditing the offset deals till March 2018, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in its report tabled in the Parliament in September 2020 had stated that 46 offset contracts were signed for ₹66,427 crore and till December 2018, ₹19,223 crore worth of offsets should have been discharged.
Indian Virtual Herbarium, biggest database of country’s flora, is a global hit(Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
With details of about one lakh plant specimens, Indian Virtual Herbarium, the biggest virtual database of flora in the country, is generating a lot of interest and turning out to be an eye-catching endeavour.
While herbarium specimens are considered important tools for plant taxonomy, conservation, habitat loss and even climate change, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently described Indian Virtual Herbarium as an example of how digital tools can help us connect to our roots.
In the ‘Mann Ki Baat ‘ episode on July 31, 2022, the Prime Minister spoke about the novel initiative and said that Indian Virtual Herbarium is an interesting collection of plants and preserved parts of plants.
The virtual herbarium also presents a rich botanical diversity of the country. I am convinced that Indian Virtual Herbarium will turn out to be an important resource for research on plants in the country,” Mr. Modi said.
Developed by scientists of the Botanical Survey of India (BSI), Indian Virtual Herbarium was inaugurated by Union Minister of Environment Forest and Climate Change Bhupendra Yadav on July 1 in Kolkata.
Each record in the digital herbarium includes an image of the preserved plant specimen, scientific name, collection locality, and collection date, collector name, and barcode number.
The digital herbarium also includes features to extract the data State-wise and users can search plants of their own States which will help them to identify regional plants and in building regional checklists.
The portal includes about one lakh images of herbarium specimens; Director of Botanical Survey of India (BSI) Dr. A.A. Mao said by the end of this year the number of digitized species will increase to two lakh.
Scientists say that there are approximately three million plant specimens in the country which are with different herbaria that are located at zonal centers of BSI and at the Central National Herbarium located at Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden at Howrah in West Bengal.
Work on the digitization of the specimens started in 2019, and most of the digitalization has been done by the BSI. About 52% of our type specimens are from foreign and collected from 82 countries of the world during the British-era.
The Indian Virtual Herbarium is also deeply linked with the botanical history of the country. The portal provides most valuable historical collections of botanists like William Roxburgh, Nathaniel Wallich, Joseph Dalton Hooker among others who are considered founding fathers of botany in India.
Science and Technology
Why strengthening genomic surveillance is an imperative(Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
Ever since it was first reported in humans in 1970, monkeypox virus infections have been largely restricted to countries in Central and Eastern Africa until recently.
Early in 2022, multiple cases were identified in Spain and several cases were reported from countries where the disease is not endemic, including regions in Europe and North America, and in patients with no history of travel to endemic regions.
Following a rapid rise in cases, the World Health Organization (WHO) on July 23, 2022 declared the 2022 monkeypox outbreak as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). As of early August 2022, over 25,000 cases of monkeypoxhave been reported from 83 countries, 76 of which have never historically reported monkeypox.
The accelerated use of genomics as a tool to understand outbreaks in the last half decade has left an indelible mark during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and has seen a wider deployment of sequencing infrastructure across the world.
Genomic surveillance of pathogens could provide unique insights to understand the outbreak better, track the spread of pathogens and provide immense opportunities for public health decision-making as well as for epidemiology.
Researchers from across the world have made available over 650 complete genome sequences of monkeypox isolates to date in public domain databases including GISAID and GenBank.
This includes over 600 genomes which were sequenced this year alone from over 35 countries, including genomes of two isolates from India, collected from Kerala.
The monkeypox virus has a DNA genome of around 2,00,000 base pairs, roughly six times larger than that of SARS-CoV-2.
Like other viruses, the monkeypox virus evolves by the accumulation of genetic errors, or mutations, in its genome when it replicates inside a host. Information about mutations occurring in different genome sequences of the monkeypox virus across different regions can, thus, provide essential insights into how the virus is evolving, its genetic diversity and other factors that may be relevant to the development of diagnostic tools.
Study of rock agama gives insights into urbanisation, conservation (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
The Peninsular Rock Agama (Psammophilus dorsalis) which is a type of garden lizard has a strong presence in southern India. Habitat loss and other such features of urbanisation have affected the presence of the animal in urban centres.
A study carried out by researchers from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, undertook to characteriseurbanisation in the region and also to understand where the rock agama reside in and around Bengaluru specifically.
The study, published in Frontiers in Conservation Science, examined several environmental factors that could affect the presence of the lizard and revealed that they are found mainly in rocky places and warm spots.
Thus, the inference is that conservation efforts must point towards retaining rocky patches even while reviving landscapes by planting trees.
This lizard is a large animal, strikingly coloured in orange and black. They do not generate their own body heat, so they need to seek warmth from external sources like a warm rock or a sunny spot on the wall.
They are important in ecology from different aspects — they can indicate which parts of the city are warming, and their numbers show how the food web is changing.
Maria Thaker from the Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc, Bengaluru, who is an author of the paper, says that since these lizards eat insects and are in turn eaten by raptors, snakes and dogs, they cannot live in places where there are no insects.
Insects are critical components of a healthy ecosystem as they provide so many services, including pollination. So, while rock agamas are interesting in themselves, they are also a good model system to understand other aspects of the ecosystem.
Dr. Thaker’s PhD students MadhuraAmdekar and AbhijitNageskumar along with student volunteers systematically surveyed Bengaluru and the surrounding area. “We counted the number of lizards in over a hundred 20 by 20 metre plots and collected fine-scale habitat information that is not available from satellite data using photographs taken by drones.
Creatures that crossed an ocean to find India(Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
You will most likely see lemurs in a Hollywood animation movie; singing, dancing and playing pranks. In the wild, they are found only on the island of Madagascar, which, to naturalists has always been a place of intriguing creatures.
Many life forms in Madagascar have affinities to lineages found in India (3,800 km away) rather than Africa (413 km). This posed a ‘difficult enigma’ to naturalists.
Zoologist Philip Sclater was perplexed by the presence of lemurs, their relatives, and their fossils in Madagascar and India, but not in nearby Africa or the Middle East.
In the 1860s, he proposed that a large island or continent must have once existed between India and Madagascar, serving as a land bridge. Over time, this island had sunk. He called this proposed island Lemuria.
Sclater’s hypothesis fascinated occultists such as Helena Blavatsky, who thought that this had to be the place, now lost, where humans originated.
Tamil revivalists such as DevaneyaPavanar also took up the idea, in the form of a Tamil civilisation, lost to the sea as described in literature and in Pandyan legends. They called this submerged continent KumariKandam.
Sclater’s ideas lost favour when another ‘outlandish’ theory, of continental drift, began to gain acceptance. In plate tectonics, the large rocky plates that we stand on float on molten subterranean rocks and move 2-15 cm per year relative to each other.
A landmass called Gondwana, split into two 165 million years ago — one containing what is now Africa and South America, the other comprising India, Madagascar, Australia and Antarctica.
Around 115 million years ago, Madagascar and India together broke free. Around 88 million years ago, India moved northward, dropping a few parcels of land along the way to form Seychelles. It joined the Eurasian mass 50 million years ago giving rise to the Himalayas and South Asia that we are familiar with.
Around 115 million years ago, it was the dinosaurs that ruled. Many life forms had not even evolved. Supporting the Gondwana breakup, dinosaur fossils found in India and Madagascar are closely related, and do not resemble species found in Africa and Asia. Fragments of Laplatosaurusmadagascarensis have been found in both India and Madagascar.
FAQ
Why is Taiwan caught between U.S. and China? (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
On August 3, United States House Speaker and senior Democratic Party politician Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan. In Taipei, Ms. Pelosi held talks with President Tsai Ing-wen, addressed the legislature, and received a civilian honour.
The trip was the highest-level visit from the U.S. to Taiwan in 25 years. China, which had publicly warned the U.S. against going ahead with it, saying it would violate commitments under the ‘One China Policy’, has since responded with diplomatic, military and economic measures.
Speaking in Taipei, Ms. Pelosi said her visit was focussed on three issues: human rights, trade and security. Ms. Pelosi also wanted to send a message of solidarity with Taiwan.
She said the world “faces a choice between democracy and autocracy” and the visit was aimed at expressing that “America’s determination to preserve democracy in Taiwan and in the world remains iron-clad”.
Ms. Pelosi has previously spoken out about human rights issues involving China in Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and the visit, by most accounts, has been driven by the House Speaker rather than by the administration.
Taiwan has welcomed this rare high-level visit as a boost to its global standing, although the White House and U.S. military were far from enthusiastic about the visit, expecting repercussions on relations with China.
U.S. President Joe Biden said last month the visit was “not a good idea”, but added that the decision to visit was entirely Ms. Pelosi’s. However, as she was a representative of a different branch of government (the legislature), the White House (representing the executive) could not intervene.
Members of the U.S. Congress — Ms. Pelosi is currently Speaker of the House of Representatives — have previously visited Taiwan, although Ms. Pelosi is the first Speaker, and thus highest-level visitor, since 1997.
While U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken argued that this suggested there was “precedent” for the visit, China has seen it as an attempt by the U.S. to change the status quo as far as its ‘One China Policy’ is concerned.
In Beijing’s view, Ms. Pelosi’s visit is the latest of a number of moves, going back to the previous Trump administration, aimed at “hollowing out” and redefining the ‘One China Policy’. Hence, the robust response from China.
The answer depends on how the ‘One China Policy’ is interpreted, and both sides have clearly done so differently. The joint communique that established diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China in 1979 declared that “the United States of America recognises the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China”.
Since the establishment of relations with China, the U.S. no longer has formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan under the ‘One China Policy’. Within this context, the very first paragraph of the communique adds, “the people of the United States will maintain cultural, commercial, and other unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan.”
How will the 5G auction impact the sector? (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
The auction of telecom spectrum, including bands for offering fifth generation (5G) technology services, concluded on Monday drawing record bids exceeding ₹1.50 lakh crore.
Telecom Minister AshwiniVaishnaw said 71% of the 72,098 MHz of spectrum on offer was sold. Reliance Jio emerged as the top bidder, staking claim for a period of 20 years to 24,740 MHz of spectrum. Bharti Airtel stood second with 19,867.8 MHz worth spectrum and Vodafone-Idea third with 6,228.4 MHz worth spectrum.
The mop-up from the bids with respect to 5G airwaves was almost double in comparison to that of 4G last year.
According to the telecom Minister, “Spectrum purchased is good enough to cover all circles in the country. [In the] coming two-three years, we will have good 5G coverage.” As per the Ministry, the roll-out of 5G services is likely to start by September/October.
Spectrum in three bands, namely, low (constituting of 600, 700, 800, 900, 1800, 2,100 and 2,500 MHz bands), mid (3,300 MHz) and high (26 GHz — 1 GHz equals 1000 Mhz) frequency bands were put up for auction.
Low-band spectrum is popular for providing wider coverage, however, the speed and latency might just be an incremental upgrade over 4G. Speed is subject to the proximity to the source.
On the other hand, the high band spectrum can provide speeds of up to two Gbps but is unable to travel longer distances, at times, less than a mile. Additionally, signals from the low-band spectrum can travel through windows and walls which is not the case with the high-band.
The mid-band spectrum falls somewhere between the two. It can carry sizeable data over longer distances and maintain increased speeds.
The mid and the high-band garnered maximum attention at the auction with 76% and 72% of the available spectrum respectively sold. Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio combined, staked claim to 87% of the total purchased spectrum in these two bands, strengthening their operational capability in the 5G market.
While making bids for spectrum, telcos take note of their existing financial position and priorities. Thus, not all spectrum on offer is acquired. For example, the 700 Mhz spectrum went unsold in 2016 and 2021.