IASbaba’s Daily Current Affairs (Prelims + Mains Focus)- 5th May 2018

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(PRELIMS+MAINS FOCUS)

Key decisions at 27^th GST Council

Part of: GS Prelims (Indian Economy) and Mains GS III

In News: Outcomes of 27^th GST Council

GST Council decides –

• to convert the GST Network into a 100% government enterprise.
• to implement a single form for GST filing from the current three.
• to create a Group of Ministers to review the plan for imposition of a cess on sugar.
• to create another GoM to consider implementation of a 2% incentive for digital transactions.

Why cess on sugar?

The cess was meant to subsidise sugarcane farmers as their production cost is much higher than the selling price.

Important Value Additions:

About GST Council

1. It is a constitutional body (Article 279A)
2. It makes recommendations to the Union and State Government on issues related to GST.

Composition:

• The GST Council is chaired by the Union Finance Minister and other members are the Union State Minister of Revenue or Finance and Ministers in-charge of Finance or Taxation of all the States.

Do you know?

As per Article 279A of the amended Constitution, the GST Council which will be a joint forum of the Centre and the States, shall consist of the following members –

Article link: GST Council approves single form for filing of returns

Vice President to visit Guatemala, Panama and Peru

Part of: Prelims (IR and Geography Map) and GS Mains II (IR, India and the world)

In News:

• Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu to visit Guatemala, Panama and Peru.

Article link:  Vice-President to leave for South America tomorrow

Important Value Additions:

About Gautemala

Observe figure below and identify the following –

1. It is in between Pacific ocean and Caribbean Sea (Gulf of Honduras)
2. It is country of Central America.
3. Capital – Gautemala city

India and Guatemala

Unique features –

• dominance of an Indian culture within its interior uplands
• origin of the name Guatemala is Indian
• volcanic eruptions
• Both nations are part of the Non-Aligned Movement and G-77
• Spice war – There is increased competition between in the production of cardamom between India and Guatemala
• Illegal immigration – Due to the visa-free entry that Guatemala offers to Indian citizens, human trafficking network operates (which transports people from India to the United States)
• Important forum – India and Central American Integration System (SICA)

About Panama:

Observe figure below and identify the following –

1. It is country of Central America.
2. Panama connects other Central American countries with South America
3. It is also in between Pacific ocean and Caribbean Sea
4. Capital – Panama City

India and Panama:

• Indian-Panamanian connection is the oldest in the Central American region
• Sikh immigrants worked on the construction of Panama railways and later the Panama Canal in the early 20th century
• Panama has largest concentration of overseas Indians in Central America
• Part of India-SICA cooperation
• Panama papers leak – Undisclosed incomes of Indians in Panama papers
• Panama is also a member of NAM and G-77

About Peru

Observe figure below and identify the following –

1. It is country of South America
2. Capital – Lima
3. Lake Titicaca (borders Peru and Bolivia) – largest lake in South America and world’s highest navigable body of water.
4. Andes Mountain
5. Pacific Ocean

India and Peru

• Peru – Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Member (India has requested membership in APEC, and received initial support from the United States, Japan, Australia and Papua New Guinea. However, officials have decided not to allow India to join for various reasons, considering that India does not border the Pacific Ocean, which all current members do.)
• Peru is also a member of NAM and G-77.

Windrush Scandal

Part of: GS Prelims (International Affairs)

In News:

• Windrush scandal or Windrush Generation is in news often.
• It deals with scandal over the ill treatment of Caribbean and other Commonwealth nationals by UK’s tough immigration policy.
• Windrush generation were migrants from the Commonwealth Caribbean who came to Britain before 1973 (1971 legislation no longer gave them automatic settlement after that date).

Do you know?

The scandal also includes those who came from many other Commonwealth countries, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and countries in West Africa.

Article link:

1. A post-colonial reckoning: on the Windrush scandal
2. Raising fences: on the plight of Britons of West Indies origin – The Hindu

GravityRAT

Part of: GS Prelims and Mains GS III Cyber Security

In news:

GravityRAT, a malware allegedly designed by Pakistani hackers to infliltrate computers, steal the data of users, and relay it to command and control centres in other countries.

The RAT was first detected by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, CERT-In, on various computers in 2017.

The ‘RAT’ in its name stands for Remote Access Trojan, which is a program capable of being controlled remotely and thus difficult to trace.

Important Value Additions:

CERT-In is operational since January 2004.

CERT-In is the national nodal agency for responding to computer security incidents as and when they occur.

In the recent Information Technology Amendment Act 2008, CERT-In has been designated to serve as the national agency to perform the following functions in the area of cyber security:

• Collection, analysis and dissemination of information on cyber incidents.
• Forecast and alerts of cyber security incidents.
• Emergency measures for handling cyber security incidents.
• Coordination of cyber incident response activities.
• Issue guidelines, advisories, vulnerability notes and whitepapers relating to information security practices, procedures, prevention, response and reporting of cyber Incidents.
• Such other functions relating to cyber security as may be prescribed.

Article link: A RAT that spies on computers

First record of invasive aphid in Kashmir Valley

Part of: GS Prelims and Mains Paper III Environment and Biodiversity

Key Pointers:

• It’s bad news for Kashmir Valley, the fruit bowl of India.
• The brown peach aphid – an insect that attacks temperate fruit trees – has been recorded here for the first time.
• The spread of the aphid could affect the local economy which is dependant on fruit trees to a large extent.

Aphids feed on the saps of plants, attacking plant tissues that transport food to all different plant parts.

In India, the aphid was recorded for the first time in the 1970s from Himachal Pradesh and Punjab.

Article link: First record of invasive aphid in Kashmir Valley

NASA launches InSight

Part of: GS Prelims and Mains III – Science and Tech

In News:

• NASA launched its latest Mars lander, InSight.
• It is designed to perch on the surface of the red planet and listen for ‘Marsquakes’.
• The key instrument on board is a seismometer, called the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure.
• Understanding the temperature on Mars is crucial to NASA’s efforts to send people there by the 2030s, and how much a human habitat might need to be heated under frigid conditions.

Do you know?

• InSight, is short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.

(MAINS FOCUS)

INTERNATIONAL

TOPIC:General Studies 2:

• Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests

200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx

Karl Marx

• German philosopher and revolutionary socialist Karl Marx
• 5 March 2018 – 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx

Important works –

• He published The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital
• Anti-capitalist works that form the basis of ‘Marxism’
• Author of Das Kapital and the leading spirit of the International Workingmen’s Association (known as the First International).

Key takeaways from the editorial –

• Karl Marx’s writings had and still have tremendous influence on most important thinkers of the twentieth century.
• He is regarded as revolutionary prophet.
• Importance of reading Marx and his theories closely, with precision and patience – The writer of the editorial believes that Karl Marx and his writing still matters. His ideas may help us to understand the economic and political inequality of our time.

Is Marx evil?

• Even today, three decades after the fall of the Soviet empire, many still blame Marx for the cruel atrocities that happened around the world in the name of Marxism.
• For those who suffered the communist regimes or simply believed in an anti-communist crusade, Marx continues to be a dangerous mind who should be banned from our schools and universities.
• Recently there were instances of statues of Marx being torn down bitterly and indistinctively.

But despite what happened in the past hundred years in the communist countries, Marx remains an important thinker and a central figure of the modern canon around the world. In other words, he should be read closely, with precision and patience.

His writings were so complex and so antithetical. Any loosely philosophical approach or iconic view of Marx would turn the critical edge of his analysis of modernity and capitalism into wrong principles of a wrong struggle.

Aspirants with following optional subject should therefore read about Marx and his theories –

• History – Rise of socialist ideas (up to Marx); spread of Marxian Socialism.
• Sociology – Karl Marx- Historical materialism, mode of production, alienation, class struggle; Marxist sociology.
• Philosophy – Political Ideologies: Anarchism; Marxism and Socialism
• PSIR – Theories of the Marxist and Marxism (Political ideologies)

Marxism–Leninism

Marxism believes that ‘capitalism can only thrive on the exploitation of the working class’. Marxism believes that there was a real contradiction between human nature and the way that we must work in a capitalist society.

Marxist theories believed – “class struggle is the basic agency of historical change, and that capitalism will ultimately be superseded by communism”.

Leninism comprises socialist political and economic theories, developed from Marxism and Lenin’s interpretations of Marxist theories, for practical application to the socio-political conditions of the Russian Empire of the early 20th century.

Marx remains an important thinker

On the one hand, Marx is a philosopher who believes in the autonomy of human beings, since he affirms that human beings make their own history, that the emancipation of the workers will be the work of the workers themselves.

On the other hand, he is obsessed by the Hegelian idea of making a total system, dominated by the universal law of social transformations in history.

It was precisely this second Marx, the theorist of historical materialism, who was elevated by Engels, Lenin, Stalin and many others as a prophet of a secular religion called socialism. But, the great mistake of several generations of Marxists was to consider Marx’s philosophy of history as a readymade revolutionary recipe for action.

In other words, writer believes that – Marxist revolutionaries such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, etc. adapted those ideas of Marx which suited best the needs of their revolutions and bureaucratic powers.

They were responsible (in the form of Marxism-Leninism ideology) to turn the materialist and historicist philosophy of Marx into a revolutionary eschatology and in many cases into thermodynamics of terror.

Marx should be viewed as a critical mind with the great intellectual courage of a Socratic gadfly (“a person who persistently annoys or provokes others with criticism, schemes, ideas, demands, requests, etc.”) who continues to defy our way of thinking and living in a market-driven world.

Writer believes that we should celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of a major thinker of human history who has found his place in the pantheon of great philosophers next to Kant, Schelling, Fichte and Hegel.

Connecting the dots:

• 150 years of ‘Das Kapital’: How relevant is Marx today?
• Is Karl Marx still relevant today? What are his major contributions?

MUST READ

Rising Fences

The Hindu

Karl Marx 2.00

Indian Express

Karl Marx’s echo in Ambedkar

Indian Express

Architecture for privacy

Indian Express

(TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE)

Model questions: (You can now post your answers in comment section)

Q.1) Consider the following statements with regard to GST Council:

1. It is a constitutional body.
2. Prime Minister is the Chairperson of the Council.
3. Members of the Council include Union Finance Minister and States Finance Minister

Which of the statements provided above is/are correct?

1. 1 only
2. 1 and 2 only
3. 2 and 3 only
4. 1, 2 and 3

Q.2) Which among the following is/are countries of South America?

1. Gautemala
2. Panama
3. Peru
4. Guyana
5. Ecuador

Choose the correct answer:

1. 1, 2 and 3
2. 2, 3 and 4
3. 3, 4 and 5
4. 2, 3, 4 and 5

Q.3) Which among the following countries are located in between and touches both Pacific ocean and Caribbean Sea?

1. Peru
2. Panama
3. Gautemala
4. Nicaragua

Choose the correct answer:

1. 2 and 3
2. 3 only
3. 1, 2 and 3
4. 2, 3 and 4

Q.4) Lake Titicaca, largest lake in South America and world’s highest navigable body of water, is located between –

1. Peru and Bolivia
2. Panama and Gautemala
3. Peru and Chile
4. Ecuador and Nicaragua

Q.5) Consider the following statements about Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and identify the incorrect statement:

1. It is a regional economic forum established in 1989.
2. India is a founding member of APEC.
3. It is a forum for 21 Pacific Rim member economies that promotes free trade throughout the Asia-Pacific region.
4. China is also a part of APEC.

Q.6) Windrush scandal or Windrush Generation is often in new. It deals with –

1. Corruption in India’s wind energy association, which is accused of blatant fakery.
2. UK’s tough immigration policy and ill treatment of Caribbean and other Commonwealth nationals.
3. OPEC members’ straightforward corruption scandal that started with some of their state-owned oil companies.
4. Agusta-Westland chopper scam or Choppergate

Q.7) GravityRAT was in news recently. What is it about?

1. Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
2. A RAT that spies on computers.
3. NASA’s latest Mars lander designed to perch on the surface of the red planet and listen for ‘Marsquakes’.
4. The most advanced computer mouse which can work with or without a surface.