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1 Smart Abhyas/June/2019
1Smart Abhyas/June/2019
Polity and Social Issues
1. Periodic Labour Force Survey 2017-18
2. SDG Gender Index
3. Elected on more than one seat: What you need to know
4. Cabinet Committees: What you need to know
5. Chaukhandi Stupa is of “national importance”
6. Foreigners Tribunals
7. Traffic Index 2018
8. By 2027, India’s population to cross China’s: UN
9. The QS World University Rankings
10. India placed in ‘Tier 2’ in human trafficking report
11. ILO Convention on Violence and Harassment
12. Simultaneous polls: What you need to know
13. Inner Line Permit: What you need to know
14. Second edition of NITI Aayog’s Health Index
15. Is India on track to achieve the Sustainable Develop-ment Goal on hunger?
16. Progress of the World’s Women 2019-2020: Families in a Changing World
17. The Legacy of Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab
Geography. Ecology and Biodiversity
5. A Global Map of where the groundwater meets the Oceans
6. Existing water cycle diagrams outdated
7. Many colours of the golden cat
8. Paddy cultivation not suitable for Haryana
9. Eastern Himalayas, the treasure trove of balsams
10. Temples and turtle conservation
11. United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification
12. Joint Monitoring Programme report by UNICEF and WHO
13. Wildlife Protection Act 1972
14. The Indian Monsoon : What you need to know
15. Beekeeping Development Committee releases its report
Economy
1. Benchmarking India’s Payment Systems: An RBI Report
2. Global Economic Prospects (GEP) report
3. Fiscal Performance Index
4. RBI tweaks leverage ratio
5. Stressed asset resolution norms revised
6. India’s exports in the past five years
7. Assessment of GST’s performance
8. Bimal Jalan Committee
9. Initiatives to improve the conditions of Government Banks
10. Asset Reconstruction Company
11. U.K. Sinha-led RBI committee
12. Black money: What you need to know
1. Indian Navy Environment Conservation Roadmap (INECR)
2. 596 new species from India in 2018
3. Guru Nanak Sacred Forests
4. Delay in the onset of monsoon and what it signifies
Science and Technology
International Relations, Summits and Meetings
Government Schemes and Initiatives
1. UdChalo initiative
2. Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to Prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (MLI)
3. Defence Space Research Agency
4. Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana (PMBJP)
5. Rashtriya Gokul Mission
6. National Animal Disease Control Programme for Foot and Mouth Disease and Brucellosis
7. Janani Suraksha Yojana (Ministry of Health and Fam-ily Welfare)
8. Jal Shakti Abhiyan
9. Proposed Mission on National Language Translation
10. Poor utilisation of Nirbhaya Fund by some states
11. One Nation, one ration card from July 1st 2020
1. E-cigarettes need to go
2. Nipah Virus: What you need to know
3. Important to deal with diabetes at an earlier stage
4. 5G: What you need to know
5. Janaki Ammal
6. Converting plastic to yarn
7. Canada to ban single use plastics
8. Bharat Stage VI fuelfrom 2021
9. Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES)
10. AHSTDV (Hypersonic Technology Demonstrator Vehicle)
11. Converting fruit waste to ethanol
12. Libra is Facebook’s new cryptocurrency
13. Carbon Quantum Dots (CQDs)
14. AWaRe: A tool to fight anti-microbial resistance
15. Indian scientists develop more potent Anthrax vac-cine
16. New study on HIV prevalence in India
17. Antibodies developed against Chikungunya viral infection
18. Data flow: What you need to know
19. Direct Seeded Rice
20.NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)
21. Use of Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture
22. NASA’s Dragonfly
23. NASA’s PUNCH mission
1. Arab League
2. US says no more Generalized System of Preferences for India
3. Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2019
4. First G7 economy with net zero carbon emissions by 2050
5. Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil artery
6. Kimberley Process (KP)
7. Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit 2019 : Bishkek
8. Asian Development Bank (ADB)
9. Countries reducing n-warheads but modernising arsenals: report
Point Blank (Facts for prelims)
10. World Health Organisation: What you need to know
11. Financial Action Task Force
12. Ambassadors of Peace
13. Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership
1. Kappaphycus Alvarezii Seaweed
2. New species of Wasp
3. Global Entrepreneurship Summit
4. India’s most profitable Public Sector Company
5. Hike in National Defence Fund Scholarship Assistance
6. China launches Sea Based Rocket
7. Gujarat tops the country with an annual fish produc-tion of 7.8 lakh tonnes
8. Kharga Prahar
9. SPICE-2000 Bombs
10. National Maritime Heritage Museum at Lothal
11. India’s first Dinosaur Museum Park inaugurated in Gujarat
12. End of Childhood Index
13. The 16th Asia Media Summit
14. India grants USD 15 million to Niger for holding the African Union Summit
15. Water Clinic for Elephants
16. Third Indo-French Cyber Dialogue
17. UAE launches UN-developed Anti Money Laundering Platform ‘goAML’
18. NASA’s first Astrobee Robot “Bumble”
19. Operation Sankalp
20. Kolhapuri Chappal gets GI tag
21. El Salvador recognises forests as Living Entities
22. Paddy frog
23. Varunastra
24. Operation Sunrise 2
25. Jal Shakti Mantralaya
26. New species of ‘Cat fox’
27. Imphal Peace Museum
28. Lunar Evacuation System
6Smart Abhyas/June/2019
Polity and Social Issues
Index
1. Online fraud in India
2. Online fraud: What you need to know
3. WHO report on AMR
4. Antibiotic resistance in Indian population
5. Prime Minister of India
6. Cabinet committees
7. SDG Gender Index
8. Child Labour
9. Speaker of Lok Sabha
10. President address to both houses of Parliament
11. Joint Sitting of Two Houses
12. SDG: 6
13. Yoga
14. India’s Health Index
15. The Emergency
16. National Register of Citizens
17. Assam Accord
Geography. Ecology and Biodiversity
1. New species of Vine Snake
2. World Environment Day 2019
3. Environmental impact of the SBM on water, food and soil
Government Schemes and Initiatives
1. Spectrum Allocation in India
2. Swachh Bharat Mission
3. The Aadhar & Other Laws Amendment Bill, 2019
4. Virtual ID
Science and Technology
1. Single layer graphene
2. Transport fleet of Indian Air force
3. Anti-biotic resistance
4. China’s 5g Era
5. Dry Eye Disease
6. Arsenic and its contamination
7. Bharat Stage VI
8. Cyclones and their formation
9. Chandrayaan-1
10. Chandrayaan-2
11. BS-VI certificate for 2-wheelers
12. Acute Encephalitis Syndrome
13. Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) space tele-scope
14. AWaRe Tool
15. Superbugs
16. Artificial Intelligence
17. Smoking affects unborn babies
7Smart Abhyas/June/2019
International Relations, Summits and Meetings
1. South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
2. BIMSTEC
3. Extradition
4. Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
5. G20 Summit
All India Radio
A discussion on
1. Bimonthly review of Monetary Policy
2. India-Maldives bilateral relations
3. bilateral relations between India and Sri Lanka
4. 5-I vision and G20 Summit
5. Eradication of Tuberculosis
8Smart Abhyas/June/2019
POLITY AND SOCIAL ISSUES
Periodic Labour Force Survey 2017-18
What is the issue?
• Unemployment of the country stood at 6.1% of the total labour force in 2017-’18, the highest in 45 years, according to a report released by the Minis-try of Statistics and Programme Implementation.
Who releases the Periodic Labour Force Survey?
• The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) has been designed to yield annual estimates of the labour force on employment and unemployment along with quarterly estimates for the urban areas. It is released by National Sample Survey Office, Minis-try of Statistics and Programme Implementation.
• The Periodic Labour Force Survey is also the first annual household survey of the National Sample Survey Office. Its data was collected between July 2017 and June 2018.
Key takeaways from the Report:
• Indicating a shift towards rise in self-employment over the last eight years in rural areas, the Peri-odic Labour Force Survey 2017-18 shows that the percentage of self-employed in rural India went up across both male and female as against that seen in 2009-10.
• While the percentage of salaried employees in rural areas also witnessed a rise during this period, there has been a notable drop in the percentage of casual labour in rural areas as they moved away from agricultural labour to self-employment and salaried jobs.
• While the percentage of rural self-employed stood at 53.5 per cent in 2009-10 among men, that in 2017-18 stood higher at 57.8 per cent. Similarly, in the case of rural women, the percentage of self-employed rose from 55.7 per cent to 57.7 in the same time period.
• On the contrary, the percentage of men casual labour in rural areas went down from 38 per cent in 2009-10 to 28.2 per cent in 2017-18, percentage of women casual labour in rural areas fell from 39.9 per cent to 31.8 per cent in the same time period.
• The disaggregated data provides some explanation for this shift It shows that while the casual labour in non-agriculture activity remained almost con-stant between 2011-12 and 2017-18, the percentage in agricultural activity witnessed a sharp decline from 21 per cent in 2011-12 to 12.1 per cent in 2017-18.
• They, however, seemed to move towards self-em-ployment or salaried job.
• While the percentage of self-employed went up from 49.8 to 52.2 per cent in the six-year period, the per-centage of salaried went up from 9.6 to 12.7 per cent.
• In the urban areas, however, while there is a decline in the percentage of men and women who are self-em-ployed or are working as casual labour from 2009-10 to 2017-18, there has been a significant rise in the per-centage of those working on regular wage or salary.
• While the percentage of urban self-employed male fell from 41.1 per cent in 2009-10 to 39.2 per cent, the percentage of female self-employed fell sharply from 41.1 per cent to 34.7 per cent in the same period.
• If the percentage of male casual labour fell from 17 per cent in 2009-10 to 15.1 per cent in 2017-18, that of female casual labour dropped from 19.6 per cent to 13.1 per cent in the same eight-year period.
• The growth was seen in salaried class as the per-centage of males rose from 41.9 per cent to 45.7 and that for females went up significantly from 39.3 per cent to 52.1 per cent.
• The survey also shows a sharp decline in the labour force participation rate (LFPR) over the last eight years. While it declined from 46.8 in 2009-10 to 38.2 per cent in 2017-18 for both males and females across both rural and urban areas (for those in age bracket of 15-29 years), it went down from 65.9 per cent to 58.8 for males and from 26.3 to 16.4 per cent in case of women in the age bracket of 15 to 29 years.
9Smart Abhyas/June/2019
MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTION Periodic Labour Force Survey is compiled and pub-lished by?
a) National Sample Survey Office
b) Chief Economic Advisor
c) Reserve Bank of India
d) Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council
Solution: a
SDG Gender Index
What is the issue?
• A new index to measure global gender equality was recently launched and ranks India at 95th among 129 countries.
Moron SDG Gender Index:
• The SDG Gender Index has been developed by Equal Measures 2030, a joint effort of regional and global organisations including African Wom-en’s Development and Communication Network, Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and International Women’s Health Coalition.
• It accounts for 14 out of 17 SDGs (sustainable development goals) that cover aspects such as poverty, health, education, literacy, political representation and equality at the workplace.
• A score of 100 reflects the achievement of gender equality in relation to the targets set for each indi-cator. It means, for example, that 100% of girls com-plete secondary education, or that there is around 50-50 parity for women and men in Parliament. A score of 50 signifies that a country is about halfway to meet a goal.
Key takeaways from the Index:
• The ranking found that the world is far from achieving gender equality with 1.4 billion girls and women living in countries that get a “very poor” grade. The global average score of the 129 coun-tries — which represent 95% of the world’s girls and women — is 65.7 out of 100 (“poor” in the index).
• Altogether, 2.8 billion girls and women live in coun-tries that get either a “very poor” (59 and below) or “poor” score (60-69) on gender equality. Just 8% of the world’s population of girls and women live in countries that received a “good” gender equality score (80-89) and no country achieved an “excellent” overall score of 90 or above.
Key findings for India
• India’s highest goal scores are on health (79.9), hunger and nutrition (76.2), and energy (71.8). Its lowest goal scores are on partnerships (18.3, in the bottom 10 countries worldwide), industry, infra-structure and innovation (38.1), and climate (43.4).
• On indicators that define such goals, India scored 95.3 on the percentage of female students en-rolled in primary education who are overage. Some of India’s lowest scores on indicators include the proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments (score 23.6; women made up 11.8% of Parliament in 2018). On seats held by women in the Supreme Court (4%), India has a score of 18.2.
• On gender-based violence, indicators include proportion of women aged 20-24 years who were married or in a union before age 18 (27.3%), women who agreed that a husband/partner is justified in beating his wife/partner under certain circumstanc-es (47.0%), and women aged 15+ who reported that they “feel safe walking alone at night in the city or area where she lives” (69.1%).
MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTION Consider the following statements with reference to SDG Gender Index
1. It has been developed by World Bank
2. It accounts for 14 out of 17 SDGs (sustainable development goals) that cover aspects such as poverty, health, education, literacy, political rep-resentation and equality at the workplace
Which of the above mentioned statements are true ?
a) 1 only b) 2 only
c) Both are true d) Both are false
Solution: b
10Smart Abhyas/June/2019
Elected on more than one seat: What
you need to know
What is the issue?
• The first session of the 17th Lok Sabha will com-mence on June 17, and Rajya Sabha is scheduled to meet on June 20.
• Some of those who won in the elections were elected from more than one constituency; some were already members of either Rajya Sabha or the legislature of a state. These MPs must vacate one of their seats — because, under the Constitution, an individual cannot simultaneously be a member of both Houses of Parliament (or a state legisla-ture), or both Parliament and a state legislature, or represent more than one seat in a House.
What are the procedures and timelines for ef-fecting this?
Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha
• If a person is elected simultaneously to both Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, and if he has not yet taken his seat in either House, he can choose, within 10 days from the later of the dates on which he is cho-sen to those Houses, the House of which he would like to be a member. [Article 101(1) of the Constitu-tion read with Section 68(1) of The Representation of the People Act, 1951]
• The member must intimate his choice in writing to the Secretary to the Election Commission of India (ECI) within the 10-day window, failing which his seat in Rajya Sabha will fall vacant at the end of this period. [Sec 68(2), RPA 1951]. The choice, once intimated, is final. [Sec 68(3), RPA, 1951]
• No such option is, however, available to a person who is already a member of one House and has contested the election for membership of the other House. So, if a sitting Rajya Sabha member contests and wins a Lok Sabha election, his seat in the Upper House becomes automatically vacant on the date he is declared elected to Lok Sabha. The same applies to a Lok Sabha member who contests an election to Rajya Sabha. [Sec 69 read with Sec 67A, RPA 1951]
Elected on two Lok Sabha seats
• There is no one in this category in the new Lok Sabha. Under Sec 33(7) of RPA, 1951, an individual can contest from two parliamentary constituen-cies but, if elected from both, he has to resign one seat within 14 days of the declaration of the result, failing which both his seats shall fall vacant. [Sec 70, RPA, 1951 read with Rule 91 of the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961]
State Assembly and Lok Sabha
• Under Article 101(2) of the Constitution (read with Rule 2 of the Prohibition of Simultaneous Member-ship Rules, 1950, made by the President under this Article) members of state legislatures who have been elected to Lok Sabha must resign their seats within 14 days “from the date of publication in the Gazette of India or in the Official Gazette of the State, whichever is later, of the declaration that he has been so chosen”, failing which their seats in Lok Sabha shall automatically fall vacant.
Cabinet Committees: What you need
to know
What is the issue?
• Recently, the Union government released the com-position of eight Cabinet Committees, including two new ones — one on Investment, the other on Employment and Skill Development.
Transaction of Business
• The executive works under the Government of India Transaction of Business Rules, 1961. These Rules emerge out of Article 77(3) of the Consti-tution, which states: “The President shall make rules for the more convenient transaction of the business of the Government of India, and for the allocation among Ministers of the said business.” The Rules mandate the minister-in-charge of a department (ministry) to dispose of “all business allotted to a department under” him or her.
• However, “when the subject of a case concerns more than one department”, no decision can be taken “until all such departments have concurred, or, failing such concurrence, a decision thereon has been taken by or under the authority of the Cabi-net”.
11Smart Abhyas/June/2019
• The Prime Minister constitutes Standing Com-mittees of the Cabinet and sets out the specific functions assigned to them. He can add or reduce the number of committees.
• Ad hoc committees of ministers, including Groups of Ministers, may be appointed by the Cabinet or by the Prime Minister for specific matters.
Key Committees
1. Cabinet Committee on Appointments
• This panel makes appointments to posts of the three service chiefs, Director General of Military Operations, chiefs of all Air and Army Commands, Director General of Defence Intelligence Agency, Scientific Advisor to the Defence Minister, Director General of Armed Forces Medical Services, Director General of Ordnance Factories, Director General of Defence Estates, Controller General of Defence Accounts, Director of Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, Solicitor-General, Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Chairman and Members of the Railway Board, Chief Vigilance Officers in Public Sector Undertakings and Secretariat posts of and above the rank of Joint Secretary in the Central Government.
• This Committee decides on all important empan-elments and shift of officers serving on Central deputation.
2. Cabinet Committee on Accommodation
• Determines the guidelines or rules with regard to the allotment of government accommodation.
• It also takes a call on the allotment of government accommodation to non-eligible persons and organ-isations as also the rent to be charged from them.
• It can consider the allotment of accommodation from the General Pool to Members of Parliament.
• It can consider proposals for shifting existing Cen-tral Government Offices to locations outside the capital.
3. Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs
• Is supposed to review economic trends, problems and prospects “for evolving a consistent and inte-grated economic policy”, coordinate all activities requiring policy decisions at the highest level, deal with fixation of prices of agricultural produce and prices of essential commodities.
• It considers proposals for investment of more than Rs 1,000 crore, deal with industrial licensing poli-cies and review rural development and the Public Distribution System.
4. Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs
• Draws the schedule for Parliament sessions and monitors the progress of government business in Parliament.
• It scrutinises non-government business and de-cides which official Bills and resolutions are to be presented.
5. Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs
• Addresses problems related to Centre-state rela-tions.
• It also examines economic and political issues that require a wider perspective but have no internal or external security implications.
6. Cabinet Committee on Security
• Deals with issues relating to law and order, internal security and policy matters concerning foreign af-fairs with internal or external security implications.
• It also goes into economic and political issues relat-ed to national security.
• It considers all cases involving capital defence ex-penditure more than Rs 1,000 crore.
• It considers issues related to the Department of Defence Production and the Department of De-fence Research and Development, Services Capital Acquisition plans and schemes for procurement of security-related equipment.
7. Cabinet Committee on Investment (New panel)
• Will “identify key projects required to be imple-mented on a time-bound basis”, involving invest-ments of Rs 1,000 crore or more, or any other crit-ical projects, as may be specified by it, with regard to infrastructure and manufacturing.
• It will prescribe time limits for giving requisite ap-provals and clearances by the ministries concerned in identified sectors. It will also monitor the prog-ress of such projects.
12Smart Abhyas/June/2019
8. Cabinet Committee on Employment and Skill Development (New Panel)
• Is supposed to provide “direction to all policies, programmes, schemes and initiatives for skill de-velopment aimed at increasing the employability of the workforce for effectively meeting the emerg-ing requirements of the rapidly growing economy and mapping the benefits of demographic divi-dend”.
• It is required to enhance workforce participation, foster employment growth and identification, and work towards removal of gaps between require-ment and availability of skills in various sectors.
• The panel will set targets for expeditious imple-mentation of all skill development initiatives by the ministries and to periodically review the progress in this regard.
MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTION Consider the following statements with reference to Cabinet Committees
1. All Cabinet Committees are headed by Prime Minister
2. They have explicitly been mentioned in the Indi-an Constitution
Which of the following statements are true ?
a) 1 only b) 2 only
c) Both are true d) Both are false
Solution: D
Chaukhandi Stupa is of “national im-
portance”
What is the issue?
• An ancient Buddhist site in Uttar Pradesh’s Sarnath known as Chaukhandi Stupa has been declared to be “of national importance” by the Archaeological Survey of India.
Monuments of National Importance :
The Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958 de-fines an “Ancient Monument” as follows:
• Ancient Monument means any structure, erection or monument, or any tumulus or place of inter-ment, or any cave, rock-sculpture, inscription or monolith which is of historical, archaeological or artistic interest and which has been in existence for not less than 100 years
A monument or a site is declared to be of National Importance by the Archaeological Survey of India pro-vided it meets the following requirements:
• The monument or archaeological site is not less than 100 years old.
• It has a special historical, archaeological or artis-tic interest, making it worthy of declaration as of national importance.
• It qualifies under specified provisions of the defini-tion of the Ancient Monuments and Archaeologi-cal Sites and Remains Act, 1958.
• The interested public do not have major objections to such a declaration.
• The authenticity and integrity of the ancient mon-ument or archaeological site and remains have not been damaged.
• It is free from major encumbrances.
• The central government maintains national monu-ments, while the state government maintains state monuments.
Current status of protected monuments :
• At present, there are 3,694 centrally protected monuments/ sites under the ASI in the country
• Uttar Pradesh (746 monuments/sites), Karnataka (506) and Tamil Nadu (413) have the highest num-ber of ASI maintained sites.
13Smart Abhyas/June/2019
Foreigners Tribunals
What is the issue?
• The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has laid out specific guidelines to detect, detain and deport for-eign nationals staying illegally across the country.
• The MHA has amended the Foreigners (Tribunals) Order, 1964, and has empowered district mag-istrates in all States and Union Territories to set up tribunals to decide whether a person staying illegally in India is a foreigner or not. Earlier, the powers to constitute tribunals were vested only with the Centre.
More on Foreigners Tribunals
• The tribunals are quasi-judicial bodies, unique to Assam (till now), to determine if a person staying illegally is a “foreigner” or not.
• In other parts, once a ‘foreigner’ has been appre-hended by the police for staying illegally, he or she is produced before a local court under the Pass-port Act, 1920, or the Foreigners Act, 1946, with the punishment ranging three months to eight years in jail. Once the accused have served the sen-tence, the court orders their deportation, and they are moved to detention centres till the country of origin accepts them.
• The 1964 order on Constitution of Tribunals said: “The Central Government may by order, refer the question as to whether a person is not a foreigner within the meaning of the Foreigners Act, 1946 to a Tribunal to be constituted for the purpose, in its opinion.”
• The amended order says — “for words Central Government may,’ the words ‘the Central Govern-ment or the State Government or the Union Terri-tory administration or the District Collector or the District Magistrate may’ shall be substituted.”
• The amended Foreigners (Tribunal) Order, 2019 also empowers individuals to approach the Tribu-nals.
Traffic Index 2018
What is the issue?
• A recent study has ranked Mumbai as the most traffic-congested city in the world for the second straight year, and Delhi at fourth place.
Which organisation publishes the Traffic Index?
• TomTom, an Amsterdam-based company that offers traffic solutions, uses location technology to collect traffic information and has been publishing city rankings for eight years.
About the Index:
• The index ranks 403 cities across 56 countries, including 13 new cities.
• For this study, congestion has been defined in terms of the additional time taken to reach a des-tination as opposed to when the road would have been clear of traffic.
• Average times are of actually taken trips, across every vehicle in the entire network, 24/7. This is worked out by establishing a baseline of travel times during uncongested conditions across each road segment in each city; travel times are anal-ysed across the entire year (24/7) for each city.
• The index factors for peak hours, accidents, in-clement weather, construction work and all other factors likely to cause disruptions. Its statistics are “calculated using GPA data from navigation devic-es, in-dash systems and smartphones”.
Key findings
• Nearly 75% of the cities part of the 2018 index had increased or stable congestion levels between 2017 and 2018, with only 90 cities showing measurable decreases, states the report.
• Globally, traffic congestion is rising. And that’s both good, and bad, news. It’s good because it indicates a strong global economy, but the flip side is drivers wasting time sitting in traffic, not to men-tion the huge environmental impact.
• Globally, Christmas Day resulted in the least traffic congestion.
14Smart Abhyas/June/2019
• Overall, the index showed that an individual stuck in traffic in 2018 could have completed listening to one audio-book per week.
• Mumbai topped the index while New Delhi was placed at the fourth position.
MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTION Traffic Index 2018 was recently published by?
a) TomTom
b) Global Road Safety Partnership
c) Institute of Road Traffic Education
d) International Road Transport Union
Solution: a
By 2027, India’s population to cross
China’s: UN
What is the issue?
• In just eight years, India is projected to surpass Chi-na as the world’s most populous country. Accord-ing to estimates in a new United Nations report released recently, India is also expected to add 273 million people by 2050 and will remain the most populated until the end of the century.
Key takeaways from the UN Report:
• The report stated that in 2019, India has an estimat-ed population of 1.37 billion and China 1.43 billion and by 2027, India’s population is projected to surpass China’s.
• The global population is projected to increase by another 2 billion people by 2050, from 7.7 billion in 2019 to 9.7 billion thirty years down the line, ac-cording to ‘The World Population Prospects 2019’ published by the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
• Between now and 2050, 55 countries are esti-mated to see their populations shrink by at least one per cent. Incidentally, since 2010, 27 countries have recorded a minimum one per cent reduction in population. This trend of a growing number of countries experiencing a decline in population has been attributed to sustained low levels of fertility and, in some cases, high rates of emigration.
• In China, the largest of these 55 countries, the population is projected to shrink by as much as 2.2 per cent or 31.4 million by 2050. In the same period, India is expected to add 273 million people more to its headcount. India leads the set of nine countries that will make up for more than half the projected growth of the global population by 2050.
• India is expected to remain the world’s most pop-ulous country with nearly 1.5 billion inhabitants, followed by China at 1.1 billion, Nigeria with 733 million, the United States with 434 million, and Pa-kistan with an estimated population of 403 million.
• Overall, it states, the world’s population is ageing, with the age group of 65 and above growing at such a fast rate that by 2050, one in six people in the world will be part of it as compared to one in 11 in 2019.
• By the end of the century, the world population is set to peak at a level of about 11 billion.
The QS World University Rankings
What is the issue?
• Twenty-three Indian Institutions have been ranked among the best global universities in QS World University Rankings.
Key takeaways :
• Indian Institute of Technology Bombay has be-come India’s best institute, securing 152nd rank.
• IIT Delhi and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore have also been figured in the top 200.
• The Manipal Academy of Higher Education, which falls within the 701-750 ranking band, is the top private university in the country. The O.P. Jindal Global University, founded in 2009, is the only new entrant in the list this year, ranking in the 751-800 band.
• Among the top 10 institutes in the world, 5 insti-tutes are from the United States and 4 are from the United Kingdom. Only one institute in the top 10, ETH Zurich - Swiss Federal Institute of Technol-ogy, is not from the United States or the United Kingdom.
• The top spot has gone to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) which has retained the first rank for seven consecutive years.
15Smart Abhyas/June/2019
About the QS World University rankings :
• QS World University Rankings, are released by global higher education analysts QS Quacquarelli Symonds.
• QS ranks the world’s 1,000 best universities, which come from 85 different countries.
India placed in ‘Tier 2’ in human traf-
ficking report
What is the issue?
• The U.S. State Department has released its 2019 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, highlighting the need for action against domestic trafficking.
Key takeaways from the Report
• India continued to be placed in Tier 2 on the coun-try trafficking scale.
• The 2019 report highlights the national nature of trafficking: in 77% of the cases, victims are traf-ficked within their own countries of residence, rather than across borders.
• Victims of sex trafficking were more likely to be trafficked across borders while victims of forced labour were typically exploited within their own countries, the report says, citing International La-bour Organisation (ILO) data.
• The report categorises countries into three groups based on the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), U.S. legislation enacted in 2000. The cat-egorisation is based on efforts to meet minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking.
• India was placed (i.e., remained) in Tier 2, which comprises “countries whose governments do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.”
Recommendations made
• The recommendations for India include amending the definition of trafficking in Sec-tion 370 of the Penal Code to “include forced labour trafficking and ensure that force, fraud, or coercion are not required to prove a child sex trafficking offence,”.
• To establish Anti- Human Trafficking Units in all districts with funding and clear mandates.
