daily-news-prescription-29-july-2020

GS1: Art and Culture        

  • Protecting artists and the arts(TH) As per the report, MSMEs, which have taken a beating due to the lockdown, make up 88% of the creative sector. Of these businesses, 32% are facing a loss of roughly 50% of their annual income in the first quarter. Fifty-three per cent of the events and entertainment management sector saw 90% of their events cancelled, and 61% of organisations established between four and 10 years ago have stopped functioning.

GS2: Polity      

  • Explained: How BSP is banking on SC rulings to hold back former MLAs(IE) The Tenth Schedule of the Constitution prohibits defection to protect the stability of governments but does not prohibit mergers. Paragraph 4(2) of the Tenth Schedule, dealing with mergers, says that only when two-thirds of the members agree to “merge” the party would they be exempt from disqualification.

GS2: Governance: Education        

  • Union Minister for HRD Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ launches India Report- Digital Education June 2020(PIB) Ministry of Human Resource Development has initiated many projects to assist teachers, scholars and students in their pursuit of learning like DIKSHA platform, Swayam Prabha TV Channel, Online MOOC courses, On Air – Shiksha Vani,   DAISY by NIOS for differently-abled, e-PathShala, National Repository of Open Educational Resources (NROER) to develop e-content and energized books, telecast through TV channels, E-learning portals , webinars, chat groups, distribution of books and other digital initiatives along with State/ UT Governments.

GS2: International Relations     

  • RIC, a triangle that is still important(TH) The Russia-India-China engagement still has significance. India is in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which is driven by Russia and China and includes four Central Asian countries. Central Asia is strategically located, bordering our turbulent neighbourhood.
  • The South Asian migrant crisis(TH) The South Asia-Gulf migration corridor is among the largest in the world. South Asians account for nearly 15 million in the Gulf. According to the World Bank, in 2019, total remittances to South Asia was about $140 billion, of which India received $83.1 billion
  • India may not alter rules of engagement with AIIB (Mint) India is a founding member and holds the second largest shares in it. So it hardly makes any sense to completely disengage from it. What New Delhi should do is to ensure that its own interests are served by its membership very explicitly. And it should make sure that AIIB doesn’t end up becoming a tool of Chinese geopolitical agenda.

GS3: Economy        

  • Digging deeper (TH) Compensation cess inflows could shrink even more with people curbing discretionary spending on luxury goods in order to conserve capital or stay afloat in the pandemic-hit economy. A little over half of the shortfall in last year’s cess kitty has been plugged by tapping cess balances from the first two years of GST implementation. The rest has been conjured up from the Consolidated Fund of India by debiting Integrated GST (IGST) funds that were lying with the Centre.
  • Running Dry (IE) urban planners gave short shrift to the imperatives of Chennai’s hydrology to meet the city’s infrastructural demands. A parliamentary panel that enquired into the causes of the Chennai floods in 2015, for example, reported that that real estate business had “usurped” the city’s water bodies.
  • Explained: What are pre-packs under the present insolvency regime?(IE) A pre-pack is an agreement for the resolution of the debt of a distressed company through an agreement between secured creditors and investors instead of a public bidding process.

GS3: Science & Technology      

GS3: Environment