Daily Hindu Editorials

💥COLLEGIUM PUTS OFF DECISION ON PRESSING JOSEPH’S CASE   ( POLITY) The Supreme Court collegium, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, met in the top court premises on Wednesday but deferred taking any decision on the fate of Justice K.M. Joseph for now. The meeting of collegium was arranged following governments decision to not to induct Justice K.M. Joseph as Supreme Court judge. Judges of the Supreme Court have taken strong exception to the government decision and publicizing to the media its confidential letter on Justice Joseph and breaching protocol. In this context let’s take a look at procedures for appointment of a jurist as judge in SC 👉The collegium system The judges of the Supreme Court and High Court in India are appointed by President as per article 124(2) and 217 of the constitution. In such appointment, the President is required to hold ‘consultation’ with such of the Judges of the Supreme Court 👉Evolution of the system In the earlier days o...

💥CORE SECTOR GROWTH SLOWS TO 4.1% IN MARCH   ( ECONOMY) Official data released by commerce and industry show that the growth of India’s eight core industries slowed to 4.1 per cent in March as output of refinery products, fertilisers, steel and cement moderated. Only the fertilizer and cement sectors reported healthy numbers, with other sectors slowing down. The previous low was in the core sectors was 3.8 per cent in December 2017. And the index for the full year (2017-18) also recorded a fall, core sector growth was 4.2 per cent compared with 4.8 per cent in 2016-17. The core sector growth would have large impact on the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) data as these eight segments account for about 41% of the total factory output. 👉Core industries Core industries can be defined as main industry of the economy. In most countries, there is particular industry that seems to be backbone of all other industries and it qualifies to be the core industry. In India, ...

👉 Despite a rigorous process, are we able to choose the right candidate for the job? 👈 About 1,000 young men and women got the nod a few days ago from the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) for induction into the Indian Administrative Service, Indian Police Service, and other services. This was at the end of a tough three-stage selection process, in which more than 4,50,000 candidates appeared at the first stage, a written test called the Prelims. Only about 13,000 made it to the written main examination, and 2,500 to the final interview stage. 👉Selection process We should be grateful that we have such a rigorous process to choose those who’ll occupy vital positions in the higher echelons of the bureaucracy. Some five decades ago, when I took the examination, only about 10,000 competed for a little less than 1,000 openings. Interestingly, a candidate can now take the examination in his or her native language. Surprisingly, this facility is availed of only by a fe...

👉The message from Wuhan is: let us give each other space and rationalise our differences in a grown-up way👈 The path of India-China relations is strewn with the ghosts of summits past. The leaders of the two countries have met, expressed the loftiest of sentiments, gone their separate ways. No doubt, summits are good, nobody has a quarrel with them, the media at least loves them. The relationship has often benefited from such meetings. A note of hope was therefore sounded when Prime Minister Narendra Modi flew into the Chinese city of Wuhan to meet with President Xi Jinping for an “informal” summit last week. The aim, as announced, was to build strategic communication and provide a long-term perspective for what is a complex and adversarial bilateral relationship. 👉Cautious optimism For the duration of a day and a half, the leaders of the world’s two most populous countries held talks against a classic Chinese landscape of gardens and lakes, with and without aides....

💥 GST revenue increase suggests the indirect tax regime is overcoming teething problems 💥 Collections from the Goods and Services Tax crossed the ₹1 lakh crore mark in April, according to data released by the Finance Ministry on tax receipts that accrued in March but were payable in April. To be precise, the total revenue from the new indirect tax in April was ₹1,03,458 crore, the highest recorded in a single month since its implementation in July 2017. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has called this a “landmark achievement” and a “confirmation of increased economic activity”. Separate data released last week suggest the number of registered tax-payers filing GST returns by the specified deadline has risen from 57% for July to nearly 63% for March. And since many had consistently failed to meet the deadline in the initial months of confusion over the online returns filing system, it is heartening to note that by the final month of the financial year, they had caught up on their pas...

💥 WHO highlights the air pollution crisis in urban India; things are no better in rural areas 💥 A new report from the World Health Organisation highlights not only how widespread air pollution is in urban India, but also how deficient air quality monitoring is. The report, which summarised 2016 data for 4,300 cities, ranks 14 Indian cities among the 20 most polluted ones globally. While Delhi comes in at number six, Kanpur, Faridabad, Varanasi, Gaya and Patna are ranked ahead of it, by PM 2.5 levels. And yet, Kanpur, Faridabad and several other pollution-choked cities have only one PM 2.5 monitoring station each, while Delhi has several. WHO researchers get around this problem by using alternative data sources such as satellite remote sensing and chemical transport models, along with ground-monitoring stations. The outcome of this exercise makes it clear that air pollution is not a problem of large metropolises alone, even though they have traditionally been the focus of mitigati...

👉What is the RBI’s stance? In the most direct action taken so far by regulatory authorities on the issue of cryptocurrencies, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), during its monetary policy announcement on April 6, directed all regulated agencies, including banks, to stop doing any business with “any person or entity dealing with or settling virtual currencies (VC)”. 👉What does this mean? The circular says that banks have to stop all services to those dealing in VCs, including maintaining accounts, registering, trading, settling, clearing, giving loans against virtual tokens, accepting them as collateral, opening accounts of exchanges dealing with them and transfer/receipt of money in accounts relating to the purchase or sale of VCs. In addition, the RBI gave its regulated entities three months from the date of the circular to exit any such relationship they might already be in. 👉Why did this happen? This decision did not come out of the blue. The RBI and the gover...