Pakistan is unlikely to exit the Financial Action Task Force (FATF’s) greylist with this plenary session as well.
Practice question for mains:
Q.What is FATF? Discuss its role in combating global financial crimes and terror financing.
What is the FATF?
FATF is an intergovernmental organization founded in 1989 on the initiative of the G7 to develop policies to combat money laundering.
The FATF Secretariat is housed at the OECD headquarters in Paris.
It holds three Plenary meetings in the course of each of its 12-month rotating presidencies.
Why is Pakistan under its scanner?
Pakistan has been under the FATF’s scanner since June 2018, when it was put on the Grey List for terror financing and money laundering risks.
FATF and its partners such as the Asia Pacific Group (APG) are reviewing Pakistan’s processes, systems, and weaknesses on the basis of a standard matrix for anti-money laundering (AML) and combating the financing of terrorism (CFT) regime.
In June 2018, Pakistan gave a high-level political commitment to work with the FATF and APG to strengthen its AML/CFT regime, and to address its strategic counter-terrorism financing-related deficiencies.
Pakistan and the FATF then agreed on the monitoring of 27 indicators under a 10-point action plan, with specific deadlines.
The understanding was that the successful implementation of the action plan, and its physical verification by the APG, would lead the FATF to move Pakistan out of the Grey List.
However, Islamabad managed to satisfy the global watchdog over just five of them.
B2BASICS
What are the Black List and Grey List of the FATF?
FATF has 2 types of lists;
1. Black List
2. Grey List
1. Meaning of Black List: Only those countries are included in this list that FATF considers as uncooperative tax havens for terror funding. These countries are known as Non-Cooperative Countries or Territories (NCCTs). In other words; countries that are supporting terror funding and money laundering activities are placed in the Blacklist.
The FATF blacklist or OECD blacklist has been issued by the Financial Action Task Force since 2000 and lists countries which it judges to be non-cooperative in the global fight against money laundering and terror funding.
The FATF updates the blacklist regularly, adding or deleting entries.
(This map shows the countries included in the Greylist)
2. Meaning of Grey List: Those countries which are not considered as the safe heaven for supporting terror funding and money laundering; included in this list. The inclusion in this list is not as severe as blacklisted.
Now Grey list is a warning given to the country that it might come in Black list (Just like a yellow card in a football match). If a country is unable to curb mushrooming of terror funding and money laundering; it is shifted from grey list to black list by the FATF.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has asked all NGOs seeking foreign donations to open a designated FCRA account at the State Bank of India’s New Delhi branch.
What is the FCRA?
The FCRA regulates foreign donations and ensures that such contributions do not adversely affect internal security.
First enacted in 1976, it was amended in 2010 when a slew of new measures was adopted to regulate foreign donations.
The FCRA is applicable to all associations, groups and NGOs which intend to receive foreign donations. It is mandatory for all such NGOs to register themselves under the FCRA.
The registration is initially valid for five years and it can be renewed subsequently if they comply with all norms.
What happens once registered?
Registered associations can receive a foreign contribution for social, educational, religious, economic and cultural purposes.
Filing of annual returns, on the lines of Income Tax, is compulsory.
In 2015, the MHA notified new rules, which required NGOs to give an undertaking that the acceptance of foreign funds.
It ruled that it is not likely to prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of India or impact friendly relations with any foreign state and does not disrupt communal harmony.
It also said all such NGOs would have to operate accounts in either nationalized or private banks which have core banking facilities to allow security agencies access on a real-time basis.
Who cannot receive foreign donations?
Members of the legislature and political parties, government officials, judges and media persons are prohibited from receiving any foreign contribution.
However, in 2017 the MHA amended the 1976-repealed FCRA law paving the way for political parties to receive funds from the Indian subsidiary of a foreign company or a foreign company in which an Indian holds 50% or more shares.
How else can receive foreign funding?
The other way to receive foreign contributions is by applying for prior permission.
It is granted for receipt of a specific amount from a specific donor for carrying out specific activities or projects.
But the association should be registered under statutes such as the Societies Registration Act, 1860, the Indian Trusts Act, 1882, or Section 25 of the Companies Act, 1956.
A letter of commitment from the foreign donor specifying the amount and purpose is also required.
When is a registration suspended or cancelled?
The MHA on inspection of accounts and on receiving any adverse input against the functioning of an association can suspend the FCRA registration initially for 180 days.
Until a decision is taken, the association cannot receive any fresh donation and cannot utilise more than 25% of the amount available in the designated bank account without the permission of the MHA.
The MHA can cancel the registration of an organisation which will not be eligible for registration or grant of ‘prior permission’ for three years from the date of cancellation.
The eVIN network, which can track the latest vaccine stock position; the temperature at storage facility; geo-tag health centres; and maintain facility-level dashboard, is being repurposed for the delivery of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Try this question from CSP 2016:
Q.‘Mission Indradhanush’ launched by the Government of India pertains to:
(a) Immunization of children and pregnant women
(b) Construction of smart cities across the country
(c) India’s own search for the Earth-like planets in outer space
(d) New Educational Policy
What is eVIN network?
The eVIN is an innovative technological solution aimed at strengthening immunization supply chain systems across the country.
This is being implemented under the National Health Mission (NHM) by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
It aims to provide real-time information on vaccine stocks and flows, and storage temperatures across all cold chain points in the country.
This system has been used during the COVID pandemic for ensuring the continuation of the essential immunization services and protecting our children and pregnant mothers against vaccine-preventable diseases.
Components of eVIN
eVIN combines state-of-the-art technology, a strong IT infrastructure and trained human resource to enable real-time monitoring of stock and storage temperature of the vaccines kept in multiple locations across the country.
At present, 23,507 cold chain points across 585 districts of 22 States and 2 UTs routinely use the eVIN technology for efficient vaccine logistics management.
Benefits of eVIN
It has helped create a big data architecture that generates actionable analytics encouraging data-driven decision-making and consumption-based planning.
It helps in maintaining optimum stocks of vaccines leading to cost savings. Vaccine availability at all times has increased to 99% in most health centres in India.
While instances of stock-outs have reduced by 80%, the time taken to replenish stocks has also decreased by more than half, on an average.
This has ensured that every child who reaches the immunization session site is immunized, and not turned back due to unavailability of vaccines.
Due to an event referred to as “opposition”, which takes place every two years and two months, Mars will shine the brightest.
Try this question from CSP 2017:
Q.Which region of Mars has a densely packed river deposit indicating this planet had water 3.5 billion years ago?
(a) Aeolis Dorsa (b) Tharsis (c) Olympus Mons (d) Hellas
What is the Opposition Event?
‘Opposition’ is the event when the sun, Earth and an outer planet (Mars in this case) are lined up, with the Earth in the middle.
The time of opposition is the point when the outer planet is typically also at its closest distance to the Earth for a given year, and because it is close, the planet appears brighter in the sky.
An opposition can occur anywhere along Mars’ orbit, but when it happens when the planet is also closest to the sun, it is also particularly close to the Earth.
It will outshine Jupiter, becoming the third brightest object (moon and Venus are first and second, respectively) in the night sky during the month of October.
When does opposition happen?
Earth and Mars orbit the sun at different distances (Mars is farther apart from the sun than Earth and therefore takes longer to complete one lap around the sun).
In fact, the opposition can happen only for planets that are farther away from the sun than the Earth.
In the case of Mars, roughly every two years, the Earth passes between sun and Mars, this is when the three are arranged in a straight line.
Further, as the Earth and Mars orbit the sun, there comes a point when they are on the opposite sides of it, and hence very far apart. At its farthest, Mars is about 400 million km from the Earth.
In case of opposition, however, Mars and Sun are on directly opposite sides of the Earth. In other words, the Earth, sun and Mars all lie in a straight line, with the Earth in the middle.
Logic behind the name
As per NASA, from an individual’s perspective on the Earth, Mars rises in the east and after staying up all night, it sets in the west just as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
Because from the perspective on Earth, the sun and Mars appear to be on the opposite sides of the sky, Mars is said to be in “opposition”.
Essentially, the opposition is a reference to “opposing the sun” in the sky.
NSM is a proposed plan by GoI to create a cluster of seventy supercomputers connecting various academic and research institutions across India.
In April 2015 the government approved the NSM with a total outlay of Rs.4500 crore for a period of 7 years.
The mission was set up to provide the country with supercomputing infrastructure to meet the increased computational demands of academia, researchers, MSMEs, and startups by creating the capability design, manufacturing, of supercomputers indigenously in India.
Currently, there are four supercomputers from India in the Top 500 list of supercomputers in the world.
Aims and objectives
The target of the mission was set to establish a network of supercomputers ranging from a few Tera Flops (TF) to Hundreds of Tera Flops (TF) and three systems with greater than or equal to 3 Peta Flops (PF) in academic and research institutions of National importance across the country by 2022.
This network of Supercomputers envisaging a total of 15-20 PF was approved in 2015 and was later revised to a total of 45 PF (45000 TFs), a jump of 6 times more compute power within the same cost and capable of solving large and complex computational problems.
What is a Supercomputer?
A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer.
The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions per second (MIPS).
Since 2017, there are supercomputers which can perform over a hundred quadrillion FLOPS (petaFLOPS).
Since November 2017, all of the world’s fastest 500 supercomputers run Linux-based operating systems.
Why do we need supercomputers?
Tackle problems: Developed and almost-developed countries have begun ensuring high investments in supercomputers to boost their economies and tackle new social problems.
These high-performance computers can simulate the real world, by processing massive amounts of data, making cars and planes safer, and more fuel-efficient and environment-friendly.
They also aid in the extraction of new sources of oil and gas, development of alternative energy sources, and advancement in medical sciences.
Disaster Management: Supercomputers have also helped weather forecasters to accurately predict severe storms, enable better mitigation planning and warning systems.
They are also used by financial services, manufacturing and internet companies and infrastructure systems like water-supply networks, energy grids, and transportation.
Future applications of artificial intelligence (AI) also depend on supercomputing.
Due to the potential of this technology, countries like the US, China, France, Germany, Japan, and Russia have created national-level supercomputing strategies and are investing substantially in these programmes.
When did India initiate its efforts to build supercomputers?
India’s supercomputer programme initiated in the late 1980s, when the United States ceased the export of a Cray Supercomputer due to technology embargos.
This resulted in India setting up C-DAC in 1988, which in 1991, unveiled the prototype of PARAM 800, benchmarked at 5 Gflops. This supercomputer was the second-fastest in the world at that time.
Since June 2018, the USA’s Summit is the fastest supercomputer in the world, taking away this position from China.
As of January 2018, Pratyush and Mihir are the fastest supercomputers in India with a maximum speed of Peta Flops.
Remember the story of the pied piper? Weren’t you astonished at the ease with which he solved the village’s problem (Rat Infestation) where everyone else had terribly failed? Certainly, the Pied Piper had special skills that villagers lacked.
Now let’s forget the Pied Piper for a moment. What if someone tells you that a 160+ score in Essay paper is very much attainable even for an average Essay writer? Don’t believe it? Have a look at these two successive scorecards.
UPSC mains scorecards of Zeeshan sir. A whopping jump of 65 marks in Essay paper.
Here you’ve seen Zeeshan sir transforming from a mere villager (average UPSC essay writer) to a pied piper. But what changes led to a whopping jump of 65 marks (from 98 to 163 Marks)? For that, you need to follow the footsteps of the Pied Piper.
Truth be told, the Essay paper is the most ignored, least understood, but the most scoring paper of the IAS exam. Consider the effort that you need to put in to score even 130 marks in any of the G.S. papers. But in the Essay, it’s altogether a different story.
Like the villagers in the story, IAS aspirants employ the wrong means to approach this paper. Some of those are:
Making the paper an enlarged version of G.S. answer and overloading it with facts, figures, data, statistics.
Using flowery language and difficult vocabulary.
Overdoing Diagrammatic representation.
Using stories, quotes, illustrations just for the sake of using them.
Being restricted to dimensional analysis e.g. PESTEL approach where the main thrust is on probing these dimensions only. And the list goes on.
It’s imperative that you become like Pied Piper to tame the Essay Paper i.e. understand the actual demands of this paper and present them as per the expectations of UPSC. What’s even more exciting is that you can do this with limited efforts and time thus allowing you to devote more time to other time taking subjects.
Zeeshan sir himself will be mentoring and streamlining your essay preparation in Essay FLTs 2020.
What is Essay FLTs 2020?
It is a mentor-driven Essay test series for UPSC 2020 Mains exam. Our focus is on personalized attention in evaluation, execution, and course correction. Our innovative methodology in topic selection, reviews, and evaluation on one hand and mentorship and collaborative approach on the other will build your capacity to write Essays that will fetch 160+ marks.
What are we offering and how is it unique?
We’ve innovated at every step of the process.
Highly relevant, precise and thoughtful topic selection
Our research tells us there are 8 broad themes of essays being asked since 2010 – Economy, Polity, Women Issues, Education, Science & Tech, Philosophy, IR, Miscellaneous.
But there is some rationality to the way UPSC selects essay topics. Those themes are highly relevant to the current times and one can find a strong correlation with current affairs of the past year(s).
We plan to develop your competencies so that you can be better prepared for the actual exam.
Our biggest innovation lies in our review methodology. Specific portions of your essay will be highlighted with symbols to indicate issues in essay writing
(X) Cross – FUNDAMENTAL FLAWS like judgments/strong postures which need to be avoided at all costs.
(*)Star -APPRECIATION for uniqueness.
STRUCTURE is not maintained. Issues with Language and expression.
GENERAL SUGGESTIONS for candidates.
Along with this, Zeeshan sir will also leave specific reviews on strengths and weaknesses.
We don’t want to merely suggest additional points that can be googled by the student themselves or point out superficial flaws like not ‘sticking to the topic’. They don’t necessarily highlight the shortcomings in the essay. This adds very little value to students. We go much beyond that and help students fix major flaws in their essays.
10 parameters on which your essays are going to get evaluated
Comprehension of the topic
Language and Expression
Structure and Organisation of thought.
Objectivity and Biases. Balance of perception
Attitude whether a learner or judgmental
Focus and attention
Content and Source matter, Knowledge and information processing capability
Ability to forge links in an interdisciplinary manner
Model essays with indicative structure and good essay copies
You will be provided with good essay copies to serve as sample answers. This is a better alternative than sample answers which are hastily written and at times not updated with the latest figures.
Students have an incorrect impression that going through a sample essay will somehow help them write better essays. This is absolutely incorrect.
To develop your competency in tackling different topics, you have to be able to come up with appropriate structures. This aspect of the program addresses this issue.
The expectation from you would be that you study the solutions in detail and try to address the shortcomings in your essays. Should doubts still persist, we’re here to help.
One-to-one Mentorship and Civilsdaily’s handholding
This component of the program is the most important. Post-evaluation of your essay test you will get on a one-to-one discussion with Zeeshan sir. He will discuss the topic in considerable depth, appropriate structure, pitfalls to avoid, etc.
Along with that, sir will also discuss copies presenting different styles in which the essays could be attempted.
Membership to exclusive group on Habitat
Habitat is our learning platform, here you’ll be given membership to an exclusive Essay group. This group will be administered by Zeeshan sir, Sajal sir, in-service officers, rankers, and other mentors.
For essays, you need multiple perspectives to understand a topic or an issue in its entirety. You need discussions; arguments; confluence, confrontation, and integration of ideas. Here, discussions will be facilitated by mentors and enriched by different viewpoints by peers. Moreover, you can ask and discuss any of your doubts with peers and Zeeshan sir.
Besides these, you will be given the following
Any additional material that we release for essays.
Notes and reference material including good articles, essays, etc. on Habitat group.
Program inclusion
5 FLTs
Model essays
One-to-one mentorship
Membership to exclusive Essay group on Habitat
Notes and references on Habitat
Price of the program
Rs. 4000 + taxes for Smash Mains 2020 enrolled students
Against the backdrop of the ongoing tussle between the states and the Centre over the issue of GST compensation, the article analyses the evolution of federalism and power-sharing in India.
GST and federalism
At the first sign of stress, the nation unified in a singular system of taxation (GST) turned into a policy of every-state-for-itself.
Evidence of seriously miscued revenue estimates without pragmatic tax rate, was accumulating at an alarming pace.
The Comptroller and Auditor-General of India (CAG) recently revealed how a cess meant to remedy shortfalls in GST yields, was retained in central government revenues, in violation of all applicable norms.
This revelation does little to build trust between the Centre and the States at a time when the States’ facing lack of resource and the central government is advising them to borrow.
Some states believe that the onus of borrowing should rest with the central government.
Higher borrowing limit for states with conditions
The central government sanctioned a higher borrowing limit for States through the current year.
In the bargain, it imposed conditionalities:
1) Enforcing a singular standard for the implementation of policies across a vast and diverse country.
2) Improving India’s ranking as a place for “doing business”.
States will have unconditional access to borrowings equivalent to half a percentage point of their gross output.
But, subsequently, every tranche of a quarter point will be premised on progress in implementing the “one nation, one ration card” scheme, and improvements in the “ease of doing business”.
Federalism in India
Aside from the contents and definitions sections, the word “federal” occurs in only one operational article of the Indian Constitution, in reference to the apex judicial body created in colonial times.
When this body was transformed into the Supreme Court at the moment the Constitution came into force, the word seemingly lost all operative value.
The distribution of powers and responsibilities between various tiers of the governmental system, was achieved without explicit recognition of federalism as a governing principle.
In actual operational terms, the relationship of Centre and States followed different paradigms through various phases of politics.
At the time of Independence, the distribution of powers between Centre and States was transformed into an internal discussion of the Congress.
Evolution of power-sharing and politics
The “Congress system”, as the political scientist Rajni Kothari called it, was seen at one time to have sufficient internal flexibility and resilience to absorb all factional pressures.
The first challenge came from the cultural terrain, compelling a reluctant national leadership to accept linguistic reorganisation of States.
And then, as ambitions of nation-building through rapid industrialisation resulted in the possibility of a non-Congress politics.
The Congress lost power in a number of key States in 1967.
The polity moved into a new phase when politics was about “waves” at the national or state level either in favour of, or against the Congress.
From 1989 onwards, politics settled into another distinct phase, when outcomes at the national level were the resultant of very separate State-level results.
Conclusion
Though federal structure could not be free from Centre-State power struggle, that struggle should not come into the development of the nation. In this context, it is the responsibility of the Centre to address the issues facing the state amid pandemic.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2020 has been awarded for the discovery of CRISPR Cas9. The two scientists have pioneered the use of CRISPR – Cas9 (CRISPR-associated protein 9) system as a gene-editing tool.
Background of discovery of CRISPR
In 1987a group of Japanese researchers observed an unusual homologous DNA sequence bearing direct repeats with spacing in a eubacterial gene.
In subsequent years CRISPR was discovered and showed to be a bacterial adaptive immune system and to act on DNA targets.
A notable discovery on the use of CRISPR as a gene-editing tool was by a Lithuanian biochemist, Virginijus Šikšnys, in 2012.
Šikšnys showed that Cas9 could cut purified DNA in a test tube, the same discovery for which both Charpentier and Doudna were given the credit.
Thus, the exclusion of Siksnys from this year’s Nobel is going to raise discussions.
Issue of gene-edited babies
The world was alarmed by such a mission in 2018 when Chinese scientist edited genes in human embryos using the CRISPR-Cas9 system which resulted in the birth of twin girls.
The incident became known as the case of the first gene-edited babies of the world.
Following the incident, the World Health Organization formed a panel of gene-editing experts.
The expert panel suggested a central registry of all human genome editing research in order to create an open and transparent database of ongoing work.
Guidelines and regulations in India
In India, several rules, guidelines, and policies are notified under the Environment Protection Act, 1986 to regulate genetically modified organisms.
The above Act and the National Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical and Health Research involving human participants, 2017, by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), and the Biomedical and Health Research Regulation Bill implies regulation of the gene-editing process.
This is especially so in the usage of its language “modification, deletion or removal of parts of heritable material”.
However, there is no explicit mention of the term gene editing.
Consider the question “What is CRISPR-Cas9? How it helps in the gene-editing? What are the concerns with use of it for gene-editing?”
Conclusion
It is time that India came up with a specific law to ban germline editing and put out guidelines for conducting gene-editing research giving rise to modified organisms.
Back2Basics: What is CRISPR?
CRISPRs: “CRISPR” stands for “clusters of regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.”
It is a specialized region of DNA with two distinct characteristics: the presence of nucleotide repeats and spacers.
Repeated sequences of nucleotides — the building blocks of DNA — are distributed throughout a CRISPR region.
Spacers are bits of DNA that are interspersed among these repeated sequences.
In the case of bacteria, the spacers are taken from viruses that previously attacked the organism.
They serve as a bank of memories, which enables bacteria to recognize the viruses and fight off future attacks.
The article suggests the three-pronged strategy to deal with the emission from transportation and highlights the importance of coordination at various level to deal with the issue of pollution.
Anti-pollution campaign in Delhi
With air pollution returning to pre-COVID levels, the Delhi administration has launched a major anti-pollution campaign this month.
The campaign is focused on cutting the deadly smoke from thermal plants and brick kilns in the National Capital Region as well as on chemical treatment of stubble burning from nearby States.
Abating emission from transportation
Delhi’s long-term solution will depend importantly also on abating emissions from transportation.
Delhi needs a 65% reduction to meet the national standards for PM2.5.
Vehicles, including trucks and two-wheelers, contribute 20%-40% of the PM2.5 concentrations.
Tackling vehicle emissions would be one part of the agenda, as in comparable situations in Bangkok, Beijing, and Mexico City.
Three-part action to combat emissions from transportation
A three-part action comprises emissions standards, public transport, and electric vehicles.
1) Stricter enforcement of emission controls
Two-wheelers and three-wheelers were as important as cars and lorries in Beijing’s experience.
Bangkok ramped up inspection and maintenance to cut emissions.
The first order of business is to implement the national standards.
2) Strengthening public transport
Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) around the world show how the sizeable investment cost is more than offset by the benefits, and that financing pays off.
Delhi has lessons from its BRT experience in designating better BRT lanes, improving the ticketing system and synchronising with the Metro.
The Supreme Court’s ruling to increase Delhi’s bus fleet and align it with the Metro network must be carried out.
The ‘odd-even’ number plate policy can help, but the system should reduce exemptions, allow a longer implementation period, and complement it with other measures.
3) Adoption of electric vehicle: A long term solution
Subsidies and investment will be needed to ensure that EVs are used to a meaningful scale.
The Delhi government’s three-year policy aims to make EVs account for a quarter of the new vehicles registered in the capital by 2024.
EVs will gain from purchase incentives, scrappage benefits on older vehicles, loans at favourable interest and a waiver of road taxes.
Need for coordination at various level
Transport solutions need to be one part of pollution abatement that includes industry and agriculture.
Delhi’s own actions will not work if the pollution from neighbouring States is not addressed head on.
Technical solutions need to be underpinned by coordination and transparency across Central, State, and local governments.
Public opinion matters.
Citizen participation and the media are vital for sharing the message on pollution and health, using data such as those from the Central Pollution Control Board.
Conclusion
It is a matter of prioritising people’s health and a brighter future. Once the pandemic is over, Delhi must not stumble into yet another public health emergency. The time to act is now.
Reviews will be provided in a week. (In the order of submission- First come first serve basis). In case the answer is submitted late the review period may get extended to two weeks.
*In case your answer is not reviewed in a week, reply to your answer saying *NOT CHECKED*. If Parth Sir’s tag is available then tag him.
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