 A very good evening everyone. Welcome to the Hindu News Analysis brought to you by Shankara IS Academy for the date 1st of May 2021. Here are the list of news articles with their page numbers and the video is timestamped for your reference. Students as we know our analysis has been comprehensive by covering main aspect as well as the preliminary aspect of the examination. But with preliminary exam around the corner we have decided to throw some light on the previous year questions from UPSC for the benefit of students and from today on those lines our analysis will also have a segment on that as well. So in those lines let us move to that part of the discussion today. As we know important terms of ancient or medieval India given an initiative very important from the prelims perspective and this one such question is inspired from that trend right? So first let us see what is Aurang. Aurang is a position term for warehouse. Warehouse is a place where you store goods before being sold. It also refers to the workshop hence Aurang is wrongly matched okay. So this Aurang was used for storing textiles weaved by Indian viewers for the British East India Company. Later some of them were abolished because of the decline of the Indian textiles. Why did the Indian textiles decline? This was mainly due to the development of cotton industries in Britain besides competition from British textiles because they were technologically more advanced and heavy duties imposed on Indian textiles in Britain. Now look at the second pair Baniyans. Baniyans acted as intermediaries for European merchants in Bengal. So they remained as a nexus between the local and the global economy facilitating a bi-directional transfer of knowledge. So second pair is correctly matched. Now look at the third pair Mirasdar is related to Raiyatwari system. So under the Raiyatwari settlement the government recognized Mirasdar as the sole proprietors of land and the tenants' rights were completely extinguished. Hence the third pair is also correct. So the correct option is option B. Look at this question. This question is based on economy. So gold tranche or reserve tranche refers to what? That's what the question asks. So the correct option is option D, a credit system granted by IMF to its members. So IMF based questions are very common in UPSC. So we'll have to know about IMF. So first let us know about reserve tranche or gold tranche. Reserve tranche is the component of member countries quota with the IMF that is in the form of gold or a foreign currency. The reserve tranche is a segment of an international monetary fund member countries quota that is accessible without fee or economic reform condition. So this is unconditional right. As we know the contribution of IMFs are made up of a combination of national currency and special drawing rights. See special drawing rights was also asked in one of the previous year questions. So you should also know about special drawing rights. Coming back to the discussion because IMF member nations have many different national currencies the IMF denominates its members quotas in terms of SDRs. It is an IMF creation backed by a specified basket of major international currencies. As of February 2021 the basket currencies of SDRs included the US dollar, the euro, the Japanese end, pound sterling, the Chinese yuan or renminbi. Okay see the Chinese yuan is the latest addition and together the dollar and euro make up about 70 percentage of the basket's value. So you should remember all these SDR currencies and their weightage also which can be important for the preliminary exam right. Now look at this question on fiscal responsibility and budget management act 2003. The correct option for this question is option D. So let's know about the fiscal responsibility and budget management act and how we arrive at this option. So this act FIBM Act as it is called provides for the responsibility of the central government to ensure intergenerational equity in financial management and long-term economic stability. And this will be done by achieving sufficient revenue surplus and removing fiscal impediments in the effective conduct of monetary policy. See this is the fancy way of explaining the FIBM Act. Simply put its essence is that it strives to ensure fiscal discipline of the government that is to minimize the deficit of the government. The section three of the act is about fiscal policy statement and it is to be laid down before the parliament. It says that some statements of fiscal policy shall be laid before the parliament by the central government under each financial year. And this shall be provided along with the annual financial statement and demand for grants. And this includes the medium term fiscal policy statement, the fiscal policy strategy statement, the macroeconomic framework statement and the medium term expenditure framework statement. So answer is option D and we see these articles here. See article 110 is about moneyable and article 112 is about the annual financial statement which is budget and article 103 is about the procedure in parliament with respect to estimates. So you don't have to memorize all the articles in the constitution but some articles are very important like 110, 112, the annual financial statement which is the budget. So some articles you need to focus apart from that you will have to know the fundamental rights, the directive principles of state policy. So focus on those areas. Now look at this polity question. So it's about Rajasabha Lok Sabha. Know that the powers and status of Rajasabha are equal to that of the Lok Sabha in several matters. And this includes the introduction and passage of ordinary bills, introduction and passage of constitutional amendment bills, election and impeachment of the president, election and removal of vice president. However Rajasabha alone cannot initiate the removal of vice president. Rajasabha also enjoys equal power while approving ordinances issued by the president, then in case of approval of proclamation of all types of emergencies by the president and selection of ministers including the prime minister. So under article 312 Rajasabha can authorize the parliament to create a new oil and air service common to both center and state. So as we can see the Rajasabha can authorize so it is a special power of Rajasabha which the Lok Sabha does not have. And in many other cases the status of Rajasabha is unequal to that of Lok Sabha. For example money bill can be introduced only in the Lok Sabha as we know and save us the case with no confidence motion and cut motion. Both are exclusively available only to the Lok Sabha. So as we can see according to Indian constitution both Lok Sabha and Rajasabha although envisaged to be equal bodies they at some level have unequal functions right. So you may have to pay attention to these nuances when you are studying polity especially the parliament chapter right. So the correct option is option B. So that brings us to the end of discussion on the preliminary question from the previous year. Now look at this news article from the business page. This article says that the goods and services tax collection in April is likely to be between 1.15 lakh crore rupees to 1.2 lakh crore rupees. Know that GST collections have clocked more than 1 lakh crore consistently for the past six months and the highest was in March which was 1.24 lakh crore. So in this context let us discuss in brief about GST. The Goodson Services Tax Act was passed in the parliament in 2016 and the bill has been ratified by the required number of states and since then received the assent of the president on 8th of September 2016 and it has been enacted as the one or first constitutional amendment act of 2016. Through this the GST council has been notified with effect from 12th of September 2016. See GST is an indirect tax. It is levied on the supply of goods and services and the Goodson Services Tax law in India is a comprehensive multi-stage destination based tax that is levied on every value addition. So it is a kind of a value added tax also. So GST is a single domestic indirect tax law for the entire country or at least that is how it has been envisaged. Know that the GST in India is the biggest tax system overhaul since independence. GST has subsumed a plethora of indirect taxes such as state sales tax, service tax, excise duties etc and it has been replaced into a single central tax regime applied uniformly on all products and services. However the biggest benefit of GST was that it opened up the entire India as a single unified market allowing for free movement of goods across the state borders. State borders had become barriers for trade before GST slowing down the trade at least domestically. So GST allowed for faster movement of trucks and like two requirements of fewer warehouses across several states. However GST has multiple tax rates labs for different categories of products say it goes by 5%, 12%, 18%, 28%. So this has made it more complicated than many had expected and know that there are four main types of GST. So the GST paid on each transaction is divided into two equal parts and the parts for the center is termed as central GST or CGST. The part of the state share is called as the state GST or SGST. When a transaction takes place within a union territory which does not have a legislature the part of GST that the union territory gets is called as union territory GST and the final one is integrated GST. So this is applied when the transaction takes place between the states or between a state and a foreign territory. So IGST is levied without any bifurcation on the applicable GST rate and finally let us see certain exemptions from the purview of GST. First and foremost is alcohol for human consumption for which the power to tax remains with the state itself and then comes the petroleum products such as crude oil, diesel, petrol, natural gas etc. Due to these exemptions GST had been critic for not keeping up with the spirit of one nation one tax concept of GST that is commonly envisaged under a GST tax regime across the world. See in India the whole GST system will be backed by a robust IT system and it is called as the goods and services tax network and it has been set up by the government. So who decides the rates of the GST or any changes in the GST tax regime who takes care of all these things? See this is done by GST council. The decision about GST and any changes is made by the GST council itself and it is a constitutional body provided under article 279A of the constitution inserted through the amendment the 101st Constitutional Amendment Act. So this GST council is headed by the finance minister and the GST council is a joint forum between the center and the state. So it is a representative body and the minister in charge of finance or taxation or any other minister as nominated by the state. From each state government are the members of this GST council. So what is the quorum? Quorum is one half of the total number of members of the GST council and as per the constitution say if a voting takes place every decision of the GST council has to be taken by majority of not less than three fourth of the weighted oath of the member present. Note that it is three fourth okay and the votes of the central government has a weightage of one third of the total votes cast and the votes of all the state governments combined makes up two thirds of the total votes cast. So in this discussion we saw about GST, GST council, the exempted products from GST all these are very important from preliminary point of view. With this discussion we have come to the end of discussion of this topic. Now look at this editorial. See recently Japan's prime minister was supposed to visit India but then it was cancelled due to the covid situation but a telephony conversation was held between the premiers of India and Japan. So this editorial was spent based on that and in the first half of the editorial the author discusses about the china factor and the Japan-US relations which is of lesser relevance to us and in the second half we talk about the prospect of Japanese India bilateral relations. So in this context let us discuss in detail about the India-Japan bilateral relations right? So this is the syllabus for your reference. So the friendship between India and Japan has a long history rooted in spiritual affinity and cultural affinity and India's earliest documented direct contact with Japan was the Todaji temple where the consecration of the towering statue of Lord Buddha was performed by an Indian monk who was called Bodhisenna in 752 AD and the Japan-India association set up in 1903 is the oldest international friendship body in Japan. After World War II India did not attend the San Francisco conference but decided to conclude a separate peace treaty with Japan in 1952. See San Francisco conference is the peace treaty with Japan by the Allied powers marking the end of the second world war but India refrained from this conference largely because it believed that San Francisco conference limited the sovereignty of Japan itself and so it decided to conclude a separate peace treaty with Japan in 1952 and India-Japan established the diplomatic relations in 1952 itself and this was followed by several high-level exchanges between both the countries and you know India was a developing country so in 1958 Japan started providing young loans to India and as a test of reliability in 1991 when India witnessed the balance of payment crisis when India witnessed the balance of payment crisis Japan was one among the few countries that contributed to bailing out India from the crisis and the bilateral ties was further strengthened in the decades to come and in 2006 both the sides decided to have annual summits every year and then both the sides established the strategic and global partnership in 2014 former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe was the chief guest at the Republic Day celebration and in 2014 itself during PM Modi's official visit to Japan the bilateral relations were upgraded from the strategic and global partnership to special strategic and global partnership apart from annual summits foreign ministers bilateral strategic dialogue defense ministers meeting NSA level dialogues 2 plus 2 ministerial level meetings and other dialogue mechanisms have ensured regular engagement in the both the sides see this 2 plus 2 dialogue is something that we encounter very often what is this 2 plus 2 dialogue this is nothing but the ministerial level meeting usually at the external affairs level ministers and the defense affairs level ministers from both the sides meet and discuss areas of common interest and importance this is what is called as 2 plus 2 level dialogues okay so coming back to the discussion the defense relations within India and Japan forms an integral pillar of the bilateral ties our exchanges has strengthened due to the common interest in especially the Indo-Pacific region and the tri-service exchanges between Japan and India have been institutionalized completing the triad and most recently despite the pandemic complex assesses like the Malabar 2020 JMEX 2020 PASIX etc were conducted and we know Japan India have also collaborated in quad and besides this Tokyo and New Delhi concluded the military packs such as acquisition and cross-servicing agreement which is a logistic agreement and it is considered as a landmark agreement in the defense collaboration between India and Japan now coming to the commercial relations Japan is regarded as the key partner in India's economic transformation see Japan's bilateral trade with India was at 16.95 billion dollars in the financial year 2019-20 while the exports from Japan to India are at 12.43 billion and imports at around 4.52 billion US dollars see the trade favor is in favor of Japan and India's primary exports to Japan are petroleum products chemicals non-metallic mineral wear fish etc and India's primary imports from Japan are machinery electrical machinery iron steel products plastic materials etc from 2000 until september 2020 the Japanese investments in India cumulatively stood at around 34.152 billion US dollars which is a huge amount and also note that Japan ranks fifth among the largest source of investment in India and India has been the largest recipient of the Japanese official development assistant loans see ODA is the name that Japan gives for its loans that is being extended to the other countries and mostly they are in the form of soft loans all right so Delhi metro is one of the outstanding examples of cooperation with Japan under this Japanese official development assistance and besides that Mumbai Ahmedabad high speed rail western dedicated freight corridor Delhi Mumbai industrial corridor are some of the other mega projects with Japanese cooperation that is on the pipeline and Japanese ODA commitment figures as you see are very huge and in the realm of technological cooperation the two powers will look to expand cooperation in sectors such as cyber security and emerging technologies so during the Shinzo Abbey years New Delhi and Tokyo put together digital research and innovation partnership that ran a plethora of technologies from artificial intelligence and 5g to internet of things and space research etc as with the US Japan summit Mr. Suga and Mr. Modi may look to deepen cooperation between research institutes and expand funding especially to counter China's technological investment program China has recently proposed to invest about 1.4 trillion US dollars for its technological development but India and Japan stand in contrast with data localization policy that's a sore point in the relationship between India and Japan please note this point alone because India favors data localization but Japan and many other western countries they do not favor data localization they believe in free flow of data across the borders right so now let's move on to the cultural relations cultural relation as per the latest estimates more than 40,000 Indians live in Japan and more than 10,000 Japanese nations reside in India so as you can see this is a significant amount of people to people contact despite the geography right so in the recent years there has been a change in the composition of the Indian community with the arrival of large number of professionals including IT professionals engineers professionals in management and etc so as you can see India is a very good contributor to the Japanese skill pool this discussion has comprehensively covered the India Japan relations and this is very important from the point of mains examination so with this we have come to the end of this discussion on Indo-Japan relations now let us take up this news article which reports about the sad demise of former attorney general Soli Sarabji he has received Padma Vibhoshan and has appeared in several historic cases including the Keshavanam Dabarati or the basic structure doctrine case so in this slide let us learn some important facts about the attorney general and also in brief about the advocate general see article 76 of the Indian constitution provides for the office of attorney general in India he is the highest law officer in the country who is appointed by the president now coming to the qualification he must be a person who is qualified to be appointed as a judge of the supreme court and also note that his term of office is not fixed by the constitution also there is no mention about the procedure and grounds for his removal see the attorney general holds office during the pleasure of the president and he may also quit his office by submitting his resignation to the president itself and conventionally he resigns when the government and the council of ministers resign or is replaced by the central government note that the remuneration of the attorney general is not fixed and he receives as much remuneration as the president may determine from time to time note that the attorney general has the right of audience in all the courts in the territory of India and under article 88 he also has the right to speak and take part in the proceedings of both the houses of the parliament or their joint sitting or any committee of the parliament of which he may be named a member but he does not have the right to vote so the right to vote is exclusively reserved for the members of the parliament since he is not the member of the parliament he does not enjoy the right to vote as well right see in addition to attorney general there are other law officers of the government of India and they are called as solicitors generals the solicitors generals of India an additional solicitor general of India assists the attorney general in the fulfillment of his official responsibilities remember article 76 does not mention about the solicitor general and the additional solicitor general now let's go on to advocate general who serves at the state level under article 16 of our constitution advocate general is provided for the states he is the highest law officer of the state appointed by the governor of the state thus he corresponds to the attorney general of India at the center and he must be a person who is qualified to be appointed as a judge of a high court and similar to the attorney general his term of office is not fixed by the constitution and he holds office during the pleasure of the governor and he can resign by submitting his resignation to the governor and he receives such remuneration as the governor may decide from time to time and this is also not fixed by the constitution so this is a brief discussion on this topic with this information let's move on to the next topic now our next discussion is going to be based on this news article it reports about a message sent by Chinese President Xi Jinping offering China's support to India in dealing with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic note that it is the first such known communication between the two leaders following the last year's border skirmish so in this slide let us see in brief about the India-China relation and this is very important from the main's point of view so this is the syllabus for your reference students see the written records of the contact between India and China dates back to second century pc such commercial contacts at the people's level improved with the advent of Buddhism into China from India in the first century area so further decline of Buddhism in India and the spread of colonialism in both the countries resulted in diminished cultural exchanges between both the countries however when people of both the countries started searching new answers to new questions old friendship was revived so note that on april 1st 1950 India became the first non-socialist bloc country to establish diplomatic relations with people's republic of China while the India-China border conflict in 1962 was a serious setback to the ties prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's landmark visit in 1988 revived the bilateral relations so there was an interregnum from 1962 to 1988 and in 1993 the signing of an agreement on the maintenance of peace and tranquility along the LAC on the India-China border areas further improved the bilateral relations note that the cumulative outcomes of various bilateral high-level visits added value and substance to India-China ties see India and China have established more than 30 dialogue mechanisms at various levels covering bilateral relations political relations economic relations cultural relations people-to-people contact consular matters as well as dialogues on regional and global issues also they have maintained regular exchanges on cooperation in water resources for example in the 12th meeting of the India-China export level mechanism both the sites signed the implementation plan on the provisions of hydrological information of Brahmaputra river system we know China is an upper reverient state and India is the lower reverient state so information on Brahmaputra can become vital in saving India from any flood related issues with respect to Brahmaputra and a similar MOU for providing hydrological information on the Sattler's river is also enforced but these mechanisms were kind of suspended following the border problems between India and China and it is expected to be revived very soon likewise they have been engaged in pursuit of scientific and technological achievement as well and the agreement on cooperation in the field of science and technology is an example what is this agreement it is an umbrella agreement under the framework of which various agreements and MOUs between organizations scientific bodies or universities of both the countries have been signed and is being collaborated under this agreement in 2006 India and China signed the education exchange program and this is an agreement for educational cooperation between both the countries under this agreement government scholarships are awarded to the students by both the sites and in-recognized institutions of higher learning in each other's country and apart from this Chinese students are also annually awarded scholarships to study Hindi at the Kedriya Hindi Sanstance Agra so coming to the trade relations China regained its position as India's top trade partner in 2020 and according to the provisional data from India's commerce ministry the two-way trade between both the countries stood at 77.7 billion US dollars last year and although this was lower than the previous year's 85.5 billion dollars it was enough to make China the largest commercial partner of India but if you note that this is a sore point for India because the trade balance is in favor of China heavily and thus India has a significant amount of balance of payment with respect to China and coming to the recent issue note that in 2013 both the countries signed a border defense cooperation agreement and this is a very important agreement that was aimed at confidence building measures between both the countries but even after this there were happenings of Chinese transgressions into Indian territory which resulted in many standoffs along the border we know about the LAC transgressions and the one that resulted in the Indo-Butan China tri-junction so they are the examples but however at present both the sides have discussed and they have completely disengaged at all friction points along the LAC putting an end to the crisis along the LAC for full restoration of peace and tranquility in the eastern Ladakh now coming back to the news article the China's foreign minister in his message to the Indian counterpart offered China's support and solidarity and expressed his sympathies to the Indian government and the Indian people he also said that the anti-pandemic materials produced in China are coming to India at a faster pace to help India fight the epidemic and that a large number of orders for oxygen concentrators ventilators and other medical supplies are in the process of being sourced from China so with this we have come to the end of this article so in this discussion we learn some relevant facts about india-china relations and also about the current scenario with this information let us now move on to the next part of the news discussion now look at this news article this news article reports the hoarding of drug called remdesvir in various parts of Chennai and the police have arrested the accused and they have filed cases and the relevant sections of Indian penal code read along with the essential commodities act of 1955 see we know that this black marketing and hoarding of remdesvir has been happening across India not just in Chennai and in this context let us focus on the drug remdesvir and know more about it see what is this remdesvir remdesvir is an antiviral drug and the reports say that it was manufactured in 2014 mainly to fight the ebola virus and over a period of time it has also been used to treat SARS that is severe acute respiratory syndrome and morse which is Middle East respiratory syndrome after injection it subsumes itself into the genetic material of the virus and prevents the replicating enzyme from making new copies of the virus and this is the main function of the drug remdesvir that is it plays a significant role in reducing the viral road in the patient so in July 2020 the drug standards control organization approved the restricted emergency use of remdesvir injectable formulations especially for the treatment of severe covid infections and this was done considering the emergency and the unmet medical need for covid 19 disease and this measure is even continued today and if you note that the WHO has issued a conditional recommendation against the use of remdesvir especially in the hospitalized patients why because there is a currently less or no evidence that remdesvir improves the survival rate and outcome of the treatment in the covid 19 patients and WHO says that the evidence around the benefit and the risks of the intervention through remdesvir is very uncertain so that is the side effects associated with remdesvir is also not documented and the effectiveness of remdesvir against the covid 19 infection is also not well studied recently the CM of Chathisgarh had written to the union health ministry to notify remdesvir injection under essential commodities act of 1955 so what is this essential commodities act this act empowers the government to regulate the production supply and distribution of commodities which are declared as essential and this is for maintaining or increasing supplies of any essential commodity not just medicines it can also be onions it can also be tomatoes so anything can be notified as essential and this is for maintaining or increasing supplies of any essential commodity then for securing the equitable distribution and availability of the essentials at fair prices to people and also for the commodities is the essential for efficient conduct of military operations in India okay so it also covers the gamut of military essentials right so if you see the list of items under the act it includes drugs fertilizers pulses edible oils and even petroleum products to some extent the center can include new commodities into the list of essential commodities and when the need arises the center can also take them off the list once the situation improves so the act allows the center to notify stock holding limits for a limited period of time and it allows the center to prevent traders sellers or importers from stockpiling beyond the limit say the central government issues a restriction on one particular commodity so once the restrictions are imposed on the limit the sellers have to sell the excess that they hold into the market so this will create some kind of surplus or some kind of regulated market environment with respect to the essential commodity these are as per the section 3 clause 2 of the essential commodities act as you can see the rise in COVID-19 cases and the increase in demand for remdesivir has led to its price rise the control of duck standards control organization has already directed states to take actions against black marketing and hoarding although recently seven pharma firms have slashed the prices of remdesivir after government intervention it still has been subject to black marketing and hoarding hence listing the drugs under essential commodities act of 1995 would be the right step to ensure its availability and here is some information on central drug standards control organization which is important from the brilliant perspective students can go through this for the benefit of exam so in this discussion we saw about the drug remdesivir and the essential commodities act now we are the fag end of the session that is practice questions so we have two questions for today's discussion so let's go into that one by one the first question with reference to essential commodities act consider the following statements the first statement is essential commodities act is put in force only to regulate drug and agricultural produce see essential commodities act can be invoked for any commodity considered essential and it is not just restricted to drugs and agricultural produce and as we saw in the discussion it was also invoked for military reasons so statement one is folk look at the statement two essential commodities act can be invoked for commodities by both central and state governments see the second statement is wrong as well because the statute is a central statute and only center can modify the list of essential commodities so the correct option is neither one nor two that is option D look at the next question so consider the following statements article 76 of the Indian constitution provides for the office of attorney general and the solicitor general in India see the statement one is incorrect because we saw in the discussion that article 76 of the Indian constitution provides only for the office of attorney general it does not mention about the solicitor general and additional solicitor general so statement one is incorrect and coming to the statement two the attorney general is not debat from private legal practice see this statement is correct see the attorney general is not a full-time counsel for the central government and he does not fall in the category of government servants as well so further he is not debat from private legal practice see this clause recently created some ruckus so you may have to remember this more vividly so the correct option is B only that is only second statement is correct two only so that brings us to the end of discussion on practice problems question post your mains answers in the comment section for the peer review and writing two through three answers every day would give you an edge in your mains preparation with that we have come to the end of today's discussion if you like the video like share comment and the handwritten notes link is mentioned below in the description box as well as the comment section we are masked stay safe stay indoors as much as possible good day