 The first article appears on page number one in both the editions. This article is important from both prelims and mains point of view. It is covered under Indian quality and governance of prelim syllabus and important aspects of governance, transparency and accountability of GS2 main syllabus. Coming to the news article, Supreme Court increases the VVPAT verification. It mandated that five random EVMs from each assembly and parliamentary constituency have to be verified physically. Earlier Supreme Court restricted the physical verification to a single EVM from every constituency. This is to ensure a great degree of accuracy and satisfaction in the electoral process. This will also make elections more foolproof. Now let us understand more about VVPAT. It stands for Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail. It is a method to provide feedback to the voters. It is an independent verification printer machine that is attached to the electronic voting machines. It allows voter to check if the vote has gone to the intended candidate. If you look at the working of VVPAT, it is a printer attached to EVM. When a voter presses a button in the EVM, a paper slip is printed through the VVPAT. The slip contains the poll symbol and the name of the candidate. It allows the voter to verify his or her choice. The slip will be available for seven seconds and will be dropped into the drop box in the VVPAT machine and a beep sound will be heard. VVPAT machines can be accessed by the polling officers only and was first time used in 2013 in Nagaland assembly elections. Let us now know what advantages VVPAT has. It provides an instant feedback to the voter, thus making it a two-way process. As a paper slip comes out of EVM, it acts as a tool of visual verification and also improves transparency in the electoral process. Transparency in elections is very important to restore public faith and democracy. Any electoral frauds or malfunctions are easily detected as it has a direct record of votes and enables authorities to count votes manually. It also acts as a means to audit stored results. Last but not the least, it acts as an additional layer of securing sanctity of votes. We will be analyzing this prelims question at the end of the video moving forward to the next article. The next article appears on page number 7 in both the editions. This article is mainly important from prelims point of view. It is covered under current issues of national and international importance and also general signs of prelim syllabus. The Ordnance Factory on Monday has handed over the first batch of Danush artillery guns to Indian Army. Let us know more about Danush. Danush is the indigenously upgraded version of Swedish Bofors gun procured in 1980s. This indigenous development has been aided by transfer of technology clause signed with the Swedish counterpart. Artillery guns are heavy guns that are more powerful and have a longer range than the conventional hand held guns. These artillery guns have a range of 36 kilometers. Danush is more sophisticated when compared to the Bofors guns. Let us see some of the special features of Danush artillery guns now. This gun is fitted with the inertial navigation systems with GPS to locate a mobile target and hit with precision. It has an enhanced computer for onboard ballistic computation in order to compute the trajectory of the gun. It also has an onboard muzzle velocity recorder. Muzzle velocity means the velocity with which a bullet leaves the muzzle of the gun. The gun also has thermal imaging. Thermal imaging is a commonly used night vision technology. It is a method of improving visibility of the objects in a dark environment by detecting the objects infrared radiation and creating an image based on that information. Danush also has an automated gun sighting system with camera and laser range finder as well. We will be analyzing this prelims question at the end of the video. Moving forward to the next article. This article appears on the page number 7 in both the editions. It is mainly important from the prelims point of view and falls under current issues of national and international importance of prelim syllabus. Coming to the news article, NIRF India rankings 2019 has been released yesterday. It is the fourth edition of the rankings. It was launched in the year 2015 by the Ministry of Human Resources and Development. Let us understand about NIRF in the first place. It stands for National Institutional Ranking Framework. It is an indigenous ranking framework for higher education institutions in the country. It outlines the methodology to rank institutions across the country based on five parameters. They are teaching, learning and resources, research and professional practices, graduation outcomes, outreach and inclusivity and perception. Teaching, learning and resources has the highest weightage among all the five that is 30%. Next comes the graduation outcomes which has 25% weightage. Research and professional practices hold 20% weightage, outreach and inclusivity has 15% weightage and finally perception has the least weightage of 10%. Perception here includes both peer and public perception. The number of categories of institutions which are ranked are 9 and they include overall category, universities, engineering, colleges, management, pharmacy, medical, architecture and law out of which the last three sections, medical, architecture and law have been introduced in 2018. Now let us know why these rankings were introduced. These rankings promote competition among the universities and drive them to strive for excellence. This is very important for improving the higher education scenario of the country and also these rankings are linked with institutions of eminent scheme. This scheme was launched by the Ministry of Human Resource and Development and it aims to bring Indian institutions to global eminence. The top 50 institutes of NIRF rankings and the top 500 global ranked institutions will be eligible to apply for the eminence tag. An institution with eminence tag will be receiving special funding from the government and also has complete academic and administrative autonomy. Coming to the news article, it talks about the performance of the institutions this year. IIT Madras was declared as the best engineering institution and it also topped under the overall category. Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore was declared as the best university while Ames Delhi topped under the medical category institutions. IIMB was adjudged the best management institute and Mirinda House Delhi is ranked as the best college. We will be analyzing this prelims question at the end of the video. This article appears on page number 8 in both the editions. It becomes important from both prelims and mains point of view and is covered under Indian polity and governance in the preliminary examination syllabus and under structure, organization and functioning of the judiciary and appointment of various constitutional posts, powers, functions and responsibilities of various constitutional bodies for GS2 main syllabus. Coming to the news article, in 2009, Delhi High Court held that the Office of Chief Justice of India was a public authority under the Right to Information Act 2005, meaning the information held by the Chief Justice of India could be requested through an RTI application. This judgment of Delhi High Court, however, was appealed by the Supreme Court and the court granted stay for the order of the Delhi High Court. This month, the case came before the five-judge bench of the Supreme Court and the court has reserved judgment. Earlier in 2009, there were two issues, one about the status of Chief Justice of India as a public authority under the Right to Information Act 2005 and other disclosing the assets of judges. Now, another issue is also under consideration, that is disclosing the correspondence of Collegium. The correspondence of Collegium includes the information such as information related to the nomination process, reasons for not elevating or elevating a judge, etc. Regarding the issue of Chief Justice of India as a public authority, the author states that the office should be subject to Right to Information Act as in a modern constitution, all the power is held accountable and judicial power is no exception and also to follow the basic idea of open justice. Regarding disclosure of assets of judges, the Right to Information Act protects the privacy of the individual or the judge and authorizes disclosure when overriding public interest is found. Coming to the correspondence of the Collegium, first we discuss in short about the Collegium. The Collegium was first put in place in India by the Supreme Court for judicial appointments as a response to increase to the increased executive interference and also as a tool to secure and guarantee independence of the judiciary. It consists of five senior most judges of the Supreme Court as a selection panel for appointments in Supreme Court and three senior most judges of Supreme Court for appointments in High Court. And India is one of the few countries where judges have the last word or final say in judicial appointments in higher judiciary. This Collegium system, however, faces major criticism of opacity, meaning its correspondence is not visible to the public. Also, too often the decisions of the Collegium are taken in ad hoc and arbitrary manner. The author compares the appointments and their accountability to the public in USA, Kenya and South Africa. In United States of America, the candidates are subject to the public confirmation hearings by the Senate based on the hearing of a candidate may be approved for the judicial appointment. Despite USA being a country with high judicial independence, it makes judiciary accountable. In Kenya and South Africa, the interviews of the candidates are broadcasted live to the public. Whereas the case with India, the correspondence of the Collegiums or the process of judicial appointments has no public scrutiny or that Supreme Court has immunized itself from the public scrutiny. However, in 2015, Supreme Court acknowledged some of the criticisms of the Collegiums and as a small step has taken to publish online the resolutions of the Collegiums. Overall, the author suggests the following as a way forward. Judicial appointments should be subjected to judicial scrutiny. Chief Justice of India shall be a public authority under Right to Information Act 2005. The assets of the judges shall be disclosed if overriding public interest is found and is arguably justified. And finally, the correspondence of the Collegium shall be disclosed thus making Supreme Court open to safeguard impartiality, independence and public faith in the judicial institution. Moving forward to the next article. India-Maldives relations is of high significance today as three newspaper articles appear on page numbers 8, 9, 14 in both the editions. India-Maldives relations is mainly important from the main's point of view and is covered under General Studies paper 2, India and its neighborhood, bilateral regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and or affecting India's interest, effects of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India's interest and Indian diaspora. It can also be covered under current issues of national and international importance and also under India and world geography of prelim syllabus. Let's see the three articles that have appeared today. The first article is the editor's note that has appeared on page number 8 where the author has discussed about the recent parliamentary elections and the victory of President Soli and India's growing bilateral arrangements with the pro-Maldivian government, which we will be seeing in the later part of our discussion. The second article that has appeared on page number 14 discusses about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulating Maldives President Soli. Our Prime Minister has reiterated India's neighborhood policy in deepening the bilateral relationship. The third article that has appeared on page number 9 is an interview with Maldivian Foreign Minister where he talks about how Maldives sees its role in the region and its relationship with the world, especially India. We have covered the excerpts of the interview in our today's discussion. Let's try to know Maldives from a geographical point of view. Maldives is an archipelago consisting of 1192 islands located to the southwest of India. It is separated from Lakshadri pylons of India by the 8-degree channel. The capital of Maldives is Malay, which is located to the north of the equator. This is very helpful from the prelims point of view. Polity-wise, Maldives follows a presidential form of government where the president is the real head of the state. We shall be orienting our discussion now with respect to the changing dynamics and equations of India-Maldives relations for the past few years. In this regard, we need to know about what happened in the previous regime, the change of the government and what's happening in now and how is it changing India-Maldives bilateral equations. The previous regime under Abdullah Yameen followed a rigorous China-first policy. Under his regime, Maldives signed a free trade agreement with China in 2017. It is important to note here that Maldives is the only second country after Pakistan in South Asia to sign an FTA with China, showing the level of closeness. And also, India doesn't have an FTA with Maldives yet. Maldives also signed an MOU with China with respect to the maritime Silk Route. Many contracts were given to the Chinese companies for various infrastructure development projects, like the Maldives Airport development. All these silently signaled the downfall in the India-Maldives economic relations and the growing depth-trap diplomacy between Maldives and China. The national debt of Maldives as a result of these balloon to a quarter of its GDP and as a result of depth-trap diplomacy. Security-wise, India faced a scare when three Chinese ships were docked at Nail in 2017. Not just that, it also threatens the security of the entire Indian Ocean. Maldives' international engagements also took a turn with Maldives parting from the Commonwealth. Maldives' polity became quite volatile with Yemen declaring emergency in February 2018, which lasted for few months. The recent presidential elections led to the return of the Maldivian Democratic Party to power and Mohammed Ibrahim Soli was declared the president of Maldives in September 2018. The newly elected president immediately announced India's first policy of Maldives and declared India as its closest ally. This clearly showed a shift in government's priorities in its bilateral engagements. It is also significant here to note that our prime minister attended the overtaking ceremony of Soli, which can be seen as a positive shift in India's bilateral relationship with Maldives. Indian government on its part has announced a $1.4 billion financial package to Maldives. Maldives reciprocated by relaxing the visa procedures for Indian diplomatic and official passports. Both the countries have signed an MOU for a grant in aid by India and agreements on clean energy and regional maritime security. All these recent bilateral engagements have been discussed in the editor's note today. The DEPTAP diplomacy has started to show its effect on the Maldives' economy. President tried to reverse certain decisions of Yameen's regime but his agenda was hobbled by the resistance from lawmakers including his own party allies on certain bills which were introduced in the Maldivian parliament. However, the recent parliamentary elections have given a significant majority to the Solis Maldivian Democratic Party. In the editor's note, the editors have shared the Solis majority government would bring in political stability and assurance economic development of Maldives. With Indian prime minister congratulating Soli Nashid and reiterating India's neighborhood first policy India-Maldives relations are at an all-time high. This has been highlighted in the third news article which covers the interview with the Maldives foreign minister. The foreign minister has underscored the importance of India-Maldives relations for a stable Indian ocean region as well as to ensure freedom of maritime trade. The foreign minister has also signaled a balanced approach towards China. We will be analyzing this prelims and main question at the end of the video. Moving forward to the last article of the day, this article appears on page number 15 in both the editions of the newspapers. It is mainly important from the prelims point of view and is covered under current events of national and international importance and economic and social development in the preliminary examination. And for means, it falls under global groupings involving India and affecting India's interests and important international institutions, agencies and their fora, their structure, mandate. Recently, World Bank has published a report titled, Exports Wanted. This news article is based on the report given by the World Bank. World Bank has estimated the real GDP growth of India at 7.2% for the financial year 2019. Financial year 2019 begins from 1st April 2018 to 31st March 2019. It is also estimated that in the first three quarters of the financial year 2019, the industrial growth stood at 7.9%. Whereas the estimation for overall financial year was 7.6%. Similarly, the agricultural growth stood at 4% in the first three quarters, but the estimation for the overall financial year was 3.5%. The World Bank has forecasted that the real GDP growth for India in the financial year 2020 would be 7.5%, which is the highest among the Sark nations. The driving factors for the growth would be the continued investment strengthening improved export performance and resilient domestic consumption. In this context, it is vital for us to know about the World Bank. The World Bank was founded in the year 1944 and India is a founding member among the other countries. Initially called as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, it provided loans to rebuild countries that were devastated by the World War II. The bank expanded to group of five development institutions. In 1956, International Finance Corporation was established to give loans to the private companies and financial institutions to the developing countries. Within a span of four years, that is, in 1960, International Development Association was developed to reduce poverty in the world's poorest countries. With this poverty eradication became the primary goal of World Bank. In 1966, International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes was established which is devoted to the International Investment Dispute Settlement. In 1988, MIGA or Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency was established. It provides non-commercial insurance for cross-border investments in the developing countries. The mission of the World Bank is two-fold. One, to end extreme poverty by reducing the share of global population that lives in extreme poverty to 3% by 2030. Also, to promote shade prosperity by increasing the incomes of the poorest 40% of the people in every country. Coming to India's position in World Bank, India is a member of four out of five institutions in the World Bank Group. India is not a member of International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes. As a part of our preliminary examination, various reports released by World Bank becomes important. It publishes the following three reports. The World Development Report, Global Economic Prospects Report and the Ease of Doing Business Report. With this, let's now move on to the discussion of the practice question in the last part of the video. Let's take the first question. The first question is with respect to VVPAT and they ask the correct statements. So the first statement reads, it is an independent system attached with electronic voting machines that allows the voters to verify that their votes are cast as intended. This is a very straightforward statement that is correct. The second statement reads, a slip is printed which consists of serial number, name and symbol of the candidate to whom the vote is casted. This is also a correct statement. Thirdly, the printed slips will remain exposed for 10 seconds. This is wrong because they remain exposed for 7 seconds only. So if you eliminate the third option, the answer is B1 and 2 only. Moving to the next question, it is about the Danish artillery guns and it asks about the correct statements. The first statement says Danish artillery guns are the indigenously upgraded version of Bofors gun procured in 1980s. This is a very factual statement and it is correct. Second, it has been developed by DRDO, that is Defense Research and Development Organization. This is a false statement because it is developed by Ordnance Factory which comes under the Department of Defense Production. So the correct answer is A1 only. Let us move to the third question. It is with reference to the NIRF and they again ask the correct statements. The first statement reads it is released by Niti Ayog. This is a wrong statement because it is released by Ministry of Human Resources and Development. And the second statement reads graduation outcomes has the highest weightage among the ranking parameters. This is also wrong as teaching, learning and resources has the higher weightage and it is around 30%. So the correct option here is D neither 1 nor 2. Moving to the fourth question it is about the Collegium and again the correct statements are asked for. The first statement reads the word Collegium is not mentioned in the Indian Constitution. This is a correct statement because it is the concept brought by Supreme Court. Secondly, the Collegium of Chief Justice of India and two senior most judges of High Court recommends the appointment of judges in a High Court. This is a wrong statement because the Collegium consists of two senior most judges from Supreme Court and Chief Justice of Supreme Court. They form the Collegium who appoint the judges in the High Court. So the correct answer here is A1 only. Moving to the fifth question which of the following cities lie to the north of Equator? Except Jakarta of Indonesia all the three cities that is Singapore and Malay. If you see in the map all the three are very close to the Equator and they lie north of the Equator except Jakarta despite being close lies south of the Equator. So the correct answer here is C1, 3 and 4 only. Moving to the sixth question it is with reference to the World Bank and they again ask the correct statements. The first statement reads India is a member country in all institutions of World Bank group. This is a false statement because India is not a member of ICSID as already discussed and second statement says the World Economic Outlook is released by World Bank. This is also a false statement because World Economic Outlook is released by IMF. So the correct answer here is D neither 1 nor 2. Let us move to the practice question of Mainz. The first question reads discuss about the Collegium system in India examine the issues of accountability and transparency in its functioning. The first part of the question can be answered by giving a brief introduction of the Collegium. For the second part that is with respect to the issues of accountability and transparency points from a news analysis like disclosure of assets of judges status of Chief Justice of India as a public authority etc can be mentioned. Moving to the second question the recent parliamentary elections in Maldives is changing the geopolitical landscape in Indian Ocean region particularly India critically analyze. Here with reference to the changing geopolitical landscape in the Indian Ocean region we may talk about India taking a lead in the security of Indian Ocean region because of the reduced Chinese tilt of Maldives. And with reference to India that is the second part possibility of signing an FTA in the near future and few points from the news analysis clean energy partnership can be mentioned. With this we have come to the end of the news analysis like share and subscribe for more updates for YouTube channel.