 Welcome to the Hindu News Analysis by Shankar IAS Academy. Displayed at the list of news articles taken up for today's analysis, along with the page numbers of Chennai, Bengaluru, Delhi, and Tiruvananthapuram editions. The handwritten notes in PDF format and the time stamping of all the news articles taken up for today's analysis will be available in the description section. It will also be available in the comment section for the benefit of the smartphone users. Let us now start our analysis. This news article talks about the regional comprehensive economic partnership. The article will be relevant in your prelims preparation under current events of national and international importance. It will also be relevant in your main preparation in your General Studies paper too, under regional groupings and agreements involving India and or affecting India's interests. We have seen that on 23rd June 2019, the 34th Asian Summit was held in Bangkok in Thailand. The leaders of this 10 member association have resoundingly committed to conclude the negotiations for RCEP free trade agreement before the end of this year, that is 2019. Now we saw that the Malaysian prime minister has stated that the RCEP shall be negotiated and concluded for just 13 countries that are willing to extremely cooperate. He also said three countries that are not ready to join RCEP could join at a later date. So the three countries that are not ready to join has put the words of Malaysian PMR, India, Australia and New Zealand. Now the idea of having a RCEP agreement was first promoted by Asian in the year 2012 if you see. The negotiations have been going on for a very long time since 2012. And till date it is not yet concluded among the 16 countries that are party to the negotiations. In the Asian Summit, it was also agreed to send a three member delegation to the Indian government and to take forward the talks. Earlier this month we have also found that China has also sent its team headed by its vice minister for commerce for talks with the Indian Commerce Secretary. Now this RCEP agreement is proposed among 10 Asian countries and six free trade partners of Asia. The six free trade agreement partners of Asia are India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. The RCEP negotiations were launched in 2012 at the 21st Asian Summit held in Cambodia. If you have been following the news analysis regularly or at least the news with respect to RCEP, you'll be able to tell that Thailand, Singapore and Cambodia are members of Asia and also the Malaysia which is a member of Asia. Now we will not push you to learn all the 10 members of Asia in one single go. Rather we want you to flow with the current FS and know it better and better day by day. So at the end of the day or just before the exam you should be able to know all the 10 members of Asia. If this RCEP agreement is finalized and it comes into force among these countries then it will cover 40% of global trade and 30% of global GDP. Now you can use these statistics in any of your main questions related to Asia and know that some of the India's concerns are not still addressed though it has been six years of negotiations starting 2012. One is with respect to opening India's markets for cheaper goods from countries like China and South Korea. Now we have been seeing this as opening of India's industrial manufacturing sector. If you remember in the last class also we discussed the same. And another concern is that ensuring that RCEP countries open their markets for Indian manpower. This we can be seeing as India has been insisting that the countries particularly China and South Korea should open their services sector. When we mean free trade partner of Asian it is like Asian plus one like Asian plus India then Asian plus Australia like that. When it becomes RCEP it is like all the 16 countries can do free trade in agreed lines with all the 16 countries. This has potential like becoming an economic block a block that has India and China in it. And note that India's trade deficit with 11 out of 16 countries that currently negotiates this RCEP agreement. And India is the only country of these 16 countries that is not negotiating a one to one free trade agreement or a bilateral free trade agreement with China. In such a situation India will be very careful to make this agreement in favor of India or at least that it should not damage India's trade. Another demand from the Indian side is to have differential tariffs for India's trade with China in contrast to India's trade with other countries in RCEP. One another demand of India is to have the tagging of the country of origin on all the products. The author says that India will be keen to have negotiations to be a part of this agreement. The negotiations are also with all those Indian industries that are deeply concerned with India joining RCEP. If you see the steel and aluminum industries already asked the commerce industry to exclude the steel and aluminum products from tariff reduction commitments in RCEP because any reduction in tariff will make Chinese goods to flood the Indian market and this will lead to shutting down of all the small scale industries. Such similar concerns are also there with some other industries such as copper, textiles and pharmaceuticals if you see. The author tells that the Indian government should develop a consensus among all the parties and stakeholders in favor of signing the regional agreement. If India does not become a party to this partnership India may lose the regional trade and also lose the ability to frame the rules and investment standards for the RCEP grouping. Now with the increasing global uncertainties and challenges to multilateralism and the international economic order if India is not a part of this RCEP agreement then it would seriously affect the India's plans for economic growth. So these are all the opinions of the author. Now we can use some of the opinions in any of your main answers relating to RCEP or Asia. With this we come to the end of the analysis of this editorial. Now have a look at the practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. Now this news article is about Jal Shakti Abhyan. The analysis of this news article will be relevant in your prelims preparation under current events of national importance and then under economic and social development particularly under social sector initiatives. The news is that the central government will initiate a program called Jal Shakti Abhyan. Here Jal means water, Shakti means power or empowerment and Abhyan means campaign. So always try to know the meaning of the schemes in your mother tongue or in English so that it will be easy for you from exam point of view. Now why is the central government starting this particular program? The scheme is basically a water security scheme. So it mainly aims to conserve the water. So the campaign aims for water conservation and irrigation efficiency, especially in the rural areas. Hence the central government is starting this water conservation program and rural India is the main focus here. Since it is a water security scheme, you can get a rough idea that it aims to cover the water stressed rural areas. Water stress means where there is not enough water. So under this scheme, the rainwater harvesting and conservation efforts in some 255 water stressed districts will be carried out. Also if you see the scheme is for a limited time period only. The scheme will run from July 1 to September 15 in the districts where the southwest monsoon occurs and for those districts that are covered by the northeast monsoon, the scheme will be covered from October 1 to November 30. Now according to a notification issued by the department of personal and training which comes under the ministry of personal public grievances and pensions, this particular Jal Shakti campaign will be coordinated by 255 central IAS offices of joint or additional secretary rank will be from various ministries. These offices would visit the districts and blocks and they'll coordinate the implementation of various rainwater harvesting and conservation measures. Now this campaign would aim to increase the rainwater harvesting, then increase the water conservation, then more will recharge activities, then renovation of water bodies, then your watershed development and also a forestation drapes. If you see many of these activities are already executed through various schemes under various ministries. Like for instance from the ministry of rural development, ministry of Jal Shakti and ministry of environment forest and climate change. Now some of the schemes that I mentioned in the news article are Mandrega or the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme and also the integrated watershed management program. If you see both these schemes are implemented by the ministry of rural development. So during the time period that has been mentioned under this particular scheme, the offices, groundwater experts and scientists from the government will work together with the state and district officials in the India's most water stress districts. So we saw that 255 water stress districts have been identified. So mainly for water conservation, water resource management and irrigation efficiency and the progress of this particular scheme would be monitored on real-time basis through mobile applications and there will be an online dashboard at a particular website called Indiawater.gov.in to display all the collected results which would also help in monitoring. Also the ministry plans to carry out the campaign in print, local and social media and also on TV and radio to create awareness about the campaign. Here the ministry is nothing but the ministry of Jalshakti. Now if you see the picture which is given in the news article, it shows two kinds of districts. The red color one is the non-aspirational districts and the yellow colored ones are the aspirational districts. In this context, let us see in brief about aspirational districts program. The main aim of this program is to rapidly transform the districts that have shown relatively lesser progress in key social areas and they have become the districts of under development like basically to transform the underdeveloped districts to a developed one. Since they are underdeveloped districts, they pose a challenge to ensure a balanced regional development. Say if a particular district in a particular state is underdeveloped that the overall development of the state will be slightly affected. So this program aims to transform the underdeveloped districts to developed districts. Under this program, the central and state schemes will be converged. Then the central and state level Prabhavari officers and district collectors will collaborate to develop the districts. And then the competition among the aspirational districts will also be driven by a mass movement that is through awareness campaigns. Now have a look at the practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. This OPET article is based on an interview with the chairman of the committee that finalized the draft national education policy. Now we have been seeing many news about the draft national education policy these days. This OPET article is an interaction with the committee's head, Dr. K. Kasturi Rangan. This is still a draft report and the comments are invited to the proposed national education policy up to 30th of June. And after June 30th, the government will take its decision about the draft policy. Now this OPET article will be relevant in your prelim syllabus under the area current events of national importance and then in public policy under Indian polity and governance. It will also be relevant in your main preparation in your general studies paper too under government policies for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation and also in issues relating to development and management of social sector services relating to education. In October 2015, a committee was constituted for the evaluation of the new education policy. If you see this committee was headed by a former cabinet secretary, Mr. TSR Sibramanian. This committee submitted its report in May 2016 and has also proposed a national education policy. Now, because of some issues, the national education policy proposed in that report did not get into action. However, based on this report, the Ministry of Human Resources and Development prepared a report title, some inputs for the draft national education policy 2016. Then if you see another committee was constituted and a former chairman of ISRO was asked to chair this committee. This committee was asked to examine the report submitted by the Mr. TSR Sibramanian committee and the proposed national education policy along with the report called as some inputs for the draft national education policy of 2016. He says that though that was a given task, what instead required was not a fine-tuning of just the existing policy, but a complete relook into the education system. This is what the chairman of this committee has said. Now, the draft national education policy suggests to have a system of school complexes. If you see the idea of school complex was first proposed by the Education Commission Report way back in 1960s. Now, according to the draft national education policy, each school complex will have a cluster of schools and will have 80 to 100 teachers to form a strong community of teachers in the neighborhood. And these teachers can form lasting relationships among themselves and with the community that they serve. This system of school complexes is expected to bring about a new culture of sharing common resources in a very optimal way. At the base of the school complex will be a network of Anganwadi centers and pre-primary schools that will be linked to the primary school in the neighborhood area. And there will be adequate infrastructural facilities such as playgrounds and societal interface for children which are currently not there under the service Iksha Abhyan program. But there is a question, how about this idea of school complexes in areas where access to schools itself is difficult? For such places, the chairman of this committee suggests to provide access facilities which has providing bicycles for children, et cetera. Now the open article states that the children from the schedule cast and the schedule trips should not suffer from want of access to education. For this they'll be given 100% scholarship to learn and they will also get special education scholarships. The selection of teachers will also be made among the schedule cast and the schedule trips. Also the existing small concessions for them will be retained and will be upgraded if necessary. Next the draft proposes that classes 9, 10, 11 and 12 will be called as secondary stage. And every year we'll have two semesters. So overall there'll be eight semesters for the entire secondary stage. This is the meaning of the semester which is mentioned in the newspaper. Don't confuse it with the college semesters. Next there'll be a system of modular or subject-wise board examinations in each semester that will be conducted to test only core concepts, principles, critical thinking, and other higher order skills in each subject. And students can take the test as soon as they are thorough with a particular subject. It is said that this will help remove the excess pressure on students because of the ROT learning approach in the present school exam system. The new system proposed on the draft national education policy will eliminate this ROT learning. Teachers have to be retrained or new teachers have to be brought into handle the proposed system. Next there was a question on extreme degree of centralization in the draft policy. For this the chairman of the committee has said that every state will have a regulatory body called as state school regulatory authority. Though the central level institutions will provide guidelines to the states, it is up to the state to decide on the curriculum and the methods in mode of teaching. Also accreditation authorities are set up at both the central and state level. With these mechanisms in place, there'll be no direct control on the authority of the state with respect to education. Next the policy also proposes a four year course for bachelor of education so that at the end of completing B-Ed or the bachelor's of education, every teacher will have the ability to frame a curriculum. That is they should be able to write a high quality resource book for various subjects. Then the chairman talks about the research. In India the amount spent on research is just 0.69 percentage of the GDP whereas in USA it is 2.5 percentage of the GDP. And if you see the 70% of all the patents that are obtained in India are only by the non-resident Indians and not by the resident Indians which means the Indians who reside in India. And non-resident Indian means those Indians who do not reside in India but do their research in abroad institutions but sign there or put their patents in India. The number of patents in India is about some 40,000 whereas in US and China the number has been around 7 lakhs. The situation is therefore we can say it is not much happier or conducive. The central and state governments must provide a lot of funding support to research because at present the funds are insufficient to keep the research and the researches going. There must also be adequate infrastructure for research in all these research institutions. Therefore there has to be a national research foundation to fund the university system of all branches and it will also enable the research grants to the research institutions from the government departments. Then there has to be seed capabilities or basic minimal capabilities in every research system so that any university can start taking research. For all these research-oriented initiatives and activities there has to be a tighter system of monitoring, evaluation and midterm correction. Such a system only will bring various outputs that condenses the industrialists to fund various research initiatives. If you see this new generation of researchers who will become as a result of strict system of monitoring will be teaching the next generation of learners. The draft policy also has the provisions to ensure that the underprivileged children are supported with various means, particularly access to education by reservations. The system of education should take them up from the state of underprivileged to the state of excellence. Now have a look at the practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. This news article is about the support that India has received at the United Nations Asia Pacific Regional Group for its candidature for United Nations Security Council Non-Permanent Membership. The analysis of this article will be relevant in your problems preparation under the area current events of national importance and in your main preparation it will be relevant in your general studies paper too under global groupings involving India and are affecting India's interests. The United Nations has five regional groups of its member states if you see. One is the African group, then the Asia Pacific group, then Eastern European group, then the Latin American Caribbean group and finally Western European and others group. In this Asia Pacific group, 57 countries participate in the meetings of the group. One thing you have to keep in mind, Turkey participates in two regional groups here. It is a member in Asia Pacific group and also in the Western European and others group. However, for electoral purposes, Turkey will be considered as a member of Western European and others group only even though it participates the meetings of Asia Pacific group. And Kiribati also participates the Asia Pacific group but it is not a member of any regional group since it has not delegated a permanent representative to the United Nations. This makes the membership of the Asia Pacific group as 55, though 57 countries participate the meetings. And note that the United States of America is also not a member of any regional group here. It just attends the meetings of the Western Europe and other states group as an observer. For electoral purposes, it is considered to be a member of Western Europe and other states group. If you take United Nations Security Council, it consists of five permanent members and 10 elected non-permanent members. The five permanent members are the countries of China, United States, France, United Kingdom and the Russian Federation. The 10 non-permanent seats are distributed on a regional basis if you see. So five seats are for African and Asian member countries, one seat for the Eastern European states and two for the Latin American and Caribbean states and two for the Western European and others. Every year the United Nations General Assembly elects five non-permanent members for a two-year term for the membership of this United Nations Security Council. Also, every year the United Nations Asia Pacific group nominates one of its members for elections in the United Nations General Assembly for the non-permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council. This year, India has won the complete support of all the member countries in the Asia Pacific group to be nominated. If you see, India has announced its candidacy for the period 2021 and 2022 at the end of the year 2013 only. This news article states that India had been a non-permanent member in United Nations Security Council for around seven terms. The recent term was in 2011 and 2012. In the end of 2013, when India was announcing its candidacy, even Afghanistan, which is another member country in the Asia Pacific group, also announced its candidacy for the same period that is 2021 and 2022. However, because of the long-standing close and friendly relations between India and Afghanistan, Afghanistan withdrew its nomination to accommodate India's candidacy for the United Nations Security Council. One special feature with respect to the recent support received by India at this United Nations Regional Group is that, even China and Pakistan, which is in this Asia Pacific group, supported India for its candidature in United Nations Security Council. Now, India will require around two-third majority in the United Nations General Assembly to get elected for the seat in the Security Council. India is particularly interested to hold the seat of the United Nations Security Council in the year 2021 and 2022 because the year 2022 coincides with the 75th anniversary of Indian independence. The news article also states that India will also be hosting the G20 Summit in our country at the 75th year of Indian independence, that is 2022. Now, we have been learning many things about the 75th year of Indian independence. If you see, even yesterday, we saw about a mission 25 by 2022 that is concerned with the child's tunting, which has to be reduced to 25 percentage from the 38.4 percentage by the year 2022. That is by the 75th year of Indian independence. Then India has also planned to double the farmers' income by the year 2022. Then India has also planned to send the nation's first human spaceflight program that is Gaganyan Bay 2022. Now, have a look at the practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. The last news article is about the recent visit of the United States Secretary of State to India. If you see, we had discussed about his visit in our yesterday's news analysis as well. In continuation of that, we shall be seeing this news. The analysis of this news article will be relevant in your prelims preparation under current events of national and international importance, and also in your main preparation in your general studies paper too under bilateral groupings and agreements involving India and are affecting India's interests and also under effective policies of developed nations on India's interests. The Secretary of State of United States of America has visited India yesterday, that is on 26th of June, 2019. During his visit, he has met the Indian Prime Minister, then the Indian Minister of External Affairs and also the National Security Advisor of India. After the meeting between the United States Secretary of State and the External Affairs Minister of India, both sides have not announced any positive outcomes. So now all the eyes are on the proposed bilateral meeting between India and USA, which is expected to take place tomorrow, that is on 27th of June, 2019. Now we shall see some of the areas of concern for the United States with respect to India. The United States demands better market access for its companies in India. Then the United States also has some concerns with India's proposed laws and policies on e-commerce and then on data localization. If you see the United States has been demanding the data of Indian people to also be stored even outside the territory of India, but India has been reluctant to do that for the security of Indians and also for some other reasons. And then there is also concern with respect to the price caps that Indian government has put in place for various products. These price caps can be particularly seen among medical and pharmaceutical products. So these were some of the issues that were stated as reasons for the United States putting India under the eligibility review. Under this generalized system of preferences program that is the GSP program in April, 2018. Next, the United States is also threatening India with sanctions under the CATSA Act. If India makes payment or purchases, the S-400 Triumph Anti-Message System from Russia. Here CATSA stands for Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. Know that it has come into force in the year 2017. And very recently Indian government has announced retaliatory tariffs on 29 American goods. Now the United States demands that this tariff has to be removed. On 15th of June, 2019, we have discussed this news with respect to the background for the retaliatory tariffs on 29 US goods. The link for the news article discussion is provided in the description box for the subject clarity. Next, India also has several concerns with respect to the United States. If you see, India seeks an exemption from USA to trade oil with Iran so that it can import oil from Iran. US had given an exemption to India along with some other countries in the month of November, 2018 for a period of six months. But this exemption came to an end on 2nd of May, 2019. And after 2nd of May, the United States did not renew or extend the exemption provided to India. Instead, it threatened India with sanctions that if India continues importing oil from Iran after 2nd of May, US will impose sanctions on India and its companies. Therefore, India has stopped importing oil from Iran after 2nd of May, 2019. Next, India has also been asking to reinstate it as a beneficiary under the GSP program. We know that the United States has removed India from this beneficiary status in GSP with effect from 5th of June, 2019. India GSP stands for Generalized System of Preferences Program. Next, India also requires United States not to interfere on the purchase of Russian S-400 tram anti-missile system. If you see the Minister of External Affairs of India as explained to the United States that it is in the India's interest and that India on its own will decide on this matter. And it is not a matter subjected to the opinion of United States. The news article states that India's relationship with Russia as a traditional relationship. And USA is a very recent friend of India, but Russia has been a long-standing friend of India since 1970s. In 2016, Indian Prime Minister stated that an old friend is better than two new friends in an India-Russia bilateral meeting in Gover. And Russia has also supported India many times at the UN Security Council in the exercise of its powers as a permanent member. The Minister of External Affairs has also raised the matter of growing tensions between Iran and United States and its impact on India's energy security. We have seen that recently the tensions between Iran and US have been increasing. This is a very serious issue because Iran can block the state of Hormuz or the Hormuz Strait to irritate or to retaliate United States. This means that a lot of ships that are carrying oil may not be able to pass through this Strait. Thus, it will have serious effect on the energy security of not only India but also to many other nations as well. Then, United States Secretary of State has also published an annual report called as 2018 Report on International Religious Freedom. The report has some remarks with respect to India and about the ruling party in India and also about its members. This report was very much critical about the enjoyment of religious rights of the minorities who live in India. But if you see, India has rejected this report and has asked United States to not to talk about the state of religious freedom that is enjoyed by the Indian citizens. Let us now move on to the practice question discussion session. First question, the question is a regional comprehensive economic partnership agreement has been proposed between a set of countries and an organization in the Asia Pacific region in 2012. The agreement is proposed between. Now, whenever you are knowing or studying about regional comprehensive economic partnership or RCEP, remember ASEAN. If you see, this RCEP has been proposed among 10 ASEAN members and six free trade partners of ASEAN which also includes the countries of India, Australia, China, South Korea, Japan and New Zealand. So, here the correct answer is Option C, Asian and India, Australia, China, South Korea, Japan and New Zealand. Moving on to the second question. Consider the following statements. They've asked two statements regarding the Jal Shakti Abyan which we saw today and they have asked you to choose the correct statement. Here the first statement is Jal Shakti Abyan is a water security scheme with an aim to accelerate the rainwater harvesting, water conservation and many such measures. This statement is correct because it is a water security scheme and they have identified certain areas of intervention like increasing the rainwater harvesting, increasing water conservation, then global recharge activities, then renovation of water bodies, then your watershed development activities, then forestation measures. So, the first statement is correct. The second statement is water stress districts that come under the aspirational districts program are not included in Jal Shakti Abyan. If you remember, we just saw a map which was given in the news article and it mentioned aspirational districts and also the non-aspirational districts. So, this second statement is wrong. So, the question is asked for the correct answer. The correct answer is option A, 1, 1, B. Moving on to the third question, which of the following suggested that there shall be two semester exams in every year of secondary stage education and in every semester, a system of modular board examinations be conducted? So, here the correct answer is option C, Kasthuri Rangan committee 2019 as we saw during our discussion. Now, there is option D, Education Commission 1964 to 66 can get confused or slightly get confused with this option. But during our analysis, we saw that the system of school complexes was the idea which was proposed by the Education Commission long back in the year 1964 to 1966. So, here the correct answer is option C, Kasthuri Rangan committee 2019. Moving on to the final question, consider the following statements with respect to United Nations Security Council. The first statement is, it consists of five permanent members and 10 non-permanent members. And the second statement is that the non-permanent members are elected for the period of two years on the recommendations of one of the permanent members of the council. And statement three is historically, India's neither permanent nor a non-permanent member of the council. They have asked you to choose the correct statement. Now, read the statements once again. From our discussion, we saw that United Nations Security Council consists of five permanent members and 10 non-permanent members. And these 10 non-permanent members are elected by the United Nations General Assembly based on the respective regions. So, there were five different regions which we saw, but not on the recommendations of permanent member. So, here the statement one is correct and the second statement is not correct. Then moving on to the third statement, though India is not a permanent member, it has served as a non-permanent member in the past. So, the third statement is also incorrect here because it is given that it was neither a permanent nor a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Their question is asked for the correct statements. The correct statement is only the first statement. So, the answer is option A1 only. With this, we come to the end of the analysis of all the news articles taken up for today's discussion and also the practice questions discussion session. Do like, comment and share the video and do subscribe to Shankar IA's Academy YouTube channel for latest videos and updates. Stay focused and motivated friends. Thank you.