 Very good evening everyone. Welcome to the Hindu News Analysis brought to you by Shankara AS Academy. Here are the list of news articles chosen for discussion today. Due to technical difficulties, we were not able to publish the video yesterday. But we'll be taking some of the important articles that is relevant for the exam in today's discussion as well. Let's start today's discussion with this particular article on entry tax. See, this article has been making news for quite some time. People who are following the cinema news along with the UPSC news will know very well about this fiasco that has been happening. So this news is not very important to us from the preparation point of view. However, the entry tax is very important that we may have to know from the economics perspective. See, our country is very huge and given the size and the magnitude of our country, many goods move across its length and breadth. So the central government in order to streamline the process has put forth the proposal of entry tax in states. So what this does is, it gives the state government control over the goods which enter their boundaries. See, the entry tax is fee levied by the state governments on the transfer of goods from one state to another. And the state to which the goods are being moved levies the entry tax to protect its tax base. That is, on entry into the state, the state which is receiving the goods will levy the tax. So the entry tax is a type of indirect tax in nature, if you see. And it is levied on the shipment of goods from one state to another. And it is applicable only when goods are brought into the state for utility. And the state entry tax act of that particular state can maintain the rates for the goods of each state. And if you see the person who owns or purchases the goods at the time of entry into the state is responsible to pay the entry tax. And also, the tax rates vary for each state due to many different product categories on which the tax is imposed at different rates. And know that the enforcement of entry tax in a state falls on the department of commercial taxes of that particular state. See, the products which attract entry tax in a state depends on a lot of factors. So, it largely depends on the resource availability of the state, the needs of the state, the consumption base of the state and many others. See, the essential commodities like that of milk, sugar, rice, these things usually do not attract any entry tax. And if you see the products which are not essential for the basic living, they usually attract the entry tax, like this of the luxurious cars. Again, it varies from state to state depending on the state's policies. So, it is important to note that entry tax has been replaced recently after 2017 by the goods and services tax from 1st of July of 2017. So, under the new GST regime, the interstate movement of goods now attracts the IGST and intrastate transfers attract central GST and state GST. So, these are the important points regarding entry tax. A very similar concept is the octritex. So, what is this octritex? It is also levied by the state government like that of entry tax. But this octritex is different from entry tax in that, octritex is levied for entry of goods into one particular city limit. And entry tax is levied for entry into a state and both are levied by the state governments only. So, with that information, let us move on to the next article discussion. Our next article is based on this particular study on midday meals which is published on the Nature Communications Journal. So, what does it find is that the girls who had access to the lunches provided by the government schools through the midday meals scheme had better growth. That is, they had better height to age ratio. So, if you see in our country, stunting is a very big problem. That is, the people do not grow as much as they should in that particular age. So, this is largely an indicator of poverty or in other words, it is also an indicator of lack of nutrition especially to the girl children in a family. So, if you see generally in a family, boy children are given more preference saying he is a boy and he should eat more and he needs more energy. So, generally a girl is deprived of nutrition even at a household level. So, stunting is a social problem as well at the household level resulting in greater proportion of girls being affected by stunting. And this report is a refreshing pointer which says that midday meals has done a commendable job in combating stunting. So, the paper has found that the midday meals scheme has been associated with about 13 to 32 percentage of improvement in the height to age ratio in India between 2006 and 2016. So, in this context what we will do is let us refresh what is midday meals scheme from the exam point of view. Here is the syllabus for your reference. See, the midday meals in schools has had a long history in India. In 1925, a midday meals program was introduced for disadvantaged children in the Madras Municipal Corporation. By the middle of 1980s, three states had universalized cooked midday meal program with their own resources for children studying at the primary stage. That is, the state governments themselves took up the burden of providing the midday meals to the children without relying on the central government contributions. So, the three states were Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Gujarat. And apart from that, Union Territory of Pondicherry also did the same. And if you see by 1990-91, the number of states implementing the midday meals program with their own resources on a universal or a large scale had increased by about 12 states. And then the National Program of Nutritional Support to Primary Education that is NP-NSPE was launched as a centrally sponsored scheme in 1995. And this was aimed at enhancing the enrollment, retention and attendance and simultaneously improving the nutritional level among the children. See, how did it contribute to the enhancing of enrollment, retention and attendance? Let us understand this. See, when education was pushed towards the people, what it was, they resisted it because they wanted to send their children to work so that they will have food to eat on their plates. So, it was a question of basic survival versus education. So, obviously, the education was losing out. They didn't want their children to be educated, but they just wanted the children to live at least because they didn't have enough money to provide for their children or for themselves. So, the children were seen as a tool towards resources to earn food. They didn't send the children to the school. So, what happened was the enrollment was very less, the retention was very less and attendance was very less. So, when Midday Meals was introduced, the students were provided education as well as food which was very nutritious. So, this ended up enhancing the enrollment, enhancing the retention as well as ensuring the attendance. So, this is how Midday Meals Scheme helped in furthering the education in India. See, this Midday Meals Scheme since its launch has been repeatedly revised. Later in 2001, the Midday Meals Scheme became a cooked Midday Meals Scheme for the first time. So, under this, every child in every government and government-aided primary school was to be served a prepared Midday Meals. So, this was the status in 2001. Now, in 2007, the scheme was further revised to cover children in the upper primary classes of 6th to 8th and around 1.7 crore upper primary children were included by this expansion of this scheme. And from 2008, you see the program covers all children studying in the government, local body, government-aided primary and upper primary schools. So, you can see the list is very comprehensive, isn't it? So, it also covers the EGS, AIE Centres including the Madrasas and Makhtabas, supported by the Sarvasiksya Abhyan of all areas across the country. And most importantly, the calorific value of the Midday Meals at the upper primary stage has been fixed at a minimum of 700 calories along with 20 grams of protein. Remember this value? This can be a potential MCQ question in the preliminary. And this was done by providing 150 grams of food grains, rice or wheat per child per school day. So, this is all about the Midday Meals scheme and the progress that was achieved through the Midday Meals scheme. So, you can quote these facts in your main answers and you may also have to remember the provisions of this particular scheme for your exam. So, this brings us to the end of discussion on the Midday Meals. Okay, now our next new discussion for today is going to be based on this article about the Neglet of Sculptures. See, the news article reports about five sculptures from Khakathya era that were left under at the Neglet at the Dudaida village in Telangana's Siddhipet district. So, after a thorough survey, it was found that the five sculptures included two Devi sculptures, Chenakesava, Venugopala and Bhairava sculptures. And if you see, all of them were found to be from 13th and 14th centuries representing the Khakathya style of art. So, in this context, let us very briefly discuss about Khakathyas. See, these Khakathyas are the sub-few-day trees of the Rajshakutas and they emerged themselves as independent kings and they founded the Khakathya dynasty. And the Khakathyas were the most powerful kings of Telangana who ruled between the 12th and 13th centuries. And in these years, the kingdom became strong and they united the whole of Telugu-speaking lands. And notably, this era marked the high point in prosperity, culture and art traditions of this part of Deccan. And if you see, the Khakathya kingdom witnessed powerful kings like Ganapati Deva, Rudra Mahadevi, Prataparudra. And remember, the Khakathyas ruled from Hanumakonda in the beginning, but later they shifted their capital to Varangal. And know that the Khakathyas are well-known for their irrigation public works. And apart from that, their sculptures and fine arts are also famous. And one thing that you should remember is that the Marco Polo, the great Italian traveler, visited the Khakathya kingdom sometime during the time when Rudra Mahadevi was the ruler of the Khakathya dynasty. And he also made note of her administrative style, admiring her extensively. So, now let's talk about the architecture of Khakathyas. See, remember, the iconic Khakathya Torana is very famous. And the Pakal lake, which is very scenic, which is also famous. And the Rudreswara temple, which is also called as the Ramapa temple. And apart from that, the Thousand Pillar Temple are some of the prominent contributions of Khakathyas. See, though a major part of the temple of this period are characterized and evolved from the later Chalukyan style of temple architecture and decoration. Still, all the temples and the temple complexes of Khakathyas have a distinct style of their own as well. Exhibiting their own technology and decoration. And this has a unique place calling it the Khakathyan sculpture and architecture. So, this is all about Khakathyas. This is a brief history discussion taking a departure from the traditional current affairs. So, with that, let's move on to the next part of our discussion today. Now, let us take up this news article. See, this part of a discussion is about the draft trafficking in persons, prevention, care and rehabilitation bill 2021. Or the TIP Bill in short. See, the bill is expected to be tabled in the upcoming monsoon session of parliament. And in this context, this news article appeared in yesterday's newspaper as well. And yesterday it focused on the concerns and the criticism that surrounds the bill. And the editorial of today also focuses on the positives and the negatives of the bill. So, in this discussion, let us see the positives and the negatives of the bill. Here is the syllabus for your reference. See, literally, trafficking means dealing or trading in something illegal, alright? And trafficking in persons is called as human trafficking. See, this means the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring of receipt of people through forced fraud or deception. So, this is what is called as human trafficking. So, this is done with the aim of exploiting a person or people for narrow profits. So, this is a crime in India and it occurs in every region of the world. In this, men, women and children of all ages and from all backgrounds can become victims. And the perpetrators are known as traffickers who often use violence or fraudulent means and fake promises of education and job opportunities. To trick and coerce their victims. And most often this crime is committed to obtain some type of labour or some type of commercial sexual exploitation. See, when it is done for sexual exploitation, human trafficking is referred to as sex trafficking. Alright? But human trafficking largely remains a hidden crime because the victims are transported to different countries and they face language barriers and then fear of their traffickers and the fear of law enforcement to keep victims from seeking any help. So, as we can see, the TIP is a social label and it needs to be removed from our society with zero tolerance. In this regard, a well-intended legislation of TIP Bill has been a welcome move to abolish trafficking. Alright? So, this bill is not something new in our country. Our society already has provisions which prohibits trafficking. The first and foremost is the constitution of India. So, trafficking in human beings of persons is prohibited under Article 23-1 of our constitution. So, it falls under the fundamental rights itself. That is Part 3. And apart from that, we have the Bill of the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act of 1956 and we also have the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 2013 wherein the Section 370 of the IPC was substituted with Section 370 and 370A of IPC which provided for a comprehensive measure to counter the menace of human trafficking. Alright? And including the children. And apart from that, we have the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. So, this also recognizes trafficking. And apart from that, we have specific legislations, an Act related to trafficking in women and children. This is a prohibition of Child Marriage Act, Bonded Labor System Abolition Act of 1976, the Child Labor Prohibition and Regulation Act of 1986 and we also have the Transplantation of Human Organs Act of 1994 because some people have also been trafficked to harvest their organs, right? And apart from specific sections of IPC, for example, Section 372 and 373, dealing with selling and buying of girls for the purpose of prostitution. So, apart from that, some states have also enacted specific legislations to deal with the issue. For example, Punjab. So, Punjab has the Punjab Prevention of Human Smuggling Act of 2012 to prevent the human trafficking, right? And in this long list, this bill is said to be a bright spot. So, it is to prevent the trafficking in persons, especially women and children, to counter the trafficking incidents. And it also aims to provide for care, protection and rehabilitation to the victims of trafficking while respecting their rights and creating a supportive legal, economic and a social environment for them. Then it also aims to ensure prosecution of offenders. So, let us see some of the positives of the bill. The first one is that it will apply to every offence of trafficking in persons with cross-border implications. So, this is very important because what happens is a person from India is trafficked outside the country and the police find it very difficult to nap the culprit. So, the existing legislations had the shortcoming and this legislation tries to bridge that shortcoming. So, what does this mean? That means it has a wider scope and it will include offences taking place within India and also outside India. The next is that it envisages setting up of a National Anti-Human Trafficking Committee. See, this is very important. And this committee will be set up at the national level and also at the state level. And if you see, the National Anti-Trafficking Committee will ensure overall effective implementation of the Act and which in turn will provide coordination as needed for prevention and countering these offences. And if you see, it will deal with matters related to victims such as their rescue, protection, medical care, psychological assistance, recovery, relief, rehabilitation, repatriation and reintegration. So, this aspect also tries to fill the gap that was left by the previous set of legislations. But even though it has these bright spots, author believes that the bill lacks in handling the offence of traffic. How? In a way, the author has listed all the concerns with the bill. Let us look at it. The main concern is regarding the involvement of NIA. See, as per the section 3 of the bill, NIA is the National Investigating and Coordinating Agency for these crimes. And they will be responsible for prevention and combating of the trafficking in persons and other offences as listed under the Act. See, it will also investigate, prosecute and coordinate these cases. So, it's a holistic rule, right? So, those who oppose this position of NIA argue that first, it would burden the agency further, the NIA, right? Second, it is an attack on the federalism, they say, because normally trafficking in persons cases are dealt with by the local police. And if the case is very tortuous, it is generally taken up by the CBCID, which is under the state. Now, since NIA is involved, it seems like these local enforcement agencies will not be playing any part. See, we all know the local law and order landscape is better understood by the local police, right? And diminishing their role and giving that role to a national investigating agency can prove regressive. So, that is one criticism. Now, another criticism is that the bill has broad definitions of sexual exploitation. So, as per the bill, you see, the sexual exploitation means obtaining financial or other benefits through the involvement of another person in prostitution, sexual servitude, or other kinds of sexual services. Alright? So, due to this broad definition, critics argue that the bill also takes those into consideration who indulge in consensual, commercial sexual activity. That is, sex work or prostitution. So, what does this mean? This means it would criminalize sex work. That is, even if the sex workers choose the work as a profession without any external coercion, right? So, because it is consensual, it is unfair to punish these people, right? Because often sex workers are indulging in the activity due to many causative factors such as poverty, debt, lack of opportunities and others. So, if a sex worker is criminalized without addressing the causative factors, then sex workers indulging in commercial sex due to their pathetic situation would be victimized further. Here, rather than saving them from servitude, government will end up punishing them. So, further, the definition also includes pornographic acts or protection of any pornographic material as sexual exploitation. So, critics say that even the non-exploitative consensual pornographic material which is created for adult consumption will not be allowed at all. See, it has an implication on freedom of choice. Now, next criticism is that the bill aims to punish non-reporting of offenses under the Act. For example, under the Act, the commercial carriers are required to report if any person attempts to or has travelled on a commercial carrier without the identity documents or travel documents, okay? See, a commercial carrier means the one who engages in the transportation of goods or people for our commercial gains. So, they can be the drug services, they can be the travel agencies, right? So, if the commercial carrier fails to report it, they shall be punished with a fine of up to 2 lakh rupees. So, you can see how steep the fine is, right? So, at one level, it is welcome that this provision ensures that the offenses are mandatorily reported, alright? But the commercial carriers argue that most of the times the victims do not want to be reported. So, what they do is they end up travelling without valid documents, especially when they escape from these perpetrators. So, here the travel agencies, that is, the commercial carriers are being victimized, okay? In these specific circumstances. So, there is another provision in the bill, which is lauded by many, but also criticised. It is nothing but the provision of death penalty for some form of crimes. See, death penalty is another huge contentious area, which is good for another huge discussion. But here, this bill provides for death penalty and that is also very contentious. So, on a whole, the act regarding TIP is the need of the art, which is very essential because it fills a lacuna that has been left by the previous pieces of legislation. But it also needs to reconsider the contentious provisions and make them sensitive and precise. All the loose ends need to be tried up and the criticisms need to be addressed. So, this is all about the TIP Bill 2021. With that information, let's move on to the next segment of our discussion today. Now, see this article, Time to Build a Valuable Economy. So, let us take up this news article, which talks about the 1991 economic reforms and its impacts and what led to the 1991 economic crisis, right? So, as we know in 1991, India met with an economic crisis relating to the external debt. See, India was much poorer than, right? And the government was unable to make repayments on its borrowing from abroad. And India's forex reserves had dropped to levels that were not sufficient for even a fortnight. And in comparison right now, the import cover is estimated at well over 12 months. And apart from this, the crisis was further compounded by rising prices of essential goods as well then. And the origin of the India's financial crisis, if you see, can be traced from the inefficient management of the Indian economy in the 1980s itself. And the situation was so bad that even foreign exchange was spent on meeting daily consumption needs. And if you see, even then, the efforts to reduce such profligate spending on boosting exports was minimal. So, to tide over the crisis, what India did was, India approached the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund or the Bretton Woods Twins. Then, India agreed to the conditionalities of the World Bank and the IMF and announced the new economic policy. See, according to the new economic policy, it had wide-ranging economic reforms which focuses on making India more a competitive environment by removing the barriers. So, it was starkly different from what India's economic policy was before 1991. And under the new economic policy, the government initiated a variety of policies which fall under three major leads. That is the LPG reforms, which is commonly called liberalization, privatization and globalization. So, the following diagram briefly explains about the new economic policy. So, the policy reforms can be broadly classified into the structural reforms and the stabilization measures. See, the stabilization measures are the quick measures that was adopted immediately to bring effect to the short term. And the structural reforms generally brought some drastic changes which lasted for the time to come, right? And they were the privatization, liberalization and the globalization or the LPG, right? And the liberalization had the following reforms, that is deregulation, financial sector reforms, tax reforms, forex reforms and of course the trade policy reforms. Now, coming back to the op-ed, the author says that though India grew post-1991 reforms, our export sector has not changed much. For example, our huge foreign exchange reserve is the result of the huge financial inflows rather than the export surpluses. So, if you know, India almost always displays a current account deficit, whereas a capital account surplus. So, by simply reducing government control over the private sector like in the 1990s, the competitiveness cannot be established. That is, the author says more needs to be done the privatization, right? Here, the author highlights three key elements to improve a country's export competitiveness. So, they are, first, publicly provided infrastructure, which could be education or health or commercial infrastructure, like roads or railways or anything. First, second is private R&D and third is facilitating government machinery. So, this is mostly available in the case of India's software services exporters, but not for exporters of the goods, right? And this explains why India's trade in services generally has a surplus and the deficit is mostly in trade of tangible goods. So, but even almost 30 years after the economic reforms, we have failed to ensure consistently strong export performance. So, this is very much required as we cannot rely too much on the volatile portfolio capital against the balance of payment stress. And that is why the author says that the much needed reforms are yet to take place. Now, the ongoing pandemic has revealed another issue as well, the absence of certain crucial services in our country. So, our policy makers shall focus on some serious structural revisions to ensure necessary infrastructure in our country. This is apart from rebuilding our lives and the laws livelihoods will create a stable economy. So, basically this article has focused on why India's current account balance is almost always deficient and why is India import dependent and why there is a need to bring some structural changes to tilt the balance of payment in the current account in our favor, alright? So, this brings us to the end of the discussion on this particular open. Let's move on to the next segment. Next, we are taking up this news article, new quad grouping to focus on connectivity. See, this news article is from the yesterday's newspaper. So, let's look at this article in detail. So, this article is about the formation of a new quadrilateral diplomatic platform. See, know that the US, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, they have agreed to form a new quad which focuses on enhancing regional connectivity. So, if you are following the news very regularly, our discussions very regularly, you will know generally quad means four countries which includes India, Australia, Japan and US. But this new quad is very different in its composition. So, remember this. See, the parties to the new quad consider long-term peace and stability in the Afghanistan as a critical factor and it also tries to enhance the regional connectivity. So, basically what it tries to do is to ensure that this particular region of three countries shall be well connected so that the trade can flourish in this region. And in order to understand the significance of this, we can recollect the recent developments of Afghanistan, right? After years of war with the Taliban, the US has been withdrawing recently. We all know that. This was a major setback for the US and if you see the Afghanistan is strategically located in the Central Asia. Look at the map and that is why it is called as the gateway to the Central Asia. So, with the formation of the new quad, what will happen is the US which is withdrawing right now will still have a hold on the Central Asian region. It will still have its presence over there and this is why this grouping is important from the US. And apart from this, the new quad group is considered as an important countermeasure to China's desire to extend its Belt and Road initiative to Afghanistan. So, have a look at this map for the better understanding, okay? Now, let us see in brief about the existing quad grouping just to, you know, differentiate the new quad and the already existing quad. See the quad officially is called as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and it is a strategic forum of four nations which we already saw. That is India, Australia, Japan and the US. If you see it aims to exchange the strategic intelligence and generally it has also been conducting joint military exercises as well. So, basic aim of this particular grouping is to maintain a stable balance of power in the particular region in western. And this is seen in the context of the rising security threats stemming from China. So, this quad grouping is also not new. It was first mooted in 2007. Then the former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe had put forth the idea based on the 2004 tsunami collaboration between these countries. And it was again put to forth in 2012 and then it was called as the Democratic Security Diamond. But, however, it was in 2017 the first official dialogue took place. Where did it take place? It took place in Manila. So, we can say that the quad has evolved from a loose coalition of democracy to a concrete entity. So, that met thrice since 2019 at the ministerial levels. And if you recollect the last ministerial level talk was in this February 2021. Now, we are also hearing about the possible transformation of quad into a quad plus dialogue. The idea is to convene expert discussions around shared strategic concerns among the four democracies and rotating fifth or the plus country. This would be any leading Indo-Pacific nation which could be New Zealand, South Korea and Vietnam, either one or all of these. So, this is quad plus. So, in this part of the discussion we saw about the new quad that is in the making. The existing quad which we have seen already but we have refreshed it in this discussion again. And we also saw about quad plus dialogues. So, with that let's move on to the next part of today's discussion. Now, let us take up this news article. Is Twitter acceding to take down requests? So, this is a news article from yesterday, a part of FAQ. So, let's discuss this in detail. So, this talks about the transparency report recently released by the Twitter. So, first let us know about this report and then we will see the highlights of this report. So, here is the syllabus for your reference students. So, most of the corporate giants nowadays subscribe to a practice of issuing transparency reports. And if you see the transparency reports offer companies a public facing opportunity. That is, they showcase their values and commitments to the users of their services. So, to make it simple they are just a way where the company tries to improve the public trust on them. So, in that line many corporate giants like Google, Apple, Facebook, Uber, Twitter. All of them have released such reports on a regular basis. So, with that now let's talk about the Twitter transparency report. Know that it is a biannual report. That is, it is released twice in a year by the Twitter itself. And if you see it is an initiative of Twitter in order to improve the transparency of its functioning. Basically, it tries to say that we are a transparent organization who seek the public trust. And know that the report covers sections like information requests, removal requests, copyright notices, trademark notices. And also email securities. So, the current reports which we are talking about right now is with respect to the second half of last year. That is from July 1st to December 31st of 2020. And now let us see the highlights of the latest reports of the Twitter. And some implications that we may have in our daily lives. So, one of the main sections covered by the report is the government information request. See what is this? See the government is a governing agency which is in charge of security, free speech, law and order, everything. So, we know social media plays an important role in all these aspects that we just said. So, the government at some point for security or law and order or law enforcement may seek some information from Twitter. So, that is what is called as the government information request which can be the police agency or the NIA or the raw it can be anything. So, this includes both emergency and routine legal demands for account information which are issued by law enforcement and other government agencies. See the routine legal demand from the government agencies include the subpoenas, the court orders and search warrants and others. See, here the report noted that India was the single largest source of government information request. And it says that there was about a 15% increase as well in the government information request compared with the Jan-July 2020 period. And according to Twitter, the emergency requests may be entertained if sufficient information is proving that there is an imminent threat involving danger of death or serious physical injury to a person. And Twitter says that under the category of government information requests, it did not disclose information in response to 70% of the requests. Which means of every 100 requests that the government placed, the Twitter entertained only 30% and it rejected 70% of the requests. Now secondly, the report says that India was one of the prominent sources of legal demands for removal of content. See, what is the legal demand for removal of content? See, some content that has been circulating in Twitter seems inflammatory. That is, it triggers a public outrage or it threatens the peace of a region. So government through legal sources demands the Twitter to remove all these. So that is what is called as the legal demands for removal of content. See, the legal demands provide data about the court orders and other formal demands to remove the content. And here the source of such demands can be governmental entities, lawyers representing individuals and all. And in this category, 94% of demands came from just five countries and India is one among the five. But Japan was on the top, which is followed by India at number two, followed by Russia, Turkey and South Korea. And in this regard, Twitter informed that the compliance rate in the case of requests emerging from India was far less compared with the average of the worldwide data. See, the compliance rate is nothing but the percentage of information requests where Twitter produced at least some sort of requested information. So here Twitter just says that the Twitter, the company itself did not accede to the requests of the Indian government. So that is what it means. Whereas to the other countries, say Japan or Russia or Turkey or South Korea, the Twitter was much more compliant. Now let us see the details of an India specific report of Twitter called as the India Transparency Report. So this report is published as per the provisions of the New Information Technology Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code Rules 2021. And note that the rules mandated large social media companies to publish periodic compliance reports every month citing details of complaints received and the action taken there on. So according to the report, in the May-June period, the Twitter suspended over 18,000 accounts for child sexual exploitation and a further of over 4,000 accounts for the promotion of terrorism. See, these things are very good. What it implies is that when government repeatedly places requests with the Twitter, it can meet two things. One, there is a lot of content that is circulating either as fake news or inflammatory content or content that can trigger the violence in the domestic territory. That is one thing. The second thing is it can also be inferred that the government is trying to stifle free speech. It is either one of these. So in that context, this report assumes significant importance. So with that discussion, let's move on to the next segment of our discussion today. And students, there are a few articles that we have already discussed in our previous sessions. And there are three articles on that context. So the first one is pertaining to the Financial Action Task Force. So review of Financial Action Task Force on India's anti-money laundering and countering terrorist financing regime has been postponed for the second time. See, earlier it was scheduled to be held in February. Now it was scheduled to be held in September or October. But this has again been postponed due to the pandemic. So it is expected to start by September 2022 now. And the takeaway from this is about the Financial Action Task Force, which is important for the preliminary exam. We are not going to deal with it all over again. I would suggest you to look up the article from May 11th and June 26th from our discussion. And if at all you're following the discussion regularly, you all will know where is the secretariat of Financial Action Task Force is located. If you know the answer, post it in the comment section. So with that, let's move on to the next segment. This segment is about the Pegasus spyware. So very recently on July 8th of discussion, we got to know about this notorious spyware, which is called as the Pegasus. So this Pegasus spyware has made headlines because even the governments are procuring the spyware to snoop around their own people. So that is why it's very notorious and especially in the context of the surveillance states. So this Pegasus software you will be knowing from our July 8th discussion. So you can code the Pegasus software both in your essays as well as main's answer. And it can also be asked in your preliminary examination. And coming to the next article. So this is about sedition. So this article has been quite critical about the sedition provision that is in our law books. And if you recollect, we discussed this in detail in two of our earlier discussions, one in May 22nd and other one on June 4th. So both our discussions on those dates had information about sedition. And this article quotes that about 326 cases of sedition was filed between 2014 and 19. And if you see of the 326, only six have been convicted. That is about only one sixth have been convicted. So you can realize the amount of misuse this provision from our law book has been put into. So that is all about this news. You can quote this fact about 326 cases and only six people being convicted. This fact can be quoted in your answers pertaining to sedition. And that is how this article is important. So since we recently discussed sedition, a very easy question on that. What is the sedition provision that is in our law book? If you remember, post it in the comment section again. Now with that information in mind, let's move on to the last segment of today's discussion. That is practice preliminary questions. So we have three questions in that regard. Let's go over it one by one. So this first question is from the entry tax topic that we discussed in the discussion today. So we have two statements in this regard. The first one is that the union budget can make important decisions and changes in tariff structure of GST. See the first statement is wrong because see the GST council is the governing body for the implementation of GST rules in India. We all know that. And it is tasked with the duties to make important decisions and changes in the GST also. And the GST council is also authorized to determine the rate of the tax that is applicable under the GST model. The tax exemption rules, the due date or submitting GST forms, the tax related laws and the deadlines and the special exemptions for some states of India. So that is exactly why the first statement is wrong. Coming to the second statement. The GST law also provides for the creation of a consumer welfare fund wherein undue benefits made by the businesses under the GST law have to be deposited. In case it cannot be passed on to the identified recipient. See second statement is right. So with that we arrive at option B2 only. Moving on to the next question. This is again a two statement question. It is based on the Kakathya dynasty that we discussed today. So the first statement is this. Rudrama Devi was the first and only woman to rule over Andhra. And if you see the statement is correct because the ruler of Kakathya empire after the death of the father Ganapati Deva it was Rani Rudrama Devi. And if you see she was the first woman to rule over Andhra. So the first statement is correct. Now coming to the second statement. She introduced some radical changes in the administrative structure like recruiting people from non aristocratic families into the army as commanders. See this is a very valid statement and some of her notable accomplishments were also quoted by the Italian traveler Marco Polo. We saw this also in the discussion. So the right answer is option C both one and two. Now moving on to the third question. Which of the following countries share land borders with Afghanistan? We have five countries and we are asked to identify the right option. So if you see from the map Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan has no borders with Afghanistan. So you can see from either of the two maps. So with that we arrive at option C as the right answer where we have Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan bordering Afghanistan. All right. So with that we are at the end of the practice preliminary questions section. Now here are some of the main questions inspired from our discussion today. I suggest you to write the answers and post it in the comments section for peer review. See writing few main answers every day will give you a very good edge in your main preparation. So with that let's wrap up our discussion today. If you like the video, like, share, comment and subscribe. Stay home, stay safe, good day.