 A very good evening aspirants and a happy new year. We have a small announcement regarding the third test batch of the pre-storming 2020 program of Shankar IAS Academy. The third test batch is going to start from 8 January 2020 and the admission for the same is currently underway. The pre-storming 2021 of Shankar IAS Academy is the prelims test series for upcoming UPSC preliminary examination 2021. Our pre-storming program is India's first full-fledged artificial intelligence supported preliminary test series. All the required details can be found in the link provided in the description of the video and also in the comment section. With this, let us move on to the news analysis for the date 1st and 2nd January of 2021. These are the list of news articles chosen for today's analysis. It has been provided along with the page numbers of different editions of the newspaper. Now let's start our discussion with this first article. Our first discussion is based on this editorial article in which the author talks about the issues inherent in the abrupt ordinance promulgations by the state and also the misuse of such ordinance-making power of the governor by the state. This editorial article has been written by a former judge of Supreme Court of India. So in today's discussion, let us discuss about the ordinance-making power of the president of India and also the governor of a state. Then we will also discuss the important points mentioned by the author in this regard. Before going further, here note the syllabus relevant to this discussion. The first let us talk about the ordinance-making power of the president and governor. See in India, the central and state legislatures are responsible for lawmaking. Then the central and state governments, they are responsible for the implementation of laws. And then comes the judiciary, which includes Supreme Court, High Courts and Low Courts, and they interpret these laws. But however, know that there are several overlap in the functions and powers of these three institutions. For example, the president has certain legislative and judicial functions also and the legislature can delegate some of its functions to the executive in the form of subordinate legislation. And this is where the ordinance-making power of the president also comes, which is dealt by article 123 of Indian constitution. This article 123 grants the president the powers to promulgate ordinance when either of the two houses of parliament is not in session. That is when the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha are not in session. And hence, it is not possible to enact laws in the parliament. That is why there is a need to promulgate ordinance by the president. See here, ordinance means an order or rule and ordinance may relate to any subject that the parliament has the power to legislate on. But conversely, it has also same limitations as the parliament to legislate due to the distribution of powers between the union list, state list and concurrent list. And there are also other limitations which exist with regard to ordinance-making power of the executive, especially the president. Firstly, the president can only promulgate an ordinance when either of the houses of the parliament, that is, Rajya Sabha or Lok Sabha, is not in session. And secondly, the president cannot promulgate an ordinance unless she or he is satisfied that there are circumstances that require taking immediate action. And thirdly, ordinances must be approved by parliament within six weeks of reassembling or the ordinance shall cease to operate. The ordinances will also cease to operate in case resolutions are passed by both the houses disapproving such ordinances. Now, just like the president of India is constitutionally mandated to issue ordinances under Article 123, even the governor of a state can issue ordinances under Article 213. And the governor of a state can issue ordinance under this article when the state legislative assembly or either of the two houses in the state that is having PICAM legislature is not in session. That is, when both the legislative assembly and legislative council are not in session, then the governor of that state can promulgate an ordinance. And here note that the powers of the president and the governors in this regard are broadly comparable. However, the governor cannot issue an ordinance without instructions from the president in these three cases. So, now why this editorial article has been written by author? It is because of a recent ordinance promulgated by the governor of Uttar Pradesh. So, what is the current issue with that ordinance? See, recently UP government through its governor has promulgated an ordinance called as the Uttar Pradesh prohibition of unlawful conversion of religion ordinance 2020. And as per this ordinance, no person shall convert or attempt to convert either directly or otherwise any other person from one religion to another by use or practice of misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement or by any other fraudulent means or even by marriage. So, by use or practice of these, no person shall convert or attempt to convert one person from their religion to another religion. And no person shall also abet, convince or conspire such conversion. Here, abet means aiding. And if a converted person reconverts to the previous religion, then that will not be considered as a conversion under this ordinance. So, what is author's opinion on this UP's ordinance? First, author opines that an ordinance is not actually required to stop a person from indulging in fraudulent or coercive interfaith marriage. This is because according to the author, it can be prevented by the police in the same manner they prevent child marriages. And even if the government is alerted on mass conversions that are taking place, they can be prevented by the police force by invoking existing legal provisions. So, according to the author, the need for immediate action in case of UP ordinance is not understandable. And then author talks about the vagueness of certain provisions in this ordinance. For example, section three of this UP ordinance, it prohibits conversion or attempt to convert any person from one religion to another by coercion or fraud, etc., or by marriage. Here the author is doubtful regarding the provision conversion by marriage. It is because of the vagueness of this provision. Author feels that this provision can be used to prosecute people who willfully desire to get converted to the religion of the other before marriage. So, that means even those who are willingly doing it may also be prosecuted wrongly using this provision. And secondly, if you see section seven of this ordinance, it provides that after receiving information that a religious conversion is designed to take place. And if it appears that the commission of the offense cannot be otherwise prevented, then a police officer is authorized to arrest the person who designed it without orders from a magistrate or even without a warrant. And when a police officer can arrest without a warrant or without an order from a magistrate, then simply this provision can be misused to arrest an innocent boy and his family also. Now, if you take section 12, it talks about the burden of proof. This section says that the burden to prove that the conversion was not on account of coercion, force or by marriage, such burden to prove will be on the person who has caused the conversion. But here author asks that how is it possible to know the mind of the converted person? Because it is only the person who has converted to another religion can answer this question and nobody else can answer whether such a conversion was due to force or by fraud or by use of marriage or not. So based on these lacunes in the ordinance, author states that the ordinance is prone to abuse like intimidation, bullying, arbitrary arrest, etc. And author also criticizes that this ordinance is ill-conceived, over-broad and vague in many respects. So it marks the right to privacy and it violates the right to life, liberty and dignity. And that is why author prescribes some practices to be followed by the government while promulgating an ordinance. Now author has given this suggestion because often when such ordinances are promulgated, they are challenged in court of law. See here should note one important judgment of Supreme Court in 2017 in the case law Krishna Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar in which the Supreme Court held that the satisfaction of president under article 123 and the satisfaction of governor under article 230 regarding the promulgation of ordinance is not immune from judicial review. That means Supreme Court can inquire into the existence of circumstances under which the governor or president was satisfied to promulgate an ordinance. Or simply we can say ordinance making powers can be subjected to judicial review. And this was mandated by Supreme Court because in most of the instances the circumstances that led to the promulgation of such ordinance is not stated by the president or governor when the ordinance is promulgated. So this led to allegations by public of misuse of power and even subsequently many cases were filed in court against the ordinance. So it leads to wastage of the valuable time of the court in searching for the existence of circumstances under which the promulgation of ordinance is made. And that is why author has provided suggestion in this regard where he says that there should be a practice which makes it mandatory for the governor or president to state the circumstances in which the ordinance is promulgated or they should publicly mention the reason for the promulgation of such ordinance. And this can be done by mentioning such reasons in the preamble of that ordinance itself. And for this author suggests that the preamble to any ordinance should state the immediacy for promulgating such ordinance when the legislator is not in session. Now this suggestion of author will be very useful because it would greatly enhance the transparency in legislation and it would also enable the legislators to understand why they were bypassed and why a debate and discussion in the legislature could not be awaited for making that particular law. This can also reduce the lackliness of public going to court to find out the circumstances under which such ordinances are promulgated. So if this suggestion of author is implemented then it will enable transparency in legislation, it will enable accountability and it will also save time and resources. So these are the points that you should know with respect to this editorial. Now let's move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on this editorial article which focuses on the estimations of leopard population based on a new report released by the government of India. See recently the status of leopards in India 2018 report was released by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. Here you should note that leopard species is listed as vulnerable in the IUCN Red List. It is also listed in Appendix 1 of the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora that is in Sites and it is also provided highest level of protection in India as it is placed under Schedule 1 of Wildlife Protection Act of 1972. Now what are the findings of this report? It is reported that more than 60 percentage increase in leopard population has been recorded and the states of Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra have recorded the highest leopard estimates and in this the state of Madhya Pradesh has the largest leopard population in India with a leopard population of 3421. It is followed by Karnataka which has a population of 1783 and Maharashtra is in the third place and it has a population of 1690. Now in this editorial article author has pointed out some of the shortcomings of this report. See according to the report the current estimation of leopard in India is found to be 12,852 but other feels that the count is underestimate by at least 40 percentage because according to the author India may have over 20,000 leopards. Now to prove this point it takes into account the areas chosen for study. See the study focused mostly on the forested habitats where tigers are found in comparison with other leopard habitats such as rocky outcrops, smaller dry forests, higher elevation habitats where leopards are known to be found in good numbers because these areas were not part of this exercise. So it clearly depicts that vast stretches of leopard habitats have been excluded from this study and thus it seems to be the key factor for low figures of leopard estimation in our country. Now this gap could have been filled if the study would have included leopard population estimates from other research organizations and from the areas that were not covered by this study. Now next author points out to the claim that leopard numbers have increased by 60 percentage because this claim also needs close analysis. See in 2014 the study for this report estimated a minimum leopard population from 18 different Indian states but in 2018 the study was expanded to 21 states and this shows a spatial increase in the size of the study area by 25 percentage along with this the number of camera trap locations were also increased nearly threefold. Therefore author is of the opinion that comparing both these reports and concluding that there is a 60 percentage increase in leopard population is quite misleading because as you can see this simply means that the 2018 study covered more area and it put in more camera traps to count the leopards which resulted in higher leopard numbers being counted and it does not mean that there is a significant increase in percentage. So these are some of the shortcomings of this report. Now even though India has a considerable population of leopards still India is not a safe place because leopards face many threats such as they are faced with habitat loss due to miding and quarrying. They are subjected to poaching as they are killed for their body parts and sometimes they are also subjected to vehicular collisions which leads to their mortality and there is also retaliatory killing by humans due to the human leopard conflict and sometimes even accidental deaths also occurs due to the trap set for catching wild preys. So with the increased conservation efforts we can really achieve a 60 percentage increase in leopard population rather than just increasing the area of study. With this we come to the end of this discussion now let's move on to the next discussion. Now this news article talks about a new index called as digital payments index. Let us see what is it. It is a composite index to capture the extent of digitization of payments across the country. This index is the measurement of deepening and penetration of digital payments in the country for example the deepening and penetration of paytm, phone, pay, GPA etc. So in short this index wants to capture that how much people use such digital payment options. This index has been constructed by Reserve Bank of India with March 2018 as base period. It means that the changes will be compared with the digitization values that were recorded in March 2018. So now RBA has released DPA values for March 2019 and March 2020. For March 2019 it is 153.47 and for March 2020 it is 207.84. So we can see that is an appreciable growth. This means that there is a growth in the deepening and penetration of digital payments in our country. Now from exam perspective you should note that this index comprises of five broad parameters that enable measurement of deepening and penetration of digital payments in the country over different time periods and these parameters are payment enablers which has been given a weightage of 25 percentage and it includes internet, mobile, Aadhar etc. And the second one is payment infrastructure, demand side factors. It has a weightage of 10 percentage and it includes debit cards, credit cards, fast tags etc. And then comes the payment infrastructure supply side. It has a weightage of 15 percentage and this includes bank branches, ATMs, QR codes etc. The next parameter is the payment performance which has the highest weightage of 45 percentage which has the sub parameters of digital payment systems, volume, then currency and circulation, cash withdrawals etc. And then finally comes the consumer centricity parameter which has the lowest weightage of 5 percentage and it includes awareness and education, declines, frauds etc. So each of these parameters have sub parameters which consist of various measurable indicators. Now this DPI will be published by RBI in its website on a semi-annual basis. That is for every 6 months from March 2021 onwards it will upload this DPI. So that is all you need to know about the digital payments index. Now let's move to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on these news articles which talk about the laying of foundation stone for lighthouse projects in 6 cities as part of the Global Housing Technology Challenge India. Now this Global Housing Technology Challenge India is an initiative of the Pradhan Mantri Avas Yojna Urban. So in today's discussion let us see about Pradhan Mantri Avas Yojna Urban, about the challenge and also about the lighthouse projects. The syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. First let us see about Pradhan Mantri Avas Yojna Urban. Here know that Avas in Hindi means accommodation or residence. So that means this is a mission to provide housing for all by the year 2022 and it is being implemented from June 2015. Now under this scheme central assistance is provided to urban local bodies and other implementing agencies through states or union territories and central nodal agencies for providing houses to all eligible families or beneficiaries against the validated demand for houses. See this program was launched with the objective to provide PAKKA house to all eligible beneficiaries of urban India by the year 2022 with the vision of housing for all and under this Yojna a mandatory provision has been made for the female head of the family to be the owner or co-owner of the house and also a basket of options have been adopted to ensure finance and availability of land to more number of people who are depending on their income and these basket of options include these four options. The first one is in situ slum redevelopment. Second is credit linked subsidy scheme. Third one is affordable housing in partnership and fourth one is beneficiary led individual house construction or enhancement. We have given in brief about these options for your reference. You can take note of it. Now who are all eligible under this scheme or who is the beneficiary under the scheme. See under the scheme a beneficiary is defined as a family comprising of husband wife and unmarried children and such beneficiary should not own a PAKKA house either in his or her name or in the name of any member of his or her family in any part of India. Also note that person having PAKKA house less than 21 meter square may be included under enhancement of existing house and the adult earning members irrespective of the marital status are also eligible under the scheme. Here also note that the economically weaker section category of beneficiaries are eligible for assistance in all four verticals of the missions which we just saw but the low income group or middle income group category is eligible under only the CLS's component of the mission. So to improve the pace and quality of work under Prasad Mantri Yawas Yojana Urban and to address the challenges of rapid urban growth it was important to adopt new and innovative construction technologies and also construction of houses at this scale is an opportunity for inviting alternative technologies from across the globe to trigger a major transition and such a major transition can be achieved through the introduction of cutting-edge technologies building materials and processes and therefore the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs conceptualized a global housing technology challenge India or in short GHTC India to enable a paradigm shift in the construction sector and this GHTC India intends to get the best globally available innovative construction technologies through a challenge process. It aims to demonstrate and deliver ready to live in houses in minimum time and minimum cost with high quality of construction in a sustainable manner. This challenge seeks to promote future potential technologies through incubation support and accelerator workshops in order to foster an environment of research and development in the country. In short this GHTC India aims to identify in mainstream a basket of innovative construction technologies from across the globe for housing construction sector and such innovative construction technologies are sustainable eco-friendly and disaster resilient and they are also to be cost-effective and speedier at the same time they should enable quality construction of houses that meets diverse geoclimatic conditions. Here note that this challenge has three components the first component is conduct of grand expo-come conference this will be organized biennially that is once in every two years in India to provide a platform to all stakeholders who are associated with housing construction the second component is identifying proven demonstrable technologies from across the globe and the third component is identifying potential future technologies for incubation and acceleration support through ASHA India here ASHA stands for affordable sustainable housing accelerators this ASHA India provides incubation and acceleration support to potential future technologies that are not yet market ready and also support to the technologies that are market ready now as a part of the component one the ministry of housing and urban affairs conducted the construction technology in 2019 expo-come conference in march 2019 and it provided a platform for all stakeholders involved in innovative and alternative housing technologies to exchange their knowledge and to provide business opportunities and as a result of this more than 60 technology providers from 25 countries exhibited their innovative technology in the expo and subsequently certain proven technology providers were shortlisted and they were invited to plan and construct the lighthouse projects within the framework of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana urban on six cities across the country so what are these lighthouse projects these are model housing projects with houses built with shortlisted alternate technologies that are suitable to the geoclimatic and hazard conditions of the region and these projects will demonstrate and they will deliver ready to live houses with speed economy and with better quality of construction in a sustainable manner so the period of construction in lhps is maximum 12 months from the date of handing over off sites to the construction agency after all statutory approvals now these lighthouse projects will serve as live laboratories for different aspects of transfer of technologies to field applications such as planning design production of components construction practices testing etc so these live laboratories will be helpful for both faculty and students builders professionals of private and public sectors and other stakeholders who are involved in such construction so in short the lhps showcase the best of new age alternate global technologies materials and processes in the construction sector for the first time in the country at such a large scale now just now we saw that certain proven technology providers were shortlisted to plan and construct lhps on six sites across the country and these six sites are indoor in madhya pradesh rajkot in gujarat chennai in tamil nadu ranche in jharkhand agarthala in tripura and lakhnau in uttar pradesh and this is where the foundation stone for these projects were laid down by the prime minister which was the news and these projects comprise of about thousand houses at each location along with allied infrastructure facilities these projects will showcase the use of six distinct shortlisted innovative technologies for field-developed application learning and replication and these are the six shortlisted technologies here also note that the minimum size of houses constructed under lhp should be in accordance with the prevailing guidelines of pradhanam tri avas yajna urban and also the constructed housing under lhp will include on-site infrastructure development also such as internal roads pathways common green area boundary wall water supply sewage drainage etc etc and this is where this news article which appeared in chennai edition mentions that the project in chennai also includes social amenities such as ration shop two anganwadi centers a library a milk booth and six shops then sewage treatment plant and an electrical substation therefore the project aims to provide all the amenities that is required for a residence you may ask how will the construction will be completed within 12 months it will be completed because the lighthouse projects also have incentives see the technology providers who are successfully completing the construction of lhps within the stipulated months period of contract they will be awarded 20 000 us dollars each and if they complete the lhps in less than 12 months a further incentive for early completion is provided and they will receive an incrementally higher bonus of 2000 us dollars for each month less than this stipulated period of 12 months that means if they completed in 10 months they will receive this 2000 us dollars for two months so this incentive will also encourage the technology providers to construct the project successfully and in a speedy manner so these are some of the points that you should know with respect to the lighthouse projects global housing technology challenge india and also about pradhan mantri avas yoshina urban now let's move on to the next discussion our next discussion is based on these two news articles which talk about the end of iuc regime now this news article is from yesterday's paper and this editorial is from today's paper so in this context let us first understand what is this interconnection uc charge or iuc who are going to benefit from this ending of iuc regime and what should be the future of mobile communications the syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for a reference firstly understand that iuc or interconnection uc charge is the charge payable by a service provider whose subscriber originates they call this charge is payable to the service provider in whose network they call terminates for example if a geo customer makes a call to etel customer then geo will pay iuc to etel now the network operator on whose network they call actually terminates like in this example in etel the call terminates and here etel carries the call on its network to its customers so this requires an infrastructure investment such as network towers customer care etc so this iuc ensures operators to make appropriate investments to carry voice calls without terminations and thus iuc is a main source of income for telecom companies now the iuc of voice calls is regulated by tri that is telecom regulatory authority of india and in 2017 iuc has been fixed at six paisa per minute and this was enforced until 31st december 2020 see here you should note that initially tri has announced that from first january 2020 that is last year there will be zero termination charge this means each network will have to agree to terminate calls from other network at no charge this is also called as bill and keep regime or net payment zero regime but later it was postponed to first january 2021 that is yesterday so at that time reliance geo announced that it was compelled to recover interconnection uc charges of six paisa per minute from customers that means geo customers had to pay additional charges for making call to other networks like etel so now since this iuc regime has ended geo has announced that it has also stopped charging iuc from its customers from yesterday so in this regard author suggests what should be focus of service providers now in this editorial author says that as they need to monitor call termination data and make iuc payments no longer exist and there is also a spectrum auction scheduled this year so the focus of service providers like geo etel vodafone etc should shift to giving the users a better deal that is they should provide reliable call quality and competitive tariffs as you are aware india has high density telecom market and it is expected for further growth because we are awaiting the expansion through 5g and internet connected devices but despite this the economic survey of 2019 to 20 pointed out that there is intense competition which has reduced the number of private players because in 2015 there were around seven to eight major service providers but currently we are left with only three to four major service providers like bsnl geo etel etc and mostly this intense competition affects the public sector operators like bsnl and mtnl as they still face a challenge and their future is not certain yet so effort should be put to improve the technological capabilities and service levels of public sector operators we are saying this because for example even now bsnl customers are awaiting 4g so if this scenario persists then obviously customers will move on to other private players who are providing better technological options now on the other hand there has also been the rise in 4g subscribers from 2017 to 2019 it is to be noted that india had 196.9 million subscribers of 4g in september 2017 and this was increased to 517.5 million 4g subscribers in june 2019 but even then only 40 percentage are on 4g networks others are still in slower 2g or 3g networks now since now the ioc has ended it should spur an expansion of high capacity networks going beyond 2g and 3g because even today etel is offering 2g services in villages while geo is exclusively 4g in all areas so all network providers should upgrade their networks completely to high speed networks like 4g and there is also an issue that in the recent days the executives of etel and vodafone idea has said that only higher tariffs can ensure the health of telecoms so in this regard tri must make decisions cautiously for consumer welfare through adequate choice affordable tariff and quality service now since india is a mass market for voice and data services which fuel the digital economy it becomes crucial to achieve the aspirations of digital india and better adoption of digital payments affordability and providing quality service in this regard as a conclusion author worries that higher tariffs and badly priced spectrum could lead to auction failures and when there is a lack of genuine competition then it will also hamper the growth of next big wave of telecoms like 5g technologies actually we have already discussed about auction of spectrums and how high prices of spectrum have led to failure of auctions in the past on our 22nd december indian analysis you can view that analysis for more understanding in this topic with this we have come to the end of this discussion well let's move on to the next discussion now we have come to the last session the practice questions discussion look at this question with reference to the ordinance making power of president of india and governors of state consider the following statements statement one president can promulgate an ordinance when either of the two houses of parliament is in session but the governor can promulgate an ordinance only when the state legislature is not in session the statement is incorrect the president and governors can only promulgate ordinances when either of the two houses of parliament in case of union and state legislatures in case of states respectively are not in session now look at the second statement Ordinance is promulgated by the President and Governors must be approved by Parliament and the respective State Legislature within six months of reassembling or they shall cease to operate. Now this statement is also incorrect because it is six weeks not six months. Now here the question asks for the incorrect statements. Since both the statements are incorrect, the correct answer to this question is option C both 1 and 2. Now this next question is a two statement question. Last statement is interconnection usage charge is the charge payable by a service provider whose subscriber originates the call to the service provider in whose network the call terminates. This statement is correct. Now second statement is from January 2021 the bill and keep system has been replaced with IUC system. Now this statement is incorrect because it is the other way around. The IUC system has been replaced by the bill and keep system. Now here the question asks for the correct statements. Now here the statement one is the correct statement. So the correct answer to this question is option A one only. Now this next question is based on the findings of status of leopards in India 2018 report. First statement is leopard population has increased in tiger reserves in Uttar Pradesh and the Terai areas of Uttarakhand when compared to the previous estimates. This statement is correct. This is one of the findings of this report. The second statement is the state of Madhya Pradesh had the largest leopard population in India. Now this statement is also correct. Madhya Pradesh was followed by Karnataka and then comes Maharashtra. Here the question asks for the correct statements and both the statements are correct. So the correct answer is option C both one and two. Now this next question is based on digital payments index. First statement is it is a composite index to capture the extent of digitization of payments across the country. Now this statement is correct about this index. Now second statement is it is released on a semi annual basis by the economic intelligence unit. Now this statement is incorrect because it is released by Reserve Bank of India and here the question asks for the incorrect statements. So the correct answer to this question is option B two only. Now here you can take note of a similar index released by economic intelligence unit which is the inclusive internet index. It is commissioned by Facebook and it is conducted by economist intelligence unit. It seeks to measure the extent to which the internet is not only accessible and affordable but also how it is relevant to all. And then there is also a digital adoption index released by World Bank and we also have a global fintech adoption index by Ernst and Young. Now let us take one main question based on GS paper two. What do you understand by lighthouse projects? Discuss their importance in the light of the need for adoption of new and innovative construction technologies to address the challenges of rapid urban growth. You have to answer this question in 150 words. You can write the answer and post it in the comment section. With this we have come to the end of today's Sindhu News Analysis. If you like the video don't forget to like, comment and share. And do subscribe to Shankar IAS Academy YouTube channel for more updates related to civil service examination preparation.