Cauvery Management Authority (CMA)

Acting on the Supreme Court’s direction, the Centre has constituted a Cauvery Management Authority (CMA) to address the dispute over sharing of river water among Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Puducherry. In a gazette notification, the Ministry of Water Resources said it has framed a scheme constituting the CMA and the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee to give effect to the decision of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal as modified by the Supreme Court order.

Composition;

The Cauvery management authority would comprise a chairman, eight members besides a secretary. Out of eight members, two each will be full-time and part-time members, while the rest four would be part-time members from states.

Functions;

• Exercise power and discharge such duty for “sufficient and expedient for securing compliance and implementation” of the Supreme Court order in relation to “storage, apportionment, regulation and control of Cauvery waters”.
• Supervise operation of reservoirs and with the regulation of water releases therefrom with the assistance of the regulation committee

• The Cauvery Management authority will also look at the regulated release of water by Karnataka, at the inter-state contact point presently identified as Billigundulu gauge and discharge station, and located on the common border of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
• The authority at the beginning of the water year (June 1 each year) would determine the total residual storage in the specified reservoirs.
• The Cauvery Management authority has also been tasked to advise the states to take suitable measures to improve water use efficiency, by way of promoting micro-irrigation (drip and sprinkler), change in cropping pattern, improved agronomic practices, system deficiency correction and command area development.
• It has to also prepare an annual report covering the activities of the authority for the preceding year.

Additional info:

1. The chairman of the Cauvery management authority should either be a “senior and eminent engineer” with an experience of water resource management and handling of inter-state water dispute or an IAS officer with an experience in water resources management and handling the inter-state dispute
2. The Cauvery Water Regulation Committee has to meet once in 10 days during the months of June and October when the south-west and north-east monsoon set in and again after the monsoon has set in.
3. The Centre will initially contribute a sum of Rs. 2 crore for the functioning of the authority.
4. The share of each state will be determined on the basis of the flows so assumed together with the available carry-over storage in the reservoirs.

The top court had modified the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWDT) award of 2007. It had raised the 270 tmcft share of Cauvery water for Karnataka by 14.75 tmcft and reduced Tamil Nadu’s share, while compensating it by allowing extraction of 10 tmcft groundwater from the river basin, saying the issue of drinking water has to be placed on a “higher pedestal”

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UN report on Kashmir

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has published the first-ever UN human rights report on Kashmir. 

The title of the report is “Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Kashmir:  Developments in the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir from June 2016 to April 2018, and General Human Rights Concerns in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan”. 

Details:

● It highlights the wide range of ongoing serious human rights violations and patterns of impunity in Indian-Administered Kashmir It also raises significant human rights concerns in Pakistan-Administered Kashmir.

  ● It criticise the Restrictions on access to Kashmir imposed by both the Governments of India and Pakistan which impede the work of civil society organizations, journalists and independent human rights experts including OHCHR.

 ● It criticise Abuses by armed groups, Sexual violence, Use of pellet-firing shotgun Lack of access to justice and impunity. Arbitrary arrests and detention, including of children Torture Etc.

  It recommends;

● Urgent repeal of the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act, 1990
● Establish independent, impartial and credible investigations to probe all civilian killings, all cases of abuses committed by armed groups, all cases of sexual violence allegedly perpetrated by state and non-state actors. 
● End restrictions on the movement of journalists and arbitrary bans of the publication of newspapers in Jammu and Kashmir
● Fully respect the right of self-determination of the people of Kashmir as protected under international law etc. 

      Problems of the report:
● Incompetence The UN report at best lacklustre and is wholly superficial with little groundwork and insufficient knowledge of the situation.

Glaring biases in the report- It refers to LeT, JeM and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen as "armed groups" even though they are listed as terrorist organisations by the Security Council.

● It uses Pakistan's nomenclature by referring to Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK) as "Azad Jammu and Kashmir" several times in the document

 ● It dwells at length on the provisions of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act but ignores the fact that most countries protect their armed forces with similar laws.

 ● Factual errors -It says that India is a state party to the international conventions against torture and enforced disappearance. But the fact is that India has not ratified either.

● The high commissioner's office does not state why it selected Kashmir's human rights situation for the report. It does not cite any resolution of the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council or the Security Council as the mandate for it, only its founding resolution.         

 India’s stand;

● India reacted sharply to the report, calling it “fallacious, tendentious and motivated”, and lodged a strong protest with the United Nations. 
● The Opposition also came out in support of the government saying the report violates India’s sovereignty and integrity.
 ● India reiterated that it does not recognise the geographical territories as defined in the report.
● The MEA also said that the report failed to take into account the global consensus on terrorism

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ECONOMICS OPTIONAL Strategy by Abhijeet Sinha, Rank 19 UPSC CSE 2017

Hello everyone,

I am Abhijeet Sinha and I have secured 19th Rank in the Civil Service Examination 2017, with Economics as my optional.  I graduated in Electrical Engineering (2016), but due to the interest developed in reading the Economics section of newspaper, I chose Economics as my optional :).  Over the 2 attempts, I have gained quite substantial experience in the optional, both the good as well as the bad ones. I hope dear aspirants would find something helpful out of it

Last year (1st attempt – 2016) I had one of the lowest scores in Economics Optional, 89+129 = 218. And it became the single reason why I did not find my name in the final rank list. It may have been in part, because Economics as a subject was almost completely new to me. But, much more importantly, it was more down to my own structural fallacies. I had hardly written down a word before the exam, did not solve past years papers…… and had many more strategical flaws.

Based on this, I modified my strategy to focus on the following in my 2017 attempt ( 2nd attempt)

1. Solving past 5–10 years papers is the most important of all tasks, since questions are generally repeated. Since, standard answers to question are missing, one can take the help of solved Past years papers by my senior Tejasvi Rana, who is like an elder sister to me
2. Practising drawing the diagrams. While, it is easy to appreciate and understand the Income effect and Substitution effect in a Labour Supply curve, believe me, while actually drawing, one realises it isn’t as easy as it seems. The more you practise, the easier it will become
3. Focussing on every word of the syllabus ( for GS as well). For instance, Q 6a of this years Paper 2 simply asked to write on Poverty Schemes and their performance. The question was almost exactly like the phrase written in the syllabus. Had one prepared notes on it, he/she could have done this question very easily
4. Making OWN notes.Last time, I just used to read from the notes of Gaurav Sir. But, now I can say that making your own notes helps to understand better, revise better and helps in writing practise. But, yeah, take the notes of Gaurav sir, Tejasvi, my own etc as a guidance
5. For Paper 1, I tried to cover the main topics from Indian authors as well, especially key terms and definitions. For eg q 5a ( 2017) asking on Differential Tax Incidence has been elaborated in Bhatia’s book.
6. Revising  This is more needed for Eco Paper 2, where there is a need to memorise things. As an example, I was able to revise between 4–5 times between prelims and mains, each revision being of a shorter duration than the previous one.
7. For Answer Writing
   1. Putting a lot of data and names of Economists in my Eco Paper 2 answer
   2. Making my answers more concise and succinct, and not being verbose. See Tejasvi’s answers to appreciate this point.
   3. I tried to interlink Eco 1 and Eco 2. For eg, on the question on Gravity model of trade in Paper 1 , I quoted actual examples of India and UAE ( how UAE is small, but we have a trade of 60 billion $)
   4. Trivial changes like Using pencil and scale to draw 🙂
8. Taking help from my peers, seniors and the group econsiasprep@googlegroups.comwhenever required.

Other Points worth noting

• For UPSC purpose, it is not important to go into the Mathematical details, what . Rarely has a question been asked from it. Instead focus on the Diagrams very well
• Utilise the first 5-15 minutes to identifywhich questions to attempt. It is better to invest time in the beginning, than to regret later, when 1 realises that he/she is short of points
• Stay away from negativities. People might demotivate you that Economics is not an easy optional. Maintain the confidence and resilience during moments like those. Remember that every year, there are scores of people who come in the rank list with Economics as an optional, in spite of very few people choosing economics in the 1st place

Booklist

Paper 1

1. Micro –
   1. Primarily from Ahuja. As Tejasvi said last time, a thumb rule to find out what is important and what is not is to see past years papers. If a question is being asked from a chapter, then it is important
   2. Abhimanyu’s notes as a summary – https://reluctanteconomistblog.wordpress.com/
2. Macro and Money Banking
   1. Mainly Froyen
   2. Ahuja to find out any new definitons / terms
3. International
   1. Salvatore
4. Growth and Devleopment
   1. Thirlwall mainly
   2. Jhingan for new terms / definitions
5. Public Finance
   1. Musgrave mainly
   2. Bhatia for new terms / definitions

Paper 2

• Instead of going cover to cover, I went topic by topic,browsing every word / phrase of syllabus, and making my own notes from various sources such as
  • Gaurav Sir’s notes – Khelo India
  • Tejasvi’s notes
  • Riju Mam notes – Riju Bafna
  • Mishra and Puri
  • Uma Kapila
• Althoug, I’ve already done the hardwork and compiled the notes out of these into 1 single source :). They can be accessed here –

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Am-XDyZeJwRZjJkuXjXNDxvI6uss-A

All of these did help me to improve my score from 218 to 288 this time ( 140 + 148). Although, its not an excellent score, but it was good enough to give me a good rank. And I hope and wish, it helps you as well 

For more queries and sharing of materials especially related to Economics, you could follow my blog abhijeetsinhaupsc.wordpress.com

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NATIONAL POLICY ON BIO FULES 2018

• The Union Cabinet has approved National Policy on Biofuels – 2018 in order to promote biofuels in the country.
• Biofuels in India are of strategic importance as it augers well with ongoing initiatives of Government such as Make in India,  Skill Development and Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.
• It also offers great opportunity to integrate with ambitious targets of doubling of import reduction, farmers’ income, employment generation, waste to wealth Creation.

Salient features of Policy

• The policy categorises biofuels to enable extension of appropriate financial and fiscal incentives under each category
• • Basic Biofuels: First Generation (1G) bioethanol and biodiesel.
  • Advanced Biofuels: Second Generation (2G) ethanol, Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) to drop-in fuels, Third Generation (3G) biofuels, bio-CNG etc.

• Expansion scope of raw material for ethanol production: It allows use of sugarcane juice, sugar containing materials like sweet sorghum, sugar beet, starch containing materials like corn, cassava, damaged food grains like broken rice, wheat, rotten potatoes, unfit for human consumption for ethanol production.
• Use of surplus food grains: The policy allows use of surplus food grains for production of ethanol for blending with petrol with approval of National Biofuel Coordination Committee. This will ensure farmers get appropriate price for their produce during the surplus production phase.
• Incentives to advanced biofuel: Viability gap funding scheme indicated for 2G ethanol Bio refineries of Rs.5000 crore in 6 years for giving special emphasis to advanced biofuels. It also proposes additional tax incentives, higher purchase price as compared to 1G biofuels.
• Supply chain mechanisms: The policy encourages setting up of supply chain mechanisms for biodiesel production from non-edible oilseeds, used cooking oil, short gestation crops.
• Synergising efforts: It predefines roles and responsibilities of all the concerned Ministries and Government Departments with respect to biofuels to synergise efforts.

Expected Benefits

• Reduce Import Dependency: The ethanol supply will help to reduce import dependency on crude oil which will in turn result in savings of forex.
• Cleaner Environment: The use of ethanol will reduce CO2 emissions. It will also reduce Green House Gas emissions by reducing crop burning and conversion of agricultural residues and wastes into biofuels.
• Health benefits: Prolonged reuse of cooking oil for preparing food, particularly in deep-frying causes health hazard and can lead to many diseases. By using cooking oil as a potential feedstock for biodiesel will prevent diversion of used cooking oil in the food industry.
• Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Management: Using advance technologies waste and plastic in MSW can be converted in use fuels. One ton of such waste has potential to provide around 20% of drop in fuels.
• Infrastructural Investment in Rural Areas: Addition of 2G bio refineries across country will spur infrastructural investment in the rural areas.
• Employment Generation: Setting up one 100klpd 2G bio refinery contributes to 1200 jobs in plant operations, village level entrepreneurs and supply chain management.
• Additional Income to Farmers: By adopting 2G technologies for producing biofuels, agricultural residues and waste which otherwise are burnt by farmers can be converted to ethanol. Through this process farmers can fetch price for these waste. Moreover, conversion of surplus grains and agricultural biomass can also help in price stabilization for farmers

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