1.Conferring eminence: Raising the quality of higher education across the board should be a priority 2.Coming home to jail: Why the

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3 Ȧ R T I C L E S 1.Conferring eminence: Raising the quality of higher education across the board should be a priority 2.Coming home to jail: Why the Repatriation of Prisoners Act, 2003 will prove to be a win-win situation for India 3.Quartermile stone: With a world-level gold, Hima Das takes Indian track and field to a higher zone 4.The Congress s OBC outreach: The party appears to be waking up to the need for a proper strategy to woo backward classes for electoral gain

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5 . P R O F I L E PRASHANT MAVANI MSc. in Management, University of Surrey (UK) Senior Faculty: StudyIQ Download PDF notes of this lecture from my FB Page

6 Safe Over India Indian skies witnessed another near miss this week Planes came close enough to trigger inbuilt aircraft collision alarms. This incident, along with many other near misses reported recently, must trigger an urgent overhaul of air safety at Indian airports, with current protocols inadequate to deal with fast growing air traffic. 2011: 67 flights took off every hour 2017: figure shot up to 100 The increase in traffic has been accompanied by an extremely high level of incidents of aircraft proximity,

7 In most cases errors are conducted by air traffic controllers (ATCs). To cope with the shortage of ATCs who perform a highly specialised task there has been a massive recruitment drive over the last two years. However, this kind of ad hoc response to shortcomings in the safety architecture is an outcome of India s substandard regulatory culture. We need to keep in mind that following an audit in 2014, US Federal Aviation Administration downgraded India s ranking on account of inadequate oversight. The way forward is to create an independent aviation regulator in place of DGCA.

8 The regulator needs to be at arm s length from the aviation ministry and entrusted primarily with ensuring safety standards. As part of this approach it is essential to ring-fence ATCs from Airports Authority of India, both in terms of licensing and service conditions. ATCs are responsible for safety in aviation and their licensing should be free of any conflicts of interest. Likewise, their compensation should not be linked to government scales. As one of the world s fastest growing aviation markets, India must do better on air safety. Else, laws of probability dictate a catastrophic collision in the air soon.

9 Conferring eminence Twelfth Plan: Planning Commission identified expansion, inclusion and excellence as the three pillars for growth. NDA government had the theme of excellence in its 2016 annual budget, with a proposal to make 10 institutions each in the public and private sectors globally competitive. The challenge of excellence is to develop liberal institutions founded on academic rigour, high scholarship and equitable access for all classes of students. Ministry of Human Resource Development has taken the decision to give Institution of Eminence (IoE) status to six institutes, three each from the public and private sectors.

10 The idea of developing centres of higher learning advances the Nehruvian vision of building temples of modern India. The IoEs can become models of autonomy, academic innovation and equity of access, and lead to a transformation of higher education. State universities had a low output because some of them had several faculty members recruited on contract basis, with no incentive to do research. Vice-chancellors should be appointed on merit, free of ideological biases. The growth of these and other national institutions will also depend on policies to raise the expenditure on R&D as a percentage of GDP.

11 As far as Higher education is concerned In fact it is UGC that is responsible for this terrible state of our higher education system Perform or don t perform: you will get your salaries & perks

12 Whole system has become bureaucratic. Recently, government has decided to grant autonomy to 62 high performing institutions. NAAC scores: I, II and Lower. Those in the highest category freedom to start new courses hire foreign faculty pay higher emoluments to faculty Catch: find you own fund

13 Coming home to jail Two cases of repatriation of Indian nationals year-old Ismail Samma of Gujarat 2. Sick 21-year-old, Jetendaera Arjanwara of Madhya Pradesh Ismail s imprisonment in Karachi, Pakistan, came to light last January after being given up for dead for nine years by his family, Jetendaera s case became known in May after five years of detention. In this time, the young man s physical and mental health had deteriorated and he suffered from a rare blood disease. Both men had accidentally crossed the border with Pakistan and were sentenced for illegal entry. They were detained well past their terms as a result of delayed consular attention and nationality verification.

14 The right to return to one s home country is assured under Article 12(4) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. A sentence served in a foreign land, far away from family, familiar food and language, has been globally perceived to be more difficult than one served at home Therefore, the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963, provides for information to consulate, consular protection and consultation upon arrest, detention and during trial in a foreign country including entitlement to travel documents. UN Model Agreement on the Transfer of Foreign Prisoners and Recommendations on the Treatment of Foreign Prisoners 1985, lays emphasis on the social rehabilitation of foreign prisoners through early repatriation to their home countries to serve their remaining sentence.

15 UN Conventions of 2004: Articles 17 and 45 In consonance with these international humanitarian commitments, most countries have legislated on a Repatriation of Prisoners Act. India legislated its Repatriation of Prisoners Act in 2003, which came into force on January 1, The first part deals with the transfer of sentenced foreign national prisoners from India, while the second deals with the transfer of sentenced Indian nationals into India. they are willing have no pending appeals the offence is not an offence under military law the sentence is not a death sentence they have at least six months of their sentence still left to serve their transfer has the consent of both treaty countries

16 The Act is a significant one for a country such as India which sees considerable outflow and inflow annually by blue- and white-collar workers, fishermen, students, stateless persons and other groups. The Minister of State for External Affairs told Parliament in March 2018 that there were as many as 7,850 Indian nationals in the prisons of 78 countries. Data on detentions from India s National Crime Records Bureau showed that at the end of 2015 there were 6,185 foreign national prisoners; 66% of them were from Bangladesh alone. While more than 2,095 Indian nationals (2017) were known to be sentenced abroad (in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, China, France, Germany, Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand), 2,363 foreign nationals were sentenced prisoners in India at the end of 2015.

17 Only nine foreign prisoners repatriated from India in 2015, six from the U.K. and one each from France, Germany and the UAE. Between 2003 and March 2018, only 63 of 171 prisoner applicants abroad have been transferred to India. Effecting transfers under the Repatriation of Prisoners Act, presents a win-win situation for India as it need not spend unduly on the housing of foreign national prisoners. It can simultaneously satisfy the public expectation of bringing nationals home and the meeting of international humanitarian commitments.

18 We re not a surveillance state: SC If the government seeks to monitor every social media message, the country will become a surveillance state, the Supreme Court said on Friday. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, who is a member of the Bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, made the oral observation, about the Central government s proposal to create a hub to track social media trends. UN report on Kashmir baseless The United Nations (UN) report on the human rights situation in Kashmir is baseless and without seeing the ground realities, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said here on Friday. I don t expect the UNSG to say anything different. But the fact is it was a report prepared sitting somewhere else. Assessment by UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is without basis on the ground and without seeing the situation on the ground, Ms. Sitharaman told presspersons at her South Block office. Suicide bomber kills 128 at Pak. poll rally Islamic State claims responsibility for attack in Mastung, near the Balochistan provincial capital Quetta

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20 Answers- 1. The United Nations has declared Chiribiquete national park as a world heritage site. The park is located in which nation? A) Colombia B) Switzerland C) Sweden D) Belgium 2. Which state government has launched the subsidised power scheme Sambal? A) Uttar Pradesh B) Rajasthan C) Madhya Pradesh D) Gujarat

21 Questions- 1. Which state has announced that five castes, including Gujjars, under the most backward classes (MBC) are entitled to 21 pc quota under OBC category? A) Haryana B) Gujarat C) Rajasthan D) Punjab 2. India s first dedicated Khadi Mall will be set up in which state? A) Uttar Pradesh B) Madhya Pradesh C) Jharkhand D) Bihar

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