Daily Current Affairs 19 October 2020 | UPSC Current Affairs 2020

 Current Affairs Of Today Are

1) NPAs Weakens monetary policy transmission 

• Banks with higher Capital to Risk (Weighted) Assets Ratio (CRAR) see a lower cost of funds. Hence, a higher CRAR “unlocks the bank lending channel and helps in smooth transmission of monetary policy,” the RBI paper said.
• The presence of non-performing assets (NPAs) in banks hinder monetary policy transmission and affects bank lending growth, according to a working paper released by RBI officials titled Bank Capital and Monetary Policy Transmission in India. “Presence of non-performing assets in a bank also weakens monetary policy transmission and lowers the loan growth rate,” the paper said stressing that the views expressed in it are those of authors and not of RBI. Authored by Silu Muduli and Harendra Behera of the Department of Economic and Policy Research (DEPR) at RBI, the paper also underscored the need for capital injection by the government into public sector banks that may increase the credit flow to the real sector along with the smoothening transmission of monetary policy.
• According to study findings, there is a positive association between bank equity and credit growth that “calls for the need for a countercyclical capital buffer for the banks to protect their balance sheet against losses from changes in economic conditions during the recessionary phase.” Also, banks with higher Capital to Risk (Weighted) Assets Ratio (CRAR) see a lower cost of funds. Hence, a higher CRAR “unlocks the bank lending channel and helps in smooth transmission of monetary policy,” the paper noted. On the other hand, Lower CRAR obstructs the smooth transmission of monetary policy and not just impacts a bank’s health. Nonetheless, the magnitude of transmission of monetary policy emerged weak for banks with CRAR higher than a certain threshold level, it added.
• Bank NPAs are likely to grow to double digits this year due to multiple challenges including Covid led disruptions. The country’s NPA ratio is among the highest vis-à-vis comparable countries and is likely to reach 11-11.5 percent by FY21 end, according to a report by Care Ratings. Lower-rated corporates ineligible for the restructuring scheme already stressed companies that could face liquidity constraints in a challenging economy, along with banking exposure to unsecured personal loans, are other reasons for higher bank NPAs this fiscal.

Analysis of News

• Monetary Policy Transmission is the pass-through of RBI's policy actions to the economy at large in terms of asset prices/ interest rates/ and general economic conditions.
• When the banks NPA increases then it needs to keep some reserve money which they can't lend (also called provisioning). Provisioning combined with not getting the principal & interest on the NPAs increases the cost (of funds) for banks. And because of these reasons, even if the RBI is reducing the repo rate, Banks do not want to reduce the lending rate because if banks will reduce the lending rate then their earnings will further decline. That is why it has been said that the presence of NPAs weakens or slows down the monetary policy transmission. (But yeah, if RBI will increase the repo rate banks may increase the lending rate immediately, so in case of an increase, there may not be any impact on monetary policy transmission even if there are NPAs. Transmission is both ways increase or decrease)
• When Govt. injects money into the public sector banks then it helps in increasing the credit flow to the real sector (real sector means various businesses like oil & gas, infra, steel, etc., other than financial sector)
• The news also says (in this image it's not reported) that RBI has deferred the implementation of the last tranche of "Capital Conservation Buffer" (which is a requirement of Basel III) up to 1st April 2021. Actually "Capital Conservation Buffer" requirement is 2.5%, which is being implemented in stages that RBI said that banks will implement by  31st March 2019, and then it is just getting extended. This "Capital Conservation Buffer" is just normal share/equity capital and acts as a buffer to the existing capital. (For example, earlier the requirement of FCI wheat and rice stock was around 20 MT and then Govt. asked to keep a buffer stock of 5 MT)
• The total capital requirement under the Basel III norm is 11.5% out of which the capital conservation buffer is 2.5%
• See the image below regarding various types of capital requirements under Basel III norms. Certain things I have erased, as it was just complicating the things without any relevant purpose for you.
• A discussion is going on to implement a "Countercyclical capital buffer" to help banks to protect their balance sheets from changes in economic conditions during the recessionary phase. (Counter means, during the recession (dip), this "Countercyclical capital buffer" will be used to counter the dip/recession)

• From RBI doc. (RWA is Risk-Weighted Assets). Loans for banks are assets. When we multiply the risk factor in the loan value then it is called risk-weighted assets.

Source: Financial Express

2) India joins UK-led fight against encrypted online messages

• India joins UK-led fight against encrypted online messages.
• The UK and India are joined by the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.
• It marks an expansion of the so-called “Five Eyes” group of nations, a global alliance on intelligence issues, to include India and Japan.

What’s the demand?

• The campaign is against end-to-end encryption of messages by social media giants such as Facebook, which they say hinder law enforcement by blocking all access to them.
• The countries also asked companies not to “bind themselves” to illegal activity on their platforms, including child abuse images.

What’s the issue with end-to-end encryption?

• The signatories claimed that end-to-end encryption policies like those employed by the social media giant erode the public’s safety online.
• When end-to-end encryption is applied with no access to content, it severely undermines the ability of companies to take action against illegal activity on their own platforms.
• It also prevents law enforcement from investigating and prosecuting the most serious crimes being committed on these services such as online child sexual abuse, grooming, and terrorist content.

What is end-to-end encryption?

• It means that the messages are visible only to the sender and the recipient, and not even to the tech company which provides it, for example, WhatsApp, or any third-party.

How it works? (Have a brief overview):

• Encryption technology involves scrambling or jumbling of the data being transferred in such a way that it can be deciphered only by the sender and the receiver.
• In the first step, when a sender sends a message, it is in the form of Plaintext that is ordinary readable text.
• Next, as soon as the data gets onto the network, it gets encrypted which is a process of converting ordinary readable text into code with the help of special keys.
• Next, when the same data reaches its intended destination, it is decrypted that is a process of converting back the coded data to readable text with the help of special keys.
• Finally, the intended receiver gets the message in the form of Ciphertext that is the readable text obtained after decryption.

Source: The Hindu

3) Hyderabad urban flooding

Ineffective and unplanned hydra-geology of cities and towns of India are more responsible for floods than monsoons.

What is urban flooding?

• Urban flooding is the inundation of land or property in a built environment, particularly in more densely populated areas, caused by rainfall overwhelming the capacity of drainage systems, such as storm sewers.
• Urban flooding is significantly different from rural flooding- urbanization increases flood risk by up to 3 times, increased peak flow results in flooding very quickly. Further, it affects a large number of people due to the high population density in urban areas.

Mention the causes of recent floods in Hyderabad?

• Unplanned development– Unplanned development, encroachments in riparian zones, failure of flood control structures, unplanned reservoir operations, poor drainage infrastructure, deforestation, land-use change, and sedimentation in river beds are exacerbating floods.
• Urban flooding– Wetlands and watersheds play a vital role in absorbing excess rainfall, but regrettably, rapid urbanization in the twin cities has resulted in the loss of a large portion of the wetlands.
• Indiscriminate encroachment of waterways and wetlands, inadequate capacity of drains, and lack of maintenance of the drainage infrastructure.
• An analysis by the Centre for Science and Environment in 2016 revealed that 3,245 hectares of water bodies were lost in Hyderabad between 1989 and 2001.
• Neglect pre-disaster planning– The extent of the damage and the turmoil shows a lack of preparation and disaster mitigation, a problem that plagues most urban centers in the country.
• Overflowing of lakes– The Hussain Sagar Lake in the middle of the city and the breaching of stormwater drains.
• Waste management– Every water body has a holding capacity. But, with all the industrial waste and sewage being dumping into the lakes, the waste accumulated and has now affected the holding capacity of the lakes.
• All the nalas, storm drains, culverts are gone, either land-filled and build over or simply filled with garbage, detritus, and forgotten.

What are the measures needed to mitigate this?

• Hyderabad urgently needs to expand and remodel its drainage system.
• Focusing on urban flood management– Risk mapping of the areas of the city should be done to assess the vulnerability, related to urban floods by using GIS technology.
• Minimize the surface runoff- Limit, reduce or mitigate for impervious surface throughout the watershed by use of new engineering techniques like previous pathways, parking lots should be considered and implements wherever possible to minimize the surface runoff.
• Prioritizing Buffers, Flexibility, and Adaptability – This includes reviewing safety criteria of dams and canals, re-building these with higher safety factors, creating new intermediate storages, and introducing dynamic reservoir management.

Source: The Hindu

4) Food security to nutritional security in India

• Strong food systems will have to be built back as the world is not on track to achieve global targets by 2030.

What is the food system?

• It is a framework that includes every aspect of feeding and nourishing people: from growing, harvesting, and processing to packaging, transporting, marketing, and consuming food.
• A food system must provide enough nutritious food for all without compromising feeding future generations and would be called a sustainable food system.

How has the food system of the country performed this year?

• Central and State governments were able to distribute around 23 million tonnes from India’s large domestic food grain reserves in three months through the Public Distribution System. It helped in providing much-needed emergency assistance to families around the country.
• The government successfully mobilized food rations for 820 million people from April to November 2020, including finding alternate solutions to provide food rations to 90 million schoolchildren.
• Agriculture grew at 3.4% during the first quarter of this financial year and the area cultivated this Kharif exceeded 110 million hectares.

What are the issues faced by India?

• The Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey 2016-18 revealed that over 40 million children are chronically malnourished, and more than half of Indian women aged 15-49 years are anemic.
• Climate change continues to be a real and potent threat to agro-biodiversity, which will impact everything from productivity to livelihoods across food and farm systems.
• Intensified food production systems with excessive use of chemicals and unsustainable farming practices cause soil degradation, fast depletion of groundwater table, and rapid loss of agro-biodiversity.
• In India, more than 86% of farmers have less than two hectares of land contributing around 60% of the total food grain production, and over half the country’s fruits and vegetables.
• It destroys human possibilities. One who could have contributed immensely to the study of Hindi literature ends up pursuing Economics or, for that matter, one who carries the burden of St Stephen’s Economics might have found real satisfaction in pursuing History in a not so “reputed” institution like Deshbandhu College.

What are the steps taken to counter the challenges?

• The FAO, IFAD, and the WFP worked in close coordination to support the Government of India’s Empowered Group 5 to facilitate supply chain and logistics management, so necessary items such as food and medicines were available.
• The agencies provided daily updates on the real-time situation on the ground, checking challenges/red flags, dynamic subjective data, and good practices from their sources in the field.
• The Integrated Child Development Services provides cooked meals and take-home rations to 100 million children under the age of six, as well as to pregnant and lactating mothers.
• The mid-day meal program, are however some examples of how the government is working to fix these challenges.
• India is dealing innovatively with climate change. For example, through the development of drought and flood-tolerant seed varieties, weather-based agricultural advisories, promotion of millets, and small-scale irrigation.
• The way we produce food must change through agroecology and sustainable production practices in agriculture and allied sectors.
• Stop the waste as one-third of the food we produce is wasted. That is why the UN, and our three agencies; the FAO (The Food and Agriculture Organisation), IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development), and WFP (The World Food Programme) are committed to working with government, civil society, farmers’ organizations and the private sector to build sustainable food systems.

5) International Day for the Eradication of Poverty 2020

• Every year 17th October is observed as International Day for the eradication of Poverty.
• Its observance started in 1992 with the adoption of a UN resolution.
• The theme for the year 2020 is "Acting Together to Achieve Social and Environmental Justice for All"

Poverty Trends:

• More than 90% of countries have reported a dip in per capita income because of Covid-19 and the ensuing economic disruptions.
• More than 115 million new poor have been added to the world, and their spread is universal, from rich Europe to the already poor Asia and from rural to urban areas.
• According to the latest "Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report" by the world bank, the Covid-19 pandemic is estimated to push an additional 88 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty this year, with the total rising to as many as 150 million by 2021.

Beyond Income Poverty:

• India and Nigeria are two countries that host the world’s largest number of poor. Here, the poor live in very ecologically fragile areas. This makes poverty not alone an income-related aspect as economists and politicians consider.

The Ecology of Poverty:

• In India, the poorest regions are invariably the forested areas of the country in states like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Madhya Pradesh.
• Some 275 million people in India depend on forests for subsistence. In the country’s poorest regions, forests provide up to 30% of their total income. This is more than agriculture and other sources of income.
• At the global level, just five countries—India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo— account for half of the extremely poor in the world. Paradoxically, the above five countries, barring Congo, are also witnessing rapid economic growth.
• Various estimates say the natural capital accounts for 9% of wealth globally, but it accounts for 47% of the wealth in low-income countries. This shows the dependence of people on natural resources in developing and poor countries.
• Poverty and Forest Dependence:
• A Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) study shows that more than a billion people are forest-dependent, and most of them are below the poverty line. Most of them are in Africa and Asia.
• The Geography of Poverty: 
• The more the reliance on ecology/nature for survival, the higher is the probability to be poor due to modern urban development.
• Regional Shift: In 1990, half of the world’s poor lived in East Asia and the Pacific. At present, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia host over 85% of the poor in the world. Further, 26 of the world’s 27 poorest countries are in sub-Saharan Africa.
• In these regions, three-fourths of the total poor live in rural areas.
• These places have a highly degraded ecology (due to increased exploitation of natural resources for development). Most of the poor depend on natural resources like land, forests, and livestock for survival. So, for them, the economy is all about ecology. Degradation of the ecology, thus, leads to poverty.

Ecology and Entitlement: 

• According to the International Union of Forest Research Organizations, forestry contributes at least $539 billion directly to the world Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
• The development has come with a heavy cost to the ecology. For instance, the latest Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) global assessment reported a decline in nature’s contributions to people since 1970.
• It clearly said that “extraction of provisioning services has increased, while the provision of regulating and maintenance services has declined”.
• According to a study by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) (covering 140 countries), the globally produced capital per head doubled and human capital per head increased by about 13%, but the value of the stock of natural capital per head declined by nearly 40% in 1992-2014.
• It means those who depend on the environment witnessed a decline in their assets thus triggering poverty.

Source: Down To Earth

6) Israel and Bahrain Diplomatic Ties

• Bahrain and Israel are signing a joint communique on the establishment of diplomatic, peaceful, and friendly relations, as well as several memorandums of understanding in areas of mutual benefit.
• Bahrain has a history of open politics and civil society movements, although rights have been curtailed in the past decade.
• The decision to normalize ties comes from the belief in the values of tolerance in a region whose people have suffered from wars and conflicts.
• The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain became only the third and fourth Arab states to agree to normalize ties with Israel, following Israel’s 1979 peace deal with Egypt and a 1994 pact with Jordan.
• Under the deal, Israel would suspend its plans to annex large parts of the occupied West Bank.
• The West Bank is sandwiched between Israel and Jordan. One of its major cities is Ramallah, the de facto administrative capital of Palestine.
• Israel took control of it in the Six-day Arab-Israeli war, 1967, and has over the years established settlements there.

Impact on the USA:

• This is the second deal in 2020 after the Israel-UAE Peace Deal brokered by the USA. The recognition grants a diplomatic win to the USA President Donald Trump ahead of the Presidential election.
• The deal buys UAE a lot of goodwill in the US, where its image has been tarnished by its involvement in the Yemen war.
• Saudi Arabia made clear that it will not normalize ties without a resolution to the Palestinian issue despite signs of rapprochement.

Concerns For Palestine

• The Palestinians have not embraced the USA’s vision. 86% of Palestinians believed the normalization agreements with the UAE and Bahrain served only Israel’s interests and not their own.
• For Palestinians, who long have relied on Arab backing in their struggle for independence, the announcement marked both a win and setback for the Israel-Palestine relations.
• While the deal halts Israeli annexation plans of the West Bank, the Palestinians have repeatedly urged Arab governments not to normalize relations with Israel until a peace agreement establishing an independent Palestinian state is reached.
• Shia-Sunni rifts in the region may get wide and violent.
• Saudi Arabia (Sunni) and Iran (representing Shia) have a long history of enmity. For decades, one of the main sources of instability in West Asia has been the cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
• The Sunni-Shiite schism may also provoke violence between Muslims in such places as Pakistan, Nigeria, and Indonesia.

Indian Interest in West Asia:

• A peaceful and prosperous West Asia is necessary for India. Such deals between Arab Countries and Israel are having a positive impact on Indian interests in the region. Also, difficulty in balancing Arab countries and Israel will become easy. Indian interests include:
• Geopolitical: West Asia occupies an important position in international relations due to its geographical location and proximity to continents and countries South Asia, China, Central Asia, Europe, and Africa.
• Energy: The region is strategically significant due to its enormous energy resources, trade route links to different parts of the world.
• It is the world's largest oil-producing region accounting for 34% of world production, 45% of crude oil exports, and 48% of oil proven reserves.
• Diaspora: Indian expatriates have constituted a substantial share of the regional labor market.
• Remittances from the region constitute a major chunk of total remittances to India.

Source: The Hindu

7) Delhi Air Pollution

• Recently, the Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change has highlighted that the air pollution is not a problem of Delhi and its corporations alone but that of a big airshed around it that includes the National Capital Region (NCR).

Airshed:

• In geography, an airshed is defined as a region in which the atmosphere shares common features concerning the dispersion of pollutants; in other words, a region sharing a common flow of air.
• Concerning the air pollution in and around Delhi, the airshed includes Gurgaon, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Noida, areas of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and even Alwar in Rajasthan.

Current Air Quality:

• The Air Quality Index (AQI) of Delhi has improved within the ‘poor’ category.
• As per a forecast from the Central government’s System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR) the AQI is expected to stay in the higher end of ‘poor’ to the lower end of the ‘very poor’ category for the following days.
• During the lockdowns, Delhi saw among the cleanest air since comprehensive records have been kept since 2015.

Air Pollution in Delhi

• Air pollution in Delhi-NCR and the Indo Gangetic Plains is a complex phenomenon that is dependent on a variety of factors.

Change in Wind Direction:

• October usually marks the withdrawal of monsoons in Northwest India and during this time, the predominant direction of winds is northwesterly.
• The direction of the wind is northwesterly in summers as well, which brings the dust from northern Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Reduced Wind Speed:

• High-speed winds are very effective at dispersing pollutants, but winters bring a dip in wind speed overall as compared to in summers which makes the region prone to pollution.
• Also, Delhi lies in a landlocked region that does not have a geographical advantage that eastern, western, or southern parts of the country enjoy where the sea breeze disperses the concentrated pollutants.

Stubble Burning:

• Stubble burning in Punjab, Rajasthan, and Haryana is blamed for causing a thick blanket of smog in Delhi during winters.
• It emits large amounts of toxic pollutants in the atmosphere which contain harmful gases like methane (CH4), carbon monoxide (CO), volatile organic compounds (VOC), and carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
• Farm fires have been an easy way to get rid of paddy stubble quickly and at low cost for several years.

Vehicular Pollution:

• It is one of the biggest causes of dipping air quality in Delhi in winters and around 20% of PM2.5 in winters comes from it.

Dust Storms:

• Dust storms from Gulf countries enhance the already worse condition. Dry cold weather means dust is prevalent in the entire region, which does not see many rainy days between October and June.
• Dust pollution contributes to around 56% of PM10 and the PM2.5 load.

Dip in Temperatures:

• As temperature dips, the inversion height is lowered and the concentration of pollutants in the air increases when this happens.
• Inversion height is the layer beyond which pollutants cannot disperse into the upper layer of the atmosphere.

Firecrackers:

• Despite the ban on cracker sales, firecrackers are a common sight on Diwali. It may not be the top reason for air pollution, but it definitely contributed to its build-up.

Construction Activities and Open Waste Burning:

• Large-scale construction in Delhi-NCR is another culprit that is increasing dust and pollution in the air. Delhi also has landfill sites for the dumping of waste and the burning of waste in these sites also contributes to air pollution.

Major Measures Taken

• Subsidy to farmers for buying Turbo Happy Seeder (THS) which is a machine mounted on a tractor that cuts and uproots the stubble, to reduce stubble burning.
• The introduction of BS-VI vehicles, push for electric vehicles (EVs), Odd-Even as an emergency measure, and construction of the Eastern and Western Peripheral Expressways to reduce vehicular pollution.
• Implementation of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) to tackle the rising pollution in the Capital. It includes measures like shutting down thermal power plants and a ban on construction activities.
• Development of the National AQI for public information under the aegis of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). AQI has been developed for eight pollutants viz. PM2.5, PM10, Ammonia, Lead, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, ozone, and carbon monoxide.

Source: Indian Express

8) Ghar Tak Fibre Scheme: Bihar

Recently, the Prime Minister of India inaugurated the ‘Ghar Tak Fibre’ scheme in Bihar.

Ghar Tak Fibre Scheme:

• It aims to connect all 45,945 villages of Bihar with high-speed optical fiber internet by 31st March 2021.
• Under the scheme, Bihar has to provide at least five fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) connections per village and at least one WiFi hotspot per village.
• The Scheme will be implemented by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

Benefit:

• The Scheme will lead digital services including e-Education, e-Agriculture, Tele-Medicine, Tele-law, and other social security schemes in Bihar ensuring easy access to all state natives.
• It is also likely to boost the local employment generation with the implementation of the Bharat Net initiative which will be done by recruiting local workers.

Internet Penetration in Bihar:

• According to TRAI’s report, only 30.35% of Bihar’s population has internet connectivity, much below India's population connectivity of 55%.
• Only 22.61% of rural Bihar have an internet connection. Compared to this Kerala has 98.10% rural internet connectivity.
• Bihar also has the lowest urban internet subscribers amounting to 73.26% of the urban population. States like Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal all have an urban subscriber base above 90%.
• However, of the 8,745-gram panchayat (GP) in Bihar, almost all are connected to the state’s main internet grid under BharatNet Project.
• BharatNet, a special purpose vehicle envisaged in 2011, was an ambitious plan to connect all the 2,50,000 gram panchayats through a high-speed optical network.
• Initially, it was launched as National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN), it was renamed as BharatNet Project in 2015.
• Under the BharatNet Project, a village or a gram panchayat (GP) is considered ‘lit up’ when it consistently has an internet connection and users at the end to verify the same.

Challenges:

• Of all the GPs of Bihar connected under phase one, 3,591-gram panchayats are non-operational, while the status of another 200 is unclear.
• The main problems are lack of power and related equipment failure, equipment theft, and faulty fiber.
• While optical fiber cable has been laid to connect nearly all the GPs, lack of users in these areas has resulted in minimal or zero follow-ups on repair and maintenance work.

Source: Indian Express

9) Naval Version of BrahMos Tested

A naval version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile was successfully test-fired from an indigenously built stealth destroyer (INS Chennai) of the Indian Navy in the Arabian Sea.

BrahMos: 

• It is a joint venture between the Defence Research and Development Organisation of India (DRDO) and the NPOM of Russia.
• Brahmos is named on the rivers Brahmaputra (India) and Moskva (Russia).
• It is a supersonic missile traveling at a speed of Mach 2.8 (nearly three times the speed of sound)
• It is the world’s fastest supersonic cruise missile.
• It is a multiplatform i.e it can be launched from land, air, and sea and multi capability missile with pinpoint accuracy that works in both day and night irrespective of the weather conditions.
• It is, therefore, used by all three forces, the Army, Navy, and the Air Force.
• It operates on the "Fire and Forget" principle i.e it does not require further guidance after launch.
• It is the heaviest weapon to be deployed on Sukhoi-30 MKI fighter aircraft, with a weight of 2.5 tonnes.
• Its range has been recently enhanced from 300 Km to 450-600 Km,
• Increasing the missile’s range became possible after India’s induction into the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) in June 2016.
• The missile features an indigenous Booster and Airframe Section, along with many other indigenous sub-systems.

Advantages:

• BrahMos has been deployed in Ladakh as well as the Eastern Sector in Arunachal Pradesh to tackle any threats in the ongoing standoff with China.
• Enhanced use of indigenous technologies will give a boost to India’s AtmaNirbhar Bharat.
• Increasing indigenous content in defense systems has also been a prime focus of Defence Acquisition Procedure, 2020, and draft Defence Production and Export Promotion Policy 2020.

Recent Defence Testing:

• India also carried out successful test-firing of a laser-guided anti-tank guided missile and nuclear-capable hypersonic missile ‘Shaurya’.
• The successful test firing of Rudram-1 was seen as a major milestone as it is India’s first indigenously developed anti-radiation weapon.

Source: The Hindu

10) SLINEX-20: India- Sri Lanka Naval Maritime Exercise

• The 8th edition of the annual India – Sri Lanka bilateral naval maritime exercise, SLINEX-20 will be held at Trincomalee, Sri Lanka from 19 to 21 October 2020.
• The 7th edition of SLINEX was conducted off Visakhapatnam in September 2019. SLINEX series of bilateral maritime exercises were initiated in 2005.

Aim:

• SLINEX aims to enhance interoperability, improve mutual understanding, and exchange best practices and procedures for multi-faceted maritime operations between both navies.
• It exemplifies the deep engagement between India and Sri Lanka which has strengthened mutual cooperation in the maritime domain.

The 2020 Exercise:

• In SLINEX-20, the Indian Navy will be represented by Indigenously built ASW corvette Kamorta and Kiltanunder.
• Indian Navy Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) and Chetak helicopters and Dornier Maritime Patrol Aircraft will also be participating.
• The Sri Lanka Navy will be represented by SLN Ships Sayura (Offshore Patrol Vessel) and Gajabahu (Training Ship).
• The maritime exercise will also showcase the capabilities of India’s indigenously constructed naval ships and aircraft.
• Surface and anti-air exercises including weapon firing, seamanship evolutions, maneuvers, and cross deck flying operations are planned during the exercise, which will further enhance the high degree of interoperability already established between the two friendly navies.

Covid Impact:

• The exercise is being conducted in a non-contact ‘at-sea-only’ format in the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Outcome:

• The exercise plays a significant role in strengthening bilateral ties and also reiterating India’s policy of ‘Neighbourhood First’ and‘Security and Growth for all in the Region (SAGAR)’.

Source: PIB