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Reading Comprehension for Bank Exams
This is the 1st set of reading comprehension for those candidates who are preparing for the bank and the insurance sector. This post is all about prelims level exams. If any candidate has any doubt regarding any question or topic, he/she can comment in the comment section, which is provided below the post.
Set.1- India has summarily rejected China’s attempt to lay claim over areas of Arunachal Pradesh after it issued new official names for them. In a fresh attempt on Sunday, the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs said it would “standardise” 11 place names in what China calls “South Tibet or Zangnan”, an area consistently controlled by India. The names, in Mandarin, Tibetan and Pinyin (English transliteration), with latitude and longitude markings that pertain to points in Arunachal, including one close to the capital Itanagar, leave little doubt that China’s list, the third such since 2017, is a deliberate affront to India’s territorial sovereignty. The Ministry of External Affairs' statement, that “invented names” will not alter the reality that Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of India, mirrors what India had said in 2021 when China “renamed” 15 places; in 2017, there were six names. It would be a mistake, given the timing, to assume that the Chinese decision is a repetition of its previous attempts. The move in 2017 was seen as retaliation after the Dalai Lama visits Tawang. In 2021, the move followed China’s new “Land and State Border Law”, which virtually authorised the government to reclaim territories claimed by China, and was seen as a way to reassert its claim over the State as a whole.
There could be many factors behind the latest move: China’s reaction after the Indian Army rebuffed a PLA attempt to take over a post at Yangtse in the Tawang sector of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in December 2022, an angry response to New Delhi’s decision to hold a G-20 engagement group meeting on Innovation technology in Itanagar which the Chinese embassy had boycotted, or an indication of more serious designs ahead. Above all, it reflects the nadir in ties and the lack of meaningful dialogue for three years since the amassing of Chinese troops at the LAC in 2020 and transgressions that have led to scuffles, including the deadly encounter at Galwan. While many rounds of talks have ensued, and there has been disengagement at some standoff points, political relations have not been resumed, although there have been some meetings between Foreign and Defence Ministers, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke briefly with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in Indonesia last year. It is necessary, in light of China’s latest act of belligerence, that the government shows more clarity on the nature of its conversations thus far. Until the government probes the reasons behind China’s moves and the motivation for its persistent aggressions, it will be hard to prepare for a future course of action, even as it counters China’s false narrative and a renaming of areas that are firmly within India’s boundaries.
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Set.2- It is not exactly surprising when the India Meteorological Department (IMD) says that the summer months will be searingly hot. Last week, it proclaimed that most parts of the country are expected to experience above-normal maximum temperatures during the “hot weather season” (March-May), barring parts of peninsular and northwest India, which would see normal or even below-normal ‘maximum’ temperatures. This does not mean that northwest India, which sees temperatures well over 45°C, will be comfortable. ‘Above normal heatwave days, characterised by temperatures 4°-5°C above what is usual for that time in a region, are likely to occur over most parts of central, eastern and northwest India during the hot weather season,’ its forecast notes. A seasonal outlook issued by the IMD in March, on probable summer temperatures, too was on similar lines. However, what has changed in the last month is a greater certainty of an El Niño, or a warming of sea surface temperatures in the Equatorial Central Pacific, that is strongly associated with reduced rains over northwest India. Many El Niño years also see reduced monsoon rainfall from June to September and are often associated with drought-like conditions. The IMD’s official outlook says that ‘neutral’ (neither El Niño nor its converse, a cooling La Niña) conditions are persisting in the Pacific. The World Meteorological Organization’s outlook says that the chances of El Niño developing gradually increase from 15% in April-June to 35% in May-July, and rise to around 55% during June-August. Later this month, the IMD is expected to announce its first forecast for the monsoon and this will hinge on the El Niño-La Niña development.
The purpose of forecasts is to give lead time to States to prepare. The National Disaster Management Authority has been issuing guidelines to States on preparing Heat Action Plans since 2016. Many States have prepared documents that detail measures and methods to deal with heat-related contingencies, that, as reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warn, are only poised to get worse. But, many of these recommendations are only on paper. An analysis by researchers at the Centre for Policy Research of such heat action plans found that most of them are not made to capture the local context. For instance, only dangers from unusually high temperatures are evaluated and almost none from humidity and warm nights. Several plans are underfunded and lack legal backing. Heatwave forecasts should be taken as seriously as monsoon forecasts, and the Centre as well as State governments must play a more coordinated role in implementing these plans.
Set-3. The long-awaited Foreign Trade Policy 2023 (FTP 2023) was unveiled at a time when India’s merchandise export performance is a mixed bag. While several technology-intensive sectors are showing dynamism over the past year, with the electronics sector leading this group, labour-intensive sectors, especially the textiles and clothing sectors, are downbeat. In general, exports have been affected by a slowing global economy, and this situation could get worse if the projections for the next two years are any indication.
Given the challenges Indian exporters could be up against, FTP 2023 needed to go beyond its standard format, which has remained unchanged since the policy was introduced in 2004. At the outset, every Foreign Trade Policy informs us that the policy is “notified by [the] Central Government, in the exercise of powers conferred under Section 5 of the Foreign Trade (Development & Regulation) Act, 1992”. This Act empowered the Centre to “make provision for the development and regulation of foreign trade by facilitating imports and increasing exports” and to “make provision for prohibiting, restricting or otherwise regulating… import or export of goods or services or technology”. So, the 1992 Act was set in the 20th-century mindset of regulating and restricting trade and accordingly included trade policy instruments. The framework of trade policy in the 21st century has since moved to the development and facilitation of trade, but there is no reflection of this in FTP 2023. Instead of recasting this vitally important policy, FTP 2023 is a compilation of “Foreign Trade Procedures” in which the words, regulate, prohibit, and restrict find more mentions than “facilitate”.
Focus on the latter would have given FTP 2023 an entirely new character, one that includes strategies needed to adopt 21st-century trade policy instruments. Today, most countries rely on improvements in product quality and production efficiencies by rapid infusion of technology to expand their presence in global markets instead of using export incentives. This approach meant that product and process standards are the new trade policy instruments. This is evident from the bilateral/plurilateral trade negotiations India is currently engaged in. The negotiating draft of the EU includes a plethora of these regulatory standards. Similarly, the three pillars of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework in which India is participating are about these standards. These standards are increasingly being used by most member countries of the WTO. Thus, the ability of India’s businesses to meet these standards would eventually determine the benefits that they can garner.
FTP 2023 was an ideal platform for the government to prepare India’s exporters to cope with the challenges in the global market. This would require the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) to coordinate with all the standard-setting agencies of the government, the export promotion councils, and the relevant institutions in the private sector to prepare a roadmap for upgrading institutions and production facilities. This means that the DGFT’s primary role would have to be that of a facilitator while the regulatory functions should be small but effective. In contrast, FTP 2023 would like the DGFT to continue playing the role of imposing import “prohibitions” or “restrictions”, one example being the list of “Principles of Restrictions”.
Export promotion schemes were rejigged after a WTO dispute settlement panel ruled against India in 2019 following a complaint by the US. The panel’s finding was that these schemes, especially the Merchandise Exports from India Scheme, provide export subsidies, which are not allowed under WTO rules. A new scheme was launched in 2021 to neutralise the effect of taxes and duties that are included in exported goods, namely, the Remission of Duties or Taxes on Export Products (RoDTEP) Scheme. When it was introduced, the RoDTEP Scheme covered 8,555 tariff lines. In December 2022, the Scheme was extended to cover 10,436 tariff lines.
The Rajya Sabha’s Standing Committee on Commerce examined the Scheme and, in its report, presented in December 2022, found several weaknesses, especially the fact that rates of remission of duties were lower than desirable. Given its salience for exporters, FTP 2023 could have responded to the recommendations of the Standing Committee, which it has not. This lacuna has continued possibly because the description of the RoDTEP Scheme has not been updated from an earlier version of the Foreign Trade Policy: Paragraph 4.5(x) of FTP 2023 says that the “Scheme will take effect for exports from 1st January 2021” (emphasis added).