more on to today's in the news analysis for the date 26th of September 2021. So these are the news articles that has been chosen for today's discussion and today we are going to start our session with this important terminologies session. In this session we are going to discuss about three important terminologies that appeared in last week's newspaper. These three terminologies are the first one, artificial reef and the second one we are going to discuss about the bio decomposer and the third one is unpowerment upper and then we have a discussion on the FAQ which talks about orcas and then we will discuss safe harbor rates and then we will also see about Mars and the Martian water and in this discussion we are going to discuss about an important scheme called as SEIS, services exporters scheme and today we have two problems practice questions and one main practice question and as usual I do have a quiz question for you today so listen to today's analysis carefully because the quiz has been framed on today's analysis only. So with this introduction let us move on to the first session which is the important terminologies session. These terminologies appeared in last week's newspaper. So the first terminology which we are going to start with today is the artificial reef. See we often discuss about the natural reefs that is the coral reefs and their importance and we also have something called as an artificial reef. So what is this artificial reef? See it is a man-made structure. This artificial reef may mimic some of the characteristics of a natural reef. We know that natural reefs are habitats for reef organisms such as softens, tonicorals, they are habitat for the fishes and invertebrates that live among them. So in a similar manner these artificial reefs and structures they also enhance the habitat for the reef organisms. So like how a natural reef acts as an habitat, this artificial reef also acts as an habitat. So this man-made structure which we are talking about could be anything from a submerged ship wreck, oil and gas platforms, bridges, lighthouses to other offshore structures. And among these structures the submerged shipwrecks are the most common form of artificial reef. And apart from these structures the marine resource authorities also create artificial reefs in underwater areas. These are the areas that require a structure to enhance the habitat for reef organisms. And these artificial reefs are typically created or constructed from dense materials and these dense materials include rocks, cinder blocks or even wooden old tires, limestones, steel, concrete etc. And it is important to note that these artificial reefs are planned and permitted by the state and federal government agencies only and it is illegal to dump anything into the ocean without a permit. So based on this some countries even prohibit using of old tires as artificial reefs. So on a whole when we say artificial reef it means one or more objects of either natural origin or human origin and these objects are intentionally placed on the sea floor to enhance marine life for human use and this is done through the creation of new reef habitat. So what are its overall benefits? First of all the artificial reefs provide local economic benefits because they attract fish to a known location. So they become popular attractions for commercial and recreational fishermen and then it also enhances recreational and diving opportunities also. The divers are motivated to visit these artificial reefs to witness the habitat of corals, fishes and invertebrates and thirdly as we already saw it increases the reef fish habitat and fourthly and more importantly it also provides shoreline protection. For example it addresses the coastal erosion and it also protects the islands from erosion and submergence due to sea level increase. How? Because these artificial reefs they act as natural breakwaters as they reduce the wave energy. So this reduces the opportunity of erosion. So overall the artificial reefs can enhance fish habitat, they can increase access to quality fishing grounds, they benefit fishermen and the economies of shore communities and they increase the total fish biomass within a given area and overall they also provide shoreline protection. So these are the important facts that you need to know about artificial reefs and its benefits. Now let us move to the next important terminology. Now the next important terminology which we are going to discuss is the bio decomposer which we are often seeing in news nowadays. So let us see what is this. See officially this bio decomposer is called as PUSA decomposer. We will see why it has the name PUSA. See actually this decomposer has been developed at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute that is situated in PUSA of Delhi. See the journey of this institute is in the way that initially it began in the year 1905 at PUSA in Bihar. So at that time it was known as PUSA Institute. But later it was transferred to Delhi and it was given the name of Indian Agricultural Research Institute and this is the reason why this decomposer is named as PUSA decomposer. So actually what is it? See it is a set of four tablets. These tablets are made by extracting fungi strains. So these tablets they are a microbial consortia of eight types of microorganisms. So it consists of eight types of microorganisms. Now what is the use of these microorganisms or the fungi strains? See they help the paddy straw to decompose at a much faster rate than usual. So here the paddy straw or stubble is turned into manure. And since these tablets helps to decompose faster it is known as a decomposer. And since it was developed at the PUSA Institute it is known as PUSA decomposer. And why we are saying it as bio decomposer? Because whenever we add the term bio as a prefix it implies that it is related to a living organism. So now how this PUSA decomposer works? See first the farmers they have to shred the straw and stubble from the crop that are left behind on fields after harvesting. So after paddy harvesting the straw and stubble are left on the field. Now these straw and stubble have to be shred. After that they have to prepare a solution. The solution is made with this tablet which contains the fungal strains and some other organic inputs are also added to the solution. These organic inputs include jaggery and chickpea flour. Now once the solution is prepared they have to spray the solution over the field or they have to mix it with the soil. And once it is mixed with the soil it is left for decomposition. So here what is the role of the fungi strains? They assist in producing enzymes which are essential to quicken the decomposition of the biomass. Here the biomass is the straw and stubble. So now how faster is this decomposition process? See normally a paddy straw takes around 3 months to decompose but this solution or these tablets they reduce the decomposition time of shredded and watered paddy straw from 3 months to below 25 days. So this is one of its main benefits. Now it has also some other additional benefits. It is completely organic and chemical free because it uses fungi strains only. Secondly it works as biomanure and it improves the fertility and productivity of the soil. How it does this? See this solution does not kill microorganisms in the field which improve the productivity when they are sprayed on. Which is not the same in the case of chemical fertilizers. So in this regard this solution also eliminates the need for chemical fertilizers because it itself makes the biomass as a biomanure. Another basic advantage to the farmers is that the cost of these four tablets is quite low. It is said that it could be around 5 to 20 rupees. So this decomposer is cheap and also environment friendly and also this can be used for a decomposition of crop residue over a hectare of field also. So even the field is large enough then also this method can be used for decomposition. There will not be any limitation because of the total area of the land. Now finally and more importantly if methods like this become successful then it will be a new revolution in farming because the paddy straw now they are currently burnt by farmers and this burning is what is called as the stubble burning and this stubble burning causes air pollution and it kills the microorganisms in the soil which are needed for productivity and the scenario is prominent in the northern regions of our country like Delhi and this is the reason why air pollution is severe in Delhi during winter. So that means a solution like this bio decomposer has the potential to reduce air pollution as well as to increase the soil fertility and that is why this solution has been suggested by the Delhi government to use it in the neighbouring states also and this is the reason why this topic becomes important from Pram's perspective. Now from Main's perspective it is important because if you have a question that asks how to mitigate stubble burning or the question asks suggest an alternative to stubble burning then you can suggest this solution or the question could even ask how to reduce air pollution in Delhi. So then also you can write this example because one of the major reasons for air pollution in Delhi is stubble burning. So once stubble burning can be avoided then the air pollution can be reduced. So this information now let us move to the next terminology. Now our next terminology is Anubhava Mantapa. Let us see what is the background for this term. See recently the Legislative Council Chairman of Karnataka has appealed to our Prime Minister and to the Lok Sabha speaker regarding naming the building of New Parliament House. He has suggested to name one of the buildings in the New Parliament House after Anubhava Mantapa. So we have to see the genesis of this term. See this term is related to 12th century. It is related to the social reformer Basaveswara or Basavanna. He is a social reformer from the Karnataka region. So this Anubhava Mantapa was established in the 12th century. So what it means? It actually means a spiritual parliament. Remember Anubhava Mantapa means spiritual parliament. Now this spiritual parliament was based on the principle of democracy. So anyone irrespective of their caste they were allowed to be a member of this spiritual parliament. And women were also part of this. So what was the purpose of this Anubhava Mantapa? In this place hundreds of Sharanas men and women they took part in spiritual discussions. See when they say Sharanas it means those who had dedicated themselves to serve humanity and God. So the Sharanas men and women they took part in spiritual discussions in this spiritual parliament. And all of them they together condemned the categorization of the society based on caste, sub-caste and its various connotations including untouchability. So they were against caste, sub-caste and untouchability. Now along with having discussions in this place the members also gave wisdom to everyone through their vachana writings. Here vachana means poetry. So through their poetry they gave wisdom to everyone. And by doing this they established a Kalyana Rajya. Here Kalyana means welfare and Rajya means state. So the members of Anubhava Mantapa along with Basaveshwara they established a welfare state. And remember this Anubhava Mantapa was established by Basaveshwara or Basavanna. So it is related to him only. And it was based on his ideologies. See he had egalitarian views. That is he believed in the principle that all people are equal and they deserve equal rights and opportunities. He also believed in enlightenment and welfare of all including the people who belong to the so-called low caste and outcasts. At that period of time outcasts were the persons who were rejected by the society as untouchables. So he believed in enlightenment of those people who were termed as untouchables at that time. And also remember he also proclaimed another important reform in the society. It was the remarriage of widows. So Basavanna had egalitarian views and he proposed an equal society. He proclaimed remarriage of widows and he even established this spiritual parliament where everyone can be a part of it. And due to this social significance only now the Legislative Council Chairman of Karnataka has asked to name one of the new parliament house as Anubhava Mantapa. So let us wait and see what the government decides. So with these important terminologies now we are moving to the news articles discussion session. Our first discussion is going to be based on this FAQ article and this article is regarding AUKUS. See this AUKUS is making a lot of ruckus nowadays. If you remember last year in the same period QUAD was making the headlines. And now in the recent times AUKUS is making the headlines. So in this discussion we are going to see what is this AUKUS, what are its terms, what are the apprehensions, what are the takeaways for India etc. So this is going to be a comprehensive discussion. Let us get into the discussion. Before that the syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. So first let us start with knowing what is this AUKUS. So it is a new trilateral security partnership that was recently announced by USA, Australia and UK. So in this term AUKUS, A stands for Australia, UK stands for United Kingdom and US stands for United States of America. It is a trilateral security partnership. Remember this. So what are the terms of this grouping? See the main aim of AUKUS is to preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific in the long term. We know that in the recent years Indo-Pacific region has been under a lot of contention and one of the main reasons for this contention is China. Because China has been increasing its aggression in this region, mainly in the South China Sea and China's territorial ambitions across the Indo-Pacific are also on the rise. So this contention forms a major reason behind the announcement of this AUKUS. So what is the reaction of China actually? See as expected China has strongly criticized the formation of AUKUS. China says that AUKUS will undermine regional peace in the Indo-Pacific region and it will also intensify the arms race in this region. So actually why China feels this way? It is because one of the key proposals of AUKUS is to transfer technology. Now this technology transfer includes nuclear submarine propulsion and manufacturing technologies and according to AUKUS, these technology transfer will be done by US and UK to the Australia and that too it will be done within 18 months. And the purpose of such technology transfer is to build a fleet of nuclear powered submarines. Here the major point to be noted is that if Australia acquires this technology then it will be the first such instance where a non-nuclear nation is acquiring such capability. And if Australia gets this technology it might lead to other countries aiming for similar technology transfers. And that is why according to China this proposal to transfer nuclear technology can lead to an arms race in the region. Now apart from this concern of China this AUKUS is also leading to some geopolitical tensions. One of the examples for this geopolitical tensions could be the problems between France and the members of AUKUS. See there is an increasing tension between France and the members of AUKUS due to this partnership. Why because before AUKUS Australia was actually planning to buy submarines from France only. And for France this was a profitable deal of 90 billion dollars. But after the announcement of AUKUS this deal has been called off and this has irritated France. So it has created a ruptured and diplomatic relations between France and the members of AUKUS that is Australia, UK and USA. So some of the important issues around AUKUS are first it might lead to an arms race in the region and second it gives rise to some geopolitical tensions. But beyond all these issues there is always a question of whether AUKUS will turn out to be a game changer. The answer is no according to many experts. See USA as we know is a leading global military power. It already has a strong presence in the Indo-Pacific region. We can take the example of a quad itself we know quad stands for Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and this is a grouping which includes India, Australia, USA and Japan. And one of the main aims of quad is to preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific. So we can observe that USA is already having a strong presence in the Indo-Pacific through quad partnership. And as we know this partnership involves joint military presence and a wide range of war games in the region. Now secondly in addition to quad US and UK also have five eyes. So what is this five eyes? So it is an intelligence sharing alliance. This alliance has countries like USA, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. This alliance evolved during the Cold War and it was used as a mechanism for monitoring the then Soviet Union. And through this mechanism they shared classified intelligence. And under this alliance the members engaged in ocean surveillance, covert action, human intelligence collection and they even engaged in counter intelligence. And this five eyes alliance is often described as one of the world's most successful intelligence alliance. And as we just saw US and UK are already part of it. And since ocean surveillance is also a part of five eyes Indo-Pacific is also a part of it. So here also US already has a strong presence in the Indo-Pacific through the five eyes partnership. So we can see that regarding Indo-Pacific region we already have the quad and we also have the five eyes. So there is no need for new partnership called AUKUS. And as of now it is also unclear about what additional signaling could be achieved through this new trilateral security arrangement. Here you should remember that AUKUS does not fall within the ambit of other partnerships like quad. So its position and functionality are not clear yet. And this is one of the reasons why experts feel that as of now AUKUS is not a major game changer. Another reason cited by experts is that AUKUS will not deter China's maritime ambitions and territorial expansionism. They rather believe that AUKUS will only lead to an increase of nuclear submarines in China's fleet. So you already China has 12 nuclear submarines. So if Australia gets the technology needed for nuclear submarines through AUKUS, then China will definitely try to increase its number of nuclear submarines. So we can see that China will not get deterred by AUKUS and this will lead to an arms race in the region as we saw in the beginning. And this is also one of the reasons why AUKUS could not be a game changer according to the experts. So now what about India? Will India gain something from AUKUS or India loses something from AUKUS? So according to experts, there might be some gains to India, especially India may derive secondary benefits from this partnership. That is because USA, UK and Australia who are part of this AUKUS are the three advanced nations with the most sophisticated military. So their presence in the Indo-Pacific through AUKUS may increase the freedom and openness of this region. And this can be beneficial to India. How it will be beneficial? See in the recent years, China has been trying to encircle India. For example, if you take the Belt and Road Initiative of China, under it, various infrastructure developments are being carried out by China in the Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka and Maldives. And through these projects, China has been trying to encircle India. And now this AUKUS can partially mitigate this encirclement by China because already, US and Australia are quad members of India. So it is expected that this AUKUS will strategically benefit India in some arenas. But here, what we have to remember is that AUKUS will take a long time to be fully executed. And Australia will also need a lot of time to have a proper nuclear-powered fleet. So that means until AUKUS is fully established and until Australia has its nuclear-powered fleet, we have to wait and see how the power is shifted in the Indo-Pacific region, to what extent and in what direction the balance of power will be shifted, has to be seen by then. And considering this reason only, India has been indifferent to AUKUS. So regarding AUKUS, the situation is not clear. It has a lot of ambiguities. And right now, India is more interested in working with quad grouping rather than worrying about AUKUS. So that is all. In this discussion, we had a brief understanding about AUKUS. We saw what are its terms. We saw what are the concerns regarding AUKUS and what gains India has with respect to AUKUS. Now, let us move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is going to be based on this article about safe harbor rates. So recently, the tax department has notified the safe harbor rates for 2020 to 21. And that is why we are going to discuss about these safe harbor rates. See, whenever we say safe harbor, it refers to a provision in a law or regulation which affords protection from liability or penalty. And it reduces liability if certain conditions are met. So with respect to India, the safe harbor provision is provided with respect to transfer pricing. So what is transfer pricing? It implies the prices at which various overseas divisions of a company transact with each other. That is, if a subsidiary company sells goods or renders service to its holding company or a sister company, then the price charged between these companies is referred to as the transfer price. So here the holding company is getting services from its subsidiary company. So what about safe harbor rates? These are the rates which are used for calculation of transfer pricing by foreign companies or firms in India. So under the existing provision of safe harbor in our country, the circumstances in which the tax authority shall accept the transfer price declared by the taxpayer is called as the safe harbor. Here the tax authority agrees to the transfer price declared by the taxpayer because the tax authority wants to minimize its interference in the taxation process. So that means if a company complies with certain calculation methods and if it follows certain check boxes, then the IT department will accept the transfer price as adopted by the company. This reduces the administrative burden on the department. And this safe harbor and the rules associated with it is one of the best tax practices around the world because it increases the ease of doing business in a country. It brings clarity to taxation rules. It brings down ambiguities. It also increases the certainty in transactions. And also it eliminates the possibility of litigation between the taxpayers and the revenue authorities. Because what happens is when the tax department fixes the tax based on its own calculations, sometimes they are challenged in the court saying that they have followed wrong methods to calculate the tax. But in the safe harbor provision, the company themselves calculate their own route and method of paying the tax. But remember these methods are to be based on certain check boxes that have to be fulfilled by the company. And these safe harbor rules also favours automatic approvals and self-assessment procedures. It also eases the compliance to taxation rules. And finally, it also reduces the compliance cost. So the safe harbor methods, they reduce taxes. So because of this, safe harbor rules are one of the best tax practices around the world. And that is why India also wanted to follow this practice. And based on this, India introduced the concept of safe harbor rules in finance act of 2009. After that, India introduced the first round of safe harbor rules provisions in August 2013. And this was announced for a period of three years, which was later revised in the year 2017. After this revision, these rules were applicable till financial year 2019 to 20. And now again, through a notification, the Central Board of Direct Taxes has extended the applicability of safe harbor rules. And this time period has been extended to 2020-21. I note that as per the latest notification, the rates under safe harbor rules are applicable from 2016 to 17. And they are going to continue till 2020-21. And this has happened only due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So the pandemic comes under control. Then we can expect a reduction in the safe harbor rates also. So what are the rates fixed under it? See, actually different rates are prescribed for different categories of international transactions. For example, the category of software development will have a different rate. The category of information technology-enabled services will have a different rate. So it varies from category to category. So on a whole, the safe harbor rules and rates, they are bound to business. And it brings certainty in transactions. It is also used by many taxpayers as a dispute resolution mechanism for transfer pricing issues. Just remember these facts don't go into much technicality. That is not required for our examination. We have to remember the benefits. You have to remember what it means. Now let us move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is going to be important from the science and technology areas of our syllabus. And this discussion is going to be based on this article from the science page. It is actually a question corner. And this question corner talks about the presence of Martian water. We know that Mars has no liquid water on its surface today. But this article talks about a recent study regarding this non-existence of water on Mars. According to this study, one of the major reasons for this is that the size of Mars is small to hold on to large amounts of water. So maybe due to the size of Mars also, there is no liquid water on its surface according to this recent study. So taking this opportunity, today let us have an understanding about planet Mars. And let us also discuss important missions that discovered the presence of Martian water. So this topic is important from a problem's perspective because you may get a match the following question. And it is also important from the main's perspective where a question may directly, you know, ask you to write the missions regarding discovery of Martian water. So let us dive into this discussion without wasting much time. The syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. So first let us have a brief understanding about Mars. So Mars is the last planet of the inner four terrestrial planets in the solar system. It has two natural satellites. These are named as Deimos and Phobos. And we know that Mars is popularly known as the red planet. Why it is called as a red planet? It is because its soil looks like rusty iron. And we know that that rusty iron has a rusty red color and this red dust covers almost all parts of Mars. And this makes the planet look like it is covered in red color. And if you talk about its topography, Mars is generally rocky. It has canyons, volcanoes and craters all over it. Then it also has clouds and wind just like that of Earth. And if you compare Mars with Earth, you should note that Mars is about half the size of Earth and Mars has about one third the gravity of Earth. The next, what about its atmosphere? See this Martian atmosphere is composed primarily of carbon dioxide. This is an important fact from Prelim's perspective. Additionally, also note that Martian atmosphere is very thin. And due to this, the planet is subjected to a continuous attack of cosmic rays and it also produces very little greenhouse effect. Then if you talk about the climate there, Mars is usually very cold. In fact, the average temperature on Mars is minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit, which is way below freezing. And also, as we saw in the beginning, Mars has no liquid water on its surface today. So there were some explorations to space which hinted about the presence of water in the Mars in the past. Let us see them one by one. Now among this, the first one are the Mariner series, especially the Mariner 8 and 9. These were the final pair in NASA's Mariner series. So Mariner series is a NASA mission. Now among these two, Mariner 8 failed and only Mariner 9 was successfully launched. And it became the first artificial satellite of Mars. Now this Mariner 9 revealed pictures of a Grand Canyon on Mars and it also revealed pictures of remains of ancient riverbeds on Mars. So Mariner 9 is important. Now the next one is also a NASA's mission. Actually, today we are going to focus on NASA's mission only. And the next one is the Viking project. This mission consisted of two spacecraft. They were named as Viking 1 and Viking 2. Now each of these spacecrafts consisted of an orbiter and a lander. And these spacecrafts, they produced images of volcanoes, lava planes, immense canyons, crater areas, wind formed features on the Mars. And most importantly, they also had images that reveal the evidence of surface water. See actually, the orbiter images had striking evidence for ancient riverbeds and vast flooding on Mars. And you should remember that the results from Viking experiments gave almost a complete view of Mars. Now the next important mission is NASA's Mars Global Surveyor. This mission studied the entire Martian surface, atmosphere and interior. Now one of the most exciting observations made by this mission is that it revealed the repeatable weather patterns that was prevalent on Mars. And it also produced high-resolution images of the documented gullies and debris flow. These were present at the surface of the Mars. See these debris flow were similar to an aquifier. We know that aquifier is a body of permeable rock which contains groundwater. So based on this, again it was hinted that there either is presence of water in Mars or there was presence of water in the past. Now next mission is the Mars Pathfinder. Now its findings included evidence of conglomerates which were generally formed in the running water during a warmer past. And at this period of time, the liquid water was stable and this mission also observed early morning water ice clouds in the lower atmosphere of Mars. And more importantly, the mission also provided evidence of an active water cycle in the past. And it is said that this could have leached out the iron from the materials on the crust of Mars. Now the next mission is Mars Odyssey Mission of 2001. See this mission consists of the Odyssey spacecraft which is the NASA's longest-lasting spacecraft at Mars. And in this mission, scientists used Odyssey's gamma ray spectrometer instrument to detect hydrogen. And this indicated the presence of water ice in the upper meter of soil in a large region surrounding the south pole of Mars. This mission also enabled scientists to create maps of minerals and chemical elements and it helped them to identify regions with buried water ice. So Mars Odyssey Mission is quite important regarding the Martian water. Now the next important mission is the Mars Phoenix Lander. So this lander also confirmed the existence of large amounts of water rise in the northern regions of Mars. Then we also have some important rovers. These also made significant discovery of water. These rovers are named as opportunity and spirit rovers. Here the opportunity rover revealed evidence for past lakes that evaporated to form sulphate-rich sands on Mars. And the spirit rover found a variety of rocks indicating subsurface water. So both of these rovers found evidence for past wet conditions that possibly could have supported microbial life on Mars. Now the next important one is the Mars reconnaissance orbiter of NASA. This orbiter revealed possible flowing water during the warmest months on Mars. Now we're not going to get into the technicalities of how they found evidence of Martian water. Just note that all these missions found some evidence of Martian water. They either hinted that Martian water was present in the past or they also hint there is frozen ice beneath its land. So further research and exploration will tell us more about the Martian water. In this discussion, we saw about Mariner 9 series. We saw about Mariner 9 mission, Viking project, Mars Global Surveyor Mission, Mars Pathfinder Mission, Mars Odyssey Mission, the Phoenix Lander, Operation T-Rover, Spirit rover, and finally Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. So we saw about nine important missions of Mars that were linked to the presence of Martian water. Let us move to the next discussion. Our next discussion is going to be based on this news article from the business page. It talks about service exports from India's scheme. So recently the benefits for this scheme for the year 2019 to 2020 has been notified. And regarding this notification, several service sectors and even service exporters have raised concerns. So in this discussion, let us first know about this scheme and then we'll see what is the issue. So now let us get into the discussion. First note that this service exporters from India's scheme, it was launched by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry through its directorate general of foreign trade. So what is the purpose of the scheme? The purpose is to provide an incentive to the service exporters who are based in India. So the scheme provides incentive to the service exporters. And what is the main objective of the scheme? The objective is to boost and maximize the export of notified or selected services from India. Or simply we can say that its main goal is to promote the export of services from India. This scheme was actually introduced in the year 2015. It was introduced as part of foreign trade policy of India 2015 to 2020. And just note that this scheme replaced a past scheme called as served from India scheme. Now when it was introduced, the validity of the scheme was up to five years. That is it was up to 31st March of 2020 only. But due to COVID-19 outbreak, the Commerce Ministry and Industry announced extension of the foreign trade policy up to March 2021. And based on this, this scheme has also been extended. So now let us see how does this scheme work. Under this scheme, the service exporters are granted benefits in the nature of transferable duty credit scripts as a percentage of net foreign exchange earned on export of the eligible services in a financial year. So in the sentence, I have said many technical terms. Let us understand it in simple words. First, let us understand what are these eligible services. See among the services exported in a financial year, the Directorate General of Foreign Trade notifies a list of eligible services under this scheme. And this list is notified so that the eligible service providers or service exporters, they can earn benefits in the nature of transferable duty credit scripts. So what is this duty credit scripts? See when we say scripts, it means a provisional certificate of money. So this certificate entitles the holder to a formal certificate and dividend. And this duty credit script is the most popular export promotion incentive that is provided by the government to the exporters. And what is the incentive provided here? The incentive provided is the import tariff concessions to the exporters. Here you may get confused as to we are talking about boosting the exports. Then why import tariff is provided? Let us take an example to understand why this is happening. See exporters may have a need to import machineries and components. This could be some specialized machineries and components which are not available in our country or which are developed in other countries. And this could be used by the exporters for producing exportable goods. So if you take certain services such as services related to health, education, communication, et cetera, the exporters can get import tariff concessions towards specific percentage of their export value. Here the import tariff we are talking about is the custom duty. So some concession is provided in the custom duty. And this concession depends on the specific percentage of their export value. So now there is a question of how much tariff concession is provided. See under the scheme, exporters of selected services are entitled to about 3% or 5% or even 7% incentive. And this incentive is provided on the net foreign exchange which is earned in the form of duty credit scripts. So that means this 3%, 5%, 7% these incentive rates are computed on the total foreign exchange earned by an exporter by exporting a service in a financial year. So on one hand, these SCIS scripts can be used to pay import duty, as you already saw. And sometimes it can also be encached by selling it to any importer. So when it is encached, this behaves as a cash incentive scheme also. And based on this, these duty credit scripts are also called as transferable duty credit scripts. So that means the entire idea behind the scheme is to increase the forex reserve of India by promoting the export of services. And one of the important facts that you need to note about the scheme is that here the government is not providing concession discount or deduction in the export duty. But it is providing concession in the import duty. This is because the government has already fixed the export duty at a very low price so as to promote the exports. So by reducing the import duty, the logic applied here is that the exporter will export even more when the import duty is reduced. Because this import duty will help the exporter to buy machineries from other countries, which will boost production in our country. And since this import duty is set at a very high rate, the reduction provided by this scheme actually helps the exporters. So here, the government doesn't want the exporters to think about stopping or reducing their service export just because of high cost import of machineries. So through this scheme, the government wants to achieve a win-win situation where government will get reasonable export duty on one hand. And on the other hand, the exporter will also be incentivized by the concession in import duty. So now what is the issue mentioned in the news article? See, initially we saw that recently the government has notified benefits for 2019 to 2020 under this scheme. And it has made certain changes in the benefits that have been announced. The first change is that in the recently released notification, certain services, which were eligible before, has been excluded from the list. So the excluded services include management consulting services, technical testing and analysis services, support services for maritime transport, and cargo handling services, et cetera. So these services were eligible before. And now they have been excluded from the list. So they cannot avail the benefits under this scheme. Apart from this, the benefit rate has also been reduced in case of tourism sector. That is earlier, 7% incentive rate was fixed for tourism sector. And now it has been reduced to 5%. Other than that, the new notification has set a cap on the benefits claimed. See, the benefits are usually claimed based on the IEC. IEC stands for importer-exporter code. This is a key business identification number. This number is mandatory for exports or imports. You know that we have GSTIN for goods and services tax. So similarly, for import and exports, we have the IEC. So based on this only, one can claim the benefits under this scheme. But now a cap has been set on the benefits. According to the cap, each IEC can claim only benefits up to 5 crore. So even though if they have more than 5 crore, net foreign exchange earned in the form of duty credit scripts, they can only claim up to 5 crore rupees. So on a whole, many changes has been brought down by this notification, especially it has reduced the overall benefits. And already in this pandemic scenario, industries are going through a tough phase. And a notification like this affects the continuance of services even more. So in this discussion, we understood about the services exports from India scheme. We saw how it works. We saw what are the concessions provided or the incentives provided under the scheme. And finally, we saw the issues based on the recent notification under the scheme. Notice more to the next discussion. So viewers and aspirants, with this news article discussion, we are now moving to the next session. In this session, we are going to see three news articles. And these news articles talk about the topics which we have already covered in our news analysis. So I'm just going to say what is the news and where can you find those discussions. So this first news article, it talks about the National Mission on Cultural Mapping. The news article mentions that this mission has now been handed over to the Indira Gandhi National Center for Arts. This mission was introduced in 2017 itself, but much has not been done under this mission. And now, this center is planning to have a trial run in 75 villages. And as you know, under this mission, government is building a comprehensive database of artists, art forms, and other resources from organizations. So we had a detailed discussion on this mission on our 27th May Hindi News Analysis. You can find that discussion on that day. Now this next discussion, it mentions that a warning has been given in Odisha regarding the Cyclone Gulab. Now according to the Indian Meteorological Department, this cyclone is expected to hit Andhra Pradesh and certain districts of Odisha also. And that is why now alert has been given. So whenever we talk about cyclones, you have to know what are these and what are the favorable conditions for the formation of the tropical cyclones or tropical storms and how it is formed. These facts are very important from the problems and main's perspective. And recently on August 31st, we had a detailed discussion on tropical cyclones. You can view that analysis to know more about tropical cyclones. Now this next news article has appeared in the Delhi edition. This news article talks about the right to be forgotten. It mentions that an individual has filed an application based on his right to be forgotten. Actually, this is an important right which is often in news nowadays. We have discussed about this right in detail. On our June 17th, 2021 Hindi News Analysis. Please refer to that analysis because there is a chance in this problems itself that might be a question based on this. So with these reference news articles, now let us move on to the next session on practice questions. These questions have been framed based on the discussions on news articles. Now this first question is a pair based question on one side Mars mission is given and on the other side, the country to which the mission belongs to is given. The first pair is hope USA. This is first pair is incorrect because the hope is a mission of United Arab Emirates. It is not a mission of USA. That is, it is not a mission of NASA. This mission is also known as Emirates Mars mission. So one should not be in answer. If you eliminate that, you can easily arrive at the correct answer which is option B, two, three and four only. This hope mission was recently in use and it is very important for the prelims 2021. Now among the remaining pairs, Mangalyan is India's Mars mission which is also called as MOM that is Mars Orbiter Mission. It was launched by Indian Space Research Organization India 2013. Now the next pair is Tianwen-1 China. This is also a correct pair. This is an interplanetary mission by China. It was launched in 2020. Now the fourth pair is also correct as you already saw, Phobos grunt. This is also called as Phobos grunt with a pH. It means Phobos ground in Russian. It is launched in the year 2011. This mission aim to study, collect and return samples from the Martian moon Phobos. We saw during discussion that Deimos and Phobos were the two moons of Mars. So this mission studied Phobos. And remember that this spacecraft also carried China's first Mars Orbiter. This Mars Orbiter is called as Yinghuo-1. So Phobos grunt belongs to Russia. Yinghuo-1 belongs to China. Now let us take this next question. It is based on safe harbor rates. First statement is it is used for calculation of transfer pricing by foreign firms in India. This is a correct statement. With respect to India, it is used for calculation of transfer pricing. Second statement, it eases the compliance to taxation rules. This is also correct. This is one of the major benefits of safe harbor provisions. And here the question asks for the correct statement. So the correct answer is option C both one and two. So with these two problems practice questions, now I have this quiz question for you. This question has been framed on the artificial reefs discussion of today. Four statements are given and you have to choose the incorrect statement. So be careful before mentioning the correct answer. You can post the correct answer in the comment section and I will tell you as usual whether your answer is right or not. And if possible, also try to say why your answer is the correct answer. This will show your real understanding of the topic. So with this, we have this main practice question. It is based on the AUKUS discussion. You can write the answer to this question and post it in the comment section for peer review. So aspirants and viewers, with this we have come to today's in the news analysis and practice questions discussion session. If you like this video, don't forget to like, comment and share. And do subscribe to Shankar IS Academy YouTube channel for more updates related to civil services preparation. Thank you.


Hi all Salvatore here with a quick primer. We Americans say primer on judicial supremacy and the American sense of humor Now with regard to my notorious tweet from yesterday, I'd like to say two things first It's a joke and second Anyone who takes legal advice from a middle-aged American man in a fez clearly needs a better lawyer On the concept of judicial supremacy the Indian Supreme Court has asserted a right to overturn even a lawfully passed amendment to the Constitution That is a level of judicial overreach unparalleled anywhere else in the world now The basic structure doctrine has been I think unfairly maligned in some ways There are some there is some truth to the idea of a basic structure of a constitution that can't be changed and That any society would resist it being changed That said the fact that the Indian Supreme Court has used the basic structure to abrogate changes to its own Authority is highly suspicious when for example the Supreme Court was silent on the issue of preventing equal representation in India by not abrogating the 42nd and the elements of the 42nd and 84th amendments that prevented equal representation in India So I think we have to take the basic structure doctrine as Actually applied by the Indian Supreme Court with something of a grain of salt and you know thus the fez now If the honorable mr. Donkar really is upset I welcome him or anyone from his office to email me and request that I take down the tweet And I will gladly do so in the meantime. Enjoy the joke. Enjoy the article and thanks for watching my videos


Welcome to those of you who joined us today, I invite you to introduce yourself in the chat by sending your name and where you're at to all participants, not just to those who are the leaders, but to everyone. And then we'll be able to see who has joined us today. Janet McGurrey is providing our support today and she'll be watching in case anyone's having problems. Just send her a chat there. My name is Jeanine Bertie Johnson. I'm serving as alumni director in addition to other roles at AMBS. And I welcome all of you here today. Just a couple of housekeeping details. If you have a question or comment for our speaker, I invite you to use the Q&A feature and I'll be watching that and then we'll ask those questions to David. That's in the bottom of your screen and you can find it by hovering over that. Please note that the webinar, including the questions is being recorded. Turning now to our conversation. David Kramer is managing editor for the Institute of Mennonite Studies, and also serves as a core adjunct faculty member at AMBS. He received his undergraduate degree from Bethel College in Mishawaka, Indiana, his MDiv from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, his MA from Trinity International University, and his PhD from Baylor University. His scholarship focuses on the tradition of Christian social ethics from the early 20th century social gospel movement to its 21st century expression in Anabaptist theological ethics. David has previously worked for Baker Academic and Brazos Press and taught at Baylor University and Bethel University. He has had a blog on Pathios and has co-authored or edited several books. In addition to his half-time work at AMBS, he's pastor at Keller Park Church in South Bend, which belongs to the Central District Conference of Mennonite Church USA. David will start by answering several questions that I have for him, and then after that we'll have time for your questions and comments. David, thanks for joining us today. What would you like to tell us about yourself as an introduction? Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here and to speak with alumni. I actually am not an alumni myself of AMBS, but I'll share a little bit about how I got connected to AMBS. I guess I did take a couple of courses just as audits, but I don't think that's enough to count. But I am really just delighted to be a part of the AMBS community and for the ways that I've been embraced by students, faculty, staff and alumni in the years I've been here. Yeah, as Janine said, I did not grow up in the Mennonite tradition. Actually, I grew up in a missionary church, which if you go back far enough, does have some Mennonite roots, but it's more of an evangelical denomination today. And so I didn't know much about Mennonites growing up beyond just my encounters living in Northern Indiana. So to me, Mennonites were either the people in buggies that I passed on the way to church, going down to church in Napa Ni from Mishawaka where I grew up. Or they were the people that we played basketball against at Goshen College when I went to Bethel. And so yeah, I grew up in a fairly conservative evangelical denomination. That's where I kind of learned about Jesus, learned about scripture, had a lot of really formative experiences. And even as I've kind of slowly moved out of that tradition, it's still a very meaningful one for me. But what happened was, when I went to Bethel College here in Mishawaka, I took a course on the history and polity of the missionary church, and that was the first time I learned that we had this Mennonite founding from the late 1800s. And that was so shocking to me because again to me Mennonites were kind of othered. And then next thing I knew I kind of was a part of that tradition and I didn't know what to make of that and that was probably around 2004. And this is shortly after, you know, a couple years after 911, and as the US is entering into wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan that at the time I was fully supportive of. And I was very dismissive of non-violence or pacifism as I understood it. And taking that course realizing this is a part of my tradition kind of opened me up to doing some exploration. So I kind of slowly read my way into the Mennonite tradition late in college and then in seminary where I went to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, which is kind of more evangelical Calvinist leaning. So I was sort of an oddball there as I was studying with those professors but reading my way into Mennonite theology. So I kind of had this interesting formative experience at an evangelical seminary where I was becoming more Mennonite. After I graduated from there and moved back to South Bend area and felt like okay I've been reading about these people but I really needed to get to know them better. And this is where AMBS became a part of that story. I audited a couple courses in the late 2000 aughts early, maybe 2010. And so I took a course with both Gayle Gerber Coons and Ted Coons. And they were great mentors for me and kind of just getting my feet wet in the Mennonite tradition. Also got to know some other people from AMBS and from Goshen College and started to not just think of the Mennonite tradition as a theology but as an embodied tradition. And I think that was really important for me moving forward was not just having these good ideas but actually being a part of a community. And so when I went to Baylor University for my PhD in theology, my wife and I, my wife, Andrea and I were looking for a way to like really get more plugged into the Mennonite church. And so we attended Hope Fellowship, which is kind of quasi intentional community sort of house church type environment down there. Some of them grew up Mennonite others kind of joined the tradition like like we did, but I was there for about five years they're part of Mennonite Church USA so that was when I started getting more formally connected. And then spent a little bit of time at Baker Academic and Brazos Press and Grand Rapids, and there's at the time there wasn't a Mennonite church up there. So after spending five years being a part of that I was kind of taken back out of that sort of an exile again, and trying to form community there with some other kind of, and a Baptist minded people but it didn't quite gel before I ended up accepting a call to the community at Keller Park Church here in South Bend, which at the time was a missionary church and then we in recent years have as a church moved into the Mennonite church USA, which is a whole other story maybe I can talk about a little bit. So now I'm bivocational spending half of my time at Keller Park Church pastoring and the other half of my time working at AMBS, particularly with the Institute of Mennonite studies that we can talk about a little bit more to talk a little bit about my family and then we can move on to some other questions but so as I said I'm married to Andrea, we've been married 17 years now she is the founding director of an organization in South Bend called neighbor to neighbor that welcomes in African refugees and asylum seekers into this community provides kind of friendship based wrap around care. So she's been working this past year a lot with Afghan refugees that have come into our community. So that's been a really formative experience for our family and our community here, and then as of a little over a month ago I have a teenager in the house of my oldest, Wesley just turned 13. He's a great here in the South Bend schools and then our daughter Liza is 10. And so it's a really fun time for our family with kids at age so a little bit about me. That's great. One of the questions I always ask people is for them to tell about an experience in which they are a time when the experience got in a powerful way. And this has been a really rich set of stories so I'm curious to hear your story. Yeah, when I saw that question I, I was interested to go back and see some of the other answers that people gave to that. So, I want to tell two quick stories one really quick and then the other one is one I'll focus on a little bit more but I don't think of myself as a very like mystical type of person that often has these kind of mountaintop experiences. I was one time in high school when I was literally on a mountaintop that I feel like I had a mountaintop experience so it was. I was on kind of a short term task force type trip down to Peru. I remember just in the mountains in Peru. Going up on the roof of the hostel we were staying in and feeling like there was just a sense of God's presence in a way that I hadn't really felt before, and I can't really describe it other than just. It's it's one of those times I look back on in my life where I felt like I was in God's presence in some way. I probably explain it away as you know the air was a little thinner up there high in the altitude or whatever. But I did feel like I just sense God's presence. But a more recent experience is more of a communal experience of sensing the spirit at work and that was when our church did discern recently I guess it's been almost two years ago, a year and a half ago. Kind of where we aligned denominationally and so Keller Park Church had been a part of the missionary church sentence founding in 1968. And so 50 some odd years later we were starting to have some feelings that we were not fitting in with the current direction that the denomination was going. And so we had a lot of discernment among our members about do we align if not where do we align, and we based on our own kind of mission here in the neighborhood and vision for who were called to be like. We connect most with our Anabaptist tradition from from our denominator previous denominations founding and so as that denomination had moved out of the Anabaptist fold. For the most part we felt like we wanted to move back in. And so I don't personally love it when churches, you know leave their denomination sometimes that makes me cringe or whatever but in our experience we felt like it was more of a homecoming than a leaving I know it was a little bit of both but anyway, we had a lot of discernment that over many months a lot of hard work. And then when it came down to the actual meeting to make that decision. I was sitting in the sanctuary this was in the middle of coven. So I was one of the only people in the room, everyone else is on the screen all the members but we went around one by one. To a person everybody affirmed the proposal that we had and so that was one of the only experiences I've had a true consensus decision making. I know is a value of our tradition sometimes it can be problematic in some ways but for me just seeing the consensus and unanimous kind of voice of the people it felt like a confirmation that the spirit had been at work and it was a very emotional time for me after all that work we've done. Wow, that's a great story. I touched on this already in terms of your growing interest in an abaptism but what specifically attracted you to be part of the ABS community. Yeah, as I mentioned, most of my initial exposure to an abaptism was through reading theology. So, when I moved back to South Bend in 2008. I had known and BS existed like for a long time but I didn't know much about it didn't know much about the people there. I think I had a friend who was a student there at the time who was attending color park church we're attending as well. And I don't remember if he encouraged me to audit or what led me to audit the course but I, I first audited Christian attitudes toward war peace and revolution with Ted. And just being a part of a community that was wrestling with those issues. That was a new experience for me I mean I'd gone through seminary taken, you know 100 some odd credits including ethics courses but never really wrestled through some of those questions and in a community and so I was hooked from that point on and when I ended up feeling led to go on to continue studying theology. I remember kind of having this thought in the back of my mind like if I could come back to one place and teach one course it would be that course I took with Ted. And then, you know, six, seven years later, when I was in Grand Rapids, Janet Hunter Bowman, our current theology and peace studies director had been teaching that course, but had a sabbatical coming up and she had been in that course with me when we were students and I was auditing and she was a student and so we got to become friends and she reached out and said, I'm, you know, I have a sabbatical coming up I know you're in Grand Rapids I don't know if this would work but if you'd be interested in teaching this course. And by the time we finished that discussion I had taken this call to the pastor here in South Bend so I never had to do the Grand Rapids to Elkhart Commute, but by that fall I was able to teach that course and that was really a dream come true for me to come full circle from taking that course to being able to teach that course and then while I was there I got to know, you know, faculty and staff better and through a conversation with Barbara Nelson I was a managing editor at the Institute of Mennonite Studies at the time I learned that she was looking to retire and that that would be an opening and so with my editing background that ended up working out really well I applied for that and was able to come on half time at MMS and I think it was ball of 2018. Many people will know what Institute of Mennonite Studies does, but there may be some that aren't aware of the breadth of all that you do can you kind of outline what all your work includes and maybe some of the projects you've been working on in the last couple of years. Sure. So the Institute of Mennonite Studies has been in existence, as long as a seminary as far as I know, and it's been kind of the research and publishing wing so faculty published with all kinds of publishers but in terms of the publishing we do at the seminary outside of like the marketing department. It comes largely through the Institute of Mennonite Studies and so we have a number of book series that we publish. People may be familiar with the classics of the radical reformation series that's been a series we've had going since I think the 80s which includes original translations of the early radical reformers. We have the studies in peace and scripture which also has been going about that long I think Willard Swartley began that years ago, and those are mostly monographs by biblical scholars on those topics. We have the occasional paper series which has been going for a long time it started as almost like an annual kind of somewhere between a book and a journal but it's sort of morphed into more monographs or edited volumes. And then since I've come on we've added the studies in Anabaptist theology and ethics series, which we publish in conjunction with TNT Clark Bloomsbury so this has kind of like an international scope and we've had three volumes published in that in recent years. So we publish some things directly with the IMS imprint and other things we do in conjunction with other publishers like TNT Clark. We've published with Erdman's Baker, Whip and Stock, I think Westminster John Knox. So, so the breadth of what we do goes beyond just what you might see with, you know, IMS on the spine we've had our, had our hands in a lot of different projects over the years. We also publish a couple of journals so one that I think is especially helpful for alumni who are in ministry as vision. It's a journal for church and theology that comes out twice a year, we publish that in conjunction with Canadian Mennonite University so there's an editorial team that includes some from Canadian Mennonite sphere some from the AMBS sphere that includes both academics and people in pastoral ministry. And those each issue has a different theme that we explore through a number of different angles oftentimes there's some biblical theological essays, some essays that are more kind of first person narration. We've had poetry and other kinds of artistic expressions in there so if you're not familiar with vision I would encourage you to give it a look it's available for free online. And then also people can get hard copies by subscribing. And then we also publish Anabaptist Witness, which is a mission journal used to be called Mission Focus and that comes out twice a year as well. The IMS director Jamie Pitts is the editor of that journal. So recent issues of vision we just had one come out on spirituality and aging that I think I've gotten a lot of good feedback from people who say that's really helping them sort of process those questions. And then this spring will have one on kind of a broad notion of uncertainty. So the topic is uncertainty and coming at that from a number of different ways just living in a time where it feels like there's a lot of uncertainty and how do we navigate that so the actual spirituality and aging one was edited by Jane Kipfer and Andy Brubaker-Caitler and then the uncertainty one is going to be edited by Carl Koop. And then coming up we're going to have one on family looking at different kind of expressions of family that we encounter today and how as pastors or other thought leaders we can sort of navigate questions related to that. We're also always working on different book projects so I'm really excited about a book that just came out earlier this semester it's called Resistance, Violence, or Confronting Violence, Power and Abuse within Peace Churches. So this is a project that Cameron Alteros and Carol Penner approached us about publishing and they had lined up a number of different contributors. I think there's like 34 chapters in this book and it comes at these questions in a lot of different ways. So the book talks about abuse within church context, it talks about the doctrine of discovery, it talks about racism, homophobia, other types of forms of violence within the church and so that book is I think one of the most kind of publications I've been able to work on in my time. Now I've turned my attention to another book I'm really looking forward to which is called Proclaiming Good News, Mennonite Women's Voices 1972 to 2006, and that's edited by Lois Barrett and Dorothy and this is a collection of essays kind of looking at the history of women in leadership in the Mennonite Church. I think the range of dates there corresponds to some different surveys that were done, I think one was done in the early 70s one in the late 80s and one I think in 2006 so it looks at kind of different cross sections of how the Mennonite Church in its various expressions has evolved, I think in very positive directions to bring more women into leadership and congregations and conferences and at the denominational level and other ways so that should be available this spring. That's a lot of different things to keep track of at once. And you mentioned earlier that you've gotten to teach the course on war peace and nonviolence. Are there other courses that you have taught and and how often are you teaching. Yeah, so my main role at the seminary is as managing editor of the Institute of Mennonite Studies but my PhD is in theology and ethics and so I'm available to teach various courses and sort of the HTE department history theology and ethics department. So Christian attitudes toward war peace and revolution I think I've taught about once a year on average, Janet Hunter Bowman still teaches it. So we kind of rotate that course, and that's, I've taught that on campus online and for the MACA Ethiopian cohort so last summer, did a two week intensive of that course. And that was quite the experience because as many of you may know, Ethiopia is in the midst of a lot of internal conflict and kind of civil strife civil war and so this is not academic cerebral conversation for them their questions were very on the ground of what they should be doing as church leaders in their communities in the midst of violence and so that was humbling for me to be teaching from a relatively comfortable safe North American context and having these questions. And I found myself framing my answers almost almost every time to the point where almost became a joke where I would say well as a North American, you know white male scholar here's how I would answer it, but I encourage you in your context to be thinking about it for yourself and so I felt myself kind of wanting to contextualize my own way of thinking about it and I think the students and were able to own kind of their own approach to war peace and revolution by the end of that course so that was, that was a really that was a privilege for me to be able to teach that I've also taught a course called the ethics and practice of forgiveness. And right now I'm teaching Christian theology one also for the Ethiopian cohort. Oh, and then through the church leadership center. Our Old Testament one of our Old Testament professors who's Anna Larry and I teach a course every year on understanding an abaptist approaches to scripture. So there's different ways that you engage the AMBS community I'm curious what dream do you have for AMBS. I would, and I'm going to kind of personalize it but I would be really thrilled to learn someday that a student that I had kind of had that sort of experience that I had with Ted of being so energized by taking a course at AMBS that they would come back someday and teach that and so I don't know if I'll ever see that but I would love to be able to pass the baton on to a former student, especially some of the students we've had from the global south. And so I know that AMBS graduates go on to do amazing things around the world and throughout North America. And I celebrate all of those things, but I would love to see a former student of mine come back and be able to sort of take the reins of one of the classes I've taught. And before we turn to questions that our alumni have for you do you have any questions for the alumni who've joined us today. Yeah I mentioned. I mentioned kind of one of my formative experiences at AMBS. I would really be interested to hear from alumni what formative experience they've had that maybe has continued to stick with them in ministry or wherever they've gone on since seminary. Was it something that they knew at the time was meaningful or was it something that later on really connected to whatever they were doing in life so I'd love to just hear some of those stories of kind of what a formative course or lecture or specific conversation you know what is it that's really stuck with you years after graduating. Right, thanks. So, if you would like to answer that question you can put your answer in the chat. If you'd also like to ask your own question of David, or make a comment I invite you to put that either in the chat or the q amp a and I'll be watching those and read those. So it's time now for your questions. And as we wait for those to come in, I will just ask you a little bit about the book that you edited a wrote you co authored with someone can you tell us about that book. Yeah, so I had a book come out earlier this year called a field guide to Christian non violence. The subtitle is key thinkers activists and movements for the gospel of peace. I was published with Baker academic and my co author was a fellow Baylor alum we got to know each other at Baylor and our PhD programs miles words he teaches at Abilene Christian in Texas and the book kind of came out of a somewhat of a frustration with the ways non violence had kind of been pigeonholed into a particular expression. And so, a lot of my own journey with understanding Christian non violence came through reading the other and Stanley how I was that kind of tradition and while that's clearly a very influential tradition. It felt like that was sort of what people thought of when they thought of non violence sort of full stop. And so I wrote an article for sojourners magazine. And it was around 2015. That was exploring different expressions of Christian non violence and maybe someone said had been overlooked or under appreciated because of all the attention on kind of the Yoder how it was tradition and so miles read that article, and he had been on some panels, where he was like the token pacifist, you know, debating with just war people or whatever and he also felt like he understood the just war tradition with a bare amount of nuance but they didn't seem to understand because I'm with much nuance it was sort of either either focused on an expression from Yoder how us or kind of a crude understanding of like the Schleitheim confession of sort of two kingdoms dualistic theology where pacifist just don't engage in the public at all. And so he reached out to me and said, Hey, I read this article. What would you think about making this into a book. And I hadn't really had that thought but as we talked about it more we thought yeah this could be something that could be helpful and then by the time I was actually working on it I was teaching Christian attitudes toward war peace and Revolution and so I was thinking of it as, what would I, what would I want to read in a course like that. And so sort of thinking of it in some ways as a textbook so it surveys eight different approaches to Christian non violence it doesn't try to argue for anyone over the other doesn't pick winners and losers or even really try to for an apologetic for non violence is just sort of setting the table and inviting people to come and experience it for themselves so yeah that was that was my most recent project. Wonderful, we have a couple questions that have come in one is from Doug Amstutz and he's asking in teaching your course in Ethiopia and Doug I believe you lived there for a while so you understand that context. So here in response to your teaching in their context were they skeptical or open to Christian non violence and pacifism. Thank you Doug. Yeah, that's a great question. In real time it was a little hard for me to know if they were skeptical or open and I think part of that is because of a, maybe an approach to education where there was tends to be more deference to the professor. And that's where I was saying earlier oftentimes they would ask, you know, what is your position on X and they just wanted to know. And that's where I tried to nuance it by contextualizing my own standing but you know like one question they had was, should we have armed guards in front of our churches. Because if we don't, there's a possibility that our people will be massacred. If we do what does that say about our commitment to non violence and how do I answer that you know I mean I say we don't have armed guards in front of our church. And that is, we all know it's not that there isn't gun violence here in the United States, but it hasn't felt in my context like that's a pressing question. So I told them, you know, we don't, and I encourage them to think through the different theological and ethical ramifications for their context and. So again I didn't know by the end of that class, where they were at on things but one of our professors drew straight was able to teach any theopia last summer. And he said he came back and asked me to have lunch with them you want to tell me some about his experiences and he said Dave. Your students said taking that course convinced them to become pacifist or convince them to take Christian non violence more seriously. And that was very humbling and sort of shocking to me that it had had that kind of impact on some of the students I don't widespread that was but that was something he was reporting back to me. And it was when they realized that in North America, we don't have it all figured out either. They were more willing to say you know what, maybe I can be a part of this tradition, because I don't have all the answers I'm not sure if I'm a card carrying pacifist but it is a, it is a question that I take seriously and that I want to wrestle and so if that's what it means to be a part of the tradition is to wrestle with this question, then maybe I am Mennonite after all. And so that was more of the feedback I got in real time was, yeah I think maybe we are a part of this Mennonite tradition whereas before maybe they weren't so sure. What a great story. Rebecca Kaufman is has a really practical question here. Do you read everything that IMS publishes. So I guess, how, how much do you have your fingers in everything that IMS is doing are you overseeing all of that. Thank you Rebecca. Yeah, thanks for the question I. Vision. So I read all of those articles, kind of multiple times, and then I edit most of the standalone book projects we do so I mentioned resistance and proclaiming what's the title of that one I'm doing now proclaiming the good news. So those I will read very closely, kind of a multiple passes, but then some of the other series that we have going on might have a different editorial process. So like, and a Baptist witness I have very little to do with that's mostly Jamie pits, and he has a team of people that do the copy editing and proof reading for that so I only read that for pleasure, not for work. And so the series and piece in scripture series has oftentimes been published through other publishers so when that happens, those publishers often have their own editors that work on it so again I might take a pass at it but I'm not actively involved in kind of the line by line editing so it, it varies but that is a major part of my job is is editing the different projects we do. And if that's not enough reading for you I understand that you are also part of a book reading group. Do you want to tell us about that and why that's life giving to you in the midst of your other kinds of reading. Yeah, so that started during the pandemic and it was just a few old college friends of mine. This was during the time of, you know, a lot of us were pretty socially isolated and one of my friends suggested that we do a reading group and we had just a couple guidelines we wanted to only read fiction, and we wanted to try to read things that we felt like we should have read by now but haven't. Whatever that means so kind of broadly understood. So we've read some classics, we read Moby Dick, we've read some John Updike. We've read some more recent things like Octavia Butler. We, we just finished reading Marion Taves women talking. And so that's been helpful for me because I got away from reading fiction and just kind of literature more generally, partly out of just the demands of so much other reading, but being able to get back into that and having reading be just about the enjoyment and the company of friends and not about trying to complete a task has really brought a new love for reading back for me so yeah. In the last few years you've also done some writing for the pathios blog and I'm wondering if you can describe what you were trying to do there and what your goals were, and what kinds of responses you got from that doing public theology. Yeah, thanks for asking that so a number of years ago. I had been blogging at pathios. He's since moved to Christianity today but I got to know him a little bit through kind of neo-anabaptist circles and he told me that pathios was looking for kind of an anabaptist voice to add to their evangelical channel. And at the time I was finishing grad school. I wasn't sure vocationally what I was going to be doing so I talked to them a little bit but said you know I'm not really sure if putting my ideas out in a public way right now is sort of the best idea for me professionally so we kind of put it on hold. But once I got situated in at AMBS and at Keller Park I felt like okay I'm fairly confident in what I believe now I mean I'm continuing to learn obviously but I didn't feel like it was as problematic to start putting some of those thoughts out there for public consumption and so the blog I started was called anabaptist revisions and it was sort of exploring my own understanding of what anabaptism is how it relates to other movements especially evangelicalism and then over time it kind of evolved in different ways so I went through the blog we did a sermon series a couple summers ago during the pandemic on women in scripture and so it was neat to be able to put up I think a dozen or more sermons kind of highlighting various women in scripture. So it served multiple uses. It's sort of gone dormant. I'll admit at this point so I haven't done a whole lot in recent year in recent months I guess did a little bit of promotion of the book and things like that but I'm curious what other people think about the role of blogs and today's kind of social media environment and information saturation I think they might still have a place but I've, I've kind of drifted away from it for the most part. So I'm curious if that's a good idea or if I should get back, get back in the ring there. We have one response to your question to the alumni. Rebecca Kaufman said that many of the classes she took were very good, but two that made her really think were biblical perspectives of atonement, which she hopes we are still teaching and biblical perspectives on. Looks like peace and justice. Yeah peace and justice. So that are there other people who want to respond to David's question or to ask him any more questions. Well to Rebecca's response I'll say that I know we still teach. It's now called biblical foundations for peace and justice. But Drew Strait has taught that I think he's team taught it before with previously with software marzook and I think he'll be teaching it with one of our two Old Testament scholars Susanna Larry or Jackie wise road soon. We also offer a short course version of that through the church leadership center if anyone wants to brush up on that. Now the biblical perspectives on atonement I don't know if that is on the books right now or at least if it's in regular rotation, but I'm not sure why it, why it's dropped out I think that's a really fascinating topic it's something I've explored personally in grad school and I know it's it's still a very live question. So Mary shirts was the person who taught it when Rebecca took the class. Thank you Rebecca any final questions. And David anything else that you'd like to share with the group. Well as I said I'm not personally an alumni, an alumnus but I have felt very embraced by the community and the alumni and. So I thank you for welcoming someone in and hopefully my story is an encouragement for for you that people can grow and change. I know we're living in a time where it can feel very polarizing politically in a lot of ways, even within the Mennonite church and so if someone like me who was gung-ho about Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s and through encounters with different people and different things I read changed my mind I know it's possible for anyone so keep at the good work you're doing keep proclaiming the good news of the gospel of peace and I know it's continuing to have an impact in your communities and around the world. Thank you so much David and thank you to all of our alumni who joined us today. We are so grateful for your ongoing support of AMBS. As I've said many times you are our most influential supporters in the church both by tapping prospective students to come to AMBS and by supporting us through your prayers and financial support. I encourage you that if you know someone that you think should be considering seminary studies that you do talk to them about that let me know so that we can be in touch with them as well. You can just send their names and contact information to JB Johnson at AMBS.edu. Today also begins our season of giving all gifts given between today and November 29 are going to be matched up to $50,000 so encourage you to consider making a gift or asking friends to make a gift. And I hope you'll stay connected to the seminary through ongoing classes, which remember you have a wonderful audit rate for grads that you can pick a class from next spring to take. And the church leadership center has wonderful offerings, including pastors and leaders coming up in February. We hope that we see all of you there. Thanks to all of you for joining us today. Thanks to Janet McGurie our student technician for providing the AV support. That's the end of today's third Thursday conversation. I hope you have a wonderful day and we'll see you next month. Bye bye.


Why did what inspire Chibukizi to become the first comedian in East Africa to own a school, to build a school? So it was our mother's dream. This is SPM Buzz, Jalango TV, Fady TV, Viki, Vikina and Trudikidui We are live in Machakos County, Matungulu sub county, Natuko Live kwa Ground, Tukondaniya Shuleya St. Martin's, the post called Matungulu Matungulu sub locations, you know? Matungulu sub county Matungulu sub county is being joined by our director, a CEO, a French teacher by the way, Mike Duke, a brother to the leading top comedian in 254 Mike Yeah Go to say your name Juzi tu me kwa pamoja Ah ah, he's in a series I'm not Onatwa za nan julukwa, so me julukwa na right Right sir of K2 Tu me sema, tu si sema Tu si sema, mama mibirakini Pua kadi sir Maybe you can start by introducing yourself and then maybe you kariu bisha, najiwa tu kwa mazingida ambain, mazingida kipikei tu kwa nishule Ya, kwa majinana itwa Michael Mudama Niniwa najiwa kama Mike Duke Mimindo managing director St. Martin's since last year, January Ya St. Martin's ni shuleyambayo imejengwa na chipukizi Matungulu sub county kutala specifically kumutula village It's a full primary school It has been in operation We've had seven classes since 2017 Now we've switched to the CBC system Now we will be launching a grade 7, come 11th May Nishuleyambayo imejengwa na chipukizi Nishuleyambayo imejengwa na chipukizi The school has been operating As I've mentioned, the first classes were since 2017 up to We've had consistently Closets kila moaka So it was our mother's dream But now chipukizi ndwa likuza aka Supportu kaka ifanya ika kwa full primary school Ya, imejengwa ilianza Back 2012-2013, doku liyanza kwa na And when in 1st Fourth Class there never came a 1st IT class and then after that there were 4th classes but the final ones where I became a bawler. So I'm during this total operation for a while. Shuddly you take us through your shots and shovs about the school, but just to ask you. Tadi ubuwo maida kwa matafuwa. Kwa kai wa kama tia? Kwa maida kwa maida? Mata maida kwa maida. Mata maida skuwa, wawata kwa maida avangaswa. Uhu. Kenu wa kwa maida, na Belaka kwa maida, When Chibukizi made some money through comedy and all, he came back to the school, to the village and now he bought some land, started constructing the classes. Ndotu Kaisa kuwana Saint Martin's here. Okay, speaking of Saint Martin, it's Saint Martin's depose. What's the meaning of that name? And what inspired the name? Saint Martin depose, I think the Spanish name. He was inspired by Saint Martin, who is known for his charitable works. So the Saint used to help people. And also the school was inspired also in that area. Kusahibia to Ambaro maybe. Asi kujimudu kuweza, kujisapot kuwata that quality education. Na resources Ambarzoziku wakonazu. So hiyon do you inspire the name kuhita the Shule Saint Martin. Just to ask you about the school now. Is it functional like any other schools, are there teachers, are there students about their need? Are there options of boarding school? Oh, yeah the school is in operation. We are actually, as you can see, in KwaTuniki, Tairisha. Since we opened the school on come next week on 30th. We are fully operational. Currently we have up to grade six. And we have ten teachers. Ten teachers, we have support staff, we have drivers, cooks. And the school currently has an enrollment of 200 students up to grade six. Now that we are going to have grade seven, I expect come next year we will have more students. And actually the population has been growing quite lately. You know, just to run a school is not something easy. I know there are teachers, there are students, there is an operational course. People want to understand why did, what inspired Chibukizi to become the first comedian in East Africa to own a school, to build a school? I've just mentioned, first it was, we wanted to support our mother's dream. Him specifically, but also he saw the need for the village to have a school that can provide that quality education that maybe the kids in urban areas are getting the necessary resources. So what inspired him more is maybe what he went through. We used to stay, his experience when growing up, I can say also it's what inspired him to maybe support the dream. Because we, of course the schools are not as bad as they were, but that time when we were schooling the schools around were not as good as they were. Maybe they are somehow very far, they don't really have the resources and such. How was life growing up, you know? With an environment whereby you can access to a good school, good school, you can maybe get enough material. How did you guys maybe, how did this motivate you guys maybe to grow up? Because I know for sure there are students out there that are going through what you guys went through. Of course. You come to lunch at 7 o'clock or 2 o'clock.  You don't really see it as your suffering. But now when you maybe grow up you see different people out there living that now you actually know it was kind of tough. Like I remember during rainy times like this, it was very challenging. Where we used to live, you can barely access with a car. Even now the water can see, the housing of what I call a margin. But you know, ina kwa inspiratundo una zidi kujituma, una zidi piaku sa idea. You see through education it's all the only way that people can change lives.  Not through that small education you get, you make an impact. And if everyone gets quality education and makes an impact, then we will change our village. So we want to understand to get to know this. Are these students paying for their fees? Is it a free education system here? Are you guys depending on donors? How are you sustaining the school? Of course running the school is not easy because I find expenses. Like nearly within a term expenses are almost, I've mentioned we have over 10 teachers. How much do you spend in a month? Close to 500,000. 500,000. We have two school ones that go daily picking the students. And as you've seen the roads, the maintenance cost of the road. I mean the vehicles is quite high. The fuel, the drivers, the teachers ensuring we have the books and all everything, the feeding program. It's quite expensive to run the school. But Chibukizi himself he quite supports on that. He chips in some amount that helps run the school. But also the parents do pay. Those who are able. But also... Those in needy? Of course we have many of the students who don't pay. We accommodate them. In terms of numbers? How many? I can say it's a 40-50. 40-60% I know really it's coming. If you can allow maybe you can share us around as we discuss more about the school. Are there options of maybe people willing to support the nation? I know for sure there is Chibukizi Foundation. Many people have actually supported us and also are coming out to support us. Also like you've seen we are constructing an office and there is one person Skye Creek Furniture who are actually open to furnish our office. And so many people are coming out to support us to actualize the whole dream. Maybe the last question. You are the teacher here in this school and we have more schools around. How can you rate the school's performance compared to other schools? I can say undoubtedly that Saint Martins is the best and have my own reasons. Right now we are switching from the 844 system to the CBC system and the 844 system it was more what it was very theoretical and about unlike the CBC which focuses on the holistic development of the students. Let's say in CBC you learn about growing beans but in CBC you actually grow the beans. So Saint Martins we are very keen on actualizing CBC we are very involving and engaging activities that help the kids learn and we have diversified our curriculum like we are teaching them friends we are teaching them computer we have hockey we have so many many learning activities that help them become more knowledgeable people who can like when left in the society they can be fruitful like basically the holistic development of a child. Coming back shortly with more but Mike Duke being a French teacher I don't know how to say my French but it's okay. Let's move on to the shows around I believe there is a lot to learn by seeing. So for now we'll move around we'll be back with more about the school in the next few but for now allow us to move around with the teacher direct himself to show us around about the school we'll be back shortly by the way.


Hello everybody, I am Dr. Keshav Valase from Mechanical Engineering Department of Valchian Institute of Technology, SolarPool. In this session, we will be discussing about the mathematical treatment that is some examples of 2D geometric transformations which we have discussed in earlier video. At the end of this session, viewers are expected to understand the basic concepts of three fundamental types of geometric transformations that is translation, scaling and rotation as well as mathematical treatments in dealing with these transformations, how the operations are carried out for a given data. Particularly, we are focusing on two-dimensional geometric transformations. Just to have a review of what we have discussed in earlier video, 2D geometric transformations are nothing but the operations which are carried out to modify the existing configuration of the object so as to alter its shape, size, position and orientation. Now, as a matter of example, a point in a Baxial system is taken as 1 by 2 matrix whereas, a line in Baxial system is taken as 2 by 2 matrix. Thus, any object that we take up in this competitive graphics or CAD-GAM for geometric transformations, they are perceived in the form of a matrix and these geometric transformations are carried out on the points which are used to define that object. It is a basic fundamental rule, the conceptual aspect that is carried out in geometric transformations. These are the three transformations we will talk about with mathematical examples with the given data. At this point, I expect the viewers to think of some image, some object like maybe a line or a triangle and for this object, think of how these geometric transformations will have the effect on that object. Let us talk firstly the example for translation as we have already discussed. In this translation as a geometric transformation, we are repositioning the given object. The example given here is to translate a line passing through two points. These two points given are 1, 1 and 2, 4. Line is passing through these two points and we are supposed to translate this line by a distance of two units along x direction and three units along y direction. Now we already discussed this relationship in earlier video for the point. The same we will now apply for a line wherein 2 by 2 matrix we need for the representation of a line. A line passes through two points, hence conveniently a line is represented as a 2 by 2 matrix. So if L is the original line given, L dash is a translated line and T is a translation matrix then we have L dash that is a translated line is equal to L given or original line plus translation matrix. Remember in translation we add the matrices thus with the given data L the line can be represented as this 2 by 2 matrix of two points point 1 will be put up as 1, 1 here in first row and second point will be put up in second row 2, 4 and next to this is a translation matrix T which is represented as 2, 3 and 2, 3. This 2 is the translation distance along x direction and this 3 is the translation distance along y direction. As we are adding the matrices here these translation distances along x and y we are supposed to repeat for both the rows. So this is the way we represent translation matrix for a line which is represented as a 2 by 2 matrix and thus we are supposed to find out what is L dash that is new translated line. Now with the relation we have L dash is equal to L plus T this L is put up as a given line in 2 by 2 matrix form. This T as a translation matrix is put up as 2 by 2 form adding these two matrices we get L dash that is translated line we get these two points in the form of 2 by 2 matrix. If you see this figure here, here this is the original line passing through two points 1, 1 and 2, 4 whereas this line is the translated line which is passing through 3, 4 and 4, 7. So these are the points 3, 4 and 4, 7 we have calculated. So this is the original line this is the translated line. Coming to second type scaling wherein we either enlarge the object or reduce the object. Now here again the same example is given same data is given wherein a line is passing through 2 points 1, 1 and 2, 4 and we are expected to use a scaling factor of 2 along both the axis that is along x and y. Scaling factor along both the axis is given to be same that is 2. Formula here to be used is L dash is equal to L into S wherein L is the original line L dash is the line after scaling and S is the scaling matrix. This L line as usual we have represented as 2 by 2 matrix of 1, 1 and 2, 4 these two points. S the scaling matrix needs to be represented as 2, 0 and 0, 2. In first row these two represent the scaling factor along x direction as we are multiplying it here for the sake of algorithm this coordinate this point in the matrix needs to be 0 whereas here this 2 is the scaling factor along y axis. So with this representation for the given data we have to find out new line after scaling. Taking to the formula again we have L dash is equal to L into S we are multiplying here in translation we add the matrices but in scaling we multiply the matrices. So this L dash is equal to this L is the given line in the form of 2 by 2 matrix into S, S is the scaling factor T x and T y or these are scaling factors along x and y directions. After multiplication we get these coordinates 2 to 4 it coming back to this representation here. This is the original line given and this one is the scaled line after scaling the scaling factor is given 2 so you can compare here against this line this line is almost doubled. So this is point 2, 2 as we have got it here 2, 2 and this point is 4, 8 which is here 4 and 8. The point to be noted here is after scaling this original line to this position this point is shifted to this point this point does not remain here if you need this line to be doubled with this point fixed at this location you are required to add up one more geometric transformation of translating this line from new line from this point back to this point that we are not talking here that is called as concatenation which we are not talking here. Coming to third one rotation here a given object we rotate about origin through an angle of theta wherein here plus theta as we have discussed earlier rotation is along clockwise direction counter clockwise direction whereas minus theta it is clockwise same example is given for the point 1, 1, 2, 4 the line passing through 2 points 1, 1, 2, 4 but the angle given is plus 30 theta is plus 30 so plus 30 means we have to rotate through counter clockwise direction L dash again as usual line after rotation L is the original line R is the rotation matrix. So this is given line and R the rotation matrix is in terms of cos theta sin theta given here as discussed in earlier video with the formula we know this L dash we get with the multiplication of L into R. So this is L this is rotation matrix R and the product of these 2 comes up as it is given here. So this point 0.366 and 1.366 this point comes up here after rotation and second point comes up at this position this is the original line this is the rotated line. These are the 2 books we have referred Grover and Ibrahim Zaid. Thank you.