UPSC/STATE PSC
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The Hindu & Indian Express
News 1: Eurozone to coordinate fiscal, monetary policy on inflation
Background:
- Euro zone finance ministers agreed on Friday to act together to protect households and companies from soaring energy prices, coordinating their support policies with the European Central Bank to avoid adding to inflationary pressures.
About Eurozone:
- The eurozone, officially known as the euro area, is a geographic and economic region that consists of all the European Union countries that have fully incorporated the euro as their national currency.
- As of 2022, the eurozone consists of 19 countries in the European Union (EU)
- Members: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.
About European Union:
- The European Union (EU) is a political and economic alliance of 27 countries.
- In recent years, the EU has expanded to include many of the countries that had been Soviet Socialist States before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
- In the 2016 referendum known as Brexit, the U.K. voted to leave the EU. It officially left in 2020.
- The Maastricht Treaty took effect in 1993, replacing the European Community with the European Union (EU).
- Members: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden
News 2: N. Korea makes nuclear programme ‘irreversible’
Background:
- North Korea has passed a law declaring its readiness to launch preventive nuclear strikes, including in the face of conventional attacks, state media said on Friday.
- The move effectively eliminates the possibility of denuclearization talks, with leader Kim Jong Un saying the country’s status as a nuclear state was now “irreversible”.
Treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons:
- The NPT is a landmark international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament.
- The Treaty represents the only binding commitment in a multilateral treaty to the goal of disarmament by the nuclear-weapon States.
- States who are not a party to this treaty: India, Pakistan, Israel, South Sudan, North Korea
News 3: Make anti-TB campaign a mass movement: President
Background:
- President Droupadi Murmu virtually launched the Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan on Friday. Speaking on the occasion, the President said it was the duty of all citizens to give high priority to the anti-tuberculosis campaign and make it a mass movement.
Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan:
- Objectives:
- Provide additional patient support to improve treatment outcomes of TB patients
- Augment community involvement in meeting India’s commitment to end TB by 2025
- Leverage Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities
- Expected outcome of this mission:
- This initiative will increase the active involvement of society in the fight against tuberculosis.
- This activity aims at increasing awareness among the public regarding tuberculosis, and involvement of community will reduce stigma
- Provision of additional support to the TB patient shall also result in the reduction of the out-of-pocket expenditure for the family of the TB patient, better nutritional outcomes will result in better treatment.
- Ni-kshay Mitra:
- The President also launched the Ni-kshay Mitra initiative to ensure additional diagnostic, nutritional, and vocational support to those on TB treatment, and encouraged elected representatives, corporates, NGOs, and individuals to come forward as donors to help the patients complete their journey towards recovery.
- The Ni-kshay 2.0 portal will facilitate in providing additional patient support to improve treatment outcome of TB patients, augmenting community involvement in meeting India’s commitment to end TB by 2025 and leveraging Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) opportunities.
National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (NTEP):
- The National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (NTEP), aims to strategically reduce TB burden in India by 2025, five years ahead of the Sustainable Development Goals.
- The National Strategic Plan for TB Elimination was launched to achieve the target of ending TB by 2025 in a mission mode. It is a multi-pronged approach which aims to detect all TB patients with an emphasis on reaching TB patients seeking care from private providers and undiagnosed TB in high-risk populations.
- A range of forward-looking policies have been implemented including critical schemes such as Ni-kshay Poshan Yojana (NPY), which helped meet the nutritional requirements of TB patients, especially the underserved.
- Over 1,50,000 Ayushman Bharat – Health and Wellness Centres will be established by December 2022 to decentralize comprehensive primary healthcare including TB care services at the grassroots level.
About Tuberculosis:
- TB is caused by bacteria (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) and it most often affects the lungs. TB is spread through the air when people cough, sneeze or spit. A person needs to inhale only a few germs to become infected.
- Tuberculosis caused the largest number of deaths among all other infectious diseases in the country.
- India has a little less than 20% of the world’s population but has more than 25% of the total TB patients of the world.
BCG vaccine:
- The BCG vaccine is one of the most widely used of all current vaccines in the world and since 2004, about 10 crore children are vaccinated with BCG each year.
- It decreases mortality and provides protection against different forms of TB disease.
- BCG’s efficacy is more variable in adolescents and adults ranging from 0 to 80% depending on various criteria.
Sustainable development Goal (SDG 3: Good health and well-being):
- According to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, all nations have set the goal of eradicating TB by the year 2030.
News 4: National Education Policy
National Education Policy:
- The NEP is the first in 21st century which is built on the foundational pillars of Access, Equity, Quality, Affordability and Accountability, this policy is aligned to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and aims to transform India into a vibrant knowledge society and global knowledge superpower by making both school and college education more holistic, flexible, multidisciplinary, suited to 21st century needs and aimed at bringing out the unique capabilities of each student.
- The National Education Policy, 2022, which advocates for a three-language formula where two of the languages are native to India, says the medium of instruction till at least Class 5 or preferably till Class 8 should be in the mother tongue, after which it can be taught as a language.
About NIPUN:
- The government has launched NIPUN (National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy) as a national mission to enable all children at the end of Class 3, in the age group of 3 to 9 years to attain foundational skills by the year 2026-27 and these benchmarks will provide a baseline for subsequent surveys.
Outcomes of implementing NIPUN Bharat programme:
- Foundational skills enable to keep children in class thereby reducing the dropouts and improve transition rate from primary to upper primary and secondary stages.
- Activity based learning and a conducive learning environment will improve the quality of education.
- Innovative pedagogies such as toy-based and experiential learning will be used in classroom transactions thereby making learning a joyful and engaging activity.
- Intensive capacity building of teachers will make them empowered and provide greater autonomy for choosing the pedagogy.
News 5: Campaign to expand SHG footprint
Background:
- In a bid to increase the coverage of self-help groups, the Ministry of Rural Development on Friday announced a nationwide campaign to expedite the inclusion of women who are left out of the umbrella of Self Help Groups (SHGs) under the Deen Dayal Upadhyay National Rural Livelihood Mission.
Deen Dayal Upadhyay National Rural Livelihood Mission:
- Ministry: Ministry of Rural Development
- Launched: 2011
- Objective: The Mission aims at creating efficient and effective institutional platforms for the rural poor enabling them to increase household income through sustainable livelihood enhancements and improved access to financial services.
News 6: PMGK Anna Yojana
Background:
- Several states are seeking an extension of the free food grains scheme (Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana) beyond September 30.
Pradhan Mantri Graib Kalyan Ann Yojana:
- Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PM-GKAY) is a scheme as part of Atmanirbhar Bharat to supply free food grains to migrants and poor. Currently, phase VI of the programme has started from April 2022 which will end in September 2022.
- Under this scheme, the center provides 5kg of free food grains per month to the poor. This is in addition to the subsidized (Rs 2-3 per kg) ration provided under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) to families covered under the Public Distribution System (PDS).
- PMGKAY caters free food grain, either rice or wheat, to over 80 crore beneficiaries of NSFA.
- The scheme which can be availed through the One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) plan was first introduced from April to June 2020 during the stringent lockdown in India and has been extended six times ever since.
Positive outcome:
- Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, has been critical in preventing any increase in extreme poverty levels in India and the doubling of food entitlements worked substantially in terms of absorbing the induced Covid-19 pandemic economic shocks, as per the IMF report (Pandemic, Poverty, and Inequality: Evidence from India)
News 7: Indo-China Dispute
Background: Issue persists in disengagement of LAC at Gogra Hot Springs.
Timeline of Indo-China Disputes
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.