Comprehensive News Analysis - 04 September 2016

A. GS1 Related

1. Inverting the pyramid

Category: Art and Culture

Topic:  Festivals

Key Points:

• On the cool, green hills of Coorg, the Kunde festival is when Jenu Kurumba men, liberated by disguise and liquor, curse their gods, their employers and all passers-by.
• Kunde Habba in the local dialect means the festival of abusing god
• The Legend : The Kurumbas asked the god Aiyappa to go hunting with them, but he was far more interested in the beautiful goddess Bhadrakali, and abandoned them to the vagaries of the hunt. The god’s love is tested by this annual reminder of his duties, couched in a torrent of anatomically accurate abuse.

2. Not just Naughty

Category: Art and Culture

Topic:  Music and Dance

Key Points:

• Nautanki: The form developed mostly in two UP towns, Hathras and Kanpur, each distinct in style.
• The Hathras format is more musical and slow-paced, while Kanpur has a more robustly dramatic, racy and dialogue-heavy style that borrowed heavily from Parsi theatre
• Till the mid-1950s, it was promoted in Bollywood films likeTeesri Kasam
• It is a complex music system with its own metres likedoha, chaubola and behre-e-tabeel
• The full-throated singing is very close to folk but at the same time, also draws heavily fromkhayal,thumri, ghazal, qawwali and even lavni
• The beats of thenaqqara and the soft notes of the clarinet, both are critical to nautanki

B. GS2 Related

Topic:  Health

Key Points:

• Noncommunicable diseases (NCD) such as diabetes, respiratory diseases, cancer and heart diseases are taking a severe toll on public health across the WHO South-East Asia Region
• It is reported as region’s leading cause of and a key source of public health expenditure

Steps taken by economies:

• Multisectoral plans are being developed
• Health promotion campaigns are being carried out
• Exposure to NCD risk factors such as alcohol and tobacco are being curtailed
• NCD monitoring has also been enhanced

Suggestions:

• To bring NCD care to the primary health-care level
• Primary health facilities are better equipped to provide the holistic, patient-centred focus that prevents and manages an NCD
• They can also enhance equity and access to NCD care — an aim central to the Sustainable Development Goals
• The national health and development policies must be recalibrated
• drafting and implementing a range of supporting protocols
• form clear policies outlining the spectrum of primary-level NCD services to well-defined diagnostic and treatment guidelines
• Health-care workers at the primary level must be given the knowledge and skills to provide NCD and associated risk factor care
• The availability of generic essential medicines and basic technologies for NCD management must be guaranteed at the primary level
• procurement policies must be reviewed and essential medicine lists updated
• Health authorities must put in place funding mechanisms to facilitate primary-level NCD care
• effective budget allocations and robust planning required to reduce the out-of-pocket costs borne by patients
• increased taxation of health-damaging commodities such as tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy foods and beverages should be considered, to diminish demand for these products as well as to increase revenue for NCD prevention and control

Category: International Relations

Topic:  India-Vietnam

Key Points:

• India has extended a USD 500 million line of credit to Vietnam to deepen their defence cooperation and signed 12 agreements including a deal to construct offshore patrol boats
• The 12 agreements were signed in a wide range of areas covering defence, IT, space, cyber security and sharing white shipping information
• India and Vietnam called for “peaceful” resolution of the South China Sea issue and “exercise self-restraint.”
• They also urged all parties to show “utmost respect” for the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)

C. GS3 Related

Category: Disaster Management

Topic:  Crowd disaster management

Key Points:

• The Indian Railways has deployed ‘intelligent video analytics’ to assess crowd density at major railway stations and initiate crowd control measures when the number of passengers/visitors exceeds a prescribed limit.
• The technology incorporated in the integrated security system will give an automatic alert to the Railway Protection Force (RPF) and Government Railway Police (GRP) personnel to set in motion certain Standard Operating Procedures
• This will include a temporary ban on the issue of platform tickets and closure of parking lots till normalcy is restored.
• The facility has been installed in the surveillance system on a trial basis at Chennai Central and Egmore railway stations.
• Taking cue from the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) guidelines on crowd control, the railway has included crowd management in its revised Disaster Management Plan

For the requires understanding of crowd disaster management and guidelines by the National Disaster Management Authority, read

Category: Security

Topic:  Defence

Key Points:

• Revision of the Defence Procurement Manual (DPM) and the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) procurement manual are expected to be finalized shortly
• A new concept of “strategic partners” has been proposed under the new Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) 2016 to promote indigenisation in key military platforms as part of the Make in India initiative
• While the “strategic partners” are meant for big corporates, efforts are on to provide a level playing field to the Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME) which hold significant technology but do not have the means to compete in this deeply regulated sector
• The MSMEs are major suppliers to the OFB and Defence Public Sector Undertakings and the revision of the DPM and the OFB procurement policy was expected to address most of the issues that industry faced

D. GS4 Related

E. Important Editorials: A Quick Glance

Category: Environment

Topic: Sustainable Development

Key Points:

1. The Paris deal is the world’s first comprehensive climate agreement. It will only come into force legally after it is ratified by at least 55 countries, which between them produce 55% of global carbon emissions
2. this will put pressure on G20 nations over the weekend to move faster with their pledge to phase out subsidies to fossil fuels
3. Before China made its announcement, the 23 nations that had so far ratified the agreement accounted for just over 1% of emissions

 

• The UK is yet to ratify the Paris deal

Average temperatures worldwide are likely to increase more in the coming years as the effect of previous carbon emissions makes itself felt
Paris agreement: Key points

• To keep global temperature increase “well below” 2C and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5C
• To peak greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and achieve a balance between sources and sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century
• To review progress every five years
• $100bn a year in climate finance for developing countries by 2020, with a commitment to further finance in the future
• Once the deal comes into force, countries that have ratified it have to wait for a minimum of three years before they exit

F. Concepts-in-News: Related Concepts to Revise/Learn:

• Paris Climate Summit
• MSME sector
• Crowd Disaster Management
• Primary health care
• India-Vietnam

G. BILLS/ACTS/SCHEMES/ORGS IN NEWS

National Action Plan on Climate Change:

H. Fun with Practice Questions 🙂

Question 1: Consider the following statements regarding the aims of Paris Climate deal?

Question 2: ‘Nautanki’ is a performing art of which of the following states?

Question 3: Which of the following statement/s is true regarding ‘Kunde’?

Question 4: Which of the following islands is not a part of the South China sea?

Question 5: The National Disaster Management Authority comes under which ministry?

I. Archives:

You can check out some more recent News Analysis sections to build even more context

3rd September 2016: Daily News & Current Affairs Analysis

2nd September 2016: Daily News & Current Affairs Analysis

1st September 2016: Daily News & Current Affairs Analysis

List of all DNA Articles

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