The Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) is an important source of study material for IAS, especially for the current affairs segment. In this section, we give you the gist of the EPW magazine every week. The important topics covered in the weekly are analyzed and explained in a simple language, all from a UPSC perspective.
1. Indo-Pacific Economic Forum 2. Vulnerabilities among the Non-vulnerable Groups 3. Public Health Cadre 4. Beyond Plastic Identifications
1. Indo-Pacific Economic Forum
Details
- In May 2022, American Government launched the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) for Prosperity with 13 partners namely Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, the United States (US), and Vietnam (Fiji became the 14th member).
- All these states together comprise 40% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP).
- The major focus of IPEF would be on seven aspects:
- Trade facilitation for small and medium entrepreneurs
- Standards for digital technology and economy
- Supply chain resilience
- Decarburization and clean energy
- Infrastructure
- Worker’s standards
- Other areas of common interests
- Moreover, IPEF member countries comprise 32% of the world population, 25% of the world’s exports, and 30% of the world’s imports.
- It is suggested that the intention of the grouping is to reassure the prominence of the United States in the Indo-Pacific Region and promote its strategic interest.
- However, it is not a free trade agreement (FTA) and will not involve market access and trade negotiations.
Also read: Indo-Pacific Economic Framework UPSC Notes – About IPEF, its Four Pillars, Significance and FAQs
IPEF Membership
- It includes India, the US, and Fiji and excludes the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) countries like China, Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Myanmar.
Source: EPW
- In contrast to Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CP-TPP), IPEF is a comprehensive deal with much focus on trade facilitation, digital trade, and regulatory cooperation.
Also read: Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP)
Associated concerns
- One of the major issues is the non-tariff barriers like technical barriers to trade, phytosanitary measures, and export-related measures. These are at high levels in the IPEF region.
- Another significant issue is the administrative arrangement of IPEF.
Future Dispensation of IPEF on the basis of a study
- A study was conducted using some computable general equilibrium models of the world economy.
- It was found that all the countries would have positive gains. However, it is also projected that there might be a negative trade balance for all countries (due to seven ASEAN countries).
- In the context of equivalent variation and value of GDP, all nations will benefit in all scenarios. However, the gains seem to be more with the future trade agreements.
- In four areas of cooperation viz. Connectivity (both physical and digital), raising labour and environmental standards and following norms of fair trade, energy, and climate security, and enhancing Global Value Chains to stem supply chain disruptions, the US, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji would be the gainers followed by India and seven ASEAN countries.
- If IPEF goes beyond the tariff and non-tariff barriers, then the industry would be the major beneficiary of the sectoral growth followed by the service sector.
- Trade liberalization along with the freer movement of skilled labour and capital will enhance value-added processes in the region and strengthen global value chains.
Conclusion
- It is found that deeper integration of policies after the formation of a trade agreement would bring more gains to the IPEF countries.
- Moreover, carbon taxation can reduce the carbon emissions growth rate and might promote the welfare and GDP growth in the IPEF region.
2. Vulnerabilities among the Non-vulnerable Groups
Context: Financial inclusion and risk associated with it due to financial illiteracy.
What is Financial Inclusion?
- Financial inclusion is a mechanism through which individuals and businesses get access to useful and affordable financial products and services that meet their needs in terms of transactions, payments, savings, credit and insurance, etc.
- Despite various attempts made to provide financial services to a larger section of the population, India has the second-largest unbanked adult population and is home to the highest number of inactive bank accounts in the world.
Financial Inclusion Pillars
Image Source: researchgate
What is financial literacy?
- Financial literacy is a process through which an individual makes informed decisions about their money. In other words, financial literacy is knowledge of concepts such as saving, investing, and debt management that leads to a sense of overall financial well-being.
Linkage between financial literacy and financial inclusion:
Image source: EPW
- Financial literacy allows people to demand such products and services that cater to their financial goals.
- On the other hand, financial inclusion ensures that the “demanded products” are supplied in terms of availability, accessibility, and affordability.
- A financially literate population will be better equipped to understand the ever-evolving financial system with its increasing complexities and digitisation as well as ensure an informed inclusion in the financial system.
Issues related to financial inclusion in India:
- Due to a lack of financial literacy, the vulnerable section of the population is exposed to more risk of being cheated and financial fraud. But, this issue is not taken seriously.
- On the one hand, the government is focused on improving the access of marginalised people to banks through its various schemes, the financial landscape is undergoing major transformations with the advent of internet banking, cashless transactions, etc, exposing the people already included in the system to various risks of financial frauds and scams.
- Public sector banks (PSBs) in India have lost a total of Rs.22,743 crores in the last three years on account of various banking frauds.
- With respect to India, the policymakers do not make any difference between being educated and being financially literate. As a result of this, both the literate and the illiterate are standing on the cusp of being scammed.
- Reporting of financial frauds in India is very less due to hesitation of being judged or due to complexity in the process of lodging the complaints.
Steps taken and required:
- The BEWARE campaign was launched in order to create awareness among the banking population about the potential threat that can arise over the course of time, through consumer education and protection.
- There is a dire need for designing policies and programmes catering to the requirements of people who are educated, economically better-off, and included in the financial system as well.
Financial fraud can erode the trust of the people in the financial system thus forcing people to withdraw from the system. India is standing at an important juncture from where it is required to take steps to reduce the impact of the scams in order to hold the belief of the people.
Context: Public Health Management Cadre (PHMC) was conceptualised by the National Health Policy 2017.
Details:
What is Public Health Management Cadre (PHMC)?
- The Public Health Cadre will consist of public health professionals with MBBS degrees and such MBBS doctors. All new MBBS doctors will be required to acquire public health qualification within a certain time (3-5 years) if not already achieved.
- Health Management Cadre will consist of health and other professionals with relevant qualifications and support in running various national health programs and public health functions.
Image 1: Evolution of Public Health Management Cadre
Image source: nhm.gov.in
- The proposed cadre would consist of four arms:
- Specialist cadre,
- Public health cadre,
- Health management cadre, and
- Teaching cadre.
Image 2: Mandate of PHMC
Image source: nhm.gov.in
Barriers to establishing public health cadre:
- Indian Medical Services (IMS) which can play a pioneering role in improving health-related services in India was dismantled soon after independence.
- All medical colleges in independent India were removed from the university system and kept as standalone medical institutions without any meaningful interactions with other important disciplines in public health such as sociology, psychology, behavioural sciences, health economics, ethics, etc. As a result, the public health approach lost its essence in medical education.
- A person who joins a medical school has no knowledge of sociology, psychology, behavioural sciences, health economics, ethics, neuro-engineering, maths and statistics which are what they will or have to use.
- Overemphasis on the vertical health programmes in the planning processes of the country was cited as another reason for sidelining the public health functions, in the Indian health service system.
- Many states do not implement this programme as they believe it was a diktat issued from above without their participation. So lack of cooperation between the two limbs of the government prevents the policy from materialising.
- The Indian healthcare system is more curative in nature. As a result, it often transforms into the belief system that medicine is health.
- It has also been seen that key fields like community medicine have not found a deserved place in public health training and practice, because of the dominance of a curative approach to health.
- The bureaucratic and centralised governance system makes the delivery of public health services merely a mechanical implementation of the programmes, without adequately being responsive to context-specific issues.
- This often leads to the disconnection of ground-level issues in the decision-making processes.
- Bureaucrats and administrators often rely on the already available solutions that are compatible with the governance and administrative frameworks.
- Policy making scenario in India is not evidence-based. They basically rely on the policy of ‘one size fits all’ techniques. As a result, most of the policies fail to achieve desired results.
- Privatisation of healthcare is another prime reason for slow progress in the establishment of healthcare. As a result, the significance of preventive and promotive health lost focus in the discourses of health and the idea of creating a public health system with a public health cadre to run it did not come to the centre stage.
- Resistance from the clinical lobby creates problems in the process of creating a health cadre. Since they constitute one of the prime donors to the political parties, their interests cannot be sidelined by the ruling party.
Health constitutes one of the prime pillars for the socio-economic development of the country. Additionally, it is one of the targets that is envisaged by SDGs. Therefore, the government of the day must take dedicated measures to make health truly inclusive and participative in order to realise the benefits of the demographic dividend.
4. Beyond Plastic Identifications
Context: Migrant labourers were denied social services during the COVID crisis due to a shortage of documents.
Who are migrant workers?
A “migrant worker” is defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO) as a person who migrates from one country to another (or who has migrated from one country to another) with a view to being employed and includes any person regularly admitted as a migrant for employment.
- In a report titled, “Migration in India 2020-21” the survey gives an account of the state of migration and migrants during the period of July 2020 to July 2021. The report, which surveyed a total of 1,13,998 migrants, shows that 51.6% of rural migrants migrated from urban areas in the aftermath of the pandemic.
Image: Reason for migration
Source: prsindia.com
Problems faced by migrant labour:
- Minor changes in the documents invite denial of services and a plethora of verification requirements. This often translates into the exclusion of the beneficiaries from the benefits that should be available to them.
- Even though the removal of the intermediaries from the delivery of services is considered an important step towards reducing leakages, it could also lead to excessive dependence on the state. And if the state fails to discharge their promise then the beneficiaries have no knowledge about how to approach the problem.
- In the absence of the relevant documents, the migrants have to buy their ration from the markets making them more vulnerable.
- As per the National Food Security Act, 2013 rules, the head of a household listed in ration cards in India is now required to be the eldest woman of the household.
- Male migrants leave behind these documents with the women in their towns or villages of origin.
- As a result, the migrant men who leave behind their wives or mothers tend to lose access to this document that recognises the family as the basic unit for food provisioning.
- If the biometrics of the migrant workers do not get verified against the data seeded in the government records, then they have to face various challenges to get the social benefits for which they are eligible. Therefore, the technology which is believed to be a game changer has caused the exclusion of the person.
- Since migrant workers do not constitute a part of the vote banks for the regional parties, their interest is often sidelined. In the worst of the situation, they are forced to face violence from the local people.
- Migrant labour who enter the city without the help of the contractors finds it difficult to get work.
India is defined as a welfare polity. It means it is the responsibility of the government of the day to look into the interests of the vulnerable sections of society. But, if the vulnerable sections are denied social benefits on the ground of failed documentation then it would seriously dent welfare credentials.
Read previous EPW articles in the link.
Gist of EPW, January Week 4, 2023:- Download PDF Here
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