10 Dec 2020: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

E. Editorials

Category: SOCIAL ISSUES

1. Thousand days of nutrition, and a billion dreams.

Background:

• Malnutrition refers to deficiencies, excesses or imbalances in a person’s intake of energy and/or nutrients.
• The term malnutrition covers 2 broad groups of conditions.
  • One is ‘undernutrition—which includes stunting (low height for age), wasting (low weight for height), underweight (low weight for age) and micronutrient deficiencies or insufficiencies (a lack of important vitamins and minerals).
  • The other is overweight, obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases (such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer).

Context:

• As per Census 2011, India, with a population of 121.1 crore, has 16.45 crore children in the age group 0-6 years and 37.24 crore in the age group 0-14 years which constitute 13.59% and 30.76% of the total population respectively.
• The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a new challenge to Government’s attempts to tackle malnutrition in children, especially the undernutrition aspect.

Details

1. What do the statistics say?
   1. As per the National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-4 (2015-16), 35.7 per cent children below five years are underweight, 38.4 per cent are stunted and 21 per cent are wasted in the country.
   2. The indicator Children under 5 years who are underweight (weight-for-age) is one of the composite indicators for child malnutrition.
   3. A Lancet study in 2017 revealed that an astonishing almost two-third of 1.04 million deaths of children under the age of 5 years can be ascribed to malnutrition.

2. Costs of malnutrition to society.
   1. Children who pull through malnutrition find themselves in a very rocky path, in the absence of adequate necessary nutrients, their body parts do not develop to the fullest, including the brain.
   2. Malnutrition can be a drain on the potential human resources of India, can have a profound effect on dropout rates, educational outcomes etc.
   3. In Asia and Africa, undernutrition costs 4-11% of GDP. In 2017, 155 million children were stunted and 52 million children were wasted. Two billion people suffer from micronutrient deficiencies, and 815 million people are chronically undernourished.

3. POSHAN Abhiyaan or National Nutrition Mission
   1. Launched in 2018, is Government of India’s flagship programme to improve nutritional outcomes for children, pregnant women and lactating mothers.
   2. The POSHAN Abhiyaan directs the attention of the country towards the problem of malnutrition and addresses it in a mission-mode.
   3. The precursor to this scheme was National Nutrition Strategy, released by NITI Aayog, which through a sample survey highlighted the need to have a holistic campaign that would take on the challenge of malnutrition.
   4. For the implementation of POSHAN Abhiyaan the four-point strategy/pillars of the mission are:
      1. Inter-sectoral convergence for better service delivery
      2. Use of technology (ICT) for real-time growth monitoring and tracking of women and children
      3. Intensified health and nutrition services for the first 1000 days
      4. Jan Andolan

4. The disruption in COVID-19
   1. 1. Loss of livelihood
         1. The COVID-19 pandemic has been harsh on people belonging to vulnerable sections of the population.
         2. People’s livelihood, employment has been threatened by the pandemic, thus plunging many people into poverty.
         3. With the economy having entered a recession, the signs of recovery are not on the horizon.
         4. The private enterprise is still not sure about the turn of events, thus have placed a hold on recruitment and are focussing heavily on trimming the wage bill.
      2. Lockdown induced disruption in essential services.
         1. Anganwadi centres, mid-day meals, immunization, micro-nutrient supplementation which have been the bulwarks of nutrition strategy of the government have been severely jolted.
         2. The proportion of children served by the Anganwadi centres and the mid-day meal scheme is huge, thus in future, care and concern have to be showed to avoid any disruption in their functioning.
      3. Gender angle
         1. There have been pieces of evidence of adolescent girls being forced into early marriages, they running the risk of entering motherhood early and bearing children that score low on nutritional indices.
         2. Early marriage means discontinuing schooling thus cutting their access to micronutrient supplies, nutritious food.
         3. Thus adolescent girls run the dual risk of risking malnutrition themselves and also giving birth to children that suffer from stunting, wasting etc.
      4. ‘Commitment to action’
         1. Through this renewed Commitment to Action, a broad range of stakeholders working on nutrition in India, have joined forces to ensure that a strong focus is maintained on nutrition during these unprecedented times, as the country grapples with the short- and long-term shocks of COVID19 pandemic.
         2. In the current crisis, where malnutrition can affect the course of the pandemic, it becomes even more pertinent to address it with multi-pronged and multi-sectoral actions.
      5. Other initiatives which lend support to tackling malnutrition
         1. Integrated Child Development Scheme, mid-day meal scheme, Public Distribution System are other such initiatives.
         2. The initiatives have been built around to strengthen early childhood nutrition status.
         3. The delivery mechanisms of the above-mentioned schemes need to be very efficient to meet a large number of beneficiaries. This requires coordination from the top to the last mile delivery.
         4. One of the reasons for the success of POSHAN Abhiyaan is that there is a synergy in the efforts from the centre to state to the district to panchayath at the village level.
      6. Financial commitments
         1. Funding to nutritional schemes have a multiplier effect on the economy and the society, adequate efforts have to be put in to avoid a financial logjam to the schemes.
         2. The COVID-19 pandemic means that additional funds have to be earmarked keeping in mind the percentage of the vulnerable population. It has to be ensured that the financial strain experienced by the government should not lead to a rollback in social security expenditure.
         3. Women, children, migrants, tribal population and areas with high malnutrition rates need to be served well.

Conclusion:

• POSHAN Abhiyaan is an initiative that has the potential in making a dent into the malnutrition levels, its intersectoral coordination
• A proper data collection, monitoring the trends and deriving necessary information from the programme will help enhance efficiency and improve India’s nutritional status.
• India has been ranked at 94 among 107 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2020, hence there is an increasing need to ensure that funding, intersectoral coordination is streamlined to achieve the POSHAN Abhiyaan targets of an annual 2-percentage-point reduction in the prevalence of low birth weight and child underweight, a 25% fall in the prevalence of child stunting and a 3-percentage-point annual decline in the prevalence of anaemia among women and children under five years of age.

Category: ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY

1. The road taken

Context: The Honourable Supreme Court verdict allowed the initial land acquisition notice to go ahead without having to obtain environmental clearances beforehand.

Details:

1. The Madras High Court judgement
   • The Madras HC had earlier ruled that prior environmental clearance is mandatory for issuing land acquisition notices for the Chennai Salem 8 lane national highway.
   • The notification issued under Section 3A of the National Highway Act 1956 for acquiring land for the ambitious Chennai-Salem 8 lane National Highway was quashed on the grounds that it did not have prior environmental clearance as per the Environment Protection Act 1986.
   • The Madras HC took a very environmentally benign stand, it advocated for early judicial intervention, it took precedent from earlier judgements issued in the US. Several judgements in the US sought an early intervention before a project could reach a stage that a roll-back was not an option anymore.
   • Madras HC considered the impact such a project would have on the environment, local livelihoods.
2. Supreme Court stand
   • SC set aside Madras HC verdict, it went on state that it would be unreasonable to anticipate the authorities to secure environmental clearances at the stage of identifying the land linked to the proposed alignment of the highway.
   • It also in a way laid down the environmental clearance process for the future projects by stating that once the land has been notified for acquisition and surveyed for feasibility, the authorities have to apply for statutory clearances.
   • Questions over the project would be dealt at the stage of application for statutory clearances.
   • However, the land could be taken over and construction activities could begin only after getting an all clear from the competent authorities.
3. Prospective overruling
   • The SC in Karnataka Industrial Development Board (KIADB) in the year 2006 had laid down that before land acquisition, the possible adverse environmental impact should be understood and analysed
   • The Chennai-Salem NH ruling appears to be a deviation from the above-stated ruling.

Conclusion:

• The development-environmental conservation conundrum is not a new one, this requires a careful assessment of whether the need and scope for development outweigh environmental conservation and vice-versa.
• The trade-off between the two is largely irreversible, therefore it requires sound reasoning, consultation at all levels before a decision is made either way.

F. Tidbits

1. Don’t paste quarantine posters: SC

What’s in News?

The Supreme Court clarified that State governments and Union Territory administrations are not required to paste posters outside the houses of quarantined COVID-19 patients.

• The order came on a petition which said that such posters entail the violation of the fundamental right to privacy of patients.
• It was argued that these placards divulge, even widely publicise, the names of the patients and other details to strangers.

This topic has been covered in 2^nd December 2020 Comprehensive News Analysis.

2. Quad is U.S. anti-China game: Russia

What’s in News?

Russia’s concerns on QUAD.

• Russia hit out at the Quad, calling it a devious policy by western powers to engage India in anti-China games.
• Quad is a four-nation quadrilateral strategic dialogue between India, Australia, Japan and the U.S.
• While Moscow has expressed concerns about the U.S. Indo-Pacific policy and criticised the Quad, it is the first time it has suggested that India-Russia ties could be affected by it.
• India hosted the Malabar exercise with all the members of the Quad.

G. Prelims Facts

1. Cabinet nod for public WiFi networks

What’s in News?

The Union Cabinet has approved a proposal for setting up public WiFi hotspots across the country via public data offices or PDOs, which could even be a kirana shop or a paan shop.

• The public WiFi Access Network Interface, will be called PM-WANI.
• It was first recommended by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in 2017.

This topic has been covered in 9^th December 2020 PIB Summary and Analysis.

2. Lakshadweep to get optical fibre cable

What’s in News?

The Union Cabinet approved laying of undersea optical fibre cable to connect 11 islands of Lakshadweep with Kochi by May 2023.

• It will be funded by the Universal Service Obligation Fund.
• The project envisages provision of a direct communication link through a dedicated submarine Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) between Kochi and 11 Islands of Lakshadweep.
• This is expected to help improve broadband connectivity in the Union Territory.
• This would improve telecommunication facilities in Lakshadweep by providing large bandwidth, and will play a vital role for delivery of e-governance services, potential development of fisheries, coconut-based industries, high-value tourism, educational development and healthcare.

Note:

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had launched the submarine cable connectivity to Andaman and Nicobar Islands in August 2020.

1. Which of these Wildlife Sanctuaries is known as “Mini Kaziranga”?

2. Consider the following statements with respect to Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF):

3. What is the classification of Indian Bison/ Gaur in the IUCN Red List?

4. Consider the following statements with respect to Exchange Traded Funds: