18 Nov 2021: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

CNA 18 Nov 2021:- Download PDF Here

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A. GS 1 Related
B. GS 2 Related
EDUCATION
1. School enrolment fell during pandemic: ASER study
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
1. India to hold first 2+2 with Russia on December 6
C. GS 3 Related
D. GS 4 Related
E. Editorials
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
1. Reading the forecast from China’s sixth plenum
SOCIAL ISSUES
1. The path to righting historical wrongs
ENVIRONMENT & ECOLOGY
1. Global Climate Risk Index (GCRI)
HEALTH
1. More a private sector primer than health-care pathway
F. Prelims Facts
1. Sabz Burj restored to its Mughal-era glory
2. Speaker seeks time frame to decide on Bills
G. Tidbits
1. Sliding rank
2. Duty should be the only mantra, says PM
H. UPSC Prelims Practice Questions
I. UPSC Mains Practice Questions

B. GS 2 Related

Category: EDUCATION

1. School enrolment fell during pandemic: ASER study

Context:

• Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2021 was released by Pratham, the educational NGO.
  • This is an annual survey that aims to provide reliable annual estimates of children’s schooling status and basic learning levels in India at the elementary level.

Details:

• Due to the pandemic, ASER’s 16th annual report was based on a phone survey assessing enrolment in schools and tuition classes, and access to devices and learning resources, rather than the organisation’s usual face-to-face survey which assesses learning outcomes and children’s competencies in reading and arithmetic skills.
• Some of the important observations made in the report are as follows:

Non-enrolled children:

• The percentage of rural children who were not enrolled in school doubled during the pandemic. The proportion of children currently not enrolled in school is higher in 2020 and 2021 as compared to 2018. Between 2020 and 2021 the numbers are relatively unchanged.
  • In 2018, only 2.5% of children were not enrolled in school. However, in 2021 it is at 4.6%.
• This might be indicative of higher school dropouts or even a lower number of new enrolments.

Increase in proportion of children enrolled in government schools:

• Overall, there is an increase in the proportion of children enrolled in government schools between 2018 and 2021.
  • Government school enrolment spiked significantly from 64.3% in 2018 to 70.3% in 2021, while private school enrolment dropped from 32.5% to 24.4% over the same period.
  • The incidence of private schooling in India had been rising over time. From 2006 to 2014 there was a steady increase. After plateauing around 30% for a few years, there has been a significant decline in the pandemic years.
• The shift to government school enrolment could be a result of financial distress and lower-income levels during the pandemic, the closure of affordable private schools and the movement of migrants to rural areas.

Increase in the proportion of children taking paid tuition classes:

• There has been a big increase in the proportion of children taking tuition in the pandemic period across grades and types of school. By 2021, close to 40% of children attend tuition classes.
• This is indicative of the disruption caused to classroom teaching or the inability to adapt to online education.
• Students, especially those from poor families, are dependent more than ever on private tuition, the survey found. This development adds to the cost of education of children which could put an extra burden on poor families.

Access to learning material:

• Although the access to relevant learning material like textbooks has increased compared to the last year, only a third of those surveyed had access to any other learning resources or support.

Access to online education:

• The pandemic induced lockdowns pushed schools to online education mode. However, smartphone access has been a challenge in the delivery of online education.
• Although the availability of smartphones in households has almost doubled since 2018, having a smartphone at home however does not automatically translate to children having access to the device.
  • All India 67.6% of children have a smartphone at home. But even in such households, 1% of children still have no access to smartphones.
• There is a marked difference among the different states with respect to access to online education. 91% of students from Kerala and almost 80% from Himachal Pradesh had online education, but only 10% from Bihar and 13% from West Bengal had.

Image source: The Hindu

• This stark digital divide carries the risk of severely affecting the learning abilities of primary grade students.

Severe disruption at the entry level:

• Over a third of children enrolled in Classes 1 and 2 have never attended school in person.
• These students who are entering the school system after the pandemic will require time to settle down, get ready for the formal education system. This is essential as these students do not even have the experience of pre-primary schools, or anganwadis.
• From having no experience of pre-primary class to the lack of access to digital devices, the pandemic has left the youngest entrants in India’s formal education system particularly vulnerable, and not addressing their specific needs can have grave consequences on the educational process of these children.

Impact on educational outcomes:

• Notably, enrolment in schools does not necessarily mean that learning took place.
• 4 per cent of teachers have flagged the problem of children being “unable to catch up” as one of their biggest challenges — which is also a warning that their learning outcomes are set to be affected.
• While the ASER survey does not shed light on learning outcomes, a sample assessment done by it has found steep drops in foundational skills, especially in lower primary grades.
• Even the recent National Achievement Survey (NAS) of the central government has noted a drop in the learning outcomes of students.

Recommendations:

• The report’s findings confirm the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on school education.
• The habit of going to school, sitting in a classroom, and teaching in a classroom has been disrupted significantly. Such disruption cannot be repaired simply by reopening schools. A “business as usual” approach cannot be sufficient. There need to be some focused actions to address this severe disruption.
• Some of the major interventions needed are as follows:
  • Given the indicators of the adverse impact on the learning outcome of students especially in lower primary grades, there needs to be special attention to children of primary classes as they return to, or enter schools for the first time. Specific attention is needed to help make up learning losses, especially in the lowest classes.
  • Given the increased enrolment in government schools, it is important to ensure that government schools and teachers are equipped and given the necessary resources for this surge in enrolment.
  • Given the stark differences in access to digital device based online education, these factors have to be taken into account as future plans are made for remote learning or the use of digital content and devices. Also to address the issue of access to digital devices, there is a need for digital device libraries, so all children can have access to them.

Category: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

1. India to hold first 2+2 with Russia on December 6

Context:

• India and Russia are scheduled to hold “2+2” format talks and also Russian President is expected to visit New Delhi for the annual India-Russia summit as well as the inter-governmental joint commission meeting.
  • Indian External Affairs Minister and Defence Minister will be holding the inaugural “2+2” format talks with their Russian counterparts.

Significance of the diplomatic exchanges:

2+2 format talks:

• The 2+2 format talks hold immense significance for India-Russia bilateral relationship, given that India conducts joint foreign and defence ministerial meetings only with its closest ‘Quad’ partners — the U.S., Japan and Australia. Russia is the first non Quad nation to hold 2+2 format talks with India.
• The 2+2 format talks could help further deepen the bilateral engagement and is also expected to help build India’s ties with Central Asia and deepen Russia’s engagement in the Indo-Pacific.

Important pacts to be announced:

• Pacts on defence, science and technology, trade are expected to be announced during the proposed Russian President’s visit.
• The collaboration and cooperation in the diverse sectors will only help deepen and strengthen the bilateral relationship between the two countries.

Conclusion:

• The intensive India-Russia exchanges are an indication of the robust ties between India and Russia. This comes despite the increasing perception of greater strategic alignment between India and the U.S.
• This augurs well for India’s diplomatic interest given that it has sought to maintain ties with all major powers of the world and this can help India achieve broad base support in the international arena.

Category: SOCIAL ISSUES

1. The path to righting historical wrongs

Irula tribe

• They are a Dravidian ethnic group that live along the borders of Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
• They are specialists in traditional herbal medicine and healing practices.
• They are known for capturing snakes, especially venomous ones.
• Today they primarily migrate to different places to work in brick kilns, rice mills, etc.
• They speak Irula, a language that belongs to the Dravidian family that is closely related to Tamil.

Issue Area

• Like many Adivasi groups in India, the Irulas also continue to suffer the stigma of criminality due to the Habitual Offenders Act, 1952, which replaced the colonial Criminal Tribes Act, 1871.

Other issues faced by the tribes

• The members of such tribes become easy replacements for criminals whom the police fail to apprehend.
• Many people remain outside the reach of affirmative action of the State as they constantly travel and do not possess any residential proof.
• Resource-rich tribal areas are encroached upon, the tribes are displaced and the promise of rehabilitation has also failed.
• The “development-induced displacement” trajectory adopted by the country has often been at the expense of the Scheduled Tribes (STs), either by way of exclusion or forced “inclusion” in a “mainstream” that is completely alien to their “world view” through what the Xaxa Committee in 2014 had called the “ashramisation” of the tribal.

Constitutional Safeguards for Scheduled Tribes

The makers of the Constitution wanted to prevent discrimination against people belonging to Scheduled Tribes, protect their rights and provide a certain degree of autonomy to them to have a say in their development pursuit.

• Accordingly, the Fifth and Sixth Schedules, which are governed by Articles 244 (1) and (2) of the Constitution, provides certain rights to tribes in the northeast and across India.

Fifth Schedule

• The Fifth Schedule had been also termed by the Mungekar Committee in 2009 for tribal development as a “Constitution within Constitution”. It allows for the creation of Scheduled Areas by the President of India.
• There are no fixed criteria for the creation of Scheduled Areas. However, factors considered by the Dhebar Commission (1960-61) has been followed. This includes:
  • preponderance of the tribes in the population;
  • compact and reasonable size;
  • underdeveloped nature of the area; and
  • marked disparity in the economic standards of the people.

Way forward

• Compact tribal areas of reasonable size, constituting villages with no less than 50% tribal population, can be identified in Community Development (CD) blocks with a significant tribal population to demarcate new administrative areas, which can then be brought under the purview of the Fifth Schedule by declaring them Scheduled Areas.
  • This would be only fulfilling a commitment made in 1976 by the Government of India and reiterated by the Mungekar Committee.
• Apart from the Scheduled Areas, villages, where STs are in minority but still in sizeable numbers, should be brought under already existing Integrated Tribal Development Project (ITDP) areas, which are being governed in Tamil Nadu with the advice of the Tribes Advisory Council (TAC).
  • The TAC is an advisory body and thee-fourth of its members must be from ST communities.

Conclusion

• The Government should show the political will and set aside its electoral interest to create a self-governed path for tribal development.
  • It should be complemented with clear policies and a plan for tribal development reflected in the yearly Tribal Sub-Plan (TSP).
  • The formulation of such a plan must be drafted by taking the viewpoints of representatives of different tribes.

Category: ENVIRONMENT & ECOLOGY

1. Global Climate Risk Index (GCRI)

• It is an index published annually by GermanWatch, a non-profit organisation.
• The Index analyses to what extent countries have been affected by the impacts of weather-related loss events (storms, floods, heatwaves, etc.).

Issue Area

The 2021 version ranked 180 countries based on the impact of extreme weather events and associated socio-economic data from 2000-2019. There are deep fault lines in the methodology and interpretation of the country rankings.

1. First, the GCRI ranks countries based on four key indicators:
   • Number of deaths;
   • Number of deaths per 1,00,000 inhabitants;
   • Sum of losses in Purchasing Power Parity (in U.S. dollars); and
   • Losses per unit of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Of these indicators, two are absolute while the other two are relative.

• Concern
  • The GCRI report does not provide a rationale for the selection of these macro indicators.

2. Second, the index suffers from exclusion errors and selection bias.

• Composite indicators are better constructed using micro indicators instead of macro indicators, which measure loss because isolating the effect of the loss of elements on GDP is fraught with errors.
• Instead, a number of key micro indicators such as the total number of people injured, loss of livestock, loss of public and private infrastructure, crop loss and others are better candidates for assessing the composite loss resulting from climate change events.

3. Third, the index provides us with information on weather-related events like storms, floods, temperature extremes and mass movements.

• However, it omits geological incidents like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or tsunamis, which may be potentially triggered by climate change and can have economic and humanitarian impacts.

4. Fourth, the ranking under the GCRI is done based on data collected by Munich Re’s NatCatService, which is not authenticated at the ground level.

National Disaster Management Information System (NDMIS)

• It is a comprehensive online application, being developed to capture disaster damages and the losses effectively and also for monitoring of funds disbursal under State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) and National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) to States for relief activities in case of disasters.
• The online System will track the impacts of hazards for the entire country up to the district level.

Significance

• It thus captures damages and losses caused by disasters and monitors the targets of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.
• The NDMIS captures details on parameters like death, injury, affected population by categories as well as economic losses in social and infrastructure sectors due to weather and geological events on a daily basis. The data captured by the NDMIS includes all major climatic events.

Way forward

• Deploying effective approaches and standards to cultivate collaboration among climate risk information users and providers along with the execution of effective action plans, will allow India to meet the targets envisaged in the Sendai Framework.

Category: HEALTH

1. More a private sector primer than health-care pathway

Background

Ayushman Bharat

Context

• NITI Aayog had recently released a report titled ‘Health Insurance for India’s Missing Middle’.
• The report brings out the gaps in health insurance coverage across the Indian population and offers solutions to address the situation.

Missing middle

• According to the report, the missing middle predominantly constitutes the self-employed (agriculture and non-agriculture) informal sector in rural areas, and a broad array of occupations – informal, semi-formal, and formal – in urban areas.
• The ‘missing middle’ are the people sandwiched between the poor and the affluent.

A look at numbers

• The report pointed out that Ayushman Bharat – Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) launched in 2018, and state government extension schemes, provide comprehensive hospitalisation cover to the bottom 50 per cent of the population – around 70 crore individuals.
• Around 20 per cent of the population – 25 crore individuals – are covered through social health insurance, and private voluntary health insurance.
• The remaining 30 per cent of the population is devoid of health insurance.

Recommendation by Niti Aayog

The report has recommended three models for increasing the health insurance coverage in the country.

• The first model focuses on increasing consumer awareness of health insurance.
• The second model is about “developing a modified, standardized health insurance product” like ‘Arogya Sanjeevani’, a standardised health insurance product launched by the Insurance Regulatory Development Authority of India (IRDAI) in 2020.
• The third model is a “slightly modified version” of the standardised Aarogya Sanjeevani insurance product.
  • The modified product should have lower waiting periods.
  • The model should expand government-subsidized health insurance through the PMJAY scheme to a wider set of beneficiaries.

A combination of the three models, phased in at different times, can ensure coverage for the missing middle population.

• In the short term, the focus should be on expanding private voluntary insurance through commercial insurers.
• In the medium-term, once the supply-side and utilization of PMJAY and Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) is strengthened, their infrastructure can be leveraged to allow voluntary contributions to a PMJAY plus product, or to ESIC’s existing medical benefits.
• In the long-term, once the low-cost voluntary contributory health insurance market is developed, the expansion of PMJAY to the uncovered poorer segments of the missing middle should be considered.

Issue Area

• The report fails to meet the expectations of a credible pathway to UHC for India.

Concerns

• Government subsidies, if any at all, will be reserved for the very poor within the ‘missing middle’ and only at a later stage of the development of voluntary contributory insurance.
• UHC cannot be achieved by relying predominantly on private sources of financing health care.
• Evidence also shows that in countries such as India, with a large informal sector, contributory health insurance is not the best way forward and can be beset with complications.
  • Even if there are examples where contributory social health insurance has been successful there are significant contributions made by the Govt, with participation from the NGOs and some important guarantees for health.
• The free-of-cost government health insurance for the poor has little penetration in the country despite being implemented for nearly two decades.
  • Therefore in all likelihood, the contributory private health insurance with modestly lower premiums, for a target group may not be successful.

Way forward

• To achieve UHC we need a strong and overarching role for the Government in health care, particularly in developing countries.
• We can also take inspiration from the Switzerland Model.
  • Despite relying predominantly on private insurers and a competitive model of insurance, certain important checks and balances exist:
    • benefits are etched in legislation;
    • basic insurance is mandatory and not-for-profit;
    • Cream-skimming and risk-discrimination are prohibited.

2. Speaker seeks time frame to decide on Bills

Veto powers of President over state legislation:

• The Indian President enjoys some degree of Veto power over state legislation.
• The Governor can reserve any Bill for the consideration of the President. As per Article 201 of the Indian Constitution, when a Bill is reserved by a Governor for the consideration of the President, the President shall declare either that he assents to the Bill or that he withholds assent.
• As per the provisions of Article 201, where the Bill is not a Money Bill, the President may direct the Governor to return the Bill to the state legislature even without giving appropriate reasons. When a Bill is so returned, the House or Houses shall reconsider it accordingly within a period of six months from the date of receipt of such message and, if it is again passed by the House or Houses with or without amendment, it shall be presented again to the President for his consideration.

Context:

• Speaking at the 82nd All India Presiding Officers Conference in Shimla, Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker has highlighted the issue of some Governors and the President withholding assent and returning a Bill passed by the State Assembly and has called for setting a binding time frame for deciding on any Bill and also making it mandatory to state reasons for withholding assent.

2. Duty should be the only mantra, says PM

• Speaking at the 82nd All-India Presiding Officers’ Conference (AIPOC) held at the Himachal Pradesh Assembly, Lok Sabha Speaker noted the need for reviewing the functioning of legislatures.
  • The conference is being attended by Presiding Officers of the legislatures from 26 States.
• He expressed concern over the decreasing number of meetings of legislatures, increasing adjournments and the declining discussion while making laws.
• One of the speakers expressed concerns over the break from strict political neutrality of the speakers of the legislatures.
• The Prime Minister called for a national portal to be created for all legislatures to give them a technological boost and allow them to be connected with one another. He also suggested the need to train first-time elected representatives on the right way to behave in the House. Stressing the need for more inclusive deliberations in the legislatures, the PM suggested that the youth, women and members representing aspirational districts should be given more time to speak. He called for quality debates in the legislatures.
• Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman suggested that it was time for legislatures to adopt new technologies and be prepared for the future with Artificial Intelligence.
• A report on the anti-defection law is to be placed before the conference.

Q.1 The Election Commission of India performs which of the following functions?

Q.2 The Sydney Dialogue is focussed on -

Q.3 Which of the following statements is/are correct?

Q.4 Which committee referred to the 5th Schedule as “Constitution within Constitution”?

Q.5 In 1920, which of the following changed its name to “Swarajya Sabha”? (UPSC 2018)

CNA 18 Nov 2021:- Download PDF Here