30 Nov 2019: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

30 Nov 2019 CNA:- Download PDF Here
TABLE OF CONTENTS

A.GS1 Related
B.GS2 Related
POLITY AND GOVERNANCE
1. Plea to stay electoral bond scheme
C.GS3 Related
ECONOMY
1. GDP growth plunges to 4.5%, lowest since 2012
2. ‘Recognise real fiscal deficit, put cash in people’s hands’
ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY
1. Warmer winter likely this year: IMD
D.GS4 Related
E. Editorials
ART AND CULTURE
1. Bringing back treasures
HEALTH
1. Getting organ donation to tick again
F. Tidbits
1. Vulture conservation centre in U.P.
2. Core sector contracts
3. Fiscal deficit hits 102% of estimate
4. CJI to share PIL cases with 3 seniors
5. Rain in Punjab and Haryana to boost wheat crop
6. POCSO Act rules displayed in Gurugram police stations
7. Bill to amend Arms Act tabled in LS
8. Reserve Bank files insolvency plea against Dewan Housing
G. Prelims Fact
1. 16 seismometers defunct in earthquake-prone zones
2. DRDO defends Nag missiles
3. Plea to shift private Bills to Wednesday
H. Practice Questions for UPSC Prelims Exam
I. Practice Questions for UPSC Mains Exam

2. ‘Recognise real fiscal deficit, put cash in people’s hands’

Context:

Economic data has been released for the second quarter of the financial year 2019-20.

Details:

• “The government needs to acknowledge its true fiscal deficit so that it can increase its expenditure and put money in people’s hands in order to stimulate demand and investments in the economy”, economists have said in reaction to the 25-quarter low GDP growth figure.
• It was observed that there is a need to recognize that there exists a real, genuine problem on the demand side, and there is a problem with people’s incomes, and the government needs to conduct expenditures that will prop this up. A similar observation was also made by the CAG for 2017-18.
• The role of putting cash into the economy is relevant for the unorganized sector. It is quite important for them because they are a cash economy. As far as the overall growth impetus is concerned, getting the unorganized sector going is important because, in the past Indian slowdowns, the unorganized sector had played important role in recovery.
• When the big companies are doing badly, it has been the smaller companies that have been able to secure credit from the banks and invest. But that is not happening now because the banks have been sceptical to extend loans in the backdrop of the issue of Non-performing assets (NPA) and the smaller players do not have the cash to invest.
• Whichever way the data is dissected, there is broad based slowdown. Whether one looks at services or industry, or government versus private, slowdown is pretty evident.
• The number would have been even worse had the net exports not contributed.
• India is a trade deficit economy; whenever it is wider, it takes away a few percentage points from the Indian GDP. But this time, because the trade deficit reduced on the back of lower import and weaker demand, it actually contributed to GDP growth.

Nothing here for today!!!

1. Bringing back treasures

Context:

• During his visits to India in January 2020, the Australian Prime Minister will not only bring with him the goodwill of his country, but also three priceless cultural artefacts.
• The National Gallery of Australia (NGA) voluntarily deaccessioned and returned them to India after establishing that they were, in fact, stolen.

Details:

• The sculptures, include a pair of dwarapalas (door guardians) from Tamil Nadu and one nagaraja (serpent king) from either Rajasthan or Madhya Pradesh.
• This is another demonstration of deep relationship between Australia and India.
• This ‘cultural repatriation’ comes in the wake of a similar, return of idols in 2016, when Washington handed over around 200 sculpture pieces valued at $100 million to India during Prime Minister Modi’s U.S. visit.

Issue:

• Increasingly, it has become evident that India’s historical artefacts, a treasure-trove of a rich cultural legacy and religious significance, are strewn across far-flung lands, the result of decades of trafficking.
• At the heart of the most extensive and ruthless of smuggling rings is one man, Subhash Kapoor, who allegedly has taken the illicit trade in antiquities to a truly global scale.
• The NGA, like many U.S. museums and art galleries, had obtained artefacts from Kapoor in good faith, yet rigorous provenance research had proved that their acquisition was a mistake.
• The problem is complicated by the fact that even among Indian institutions, the inventory documentation of idols is poor.
  • Southern Tamil Nadu, for instance, has many ancient temples, most situated in small, abandoned premises of a village, where even local residents have no recollection of what idol was originally within the temple, let alone questions of safeguarding the structure.
  • Further, investigative reports, have revealed the extent to which certain sections of law enforcement have tacitly abetted the loot.

Way forward:

• Major institutional reforms are required to end the operations of smugglers.
• In the global arena, India would do well to leverage the power of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.
  • Most major western nations are signatories and the Prime Minister would be well within his rights to demand that they institute stricter vetting protocols for international trade in historical artefacts.

Unless such multi-pronged action is taken by the government, targeting loopholes in domestic legislation and enforcement, idol trafficking will continue to erode India’s invaluable cultural heritage.

1. Getting organ donation to tick again

Context:

Organ Donation Day is observed by the Government of India on the 30^th of November. Organ donation day is observed with the primary objective of promoting organ donation and transplantation so that number of persons suffering from organ failure, such as the kidneys and liver, can get a new lease of life using organs gifted by others who have lost their lives (in road accidents or other reasons).

Factors undermining altruistic organ donation:

• As India honours the donation process, and distributes awards to donor families, it also needs to reflect on certain negative perceptions that appear to be growing and undermining the altruistic donation mindset of donor families.
• A classic example of this is the steep drop seen in Kerala — from 76 deceased donors in 2015 to eight in 2018 — due to a perceived, however unfounded, scandal that private hospitals were declaring persons brain dead when they were not really so, in order to harvest their organs and profit from them.

What are the issues?

• The underlying factor for altruistic organ donation being undermined is the highly privatised health-care system in India and the growing trust gap between patients and doctors trapped in the profit-seeking business of tertiary care; seeking second and third opinion on patient treatment is commonplace today.
• While an organ comes free, as donated to society, transplanting it to another person costs anywhere between 5 lakh and Rs. 25 lakh, including profit to the hospital. This explains the presence of unavoidable suspicion that unethical practices may take place in the health care sector.
• The reality is that a majority of accident victims who become donors are lower middle class and below, while the majority of organ recipients are from the small number of persons who can afford transplant surgery and costly lifetime medication thereafter.
• The cost factor is the key reason why more than three quarters of donated hearts and lungs do not get taken.

Can the Public hospitals help?

• Though a common solution to this, is that public hospitals should chip in and help the poor, very few public hospitals in the country do kidney transplants and less than five do liver and heart transplants.
• In a country where public expenditure on health care remains an abysmal 1.2% of GDP — less than a third of what even some developing countries spend — priority should be on spending the limited allocation on areas that would benefit the greatest number of persons.
• A given amount, if spent on organ failure prevention will save many more lives than if spent on organ transplant.
  • A World Health Organisation Consultative Group in its 2014 report points to a study in Thailand which finds that money spent on dialysis can save 300 times more healthy life years if spent on tuberculosis control.
  • It considers expansion of low- and medium-priority services before near-universal coverage of high priority services as an “unacceptable trade-off” and does not include dialysis or organ transplantation even in the low-priority category.

Are there any solutions to these issues of trust gap and inequality?

• Only steps to moderate are possible in these deep-rooted societal fault lines. One usual approach is to regulate hospitals through acts and rules.
  • In the 25th year of the Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994, it is time to revisit its effectiveness.
• Substitution of bureaucratic procedures for hospital and transplant approval by self-declaration and mandatory sample verification involving civil society will improve compliance — as proved in other countries — and will also help get more hospitals involved.
• Further amendment is needed to ensure full State autonomy in this area, avoiding the Central government’s interference in organ distribution, which is now demotivating many hospitals.
• All State organ distribution agencies need to make their operations fully transparent. Steps such as making online organ distribution norms and the full details on every organ donation will help build public confidence in the system.
• As for “organs from poor to rich” some moderation of the inequality in our country is called for, especially as India figures in the top 10% of unequal countries in the world and among the top 10% of high proportion population spending more than a tenth of their income on health. This must also be considered in light of the fact that the organ comes totally free to a hospital from a donor.
  • One approach could be to mandate that every third or fourth transplant done in a private hospital should be done free of cost to a public hospital patient. This will amount to cross-subsidisation, with the hospital, the doctor and the recipient footing the bill for free surgery to the section of the population that donates a majority of organs.

Though some of these solutions may not please present stakeholders in this field there is a need for serious discussions on how to address the trust gap and inequality that are factors impacting family consent for organ donation.

Q1. Which of the following statement/s is/are correct with respect to The Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India Limited (TRIFED)?

Q2. Which of the following statements are incorrect with respect to the Vishaka guidelines ?

Q3. Consider the following statements with respect to Biomining:

Q4. which of the following statements are correct with regard to Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India?