09 October 2019: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

A. GS1 Related

Nothing here for today!!!

Context:

Organisations representing five minor tribes in Meghalaya have asked Chief Minister to intervene in the move to exclude them from the provisions of the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution.

Details:

• The five minor tribes – Bodo-Kachari, Hajong, Koch, Mann and Rabha – are clubbed as “unrepresented tribes” for nomination in Meghalaya’s autonomous tribal councils.
• These councils are in the names of Garo, Jaintia and Khasi, the State’s three major matrilineal communities.

Concerns:

• Recently, a sub-committee on the amendment to the Sixth Schedule constituted by the Meghalaya State government decided to recommend to the Standing Committee of Parliament the removal of the word “unrepresented tribes” from the amended special provision.
• Currently, members of such tribes are nominated to the autonomous district councils.
• Meghalaya’s bid to exclude “unrepresented tribes” from the provisions of the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution has left minor tribes, edgy.
• It is believed that the proposed amendment will deprive some of the STs of their constitutional rights in the district councils.
• The minor tribes are indigenous to Meghalaya and have been living in the State from much before its creation in 1972.
• The State government’s move will deprive them of the opportunity to be represented in the autonomous district councils as it will not be possible for them to get elected on the basis of adult suffrage.

Sixth Schedule of the Constitution:

• It deals with the administration of the tribal areas in the four northeastern states of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram.
• It makes special provisions for “tribal areas”. The rationality behind the special arrangements is that:
  • “The tribes in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram have not assimilated much the life and ways of the other people in these states.
  • These areas have hitherto been anthropological specimens.
  • The tribes in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram still have their roots in their own culture, customs and civilization.

Context:

The first-ever Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS) has been conducted by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF).

Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey:

• Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS) is a cross-sectional, household survey covering more than 1,20,000 children and adolescents in both urban and rural areas across India.
• It aimed at assessing the national prevalence of biological indicators (micronutrient deficiencies, subclinical inflammation, and worm infestation) and prevalence of overweight/obesity, along with information on body composition, cardio-metabolic risk, muscular strength, and fitness.
• The CNNS was implemented in all 30 states of India during 2016-2018.
• The CNNS included three population groups – pre-schoolers 0-4 years, school-age children 5-9 years, and adolescents 10-19 years – in rural and urban areas.
• The survey has described the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the sample population, including age, sex, place of residence, mother’s schooling, caste, religion, household wealth status and dietary practices.
• This information is useful for understanding factors affecting the health and nutrition of children and adolescents across the country’s diverse geographies and populations.
• This was the largest micronutrient survey ever implemented globally and used gold standard methods to assess anaemia, micronutrient deficiencies and biomarkers of non-communicable diseases among children for the first time in India.

Findings of the survey:

• The survey found that the percentage of mothers with no formal education was high across the three age groups, with 31 per cent, 42 per cent, and 53 per cent of mothers of children aged 0-4, 5-9, and 10-19 years, respectively, not having attended school.
• Malnutrition among children in urban India is characterised by relatively poor levels of breastfeeding, higher prevalence of iron and Vitamin D deficiency as well as obesity due to long commute by working mothers, prosperity and lifestyle patterns.
  • It is believed that wealthier households in urban areas and sedentary lifestyles of children may also be responsible for a higher deficiency of Vitamin D in urban areas (19%) as compared to rural areas (12%).
• Rural parts of the country see a higher percentage of children suffering from stunting, underweight and wasting and lower consumption of milk products.
  • Rural children lag in intake of zinc which causes diarrhoea, growth retardation, loss of appetite and impaired immune function. Among children aged 1–4 years, zinc deficiency is more common in rural areas (20%) compared to urban areas (16%).
• 83% of children between 12 and 15 months continue to be breastfed, a higher proportion of children in this age group residing in rural areas are breastfed (85%) compared to children in urban areas (76%).
  • Breastfeeding is inversely proportional to household wealth and other factors influencing this trend may include working mothers who have to travel long distances to reach their workplace.
• Children and adolescents residing in urban areas also have a higher (40.6%) prevalence of iron deficiency compared to their rural counterparts (29%).
  • Experts say this is due to a better performance of the government’s health programmes in rural areas.
• Children in urban areas are also overweight and obese as indicated by subscapular skinfold thickness (SSFT) for their age.
  • SSFT is an anthropometric measurement used to evaluate nutritional status by estimating the amount of subcutaneous fat — for their age.
  • Taking cognisance of the need for a special focus on urban areas under the Poshan Abhiyaan [Nutrition Mission], NITI Aayog is currently developing a strategy to deal with problems unique to children living in cities as well as factors hampering implementation of government programmes.
• Children are facing the double burden of malnutrition and rising risk of non-communicable diseases including diabetes, high cholesterol, chronic kidney disease and hypertension.
  • The report presents data on the shifting conditions of both undernutrition and overweight, obesity among Indian children from 0-19 years.
• Abdominal obesity among children and adolescents showed that prevalence of abdominal obesity increased with the level of mother’s schooling and household wealth.

Context:

A 10-day-long social audit of welfare measures of the Building and Other Construction Workers’ Board in Ajmer district’s Beawar block has revealed irregularities by a vast network of agents and e-mitra centres operating in the region.

Issues:

• The agents, who get the applications passed in the Labour Department, allegedly demand huge commissions and block the approvals for eligible labourers.
• Instances of corruption and harassment have also been reported.
• At the Jan Sunwai (public hearing), the construction workers said they were deprived of the benefits of welfare schemes if they did not pay commission to the agents.
• The applications of labourers applying for various works through e-mitra centres were mostly rejected.
• Workers alleged that the Labour Department’s officials had approached them at their homes demanding bribe for approving their applications for children’s scholarships, Shubh Shakti Scheme and social security death benefits for survivors.

Details:

• Gadia Lohars (also known as Gaduliya Lohars) are a nomadic community of Rajasthan. They are also found in the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh.
• They are categorised as the Most Backward Class in Rajasthan, faces difficulty in getting the benefits of schemes because most of its members do their own work and are unable to get the employer’s certificate.
• The children belonging to the community face difficulties in going to schools and getting scholarships.

Way forward:

• The working of the BOCW Board should be made more transparent and efficient.
• Steps must be taken to carry its welfare component to the intended beneficiaries with a higher success rate.
• Gram Sabhas could play an important role in this task.
• Strict actions must be taken against e-mitra centres charging commissions.
• The Board must conduct social audit in other districts as well and take necessary measures to ensure that communities reap the benefits of welfare schemes.

E-Mitra:

• E-Mitra is an ambitious E-governance initiative of the Government of Rajasthan (GoR).
• It is being implemented in all 33 Districts of the state using Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model for convenience and transparency to citizens in availing various services of the Government and Private Sectors under a single roof at their doorsteps using an e- platform.
• These services include utility bill payment, application & digitally signed certificate services, banking, tele-medicine, e-commerce services, etc, with new services being added to its fold regularly.

C. GS3 Related

Category: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

1. Canadian-American, two Swiss stargazers win Physics Nobel

Context:

Americans William G Kaelin Jr and Gregg L Semenza and Britain’s Peter J Ratcliffe have been awarded the Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine, for discovering details of how the body’s cells sense and react to low oxygen levels.

Details:

• “How cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability” is a discovery that is being explored by medical researchers seeking to develop treatments for various diseases that work by either activating or blocking the body’s oxygen-sensing machinery.
• Oxygen sensing is central to a large number of diseases.
• The discoveries made by the Nobel Prize laureates have fundamental importance for physiology and have paved the way for promising new strategies to fight anaemia, cancer and many other diseases.
• Semenza and Ratcliffe separately studied the processes surrounding the sensing of oxygen, and found it was at work in virtually all the body’s tissues.
• Semenza worked in the 1990s on identifying a protein complex that binds to cells’ DNA in response to levels of oxygen in the cell’s environment.
• The complex, called hypoxia inducible factor, regulates production of red blood cells. The science behind it is the basis for an anemia drug called roxadustat that was approved in China in December.
• Kaelin’s work linked the same oxygen-regulating machinery to a role in cancer, which is also being mined for potential therapeutics.
• It is the 110th prize in the category that has been awarded since 1901.

D. GS4 Related

E. Editorials

Background

• In December 2018, NITI Aayog released its ‘Strategy for New India @75’ which defined clear objectives for 2022-23, with an overview of 41 distinct areas.
• In this document, however, the strategy for ‘water resources’ is dull and unrealistic as the successive National Water Policies (NWP).

Effective strategic planning must satisfy three essential requirements.

• One, acknowledge and analyse past failures;
• Two, suggest realistic and implementable goals;
• Three, stipulate who will do what, and within what time frame. The ‘strategy’ for water fails on all three counts.

No new vision

The document reiterates some failed ideas:

• Adopting an Integrated River Basin Management approach
  • The integrated management concept has been around for 70 years, but not even one moderate size basin has been managed thus anywhere in the world.
• Setting up of River Basin Organisations (RBOs) for major basins.
  • And 32 years after the NWP of 1987 recommended RBOs, not a single one has been established for any major basin.
• The Water Resources Regulatory (WRA) authority is another failed idea.
  • Maharashtra established a WRA authority in 2005.
  • But far from an improvement in managing resources, water management in Maharashtra has gone from bad to worse.
  • Without analyzing why the WRA already established has failed, the recommendation to establish water resources regulatory authorities is inexcusable.
• The strategy document notes that there is a huge gap between irrigation potential created and utilised, and recommends that the Water Ministry draw up an action plan to complete Command Area Development (CAD) works to reduce the gap.
  • Again, a recommendation is made without analysing why CAD works remain incomplete, that too despite having a CAD authority as an integral component of the ministry.
• Goals in the document include providing adequate and safe piped water supply to all citizens and livestock; providing irrigation to all farms; providing water to industries; ensuring continuous and clean flow in the “Ganga and other rivers along with their tributaries”, i.e. in all Indian rivers; assuring long-term sustainability of groundwater; safeguarding proper operation and maintenance of water infrastructure; utilising surface water resources to the full potential; improving on-farm water-use efficiency; and ensuring zero discharge of untreated effluents from industrial units.
  • These goals are not just over-ambitious, but absurdly unrealistic, particularly for a five-year window.

Who is Accountable?

• A strategy document must specify who will be responsible and accountable for achieving the specific goals, and in what time-frame.
  • Otherwise, no one will accept the responsibility to carry out various tasks, and nothing will get done.
• The Niti Aayog speaks about encouraging industries to utilize recycled/treated water.
  • But who will encourage them?
  • Should the State Water Ministries do this by restricting or even withholding recalcitrant industry’s access to freshwater?
  • Should the Environment Ministries cancel clearances for industries that do not practise recycling?
  • Or should the Finance Ministries do this through monetary incentives and disincentives? No one knows.

Many Challenges are unaddressed in the document

• Of the issues listed under ‘constraints’, only one, the Easement Act, 1882, which grants groundwater ownership rights to landowners, and has resulted in uncontrolled extractions of groundwater, is actually a constraint. The remaining are not constraints.
• These are irrigation potential created but not being used; poor efficiency of irrigation systems; indiscriminate use of water in agriculture; poor implementation and maintenance of projects; cropping patterns not aligned to agroclimatic zones; subsidised pricing of water; citizen’s not getting piped water supply; and contamination of groundwater.
• These are problems, caused by 72 years of misgovernance in the water sector, and remain challenges for the future.
• Ideas listed under ‘way forward’ and ‘suggested reforms’ do not say how any of these will come about.
  • For example, there is no recommendation to amend the Easement Act, or to stop subsidised/free electricity to farmers. On the contrary, the strategy recommends promoting solar pumps. These are environmentally correct and ease the financial burden on electricity supply agencies.
  • However, the free electricity provided by solar units will further encourage unrestricted pumping of groundwater, and will further aggravate the problem of a steady decline of groundwater levels.

Reforms Ignored

• The document fails to identify real limitations.
  • For example, it notes that the Ken-Betwa River inter-linking project, the India-Nepal Pancheshwar project, and the Siang project in Northeast India need to be completed.
  • A major roadblock in completion of these projects is public interest litigations filed in the National Green Tribunal, the Supreme Court, or in various High Courts.
  • Unless the government has a plan to arrest the blatant misuse of PIL for environmental posturing, not only these but also other infrastructure projects will remain bogged down in courtrooms.
• The document takes no cognizance of some real and effective reforms that were once put into motion but later got stalled, such as a National Water Framework law; significant amendments to the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act; and the Dam Safety Bill.

Conclusion

India’s water problems can be solved with existing knowledge, technology and available funds. But India’s water establishment needs to admit that the strategy pursued so far has not worked and come up with innovative measures of problem-solving by analyzing the past mistakes and adapting new strategies by taking examples from elsewhere and making due changes to suit the local conditions.

Introduction

• Mexico was the first Latin American country to recognize India after independence. They have had 69 years of diplomatic relations based on mutual interest and understanding.
• Mexico and India have enjoyed a Privileged Partnership since 2007.
  • This allowed the growth of bilateral relations in economic field, in science and technology and in the most important issues of the global agenda reflecting a broad convergence of long-term political, economic and strategic goals.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Nieto in the past have also agreed to work for achieving a ‘Strategic Partnership’.

Economic Relationship

• Mexico has become India’s top trading partner in Latin America and it is the top investor from the region in India, while India is now for the first time among Mexico’s top 10 commercial partners.
  • More than 13 Mexican companies have presence in India and more than 100 Indian companies have presence in Mexico
• India’s exports mainly include vehicles and auto parts, organic chemicals, electrical machinery & electronic equipment, aluminium products, readymade garments, iron and steel products and gems & jewellery.
• India’s imports mainly consisted of crude oil, electrical goods and machinery, organic chemicals, vehicles and auto parts and iron & steel. India is the third-largest buyer of Mexico’s crude oil.
• The bilateral trade reached more than $10 billion in 2018, four times what it was in 2009.

Tourism Sector

Tourism is one of the major sectors which brings people together. They take pride in their ancient and rich Civilizations

• In 2018, Mexico attracted 41 million international tourists, 6% more than 2017.
  • According to the WTO, Mexico is the sixth most-visited country in the world, and it is proud home to 35 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, a figure comparable to India’s.
  • In the year 2018 Indians have been among the top 20 visitors to Mexico, and Indian tourism to Mexico is exceeding that of many European countries.
• Mexico has a great variety of attractions like beaches, colonial cities, natural scenery, cultural diversity and ancient history.
• This has also been made possible by the wide variety of flights and airlines connecting both countries.
• More connectivity to facilitate leisure travel would enhance trade and business cooperation between the two countries.

Challenges

• The bilateral relationship has long been characterized by warmth, friendship and commonality of views on a wide range of issues, even though there are differences on expansion of the permanent membership of the UNSC, environment and nonproliferation.
• Mexico is a member of the group, which opposes any expansion of permanent seats.
  • Uniting for Consensus (UfC) is also nicknamed the Coffee Club
  • Italy along with Pakistan, Mexico and Egypt, in 1995 founded the “Coffee Club”.

Way Forward

Mexico and India have a common goal: social development and inclusion.

• To accomplish this, both the countries should be determined to promote trade and investment in priority sectors; improve market access, including agricultural products; promote tourism; and foster cooperation in many areas, such as energy, science and technology.
• Our collaboration is also important to strengthen multilateralism and the rules-based international system, and to foster cooperation within mechanisms such as the G20.

2. Informal Summit- India and China

Q1. Consider the following statements with respect to MOSAiC expedition:

Q2. Consider the following statements:

Q3. Consider the following statements with respect to Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee 
Corporation of India (DICGC):

Q4. Consider the following statements: