Important Announcement:  Topics to be covered on 5th February

GS-1  Modern Indian history from about the middle of the eighteenth century until the present- significant events, personalities, issues.

GS-4 Public/Civil service values and Ethics in Public administration: Status and problems; ethical concerns and dilemmas in government and private institutions

Question 1)

How does the population distribution of India relate to the broad physical divisions of the country ? Analyse. 10 marks

Question 2)

Vaccine nationalism has been threatening the global health and would exacerbate poverty. Examine the role played by India in this context. 10 marks

Question 3)

India has been struggling with the problem of terrorists and smugglers infiltrating into the country and efforts are ongoing to secure our borders and curb cross-border infiltration. It is high time that we start using technology to deal with this problem. In light of this, explain the smart wall technology and how it could help India in dealing with the problems at borders. 10 marks

Question 4)  

“What really matters for success, character, happiness and life-long achievements is a definite set of emotional skills— not just purely cognitive abilities.” — Daniel Goleman. Elucidate. 10 marks

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Reviews will be provided in a week. (In the order of submission- First come first serve basis). In case the answer is submitted late the review period may get extended to two weeks.

*In case your answer is not reviewed in a week, reply to your answer saying *NOT CHECKED*. If Parth Sir’s tag is available then tag him.

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Important Announcement:  Topics to be covered on 4th February

GS-1  Role of women and women’s organization; population and associated issues, poverty and developmental issues.

GS-4 Ethics and Human Interface: Essence, determinants and consequences of Ethics in human actions; dimensions of ethics; ethics in private and public relationships.

Question 1)

Discuss in what ways Sanskrit Literature has imparted diversity and richness to Indian Literature. 10 marks

Question 2)

The previous water policies primarily emphasised on the supply side, through the construction of reservoirs and dams. This draft policy focuses on improving efficiency and river restoration. That’s a paradigm shift. In light of this, discuss the major recommendations in the draft National Water Policy 2020. 10 marks

Question 3)

To deal with the challenges faced in the financing, the Budget 2021-22 proposed the Development Finance Institution (DFI). How would DFI address the problem of financing? What are the concerns with allowing FPI in DFI? 10 marks

Question 4)  

What are the determinants of moral values of a society? How they influence adherence of ethics in such society? Explain with examples. 10 marks

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Reviews will be provided in a week. (In the order of submission- First come first serve basis). In case the answer is submitted late the review period may get extended to two weeks.

*In case your answer is not reviewed in a week, reply to your answer saying *NOT CHECKED*. If Parth Sir’s tag is available then tag him.

For the philosophy of AWE and payment, check  here: Click2Join

Important Announcement:  Topics to be covered on 3rd February

GS-1  Indian culture will cover the salient aspects of Art Forms, Literature and Architecture from ancient to modern times. 

GS-4 Ethics and Human Interface: Essence, determinants and consequences of Ethics in human actions; dimensions of ethics; ethics in private and public relationships.

Question 1)

What are the basic features of social protest movement? Explain social movements as an expression of protest. 10 marks

Question 2)

To deal with the issue of financial disempowerment of our municipalities, we need reforms through municipal legislation by our states. Suggest the agenda which would reflect progressive and enabling financial governance of our cities. 10 marks

Question 3)

Ageing dams pose several challenges for India. What are these challenges? Suggest ways to deal with these challenges. 10 marks

Question 4)  

State reasons why war is not considered as the first option rather is taken as the last resort? 10 marks

Reviews will be provided in a week. (In the order of submission- First come first serve basis). In case the answer is submitted late the review period may get extended to two weeks.

*In case your answer is not reviewed in a week, reply to your answer saying *NOT CHECKED*. If Parth Sir’s tag is available then tag him.

For the philosophy of AWE and payment, check  here: Click2Join

Important Announcement:  Topics to be covered on 2nd February

GS-1  Salient features of Indian Society, Diversity of India. 

GS-4 Probity in Governance: Concept of public service; Philosophical basis of governance and probity.

Question 1)

What do you understand by a colonial system and identify the factors promoting it? Elaborate on the major countries that got benefitted from colonialism and why?

Question 2)

Governance in India has long been marred with structural challenges like transparency, lack of accountability and sustainable and inclusive growth. In light of this, discuss the role played by the Public Financial Management System in tackling these challenges. 10 marks

Question 3)

The Economic Survey 2020-21 highlights the issue of the adverse rating given by international credit rating agencies to emerging economies. Examine the basis used in the Economic Survey in support of the argument. Also, suggest on what basis India should make the argument against the rating given by the international credit rating agencies. 10 marks

Question 4)  

Law is nevertheless an indispensable part of the picture. It is a necessary complement to both morality and ethics. Elucidate. 10 marks

Reviews will be provided in a week. (In the order of submission- First come first serve basis). In case the answer is submitted late the review period may get extended to two weeks.

*In case your answer is not reviewed in a week, reply to your answer saying *NOT CHECKED*. If Parth Sir’s tag is available then tag him.

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Universal vaccination programs have eliminated smallpox and reduced serious diseases including measles, mumps, rotavirus, and polio. But in the coming few months, India will witness another great event in its history — the great Covid vaccination exercise. This is vaccination going to be one of the most anticipated events in the country. This mass universal vaccination drive might prove to be a daunting task.

Making of a vaccine

• A vaccine has to pass three tests to be successful – quality, ease of delivery, and public acceptance.
• Quality, in turn, has three attributes – safety, efficacy, and duration of protection.
• These are initially assessed in animals, then in humans through rigorously three-phased clinical trials involving thousands of persons, followed by post-marketing surveillance of several thousands more.

India’s potential in vaccine-making

• The universal immunisation programme in India has well established and time-tested vaccine distribution systems.
• India has run massive immunisation programme earlier too, makes 60% of the world’s vaccines and is home to half a dozen major manufacturers, including Serum Institute of India – the largest in the world.
• Not surprisingly, there’s no lack of ambition when it comes to vaccinating a billion people against Covid-19.
• India plans to receive and utilise some 500 million doses of vaccines against the disease and immunize up to 250 million people by July next year.

Mechanisms available

• India’s vaccine distribution network is operated through four government medical store depots (GMSDs) in Karnal, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, which procure vaccines from the manufacturers.
• About 53 state vaccine stores get their supplies either from these GMSDs or directly from manufacturers.
• The state vaccine stores then distribute the vaccines to regional, district and sub-district level cold chain points via insulated vans.
• The vaccine management has improved over the years thanks to a real-time supply chain management system known as the electronic vaccine intelligence network (eVIN).

EVIN: The COVID-19 delivery system will use the UIP platform, with the innovative Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network enhancing efficiency and diligence.

CO-WIN Platform: This user friendly mobile app for recording vaccine data is working as a beneficiary management platform having various modules. Once people start to register for the app, the platform will upload bulk data on co-morbidity provided by local authorities.

India’s efficacy

• India ranked within the 51-75 percentile range among 89 countries on effective vaccine management as per a global analysis by WHO-UNICEF in 2018.
• Its performance was relatively poor when it came to following the required vaccine arrival procedures and using the MIS system for estimating demand of vaccine, syringe, etc.

Various challenges looming before the roll-out of Vaccine

[A] Infrastructure and other ground challenges

For India, the magnitude of the task at hand is huge. If we have 1.3 billion Indians, a two-dose vaccine (such as Moderna or Oxford vaccine) implies 2.6 billion doses that need to be given across the nation.

(1) Supply-chain challenges

• The  supply  chain  of  the  vaccines  has to  be  strictly monitored  for  temperatures as the vaccines tend to be very sensitive to temperature variations.
• Storing  the vaccines  in  temperature controlled  boxes proves  to  be  challenging  in  India,  because  of problems  with electricity supply, which in many places in India tends to get interrupted frequently.

(2) Infrastructure challenges

• Getting vaccines to people who need them will require over a billion vials to be manufactured, filled and shipped, at top speed and in some cases, under extreme stress.
• India needs to scale up its cold chain and distribution infrastructure for the last-mile connectivity.
• Cooling facilities in the final delivery stages and a lack of storage at clinics would pose the biggest challenge to delivering vaccines on a high scale.

 (3) Inter-state disparity

• What adds to the vaccination challenge is the inter-state disparity in the distribution of cold chain points across the country.
• Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar are among the least served states when it comes to cold chain infrastructure.
• It won’t be easy to fill such deficits given that most of the private sector cold chain network is concentrated in the bigger cities and towns.

[B] Access challenges

(1) Access and affordability

• Vaccine distribution poses another daunting challenge, and is accompanied by questions such as how much it will cost and who will pay for it.
• Some of the concerns are about corruption over access to vaccines.

(2) Vaccine safety

• It is essential to assess safety as the vaccine will be administered to healthy persons.
• This is a concern because some candidate vaccines have previously been known to have serious adverse effects.
• The choices of vaccines, distribution, identifying groups for early vaccination, storage and more importantly, trained personnel, all play a role, the experts underline.

(3) Uptake and monitoring

• Apart from distribution and delivery, other issues would be vaccine uptake and monitoring.
• Vaccine uptake requires confidence in the vaccines and the delivery system.
• Documentation of vaccination and the tracking and investigation of vaccine safety events are essential components of monitoring.
• India also has to battle with vaccine hesitancy. These have not been done well looking at the past experience.

[C] Ethical challenges

Acute humanitarian crises pose complex ethical dilemmas for policy-makers, particularly in settings with inadequate health-care services, which often become dependent on external agencies for urgently needed care.

When resources, especially staff, are scarce, decision-makers often choose among interventions – implicitly or explicitly – on the basis of cost-effectiveness because they are seeking to maximize benefits.

Many ethical issues surround the development and use of vaccines. These issues include

• Requiring vaccination by law;
• Development and testing of vaccines;
• Informed consent about the benefits and risks of vaccination; and
• Equitable distribution of vaccines

Among these, one is very crucial, i.e.

#Prioritization

It is a matter of distributive justice. Distributive justice requires the fair allocation of scarce basic resources, such as shelter, food, potable water and vaccines is not an exception to this.

• Different rules govern decision-making and priority-setting during acute crises.
• Objective, transparent processes for making priority-setting decisions are extremely important to maintain trust in the vaccination plans.
• Incidentally, the intent behind identifying the high-priority groups to receive the vaccine first was to safeguard them from severe disease and not to break the virus transmission chain.

Prioritized group as per our Health Ministry

Prioritized Population Groups include:

1. Healthcare Workers in both Government and Private Healthcare facilities
2. Frontline Workers including personnel from state and central police department, armed forces, home guard, civil defence organizations, disaster management volunteers and municipal workers and
3. Prioritized Age Group, which includes those aged above 50 years & those with co-morbidities

(Note: This is not the sequence, but categorization.)

[D] The biggest global challenge: Vaccine Nationalism

• Vaccine nationalism occurs when a country manages to secure doses of vaccine for its own citizens or residents before they are made available in other countries.
• This is done through pre-purchase agreements between a government and a vaccine manufacturer.
• It is harmful to equitable access to vaccines.

Why it has to go away?

• Most vaccine development projects involve several parties from multiple countries.
• With modern vaccines, there are very few instances in which a single country can claim to be the sole developer of a vaccine.
• And even if that were possible, global public health is borderless. As COVID-19 is illustrating, viruses can travel the globe.

“An outbreak anywhere is an outbreak everywhere”.

Way forward

• Considering the large population and limited capacity of production and distribution of vaccine, it will not be easy to provide everyone around the world with the vaccine at the same time.
• There is a need to develop a strategy for the same which will guide us in deciding who should receive the vaccine first.
• In this context, any effective vaccine that is developed should be treated as a global public good and should be distributed equally around the world, regardless of where it was invented or of a country’s ability to pay.
• There has to be a comprehensive global framework that will ensure priority for the most vulnerable populations.
• International institutions — including the WHO — should coordinate negotiations ahead of the next pandemic to produce a framework for equitable access to vaccines during public health crises.

Conclusion

The allocation of a limited supply of vaccine calls for a fine balance between utility and equality and fairness. Accountability demands that decision-making be explicit, documented and open to public review.

• Efforts to maximize utility can conflict with the egalitarian goal of helping the neediest.
• When limited supplies are allocated to the most vulnerable, overall health utility is sometimes suboptimal.
• From the perspective of value pluralism, balancing utility and equality should be the goal, rather than prioritizing one or the other.
• When it comes to vaccination, the utility is fortunately often greatest when the most socially disadvantaged groups are targeted.

References

https://www.livemint.com/news/india/india-s-vaccine-distribution-challenge-explained-in-five-charts-11607106132744.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-55048925

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/covid-19-vaccine-global-health-covax/ https://intelligence.weforum.org/topics/a1G0X000006O6EHUA0?tab=publications

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30773-8/fulltext#seccestitle90

https://www.devex.com/news/opinion-the-unspoken-covid-19-vaccine-challenges-distribution-and-corruption-98437