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  • National Hispanic Heritage Month

    The National Hispanic Heritage Month has begun in the US.

    Try this MCQ:

    Q.The event National Hispanic Heritage Month recently seen in news is primarily celebrated in which of the following countries?

    (a) US (b) Spain (c) Mexico (d) Cuba

    National Hispanic Heritage Month

    • The annual event honours the history, culture and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors hailed from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America.
    • It is marked every year from September 15 to October 15.
    • The observation was started by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 as Hispanic Heritage Week and was extended to an entire month by President Ronald Reagan in 1988, the year it was enacted into law.

    Hispanics in the US

    • With a population of over 5.7 crores, Hispanic Americans are currently the largest minority group in the US, making up a fifth of the total US population.
    • More than half– 3.5 crore– are of Mexican origin, followed by Puerto Rican (53 lakh), and about 10 lakh each of Salvadorans, Cubans, Dominicans, Guatemalans and Colombians.
    • The community is referred to as Hispanic, Latino or Latinx– terms that refer to a person’s origin or culture, without considering their race.

  • Departmental Standing committees

    The article analyses the issue of tenure of the members of the Department related committees and suggest the changes to the rules about the tenure.

    Context

    • There was speculation in the media that the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, M. Venkaiah Naidu, is keen on amending the rules to give them a fixed tenure of two years.

    Why 2-year tenure?

    • According to the Rajya Sabha Rules, the term of office of the “members” of the committees shall not exceed one year.
    • Thus, it is the term of office of the members and not that of the committees per se that is one year.
    • The tenurial issue has to be looked at against the backdrop of the fact that the Rajya Sabha itself undergoes partial biennial renewal.
    • While Lok Sabha has a fixed tenure of five years, unless sooner dissolved.
    • Given these facts,2-year tenure suggestion is in consonance with the biennial partial reconstitution of the Rajya Sabha.

    Need to rethink the tenurial prescription

    • In case of Lok Sabha, the major reconstitution takes place when a new Lok Sabha is elected, that is normally after five years.
    • Since Rajya Sabha elects new member every two years and the Lok Sabha after every five years, it is only once in 10 years that the requirement of major reshuffle of the Standing Committees in both the Houses is expected to coincide.
    • Given the different election schedules of the two Houses, there is perhaps no need to mandate the same term for the members of both the Houses.

    Way forward

    • There are 24 Department-related Standing Committees, each with a membership of 31 (10 of the Rajya Sabha and 21 of the Lok Sabha).
    • They can accommodate 240 members of the Rajya Sabha and 504 members of the Lok Sabha.
    • Therefore, once a member is nominated to a committee, he should be allowed to continue till he retires or otherwise discontinues the membership in order that the committee is able to benefit from his experience and expertise.
    • The Standing Committees are permanent. Hence, there should be no difficulty if the terms of the members of the two Houses on these committees are different, in consonance with the tenure of the Houses themselves.
    • Given these facts, it would stand to reason if the tenure of Department-related Standing Committees is prescribed differently for the two Houses.
    • The Rules could also provide that casual vacancies may be filled in by the Presiding Officers.

    Conclusion

    While making changes to the rules the Chairman and the Speaker should consider the different tenure for the members of the two Houses on the Department-related committees.

  • What are Interest Rate Derivatives (IRDs)?

    The RBI has proposed allowing foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) to undertake exchange-traded rupee interest rate derivatives transactions subject to an overall ceiling of ₹5,000 crores.

    Every year, there is a question on a capital market instruments. Make note of all such separately. Also, try this PYQ:

    Q. Which of the following is issued by registered foreign portfolio investors to overseas investors who want to be part of the Indian stock market without registering themselves directly? (CSP 2019)

    (a) Certificate of Deposit

    (b) Commercial Paper

    (c) Promissory Note

    (d) Participatory Note

    Interest Rate Derivatives (IRDs)

    • An IDR is a financial instrument with a value that is linked to the movements of an interest rate or rates.
    • These may include futures, options, or swaps contracts.
    • They are often used by institutional investors, banks, companies, and individuals to protect themselves against changes in market interest rates.
    • The proposed directions by RBI are aimed at encouraging higher non-resident participation, enhance the role of domestic market makers in the offshore market, improve transparency, and achieve better regulatory oversight, according to the central bank.

    Back2Basics: Foreign portfolio investment (FPI)

    • FPI involves holding financial assets from a country outside of the investor’s own.
    • FPI holdings can include stocks, ADRs, GDRs, bonds, mutual funds, and exchange-traded funds.
    • Along with foreign direct investment (FDI), FPI is one of the common ways for investors to participate in an overseas economy, especially retail investors.
    • Unlike FDI, FPI consists of passive ownership; investors have no control over ventures or direct ownership of property or a stake in a company.

    FPI vs FDI

    • With FPI—as with portfolio investment in general—an investor does not actively manage the investments or the companies that issue the investments.
    • They do not have direct control over the assets or the businesses.
    • In contrast, foreign direct investment (FDI) lets an investor purchase a direct business interest in a foreign country.

  • Urban unemployment in India

    The article discusses the issue of vulnerability of informal jobs in India and suggests the steps to address the problem.

    The urban unemployment in India crept up to 9.83% in August as against 9.15% in July, according to monthly unemployment data released Tuesday by the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). In other words, roughly one in every 10 person in urban areas cannot find work

  • Crisis in education in rural India and NEP

    The article analyses the missing focus on the rural youth in the National Education Policy 2020 and its implications.

    Education in rural India and NEP

    • Poor quality education marks and mars the lives of rural citizens.
    • The NEP fails to address the growing school differentiation in which government schools are now primarily attended by children of disadvantaged castes and Adivasi groups.
    • The mushrooming of private schools caters to the aspirations of the more advantaged castes and classes.
    • The NEP overlooks the complexity of contemporary rural India, which is marked by a sharp deceleration of its economy, extant forms of distress, and widespread poverty.
    • Rural candidates are finding it increasingly difficult to gain entry into professional education.
    • The lack of fit between their degrees and the job market means that several lakhs of them find themselves both “unemployable” and unemployed.

    What the NEP misses

    • NEP overlooks the general adverse integration of the rural into the larger macroeconomy and into poor quality mass higher education.
    • The report calls for the “establishment of large, multi-discipline universities and colleges” and places emphasis on online and distance learning (ODL).
    • However, correspondence courses and distance education degrees have become a source of revenue generation for universities.
    • The possibility of forging and promoting environmental studies for local ecological restoration and conservation are missing.
    • Emphasis on local health and healing traditions from the vast repertoire of medical knowledge is missing.
    • Vernacular architectural traditions and craftsmanship to use local resources find no mention at all in the NEP.

    Neoliberal ideas in NEP

    • The NEP moots the possibility of establishing “Special Education Zones” in disadvantaged areas and in “aspirational districts”.
    • But the report provides no details as to how such SEZs will function and who will be the beneficiaries of such institutions.

    Conclusion

    The NEP fails to cater to the needs of rural India’s marginalised majority, who in so many ways are rendered into being subjects rather than citizens.

  • India becomes a member of UN Commission on Status of Women

    India has been elected as a member of the United Nation’s Commission on Status of Women (UN-CSW), a body of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

    Try this PYQ:

    Q.Democracy’s superior virtue lies in the fact that it calls into activity:

    (a) The intelligence and character of ordinary men and women

    (b) The methods for strengthening executive leadership

    (c) A superior individual with dynamism and vision

    (d) A band of dedicated party workers

    UN Commission on Status of Women

    • The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW or UNCSW) is a functional commission of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), one of the main organs within the United Nations.
    • CSW has been described as the UN organ promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women.
    • Every year, representatives gather at UN Headquarters in New York to evaluate progress gender equality, identify challenges, set global standards and formulate concrete policies to promote gender equality and advancement of women worldwide.
    • India will be a member of United Nation’s Commission on Status of Women for four years, 2021 to ‘25.
    • This year is the 25th anniversary of the famous Beijing World Conference on Women (1995).

  • Who was Subramania Bharatiyar?

    This newscard is an excerpt from an article originally published in TH.

    Try this question from CSP 2016:

    Q.A recent movie titled The Man Who Knew Infinity is based on the biography of-

    (a) S. Ramanujan
    (b) S. Chandrasekhar
    (c) S. N. Bose
    (d) C. V. Raman

    Subramania Bharati

    • Bharati was a Tamil writer, poet, journalist, Indian independence activist, social reformer and polyglot.
    • Popularly known as “Mahakavi Bharathi”, he was a pioneer of modern Tamil poetry and is considered one of the greatest Tamil literary figures of all time.
    • His numerous works included fiery songs kindling patriotism during the Indian Independence movement.

    Literary works

    • As a working journalist, Bharati necessarily employed prose to communicate, and his writings in Swadesamitran and India made an important contribution to Tamil political vocabulary.
    • He wrote stories, commentaries, and was also the pioneer of column writing in Tamil.
    • Active participation in the day-to-day politics of the nationalist movement notwithstanding, Bharati never lost sight of the future, the dream of how a free India should look like.
    • Aspects of this dream form part of his fantasy story, Gnanaratham (The Chariot of Wisdom), written when he was still in his late 20s.

  • Singapore Convention on Mediation

    The Singapore Convention on Mediation has finally come into force.

    Try this MCQ:

    Q. The Singapore Convention recently seen in news is related to:

    Climate change/ Arbitration and conciliation/ Foreign trade/ Marine Regulation

    Singapore Convention

    • It is aimed to provide a more effective way of enforcing mediated settlements of corporate disputes involving businesses in India and other countries that are signatories to the Convention.
    • Also known as the UN Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation, this is also the first UN treaty to be named after Singapore.
    • With the Convention in force, businesses seeking enforcement of a mediated settlement agreement across borders can do so by applying directly to the courts of countries that have signed and ratified the treaty.
    • The harmonized and simplified enforcement framework under the Convention translates to savings in time and legal costs.

    Its signatories

    • The Convention has 53 signatories, including India, China and the U.S.
    • Singapore had worked with the UN Commission on International Trade Law, other UN member states and non-governmental organisations for the Convention.

    Significance of the convention

    • The Convention would boost India’s ‘ease of doing business’ credentials by enabling swift mediated settlements of corporate disputes.
    • Businesses in India and around the world will now have greater certainty in resolving cross-border disputes through mediation.

  • Making malnutrition free India by 2030

    The article analyses the problem of malnutrition in India and suggests the pathways to achieve the malnutrition free India by 2030.

    Severity of the nourishment problem in India

    • There were  189.2 million undernourished people (28 per cent of the world) in India in 2017-19, as per the combined report of FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO (FAO, et.al. 2020) on “The state of Food Security and Nutrition in the World”.
    •  India accounts for 28 per cent (40.3 million) of the world’s stunted children (low height-for-age) under five years of age, and 43 per cent (20.1 million) of the world’s wasted children (low weight-for-height) in 2019.
    • In India, the problem has been more severe amongst children below the age of five years.
    • As per the National Family Health Survey (NFHS, 2015-16), the proportion of underweight and stunted children was as high as 35.8 per cent and 38.4 per cent respectively.
    • In several districts of Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and even Gujarat, the proportion of underweight children was more than 40 per cent.

    Aims of the National Nutrition Mission (NNM)

    • Ending all forms of malnutrition by 2030 is also the target of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG-2) of Zero Hunger.
    • Towards this end, NNM aims to reduce stunting, underweight and low birth weight each by 2 per cent per annum.
    • It aims to reduce anaemia among children, adolescent girls and women, each by 3 per cent per annum by 2022.
    • However, the Global Burden of Disease Study 1990–2017 has estimated that if the current trend continues, India cannot achieve these targets under NNM by 2022.

    Understanding the key determinants and deciding policy response

    1) Mothers’ education

    • Mothers’ education, particularly higher education, has the strongest inverse association with under-nutrition.
    • Women’s education has a multiplier effect not only on household food security but also on the child’s feeding practice and the sanitation facility.
    • Despite India’s considerable improvement in female literacy, only 13.7 per cent of women have received higher education (NFHS, 2015-16).
    • Therefore, programmes that promote women’s higher education such as liberal scholarships for women need to be accorded a much higher priority.

    2) Sanitation and access to safe drinking water

    • The second key determinant of child under-nutrition is the wealth index, which subsumes access to sanitation facilities and safe drinking water.
    • WASH initiatives, that is, safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, are critical for improving child nutritional outcomes.
    • In this context, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan aims to eliminate open defecation and bring about behavioural changes in hygiene and sanitation practices.
    • In five years of the Abhiyan, as per government records, rural sanitation coverage has gone from 38.7 per cent in 2014 to 100 per cent in 2019, while the sanitation coverage in urban cites has gone up to 99 per cent by September 2020.
    • This remarkable achievement of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, subject to third-party evaluations, is expected to have a multiplier effect on nutritional outcomes.

    3) Leveraging agricultural policies

    • We should leverage agricultural policies and programmes to be more “nutrition-sensitive” and reinforcing diet diversification towards a nutrient-rich diet.
    • Food-based safety nets in India are biased in favour of staples: rice and wheat.
    • They need to provide a more diversified food basket, including coarse grains, millets, pulses and bio-fortified staples.
    • Bio-fortification is very cost-effective in improving the diet of households and the nutritional status of children.
    • The Harvest-Plus programme of CGIAR can work with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) to grow new varieties of nutrient-rich staple food crops.

    4) Promotion of exclusive breastfeeding, complementary foods, diversified diet

    • The promotion of exclusive breastfeeding and the introduction of complementary foods and a diversified diet after the first six months is essential to meet the nutritional needs of infants and ensure appropriate growth and cognitive development of children.

    5) Access to prenatal and postnatal care

    • Access and utilisation of prenatal and postnatal health care services also play a significant role in curbing undernutrition among children.
    • Aanganwadi workers and community participation can bring significant improvements in child-caring practices.

    Consider the question “Assess the severity the problem of malnutrition in India and suggest the measure to achieve the goal of malnutrition free India by 2030”

    Conclusion

    To contribute towards the holistic nourishment of children and a malnutrition free India by 2030, the government needs to address the multi-dimensional determinants of malnutrition on an urgent basis.

  • Dictionary of Martyrs of India’s Freedom Struggle (1857-1947)

    Four martyrs of Communist movement of Kerala will be added to the ‘Dictionary of Martyrs India’s Freedom Struggle (1857-1947)’, if an earlier review report to the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) is accepted.

    Communist revolutionaries of Kerala

    • The four who may make it to the list include Aboobacker and Chirukandan of Kayyur, “who walked to the gallows shouting Inquilab Zindabad and Communist Party Zindabad” and “died as brave communists,” as mentioned in the fifth volume of the dictionary.
    • Abu of Mambram, a Communist and active partner in the nationalist and anti-imperialist movements, and Chattukutty, an active Communist cadre involved in the agitations for price control, wage hike, and relief to peasants, who were killed in the Tellichery police firing on September 15, 1940, would also qualify.
    • The report had suggested the deletion of the martyrs of Punnapra-Vayalar, Karivelloor, and Kavumbayi agitations as they were rioters against the interim government headed by Jawaharlal Nehru.

    Back2Basics: “Dictionary of Martyrs” Project

    • The project for the compilation of “Dictionary of Martyrs” of India’s Freedom Struggle was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture, to the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the uprising of 1857.
    • In this dictionary, a martyr has been defined as a person who died or who was killed in action or in detention, or was awarded capital punishment while participating in the national movement for the emancipation of India.
    • It includes ex-INA or ex-military personnel who died fighting the British.
    • Information of about 13,500 martyrs has been recorded in these volumes.

    Who are included?

    • It includes the martyrs of 1857 Uprising, Jallianwala Bagh Massacre (1919), Non-Cooperation Movement (1920-22), Civil Disobedience Movement (1930-34), Quit India Movement (1942-44), Revolutionary Movements (1915-34), Kissan Movements, Tribal Movements, Agitation for Responsible Government in the Princely States (Prajamandal), Indian National Army (INA, 1943-45), Royal Indian Navy Upsurge (RIN, 1946), etc.

    Five Volumes

    • Volume 1: In this volume, more than 4400 martyrs of Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh have been listed.
    • Volume 2: In this volume, more than 3500 martyrs of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Jammu & Kashmir have been listed.
    • Volume 3: The number of martyrs covered in this volume is more than 1400. This volume covers the martyrs of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Sind.
    • Volume 4: The numbers of martyrs covered in this volume is more than 3300. This volume covers the martyrs of Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura.
    • Volume 5: The number of martyrs covered in this volume is more than 1450. This volume covers the martyrs of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.