Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: CAG's role
Mains level: Paper 2- Role of CAG in the pandemic
The article highlights the importance of CAG in times of disasters to ensure check and balances.
Context
- With the nation spending substantial resources to manage the pandemic, the role of Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has come into prominence.
Opportunity for corruption in pandemic
- Allegations of siphoning off of funds to purchase the inferior quality at prices higher than those prevailing in the market are made.
- The opportunity to indulge in corruption exists in disaster management.
- Emergency procurement to save lives and reduce sufferings are a chance to obfuscate rules and procedures and can happen in all three tiers of governance.
Role of the CAG
- If all the major purchases by governments are audited by the CAG, there can be substantial improvement in disaster management.
- It will usher in better transparency, integrity, honesty, effective service delivery and compliance with rules and procedures and governance.
- The CAG has issued an order creating a new vertical — health, welfare and rural development, restructuring the office of the Director General of Audit, Central Expenditure.
- It is necessary that the CAG undertakes performance audits of COVID-19 related procurements, the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) and Employee State Insurance (ESI) hospitals.
- A beneficiary survey will become part of the audit process to bring out efficacy of service delivery and the availability and quality of drugs.
- Audit recommendations can contribute improvements in various aspects of disaster preparedness, management and mitigation.
Benefits of audit
- The statutory responsibility of CAG includes appraising disaster preparedness, ensuring that management, mitigation operations, procedures are complied with, and proper internal controls are in place.
- Ensuring that there are proper records, documentation, authentic, accurate, reliable and complete information and data.
- Providing assurance to people’s representatives, tax payers and the public at large that government resources are being used prudentially as per the law and regulations and safeguarded.
- Providing assurance that risks are assessed, identified and minimised with established disaster management process and procedures.
- Offering assurance that resources are being used economically efficiently and effectively for achieving the planned objectives and that benefits have gone to the targeted beneficiaries.
Conclusion
All public entities management must be accountable and ensure that resources are managed properly and used in compliance with laws and regulations; programmes are achieving their objectives; and services are being provided efficiently, effectively, and economically.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: ART Bill
Mains level: Paper 2- Concerns with the ART Bill
There are several issues with the Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill and these issues need consideration before the passage of the Bill.
What the Bill aims to achieve
- Union Health Minister introduced the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2020 (Bill) in the Lok Sabha.
- Its aim is to regulate ART banks and clinics, allow safe and ethical practice of ARTs and protect women and children from exploitation.
- The Bill was introduced to supplement the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2019 (SRB), which awaits consideration by the Rajya Sabha after review by two parliamentary committees.
Concerns with the Bill
1) Exclusion in the access of ART
- .The Bill allows for a married heterosexual couple and a woman above the age of marriage to use ARTs.
- It excludes single men, cohabiting heterosexual couples and LGBTQI individuals and couples from accessing ARTs.
- This violates Article 14 of the Constitution and the right to privacy jurisprudence of Puttaswamy, where the Supreme Court held that “ the liberty of procreation, the choice of a family life” concerned all individuals irrespective of their social status and were aspects of privacy.
- In Navtej Johar case, Justice Chandrachud exhorted the state to take positive steps for equal protection for same-sex couples.
- Unlike the SRB, there is no prohibition on foreign citizens accessing ARTs.
- Foreigners can access ART but not Indian citizens in loving relationships.
- This fails to reflect the true spirit of the Constitution.
2) Consent
- The ART Bill does little to protect the egg donor.
- Harvesting of eggs is an invasive process which, if performed incorrectly, can result in death.
- The Bill requires an egg donor’s written consent but does not provide for her counselling or the ability to withdraw her consent before or during the procedure.
- She receives no compensation or reimbursement of expenses for loss of salary, time and effort.
- Failing to pay for bodily services constitutes unfree labour, which is prohibited by Article 23 of the Constitution.
- The commissioning parties only need to obtain an insurance policy in her name for medical complications or death; no amount or duration is specified.
- The egg donor’s interests are subordinated in a Bill proposed in her name.
- The Bill restricts egg donation to a married woman with a child (at least three years old).
3) Threat of eugenics
- The Bill requires pre-implantation genetic testing.
- If the embryo suffers from “pre-existing, heritable, life-threatening or genetic diseases”, it can be donated for research with the commissioning parties’ permission.
- These disorders need specification or the Bill risks promoting an impermissible programme of eugenics.
4) Overlap with Surrogacy Regulation
- There is considerable overlap between ART and SRB sectors. Yet the Bills do not work in tandem.
- Core ART processes are left undefined; several of these are defined in the SRB.
- Definitions of commissioning “couple”, “infertility”, “ART clinics” and “banks” need to be synchronised between the Bills.
- A single woman cannot commission surrogacy but can access ART.
- The Bill designates surrogacy boards under the SRB to function as advisory bodies for ART, which is desirable.
- However, both Bills set up multiple bodies for registration which will result in duplication or lack of regulation (e.g. surrogacy clinic is not required to report surrogacy to National Registry).
- Also, the same offending behaviours under both Bills are punished differently + punishments under the SRB are greater.
- Offences under the Bill are bailable but not under the SRB.
- Finally, records have to be maintained for 10 years under the Bill but for 25 years under the SRB.
- The same actions taken by a surrogacy clinic and ART clinic attract varied regulation.
Other concerns
- Children born from ART do not have the right to know their parentage, which is crucial to their best interests and protected under previous drafts.
- There is no distinction between ART banks and ART clinics, given that gamete donation is not compensated, economically viability of ART Banks raises a question.
- In previous drafts, gametes could not be gifted between known friends and relatives if this is not changed, gamete shortage is likely.
- The Bill’s prohibition on the sale, transfer, or use of gametes and embryos is poorly worded and will confuse foreign and domestic parents relying on donated gametes.
- Unusually, the Bill requires all bodies to be bound by the directions of central and state governments in the national interest, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality — being broadly phrased, it undermines their independence.
Way forward
- The Bill to maintain a grievance cell but clinics must instead have ethics committees.
- Mandated counselling services should also be independent of the clinic.
- The poor enforcement of the PCPNDT Act, 1994, demonstrates that enhanced punishments do not secure compliance — lawyers and judges also lack medical expertise.
- Patients already sue fertility clinics in consumer redressal fora, which is preferable to criminal courts.
Conclusion
The Bill raises several constitutional, medico-legal, ethical and regulatory concerns, affecting millions and must be thoroughly reviewed before passage.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3- Declining private investment in the infrastructure and ways to boost it
Declining private investment in the infrastructure needs policy overhaul. The article suggests the changes in the policy and approach on the part of the government to achieve the sustainable 40 per cent private investment in the infrastructure.
Declining private investment in infrastructure
Currently, private financing into the infrastructure sector has declined to around 20 per cent of the total funding.
Reasons for the decline are-
- 1) the crisis in the non-banking finance sector.
- 2) the financial challenges faced by infrastructure companies.
- 3) the inadequately developed Indian market for infrastructure financing.
- The Economic Survey 2017-18 has assessed India’s infrastructure financing needs at $4.5 trillion by 2040.
- Reviving private investment flows into infrastructure to around 40 per cent will be key to attaining this threshold.
Actions need to be taken to revive the private investment in infrastructure
- The Vijay Kelkar committee had put out a balanced report in 2015 on overhauling the PPP ecosystem, including governance reform, institutional redesign, and capacity-building.
Ramping up private investments in infrastructure will need action on two fronts:
- 1) Refreshing institutions and policies for channelling financing.
- 2) Providing a stable, durable, and empowering ecosystem for private players to partner with government entities.
1) Institutions and policies for channelling financing
- Due to long-duration profitability cycles of infrastructure projects, successful PPP requires stable revenue flow assurances and a settled ecosystem to investors over long periods.
- This could be achieved means of policy stability, assurances possibly secured by law.
- PPP contracts also need to provide for mid-course corrections to factor in uncertainties including utilisation patterns, as well as the creation of competing infra assets.
- Government partners in PPP arrangements need to ensure that open-ended arrangement that might entail unforeseeable risk are minimised for the private investor, including aspects such as land availability and community acceptance.
2) Institution and policies for financing
- There is a need to change the culture and attitude towards the conjoining of government entities and private partners.
- Kelkar committee has stated that there needs to be an approach of “give and take” and the Government should avoid a purely transactional approach.
- Government should avoid trying to minimise risk to themselves by passing on uncertain elements in a project — like the land acquisition risk — to the private partner.
- This attitudinal change can be achieved by amending the Prevention of Corruption Act to encompass modern-day requirements, including factoring in the need for government agents to take calibrated risks while engaging with the private sector.
- The private partners also need to be incentivised to focus on project outcomes, with guard-rails in place to discourage rent-seeking behaviour.
- In sum, risk avoidance by the public entity and rent-seeking by the private partner are the twin challenges that need to be carefully addressed.
- On the regulatory front, a compelling need would be to promulgate a PPP legislation which can provide a robust legal ecosystem and procedural comfort.
Consider the question “Declining private investment in the infrastructure has several implications for the economy. In ligh of this, examine the factor for such decline and suggest the measures to boost the private investment in the infrastructure.”
Conclusion
After we emerge out of this pandemic, a focus area for public policy has to be the creation of a modern-day, sustainable and resilient infrastructure. . Designing a fresh approach and creating a stable policy environment that provides comfort and incentives to private investors will be key to attaining this goal.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: TRP, BARC
Mains level: TRAI and its regulations of telecom services
Mumbai police are investigating the alleged manipulation of Television Rating Points (TRP) by an extremely right-wing opinionated news reporter.
Try this question:
Q.What do you mean by “TRP Journalism”? Discuss the loopholes in the present system of self-regulation in Indian media.
What is TRP?
- In simple terms, anyone who watches television for more than a minute is considered a viewer.
- The TRP or Target Rating Point is the metric used by the marketing and advertising agencies to evaluate this viewership.
- In India, the TRP is recorded by the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) using Bar-O-Meters that are installed in televisions in selected households.
- As on date, the BARC has installed these meters in 44,000 households across the country. Audio watermarks are embedded in video content prior to broadcast.
- These watermarks are not audible to the human ear, but can easily be detected and decoded using dedicated hardware and software.
- As viewing details are recorded by the Bar-O-Meters, so are the watermarks.
What is BARC?
- It is an industry body jointly owned by advertisers, ad agencies, and broadcasting companies, represented by The Indian Society of Advertisers, the Indian Broadcasting Foundation and the Advertising Agencies Association of India.
- Though it was created in 2010, the I&B Ministry notified the Policy Guidelines for Television Rating Agencies in India on January 10, 2014, and registered BARC in July 2015 under these guidelines, to carry out television ratings in India.
How are the households selected?
- Selection of households where Bar-O-Meters are installed is a two-stage process.
- The first step is the Establishment Survey, a large-scale face-to-face survey of a sample of approximately 3 lakh households from the target population. This is done annually.
- Out of these, the households which will have Bar-O-Meters or what the BARC calls the Recruitment Sample are randomly selected. The fieldwork to recruit households is not done directly by BARC.
- The BARC on its website has said that the viewing behaviour of panel homes is reported to BARC India daily. Coincidental checks either physically or telephonically are done regularly.
Vigilance activities by BARC
- Certain suspicious outliers are also checked directly by BARC India.
- BARC India also involves a separate vigilance agency to check on outliers that it considers highly suspicious.
- And as per the guidelines of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, these households rotate every year.
- This rotation is in such a manner that older panel homes are removed first while maintaining the representativeness of the panel.
- The Ministry guidelines further say that the secrecy and privacy of the panel homes must be maintained, and asked the BARC to follow a voluntary code of conduct.
What are the loopholes in the process?
- Several doubts have been raised on many previous occasions about the working of the TRP.
- As per several reports, about 70% of the revenue for television channels comes from advertising and only 30% from subscriptions.
- It is claimed that households were being paid to manipulate the TRP.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: GRAP
Mains level: Not Much
The Supreme Court has directed Delhi and neighbouring States to implement air pollution control measures under “very poor” and “severe” category air quality of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP).
Note the various measures under the GRAP under various grades of Air Quality.
Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP)
- In 2014, when a study by the WHO found that Delhi was the most polluted city in the world, panic spread in the Centre and the state government.
- Approved by the Supreme Court in 2016, the plan was formulated after several meetings that the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA) held with state government and experts.
- The result was a plan that institutionalized measures to be taken when air quality deteriorates.
- GRAP works only as an emergency measure.
How does it work?
- As such, the plan does not include action by various state governments to be taken throughout the year to tackle industrial, vehicular and combustion emissions.
- When the air quality shifts from poor to very poor, the measures listed under both sections have to be followed since the plan is incremental in nature.
- If air quality reaches the severe+ stage, GRAP talks about shutting down schools and implementing the odd-even road-space rationing scheme.
Measures taken under GRAP
1)Severe+ or Emergency
(PM 2.5 over 300 µg/cubic metre or PM10 over 500 µg/cu. m. for 48+ hours)
- Stop entry of trucks into Delhi (except essential commodities)
- Stop construction work
- Introduce odd/even scheme for private vehicles and minimise exemptions
- Task Force to decide any additional steps including shutting of schools
2) Severe
(PM 2.5 over 250 µg/cu. m. or PM10 over 430 µg/cu. m.)
- Close brick kilns, hot mix plants, stone crushers
- Maximise power generation from natural gas to reduce generation from coal
- Encourage public transport, with differential rates
- More frequent mechanized cleaning of road and sprinkling of water
3) Very Poor
(PM2.5 121-250 µg/cu. m. or PM10 351-430 µg/cu. m.)
- Stop use of diesel generator sets
- Enhance parking fee by 3-4 times
- Increase bus and Metro services
- Apartment owners to discourage burning fires in winter by providing electric heaters during winter
- Advisories to people with respiratory and cardiac conditions to restrict outdoor movement
4) Moderate to poor
(PM2.5 61-120 µg/cu. m. or PM10 101-350 µg/cu. m.)
- Heavy fines for garbage burning
- Close/enforce pollution control regulations in brick kilns and industries
- Mechanized sweeping on roads with heavy traffic and water sprinkling
- Strictly enforce a ban on firecrackers
Has GRAP helped?
- The biggest success of GRAP has been in fixing accountability and deadlines.
- For each action to be taken under a particular air quality category, executing agencies are clearly marked.
- In a territory like Delhi, where a multiplicity of authorities has been a long-standing impediment to effective governance, this step made a crucial difference.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Quad Group
Mains level: Deterrence in Australia-China Ties
Australia and China’s cordial economic ties, established over the last three decades, have been soured this year over several points of friction.
Try this question
Q. Discuss the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or the Quad) and its purpose to establish “Asian Arc of Democracy”.
Various points of friction
(1) Australia’s Covid-19 inquiry
- Australia’s appeal for an independent global inquiry into the origins and initial response of Covid-19 created fury in Beijing.
- China alleged that Australia was teaming up with the US to spread “anti-China propaganda”.
(2) Tension over journalists
- The second diplomatic spat began with the detention of an Australian news anchor based in Beijing by the Chinese authorities after she was suspected of “criminal activities” that endangered China’s national security.
- The Australian government said the journalist was held under “residential surveillance” at an unknown location.
- Following this, the journalists sought refuge in Australian diplomatic missions, as they were not allowed to leave the country.
(3) Ideological issues
- The two countries have also been at loggerheads on other ideological issues previously too.
- After reports of China keeping Uighur Muslims in state-run detention camps surfaced, Australia was swift to respond and expressed “deep concern” over the “human rights situation.”
- Australia also supported Hong Kong’s autonomy cause. It decided to extend visas for Hong Kong residents.
- In both instances, China responded staunchly and asked Australia to not meddle in its “internal matters.”
(4) Economic dependence
- China is Australia’s largest trading partner in terms of both exports and imports.
- China’s share in Australia’s exports reached a record A$117 billion, or 38 per cent, in 2019, more than any other country.
- Australian sectors like mining, tourism, education benefit from trade with China. China even imports products such as milk, cheese, wine and meat.
- Over the years, it has been increasing its investment in Australian infrastructure and real estate products too.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Abortelphusa Namdaphaensis
Mains level: Eastern Himalayas and its biodiversity
A crab specie was recently named after Arunachal Pradesh’s pristine forests on the edge of a small stream in Namdapha Tiger Reserve.
Try this question from CSP 2020:
Q.With reference to India’s Biodiversity, Ceylon frogmouth, Coppersmith barbet, Gray-chinned minivet and White-throated redstart are:
(a) Birds
(b) Primates
(c) Reptiles
(d) Amphibians
Abortelphusa Namdaphaensis
- The species, a small freshwater crab species, is a tribute to Namdapha, the largest protected area in the Eastern Himalayan Biodiversity Hotspot and the Abor Hills.
- It is the first Gecarcinucidae to be found in the Himalayan region. Freshwater crabs are divided into two families/categories: Potamidae and Gecarcinucidae.
- Both differ in abdomen shape and size. Potamidae species have a broad triangular abdomen, whereas, in Gecarcinucidae, the abdomen is mostly T-shaped.
- While the Gecarcinucidae is found in the peninsular region, the Western Ghats and the Eastern Ghats, Potamidae are found in the Himalayan region.
What makes it special?
- The new species was found in a dry area, despite being a “freshwater” crab.
- Freshwater crabs use their gills to absorb dissolved oxygen from water, but for food, breeding, and other purposes, they do not need water, and thus roam on the land near water.
- The only reason it was possible to spot this on land is that the habitat around the water body has been preserved, untouched even.
- Of the 125 freshwater crabs in India, the north-east accounts for 37. Arunachal Pradesh has 15 and Assam has 21.
- The discovery highlights the potential of Arunachal Pradesh as one of the richest biodiversity hotspots in the country.
Back2Basics: Namdapha
- Namdapha (named a National Park in 1983) is known for its rich biodiversity and believed to be the rare area that harbours four large cats: tigers, snow leopards, clouded leopards and leopards.
- The Abor Hills, bordered by the Mishmi Hills and Miri Hills, is historically known for the Abor Expedition.
- It is a punitive expedition against the Abors in the North-Eastern Frontier Agency (which corresponds to parts of present-day Assam and Arunachal Pradesh) from October 1911 to April 1912.
- The expedition had thrown up a plethora of new floral and faunal species, making it a zoological and botanical expedition as well.
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