Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Disaster Management Act 2005
Mains level: Paper 2- Making healthcare disaster prepared
The article highlights the importance of the robust public healthcare system for the disaster preparedness and suggests linking it with the primary healthcare.
Reactive approach to disasters
- In 2005, India enacted the Disaster Management Act, which laid an institutional framework for managing disasters across the country.
- Under the Act, reactive, ad hoc measures applied in the event of a disaster, was to be replaced with a systematic scheme for prevention, mitigation, and responding to disasters of all kinds.
- Disaster management considerations were to be incorporated into every aspect of development and the activities of different sectors, including health.
- While some headway has indeed been achieved, the approach continues to be largely reactive.
- Significant gaps remain particularly in terms of medical preparedness for disasters.
Medical preparedness for disasters
- Two important lessons emerge:-
- First, health services and their continuing development cannot be oblivious to the possibility of disaster-imposed pressures.
- Second, the legal framework for disaster management must push a legal mandate for strengthening the public health system.
Role of private health sector during disaster
- Instances of overcharging during Covid illustrates how requisitioning of private sector services during disasters can hardly be a dependable option in the Indian context.
- This is particularly important since the future development of hospital care services is being envisaged chiefly under publicly financed health insurance, which would very likely be private-sector led.
- The Indian private sector landscape, characterised by weak regulation and poor organisation, is incapable for mounting a strong and coordinated response to disasters.
- During disasters, the limited regulatory ability could be further compromised.
- While publicly financed insurance could be a medium to introduce some order into this picture, a large majority of private hospitals in the country are small enterprises which cannot meet the inclusion criteria for insurance.
- Many of these small hospitals are also unsuitable for meeting disaster-related care needs.
- Punitive action against non-compliant requisitioned hospitals becomes tricky during disasters since health services are already inadequate.
- Private hospitals are known to prefer lucrative and high-end ‘cold’ cases, especially under insurance, and are generally averse to infectious diseases and critical cases with unpredictable profiles.
Need for strong public sector capacities
- Due to the above-cited limitations of the private sector, strong public sector capacities are imperative for dealing with disasters.
- While the Disaster Management Act does require States and hospitals to have emergency plans, medical preparedness is a matter of policy, and, therefore, gaps are pervasive.
- There is a strong case for introducing a legal mandate to strengthen public sector capacities via disaster legislation.
- There is also scope for greater integration of disaster management with primary care.
- Primary care stands for things such as multisectoral action, community engagement, disease surveillance, and essential health-care provision, all of which are central to disaster management.
Way forward
- Evidence supports the significance of robust primary care during disasters, and this is particularly relevant for low-income settings.
- Synergies with the National Health Mission, concurrently with the Disaster Management Act in 2005, could be worth exploring.
- Interestingly, the National Health Mission espouses a greater role for the community and local bodies, the lack of which has been a major criticism of the Disaster Management Act.
- Making primary health care central to disaster management can be a significant step towards building health system and community resilience to disasters.
Consider the question “Robust public healthcare system is indispensable for the disaster preparedness which could be achieved through making the primary healthcare central to the disaster management. Comment.
Conclusion
While the novel coronavirus pandemic has waned both in objective severity and subjective seriousness, valuable messages and lessons lie scattered around. It is for us to not lose sight and pick them up.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Role of CPCB and SPCBs
Mains level: Paper 3- Issues faced by SPCBs
The article deals with the issues faced by the State Pollution Control Boards.
Role of CPCB and State Pollution Control Boards
- The pollution crisis is a highly complex, multi-disciplinary issue with several contributory factors.
- To address this crisis, India has a plethora of rules, laws and specialised agencies which, at least on paper, seem very impressive.
- The footsoldiers of India’s battle against polluters are its officials at the state pollution control boards.
- The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) based in Delhi is generally well funded and resourced, unlike the state pollution control boards (SPCBs) that are in charge of implementation of the rules that CPCB writes.
5 issues faced by SPCBs
1) Shortage of Staff
- As an illustration, the Haryana State Pollution Control Board has been operating with a 70 per cent staff shortage.
- What this means practically is that a single officer is tasked to handle the demands of pollution control for an entire district without any subordinate technical staff.
- This comes at the cost of not being able to do inspections and other core pollution control work.
2) Lack of specialisation
- The officers at the SPCBs do not get to develop any specialisation.
- The CPCB has a decent workforce and robust laboratories, where scientists once recruited get to work and excel in a particular area.
- On the other hand, SPCBs don’t have such a stratified system, and the same officer is in charge of all these pollution categories, making it impossible to gain expertise and excel in any one area.
3) Lack of legal skills to take on pollutors
- SPCBs lack the necessary legal skills to take on polluters.
- While a legal cell may exist at the head office of a SPCB, they have few full-time public prosecutors there.
- As a result, engineering graduates in district SPCB offices — have to play the role of lawyers and develop legal paperwork that often falls short of holding polluters to account.
- Clerks and superintendents at courts often refuse to file cases, pointing at flaws that someone not trained in law would naturally make.
4) Lack of funds
- SPCBs are chronically underfunded.
- For instance, the funds of several SPCBs such as Haryana’s largely come from “No Objection Certificates” and “Consent to Operate” that the boards grant to industries and projects, rather than budgetary allocations by the government.
- Owing to this, SPCB officials are unable to spend on critical functions.
5) Additional duties
- SPCB officials are at times given additional responsibilities that are unrelated to pollution control.
- Haryana’s SPCB, for instance, has poultry farms under its ambit.
Consider the question “Dealing with the crisis of air pollution need coordination at various levels and the State Pollution Control Boards play an important role in it. In light of this, examine the challenges and suggest the steps needed to empower them.”
Conclusion
India must empower SPCBs to act by giving them the necessary funds, human resources, tools and technologies.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3-Challenges in judicial review of the central bank actions
Judicil review of central bank action could impact several stakeholders at the same time. This type of problems could be termed as polycentric problems. The article disusses the issues with judicial reviews in such cases.
Judicial review of central bank actions
- The Supreme Court is currently considering if the RBI should extend the COVID-19 induced loan moratorium and waive the accrued interest on interest.
- Earlier this year, the court struck down an RBI circular imposing a ban on virtual currencies.
- Last year, it quashed RBI circular that mandated banks and financial institutions to initiate insolvency proceedings against defaulting companies with significant loan exposures.
Unsuitable for adjudication
- Legal scholars have long recognised that certain disputes are inherently unsuitable for adjudicative disposition.
- The most influential arguments on this subject were advanced by the American legal philosopher Lon Luvois Fuller.
- Fuller compared polycentricity with a spider’s web — a pull on one strand distributes the tension throughout the web in a complicated pattern.
- Applied to adjudication, polycentric problems normally involve many affected parties and a somewhat fluid state of affairs.
- The range of those affected by the dispute cannot easily be foreseen and their participation in the decision-making process by reasoned arguments and proofs cannot possibly be organised.
- As a result, the adjudicator is inadequately informed and cannot determine the complex repercussions of a proposed solution.
Complexity of functioning of bank
- Disputes involving certain central bank functions are highly polycentric and are unsuitable for resolution through judicial review.
- For example, consider monetary policy function.
- This involves varying short-term interest rate to control supply and demand of money in the economy, which, in turn, influences economic activity and inflation.
- If judicial review supplants the central bank’s decision on this rate with the decision of the adjudicator, the repercussions would affect every single borrower and saver.
- Yet, the adjudicator can neither offer a meaningful hearing to all those affected parties, nor can he effectively process all the necessary information to determine an optimal solution.
- Evidently, disputes about monetary policy rate are highly polycentric and are better resolved outside the court.\
Which actions of banks should involve judicial review
- Not all disputes involving central bank functions are polycentric.
- For example, a dispute regarding imposition of a pecuniary penalty by a central bank could be resolved through judicial review.
- If the adjudicator finds the central bank to be correct, it need not interfere.
- If the adjudicator finds the central bank to be incorrect, it could modify or overturn the central bank’s decision.
- Clearly, judicial review could be effectively used to resolve bipolar disputes involving the central bank if they exhibit low polycentricity.
Need for striking the balance
- Monetary policy and pecuniary penalties are at two extreme ends of the polycentricity spectrum.
- There are, however, various central bank functions of intermediate polycentricity.
- Consider prudential regulations such as bank capital regulation.
- If judicial review supplants provisions of such regulations with the decision of the adjudicator, it may appear to directly impact only the banks and nobody else.
- But in reality, it could impact bank lending, which, in turn, would have complex repercussions on the entire credit market and risk-taking abilities across the economy.
- Effective hearing of all affected parties, directly or indirectly, would, therefore, be impossible.
- Consequently, some bipolar disputes involving the central bank may be too polycentric for meaningful resolution through judicial review.
- Judicial review could be purely procedural — the adjudicator could merely review whether the central bank’s action is within its legal mandate or not.
- The adjudicator could at most nullify a procedurally invalid central bank action, but may never supplant the decision of the central bank with his own.
Consider the question “Judicial review of the central bank actions could be different from the other judicial reviews. Examine the issues in such reviews by the judiciary.”
Conclusion
Adopting polycentricity test within constitutional jurisprudence would help sustain the legitimacy of judicial review while retaining the accountability of technocratic institutions such as the central bank.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not Much
Mains level: Loopholes in India's policymaking
This newscard is an excerpt of the original article published in the DownToEarth.
Central theme: India needs to work out problems in old policies and develop new ones that ensure a rapid tectonic shift in India’s technological future.
Past lessons:
(1) From Agriculture
- The Father of the Green Revolution, Norman E Borlaug, was credited with the development of semi-dwarf, disease-resistant and high-yield variety of wheat that he introduced in India, Pakistan and Mexico.
- Led by Mexico, and soon followed by India, many countries adopted what is now commonly known as the ‘Green Revolution’.
- Even after suffering two famines and recovering from the colonial catastrophe, India transformed itself into a self-sufficient nation in terms of rice and wheat over the next two decades.
Sustaining GR with farm mechanization
- Nearing the end of this decade, farm mechanization in India stands at 40-45 per cent, which is low compared to the USA (95 per cent), Brazil (75 per cent) and China (57 per cent).
- Renewal of focus on farm mechanization was afforded only in the 12th five-year plan through a sub-mission on agricultural mechanization.
- Regional disparities aside, India has broken the inertia in adopting farm machinery when compared to previous decades that is largely owed to the current push by the Union government.
Still stranded with Land reforms
- Yet, the response came late as compared to other countries with similar levels of development and was off by decades when compared to advanced economies.
- Indian policymakers are still catching-up when implementing agriculture reforms, including land record digitization that should have been done and dusted by now.
(2) Agriculture to Industries
- After adopting resistant-variety cotton, India became the largest producer and second-largest exporter of cotton.
- But it lags significantly behind in exporting cotton fabric at 5-6 per cent of the global share as China leads at 51 per cent.
- Even with technical textiles, India’s production share is at four per cent and we suffer from an overall trade deficit.
Why do we lag?
- The earlier policies have not been revamped to reorient them into improving the technologically laggard and decentralized small-scale industries.
- The overall direction is guided by budgetary announcements and segregated schemes that often leads to ambiguity in policy.
- The new textile policy that is expected to provide for the economy of scale through textile parks is yet to be rolled out and the dedicated National Technical Textile Mission has only been recently announced.
- Both policies should have been in place a decade ago.
(3) Automobile sector
- India’s automobile sector is yet another example of playing policy catch-up.
- None of the Indian companies has any substantial market share in electric vehicle (EV) production, and retail sale of EVs in India has not registered any significant growth.
- The biggest hurdle to the growth of EVs in India, among others, is policy ambiguity in relation to conventional internal combustion (IC) engine vehicles that hamper strategic business decisions.
Beyond lofty roadmaps
- In June 2019, NITI Aayog claimed that only EVs would be sold in India after 2030, replacing conventional IC engine vehicles, a claim that was later refuted by the Union Minister of Transport.
- Policy ambiguity and lack of clear-cut directives on such a revolutionary technology can create disarray within the industry and on the broader strategic direction of the manufacturing sector.
(4) Gaps in data and privacy lawmaking
- The world is fast changing with the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing (QC).
- Every dimension of technology will start interacting with each other as the physical operations will all be controlled and operated by intelligent and adaptive virtual systems.
Here too, India lags
- Advanced economies have already put data regulation guidelines in place. China and the United States are already far too ahead in their R&D and policy research into AI and QC.
- India developed its national strategy for AI only in 2018 and still lacks a full-proof futuristic policy on quantum computing.
- Revolutionary and disruptive technologies require full-proof futuristic policies and strategies for development, and not vision documents and segregated schemes.
Dealing with data
- As of November 2019, the Internet and Mobile Association of India put India’s active Internet users at 504 million; in 2020, India would register nearly 700 million internet users.
- We generate a copious amount of data, which, when combined with personal data from individual users in India, demand a new legal and paradigm change.
- India’s data fiduciary laws are still in their nascent stage.
- Data Protection Bill based on the recommendation of the Justice BN Srikrishna Committee is still pending with Parliament.
Not treating the symptoms
- Every day millions of Indians share intricate personal details and data over the internet; a majority of active users are unaware of the threats posed by an open-access to data.
- Political battles are slowly gaining traction on the internet by harnessing the loopholes in social media.
- Threats of state surveillance loom over millions of Indians and even now, any legal framework to protect data or privacy is missing.
What we can deduce from the above discussion?
- The Indian State heavily influences the outcome of the country’s technological development, largely due to the significant presence of PSEs, the dominance of public expenditure in R&D and the type of mixed economy.
- Therefore timely policy intervention is essential to drive technological development in India.
- Policies also require time to materialise and bear fruit, and thus far, India’s track record in implementing policies does not inspire confidence.
India isn’t always laggard
- India has been able to harness the potential of technology in the past by timely policy intervention. India was an early bird to its environmental policies and space technology.
- The United States set up its Solar Energy Research Institute in 1977 and India set up its Commission of Alternate Sources of Energy (CASE) in 1981.
- Today, India leads by example in the share of renewable energy in its power generation matrix. India’s space technology is another success story that doesn’t miss the public eye.
- Time and again, through innovation and research, Indian academia and industries have exemplified its willingness and capacity to change, and all it requires is the desired policy push.
Conclusion
- With the rapid pace of technological development, the Union government and states cannot set to lose out time, as they have done in the previous decades.
- India must hunt for new technological innovations, fund research into prospective applications and build policies to facilitate the adoption of new technologies.
- Ministries and public-funded research bodies must be re-tasked to actively seek out new and emerging technologies all across the globe.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: SCO
Mains level: SCO and India
In an indirect reference to the Chinese infrastructure projects in PoK, our PM has urged members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) to respect “territorial integrity” and “sovereignty”.
What is SCO?
- After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the then security and economic architecture in the Eurasian region dissolved and new structures had to come up.
- The original Shanghai Five were China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan.
- The SCO was formed in 2001, with Uzbekistan included. It expanded in 2017 to include India and Pakistan.
- Since its formation, the SCO has focused on regional non-traditional security, with counter-terrorism as a priority.
- The fight against the “three evils” of terrorism, separatism and extremism has become its mantra. Today, areas of cooperation include themes such as economics and culture.
Try this PYQ now:
Q. In the context of the affairs of which of the following is the phrase “Special Safeguard Mechanisms” mentioned in the news frequently?
(a) United Nations Environment Programme
(b) World Trade Organization
(c) ASEAN- India Free Trade Agreement
(d) G-20 Summits
India’s entry to the SCO
- India and Pakistan both were observer countries.
- While Central Asian countries and China were not in favour of expansion initially, the main supporter — of India’s entry in particular — was Russia.
- A widely held view is that Russia’s growing unease about an increasingly powerful China prompted it to push for its expansion.
- From 2009 onwards, Russia officially supported India’s ambition to join the SCO. China then asked for its all-weather friend Pakistan’s entry.
Tap to read more about SCO
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: OPEC + members
Mains level: Global oil price dynamics
Oil prices jumped by close to 10% for its biggest daily gain in almost six months after news of a highly effective vaccine against COVID-19 and Saudi Arabia’s assurance that an OPEC+ oil output deal could be adjusted to balance the market.
About OPEC
- OPEC stands for Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
- It is a permanent, intergovernmental organization, created at the Baghdad Conference in 1960, by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.
- It aims to manage the supply of oil in an effort to set the price of oil in the world market, in order to avoid fluctuations that might affect the economies of both producing and purchasing countries.
- It is headquartered in Vienna, Austria.
- OPEC membership is open to any country that is a substantial exporter of oil and which shares the ideals of the organization.
- Today OPEC is a cartel that includes 14 nations, predominantly from the middle east whose sole responsibility is to control prices and moderate supply.
What is OPEC+?
- The non-OPEC countries which export crude oil along with the 14 OPECs are termed as OPEC plus countries.
- OPEC plus countries include Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, Russia, South Sudan and Sudan.
- Saudi and Russia, both have been at the heart of a three-year alliance of oil producers known as OPEC Plus — which now includes 11 OPEC members and 10 non-OPEC nations — that aims to shore up oil prices with production cuts.
Why OPEC plus came into existence?
- When Russia concluded the Vienna Agreement in 2016, the Russian leadership believed that it would help prepare the country for the Russian presidential elections in March 2018.
- Higher oil prices ensured the Kremlin’s financial capacity to lead a successful electoral campaign.
- This changed the regime’s priorities – from satisfying the needs of the general population to ensuring the sustainability of the Kremlin’s alliance with powerful tycoons, including that controlling oil production.
- For Saudi Arabia, turning what had been an ad hoc coalition into a formal group provides a hedge (protection) against future oil-market turbulence.
- For Russia, the formalization of the group helps expand Putin’s influence in the Middle East
- However, both reportedly aimed at causing a drop in oil prices in order to hit US shale producers, who have continued to benefit from OPEC production cuts by expanding their market share.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Nagorno-Karabakh region
Mains level: Usual crisis in the middle east and caucasus region
Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed on a deal with Russia to end fierce clashes over Nagorno-Karabakh after a string of Azerbaijani victories in its fight to retake the disputed region.
Ending up the bloodshed
- During the course of the conflict, over 1200 have lost their lives as per the Nagorno-Karabakh authorities, while thousands have been displaced.
- Since the conflict started in September, multiple ceasefire agreements have been signed between the two sides, but none so far have been successful.
- The deal is meant to end the conflict between the two nations.
- Russia’s role in the conflict has been somewhat opaque since it supplies arms to both countries and is in a military alliance with Armenia called the Collective Security Treaty Organisation.
What is the Nagorno-Karabakh region?
- Straddling western Asia and Eastern Europe, Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, but most of the region is controlled by Armenian separatists.
- It has been part of Azerbaijan territory since the Soviet era.
- When the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late 1980s, Armenia’s regional parliament voted for the region’s transfer to Armenia; the Soviet authorities turned down the demand.
- Years of clashes followed between Azerbaijan forces and Armenian separatists.
- The violence lasted into the 1990s, leaving tens and thousands dead and displacing hundreds of thousands.
- In 1994, Russia brokered a ceasefire, by which time ethnic Armenians had taken control of the region.
Consider this PYQ:
Q.The area is known as ‘Golan Heights’ sometimes appears in the news in the context of the events related to: (CSP 2015)
a) Central Asia
b) Middle East
c) South-East Asia
d) Central Africa
Who controls it?
- While the area remains in Azerbaijan, it is today governed by separatist Armenians who have declared it a republic called the “Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast”.
- While the Armenian government does not recognise Nagorno-Karabakh as independent, it supports the region politically and militarily.
Ethnicity and the conflict
- Ethnic tensions from decades ago have a crucial role in the dispute.
- While the Azeris claim that the disputed region was under their control in known history, Armenians maintain that Karabakh was a part of the Armenian kingdom.
- At present, the disputed region consists of a majority Armenian Christian population, even though it is internationally recognised as a part of Muslim-majority Azerbaijan.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Thirty Metre Telescope
Mains level: Not Much
With regime change in the US, hopes have been raised for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in Hawaii. India is one of the partners in the ambitious next-generation observatory project along with the US, Canada, China and Japan.
Try this PYQ:
Q.“Event Horizon” is related to:
(a) Telescope
(b) Black hole
(c) Solar glares
(d) None of the above
Thirty Metre Telescope
- The TMT is a proposed astronomical observatory with an extremely large telescope (ELT) that has become the source of controversy over its planned location on Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii.
- It is being built by an international collaboration of government organisations and educational institutions, at a cost of $1.4 billion.
- “Thirty Metre” refers to the 30-metre diameter of the mirror, with 492 segments of glass pieced together, which makes it three times as wide as the world’s largest existing visible-light telescope.
- The larger the mirror, the more light a telescope can collect, which means, in turn, that it can “see” farther, fainter objects.
- It would be more than 200 times more sensitive than current telescopes and would be able to resolve objects 12 times better than the Hubble Space Telescope.
Utility of the telescope
- One of its key uses will be the study of exoplanets, many of which have been detected in the last few years, and whether their atmospheres contain water vapour or methane — the signatures of possible life.
- For the first time in history, this telescope will be capable of detecting extraterrestrial life.
- The study of black holes is another objective.
- While these have been observed in detail within the Milky Way, the next galaxy is 100 times farther away; the Thirty Metre Telescope will help bring them closer.
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