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Subject: Governance

Important aspects of Society

  • Labour code reforms address basic needs

    The article highlights the key provision of the labour code and how it will help in removing the various hurdles faced by the key stakeholders.

    Increase in the threshold for closure/lay-off and its impact

    • The Industrial Relations Code 2020 increased the threshold for retrenchment/closure or lay-off without requiring government approval, from 100 to 300 workers.
    • This will help in addressing the matter of expansion of the firms.
    • In 2014, Rajasthan had increased the threshold of taking prior permission of the government before retrenchment.
    • The reform has helped firms to set up larger operations in Rajasthan, and the same amendment was followed by 15 states.

    Fixed Term Employment(FTE): Ensuring flexibility and tackling exploitation

    • In many jobs employees are required for a few months such as infrastructure projects, textiles and garments, food and agro-processing, etc.
    • However, the contractual employment workforce is quite often exploited with respect to wages, social security, and working conditions as well as welfare facilities.
    • Fixed Term Employment is an intervention to enable the hiring of employees directly instead of hiring through contractors, which will ensure flexibility.
    • For employees, all statutory entitlements and service conditions equivalent to those of a regular employee have now been made applicable.
    • The Code on Industrial Relations also extends the benefit of gratuity even for an FTE contract of one year, which is five years in the case of regular employees.

    Strengthening the formal economy

    • The inclusion of the gig and platform workers in the Social Security Code 2020 is a step towards strengthening the formal economy.
    • The provision for insurance coverage has been extended to plantation workers, and free annual health check-ups and a bipartite safety committee has been introduced for establishments such as factories, mines and plantation sectors in place of hazardous factories.
    • The ESIC and EPFO requirements will now apply to establishments employing less than 10 and 20 workers respectively on a volunteer basis.

    Ensuring female labour force participation

    • Falling women’s workforce participation in India has been a matter of concern for a long time.
    • Female labour force participation is a driver of growth and, therefore, participation rates indicate the potential for a country to grow more rapidly.
    • The new Code ensures the employment of women in night shifts for all types of work.

    Expansions of the provisions for migrant workers

    • The Occupational Health, Safety & Working Conditions Code expands the definition of a migrant worker.
    • The expanded definition includes workers who would be directly employed by the employer besides those employed through a contractor.
    • Also a migrant, who comes on his own to the destination state, can declare himself a migrant worker by registering on an electronic portal.
    • Registration on the portal has been simplified and there is no requirement of any other document except Aadhaar.
    • For de-licencing/de-registration, it is mandated to notify registering officers about the closure of their establishment and certify payment of dues to all employed workers.
    • This will ensure that workers will not be exploited even during the closure of the concerned establishment.

    Other provisions

    • The introduction of a concept of conducting web-based inspections can be seen as an attempt of matching corporate needs in the digital world.
    • The provision for a 14-day notice period before strikes and lockdowns would allow both workers and employers to attempt resolving the issues.
    •  The codes also promote lifelong learning mechanism to match the evolving skill sets required for technology and process changes through the introduction of a reskilling fund.

    Consider the question “What are the various provision added in the three labour code and how it will help revive the economy and tackle barriers in the expansion of firms?”

    Conclusion

    The reform measures address basic needs — to revive the economy and tackle barriers in the expansion of firms. Moreover, they promote the employment of women as well as reskilling of the workforce for the deployment of migrants.

  • [pib] Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness for Innovation (CEPI)

    Translational Health Science And Technology Institute (THSTI), an autonomous institute of the Department of Biotechnology, has now been recognized by Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness for Innovation (CEPI) as one of the Global Network of Laboratories for centralized assessment of COVID 19 Vaccines.

    Note: CEPI is neither a WHO subsidiary nor a UN body .

    Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness for Innovation (CEPI)

    • The CEPI is a foundation that takes donations to finance independent research projects to develop vaccines against emerging infectious diseases (EID).
    • It is focused on the WHO’s “blueprint priority diseases.
    • These diseases include the Middle East respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (MERS-CoV), the SARS coronavirus 2 the Nipah virus, the Lassa fever virus, and the Rift Valley fever virus, as well as the Chikungunya virus and the hypothetical, unknown pathogen “Disease X”.
    • CEPI investment also requires “equitable access” to the vaccines during outbreaks.
    • CEPI was conceived in 2015 and formally launched in 2017 at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.

  • Changes in the labour laws needs to discussed and debated

    Increase in the jobs without employment security

    • Between 2004-05 and 2017-18, the share of salaried workers outside agriculture without any written contract increased from 60 per cent to 71 per cent.
    • Even in private and public limited companies, this share increased from 59 per cent to 71 per cent.
    • In the government and the public sector the share of such workers increasing from 27 per cent to 45 per cent over the period.
    • Many of the wage jobs in the organised sector came through contractors.
    • In organised manufacturing, the reported share of contract labour increased from 13 per cent in 1995-06 to 36 per cent in 2017-18.

    Policy response

    • A policy to deal with the problem of employment security was much needed.
    • The response came in the form the three revised labour Code Bills — on Industrial Relations, Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions, and Social Security.
    • These were introduced in Parliament in the Monsoon Session, and approved on September 23.
    • These three labour codes, along with the Code on Wages approved earlier, touch the lives of every Indian worker.

     “Fixed term” worker

    • In 2018, the government amended the Standing Orders on Employment Act and introduced the category of “fixed term” worker.
    • That category creates a permanent cadre of temporary workers, with no prospects of career growth and job security.

    Changes and issues with the Bills

    • 1) Government had rationalised fixed-term employment by arguing that industries had resorted to the third-party engagement of contract labour to get around the rigidities in firing workers.
    • But that has not stopped the Codes from further liberalising the provisions relating to employment of contract labour and making their regulation applicable only in establishments employing 50 or more workers, instead of 20 or more.
    • 2) The key provisions which regulate the employment of inter-state migrant workers have been further diluted and made applicable only to establishments employing 10 or more such workers, compared to five earlier.
    • 3) Along with the provisions of retrenchment, the applicability of the Standing Orders, which regulate the categorisation as well as the terms of employment of workers in establishments, has also been raised from 100 to 300 workers.
    • 4) The threshold for factories has now been doubled — from 10 to 20 workers with power — thereby eliminating a large number of important regulatory provisions for the smaller factories.
    • 5) Relevant governments have been given much more leeway in exempting establishments from the applicability of a whole range of provisions in the Code.
    • 6) Inspection provisions have been diluted in all the Codes and will no longer even be complaints based.
    • 7)  The changes have also made legal industrial action a virtual impossibility, and the presence of unions less possible.

    Conclusion

    Informality contributes to inequality and to conditions which make sustainable growth impossible, and economic recovery more difficult. It also creates conditions in which employers under-invest in workers’ capacities and workers are not invested in a company’s future — leading to low productivity and lack of competitiveness.

  • A demarcation in the interest of public order

    The article analyses how could the duel role assigned to an official leads to the problems in certain situations and so suggest the separation of the roles.

    Context

    • Delhi Police, having magisterial powers under the Criminal Procedure Code to take preventive action has been criticised for failing to maintain public order and prevent riots in Delhi.

    Issue with delegation: Confusion powers with the role

    • The distinction between independent actions, for which no political clearance is needed, by the District Magistrate to maintain public order and by the police to investigate crime and make arrests, was ignored.
    • Maintaining public order requires the District Magistrate to make hard choices but there can be no justification for lack of effective police action.
    • The District Magistrate is expected to consider protest as legitimate.
    • In Delhi, the police did not distinguish between wider political support and violence caused by a few.

    Distinction between “law and order” and “public order”

    • The Supreme Court has made a distinction between law and order, relating to individual crime, and public order.
    • Law and order consists of the analysis made by police of the situation in an area and their commitment to firm action and penalties under criminal law.
    • Public order is a duty imposed on the District Magistrate to assess whether it is necessary to rush to the spot where law and order has been breached to prevent violence.
    • The District Magistrate’s role is important in exceptional situations — for example, to prevent a breach of peace at a particular place.
    • If an official is allotted a dual role, this could lead to the displacement of one goal in favour of the other.

    Supreme Court’s guidelines

    • The Supreme Court has formulated certain guidelines and rules when it comes to these distinct duties.
    • 1) In Ram Manohar Lohia vs. State of Bihar, in 1965, the Supreme Court held that in the case of ‘public order’, the community or the public at large have to be affected by a particular action as it “embraces more of the community than ‘law and order’, which affects only a few individuals”.
    • 2) In the Madhu Limaye case, the Bench reiterated that “the emergency must be sudden and the consequences sufficiently grave” for imposition of restrictions.
    • 3) In Anuradha Bhasin vs. Union of India, the Supreme Court held that prohibitive orders should not prevent legitimate expression of opinion or grievance or exercise of democratic rights.
    • The Supreme Court has also specifically recognised the importance of the assessment of the role of the District Magistrate, distinct from that of the police.

    Way forward

    • Judicial review of roles and proportionality of decisions for maintaining public order requires a policy rethink.
    • Prevention through grievance redress and reliance on the least blunt instruments are critical for legitimacy.
    • The National Police Commission also recognises the coordinating role of the District Magistrate, having more leverage than the police.

    Conclusion

    The role of the District Magistrate needs to be clearly differentiated from the role of the Police Commissioner.

  • Obesity in India

    Adults in urban India consume much more fat than those in rural areas, found the latest survey by the Indian Council of Medical Research and National Institute of Nutrition.

    Do you know?

    Over-nutrition is also a form of malnutrition.

    ‘What India Eats’ Survey

    • Adults in India’s urban centres consumed 51.6 grammes fat per day per head on an average. The volume was 36 g in rural areas, according to the survey report What India Eats.
    • The report categorised fat into two groups:
    1. Visible or added fat, comprising oils and fat in preparing food, in fried food and those derived from meat and poultry
    2. Invisible fat, including fat/oils from rice, pulses, nuts and oilseeds

    Urban-Rural data

    • 84 per cent of the rural population secured their energy (E) per day requirement from total fats/oils, or visible / added fats.
    • On the other hand, less than 20 per cent of the urban population derived their E / day from this category.
    • In urban areas of the country, northern India had the highest intake of added fat with 45.9 g / day.
    • Southern India reported the lowest per capita consumption of added fat/oils with 22.9 g / day in this segment of the population.
    • In the urban region of north India, fat intake (67.3 g) was among the highest; and overweight, obesity and abdominal obesity were highest when compared to other regions.

  • Dealing with the problems of medical education

    The article discusses the issues with medical education in India and how it affects the principle of equality.

    Role of private entities

    • Due to demand for high-quality medical care on the one hand and constraints on public resources on the other, private entities have been permitted to establish medical educational institutions to supplement government efforts.
    • In the field of health care, there is a continuing shortage of health-care personnel.
    • The infrastructure required for high-quality modern medical education is expensive.
    • The three stated objectives of medical education has been — providing health-care personnel in all parts of the country, ensuring quality and improving equity.
    • None of the three stated objectives of medical education has been achieved by the private sector.
    • Though they are supposed to be not-for-profit, taking advantage of the poor regulatory apparatus and the ability to both tweak and create rules, these private entities, with very few exceptions, completely commercialised education.

    Demand for regulation and equity

    • There have been attempts to regulate fees, sometimes by governments and sometimes by courts.
    •  These efforts have not been fruitful.
    • The executive, primarily the Medical Council of India, has proven unequal to the task of ensuring that private institutions comply with regulations.
    •  When the courts are approached, which issues are seen as important depends on the Bench.
    • It was in this situation that led to the introduction of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (Undergraduate), or NEET-UG, as a single all-India gateway for admission to medical colleges.
    •  Challenged in courts, after an initial setback, the NEET scheme has been upheld.

    How NEET affected equity

    • NEET may have improved the quality of candidates admitted to private institutions to some extent, but it seems to have further worsened equity.
    • Under any scheme of admission, the number of students from government schools who are able to get admission to a medical college is very low.
    • With NEET, the number has become lower.
    • The high fees of private medical colleges have always been an impossible hurdle for students from government schools, whatever the method used for admission.

    Way forward

    • The basic cause of inequity in admission to higher educational institutions is the absence of a high quality school system accessible to all.
    • Allowing government medical colleges to admit students based on marks in Standard XII and using NEET scores for admission to private colleges will be more equitable right now.

    Conclusion

    Only a resolute government, determined to ensure that economic policy facilitates quality and equity in education, can do it.

  • Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2020

    The Centre moved to standardize protocols of the growing fertility industry and introduced the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2020, in Lok Sabha on the first day of the monsoon session of Parliament.

    Try this question for mains:

    Q. What is Assisted Reproductive Technology? Discuss the salient features of ART Regulation Bill, 2020?

    Features of the ART Regulation Bill, 2020

    (1) Defining ART

    • The Bill defines ART to include all techniques that seek to obtain a pregnancy by handling the sperm or the oocytes (immature egg cell) outside the human body and transferring the gamete or the embryo into the reproductive system of a woman.
    • Examples of ART services include gamete (sperm or oocyte) donation, in-vitro-fertilisation (fertilising an egg in the lab), and gestational surrogacy (the child is not biologically related to surrogate mother).
    • ART services will be provided through: (i) ART clinics, which offer ART related treatments and procedures, and (ii) ART banks, which store and supply gametes.

    (2) Regulation of ART clinics and banks

    • The Bill provides that every ART clinic and the bank must be registered under the National Registry of Banks and Clinics of India.
    • The National Registry will be established under the Bill and will act as a central database with details of all ART clinics and banks in the country.
    • State governments will appoint registration authorities for facilitating the registration process.
    • Clinics and banks will be registered only if they adhere to certain standards (specialised manpower, physical infrastructure, and diagnostic facilities).
    • The registration will be valid for five years and can be renewed for a further five years. Registration may be cancelled or suspended if the entity contravenes the provisions of the Bill.

    (3) Conditions for gamete donation and supply

    • Screening of gamete donors, collection and storage of semen, and provision of oocyte donor can only be done by a registered ART bank.
    • A bank can obtain semen from males between 21 and 55 years of age, and oocytes from females between 23 and 35 years of age.
    • An oocyte donor should be an ever-married woman having at least one alive child of her own (minimum three years of age).
    • The woman can donate oocyte only once in her life and not more than seven oocytes can be retrieved from her.
    • A bank cannot supply gamete of a single donor to more than one commissioning couple (couple seeking services).

    (4) Conditions for offering ART services

    • ART procedures can only be carried out with the written informed consent of both the party seeking ART services as well as the donor.
    • The party seeking ART services will be required to provide insurance coverage in the favour of the oocytes donor (for any loss, damage, or death of the donor).
    • A clinic is prohibited from offering to provide a child of pre-determined sex. The Bill also requires checking for genetic diseases before the embryo implantation.

    (5) Rights of a child born through ART 

    • A child born through ART will be deemed to be a biological child of the commissioning couple and will be entitled to the rights and privileges available to a natural child of the commissioning couple.
    • A donor will not have any parental rights over the child.

    (6) National and State Boards

    • The Bill provides that the National and State Boards for Surrogacy constituted under the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2019 will act as the National and State Board respectively for the regulation of ART services.
    • Key powers and functions of the National Board include:
    1. advising the central government on ART related policy matters,
    2. reviewing and monitoring the implementation of the Bill,
    3. formulating code of conduct and standards for ART clinics and banks, and
    4. overseeing various bodies to be constituted under the Bill
    • The State Boards will coordinate enforcement of the policies and guidelines for ART as per the recommendations, policies, and regulations of the National Board.

    (7) Offences and penalties

    • Offences under the Bill include:

    (i) abandoning, or exploiting children born through ART, (ii) selling, purchasing, trading, or importing human embryos or gametes, (iii) using intermediates to obtain donors, (iv) exploiting commissioning couple, woman, or the gamete donor in any form, and (v) transferring the human embryo into a male or an animal.

    • These offences will be punishable with a fine between five and ten lakh rupees for the first contravention.
    • For subsequent contraventions, these offences will be punishable with imprisonment for a term between eight and 12 years, and a fine between 10 and 20 lakh rupees.
    • Any clinic or bank advertising or offering sex-selective ART will be punishable with imprisonment between five and ten years, or fine between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 25 lakh, or both.
    • No court will take cognizance of offences under the Bill, except on a complaint made by the National or State Board or any officer authorised by the Boards.

    With inputs from PRS: https://www.prsindia.org/billtrack/assisted-reproductive-technology-regulation-bill-2020

  • World Bank’s Human Capital Index 2020

    India has been ranked at the 116th position in the latest edition of the World Bank’s annual Human Capital Index that benchmarks key components of human capital across countries.

    Try this PYQ:

    Q.As per UN-Habitat’s Global Report on Human Settlements 2009, which one among the following regions has shown the fastest growth rate of urbanization in the last three decades?

    (a) Asia

    (b) Europe

    (c) Latin America and Caribbean

    (d) North America

    Highlights of the 2020 rankings

    • The 2020 Human Capital Index update includes health and education data for 174 countries — covering 98 per cent of the world’s population — up to March 2020.
    • It provides a pre-pandemic baseline on the health and education of children, with the biggest strides made in low-income countries.

    Impact of the pandemic

    • The analysis shows that pre-pandemic, most countries had made steady progress in building the human capital of children, with the biggest strides made in low-income countries.
    • The pandemic puts at risk the decade’s progress in building human capital, including the improvements in health, survival rates, school enrollment, and reduced stunting.
    • The economic impact of the pandemic has been particularly deep for women and for the most disadvantaged families, leaving many vulnerable to food insecurity and poverty.
    • Due to the pandemic’s impact, most children — more than 1 billion — have been out of school and could lose out, on average, half a year of schooling, adjusted for learning, translating into considerable monetary losses.
    • Data also shows significant disruptions to essential health services for women and children, with many children missing out on crucial vaccinations.

    India’s performance

    • India’s score increased to 0.49 from 0.44 in 2018, as per the Human Capital Index report released by the World Bank.
    • Last year, India had raised “serious reservations” over the Human Capital Index, wherein India was ranked 115 out of 157 countries.
    • This year India finds itself at 116th from among 174 countries.

    Back2Basics: Human Capital Project

    1. As part of this World Development Report (WDR), the World Bank has launched a Human Capital Project (HCP).
    2. The HCP programme is claimed to be a program of advocacy, measurement, and analytical work to raise awareness and increase demand for interventions to build human capital.
    3. There are three components of HCP:
    • a cross-country human capital measurement metric called the Human Capital Index (HCI),
    • a programme of measurement and research to inform policy action
    • a programme of support for country strategies to accelerate investment in human capital.

    Human Capital Index (HCI)

    1. The HCI has been constructed for 157 countries.
    2. It claims to seek to measure the amount of human capital that a child born today can expect to attain by age 18.
    3. The HCI has three components:
      • Survival: as measured by under-5 mortality rates
      • Expected years of Quality-Adjusted School: which combines information on the quantity and quality of education
      • Health environment: Using two proxies of (a) adult survival rates and (b) the rate of stunting for children under age 5. 

    HDI vs. HCI

    1. UNDP constructs Human Development Index (HDI) for several years.
    2. The HCI uses survival rates and stunting rate instead of life expectancy as a measure of health, and quality-adjusted learning instead of merely years of schooling as a measure of education.
    3. HCI also excludes per capita income whereas the HDI uses it.

  • National Medical Commission

    The National Medical Commission (NMC) has replaced the Medical Council of India (BoG-MCI), as per information released by the Health Ministry.

    National Medical Commission

    • National Medical Commission (NMC) is an Indian regulatory body of 33 members which regulates medical education and medical professionals.
    • It replaced the Medical Council of India (MCI) on 25 September 2020.
    • The Commission grants recognition of medical qualifications, gives accreditation to medical schools, grants registration to medical practitioners, and monitors medical practice and assess the medical infrastructure in India.
    • The NMC will have four separate autonomous boards: under-graduate medical education, post-graduate medical education, medical assessment and rating and ethics and medical registration.

    It’s legal backing

    • The NITI Aayog had recommended the replacement of MCI with NMC.
    • The decision was approved by most states and after its approval by the Prime Minister and NMC bill was passed by parliament and approved by President on 8 August 2019.
    • National Medical Commission ordinance was brought in to replace Medical Council of India in early 2019 through an ordinance issued in January 2019 by the President of India.
    • The Supreme Court had allowed the Central Government to replace the medical council and with the help of five specialized doctors monitor the medical education system in India, from July 2017.
    • The government dissolved the MCI in 2018 and Indian Medical Council Act, 1956 (102 of 1956) stands repealed.

  • What is a Yo-Yo Test?

    In his interaction with fitness experts and influencers the PM asked about the yo-yo test, that is a vital part of the Indian cricket team’s fitness routine.

    Try this MCQ:

    Q.The Yo-Yo test sometimes seen in news is related to:

    Sports/ Healthcare/ Robotics/ Automation

    What is the Yo-Yo test?

    • The test was developed by Danish football physiologist Jens Bangsbo.
    • Two cones are placed 20 metres apart, and the athlete has to run between them when the beep goes off.
    • The beeps become more frequent after one minute, and if the athlete fails to reach the line within that time, he is expected to catch up within two more beeps.
    • The test is stopped if the player fails to catch up before the beeps run out.
    • The test has a beginner and an advanced level, and players are given scores. The minimum score set by the Board of Control for Cricket in India to pass the test is 16.1.