Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3- Impact of second Covid wave on States' fiscal health
The article gives the overview of the impact of second Covid wave on the fiscal health of the States.
Impact of first Covid wave on fiscal health of states
- The analysis of the fiscal data for all states with the exception of Goa, Manipur, Meghalaya and Sikkim reveal a grim picture.
- The aggregate revenue deficit for 24 state governments soared to Rs 4 trillion as per the revised estimates (RE) for 2020-21, up from a modest budgeted amount of Rs 353 billion.
- And, despite a 16 per cent cut in capital spending, the fiscal deficit of these states deteriorated to Rs 8.7 trillion in 2020-21 (RE), up from the budgeted estimate of Rs 6.0 trillion.
How states had projected ambitious decline in revenue deficit
- The budgets for the ongoing fiscal year, had projected an ambitious, decline in the aggregate revenue deficit to Rs 1.2 trillion, lower than the pre-Covid-19 level of Rs 1.3 trillion in 2019-20.
- This has benefitted from the considerable expansion in their revenue receipts this year, forecasted at 24.7 per cent, compared to a moderate 12.4 per cent increase in their aggregate revenue expenditure.
- This anticipated shrinking of the revenue deficit has allowed states to plan for a substantial expansion in their capital expenditure and net lending pegged at 34.1 per cent.
- This anticipated shrinking also allowed the States to attempt a modest correction in their budgeted fiscal deficit, bringing it down to Rs 7.6 trillion in 2021-22 from Rs 8.7 trillion in 2020-21 (RE).
Fiscal concerns over second Covid wave
- The second wave of Covid-19 infections and its spread to rural areas has fanned fiscal concerns.
- The curtailed consumption of discretionary items and contact-intensive services will dampen the growth of states’ own tax revenues this year.
- Moreover, lower mobility during the regional lockdowns will constrain tax revenues that states earn on fuels.
- The data for the generation of GST e-way bills confirms that the staggered imposition of the localised lockdowns has had an adverse impact on economic activity since April.
- This will result in a sequential slowdown in GST collections that will be reported in the subsequent two months.
- Nevertheless, the GST collections is likely to nearly double to Rs 1.7 trillion in the first quarter of this year, up from Rs 0.9 trillion over the same period last year, boosted by the record-high collections in April,
- That reflected healthy economic activity in March.
The shortfall and way forward
- States’ own tax collections is estimated to trail their budget estimates as they were drawn up before the second wave.
- For this year, state GST collections would be at Rs 6.1 trillion, falling below their projected revenues of Rs 8.7 trillion.
- This indicates a GST compensation requirement of Rs 2.65 trillion — only 38 per cent of which may be met through the expected GST compensation cess collections.
- Following the meeting of the GST Council, the Finance Minister has indicated that a back-to-back loan of Rs 1.58 trillion will be provided to the states.
- If the tranches of this loan start flowing to the states soon, it will alleviate their anticipated revenue crunch over the next two months.
- Already, there has been a sharp rise in the size of the upcoming State Development Loan auction to Rs. 19,550 crore, relative to the modest average size of around Rs. 7,400 crore seen so far in the first eight auctions held in FY2022.
Conclusion
In any case, the capital spending budgeted by certain state governments this year appears to be optimistic. Moreover, localised restrictions imposed during the last two months are expected to have constrained activity.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Blockchain technology
Mains level: Paper 3- Adopting and regulating cryptocurrencies
The article highlights the need for coherent cryptocurrency policy and avoid missing the benefits offered by the technology.
Growing dominance of cryptocurrencies
- Created by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency.
- It is a fully decentralised, peer-to-peer electronic cash system that didn’t need the purview of any third-party financial institution.
- The Bitcoin, which traded at just $ 0.0008 in 2010, commanded a market price of just under $65,000 this April.
- Many newer coins were introduced since Bitcoin’s launch, and their cumulative market value touched $ 2.5 trillion this May.
- Within a span of just over a decade, their value has surpassed the size of economies of most modern nations.
- The “cryptomarket” grew by over 500 per cent, even while the pandemic unleashed global economic carnage not seen since the Great Depression.
- China’s recent crackdown on cryptocurrency had far-reaching consequences.
- An astounding trillion US dollars were wiped out from the global cryptomarket within a span of 24 hours.
- This kind of volatility mentioned above has always been a concern for regulators and investors alike.
India’s approach
- Law enforcement and taxation agencies have called for a ban, expressing concerns over cryptocurrencies being used as instruments for illicit activities, including money laundering and terror funding.
- In 2018, the Reserve Bank barred our financial institutions from supporting crypto transactions — but the Supreme Court overturned it in 2020.
- Yet, Indian banks still block these transactions, and the government has circulated a draft bill outlawing all cryptocurrency activities, which has been under discussion since 2019.
- The Reserve Bank has announced the launch of a private blockchain-supported official digital currency, similar to the digital Yuan.
- India is increasingly mimicking China’s paradoxical attempt to centralise a decentralised ecosystem.
- India is trying to decouple cryptocurrencies from their underlying blockchain technology, and still derive benefit.
- Unfortunately, this is impractical, and shows a lack of understanding of this disruptive innovation.
- The funds that have gone into the Indian blockchain start-ups are less than 0.2 per cent of the amount the sector raised globally.
- The current central government approach makes it near-impossible for entrepreneurs and investors to acquire much economic benefit.
Need for regulation
- Regulation is definitely needed to prevent serious problems, to ensure that cryptocurrencies are not misused, and to protect unsuspecting investors from excessive market volatility and possible scams.
- However, regulation needs to be clear, transparent, coherent and animated by a vision of what it seeks to achieve.
- India has not been able to tick these boxes, and we’re in danger of missing out in the global race altogether.
Way forward
- Any new regulations made in this sector should prevent the misuse of these digital assets without hindering innovation and investments.
- Provisions have to be made to route the value extracted from these networks transparently into our financial system.
- Regulatory uncertainties over India’s position on cryptocurrency highlights the need for clear-headed policy-making.
Consider the question “India was a late adopter in all the previous phases of the digital revolution be it the semiconductors, the internet or smartphones. Do you think the same is happening again in India’s adoption of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology?”
Conclusion
We are currently on the cusp of the next phase, which would be led by technologies like blockchain. We have the potential to channel our human capital, expertise and resources into this revolution, and emerge as one of the winners of this wave. All we need to do is to get our policymaking right.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: `Paper 3- Role of data analytics during pandemic
The article highlights how data played an important role in decision-making in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Importance of data in decision making
- The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted globally how important data is to governments in decision-making.
- Epidemiological data is of paramount significance for targeting and implementing control measures for public health in a timely manner
- Such data was used effectively in the evidence-based response and decision-making in countries like South Korea.
- Modern response to pandemics has focused on exploiting all the available data to inform policy action in real time.
How data analysis helped during pandemic
- Data analysis has revealed the need for continuous and repeated tracking of case numbers, fatalities and recoveries.
- The epidemiological concept of flattening the curve and its predictions are results of data analysis and modelling.
- Understanding testing adequacy or lack thereof allows us to measure our preparedness, prognostic versus diagnostic ability, and shape our responses to identify, manage, and care for new cases.
- Epidemic outbreak data like case data, medical and treatment data can be used to understand disease pathogenesis and severity.
- Genome sequencing surveillance helps identify and track viral genome sequence variants in real time and the evolution of the virus.
- The concept of open access to various data enables models to improve forecast and study the spread of the disease.’
Integration and analysis of multiple datatypes
- The integration and analysis of multiple heterogeneous datatypes eventually would yield a holistic picture.
- This helps guide policy decisions for control and management of public health.
- When genome surveillance data is correlated with the magnitude of cases and their outcomes, then we can understand the transmissibility or infectivity of the virus.
- Geographical mapping of prevalence of mutants allows us to understand viral spread and explain recoveries or deaths in a specific area.
- The roll out of vaccinations can shape viral evolution and drug-treatment strategies.
- Surveillance through studying genome sequencing of the virus, coupled to other epidemiological data allows us to identify these connections.
Challenges
- Part of the challenge lies in the standardisation of data collection, curation, annotation and the integration of data analytics pipelines for outbreak analytics.
Way forward
- Ensuring data availability and quality under operational constraints is critical.
- The use of data standards instils consistency, reduces errors and enables transparency.
- Embedded in the idea of data sharing lies the concept of data security and confidentiality.
- Concerns of privacy and security calls for a systemic infrastructure with built-in safeguards to ensure data encryption while preserving anonymity and ensuring privacy.
- As our dependence on data-based decisions becomes more and more critical, an urgent charter for standardised digital health data in India is required.
Consider the question “The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted globally how important data is to governments in decision-making. Explain how data helps in decision making and challenges in evidence-based decision making based on data.”
Conclusion
Rational and scientific methods necessitate data without which neither can we have information, nor knowledge or wisdom. Data sharing, and transparency and timely dissemination of data are critical to overcome the pandemic.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Engage with Nepal without intervening
The article suggests recalibration of India’s approach towards political turmoil in Nepal.
Nepal in political crisis
- For the second time in weeks, Prime Minister K P Oli has persuaded President Bidya Devi Bhandari to dissolve parliament and call for fresh elections.
- That is, unless the Supreme Court decides to declare the dissolution of parliament as unconstitutional, as it had done in the recent past.
- The current dissolution has been challenged in the court by five political parties.
Medhesi demand fulfilled
- Prime Minister Oli has also delivered on the longstanding Madhesi demand to reverse a constitutional provision which denied citizenship to children born of Nepali mothers who had foreign husbands.
- The widespread unrest in the Terai adjoining India in 2015 was triggered by this attempt to deny equal rights to the Madhesi population.
- This provision had directly targeted the Madhesi population, which has close kinship and marital ties across the border with India.
- While this provision has now been removed through a presidential ordinance, it could well be reversed in future by Nepali political parties dominated by the higher caste.
Steps India needs to take
- Political uncertainty in a neighbouring country is never good news for India, particularly in Nepal with whom we share a long and open border.
- The Indian government has maintained a studied silence on the current political developments in Nepal and this may be the right thing to do.
- But this silence should not imply the lack of a proper assessment of the political situation in Nepal and what would serve the interests of India best.
- Following are the steps India need to take:
1) India should declare it does not support the revival of monarchy
- The abolition of the monarchy is a net gain for India and the government must firmly and unambiguously declare that it does not support the revival of the monarchy, which has already been rejected by its people.
- India should declare its unconditional support to Nepal’s republican democracy.
2) Remain engaged with Nepal
- India should remain fully engaged with Nepal at all levels and across the political spectrum.
- The safeguarding of India’s vital interests demands such sustained engagement.
- A hands-off policy will only create space for other external influences, some of which, like China, may prove to be hostile.
- However, engagement must dispense with the recurrent tendency to label Nepali political leaders as friends or enemies.
- India should advocate policies rather than persons.
3) Recognise the role of Madhesi population
- In India’s engagement with Nepal, the Terai belt and its large Madhesi population plays a critical and indispensable role.
- In an effort to win over the Kathmandu political and social elite, one should be careful not to neglect citizens living in the plains.
- Our engagement with Nepal must find an important place for Nepali citizens who are our immediate neighbours and act as a kinship, cultural and religious bridge between our two countries.
4) Appreciate people-to-people link
- India needs to appreciate that the people-to-people links between our two countries have an unmatched density and no other country, including China, enjoys this asset.
- The challenge to our Nepal policy lies in leveraging this precious asset to ensure a stable and mutually-productive state-to-state relationship.
- India has every reason to approach its relations with Nepal with confidence and assurance.
Consider the question “What are the factors that make India-Nepal relationship special? What are the recent challenges impacting this special relationship? ”
Conclusion
The safeguarding of India’s vital interests demands India’s engagement with Nepal without intervening in its politics. A hands-off policy will only create space for other external influences.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Provisions of IT Rules 2021
Mains level: Paper 3- Issues with IT Rules 2021
The article highlights the issues with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.
Important provision made in the IT Rules 2021
- The Rules mandate duties such as removal of non-consensual intimate pictures within 24 hours.
- The rules also mandates publication of compliance reports to increase transparency.
- Rules provides for setting up of a dispute resolution mechanism for content removal.
- It provides for adding a label to information for users to know whether content is advertised, owned, sponsored or exclusively controlled.
Issues with the rules
1) Affects right to free speech and expression
- The Supreme Court, in the case of Life Insurance Corpn. Of India vs Prof. Manubhai D. Shah (1992) had elevated ‘the freedom to circulate one’s views as the lifeline of any democratic institution’.
- So, the rules need to be critically scrutinised for the recent barriers being imposed by it.
2) Violation of legal principles
- The rules were framed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeiTY).
- However, the Second Schedule of the Business Rules, 1961 does not empower MeiTY to frame regulations for digital media.
- This power belongs to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
- This action violates the legal principle of ‘colourable legislation’ where the legislature cannot do something indirectly if it is not possible to do so directly.
- Moreover, the Information Technology Act, 2000, does not regulate digital media.
- Therefore, the new IT Rules which claim to be a piece of subordinate legislation of the IT Act, goes beyond the rule-making power conferred upon them by the IT Act.
- This makes the Rules ultra vires to the Act.
3) Deprives the fair recourse to intermediary
- An intermediary is now supposed to take down content within 36 hours upon receiving orders from the Government.
- This deprives the intermediary of a fair recourse in the event that it disagrees with the Government’s order due to a strict timeline.
4) Privacy violation
- These Rules undermine the right to privacy by imposing a traceability requirement.
- The immunity that users received from end-to-end encryption was that intermediaries did not have access to the contents of their messages.
- Imposing this mandatory requirement of traceability will break this immunity, thereby weakening the security of the privacy of these conversations.
- This will also render all the data from these conversations vulnerable to attack from ill-intentioned third parties.
- The threat here is not only one of privacy but to the extent of invasion and deprivation from a safe space.
- Recent data breach affecting a popular pizza delivery chain and also several airlines highlights the risks involved in such move in the absence of data protection law.
- Instead of eliminate the fake news, the Rules proceed to hurriedly to take down whatever authority may deem as “fake news”.
5) Operational cost
- The Rules create additional operational costs for intermediaries by requiring them to have Indian resident nodal officers, compliance officers and grievance officers.
- Intermediaries are also required to have offices located in India.
- This makes profit making a far-fetched goal for multinational corporations and start-up intermediary enterprises.
- Therefore, not only do these Rules place a barrier on the “marketplace of ideas” but also on the economic market of intermediaries in general by adding redundant financial burdens.
Consider the question “What are the challenges associated with the social media? How the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 will help is dealing with these challenges? What are the issues with these rules?”
Conclusion
Democracy stands undermined in direct proportion to every attack made on the citizen’s right. The IT Rules 2021 have tilt towards violation of rights. Therefore, these rules need reconsideration.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Dealing with vaccine hesitancy
The article deals with the issue of vaccine hesitancy and its consequences.
Why vaccinate?
- The primary purpose of vaccination is to protect individuals against severe infection.
- Vaccination also protects populations by providing ‘herd immunity’, if done on a large scale.
- Globally, vaccinations against polio, small pox, meningitis and so on have seen huge success.
Need to address the vaccine hesitancy
- The results of a 2020 Gallup poll, conducted before the vaccine roll-out reveals that 18% of the Indian said that they won’t take the vaccine.
- But vaccine hesitancy has gone up in India since then, due in part to largely overblown reports of complications or even deaths.
- The consequences of vaccine hesitancy are disastrous.
- If herd immunity does not develop, disease outbreaks and pandemics will prevail.
- The slower the vaccination rate, the wider the spread of infection and the greater the chances of mutations and the emergence of new variants.
Factors driving vaccine hesitancy
- The influencing factors include a lack of awareness of the extent of benefits.
- Fears based on inaccurate information.
- Lack of access to vaccine.
- Disinformation, especially on social media.
- Other factors include civil liberty concepts, cost, cultural issues, and various layers of confidence deficit.
Way forward
- To allay vaccine fears, our messaging needs to focus on simple facts.
- Before attempting to persuade people, we need to understand the basis of their fear, hesitancy and the anti-vax attitude.
- By challenging untruths, we inadvertently feed the perception that we are actively suppressing the “real” truth.
- The objective now should be to reach more people faster with a message that doesn’t just provide more science but includes guidance.
- Providing practical information through social media, alternatives to apps for those lacking easy access to vaccines, and taking the help of well-informed frontline workers will all help.
Conclusion
The possibility of a significant number of people not getting vaccinated thwarts our collective ability to reach the herd immunity threshold against Covid-19. Therefore the issue of vaccine hesitancy needs to be urgently addressed.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3- Fundamental challenges GST regime faces
The article highlights the fundamental challenges the GST faces in the form of trust erosion and politicisation of decision making in GST Council.
Initial issues with GST
- The multiple rates structure, high tax slabs and the complexity of tax filings as the problems underpinning India’s GST.
- These were indeed the initial problems in the way GST was implemented, leading to some of its current woes.
- However, technical fixes such as simplification of GST rates and tax filing systems will not succeed in addressing the fundamental problems with GST.
Fundamental problems
1) Politics influence the decision of GST Council
- The 43rd meeting of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council which consists of 31 States and Union Territorie is to be held on May 28.
- Ideally, political affiliations should not matter in a Council set up to decide indirect taxes.
- The GST Council was mandated to meet at least once every quarter, but it had not met for two quarters, due to the pandemic.
- Several of the 14 members of the groups who belong to parties different from the party ruling in the Centre, requested the Finance Minister to convene the GST meeting to help them manage their finances.
- None of the 17 members of the ruling group deemed it necessary.
- Even the need for a meeting to determine tax revenues for States is evidently a political decision.
2) Lack of trust
- The GST Council is a compact of trust between the States and the Centre, set in the larger context of India’s polity.
- The tragedy of the GST Council is that it is afflicted with spite and forced to function under the prevailing cloud of politics.
- If the functioning of the GST Council is subject to the vagaries of elections and consequent vendetta politics, GST will continue to be just a caricature of its initial promise.
3) Uncertainty after the guarantee of 14% growth ends
- The States paid a huge price for GST in terms of loss of fiscal autonomy.
- GST has endured so far primarily because the States were guaranteed a 14% growth in their tax revenues every year.
- This minimised the risks of this new experiment for the States and compensated for their loss of fiscal sovereignty.
- This revenue guarantee ends in July 2022.
- This can lead to a crumbling of the precarious edifice on which GST stands today.
Consider the question “What are the challenges faced by the States in the GST regime? What would be the impact on States as a guarantee of 14% growth in tax revenue comes to an end in July 2022?”
Conclusion
The end of India’s grand GST experiment seems inevitable unless there is a radical shift in the tone and tenor of India’s federal politics, backed by an extension of revenue guarantee for the States for another five years.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: MGNREGS
Mains level: Paper 2- Need to strengthen the PDS and MGNREGS
The disruption caused by the second Covid wave has added to the hardship faced by the migrant workers and the rural poor. Dealing with it requires strengthening of PDS and MGNREGS.
Distress due to second Covid wave
- Several States have imposed lockdown amid second Covid wave which will have severe implications for the livelihoods of those in the informal sector.
- Migrant workers and the rural poor have been facing great distress over the past one year and the crisis for food and work is only going to intensify further.
- The migrants have again become vulnerable due to the lockdown in different cities.
- In this context, there is an urgent need to strengthen the public distribution system (PDS) and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).
Steps need to be taken
- The government announced 5 kg free foodgrains for individuals enlisted under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), for May and June 2021.
1) Changes in PDS
- Expand coverage: The government should expand PDS coverage immediately and include all eligible households under the schemes.
- According to an independent study, about 100 million people are excluded from the ration distribution system owing to a dated database based on the 2011 Census.
- Extend period: The Centre should also extend the free foodgrains programme to a year instead of limiting it to two months.
2) Expand MGNREGS
- The Centre had allocated ₹73,000 crore for 2021-22 for MGNREGS and notified an annual increment of about 4% in wages.
- Both these provisions are inadequate to match the requirements on the ground.
- The central allocation for MGNREGS is about ₹38,500 crore less than last year’s revised estimate.
- The budget for 75-80 days of employment in the year for 6.5 crore families given the current scale of economic distress.
- By this rationale, at the current rate of ₹268/day/person, at least ₹1.3 lakh crore will have to be budgeted.
- The government should also re-consider its decision of a mere 4% increase in MGNREGS wages and hike it by at least 10%.
Conclusion
A large population is facing hunger and a cash crunch. The situation is only becoming more dire as the pandemic continues to rage on. Therefore, the Union government should prioritise food and work for all and start making policy reforms right away.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3- Data driven approach to deal with the future disruptions
Article highlights the importance of data driven approach in dealing with the future disruptions and suggests the reforms in the system.
Managing the disruption through data-driven tools
- The data-driven tools were used for managing pandemic induced disruption.
- This offers an opportunity to restructure the data ecosystem for managing the disruptions of the future that are more likely to be driven by climate change.
Policies for data sharing in India
- The National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP), 2012 recognises the importance of data.
- NDSAP recognised the importance of data in improving decision making, meeting the needs of civil society and generating revenue by permitting access to datasets.
- In 2012, a government portal, data.gov.in was also established as a unified platform to enable sharing of data available with ministries, departments and other public agencies for wider public use.
- The sharing of data in this platform, apart from others, is further streamlined through the nodality of Chief Data Officer-CDO in respective ministries.
Challenges
- Challenge remains about whether the collected data is usable, accessible and if it captures the details that end users are interested in.
- Even after years of the portal’s operationalisation, there are multiple data-sets that aren’t updated regularly.
- Though NITI Aayog has brought indices to track climate actions such as under SDG-13 of SDG India Index, but it remains vague in tracking improvements in climate resilience, by solely using number of lives lost due to extreme weather events.
Reforms needed in data-ecosystem
- 1) Complete dataset: There is a need to collect complete datasets required to assess climate risks and vulnerabilities.
- This involves collection of datasets that are sex-disaggregated and geo-spatial and collect more nuanced dimensions like disaster response capacities.
- Targeted research: There is a requirement of targeted research for designing better questionnaires and identifying new nodes for data collection.
- 2) Reliability of data: The data collected has to be made reliable and usable through an accountability framework.
- Legislation: A separate legislation in this regard would bring in the much-needed consistency in periodic collection of identified datasets and their proactive sharing in designated platforms.
- 3) Centralisation of data: There is a need for centralising public data that currently exists with different departments and public institutions.
- The National Data Governance Centre was planned to be set up in 2019 for precisely this objective.
- But it is yet to be operationalised.
Consider the question “How data driven approach could help India deal with the future disruptions that are more likely to be from climate change? Suggest the reforms needed in India’s data ecosystem.”
Conclusion
It is time that India places itself on track to address the issues around the known unknowns of climate change through data driven apporach.
Source:
https://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/data-central-to-effective-climate-action/2258964/
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Israel-Palestine conflict
The article highlights the challenges in the success of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict and suggests the one-state solution instead.
Background of the two-state solution
- It involves dividing Palestine between the state of Israel and the indigenous population of Palestine.
- It was first offered by the British in 1937 and rejected by the Palestinians already then.
- In 1947 the United Nations insisted that the Palestinians should give half of their homeland to the settler movement of Zionism.
- The two-state solution, offered for the first time by liberal Zionists and the United States in the 1980s, is seen by some Palestinians as the best way of ending of the occupation of the West Bank .
- It will also lead to the partial fulfilment of the Palestinian right for self-determination and independence.
Interpretation of two-state solution
- The Israeli interpretation, until 2009, was that the two-state solution is another means of having the territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, without incorporating most of the people living there.
- In order to ensure it, Israel partitioned the West Bank which is 20% of historical Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab part.
- This was in the second phase of the Oslo Accords, known as the Oslo II agreement of 1995.
- One area, called area C, which consists of 60% of the West Bank was directly ruled from 1995 until today by Israel.
- Now, Israel is in the process of officially annexing this area.
- 40% of the West Bank, areas A and B under Oslo II, were put under the Palestinian Authority.
- Palestinian Authority calls itself the state of Palestine, but in essence has no power whatsoever, unless the one given to it, and withdrawn from it, by Israel.
- In 2018 a citizenship law was passed known as the nationality law.
- As per the citizenship law, the Palestinian citizens who live in Israel proper which is Israel prior to the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and who are supposedly equal citizens of the Jewish state, will in essence become the Africans of a new Israeli Jewish apartheid state.
Issues with two-state solution
- The endless negotiation on the two-state solution was based on the formula that once the two states become a reality, Israel will stop these severe violations of the Palestinian civil and human rights.
- But while the wait continued, more Palestinians were expelled and the Jewish settler community in the West Bank grew in size.
- The two-state solution is not going to stop the ethnic cleansing; instead, talking about it provides Israel international immunity to continue it.
Way forward
- The only alternative is to decolonise historical Palestine.
- New state should a state for all its citizens all over the country, based on the dismantlement of colonialist institutions, fair redistribution of the country’s natural resources, compensation of the victims of the ethnic cleansing and allowing their repatriation.
- Settlers and natives should together build a new state that is democratic, part of the Arab world and not against it, and an inspiration for the rest of the region.
Conclusion
The one-state solution is the way forward in Palestine and that should be the state for all citizens.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- The U.S. exit from Afghanistan and its implications for the region
The article highlights the implications of the U.S. exit from Afghanistan for the region.
Status of the Afghanistan peace process
- The Afghanistan peace process has been in disarray as the conference to be hosted by the United Nations in Istanbul, remains suspended due to the reluctance of Afghan’s Taliban.
- Now there is some hope of breaking the impasse as the Taliban have expressed an openness to attend the Istanbul summit.
- United States President Joe Biden is insistent on withdrawing the troops on September 11, even without any power-sharing deal between the warring parties.
- Taliban leadership, who may feel the urgency to resuming negotiations than completely abandoning them for fear of losing the international legitimacy they enjoy at the moment.
How the U.S. exit will affect Pakistan
- After months of negotiations, the U.S.-Taliban deal was signed in February 2020, and Pakistan took full credit for it.
- As the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan for almost two decades had kept the U.S. reliant on Pakistan for operational and other support.
- Pakistan smartly mobilised this factor against India.
- With the disappearance of this lethal dependence, Pakistan faces an uphill task in conducting a viable Afghan policy.
- Pakistan cannot keep America invested in it on military, economic, and societal fronts without partnering with the U.S. to ensure a smooth transition of power in Kabul.
Impact on China
- The Taliban now draw support from a wide variety of regional powers, including Russia, China and Iran.
- However, these countries too want the insurgent group to moderate its position.
- China, which has a beneficiary of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, seems confused as the American exit looms large.
- The U.S. exit would leave Beijing vulnerable to its spillover effects particularly in the restive Xinjiang province.
- That is why China has remained invested in all major regional Afghan-centric negotiations.
Implications for India
- India has been the key regional backer of an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned and Afghan-controlled peace process.
- India is concerned that the Taliban-dominated regime in Afghanistan might allow Pakistan to dictate Afghanistan’s India policy.
- That is why India has underlined the need for a genuine double peace i.e. within and around Afghanistan.
- But despite being offered a seat at Istanbul at the U.S.’s behest, India remains a peripheral player.
- The strategic competition between the China and the U.S., China’s growing rivalry with India, and New Delhi’s tense relationship with Islamabad are some of the factors which will certainly affect the situation in Afghanistan as the U.S. leaves the country.
Consider the question “What are the implications of the U.S. exit from Afghanistan for the region? Examine its impact on India.
Conclusion
While the exit would bring the U.S.’s “forever war” to an end, it is unlikely to result in peace if Afghan stakeholders show their utter inability to take the process forward.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Role of civil society in pandemic
The article highlights the important role played by civil society and suggest the need for the new framework for the participation of community in the solution of problems.
Important role played by civil society in second wave of Covid
- We also have to realise that the state or the market cannot be the only provider for what citizens need.
- Effective social interactions and community participation can play an important role in scaling up some of the actions that have been found useful.
- During the second wave of Covid infections, communities emerged as resilient entities across the country.
- Active engagement with civil society: Recently, the Prime Minister called for an active engagement of civil society in coping with the pandemic.
- The empowered group of secretaries has also identified the role of civil society during this period of crisis.
Tasks for NITI Aayog: New framework
- NITI should engage government institutions that encourage public participation and also support new frameworks for crisis management.
- This new framework should critically look into the weaknesses and failures of the existing ones in attracting community participation in an effective manner.
- This would also help in NITI’s own goal of localisation of development as part of its SDG strategy.
- NITI should create mechanisms for facilitating the creation of required space for community initiatives.
- It should leverage advanced technologies ABCD — artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing and data analytics for bridging demand-supply gaps.
- It is time for NITI to apply the institutional framework where it has to, to rationalise select activities of communities and overcome the failure of the state where it is imminent.
- NITI should partner with willing state governments to explore the launch of platforms that promote cross-learning and experience-sharing to reduce the cost of operations.
- This may help in scaling up and, in some cases, overcome the asymmetric flow of information.
- Opportunities for the participation of communities in decision making and their implementation at local levels may be explored.
- The advantage for NITI is DARPAN, its portal for all voluntary organisations/non-governmental organisations engaged in development activities.
- Several informal entities, start-ups and others, at times undefined, may also have to be engaged.
Initiatives and micro-models
- Several micro-models are coming up, but few have a larger footprint.
- In Nandurbar, for instance, a district collector could achieve what now seems a rare coordination between beds, number of critical patients and supply of oxygen.
- At the end of the day, they had more beds with oxygen than required.
- Breathe India and HelpNow represent an array of options, these apps have facilitated access to oxygen concentrators, hospitals and ambulances.
- There are several such initiatives that are taking place across the country with little connection with each other.
- These micro-models need to be scaled up.
Consider the question “The role played by the civil society during the second covid wave highlighted its importance. What we need is a new framework for community participation. In light of this, discuss the important aspects of such framework.”
Conclusion
Solutions to any social problem call for an effective collective action that coordinates the aspirations of several groups of stakeholders. The present situation underlines the necessity of combined efforts to face this challenge.
B2BASICS
What is civil Society?
- The society considered as a community of citizens linked by common interests and collective activity is a civil society.
- It is the aggregate of non-governmental organizations and institutions that manifest interests and will of citizens.
- It is referred to as the third sector of the society distinct from government and business.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3- Worsening inequality amid pandemic
Pandemic hit hard the lives, livelihood and the economy. It has also worsened income inequality. The article deals with the issues of impacts of pandemic and suggests ways to revive growth the deal with income inequality.
Need to address growth and inequality issue
- The second wave of the pandemic is spreading to rural areas also.
- It is known that rural areas have poor health infrastructure.
- Similar to the first wave, inequalities are also increasing during the second wave.
- The country has to address the issue of rising inequalities for achieving higher sustainable growth and the well-being of a larger population.
- According to the State of Working in India 2021 report of the Azim Premji University, the pandemic would push 230 million people into poverty.
- CMIE data shows a decline in incomes and rising unemployment during the second wave.
- U-shaped impact: The recent RBI Bulletin says that the impact of the second wave appears to be U-shaped.
- In the well of the U are the most vulnerable — blue collar groups who have to risk exposure for a living and for rest of society to survive.
K-shaped recovery and rising inequality
- The recovery seemed to be K-shaped during the first wave.
- The share of wages declined as compared to that of profits.
- A large part of the corporate sector managed the pandemic with many listed companies recording higher profits.
- On the other hand, the informal workers including daily wage labourers, migrants, MSMEs etc. suffered a lot with loss of incomes and employment.
- The recovery post the second wave is also likely to be K-shaped with rising inequalities.
Policies needed for higher growth and reduction in inequality
1) Vaccination and healthcare facilities
- An aggressive vaccination programme and improving the healthcare facilities in both rural and urban areas is needed.
- Reducing the health crisis can lead to an economic revival.
- Vaccine inequality between urban and rural areas has to be reduced.
- The crisis can be used as an opportunity to create universal healthcare facilities for all, particularly rural areas.
- Other states can learn from Kerala on building health infrastructure.
2) Investment in infrastructure
- The budget offered some good announcements relating to capital investment in infrastructure.
- The Development Financial Institution (DFI) for funding long-term infrastructure projects is being established.
- This can revive employment and reduce inequalities.
- The government has to fast track infra investment.
3) Safety net for vulnerable
- The informal workers and other vulnerable sections including MSMEs have been dealt back-to-back blows due to the first and second waves.
- A majority of workers have experienced a loss of earnings.
- Therefore, the government has to provide safety nets in the form of free food grains for six more months, expand work offered under MGNREGA in both rural and urban areas.
- The government also need to undertake a cash transfer to provide minimum basic income.
Policies for growth
- Focus on demand: On economic growth, the RBI Bulletin says that the biggest toll of the second wave is in terms of a demand shock as aggregate supply is less impacted.
- Investment: In the medium term, the investment rate has to be increased from the present 30 per cent of GDP to 35 per cent and 40 per cent of GDP for higher growth and job creation.
- Export: It is one of the main engines of growth and employment creation.
- There is positive news on exports as the global economy is reviving.
- Protectionist trade policy: In recent years India’s trade policy has become more protectionist and the country has to reduce import tariff rates.
- Role of fiscal policy: In the near term, fiscal policy has to play a more important role in achieving the objectives of growth, jobs and equity by expanding the fiscal space by restructuring expenditure, widening the tax base and increasing non-tax revenue.
Consider the question “Two waves of the Covid pandemic have worsened the inequality. India has to address the issue of rising inequalities for achieving higher sustainable growth and the well-being of a larger population. Suggest the policies that India should follow for higher growth and reduction in inequality.”
Conclusion
Vaccination, expansion in rural healthcare and cash transfers should be part of the strategy to boost demand and address inequalities.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Tax buoyancy
Mains level: Paper 3- Recalibration of growth projections
The article highlights the challenges the second Covid wave poses to India’s path to fiscal consolidation.
Recalibration to growth projection due to second Covid wave
- The growth projections of different national and international agencies and the fiscal projections of Centre’s 2021-22 Budget require recalibration.
- The International Monetary Fund (IMF) had forecast real GDP growth for 2021-22 at 12.5%.
- The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had forecast real GDP growth for 2021-22 at 10.5%.
- The Ministry of Finance’s Economic Survey had forecast real GDP growth for 2021-22 at 11.0%.
Growth rate of 8.7% to keep GDP at same level as in 2019-20
- Moody’s has recently projected India’s GDP growth in 2021-22 at 9.3%.
- Benchmark growth rate: 9.3% is close to the benchmark growth rate of 8.7% which would keep India’s GDP at 2011-12 prices at the same level as in 2019-20.
- This level of growth may be achieved based on the assumption that the economy normalises in the second half of the fiscal year.
- The 2019-20 real GDP was ₹145.7-lakh crore at 2011-12 prices.
- It fell to ₹134.1-lakh crore in 2020-21, implying a contraction of minus 8.0%.
- At 8.7% real growth, the nominal GDP growth would be close to 13.5%, assuming an inflation rate of 4.5%.
- This would be lower than the nominal growth of 14.4% assumed in the Union Budget.
- At 13.5% growth, the estimated GDP for 2021-22 is ₹222.4-lakh crore at current prices.
- Impact: This will lead to a lowering of tax and non-tax revenues and an increase in the fiscal deficit as compared to the budgeted magnitudes.
How much the gross tax revenue would be impacted?
- The budgeted gross and net tax revenues for 2021-22 were ₹22.2-lakh crore and ₹15.4-lakh crore, respectively.
- The assumed buoyancy for the Centre’s gross tax revenues (GTR) was 1.2.
- If, however, the buoyancy of 1.2 proves optimistic and instead a buoyancy of 0.9, which is the average buoyancy of the five years preceding the COVID-19 year, is applied, the nominal growth of GTR would be 12.2%.
- This would lead to the Centre’s GTR of about ₹21.3-lakh crore.
- The corresponding shortfall in the Centre’s net tax revenues is estimated to be about ₹0.6 lakh crore.
- The budgeted magnitudes for non-tax revenues and non-debt capital receipts at ₹2.4-lakh crore and ₹1.9-lakh crore, respectively, may also prove to be optimistic.
- In these cases, the budgeted growth rates were 15.4% and 304.3%, respectively.
- The excessively high growth for the non-debt capital receipts was premised on implementing an ambitious asset monetisation and disinvestment programme.
- Together with the tax revenue shortfall of nearly 0.6 lakh crore, the total shortfall on the receipts side may be about ₹2.1-lakh crore.
Impact on fiscal deficit estimates
- Two factors will affect the fiscal deficit estimate of 6.76% of GDP in 2021-22.
- First, there would be a change in the budgeted nominal GDP growth.
- Second, there would be a shortfall in the receipts from tax, non-tax and non-debt sources.
- Together, these two factors may lead to a slippage in fiscal deficit which may be close to 7.7% of GDP in 2021-22 if total expenditures are kept at the budgeted levels.
- This would call for revising the fiscal road map again.
- Protecting total expenditures at the budgeted level is, however, important given the need to support the economy in these challenging time.
Vaccination policy and role of Central government
- Positive externalities: COVID-19 vaccination is characterised by strong inter-State positive externalities, making it primarily the responsibility of the central government.
- The entire vaccination bill should be borne by the central government.
- If the central government is the single agency for vaccine procurement, the economies of scale and the Centre’s bargaining power would keep the average vaccine price low.
- The central government may transfer the vaccines rather than the money that it has budgeted for transfer.
- Some of the smaller States may find procuring vaccines through a global tender to be quite challenging.
Conclusion
Protecting total expenditures at the budgeted level and mass vaccination are important in India’s pandemic situation.
Back2basics: Tax buoyancy
- There is a strong connection between the government’s tax revenue earnings and economic growth.
- Tax buoyancy explains this relationship between the changes in government’s tax revenue growth and the changes in GDP.
- It refers to the responsiveness of tax revenue growth to changes in GDP.
- When a tax is buoyant, its revenue increases without increasing the tax rate.
- In 2007-08, everything was fine for the economy, GDP growth rate was nearly 9 per cent.
- Tax revenue of the government, especially, that of direct taxes registered a growth rate of 45 per cent in 2007-08.
- We can say that the tax buoyancy was five (45/9).
What is tax elasticity?
- It refers to changes in tax revenue in response to changes in tax rate.
- For example, how tax revenue changes if the government reduces corporate income tax from 30 per cent to 25 per cent indicate tax elasticity.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3- Benefits of environmental tax
The article highlights the advantages of environmental fiscal reforms in India.
Status of out-of-pocket spending on health in India
- As per WHO data, in 2011, 17.33% of the population in India made out-of-pocket payments on health that was more than 10% of their income.
- The percentage was higher in rural areas compared to urban areas.
- Globally, 12.67% of the population spent more than 10% of their income (out of their pocket) on health.
- In Southeast Asia, 16% spent more than 10% of their household income on health.
- Similarly, 3.9% of the population in India made more than 25% of out-of-pocket payments on health, with 4.34% of it in the rural areas.
Alternate source of health financing: Eco tax
- The Economic Survey of India 2019-20 has outlined that an increase in public spending from 1% to 2.5-3% of GDP, can decrease out-of-pocket expenditure from 65% to 30% of overall healthcare expenses.
- The National Health Policy of 2017 also envisages increase in public spending from 1% to 2.5-3% of GDP.
- This is where the importance of alternate sources of health financing in India needs to be stressed.
- Fiscal reforms for managing the environment are important, and India has great potential for revenue generation in this aspect.
Environmental tax reforms
- Environmental tax reforms generally involve three complementary activities:
- 1. Eliminating existing subsidies and taxes that have a harmful impact on the environment;
- 2. Restructuring existing taxes in an environmentally supportive manner;
- 3. Initiating new environmental taxes.
- Taxes can be designed either as revenue neutral or revenue augmenting.
- Revenue augmenting model: In case of revenue augmenting, the additional revenue can either be targeted towards the provision of environmental public goods or directed towards the overall revenue pool.
- In developing countries like India, the revenue can be used to a greater extent for the provision of environmental public goods and addressing environmental health issues.
Eco tax
- The success of an eco tax (environment tax) in India would depend on its architecture, that is, how well it is planned and designed.
- It should be credible, transparent and predictable.
- Ideally, the eco tax rate ought to be equal to the marginal social cost arising from the negative externalities associated with the production, consumption or disposal of goods and services.
- This would include the adverse impacts on the health of people, climate change, etc.
- The eco tax rate may, thus, be fixed commensurate to the marginal social cost so evaluated.
- There is also a need to integrate environmental taxes in the Goods and Service Tax framework.
In India, eco taxes can target three main areas
- One, differential taxation on vehicles in the transport sector purely oriented towards fuel efficiency and GPS-based congestion charges.
- Two, in the energy sector by taxing fuels which feed into energy generation.
- Three, waste generation and use of natural resources.
Benefits of implementation of eco taxes
- The implementation of an environmental tax in India will have three broad benefits: fiscal, environmental and poverty reduction.
- Finance basic public services: Environmental tax reforms can mobilise revenues to finance basic public services when raising revenue through other sources proves to be difficult or burdensome.
- Reduce distorting taxes: It can can also help to reduce other distorting taxes such as fiscal dividend.
- Finance research: Environmental tax reforms help internalise the externalities, and the said revenue can finance research and the development of new technologies.
Impact
- Environmental regulations may lead to slow productivity growth and high cost of compliance in private sector.
- This could result in the possible increase in the prices of goods and services.
- However, the European experience shows that most of the taxes also generate substantial revenue and there is no evidence on green taxes with sustainable development goals leading to a ‘no growth’ economy.
- Negligible impact on GDP: Most countries’ experiences suggest negligible impact on the GDP, though such revenues have not necessarily been used for environmental considerations.
- The negligible impact on the GDP may be a temporary phenomenon.
Conclusion
This is the right time for India to adopt environmental fiscal reforms as they will reduce environmental pollution and also generate resources for financing the health sector.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Article 342A (1)
Mains level: Paper 2- Interpretation of 102nd Amendment
The article highlights the issues with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the 102nd amendment depriving the States of power to identify the SEBCs.
How 102nd Constitution Amendment was interpreted by the SC?
- Supreme Court held that the 102nd Constitution Amendment has taken away the power of the states to identify and prepare a list of Socially and Economically Backward Classes (SEBCs).
- The Supreme Court has interpreted the 102nd constitutional amendment to the effect that only the President can publish a list of backward classes in relation to each state and that only Parliament can make inclusions and exclusions in that list.
- The Supreme Court has also directed the central government to notify the list of SEBCs for each state and Union Territory.
- Until such lists are prepared, the court directed that the present state list would continue to be in operation.
Time-honoured authority of the States
- The states have been exercising the power to identify the list of SEBCs from the beginning of the 20th century.
- In states like the Madras Presidency, Mysore, Bombay, Travancore-Cochin, reservation and other benefits to OBCs were in practice since the 1920s.
- The Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951 and the insertion of Article 15(4), empowered the states to make “special provision for the advancement of socially and educationally backward classes of citizens”.
- In states like Bihar, 26 per cent reservation to OBCs in jobs and educational institutions were provided in 1978 on the recommendations of the Mungeri Lal Commission.
- Similarly, in more than a dozen states, reservation in jobs and educational institutions were provided on recommendations of the respective state commissions.
- Till 1992, there was no central list of SEBCs and no reservation in jobs and educational institutions in the central government.
- In the Indra Sawhney judgment in 1992, the Supreme Court upheld 27 per cent reservation in central government jobs for SEBCs.
- After Indra Sawhney, the Union government was authorised to prepare a central list for reservation of SEBCs in central government jobs and take other affirmative actions.
- Acting on the directions of the Supreme Court in Indra Sawhney, the central and several state governments enacted laws for setting up commissions to ascertain and identify the backward class of citizens.
- Therefore, after 1992, there was a “central list” for central government services and a “state list” that was prepared by state governments for state-specific jobs.
Intention of the Union government
- The intention was not to change the status quo and to take away the power of the state governments to prepare and notify a separate state list of SEBCs.
- Even during the discussion in the select committee of Parliament on the 102nd Constitution Amendment, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment clarified that the proposed insertion of Article 342A (1) and (2) did not interfere with the power of state governments to identify SEBCs.
- In the affidavit filed by the central government before the Supreme Court, it was submitted that the power of Parliament to identify SEBCs lay with reference to the central list and states would have a separate list of SEBCs for reservation.
Way forward
- If the review petition fails to convince the Supreme Court, the central government would have to expeditiously bring a constitutional amendment to resolve this crisis.
Consider the question “Examine the issues with the Supreme Courts interpretation of the 102nd constitutional amendment regarding the States’ right to identify the socially and economically backward class.”
Conclusion
The majority judgement by 3:2 has failed to appreciate that Article 15 empowers the states to identify socially and economically backward classes of citizens and that this power has not been changed by the 102nd Constitution Amendment.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: TRIPS
Mains level: Paper 3- Ensuring affordability and availability of Covid-19 vaccines
The possibilities of new strain of Covid-19 emerging from any region of the world could derail the global recovery. To prevent that from happening vaccines need to be made available and affordable to all. This article discusses the ways to ensure that.
Ensuring affordability and availability of Covid vaccines
- To achieve global herd immunity and prevent new strains of COVID-19 from emerging, vaccines need to be affordable and available in massive quantities throughout the globe.
- Following three are the ways to ensure vaccine availability and affordability.
- 1) Voluntary linceses: This can happen through patent owners voluntarily licensing their products to other companies, especially Indian producers who are experienced at mass-producing low-cost medications.
- 2) Compulsory licenses: This can also be done by temporarily suspending patent rights for COVID vaccines.
- 3) COVAX option: Some favour ensuring access to COVID-19 vaccines through the COVAX programme.
Options to ensure vaccine availability and affordability
1) Voluntary licencing: Lessons from fight against AIDS
- Due to anti-TRIPS activism from low-income countries and low profits from low-income markets some manufacturers placed licensing agreements to produce AIDS drugs for which they owned patent rights in the UN-affiliated Medicines Patent Pool.
- Several India-based companies then used these voluntary licences to manufacture these drugs on a massive scale and sold them at prices they determined.
- This effort brought down the price of key AIDS medications in these countries.
- The United Nations’ Medicines Patent Pool and the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool are important tools in an effort to promote voluntary licensing for COVID products.
- Sharing patent rights through voluntary licensing would need to involve India’s large pharmaceutical sector.
Challenges in voluntary licensing
- So far, no patent holders have joined the WHO’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool.
- This is why India and South Africa called on the WTO to temporarily waive patent protections for COVID-19.
- Meanwhile, the UN Medicines Patent Pool stands ready to accept voluntary licences for COVID-19.
2) Compulsory licenses
- Compulsory licenses override patent rights to allow local production or import of drugs by generic manufacturers in the event of a public health crisis.
- Since 2003, this right has been enshrined in the Doha Declaration addendum to the WTO’s TRIPS agreement and this is what India and South Africa are lobbying for.
- The Doha addendum, Section 5c, offers AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis as examples of what qualifies as a health emergency.
- By this standard, COVID-19 should easily qualify.
Issues with compulsory licensing
- Good will: Manufacturers in India say they prefer to work with voluntary licences because there is more good will between companies while compulsory licences often come with a legal battle brought by the patent holder.
- Time factor: Voluntary licences also enable production to begin more expeditiously as they usually are accompanied by “technology transfer” meaning that the patent holder reveals to the licensee how to manufacture the medication.
- No need to reverse engineer: Volunatry licensing spares the licensee the lengthy and costly process of figuring out how to reverse engineer the product.
3) COVAX option and issues
- COVAX programme was established to purchase vaccine doses and donate them to low-income countries.
- It does not involve modifying patent rights.
- Underfunded: COVAX is also currently underfunded.
- Delay: The Director-General of WHO warned that people in the lowest-income countries might have to wait until 2022 to get vaccinated through this programme.
Government aid should entail an obligation
- The billions of dollars in government aid given to companies to help develop COVID-19 treatments should entail an obligation to enable the mass production of affordable vaccines.
- Patents are not ironclad ownership rights, they are a temporary contract that balances the public interest with the claims of the innovator.
Consider the question “What is the importance of ensuring availability and affordability of Covid-19 vaccine throughout the world? What are the options available to ensure that?”
Conclusion
This is not just a question of social justice and ensuring life-saving therapies are available to the world’s poor. It is a necessary step to prevent deadlier, more contagious and possibly vaccine-resistant variants of COVID-19 from proliferating in an under-vaccinated world.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Issues with the bureaucracy
The second wave of Covid has exposed the inherent weakness of the bureaucracy in India. The article highlights the necessity for reforms in the way bureaucracy functions in India.
Features of traditional bureaucracy
- Preference to generalist: Weberian bureaucracy still prefers a generalist over a specialist.
- Preference to leadership of position: The leadership of position is preferred over leadership of function in the traditional bureaucracy.
- The leadership of function is when a person has expert knowledge of a particular responsibility in a particular situation.
- The role of the leader is to explain the situation instead of issuing orders.
- Every official involved in a particular role responds to the situation rather than relying on some dictation from someone occupying a particular position.
- Lack of innovation: The rigid adherence to rules has resulted in the rejection of innovation.
Covid exposed limits of traditional bureaucracy
- A generalist officer IAS and State civil service officials are deemed an expert and as a result, superior in traditional bureaucracy.
- Specialists in every government department have to remain subordinate to the generalist officers.
- The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the weakness of this system.
- Healthcare professionals who are specialists have been made to work under generalist officers and the policy options have been left to the generalists when they should be in the hands of the specialists.
- The justification is that the generalist provides a broader perspective compared to the specialist.
Is privatisation and private sector managerial techniques an answer?
- The reform often suggested in India is new public management.
- This as a reform movement promotes privatisation and managerial techniques of the private sector as an effective tool to seek improvements in public service delivery and governance.
- But this isn’t a viable solution in India where there is social inequality and regional variations in development.
- It renders the state a bystander among the multiple market players with a lack of accountability.
- Further, COVID-19 has shown that the private sector has also failed in public service delivery.
Way forward: Collaborative governance
- The most appropriate administrative reform is the model of new public governance.
- Work together: In collaborative governance, the public sector, private players and civil society, especially public service organisations (NGOs), work together for effective public service delivery.
- As part of new public governance, a network of social actors and private players would take responsibility in various aspects of governance with public bureaucracy steering the ship rather than rowing it.
- As part of new public governance, the role of civil society has to be institutionalised.
- It needs a change in the behaviour of bureaucracy.
- Openness to reforms: It needs flexibility in the hierarchy, a relook at the generalist versus specialist debate, and an openness to reforms such as lateral entry and collaboration with a network of social actors.
- All major revolutions with huge implications on public service delivery have come through the collaboration of public bureaucracy with so-called outsiders.
- These include the Green Revolution (M.S. Swaminathan), the White Revolution (Verghese Kurien), Aadhaar-enabled services (Nandan Nilekani) and the IT revolution (Sam Pitroda).
Consider the question “What are the weaknesses of bureaucracy in India? Suggest the measures to improve the quality of public service delivery in India.”
Conclusion
New public governance is the future of governance, especially public service delivery.
Back2Basics: The Weberian Model of bureaucracy
- The classic model of bureaucracy is typically called the ideal Weberian model, and it was developed by Max Weber, an early German sociologist.
- Weber argued that the increasing complexity of life would simultaneously increase the demands of citizens for government services.
- Therefore, the ideal type of bureaucracy, the Weberian model, was one in which agencies are apolitical, hierarchically organized, and governed by formal procedures.
- Furthermore, specialized bureaucrats would be better able to solve problems through logical reasoning.
- Such efforts would eliminate entrenched patronage, stop problematic decision-making by those in charge,, impose order and efficiency, create a clear understanding of the service provided, reduce arbitrariness, ensure accountability, and limit discretion.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Poor public health infrastructure in India and its consequences
The poor public health infrastructure in India hits the poor hard. The article examines the factors responsible for poor public health infrastructure and suggests the measures to deal with it.
Poor state of health infrastructure
- World Bank data reveal the poor state of India’s health infrastructure.
- It reveals that India had 85.7 physicians per 1,00,000 people in 2017.
- In contrast, it is 98 in Pakistan, 58 in Bangladesh, 100 in Sri Lanka and 241 in Japan.
- India had 53 beds per 1,00,000 people.
- It is 63 in Pakistan, 79.5 in Bangladesh, 415 in Sri Lanka and 1,298 in Japan.
- India had172.7 nurses and midwives per 1,00,000 people in contrast to 220 in Sri Lanka, 40 in Bangladesh, 70 in Pakistan, and 1,220 in Japan.
What are the factors responsible for poor health infrastructure?
- Stagnant expenditure: Analysis by the Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA), Ashoka University, shows that health expenditure has been stagnant for years.
- Lack of expertise with states: Despite health being a state subject, the main bodies with technical expertise are under central control.
- The States lack corresponding expert bodies such as the National Centre for Disease Control or the Indian Council of Medical Research.
- Inter-State variation: States also differ a great deal in terms of the fiscal space to deal with the novel coronavirus pandemic because of the wide variation in per capita health expenditure.
- Kerala and Delhi have been close to top in years from 2011 to 2019-20.
- Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, States that have been consistently towards the bottom of the ranking in the same years.
Out-of-pocket expenditure and its impact on the poor
- Due to low levels of public health provision, the World Health Organization estimates that 62% of the total health expenditure in India is OOP, among the highest in the world.
- Some of the poorest States, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Odisha, have a high ratio of OOP expenditures in total health expenditure.
- Impact on the poor: High ratio of OOP means that the poor in the poorest States, the most vulnerable sections, are the worst victims of a health emergency.
Way forward
1) Coordinated national plan
- The inter-State variation in health expenditure highlights the need for a coordinated national plan at the central level to fight the pandemic.
- The Centre already tightly controls major decisions, including additional resources raised specifically for pandemic relief, e.g. the PM CARES Fund.
- The need for a coordinated strategy on essential supplies of oxygen and vaccines is acute.
- The Centre can bargain for a good price from vaccine manufacturers in its capacity as a single large buyer like the European Union did for its member states.
- Centre will also benefit from the economies of scale in transportation of vaccines into the country.
- Once the vaccines arrive in India, these could be distributed across States equitably in a needs-based and transparent manner.
- Another benefit of central coordination is that distribution of constrained resources like medical supplies, financial resources can internalise the existing disparities in health infrastructure across States.
2) Form Pandemic Preparedness Unit
- There is a need for the creation of a “Pandemic Preparedness Unit” (PPU) by the central government.
- PPU would streamline disease surveillance and reporting systems; coordinate public health management and policy responses across all levels of government.
- It will also formulate policies to mitigate economic and social costs, and communicate effectively about the health crisis.
Consider the question “India has among the highest out-of-pocket expenditure in the world, which is the result of poor public health infrastructure. Examine the factors responsible for poor public health infrastructure and suggest the ways to deal with it.”
Conclusion
As and when we emerge on the other side of the pandemic, bolstering public health-care systems has to be the topmost priority for all governments: the Centre as well as States.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: CAPF
Mains level: Paper 2- Issues with MHA's decision to deploy CAPF for the security of MLAs
The article deals with the issue of the Home Ministry’s decision to provide security to BJP MLAs in West Bengal.
Context
Recently, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) decided to provide security cover to 77 MLAs of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who were elected earlier this month after the West Bengal Assembly poll.
Issues with the decision
1) Threat perception discussed for a group and not one by one person
- Decisions to provide security to persons under threat is taken by a committee in the MHA.
- The committee comprises officials from the MHA, the Intelligence Bureau, Delhi Police and senior officials of the Central Armed Police Forces.
- In the meetings of the committee, the threat perception of each of the person to be secured is discussed one by one and not collectively for any group as such.
- However, in the decision to deploy CAPF personnel for the 77 MLAs, threat perception for each of the persons was not discussed.
2) Law and order is a state subject
- Law and order being a State subject, West Bengal is duty-bound to protect every citizen of the State, more so the MLAs.
- By deploying central forces, the Centre has sent a clear signal that it does not rely upon the State government to provide fool-proof security to the BJP MLAs.
- This is not a good sign for Centre-State relations.
- The Central government’s distrust of officers who are considered close to a State’s ruling dispensation does not bode well for police officers across the country.
3) Burdening the security forces
- The number of protected persons has increased in recent years.
- In 2019, as many as 66,043 police and CAPF personnel were deployed to protect 19,467 persons against the sanctioned strength of 43,556 personnel, as per the Data on Police Organisations.
- Constant deployment of CAPF personnel on protection duties impacts their training schedule.
Curbing the tendency to have security as status symbol
- To curb the tendency of demanding security personnel around themselves, leaders and prominent persons should be asked to bear the expenditure.
- Similarly, Members of Parliament and leaders with criminal records should be charged a fee for the security personnel deployed to protect them.
Conclusion
The Centre’s decision to provide security to the MLAs would set a wrong precedent and does not bode well for federalism.
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