Brief of newspaper articles for the day bearing
relevance to Civil Services preparation
- GS PAPER 2
- More medicine for less {Health}
- EU needs a reality check {International Affairs}
- ‘Make in India’ not at cost of IPR: US {International Affairs}
- A cop-out called prohibition {Health}
- Researching education {Education}
- Why do healthy girl grow into undernourished woman in India {Health}
- GS PAPER 3
- Govt. to set up sex offenders registry {Security}
- India may become net importer of sugar as drought parches fields {Indian Economy}
- The case for high-speed rail {Railways}
- The challenge of economic revival {Indian Economy}
GS PAPER 2
[1] More medicine for less
The central government is considering the introduction of a law to make it mandatory for the doctors to prescribe generic drugs
Click here for the earlier article which explains the whole concept
Why this move?
- There is a lack of access to cheap drugs especially in case of poor people
- There is a lack of awareness on the availability of affordable alternatives to expensive brands.
- A recent assessment of India’s expenditure on health published by The Lancet showed that
- Out-of-pocket spending comprises 58 per cent of the total; two-thirds of this is on drugs.
- What makes the situation difficult even for relatively better-off patients who can afford commercial health insurance is that risk cover is generally confined to part payment of hospitalisation bills, but not prescription medicines.
- The poor are impoverished further by drug costs.
What can be the possible solutions?
- Governments should act on multiple fronts
- Making listed essential medicines available free or nearly free to all in hospitals through higher public spending
- Widening access to generics through Jan Aushadhi outlets
- Closely monitoring professional practice to eliminate prescription of irrational, non-essential drugs that have no curative effect.
There are malpractices of adulteration and non-adherence to the set standards on the part of drug manufacturing companies like Ranbaxy episode.
- To address this issues, government should help all manufacturers — public and private — to meet the internationally recognised Good Manufacturing Practice standards.
Jan Aushadhi stores- the reality:
- Scaling up the number of Jan Aushadhi outlets quickly is full of challenges
- Moreover, the performance so far is not so inspiring. The target of opening Jan Aushadhi stores in many states has not been met.
A transparent supply chain managed by state-run procurement agencies can help overcome bottlenecks of medicine availability.
[2] EU needs a reality check
Issue
- Considering the new geo-economic realities, EU should look towards East.
Importance and contribution of European Union in the contemporary world
- EU’s outreach to Iran paved the way for a diplomatic breakthrough between US and Iran.
- Its contested, yet continuing and valiant efforts to absorb Syrian war refugees are seminal.
- And, its clever, geo-economic manoeuvres have succeeded in effectively containing Russia’s sphere of influence across central and eastern Europe.
Weaknesses in the EU
- European nations has achieved only patchy social integration within its members.
- The states have been open to economic migrants and welcoming distressed populations from across the world’s conflict zones in the past (most recently from West Asia) but they have not been efficient in assimilating newcomers into their society.
- This gave birth to the the emergence and consolidation of radical Islamism and its twin, racist-right-wing politics and liberal EU is now grappling with two illiberal ideologies.
- In the economic sphere, EU finds itself caught in the inevitable confusion that comes from being a monetary union without being a fiscal union. The periodic eruption of the Greek tragedy fundamentally arises from this cleavage.
Four issues that dilute what the EU could potentially offer
Status Quoist:-
European powers are either unwilling or unable to reform the existing global governance order and allow it to be refashioned according to the realities of the 21st century.
Atlantic Centric:-
Asia and Africa holds the key to the future, in terms of resources and demographic dividend. Instead of a serious institutional push towards building a common future with the powers of these two regions, EU is still obsessed with powers of the Atlantic. And it is near absent in the great debates of the Indo-Pacific.
Self-proclaimed champion of human rights and value system:-
What Europe has engaged in since colonial era is promotion of self-determined values and norms divorced from immediate political interests.
Lack of communication in Asia and Africa:-
EU public diplomacy has been fairly ineffective in large parts of Asia and Africa, with the consequence that the many positive messages that the EU could communicate to countries and regions to its east have been muted, to be crowded out by narratives emerging from eurosceptics in Britain and the U.S. instead.
EU needs to look towards East (India)
EU in India seems to be in the news mostly for the wrong reasons, so it needs to take a hard look at its messaging, the medium, and at the concrete steps it needs to take to establish and reinvent itself among people it would need the most in the coming years.
[3] ‘Make in India’ not at cost of IPR: US
What happened?
The US Trade Representative’s annual Special 301 report, that identifies trade barriers to U.S. companies and products due to a foreign government’s intellectual property regime, has placed India on the Priority Watch List, the same as last year.
What is special 301 report?
Under Section 301 of US Trade Act, the office of US Trade representative (USTR) prepares a list of countries whose Intellectual property right regime (IPR) has negative impact on American products. Among such countries, special attention given to two groups:
| Priority watch list countries | Priority foreign countries |
| USA uses “carrot” policy to incentivize IPR reforms e.g. funding, training, capacity building, bilateral exchanges and conferences. | “sticks” policy to force IPR reforms e.g. putting trade sanctions, approaching WTO dispute resolution. |
Why is India kept in the Priority Watch list, in this report?
India is kept in Priority watchlist because
- Report has raised multiple concerns, particularly related to the potential erosion in IP standards due to its push for promoting domestic manufacturing.
- It is concerned about actions and policies in India that appear to favour local manufacturing or Indian IPR owners.
- According to the report, India has not taken the opportunity to address long-standing and systemic deficiencies in its IPR regime and has endorsed problematic policies.
- It said India was the source of a lot of pirated and counterfeit goods reaching the U.S shores.
- It has asked for clarity from the Government of India regarding the compulsory license decision-making process, as it affects U.S. stakeholders.
- India doesn’t have separate Anti-Camcording law to combat video piracy.
- India doesn’t have special takedown procedures against piracy websites.
- India is the top supplier of counterfeit pharmaceuticals to USA. Patent holder lose billions of dollar each year due to counterfeit / pirated products.
- Thus, India’s IPR regime is not conductive for innovation by foreigners- at least in USTR’s interpretation, hence put under “Priority watch list” of Special 301 report
Compulsory Licencing
- Compulsory licensing is when a government allows someone else to produce the patented product or process without the consent of the patent owner.
- It is one of the flexibilities on patent protection included in the WTO’s agreement on intellectual property — the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement.
- The compulsory licensing provision arms the government with the power to ensure that medicines are available to patients at affordable rates and has so far been used in Brazil, Thailand and South Africa.
- It gives the government the right to allow a generic drugmaker to sell copycat versions of patented drugs under certain conditions, without the consent of the patent owner.
- The TRIPS Agreement does not specifically list the reasons that might be used to justify compulsory licensing.
- However, the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health confirms that countries are free to determine the grounds for granting compulsory licences.
Stand of the Indian Government
- The government of India does not engage with the process as it considers it an infringement on the country’s sovereignty.
- Indian official sources pointed out that the categorisation is arbitrary and mostly a political decision, in order to reward or punish a target country.
How does India fare with respect to its competitors?
China too is in Priority Watch List whereas Pakistan is in Watch List, as according to the report Pakistan has shown sufficient improvement in IP protection and enforcement.
[4] A cop-out called prohibition
Recently elected Bihar government banning its sale and consumption to fulfil a key electoral promise.
Issue
- Prohibition of alcohol
Consequences of alcohol consumption
- Household impoverishment
- Domestic violence
- Premature mortality
Is prohibition of alcohol a sound move?
Prohibition is a very poor policy to address the consequences of alcohol abuse. No evidence.It has major negative implications :
- Massive loss to the exchequer.
- Criminalization of a majority of people who drink sensibly.
- Criminalization of a large section of society right from the manufactures (will resort to illegal manufacturing), dealers (would resort to smuggling) and the consumers (would be forced to buy illegally).
- This has a potential to result into a big nexus of smugglers, police ,politic. and bootleggers.
Prohibition of alcohol surprisingly has a serious ramification even on public health as poor people would resort to illegally brewed alcohol which is often poisonous and frequently results in deaths.
Prohibition in its true sense is rejected by most public health scientists who know this field, even the World Health Organisation does not recommend it.
There is lack of public health approach in India:
- Government has permitted the shameless substitute advertising of alcohol by corporations, for example, through selling “bottled water” under the same brand names as their much better known alcoholic beverages.
- Airline named after the most popular alcoholic beverage (Kingfisher)
What to do then if not prohibition?
India must not follow these archaic models of de-addiction. There are many other steps that could be taken:
- Effective counselling interventions for those who wish to control their drinking.
- Keeping a strong check on the proliferation of bootlegging and illegal manufacturing units.
- Spreading awareness right from the schools and colleges about the problem of alcohol abuse
Conclusion
Though prohibition may appear to be a one stop solution to the problem of alcohol abuse
In fact there is no evidence to show that prohibition has ever had its intended impact.
Yes it will reduce alcohol consumption but it can do very little for domestic violence and premature mortality. It might pose more serious problems than it would tackle.
[5] Researching education
Concern
- India in a big need for research in education sector, to improve quality of education.
Research
Two kinds of research can be done in education.
Second type of research is usually done by economists, political scientists, sociologists and scholars from similar intellectual backgrounds.
In India nobody is bothered about first type of research, very little can be seen, and second type of research gets disproportionate attention of policymakers and the public.
It basically focuses on issues of peripheral importance to the reality of education.
If research really want to help educational policy and practice, in improving the educational experience and attainment of the millions of students in our schools, we need to pay adequate attention to the first kind of research also.
This type of research requires focus on understanding the two important elements in our education system.
- The teacher
- Most teachers in India deal with heterogeneous student group
- That present complex challenges.
- Example
- different age groups
- A large number of these children would have parents who have never gone to school
- and even for others, the brutal struggle for livelihood leaves little possibility of educational support at home.
- Language issue: child knows different from the language used as the medium of instruction at the school.
- For many of these children, the only full meal is the mid-day meal provided by the school. Before and after school, most of them are engulfed with their share of daily chores.
Now the questions arises:
- How does a teacher deal with this situation?
- How can she be effective as an educator?
- How does she tackle the issue of multiple languages?
- How does she provide required support to those children facing the most acute deprivation?
- What are her struggles in doing all this, day after day, for years?
- What support does she require and how can we make that happen?
- How can she deal more effectively with the local community?
There is no one correct answer to any of these questions. There can be multiple valid approaches, influenced by factors factors, which may change over time.
With experience and rigorous reflection, one can arrive at relevant operating principles that can help in multiple contexts and situations.
Even these need constant critical interrogation, because of our dynamic social reality.
Now arises second set of questions which requires deep understanding of education systems in their complex social setting.
These type of questions take account of, the aims, values and concerns of education revealed by the first set with empathy.
Questions arises are:
- How can the capacity of our 8.5 million teachers, who have a full-time job, be improved within the constraints and diversity of our education system and social reality?
- How does community engagement with schools become effective?
- How can schools foster constitutional values?
- How should schools be governed, recognizing fully that simplistic, industrial-mindset governance mechanisms are not only ineffective but also harmful to good education?
- How do we deal with the rot in the pre-service teacher education system?
- Individual educators and organizations
- Some have conducted systematic inquiry and they have been able to abstract the experience into shareable knowledge.
- And if we compare multitude of these matters and their complexity, such inquiry has been microscopic in India.
Conclusion
- Research in education must focus on the real and important issues within education.
- Educators themselves should adept at asking and answering research questions, rigorously and systematically.
- If educators take responsibility for research, it will definitely cause a quiet revolution in education research and education itself.
[6] Why do healthy girl grow into undernourished woman in India
Context
- Recent research shows that adolescent girls are not as well-fed as boys of their age.
Why is it important?
- This helps us solving the puzzle: “why women fare badly on nutritional health indicators in India when an average girl child aged less than 5 years is healthier than her male peers”.
The study, Do Boys Eat Better than Girls in India: Longitudinal Evidence from Young Lives, shows two things.
- There is a gender gap in dietary diversity for all age groups except 12-year-olds, where consumption of food is more in girls than boys.
- The gap in favour of boys is the most marked in 15-year-old children.
See graph from here for better understanding
What explains these gender gaps in nutritional status?
- According to the paper, some of these relate to “In India, where meals are usually shared from the same pot, parents may be able to discriminate between siblings by providing an egg, a piece of fruit or a glass of milk to the preferred child at a given age”.
- These findings are in contrast with earlier finding which says that female are not disadvantaged in consumption of food and if they are then it may be because of anthropometric status (backed by data on anthropometric indicator).
- The advantage for girl child is seen to exist across multiple rounds of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data.
- These data does not explain why the average healthier girl child grows up to become an undernourished woman in India.
- Recently fourth round of NFHS (2015-16) shows that
- there is a much higher prevalence of anaemia and below normal body mass index (BMI) among women in comparison to men in India.
Conclusion
- Latest evidence showing that gender discrimination in nutrition might be starting not in childhood but in adolescence might help us solve this puzzle.
- Perhaps, these evidence would also act as a signal to our policy makers to plug what seems to be a significant loophole in female health in India.
GS PAPER 3
[1] Govt. to set up sex offenders registry
News
- Government is planning to set up a sex offender’s registry, on the lines of those maintained in western countries including the U.S. and the U.K.
What it will include?
- Details of convicted sex offenders like their photograph,addresses, PAN card details, Aadhar card number, fingerprint details and DNA samples.
- Even the details of juvenile Sex offenders will be included.
Where?
- On the website of National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)
Why is it needed?
- Citizens have the right to know whether a potential employee or a neighbour, for example, have a past record of conviction.
- Will be helpful for law enforcement agencies. Providing personal details on regular basis will ensure effective supervision of sex offenders and reduce future offences.
- It will bring fear in the minds of repeat sexual offenders.
Problems with such registry
- Alienation of convicts from the society after their release.
- Once on the list, all possibility for a convict to improve and move on in life will be lost.
- This will tantamount to double punishment.Sex offenders have already served a jail sentence, on their release , shaming by the society will be another punishment.
What are the government plans for this database?
- Plans is to publicise offenders photographs, addresses, PAN card details, Aadhaar card number, fingerprints and DNA samples through this database registry.
- As of now it will include registration of individuals convicted for offences like rape, voyeurism, stalking and aggravated sexual assault and also includes the possibility of registration of offenders below and above 18 years.
- According to the draft guidelines proposed, extensive information on the offender will be collected like:
- Inter-alia name and aliases, registration of primary or given name, nicknames, pseudonyms, telephone numbers, addresses including temporary lodging information, travel and immigration documents.
- Registry will also include information related to their jobs, professional licenses, information of school, college, institute with which they have been associated, vehicle information, date of birth, criminal history, current photograph, fingerprints and palm prints, DNA sample, driver’s licence, identification card, PAN card number, Aadhaar card number and Voter ID number.
- People can access this database through a Citizen Portal in the upcoming Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) project.
[2] India may become net importer of sugar as drought parches fields
What happened?
India is likely to become a net importer of sugar in 2016-17 as back-to-back drought years, dry irrigation channels and ravage cane fields, with Maharashtra seen dropping over 40 per cent.
Root of the problem
The El Nino weather phenomenon, which brings dry conditions to many regions, has stoked the worst drought in decades in some parts of India, with thousands of small-scale sugar cane growers in Maharashtra State failing to cultivate crops for the next marketing year, starting October.
Implications of imports
- It will give rival producers such as Pakistan, Thailand and Brazil the chance to boost shipments from their ports.
- Indian imports have in the past boosted global sugar prices.
- The global supply deficit is going to rise with the Indian shortfall. This could trigger a rally, although a lot depends on how much sugar India needs to import.
What next?
- The government should stop exports now to reduce import requirements in the next season.
- And in case, sugar is imported, then Duty free imports will be required to arrest price rises.
[3] The case for high-speed rail
Why in news?
The government of India recently decided to build a high-speed rail (HSR) corridor between Mumbai and Ahmedabad with Japanese financial and technical assistance.
Merits of this Project
- The negotiated terms are the best till now for any project financed through a bilateral/ multilateral agency in India.
- It involves transfer of technology and a Make in India component, which will have long-term benefits for Indian manufacturing.
- There is no minimum Japanese procurement restriction in percentage terms.
- All the main construction packages will be open to Indian companies, which was not the case in earlier Step-funded projects.
Why India needs High-speed rail (HSR)
- A growing economy like India needs investment in infrastructure and railways, which has a multiplier effect.
- The HSR will enhance transport capacity by four to five times of the normal capacity and facilitate the movement of a large number of people.
- Indian Railways is not constrained by demand but by capacity, and any substantial investment in railways will enable economic growth.
- Involvement of Indian co. in such project and at the same time the technology transfer by Japan will result in increasing the competence of such companies and help them become competitive at global level.
- Development of rail based mode of trans will reduce road congestion,pollution and provide convenient transport sol.
- Since the HSR system is highly safe, they reduce external costs (accidents, air/ noise pollution, impact on climate, etc).
Conclusion
- A healthy economic rate of return of almost 12 per cent, accounting for only the direct benefits and the other socio-economic benefits mentioned above, is sufficient to look beyond conventional speeds and move towards high speed.
- Constructing HSR lines in the country should be seen as a nation-building exercise rather than a standalone project justified only on transport demand.
[4] The challenge of economic revival
Context
- Deceleration in income growth and the lack of demand in rural areas, has started affecting other sectors of the economy
Deceleration in the income growth in the rural economy
The reduction of income in rural India has often been seen with a myopic lens. Entire blame for this has been put on the drought in the past 2 years. However there are other pertinent reasons for this reduction:
- The deceleration of income growth was largely due to the rise in input prices since 2010, particularly fertilizer and wages.
- It became serious after the collapse of international commodity prices.
- The first wave of recent farmer suicides was related to the collapse of prices (internationally and domestically) of sugarcane, rubber, cotton, guar and basmati rice, and not the drought as much.
Deceleration led to overall rural crisis.
- Agricultural labourers were worst hit as the growth rate of wages in casual labour started decelerating since November 2013 and have continued to fall.
- Lack of employment opportunities in agriculture in the past two years due to drought and shrinking farm incomes has hit the rural poor the most.
- It has also hit the non-farm sector in rural areas also with construction activity declining sharply in the past two years.
- The lack of demand in the non-farm sector, particularly in construction, contributed to the overall crisis in rural areas.
How the slowdown in rural demand affects the other sectors of the economy?
- The lack of effective demand has led to excess capacity in the manufacturing sector, with modest sales recovery in some sectors.
- The overall growth of the this sector remains constrained by a lack of domestic demand along with the decline in export demand.
- It has also led to a situation where despite the cuts in interest rates, private investment is yet to respond.
What is required from the government in such a scenario?
- Such a scenario is our own making with domestic policies not responding to challenges.
- The government need to have a plan to respond to the challenge of economic revival.
- The very minimum that is expected of the government is to inject demand through public expenditure.
- The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has certainly provided some relief with the increase in spending, but it still suffers from issues of supply side bottlenecks and fund-flow issues with delays in wage payments and so on.
- Government needs to fully implement the National Food Security Act, as in the poor households, large portion of their income is spent on food items. If food will be provided by the State, then they can use their money on non-food items, which will generate demand from the rural economy.
- And for financial inclusion, Jan Dhan scheme needs to be utilized for efficiency in service delivery.
Revival
While the fortunes of the economy look upbeat with the news of normal monsoon, any process of recovery will be conditional on the revival of demand in the rural economy.
A normal monsoon may provide immediate relief from the crisis in the agrarian economy, but it is unlikely to boost the rural economy in the long run.
For that, Government needs to follow following measures.
- Government needs to step up public expenditure in rural areas in different heads, including a substantial increase in investment in agricultural infrastructure and other rural infrastructure.
- It will also require kick-starting the process of rural non-farm diversification through various measures of support to small and medium enterprises.
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