Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions Bill 2020
Mains level: Paper 2- NCAHP Bill 2020
The article highlights the key aspects of NCAHP Bill 2020 which recognises the allied healthcare professionals and seeks to regulate and set the standards of education.
Regulating allied health professions
- The National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions Bill, 2020 (NCAHP) was passed by Parliament in March.
- Global evidence demonstrates the vital role of allied professionals in the delivery of healthcare services.
- They are the first to recognise the problems of the patients and serve as safety nets.
- Their awareness of patient care accountability adds tremendous value to the healthcare team in both the public and private sectors.
- The passage of this Bill has the potential to overhaul the entire allied health workforce by establishing institutes of excellence and regulating the scope of practice by focusing on task shifting and task-re distribution.
What the Bill provides for
- This legislation provides for regulation and maintenance of standards of education and services by allied and healthcare professionals and the maintenance of a central register of such professionals.
- It recognises over 50 professions such as physiotherapists, optometrists, nutritionists, medical laboratory professionals, radiotherapy technology professionals, which had hitherto lacked a comprehensive regulatory mechanism.
- This Bill classifies allied professionals using the International System of Classification of Occupations (ISCO code).
- This facilitates global mobility and enables better opportunities for such professionals.
- The Act aims to establish a central statutory body as a National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions.
- The Bill has the provision for state councils to execute major functions through autonomous boards.
Shift in perception and policy in healthcare delivery
- There has been a paradigm shift in perception, policy, and programmatic interventions in healthcare delivery in India since 2017.
- In the past, curative healthcare received substantially greater attention than preventive and promotive aspects.
- Ayushman Bharat as a programmatic intervention, with its two pillars of Health and Wellness Centres (HWCs) and Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY), operationalised certain critical recommendations of the National Health Policy, 2017, emphasising wellness in healthcare.
- With PMJAY, the neediest are protected from catastrophic expenditure and India took the first step towards delivering comprehensive primary healthcare with HWCs.
Conclusion
Caring for patients with mental conditions, the elderly, those in need of palliative services, and enabling professional services for lifestyle change related to physical activity and diets, all require a trained, allied health workforce. The NCAHP is not only timely but critical to this changing paradigm.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Reviving BIMSTEC
More than two decades after its formation, BIMSTEC still remains a work in progress. And it has many obstacles to overcome. The article highlights challenges and progress made so far.
Background of BIMSTEC
- The foreign ministers of BIMSTEC (the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) met virtually on April 1.
- It was established as a grouping of four nations — India, Thailand, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka — through the Bangkok Declaration of 1997 to promote rapid economic development.
- BIMSTEC was expanded later to include three more countries — Myanmar, Nepal and Bhutan.
- It moved at a leisurely pace during its first 20 years with only three summits held and a record of modest achievements.
Growing significance
- BIMSTEC suddenly received special attention when India chose to treat it as a more practical instrument for regional cooperation over a faltering SAARC.
- The BIMSTEC Leaders’ Retreat, followed by their Outreach Summit with the BRICS leaders in Goa in October 2016, drew considerable international limelight to the low-profile regional grouping.
- At the fourth leaders’ summit in Kathmandu in 2018, a plan for institutional reform and renewal that would encompass economic and security cooperation was devised.
- It took the important decision to craft a charter to provide BIMSTEC with a more formal and stronger foundation.
- The shared goal now is to head towards “a Peaceful, Prosperous and Sustainable Bay of Bengal Region”.
Why the recent summit is important
- In the recent virtual summit, the foreign ministers cleared the draft for the BIMSTEC charter.
- They endorsed the rationalisation of sectors and sub-sectors of activity, with each member-state serving as a lead for the assigned areas of special interest.
- The ministers also conveyed their support for the Master Plan for Transport Connectivity.
- Preparations have been completed for the signing of three agreements:
- 1) Mutual legal assistance in criminal matters.
- 2) Cooperation between diplomatic academies.
- 3) The establishment of a technology transfer facility in Colombo.
Lack of progress on trade
- In the recent deliberation, there was no reference to the lack of progress on the trade and economic dossier.
- A January 2018 study by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry had suggested that BIMSTEC urgently needed a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement to be a real game-changer.
- Ideally, it should cover trade in goods, services and investment; promote regulatory harmonisation; adopt policies that develop regional value chains, and eliminate non-tariff barriers.
- Also lacking was an effort to enthuse and engage the vibrant business communities of these seven countries.
- Over 20 rounds of negotiations to operationalise the BIMSTEC Free Trade Area Framework Agreement, signed in 2004, are yet to bear fruit.
Achievements
- Much has been achieved in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief and security, including counterterrorism, cybersecurity, and coastal security cooperation.
- India has led through constant focus and follow-up.
- While national business chambers are yet to be optimally engaged with the BIMSTEC project, the academic and strategic community has shown ample enthusiasm through the BIMSTEC Network of Policy Think Tanks and other fora.
Challenges
- A strong BIMSTEC presupposes cordial and tension-free bilateral relations among all its member-states.
- However, there has been tensions in India-Nepal, India-Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh-Myanmar ties in recent years.
- Second, uncertainties over SAARC hovers, complicating matters. Both Kathmandu and Colombo want the SAARC summit revived, even as they cooperate within BIMSTEC, with diluted zeal.
- Third, China’s decisive intrusion in the South-Southeast Asian space has cast dark shadows.
- Finally, the military coup in Myanmar and the continuation of popular resistance resulting in a protracted impasse have produced a new set of challenges.
Consider the question “What are the challenges BIMSTEC faces in emerging as an alternative to the SAARC? What are its achievements?”
Conclusion
The grouping needs to reinvent itself, possibly even rename itself as ‘The Bay of Bengal Community’. It should consider holding regular annual summits. Only then will its leaders convince the region about their strong commitment to the new vision they have for this unique platform linking South Asia and Southeast Asia.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3- Economic recovery and challenges posed by second covid wave
The article highlights the challenges posed by the second wave of covid and how aggressive vaccination could help dealing with the issue.
Severe second covid wave in India
- India’s daily new cases have surged past 1,50,000, much above the first peak.
- In India’s first wave, the increase from 50,000 to about 1,00,000 cases took about 50 days; in the second wave, it’s taken just 13.
- To start with, the second wave was more concentrated, with Maharashtra accounting for 60 per cent of cases.
- While the top five states still account for about 65 per cent of cases, the reproduction (R) factor in almost 10 states is estimated to be two or higher, creating risks for a wider and more rapid spread, if unaddressed.
Lessons from the first wave
- Policymakers, businesses and households have all learnt from the first wave and with the private sector better adapted to “live with the virus”.
- Therefore, the economic costs should hopefully not be comparable to the first wave. Yet, they may not be trivial either.
- The five states that account for 65 per cent of new cases also account for almost 36 per cent of GDP.
- As virus cases have grown and restrictions have been imposed, retail and recreational mobility across these five states, is down 10 per cent since mid-March.
- Labour market surveys have also begun to show discernable impacts on both participation and unemployment rates.
Implications of unequal recovery for developing countries
- The IMF projects India’s FY22 growth at 12.5 per cent, this would still leave India about 8-9 per cent below the level of output that was projected pre-pandemic for the end of 2021-22.
- The challenge for emerging markets is that, given the quantum of fiscal and monetary space expended in combating the first wave, space to respond to subsequent waves will be constrained.
- Owing to the fiscal support and pace of vaccinations the US will be the only large economy, apart from China, to surpass its pre-pandemic path.
- This, resulted in increased US yields, tightened global financial conditions, induced dollar strength and triggered
- All this makes it harder for emerging economies to respond expansively to domestic shocks.
- In effect, the heterogeneity of the recovery across developed and emerging markets is imposing policy constraints on the latter which, ironically, will simply compound the economic divergence.
Challenges for India
- India’s fiscal space to respond to a second wave appears constrained due to the following two factors:
- 1) In India’s case, consolidated public debt will approach 90 per cent of GDP.
- 2) The consolidated public sector borrowing requirements are budgeted above 11 per cent of GDP in FY22.
- The dependence on budgeted asset sales has only increased, both as a hedge to tax revenues that could be impacted from a second wave, and as a means of protecting expenditures.
- It will be equally crucial to leaving enough space for higher MGNREGA demand and other safety nets on account of a second wave, even while protecting capital expenditures — which generate large multiplier effects on the economy.
- Similarly, monetary policy is already very accommodative, and with core inflation sticky and elevated, global deflationary pressures entrenched, there are natural limits to the degree of more monetary accommodation.
Aggressive vaccination is the key
- Israel, the UK and the US have all demonstrated how aggressive vaccinations can bend the COVID-curve.
- Therefore, the Indian government’s decision to approve a third vaccine and fast-track emergency approval for foreign-produced vaccines is unambiguously positive.
- On the demand side, of an estimated 100-110 million population of seniors (60-plus) in India, only about 40 million have taken the vaccine over the last six weeks, suggesting a reluctance to get vaccinated.
- But, in fact, it’s crucial to ensure the vulnerable — those whose probability of hospitalisation is the highest — are fully vaccinated to reduce pressure on the health infrastructure.
Consider the question “What are the challenges posed to the developing countries by heterogeneity of recovery across the developed and developing countries?
Conclusion
Vaccinations should be construed as simultaneously delivering both a positive demand and supply shock (for the economy), and a negative demand shock (for health infrastructure), thereby providing the best chance to decisively break the trade-offs between lives and livelihoods that bedevilled emerging markets all of last year.
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