Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Himalayan Frontal Thrust
Mains level: Paper 1- Major seismic hazards along Assam faultline
Location of epicentre
- An earthquake of magnitude 6.4 on the Richter scale hit Assam around 8 am on Wednesday.
- The primary earthquake had its epicentre at latitude 26.690 N and longitude 92.360 E, about 80 km northeast of Guwahati, and a focal depth of 17 km, the National Centre for Seismology (NCS) said.
The faultline
- The preliminary analysis shows that the events are located near to Kopili Fault closer to Himalayan Frontal Thrust (HFT).
- The Kopili Fault is a 300-km northwest-southeast trending fault from the Bhutan Himalaya to the Burmese arc.
- The fault is a fracture along which the blocks of crust on either side have moved relative to one another parallel to the fracture.
- The area is seismically very active falling in the highest Seismic Hazard zone V associated with collisional tectonics where Indian plate sub-ducts beneath the Eurasian Plate the NCS report said.
- HFT, also known as the Main Frontal Thrust (MFT), is a geological fault along the boundary of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates.
Need for earthquake preparedness
- The Northeast is located in the highest seismological zone, so we must have constant earthquake preparedness at all levels.
- Continuous tectonic stress keeps building up particularly along the faultlines.
- Today’s earthquake was an instance of accumulated stress release — probably, stress was constrained for a fairly long time at this epicentre, and hence the release was of relatively higher intensity.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Welfare state
Mains level: Paper 2- Universal social protection scheme
The article highlights the need for universal social protection scheme in India and suggests a way to achieve it.
Need for universal social security
- The pandemic has revealed that leveraging our existing schemes and providing universal social security is of utmost importance.
- This will help absorb the impact of external shocks on our vulnerable populations.
- The country has over 500 direct benefit transfer schemes for which various Central, State, and Line departments are responsible.
- However, these schemes have not reached those in need.
Lessons from Poor Law System in Ireland
- An example of a universal social protection scheme is the Poor Law System in Ireland.
- In the 19th century, to deal with poverty and famine, Ireland introduced the Poor Law System to provide relief that was financed by local property taxes.
- These laws were notable for not only providing timely assistance but maintaining the dignity and respectability of the poor while doing so.
- They were not designed as hand-outs but as necessary responses to a time of economic crisis.
- Today, the social welfare system in Ireland has evolved into a four-fold apparatus that promises social insurance, social assistance, universal schemes, and extra benefits/supplements.
Issues with the existing social protection schemes in Inda
- Existing schemes in India cover a wide variety of social protections.
- However, they are fractionalised across various departments and sub-schemes.
- This causes problems beginning with data collection to last-mile delivery.
How universal system would help
- Having a universal system would improve the ease of application by consolidating the data of all eligible beneficiaries under one database.
- It can also reduce exclusion errors.
- The Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY) is one scheme that can be strengthened into universal social security.
- It already consolidates the public distribution system (PDS), the provision of gas cylinders, and wages for the MGNREGS.
- Generally, social assistance schemes are provided on the basis of an assessment of needs.
- Having a universal scheme would take away this access/exclusion barrier.
- For example, PDS can be linked to a universal identification card such as the Aadhaar or voter card, in the absence of a ration card.
- This would allow anyone who is in need of foodgrains to access these schemes.
- It would be especially useful for migrant populations.
- Making other schemes/welfare provisions like education, maternity benefits, disability benefits etc. also universal would ensure a better standard of living for the people.
- To ensure some of these issues are addressed, we need to map the State and Central schemes in a consolidated manner.
- This is to avoid duplication, inclusion and exclusion errors in welfare delivery.
- The implementation of any of these ideas is only possible through a focus on data digitisation, data-driven decision-making and collaboration across government departments.
Consider the question “What are the issues with existing social security schemes in India? What would be the benefits of replacing all these social security schemes with universal social security scheme?”
Conclusion
India is one of the largest welfare states in the world and yet, with COVID-19 striking in 2020, the state failed to provide for its most vulnerable citizens. This underlines the need for a universal social protection scheme in India.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: SCRI
Mains level: Paper 2- Making the supply chains resilient
Tackling the supply chain disruption through SCRI
- The Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI) was formally launched on Tuesday by the Trade Ministers of India, Japan and Australia.
- The three sides agreed that the pandemic revealed supply chain vulnerabilities globally and in the region and noted the importance of risk management and continuity plans in order to avoid supply chain disruptions.
- Some of the joint measures they are considering include supporting the enhanced utilisation of digital technology and trade and investment diversification, which is seen as being aimed at reducing their reliance on China.
How China reacted
- China’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday described the move as ‘unrealistic’.
- The formation and development of global industrial and supply chains are determined by market forces and companies choices, it said.
- It also said that the artificial industrial ‘transfer’ is an unrealistic approach that goes against the economic laws and can neither solve domestic problems nor do anything good to the stability of the global industrial and supply chains, or to the stable recovery of the world economy.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3- What makes vehicle policy unattractive
Why the Vehicle Scrappage Policy is unattractive
- The policy proposes to de-register vehicles that fail fitness tests or are unable to renew registrations after 15-20 years of use.
- Limited incentives and poor cost economics for trucks in the Vehicle Scrappage Policy, coupled with lack of addressable volumes for other segments is unlikely to drive freight transporters to replace their old vehicles with new ones, said a Crisil report.
- Though the scrappage volume of buses, PVs and two-wheelers is expected to be limited as well, the policy’s impact on new commercial vehicle (CV) sales could be sizeable, based on addressable volume, ratings agency Crisil Research said in its report.
- The potential benefit from scrapping a 15-year-old, entry-level small car will be ₹70,000, whereas its resale value is around ₹95,000. That makes scrapping unattractive, Crisil said in the report.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Factors responsible for anti-microbial resistance
Mains level: Paper 2-Threats posed by anti-microbial resistance
The article highlights the challenges posed by anti-microbial resistance (AMR) and suggests ways to deal with it.
Understanding the severity of challenges posed by AMR
- Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is the phenomenon by which bacteria and fungi evolve and become resistant to presently available medical treatment.
- AMR represents an existential threat to modern medicine.
- Without functional antimicrobials to treat bacterial and fungal infections, even the most common surgical procedures, as well as cancer chemotherapy, will become fraught with risk from untreatable infections.
- Neonatal and maternal mortality will increase.
How AMR will affect low and middle-income countries
- All these effects will be felt globally, but the scenario in the low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) of Asia and Africa is even more serious.
- LMICs have significantly driven down mortality using cheap and easily available antimicrobials.
- In the absence of new therapies, health systems in these countries are at severe risk of being overrun by untreatable infectious diseases.
Factors contributing to AMR
- Drug resistance in microbes emerges for several reasons.
- These include the misuse of antimicrobials in medicine, inappropriate use in agriculture, and contamination around pharmaceutical manufacturing sites where untreated waste releases large amounts of active antimicrobials into the environment.
Stagnant antibiotics discovery
- The Challenge of AMR is compounded by fact that no new classes of antibiotics have made it to the market in the last three decades.
- This has happened on account of inadequate incentives for their development and production.
- A recent report from the non-profit PEW Trusts found that over 95% of antibiotics in development today are from small companies, 75% of which have no products currently in the market.
- Major pharmaceutical companies have largely abandoned innovation in this space.
Measures to deal with the challenge of AMR
- In addition to developing new antimicrobials, infection-control measures can reduce antibiotic use.
- A mix of incentives and sanctions would encourage appropriate clinical use.
- To track the spread of resistance in microbes, surveillance measures to identify these organisms need to expand beyond hospitals and encompass livestock, wastewater and farm run-offs.
- Finally, since microbes will inevitably continue to evolve and become resistant even to new antimicrobials, we need sustained investments and global coordination to detect and combat new resistant strains on an ongoing basis.
Way forward
- A multi-sectoral $1 billion AMR Action Fund was launched in 2020 to support the development of new antibiotics.
- The U.K. is trialling a subscription-based model for paying for new antimicrobials towards ensuring their commercial viability.
- Other initiatives focused on the appropriate use of antibiotics include Peru’s efforts on patient education to reduce unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions.
- Australian regulatory reforms to influence prescriber behaviour, and initiatives to increase the use of point-of-care diagnostics, such as the EU-supported VALUE-Dx programme.
- Denmark’s reforms to prevent the use of antibiotics in livestock have led to a significant reduction in the prevalence of resistant microbes in animals and improved the efficiency of farming.
- Finally, given the critical role of manufacturing and environmental contamination in spreading AMR there is a need to curb the amount of active antibiotics released in pharmaceutical waste.
- Regulating clinician prescription of antimicrobials alone would do little in settings where patient demand is high and antimicrobials are freely available over-the-counter in practice, as is the case in many LMICs.
- Efforts to control prescription through provider incentives should be accompanied by efforts to educate consumers to reduce inappropriate demand, issue standard treatment guidelines.
- Solutions in clinical medicine must be integrated with improved surveillance of AMR in agriculture, animal health and the environment.
- AMR must no longer be the remit solely of the health sector, but needs engagement from a wide range of stakeholders, representing agriculture, trade and the environment with solutions that balance their often-competing interests.
- International alignment and coordination are paramount in both policymaking and its implementation.
Consider the question “Anti-microbial resistance (AMR) represents an existential threat to modern medicine. What are the factors contributing to AMR? Suggest the measures to deal with it.”
Conclusion
With viral diseases such as COVID-19, outbreaks and pandemics may be harder to predict; however, given what we know about the “silent pandemic” that is AMR, there is no excuse for delaying action.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Article 239AA
Mains level: Paper 2- GNCT of Delhi Amendment Act notified by the Centre
GNCT Act comes into effect
- The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued a gazette notification stating that the provisions of the Government of National Capital Territory (GNCT) of Delhi (Amendment) Act, 2021, would be deemed to have come into effect from April 27.
- The Act defines the responsibilities of the elected government and the L-G along with the “constitutional scheme of governance of the NCT” interpreted by the Supreme Court in recent judgements regarding the division of powers between the two entities.
What the Amendment seeks to achieve
- The Act will clarify the expression Government and address ambiguities in legislative provisions.
- It will also seek to ensure that the L-G is “necessarily granted an opportunity” to exercise powers entrusted to him under proviso to clause (4) of Article 239AA of the Constitution.
- Clause (4) of Article 239AA provides for a Council of Ministers headed by a Chief Minister for the NCT to “aid and advise the Lieutenant Governor” in the exercise of his functions for matters in which the Legislative Assembly has the power to make laws.
- Now Act will also provide for rules made by the Legislative Assembly of Delhi to be “consistent with the rules of the House of the People” or the Lok Sabha.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3- Slowing innovation in clean energy
Major findings of the report
- It is a joint report titled “Patents and the energy transition” released by the European Patent Office and the International Energy Agency.
- The average annual growth rate of patents for low carbon emissions technologies has fallen to 3.3 percent since 2017, the rate was 12.5 percent in the period 2000-2013.
- The report found that around 35 percent of the cumulative CO2 emissions reductions needed to shift to a sustainable path to reach net-zero emissions by 2070 are still currently at the prototype or demonstration phase.
- The report found that energy efficiency and fuel-switching technologies remained at the top of patent activities, accounting for about 60 percent of the total.
Shifting trend withing renewable
- Patent activity in renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar has been in decline for nearly a decade however, and represented just 17 percent of the total in 2019, report found.
- The key driver of patent growth since 2017 has been innovation in cross-cutting technologies such as batteries, hydrogen and smart grids, along with carbon-capture, utilisation and storage.
Source:
https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/renewable/clean-energy-innovation-slowing-report-warns/82270391
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