Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- Reforming medical education in India
The article highlights the issue of shortage of doctors in India and issues with the involvement of private sector in it.
Government approach
- Market-oriented approach towards medical education: NITI Aayog’s proposal of allowing private entities to take over district hospitals for converting them into teaching hospitals with at least 150 MBBS seats.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Al-Aqsa Mosque
Mains level: Paper 2- Israel-Palestine conflict
The article discusses the types of response the recent violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict would invoke across the world and also explains the perils of ignoring the conflict.
Three types of responses
- The deadly riots in Israel and the war in Gaza, is likely to evoke three kinds of responses: The indifferent, the imperial, the humanitarian.
1) Moral indifference
- Instead of becoming the symbol of the unfinished tasks of decolonisation, and a human rights catastrophe, the Palestinian question is now mostly an occasion to vent cynicism.
- The moral questions the oppression of Palestinians poses is avoided by claiming that in this conflict we can assigning rights and wrongs equally to both sides.
- There is the spectacle of civilians on both sides living in terror.
- There is the fanaticism of the right-wing in Israel and there is the fanaticism of Hamas and Fatah.
- Blaming both sides also whitewashes the fact that there is a monumental injustice to the Palestinians at the heart of the problem.
2) The imperial response
- The events leading up to the recent clashes at the Al-Aqsa Mosque can be seen as part of a long pattern of pushing out Palestinians from territory Israel wants to claim.
- American administration has not been able to significantly roll back this project of pushing the Palestinians out.
- Palestine will once again be the site where the Biden administration’s liberal internationalism will face challenge.
3) Humanitarian response
- This third response is to dig beneath the politics and find bridges in shared humanity and suffering.
- This is also the tack of the peace movements that use culture and a history of shared suffering to build bridges.
- They emphasise that dispossession and exile is something both communities share; they, of all the people, should be able to understand each other.
- Humanity and culture, even when deeply internalised, collapse quickly when subject to fear.
- And they always fall short of acknowledging the core issue at stake: Political equality between two peoples.
Geopolitical implications of conflict
- The violence of Israel will beget more terrorist violence of Hamas and Fatah, with every world power from Russia to Iran influencing the chaos.
- Israel needs to be reminded of the blowback of imperial politics: The ultimate consequence of trying to dominate a people is that you end up destroying the moral legitimacy of your own claims.
- No amount of military capacity can compensate for the images of lynching, rioting, and provocations that we have seen this week.
Conclusion
We continually risk conflict if the Palestinian question is simply treated as an object of geo-political opportunism, not as a question of basic dignity and justice.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Remittances received by India
Mains level: Paper 3- Remittances received by India bucks pandemic effect
What the World Bank report says
- India received over USD 83 billion in remittances in 2020, according to a World Bank report.
- In 2019, India had received USD 83.3 billion in remittances.
- The report said India’s remittances fell by just 0.2 per cent in 2020.
- Much of the decline was due to a 17 per cent drop in remittances from the United Arab Emirates, which offset resilient flows from the United States and other host countries.
- The World Bank, in its latest Migration and Development Brief, said despite COVID-19, remittance flows remained resilient in 2020.
Trend analysis
- China, which received USD 59.5 billion in remittances in 2020 against USD 68.3 billion the previous year, is a distant second.
- India and China are followed by Mexico (USD42.8 billion), the Philippines (USD34.9 billion), Egypt (USD29.6 billion), Pakistan (USD26 billion), France (USD24.4 billion) and Bangladesh (USD21 billion).
- Remittance outflow was the maximum from the United States (USD68 billion), followed by UAE (USD43 billion), Saudi Arabia (USD34.5 billion), Switzerland (USD27.9 billion), Germany (USD22 billion), and China (USD18 billion).
- The relatively strong performance of remittance flows during the COVID-19 crisis has also highlighted the importance of timely availability of data.
- Given its growing significance as a source of external financing for low- and middle-income countries, there is a need for better collection of data on remittances, in terms of frequency, timely reporting, and granularity by corridor and channel.
B2BASICS
Remittances
- Remittances are usually understood as financial or in-kind transfers made by migrants to friends and relatives back in communities of origin.
- These are basically sum of two main components – Personal Transfers in cash or in kind between resident and non-resident households and Compensation of Employees, which refers to the income of workers who work in another country for a limited period of time.
- Remittances help in stimulating economic development in recipient countries, but this can also make such countries over-reliant on them.
Remittance and the Indian Economy
Benefits
- Increased inward remittance is a boon for the economy at both macro and micro levels.
- At the macro level, remittances contribute to maintaining stable foreign reserves.
- Remittances help Indian Rupee hold its value against the US dollar and forms a significant part of the GDP.
- On a micro level, remittances have shown a positive impact on healthcare, entrepreneurship, education, and overall economic development of the recipient families.
Issues
An increase in outward remittances however, raises an alarm. It causes the rupee to weaken against the dollar, which in return impacts the businesses exposed to foreign exchange, and the economy overall.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- App to watch live proceedings of the Supreme Court
App to view virtual proceedings
- Chief Justice of India launched a mobile app that would allow media persons to view the Supreme Court’s virtual proceedings live on their mobile phones.
- The role of the media assumes importance in the process of disseminating information.
- Justice A.M. Khanwilkar said the facility, which is now temporary, could be made permanent in the future depending on the operational issues.
‘Indicative Notes’ on the SC website
- The CJI also launched a new feature in the Supreme Court’s official website called ‘Indicative Notes’.
- This feature is aimed at providing concise summaries of landmark judgments in an easy-to-understand format.
- This will serve as a useful resource for media persons and the general public who wish to be better informed about the rulings of the court.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Difference between OCI and NRI
Mains level: Paper 2- Issues faced by OCI
About notification
- The Home Ministry’s March 4 order that required professional Overseas Citizens of India (OCIs), such as journalists, engineers and researchers, to notify the Ministry about their activities in India.
- The notification said that OCIs shall be required to obtain a “special permission or a special permit” from the competent authority or the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) or the Indian mission “to undertake research, missionary or Tabligh or mountaineering or journalistic activities or internship in any foreign diplomatic missions
- The Ministry issued a gazette notification that OCI cardholders could claim “only NRI (Non-Resident Indian) quota seats” in educational institutions.
Issues with the notification
- This will place undue burden on scientific, pharmaceutical, medical, biotechnology and other research fields.
- Even if an OCI student has secured a high rank in an exam like NEET, several institutions of repute do not have NRI seats.
- The exorbitantly high fees under the NRI quota cannot be afforded by many OCIs as they live and work in India.
- India-domiciled OCI students are deprived of domicile status both in India [country of residence] as well as the country of their citizenship.
- The notification equates India-domiciled OCIs with a foreigner.
About OCIs
- OCIs are of Indian origin but hold foreign passports.
- India does not allow dual citizenship but provides certain benefits under Section 7B(I) of the Citizenship Act, 1955 to the OCIs.
- So far, 37.72 lakh OCI Cards are said to have been issued.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Cluster of cases and community transmission classification of WHO
Mains level: Paper 2- Why community transmission tag matters
How other countries are classifying themselves
- Inspite of adding the highest number of cases in the world every day, India continues to label itself as a country with no community transmission (CT) according to the latest weekly report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on May 11.
- India opts for the lower, less serious classification called ‘cluster of cases’.
- Countries such as the United States, Brazil, United Kingdom, France have all labelled themselves as being in ‘community transmission.
- Among the 10 countries with the most number of confirmed cases, only Italy and Russia do not label themselves as being in community transmission.
- Both countries have been on a declining trajectory for at least a month and together contribute less than 20,000 cases a day — about 5% of India’s daily numbers.
- India, since the beginning of the pandemic has never marked itself as being in community transition.
Understanding the classification
- Broadly, CT is when new cases in the last 14 days can’t be traced to those who have an international travel history, when cases can’t be linked to specific cluster.
- Instead, the classification, ‘cluster of cases’ says “Cases detected in the past 14 days are predominantly limited to well-defined clusters that are not directly linked to imported cases”.
- The WHO guidelines further suggest four subcategories within the broader definition of CT.
- CT-1 implying “Low incidence of locally acquired, widely dispersed cases…and low risk of infection for the general population.
- The highest, a CT-4 suggests very high incidence of locally acquired, widely dispersed cases in the past 14 days.
- Very high risk of infection for the general population.
Why right classification matters
- If cases were still a cluster, it would mean that the government ought to be prioritising testing, contact tracing and isolating to prevent further infection spread.
- CT, on the other hand meant prioritising treatment and observing advisories to stay protected.
- CT — far from being stigmatic or an indicator of failure — has a bearing on how authorities addressed a pandemic.
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