Current affairs 25th April 2019
Current Affairs and Editorial discussion from various national daily newspapers
Current affairs 25th April 2019
The Art of Giving
What has been found?
Only a small percentage of India’s everyday giving goes towards non-government organisations. Around Rs. 3,500 crores goes to NGOs, making it a mere 6% contribution to total philanthropic giving in India.
Who founded out this?
This was one of the findings of the ‘Everyday Giving in India Report’. The research was undertaken by Sattva Consulting, a social impact consulting firm, in association with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies.
How does India donate?
The report highlights ‘everyday giving’ in India, which includes the ways in which India’s citizens give their money and time, and engage with social causes. The report states that ‘India’s everyday givers’ are motivated by four factors — convenience, urgency, community and impact.
Where does India stand in the world?
Nearly all cultures have strong traditions of giving and caring for their communities. India, in fact, has the most number of people volunteering and donating money in the world, ahead of the USA and China. Growing potential to give is evident from the expanding size and wealth of India’s middle class. We believe this is the apt time to discuss individual giving and citizen engagement in nation building when the country is embarking on a new wave of governance post the elections of 2019.
The report also states that face-to-face and telemarketing channels could continue to dominate in 2021, but payroll giving, crowdfunding, and e-commerce-based giving are poised to grow strongly.
Bilkis Bano case
What is the judgement?
In ordering the Gujarat government to pay Rs. 50 lakh (besides asking the State government to provide her with a government job and a house) to Bilkis Yakoob Rasool Bano, a gang-rape survivor of the 2002 communal pogrom in the State who has bravely fought her case, the Supreme Court has endeavoured to achieve restitutive justice.
How is the compensation decided in India?
While convictions are not easy to come by in cases of mob violence, victim compensation may often be the only way to ensure some justice. The Code of Criminal Procedure was amended in 2008 to insert Section 357A under which every State government has to prepare a scheme to set up a fund from which compensation can be paid to victims of crime and their dependants who have suffered loss and injury and who may require rehabilitation. The Centre has a Central Victim Compensation Fund. On Supreme Court directions, the National Legal Services Authority has prepared a compensation scheme for women victims and survivors of sexual assault and other crimes. Many States have notified schemes on these lines. While on paper there is a mechanism to assess rehabilitation needs and pay compensation, there is a need to streamline the schemes and ensure that the compensation process is not done in an ad hoc manner, but is based on sound principles.
BRI more about Asia than about China
Why in news?
India has, once again, decided to not participate in China’s second Belt and Road Forum (BRF) due on April 25, which is likely to be attended by around 40 heads of government.
How can India benefit?
First, the defining feature of the 21st century is that Asia, not China, is at the centre of the world. The BRI is part of a transformation triggered by colonialism and industrial capitalism from the 1840s and influenced by the UN institutions and global rules from the 1950s. Of the estimated $30 trillion increase in middle-class consumption growth estimated by 2030, only $1 trillion is expected to come from Western economies and most of the rest from Asia. China’s population is nearly one-third of the total population of Asia but by 2050 its population of working age will shrink by 200 million people while in India the working-age population will increase by 200 million. Asians are not subscribing to a “China-led Asia”, which would imply returning to the colonial order.
Second, the global spread of the BRI signals the political end of the old order where the G7 shaped the economic agenda. Italy, a member of the G7, is joining the BRI, despite the publicly voiced objection of the U.S., just as Britain joined the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank in 2015. Asians are gravitating to the new as it better meets their needs, not because the old is crumbling.
Third, the Asian Development Bank, not China, drew global attention to infrastructure as the key driver of economic growth in Asia and the financing gap of $26 trillion. The most visible feature of the BRI is the network of physical and digital infrastructure for transport, energy transmission and communications, harmonised with markets for advanced manufacturing and innovation-based companies.
Fourth, the BRI, faced with criticism over lack of transparency and insensitivity to national concerns, is evolving towards standards of multilateralism, including through linkages with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The International Monetary Fund describes it as a “very important contribution” to the global economy and is “in very close collaboration with the Chinese authorities on sharing the best international practices, especially regarding fiscal sustainability and capacity building”. China is now also seeking co-financing with multilateral institutions as well as private capital for a Silk Road Bond.
Fifth, for the BRI to have strategic objectives is not unusual. The Marshall Plan in the 1950s also required recipients to accept certain rules for deepening trade and investment ties with the U.S. Chinese control over supply-chain assets like ports provides the ability to project naval power, which will however remain minuscule compared to that of the U.S. — comprising 800 overseas bases. The BRI’s commercial advantage has certainly increased China’s international weight and India needs to shape the new standards to benefit Indian technology companies.
What is the Indian China dilemma?
India’s China dilemma, as it ends its ambivalence towards China, revolves around assessment of the extent the Asian giants need each other for the Asian century. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has declared a cooperative vision of the ‘Indo-Pacific’, contrary to the containment-based view of the United States. China also recognises the difficulties inherent in the interlinked international and domestic agenda of the BRI, and needs India’s support for reform of global governance, which was an important part of last year’s discussion at Wuhan.
How should India respond?
India should respond to the strategic complexity arising from the BRI, a key part of which cuts through Gilgit-Baltistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, through three related but distinct diplomatic initiatives.
First, India needs to highlight that a British-led coup by the Gilgit Scouts led to Pakistani occupation of this territory and seek appropriate text recognising India’s sovereignty — a drafting challenge but not an insurmountable one.
Second, New Delhi should give a South Asian character to the two BRI corridors on India’s western and eastern flanks, by linking them with plans for connectivity in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region.
Third, India needs work towards ‘multilateralising’ the BRI with a set of rules.
Magic milk: fighting infections with a clue from the echidna
Why in news?
Scientists at the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research - Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CSIR-CCMB) here have isolated an anti-microbial protein found in the milk of an egg-laying mammal. The protein promises to serve as an alternative to antibiotics used on livestock.
Who are Echidnas?
Echidnas, also known as spiny anteaters, are unique egg-laying mammals found only in Australia and New Guinea.
Why is it important?
The scientist pointed out that there is a rise of superbugs due to the indiscriminate use of antibiotics by the animal husbandry industry to raise livestock.
The superbugs can cause mastitis, an infection of the mammary gland, in dairy animals.
The milk of the echidna has a protein that can puncture the cell membranes of multiple bacterial species, thus destroying the source of infection. Scientist Satish Kumar from the research team said that there are ways to produce the protein in large quantities using E. coli. It can then be used to fight infections.
Dr. Kumar’s team has been able to show that the protein from echidna milk is effective against mastitis-causing bacteria.
Importance of J&K trade?
As against regional cooperation between governments, this one is a process that binds the societies and economies of neighbouring countries together much more closely. Going beyond economics, the essence of LoC trade was to extend the familial and social interconnectedness into the arena of business and commerce. To start with, this trade was meant to result in interaction between people and help build partnerships across the two parts of J&K. In the second phase, it would have progressed into an economic and commercial interdependence between the two parts of J&K.
Finally, it would result in a network of institutions like banks, trade bodies, and regulators across the LoC aligning with each other. An institutionalisation of relations would automatically happen. In this process, a constituency of commerce for peace and normalisation of relations between India and Pakistan would be built. These new stakeholders would exercise “bottom up” pressure on their respective governments emanating from enlightened business self-interest.
The three progressions — interactions, interdependence and institutionalisation — would, over time, make the LoC less of a barrier by forging a functional unification between the two parts of J&K; a de facto unification without disturbing the sovereignty claims and the de jure political status of either side.
What is required to be done?
It is predicted the likelihood of this trade being derailed in the absence of five basic networks — financing, communication, transport, regulatory logistics, and a dispute resolution mechanism for the traders operating in the two parts of J&K.
A financing mechanism comprising of a banking arrangement and payments system is complex but the most critical of the five networks. A creative solution, which avoids the minefields of sovereignty, political control, medium of exchange, its risk, and credit arrangements has to be worked out.
In addition, what is needed is a communication system for reliable transmission of information as a decision support system, a transport and logistic network for offtake and delivery, a regulatory framework for ensuring legitimate transactions and banning contrabands, and a legal mechanism for dispute resolution and settlement. None of these was put in place. Had it been done then, the trade would not have got derailed now.
The big lesson from the cross-LoC trade experiment is that symbolism should not be given precedence over substance. While it was a major CBM (confidence building measure ), and a step towards the resolution of the impending issue, that objective in itself is not enough to make it sustainable. Trade is embedded in politics but trading should not be made a political activity. That is precisely what happened resulting in the trade being killed for political reasons.
New malaria vaccine
Why in news?
The World Health Organisation issued a statement Tuesday welcoming a pilot project in Malawi of administering a malaria vaccine to children below the age of 2 years.
The vaccine has taken three decades to come to fruition, and is the first one ever against a disease that kills 4,35,000 people a year, most of them children. India ranks high in the list of countries worst affected by the mosquito-borne disease.
What is the RTS,S vaccine?
The vaccine has been developed by GSK — the company is donating about 10 million doses of the product for the pilot. It was created in 1987 by GSK, and was subsequently developed with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2014, the vaccine cleared phase III clinical trials which certified that it was both effective and safe for use in humans.
How does the vaccine work?
RTS,S aims to trigger the immune system to defend against the first stages of malaria when the Plasmodium falciparum parasite enters the human host’s bloodstream through a mosquito bite and infects liver cells. The vaccine is designed to prevent the parasite from infecting the liver, where it can mature, multiply, re-enter the bloodstream, and infect red blood cells, which can lead to disease symptoms.
Why is malaria such a major global public health challenge?
Malaria is a potentially life-threatening parasitic disease caused by the parasites Plasmodium viviax (P.vivax), Plasmodium falciparum (P.falciparum), Plasmodium malariae (P.malariae), and Plasmodium ovale (P.ovale), transmitted by the female Anopheles mosquito.
Malaria, according to the WHO, remains one of the world’s leading killers, claiming the life of one child every two minutes. Most of these deaths are in Africa, where more than 2,50,000 children die from the disease every year. Children under the age of 5 are at greatest risk from its life-threatening complications.
How badly is India affected by malaria?
India ranks very high in the list of countries with a serious malaria burden. In 2018, 3,99,134 cases of malaria and 85 deaths due to the disease were reported in the country, according to data from the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme.
Questions are repeatedly asked about the veracity of the Indian data, with some reports suggesting India may be recording just 8% of the actual number of malaria cases. Between 60% and 80% of patients in the urban areas are treated by private doctors or health establishments, most of whom do not notify cases. Although malaria is a notifiable disease, it is only voluntary notification — there are no penalties for doctors or hospitals not doing so. However, there is, of late, renewed focus on case reporting.
Six states — Odisha (40%), Chhattisgarh (20%), Jharkhand (20%), Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, and Mizoram (5-7%) — bear the brunt of malaria in India. These states, along with the tribal areas of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, account for 90% of India’s malaria burden.