The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 19th September 2022

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis for UPSC

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 20th September 2022

• Dependents of doctors got just over 20% of the total money distributed under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Package (PMGKP) insurance scheme for health workers who died fighting COVID-19 in the country.
• The scheme ensures an insurance coverage of ₹50 lakh each. According to a Right to Information Act (RTI) reply from New India Assurance Company Ltd.
• on September 16, the “total number of beneficiaries under PMGKP insurance scheme” as on August 31 was 1,962 and the amount disbursed was ₹981 crore. Among them, the number of doctors whose beneficiaries got compensation was 424 and the amount disbursed was ₹212 crore.
• The Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana / Package is a comprehensive relief package of Rs 1.70 Lakh Crore Yojana for the poor to help them fight the battle against Corona Virus. This was announced in March 2020, to reach out to the poorest of the poor, with food and money in hands, so that they do not face difficulties in buying essential supplies and meeting essential needs. The package included the measures listed hereunder from 30^thMarch 2020:
• Insurance cover of Rs 50 Lakh per health worker fighting COVID-19 to be provided under Insurance Scheme – extended for one year effective April 2021
• 80 crore poor people will to get 5 kg wheat or rice and 1 kg of preferred pulses for free every month for the next three months – extended to November 2021 (initially, the package was extended to May & June 2021; originally, it was extended to November 2020)
• 20 crore women Jan Dhan account holders to get Rs 500 per month for next three months
• Increase in MNREGA wage to Rs 202 a day from Rs 182 to benefit 13.62 crore families
• An ex-gratia of Rs 1,000 to 3 crore poor senior citizen, poor widows and poor disabled
• Government to front-load Rs 2,000 paid to farmers in first week of April 2020 under existing PM Kisan Yojana to benefit 8.7 crore farmers
• Central Government has given orders to State Governments to use Building and Construction Workers Welfare Fund to provide relief to Construction Workers

• The eight cheetahs from Namibia, which were released into Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park (KNP) a day ago, seemed to be slowly adapting to the new environment as they were seen strolling in their quarantine enclosure on Sunday and soaking in the ambience with curiosity.

• It has managed to emerge as a major pivot of the global Indo-Pacific grand strategic imagination, avoided the temptations to militarise/securitise the Quad (Australia, Japan, India and the United States), and has ensured that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) states do not feel uneasy by the ever-increasing balance of power articulations in the Indo-Pacific.
• New Delhi’s vision for the Indo-Pacific appears half-baked and unsustainable in the long term, given the inadequate attention New Delhi is prepared to give to the geoeconomic developments of the Indo-Pacific.
• The most recent example is India’s refusal to join the trade pillar of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) while deciding to join the three other pillars of the IPEF — supply chains, tax and anti-corruption, and clean energy.
• India’s move to stay out of IPEF, a U.S.-sponsored soft trade arrangement at best, comes two years after India walked out of the negotiations on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) which came to effect earlier this year.
• the recent decision to stay out of the IPEF shows a clear policy direction in New Delhi: by not becoming a part of the IPEF and RCEP, and signing FTAs with individual states, New Delhi has made it clear that it favours bilateral agreements, and is not keen on multilateral, plurilateral and even soft agreements such as the IPEF.
• the absence of the world’s fifth largest economy from various regional trading platforms will invariably boost China’s geo-economic hegemony in Asia.

Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF)

• The U.S.-led economic grouping of a dozen countries representing 40 per cent of the global GDP proposes to advance resilience, economic growth, competitiveness and fairness in member countries.
• However, some analysts view it as a move to counter China’s growing influence in the region.
• Partner Countries: Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the United States.
  • Within days of its launch, IPEF expanded its membership to the Pacific Island states, with Fiji joining the initiative.
• Pillars
  • It was proposed as an elaborate framework of rules covering four pillars, namely, fair and resilient trade, supply chain resiliency, clean energy decarbonisation, and tax and anti-corruption.

• India is among the most important countries when it comes to the global economic growth and structural transformation story.
• Yesterday was the Third International Equal Pay Day 2022 — the day falls on September 18 — and it is time to pause and reflect on the extent of progress made towards closing the gender pay gap and reaffirming our collective commitment to the effective and accelerated realisation of the principle ‘equal pay for work of equal value’.
• This is attested by the International Labour Organization’s “Global Wage Report 2020–21” which suggests the crisis inflicted massive downward pressure on wages and disproportionately affected women’s total wages compared to men.
• Indian women earned, on an average, 48% less compared to their male counterparts in 1993-94. Since then, the gap declined to 28% in 2018-19 as in the labour force survey data of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO).
• While individual characteristics such as education, skills or experience explain part of the gender pay gap, a large part of the gender pay gap can still be attributed purely to discrimination based on one’s gender or sex.
• Gender-based discriminatory practices include: lower wages paid to women for work of equal value; undervaluation of women’s work in highly feminised occupations and enterprises, and motherhood pay gap — lower wages for mothers compared to non-mothers.
• In this regard, it was one of the pioneering countries to enact the Minimum Wages Act in 1948 and followed by the adoption of the Equal Remuneration Act in 1976.
• One of the targets of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 8 is “achieving full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities and equal pay for work of equal value” by 2030.

• The dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh goes back to the pre-Soviet era. When the Soviet Union was formed, the Armenian majority enclave became part of the Azerbaijan Soviet Republic.
• When the Soviet Union collapsed and Armenia and Azerbaijan became independent republics, the clashes resurfaced.
• Now, Russia’s ability to project power in its neighbourhood appears to be further limited on account of Ukraine.
• On the other side, gas-rich Azerbaijan, which still has the backing of Turkey, is being courted by the EU for increased gas supplies.

• Recently, China used its status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council (UNSC) to put a hold on the UN Security Council’s Al Qaida and ISIL (Daesh) Sanctions Committee’s (also known as the UNSC 1267 Committee) listing of Laskar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist Sajid Mir, one of India’s most wanted in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
• Earlier, China had blocked the listing of US-designated terrorists Abdul Rehman Makki and Abdul Rauf Azhar of the LeT and the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), respectively.
• It may be recalled that China brazenly opposed the listing of JeM chief Masood Azhar for ten years until 2019 before lifting the hold.

• On September 9, the Centre instituted a ban on the export of broken rice. Additionally, it mandated an export duty of 20% on rice in husk (paddy or rough), husked (brown rice) and semi-milled or wholly-milled rice.
• In the ongoing Ethanol Supply Year, because of supply constraints there has been an uptick in the procurement of rice from the FCI. The export ban is a means to catch-up with this supply and additionally, unburden the FCI from provisioning to distillers.
• With trade disrupted in the Black Sea region, prices of rice are surging because traders are betting it will be an alternative for wheat which is becoming prohibitively expensive. India accounted for 41% of the total rice exports in the world in 2021.

Mains Practice Question:

Q) Whether growing population is the cause of poverty or poverty is the mains cause of population increase in India ?(150 words)

बढ़ती जनसंख्या गरीबी का कारण है या गरीबी भारत में जनसंख्या वृद्धि का मुख्य कारण है ?(150 शब्द)

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