The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 10 July 2023

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis for UPSC

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 8 July 2023

• Under the Namami Gange Programme, large-scale human efforts have been undertaken since 2014 to clean the Ganga and rejuvenate the nearly 2,600-km river network. In this, marine life, especially turtles, has been playing a key role as well.
• In 2014, the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the Ministry of Forest joined hands with the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), the agency implementing the Namami Gange Programme. Since 2017, they have been running the turtle breeding and rehabilitation centre in Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi.
• About a dozen of the 29 turtle species in India, both herbivorous and carnivorous, help by clearing rotten or half-burnt human bodies as well as flowers dumped into the river here.

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• The ‘Anna Bhagya’ scheme is one of the five main election promises made by the Congress party in the run-up to the Karnataka Assembly elections, in May 2023, with the pledge to provide an additional five kilograms of free rice to every member of a Below Poverty Line household.
• The National Food Security Act (NFSA) 2013 expanded the coverage of the PDS substantially. So, why are so many people still without ration cards? The law mandates that 50% of the urban and 75% of the rural populations must be covered by the PDS.
• The central government combined these coverage ratios (adjusted to account for State-wise poverty levels) with the 2011 population numbers to determine each State’s ‘quota’ of ration cards. As the NFSA rolled out (staggered across States between 2013-2017), PDS coverage climbed from under 500 million to reach 800 million — its current level.
• The Food Corporation of India (FCI) procures grain for three broad purposes. One, it supports producers by procuring (mainly) wheat and rice at minimum support prices (MSP).
• Two, the central government uses this to meet the needs of the PDS (providing five kilograms a person every month free to NFSA households), a consumer subsidy.
• Three, the stocks are used for price stabilisation through the OMSS.

• An important part was resurrecting the WTO’s dispute settlement system (DSS), also called WTO’s ‘crown jewel’, by 2024. Since 2019, the WTO’s two-tiered DSS remains paralysed.
• Dispute settlement:
• Resolving trade disputes is one of the core activities of the WTO.
• A dispute arises when a member government believes another member government is violating an agreement or a commitment that it has made in the WTO.
• The WTO has one of the most active international dispute settlement mechanisms in the world. Since 1995, 609 disputes have been brought to the WTO and over 350 rulings have been issued.
• There are two main ways to settle a dispute once a complaint has been filed in the WTO:
• (i) the parties find a mutually agreed solution, particularly during the phase of bilateral consultations.
• (ii) through adjudication, including the subsequent implementation of the panel and Appellate Body reports, which are binding upon the parties once adopted by the Dispute Settlement Body.

• The Appellate Body, set up in 1995, is a standing committee of seven members with a limited four-year term that presides over appeals against judgments passed in trade-related disputes brought by WTO members.
• Each member of the Appellate Body is required to be a person with demonstrated expertise in law, international trade and the subject-matter of the covered agreements generally.
• The United States stopped the process of reappointing judges, after their terms expired in 2017. In December 2019, the number of judges in the court fell below three — the minimum required.
• It believes the WTO is biased against it, and has criticised it for being “unfair”.

• Newsan is one of Argentina’s biggest home appliance retailers. For decades, it settled its payments in U.S. dollars for the goods it bought from China, such as fridges and TV sets.
• In April, Newsan suddenly switched to Chinese yuan for its payments. Meanwhile, Brazil’s new government under President Lula da Silva recently announced that Brazilian companies can settle their foreign trade using Chinese yuan.
• A significant global outcome of the Russia-Ukraine conflict is the U.S. dollar-Chinese yuan conflict.

• The pandemic led to a decline in educational performance of many districts in the country, reveals a report from the Education Ministry.
• The Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D) released by the Ministry on Sunday as a combined report for 2020-21 and 2021-22 assesses the performance of school education system at the district level.
• Much like the PGI for States released earlier, this report too has 10 grades under which districts are categorised, with Daksh being the highest grade (above 90%), followed by Utkarsh (81%-90%); Ati-Uttam (71%-80%); Uttam (61%-70%); Prachesta-1 (51%-60%); Prachesta-2 (41%-50%); Prachesta-3 (31%-40%); Akanshi-1 (21% to 30%); and Akanshi-2 (11% to 20%). The lowest grade is Akanshi-3, for districts that score less than 10%.

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