The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 27 July 2023

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis for UPSC

The Hindu Newspaper Analysis 26 July 2023

• About:
• FATF is the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog set up in 1989 out of a G-7 meeting of developed nations in Paris.
• Objective:
• Initially, its objective was to examine and develop measures to combat money laundering.
• After the 9/11 attacks on the US, the FATF in 2001 expanded its mandate to incorporate efforts to combat terrorist financing.

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• In April 2012, it added efforts to counter the financing of proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
• As of today, it is a 39-member body representing most major financial centres in all parts of the globe.
• Out of 39 members, there are two regional organisations: the European Commission, and the Gulf Cooperation Council.
• India and FATF: India joined with ‘observer’ status in 2006 and became a full member of FATF in 2010.
• The FATF Secretariat is located at the OECD headquarters in Paris.
• Black List: The Black List includes Non-Cooperative Countries or Territories (NCCTs) that support terror funding and money laundering activities.
• As of now, Iran, North Korea and Myanmar are the three black listed countries.
• Myanmar has been recently added to the list due to actions by the military leadership after the 2021 coup.

• The elevated levels of India’s fiscal deficit and public debt have been a matter of concern for a long time in India. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, debt levels were among the highest in the developing world and emerging market economies.
• The pandemic pushed the envelope further and relative to GDP, the fiscal deficit in 2020-21 increased to 13.3% and the aggregate public debt to 89.6%. As the economy recovered after the pandemic, the deficit and debt ratios have receded to 8.9% and 85.7%, respectively.
• The issue is of concern in Punjab, Kerala, Rajasthan, and West Bengal. In Punjab, the Debt to GSDP ratio is 48.9%, in West Bengal, 37.6%, Rajasthan 35.4%, and in Kerala close to 33%.
• on average, interest payments constitute over 5% of GDP and 25% of the revenue receipts, this is more than the government expenditure on education and health care put together. Large interest payments crowd out the much-needed expenditures on physical infrastructure and human development and emerging priorities to make the green transition.
• ‘Today’s borrowing is taxing tomorrow’ and the burden of large deficits and debt will have to be borne by the next generation
• Equally important is the need to impose hard budget constraints by enforcing Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management rules in allowing States to borrow.

• Leaders of the SCO member-states signed the New Delhi Declaration, and issued the statements on countering radicalisation and exploring cooperation in digital transformation. The summit granted Iran full SCO membership, signed the memorandum of obligations of Belarus to join the SCO as a member-state, and adopted the SCO’s economic development strategy for the period until 2030.
• We should advocate multilateralism to shape our common destiny.

Shanghai Cooperation Organization?

• About:
• SCO is a permanent intergovernmental international organization.
• It’s a political, economic and military organization aiming to maintain peace, security and stability in the region.
• It was created in 2001.
• The SCO Charter was signed in 2002 and entered into force in 2003.
• SCO Secretariat:
• Based in Beijing to provide informational, analytical & organizational support.
• Official language:
• The official working language of the SCO Secretariat is Russian and Chinese.
• Member States: China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan , Iran.

• A close scrutiny of the relationship between life satisfaction and income based on Gallup World Poll (GWP) Surveys confirms a positive relationship between them with a slightly stronger effect in developed countries.
• fall in private consumption, high inflation, rise in poverty, and income and wealth inequality.

• This sudden rush followed the Indian government’s decision on July 20 to ban the export of non-basmati white rice to “ensure adequate availability in the Indian market and to allay the rise in prices in the domestic market.” It did not restrict the export of the other types of semi/wholly milled rice — basmati and parboiled rice.
• In FY23, India exported around 64 lakh tonnes of non-basmati white rice and close to 45 lakh tonnes of basmati rice. The most widely exported type was parboiled rice (78 lakh tonnes).
• The effect of the ban will be most pronounced in the neighbouring countries of Nepal and Bangladesh, the African countries of Madagascar, Benin, Kenya, and Ivory Coast, the Asian countries of Malaysia and Vietnam, and the UAE, which are all the biggest buyers of this type of rice in absolute terms.
• NRIs have been resorting to panic buying rice in the U.S. despite the country’s relatively low dependence on imports from India

• Ministry says manual scavenging is no longer practised in India; T.N., Chhattisgarh, Bihar among States with all districts reporting free status
• Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, and Jharkhand are among the States and Union Territories that have the highest number of districts yet to declare themselves free of manual scavenging, showed data submitted by the Social Justice Ministry in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.
• The Ministry said 530 districts had so far reported themselves to be free of manual scavenging, while the rest were yet to do so. The Ministry said manual scavenging was no longer carried out in the country.
• Manual scavenging is defined as “the removal of human excrement from public streets and dry latrines, cleaning septic tanks, gutters and sewers”.
• India banned the practice under the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 (PEMSR).
• The Act bans the use of any individual manually cleaning, carrying, disposing of or otherwise handling in any manner human excreta till its disposal.
• The Act recognizes manual scavenging as a “dehumanizing practice”.

National Action Plan for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem (NAMASTE):

• The NAMASTE scheme is being undertaken jointly by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and the MoSJ&E and aims to eradicate unsafe sewer and septic tank cleaning practices.
• SC Judgment: In 2014, a Supreme Court order made it mandatory for the government to identify all those who died in sewage work since 1993 and provide Rs. 10 lakh each as compensation to their families.

• The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has warned against an uncritical rush toward embrace of digital products in educational settings, noting that “there is little robust evidence on digital technology’s added value in education” and that “a lot of the evidence comes from those trying to sell it”.
• The UN body’s Global Education Monitoring Report, 2023, titled “Technology in education: a tool on whose terms?”, has endorsed banning smartphones in schools in situations where “technology integration does not improve learning or if it worsens student well-being”.
• Detailing the rationale for restricting smartphone usage for children, the report cited a study of young people between the ages of two and 17 which “showed that higher screen time was associated with poorer well-being; less curiosity, self-control and emotional stability; higher anxiety; and depression diagnoses”.
• The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is a specialised agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences, and culture
• UNESCO was founded in 1945 as the successor to the League of Nations’ International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation
• It has 193 member states and 11 associate members, as well as partners in the non-governmental, intergovernmental, and private sector
• Headquartered at the World Heritage Centre in Paris
• The UNESCO’s founding mission is to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights by facilitating collaboration and dialogue among nations
• It pursues this objective through five major program areas:
• Education
• natural sciences
• social/human sciences
• culture and
• communication/information

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