 Very good evening to all of our friends and welcome to the Hindu News Analysis of Shankar IAS Academy for the date 24th November 2020. Here is the list of the relevant news articles taken for today's discussion from five different editions of the Hindu newspaper along with their page numbers. Also the handwritten notes in the PDF format and time stampings for all the news articles taken for today's discussion is given in the description box and also in the comment section for the best interest of the viewers. Let us now begin our news analysis. First let us take up this front page article and this editorial which are based on a recent ordinance which was introduced by the Kerala government. The ordinance so to amend the Kerala Police Act of 2011 and empower the police to prosecute persons disseminating defamatory content. This measure has been criticized as draconian by the opposition parties and the medias as it could violate the freedom of speech. So in this context let us understand the important provisions related to defamation in India. The syllabus relevant for this analysis is highlighted here for your reference. Please go through it. Know that the Indian Penal Court which was enacted in 1860 has a separate chapter on defamation. Here section 499 of IPC defines defamation. Suppose a person by words either spoken or intended to be read or by signs or by visible representations makes an accusation concerning a person. So if this is done with an intention to harm the person or knowing that it will harm the reputation of such person then it is called defamation. To put it simply a defamatory statement is one which injures the reputation of another person. It also says that no such claim or imputation is said to harm a person's reputation unless in the views of the others it lowers the character of that person or causes the body of that particular person to be in a disgraceful state. Section 499 also cites several exceptions to defamation. This includes imputation of truth which public good requires to be published then an opinion made in good faith regarding the public conduct of public servants or conduct of any person touching any public question. Other exceptions or publication of reports of proceedings of the court or merits of cases decided in the court or conduct of witnesses. Also it is not defamation if an accusation is made in good faith against any person who has lawful authority over that person with respect to the subject matter of that accusation. So it is very clear that definition of defamation is vague and thus it leaves a wide scope for its misuse. Now coming to section 500 it says that whoever defames another shall be punished with a fine or simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years and section 501 deals with printing or engraving matter having a good reason to believe that it is defamatory. Then section 502 is about selling printed or engraved substance knowing that it contains defamatory matter. In both the cases the convicted shall be punished with a fine or maximum two years of imprisonment. See the issue of defamatory laws is that in many cases it compromises freedom of speech guaranteed by the constitution of India. We know that article 19 close one sub close a provides that all citizens shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression. However such freedom is subject to reasonable restrictions. Here the restrictions on free speech can be imposed in the interest of the sovereignty and integrity of India. Then the security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court or in the case of defamation or incitement of an offense. So it is clear that the protection of reputation of another person falls within the ambit of reasonable restriction. Hence any remark which hampers the reputation of another person unless it is true would invite liability under the law of defamation. And in this context we should know about the Supreme Court judgment in Shreya Singhal vs Union of India 2015 case. Here the Supreme Court invalidated section 66A of the Information Technology Act which criminalized sending messages causing annoyance and inconvenience. It also struck down the section 118 close D of the Kerala Police Act which made causing annoyance in an indecent manner through verbal comments or telephone and offense. The Supreme Court observed that both the offenses were overbroad that is it was defined so widely that both innocent and offensive messages could be brought under its ambit. So to conclude we can say that though freedom of speech cannot be absolute criminal defamation should not be used to discourage legitimate criticism. So this is all about this news article and this editorial. In this discussion we saw some of the important provisions related to defamation in India. With this we will move on to the next news. Now this editorial article talks about how neglect of health in public policy has led to loss of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors explain what could be the reasons for the variation in death rates among the states in the country. So in this regard we will discuss some related important aspects mentioned in this editorial. The syllabus relevant for this analysis is highlighted here for your reference. Please go through it. See at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic it was frequently reported that the COVID-19 death rates in India is lower compared to other parts of the world. See at national level this death rate is an average that will not portray the range of death rates among the states that is it will hide the maximum and minimum death rates among the states. See there is a variation in the death rates among the states in the country and the authors attempted to find an answer to this variation. First the authors looked for a relationship between the income levels and the COVID-19 deaths. It is found that the states with higher per capita income often had higher death rates. This suggests that the wealth of a state has not acted as a shield against death for a section of its population. Also it is found that there exists inverse relationship between income levels of states and the public health expenditure they do. That is even though the economic growth of some states are higher the public health expenditure made by such states was found to be lower. And these states focused on growth as mere GDP numbers and not as development. While growth is quantitative development is qualitative and development improves the standard of living of the people. And since the income levels are not explaining the variation in the death rates the authors focused on the data related to public health expenditure. It is found that the public expenditure on health has a good relationship with the death rate. There is a high variation in the public expenditure on health as a share of domestic product among the Indian states. The public expenditure on health and the death rate is negatively related that is more the public expenditure on health the lesser is the drive rate. In states where the public expenditure on health is lesser their death rates were found to be higher. So we can say that more and adequate public expenditure on health acts as a shield against the death to COVID-19 pandemic. Next, the author talks about what is more important for diseases like the COVID-19 pandemic, whether it is the doctors or medical infrastructure like hospitals or hospital beds per person. The authors highlight the point that even if there are adequate beds or hospitals, if the required number of doctors are not there, then the scenario will worsen. This is because patients are treated by the doctors and not by hospital beds. So doctors in the public healthcare system is also a major need of the hour and not just hospitals and beds. Thirdly, the authors talk about the importance of funding in order to handle an epidemic or pandemic. This is because during a pandemic, serious steps such as detection, contact tracing and isolation have to be performed before the treatment is started. And this process along with the treatment will cost a lot of money. And at this scenario, an effective combination of medical expertise, protocols and management practices becomes central to the effectiveness of the response to a particular epidemic. And for this combination to occur within a short span of time, sufficient funding is a must. Having said that, while money can do a set of things, governance aspects also play an equally important role. So both have to be given adequate attention and importance. Next, the authors tell how a number of deaths could have been avoided. For this, they selected a state with a median level of public health expenditure. And they applied the death rate in this state to the national population. And by this, they arrived at the number of deaths due to COVID-19 for the entire country. That is, if all the states have the spending level of that selected state, then the number of COVID-19 deaths till November 7 would have been 35,000. But in reality, the number is 1.25 lakhs. That is, till November 7, 1.25 lakh Indians have died due to COVID-19 pandemic. So the authors conclude that if there was adequate spending on public health across all the states in India, we could have avoided or prevented around 90,000 deaths. In other words, we could have saved the lives of 90,000 people from COVID-19. And this is where the authors post a strong criticism that the deaths are indicating the lack of attention to health in public policy. In the end, the authors call for paying the required attention to health in our public policy. Economic policy should prioritize development and not economic growth. And also political processes should be carried out with ethical awareness. Simply, adequate public health expenditure and also medical infrastructure with required number of doctors are important. Sufficient funding and good governance are also equally important to prevent loss of lives, generally and more particularly during a pandemic. So with this, we have come to the end of analysis of this news article. Now let us move on to the next news. Now this news article says that the Environment Ministry wants to expedite the environment appraisal of industrial projects. So in this context, before going through today's news, let us have a brief recap on what is Environment Impact Assessment and what is its need. The relevant syllabus is highlighted here for your reference. Please go through it. See, every anthropogenic activity or human activity has some impact on the environment. It can also be said that this activity is more often harmful to the environment than being beneficial to the environment. However, these activities must be done for the food, security and other needs of human. And consequently, there is also a need to harmonize the developmental activities with the environmental concerns. And the environmental impact assessment is one of the tools that are available with the planners to achieve this harmonization. So EIA is a planning tool. It is generally accepted as an integral component of a sound decision making process. The objective of Environment Impact Assessment is to foresee or to predict the potential environmental problems or concerns at an early stage of project planning and project design. Next is to deal with how to address the same potential environmental problems or concerns. So here the EIA should assist the planners and government authorities in the decision making process. And this will be done by identifying the key impacts or issues and by formulating the mitigation strategies or measures or the impact reduction measures. So we can say that EIA is a process that is used to identify the environmental impacts of a project prior to its approval. And the assessment systematically examines both beneficial and adverse consequences of a proposed project. It ensures that the environmental impact and the mitigation measures are considered during the project design stage itself. Now we should know that there are many benefits of considering environmental effects and mitigation early in the project planning cycle. The benefits such as protection of the environment, optimum utilization of the available resources, and saving overall time and cost of the project is possible by Environment Impact Assessment. Also know that the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change is the nodal agency for making rules and regulations pertaining to environmental clearance or EC. The Environment Impact Assessment and Environmental Clearance mandatory for certain developmental projects through its notification of environmental clearance and post clearance monitoring in 1994 under the Environment Protection Act of 1986. Then subsequently, after keeping in view the experience gained in the environmental clearance process over a period of one decade or 10 years, the Ministry brought out another notification that is the Environment Impact Assessment notification in September 2006. The process of granting environmental clearance for projects has been defined in this 2006 Environment Impact Assessment notification. The process comprises of four stages. They are screening, scoping, public consultation and appraisal. See, screening is done to see whether a project requires environmental clearance as per the statutory notifications or not. The screening criteria are based on the skills of investment, the type of development and the location of development. Then the scoping is the process that details the terms of reference of Environment Impact Assessment. That is what are the things that the Environment Impact Assessment must look into. Then the third stage that is the public consultation refers to the process which ascertains the project as appropriate by considering all the material concerns in the project or activity design. This ascertains or settles the concerns of the local affected persons and others who have credible stake in the environmental impact which is going to happen with the particular project. This means that anyone who is likely to be affected by the proposed project is entitled to know that the project is appropriate. The affected persons may include the Bonafida residents, the local associations and also the environmental groups which are active in the project area. Then any other person who is located at the project site or the sites of displacement are also included in the list of affected persons. And see, public consultation usually have two components. One is public hearing. See, a public hearing at the project site or in its proximity in a district wise manner is to be carried out. And this is for ascertaining the concerns of the local affected persons as we have discussed now. And the next component is to obtain the responses in writing from other concerned persons who are having a credible stake in the environmental aspects of the project or activity. And then comes the fourth stage that is appraisal. And here comes the role of the expert appraisal committee. See, these exist in the union as well as in the state levels. Here for states, they have the state expert appraisal committee or SCAC. So they are set up to advise the government on environmental clearance of developmental projects. And the role of EAC is integral to the process of granting environmental clearance to development projects. EAC or SCAC are involved in various capacities in all the stages, except for public hearing. Now, today's news is that the environment ministry further wants to expedite or speed up the environment appraisal of industrial projects by ensuring that the expert appraisal committee meetings are held at least once in 15 days. But many environmental activists have criticized the move and expressed that accelerated approvals definitely don't allow for good environmental decisions. Also do note that the government has also brought in the draft environment impact assessment in this year. And if it comes into force, it would replace the existing environment impact assessment that is EIA 2006. And many proposals in the draft were criticized as they are directed towards diluting the EIA regime thereby threatening the precious and pristine environment. So this is all about the news and in this discussion, we saw about the environment impact assessment, its relevant provisions and also about the expert appraiser committee with this we'll move on to the next news. Now, have a look at this question. It is based on this news article, which talks about a cyclone in Bay of Bengal. Yesterday, we have discussed how a tropical cyclone develops and they also said that a depression is brewing in the Bay of Bengal and may turn into a cyclone in the next two days. Now, today's news says that the depression has progressed into a cyclone and it is named Cyclone Nivar. And as a matter of fact, we are experiencing heavy rains in Chennai today. And if you remember, in May this year, we had a cyclone called Amphan. So the question is, how cyclones are named? See the tropical cyclones forming over different ocean basins are named by the concerned regional specialized meteorological centers. Now, what is this regional specialized meteorological centers? See worldwide, there are six regional specialized meteorological centers or RSMC's and five regional tropical cyclone warning centers or TCWC's. Now, they are mandated for issuing advisories and also to name the tropical cyclones. Now, the India Meteorological Department is one of the six RSMC's to provide tropical cyclone and storm surge advisories to 13 member countries under the WMO ESCAP panel. See in the year 2000, a group of nations called the World Meteorological Organization slash United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, or simply WMO ESCAP which comprised Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Oman, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Thailand, that is eight countries, decided to start naming the cyclones in the region. After each country sent its suggestions, the WMO ESCAP panel on tropical cyclones finalized the list. Later in 2018, the WMO ESCAP expanded to include five more countries and they are Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. So now in total, it has 13 member countries. And these 13 countries recommend names for tropical cyclones evolving in the North Indian Ocean. Each country gave 13 names, so a total of 169 names are now readily available for naming the cyclones. The current cyclone name that is Newar was given by Iran. Now, the cyclone which is named Gati developed in the Arabian Sea and it struck Somalia yesterday. The name Gati was given by India and the next cyclone name will be Burevi which is recommended by Maldives and then Taubte by Myanmar. So this is how cyclones are named. Now see this question. Consider the following statements. The cyclones developing in Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea are named by regional specialized meteorological center of New Delhi. Yes, this statement is correct. Now the second statement reads only the countries sharing land border with India can recommend names for cyclones developing in Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea. See this statement is incorrect because we saw that the 13 countries under the WMO S Cup recommended their names for the tropical cyclones evolving in the North Indian Ocean. And the 13 countries included not only the countries which share land border with India but also many others like Maldives, Oman, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Yemen. So here the first statement is correct and the second statement is incorrect. So we have to identify the incorrect statement from these given statements. So the correct answer is option B2 only. With this, we'll move on to the next news. Now have a look at this question. It is based on this opiate article which was authored by experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization. In this article, the authors talk about the antimicrobial resistance, then a concept called One Health, and about the World Health Organization Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance. First, what do we mean by antimicrobial resistance? Think about a disease which is caused by a virus or simply a microbe and to get cured from this disease, we need to kill or inhibit this microbe. For this, we take a drug developed or certified to kill that particular microbe. And this drug is called as antimicrobial drug as it kills or works against the microbe. But what happens over a period of time is that this particular microbe develops a resistance to the medicine. As a result, even if a patient takes the drug, the disease is not cured. And this is because the microbe was not affected by the drug which was administered to the patient. And this resistance offered by the microbe to the antimicrobial drugs is called as antimicrobial resistance. So what if all microbes offer such resistance? Then for various diseases caused by various pathogens, we will have no cure or we have to discover a new cure. And is discovering a new cure is that simple? The answer is no. This requires a lot of money as researchers have to be conducted and a lot of investment have to be made. Now say an organization invests 10 crore rupees and develops an effective cure to the disease. And after the launch of the medicine, say within one month, if the microbe resists to the drug, then all the investments go in vain. And this may lead to bankruptcy and other financial exigencies for the investors. This is one of the reasons why in some cases there is not much investment to handle antimicrobial resistance. And that is why the authors mentioned that with rapid development of resistance, the life of new antibiotics becomes limited and the return on investments on new molecules gets diminished. See, AMR or antimicrobial resistance is a serious challenge as it can cause around 1 crore deaths annually by 2050. And this can happen if concerted actions are not taken as soon as possible. It will result in 7.5 percentage reduction in the livestock production which in turn weakens the nutrition security of the nation and the world as a whole and which will also negatively impact the global GDP by 3.5 percent. Now let us see the suggestions of the authors to handle antimicrobial resistance. See, given the challenges involved in developing a new cure to treat a resistant pathogen, the only option available for assistive use the available antibiotics carefully so that we can ensure their efficiency for as long as possible. In adopting the careful usage, the world has a roadmap from the World Health Organization in order to tackle this challenge. And this roadmap is called as the global action plan on antimicrobial resistance. All the world countries must develop their respective national action plans in alignment with the World Health Organization global action plan on antimicrobial resistance. See, the goal of this particular action plan is to ensure the continuity of successful treatment and prevention of infectious diseases as long as possible with effective and safe medicines. And these medicines are those which are quality assured used in a responsible way and accessible to all who need them. So to achieve this goal, five important strategic objectives are set out by this action plan and they are given here for your reference. See, one of the reasons for antimicrobial resistance is the indiscriminate usage of drugs. So, rational use of antibiotics in humans, animals and also in agriculture is required. And this warrant coordinated action in all the sectors. This is where the authors bring the One Health approach. This approach advocates a multi-sectoral, multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional response to public health problems, particularly pandemics and also to address issues related to antimicrobial resistance. So, these are some of the informations with reference to this OPED article. Now, see this question. In May 2015, which of the following organizations or mechanisms adopted a global action plan on antimicrobial resistance? Here, the correct answer is option B, World Health Assembly. See, World Health Assembly is nothing but the decision making body of World Health Organization. And see, it is attended by the delegations from all the WHO member states and it focuses on a specific health agenda prepared by its executive board. The main functions of World Health Assembly are to determine the policies of the organization, appoint the director general, then supervise the financial policies and review and approve the program budget of WHO. And also know that the World Health Assembly is held every year in Geneva, Switzerland. So, with this, we have come to the end of analysis of all the news articles. Now, let us move on to the practice questions discussion section based on today's news analysis. See this first question. Consider the following statements with reference to the environment impact assessment. The first statement reads, It is a process that is used to identify the environmental impacts of a project once the project is completed. See, this statement is incorrect. We have seen that environment impact assessment is a process that is used to identify the environmental impacts of a particular project prior to its approval. Here, the EIA systematically examines both the beneficial and adverse consequences of a proposed project. So, here it ensures that the environmental impact and the mitigation measures are considered during the project design itself. So, the first statement is wrong. Now, the second statement reads, It was notified by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in the year 2006. Yes, this statement is correct. So, we have to identify the correct statement or statements. Here, statement one is incorrect and statement two is correct. So, the correct answer is option B2 only. Now, we have these three main questions. Please write your answers and post it in the comments section. Our feedback will be given in a reasonable time frame. So, friends, with this, we have come to the end of analysis of all the news articles taken up for today's discussion and also the discussion of practice questions. If you like this video, please press the like button, comment, share and do subscribe to Shankara IAS Academy YouTube channel for more updates related to civil service preparation.