 A very good evening everyone. Welcome to the Hindi News Analysis brought to you by Shankarayesh Academy. Here are the list of news articles chosen for discussion today and our video is timestamped for your convenience. Now let's move on to the discussion. Now let us take up this news article for discussion. Former Chief Secretary of West Bengal, Alappan Mandupadhyayi was served a show-cause notice by the Union Home Ministry under section 51 of the Disaster Management Act 2005. See this is a very interesting political fiasco. We are not going to get into the details of the political side but what we are going to focus on today's discussion is Disaster Management Act of 2005. See the Disaster Management Act was passed by the Government of India in 2005 for the efficient management of disasters and other matters connected to it. The objective of the Disaster Management Act is to manage disasters including preparation of mitigation strategies, capacity building and more. Now let us see some important features of this Act. See the Disaster Management Act 2005 puts into place a systematic structure of institutions at the national, state and the district levels. See the national level institutions put forth by this Act is the National Disaster Management Authority, the National Executive Committee and National Institute of Disaster Management. Right? The first let us take National Disaster Management Authority. It is a national level authority that is tasked with laying out disaster management policies and ensuring timely and effective response mechanism throughout India. Next is the National Executive Committee. The National Executive Committee is constituted under section 8 of the Disaster Management Act to assist the National Disaster Management Authority for performance of its functions. Right? Following NEC, let us look into National Institute of Disaster Management. It is an institute for training and the capacity building programs for managing natural calamities. The recruits for the National Disaster Response Force are trained in this National Institute of Disaster Management. Finally, we have these National Disaster Response Force. See the National Disaster Response Force refers to the trained professional units that are called upon forth specialized response to disaster. See they are generally recruited from the Central Armed Police Force and it contains 12 battalions and three each from Border Security Force and CRPF and two each from Central Industrial Security Force and Indo-Tibetian Border Police Force and SSB. Right? Similarly, when it comes to the state and district level, the Disaster Management Act provides for a state disaster management authority and as well as a district level disaster management authority. These authorities are responsible for drawing plans for implementation of disaster management plans at the local level. And also when it comes to finance, the Disaster Management Act contains provisions for financial mechanism also. So based on this, the National Disaster Response Fund has been placed. But this National Disaster Response Fund was formerly called as the National Calamity Contegency Fund which is NCCF and with the enactment of Disaster Management Act 2005 it has been renamed. And if you see this fund is a public account of the government under the reserve funds not bearing interest. What does it mean? It simply means that it does not require parliamentary approval every time for the expenditure from this account. All right? It can simply be taken out by executive action itself. And apart from that we also have a state disaster response fund at the state level. And the finances to the state disaster response fund is funded by 75% from the central government for the general category states and 90% for the special category states. That is northeastern states apart from that Sikkim, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. Right? And the substance of this fund is gotten from the levy of assess on certain items which is annually approved in the finance bill. All right? Coming back to the news article now, the former Chief Secretary of West Bengal was served a show cause notice by the Union Home Ministry under section 51 of the Disaster Management Act 2005. We first saw this in the beginning of the discussion. See according to the Home Ministry, the former Chief Secretary of West Bengal by abstaining himself from the review meeting taken by the Prime Minister for the cyclone affected Kalaikunda in West Bengal. He apparently has acted in a manner equivalent to refusing to comply with the lawful direction from the central government and which in turn is violative of section 51 B of the Disaster Management Act of 2005. And this is a punishable offense and it prescribes a punishment for obstruction for refusal to comply with any direction given by or on behalf of the central government or the state government or the National Executive Committee or the State Executive Committee or the District Authority under the Act. Okay? So with this, we are at the end of the discussion on this news article. In this news article, we saw the news in brief. Apart from that, we also saw the Disaster Management Act 2005 in detail which was enacted in the aftermath of tsunami. Right? With that information, let's move on to the next segment. Now, let us take up this article which reports about an interview with Lithuania's ambassador to India. Recently, Lithuania had announced to pull itself out of the China and CEE 17 plus one mechanism. Now, let us see about this 17 plus one mechanism. See the tension between China and Lithuania have been building up over a number of issues like Lithuania's new ties with Taiwan. It's a parliament's resolution of Uyghurs and the Chinese sanctions on Lithuania and the EU politicians. So these were some of the contentious issues between China and Lithuania. Apart from these, other reasons where the growing tensions between the EU and the China over a number of issues include sanctions and trade negotiations. And the ambassador further expressed that they want Europe to speak in one strong voice. And they would prefer to keep the dialogue as 27 members plus one, that is European Union 27 members. That's what he refers here. Instead of 17 plus one, meaning the entire European Union will engage as one with China on all aspects. So what is this 17 plus one grouping? The 17 plus one initiative is a China led format founded in 2012 itself in Budapest. And its aim is to expand cooperation between Beijing, that is China and the CEE member countries. The CEE is what? The Central and the Eastern European countries. For what purpose? For investment and trade and for the development of the CEE region. See, if you see the Central and Eastern European region is much less developed compared to the Western European region. The Western European region is much more affluent. And the Eastern European region, largely reminiscent of the erstwhile USSR, is less economically prosperous compared to the West. And in this aspect, the China has opted to help the CEE region for its betterment. Okay. And the 17 plus framework also focuses on the infrastructure projects such as bridges, motorways, railway lines and modernization of ports in the member states. All right. And note that the initiative includes 12 European Union member states and five Balkan states as well. All right. So these are the countries as shown are included in the 17 plus one membership. And note that the platform is largely seen as an extension of the China's flagship Belt and Road initiative and China's narrative towards the 17 plus one initiative is about improving its relations with the European countries that are less developed as compared to the Western European states. Right. So this is all about the 17 plus one grouping and its background. But this points in mind. Let us move on to the next part of the discussion. Now let us take up this news article. It is about a recent press release by Ministry of Commerce and Industry. The author has taken up the information released during the press release and has analyzed to a great extent. So let us look into it. Here is the syllabus for your reference. So before we jump into the article analysis, rough reading will let us know that this article is largely about FDI, FBI and FII. Right. So I'll briefly tell you what is FDI. See, FDI is an investment made by a firm or an individual in one country into the business located in another country. So FDI into India means people from some other country is investing into India and FDI lets an investor purchase a direct business interest in a foreign country. So investor can make an FDI in number of ways. Say some common ones include establishing a subsidiary in another country or some investor from a different country can acquire or merge with the existing foreign company in India or a foreign company may start a joint venture partnership with an Indian company. So these are the ways foreign direct investment functions. All right. Now coming to foreign portfolio investment, this consists of securities and other financial assets passively held by foreign investors. They just buy the security shares and the other financial assets and they just take the profit share. All right. It does not provide the investor with direct ownership of the financial asset. That is a FBI person will not be present in a big corporate boardroom. Right. That's what it means. And this FBI and FII contribute to the volatility in the market. All right. So with that understanding, now let's look into the released information. See, according to the Ministry of Commerce and Industries press release, the total foreign direct investment to India in 2020-2021 was 81.7 billion US dollars. So this is supposed to be an increase of 10 percentage over the previous year. Also, according to the Ministry, the measures taken by the government on the fronts of the foreign direct investment policy reforms, investment facilitation and ease of doing business have resulted in increased FDI inflows into the country. Simply put, government's efforts have translated into FDI inflows. So that's what report claims. So the author has taken up this information and he has assessed the validity of it. All right. See the total FDI inflow mentioned in the Ministry's press release saw an increase of 10 percentage. But the direct investment to India, an important component of the total FDI inflow has actually declined by 2.4 percentage. Look at the figure. See, direct investment is an investment in the foreign business enterprise designed to acquire a controlling interest in the enterprise. So we just saw that, right? So this component is important because it is a long-term investment. So it can play a vital role in the economic growth. How? When you invest a lot of money in India, the company in India might undergo an expansion or when it undergoes an expansion, it may recruit a lot of people and it may create employment opportunities. All right. Or the FDI from another country into India can create a new company and can engage a new set of skills from the people, right? So by that, new market could be created or the expanding market could be expanded as well as employment opportunities are created. That's how FDI, which is a long-term investment, plays an important role in the economic growth. But this FDI has contracted by 2.4 percentage of the author notes, all right? So the 10 percentage increase of the total foreign direct investment does not convey the whole picture, okay? So where does the 10% increase come from? It actually is from the net portfolio investment. See the net portfolio investment saw an increase from 1.4 billion US dollars in 2019-20 to 36.8 billion in 2020-2021. So this is a 2.5 to 6 percentage increase, all right? And even with the net portfolio investment, foreign institutional investments have boomed by an astounding 6,800 percentage to 38 billion US dollars in 2020-2021, right? And the foreign institutional investment was a mere half a billion dollar in the previous year. So according to author, it is entirely on account of the net foreign portfolio investment. The total FDI inflow has increased by 10 percentage. See the foreign portfolio investment is the short-term investment in the domestic capital. We already saw that through debt and equity. So just that these foreign entities, they just invest it, they get the profit and they quickly vacate. So this contributes to the volatility. But what is the net gain for the country that is being invested? That is almost nothing. So it doesn't translate to the economic growth of the country. So FDI inflow in theory is supposed to bring additional capital to augment the potential output, right? So it is not apt to include foreign portfolio investment in the FDI inflow. FDI is the process whereby the residents of one country acquire ownership of assets for the purpose of controlling the production, distribution and other activities of a firm in the other country, right? So that's what we saw in the beginning of this discussion. But in India, the conceptual distinction of the FDI and FBI have been blurred in the official reporting. So that is what author has sensed. And according to the author, this is mainly done to show an outsized role of FDI and its growth in India. So basically he believes that it presents a distorted picture, right? See in reality, FII inflow does not augment to the economic potential output. He also takes the GDP data to support this stance. So even last year in India, the high FIA inflow did a little to increase our economic output. And this can be proven by the fact that our GDP saw a contraction by 7.3 percentage in 2020-2021. So we can see the high inflow of FII did very little to increase our GDP and economic output, right? See this figure for better understanding. From 2013 to 14 to 2019 to 2020, the ratio of net FDI to GDP has remained just over 1 percentage. So there is no noticeable rising in this trend. Then what did it do, all right? This 10% increase, what did it do to the Indian market, right? According to the author, the high inflow of FII has increased the stock prices to a great extent. How? They believe that India has a very good return potential. That is, it is able to give profit. And RBSC's price earning multiple is among the world's highest closely behind S&P 500 in the US. So what is this price earning? Price earning multiple is defined as the share price related to the earning per share. That is how much of the profit you get per share investment, okay? And India has a very high price earning multiple. So the foreign investors are attracted towards India. They just invest, they just get the profit and then they move away. This has created some demand for the shares. So and it has pushed up the stock prices. For example, BSE Sensex nearly doubled from 26,000 points on March 23, 2020 to over 50,000 on March 31, 2021, right? See, this surge in total FDI inflow into the pandemic year is entirely explained by the short term FIIs in the capital market. So that's what the author believes. And the short term FII have done little to translate into economic growth for India's favor. So he stresses these points by citing these few important data, right? This is what the article has focused in entirety. That is, the distortion that he perceives is existent in the government released data, all right? So with this information, let's move on to the next segment. Now look at this news article. This open article focuses on the lack of transparency from the side of government related to the management of pandemic. Let us see certain examples given by the author to substantiate his viewpoint. And in the course of the discussion, we'll also see the importance of transparency and the right to information act, right? Here's the syllabus for your reference. See, transparency is an integral part of democracy and a characteristic feature of good governance. So we can say that transparency refers to the unfettered access for the public to the timely and reliable information on decisions and performance of the governmental institutions. Simply put, the public is made aware of what the government is doing, right? By that, the public, the general public becomes a giant watchdog of the governmental actions, okay? So the transparency makes sure that people know exactly what is going on and what is the rationale behind the decisions and its functional effectiveness as well. And this means right to information and transparency go hand in hand, right? See, the transparency is important to rule out arbitrary decisions taken by the government and it enables citizens to participate in the governance process effectively. Instead, if opacity and secrecy is maintained by the government, it becomes a source of corruption and harassment. Therefore, to be transparent, government transparency needs to be ensured in different dimensions. See, the first one is openness in public dealings. Whenever it makes contact with the public, say it through the public offices, the government should be open in disclosing these dealings, all right? The second one is right to information relating to service delivery process, public expenditure and contracts. Say the government is entering into a contract with some private entity or with some other government regarding some social benefit scheme. So these contracts can be made public for the public scrutiny, right? So this is an aspect of transparency. And apart from that, how much of the government money is being spent on various schemes, how much of the tax money that the people pay is going for various public expenditure, these things can also be disclosed. And apart from that, the service delivery process, say the government is giving out vaccines, probably the government is giving out scholarships. How is it being given? Is it regularly given? Is it free from nepotism? Is it free from corruption? These things has to be disclosed by the government as well. And the third point is enactment relating to right to information. So the right to information is a valuable statute in our country. So how effectively is this statute being implemented? This should also be disclosed by the government. And coming to the next point, code relating to access to information. So how well the access to the information is being achieved by the citizens and what is to be done to achieve effective access to information. And coming to the next point, openness in the cost of the project, quality standard, etc, etc. So some project is being undertaken, say the government is building road or a bridge. So how much cost did the government put into? So where were the costs being spent? So how much was allocated for cement? How much was allocated for the contractor? And what is the quality that the government prescribed? So these can also be disclosed for an open governance. Normally we can find that our government discharges most of these. So like for example, we have the RTI Act in place since 2005 and it was enacted to provide the right to information for the citizens. And the act ensures that the securing of access to information which is under the control of public authorities is being done effectively. And it also includes the information relating to any private body which can be accessed by a public authority. So which is a valuable piece of statute. So fundamentally transparency is about opening up government's record to public scrutiny, right? And also arming the citizens with a vital tool like RTI to tell them about what government does and how effective is the governance keeps the power in the citizens hand. But this scenario the author says has changed since the pandemic has hit. As the author points out, there is a lot of secrecy around the COVID-19 related matters like the management of pandemic, vaccine manufacturing, vaccine pricing decisions etc. And apart from that there is no information available in public domain regarding the critical life-saving policies and decisions for combating the pandemic as well. So according to the author, such information is not even provided by the government through the avenue of RTI application under the RTI Act. They quote the following examples. For example the first thing is the RTI application was filed to know the details of the meetings of the National Export Groups on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19. The Ministry of Health did not provide any promising answer. And we know that NEGVAC which is the National Export Group on Vaccine Administration acts as the nodal agency on all matters related to vaccine. So the functioning of such a powerful body is being kept opaque from the public scrutiny. So that is something to be concerned of. Similarly the MOU between the ICMR and the Bharat biotech could not be obtained through RTI means. This information is important because as co-vaccine is manufactured by Bharat biotech limited in association with ICMR and the National Institute of Virology right. And there is no information available on public investment into the co-vaccines research and development okay. This the public needs to know because the tax money is being spent on these right. And even the details regarding the emergency approval of vaccines by the drug controller general of India could not be obtained by RTI. The RTI requests are being denied saying that the vaccine efficacy and the safety or confidential commercial information but if such informations are not provided. We may never know why DGCI gave emergency approval to co-vaccine and coffee shield. So on the whole we know nothing regarding the vaccine efficiency procurement pricing decision etc according to the author. Now you may ask why such information is important right. Because firstly there is a shortage of vaccine and this leads us to the question of which vaccine is safe. In addition to this author notes that the co-vaccine is being administered in private hospital for 1200 per dose making it very expensive in comparison to any other vaccine in the world. Is this how much government wants the vaccine to cost or genuinely this was how much the vaccine is priced or is the government and the company involved is making profits even in this pandemic. So all these questions are arising when the vaccine is priced this high. So we cannot answer these questions until we get the answers to the above. So further such secrecy also leads to Daniel of information to scientists public health experts and the other policy experts. See such information can be improvised by the scientist for better you know treatment options. So that opportunity is being curbed. So these are unable to provide timely feedback and suggestions to the government or filling the gaps in the COVID-19 management as well. So you may think if the answers are not gotten through RT applications we can go for further appeals and if you still don't get it we can still go to the high court. Yes it is all a possibility but time is a constraint and it is a long-term process and vaccines are a necessity at this moment right. So time becomes a constraint here. Therefore only solution available is disclosure of these information by the government proactively that is all by itself. Regarding this author has given a suggestion it is the intervention of the supreme court. Supreme court shall order for zoomoto disclosure of the government policies regarding the COVID-19. So these are the author's opinion on the transparency of the government. So with this we have come to the end of the discussion on this article. Let's move on to the next segment. Now our next discussion is going to be based on this editorial article written by the director of the international label organization Indian office. As the title hints the author here talks about the need for effective and potential government policies and pragmatic interventions for saving Indian children and to break the cycle of child labor. So in this slide let us see the important points from the editorial right and the syllabus given by this editorial article is highlighted below for your reference. So as we know the corona pandemic has affected the Indian children in multiple ways. For that it has left some as orphan and has also contributed to child labor and it is expected to have a significant impact on children even though it is not clearly defined yet in any reliable source. No study has been conducted on this regard but however it is important for us to note that not all forms of child labor are created by corona pandemic alone. This is because even before the emergence of corona child labor existed in India right and if you see even in the third decade of 21st century around 152 million children in the world are still in child labor and about 73 million of them are in hazardous work right. Now let us see few statistics used by the author to better understand the scenario. See the 2011 census of India reports that about 10.1 million children in the age group of 5 to 14 years are working and in them about 8 million are from rural areas and among 26 percentage are engaged as cultivators and 32.9 percentage as agricultural laborers and as per the UNESCO estimates based on the 2011 census 38.1 million children are out of school and as per the rapid survey on children which was conducted in 2013 and 14 and it was jointly undertaken by Ministry of Women and Child Development and UNICEF. According to this study less than half of children in the age group of 10 to 14 years have completed primary education. So we get a rough picture out of these data right. See we need to understand the fact that the work performed by children will not be having any immediate implication okay but it has got the potential to produce long-term consequences in their education skills and other aspects of the child development and this will significantly reduce the future possibilities to overcome the vicious circle of poverty and poor quality of jobs right. Now let's understand it slightly later when a child is not educated it grows up unskilled without education so it finds it difficult to find a stable job right. So it stays unemployed and the poverty grips the child in our latest stages of life it gets trapped in the vicious circle of poverty right. So the next part of the editorial talks about the impact of the right combination of policy and the programmatic interventions that has led to the decrease of child labor in India in the decade of 2001 to 12 and the author here cites some of the important contributions from the schemes like Mandrega that is Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the Right to Education Act of 2009 and the Midday Mail Scheme and note that these interventions not only paved way for education but has also guaranteed wage employment that is unskilled for rural families. In fact the government's ratification of the international labor organization conventions number 138 and 182 in 2017 further highlights its commitment to the elimination of child labor. So what are these conventions see the two ILO conventions 138 and 182 are called the basic or the fundamental conventions right. This means that the international labor organization's declaration on the fundamental principles and right at work all international labor organization member states have an obligation to respect these okay so India has signed this so it just reiterates India's commitment towards reduction of child labor alright further the online portal operated by the Ministry of Labor and Employment which is called the pencil portal alright is a remarkable initiative see the pencil portal is a very important preliminary question as well okay it is operated by Ministry of Labor and Employment it is pertaining to child labor so you should know that pencil portal right. See this portal allows the government officials law enforcement agencies and the non-governmental organization as well to share information and to coordinate on child labor cases at the three levels what are the levels the national state and the local levels for the effective enforcement of the child labor laws and note that despite the decline in the global child labor during the past decade the rate of reduction has slowed by two-thirds in the most recent four-year period so the author here insists on the importance to take into account these positive and the negative trends while developing India's policies for the child labor in the post pandemic era so as we are witnessing the economic contractions the lockdowns have led to the income reduction for enterprises and the workers especially for those engaged in informal economy so what will happen is the workers will tend to send their children to work to enhance their revenue all right and apart from that the informal employers will also try to recruit more children because the children can be paid less this can be a huge factor hindering the elimination of child labor in the future okay and because of the present prevailing economic insecurity lack of social protection and the reduced household income children from poor households will be pushed into this situation okay and apart from this with the closure of schools and the various challenges posed by the distant learning because a lot of schools have shifted to online mode in the midst of the pandemic right especially the rural kids and the poor kids they really don't have access to the education so what happens is the children they tend to sit at home and the parents they tend to send these children who are sitting at home to work and this will perpetuate the trend of child labor which results largely from the digital divide for example according to the annual status of education report 2020 only a third of the total number of enrolled children received some kind of learning material from the teachers during the reference period okay which is very little isn't it through the digital mode of education so this digital divide should also be reconciled by the India in the next several decades and the years to come this should be incorporated in the policy reforms to further eliminate the child labor now having known the scenario it is true that the challenges are significant and manifold but we can overcome it with the right level of commitment we can arrive at a better situation if we carefully design our strategic partnerships and collaboration in this regard involving government employers trade unions and community-based organizations and child labor families and this proves the need for a strong alliance that will help us in paving our way towards ending child labor in all its forms by 2025 as agreed to in the sustainable development goals 8.7 see this goal 8.7 is what it stresses on the need to take immediate and effective measures to eradicate the forced labor and to end modern slavery and human trafficking so this is broad but it also has the component of child it also insists to secure the prohibition and elimination the worst form of child labor including the recruitment and the use of child soldiers and to end the child labor in all its forms by 2025 and the author concludes the editorial by stressing on the need for the government's employers unions civil society organizations and even individuals to take necessary action against child labor as a part of UN's declaration of 2020 as 2021 is the international year for the elimination of child labor so with this we have come to the end of this editorial discussion so with this let's move on to the next part of the news discussion now look at this news article this news article is about the purchasing managers index we are not going to discuss about purchasing managers index today because our May 4th discussion had already covered the purchasing managers index so i suggest you to watch that video for a better understanding of purchasing managers index from the exam perspective so with that let's jump into the last segment of today's discussion that is practice preliminary questions we have two questions for discussion today let's go over it one by one so the first question is this consider the following statements about the china and central eastern european that is CE 17 plus one mechanism so the first statement goes like this it aims to expand the cooperation between Beijing and the CE member countries with investments and trade for development of the CE region see this statement is right we know this from the discussion and it members include the entire european union and the balkan states so this question is wrong because of the word entire because the 17 plus one mechanism has states from european union as well as balkan states but not all the european union states are members right so the statement two is incorrect so only statement one is right but another added fun fact with this with litunia leaving the mechanism the mechanism has become 16 plus one from the 17 plus one okay now moving on to the next question so this question is based on the disaster management act which we saw in the discussion the first statement is that the national disaster management authority is a statutory body established under the disaster management act 2005 on the second statement union home minister is the ex-officio chairperson of the ndma so the first statement is correct because we know that from the article and the second statement is incorrect because it is not the union home minister it is the prime minister who is the ex-officio chairperson so statement two is incorrect and we have been asked to identify the correct statement so the answer is option a one only alright so here are displayed some of the main questions that are inspired from the discussion today writing one or two answers every day will give you a significant edge in your preparation so write those answers and post it in the comment section so with that let's wrap up our discussion today stay home stay safe good day