 Shankar IIS Academy. Admissions open for UPSC Coaching 2021-22. Classes starts on June 28th. Admissions contact 766776626. Very good evening aspirants. Welcome to the Hindu news analysis by Shankar IIS Academy for the date 22nd of June 2021. These are the list of news articles taken for today's discussion. They have been provided along with these articles page numbers in different editions of Hindu newspaper. Let us start over today's discussion with this editorial article. This editorial article is about poverty line and the importance of estimation of poverty. So based on this into this discussion, let us see the definition of poverty and poverty line. We'll also see about the recommendations of Tendulkar committee and Rangarajan committee, etc. The syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. So first let us start by knowing what is poverty and poverty line. See Mahatma Gandhi says poverty is the worst form of violence. Poverty can be defined as a condition in which an individual or household lacks the financial resources to afford a basic minimum standard of living and poverty line is the level of income to meet the minimum living conditions. In other words, we can say that poverty line is the amount of money needed for a person to meet her basic needs. But if you see poverty line differs from one country to another, or even it differs within a country. Now this difference depends upon the idea of poverty. For example, if you take the advanced countries, their standard of living is high. So the poverty line is also high. It is because the basic standard to live includes higher consumption requirements and the accessibility to many goods and services. So in the West, even a poor household will have a room heater but yet they are poor in their country. So we can say that an American citizen may require higher amount to meet her basic expenditure. So we can see that here the difference comes in what constitutes this basic. Now on the other hand, if you take the less developed countries, in many of these countries, the basic requirements will be low and it contains mostly essential consumption items like food and clothing. So the one who is having food on her plate and clothes on for the comfort could be called rich in a less developed country. And that is why the poverty line in these less developed countries is low. So it is right to say that poverty is relative. So what poverty in US may not be poverty in India. I note that the poverty line is based on consumption expenditure that is it is based on the needs. And this poverty line says how many people are poor. So in India, various attempts have been made to estimate the poverty line based on various committees and thereby they also try to count the poor. And one such measure was also taken by the erstwhile planning commission. It estimated the levels of poverty in our country. And this estimation was based on the basis of consumer expenditure surveys that were conducted by the national sample survey office which functions under the ministry of statistics and program implementation. But note that the current methodology for poverty estimation is based on the recommendations of Tendulkar committee that was established in the year 2005. The Tendulkar committee calculated poverty levels for the year 2004 to 2005. Now the poverty levels for subsequent years were also calculated on the basis of same methodology. But after adjusting for the differences in the prices due to inflation. But lots of debates surround this estimation. It is because Tendulkar committee report said that anyone earning below 816 rupees per capita per month in rural India is poor. And anyone who is earning 1000 rupees per capita per month in urban India is poor. See here for urban India, the poverty line is kept higher because the cost of living in urban areas is higher. So through this it was calculated that the poor were 25.7 percentage of the population. Now these calculations were provided in 2011 and these 2011 calculations and conclusions based on the Tendulkar committee didn't settle well. And this led to the setting up of another committee called as the Seerangarajan committee. And in 2014 the Seerangarajan committee estimated that the number of poor are around 29.6 percentage. And this estimation was based on the persons who are spending below 47 rupees a day in cities and spending below 32 rupees a day in villages. So here we are talking about days. Here note that Tendulkar committee report and the estimation was based on per capita per month but here it is based on a day. So this was about India and India's measures to estimate the poverty line and to count the poor. So now what about the international standards? See here we can take the example of World Bank because World Bank has also estimated poverty at various levels and it revises this periodically. So according to this World Bank says that extreme poverty is defined as living on less than 1.9 dollars a day. Here you should note that recently World Bank has pointed out that the rate of poverty will increase after 20 years around the world after the pandemic hit the world. So now you may have a question on why is it important to talk about poverty line and what is the rationale for counting the number of poor. We will see why is it important and what is the rationale one by one. See firstly note that knowing such numbers will help to gather public support for a massive and urgent cash transfers. It will pave the way to look at cash transfers as a rational economic decision rather than a charity by the government. Secondly such numbers help in knowing if they made the needs of the majority or not. See for example certain loan waivers were provided to corporates and these have been critiqued by many. So this gave rise to many questions such as whether such loan waivers made any perceptible prosperity or not but there is no one to answer these questions. So counting the poor and estimating the poverty line will help us to answer these questions and future policy decisions can be corrected according to it. If it is seen that loan waivers did not provide any prosperity so rather than providing that the government can easily go for other measures such as cash transfers to the poor. Now another reason is that such numbers can create a climate that demands accountability from the public representatives for every penny that is spent and these pennies can also be better tracked and more importantly the rising gap between rich and poor has been noted in our country so counting the number of poor will also help in knowing this trend. See we know that every country is proud to provide the list of billionaires in their country. Such billionaires are evaluated in detail and they are reported. So in the similar manner a country should not shy away from counting its poor because then only appropriate policy decisions can be made to address this rich poor disparity. Now such a debate of counting the poor and estimating the poverty line is not only rising in this pandemic but even before that there were concerns because we could witness the worsening situation of poverty in our country and this worsening situation could be seen through many researchers many studies and many indices and many findings of the indices let us see them one by one. See first such worsening situation of poverty could be seen when there was a fall in the monthly per capita consumption expenditure in 2017-18 for the first time since 1972 to 73 and secondly there was also a fall in the rank of India in the global hunger index where India was pushed to the serious hunger category. Then in addition to this recently the NFHS five findings were released and this has also provided worrying markers of increased malnutrition infant mortality and maternal health and then according to the author Bangladesh is having better average income statistics as compared to India and apart from that the international monetary fund then hunger watch and swan and other surveys show a slide in poverty gains in our country and if you take some recent studies and research in March the Pew Research Center in the World Bank estimated that the number of poor in India on the basis of an income of two dollars per day has more than doubled. It has jumped to 134 million from 60 million in just a year due to the pandemic induced recession. It has also reported that in 2020 itself India contributed around 57.3 percentage of the growth of global poor so all of these analysis data they show the worsening situation of poverty in our country and if you see the last time that India reported an increase in poverty was in the first 25 years of independence that is from 1951 to 1974. At this time the population of the poor also increased from 47 percentage to 56 percentage so on a whole India is again a country of mass poverty after 45 years. So all of this points to the need to count the poor in India and to make the necessary amends in policy so as to check the rise of poverty in our country again and in this context the recommendations of Tendulkar committee, Rangarajan committee, Lakhdavala committee are important but we will see these important recommendations some other day. You just note that they have given certain suggestions in this regard so that is all in this discussion where we saw about poverty and poverty line and why they need to be calculated etc. Now let us move to the next discussion. Now let us take up this oped article it discusses about decriminalizing suicide in our country. So in this discussion we will be seeing important legal provisions and Supreme Court judgments etc regarding decriminalizing suicide. The syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. So when we talk about suicide first what comes to our mind is right to life. This right to life is a basic natural right of the human beings. Additionally in our Indian constitution it has been guaranteed as a fundamental right under article 21 in part three of the constitution and this article 21 states that no person shall be deprived of his life or personally except according to procedure established by law but this right to life itself this term itself is quite vague and because of which Indian judiciary has interpreted it in various ways and as a conclusion Supreme Court has said that right to livelihood right to shelter right to privacy right to food etc all constitute right to life but there has always been a debate whether this right to life can be interpreted to such an extent which leads to its self-destruction that is in simple words can this right to life include within its ambit the right not to live or simply the right to die. There has always been a debate whether right to die is a part of right to life or not. So here the right to die denotes suicide. Suicide is the voluntary act of taking one's own life and in one's own way to exercise the right to die but the issue with this right is that it is punishable in our country. See the Indian penal code punishes this right in various ways just know that it does not define suicide but section 306 deals with abetment of suicide. See abetting suicide means you are encouraging someone to commit suicide so as per this section 306 of IPC if any person commits suicide then whoever abets that suicide shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 10 years so that means if someone encourages other person to commit suicide then they are punishable for up to 10 years imprisonment. This is abetment of suicide but along with abetment of suicide Indian penal code also punishes attempt to commit suicide and this is dealt under section 309 it says that whoever attempts to commit suicide shall be punishable with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year that is if someone who attempts to commit suicide then they can be punishable with imprisonment for one year. So for a long time there has been a debate on whether this section 309 is violative of article 21 or not. So in this regard many judicial observations has also been made let us see them one by one. First case law is Peerathinam versus Union of India it is a 1994 case law in this case Supreme Court held that section 309 of IPC is unconstitutional and it is violative of article 21 of the constitution and remember that this decision of Supreme Court has its origin to a decision of a high court in a 1986 case law it is the Maruti Shri Pati Dubal versus state of Maharashtra case law in this case the Bombay High Court declared that section 309 is unconstitutional and this was declared unconstitutional by Bombay High Court by saying that freedom of speech and expression includes freedom not to speak also and to remain silent. So similarly the same logic should also apply to right to live which means right to live should also include right not to live or not to be forced to live. Based on this in 1986 Bombay High Court declared section 309 unconstitutional and keeping this as a precedent Supreme Court in 1994 case declared that section 309 is unconstitutional and additionally it is violative of article 21 of the constitution. Then in 2010 in Madan Mohan Singh versus state of Gujarat case law Supreme Court held that baseless allegations could not be used for prosecution for a serious offense under section 306 and then in 2015 Rajasthan High Court dealt with Santara see Santara is a rivered jain practice in which jains give up food and water till they die of starvation that means in this Santara tradition they embrace starvation to die so in 2015 Rajasthan High Court in Nikhil Soni versus unit of India case declared that Santara was punishable under section 306 and 309 and this judgment was also later state by Supreme Court. So we can say that in this case law Supreme Court upheld section 306 and 309. Then another important judgment before this was Gyankor versus state of Punjab case law of 1996 in which court directly held that right to life is a natural right embodied in article 21 of the constitution but suicide is an unnatural termination or unnatural extinction of life. So suicide is incompatible and inconsistent with the concept of right to life. So here Supreme Court held that right to die is not a part of right to life and we remember that a similar view of Supreme Court was also endorsed in the 2011 case law Arnau Ramchandra Shamburg versus union of India case law. So here we can say that there are many precedents where this section 306 itself has been declared unconstitutional and on the other hand they have also been upheld by the Supreme Court. So while we are discussing this issue it is very important to talk about a legislation that has been framed in this regard. See here we are talking about the mental health care act of 2017. We can say that suicide can be associated with mental health because someone will try to take their own life only if they are stressed. So under this act the section 115 actually bars prosecution of a person who is trying to take their own life because they are under severe mental stress. This section further says that government shall have the duty to provide care treatment and rehabilitation to that person who is having severe stress and who has attempted to commit suicide. So simply we can say that this section or the act as a whole contradicts section 309. A similar observation was also made by Chief Justice of India in 2020 where the then Chief Justice of India observed that this mental health care act negates or nullifies section 309 of IPC. Here CJI held that one cannot presume the intentions behind a suicide. So based on all these only the author of this opiate article has called for decriminalization of suicide that is removing section 306 from IPC. And author is basing this argument based on several reasons such as see this section 309 of IPC is a British error law and it was promulgated when killing or attempting to kill oneself was considered a crime against the state. So that means in the current situation when we talk about democracy and upholding fundamental rights it will be positive to nullify this section 309. Then secondly if you see this mental health care act only provides an exception in criminalization of suicides because we saw that it bars prosecution of person who is trying to take their own life under severe mental stress. So that means here the term severe mental stress plays an important role when that person is considered for prosecution. If severe mental stress can be established then only this section could be applied otherwise the person can be tried under section 309 of IPC. So based on this only since this act has been enacted mental health experts have been demanding removal of section 309. In addition to this even law commission has called for a repeal of this section. See in 1971 and 2008 that is twice law commission of India recommended repealing section 309 of IPC. And then you should note that Rajasabha even passed a bill in their 1978 in the name IPC amendment bill which repeal this section but this bill lapsed due to dissolution of Lok Sabha at that time. And then in 2011 Supreme Court also recommended that the parliament should consider the feasibility of deleting this section. And then in 2018 again a bench headed by Justice D. W. Chandruth observed that it was inhumane to punish a distressed person who failed to end her or his life by suicide. So we can see that the thought about section 309 is evolving and many are demanding for decriminalization of suicide or in other words they want to remove the section 309 of IPC. So as a conclusion we can say that let us hope that parliament will take the right step to repeal the section 309 soon. That is all viewers. In this discussion we saw about decriminalization and certain legislations and even certain judicial precedents in this regard. Now let us move on to the next discussion. Now our next discussion is based on this news article. It talks about a recent amendment to the food security assistance to state government rules of 2015. This amendment is aimed at increasing the transparency of fair price shops. So before discussing the amendment let us have a brief about these rules. So you should note that government is already implementing a scheme called end-to-end computerization of targeted public distribution system operations. This scheme is implemented by the Department of Food and Public Distribution which functions under the Ministry of Consumer Affairs Food and Public Distribution and this is being implemented by the department in association with all states and UTs. Now this scheme is aimed at improving the distribution of food grains across the country. So among other things the scheme includes automation of fair price shops. See these fair price shops are nothing but the ration shops. Now this automation is to bring transparency and efficiency in the allocation and distribution of highly subsidized food grains to the beneficiaries. These beneficiaries are the ones who are covered under the National Food Security Act. So as part of this automation only the fair price shops in the country have been automated by installing the EPOS devices that is electronic point-of-sale devices. See there are certain benefits to using EPOS devices. Mainly it ensures transparent recording of transactions at all levels. Then it also ensures that subsidized food grains are provided to the rightful beneficiaries through biometric authentication. So like this it has many benefits. Now to encourage the use of this EPOS devices in fair price shops, government provides a financial assistance to the states or UTs and this is provided as an incentive and such financial assistance is provided under the Food Security Assistance to State Government's Rules of 2015 and these rules are framed under the National Food Security Act and the financial assistance which we are talking about comes under Rule 7. See under this central government provides for reimbursement of an additional dealer margin to states or UTs. This additional margin is at the rate of rupees 17 per quintal of food grains. Note that these are the food grains which are distributed through the EPOS devices. Now as per Rule 7 Sub Rule 2, the additional margin is provided to meet up the expenditure which is incurred towards the purchasing cost of EPOS devices. It includes operational expenses, running expenses or maintenance expenses of EPOS devices and it also aimed at meeting the expenditure which is incurred towards the incentives provided for the use of EPOS devices. So this additional margin is to meet up the expenditure incurred towards purchasing cost, operational expenses and also for the incentives. Now such an expenditure is shared between the center and state governments on a 75 to 25 basis, 23 special category states or UTs and it is shared on the basis of 50-50 for 13 general category states and most importantly note that this additional margin is payable for the fair price shop which has installed a point of sale device that is a POS device and such an additional margin is limited to the transactions made through it. Now the amendment which we are talking today is regarding this Rule 7 Sub Rule 2 only and this amendment is applicable when savings are made on the additional margin. See according to the government savings are made on this additional margin due to the evolving technologies because government says that the technologies reduces the operating costs of EPOS devices. So through this states and UTs are saving some money. So regarding this only an amendment has been now introduced. Now this amendment has added a statement to this rule and as per this statement if any savings is accrued by any state or unit territory from the additional margin which is provided towards the cost of purchase operation maintenance of POS devices etc etc then such savings can be utilized for the purchase operations and maintenance of electronic weighing scales and their integration with the point of sale devices that means the savings should be used for electronic weighing scales that means states who are operating their EPOS devices in a judicious manner and the states which are able to generate savings from their additional margin of 17 rupees per quintal then this amendment would be applicable to them. This measure will encourage the integration of EPOS devices with the electronic weighing scales and this in turn would ensure that the beneficiary is given the right quantity of food grains by the fair price shop dealer as per the beneficiary's entitlement. So it is expected that this amendment would encourage other states also to generate savings through judicious use of EPOS devices. See here judicious use is nothing but ensuring that right quantity is distributed to the beneficiaries as per their entitlement under National Food Security Act. Now other than these benefits another benefit is that this move will improve the transparency in the operations of targeted public distribution systems under NFSA and it will also reduce food grain leakages. So these are some of the points that you can take note with respect to this amendment. Now let us move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on this small article which is about light utility helicopters. The news is that Indian Army is going to get around six light utility helicopters by December 2022. So in this context let us see some crucial facts about light utility helicopters or in short LUH from example spectrum. See first and foremost fact that you should remember is that LUH is designed and developed as a replacement for the Chita helicopters and Chetak helicopters. See these Chita and Chetak helicopters are now being operated by Indian Armed Forces but these Chita and Chetak helicopters fleet is aging and that is why it is important to replace them and their replacement is this light utility helicopters. Now these LUH helicopters are indigenously designed and developed by the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and note that it is a new generation helicopter in the three ton class. It incorporates the state of the art technology features such as it has the glass cockpit with multifunction displays. Here a glass cockpit is a cockpit where flight data is shown on electronic flight displays rather than on separate gorges for each instrument. So it is one of the state of the art technology used in these types of helicopters and secondly it also has health and usage monitoring system for high altitude missions in the Himalayas and then these helicopters are powered by single turbo shaft engine with sufficient power margin for catering the demand in high altitude missions. So remember it has single engine and you should also note that this helicopter will be capable of flying at 220 kilometer per hour and it has a service ceiling of 6.5 kilometers and a range of about 350 kilometers with a 500 kilogram payload. So in this you should remember that it replaces Chita and Chita helicopters. It is indigenously developed by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and it has a glass cockpit. It is a new generation helicopter in the three ton class and it has a single engine. So that is all about light utility helicopters. Now let us move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on these articles which are focused on the issue of X-Gracia payment to the victims of COVID-19. So in this context let us discuss about the statutory obligations of the government under the Research Management Act regarding this X-Gracia payment and also the recent issues surrounding it. The syllabus relevant to this discussion is given here for your reference. See first of all we should know what is X-Gracia and X-Gracia is a payment that is made to an individual by an organization government or insurer for the damages or claims and note that the party providing such assistance has no liability in making that payment and therefore X-Gracia payments are made out of moral commitments and obligations. And in our case Disaster Management Act specifies about X-Gracia assistance in case of a disaster. So let us see about that now. See as we know this act was enacted in the year 2005 for the effective management of disasters and the section 12 of this act describes the guidelines for minimum standards of relief. And as per this section the National Disaster Management Authority recommends the guidelines for minimum standards of relief to the persons who are affected by the disaster. And as you can see here such a relief includes the minimum requirements to be provided in the relief camps in relation to shelter, food, drinking water, medical cover and sanitation. It includes the special provisions to be made for widows and orphans and it also includes the X-Gracia assistance on account of loss of life. So this particular clause is our concern today because based on this clause only a petition was filed in the Supreme Court where the petitioners are asking the government to provide relief pavements as X-Gracia to the families who lost their loved ones to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now for demanding such an assistance the petitioners highlight a 2015 notification issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs regarding the compensation. According to this notification the government has to pay an X-Gracia of four lakh rupees to each victim's families under the section 12 of Disaster Management Act. And this part has only given rise to many issues because now the government is not willing to pay X-Gracia of four lakh rupees to the COVID-19 victim families. And for this the government has given certain reasons. Let us see these reasons one by one. First they argue that the section 12 was only a recommendationary in nature. So it doesn't mandate the government to provide it. Secondly they also argue that the focus was on utilization of the available funds for food, medical care, oxygen, vaccination etc. And these funds could also be used to boost the economy. So they argue that rather than attending to these needs they cannot pay a one-time compensation of four lakh rupees each to the families of COVID-19 victims. And the third reason given by them is that already funds are fixed for the Disaster Management for the year 2021-26 by the 15th Finance Commission. So to provide compensation under the Disaster Management Act they cannot use of this available money. But note that this argument was criticized by the Supreme Court itself where the justice observed that the Finance Commission's report regarding the funds cannot override a statutory provision of section 12 of DMAT. So we can see that on one hand the families of the victims are demanding X-Gracia and on the other hand government is trying every other avenue to not provide that X-Gracia. Now based on these arguments only this editorial has been written where the author criticizes the government for its inconsistency and vague statements regarding X-Gracia. See it is because previously government said that such X-Gracia payments were beyond government's fiscal affordability. That is government said cannot afford that but now the UN government has argued in the Supreme Court that it is not that it lacks funds but the funds which are available are to be used for other purposes while tackling the pandemic. That is government is stating that it is more concerned with the areas of priority to put use of the available funds efficiently. So here this priority area brings in a question whether the redevelopment projects of the government such as the Central Vista redevelopment project are a part of such priority area or not. We can see that government is pending for that. See here author does not go against the stand of the government that it is essential to spend on key areas such as health infrastructure development. But in addition to this lending a helping hand to families who are now impoverished should also be a priority to the government. This is essential as many families have lost their breadwinner and many children have lost their parents. So such an X-Gracia will help these families and children to lead a stable life at least for now. And this argument of author is based on an analysis by International Monetary Fund which stated that the policy responses of the government to the pandemic are very much concerning. See as per this IMF analysis early in the pandemic food, fuel and cash transfers to the low income households was just 1.2 percentage of the GDP. But if you remember government said that the budget allocation and the Atman river package along with other schemes they all targeted relief packages amounting to 13 percentage of GDP. So even though we had a target of 13 percentage of GDP only 1.2 percentage of GDP went to lower income households. So this shows the existence of loopholes in the redistributive function of the government. So author calls for overcoming these loopholes along with this now to tackle the fiscal constraints which the government stated for not providing X-Gracia. Here the author has suggested one thing which is the center to review its tax sources. Here author could mean increasing the tax rates which are aimed at wealthiest sections of our population. So in short we can say that rather than refusing the X-Gracia payment to the families of COVID-19 victims government should tackle the fiscal constraints. So these are some of the points that you can take note from the article and the editorial article. Now let us move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on this news article which talks about the decision of central board of SBI. See it has approved to raise 14,000 crores by issuing basal 3 compliant bonds. So in this context let us discuss in detail about basal norms and basal 3 compliant bonds. See know that basal is a city in Switzerland and this city is the headquarters of bureau of international settlement or in short BIS. This BIS fosters cooperation among central banks with a common goal of financial stability and common standards of banking regulations. So in this regard we have the basal guidelines. These guidelines refer to broad supervisory standards that are formulated by this group of central banks. See this group of central banks is called as basal committee on banking supervision. And the membership of the basal committee on banking supervision or in short BCBS has agreed to fully implement these standards and apply them to the internationally active banks in their jurisdictions. See here you should note that this BCBS was established in 1974 and it is the primary global standard center for the prudential regulations of banks. They provide a forum for regular cooperation on banking supervisory matters and it has 45 members which comprises of central banks and bank supervisors from 28 jurisdictions. I know that the Reserve Bank of India represents India in the BCBS. Now this BCBS introduced a capital measurement system called as the basal capital accord which is also known as basal one and it was introduced in the year 1988. Now this basal one focused almost entirely on credit risk that is it fixed the minimum capital requirement at eight percentage of risk weighted assets for the banks. Then in the year 2004 came the basal two guidelines and this was published by BCBS as a refined and reformed version of basal one accord. See this basal two guidelines had three parameters. First one is the capital adequacy requirements and under this it is mandated that banks should maintain a minimum capital adequacy requirement of eight percentage of risk assets. And second parameter was the supervisory review. Under this banks were needed to develop better risk management techniques in monitoring and managing risks. The third parameter was the market discipline. See under this market discipline pillar various disclosure requirements were increased such as banks risk exposures risk assessment processes etc. And then came the basal three guidelines it was released in 2010 and note that basal three was introduced in response to the financial crisis of 2008. So these guidelines were an outcome of the need to strengthen the banking system. It is because at that time banks in the developed economies were also under capitalized. They were over leveraged and they had a greater reliance on the short term funding. So in this regard these basal three guidelines or norms aimed at making most banking activities as capital intensive such as making the trading book activities more capital intensive. Now these guidelines also promote a more resilient banking system by focusing on four vital banking parameters and these parameters are capital, second leverage, third funding and fourth liquidity. And our today's discussion is based on the basal three compliant bonds. So what are these? See these bonds have higher capital requirement and they have loss absorption features as compared to basal two bonds. It means that such bonds will mitigate concerns on potential stresses on asset quality and they will also have an impact on the performance and profitability of banks. So these are some of the points that you can take note about basal norms. Now let us move on to the next discussion. Our next discussion is based on this news article which talks about the aftermath of dumping of covid victims bodies in the river Ganga. See there were allegations that this has led to the pollution of river Ganga but now the government has denied this accusation that the corpses have added to the pollution and government is saying this based on the data for April to June which has suggested that the water quality in terms of pH dissolved oxygen and biochemical oxygen demand all of these have confirmed with the bathing water quality criteria only with certain exceptions with marginal deviations at few locations. So when we talk about the pollution of water especially the pollution of river Ganga we need to know about the biological oxygen demand and chemical oxygen demand. We also need to know about NMCG because it is interested with cleaning of Ganga. So first let us see about biochemical oxygen demand or in short BOD. It represents the amount of oxygen consumed by bacteria and other organisms while they decompose organic matter under aerobic conditions at a specific temperature. See aerobic conditions means their oxygen is present. So here the more organic matter there is the greater the biochemical oxygen demand. For example when there is more sewage water in the water bodies and when there is more pollution of water bodies then at that time we will have greater BOD and this greater BOD leads to lower amount of dissolved oxygen which is available for higher animals such as fishes. So that means a higher BOD can mean a depth of higher aquatic organisms in that ecosystem. So that is why this BOD is a reliable gauge of organic pollution of a body of water and another related concept is chemical oxygen demand. It is defined as the amount of oxygen equivalence consumed in the chemical oxidation of organic matter by strong oxidants such as potassium dichromate and these tests are used to determine the degree of pollution in water bodies and their self-purification capacity and the efficiency of treatment plans and it is also used to determine the pollution loads of the water body. So that means the concept of BOD and COD are important from problem's perspective. Now let us see about NMCG. See NMCG stands for National Mission for Clean Ganga. It is registered as a society under Societies Registration Act of 1860. Previously it acted as an implementation arm of National Ganga River Basin Authority which was constituted under the provisions of Environment Protection Act of 1986. Now note that currently NMCG has two-tier management structure. It comprises of governing council and executive council and both of these structures are headed by Director General of NMCG. Now here note that the executive committee has been authorized to accord approval for all projects up to 1000 crores. So similar to the structure at national level, state program management groups acts as implementing arm of the state ganga committees. So the newly created structure attempts to bring all stakeholders on one platform to take a holistic approach towards the task of cleaning of ganga and its rejuvenation. And another notable feature is that NMCG receives funding from World Bank. So that is all about BOD, COD and NMCG. Now let us move on to the next discussion. So with this we have come to the end of news articles discussion session. Now let us see certain practice questions framed based on the news articles which we just discussed. Now this first question is a previous question that appeared in Prelims 2015 and the question is regarding Basel III Accord or simply Basel III often seen in news 6-2. Option A, develop national strategies for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. No it is not. Option B, improve banking sector's ability to economic stress and improve risk management. This is the correct answer because Basel III Accord is related to banking sector and none of the other options talk about banking sector. So the correct answer is option B. Now let us take one practice question based on Basel III. This is a two statement question. First statement is Basel III bonds have higher capital requirement and loss absorption features compared with Basel II. Now from the discussion we can say that the statement is correct. Second statement is the Basel guidelines are released by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Now this statement is incorrect because Basel guidelines refer to the broad supervisory standards that are formulated by the group of central banks called as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. So it is not released by OECD. Hence this statement is incorrect and here the question asks for the correct statements. So the correct answer is option A one only. Now this next question is another previous question that appeared in problems 2017. This question is regarding biological oxygen demand or in short BOD. The question asks BOD is a standard criterion for measuring oxygen levels in blood, computing oxygen levels in forest ecosystems, pollution assay in aquatic ecosystems, assessing oxygen levels in high altitude regions. Now option A is incorrect. It does not measure oxygen levels in blood. It is not related to oxygen levels in forest ecosystems and it is also not related to oxygen levels in high altitude regions. Rather it is related to the pollution assay in aquatic ecosystems. So option C is the correct answer. Now let us take two main questions. This question is based on GS Paper 3. This question asks you to discuss about some of the measures to lift up India's poor. So you can disturb the measures taken by Indian government in this pandemic especially like the schemes introduced etc. And this next question is based on GS Paper 2. It is regarding right to die as part of right to life. So this question asks you to critically analyze the statement. So you have to analyze how right to die cannot be a part of right to life and you have to also say why punishing a distressed person is inhumane in this scenario. You have to provide arguments for both the statements and you have to answer this question in 150 words. You can answer both these questions and post it in the comment section for peer review. With this we have come to the end of today's Hindi news analysis and practice questions discussion session. If you like this video don't forget to like comment and share and to subscribe to Shankar IIS Academy YouTube channel for more updates related to civil service examination preparation. Thank you.