 Good evening aspirants. Welcome to the Hindu newspaper analysis brought you by Shankar IAS Academy for the date 28th of December 2021. Displayed here are the list of news articles chosen for today's discussion. Say look at the first news article, it talks about the health index released by the Niti Aayog. The points covered in this discussion can be used for your mains answer writing. Also we have discussed a mains article on the topic extended producer responsibility. Now without wasting much time let's get into our discussion. The first news article is about the release of state health index report for 2019-20 by Niti Aayog. So today let us see about this index, its key indicators and findings. The syllabus relevant to this news article is given here for your reference please go through it. Now let's begin our discussion. This state health index report is officially titled as Healthy States Progressive India. It was launched in 2017 as an annual health index. It was launched by Niti Aayog in collaboration with the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the World Bank. So it was launched to track the overall performance and also the incremental performance across all states and union territories in our country. See here the incremental performance would mean the year-to-year progress and the overall performance means the current performance. So its main objective is to track the progress on health outcomes and health system performance. It also aims to develop healthy competition among states and union territories along with encouraging cross learning among those states and union territories. Overall you can say that this index will help in the achievement of health related sustainable development goals and will help to identify parameters in which states or union territories have improved stagnated or declined. Therefore for this purpose the index generates scores and corresponding ranks for the states and union territories. These scores are generated incorporating 24 indicators which cover key aspects of health performance. See these indicators are under three domains. What are those domains? They are health outcomes, governance and information and the last one is key inputs and processes. Among these domains health outcomes are assigned the highest weight. Now these are the 24 indicators as you can see here. Now in addition to these indicators for generation of ranks and to ensure comparability among entities the states are classified into three categories. What are those three categories? First one is larger states, second one is smaller states and the last one is UTs which is nothing but union territories. So you can see this categorization in this table given below. Now coming to the state health index report for 2019 to 2020. See it is the fourth round of the index and in this round three new indicators have been added. What are the three indicators? They are maternal mortality ratio, proportion of pregnant women received four or more antenatal care visits and the last one is level of registration of deaths. So these are the three new indicators that have been added in this 2019 to 2020 report. Now let us get into the findings of this index. First finding it is about the overall performance. See among the largest states the best performers are Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana. Here you have to note that for the fourth consecutive round Kerala has emerged as the best performer in terms of overall performance. But remember that Kerala's overall index score is 82.20 and the maximum index score that a state or UT can achieve is 100. So this shows that even for a top performing state there is still room for improvement. Now among the smaller states Mizoram is the best performer in overall performance and among the UTs or you can say Union Territories, Dadra, Nagareveli and Daman and Dew was at the top. On the other hand Uttar Pradesh has the lowest score among the larger states. So it has been ranked 19 which is the bottom rank and among the smaller states Nagaland is at the bottom. Now if we take Union Territories, Andaman and Nikhubar is at the bottom along with Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir. Here you can see the change in the overall performance ranks of larger states, smaller states and Union Territories between 2018-19 and 2019-20. So from the findings it could also be concluded that in the overall performance among larger states Kerala and Tamil Nadu have retained their position as the top two performance in the year 2018-19 and 2019-20. Similarly Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh have retained their position as the least three performance in the year 2018-2019 and 2019-2020. Now we will see what is the second finding. If we take the incremental performance, here the findings are upside down compared to the overall performance. What it means UP has ranked at the top in terms of incremental performance. It has registered the highest incremental change from the year 2018-2019 to 2019-2020. That is it has performed better or progressed in the year 2019-2020. But Kerala and Tamil Nadu have comparatively lowest scores here. They have been ranked 12th and 8th respectively which means Kerala has ranked 12th and Tamil Nadu has ranked 8th. This does not mean that these states have performed badly in the year 2019-2020 as compared to 2018-2019. But they had a good performance in the year 2018-2019 itself. Now if we take the smaller states, Mizoram is the best performer in incremental performance also and among the union territories Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir actually emerged as the leading performer in terms of incremental performance. And this data shows the incremental performance of larger states, smaller states and union territories between the year 2018-2019 and 2019-2020. Now we will see what is the third finding. Here note that among all the states Mizoram and Telangana were the only two states that demonstrated strong overall performance and showed most improvements in the incremental performance. Then among all the states Sam and Uttar Pradesh or the bottom one-third performance in overall performance but they performed exceedingly well in incremental performance. That means they have recorded the highest progress. Now let's see what is the fourth finding. See if we take the performance in both overall performance and incremental performance together then among the larger states Telangana is the only state that demonstrated strong overall performance and incremental performance. On the other hand Rajasthan was the weakest performer both in terms of overall performance and incremental performance. Now let's see the fifth finding. See the index also found wide disparities or you can say differences in the health outcomes domain index course across the states and union territories. For example among the larger states you can see the score of the best performer Kerala is 85.97 in the health outcome domain but Uttar Pradesh score is just 25.64. See it is about three and a half times less than Kerala right. So similar disparities could also be seen in the domain of key inputs and processors. Next let us take the key health outcome indicators such as neonatal mortality rate under five mortality rate sex ratio at birth and maternal mortality ratio. Among the larger states Chattisgarh was the only one to have shown deterioration in all the key health outcome indicators except for the under five mortality rate. Remember who is the worst performer here Chattisgarh. Most importantly the report also found that there is a general negative correlation between the health index course and the poverty levels of the states and union territories. See we know that the poverty levels are measured by the multi-dimensional poverty index released by NITIO. See this means that states with the same level of poverty performed better in the health index. This shows that factors other than income determined the health sector performance of a state. So these were the important findings of the state health index for the year 2019 to 2020. Now let us move on to our next news article discussion. Look at this picture. It shows a royal Bengal tiger who is enjoying a brief dip in a water tank at the Nehru Zoological Park in Hyderabad. In this context we learn about Indian tigers its distribution significance and its conservation status. Now let's start our discussion. See first of all we need to know that there were eight subspecies of tiger that existed in the past out of which three have gone extinct for many years. We'll first know those three extinct subspecies. They are Bali tiger, Javan tiger and Caspian tiger. See the scientific names of these tigers are given here for your reference. Just have a look at it. Now we'll see the five surviving subspecies of tiger. First one is Indian tiger or royal Bengal tiger. Second one is Indochinese tiger. Third one is Siberian or Amur tiger. Fourth one is Sumatran tiger. And the last one is South China tiger. See note that recent genetic studies have indicated that the Caspian and the Siberian tigers may have been from the same subspecies. Also note that recent reports are indicating that the South China tiger is also getting extinct in the wild. See now our discussion will be mainly on the Indian tiger. The Indian tiger or the royal Bengal tiger is the largest member of the cat family. What is the family name? Felidae. See the magnificent tiger Panthra Tigris is a striped animal. So it will have a thick yellow coat of fur with dark stripes. And it has black ears each with the winking white spot on the back. It has a powerful forepass and a long banded tail. It weighs anywhere between 135 to 280 kgs. See the average lifespan of a tiger in the wild is about 14 to 16 years. Thus you can see that the royal Bengal tiger is a combination of grace, strength, agility and enormous power. And all these characteristics had earned the tiger its pride of place as the national animal of India. See it is found throughout the country except in the northwestern region. Also it is found in our neighboring countries like Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. See the diet of an Indian tiger mainly consists of large wild angulates such as chital, sambar, barasingha, nilgai and gar. See remember it is an opportunistic feeder and can even kill large prey such as elephant calves. See the tigers are found in a variety of habitats including the tropical and subtropical forests, evergreen forests, mangrove swamps and grasslands. Now we will see the important points in the numerical estimation process of these tigers. So this process will be called as tiger senses. See it is conducted at regular intervals that is once in four years. For what it is done it is done to know the current tiger population and its population trend. See many different methods are used to estimate the number of tigers or you can say many different methods are used for tiger senses. The most commonly used technique in the past was pug mark senses technique. In this method what they will do is the imprints of the pug mark of the tiger will be recorded and used as a basis for identification of individuals. But now the reason method used is camera trapping and DNA fingerprinting. As for now you saw how our Indian tiger looks its distribution and the methods used to estimate the number of tigers. Now we will see what is the significance of the tiger in our ecosystem. See it is a unique animal which plays a pivotal role in the health and diversity of an ecosystem. It is a top predator and it is at the apex of the food chain meaning it is the topmost in the food chain. Therefore the presence of tiger in the forest is an indicator of the well-being of the ecosystem. Thus protection of tigers in the forest protects the habitats of several other species. So these are all the direct benefits that you can get from protecting the tiger. Now we will see some of the indirect benefits. Indirect benefits includes protection of rivers and other water sources. It also helps in the prevention of soil erosion and improvement of ecological services like pollination, water table retention etc. The absence of this top predator is an indication that its ecosystem is not sufficiently protected. Therefore the survival of the tiger is an important yardstick to measure the existence of a healthy forest ecosystem. So now you got to know the significance of the tiger. So we will see what is the conservation status of this tiger in India as well as at the international level. See Indian tiger is an endangered animal and is listed in the schedule one of the wildlife protection act 1972. So you can understand that the IUCN status is endangered. See this wildlife protection act 1972 gives tiger a protection against hunting, poaching and trade for skins, bones or its body parts. Any person who commits such an offense is punishable with an imprisonment of three to seven years. Also note that this tiger is listed in appendix one of the convention on international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora that is you can say it as sites CITES. See this sites makes international trade in tiger parts illegal. Now we will see about the tiger human conflict. See tigers like all other wild animals tend to white people but it can attack in defense if they are taken by surprise or if they are with their young ones. For centuries humans and wild animals have coexisted in India. See how they coexisted this is mainly because the human population were much lower and the forest areas were larger but now you know what is the status right. After so many decades the human population has grown many fold thereby it created great pressure on forest resources. So this forces tiger to depredate crops that adjoin the forest and due to lack of sufficient wild prey base in the forest tigers frequently visit villagers looking for food. See in this process no humans particularly children and women gets killed by these tigers. So now the villagers know they will retaliate by poisoning these wild animals thus there is a conflict that is existing between this tiger and human population. That's all about this article. So in this discussion we saw about Indian tigers its distribution its significance methods used in tiger senses and lastly we saw about the significance of this magnificent species. Finally we ended our discussion with the conflict that is existing between the Indian tigers and the human population. Now let us move on to our next article discussion. See this article is with reference to the turkey advising Russia to adapt a constructive approach towards Natto and the western powers. In this context we'll learn about Natto its members and the purpose of Natto. Now let's start our discussion. See the North Atlantic Treaty Organization which is abbreviated as Natto is a transatlantic alliance. This alliance is with 30 countries which consists of the like-minded North American and European countries. See we'll have a brief look at the history of this Natto. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada and several western European nations in order to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. The alliance also promotes democratic values and diplomacy. See it enables members to consult and cooperate on defence and security related issues. Note that this Natto was the first peacetime military alliance that the United States had entered outside the western hemisphere. See after the destruction of the Second World War the nations of the Europe struggled to rebuild their economies and they also struggled to ensure their security. But at that time no this United States thought that Europe should become economically strong, re-armed and integrated. See why did they think so? Because it is vital for the prevention of communist expansion across the continent. So all these reasons led to the creation of Natto. Soon after the creation of this Natto there was an outbreak of the Korean War in which the North Korea attacked South Korea. See this was widely viewed at that time as an example of communist aggression directed by Moscow. So the United States reinforced its troop commitments to Europe. Later West German also entered Natto so this entry led the Soviet Union to create an organization to counter attack Natto. So the Soviet Union with its satellite states of Eastern Europe created the Warsaw Treaty Organization simply the Warsaw Pact. Thus you can see the collective defense arrangements in Natto placed the whole of Western Europe under the American nuclear umbrella. See in the 1950s one of the first military doctrines of Natto emerged in the form of massive retaliation or you can say an idea that if any member was attacked the United States would respond with a large-scale nuclear attack. So the threat of this form of response was meant to serve as a deterrent against Soviet aggression on the continent. Although this Natto which was formed in response to the developing Cold War lasted beyond the end of that conflict with membership even expanding to include some former Soviet states. Thus this Natto remains the largest peacetime military alliance in the world. Now we'll have a look at the 30 members who are currently present in Natto. See for this purpose you can have a look at this political map and just remember the 30 members which might be useful in prelims perspective. Also know that the Natto's membership is open to any other European state which are in a position to further the principles of this Natto treaty okay and it should be ready to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area. Now we'll see the purpose of this Natto. See the purpose of the Natto is to guarantee freedom and security for its members through political and military means. Let us know how it is purposeful in means of political and military aspects. See politically Natto promotes democratic values and enables members to consult and cooperate on defense and security related issues. It also enables to solve problems and build trust. So in the long run it helps to prevent conflict. But when does this military aspect comes into play? See Natto is committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes. But if diplomatic efforts fail it has the military power to undertake crisis management operations. Thus the military aspect comes into play under the collective defense clause of the Natto's founding treaty. Note that all the decisions of the Natto are taken by consensus. Thus it is an expression of the collective will of all the 30 member countries. That's all about this article. So we saw what is Natto, its history in brief and its purpose. See try to remember the member countries of Natto with that political map that was provided. Now we'll move on to our next article discussion. See this article here is about the draft regulations on extended producer responsibility that is EPR. So it was published in October by the Environment Ministry. So under this article discussion we are going to see extensively about this extended producer responsibility that is EPR and the provisions of it. See the author in this article has also discussed some of the concerns in the draft EPR. So we shall see them all one by one. The syllabus relevant to this news article is given here for your reference. Please go through it. Now let's start our discussion. First of all let us see the commencement of EPR. See the plastic waste management rules 2016 introduced the concept of EPR that is extended producer responsibility. It was introduced to manage plastics in India. So as per the rules the generators of the waste have been mandated to take steps to minimize generation of plastic waste and not to litter the plastic waste. See they must ensure segregated storage of waste at the source and also hand over the segregated waste to the local bodies or agencies authorized by the local bodies. The rules here emphasizes on polluters pay principle through mandates on the extended producer responsibility. See now let's see the global scenario. Here you have to know that it is prevalent in many countries like you can see in Belgium, Zekh Republic, Ireland, Italy, France, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and even in Spain this EPR scheme is there. So under the scheme the obliged industry creates one common non-profit entity. So what will this non-profit entity do? They will collect the necessary funding, cooperate with the local authorities and ensures recycling in the most cost efficient and environmental way. So if it is done what will happen? This will reduce the country's public spending on the waste management by almost 15 percent okay. So from this we can infer that EPR policy in India will not just help in maintaining a clean environment but it will also reduce the public spending. Not only this in India major schemes are implemented for solid waste management like you can remember Swachbara Thabyan okay. Now we are going to the main part of our discussion. See we shall understand what is this EPR. Extended producer responsibility or EPR may be defined as a policy principle to promote total life cycle environmental improvements of the product systems by extending the responsibilities of the manufacturer of the product to various parts of the entire life cycle of the product and especially in the take back recycling and final disposal of the product. See I'll put this in simple words for you to understand the responsibility of the producer to manage the product throughout its life cycle till the last that is till the final disposal that is called as extended producer responsibility. Now we'll see some of the objectives that are included in this EPR. See it includes integration of environmental cost, improved waste management, reduction of disposal, reduction of burden on municipalities, design of environmentally sound products. See the rationale behind EPR is that the plastic waste management sector is largely informal and has several flaws that limits the scope of plastic waste management. Several informal methods of plastic waste handling and recycling or disposal often poses risk to the human health and environment right. So this is the rationale behind EPR policy. So for what we have seen we have seen some basic details about the EPR such as its definition and the rationale behind it. Now we shall see some of the important provisions of the draft EPR policy. See basically this system is based on the premise that producers are required to provide financial incentive to the collection systems. Also for processing facilities and the recycling industries to collect and process plastic waste in order to meet the target set doubt by the government. Here you can see the producer is the umbrella term that includes producers, importers and brand owners. See I have given the criteria for a person to be called as producer. You just go through it okay. See it includes persons who are manufacturing or importing or using the following products. Just have a look at it so that when it comes in a statement type of questions and problems you can easily eliminate it. Now getting into our discussion back. See the word producer unless otherwise return would mean to include only producer, importer and brand owner. It is abbreviated as PIBO. Now moving on to who is managing the plastic waste in India. See the plastic waste in India is managed both in informal and formal ways which are also handled by public and private sectors. The image here shows the flow of plastic. So you can see that the local bodies such as urban local bodies have the responsibility to serve the cities and villages with waste management services. Apart from this urban local bodies, collection is done by waste management agencies which will get their approval from this urban local body or there are some informal sector which are involved in this collection. Who are they? Kabadiwalas or you can say them as crap dealers or aggregators or even you can say them as waste pickers. See waste pickers and bottom of the economic permits are the ones contributing maximum to the informal waste collection. They are in a big way helping to reduce collection and disposal cost of the municipalities. But the major concern here is recycling such waste. It leads to occupational and environmental hazards due to poor waste segregation and handling methods. But the provision here is that now the producers are having targets to collect the waste they put out in the market. Also we will see one more important provision. This provision will be regarding the types of plastic that is included okay. See the plastic waste can be categorized as two things. First one pre-consumer or post-industrial waste. This refers to the plastic waste that is generated within the industries during manufacturing and packaging processes. Now we will see what is the second category. This is post-consumer waste. It refers to the plastic packaging discard including carry bags that are generated by consumers of the commodity. See these both categories come under the ambit of EPR. So far what we have seen we have discussed some of the important provisions that are there in the EPR policies along with its definition. Now we will see some of the limitations of this EPR. See first of all the waste hierarchy can be found in most of the guidelines like those released by Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and even in the guidelines released by Central Pollution Control Board. Here I have given an image for your reference. See the limitation is that the EPR policy talks about all these forms of management from reuse to end of life disposal but it left out only one thing. What is that? The most preferred option of plastic waste is reduction or minimization that is not included in EPR policy. This is the first limitation. Now let's move on to the next limitation. See the guidelines disregarded waste pickers and it didn't even involve them as stakeholders in formulating the guidelines. We have already discussed that this waste pickers are the major informal sector working for the collection of the waste. So they should have been included in this EPR guidelines as stakeholders but they aren't included. So this is a limitation. Now see these guidelines also directed the producers to set up a private parallel plastic waste collection and recycling chain. See this is an act of dispossessing the waste pickers of the means of livelihood since all these plastic waste contribute up to 60% of their incomes. Now let's move on to the third limitation. The EPR guidelines are limited to plastic packaging. See while a large part of plastics produced are single use or throw away plastic packaging there are other multi-material plastic items like even sanitary pads, chapels and polyesters that pose a huge waste management challenge today but they're all left out of the scope of EPR. So this is being a limitation of EPR guidelines. So what can be done to improve the guidelines? Let's see one by one. See rigid plastics like polyethylene pterothelate can say it as PET and the high density polyethylene are effectively recycled but take the case of flexible plastics like low density polyethylene and polypropylene bags. They are also recyclable but due to their contamination with organic waste, light weight and high volume the cost of recycling are expensive when compared to the market value of the output. See they are primarily used in foot packaging right and see one major problem of these plastic waste is they often attract rodents so the storage becomes problematic. Even if this plastic is picked recycling is technologically challenging as it is heterogeneous material so the guidelines could be altered to exclude those plastics which are already efficiently recycled and include these plastics which are not effectively recycled. And the last suggestion is see the end of life processing technologies such as pyrolysis chemical treatments should be closely evaluated. See this evaluation should not only be based on their health and environmental impacts but it should also be on the implications for continued production of low quality and multi-layered plastics. Most importantly you have to remember that the informal sector should be included in the process of formulation of guidelines. So that's all about this article with these learned points in mind let's move on to our last article discussion. The article here mentions about the tax evasion case of Uttar Pradesh based businessman Mr. Puyush Jain. See the Directorate General of GST intelligence unit unearthed rupees 194.45 crores in cash and 23 kgs of gold and unaccounted raw materials that are worth rupees 6 crore. See with this article as background we are going to learn two basic economic terms which are GST and tax evasion. First let's start with GST. GST is known as the goods and services tax. It is an indirect tax which has subsumed many indirect taxes in India such as excise duty, value added tax that is abbreviated as WAT then services tax etc. See it is a destination based tax on consumption of goods and services. What is this destination based tax means? See the tax that is livid where the goods and services are consumed that is called as destination based tax. In a nutshell I can say only value addition will be taxed and burden of tax is to be borne by the final consumer. See if you look at this example here you can easily understand. See in this image you can see the cupcake is a product. Who is the final consumer of the cupcake will need to pay the GST along with the original cost of the cupcake. See for you to easily understand I have just used this example to show you how GST is added with the original cost. See take the GST rate of this cupcake as 10 percentage. Let the original cost of this cupcake be 100 rupees. Now what will be the GST amount? It will be 10 percentage of this original cost which is rupees 10. So now the final amount or the total amount the consumer have to pay for this cupcake will be equal to original cost plus this GST amount which is 100 rupees plus 10 that is equal to rupees 110. So now you will be able to understand how this GST is calculated right. Now one more important fact that you have to remember here is who will levy these GST that is very much important here. See central goods and services tax and integrated goods and services tax will be livid by the center and it will even be administered by the center. But take the case of states goods and services tax or union territory goods and services tax it will be livid by the respective states or union territories and it will also be administered by the respective states or union territories. So you understood that there are CGST, IGST and SGST or you can say UTSD. So now we shall move on to the next term tax evasion. Tax evasion is an illegal activity in which a person deliberately makes an underpayment or non-payment of tax. It means they are deliberately hiding and misrepresentating their income from the authorities to reduce their tax liability. See it is like a white collar crime okay. See this tax evasion and tax avoidance these two terms will be often confused by the people. See for you to understand I am saying tax avoidance means using legal methods to decrease the percentage of tax payable using legal methods. Note that it is using legal methods. Now look at this tax evasion it is a criminal offense in India. See in income tax act 1961 it is stated that the provisions related to the prosecution of such offenses failure to file a timely return or a false information, deliberate attempt to evade tax, fabrication of numbers etc are mentioned. See the burden of proof in such cases lies on the accused. See regarding tax avoidance we will see in some other video. In this we will see only about tax evasion. See here I will give you some of the main practices which are deemed to be tax evasion. First one will be concealing the income, second claiming excessive expenditure, third falsification of accounts, fourth inaccurate financial statements, fifth not reporting income and sixth one is storing wealth outside the country, seventh filing false tax returns, eighth giving fake documents to claim exemptions. All these are some of the major practices which are deemed to be as tax evasion. See if you like this kind of simple explanation for the economic terms do mention in the comment section so that in the following days I will try to make such simple explanations for more economic terms. Now let's discuss the answers for the prelims practice questions. Now let's take up the first question. See it is a statement type question so you can apply the elimination technique here but remember this is a fact based question so you must be thorough with the facts then only you can apply the elimination technique here. Now this question is about the state health index report for the year 2019 to 2020. Now look at the first statement. Kela is the best performer in terms of overall performance for the fourth time. Yes that statement is correct. Second statement Rajasthan is the weakest performing large state both in overall performance and incremental performance. Yes statement two is also correct. Now look at the third statement. Aadya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh are the best three performers in 2018 and 19 and 2019 to 2020 in terms of overall performance. It is absolutely wrong because Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh are the worst performers. So if you consider third statement to be wrong you can easily arrive at the answer that is option B one and two only with the elimination technique. So the correct answer for the first question is option B one and two only. Now let's see the second question. It is also a statement type question. It is about Indian tiger. See look at the first statement. It says Indian tigers are found only in India so it is wrong. We already saw in our discussion that Indian tiger is also found in Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. Now look at the second statement. Block counting method is a method used for tiger senses. See do you remember that we mentioned in our discussion that we use Pugmark method and recently we use camera trapping and DNA fingerprinting methods. We never mentioned about this word block counting method. So statement two is incorrect. Now look at the third statement. It is listed in the schedule one of the wildlife protection act 1972. Yes it is correct. So only statement three is correct here. Statement one and two is incorrect. Now look at the options. Option D three only is the answer. Now let's move on to the third question. It is about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO. Now check whether you can apply the elimination technique here. See look at the first statement. The Soviet Union with its satellite states of Eastern Europe created the NATO. See it is absolutely incorrect. We saw in our discussion that the Soviet Union with its satellite states of Eastern Europe created the Warsaw Pact which is against this NATO. So statement one is wrong. You can easily eliminate option A, C, D and you can arrive at the answer option B two and three only. But cross verify by reading the statements again. The statement two is Germany, France, Poland are members of NATO. Yes it is correct. Statement three all the decisions of NATO are taken by consensus. Yes it is correct. So your answer here two and three option B is correct. Now let's see the last prelims practice question. It is about the tax evasion in India. See this is also a statement question but here only two statements are given. So you have to read both the statements to arrive at the answer. See first statement tax evasion is not a crime in India. It is wrong because we saw tax evasion is that illegal activity in which a person deliberately makes an underpayment or non-payment of taxes. Also we saw that it is called a white collar crime. Now look at the second statement. Tax evasion means using legal methods to decrease a percentage of tax payable. Already I mentioned in our discussion that tax avoidance means using legal methods to decrease the percentage of tax payable. So it is not tax evasion. It is tax avoidance. So statement two is also incorrect. So the question here is select the correct answer from the code given below. So they are asking for correct statement. Neither one nor two is correct. So the answer here is option A. Displayed here is a mains practice questions. Please go through it and write your answers and post it in the comment section. If you like this video, do like, share and comment. And don't forget to subscribe to our Shankar IAS Academy YouTube channel. Thank you for listening.