 A very good evening everyone. Welcome to the Hindu news analysis brought to you by Shankara A's 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. So here is the first article that we are taking up for discussion today. So this is titled China goes malaria free with multi-pronged health strategy. This is a very notable feat. See following 70 years of effort recently China has been awarded this certification from WHO and if you see 1940s it reported about 30 million cases of disease annually and right now it has been awarded a malaria free status and that is why it is very important and in this context let us discuss this article which speaks about the strategy adopted by China which can be a lesson for the rest of the world. So here is the syllabus for your reference. See few days ago we were discussing about malaria in reference to some other news article right. If we recollect we understand that malaria is a disease life-threatening disease caused by plasmodium parasite and the parasites are spread to people through the bites of infected female anopheles mosquito called the malaria vectors and generally five different species cause the disease in humans but if you see only two specific species are the greatest threat. First is the plasmodium falciparum the next one is plasmodium pivax and as we saw they are spread by mosquitoes which are called the malaria vectors they are generally female anopheles mosquitoes and know that in 2019 alone about 229 million cases of malaria was reported across the world and however the WHO regions of the southeast asia eastern mediterranean western pacific and the americas they are also at risk they are not spared and if you see the symptoms generally it is manifested as fever and chills and individual acquiring malaria for the first time generally displays symptoms in 10 to 15 days after the infected mosquito bites the individual and if they are not treated within 24 hours it can actually turn out to be fatal and we also saw that the life cycle of a malarial parasite is completed by the humans that is half of its life cycle is in the mosquitoes and half is in the human body especially in the rbc's with that recollection in mind let us also know that malaria is very much preventable and curable that is globally about 40 countries and territories have been granted a malaria free certification from WHO and if you see the china is the first country in the western pacific region to be awarded a malaria fee certification in more than three decades so there are other countries who are in western pacific region who have been accorded these status this includes australia which was accorded in 1981 followed by singapore the very next year and brunei darsalam in 1987 and india is not malaria free we harbored a huge burden of malaria in our country now let us discuss the significant developments in china's malaria elimination journey so it started all in 1950s where the health authorities in china they worked to locate and stop the spread of malaria they provided preventive anti-malarial medicines for people and the country also made major efforts to reduce mosquito breeding grounds by stepping up the use of insecticide spraying and in 1967 the chinese government launched the five two three project remember this it was a nationwide research program so it aimed at finding new treatments of malaria this effort involving more than 500 scientists from 60 different institutions so this paid off and this led to the discovery of artemisinin in 1970s so this is one of the main state treatment for the malaria which is in vogue even right now and its core component of artemisinin is based on the combination therapies and in 1980s if you see china was one of the first countries in the world to extensively test the use of insecticide treated nets for the prevention of malaria and this was well before the nets were recommended even by the who for malaria control and as we know the insecticide treated nets are a form of personal protection that has been shown to reduce malaria illness by 1988 more than 2.4 million nets had been distributed in china and the use of such nets led to about substantial reduction in malaria incidents in the areas where they were deployed and by the end of 1990s the number of malaria cases in china came down drastically to 117000 and the deaths were reduced by 95 presentation you can imagine in less than 50 years this progress has been achieved so in this journey china was also helped by global funds to fight AIDS tuberculosis malaria so this fund remember was launched in 2002 and in 2020 after reporting four consecutive years of zero indigenous cases china applied for an official who certification of malaria elimination so what is this indigenous cases the cases that have seen spread and origin within the country okay those are called as indigenous cases but if non-indigenous cases something that is imported from the outside that is when a person lands inside china and that person is a carrier of malaria and they end up spreading and that is when it is a non-indigenous cases so for four consecutive years china has not had any indigenous cases so that is why it applied for the who certification and in 2021 china was declared as malaria free country by the who so to conclude we can say that this significant feat achieved by china shall help countries like india to realign their roadmap and it is also very important strategy that india can adopt to reduce its own load of malaria so with that information in mind let's move on to the next part of our discussion now let us take up this news article see recently us troops departed from the bagaram airbase so this airbase coordinated the 20 year long war in afghanistan and in this context let us discuss the afghan issue from the mains perspective and this discussion is divided into four segments for a better understanding so let's see them one by one the first one is regarding the reasons for us invasion of afghanistan first that is the beginning of the issue second part will be the motives of the us in pulling back its troops right now right following the doha accord and all and the third one is the role of pakistan in afghanistan politics and the fourth one deals with india's interest in the entire issue so the fourth part is going to be much more important but the first three parts are very much important for understanding the fourth part all right so here is the syllabus for your reference so let us take up the first segment first reasons for the us invasion of afghanistan see the history of afghanistan especially between the period of 1970s to 1990s it has witnessed large number of internal conflicts within the country that is within afghanistan and this internal conflict began in the year 1978 between anti-communist islamic gorillas and the afghan communist government and note that till that period these issues was seen as a intra-afghan conflict only but the real problem began when the religious fundamentalist groups within the afghanistan which is the taliban started to rule afghanistan from the year of 1996 so following that on 11th of september 2001 the attacks in the america killed nearly 3000 people you may remember the twin tower attacks famously it is called and it was identified that osama bin laden who is the head of the terror group al-qaida as the person behind the attack and the taliban group who ran afghanistan protected bin laden and they refused to hand him over to the us government as well so what happened as a result the us president george w bush declared war on the afghanistan because they failed to hand over the man responsible for the twin tower attacks and alongside this the natto coalition group led by the us quickly dislodged the taliban regime and established a transitional government and due to this the al-qaida's leaders and key operators fled to safe heavens in pakistan and with this let us move on to the next segment as to the motive of us in pulling back its see many experts say that taliban is a powerful fighting force so and it is believed to threaten the afghan democratic institutions citizens rights and the regional security and if you see the group has withstood counter insurgency operations from the world's most powerful security alliance which is the natto and three us administrators and it is reported that afghan war has killed more than 6 000 us troops and contractors and over 1,100 natto troops and some 46 000 civilians have died and an estimated 73 000 afghan troops and police officers have been killed in operations since 2017 you can see the nature of the war in afghanistan now the figures look really ugly isn't it and also the us had reached the conclusion long ago that the war was unwinnable this was the opinion about among the many experts as well and in 2015 july the obama administration had sent a representative to the first ever meeting between the taliban and the afghan government that was hosted by the pakistan in muhri so note that the first meeting that brought the terrorist group to the negotiation table was hosted in pakistan under the us director right and following this the president donald trump who succeeded obama appointed a special envoy for afghanistan so what was the mandate it had a mandate to directly negotiate with the taliban and this negotiation finally concluded with an agreement between the us and the taliban insurgents and this agreement is what is famously called as doha accord remember that and along with this information let us discuss about doha accord in brief let us just know what is the essence of it right briefly doha accord dealt with four aspects of the conflict the first demanding the talibans to end the violence so that is the first demand and the second one is the withdrawal of the foreign troops so this was a demand from the taliban side that is the foreign troops including natto troops have to withdraw the third one is asking talibans to join intra afghan peace talks and the fourth one is to prevent the use of afghan soil by terrorist groups such as al-qaida and the islamic state so the compromise from the us side is to put pressure on the afghan government to release thousands of taliban prisoners and this is the essence of the doha accord so coming back now focusing on the second aspect of the deal see let us know that us pledged to withdraw all its troops by may 1st itself of this year and it was said that at the time of signing of the agreement say in february 2020 but after the regime changed in the us the britain government also endorsed the trump taliban deal but what the new government did was they pushed the deadline for withdrawal further to september and till now we in detail saw about the us entry to its uh plan to exit in afghanistan now let us know the role of pakistan so why is pakistan's name being pulled inside the afghan peace talks first and foremost yes of course it's the neighboring country so involving it is going to be important and apart from that pakistan was one of the three countries that had recognized the taliban regime in 1990 and also the taliban captured much of the country with the help from pakistan's inter-service intelligence and even after september 11 attack on the us the pakistan government continued its support to taliban and remember we earlier discussed that our transition government was formed in afghanistan after us in near to invasion and as a result the terrorists fled to pakistan they sought refuge from pakistan and pakistan provided it and during these times the taliban regrouped they raised money they took recruits and they planned military strategies all this to place in pakistan soil and they staged a comeback in afghanistan now when the us is leaving and the taliban is advancing pakistan is again in the spotlight because of the help it provided to the insurgent group earlier and all this is happening but india's name also repeatedly pops up in the afghanistan issue so how does this development impact india's interest so that will be the fourth and the most important part of our discussion see in the past due to the terror activities of taliban india has been very critical of the taliban coming to the power and we have also shown resistance to publicly dealing with the afghanistan that is india never was in support until recently to negotiate with taliban in equal terms the same table okay and also india supports the ashraf ghani government and backs the idea of an afghan led afghan owned afghan controlled process but at the same time news reports quoting a kathari official mentions that india made contacts with the taliban in doha in recent times and one must be surprised in the sudden change in the afghan policy of ours see this is because ever since the us began pulling its troops taliban have made rapid territorial advances they are taking up control in major areas and according to the long war journal by the month of may taliban had controlled only 73 of the afghans 407 districts but right now the number of districts under taliban has gone up to 168 and this advance is just achieved in two months hence india's move in engagement with taliban is seen as more of a pragmatic approach but why india is more worried about this situation see india has three critical areas in dealing with the taliban one protecting its investments which run into billions of rupees in afghanistan because we wanted to have a good relations we invested a lot of money in afghanistan all right so that is one reason and the second preventing a future taliban regime from being influenced by pakistan so during the course of discussion we made it very clear how the insurgent group took refuge in pakistan and regrouped itself and came back pakistan is not a friendly state of india so pakistan when it can nurture a terrorist organization in its soil against one neighbor it is also a possibility that it'll nurture the terrorist organization against a not so friendly neighbor which is our country which is india and even time and again india has been very vocal and about the problems that pakistan is causing to india regarding terrorism so that is no secret right third reason why india has interest in the afghanistan part is that india is trying to make sure that pakistan backed anti-india terrorist group do not get support from the taliban so the second point is about the terrorist group getting support from pakistan and third point is about terrorist group getting support from taliban so it is more of a security question that india is worried about in the afghanistan so in the vicinity india does not want any more problem apart from pakistan and china so that is our concern with respect to the afghan issue so with this we have come to the end of this article let's move on to the next part of our discussion now let us take up this news article for discussion see recently the price of crude oil has been rising sharply so this article largely deals with what exactly is causing the spike in the fuel prices see in india the fuel prices has four major components but first is the crude oil frightened processing charges the second one is the excise duty charged by the government next is the dealer commission to the gas station and then comes the value added tax levied by the state government so as you can see one component that is excise duty is charged by the central government and the vat that is value added tax is levied by the state government now let us see the impacts of the taxes on the price hike see note that increasing central and the state taxes on fuel are the key reasons for the prices of petrol and diesel being this high in our economy see the central government in 2020 hiked the excise duty on petrol and diesel petrol it hiked at rupees 13 and diesel it hiked at rupees 16 and why did the central government do this this was to shore up the revenues at the as the pandemic led to sharp fall in the income of the central government so in order to compensate for that it wanted more revenue to spend more for the people so it ended up charging more in the petrol and diesel and in delhi if you see the central and state taxes account for about 57 percentage of petrol prices and 51.4 percentage of diesel prices see in other words if you take one litter of diesel and if you have the price of the diesel it is the actual diesel cost without tax that is almost half the price of a litter of a diesel is contributed by the taxes and in order to curb the prices few states including Rajasthan, West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya they have reverse hiked the state levies that is we saw that central and the state taxes contribute to the price of the petrol so as the central government has increased the price in order to keep the prices low the state governments have decreased the prices to keep the prices of the diesel and the petrol stable and the decrease in the price has been brought about by decreasing the state taxes so as you can see this will take a hit on the state revenue but the central government's revenue would still remain stable see will still remain stable because the central government has not cut the central taxes and if you see even RBI has been asking central government to cut the taxes because RBI sees that the increase in the fuel price will contribute to the inflation that is general price rise in the economy so typically when the fuel prices rises the inflation also rises so consequently what happens is the goods and services will become much more expensive and the investment returns will also decrease so let us take an example say some lorry is transporting some raw material for a textile industry from a different part of the country so when the lorry is transporting it requires diesel right so when the raw material is transported from a different part of the country the lorry diesel prices increases so the transportation charges increases and thereby the textile that is being manufactured so the cost of the textile is also increased so that is how the inflation accumulates in the other sector as well so when this happens the number of people buying that particular textile will be discouraged from buying because it is much more expensive than it was before right so the demand will get muted so the person who is investing on these textile the investments return will also diminish so this is how we understand the phenomenon right now if you remember India's retail inflation raised to 6.3 percentage in May 2021 and if you see it has breached the upper limit of the central bank's inflation target that is 6 percentage for the first time in the six months and this brought further pressure on the economy whipped up by the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic infections because of the lockdowns that was reimposed during the second wave so what is the way forward recently the ratings agency ICRE proposed that the government may cut ses lavis on certain retail prices of petrol and diesel to ease the prices and according to the agency's estimates petrol consumption is estimated to grow 14 percentage and diesel by 10 percentage in the financial year 2020 year on year so this is mainly driven by the recovering economic activities and mobility after the lifting up of the lockdowns see the higher the consumption of fuel the greater will be the indirect taxes that will accumulate with the central government so this estimated growth in consumption would result in rupees 40 000 crore of extra ses collected during the current fiscal compared to the last fiscal so that is the estimate by ICRE thus according to ICRE government can afford a window for a partial reversal in ses hikes that were imposed last year if the government foregoes the additional ses revenue that could accrue during the higher fuel consumption the existing fuel prices can be cut by rupees 450 per liter of petrol and diesel so that is the estimates given by ICRE which seems very valid given the high prices of fuel that is prevalent in the economy carrying the risk of inflation that can accumulate subsequently in the other sectors of the economy let's not forget that fuel is the basic raw material for any manufacturing order service industry so with that knowledge in mind let's move on to the next segment of our discussion today now our next discussion is going to be on this article see this article is written on the basis of the green passport system that is making bus see this system of green passport has raised protests from india as well as the african union so in that context this article is more of an explainer about the green passport and the implications of it around the world so this is the syllabus that covers this article so before getting to know about this article so let us know what is a green passport see recently the european union implemented the eu digital covid certificate and this is what is popularly called as green passport so this green passport is expected to ease travel restrictions for people traveling to the EU country that is those people who are vaccinated will be allowed to travel to the EU country that is the essence of this and for that green passport is a digital proof all right so this green passport attests information on the vaccine information of the individual and this passport recognizes four covid-19 vaccines and all these four covid-19 vaccines have been cleared by the european medical agencies or receive a negative test results or recovered from a viral infection so these are the criteria for one to get a green passport let's go over it again first one is vaccination with four vaccines that have been cleared by the european medical agency number one second one is receiving a negative test result that is rtpcr or someone who has been recovered from the viral infection and if you see the certificate includes information such as the name date of birth date of issuance the name of the vaccine or the details of the negative test result or the details of the recovery from the covid-19 so these are the parameters that the green passport requires and note that the certificate contains a digital signature in the form of a qr code and each issuing body has its own digital signature key all of which are stored in a secure database in each country and note that the certificate is recognized by all the 27 european union countries as well as switzerland, lichenstein, iceland and the norway so therefore a person possessing this certificate will be exempted from free movement restrictions and the member states should refrain from imposing additional travel restrictions on such holders until unless they are necessary to safeguard the public health and those who do not possess the certificate they will be subject to the usual travel restrictions and quarantine rules which are in effect in every country now the issue is that the european medical agency has listed only four vaccines we saw that right so this includes an oxford astrazeneca vaccine which is a vaxivaria and pyser biotech vaccine that is comernati and another moderna vaccine which is a spike vaccine and johnson and johnson vaccine which is janssen and this means that none of the three vaccines that india is utilizing that is covishield, covax and sputnik have featured in the list this means that only essential travel is allowed into the european union countries and that too special permission have to be taken from those traveling from india so this has made traveling for indians to europe much more difficult right and with the global concerns over the delta variant which was first detected in india more restrictions have also been put into place and making the travel more difficult and according to the european union the reason behind excluding the indian vaccine is that the serum institute of india vaccine that is covishield is biologically a different product which means that it needs to apply separately for an ema clearance so in this line the serum institute of india and astrazeneca are in the process of seeking clearance but what is being left behind is the covaxin see covaxin is yet to gain recognition even from the world health organization however there is a hint of racism that is being claimed behind it because if you see all the vaccines that are being approved they are being used by the north american people and the european people but they have not been used in the other countries that is the third world countries as it is called or the low income countries and the middle income countries and who in this regard has held that the vaccine passport should not be made mandatory for travel and it should be optional only so that is what who is calling for further it stated that the proof of covaxin vaccination should not be required as a condition of entry and exit from a country now coming to india stand what has india done in response to the green passport so in the recent g20 ministerial conference the external affairs minister registered a strong protest over the issue and as per the sources india was prepared to initiate reciprocal harsh quarantine measures against the countries that discriminate against the indians and see india's concerns in this regard are threefold and one is vaccine inequality or the vaccine passports being restricted to passengers from countries that do not have the same access to vaccines then is to gain recognition to covaxin first is vaccine inequality second one is to gain recognition to covaxin and third one for the indian approved vaccine to be given recognition across the globe so this is the three concerns that india will be fighting for india future and like india the african union and the african centers for disease control and prevention has also raised the concerns over the green passport because they have also been using the covaxin vaccine and this they have pointed out that has been the backbone of the EU supported international covax alliance program in africa so they have also registered a protest regarding this coming to the present currently at least nine countries including these countries like switzerland netherland austria germany have independently made exemptions for covi shield whereas estonia has accepted both covi shield as well as covaxin so there is a hope that enough pressure will be built on the AMA to include exemptions for the indian vaccines as well so with this we understand that how vaccines have been used as a tool to discriminate between the worlds and how india is fighting to get recognition for the homemade vaccines across the world and have travel access for indians to the europe and the other western countries so with this we have come to the end of this article discussion now let's move on to the next part of our news discussion now let us take up this news article which reports about the recent findings at codomanal excavation site so the news is that 2300 year old stepwell has been found for the first time at the codomanal excavation site by a team of the state department of archaeology see stepwell is nothing but where the water is stored in the well and the surrounding walls of the well are constructed in the form of stairs because during summers when the water level recedes the people can go deep down walk deep down and fetch the water so this stepwell trend in archaeology is very famous in india this particular picture that we are displaying is not about codomanal but it is just for your general understanding of a stepwell so in this slide let us see some important facts about codomanal excavation site and also the recent findings first let us see about the excavation site see codomanal is located at a distance of 40 kilometers from e-road this is a district in tamil nadu and it is located in the northern banks of river noyal and this is a tributary of kaveri if you recollect and note that the excavation at this site has brought to light two cultural periods and they are the megalithic period and the early historic period and the site is believed to have served as a habitation and an industrial site as well this is because the excavation since 1981 on this site revealed the presence of a industrial complex the industrial complex made beets and semi-purchase stones and there were also evidences of presence of a number of iron smelting units making steel at the site which was a trade center from the 5th century BCE to the 1st century BCE and remember this village lies on the ancient trade route that connected the cheira capital of karur with the cheira port of musiri in patinam in kerala so remember these facts they are very important from the example perspective now coming to the recent findings see a circle shaped stepwell has been found so this is found for the first time during the excavation of this particular site and the scientific dating that was done last year revealed that this well is about 2300 years old and note that back in 2020 the team unearthed rubble masonry wall of 3.5 meters which was believed to be a waterway so in this line during the current excavation a trench was dug near the last year's trench to know more about the waterway and this resulted in the discovery of the well and the well is found to be about 2.65 meters wide and the depth is expected to be known only after the deposits are removed and the step of the wells which is constructed using weathered rocks slopes down from the ground to the well that served the habitation and two rubble masonry walls existed on the either side of the steps and since this site is believed to be a habitation cum industrial site as we saw earlier the water from the well is expected to have been used both for household needs as well as for polishing the beach and the other industrial activities and apart from this the other objects excavated at this site so far includes pottery like black and red ware and black slipped ware russet coated ware and apart from that we also have red slipped ware and we have beads made of quartz and clay and portraits and megalithic cairn circle iron ward double edged axis and we also found some small daggers so this is all about the codominal excavation site you may expect a prelims question out of this and that is why we discussed this article so with this we have reached the end of this discussion with that in mind let's move on to the next segment of our discussion now let us take up some small topics for discussion that are very important from the preliminary point of view we have three topics in that direction so this topic is from the trivandrum edition of the hindu so this article talks about subiksha keralam let us know about the scheme alone which could be asked in the exam see this subiksha keralam scheme was launched to attain self-sufficiency in the state especially regarding the agriculture and food see if you see the kerala state is not very self-sufficient with respect to agriculture it imports a lot of stuff from the other state so in order to cut the expenses in this regard the government has launched this particular scheme so what does it do is the fellow lands in the state are being turned towards cultivation and for that various government machineries have been roped in to initiate the cultivation so that is all about this particular scheme this particular scheme can also be quoted as a case study in any relevant gsmains answers as well so with that let's move on to the next topic this is about the opec plus grouping so recently the oil prices have been reaching very high prices and the opec plus have been trying to you know regulate the prices of the oil and for that they have been convening various rounds of meeting and this news article is about that so let us understand opec and opec plus from the preliminary perspective with respect to this article so first let us start with opec opec is nothing but organization of the petroleum exporting countries and if you see it is a prominent intergovernmental organization and it has about 14 members and all these 14 members are oil exporting developing nations and if you see it was created in 1960 at the Baghdad conference and it has five founding members that is Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela and the other members of opec include Algeria, Angola, Nigeria, United Arab Emirates and many others and if you see they are all oil rich countries capable of exporting oil and Qatar was also a member but it left opec in 2019 January and there are other oil exporting nations apart from these and these other nations join the opec meetings as observers and this is a mission of the opec nations that is displayed here and the opec is headquartered in the country of Austria that is in Vienna and the secretariat and the executive organs are also located in Vienna and if you see the notable publication that is released by opec is the world oil outlook with that information let us know about the opec plus countries see this is a loose group compared to the opec itself so this has about 24 oil producing nations that is 14 opec members and 10 non opec members and if you see the non opec member country include also Russia so Russia is also an oil exporting country remember that and this was born very recently in 2017 only because in 2017 if you remember there was a glut in the oil production and there was a free fall in the oil prices in the global market so in order to stabilize that in 2017 opec plus was formed and it reached deals for members to voluntarily cut and ramp up production in response to the changes the global oil prices and here the members collectively agree on how much oil to produce or how much oil to cut in production so if you can see overall the opec and opec plus nations exert considerable influence over the global oil market prices and it tends to keep it stable not very high or not very low thereby to maximize the profit with that information let's look into the next article so this article is taken from the Chennai edition so the Tamil Nadu government is in this age in bringing Krishna water through pipelines so traditionally the Tamil Nadu has been taking Krishna water through canals and this is resulting in a lot of theft by the farmers on the way so the stipulated amount that is supposed to reach Tamil Nadu according to the Telugu Ganga project or the Krishna water supply scheme the actual amount that is stipulated under this project is not reaching Tamil Nadu so pipeline to bring Krishna water to Tamil Nadu is being envisaged in that context let us know about Krishna river in particular see this Krishna river is a east flowing river of the peninsular India and it rises in the Mahabaleshwar in the western guards in Maharashtra so the total length of the river is about thousand three hundred thousand four hundred kilometer and it drains into the Bay of Bengal and if you see the Krishna basin extends over four states that is Andhra Pradesh Telangana Maharashtra and Karnataka and together this covers about eight percentage of the total geographic area of our country and the river is bounded by the Balagat range in the north the eastern guards on the south and the east and we have western guards on the west see it has about 13 major tributaries which join Krishna along the 1400 kilometer course and of the thirteen six are right bank tributaries and the seven are left bank tributaries and among the major tributaries the Ghataprabha Malaprabha and the Thungabhadra are the principal right bank tributaries and if you see Bhima, Mousi, Munneru are the principal left bank tributaries and note that the major hydropower stations in the basin are Koina, Thungabhadra, Srisailam, Nagarjuna Sagar, Almatti, Narayanpur and Badra. Remember a few of these which can come handy for your preliminary exam and the basin is said to possess rich mineral deposits and this can create a good potential for industrial development and iron and steel cement sugar cane vegetable oil extraction and rice myelin are some of the important industrial activities if you see around the basin and the major urban centers in the basin are Pune, Hyderabad and all and remember that the hydrological observation in the basin is carried out by the central and the state government and the central water commission maintains a 53 gauge distal site also in the basin so this is all about the Krishna river and with that we are at the end of the discussion on the news analysis and we are at the fag end of today's discussion that is practice preliminary question we have two questions in that regard let's go over it one by one so the first question is this which of the factors that are mentioned affects the price of the automobile fuel in India so this is the question and we have four factors listed we are supposed to identify what are the factors that influence the petrol and diesel prices in India so from our discussion we'll remember that the frightened processing charges to the dealers excise duty charged by the central government that by the state government are all components of the fuel prices and but the higher tax slab under GST the fuel prices are still yet to be inducted under the GST regime so it is still kept out of it so option C is the right answer when we eliminate the fourth factor from A, B and D itself so with that let's move on to the next question so this is a two statement question pertaining to malaria so the first statement goes like this malaria is a bacterial disease spread to people through the bites of infected female anopheles mosquito see this statement is wrong because the malaria is not a bacterial disease but it is a paracital disease which is spread by the female anopheles mosquito and we also saw plasmodium falciparum and plasmodium ovale are the most threatening species in the malaria so with that let's move on to the next statement in 2020 India was declared as a malaria free country by the world health organization see it is not so we also saw in the discussion that India is not malaria free and it almost harbors majority of the world malaria cases so statement two is wrong so we are asked to identify the correct statement so our option is option D neither one nor two and these are some of the main questions inspired from our discussion today write these answers and post it in the comment section for peer review see writing one or two answers every day will give you a very good edge in your GS preparation right so with that information in mind let's wrap up our discussion today if you like the video like share comment and subscribe and we provide the PDF link for the hand written notes in the description box as well as in the comments box stay home stay safe good day