 A very good evening everyone. Welcome again to the Hindi News Analysis brought to you by Shankar Ayes Academy for the date 7th of May 2021. Here are the list of news articles chosen for discussion today and the video is time stamped for your convenience. As you know as a segment of our news analysis we have been discussing some of the preliminary questions from the past year for the benefit of the students with the preliminary approaching. So let's start today's analysis with some of these questions and let's proceed to the analysis later on. So let us start this section with the question on G20. So let's read the question in which one of the following groups are all the four countries members of G20 and we have given four options. So this is taken from the current affairs part of the syllabus pertaining to the international groupings and questions like this are very common in UPSC. Knowing the member nations of some of the important international grouping is very very important and few years ago there was also a question on OPEC. So the question says that all the four countries in the option that is to be chosen should be a member of G20. Regular followers will remember that a couple of days ago when we were discussing G7 we also discussed about G20. So the G20 members are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, India, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Turkey, UK and the US and apart from that we also have European Union. So as you can see it has 19 countries plus the European Union. So all the members are not countries and we have 19 countries plus one Union and note that the grouping is concerned with global economic and financial issues only. So it represents about 80 percentage of the global GDP. So G20 doesn't have a permanent secretariat and the 2023 summit is expected to be hosted in India. So with this information let's go to the next question. With reference to foreign direct investment in India which one of the following is considered its main characteristic. So this is an application based question on a FDI. So let's know what is FDI first. So foreign investment means any investment made by a person resident outside of India through a capital instrument on an Indian company. So the capital instrument means it can be equity, it can be debentures, it can be share warrants issued by the Indian companies, etc. Now the FDI is the investment through capital instrument by a person resident outside India as we just saw. And if you notice FDI includes investment in listed as well as unlisted companies. So statement A is incorrect. It is not essentially a listed Indian company. Also the investment is not associated to government securities rather to capital instruments of equity shares debentures. So we eliminate option B as well. Now look at option 3 that is also incorrect because death servicing means the cash that is required to cover the repayment of interest and principle. So FDI is an investment option. It's not a death servicing option. So that is also an inaccurate description of FDI. So all the three statements are incorrect. That is A, C and D are incorrect. So option B is right. So the second statement says it is a largely non-debt creating capital flow. So as we just saw it is an investment instrument right and does not create any debt. And FDI is largely a non-debt capital flow that is the one where there is no direct repayment obligation. And in the case of FDI and FBI, there is no debt repayment obligation at all. So they are non-debt creating capital flow. So let's move on to the next question. With reference to Indian economy, consider the following statement and the statements are about the commercial paper, certificate of deposit, call money and zero coupons. So the correct option here is option C. Let's see how we arrived at it. Okay. See the commercial papers. It's an unsecured money market instrument. That is, it has no underlying asset to support it. And so it is issued in the form of a promissory note. And it was introduced in India in 1990 with the view to enable highly rated corporate borrowers to diversify their source of borrowings and to provide an additional investment instrument. Okay. And subsequently, the primary dealers and all India financial institutions were also permitted to issue commercial papers to enable them to meet the short term funding requirements of their operations. And corporates, primary dealers and all India financial institutions are right now eligible to issue commercial papers. And the commercial papers can be issued for maturities between a minimum of seven days and a maximum of up to one year from the date of issue. So option one is right. Look at the second statement. The second statement is wrong because the RBA doesn't issue Certificate of Deposits to Bank. So your certificate of deposit is a product offered by banks and credit unions that provides an interest rate premium in exchange for the customer agreeing to give a lump sum deposit untouched for a predetermined period of time. Almost all consumer financial institutions offer them. Okay. So statement two is wrong. And consider the statement three. Statement three correctly defines call money. Call money or a notice money market forms an important segment of the Indian economy. So you should know about it. See under call money market funds are transacted on an overnight basis and notice money is slightly different. And a notice money market the funds are transacted for a period of two days to 14 days. And the participants in call and notice money market currently include banks, primary dealers, development financial institutions, insurance companies and some mutual fund agencies. So call money and notice money are short term instruments. Okay. See statement three is right. And coming to statement four, the statement four is also incorrect because zero coupon bonds are government securities that are issued at a discount and redeemed at par and no interest payment is made on such a bond on periodic intervals before the maturity. And that is how we arrived at option C where one and three are correct. Now coming to the next question, consider the following statements about CPI and WPI. Correct option for this question is option A. And this is an economics based question again. And CPI and WPI are very important policy tools that fines mention in the news. On April 16th, also we had a discussion on this. So coming back to the question, first statement is about the weightages. See the index basket of WPI covers commodities falling under three major groups that is primary articles, fuel and power and manufactured products. Here the manufactured products have the highest weightage of 64.2 percentage followed by primary articles that has a weightage of 22.6 percentage and the fuel and power category has a weightage of 13.2 percentage. And these three categories of WPI covers the prices of the products and commodities from four sectors. They are agriculture, mining, manufacturing and electricity. Here we can see that the services sector is not covered under WPI. This is all factual information that you may have to remember, but let us understand it better. See, as the name goes, the wholesale price index, it calls for a wholesale approach, right? And daily food cannot be wholesale. And services can never be wholesale, right? So the first and the second statement is right. And in case of CPI, it measures price changes by comparing the present cost of a fixed basket of goods and services with reference to a base year. And these goods and services can be classified on six broad categories, which is food and beverages, clothing and footwear, panned tobacco and intoxicants, housing, fuel and light and miscellaneous. The miscellaneous ones include health, education, transport, recreation, etc. And out of all food and beverage has the highest weightage. RBI is using CPI combined as the sole inflation measure for setting inflation target and ensuring price stability. And it very recently switched from WPI to CPI. So third option is wrong. So that is how we arrive at our answer. So that brings us to the end of this segment on preliminary question discussion. Let's move on to the discussion on news articles. Now let us take up this news article. And this is about oxygen saturation levels. See recently, the Health Ministry of India issued guidelines regarding the management of adult COVID-19 patients. And according to the ministry, an oxygen saturation of 92 or 93 in COVID-19 patients should not be considered critical. Instead, this level should only be considered as a buffer that enables the patient to reach the hospital for treatment on time. See, this statement was issued by ministry because people are panicking and stocking up oxygen cylinders in their home. And even if their oxygen level dips slightly by say one or two percent to 94 or 93, they are using these stocked up oxygen cylinders. And this is dangerous because it deprives oxygen to patients who actually need it where their oxygen saturation level is critically low. And this is why the ministry has issued this statement. Now in this context, let us learn about the blood oxygen level. See, the blood oxygen level is a measure of how much oxygen the red cells of our body are carrying. And how is the blood oxygen level measured? It can be measured by two different tests. First one is arterial blood gas. See, the arterial blood gas commonly abbreviated as ABG is a blood test. With this test, we can measure the blood oxygen level along with the pH levels also. See, the ABG test is very accurate, but it is invasive and also time consuming. So the oxygen level may vary from the time of giving the blood for test to the one that is actually in the blood when the results are out. So many doctors do not prefer this way. Instead, they usually go for the second way of testing, which is using the pulse oximeter. The pulse oximeter is a noninvasive device. And it estimates the amount of oxygen in your blood through infrared light passing into your capillaries in your finger, toe, or your lobe. Then it measures how much light is reflected off the glasses in the blood. See, a pulse oximeter reading indicates what percentage of your blood is saturated and which is commonly abbreviated as SPO2 levels, right? But this test has a two percent error window. This means the reading may be as much as two percent higher or two percentage lower than the actual blood oxygen level. So this test may be slightly less accurate and doctors prefer this method because it is very easy to perform noninvasive and it is very quick. Now let us learn more about the different oxygen saturation levels. See, the measurement of your blood oxygen is called your oxygen saturation level. In medical shorthand, you may recall it as SPO2 when using a pulse oximeter and there are three levels which is normal above normal and below normal. See, normal is when it is 95 to 100 percent, right? And below normal is when a pulse oximeter is below 95 percent. See, a below normal oxygen level is called as hypoxemia. Hypoxemia is often cause of concern and especially in the current pandemic situation. The lower the oxygen level in the blood, the more severe the hypoxemia and this can lead to complications in the blood tissues and organs. And according to World Health Organization, training manual on pulse oximetry, if the oxygen saturation is 94 percentage or lower, the patient needs to be treated quickly and the saturation of less than 90 percent is considered as a clinical emergency. And according to the latest Health Ministry clinical guidelines, the adult COVID patients and oxygen concentration of less than or equal to 93 on room air requires hospital admission. While that below 90 percent is classified as a severe disease requiring admission in the intensive care unit that is ICU. And note that hypoxia and hypoxemia are not the same. Hypoxia is the oxygen deficiency that happens at the tissues and hypoxemia is the reduced oxygen concentration in the blood. And hypoxemia can lead to hypoxia because blood is something that delivers oxygen to the tissues. So when blood oxygen level is lesser, it can consequently lead to deficiency in the oxygen at the tissue level leading to hypoxia. And hypoxia is a condition which can turn fatal in the COVID pneumonia cases. So this brings us to the end of discussion on the oxygen saturation levels. So now look at this article. So much has been discussed about the patents, trips and everything. But it also has an ethical side which can actually be a potential ethics question in our ethics paper. So through this article, what we are going to do is we'll just understand the issue and then we'll also have an understanding on the ethical perspective, both from the patent holders point of view, but and also on the humanitarian point of view, right? So let's get into the discussion. Recently, the president of the US has decided to support the waving of patents on COVID-19 vaccine. And a group of drug makers argued that waving patents of COVID-19 vaccine could disrupt a fragile supply chain. See, this statement has important implications because doing away with intellectual property rights, which is commonly referred to as IPR and we'll be referring to intellectual property rights as IPR subsequently in our discussion today. So doing away with IPR will pave the way for cheaper versions of the vaccine to enter the market and also scale up production. See, a medical patent is legal protection granted by the government to the inventor of a unique physical item or a process with a medical purpose. See, it prevents competitors from making, using or selling the patented technology for a limited period of time only. So note that it is limited by the time. See, India has been leading a push from the lower and the middle income countries at the World Trade Organization to do away with patents on vaccines against COVID. The demand had also been raised by the human rights bodies and global advocacy groups. However, the appeal to do away with the IPR have been unsuccessful so far in the face of lobbying of powerful pharmaceutical companies. So coming to the significance of widens decision in this background, lifting of patent will allow the formula to be shared, correct? Then any company which possesses the required technology and infrastructure can produce vaccines and this will lead to cheaper and more generic version of COVID vaccines to be available in the market. Hence, vaccines will be more affordable and this will help in overcoming the vaccine shortages. And we know that inequitable distribution of vaccines has opened up a glaring gap between the developing and the wealthier nations. And the rich countries have already received billions of doses and gave the shot to considerable percentage of their populations. And when they are looking for normalcy back into their lives, poorer nations that continue to face shortages have overburdened healthcare systems and hundreds are dying daily, as we see in the news every day, sadly, right? See, the issue of waiving intellectual property rights is one of the conflicts between the human rights that we just saw and the patent interests of the pharmaceutical companies. So the patent holders have their side of story as well. See, the drug manufacturers argue that innovation as well as vaccine quality and safety depend on maintaining a exclusive IPR. How? Simply put, if there is no incentive for innovation in the form of patent protection, there will be no innovation. The people and corporation will find a need to innovate and find solutions to the problem only if they are given some kind of reward, right? So that is why patent becomes important, say the drug manufacturers. And another argument is that IPR are important because of the money and effort that goes into research and development. They feel lifting of patents would be a huge deterrent to them investing heavily on the vaccine development, especially during the pandemics in the future. That is, they won't be nudged towards investing in the patents because anyway, it will be liberalized. So we don't get any incentive. So why to invest on the vaccines? So according to the Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, if the WTO approves the Bidens proposal, new manufacturers lack less essential know-hows and oversights from the investors would start making vaccines. And this would do more harm than good. Vaccines that are made by these companies may not be perfect. So which can actually cause potential side effects. That is the point that they are trying to make. And they argue that the biggest challenge is not IPR, but the availability of raw materials as most vaccine makers focus on the mRNA technology. So this is the other side of the story that the drug manufacturers put forth as a justification of patents. So let us hope that an amicable solution will be found at the earliest and the vaccines would reach every nook and corner of the world. And students, you can also take a stand on this issue and you can post it on the comment section. With this information, we have come to the end of the discussion on this topic. Now look at this news article. It talks about different portfolios that were assigned to the ministers of TN Cabinet. So in this slide, let us see some important facts about the appointments process of the CM and the council of ministers. It's very important from the polity point of view, right? So as we know, in the parliamentary system of government, the governor is the nominal executive authority or the head of the state while the chief minister is the real executive authority or the head of the government. Thus, the position of the chief minister at the state level is similar to the position of PM at the centre, right? Remember, Article 164 of the Indian Constitution deals with the appointment process of the CM and the state council of ministers. So as you can see, the constitution does not contain any specific procedure for their appointment, except that chief minister shall be appointed by the governor. Usually, the governor appoints the leader of the majority party in the state legislative assembly as the chief minister. Pay attention here, right? And during situations where no party has a clear majority in the assembly, the governor using his discretion will appoint the leader of the largest party or the coalition in the assembly as the chief minister and will ask him or her to seek a vote of confidence in the House within a month. On coming to the state council of ministers as specified in article 164, they are appointed by the governor on the advice of the chief minister. And note that the 91st Amendment Act of 2003 added a new provision in relation to the compensation of the state council of ministers. And according to this, the total number of ministers in the state council of ministers, including the chief minister, shall not exceed 15% of the total strength of the legislative assembly of that state. And see that there are no specific guidelines in the constitution on what the governor should do or whom he or she should invite in the situations where there is a face-off between the parties on the coalition allies. And at such instances, their recommendations of Sakarya commission that was set up in June 1983 acts as the guiding principle. So, according to it in situations where no single party has obtained an absolute majority, the governor should make decision based on the order of preferences as you can see in this slide. So, note these points, these are very important from the main's point of view and you will be able to access this from the PDF that is being provided in the description box. So, with this information, let us move on to the next section. Now, look at this article. This article is regarding an important observation made by the Supreme Court of India. Recently, the Madras High Court judges had said that the election commission of India officials should be charged with murder for allowing rallies and mass gatherings during the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections during the pandemic. And later, the election commission of India filed a plea in the Supreme Court to restrain the media from reporting oral remarks made by the High Court. So, as we know with the advent of technology, the social media forums are taking the court observations to a much wider audience. And the Supreme Court observed that the real-time reportage of the court proceedings including the oral exchanges in the courtroom between the judges and the lawyers is a part of right to freedom of speech. And the apex court also said that the live reporting of court proceedings is a cause of celebration rather than prehension. So, in this context, let us discuss in brief about the transparency and accountability in the Indian judicial system. Here is the syllabus for your reference. See, the judicial organ enjoys at most prestige in India. The judiciary is looked upon to even fill the lacunae left by the executive and judiciary. The trust and the faith of people of India is a psychoanon for the judiciary to be running and successful. And this is what is commonly called as judicial independence, right? And over the years it is being said that the favoritism nepotism corruption have also kept into judiciary as well. And this is being said that it is protected by the weapon of contempt of court and unaccountability. And as a result, most of the wrongs done by the judges go undetected. The accountability only arises when you have someone towards whom you will be responsible to, right? So, in Supreme Court in Manohar, son of Manikrao Anjule versus state of Maharashtra stated that it is undoubtedly that transparency is very important for a democracy. See, there are several issues of controversy in the Indian judiciary and the first is its power of contempt of court that is being criticized very often. See, there are arguments that judicial power has been used to settle scores and silence the critics of the court and it has even come in the way of reporting of corruption in the judiciary and the courts. The appointment of judge is another controversial topic where the judge is resisting transparency. Know that the appointment of Supreme Court judges is made by the president of India on the recommendation of chief justice and four other judges. So, who makes it to the list and what are the criteria employed by the executive to narrow down on some particular judges, these things have not been made transparent. So, without a transparent process of appointment of judges, the collegium system will not have the credibility and the legitimacy. This is provided by a 2019 incident when the then chief justice of Metra's High Court, Vijaya Kamalesh Tahil Ramani, resigned after the collegium upheld the decision to transfer her to a different state high court. In 2014, the government tried to replace the collegium system with a National Judicial Appointment Commission which is commonly called the 99th Constitutional Amendment. The Supreme Court argued that the NJAC hampered the independence of the judiciary and it stuck it down in 2015. So, the need of the hour is a system which can address a major flaw of the collegium system which is secrecy of its functioning and lack of reasons for its decisions. The next case is the live streaming or covering of the cases on video. So, this has been dodged by the Supreme Court of the High Court's time and again and even in the case Swapnil Tripathi versus Supreme Court of India 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of opening up the apex court to the live streaming. But still this remains on paper only and all this augments the judicial opacity. So, there is an urgent need to develop an in-house committee that can find a balance between judicial independence and transparency so that the democracy is enhanced. See, students look at this article. See, this article's essence is quite radical, I must say. The author's views are quite radical and from our end we have tried to moderate it for the students convenience as much as possible and the views are largely from the author only and from exam point of view this article is very much relevant for a sociology optional student and for a GS student it is more to gain a perspective of the issues that is happening around us in this pandemic situation, right? Now let's get into the discussion. See the author in this article talks about the ongoing crisis caused by the pandemic in India and also on the role played by the Indian state in this regard. So, in this slide let us see some important points mentioned in the article and this is the syllabus covered by this editorial. So, let's first start with the present crisis and the concerns as put down by the author. As we know with each passing day the situation in India is getting worse and this is evident with the surging number of positive cases and the casualties the very instances of citizens attacking the hospital persons for the loss of life of their loved ones due to inadequate medical care or scenes of citizens struggling to breathe with an oxygen cylinder on the pavement highlights the intensity of the crisis at several levels and as pointed by the author apparently on the other side of the crisis we are witnessing the failure of the Indian state or the collapse of our system and few narratives this on the governmental responsibility also see such kind of self-defense not only affects the lives of people or alters people's trust over the state but it also impacts the Indian democracy. So, with this backdrop the author in the editorial critically analyzes the role played by the state in handling the pandemic and on how it is diminishing the democracy and he draws in philosophical theories to better explain his point. Firstly, he talks about a concept called social murder. So, we know that social division was a very prominent feature of the ancient England and back in 1840s the English ruling class and the state made their working class to work and live amidst very horrifying conditions. Such poor conditions not only caused ill health but also made the people of working class to meet their deaths very early in their life and Friedrich Engels a German philosopher named this as a social murder. See, social murder refers to a murder that was explicitly committed by a political and social elite against the poorest in the society. See, it is similar to the murder committed by an individual but the only difference between a social murder and the murder committed by an individual is that in a social murder the murderer is unknown and the death appears to be a natural one. Okay, and the author in this editorial views the ongoing Covid deaths to be very similar to this kind of social murder and he also points out that the only difference between the deaths in England in 1840s and that of India at present is that no particular section is targeted. So, he also talks about the state's failure through the migrant worker crisis. So, if you remember the lockdown imposed during the first wave of the pandemic many migrant workers were left unemployed. So, they were left with no other option than to walk to their homes even though it was thousands of kilometers and note that this journey to reach their native villages served as a transmitter for the infection which further led to the social ostracism of these migrant workers and when the government was questioned on the plights of such migrant workers the government justified its stand saying that migrant workers chose to migrate back voluntarily and the author considers this more of the government to be a classic case of social murder. See the author also hints about the kind of double standards that is in practice. For example, the ordinary people like migrant workers are expected to own up to their mistakes whereas the powerful institutions show a lack of willingness to own to their role in the spread of the virus just like how Kumbh Mela was justified and this in fact will lead to social Darwinism where only the most powerful will have some chance of survival. See Darwinism says survival of the fittest and social Darwinism says the most powerful will have some chance of survival right. Now next he talks about the patrimonialism. See we'll understand this better. The author further compares the distinct tendencies of the Indian state to that of patrimonialism or in simple words a highly personalized and centralized form of rule. Under patrimonial form of government the ruler exercises a traditional form of authority which does not have a constitution or anything but which rests on the sacredness of say an ancient text or an immemorial tradition instead of having a rule based or an impersonal rules are which is not based on rational legal bureaucracy and according to the author patrimonialism in the Indian state is built on the ideology of religious majoritarianism and nationalism and it is made legitimate by the success of the elections and as caller points out one of the fundamental problem in patrimonialism is the lack of proper accountability and this is evident even in a present situation as well. See if you see the executive being the head of a democracy has not addressed a single press conference on COVID-19 and the author then turns his focus on the arguments prevailing around the cremations. See it is argued that the cremations cannot be shown by media because it is a part of the sacred act of some sections of the Indian society. See if the number of deaths is not made known statistically then the actual intensity of the pandemic will remain unknown only to the public and the criticality of the situation will not be appreciated by the public and as epidemiologists say hiding the real gravity of a pandemic will lead to an even bigger disaster because the people will not behave responsibly right now say for instance if the china state had not hidden the pandemic in its initial stages that the world probably would have been better prepared at this juncture right and this is the reason why world media had a sustained focus on the hot spots like US, UK, Brazil where the death tolls were high. However this doesn't seem to happen in India since the concept of cultural exceptionalism is coming into play that is the reality is being hidden behind the veil of culture so remember by participating in the state's failure to fulfill its duty or responsibility we are actually encouraging conditions of social murder and this happens when we support the arguments that are against the cremations being televised or recorded. So in essence the author says that at present India is witnessing different kind of prejudice and according to angles when people are placed under conditions which appeal to violence they have two choices they will either rebel or they will either succumb to brutality so as a conclusion the author is advising the people to become citizens instead of being mere subjects under a patrimonial rule because it not only leads us to light but also prevents our democracy from fading away so that brings us to the end of discussion on this editorial let's move on to the next section now we are at the fag end of the session which is practice questions so we have two questions for discussion today let's go over it one by one so look at this question which of the following is the most accurate description of hypoxemia so we have four statements so the first statement is it refers to the high level of carbon dioxide in the blood see this statement is wrong because hypercarbia refers to the high level of carbon dioxide in the blood it refers to high level of oxygen in the blood which is also not true because it means hyperoxia and look at the third statement it refers to the low level of oxygen in the blood see low level of oxygen in the blood is called as hypoxemia and we saw this in the discussion so c is the correct answer and look at the third statement it refers to the low level of carbon dioxide in the blood so this refers to hypocarbia okay so the correct option is option c next question consider the following statement about sarcaria commission we have three statements here the first statement is it recommended the order of preferences to be followed when no single party obtains absolute majority so based on our analysis we can infer that the first statement is correct and the second and third statement is largely of an information that we may have to retain in our minds okay the second statement is it recommended the criteria to be followed in the appointment of the governor this statement is also correct see the committee in its recommendation also prescribe the criteria for the appointment of the governor in the state and another prominent commission along with the sarcaria commission is the panchi commission which also gave recommendations on the same subject okay so according to it the governor should be an eminent person in some walk of life should be a person from outside the state should be detached a figure who's not too intimately connected with the local politics and also a person who has not taken too great a part in politics especially in the recent past so these are the recommendations and so second statement is also correct look at the third statement the recommendations were affirmed by a constitution bench of the supreme court in rameshwar prasad this is union of india in 2005 so this statement is also factually very correct considering the third statement the sarcaria commission recommendation was affirmed by a constitution bench and it is often called as the guiding principle and at the main reference point so the statement 3 is also correct so all the three statements are correct so the correct option is option d which has all the three statements post your mains answers in the comment section for pure review with that we have come to the end of today's discussion if you like the video like share comment the handwritten notes link is mentioned below in the description box writing few answers every day would give you an edge in the mains preparation consistency is the key we know so be a mask stay safe stay indoors good day