 Welcome to the Hindu News Analysis by Shankar IA's Academy for the date 15th of February 2020. The list of news articles taken up for today's analysis is displayed here along with the page numbers of five different editions. The handwritten notes in PDF format and the time stamping of all the news articles taken up for today's analysis is available in the description section as well as in the comment section for the benefit of the smartphone users. Let us now start our analysis. This news article is with reference to the release of the budget in the state of Tamil Nadu. As a part of this analysis, let us see about the provisions that are given in the constitution of India with respect to state budgets. Then we will discuss about the concept of revenue deficit in the perspective of this news article discussion. And finally, let us see some important points from this news article. The syllabus that is relevant to the analysis of this news article is highlighted here for your reference. Know that the term budget is nowhere mentioned in Indian constitution. One can see that article 112 and article 202 of Indian constitution deal with budgets. See article 112 of Indian constitution mentions annual financial statement. Here it refers to the statement of the estimated receipts and expenditure of the government of India. And if you see the statement is generally stated as a part of the union budget. To know in detail about the union budget, we request our viewers to have a look at our second February 2020 the Hindu news analysis. We have discussed in length about how union budget is presented in the parliament by the central government. So while article 112 is about the annual financial statement for the government of India, we have article 202 which is a statement of the estimated receipts and expenditure of a particular state government for a particular financial year. If you see the recently tabled union budget, you could see the actual numbers for the financial year 2018-2019. Then you can see the budgeted estimates and the revised estimates for the present financial year which is financial year 2019-2020. And you can see the budgeted estimates for the upcoming financial year which is 2020-2021. Now let us see the constitutional provisions for the annual financial statement which is tabled by a state government before the state legislature. This is applicable to all the states, so just have this in mind. Now article 212 states that the governor of a state shall cause the annual financial statement of a state to be laid before the house or the houses of the state legislature. Why? Because certain state legislatures have a single house whereas certain legislatures have two houses, the other being the legislative council. Now the estimates of expenditure in the statement shall show two things separately. One is the sums required to meet the expenditure that are described by this constitution as expenditure charged upon the consolidated fund of the state. If you see clause 3 of article 202 prescribes the expenditure that shall be the expenditure which is charged upon the consolidated fund of each state. We have given the image of this clause 3 for your reference. Note that this expenditure which is prescribed as expenditure charged upon the consolidated fund of a state shall not be submitted to the vote of the state legislative assembly. So we can tell that the charged expenditure is non-votable by the state legislative assembly. However, this does not prevent the assembly from having discussions on these estimates of charged expenditure. So this is all that you need to know. Now come to the next part of the expenditure. These are the sums that are required to meet other expenditure that are proposed to be made from the consolidated fund of the state. This expenditure shall be submitted in the form of demands for grants to the state legislative assembly. For this, a voting process will take place in the legislative assembly for the vote on demands for grants. And the state legislative assembly shall have power to assent or it can refuse to assent to any demand or it can give its assent to any demand subject to a reduction of the amount. So what is the role of the state legislative council here? See the council cannot vote on the demands for grants. So this makes the voting on demands for grants in state budget process as an exclusive privilege of the state legislative assembly. And if you look at this annual financial statement, it shall differentiate the expenditure on the revenue account from other expenditures. So this is the reason why annual financial statements of the states usually give receipts and expenditure or disbursements of the revenue account separately and the receipts and expenditure of capital account and public account separately. So know this difference. Now if you look at the union budget, it is almost similar like the states. For union government, the expenditure shall be charged from consolidated fund of India and for states it is the consolidated fund of the concerned state. Now after voting on the demand for grants, money has to be withdrawn from the consolidated fund of the state. But to withdraw money from this consolidated fund of a state and appropriation has to be made by that particular state through a law. Now this law is called as the Appropriation Act. Therefore an appropriation bill is introduced to appropriate money that is to withdraw money from consolidated fund of a state in order to meet the grants that were voted by the legislative assembly and the expenditure that is charged upon the consolidated fund of the state. Now if you look at these appropriation bills, they are dealt under article 204 of Indian constitution. One special feature that you need to know about appropriation bill is that no amendment can be proposed to this bill to vary the amount of the voter grant or to vary the amount of any expenditure that is charged on the consolidated fund of the state. However the constitution states that the decision of the officer who is presiding is final in saying whether an amendment to this bill that is mentioned in this class is inadmissible or not. So this is all with respect to appropriation. Now next if you see in the state budgets, the state governments can make some changes with respect to the taxes that are levied by the state governments. This can be given effect by passage of a financial bill. So these are some of the constitutional provisions regarding the tabling of the state budget. Now let us move on to the next part of our discussion. In the news article you can find the term revenue deficit. This news article states that the revenue deficit of Tamil Nadu is to be around 21,000 crores for the upcoming financial year. So what do we mean by revenue deficit? For this we need to know the revenue account. The revenue account contains revenue receipts and revenue disbursements. Nothing but revenue expenditure. Recepts is nothing but the money that you receive and expenditure is nothing but the money that you spend. Now revenue deficit refers to the case where the revenue expenditure is more than the revenue receipts. That is your spending is more than the money that you receive. So if we subtract the revenue receipts from the revenue expenditure one can get the value of revenue deficit for a particular financial year. So the revenue deficit implies that government's own earnings are inadequate in order to run the normal functioning of the government departments and government services. So this is the concept of revenue deficit. Now if you look at this news article it states that one of the reasons for the increased revenue deficit of the state of Tamil Nadu is because of Uday scheme. This is because under the Uday scheme the state government has to take over the debt and losses of tangent code. That is the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation Limited which is the state power distribution company of Tamil Nadu or the state discom of Tamil Nadu. Here Uday stands for Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana. Under this Uday scheme the appropriate state governments were asked to take over 75% of their discom debt which was there on 30th September 2015 and then to take over 50% of discom debt in financial year 2015-16 and then 25% of the discom debts in the financial year 2016-2017. So this has increased the burden on the state government. And another silent feature of this Uday scheme is that it has asked the states to issue bonds to take over debt and to transfer proceeds to discoms through a mixture of grant, loan and equity. Now the situation in Tamil Nadu is that the state government is providing grants to tangent code. And then if you see there involves debt servicing for interest payments every year. And in addition to this the state government is taking the losses and it will take the losses made by tangent code till the financial year 2021-2022. As a result even until the financial year 2022 there will be increased revenue deficit due to the support of discoms by the state government under this Uday scheme. The idea here is that under the Uday scheme the inefficiencies and losses of the state discoms should not be passed on to the consumers as increased tariff for electricity power. So this is one major reason for the increased revenue deficit of the state government of Tamil Nadu. Now there is one more reason why the revenue deficit is increasing. It is because of the slower growth in tax revenue at the central level. See yesterday in the budget speech the state finance minister said that the state of Tamil Nadu has faced a serious setback in the revised estimates of the financial year 2019-2020 due to the unprecedented reduction in the share in central taxes. Now why there was huge drop in the central taxes was because of the lower tax collections in the corporate tax. So because of this the state did not get its proper share of central taxes. So because of all these reasons the overall revenue deficit for the financial year 2019-2020 has increased to around 25000 crore rupees in the revised estimates of financial year 2019-2020. Initially the budgeted amount was around 14300 crores. This is all that you need to know about the concept of revenue deficit and why the revenue deficit of the state of Tamil Nadu has increased. With this we come to the end of the analysis of this news article to summarize this news article which discusses about the presentation of the state budget by the state government of Tamil Nadu. We saw about the constitutional provisions with respect to the state budgets like annual financial statement then about the appropriation bill then about the financial bill. And then we saw about the concept of revenue deficit and why the revenue deficit of the state government of Tamil Nadu has increased. These are some of the important points that you need to know about from this news article. Now have a look at the practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. Next let us see a news article which quotes global hunger index 2019. In this news article the vice president of India had said that despite high food production it is alarming that India's ranked very low in the global hunger index course of 2019. So in this context let us discuss about this global hunger index in detail the indicators and the position of India in this 2019 index. And finally let us see some suggestions that are given in the report to reduce hunger across the world. The syllabus that is relevant to the analysis of this news article is given here for your reference. See hunger is understood as the distress that is associated with a lack of sufficient calories. Or in other words it is the distress that is associated with insufficient uptake of calories. Now if you look at this global hunger index it is designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger at global regional and national levels. See the scores are calculated each year to assess the progress and setbacks in combating hunger across the world. So it will raise awareness and make the countries to understand the struggle against hunger. It also helps to compare the levels of hunger between countries and regions. And then it also calls attention to those areas of the world where hunger levels are highest and where there is need for additional efforts to eliminate hunger. And note that this global hunger index is an annual report which is jointly released by concern worldwide which is an Irish aid agency and World Hunger Life German charity. Now it is important to know about this global hunger index because we have our sustainable development goals especially goal number 2 which speaks about eliminating hunger and malnutrition. We have the sustainable development goal number 2 which aims to end all forms of hunger and malnutrition by the year 2030. So it is important to know about this index from this point of view. Because if you also see there was recent news where representative to the United Nations has said that the world is likely to miss its targets of achieving all the 17 sustainable goals by the year 2030. Now let us see how this global hunger index is calculated. See the scores are based on three dimensions of hunger which covers four indicators. The first dimension is inadequate food supply. It is calculated by measuring the share of population that is undernourished or having insufficient calorific intake. The second dimension is child under nutrition. It covers two indicators. One is child wasting and the other is child stunting for children under the age of five. You know that child wasting measures the share of children who are wasted or who are having a low weight for their height. And if you look at child stunting it measures the share of children who are stunted or who are having a low height for age. So this indicates chronic under nutrition. And if you look at the third dimension it is about child mortality. It measures the mortality rate of children under the age of five. Note that each category have equal or one by third weightage. And within child malnutrition wasting and stunting have one by sixth weightage. This picture will give you an idea about the three dimensions and the four indicators. Now based on these indicators this index ranks countries on a hundred point scale. Here zero is the best score. That is there is no hunger and hundred is the worst which indicates the presence of hunger. And based on the scores the countries are classified into five different categories as low, moderate, serious, alarming and extremely alarming as you can see in this picture. So what are the important findings of this 2019 index? See in 2019 this global hunger index was calculated for 117 countries. The Central African Republic scored more than 53 and became the only country in the extremely alarming category. And if you look at countries like Zambia, Madagascar, Chad and Ayman all these four countries came under the alarming category. Except for this country of Ayman where the civil war is happening and where people are affected. The rest of the countries belong to Africa. Now what about India ranking? See in this 2019 index India was ranked 102nd out of 117 countries. The score was 30.3 so India was placed under the serious category. If you look India's score in the year 2000 it was 38.8. So from 2000 the score has decreased continuously or we can tell that the level of hunger decreased except from the years 2000 to 2005. Now have a look at this graph. It will give you an idea about the trend of scores which India got so far. So is India really performing well? For this we need to compare our ranks with our neighborhood and then let us also try to compare India's rank with Bricks Nation. Because we keep on telling that whenever you are studying about any global indices try to compare India's rank with the neighborhood and also with certain global or regional groupings. Especially you can take Bricks Groupings or groupings like ASEAN, SEO etc. Now let us compare India's rank with our neighborhood. See Pakistan is ranked at 94th in this 2019 index. Nepal is ranked 73rd and Sri Lanka is at 66th position. So in our neighborhood we can see that India's rank is at the bottom and compared to these three countries. Now let us compare India's performance with the Bricks Nations. Brazil is ranked at 18th with a very low score of 5.3 and Russia is ranked at 22nd then China at 25th and South Africa at 59th. So even across the Bricks Grouping India is still lagging behind others. Now we cannot just blame that huge population is the reason behind low ranking. In fact China which is the most populous country in the world is ranked better when compared to India. So we can see that India still has chance to move forward in this ranking. So a lot of initiatives need to be taken by India in order to eliminate hunger and malnutrition in India. Some of the initiatives taken by India in the recent past include the enactment of National Food Security Act, then schemes like Portion Abiyan and also certain other schemes that have been taken at the state level by different state governments to eliminate hunger and malnutrition. But these initiatives are not enough. India still needs to improve towards eliminating hunger and malnutrition by 2030 in order to meet the sustainable development goals. Now let us come back to this report. This report puts forward some recommendations to reduce hunger across the world. The first and foremost recommendation is to prioritize resilience and adaptation among the most vulnerable groups and regions. We know that the global south which covers countries of Africa, South America and most of the Asian countries are the most vulnerable. So the focus on eliminating hunger should be more in these countries. Also this index suggests that we must invest more in the vulnerable groups like small scale farmers, women and children. For example actions like diversifying agricultural production, improving farmers access to resources and markets and creating non-agricultural jobs in rural areas will all help towards eliminating hunger. The second suggestion that is given is to better prepare for and respond to disasters. So it suggests that donors and governments must increase investments in disaster prevention and disaster risk reduction, especially in the vulnerable regions which are prone to extreme weather events. So actions like investing in early warning and response systems, then giving adequate funding to tackle the food crisis, then investing in resilience building in order to prevent conflicts related to the use of natural resources such as water and land should all be taken by the countries in order to eliminate hunger. So if a country is able to reduce the risk that is caused due to disasters, then it can be well equipped to focus towards eliminating hunger. Now if you look at the third suggestion, it is to transform the food systems and address inequalities. This involves promotion of sustainable production systems, then consumption of nutritious foods, then reduction of food laws and waste. Also this index suggests that governments should take measures to reduce poverty and existing inequalities which can be done by increasing investment in rural development, social protection, health services and education. Now if you look at the next suggestion, it is to take action to mitigate climate change without compromising food and nutrition security. This can be achieved by working hard to achieve the targets of 2015 Paris climate agreement. So all countries, particularly the high income countries must implement more ambitious measures like decarbonizing their energy sector, focus towards building green infrastructure and boosting carbon sequestration. So all this will help to mitigate the climate change without compromising food and nutrition security. Now if you look at the final recommendation, it is to commit to fair financing. This index tells the governments must increase their financial support to the most vulnerable people and regions. The least developed countries were the most vulnerable to climate change and food security should get more priority in funding. So these are some of the recommendations given by the Global Hunger Index in order to reduce hunger across the world. This is all about the discussion of this news article. To summarize this news article quoted about Global Hunger Index. So we have discussed about this Global Hunger Index in detail, its indicators and India's position. And we also try to compare India's position with our neighborhood as well as amongst the BRICS grouping. Know that this index was released in October 2019. We did not get a chance to discuss this particular index. Now this index is important to know from prelims point of view. And some of the statistics and the points that we have discussed in this news article will be helpful to write your mains answer as well. Because we just saw in the beginning that a UN representative has said that the world is not likely to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals in 2030. So it is important to know about this index aspect. Now have a look at the practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. This news article is about Indian Pangolin. It says that for the first time scientists have radio tagged the Indian Pangolin. In this context let us see about Pangolins including Indian Pangolins, then about the IUCN status, then about its protection status as per Wildlife Protection Act of 1972. And then we will see the use of radio tagging of Pangolin as mentioned in the news article. The syllabus that is relevant to the analysis of this news article is given here for your reference. Now let us see about Pangolins. See Pangolins are actually mammals but many people think they are reptiles. They are the only mammals which are fully covered in scales and they use these scales to protect themselves from predators in the well. That is if under threat the Pangolins will immediately curl into a tight ball and it will use their sharp scale tails to defend themselves. This is how they survive from their predators. See the Pangolins eat ants, termites and larvae and they are often known as the scaly anteaters. They have no teeth and they pick up food with their sticky tongue. Know that their tongue can sometimes reach lengths greater than the animal's body. Most of the Pangolins are nocturnal mammals. As nocturnal animals, Pangolins spend their days sleeping and their nights searching for food and digging their burrow. Know that across the world there are eight types of Pangolins. Four species are Asian Pangolins and the remaining four species are African Pangolins. The Asian Pangolins include Chinese Pangolin, then Sunda Pangolin, then Indian Pangolin and the Philippines Pangolin. Then the African Pangolins include Cape or Temmings Ground Pangolin, then White Belied or Tree Pangolin, then Jean Ground Pangolin and Black Belied or Long Tail Pangolin. So these are the eight types of Pangolins. The protection status as per the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species of these eight Pangolins is mentioned on this table for your reference. Now we will see how many species of Pangolins are found in India. See there are two species of Pangolins which are found in India. One is the Indian Pangolin and the next is the Chinese Pangolin Manus. The Indian Pangolin occurs sporadically throughout the plains and Himalayan foothills to southern India. And in the northeast it is replaced by the Chinese Pangolin where its range extends till southeast Asia. Know that both these Pangolin species are listed under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972. The IUCN status of Indian Pangolin is endangered and that of Chinese Pangolin is critically endangered. Now let us look at the protection status under Sites which is the Convention on International Trade and Endangered Species. Since 2016 all the eight Pangolin species have been transferred from Appendix II to Appendix I of the Sites. So what are these three appendices? See Appendix I includes those species that are threatened with extinction and the trade in specimens of these species is permitted only in exceptional circumstances. Then if you look at Appendix II it includes species not necessarily threatened with extinction but in which trade must be controlled in order to avoid utilization incompatible with their survival. Then if you look at Appendix III it contains species that are protected in at least one country. In simple terms Appendix I species provide highest degree of protection and it prohibits any international commercial trade but they are permitted only in exceptional cases. Now we will see why Pangolins are one of the most trafficked animals. See their meat is considered a delicacy and also Pangolin scales are used in traditional medicine and folk remedies. So Pangolins are in high demand in countries like China, Vietnam and other countries. Therefore to check the illegal trade all the eight Pangolin species are protected under various national and international laws. But if you see still there is a growing international illegal trade in Pangolins. Therefore we can see that Pangolins are among the most trafficked wildlife species in the world. Now if you look at this news article it says that scientists have radio tagged Indian Pangolin for the first time. Here radio tagging involves attaching a transmitter to an animal in order to monitor its movement. So once the animal is radio tagged we can see where it moves. It will help us to understand its habits and also to understand the Pangolin smuggling syndicates that involves right from poachers to smugglers. This is all about the discussion of this news article. To summarize this news article discussion we have seen in detail about the Pangolins across the world including the Indian Pangolins. Then about their protection status under IUCN and Sites. And then the protection status of those Pangolins that are found in India as per the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972. And finally we saw the use of radio tagging of Indian Pangolins which is mentioned in this news article. Now have a look at the practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. This news article is about global spending on defense. In this analysis we will see few important information about Shangri-La Dialogue and the important findings of the Military Balance Report 2020. The syllabus relevant to the analysis of this news article is given here for your reference. See the findings that you can see in this news article is based on a report titled as Military Balance 2020. This report is released by the institute that hosts the famous Shangri-La Dialogue. See Shangri-La Dialogue is called as Asia's premier defense summit. This summit is hosted by an international think tank which is called as International Institute for Strategic Studies. This dialogue is annually held in Singapore usually around the months of May or June with the support of the Government of Singapore. This year Shangri-La Dialogue is scheduled to be held in the first week of June in Singapore. See the name Shangri-La is the name of the hotel where the dialogues are being held. Now coming to the report the Military Balance 2020. You need to note that the Military Balance is the annual assessment of the military capabilities and defense economics of around 170 countries in the world. It therefore becomes an essential resource to be used in security policy making, then security analysis and research by various stakeholders. Now let us see some of the important findings of this report. It states that the global spending on defense has increased by 4% in 2019. When compared to 2018. The increase in this year's expenditure is mainly led by big increases in two countries of the world as one can easily guess they are the countries of United States and China. See both US and China are said to have increased their military spending by 6.6% in 2019 when compared to 2018. The amount spent in 2019 by US is around 6.85 billion US dollars and the amount spent by China is approximately around 181 billion US dollars. And if you look at the budget increase in case of US for this year 2019 it was the largest in the last 10 years. Here you need to know one more interesting fact. The total amount that is spent by US in 2019 is more than the combined spending of the top 11 countries from second position to 11th position. So we can see that US is spending in defense more than three times the amount spent by the world's second largest defense spender from this picture. So know that in 2019 the world's largest defense spender is the United States and the second largest spender is China. So which are the other countries in the top five defense spenders list? The report states that it is the same as observed in 2018 that is the top five largest spenders did not change in the year 2019. The order is first United States, second China, then Saudi Arabia which is followed by Russia and the fifth spot is India. Know that India spending one third of which China spending for its defense that is around 60 billion US dollars and Russia spending just slightly above India in defense. Now if you look among the BRICS nations except South Africa all countries that is China, Russia, Brazil and India feature in top 15 largest defense spenders list. And the countries of China, Russia and India feature in top five. So as already said try to always compare India related data with its neighborhood and also amongst the groupings like BRICS. So these are some of the important information that you can take from this news article. To summarize this news article we have seen about military balance 2020 report. So note some key facts like who releases the report and who are the major defense spenders of the world which we have discussed. So it will come in handy for your mains answer writing. Now have a look at the practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. This discussion is based on coronavirus. See we have discussed in detail many times about this 2019 coronavirus. Earlier this week the World Health Organization declared an official name for this coronavirus which is COVID-19. In our today's discussion we will see an editorial and then a ground zero report on the actions taken to tackle this coronavirus disease. The editorial is on the actions taken by the Chinese government to tackle this disease. And the ground zero report is regarding the actions taken by the state government of Kerala in containing this coronavirus disease. And in between let us also try to see two or three relevant news articles regarding this coronavirus outbreak. The syllabus that is relevant to the analysis of all these editorials and news articles is given here for your reference. First let us look at the editorial which is related to the actions taken by the Chinese government. The author of this editorial feels that China has handled the new coronavirus epidemic outbreak better than how it handled the SARS outbreak. As you would have heard the SARS coronavirus outbreak also happened in China first. It was identified in 2003 which first infected humans in the Guangdong province of southern China in November 2002. This is the reason why the author is comparing both these two virus outbreaks. Both virus outbreaks began in winter and according to the author both these crisis featured cover ups and whistle blowers. See this COVID-19 outbreak was revealed by a doctor in China who posted the information online. The author refers this as whistle blowing since initially the Chinese government did not reveal any detail about this outbreak. Next if you see the origins of both these virus outbreaks were traced to China's unregulated wet markets and the sale of wildlife. Both resulted in quarantines and considerable panic. Also both featured the construction of entire hospitals within a few days. So there are some similarities in both these viral outbreaks. But if you look there are also certain differences in these virus outbreaks like it took 8 months for SARS to spread to more than 8000 people. But this COVID-19 has infected more than 63000 people in about 6 weeks itself. So on a whole both the outbreaks demonstrated the pros and cons of China's authoritarian political system. Now the positive in this is that China was able to implement drastic measures to contain a crisis. But the negative was these drastic measures were taken only after the unnecessary escalation of the crisis. The author is telling this because during SARS and the current COVID-19 outbreak the issue was covered up for a longer period. And during this period the infected people started moving to other places and started transmitting the information. But in this current epidemic China acted a little bit responsible when compared to the SARS outbreak. The cover-up was not much longer as compared to SARS outbreak. See the first instances of this COVID-19 appeared in early December and by the end of December China had already alerted the World Health Organization. Moreover by the second week of January China had genetically sequenced the virus and shared it with WHO. And then immediately the city of Wuhan suspended all the public transportation because it was the most affected province by this COVID-19. And all the outbound trains and flights were halted. But the author tells that this outbreak could have been further contained if it was revealed by the Chinese government earlier. So the author is of the opinion that those certain things have changed in China. The Chinese political system which has an overly controlling attitude towards information has not changed at all. That is it is still persistent. So the author tells that if China changes this attitude then only it could save people from such outbreaks and deaths because of it in a timely manner. So we can conclude by saying that China has a status of one of the major world powers. So this means that its way of handling the crisis will be inevitably subjected to global scrutiny. That is all the countries will be watching what China does. So China should learn to act responsibly. So this is all about from this editorial. Now let us look at this Ground Zero article. We know that in India there are imported cases of novel coronavirus. The first imported case of this novel coronavirus in India had been confirmed in the state of Kerala. The patient was a female student who had written home from Wuhan. Kerala was especially at risk because hundreds of Malayali students who were pursuing undergraduate medical courses or nursing courses in China were on their way back to home that is to Kerala. So it was important for Kerala to handle this COVID-19 outbreak. Now let us understand how Kerala handled this crisis. Initially the female student did not have any symptoms of this disease. So the officials gave her the number of the district surveillance officer and asked her to dial the official in case she develops flu-like symptoms. Eventually after three days the student developed a sore throat and she promptly contacted the officer and she was rushed to the hospital and after that she was placed in the isolation ward. So Kerala was able to react immediately because of its surveillance and emergency preparedness measures and these measures were launched immediately after the virus outbreak was known. Initially if you see the World Health Organization sent out a notification on the disease on January 18. After this immediately the officers who are part of this integrated disease surveillance program and the district surveillance teams were alerted in the state. They were told to increase the surveillance of all SARS-like illnesses and influenza-like illnesses. And then the WHO guidelines and the clinical protocols were all circulated to all the districts. And all the health personnel in Kerala were asked to undertake surveillance monitoring and contact tracing exercises. Now if you look here Kerala learned the experience of contact tracing during the NIPA virus outbreak of 2018. Here contact tracing is defined as the identification and follow-up of persons who may have come into contact with the person who is infected with the deadly virus. In our context it is the COVID-19. And according to the World Health Organization all close contacts to the infected person should be monitored following their last known exposure to the case and they should be isolated if they become ill. Now this is an important measure because people in close contact with someone who is infected with the virus are at a higher risk of becoming infected themselves. And they are at an higher risk of potentially further infecting others as well. So closely watching these contacts after exposure to an infected person will help the contacts to get care and treatment and it will prevent further transmission of the virus. This monitoring process that is the contact tracing can be broken down into three basic steps. One is contact identification. Next is the contact listing and the third is the contact follow-up. So let us understand how all these three steps work. In contact identification once someone is confirmed as infected with the virus the contacts are identified by asking about the person's activities and the activities and the roles of people around them since the onset of illness. Here contacts can be anyone who has been in contact with an infected person. It could be a family member or a work colleague or a friend or even healthcare provider. Next if you look at contact listing all those persons who are considered to have contact with the infected person should be listed as contacts. And they should also be provided with information about the prevention of the disease. And in some cases quarantine or isolation is required for high risk contacts either at home or in hospital. And the next step is the contact follow-up. Here regular follow-up should be conducted with all contacts to monitor the symptoms and they also should be tested for signs of infection of that particular virus. So contact tracing in case of symptomatic passengers is the most major exercise for reducing the spread of any novel infection in the community that is why contact tracing is very important. So Kerala did this contact tracing exercise. Then after this what Kerala did was as a part of the surveillance it launched airport based surveillance. It is not just that Kerala only did this airport based surveillance in fact it was carried across the major cities of India which are major international airports. So on a periodic basis the Directorate General of Civil Aviation issues notification regarding the surveillance measures to be carried out across the airports of India. And today also we have a news article related to the directions given by this Directorate General of Civil Aviation. So we can see that Kerala did airport based surveillance. So those people who recently travelled to China were placed under surveillance and anyone with mild symptoms of flu was directly sent to the isolation wards of selected hospitals in every district. And they were taken in special ambulance services that had been arranged at all the airport. But those people who were without any symptoms were sent home along with instructions. The instruction was to strictly quarantine them at home. But later if you see in the first of February WHO reported that in China 60.5% of all the cases since the start of the outbreak had been reported from Hubei province. And the city of Wuhan is the capital of this Hubei province. So immediately what the Kerala officials did was they decided to change their surveillance strategy a little. They started to observe mainly the people coming to Kerala from the city of Wuhan. And aggressive surveillance and quarantine strategy was developed since there were reports that even asymptomatic patients could spread the disease. Here asymptomatic patients means those patients who do not show any symptoms of the disease. So all the people who were returning from Wuhan were placed in isolation irrespective of whether they showed the symptoms or not. And those people who came to the state of Kerala from other parts of China were sent home and told to remain in quarantine if they did not have any of the symptoms. So this measure of quarantining especially paid off well because all the three people who tested positive for the virus in Kerala were already in isolation when the virus was detected. Now if these people would not have been isolated then the authorities would have missed these cases because their symptoms were very mild. On a normal circumstance they would not have been admitted in hospitals but due to the intensive disease surveillance measures of Kerala these patients were able to be isolated even before they had the symptoms. And then as a part of the surveillance measures every district was instructed to have tertiary care facilities in at least two public sector hospitals and at one major private sector hospital. The tertiary care facilities also had an intensive care unit and ventilator support. Then what Kerala did was it set up a state control cell for COVID-19 at the directorate of health services. Then multidisciplinary teams were set up for monitoring field surveillance, hospital admissions, logistics, etc. And then expert teams were there. They prepared guidelines for surveillance, for lab testing and clinical management and these guidelines were disseminated to all the districts. And if you look at these guidelines they were more elaborate and stringent than those of WHO's guidelines. And they were also constantly revised time to time. Now if you look at the incubation period the central government suggested an incubation period of 14 days. But if you see Kerala extended it to 28 days. And then test samples were required for those people who were admitted in hospitals with symptoms. But since there were reports about possible asymptomatic transmission what Kerala authorities did was they decided to collect test samples from everyone who had returned from Wuhan after 15th of January. So various measures were taken by the state of Kerala along with this the health department of the state of Kerala publicized its 24x7 helpline Disha as the first point of contact for the public to clarify any doubts regarding this COVID-19 and related issues. And these were some of the measures taken by the state government of Kerala to contain the COVID-19 outbreak. And all these are one of the most intensive surveillance measures and more elaborate when compared to what World Health Organization prescribed. So you can see that Kerala performed really well in containing this COVID-19 outbreak. Here you should know that the entire framework of Kerala's response to this COVID-19 threat is based on its experience in managing the NIPA outbreak which happened in 2018. The NIPA outbreak took the state health system by surprise because it had a high case fatality rate that is almost 88.9% deaths were recorded. And by the time this NIPA outbreak was contained 17 people had already died. So from that experience Kerala learned its lessons. Kerala learned that simple and universal infection control protocols in hospitals would have prevented human to human transmission and it would have also saved lives during NIPA outbreak. Here the simple infection control measures include washing hands and using personal protective equipment. So when the COVID-19 outbreak happened all the baseline preparations that were made during the NIPA outbreak were helpful. And the rest of the measures concerning logistics and management were managed very well by the state health administration. And even overnight if you see the Department of Health and Family Welfare of Kerala State set up 18 subdivisions for surveillance, training and awareness, sample tracing, transportation, ambulance, etc. And if you look it also charted out the roles and responsibilities of each team. And even the help of local self-government bodies was taken. They assisted and ensured that the families who were quarantined at home had adequate food and supplies delivered to them. And even in between the government of Kerala declared the new coronavirus outbreak as a state-specific calamity. Later this declaration was withdrawn when there were no more positive cases for the virus. But if you see still the state of Kerala remains on high alert and the surveillance is still on. The state rapid response team has relaxed the quarantine guidelines. So according to Kerala government it has successfully managed to limit this COVID-19 outbreak in Kerala to just three cases and also with no case of human to human transmission. But know that any surveillance even if it is intensive is not foolproof. The crucial question here is whether Kerala is accounting for the gaps in surveillance and if it is ready with the plan B if the scenario changes and if the local transmission of this COVID-19 happens. So what is advised is that Kerala should continue its regular disease surveillance system throughout the year where the state's health authorities should pick up unusual disease trends and undiagnosed deaths and they should also analyze the data meticulously. And all these have to be done so that the state will be well equipped to deal with surprises like any disease outbreaks. Even the experts caution that Kerala should not rely too much on its NIPAA strategy while dealing with this COVID-19 outbreak. They agree that taking lessons from NIPAA experience is fine but it is crucial to understand that NIPAA and COVID-19 do not share the same epidemiology. That is they do not have the same characteristics when they spread and their surveillance and control strategies are different. Because according to experts NIPAA is not capable of sustained transmission and it disappears when the virus runs its natural course. It means that NIPAA virus develops and finishes naturally. But if you look at COVID-19 it is having a potential for sustained transmission. So this COVID-19 may turn out to be a long term problem which will require long term engagement by the public health authorities. This is the reason why it is being emphasized that Kerala should be prepared for a long term engagement with this COVID-19 outbreak. So on a whole we can see that Kerala government's response to this COVID-19 virus outbreak is much better when compared to China's. So this is all about the discussion of this Ground Zero article. Now if you look there are two more news articles on this coronavirus which are self-explanatory. In this news article it tells that the health workers who are assisting the patients who are suffering from this COVID-19 outbreak in the Wuhan province of China are also being affected by this virus. And many of them are severely affected and there are also deaths of these health workers which have been reported. In this news article you can see that two suspected cases of this COVID-19 have been kept in isolation in Delhi. The Human Health Minister has said that the health care institutions have been asked to stock up on medicines and other equipments in order to tackle this COVID-19 outbreak. And in this news article you can also see that the World Health Organization has called this COVID-19 public enemy number one because it has a potential to create significant political, economic and social issues across the world. You can see certain other news articles which tell that the manufacturing capability of China has taken a hit due to this COVID-19 outbreak and because of this China's economy is suffering. So it will have a cascading effect on the world's economy as well. And some precautionary measures to handle this COVID-19 is also mentioned in this news article. So just have an idea about this. This is all about the discussion of this coronavirus. Sometimes you get editorials like this on coronavirus. Both these articles that is the editorial and the ground page is important from your mains perspective because it has compared how China has behaved in responding to the virus outbreak that is SARS and COVID-19. And it has also compared how Kerala's reacted to this COVID-19 outbreak. And this article has also compared Kerala's measures towards NIPAA outbreak. So always have this idea prevention is better than cure. Whenever you get such editorials or news articles which discuss about the prevention strategy, it will be helpful from your mains perspective. And some potential editorials will also be helpful in your interview preparation. So just have a tab on all these articles. Now have a look at the practice question. Let us move on to the practice questions discussion session. Look at this first question. Two statements are given and you need to choose the correct statements. Look at the first statement. It tells that the expenditure charged upon the consolidated fund of a state shall not be submitted to the vote of the legislative assembly of a state. And the second statement tells that at the level of states with respect to the demands for grants, a state legislative council cannot vote. Know that both these statements are correct as per article 203 of Indian constitution. So the expenditure charged upon the consolidated fund of a state shall not be submitted to the vote of the legislative assembly. And know that at the level of states with respect to demands for grants, a state legislative council cannot vote. This is an exclusive privilege of the state legislative assembly. So both the statements are correct. The correct answer is option C both one and two. Now look at this question on global hunger index. Two statements are given and you need to choose the incorrect statement or statements. Look at the first statement. It tells that global hunger index is released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. This statement is wrong because the global hunger index is released by concern worldwide and Irish aid agency and wealth hunger life or German charity. So the first statement goes wrong. Look at the second statement. It tells that GHI scores are calculated based on three dimensions of hunger, inadequate food supply, child under nutrition and child mortality. Yes, this statement is correct. Now you need to choose the incorrect statement or statements. The correct answer is option A one only. See this index ranks countries on a hundred point scale. Your zero is the best score, which indicates there is no hunger and under is the worst, which means there is extreme hunger. So a high score indicates extremely alarming hunger. Just remember this fact. Now let us move on to the next question, which is on pangolins. Three statements are given and you need to choose the correct statements. The first statement tells that all the eight species of pangolins are naturally found in India. This statement is incorrect because only two of the eight species of pangolins are found in India. They are Indian pangolin and Chinese pangolin. Now look at the next statement. It tells that all the eight species of pangolins are included in the appendix one of sites. This statement is correct. All the eight species were included in appendix one in the year 2016. They were moved from appendix two to appendix one of sites. Appendix one of sites gives utmost protection to the species. Now look at the third statement. It tells that all the eight species of pangolins are categorized as endangered in IUCN Red List of threatened species. This statement is wrong because some of the species are categorized as endangered. Whereas some other species are categorized as critically endangered under this IUCN Red List of threatened species. And some other species are categorized as vulnerable as well as you can see in this picture. So the third statement is wrong. Only the second statement is correct out of all these three statements. So the correct answer is option B two only. Now let us look at the next question which is on the report titled The Military Balance. The question is simple. Who releases this military balance report? The correct answer to this question is option D International Institute for Strategic Studies. This report is basically the annual assessment of the military capabilities and defense economics of around 170 countries in the world. So it is an essential resource to be used in security policymaking, security analysis and research by various stakeholders. Now if you look, this institute also plays a role in hosting the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. Then if you look at the other option, Observer Research Foundation. It is an Indian think tank which provides inputs for policy makers in India. And this Observer Research Foundation is known for organizing Reissina Dialogue which happens usually in January. It organizes along with the Ministry of External Affairs of the Government of India. Then if you look at the next option, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. This institute issues the SIPRI military expenditure database which gives the annual military spending of countries since 1949. It allows comparison of countries military spending in local currency at current prices and also in US dollars at constant prices and exchange rates. And as a share of GDP. Next if you look at the Office of Disarmament Affairs of United Nations. It releases disarmament yearbook every year. It is titled the United Nations Disarmament Yearbook. The latest yearbook is available for the year 2018. So the correct answer to this question is Option D International Institute for Strategic Studies. Now let us look at the main question. The question is what is contact tracing? How it helps in reducing the spread of any novel infection in the community? Discuss how Kerala Government used inter alia the contact tracing strategy in containing the COVID-19 outbreak. Answer this question in 250 words. This question carries 15 marks. So try to explain what is meant by contact tracing. The three different types of contact tracing that we discussed. And then discuss how Kerala Government used this strategy in tackling the outbreak of the novel coronavirus outbreak that recently occurred in India. Especially in the state of Kerala. Please post your answers in the comment section. We shall review and give suitable suggestions and feedback within a reasonable time frame. With this we come to the end of the analysis of all the news articles taken up for today's discussion. And also the practice questions discussion session. If you like the video, press the like button, comment and share. And do subscribe to Shankar IAS Academy YouTube channel for latest videos and updates. Stay focused and motivated friends. Thank you.