 A very good evening everyone. Welcome to the Hindi News Analysis brought to you by Shankar IAS Academy. Here are the list of news articles chosen for discussion today and our video is timestamped for your convenience. Now let us take up this news article. This article is about the observations made by the economics research team of the State Bank of India regarding the state of the Indian economy. So they have warned that India's economic recovery could be delayed and the reason for this is the rising financial stress on the households along with the inflation. See the financial stress is not because of the health expenditure but it is due to the expenditure on the oil. That's what the report says. See the increased expenditure on oil or fuel is due to the increased fuel prices. We know the petrol and diesel has hit the 100 rupees mark in many places. So this scenario has even reduced the spending on the non-discretionary items like grocery and utility services. Here you need to understand what is this consumer discretionary products and what is this non-discretionary items and all. See consumer discretionary product is a term used for classifying goods and services that are considered non-essential by the consumers but these goods and services are considered desirable by the consumers and these goods will be bought by the consumers only if their available income is sufficient to purchase them beyond the essential items. For example high-end apparells or going to a movie or leisure activities and say buying a car. So these are things that are not essential for the survival of an individual. But they can be considered as a luxury or a non-essential product and we ourselves will invest in these products only if our income satisfies first the essentials of the food and the clothing that we basically require and only over and above will spend for these products. So this is what we mean by here. See the spending on these products provides us picture on the state of economy as well. Generally when the economy is strong consumers earn more and the spending will also be more. On the consumer discretionary products. So discretion is what? Discretion is nothing but free will. Consumers buying things only free will. So spending on these things will be more. But when an economy is in contractionary phase these consumers usually earn less and they focus their spending more on the consumer staples. Consumer staples are nothing but the essential products used by the consumers which can be food and clothing etc. And in a poor economy consumers abandon the non-essential consumer discretionary products because they want to save more. Even then consumers still need to spend on the consumer staples which includes basics such as food, beverage, gas, petrol and toilet paper and others. So based on the above we can say that spending on discretionary products or the non-essential items is defined as discretionary spending. So on the other hand spending on essential items or non-discretionary products is called non-discretionary expense. So discretionary means once free will right. Sometimes we spend on our free will over and above what is essential. So that is discretionary spending and sometimes we have to spend no matter what in respect to of our income level we have to spend on certain things and that is called as non-discretionary expense. So but due to the rise in the fuel prices on a whole the non-discretionary expense has increased in June 2021. And if we consider the non-discretionary items like grocery and the utility services the spending has reduced. So this is a worrying factor. So the consequence is that if this starts the non-discretionary spending of the household that is spending on the essentials and it also crowds out the discretionary expenses that is an individual will not be able to purchase the luxuries as well if he is spending everything on the essentials right. So some discretionary expenses are good for economy such as spending on automobile. So this will in turn help the economy grow. So the automobile sector will grow which in turn will reflect in the economy and thereby reflect as a growth in the GDP of the economy. If the spending on the economy dies down obviously you will have an impact on the economy. So along with this we also have another issue with respect to rising fuel prices. So which is high fuel prices leads to high transport cost and this in turn would eventually increase food inflation further. See we have seen similar circumstances in one of our previous discussion as well. Say consider a truck that is transporting rice. Say we are selling rice 1 kg for 40 bucks okay and the diesel price has been 90. Now there has been an increase in diesel price 200 and this increase of diesel price of 10 rupees will be added up to the rice that is being transported in the truck that is fueled by the diesel. So that will push the price of the rice much higher. So this will result in inflation of the that particular commodity which is rice that we have considered here. So coming back to the discussion the research team also observed a decline in the bank deposits by 38 percentage in Q1 of 2021-2222 and this is a very bad indicator because it means that people are taking their money out for spending. So it means the amount of savings available with the people has been depleting at 38 percentage and this in turn has led to an increase in the household debt as well. So it has increased to 37.3 percentage of the GDP or 73.6 lakh crore. See in this pandemic there is a reduction in the income and some even lost their jobs. So to meet the non-discretionary expenses that is essential expenses households are pushed to borrow. So there is an indication of debt financed consumption that is even for the essentials these households are borrowing money to meet their food and clothing expenses. You know this is a very bad sign right even for their sustenance the people are living on debt. So this is what it means and since India is a domestic consumption-based economy researchers have concluded that there will be a delay in the economic recovery. So what does this consumption-based economy mean? See India has a huge cohort of population right and that has been harvested as a market by the many of the manufacturers sellers and the service providers. So because we consume more our economy is also huge. Now with the depleting income now when we are consuming much less the economic activity is also going down and because our economic growth is largely supported by the consumption of the people it can be said that it will have a very huge impact on the economy when the demand dies down. So this is what this report says and as a conclusion the research team has suggested to urgently reduce the oil prices which could be done through tax rationalization. So this brings us to the end of our discussion on this particular article with that let us move on to the next part of our discussion. Now let us take up this news article. See recently the UP announced a list of incentives and penalties to control the population growth. This editorial is written in this backdrop so let us discuss it. Students here is the syllabus for your reference. See UP government recently introduced a lot of measures which was aimed at reducing UP's TFR that is total fertility rate. See the UP's TFR was recorded at 2.7 by the National Family Health Survey of 4 in 2016 and we all know that India is aiming for an ideal TFR of 2.1. So the TFR of 2.1 is called the replacement rate. So UP has introduced a lot of steps to bring the TFR down. Let us quickly understand what is a TFR. See a TFR or the total fertility rate refers to the number of children that a hypothetical woman would have over a course of a reproductive life. If she experienced the age specific fertility rates observed in a given calendar that is the TFR is the number of children a woman can give or bear until her menopause in other words. So this TFR of 2.1 is called as the replacement rate. So why is a TFR of 2.1 called as the replacement rate? Because a TFR of 2.1 indicates that two children for a couple it means the two children replace their parents in the next generation. Alright that is why the TFR of 2.1 means if it is a replacement rate and the point one is nothing but the attrition that can happen over the generations. So now coming back to the editorial. Before discussing the measures introduced by the UP government let us learn about the International Conference on Population and Development. See this is important from the preliminary perspective. See the International Conference on Population and Development. It was held in 1994 and the UN organized and coordinated this conference in Cairo of Egypt and during this meet some 20,000 delegates from various governments, UN agencies, NGOs and the media gathered for a discussion of variety of population issues including that of immigration, infant mortality, birth control, family planning, education of women, protection of women from unsafe abortion services and others and in this conference a lot of measures to control population were given. For example measures like increasing the rate of modern contraceptive prevalence, male contraception, decreasing maternal mortality and infant mortality rates were highlighted during this conference and some of the population measures taken by the UP government are in tune with this which is appreciable. Also the Cairo Population Conference called for measures like promotion of reproductive rights, empowering women, universal education, maternal and infant health to fight the issue of high fertility but UP government has not taken steps for these aspects. Instead they have taken the approach of incentive and penalties to tackle the problem of high fertility rate. See in the draft UP population control stabilization welfare bill of 2021 the UP government aims to incentivize those families who have smaller number of children. For example families with smaller number of children will be rewarded with perks in government schemes and they will also get rebates in taxes and loans and the UP government is also planning to give cash awards for family planning. So these are the incentives but on the other hand the government is planning to penalize families with a greater number of children. For example the families with more than two children will be denied subsidies and welfare benefits and they won't be eligible for government jobs and they can't take part in elections. So we can see that UP government has chosen the path of incentives and penalties to control the population. But the incentives and penalties approach has been denounced in the past by the National Human Rights Commission. See the incentive penalties approach is not something new and all. They were already introduced by several states in the 1990s and 2000s. For example Haryana and the undivided Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chattasgarh, Odisha they all opted for such approaches. But it did not produce the desired results and also according to the various scientific studies coercive measures like incentive penalties approach have not helped in the population control. Instead they have had some adverse impact on the marginalized people. So instead of relying on such coercive measures the UP government should rely on the poverty reduction schemes and the economic reforms. See the poverty reduction schemes and the economic reforms measures will raise the labour productivity and employment opportunity and this will allow the families to empower the women in the household also. And if women are empowered they will be able to make rational choices which will reduce the fertility rates. See the India's TFRs have been reducing substantially in many states and these states opted for their non-coercive measures like poverty reduction schemes and economic reforms to control the population. It worked and so UP government should also go for such similar approaches rather than adopting such coercive measures to bring the fertility down and it is better if it tackles the socio-economic issues and confront the population rather than seeking coercive approaches on the population control. So these are the important points discussed in the article. So the entire article is very important from the main's point of view and the KRO conference is something you will have to remember from the preliminary perspective. With that let's move on to the next segment of our discussion today. Now let us take up this news article for discussion. See in this article the author in this presence to us a comprehensive analysis on the current trends of the economic growth prospects in India and he mainly throws light on the rising unemployment rate in particular and by doing so the author stresses on the need for the demand recovery in order to achieve growth recovery. Let us see how this nexus works and this sharp revival of demand in turn needs higher per capita income. We will discuss about all these things in detail in the subsequent part of the discussion. So here is the syllabus covered by the OPED article. See during the month of May the NSO under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation released the provisional estimates of the national income for the financial year of 2020 and 2021 and according to this estimates agriculture sector continued to be the vital sector of the economy and it had a very good growth performance but on the contrary the manufacturing sector saw a reduced growth rate. This is largely because of the lockdowns imposed because of the COVID-19 and a negative trend was observed in important sectors like that of trade, construction, mining and manufacturing. See this is a matter of concern because if you see these sectors, these sectors are all labor intensive especially for low skilled jobs. So in simple words if these sectors get affected the laborers depend on them will also get affected and know that the GDP at constant prices for the fourth financial quarter is showing a growth of 1.6 percentage. See this growth is an improvement of 0.5 percentage over the previous quarter but for a period when the restrictions on mobility and economic activity witnessed reduction this performance was not up to the mark. Now the magnitude or the extent of this economic contraction and the policy response towards it brings to the light an important issue that is growth recovery or the question of growth prospects for the next year. So a comprehensive analysis on the current growth rates helps us in getting better perspective on the growth recovery. So in this regard the author takes into account the unemployment data released by the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy. So according to this data set as of May 2020-2021 the rate of India's labor participation was found to be at 40 percentage. So which is the same as compared to the previous month of April 2021 but if you see on the contrary the unemployment rate shot up to 11.9 percentage which is almost 12 percentage in May in comparison to 8 percentage in April. See let us understand this better. See the labor participation rate includes the section of the working population in the age bracket of 16 to 64. They are currently employed or unemployed but they are ready for work. So that is what people the labor participation rate is nothing but the age bracket of people belonging to 16 to 64 who are ready to work. Now the estimation highlights the presence of a stable labor participation rate which is at 40 percentage as we saw and this implies a loss of job in falling employment rate because the unemployment rate has gone up. The number of people ready to work is the same but the amount of employment available to them is depressed. And in fact the employment rate fell to 35.3 percentage in May 2021 from the previous of 36.8 percentage in April 2021 and remember that the month of May has become a particularly stressful month when it comes to job front and as per data over 15 million jobs were lost in the May 2021. This is higher than the loss of jobs witnessed during demonetization itself. So this is the about the labor. Now on moving further we know that employment and aggregate demand are entangled. How is it entangled? When a person is employed the person has more money in her hands and thereby the person is pushed to buy something from the market something more than food and the basics. So the demand in the market gets enhanced. In simple words the employment and the total demand in the economy are related through the channel of disposable income of the workers. So more the income more the demand. Likewise the aggregate demand and the output growth also have a positive correlation or directly related. How? When a lot of people are earning more they all will demand a lot from the market. Their needs will get more. So what will happen is the sector that is manufacturing will also be incentivized to produce more. So the output from the manufacturing sector will also see a boost. So the demand and the output growth that is how they are positively correlated. So when viewed in this perspective the prospect of growth revival in the upcoming years seem to be very vague and this also creates an impact in the business confidence or the expectations on the Indian firms especially based upon surveys and production orders and finished goods in the sector. That is what we just saw. And the recent business confidence index from the survey indicated a drop in 51.5 from the 74.2 in the previous round. So what does it highlight? It indicates the weak demand conditions in the economy to be one of the reasons. There are high chances for weak demand to remain for a longer period due to the severe impacts caused by the first wave on the household incomes and the past savings. See this is twofold. Firstly the people might have been affected by the covid and they might have spent towards the treatment of the particular disease and on the other hand people might have lost their jobs and they would have eaten up into their savings. So this is how it has affected the economy and this was further enhanced by the uncertainty associated with the localized curbs and the muddled vaccine policy. So talking about the policy responses, as per the author they focused more on the supply side measures with more emphasis on improving the flow of credit to important sectors and comparatively less direct action to support the vulnerable to alleviate their hardship. So what the government did through the Pradhan Mantri Dhariv Kalyan Yojana and all is, they gave loans to the sellers or the manufacturers to support them. But what happened is the people, the common people, the working class people, they also don't have money in their hands to buy the products that will be manufactured by the manufacturers and the sellers. So this is what the author tends to point out. And the author further moves on to mention three aspects in the government policies which made it fall short of its purpose. One is that they were more of supply side measures and not on the demand side. And secondly, a large part of all the stimulus packages announced till now will only work in the medium term and short term only that is they won't work on a longer term period. And thirdly, the use of credit backstops as the main plank of policy has great limitations compared to the direct measures on the demand side because the loans are temporary, right? They need to be repaid. If they don't repaid will affect the economy and the burden of repaying also will consciously rest with the manufacturers and the sellers. So this is what the author tries to mean by this. And the concern is that this could result in poor growth performance if the private investments do not pick up. And the author further concludes the editorial by suggesting some measures in the way forward. And the most important among them is to insist on the short revival in the overall demand. Apart from this, instead of focusing on short term magnified growth rates, emphasis should be laid on the growth rates that have got merits in the long term. See, this is because in order to achieve higher income levels sustained growth is required for a longer periods. So these are the some of the important points mentioned in the open article. With this, we have come to the end of this discussion. With this understanding in our mind, let's move on to the next part of our discussion. Now let us take up this news article. So we have discussed elaborately about the information technology guidelines for intermediaries and digital media ethics code rules 2021. So that was discussed in February 28 itself. Today, let us see an editorial which criticizes lawmaking without discussion and openness and with government overreach. Here is the syllabus relevant to this editorial. First of all, know that rules 2021 was framed under the IT Act of 2000. What it did was it superseded the earlier IT intermediary guidelines rules 2011. And it seeks to provide a grievance redressal mechanism for users of digital platforms of all kinds. And what all does it include? It includes the social media sites, messaging apps over the top streaming services, the digital news publishers and others. So it's quite comprehensive as you can see. Now let us see some of the provisions of the rules which attracted criticism. See the rules require the intermediaries and the digital media publishers to provide for a grievance redressal mechanism. So what is this grievance redressal mechanism? This is nothing but where a grieved consumer has a forum to report that something has gone wrong with her in a particular transaction. So a reporting mechanism which can be escalated within the organization to resolve the grievance of the service or the goods receiver is what is called as the grievance redressal mechanism. So in case of a digital media publisher such as the news and the OTT that is over the top services, a three tier grievance redressal mechanism will deal with complaints regarding the content. And the first level is self-regulation by the publishers. And then comes the self-regulating bodies of the publishers. And finally there will be an oversight mechanism by the central government. So if you have to take it similar to the normal media let us consider for example self-regulation by the publishers say a newspaper is publishing something they themselves is self-regulating. And then comes the self-regulation by the self-regulating bodies of publishers. Here it can be press council of India. And finally there will be an oversight mechanism by the central government. So what I'm saying is these mechanism is for the print media that is already in existence. A similar mechanism is being brought in for the internet services, right. And as a part of the oversight mechanism the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting will establish a inter-departmental committee. So it will hear grievances not addressed by self-regulatory bodies and they will also oversee adherence to the code of ethics. And not just that in case of emergencies the authorized officers may examine digital media content. And the secretary of the Ministry of Information Broadcasting which is MIB may pass an interim direction for blocking of such contents as well. And according to Fiki the OTD platforms and the entertainment industry had reached about 1.82 trillion rupees in 2019 itself. And if you see it is projected to cross 2.4 trillion by 2022. So as per the editorial there are about 550 million televisions in smartphone consumers in India and these figures are only expected to double by 2025. So you can imagine the amount of reach that these OTD platforms and the internet services or the social media will have on the people. So that is what these figures convey. Now coming to OTD as of now there are about 200 million OTD subscribers. With the above mentioned factors the OTD is poised to grow to new levels in the coming days. But many of the provisions of the new rules indicates governments overreach in the sector. So this will not be good for the growth of the OTD sector. See this is not the case in other countries and all. See if you see the EU the audio visual media services director encourages self-regulation and co-regulation among the players. If you see in the US OTD content remains unregulated still and most of these countries focus on regulating content with respect to child safety and violence and hate speech. Thus they have set up an enabling architecture for the OTD platforms to grow and it is not just about the overreach. It is also about the transparency of a legislation. So that is what the author has dealt with. See the author says the new rules were pushed through without much discussion on it either in the parliament or in the public. See if you remember cable TV networks regulation amendment bill was introduced in 2007. They were about months of discussion with all the stakeholders and this act was amended in the later days after intense discussion even after the amendment with all the stakeholders and this is a healthy trend in democracy where all the stakeholders get together they discuss and all the deliberations is done before the legislation is passed. So what will this do is it will make sure that the controversial provisions would be diluted and thereby it will ensure that the legislation shall have more acceptability. So had the government adopted this system while framing the new IT rules it would have had more acceptability among the leading OTD platforms. So to conclude we can say that the pre-legislative scrutiny is an essential feature of a democracy. So there shall be greater transparency in the policy making process. Also we need to prevent lobbying and thereby we need to ensure equality of access for all stakeholders in engaging with the process and above all the discussions and transparency indicate trust in the people by an elected government. So as the government has proposed the amendments for the cinematograph act of 1952 we saw that had a lot of controversial provisions in one of our previous discussions. So let us see whether they will follow these steps. They have put it up for public deliberation as of now but we don't know how much of the comments that the public is giving is going to be taken up by the government. So let us wait and watch regarding that. So with that information let's move on to the next segment of the discussion. Our next discussion is based on this data point. This provides data including pupil-teacher ratio. This data is based on UDISE report of 2019 and 2020. See UDISE stands for Unified District Information System for Education and it was initiated in 2012 and 13 for providing a robust real-time and credible information collection mechanism and this is important for an objective evaluation of the education system. So UDISE was developed with the purpose to collect these school details that is the factors related to a school and its resources. See the information collected utilized for planning for optimized resource allocation for implementation of various education related programs and for the assessment of progress. Now based on the information collected UDISE publishes a report containing the salient results at all India level in the education system and our discussion is based on the report for 2019 and 2020 as we saw earlier and it provides information like enrollment of students, number of teachers, school infrastructure and others. But we are going to focus only on the data related to the teachers trained to teach with the computer and about the pupil-teacher ratio that is PTR. First about teachers trained to teach with a computer. See this assessment assumes importance in this pandemic era where online education is gaining ground and as per the data the proportion varies according to the level of management like the government government aided and others and overall it could be seen that the states fared much better in case of private schools comparing to the other management levels. But it was found that only 15 percentage of the teachers were trained to teach with a computer in the government schools and in that too in states like Bihar, MP and Ulisa the proportion was much worse at only 3 percentage and what does this mean? This means the distress is not only on the teacher but also on the students relying on them because they will also not know to operate the computer right and on the contrary some states have real improvement where more than 50 percentage of teachers are trained to teach using computers to teach online. So this includes Gujarat, Maharashtra and Punjab and next is the pupil-teacher ratio. See the PTR at different levels of education shows the availability of adequate number of teachers for teaching the children enrolled at different levels of education. Simply put it provides the number of students per teacher. So what is the mandated PTR? So as per the right of children to free and compulsory education Act of 2009, PTR for primary school should be 30 is to 1 and for upper primary schools it should be 35 is to 1 and additionally the Rajshriya Madhyamak Siksha Abhyan which is RMSA framework it stipulates that the pupil-teacher ratio at the secondary level should be 30 is to 1 and the advantage of maintaining this PTR is multifold. First it enables the teacher to cater to different learning styles of the students and this will ensure that they stay engaged and they understand what is being taught in a better fashion and in other words a low PTR enables teachers to pay individual attention to students which leads to increase in the student achievement because it enables the students to have a better absorption understanding of the subject. So a low PTR is essential for long-term and broad-based academic achievement therefore PTR is closely related to the quality of teaching in the schools. It also ensures the rational deployment of teachers and thereby ensuring that there is no urban or rural imbalance in the teacher postings and apart from that it also provides for prohibition of deployment of teachers for non-educational work. So all that said what is the current scenario so let us know that from some data see this graph shows the PTR for different levels of education during 2012 and 13 to 2019 to 20 and we can see a substantial increase from 2012-13 to 2019-20 and the PTR is also less than 30 is to 1 for 2019-20 at all levels of education and if we consider the state level data look at the graph for most states it is within the mandated range of 30 is to 1 but for certain states the ratio was more than 40 is to 1 at the higher secondary level so as you can see they are states like Odisha, Jhark and UP and Bihar and most worryingly Bihar's PTR was far worse than the primary and the secondary levels and sometimes it even crossed 50 is to 1 this means these states have comparatively low quality of teaching in the schools. So this entire data point emphasizes the importance of pupil-teacher ratio and its implication on the teaching standards so you can expect the entire discussion as a main question in the exam so this brings us to the end of the discussion on this particular topic on data point with that let's move on to the next segment of the discussion. Now see this news article see this news article talks about a gesture by India to Georgia so which in turn strengthens the India-Georgia ties. See this gesture is the gifting of a part of the relics or remains of sent queen Ketuvan to Georgia by India and sent queen Ketuvans remains were unearthed by the ASI that is Archaeological Survey of India few years ago so in this context let us know some facts related to sent queen Ketuvan. See sent queen Ketuvan was the 17th century Georgian queen she was unfortunately murdered in 1624 that is about 400 years ago in the shyed as city of the present day Iran so according to historical sources in 1614 the king of Georgia whose king Taimuraz sent queen Ketuvan as a negotiator to Shah Abbas I see Shah Abbas I of Persia was the 5th Safavid Shah of Iran that is king of Iran and queen Ketuvan was sent to prevent any attacks by an Iranian army and attack on on a place called Khakiti so Khakiti was an eastern province of Georgia but she failed to prevent the attack so it is said that she surrendered herself as honorary hostage to Iran due to this failed attempt and after that she was held hostage in Shairaz for several years but it seems king Taimuraz was recalcitrant that is resisted the authority of the control of Shah Abbas I so in an act of revenge Shah Abbas ordered the queen to convert her religion see many Georgians are members of the Georgian Orthodox Church so Abbas I ordered the queen to renounce her own religion but she refused so this made the Abbas I to torture her to death with red hot pincers so this unfortunate event happened in 1624 and her martyrdom was witnessed by Saint Augustine Portuguese Catholic missionaries and these missionaries what they did was they secretly in an illicit way took portions of the remains of the queens because of the immense spiritual value of the relic they took it to Georgia where the relics were interred at the aloe verde monastery of Georgia and rest of it remains were buried at the church of Saint Augustine in Goa in India but the holy relics remained lost because Saint Augustine church collapsed in 1842 and the Georgians took several expeditions to Goa in 21st century to bring back the remains but they could not be found at all but in 2005 parts of the bone of the right arm of the queen was found at Goa Saint Augustine's church and it was found by the ASI the authenticity of the remains were confirmed only in 2013 and from then on it was with the Indian government as a diplomatic gesture India has gifted a part of the relics to Georgia so it is said that the relics are likely to be put on display in India as well as in Georgia so this move of India is expected to strengthen the bond of friendship between the countries so this is an interesting piece of news article that we spotted in the news today so this will be a refreshing departure from the monotonous discussion of our news analysis so with that let's move on to the next segment of our discussion today now look at this article see it is about the excavation of a terracotta ring well from the keelady site see so far many ring wells have been excavated from this site but this new recovery is special because it is the first time a terracotta ring well with a thumb impression has been excavated from this site so far only plain terracotta ring wells have been discovered from this site so that is why this is very special and in this context let us discuss about keelady see keelady is located in the southeast to the present day madurai of Tamil Nadu and it is located on the banks of river Baigail since 2015 the archaeological excavations have been going on in keelady and these excavations are conducted by the Tamil Nadu archaeological department and they're carried out in different phases and during each phase a lot of exciting discoveries are being unearthed now let us see about these discoveries that are very important for the exams see in keelady a lot of interesting artifacts have been unearthed right for example a pottery with a Tamil Brahmi inscription gold coins beets iron tools jewellery charcoal were unearthed from this site and these discoveries show that an urban civilization existed in Tamil Nadu and also based on these excavations the archaeologists believe that the recovered artifacts could be dated to a period between 6th century BCE and the 1st century CE BCE means before the common era and CE means common era see this is an important discovery so because it shows the second urbanization that happened in the Baigail plains of Tamil Nadu around the 6th century before the common era that is BCE as it happened in the Gangetic plains so we all know that the first urbanization is the Indus valley civilization and the Indus valley civilization roughly happened around 5000 years ago in the third millennium BCE now coming back to keelady see in keelady many pottery's with Tamil Brahmi inscriptions were recovered this shows that the people who lived in this area attained literacy or learnt the art of writing as early as the 6th century BCE also the archaeologists have recovered skeletal fragments of cow or ox buffalo sheep goat wild boar from the site so from these skeletal remains experts have concluded that an agrarian society had existed in keelady and they have also reared cattle and in addition to that the archaeologists have also recovered materials associated with the traditional weaving from this site for example the spindle walls and the copper needles were excavated from this place so what does this show this shows that the keelady had a well established thriving weaving industry so in addition to that the archaeologists have recovered the remains of the long walls well laid floors roof tiles from this site so what does this show this indicates that the keelady had a very high standard of living so we can see that there has been an urban settlement which flourished at keelady since the 6th century BCE and more excavations from this site will give us more interesting facts about the history of this place so with that information we conclude the discussion on keelady let's move on to the next segment of the discussion now let us take up this news article see this news article is about vaccination and vaccine hesitancy we are not going to discuss in detail about this elaborately in many of our previous discussions so because this is published we'll just discuss the new informations and apart from that we'll be more like refreshing the information that we had already discussed only all right now let's get into the discussion so as we know the vaccination drive in India began in jan 2021 so as of now crores of people have been vaccinated but we must recognize the major challenges in vaccinating the entire population see the foremost challenge has been the supply deficit most of us do not get the vaccine slot to get ourselves vaccinated so this problem shall be mitigated by the reorientation of the vaccine policy in which the union government took charge of 75 percentage of the total procurement which is a welcome move now two other complex challenges that need immediate focus are the vaccine hesitancy and the much discussed digital divide in the country so now let us discuss the opiate which talks about the vaccine hesitancy in India so if you remember the who has come forward with the besd model that is behavior and social drivers vaccination model see it emphasized on the motivation as the vanguard of human psychology during the vaccination drive now following this the us in israel have successfully driven up their covid vaccination coverage by incentivizing and motivating citizens and unfortunately in india misinformation and misplaced beliefs have led to fears about the potential harmful effects of the vaccine and the diversity of india necessitates community engagement at the local level to counter this narrative of misinformation there is a need to engage with people at the lowest level at the grass root level to shun the fear about the vaccination now coming to our health system we followed a target-based approach for all these years here the grass root health workers are given a target and this transformed most of our health programs into a target chasing exercise so what happened is this undermined the trust of the public health system so people often avoid the contact with the health facilities for even the routine health services which is very much necessary so what are the reasons behind the vaccine hesitancy now so first of all covid-19 vaccines are new entrants so they don't have years of results to prove their importance so despite this they have been rolled out as an at an unprecedented scale which is a laudable thing and these coupled with media reporting of the adverse events and the rumor-mongering through social media fuels suspicion so what happens is there is lack of trust in the vaccine that is being circulated so for the vaccination to be successful what is needed is first we need to rebuild the trust so for this we must look at the real problem see this issue cannot be resolved just by pouring in more resources manpower and coming up with new policies alone no that alone won't help instead focus on input deficiencies so we must focus on simple information education communication exercise and if not at rest trust deficiency among communities in the health system can lead to avoidance of public health facilities by many in the future also so the public health facilities will not be sought after by the public even when they are in need and this is the right time to address this trust deficit by engaging in the information education communication exercise and in order to curb the spread of misinformation government should also publish reliable data on disease and the damage prevention after vaccination this is very important so government should be very transparent about the adverse events associated with the vaccination and the role vaccines can play in fighting newer variants and the upcoming waves this should also be highlighted by the government in order to push the vaccination closer to the people and a successful information campaign requires dissemination through mediums that invoke trust so what should be done is local languages and dialects should be used to engage people so what can be done local television channels can be used regional newspapers can be used as media to reach out to the people besides that local artists can also be encouraged to ideate and innovate through music murals graffiti dance and drama as well for example in the tribal districts of chattis girl popular songs are being used to highlight the benefits of vaccination so measures like these can take vaccination closer to people and this will help our country battle the upcoming wave of the pandemic so this brings us to the end of the discussion on this editorial so this editorial as we saw earlier just largely about vaccine hesitancy this is more of a refreshing reminder about the vaccine hesitancy the ways to overcome it one thing you can take away as new is about the tribal districts of chattis girl is using a popular folk song to highlight the benefits of vaccination you can code this as a case study in your main sensors and this can also be used for as a case study for anthropology preparation with that let's move on to the next segment of our discussion now here we are at the last segment of today's discussion practice preliminary questions so we have two questions for today's discussion let's go over it one by one so the first question for today is based on georgia remember we had a small article on queen saint kitaban so based on that we'll be discussing georgia's geography through this question so the question asks which of the following country does not border georgia we have four options in this regard see look at this map georgia is bounded on the north and the northeast by russia and on the east and the southeast we have azerbaijan and on the south by armenia and turkey and we have the black sea on the west so this is not a landlock country and all so from this information we can see that iran does not border georgia so our answer is option c iran now moving on to the next question consider the following statement with reference to unified district information system for education our data point article discussion today was based on this so this question is inspired from that so it's a two statement question so the first statement is this it was developed by integrated district information system for education for elementary and secondary education see ud is e was for providing a robust in a real-time information collection mechanism for an objective evaluation of the education system we saw this in the discussion and it was developed by d i s e which comes under ministry of education so this option one is true now the second option is this ud i s e plus is it's updated online version that collects data in real time see this statement is also correct because ud i s e is an updated and improvised version of the already existing ud i s e importantly the entire system is now online and it has been collecting data on the real time even from 2018-19 itself and if you see ud i s e plus has a mandate of collecting information from all recognized and unrecognized schools that are imparting formal education from the pre primary to the 12th standard and if you see the information collected is utilized for the planning of the resource allocation and for implementation of the various education related programs and it is also utilized for the assessment of the progress so with this information we understand the correct option is option c both one and two so with that we are at the end of the practice preliminary question section discussion so here are some of the main questions inspired from our discussion today write the answers and post it in the comment section for pure review if you like the video like share comment and subscribe stay home stay safe good day