 a very good evening aspirants welcome to hindu's analysis brought to you by shankar is academy for the date 12th of august 2022 the list of articles we are going to discuss today is displayed on the screen you can go through it now let's start our discussion see this article here it says that kerala high court reserved its verdict on a public interest litigation filed by left democratic front legislators the pl6 to refine the enforcement directorate from interfering in the affairs of kerala infrastructure investment fund board and this is the crux of the news article given here in this context let us see more about pl we have heard so many times about pl we have seen so many important cases also for example in vizhaka was a state of rajasthan case it laid the foundation for the sexual harassment of women at workplace act 2013 okay like this there are so many cases but what a pl is see a public interest litigation means a litigation filed in a court of law for the protection of public interest okay it refers to the legal action which is initiated in a court of law this is done in order to enforce the public interest in which the common people have some interest by which their legal right or liability is affected the pl is a tool to safeguard the socially disadvantaged communities who cannot represent themselves and claim justice in a court of law also know that the term pl is not defined in any other indian law or in the indian constitution now who can file a pl see any individual or organization can file a pl here the concept of locus tandy has been relaxed locus tandy is nothing but the capacity to approach court by the agreed person that is in locus tandy the person involved in the case or the affected person has to approach the court so this means that in the case of pl even the person who is not agreed can approach the court the only condition here is that it should not be filed with the private interest but in a larger public interest in some scenarios so motocognitions may be also taken by the court now we know who can file pl next let us move on to see how it can be filed see it is very simple pl are generally considered as extensions of rich jurisdictions so it can be filed under article 32 if one wants to approach supreme court and it can be filed under article 226 if one wants to approach high court here it implies two things one is pl can be filed both in the high court and supreme court the other one is if a statement is asked in the preliminary examination saying pl mandamus co-aranto habeas corpus certiorary prohibition all comes under rich jurisdictions of court then the statement is correct adding to this also know that even a simple letter or a postcard addressed to the chief justice of india or the chief justice of high court is sufficient the court may then choose to take cognizance of the letter and convert it into a pl now there is a major issue here since it can be initiated by anybody misuse of pl is becoming a problem and it acts as a serious concern for the indian judiciary this is because it will consume the valuable time of the courts so to avoid this supreme court lay down certain guidelines to be followed by courts in entertaining pls we will see those guidelines in some other discussion now coming to today's article how this pl serves the public interest as per the article the pl says that ed repeatedly summoned the officers of kerala infrastructure investment fund board and this affected the credibility and goodwill of kifb the petitioners said that this act of ed will create doubts in the minds of domestic institutions about the financial condition of the board see the board is concerned with infrastructure investment right and infrastructure plays a crucial part in the economic development and economic development includes the common public interest and that is why this case is entertained as pl so that's all regarding this news article in this news article we saw about the pl and its significance with these learned points let's move on to next news article discussion see this editorial article here this lead editorial article focuses on two things first is how data from the national family health survey can be used in public policy making and second is about the quality of nfhs data here while talking about the nfhs the focus is mainly on nithiyogs multi-dimensional poverty index this is the crux of the editorial so in this discussion first let us see some points about nfhs and mpi then we will see how multi-dimensional poverty index is different from other measures of poverty then we will see about the validity of national family health survey and finally we will see how the national family health survey data can be used in public policy making okay before that the syllabus relevant to this article discussion is highlighted here for your reference you can go through it first let's take national family health survey see the national family health survey in india was initiated in the early 1990s the first national family health survey was conducted in 1992 to 1993 since then india has successfully completed five rounds the latest round being national family health survey five in 2019 to 2021 all the rounds of national family health survey have been conducted by the international institute for population sciences mumbai as the national nodal agency and the operation was supervised by the ministry of health and family welfare now you may have a question why is this survey conducted the answer for this question is firstly our government is undertaking various programs and schemes right the effectiveness of these programs can be monitored by the national family health survey the data from the nfhs will inform us whether the government's program are working or not secondly to make focused policy making the data from the survey will help the government find new focus areas and identify the people who are in desperate need of government support finally it helps to check our progress our country aims to achieve the sustainable development goals by 2030 for that the progress we have made must be quantified right the national family health survey data helps us to quantify our progress in this regard so these are the three main objectives of the survey having gone through this now let's see two or three points about national family health survey five the national family health survey five six point one lakh households are covered the survey is conducted in two phases the first phase was conducted pre-pandemic that is around 2019 to 2020 and the second phase was conducted post-pandemic so the data from the national family health survey five help us understand the various impacts of the pandemic in addition to this nfhs five has included various new topics of survey like preschool education disability access to toilet facility death registration bathing practices during menstruation and methods and reasons for abortion having covered the basics about the national family health survey now let's take a look at multi-dimensional poverty index we all know poverty is multi-dimensional so measuring poverty only via income can be faulty so a better way to measure poverty is through deprivation to understand this consider this example say a person is living in a remote village with no public amenities this remote village does not have a high school the closest high school is at a distance of more than 20 kilometers you do no proper road connectivity it is close to impossible to reach the high school so a person living in that village however rich here she may be will find it difficult to send his or her kid to school so here even with sufficient money the kid is deprived of a good education so this is why while measuring poverty focusing on deprivation instead of income is important and multi-dimensional poverty index does exactly that see the global MPI is released by the united nation development program and the oxford poverty and human development initiative since this article focuses on the national MPI we shall cover the national MPI in today's discussion okay see the national MPI is released by the nithya yok the MPI measures deprivation in health deprivation in education and deprivation and standard of living here all three dimensions that is health education and standard of living have equal weightage here note that data for finding the MPI is taken from the national family health survey these dimensions encompasses various indicators within them I have displayed everything here you can pass the video and go through it here take cooking fuel for example a household is considered deprived when a particular person cook with dunks agricultural crops scraps wood charcoal or coal so for every household surveyed its deprivation in each of these 12 indicators are calculated then the weighted sum of the deprivation is calculated this weighted sum is called the deprivation score if the deprivation score is more than 33 percent then the household is considered multi-dimensionally poor okay so this is how the national MPI is calculated the lead article that we are discussing has mentioned two aspects of MPI they are poverty ratio that is poverty head count ratio and intensity of poverty here poverty ratio or poverty head count ratio is nothing but the proportion of individuals identified as multi-dimensionally poor in the population it is also called incidence of poverty poverty head count ratio broadly explains how many people are poor okay moving on to intensity of poverty intensity of poverty broadly explains how poor are the poor that is a person is poor but how much poor he is it is the intensity of poverty okay how is this calculated we all know that every household survey as a deprivation score right if we take the deprivation score of all the multi-dimensionally poor households and find the weighted average we can find the intensity of poverty okay having covered the basics about the MPI we shall now see how the MPI is different from other measures of poverty the first point I already covered but let me repeat again as the name indicates the MPI is multi-dimensional it measures deprivations among various indicators this is the major difference between MPI and other measures of poverty second is flexibility MPI can be tailored to alter to meet the country's priority based on the needs of the country deprivations in various indicators can be monitored this is not available with other poverty measures third the MPI complements the monetary poverty measures like the income based poverty measure once income based poverty measure is identified the data from the MPI can be used by the government to make targeted poverty intervention by providing a better depiction of poverty the government can make precise policy measures okay the last one about the intensity of poverty is that with MPI not just the head count ratio but the intensity of poverty can also be measured this is not possible with other income based poverty measures okay see these are some points that highlight the uniqueness and the usefulness of MPI when compared to other poverty measures moving on now let's see the issues in the NFHS highlighted by the author of the editorial now the first issue is the data quality like any other survey the quality of insight we get from the survey is directly related to the quality of data used in the survey right here the author highlights that the quality of data used in national family health survey is mostly unreliable he says that there is a huge difference in the quality of data collected from educated and uneducated respondents the second issue is regarding the field researchers here field researchers are people who collect data for the national family health survey they are often poorly trained and underpaid this also affects the quality of data collected and in turn affects the quality of national family health survey the third issue is regarding the questionnaire used in the survey the issue here is the length of the questionnaire the NFHS4 questionnaire had over a thousand questions some of these questions are difficult for researchers to ask and for the respondents to answer this is also affecting the quality of data collected because of the longer questioners people's seriousness in answering the questions comes down thus affects the data okay all these issues makes the national family health survey results highly debatable this is not something new the quality of data collected and used by national family health survey has been criticized since its inception efforts have been constantly made to make corrections to these methodologies to improve the quality of data collected so the above mentioned issues can also be addressed with little more effort this is about the issues with NFHS okay now let's see how NFHS data can be used to make better public policy to better understand this let's take MPI data for Tamil Nadu MPI for Tamil Nadu calculated using the national family health survey 4 data and 5 data shows that poverty ratio that is the headcode ratio in Tamil Nadu declined from 4.9 percentage in 2015 to 16 to 1.57 percentage in 2020 to 2021 this data shows that there is a significant decline in the multi-dimensionally poor people in Tamil Nadu in the same period the intensity of poverty in Tamil Nadu declined from 39.97 percentage to 38.78 percentage what this very meager decline in the intensity of poverty data shows that multiple deprivations of the poor has only marginally declined with these two data what we can infer is that the future focus on poverty reduction in Tamil Nadu must be universal only by addressing poverty universally the intensity of poverty will be reduced in an increasingly data driven world this is how government can use data from national family health survey to make their programs more effective okay so that's all regarding this editorial article in this editorial article we saw about national family health survey and we saw about multi-dimensional poverty index by Nithya Yoke we also saw certain issues with the national family health survey and then we concluded discussion by seeing how nfh's data can be used to make better public policy okay with this understanding let's move on to next news article discussion see this article here this article says that people in china are falling ill with a new virus and according to one of the reports the virus is also found in shrews according to new england journal of medicine the virus was found in china's eastern shandong and central hinan provinces and this is about the news article given here in this context let us learn more about the newly discovered virus see according to the new england journal of medicine that is NEJM the newly discovered virus is a phylogenetically distinct henipa virus this new type of henipa virus is called the langya henipa virus know that henipa viruses are classified as biosafety level four pathogens they can cause severe illness in animals and humans now how was this virus discovered see langya was discovered in eastern china during surveillance testing of patients who had fever along with the recent history of animal exposure the virus was identified and isolated from the throat swab sample of one of those patients according to the NEJM study 26 patients out of 35 were infected with this new virus alone now where do you think it came from mostly the new virus has jumped from animal to humans according to the study in the journal the researchers conducted a zero survey of domestic and wild animals zero survey involves testing of blood serum to detect the prevalence of pathogens and by doing this survey the study has found out that the langya virus RNA has been predominantly found in shrews the study found that langya's genetic materials are found in over 200 shrews that were tested so it is thought to be natural host of the virus but know that virus has also been detected in domestic goats and dogs so if a statement in prelim says that langya virus is present only in shrews then that statement is incorrect okay with this information let's see what it implies this implies that the virus has been transferred from animal to humans so it is a zoonotic virus as far as human transmission is concerned there is no information available till now this is because there were no close contact or common exposure history among the patients who were infected with the virus so this means that the virus infection in human beings is sporadic as of now now coming to the symptoms the study monitored 26 patients who were infected with langya virus alone see this is done to identify the symptoms that are specific to the langya virus it is found that common symptoms include fever fatigue cough nausea headache and vomiting some of them were found with impaired liver function impaired kidney function and blood cell abnormalities such as thrombocytopenia and leukopenia thrombocytopenia is low platelet count and leukopenia means a fall in the white blood cell count which in turn reduces the body's immune capability know that as of now no death has been occurred due to the novel langya virus but virologist categorized the virus as biosafety level 4 virus which has a potential of causing 40 to 75 percent fatality rate and also know that since it is a new human virus no vaccine is available for the protection against the virus okay that's all we know about the virus as of now we have to wait and watch how it turns out to be okay that's all regarding this news article this news article we saw about langya virus and its symptoms with these learned points let's move on to next news article discussion this particular article states that a memorandum of understanding was signed between kudubhashree mission and the postal department of kerala this memorandum of understanding is signed for engaging the members of kudubhashree in packing work in post offices this particular act is considered as an attempt to address the issue of unemployment and to ensure financial security this is about the news article given here in this context let us learn about the kudubhashree mission first of all know that the name kudubhashree in malaya alum language means prosperity of the family it is called the kudubhashree mission which is a poverty eradication and women empowerment before moving further you should know a little about its origin know that kudubhashree mission was set up in the year 1997 based on the recommendations of a three-member task force appointed by the state government the task force is regarding the devolution of powers to the panchayatiraj institutions in kerala initially kudubhashree was conceived as a joint program of the government of kerala and nabad which will be implemented through community development societies of poor women and later it is formally registered as the state poverty eradication mission see it was registered as a society under the tramant core kochi literary scientific and charitable societies act 1955 every mission or program has mission goals or objectives right likewise kudubhashree mission also has mission statements some roles and functions first of all let's see the mission statement the mission is to eradicate absolute poverty in 10 years through community action under the leadership of local governments and this is to be done by facilitating organization of poor for combining self-help with demand-led convergence of available service and the providing resources to tackle the multiple dimensions and manifestations of poverty holistically apart from this mission objective there are some roles and functions which include looking after the overall implementation of the poverty eradication and women empowerment program across the state and providing guidance and directions to the programs as per the government policy third objective is to ensure convergence of community network with local self-government institutions and the fourth objective is the expansion and promotion of the community network and then supporting programs in economic and social empowerment through financial and technical assistance the objective is to work towards enhancement of women's citizenship and agency through women empowerment programs now coming to the structure kudubhashree has a three-tier structure for its women community network it has a neighborhood groups at the lowest level it is considered as the primary units and then there is a area development societies at at the middle level this areas functions at the ward level and then we have community development societies at the local government level and this is said to be one of the largest women networks in the world now finally we are going to end our discussion by seeing the governance of the mission see the mission is governed by the governing body which is chaired by the minister of local self-government of government of kerala and the vice chairman is the principal secretary of department of local self-government other than that the members include representatives of the three layers of panchayat raj institutions different government departments the state planning board state women's commission okay so that's all regarding this news article that we saw about kudubhashree mission its objectives and structure with all these learned points let's move on to next part of our news article discussion which is preliminary practice questions discussion look at the first question it is regarding kudubhashree mission statement one amputam nutrimix of kudubhashree has backed the glenmark nutrition award for 2022 statement two kudubhashree with its central objectives of poverty eradication and women empowerment has three strategic domains in which programs are formulated and rolled out through the community network we have to find the correct statement here see the statement one it is correct the glenmark nutrition award is organized in partnership with the world food program of united nations the award is given for taking up and implementing programs and activities for undertaking exceptional efforts through their health initiatives or programs to reduce the impact of malnutrition in society kudubhashree has acceded in producing and distributing the amputam nutrimix which is the nutrition food which is being given to the children of six months to three years at the angan vadis with its effective implementation it backed the glenmark nutrition award for 2022 regarding statement two it is also correct the three strategic program domains are economic empowerment social empowerment and women empowerment so our correct answer here will be option c both one and two look at the second question it is regarding p il consider the following statements services pertaining to pension and gradually petitions for early hearing of cases pending in high courts and subordinate courts petitions pertaining to environmental pollution petitions against police for refusing to register a case bonded labor matters and matters related to neglected children which of the above statements can be entertained as p i l see here statement one and two it comes under cases that cannot be entertained as p i l okay i have given the cases that cannot be entered in as p i l here just go through it and statement three four and five it comes under the cases that can be entertained as p i l here also i have given the box you can go through it so our answer here will be option b three four and five okay see look at the third question it is regarding longia henipa virus this is a quiz question for you this is a very easy question if you have listened to our discussion find the answer and post it in the comment section okay the main question based on today's discussion is displayed on the screen you can write your answer and post that in the comment section if you like the video hit 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