 Good evening, aspirants. Welcome to the Hindu News Analysis by Shankara Ace Academy for the date 3rd May 2019. The list of articles which has been chosen for today's analysis along with the page numbers of Chennai, Bengaluru, Delhi and Tiruvananthapuram editions are provided here. The handwritten notes in the PDF format and the time stamping has been provided in the description box. For the benefit of smartphone users, the time stamping is also provided in the comments section. Moving on to the first article for the day which is about the structural issues that keep women away from workforce. This editorial article has appeared on page 8 in all the four editions. The information under this article is relevant in the preliminary examination under the areas current events of national importance, public policy, rights issues and under Indian polity and governance and also in inclusion in economic and social development. And in the main syllabus in the GS paper 1 under the areas role of women and women's organization, their problems and their remedies. And next in GS paper 3 under the areas Indian economy and issues relating to mobilization of resources, growth, development and employment, and in inclusive growth and issues arising from it. Stepping into the main discussion, the crux of the article is that if the structural issues which keep women from entering and staying in the workforce are not addressed, then promising more jobs is unlikely to lead to the socio-economic transformation that India needs. The author briefly notes that the distressing facts related to the participation of women in workforce despite rising levels of education for women. The participation of women in workforce in India is one of the lowest in the world. The female labor force participation rate that is LFPR in India fell from 31.2 percent in 2011 to 12 to 23.3 percent in 2017 to 2018. The labor force participation rate is calculated by expressing the number of persons in the labor force as a percentage of the working age population. That is in this context the percentage of women who are in labor force with respect to the total women population in the working age. Working age will be roughly from 15 years to 64 years according to the International Labor Organization. Even here if one takes a closer look, this decline has been sharper in rural areas where the female labor force participation rate fell by more than 11 percentage in 2017 to 2018. Now there are some questions relating to this like why the female labor participation rate is lower for women and why is it decreasing recently as stated above. Here the author states that there are structural issues which we will see one by one. First one is that the social acceptability of women working outside the household is very low. Imagine a woman getting a job in an industry who has informed her family and her neighbors who actually are the closest society for her. Now majority of the members of this society are not accepting that a woman is going to work. Then the society tries to influence the woman by saying that she better to be at home and take care of household work. The second structural issue is there is lack of access to safe and secure work spaces. This means multiple things like lack of internal complaints committee to report sexual harassment in workplaces, lack of safe access to use separate washrooms or toilets in workplaces, lack of physical security, absence of safety mechanisms for traveling to and fro from the workplaces etc. And also widespread prevalence of poor and unequal wages is another structural issue that hampers women to participate in work outside their home. Then the lack of decent and suitable jobs according to their educational qualifications and skills is another issue. One can see that in rural areas most women are working in subsistence level or basic level work in agriculture. In urban areas most of them are in low-paying jobs such as domestic services and petty home-based manufacturing. Note that around 33 percent of women are working as farmers, farm labourers and service workers in the age group of 25 to 59 years. There are only about 15 percent of women who are among professionals, managers and clerical workers. Then another issue is that growing incidents and drudgery of unpaid work. Now this takes away substantial amount of time of women as they are made to devote such time for unpaid work. These unpaid works include childcare, elderly care that may include in-laws care and household work where the burden is disproportionately on women. The authors highlight some findings of a recent study which found out strong negative relationship between a woman's education level and her participation in agricultural and non-agricultural wage work and in family farms. This means as level of educational qualification improves women's participation in agricultural and non-agricultural wage work and in family farms tend to decrease. Also women with moderately high levels of education do not want to do manual labour outside the household. This is due to the perception that these manual labour works are below their educational standards. As educational attainment increases women prefer salaried jobs but such jobs remain extremely limited for women. One aspect of salaried job is that it gives a fixed pay for a fixed period where the pay will be quoted on an annual basis. Whereas in wage based job it will be mostly per hour basis or otherwise per day basis and certainly not on annual basis. To address these structural challenges the author as a first suggestion suggests two-tailed approach where on one hand it should facilitate women's access to decent work by providing gender responsive public services such as free and accessible public toilets, household water connections, safe and secure public transport and adequate lighting and CCTV cameras to prevent violence against women in public spaces and to increase their mobility. Also eliminating discrimination in hiring, ensuring equal and decent wages and improving women's security in public spaces. On the other hand there should be four hours of unpaid work. There are recognition of unpaid work, reduction of unpaid work, redistribution of unpaid work and renumeration of unpaid work. Next suggestion is there shall be fair and decent living wages and appropriate social security that shall include maternity benefit, sickness benefit, provident fund and pension. For women migrant workers there shall be policies to ensure safe and dignified working and living conditions. Governments must set up migration facilitation and crisis centers that provide temporary shelter facility, helpline, legal aid and medical and counselling facilities and allocation of social housing spaces such as rental housing and house hostel for women workers. Spaces shall be allocated or earmarked for women shopkeepers and hawkers or vendors in all markets and vending zones. Women must be recognized as farmers in accordance with the national policy for farmers and they shall be remunerated for their work that are now unpaid and underpaid in agriculture and fisheries. Women should have equal rights and entitlements over land and access to inputs, credit markets, meaning financial services and extension services such as delivery of information inputs to them for their economic well-being must be ensured. To address the challenges correct assessment must be made. This assessment shall collect sex disaggregated household level data with suitable parameters. The author concludes the article stating that if these structural challenges are not addressed more jobs for women may not lead to the socio-economic transformation that Inja needs. Addressing these concerns is equivalent to climbing up the gender ladder to achieve socio-economic transformation which substantiates the title of this article. With this we come to the end of this discussion. The displayed main question will be discussed in the last session. Moving on to the next article for the day which is about the gold reserves. This article appeared on page 13 in all the four editions. The contents of this news article will be helpful in your prelims preparation under current events of national importance and also under economic development. Before discussing the news article you need to know about types of foreign exchange reserves in India to understand the article. The foreign exchange reserves consists of foreign currency assets, gold reserves of RBI, special drawing rights that is SDR holdings of Indian government with IMF, the international monetary fund and reserve tranche. Let us see the news article for the day now. It tells that the central banks across the globe are building up their gold reserves. The first quarter of 2019 that is the first three months of this year has seen significant buying of gold around the world. According to the gold demand trends report of world gold council the purchase of gold by the central banks in the first quarter is 68% higher than the purchase done by the central banks in the first quarter of 2018 and the overall global demand of gold in the first quarter of 2019 is 7% higher than the global demand in the first quarter of 2018. Some of the reasons for the higher demand of gold globally is that majority of central banks of the world have started to purchase the gold. Also, growth in gold backed exchange traded funds can be seen. As the name indicates, exchange traded funds are the funds that can be traded on stock exchanges. Next, the central banks are keen to diversify their foreign exchange reserve asset base. Gold is considered a safe asset, hence the global demand for gold is high. The second part of this news article speaks about the jewelry demand in India. This is not required for prelims preparation. With this, we come to the end of this discussion. The displayed prelims question will be discussed in the last session. Moving on to the next article, which is about the disease scrub typhus. This news article appeared on page 5 in Tiruvannanthapuram edition only. The contents of this news article will be helpful in your prelims preparation under current events of national importance and general sign. The news article talks about one fatality that was reported in the Weiner district of Kerala because of scrub typhus. Let us now see scrub typhus disease in detail. Scrub typhus is also called as bush typhus. It is caused by a bacteria called Orensia susugamosi. This bacteria comes under the family of Rickettsiasia. The general mode of transmission of this disease is through chiggers. As you can see in the picture, chiggers are the larval mites. The bacteria is transmitted to humans through these chiggers. This disease occurs in rural areas of Southeast Asia including Indonesia and in the countries of Bhutan, China, Japan, India and Northern Australia. The symptoms of this disease begin after 10 days in humans after being bitten by chiggers. As in this picture, you can see that a dark scab-like region develops at the spot bitten by chiggers. Such a scar is called as a scar. The common symptoms include fever, headache, body ache, muscle pain. Also, rashes develop in the body because of the chigger bite. It also leads to mental changes which range from confusion to coma. If the symptoms are left untreated, it can lead to death also. Since the disease is caused by a bacterium, antibiotic treatments would cure this scrub typhus disease. Doxycycline antibiotic is generally prescribed for the treatment of this disease. No vaccination is available for this disease until now. With this, we come to the end of the discussion. The displayed prelims question will be discussed in the last session. Moving on to the next article for the day, which is an editorial about combating climate change. This article appeared on page 9 in all the editions. The discussion based on this article will be relevant in the preliminary examination syllabus under the area general issues on climate change and in the main syllabus under GS paper 2 in the areas agreements involving India and or affecting India's interests. And next in effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India's interests. And also in GS paper 3 under the area conservation environmental pollution and degradation. Now, before getting into the main discussion, let us have some background about climate change. Climate change is the most serious global environmental crisis that the world is facing today, leading to loss of biodiversity, rise of sea level, global warming, etc. It does not only affect the environment, but it has a unique multi-scalar characteristic that affects everyone from the globe to the local people. And moreover, this climate change is in need of immediate attention before it leads to an irreversible phase. And the climate change also causes an existential problem that creates an undermining of the conditions for a productive life. And therefore, this is a problem that does not override other issues, but certainly penetrates or permeates all kinds of other issues. Meaning climate change leads to loss of biodiversity, rise of sea level, global warming, etc. as we saw earlier. And we know that global warming has also increased about one degree Celsius about the pre-industrial levels. So this has to be kept in check. This is the background about the climate change. Now let us move into the main discussion. If we talk about how much India is responsible for this climate change, we can see that India only amounts to 6% or 7% of global emissions. And moreover, India is not responsible for the stock of carbon dioxide in atmosphere. This statement does not mean that we did not cause the climate change. It means that as a developing country, we have contributed less to this problem than other developed nations. But even so, we are doing more mitigation measures than other developed nations, like by compromising our development. One such initiative is Nationally Determined Contribution or NDC. Before we get to know about NDC, let us first know what is Paris Agreement or Paris Accord. At Conference of Parties 21 or in short COP 21, which was held in Paris on 12th December 2015, Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in short UNFCCC, reached a landmark agreement to combat climate change and to accelerate and intensify the actions and investments needed for a low carbon, resilient and sustainable future. And this can be achieved by nationally determined contributions in short NDC by the Partisan Agreement. This was introduced with the idea that each country will see that it is not too costly and not so hard and that or there are also some developmental benefits. The universal agreement's main aim is to keep the global temperature rise well below 2 degree Celsius by this century and to drive efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degree Celsius above the pre-industrial levels. The 1.5 degree Celsius limit is a significantly safer defense line against the worst impacts of changing climate. Additionally, the agreement aims to strengthen the ability to deal with the impacts of climate change. To reach these ambitious and important goals, appropriate financial flows will be put in place, in line with the national objectives of countries, thus making a stronger action by developing countries and the most vulnerable countries also. In this context, India has pledged nationally determined contribution targets such as to reduce the emissions intensity of its GDP by 33 to 35 percent 2030 from the 2005 level and then also to achieve about 40 percent cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel based energy source by 2030. And then to enhance carbon sink that is to create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent through additional forest and tree cover by 2030. And so far, India is performing good in its NDC and probably India will exceed the pledges. This exceed will happen because of reasons like urban congestion and air pollution for tackling which we will want to move in the direction of low carbon anyway. Even though we have Paris Agreement, NDC and all in place, there are certain challenges we have to deal with first. The first and foremost challenges lack of international cooperation. This is because many countries fail to realize the devastating effects of the climate change and thus they think there is no need for immediate attention. And next is climate change is a global collective action problem as we have to globally respond to it and take measures collectively. But what is happening is many countries such as India are adhering to the NDC and trying to cut the emissions to the core. While some countries are not doing anything to solve this problem. In the end, when one country cuts its emissions to the core and the other do not follow it, this whole effort is going to be of little use. And then all the countries will suffer the consequences of climate change despite the extent of its sacrifice. Like we just saw, there are some countries which are not meeting the NDC. Despite having ratified the agreement. And then there are who are not even part of the agreement like USA. We know that USA is a major contributor to the emissions. This is also one of the major challenges. The author also notes some of the problems or challenges that we need to face within India. Like political debates on usage of fossil fuels and supporting their use by saying they need fossil fuels for more growth. Rather than moving into a non-fossil fuel energy usage. And further the author adds that while complying with NDCs we are risking a great deal in terms of consumption. And energy is what we need now. Because India still has huge development deficits. And then the Indian private sector which is willing to donate willing to tell farmers how to be sustainable and invest in such kinds of activities outside their firms. But they fail to make their own firms sustainable. Then in accordance with these challenges the author also lists some possible solutions such as developed countries should make way for developing countries by contributing in the international cooperation. And let the developed countries to grow as well. The Paris Agreement process is an iterative process where countries put something on the table. Then try to implement it. They see if they could do it more easily than they thought and they come back to the global level. The author states that it is a two level game. But the driving force is at the national level. And countries are not going to be arm twisted by international pressure. But what will drive them is enlightened self-interest to comply with the agreement. And then another solution can be every country should move to a low carbon system. Then the global role is going to be important in technological cooperation which is in context of spillover effects. To understand this point we can take the example of Germany. But Germany with its domestic program supported the global prices for renewables. And as a result there was a fall in renewable energy prices. Now the author also lists some solutions that can be adapted within India which are first to make climate change as top foreign policy agenda which will in turn compel the countries to ratify the agreement which are not on board with the Paris Agreement. And then we should design our cities to be more sustainable. Cities with less congestion and with more public transport because we want cities that are more livable. And these kinds of cities will be also low in carbon. And then our focus should be on understanding what our development deficits are. Next we need to invest in a conceptual agenda like more public transport rather than electric vehicle. Because the author states that many say electric mobility is a good thing and cheaper than conventional transport. But electric mobility is actually more expensive in terms of cost per vehicle kilometer. And then the author also insists that India has to play a role diplomatically and has to construct a development model that takes into account all our needs including climate change. And that model should keep the financial and technological pressure on the west but not on our country. Finally we should take care of our local priorities like making the industries and private companies comply with the agreement and taking stringent action when they violate environmental rules. With this we come to the end of this discussion. The displayed main question will be discussed in the last session. Moving on to the next article which is about the decline in manufacturing purchasing managers index. This article appeared on page 13 in all the four editions. The contents of this news article will be helpful in the prelims preparation under current events of national importance and under economic development. Before discussing the news article you need to know what is meant by PMI. PMI refers to purchasing managers index. The data required for compiling and the report preparation is done by market economics. But the PMI data is released by Nikkei India. This purchasing managers index provides an accurate and a timely set of data to understand industrial conditions. This data is useful for the business decision makers and purchasing professionals to plan their purchase orders accordingly. Thus purchasing managers index acts as an indicator of business activity, economic health and investor sentiments. We saw that market economics compiles certain data. This data is based on the variables tracked by market economics. This tracking of data is not direct but through surveys. So the purchasing managers of selling companies in India are surveyed on variables such as new orders, stock levels, employment and prices. The key feature of this purchasing managers index is that it is released on monthly basis and it is not revised after publication. There are two types of PMI released for India. One is for the manufacturing sector and the other is for the service sector. Today's news article discusses about the manufacturing PMI only. As you can see in this picture if the values are greater than 50 then it denotes expansion in the economy that is an increased rate of growth and if the values are lesser than 50 then it denotes a contraction in the economy which is a decreasing rate of growth. The manufacturing PMI reading for India is given here. In March 2019 the PMI reading was 52.6 but it reduced to 51.8 in April 2019. This denotes a slowdown in the growth of the manufacturing sector in India but the reading above is 50 which means there is expansion in the economy. So we can see that the growth is softening. The report notes that this slowdown in growth is largely due to the ongoing general elections in India. A very challenging economic environment is prevailing due to the political uncertainties. The report also notes that in order to boost the manufacturing the Reserve Bank of India may reduce the interest rates. So if the interest rates are reduced then the borrowing cost will become lower. So the manufacturing process is likely to speed up. With this we come to the end of this discussion. That is Petroleum's question will be discussed in the last session. Moving on to the last article for the day which is about microbots. This article appeared on page 18 of Delhi, Bengaluru and Thiruvananthapuram editions only. The discussion under this article will be relevant in the preliminary examination under the area general science and in main syllabus it will be relevant under the area science and technology, their developments and their applications and effects in everyday life and also in awareness in the field of robotics. The microbot is the shorter name for microscopic robo which was developed at Cornell University in New York. These microscopic robo devices are about the size of a cell that is the size of a speck of a dust. Earlier the exoskeleton for the robot arms which are the actuators did not exist. Now the scientists have found these. Exoskeleton means a rigid external covering for the body and an actuator is something that converts energy into motion. Thousands of microbots can be fit side by side on a single silicon wafer. A silicon wafer is the one which are similar to those used for computer chips. The scientists created a technique where they place layers of titanium and platinum in the silicon wafer and whenever they applied an electrical voltage the platinum contracts and the titanium remains rigid and the flat surface bends. This reaction becomes the motor that enables the microbots to loop. So these microbots pull themselves free and start crawling and it has been found that they can survive harsh conditions also. The microbots run on a friction of a volt and consume only 10 billions of a watt and they are powered by shining lasers on them. The scientists have placed tiny solar panels which are on the back of the robot and they function with the power gained by this laser. Further this will enable them to carry out many functions such as they will be useful in the fields as diverse as neurobiology and phone communications etc. They could crawl into cell phone batteries and clean and rejuvenate them. The scientists are also looking into using ultrasound and magnetic fields as new sources of energy that will allow the robots to work inside the human body. And with this the microbots could perform medical and scientific functions such as delivering drugs to a specific body part or mapping the brain by measuring the nerve signal because the scientists have found when they inject the microbots using a syringe they also survive and are intact and functional inside the body. And with the millions of them in a P3 dish could be used to test ideas in networking and communications also. Moreover because the robots are manufactured using silicon scientists can incorporate sensors that will enable the robots to measure temperature and electrical pulses. But there are also some challenges like for robots which are injected into the brain lasers would not work as the power source. So scientists are trying to use magnetic fields as an alternative like we already saw. With this we come to the end of the discussion session. The practice problem question will be discussed in the next session. The first question is consider the following statements. First statement is gold reserves is a type of foreign exchange reserve maintained by Reserve Bank of India. Second statement when the balance of payments is in deficit the payment is made by utilizing the gold reserves of RBI which of the above statements is or are correct. Here both the statements are correct as gold reserve is a type of foreign exchange reserve maintained by Reserve Bank of India which is the central bank for India. When there is a deficit in the balance of payments the payments are made with the existing foreign exchange reserves. Since gold is also a foreign exchange reserve statement 2 is also correct. Note that if the second statement ends with gold reserves of RBI only then the statement will be wrong but here it is not so. So the statement is correct. Since gold is one of the foreign exchange reserves of RBI. So the final correct answer to this question is option C both 1 and 2. The next question is manufacturing purchasing managers index for India is released by which of the following A. Ministry of Commerce and Industry B. Central Statistics Office C. Institute for Supply Management D. Nikkei India It is a very direct question as we know from our discussion manufacturing purchasing managers index for India is released by Nikkei India so the correct answer is option D. The next question is consider the following statements with reference to microbots. Recently seen in news first statement they are about the size of a cell second statement they can perform medical functions like delivering drug to the specific body parts which among the above statements is or are correct. Keep in mind that we have to look for the correct statement. The first statement is correct as we already discussed in our analysis that microscopic robot devices or microbots are about the size of a cell that is the size of a speck of a dust. The second statement is also correct as they can perform medical and scientific functions like delivering drugs to a specific body part and mapping the brain. So the correct answer to this question is option C both one and two. Well let us see one practice main question how the structural issues that keep women away from the workforce can be effectively addressed to increase the participation of women in workforce. Here you may list out the structural issues that keep women away from labour force such as low social acceptability lack of access to safe and secure work spaces prevalence of poor and unequal wages lack of decent and suitable jobs the growing incidence and drudgery of unpaid work etc. And then highlight the measures to be taken or the ways such as to facilitate women's access to decent work by providing gender responsive public services recognition reduction redistribution and remuneration of unpaid work which are the four hours of unpaid work fair and decent living wages appropriate social security allocation of social housing spaces equal rights entitlements etc etc can be mentioned in this as we have already discussed in our analysis. Let us see another question based on mains. The question is as follows discuss the challenges faced by India in combating climate change and suggests measures to overcome these challenges. For answering the first part of the question a list of the challenges that we discussed in our analysis like lack of international cooperation countries not meeting NDC targets and challenges within India like development deficits etc. And for the second part try to answer in power with the above mentioned challenges by giving solutions like how to increase global cooperation and in India's context elaborate the points like designing low carbon cities diplomatic game that India should play etc. All these points we have already discussed in the analysis try to list out those. Don't forget to like comment and share and subscribe to our Shankar Ayes academy youtube channel for more updates on UPSC civil service examination preparation.