Daily Current Affairs : 8th and 9th October

Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE

Topics Covered

1. Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS)
2. Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP)
3. Automatic Exchange of Information
4. Global Competitiveness Index
5. Nobel Prize
6. Nobel Prize for Physics
7. Nobel Prize in Physiology

1 . Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS)

Context : A nutrition survey by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has found that 35 per cent of children under the age of 5 years in the country are stunted, while 17 per cent are wasted and 33 per cent are underweight.

About Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS)

• Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS), the first-ever nationally representative nutrition survey of children and adolescents in India, was commissioned by the ministry and carried out by experts from various institutes, including PGIMER Chandigarh, Kalawati Saran Children’s Hospital in New Delhi, along with experts from UNICEF and other development partners.
• This was the largest micronutrient survey ever implemented globally and used gold standard methods to assess anaemia, micronutrient deficiencies and biomarkers of non-communicable diseases among children for the first time in India, noted the Ministry.

Key Findings of the Survey

• The survey, conducted between 2016 and 2018, also found that 24 per cent of adolescents were thin for their age, 4-8 per cent of adolescents were overweight or obese, 6 per cent of adolescents were overweight, and 2 per cent had abdominal obesity.
• The study also found that 10.4 percent of 10-19 year-olds in India are pre-diabetic, which experts say is largely due to consumption of processed foods and sedentary lifestyles.
• In the CNNS, 35 per cent of Indian children aged 0-4 years were stunted. A number of the most populous states including Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, and had a high (37-42 per cent stunting prevalence. The lowest prevalence of stunting (16-21 per cent) was found in Goa and Jammu and Kashmir
• According to the survey, 17 per cent of Indian children age 0-4 years were wasted. High prevalence (20 per cent) states included Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Jharkhand. The states with the lowest prevalence of under-five wasting were Manipur, Mizoram and Uttarakhand (6 per cent each).
• The study also found that 41 per cent of preschoolers, 24 per cent of school-age children and 28 per cent of adolescents were anaemic. Anaemia was a moderate or severe public health problem among preschoolers in 27 states, among school-age children in 15 states, and among adolescents in 20 states.

2 . Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP)

Context : Starting October 15, some stricter measures to fight air pollution will come into force in Delhi’s neighbourhood, as part of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP).

About GRAP

• GRAP is a plan that institutionalised measures to be taken when air quality deteriorates.
• It was approved by the Supreme Court in 2016, the plan was formulated after several meetings that the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA) held with state government representatives and experts.
• GRAP works only as an emergency measure. If air quality reaches the severe+ stage, GRAP talks about shutting down schools and implementing the odd-even road-space rationing scheme.
• GRAP was notified in 2017 by the Centre and draws its authority from this notification. Before the imposition of any measures, EPCA holds a meeting with representatives from all NCR states, and a call is taken on which actions has to be made applicable in which town.

Implementation under different Air Quality Index (AQI)

• Severe+ or Emergency (PM 2.5 over 300 µg/cubic metre or PM10 over 500 µg/cu. m. for 48+ hours)
  • Stop entry of trucks into Delhi (except essential commodities)
  • Stop construction work
  • Introduce odd/even scheme for private vehicles and minimise exemptions
  • Task Force to decide any additional steps including shutting of schools
• Severe (PM 2.5 over 250 µg/cu. m. or PM10 over 430 µg/cu. m.)
  • Close brick kilns, hot mix plants, stone crushers
  • Maximise power generation from natural gas to reduce generation from coal
  • Encourage public transport, with differential rates
  • More frequent mechanised cleaning of road and sprinkling of water
• Very Poor (PM2.5 121-250 µg/cu. m. or PM10 351-430 µg/cu. m.)
  • Stop use of diesel generator sets
  • Enhance parking fee by 3-4 times
  • Increase bus and Metro services
  • Apartment owners to discourage burning fires in winter by providing electric heaters during winter
  • Advisories to people with respiratory and cardiac conditions to restrict outdoor movement
• Moderate to poor (PM2.5 61-120 µg/cu. m. or PM10 101-350 µg/cu. m.)
  • Heavy fines for garbage burning
  • Close/enforce pollution control regulations in brick kilns and industries
  • Mechanised sweeping on roads with heavy traffic and water sprinkling
  • Strictly enforce ban on firecrackers

Evaluation

• Three major policy decisions that can be credited to EPCA and GRAP are the closure of the thermal power plant at Badarpur, bringing BS-VI fuel to Delhi before the deadline set initially, and the ban on Pet coke as a fuel in Delhi NCR.

3 . Automatic Exchange of Information

Context : India has got the first set of Swiss bank account details of its nationals under a new automatic information exchange pact, a major milestone in the government’s fight against black money stashed abroad.

What is Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI)?

• Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) is the exchange of information between countries without having to request it.
• Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) reduces the possibility for tax evasion.
• It provides for the exchange of non-resident financial account information with the tax authorities in the account holders’ country of residence.
• Participating jurisdictions that implement AEOI send and receive pre-agreed information each year, without having to send a specific request.

Benefits

• AEOI will enable the discovery of formerly undetected tax evasion.  
• It will enable governments to recover tax revenue lost to non-compliant taxpayers, and will further strengthen international efforts to increase transparency, cooperation, and accountability among financial institutions and tax administrations.
• AEOI will generate secondary benefits by increasing voluntary disclosures of concealed assets and by encouraging taxpayers to report all relevant information.
• As new information is brought to light by AEOI, the importance of the current standard of Exchange of Information on Request (EOIR) will also increase.

About Common Reporting Standard

• The Common Reporting Standard (CRS), developed in response to the G20 request and approved by the OECD Council calls on jurisdictions to obtain information from their financial institutions and automatically exchange that information with other jurisdictions on an annual basis.
• It sets out the financial account information to be exchanged, the financial institutions required to report, the different types of accounts and taxpayers covered, as well as common due diligence procedures to be followed by financial institutions.

About the Current Exchange of information

• According to the two Swiss agencies, India is among 75 countries with whom information on bank accounts will be shared this year — AEOIs were implemented with 36 countries last year.
• Current exchange of information is regarding financial accounts that are currently active as well as those accounts that were closed during 2018.
• The next exchange would take place in September 2020.

4 . Global Competitiveness Index

Context : India has moved down 10 places to rank 68th on an annual global competitiveness index, largely due to improvements witnessed by several other economies, while Singapore has replaced the U.S. as the world’s most competitive economy.

About the Index

• The Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), which was launched in 1979, maps the competitiveness landscape of 141 economies through 103 indicators organised into 12 pillars.
• The basic notion behind the GCI is to map the factors that determine the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) in a country. The TFP is essentially the efficiency with which different factors of production such as land, labour and capital are put to use to create the final product. It is believed that it is the TFP in an economy that determines the long-term economic growth of a country.
• It is compiled by World Economic Forum (WEF)

What is GCI 4.0

• This is the fourth version of the global competitiveness index – hence referred to as GCI 4.0 – and it was introduced in 2018. The 141 countries mapped by this year’s GCI account for 99 per cent of the world’s GDP.

Categories of GCI 4.0

• The GCI 4.0 tracks data and/or responses on 12 factors divided into 4 broad categories
• The first category is the “Enabling Environment” and this includes factors such as the state of infrastructure, institutions, the macroeconomic stability of the country and its ability to adopt new technology.
• The second category is “Human Capital” and includes health and level of skills in the economy.
• The third is the state of “Markets” such as those for labour, product, financial and the overall market size.
• The last category is “Innovation Ecosystem” which includes business dynamism and innovation capability.

How countries are ranked

• According to the report, “a country’s performance on the overall GCI results as well as each of its components is reported as a ‘progress score’ on a 0-to-100 scale, where 100 represents the ‘frontier’, an ideal state where an issue ceases to be a constraint to productivity growth”.
• For example, the average GCI score across the 141 economies that were studied this year was 60.7. This means that the ‘distance to the frontier’ stands at almost 40 points.

Key Findings of the Report

• Singapore has become the world’s most competitive economy in 2019, pushing the U.S. to the second place. Hong Kong SAR is ranked 3rd, Netherlands is 4th and Switzerland is ranked 5th.
• India, which was ranked 68th in the annual Global Competitiveness Index compiled by Geneva-based World Economic Forum (WEF), is among the worst-performing BRICS nations along with Brazil (ranked even lower than India at 71st this year).

India’s Performance

• India ranks high in terms of macroeconomic stability and market size, while its financial sector is relatively deep and stable despite the high delinquency rate, which contributes to weakening the soundness of its banking system.
• India is ranked also high at 15th place in terms of corporate governance, while it is ranked second globally for shareholder governance, the WEF study showed. In terms of the market size, India is ranked third, while it has got the same rank for renewable energy regulation.
• India also punches above its development status when it comes to innovation, which is well ahead of most emerging economies and on par with several advanced economies
• Major shortcomings are found in some of the basic enablers of competitiveness in case of India are limited ICT (information, communications and technology) adoption, poor health conditions and low healthy life expectancy.

5 . Nobel Prize

What is the Nobel Prize

• Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist, engineer, industrialist, and the inventor of dynamite, in his last will and testament in 1895, gave the largest share of his fortune to a series of prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology/Medicine, Literature, and Peace, to be called the “Nobel Prizes”.
• In 1968, the sixth award, the Prize in Economic Sciences was started by Sweden’s central bank, the Sveriges Riksbank.
• The Nobel Prize consists of a Nobel Medal and Diploma, and a document confirming the prize amount.

Prize money

• The awardees of the 2019 Nobel Prize will receive in prize money Swedish kronor (SEK) 9 million (approximately Rs 6.45 crore) for a full Prize.
• In his will, Alfred Nobel dedicated most of his fortune, SEK 31 million at that time, for the Awards. This money was to be converted into a fund and invested in “safe securities.” The income from the investments was to be “distributed annually in the form of prizes to those who during the preceding year have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind”.

How candidates are nominated

• The Nobel Committees of four prize-awarding institutions every year invite thousands of members of academies, university professors, scientists, previous Nobel Laureates, and members of parliamentary assemblies among others to submit candidates for the Nobel Prizes for the coming year.
• Per the Nobel website, the nominators are selected in such a way that as many countries and universities as possible are represented over time.
• One cannot nominate himself/herself for a Nobel Prize.
• The names of the nominees cannot be revealed until 50 years later.

The institutions that choose winners

• The Nobel Committees of the prize-awarding institutions are responsible for the selection of the candidates, the institutions being:
  • Nobel Prize in Physics, Nobel Prize in Chemistry: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
  • Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: The Karolinska Institutet
  • Nobel Prize in Literature: The Swedish Academy
  • Nobel Peace Prize: A five-member Committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament (Storting)
  • Prize in Economic Sciences: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

The Nobel Prize and India

• The following Indians (or individuals of Indian origin) have been honoured with the Nobel:
  • Rabindranath Tagore (Literature, 1913)
  • C V Raman (Physics, 1930)
  • Hargobind Khorana (Medicine, 1968)
  • Mother Teresa (Peace, 1979)
  • Subramanian Chandrashekhar (Physics, 1983)
  • Dalai Lama (Peace, 1989)
  • Amartya Sen (Economics, 1998)
  • Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (2009)
  • Kailash Satyarthi (Peace, 2014).
  • The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) under the chairmanship of R K Pachauri won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

6 . Nobel Prize for Physics

Context : A Canadian-American cosmologist and two Swiss scientists won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for exploring the evolution of the universe and discovering a new kind of planet, with implications for that nagging question: Does life exist only on earth.

7 . Nobel Prize for Physiology / Medicine

Context : Nobel Peace Prize 2019 Winners List: The 2019 Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology was jointly awarded Monday to two Americans and a British scientist, namely William G. Kaelin Jr, Gregg L. Semenza, Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, for their discoveries of “how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability”.

About the Discovery

• The scientists’ work established the basis for understanding of how oxygen levels are sensed by cells – a discovery that is being explored by medical researchers seeking to develop treatments for various diseases that work by either activating or blocking the body’s oxygen-sensing machinery.
• Oxygen is essential for life and is used by virtually all animal cells,” the work is central to how the body functions.