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Globally, food and nutrition security continue to be undermined by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, spiralling food inflation, conflict, and inequality. Today, around 828 million people worldwide do not have enough to eat and over 50 million people are facing severe hunger.
The Hunger Hotspots Outlook (2022-23) — a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) — forebodes escalating hunger, as over 205 million people across 45 countries will need emergency food assistance to survive.
This year’s World Food Day (October 16) has been a reminder to ensure that the most vulnerable people within our communities have easy access to safe and nutritious food.
Without food and nutrition security for all, there can be no peace and no prosperity. Only through collective and transformational action to strengthen agri-food systems, through better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life, can we meet our promise to end hunger by 2030.
Adequate food production is fundamental to attaining the goal of zero hunger. India has had an inspiring journey towards better production and achieving self-sufficiency and is now one of the largest agricultural product exporters in the world. During 2021-22, the country recorded $49.6 billion in total agriculture exports — a 20% increase from 2020-21. However, recent climate shocks have raised concerns about India’s wheat and rice production over the next year.
Given climate shocks and extreme weather phenomena, it is important to place a greater focus on climate adaptation and resilience building.
India’s agriculture sector primarily exports agriculture and allied products, marine products, plantations, and textile and allied products.
Rice, sugar, and spices were some of the main exports. India is also a provider of humanitarian food aid, notably to Afghanistan, and to many other countries when the world faces food supply shortages and disruptions, such as during the current crisis in Ukraine.
By 2030, India’s population is expected to rise to 1.5 billion. Agri-food systems will need to provide for and sustainably support an increasing population.
In the current times, there is an increased recognition to move away from conventional input-intensive agriculture towards more inclusive, effective, and sustainable agri-food systems that would facilitate better production.
The bigger picture of intermediation, financial crises (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The financial sector plays a major role in modern economies and banks are the cornerstone of the financial system. They mobilise savings for investments, create opportunities to pool risks, improve allocative efficiencies, and lower transaction costs when funds exchange hands between borrowers and lenders.
Interestingly, the very mechanisms that enable banks to offer these valuable services are also those which, at times, make banks vulnerable to small shocks and market sentiments, triggering a financial crisis and/or bank run with severe consequences.
This year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences has been awarded to three American economists — Ben S. Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve Chair; Douglas W. Diamond at the University of Chicago; and Philip H. Dybvig at Washington University in St. Louis for offering a deeper understanding of the genesis, the propagation, and the management of financial crises. Explaining the ideas of Diamond and Dybvig in their 1983 seminal paper on bank runs is a good beginning.
Consider an ideal situation where banks and firms are honest, banks are healthy with a small volume of non-performing loans, and that the economy is not facing any significant adverse events such as wars, floods, etc.
Now, ask yourself if your deposits in a bank are safe under this ideal condition. According to Diamond and Dybvig, even in this ideal environment banks may fail to meet obligations to depositors due to a different kind of risk — the risk associated with maturity transformation which banks have to undertake to be viable.
Their argument goes as follows. Consider a bank that takes deposits from many small savers, like you and me. We may face a sudden need for cash due to unforeseen circumstances. Therefore, we prefer to put our savings in liquid deposit accounts from which we can withdraw at minimum notice.
On the other hand, the firms that borrow from the bank prefer loans with longer maturity since they want to invest the money in business activities. To make its operation viable, a bank has to pay attention to the needs of both sets of customers.
Thus, a bank has to turn short-term deposits into long-term lending. Under ordinary circumstances, a bank’s day-to-day operation remains unaffected by this mismatch of its assets (loans) and liabilities (deposits) because withdrawals by depositors largely uncorrelated.
On a given day, only a fraction of depositors (you and me) faces an unforeseen need for cash and the need to withdraw money from their accounts.
Opinion
The ‘plumbing’ of inner party democracy (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
‘Inner party democracy’ is a favourite buzzword for Indian political commentators. Since 2019, there have been 27 articles in mainstream English media publications delivering sermons to the Congress about ‘internal democracy’.
If inner party democracy was such a magic pill, why is it that no political party in India has embarked on it for so long?
Contrary to shallow theories, it is not because the current leadership fear losing control.
In fact, a Rahul Gandhi, M.K.Stalin, Mamata Banerjee, SharadPawar or an Akhilesh Yadav would sweep any internal elections held in their respective parties.
A contest is possible only when established party leaders sacrifice their quests, such as what Mr. Gandhi has done for the Congress.
There is also some fear among parties that an internal leadership contest may result in a splintered organisation, vulnerable to capture by external adversaries. But political parties, especially the Opposition, are anyway not secure from such external raids by the ruling party today.
Translating grandiose ideas such as inner party democracy into action requires institutional capabilities, just as the Election Commission (EC) has to keep India a democratic republic.
The ‘plumbing’ needed to implement inner party democracy is very complex, messy and lacking in India’s political parties. No other political party has the institutional capacity of the EC to implement internal democracy.
The Central Election Authority (CEA) of the Congress, headed by Madhusudhan Mistry, recruited a massive team of 943 returning officers from within the party.
These officers were tasked with overseeing the process of choosing delegates from each of the 9,000+ block units of the Congress across the country, either through election or consensus, based on membership enrolment.
Beginning with a six-month membership drive and formation of block, assembly and district units, over 9,800 delegates were chosen through a constitutionally defined process, provided a QR-coded ID card and formed the electoral college to elect the next president.
Any of them could choose to contest for the post of the president by getting the support of 10 other delegates. Voting is through a secret paper ballot under a rank choice voting system, unlike the first-past-the-post system of Indian elections. The returning officers are responsible for conducting smooth elections in each State headquarters and bringing the ballot boxes to Delhi for counting.
And through this process, the CEA and its returning officers must not only be impartial and fair, but also perceived to be fair. This mammoth exercise is only possible due to the institutional structure of the CEA, the constitutionally prescribed election rules and an experienced team of nearly a thousand people working on it for over a year.
Making a case for the Old Pension Scheme (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Social Justice)
After Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, Punjab is the latest State that has announced its plan to revert to the Old Pension Scheme (OPS). Many have argued that this is a fiscally irresponsible move. We argue why and how we must go back to the OPS.
The OPS is an assured inflation-indexed monthly family pension till you (and your spouse) live(s). The OPS level is linked to the last pay you drew.
The NPS is a corpus from which you can draw a pension after retirement. Its value is determined by the market prices in which the corpus is invested.
There are many issues with the NPS. The amount of monthly pension you would draw (for the same contribution during service) with three hypothetical market rates of return is significantly lower for NPS.
Two, it is dependent on the vagaries of the market prices of equity/bonds in which the corpus is invested. To be sure, the markets do not crash often and in the long run they go up rather than down.
But it is still a lottery. If there is a crash, the downside has to be absorbed by the retirees. According to a 2008 OECD study, the global financial crisis had wiped a total of $5 trillion off the value of private pension funds in rich countries compared to the start of the year.
It’s true that this is the value of assets on paper, but such a fall can, and did, induce withdrawals among panic-stricken retirees who didn’t have age on their side to be in the long game of speculation.
Three, the OPS is a fixed government expenditure irrespective of an economic slowdown or a stock market crash, which makes it a good counter-cyclical policy measure during a crisis. In fact, the Sixth Pay Commission in India did precisely this during the Great Recession of 2008.
It has been argued that the OPS is a big hole in the exchequer’s pocket (25% of the States’ budget). This number is misleading because three other parts of States’ revenue receipts — tax the Centre collects on behalf of the States (SGST, a part of direct taxes, etc.); non-tax revenue that the States collect; and non-tax grant that the Centre shares with the States — have not been taken into account.
The OPS outlays, when calculated correctly, are less than half of 25%. Additionally, as Chart 2B shows, when the revenues (as a share of State GDP) go up, the share of pensions falls. So, shouldn’t the focus then be on mobilising revenues instead of cutting expenditures? But how?
The tax-GDP ratio (State plus Centre’s taxes) for 18 of the G20 countries. India is the fifth country from the bottom and performs poorly among BRICS nations.
Explainer
Understanding the Global Hunger Index (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Issues Relating to Poverty & Hunger)
For the second time in two years, the Ministry of Women and Child Development on Saturday rejected the Global Hunger Index (GHI) that ranked India 107 among 121 countries.
India was accorded a score of 29.1 out of 100 (with 0 representing no hunger), placing it behind Sri Lanka (66), Myanmar (71), Nepal (81) and Bangladesh (84). It referred to the index as “an erroneous measure of hunger”. It also wrongly claimed that the Index relied on an opinion poll.
The GHI, is a peer-reviewed annual report that endeavours to “comprehensively measure and track hunger at the global, regional, and country levels”.
It is jointly-produced by the Germany-based not-for-profit organisation Welthungerhilfe and Ireland-based Concern Worldwide. Authors of the report primarily refer to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG 2) that endeavours to achieve ‘Zero Hunger’ by 2030.
According to them, the report attempts to “raise awareness and understanding of the struggle against hunger”. The inaugural report was first published in 2006. The 2022 report is its 17th edition.
The GHI score is computed using four broad indicators — undernourishment (measure of the proportion of the population facing chronic deficiency of dietary energy intake), child stunting (low height for age), child wasting (low weight for height) and child mortality (death of a child under the age of five).
Before looking at the methodology, it is imperative to understand certain basic terminologies. Starting with ‘hunger’, it refers to the undesirable sensation caused by insufficient consumption of calories on a daily basis to lead a normal and healthy life taking into account her/his age, sex, stature and physical activity.
Undernutrition’ is the result of inadequate intake of food, which could be in terms of either quantity or quality, poor utilisation of nutrients due to infections or other illnesses.
It could emanate from varied social or economic factors. And finally, U.S. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) defines ‘malnutrition’ is defined as the abnormal physical condition caused by unbalanced or excessive intake of macronutrients and/or micronutrients. Imperative to understand here is chronic undernourishment is synonymous with hunger and undernutrition is a type of malnutrition.
Undernourishment, as per the authors, provides a basis to measure inadequate access to food and is among the lead indicators for international hunger targets, including the UN SDG 2.
Why does the SC Collegium hold primacy over transfers? (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
Appointments and transfers of judges in the constitutional courts is a participatory consultative process between the Supreme Court and the government.
But there is an increasing trend, if not a disturbing pattern, of the government unilaterally delaying or segregating names recommended by the Supreme Court Collegium.
While the need of the hour is to fill up judicial vacancies for effective justice administration, the primacy of the Collegium to recommend names for elevation to the Supreme Court and appointments and transfers in high courts, is affected by what some legal experts term as “cherry-picking” on the part of the executive.
Justice Muralidhar’s transfer as the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court was recommended by the Collegium to the government along with the name of Jammu and Kashmir High Court Chief Justice Pankaj Mithal on September 28.
Both names were proposed jointly in a single batch. However, the government chose to notify Justice Mithal’s transfer to the Rajasthan High Court while keeping an ominous silence about Justice Muralidhar.
The split in the batch had a ripple effect. The name of Justice Jaswant Singh, who was recommended to replace Justice Muralidhar as the Orissa High Court Chief Justice, was also segregated.
Justice Singh’s recommendation lies in limbo with the government while the other judges recommended by the Collegium in the same batch for elevation — Justice PrasannaBhalachandraVarale of the Bombay High Court and Justice Ali Mohammad Magrey of the Jammu & Kashmir High Court — were notified by the government on October 11.
The juggling of names at the government’s end not only affects the primacy of the Collegium, but also impacts the seniority of a judge and even his/her prospects to be appointed to the Supreme Court.
But Justice Muralidhar’s case is not the first such incident. In the past, the government has unilaterally segregated names recommended by the Collegium.
In 2014, the Collegium headed by then Chief Justice of India (CJI) R. M. Lodha had recommended former Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium for direct appointment to the Supreme Court Bench.
The government turned down Mr. Subramanium’s name while clearing the names of senior advocates such as Rohinton F. Nariman, Justices Arun Kumar Mishra and A.K. Goel. Chief Justice Lodha, in an interview to The Hindu, said the collegium was the “final arbiter of judicial appointments”.
He said segregation with the Collegium’s list amounted to “tinkering”. He had maintained that prior consultation with the CJI before segregation was the “integral component of the primacy of the Collegium”.
News
‘India’s coal mines are severely under-utilised amid push for new ones’ (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
On average, India’s coal mines use only two-thirds of the capacity with some large ones using only 1%, says an analysis by Global Energy Monitor (GEM), a firm that tracks utilisation of the fuel-source internationally.
This suggests that 99 of India’s coal mine projects, expected to yield 427 MTPA (million tonnes per annum), under development are unnecessary and opening new coal mines wouldn’t contribute to easing short-term supply-crunches.
At least twice last year, India experienced severe coal crises with more than 100 of 285 thermal power plants seeing coal stocks fall below the critical mark of 25% of the required stock.
In over 50 plants, it fell below the 10%. This led to power shortages in several States, including Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh.
GEM performed its analysis by surveying annual reports of Coal India, the largest coal producer in the world, and its subsidiaries and underlines that the company has not listed capacity constraints as among the reasons it fails to reach production targets.
Instead, they blame “..competition from renewables, infrastructure impasses, and land-use concerns for hindering output..” the report notes.
Coal mines under development threaten to displace at least 165 villages and affect 87,630 families, of which 41,508 families live in areas where the predominant population is tribal communities.
Coal mines under development also threaten 22,686 hectares (ha) of agricultural land and 19,297 ha of forest, and will consume at least 168,041 kilolitres of water per day, comparable to the daily water needs of over one million people, at a time of severe water stress in the country, according to the GEM.
On the heels of Prime Minister Modi’s announcement of a net zero target of 2070, these new mines “...increase India’s likelihood of stranded assets, delay a clean energy future—and in the process pose irreversible impacts on India’s rural communities and environments for the sake of economically precarious mining ventures,” the report underlines.
“The signs warning against the massive expansion of coal mining are easy to see, but the Indian government is not heeding them,” Ryan Driskell Tate, Project Manager for GEM’s Global Coal Mine Tracker, said in a statement.
“New mines can’t make the industry’s old problems go away. The irony of this expansion is that opening new mines today could intensify the sector’s weaknesses and inefficiencies tomorrow, especially as competition from renewables and conflicts over land use continue to emerge.”
Public dashboard to track progress of remediation of legacy landfills (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
Preparations to complete one of the targets of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban) 2.0 that was launched a year ago – the remediation of all legacy landfills in the country - are in full swing and a public dashboard on the progress at 2,200 such sites is in the offing.
Launched on October 1, 2021 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the mission aims at making all cities “garbage-free” by the end of its five-year period. An official said action plans for 1,000 legacy landfill sites had been approved by the Ministry, with each having a different timeline for completion.
To begin with, the official said, there was no data on the exact number of landfill sites. While landfills were only supposed to contain the remnants of solid waste after processing, the segregation and management were not carried out over the years, leaving mountains of trash. Any waste that has remained dumped for over three months is considered “legacy”.
The process of reconciliation of the details of all such sites was on and the online dashboard that would be launched in November would contain the exact number, size and remediation plans of the sites, which are estimated to be around 2,200, the official said.
These “sizeable” landfills each contain at least 1,000 tonnes of waste. The preparations for all the sites would be completed in this financial year.
Through the portal, citizens would be able to track the progress of their cities’ action plans for remediation of legacy landfills. The plans cover everything from remediation of the landfill to the eventual reuse of the land.
Once removed, the landfill sites would free up 15,000 acres of land, the official said. For instance, the largest such landfill, in Mumbai, is spread over 300 acres and contains 2.60 crore tonnes of waste, according to the Ministry. Delhi’s three landfills - Ghazipur, Bhalswa and Okhla - contain around 2.8 crore tonnes of waste. The official said funding for the cities’ action plans had been increased. For example, Delhi’s budget for remediation of landfills had gone up from ₹436 crore to ₹1,180 crore.
The action plans for each site takes into account the quantum of waste generated and a financial assessment. The waste is separated into materials for refuse derived fuel (RDF) for industries, construction and demolition (C&D) waste to be recycled into building materials and bio-soil that is used to fill in low-lying areas after passing a check for heavy metals.
Apart from the action plans for legacy dumpsites, the Ministry has also approved many holistic city action plans on the management of new waste.