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The three southern states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana emerged as the top performers among the ‘larger states’ in the NITI Aayog’s annual ‘health index’ for the Covid year of 2020-21. While Tripura was the best among the ‘smaller states’, Delhi ranked at the bottom of the Union territories’ list.
The annual health index, which measures the performance of states and UTs on a “weighted composite score incorporating 24 health performance indicators”, was launched by the NITI Aayog in 2017. The Aayog brings out the index in collaboration with the Union Health Ministry and World Bank.
While the 2020-21 (fifth) health index report was supposed to be released by December 2022, it has not been made public yet. The NITI Aayog is learnt to have shared the report – Healthy States Progressive India Report on the Ranks of States and Union Territories – with the Health Ministry.
The health index assesses states and UTs on two parameters – incremental performance (year-on-year progress) and overall performance. The states and UTs — categorised separately as ‘larger states’, ‘smaller states’ and UTs — are then ranked based on their scores.
Govt. and Politics
G20 Summit venue at Pragati Maidan to host NITI Aayog meet tomorrow (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
The redeveloped Pragati Maidan convention centre, which is the venue for the G20 leaders’ summit in September, will on Saturday host its first high-profile event since the site was rebuilt.
NITI Aayog announced that its 8th governing council meeting, with the theme ‘Viksit Bharat @ 2047: Role of Team India’, will be held at the “new Convention Centre in Pragati Maidan.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chair the meeting, to be attended by state Chief Ministers and Lieutenant-Governors of Union Territories, the Aayog said in a statement.
The site, owned by India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO), has been under redevelopment by state-owned construction company NBCC (India) Ltd since 2017.
The initial deadline for the project was 2019, but work has continued at the site until now. Work began in 2017 with the demolition of existing structures, including the iconic Hall of Nations, which was designed by architect Raj Rewal and was opened in 1972 to mark 25 years of Independence.
The redevelopment project includes the convention-cum-exhibition centre, six exhibition halls, an administration block and an amphitheatre with a capacity to host 3,000 people.
Two officials with knowledge of the project said that the elliptic-shaped convention centre, which will host the G20 summit on September 9 and 10, is ready and will be the location for the NITI Aayog meeting.
Editorial page
An outpost in the sea (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
Since 2013, China has engaged in an intense campaign of building artificial islands in the South China Sea. Using a huge fleet of dredgers, it has created over 3,000-4,000 acres of new land atop reefs and rocks.
Three such maritime outposts — Fiery Cross, Mischief and Subi Reefs — have been provided with runways and harbours as well as guided-missile batteries. China’s island strategy has two objectives.
By developing a capability to monitor all traffic that moves under or above the sea — termed “maritime domain awareness” — a nation can extend its defensive perimeter well beyond the homeland.
Moreover, by providing island outposts with surveillance facilities and fortifying them, a nation can project power over a huge oceanic expanse.
India is fortunate to own strategically-located island territories in the Bay of Bengal as well as the Arabian Sea. The Andaman and Nicobar (A&N) group of 572 islands, closer to South East Asia than to peninsular India, forms a springboard from where India can project power, exert influence, or strike friendships in its eastern neighbourhood. They could also be objects of desire for any country that wants to dominate the Bay of Bengal.
On October 1, 2001, India took a giant leap of faith by placing all Armed Forces located in the A&N Islands, including the Coast Guard, under the unitary command of a newly created Commander-in-Chief, A&N (CINCAN) to be nominated, in rotation, from the three services.
Apart from ensuring defence of the territory, waters, airspace and the exclusive economic zone of the islands, the ANC was charged with safeguarding the eastern approaches to the Indian Ocean and establishing an air defence identification zone (ADIZ) over the islands.
Employment, theirs ours (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Our faith in India’s once-vaunted statistical system is at such a low ebb that it is hard to trust its judgment, even when it is based on a sound rationale. How to define and measure employment is one such example.
The Indian definition of employment does not meet international standards. This has resulted in strong recommendations from international bodies to revise India’s definition of who is employed and who is not.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has urged India to follow the standards laid down by the 19th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS-19), held in 2013.
To evaluate this, we first need to understand the recommendations made by ICLS-19 and then examine them within the Indian context.
Two major recommendations of ICLS-19 are: (1) Employment data should rely on short-term measures of employment, in most cases, a 7-day measure, capturing employment during the preceding week; (2) it should measure all types of work, including unpaid work, but define a person as being employed only if he or she engaged in producing goods or services for pay or profit. This distinction between work and employment may have critical implications for the measurement of progress towards SDGs.
World
Iran says successfully test-launched ballistic missile amid nuke tensions (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
Iran successfully test-launched a ballistic missile with a potential 2,000-km range, state media said, two days after the chief of Israel’s armed forces raised the prospect of “action” against Tehran over its nuclear programme.
Iran, which has one of the biggest missile programmes in the Middle East, says its weapons are capable of reaching the bases of arch-foes Israel and the United States in the region.
Despite U.S. and European opposition, the Islamic Republic has said it will further develop its “defensive” missile programme.
Our message to Iran’s enemies is that we will defend the country and its achievements. Our message to our friends is that we want to help regional stability.
State TV broadcast a few seconds of footage of what it said was the launch of an upgraded version of Iran’s Khoramshahr 4 ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 km (1,243 miles) and able to carry a 1,500-kg (3,300-pound) warhead.
The state news agency IRNA said the liquid-fuel missile had been named the “Kheibar”, a reference to a Jewish castle overrun by Muslim warriors in the early days of Islam.
Economy
Purview of angel tax narrows further: Investment from 21 nations exempted (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
The Finance Ministry has exempted investors from 21 countries including the US, UK and France from the levy of angel tax for non-resident investment in unlisted Indian startups. The list, however, excludes investment from countries like Singapore, Netherlands and Mauritius.
The notification by Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on May 24 comes after a press release issued on May 19, which had detailed the classes of investors exempted from the angel tax provision. Excluded entities include those registered with Sebi as Category-I FPI, Endowment Funds, Pension Funds and broad-based pooled investment vehicles, which are residents of 21 specified nations, including the US, UK, Australia, Germany and Spain, as per the notification.
Other nations mentioned in the notification are Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Israel, Italy, Iceland, Japan, Korea, Russia, Norway, New Zealand and Sweden.
The CBDT notification is effective from April 1.
Bhavin Shah, Deals Leader at PwC India said, “This relaxation is a welcome step to ease foreign investments. However, the exemption for broad-based fund is provided for 21 countries, which exclude top jurisdictions like Singapore, Mauritius and UAE. These three countries together constitute over 50% FDI in India. Not including Singapore, Mauritius and UAE, keeps almost all significant PE / VC funds and start-ups in which they invest, on their toes for angel tax issue. These funds contribute close to 50% of foreign investment in the country today.”
Explained
India & South Pacific (Page no. 18)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Visuals of Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape touching Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s feet have been seen as a reflection of India’s global status, and the significance of its engagement with Pacific Island Countries (PICs) and the Forum for India-Pacific Islands Cooperation (FIPIC).
After meeting United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who stood in for President Joe Biden who had to return to the US for talks on the debt ceiling crisis, Marape said: “This is an extraordinary day for us. We have two extremely important meetings today — separated but joined at the hip, if I can call it this way.”
PICs is a cluster of 14 island nations dotting the Southwestern Pacific: the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Niue, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. All these islands are located at the crossroads of strategically important maritime trade corridors.
Until recently, the South Pacific was considered to be under US influence, managed under the Australia, New Zealand, US (ANZUS) trilateral military alliance.
But with China’s growing influence in the region, and the increasing focus on the Indo-Pacific, New Delhi’s engagement strategy in the region has evolved.
Of the 14 PICs, Fiji and Papua New Guinea (PNG) are the ones with the biggest populations and the most heft. India’s interaction with the PICs has traditionally focussed on its engagement with Fiji and PNG, mainly due to the presence of a large diaspora — about 37% of Fiji’s 849,000 population (2009 estimates) is of Indian origin, and about 3,000 Indians live in PNG.
Petaflop Supercomputers (Page no. 18)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
India will unveil its new 18 petaFLOP supercomputer for weather forecasting institutes later this year, Union Earth Sciences Minister Kiren Rijiju said.
The new supercomputer is expected to improve weather forecasts at the block level, help weather scientists give higher resolution ranges of the forecast, predict cyclones with more accuracy and better lead time (the difference between a phenomenon being forecast and actually occuring), and provide ocean state forecasts, including marine water quality forecasts.
“Presently, we give forecasts with a 12-kilometre resolution. The new supercomputer will improve it to six-kilometre resolution. Our aim is to achieve one-kilometre resolution forecasts.
Making the announcement after a visit to the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) in Noida, Rijiju said that the supercomputer will cost Rs 900 crore.
FLOPs, or Floating-Point Operations per Second, is a commonly used metric to measure the computational performance – processing power and efficiency – especially in the field of high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI). Floating-point operations are a certain kind of mathematical calculation using real numbers with fractional parts.
Modern computing systems, such as CPUs (Central Processing Units) and GPUs (Graphics Processing Units), are designed to perform multiple operations simultaneously, using parallel processing techniques.
The parallelism significantly increases the number of FLOPs a system can achieve within a given time frame. Over the years, hardware has become more efficient, exponentially increasing computing power.