The Indian Express’ UPSC weekly news express covers some of the most important topics of current affairs news from this week to help you prepare for UPSC-CSE. Try out the MCQs and check your answers provided towards the end of the article.

World Bank report on poverty and inequality

Preliminary Examination: Economic and Social Development – Sustainable Development, Poverty, Inclusion, Demographics, Social Sector initiatives, etc.

Mains Examination: General Studies II: Issues relating to poverty and hunger

— According to a new World Bank report, titled “Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022: Correcting Course”, the Covid pandemic has been the biggest setback to global poverty alleviation in decades.

— “The world is unlikely to meet the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 absent history-defying rates of economic growth over the remainder of this decade,” states the report.

— The report states that global poverty reduction has been slowing down since 2015 but the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine have completely reversed the outcomes.

— By 2015, the global extreme-poverty rate had been cut by more than half. Since then, poverty reduction has slowed in tandem with subdued global economic growth. The economic upheavals brought on by COVID-19 and later the war in Ukraine produced an outright reversal in progress.

— As such, the global goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 would not be achieved. In 2020 alone, the number of people living below the extreme poverty line rose by over 70 million; the largest one-year increase since global poverty monitoring began in 1990. As a result, an estimated 719 million people subsisted on less than $2.15 a day by the end of 2020.

— Inequalities, too, have risen. The poorest people bore the steepest costs of the pandemic: income losses averaged 4 per cent for the poorest 40 per cent, double the losses of the wealthiest 20 per cent of the income distribution. Global inequality rose, as a result, for the first time in decades.

— Global median income declined by 4 per cent in 2020 — the first decline since measurements of median income began in 1990.

— Poverty has gone up in India too. “Previous estimates suggested a poverty headcount rate at the US$1.90 poverty line of 10.4 percent in 2017…The latest estimate based on Sinha Roy and van der Weide (2022) shows that poverty at the US$1.90 poverty line was 13.6 percent in 2017,” finds the report.

— However, the report uses data from Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), because there are no official estimates of poverty available since 2011. “The most recent survey data released by the National Sample Survey Office of India used to measure poverty is the 2011/12 National Sample Survey (NSS). The government decided not to release the 2017/18 NSS round because of concerns about data quality,” it states.

— But it could not have left India out of the poverty estimates simply because India is one of the countries with the biggest poor population. “Because of India’s size, the lack of recent survey data for the country significantly affects the measurement of global poverty, as was evident in Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020.”

— It states that given the country’s size and importance for global and regional poverty estimates, the CMIE data helps fill an important gap.

— According to David Malpass, President World Bank Group, “fiscal policy—prudently used and considering the initial country conditions in terms of fiscal space—does offer opportunities for policy makers in developing economies to step up the fight against poverty and inequality”.

— To be sure, the average poverty rate in developing economies would have been 2.4 percentage points higher without a fiscal response. Yet government spending proved far more beneficial to poverty reduction in the wealthiest countries, which generally managed to fully offset Covid-19’s impact on poverty through fiscal policy and other emergency support measures.

— Developing economies had fewer resources and therefore spent less and achieved less: upper-middle-income economies offset just 50 per cent of the poverty impact, and low- and lower-middle income economies offset barely a quarter of the impact.

— The World Bank has three specific suggestions when it comes to fiscal policy.

1: Choose targeted cash transfers instead of broad subsidies. 2: Prioritize public spending for long-term growth. 3: Mobilize tax revenues without hurting the poor.

Point to ponder: How did poverty in rural India come down?

Which of the following are World Bank reports?

1. The Global Financial Development Report

Preliminary Examination: General issues on Environmental Ecology, Biodiversity, and Climate Change

Mains Examination: General Studies III: Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment

— A team of researchers has flagged the changing chemistry of the western region of the Arctic Ocean after discovering acidity levels increasing three to four times faster than ocean waters elsewhere.

— The team also identified a strong correlation between the accelerated rate of melting ice and the rate of ocean acidification. The study, published on Thursday in ‘Science’, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is the first analysis of Arctic acidification that includes data from 1994 to 2020.

— Scientists have predicted that by 2050, Arctic sea ice in this region will no longer survive the increasingly warm summers. As a result, the ocean’s chemistry will grow more acidic, creating life-threatening problems for the diverse population of sea creatures, plants and other living things that depend on a healthy ocean. Crabs, for example, live in a crusty shell built from the calcium carbonate prevalent in ocean water. Polar bears rely on healthy fish populations for food, fish and sea birds rely on plankton and plants, and seafood is a key element of many humans’ diets.

— Seawater is normally alkaline, with a pH value of around 8.1.

— Researchers point to sea-ice melt as the key mechanism to explain this rapid pH decrease, because it changes surface water in three primary ways.

— The water under the sea ice, which had a deficit of carbon dioxide, now is exposed to the atmospheric carbon dioxide and can take it up freely. The seawater mixed with meltwater is light and can’t mix easily into deeper waters, which means the carbon dioxide is concentrated at the surface. The meltwater dilutes the carbonate ion concentration in the seawater, weakening its ability to neutralise the carbon dioxide into bicarbonate and rapidly decreasing ocean pH.

Point to ponder: What is India’s Arctic policy?

With respect to sea water, consider the following statements

1. Seawater is normally alkaline, with a pH value of around 8.1.

2. Seawater’s freezing point is higher than that of pure water, and its boiling point is lower.

Which of the above staements is/are correct?

Halting kiln operations during the stubble burning period in Punjab

Preliminary Examination: General issues on Environmental Ecology, Biodiversity, and Climate Change

Mains Examination: General Studies III: Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment

— When the stubble burning cases have already begun in the state with the harvesting of paddy, the Punjab government can control the pollution level to a large extent during paddy harvesting followed by stubble burning by halting the operations of brick kilns in the state.

Why closing brick kilns during paddy harvesting season will not affect their businesses

— Normally, the kilns remain operational for 6-7 months in a year except for some exceptional cases where kiln owners even run them for 8 months in a year. So, closing these during paddy harvesting and post paddy harvesting for 3-4 months from October to December when there is already a lot of air pollution taking place due to huge stubble burning would be an ideal situation. Nearly 200 to 250 people are dependent on a kiln for their living and if a system is created then they would be aware of the operational months of these kilns. Hoshiarpur-based brick Kiln owner of Tata Bricks, Shiv Walia said that in the National Capital Region (NCR) Delhi these are not operational in the winter months.

— In 2018, Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) ordered of halting the operations of Brick kilns for four months from October 1, 2018, to January 2019 to check the air pollution level during paddy season and the winters month in Punjab and then in December 2018, the department of Science and Technology and Environment Punjab, on the directions of National Green Tribunal (NGT) had allowed operating those Kilns which were upgraded with new technology and certified by Science and Technology department.

— According to the PPCB, in 2018 stubble burning started in Punjab on September 21. From September 21 to October 21 that year 10,813 field fires were recorded in Punjab. And according to Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), Punjab’s main cities including Amritsar, Jalandhar, Bathinda, Ludhiana, Mandi Gobindgarh, Khanna, Patiala and Rupnagar have recorded satisfactory to Moderate AQI on most of the days barring a couple of days when Mandi Gobindgarh, Amritsar and Ludhiana recorded poor AQI for some hours in that one month. While the National Capital’s AQI had remained in the poor category for several days during this period then. RSMP remained between 0-55 /cubic meter (mg/cm) in the air is considered to be good quality air and it is permissible/satisfactory up to 100 RSPM. The moderate limit of AQI is between 101 to 2o0 RSPM, Poor between 200 to 300, Very Poor 300 to 400 and Severe between Above 400 AQI.

— Even the Ambient AQI at the rural stations (as the stubble fires take place in the rural areas) under the National Ambient Monitoring Programme (NAMP) NAMP had remained satisfactory to Moderate at most of the rural stations in September and October 2018, as per the records of the PPCB.

How kilns can reduce pollution

— In Punjab, there are 2800 kilns out of which nearly 2100 are operational. And all the operational kilns are upgraded to ‘zigzag’ technology, which minimises the pollution emission to 70 per cent as compared to old technology. PPCB officials said that this has reduced the emission of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) into the air by 4-lakh tonnes by upgrading the kilns.

— A kiln is run on coal and a single operation needs around 135 to 150 tonnes of coal. When all 2100 kilns run during October and November when stubble burning takes place then with a single operation, which lasts for around a month, this kiln will burn between 2.83 lakh tonnes to 3.15 lakh tonnes of coal and if they remain operational all winter months then the amount would be much more.

— PPCB officials said that not only stubble burning is responsible for poor AQI but industrial, and vehicular pollution is also largely responsible.

— According to Science and Technology department, new technology has reduced the pollution level but still, their operation must be stopped during these months when stubble burning takes place.

— Experts said that in winters the wind flow is slow at 8 to 10 Km/hour and the polluted air gets accumulated instead of dispersing out.

— Punjab Brick Kiln Owner Association President Harmesh Mohi said that they have no objection if the government wants to halt the operation during the winter months.

Point to ponder: How to get farmers to not burn crop residue?

With respect to stubble burning, which of the following statements is incorrect?

a) Stubble burning reduces soil fertility.

b) Stubble burning causes increase in moisture of soil.

c) Stubble burning causes in loss of useful microbes in soil.

d) Stubble burning may cause smog.

India-made cough syrups and deaths in Gambia

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Mains Examination: General Studies II: Health

— World Health Organisation (WHO) issued an alert about four Indian-manufactured cough syrups that it said could potentially be linked to acute kidney injury in children and 66 deaths in the small West African nation of The Gambia.

— The syrups — Promethazine Oral Solution, Kofexmalin Baby Cough Syrup, Makoff Baby Cough Syrup, and Magrip N Cold Syrup — were manufactured by Maiden Pharmaceuticals, based in Sonipat, Haryana.

— At the end of July, the country’s Epidemiology and Disease Control Department was informed of a “sudden” increase in cases of children ages 5 months-4 years reporting to hospital with acute kidney injury. By August, 32 cases and 28 deaths had been reported — a case fatality ratio at 87.5 per cent — local media quoted the Ministry of Health as saying.

— In September, The Gambia reported the four syrups, used for fever, cough, and allergic cold, to the WHO. In its alert, the WHO said laboratory analysis of samples of each of these products had confirmed the presence of “unacceptable amounts of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol as contaminants”.

— The Gambia initiated a nationwide recall of the syrups on October 5, beginning with three of the worst-affected regions.

What do diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol do?

— Both are chemical contaminants that may be present in the solvent that is used in the syrups. It is toxic to humans, and can result in abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhoea, inability to pass urine, headache, and altered mental state. It can also lead to acute kidney injury that may be fatal in children. In 2020, 17 children died in Jammu and Kashmir after consuming a syrup with high levels of diethylene glycol.

Why are the syrups not sold in India?

— A drug regulatory expert who was part of the investigation into the 2020 J&K deaths said India has phased out syrups in favour of suspensions.

— In syrup, the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) is completely mixed in the solvent — imagine a sugar solution. In a suspension, on the other hand, API particles are suspended uniformly in a solvent — imagine cooked dal.

— “That is why it says on labels on the bottles, ‘shake well before use’, otherwise the API will settle at the bottom,” the expert said.

— APIs such as paracetamol and others contained in the four syrups are not water-soluble, and hence need a base solvent like propylene glycol. “Propylene glycol is available in two varieties — one type is meant for industrial use, the other for pharmaceutical use. To save on costs, some companies use the industrial propylene glycol that may contain diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol as contaminants,” the expert said.

— Suspensions do not need propylene glycol as the active ingredient does not have to be dissolved. They use a liquid base called carboxymethylcellulose (CMC), with no risk of containing the two contaminants.

What are the Indian authorities doing?

— After being informed about the incident on September 29, India’s apex regulatory body, Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), along with the state authorities, opened investigations and lifted control samples — from the same batch of syrups — which are being tested in a Chandigarh-based lab.

— Should the control samples be found to contain high levels of contaminants, “proportionate action will be taken against the company, which may include suspension of the licence to export the drug”, said an official. “However, we are unsure whether we can initiate criminal action because the deaths did not happen in India,” the official added.

— Pharmaceutical expert C M Gulhati said it is the responsibility of the importing country to test medicines before releasing them in their market. “India tests what is imported… If Indian authorities start testing all the drugs that the country exports, then that is all they will be doing,” Gulhati said.

— The Health Ministry has asked the WHO to share a report on causal relationship — confirmation that the syrups led to the deaths in The Gambia — at the earliest. “The exact one to one causal relation of death has not yet been provided by WHO to CDSCO. As a robust National Regulatory Authority, CDSCO has requested WHO to share at the earliest with CDSCO the report on establishment of causal relation to death with the medical products in question,” an official release said.

Point to ponder: Why WHO’s alert over Indian medicines in Gambia should not be ignored?

Consider the statements with respect to CDSCO:

1. CDSCO is a national level regulatory body under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

2.CDSCO regulates control over the import of drugs and approves new drugs and clinical trials.

Which of the above statements is/are not true?

SIPRI study on defence production

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Mains Examination: General Studies II: Health

— India ranks fourth among 12 Indo-Pacific nations in self-reliant arms production capabilities, according to a study released this month by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a widely respected independent resource on global security. China tops the list, Japan is second, South Korea is in third place, and Pakistan is at number 8.

— The study, which measures self-reliance until 2020, is based on three indicators of self reliance in each country:

* Arms procurement — imports, licensed and domestic production as a proportion of the government’s total procurement of major conventional arms;

* Arms industry — the study presents the five largest arms companies in each country, where data are available, ranked by sales of arms and military services in 2020 to both domestic and export customers;

* Uncrewed maritime vehicles, the sea equivalent of drones — covering both uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) and uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs), meant to provide a qualitative understanding of how countries are engaging domestic research institutes and firms to produce such cutting edge systems.

— The study’s choice of maritime domain was because the Indo-Pacific region is a “maritime theatre”, and most of its flash points involve navies. The 12 countries in the study were selected because they have the highest military spending in the region — Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

— According to the study, understanding and determining the extent of self-reliance in the Indo-Pacific region, which has several ongoing flashpoints, is crucial for trust and confidence-building among states. This region has also seen a growing allocation by states for defence procurement. Eighteen arms manufacturing companies based in the region were ranked among the world’s largest arms companies in 2020.

“In a region where tensions among neighbours are rising, this report contributes to transparency with regards to levels of self-reliance in domestic arms production, allowing for an independent assessment of the region’s respective arms industries,” the study says.

— China was the world’s fifth largest arms importer in 2016-20. Its self-reliance policies, and its high economic growth in that period meant that the Chinese arms industry now increasingly fulfills the requirements of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Its high volume of imports in absolute terms accounts for only 8 per cent of total procurement for the period, the lowest share for any of the 12 governments studied in this report.

— China’s arms industry primarily involves nine large state-owned enterprises (SOEs). All eight companies for which data are available are in the top 100, with four in the top 10 in 2020. Four are dominant in the aerospace and aviation sectors, two in land systems, one in electronics, one in shipbuilding, and one in nuclear power.

— The PLA is the main customer for the arms companies. China also has 17 ongoing projects, in collaboration with universities and other agencies to develop “long-range precision, intelligent, stealthy or unmanned weaponry and equipment”.

— India is ranked as the second largest importer of arms for its armed forces in 2016-20. India is highly dependent on imports of complete foreign major arms, including many produced under licence or as components for its domestic production.

— Of India’s total volume of procurement in 2016–20, 84 per cent was of foreign origin. Domestic arms companies provide only 16 per cent of its total procurement. According to the study, the significant arms sales of local firms and the high level of licensed production push India to fourth position in the list.

— Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, Indian Ordnance Factories, Bharat Electronics, Mazagaon Docks and Cochin Shipyard are among the major Indian arms servicing companies. Ashok Leyland, one of the largest suppliers of trucks to the Indian Army, is the only company ranked in the top 50 in the Indo-Pacific.

— India has seven Uncrewed Maritime Vessel projects ongoing. In the private sector, Larsen & Toubro has been developing AUV prototypes on its own and in collaboration with foreign partners, such as Italy’s EdgeLab, while DRDO and the Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute have been considering development of AUV prototypes.

Point to ponder: One consequence of the Russian war in Ukraine is that it has brought into sharper focus the extent of India’s dependency on Moscow for defence hardware, and the urgent need for indigenisation to the extent possible. Do you agree?

According to SIPRI study on defence production which of the following statements is not true?

a) India ranks fourth among 12 Indo-Pacific nations in self-reliant arms production capabilities.

b) The study measures self-reliance until 2020 and is based on three indicators-arms procurement , arms industry and uncrewed maritime vehicles.

c) The 12 countries in the study were selected because they have the highest military spending in the region.

d) India is ranked as the largest importer of arms for its armed forces in 2016-20.

Answers to the MCQs: 1 (b), 2 (a), 3 (b), 4 (d), 5(d)

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