Insights Daily Current Affairs + PIB: 15 April 2019

insightsonindia.com/2019/04/15/insights-daily-current-affairs-pib-15-april-2019/

April 15, 2019

Insights Daily Current Affairs + PIB: 15 April 2019

Relevant articles from PIB:

Different harvest festivals being celebrated in several parts of country:

1. Vaisakhi- Celebrated by Sikhs.

2. Vishu- Kerala.
3. Rongali Bihu- Assam.
4. Naba Barsha- Bengal.
5. Puthandu Pirappu- Tamil Nadu.

Resilient Cities Asia-Pacific (RCAP) Congress

What to study?

For Prelims: About RCAP and ICLEI- key objectives.

For Mains: Significance and the need for urban resilience and climate change
adaptation, challenges therein.

Context: 4th Resilient Cities Asia-Pacific (RCAP) Congress 2019 was recently organized by
the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) in association with
South Delhi Municipal Corporation.

About Resilient Cities Asia-Pacific:

It is the annual global platform for urban resilience and climate change adaptation .
It is convened by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability and co-hosted by the
World Mayors Council on Climate Change and the City of Bonn.
It was launched in 2010 with the goal of forging partnerships and dialogues that
matter.
The Asia-Pacific Forum on Urban Resilience and Adaptation – Resilient Cities Asia
Pacific Congress (RCAP) is a response to heightened demand from the Asia Pacific
Region, which encouraged ICLEI to expand the congress series to include Resilient
Cities Asia-Pacific, bringing the event and the focus to the Asia-Pacific region, catering
to the situation, challenges and opportunities of local governments specifically in this
region.
Aim: To provide an Asian platform for urban resilience and climate change adaptation
where partnerships are forged and concrete dialogues are happening, with the
ultimate goal of identifying solutions and creating lasting impacts for cities in the
region.

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Need for urban resilience and climate change adaptation:

Current changes in climate, combined with rapid and often unplanned urbanisation, make
Asia one of the regions of the world most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
Increasing temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, intensification of extreme weather
events and rising sea levels are already a reality in the region. At the same time, increasing
population and spreading of human settlements in low lying, flood prone coastal areas
magnify the risks coming from climate change related disasters, thus increasing the
vulnerability of people, especially the urban poor, who live in hazardous areas. More than
60% of the world’s population resides in Asia and the region was most affected by natural
disasters.

What can be done?

1. Town planners need to integrate sustainable solutions such as harvesting solar energy,
enhancing green cover and water conservation as an essential part of town planning.
2. Municipal administrators to accord priority to tree plantation, solid waste
management, protection and rejuvenation of water bodies.
3. Need for collaborative efforts of governments at state and centre to reduce the divide
by providing urban amenities in rural areas.
4. Dependency on fossil fuel must be reduced and new forms of energy sources such as
solar must be explored.
5. Need to adopt multi-dimensional and innovative approaches to ensure low emissions
oriented development. Need to promote public transport in cities to reduce congestion
and air pollution.

Facts for Prelims:

ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability is a global network of more than 1,750 local and
regional governments committed to sustainable urban development.

Relevant articles from various News Papers:

Paper 2:

Topics Covered:

1. Issues related to health.

India short of 6 lakh doctors, 2 million nurses: U.S. study

What to study?

For Prelims and Mains: Key facts on India’s healthcare industry and concerns raised by the
report, what needs to be done?

Context: US -based Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy (CDDEP) has released a
report on the state of health services.

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Key findings:

India specific:

India has a shortage of an estimated 600,000 doctors and 2 million nurses. There is
one government doctor for every 10,189 people (the World Health Organisation (WHO)
recommends a ratio of 1:1,000).
Lack of access to antibiotics kills more people currently than does antibiotic
resistance.
65% of health expenditure is out-of-pocket, and such expenditures push some 57
million people into poverty each year.

Global scenario:

The majority of the world’s annual 5.7 million antibiotic-treatable deaths occur in low-
and middle-income countries, where the mortality burden from treatable bacterial
infections far exceeds the estimated annual 700,000 deaths from antibiotic-resistant
infections.
Even after the discovery of new antibiotic, regulatory hurdles and substandard health
facilities delay or altogether prevent widespread market entry and drug availability.
Worldwide, the irrational use of antibiotics and poor antimicrobial stewardship lead
to treatment failure and propagate the spread of drug resistance which, in turn,
further narrows the available array of effective antibiotics.

Concerns:

The lack of staff who are properly trained in administering antibiotics is preventing
patients from accessing live-saving drugs.
High out-of-pocket medical costs to the patient are compounded by limited
government spending for health services.

Some of the key roadblocks for India’s healthcare industry:

Population: India has the world’s second-largest population, rising from 760 million in 1985
to an estimated 1.3 billion in 2015.

Infrastructure: The existing healthcare infrastructure is just not enough to meet the needs of
the population. The central and state governments do offer universal healthcare services
and free treatment and essential drugs at government hospitals. However, the hospitals are,
understaffed and under-financed, forcing patients to visit private medical practitioners and
hospitals.

Insurance: India has one of the lowest per capita healthcare expenditures in the world.
Government contribution to insurance stands at roughly 32 percent, as opposed to 83.5
percent in the UK. The high out-of-pocket expenses in India stem from the fact that 76
percent of Indians do not have health insurance.

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Rural-urban disparity: The rural healthcare infrastructure is three-tiered and includes a sub-
center, primary health centre (PHC) and CHC. PHCs are short of more than 3,000 doctors,
with the shortage up by 200 per cent over the last 10 years to 27,421.

Other issues include:

Weak governance and accountability.

Irrational use and spiralling cost of drugs.
Fragmented health information systems.
Low public spending on health.
Large unregulated private sector.
Unequally distributed skilled human resources.
A weak primary healthcare sector.

Sources: the hindu.

Mains Question: Critically examine whether making healthcare affordable through capping of
prices would solve the problem of Out of Pocket Expenditure in health in India?

Paper 3:

Topics Covered:

1. Inclusive growth and issues arising from it.

Unified Payments Interface (UPI)

What to study?

For Prelims and Mains: UPI- features, objectives and significance.

Context: An analysis of data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the National Payments
Corporation of India (NPCI) and some industry players from April 2018 to March 2019 shows
that not only is the UPI platform outperforming e-wallets in terms of the value of
transactions done, but it is also eating away at e-wallets’ market share in specific areas
such as person-to-merchant (P2M) transactions.

Payments made on the UPI platform saw a remarkable growth of over 400% in the April to
March period, from a little more than ₹27,000 crore in April 2018 to ₹35 lakh crore in March
2019.

Why UPI is outperforming e- wallets?

People are changing the way they transact, choosing bank-to-bank methods such as
the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) over other instruments such as e-wallets. This is
because UPI is completely interoperable and as such, it is unique in the world, where
you have an interoperable system on the ‘send’ and ‘receive’ side.
The rapid growth of UPI is accompanied by a reasonably strong growth in the value of
transactions done using e-wallets, but the latter’s growth has not taken off much
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 following the fillip it received in the aftermath of demonetisation in November 2016.

What is Unified Payments Interface (UPI)?

Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is a system that powers multiple bank accounts into a single
mobile application (of any participating bank), merging several banking features, seamless
fund routing & merchant payments into one hood. It also caters to the “Peer to Peer” collect
request which can be scheduled and paid as per requirement and convenience.

How is it unique?

Immediate money transfer through mobile device round the clock 24*7 and 365 days.
Single mobile application for accessing different bank accounts.
Single Click 2 Factor Authentication – Aligned with the Regulatory guidelines, yet
provides for a very strong feature of seamless single click payment.
Virtual address of the customer for Pull & Push provides for incremental security with
the customer not required to enter the details such as Card no, Account number; IFSC
etc.
Bill Sharing with friends.
Best answer to Cash on Delivery hassle, running to an ATM or rendering exact amount.
Merchant Payment with Single Application or In-App Payments.
Utility Bill Payments, Over the Counter Payments, Barcode (Scan and Pay) based
payments.
Donations, Collections, Disbursements Scalable.
Raising Complaint from Mobile App directly.

Participants in UPI:

Payer PSP.
Payee PSP.
Remitter Bank.
Beneficiary Bank.
NPCI
Bank Account holders.
Merchants

UPI – Benefits to the Ecosystem participants:

Benefits for banks:

Single click Two Factor authentication.

Universal Application for transaction.
Leveraging existing infrastructure.
Safer, Secured and Innovative.
Payment basis Single/ Unique Identifier.
Enable seamless merchant transactions.

Benefits for end Customers:

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 Round the clock availability.
Single Application for accessing different bank accounts.
Use of Virtual ID is more secure, no credential sharing.
Single click authentication.
Raise Complaint from Mobile App directly.

Benefits for Merchants:

Seamless fund collection from customers – single identifiers.

No risk of storing customer’s virtual address like in Cards.
Tap customers not having credit/debit cards.
Suitable for e-Com & m-Com transaction.
Resolves the COD collection problem.
Single click 2FA facility to the customer – seamless Pull.
In-App Payments (IAP).

Sources: the hindu.

Paper 3:

Topics Covered:

1. Awareness in space.

Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)

What to study?

For Prelims and Mains: Key features and significance of DART.

Context: SPACEX TO LAUNCH NASA’S ASTEROID-SMASHING MISSION. The mission will blast
off in June 2021 and will smash into the asteroid’s moon around October 2022.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, is a spacecraft designed to determine

whether an asteroid can be redirected with a high-speed collision.
SpaceX will launch the spacecraft toward an asteroid named Didymos about 4 million
miles from Earth. It then will ram into the asteroid’s small moon at about 13,000 miles
per hour.

About the DART:

DART would be NASA’s first mission to demonstrate what’s known as the kinetic impactor
technique – striking the asteroid to shift its orbit – to defend against a potential future
asteroid impact.

How it impacts?

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The target for DART is an asteroid that will have a distant approach to Earth in October 2022,
and then again in 2024. The asteroid is called Didymos – Greek for “twin” -because it is an
asteroid binary system that consists of two bodies: Didymos A, about 780 metres in size, and
a smaller asteroid orbiting it called Didymos B, about 160 metres in size.

DART would impact only the smaller of the two bodies, Didymos B. The Didymos
system has been closely studied since 2003. The primary body is a rocky S-type object,
with composition similar to that of many asteroids.
The composition of its small companion, Didymos B, is unknown, but the size is typical
of asteroids that could potentially create regional effects should they impact Earth.
After launch, DART would fly to Didymos and use an APL-developed onboard
autonomous targeting system to aim itself at Didymos B.
Then the refrigerator-sized spacecraft would strike the smaller body at a speed about
nine times faster than a bullet, about six kilometres per second. Earth-based
observatories would be able to see the impact and the resulting change in the orbit of
Didymos B around Didymos A, allowing scientists to better determine the capabilities
of kinetic impact as an asteroid mitigation strategy.
The kinetic impact technique works by changing the speed of a threatening asteroid by
a small fraction of its total velocity, but by doing it well before the predicted impact so
that this small nudge will add up over time to a big shift of the asteroid’s path away
from Earth.

Sources: the hindu.

Facts for Prelims:

World’s largest plane makes first test flight:

Context: The world’s largest aircraft recently took off over the Mojave Desert in California.

Key facts:

It is carbon-composite plane built by Stratolaunch Systems Corp.

It is called Roc.
It has a wingspan the length of an American football field and is powered by six
engines on a twin fuselage.
The plane is designed to drop rockets and other space vehicles weighing up to 500,000
pounds at an altitude of 35,000 feet and has been billed by the company as making
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 satellite deployment as “easy as booking an airline flight.”

Yangtze giant softshell turtles:

Context: The only known female member of

one of the world’s rarest turtle species has
died at a zoo in southern China. The animal
was one of four Yangtze giant softshell turtles
known to be remaining in the world. The Suzhou zoo, where the female turtle lived, also
houses a male Yangtze giant softshell turtle. The other two live in Vietnam.

It is also known as the Red River giant softshell turtle, Shanghai softshell turtle,
Swinhoe’s softshell turtleor speckled softshell turtle.
It is listed as critically endangered in the IUCN Red List. It may be the largest living
freshwater turtle in the world.

India becomes net steel importer, a first in

3 years:

Context: India was a net importer of steel

during the 2018-19 fiscal year, the first time in
three years, as the country lost market share
among its traditional steel buyers and imports
jumped on demand for higher quality steel
domestically.

India’s exports during the fiscal year

declined after rival steelmakers in China,
Japan, South Korea and Indonesia,
blocked from markets in the United States and Europe by tariffs and other
protectionist measures, ate away at the country’s markets in West Asia and Africa.
Imports from the four Asian countries also climbed as they diverted supply into India.
Imports of value-added steel, primarily for the auto sector and high-end electrical steel,
were the biggest source of imports.

Summaries of Important Editorials:

How spaceflight affects body?

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/in-twins-clues-to-how-spaceflight-
affects-body-5675526/.

Context: In 2015, astronaut Scott Kelly set off for the International Space Station while his
twin, Mark Kelly, remained on Earth. Scott returned in 2016, and both brothers are now
retired, but over the one year Scott spent in space, 10 teams of researchers in the US carried

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out a landmark study on the twins’ biological profiles (Scott was sending his samples from
space). With the twins sharing the same genetic code, the researchers looked for variances in
their bio-markers.

Details of the study:

The results showed that a long stay in space can cause changes in the human body . These
were epigenetic changes — chemical “tweaks” to DNA that can influence gene activity,
without affecting the underlying genetic code itself. When epigenetic changes occur at the
wrong time or place, the process can turn genes on or off at the wrong time and place. In
Scott’s case, most of the changes were reversed within months of his return to Earth .

What changed, what did not?

Telomeres: These are special features at the ends of each DNA strand. Telomeres tend to get
shorter as one ages; however, certain factors can affect the rate of this shortening. In Scott’s
case, the study identified a change in telomere length dynamics during spaceflight and within
days of landing.

Gene expression: Samples taken before, during and after Scott’s mission in space revealed
some changes in gene expression. These were different from the changes Mark experienced
on Earth. Of the changes Scott experienced, most (about 91.3%) reverted to baseline after he
returned, while a small subset persisted after six months. Some observed DNA damage is
believed to be a result of radiation exposure.

Gut bacteria: Scott’s microbiome during flight was profoundly different from pre-flight. This
could be due to the food he consumed in space, although other space-specific
environmental factors may have also contributed. When he landed on Earth, Scott’s
microbiome returned to pre-flight state.

Arteries: The inside of an artery wall can narrow due to plaque buildup. Researchers found
indications of inflammation and carotid artery wall thickening in Scott during and
immediately after his mission, but no such changes were observed in Mark. Researchers
have not yet established whether this adaptation is reversible.

Some of the findings were encouraging for researchers:

Vaccination: Scott received three flu vaccines — on Earth, in space, and back on Earth —
each a year apart. This study found that his body reacted appropriately to the vaccine.

Cognition: With few exceptions, Scott’s cognitive performance (such as mental alertness,
spatial orientation, recognition of emotions) remained largely unchanged during his time in
space, and relative to Mark on the ground.

Politics and the military:

Source: https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/politics-and-the-
military/article26836885.ece.

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Context: Recently, more than 150 senior military veterans, including several former service
chiefs, wrote a letter to the President expressing their anguish over the ‘politicisation’ of the
military.

Concerns:

Using military achievements for electoral gains is dangerous. The current political
atmosphere is already vitiated by the use of communally polarising tactics. Exploiting
India’s military, so far a remarkably politically neutral force, for partisan ends adds to
the already morally degraded political environment in which the elections are taking
place.
It sends the signal to the top brass that there is nothing wrong in intermixing politics
with the military. The eventual lesson they will learn is that they can interfere in the
political process with impunity since the civilian leadership has already legitimised the
military’s use in the political realm.
In recent years, many senior serving officers have commented on important domestic
and international issues, such as immigration and India-Pakistan relations, that until
recently had been off limits for the military brass.

Need of the hour:

Political parties must forthwith desist from using the military, military uniforms or
symbols, and any actions by military formations or personnel, for political purposes or
to further their political agendas.
Political leaders should not take credit for military operations such as cross-border
strikes.

Conclusion:

The use of the military for short-term political gains and the propensity of serving officers to
make politically charged statements — augment each other. This nexus does not bode well
for Indian democracy. This is an unprecedented development that needs to be reversed in
order to preserve civilian supremacy over the armed forces and keep the political and
military arenas distinct.

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