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Everyone counts: On Census-NPR postponement (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Polity 
Prelims level: Census-NPR postponement
Mains level:  Reasons behind Census-NPR postponement

Context:

• The Centre’s decision to postpone the first phase of the 2021 Census, earlier planned to start on April 1, was expected in view of the COVID-19 outbreak that has brought life to a standstill in India and across the world. 
• The 21-day national lockdown called by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is until April 15, but the return of any semblance of normalcy in daily life will take many more weeks, if not months.

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Extent and intensity:

• India is still struggling to make sense of the extent and intensity of the pandemic and the accompanying and inevitable economic calamity. 
• What is for certain is that all resources, public and private, will need to be mobilised, first for combating the malady and then for tending society and the economy back to its health and dynamism. 
• The Census is a massive exercise, which involves mass contact and diversion of resources. 
• According to the original schedule, the first phase, from April to September, would have included house listing and updating of the National Population Register, and the second phase, in February 2021, would have been population enumeration. 
• The Centre has done well by putting off the first phase until further orders. State governments can now focus on the pressing task of combating the coronavirus.

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Reconciliation:

• The unexpected suspension of the Census operation also opens a fresh window, and an entirely new context, for reconciliation between the Centre and States on the exercise itself. 
• If the NPR exercise, and the allied questions regarding citizenship rights had turned India into a cauldron of discord, the pandemic forced the collective attention of the country, nay the world, on the interconnectedness of modern life. 
• Several State governments had made their opposition clear to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, and the additional questions in the NPR pro forma that many fear is a prelude to something more cynical and divisive that is based on some quaint ideas of nationhood. 
• The Centre clarified that people could choose to not respond to these questions, but never bothered to address the underlying concerns. 
• The pandemic is a reminder that the future of humanity is collective and cannot be fragmented. 
• The Centre can turn this crisis into an opportunity to restore mutually respectful terms for relations with States and harmony among communities — both currently frayed. 

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Conclusion:

• Unshakeable national unity is essential for the country to tide over the pandemic crisis. 
• If India can come out of this more united and more resolute, the pains of the pandemic will fade sooner. 
• The coronavirus is forcing the re-examination in many nations about national power. 
• The Centre must use this sobering backdrop to analyse India’s priorities as a country and revisit its idea of citizenship and plans for the NPR. The Centre must use the opportunity of the pause in NPR to redraft questions.

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Covid-19 crisis calls for an urgent re-working of the Union Budget (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Economy 
Prelims level: Budget assumptions
Mains level:  Budget assumptions and its effect on Indian economy due to COVID-19 outbreak 

Context:

• The Indian government would do well to remember this maxim as it tries to stitch together a fiscal response to the Covid-19 crisis within the constraints of the Union Budget it had presented in February. 
• Governments around the world have made it amply clear while rolling out mega-stimulus packages, that normal budgetary considerations go out of the window in these extra-ordinary times. 
• The Centre too, must recognise that none of the estimates it made on February 1 can be expected to stick to the script now. 
• Though the Parliament has already passed the Budget, it would be best to acknowledge that the crisis calls for an urgent re-assessment of Central priorities and to completely redraw it.

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Three sets of Budget assumptions: 

• One, with the Covid-19 crisis likely to sharply dent India’s GDP growth this quarter onwards, the ambitious tax revenue growth assumed in the revised estimates for FY20 are now highly unlikely to be met. 
• This will also affect assumptions for FY21, which factor in a 9 per cent increase in taxes and a 11 per increase in non-tax revenues on the high base. With the nationwide lockdown freezing economic activity, the next couple of quarters are likely to be a complete washout for most businesses, making it imperative for the Centre to come up with financial support to ensure business continuity. 
• Two, the standard outlays in the February Budget towards administrative costs, defence expenditure and pet schemes need to be revisited too. 
• As lakhs of displaced migrant workers struggle to make ends meet, they urgently require some form of direct cash support to meet their basic needs. 
• None of the measures announced in the PM Garib Kalyan Yojana — higher rations, small credits into women’s Jan Dhan accounts, higher MGNREGA wages, EPF withdrawals — address the problems of these informal workers. 
• The size of this package — at 0.8 per cent of GDP — mocks the scale of this problem. 
• Three, research agencies are now modelling alarming numbers on the need for hospital beds and critical care equipment should Covid-19 spread. 
• This has underlined the glaring inadequacy of India’s public health infrastructure in terms of both the number of doctors and beds and equipment, which will need investments on a war footing over the next few months. 

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Conclusion:

• The Centre should, therefore, set out realistic deficit targets in its reworked Budget while also allowing States, who are at the frontline of this crisis, to cross the red lines set out by the FRBM rules.

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Get equipped quick to work from home (Mint)

Mains Paper 3:Economy 
Prelims level:  Remote workplace
Mains level:Building infrastructure for remote workplace 

Context:

• Technology gaps need to be filled for companies to transition seamlessly to a work-from-home environment in exceptional times like these and ensure business continuity.
• Many of us are perhaps finding ourselves getting up a little late, not having to rush sending children to school before making the mad dash to office. 
• Millions of people across the world are having to stay at home—as more and more companies are mandating their workforce to sign in from home, and rightly so.

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How can this be achieved?

Get ready to work from home:

• Most companies are not yet there in having the right infrastructure and tools to enable a mass remote working scenario.
• More than half of human resource leaders in a Gartner snap poll indicated that poor technology and/or infrastructure were the biggest barriers to effective remote working. 
• The work scenario today is testing employers’ IT infrastructure, and security policies. 
• The need of the hour is to equip the workforce with technology solutions for productivity and collaboration to enable seamless execution. 
• Essential devices, companies also need to think about ways to improve productivity around flexible, remote workstyles. Their employees need to be equipped with collaborative tools to interact and work with office groups. 
• Providing access to company data remotely via mobile phones, IT administrators need to consider a broader ecosystem of devices such as notebooks, AR/VR headsets, and other smart devices.

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Secure the remote workplace:

• Having a large part of the workforce operating from home or remote locations presents organisations with a new set of challenges—chief of them being data security. 
• Regardless of their size, companies spend significant resources in securing the IT infrastructure and networks in their offices. 

Challenges:

• With remote work becoming essential, it poses major threats to network security, leaving a wealth of sensitive information vulnerable to opportunistic cybercriminals, thus making security one of the key concerns for both small and large organisations.
• This is especially of concern in India, which is among the top targets for malicious cyberattacks in the world.
• Endpoints such personal computers, printers, Wi-Fi routers and Internet of Things devices are on the frontline of the cybersecurity battleground. 
• In addition, investing in devices that come with advanced security features like in-built LTE connectivity, webcam kill switches and BIOS security should be top priority. 
• Further, companies should also look at counselling employees on security best practices while working remotely and mandating multi-factor authentication beyond mere passwords.

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Go beyond private enterprises:

• As concerns around the health situation grow, the central government too has mandated work-from-home for its staff in a staggered manner, and states are likely to follow suit. 
• While this is essential to ensure the safety of the staff, there will be a likely impact on the delivery of government services, as a large part of the government IT infrastructure is based around desktops. 
• Hence, it is critical that governments create a better mix of notebooks and desktop computers. 
• This will ensure government staff too is able to work seamlessly, and services to citizens are affected to the minimum degree possible.

Plan for the long term:

• But the situations we face today, and their management has already thrown up scenarios that we are likely to face again in the future. 
• Risk management plans for both public and private enterprises will have to be reviewed, and infrastructure updated to provide mobility and flexibility in operations. 
• Security protocols too need to be addressed to cater to any such situations that may arise again.
• The open, borderless world that we had so grown used to has been challenged, and businesses and governments have risen to it. 

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Way forward:

• It will be critical to share the learnings—between businesses, communities and governments.
• After all, the lessons we learn today will hopefully lead to a more agile and responsive ecosystem. 
• It is the only way we can make sure that that the any eventuality, like the one we currently face, causes far lesser disruption to our lives, as we are seeing today.

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From Plate to Plough: A smarter supply line (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 3:Economy 
Prelims level:  APMC Act
Mains level:Economic growth and improve the food supply chain 

Context:

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement of a 21-day all-India lockdown to break the chain of transmission of COVID-19 would have led many to appreciate the threat posed by the virus. 
• The PM did not want to take any chances. But the lockdown has also created problems for a section of the country’s population. 
• Migrant labourers in Mumbai, Delhi and other metros have left for their homes in Bihar, Jharkhand and UP. 
• Let’s hope that no such worker has been infected by the virus. Else, the pathogen could reach the rural areas of these states, where the public health infrastructure is badly strained.

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Measure taken: 

The government has announced relief measures. Last week, the Finance Minister announced a welfare package of Rs 1.7 lakh crore.

How will the government find funds for this package? 

•  The windfall gains that have accrued to it as a result of the crash in crude oil prices could come in handy, the government could divert all subsidies and some development funds to fund this package and ask the country’s corpThis is too small to cope with the onslaught of the virus. 
• A package to compensate all losses, including business losses, should amount to at least Rs 5 to 6 lakh crore, if not more. 
• •   orate leaders to help with funds. 
• The prime minister could even issue a clarion call to those with a fixed income (say above Rs 50,000/month) to voluntarily donate at least 10 per cent of their salaries to fund the battle against the virus.

Focus on the supply lines of the food: 

• But in this piece, we focus on the supply lines of food — what the government must do to ensure that people don’t go hungry and the measures it must take to make sure people don’t crowd a few outlets, increasing the chances of the virus spreading. 
• The government has announced that the beneficiaries of the public distribution system can avail three months’ ration at one go. 
• The challenge is to ensure that fair price shops deliver the provisions in an orderly manner and their supply lines remain intact. 
• Home (street) delivery of these provisions, to avoid crowding, is a good option. 
• This is also an occasion to rope in civil society. NGOs, resident welfare associations, religious organisations and paramilitary forces can be engaged for orderly and safe distribution of food — both pre-cooked and fresh. 
• NGOs with experience in food preparation and distribution, could guide local authorities. 
• People involved in this endeavour should be provided with safety gears.

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Key challenges:

• The challenge, however, pertains to supplying perishables like fruits, vegetables and milk. These perishables must be sold in a packaged form in mobile vans. 
• The weekly markets need to be temporarily suspended lest they spread the virus — at such markets, people are known to do quality checks on vegetables by touching and feeling them. 
• Vegetable vendors can work with civil society organisations as well as e-commerce players to do this job in a safe manner.

Linked retail distribution with wholesale supply lines: 

• Retail distribution lines need to be seamlessly linked to wholesale supply lines. 
• Luckily, the government godowns are overflowing with wheat and rice — about 77 million metric tonnes (MMT) on March 1, against a buffer stock norm of 21.4 MMT on April 1. And, procurement operations for rabi crops are around the corner. 
• The FCI and other procuring agencies need to be trained about safety measures and supplied safety gear. 
• Farmers could be given Rs 50/quintal per month as an incentive to stagger bringing their produce to the market — say after May 10.

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Ensure the safety of workers in mandis:

• They will also need to be screened, given training and equipped with safety gear.
• The safety of workers in mandis — and other workers who handle agricultural produce — should be accorded as much priority as the safety of frontline health warriors. 
• We should also use this opportunity to suspend the APMC Act and encourage NGOs, civil society and corporate houses to directly procure from farmers.

Compensate poultry and maize farmers:

• In such times, prices of essential food items are known to shoot up. But in India, prices of food items like chicken meat and eggs have registered a sharp fall. 
• This has also pushed the maize prices down as poultry is largely fed packaged maize. 
• The government may have to think of compensating poultry and maize farmers in due course.

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Conclusion: 

• When things settle, it will be worth knowing how the virus spread from Wuhan to Iran, Italy, Washington, India and other parts of the world. 
• Which organisation or nation failed to blow the whistle and alert the world in time? Was it China’s failure? Or that of WHO? Or was it the failure of all governments around the world to respond quickly to the outbreak? 
• We need better global governance for pandemics to avert the next crisis.

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Reverse migration of workers raised new concerns (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2:Governance 
Prelims level:  The Inter State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979
Mains level:Welfare for the migrate workers 

Context:

• The Home Ministry’s announcement on Sunday evening to seal inter-State and inter-district borders, following the appalling exodus of thousands of workers from the Capital, underscores the lack of prior preparation in implementing the three-week nationwide lockdown. 

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Measures need to be taken: 

• Now, the workers who have already left Delhi for their homes in neighbouring States will be quarantined for 14 days in their respective State. 
• It is inexplicable that the Centre did not foresee the current exodus, triggered by panic and desperation, of Delhi’s informal workforce when it made its surprise decision on March 24. 
• This has, in effect, led to a massive dilution of its lockdown measure to contain the virulent coronavirus. 
• Steps such as providing for basic needs and ensuring that landlords do not evict tenants for at least a month could have been decided upon before the March 24 announcement. 
• The chaos and angst could have been minimised, with the State administrations getting some time to put necessary welfare and law and order systems in place. 
• It is hoped that the remaining period of the lockdown will not impose a disproportionate burden on the weaker sections of society. 
• Ameliorative measures announced under the Prime Minister’s Garib Kalyan Yojana must be bolstered if necessary.

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Delaying in implementation occur problem: 

• However, this lapse in implementation also underscores a larger problem: of the informal, migrant workforce not being effectively covered under any welfare or other forms of State protection. 
• The Inter State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979, spells out the rights of unorganised sectors and the duties of contractors and the State. 
• The more recent Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008, an outcome of the report prepared by National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector, is by all accounts a watered-down piece of legislation which has not been seriously implemented. 
• These laws must be strengthened. 
• An important reform measure that brooks no delay is the implementation of the ‘one nation one ration card’ scheme, which could arguably have contained this fear of the future as well as the sudden descent to hunger. 
• According to the Economic Survey 2016-17: “The first-ever estimates of internal work-related migration using railways data for the period 2011-2016 indicate an annual average flow of close to 9 million people between the states.” This population falls between the cracks of schemes announced by the Centre and the States. 

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Way ahead: 

• The exodus from Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Valsad and Jamnagar seems to have subsided.
• However, this “urban avalanche” simultaneously reveals the scale of poverty and fragility of the lives of urban poor. 
• Visuals of jeans-clad men with their backpacks walking on the highways may not correspond to the stereotypes about the poor. 
• They underscore the desperate need for India’s planners to understand that the poverty line can no longer be defined just in terms of food energy intake or asset possession.

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Political pardon: On Sri Lankan soldier’s release (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2:International 
Prelims level:  Mirusuvil massacre
Mains level:India and its neighbourhood relations 

Context:

• The grant of presidential pardon, on Thursday, to a Sri Lankan soldier on death row for murdering eight Tamil villagers has sparked justified outrage among those who have been demanding justice from the state for past crimes. 
• Far from helping the cause of accountability for war-time atrocities, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has gone the other way to nullify a rare instance of justice being ensured by Sri Lanka’s judicial system. 
• Not many army men have been brought to book for attacks on civilians; but, in what came to be known as the ‘Mirusuvil massacre’, military police had immediately detained the soldiers involved, thus denying them impunity. 

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Background:

• The victims included three boys aged five, 13 and 15. In December 2000, a group of internally displaced villagers had come to have a look at their war-ravaged homes at Mirusuvil in the Jaffna peninsula. 
• They ran into some army men, who led them away blindfolded. Their bodies were later found in a sewer, with their throats slit. 
• The only one who escaped later led the military police to the spot and turned a crucial witness. Five soldiers were indicted, and a special provision for having a trial before a bench of three high court judges was invoked. 
• The plodding trial ended in 2015 with only one of them, Sunil Ratnayake, being found guilty. He was sentenced to death, but there is a moratorium on executions since 1976.

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Key emphasis: 

• It hardly needs emphasis that the exercise of the power of pardon is an act of compassion, and not a tool for political or electoral messaging. 
• President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has sent out a message to his vast body of supporters among the Sinhalese that he would not let ‘war heroes’ languish in prison, even if it means that the minority Tamils get a chilling message that substantive justice for war crimes will always elude them.
• Even when rendered, it could be undone with a stroke of the pen. 
• There is also an electoral angle to the decision, as parliamentary polls were set for April 25, but have now been postponed in view of the global pandemic. 
• The process of granting pardon may have been going on in the run-up to the polls. Sri Lanka’s Constitution lays down a procedure that says the President must get a report from the trial judge, the Attorney General’s advice on that, and a recommendation from the Minister for Justice before he can pardon a convict. 

Way forward:

• However, there appears to be no rule that such advice or recommendation is binding. 
• Apart from some domestic voices from the Tamil leadership and individual politicians, the UN Human Rights High Commissioner and rights watchdog bodies have questioned the release of the soldier, rightly calling it an affront to the victims.
• The pardon, granted at a time when the country’s focus is on fighting COVID-19, is a serious setback to hopes that accountability could be brought about in Sri Lanka through domestic mechanisms.

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The deep void in global leadership (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2:International Relations 
Prelims level:  G20 
Mains level:Outcome from G20 meetings on economic slowdowns

Context:

• The coronavirus’s flight across the world at lightning speed, has exposed the total void in collective leadership at the global level. 
• Three months into the catastrophic war declared by an invisible, almost invincible virus, that is rapidly gobbling up human lives, regardless of citizenship and race, and contemptuously ravaging economies across continents, there is as yet no comprehensive, concerted plan of action, orchestrated by global leaders, to combat this terror.

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Outcome from G20 meetings: 

• The G20 has just had a virtual meeting, we understand, at the prodding of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 
• It is encouraging to learn that the G20 leaders have agreed to inject $5-trillion into the world economy to partially counter the devastating economic impact of the pandemic. 
• This is indeed good news. But taking collective ownership to fight a global war against the virus will require a lot more than writing cheques.
• Good war, bad enemy
• World leaders are obviously overwhelmed with their own national challenges and do not appear inclined to view the pandemic as a common enemy against mankind, which it is. 
• China delayed reporting the virus to the World Health Organisation (WHO), and perhaps, in the process, contributed to the exacerbation of the spread of the virus across the globe. 
• It was reported that the Trump administration did not even inform the European Union before it shut off flights from Europe. 
• It must be acknowledged that the initiative taken by Mr. Modi in the early days to convene a meeting of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation countries stands out in contrast to the pusillanimous leadership around the world.

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Seeds of indifference

• Two developments in the global polity in the last few years have contributed to the indifference towards collective global action.

Right-wing nationalism:

• One, the swing towards right-wing nationalism, as a guiding political ideology, in large swathes of the world, particularly in the U.S. 
• This ideology posits ‘global good’ being in conflict with and inimical to national interests. The dramatic announcement by U.S. President Trump, in June 2017, that the U.S. will cease involvement from the Paris Accord on climate change, preparatory to full withdrawal after the mandatory period, on the ground that the accord will ‘undermine U.S. economic interest’ is a classic demonstration of narrow nationalism trumping global interests. 
• There is no issue more global than climate change, and yet the U.S. Administration chose to look at it from the prism of national, short-term economic interest.

Atrophy of multilateral institutions:

• The United Nations was the outcome of the shared vision of the world leaders after World War II, that collective action is the only way forward to prevent the occurrence of another war. 
• That institution has notoriously failed to live up to its expectations to maintain peace among nations in the nearly 80 years since its formation. 
• Its affiliate organisations have, in several ways, failed to deliver on their lofty missions. 
• In particular, WHO, which has as its objective ‘to be the directing and coordinating authority among member countries in health emergencies’, has proven to be too lethargic in reacting to pandemics in the past. Its responses to COVID-19, has come under the scanner, not merely for incompetence, but also for lack of intellectual integrity.

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G20 offers hope:

• If the world leaders realise the relevance and critical importance of collective global action in the context of the present pandemic, it is not difficult to contrive an appropriate mechanism quickly to get into war. 
• A nimble outfit, not burdened with bureaucracy, is required to manage a global crisis of the nature that we are confronted with, today. 
• The G20, with co-option of other affected countries, itself might serve the purpose for the present. 

Addressing shortage of drugs and medical equipment:

• The collective should ensure that shortages of drugs, medical equipment and protective gear do not come in the way of any nation’s capacity to contain or fight the pandemic. 
• It is very likely that some nations that have succeeded in bringing the pandemic under control, such as China, Japan or South Korea, might have the capability to step up production at short notice to meet the increasing demand from other countries which are behind the curve. 
• This would typically involve urgent development of an information exchange on global production capacity, present and potential, demand and supply. 
• This is not to mean that there should be centralised management, which is not only infeasible, but counterproductive, as the attendant bureaucracy will impede quick action. 
• A common information exchange could restrain the richer countries from predatory contracting of global capacities.

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Seamless logistics for essential goods: 

• The protocols might need to be put in place among participating countries to ensure seamless logistics for the supply chain for essential goods and services to function efficiently. 
• This might be particularly necessary in the context of controls on international traffic and national shutdowns. 
• There would need to be concomitant accord to eliminate all kinds of tariff and non tariff barriers.

Information exchange is vital

• There needs to be instantaneous exchange of authenticated information on what clinical solutions have succeeded and what has not. 
• An example is the issue relating to hydroxychloroquine, which is being used experimentally, bypassing the rigours of randomised clinical trials. 
• While there is no substitute to classic clinical proof, the more field-level information is shared within the medical community, the better will be the success rates of such experimentation.

Cross-country collaboration on laboratory trials:

• This is a time to have cross-country collaboration on laboratory trials and clinical validation for vaccines and anti-viral drugs. It must be acknowledged that WHO has already moved on this issue, although, perhaps, belatedly. 
• The world can ill-afford delays, as the pandemic is predicted to stage a comeback once the shutdowns are gradually relaxed. The best way to ensure speedy research is to pool global resources. 
• Any effort at reinventing the wheel will only delay the outcomes. This attempt to collaborate might also bring in its wake an acceptable commercial solution that adequately incentivises private research, while ensuring benefits being available to the entire world at affordable costs. 
• Such a framework might be necessary for sustained collaborations for future challenges.

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Movement of trained health professionals:

• There is a need to facilitate easy movement of trained health professionals across the world to train others and augment resources wherever there are shortages. 
• In other words, nations should come together to organise a global army to fight the pandemic, equipped with the best weapons and tools.

Food watch

• We must anticipate food shortages occurring sooner or later, in some part of the world, consequent to the national shutdowns. 
• Ironically, while we might have saved lives from the assault of the novel coronavirus, we might run the risk of losing lives to starvation and malnutrition, somewhere in the world if we do not take adequate precautions. 
• This requires not only coordinated global action; it would also turn out to be the test of global concern for mankind in general.

Way forward:

• There is no doubt that human talent will triumph over the microscopic virus. It may be some months before we declare our win. 
• But the economic devastation, that would have been caused as a result will be no less than the aftermath of a world war. 
• Economies of the world are inexorably intertwined. 
• An orderly reconstruction of the global economy, which is equitable and inclusive, will eventually involve renegotiating terms of trade among key trading blocs, concerted action among central bankers to stabilise currencies, and a responsible way to regulate and manage global commodity markets.

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Standing with the needy: On coronavirus lockdown package (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Governance
Prelims level: Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana
Mains level:  Functions and responsibilities of the Union and the States

Context:

• ₹1,70,000-crore relief package was announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on March 26 — Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY). 
• It is a good first step towards alleviating the distress caused to vulnerable sections of the population by the 21-day lockdown imposed to combat the spread of the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). 

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Allocation to various sectors:

• What is noteworthy about the package is not the amount but the innovative ways in which the government is seeking to offer relief. 
• It covers various sections of the vulnerable, ranging from farmers and women Jan Dhan account holders, to organised sector workers, to the most important of all — healthcare workers, who will now get a sizeable insurance cover of ₹50 lakh. 
• The doubling of foodgrain allocation offered free is a good idea that privileges the hungry poor over rodents and pests devouring the stocks in Food Corporation of India godowns. 
• So is the move to provide free cooking gas refills to the underprivileged who are part of the PM Ujjwala scheme. 
• The offer to pay both employer and employee contributions to the Provident Fund for very small business enterprises is welcome. 
• It will offer relief to those businesses that have been forced to shut down operations, and also to employees earning small salaries for whom the PF deduction may hurt at this point in time. 
• The salary limit could have been set higher at ₹25,000 per month — there’s no cash outgo for the government anyway because this is just a book entry transaction.

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Funding within budget:

• The effort appears to be to keep the funding within the budget as much as possible and retain control over the deficit. 
• For instance, the PM Kisan transfer has been already budgeted for and the increase in MGNREGA wages can also be accommodated within the budget. 
• Ditto with the Jan Dhan account transfer of ₹500 per month for the next three months which will cost the government ₹30,450 crore. 
• It is possible to argue here that the transfer could have been a little more generous — at least ₹1,000 a month. 
• The government may have wanted to stay within the budget for now. It could also be to preserve firepower, as there is no saying how long this uncertainty will last. 
• But, at some point soon, the government will have to break the fiscal deficit shackles. Also, it needs the financial bandwidth to support businesses in trouble. 
• In fact, ideally the government ought to have announced a relief package for the corporate sector and the middle class along with the PMGKY. 
• It should now turn its focus towards businesses that are running out of cash and may soon default on even salaries and statutory commitments if relief is not given. 
• There are enough ideas to borrow from others such as the U.S. which is in the process of finalising a $2 trillion package. 

Conclusion:

• Part II of the economic relief package should not be delayed beyond the next couple of days.
• The relief package is a good start, but more might need to be done sooner than later.

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How can India contain the economic impact of COVID-19? (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Economic
Prelims level: COVID-19 pandemic
Mains level:  Economic impact of COVID-19 on India

Context:

• The COVID-19 pandemic has effectively brought normal life to a halt in India. 
• The importance of social distancing and a lockdown in curbing the spread of the virus cannot be stressed enough, but these measures also have huge repercussions on livelihoods and the economy at large, which has already been seeing a slowdown over the past year. 
• In a conversation moderated by Vikas Dhoot, Naushad Forbes and M. Govinda Rao talk of ways in which India can tackle this humanitarian and economic crisis. 
• Do you see a parallel in recent history to the situation we face globally due to the novel coronavirus?

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Govinda Rao: 

• This is the mother of all challenges in recent memory. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says that the 2008 financial crisis comes close, but I think this is much bigger than that. 
• Possibly, one has to go to the times of the Great Depression. Even qualitatively, it’s a very different challenge, because first you have to save lives, then you have to save livelihoods, then you have to meet with other costs like loss of jobs and production, and supply chain disruptions. 
• It’s not just confined to one sector or country; it encompasses the entire economy and the world. 
• So, I think there is no immediate policy instrument that you can put in place because you don’t even know how long the problem will last. 
• The depth of the problem that you are going to face is dependent on the length of the period for which you are going to close down and the extent to which the virus spreads.

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Naushad Forbes: 

• Every country is either already deeply affected or is at the start of being more affected. 
• This is unprecedented in terms of its immediate impact on the lives of individuals from all walks of life.
• We have a few additional factors in India: an economy which relies very heavily on informal employment, so our reliance for people’s well-being on the broader economy performing and the markets performing is high, whatever role the state may try to play. 
• And anything that you change in the functioning of the economy has unintended effects.
• We sometimes have, I think, a tendency to act and then plan. I worry about that. For example, on Saturday, all manufacturing companies in Pune were told to shut down. 
• On Sunday, all trains were stopped. And on Monday, all companies were told, ‘Look, you must keep supporting your staff and contract workers.’ 
• Now, the sequence should have been the reverse: first, you work out which companies will ensure support for everyone across the board and how. Then you stop the trains so that you contain populations [moving]. 
• And then you close the actual sources of employment. If you do it in the opposite sequence, you end up with what we saw on Saturday and Sunday, which is thousands of people crowding into train and bus stations, heading out of town, potentially spreading the virus across the country. 
• This is obviously an unintended consequence. 
• We sometimes act first without going into what we actually want to achieve. 
• The way to achieve ‘social distancing’ is not to announce something which then brings suddenly crowds of people together in a panic [but] to do something for their own security, well-being and longer-term success. 
• A little bit of thought before we act would really help. 
• Over the last few days, both the formal and informal sector have come to to a virtual halt. Lakhs of truckers are held up across States and most manufacturing firms have shut down. How will this impact our output and incomes?

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Naushad Forbes: 

• Everything’s come to a halt. The lockdown is the right thing to do for the country. From everything one reads, [we get the idea that] a lockdown is the way to ensure social distancing and contain the virus.
• How do you then limit the economic impact and who do you need to buffer the impact for? Without question, it is the people who are most vulnerable, those who live from day to day and have no savings to fall back on. 
• Then you look at medium to small companies with very limited staying power. The only way they can actually survive is by not paying people. You don’t want that to happen, otherwise you’d spread that distress in the economy. 
• You need to address their concerns, either through moratoriums on principal and interest payments or direct salary support, as we’ve seen happen in the U.K., Switzerland and France, to ensure some employment is sustained. 
• Then you need to extend it to larger labor-intensive companies if they employ 20,000 people and if they don’t have enough money to pay salaries next month we’re going to see something rather critical happen within a week.

Govinda Rao: 

• One of the biggest problems in the system is the capacity of the state to deal with the problem. The reaction that we have is a knee-jerk reaction. Today, you cannot worry about issues such as fiscal deficit. 
• You have to save people’s lives. There is a 21-day lockdown and redistribution is a major issue. Thankfully, you have a much better targeting device [Jan-Dhan accounts and Aadhaar] than before. Augmenting the state’s capacity... I don’t know how you’re going to do it.
• At 8 p.m., the Prime Minister says we are closing down for 21 days, and everyone runs to the shops and panics. Couldn’t this have been done in a smoother way? 
• One could have said essential supplies will be available — simply saying there’s a lakshman rekha outside your house, that really scares people.
• The immediate issue is to focus on health, which we have never done, and see how you can establish the public health system. And the second is livelihood issues.
• Regulatory compliance deadlines have been extended, but non-performing asset recognition norms remain 90 days (of defaults). Would you say this regulatory forbearance is sufficient?

Naushad Forbes: 

• It’s a classic case of ‘necessary but not sufficient’. These are all the right things to do. 
• You can have regulatory forbearance and extend regulatory forbearance for returns that have to be filed, but if there is some question on whether you will survive long enough to file your returns, then you need to address that.
• If we start by recognising that we have very limited state capacity, then we can think about how to get the desired outcome with an assumption of limited state capacity.
• For example, I would like to see a massive publicity campaign on what social distancing means and why it’s important to do. Regardless of what announcement comes, people should know not to crowd outside a shop together.
• And if my action in announcing something is going to prompt just this, let me first send out all the reassurances that grocery stores will be open. 
• The government has said that, but if you read the actual notification, it doesn’t say how groceries will get to homes. 
• There are some vague references to it being delivered. That sounds to me like a horrendous task to take on if state capacity is limited... delivering groceries to 1.3 billion people. Instead, rely on people going and doing the right thing. 
• So, you say, ‘grocery stores are going to be open and here are the rules under which people can go and buy groceries. 
• Grocery stores can decide for themselves if they wish to be open 24 hours. We will allow a maximum of so many people per square foot. 

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Govinda Rao: 

• A lot of things can now be done at home with online trading. To the extent that crowds can be avoided, it is important. But that doesn’t mean that you should shut down the stock market. It is a barometer... in the immediate context, it may not tell you what your economy’s doing if something is happening the world over. But you don’t kill the messenger, it gives you a message.
• Three weeks from now, what would be the best-case scenario for us to be in?

Naushad Forbes: 

• We should, by the way, do some scenario planning for what’s the best- and worst-case scenario and what’s in between. 
• For those scenarios, we must have action plans in place that are transparent so people can prepare accordingly. 
• The best-case scenario to me is that the three-week lockdown delivers. We shouldn’t expect the rising trend of cases to change for a minimum of 10 days before a successful lockdown can have an effect (because of the gestation of the virus). 
• The best-case scenario is that 10 days from now, we start seeing a flattening of the growth rate. A few more days later, we see the curve starting to turn down. 
• Then we can say the lockdown is working, now how do we start working towards recovery. We should put those plans in place now.
• We will not go back to normal from day one, where everyone can do whatever they wished. 
• Can all manufacturing start again? Does everyone show up at work all at once? 
• If you have the curve pointing down sharply, maybe 50% can come back and we’ll see for another two or three weeks how that sustains. 
• Shops can open again, but with limited operations and all the social distancing in place. You probably should not allow anything which involves mass gatherings of people even in the best-case scenario. 
• So, you’re not going to have large conferences, movie theatres, sports stadiums. Those will come last. I really think there’s a lot of value in this plan being as transparent as possible.

Govinda Rao: 

• The first thing that the government will have to do immediately is massively ramp up testing. We have not done enough testing as yet and do not know the magnitude of the problem. 
• Even if you take the best-case scenario after three weeks, this will be different in different places. 
• You may have to look at differential relaxations in a calibrated and transparent manner and say that areas with these trends can allow some of these activities. 
• My own feeling is that after 21 days, there will be some areas where you can have economic activities without much movement, and restrictions will have to continue elsewhere. 
• But we should be prepared for the long haul. Life is not going to be easy.
• My big concern is about children not going to school. Some from well-off families may learn on the computer, but what about those children who cannot go to school, can’t play, or do anything. 
• About 40% of the population is in the age group of zero to 14. We really have a crisis brewing there.

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Safeguarding the vulnerable among us (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Governance 
Prelims level: Covid 19
Mains level:  Welfare schemes for the vulnerable sections 

Context:

• The human dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic reach far beyond the critical health response. 
• All aspects of our future will be affected — economic, social and developmental. 
• Our response must be urgent, coordinated and on a global scale, and should immediately deliver help to those most in need.
• From workplaces, to enterprises, to national and global economies, getting this right is predicated on social dialogue between government and those on the front line — the employers and workers, so that the 2020s don’t become a re-run of the 1930s.

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Impact on economy:

• The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that as many as 25 million people could become unemployed, with a loss of workers’ income of as much as $3.4 trillion. 
• However, it is already becoming clear that these numbers may underestimate the magnitude of the impact.
• This pandemic has mercilessly exposed the deep fault lines in our labour markets. Enterprises of all sizes have already stopped operations, cut working hours and laid off staff. 
• Many are teetering on the brink of collapse as shops and restaurants close, flights and hotel bookings are cancelled, and businesses shift to remote working. 
• Often the first to lose their jobs are those whose employment was already precarious — sales clerks, waiters, kitchen staff, baggage handlers and cleaners.

Weak safety nets:

• In a world where only one in five people are eligible for unemployment benefits, lay-offs spell catastrophe for millions of families. 
• Because paid sick leave is not available to many carers and delivery workers — those we all now rely on — they are often under pressure to continue working even if they are ill. 
• In the developing world, piece-rate workers, day labourers and informal traders may be similarly pressured by the need to put food on the table. 
• We will all suffer because of this. It will not only increase the spread of the virus but, in the longer-term, dramatically amplify cycles of poverty and inequality.
• We have a chance to save millions of jobs and enterprises, if governments act decisively to ensure business continuity, prevent lay-offs and protect vulnerable workers. 
• We should have no doubt that the decisions they take today will determine the health of our societies and economies for years to come.
• Unprecedented, expansionary fiscal and monetary policies are essential to prevent the current headlong downturn from becoming a prolonged recession. 
• We must make sure that people have enough money in their pockets to make it to the end of the week — and the next. 

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Flattening the Curve:

• As governments try to flatten the upward curve of infection, we need special measures to protect the millions of health and care workers (most of them women) who risk their own health for us every day. 
• Truckers and seafarers, who deliver medical equipment and other essentials, must be adequately protected. 
• Teleworking offers new opportunities for workers to keep working, and employers to continue their businesses through the crisis. 
• However, workers must be able to negotiate these arrangements so that they retain balance with other responsibilities, such as caring for children, the sick or the elderly, and of course, themselves.
• Many countries have already introduced unprecedented stimulus packages to protect their societies and economies and keep cash flowing to workers and businesses. 
• To maximise the effectiveness of those measures, it is essential for governments to work with employers’ organisations and trade unions to come up with practical solutions, which keep people safe and to protect jobs.

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Conclusion:

• In these most difficult of times, I recall a principle set out in the ILO’s Constitution: 
• “Poverty anywhere remains a threat to prosperity everywhere.” 
• It reminds us that, in years to come, the effectiveness of our response to this existential threat may be judged not just by the scale and speed of the cash injections, or whether the recovery curve is flat or steep, but by what we did for the most vulnerable among us.

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Terror unlimited: On Kabul gurdwara attack (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Security 
Prelims level: Islamic State
Mains level:  Linkages between development and spread of extremism

Context:

• The attack on a gurdwara in Kabul on March 25 killed at least 25 people, mostly members of Afghanistan’s persecuted Sikh minority.

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Attempt to revive fortunates:

• This is a barefaced attempt by the Islamic State (IS) to revive its fortunes in the country at a time when it is politically divided and the peace process is hamstrung by the Taliban’s continuing violence. 
• The IS, which is concentrated in the eastern parts of Afghanistan, carried out several attacks in the past targeting the country’s minorities. 
• But, in recent months, the jihadist group suffered setbacks in the wake of sustained military operations by both Afghan and U.S. troops. 
• In some parts, the Taliban had also attacked the IS, as the insurgents, who are tribal Islamist nationalists, see the latter as a threat. 

Internal turmoil:

• But the war-torn country’s security situation is as fluid as ever. 
• It now has two governments, one led by Ashraf Ghani, who was declared winner of the September presidential election, and the other by Abdullah Abdullah, who has disputed the results and formed a rival administration. 
• The peace agreement reached between the Taliban and the U.S. failed to bring any halt to violence, with the insurgents and the government not being able to reach an understanding even on a prisoner swap. 
• Besides, the country has also seen a jump in the number of SARS-CoV-2 infections, with the Herat Province, which shares a border with Iran, emerging as the epicentre. The attack couldn’t have come at a worse time.

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Attack on minorities:

• Afghanistan is notorious for violence against its minority communities. 
• The Hazara Shias were brutalised during the Taliban regime in 1996-2001. Most Hindus and Sikhs, once spread across the country in hundreds of thousands, have fled the country. 
• With the resurgence of the Taliban and the fear of the insurgents taking over Kabul and undermining the Constitution, which at least in theory guarantees rights to all communities, the remaining minority groups are already in an abandoned state. 
• By attacking the gurdwara and an adjacent housing complex, the IS has not just terrified the country’s minorities further, but sent a message to the Afghan authorities that it remains a potent security threat. 

Conclusion:

• Afghanistan has too many problems, ranging from terrorism to the breakdown of the administration, which demands absolute resolve from the government. 
• But, unfortunately, the country’s political leadership appears to be concerned less about resolving any of them than about keeping power. 
• The leadership should realise the magnitude of this crisis, and take a united approach to tackle it. 
• It should kick-start the peace process with the Taliban, fight the IS cells more aggressively and work towards at least ensuring the minimum rights of its citizens guaranteed by the Constitution.
• However, the IS attack is another reminder that there is no end to the Afghan violence in sight.

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It shouldn’t take a pandemic (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 2: Health 
Prelims level: Handwashing habit 
Mains level:  Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health

Context:

• The coronavirus has taken the world by storm. 
• This highly contagious and deadly virus spreads primarily when people touch surfaces where the virus has been deposited by infected individuals, and then touch their eyes, nose or mouth.

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Background:

• This chain is best broken by the simple act of handwashing with soap, and this has been correctly projected as the silver bullet in our collective battle against this global health catastrophe.
• The message that washing one’s hands thoroughly with soap for 20 seconds neutralises the virus is being promoted by several stakeholders the world over — governments, multilateral agencies, private sector participants, media and entertainment channels, and even celebrities. 
• And there is little doubt that these efforts are paying off and that many more people are washing their hands with soap much more frequently than they were in the past.

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Advantages of handwashing with soap:

• It is little known that this simple practice is extremely effective against several other viruses and diseases as well. 
• Research has time and again shown the direct causality between the reduction of diseases and regular handwashing with soap, especially at critical times of pre-meals, post-defecation and pre-feeding babies. 
• According to UNICEF, handwashing at the aforementioned critical times can save millions of lives, especially of children below five, by reducing diarrhoea rates by more than 40 per cent.
• Moreover, handwashing not only reduces the rate of infection but also keeps children in school, since they are not staying home due to illness. 
• It is also estimated that the rates of handwashing with soap at these critical moments is very low the world over — ranging from zero per cent to 34 per cent.

Sustainability this habit: 

• There have been several efforts in the past by various stakeholders to promote handwashing and hygiene. 
• There has been momentum generated on the subject at the time of previous epidemics in the 21st century — during SARS and Swine Flu. 
• On both occasions, handwashing with soap became fashionable in parts of the world most affected by the diseases, but failed to sustain and become ingrained as a habit for posterity. 
• This can be partially attributed to the fact that once the threat of the diseases had faded, there was not enough follow-through in terms of sustained behaviour change communication on the subject. 
• Slowly, people returned to their old ways, with the need for handwashing not being as apparent anymore. 
• This time, however, there has been a multi-stakeholder barrage of communication on the subject like never before, and more countries are affected by coronavirus than any pandemic in recent memory. 
• In this threat is also an opportunity for the world — to make handwashing with soap the default behaviour and a key public health objective, even after the threat of the virus is behind us. This time, the behaviour change can and must be sustained.

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Way ahead:

• Today, in India, we have a comparative advantage with respect to large scale behaviour change, having implemented perhaps the largest ever social revolution the world has ever seen — the Swachh Bharat Mission. 
• Over 55 crore people have changed their habit of open defecation and have started using toilets. This has come about because the people adopted the programme as their own and made it a true jan andolan. 
• Today, the focus is on sustaining the changed behaviour — that of using toilets and stopping defecating in the open. 
• It will still take a lot of effort, but the commitment to do so is there and the behaviour change communication and the capacity building at the local level will continue. 
• The government has also developed a 10-year strategy on rural sanitation and is increasing the scope of swachhata from ODF to ODF Plus, which includes solid and liquid waste management.

Conclusion:

• Just as we are today collectively promoting handwashing with soap to fight the coronavirus, we must continue to work together to ensure that this habit sticks. 
• It should not take a pandemic to promote hygiene behaviour. It saves lives even in not-so-desperate times.

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Automated facial recognition: what NCRB proposes, what are the concerns (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 3: Science and Tech  
Prelims level: National Crime Records Bureau
Mains level:  Facial Recognition features and advantage 

Context:

• On June 28, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) released a Request for Proposal for an Automated Facial Recognition System (AFRS) to be used by police officers across the country.

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What is automated facial recognition?

• AFRS works by maintaining a large database with photos and videos of peoples’ faces.
• Then, a new image of an unidentified person — often taken from CCTV footage — is compared to the existing database to find a match and identify the person.
• The artificial intelligence technology used for pattern-finding and matching is called “neural networks”.
• Currently, facial recognition in India is done manually.

Are there any automated facial recognition systems in use in India?

• It is a new idea the country has started to experiment with.
• On July 1, the Ministry of Civil Aviation’s “DigiYatra” using facial recognition for airport entry was tried in the Hyderabad airport.
• State governments have also taken their own steps towards facial recognition. Telangana police launched their own system in August 2018.

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What does the NCRB request call for?

• The NCRB, which manages crime data for police, would like to use automated facial recognition to identify criminals, missing people, and unidentified dead bodies, as well as for “crime prevention”.
• Its Request for Proposal calls for gathering CCTV footage, as well as photos from newspapers, raids, and sketches.
• The project is aimed at being compatible with other biometrics such as iris and fingerprints.
• It will be a mobile and web application hosted in NCRB’s Data Centre in Delhi, but used by all police stations in the country.

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Why need AFRS?

• Automated Facial Recognition System can play a very vital role in improving outcomes in the area of Criminal identification and verification by facilitating easy recording, analysis, retrieval and sharing of Information between different organisations.
• While fingerprints and iris scans provide far more accurate matching results, automatic facial recognition is an easier solution especially for identification amongst crowds.
• The integration of fingerprint database, face recognition software and iris scans will massively boost the police department’s crime investigation capabilities.
• It will also help civilian verification when needed. No one will be able to get away with a fake ID.

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Integration of databases:

• NCRB has proposed integrating this facial recognition system with multiple existing databases.
• The most prominent is the NCRB-managed Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS).
• Facial recognition has been proposed in the CCTNS program since its origin.
• The new facial recognition system will be integrated with Integrated Criminal Justice System (ICJS), as well as state-specific systems, the Immigration, Visa and Foreigners Registration and Tracking (IVFRT), and the Khoya Paya portal on missing children.

What are the concerns around using facial recognition?

• Cyber experts across the world have cautioned against government abuse of facial recognition technology, as it can be used as tool of control and risks inaccurate results.
• Amid NCRB’s controversial step to install an automated facial recognition system, India should take note of the ongoing privacy debate in the US.
• In the US, the FBI and Department of State operate one of the largest facial recognition systems.
• International organisations have also condemned the Chinese government on its use of surveillance cameras and facial recognition to constrict the rights of Uighurs, a mostly Muslim minority.

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Way forward:

• The NCRB, which manages crime data for police, would like to use automated facial recognition to identify criminals, missing people, and unidentified dead bodies, as well as for “crime prevention”. 

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Test, test, test for the virus

Mains Paper 2: Health   
Prelims level: Anti-COVID-19 drugs 
Mains level:  India’s position on testing coronavirus 

Context:

• The novel coronavirus differs from other pandemics because of its exponential speed of transmission. 

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Coronavirus:

• The coronavirus is a novel virus because the genetic RNA has undergone mutation recently to infect humans from an animal source, thus converting a zoonotic disease to an anthroponotic one. 
• Coronavirus RNA is new to the human immunological system. 
• Therefore, there are a lot of unanswered questions with regard to immunity, recurrence, carrier state, treatment and vaccines. 
• The incubation period is 2-14 days. However, research has revealed that the virus can remain in circulation for much longer in affected individuals.

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Economic status:

• The economic status of a country influences implementation of its policies. 
• As India is a lower-middle-income country with a healthcare expenditure that is consistently below 1.5% of the GDP, it needs to be prudent and pragmatic in its approach to withstand it in the event of community spread. 
• Therefore, the government must focus on continued surveillance, prompt diagnosis and adopt robust treatment modalities to reduce morbidity and mortality.

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Increase in testing:

• An increase in testing will identify the actual number of cases that would require quarantine and prompt treatment. 
• The Indian Council of Medical Research has to increase random sampling and screening of the high-risk population. 
• Nationwide, the government has identified 75 government hospitals for testing and has allowed private labs with NABL accreditation to conduct real-time PCR assay of the RNA virus. 
• The National Task Force has recommended that the maximum cost for testing sample should not exceed ₹4,500. 
• The country’s per capita annual income for 2019-20 is ₹1,35,048 and the average middle-class annual income is ₹10-15 lakh. 
• Out-of-pocket expenses in healthcare is what pushes a lot of low-income Indians below the poverty line.

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Fighting information:

• Misinformation, especially on the use of facial masks, alternative medicine, and availability of a cure, should be avoided. 
• With limited resources, India requires protection gear such as three-layered facial masks for its healthcare workers and for those in service industries.

India’s position:

• There is no vaccine to fight the virus yet. Randomised controlled trials for antiviral treatment are difficult to execute during pandemics. 
• Researchers need to make tough choices during clinical trials, while ensuring the safety of the patients. 
• Medication was elusive in the past for H1N1, HIV and many other viral illnesses but the human mind proved invincible. Anti-COVID-19 drugs may be available sooner than later.
• The true incidence of the disease is still unknown. 
• Evidence from the identified cases worldwide suaggest that 80% of the infections will be mild with people having flu-like symptoms, about 15% will be severe requiring hospitalisation due to breathlessness or pneumonia, 3-5% will require ventilatory support, and about 1% will succumb to the virus.

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Conclusion:

• Every individual at risk, and not just those in power, should be tested on request. 
• There are authentic reports that several individuals have been denied diagnostic tests despite a contact history.
• The WHO categorised India as having local transmission. 
• If so, lessons can be learnt from South Korea which is taking 6,388 tests per million of the population compared to India’s 11.6. Every life is equally invaluable.

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Rising incidents of hate crimes point to the growing power of the lumpen (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 1: Society 
Prelims level: Hate Crimes 
Mains level:  Rising hate crimes and its prevention 

Context:

• There have been marked by hate crimes two Muslim men beaten by mobs in Jharkhand and Mumbai, demanding they shout ‘Jai Shri Ram’, one so mercilessly that he died. 
• Another man, a tribal, lynched in Tripura on suspicion of being a cattle thief. 
• Most recently, 24 men accused of being cattle smugglers, beaten and made to shout ‘Gau Mata ki Jai’, in Rajasthan.

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A rising graph:

• Studies of hate crimes in India show that they have steadily risen over the past five years. 
• Amnesty International India documented 721 such incidents between 2015 and 2018. 
• Last year alone, it tracked 218 hate crimes, 142 of which were against Dalits, 50 against Muslims, 40 against women, and eight each against Christians, Adivasis, and transgenders. 
• The more common hate crimes, they found, were honour killings that have sadly occurred for decades and ‘cow-related violence’, that was rare earlier but has become more frequent over the past five years.
• These facts are striking enough to concern any government. 
• The Prime Minister expressed pain at the sickening murder of Tabrez Ansari in Jharkhand, but clearly far more is required. 
• The Rajasthan administration is introducing a Bill prohibiting cow vigilantism, but that deals with only one hate crime. 
• An omnibus act against all hate crimes, including hate speech, is required across India and should be a priority of the 17th Lok Sabha. 

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Constitutional Provision: 

• Germany, for example, amended Section 46 of its Criminal Procedure Code, dealing with sentencing in violent crime, to say the sentence must be based on consideration of ‘the motives and aims of the offender, particularly where they are of a racist or xenophobic nature or where they show contempt for human dignity’.
• We have a number of sections in the Indian Penal Code that can be used to punish or even prevent hate crime, but they are disparate and few policemen are aware of them. 
• Those that are, fear to use them in areas whose political leaders mobilise through hate speech. 

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Court directives:

• In 2018, the Supreme Court directed Central and State governments to make it widely known that lynching and mob violence would ‘invite serious consequence under the law’ (Tehseen S. Poonawalla v. Union of India and Ors).
• Then Home Minister Rajnath Singh told Parliament that the government had formed a panel to suggest measures to tackle mob violence, and would enact a law if necessary. 
• The panel’s recommendations are not in the public domain, and acts of hate crime do not appear to have diminished in the year since Mr. Singh’s promise.
• In a May 2019 report, Human Rights Watch India pointed out that only some States had complied with the Supreme Court’s orders to designate a senior police officer in every district to prevent incidents of mob violence and ensure that the police take prompt action, including safety for witnesses; set up fast-track courts in such cases; and take action against policemen or officials who failed to comply. 
• Those State governments that did comply, the report commented, did so only partially. In several instances, the police actually obstructed investigations, even filing charges against the victims.
• Whether it is political hate speech or police bias on the ground, there is little doubt that the national bar against hate crime has been lowered. 
• On television, we see replays of hate speech and videos of lynching.
• Though the accompanying commentary is critical, repeated iterations normalise the hateful. Indeed, anchors themselves resort to invective far more often than before note how Kashmiris are routinely heckled and abused on talk shows. 

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Key steps needed:

• One of the policy issues that is high on the Modi administration’s list is dealing with incitement to violence through social media. 
• But the focus is on hate in relation to terrorism, and it is unclear whether government policy will extend to cover hate crime. 
• Important as it is to do so, the digital media is not the only offender. In fact, there are several obvious steps which would be easier to take and yield more immediate results than regulation of the digital media. 
• Parliament could enact an omnibus act against hate crime, and the Home Minister could set benchmarks for policemen and administrators to deal with hate crime. 
• The legislature and political parties could suspend or dismiss members who are implicated in hate crimes or practise hate speech.
• The electronic and print media could stop showing or publishing hateful comments and threats. 
• Priests could preach the values of tolerance and respect that are common to all religions and schools could revitalise courses on the directive principles of our Constitution.

Way forward:

• For a demographically diverse country such as India, hate crimes — including crimes of contempt — are a disaster. 
• Each of our religious and caste communities number in the millions, and crimes that are directed against any of these groups could result in a magnitude of disaffection that impels violence, even terrorism. 
• Far less diverse countries than India are already suffering the result of hate ‘moving into the mainstream’, as UN Secretary General António Guterres recently highlighted. 

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The malaise of malnutrition (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: National 
Prelims level: Malnutrition 
Mains level:  Malnutrition problems and prevention 

Context:

• A new report, ‘Food and Nutrition Security Analysis, India, 2019’, authored by the Government of India and the United Nations World Food Programme, paints a picture of hunger and malnutrition amongst children in large pockets of India. 
• It raises moral and ethical questions about the nature of a state and society that, after 70 years of independence, still condemns hundreds of millions of its poorest and vulnerable citizens to lives of hunger and desperation. 
• And it once again forces us to ask why despite rapid economic growth, declining levels of poverty, enough food to export, and a multiplicity of government programmes, malnutrition amongst the poorest remains high.

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A trap of poverty, malnutrition:

• The report shows the poorest sections of society caught in a trap of poverty and malnutrition, which is being passed on from generation to generation. 
• Mothers who are hungry and malnourished produce children who are stunted, underweight and unlikely to develop to achieve their full human potential.
• The effects of malnourishment in a small child are not merely physical. A developing brain that is deprived of nutrients does not reach its full mental potential. 
• A study in the Lancet notes, “Undernutrition can affect cognitive development by causing direct structural damage to the brain and by impairing infant motor development.” 
• This in turn affects the child’s ability to learn at school, leading to a lifetime of poverty and lack of opportunity.

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Key findings of the report: 

• Many studies over the last five years have exposed the failure of the Indian state to ensure that its most vulnerable citizens are provided adequate nutrition in their early years. 
• India has long been home to the largest number of malnourished children in the world. Some progress has been made in reducing the extent of malnutrition. 
• The proportion of children with chronic malnutrition decreased from 48% percent in 2005-06 to 38.4% in 2015-16.
• The percentage of underweight children decreased from 42.5% to 35.7% over the same period. 
• Anaemia in young children decreased from 69.5% to 58.5% during this period. 

An ambitious target:

• The government’s National Nutrition Mission (renamed as Poshan Abhiyaan) aims to reduce stunting (a measure of malnutrition that is defined as height that is significantly below the norm for age) by 2% a year, bringing down the proportion of stunted children in the population to 25% by 2022. But even this modest target will require doubling the current annual rate of reduction in stunting.
• The minutes of recent meetings of the Executive Committee of Poshan Abhiyaan do not inspire much confidence about whether this can be achieved. 
• A year after it was launched, State and Union Territory governments have only used 16% of the funds allocated to them. 
• Fortified rice and milk were to be introduced in one district per State by March this year. 
• But the minutes of a March 29 meeting showed that this had not been done, and officials in charge of public distribution had not yet got their act together.
• Or, as the minutes put it, “The matter is under active consideration of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution”.

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Ways to removing malnutrition: 

• Anganwadis are key to the distribution of services to mothers and children. But many States, including Bihar and Odisha, which have large vulnerable populations, are struggling to set up functioning anganwadis, and recruit staff.
• The key to ending the tragedy of child nutrition lies with a handful of State governments: the highest levels of stunted and underweight children are found in Jharkand, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. Malnutrition is a reflection of age-old patterns of social and economic exclusion.
• Over 40% of children from Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes are stunted. Close to 40% of children from the Other Backward Classes are stunted. 
• The lack of nutrition in their childhood years can reduce their mental as well as physical development and condemn them to a life in the margins of society.
• Stunting and malnourishment starts not with the child, but with the mother.
• An adolescent girl who is malnourished and anaemic tends to be a mother who is malnourished and anaemic. This in turn increased the chances of her child being stunted.

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The problem is access to food:

• The famines are caused not by shortages of food, but by inadequate access to food. And for the poor and marginalised, access to food is impeded by social, administrative and economic barriers.
• In the case of children and their mothers, this could be anything from non-functioning or neglectful governments at the State, district and local levels to entrenched social attitudes that see the poor and marginalised as less than equal citizens who are meant to be an underclass and are undeserving of government efforts to provide them food and lift them out of poverty.
• A lot of attention has focussed on the government’s aim of turning India into a $5 trillion economy in the next five years. 
• Whether this will achieved is a matter for debate. But these declarations only serve to obscure a larger reality. 

Conclusion: 

• There is a large section of society, the poorest two-fifths of the country’s population, that is still largely untouched by the modern economy which the rest of the country inhabits. 
• As one part of the country lives in a 21st century economy, ordering exotic cuisines over apps, another part struggles with the most ancient of realities: finding enough to eat to tide them over till the next day.

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Global problem, local solutions (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Environment 
Prelims level: Dongria Kondh tribe
Mains level:  Highlighting the global assessment of biodiversity

Context:

• The Dongria Kondh tribe of Niyamgiri Hills are among the best conservationists in the world. 
• Known for the spirited defence of their forested habitat against short-sighted industrialisation, they have through millennia evolved a lifestyle that is in perfect harmony with nature. 
• Across India, there are scores of indigenous people who have managed to lead meaningful lives without wanton destruction of natural ecosystems.
• These tribes, along with marginalised communities living on the fringes of forests and millions of smallholder farmers, are the best hope that India has to preserve biodiversity and ensure food security. 
• At a time when nature faces the threat of another mass extinction of species, their importance cannot be emphasised enough because they offer us solutions to avert an imminent meltdown.

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Global assessment of biodiversity:

• The first global assessment of biodiversity by a UN-backed panel, which released its report in May, held humans squarely responsible for the looming mass extinction of species. 
• Without radical efforts towards conservation, the rate of species extinction will only gather momentum.
• The red flag comes close on the heels of a February report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 
• A loss in biodiversity simply means that plants and animals are more vulnerable to pests and diseases, and it puts food security and nutrition at risk, the FAO said.

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At a higher risk:

• Although biodiversity loss is a global problem, it can be countered only with local solutions. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. 
• A solution that has succeeded in a temperate, wealthy nation may not be suitable for a country like India.
• Our tropical homeland is rich in biodiversity, but the imperatives of relentless economic growth, urbanisation, deforestation and overpopulation place it at risk more than many other places.

Active participation needed: 

• Nothing can be achieved without the active participation of communities that live close to nature farmers and forest dwellers. 
• It is now obvious that intensive agriculture, exploitative forestry and overfishing are the main threats to biodiversity in India and the world.
• UN agencies are unanimous that the best way to correct the present course is to heed the accumulated wisdom of indigenous peoples, fishers and farmers.
• The situation with our forests is even more dire. Instead of evicting forest dwellers from their homes, we should be encouraging them to conserve and nurture their habitats. 
• Pressure from industrialisation does not care too much about conservation and biodiversity. The same holds true for the overexploitation of our rivers and seas.

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No silver bullet:

• There is no silver bullet to solve the problem of crop and biodiversity loss at the national level. 
• The natural farming movement in Andhra Pradesh may not be suitable for, say, Punjab. 
• Fortunately, India’s farmers and tribes are nothing if not innovative and they do have local solutions.

Conclusion: 

• Loss of biodiversity and the threat of species extinction along with the alarming changes wrought by global warming are the primary concerns of our times.
• Our best bet for survival depends on how well we address these issues. 
• We can do that only if we put people at the centre of our actions.
• If we continue to ride roughshod over the people who are essential to revitalising nature, we do so only at our peril.

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Leakage of medical details (Mint)

Mains Paper 3:Security 
Prelims level:  Cyber security
Mains level:Challenges towards Cyber security

Context:

• The report by a German cybersecurity firm that medicaldetails of millions of Indian patients were leaked and arefreely available on the Internet is worrying.
• Associated risk of the breach: 
• Medical details (inmillions) of Indian patients has the potential to be minedfor deeper data analysis and for creating profiles thatcould be used for-social engineering, phishing, onlineidentity theft, other practices that thrive on theavailability of such data on the Darknet.

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Reason for the availability of this data: 

• Absence of anysecurity in the Picture Archiving and CommunicationsSystems (PACS) servers used by medical professionals;Server to have been connected to the public Internetwithout protection.

Key analysis in detail:

• Public data leaks have been quite common in India —from government websites enabling the download ofAadhaar numbers to electoral data rolls beingdownloaded in bulk, among others.
• India still lacks a comprehensive legal framework toprotect data privacy, unlike the data protectionregulations in place in the European Union and in theU.S.
• The Draft Personal Data Protection Bill 2019 is still to betabled but could enable protection of privacy.
• The draft Bill follows up on the provisions submitted by acommittee of experts chaired by Justice B.N. Srikrishnato the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technologyin 2018.
• The committee sought to codify the relationship betweenindividuals and firms/state institutions as one between“data principals” (whose information is collected) and“data fiduciaries” (those processing the data) so thatprivacy is safeguarded by design.
• While the 2019 version of the Bill seeks to retain theintent and many of the recommendations of the JusticeSrikrishna committee, it has also diluted a few provisions.For example, while the Bill tasks the fiduciary to seek theconsent in a free, informed, specific, clear form (andwhich is capable of being withdrawn later) from theprincipal, it has removed the proviso from the 2018version of the Bill that said selling or transferringsensitive personal data by the fiduciary to a third party isan offence.
• There are other substantive issues with the Bill pertainingto the situations when state institutions are grantedexemption from seeking consent from principals toprocess or obtain their information.

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Way forward:

• Considering the manner in which public data are beingstored and used by both the state and private entities, acomprehensive Data Protection Act is the need of the hour.

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Digital identification (Mint)

Mains Paper 3:Security 
Prelims level:  Data Privacy
Mains level:Data privacy and threat from protection 

Context:

• In a first anywhere in the world, a court in the Netherlandsrecently stopped a digital identification scheme for reasonsof exclusion.

Background:

• The Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs developed SyRI(System Risk Indicator) in 2014 to weed out those who
• are most likely to commit fraud and receive governmentbenefits.
• The legislation allowed government agencies to share 17categories of data with a private company (TheIntelligence Agency).
• The company used an algorithm to analyse data andcalculate risk scores. The selective rollout was conductedin low-income and immigrant neighbourhoods, whichhave a higher number of beneficiaries.
• Elevated riskscores were sent to relevant government arms, whichstores these on government databases for a maximum oftwo years. The government, in that time period, couldopen an investigation on the targeted person.

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How relevant is this for India?

• Similar to the Supreme Court’s Aadhaar judgment settinglimits on the ID’s usage, the Hague Court attempted tobalance social interest with personal privacy.
• The ruling is also an example of how a data protectionregulation can be used against government surveillance.
• India’s pending data protection regulation, beinganalysed by a Joint Select Committee in Parliament,would give broad exemptions to government dataprocessing in its current form. Some members of thecommittee have decided to take up governmentsurveillance in the upcoming deliberative meetings.
• India’s proposed regulation is similar to the US in theloopholes that could be potentially exploited. Hence,attempts to ban facial recognition in cities such as SanFrancisco have not had the same success as attempts inEurope.

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Have other countries taken note of the Dutch court ruling?

• Digital ID systems are being rolled out at a fast pace inplaces like Kenya, Philippines, Nigeria, Mexico, and more.
• Experts worldwide have been watching the Netherlandscase throughout, and agree that the ruling will ripplebeyond.
• The UN Special Rapporteur, Philip Alston, said: “Thisdecision sets a strong legal precedent for other courts tofollow. This is one of the first times a court anywhere hasstopped the use of digital technologies and abundantdigital information by welfare authorities on humanrights grounds.”
• The UK chairman of the House of Commons, StephenTimms, said: “This ruling by the Dutch courtsdemonstrates that parliaments ought to look very closelyat the ways in which governments use technology in thesocial security system, to protect the rights of theircitizens.”

Way forward:

• The Government of India should enact a privacylegislation that clearly defines the rights of citizensconsistent with the constitutional provisions.
• The government should factor in privacy risks andinclude procedures and systems to protect citizeninformation in any system of data collection.
• An institutional mechanism such as PrivacyCommissioner should be created to preventunauthorised disclosure of or access to such data.
• Capabilities of India’s national cyber cell should beenhanced for dealing with any cyber-attack in shortesttime.

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How the coronavirus lockdowns can be converted into an opportunity to secure our children’s future (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 2:National 
Prelims level:  Not much 
Mains level:Social issues 

Context:

• Every global crisis has its own philosophical import and an embedded message. We can ignore it only at our peril. 
• In more recent history World War II ended with unmistakable warning against nationalistic zealotry and use of nuclear weapons. 
• The world managed to heed both the messages for about 70 years before one of them – extreme and exclusivist nationalism – started raising its head again in several parts, including in India. Use of nuclear weapons has although been refrained from, its deterrent value still being traded as a weapon of blackmail if not destruction.

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Key significance: 

• Some messages led to the greater good of greater numbers but, simultaneously, also led to its tweaking to reinvent older evils by some other name. 
• For example, imperialism led to two World Wars but their horrific effects paved way for good sense to prevail resulting in greater co-operation among nations and opening up of national economies and international trade. But it was also used by some to unleash their hidden economic imperialism.
• All this, however, was always open to amendments from time to time, thus preventing the world from total collapse. 
• Yet, we haven’t apparently fully come to grips with the most alarming of the global crises of environmental degradation yet. 
• We still are fighting for our economic interests instead of unitedly facing the effects of the environmental crisis. 

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Abstinence from natural resources:

• The most important of all takeaways is abstinence from the overexploitation of natural resources. 
• We have shut ourselves indoors for a period that we never previously thought was even imaginable, forget being possible. 
• But here we are, forced to live with minimal provisions lest we perish. 
• It offers huge returns in terms of saving fossil fuels. It will not only save us huge money but will also help delay the process of environmental degradation.
• We can use those two ‘shut’ days entirely for our families, which, in turn, will restore the fast-eroding family bonds. 
• Needless to say, this has to be done unexceptionally by all the countries since “no work” holidays are bound to retard a country’s economic growth as well. 
• No country shouldn mind that as long as all agree to do it. 

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Social advantages: 

• On “open” days, we can further whittle it down by offering at least two “work from home” days wherever possible. It will save more fuel and thus more foreign exchange for countries like India.
• One of the social advantages of this “abstinence” regimen would be drastic reduction in accidents and crimes. Less crowd or no crowd on streets would also vastly reduce our solid waste burden, thus catalysing the process of restoration of environmental balance. 
• What it will also do is reduce the spread of contagious diseases. It could actually work wonders in extremely crowded and most populated cities.
• All this, of course, comes at a price. It demands not only a great resolve to help mankind from a possible apocalypse, but also renunciation of age-old straight-jackets. For example, if the “shut” days unavoidably happen to eclipse some of the auspicious muhurats for religious observance.

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Way ahead:

• Of course, the two-day abstinence idea isn’t an “open” and “shut” case and will need to be worked out in a more nuanced fashion. 
• We will have also to decide how long we must observe this abstinence. But we have already made the beginning per force. 
• If people of the world unite to do this, they have nothing to lose but a little bit of their self-indulgence. 
• Their loss would be their descendants’ gain. That’s not a small gain to be happy about.

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