Goaltide Daily Current Affairs 2022

Jan 27, 2022

Current Affair 1:
Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs)

 

What are Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD)?

Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) can be defined as a diverse group of communicable diseases that prevail in tropical and subtropical conditions. Populations living in poverty, without adequate sanitation and in close contact with infectious vectors and domestic animals and livestock are the worst affected.

Lacking a strong political voice, people affected by these tropical diseases have a low profile and status in public health priorities. Lack of reliable statistics and unpronounceable names of diseases have all hampered efforts to bring them out of the shadows.

According to the WHO, some of the major NTDs can be listed as follows: Just remember the names.

Status of India with respect to Neglected Tropical Diseases:

As shown in Table, today the nation of India experiences the world’s largest absolute burden of at least 11 major NTDs.

India & Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD)

  1. According to the World Health Organization report of 2017, India was able to eliminate Leprosy in 82% of the cities and districts
  2. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare also mentioned that India has eradicated Infectious Trachoma along with the chronic disease Yaws from the country.
  3. The most common NTDs in India are Lymphatic Filariasis, Visceral Leishmaniasis, Rabies, Leptospirosis, Dengue and Soil-Transmitted Helminthic Infections (STH).
  4. As per WHO data, India ranks number 1 in the number of cases for many major NTDs in the world. We have seen above.

WHO’s new road map for 2021–2030. You can see complete road map here

Titled “Ending the neglect to attain the Sustainable Development Goals: a road map for neglected tropical diseases 2021−2030”, the road map sets global targets and milestones to prevent, control, eliminate or eradicate 20 diseases and disease groups as well as cross-cutting targets aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals.

Current Affair 2:
Green Climate Fund

 

GCF was established under the Cancún Agreements in 2010 as a dedicated financing vehicle for developing countries within the global climate architecture, serving the Financial Mechanism of the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement. Since the approval of the first project funding in 2015, GCF has made rapid strides in building a portfolio of more than 100 projects.

It is the world’s largest climate fund, mandated to support developing countries raise and realize their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) ambitions towards low-emissions, climate-resilient pathways.

The Green Climate Fund is headquartered in Songdo, Incheon City, Republic of Korea.

India has designated Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change a National Designated Authority or Focal Point, paving the way towards unlocking GCF resources for climate solutions.

Current Affair 3:
India’s economy and the challenge of informality

Source Link

 

The above is article from the HINDU. The article explains why our economy is dominated by informal enterprises, issues arising of it and what needs to be done to formalize the economy. As most of the article is self-explanatory, but few points I would like to reiterate.

1) In the post-independence period, to protect employment, Govt. gave various fiscal benefits for small enterprises as these enterprises were mostly labour intensive and were present in rural and semi urban areas. Govt. also reserved various items which could be produced only by MSME firms and it regulated bigger firms through various acts (one is MRTP Act 1969). So, due to socio-economic reasons, govt. had to give protection to small firms which resulted in an informal economy.

2) The agriculture sector is again mostly informal. And as we have not been able to establish large scale manufacturing units, so this labour in agriculture sector is stuck in the informal economy of agriculture.

3) In the last few years Govt. is taking several steps to formalize the economy and the labour force (like GST, demonetization, registration through various schemes like MUDRA etc.) but its a kind of forced formalization which has also resulted in closure of various small enterprises. Informal enterprises are less productive and they lack capital, technology and best management practises. So, what India requires is a structural transformation of converting these smaller unproductive units by providing capital, technology, better management practices so that they can increase productivity, become efficient and big and then they come into tax net and convert into formal enterprises. And its a very slow process.

I am not saying that GST and other reforms are bad or not required but it will have only a limited impact on formalization. We require broad based reforms in education, health, governance, agriculture at the bottom level to properly move from an informal economy to a formal one and it will be less painful.

 

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