20 Dec 2020 CNA:- Download PDF Here

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A. GS 1 Related
SOCIAL ISSUES
1. ‘Any exploitation of Sentinel Island will wipe out tribals’
B. GS 2 Related
HEALTH
1. India’s COVID-19 fatality rate is among the lowest in the world.
2. Ethical challenges of vaccinating people with comorbidities.
C. GS 3 Related
ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY
1. Why elephants and tigers did not go extinct in India
2. Overexploitation, long life cycle have endangered a common Himalayan herb.
D. GS 4 Related
E. Editorials
POLITY AND GOVERNANCE
1. Are NRI’s likely to get postal voting rights soon?
F. Tidbits
G. Prelims Facts
H. UPSC Prelims Practice Questions
I. UPSC Mains Practice Questions

A. GS 1 Related

Category: SOCIAL ISSUES

1. ‘Any exploitation of Sentinel Island will wipe out tribals’

Context:

• The Anthropological Survey of India (AnSI) has released a policy document for the Sentinelese island.
• The policy document was prepared at the behest of the Andaman and Nicobar administration.

Details:

• The North Sentinel Island of the Andamans consists of one of the most secluded tribal population in the name of Sentinelese.
• The policy document released by the Anthropological Survey of India talks about the need to protect the rights of the Sentinelese.
• The policy document highlights the need to develop a repository of the Sentinelese tribe, which could help in understanding the tribe better.

What are  Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs)?

• In 1973, the Dhebar Commission created Primitive Tribal Groups (PTGs) as a separate category, who are less developed among the tribal groups.
• In 2006, the Government of India renamed the PTGs as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs).
• PVTGs have some basic characteristics -they are mostly homogenous, with a small population, relatively physically isolated, social institutes cast in a simple mould, absence of written language, relatively simple technology and a slower rate of change etc.

Who are the Sentinelese?

• The Nicobar tribes are Mongoloid; the Andaman tribes, including the Sentinelese, are Negrito.
• The Sentinelese are a pre-Neolithic people who have inhabited North Sentinel Island for an estimated 55,000 years without contact with the outside world.
• The Sentinelese have remained hostile to any efforts from the Government to reach out, they have time and again rebuffed any such efforts.
• In 2006, two fishermen who went harvesting crabs illegally off North Sentinel Island did not return. The more recent incident of John Allen Chau who set foot on the shores of the land of Sentinelese met the same fate.

Policy document

• The document has warned that any attempts at commercial exploitation or a strategic venture in the North Sentinel Island of the Andamans could be detrimental to the existence of the Sentinelese tribe.
• AnSI says that the right of the people to the island is non-­negotiable and cannot be traded off for commercial and strategic gains.
• The state has the cardinal duty to protect is to protect these rights as eternal and sacrosanct.
• The Sentinelese, with a population of about 50 to 100 on the North Sentinel Island, are among the most isolated of nearly 70 PVTGs across the country.
• Sentinelese also is among the five in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands which include the Great Andamanese, the Onge, the Jarawa, and the Shompens

B. GS 2 Related

Category: HEALTH

1. India’s COVID-19 fatality rate is among the lowest in the world.

Context:

• The Union Health Minister while chairing the high-level Group of Ministers(GoM) has spoken optimistically about the fatality rate, recovery rate concerning the COVID-19.

Details:

• The Union Health Minister has revealed data that shows India is currently coping with the virus better.
• The COVID-19 cases have not risen sharply despite festivities in October and November.

Optimistic data

• India’s COVID-19 case fatality rate (CFR) is currently at 1.45% and is currently one of the lowest in the world.
• The case fatality rate, also called case fatality risk or case fatality ratio, in epidemiology is the proportion of people who die from a specified disease among all individuals diagnosed with the disease over a certain period of time.
• India has done well when compared to other countries like Mexico, China, Indonesia, Italy etc.
• India’s recovery rate is very encouraging, India has the highest recovered patients in the world.
• The recovery rate presently stands at 95.46% and the cumulative positivity rate has decreased to 6.25%.

Vaccination blueprint

• The Government has come up with a vaccination policy, outlining the groups to be given priority, beginning with healthcare workers.
• The vaccination will cover different groups in a phased manner, currently, Phase 1 of the vaccination drive is expected to cover around 30 crore people.

Conclusion

• The data with regards to fatality rate and recovery rate and the announcement of the vaccination blueprint gives a feeling of comfort, but the fight against the virus is far from over.
• People have to continue with social distancing and following the precautions.

2. Ethical challenges of vaccinating people with comorbidities.

Context:

• The Government has recently unveiled the blueprint to vaccination drive for the COVID-19.

Details:

• The COVID-19 vaccine policy announced the Government will be at the forefront in tackling the virus.
• The vaccine drive will hope to diminish the pace at which spreads as there is no conclusive cure available as of today.
• Concerns have been raised over the vaccination of people suffering from comorbidities.

The vaccination priority

• The scale of vaccination is set to be graded with identified beneficiaries to be given preference.
• The health care workers have been given the priority as they are the frontline personnel and are exposed to the virus on a very frequent basis and at a proximate distance.
• The elderly population follow the health care workers, people above the age of 50 are considered under this, with preference being given to those that are aged 60 and above.
• This first phase of vaccination is expected to cover up to 30 crore people.

People with comorbidities.

• Comorbiditymeans more than one disease/condition is present in a person at the same time.
• Comorbidity people have been very vulnerable to the COVID-19, this can be seen in the number of deaths related to COVID-19 by those having comorbidities.
• Comorbidities range from hypertension, diabetes, asthma, chronic renal failure, cancer, bronchitis etc.

Comorbidities that increase the risk of COVID-19

• Considering this wide range of comorbidities, it is a challenge and an ethical dilemma to identify which comorbidities require vaccination more than other comorbidities.
• As per some of the pieces of evidence gathered, diabetes, hypertension, coronary artery disease increases the risk of COVID-19.
• In general, elderly people having multimorbidity followed by elderly people with comorbidity and then the elderly people should be the priority, this can be further followed by young with multimorbidity, young with comorbidity.

No comprehensive database for people with comorbidities.

• There is no national database for people with comorbidities, there have been data from the screening processes associated with National Programme for the Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases and Stroke (NPCDCS) guidelines.
• Under the Ayushman Bharat initiative, states have been screening people above the age of 30 years for non-communicable diseases to identify individuals with comorbidities for COVID -19 vaccination.

Health inequality

• The poor people and those living in rural areas are often not aware of their disease status, thus leaving them out of the ambit of vaccination policy is not fair.
• If there arises a scenario wherein there is a need to submit documents confirming comorbidities, then it will leave the poor and the rural people at a very disadvantageous position, favouring the rich and the educated.
• Ignorance of underlying chronic conditions is not just confined to poor and the rural people but also millions of middle-class Indians.

Way forward.

• States should permit people with comorbidities to self-report and back it up with a quick survey to screen, enrol, schedule the vulnerable for vaccination.
• Also, the private hospitals and diagnostic centres should be alerted to go through their records and submit the list of people with such comorbidities.

C. GS 3 Related

Category: ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY

1. Why elephants and tigers did not go extinct in India

Context:

• A team from Yale University has set out to investigate why certain big mammals in India continue to exist while they have been disappearing elsewhere.

Details:

• During the course of the last 100 thousand years, the world has witnessed extinctions of several land-dwelling mammals, to cite few examples, North America lost its sabertoothed cat, North American lion, scimitartooth cat, American cheetah.
• The team is looking to establish factors that have contributed to extinctions.

Co-evolution.

• The adaptation mechanism developed by the indigenous animal population to counteract the threat of a new predator is one such factor.
• The co-evolution involved practices shifting the dwelling place, a spatial change in hunting grounds etc to avoid being seen by the new set of predators.

Environmental factors behind extinctions in India

• Extinctions of elephant, rhino, horse species have been studied to establish common a thread that could link these extinctions.
• An observation made during this study was that all the species mentioned above were large, slow reproducers and were very susceptible to any fluctuations in climate.
• The climate variations can have a profound impact on species that produce slowly.
• Elephants have a two year pregnancy period and usually takes close to 6 years between calving events.
• The hippos when stressed is reflected in their breeding.

Human intervention

• The fossil remains have indicated that the above-mentioned animals were able to tide through numerous environmental changes, thus their extinction cannot be tied to environmental changes alone.
• The phase of the rise of humans has coincided with the decline in the population of few species.
• The case in point for humans contributing significantly to the extinction of certain species is the disappearance of Ostriches in India.
• There have been numerous pieces of evidence of Ostriches in India, ostrich eggshells were used in bead making.
• Ostrich eggs became a part of human dietary needs and this fastened up the pace of decline of Ostrich population in India.

Habitat shrinkage

• The species which survived had a large geographic range, but with rising population levels and the sophisticated technology available for tapping natural resources have meant that these populations have been confined to small pockets.
• Habitat shrinkage has led to several problems such as interbreeding, conflict over limited resources, increased human-animal conflict.

Conclusion.

• Several paleoanthropologists have cited that it is very difficult to pinpoint one reason behind extinctions of different species.
• Environmental factors such as availability of food, nature of the habitat, presence of predators along with climatic factors and human interventions have contributed to the extinction of species.
• However, it would not be entirely wrong to say that human activities have rendered a larger number of species vulnerable to extinction than ever before.

1. Overexploitation, long life cycle have endangered a common Himalayan herb.

Context:

• The Himalayan trillium, a common herb of the Himalayas was declared ‘endangered’ by the IUCN.

Details:

• The Himalayan trillium has been exploited beyond the capacity leaving the herb’s survival threatened.
• The herb has numerous uses for human beings thus inviting people to utilize it, paving way for overutilization.

Medicinal value

• It is used as a traditional medicine to cure,
  • Dysentery.
  • Sepsis.
  • Wounds.
  • Inflammation
  • Skin boils
  • Menstrual and sexual disorders
• Recent studies have revealed that the rhizome of the herb is a source of steroidal saponins and has its application as an anti-ageing agent and anti-cancer drug.

Natural habitat

• Temperate and sub-alpine zones of the Himalayas at an altitude of 2400 meters to 4000 meters.
• India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Nepal, Bhutan has been home to this specie.
• Indian Himalayan states like Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir possess the herb

Factors that have threatened the survival

• Over-exploitation
• Long life cycle, implying slow to reach reproductive maturity.
• Poor seed dispersal capacity.
• High trade value.
• Specific habitat requirement.
• Increase in market demand.
• Poaching.

Ways to protect the herb

• Implementation and enforcement of sustainable collection protocols
• Designation of areas of natural habitat to local communities for management of harvest.
• Implementation of FairWild standard, a set of ecological and fair trade guidelines can assist traders and concerned agencies in sustainable harvest and trade of species without harming its survival.

D. GS 4 Related

Nothing here for today!!!

Q1. Consider the following statements

Q2. Arrange the following places from north to south

Q3.  Which of the following countries are members of NATO:

Q4. The town of Chibok, seen in news is located in which of the 
following countries?

20 Dec 2020 CNA:- Download PDF Here