NFHS-5
- Births in institutional facilities, such as a hospital, improved by nearly eight percentage points but children who were either stunted or displayed signs of wasting only dropped by a maximum of three percentage points, shows a comparison of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 5 and 4.
- India has also officially hit a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 2.0 that indicates a decrease from the 2.2 in the NFHS-4.
- According to the UN Population Division, a TFR of about 2.1 children per woman is called replacement-level fertility.
- If replacement level fertility is sustained over a sufficiently long period, each generation will exactly replace itself.
- The urban TFR is 1.6 and rural 2.1.
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K shaped recovery
- A K-shaped recovery occurs when, following a recession, different parts of the economy recover at different rates, times, or magnitudes.
- This is in contrast to an even, uniform recovery across sectors, industries, or groups of people.
- A K-shaped recovery leads to changes in the structure of the economy or the broader society as economic outcomes and relations are fundamentally changed before and after the recession.
- This type of recovery is called K-shaped because the path of different parts of the economy when charted together may diverge, resembling the two arms of the Roman letter “K.
- Several different economic phenomena may be at work in driving a K-shaped recovery. First, a K-shaped recovery can reflect creative destruction in an economy described by economist Josef Schumpeter, which is when new technologies and industries replace older technologies and industries over the course of a recession.
- Second, it can reflect the public policy response to a recession in terms of monetary and fiscal policy, which can benefit some segments of the economy more than others.
- Lastly, it can simply reflect the differential impact that the initial recession had on different parts of the economy in the first place, especially when the recession coincides with or is triggered by negative real economic shocks that impact specific parts of the economy and can have lasting effects on them more than others.
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Organic farming
- Organic farming is a method of farming system which primarily aimed at cultivating the land and raising crops in such a way, as to keep the soil alive and in good health by use of organic wastes (crop, animal and farm wastes, aquatic wastes) and other biological materials along with beneficial microbes (bio fertilizers) to release nutrients to crops for increased sustainable production in an eco-friendly pollution free environment.
The four principles of organic agriculture are as follows:
- Principle of health
- Principle of ecology
- Principle of fairness
Organic Agriculture should build on relationships that ensure fairness with regard to the common environment and life opportunities.
- Fairness is characterized by equity, respect, justice and stewardship of the shared world, both among people and in their relations to other living beings.
Principle of care
- Organic Agriculture should be managed in a precautionary and responsible manner to protect the health and well-being of current and future generations and the environment.
- Organic agriculture is a living and dynamic system that responds to internal and external demands and conditions
Constraints
- Marketing of organic farming produce is the main problem for organic growers.
- The lack of awareness among people (customers/buyers) is the main hurdle in selling organic products.
- Further the cost of the organic products is high which only the elite and foreigners can afford. Moreover peoples should verify the organically certified produces before buying.
- Organic growers are not in a position to spend money towards the organic certification
- Lack of organic sale units.
- There is consensus in the scientific community that organic agriculture could reduce crop yield.
- The yield reduction in organic agricultural systems could be 19-25%, depending on the crop and agro-climatic region. To switch to 100% organic agriculture, a country must have robust scientific evidence and a meticulously planned methodology along with targeted actions.
- Otherwise, it will plunge into a food crisis, if food security cannot be achieved by other means.
Regulatory framework-Telecos vs internet form
- The telecommunication sector is made up of companies that make communication possible on a global scale, whether it is through the phone or the Internet, through airwaves or cables, through wires or wirelessly.
- These companies created the infrastructure that allows data in words, voice, audio, or video to be sent anywhere in the world
- Internet company may refer to:
- Internet service provider, a company whose main activity is providing Internet access to customers
- Dot-com company, a company which does most of its business on the Internet.
- It is evident that the success of Internet firms and telcos goes hand in hand.
- However, the ownership of approximately 18% of Jio by Facebook and Google provides a hint that new dynamics are on the horizon with the evolution of 5G technologies, we are seeing the growth of an integrated sphere of cooperation as well as competition between telcos and Internet companies on account of substitute services, and competition in complementary value networks.
- The growth in over-the-top (OTT) messaging services provided by Internet firms has been accompanied by significant reductions in the revenues of text messaging services provided by telcos.
- Complementary value networks or ‘Walled Gardens’ comprise a bouquet of services provided by network operators, handset manufacturers, platform vendors, and content providers.
- A Walled Garden is a closed ecosystem in which all the operations are controlled by the ecosystem operator.
- An example is the one created by Apple with exclusive wholesale agreements with AT&T Wireless in the early 2000s for its iPhones.
- By subsidising the iPhone with long tenure contractual agreements, and creating a proprietary app store, Apple created a walled garden.
- When net neutrality was conceptualised in the early 2000s, it was meant to stem the significant market power of telcos, which provide an essential service.
- A dominant telco can hinder competition in a downstream market by a vertical merger with content and application providers.
- Net neutrality regulation that prohibits discriminatory treatment of Internet companies either with respect to pricing or traffic management in a sense eliminates any incentive for vertical integration.
- The Internet has evolved to a point where many Internet companies also provide an essential service and enjoy significant market power.
- For instance, web search, a market dominated by Google, is often the starting point for navigating the World Wide Web.
- Without search neutrality, search results may be manipulated to favour certain firms.
- There is an element of competition between telcos and Internet companies in the context of overlapping services and walled gardens.
- Hence, there is a need for a measure of regulatory parity between the two.
- In the U.S. and in India, while the sector regulator makes rules for telcos, the competition regulator oversees the behaviour of the Internet firms.
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China in Afghanistan
- A number of Chinese companies have already begun “onsite inspections” of possible projects to tap lithium deposits in Afghanistan, having received the green light to do so from the Taliban regime, according to a report.
- Lithium is one of many resources in Afghanistan present in large deposits but as yet untapped, largely because of years of political instability and the lack of infrastructure.
- A Chinese company secured the rights to mine one of the world’s biggest copper reserves in Afghanistan at Aynak more than a decade ago, but has not yet begun work on extraction.
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