Daily Prelims Notes 18 July 2020

July 18, 2020
Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
Category: DPN

Table Of Contents

1. UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)

Subject: IR

Context:

In high-Level Segment of the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) session, Indian Prime Minister has stressed the importance of multilateralism and called for reforms in United Nations

Concept:

The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) is one of the 6 principal organs of the United Nations System established by the UN Charter in 1945.
It consists of 54 Members of the United Nations elected by the General Assembly.
ECOSOC coordinates economic, social, and related work of the fourteen United Nations specialized agencies, functional commissions and five regional commissions.
It serves as the central forum for discussing international economic and social issues, and for formulating policy recommendations addressed to Member States and the United Nations system. It is responsible for:
Promoting higher standards of living, full employment, and economic and social progress
Identifying solutions to international economic, social and health problems
Facilitating international cultural and educational cooperation
Encouraging universal respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.

2. Multidimensional Poverty Index

Subject: Economy

Context:

A report “Charting pathways out of multidimensional poverty: Achieving the SDGs“ is released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).

Findings:

The Multidimensional poverty Index was observed in 75 countries from the East, Central and South Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa as well as the Pacific.
The report was meant to provide a comprehensive picture of global trends in multidimensional poverty covering five billion people.
The study has found that four countries India Armenia, Nicaragua and North Macedonia have reduced their MPI by half or more in 5.5 to 10.5 years.
More than 270 million people in India were lifted out of poverty from 2005 to 2016-the largest by any country in that period
According to the study, 55.1 per cent of the population in India lived under multidimensional poverty in 2005-06. In 2015-16, it came down to 27.9 per cent.
As of 2015-16, the intensity of deprivation was 43.9 per cent, while the population under severe multidimensional poverty was 8.8 per cent.
According to the study, 37.7 crore people in India lived under multidimensional poverty as of 2018.

Concept:

Multidimensional poverty encompasses the various deprivations experienced by poor people in their daily lives such as poor health, lack of education, inadequate living standards, poor quality of work, the threat of violence, and living in areas that are environmentally hazardous, among others.
Poverty can be defined as a condition in which an individual or household lacks the financial resources to afford a basic minimum standard of living.

Poverty Measurement

Economists and policymakers estimate “absolute” poverty as the shortfall in consumption expenditure from a threshold called the “poverty line”.
The official poverty line is the expenditure incurred to obtain the goods in a “poverty line basket” (PLB).
Poverty can be measured in terms of the number of people living below this line (with the incidence of poverty expressed as the head count ratio).
Six official committees have so far estimated the number of people living in poverty in India :
The working group of 1962
V N Dandekar and N Rath in 1971
Y K Alagh in 1979; D T Lakdawala in 1993
Suresh Tendulkar in 2009
C Rangarajan in 2014
The government did not take a call on the report of the Rangarajan Committee; therefore, poverty is measured using the Tendulkar poverty line. As per this, 21.9% of people in India live below the poverty line.

Tendulkar committee

The committee was constituted by the Planning Commission to address the following shortcomings of the previous methods:
Changes in the consumption patterns of the poor since that time, which were not reflected in the poverty estimates.
There were issues with the adjustment of prices for inflation, both spatially (across regions) and temporally (across time).
It recommended four major changes:
A shift away from calorie consumption-based poverty estimationto Nutritional outcomes
A uniform poverty line baskets (PLB) across rural and urban India;
A change in the price adjustment procedure to correct spatial and temporal issues with price adjustment; and
Incorporation of private expenditure on health and education while estimating poverty.
It based its calculations on the consumption of the following items: cereal, pulses, milk, edible oil, non-vegetarian items, vegetables, fresh fruits, dry fruits, sugar, salt & spices, other food, intoxicants, fuel, clothing, footwear, education, medical (non-institutional and institutional), entertainment, personal & toilet goods, other goods, other services and durables.
The Committee computed new poverty lines for rural and urban areas of each state.

3. Herd immunity

Subject: Science and tech

Context:

Recent study found that herd immunity threshold (HIT) required to prevent a resurgence of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) is in excess of 50 per cent for any epidemiological setting.

Concept:

Herd immunity happens when so many people in a community become immune to an infectious disease that it stops the disease from spreading. This can happen in two ways:

Many people contract the disease and in time build up an immune response to it (natural immunity).
Many people are vaccinated against the disease to achieve immunity.

When a large percentage of the population becomes immune to a disease, the spread of that disease slows down or stops. Many viral and bacterial infections spread from person to person. This chain is broken when most people don’t get or transmit the infection. This helps protect people who aren’t vaccinated or who have low functioning immune systems and may develop an infection more easily

4. Strategic Petroleum Reserves

Subject: Economy

Context:

India and USA signed MoU to begin cooperation on operation and maintenance of strategic petroleum reserves, including exchange of information and best practices, and also discussed the possibility of India storing oil in the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to increase India’s strategic oil stockpile.

Concept:

Government of India decided to set up 5 million metric tons (MMT) of strategic crude oil storages at three locations namely, Visakhapatnam, Mangalore and Padur (near Udupi).
These strategic storages would be in addition to the existing storages of crude oil and petroleum products with the oil companies and would serve as a cushion during any supply disruptions.
Government established additional 6.5 Million Metric Tonne (MMT) Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) facilities at two locations, i.e. Chandikhol in Odisha and Padur in Karnataka
Responsibility:The construction of the Strategic Crude Oil Storage facilities is being managed by Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Limited (ISPRL), a Special Purpose Vehicle, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Oil Industry Development Board (OIDB) under the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas.
Uses: Total 5.33 MMT capacity under Phase-I of the SPR programme is currently estimated to supply approximately 10 days of India’s crude requirement according to the consumption data for FY2016-17. Cabinet’s approval for establishing additional 6.5 MMT Strategic Petroleum Reserve facilities will provide an additional supply of about 12 days and is expected to augment India’s energy security.

5. IPOs

Subject: Economy

Context:

There are only 2 Initial public offerings in last 6 months in both NSE and BSE.

Concept:

Initial public offering is the process by which a private company can go public by sale of its stocks to general public. It could be a new, young company or an old company which decides to be listed on an exchange and hence goes public.
Companies can raise equity capital with the help of an IPO by issuing new shares to the public or the existing shareholders can sell their shares to the public without raising any fresh capital.
After IPO, the company’s shares are traded in an open market. Those shares can be further sold by investors through secondary market trading.

6. UN resolution 1267

Subject: IR

Context:

The United Nations designated Pakistan based terror organisation Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan’s leader, Mufti Noor WaliMehsud, as a global terrorist.

Concept:

Article 41 of the United Nations Charter gives the Security Council the authority to use a variety of measures to enforce its decisions. The Council regularly creates subsidiary organs to support or implement these measures. Among the most common are those measures that are known as “sanctions”, which are generally supported by a Committee, as well as Panels/Groups of Experts or other mechanisms to monitor implementation of the sanctions.
By resolution 1267 (1999) of 15 October 1999, the Security Council established a Committee to oversee the implementation of targeted sanctions measures against designated individuals, entities and aircraft that were owned, controlled, leased or operated by the Taliban.
The measures were subsequently modified, particularly by resolutions 1333 (2000) and 1390 (2002), to include an assets freeze, travel ban and an arms embargo affecting designated individuals and entities associated with Usama bin Laden, and the Taliban wherever they are located.
By resolution 2253 (2015) of 17 December 2015, the Security Council decided to expand the listing criteria to include individuals and entities supporting the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).