RCEP trade deal hurts Indian farmers
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India was dropping out of the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership), citing its negative effects on “farmers, MSMEs and the dairy sector”.
News in Detail:
- The RCEP is a proposed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between sixteen countries namely 10 countries of ASEAN (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) and their six FTA partners (also known as AFP’s or ASEAN FTA Partners) namely Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea and New Zealand.
- RCEP negotiations were formally launched in 2012 at the ASEAN Summit in Cambodia.
- The 16-member RCEP bloc aims to cover among the issues related to goods, services, investments, economic and technical cooperation, competition and intellectual property rights.
Reasons behind India walking out of it:
- The present form of the RCEP agreement does not address satisfactorily India’s outstanding issues and concerns. Indian farmers, traders, professionals and industrialists have protested against the government’s decision to go ahead with the negotiations.
- Because Indian products face high non-tariff barriers (NTBs) like food-related and other standards, as well as technical barriers in Japan, Australia and New Zealand, exports are difficult.
- At the same time, NTBs are lower in India. When tariffs are reduced, Australia, New Zealand, and ASEAN countries will be the major beneficiaries.
Artificial Emotional Intelligence
Relevance: Mains: G.S paper III: Science and technology
- Research firm Gartner has predicted that by 2024, the World Health Organisation (WHO) will identify online shopping as an addictive disorder, as millions abuse digital commerce and encounter financial stress.
News in detail
- Consumer spending via digital commerce platforms will continue to grow over 10 per cent year over year through 2022.
- The ease of online shopping will cause financial stress for millions of people, as online retailers increasingly use artificial intelligence (AI) and personalisation to effectively target consumers and prompt them to spend discretionary income that they do not have.
- The resulting debt and personal bankruptcies will cause depression and other health concerns caused by stress, which is capturing the attention of the WHO.
- By 2024, AI identification of emotions will influence more than half of the online advertisements you see. Artificial emotional intelligence (AEI) is the next frontier for AI development, especially for companies hoping to detect emotions in order to influence buying decisions.
Oligomannate
Relevance: Mains: G.S paper III: Health
- China announced that GV-971 or “Oligomannate”, a new drug, meant to potentially treat Alzheimer’s disease, will be available to Chinese patients by the end of this year.
News in detail
- GV-971 or “Oligomannate” is a seaweed-based drug, administered orally.
- Chinese researchers have claimed it is capable of treating mild to moderate Alzheimer’s and may improve cognition.
- It has been jointly developed by the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica and the Ocean University of China and Green Valley Pharmaceutical Company Ltd.
Alzheimer’s disease
- Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive brain disorder that typically affects people older than 65. When it affects younger individuals, it is considered early onset.
- Alzheimer’s involves two proteins, called beta amyloids and tau. When levels of either protein reach abnormal levels in the brain, it leads to the formation of plaque, which gets deposited between neurons, damaging and disrupting nerve cells.
- Alzheimer’s disease is also the most common cause of dementia — which is a syndrome and not a disease in itself, and whose symptoms include loss of memory, thinking skills, problems with language, changes in mood and deterioration in behaviour.
Wastelands atlas 2019
Relevance: Mains: G.S Paper III: Indian Economy
- The Union Minister for Agriculture released the Wastelands Atlas – 2019.
News in detail
- The Department of Land Resources in collaboration with National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Department of Space has published Wastelands Atlases of India – 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2011 editions. The new wastelands mapping exercise, carried out by NRSC using the Indian Remote Sensing Satellite data is brought out as the fifth edition of Wastelands Atlas – 2019.
- This Wastelands Atlas-2019 provides district and state wise distribution of different categories of wastelands area. The changes in wastelands between 2008-09 and 2015-16 have been presented in the Atlas.
- The effort has resulted in estimating the spatial extent of wastelands for entire country to the tune of 55.76 Mha (16.96 % of geographical area of the Country i.e. 328.72 Mha) for the year 2015-16 as compared to 56.60 Mha (17.21%) in the year 2008-09.
- During this period 1.45 Mha of wastelands are converted into non wastelands categories.
- There is a net conversion of 0.84 Mha (0.26%) of different wasteland categories in the country during 2008-09 to 2015-16.
- A reduction in wasteland area was observed in the categories of land with dense scrub, waterlogged and marshy land, sandy areas, degraded pastures / grazing land and gullied and / or ravinous land.
- The wastelands have undergone positive change in the states of Rajasthan (0.48 Mha), Bihar (0.11 Mha), Uttar Pradesh (0.10 Mha), Andhra Pradesh (0.08 Mha), Mizoram (0.057 Mha), Madhya Pradesh (0.039 Mha), Jammu & Kashmir (0.038 Mha) and West Bengal (0.032 Mha).
- Majority of wastelands have been changed into categories of ‘croplands’ (0.64 Mha), ‘forest-dense / open’ (0.28 Mha), ‘forest plantation’ (0.029 Mha), ‘plantation’ (0.057 Mha) and ‘industrial area’ (0.035 Mha) etc.