Daily Current Affairs: Mains

 

• Relation to Tuberculosis (TB) report with malnutrition

Context

• The Annual India Tuberculosis (TB) report released by the government says that India is now home to about a quarter of the total global TB patients.
• The current government is committed to ending TB in India by 2025.

TB in relations with Malnutrition and Sanitation

• Prime Minister declared that rural India was open defecation free (ODF).
• The Global Hunger Index 2019 put India at 102 in a list of 117 countries. India’s ranking was below Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
• It has been established beyond doubt that TB is more of a social disease owing to its roots to poverty, malnutrition and poor sanitary conditions.

State of TB in India

• The TB report reveals the progress on the government’s action plan on combating TB.
• As per the report, 21.5 lakh TB cases were reported in the country in 2018. This is the highest number of TB cases registered in any country.
• The report says that with the introduction of Nikshay – the computer-based surveillance programme for TB patients, the reporting of TB cases has improved dramatically.

Discuss the barriers to TB notifications

• The working of such a surveillance programme in an unequal country like India should be taken with a pinch of salt.
• In a paper published in the BMJ Open concluded that despite a national notification system of Nikshay other factors decide notification of patients.
• Issues like patient confidentiality, poor knowledge of notification system, etc, prevented notification of TB patients in a hospital setting.
• These factors are social and without intervening at that level, it is hard to believe that notification of TB cases can reach a significant number by 2025.
• Of the total notifications, 5.4 lakh cases were from the private sector, an increase of 40% from last year. More than 80% of healthcare is now being delivered by private health enterprises.

Key issues in TB control for public health system

Public health

• An increase in the notification of TB patients could be heartening for the government. But is not a good indicator for the public health system.

Hunger

• The GHI report reminds that a hungry India cannot be free of TB.
• Dietary deprivation is a direct indicator of inequality. Unequal societies cannot be made free of disease and infirmity.
• BMC Pulmonary Medicine journal from Ethiopia shows that the proportion of malnutrition in TB patients was nearly 60%.
• Even a very distal reason for malnutrition in the community became a proximal cause for TB.

Open Defecation

• TB and sanitation have a direct causal relationship.
• The Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme run by the National Centre for Disease Control maintains a web portal that
  details the outbreak of epidemics.
• The validity of the claims of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SAB) through this data shows that there was no statistically significant reduction in the occurrence of vector-borne epidemics in the country, two years after the launch of SAB.

Conclusion

• To end TB is not possible till we end malnutrition, poverty and poor sanitation.
• We need a paradigm shift in the response to TB. This should include a more sensitive approach on gender and towards the underprivileged.

 

 

• Draft notification for Sukhna Lake

Context

• The Chandigarh administration had on Monday issued a draft notification for declaring Sukhna Lake as a wetland under the Wetland (Conservation and Management) Rule, 2017.
• Suggestions and objections have been invited from residents for the same.
• Sukhna Lake was declared a wetland more than 30 years ago as well. A status report placed before the Punjab and Haryana High Court recently stated that the UT administrator had issued such a notification on July 6, 1988, as well.
• The new notification will include the public’s suggestions and objections as required under the 2017 rules.

When was this decision taken?

• In July this year, the Chandigarh Wetlands Authority had unanimously decided to declare the Sukhna Lake as a wetland.
• It was the second meeting of the Union Territory of Chandigarh Wetlands Authority that was chaired by Punjab Governor and Chandigarh Administrator V P Singh Badnore.
• At the meeting, officers of the Punjab and Haryana government were also asked to join UT in conserving the lake.

How will this help Sukhna?

• Declaring Sukhna a wetland will help preserve the lake and conserve its ecological and biodiversity.
• A major threat to Sukhna is the discharge of pollutants from neighbouring areas. Sukhna Wetland is spread over 565 acres.
• The catchment area of Sukhna Wetland spreading over 10,395 acres as finalised by the Survey of India includes 2,525 acres of Haryana and 684 acres of Punjab.
• With this, various activities will be prohibited/regulated/ promoted both in the wetland as well catchment areas.

What activities will be prohibited?

• Encroachment of any kind, setting up of any industry and expansion of existing industries, manufacturing or handling or storage or disposal of construction and demolition waste covered under the Construction and Demolition Waste Management Rules, 2016.
• The hazardous substances covered under the Manufacture, Storage and Import of Hazardous Chemical Rules, 1989, or the Rules for Manufacture, Use, Import, Export and Storage of Hazardous Micro-organisms Genetically Engineered Organisms or Cells, 1989, or the Hazardous Waste (Management, Handling and Trans-Boundary Movement) Rules, 2008.
• This also includes electronic waste covered under the E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2016, solid waste dumping, discharge of
  untreated waste and effluents from industries, cities, towns, villages and other human settlements and any construction of a permanent nature within specific distance of the wetland.

Way ahead

• The administration had recently introduced a programme to include villagers of Kaimbwala under the ‘Friends of Sukhna’ — a voluntary program to keep a check on activities taking place in the area.

 

 

• Highlights of the FMCG report on domestic consumption

Context

• Growth in private final consumption in the June 2019 quarter slid to 6.2 per cent, down from 14.1 per cent in the September quarter of 2018; industrial production contracted by 1.1 per cent in August, wholesale price index moved close to zero, and Markit India Services PMI crashed to 48.7 in September.
• The slowdown seems to have impacted rural consumption of fast-moving consumer goods.

Highlights of the FMCG report

• Nielson Holding Plc’s report on the FMCG segment for the September 2019 quarter has pointed out that overall growth in value of
  FMCG sales halved in the September 2019 quarter, compared to last year.
• Growth in FMCG volumes has dived from 13.9 per cent in the third quarter of 2018 to 3.9 per cent this year.
• What is of greater worry is that rural sales grew 5 per cent in the recent quarter, much slower than the growth in urban sales, which was 8 per cent.
• The Confederation of All India Traders is also of the opinion that the consumption slowdown, along with shift to online purchases, has affected festival sales.
• Gold-jewellery makers have been hurt by the sharp increase in gold prices dampening demand.
• This, along with the higher import duty, is said to be behind the lacklustre sales in the period before Diwali this year.

Shifting sales pattern

• However, there is optimism among jewellery makers that with the wedding season to begin soon, jewellery sales can revive in the penultimate months of this calendar.
• Automakers are also adopting a positive tone in their management notes, stating that the foot-falls in show rooms have improved in recent months.
• A bright spot in the festival season sales in 2019 has been online sales.
• E-commerce majors including Amazon and Flipkart have claimed a lofty 33 per cent growth in festival shopping over last year, towards the beginning of October.
• These sales are said to be led by loans by banks, attractive EMIs and exchange schemes, and availability of a wide range of products.

Way forward

• What is heartening is that demand from rural customers has been robust in online sales, with Amazon India claiming that 88 per cent of its customers were from smaller towns and rural areas.
• The Nielson report states that FMCG sales can revive by the end of this year as the festival season progresses and e-commerce sales increase.
• It may be a little too soon to write off rural consumption just yet.