Global Hunger Index, 2018

Recently the 2018 Global Hunger Index (GHI) has been released which is a peer-reviewed annual publication by Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide (The International Food Policy Research Institute was also involved with the publication until 2018) .

• The Report shows that the world has made gradual progress in reducing overall hunger, but this progress has been uneven. Areas of severe hunger and undernutrition stubbornly persist, reflecting human misery for millions.
• India ranked 103 out of 119 countries in the GHI 2018 which dropped 3 places as compared to 100 out of 119 in 2017.

Global Hunger Index

• The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a tool designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger at global, regional, and national levels.
• The GHI is designed to raise awareness and understanding of the struggle against hunger, provide a way to compare levels of hunger between countries and regions, and call attention to those areas of the world where hunger levels are highest and where the need for additional efforts to eliminate hunger is greatest.
• GHI is calculated each year to assess progress and setbacks in combating hunger. It scores on a 100-point GHI Severity Scale, where 0 is the best score (no hunger) and 100 is the chronic undernutrition.
• Indicators for Calculating GHI Score:
  • UNDERNOURISHMENT: the share of the population that is undernourished (caloric intake is insufficient);
  • CHILD WASTING: the share of children under the age of five who are wasted (low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition);
  • CHILD STUNTING: the share of children under the age of five who are stunted (low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition); and
  • CHILD MORTALITY: the mortality rate of children under the age of five (reflection of the fatal mix of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments).

Key Findings

• Worldwide, the level of hunger and undernutrition falls into the serious category (with a GHI score of 20.9). However, there is a decline of 28% from the score of 29.2 in 2000.
• Achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 will remain a challenge which aims to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture, by 2030.
• If progress in reducing hunger and undernutrition continues on its current trajectory, an estimated 50 countries will fail to achieve low hunger by 2030.
• Hunger varies enormously by region as GHI scores reflect serious levels of hunger in South Asia and Africa in comparison to other regions which have low or moderate hunger levels.
• In both South Asia and Africa south of the Sahara, the rates of undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting, and child mortality are very high.
• Conflict and poor climatic conditions both separately and together have worsened undernourishment in these regions.
• Conflict has also compromised children’s nutritional status, and the impact of conflict on child mortality is starkly evident. For eg. the 10 countries with the world’s highest under-five mortality rates are all in Africa south of the Sahara, and 7 of these are considered fragile states.
• Hunger may be both a cause and a consequence of forced migration, for about 70 million displaced people, including internally displaced people, refugees, and asylum seekers.
• India’s hunger level is categorised as “serious”. Its score is 31.1, which is 7.7 points lesser than in 2000, but higher than the global average of 20.9 (higher the score, worse the situation).
• At least one in five Indian children under the age of five are ‘wasted’.
• India has shown improvement in three of the indicators (undernourishment, mortality and stunting) over the comparable reference years.
• However, the prevalence of child wasting has worsened in comparison to previous reference years which is associated with a low maternal body mass index, suggesting the need for a focus on the nutritional status of the mother during pregnancy.
• Further, wasting rates are highest for infants aged 0 to 5 months, suggesting that attention to birth outcomes and breastfeeding is important.

Policy Recommendations

• Resources and attention should be focussed on the regions of the world where the majority of displaced people are located: low- and middle-income countries and the least-developed countries.Displaced people and host communities in these countries should receive strong, sustained support from governments and international organizations.
• UN Resolution 2417 (2018) should be followed, which focuses on the links between armed conflict, conflict-induced food insecurity, and the threat of famine. A robust monitoring, reporting, and accountability mechanism for addressing violations should be introduced.
• Actions should be prioritized to address the special vulnerabilities and challenges of women and girls to ensure their access to assets, services, productive and financial resources, and income-generating opportunities.
• Investment should be scaled up and governance should be improved to accelerate development in rural areas, where large numbers of displaced people originate and where hunger is often greatest.
• Support should be provided for people’s efforts to diversify their livelihoods and secure access to land, markets, and services.
• Sustainable agricultural practices should be promoted that will increase households’ resilience and enhance domestic food supplies.

Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has launched a Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) in India.

• The centre would aim to bring together the government and business leaders to pilot emerging technology policies.
• The centre would be based in Maharashtra. Drones, artificial intelligence and blockchain have been selected as the first three project areas.

Key Points

• As part of the WEF’s global network, the new centre in India will work closely with project teams in San Francisco (USA), Tokyo (Japan) and Beijing (China), where such Centres are already present.
• NITI Aayog will coordinate the partnership on behalf of the government and among the multiple ministries.
• The WEF has also entered into partnerships with the Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh governments for the new initiative and more states would be roped in going forward.
• The initial efforts at the national level are focused on two emerging technology areas-
  • Artificial intelligence and machine learning: expanding access to data to accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence in socio-economic areas like education, healthcare and agriculture.
  • Blockchain and distributed ledger technology: application of smart contracts (the terms of the agreement between buyer and seller are directly written into lines of code) to boost productivity and transparency while reducing inefficiency
• At the state level, the Government of Maharashtra in collaboration with the Centre is planning to undertake a drone mapping operation in the agriculture sector.

Benefits

• Emerging fields, including Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Internet of Things, Blockchain, and Big Data, can improve the quality of life of Indian citizens.
  • In this regard, the government has recently exempted wireless devices that operate in low-frequency range like bluetooth, wireless chargers, internet-of-things products, medical devices etc from licensing requirement. This is particularly significant for easing business for the emerging smart industry for machine-to-machine communications both in industrial and consumer applications.
• The Digital India movement has brought data connectivity to the villages of India. Tele-density, internet coverage, and mobile internet subscriptions have increased tremendously in the recent past. There has been a rapid growth in the number of Common Service Centres (access points for delivery of essential public utility services, social welfare schemes, healthcare, financial, education and agriculture services, apart from a host of B2C services to citizens in rural and remote areas) in India.
• India has the highest mobile data consumption in the world and is also the country where data is available at the lowest price. Currently, India’s digital infrastructure and its interfaces include Aadhaar, Unified Payment Interface, National Agriculture MArket (e-NAM), and Government e-Marketplace (GeM).
• A national strategy for creating a robust infrastructure for research in Artificial Intelligence has recently been prepared. The new Centre will strengthen this process.
• Along with all these changes, Industry 4.0, and the expansion of Artificial Intelligence can lead to better health care, and reduce expenditure on health.
• It can also help farmers, and be of immense help in the agriculture sector. It can play a key role in other areas such as transportation and smart mobility.

4th Industrial Revolution

• The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production. The Second used electric power to create mass production. The Third used electronics and information technology to automate production. Now a Fourth Industrial Revolution which builds upon the Third, the digital revolution has been occurring since the middle of the 20th century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.
• When compared with previous industrial revolutions, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace (linear pace is steadier whereas exponential is much faster). Moreover, it is disrupting almost every industry in every country. The depth and breadth of these changes bring out the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance.
• The Fourth Industrial Revolution has the potential to raise global income levels and improve the quality of life for populations around the world.
• Transportation and communication costs will drop, logistics and global supply chains will become more effective, and the cost of trade will diminish, all of which will open new markets and drive economic growth.
• However, economists have pointed out, that the revolution could yield greater inequality, particularly by disrupting labor markets. As automation substitutes for labour across the entire economy, the net displacement of workers by machines might widen the gap between returns to capital (profit to the entrepreneurs) and returns to labour (wages earned by the labours).
• On the other hand, it is also possible that the displacement of workers by technology will, in the aggregate, result in a net increase in safe and rewarding jobs.
• Concerns have also been raised regarding the increasing societal inequality due to technological interventions. The largest beneficiaries of innovation tend to be the providers of intellectual and physical capital (the innovators, shareholders, and investors). The few capital investors tend to reap much more benefit than the large population of workers who are not investors.
• Also the demand for highly skilled workers is being seen to be increased while the demand for workers with less education and lower skills has decreased.

Way Forward

• Concerns have been raised that the technology will drive out jobs from the market, however, the leaders in the country have assured that 4th Industrial Revolution will create more opportunities in India while changing the nature of jobs.
• Government initiatives including Skill India Mission, Start-Up India, and Atal Innovation Mission are preparing the country for new and emerging technologies. The diversity, demographic potential, fast-growing market size, and digital infrastructure has the potential to make India a global hub for research and implementation.

Important Facts for Prelims (12th October 2018)

Global Financial Stability Report-October 2018

• The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has released its Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR) that assesses the stability of global financial markets and emerging-market financing. It is released twice per year, in April and October.
• The report analyses the key risks to global financial stability takes stock of the global regulatory reform agenda over the past decade and looks at whether the global financial ecosystem since the crisis (2008 financial crisis) has evolved in the intended direction.
• GFSR-2018 says that a stronger dollar, higher credit spreads, weaker equity prices, and higher domestic interest rates have led to a tightening of financial conditions in recent months which may lead to the fall in inflows from emerging markets.
• This drop in inflows will pose challenges to countries that rely heavily on external financing. In other words, financing India’s rising current account deficit is going to be challenging. It will also impact sovereign and corporate borrowers that are dependent on external financing.
• According to the report, the broad regulatory agenda set by the international community has helped strengthen the global banking system.
• However, it has warned that the regulators and supervisors must remain attentive to new risks, including possible threats to financial stability stemming from cybersecurity, financial technology, and other institutions or activities outside the perimeter of prudential regulation.

Black leopard In Tadoba Andheri Forest Reserve

• The black leopard, seen in Tadoba Reserve, is the melanistic color variant of Indian leopard (Panthera pardus fusca) which is subspecies of leopard native to Indian Sub-continent.
• Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972: Schedule I
• CITES Appendix I
• IUCN Red List: Near Threatened

Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve

• Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve is located in Chandrapur district, Maharashtra state, India.
• It is Maharashtra's oldest and largest national park.
• It is one of India's 50 "Project Tiger" - Tiger reserves.
• Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve was established as second Tiger Reserve in the Maharashtra State, in 1994-95
• It represents Southern Tropical Dry Deciduous Teak Forests in the Tiger habitat and viable tiger population of more than 40 tigers.

India - Indonesia Coordinated Patrol (CORPAT)

• Indian Naval ships and aircraft are participating in the 32nd edition of India – Indonesia coordinated patrol (IND-INDO CORPAT) in Indonesia.
• The ships and aircraft from both the countries would undertake patrolling on the respective sides of 236 nautical miles long International Maritime Boundary Line.
• The patrol seeks to emphasize India’s peaceful presence and solidarity with friendly countries towards ensuring good order in the maritime domain, consolidate interoperability and strengthen existing bonds of friendship between the two countries.