5 Key Points on India’s Act Far East Policy

1. PM Modi unveiled the "Act Far East" policy to boost India's engagement with Russia's Far East region.
2. For the development of Far East, India will give line of credit worth $ 1 billion.
3. Ahead of the PM’s trip, commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal led a delegation of four BJP chief ministers and 140 businessmen last month to the Russian Far East in a bid to stamp India’s presence in a region currently dominated by China.
4. In many ways India’s presence and involvement in sparsely populated Russian Far East as part of its Indo-Pacific strategy will balance Chinese presence in this region of Russia on the Pacific coast.
5. India's connection to Russia's Far East go back a long way. India was the first country to open a Consulate in Vladivostok.

5 Points on Spiraling Tension between USA-IRAN

1. US Withdrawal from Nuclear Deal: In May 2018, the U.S. withdrew from the 2015 nuclear agreement reached between the P5+1 countries, the European Union, and Iran, which Mr. Trump once derided as the “the worst ever deal”. That move was in disregard of the opinions of the International Atomic Energy Agency and Mr. Trump’s own top advisers that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action had proved effective.
2. There has not been any let-up from the U.S. strategy of exerting “maximum pressure” on Iran so far. In August 2019, the administration imposed sanctions against Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
3. In April 2019, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was designated a terrorist organisation.
4. Iran’s Economic Isolation: Tehran’s crude exports are said to have plummeted to 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) or less since April 2018 levels (more than 2.5 million bpd), according to estimates. Corporations that continue to do business with Iran face the risk of being cut off from the dollar system.
5. Rising Tension in West Asia: In retaliation to these measures, Iran demonstrated its ability to paralyse Western maritime operations by seizing oil tankers off the Gulf of Hormuz. While Mr. Trump held back from a counter-offensive following the downing of a U.S. drone, the missile attack amplified the risk of conflict in the region.

5 Reasons Why Teaching Quality is Poor in India

Introduction: The Indian teacher, once a foot soldier in the freedom struggle and a contributor to nation building in the early years after Independence, now stands relegated to the margins of public life.

1. Poor Quality Graduates: Graduates whose college education is of poor quality cannot be expected to overcome their learning backlog at a training institute.
2. National Council of Teacher Education (NCTE) Failed as a Regulator: The teacher-training sector became so afflicted by fraudulent institutions and practices that internal mechanisms of correction proved inadequate. Hundreds of cases against bogus institutions reached the Supreme Court, which appointed a commission chaired by late Justice J.S. Verma. For a few years after 2012, when its report was published, an attempt was made to implement its recommendations, but the momentum slowed down before long.
3. Difficult to Sustain Idealism: In a consumption-oriented environment, the kind of idealism school teaching requires is not easy for a young person to cultivate and sustain. The working conditions and ethos at their respective schools erode the stamina of the few who start with a sense of dedication.
4. Family’s cooperation to teachers has receded: Many parents now treat their progeny’s school life as an ‘investment’ for which they demand the best ‘value’, often by relentlessly criticising the teacher and the principal. They don’t know the burden teachers carry on their fragile, ill-equipped professional shoulders. This burden includes the weight of family and community life, and the pressure coming from officialdom.
5. Lure of the Coaching Industry: Para-professionals have been growing in number and influence. They are known by various names in different States, but they also exist in vast numbers outside the system — as providers of home tuition and coaching. This underbelly of the education system suffers no interference from state norms. In the world of coaching, we see the utopia of free enterprise and the demise of teaching as noble work.

5 Points on Hepatitis B Virus in India

1. Morbidity and Mortality Statistics: Despite the introduction of hepatitis B vaccine in the Universal Immunisation Programme in 2002 and scaling-up nationwide in 2011, about one million people in India become chronically infected with the virus every year. According to the Health Ministry, as on February 2019, an estimated 40 million people in India were infected. Hepatitis B infection at a young age turns chronic, causing over 1,00,000 premature deaths annually from liver cirrhosis or liver cancer.
2. Vaccination Coverage Increased; Disease Uncontrolled: According to the WHO, the coverage of hepatitis B third dose had reached 86% in 2015. However, despite the high vaccination coverage, disease prevalence in children aged less than five years has not dropped below 1%.
3. First 24 Hour Period Crucial: One of the reasons for this is the sub-optimal coverage of birth dose in all infants within 24 hours of birth. Even seven years after the Health Ministry approved the birth dose in 2008, its coverage remained low — 45% in 2015 and 60% in 2016 — according to a 2019 Health Ministry report.
4. Awareness and Training of Health Workers: One of the reasons for the low coverage is the fear of wastage of vaccine when a 10-dose vial is used. Unfortunately, health-care workers are very often unaware of the WHO recommendation that allows hepatitis B open-vial policy. Opened vials of hepatitis B vaccine can be kept for a maximum duration of 28 days for use in other children if the vaccine meets certain conditions.
5. Conclusion: Awareness and Achievement: There is also a need to increase public awareness about the merits of the birth dose. On September 3, 2019, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Thailand became the first four countries in the World Health Organization’s southeast Asia region to have successfully controlled hepatitis B. India must follow suit.

5 Ways How Motor Vehicle Amendment Act 2019 Helps Accident Victims

1. Enhanced Compensation: The amended Act gives the victims some respite as it provides for an enhanced insurance compensation of ₹5 lakh in case of death of a person in a traffic accident and ₹2.5 lakh where there is “grievous hurt”. The compensation to be awarded following hit-and-run accidents has also been raised to ₹2 lakh when a victim dies and ₹50,000 when he/she suffers a grievous injury.
2. Treatment during Golden Hour: Additionally, the Act now requires insurance companies and the government to notify schemes relating to cashless treatment during the ‘Golden Hour’ — the period of first 60 minutes from the occurrence of an accident when the risk of fatality can be minimised to the greatest extent.
3. Compulsory Insurance: It mandates compulsory insurance of all road users, including pedestrians, who will be covered through a ‘Motor Vehicle Accident Fund’.
4. Interim Relief: It also provides for interim relief to be provided to the claimants.
5. Passage to Ambulance: Vehicle users who don’t give passage to emergency ambulance vehicle are liable to be punished with fines

5 Points on Hunger & Malnutrition in India

1. Statistics: Food and Agriculture Report, 2018 stated that India houses 195.9 million of the 821 million undernourished people in the world, accounting for approximately 24% of the world’s hungry. Prevalence of undernourishment in India is 14.8%, higher than both the global and Asian average.
2. Statistics: It has been “reported in 2017 by the National Health Survey (NHS) that approximately 19 crore people in the country were compelled to sleep on an empty stomach every night. Moreover, the most alarming figure revealed is that approximately 4500 children die every day under the age of five years in our country resulting from hunger and malnutrition, amounting to over three lakh deaths every year owing to hunger, of children alone”.
3. Solution 1: State-funded community kitchen: Tamil Nadu's Amma Unavagam had become a roaring success by involving peers in self-help groups, employing the poor to serve hygienic food to eradicate the gnawing problem of hunger on the streets. Rajasthan's Annapurna Rasoi, Indira Canteens in Karnataka, Delhi's Aam Aadmi Canteen, Anna Canteen in Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand Mukhyamantri Dal Bhat and Odisha's Ahaar Centre were combating starvation and malnutrition crisis.
4. Solution 2: Creation of a national food grid by the Centre that would be beyond the scope of the Public Distribution Scheme (PDS).
5. Conclusion: Starvation deaths continue to eat into the right to life and dignity of social fabric and a “radical” new measure like community kitchens need to be set up across the country to feed the poor and the hungry.

5 Significance of NHRC Amendment

1. The proposed amendments will enable both the National Commission as well as the State Commissions to be more compliant with the Paris Principles concerning its autonomy, independence, pluralism and wide-ranging functions in order to effectively protect and promote human rights.
2. Filling up the Vacancies: The age limit for appointment to the panel has been reduced and qualification required have been eased to fill the vacancies. The amendment has ensured transparency in the appointment of Chairman and members of the Commission.
3. Enabling conditions to incorporate Civil Society: Effort is to also to increase the presence of civil Society in the composition of the Commission. Originally act provided appointment of 2 members having knowledge of human rights to be appointed. This has been expanded to 3, of which at least one will be a women.
4. Ease of accessibility: The applicants in Union Territories can now appeal in the human Rights Commission of nearby states instead of coming all the way to Delhi. Central government may confer on a SHRC human rights functions being discharged by Union Territories.
5. The Act provides for including the chairpersons of the National Commission for Backward Classes, the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights, and the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities as members of the NHRC.