Current Affairs- 18 October

Current Affairs 18 October 2022

CONTENTS Poverty issues -MDPI. Fiscal policy Tokenisation of card Cyber threat Mains value addition Prelims, PIB

GS-I/II- Issues related to poverty

MULTIDIMENSIONAL POVERTY INDEX

2022 report

• About 41.5 crore people exited poverty in India during the 15-year period between 2005-06 and 2019-21, out of which two-third exited in the first 10 years, and one-third in the next five years, according to the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) .
• The incidence of poverty fell from 55.1% in 2005-06 to 16.4% in 2019-21 in the country and and incidence of poverty more than halved.
• it is for the first time that it is not the region with the highest number of poor people, at 38.5 crore, compared with 57.9 crore in Sub-Saharan Africa.
• The report doesn’t fully assess the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on poverty in India .
• India has by far the largest number of poor people worldwide at 22.8 crore, followed by Nigeria at 9.6 crore.
• There were also 9.7 crore poor children in India in 2019-2021 — more than the total number of poor people, children and adults combined, in any other country covered by the global MPI.

What is MPI?

Global MPI is an international measure of multidimensional poverty.

It covers 107 developing countries.

• It was first developed in 2010 by Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for UNDP’s Human Development Reports.

When is it released?

The Global MPI is released at the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development of the United Nations in July, every year.

Global MPI is computed by scoring each surveyed household on 10 parameters based on –

1. HEALTH (1/3^RD )- nutrition (1/6) , child mortality( 1/6 )
2. EDUCATION (1/3^RD )-  – years of schooling (1/6 ), school attendance(1/6) ,
3. LIVING STANDARDS (1/3^RD ) –  cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing and household assets.-Each has 1/18^th proportion.

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COVID-19 -POVERTY – FISCAL POLICY

Context – A recent World Bank report, titled “Correcting Course”, captures the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global poverty.

Stats

• The number of people living in extreme poverty rose by seven crore million in 2020, as the global poverty rate rose from 8.4% in 2019 to 9.3% in 2020. This is the first time in two decades that the poverty rate has gone up.
• Global inequalities have widened.

Fiscal policy as tool to reduce poverty

• The report focuses on fiscal policy as an instrument for governments in dealing with crises such as the pandemic.
• Poorer countries were unable to use fiscal policy as effectively.
• The report identifies three priorities for fiscal policy for governments to aid with post-pandemic recovery:
  • Targeted subsidies that benefit the poor;
  • public investment to build resilience in the long term; and
  • Revenue mobilisation that should rely on progressive direct taxation rather than indirect taxes.
  • These proved efficient in reducing poverty

How India fared

• India’s economy continues to be sluggish in 2022,
• The World Bank report relies on the Consumer Pyramids Household Survey (CPHS) by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), in the absence of official poverty data since 2011.
• By their estimate, 5.6 crore people are likely to have slipped into poverty as India’s GDP fell by 7.5% in FY2020-21. The population below poverty line in India stood at 10% in 2020.
• Refusal to provide a fiscal stimulus to consumption — the Government announced a fiscal stimulus worth ₹2 lakh crore, or 1% of GDP.
• The minor increase to the MGNREGA wage by ₹20 per day was a long-pending correction and quite inadequate to say the least.
• The majority of India’s stimulus package went to private enterprises, and did not   boost household-level consumption.
• A highlight, but no long-term solutionThe only saving grace is 80 crore people would get food aid through the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Ann Yojana (PMGKAY), .Food aid is not a long-term solution.
• Obtuse tax policies The reduced corporate tax from 30% to 22% cost the exchequer ₹1.84 lakh crore over the last two fiscal years, with increased corporate profits . While indirect taxes may help prop up public finances, they place a disproportionate burden on the poor.

Mandarins within India’s economic management establishment often claim that India kept its powder dry in 2020-2021 by being fiscally conservative.. In the last two years, the often-promised public capital expenditure has not fructified beyond repeated grand announcements. The economic mismanagement we were witness to in India resulted in 5.6 crore people slipping into extreme poverty in 2020.

(In exam u can write how fiscal policy reduces poverty but u cant criticise government policies unless asked critically examine.Be careful while writing opposite of government)

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GS-III- Economy

TOKENISATION TO PREVENT ONLINE CARD FRAUD

Context – The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has mandated the tokenisation of credit/debit cards for online merchants from October 1.

What is tokenisation?

• Tokenisation “refers to the replacement of actual card details with an alternative code called the ‘token’, which shall be unique for a combination of card and the token requestor
• Token requestor is  the entity which accepts the request from the customer for tokenisation of a card and passes it on to the card network to issue a corresponding token.
• So, if you use a mobile app or a website for online purchases, the merchant can, on your behalf but only with your explicit consent, raise a request for a token with the card issuing bank or the card network such as MasterCard.
• Done to avoid saving card details online

Why is tokenisation necessary?

1.To prevent economic loss – As per the RBI annual report 2021-22, in FY20 there were a reported 2,677 cases of card fraud via the internet involving ₹129 crore. While in FY21, the number of cases decreased to 2,545, it further increased to 3,596 cases in FY22 with the amount involved being ₹155 crore.

2. To avoid online fraud – Card thieves  clone your card with a skimmer, a gadget that quietly reads the magnetic strip at the back of your card.

Similarly, hackers can also break into online websites and mobile apps that store your credit card details.

Banks safety measures

1. The use of an OTP delivered to your registered mobile number to withdraw cash at ATMs.
2. Enabled the use of their mobile app to allow cash withdrawal without the physical use of cards.
3.  Credit card-issuing banks allow limits that you can set up yourself, per day, per transaction, etc on the bank’s app.
4. The tokenisation mandate of the RBI is a similar exercise in caution.

What are the benefits of tokenisation?

• The RBI says that a tokenised card transaction is safer as the actual card details are not shared with the merchant.
• The token generated upon request for a specific merchant is unique to a specific card number and is usable only on that particular site or mobile app. The token is useless outside of that merchant’s ecosystem.
• New mandate is only for the use of credit/debit cards online. For offline merchants, users would continue to swipe the cards on the POS machines .
• And if an undesirable third-party gains access to that specific token and shops within that specific website, the chances of identifying the party are more as their login and phone details would be with the site.

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GS-III -Security issues

TODAYS WEAPON OF CHOICE AND ITS EXPANDING DIMENSIONS

• As the 21st century advances, a new danger — the cyber threat — is becoming a hydra-headed monster.
• Cyber space has been described by Lt. Gen. Rajesh Pant (retired), India’s current national cyber security coordinator, as a “superset of interconnected information and communication technology, hardware, software processes, services, data and systems
• A cybersecurity threat is a malicious and deliberate attack by an individual or organization to gain unauthorized access to another individual’s or organization’s network to damage, disrupt, or steal IT assets, computer networks, intellectual property, or any other form of sensitive data.
• The cyber threat is in this sense all-pervading,embracing many regions and operating on different planes. Hence, dealing with the cyber threat calls for both versatility and imaginative thinking. 

Sources of attacks

Types of attacks

Issues associated with cyber attacks

Grey Zone Operations’ which fall outside traditional concepts of conflicts have become the new battleground, especially in regard to cyber warfare.

Geo political – In the case of the Russia-Ukraine war, cyber space has become an experiment for various players to try and support a weaker nation against a more powerful opponent,

Education sector – recent arrest in India, of a Russian for hacking into computers involved in the conduct of examinations for entry into the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)

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MAINS VALUE ADDITION

GS-II – Polity

• High constitutional functionaries, from the President of India to government Ministers, need not depend on the state machinery to prosecute his or her defamer, the Supreme Court 
• Can take the role of a private citizen to prosecute damaging comments made about his public functions in office.

GS-II -International organisations

• Interpol-International criminal police organisation was not playing any role in curbing state-sponsored terrorism and it focussed primarily on ordinary law crimes.
• Interpol’s global stop-payment mechanism, an anti-money laundering rapid response protocol, had helped the member-countries recover over $60 million in the past 10 months.
• “Our Global Crime Trend Report also highlighted the massive increase in online child sexual exploitation and abuse.”
• The Interpol’s International Child Sexual Exploitation database helped investigators identify an average of seven child abuse victims every day

Also useful for prelims

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 PRELIM

The Q400 Dash 8 airliner was developed by Bombardier(Canada) to meet the requirements of regional airlines for larger aircraft on high-density, short-haul routes. The 350k Q400 airliner is one of the world’s quietest turboprop aircraft.

PIB

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today launched the Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Jan Urvarak Pariyojana-One Nation One Fertilizer scheme. PM Modi launched the scheme after inaugurating the two-day event “PM Kisan Samman Sammelan 2022” at Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi. Now, urea of uniform quality will be sold in the country under one name and one brand

TERM IN NEWS

COMMODITY FETISHISM

• Introduced in  Karl Marx’s most ambitious project, Das Kapital, or Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Marx applied his analysis of commodities in capitalism to society as a whole through the concept of commodity fetishism.
• The term describes how the social relationships of production and exchange among people take the form of relationships between things (money and commodities) under capitalism.
• The term fetishism in anthropology refers to the belief among indigenous cultures of inanimate objects (such as totems) possessing godly or mystical powers.
• Marx separates the religious connotation of the term and uses it to understand how commodities possess mystical powers once in the market as it cuts ties with the production process.
• Under capitalism, the social relations and the production process become invisible to the consumer as it is a private process
• While monetary value is attached to each and every product, one must also look at how the exchange value or the price of a product depends on brand names and price tags rather than the quality or the use-value of the product. 
• Luxury and sophistication are associated with a commodity and through brand endorsements.

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