October 2020
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CURRENT AFFAIRS OCTOBER 2020 GS 1 World will have 150 million ‘new extreme poor people’ in 2021 The world will have 88-115 million ‘new extreme poor people’ in 2020 due to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, a new World Bank report released said. The number could rise to as many as 150 million by 2021. This is the first time in 20 years that global poverty rates will go up, according to the biennial Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report. Highlights Global extreme poverty rate is projected to rise by around 1.3 percentage points, to 9.2 per cent in 2020. If the pandemic would not have been there, the poverty rate was expected to drop to 7.9 per cent in 2020. This is nearly twice the number of ‘new extreme poor’ estimated by the World Bank in April 2020. Six months ago, 40-60 million people were estimated to become extremely poor in 2020. Most of the ‘new extreme poor’ will be in countries that already have high poverty rates. Several middle-income countries will see significant numbers of people slip below the extreme poverty line. About 82 per cent of the total will be in middle-income countries, according to the new World Bank estimates. Increasing numbers of urban dwellers are expected to fall into extreme poverty, the World Bank said. This even as a majority of the rural areas still share the burden of ‘extreme poverty’. When 52 million people were lifted out of poverty between 2015 and 2017, the rate of reduction slowed to less than half a percentage point per year between 2015 and 2017. Global poverty had declined at the rate of around 1 percentage point per year between 1990 and 2015. In two-and-a-half decades (1990-2015), the extreme poverty rate declined by 26 percentage points. It dropped to 10 per cent from nearly 36 per cent. While less than a tenth of the world’s population lives on less than $1.90 a day, close to a quarter lives below the $3.20 line and more than 40 per cent — almost 3.3 billion people — live below the $5.50 line Average income of people is projected to decline and this will hit the poorest the most according to the World Bank estimates. Shared prosperity or growth in income of the poorest 40 per cent of a country’s population will suffer due to the pandemic-led deceleration in economic activity, the report said. Average global shared prosperity may stagnate or even contract over 2019-2021 due to the reduced growth in average incomes, the report warned. During 2012-2017, the growth was inclusive and the incomes of the poorest 40 per cent of the population grew. In fact, the average global shared prosperity (growth in the incomes of the bottom 40 per cent) was 2.3 per cent during the period. Without policy actions, the COVID-19 crisis may lead to an increase in income inequality, resulting in a world that is less inclusive, the World Bank noted. Reservation for women in State Civil Service Punjab cabinet approved 33 per cent reservation for women in direct recruitment for the Punjab civil services, boards and corporations. The state Cabinet approved the ‘Punjab Civil Services (Reservation of Posts for Women) Rules, 2020’ to provide such reservation for women for direct recruitment to posts in government, as well as in Boards and Corporations in Group A, B, C and D posts, an official spokesperson said. The state had provided 33 per cent reservation for women in panchayats and local bodies. The decision makes Punjab the second state to give reservation to women in government jobs. Bihar in 2016 had formally given 35 percent reservation to women in all government jobs in the state. Women has right of residence in ‘shared household’ of in-laws The progress of any society depends on its ability to protect and promote the rights of its women”, the Supreme Court said recently, while ruling that a woman is entitled to claim right to residence in a “shared household” where she has been living with her husband even if the said premises belongs to his relatives. A three-judge Bench overruled a 2006 judgement of the court and said “In event, the shared household belongs to any relative of the husband with whom in a domestic relationship the woman has lived, the conditions mentioned in Section 2(s) (of The Protection of Women From Domestic Violence Act, 2005) are satisfied and the said house will become a shared household”. The observations came in a judgment that held that the relief granting right to residence to a married woman under the domestic violence law by a criminal court was relevant and could be considered even in civil proceedings seeking her eviction from the matrimonial home. The right of occupation of matrimonial home, which was not so far part of the statutory law in India came to be included in Act, 2005”, the court said and pointed out that such a right exists in the audited kingdom. In its 2006 judgement in the case S.R. Batra Vs. Taruna Batra, a two-judge Bench of the court had disallowed the woman involved from claiming any right to live in the said house since it belonged to mother-in-law of the respondent and did not belong to her husband. Ruling in favour of the women, the SC dwelt on the rights of women and the circumstances meaning to the passing of the 2005 Act which it described “is a milestone for protection of women in this country”. Women continue to be vulnerable to these crimes because of non-retaliation, coupled with absence of laws addressing their rights and ignorance of the existing statutes. Societal attitude, stigma and conditioning also made women vulnerable to domestic violence, the court said. It said that till 2005, “the remedies available to a victim of domestic violence were limited. The women either had to go to the civil court for a decree of divorce or initiate prosecution in the criminal court for the offence punishable under Section 498-A of the IPC. In both the proceedings, no emergency relief/reliefs is/are available to the victim. Also, the relationships outside the marriage were not recognized. This set of circumstances ensured that a majority of women preferred to suffer in silence, not out of choice but of compulsion. Improving Sex ratio There is an urgent need to reach young people both for reproductive health education and services as well as to cultivate gender equity norms. Why is it necessary Fertility has been declining in India for some time now. The Sample Registration System (SRS) Statistical Report (2018) estimated the Total Fertility Rate (TFR), the number of children a mother would have at the current pattern of fertility during her lifetime, as 2.2 in the year 2018. Fertility is likely to continue to decline and it is estimated that replacement TFR of 2.1 would soon be reached for India as a whole. Many people believe that the population would stabilise or begin to reduce in a few years once replacement fertility is reached. This is not so because of the population momentum effect, a result of more people entering the reproductive age group of 15-49 years due to the past high-level of fertility. For instance, the replacement fertility level was reached in Kerala around 1990, but its annual population growth rate was 0.7 per cent in 2018, nearly 30 years later. This is the reason why UN Population Division has estimated that India’s population would possibly peak at 161 crore around 2061. But the most troubling statistics in the SRS report are for sex ratio at birth. Biologically normal sex ratio at birth is 1,050 males to 1,000 females or 950 females to 1,000 males. The SRS reports show that sex ratio at birth in India, measured as the number of females per 1,000 males, declined marginally from 906 in 2011 to 899 in 2018. There is considerable son preference in all states, except possibly in Kerala and Chhattisgarh. The UNFPA State of World Population 2020 estimated the sex ratio at birth in India as 910, lower than all the countries in the world except China. This is a cause for concern because this adverse ratio results in a gross imbalance in the number of men and women and its inevitable impact on marriage systems as well as other harms to women. Thus, much more attention is needed on this issue. Way ahead Increasing female education and economic prosperity can help to improve the ratio. In view of the complexity of son preference resulting in gender-biased sex selection, government actions need to be supplemented by improving women’s status in the society. There is an urgent need to reach young people both for reproductive health education and services as well as to cultivate gender equity norms. This could reduce the effect of population momentum and accelerate progress towards reaching a more normal sex-ratio at birth. India’s population future depends on it. International Day for the Eradication of Poverty October 17 is observed as International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. This year it is observed at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has undone years of gains in reducing poverty across the world. This year’s theme: ‘Acting Together to Achieve Social and Environmental Justice for All’ The world has reported an increase in poverty the first time in a quarter century.