General Awareness Updates – October 2009

Miscellaneous-1

Border Dispute: China strikes back

Barely weeks after it failed in its attempt to block Asian Development Bank (ADB) funds to a project in Arunachal Pradesh, China has successfully struck back. In August this year, in a development that India has been quiet about, China won a vote on a “disclosure agreement”, which prevents ADB from formally acknowledging Arunachal Pradesh as part of India. (A disclosure agreement is a formal notification of a project once it is approved by the ADB board.)

On June 16, India had successfully isolated China — the entire ADB Board except Beijing had voted in India’s favour — and secured approval for its $2.9-billion country plan. China had raised objections to the plan because it included $60-million project in Arunachal Pradesh. It argued that ADB cannot fund projects in “disputed areas” like Arunachal Pradesh.

Clearly, China did not give up after that defeat and the reversal is symptomatic of its growing clout. It’s learnt that India lost the vote despite the U.S. and most of the Western bloc voting in India’s favour. In what was relatively a narrow margin, the scales were tilted in China’s favour by Japan, Australia, and a group of other South East Asian countries. Despite the U.S. support, India was also surprised by the fact that Australia chose to go with China. Pakistan, of course, also went with China.

In particular, the role of Japan has come as a shock to India. Being the current chair of the ADB board, Japan allowed the matter to be put to vote. Once that happened, Japan backed China indicating a shift in its political approach. It now transpires that since the first vote where China was humiliated, it left no stone unturned in increasing pressure on South East Asian countries, and Japan and South Korea. The defeat has caused considerable concern in New Delhi. One view is that India should not take the $60 million meant for projects in Arunachal Pradesh. It’s quite possible that India will not use ADB funding for the state. In future, India will also have to be careful when it lists projects in “sensitive areas” for external funding.

The more serious ramification is diplomatic. There is a view that after the June 16 victory, India didn’t anticipate the Chinese response and so did not plan its lobbying as well as it did the first time. Incidentally, before the June vote, India had sent demarches to all 66 countries represented at the ADB.

U.S. accuses Pak of illegally modifying Harpoon missile

Validating India’s fears that Pakistan was using the U.S. security aid to beef up its military against it, the Obama Administration has accused Pakistan of illegally modifying the Harpoon anti-ship missile and maritime surveillance aircraft P-3C for land attacks for potential use against India. ‘The New York Times’ in a front page story has reported that the Obama Administration lodged its protest in this regard with Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in June 2009, adding to the tension between the two countries.

The revered daily said that Washington has also accused Pakistan of modifying American-made P-3C aircraft for land-attack missions, another violation of United States law. The Obama Administration’s accusation confirms New Delhi’s stand that the U.S. military aid is primarily used by Pakistan to strengthen and build up its army against India.

IMR declines by 28 per cent, but is still high

India alone accounts for 21 per cent of the under-five mortality of the globe. In fact, half of the deaths occurred in India, Nigeria, Congo, Pakistan, and China. Interestingly, among them, India and Nigeria (12 per cent) together accounted for nearly one-third of the total number of under-five deaths worldwide. Pneumonia and diarrhoea are the two leading causes of the deaths.

According to a new UNICEF study, published in ‘Lancet’, there has been a 28 per cent decline in the under-five mortality rate since 1990. In absolute numbers, this means that under-five child deaths in 2008 declined to 8.8 million from 12.5 million in 1990.

Nineteen years ago, 90 children per 1,000 live births died before their fifth birthday. This stands at 65 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2008. The report from UNICEF said that “while progress is being made, it is unacceptable that each year 8.8 million children die before their fifth birthday”. The new estimates show that the average rate of decline of under-five mortality from 2000 to 2008 is 2.3 per cent compared to a 1.4 per cent average decline from 1990 to 2000.

An exciting finding has been that seven of the 67 high mortality countries (those with under-five mortality rates of 40 per 1,000 live births or higher) have consistently achieved annual rates of reduction of under-five mortality of 4.5 per cent or higher. These are Nepal, Bangladesh, Eritrea, Laos, Mongolia, Bolivia, and Malawi.

These new estimates calculated by UNICEF, WHO, World Bank, and United Nations Population Division pointed to another interesting fact that under-five mortality is increasingly getting concentrated with 75 per cent of these deaths occurring in only 18 countries, including India. Around 40 per cent of the 8.8 million children who die globally every year are from India, Nigeria, and Congo.

Africa (51 per cent) and Asia (42 per cent) combined still account for 93 per cent of all under-five deaths that occur each year. Mortality in developing countries (71 deaths per 1,000) was 12 times that in industrialised countries (6 per 1,000). “A handful of countries with large populations bear a disproportionate burden of under-five deaths. Unless mortality in these countries is significantly reduced, the target of achieving the goal of a two-thirds reduction in the under-five mortality rate by 2015 will not be met,” said the report.

Saakshar Bharat Mission launched to reduce illiteracy

The Central Government has, on September 8, launched the Saakshar Bharat Mission (SBM) with the objective to reduce illiteracy, especially among women, to mark the International Literacy Day. The objective of this new flagship programme of the Central Government is to provide functional literacy to the adults over 15 years of age. It aims to achieve 100 per cent literacy in 365 low literacy districts where the adult female literacy rate is 50 per cent less as per the 2001 census. 33 districts affected with Left-wing extremism will be covered under the programme.

Ten per cent of the budget of the programme will be spend in north eastern region. The goals of the programme are to achieve the 80 per cent literacy by making 7 crore people literate, reduce gender disparity, and minimise regional disparities. The SBM will involve the community, Panchayati Raj institutions and the women self-help groups in its endeavour. Empowering the disadvantaged groups with literacy is a big challenge for the government.

The Central Government believes that although good progress has been made to make India literate, one-third of the population still continuous to be illiterate and half of the women cannot read or write. It is also a fact that the number of illiterate people in the country is the highest in the world.