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Routine meetings between leaders will liberate the Subcontinent from formalism of summits (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 2: International Relations
Prelims level: SAARC
Mains level: Informal meetings may provide enhanced relationship with neighbors

Context

• Rather than pray for the success of SAARC, the new government in Delhi should double down on informal diplomacy that could help pave the way for more purposeful regional cooperation both bilateral and multilateral.

Background

• If Modi used the invitation in 2014 to signal his commitment to South Asian regionalism, he was also quick to see the limitations of SAARC (the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation) at the Kathmandu summit in 2014.
• The summit had failed to sign off on the connectivity agreements that were painfully negotiated by senior officials, because Pakistan chose to pull out at the last stage.
• Apparently Rawalpindi was not ready for trade and economic cooperation with India.

Steps taken to enhance regional coperation

• At Kathmandu, Modi recognised that South Asian regionalism can’t be allowed to become a hostage to Pakistan.
• To be sure, Islamabad had the sovereign right to decide on the need, nature and pace of its integration with the rest of the subcontinent.
• The only sensible course, then, is for the rest of the SAARC to move forward wherever they can and let Pakistan join the process whenever it feels comfortable.

Multilateral Mechanism

• Since then Delhi has emphasised other multilateral mechanisms including sub-regional cooperation between Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal and trans-regional cooperation in the east.
• The littoral of the Bay of Bengal including Burma and Thailand.
• Modi also revived the bilateral engagement with countries like Sri Lanka that were constrained in the UPA years — thanks to Tamil Nadu’s veto over the engagement with Colombo.
• Regular official visits to the neighbouring capitals have become the norm at all levels.
• It has become the convention for any new foreign secretary to travel first to all the neighbouring capitals.

Key focus on informal meetings

• The Subcontinent can do with more of this kind of engagement — leaders seeing each other on short notice for informal consultations or just watch a cricket match or join a social or spiritual occasion.
• Informal diplomacy in South Asia will make it easier for India to sustain high-level engagement with the neighbourhood.
• These include pre-set multilateral summits from BRICS and SCO to the ASEAN, G-20 and the UN as well as annual meetings with friendly nations through the year
• Meanwhile, some of these multilateral summits could throw up the possibilities of a meeting with the Pakistani leadership.
• If meetings with Pakistan’s leadership become routine and informal, Delhi will be able to prevent each encounter seem like a gladiatorial contest that must address all issues and produce joint statements, every word of which is analysed to death.

Conclusion

• While Pakistan is a special case, informal high-level diplomacy could also help liberate the region from the stuffy and unproductive formalism of the SAARC.

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Eye on the monsoon (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Agriculture
Prelims level: Monsoon
Mains level: Preparedness for monsoon

Context

• As India awaits the arrival of the annual summer monsoon, hopes are particularly high for normal rainfall that is so vital for agriculture, the health of forests, rivers and wetlands.
• The India Meteorological Department has forecast normal rainfall of 96% of the long period average of 89 cm rain, with an onset date in the first week of June in Kerala. It has also signalled a significant possibility of a deficit.

Importance of monsoon

• The monsoon bounty is crucial for the 60% of gross cropped area in farming that is rain-fed, and represents, in the assessment of the National Commission on Farmers, 45% of agricultural output.
• Given the erratic patterns of rainfall witnessed over the past few decades and their possible connection to atmospheric changes caused by a variety of pollutants, the distribution of monsoon 2019 will add to the insights.
• The southwest monsoon is a determinant of India’s overall prosperity, and sustained efforts to make the best use of rainfall are absolutely important for farms, cities and industry.

Area of Concern

• Considering that there has been a 52% decline in groundwater levels based on tests conducted last year over the previous decadal average, State governments should have pursued the setting up of new recharging wells and made improvements to existing ones on a war footing.
• They also have lagged in building structures to harvest surface water and helping farmers raise the efficiency of irrigation.
• The approach to the farming sector, however, has been influenced more by the imperatives of an election year, and the Centre’s biggest intervention was to announce a cash handout to specified categories of small farmers.

Effects of Industrial Pollution

• A normal summer monsoon over the subcontinent brings widespread prosperity, but does not guarantee a uniform spread.
• This, as scientists point out, may be due to the effect of particulates released through various industrial and agricultural processes.
• Some of these aerosols suppress the rainfall and disperse it across the land, causing long breaks in precipitation, while others absorb heat and lead to a convection phenomenon that increases rainfall in some places.
• Such evidence points to the need for India to clean up its act on rising industrial emissions, and burning of fossil fuels and biomass in order to improve the stability of the monsoon.
• An equally key area of concern is freshwater availability for households, which, NITI Aayog says, account for 4% of available supplies, besides 12% used by industry.

Conclusion

• Urbanisation trends and the severe water stress that residents experience underscore the need for mandatory rainwater harvesting policies and augmented efforts by States to preserve surface water by building new reservoirs.
• Yet, governments are adopting a commodity approach to the vital resource, displaying deplorable indifference to the pollution and loss of rivers, wetlands and lakes that hold precious waters. This is no way to treat a life-giving resource.

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Eye on the monsoon (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Agriculture
Prelims level: Monsoon
Mains level: Preparedness for monsoon

Context

• As India awaits the arrival of the annual summer monsoon, hopes are particularly high for normal rainfall that is so vital for agriculture, the health of forests, rivers and wetlands.
• The India Meteorological Department has forecast normal rainfall of 96% of the long period average of 89 cm rain, with an onset date in the first week of June in Kerala. It has also signalled a significant possibility of a deficit.

Importance of monsoon

• The monsoon bounty is crucial for the 60% of gross cropped area in farming that is rain-fed, and represents, in the assessment of the National Commission on Farmers, 45% of agricultural output.
• Given the erratic patterns of rainfall witnessed over the past few decades and their possible connection to atmospheric changes caused by a variety of pollutants, the distribution of monsoon 2019 will add to the insights.
• The southwest monsoon is a determinant of India’s overall prosperity, and sustained efforts to make the best use of rainfall are absolutely important for farms, cities and industry.

Area of Concern

• Considering that there has been a 52% decline in groundwater levels based on tests conducted last year over the previous decadal average, State governments should have pursued the setting up of new recharging wells and made improvements to existing ones on a war footing.
• They also have lagged in building structures to harvest surface water and helping farmers raise the efficiency of irrigation.
• The approach to the farming sector, however, has been influenced more by the imperatives of an election year, and the Centre’s biggest intervention was to announce a cash handout to specified categories of small farmers.

Effects of Industrial Pollution

• A normal summer monsoon over the subcontinent brings widespread prosperity, but does not guarantee a uniform spread.
• This, as scientists point out, may be due to the effect of particulates released through various industrial and agricultural processes.
• Some of these aerosols suppress the rainfall and disperse it across the land, causing long breaks in precipitation, while others absorb heat and lead to a convection phenomenon that increases rainfall in some places.
• Such evidence points to the need for India to clean up its act on rising industrial emissions, and burning of fossil fuels and biomass in order to improve the stability of the monsoon.
• An equally key area of concern is freshwater availability for households, which, NITI Aayog says, account for 4% of available supplies, besides 12% used by industry.

Conclusion

• Urbanisation trends and the severe water stress that residents experience underscore the need for mandatory rainwater harvesting policies and augmented efforts by States to preserve surface water by building new reservoirs.
• Yet, governments are adopting a commodity approach to the vital resource, displaying deplorable indifference to the pollution and loss of rivers, wetlands and lakes that hold precious waters. This is no way to treat a life-giving resource.

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Eye on the monsoon (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Agriculture
Prelims level: Monsoon
Mains level: Preparedness for monsoon

Context

• As India awaits the arrival of the annual summer monsoon, hopes are particularly high for normal rainfall that is so vital for agriculture, the health of forests, rivers and wetlands.
• The India Meteorological Department has forecast normal rainfall of 96% of the long period average of 89 cm rain, with an onset date in the first week of June in Kerala. It has also signalled a significant possibility of a deficit.

Importance of monsoon

• The monsoon bounty is crucial for the 60% of gross cropped area in farming that is rain-fed, and represents, in the assessment of the National Commission on Farmers, 45% of agricultural output.
• Given the erratic patterns of rainfall witnessed over the past few decades and their possible connection to atmospheric changes caused by a variety of pollutants, the distribution of monsoon 2019 will add to the insights.
• The southwest monsoon is a determinant of India’s overall prosperity, and sustained efforts to make the best use of rainfall are absolutely important for farms, cities and industry.

Area of Concern

• Considering that there has been a 52% decline in groundwater levels based on tests conducted last year over the previous decadal average, State governments should have pursued the setting up of new recharging wells and made improvements to existing ones on a war footing.
• They also have lagged in building structures to harvest surface water and helping farmers raise the efficiency of irrigation.
• The approach to the farming sector, however, has been influenced more by the imperatives of an election year, and the Centre’s biggest intervention was to announce a cash handout to specified categories of small farmers.

Effects of Industrial Pollution

• A normal summer monsoon over the subcontinent brings widespread prosperity, but does not guarantee a uniform spread.
• This, as scientists point out, may be due to the effect of particulates released through various industrial and agricultural processes.
• Some of these aerosols suppress the rainfall and disperse it across the land, causing long breaks in precipitation, while others absorb heat and lead to a convection phenomenon that increases rainfall in some places.
• Such evidence points to the need for India to clean up its act on rising industrial emissions, and burning of fossil fuels and biomass in order to improve the stability of the monsoon.
• An equally key area of concern is freshwater availability for households, which, NITI Aayog says, account for 4% of available supplies, besides 12% used by industry.

Conclusion

• Urbanisation trends and the severe water stress that residents experience underscore the need for mandatory rainwater harvesting policies and augmented efforts by States to preserve surface water by building new reservoirs.
• Yet, governments are adopting a commodity approach to the vital resource, displaying deplorable indifference to the pollution and loss of rivers, wetlands and lakes that hold precious waters. This is no way to treat a life-giving resource.

  Online Coaching for UPSC PRE Exam

  General Studies Pre. Cum Mains Study Materials

Eye on the monsoon (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Agriculture
Prelims level: Monsoon
Mains level: Preparedness for monsoon

Context

• As India awaits the arrival of the annual summer monsoon, hopes are particularly high for normal rainfall that is so vital for agriculture, the health of forests, rivers and wetlands.
• The India Meteorological Department has forecast normal rainfall of 96% of the long period average of 89 cm rain, with an onset date in the first week of June in Kerala. It has also signalled a significant possibility of a deficit.

Importance of monsoon

• The monsoon bounty is crucial for the 60% of gross cropped area in farming that is rain-fed, and represents, in the assessment of the National Commission on Farmers, 45% of agricultural output.
• Given the erratic patterns of rainfall witnessed over the past few decades and their possible connection to atmospheric changes caused by a variety of pollutants, the distribution of monsoon 2019 will add to the insights.
• The southwest monsoon is a determinant of India’s overall prosperity, and sustained efforts to make the best use of rainfall are absolutely important for farms, cities and industry.

Area of Concern

• Considering that there has been a 52% decline in groundwater levels based on tests conducted last year over the previous decadal average, State governments should have pursued the setting up of new recharging wells and made improvements to existing ones on a war footing.
• They also have lagged in building structures to harvest surface water and helping farmers raise the efficiency of irrigation.
• The approach to the farming sector, however, has been influenced more by the imperatives of an election year, and the Centre’s biggest intervention was to announce a cash handout to specified categories of small farmers.

Effects of Industrial Pollution

• A normal summer monsoon over the subcontinent brings widespread prosperity, but does not guarantee a uniform spread.
• This, as scientists point out, may be due to the effect of particulates released through various industrial and agricultural processes.
• Some of these aerosols suppress the rainfall and disperse it across the land, causing long breaks in precipitation, while others absorb heat and lead to a convection phenomenon that increases rainfall in some places.
• Such evidence points to the need for India to clean up its act on rising industrial emissions, and burning of fossil fuels and biomass in order to improve the stability of the monsoon.
• An equally key area of concern is freshwater availability for households, which, NITI Aayog says, account for 4% of available supplies, besides 12% used by industry.

Conclusion

• Urbanisation trends and the severe water stress that residents experience underscore the need for mandatory rainwater harvesting policies and augmented efforts by States to preserve surface water by building new reservoirs.
• Yet, governments are adopting a commodity approach to the vital resource, displaying deplorable indifference to the pollution and loss of rivers, wetlands and lakes that hold precious waters. This is no way to treat a life-giving resource.

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Moral ambiguity on the Rohingya (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: International Relations
Prelims level: Not Much
Mains level: India stand on rohingaya crisis

Context

• India’s abstention from voting on a UN Human Rights Council draft resolution, in March this year, on the “situation of human rights in Myanmar” needs closer examination.
• Co-sponsored by the European Union (EU) and Bangladesh, the resolution “expresses grave concern at continuing reports of serious human rights violations and abuses in Myanmar”, particularly in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan States, and calls for a full inquiry into these by the Council’s own mechanism and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
• In its follow-up explanatory statement, India’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, Rajiv Kumar Chander, said that it would “only be counter-productive” to support “extensive recommendations regarding legislative and policy actions” and “threatening Myanmar with punitive action, including at the ICC, to which that state is not a signatory”.

A deference

• India continues to toe Myanmar’s line on the issue, which harps on the “complexity” of the whole situation, lays emphasis on economic development rather than political rights for the Rohingya, lays stress on internal inquiries instead of international mechanisms, and even refuses to call the Rohingya community by its name.
• In fact, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not even publicly condemned the horrible atrocities that the Rohingya have faced at the hands of Myanmar’s security forces.
• On his last visit to Myanmar in September 2017, he simply expressed concern at the “loss of lives of security forces and innocent people due to the extremist violence in Rakhine State”.
• There was no reference to the excessive and arbitrary force used by security forces on Rohingya civilians in response to the “extremist violence”.
• India, for its part, continues to maintain ties with the Myanmar armed forces (Tatmadaw), supplying them with combat hardware and imparting UN peacekeeping training.
• An edition of the India-Myanmar bilateral army exercise, IMBEX 2018-19, took place this January at Chandimandir.

Arms and business ties

• According to the arms transfer database of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), India is one of Myanmar’s top arms suppliers, and weapons sales includes military aircraft, artillery, naval vessels and reconnaissance equipment, armoured vehicles, anti-submarine torpedoes and missiles.
• One analysis by the Dutch advocacy group, Stop Wapenhandel (Stop Arms Trade), claims that India transferred combat equipment in violation of international embargoes.
• India’s core logic here is to “modernise” the Tatmadaw with the intent of securing its 1,640-km plus border with Myanmar and forge a sustainable strategic partnership at China’s doorstep.
• But, in this inflexible realpolitik approach, there is little space for end-user accountability and human rights.
• Whether Myanmar is using some of its India-supplied weapons to maim non-combatant civilians in Rakhine State and other ethnic regions is a question that New Delhi has not asked so far.
• Further, Indian companies continue to invest in Myanmar, with several having direct links with Tatmadaw-owned businesses.

Through Dhaka’s lens

• India has so far refused to exert any pressure on Myanmar, instead choosing to balance ties with Dhaka and Naypyidaw by sending humanitarian aid to both.
• But India’s soft, backfoot approach is being increasingly seen by Bangladesh, which is hosting nearly a million Rohingya refugees, to be tilted in Myanmar’s favour.
• Instead of just pushing one-time economic aid into Bangladesh and Myanmar, India could have forged a regional ‘compact’, much like the Jordan Compact on Syria, to ensure sustained humanitarian assistance in addressing the short- and long-term needs of the displaced Rohingya population.
• This would have ensured uniform donor interest and better monitoring of where aid is going to.
• Instead, India has deported (or refouled) more than a dozen Rohingya refugees from its own territory back to Myanmar, in violation of international and domestic legal norms.
• Using the geo-economic leverage that it enjoys with Myanmar, India could compel Myanmar to bring the alleged perpetrators of war crimes to book or at least get a guarantee that such conduct would not be repeated in the future.
• But New Delhi does not want to corner Aung San Suu Kyi, whose own relations with the Generals remain dicey.

Conclusion

• For now, India is happy to be in a stable, but morally tenuous, friends-with-benefit relationship with Myanmar.
• The victims continue to be the stateless Rohingya.

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Anaemia is a public health emergency that needs to be addressed immediately (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 2: Health
Prelims level: Anaemia
Mains level: Tackling Anaemia through malnutrition

Context

• India has been able to dramatically reduce the number of people living in extreme poverty from 306 million people living on less than $1.90 (on a PPP basis) a day in 2011 to 48 million today.
• However, it is puzzling as to why the country has been unable to show a similar dynamism in its record against malnutrition.
• Despite major government interventions including providing highly subsidised foodgrains to the poorest 67 per cent of the population under the National Food Security Act (NFSA).
• A free Mid-day Meal Scheme (MDM) that targets around 100 million students in government schools and a supplementary nutrition programme through the ICDS network the country is home to the largest number of malnourished children in the world.

Background

• In the decade between 2005-06 and 2015-16, stunting declined at the rate of 0.9 per cent per annum.
• Though anaemia among children has declined, it affects every second child in the country.
• There has been no perceptible decline in anaemia among 15 to 49-year old women; it affects around 60 per cent of them.
• This public health emergency needs to be addressed immediately.

Causes of anemia

• Poverty, gender disparity, poor sanitation, low health and nutrition service coverage and poor nutritional intake particularly an iron-deficient diet continue to impede our fight against anaemia.
• The daily consumption of iron rich dark green leafy vegetables has reduced from 64 per cent to 48 per cent of the population in the last decade. Many, in fact, argue that the NFSA’s focus on wheat and rice has forced millets traditional source for iron and minerals out of the market.
• The government’s iron supplementation programme to overcome IDA has led to only 30 per cent of pregnant women consuming iron and folic acid tablets.
• This compels us to think of simpler and effective strategies like fortification of food staples with essential micronutrients like iron and vitamin.

Tackling food fortification problem

• Food fortification is a largely-ignored, yet critical, strategy which has proved an effective, affordable, scalable and sustainable intervention in many countries.
• India too has tested this idea when it successfully tackled the widespread problem of goitre by mandating iodised salt in 1962.
• As there are numerous programmes to address malnutriton, this simple idea of fortifiying meals has the potential to reach every segment of the population.
• Policy-makers have recently begun to address this blind spot to change the country’s nutritional landscape. Comprehensive regulations and standards have been framed by the FSSAI on fortification of food.
• The Women and Child Development and Human Resource Development ministries have issued advisories to the states to mandatorily use fortified wheat flour and edible oil in ICDS and MDM.

Affected regions for short of staple food

• However, given that fortification of these staples is still relatively new in India, traction has been slow.
• Rice is the staple for 65 per cent of the Indian population, most of whom are located in high malnutrition burden states.
• Supply of fortified rice through a network of fair price shops is a cost-effective intervention to address anaemia across all sections of the population.
• Evaluations in Odisha’s Gajapati district, which experimented with fortified rice in MDM, found that the incidence of anaemia has reduced by 20 per cent between 2012 and 2015, of which 6 per cent reduction can be directly attributable to fortification.
• The Department of Food and Public Distribution, facilitated by the NITI Aayog, has recently launched a centrally-sponsored scheme on rice fortification in PDS. The programme is designed to cover 15 districts, initially.
• Although the budget is a meagre Rs 147 crore, the implications for the fight against anaemia are huge.
• Our estimate for a pan-India roll out of rice fortification is around 2,400 crore (about 1.4 per cent of the total food subsidy bill in 2018-19).

Conclusion

• A successful pan-India scale up of fortification will depend on many factors the political will of state governments, flexibility to allow states to adapt the fortification model to their procurement and distribution systems and capacity building of different stakeholders.
• The FSSAI’s role, its enforcement machinery and the quality control labs needs to be strengthened. Lastly and most crucially, sustainability of fortification depends on the regular consumption of fortified food by the consumers and thus a comprehensive state specific strategy should be developed to generate awareness among the consumers.

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Ten years on: on end of Sri Lanka civil war (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: International Relations
Prelims level: Sri Lanka civil war
Mains level: Impact of Sri Lanka civil war

Context

• As Sri Lanka completes 10 years since the brutal and decisive war against Tamil militants came to an end, it must be acknowledged that the country has not achieved much tangible progress towards ethnic reconciliation, accountability for war-time excesses and constitutional reform that includes a political solution.
• The fruits of peace are limited to the revival of economic activity, but the pervasive grievances of the Tamil minority remain.
• Some progress has been made in resettlement and rehabilitation, but complaints abound.
• Many say their land continues to be held by the military, which also controls huge swathes of state-owned land. Preliminary steps were taken towards forging a new Constitution, but the process seems to be at a standstill.
• There is no sense of closure for families affected by the disappearance of thousands over the years.

Office on Missing Persons

• The creation of an ‘Office on Missing Persons’ has not inspired enough confidence.
• There is no mechanism to secure justice for those massacred in the closing stages of the war.
• What continues is the fractious politics of leaders of the national parties.
• Jockeying for power has overshadowed the promise of good governance, economic growth and a push towards a constitutional settlement.

Background

• Half the period since the end of the war was marked by triumphalism and also warding off international pressure for an inquiry into possible war crimes.
• The year 2015 brought to power a new regime, a fresh promise of democratic governance, and the infusion of a spirit of political and constitutional reform.
• Any reckoning at the end of 10 years would possibly have been marked by a tabulation of peace-time gains and failures.

Recent development

• The Easter Sunday bombings have taken the country back to the time when terrorism was the dominant theme.
• This time, there is no real ‘underlying cause’ to address; no group or organisation to talk to; and no tangible political grievances to redress.
• The serial blasts, executed by fanatical elements apparently inspired by the Islamic State, may be a flashpoint for a fresh round of inter-ethnic and inter-religious tension.
• Already there was some indication last week when Sinhala mobs attacked predominantly Muslim villages in waves, destroying property and threatening the people. Anti-terrorism laws and emergency regulations are back in full measure.
• The biggest adverse fallout is that a new dimension has been given to inter-ethnic suspicions that may deepen distrust among communities.

Conclusion

• As prospects of accountability for past crimes and constitutional reform recede, some sections, including the incumbent regime, may believe economic development may be enough to propel the country forward.
• But when tensions persist among communities, nothing can make up for the absence of reconciliation and trust among all sections.
• Sri Lanka needed a shared sense of nationhood among all its peoples more than it does now.

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Creating jobs through garment exports (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Economy
Prelims level: Employment
Mains level: Boosting employment through garment exports

Context

• Rapid creation of productive and better paying jobs reduces poverty. It also mitigates inequality.
• One can actually have high GDP growth rates with modest employment generation.
• One can also have higher expenditure on anti-poverty and welfare measures, without having a major impact on jobs.

Job creation is the key goal

• Job creation should, therefore, be the key development goal. States, instead of signing MoUs for thousands of crores of investment, should be seeking job creation commitments in their Investment Summits.
• Seeing the economy through the prism of job creation would bring into focus labour intensive sectors and generate discussion around policy instruments which could be used to get these sectors to grow more rapidly.
• This would require fresh thinking beyond the traditional macroeconomic parameters such as inflation, the fiscal and current account deficits, and interest rates on the one hand, and, on the other, infrastructure development; power, highways, ports and airports.
• India fought hard in the WTO negotiations for the phasing out of the quota system which used to govern textile exports and where (presumably for geopolitical reasons) the Chinese had a quota which was many times that of India’s.
• It was felt that once quota restrictions ended, apparel exports from India would rise rapidly and catch up with Chinese exports.

Challenges for India

• After the quota regime ended in 2005, textile and garment exports from India did not rise more rapidly.
• China’s per capita income and wages are now about five times that of India’s. Yet its textile exports are over $270 billion whereas India’s are around $40 billion.
• India’s growth rates remain modest whereas Vietnam and Bangladesh have been having sustained export growth of over 20 per cent per annum.
• Fresh thinking on feasible measures to achieve a breakthrough is overdue.
• Garment exports, given India’s low wages, should be covering the whole range of products for the global market rather than being restricted primarily to cotton apparel as is the case now.
• Given the nature of the global supply chain of readymade garments with rapidly changing designs and fashions, hassle-free zero duty imports of synthetic fabrics specified by designers of global brands is an essential prerequisite for becoming part of global supply chains.
• This is not the case now.
• The mechanism of advance licensing on input-output norms for exports works for standard industrial products, but not for garments.
• One radical option would be to do away with the duty protection available to the domestic synthetic fibre and fabric industry.

What it needs to?

• However, a viable approach which does not hurt the upstream domestic industry would be a dispensation where garment exporters exporting more than ₹100 crore per annum are given the freedom to import fabrics duty free, maintain records of usage for exports and be subject to annual audit to ensure that there is no misuse.
• Bangladesh runs such a scheme. India could easily do so.
• This would enable garment exporters across the country to attempt diversification using imported fabric and accessories.

Textile SEZs

• A more ambitious approach would be for the government to develop large integrated textile and apparel Special Economic Zones, where there are no import duties, and invite investors from India as well as overseas to put up plants.
• There is one good precedent in the 1,000-acre Brandix textile SEZ, promoted by a Sri Lankan entrepreneur near Vijayawada.
• It has specialised in women’s underwear and is a major supplier to the global luxury brand Victoria Secret.
• They claim that 60 per cent of the bras sold by Victoria Secret in the US are made here.
• It has been growing and now employs over 18,000 women from nearby villages who come in chartered buses for two shifts in the day.
• The allotment of land at reasonable/nominal/subsidised rates for industrial parks for job creation has to be the guiding principle if labour intensive organised sector manufacturing jobs for global supply chains are to be created.
• Expensive land can undo the cost advantage of low wages.
• The SEZ regime could also be tweaked to treat sales to the domestic market on normal import duties as meeting the foreign exchange earning obligation of units in the SEZ.
• Some production for the growing Indian market would shift to the SEZ creating jobs for Indians.

Incubation centres

• Another bolder approach would be for the state to finance the creation of Incubation Centres of plug and play garment manufacturing units in Textile Parks.
• This would mean that work sheds with state-of-art stitching machines are provided at a token rent to a start-up, say, a fresh graduate from a fashion/ design institute with the agreement that as she succeeds, she would pay higher rents and even buy the garmenting unit paying the full cost.
• Those who fail, and some would fail, could leave and look for jobs without any liabilities. The cost of the failures could over time be borne by the successes so that the Incubation Centre could grow and nurture an increasing number of entrepreneurs.
• To have global scale, the Textile Parks need to be large. These may be promoted by the state directly, or, through innovative public-private partnerships.
• These could also break new ground by developing rental workers housing which has so far been missing in industrial area development.

Conclusion

• However, staff housing is intrinsic to the IT SEZ development. Decent housing at a reasonable distance from the work place makes a huge difference to worker productivity.
• These ideas are equally relevant for other labour intensive sectors ranging from toys to shipbuilding.
• The state needs to assume a larger responsibility than it has so far been prepared to do for India to begin creating manufacturing jobs for global supply chains on the scale needed.
• It also needs strategic thinking, patience and willingness to take risks.

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Banking reforms must be on the top of the new govt’s agenda (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: NPA crisis
Mains level: Effects of NPA crisis on Indian economy

Context

• Lok Sabha campaign winds to a close, the Indian electorate can now heave a sigh of relief.
• It will have its task cut out to put the sputtering economy back on track, which will mean taking up the unfinished agenda on economic reforms.
• Reforms in banking must surely figure at the top of this to-do list.
• After inheriting a banking system that was staggering under the weight of undisclosed non-performing assets (NPAs), the incumbent government led by the RBI, did manage to force banks to disclose evergreened loans and provision for them. A new Bankruptcy Code was legislated to allow lenders to take charge of the resolution process.
• But beyond this, most of the energies have gone into fire-fighting operational issues at public sector banks (PSBs) and scrounging up capital to keep them afloat.
• While investors and depositors can take heart from the worst of this NPA crisis being behind them, they have very little assurance that a similar one will not recur in future.

Prevent an encore of the NPA crisis

• The structural reforms at PSBs are imperative on three counts.
• One, the poor credit appraisal and risk management systems which led to them concentrating their loans in a handful of borrowers need drastic overhaul.
• RBI recently imposed tighter curbs on the group-level and firm-level exposures of banks, capping them at 40 per cent and 20 per cent respectively of Tier-1 capital.
• But such limits cannot substitute for the PSBs’ lack of in-house talent in credit and project appraisal, which needs urgent fixing. RBI needs to work on internal early warning systems that leverage analytics to head off credit bubbles too.
• Two, while mis-judgement can be condoned, strict enforcement action needs to be taken against bankers who willingly colluded with corporate borrowers to evergreen loans.
• There’s also need for a thorough overhaul of recruitment policies at PSBs, greater accountability from their top managements and Boards and performance-linked compensation.
• Three, political interference has played an egregious role in diverting bank funds to crony capitalists.
• Fixing this issue requires deep-rooted governance reforms that distance the management and Boards of PSBs from their promoter the Central government.
• A roadmap for the transfer and gradual dilution of the government shareholding in PSBs is now critical, as is the strengthening of the toothless Bank Boards Bureau.
• RBI on its part needs to work through recent setbacks to the IBC process to put it back on its feet.

Conclusion

• Apart from all this, the confidence that the Indian public and depositors place in banks seems to be taken for granted, amid every new crisis.
• The new government must quickly get to the task of raising the deposit insurance cover for retail depositors, which has remained at a measly ₹1 lakh for over two decades.

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Why appeals are stuck at WTO, how India will be hit if process breaks down (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 2: International Relation
Prelims level: WTO’s Appellate Body
Mains level: Important international organisation and their significance

Context

• The World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) dispute settlement mechanism is going through a “crisis”: the body is struggling to appoint new members to its understaffed Appellate Body that hears appeals in trade.
• Unless the issue is resolved, the body could become defunct, and countries locked in international trade disputes will be left with no forum for recourse.
• Over 20 developing countries met in New Delhi last week to discuss ways to prevent the WTO’s dispute resolution system from collapsing due to the logjam in these appointments.

Importance of the WTO’s Appellate Body

• The Appellate Body, set up in 1995, is a standing committee of seven members that presides over appeals against judgments passed in trade-related disputes brought by WTO members.
• With over 500 international disputes brought to the WTO and over 350 rulings issued since 1995, the organisation’s dispute settlement mechanism is one of the most active in the world, and the Appellate Body is the highest authority in these matters.
• Countries involved in a dispute over measures purported to break a WTO agreement or obligation can approach the Appellate Body if they feel the report of the panel set up to examine the issue needs to be reviewed on points of law.
• Existing evidence is not re-examined; legal interpretations are reviewed.
• The direct participant in 54 disputes, and has been involved in 158 as a third party.
• The Appellate Body can uphold, modify, or reverse the legal findings of the panel that heard the dispute. Countries on either or both sides of the dispute can appeal.
• The WTO’s dispute settlement procedure is seen as being vital to ensuring smooth international trade flows. The Appellate Body has so far issued 152 reports. The reports, once adopted by the WTO’s disputes settlement body, are final and binding on the parties.

Problem in the WTO Appellate Body

• Over the last two years, the membership of the body has dwindled to just three persons instead of the required seven.
• This is because the United States, which believes the WTO is biased against it, has been blocking appointments of new members and reappointments of some members who have completed their four-year tenures. Two members will complete their tenures in December this year, leaving the body with just one member.
• At least three people are required to preside over an appeal, and if new members are not appointed to replace the two retiring ones, the body will cease to be relevant. Between 1995 and 2014, around 68% of the 201 panel reports adopted were appealed.
• While the US is directly involved in more disputes than other WTO member countries, several countries—including India—enter disputes as third parties.
• India has so far been a direct participant in 54 disputes, and has been involved in 158 as a third party.
• The understaffed appeals body has been unable to stick to its 2-3 month deadline for appeals filed in the last few years, and the backlog of cases has prevented it from initiating proceedings in appeals that have been filed in the last year. The three members have been proceeding on all appeals filed since October 1, 2018.
• In February 2019, the body said it would be unable to staff an appeal in a dispute between Japan and India over certain safeguard measures that India had imposed on imports of iron and steel products. The panel had found that India had acted “inconsistently” with some WTO agreements, and India had notified the Dispute Settlement Body of its decision to appeal certain issues of law and legal interpretations in December 2018.
• The body has so far been unable to review at least 10 appeals that have been filed since July 2018.

What can happen if this situation is not addressed in time?

• With the Appellate Body unable to review new applications, there is already great uncertainty over the WTO’s dispute settlement process. If the body is declared non-functional in December, countries may be compelled to implement rulings by the panel even if they feel that gross errors have been committed.
• Should such a country refuse to comply with the order of the panel on the ground that it has no avenue for appeal, it will run the risk of facing arbitration proceedings initiated by the other party in the dispute.
• This does not bode well for India, which is facing a rising number of dispute cases, especially on agricultural products. In the last four months alone, four cases have been brought to the WTO against India’s alleged support measures for its sugar and sugarcane producers.
• Also, the overall weakening of the WTO framework could have the effect of undoing over two decades of efforts to avoid protectionism in global trade. This is a major concern currently, as trade tensions, for example between the US and China and the US and India, are on the rise.

Way forward

• While new appointments to the Appellate Body are usually made by a consensus of WTO members, there is a provision for voting where a consensus is not possible.
• The group of 17 least developed and developing countries, including India, that have committed to working together to end the impasse at the Appellate Body can submit or support a proposal to this effect, and try to get new members on the Appellate Body by a majority vote.
• This, however, may be an option of the last resort, as all countries fear unilateral measures by the US as a consequence of directly opposing its veto.

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Q1. Which of the following statements regarding ICOMOS (The International Council on Monuments and Sites ) are true ?

1) The International Council on Monuments and Sites is a professional association that works for the conservation and protection of cultural heritage places around the world.
2) ICOMOS was founded in 1965 in Warsaw as a result of the Venice Charter of 1964, and offers advice to UNESCO on World Heritage Sites.
3) It is headquartered in Geneva,Switzerland.

a) 1 & 2 only
b) 2 & 3 only
c) 1 & 3 only
d) all of the above

Q2. Which of the following ancient temples of India are correctly matched with their location states ?

1) Khajurahotemples : Madhya Pradesh
2) Mundeshwaridevitemple : Karnataka
3) Kailashnathtemple : Maharashtra
4) Kedarnathtemple : Himachal pradesh
5) Konark sun temple :Odisha

a) 1,2& 3 only
b) 3,4 & 5 only
c) 1,3 & 5 only
d) all of the above

Q3. Consider the following statements :

1) DNA methylation is a process by which chemical changes occur to the DNA molecule. It also affects the functioning of what is called the hypothalamus-pituitary axis.
2) All the four bases of DNA’s can be methylated in mammals.
3) In mammals DNA methylation is essential for normal development and is associated with a number of key processes including genomic imprinting, X-chromosome inactivation, repression of transposable elements, aging, and carcinogenesis.

Which of the above statements are true ?

a) 1 & 2 only
b) 2 & 3 only
c) 1 & 3 only
d) all of the above

Q4. National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has slashed the prices of 9 non-scheduled cancer drugs by up to 87 per cent. Which of the following statements regarding the same are true ?

1)The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) is a government regulatory agency that controls the prices of pharmaceutical drugs in India which also implements the provisions of the Drugs (Prices Control) Order.
2) The new list of drugs is in continuation of the government’s efforts to curb profiteering on these vital drugs and to make cancer cure affordable for patients and their families.
3) NPPA is also entrusted with the task of recovering amounts overcharged by manufacturers for the controlled drugs from the consumers.

a) 1 & 2 only
b) 2 & 3 only
c) 1 & 3 only
d) all of the above

Q5. Which of the following countries of central Asia does not share boundary with Tajikistan ?

a) China
b) Afghanistan
c) Turkmenistan
d) Uzbekistan

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Why an industrial policy is crucial (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: Industrial policy
Mains level: Significance of the industrial policy

Context

• The contribution of manufacturing to GDP in 2017 was only about 16%, a stagnation since the economic reforms began in 1991.
• The contrast with the major Asian economies is significant. For example, Malaysia roughly tripled its share of manufacturing in GDP to 24%, while Thailand’s share increased from 13% to 33% (1960-2014).
• In India manufacturing has never been the leading sector in the economy other than during the Second and Third Plan periods.

Core to growth

• No major country managed to reduce poverty or sustain growth without manufacturing driving economic growth.
• This is because productivity levels in industry (and manufacturing) are much higher than in either agriculture or services.
• Manufacturing is an engine of economic growth because it offers economies of scale, embodies technological progress and generates forward and backward linkages that create positive spillover effects in the economy.
• In the U.S. and Europe, after the 2008 crisis, the erstwhile proponents of neo-liberal policies started strategic government efforts to revive their industrial sectors, defying in principle their own prescriptions for free markets and trade.
• The European Union has identified sector-specific initiatives to promote motor vehicles, transport equipment industries, energy supply industries, chemicals and agro-food industries.
• The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development or UNCTAD finds that over 100 countries have, within the last decade, articulated industrial policies.
• However, India still has no manufacturing policy.
• Focussing (as “Make in India” does) on increasing foreign direct investment and ease of doing business, important though they may be, does not constitute an industrial policy.

Key reasons for a policy

Need to coordinate

• First, there is the need to coordinate complementary investments when there are significant economies of scale and capital market imperfections (for example, as envisaged in a Visakhapatnam-Chennai Industrial Corridor).

Needed to address learning externalities

• Second, industrial policies are needed to address learning externalities such as subsidies for industrial training (on which we have done poorly).
• In fact, industrial policy was reinforced by state investments in human capital, particularly general academic as well as vocational education/training aligned with the industrial policy, in most East Asian countries.
• However, a lack of human capital has been a major constraint upon India historically being able to attract foreign investment (which Southeast Asian economies succeeded in attracting).

Role of organiser of domestic firms

• Third, the state can play the role of organiser of domestic firms into cartels in their negotiations with foreign firms or governments a role particularly relevant in the 21st century after the big business revolution of the 1990s (with mega-mergers and acquisitions among transnational corporations).
• In fact, one objective of China’s industrial policies since the 1990s has been to support the growth of such firms (examples being Lenovo computers, Haier home appliances, and mega-firms making mobile phones).
• Fourth, the role of industrial policy is not only to prevent coordination failures (i.e. ensure complementary investments) but also avoid competing investments in a capital-scarce environment.
• Excess capacity leads to price wars, adversely affecting profits of firms either leading to bankruptcy of firms or slowing down investment, both happening often in India (witness the aviation sector).
• Even worse, price wars in the telecom sector in India have slowed profits (even caused losses), which hampers investment in mobile/Internet coverage of rural India where access to mobile phones and broadband Internet, needs rapid expansion. The East Asian state managed this role of industrial policy successfully.

Industrial capacity installed

• Fifth, an industrial policy can ensure that the industrial capacity installed is as close to the minimum efficient scale as possible. Choosing too small a scale of capacity can mean a 30-50% reduction in production capacity
• The missing middle among Indian enterprises is nothing short of a failure of industrial strategy. Contributing to the missing middle phenomenon was the reservation of products exclusively for production in the small-scale and cottage industries (SSI) sector (with large firms excluded) from India’s 1956 Industrial Policy Resolution onwards. By the end of the 1980s, 836 product groups were in the “reserved” category produced only by SSIs (which encouraged informal enterprises).
• In 2005, there were still 500 products in this category, 15 years after the economic reforms were launched.
• Thereafter the reservation of products of small firms was cut sharply to 16 products.
• By then, small scale and informality had gotten entrenched in Indian manufacturing. Incentivisation to remain small in scale cost India dearly.

Need for structural change

• Sixth, when structural change is needed, industrial policy can facilitate that process. In a fast-changing market, losing firms will block structural changes that are socially beneficial but make their own assets worthless.
• East Asian governments prevented such firms from undermining structural change, with moves such as orderly capacity-scrapping between competing firms and retraining programmes to limit such resistance.
• Finally, manufacturing will create jobs; its share in total employment fell from 12.8% to 11.5% over 2012 to 2016.

The Asian story

• The East Asian miracle was very much founded upon export-oriented manufacturing, employ surplus labour released by agriculture, thus raising wages and reducing poverty rapidly.
• This outcome came from a conscious, deliberately planned strategy (with Five Year Plans).
• The growing participation of East Asian countries in global value chains (GVCs), graduating beyond simple, manufactured consumer goods to more technology and skill-intensive manufactures for export, was a natural corollary to the industrial policy.
• India has been practically left out of GVCs.
• Increasing export of manufactures will need to be another rationale for an industrial policy, even though India has to focus more on “make for India”.
• From 2014 to 2018 there has been an absolute fall in dollar terms in merchandise exports.
• In this quest for increased exports, economies of scale are critical.
• Such economies were not possible with the policy-induced growth of micro-enterprises and informal units (the unorganised sector accounts for 45% of India’s exports).

Lessons from IT taking root

• If evidence is still needed that the state’s role will be critical to manufacturing growth in India, the state’s role in the success story of India’s IT industry must be put on record.
• The government invested in creating high-speed Internet connectivity for IT software parks enabling integration of the Indian IT industry into the U.S. market.
• The government allowed the IT industry to import duty-free both hardware and software. (In retrospect, this should never have continued after a few years since it undermined the
  growth of the electronics hardware manufacturing in India.)
• The IT industry was able to function under the Shops and Establishment Act; hence not subject to the 45 laws relating to labour and the onerous regulatory burden these impose.
• Finally, the IT sector has the benefit of low-cost, high-value human capital created by public investments earlier in technical education.

Conclusion

• Without these, the IT success story would not have occurred.
• These offer insights to the potential for industrial policy when a new government takes over soon.

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Is there a silver lining in services? (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: FMCG
Mains level: Industries growth and infrastructure

Context

• The high frequency indicators that are believed to capture the ECG graph of the Indian economy have been flat-lining.
• Some analysts have used these data points on IIP, vehicle and FMCG sales to conclude that domestic consumers are now in dire straits, putting the economy at risk of a cardiac arrest.
• But the assessment would be less pessimistic if one looks at the services leg of the economy. Most high-frequency indicators in India are designed to track consumer demand for goods and sales of manufactured products.
• Yet, industry today chips in with just a fifth of India’s GDP while services is three times as big with a 60 per cent contribution.

Services holding up

• Three big-picture data points indicate that services may be holding up better amid the industrial slowdown.
• One, bank credit to the services sector, according to the RBI, grew at 20 per cent plus year-on-year every month between March 2018 and February 2019, closing FY19 18 per cent higher.
• In the same months, credit offtake for industry grew at 1 to 6 per cent, rounding off the year at 7 per cent.
• Two, while listed industrial firms have delivered poor sales growth in the January-March 2019 quarter at 5 per cent, services firms have grown fast at 16.5 per cent.
• This is derived from results of 175 NSE-listed services companies and 240 industrial ones that have so far reported their numbers.
• Services companies have also steadily improved upon their revenue growth in the last five quarters, starting out at 8 per cent in January-March 2018 and doubling the pace since.
• Three, consumer price inflation trends for the past two years show the price rise for services such as housing, health, recreation, education and personal care has remained elevated even as goods inflation has collapsed.

Retail rebound

• India’s retail sector registered a revival of sorts in FY19 after stalling the previous financial year.
• Trade analysts put the sector’s growth at 8-10 per cent in FY19, with organised retail growing faster.
• Listed retail players have clocked a 21 per cent revenue growth in the latest March quarter and value retailer Avenue Supermarts clocked same-store sales growth of 17.8 per cent for FY19, rebounding from 14 per cent in FY18.
• If demand for premium mall space is an indicator of the sector’s health, consultant JLL noted that retailers, who absorbed 3.9 million sq ft of mall space in 2018, were looking to double that to 7.7 million sq ft in 2019.
• But while organised retail seems to be back on its feet, it is difficult to know if the mom-and-pop stores which make up most of the sector are mirroring this rebound.

Hospitality warm-up

• Holidaying in exotic spots seems to top the bucket-list of affluent Indians and that’s showing up in demand for hotel rooms consistently outpacing supply in the last five years.
• Indian Hotels checked out of FY19 on an upbeat note, recording a 10 per cent revenue growth and its highest profit in 11 years. \
• It shared industry data showing that demand for hotel rooms grew by 3.4 per cent in FY19 even as supply expanded 2.6 per cent.
• Occupancy rates have climbed from 57 to 65 per cent in five years. Should this sustain, players expect to take hikes in their room rates that they have been putting off for five years now.
• After battling activist regulators and reluctant buyers between 2013 and 2017, real estate players saw some light at the end of the tunnel in 2018. Knight Frank noted that 2018 was the
  first calendar year in a decade, in which sales of new homes in key cities increased (they rose by 6 per cent to 2.42 lakh units).
• The pick-up helped the industry’s unsold inventory recede from 7.2 lakh units in 2014 to 4.7 lakh in 2018. RBI data reiterates healthy home loan growth at 19 per cent in FY19.

Demonetization effect

• Banks, insurers and mutual funds reaped a windfall in inflows between FY16 and FY18, thanks to demonetisation.
• But with the spell wearing off in FY19, bank deposits have registered just a 10 per cent increase, life insurers have collected just 6 per cent more in individual life premiums and mutual funds have seen their net inflow halve compared to FY18. But this doesn’t put these players in particularly difficult straits, as their flows remain well above pre-note ban levels. On the credit front, listed banks saw a 16 per cent growth in the latest March quarter, while many NBFCs braked due to the liquidity crunch.
• Telecom players certainly don’t face a demand problem, with their internet customers soaring by 82 per cent between 2015 and 2018 and their data usage jumping from 136 MB to 8.7 GB per month, even though the mobile subscriber base has stagnated. But with competition denting tariffs, revenues of players have dipped in this period, with analysts now expecting a shakeout to rescue profitability.
• Consumers also seem to be splurging without a care on other forms of entertainment. Listed players in the multiplex and content space saw a 22 per cent expansion in their takings in the March 2019 quarter, on top of a 26 per cent growth last year. India’s DTH subscriber base has jumped from 56 million to 71 million in the last three years.
• Transport is one of the few services to have lost speed lately, with commercial vehicle sales, a proxy for road transport, slowing sharply in the second half of FY19. Air passenger traffic has also seen a drop-off from January moderating FY19 growth to 13 per cent, from 19-20 per cent earlier.

The ‘E’ factor

• Online aggregators who have enabled Bharatvasis to buy groceries, hire conveyance, order food, book hotel rooms and call in the beautician at the swipe of a smartphone managed scorching growth rates in the last three years.
• Redseer Consulting estimates that e-tailing platforms shipped out 2.5 million packages a day in 2018, compared to 1.5 million in 2016.
• Food-ordering apps have set the cash registers ringing at neighbourhood eateries by clocking gross business volumes of $1700 million in 2018, from $300 million in 2016. Daily rides hailed on online taxi apps have jumped from 2 million to 3.5 million.

Need to be read with caveats.

• One, while most of the above metrics capture growth for corporate services firms, well over half of India’s services economy is made up of informal mom-and-pop outfits on whom there is precious little information.
• Two, a lot of the services growth seems to be powered by the creamy layer of India’s population.

Conclusion

• For more inclusive services such as telecom, loss-leader pricing has played a big role in driving demand, suggesting that the growth could peter out if the economy doesn’t deliver income increases.
• Collecting more data on the informal sector and designing a monthly index on services, like the IIP.
• It can help ensure that commentators on the Indian economy, like the seven blind men, don’t have to guess at the shape of this elephant by feeling its trunk.

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In the age of social media, the credibility of content is an important issue (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Security
Prelims level: Fake news
Mains level: Fake news impact

Context

• In the digital age, where copious amounts of free information is available in public domain, the menace of misinformation, propaganda and personal attacks is bound to exist. It is certainly not new in the world of social media. In the last few months, however, social media has been at its worst. At the same time, it is also struggling, taking baby steps towards improving itself.
• Riding on networking, information sharing and propaganda, political parties have set up war rooms, garages and factories.
• Hours and days at a stretch are being spent to manufacture disinformation, disseminate it through public or private communication channels, and wait for it to play up.

Background

• India has witnessed unprecedented levels of misinformation, lies, fables and manufactured statistics being fed to people through their mobile devices.
• The systematic, organised way in which large amounts of misinformation is reaching the masses is leaving the public confused between right and wrong and between relevant and
  irrelevant.
• Adding fuel to the raging fire is the usual public apathy towards “fact-checking” and verifying the information they are consuming.
• Mainstream media houses, with their political biases and jingoism in prime time spotlight, have blurred the lines between fake and fact, reporting and opinion, objective and subjective.
• Gone are the days of media objectivity. And, unfortunately, the systematic and organised voices are louder even though they may not be credible.

Credible source

• Believers are following a storyline and their influencers; non-believers are following the other narrative that feeds their ideas leaving them in an echo chamber of toxic information.
• With mainstream media channels, in many cases, becoming the mouthpieces of political parties, believers don’t get to hear the non-believer’s storyline with objectivity and non-believers don’t get to hear the believer’s storyline with objectivity.
• People find it easier to believe a piece of information if it aligns with their political, religious or personal ideology or biases and favourites.
• They ignore the idea that their friends, family or networks could also be pushing misinformation, by choice or by chance.
• After all, misinformation manufacturers aren’t just working out of their head offices in the national capital, but are even operational at the district, block and village level.
• They are using the media of text messages, voice notes, photographs and videos; and they are grabbing the attention of their audiences through humour, sarcasm, memes and gifs.
• If everything fails, they return to the usual emotional approach — a misguided sense of religious and nationalist identities.

Way forward

• In a country of 900 million Indian voters, at least 200 million use social media and instant messaging platforms on a daily basis.
• Each one of them is connected to hundreds and thousands of individuals, mostly those with a mobile phone in their hands but some also who have no devices.
• The problem, however, does not lie in the platforms, it lies with the people.
• The masses have not been trained and equipped to produce content.
• They are largely consuming content, and passing it on further for the sheer enjoyment of sharing, without pausing and thinking about its consequences.
• The scale and volume at which misinformation is being created; we may need to develop large scale cadres of MIL experts (media information literacy experts) at community levels to reinstall our messaging patterns.
• If this isn’t done on a priority basis, our society is at a serious risk of information toxicity.

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IBC hits and misses (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: IBC
Mains level: IBC pros and cons

Context

• Even as the time taken for resolution under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) continues to exceed the outer limit prescribed under the law.
• The process is yielding better outcomes in a shorter time frame as compared to the erstwhile regime.

Background

• In FY19, financial institutions recovered close to Rs 70,000 crore through resolution under the IBC, estimates rating agency Crisil.
• This works out to a recovery rate of 43 per cent.\
• In comparison, recoveries under the preceding regime through various channels debt recovery tribunals, securitisation and reconstruction of financial assets, and enforcement of the securities interest act (SARFAESI) and Lok Adalats stood at Rs 35,000 crore in FY18.

Cause for concern

• The time taken for successful resolution continues to exceed that envisaged in the law. Under the law, the insolvency resolution process is to be completed in 180 days, which can be extended by another 90 days to a maximum of 270 days.
• But, of the 1,143 cases that are currently outstanding under the IBC, 362 cases or 32 per cent are pending for more than 270 days.
• In a few of the big ticket cases, the resolution process has exceeded 400 days.

Reason

• Part of the delay in resolution can be attributed to the absence of buyers, differences between members of the committee of creditors, as well as legal challenges mounted by existing promoters not willing to let go of their companies.
• Then, there are issues of institutional capacity which need to be addressed.

Conclusion

• However, despite these delays, Crisil estimates that it takes around 324 days for cases to be resolved under the IBC in comparison, as per the World Bank’s Doing Business Report 2019, it took 4.3 years under the earlier regime.
• In the months after the IBC kicked in, operational creditors had taken the lead in initiating the corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRPs) against errant debtors.
• But thereafter, financial institutions stepped up.
• In fact, in the quarter ended March 2019, the number of CIRPs initiated by financial creditors exceeded those initiated by operational creditors. But it is difficult to say whether this trend will continue after the Supreme Court ruling on the RBI’s February 12 circular.
• The quashing of the circular has opened the door for banks to tackle the issue of bad loans outside the IBC process, a route they might prefer.

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India’s soaring demand for cooling technologies portends significant environmental concerns (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 3: Science and Tech
Prelims level: ICAP
Mains level: ICAP impact and significance

Context

• The rising global need for cooling amenities and the associated environmental and economic concerns have been matters of extensive study and debate recently.
• India as the fastest growing and rapidly urbanising economy is projected to have the strongest growth in cooling demand worldwide.
• While India’s soaring demand in this sector is in line with the country’s developmental needs, it does portend significant environmental, social and economic concerns.
• The government’s launch of the India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP) on March 8 is a bold response to addressing India’s future cooling needs while neutralising its impacts.
• ICAP most visibly is about enhancing access to cooling amenities, optimising demand and efficient cooling practices and technologies.

Impact of ICAP

• At its core, ICAP is about improving the quality of life and productivity of the people of India, and achieving many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) thus accelerating the country’s growth trajectory.
• There is ample evidence to correlate access to cooling amenities and technologies with human health and productivity, and in extreme cases, even survival. It is closely tied to achieving several of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
• India has one of the lowest access to such technologies and amenities across the world, far below the global average.
• The ICAP addresses the dilemma of how to meet the country’s growing social need in this respect without posing major economic and environmental consequences.
• Conceived against the backdrop of the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the Kigali Amendment, the ICAP for the first time harmonises separate policy streams: Energy consumption and refrigerant use.
• This landmark policy document demonstrates unprecedented inter-ministerial and cross-sectoral collaboration in laying out actionable pathways and goals to achieve 25-40 per cent reduction in cooling energy requirements and 25-30 per cent reduction in refrigerant demand as compared to business as usual over the next 20 years.
• As meaningful as these goals are to proactively and effectively manage India’s future cooling needs, what makes the ICAP even more momentous is the significant co-benefits above the energy and emissions reduction that are inherent in the pathways recommended by the ICAP for the cooling sectors.

Space cooling sector

• In the space cooling sector, which represents a dominant share of India’s current and future cooling needs, the underlying thrust is to enable thermal comfort and well-being for all citizens by providing affordable and reliable cooling options, maintaining reliable electricity grids, and enhancing climate resilience of buildings and homes.
• The thrust is on ensuring that the vulnerable populations, particularly children and the elderly, are not exposed to undue heat stresses.
• To maximise the cooling load reduction and possible benefits for this sector, ICAP proposes an approach that first reduces the cooling energy demand through climate appropriate and energy efficient building design.
• Then serves the demand through energy efficient appliances and finally, controls and optimises the demand through demand-side and user adaptation strategies, such as adaptive thermal comfort.
• The plan lays special emphasis on enabling thermal comfort for the economically-weaker sections through climate-appropriate designs of affordable housing, and low-cost interventions to achieve better thermal insulation (such as cool roofs).
• The benefits of the proposed actions extend to enhancing nationwide productivity, reducing heat-islands in urban areas, mitigating peak-load impacts and reducing the stress on the power systems — much of this would also free up capital for other developmental priorities.

Way forward

• ICAP proposes development of an integrated cold chain infrastructure with the appropriate market linkages, supported by adequate training and up-skilling of farmers and professionals.
• The co-benefits include economic well-being of farmers and reducing food losses thus strengthening food security and alleviating hunger-related issues.
• Driving skill-building of the services sector through training and certification is an important target identified by the plan.
• This will address rampant operational inefficiencies and leakage of refrigerants a significant source of GHG emissions.
• It also presents an opportunity for providing increased employment, better livelihoods, and safer working practices for the HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) sector.
• ICAP’s emphasis on an innovative R and D ecosystem aims to drive the nation towards better utilisation of public-funded R and D efforts that solve pressing issues related to the
  environment and quality of life.
• The plan also positions India’s cooling challenge as an opportunity for the nation to demonstrate leadership in areas related to innovation.
• It also supports the Make in India campaign through indigenous production of cooling equipment and refrigerants.
• The benefits of ICAP could impact several SDGs good health and well-being, decent work and economic growth, sustainable cities and communities, reduced inequalities, affordable and clean energy, responsible consumption and production, and climate action.

Conclusion

• The onus is now on the various stakeholders to work collaboratively, with the right policy and market levers, to lead the country towards a cooling transformation that exemplifies sustainable and responsible cooling for all.

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Q1. Consider the following statements regarding seismometers :

1) Seismometers are instruments that measure the shaking produced by quakes, recording the arrival time and strength of various quake waves to get a location estimate, called an epicentre.
2) They can be placed only on surfaces with gravity and therefore cannot be placed in moon to record quakes.
3) One of the continuing problems with sensitive vertical seismographs is the buoyancy of their masses. The uneven changes in pressure caused by wind blowing can easily change the density of the air in a room enough to cause a vertical seismograph to show spurious signals.

Which of the above statements are true ?

a) 1 & 2 only
b) 2 & 3 only
c) 1 & 3 only
d) all the above

Q2. Consider the following pairs of hydro power projects in India and their location states :

1) Jawaharsagar : Rajasthan
2) Tehri :Uttarakhand
3) Tungabhadra : Andhra Pradesh
4) Ukai :Odisha
5) Pong Dam : Himachal Pradesh

Which of the above pairs are correctly matched ?

a) 1,2 & 3 only
b) 1,2 & 5 only
c) 3,4 & 5 only
d) all the above

Q3. India has joined a major global initiative named ‘Christchurch call to action’ to combat terrorism and extremism online and secure the internet. Which of the following statements regarding the same are true ?

1) The declaration on ‘Christchurch call to action’ said a free, open and secure internet is a powerful tool by which to promote connectivity, enhance social inclusiveness and foster economic growth.
2) The initiative outlines collective, voluntary commitments from governments and online service providers intended to address the issue of terrorist and violent extremist content online and to prevent the abuse of the internet.
3) While the document stresses on the need to ensure that it does not impinge upon the rights of free speech of citizens of any country, the US has decided not to sign the document amid free speech concerns.

a) 1 & 2 only
b) 2 & 3 only
c) 1 & 3 only
d) all the above

Q4. Which of the following statements regarding RBI’s recently published vision document“Payment and Settlement Systems in India: Vision 2019 – 2021” are true ?

1) The document envisages to achieve "a highly digital and cash-lite society" through the goal posts of competition, cost-effectiveness, convenience and confidence.
2) The payment systems landscape will continue to change with further innovation and entry of more players which is expected to ensure the optimal cost to the customers and freer access to multiple payment system options.
3) RBI will continue to intervene heavily in the pricing of charges to customers for digital payments,all efforts will be made towards facilitating the operation of payment systems which are efficient and price-attractive.

a) 1 & 2 only
b) 2 & 3 only
c) 1 & 3 only
d) all the above

Q5. The Fujairah port recently seen in news is in which of the following countries of West Asia ?

a) Saudi Arabia
b) Qatar
b) UAE
d) Kuwait

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No apology, please (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 2: Polity
Prelims level: Freedom of expression
Mains level: Constitutional background

Context

• The Supreme Court vacation bench has granted bail to Priyanka Sharma of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) in West Bengal.
• This was scrupulously correct, because bail is a right except in special circumstances, where the accused is deemed to be likely to misuse her freedom to interfere with the course of justice.

Background

• Initially, the bail granted was conditional upon Sharma tendering an immediate apology for sharing a bizarre meme online, showing West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.
• The final order was softened to restore Sharma’s liberty without a pre-condition, but it required her to apologise after being set free.

Problem with such conditions

• This rider was deeply problematic on multiple counts.
• First, the court appears to have asked for an apology because the post was made by a political worker during elections, though situational matters generally do not concern the process of justice.
• What is deemed to be just today should be deemed so for all time.
• Second, Sharma’s counsel has argued that she had only re-posted a pre-existing meme.
• The judicial remand of Sharma for 14 days was a travesty of justice, especially by a government that, ironically, claims to be pushing for a more liberal space.
• The judicial action, without doubt, was out of proportion with the act of forwarding a meme, and the demand for an apology by the highest court, as a condition following her release,
  heaps insult upon injury.
• Third, while the court is correct in observing a principle of natural justice, which requires a balance in the rights of individuals, Sharma’s alleged transgression cannot have been probed sufficiently in a single hearing. Indeed, the order states: “The questions raised are kept open.”
• To require her to apologise when her transgression has not been sufficiently established militates against natural justice.

Setting a Dangerous Precedent

• Though the order states that “it shall not operate as a precedent”, if the need for an apology is eventually upheld, the effects would be catastrophic, for all satire is political in nature and intent.
• Cartoonists would have to publicly repent every morning, shortly after newspapers land on the doorsteps of readers. Stand-up comics could apologise in the evenings, after the show.
• Theatre and cinema producers and directors dealing in political issues (and what is drama if it is not political?) would have to send pre-emptive apologies to the powers that be before their shows opened.
• And satire would be declared dead on arrival.

Conclusion

• The meme shared by Sharma was merely bizarre, even if it involved a political personality.
• If producers of real political satire could be prosecuted until they apologised, it would be the death of free speech.

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