The Jan Dhan Yojana is gathering steam (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Polity
Prelims level: Jan Dhan Yojana
Mains level: Signifiance of the Jan Dhan Yojana

Context

• The NDA’s Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) seems to be delivering well on its financial inclusion objectives without placing undue burden on bank bottomlines.
• The aggregate deposits in the PMJDY accounts are currently nudging ₹1 lakh crore, having grown ten-fold from the ₹10,500 crore in the first phase of the scheme in January 2015.
• After witnessing a sharp spike and then a moderation in the three months immediately following the note ban in 2016, deposit flows into JDY has settled down to a brisk 25 per cent growth rate in the last two financial years.
• Though they still make up less than 1 per cent of banks’ deposit base, their sustained growth in a year when deposit flows were hard to come by, has helped shore up banks’ CASA (Current Account Savings Accounts) balances.

Success of PMJDY

• The PMJDY has delivered financial inclusion on three counts.
• One, it has contributed to financialisation of savings by giving lower income households access to a safe investment product.
• Two, with 13.5 crore beneficiaries enrolling for the low-cost accident insurance cover and 5.5 crore for the life cover, the account is giving disadvantaged folks a look-in to other financial products.
• Three, with 27.7 crore account holders now armed with Rupay debit cards, their transition to electronic payments has gotten a leg-up too. But now that JDY deposit flows are shoring up banks’ CASA, the Centre must nudge them to offer much-needed loan products to these account holders.
• Allowing them to build up a credit and transaction history in the banking system is critical to wean them away from the grip of usurious money lenders who extract a heavy price on their finances when emergencies strike.
• Using a dashboard approach to track the value and number of overdrafts sanctioned on the PMJDY portal would be a good way to achieve this.
• The Centre and the RBI also need to make sure that these first-time adopters are treated well at bank branches, know the grievance redressal mechanisms and are aware of, and protected from, the consequences of fraud or misuse of their accounts.

Conclusion

• The sharp spike in the JDY account balances during the note ban months was a red flag on this score.
• Rather than persisting with account opening or deposit targets for banks on JDY, regulators must now ratchet up their education efforts to make sure that JDY holders are aware of their rights and don’t fall prey to benami holders or money-launderers seeking to exploit their banking access.

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All out at sea: on India’s engagements in the Indian Ocean (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: International Relations
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: India’s foreign policy

Context

• India is setting a high tempo of naval operations in Asia. In recent weeks, a series of bilateral exercises with regional navies in the Indian Ocean have demonstrated the Indian Navy’s resolve to preserve operational leverage in India’s near seas.
• In April, in their biggest and most complex exercise, Indian and Australian warships held drills in the Bay of Bengal.
• This was followed by a much-publicised anti-submarine exercise with the U.S. Navy near Diego Garcia.
• Last week, the Indian Navy held a joint exercise ‘Varuna’ with the French Navy off the coast of Goa and Karwar.
• Even as two Indian warships participated in a ‘group sail’ with warships from Japan, the Philippines and the United States on return from a fleet review in Qingdao.

Challenges for India

• The trigger for India’s newfound zeal at sea is the rapid expansion of China’s naval footprint in the Indian Ocean. Beyond commercial investments in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, China has established a military outpost in Djibouti, a key link in Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
• Reports suggest the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is planning an expansion of its logistics base for non-peacekeeping missions, raising the possibility of an operational overlap with the Indian Navy’s areas of interest.
• As some see it, Djibouti portends a future where China would control key nodes skirting important shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean, allowing the PLA’s Navy (PLAN) to dominate the security dynamic.
• Meanwhile, South Asian navies have been making their presence felt in the seas of the subcontinent. In a quest for regional prominence, Sri Lanka has positioned itself as a facilitator of joint regional endeavours, expanding engagement with Pacific powers which includes the Royal Australian Navy and the U.S. Navy.
• With China’s assistance, Pakistan too is becoming an increasingly potent actor in the northern Indian Ocean, a key region of Indian interest.
• Beijing has also been instrumental in strengthening the navies of Bangladesh and Myanmar, both increasingly active participants in regional security initiatives.
• In these circumstances, India has had little option but to intensify its own naval engagements in South Asia.

Partnerships are key

• As the most capable regional maritime force, the Indian Navy has played a prominent role in the fight against non-traditional challenges in the Indian Ocean.
• While its contribution to the counter-piracy mission off the coast of Somalia, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (including in cyclone-hit Mozambique) has been substantial, a paucity of assets and capacity has forced the Navy to seek partners willing to invest resources in joint security endeavours.
• Partnerships are vital to the Indian Navy’s other key undertaking: deterring Chinese undersea deployments in South Asia.
• For New Delhi, China’s expanding submarine forays in the Indian Ocean indicate Beijing’s strategic ambitions in India’s neighbourhood.
• Experts reckon PLAN has been studying the operating environment in the Indian Ocean in a larger endeavour to develop capabilities for sustained operations in the littorals.
• As a result, the Indian Navy’s recent bilateral exercises have focussed on under-sea surveillance and anti-submarine warfare.

The movement of China

• To be sure, sightings of Chinese submarine sightings have decreased, which has led some to conclude that Beijing is moving to scale down its maritime operations in the Indian Ocean.
• After a ‘reset’ of sorts in ties following the Wuhan summit last year, some observers believe India and China are on a collaborative path.
• New Delhi’s silence on China’s continuing aggression in the South China Sea, and Indian warships being sent for the Chinese fleet review in Qingdao (in April) do suggest a conciliatory stance.
• Yet, reduced visibility of Chinese submarines does not necessarily prove absence.
• The truth, as some point out, is that PLAN is on a quest to master undersea ‘quieting’ technologies and its new submarines are stealthier than ever.
• The reason they are not being frequently sighted is because Chinese submarines are quieter and craftier than earlier.
• China has been downplaying its strategic interests in South Asia.
• It is concerned that too much talk about its growing naval power could prove detrimental to the cause of promoting the BRI.
• Alarm at the recent BRI summit over Chinese ‘debt traps’ has led Beijing to revise some infrastructure projects. India’s refusal to participate in the BRI may have also prompted China to rethink its economic and military strategies in the Indian Ocean.

African focus

• Even so, Beijing hasn’t indicated any change of plan in West Asia and the east coast of Africa, where most of China’s energy and resource shipments originate.
• Chinese investments in port infrastructure in Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania and Mozambique have grown at a steady pace, even as PLAN has sought to expand its presence in the western Indian Ocean.
• In response, India has moved to deepen its own regional engagement, seeking naval logistical access to French bases in Reunion and Djibouti, where the second phase of ‘Varuna’ will be held later this month.
• Yet, India’s Indian Ocean focus makes for an essentially defensive posture.
• Improvements in bilateral and trilateral naval engagements, it hasn’t succeeded in leveraging partnerships for strategic gains.
• With India’s political leadership reluctant to militarise the Quadrilateral grouping or to expand naval operations in the Western Pacific, the power-equation with China remains skewed in favour of the latter.

Conclusion

• For all its rhetoric surrounding the ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’, New Delhi is yet to take a stand on a ‘rules-based order’ in littoral-Asia.
• A wariness for sustained operations in China’s Pacific backyard has rendered the Indian Navy’s regional strategy a mere ‘risk management’ tactic, with limited approach to shape events in littoral-Asia.

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Missing demand: on economic slowdown (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers
Mains level: Economic growth and development

Context

• A welter of data collectively and individually point to one worrying conclusion: economic momentum across sectors is slowing in the widening absence of that key ingredient, demand.
• Domestic sales of cars, commercial vehicles and two wheelers all contracted in April, from a year earlier, the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) has reported.
• The decline of almost 16% in total automobile industry sales is an indication that consumption demand across markets urban and rural, institutional and individual is petering out.
• While sales of commercial vehicles, a fair proxy for overall economic activity, slid 6% last month, a 16.4% drop in demand for two-wheelers extended the segment’s slump into the new financial year, mirroring the rippling rural distress.

Analyzing the data on declining

• The data on passenger vehicles, which saw the steepest drop in almost eight years, add to the gloom.
• Car sales shrank almost 20% amid a protracted slump that shows no signs of a reversal.
• The latest industrial output figures from the government serve to underscore the widespread nature of the demand drought.
• The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) for March shows output fell 0.1% from a year earlier to a 21-month low, with the use-based classification revealing a weakening that spared none of the six segments.
• The capital goods sector shrank by 8.7% on the back of an 8.9% contraction in the preceding month.
• Output of consumer durables fell 5.1% from a year earlier, and growth in consumer non-durables production slid to 0.3% from the 14.1% pace in March 2018.
• Manufacturing, which has a weight of almost 78% in the index, continues to be the biggest drag, with output contracting by 0.4% after shrinking by a similar extent in February.

Way forward

• Overall, the sector’s growth slowed to 3.5% in the last fiscal, from 4.6% in 2017-18. The composite picture that emerges from all these numbers belies the CSO’s implicit fourth-quarter
  GDP growth assumption of 6.5%, and paints it as overly optimistic.
• With global headwinds strengthening in the backdrop of an escalating trade war between the two largest economies, the U.S. and China, and rising tensions in West Asia beginning to push up energy costs from the top oil-exporting region, Indian policymakers have to contend with an external sector that would likely only add to the domestic pressures, most certainly in the near term if not in the longer.
• The distress in the farm sector may just ease marginally if the monsoon does turn out to be “near normal” as forecast last month, and could help spur a demand revival in the rural hinterland.

Conclusion

• Still, the new government that emerges after May 23 must spare little time in drawing up appropriate policy measures that not only help reinvigorate demand but also ensure that such a revival is robust, across-the-board and enduring.

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Facing the climate emergency (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Environment
Prelims level: Climate emergency
Mains level: Climate emergency and its solution

Context

• Already wealthy countries have become wealthier and developing countries have been made poorer in relative terms during this time.
• India’s GDP growth penalty between 1961 and 2010 is in the order of 31% for the period, whereas Norway gained about 34% on a per capita basis.
• More recently, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services has reported that, worldwide, the abundance of species has reduced by at least one-fifth, about a million species are under threat of extinction in the next few decades and 85% of wetlands have been lost.

Instances of collusion

• Moreover, are numerous instances of elite networks that are taking advantage of the situation to consolidate their control.
• These networks often involve governments actively or quiescently colluding with fossil fuel companies, agro-industrial elites, financial elites and other big businesses that are ignoring climate change and making a fast buck often even from the growing disasters.
• The International Monetary Fund estimates in a recent working paper that fossil fuel subsidies were $4.7 trillion in 2015 and estimated to be $5.2 trillion in 2017.
• It goes on to say that efficient fossil fuel pricing would have reduced global carbon emissions by 28%.
• The Arctic is melting rapidly and the tenor of the recent discussions among Arctic countries suggests that even as increasing glacier melt is responsible for opening up shipping in the area, superpowers are angling to access wealth from the oil, gas, uranium and precious metals in the region.

What needs to be done?

• While this kind of corruption may not be new, various versions of this are played out in other countries. Governments’ corporate cronies and plundering elites, of course, need not be foreign.
• Environmental laws can be broken by old boys’ networks with impunity as penalties are cancelled by a party in control.
• It is the poorest and those without access to power who become victims of the fallout from these situations.
• Another recent example is the draft Indian Forest Act of 2019, which enhances the political and police power of the forest department and curtails the rights of millions of forest dwellers.

Ear to the ground

• Policies and commitments make it clear that most governments and businesses are not interested in dealing with the climate and ecological crises.
• They will certainly not give these the central attention they deserve in these times of an emergency; they barely even acknowledge them.
• Luckily, what we are witnessing is a large-scale movement for “planet emergency”, climate and ecology. Greta Thunberg has been leading this among school-going children, an Extinction Rebellion has been organising “die-ins” in many parts of Europe and now in Asia.
• Their non-violent civil disobedience is just what is needed and it is indeed inspiring to see children and grandparents protest together. People’s movements, whether made up of students or adults, cannot be ignored for long and governments will have to pay attention.
• The atmosphere now has concentrations of over 415 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide, compared to 280 ppm in pre-industrial times.
• But then, fossil fuel companies and politicians have known about climate change for at least 30 years.
• They have funded misinformation regarding climate directly, taking lessons from tobacco companies that propagated lies for decades about cigarettes being safe.
• The documentary film Merchants of Doubt describes how a handful of scientists have obscured the truth on global warming so that business profits can continue to flow.
• The fossil fuel industry has also funded politicians, so their words and laws are already bought.

Way forward

• The only solutions that governments and business are looking for are those that enable them to carry on as before.
• But the planet is well past that point where small fixes can help take us on a long path to zero carbon earth.
• We are now at a stage where we need major overhaul of our lifestyles and patterns of consumption.
• The U.K. Parliament became the first recently to declare a climate emergency. It remains to be seen if appropriate actions will follow this declaration.
• When a 16-year-old speaks with far greater clarity and conviction than the thousands of dithering policy wonks who have been debating for over three decades, we know the politics of the climate crisis must undergo a radical transformation.

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Q1. India has been unanimously chosen as co-chair of the Consultative Group (CG) of Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) for the fiscal year 2020.

Which of the following regarding the same are true ?

1) GFDRR is a global partnership that helps developing countries better understand and reduce their vulnerability to natural hazards and climate change.
2) It is a grant-funding mechanism, managed by the WTO, that supports disaster risk management projects worldwide.
3) This will give the country an opportunity for India to work with the member countries and organizations with a focused contribution towards advancing the disaster risk reduction agenda during the course of the year.

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

Q2. Consider the following pairs of vitamins/minerals and their deficiency disorders :

1) Iodine : Goitre
2) Vitamin C : Bone and tooth decay
3) Vitamin D : Rickets
4) Calcium : Scurvy
5) Iron : Anaemia

Which of the above pairs are correctly matched ?

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

Q3. Which of the following statements regarding the recently published World Insurance Report 2019 are true ?

1) As per the report, 83% of personal insurance customers have medium or high exposure to cyberattacks and to outliving their savings, yet just 3% and 5% respectively are comprehensively covered against these eventualities.
2) Under 25% of business customers across all geographies, and less than 15% of personal policyholders, feel they have sufficient coverage to insure against any one of the emerging risks driven by these macro trends.
3) A per the report, risk assessment capabilities can be significantly enhanced through deployment of machine learning, artificial intelligence and advanced analytics, and effective collaboration with tech providers.

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

Q4. Consider the following statements with respect to climate change and its mitigation techniques :

1) Climate change, plus relentless industrial farming and fishing are leading to the extinction of 1 million species from Mother Earth within decades.
2) We need to replace carbon-based fuels, with other forms of energy generation that do not generate greenhouse gases; hence solar power, wind power and others. Also enhance all natural methods which absorb CO2.
3) Tropical forests house over 200 million species of plants, animals and fungi. They are thus termed as Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs). They restore and protect biodiversity, increase yields and enhance ecosystem protection and defense, hence deforestation should be avoided in these regions.

Which of the above statements are true ?

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

Q5. The global services trade restrictive index ( STRI )is released by which of the following global organisations ?

a) World Bank
b) WTO
c) OECD
d) IMF

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A Dialogue, an Opportunity (Live Mint)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: GSP
Mains level: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization of resources, growth,
development and employment.

Context

• Trade issues are not a formal part of this week’s dialogue in Delhi between the visiting US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Union Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu.
•  But there is no doubt that mounting trade tensions between India and the US have cast a dark shadow over the talks.
  Withdrawing trade benefits impact
•  The immediate danger is that the US might withdraw India’s trade benefits under the so-called Generalised System of Preferences that Delhi has enjoyed since the mid-1970s.
•  Market access, reciprocity in tariffs, trade deficit, predictable investment rules and data localisation.
•  The first is to recognise the value of the trade relationship between the two countries and its huge potential.
•  “Flat as a chapati” annual two-way trade has grown rapidly to touch nearly $130 billion last year (including trade and services).

Way forward

•  For India, the US is probably the most important trade partner today and will remain so for a long time.
•  For Washington, the size of the trade volume with India is quite low in comparison with its other key partners like Canada, Mexico, the European Union, Japan and China.
•  But the potential remains high as India emerges as the world’s third-largest economy.
•  Both countries need to be sensitive to the domestic political considerations.
•  Trump has convinced himself that the rest of the world has taken advantage of America’s open market.
•  In India, successive Prime Ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi chose to defy conventional political and bureaucratic wisdom to advance the country’s relationship with the US.
•  Indian officials who negotiated the complex nuclear deal can recall how George W Bush repeatedly overruled objections of his cabinet colleagues.
•  Never stop negotiating and keep making deals small or big.

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It’s time to raise the bar (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Polity
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Structure, organization and functioning of the Executive and the Judiciary Ministries and Departments of the Government

Context

• Justice A.K. Sikri, a well-regarded judge of the Supreme Court of India, found himself in the eye of a storm arising from accepting a post offered by the government, last year, while being a judge of the court.
•  By later turning down the offer after the controversy erupted, he substantially redeemed the judiciary’s and his own honour.
•  However, this is an issue that recurs frequently. Even titans in the legal field have had to face stinging rebuke from respected members of the fraternity for similar lapses.

The case of M.C. Chagla

•  The case of the late Justice M.C. Chagla. Both he and the former Attorney General of India, M.C. Setalvad, were members of the First Law Commission.
•  Speaking as members of the Law Commission they had categorically denounced the proclivity of judges accepting post-retirement jobs sponsored by governments and called for an end to it.
•  Unfortunately, in his post-retirement assignments, Justice Chagla violated the very same principle he had supported.
•  After retirement, he accepted a government appointment to serve as Indian Ambassador to the U.S. (1958-61) and later as Indian High Commissioner to the U.K (1962- 1963).
•  Soon after this he was asked to be minister for education in Nehru’s cabinet, which he again accepted.
•  He served as Education Minister (1963-66) and then as Minister for External Affairs (1966-67).

Law commission recommendation

•  These harsh words are possibly unfair to a person of the calibre of Chagla.
•  In none of the posts he held could he be accused of having acted as a sidekick to the government.
•  On the other hand, by declaring in 1965 that the Aligarh Muslim University could not claim minority status conferred under Article 30(1) of the Constitution, he even earned the collective ire of his cabinet members.
•  However, the shrill denunciations of the Law Commission on judges accepting post-retirement posts and Setalvad’s repeated calls to honour the principle merit acceptance even today.

Striking a balance

•  At the same time, it is also true that the valuable experience and insights that competent and honest judges acquire during their period of service cannot be wasted after retirement.
•  Unlike abroad, a judge of the higher judiciary in India retires at a comparatively young age and is capable of many more years of productive work.
•  However, government-sponsored post-retirement appointments will continue to raise a cloud of suspicion over the judgments the best judges delivered while in service.
•  Though cliched, it is true that in law justice must not only be done but also be seen to be done.
•  Therefore, the viable option is to expeditiously establish, through a properly enacted statute, a commission made up of a majority, if not exclusively, of retired judges to make appointments of competent retired judges to tribunals and judicial bodies.

Way forward

•  It is true that judges cannot legislate.
•  However, where a void is found in the legal framework that requires immediate attention, and legislative intervention is not likely to emerge immediately, the Supreme Court is empowered to provide an interim solution till legislation is passed to address the hiatus.
•  This process the top court has followed, to cite an instance (there are others), in the Vishaka case, where it laid down guidelines to deal with sexual harassment in workplaces till a law was passed by Parliament.
•  It is desirable the Supreme Court invokes that methodology now and puts in place a process to regulate post-retirement appointments for judges.
•  Such a process must sufficiently insulate the judiciary from the charge of being a recipient of government largesse.
•  In these times, the attacks on the fabric of independence of the judiciary will not be through engulfing flames but through small corrosive doses.
•  Therefore, it is in the judiciary’s own interests to resolve this issue as expeditiously as it can.

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Welcome shift (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Governance
Prelims level: Muzaffarpur shelter home trial
Mains level: Structure, organization and functioning of the departments of the government.

Context

•  The Supreme Court’s order transferring the trial in the Muzaffarpur shelter home case from Bihar to a court in Delhi is a welcome intervention to ensure justice for the children who were sexually exploited.
•  The Central Bureau of Investigation had argued that the trial would not be fair if it was held in Muzaffarpur.
•  In shifting it to a court notified under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act at Saket in Delhi.
•  The apex court has once again demonstrated its lack of confidence in the Bihar government. It had transferred the investigation from the State police to the CBI.
•  Later, it asked the agency to take over the probe in respect of 16 other shelter homes for children, destitute women and senior citizens.
•  These interventions had become necessary, given the apparent apathy of the authorities in Bihar even after horrific instances of physical and sexual exploitation came to light last year. The Bihar government asked the Tata Institute of Social Sciences to audit the short-stay and shelter homes, run by non-governmental organisations but funded by the government.
•  Last year, TISS came up with a damning report on the unsafe conditions in which children were staying in many shelter homes.
•  The Muzaffarpur home was among the worst: many girls reported physical and sexual violence. More than 30 girls below 17 have been sexually assaulted.

Steps taken so far

•  However, the subsequent response of the State government has not inspired much confidence.
•  Apart from some officials being suspended, and some of those involved arrested, the State government did not have much to show as stringent action. Its response came under adverse scrutiny.
•  A Bench of the Supreme Court found that 11 FIRs mentioned only minor offences, that is, “the least serious” of the offences involved.
•  In the Muzaffarpur case, the court took note of the clout of Brajesh Thakur, whose NGO ran the shelter home concerned. The girls in the shelter identified Chandrasekhar Verma, the husband of former Social Welfare Minister Manju Verma, as a frequent visitor.
•  The Verma couple later surrendered to the authorities.

Way forward

•  It is disquieting and significant that the court had to order Thakur’s transfer to a prison in Patiala to prevent him from exerting his influence on the authorities in Bihar.
•  The court is also separately monitoring the functioning of child care homes in Bihar.
•  Meanwhile, it is high time that States bestowed sufficient attention to such institutions.
•  A recent Central government committee report highlighted the shocking inadequacies in the facilities available at most child care institutions and homes.
•  There is a strong case for a systematic scrutiny to be taken up on an urgent basis to address the problem.

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The state of the States (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: SDG India Index
Mains level: Discuss the highlights of the SDG India Index

Context

•  India was one among the 193 United Nations member states to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September 2015.
•  It has been making sincere efforts to achieve these goals.
•  The SDG India Index: Baseline Report 2018, released to the public in December 2018 by NITI Aayog, is a useful comparative account of how well different States and Union Territories have performed so far in their efforts to achieve these goals.

Background

•  It has not been possible to establish suitable indicators for three of the 17 goals, including climate action (SDG-13).
•  This is on account of either lack of identification of appropriate indicators or of the inability to compare different States.
•  On the whole, 62 indicators representing 14 goals have been identified based on their measurability across States over time.
•  A progress performance assessment has been made towards targets set by the Government of India, or the UN SDGs target for 2030, or the average of the three best-performing States.
•  For reasons of comparability, all these indicators are normalised.

Four categories

•  Based on a scale of 0 to 100, the States are categorised into four groups: achievers, front runners, performers, and aspirants.
•  Achievers are those States which have already accomplished the set target. Front runners are those States that are very close to realising them.
•  A majority of the States are categorised as performers and some lag behind as aspirants.
•  Although classification sounds like an appropriate thing to do, there is arbitrariness in the exercise in the sense that in a unitary range, those States with scores till the midpoint are categorised as aspirants and a cluster of States in a close range of progress are termed as performers. A few States are designated as front runners.
•  The three front runner States Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Himachal Pradesh assume values of 66, 69 and 69, respectively, as against a range of States with values between 50 and 64.
•  With the national score being 57, almost 17 States qualify as above or equal to the national score.
•  Plotted on a graph, there is a negatively skewed distribution of scores with a reasonable tail to the left, a fat presence in the middle, and a tapering to the right.
•  This needs to be recognised in classification; otherwise the arbitrariness with which the classification is made somewhat hints at a purposive designation of a few States in two extremes
  and a major share of them in between.

The problem of averaging

•  Further, when one reads into the performance on various SDGs, it is found that many States fall into the aspirant category, especially for SDG-5 (gender equality), SDG-9 (industry innovation and infrastructure) and SDG-11 (sustainable cities and communities).
•  These kinds of differences could well be emerging owing to a different number of indicators considered under different SDGs as well as their corresponding variability across the States.
•  This is evident in the variation of scores across different goals. In case of goals 1 and 2, the range for the majority of the States is between 35 and 80. For goals 3 and 6, the range is between 25 and 100.
•  Again, for goal 5, it ranges between 24 and 50. Given these variations across different goals, merely averaging them not only compromises on robustness but also masks the disaggregated story to a large extent.
•  Not only does the feature of the progress performance pattern need to be recognised in such classification but also the pathway of progress in development indicators, which has a character removed from linearity.
•  Given that this is a measure of progress towards a target, the States near the target get a value closer to one compared to those which are away from the target assuming a lower value.
•  These values are determined in relative terms in the sense that they represent the unitary position of the States within the available scale of gap between the minimum achieved and the target.
•  Such positioning conveys a linear distance, which does not differentiate a given distance between two States which have performed well compared with another pair of States which are far from achieving the target.
•  The difference in progress between the three front runner States is three points.
•  This is perhaps not similar to the distance between the performing States of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, which too have a three-point difference.
•  Such comprehension of achievement is limited as regards to comparing States, let alone designating them into four categories.

What can be done?

•  The process of aggregation adopted to present the summary index of compliance with the targets being a simple average assumes that each of the goals as well as the corresponding set of indicators are equally important and can substitute for each other.
•  This also overlooks the aspect of inter-dependence of various goals, although it is upfront stated in the exercise.
•  To ensure minimum robustness of this measure, a geometric average would have served towards avoiding perfect substitutability of one goal with the other.
•  It means achievement of progress in one goal cannot compensate for compromise in another.
•  While this exercise serves as a report card of performance of States as regards compliance with the SDGs, its scientific adequacy is compromised with arbitrariness that presents a
  stereotypical pattern of performance rather than bringing out surprises.

Conclusion

•  The choice of indicators representing specific goals need not necessarily be guided by availability but also their explicit independence from one another.
•  This may help in making a uniform set of indicators for each of the goals with proper representation without duplication.
•  On the whole, this performance assessment may not be misleading, but it does not help us understand the relative significance of compliance in some goals that helps in compliance of the other.
•  Thus, performance assessment of SDGs while overlooking the strict interdependence of them may not be rewarding.

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General Studies Pre. Cum Mains Study Materials

Implementation issues in 10% reservation (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Polity
Prelims level: EWS
Mains level: Basic structure of Indian constitution

Context

•  A new Constitution amendment provides 10% reservation to individuals from economically weaker sections (EWS) in the general category for government jobs and educational institutions in India. This law raises several implementation questions.
•  Under the law, EWS applicants may even find it harder to obtain positions.

Unreserved to reserved

•  Until now, India’s main reserve-eligible groups have been Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes. In job and university assignments, there is a widespread tradition of first assigning a reserved category applicant to an unreserved position if he or she qualifies on the basis of merit alone.
•  When unreserved positions are exhausted, a reserved category applicant may then be considered for a reserved position.
•  A meritorious reserved candidate (MRC) is a reserved category applicant, who is tentatively assigned to an unreserved position.
•  When the assignment involves multiple types of jobs or universities, the existence of MRCs raises two important questions.
•  One, can an MRC move to a reserve position for a more preferred job or university place if he or she is tentatively holding a less preferred unreserved position?
•  Two, if such movement is allowed, what happens to the newly vacated seat?

Constitutional background

•  A 2004 Supreme Court decision in Anurag Patel v. U.P. Public Service Commission mandates that an MRC is entitled to move or “migrate” to the more preferred assignment.
•  A 2010 Supreme Court decision in Union of India v. Ramesh Ram & Ors answers the second question for the case of public sector job assignments.
•  It specifies that the newly vacated position is to be given to a candidate from the general category, who is not eligible for any reservation.
•  That is, even if there is a more deserving reserved category applicant say, another MRC who received a less preferred position the newly available unreserved position can go to a potentially lower-scoring applicant from the general category.
•  Therefore, one unintended consequence of this judgment is that the cut-off score for reserved category candidates can be higher than the cut-off score for the general category.

Implications

•  At present, a small fraction of unreserved positions are tentatively assigned to reserved category applicants.
•  This means that the number of meritorious reserved candidates is relatively modest compared to the number of unreserved positions.
•  But with the new EWS reservation amendment, a large fraction of general category applicants are expected to qualify as economically weak.
•  This means that a large share of unreserved positions will be tentatively assigned to the EWS category.
•  As a result, there will be many more meritorious reserved candidates. And the positions they vacate due to migration are to be offered to the general category candidates who do not qualify for EWS reservation due to Ramesh Ram.
•  This may result in a reduction in the number of positions offered to those in the EWS category.

Horizontal or vertical?

•  Another implementation challenge with the new amendment is that the new law does not explicitly state whether the new EWS reservation is horizontal or vertical.
•  This is despite the clear distinction made in the landmark judgment in Indra Sawhney v. Union of India (1992).
•  A horizontal reservation is a ‘minimum guarantee’, which only binds when there are not enough EWS applicants who receive a position on the basis of their merit score alone; if so, the bottom-ranked general category selections are knocked out by the top-ranked unselected EWS candidates.
•  With a large number expected to qualify for EWS, the 10% minimum guarantee will already be achieved essentially in all applications. This means the policy, if applied horizontally, will virtually have no effect.
•  A vertical reservation, on the other hand, is an ‘over and beyond’ reservation.
•  This means that if an applicant obtains a position on the basis of his or her merit score without the benefit of the reservation, it does not reduce the number of reserved positions.
•  This important distinction appears not to have been a part of discussions leading up to the passage of the law.
•  A government memo suggests that the new EWS reservation might be vertical, but it is important that this issue be clarified.

Conclusion

•  Lack of clarity on implementation opens up possibilities to distort or even manipulate outcomes, undermining policy goals.
•  It can confuse the public and keep university or job assignments in limbo for years as courts process legal challenges.
•  India’s new EWS reservation policy is heading in this direction unless these implementation issues are addressed head-on.

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General Studies Pre. Cum Mains Study Materials

Why the RBI needs more data scientists and farm economists (Live Mint)

Mains Paper 5: Economy
Prelims level: Not Much
Mains level : Inflation forecast model

Context

•  A good central banker has to think like a good football player.
•  A footballer usually tries to pass the ball to the position where his colleague will reach a few seconds later rather than where he is right now. Anticipation is important.
•  A central banker has to similarly fix interest rates depending on where inflation will be a year down the line rather than where it is right now. Why?
•  Because monetary policy works with a lag of around three or four quarters.
•  A rate cut or a rate hike today takes time to work through an economy.

Targeting inflation

•  That is why getting the inflation forecast is so important in modern central banking.
•  The actual inflation rate in the future cannot be known today.
•  So, the inflation forecast becomes the intermediate target of monetary policy, though the formal target may be some specific measure of actual inflation.
•  To switch metaphors: Central bankers have to look ahead through the windshield rather than look back through the rear-view mirror.
•  Too many Indian monetary policy debates are based on recent inflation rather than future inflation, through the rear-view mirror rather than the windshield.
•  The problem is that central banks across the world have struggled to get their inflation forecasts right in recent years.
•  The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been no exception.
•  A new research report released by the central bank earlier this month under its Mint Street Memo series shows that “episodes of large inflation forecast errors for India were associated with large and unanticipated shocks emanating from prices of food items, especially perishables such as vegetables".
•  The more general observation in the report is that countries where food items account for a large part of consumer price inflation tend to have larger inflation forecast errors.
•  In other words, the problem is with forecasting food prices rather than the rest of the consumption basket.
•  Food accounts for a little less than half of the Indian consumer price index.

Upgrade inflation forecast model

•  Every central bank has a statistical model to forecast inflation.
•  RBI is no exception. The inflation estimates it releases are not plucked out of thin air.
•  However, the RBI inflation forecasting model, its Forecasting and Policy Analysis System, has parted ways with standard central bank forecasting models by taking a disaggregated look at food, fuel and core inflation.
•  In other words, there are separate forecasts for food inflation within the overall inflation forecasting framework.
•  A lot of the immediate estimates of food price inflation are based on trends in wholesale prices in mandis across the country and surveys in consumer markets.
•  Some have begun to scrape data from e-commerce sites as well.
•  Economists in RBI and the private sector depend on such data to understand the direction of food prices in the next few weeks.
•  Food price estimates for longer periods of time require more rigorous forecasts that feed into the inflation forecasting system.
•  This is where RBI seems to be struggling. The dominance of food prices in the Indian consumer price index and the food price forecast errors of RBI in recent years have become a problem for monetary policy makers.

Two radical suggestions

•  The Indian central bank needs to bring Big Data experts in to help keep a closer eye on factors that affect food prices, be it understanding soil moisture levels using satellite data, or getting online data from various e-commerce sites to pick early signs of big moves in consumer prices.
•  RBI should consider getting more agricultural economists into its policy process, be it as staff economists, outside advisors or even as members of the Monetary Policy Committee.
•  In fact, the central bank has a big stake in promoting more agricultural economics in the country.

Conclusion

•  Credibility also has a big role to play.
•  Sudden moves in food prices need not unleash big changes in the inflation expectations of households as long as people have confidence that monetary policy will maintain inflation close to the promised target.
•  Thankfully, there are early signs that such credibility is being re-established, going by the recent decline in inflation expectations.
•  RBI is not alone. Other central banks have also struggled with their inflation forecasts. It is important to communicate the fragility of forecasts.

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Ranked-choice voting system could deepen democracy, prevent polarisation (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 4 : Polity
Prelims level : Ranked-choice voting system
Mains level : Basic structure of Indian Constitution

Context

•  Elections to the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabhas take place under the first-past-the-post (FPP) system.
•  Under the FPP, a candidate only needs to get more votes than any other candidate to win a seat.
•  It over-translates the votes of the winning party into seats, which is why the BJP won over 50 per cent seats in Lok Sabha despite winning only 31 per cent of the popular vote in 2014.
•  The FPP also encourages political polarisation because a party with a sufficiently energised base needs to convince a relatively small number of unaffiliated voters in order to win an election.
•  A party opposed by a majority of voters forms the government.

About the proportional system

•  This democratic deficit of the FPP has been long recognised.
•  The main alternative that has been suggested over the years is some version of the proportional system (PS).
•  Under PS, voters do not vote for individual candidates in particular constituencies. Instead, they vote directly for a party.
•  A party that gets 31 per cent of the votes wins 31 per cent of seats, usually subject to a threshold requirement that a party has to secure a basic minimum share of the popular vote (say, 5 per cent) in order to get any seats at all.

Constitutional background

•  Our Constitution does not mandate the FPP, but it does require elections to be conducted on the basis of territorial constituencies.
•  Although it is possible to design a mixed PS system based on territorial constituencies, PS may actually exacerbate polarisation.
•  Under PS, all that a radical party needs in order to win 10 seats in a 100-member house is to convince 10 per cent of the electorate through a hateful and polarising campaign, even if the remaining 90 per cent detest its ideology.
•  What we need is a voting system that goes beyond FPP’s yes-no binary and is sensitive to the strength of voters’ preferences whether she loves a party, or merely tolerates it, or loathes it.

Key highlights of the ranked-choice vote system

•  There is one such system, which would reduce democratic deficit, discourage polarisation and respect territorial constituencies.
•  It is variously called the preferential vote, alternative vote or ranked-choice vote system (RCV), used in Australia, Papua New Guinea and the American state of Maine.
•  Under the RCV, instead of voting for only one candidate, a voter ranks her candidates in order of preference.
•  Say a voter ranks candidate E as her number 1 choice, candidate C as number 2 and candidate F as number 3.
•  In the first round of counting, every voter’s first-ranked votes alone are counted. If any candidate reaches the 50 per cent mark, she is declared the winner.
•  If not, the candidate with the lowest share of first-rank votes— say, candidate E — is eliminated.
•  The second-rank votes of voters whose first choice was E are now counted and added to the tally of remaining candidates.
•  If a candidate now closes the 50 per cent mark, that candidate wins. If not, this process of elimination and re-distribution is continued until either one candidate crosses the 50 per cent mark, or is the last one standing.

Way forward

•  The RCV should also reduce political polarisation. Under this system, parties cannot win elections by relying solely on their base.
•  They need not only enough first-rank votes but also a sufficient number of second and third-rank votes. This will require them to build broad social coalitions.
•  An optional RCV is not only constitutionally viable but even endorsed by the Constitution.
•  When MPs elect our President or Vice-President, they also rank the candidates on the ballot the Constitution calls it a “single transferable vote” (STV), but in a single-winner voting, there is no difference between STV and RCV.
•  In Indian conditions, a limited optional RCV might be logistically better.
•  Instead of mandating the ranking of all candidates, a voter can have the option of ranking up to three top choices.
•  She may cast only a single-unranked-vote, or rank her top two or her top three candidates.
•  Such a 1-2-3-vote system would deepen democracy and reduce political polarisation.

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Consumption expenditure is losing steam (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3 : Economy
Prelims level : FMCG
Mains level : Consumption demand reduce

Context

•  Consumers have proved to be messiahs for the Indian economy in the last three years, propping up demand for goods and services with their spending, even as the investment leg of the economy has stalled.
•  But high-frequency indicators in the last five months indicate that private consumption expenditure is losing steam. Passenger vehicle sales have registered contraction for the five successive months to March 2019.
•  Two-wheeler sales have been in negative territory for four months.
•  The consumer durables leg of the Index of Industrial Production has grown by less than 2 per cent in the months since November 2018.
•  Air passenger traffic, which was booming, at 20 per cent plus growth rates until September 2018, has lost momentum to register barely any growth in March.
•  FMCG giants such as Hindustan Unilever have commented on slowing rural as well as urban consumption, that has led to a marked slowdown in volume growth.

Consumption slowdown

•  It is true that part of the consumption slowdown telegraphed by these high-frequency indicators is the result of one-off factors.
•  The regulatory disruption from the upcoming transition to BS VI norms on top of a spike in insurance costs, has curtailed passenger vehicle production and sales in recent months.
•  Air travel has been hit by Jet Airways’ financial woes, which has taken substantial capacity off air and sent airfares soaring. But there are more serious factors underlying the consumption slowdown too.
•  The structural collapse in agricultural crop prices which has dented rural incomes is already well-documented.
•  But the consumption cutbacks on durables and consumer staples in recent months suggest that the Indian middle class is not in an upbeat mood either.
•  For middle-income earners, the prop from the Seventh Pay Commission that had delivered a boost to incomes in FY17 and FY18, has materially waned.
•  The muted nominal GDP growth of the last three years, thanks to low inflation, has curtailed corporate top-line growth and muted private sector wage increases too.
•  In the last six months, the NBFC liquidity crisis has worsened the business environment and put a spoke in the wheels of consumer financing, a big driver for big-ticket consumer purchases.

Way forward

•  Overall, with consumption weakening, the next Central government will have its task cut out to sustain 7-7.5 per cent GDP growth.
•  Yet, the economic agendas of both the national parties ignore the spending slowdown and take nominal income growth and middle-class prosperity for granted, while they ready income support schemes such as PM KISAN and NYAY for the poor.
•  Without a revival in consumption expenditure and nominal GDP growth, finding the fiscal headroom for such transfers in India’s resource-constrained budget will prove a pipe-dream.

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Prisoner of procedure: on CJI sexual harassment case (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 1 : Polity
Prelims level : CJI
Mains level : Judicial Activism

Context

•  The main question was whether the Supreme Court would live up to the standards of fairness it expects of all authorities while inquiring into a former woman employee’s complaint of sexual harassment and victimisation against the Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi.
•  An ad hoc committee, following an informal procedure, has concluded that the allegations have “no substance”, but the findings will not be made public.
•  The report cannot be reviewed judicially. No one else, not even the complainant, knows what evidence was examined and who else testified apart from herself.

Highlighting the panel report

 All that is known is that she was heard, and questioned, at two sittings.

•  She later withdrew from the inquiry, saying she was denied the help of a lawyer or a representative, that she found the questions from a panel of three sitting Supreme Court judges quite intimidating, and that she was not clear how her testimony was being recorded.
•  There is no doubt that the committee remained impervious to the power imbalance in the situation.
•  Perhaps she ought not to have pulled out from the probe, despite these grievances. The panel’s conclusion would have been even starker had she been present to hear how Justice Gogoi defended himself; and who among the court officials, if any, answered her specific and documented charges about the administrative harassment she was put through following the alleged incident of sexual harassment.
•  The most relevant parts of the complaint were the transfer orders and disciplinary inquiry against her, the role of the court administration in dismissing her, and that of the Delhi Police in arresting her on a complaint of alleged bribery and initiating disciplinary action against her husband and his brother, both police personnel.
•  It is not known if any of these officials were examined.
•  The manner in which the court dealt with the complaint on the administrative side has been less than fair.

Way forward

•  It is true that the in-house procedure devised in 1999 envisages only a committee of three judges to deal with allegations against serving Supreme Court judges.
•  The fact that a special law to deal with sexual harassment at the workplace is in force since 2013 appears to have made no difference.
•  The court could not bring itself, even in the interest of appearing fair, to adopt a formal procedure or allow the complainant to have legal representation.
•  For all its judicial homilies on fairness, when it comes to dealing with its own the Supreme Court has come across as a prisoner of procedure and displayed an alarming propensity to mix up its institutional reputation with an individual’s interest.
•  The decision by the ‘in-house committee’ is an egregious instance of a hallowed institution abusing its own greatness by letting its power speak, and not the compassion for which it is renowned.

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On the political fringes (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2 : Polity
Prelims level : Not Much
Mains level : Migration problem

Context

• The Election Commission of India (EC), on February 21, clarified that NRI voters cannot cast votes online, and that an NRI who holds an Indian passport can vote in his/her hometown after registering as an overseas voter.
• But the roughly 60 million people moving across the country as migrant workers find it difficult to cast their votes because their voting rights are mostly at the place from where they migrate. The scale of lost votes due to migration is large.
•  It may not be an exaggeration to say that there seems to be a general agreement to let the votes of domestic migrants go missing in the electoral process.
•  Migrants remain a political issue despite their poverty, vulnerability and insecurity.
•  Yet, we know very little about the way migrants engage with politics, especially in elections.

At the receiving end

•  Migration is perceived as a problematic phenomenon. Poor migrants often find themselves at the receiving end of ‘nativist’ politics.
•  They are projected as a ‘problem’ for the local population around issues of employment and unemployment, use of place and space, identity and political affiliation.
•  The physical threat and verbal abuse that migrants experience can be gauged in the numerous statements of leaders of various political parties.
•  References to migrants often include terms and phrases such as ‘infiltrators’, of those who ‘need to possess a permit for work’ and ‘lacking in values, culture and decency’.
•  Such allusions are in contradiction to the provisions in the Indian Constitution that allow freedom of movement by ensuring the right to reside and settle in any part of India. The process of ‘othering’ of migrants produces heightened anxieties, and this ‘manufactured anxiety’ is deployed for political gains. In the city
•  Mostly working in the unorganised sector and drawing meagre wages, migrants often find it difficult to visit their home States to cast their vote.
•  In cities, they find it challenging to make their presence felt during elections.
•  Unlike the family and kinship association in a panchayat election, caste and community affiliations are the driving force in Assembly and Lok Sabha elections.
•  While candidates or their affiliates mostly meet the travel expenditure for upper caste and other backward caste migrants, Dalit migrants are motivated to travel at their own expense and participate aggressively with the clarity of caste identity and political affiliation.
•  In a city, migrants rely on support from relatives, friends and fellow migrants for accommodation, employment and to negotiate wages.
•  Through these interactions, migrants build social networks and political connections. Region, religion, village and the caste identity of migrants play a crucial role in these processes.
•  These elements of ‘identity’ contribute to the mobilisation of migrants in the city to tackle hostility as well as participation in politics.

Key issues

•  Contrary to received wisdom, migrants seldom bother about civic problems such as water and sanitation.
•  Rather, their primary concern revolves around macro-issues such as employment, inflation and poverty.
•  Dalit migrants are troubled by caste-based discrimination, exclusion, atrocities and reservation, which in turn determine their political choices.

Conclusion

•  The manifested political articulation of migrants often makes mainstream political parties uncomfortable, which then label them outsiders as obstacles for development and let their votes drop in the electoral process.
•  The exclusion of migrants from the electoral process, in a way, reveals the caste- and class-driven nature of mainstream politics.

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India’s gender gap is a disgrace and it’s time we paid attention to women (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 5: Society
Prelims level: Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy
Mains level: Women empowerment and Gender equality

PFRDA must insist on pension funds to beef up their risk assessment norms (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 4: Governance
Prelims level: PFRDA
Mains level: Welfare schemes

Potato wars (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Polity
Prelims level: Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act
Mains level: Act and provision related to agriculture

Deserved penalty: SEBI’s ‘capital’ punishment to NSE (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Economy
Prelims level: SEBI
Mains level: SEBI's imposition of fine on NSE

Posers on the code: on EC clearing PM Modi’s speeches (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 1: Polity
Prelims level: Election Commission
Mains level: Role of Election Commission