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THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 29 JANUARY 2019 (Next step to clean fuel (The Indian Express)

Next step to clean fuel (The Indian Express)

Mains Paper 4: Economy
Prelims level: Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana
Mains level: Issues related to direct and indirect farm subsidies and minimum support prices

Context

  •  There has been a considerable reduction in the prices of non-subsidised LPG cylinders. Unless LPG subsidies suffer from extreme mis-targeting, it should rather be the price on the subsidised market that matters for the poor.
  •  This price has hardly changed.
  •  If the main objective is to help the poor to switch from cooking with cow dung and firewood to the more healthy alternative of LPG, other factors are also relevant.
  •  Research suggests that simply informing people about the deadly effects of smoke from the chulha may significantly influence their behaviour.

Major concerns highlighted by the WHO

  •  The World Health Organisation (WHO) attributes about one million deaths (annually) to the use of solid cooking fuels in India.
  •  The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) seeks to promote the use of LPG as a clean alternative.
  •  It launched in 2016, the programme claims success in providing LPG connections to over 60 million poor households.
  •  This is an important first step towards the switch to clean cooking fuels.
  •  However, substantial numbers of rural households with LPG connections continue to rely on solid biomass for cooking as a primary fuel.
  •  The concern now is to enhance consumption of LPG in such homes.
  •  Our study carried out in the framework of the Indo-Swiss Joint Research Programme in the Social Sciences sheds light on promising pathways to support the fuel switch.
  •  It focused on the impact of providing information on the health-related ill-effects of cooking with solid biomass fuels on LPG consumption.
  •  The findings offer new insights that could encourage a more regular use of LPG among poor rural households.
  •  We sampled 550 PMUY households across rural Bikaner; the NSS data indicates that the pattern of fuel consumption in Bikaner district is fairly representative of rural areas of north Indian states.
  •  Only 13 per cent of our respondents considered that serious health hazards do exist;
  •  27 per cent perceived no health problems and 60 per cent believed that health consequences were limited to temporary irritations such as coughing or watering of eyes.
  •  Clearly, poor rural households are unaware how severely indoor air pollution from solid biomass use can affect their health, and thereby lack the basic knowledge that would enable them to take an informed decision about fuel consumption.

Behavioural economics approach

  •  Households stated their willingness to pay in the framework of a well-established demand-revealing mechanism.
  •  They obtained a discount voucher (facilitated by the research team in partnership with local LPG distributors) if their stated WTP was at least as high as the offer price that they themselves subsequently drew at random from a given price range.
  •  The maximum price was Rs 480, the prevailing (subsidised) price for a refill (14.5 kg cylinder).
  •  The voucher had limited validity such that it could be used only if the household used up the LPG remaining in the currently consumed cylinder twice as quickly as it would have done under normal circumstances.
  •  This date was determined on the basis of prior questions on normal consumption along with cross-checking of the entries in the consumer’s gas book.
  •  Thus, we assessed the WTP for a refill under the constraint of more regular consumption than the prevailing pattern.
  •  Under this condition, with no additional information, the average household was ready to spend Rs 352, considerably less than the prevailing subsidised price.  Put in perspective, at current prices and awareness levels, rural households appeared unlikely to substantially enhance their consumption of LPG.
  •  However, the provision of health information leads households to take a more informed decision, which in turn increases their WTP.
  •  Our brief intervention lead to a relatively small though statistically significant difference in the WTP from Rs 352 to Rs 362.
  •  Use of vouchers was 36 per cent higher among households that received health information.
  •  It is reasonable to expect that a broader intervention embedded in the general LPG campaigns or within health and nutrition programmes administered to women and children in other contexts will translate into even stronger and more sustained effects.

Way forward

  •  However, this requires the delivery of messages on specific effects rather than just talking about “clean” fuels, which can refer to a variety of things, including the possibility to keep the kitchen looking nice and white.
  •  Targeting health-related information only towards women may not make a significant difference since the final decision about the purchase of a relatively expensive good such as an LPG refill is often taken by men or at best, jointly.
  •  Complementary measures that address the problem of financial and liquidity constraints as well as the regularity and ease of access to supplies will also continue to be relevant in determining consumption.
  •  Some ongoing measures by oil marketing companies that point in the right direction to tackle these are the option to use smaller cylinders, parallel connections and decoupling of loan repayments for the stove and the first cylinder from subsequent LPG consumption.
  •  Our evidence strongly suggests a need for refocusing the ongoing campaigns on information about the important health benefits of cooking with LPG, alongside these other complementary activities.

Online Coaching for UPSC PRE Exam

General Studies Pre. Cum Mains Study Materials

THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 29 JANUARY 2019 (Learning to probe early (The Hindu)

Learning to probe early (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3 : Education
Prelims level: UG research program
Mains level: Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources

Context

  •  Addressing to the 106th Indian Science Congress, Prime Minister Narendra Modi underscored the need for universities to get involved in research.
  •  India has made considerable strides in achieving a near-perfect enrolment rate in primary education, it has failed to give higher education as much attention.
  •  As a consequence, Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher education is 25.8%, against China’s 48.44% and the U.S.’s 88.84%.
  •  Mr. Modi’s address alerts us to major lacunae in the education system that need to be looked at urgently if the higher education system is to meet the demands of today.

The importance of research

  •  Research remains a significant weakness in India’s higher education system, traditionally cocooned in specialised institutes such as the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc).
  •  Unlike the world’s best higher education systems, there is hardly any interaction between these institutes and teaching universities.

Present conditions of the higher education system in India

  •  In India, about 80% of the students enroled in higher education are concentrated in undergraduate (UG) programmes.
  •  Research and application-oriented education can substantially enhance the quality of UG education.
  •  While the concept of UG research is fairly new in India, it is now taken as a given in many parts of the world.
  •  Several studies on such programmes have shown a positive impact on students, such as enhanced learning through mentorship, increased retention, increased enrolment in graduate education, more prowess in critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, intellectual independence, and understanding of research methodologies.
  •  Research at the UG level increases the aptitude for research-oriented career options as well as the employability of students.
  •  Based on the nature of their association and the nuances of a research programme, the faculty can also gain by sharing their research ideas with students, receive valuable feedback as well as help in the form of assistantship and apprenticeship.
  •  Additionally, research also helps the faculty enhance their teaching abilities and content by upgrading knowledge.
  •  Introducing and sustaining the culture of research at this level can also help solve the problem of shortage of faculty, as more students will likely opt for doctoral and post-doctoral studies and teach in their home country.
  •  In any sound higher education system, research and teaching should ideally go together.

Initiatives taken by the government

  •  The government has also floated two ambitious projects towards internationalising higher education in India: ‘Study in India’ and ‘Institutes of Eminence’.
  •  Both these will need institutes to become world class and carry out high-quality research on campuses.
  •  Only then will competent faculty as well as doctoral students from across the world come to India. Internationalisation of campuses is important if India wants to be in the global university ranking lists and this will not happen without encouraging an ecosystem that promotes high-quality research.

Some strategic steps

  •  It given the impediments vis-a vis infrastructure, teachers, funds and content, the government will need to take strategic steps to roll out policies to promote UG research programmes.
  •  The investment in education needs to meet the world standard of at least 6% of GDP, to upgrade infrastructure, labs and resources, which are essential to carry out high-quality research.
  •  The University Grants Commission and other regulatory bodies will have to come out with a priority list of reputable journals.
  •  This will rid the country of the problem of bogus journals and publications.
  •  Research institutes such as TIFR and IISc should mentor some of the well-performing universities and colleges till they become aware of the nuances of conducting fair and high-quality research.
  •  Once capable, these trained institutes can then help the second rung of colleges and so on.
  •  There should be planned ways to embed research in UG curriculum.
  •  Due to limitations in curriculum and the practice of rote learning, most students in India, even at the Masters level, graduate without having attempted an original piece of research or dissertation.
  •  The UGC should make it compulsory for students to submit at least a 5,000-word research paper that should be assessed just as publication in serious research journals are.
  •  Unless students are made aware of the value of research from an early stage, they will not recognise the true value of higher education.

Conclusion

  •  The status quo in education has resulted in education that is not only substandard but also fails to open inquiring minds to the world of research.
  •  India must be innovative in its approch if its demographic dividend is to be tapped into.
  •  Otherwise, what Mr. Modi said will remain a quotable quote.

Online Coaching for UPSC PRE Exam

General Studies Pre. Cum Mains Study Materials

THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 29 JANUARY 2019 (Capable even if disabled (The Hindu)

Capable even if disabled (The Hindu)
 

Mains Paper 2: Economy
Prelims level: American disability rights movement
Mains level: Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector

Context

  •  The American disability rights movement was the American Supreme Court’s decision, in 1927, upholding the forced sterilization of a mentally infirm woman, reasoning that it helped get rid of those who would sap the state of its strength by swamping it with incompetence.
  •  In India, the Supreme Court’s ruling last Tuesday, in V. Surendra Mohan v. Union of India, has to be regarded as one of the darkest in India’s disability rights movement.

Problematic for fulfillment

  •  The Court had to rule on the legality of the Tamil Nadu government’s policy of reserving the post of civil judge only for people whose percentage of blindness does not exceed 40-50%,
  •  It resulting in the exclusion of the applicant who was 70% blind. It held that the government’s decision was rational and reasonable.
  •  It ruled that a judicial officer has to possess a reasonable amount of sight and hearing to discharge her functions.
  •  It accepted the claim that impaired vision makes it impossible to perform the functions required of judicial officers, such as assessing the demeanour of witnesses and reading and analysing evidence.
  •  It also accepted that asking a blind judicial officer to perform such administrative functions as recording dying declarations and conducting inquiries can result in avoidable complications.

Examples of success

  •  The view that a totally blind person cannot thrive as a judge is belied by several examples of successful judges who are blind.
  •  One is former South African Constitutional Court judge Zak Yacoob, who has repudiated the notion that one needs to be sighted to assess a witness’s demeanour as being nonsensical, to U.S. Court of Appeals DC Circuit judge David S. Tatel, who thinks that it is neither fair nor accurate to impose low expectations on what blind lawyers can do.
  •  There is also former San Diego County Court judge David Szumowski, who has described the view that a blind person lacks the wherewithal to become a judge as an unfair characterisation, to Yousaf Saleem who, last year, became Pakistan’s first blind civil judge.
  •  How, some contend, can a blind person be reasonably expected to thrive as a judge without being excessively dependent and inefficient?
  •  However, as the Supreme Court itself noted in 2017“A lawyer can be just as effective in a wheelchair, as long as she has access to the courtroom and the legal library, as well as to whatever other places and material or equipment that are necessary for her to do her job well.”
  •  The Court’s unreasoned assertion is an outcome of their ignorance about the capabilities of the disabled.
  •  However, as Laura Wolk notes, ignorance simply cannot be an excuse in 2019.
  •  It is simply unacceptable to condemn disabled legal professionals, possessing the intellectual wherewithal to be a judge, to the status of outcasts only because the judges delivering the judgment in this case appear simply not to have bothered to notice the competence of the millions of disabled people who inhabit this world.

Reasonable accommodations

  •  The reasonable accommodations required by a blind judge may be considered irksome.
  •  However, it bears noting that “there is a distinct exhortatory dimension to be recognised in deciding whether an adjustment to assist a disabled person to overcome the disadvantage that she or he has in comparison to an able-bodied person is reasonable.”
  •  It does not lie in our mouth to say that we are truly committed to ensuring that the constitutional promise of equality is fully realised, if we lack the ability to even pay the price of making reasonable accommodations.

Way forward

  •  Supreme Court tells me that my blindness makes me intrinsically incapable of becoming a judicial officer, when it arrogates to itself the power to stamp a badge of incompetence on thousands like me about whom it knows nothing, its declaration cuts to the core of my confidence about the fairness and robustness of our judicial system.
  •  Indeed, it is telling that even the applicant in this case took it as a given that those who are completely blind for all intents and purposes, like me, cannot become a judge;
  •  It only argued that a partially blind person can become a judge. I have never had any interest in becoming part of the judiciary.
  •  However, I earnestly believe that how we choose to respond to this institutional display of pure and simple discrimination dressed up as legal reasoning will be reflective of what kind of a society we hope to be.
     

Online Coaching for UPSC PRE Exam

General Studies Pre. Cum Mains Study Materials

THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 29 JANUARY 2019 (Investment over subsidies (The Hindu)

Investment over subsidies (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 1: Economy
Prelims level: Subsidies
Mains level: Issues related to direct and indirect farm subsidies and minimum support prices;

Context

  •  Government is planning to provide a universal basic income scheme every Indian citizen gets money paid into their bank account.
  •  It argues for the removal of all agricultural subsidies, which range from fertilizer subsidies to those on interest, water and power, and distributing the saving among most of the rural population.
  •  To its authors, this scheme presents itself as addressing ‘rural’ and not just ‘farm’ distress.
  •  To evaluate what is being proposed as a way out of the present agrarian crisis it would be useful to understand what defines it and to recognise the originally intended role for the agricultural subsidy.

Targeting group

  •  At its core the agrarian crisis is a case of agricultural activity not yielding enough returns for a section of the farming population.
  •  This group is facing a declining farm size due to partitioning across generations.
  •  As this population grows the process of fragmentation of the family farm will continue, with succeeding generations staring at a shrinking pie.
  •  There are two solutions to this problem
  •  One is the obvious one of enabling some members of each household to shift out of farming.
  •  The other is to reconfigure public expenditure on agriculture to raise the yield of land.
  •  A reconfiguration of public policy is needed to replace agricultural subsidies by capital formation or ‘investment’.

Subsidies VS Public investment

  •  For three and a half decades now subsidies have progressively replaced public investment for agriculture.
  •  Having once been less than half that of investment it is now five times as large.
  •  Evidence points strongly to a case for moving some distance back.
  •  The impact of public investment on both the yield of land and rural poverty, encompassing a cohort wider than farmers, is far greater than that of fertilizer, electricity, irrigation and interest rate subsidy.
  •  This crucial finding is due to the Sino-Indian team of economists Shenggen Fan, Ashok Gulati and Sukhadeo Thorat.
  •  In their study, the investments found most valuable were “educational” and on rural roads.

Way forward

  •  The agricultural subsidies that are now found wasteful were designed with a purpose. The plan was to place agricultural production on a sound footing.
  •  It envisioned raising the yield of land, which works to generate rising output without inflation and with reasonable profit.
  •  The price of food has historically been high for Indians at the bottom of the income distribution.
  •  This has held back industrialisation and the desirable shifting of population away from farming to other activities.
  •  Even a total elimination of subsidies to enable this transformation via public investment may not be such a bad thing.
  •  However its eliminating them merely to implement a universal basic income would be unwise.

Online Coaching for UPSC PRE Exam

General Studies Pre. Cum Mains Study Materials

THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 28 JANUARY 2019 (Whose quota is it Anyway? (The Indian Express)

Whose quota is it Anyway? (The Indian Express)

Mains Paper 4: Polity
Prelims level: Reservation System
Mains level: Structure of Indian Constitution

THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 28 JANUARY 2019 (The Inclusive Nationalist (The Indian Express)

The Inclusive Nationalist (The Indian Express)

Mains Paper 3: Indian History
Prelims level: Lajpat Rai
Mains level: The Freedom Struggle – its various stages and important

THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 28 JANUARY 2019 (Faith, science and spectacle (The Indian Express)

Faith, science and spectacle (The Indian Express)

Mains Paper 5: Society
Prelims level: Shraddha
Mains level: Salient features of Indian Society, Diversity of India

THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 28 JANUARY 2019 (Model for malaria control (The Hindu)

Model for malaria control (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Health
Prelims level: Malaria Diseases
Mains level: Various measures taken to control the disease

THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 28 JANUARY 2019 (Removing the roots of farmers’ distress (The Hindu)

Removing the roots of farmers’ distress (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 1: Economy
Prelims level: Gross Value Added in Agriculture
Mains level: Various measures need to be taken to control agricultural distress

THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 26 JANUARY 2019 (How changes in family law can improve household finance (Live Mint)

How changes in family law can improve household finance (Live Mint)

Mains Paper 5: Society
Prelims level: HUF
Mains level: Describe the influences of the family law amendments

THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 26 JANUARY 2019 (The illness plaguing India’s pharmaceutical sector (Live Mint)

The illness plaguing India’s pharmaceutical sector (Live Mint)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: Pharmaceutical sector
Mains level: Various problems face by the India’s pharmaceutical sector

THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 26 JANUARY 2019 (Crisis in Caracas (The Hindu)

Crisis in Caracas (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: International Relations
Prelims level: Venezuela’s political crisis
Mains level: Impacts of Venezuela’s political crisis

THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 26 JANUARY 2019 (Examining farm loan waivers (The Hindu)

Examining farm loan waivers (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 1: Economy
Prelims level: Farm loan waivers
Mains level: Impact the farm loan waivers

THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 25 JANUARY 2019 (An inside Problem (The Indian Express)

An inside Problem (The Indian Express)

Mains Paper 4: Environment
Prelims level: Air pollution
Mains level: Different diseases caused by air pollution

THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 25 JANUARY 2019 (Schools without a Difference(The Indian Express)

Schools without a Difference(The Indian Express)

Mains Paper 3: Governance
Prelims level: Navodaya Vidyalayas
Mains level: Navodaya Vidyalayas significance and their assessment

THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 25 JANUARY 2019 (A tragedy that was long in the making (The Hindu)

A tragedy that was long in the making (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Governance
Prelims level: East Jaintia hills
Mains level: Various disputes mechanism

THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 25 JANUARY 2019 (Season’s worst: on the influenza outbreak (The Hindu)

Season’s worst: on the influenza outbreak (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 1: Governance
Prelims level: Influenza outbreak
Mains level: Tackling influenza outbreak procedure

THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 24 JANUARY 2019 (On Assam, clearing the air)

On Assam, clearing the air

Mains Paper 4: Polity
Prelims level: Citizenship Amendment Bill
Mains level: Highlights of the Citizenship Amendment Bill

THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 24 JANUARY 2019 (The gap within: on inter-State disparities)

The gap within: on inter-State disparities

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Various inter-State disparities and resolving procedure

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