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There is a design flaw with this military post (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Defense and Security
Prelims level: Chief of Defence Staff
Mains level: Various Security forces and agencies and their mandate

Context:

• On December 24, 2019, a Press Information Bureau release on the Cabinet clearing the appointment of a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS)said: “The following areas will be dealt by the Department of Military Affairs headed by CDS: The Armed Forces of the Union, namely, the Army, the Navy and the Air Force.
• Integrated Headquarters of the Ministry of Defence comprising Army Headquarters, Naval Headquarters, Air Headquarters and Defence Staff Headquarters. The Territorial Army.
• Works relating to the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. Procurement exclusive to the Services except capital acquisitions, as per prevalent rules and procedures.”

Role of CDS:

• It added, “The Chief of Defence Staff, apart from being the head of the Department of Military Affairs, will also be the Permanent Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee.
• He will act as the Principal Military Adviser to the Raksha Mantri [RM] on all tri-Services matters.
• The three Chiefs will continue to advise RM on matters exclusively concerning their respective Services.
• CDS will not exercise any military command, including over the three Service Chiefs, so as to be able to provide impartial advice to the political leadership.”

A subordination:

• Herein lies the contradiction and the design flaw.
• As Secretary in charge of the Department of Military Affairs (DMA) and having superintendence over the Indian Army, Indian Navy and Indian Air Force, there would be an implied subordination of the three service chiefs to the CDS notwithstanding any declaration to the contrary.
• As Secretary of the DMA, the CDS is tasked with facilitating the restructuring of military commands, bringing about jointness in operations including through the establishment of joint/theatre commands.
• This will invariably encroach upon the domain of the service chiefs.
• The CDS, as Permanent Chairperson of Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, would outrank the three service chiefs even though theoretically all are four star.
• Moreover the advice of the CDS could override the advice of the respective Service Chiefs on critical tactical and perhaps even strategic issues.

Issues with the Department of Military Affairs:

• With the creation of the DMA on most issues, the reporting structure of the three services to the Defence Minister would now be through the CDS.
• If not immediately it would become the norm over time.
• Even today while in theory the service chiefs report directly to the Defence Minister, in practice all files and decisions are routed through the Defence Secretary.

Way forward:

• However most problematic is the erosion of civilian supremacy over the defence establishment in the Ministry of Defence itself.
• This impacts on the first principles of constitutionalism and has implications for our democratic polity also.
• Sophistry is being employed to suggest that the Secretary DMA would be in charge of military affairs and the Defence Secretary would look after the ‘defence of the realm’.
• The fact is that the defence of India is managed by the three services who would now report to the DMA.

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The road to radicalisation (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Security
Prelims level: Lone wolf attack
Mains level: Linkages between development and spread of extremism

Context:

• Whenever there are acts of violence, there is an urgency to label them as acts of terror.
• The basis for categorisation of violent acts as terrorist acts include the type of weapons used in the killings, the beliefs of the accused, the number of people killed, etc.
• Categorising violence is important, but if it is done without due thought or diligence, it could end up harming the affected state or community and lead to vastly different policy imperatives.
• Three attacks last year, one in the U.K. and two in the U.S.’s military facilities, illustrate this point clearly.

Complex reality:

• The stabbing at London Bridge in the U.K., and the shootings at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and Pensacola Naval Air Station in the U.S., were all quickly characterised by sections of the media and by analysts as ‘lone wolf’ attacks.
• The reality is more complex.
• Though all three cases are still under investigation, news reports establish the fact that Usman Khan, the London Bridge attacker, was not a lone wolf.
• Khan, a radical preacher, had been arrested earlier in a major counterterrorism operation.
• He had spent eight years in prison, before being released in December 2018, for plotting to bomb the London Stock Exchange.

Lone wolf attack:

• The attack in the Pearl Harbor military base in Hawaii was also classified as a lone wolf attack, but since the attacker’s motive seemed to have been non-political, it may be classified as homicide.
• Mohammad al-shamrani, who was training to be a pilot at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, and carried out the third attack, seems to fit the profile of a lone wolf. Al-shamrani had professed anger towards the U.S. for its policies against Muslims.
• His family said that he had never shown any inclination towards extremism or violence.
• And no group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Identifying lone wolf attack:

• In the first case, by labelling Khan a lone wolf, many discounted the influence of an extremist organisation’s concerted efforts at recruiting individuals to its cause.
• The focus of counterterrorism programmes are on individuals and do not take into consideration overarching structural factors in play; an individual who is getting radicalised because of propaganda on the Internet is simply called “self-radicalised”.
• A majority of programmes on counter extremism or terrorism aiming at cognitive change concentrate their efforts on a single aspect without taking into account a host of factors.
• There is also no statistical correlation between the number of people admitted to such programmes and the number of people who emerge ‘deradicalised’, as admitted tacitly by Khan’s supervisors at the Healthy Identity Intervention Programme at Belmarsh prison, where he was incarcerated for eight years.

Process of radicalization:

• The second issue is how the process of radicalisation is perceived by analysts and academics.
• Most consider radicalisation as a linear process where the individual goes through a number of stages.
• The most common model is the one designed by the New York Police Department, which believes that radicalisation has four steps.
• The first stage, pre-radicalisation, assumes an individual to be a blank slate, at best, or an eager receptor, at worst.
• This is followed by self-identification where he or she realises the uniqueness of his or her identity.
• Then comes the stage of indoctrination and, finally, jihadisation.
• A major element of a person committing murder in the pursuit of an alleged political objective is ‘radicalising cumulatives’, an aggregation of factors, structural and causal, that may push him to do this.
• The final cognitive step of actually committing violence cannot be prejudged accurately every time.

Final issue:

• The final issue is that of the divide between the state and the family.
• The state’s coercive institutions do not directly interfere into familial structures and hierarchies, where the likelihood of influencing factors is very high.
• A significant number of attacks have been carried out by second generation or later generations of immigrants.
• The patriarchal nature of the immigrants’ families may be one of the reasons behind this phenomena and this needs to be investigated further.

Way forward:

• However, the state’s right to intrude into the family has been limited by a number of regulations that afford all citizens the right to privacy and considerable autonomy.
• This dilemma of finding the right balance between security and autonomy needs to be delved upon.
• ‘Prevent’, the U.K.’s disastrous attempt at involving civil society and local communities in its fight against terrorism, has shown that this is a major issue for civilised societies.
• No society can benefit by oversimplifying the factors that push an individual towards violence.
• Oversimplification will mean that we will be left with poor policies.

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Amidst a tragedy, an opportunity (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: International Relations
Prelims level: India-Australia
Mains level: Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India's interests.

Context:

• The writer David Horne once described Australia as “the lucky country”, with its abundance of natural resources, good weather, and its relative geographical isolation from the turbulence of the world.
• Today, with wildfires burning more than 12 million hectares of land, destroying native flora, killing thousands of wild animals, including endangered species, and displacing residents and tourists.

Dialogue on energy:

• At this moment of crisis, and while the tragedy of the bushfires is still unfolding, New Delhi and Canberra have a rare opportunity: to translate their rapidly converging interests and coalescing of values into a formidable partnership for the 21st century.
• There is a scope for the future in diverse areas, including the grand challenges facing our planet.
• Australia today is ground zero for the climate catastrophe.
• As evidence, he pointed out that the Great Barrier Reef is dying.
• The world-heritage rain forests are burning.
• The giant kelp forests have disappeared.
• Numerous towns have run out of water or are about to, and now the vast continent is burning on a scale never before seen.

Challenges for two economies:

• The campaign against fossil fuels and the export of coal is sure to intensify in the days to come.
• As two economies with a great stakeholding in fossil fuels, it is critical for India and Australia to ensure that their dialogue on energy acquires momentum.
• This will require a joint scientific task force to disinter the latest evidence linking climate change and extreme climatic events with fossil fuels and to study the promise and potential of “clean” coal technology.
• Both countries must simultaneously strengthen the International Solar Alliance and the search for other alternative green fuels.
• Fortunately, in New Delhi there is a near consensus within the political leadership and the strategic community that the Australia-India relationship is an idea whose time has well and truly come.
• From water management to trauma research to skills and higher education, from maritime and cybersecurity to counterterrorism, a world of opportunities awaits the two countries if they can work in coordination.
• A few years ago, the Australia-India Institute at the University of Melbourne, in partnership with the Sydney-based Lowy Institute, commissioned one of the most comprehensive surveys of Indian public opinion on key foreign policy issues and critical challenges of governance.
• Indians ranked Australia in the top four nations towards which they feel most warmly.
• Only the U.S., Singapore and Japan ranked higher.
• Today, Indians feel warmer towards Australia than towards European countries and BRICS nations.
• In addition, Indians are today the largest source of skilled migrants in Australia and the economic relationship, already robust, could potentially be transformed.
• In Canberra, there is considerable sensitivity to India’s concerns over the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership while there is still hope that there is an early conclusion of a bilateral Free Trade Agreement.

An important partner:

• After more than six decades characterised by misperception, lack of trust, neglect, missed opportunities and even hostility, a new chapter in India’s relations with Australia has well and truly begun.
• Consider this: in 1955, Prime Minister Robert Menzies decided that Australia should not take part in the Bandung Afro-Asian conference.
• By distancing Australia from the ‘new world’, Menzies (who would later confess that Occidentals did not understand India) alienated Indians, offended Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and left Australia unsure for decades about its Asian identity.
• India and Australia should bring this chequered past to a closure, and herald a new united front for the Indo-Pacific.
• One of Australia’s most formidable diplomats, wrote in 1965 to his Foreign Minister, Paul Hasluck, that there was fertile ground between the two countries, but “no one seems to know what seed to plant”.
• More than 50 years on, there are not only many seeds waiting to be planted, but also ripe fruit ready to harvest.

Way ahead:

• Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who postponed his visit to India because of the bushfires, will be missed at the Raisina Dialogue.
• One hopes that one immediate decision that be will taken by New Delhi and Canberra is to elevate the ‘two plus two’ format for talks from the secretary level to the level of foreign and defence ministers.
• That should signal that New Delhi recognises Canberra as important a partner as Washington and Tokyo.

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संघ लोक सेवा आयोग सिविल सेवा - मुख्य परीक्षा (Download) UPSC IAS Mains Exam 2019 समाजशास्त्र (Paper-1)

Exam Name: UPSC IAS Mains SOCIOLOGY (समाजशास्त्र) (Paper-1)
Marks: 250
Time Allowed: 3 Hours.

खण्ड 'A'

Q1. निम्नलिखित में से प्रत्येक प्रश्न का उत्तर लगभग 150 शब्दों में दीजिए:

(a) एक अनुशासन के रूप में समाजशास्त्र के आविभार्व के ऐतिहासिक पुर्ववृतों की विवेचना कीजिए |
(b) डेविस और मूर ने यह स्पष्ट किया कि सामाजिक संस्तरण एक प्रकार्यात्मक आवश्यकता और अचेतन युक्ति भी है| विवेचना कीजिए |
(c) 'फिटिशिज्म ऑफ़ कमोडिटीज' की मार्क्सवादी संकल्पना क्या है?
(d) 'नव मध्यम-वर्ग' पर एक समाजशास्त्रीय समीक्षा प्रस्तुत कीजिए |
(e) प्रायिकता नमूना-चयन रणनीतियों की सोदाहरण व्याख्या कीजिए|

Q2. (a) मीड के अनुसार, "हम आपने स्वयं के समाजीकरण में एक मुख्य भूमिका अदा करते हैं |"
(b) सामाजिक शोध में नृजाति वर्णन (Ethnography) के महत्व को दर्शाइए |
(c) 'आरक्षित श्रमिक सेना' क्या है? इस पर स्त्रीवादी विद्वानों के दृष्टिकोण को प्रस्तुत कीजिए|

Q3. (a) सामाजिक घटनाओं के व्याख्यात्मक ज्ञान के महत्त्व की विवेचना कीजिए तथा इसकी सीमाओं की व्याख्या कीजिए |
(b) क्या सभी विश्व धर्म पितृसत्तात्मक हैं? अपने उत्तर को सोदाहरण प्रमाणित कीजिए|
(c) मर्टन के अनुसार 'अप्रत्याशित परिणामों' तथा 'अव्यक्त प्रकार्यों' में क्या अंतर है? विस्तारणार्थ उदाहरण दीजिए|

Q4. (a) आधुनिकीकरण वर्गगत समाज की पूर्वकल्पना करता है; किन्तु जाति, नृजातीयता एवं प्रजाति अभी भी प्रभुत्वशाली हैं | व्याख्या कीजिए|
(b) पूंजीवादी समाज में सामाजिक संस्तरीकरण पर मार्क्स और वेबर के योगदानों में तुलना और भेद कीजिए|
(c) इरावती कर्वे के अनुसार उत्तर भारतीय और दक्षिण भारतीय नातेदारी तंत्रों के मध्य प्रमुख अंतर क्या हैं ?

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खण्ड 'B'

Q5. निम्नलिखित में से प्रत्येक प्रश्न का उत्तर लगभग 150 शब्दों में दीजिए :

(a) 'जीवन-अवसरों' और 'जीवन-शैली' के मध्य उपयुक्त उदाहरणों सहित विभेद कीजिए |
(b) भारत में उच्चतर शिक्षा में पहुँच एवं बहिष्करण सम्बन्धी विषयों की विवेचना कीजिए|
(c) नागरिक समाज क्या है? भारत में नागरिक समाज का विज्ञान एवं प्रौधोगिकी नीति के साथ आबंधन पर एक टिप्पणी प्रस्तुत कीजिए|
(d) ए.ज़ी. फ्रैंक के 'अल्पविकास का विकास' की समालोचना कीजिए |
(e) आपके विचार से टॉनीस, दुर्खिम, वेबर और मार्क्स ने आधुनिक समाज के चरित्र की कितनी ठीक भविष्यवाणी की ? समालोचना कीजिए |

Q6. (a) जेंडर सामाजिक संस्तरीकरण का एक आयाम क्यों है ? जेंडर जाति, वर्ग, प्रजाति और नृजातीयता पर आधारित असमानता के अन्य आयामों को कैसे प्रतिच्छेदित करता है?
(b) सामाजिक शक्ति के सैधन्तिक प्रतिमान क्या हैं ? उनमें से कौन उन्नत औधोगिक समाजों पर सर्वाधिक लागू होता है?
(c) सकारात्मक क्रिया क्या है ? सकारात्मक क्रियाओं पर सैद्धान्तिक दृष्टिकोणों को उदाहरणों सहित प्रमाणित कीजिए |

Q7. (a) 'अनौपचारिक श्रम' क्या है ?  औद्योगिकोतर समाज में अनौपचारिक श्रम को विनियमित करने की आवश्यकता एवं उसकी चुनौतियों की विवेचना कीजिए |
(b) स्त्रीवादी विद्वान तर्क करते हैं कि 'नया मीडिया' मरदाना है और इसीलिए पुनर्सरूपण के बजाय संरचनात्मक पदानुक्रमों को पुनर्बलित करता है| टिप्पणी कीजिए |
(c) संभ्रांत वर्ग के संचरण की संकल्पना की विवेचना कीजिए |

Q8. (a) 'सह-सम्बन्धवास' पर न्यायिक हस्तक्षेप के आलोक में, भारत में विवाह एवं परिवार के भविष्य की विवेचना कीजिए|
(b) मर्टन के अनुसार विचलित उप्संस्कृतियाँ किस प्रकार उत्पन्न होती हैं ?
(c) आतंकवाद किस प्रकार से विषम युद्ध का एक न्य रूप है ? आतंकवाद से युद्ध जितने के प्रयास में कुछेक चुनौतियाँ क्या हैं?

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A faulty service delivery system could thwart any rural stimulus (Mint)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: Economic stimulus
Mains level: Various government schemes and their performance

Context:

• The regular flow of data confirms our worst fears about the economy.
• With the index of industrial production (IIP) declining successively in September and August, there are serious concerns about jobs and incomes in the manufacturing sector. Construction has failed to recover too.
• Even service sector growth is a slowdown story once government expenditure is taken out.
• Private investment shows no sign of recovery and consumption continues to show a loss of pace.
• With exports also continuing their decline and signs emerging of rising inflation driven by food inflation, the task of reviving the economy is tougher than imagined.

Economic stimulus needed:

• There is also a consensus that the rural economy needs a stimulus if demand has to improve in the economy.
• At the same time, government has continued to make bold claims of increasing transfers to the rural economy in the last five years.
• However, most of these claims are based on dubious administrative data from departments responsible for managing various schemes.
• Some of these claims could have been checked had the government allowed the release of India’s full consumption expenditure survey of 2017-18.
• Leaked estimates suggest that consumption expenditure declined by almost 10% in rural areas, where most of the schemes were implemented.
• The puzzle then is why consumption declined if government transfers went up in the period this government has been in power.

Highlights of the National Statistics Office report:

• Reports of the National Statistics Office (NSO) suggest that the problem may lie in a broken delivery system and exaggerated claims of transfers by the government.
• Not only were government claims found to be at variance with actual survey data, these also suggest serious problems of service delivery of government schemes.
• A recent report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has not only flagged a decline in consumption of LPG cylinder refills under the Ujjwala scheme, but also highlighted cases of the delivery of cylinders to minors and unidentified beneficiaries.
• It also flagged other odd numbers recorded.
• For example, 1.4 million beneficiary families consumed anywhere between 3 and 41 cylinders each in a month, which is difficult to believe, given that most of them are poor.
• Similar discrepancies have been noted on claims of toilet construction between data from NSO surveys and administrative data.
• As against the claim of several states being classified as “open-defecation free", the surveys show the proportion of our population with toilets and access to these at much lower levels than the figures claimed by the government.
• It is difficult to believe that people in rural areas will under-reporttoilets at home, given that these are clearly identifiable structures.

Affecting the various social schemes:

Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana:

• The largest scheme, of transferring cash to farmers as part of the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana, has also run into trouble.
• With only 76.2 million people having received the money until 30 November 2019.
• Of these, only 31.2 million farmers have received all three instalments, as against a target of 140 million farmers.
• With less than one-fourth of farmers having received the full amount, the scheme has failed to provide the relief intended.

National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme:

• The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) is already suffering from delayed wage payments and non-availability of work.
• With NREGS wages almost half the market rate, the scheme has lost its ability to play the role of demand multiplier.
• Similar is the case of the Public Distribution System (PDS) with the government sitting on large stocks of foodgrains, instead of releasing these staples through the system.
• It has already affected the procurement of grains by the Food Corporation of India, which is struggling with huge stocks and debt due to non-payment of the government subsidy.

Way ahead:

• There is now an urgent need to revive the rural economy.
• Public-expenditure-led interventions could have provided the necessary stimulus to raise demand in the rural economy.
• Unfortunately, the situation on the ground suggests that most schemes are suffering from lack of financial and administrative support.
• However, even with financial and administrative support, these will be able to impact rural incomes only if the country’s broken service delivery regime is repaired and made efficient.

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On the loose: Education begins at home (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 2: Education
Prelims level: Cyberbullying
Mains level: Cyberbullying affects in Indian education system

Context:

• The point, that we need to be more mindful of the casual misogyny in our own homes, was almost prescient: around the same time.
• A top IB school in Mumbai suspended eight middle school students for making threatening and sexually explicit remarks in a WhatsApp conversation.

Background:

• The story, buried by the NRC/CAA furore, is an important one because while it’s a known fact that kids can be incredibly mean, that they were using terms like ‘gang bang’ to describe what they want to do to girls at the ripe old age of 14, was a fresh shocker.
• The transcript of the chat floating around WhatsApp runs into tens of pages: classmates, two females specifically, body shamed and jeered at with homophobic slurs and desperate profanities.
• The word ‘rape’ featured repeatedly. IB school fees can be upwards of Rs 50,000 per month, so these kids come from privileged backgrounds.
• If this is how the progeny of the educated elite are behaving, it’s clear there is a serious values crisis across socio-economic groups in the country.
• And this is not a problem that can be solved by attending the best school money can buy. We’d do well to take into account that children spend approximately six hours in school five days a week.
• Counting the summer, winter, autumn breaks, and weekends, they’re probably in school for less than seven months a year.
• When incidents like this happen, it’s unfair to blame schools, when 80 per cent of what children imbibe is from their home environment.

Effects of cyberbullying:

• If a teenager is making lewd comments or using foul language, sure, peer group influence plays a part and so does social media.
• But if the parenting has been right, a child would know instinctively what’s never to be thought, said and never, ever, written.
• Where the schools fall short is in their response to electronic aggression, because the perception still is that bullying is limited to pushing and shoving on the playground.
• ‘Cyberbullying’ may be bandied around liberally but Indian schools don’t have an established protocol on what to do about cruel instant messages that can torment children as much as being physically hit.
• Schools hide behind the pathetic excuse that what happens outside their premises isn’t their responsibility and refuse to acknowledge that teenagers live and interact via Snapchat and Instagram.

Way forward:

• Like the school diary has a set of rules and many carry an anti-bullying pledge, there is nothing unequivocally stated that Internet bullying will have extremely unpleasant consequences for students as well.
• Technology isn’t necessarily the enemy. But parents need to explain to children that the same rules apply during interactions online, as they do in person.
• Just like how one wouldn’t use certain slurs with someone you meet at a party, one can’t use it online either.
• The stealthiest version of social cruelty must be addressed with clarity — and with penalties.

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Blaze down under (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 3: Environment
Prelims level: Bushfires
Mains level: How bushfires affect Australia’s ecosystem?

Context:

• At least 24 people have lost their lives, nearly 500 million animals have perished and more than 12 billion acres of land — an area as large as Denmark — has turned to cinders as bushfires have ravaged large parts of Australia.
• The fires, among the worst in the country’s history, have been raging since September and show no signs of abating.
• New South Wales, the country’s worst-affected state, declared an emergency last week in its southeastern region and people were asked to move to safer locations.
• But the state government faced people’s ire when those fleeing the inferno had to face long traffic jams.
• More opprobrium has been heaped on the country’s Federal government. Across the country, frustrated Australians have vented their anger at Prime Minister Scott Morrison for playing down the blaze’s association with climate change — a charge the Federal government has denied.

How bushfires affect Australia’s ecosystem?

• Bushfires are actually a part of Australia’s ecosystem.
• Many plants depend on them to cycle nutrients and clear vegetation. In fact, eucalyptus trees in Australia depend on fire to release their seeds.
• But all this usually happens during a few weeks in late January-February, when the country is at its driest.
• The prolonged blaze this year has coincided with Australia’s harshest summer. Parts of the country recorded their highest recorded temperature in December.
• Then, longer-term factors have been at play. Much of Australia is facing a drought that is a result of three consecutive summers with very little precipitation. This, according to climate scientists, is unprecedented.
• Moreover, as the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s 2018 State of the Climate report notes, “Australia’s climate has warmed by just over 1 degree Celsius since 1910, leading to an increase in the frequency of extreme heat events.” This has led to more rainfall in northern Australia, but created drought-like conditions in the more densely populated southeast.

Way ahead:

• Australia is home to nearly 250 animal species, some of them like the koalas and kangaroos are not found elsewhere.
• But the region also has the highest rate of native animals going extinct over the past 200 years. The fires will aggravate this situation.
• Experts, for example, reckon that more than a quarter of the koala habitat has been consumed by the blaze. The fires have also caused a drop in the bird, rodent and insect populations.

Conclusion:

• These creatures are the building blocks of the ecosystem and the fall in their population is bound to have long-term impacts.
• In Australia’s bushfires lie a warning about the complex ways in which climate variables interact.

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A case for including Tulu in the Eighth Schedule (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Polity
Prelims level: Tulu language
Mains level: Various constitutional provision in under 8th schedule regarding to Indian languages

Context:

• According to the 2001 Census, India has 30 languages that are spoken by more than a million people each.
• Additionally, it has 122 languages that are spoken by at least 10,000 people each. It also has 1,599 languages, most of which are dialects.
• Article 29 of the Constitution provides that a section of citizens having a distinct language, script or culture have the right to conserve the same.

Thousands of speakers:

• Among the legion of languages in India, the Constitution has 22 blue-eyed languages.
• They are protected in Schedule VIII of the Constitution. But many languages that are kept out of this favoured position are in some ways more deserving to be included in the Eighth Schedule.
• For example, Sanskrit, an Eighth Schedule language, has only 24,821 speakers (2011 Census). Manipuri, another scheduled language, has only 17,61,079 speakers.
• However, many unscheduled languages have a sizeable number of speakers: Bhili/Bhilodi has 1,04,13,637 speakers; Gondi has 29,84,453 speakers; Garo has 11,45,323; Ho has 14,21,418; Khandeshi, 18,60,236; Khasi, 14,31,344; and Oraon, 19,88,350.

About Tulu language:

• Tulu is a textbook example of linguistic discrimination.
• Tulu is a Dravidian language whose speakers are concentrated in two coastal districts of Karnataka and in Kasaragod district of Kerala.
• Kasaragod district is called ‘Sapta bhasha Samgama Bhumi (the confluence of seven languages)’, and Tulu is among the seven.
• The Census reports 18,46,427 native speakers of Tulu in India.
• The Tulu-speaking people are larger in number than speakers of Manipuri and Sanskrit, which have the Eighth Schedule status.
• The present-day Tulu linguistic majority area is confined to the region of Tulu Nadu, which comprises the districts of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi in Karnataka and the northern part of Kasaragod district of Kerala up to the river Payaswani, or Chandragiri.
• The cities of Mangaluru, Udupi and Kasaragod are the epicentres of Tulu culture.

Advantages:

• At present, Tulu is not an official language in India or any other country. Efforts are being made to include Tulu in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.
• If included in the Eighth Schedule, Tulu would get recognition from the Sahitya Akademi.
• Tulu books would be translated into other recognised Indian languages. Members of Parliament and MLAs could speak in Tulu in Parliament and State Assemblies, respectively.
• Candidates could write all-India competitive examinations like the Civil Services exam in Tulu.

Conclusion:

• India has a lot to learn from the Yuelu Proclamation. Placing of all the deserving languages on equal footing will promote social inclusion and national solidarity.
• It will reduce the inequalities within the country to a great extent.
• So, Tulu, along with other deserving languages, should be included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution in order to substantially materialise the promise of equality of status and opportunity mentioned in the Preamble.

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Exit Iraq: On US-Iran tensions (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: International Relation
Prelims level: US-Iran tensions
Mains level: Describe the role of Iraq to escalate the tensions between US-Iran

Context:

• The vote by Iraqi parliamentarians in favour of a resolution seeking to expel American troops on Sunday was the first blowback the U.S. faced after it assassinated Iranian General Qassem Soleimani inside Iraq on Friday.
• The outcome of the vote was expected as the lawmakers were under pressure from both the public and militias to act against the U.S. after the killing.
• The U.S. troops, which are in Iraq on an invitation from the Iraqi government to fight the Islamic State, have carried out air strikes against Iraqi militias in recent weeks, without the approval of the Baghdad government.

From Iraq’s perspective:

• This triggered public protests and led to the siege of the American Embassy last week.
• In an already explosive situation, the killing of Soleimani acted as a catalyst. The anger among Iraqi lawmakers towards U.S. actions was on full display inside the Parliament hall on Sunday when they chanted, ‘America out, Baghdad remains free’, before the voting.
• Parliament itself doesn’t have the authority to expel foreign troops. But a resolution passed in Parliament is a call to the executive branch to act.
• Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, who condemned the killing of Soleimani, has stated unambiguously that it is time for the Americans to go home. Government officials have already started working on a memorandum on the legal and procedural formalities to expel U.S. troops, according to him.

From USA’s perspective:

• Iraq is a crucial ally for the U.S. in the war against terrorism in West Asia, and the Trump administration has nobody to blame but itself for the setback.
• It pushed the Iraqis to a point where they had to choose between Tehran and Washington. And understandably, they picked their powerful neighbour.
• But U.S. President Donald Trump still doesn’t seem to be in a mood to listen. He has threatened Iraq with sanctions and a bill for billions of dollars if the U.S. troops are forced to pull back.

Way ahead:

• This approach not only violates Iraq’s sovereignty, it also escalates the situation to a three-cornered crisis involving the U.S., Iraq and Iran.
• Mr. Trump is primarily responsible for today’s situation. His decision to pull the U.S. out of a functioning Iran nuclear deal was the trigger.
• When the U.S. reimposed sanctions on Iran, it was up to the other signatories of the deal — European countries, Russia and China — to save the agreement.
• Iran waited for a year before taking countermeasures. But they did nothing, barring issuing occasional statements in favour of the agreement. Europe, which has good ties with both the U.S. and Iran, should wake up at least now.

Conclusion:

• It should use its diplomatic channels to rein in Mr. Trump and pacify Iran to prevent an all-out war.
• As a first step of de-escalation, what Mr. Trump could do is to order his soldiers to pack their bags and leave Iraq.

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Preparing for fires (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Governance
Prelims level: National Building Code
Mains level: Highlights the reasons behind fire incidents

Context:

• India saw at least three major fire accidents in 2019.
• The first, in a four-storey central Delhi hotel in February, killed 17 people.
• The second, at a coaching centre in Surat in May, killed 22 students.
• The third broke out in a factory in Delhi and resulted in the death of 43 workers.
• In the second and third instances, it was found that buildings authorised to be residential complexes were operating as commercial buildings instead.
• (According to the Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India report of 2015, residential buildings are most prone to fire outbreaks.)

Reasons behind the fire accidents:

• Despite major fires in the past, flagrant violations of building and fire safety norms continue unabated and fire accidents take place with alarming regularity.
• It is high time safety is taken seriously and violators are brought to book.
• Past incidents show that most fire accidents take place due to three major reasons: electrical short circuit and gas cyclinder/stove bursts, human negligence, and ill-formed habits.
• All three need to be addressed to make buildings safer.

What all can we do to reduce fire accidents?

Adherence to National Building Code:

• On the regulatory side, adherence to the National Building Code of 2016 should be made mandatory.
• This is a detailed set of guidelines for the construction, maintenance and operation of buildings of all kinds (residential, educational, institutional, assembly, mercantile, industrial, business, etc.) and includes a separate and comprehensive chapter on fire and life safety.
• The National Building Code specifies, for instance, how many exits should be provided in a specific kind of building and where they must be placed.
• In the case of the Delhi fire, it was not only reported that a residential space was operating as a commercial space, but also that the fire exits in the buildings were blocked, thus trapping people inside.

Assessment through fire safety audit:

• But before all that, the first stage towards a fire-safe building is to construct the building with fire-resistant/retardant materials and install smoke detection systems and fire alarms.
• A building’s fire alarm/detection system should be connected with the city’s fire system. Fire compartmentalisation (area/floor wise) should be made mandatory to restrict the spread of fire through horizontal and vertical spaces.
• Further, a systematic procedure should be outlined for periodically assessing and monitoring fire risks.
• While the fire safety audit (FSA) is a good tool to assess fire safety standards of an occupancy, there are no clear provisions in any legislation regarding, say, the scope or periodicity of an FSA.
• FSAs should thus be made mandatory everywhere.

Authorization of electrical and fire installations:

• Once electrical and fire installations are in place, they should be certified by authorised persons and agencies.
• These will help identify and monitor risks of short circuits due to changes in building use, change in load pattern, etc.
• Only qualified persons and firms should be authorised to inspect buildings. No-objection certificates should be renewed only after verifying the originally intended use of the building being certified and any change in the building’s pattern.

Increase the number of fire station and services:

• In case fires break out despite all this, fire services should always be in place. This too is lacking in India.
• Data show that fire services are not at all adequate.
• In 2017, for instance, the Home Ministry told Parliament that that in 2012 India had just 2,987 fire stations against the requirement of 8,559.
• It is hoped that there are more now. It is important to not only increase fire services but also modernise fire fighting departments.

Building awareness:

• Awareness of fire safety is nearly absent in India.
• In schools, the curriculum should have a chapter on fire safety. Regular drills should be conducted so that children are prepared to handle such incidents.
• Communities managing housing and commercial premises need to regularly organise awareness programmes with assistance from authorised persons and agencies.
• These need to be not only on fire safety but also on other disasters such as earthquakes and floods.

Mandatory of infrastructural changes:

• We need dedicated access lanes for quick movement of emergency vehicles.
• Under the Smart Cities Mission, ‘smart control rooms’ should be able to guide emergency vehicles through the shortest route and enable coordination among various departments such as police, traffic police, fire, ambulance, and security forces.

Way forward:

• A lot of ground has to be covered before India can claim to be a fire-safe country.
• It is imperative that lessons are learned from the Delhi incident at least now.
• India can work towards a new goal this decade if everyone cooperates and takes precious lives seriously — the goal of a ‘surakshit Bharat’(safe India).

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Spotting an opportunity in changing fundamentals (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: International Relations
Prelims level: US and China relation
Mains level: Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India's interests

Context:

• The “Phase One” trade deal between the United States and China gives both sides a reprieve, especially since the U.S. stayed its hand in not imposing additional tariffs worth $160-billion in mid-December.
• A technology war has erupted in the areas of artificial intelligence, digital space and 5G. Tensions have risen following the U.S.’s passing of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 and the proposed Uighur Act.
• The slowdown in the global economy is compounded by the U.S.-China trade war. As more sectors get drawn in, costs are rising and disrupting global supply chains.

Energy concerns

• Slack demand for energy and surplus production mainly by the U.S. had lowered oil prices, which was good news for India, given its huge imports.
• Lower energy prices may help India address its current account deficit. It can also make India’s export sector more competitive.
• But oil prices have surged more than 4% following the U.S. air strike killing Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, Commander of the Qods Force.
• An outbreak of hostilities would send oil prices soaring. Unlike India, China continues to buy Iranian crude oil and is its largest buyer.
• Reports suggest that China will invest $280-billion in developing Iran’s oil, gas and petrochemicals sectors and even station Chinese security personnel to guard Chinese projects.
• Dependence on China prevents Iran from criticising China on its policies in Xinjiang. In tensions with the U.S., Iran sees in China a sympathiser.
• India’s ramped up energy imports from the U.S. are likely to touch $10-billion in 2019-2020.
• China’s interest in Saudi Aramco’s initial public offering and interest in weakening the dollar in the global energy market has grown.
• It is forging closer ties with oil producers that are in the U.S.’s cross hairs on human rights and governance issues.
• This facilitates its naval presence in the western Indian Ocean, including the Strait of Hormuz.

On trade:

• According to a State Bank of India “Ecowrap” report of July 2019, India has scarcely benefited from U.S.-China trade.
• Of the $35-billion dip in China’s exports to the U.S. market in the first half of 2019, about $21-billion (or 62%) was diverted to other countries.
• The rest, $14-billion, was made good largely by the U.S. producers.
• Going by a UN Conference on Trade and Development report of November 2019, additional exports from India to the U.S. market in the first half of the year due to trade diversion amounted to only $755-million.
• U.S. tariffs on China seem to have made some other players such as Taiwan, Mexico, Vietnam and the European Union even more competitive.

Shortage in meat export:

• China is facing a great shortage of pork due to an outbreak of swine flu but India’s meat exports, primarily buffalo meat, reach China indirectly through Vietnam and the Philippines, adding to costs and reducing market share.
• Besides, India’s pork exports are meagre.
• China’s ambitious thrust on artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technologies has goaded the Donald Trump administration into action.
• With tensions rising after the blacklisting of Huawei Technologies by the U.S., the spectre of a high-tech war looms large.

Challenges in IT autonomy:

• The big three Chinese high-tech companies, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, together poured in $5-billion in Indian startups in 2018.
• India could use this opportunity to try and force China to pry open its market to India’s IT and other tech exports.
• The U.S.-China high-tech war threatens India’s strategic autonomy. Yet India has decided to allow all network equipment makers, including Huawei, to participate in 5G spectrum trials. The outcome is far from clear.
• As U.S.-China tensions drive supply chains out of China, India could emerge as an alternative destination with the right policies, as Vietnam has done.
• Any impact on clean energy targets in China due to U.S. technology restrictions in the nuclear field could be a setback to efforts to reduce emissions and mitigate climate change in the entire region.
• Denial regimes often spur domestic research and development and if the development of India’s own missile programme during years of U.S. sanctions is anything to go by, China may yet succeed in riding out the storm on the technology front.
• China claims that the U.S. is behind the disturbances in Hong Kong. There is no sign of the protests abating. If things turn uglier, India may have to cater to refugees of Indian origin.

Key regional issues:

• The situation in the South China Sea is weighted in favour of China given its fait accompli in occupying several man-made islands.
• India has no role in negotiating the “Code of Conduct” with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, though it is a participant in the “Quad” dialogue on broader issues in the Indo-Pacific.
• India reserves the right to sail and fly unhindered through the South China Sea in accordance with the principles of freedom of navigation and overflight.

On connectivity:

• The U.S.’s position is helpful to India.
• Recently, the U.S. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Alice G. Wells criticised the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which traverses Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, as eventually worsening Islamabad’s economic troubles.
• India is neither part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) nor the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.
• It is absent from the Indo-Pacific Business Forum created by the U.S., Japan and Australia as also from the Blue Dot network.
• A future challenge lies in India having to reconcile its own regional connectivity initiatives with the BRI projects that have mushroomed in the neighbourhood.

On defense sector:

• China’s economic success has emboldened it such that it challenges the liberal democracy model and offers an alternative developmental model based on its own system.
• Overall, the military advances by China notwithstanding, U.S. defence spending far outstrips China’s budget. Its nuclear arsenal dwarfs that of China. With the creation of a U.S. Space Force as a separate arm under the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. will seek to increase its superiority in network-centric warfare.
• As China’s anxieties in the Asia-Pacific theatre grow, India may yet have to contend with a greater Chinese military presence on its periphery.
• The Western Theater Command created in 2016 is responsible for the border with India.
• It is the largest of China’s military regions, and the Tibet Military Command under it has been accorded a higher status than other provincial commands to widen its scope for combat preparedness.

Way forward:

• U.S.-China rivalry coincides with an upward trajectory in India-U.S. relations.
• This is important for equilibrium and multi-polarity in Asia, even as India and China try and build much-needed trust and cooperation.

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Rebooting the economy (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: US-Iran geopolitical tensions
Mains level: Inclusive growth in Indian economy and issues arising from it

Context:

• That windfall could come under threat if crude prices go up with increased US-Iran geopolitical tensions and the Modi government — unwisely, if at all — cuts duties or forces oil companies to absorb part of the burden.

Evolving the uncertainty:

• Heightened uncertainty in West Asia following the US airstrike killing Iran’s top military commander has thrown the spotlight again on oil.
• In the last three months, Brent crude prices have risen from about $ 58 to almost $ 69 per barrel.
• US and Russia have displaced Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest crude producers today, with the former’s output especially more than doubling from roughly 5.5 million to 12.9 million barrels per day in the last decade.
• As a result, the Persian Gulf region’s control over global supplies isn’t as much as during the 2003 or 1991 Iraq War.
• But that’s hardly any consolation for India, which cannot, for purely geographical reasons, source crude beyond a point from the likes of the US, Venezuela and Russia.
• The Narendra Modi government’s first term was marked by falling international oil prices.
• It did not, wisely, pass these on fully to consumers and, instead, netted a yearly revenue windfall of some Rs 150,000 crore by raising excise duties on petrol and diesel.

Effects from this windfall:

• That windfall could come under threat if crude prices go up with increased US-Iran geopolitical tensions and the Modi government unwisely, if at all cuts duties or forces oil companies to absorb part of the burden.
• Rising oil prices can also impact India’s balance of payments and the rupee (the domestic currency shed 44 paise against the dollar on Friday), further adding to inflationary pressures.
• There is a third component that contributed to benign inflation during the Modi government’s first term: Low food prices. Annual consumer food inflation crossed single digits in November, which was for the first time in nearly six years.
• Many commodities — from onion, potato, pulses and milk to maize and soyabean — have seen prices rising or at least correcting from lows.
• The reasons for it are partly weather-induced (excess rains during September-October) and partly structural (farmers reducing production in response to the earlier sustained low realisations). Either way, benign food and fuel inflation can no longer be taken for granted.
• The return of inflation, on top of pressure on government revenues, leaves very little space for both monetary and fiscal policy.
• The focus has to necessarily shift to structural reforms that have been put off for too long.
• The existing system of open-ended procurement of wheat and paddy at minimum support prices has to go.

Conclusion:

• To must super-subsidised physical sales of grain or urea. These should be replaced by direct cash transfers targeting vulnerable consumers and smallholder farmers.
• The resources thus freed, along with those raised through privatisation (inclusive of excess land parcels held by government departments/enterprises), can fund much-needed public investment without creating fiscal or inflationary pressures.

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Tableaux of exclusion (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 2: Polity
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Issues and challenges pertaining to the federal structure

Context:

• The Republic Day parade has been dragged into the over-politicised conversation that now stands in for meaningful public discourse.
• The tableaux that form an integral part of the parade highlighting the culture of various states, union territories and even the mandate of Union ministries are now a front in the battle between the Centre and non-BJP ruled states.
• Maharashtra, Kerala, West Bengal and Bihar are among the states that have been excluded from the parade, and are crying foul.
• The governments of both West Bengal and Kerala have drawn a connection between their rejection of the CAA-NRC and exclusion from the parade.

About the selection process:

• The selection of tableaux is done by a committee under the Union Ministry of Defence.
• Only 16 states have been selected for the parade, and government and BJP spokespersons insist that there is no political bias at play in the selection.
• They have also cited the fact that in the past, tableaux have been rejected when there were Congress governments both at the Centre and in the states concerned.
• It is by the same process that the current selection has been made.
• This is essentially a procedural justification for what has become a political issue, and, therefore, is unlikely to cut ice with the aggrieved states.

Arguments behind not selection:

• Arguably, more than any other government in recent times, the Narendra Modi-led government is acutely aware of the potency of political symbolism and optics.
• To be seen as excluding entire states whose elected governments have stood in opposition to the NRC and CAA will certainly strain already fraying Centre-state relations.
• It is certainly possible, as the Ministry of Defence insists, that the exclusions are purely procedural.
• The current climate of division and suspicion makes it incumbent on the Centre to not conform to its image as being overbearing on the back of its majority in Parliament.

Conclusion:

• The Republic Day parade in India has always been much more than a celebration of masculine nationalism and militarism it bears testimony to the diversity of India.
• The way to rescue it now might be to practice that once-much-vaunted slogan cooperative federalism.

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Life of science: On Indian Science Congress (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Science and Tech
Prelims level: Indian Science Congress
Mains level: Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, robotics, nano-technology, bio-technology and issues relating to intellectual property rights

Context:

• The 107th edition of Indian Science Congress (ISC) in Bengaluru has served as a reminder of the status accorded to science and technology in the early years of the Indian republic.
• Though the formation of the congress pre-dates the Indian republic, it was the intellectual nursery of modern science in the country.

Significance of the program:

• Early ideas of how science and technology could aid the development of the new nation were incubated at this coming together of scientists.
• The years since have seen the nature of the congress change: from one where scientists, in the era of postal communication, congregated to exchange scientific ideas to one today where it has become a ‘science mela’.
• The prime purpose of the ISC now is to draw school and science college students to hear Nobel Laureates and Indian-origin scientists from abroad to lecture about their work and the future prospects of science.
• The other draws are science projects and innovations by schoolchildren and stalls showcasing scientific work being done in key national laboratories and institutions.

Mix of myth and pseudoscience:

• In recent years, the congress often makes news for becoming a forum for pseudoscience and less for interesting scientific ideas or demonstrations.
• Speakers some holding distinguished positions in leading universities have tended to mix mythology and science and publicise far-fetched assertions: that the Kauravas were born from stem-cell technology and the Vedas discussed avionics.
• While this has eroded the congress’s public image, the government itself does not seem too keen to vitalise it.
• The exhibits at several scientific laboratories are re-runs from old congresses, or from similar and past science fairs.
• Many laboratories showcase their work as ‘posters’ rather than actually showing demonstrations or working inventions.
• Several luminaries of India’s science establishments the Principal Scientific Adviser, secretaries from several ministries, the chiefs of major organisations such as ISRO or the Department of Atomic Energy, who have been fixtures, or have at least had their organisation present a dedicated talk or session, were absent this year.
• It is inevitable that traditions change over time and the relative importance accorded to institutions wax and wane.

Way forward:

• However this must make way for inspiring new ideas, or new models of taking science to the public.
• A rising trend in science displays, at museums or exhibitions in many places, is to mix science and art as well as make interactive displays that encourage audience engagement.
• A rebirth, and not a creeping requiem, is what the congress needs.

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संघ लोक सेवा आयोग सिविल सेवा - मुख्य परीक्षा (Download) UPSC IAS Mains Exam 2019 लोक प्रशासन (Paper-2)

Exam Name: UPSC IAS Mains PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION (लोक प्रशासन) (Paper-2)
Marks: 250
Time Allowed: 3 Hours.

खण्ड 'A'

Q1. निम्नलिखित में से प्रत्येक का लगभग 150 शब्दों में उत्तर दीजिए :

(a) अर्थशास्त्र में मूलपाठ में "राज्य न तो एक पुलिस राज्य है और न ही मात्र एक कर एकत्रित करने वाला राज्य है"| टिप्पणी कीजिए|
(b) आर्थिक सुधारों ने भारत के संविधान के आधाभूत मूल्यों और आत्मा (भावना) का महत्वपूर्ण ढंग से अतिलंघन किया है| परीक्षण कीजिए |
(c) भारतीय सिविल सेवा पर मैकाले के विचार अधिकारीतंत्र की संभ्रांत थिथोरी के समरूप हैं, जो अभी तक भी कायम हैं | क्या आप सहमत है? औचित्य सिद्ध कीजिए|
(d) एक मत यह रहा है कि भारतीय न्यायिक व्यवस्था का विशिष्टाचार निरंतर औपनिवेशिक बना हुआ है| त्वरित न्याय की प्राप्ति के लिए न्यायिक श्रेष्ठता के स्तर को ऊँचा उठाने के लिए उपाय सुझाईए |
(e) विभिन्न आयोगों ने भारतीय शासन प्रणाली में राज्यपाल की निर्णायक भूमिका को बार-बार दोहराया है, किन्तु उतरोत्तर सरकारों ने राज्यपाल के पद को अराजनितिक बनाने पर ध्यान नहीं दिया है| उदाहरणों सहित परीक्षण कीजिए|

Q2. (a) अनुच्छेद 356 "राज्य सरकार को उसकी न्यूनताओं को सुधारने का अवसर या नोटिस दिए बिना ... बहुत हद तक आसमान से बिजली गिरने जैसा काम करता है"| यह परिघटना न केवल राज्य सरकार की स्वायत्ता को क्षति पहुंचाती है, बल्कि भारत के राष्ट्रपति की प्रतिष्ठा को भी कम करती है| समालोचनात्मक विश्लेषण कीजिए |
(b) सार्वजनिक क्षेत्रक उद्यमों से अपेक्षा की गई थि कि वे भारतीय अर्थव्यवस्था को 'प्रभावशाली ऊँचाइयों' तक ले जाएँगे, इसके बजाय क्रमिक सरकारें इनको विनिवेश की ओर धकेलती रही हैं| समालोचनात्मक परीक्षण कीजिए कि विगत वर्षों में परिदृश्य कैसे-कैसे बदला है|
(c) समाज की उभरती हुई विकासीय आकांक्षाएँ लोक सेवकों को उपलब्ध वर्तमान सुरक्षा साधनों में परिवर्तन करने के लिए संविधान संशोधन को आवश्यक बनाती हैं | ऐसे संशोधन के पक्ष और विपक्ष में तर्कों का मूल्यांकन कीजिए|

Q3. (a) "शक्तिशाली प्रधानमंत्री कार्यालय (पी० एम० ओ०) मंत्रिपरिषद के सामूहिक उतरदायित्व के लक्षण की विपरीतता है|"  इस कथन के प्रकाश में पी० एम० ओ० बनाम मंत्रिपरिषद की पद-स्थिति से सम्बंधित मुद्दों का परीक्षण कीजिए |
(b) कर्मचारियों से सम्बंधित क्षमता मुद्दों ने अनेक सरकारी कार्यक्रमों के क्रियान्वयन को बाधित किया है | राष्ट्रीय प्रशिक्षण नीति, 2012 के प्रावधानों के सन्दर्भ में, इसके कारणों का पता लगाइए |   
(c) हो सकता है कि बैंकों की गैर-निष्पादनी संपत्तियों से निपटने की रणनीति से करदाताओं पर अतिरिक्त भार पड़ जाय| इन दोनों के हितों की रक्षा के लिए सर्कार की भूमिका का परीक्षण कीजिए|

Q4. (a) केन्द्रीय और स्थानीय स्तरों के प्रशासन तंत्र की पुनर्रचना के बारे में प्रयाप्त ध्यान दिया गया है, किन्तु राज्य स्तर पर बहुत ही कम सुधार किए गए हैं| इस स्थिति को सही करने के लिए आप क्या सुझाव देना चाहेंगे ?
(b) यह देखा जाता है कि जिला नियोजन समितियों की अकार्यशीलता ग्रामीण और नगरीय नियोजन की आवश्यकताओं की समानुरुपता को बाधित कर रही है? क्या आप सहमत हैं? औचित्य बताईए|
(c) पुलिस-जनता आमना-सामना (पारस्परिक संबंधों) पर अविश्वास और डर के द्वारा विराम लग जाता है| सुझाइए कि जनता की नजरों में पुलिस अपनी छवि को किस प्रकार सुधार सकती है|

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The IMD says India has just finished a satisfactory northeast monsoon. What is this monsoon? (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 1: Geography
Prelims level: India Meteorological Department
Mains level: Highlights about the northeast winter monsoon

Context:

• The northeast, or winter, monsoon has ended on a high, with an overall surplus rainfall being recorded for the season.
• The year that just went by witnessed the rare meteorological coincidence of the northeast (winter) monsoon making its onset on the same day as the southwest monsoon withdrew officially.
• The two events rarely happen simultaneously, although the three-month winter monsoon season is supposed to begin almost immediately after the end of the June-September summer monsoon season.
• In 2019, the retreat of the southwest (summer) monsoon was delayed by a record margin, while the northeast (winter) monsoon set in on time.

So, what is the northeast (winter) monsoon?

• In common parlance, a reference to the “monsoon” usually means the southwest summer monsoon. It is the main monsoon season, which brings widespread rain across the country.
• For many parts of India, this is the only time they receive rain. These four months bring about 75 per cent of India’s annual rainfall.
• However, for some regions of South India, it is the winter monsoon that is much more important. Though much less heard of, especially in the north of the country, the northeast monsoon is as permanent a feature of the

Indian subcontinent’s climate system as the summer monsoon.

• The India Meteorological Department (IMD) recognises October to December as the time for the northeast monsoon.
• During this period, rainfall is experienced over Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Andhra Pradesh, along with some parts of Telangana and Karnataka.

So why are these two monsoons named thus?

• The northeast monsoon does not have anything to do with India’s Northeast, even though a part of the system does originate from the area above it.
• Rather, it derives its name from the direction in which it travels — from the northeast to the southwest. (In fact, all winds are named for the direction from which they blow. Thus the westerlies blow from the west, and the easterlies from the east.)
• Similarly, the summer monsoon (at least the Arabian Sea branch of it; there is also a branch that swerves in an anticlockwise direction in the Bay of Bengal before entering the Indian landmass and bringing rain to the eastern, northeastern and northern parts of the country) moves in exactly the opposite direction — from the southwest to the northeast. That is why it is called the southwest monsoon.

When does the northeast monsoon set in?

• Although October, November, and December are supposed to comprise the northeast monsoon season, the rains normally set in only around October 20.
• The southern peninsular region receives rain in the first half of October as well, but that is attributable to the retreating summer monsoon. The summer monsoon season ends on September 30 but the withdrawal does not happen overnight.
• The southward withdrawal takes place over a period of three to four weeks. It usually starts around the second week of September and continues till about the second week of October, bringing rain as it retreats. 2019 was unusual in that the withdrawal was completed in just eight days, beginning on October 9.

Where does it rain during the northeast monsoon season?

• The northeast monsoon brings rain to just five of the 36 meteorological divisions in the country — Tamil Nadu (which includes Puducherry), Kerala, Coastal Andhra Pradesh, Rayalaseema and South Interior Karnataka.
• As such, this season contributes only 11 per cent to India’s annual rainfall of 1,187 mm, compared to about 75 per cent in the summer monsoon season (the remaining rain comes in other non-monsoon months).
• Many other parts of the country, like the Gangetic plains and northern states, also receive some rain in November and December but this is not due to the northeast monsoon.
• It is caused mainly by the Western Disturbances, an eastward-moving rain-bearing wind system that originates beyond Afghanistan and Iran, picking up moisture from as far as the Mediterranean Sea, even the Atlantic Ocean. In the higher reaches of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand, the precipitation is often in the form of snow.
• The northeast monsoon is particularly important for Tamil Nadu, which receives almost half its annual rainfall (438 mm of the annual 914.4 mm) during this season.
• The southwest monsoon contributes just 35 per cent to Tamil Nadu’s annual rainfall (the rest comes in other non-monsoon months). Within the state, some districts get up to 60 per cent of their annual rainfall during this time.
• Similarly, Rayalaseema region and Coastal Andhra Pradesh both about 30 per cent, and South Interior Karnataka receives about 20 per cent of its annual rainfall during the northeast monsoon season.

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India is failing its young women in terms of work (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: Periodic Labour Force Survey
Mains level: Factors responsible for Female participation ratio declining

Context:

• Anyone who has been following the upsurge of protests across the country in the wake of the CAA-NRC moves of the government would have been impressed and inspired by the role played by young women.
• They have been forthright and fearless in articulating their concerns and demands, even in the face of overt repression by the state, and there is no doubt that they provide much hope for the future of the country.

Periodic Labour Force Survey:

• These young women have already displayed much courage and resilience—but unfortunately these qualities are likely to become even more necessary, because in addition to Indian politics and society failing them, the economy also deals them a terrible hand.
• Many of the multidimensional problems Indian women have to deal with (violence, lack of autonomy, lack of assets, restricted mobility) are interlinked, but the very poor employment generation and the associated lack of productive income opportunities has become an underlying context that particularly affects young women.
• The latest official Periodic Labour Force Survey of 2017-18 showed a dramatic drop in women’s work participation rates to only 16.5 per cent from already low levels.
• In a growing economy, this is bizarre and almost unbelievable. It may well be true that there is significant under-reporting of women’s employment, especially with respect to work on family farms and enterprises, as well as lack of recognition of the productive contributions made by unpaid work within households.

Declining trend:

• But such under-reporting is itself a sign of low status of women in a society, while the fact of extremely low rates of gainful employment cannot really be doubted.
• Like everything else in this enormous country, there is substantial regional variation.
• All States in the country showed a decline in women’s work participation rates in 2017-18 (as against 2011-12) — with the exceptions of Madhya Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh, and some Union Territories such as

Chandigarh, Daman and Diu.

• There were some States that showed major declines from already low rates, including Gujarat and Odisha, and others in the eastern region such as Assam and West Bengal that also declined moderately from low rates.
• But it is clear from the map that the worst affected States lie broadly along the Indo-Gangetic plain, with some in this mostly Hindi belt showing aggregate rates of women’s employment of less than 10 per cent.

Education factor:

• It is also in these States that young women are especially disadvantaged. Despite girls’ educational enrolment increasing over the past two decades to the point where near gender parity has been achieved up to secondary education.
• This still does not seem to have led to more employment for such higher-educated young women — if anything, employment rates have actually fallen.
• The labour force participation rates of young women have collapsed in these States—to the unbelievable rate of 1.7 per cent for the 15-29 age group in Bihar.
• This measures all those who are willing to work, but excludes discouraged workers who have stopped looking for work, or those who are unable to seek employment because of other constraints.
• It is often argued that these rates are low because of enrolment in education, but this cannot explain the large numbers of young people who are not in education, employment or training of any sort.
• This number is as high as 21 million (both young men and women) in Uttar Pradesh, 11 million in Bihar, 2.4 million in Haryana, two million in Punjab and 0.7 million in Uttarakhand.
• It is clear that the absence of job opportunities is leading to this appalling outcome, most of all in these States.

Adverse conditions

• This is also evident from the fact that, even with such low rates of labour force participation, rates of open unemployment remain high for young women in these States.
• Bear in mind that this number relates only to those who are actively seeking but unable to find work, as a share of all those willing to be in the labour force.
• The extreme tendencies displayed in these States are part of the wider trend across India. But they also point to particularly adverse labour market conditions for women in these regions.

Conclusion:

• These are States in which aggregate employment rates have been low and falling, and also where public employment has been grossly inadequate and have not employed more women in good quality jobs.
• The contrast with some of the southern States with slightly better performance indicates that, in addition to broader economic policies, State government policies also play a role in shaping the prospects for young women.

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Bracing for global impact after Soleimani’s assassination (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: International Relations
Prelims level: Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps
Mains level: Effect of policies on Indian Diaspora

Context:

• Assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani, Commander of Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), bears two important differences from recent targets of similar U.S. operations.
• Unlike Abu Musaib al-Zarqawi (leader of the al-Qaeda in Iraq), Osama bin Laden (founder of the al-Qaeda) and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, (founder of the Islamic State, or the IS), Gen. Soleimani, 62, was a state actor. Second, unlike the previous three, he was not past his prime. Both these factors could lead to more substantive fallout.

Background:

• The U.S. has sought to link the operation to a surge in attacks on its assets and personnel in Iraq. America proscribed the Qods Force and Gen.
• Qassem Soleimani more than 12 years ago for terrorism, but has not acted. In fact, during 2017-18, the U.S. indirectly collaborated with the Hashd Al-Shabi created by Gen. Soleimani, to defeat the IS.
• Gen. Soleimani was a frequent visitor to Iraq, and these visits were hardly secret.
• Moreover, had the U.S. wished to avoid a direct confrontation, it could have steered clear of taking public responsibility for the operation.
• But, presumably for domestic political reasons, it decided otherwise, thereby throwing down a risky “double-or-quit” gauntlet, at Tehran.
• Yet, unlike the targeted assassination of the IS chief in October, the U.S. President has, uncharacteristically avoided taking personal credit. Therefore, the handling of this operation raises more questions than it answers.

Pivotal figure:

• Gen. Soleimani hailed from a modest background in Kerman, far from the country’s traditional power centres.
• He was a child of the revolution, fought with distinction as a member of the IRGC in the Iraq-Iran war and was from 1998 the founder-commander of its Qods Force, formed for extra-territorial operations.
• During the past decade, he managed to leverage the disarray to enhance Iranian influence in Arab countries with a significant Shia population such as Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Relations between two countries:

• Iranian authorities have reacted with predictable vehemence at Gen. Soleimani’s “martyrdom” and vowed vengeance.
• This tit-for-tat between the U.S. and Iran could easily go out of hand and lead to a major confrontation in a pyretic and fragile region, with unpredictable consequences.
• Both the antagonists have their respective domestic compulsions: Mr. Trump faces a Senate impeachment and re-election and Iran has its parliamentary elections next month. These factors would, hopefully, limit their options to low-intensity skirmishes.
• Iran has in the past used its foreign proxies, many of which were created and fostered by Gen. Soleimani, and they may now be itching to avenge his loss.
• Moving concentrically, Gen. Soleimani’s assassination in Baghdad is one incident most Iraqis could do without.
• It is likely to queer the pitch for Iraq, a hapless country with a caretaker government convulsed by nearly three months of youth protests, inter alia, against undue foreign interference by both Iran and the U.S.

Oil sector as target

• At a regional level, anxiety may rise about Gen. Soleimani’s death being avenged by a thousand cuts at the interests of the U.S. and its allies.
• This may involve resumed attacks on oil tankers and other low hanging but high value economic targets, particularly in the oil sector.
• Global oil prices have already seen a 4% rise within hours of the incident due to the “fear premium”; unless de-escalated, jittery commodity speculators may spin out of control.
• The urge for a riposte runs deep in the Iranian psyche. The U.S. has a global presence but that also brings in vulnerabilities.
• All that can be safely predicted is that the situation remains highly unpredictable.

Potential fallout, on India

• India has already had considerable difficulties in meandering through the obstacle course created by the U.S.-Iran cold war.
• While we need to be on the right side of the U.S., our ties with Iran, apart from being “civilisational”, have their own geostrategic logic.
• Now that the conflict has turned hot, its adverse impact on India could magnify. Apart from a rise in our oil import bill and difficulties in supplies, the safety of an estimated eight million expatriates in the Gulf may be affected.
• Iran has the capacity to influence the U.S.-Taliban peace process in Afghanistan, a neighbouring country.

Way forward:

• Last but not the least, after Iran, India has perhaps the largest number of the world’s Shia population and the possibility of some of them being radicalised by this event cannot be ruled out.
• It can be argued that had the U.S. not invaded Iraq in 2003 creating the mother of all chaos, Qassem Soleimani and his Qods Force would have largely remained a sideshow in Lebanon. So his targeted assassination yesterday completes the circle.

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Railways restructure means (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: Indian Railways Management Service
Mains level: Infrastructure in Railway personnel

Context:

• The Cabinet recently approved trimming of the Railway Board, the powerful body that governs the Indian Railways. From nine, the Board will now have only five Members.
• The Cabinet also decided to merge all central service cadres of Railways officers into a single Indian Railways Management Service (IRMS).
• Now, any eligible officer could occupy any post, including Board Member posts, irrespective of training and specialisation, since they will all belong to IRMS.

What is the present system like?

• The Indian Railways is governed by a pool of officers, among whom engineers are recruited after the Indian Engineering Service Examination, and civil servants through the Civil Services Examination.
• The civil servants are in the Indian Railway Traffic Service (IRTS), Indian Railway Accounts Service (IRAS) and Indian Railway Personnel Service (IRPS).
• The engineers are in five technical service cadres — Indian Railway Service of Engineers (IRSE), Indian Railway Service of Mechanical Engineers (IRSME), Indian Railway Service of Electrical Engineers (IRSEE), Indian Railway Service of Signal Engineers (IRSSE) and the Indian Railway Stores Service (IRSS).
• Until the 1950s, the Railways system was run by officers from just three main streams: Traffic, Civil Engineering, and Mechanical. The other streams emerged as separate services over time.

Why was the reform needed?

• The government wants to end inter-departmental rivalries, which it says have been hindering growth for decades. Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said departments were working “in silos”.
• Several committees including the Bibek Debroy committee in 2015 have noted that “departmentalism” is a major problem in the system. Most committees have said merger of the services in some form would be a solution.
• The Debroy report recommended merging of all services to create two distinct services: Technical and Logistics. But it did not say how to merge the existing officers.
• A separate exam under the Union Public Service Commission is proposed to be instituted in 2021 to induct IRMS officers.

Why are officers opposed to the move?

• The questions started with a proposal to merge all 8,400 officers in the eight services — five technical and three non-technical — to prepare a common seniority list and a general pool of posts, especially in higher managerial ranks. The Cabinet has decided that a Group of Secretaries, and then a Group of Ministers through the ‘Alternate Mechanism’, will look at how best to do this. The process might take a year, officials said.
• Those protesting the government’s decision say that the merger is unscientific and against established norms, because it proposes to merge two fundamentally dissimilar entities, with multiple disparities.
• The civil servants come from all walks of life after clearing the Civil Services Examination. The engineers usually sit for the Engineering Services Examination right after getting an engineering degree. Various studies have noted that engineers join the Railways around the age of 22-23, while the civil servants join when they are around 26, barring exceptions. The age difference starts to pinch at the later stages of their careers, when higher-grade posts are fewer. There are more engineers than civil servants.
• Protesters are also saying that the merger is against the service conditions which civil servants sign up for while choosing an alternative if they cannot make it to IAS.

How pronounced is this skew?

• The Railways have legitimised a system wherein an officer with a certain number of years left in service will be considered eligible for general-management higher posts, the most important of which is that of General Manager, who heads zones and production units.
• An officer, irrespective of seniority in his batch and acumen, requires at least two years of service left to be eligible for GM. There are 27 such posts, including as the heads of the 17 zonal railways.
• While any officer from any service can be considered for GM, civil servants have often found themselves at a disadvantage since they don’t have the required service tenure left. Today, of the 27 posts, civil servants occupy only two. One of them is from the Traffic service, not just because of merit but also because the Member (Traffic) post cannot be filled by anyone other than a Traffic service officer and, to be the Member (Traffic), an officer needs to have served as GM. And only engineers have been Chairman Railway Board since July 2013.
• In the fields where the Railways are actually operated, the share of civil servants in junior-to-middle levels is over 40 per cent. But in higher management, their representation is around 16-17 per cent.

What will change with the restructure?

• In inter-departmental seniority — a complex process to fix, which has led to court cases in the past — problems arise when different services compete for posts that are open to all — like those of Divisional Railway Managers (DRMs), GMs, and subsequently, the Chairman Railway Board. And here lies the major criticism of the move.
• The civil servants are saying that if all present cadres are merged and even higher departmental posts become open to all, engineers, being in larger numbers and of a certain age profile, may end up occupying most posts, if not all.
• Another aspect is the suitability of jobs. The move, many say, emerges from the “simplistic” belief that while non-technical specialists cannot do technical jobs, technocrats can do both.
• The counter-argument is that civil servants in government, by virtue of the screening process and subsequent training, possess acumen and skills that go beyond academic specialisation.

How did the Railways get here?

• Departmental posts are ring-fenced; promotions happen within each department from officers of that service.
• The problem starts when, within a department, there are too many officers eligible for a few posts.
• A department needs a constant supply of posts in higher grades to keep promoting its seniors so that the juniors can keep getting timely promotions.
• In the Railways, this has happened either organically when the government restructured the cadres and created new posts at intervals of several years, or through the execution of projects.
• In the cadre-restructuring exercise, overseen by the Cabinet and the Cabinet Secretary, work-charged posts have been banned. But a majority of the “temporary” posts were absorbed in regular cadres.
• In 2015, the government merged the verticals (not cadres) of Electrical and Mechanical on “functional lines” to make the Rolling Stock and the Traction departments.
• Electrical was made in charge of locomotives, and Mechanical of coaches, wagons, AC — even though the Railways are an electrical system. So Mechanical verticals working in one field started reporting to an Electrical boss and vice versa, with many of them losing influence on their domain subjects.

What happens next?

• The current demand is for two distinct services instead of one — a civil services, and one that encompasses all engineering specialisations.
• The logic is that functionally, departments will continue to exist through various technical and non-technical specialisations, so merging them will not end departmentalism per se.
• The government has on record assured all existing officers that no one’s seniority will be hampered and promotion prospects will be protected.

Conclusion:

• Amid all this, one concern among the higher-ups is that the actual job of safely running trains 24/7 must not get neglected.

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Lord Curzon, to whose table the West Bengal Governor recently referred? (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 1: History
Prelims level: Lord Curzon
Mains level: Describe the role of Lord Curzon in Bengal’s partition

Context:

• On Tuesday, West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar drew widespread condemnation over his tweet referring to a table, apparently used by Lord Curzon to sign papers pertaining to the Partition of Bengal in 1905, as “iconic”. Dhankhar later deleted the tweet.

Who was Lord Curzon?

• Born in 1859 into British nobility, Curzon was educated at the elite Eton College school and attended Oxford.
• In 1891, he became Under-Secretary of State for India (the deputy minister in the British cabinet responsible for India).
• He became the youngest Viceroy of India in 1899 at age 39, and remained in office until his resignation in 1905.
• Curzon was deeply racist, and convinced of Britain’s “civilising mission” in India. In 1901, he described Indians as having “extraordinary inferiority in character, honesty and capacity”.
• He said, “It is often said why not make some prominent native a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council? The answer is that in the whole continent there is not an Indian fit for the post.”
• The Viceroy was intolerant of Indian political aspirations. In a letter to the British Secretary of State in 1900, Curzon wrote, “(The Indian National) Congress is tottering to its fall, and one of my greatest ambitions while in

India is to assist it to a peaceful demise.

”What was Curzon’s role in the partition of Bengal?

• In July 1905, Curzon announced the partition of the undivided Bengal Presidency. The Presidency was the most populous province in India, with around 8 crore people, and comprised the present-day states of West Bengal, Bihar, parts of Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and Assam, as well as today’s Bangladesh.
• A new province of East Bengal and Assam was announced, with a population of 3.1 crore, and a Muslim-Hindu ratio of 3:2.
• Bengal, the western province, was overwhelmingly Hindu. While the move was ostensibly aimed at making the administration of the large region easier, Curzon’s real intentions were far less benign.
• He recorded in a letter: “The Bengalis like to think of themselves as a nation… If we are weak enough to yield to their clamour now we shall not be able to dismember or reduce Bengal again, and you will be cementing and solidifying on the eastern flank of India a force almost formidable, and certain to be an increasing trouble in the future.”

What happened after the partition was announced?

• The partition provoked great resentment and hostility in Bengal. It was clear to the Bengal Congress and patriotic Indians in both Bengal and elsewhere that Curzon’s motive was to crush the increasingly loud political voices of the literate class in the province, and to provoke religious strife and opposition against them. But the protests against the partition did not remain confined to this class alone.
• A campaign to boycott British goods, especially textiles, and promote swadeshi began.
• There were marches and demonstrations with the protesters singing Bande Mataram to underline their patriotism and challenge the colonialists. Samitis emerged throughout Bengal, with several thousand volunteers.
• Rabindranath Tagore led the marches at many places, and composed many patriotic songs, most famously ‘Amar Sonar Bangla’ (My Golden Bengal), which is now the national anthem of Bangladesh.
• The message of patriotism and Bengali nationalism was showcased in Jatras, or popular theatre.

What impact did the protests have?

• Curzon left for Britain in 1905, but the agitation continued for many years. Partition was finally reversed in 1911 by Lord Hardinge in the face of unrelenting opposition.
• The Swadeshi movement, which had grown significantly during the agitation, later reached nationwide proportions. The partition of Bengal and the highhanded behaviour of Curzon fired the national movement and the Congress.

Conclusion:

• Curzon had hoped… to bind India permanently to the Raj. Ironically, his partition of Bengal, and the bitter controversy that followed, did much to revitalize Congress. Curzon, typically, had dismissed the Congress in 1900 as ‘tottering to its fall’. But he left India with Congress more active and effective than at any time in its history.”

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