Attempt the questions individually by clicking on them.
Source: https://www.civilsdaily.com/gm-mustard-debate/
Genetically modified organisms (GMO) can be defined as organisms (i.e. plants, animals or microorganisms) in which genetic material has been altered in a way that cannot be altered naturally. DMH-11 is a Genetically Modified (GM) mustard hybrid. Hybrids are normally obtained by crossing two genetically diverse plants from the same species.
GM Mustard being the first GM food crop has some perceived benefits. The expected benefits of introducing GM Mustard in India are as follows-
- Presently, the production of edible oil in India is not much due to which India has to import lot of edible oil outside from outside.GM mustard is expected to boost the production of mustard and thereby would help to cut the import of oil.
- GM crops are engineered to withstand the extremes of weather. In India, where variability of monsoon badly affects the crop production, the introduction of GM crops would help to alleviate the risks associated with it.
- The most perceived benefit which GM mustard or GM crop in general is expected to bring about is their ability to be pest resistance. It would allow farmers to save the money which they would earlier spend on buying pesticides.
- The resulting GM mustard hybrid, it is claimed, gives 25-30% more yield than the best varieties such as ‘Varuna’ currently grown in the country.
The Cons associated with GM crops are as follows:
- At a time when sustainable farming and low-input agriculture are becoming the buzzwords, GM mustard will require almost double the quantity of fertilizer and water.
- Health concerns of GM Mustard include allergenicity, gene transfer, especially of antibiotic-resistant genes, from GM foods to cells or bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract. The movement of genes from GM plants to conventional crops, posing indirect threats to food safety and security.
- GM mustard can affect honeybees directly and indirectly through effecting flowering and pollen production. Protease inhibitors have proved detrimental to the longevity and behaviour of bees.
- The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee, which is responsible for approving large-scale releases and commercialization of GMOs, is not entirely independent and accused of regulatory weakness.
- GM technology makes the crops to survive high doses of herbicides resulting in higher herbicides residues in food.
- There is growing concern that GMO are creating ‘super weeds ’which can only by killed by toxic poisons.
- Further, GMO contaminate forever.GMO cross pollinate and their seeds can travel far and wide. It is impossible to fully clean the contaminated pool of genes.
Way forward
There is need to construct a possible way to address the concerns related to GM crops while at the same time, leveraging benefits associated with the GM technology. There should be independent and autonomous evaluation of GM crops before commercially introducing them. The risk assessment along with public awareness and enhanced information dissemination has to undertaken before the clearance to allay the fears. The results should be made available to public transparently so there would be coherence among the stakeholders to adopt this technology.
Source: https://www.civilsdaily.com/li-fi/
Li-Fi (Light Fidelity) is a breakthrough high-speed wireless communication technology that uses visible light to transmit information. This technology invented by German physicist and Professor Harald Haas, is a wireless technology that makes use of visible light in place of radio waves to transmit data at terabits per second speeds—more than 100 times the speed of Wi-Fi.
Multiplier benefits of Li-Fi
- Li-Fi relies on visible light to communicate, which is a good thing in more ways than one. These waves are able to carry far more information than the traditional radio waves used in WiFi technology.
- The visible light spectrum is almost 10,000 times larger than the spectrum occupied by radio waves.
- Also, Li-Fi is said to increase bandwidth by 100 times what we have today with Wi-Fi.
- A Li-Fi connection can transmit data at the rate of 224 gigabytes per second.
- Li-Fi is also more suitable in electromagnetic-sensitive areas like hospitals, airplane cabins, and nuclear power plants (where electromagnetic disturbance can be disastrous).
- Also, it presents another unique possibility: transmitting power wirelessly, wherein the smart phone will not only receive data through Li-Fi, but will also receives power to charge itself.
Shortcomings of LI-FI
- Since it uses visible light to transmit data, Li-Fi would be rather useless in conditions where there is no light. That means no Internet while lying in your bed at night.
- If you have a Wi-Fi router installed in one room of your house, you can connect your devices sitting anywhere in the house, but this is not the case with Li-Fi.
- Since visible rays cannot pass through walls, you have to be in the immediate vicinity of the source of light to access the Internet on your device, which may not sound particularly convenient to many people.
- This technology is also said to be less reliable (again, due to it being dependent on visible light) and has high installation charges.
- The main challenge is to create a Li-Fi ecosystem, which will need the conversion of existing smartphones into Li-Fi enabled ones by the use of a converter/adapter.
If Li-Fi can be put into practical use, every LED lamp (indoor as well as outdoor) can be converted into something like a hot spot to transmit data to every mobile device to achieve universal broadband communication between devices.
There’s no doubt that Li-Fi is going to transform the world of Internet connectivity, but it seems unlikely that its rise would necessarily mean the death of Wi-Fi, since the latter is deeply embedded in the lifestyles of billions of people. A more likely scenario, though, is that we’ll eventually have a wide range of technologies available at our disposal and will be free to choose the most appropriate one. Having that flexibility certainly seems like the most desirable scenario to us.
Q.3) There is nothing Indian about denying rohingyas refuge. Critically discuss
Rohingya Muslims comprise one million out of the 53 million people that live in Myanmar, forming the world’s largest stateless population in a single country. The discrimination and persecution of Rohingyas has existed since the 1962 coup by the Burmese Army, which went on to legally strip Rohingyas of their Burmese nationality in 1982. The current round of oppression is therefore only a continuation of the ethno-communal identity politics played by Buddhist majority Myanmar.
India’s tough stand on deporting Rohingyas back to Rakhine State in the midst of the ongoing violence has evoked criticism from national and international human rights activists.
India’s national fabric is not divisiveness; it is universal acceptance and tolerance. India’s idea was and should remain every religion is true, every path leads to the same destination. In order to preserve India it is imperative to deny refuge to Muslim Rohingyas is incongruous with India and its civilizational ethos. Fear begets hatred, fearlessness is love. India has sheltered persecuted Jews, Zoroastrians, Muslims of Prophet’s family and Syrian Christians. India is already home to diverse groups of refugees including Chakmas from Bangladesh, Bhutanese, Nepalis and many other groups from African and Asian countries.
However, in recent some years, the resurgence of atrocities on Rohingya Muslims has raised question on this long tradition of generosity of India.There are two reasons for which India has been criticized. It is against the culture and values that India has been following from the beginning. India should offer shelter to refuges in the same way as it had done with other minorities. Though India is not a signatory to United Nations Convention on Refugees, it hails the principle of non-refoulement, which applies to everyone.
Though the above mentioned issues to some extent valid, but there is another angle which should be analyzed prior to any judgment. India is justified with its decision on the following grounds:
- They are a potential threat to national security on the behest of their alleged association with Islamic state and other terrorist organizations.
- Given the limited resources and increasing population, the pressure on existing resources is increasing day by day. At this point of time, giving shelter to more people could provide challenges in terms of providing adequate facilities to the people.
- Ethnic conflicts have been the part of Indian history. Influx of more people could create more ethnic conflicts. The fragile North east corridor may further become destabilized.
- Myanmar is considered to be safe haven for various insurgent groups. Accepting Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar could be detrimental to the internal security of India.
- There is also a serious possibility of violence against Buddhists living in India by radicalized Rohingyas.
Thus, India should take a middle ground to address the humanitarian concerns of Rohingyas and the security concerns of the country. It must be understood that deportation of Rohingyas must be seen in right perspective. Financial aid to Bangladesh for rehabilitation of refugees should be considered. The ideal solution would be for Rohingyas to be equal and free citizens in their own land Myanmar, but that would require the US, India and China and the UN to align and speak in one voice through international pressure against the Burmese Military Junta, instead of the present trend of placating Myanmar for its strategic-economic importance. India should engage bilaterally with Myanmar and mobilize regional forums like ASEAN to solve this issue. India has been equally concerned about the situation. But it should show it by active engagement with Myanmar to solve this problem.
Source: https://www.civilsdaily.com/should-section-124-be-amended/
Some time back, it was commented that judiciary must draw its own ‘Lakshman rekha (inviolable boundary)’ and not take decisions that fall in the domain of executive, highlighting the increasing friction between the judiciary and executive over a perceived overreach by the courts by the use of two devices at its dispersion that are- Judicial Activism and Judicial Overreach.
Judicial Activism is the view that courts make political rather than legal decisions to further some agenda. It refers to the process in which judiciary steps into the shoes of legislature and comes up with new rules and regulations, which the legislature ought to have done earlier.
Judicial Overreach refers to an extreme form of judicial activism where arbitrary, unreasonable and frequent interventions are made by judiciary into the legislature’s domain.
Judicial activism is important
- When the other branches of the government fail to discharge their functions leading to erosion of the citizens confidence in the constitutional values and democracy.
- Also when the fundamental rights of the citizens are trampled, then the judiciary steps in to restore the primacy of the fundamental rights over the arbitrary action of the government or the third party.
- It also helps to fill the legislative vacuum to provide for the immediate societal needs.
The Constitution of India empowers the judiciary to strike down arbitrary legislation infringing citizen’s fundamental rights and the ones that has been framed by the legislature beyond its competence through Articles 13, 21, 32, 226 and 227. Also Article 142 extends a unique, extraordinary power to our Supreme Court to do ‘complete justice’ in any matter before it.
However, judicial activism has been criticized on various grounds as
- Viewed as a challenge to basic structure of the Constitution by challenging the idea of separation of powers.
- Just as independence of the judiciary is part of basic structure, the primacy of the legislature in policy making is also part of basic structure and interference by the courts into their domain is not justified.
- Judiciary has the function of interpreting the laws and decides whether they conform to the Constitution of India or not. It shall not consider itself sole custodian of public interest.
Judicial activism seeks to correct the failings of the legislature and the misdeeds of the executive but it must not intrude into the domain of legislative functioning. Judiciary must set its own limits and be accountable to the citizens like all other institutions in the democracy. Also, strive to plug the loopholes like inadequate judicial infrastructure, judges strength and effective case management through use of information and technology.
Source: https://www.civilsdaily.com/a-direct-shift-from-bs-1v-to-bs-vi-by-2020-issues-challenges/
Bharat stage emission standards were instituted by the Government of India in 1991 to normalize the productivity of air pollutants from internal combustion engine equipment. Recently the government decided to directly shift to BS VI norms by April 1, 2020 norms from the current BS IV norms in order to contain the large amount of vehicular emissions and their debilitating effects on climate change. This is a progressive step towards air pollution control but the direct transition to BS VI norms comes with several techno-economic challenges posing the automobile industry.
Significance of direct transition to BS VI norms
- It would improve air quality and is in direction of the India’s commitment at Paris climate change conference.
- The BS-VI compliant fuels have sulphur concentration of as low as 10 parts per million as compared to 50 parts per million (ppm) in BS-IV fuels. This means a lower level concentration of PM 2.5 and thus reduced incidence of lung diseases.
- It will also reduce concentration of carbon monoxide, unburnt hydrocarbons and nitrous oxide.
- India has been lagging behind its counterparts for example China has already upgraded to BS V equivalent Euro V emission norms.
- The experience of countries such as China and Malaysia shows that poor air quality can be bad for business.
Challenges in implementation
- According to Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) economic burden of moving to BS VI norms will be very significant for automobile manufacturers as many new technologies would have to be developed.
- The transition will involve overhauling the working dynamics of the automakers and will alter the cost structure forever.
- There’s a time crunch and firms would have to develop and optimize the Diesel Particulate Filter and Selective Catalytic Reduction systems in parallel, instead of doing it sequentially.
- The shift to BS VI is set to shake up the auto component industry.
- In a cost-sensitive market like India, the challenge is to design a system for India that would not just meet the stringent particulate matter (PM) and NOx emissions of BS VI but also be cost-effective and robust.
- Skilled manpower would be required by the industry which in itself is a mammoth cahllenge.
- The climatic conditions, driving habits ,road conditions, fuel conditions and maintenance practices in India are different from that in Europe.
Thus, this binary transition to BS VI standards is not a easy task. It must be supplemented with government efforts to increase fuel standards, increase the frequency and number of public transport vehicles and steps like hiking parking charges to disincentivise private transport will also help to improve air quality. As under Article 21, right to clean air is a fundamental right, required steps must be undertaken by the government.
Source: https://www.civilsdaily.com/should-india-adopt-universal-basic-income-model/
The large scale poverty, deepening income inequalities and the prospective job losses owing to the automation in the economy which already has high unemployment rate calls for Universal Basic Income(UBI) which guarantees a minimum level of income support. UBI is based on the three cardinal principles of universality, unconditionality and agency.
Benefits of UBI
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- Free from inclusion and exclusion errors as it is universal and unconditional
- The money will be transferred directly into the account of the beneficiaries making the process transparent and less prone to leakages.
- It will empower the people providing them with greater decision making opportunities to spend their money according to their priorities and needs.
- It will reduce poverty as people will be less worried about from where there next meal will come from and will invest more time in planning their lives and businesses. This will also usher innovative thinking at the level of an individual.
- It will also tackle the problem of multiple authorities giving different subsidies like food, water, housing, education etc. Thus, freeing up bureaucracy from complex welfare activities.
- Currently more than 350 welfare schemes are being run by government, UBI will help by clubbing them into one and therefore increasing efficiency and better targeting.
- It will provide a minimum safety net to all people thus minimizing exploitations because for survival people do all kinds of menial jobs (example- manual scavenging).
Challenges in implementation of UBI
- Unaffordable– It will amount to huge fiscal burden on the government, even if Rs 5000 is provided every month owing to the huge population of India. Switzerland UBI due to its fiscal pressures.
- Inflation– Universal cash transfers are subject to inflation as they will influence people spending behavior and also will raise the labour costs thus affecting markets.
- It might hamper the motivation to work leading to laziness.
- It may also lead to unproductive spending. Example on alcohol, gambing etc.
- It also poses challenges to how food subsidies will be implemented and if they are abolished it may affect food Security to all farmers may not feel motivated enough to grow more.
- It may also lead to market fluctuations.
- India has still not achieved the goal of universal financial inclusion and it acts as an impediment in the implementation of UBI.
Way Forward
Basic incomes are no panacea; but for overworked developing-country citizens living in extreme poverty, they would certainly be a relief. But they need to be supplemented with broad based economic reforms which strive to encourage entrepreneurship, lead to job creation, strive for development in MSMEs and agriculture sector. UBI gave results when implemented on a pilot basis in a village in Madhya Pradesh, Finland is also successfully implemented UBI as experimental scheme. But UBI must not be a solution to collusion and connivance in welfare scheme because we cannot throw baby with the bathwater.
Source: https://www.civilsdaily.com/should-marital-rape-be-criminalized/
Hints:
- Sexual intercourse releases physical & mental tension, gives a sense of psychological fulfillment, enhances body image & boosts self-esteem. Perhaps the biggest role that sex plays in human life is the strengthening of the bonds of intimacy between two steady partners. However, the consent matters the most every time from both sides.
- Thus the sex without consent by spouse with his wife/husband obtained by force, threat of force, or by physical violence, or when s/he is unable to give consent is termed as marital rape. Marital rape occurs mostly against women and is not criminalized in India as Section 375 of IPC only criminalizes (recognizes rape) when women is below 15 years of age.
- However, the growing sufferings of women due to harassment by spouse made it necessary to think on the issue and criminalize marital rape.
Why it should be criminalized?
- An informal survey conducted by NFHS indicates that 97.7% rapes were committed by the people known to the victim, of which marital rape accounts for 2/3rd. Thus the sheer intensity suggests it to be criminalized.
- This inflicts mental trauma among women who are forcefully raped every night, even during pregnancy and expecting child that too by the person who is known to her and are supposed to take care of her feelings.
- This also violates Fundamental rights guaranteed under Article 21 – right to live dignified life, Article 14 – right to have equal consent and equal protection apart from violating the person’s human rights.
- Marital privacy – which justifies laws such as the marital rape exception – is a fundamental denial of society’s commitment to treating all persons with equal concern and respect.
- Many countries have made it a crime for a husband to force his wife to have sex in recent years. India too being a progressive country should consider criminalizing marital rape otherwise India would be gagged for not protecting women at par with men.
- Even the law commission and Justice Verma committee have recommended criminalizing marital rape by doing away with the exemption granted to marital rape in the laws.
However, Criminalizing Marital rape will have certain considerations such as:
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- Prone to misuse: If marital rape is criminalized without adequate safeguards it could be misused like the current dowry law by the dis-satisfied wives to harass and torture their Husbands.
- Subjectivism: It is very subjective and intricate to determine whether consent was acquired or not. Sometimes women use denying intercourse even if she is comfortable with, as a tool for punishment or getting their demands fulfilled.
- Affects social fabric: Marriage is the holy institution and application of such laws will wither away its basic fabric as it will lead the investigation to the intricate relationship between the couple.
- Burden on Judiciary: Will increase the burden of judiciary which otherwise may serve other more important causes.
- Cannot be applied to India: Due to dynamic society with various factors like level of education/illiteracy, poverty, myriad social customs and values, religious beliefs, mindset of the society to treat the marriage as a sacrament the concept will never be applied to India.
Conclusion:
-
- The need of the hour is to bring adequate safeguard in the law which the opportunities for misusing this law like the dowry Act could be avoided.
- Here we also need to focus that, only legal reforms are not sufficient as along with legal reforms we also need social reform so that this menace could be eradicated from our society.
- However, this law is a progressive one considering the current situations but the political will as well as social consciousness is the need of the hour.
Source: https://www.civilsdaily.com/model-bilateral-investment-treaty/
Hints:
- Bilateral investment Treaties (BITs) or Bilateral Investment Protection Agreements (BIPAs) are agreements between two countries for the reciprocal promotion and protection of investments in each other’s territories by individuals and companies situated in either State.
- Though, they are signed by governments, their beneficiaries are business entities.
- Due to some lacunas in BIT-1993 which resulted India being sued several times by foreign corporations like Sistema, Vodafone, and Children Investment Fund etc. tempted the policy makers to reframe the BITs.
- In the year 2016, India drafted new Model Bilateral Investment Treaty to overcome the earlier drawbacks with many modified provisions. The move is important as it will help the country to make its treaty more specific in international arbitrations. The textual consistency of a countries’ BIT determines its success in BIT negotiations and disputes.
How it will attract and safeguard foreign investment?
- Enterprise based definition of investment instead of asset based definition: Recognizing whole of enterprise instead of individual products in order to narrow the scope of protected investments are reduce the potential liability of the state under Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) claims.
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- Exclusion of MFN treatment: This is adopted in order to eliminate discrimination among investors from various countries means providing equal opportunities for all.
- Full Protection and Security: The new MBIT ensures physical security of investors and to investment which strengthens trust among investors and thus bound to attract more corporations.
- State Government as Stakeholders: this gives opportunity to state government also in order to participate in business with foreign investors. This will boost technological transfer as well as expertise.
- Fair and Equitable treatment: The new model BIT recognizes international laws in order to treat any dispute redressal and other issues. This ensures more hold of government and regulators on corporation investing.
- Expropriation: The new model BIT provides security to investors by restricting the state from nationalizing the foreign investment, except for reasons of public purpose.
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- Non-Discriminatory treatment: The Model BIT includes a new clause on non-discriminatory treatment for compensation of losses. As per the clause, investors can avail non-discriminatory just compensation in circumstances like armed conflict, natural disasters and in the state of national emergency.
- It recognizes Corporate Social Responsibility: The Model BIT mandates foreign investors to voluntarily adopt internationally recognized standards of corporate social responsibility.
- Taxation: The model BIT tries to balance protection to the investor with state regulations.
Conclusion:
- Hence, the above mentioned features indicates that the new Indian Model BIT text will provide appropriate protection to foreign investors in India and Indian investors in the foreign country in the light of relevant international precedents and practices, while at the same time maintaining a balance between the investor’s rights and the Government obligations.
Q.9) What do you understand by Big Data? Discuss some of its applications
Source: https://www.civilsdaily.com/big-data/
Hints:
- Big data is a term for data sets that are so large or complex that traditional data processing application software is inadequate to deal with them. This include capturing data, data storage, data analysis, search, sharing, transfer, visualization, querying, updating and information privacy.
- Here, the challenging data could be from social networks, web server logs, traffic flow sensors, satellite imagery, broadcast audio streams, banking transactions, MP3s of rock music, the content of web pages, scans of government documents, GPS trails, telemetry from automobiles, financial market data and so on.
- The Big Data is very useful to identify ‘patterns of certain type that could be used for other purposes.
Some of its potential applications are as follows:
- Seed Selection – Big-data businesses can analyse varieties of seeds across numerous fields, soil types, and climates and select the best.
- Crop disease – Similar to the way in which Google can identify flu outbreaks based on where web searches are originating, analysing crops across farms helps identify diseases that could ruin a potential harvest.
- Irrigation – Precision agriculture aids farmers in tailored and effective water management, helping in production, improving economic efficiency and minimising waste and environmental impact.
- Weather – Advanced analytics capabilities and agri-robotics such as aerial imagery, sensors help provide sophisticated local weather forecasts can help increasing global agricultural productivity over the next few decades.
- Climate change – Since, climate change and extreme weather events will demand proactive measures to adapt or develop resiliency, Big Data can bring in the right information to take informed decisions.
- Food processing – They help in streamlining food processing value chains by finding the core determinants of process performance, and taking action to continually improve the accuracy, quality and yield of production. They also optimize production schedules based on supplier, customer, machine availability and cost constraints.
- Loss control – In India, every year 21 million tons of wheat is lost, primarily due to scare cold-storage centres and refrigerated vehicles, poor transportation facilities and unreliable electricity supply. Big Data has the potential of systematization of demand forecasting thus reducing such losses.
- Pricing – A trading platform for agricultural commodities that links small-scale producers to retailers and bulk purchasers via mobile phone messaging can help send up-to-date market prices via an app or SMS and connect farmers with buyers, offering collective bargaining opportunities for small and marginal farmers.
Conclusion:
- Big Data is a revolution in data processing and information technology and is a boon for India at a time when India is suffering from vulnerable cyber threats, and lacks proper handling of online data. Given India’s urge for digitization this will give a big push to the concept. However, there is need to implement a proper system to deal with the big data so that its advantages can be harnessed can concerns could be addressed properly.
Q.10) Critically examine the performance of Demonetization?
Source: https://www.civilsdaily.com/demonetization-an-analysis/
Achievements
- Increase in tax collection: As a result of demonetization drive, there is a substantial increase in the number of Income Tax Returns (ITRs) filed. The number of Returns filed as on August 5, 2017 registered an increase of 24.7% compared to a growth rate of 9.9% in the previous year.
- Curb on Black money: Transactions of more than 3 lakh registered companies are under the radar of suspicion while one lakh companies were struck off the list. The government has already identified more than 37000 shell companies which were engaged in hiding black money and hawala transactions. Around 163 companies which were listed on the exchange platforms were suspended from trading, pending submission of proof documents.
- Impact on terrorism and naxalism
i. As a result of demonetization of SBNs, terrorist and naxalite financing stopped almost entirely.
ii. No high quality FICN was found / seized by intelligence operations, including at the Indo-Bangladesh Border since demonetization.
iii.Further, it also adversely affected the hawala operators and dabba trading venues. - Promoted Digital Payment: In 2015-16, the value of transactions for debit and credit cards was ₹1.6 lakh crore and ₹2.4 lakh crore, respectively; in 2016-17, it was ₹3.3 lakh crore for each. Also, in 2016, the National Electronic Funds Transfer handled 160 crore transactions valued at ₹120 lakh crore, up from around 130 crore transactions worth ₹83 lakh crore in the previous year. Note that the demonetisation impact would only have been registered in the final four to five of 2016-17. The gains in 2017-18 will be even more.
On the other hand, the drawbacks of demonetization are as follows:
Black money
- . It was thought that if cash was squeezed out, the black economy would be eliminated.
- But cash is only one component of black wealth: about 1% of it.
- It has now been confirmed that 98.8% of demonetised currency has come back to the Reserve Bank of India.
- Further, of the ₹16,000 crore that is still out, most of it is accounted for. In brief, not even 0.01% of black money has been extinguished.
- Black money is a result of black income generation. This is produced by various means which are not affected by the one-shot squeezing out of cash. Any black cash squeezed out by demonetisation would then quickly get regenerated. So, there is little impact of demonetisation on the black economy, on either wealth or incomes
GDP growth
- GDP growth in the first quarter of 2017-18, at 5.7 per cent, compared with 7.9% in the same quarter a year ago, was way lower than consensus estimates by Reuters (6.6%) and Bloomberg (6.5%). Both supply and demand were impacted due to a combination of demonetisation
- The big failure of demonetisation is that it was carried out without preparation and caused big losses to the unorganised sector. This has not been factored into the recent data on growth rate, so the loss to the economy would be in lakhs of crores of rupees. Farmers, traders and the youth are all agitating.
Agriculture
- Another factor that did not support growth as anticipated is agriculture, particularly in view of the record food grain production in 2016-17.
- Agricultural growth declined to 2.3% from 5.2% in January-March 2017 and 2.5% in April-June 2016. In view of record foodgrain production, it appears the shortfall is mainly due to the underperformance of allied sectors, namely dairy, fisheries etc.
- The main negative economic consequence of demonetisation has been the disruption of unorganized supply chains that are dependent on cash transactions; it is still not clear how smoothly they were being rebuilt as the economy was remonetized.
- RBI annual report shows a rather dramatic spike in the number of suspicious transaction reports filed by banks, financial institutions and intermediaries in 2016-17—it was up from 61,361 in the previous year to a staggering 361,214.
Job Loss
Demonetization decision may have resulted in the loss of roughly 1.5 million jobs, according to survey data put out by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). CMIE’s data is based on the result of consecutive waves of household surveys performed from January 2016 to April 2017 .
Conlcusion
- Available data points to a lingering impact of demonetisation.
- All economic data points are from the organised/corporate sector. The unorganised/informal sector was badly impacted by demonetisation and the present data set has not been able to capture its impact. The annual survey of industries will be able to capture the impact of demonetisation on the unorganised/informal sector, but this will come with a lag. The organised/corporate sector depends on the unorganised/informal sector for provision of intermediate goods and services, which are used in final production. The Central Statistical Office is using only the database of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. The true picture may emerge only after the annual surveys of industries results are available.
- Tax reforms and effective monitoring of suspicious transactions are a better alternative for addressing the issues that the policy-makers sought to fix through demonetisation.
Ethics
Q.11) Define and explain with examples the following terms:
a) Probity
b) Integrity
c) Objectivity
d) Accountability
Probity : The quality of having strong moral principles, honesty and rectitude. It brings the objectivity in the concept of Ethics and Morality because it lets a person to take an extra step to confer to what they feel right. It is the high action part of ethics and morality.
Example of Probity: If you found that a poor person is in distress and need some financial help and you don’t have enough money to help. Helping with how much you can is Ethics or Morality, but arranging money for him by requesting others to also help and taking care of non-financial part will be Probity.
Integrity: The quality to remain consistent to your basic ethics and morality even at the time of crisis. Most of the people will behave ethically in moderate situations, but an extreme situation actually tests one’s Integrity.
Example of Integrity: Sharing food while you are also feeling hungry with someone from whom you don’t expect anything in return shows your Integrity of moral of selfless help.
Objectivity: The ability of finding, reaching or exhibiting a discrete and clear conclusion for your actions.
Example of Objectivity: In time of moral dilemma if you are able to come to conclusion in lesser amount of time with clear resolution.
Accountability: The principle of taking responsibility of failure or low-quality result of your actions. It is important attribute of highly successful and humble personalities to take full responsiblity and admit their mistake and not to hide.
Example of Accountablity: If you are project owner and under your guidance whole team’s effort didn’t yield expected result. You take responsibility for it and inspire team to work harder for next time rather than blaming them for such result.
Action should be as follow:
- Park Car- so that no disturbance to the traffic
- Call to destination where I was heading about the emergency so that they will not wait for me.
- Reach the spot where the man is beating girl and immediately stop him and ask him not to beat or take law in his hand. Thank him for taking notice of the theft and taking action, but remind him that the girl is very young and could have acted out of hunger too. Remind him gently that it is a public space and such act physical violence could land him in legal trouble. This should lower his anger.
- If girl is injured- carry out first aid from the box available in the car. Get her something to eat and drink.
- Try to know her history and then informing to NGO or child care centre and personally taking to there will be my choice since leaving her just like that will make her to repeat the act since its the poverty and poor care made her to act. If these are given girl will desist from such acts.
- Make an occasional follow up of the girl with the agency to whom she had been handed over to.
