Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: NA
Mains level: Concerns of farmers other than MSP
With most farming land held by only 20% of its cultivators in Assam, there is a perception that agriculture is unimportant. However, the new farm laws are equally detrimental to small and marginal farmers in the state.
Muted response from the state’s farming community
- With more than 70% of Assam’s population directly or indirectly dependent for their livelihood on the agricultural sector, it is surprising that the state has only seen sporadic protests against the farm laws passed by the Central government.
- Reformists would like to read this muted response from the state’s farming community as the voice of the silent majority who expect to benefit from the new farm laws.
- The real answer lies in the political economy of the state’s rural sector, which has its origins in the colonial handling of its agrarian possibilities.
Q. Farmers agitations in India are often region-specific. Discuss
Ungrounded and uncultivated
- The pre-Independence British administration had invested substantially in the agriculture in what today constitutes Punjab and Haryana, building dams and irrigation facilities and creating conditions that allowed farmers to benefit from the post-independence Green Revolution.
- This gave rise to the capitalist class among them.
- However, at the same time, peasants in Assam were arbitrarily taxed by the British Raj to make them voluntarily give up farming in favour of joining the labour forces of the tea industry in the region.
- Its policies did result in the transfer of land from the peasantry to mid-level revenue officials, leading to a highly unequal land distribution that has persisted since that time.
- Since the landed class tended to support the Indian National Congress-led freedom struggle, no land reform programme has ever been pursued seriously in the post-independence period.
Unequal land distribution
- Seven decades after independence, Assam’s agrarian setting is still characterized by a very high level of unequal land distribution.
- The evidence documented in the Assam Human Development Report, 2014 shows that 20% of farmers hold as much as 70% of the state’s farmland and shows tenancy at a much higher level of 26%.
- The lack of legal recognition of tenants means most of them have never been beneficiaries of public policies in agriculture in the state.
- The state’s agriculture is characterized by mono-cropping, with rice accounting for 90% of the land cultivated, but public procurement at the minimum support price (MSP) is conspicuously absent.
- The latest information from the public information bureau (PIB) shows that the state produces 4.2% of the country’s rice, but only 0.2% of its farmers availed public procurement by the Food Corporation of India (FCI).
- Most farmers had to bear with the low prices of rice in the open markets, even as the state was flooded with rice sourced from elsewhere through the public distribution system.
- Frequent floods often ravage the region, reducing farming operations to just one season in most flood-affected districts. Assam’s cropping intensity of 146% is one of the lowest among all major rice-producing states.
- In such a setting, the landed class takes little interest in farming, even as small and marginal farmers have increasingly been migrating, many even outside the state, to earn their livelihoods.
- It’s not surprising that the state’s agriculture is still stuck at the subsistence level. The Assam Economic Survey 2017-18 shows only 38% of the state’s land under high yielding variety seeds and 26% of its land under irrigation.
APMC must be strengthened
- The farmers of Assam might benefit from the breaking down of MSP procurement elsewhere through higher prices in the open market.
- The new farm laws are more or less meaningless, which are more about APMC markets than about MSP.
- With just 24 regulated APMC markets, Assam does not have enough marketing infrastructure to justify the argument made by the advocates of the new farm laws that the new Acts will liberate the farmers from the APMC markets’ monopoly and boost private investment in the sector.
- With the state’s agricultural marketing largely revolving around 700-odd unregulated haats (village markets), the 24 APMC markets are hardly enough to curtail the farmers’ ‘freedom’ to dispose of their produce.
- The credit deposit ratio (CDR) reported by major national banks in the state in 2017 is still below 40% compared to 72% at the national level, showing that the state is losing much of its savings to better-endowed states instead of receiving investment from outside the state.
- The APMC market as a public institution still has a large role to play in reviving the state’s agricultural sector. Additionally, it can stop growing inter-state migration that has come to light in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: NA
Mains level: Bovine nationalism
The recent law passed by the Karnataka State Assembly on bovine slaughter is a topic of contention.
Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Bill (2020)
- The Karnataka state assembly passed the Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Bill (2020).
- It has banned the slaughter of all cows, bulls, bullocks and calves as well as it also outlaws the slaughter of buffaloes below the age of 13.
- Smuggling and transporting animals for slaughter is also an offence.
- The bill prescribes punishments of between three to seven years – which is more than the punishment prescribed in Indian law for causing the death of a human being by negligence.
- It also gives the police powers to conduct searches based on suspicion.
- Though the bill has yet to be passed by the state’s Legislative Council, the government has said it will pass an ordinance to implement its provisions.
Practice Question: The recent law passed by Karnataka State Assembly on bovine slaughter is a topic of contention. Analyze.
Muslims and farmers
- The legislation, based on Hinduism’s reverence for the cow, undermines the food practices of many Indians, for whom beef is a cheap source of protein.
- Already, Indians are some of the most malnourished people on the planet and, remarkably, nutrition standards are worsening.
- The bill also penalizes people working in the meat and leather industries that depend on cattle slaughter, many of whom are Muslim.
Dairy economics
- The sector that will take the largest hit from the legislation is the dairy industry. India’s dairy industry is massive with an annual turnover of Rs 6.5 lakh crore – making it by far India’s largest agricultural product.
- India’s farmers earn more from dairy than wheat and rice put together. India has almost as many bovines as people in the United States with one for every four Indians.
- The problem with the bill is that that slaughter is integral to the dairy industry’s economic functioning. Dairy farming in India functions on small margins. As a result, the upkeep of unproductive animals would throw their bottom lines out of alignment.
- When a male calf is born or a milch animal stops giving milk (or yield falls), farmers need to be able to get rid of the animal. In normal times, this sale is also a source of capital for the farmer.
- In 2014, the size of the used cattle market just in Maharashtra was valued at as much as Rs 1,180 crore per year.
- Verghese Kurien, founder of Amul and the architect of India’s White Revolution, that supercharged India’s milk production from 1970, opposed any ban on cow slaughter. Kurein was clear that the economics of dairy demanded slaughter.
Cowed down
- The statistics produced by the 2019 Livestock Census are clear: cow slaughter laws have actually ended up harming cows.
- Between 2012 and 2019, states with cow slaughter laws such as Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh saw their cattle numbers fall (by 10.07%, 4.42% and 3.93%, respectively).
- On the other hand, West Bengal – one of India’s rare states where cattle slaughter has no restrictions – saw a massive increase of 15.18%. As a result, Bengal now has the Indian Union’s largest cattle population.
- Farmers simply let unproductive cattle loose, giving rise to the problem of large herds of feral cows which have caused economic havoc and pose a danger of citizens – a problem unique to India.
- In the countryside of many states, famished cattle herds now pose a danger to crops and cause accidents.
Buffalo nation
- Naturally, stray cattle numbers are directly linked to cow slaughter laws. States such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat have seen substantial rises in their stray cow population between 2012 and 2019 while West Bengal has seen a sharp fall.
- Between 2012 and 2019, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh saw their buffalo numbers rise.
- Since the buffalo – not seen as sacred in Hinduism – could be slaughtered legally, dairy farmers were clearly preferring it over the holy cow.
- But the Karnataka bill very alarming even compared to the devastation caused by the earlier cow slaughter laws is because it even targets buffalos.
Making it worse
- Karnataka’s stringent laws against cow slaughter is part of a policy pattern that – rather than make India’s already precarious economic situation better – makes Indians worse off.
- Recent examples include demonetization, the new Goods and Services Tax as well as putting in place the world’s harshest Covid-19 lockdown, making sure India’s was the worst affected country economically during the pandemic.
- India is going through a rural crisis. With poor yields due to unscientific farming methods and lack of support structures like irrigation, the average monthly income of the Indian farmer stands at only Rs 6,427 per month.
- To make matters worse, for small farmers (defined as owning less than a hectare of land), their farming income is too low to cover their expenses and they are in debt and this describes the situation of 83% of Indian farmers.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: WTO
Mains level: WTO
The next Director-General of the organization will have to navigate through a slew of thorny issues in WTO.
WTO to lead by a woman for the first time
- For the first time in its 25-year history, the World Trade Organization (WTO) will be led by a woman.
- The D-G’s job will require perseverance and outstanding negotiating skills for balancing the diverse and varied interests of the 164 member countries, and especially, for reconciling competing for multilateral and national visions, for the organization to work efficiently.
- The next D-G will have to grapple with the global economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and work towards carrying out reforms of the multilateral trading system for reviving the world economy.
- On all these issues, her non-partisan role will be watched carefully.
Practice Question: In the wake of the global economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, discuss the challenges ahead of WTO.
Tussle between developed and developing countries
- The current impasse in the WTO negotiations has led member countries to believe in the necessity of carrying out urgent reforms, which is likely to throw up some difficult choices for developing countries like India.
- At the core of the divide within the WTO is the Doha Development Agenda, which the developed countries sought to move in favour of a new agenda that includes, amongst others, e-commerce, investment facilitation, MSMEs and gender.
- Salvaging the ‘development’-centric agenda is critical for a large number of developing countries as they essentially see trade as a catalyst of development.
- Restoring the WTO dispute settlement mechanism, especially the revival of its Appellate body, is also crucial for the organization’s efficient functioning.
Definition of ‘Developing Country’ – a contentious issue
- The push for a change in the definition of “developing country” under the principle of special and differential treatment (S&DT), aimed at upgrading certain developing countries, will deeply affect the status of emerging economies such as India, China, South Africa, Turkey, Egypt, etc.
- The assumption that some countries have benefited immensely from the WTO rules since its formation in 1995 is flawed, at least in the case of India. And even if there may be no consensus of views on measuring ‘development’, India will remain a developing country no matter which parameter is used.
- The way out for India could be to negotiate a longer phase-out period or an acceptable formula based on development indices, etc.
Fisheries subsidies negotiations
- Among the current negotiations at the WTO, the fisheries subsidies negotiations command the highest attention.
- India can lead the way in finding a landing zone by urging others to settle for the lowest common denominator while seeking permanent protection for traditional and artisanal farmers who are at the subsistence level of survival.
- The danger lies in seeking larger carve-outs, which could result in developed countries ploughing precious fisheries resources in international waters.
Lessons from COVID-19
- The COVID-19 crisis has revealed the urgent and enduring need for international cooperation and collaboration, as no country can fight the pandemic alone.
- The D-G can help mitigate the effects of the pandemic by giving clear directions on ensuring that supply chains remain free and open, recommending a standard harmonized system with classification for vaccines, and by the removal of import/export restrictions.
- Voluntary sharing and pooling of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) is required for any global effort to tackle the pandemic, but with the fear of vaccine nationalism looming large, several countries are seeking to secure the future supply of leading COVID-19 vaccines.
- India’sreiteration that its vaccine production and delivery capacity will help the whole of humanity will require the D-G to play a responsible role in removing barriers to intellectual property and securing a legal framework within the WTO TRIPS Agreement.
- This can be done by lending salience to the effective interpretation of Articles 8 and 31 of the Agreement, that allow compulsory licensing and agreement of a patent without the authorization of its owner under certain conditions.
Way Forward
- The consensus-based decision-making in the WTO, which makes dissension by even one member stop the process in its track, gives developing countries some heft and influence at par with developed countries.
- The D-G would need to tread cautiously on this front, as some will allude to the successful implementation of the Trade Facilitation Agreement in 2017 that allowed member countries to make commitments in a phased manner in accordance with their domestic preparedness.
- Most imminently, the next D-G will need to build trust among its members that the WTO needs greater engagement by all countries, to stitch fair rules in the larger interest of all nations and thwart unfair trade practices of a few.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Sessions of the Parliament
Mains level: Executive responsibility to the Legislature
The centre has said that there will be no winter session of Parliament this time due to the COVID despite the ‘success’ in curbing the pandemic. This year, the Parliament has met for only 33 days!
Q. The undue delays and inactions by the constitutional functionaries threaten to widen the constitutional faultlines among the Executives. Critically comment.
Sessions of Parliament
- The power to convene a session of Parliament rests with the government. But it is the President who summons Parliament.
- The decision is taken by the Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs, which currently comprises nine ministers, including those for Defence, Home, Finance, and Law.
- The decision of the Committee is formalized by the President, in whose name MPs are summoned to meet for a session.
- A general scheme of sittings was recommended in 1955 by the General Purpose Committee of Lok Sabha.
- It was accepted by the government of PM Jawaharlal Nehru but was not implemented.
No fixed calendar
- India does not have a fixed parliamentary calendar.
- By convention, Parliament meets for three sessions in a year.
- The longest, the Budget Session, starts towards the end of January and concludes by the end of April or first week of May.
- The session has a recess so that Parliamentary Committees can discuss the budgetary proposals.
- The second session is the three-week Monsoon Session, which usually begins in July and finishes in August.
- The parliamentary year ends with a three-week-long Winter Session, which is held from November to December.
What the Constitution says
- The summoning of Parliament is specified in Article 85 of the Constitution. Like many other articles, it is based on a provision of The Government of India Act, 1935.
- This provision specified that the central legislature had to be summoned to meet at least once a year and that not more than 12 months could elapse between two sessions.
- Dr B R Ambedkar stated that the purpose of this provision was to summon the legislature only to collect revenue and that the once-a-year meeting was designed to avoid scrutiny of the government by the legislature.
- His drafting of the provision reduced the gap between sessions to six months and specified that Parliament should meet at least twice a year.
Convening a Session: The debate
- During the debate, members of the Constituent Assembly highlighted three issues: (i) the number of sessions in a year, (ii) the number of days of sitting and, (iii) who should have the power to convene Parliament.
- Prof K T Shah from Bihar was of the opinion that Parliament should sit throughout the year, with breaks in between.
- Others wanted Parliament to sit for longer durations and gave examples of the British and American legislatures which during that time were meeting for more than a hundred days in a year.
- Prof Shah also wanted the presiding officers of the two Houses to be empowered to convene Parliament in certain circumstances. These suggestions were not accepted by Dr Ambedkar.
Moved, delayed, stretched
- Over the years, governments have shuffled around the dates of sessions to accommodate political and legislative exigencies.
- Sessions have also been cut short or delayed to allow the government to issue Ordinances.
Fewer House sittings
- Over the years, there has been a decline in the sittings days of Parliament.
- During the first two decades of Parliament, Lok Sabha met for an average of a little more than 120 days a year.
- This has come down to approximately 70 days in the last decade.
Why sittings are reducing day by day?
- One institutional reason given for this is the reduction in the workload of Parliament by its Standing Committees, which, since the 1990s, have anchored debates outside the House.
- However, several Committees have recommended that Parliament should meet for at least 120 days in a year.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Various monetary policy tools
Mains level: Currency manipulation
The U.S. Treasury has labelled Switzerland and Vietnam as currency manipulators and added three new names, including India, to a watch list of countries. Earlier it had removed India from the list in March 2019.
What is Currency Manipulation?
- Currency manipulation refers to actions taken by governments to change the value of their currencies relative to other currencies in order to bring about some desirable objective.
- The typical claim – often doubtful – is that countries manipulate their currencies in order to make their exports effectively cheaper on the world market and in turn make imports more expensive.
Why do countries manipulate their currencies?
- In general, countries prefer their currency to be weak because it makes them more competitive on the international trade front.
- A lower currency makes a country’s exports more attractive because they are cheaper on the international market.
- For example, a weak Rupee makes Indian exports less expensive for offshore buyers.
- Secondly, by boosting exports, a country can use a lower currency to shrink its trade deficit.
- Finally, a weaker currency alleviates pressure on a country’s sovereign debt obligations.
- After issuing offshore debt, a country will make payments, and as these payments are denominated in the offshore currency, a weak local currency effectively decreases these debt payments.
US treasury’s criteria
To be labelled a manipulator by the U.S. Treasury:
- Countries must at least have a $20 billion-plus bilateral trade surplus with the US
- foreign currency intervention exceeding 2% of GDP and a global current account surplus exceeding 2% of GDP
Implications for India
- India has traditionally tried to balance between preventing excess currency appreciation on the one hand and protecting domestic financial stability on the other.
- India being on the watch list could restrict the RBI in the foreign exchange operations it needs to pursue to protect financial stability.
- This comes when global capital flows threaten to overwhelm domestic monetary policy.
- The two most obvious consequences could be an appreciating rupee as well as excess liquidity that messes with the interest rate policy of the RBI.
- Indian policymakers have to be sensitive for the unpredictable nature of policy-making in the US under Trump, especially concerning global trade.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Chang E probe
Mains level: Various lunar missions and their success
A Chinese lunar capsule has returned to Earth with the first fresh samples of rock and debris from the moon in more than 40 years.
Try this PYQ:
Q.What do you understand by the term Aitken basin:
(a) It is a desert in the southern Chile which is known to be the only location on earth where no rainfall takes place
(b) It is an impact crater on the far side of the Moon
(c) It is a Pacific coast basin, which is known to house large amounts of oil and gas
(d) It is a deep hyper saline anoxic basin where no aquatic animals are found
Chang’e-5 Probe
- The Chang’e-5 probe, named after the mythical Chinese moon goddess, aims to shovel up lunar rocks and soil to help scientists learn about the moon’s origins, formation and volcanic activity on its surface.
- The goal of the mission is to land in the Mons Rumker region of the moon, where it will operate for one lunar day, which is two weeks long.
- It will collect 2 kg of surface material from a previously unexplored area known as Oceanus Procellarum — or “Ocean of Storms” — which consist of vast lava plain.
- The original mission, planned for 2017, was delayed due to an engine failure in China’s Long March 5 launch rocket.
A big achievement
- The successful mission was the latest breakthrough for China’s increasingly ambitious space programme that includes a robotic mission to Mars and plans for a permanent orbiting space station.
- This return marked China’s third successful lunar landing but the only one to lift off again from the moon.
- It also marked the first time scientists have obtained fresh samples of lunar rocks since the former Soviet Union’s Luna 24 robot probe in 1976.
Significance of the mission
- Rocks found on the Moon are older than any that have been found on Earth and therefore they are valuable in providing information about the Earth and the Moon’s shared history.
- Lunar samples can help to unravel some important questions in lunar science and astronomy, including the Moon’s age, its formation, the similarities and differences between the Earth and the Moon’s geologic features.
- For instance, the shape, size, arrangement and composition of individual grains and crystals in a rock can tell scientists about its history, while the radioactive clock can tell them the rock’s age.
- Further, tiny cracks in rocks can tell them about the radiation history of the Sun in the last 100,000 years.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: HDI
Mains level: Human Development
India dropped two ranks in the United Nations’ Human Development Index this year, standing at 131 out of 189 countries.
Try this PYQ:
Which one of the following is not a sub-index of the World Bank’s ‘Ease of Doing Business Index’?
(a) Maintenance of law and order
(b) Paying taxes
(c) Registering property
(d) Dealing with construction permits
Human Development Index (HDI)
- HDI is a statistical tool used to measure a country’s overall achievement in its social and economic dimensions.
- It is one of the best tools to keep track of the level of development of a country, as it combines all major social and economic indicators that are responsible for economic development.
- Pakistani economist Mahbub-ul-Haq created HDI in 1990 which was further used to measure the country’s development by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
- Every year UNDP ranks countries based on the HDI report released in their annual report.
Various indicators under HDI
- Calculation of the index combines four major indicators: life expectancy for health, expected years of schooling, mean of years of schooling for education and GNI per capita for the standard of living.
For the first time: PHDI
- For the first time, the UNDP introduced a new metric to reflect the impact caused by each country’s per-capita carbon emissions and its material footprint.
- This is Planetary Pressures-adjusted HDI or PHDI.
- It measured the amount of fossil fuels, metals and other resources used to make the goods and services it consumes.
- The report found that no country has yet been able to achieve a very high level of development without putting a huge strain on natural resources.
Highlights of the 2019 Report
- Norway, which tops the HDI, falls 15 places if this metric is used, leaving Ireland at the top of the table.
- In fact, 50 countries would drop entirely out of the “very high human development group” category, using this new metric PHDI.
- Australia falls 72 places in the ranking, while the US and Canada would fall 45 and 40 places respectively, reflecting their disproportionate impact on natural resources.
- The oil and the gas-rich Gulf States also fell steeply. China would drop 16 places from its current ranking of 85.
Indian scenario
- If the Index were adjusted to assess the planetary pressures caused by each nation’s development, India would move up eight places in the rankings.
- China’s net emissions (8 gigatonnes) are 34% below its territorial emissions (12.5 gigatonnes) compared with 19% in India and 15% in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: PMSSS
Mains level: Special schemes for JK and Ladakh
The Prime Minister’s Special Scholarship Scheme (PMSSS) instalment has been released to support J&K and Ladakh students.
Tap to read more about: Reorganization of J&K
About PMSSS
- The PMSSS aims to build the capacities of the youths of J&K and Ladakh by educating, enabling and empowering them to compete in the normal course.
- Under the Scheme, the youths of J&K and Ladakh are supported by way of scholarship in two parts namely the academic fee & maintenance allowance.
- The academic fee is paid to the institution where the student is provided admission after on-line counselling process conducted by the AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education).
- The academic fee covers tuition fee and other components as per the ceiling fixed for various professional, medical and other under-graduate courses.
- In order to meet the expenditure towards hostel accommodation, mess expenses, books & stationery etc., a fixed amount of Rs.1.00 Lakh is provided to the beneficiary and is paid in instalments of Rs. 10,000/- pm directly into students account.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now