Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Unemployment
Mains level: Paper 3- Support to gig workers
With the lack of NREGA equivalent in the urban area government has to find ways to provide income support and employment. The article suggests ways to do the same.
Slowdown in employment recovery
- The Indian economy has been gradually recovering from historic contraction of negative 23.9%.
- This recovery has shifted focus away from the employment question, considered resolved after a sharp rally following the collapse in employment numbers in April.
- More recent data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, however, point to a gradual slowdown in employment recovery.
NREGA: employment support in rural area
- For labour coming back to rural India, employment support came in the form of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGA), which witnessed a 243% increase in person workdays.
- This increased dependency on NREGA, has seen the Rural Development Ministry spend nearly 90% of its increased ₹86,4000 crore allocation by the month of November.
- In several Indian cities, however, closed businesses have meant that millions of workers have either had to leave or have had to take up new forms of work.
Supporting gig workers
With no urban equivalent to the NREGA on the horizon, there must be an increased impetus on evaluating, regulating and supporting new forms of employment.
1) Evaluation
- Our current understanding of gig work is based on the limited disclosures made by the platforms themselves.
- Furthermore, most regulators continue to remain in the dark on basic questions surrounding platform labour.
- As of now, there exists no authoritative estimate on the total number of gig workers in India.
- The centralised nature of the platforms and the larger platform labour market should make the collating of this data relatively straightforward for the Labour Ministry.
2) Regulation
- The next step is significantly more sensitive and involves regulation.
- The reason for the sensitivity primarily revolves around the varied nature of gig work.
- While some workers use these platforms as a “side hustle”, for others it continues to serve as a primary source of employment.
- This dynamic is further complicated by the risk of a one-size-fits-all regulatory strategy.
- Such regulatory strategies are unintentionally hurting the similar, yet distinct, market for highly skilled (and highly paid) freelancers.
Way forward
- A more viable strategy then would involve conditional government partnerships with platforms under some of its flagship schemes.
- The successful pilot of Swiggy’s Street Food Vendors programme under the PM SVANidhi, or PM Street Vendor’s Atma Nirbhar Nidhi scheme, may prove to be an illustrative example.
- Creation of jobs, alongside the voluntary adoption of quality standards, is an example of a mutually beneficial partnership between the state and platforms.
- Similar collaborations on urban employment, that require labour platforms to comply with disclosure norms and worker compensation standards to access government support, could create jobs while ensuring compliance.
- Collaborating with platforms to employ workers, would bring down costs significantly (for both the state and their partners) it would also create an environment where firms would be more likely to cooperate with the state.
Conclusion
Limited fiscal space and a growing need to fuel the country’s consumption base, must push the government to build symbiotic relationships with new partners.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 2- India-U.S. relations and area of cooperation
The article explores the area of cooperation for India and the U.S. under a new administration in U.S. amid changing geopolitical realities.
China: Shared cause of concern
- The Biden administration’s approach to India will be shaped by its position towards China.
- There is a bipartisan change in the US’s attitude to China.
- The Biden administration will continue Trump administrations trade policy- reducing the trade deficit, ensuring a level-playing field, keeping a keen eye on technology rivalry etc.
- There are parallels in the concerns of India and the U.S. — invigorating the domestic economy and dealing with a rising rival.
- These concerns can translate into opportunities for both countries.
How India and U.S can convert concerns into opportunities
1) Cooperation in healthcare
- Healthcare is clearly an area that India can play up in bilateral relations.
- The two countries can also work with multilateral agencies across the spectrum of vaccine (including Covid vaccine) development, logistics and distribution.
- India produces around 20 per cent of the global requirement for generic drugs by volume and every third tablet of generics consumed in the US.
- The President-elect has indicated his commitment to providing better and affordable healthcare
- This could be an opportunity for the Indian pharma sector to play a role in reducing health costs of the American consumer.
- India can benefit from advancements in medical technologies, devices, new medicines and R&D capabilities, presenting opportunities for American companies.
2) Job creation through trade and exports
- Biden has set an ambitious target for US-India trade.
- Businesses in both countries are also looking for diversifying their manufacturing supply chains.
- This portends well for the creation of employment in manufacturing.
- An area where strategic considerations and imperatives of job creation converge is defence, especially since India has been designated a Major Defence Partner of the US.
3) Focus on infrastructure in both countries
- For the US, this can mean opportunities in India in transportation, power and other urban amenities.
- The US’s renewed focus on climate change should lead to greater cooperation with India in energy-related areas.
- Cooperation in energy-related areas includes more efficient energy dissemination and management (such as smart grids) to renewable energy technologies.
4) Enhance opportunities in 5G tech
- There is potential to enhance mutual opportunities in the 5G tech sector.
- Increased partnership between the two nations can accelerate the development of technology solutions, promote vendors in the 5G open ecosystem and drive economic growth.
- The two countries should engage in shaping the rules of a new order in this space.
- This also has an important strategic element when seen in the light of developments in the Indo-Pacific as well as China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
5) Multilateralism for cooperation in wider areas
- Once the Biden administration assumes office, we should expect the U.S.’s return to multilateralism.
- The Trans-Pacific Partnership aimed to create a rules-based order that all parties could subscribe to.
- With the ascendancy of the Indo-Pacific paradigm and the Quad and Quad Plus, a successor to the TPP could include a wider canvas.
- For India, this could mean cooperation beyond defence and security, including economics, technology and developments pertaining to the regional order.
Conclusion
Both countries should treat the economic and commercial dimension with as much priority as the strategic dimension. Both governments should embrace the prosperity-creating potential of such an approach.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Uranium Enrichment
Mains level: Iran's hostile nuclear ambitions and its global threat
Iran has begun enriching uranium up to 20% at an underground facility and seized a South Korean-flagged oil tanker in the crucial Strait of Hormuz, further escalating tensions in West Asia between Tehran and the West.
Scratch your school basics to answer this PYQ:
Q.The known forces of nature can be divided into four classes, viz, gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear force and strong nuclear force.
With reference to them, which one of the following statements is not correct? (CSP 2012)
(a) Gravity is the strongest of the four
(b) Electromagnetism act only on particles with an electric charge
(c) Weak nuclear force causes radioactivity
(d) Strong nuclear force holds protons and neutrons inside the nuclear of an atom.
What is Uranium Enrichment?
- Uranium enrichment is a process that is necessary to create an effective nuclear fuel out of mined uranium by increasing the percentage of uranium-235 which undergoes fission with thermal neutrons.
- Nuclear fuel is mined from naturally occurring uranium ore deposits and then isolated through chemical reactions and separation processes.
- These chemical processes used to separate the uranium from the ore are not to be confused with the physical and chemical processes used to enrich the uranium.
- Naturally occurring uranium does not have a high enough concentration of Uranium-235 at only about 0.72% with the remainder being Uranium-238.
- Due to the fact that uranium-238 is fissionable and not fissile, the concentration of uranium-235 must be increased before it can be effectively used as a nuclear fuel.
Why is the West concerned?
- Iran’s decision to begin enriching to 20% purity a decade ago nearly triggered an Israeli strike targeting its nuclear facilities, tensions that only abated with the 2015 atomic deal.
- A resumption of 20% enrichment could see that brinksmanship return as that level of purity is only a technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not Much
Mains level: School Bag Policy, 2020
The Directorate of Education has issued a circular asking school to follow the new ‘School Bag Policy, 2020’ released by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
Q.What are the features of the School Bag Policy, 2020? Discuss how heavy school bags are a serious threat to the health and learning capability of students.
School Bag Policy, 2020
- According to the circular, schoolteachers should inform the students in advance about the books and notebooks to be brought to school on a particular day.
- They frequently need to check their bags to ensure that they are not carrying unnecessary material.
- It adds that the teachers should take the responsibility of checking the weight of school bags of the students every three months on a day selected for the whole class.
- It also holds that any information about heavy bags should be communicated to the parents.
- The circular also says that it is the duty and the responsibility of the school management to provide quality potable water in sufficient quantity.
- It adds that files and thin/light exercise books should be preferred to thick/heavy ones.
Prescribed weights
The weight of the school bags, as per the policy, should be
- 6 to 2.2 kg for students of Classes I and II
- 7 to 2.5 kg for Classes III, IV and V
- 2 to 3 kg for Classes VI and VII
- 5 to 4 kg for Class VIII
- 5 to 4.5 kg for Classes IX and X
- 5 to 5 kg for Classes XI and XII
Why heavy school bags are a curse?
- Heavy school bags are a serious threat to the health and well-being of students.
- A heavy backpack can pull on the neck muscles contributing to headache, shoulder pain, lower back pain and neck and arm pain.
- Not just this, carrying backpacks over one shoulder is a wrong practice as it makes muscles strain.
- The spine leans to the opposite side, stressing the middle back, ribs, and lower back more on one side than the other and this muscle imbalance can cause muscle strain, muscle spasm, and back pain.
- Heavy school bags are also one of the major reasons for cervical and lumbar pains.
- The posture of the body also gets affected to a great extent which in the long term develops imbalances in the body and affects the health of the nervous system.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Tide–Rainfall Flood Quotient
Mains level: Flood management
To understand if a coastal city is more prone to floods caused by tidal events or extreme rainfall, a team from the IIT Bombay devised a new metric or measure called the Tide–Rainfall Flood Quotient.
Try this PYQ:
The 2004 Tsunami made people realize that mangroves can serve as a reliable safety hedge against coastal calamities. How do mangroves function as a safety hedge?
(a) The mangrove swamps separate the human settlements from the sea by a wide zone in which people neither live nor venture out
(b) The mangroves provide both food and medicines which people are in need of after any natural disaster
(c) The mangrove trees are tall with dense canopies and serve as art excellent shelter during a cyclone or tsunami
(d) The mangrove trees do not get uprooted by storms and tides because of their extensive roots
Tide–Rainfall Flood Quotient
- Using the past rainfall data, tidal data, and topography of the region one can apply this framework to pinpoint the major factor at play.
- This quotient helps understand the main driver of the flooding events for effective disaster management.
- It considers three geographically diverse flood-prone coastal regions – Mithi Catchment in Mumbai, , Jagatsinghpur District in Odisha, and Greater Chennai to test their new metric.
- The new method helped classify these regions into ‘storm-tide dominated’ or ‘pluvial (rainfall) dominated’ regions.
- In Mithi, they found a devastating impact of storm-tide reaching even up to a distance of 7 km from the coastal boundary.
- It concluded that Mithi catchment was ‘storm-tide dominated’, while Jagatsinghpur and Chennai were ‘pluvial dominated’
A tool for flood management
- This metric can help disaster management experts in framing better flood risk management systems directed towards long term planning.
- For storm-tide dominated regions, severe flood hazard can be alleviated by building coastal defence structures such as closure dams, tide breakers, and storm-surge barriers at appropriate locations.
- The tide and surge forecasting systems in these regions should be equipped with state-of-the-art ocean circulation models.
- On the other hand, for pluvial dominated regions, structural measures such as rainwater storage structures, lakes, and detention basins should be prioritized in the flood management plans.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Bird Flu
Mains level: Not Much
An outbreak of bird flu was confirmed in Kerala, Rajasthan and Himachal.
Try this question from our AWE initiative:
There is been an increase in occurance of zoonotic human infectious diseases are zoonotic . Give reasons for this. Also suggest ways to contain and decrease the frequency of such events.(250 Words)
What is Bird Flu?
- Bird flu is an infection caused by avian influenza viruses, which are of different types A, B and C.
- Type A avian influenza viruses are the most frequently associated with avian influenza epidemics and pandemics.
- There are 16 hemagglutinin (H1 to H16) and 9 neuraminidase types (N1 to N9) identified till date.
- There are various modes of transmission of human influenza including inhalation, direct or indirect contact etc. can have manifestations ranging from mild to severe or fatal disease.
- Avian influenza A (H5N1) results in a high death rate amongst infants and young children.
- The first outbreak of human infection by avian influenza viruses (H5N1) was observed in 1997 in Hong Kong. Since then a large number of outbreaks have been reported in different parts of the world.
The H5N8 strain
- The presence of the H5N8 subtype of the Influenza A virus was reported in ducks in parts of Kerala.
- While it can prove lethal for birds, the H5N8 strain of avian influenza has a lower likelihood of spreading to humans compared to H5N1.
- While the source of infection is yet to be pinpointed, the role of migratory birds in passing on the virus is suspected.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: India's polar mission
Mains level: Climate change impact on cryosphere
40th Indian Scientific Expedition is set to depart for Antarctica from Mormugao Port, Goa.
Try this question:
Q.How does the cryosphere affect global climate? (150W, CSM 2018)
Indian mission on the Antarctic
- The Indian Antarctic Program is a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional program under the control of the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research, Ministry of Earth Sciences.
- It was initiated in 1981 with the first Indian expedition to Antarctica.
- The program gained global acceptance with India’s signing of the Antarctic Treaty and subsequent construction of the Dakshin Gangotri Antarctic research base in 1983, superseded by the Maitri base from 1990.
- The newest base commissioned in 2015 is Bharati, constructed out of 134 shipping containers.
Its significance
- This 40th expedition is procuring fuel from India after about 22 years. Till the last expedition, fuel was being obtained from outside the country.
- Indian Oil Co. Ltd. has supplied aviation fuel, Jet A1 in bulk and packed form to a non-aviation customer and is delivered to an ocean-going vessel for the first time.
Why need such a mission?
- Polar Regions are crucially important in answering key questions about global climate change.
- It contributes towards the global sea-level rise, the background aerosol properties, variability in the sea ice cover and phenomena like Antarctic haze and ozone concentrations.
- Attempts to address some of these issues are helping in mitigating several important problems concerning human life and well-being.
Back2Basics: India’s polar missions
- The first Indian expedition to Antarctica sailed from Goa on December 6, 1981, and reached the shores of this polar continent on January 9, 1982.
- India has two stations in the polar continent of Antarctica – Maitri and Bharati, which are being operated under NCPOR, Ministry of Earth Sciences.
Indian mission on the Arctic
- Himadri Station is India’s first Arctic research station located at Spitsbergen, Svalbard, Norway. It is located at the International Arctic Research base, Ny-Ålesund.
- It was inaugurated on the 1st of July, 2008 by the Minister of Earth Sciences. It is followed by IndARC.
- The United States Geological Survey estimates that 22% of the world’s oil and natural gas could be located beneath the Arctic.
- ONGC Videsh has signed joint-venture with Russia for oil exploration there.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Faceless Tax Scheme
Mains level: Ease of IT returns
The government’s faceless tax assessment scheme has managed to deliver about 24,000 final orders since its introduction in August 2020.
Try this PYQ:
Q. With reference to India’s decision to levy an equalization tax of 6% on online advertisement services offered by non-resident entities, which of the following statements is/are correct?
- It is introduced as a part of the Income Tax Act.
- Non-resident entities that offer advertisement services in India can claim a tax credit in their home country under the “Double Taxation Avoidance Agreements”.
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) Neither 1 nor 2
Faceless Tax Scheme
- The Central Government introduced the Faceless Assessment Scheme to provide greater transparency, efficiency and accountability in Income Tax assessments.
- It is an attempt to remove individual tax officials’ discretion and potential harassment for income taxpayers.
- All provisions introduced under Faceless Assessment, under the Income Tax Act, 1961, are introduced to-
- Eliminate the interface between the Assessing Officer and the assesses during the course of proceedings, to the extent that is technologically feasible
- Optimize the utilization of resources through the economies of scale and functional specialization and
- Introduce a team-based determination of arm’s length price with dynamic jurisdiction.
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