Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Paper 3- Challenges facing Indian agriculture
Context
Many wish for legendary “Milk Man of India” Verghese Kurien’s presence in our midst today as the conflict between the Central government and the farming community on the issue of the farm laws appears to be still unresolved.
Adopting cooperative model
- Kurien won the farmers over with his professional integrity and his vision of a central role for farmers in India’s journey of development.
- It is on that foundation that Kurien went on to design his idea of Amul as a co-operative.
- He turned it over the years into a global brand, and later launched the White Revolution that would make India the largest milk producing nation in the world.
- Central to Kurien’s vision was the co-operative model of business development.
- Kurien’s fascination for the co-operative model was also influenced by Gandhian thinking on poverty alleviation and social transformation.
- Kurien could borrow from the ideas and the practices of the corporate world.
- In areas such as innovations in marketing and management, branding and technology, the private sector excels and sets benchmarks for businesses across the world to follow and adopt.
- Innovations and evolving technologies: At the same time, Amul was steadily emerging as a laboratory, developing significant innovations and evolving technologies of its own, and these have strengthened its competitive power against multinational corporations.
Challenges facing cooperative movements in India
- Amul’s success has not been the catalyst for similar movements across other agricultural commodities in India.
- Bypassing digital revolution: India’s digital revolution has bypassed the agriculture sector.
- The cooperative movement in India is in a state of flux.
- Decline of cooperative movement: India has suffered due to lack of professional management, adequate finance and poor adoption of technology.
Conclusion
This is truly a moment to reflect on Verghese Kurien’s remarkable legacy and the unfinished task he has left behind.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Making of Indian Constitution
Mains level: Paper 2- Indian Constitution
Context
On November 26, 1949,72 years ago, India adopted new Constitution. Provisions of the Constitution like those pertaining to citizenship, a provisional parliament and other transitional measures came into force immediately, on November 26, 1949.
Challenges faced by the Constituent Assembly
- Boycott of the members: The body was meant to comprise 296 members but was boycotted by some members who would eventually move to Pakistan.
- Hence, the assembly would be a 210-member body at the initial sessions.
- Deft statesmanship, not rage was displayed in response to the boycott.
- Juristicconcerns: There were other juristic concerns.
- The colonial constitutionalist Ivor Jennings, who long sought to be involved in India’s drafting project but was refused later, asked, why the Constitution of India “plays down communalism?”
- This was a stinging question, for Partition was the result of communalism, how could any of us forget that?
Important feature of Indian Constitution: Addressing historical discrimination
- India’s Constitution is unique in its approach for making reparations for historical discrimination on grounds of caste that defines the present and future of so many Indians.
- By contrast, America’s Constitution makes no apology nor enables reparations for slavery.
- Despite being a body that was not significantly diverse, the founders, having appreciated the concerns of their people, were able to stand outside of their own privilege and conceive of a founding document that would speak for those who have been silenced for thousands of years.
What makes the Indian Constitution enduring?
- After having studied every constitution from 1789 to 2005, Tom Ginsburg of the University of Chicago School of Law and his colleagues concluded that on average a constitution survives for around 17 years.
- France with 14 constitutions, Mexico at five constitutions and neighbouring Pakistan with three constitutions typify the global experience.
- Expansion of freedoms of citizens: India’s Constitution has endured because its founders, its interpreters — the constitutional courts — and litigants in the form of social movements have all ensured that it is used to consistently expand the freedoms of citizens, even if social morality thinks otherwise.
- Constitutional morality: The Constitution’s morality has stood firmly with disadvantaged castes, women, and religious minorities.
- Accommodating marginalised groups: In contemporary times, other marginalised groups like LGBT Indians have been heard by constitutional courts that have unanimously found for their freedoms and for a full equality.
Consider the question “Elaborate on the features that explain the endurance of the Indian Constitution.”
Conclusion
Today, we marvel at the 72nd year of the adoption of our Constitution, and 72 years of our birth as “We the People”. But, as we revel in our good fortune, we must also be aware that its endurance is deeply rooted in the ability of all of us to commit to the project of expanding freedom, not contracting it
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Blockchain technology
Mains level: Paper 3- Approach towards cryptocurrencies
Context
The draft legislation on crypto currency being introduced in Parliament and the stance of the RBI suggest that consideration is being given to banning crypto currencies in India.
What fascination with crypto reveals about our society?
- It is about faith in that value is largely a matter of belief.
- It is about politics because money is always about the allocation of power.
- The money itself may not be material, but it is still embedded in a materiality.
- The fact that money is subject to politics is actually the advantage of money.
- It allows a modicum of collective control over our future, and allows distributive questions to be posed.
- It is mania because the alchemy of creating something out of nothing is always deeply alluring.
- Cheap money: The global economy is awash with cheap money.
- Seeking return: In an Indian context small savers are desperate for return.
- In this context it is easy for the powerful to misallocate money and the small saver to express desperation by speculation.
Background
- Faced with the inflation of the 1970s, thinkers like Friedrich Hayek theorised about reasserting the dominance of private currencies, protected from the state.
- Crypto currencies are a fascinating technological innovation.
- Part of their initial attraction was that they promised a new governance order.
- It is at the confluence of faith, politics, and psychological mania.
- Solving the problem of trust: This project crucially depended on solving the problem of “trust” on which every currency depends.
- Crypto seemed to solve that problem, with its decentralised architecture and community and self-verification protocols.
How cryptocurrency poses challenges to the state?
- No state was going to let go of its power to assert control over the monetary system.
- Significance of fiat money: The sustenance of state-sponsored fiat money is one of the great achievements of modern state formation and the foundation of its power and legitimacy.
- Cryptocurrency requires material infrastructure: There was a delusion, as if crypto is conjured out of thin air: It actually requires substantial material infrastructure, which a state could always control.
- States can shut down mining as China has done.
Way forward
- We allow people to invest in all kinds of things. Why ban this, especially now that so many investors are in it?
- Analyse the risk to the financial system: The answer to this question depends on how much risk the existence of crypto assets pose to the stability of the rest of the financial system.
- Insulate financial system: One answer is if you can insulate the financial system from the gyrations of crypto markets there are few systemic risks.
- This is why it was a good idea of the RBI to prohibit the entanglement of financial institutions with this market.
- Instead of just focussing on issues of fraud, money laundering, and private risks, the RBI’s case would be strengthened if it spelled out the systemic risks that crypto might pose to the stability of the real economy.
- Avoid ban with exception scenario: For political economy reasons, the RBI should avoid a scenario where it bans but then carves out exceptions.
- Ensuring that trade does not go offshore: The second thing is that if it somehow allows Indians to invest then it has to ensure that trade does not go offshore.
- Not fully banning and allowing it offshore will be the worst of both worlds.
Challenges in insulating the crypto market
- In practice the insulation of crypto markets will be difficult to achieve.
- Political economy: The first reason is political economy. Once you have a large number of investors, and some influential ones, they will be a vested interest in their own right, potentially demanding the socialisation or mitigation of losses.
- Impact of volume: The second reason is that it is difficult to pretend that a major new class of assets, especially if volumes grow, does not have systemic effects on the rest of the economy.
Consider the question “What are the risks and advantages provided by the cryptocurrencies? Suggest the approach India should adopt in dealing with cryptocurrencies.”
Conclusion
As the RBI makes the case for banning crypto, we also need to ask, why it is alluring in the first place. What does this mania reveal about our politics and economics?
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: National Family Health Survey
Mains level: Read the attached story
The Union health ministry released the summary findings of the fifth round of the National Family and Health Survey (NFHS-5), conducted in two phases between 2019 and 2021.
About NFHS
- The NFHS is a large-scale, multi-round survey conducted in a representative sample of households throughout India.
- The previous four rounds of the NFHS were conducted in 1992-93, 1998-99, 2005-06 and 2015-16.
- The survey provides state and national information for India on:
Fertility, infant and child mortality, the practice of family planning, maternal and child health, reproductive health, nutrition, anaemia, utilization and quality of health and family planning services etc.
Objectives of the survey
Each successive round of the NFHS has had two specific goals:
- To provide essential data on health and family welfare needed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and other agencies for policy and programme purposes
- To provide information on important emerging health and family welfare issues.
Key highlights of the NFHS-5
[1] Women outnumbering men
- NFHS-5 data shows that there were 1,020 women for 1000 men in the country in 2019-2021.
- This is the highest sex ratio for any NFHS survey as well as since the first modern synchronous census conducted in 1881.
- To be sure, in the 2005-06 NFHS, the sex ratio was 1,000 or women and men were equal in number.
[2] Fertility has decreased
- The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) has also come down below the threshold at which the population is expected to replace itself from one generation to next.
- TFR was 2 in 2019-2021, just below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1. To be sure, in rural areas, the TFR is still 2.1.
- In urban areas, TFR had gone below the replacement fertility rate in the 2015-16 NFHS itself.
[3] Population is ageing
- A decline in TFR, which implies that lower number of children are being born, also entails that India’s population would become older.
- Sure enough, the survey shows that the share of under-15 population in the country has therefore further declined from 28.6% in 2015-16 to 26.5% in 2019-21.
[4] Children’s nutrition has improved
- The share of stunted (low height for age), wasted (low weight for height), and underweight (low weight for age) children have all come down since the last NFHS conducted in 2015-16.
- However, the share of severely wasted children has not, nor has the share of overweight (high weight for height) or anaemic children.
- The share of overweight children has increased from 2.1% to 3.4%.
[5] Nutrition problem for adults
- For children and their mothers, there are at least government schemes such as Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) that seek to address the nutritional needs at the time of childbirth and infancy.
- However, there is a need to address the nutritional needs of adults too.
- The survey has shown that though India might have achieved food security, 60% of Indians cannot afford nutritious diets.
- While the share of women and men with below-normal Body Mass Index (BMI) has decreased, the share of overweight and obese (those with above-normal BMI) and the share of anaemic has increased.
[6] Basic sanitation challenges
- Availability of basic amenities such as improved sanitation facilities clean fuel for cooking, or menstrual hygiene products can improve health outcomes.
- There has been an improvement on indicators for all three since the last NFHS. However, the degree of improvement might be less than claimed by the government.
- For example, only 70% population had access to an improved sanitation facility.
- While not exactly an indicator of open defecation, it means that the remaining 30% of the population has a flush or pour-flush toilet not connected to a sewer, septic tank or pit latrine.
[7] Use of clean fuel
- The share of households that use clean cooking fuel is also just 59%.
[8] Financial inclusion
- The share of women having a bank account that they themselves use has increased from 53% to 79%.
- Households’ coverage by health insurance or financing scheme also has increased 1.4 times to 41%, a clear indication of the impact of the government’s health insurance scheme.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: NMPI
Mains level: Multidimensional Poverty in India
The Government think-tank NITI Aayog has released the National Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI).
Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)
- This baseline report of India’s first-ever national MPI measure is based on the reference period of 2015-16 of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS)- 4.
- It uses the globally accepted and robust methodology developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
- It captures multiple and simultaneous deprivations faced by households.
Parameters used
- The NMPI is calculated using 12 indicators — nutrition, child and adolescent mortality, antenatal care, years of schooling, school attendance, cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets and bank account,
- They have been grouped under three dimensions namely, health, education and standard of living.
Why NFHS-4?
- Data collected during the NFHS-4 (2015-2016) corresponds to the period before the full roll out of new governments’ flagship schemes.
- Hence it serves as a useful source for measuring the situation at baseline i.e. before large-scale rollout of nationally important schemes.
How is the data used?
- The national MPI 2021 is calculated using the household microdata collected at the unit-level for the NFHS-4 that is used to derive the baseline multidimensional poverty.
- Further, the country’s progress would be measured using this baseline in the NFHS-5, for which the data was collected between 2019 and 2020.
- The progress of the country with respect to this baseline will be measured using the NFHS-5 data collected in 2019-20.
Key highlights NMPI
- As per the index, 51.91% of the population in Bihar is poor, followed by Jharkhand (42.16%), Uttar Pradesh (37.79%), Madhya Pradesh (36.65%) and Meghalaya (32.67%).
- On the other hand, Kerala registered lowest population poverty levels (0.71%), followed by Puducherry (1.72%), Lakshadweep (1.82%), Goa (3.76%) and Sikkim (3.82%).
- Other States and UTs where less than 10% of the population are poor include Tamil Nadu (4.89%), Andaman & Nicobar Islands (4.30%), Delhi (4.79%), Punjab (5.59%), Himachal Pradesh (7.62%) and Mizoram (9.8%).
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Solomon Islands
Mains level: NA
Australia has announced sending police, troops and diplomats to the Solomon Islands to help after anti-Government demonstrators.
Solomon Islands
- Solomon Islands is a sovereign country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and northwest of Vanuatu.
- Its capital, Honiara, is located on the largest island, Guadalcanal.
- The country takes its name from the Solomon Islands archipelago, which is a collection of Melanesian islands that also includes the North Solomon Islands (a part of Papua New Guinea).
- It excludes outlying islands, such as the Santa Cruz Islands and Rennell and Bellona.
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