Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: GST Council
Mains level: Paper 2- Working of Constitution
Context
A republic is made robust and kept alive by its people. In its current form, the Indian republic marks 73 years of maintaining a dynamic balance.
Directly elected representation
- It is to the credit of our people that today we have a pyramidal three-layered elected representative system that governs us.
- This system today has over 3 million elected representatives (a million of them women), over 4,000 elected to the state legislatures and over 500 in the Parliament.
- This scale of directly elected representation, perhaps, can be seen nowhere else in the world.
Moral and spiritual basis of the Constitution
- In Pilgrimage to Freedom, K M Munshi writes, “our Constitution has a moral background — to secure justice for every section of our society; as also a spiritual basis — to preserve and protect all religions in the exercise of their functions”.
- The challenges continue in securing justice for every section of our society.
- The Backward Classes, the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes and the poor across all categories clamour for better opportunities and affordable justice.
- What Munshi calls the spiritual basis of our Constitution in having to preserve and protect all religions is also seen under stress.
- When the right to practise one’s religion is denied or threatened, the silence of the thinking public or the media weakens that constitutionally embedded protection.
Challenges posed by social media
- Through the power of technology and its capacity to broadcast at mass scale, an otherwise useful tool, social media, has become a challenge and sometimes a threat to one or several of the rights enshrined in our Constitution.
- Curtailing them to protect the rights of citizens is seen as trampling upon the right to free speech.
- Without any action, the damage caused to social harmony by such rampant false news can result in people losing faith in the Constitution itself.
Constitution as a living, dynamic process
- Our Constitution is the most amended of all constitutions in the world.
- If there are more than 100 amendments made to the Constitution, there are more than 1,500 laws that have been repealed because they have outlived their times.
- These deadwood laws, by remaining on paper, occasionally became a weapon in the hands of rent-seekers.
- Their removal, as a part of administrative reform, has kept the role of the executive transparent and accountable.
- That the Constitution is always evolving is best exemplified by the 101st amendment which rolled out the Goods and Services Tax.
- his amendment brought in a unified indirect tax regime by subsuming most of the indirect taxes of the Centre and the states.
- Yet to complete five full years, the GST Council has stood the test of challenging times even in its initial years.
- It augurs well for cooperative federalism.
Conclusion
Our Constitution has served us well in these seven decades. Several republics in the post-imperial era have rejected their earlier constitutions and tested new ones. It is the people who can keep the republic robust and alive.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Constituent Assembly working
Mains level: Paper 2- Working of India's Constitution
Context
This year we are celebrating our 73rd Republic Day. The Constitution has been our guiding force in the journey of the nation as a mature democracy among comity of nations.
Historical background
- The Constituent Assembly undertook intensive deliberations over a period of two years, 11 months and 18 days spread over 11 sessions, during which the Constitution of India took shape.
- Our Constituent Assembly played a dual role after Independence, given the insurmountable task of nation-building.
- Our Constituent Assembly had performed the functions of the provisional Parliament of India in the interval between the time our Constitution was enforced and the day when the new Parliament was formed following the first General Elections (October 25, 1951-February 21, 1952).
- The Constituent Assembly of India acted as the first Parliament of independent India.
Role of the Parliament
- Representative institutions and democratic traditions have always been an integral part of our rich heritage
- Our Parliament has been playing a pivotal role in the all-round development of the nation by adopting many parliamentary devices for ensuring free and fair discussions and dialogue.
- We have to ensure that our institutions and governance ensure inclusivity and the participation of our population in our developmental journey, particularly our women, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and all other marginalised sections become equal partners in our growth story.
Ensuring the best legislative practices
- Repository of the proceedings: To ensure that best legislative practices are shared, a national portal is being planned to serve as a repository of the proceedings of Parliament and all State/Union Territory legislatures in the country.
- Research support is being provided to Members to help them participate better and meaningfully in matters brought before Parliament.
- Review of the laws to make them relevant: It is also time in the journey of our nation to take stock and review laws that were enacted during the pre-Independence era so as to make them more relevant to our current requirements and future challenges.
Conclusion
Republic Day is an occasion for people’s representatives and all citizens of this proud nation to reaffirm faith in the ideals enshrined in our Constitution.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: COP26
Mains level: Paper 3- Transition to net zero-emission future
Context
While many developing countries made net-zero pledges at COP26 in Glasgow, they face enormous developmental challenges in their attempts to grow in a climate-constrained world.
Developmental challenges for India
- For India, the national context is shaped by high youth unemployment, millions more entering the workforce each year, and a country hungry for substantial investments in hard infrastructure to industrialise and urbanise.
- Growth with low emission footprint: India’s economic growth in the last three decades, led by growth in the services sector, has come at a significantly lower emissions footprint.
- But in the coming decades, India will have to move to an investment-led and manufacturing-intensive growth model to create job opportunities and create entirely new cities and infrastructure to accommodate and connect an increasingly urban population.
- All of this requires a lot of energy. Can India do all of this with a low emissions footprint?
What could India do to pursue an industrialization pathway that is climate-compatible?
- A coherent national transition strategy is important in a global context where industrialised countries are discussing the imposition of carbon border taxes while failing to provide developing countries the necessary carbon space to grow or the finance and technological assistance necessary to decarbonise.
- What India needs is an overarching green industrialisation strategy that combines laws, policy instruments, and new or reformed implementing institutions to steer its decentralised economic activities to become climate-friendly and resilient.
Issues with India’s domestic manufacturing of renewable technology components
- India’s industrial policy efforts to increase the domestic manufacturing of renewable energy technology components have been affected by policy incoherence, poor management of economic rents, and contradictory policy objectives.
- India managed to create just a third of jobs per megawatt that China has managed to in its efforts to promote solar PV and wind technologies.
- China has created more jobs in manufacturing solar and wind components for exports than domestic deployment.
- India could have retained some of those jobs if it were strategic in promoting these technologies.
Opportunities in decarbonising transport and industry sector
- Technologies needed to decarbonise the transport and industry sectors provide a significant opportunity for India.
- However, India’s R&D investments in these emerging green technologies are non-existent.
- PLI is a step in right direction: The production-linked incentives (PLIs) under ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ are a step in the right direction for localising clean energy manufacturing activities.
- Focus on R&D: Aligning existing RD&D investments with the technologies needed for green industrialisation is crucial for realising quantum jumps in economic activities.
- Encourage private entrepreneurship: India also needs to nurture private entrepreneurship and experimentation in clean energy technologies.
- Besides China, Korea’s green growth strategy provide examples of how India could gain economic and employment rents from green industrialisation without implementing restrictive policies.
Way forward
- India should set its pace based on its ability to capitalise on the opportunities to create wealth through green industrialisation.
- India should follow a path where it can negotiate carbon space to grow, buying time for the hard-to-abate sectors; push against counterproductive WTO trade litigations on decarbonisation technologies; all while making R&D investments in those technologies to ensure that it can gain economic value in the transition.
Consider the question “What are the challenges India faces as it strives to reach the goal of net-zero emission by 2070. Suggest the strategy India should follow to maximise the developmental gains.”
Conclusion
The government should neither succumb to international pressure to decarbonise soon nor should it postpone its investment in decarbonisation technologies and lose its long-term competitiveness in a global low-carbon economy.
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