Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: NA
Mains level: Emmployment issues
Context
- Mass prosperity for massive populations is hard. India’s large remittances from a small population overseas and IT sectors employability reinforce that our mass prosperity strategy should be human capital and formal jobs.
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Why human capital formation is effective tool for mass prosperity?
- Disproportionate contribution of IT employees: A strong case for human capital-driven productivity is our software employment — 0.8 per cent of workers generate 8 per cent of GDP.
- Remittance by NRIs: This case is reinforced by remittances from our overseas population of less than 2 per cent of our resident population crossing $100 billion last year.
- Shift towards formal employment: A World Bank report suggests that the qualitative shift during the previous five years from low-skilled, informal employment in Gulf countries (dropped from 54 per cent to 28 per cent) to high-skilled formal jobs in high-income countries (increased from 26 per cent to 36 per cent) is significant.
- Remittances are higher than FDI: Our rich forex remittance harvest roughly 25 per cent higher than FDI and 25 per cent less than software exports is fruit from the tree of human capital and formal jobs.
- Credit availability is bigger issue: Monetary policy is, at best, a placebo, painkiller, or steroid especially since credit availability is a bigger problem in India than credit cost.
- Source of finance is important than expenditure: Global experience suggests where governments spend money (pensions, interest, salaries, education, healthcare, roads, etc) and how this spending is financed (taxes or debt) matters more than how much is spent (about Rs 80 lakh crore in India this year).
- Fiscal policy tends to overshoot: Covid made enormous fiscal and monetary policy demands, but the bigger the binge, the bigger the hangover. Western central banks are struggling to shrink their balance sheets because they used what Harvard’s Paul Tucker calls “unelected power” to chase goals outside their mandate, administer medicine with poorly understood side effects, and speed down highways with no known return paths.
- India avoided the fiscal and monetary trap: Rich-country borrowing rates have risen by 300 per cent plus and inflation hurts the poor the most. India avoided these fiscal and monetary policy excesses. This prudence now combines with previous structural reforms (GST, IBC, MPC, UPI, DBT, NEP, etc) and a reform “tone from the top” to create a fertile habitat for productive citizens and firms.
What should be the strategy in next fiscal year for employment generation?
- Targeting the job creation: The Finance Bill must target productivity and continuity by legislating human capital and formal job reforms previously proposed.
- NEP should be implemented in 5 years: It should reduce the implementation glide path for the powerful National Education Policy 2020 from 15 years to five years.
- Abolishing the licensing: It should abolish separate licensing requirements for online degrees and freely allow all our 1,000-plus accredited universities to launch online learning.
- Accelerating apprentices: It should accelerate growing our 0.5 million apprentices to 10 million by allowing all universities to launch degree apprentice courses under tripartite contracts with employers under the Apprentices Act.
What are the other steps that can be taken through next budget?
- Notify labour code: It should notify the four labour codes for all central-list industries while appointing a tripartite committee to converge them into one labour code by the next budget.
- Universal enterprise number: It should continue EODB reforms by designating every enterprise’s PAN number as its Universal Enterprise Number.
- Remove the factory act: It should explore manufacturing employment by abolishing the Factories Act this painful Act accounts for 8,000 of the 26,000 plus criminal provisions in employer compliance and require all employers to comply under each state’s Shops and Establishment Act (like Infosys, TCS, and IBM India do).
- Ensuring better compliances by employer: It should create a non-profit corporation (like NPCI in payments) that will operate an API-driven National Employer Compliance Grid and enable central ministries and state governments to rationalise, digitise and decriminalise their employer compliances.
- Making EPFO contribution optional: Making employees’ provident fund contributions optional but raising employer PF contributions from the current 12 per cent to 13 per cent. It should notify a previous budget announcement to create employee choice in their contributions to health insurance (ESIC or insurance companies) and pensions (EPFO or NPS).
- Subsidy to high wage employer: Most importantly, it should link all employer subsidies and tax incentives to high-wage employment creation (a difficult-to-fudge and easy-to-measure effectiveness metric for this public spending is employer provident fund payment).
Conclusion
- Experience and evidence now firmly suggest the odds of mass prosperity in the planet’s most populous nation rise from possible to probable by anchoring our strategy in human capital and formal jobs rather than fiscal or monetary policy.
Mains Question
What are the limitations of Fiscal and monetary policy in mass welfare of people? What are the possible strategies for creation of mass prosperity in India?
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Transgenic technology and its applications
Mains level: Advantages and disadvantages of Genetically modified Crops and Transgenic Technology
Context
- The Supreme Court’s Technical Expert Committee and two unanimous reports of multi-party parliamentary standing committees have recommended that genetically modified (GM) Herbicide Tolerant (HT) crops should be banned in India.
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Why transgenic technology is worrisome?
- Uncontrollable and irreversible: Transgenic technology, unlike other technologies, is uncontrollable and irreversible after environmental release.
- Self-propagation and proliferation: Living Modified Organisms (LMOs), as the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety refers to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), propagate themselves and proliferate.
- Long term assessment is necessary: This process cannot be reversed. Therefore, any deliberate environmental release has to be only after thorough, independent, peer-reviewed assessment of long-term implications.
- Precaution is necessary: The precautionary principle is a cornerstone because of the unpredictability and time lag of serious outcomes manifesting in highly complex living systems, and their irreversibility. To draw a parallel, not a single one of 330 invasive species (for example, lantana, parthenium) in India has yet been eliminated, despite estimated damage of Rs 8.3 trillion by just 10 of them!
Reality check on GM crops
- Less countries adopted GM technology: More than 25 years after their introduction, GM crops are still globally grown in just 29 out of 172 countries. Moreover, 91 per cent of GM crop area continues to be in just five countries (USA, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, India).
- BT cotton demand is declining: Most countries of Europe and Japan, Israel, Russia, Malaysia etc., do not grow GM crops. In China, a first adopter, Bt cotton area has been declining and non-GM hybrid technology is used for rapeseed/mustard.
- Heavy focus on two traits only: Only two traits are present in over 85 per cent of GM crops grown herbicide tolerance (HT, where crop plants are modified to withstand large amounts of toxic weed-killing chemicals), and/or insect resistance (pesticidal toxin, usually Bt, is produced inside the plant).
Negative impact of HT crops
- Damage to ecology: HT crops result in not only ecological damage, but human health impacts for consumers. Like tobacco, once declared safe, the effects take long to manifest.
- Honey production will be affected: Beekeepers say that HT mustard will affect honey production and contaminated honey will damage exports.
- Human health will be affected: As regards human health, probable carcinogenicity, neuro-toxicity, reproductive health problems, organ damage etc. have been documented by independent research on GM crops and associated herbicides, once claimed by developers and regulators to be “safe”.
- Campaign against release of GM crops: Like thousands of doctors in other countries, over 100 eminent Indian doctors have conveyed their concerns asked that no HT food crops be released and the planted GM mustard be uprooted before flowering.
- Proponent says Mustard is not a HT crop: It is claimed that DMH-11 is not an HT crop as the use of the Bar gene which confers an herbicide tolerance trait is essentially for the pollination control technology in creating hybrids, and glufosinate herbicide will only be used during seed production.
- Opponent says it’s a HT crop: The reality is that by virtue of the Bar gene being present in both parental lines, and thereby also in all their hybrid offspring, this GM mustard can withstand application of a toxic weedkiller, glufosinate, including in farmers’ fields. It should therefore have been assessed as an HT crop.
- Government failed to prevent illegal use of HT cotton: If governments, for over 10 years, have been aware of the illegal planting of herbicide tolerant cotton and rampant illegal use of glyphosate on such HT cotton, and have been unable or unwilling to stop this, what “regulatory process” will now prevent farmers in search of low-cost weeding options from spraying glufosinate on herbicide tolerant mustard?
What are the observations of SC and parliamentary Committee?
- Absence of regulatory protocol: The ongoing litigations in the Supreme Court are about serious shortcomings in our regulatory regime. Minutes of meetings of the regulatory body GEAC and the “guidelines and protocols” on the regulator’s website reflect an absence of regulatory protocols for HT crops.
- Inadequate bio testing: And yet a crop with an HT trait is being released in the environment! The technical expert committee (TEC) appointed by the SC and the unanimous multi-party reports of two parliamentary standing committees have exposed serious lapses and inadequacies in bio-safety testing.
- Against the release of GM crops: They all advised that herbicide tolerant crops, which GM Mustard is, should not be released in Indian conditions.
- Government panel recommended the ban: Even the government-nominated experts in the TEC asked for a ban on HT crops. The government, surely, cannot call them unscientific.
- No independent participant in testing: Testing on GM mustard has been done with test protocols evolved by the crop developer, and most tests were done by the applicant. No independent health expert participated in the committees that looked at GM mustard safety.
- No biosafety data: To this day, biosafety data of GM mustard has not been posted on the regulator’s website for independent scrutiny.
Conclusion
- GM crop transgenic technology comes with mixed baggage. Government must strike the balance between biodiversity concern and welfare of farmers. Outright ban or permission without credible data and scrutiny must be avoided.
Mains Question
Q. What are the worrisome aspects of transgenic technology? What are the observations of Supreme court and parliamentary committee regarding GM crops?
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: World Ayurveda Congress (WAC), 2022
Mains level: World Ayurveda Congress, Traditional medicines and modern medicines integrated approach.
Context
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi commended the recent growth of traditional medicine (TM), and Ayurveda in particular, while addressing the World Ayurveda Congress 2022 (WAC) earlier this month. Noting the lag in evidence despite considerable research, he gave a clarion call “to bring together medical data, research, and journals and verify claims (benefit) using modern science parameters”.
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All you need to know about World Ayurveda Congress (WAC)
- Platform by World Ayurveda foundation: The World Ayurveda Congress (WAC) is a platform established by World Ayurveda Foundation to propagate Ayurveda globally in its true sense.
- Platform to connect various stakeholders in medicine: World Ayurveda Congress (WAC) is a platform to connect Ayurveda practitioners, medicine manufacturers, enthusiasts and academicians.
- What is the mandate: World Ayurveda Congress (WAC) & Arogya Expo monitors progress and initiate missions and collect feedbacks.
World Ayurveda Congress (WAC), 2022
- 9th edition of WAC held at Panjim, Goa: The 9th edition of World Ayurveda Congress (WAC) & Arogya Expo was organized at PANJIM, GOA.
- Organised by Ministry of AYSUSH on the principle of whole government approach (WGA): The WAC organised by the Ministry of AYUSH on the ‘Whole Government Approach’ (WGA) to foster and strengthen the research ecosystem for AYUSH systems.
- What is Whole System Approach (WSA): The concept of WGA is in consonance with the “Whole System Approach” (WSA). WSA encompasses integrated and network participation of several stakeholders (including patients and the community) for better solutions (treatment outcomes) in a challenging and complex situation. IM is an important component of WSA in the current context.
- Active Participation: The event witnessed the active participation of more than 40 countries and all states of India.
- PM’s vision: To transform the healthcare system of the country and to develop a healthy society, there is a need to think holistically and integrate the Traditional medicine (TM) and modern medicine system (MM).
World Ayurveda Foundation (WAF)
- Aim of WAF: WAF is an initiative by Vijnana Bharati aimed at global propagation of Ayurveda, founded in 2011.
- Objective and core principle: The objectives of WAF reflect global scope, propagation and encouragement of all activities scientific and Ayurveda related are the core principles.
- Focus Areas: Support to research, health-care programmes through camps, clinics and sanatoriums, documentation, organization of study groups, seminars, exhibitions and knowledge initiatives to popularize Ayurveda in the far corners of the world are the broad latitudes of focus at WAF.
What is Traditional Medicine?
- According to WHO: The WHO describes traditional medicine as the total sum of the “knowledge, skills and practices indigenous and different cultures have used over time to maintain health and prevent, diagnose and treat physical and mental illness”.
- Culmination of multiple ancient practices: Its reach encompasses ancient practices such as acupuncture, ayurvedic medicine and herbal mixtures as well as modern medicines.
- Percentage of people use traditional medicine: of According to WHO estimates, 80% of the world’s population uses traditional medicine.
Traditional medicine in India
- It is often defined as including practices and therapies such as Yoga, Ayurveda, Siddha that have been part of Indian tradition historically, as well as others such as homeopathy that became part of Indian tradition over the years.
- Ayurveda and yoga are practised widely across the country.
- The Siddha system is followed predominantly in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
- The Sowa-Rigpa System is practised mainly in Leh-Ladakh and Himalayan regions such as Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Darjeeling, Lahaul & Spiti.
How TM modalities (such as Ayurveda or homoeopathy) can scientifically align with MM for a better outcome?
- Remarkable success in treating neurological diseases: A recently established Department of IM in NIMHANS continued to show remarkable success in treating difficult neurological diseases with a team of Ayurvedic and MM physicians and carefully planned and monitored IM strategy.
- CRD projects: Modern rheumatology practice in the Centre for Rheumatic Diseases (CRD) model includes critical elements of TM and Ayurveda, which have shown unequivocal evidence in CRD research projects
- Evaluation based on other protocols: Several controlled protocols-based evaluations of standardised Ayurvedic drugs and other TM modalities (such as diet, exercise, yoga, and counselling), often in conjunction with MM, in arthritis patients, were completed.
- Sustained clinical improvement in patients suffering from active Rheumatoid arthritis (RA): RA is a severely painful crippling lifelong autoimmune condition, mostly seen in women, and universally acknowledged as difficult to treat. Supervised and monitored IM intervention (including Ayurvedic drugs) over several years showed a consistently superior and sustained clinical improvement in patients suffering from active RA.
- AYUSH systems include Ayurveda, Homeopathy, Unani, Siddha, and other TM.
- AYUSH systems and MM differ radically in several ways or so it seems.
- Modern scientific research in Ayurveda is often at variance with classical Ayurveda.
- Unlike MM, TM has at its core a personalised approach. MM is dominantly reductionist.
- The ambitious futuristic programme of TM and IM by AYUSH is well-intended and in the right direction.
Conclusion
- TM and Ayurveda need to respond to the new world order, which has changed substantially recently. It is reasonably certain that MM and TM in the current format will continue to treat several medical disorders and altered health states. But evidence-based medicine will become the new mantra. Also, informed and empowered patients and people will continue to make the right choices.
Mains question
Q. What is World Ayurveda congress? What is tradition medicines? How Traditional medicines can align with modern medicines to treat several serious medical disorders.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Millets
Mains level: Read the attached story
To raise awareness on millets and prepare for 2023, PM Modi, along with fellow parliamentarians across party lines, enjoyed a sumptuous lunch where millets were front and centre.
Why in news?
- 2023 has been declared as the “International Year of Millets” by the United Nations, after a proposal from India in 2019.
What are Millets?
- Millet are small-grained cereals like sorghum (jowar), pearl millet (bajra), foxtail millet (kangni), little millet (kutki), kodo millet, finger millet (ragi/ mandua), proso millet (cheena/ common millet), barnyard millet (sawa/ sanwa/ jhangora), and brown top millet (korale).
- They were among the first crops to be domesticated.
- There is evidence for consumption of millets in the Indus-Sarasvati civilisation (3,300 to 1300 BCE).
- Several varieties that are now grown around the world were first cultivated in India.
- West Africa, China, and Japan are also home to indigenous varieties of the crop.
Cultivation of millets
- Millets are now grown in more than 130 countries, and are the traditional food for more than half a billion people in Asia and Africa.
- Globally, sorghum (jowar) is the biggest millet crop.
- The major producers of jowar are the US, China, Australia, India, Argentina, Nigeria, and Sudan.
- Bajra is another major millet crop; India and some African countries are major producers.
Millets in India
- In India, millets are mainly a kharif crop.
- During 2018-19, three millet crops — bajra (3.67%), jowar (2.13%), and ragi (0.48%) — accounted for about 7 per cent of the gross cropped area in the country, Agriculture Ministry data show.
(1) Jowar
- Jowar is mainly grown in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, and Madhya Pradesh.
- In 2020-21, the area under jowar stood at 4.24 million hectares, while production was 4.78 million tonnes.
- Maharashtra accounted for the largest area (1.94 mn ha) and production (1.76 million tonnes) of jowar during 2020-21.
(2) Bajra
- Bajra is mainly grown in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka.
- Of the total 7.75 mn ha under bajra in 2020-21, the highest (4.32 mn ha) was in Rajasthan.
- The state also produced the most bajra in the country (4.53 million tonnes of the total 10.86 million tonnes) in 2020-21.
- The consumption of millets was reported mainly from these states: Gujarat (jowar and bajra), Karnataka (jowar and ragi), Maharashtra (jowar and bajra), Rajasthan (bajra), and Uttarakhand (ragi).
Benefits of Millets
- Millets are eco-friendly crops: They require much less water than rice and wheat, and can be grown in rainfed areas without additional irrigation.
- Lesser water footprints: Wheat and rice have the lowest green water footprints but the highest blue water footprints, while millets were exactly opposite. Green water footprint refers to water from precipitation whereas blue water refers to water from land sources.
- Highly nutritious: Agriculture Ministry declared certain varieties of millets as “Nutri Cereals” for the purposes of production, consumption, and trade.
- Nutrition security: Millets contain 7-12% protein, 2-5% fat, 65-75% carbohydrates and 15-20% dietary fibre. Small millets are more nutritious compared to fine cereals. They contain higher protein, fat and fibre content.
Back2Basics: 2023- the Year of Millets
- On March 3, 2021, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted a resolution to declare 2023 as the International Year of Millets.
- The proposal, moved by India, was supported by 72 countries.
- Several events and activities, including conferences and field activities, and the issuing of stamps and coins, are expected as part of the celebrations.
- These are aimed at spreading awareness about millets, inspiring stakeholders to improve production and quality, and attracting investments.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Anti-dumping duty
Mains level: Not Much
The Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR) has recommended the levy of anti-dumping duty (ADD) on viscose staple fibre imported from Indonesia.
What is Dumping?
- Dumping is a process wherein a company exports a product at a price that is significantly lower than the price it normally charges in its home (or its domestic) market.
- This is an unfair trade practice which can have a distortive effect on international trade.
- Anti-dumping is a measure to rectify the situation arising out of the dumping of goods and its trade distortive effect.
What is Anti-Dumping Duty?
- An anti-dumping duty is a protectionist tariff that a domestic government imposes on foreign imports that it believes are priced below fair market value.
- In order to protect their respective economy, many countries impose duties on products they believe are being dumped in their national market.
- In fact, anti-dumping is an instrument for ensuring fair trade and is not a measure of protection per se for the domestic industry.
- Such ‘dumped’ products have the potential to undercut local businesses and the local economy.
- Anti-dumping duties provide relief to the domestic industry against the injury caused by dumping.
Mechanism in India
- The Department of Commerce recommends the anti-dumping duty, provisional or final.
- The Department of Revenue in Finance Ministry acts upon the recommendation within three months and imposes such duties.
WTO and Anti-Dumping Duties
- The WTO operates a set of international trade rules, including the international regulation of anti-dumping measures.
- It does NOT intervene in the activities of companies engaged in dumping.
- Instead, it focuses on how governments can—or cannot—react to the practice of dumping.
- In general, the WTO agreement permits governments to act against dumping if it causes or threatens material injury to an established domestic industry.
Issues with such duties
- Anti-dumping duties have the potential to distort the market.
- In a free market, governments cannot normally determine what constitutes a fair market price for any good or service.
Back2Basics: Viscose Fibre
- Viscose is a type of rayon. Originally known as artificial silk, in the late 19th century, the term “rayon” came into effect in 1924.
- The name “viscose” derived from the way this fibre is manufactured; a viscous organic liquid used to make both rayon and cellophane.
- It is the generalised term for a regenerated manufactured fibre, made from cellulose, obtained by the viscose process.
- As a manufactured regenerated cellulose fibre, it is neither truly natural (like cotton, wool or silk) nor truly synthetic (like nylon or polyester) – it falls somewhere in between.
- Chemically, viscose resembles cotton, but it can also take on many different qualities depending on how it is manufactured.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Great Lakes
Mains level: Not Much
Scientists are building a sensor network to detect the trends in the water chemistry of Lake Huron, one of the five Great Lakes of North America.
What is the Acidification of water bodies?
- Acidification of oceans or freshwater bodies takes place when excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere gets rapidly absorbed into them.
- Scientists initially believed this might be a good thing, as it leaves less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
- But in the past decade or so, it has been established that absorption of carbon dioxide leads to a lowering of the pH, which makes the water bodies more acidic.
What are Great Lakes?
- The Great Lakes are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River.
- There are five lakes, which are Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario and are in general on or near the Canada–US border.
- Hydrologically, lakes Michigan and Huron are a single body joined at the Straits of Mackinac.
- By itself, Lake Huron is the world’s third largest freshwater lake, after Lake Superior and Lake Victoria.
- The Great Lakes Waterway enables modern travel and shipping by water among the lakes.
Why are they significant?
- The Great Lakes contain a fifth of the world’s total freshwater, and is a crucial source of irrigation and transportation.
- They also serve as the habitat for more than 3,500 species of plants and animals.
Acidification of Great Lakes
- Scientists are developing a system that would be capable of measuring the carbon dioxide and pH levels of the Great Lakes over several years.
- It is known that the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide has caused the world’s oceans to turn more acidic.
- Recently, it has been observed that by 2100, even the Great Lakes — Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario — might approach acidity at around the same rate as the oceans.
- Researchers hope the data from the Lake Huron project would add to scientific information on the subject.
Consequences of acidification
- The Great Lakes are believed to have been born some 20,000 years ago, when the Earth started to warm and water from melting glaciers filled the basins on its surface.
- However, this rich ecosphere is under threat as the five lakes would witness a pH decline of 0.29-0.49 pH units — meaning they would become more acidic — by 2100.
- This may lead to a decrease in native biodiversity, create physiological challenges for organisms, and permanently alter the structure of the ecosystem, scientists say.
- It would also severely impact the hundreds of wooden shipwrecks that are believed to be resting at the bottom of these lakes.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Dhokra Art
Mains level: Not Much
This newscard is an excerpt from the articles published in TH.
Do you know?
The dancing girl from Mohenjo-Daro (c. 2300 – 1750 BCE) is not just the most famous piece of art from the Harappan Civilisation, it is also one of the finest examples of metal art from that period.
But did you know that this world-famous figurine is also the oldest example of a unique metal casting tradition called Dhokra that survives to this day in parts of India?
Dhokra Art
- Named after a nomadic tribe called ‘Dhokra Damar’, the art of Dhokra was originally found in the region from Bankura to Dariapur in Bengal, and across the metal-rich regions of Odisha and Madhya Pradesh.
- Today, it is practiced in the tribal belt across present-day Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Telangana.
- The Dhokra artistes first make a clay model out of wax, which is then replaced with molten metal, either brass or bronze, through a lost-wax metal cast.
What is Dhokra?
- Dhokra is a metal casted art that uses the ancient lost-wax casting technique.
- This art is said to be the first of its kind to use a non-ferrous metal like copper and its alloys – brass (a mix of zinc and copper) or bronze (tin and copper) which do not contain iron.
- It uses the process of annealing, where a metal is heated to very high temperatures and allowed to cool slowly.
- The casting is done using two kinds of processes – the traditional, hollow-casting method and solid casting. Solid casting is predominant in Telangana, whereas hollow casting is used in Central and Eastern India.
Symbolism of Dhokra
- With its roots in ancient civilisations, Dhokra represents a primitive lifestyle and the beliefs of people, going back to the age of hunting.
- This is why figures of elephants, owls, horses and tortoises are commonly seen in Dhokra art.
- The elephant symbolises wisdom and masculinity; the horse motion; owl prosperity and death; and the tortoise femininity.
- In Hindu mythology, these iconic symbols also have stories behind them.
- The world is imagined to rest on four elephants, standing on the shell of a tortoise.
- The tortoise, considered as an avatar of Lord Vishnu, carries the world on his back, holding up the earth and the sea.
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