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The number of families availing the benefit of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) continues to fall post the Covid-19 pandemic, with 6.19 crore households availing of the rural job programme during the 2022-23 financial year compared to 7.25 crore in 2021-22 and 7.55 crore in 2020-21, shows the official data.
However, the demand for work under NREGS is still higher than its pre-Covid levels when the number of families who availed of the scheme stood at 5.48 crore in 2019-20 and 5.27 crore in 2018-19.
NREGS was launched in the 200 most-backward rural districts of the country in 2006-07 and was extended to an additional 130 districts during 2007-08; and to the entire country from 2008-09.
The scheme saw a spike in demand for work during 2020-21 when a record 7.55-crore rural families availed of its benefit in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak. In fact, the scheme became a safety net for migrants who returned to their villages during the pandemic-induced lockdown in 2020. However, since 2020-21, the figure has been declining — 7.25 crore in 2021-22 and 6.19 crore in 2022-23.
The Economic Survey 2022-23, presented in Parliament earlier this year, had attributed the year-on-year (YoY) decline in monthly demand for MGNREGS work to the “normalisation of the rural economy due to strong agricultural growth and a swift recovery from Covid-induced slowdown, culminating in better employment opportunities.”
However, activists blame the introduction of mandatory attendance through the National Mobile Monitoring System App (NMMS), Aadhaar Based Payment System, and cut in the budget for the dip in the number of families availing of the NREGS. A parliamentary standing committee too has expressed concerns over the reduction of Rs 29,400 crore in the rural job scheme budget for the financial year 2023-24.
Ideas Page
Internal Chaos, External crisis (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s visit to India this week is bound to generate much media interest but will make little dent in the indifferent relations between the two countries.
Any meaningful change in bilateral relations must necessarily wait until Pakistan has a domestic consensus on foreign policy.
The vocal opposition in Islamabad to Bilawal’s visit – the first by its foreign minister to India in more than a decade — underlines Pakistan’s sharp internal divisions about its external relations at a critical juncture in world politics.
Although Bhutto is arriving here to participate in the deliberations of a multilateral organisation, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation which is led by Pakistan’s close partner China, the very act of visiting India is seen as a sacrilege by the ideologues in Islamabad.
The lack of agreement on India is only one part of Pakistan’s foreign policy problem. The bigger tussle has been on finding a sustainable approach to Pakistan’s engagement with the major powers that are at odds with each other—US, China, and Russia. Islamabad is also facing new challenges in Afghanistan and is struggling to cope with the shifting geopolitical dynamic in the Middle East.
That the Pakistan Army, long the arbiter of the nation’s major policies including the India strategy, is finding it hard to set the agenda is evident by the latest attacks on the former chief, General Qamar Jawed Bajwa.
Senior media figures have accused Bajwa of making major “compromises” with India on Kashmir; they also alleged that he was claiming that the Pakistan army is in “no position to fight” India.
Few in the media or the political class dared to criticise Bajwa during his six-year tenure (2016-22) as the army chief. There now is open season on him as the prestige of the Pakistan Army as an institution hit one of its lowest points.
For the people (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Narendra Modi government has been taking various measures to protect Indian consumers from international oil and gas price volatility. Despite a staggering increase of 228 per cent in international gas prices between January 2021 and February 2023, the increase in CNG prices in India has been restricted to 83 per cent — only about a third of the global increase.
Politically motivated naysayers, in their haste to criticise rising prices, fail to see how well India has done to shield its citizens from extreme price volatility in comparison to other major economies.
Farsighted governance through proactive measures such as increasing domestic Administered Price Mechanism (APM) gas allocation and diverting gas from non-priority sectors to transport and domestic segments has made this possible.
The recent Cabinet decision to approve a series of critical APM gas pricing reforms will further advance this objective. These reforms achieve two major goals:
First, to protect Indians from extreme price volatility and to provide clarity for planned capex investments in gas-based sectors; second, to promote more innovation and investments in exploration and production (E&P).
Explained
Stone of Scone (Page no. 18)
(Miscellaneous)
With Britain’s King Charles III set to have his coronation ceremony later this week on May 6 (Saturday), preparations are afoot for a day associated with specific objects and traditions as part of the world’s few remaining monarchies.
The event is expected to draw a significant audience from across the world. The interest here may also be because of the fact that the last time a coronation happened in the UK royal family was in 1953, after Charles’s mother Queen Elizabeth II was crowned Queen following the death of her father, King George VI, around a year prior. The Queen passed away on September 8, 2022.
Given the scale of the coronation ceremonies, they take place some months after the monarch’s death. Although, the proclamation of Charles as King happened soon after the Queen’s death in a small ceremony.
One of the objects which will be seen here, with a history stretching as far back as nearly a thousand years, is the Stone of Scone. It was recently moved from Scotland’s Edinburgh Castle to London in preparation for the coronation.
The 150kg red sandstone slab has some marks on it, along with two attached metal rings. Also known as the Stone of Destiny, the stone has long resided in Scotland and is seen as a sacred, historic symbol of its monarchy and nationhood.
Most populous: history and economics of India’s population growth (Page no. 18)
(GS Paper 1, Population and Associated Issues)
Last week, it was announced that India overtook China as the world’s most populous country. According to the estimates of the United Nations, in April 2023, India’s population reached 1,425,775,850 people.
This is a dubious distinction for a country that, notwithstanding its genuine credentials of being the fastest-growing major economy in the world at present, still belongs to the lower-middle income category (per capita income is around $2,200; one-sixth of China’s and even lower than Bangladesh’s).
Let’s first look at how India’s population grew over the centuries. The following information is sourced from the 2018 book A Population History of India written by Tim Dyson, Emeritus Professor of Population Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
While reading these numbers, note that “India” refers to different geographies over the millennia and, of course, the accuracy of data becomes more and more a matter of debate as one goes back in time.
The earliest estimates date back to around 9,500 years ago. “If the first modern people arrived in the subcontinent sometime between 60,000 and 80,000 years ago, then following the end of the last glacial period — say around 9,500 to 7,000 years before the present — they probably numbered in the several hundred thousand,” writes Dyson.
Around 4,000 years ago, most of the population (estimates vary between 4 to 6 million) was living in and around the Indus basin.