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Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently praised the Bharuch district administration and the Gujarat Government for covering 100 percent beneficiaries in the district under four national schemes.
The schemes are for widows and senior citizens and the district’s drive to enrol all beneficiaries was named “Utkarsh Pahel”.
Between January and May, Surat enrolled 13,431 beneficiaries (see table) under four schemes — Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Vrudhhavasta Pension Yojana (IGRVPY), Niradhar Vrudh Sahay Yojana (NVSY), Ganga Swaroop Arthik Sahay Yojana (GSASY) and Rashtriya Kutumb Sahay Yojana (RKSY).
The campaign saw the coming together of local BJP leaders and their team, the district administration and Ankleshwar Industries Association (AIA), a body of industries manufacturing chemicals, drugs, petroleum products, etc.
The AIA played a major role by identifying 305 youths and paying an incentive of Rs 250 to Rs 500 per enrolment.
We also shared information about the schemes at Samaj Suraksha office at taluka and district levels. Hoardings were put up at different locations and advertisements issued in the newspapers and local news channels.
The response started coming in and we sent our teams to different villages in the talukas, to get the forms of beneficiaries filled.”
Sumera then reached out to the AIA seeking its help to hire youths who were Class 10 pass to help beneficiaries fill the forms. Such volunteers were called “Utkarsh Sahayaks”.
Explained
Chinese Space rocket debris crashes back to Earth over Indian Ocean (Page no. 9)
GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
Debris from a massive Chinese rocket fell back to Earth over the Indian Ocean, space officials from the US and China confirmed, according to a report by news agency Reuters.
The US Space Command said that the Long March 5B (CZ-5B) rocket re-entered over the Indian Ocean at approximately 12:45 pm EDT Saturday (16:45 GMT).
We refer you to the PRC for further details on the reentry’s technical aspects such as potential debris dispersal+ impact location.
NASA said Beijing had not shared the “specific trajectory information” needed to know where possible debris might fall.
It remains unclear what path the debris from the booster might take, US Space Command said on Twitter, referring questions to the Chinese government.
China’s spaceflight agency said that wreckage of the 23-metric-ton (25.4 tons) Long March 5B hit Earth over the sea in the southwestern Philippines with the “vast majority” of the debris burning up upon re-entry, according to a brief statement that was criticized by a US official.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Manned Space Agency insisted most of the debris had burned up on re-entry over the Sulu Sea, between the island of Borneo and the Philippines, according to the New York Times, which cited updates on the social networking site Weibo.
All spacefaring nations should follow established best practices and do their part to share this type of information in advance to allow reliable predictions of potential debris impact risk,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, as reported by Reuters. “Doing so is critical to the responsible use of space and to ensure the safety of people here on Earth.
India’s unique jobs crisis (Page no. 9)
GS Paper 3, Indian Economy)
India has “too many people” in agriculture and the inability to move surplus labour from farms constitutes a major policy failure of successive governments.
According to Amit Basole, who heads the Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University in Bengaluru, the share of India’s working population engaged in farming has fallen quite significantly during the last three decades.
In 1993-94, agriculture accounted for close to 62% of the country’s employed labour force. That proportion – based on data from the National Statistical Office’s Periodic Labour Force (previously known as ‘employment and unemployment’) Surveys – dropped almost six percentage points by 2004-05 and even more (9 percentage points) over the next seven years. The declining trend continued, albeit at a slower pace, in the subsequent seven as well.
Overall, between 1993-94 and 2018-19, agriculture’s share in India’s workforce came down from 61.9% to 41.4% (see chart). In other words, roughly a third in 25 years.
That isn’t insignificant. Basole estimates that given its level of per capita GDP in 2018 – and comparing with the average for other countries in the same income bracket – India’s farm sector should be employing 33-34% of the total workforce. 41.4% may not be a substantial deviation from the average.
To start with, there’s been a reversal of the trend in the last two years, which has seen the share of those employed in farms rise to 44-45%. This has primarily to do with the Covid-induced economic disruptions.
The Periodic Labour Force Survey years are from July to June. The 2019-20 survey results will, hence, also cover the first lockdown period from late-March to end-June 2020.
The reverse migration of people back to the farms should be a temporary blip, though, with the surveys from 2021-22 hopefully revealing a restoration of the long-term trend.
PM and President’s photos in govt ads: Supreme Court ruling, High Court interpretation (Page no. 9)
GS Paper 2, Indian Polity)
The Madras High Court directed the Tamil Nadu government to include the photographs of the President of India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in advertisements on the 44th Chess Olympiad underway in Chennai. The HC relied on a 2015 Supreme Court ruling that issued guidelines on government spending on advertisements.
In Common Cause v Union of India, the Supreme Court sought to regulate the way the government spends on advertisements.
It essentially regulated the 2007 New Advertisement Policy of the Government of India. The petitioners had argued that there is arbitrary spending on advertisements by the government.
The allegations ranged from wastage of public money for political mileage to using advertisements as a tool to manipulate media.
Since the primary cause of government advertisement is to use public funds to inform the public of their rights, obligations, and entitlements as well as to explain Government policies, programs, services and initiatives, however, when these requisites are not fulfilled in a government advertisement then the whole purpose would be frustrated,” the court said.
Patronization of any particular media house(s) must be avoided and award of advertisements must be on an equal basis to all newspapers who may, however, be categorized depending upon their circulation.
The DAVP (Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity) guidelines do not deal with the said aspect of the matter and hence the necessity of incorporating the same in the present directions to ensure the independence, impartiality and the neutrality of the fourth estate which is vital to the growth and sustenance of democracy will have to be weighed and considered by us.
A three-judge Bench comprising then Chief Justice of India P Sathasivam, and Justices Ranjan Gogoi and N V Ramana had set up a committee to suggest a better policy.
Editorial Page
Turbulence ahead (Page no. 10)
GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The recent incident so fair lines developing technical glitches have received widespread public scrutiny, raising concerns about the safety of Indian carriers.
The aviation industry in India has shown tremendous resilience in withstanding the onslaught of market forces along with ever-changing passenger preferences.
Many airlines have come and gone in this intensely competitive industry, proving that complacency in this sector is not prudent, neither for airline companies nor the regulator.
Questions about the safety of airlines need to be viewed through the definitive answers provided by statistics. As per International Air Traffic Association (IATA) records, there was only one accident in every 9.9 lakh flights in 2021 as opposed to one in every 6.3lakhflights in2020, globally.
Across the world, there has been a significant reduction in accident rates and fatalities. India’s air safety indicators are significantly ahead of the global average.
In 2019, there were just 0.82 accidents per million flights as compared to the global average of 3.02. The improvement in India’s performance can be noted in the fact that accidents per million flights were 2.8 in 2014.
Despite the technical issues that have cropped up, flying remains the safest mode of transportation. One of the primary factors responsible for air safety is undoubtedly the quality of human resources.
The critical facets of training pilots, ground crew and engineers significantly contribute to the holistic health of the airlines. One of the indicators that speak to the health of airlines is the robustness of aircraft maintenance.
An airline, to be truly considered safe, must have the requisite bandwidth and repository of spare parts. Hence, the regulator must come down heavily on issues regarding the shortage of spare parts owing to delayed payments to vendors.
Impending Storm (Page no. 10)
GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The good news from last week’s two-hour long virtual meeting between US President Joe Biden and the Chinese leader Xi Jinping is this: Washington and Beijing are talking to each other at the highest political level despite the rapidly deteriorating ties.
If the problems between the world’s two most powerful nations had begun in the Trump era (2017-21), they are now racing down the slippery slope. The bad news, however, is that the two sides are talking past each other rather than to each other.
That neither side was willing to call the talks “positive” or “constructive” suggests how far the two sides are. In fact, the objectives of Biden and Xi are quite divergent.
Biden is looking for a measure of stability in a relationship that has become increasingly volatile. The US President would like to keep the channels of communication open and create some safeguards to prevent the two sides from coming to blows.
While recognising the depth of US’s contradictions with China, Biden would like to explore potential areas of cooperation such as mitigating climate change. For Xi, the priority is to persuade Biden to dilute if not end the American sanctions and compel Washington to accept China as an equal power, and cede Beijing primacy in Asia.
To make matters worse, neither Biden nor Xi is in a position to make major concessions. Although some in the US have called on Biden to reduce some of the tariffs on Chinese goods imposed by Trump, Biden can’t afford to look weak before the midterm elections scheduled in the first week of November.
Xi, who has projected himself as a strong champion of Chinese nationalism, can’t back off as he prepares for the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party later this year.
Biden and Xi have apparently agreed to explore the possibility of a physical summit between the two leaders at the end of the year. Hopefully, both the leaders will have greater political room to find some common ground.
But the turbulence between the US and China is unlikely to respect the political calendar in either country. The last few years have seen Taiwan emerge as a dangerous flashpoint between the two nations.
It is now about to boil over. Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, has plans to visit Taiwan during her current trip to Asia. Beijing is warning Washington not to play with fire on Taiwan.
Hotheads in Beijing are demanding the use of force to prevent Pelosi from landing in Taiwan. The US military is making forces to cope with a potential military crisis.
In Washington, the Republicans, who despise Democrat Pelosi, are urging her not to back down. Unless one or the other steps back, a perfect geopolitical storm is about to envelop Asia this week.
The Idea Page
On food inflation, the humble tomato has challenged the mighty RBI (Page no. 11)
GS Paper 3, Indian Economy)
The RBI has the unenviable task of keeping inflation within the 4+/-2 per cent range. But lately, despite its best efforts, inflation has remained defiant and above its tolerance band.
In June 2022, consumer price index (CPI) inflation was at 7.01 per cent, and wholesale price index (WPI) inflation was at 15.18 per cent. For 2022-23, the RBI seems to have admitted that inflation will stay above 6 per cent, maybe settle at 6.7 per cent.
The RBI’s major policy tool, the repo rate, its brahmastra to tame inflation, has already been hiked by 90 basis points, raising it to 4.9 per cent in June.
It is likely to rise to at least 5.5 per cent, if not more, over the course of this financial year. But will this be enough to tame inflation? The short answer is “probably not”. The underlying reason is the nature and structure of inflation in India.
The CPI basket in India comprises of 299 commodities grouped into six major categories. The food and beverages group has a weight of 45.86 per cent (with food at 39.06 per cent, prepared meals at 5.55 per cent and non-alcoholic beverages at 1.26 per cent). The consumer food price inflation (CFPI) was at 7.75 per cent in June, a bit higher than overall CPI inflation.
It is this overwhelmingly high weight of food in overall CPI, based on the consumer expenditure survey (CES) data of 2011-12, that distinguishes Indian inflation from many other developed countries where the food weight is much smaller.
For example, it is much lower in Germany (8.5 per cent), the UK (9.3 per cent), the US (13.42 per cent), Canada (15.94 per cent), France (16.49 per cent), Australia (16.8 per cent), China (19.9 per cent), and Japan (26.3 per cent). Even developing nations like South Africa (17.24 per cent), Brazil (25.5 per cent), and Pakistan (34.83 per cent) have lesser weightage of food in overall CPI than India.
The higher the weight of food in the overall CPI, the more difficult it is for the monetary policy squeeze alone to contain inflation.
A new trade deal (Page no. 11)
GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Five months into the Ukraine war, much of the world’s focus has been on the near term impact of the war. Critical cuts in Russian and Ukrainian exports have resulted in commodity prices soaring, threatening trade flows, external balances, and most importantly, food security of many countries.
The price of oil has risen sharply. Despite the slight dampening due to fears of recession in the past few weeks, it has raised concerns about impaired energy security.
Quite naturally, everyone is focused on the rise in commodity prices, a major problem in the short term. The US and the EU have imposed sanctions with the express intent of cutting off Russia’s capacity to wage war on Ukraine.
Russia, however, has found other ways to fund the war. Russia contributes12 per cent of the world’s oil and gas. Despite Ural oil prices being 30 per cent lower than Brent crude, the world, with two significant exceptions, has shunned the former.
China and India have sharply increased the import of Russian oil despite being net exporters of oil products. Given the current price of oil, Russia earns more from oil now than it did before the war.
Importantly, the global oil price is lower than what it would have been if China and India had bought oil from non Russian sources.
This has necessitated a different tactic and the US response, endorsed by the heads of G-7, has been to cap the price of the oil sold by Russia so that Moscow accepts a lower payment while providing the same amount of oil to the market. This can have serious unintended consequences and backfire badly.
Why would China, India and, indeed, the rest of the world, agree to the lower price knowing that this would work only if Russia chose not to retaliate?
In fact, Russia’s public finances and external balances today are sufficiently strong for them to retaliate. Analysts suggest that Russia could withhold about three million barrels a day without damaging its public finances. This would have a catastrophic effect on the oil market, sending the price of oil to $192, according to experts.