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The Election Commission of India said it has begun the process of delimitation of Assembly and Parliamentary constituencies in Assam.
The process will be based on Census data from 2001. The last delimitation of constituencies in Assam was done in 1976 on the basis of the 1971 Census.
In 1971, Assam’s population was 1.46 crore. In 2001, it increased to 2.66 crore and to 3.12 crore in 2011.The EC also issued a directive banning the creation of new administrative units in the state with effect from January 1 next year until completion of the delimitation exercise in the state.Assam currently has 14 Lok Sabha, 126 Assembly constituencies.
As mandated under Article 170 of the Constitution, census figures (2001) shall be used for the purpose of readjustment of Parliamentary and Assembly Constituencies in the State.
Reservation of seats for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes will be provided as per Articles 330 & 332 of the Constitution of India.
Assembly polls are not due in Assam until 2026. The state currently has 126 Assembly constituencies and sends 14 MPs to Lok Sabha.
The state Opposition is questioning why the delimitation exercise is being done on the basis of the 2001 Census, and not the 2011 Census.
It said the delimitation exercise in the state has been initiated following a request from the Ministry of Law and Justice.The Commission will design and finalise its own guidelines and methodology for the purpose of delimiting the constituencies.
During the delimitation exercise, the Commission will keep in mind the physical features, existing boundaries of administrative units, facility of communication, public convenience and as far as practicable, the constituencies will be kept as geographically compact areas.
According to the EC, once a draft proposal of delimitation of constituencies in Assam is finalised by the Commission, it will be published in the Central and State Gazettes inviting suggestions/objections from the general public.
Section 8A of the Representation of the People Act allows for delimitation of Parliamentary and Assembly constituencies in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur or Nagaland.
In March 2020, the Centre notified a Delimitation Commission for Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland.
Express network
Government charts course to boost animation,VFX, gaming sector (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, IT Computers and Economy)
Video games inspired by Ramayan and Mahabharat, a dedicated Doordarshan channel for children to promote indigenous animation, at least two teachers in every school to impart relevant training, and special degree courses approved by the UGC.
These are among avenues being explored by the government to promote the Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics (AVCG) sector in the country.
An inter-ministerial task force headed by Information and Broadcasting Secretary Apurva Chandra has made the recommendations, now being studied by the government, according to top officials of I&B, Education, and Skill Development ministries, who were involved in preparing three sets of reports on this.
The committee was formed by the I&B Ministry in April following a proposal in the Budget.According to the report, the Indian media and entertainment sector is expected to grow at 8.8% Compound Annual Growth Rate to reach $53.75 billion in 2026. Within the industry, the AVGC sector may see a growth of 14-16% in the next decade.
At present, India contributes about $2.5 billion to $3 billion out of the estimated $260-275 billion global AVGC market.Chandra told the media that more than incentives, the market at present requires a skilled workforce in this area.
There are an estimated 1.85 lakh professionals employed in the AVCG sector in India at present, and for the market to sustain its growth, another 20 lakh trained individuals are required by 2030.
In its report, the task force has highlighted the industry’s growth potential, particularly by showcasing India’s “culture and heritage across geographies”, along with the challenges.
It seeks to achieve that by a combination of promoting the sector at the global stage, along with developing school and college curriculum to address the problem of manpower deficit.
There is a need to explore other innovative ways through which the integration of AVGC with India’s culture could be strengthened and made more robust. Indian epics such as Ramayana and Mahabharata could be used as inspiration to develop online and video games, which could eventually contribute to India’s growth as an AVGC hub.
The task force, which saw participation from private players in the sector, observed that notwithstanding the current growth, AVGC education in the country strongly needs standardisation of content and delivery modes.
Editorial Page
The suitable officer (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Make in India and Ease of Doing Business policies were framed because Prime Minister Narendra Modi correctly believed that the problems of poverty and unemployment could only be solved by the rapid growth of the manufacturing sector.
This could not happen unless India changed from being a difficult country in which to manufacture and do business, to an attractive destination for manufacturing investment.
A multitude of important and badly-needed reforms were implemented in pursuance of these policies. Despite these efforts, manufacturing has till now not shown any significant increase in its growth. Investments in the sector remain inadequate.
Even taking into account Covid and global events, it is apparent that while policy intentions were excellent, their implementation has not yielded the intended results. Clearly, our implementation capabilities need to be more effective.
The development of strategies and plans for implementation and their execution is done by individuals. Repeated failures in this area point to the necessity of identifying the root causes for why existing personnel charged with policy execution have been failing.
The reasons could be inadequate knowledge and skills, lack of motivation, environmental constraints or weak supervision and monitoring. While the political leadership lays down the vision, the responsibilities for translating these into ground realities are that of IAS officers.
Most of the senior posts in the secretariats and districts are held by officers from the IAS. They are responsible for ensuring that subordinate civil servants are adequately trained and skilled, motivated and guided to deliver good outcomes.
They create the framework of rules that constitute the environment for implementation. Therefore, if policies are to be more effectively implemented, IAS officers need to be better equipped.
The recruitment system for the higher civil services ensures high-quality entrants. However, that does not automatically mean good results when posted in jobs that require specialised knowledge and experience.
They need to be properly equipped to work in the manufacturing sector. Achieving global levels of cost and quality competitiveness in the sector requires that officers working in areas relevant to policy-making in the central and state governments understand how laws, regulations and procedures impact the competitiveness of industry.
The green in our weaves (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Looking back at my 30-plus years working with Indian handlooms, I see both positive and negative trends. What is certain is that the craft world has changed, not in the slow-paced gradual way of changes in the past, but much faster than before.
The weavers of India have supplied the markets of the world with cotton cloth since at least the first century of the Common Era. In pre-industrial times, the many varieties of Indian cotton cloth — bafta, mulmul, mashru, jamdani, moree, percale, nainsukh, chintz, etc — were the source of India’s fabled wealth.
Until colonial times, the yarn for handloom weaving in India had been spun by hand. With the invention of spinning machinery in Britain and the import of machine-spun cotton yarn, this occupation vanished.
Since India was a British colony, the latter dictated its economic policies. Machine-woven cotton fabrics began to be imported, while raw cotton was shipped out to supply British industry.
But there was a problem: Though Indian varieties of cotton produced the finest fabrics the world has yet seen, the famous Dhaka muslins, they were unsuited to the newly invented textile machinery, while American cotton varieties that have a longer, stronger staple, were more suited to machine processing.
The machines needed a uniform kind of cotton, so the hundreds of varieties of Indian cotton which had been bred over centuriesnow had to become uniform. Diversity, until then valued, became a handicap.
By 1947, mass production was well established, and India’s own spinning and weaving mills took over the role of Lancashire. American cotton varieties and their hybrids gradually replaced native ones, so now, native varieties grow only in a few pockets.
Cotton in India is grown largely by small farmers, and the new practices have changed the nature of farm practices from sustainable, family-based agriculture to intensive commercial farming with severe and tragic consequences.
Humidity encourages pests and fungi. A cocktail of chemicals — fertiliser, pesticide and fungicide— is used which adds to the cost of cultivation, but does not guarantee a good harvest.
Explained
China, West, G20: Opportunities & concerns (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
After a tumultuous year in global geopolitics — with the Russia-Ukraine war and China’s belligerence at India’s doorstep — India is entering 2023 with challenges and opportunities staring at it on the diplomatic and military fronts.
With the war in Europe coming after two brutal years of the pandemic, 2022 is being compared with disruptive periods in the past — 1962 (India-China war, Cuban missile crisis), 1979 (Iranian revolution, invasion of Afghanistan, siege of Mecca), 1989 (fall of Berlin Wall), 1991 (Collapse of the Soviet Union, Economic reforms in India, Gulf War I), 2001 (9/11 terror attack, fall of Taliban, war on terror), 2008 (global financial crisis, 26/11 Mumbai terror attack).
With a highly infectious COVID-19 variant spreading across China, a level of uncertainty has again gripped the world. And an economic downturn looms large on the horizon.
As India hosts the G20 summit this year, Delhi looks to shape conversations on issues confronting the world: post-Covid economic recovery to health structures to deal with future pandemics to challenges to global norms to protection of the environment.
In two years at the UN Security Council as a non-permanent member, it sought to project India’s views and contribute to the global conversations.An evaluation of trends and events shows that six hard realities face India in 2023.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 has upended the global order in place since World War II, impacted the world’s food and energy security, and is pushing the global economy towards a recession.
The nuclear rhetoric from Russian leaders has caused anxiety, while the strategic embrace of Russia and China is another worry.
The Ukraine war has also made the world sit up and look at China’s aggression in the Indo-Pacific. US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan and Beijing’s response has drawn attention to China’s moves.
Closer home, India is facing that aggression on its border, with a skirmish in Arunachal Pradesh after the 2020 Galwan clashes that killed 20 Indian soldiers.
That Beijing is belligerent can be seen in its recent activities in the South China Sea, where it has been observed to carry out construction on an island.
The year that bid au revoir to hyper globalisation (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
In 1910, the British journalist Norman Angell published a book titled The Great Illusion, which argued that war in the modern era was an “economic impossibility”.
The sheer extent of financial and commercial interdependence between countries made conflict as futile for the conqueror as the conquered.
The economic chaos unleashed would compel “financiers of London to co-operate with those of New York to put an end to the crisis, not as a matter of altruism, but as a matter of commercial self-protection”. By 1913, The Great Illusion had sold over a million copies and been translated into 22 languages.
Angell was proved wrong. On 28 July 1914, World War-I broke out, ending only on November 11, 1918. It also ended the first “golden age” of globalisation between 1870 and 1914, when world trade in goods surged from 9% to 16% of GDP.
This was a period of internationalisation of economic and social life when, as the Cambridge economist John Maynard Keynes put it, “the inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep”.
By the time War War-II began in September 1939, the share of merchandise trade in global GDP had collapsed to 5.5%. It recovered gradually thereafter to reach the pre-World War-I levels only towards the late-1970s.
In December 1996, yet another journalist, Thomas L Friedman, wrote in The New York Times that “no two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other”.
He propounded this “thesis” just when the world had entered a new era of what Arvind Subramanian – who became Chief Economic Adviser to the Indian government – termed “hyperglobalisation”.
Between 1990 and 2008, global trade in goods soared from 15.3% to 25.2% of world GDP. Inclusive of trade in services, the increase was from 18.8% to 31.7%.
That era formally ended in 2022, which has seen not one, but two wars. Both have upended the assumption of “doux commerce” – encapsulated in the sayings of the French philosopher Montesquieu that “commerce is a cure for the most destructive prejudices” and “peace is the natural effect of trade”.
Economy
MeitY becomes nodal ministry for online gaming (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 2, Government Policies and Interventions)
The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) will soon publish rules for online gaming platforms and start public consultation on the regulations.According to an official gazette on Monday, MeitY is now the nodal ministry regulating online gaming.
In a tweet, Chandrasekhar said that the government is “committed to fully encouraging technology innovation — but also to ensure that no illegal content or services are possible”.
Earlier this month, Chandrasekhar had told Parliament that the government was aware of the possible risk and challenges of online gaming, including the risk of “violence abetting video games, addiction to it, and consequential financial loss.
The online gaming industry has been for a long asking for central-level law to regulate the sector. In May, MeitY set up an inter-ministerial task force to propose rules for regulating online gaming.
In October, the task force recommended the creation of a central regulatory body for the sector, clearly defining what games of skill and chance are and bringing online gaming under the purview of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, among other things.
The online gaming industry has welcomed the ministry’s appointment as the nodal agency.The appointment of MeitY as the central regulatory authority will provide clarity and certainty to investors, industry and consumers.
The decision is in line with the government’s initiative to push for the growth of the animation, visual effects, gaming and comics (AVGC) sector and making India a global hub for online gaming.
We are sure that the online gaming industry will grow responsibly under MeitY in creating a well-balanced regulatory framework.
As per a report by VC firm Sequoia and management consulting company BCG, the revenue of the Indian mobile gaming industry is expected to exceed $1.5 billion in 2022 and is estimated to reach $5 billion in 2025.
The industry grew at a CAGR of 38 per cent between 2017-2020, compared to 8 per cent in China and 10 per cent in the US. It is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15 per cent to reach Rs 153 billion in revenue by 2024.