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  • Using knowledge-era technology to bridge the urban-rural gap

    This article puts forward the idea of using knowledge-era technology to minimise the difference between rural and urban areas. In the first part, it elaborates the reasons and circumstances that led to the neglect of rural areas and development in urban areas. In the next part, the idea of using knowledge-era technologies to close the gaps between rural and urban areas is explored.

    Why Urbanisation is spreading and how it led to the neglect of rural areas?

    • Better opportunities: The tendency to migrate to urban areas has been a natural consequence of better opportunities that got created there — in contrast to life in rural areas becoming increasingly unsustainable.
    • Centralisation: The industrial-era dynamics that led to centralisation in support of mass production or massive scale-up was clearly a major one.
    • This, in turn, also led to the concentration of higher education/capacity building processes to urban centres where there was job growth, quite to the detriment of the much larger rural area.
    • Problems in education and training: The education and training environment became myopic, essentially meeting the manning requirements to run systems created by others.
    • Our education with its inherent problems led to little confidence in creating one’s own systems to address needs independent of others.
    • Demographic dividend: India’s importance grew primarily because of her demographic dividend and the large market that her people constituted and not because of the systems and technologies.
    • Neglect of rural India: Rural India suffered severe neglect in the process, probably as a result of poor job opportunities there and education having lost its role as an enabler of local development.
    • However, the country is learning to create systems and technologies to address her needs. The exercise is, by and large, urban-centric.

    UPSC asked about the quality of urban life in 2014, and the trends of labour migration in 2015. This article touched upon both of these themes.

    Using the knowledge-era technology to close the urban-rural gap

    • We are now in the knowledge era.
    • And knowledge-era technologies, in contrast to industrial-era technologies, promote democratisation (social media, for example) and facilitate decentralisation (work from home).
    • It should thus be possible for an adequately educated and trained youth residing in a rural domain to support a significant part of the manufacturing and service needs of urban areas.
    • Just as an urban youth can support a significant part of the knowledge and application needs in rural areas.
    • With technologies like additive manufacture, internet of things, and artificial intelligence, well-trained people can address needs in both urban and rural areas from wherever they are.
    • Thus, the knowledge era should, in principle, become a significant income leveller between the urban and rural domains, with a large rise in the overall national income.
    • As we focus on capacity building of rural youth, the opportunities in rural areas should, in principle, become higher than those in urban areas since the rural segment can now benefit from all three sectors of the economy- agriculture, manufacturing and services.

    The idea of “cillage”

    • In the knowledge era, with emphasis on capability and capacity building of rural youth in terms of holistic education, appropriate technology and enhanced livelihood, there is a possibility for a more balanced distribution of income as well as population.
    • This would, however, need knowledge bridges to be built between cities and villages, and the creation of an ecosystem which has been conceptualised as a “cillage” — a synergistic combination of city and village.
    • Bridging the knowledge gap between a city and a village would also bridge the income gap between the two.
    • This will also lead to a faster bridging of the gap between the average individual income in India and that in industrially advanced countries.
    • Democratisation promoted by knowledge technologies, if properly leveraged, can in principle reduce disparities, which, unfortunately, are on the rise today.

    How to realise the idea of cillage?

    • Integrated and holistic approach: Developing a “cillage” ecosystem would need a rooted and integrated approach to holistic education and research, technology development and management, as well as technology-enabled rural livelihood enhancement.
    • It would take a while for the rural youth to become empowered enough to convert the challenges into opportunities in rural areas.
    • The emergence of a new-age society is an inevitability.
    • How soon the rural domain can embrace it and how concurrently, comprehensively that can happen, is the real challenge.
    • That will decide whether India will gain in the knowledge era or lag as it did in the industrial era.

    Look at one more question from 2015-“Smart cities in India cannot sustain without smart villages. Discuss this statement in the backdrop of rural-urban integration”.  The ideas discussed here in this article help us to deal with such questions.

    Can Covid-19 speed up the realisation of cillage?

    • The process could also be seen as the migration of a set of experiences and skills to villages.
    • We can look at this as a potential two-way bridge for a new relationship between cities and villages.
    • It will be the bridge in which not all need to return to cities, but can rather meet the needs of cities as well as villages by remaining in villages.
    • Several initiatives will be needed to realise such a possibility.
    • Facilitating a number of new skills, technologies and support systems that can further leverage current capabilities of these people for starting a new enterprise would be important.
    • Immediate arrangements to facilitate their livelihood, and leveraging their present capabilities could help retain at least some of these people in villages.
    • It could trigger a faster movement towards an inevitable long-term equilibrium.
    • Going forward, we should take knowledge activities to a higher level so that the products and services created by these people become more competitive.
    • Looking at disruptive technologies for exploiting local opportunities should follow.

    Conclusion

    Given that the new normal after Covid-19 would, in any case, be quite different, the right course would be to channelise the stimulus caused by this crisis towards accelerating the shift to a new normal. This will not only help a more dispersed population, but will also reduce disparities and lead to faster growth of the economy.

  • Is the Centre’s lockdown different from a state’s lockdown?

    The central government has extended the 21-day nationwide lockdown by two more weeks. Before this, some states had already ordered to extend the lockdown till the end of this month.

    How do the two lockdowns differ?

    Newspapers are flooded up with news on lockdowns. The two lockdowns are fundamentally different from each other. Such difference sparks a thought in the mind of question framers.

    1) State lockdowns

    • As per the Constitution, subjects of law and order and public health lie with state governments.
    • Additionally, the Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897, which many states have invoked to order a lockdown, empowers them to prescribe temporary regulations to prevent the outbreak and spread of disease.

    2) Centre’s lockdown

    • The lockdown ordered by the centre is implemented under the Disaster Management Act, 2005.
    • The Union home ministry, in compliance with the NDMAs order can issue orders for the lockdown under Section 10(2)(l) of the DMA.

  • How IS regroups and its threat to India

     

    IS has shown its ability to strike by regrouping and co-opting local affiliates be it the case of Ester Sunday attack in Sri Lanka or a recent attack on a  Gurudwara in Afghanistan. For India, the presence of sleeper cells and their links with the Islamic jihad group has internal security implications. We have covered an op-ed dealing with the Gurudwara attack and discussed the futility of the US-Taliban peace deal.

    Security threat of IS to India and South Asia

    • In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there was speculation about the degree to which al-Qaeda had been able to make inroads in India.
    • In recent years, the focus has shifted to the IS.
    • The creation of an IS-Khorasan (IS-K) in early 2015 with a visible presence in Afghanistan-Pakistan, seemed to suggest that the group is now targeting South Asia.
    • The recent terror attack on a gurdwara in Kabul (March 25) was also claimed by the IS. The IS released a photograph of one of a resident of Kasargod in Kerala
    • According to India’s leading terrorism think-tank SATP (South Asia Terrorism Portal), 99 persons from India were confirmed to have joined the IS in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

    Question about the ” Over-ground worker” of the terrorist organisation was asked by the UPSC in 2019.

    Close intelligence cooperation within and beyond South Asia

    • Last October, the NIA disclosed that it had arrested 127 IS sympathisers from across India since 2014, and the highest number of 33 were from Tamil Nadu.
    • The arrests by NIA were made throughout the country and not from a specific region.
    • This degree of spread is testimony to the close watch the Indian security agencies are maintaining concerning the IS.
    • One may conjecture that close intelligence cooperation has been established within and beyond South Asia.
    • The pattern that now obtains is that countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan have their own internal surveillance in place to monitor the activities of the IS-K.

    Ability of IS to regroup and ally with a domestic affiliate

    • The IS has demonstrated a proclivity to re-group by co-opting or merging with credible domestic affiliates, even if they are little-known.
    • In Afghanistan, the IS-K has sought to position itself favourably in the factional tussle, and the Kabul gurdwara attack is seen as part of this murderous strategy.
    • Pakistan connection: Islamic terror groups in the Af-Pak region are deemed to be as credible as the support that they receive from the deep-state in Pakistan.
    • It is pertinent that the main accused in the Kabul gurdwara attack is Aslam Faroqi, a Pakistani national.

    Conclusion

    The ability of IS to co-opt a local affiliate makes it a credible threat for India where there is a significant presence of the sleeper cells. In the light of that threat India and the other affected nations will have to strive individually and collectively to foil such nefarious designs.

  • What are Primordial Black Holes (PBH)?

    A scientist duo from Pune has studied primordial black holes that were born as a result of a tiny bump in the potential energy levels of the universe, at a time when it was expanding rapidly.

    Strange space events are known to be the favourites of UPSC 🙂

    Primordial Black Holes (PBH)

    • PBH are a hypothetical type of black hole that formed soon after the Big Bang
    • It is believed that they are formed as a result of collapsing radiations as opposed to the collapse of massive stars, which is the case of any other black holes.
    • PBH can be massively large as 3000kms or be extremely tiny like nucleus of an atom.

    What did the study conclude?

    • The study has confirmed that this marginal rise in potential energy resulted in birth of several PBHs and also emitted very powerful gravitational waves.
    • Approximately 14 billion years ago before the commencement of the Hot Big Bang phase, the very young universe was found to be active and expanding at a highly accelerated rate.
    • This exponential growth in its size was fuelled by the presence of uniform energy field and density as the universe passed through the Cosmic Inflation phase.
    • According to the scientists, as time passes, this uniform energy prevailing in the Inflation Field wanes out.
    • As a result, the universe resumes its normal decelerating rate.

    Expansion of universe

    • Gravity is normally attractive in nature. The PBH did undergo rapid expansion due to the Inflation field which contrarily possessed repulsive gravity.
    • This pushed the universe to expand at a much faster rate than normal.
    • The universe had expanded to nearly 10^27 times its original size, that too, within just fraction of a second by the time Cosmic Inflation phase concluded.
    • Thereafter, the remnant energy possessed by this gravitational force got converted mainly into photons (light) in addition to protons, electrons, neutrons and other particles.
    • As the universe continued to grow exponentially during the Cosmic Inflation phase, it sent across tiny quantum jitters.
    • These fluctuations, released in a specific fashion, when sufficiently large, slowly give birth to galaxies and stars. Among those that were significantly large, helped form PBHs.

     

  • How a dollar swap line with US Fed can help in uncertain times?

    India is working with the US to secure a dollar swap line that would help in better management of its external account and provide an extra cushion in the event of an abrupt outflow of funds.

    What are Currency Swaps?

    • A currency swap, also known as a cross-currency swap, is an off-balance sheet transaction in which two parties exchange principal and interest in different currencies.
    • The purpose of a currency swap is to lower exposure to exchange rate risk or reduce the cost of borrowing a foreign currency.

    Why do we need dollars?

    • According to RBI data, 63.7% of India’s foreign currency assets — or $256.17 billion — are held in overseas securities, mainly in the US treasury.
    • While FPIs investors looking for safer investments, the current global uncertainty over COVID outbreak have led to a shortfall in Indian stock markets.
    • This has pulled down India’s foreign exchange reserves.
    • This means that the government and the RBI cannot lower their guard on the management of the economy and the external account.

    How does a swap facility work?

    • In a swap arrangement, the US Fed provides dollars to a foreign central bank, which, at the same time, provides the equivalent funds in its currency to the Fed, based on the market exchange rate at the time of the transaction.
    • The parties agree to swap back these quantities of their two currencies at a specified date in the future, which could be the next day or even three months later, using the same exchange rate as in the first transaction.
    • These swap operations carry no exchange rate or other market risks, as transaction terms are set in advance.

    Benefits of currency swap

    • The absence of an exchange rate risk is the major benefit of such a facility.
    • This facility provides India with the flexibility to use these reserves at any time in order to maintain an appropriate level of balance of payments or short-term liquidity.
    • currency swaps between governments also have supplementary objectives like promotion of bilateral trade, maintaining the value of foreign exchange reserves with the central bank and ensuring financial stability (protecting the health of the banking system).

    Recent examples

    • India already has a $75 billion bilateral currency swap line with Japan, which has the second-highest dollar reserves after China.
    • The RBI also offers similar swap lines to central banks in the SAARC region within a total corpus of $2 billion.

    Note: Relate all other terminologies related to USD-INR convertiblity viz. Current Account, BoP etc.

  • Covid-19 donations to CM Relief Fund won’t qualify as CSR

    The corporate affairs ministry has clarified that COVID-19 donations to CM Relief Fund won’t qualify as CSR contributions.

    Contributions considered under CSR

    • According to the ministry, contributions made to the State Disaster Management Authority to combat COVID-19 would qualify as CSR expenditure.
    • The contributions by companies to PM-CARES Fund to tackle the pandemic would be considered as CSR.
    • Ex-gratia payments made to temporary, casual and daily wage workers by companies will be considered as CSR expenditure under the company’s law, provided that such payments are over and above disbursement of wages.
    • The contribution towards ‘Chief Minister’s Relief Fund’ or ‘State Relief Fund for COVID-19’ would not be considered as spending towards CSR work.

    Note: Please remember or make note of the various contributions complying for CSR.

    Back2Basics: CSR in India

    • India is the first country in the world to make corporate social responsibility (CSR) mandatory, following an amendment to the Companies Act, 2013 in April 2014.
    • Prior to that, the CSR clause was voluntary for companies, though it was mandatory to disclose their CSR spending to shareholders.
    • Businesses can invest their profits in areas such as education, poverty, gender equality, and hunger as part of any CSR compliance.
    • Under the Companies Act, 2013, certain classes of profitable entities are required to spent at least 2 per cent of their three-year average annual net profit towards CSR activities.
    • Under Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013, every company having net worth of at least ₹500 crore, turnover of ₹1,000 crore or more, or a minimum net profit of ₹5 crore during the immediately preceding financial year, has to make CSR expenditure.

  • [pib] Operation Lifeline UDAN

    To ensure a steady supply of essentials, even in the most remote locations, the Union Civil Aviation Ministry launched ‘Lifeline Udan’.

    Don’t get confused or correlate this with Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN) Scheme. The name clearly indicates that it is an HADR like operation. Whats HADR? Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief

    Op. Lifeline Udan

    • Under this operation, flights are being operated to transport essential medical cargo to remote parts of the country amid the lockdown to support India’s fight against Covid-19.
    • The flights have been operated by Air India, Alliance Air, Indian Air Force, Pawan Hans and private carriers.
    • The cargo compulsorily supplies goods such as regents, enzymes, medical equipment, testing kits and PPE, masks, gloves and other essential items as applicable by the State and UT Governments.
    • Air India is shouldered to operate dedicated scheduled cargo flights to other countries for transfer of critical medical supplies, as per the requirement.

  • [pib] YUKTI web-portal

    Union Ministry for HRD has launched a web-portal YUKTI (Young India Combating COVID with Knowledge, Technology and Innovation).

    There are various web/portals/apps with peculiar names, ex. DISHA, SWAYAM. Note them down with their one line purpose. UPSC Prelims may quiz you on these.

    YUKTI web-portal

    • YUKTI is a unique portal and dashboard to monitor and record the efforts and initiatives of MHRD.
    • The portal intends to cover the different dimensions of COVID-19 challenges in a very holistic and comprehensive way.
    • The primary aim of the portal is to keep academic community healthy, both physically & mentally and to enable a continuous high-quality learning environment for learners.

    Utility of the portal

    • The portal allows various institutions to share their strategies for various challenges which are there because of the unprecedented situation of COVID-19 and other future initiatives.
    • It will give inputs for better planning and will enable MHRD to monitor effectively its activities for coming six months.
    • It will establish a two-way communication channel between the Ministry of HRD and the institutions so that the Ministry can provide the necessary support system to the institutions.

  • A plan for the aftermath

    Context

    Everyone is agreed that the whole world is hurtling towards an unprecedented economic recession. India, already facing a massive slowdown, is going to get hurt perhaps more than the others, because our economic immune system is already weak.

    Three things that we must do in the present situation

    • The first is containing the spread of the virus.
    • Apart from the manpower, medicines, protective equipment for frontline workers and other methods, it will need massive resources to tackle it.
    • Second, the poor are already suffering in more ways than one, including the daily wage earners. They will have to be taken care of, again needing massive resources.
    • Third, economic activity will have to be revived as soon as conditions return to normal or near-normal, for which businesses will have to be helped, again needing massive resources; both in terms of revenue foregone and actual cash outgo.
    • The question, therefore, on everyone’s mind is how much money will be needed for all this and where will it come from?
    • What the government and the RBI have done so far is clearly awfully inadequate. Other countries have done much more. India can be no exception.

    Where will the government will get resources?

    • Partly from market and partly form RBI: Broadly speaking, resources will come partly through market borrowings and partly from the RBI.
    • Manmohan Singh had decided in 1994 that in future the government of India would not monetise its deficit; in other words, would not borrow from the RBI but go to the money market and borrow from there.
    • Borrow from the RBI: In these unprecedented times, we may take leave from that very sound principle, which all governments have followed religiously since then, and borrow from the RBI.
    • What does it mean? This means printing of more currency notes with all its attendant problems including inflation.
    • Government of India will have to take the steps necessary to tackle the after-effects to the extent possible. It must ensure that the supply chains work smoothly.

    How will the money be spent?

    • The Important role of states: The states will have to play a very important role in this, as much of the work will have to be done by them.
    • Responsibility of finance commission: Since the finance commission continues to be in existence and has a clear idea of the state finances, it should be immediately tasked with the responsibility of discussing this matter with the state governments and making its recommendations available within a period of one month.
    • The task force under the finance minister could work out the needs of businesses and the government of India both in the short as well as the medium term.
    • Spending money properly and efficiently: It should not be wasted and each rupee spent creates its own multiplier effect.
    • Our system leaves much to be desired. And the moment it is known that funding is not a constraint, the system can go berserk.
    • We must guard against that and ensure that rules are in place, specially at the field level to ensure the proper use of resources.

    Role of banks, financial institutions and MGNREGA

    • The banks and other financial institutions will have to be provided with resources to help the private sector, especially the agricultural and MSME sectors.
    • In the rural areas, we must ensure that durable assets are created out of the funds made available.
    • The rules governing the MGNREGA scheme should be tweaked to the extent necessary in order to ensure that more material than labour is used wherever necessary.

    Conclusion

    India should and can come out of the present crisis with as little damage as possible if we tackle it together. We cannot control what happens in other countries, but we can surely learn from them and adopt their best practices. We must also play our role in defining the new global order because the world is more intertwined now than ever before.

  • Know all about the National Board for Wildlife

    The National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) hasn’t met since 2014. Policy decisions and clearances have, meanwhile, come from a standing committee to the dismay of experts.

    This newscard is all about the factoids on National Board for Wildlife. The fact that they haven’t met since 2014 makes it interesting for UPSC to quiz you on its details.

    About National Board for Wildlife

    • The NBWL is constituted by the Central Government under Section 5 A of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 (WLPA).
    • It serves as an apex body to review all wildlife-related matters and approve projects in and around national parks and sanctuaries.
    • The board is advisory in nature and advises the Central Government on framing policies and measures for conservation of wildlife in the country.

    Composition

    • It is chaired by India’s Prime Minister and its vice-chairman is Minister of Environment.
    • The NBWL has 47 members including the chairperson.
    • Among these, 19 members are ex-officio members.
    • Every new government constitutes a new board, based on the provisions of the WLPA, with the new PM as the chair.

    Functioning

    • The primary function of the NBWL is to promote the conservation and development of wildlife and forests.
    • It has the power to review all wildlife-related matters and approve projects in and around national parks and sanctuaries.
    • No alternation of boundaries in national parks and wildlife sanctuaries can be done without the approval of the NBWL.

    Working through a Standing Committee

    • The National Board may, at its discretion, constitute a Standing Committee.
    • The Committee shall consist of the MoEFCC in charge as Vice-Chairperson, Member Secretary and not more than ten members to be nominated by the Vice-Chairperson from amongst the members of the National Board.
    • The WLPA mandates that without the approval/recommendation of the NBWL, construction of tourist lodges, alteration of the boundaries of PAs, destruction or diversion of wildlife habitat and de-notification of Tiger Reserves, cannot be done.

    Seeking clearances

    • Several proposals seeking statutory approvals for such projects come up before the Standing Committee.
    • Every proposal requires to be submitted by the State Government in the approved format with complete details (maps, field assessments, alternatives explored…).
    • It must also contain the clear opinion of the officer in charge of a PA, the Chief Wildlife Warden and the State Government in consultation with the State Board for Wildlife.
    • The Standing Committee will then have to consider such proposals in accordance with the provisions of the WLPA.

    Back2Basics: Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972

    • WPA provides for the protection of the country’s wild animals, birds and plant species, in order to ensure environmental and ecological security.
    • It provides for the protection of a listed species of animals, birds and plants, and also for the establishment of a network of ecologically-important protected areas in the country.
    • It provides for various types of protected areas such as Wildlife Sanctuaries, National Parks etc.
    • There are six schedules provided in the WPA for protection of wildlife species which can be concisely summarized as under:
    Schedule I: These species need rigorous protection and therefore, the harshest penalties for violation of the law are for species under this Schedule.
    Schedule II: Animals under this list are accorded high protection. They cannot be hunted except under threat to human life.
    Schedule III & IV: This list is for species that are not endangered. This includes protected species but the penalty for any violation is less compared to the first two schedules.
    Schedule V: This schedule contains animals which can be hunted.
    Schedule VI: This list contains plants that are forbidden from cultivation.