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GS Paper: GS3

  • Startup India Initiative and its Success

    A research, reviewing India’s entrepreneurial policy Startup India, affirmed its positive impact in reducing regional entrepreneurial disparities.

    Startup India Initiative

    • The Startup India campaign was first announced by PM Modi during his speech on 15 August 2015 address from the Red Fort.
    • The action plan for this initiative is focusing on three areas:
    1. Simplification and Handholding.
    2. Funding Support and Incentives.
    3. Industry-Academia Partnership and Incubation.
    • An additional area relating to this initiative is to discard restrictive States Government policies within this domain, such as License Raj, Land Permissions, Foreign Investment Proposals, and Environmental Clearances.
    • It was organized by the Department for promotion of industry and internal trade (DPI&IT).

    The success of the scheme

    • Minister for Commerce and Industry has informed the Lok Sabha that the entrepreneurial portal had more than 65,000 startups registered.
    • Of which, 40 attained the ‘unicorn’ status in the last twelve months, bringing the total as of date to 90.
    • India now ranks third among global startup eco-systems.
    • The networking, training and mentoring facilities provided by Startup India alongside entrepreneurship outreach campaigns in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, helped address regional entrepreneurial disparities in India.

    Limitations to its success

    (1) Heavy concentration in megacities

    • Entrepreneurship continues to be “highly concentrated” in three megacities, namely, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi NCR.
    • India’s venture capital industry is also clustered in and around these three cities.
    • Such concentration can lead to increased economic inequality and hinder emergence of entrepreneurs from industries other than those belonging to the clusters.

    (2) Narrow Representation

    • The Startup India Action Plan document has no mention of the words ‘caste’, ‘tribe’, ‘marginalised’, ‘indigenous’ or ‘social group’.
    • Additionally, the policy’s reliance on technology does not take into consideration India’s digital divide, especially with respect to urban and rural areas.

    (3) Few Women in the industry

    • There is an under-representation of women and marginalized caste groups in the national startup ecosystem.

    Dedicated measures to support Women

    • 10% of the fund in the Fund of Funds operated by Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) has been reserved for women-led startups.
    • Further, all the alternate investment funds where the SIDBI takes equity have been mandated to contribute 20% in business which are women led.
    • There is a capacity-building program and a dedicated webpage for women on the portal.

    Way ahead

    • There is a need for policies and progressive strategies from governments to encourage startups and provide access and assistance in key areas including tax clarity, incubation, affordability and licensing.
    • In any case, governments should be well prepared and dedicated to creating a culture of startups to impact the entrepreneurial ecosystem in their cities, countries and citizens.

     

    Also read:

    [Burning Issue] Five Years of Startup India Scheme

     

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  • Rhino population up by 200 in Kaziranga

    The population of the greater one-horned or Indian rhinoceros in the Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve has increased by 200 (from 2413 in 2018) in four years, the latest census of the flagship animal has revealed.

    About Indian Rhino

    • The Indian rhinoceros also called the greater one-horned rhinoceros and great Indian rhinoceros is a rhinoceros native to the Indian subcontinent.
    • It is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List and Schedule I animal in the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.
    • It once ranged across the entire northern part of the Indian Subcontinent, along the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra River basins, from Pakistan to the Indian-Myanmar border.
    • Poaching for rhinoceros horn became the single most important reason for the decline of the Indian rhino.

    Why are Rhinos poached for horns?

    • Ground rhino horn is used in traditional Chinese medicine to cure a range of ailments, from cancer to hangovers, and also as an aphrodisiac.
    • In Vietnam, possessing a rhino horn is considered a status symbol.
    • Due to demand in these countries, poaching pressure on rhinos is ever persistent against which one cannot let the guard down.

    Try this PYQ:

    Q. Consider the following statements:

    1. Asiatic lion is naturally found in India only.
    2. Double-humped camel is naturally found in India only.
    3. One-horned rhinoceros is naturally found in India only.

    Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

    (a) 1 only

    (b) 2 only

    (c) 1 and 3 only

    (d) 1, 2 and 3

     

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  • Places in news: Sariska Tiger Reserve

    A massive fire has broken out in the Sariska Tiger Reserve and Air Force helicopters equipped with water sprays are battling to bring it under control.

    Sariska Tiger Reserve

    • Sariska Tiger Reserve is a tiger reserve in Alwar district, Rajasthan.
    • It stretches over an area of 881 sq km comprising scrub-thorn arid forests, dry deciduous forests, grasslands, and rocky hills.
    • This area was a hunting preserve of the Alwar state and was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1958.
    • It was given the status of a tiger reserve making it a part of India’s Project Tiger in 1978.
    • It is the first reserve in the world with successfully relocated tigers.
    • It is a part of the Aravalli Range and the Khathiar-Gir dry deciduous forests eco-region.

    Existential threats

    • It is rich in mineral resources, such as copper.
    • In spite of the Supreme Court’s 1991 ban on mining in the area, marble mining continues to threaten the environment.

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  • [Sansad TV] Perspective – NLMC: Utilising Unused Land

  • RBI cannot ignore inflation

    Context

    Despite being legally mandated to keep inflation in check, RBI has persisted with easy monetary policy, even as inflationary pressures have increased. We need to understand why, and what could be the repercussions.

    Inflation problem in India

    • For most of the past two years, CPI (consumer price index) inflation has been hovering close to the 6 per cent upper threshold of the RBI’s target band.
    • Inflation averaged 6.1 per cent during the pandemic period (April 2020 to June 2021), despite a massive collapse in aggregate demand.
    • Then in January 2022, as food prices recovered, headline inflation once again crossed the upper threshold of the inflation targeting band.
    • Inflationary pressures do not seem to be diminishing either. Instead, they continue to build up.
    • The standard measure of inflation “in the pipeline” is WPI (wholesale price index) inflation, since price increases at the wholesale level tend to translate into retail inflation in due course.
    •  Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has resulted in a sharp increase in global commodity prices, including prices of crude oil, edible oils, and fertilisers.
    • Indian firms are already adapting to this situation, passing on commodity price increase to retail prices.

    Issues with RBI’s stance

    • Standard economics gives us a guide for how central banks should react in a situation like this.
    • Two conditions: It says that monetary policy should accommodate the first round of commodity price increase, but only under certain conditions, notably that inflation is initially on target, and expectations are firmly anchored.
    • But neither condition holds at present. Inflation is already too high, and so are expectations.
    • An argument is nonetheless being made that monetary policy should not be tightened when inflation is driven by supply-side factors, as it can adversely impact growth.
    • This is fallacious. When there are supply constraints, using easy monetary policy to boost demand is not going to boost output.
    • And if firms are expecting high inflation, this will send things into a vicious spiral, as they will increase their prices even more in advance of any input price pressures.
    • Surely the RBI is aware of all of this. So why is it still not acting on it?

    Why RBI is ignoring inflationary pressure?

    • Growth concerns: The problem seems to be that governments all over the world are worried about growth.
    • The US Federal Reserve has been slow to raise rates even as inflation has reached a four-decade high. The European Central Bank has been even slower to react.
    • Fiscal dominance in India: In India, monetary policy also suffers from a strong fiscal dominance.
    • As a result, not only is the RBI expected to support growth, it is also expected to keep the government’s borrowing costs in check, which is in direct conflict with its inflation targeting objective.

    Implications of RBI ignoring inflationary pressure

    • Aggressive reduction in interest rates: A decade ago, we were in a similar situation when RBI delayed its response because it was focusing on growth.
    • When inflation subsequently took off, it reached double digits and the RBI had to raise interest rates aggressively to bring it down.
    • That was a very painful adjustment.
    • Impact on credibility of the RBI: In addition, if the RBI does allow inflation to take off, there will be long-lasting repercussions for its credibility.
    • Unachrored expectation:  if the public sees the RBI consistently ignoring inflation, expectations can rapidly get unanchored, and then it becomes very costly to bring it down.

    Conclusion

    To conclude, inflation is best addressed by the central bank using monetary policy, not by the government adjusting taxes. The RBI needs to urgently revisit its inflation forecast and its monetary policy stance in order to avoid potentially painful adjustments down the road.

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  • Detecting Microplastics in Human Blood

    A study by researchers from The Netherlands has found Microplastics in blood samples. About half of these were PET (polyethylene tertraphthalate) plastics, which is used to make food grade bottles.

    What are Microplastics?

    • Microplastics are tiny bits of various types of plastic found in the environment.
    • The name is used to differentiate them from “macroplastics” such as bottles and bags made of plastic.
    • There is no universal agreement on the size of microplastics. It defines microplastic as less than 5mm in length.
    • However, for the purposes of this study, since the authors were interested in measuring the quantities of plastic that can cross the membranes and diffuse into the body via the blood stream.
    • Hence they agreed on an upper limit on the size of the particles as 0.0007 millimetre.

    What were the plastics that the study looked for in the blood samples?

    • The study looked at the most commonly used plastic polymers.
    • These were polyethylene tetraphthalate (PET), polyethylene (used in making plastic carry bags), polymers of styrene (used in food packaging), poly (methyl methylacrylate) and poly propylene.
    • They found a presence of the first four types.

    Significance of the study

    • Making a human health risk assessment in relation to plastic particles is not easy, perhaps not even possible, due to the lack of data on exposure of people to plastics.
    • In this sense, it is important to have studies like this one.
    • The authors of the paper also remark that validated methods to detect the tiny (trace) amounts of extremely small-sized (less than 10 micrometre) plastic particles are lacking.
    • Hence this study, which builds up a methods to check the same, is important.

    Health hazard of microplastics

    • It is not yet clear if these microplastics can cross over from the blood stream to deposit in organs and cause diseases.
    • The report point out that the human placenta has shown to be permeable to tiny particles of polystyrene ( 50, 80 and 24 nanometre beads).
    • Experiments on rats where its lungs were exposed to polystryrene spheres (20 nanometre) led to translocation of the nanoparticles to the placental and foetal tissue.
    • Oral administration of microplastics in rats led to accumulation of these in the liver, kidney and gut.
    • Further studies have to be carried out to really assess the impact of plastics on humans.

     

    Try this PYQ:

    Q. Why is there a great concern about the ‘microbeads’ that are released into environment?

    (a) They are considered harmful to marine ecosystems.

    (b) They are considered to cause skin cancer in children.

    (c) They are small enough to be absorbed by crop plants in irrigated fields.

    (d) They are often found to be used as food adulterants.

     

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  • What are Articulated All-Terrain Vehicles?

    The Indian Army has issued a Request For Information (RFI) for the supply of Articulated All-Terrain Vehicles to be deployed in Ladakh and Kutch.

    What are Articulated All-Terrain Vehicles?

    • Articulated ATV is a twin cabin, tracked, amphibious carrier for off road mobility.
    • The special design of this equipment exerts low ground pressure on the soil and a pull-push mode of locomotion between two cabins facilitates mobility over varied terrains like snow, desert and slush.
    • A ballistic protection in the cabin body ensures protection to troops travelling in it from small arms fire.
    • They can reach where wheeled vehicles cannot due to deep snow, slush or marshy terrain and can be very effective for patrolling and rapid deployment in operational situations.

    Utility of these vehicles

    • These vehicles are very useful to move troops or supplies in snow-bound terrains and in marshy/sandy environments.
    • The Indian Army wishes to use these vehicles in the snow-bound areas of Ladakh and in the marshy terrain of the Rann of Kutch.

     

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  • Self reliance in Agriculture

    Context

    For the Amrit Kaal (next 25 years) that the government has announced, we need to be self-reliant not just in missiles (defence equipment) but also in meals (food).

    What does self-reliance in food mean?

    • Its true meaning lies in specialising in commodities in which we have a comparative advantage, export them, and import those in which we don’t have a significant comparative advantage.
    • Self-reliance in food does not mean that we have to produce everything ourselves at home, irrespective of the cost.
    • If some protection is needed for new areas to develop (infant industry argument), that may be okay.
    • But one should not aspire to be self-sufficient behind high tariff walls.

    Importance of agri-R&D

    • What is it that gives a country an edge over others in attaining comparative advantage?
    • There is ample literature to show that agri-R&D raises total factor productivity and makes agriculture more competitive globally.
    • If India wants to be fully self-reliant in food, it is generally agreed that it must invest at least 1 per cent of its agri-GDP in agri-R&D.
    • The Economic Survey (2021-22) explicitly highlighted the correlation between spending on agri-R&D and agricultural growth.
    • Low expenditure on agri-R&D: But the budgets of both the Union government and the states put together reveal that this expenditure on agri-R&D and education hovers around 0.6 per cent of agri-GDP.
    • This is way below the minimum cut off point of 1 per cent and government policy must urgently work towards raising this substantially.
    • There are some global and local companies like Bayer, Syngenta, MAHYCO, Jain Irrigation, and Mahindra and Mahindra that spend a considerable amount of their turnover on R&D programmes and developing high-tech inputs.
    • The USP of these companies is that they develop technology that increases productivity while addressing the current challenges of limited net sown area, depleting water resources, vulnerability to climate change, and the need to produce nutrient-rich food.

    Way forward

    • Role of private sector: The private sector need to come forward and help India attain supremacy in agri-R&D and innovation systems and a hub for exports and agri-technology.
    • Increase expenditure on Agri-R&D and education: The need of the hour is to focus on increasing expenditure on ARE and other development projects, which can aid in the sustainable growth of the agriculture sector.
    • India’s budget allocations in the agri-food space should thrive on creating “more from less”.
    • There is a need to work on building long-term sustainable solutions that have an aggressive approach to implementing relevant policies and developing new ones.
    • India’s current budgetary allocation strategy and trends need to be reoriented to ensure that there is more room for R&D expenditure by the government.
    • Incentivise private companies for R&D: In addition to this, the government should come out with policies that incentivise private companies to expand their R&D programmes and invest more financial resources on development projects, which have the potential to overcome the challenges of the current agrarian setup of India.

    Conclusion

    If India wants to be fully self-reliant in food, it must focus on agri-R&D and increase allocation in the Budget.

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  • DRDO’s Corner-Shot Weapon System

    A corner-shot weapon system (CSWS), designed and developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), is at an advanced stage of being inducted by the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the Jammu and Kashmir police.

    What is CSWS?

    • The CSWS is a special purpose weapon designed by the Armament Research and Development Establishment (ARDE), Pune.
    • It can engage targets located around the corners as the system bends and captures video feed thus saving soldiers from any surprise counter-attack and is best suited for urban, close quarter situations.
    • It is equipped with weapon, camera, laser, infrared illuminator and torch in front portion, while display, electronics, battery and swivelling mechanism are located at rear portion.
    • The body is made from high-grade aluminium alloy to make it lighter and durable.

    Key features

    • Day-night firing capability, colour display, digital zoom, zeroing facility, hot keys, high power battery along with status display and compliance with JSS 5855 makes it a very potent system for security forces.
    • It is very helpful in Counter Insurgency and Counter Terror (CI/CT) operations.
    • This indigenously developed system has many superior features compared to its contemporary international systems and available for 9 mm GLOCK 17/19 and 1A1 Auto Pistol variant.

     

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  • What is T-Cell Immunity?

    A new study from Wuhan has studied the role of T-Cell Immunity against prolonged and sever COVID-19.

    What are T-Cells?

    • Like B cells, which produce antibodies, T cells are central players in the immune response to viral infection.
    • For your immune system to fight off any kind of invader, such as a virus, you need a kind of white blood cell called a B cell, which makes antibodies, and a similar-looking white blood cell called a T cell.
    • T cells can play different roles altogether.
    • They can act as “killer cells”, attacking cells which have been infected with a virus or another kind of pathogen, or they can act as “helper cells” by supporting B cells to produce antibodies.

    How do they function?

    • Alongside antibodies, the immune system produces a battalion of T cells that can target viruses.
    • Some of these, known as killer T cells (or CD8+ T cells), seek out and destroy cells that are infected with the virus.
    • Others, called helper T cells (or CD4+ T cells) are important for various immune functions, including stimulating the production of antibodies and killer T cells.
    • T cells do not prevent infection, because they kick into action only after a virus has infiltrated the body. But they are important for clearing an infection that has already started.
    • In the case of COVID-19, killer T cells could mean the difference between a mild infection and a severe one that requires hospital treatment.

    What did the latest research find?

    • The researchers found that neutralising antibodies were detectable even 12 months after infection in “most individuals”.
    • It remained stable 6-12 months after initial infection in people younger than 60 years.
    • The researchers found that “multifunctional T cell responses were detected for all SARS-CoV-2 viral proteins tested”.
    • And most importantly, the magnitude of T cell responses did not show any difference immaterial of how severe the disease was.
    • While the ability of antibodies to neutralise was nearly absent against the Beta variant, it was reduced in the case of the Delta variant.

    Neutralizing antibodies

    • SARS-CoV-2-specific neutralising antibody and T cell responses were retained 12 months after initial infection.
    • Neutralising antibodies to the D614G, Beta, and Delta were reduced compared with those for the original strain, and were diminished in general.
    • Memory T cell responses to the original strain were not disrupted by new variants.
    • The findings show that robust antibody and T cell immunity against SARS-CoV-2 is present in majority of recovered patients 12 months after moderate-to-critical infection.

    Robustness of antibodies

    • The study reveals the durability and robustness of the T cell responses against variants, including Delta, even after one year of infection.
    • Most importantly, the robust and longstanding T cell responses were seen in people who have not been reinfected or vaccinated.
    • This would mean even in the absence of vaccination, a person who has been infected by the virus even one year ago would have robust immune responses.
    • It would offer protection against disease progressing to a severe form requiring hospitalization.

     

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