The 15th edition of the biennial trilateral coast guard exercise ‘Dosti’ involving India, the Maldives and Sri Lanka is underway in the Maldives.
Exercise Dosti
The aim of this exercise is to further fortify the friendship, enhance mutual operational capability, and exercise interoperability and to build cooperation.
Both the Maldives and Sri Lanka are of strategic importance to New Delhi and to its maritime security interests.
2021 marks 30 years since these exercises were first launched.
Significance of the exercise
These exercises help during joint operations and missions undertaken by countries and also help enhance interoperability.
Although piracy is not a major issue in this part of the Indian ocean, these kinds of exercises also help coast guards with training for possibilities.
These exercises help develop a better understanding of the other nation’s coast guard operations and how to enhance coordination during different kinds of missions.
What it involves
The scope of these exercises are wide-ranging.
India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives have agreed to work on what they called the “four pillars” of security cooperation.
These involved the areas of marine security, human trafficking, counter-terrorism and cyber security.
Reports suggest that more child marriages have been noticed during the Covid pandemic.
Covid-19 and Girls
Socio-economic impacts of Covid-19 are gendered, evident in the form of educational inequality, sexual violence, and increased household burden.
Increased domestic violence: In India, the National Commission for Women reported 2.5 times to increase in domestic violence during the initial months of nationwide lockdown.
Abuse & Trafficking: Closure of schools and pandemic induced poverty has increased the vulnerability of children especially the girl child to abuse and trafficking
School dropout: UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report (2021) throws light on increased educational inequalities for adolescent girls during the Covid-19 crisis. UNESCO estimates that around 11 million girls may not return to school.
School Closures pushed Children into Labour: In 2021, says UNESCO, 24 million children may not find their way back to schools after the pandemic. Any child who is not in school is a potential child laborer.
Child Marriages: India witnessed an increase in the number of child marriages since 2020. Girls are further at risk – married off early, these child brides are also often child laborers.
Reduced Education Budget: Despite knowing the impact of the Pandemic on the education system & thus on Children’s future, the Union budget has Rs 5,000 crore less to spend on education for children this year.
Digital gender gap: The digital gender gap deters girls’ remote education and access to information.
Child Marriage
It is defined as a marriage of a girl or boy before the age of 18 and refers to both formal marriages and informal unions in which children under the age of 18 live with a partner as if married.
UNICEF estimates suggest that each year, at least 1.5 million girls under 18 get married in India, which makes it home to the largest number of child brides in the world – accounting for a third of the global total.
A recent study by the Lancet shows that up to 2.5 million more girls (below the age of 18) around the world are at risk of marriage in the next 5 yearsbecause of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Prevalence of child marriage in India
Data from the fourth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS4) in 2015-16 shows that even before Covid, one in four girls in India was being married before 18.
Around 8 percent of women aged 15-19 years were mothers or pregnant at the time of the survey.
The first phase findings of NFHS5 (2019-20) show that the needle has not moved substantially on ending child marriage.
Why did Child Marriages have increased during Lockdowns?
Lack of Alert Mechanism: Earlier, when child marriages happened at wedding halls, temples, etc, there were people who would alert the relevant authorities or activists who would be able to reach on time to stop it.
But now, with marriages happening at homes, we may get fewer alerts and our going there could be treated as trespass.
Pandemic Induced Pressures: Economic pressures due to the pandemic have pushed poor parents to marry off girls early.
With no schools, the safety of children, particularly girls, was a major reason for the increase in violence against children and child marriages.
Causes for Child Marriages
Age Factor: Some parents consider the age period of 15-18 as unproductive, especially for girls, so they start finding a match for their child during this age period.
Further, the Right To Education Act makes education free and compulsory up to the age of 14 only.
Insecurity: Law and Order are still not able to provide a secure environment for the girls in adolescent age, so some parents get their girl child married at a young age.
Other Reasons:
Poverty,
Political and financial reasons,
Lack of education,
Patriarchy and gender inequalities, etc.
Consequences of child marriage
Violation of human rights: Child marriage violates girls’ human rights. It makes them almost invisible to policy.
Impact on education and health: It cuts short their education, harms their health, and limits their ability to fulfill themselves as productive individuals participating fully in society.
The low domestic status of teenage wives typically condemns them to long hours of domestic labor; poor nutrition and anemia; social isolation; domestic violence; early childbearing; and few decision-making powers within the home.
Malnutrition: Poor education, malnutrition, and early pregnancy lead to low birth weight of babies, perpetuating the intergenerational cycle of malnutrition.
The costs of child marriage include teenage pregnancy, population growth, child stunting, poor learning outcomes for children, and the loss of women’s participation in the workforce.
What should be the policy interventions to end child marriage?
CCTs:Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have been the main policy instrument introduced by most states in the last two decades to end child marriage.
CCTs alone cannot change social norms. We need a comprehensive approach.
Legislative measures: Legislation is one part of the approach.
Karnataka amended the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act in 2017, declaring every child marriage, making it a cognizable offense.
Expansion of education: These include expansion of secondary education, access to safe and affordable public transport, and support for young women to apply their education to earn a livelihood.
Expansion of education goes beyond access. Girls must be able to attend school regularly, remain there, and achieve.
States can leverage their network of residential schools, girls’ hostels, and public transport, especially in underserved areas, to ensure that teenage girls do not get pushed out of education.
Teachers should hold regular gender equality conversations with high school girls and boys to shape progressive attitudes that will sustain them into adulthood.
Empowerment measures: Empowerment measures, too, are required to end child marriage, such as community engagement through programs like Mahila Samakhya.
Children’s village assemblies in the 2.5 lakh gram panchayats across India can provide a platform for children to voice their concerns.
Government actions driving social change: Field bureaucrats across multiple departments, including teachers, Anganwadi supervisors, panchayat, and revenue staff, all of whom interact with rural communities, should be notified as child marriage prohibition officers.
Decentralizing birth and marriage registration: Most important of all, decentralizing birth and marriage registration to gram panchayats will protect women and girls with essential age and marriage documents, thus better enabling them to claim their rights.
Consider the question “What are the consequence of child marriage? Suggest the measures to deal with the issue.”
Conclusion
We need to adopt a comprehensive approach to deal with the problem of child marriage. The approach should include a focus on education and legal measures.
Shortly after the Cabinet announced nine structural and procedural reforms in September to address the deep financial woes of telcos, Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel hiked their tariff.
About the package for telecom sector
The telecom relief package announced by the government in September supports proposals that have been repeatedly presented to the government by the regulator, industry associations and think tanks.
Risk of duopoly: With the risk of a duopoly looming large, the government was pushed to take up these long-pending decisions that included nine key changes.
Provisions in the package: Besides providing immediate relief on payment of licence fee and penalties due to the government, the package increased FDI limits, extended licence tenure to 30 years from 20, removed charges on spectrum-sharing and proposed timelines for spectrum auctions.
The package will undoubtedly have a positive short-term impact and perhaps safeguard competition in the future.
Reforms and challenge of addressing the inequality
From socialist to market-oriented economy: In July this year, we celebrated three decades of India’s 1991 reforms, one that catapulted India from being a socialist economy with a heart but no trickle-down, to a market-oriented economy with a mind but also very little trickle-down.
Inequality has been a feature of both models.
The 2018 Oxfam report showed that 10 per cent of the richest Indians took home 77.4 per cent of wealth (compared to 73 per cent the year before).
Moreover, 58 per cent of India’s wealth was in the hands of 1 per cent of the country’s population.
Changes in the modes of distribution: In the pre-1991 period, the principal modes of redistribution were taxation and public sector operations.
In the post-1991 period, it has been a combination of taxation, technology, smartphones and the associated direct benefit transfers.
Role of telecom sector in addressing the challenge of achieving growth and inclusion
High growth dividend of telecom sector: Every 10 per cent increase in investment in telecom, for example, leads to a 3.2 per cent increase in GDP growth for India.
Not only is the growth dividend positive, it is large.
Mobile as a mean of financial integration: At the same time, the mobile phone has become a means for sophisticated financial integration, as shown by the expanding usage of pre-paid payment instruments and mobile banking.
The Jan-Dhan Yojana (JDY) attempts to include the marginalised and unbanked through technology.
As of October 2021, a total of 440 million bank accounts have been opened and more than 310 million RuPay cards have been issued under the latter, indicating the large unmet demand for banking services.
Making transfers predictable and targeted: The Jan-Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile (JAM) trinity ties the Aadhaar number to an active bank account, making income transfers predictable and targeted.
There is already evidence that payments through Aadhaar-linked bank accounts have increased efficiency and reduced leakages.
Way forward
Predictable and less erratic telecom policy: The benefits of digitalisation could have been much larger and more widespread had telecom policy been more predictable and less erratic.
That Indian reforms more often than not happen on the back of a crisis is true for the telecom sector.
The principal motive of the New Telecom Policy of 1999 was to rescue the deeply indebted sector of its own reckless bidding by replacing the fixed licence fee system with a revenue-sharing regime.
In hindsight, it was the right thing to do since it threatened business continuity.
The move to auction spectrum “for all times to come” in 2008 was necessitated by the administrative bungling in spectrum assignment.
Quick adaptation: A question we pose is why did it take a crisis — a grave one at that — to push the needle on policy change?
It is a a reasonable expectation of policy to adapt quickly and not wait for a crisis to emerge.
Consider the question “Telecom sector could play an important role in achieving the growth with inclusion. In context of this, examine the challenges facing the sector and suggest the measures to deal with these challenges.”
Conclusion
The seemingly naïve question about the adaptation in policies may not be as credulous for the intensely dynamic digital markets. For there is no point shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
GS-1 Important Geophysical Phenomena such as earthquakes, Tsunami, Volcanic activity, cyclone etc., geographical features and their location-changes in critical geographical features (including water-bodies and ice-caps) and in flora and fauna and the effects of such changes.
GS-2 Effect of Policies and Politics of Developed and Developing Countries on India’s interests, Indian Diaspora.
GS-3 Effects of Liberalization on the Economy, Changes in Industrial Policy and their Effects on Industrial Growth.
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If there was one visible change in UPSC CSE 2021, then its the high weightage of questions from Enviornment and Ecology. Most of the current affairs questions from Environment and Ecology are not from the last one year and one had to know about conventions and conferences held long time back. About 25-30% of the questions in GS Paper 3 in UPSC Mains are from this subject.
Many aspirants make the mistake of assuming that Enviornment and Ecology is an easy subject as it tends to overlap with Geography and Science. Post 2013, with the introduction of separate Indian Forest Service Exams, the weightage for this subject has increased as well. Topics such as Biodiversity, Wildlife conservation, Pollution, Sustainable Development, Climate Change and International Organisations have the maximum questions asked.
Free Open for All Webinar by Retired Indian Forest Officer Dr. Sukhdev Singh
If as a UPSC aspirant, you also want to appear for Indian Forest Exams and score better in Prelims and GS Paper 3, then this webinar is for you. Dr. Sukhdev Singh will discuss both his work experiences on field and also on important topics that appear in these examinations.
Dr. Sukhdev Singh has nearly 35 years of experience and served mainly in the Uttarakhand cadre. He retired as the Chief Conservator Forest Officer.
What will you learn from Dr. Sukhdev Singh in this webinar?
1. Issues concerning wildlife in the past ten years. What are the practical solutions Dr. Sukhdev Singh implemented as an IFoS officer?
2. Forest and administration. Important conventions and clauses from exam point of view will be discussed.
3. Issues of Climate Change. What are the important protocols passed by International Organisations?
4. Current Affairs of Past One year related to Environment. What is happening in India with respect to this?
5. Biodiversity and Conservation. What are the important wildlife sanctuaries and biodiversity reserves?
6. Implementing government policy as an Indian Forest Officer. Dr. Sukhdev Singh will speak from his own experiences and also experiences of his colleagues.
Everything you need to know about IFoS. Why choose IFoS over IAS?
This live webinar for all students will also be interactive in nature with a Q&A session.
Webinar Details
Don’t miss the chance to get value addition inputs to score better in the examination! This webinar is absolutely free. All aspirants are welcome to attend.
Date – 26th November 2021 (Tomorrow)
Time – 10:30 AM
Limited slots are available. So please register by today.
Drones, officially known as Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), have been in widespread use in the Indian military since the 1990s.
While the first drones were imported into India from Israel for use in active combat, DRDO has since then developed numerous indigenous drones.
They have been successfully deployed by the three wings of the Indian Armed Forces.
The evolving nature of warfare has prioritised training in and preparation for stealth missions.
Drones are a key element of this transformation and are indispensable in reconnaissance, precision targeting, and intelligence gathering, among others.
Indian Drone Market
India is currently the third-largest importer of military-grade drones with 6.8 per cent of total Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) imports according to a report by SIPRI.
Reports suggest that India is already the fastest-growing drone market in the world.
A January 2020 report by PwC also suggested that the market size of drones in India would be USD 885 million.
To leverage this opportunity effectively, therefore, the liberalised policy has been welcomed by industry players and drone enthusiasts alike.
It also comes at an opportune time as global businesses expand to include drones in business-efficiency enhancement, speed delivery, and expand operations.
PLI Scheme for Drone Industry
Government has approved Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme for Drone Industry with incentives worth ₹ 26,058 crore will be provided to industry over five years.
This will incentivize emergence of Advanced Automotive Technologies global supply chain in India and help create additional employment of over 7.6 lakh people.
It will bring fresh investments of over₹5,000 crore in three years and incremental production of over ₹ 1,500 crore.
Drone Rules, 2021
These rules are built on the premise of trust, self-certification, and non-intrusive monitoring. The policy is designed to usher in an era of super-normal growth while balancing safety and security considerations.
Some of the key features are as under:
Number of forms: The rules propose to reduce the number of forms required for manufacturing, importing, testing, certifying and operating drones in India from 25 to six.
Abolishing authorization number: The draft seeks to abolish the unique authorisation number, unique prototype identification number, and certificate of conformance that were previously required for approval of drone flights.
Digital Sky Platform: Digital Sky, a platform launched by the government in December 2018, will become a single-window system for all approvals under the newly proposed rules.
Airspace map: An airspace map segregating the entire landmass of India into Green, Yellow and Red zones will be published on the platform within 30 days of notification of the new rules, the government said. The map will also be machine-readable through an Application Programming Interface (API) for easier plotting of drone flight paths.
Airport Perimeter: The draft rules reduced the airport perimeter from 45 km to 12 km. The rules state that no flight permissions would be required to fly up to 400 feet in green zones and up to 200 feet in the area between 8 and 12 km from the airport perimeter.
Drone corridors: The government will also publish a policy framework for Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) within 60 days of notifying the rules. This will also include frameworks for developing “drone corridors” for the safe transfer of goods by drones.
Drone Promotion Council: The Rules also propose the setting up of a Drone Promotion Council, with the aim of facilitating a business-friendly regulatory regime for drones in India, the establishment of incubators for developing drone technologies and organizing competitive events to showcase drones and counter-drone solutions.
Others: To implement safety features such as “no permission, no take-off”, real-time tracking and geofencing, drone manufacturers, importers and operators will get six months’ time to comply from the date of notification of the rules.
Security imperative and Drones
The integration of unmanned aircraft systems into national air-force is critical and challenging both.
We have incidences were arms, narcotic drugs have been dropped by drones. So, security challenges are increasing.
DRDO has come up with an Anti-drone system. This makes India capable of where drones can be jammed.
Other is one can shoot the drone through lasers. But this has potential threats to humans.
Drones are called eyes in the sky as they are used by law enforcement agencies, fire emergency services, health care facilities.
Conclusion
The drone industry (manufacturing and operation) is still grappling with evolutionary challenges in India.
The ministry of civil aviation’s decision to liberalize the drone policy even after the recent drone incidents in Jammu showcases the government’s bold approach.
They are necessary to promote the use of the drone and the government must focus on the development of counter-drone technology to address the threat posed by rogue drones.
The biggest-ever initial public offering (IPO) in India fell flat on its face on the first day of its listing in the stock exchange, with shares being traded at prices less than 27% of the IPO price.
Rise of unicorns in India and factors driving it
Unicorns in diverse sectors: There has been a unicorn gale in India in recent years, covering diverse sectors from fintech to cloud kitchen.
Growth in digital payment is reflected in the fintech sector that has contributed the most to the unicorn list.
Factors driving growth: An ecosystem which combines thriving digital payments, a growing smartphone user base and digital-first business models adopted by many start-ups has driven expectations of investors, resulting in large-scale fund flows into new business ventures.
Growing smartphone user: Expectations are high as the country has around 640 million Internet users, of which 550 million are smartphone users.
Growing digital payments: Digital payment has seen a growth of 30.19% as of March 31, 2021 and by the end of September 30, the unified payments interface (UPI) registered 3.5 billion transactions amounting to ₹6.54 trillion.
FinTech and EdTech leading unicorns
American investment firms Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital have been the major investors, providing very quick follow-up rounds of funds across all stages and sectors.
Fundamental financial performance of the business is not factored in these decisions which could lead to biased valuations.
Idea of disruptive technologies: The idea of disruptive technologies has become a buzzword for characterising start-ups.
The idea was that start-ups with limited resources can aim at technology disruption by inventing an entirely new way of getting something done.
The story is similar in educational technologies (EdTech) as well.
The novel coronavirus pandemic has been a blessing in disguise for EdTech firms, as it is this external environment that is pushing the industry, giving it an acceleration by four to five years.
Too many acquisitions with big ambitions to grow inorganically puts pressure on the balance sheet in the years to come as some of the new acquisitions are likely to fail.
Even, EdTech firms with reasonably good business models are highly overvalued due to abundant liquidity.
Cost of achieving behaviour change: Almost every second advertisement on primetime television is either of a digital payment firm or EdTech platform.
New firms in services will have to indulge in this process for a longer period than firms in other industries such as transportation as these firms have to bring about a particular kind of change that customers are significantly comfortable using the service.
Firms burn cash to give massive discounts to customers in the hope that people will get so habituated to these platforms that they will remain active even when the prices are hiked.
To some extent this worked in the context of mobile telephone services as Indians have got hooked to mobile phones and reoriented spending to buy more sophisticated smartphones and data.
But in other services this does not seem to work so easily.
The projection flaw: Data by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) points to this flaw of over-optimistic demand projections as there are just about 23 million households which earn more than ₹5 lakh per year i.e., less than ₹42,000 a month, which is about 7% of all Indian families.
It is only this class which can be coaxed to behavioural changes — i.e. people who can afford various kinds of goods and services.
If firms want to go beyond this 7% of households they have to offer bigger discounts, burning more cash, with the possibility that once the discounts are reduced, customers drop off.
Consider the question “India is witnessing the unicorn boom in the starts-ups. However, valuation of these unicorns has raised concerns. In light of this, examine the factors driving the rise of unicorns in India and why their valuation raises concerns?”
Conclusion
We are witnessing new unicorns emerging every month, which are products of inflated valuations to tap more funds to burn more cash. These valuations are solely on the basis of future earnings, with virtually no profits to show in the present.
Half-way through your preparation for UPSC-CSE 2022 and feel stressed? After attending UPSC CSE 2021, do you feel the exam is highly unpredictable ? Of course, not! If you want to know what UPSC expects from its candidates every year, then continue reading.
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Dear Students,
Many say that the Prelims 2021 paper was harder than Prelims 2020, a close analysis however reveals that there are more similarities than differences. Though one did not expect questions from sports this year, we all can agree that both the papers tested the application of current affairs knowledge to all the subjects.
Trends from the last five years tell us that UPSC is keener on testing conceptual clarity of topics from the syllabus. So, it’s no longer about reading GS, Optionals and Current Affairs in isolation. If you are reading a plethora of books or watching random videos, it’s time to reconsider your way of preparation.
Avoid Common Preparation Mistakes Early On
Unlike other exams, UPSC decides your fate based on what you have studied for the last 12-15 months over 1 month before the exam. Hence, rectifying preparation mistakes at the eleventh hour will not help you.
AIR 148 UPSC 2020 topper and our Civilsdaily student Ponmani explains why answer writing with mentorship for Mains is necessary.
Last month we mentored around 3500 IAS aspirants, some of whom were beginners and others who had an experience of few attempts.
We resolved common doubts related to right sources for various topics, answer writing for mains and how to crack the personality round. We found out that almost all of these aspirants struggled in one area or the other.
If someone was excellent in scoring at prelims test series, they were not confident about mains. If someone was good at history, they were not sure about science and technology. If someone had time to revise their GS portions, they did not have time for Optionals.
But is it wise to neglect your weak areas? Toppers manage to maintain slightly above average scores in all the subjects.
How Do Our Mentors Guide You
This is where you require a mentor. A mentor helps you understand where your preparation stands as of now and what more needs to be done to fulfill the expectations of UPSC. A mentor will help you maintain your focus even when the pressure is high, instead of succumbing to it.
This is how Civilsdaily mentorship helped Pranav Vijayvergiya clear the exam after 2 failed prelims attempts.
Watch what our Civilsdaily student and UPSC 2020 topper (AIR 42) Shreya feels about our mentoring program.
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