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Subject: Indian Society

  • Assessing the digital gap and learning losses

    A recent survey released seeks to analyze the COVID-impact on digital connectivity in the context of healthcare, education, and work.

    About the Survey

    • LIRNEasia, an Asia Pacific think tank focussed on digital policy, tied up with the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER).
    • They took part in a global study funded by the Canada’s International Development Centre to assess the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 .
    • They sought to analyse access to services, with a focus on digital technologies in healthcare, education and work.

    Highlights of the Survey:

    [A] Internet Access and Use

    (1) Internet users

    • The survey found that 47% of the population are Internet users, a significant jump from the 19% who were identified as Internet users in late 2017.
    • At least 5 crores have already become new Internet users in 2021.

    (2) Gender and internet

    • Men still use the Internet more than women.
    • There is a 37% gender gap among users, although this is half of the 57% gap present four years ago.

    (3) Rural-urban Gap

    • The rural-urban gap has dropped from 48% in 2017 to just 20% now as more rural residents come online.

    (4) Education

    • Among those with college education, 89% are Internet users, compared to 60% of those who completed secondary school.
    • Only 23% of those who dropped out of school after Class 8, and 9% of those without any education, are able to use the Internet.

    Major inferences drawn

    • Among non-users, lack of awareness is still the biggest hurdle.
    • The percentage of non-users who said they do not know what the Internet is dropped from 82% to 49% over the last four years.
    • Increasingly, lack of access to devices and lack of skills are the reason why people do not go online.

    Loopholes in Remote Education

    • 80% of school-age children in the country had no access to remote education at all during the 18 months of lockdown.
    • This happened even though 64% of households actually had Internet
    • Situation was worse for those homes without Internet connections, where only 8% of children received any sort of remote education.

    [B] Internet connectivity

    • Apart from not having any devices, poor 3G/4G signal and high data cost were listed as the biggest hurdles.
    • Even among the 20% who received education, only half had access to live online classes which required a good Internet connection and exclusive use of a device.
    • Most depended on recorded lessons and WhatsApp messages which could be sent to a parent’s phone and downloaded at leisure.
    • Others were able to have more direct contact with teachers via phone calls or physical visits.

    Worst consequences: Dropouts

    • Nationwide, 38% of households said at least one child had dropped out of school completely due to COVID-19.
    • The situation was significantly worse among those from lower socio-economic classes, or where the head of the household had lower education levels.

    [C] Internet access and healthcare

    • About 15% required healthcare access for non-COVID related purposes during the most severe national and State lockdown.
    • Of the 14% who required ongoing treatment for chronic conditions, over a third missed at least one appointment due to the lockdown.
    • Telemedicine and online doctor consultations surged during these times, but only 38% said they were able to access such services.
    • With regard to COVID-19, about 40% of respondents depended on television channels for advice as their most trusted source.

     

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  • Dalit capitalism and Dalit entrepreneurship

    Context

    In a departure from the fixation on traditional parameters for the study of Dalit rights and empowerment, there is now a focus on how market forces can be expanded to address social exclusion.

    How Dalit entrepreneurship can help in Dalit entrepreneurship

    • While entrepreneurship alone isn’t the panacea to caste-based exclusion or marginalisation, Dalit entrepreneurship is the new narrative changing the discourse of Dalit empowerment.
    • Entrepreneurship can shape access to rights and push against entrenched social hierarchies.
    • The circulation of material benefits and the relative autonomy that comes with entrepreneurship are added advantages.
    • As per the reports by the MSME ministry, Dalit-owned ventures are still minimal in terms of numbers as well as revenue.
    • To overcome hindrances to the establishment of networks across various social groups, Dalit entrepreneurs take recourse to their internal ties and use them to sustain their economic gains.
    • It is increasingly becoming clear that supporting Dalits entrepreneurs is integral to the nation’s inclusive development and this is why institutional aid is required in this regard.

    Steps taken so far

    • The District Industries Centre (DIC) stipulates that to nurture entrepreneurs, the government must increase the share of goods produced by Dalits in its procurement.
    • State financial corporations have also been instructed to increase financial support to Scheduled Caste entrepreneurs.
    • The Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation has allocated 16.2 per cent of plots to SC entrepreneurs, while the Small Industries Development Bank of India offers an additional subsidy to them.
    • One of the focussed financial interventions for SC/ST entrepreneurs is the Stand Up India initiative, guaranteeing credit up to Rs 1 crore.

    Challenges

    • Stand Up India initiative failed to deliver the expected results due to the unavailability of so-called eligible SC/ST entrepreneurship, with most of the fund lying unutilised.
    • This was primarily due to the apathy of loaning branches and officials towards proposals by Dalit entrepreneurs.
    • It is evident that despite the existence of government schemes and policies to support such initiatives, the actual benefit could never reach the beneficiaries due to the artificial inaccessibility created by inherent social and caste biases.

    Way forward

    • There is a need for Dalit-focussed alternate investment finance (AIF) and private equity (PE) funds to create a vibrant and inclusive MSME ecosystem.
    • It is evident that despite the existence of government schemes and policies to support such initiatives, the actual benefit could never reach the beneficiaries due to the artificial inaccessibility created by inherent social and caste biases.
    • There is a need to formulate multiple credit guarantee trusts by raising contributions from MNCs, FDIs, portfolio investors, corporates, etc.
    • A social vulnerability index also needs to be introduced, addressed and assessed.

    Conclusion

    Dalit entrepreneurship today holds the promise of an exciting and uncharted future for social transformation.

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  • First National Achievement Survey (NAS) held

    The first National Achievement Survey (NAS) in four years was conducted, in a bid to assess the competencies of children in Class 3, 5 and 8.

    National Achievement Survey (NAS)

    • NAS is a nationally representative large-scale survey of students’ learning undertaken by the Ministry of Education.
    • It is implemented on a sample size aiming to assess students of 3rd, 5th, 8th and 10th
    • It gives a system level reflection on effectiveness of school education.
    • The NCERT has developed the Assessment Framework for gauging the competencies attained by the student’s vis-a-vis learning outcomes.

    Features of the Survey

    • The Survey goes beyond the scorecard and includes the background variables to correlate student’s performance in different learning outcomes vis-a-vis contextual variables.
    • The Survey was conducted in a monitored environment in the sampled schools.
    • Selection of sampled schools was based on UDISE+ (Unified District Information System for Education) 2019-20 data.

    Significance of NAS

    • NAS findings would help diagnose learning gaps of students and determine interventions required in education policies, teaching practices and learning.
    • Through its diagnostic report cards, NAS findings help in capacity building for teachers, officials involved in the delivery of education.
    • This will help to assess the learning interruptions and new learnings during the COVID pandemic and help to take remedial measures.

     

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  • There are shades of equality

    Context

    On October 29, the Supreme Court issued notice on an appeal of the Kerala government against a High Court order directing it to award the scholarships by the proportion of minorities in the overall population of the State. This case will be significant for constitutional law.

    Background

    • The Kerala government passed an executive order in 2015 prescribing that minority communities will be entitled to scholarships.
    •  Of the scholarships, 80% were distributed to Muslim students.
    •  In Justine Pallivathukkal v. State of Kerala (2021), the Kerala High Court set aside this order holding that all minorities must be treated alike. 
    • The government argued that its policy was based on the findings of the Sachar Committee report and the Kerala Padana report on the disadvantages faced by Muslims.
    •  It pointed out that Muslims were far behind Christians, Dalits and Adivasis in college enrolment, just as they are in employment and land ownership.

    Justification

    • The different kinds of backwardness of a community must be considered while awarding scholarship schemes.
    • Any other scheme defeats the purpose of offering scholarships to students from minority communities.
    • The High Court prohibited an allocation sensitive to social realities by adopting a form of blind equality approach.
    • It is important, therefore, that the Supreme Court corrects the error of the High Court.
    • The High Court’s reasoning suggests that access to the benefits of affirmative action must follow an approach which is blind to the relative backwardness of different communities.

    Conclusion

    Even when we identify disadvantaged castes or communities, we need to remember the forms of inequality and hierarchy among them. The logic of the High Court’s judgment forbids this.

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  • A brief history of India’s Poverty Levels

    Poverty in India had increased between 2012 and 2020.

    What is Poverty?

    • Fundamentally, the concept of poverty is associated with socially perceived deprivation with respect to basic human needs (Tendulkar, 2009).
    • This is a crucial definition to consider since the Tendulkar committee’s estimation method is the last officially recognized method for arriving at poverty numbers in India.

    A relative term

    • If you think about it for a moment, poverty is a “relative” concept.
    • Poverty is essentially about how you are “relative” to those in your surroundings.
    • For example, with Rs 1,000 in your pocket, you may be “rich” if those around you have no more than Rs 100 with them.
    • But, in another setting, say around those who have no less than Rs 10,000 with them, you will come across as “poor”.
    • As such, as long as there are variations in the income and/or wealth levels in a society, there will be “poverty”.

    What is abject poverty?

    • Apart from the relative nature of poverty, there is such a thing as abject poverty.
    • It typically refers to a state where a person is unable to meet its most basic needs such as eating the minimum amount of food to stay alive.

    What is a Poverty Line?

    • From the point of view of policymaking, poverty levels typically refer to some level of income or expenditure below which one can reasonably argue that someone is poorer than the rest of the society.
    • The whole point of the bulk of policymaking is to improve the living standards of the poorest in the country.
    • But to design policies, one must first know what the target group is, how much does it earn (or spend, since robust data on income is not easily available).
    • This is done by choosing a “poverty line” — or a level of income or consumption expenditure that divides the population between the poor and non-poor.

    Why define a Poverty Line?

    The purpose behind choosing a poverty line is two-fold.

    (A) To accurately design policies for the poor

    • Doing so allows you to target your policies towards the two poorest people in the country.
    • Often such policies are redistributive in nature — such as giving subsidised food grains or providing some kind of social security like MGNREGA.
    • In an ideal world a government would have the resources to help everyone in the economy but in reality, even the government’s works within some financial or budgetary constraints.

    (B) To assess the success or failure of government policies over time

    • Over time the overall GDP doubles but the income of the general public falls.
    • Hence the government would know that its policies are not bearing fruit.

    Poverty Estimation in India

    • Planning Commission Expert Group (1962): It formulated the separate poverty lines for rural and urban areas at ₹20 and ₹25 per capita per year respectively.
    • VM Dandekar and N Rath (1971): They made the first systematic assessment, based on National Sample Survey (NSS) data. They suggested providing 2250 calories per day in both rural and urban areas.
    • YK Alagh Committee (1979): It constructed a poverty line for rural and urban areas on the basis of nutritional requirements and related consumption expenditure.
    • Lakdawala Committee (1993): It suggested that consumption expenditure should be calculated based on calorie consumption as earlier. State specific poverty lines should be constructed. It asked for discontinuation of scaling of poverty estimates based on National Accounts Statistics.
    • Tendulkar Committee (2009): The current official measures of poverty are based on the Tendulkar poverty line, fixed at daily expenditure of ₹27.2 in rural areas and ₹33.3 in urban areas is criticised by many for being too low.

    What has happened in India’s fight against poverty?

    • There are two ways to assess India’s performance.
    1. One is to look at the headcount ratio of poverty which is the percentage of India’s population that was designated to be below the poverty line
    2. The other variable to look at is the absolute number of poor people in the country
    • If one looks at the headcount ratio then India made rapid strides since 1973.
    • Even though India is home to possibly the largest number of poor people in the world, there has been no official update on India’s poverty levels since.

    Who oversees the Poverty Level?

    • Poverty levels are updated by using the Consumer Expenditure Survey, which is conducted by the National Statistical Office (NSO) once every five years.
    • The last such survey was conducted in 2017-18.
    • That survey reportedly showed that for the first time in four decades consumer expenditure in India had fallen.

    What are the latest findings?

    • Poverty levels, as well as the absolute number of poor, had risen between 2011-12 and 2017-18.
    • The government claimed that the survey suffered from “data quality” issues.
    • The next round of the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES) was supposed to be conducted in 2021.

    Causes of rise in Poverty

    • GDP growth decline: It is a fact that India’s GDP growth rate had registered a secular deceleration between the start of 2017 and 2020.
    • Jobless growth: The second and related factor is the unprecedented rise in joblessness.
    • Wages decline: Millions were pulled out of poverty between 2004 and 2011 due to sharp rise in non-farm employment and associated wages. But for many of those workers, real wages have either fallen or stagnated.
    • Pandemic impact: Covid induced lockdown sent millions of workers back to villages, seeking MGNREGA work at minimum wages.

     

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  • There’s a mismatch between India’s graduate aspirations and job availability

    Context

    There is a huge pool of unemployed university graduates with unfulfilled aspirations. This group of dissatisfied, disgruntled youth can lead to disastrous consequences for our society.

    Enhanced enrollment

    • Reservation: The extension of reservations to OBCs and EWS increased the enrollment of students from these socio-economic backgrounds.
    • Increased education institutions: In addition, the massive increase in the number of higher education institutions has led to an enlargement of the number of available seats — there are more than 45,000 universities and colleges in the country.
    • The Gross Enrollment Ratio for higher education, which is the percentage of the population between the ages of 18-23 who are enrolled, is now 27 per cent.

    Issues of employment opportunities

    • Unfortunately, the spectacular increase in enrollment in recent years has not been matched by a concomitant increase in jobs.
    •  Employment opportunities in the government have not increased proportionately and may, in fact, have decreased with increased contractualisation.
    •  Even in the private sector, though the jobs have increased with economic growth, most of the jobs are contractual.
    • Worse, the highest increase in jobs is at the lowest end, especially in the services sector — delivery boys for e-commerce or fast food for instance.
    • Thus what we see is a huge pool of unemployed university graduates with unfulfilled aspirations.
    • This group of dissatisfied, disgruntled youth can lead to disastrous consequences for our society, some of which we are already witnessing.

    Way forward

    • A reduction in the rate of increase of universities and colleges might not be politically feasible given the huge demand for higher education.
    • Increase vocation institutions: A concurrent increase in the number of high-quality vocational institutions is something that can be done.
    • There are upwards of 15,000 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) in the country currently.
    • Upgrading the existing ITIs, opening many more new ones with high-quality infrastructure and updated curriculum is something which should be done urgently.
    • There is a scheme to upgrade some ITIs to model ITIs.
    • However, what is required is not a selective approach but a more broad-based one that uplifts the standards of all of them besides adding many more new ones.
    • Industry might be more than willing to pitch in with funding (via the CSR route) as well as equipment, training for the faculty and internships for students.

    Conclusion

    These steps could help mitigate the mismatch between employment opportunities and the increasing number of educated youth in the country.

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  • Unified Database of Birth and Death

    The Centre has proposed amendments to a 1969 law that will enable it to “maintain the database of registered birth and deaths at the national level”.

    Registration of Births and Deaths Act (RBD), 1969

    • The registration of births, deaths and stillbirths are compulsory under the provisions of RBD Act in all parts of the Country.
    • The normal period of 21 days (from the date of occurrence) has been prescribed for reporting the birth, death and stillbirth events.

    Why need amendment?

    • The database may be used to update the Population Register and the electoral register, and Aadhaar, ration card, passport and driving licence databases after the amendment.
    • Presently, the registration of births and deaths is done by the local registrar appointed by States.

    What are the proposed amendments?

    Ans. Unified Database of Birth and Death

    • It is proposed that the Chief Registrar (appointed by the States) would maintain a unified database at the State level.
    • It would then integrate it with the data at the “national level,” maintained by the Registrar General of India (RGI).
    • The amendments will imply that the Centre will be a parallel repository of data.

    Significance of the database

    • It would help update:
    1. Population Register prepared under the Citizenship Act, 1955;
    2. Electoral registers or electoral rolls prepared under the Representation of the People Act, 1951
    3. Aadhaar database prepared under the Aadhaar Act, 2016;
    4. Ration card database prepared under the National Food Security Act, 2013;
    5. Passport database prepared under the Passport Act; and
    6. Driving licence database under the Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act, 2019, and
    7. Other databases at the national level are subject to provisons of Section 17 (1) of the RBD Act, 1969

     

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  • Meghalaya to give land rights to men

    Matrilineal Meghalaya is set to break the tradition of share of parental property to the khatduh, which means the youngest daughter in the Khasi language.

    Matrilineal Society of Meghalaya

    • The matrilineal tradition which the Khasi and other subgroups practice in Meghalaya is unique within India.
    • Khasi are an ancient tribe said to be the largest surviving matrilineal culture in the world.
    • Matrilineal principles among the Khasi are emphasised in myths, legends, and origin narratives.

    Their evolution

    • Khasi kings embarking on wars left the responsibility of running the family to women and thus their role in society became very deep rooted and respected.
    • Reference to Nari Rajya (female kingdom; or land of matriarchy) in the epic Mahabharata likely correlates with the Khasi and Jaintia Hills and Meghalaya’s present-day matrilineal culture.

    Property rights

    • The youngest daughter of the family, the Ka Khadduh, inherits all ancestral property.
    • After marriage, husbands live in the mother-in-law’s home.
    • The mother’s surname is taken by children.
    • When no daughters are born to a couple, they adopt a daughter and pass their rights to property to her.
    • The birth of a girl is celebrated while the birth of a son is simply accepted.
    • There is no social stigma attributed to a woman remarrying or giving birth out of wedlock as the “Khasi Social Custom Lineage Act” gives security to them.
    • Care of children is the responsibility of mothers or mothers-in-law.

    Matrilineal, not matriarchal

    • While society is matrilineal, it is not matriarchal. In past monarchies of the state, the son of the youngest sister of the king inherited the throne.
    • Even now in the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly or village councils or panchayats the representation of women in politics is minimal.

    Issues with the system

    • Some Khasi men perceive themselves to be accorded a secondary status.
    • They have established societies to protect equal rights for men.
    • They express that Khasi men don’t have any security, they don’t own land, they don’t run the family business and, at the same time, they are almost good for nothing.

     

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  • What the low rank on the Global Hunger Index means for India

    Context

    This year’s Global Hunger Index (GHI) ranks India 101 out of 116 countries for which reliable and comparable data exist.

    Government’s stand

    • Is India’s performance on hunger as dismal as denoted by the index or is it partly a statistical artefact?
    • This question assumes immediacy, especially since the government has questioned the methodology and claimed that the ranking does not represent the ground reality.
    • This calls for careful scrutiny of the methodology, especially of the GHI’s components.

    Understanding the GHI methodology

    • The GHI has four components.
    • The first — insufficient calorie intake — is applicable for all age groups.
    • The data on deficiency in calorie intake, accorded 33% weight, is sourced from the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Suite of Food Security Indicators (2021).
    • The remaining three — wasting (low weight for height), stunting (low height for age) and mortality — are confined to children under five years.
    • The data on child wasting and stunting (2016-2020), each accounting for 16.6% of weight, are from the World Health Organization, UNICEF and World Bank, complemented with the latest data from the Demographic and Health Surveys.
    • Under-five mortality data are for 2019 from the UN Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation.

    Issues with GHI

    • The GHI is largely children-oriented with a higher emphasis on undernutrition than on hunger and its hidden forms, including micronutrient deficiencies.
    • The first component — calorie insufficiency — is problematic for many reasons.
    • The lower calorie intake, which does not necessarily mean deficiency, may also stem from reduced physical activity, better social infrastructure (road, transport and healthcare) and access to energy-saving appliances at home, among others.
    • For a vast and diverse country like India, using a uniform calorie norm to arrive at deficiency prevalence means failing to recognise the huge regional imbalances in factors that may lead to differentiated calorie requirements at the State level.

    Understanding the connection between stunting and wasting and ways to tackling them

    • India’s wasting prevalence (17.3%) is one among the highest in the world.
    •  Its performance in stunting, when compared to wasting, is not that dismal, though.
    • Child stunting in India declined from 54.2% in 1998–2002 to 34.7% in 2016-2020, whereas child wasting remains around 17% throughout the two decades of the 21st century.
    • Stunting is a chronic, long-term measure of undernutrition, while wasting is an acute, short-term measure.
    • Quite possibly, several episodes of wasting without much time to recoup can translate into stunting.
    • Effectively countering episodes of wasting resulting from such sporadic adversities is key to making sustained and quick progress in child nutrition.
    • Way forward: If India can tackle wasting by effectively monitoring regions that are more vulnerable to socioeconomic and environmental crises, it can possibly improve wasting and stunting simultaneously.

    Low child mortality

    • India’s relatively better performance in the other component of GHI — child mortality — merits a mention.
    • Studies suggest that child undernutrition and mortality are usually closely related, as child undernutrition plays an important facilitating role in child mortality.
    • However, India appears to be an exception in this regard.
    • This implies that though India was not able to ensure better nutritional security for all children under five years, it was able to save many lives due to the availability of and access to better health facilities.

    Conclusion

    The low ranking does not mean that India fares uniformly poor in every aspect. This ranking should prompt us to look at our policy focus and interventions and ensure that they can effectively address the concerns raised by the GHI, especially against pandemic-induced nutrition insecurity.

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  • NEET hasn’t created the equality of opportunity

    Context

    The Tamil Nadu government has passed an Act seeking an exemption from treating NEET as the sole and mandatory requirement for medical admission in the state. The Act, which is yet to get approval from the President.

    NEET issue in Tamil Nadu

    • The Justice A K Rajan committee was appointed by the state government of Tamil Nadu to examine whether NEET is an equitable method of selection.
    • Its report lends credence to the belief that NEET tends to give an advantage to students from privileged backgrounds.
    • It also observed that NEET, in terms of orientation, is biased towards the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).
    • In the section titled ‘Size of coaching market’, the report brings out two poignant facts.
    • One, by inadvertently creating a “market for coaching”, NEET has helped to create an “extractive industry of coaching” as an essential condition for clearing it.
    • Two, the coaching fees are not only high, but are beyond the reach of many, especially the poor and marginalised.
    • Acting upon the committee’s recommendation, the Tamil Nadu government has passed an Act seeking an exemption from treating NEET.
    • The Act, which is yet to get approval from the President.
    •  An educational intervention which was introduced as a solution to foster equality of opportunity has turned out to be the primary cause of deepening inequality of participation and opportunity.

    Important questions

    • There are at least two important questions.
    • Equality of opportunity: First, does NEET help foster equality of opportunity for everyone without unduly advantaging or disadvantaging anyone?
    • Second, is NEET’s bias towards CBSE justifiable in an immensely diverse country like ours, where varied school curricula coexist with a highly unequal access to financial and educational resources and opportunities?
    • The question here is: How can NEET promote parity of participation when aspiring first-generation students from marginalised and poor households participate from a highly unequal position in the first place?
    • NEET disregards the fact that the terms and conditions of participation are highly unequal and biased.

    Way forward

    • The National Education Policy (NEP 2020) envisions a curriculum and pedagogy which will promote holistic learning, social responsibility and multilingualism, among other things.
    • It is important, therefore, to significantly restructure the focus of NEET keeping in mind the spirit of NEP and varied school curricula in regional languages.

    Conclusion

    A restructured NEET, which does not require intensive and repeated coaching as a prerequisite and is not biased towards any board, can go a long way in promoting the parity of participation and nourishing the capacity to aspire, especially of the poor and marginalised.

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