Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Thalinomics
Mains level: Read the attached story
- The Economic Survey 2019-20 states that affordability of vegetarian Thalis improved 29 per cent from 2006-07 to 2019-20 while that for non-vegetarian Thalis by 18 per cent.
- Affordability of Thalis vis-à-vis a day’s pay of a worker has improved over time, indicating improved welfare of the common person.
- The Survey says that food is not just an end in itself but also an essential ingredient in the growth human capital and therefore important for national wealth creation.
The term ‘Thalinomics’
- The conclusion has been drawn on the basis of “Thalinomics: the Economics of a plate of food in India” – an attempt to quantify what a common person pays for a Thali across India.
- Price data from the Consumer Price Index for industrial workers for around 80 centers in 25 States and UTs from April 2006 to October 2019 has been used for the study.
- Using the dietary guidelines for Indians, the price of Thalis is constructed.
- The Survey states that across India and also the 4 regions- North, South, East and West- it is found that the absolute prices of a vegetarian Thali have decreased significantly since 2015-16 though the price has increased in 2019.
- This is owing to the sharp downward trend in the prices of vegetables and dal in contrast to the previous trend of increasing prices.
- As a result, an average household of 5 individuals that eats two vegetarian Thalis a day, gained around Rupees 10887, on average per year, while a non-vegetarian household gained Rupees 11787, on average per year.
Shift in Thali dynamics
- The Survey states that 2015-16 can be considered as a year when there was a shift in the dynamics of Thali prices.
- Many reform measures were introduced since 2014-15 to enhance the productivity of the agricultural sector as well as efficiency and effectiveness of agricultural markets for better and more transparent price discovery.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Not Much
Mains level: Prospects of ethical wealth creation and its redistribution
- The big idea from the Economic Survey 2019-20 is the need to push towards increasing the number of wealth creators in the Indian economy.
- The Survey states that to achieve the goal of becoming a $5-trillion economy, the invisible hand of markets will need the support of “the hand of trust”.
Wealth Creation
- Essentially, this means that regulation and rules in the economy should be such that they make it easy to do business but not turn into crony capitalism.
- The Survey states: “The invisible hand needs to be strengthened by promoting pro-business policies to:
- Provide equal opportunities for new entrants, enable fair competition and ease doing business,
- Eliminate policies that unnecessarily undermine markets through government intervention,
- Enable trade for job creation, and
- Efficiently scale up the banking sector to be proportionate to the size of the Indian economy.”
How can this be done?
- The Survey introduces the idea of “trust as a public good that gets enhanced with greater use”.
- In other words, it states that policies must empower transparency and effective enforcement using data and technology to enhance this public good.
- A key element here is the need to increase the opportunities for new entrants.
- “Equal opportunity for new entrants is important because… a 10 per cent increase in new firms in a district yields a 1.8 per cent increase in Gross Domestic District Product (GDDP)”.
- According to the Survey, the right policy mix can boost job creation.
Levers for furthering Wealth Creation
The Survey identifies several levers for furthering Wealth Creation, which are:
- entrepreneurship at the grassroots as reflected in new firm creation in India’s districts;
- promote ‘pro-business’ policies that unleash the power of competitive markets to generate wealth as against ‘pro-crony’ policies that may favour incumbent private interests;
- eliminate policies that undermine markets through government intervention, even where it is not necessary;
- integrate ‘Assemble in India’ into ‘Make in India’ to focus on labour intensive exports and thereby create jobs at a large scale;
- efficiently scale up the banking sector to be proportionate to the size of the Indian economy and track the health of the shadow banking sector;
- use privatization to foster efficiency. The Survey provides careful evidence that India’s GDP growth estimates can be trusted.
Is this push for wealth creators new?
- This is an extension of what PM said during his Independence Day speech in August last year, where he stressed on the need for the country to view “wealth creators” differently.
- Those who create wealth for the country, those who contribute in the country’s wealth creation — they all are serving the nation as well.
- We should not look at wealth creators with apprehension and doubt their intentions; we should not look down upon them.
- The PM had also said there was a need in the country to give such wealth creators due respect and credit.
- He had said that this change is required because “If no wealth is created, no wealth can be distributed”.
Focus on Ethical Wealth Creation
- The Survey emphasised on the importance of ‘Ethical Wealth Creation’, as the key to making India $5 trillion economy by 2025.
- Krishnamurthy V. Subramanian, the Chief Economic Adviser of Ministry of Finance has done a commendable job in producing a thought-provoking masterpiece on ‘ethical wealth creation’.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Make in India
Mains level: Expected outcomes of the said integration
Giving a new dimension to ‘Make in India’, the Economic Survey 2019-20 suggested that the government should integrate ‘Assemble in India for the world’ into ‘Make in India’ to boost exports and generate jobs.
Assemble in India
- Survey says India has unprecedented opportunity to chart a China-like, labour-intensive, export trajectory.
- By integrating “Assemble in India for the world” into Make in India, India can:
- Raise its export market share to about 3.5 % by 2025 and 6 % by 2030.
- Create 4 crore well-paid jobs by 2025 and 8 crore by 2030.
- Exports of network products can provide one-quarter of the increase in value added required for making India a $5 trillion economy by 2025.
How to harness the situation?
- The US-China trade war is causing major adjustments in global value chains and firms are scouring alternative locations for operations.
- Even before the trade war began, China’s image as a low-cost location for final assembly of industrial products was rapidly changing due to labour shortages and increases in wages.
- These developments present India an unprecedented opportunity to chart a similar export trajectory as that pursued by China and create unparalleled job opportunities for its youth.
- As no other country can match China in the abundance of its labour, we must grab the space getting vacated in labour-intensive sectors.
Key suggestions made by the Survey
Survey suggests a strategy similar to one used by China to grab this opportunity by:
- Specialization at large scale in labour-intensive sectors, especially network products.
- Laser-like focus on enabling assembling operations at mammoth scale in network products.
- Export primarily to markets in rich countries.
- Trade policy must be an enabler.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Economic Survey
Mains level: Economic Survey and its significance
With the Indian economy in the doldrums, this year’s Economic Survey will be keenly watched. The Economic Survey for 2019-2020 will be tabled in Parliament today.
What is the Economic Survey?
- The Economic Survey is a report the government presents on the state of the economy in the past one year, the key challenges it anticipates, and their possible solutions.
- One day before the Union budget, the Chief Economic Adviser (CEA) of the country releases the Economic Survey.
- The document is prepared by the Economic Division of the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) under the guidance of the CEA.
- Once prepared, the Survey is approved by the Finance Minister.
- The first Economic Survey was presented in 1950-51. Until 1964, the document would be presented along with the Budget.
- For the past few years, the Economic Survey has been presented in two volumes.
- For example, in 2018-19, while Volume 1 focussed on research and analysis of the challenges facing the Indian economy, Volume 2 gave a more detailed review of the financial year, covering all the major sectors of the economy.
Why is the Economic Survey significant?
- The Economic Survey is a crucial document as it provides a detailed, official version of the government’s take on the country’s economic condition.
- It can also be used to highlight some key concerns or areas of focus — for example, in 2018, the survey presented by the then CEA Arvind Subramanian was pink in colour, to stress on gender equality.
Is it binding on the government?
- The government is not constitutionally bound to present the Economic Survey or to follow the recommendations that are made in it.
- If the government so chooses, it can reject all suggestions laid out in the document.
- But while the Centre is not obliged to present the Survey at all, it is tabled because of the significance it holds.
What are the expectations from Economic Survey 2020?
- At a time when India’s growth has plummeted to a six-year low, the Economic Survey ahead of the Union Budget is expected to offer key insights into the path ahead for the government to revive growth.
- The conundrum of remaining fixated on deficit targets or making a concerted push towards more expenditure to kickstart growth is one of the key challenges the government is facing.
- The Survey is expected to shed light on the crucial gaps that the Budget will aim to fill in terms of unemployment, private investment, and a slump in consumption.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Association for Democratic Reforms
Mains level: De-criminalization of politics in India
The Supreme Court has agreed to examine a proposition made by the Election Commission (EC) to ask political parties to not give a ticket to those with criminal antecedents.
Cleansing of Political Parties
- The judgment had urged Parliament to bring a “strong law” to cleanse political parties of leaders facing trial for serious crimes.
- The ruling concluded that rapid criminalisation of politics cannot be arrested by merely disqualifying tainted legislators but should begin by “cleansing” the political parties.
- The court had suggested that Parliament frame a law that makes it obligatory for political parties to remove leaders charged with “heinous and grievous” crimes like rape, murder and kidnapping, only to a name a few, and refuse ticket to offenders in both parliamentary and Assembly polls.
- It had also issued guidelines, including that both the candidate and the political party should declare the criminal antecedents of the former in widely-circulated newspapers.
Why such move?
- 46% of Members of Parliament have criminal records.
- A move to steer politics away from the denizens of the criminal world would definitely serve national and public interest.
- The EC had tried several measures to curb criminalisation of politics but failed.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Project 39A
Mains level: Capital Punishment and its justification
Trial courts in India delivered 102 death sentences in 2019, over 60% fewer than the 162 death sentences passed in 2018.
Highlights of the Report
- In 2019, fewer death sentences overall were delivered.
- 1 out of 2 sentences for sexual violence-murder; in 3 out of 4 sexual violence-murder death sentences, children were the killer’s victims.
- The courts were, however, especially unforgiving of murders that involved sexual violence — the proportion of death sentences imposed for murders involving sexual offences was at a four-year high in 2019 at 52.94%.
- 2019 also saw the highest number of confirmations by High Courts in four years; 17 out of the 26 confirmations (65.38%) were in offences of murder involving sexual violence.
- The Supreme Court, primarily during the tenure of the previous CJI Gogoi, listed and heard 27 capital cases, the most in a year since 2001.
Project 39A
- These are the headline findings in the fourth edition of The Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics, published by Project 39A at the National Law University (NLU), Delhi.
- Project 39A is a research and litigation initiative focussed on the criminal justice system, and especially issues of legal aid, torture, death penalty, and mental health in prisons.
- The report tracked news of death sentences awarded by trial courts published online by news organisations in English and Hindi.
- It checked these numbers against judgments uploaded to websites of High Court and district courts.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: ASER
Mains level: Highlights of ASER 2019
The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2019 (rural) was recently released by NGO Pratham.
Highlights of the report
- Only 16% of children in Class 1 in 26 surveyed rural districts can read text at the prescribed level, while almost 40% cannot even recognise letters.
- Only 41% of these children could recognise two digit numbers.
Private schools ahead
- Of six-year olds in Class 1, 41.5% of those in private schools could read words in comparison to only 19% from government schools.
- Similarly, 28% of those in government schools could do simple addition as against 47% in private schools.
- This gap is further exacerbated by a gender divide: only 39% of girls aged 6-8 are enrolled in private schools in comparison to almost 48% of boys.
- The report also found that a classroom could include students from a range of age-groups, skewing towards younger children in government schools.
Determinants of learning outcomes
- The ASER report shows that a large number of factors determine the quality of education received at this stage, including the child’s home background, especially the mother’s education level; the type of school, whether anganwadis, government schools or private pre-schools; and the child’s age in Class 1.
- More than a quarter of Class 1 students in government schools are only 4 or 5 years old, younger than the recommended age.
- The ASER data shows that these younger children struggle more than others in all skills.
- Permitting underage children into primary grades puts them at a learning disadvantage which is difficult to overcome,” said the report.
Role of Mothers
- Among the key findings of ASER 2019 is that the mother’s education often determines the kind of pre-schooling or schooling that the child gets.
- The report says that among children in the early years (ages 0-8), those with mothers who had completed eight or fewer years of schooling are more likely to be attending anganwadis or government pre-primary classes.
- With 75% women in the productive age group not in the workforce, they can be better engaged in their children’s development, learning and school readiness.
Key suggestions made by the report
- ASER found that the solution is not to spend longer hours teaching children the 3Rs.
- Counter-intuitively, the report argues that a focus on cognitive skills rather than subject learning in the early years can make a big difference to basic literacy and numeracy abilities.
- The survey shows that among Class 1 children who could correctly do none or only one of the tasks requiring cognitive skills, about 14% could read words, while 19% could do single digit addition.
- However, of those children who could correctly do all three cognitive tasks, 52% could read words, and 63% could solve the addition problem.
Focus on productive learning
- ASER data shows that children’s performance on tasks requiring cognitive skills is strongly related to their ability to do early language and numeracy tasks,” says the report.
- This suggests that focussing on play-based activities that build memory; reasoning and problem-solving abilities are more productive than an early focus on content knowledge.
- Global research shows that 90% of brain growth occurs by age 5, meaning that the quality of early childhood education has a crucial impact on the development and long-term schooling of a child.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: State Energy Efficiency Index
Mains level: Various initiatives for promotion of energy efficiency of power sector
The Ministry of Power and New & Renewable Energy has released the ‘State Energy Efficiency Index 2019’.
State Energy Efficiency Index
- The first such Index, the “State Energy Efficiency Preparedness Index 2018”, was launched on August 1, 2018.
- The index tracks the progress of Energy Efficiency (EE) initiatives in 36 states and union territories based on 97 significant indicators.
- It is developed by Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) in association with Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy (AEEE).
- It categorizes states as ‘Front Runner’, ‘Achiever’, ‘Contender’ and ‘Aspirant’ based on their efforts and achievements towards energy efficiency implementation.
- It incorporates qualitative, quantitative and outcome-based indicators to assess energy efficiency initiatives, programs and outcomes in five distinct sectors – buildings, industry, municipalities, transport, agriculture, and DISCOMs.
Performance evaluation
- For rational comparison, States/UTs are grouped into four groups based on aggregated Total Primary Energy Supply (TPES) required to meet the state’s actual energy demand (electricity, coal, oil, gas, etc.) across sectors.
- TPES grouping shall help states compare performance and share best practices within their peer group.
- Under four categories based on TPES, Haryana, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Puducherry and Chandigarh have been evaluated as progressive states/UTs in the index.
- The top performing states Haryana, Kerala and Karnataka – are in the ‘Achiever’ category.
- Manipur, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand and Rajasthan performed the worst in each of their groups.
Utilities of the index
- It will help states contribute towards national goals on energy security and climate action by helping drive EE policies and program implementation.
- It will help tracking progress in managing the states’ and India’s energy footprint and institutionalising the data capture and monitoring of EE activities by states.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: NCRB
Mains level: Strategies to combat farmer's distress in India
In 2017, 10,655 people involved in agriculture committed suicide in India, according to data released January 2, 2020 by the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB).
NCRB had released the 2017 crime data last October 2019, but held back information on suicides.
Highlights of the report
- NCRB highlighted that the toll was the lowest since 2013.
- Among those who took their lives, 5,955 were farmers / cultivators and 4,700 agricultural labourers — both lower than in 2016.
- They comprised 8.2 per cent of all suicide cases in the country in 2017.
- In 2016, 6270 farmers killed themselves, down from 8,007 in 2015, while 5,109 farm hands committed suicide, up from 4,595.
- The number of women farmers committing suicide, however, jumped to 480 in 2017 from 275 in ’16.
Farm suicides over half a decade
| Years |
No. of farm sector suicides |
No. of farmers |
| 2017 |
10,655 |
5,955 |
| 2016 |
11,379 |
6270 |
| 2015 |
12,602 |
8007 |
| 2014 |
12,360 |
5650 |
|
|
|
|
Statewise data
- In 2017, the most number of farm suicides were reportedly in Maharashtra (34.7 per cent), followed by Karnataka (20.3 per cent), Madhya Pradesh (9 per cent), Telangana (8 per cent) and Andhra Pradesh (7.7 per cent).
- The trend was quite similar to previous year: In 2016, Maharashtra accounted for 32.2 per cent, Karnataka 18.3 per cent, MP 11.6 per cent, Andhra 7.1 per cent and Chhattisgarh 6 per cent.
- In 2015 too Maharashtra tops in farmers suicides followed by Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh in 2016.
- West Bengal, Odisha, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Uttarakhand, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Delhi, Lakshadweep and Puducherry reported zero suicides by farmers or agricultural labourers.
Causes of Farmers Suicide
- Major causes of farm suicides were reportedly bankruptcy / indebtedness, problems in the families, crop failure, illness and alcohol / substance abuse.
Assist this newscard with:
[Burning Issue] Annual Crime in India Report-2017
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