1)Accessible India (Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan) :-
- DEPwD – Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities , has launched the Accessible India Campaign as a nation-wide flagship campaign for achieving universal accessibility for the PwDs.
- For PwDs , universally is critical for enabling them to gain for equal opportunity and live independently.
- Persons with Disabilities(Equal opportunities, Protection of rights and Full participation ) Act ,1995 under section 44,45,46 categorically provides for non-discrimination in transport and non-discrimination in built environments.
- UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (UNCRPD), to which India is a signatory , under article 9 casts obligations on the governments for ensuring the PWDs accessibility to :-
- Information
- Transportation
- Physical Environment
- Communication Technology
- Accessibility to services as well as emergency services
- Keeping this in view and creating India as a more inclusive and accessible society , the Government of India has launched this program.
2)Chennai Floods – What has gone wrong-
- The recent floods in Chennai and the unprecedented inability to deal with it , shows that in our way towards economic growth , environment has taken a back seat.
- The flood is akin to Mumbai flood of 2005 . Both the cities are coast facing and both have grown enormously as a city in the last few decades.
- Chennai , its soil and rock types suggest that the city is historically a flood plain.
- Chennai had more than 600 waterbodies in the 1980s, but a master plan published in 2008 said that only a fraction of the lakes could be found in a healthy condition. According to records of the State’s Water Resources Department, the area of 19 major lakes has shrunk from a total of 1,130 hectares (ha) in the 1980s to around 645 ha in the early 2000s, reducing their storage capacity. The drains that carry surplus water from tanks to other wetlands have also been encroached upon.
- Chennai has only 855 km of stormwater drains against 2,847 km of urban roads. Thus, even a marginally heavy rainfall causes havoc in the city.
- Urban sprawls such as Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Srinagar etc. have not paid adequate attention to the natural water bodies that exist in them. In Chennai, each of its lakes has a natural flood discharge channel which drains the spillover. But we have built over many of these water bodies, blocking the smooth flow of water. We have forgotten the art of drainage. We only see land for buildings, not for water.
- Chennai’s human-made drainage is no replacement for its natural drainage systems — analysis shows that there are natural canals and drains that directly connect the city with wetlands, waterbodies and rivers such as the Cooum and the Adyar that run through Chennai.However real-estate has been built upon the flood plains, and with a slight heavy rain, poorly constructed drainage system which are silted , the water stays on the road and it has no where to go in the concrete jungle.
- Also , the freak weather is predicted as an extension of climate change. The data vindates this stance. The rains in Chennai have broken a 100-year record (374 mm in just 24 hours). In November, the city had received 1,218 mm of rain, which was almost three times more than the average the city receives (407 mm).
- Urban planning withe out due consideration for environment has been a major cause of worry in India. Many coastal cities have been lost to the times of history and major cause of disappearance of coastal cities is attributed to either climate change or bad urban planning, focusing mainly on drainage system.
- Environmental swings are inevitable , and improper planning accentuates the devastating capacity of the calamities.
Way Forward :-
- Every city has it’s carrying capacity and once it’s overrun , it becomes almost impossible for the city to sustain life.Hence , pro-active measures needs to be taken to release the stress of the mega cities of India.Satellite cities can be built which can release the stress of our urban sprawl.
- Though we have a flood plain zoning and management , it has not been adhered to.Political class need to listen to the environmentalists and engage not only the civil engineers but environmental engineers in the planning process.
- SMART CITY in this regard is an ambitious project , which not only aims retrofitting the existing cities but also plans to build new cities which could take the demographic pressure of our mega cities.
- However the project has came too late, we are not in the brink of climate change , we are already in it, thus this needs speedier implementation.
- It was often cited in the time of relief and rescue work that our Air force could not find a high ground to land and carry on the rescue work. In this regard , as a short term measure , high ground structure and homes has to be built so as to, not only provide shelter in the times of disaster but also give the rescue team a base to operate from.
3)Toda tribe of Nilgiris :-
- The Nilgiris, (blue mountains) first explored by British writer John Sullivan in 1819 is the pride of South India. Everything about the hills is amazing; more so its name which is derived from a wild flower called Neela Kurinji (bluish-violet colour) that blossoms once in every 12 years.
- Even more exotic is the first ever tribal natives of Nilgiris, the Toda (Thuda) clans who were first spotted by the British.
- The Toda clan to this day are distinctly different from the rest of the Tamil tribes or plainsmen. They are an exotic race, whose facial features (barring gene mutations) are very un-south Indian. For one, they are generally not dark; they are fair-skinned, ruddy with constant exposure to sunny to rainy weather.
- The Englishmen who resided in Nilgiris then were amazed and also appreciative of the Toda’s good looks as also their pride, as has been written in their analogies. The Toda would never turn his head and admire the foreigner as we would even today.
- There are 15 Toda clans presently in Nilgiris, each having its own temple and head priest. They are close to the Hindus in religion.
- The language is Proto Dravidian, their prayer is not in their spoken tongue. Even linguist Emino in 1930s was unable to decipher their prayer lingo. The Toda culture is unlike other tribal cultures across India
- Todas are totally vegetarian; their diet is milk and milk products. They are pastoral by birth but now many have moved to agriculture too.
4)Agra to host first ever international bird fete:-
- In a bid to promote Uttar Pradesh as an international bird-watching destination, the State Forest department, in collaboration with FICCI, is planning to hold a three-day international festival on birds at the National Chambal Sanctuary (NCS) in Agra.
- The festival starts on December 4 and will end on December 6.As many as 25 top international bird experts and over 80 Indian ornithologists are expected to attend the first-of-its-kind festival.
Birdman of India- Salim Ali
- Sálim Moizuddin Abdul Ali was an Indian ornithologist and naturalist. Sometimes referred to as the “birdman of India”.
- Salim Ali was among the first Indians to conduct systematic bird surveys across India and his bird books helped develop ornithology
- He became the key figure behind the Bombay Natural History Society after 1947 and used his personal influence to garner government support for the organisation, create the Bharatpur bird sanctuary (Keoladeo National Park) and prevent the destruction of what is now the Silent Valley National Park. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1958 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1976.
- His magnum opus was however the 10 volume Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan written with Dillon Ripley.
5)Change of guard – Chief Justice of India :-
- Justice Tirath Singh Thakur was sworn in as 43rd Chief Justice of India by President Pranab Mukherjee recently.
- Appointment of CJI:-
- According to the convention, the present Chief Justice recommends the name of his successor to the government.
- After the Law Ministry clears his name, the file will go to the Prime Minister’s Office and finally reaches the President, after whose approval the Warrant of Appointment will be issued
- Article 124 of the Constitution of India provides for the manner of appointing judges to the Supreme Court.
- Though no specific provision exists in the Constitution for appointing the Chief Justice, who, as a result, is appointed like the other judges.
- Usually the seniority take precedence.However, this convention has been breached on a number of occasions, most notably during the premiership of Indira Gandhi, who appointed A.N. Ray superseding three judges senior to him allegedly because he supported Gandhi’s government, during the Emergency, a time when her government was becoming increasingly mired in a political and constitutional crisis.
Question Of the Day (150-200)
- What is urban sprawl ? In your view, can the mega cities of India withstand natural calamities.What are the different types of disaster vulnerability of our Mega cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata ?
- What is the state of affairs for PwDs in India ? What measures are required to make India more accessible to the PwDs.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.
Consider this hypothetical situation: Rajalakshmi, from a remote Karnataka village spots a business opportunity.
She knows that flowers, discarded in the thousands by temples can be handcrafted into incense sticks.
She wants to find a market for the product and hopefully, employ some people to help her. Soon enough though, she discovers that starting a business is a herculean task for a person like her.
There is a laborious process of rules and regulations to go through, bribes to pay on the way and no actual means to transport her product to its market.
After making her first batch of agarbathis and taking it to Bengaluru by bus, she decides the venture is not easy and gives up.
On the flipside of this is a young entrepreneur in Bengaluru. Let’s call him Deepak. He wants to start an internet-based business selling sustainably made agarbathis.
He has no trouble getting investors and to mobilise supply chains. His paperwork is over in a matter of days and his business is set up quickly and ready to grow.
Never mind that the business is built on aggregation of small sellers who will not see half the profit .
Is this scenario really all that hypothetical or emblematic of how we think about entrepreneurship in India?
Between our national obsession with unicorns on one side and glorifying the person running a pakora stall for survival as an example of viable entrepreneurship on the other, is the middle ground in entrepreneurship—a space that should have seen millions of thriving small and medium businesses, but remains so sparsely occupied that you could almost miss it.
If we are to achieve meaningful economic growth in our country, we need to incorporate, in our national conversation on entrepreneurship, ways of addressing the missing middle.
Spread out across India’s small towns and cities, this is a class of entrepreneurs that have been hit by a triple wave over the last five years, buffeted first by the inadvertent fallout of demonetization, being unprepared for GST, and then by the endless pain of the covid-19 pandemic.
As we finally appear to be reaching some level of normality, now is the opportune time to identify the kind of industries that make up this layer, the opportunities they should be afforded, and the best ways to scale up their functioning in the shortest time frame.
But, why pay so much attention to these industries when we should be celebrating, as we do, our booming startup space?
It is indeed true that India has the third largest number of unicorns in the world now, adding 42 in 2021 alone. Braving all the disruptions of the pandemic, it was a year in which Indian startups raised $24.1 billion in equity investments, according to a NASSCOM-Zinnov report last year.
However, this is a story of lopsided growth.
The cities of Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, and Mumbai together claim three-fourths of these startup deals while emerging hubs like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Jaipur account for the rest.
This leap in the startup space has created 6.6 lakh direct jobs and a few million indirect jobs. Is that good enough for a country that sends 12 million fresh graduates to its workforce every year?
It doesn’t even make a dent on arguably our biggest unemployment in recent history—in April 2020 when the country shutdown to battle covid-19.
Technology-intensive start-ups are constrained in their ability to create jobs—and hybrid work models and artificial intelligence (AI) have further accelerated unemployment.
What we need to focus on, therefore, is the labour-intensive micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME). Here, we begin to get to a definitional notion of what we called the mundane middle and the problems it currently faces.
India has an estimated 63 million enterprises. But, out of 100 companies, 95 are micro enterprises—employing less than five people, four are small to medium and barely one is large.
The questions to ask are: why are Indian MSMEs failing to grow from micro to small and medium and then be spurred on to make the leap into large companies?
At the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), we have advocated for a National Mission for Mass Entrepreneurship, the need for which is more pronounced now than ever before.
Whenever India has worked to achieve a significant economic milestone in a limited span of time, it has worked best in mission mode. Think of the Green Revolution or Operation Flood.
From across various states, there are enough examples of approaches that work to catalyse mass entrepreneurship.
The introduction of entrepreneurship mindset curriculum (EMC) in schools through alliance mode of working by a number of agencies has shown significant improvement in academic and life outcomes.
Through creative teaching methods, students are encouraged to inculcate 21st century skills like creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and leadership which are not only foundational for entrepreneurship but essential to thrive in our complex world.
Udhyam Learning Foundation has been involved with the Government of Delhi since 2018 to help young people across over 1,000 schools to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
One pilot programme introduced the concept of ‘seed money’ and saw 41 students turn their ideas into profit-making ventures. Other programmes teach qualities like grit and resourcefulness.
If you think these are isolated examples, consider some larger data trends.
The Observer Research Foundation and The World Economic Forum released the Young India and Work: A Survey of Youth Aspirations in 2018.
When asked which type of work arrangement they prefer, 49% of the youth surveyed said they prefer a job in the public sector.
However, 38% selected self-employment as an entrepreneur as their ideal type of job. The spirit of entrepreneurship is latent and waiting to be unleashed.
The same can be said for building networks of successful women entrepreneurs—so crucial when the participation of women in the Indian economy has declined to an abysmal 20%.
The majority of India’s 63 million firms are informal —fewer than 20% are registered for GST.
Research shows that companies that start out as formal enterprises become two-three times more productive than a similar informal business.
So why do firms prefer to be informal? In most cases, it’s because of the sheer cost and difficulty of complying with the different regulations.
We have academia and non-profits working as ecosystem enablers providing insights and evidence-based models for growth. We have large private corporations and philanthropic and funding agencies ready to invest.
It should be in the scope of a National Mass Entrepreneurship Mission to bring all of them together to work in mission mode so that the gap between thought leadership and action can finally be bridged.