1)PAHAL-Guinness world record :-
- The “Pahal” scheme has been acknowledged by the Guinness Book of World Records for being the largest cash transfer program (households) with 12.57 crore households receiving cash transfer as of 30th June, 2015
- This scheme has enabled substantive savings in subsidy on supply of LPG consumers to the households.
- Pahal:-
- PaHaL or Pratyaksha Hastaantarit Laabh, formerly the Direct Benefit Transfer Scheme for LPG subsidy, is a Direct Benefit Transfer scheme for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) subsidy in India. Under the scheme, LPG cylinders are sold at market rates and consumers receive a subsidy from the Union Government directly into their bank accounts. It replaced the previous system of selling subsidised LPG cylinders directly to consumers. It is the largest cash transfer programme in the world
- By 1 March 2015, 75% of the total LPG consumer base of 15.3 crore was enrolled under the scheme
- Give It UP:-
- The PaHaL scheme was accompanied by a “Give It Up” campaign requesting people to voluntarily give up their LPG subsidy, if they could afford to do so
- As of 16 November 2015, 4,694,129 LPG consumers have voluntarily surrendered their subsidies
2)PM releases commemorative coins on Dr. B.R. Ambedkar:-
- The Prime Minister today released two commemorative coins, as part of the 125th birth anniversary year celebrations of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. The coins, which are of “ten-rupee” and “one hundred and twenty-five rupee” denomination, were issued on the Mahaparinirvan Divas of Babasaheb Ambedkar
- Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar popularly known as Babasaheb, was an Indian jurist, economist, politician and social reformer who inspired the Modern Buddhist Movement and campaigned against social discrimination against Untouchables (Dalits), while also supporting the rights of women and labour. He was Independent India’s first law minister and the principal architect of the Constitution of India.
- Ambedkar had been invited to testify before the Southborough Committee, which was preparing the Government of India Act 1919. At this hearing, Ambedkar argued for creating separate electorates and reservations for untouchables and other religious communities
- In 1920, he began the publication of the weekly Mooknayak (Leader of the Silent) in Mumbai
- Poona Pact:-In 1932, British announced the formation of a separate electorate for “Depressed Classes” in the Communal Award. Gandhi fiercely opposed a separate electorate for untouchables, saying he feared that such an arrangement would divide the Hindu community.Gandhi protested by fasting while imprisoned in the Yerwada Central Jail of Poona. Following the fast, Congress politicians and activists such as Madan Mohan Malaviya and Palwankar Baloo organised joint meetings with Ambedkar and his supporters at Yerwada.On 25 September 1932, the agreement known as Poona Pact was signed between Ambedkar (on behalf of the depressed classes among Hindus) and Madan Mohan Malaviya (on behalf of the other Hindus). The agreement gave reserved seats for the depressed classes in the Provisional legislatures, within the general electorate. Due to the pact, the depressed class received 148 seats in the legislature, instead of the 71 as allocated in the Communal Award earlier proposed by the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. The text uses the term “Depressed Classes” to denote Untouchables among Hindus who were later called Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes under India Act 1935, and the later Indian Constitution of 1950.
- In 1936, Ambedkar founded the Independent Labour Party, which contested the 1937 Bombay election to the Central Legislative Assembly
- Ambedkar opposed Article 370 of the Constitution of India, which granted a special status to the State of Jammu and Kashmir, and which was included against his wishes. Balraj Madhok reportedly said, Ambedkar had clearly told Sheikh. Abdullah: “You wish India should protect your borders, she should build roads in your area, she should supply you food grains, and Kashmir should get equal status as India. But Government of India should have only limited powers and Indian people should have no rights in Kashmir. To give consent to this proposal, would be a treacherous thing against the interests of India and I, as the Law Minister of India, will never do it.“
- In 1951, Ambedkar established the Finance Commission of India. He opposed income tax for low-income groups. He contributed in Land Revenue Tax and excise duty policies to stabilise the economy.He played an important role in land reform and the state economic development
- Works:-
- Annihilation of Caste
- Who Were the Shudras?
- The Buddha and His Dhamma
- Dikshabhumi, a stupa at the site in Nagpur, where Ambedkar embraced Buddhism along with many of his followers
- Outside India, during the late 1990s, some Hungarian Romani people drew parallels between their own situation and that of the downtrodden people in India. Inspired by Ambedkar, they started to convert to Buddhism.
- Indian Buddhists regard him as a Bodhisattva, although he never claimed it himself.
- Chaitya Bhoomi (Maharastra) is a memorial to Dr. B R Ambedkar, Chief architect of Indian Constitution. Earlier known as Dadar Chowpatty it began to be known as Chaitya Bhoomi after Babasaheb Ambedkar was cremated here after his death on 6 December 1956.
- Ambedkar’s death anniversary, 6 December, is observed as Mahaparinirvan Din. Lakhs of people across the nation throng Chaityabhoomi to pay homage to him on this day has become an old custom.
3)Child-friendly paediatric TB drugs will be a game changer:-
- Treating young children afflicted by drug-sensitive TB disease will no longer be the same. After years of neglect, the availability of flavoured, easily dissolvable first-line TB drugs in correct doses marks a watershed moment as the special needs of these children will be met. The tablets, which are a combination of two and more medicines in a fixed dose (FDC), are meant for children weighing less than 25 kg.
- The Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program in India has made the child TB program a priority. India expects to roll out the new FDCs in a pilot project in 100 districts
- According to the World Health Organisation, at least 1 million children become ill with TB each year and 140,000 children die each year. It’s an irony that despite the high demand, children around the world have not had access to appropriate TB medicines.
- Young children, who have relatively greater mass of liver in proportion to total bodyweight, absorb and eliminate drugs faster than adults. Children are not little adults but need higher doses of the medicines than what they were receiving and what is prescribed for adults.
- In the absence of medicines of correct dosages, parents and caregivers were forced to crush or cut medicines meant for adults to achieve correct dosing. Very often, the crude method of crushing adult tablets resulted in imprecise dosing, not to mention the bitter taste when tablets were broken. It is likely that cutting and crushing of adult pills could have contributed to drug resistance as caregivers were never fully sure to give the right dosages.
- The availability of child-friendly drugs of correct dosages will have many advantages — dramatically simplify and improve adherence, improve overall treatment, stop the growth of drug-resistant TB, and save lives.
Questions of the Day (150-200 word):-
- “Article 370 has hampered the integration of Jammu and Kashmir with India”-What your view on this ?Should article 370 be removed from constitution of India ?
- What is Poona Pact and how it stopped the creation of Separate electorates.Do you think Separate electorates would have divided Indian Society ?
- Do you think “Give it Up” campaign will succeed ? “People usually don’t give up the benefit they receive irrespective of their economic status “-Comment.
- What is the cause and mode of propagation of the TB?What do you understand by drug-resistance TB ?
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.