1.Right of Persons with disabilities Bill, 2014 passed by Rajya sabha:
- The list of disabilities has been expanded from 7 to 21 for example the person with psychosocial & intellectual disability, cerebral palsy, autism, muscular dystrophy have been included like down syndrome(it is a genetic disorder leading to mental retardation in child)
- The disability has been defined as an evolving and dynamic concept
- Quantum for reservation for person suffering with disabilities have been increased from 3% to 4% in government jobs.
- In higher education the reservation has been extended to 5 percent from the current 3 percent.
- It gives effect to UN convention on persons with disabilities and related matters.
- It provides for imprisonment ranging from six months to two years along with fine ranging from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 5 Lakhs for discriminating against the person with disabilities.
- Bill strengthens the office of chief commissioner and state commissioner for persons with disabilities . They will act as regulatory bodies.
- Does not completely induct all the principles of UNCRPD and even dilutes few of them. Further there is emphasis on the disability of the person rather than on the removal of restrictions that are present.
- It has restricted the benefits of reservation to disabled people with more than 40% disabilities.
- The bill also doesn’t recognize the right to vote via secret ballot for disabled and even contest elections, hold offices & perform all public functions.
The parliamentary standing committee on social justice & empowerment has recommended the following:
- Removing the word ‘disabilities’ from the bill as it provides a wrong connotation to these people who are bestowed with extra talent & thereby limits the potential to exhibit it.
- Including within the ambit of communication: sign language, video, visual displays.
- Including a sub section to deal with women & children with disabilities.
- The language of the bill should be gender neutral & transgender be included within the ambit of disabled
2. Primary education: Public schools vs Private schools
- Making a massive supply side push by creating a sufficient schooling network covering urban and rural areas.
- Students were provided with uniforms, classrooms, textbooks.
- Activity based learning: it is a pedagogy that teaches each child at the right level rather than teaching the average learner and it uses a broader cognitive approach than learning by rote. There are defined competency milestones that also teaches each student the cognitive level they are in. It should use the principle that ‘no child left behind’.
- Innovative solutions like in Tamil Nadu: to tackle migration dropout due to “cotton led migration” the schools also shift to such migration areas as non residential schools.
Child Drug Abuse in India
Background :-
Recently Supreme Court ordered the government to come up with a plan to tackle child drug abuse, acting on a petition from Nobel Peace laureate Kailash Satyarthi´s child rights group.Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save Childhood Movement) filed the petition before the Supreme Court in 2014
Statistics :-
With government figures showing almost 20 percent of addicts in India are under 21, the Supreme Court said more needed to be done to educate young people about the dangers of substance abuse in India.
The court ordered govt. to “evolve a national action plan within six months to combat drug abuse amongst school children”.
A 2013 report by the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights estimated 40-70 percent of India´s 18 million homeless children were exposed to some form substance abuse. Many of them started taking drugs as young as five years old, the report found.
Regional Analysis :-
In Punjab the numbers are ridiculous nearly 75% of its youth are severely addicted to drugs, that’s 3 out of every 4 children.
Mumbai, Hyderabad and other cities around the country are quickly gaining a reputation for their drug usage; and the population in each of these cities continues to grow.
Delhi is filled with rehab centres trying to keep up with the flow of addicts. Over 500 centres across our country work together to nurse addicts back into healthy productive lifestyles but addiction is becoming too much for India.
The menace of drugs and alcohol has woven itself deep into the fabric of our society. As its effects reach towards our youth, India’s future generation will have to compete with drugs like cannabis, alcohol and tobacco.
More Indian youngsters struggle with addiction than ever before. Peer pressure, adolescent immaturity and irresponsible parenting is the three-headed monster luring our children towards addiction and a life of suffering and regret.
Fixing the youth drug problem
Nearly 75% of Indian homes house at least one drug user,usually a parent, and often the father. Experts tell us that children as young as 13 and 14 regularly experiment with intoxicants.
Instead of wondering why our youth are becoming addicts, we should start asking better questions. How do we stop them? How do we keep the stuff out of their little hands and away from their innocent minds?
The answer to these questions are two sided:
1. There needs to be an effort to prevent drug and alcohol addiction.
2. De-Addiction Centres need to focus in on the youth of India.
Preventing Addiction
Although often neglected, we need to give special attention to our young community who have never abused drugs.
The old saying, “Preventing addiction is more effective than curing it,” may seem idealistic, but it demonstrates a mindset that Indians need to adopt. While many programmes aim at presenting alternatives to addicts, we need to remember the community that has never abused drugs.
Creating healthy and attractive alternatives to drug abuse can curb the number of first time users. The United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention recently came out with a handbook to help communities prevent drug abuse. Some basic prevention ideas include:
- Promotion of Health: The community needs to promote healthy lifestyles through personal and cultural practices. By setting an example of health you will discourage damaging and dangerous lifestyles.
- Focus on people and encouragement of social interaction: Promoting social interaction between old and young can only be done in a social environment. Create this environment through organized activities that all ages can partake in.
- Local involvement of young people and respect for cultural values: The activities you chose should focus on young people. Be sure to respect cultural traditions of the community.
- Encouragement of positive alternatives: Develop these alternatives with cultural values in mind, and understanding what appeals to the younger generation.
- Long-term perspective: Don’t be discouraged if results aren’t immediate. Preventing drug use takes time keeping a long-term perspective is important.
- Community development: Focus on developing the fundamentals of your community. Education, health and social services, housing, sanitation, and income-generating activities are important ideas to focus in on.
Helping our youth come clean
The second side to India’s addiction problem comes in the form of our present addicts. And unfortunately, addiction currently plagues millions of Indians both young and old.
Solving this problem won’t be easy either, but the solution will come in the form of better youth de-addiction centres. Currently, only 33% of the 580 centres listed offer youth de-addiciton. This statistic must change if India hopes to save its youth.
Recent Posts
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.