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.
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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.