UPSC 2017: Comprehensive News Analysis - December 18

A. GS1 Related

B. GS2 Related

Nepal has been in distress for two decades, since the start of the Maoist war in early 1996, through royal autocracy, palace massacre, earthquake, foreign interference and communal polarisation.

• Finally, in a second try, the new Constitution was promulgated by the Constituent Assembly in September 2015. The last roadblock to its implementation was overcome with a series of local, provincial and national elections over the summer-winter of 2017.
• The parliamentary elections of November 26-December 7 ended the 70-year tradition of the Nepali Congress (NC) setting the political agenda in power or in dissidence.
• The Left alliance of the mainstream Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), or UML, and the Maoists have made a clean sweep to be able to form governments at the Centre and all but one of the seven brand new provinces.

Constitutional confidence

• While this weakening of opposition is cause for concern, Nepal finally seems set for a stable government with longevity beyond a year.
• To begin with, Nepal’s adherence to republicanism, federalism and its own brand of secularism are now set in stone, while earlier there was the fear of backsliding.
• The placement of elected representatives in three tiers from local, provincial to national — including in the restive Tarai plains — means there is now buy-in for the Constitution from all political stakeholders.
• New Delhi’s overt show of displeasure regarding the constitutional promulgation too has been overcome through sheer national public will.
• The citizenry feels empowered for having participated in each key episode of the last decade, including the People’s Movement of 2006, blocking attempts at communal arson, and overcoming the five-month blockade of 2015-16.
• The new Constitution marks an innovation in the South Asian landscape, with devolution of fiscal, legislative, executive and other powers not to two but three tier ‘sarkars’.
• Besides the national Parliament, the Constitution has empowered representative government in the seven provinces, 17 cities, 276 towns and 460 village municipalities.
• Emerging from a history of Kathmandu-centrism and two decades without elected local government, today an entire superstructure of representation is in place.
• A system of democratic filtering is in place, and there is excitement among the people to experiment with this new system.
• All eyes are now on Mr. Oli, having emerged as paramount leader with both electoral and populist power.
• The new Prime Minister’s biggest success will be to ‘neutralise’ the Maoist party — through power-sharing or unification
• Beyond the Maoists, Mr. Oli will have to build a working relationship not only with the NC but also the plains-based parties with whom he has been combative.

Road ahead for New Government

• Democratic stability would, ipso facto , release long-pending economic energy for which the new Prime Minister will have to fight rather than join the crony capitalists who have entrapped the political economy during the decade of “political transition”.
• The economy has to start galloping, creating jobs for the young workforce, including the millions in of job migrants in West Asia, Malaysia and India likely to return due to pushes and pulls beyond Nepal’s control.
• This requires movement on infrastructure projects, agro-forestry, tourism, service industries and irrigated agriculture in the Tarai plains.

India and China’s role

• The new Prime Minister will need to mend fences with New Delhi, energised by the strength of his electoral mandate.
• Based on the set of agreements signed in Beijing during his earlier stint at Singha Durbar, Mr. Oli is expected to accelerate connectivity to the north, utilising the Chinese railway network that has arrived on the Tibetan plateau.
• Kathmandu does not yet fully understand Beijing’s super-charged geopolitical agenda, but a confident Mr. Oli can be expected to seek a respectful rather than obsequious relationship.
• The ride to democratic stability is bound to be bumpy, not least because the Constitution — written by politicians rather than jurists and constitutionalists — is so ‘magnanimous’ that it will be a challenge to implement.
• Hundreds of laws need drafting, the grey areas in the inter-relationships between the three levels of government have to be clarified.
• The concurrent list detailing the rights and responsibilities of not two but three tiers makes Nepal’s experiment unique.
• Already, one can sense reluctance among the topmost leadership and bureaucracy to devolve power to local government as mandated by the Constitution.
• The newly instituted Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court will need to gear up to tackle the deluge.
• There are enough triggers out there for social discontent to erupt. The profligacy of the last decade of “consensus governance” has emptied the national coffers even as expenditure is set to rise to meet the needs of local and provincial administration. The post-earthquake reconstruction of households, infrastructure and heritage structures has yet to gather steam.
• There is a sharp difference in the economic status of the seven federal units, with Province No. 1 (in the East) and No. 3 (including Kathmandu Valley) the best placed in the GDP and human development indices. An equalisation protocol is the need of the hour.
• The power devolved to provincial and local government is liable to expose the population to mistreatment, from economic crimes to human rights abuse.
• Civil liberty forums therefore must rise to the occasion in all seven provinces, to watchdog all tiers. A society heading out into uncharted waters amid economic, political and geopolitical challenges is asked to implement the democratic, inclusive and social justice-oriented ideals that are to be found in the Constitution of Nepal (2015).

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly targeted the Congress over charges of dynastic politics and the lack of internal democracy in the party.
• The elevation of Rahul Gandhi as Congress president has been used by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to portray the Congress as an organisation that adheres to the principle of dynastic succession in contrast to the rise of its party workers to top echelons to project itself as a party with a difference.
• The domination of the Nehru-Gandhi family over the Congress is unmistakable — Mr. Gandhi is the sixth member from the family to occupy the top post in the party.
• Although election of the party president cannot be the sole criteria for judging intraparty democracy, the BJP views the matter solely through the lens of how parties elect chiefs.
• The facts are clear in the case of the BJP too: there has been no contest for the president’s post in the BJP since it was founded in 1980.
• All presidents have come through the selection or nomination route. Elections have taken place at the State level, but this practice too has been jettisoned in recent years in favour of election by consensus.
• The selection of the party president in the BJP is not guided by dynastic succession; it is generally guided by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) which plays the most important role in picking the party president.
• Legitimate questions arise about the influence of the RSS on the BJP, which invariably get brushed aside by drawing attention to the lack of internal democracy in the Congress.
• Also, there is an assumption that the BJP as a non-dynastic party would have better intraparty democracy. But there is no major difference between the two parties in their internal democratic structures.
• The vanishing of democracy in the Congress as a result of the centralising impulses of Indira Gandhi has been the subject of unrelenting criticism, but nearly all parties are centralised in their decision-making and have been run from the top down in terms of distribution of party tickets, selection of Chief Ministers and State party leaders, and party finance.
• The Congress led the way, but most other parties have been quick to follow the model. In the Congress, the selection of the Chief Minister is not left to the legislature party in the State assembly.
• This is a far cry from the situation before the 1969 split in the party when recommendations of State units for candidates for parliamentary or Assembly seats or Chief Minister were almost always accepted by the central leadership. Likewise in the BJP, on issues that are of crucial importance, the top echelons appear to play a decisive role.
• Furthermore, family rule has been a striking feature of the Congress but it is only fair to note that this is not a monopoly of the Congress.
• Quite a few political families have sprung up in the recent past, and more are mushrooming. In other words, what began in the Congress now extends to the bulk of party politics.
• Of the BJP’s elected MPs, 14% in 2004, 19% in 2009 and 14% in 2014 were dynastic. The BJP had given party tickets to a swing of dynasts in the U.P. Assembly elections.

Global Scenario

• Evidence from other democracies, however, shows a trend towards greater intraparty democracy, decentralisation and transparency within parties.
• In Germany, for example, parties are required to meet certain conditions in nominating their candidates to party posts. They have to be chosen by a direct secret vote at both constituency and federal levels. In the U.S., laws were enacted that required the use of secret ballots in intraparty elections.
• The British Labour Party, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, the Democratic Party in the U.S. and the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada have all seen movements by party activists and by the rank and file to reduce the power of entrenched party elites.

Indian scenario

• In India, on the other hand, there is no real movement towards democratisation of parties; the selection of candidates, Chief Ministers and office-bearers of party units is usually left to the discretion of a handful of leaders who take decisions behind closed doors.
• India’s success in consolidating a democratic system of government has paradoxically forestalled pressure for party reform. Taken as a whole, the electoral process is more representative but political parties look a lot like oligarchies.
• Most parties are subservient to one supreme leader who can impose his/her offspring on the party, and even electoral defeat does not loosen their control or hold over the party.
• Political parties — with the exception of the Left parties — still refuse to lay down settled and predictable procedures for almost everything they do, from the selection of candidates to the framing of a manifesto.
• The question of party reform is a pressing one in India. While many argue that intraparty democracy is essential to sustain broader political democracy, this is not a panacea for the numerous problems facing parties.
• The more significant issue is the lack of institutionalisation and, partly as a consequence, democratisation.
• The biggest weakness of parties is that they are leader-centric and most leaders are unwilling to institutionalise procedures for the selection of candidates and increase the participation of members in party functioning to prevent elite capture from getting entrenched.
• As a rule, strong leaders rarely support institutionalisation because it constrains their discretion and personal power. This has proved detrimental to the political system as it impedes the growth of broad-based non-sectarian parties which can effectively articulate and aggregate a variety of interests.
• This is a major challenge facing the party system because party activity driven by partisan mobilisation lies at the root of much of the schism and disruption of Indian politics today.
• Another aspect is the reduction of party organisations into election-winning machines, which depend for their success on the charisma of the leader and their capacity to win elections.
• Winning elections has become the only role a party envisages for itself. The privileging of elections at the expense of other aspects of the democratic process implies that parties are inattentive to the need for constant organisational change and renewal.
• Leaders are valued for their capacity to attract crowds and raise funds as elections become more and more expensive.The opacity of political financing, necessitates unhindered top-down control’ and ‘absolute loyalty down the line.
• If party funds are raised and controlled centrally, this weakens the State units and rank and file vis-à-vis the central leadership on a range of issues including leadership selection and nominations for elections.
• It also discourages democratisation as this would limit their power to accumulate wealth or amass a fortune or promote personal power at the expense of public interest.

• The Centre’s proposal to make instant triple talaq an offence punishable with three-year imprisonment and a fine is an unnecessary attempt to convert a civil wrong into a criminal act.
• By a three-two majority, the Supreme Court has already declared, and correctly, that the practice of talaq-e-biddat, or instant divorce of a Muslim woman by uttering the word ‘talaq’ thrice, is illegal and unenforceable.
• While two judges in the majority said the practice was arbitrary and, therefore, unconstitutional, the third judge ruled that it was illegal because it was contrary to Islamic tenets.
• Its consequence is that the husband’s marital obligations remain, regardless of his intention in pronouncing it.
• When Parliament enacts a law to give effect to the judicial invalidation of talaq-e-biddat, it must primarily ensure protection to Muslim women against its use.
• The proposed Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2017, appears to have provisions for maintenance or subsistence allowance to the wife and children in the event of triple talaq being pronounced.
• It seeks to preserve the woman’s entitlement to custody of her children. While these are welcome and necessary features of a law aimed to protect the rights of Muslim women against arbitrary divorce, it hardly requires iteration that the civil character of these aspects of marital law must be preserved.
• Instant triple talaq is viewed as sinful and improper by a large section of the community itself. Therefore, there can be no dispute about the need to protect Muslim women against the practice.
• But it is also well established that criminalising something does not have any deterrent effect on its practice. That there have been 66 cases of its use after the Supreme Court verdict only underscores the need for protecting women against desertion and abandonment.
• Also, the fine amount under consideration could as well be awarded as maintenance or subsistence allowance.
• There is no need for a fresh criminal provision when existing laws, under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code or provisions of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, already allow the prosecution of a husband for inflicting physical or mental cruelty, emotional and economic abuse, and for deprivation of financial resources.
• Regardless of whether instant talaq would fall under any of these forms of cruelty or domestic violence, criminalising it risks defeating the objective of preserving the husband’s legal obligations, and the payment of maintenance.
• The Centre would do well to reconsider its draft and limit its scope to providing relief to women, instead of creating a new offence out of a civil matter.

• India has among the youngest populations in the world, which means it can make a resourceful pool of manpower. A pre-requisite though is that it receives the right form of education, skills and employment. A step in this direction is the Skill Development Mission.
• However, an issue that has been plaguing India since long now is jobless growth. The skilling programme has been built such that it provides short-term training to youth who have already dropped out from school.
• The idea is to provide them with a job by offering short-term technical/non-technical courses rather than actively enable them to seek out a career.
• The concern here is that those who gained employment post-training were found to have dropped out in less than one year. For those who completed a year in employment, the system did not offer a career because career advancement is not just related to skills, but also to educational qualifications.
• The issue is that the same system that endeavours to provide jobs to youth restricts their career advancement, labelling them instead as dropouts.
• The skill programme fails to understand how integral it is to incorporate such a huge initiative within the education system. A system that integrates skills and education can go a long way in ensuring that the youth are better equipped to handle a challenging employment market.
• The Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) is a centrally sponsored scheme of ‘vocationalisation’ of secondary and higher secondary education.
• It focusses on enhancing the employability of youth through demand-driven, competency-based, modular vocational courses, while reducing drop-out rates.
• Yet, its biggest drawback is that its modules are not customised to suit the requirements of children in different age groups. The same approach for skill training a 12- or 14-year-old cannot be followed for training an 18-year-old because skills need to be looked at more dynamically. Skills at school should be imparted as a hobby and not as a serious trade, to make learning fun.
• Moreover, operational challenges within the schools are barriers to coalesce the education and skill model. For instance, BMC schooling in Maharashtra doesn’t provide for more than 70-80 hours per year for a vocational subject opted for by a student.
• Thus, it is not possible to complete the desired National Occupational Standards requirement of 150 hours for skills training. Also, there is lack of proper infrastructure and unavailability of quality trainers.
• We need strategic thinking while looking at skills at school. The government must learn from the gaps while implementing its skill development programmes for 18-plus youth and then develop its strategy for integrating skills within schools.

• The latest Value of Education report from HSBC, after surveying the aspirations of 8,481 parents across 15 countries, reiterates that Indian parents continue to pull out all stops when it comes to their offspring’s education.
• The 2017 report found that Indian parents spent a hefty $18,909 (about Rs. 12.3 lakh) towards their children’s school and college education in tuition fees, books and transport. About 83% of them engaged private tutors and 94% were keen to fund a post-graduate degree.
• But most importantly, both for undergraduate and postgraduate courses for their wards, a majority of Indian parents — a good 55% — were eyeing varsities overseas. This is much higher than the global average of 41%.
• Quizzed about the reasons for sending their wards abroad, (globally) the parents surveyed diplomatically said that a shot at learning foreign languages, gaining international work experience and exposure to new ideas were the main motivations.
• But what remains unsaid for Indian parents is the widespread belief that the quality of foreign educational institutions, their faculty and research opportunities, are vastly superior to what is on offer at home.
• Data from global agencies tell us that this trend of young people heading abroad to pursue college education, is the strongest in Asia. But lately, India has emerged as the torch-bearer of this trend.
• The total number of Indian students pursuing college education abroad has vaulted from 62,350 to 2.55 lakh between 2000 and 2016, data from UNESCO-UIS showed. That’s a moderate growth of 6% annually. But student migration from India has gathered steam in the last three years, even as that from other origin countries slowed.
• Between 2013 and 2016, there was a 24% jump in the number (stock) of Indian students studying abroad. This growth outpaced that for China (which saw a 12% expansion), South Korea (5% decline), Saudi Arabia (16% increase), Germany (2% decline) and France (6% increase). These countries have traditionally been the biggest contributors to the international tertiary student pool.
• Globally, India now accounts for the second largest population of international college students (2.5 lakh) after China (8 lakh).
• With its outbound student growth rates beating China’s lately, it is no wonder that many foreign varsities have been raising the pitch for their marketing blitzkrieg (though not student aid) in India.
• Growth rates apart, the other unusual facet of student migration from India is that it is largely a one-way street. Data from HSBC showed that, while China had more than 8 lakh students lodged in varsities abroad in 2016, it had also half as many international students lodged at its own campuses.
• In Malaysia, inbound students pursuing college were neck-and-neck with outbound ones. Singapore has managed to attract more than twice the number of college students it sends overseas. But in India, the number of students lodged abroad is at more than four times the inbound numbers.
• Data from Open Doors 2017 on Indian students in the USA starkly highlighted this one-way stampede. In the five years to 2016-17, the number of Indian youth pursuing the American dream at colleges there shot up from 1 lakh to 1.86 lakh, but the number of American students studying in India fell from 4,600 to about 4,100.
• The rising global mobility of Indian students is a welcome trend in some respects. It enhances job prospects and encourages cross-pollination of ideas for the students who make the cut.
• But the trend has economic downsides too. If the hordes of bright students who head offshore for their higher studies decide to settle there permanently, the brain drain cannot be very good for India’s demographic dividend story.
• A more immediate problem than the brain drain though, is the dollar drain. As more Indian parents pack off their children right from under-graduation, foreign exchange remittances towards their support are growing by leaps and bounds.
• In 2016-17, Indians spent $3.7 billion towards ‘maintenance of close relatives’ and ‘studies abroad’, with these two items accounting for 45% of all outward remittances under the RBI’s Liberalised Remittance Scheme.
• More worryingly for a country that runs a perpetual trade deficit, these outflows have grown thirteenfold since FY12, from $279 million. Upgrading the quality of domestic educational institutions is therefore a must-solve problem for India’s policymakers. It can staunch the brain drain, attract more international students onshore and thus help keep the balance of payments in check.

C. GS3 Related

• Scientists have announced the discovery of two new exoplanets, Kepler-90i and Kepler-80g.
• Exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system, are routinely being discovered, with the number of those that have already been found now standing at 3,567.
• But this announcement by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the U.S. is particularly significant.
• First, with the discovery of the planet Kepler 90i, orbiting the star Kepler 90, we now know of another star besides the Sun that has eight planets orbiting it.
• Second they have discovered it using a deep learning neural network — an artificial intelligence tool that mimics the workings of a human brain.
• They “trained” their computer to analyse light readings made by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, which are archived and made available for anyone to use.
• The network also identified another Earth-sized exoplanet, Kepler 80g, orbiting the star Kepler 80. This is a very stable system in which Kepler 80g and four of its neighbours are locked together in a so-called resonant chain.
• Deep learning and neural networks have been used in other applications successfully, as in the AlphaGo AI player of the Go game.
• This is not also the first time that automation has been used in identifying exoplanets. After the initial years of their discovery, when the number of known exoplanets grew, the need for automating the initial vetting process became clear.
• Robotvetter programis a first attempt at automating the process of rejecting false positives in the signal. The preprint describes the careful process of doing away with the false positives and systemic blips before coming up with the true signals — in this case, the two signals corresponding to Kepler 90i and Kepler 80g.
• It also indicates the caveats and failure modes in the model where it needs to be improved before it can be used to function independently. Here, then, is the takeaway — good science not only solves problems but also can take a hard look at itself, at where and how it can improve. This is a leap for humankind, a measured leap.

• Odisha seems to have emerged as a preferred investment destination for a section of Indian companies seeking to remain cost competitive while aiming to expand their market.
• Following an overhaul of the State’s industrial policy and moves by the administration to deliver on promises, a large number of companies from non-metal sectors are heading to the eastern state, the 13th largest contributor to the Indian economy.
• Two years ago, the State came out with a sector-specific Industrial Policy focusing on employment-intensive non-metal sectors with an aim to be among the top three investment destinations in the country.
• It unveiled its Vision 2025 at the Make In India Week in Mumbai last year.
• According to a recent Assocham report, Odisha has been ranked third with a more than 7% share in total live investments exceeding Rs. 177 lakh crore attracted by different states of India as of FY17. Maharashtra had a share of more than 11% while Gujarat had 8.5%.
• Odisha had attracted more than 900 projects with live investments worth more than Rs. 13 lakh crore as of FY17, the report said.
• Odisha clocked a CAGR of about 9% in the industry sector between FY12 and FY17 which was ahead of all-India’s growth rate of 6%.
• Political stability under Naveen Patnaik since 2000 has helped. Top officials point to his relentless efforts in ensuring ease of doing business.
• Over the years, big names such as Tata Steel, Aditya Alumina, Vedanta, Jindal Steel & Power and Essar have invested in the state. But, this time around, companies from the non-metal sectors and MSMEs are coming in droves.
• The state’s 480 km-long coastline and three ports are also helping attract businesses.Seafood processing is also high on the State’s agenda. A Sea Food Park with a state-sponsored investment of Rs. 134 crore is coming up at Deras, near the State capital, which will be functional in early 2018. The park stands on 150 acres and seafood processed there would be primarily meant for exports.
• Navrangpur in southwest Odisha has traditionally seen significant production of maize. The State is now wooing cattlefeed manufacturers to set up base. Several starch units have applied for permission. The State is also setting up an Aluminium Park at Angul near the Nalco factory, a Plastic Park at Paradip near an Indian Oil refinery and a Food Processing Park at Bhadrak.
• Firms find the low wage rate attractive. Land acquisition costs and power tariffs are also low, and so is the cost of living, said sources. The State rates firms on their ability to create employment and provides incentives based on the rating.
• Odisha has developed a single-window portal where applicants can log in and obtain necessary approvals. Their grievances will also be tracked through this portal.
• The state is creating a land bank of 1 lakh acres, of which 60,000 acres come from government-owned land.

• The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) urged the Centre to dilute its majority stake in public sector banks (PSBs), from the current threshold of 52% ownership to 33% over the next three years, to complement its Rs. 2.11 lakh-crore recapitalisation plan for these banks.
• The Centre could retain a larger share in the State Bank of India to meet priority sector needs and even maintain majority voting rights in other PSBs by diluting its stake through non-voting shares, the industry chamber recommended.
• The minimum government stake in PSBs had been relaxed to 52% from 58%, but the actual holdings in many of these banks are more than 80%. Just four banks have a government stake of 58% each as of March this year, the CII noted. “New accounting standards will also be applicable for banks from April 1, 2018.
• This is likely to increase provisioning requirements on bad loans by as much as 30%, further adding to these banks’ capital requirements.
• The Centre could immediately initiate public issues to dilute its stake to 52% in the public sector banks.
• The bank recapitalisation programme may revive bank credit growth over the next couple of years and lift the economy from the overhang of NPAs (non-performing assets) before suggesting some more steps to meet the capital requirements of public sector banks.

D. GS4 Related

E. PRELIMS FACT

F. Practice Questions for UPSC Prelims Exam

1. What are the reasons for Brain drain phenomena in India? Explain the significance of reforms in Indian universities and higher education in this regard?

GS Paper III

Also, check previous Daily News Analysis