16 Mar 2020: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

March 16, 2020 CNA:- Download PDF Here

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A. GS 1 Related
B. GS 2 Related
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
1. Modi calls for SAARC emergency fund
C. GS 3 Related
ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY
1. SC approves Kerala slotting projects in orange category
ECONOMY
1. Labour Ministry yet to spend ₹2,053.59 cr. of 2019-20 Budget
AGRICULTURE
1. Distress sale of mustard in Haryana as govt. yet to start procurement
D. GS 4 Related
E. Editorials
POLITY
1. Needless appeal: On U.P. move against removal of ‘name and shame’ posters
2. Reforming power to serve people
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
1. Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)
F. Prelims Facts
G. Tidbits
H. UPSC Prelims Practice Questions
I. UPSC Mains Practice Questions

Category: ECONOMY

1. Labour Ministry yet to spend ₹2,053.59 cr. of 2019-20 Budget

Context:

• The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour’s report.

Details:

Underutilization of funds:

• The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour has flagged the under-utilization of funds by the Labour and Employment Ministry.
  • The Labour and Employment Ministry was yet to spend almost 20% of its 2019-20 Budget (revised estimate) as of February 2020, pointing to gross under-utilization of funds. Underutilized funds amounted to about ₹2,053.59 crores for 2019-20 fiscal.

Uneven spread:

• The committee also noted that the utilization of funds was not evenly spread out across all the four quarters for the 2019-20 fiscal.
• The percentage of fund utilization across the schemes has not been uniform.
  • The Pradhan Mantri Rojgar Protsahan Yojana, which gives employers incentives to generate new employment, recorded 100% utilization, compared with the revised estimate.
    • The Pradhan Mantri Rojgar Protsahan Yojana Scheme aims to incentivize employment generation by the Government paying the full employers’ EPS contribution of 12%, for the new employees, for the first three years of their employment.
    • This Scheme has a dual benefit, as it incentivizes increasing employment base for workers in the establishment, and will also enable the workers to have access to social security benefits of the organized sector.
  • The National Career Service (NCS) project of the Labour Ministry, which facilitates job-seekers, recorded only 60.88% utilization of allotted funds.
    • National Career Service (NCS) project is an initiative launched by the Ministry of Labour and Employment (India) as a Mission Mode Project for establishing quick and efficient career-related services.
    • National Career Service works towards bridging the gap between job-seekers and employers by transforming the National Employment Service.
    • It brings together all stakeholders like job seekers, employers, counsellors, trainers, and private placement agencies to facilitate the convergence of information and create synergies through these associations.
    • NCS provides a host of career-related services such as dynamic job matching, career counselling, job notifications, vocational guidance, information on skill development courses, internships, etc.

Ineffectiveness of the schemes:

• 3,751 job fairs had been conducted under the National Career Service (NCS) scheme until December 2019. However, only 3.69 lakh of the 19.71 lakh candidates had received job offers.

Additional summary:

Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-dhan Yojana:

• Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-dhan is a central government scheme meant for old age protection and social security of Unorganised Workers (UW).
  • There are an estimated 42 crore unorganized workers in India.
• It is a voluntary and contributory pension scheme, under which the subscriber would receive a minimum assured pension of Rs 3000/- per month after attaining the age of 60 years and if the subscriber dies, the spouse of the beneficiary shall be entitled to receive 50% of the pension as a family pension.

To know more about the Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-dhan, click here.
Category: AGRICULTURE

1. Distress sale of mustard in Haryana as govt. yet to start procurement

Context:

• Distress sale of mustard in Haryana.

Details:

• As the Haryana government is yet to begin the procurement process, mustard farmers are resorting to distress selling of their produce at prices far lower than the mandated minimum support price fixed by the Haryana government for mustard.

Concerns:

Marginal farmers fail to benefit:

• Given the fact that marginal farmers have limited or no access to storage facilities, have loans to repay and many other expenses to meet, farmers with small landholdings cannot afford to wait for long for the government to start the procurement process and hence, resort to distress selling. Most of them sell off their crop soon after harvesting.
• Notably, it is only the big farmers who avail of the government’s procurement policy.
• The commission agents make immediate payment while the payment from the government takes weeks. This too discourages farmers from selling their produce to government agencies.

Decreasing earnings:

• The unexpected rain has delayed the arrival of mustard, besides also reducing mustard production.
• The distress selling has led to farmers selling to commission agents at prices much lower than the MSP, leading to a further decrease in the farmers’ earnings.

Way forward:

• Resorting to a fixed schedule for the procurement of crops under the MSP framework should be the focus.
• Ideally, the window for MSP procurement should start early in the crop season to ensure that all the farmers can benefit from government procurement and there is no distress selling.
• The MSP procurement should be uniformly distributed and should benefit all regions equally.

Additional Information:

Kisan Credit Card:

• The Kisan Credit Card (KCC) scheme is a credit scheme introduced in August 1998 by Indian banks. The model scheme was prepared by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) to provide term loans for agricultural needs.
  • The scheme’s objective is to meet the comprehensive credit requirements of the agriculture sector and fisheries and animal husbandry sector (added in 2019) by giving financial support to farmers.
  • Participating institutions include all commercial banks, Regional Rural Banks, and state co-operative banks.
  • The scheme has short term credit limits for crops and term loans. The validity period is five years, with an option to extend for up to three more years.

2. Reforming power to serve people

Context

• The article highlights issues with the political parties and their hunger for power, and a growing need to introduce electoral reforms.

Examples

• The campaign for the Delhi Assembly elections was filled with hate speeches.
• In Madhya Pradesh, the ruling Congress is battling defections.
• The Maharashtra Government currently has political parties that are ideologically mismatched.
• In Karnataka, defections from the Janata Dal (Secular)-Congress coalition to the BJP brought the government down.

Capturing power

• The primary goal of political parties is to capture power, and they use all the means at their disposal to obtain power. Power brings money, privileges, and control of the treasury. So, the stakes are high.
• Political parties in power are supposed to deliver good governance and serve the public, but usually, power becomes an end in itself.
• The fact that more and more freebies are being provided nowadays clearly shows that public funds are being used by those in power to lure voters, and are not necessarily being used for public service.

Factors that strengthen the growing deterioration in the quality of campaigns

• One is the rapidly increasing criminalization of politics.
  • In 2019, the Lok Sabha had 43% of MPs with a criminal record, up from about 23% in 2004.
  • Political parties that give tickets to such candidates are directly responsible for this.
• The other factor is peddling fake news during an election campaign. Most of what is online consists of abuse of rivals and vilification of opposition parties.

How Money affects Elections?

• Money fuels much of what we witness today. Defection from one party to another is primarily due to the influence of money.
  • Who is elected or which party wins does not seem to matter any longer. Those with money and the ability to engineer defections can always come to power.
• Two factors contribute to this open use of money to topple governments.
  • One is the total lack of transparency in the funding of political parties.
    • Electoral bonds have made it even more difficult to trace the source of funds of political parties.
  • The second is that political parties in power have a complete hold over law and order.
    • A corporate scamster is arrested when the money trail is discovered, but no effort is taken to trace the money trail during massive defections.
  • Political parties in India are fully controlled by a small ruling clique. Finances are raised and used in a completely opaque way.

Consequences

• All governments, whether Central or State, are in financial difficulty. More than 25% of the Central Budget is spent on paying interest on money borrowed by the government.
• Then there is deficit financing.
  • The Central government has made efforts to bring it down but has not been able to meet its targets. India’s fiscal deficit is among the highest in the developing world, with the IMF estimating it to be 7.5% of the GDP in 2019.
  • State government finances are worse: a substantial amount is spent on salaries and pensions.
• Then we have a huge problem in the financial sector with banks, non-banking financial companies and ILFS going almost into liquidation. That means a lot of the public’s money is either gone or is under great risk.
• Other manifestations of these problems are an increasing number of government scams; corruption; growing fear and insecurity; average or poor governance, including public services provided by the government; and rising unemployment.

The way forward

• India needs a system that throws up parties and politicians whose primary goal is public service, not power.
• Mahatma Gandhi suggested a way: “Democracy is an impossible thing until power is shared by all… Even a laborer, who makes it possible for you to earn your living, will have his share in self-government.”
• Politicians in the ruling party are rarely arrested, and old cases against them are even withdrawn. Sometimes no action is taken against those making hate speeches.
  • Only rival politicians are targeted. This shows that the police follow the orders of their political masters. Therefore, police reforms are required.
• As a quick fix for misuse of money power and engineered defections, a forensic audit by an independent agency should be mandatory when MLAs defect to other parties.

Conclusion

• Political parties who can reform the system do not want to change. Voters who want to reform are not in a position to bring about inner change in the electoral and political system merely through voting.
• Therefore, to promote a sustainable democracy, we need to encourage active participation of citizens in governance and work towards educating them about major public policy issues. Citizen awareness is the answer.

Category: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

1. Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)

• It was formerly known as the Millennium Dam and sometimes referred to as Hidase Dam.
• It is a gravity dam whose construction began in 2011 on the Blue Nile tributary in the northern Ethiopia highlands, from where 85% of the Nile’s waters flow.
• When complete, the Grand Renaissance Dam, which Ethiopia is building, will be Africa’s biggest hydroelectric power plant.

Why is it so contentious?

• At the centre of the dispute are plans to fill up the mega-dam as Egypt fears the project will allow Ethiopia to control the flow of Africa’s longest river.
• Hydroelectric power stations do not consume water, but the speed with which Ethiopia fills up the dam’s reservoir will affect the flow downstream.

Why is Egypt so upset?

• Egypt relies on the Nile for 90% of its water. It has historically asserted that having a stable flow of the Nile waters is a matter of survival in a country where water is scarce.
  • Egypt also fears that the dam could restrict its already scarce supply of the Nile waters, which is almost the only water source for its citizens.
  • It could also affect transport on the Nile in Egypt if the water level is too low and affect the livelihood of farmers who depend on the water for irrigation.
• A 1929 treaty (and a subsequent one in 1959) gave Egypt and Sudan rights to nearly all of the Nile waters.
  • The colonial-era document also gave Egypt veto powers over any projects by upstream countries that would affect its share of the waters.
  • Under the 1959 Nile Waters Agreement, the two downstream riparian states Egypt and Sudan, respectively, were allocated 55.5 billion cubic metres and 18.5 billion cubic metres of Nile water annually.
    • That settlement reduced Cairo’s control of the waters, compared to the virtual veto over utilisation it was granted under the 1929 treaty.
  • Egypt accuses Ethiopia of not factoring in the risk of drought conditions such as those that affected the Nile Basin in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
  • Ethiopia was outside the purview of the 1959 treaty, as also other upstream states including Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda.
    • Ethiopia has said it should not be bound by the decades-old treaty and went ahead and started building its dam at the start of the Arab Spring in March 2011 without consulting Egypt.

Why does Ethiopia want such a big dam?

• The dam is at the heart of Ethiopia’s manufacturing and industrial dreams. When completed, it is expected to be able to generate a massive 6,000 megawatts of electricity.
• Ethiopia has an acute shortage of electricity, with 65% of its population not connected to the grid.
• The energy generated will be enough to have its citizens connected and sell the surplus power to neighbouring countries.
• Ethiopia also sees the dam as a matter of national sovereignty.
  • The dam project does not rely on external funding and relies on government bonds and private funds to pay for the project.
  • The country has been critical of what it considers foreign interference in the matter.

Does anyone else benefit?

• Neighboring countries including Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Djibouti and Eritrea are likely to benefit from the power generated by the dam.

Q1. Which of the following pairs of Mountain pass and the corresponding state/UT is wrongly
matched?

Q2. Which of the following statement/s is/are correct?

Q3. Which of the following statement/s is/ are correct?

Q4. Which of the following statement/s is/are incorrect?

March 16, 2020 CNA:- Download PDF Here