22 Mar 2021: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

B. GS 2 Related

Category: POLITY AND GOVERNANCE

1. SC walks a tightrope over vacancies

Context:

The Supreme Court Collegium is striving to reach a consensus on recommendations to fill the five vacancies.

Details:

• The names of several High Court judges are in the zone of consideration.
• The Collegium is discussing diverse opinions from within on issues like proportionate representation from various High Courts and seniority among High Court judges before finalising the names to recommend to the government for appointment.
• Proportionate representation from High Courts and seniority carry weight during the appointment process.
  • However, these are only conventions and not constitutional or legal mandates.

Issue:

• The past several months have seen the Supreme Court function under a series of challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, even as its judicial strength faded to 29 with the retirement of Justice Indu Malhotra.
  • The maximum possible strength is 34.
• The year 2021 will see four retirements in the top court.
  • As per the Constitution of India, judges of the Supreme Court retire at the age of 65.

Appointment of Judges to the Supreme Court:

• The Collegium System of the Supreme court of India deals with the appointment and transfer of judges.
• Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) is an agreement between the Government and the judiciary that has a set of guidelines for the appointment of judges of the Supreme Court.
• The MoP was formulated after the Third Judges Case in order to govern the process of how the Collegium System would make recommendations to the executive.

Read more about the Appointment and Removal of Judges of the Supreme Court of India.

E. Editorials

Category: ECONOMY

1. Doubling down on a resilient India

Context

• The article speaks about India’s investment climate.

FDI inflows

• Despite India experiencing economic contractions due to covid-19, India saw the fastest growth in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows among all the major economies in 2020.
• Google, Facebook, Walmart, Samsung, Foxconn, and Silver are some of the companies which have placed trust in the Indian markets.

But India still remains a complex place to do business.

Challenges

• Companies usually are concerned about market access as they encounter obstacles or conditions which are tough for them to achieve when it comes to operating in India.
• Policies change quite often which shows a lack of planning and frequent changes in rules, laws, create a complex environment for executing an action plan.
• The government’s push to build a “self-reliant” India has rattled investors.
• Smaller companies lack the resources and monetary advantages to navigate on-the-ground hurdles.

Still, leading corporate investors see the Indian market differently. They have the vision to understand that these are risks worth taking given the scale of the India Opportunity.

India an essential part of their growth story

1. First, sheer demographics.

• What India offers through its nearly 1.4 billion people and their growing purchasing power is uniquely valuable for multinationals with global ambitions.
• No other country outside of China has a market that houses nearly one in six people on the planet and a rising middle class of 600 million.

2. Second, shifting geopolitics.

• Trade war and rising tensions between the USA and China are making companies rethink on its strategies as they are moving to different production hubs.
• Savvy countries such as Vietnam have capitalised on this opportunity to great effect, but India is only finally getting serious about attracting large-scale production and exports.
• Major multinational companies such as Samsung have invested billions in the Indian market, and manufacturers such as Cisco, Nokia, Ericsson, and Flex are reportedly weighing new investments that take advantage of fresh incentive programs.

3. Third, rising digital connectivity.

• India’s digital landscape has further expanded due to cheap mobile data and India has an estimated 700 million active internet users.
• This is the primary reason why leading global tech companies are investing in India and weathering acute policy pressure.
• Domestic Indian companies have also demonstrated their ability to innovate and deliver high-quality services at scale.
• The partnerships and FDI flows linking multinationals and Indian tech firms will continue to unlock shared market opportunities for years to come.

4. Fourth, national resilience.

• Despite facing the scourge of the novel coronavirus head-on, India has managed the pandemic better than many of its western peers and restored economic activity even before implementing a mass vaccination programme.

Way forward

• Companies should continuously demonstrate their commitment to India.
  • Successful companies do this by placing shared value creation at the heart of their business strategy. They tie corporate success to India’s growth and development.
  • They forge enduring partnerships and lasting relationships, elevate and invest in Indian talent, align products with Indian tastes, and ultimately tackle the hardest problems facing India today.

2. Junk inefficiency

Background

Check the link: CNA dated Jan 31, 2021.

Implementational Challenges

• Enforcement will be key to get the vehicles scrapped once they are found unfit for use and to stop them from moving to smaller towns.
• States must also come on board to provide road tax and registration concessions, while the automobile industry is expected to sweeten the deal with genuine discounts on new vehicles.

Way forward

• The Centre has to offer incentives that reward manufacturers of vehicles that are the most fuel-efficient.

Category: SOCIAL ISSUES

1. How to treat unpaid work

Introduction

• Women everywhere carry a disproportionately higher burden of unpaid work, namely, unpaid domestic services as well as unpaid care of children, the old and the disabled for their respective households.
  • Unpaid work can be understood to comprise all productive activities outside the official labour market done by individuals for their own households or for others.
• Women do this job not necessarily because they like it or are efficient in it, but because it is imposed on them by patriarchal norms, which are the roots of all pervasive gender inequalities.
• Though this work contributes to overall well-being at the household level and collectively at the national level, it is invisible in the national database and particularly in national policies.

This unequal division of unpaid work between women and men is unfair and unjust and it deprives women of equal opportunities as men.

What the government could do?

• First, the government should recognise unpaid work in the national database by a sound time-use survey and use the data in national policies.
  • The most obvious and simple measures are data collection, presentation and analysis.
• A second step in making visible the importance of unpaid work for society as a whole is imputing its value in monetary terms.
  • Imputing a monetary value for unpaid work is a necessary condition for its inclusion in national accounts.
• Third, they could relieve women’s burden of unpaid work by improving technology (e.g. better fuel for cooking), better infrastructure (e.g. water at the doorstep), shifting some unpaid work to the mainstream economy (e.g. childcare, care of the disabled, and care of the chronically sick), and by making basic services (e.g. health and transportation) accessible to women.
• Also, they could redistribute the work between men and women by providing different incentives and disincentives to men (e.g. mandatory training of men in housework, childcare, etc.) and financial incentives for sharing housework.
• The government can also look at the payment of pension to old women (60+ years).

Indirect policies relating to unpaid work

• A well-known indirect way of recognizing unpaid work is granting to the male breadwinner/head of the household a (minimum) wage level that is supposed to include some ‘reward’ for his wife’s unpaid household work and a compensation for the fact that he has to support his ‘non-earning’ wife.

Way forward

• The concept of unpaid work and its place in the economy at large deserves more in-depth research and analysis.

Conclusion

• The reality of the huge unpaid contribution of households to economic value needs to be accepted. If policy-makers became aware of all these effects and took them into account, unpaid work would be ‘mainstreamed’ as a regular element in the policy-making process.
• Therefore, measures have to be taken to give free time to women, so that new opportunities can strengthen their progress.

Category: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

1. Iran deal could be rescued by the IAEA

Reference:

CNA dated Feb 28, 2021.

Q1. Consider the following statements:

Q2. Lachit Borphukan is associated with which of the following?

Q3. Muria tribe belongs to which state?

Q4. Consider the following statements with respect to Whitsun Reef:

I. UPSC Mains Practice Questions

1. Companies with global ambitions invest in the Indian market in spite of hurdles as the rewards for investment are substantial and well worth pursuing. Substantiate. (10 marks, 150 words) [GS 3, Economy]
2. The unpaid work of women has to be recognized and should be taken into account in the formulation of socio-economic policies. Discuss. (10 marks, 150 words) [GS1, Social Issues]

Read previous CNA here.