Gist of Yojana January 2022: Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav

Yojana Magazine is an important source of material for the UPSC exam. The monthly magazine provides details of major government schemes and programmes in various domains. Moreover, coming from the government, it is an authentic source of information for the UPSC Exam. Here, we provide the Gist of Yojana, exclusively for the IAS Exam.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. India As a Space Power
2. Swadeshi Entrepreneurship
3. Global Agricultural Powerhouse
4. Economic Transformation
5. Infrastructure: History and Challenges
6. Voyage of Indian Cinema
7. Role of Media
8. Reforming caste in New India
9. Preparing future leaders

Chapter 1: India As a Space Power

Introduction:

Space and satellites are becoming increasingly important. With a large number of space assets, India has emerged as a major player in the global space competition.

Beginning of Indian Space Program

1. INCOSPAR (Indian National Committee for Space Research) was founded in 1962 under the Department of Atomic Energy by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the “father of Indian space programme,” Vikram Sarabhai.
2. In 1963, the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) was created in Thiruvananthapuram for upper atmospheric research.
3. INCOSPAR was succeeded by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in 1969.
4. The ISRO created the first Indian satellite, Aryabhata, which was launched on April 19, 1975, with the support of the Soviet Union.
5. India’s second satellite, Bhaskara Sega-I, was likewise launched with Soviet aid.
6. Rohini was the first Indian satellite to be successfully put into orbit by the SLV-3, an Indian-built launch vehicle, in 1980.

Achievements of the Indian Space Program

Significance of Space Program for India: –

1. India has a thriving space programme for national security, economic development, and technical advancement.
2. Agriculture, communications, remote sensing, resource mapping, imaging, navigation, education, weather forecasting, cyclone prediction, and disaster management are all uses that Indian satellites provide.
3. It’s also critical to protect and secure India’s precious space assets. I
4. There is an increasing reliance on space for economic and technical progress, national security, and military operations, as well as a need to protect space assets.
5. The changing security environment has also influenced India’s space programme.

Recent Developments:

1. IRNSS: The ‘Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System’ (IRNSS) was launched by India to provide precise position information service in India and the region extending up to 1500 km beyond its border with a position precision of better than 20 metres.
2. Aditya-L1: In 2020, India will launch ‘Aditya-L1,’ the country’s first mission to the Sun.
3. Gaganyaan: The launch of ‘Gaganyaan,’ India’s first human space project, is scheduled for 2022 or earlier.
4. 2017 Draft Space Activities Bill: The bill’s goal is to promote and govern India’s space operations. It focuses on fostering private-sector participation under the direction and approval of the government through the Department of Space.
5. Defense Space Agency (DSA): The Defense Space Agency is a tri-service organization. The agency is in charge of India’s space-warfare and satellite intelligence assets.
6. NSIL (New Space India Limited): It was founded in 2019 as a Central Public Sector Enterprise under the Department of Space. Its mission is to market space-related products and services developed by India’s space programme to international clients.
7. Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe): It is an independent nodal entity within the Department of Space responsible for authorising NGPEs to participate in space activities and use DOS-owned facilities, as well as prioritising the launch manifest.

Challenges

1. National security concerns: Government worries over knowledge sharing, launch methods, and satellite capabilities have led to a reluctance to allow private actors in the market due to the security concerns.
2. Delay in Processes: Many approval processes take a long time to complete. Approvals take around a year and a half. This comes at a time when the next three to four years are critical for the sector’s growth.
3. Conflicts of interest: The ISRO is directly controlled by the Department of Space (DOS), which is under the Prime Minister’s Office. ISRO also has a business branch called Antrix, which markets ISRO’s space products and technologies to a global audience.
4. Concerns with Licensing: Another regulatory worry is the licensing structure for satellite earth station gateways, which needs to be transformed to make it easier for any satellite operator to set one up. It will boost both satellite capacity and increased spending.
5. Innovation Challenge: Another challenge is promoting indigenous innovation. In the new global climate, the challenge for the country is to continue to benefit from this innovation.

Recommendations

1. Creating a policy and regulatory framework that is predictable for both ISRO and private firms.
2. Future planetary exploration and space travel should include the private sector.
3. Allowing commercial enterprises to rent ISRO testing facilities for the purpose of testing their products and equipment.
4. Improved regulatory clarity would result in fewer hurdles to entry for private companies and better synergy between ISRO and private partners.
5. Private companies are given incentives to develop satellites or test rockets, lowering costs and increasing incentives for enterprises to build operational spacecraft.
6. ISRO would assist the private sector in attracting both domestic and foreign direct investment by offering access to its satellite technology, facilities, and orbital slots (FDI).

Conclusion

To carry forward the government’s intention to liberalise the space sector and allow more private players to use ISRO facilities for developing, launching, and deploying a variety of applications, the government should take appropriate measures as soon as possible to enable the private sector to ensure that India remains at the forefront of the global space industry.

Chapter 2: Swadeshi Entrepreneurship

What is Swadeshi Economics?

• The Swadeshi economic system is based on Indegenious Indian values.
• Its contemporary expression is more a strategic opposition to market-driven capitalism as well as Marxian and socialist frameworks rather than an alternative economic system.
• They see foreign capital, big companies and multilateral trade agreements as inherently depraved concepts designed to control and profit from developing and poor nations.
• A key requirement of the swadeshi philosophy is a selfless human being operating in a swadeshi socio-economic environment, instead of people driven by incentive and deterrence.

Pre-Swadeshi Movement

Swadeshi Enterprises

• The Swadeshi movement spawned a slew of new industries with the goal of making India self-sufficient and self-sufficient.
• These businesses have been identified as Swadeshi businesses. These articles were made with technology that was not necessarily indigenous.
• Swadeshi can be defined in a variety of ways, ranging from the completely acceptable and wonderful support of Indian industry to the complete exclusion of foreign, particularly English, goods. It was an anti-British political campaign.
• Eliminating needless imports and replacing them with Indian-made goods will revolutionize India and create jobs for tens of thousands of people.

Swadeshi in Everyday Lives

1. Buying local is the best way to fight a globalized monoculture.
2. Buying from local artisans allows artists to flourish in their place of residence.
3. Supporting local artists aids in building.
4. Sustaining unique local art hubs that are less connected to the corporatization of art.
5. Creating more robust food communities and networks.
6. Allowing the democratization of food within communities.

Chapter 3: Global Agricultural Powerhouse

India as an Agricultural Powerhouse of the World

• Agriculture accounts for barely 15% of India’s $2.9 trillion economy, which is increasing at a sluggish 1.5-2 percent per year.
• With only 2.4 percent and 4 percent of global land and water resources, India effectively feeds and manages approximately 18 percent of the world’s population.
• Agricultural and land reforms, progressive and inclusive policies, and the use of Science and Technology at the ground level have pushed up agricultural product productivity, production, and quality at a remarkable rate.

Agricultural reforms Towards Self-Reliance:

Mighty challenges in Indian Agriculture

1. Small and fragmented land ownership, post-harvest losses, and insufficient market infrastructure are all important issues in Indian agriculture.
2. Because virtually all cultivable land is farmed, increasing productivity per unit of land will be the main engine of agricultural growth.
3. Water resources are also scarce, and irrigation water must compete with growing industrial and urban demands.
4. Farmers are making a mistake by continuing to overproduce grains in an environmentally unsustainable manner.
5. Indian agriculture faces a tremendous challenge in bringing new technologies and practices to a large number of farmers and integrating them with modern input-output marketplaces.
6. Indian farmers have suffered net losses as a result of a lack of basic infrastructure for storage, transportation, and other purposes.
7. There’s also the issue of pollution created by pesticides and chemical fertilisers. The effects of nitrogen pollution on global warming are also significant.

Recommendations:

• Improve farming practices to boost agricultural, livestock, and fisheries productivity.
• Rural prosperity is aided by improved infrastructure and easier access to markets.
• Recognize Indian agriculture as a significant foreign exchange earner and export-oriented industry.
• Promotional efforts to boost India’s farm exports, resulting in price and income stability.
• Investment and production plans, including breakthrough technology for agri inputs, should be cleared quickly.
• Encourage agricultural R&D to improve per-hectare productivity using a variety of S&T approaches.

Way Forward: –

India has undergone a historic agricultural revolution, transforming the country from a chronic reliance on grain imports to a global agricultural powerhouse and net food exporter. Step-by-step efforts must be made to move India closer to self-sufficiency in these crops, thereby enhancing the country’s food security.

Chapter 4: Economic Transformation

Introduction:-

Since 1947, India’s economic journey has seen its share of ups and downs. India, once referred to as a “third world country,” a designation for poor developing countries that has since become obsolete, is now one of the world’s largest economies.

What is Economic Transformation?

Economic transformation is a long-term process of shifting labour and other resources from lower- to higher-productivity activities both within and across sectors, resulting in more diversified and complex productive activities.

Post 1991 Reforms

During the 1990s, the process of liberalization that began in the mid-1980s to make the Indian economy more accessible to trade and external flows picked up speed. The goal was to increase the efficiency of the Indian economy by lowering trade obstacles like import tariffs.

• The Industrial Policy of 1991 constituted a major economic reform and was introduced to reinvigorate the industrial sector.
• The strategy eliminated the industrial licensing system and allowed for more private sector engagement as well as foreign investment in the sector.
• In the manufacturing environment, many sectors have gained traction.
• India is becoming a major manufacturer of pharmaceuticals and conducts research to develop new drugs. Engineering and electrical machinery products have also progressed to become global benchmarks.
• New areas such as information technology and telecommunications have changed the landscape in the services industry, opening up new options such as e-commerce and startups. India’s IT prowess is well-known around the world.
• Traditional service industries have also grown, with financial services, tourism and hospitality, and retail all transforming in different ways, adapting to technology, and gaining market share.

Conclusion:

The pace of reform remains rapid, with important reforms including the historic Goods and Services Tax, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and Ease of Doing Business reforms, among others, being implemented. All of them are expected to contribute to an ever-expanding and dynamic economy, as well as promote additional economic growth. The year 2022, when India celebrates 75 years of independence, is the new milestone on which the country has set its sights.

Chapter 5: Infrastructure: History and Challenges

Infrastructure in India: –

• India’s economic progress is still hampered by a lack of infrastructure. Given the government’s financial limits, private finance for infrastructure provisioning via public-private partnerships has become critical.
• In recent years, India’s infrastructure industry has made significant growth. Infrastructure development is critical for India’s economic development because the country’s future growth potential is vast.

Source: IBEF

Infrastructure in India: History

1. A mixed economy was advocated in the 1948 Industrial Policy Resolution (IPR).
2. Eight powerful industrialists offered the ‘Bombay Plan,’ which envisions a large public sector with State intervention and laws to protect local businesses.
3. The Planning Commission was established in 1950 to oversee all aspects of planning, including resource allocation, implementation, and evaluation of five-year plans. These were centralised economic and social development plans.
4. With the support of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom (UK), and West Germany, hydroelectric power plants and five steel plants were built in Bhilai, Durgapur, and Rourkela, respectively.
5. As research institutes, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and the Atomic Energy Commission of India were founded.
6. During the Fourth Plan (1969– 1974), the nationalization of 14 public sector banks was a key event that had a significant impact on the Indian economy and infrastructure.
7. During the fifth plan, the Indian National Highway System was established, and several highways were enlarged to meet the growing traffic (1974-78).

Recent Milestones

Infrastructure in India: Challenges

High population and economic expansion put strain on existing infrastructure, causing bottlenecks. Transportation, electricity, communication, and sanitation are just a few of the fundamental services that will need to be expanded to fulfil the demands of an ever-increasing population. Poor infrastructure will cause GDP bottlenecks, poverty, and raise the cost of key services.

Chapter 6: Voyage of Indian Cinema

History of Indian Cinema:

• The Lumiere Brothers’ very first films were screened in Mumbai in 1896. (then Bombay).
• Dadasaheb Phalke, known as the “Father of Indian Cinema,” released the first full-length feature film, “Raja Harishchandra,” in 1913.
• In 1914, Raja Harischandra was the first Indian film to be shown in London.
• From the 1940s to the 1960s, Indian filmmakers refer to the period following the end of the British Raj as “The Golden Era.”

Evolution of Indian Cinema:

Chapter 7: Role of Media

Introduction:

The media serves an important role in democracies such as India, where it is regarded as the society’s fourth pillar. Media is a powerful medium of communication; it aids in the transmission of knowledge, the debunking of erroneous beliefs, and the correction of inaccurate or obsolete information.

Challenges of Indian Media:

1. Political Interference: Corporate and political power has suffocated huge segments of the media, both print and visual, resulting in vested interests and the destruction of freedom.
2. Sedition Charges: Section 124a of the Indian Penal Code, which makes sedition punishable by life imprisonment, puts journalists’ independence in jeopardy. As a result, journalists are afraid to work freely.
3. Concerns with paid and Fake News: Paid news, advertorials, and fake news all pose a danger to free and unbiased journalism. All of this encourages favoritism and makes it difficult to report objectively.
4. Censorship: The suppression of speech, public communication, or other information is referred to as censorship. Through strict norms and laws, various efforts are undertaken to control and contain the media.

Conclusion:

The media should be objective and free of propaganda. It should give the public a balanced picture. The media informs and educates the public on national and worldwide political and other human realities that occur in daily life.

Chapter 8: Reforming caste in New India

Introduction:

Historically, the caste system has formed the social and economic framework for the life of the people in India. In its essential form, the caste system is based on separation, division of labor, and hierarchy where civil, cultural, and economic rights for each caste are fixed.

The system implies “forced exclusion” of one caste from the rights of other castes. Exclusion and discrimination in civil, cultural, and economic sphere, is therefore, internal to the system and a necessary outcome of its governing principles.

Post-independent State Policies and Interventions

The nature of caste-based exclusion is described as “living mode exclusion” in political participation and exclusion and disadvantage in social and economic opportunities.

In the absence of legal provisions for affirmative action policy, the State has been using ‘general programmes’ for the inclusion, uplift, and empowerment of the SCs in the economic, educational, and social spheres.

Compensatory Measures: To overcome the multiple deprivations inherited due to exclusion in the past and to bring them on par with others involving land reforms and political representation

Protective Measures: Recognising violence and caste-based discrimination meted out to Dalit communities; the Protection of Civil Rights Act (PCRA) and the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act (SC/ST POA) were promulgated to protect and prevent violence on them.

Promotional Measures: In order to address continuing discrimination and promote their active participation in the growth and development of the country, reservation in education, employment, and special economic provisions have been set in place.

How the Caste System Affects Citizens?

1. Marriages: Most Indian marriages are arranged by parents. Several factors were considered by them for finding the ideal spouse. Out of which, one’s caste is a significant factor.
2. Education: Public universities have caste-based reservations for students coming from underprivileged backgrounds.
3. Jobs: A significant amount of public sector jobs are allocated based on caste reservation.

Recommendations: –

1. Need for Public Education to Change Mindsets.
2. Need for Creating an Environment for Change.
3. Eliminate Discrimination in State Services.
4. Ensure complete accessibility to Justice.
5. Promote and Support Civil Society lead by Marginalized Communities.
6. Need to  Strengthen Affirmative Action like Reservation.

Conclusion:

To conclude, group formation is common and natural to human beings, and hence, special efforts and interventions need to be taken to oversee that they do not turn negative based on prejudices, stereotypes, and protection of privileges be promoted both at the state and civil society levels. International mechanisms and solidarity can support both state and civil society in taking them forward.

Chapter 9: Preparing future leaders

Introduction: –

The most crucial part of our country’s development is skill development. India has a large ‘demographic dividend,’ which implies it has a lot of potential to supply trained personnel to the market.

What is Skill Development?

• Skill development is the process of recognising your skill gaps and making sure you fill them.
• Your skills determine your ability to carry out plans and reach your objectives.
• Skills are generally categorized in 3 different ways: –

1. Transferable Skills: Functional skills deployed across different industries.
2. Attitudinal Skills: Define personality characteristics.
3. Knowledge-Based Skills:Pertains to the subjects, procedures and information.

Government Initiatives: –

Challenges to skill development in India:-

1. Lack of mobility: People involved in skill development still have a fairly traditional outlook. The task of enrolling pupils in vocational education and training has become incredibly difficult.
2. Lack of Infrastructural: Given the high demand for qualified labour, the current infrastructure facilities offered in educational institutions across the country are insufficient.
3. Lack of Training: There are a limited number of highly qualified and professional trainers accessible. To take on greater duties, the faculty must be motivated and skilled.
4. Lack of Scalability: –Any model that is to be effective requires a large amount of support from a variety of stakeholders. As a result of the lack of corporate buy-in, such projects are progressing slowly.
5. Misalignment of skills: There are numerous challenges relating to the skills required by business and the skills provided by educational and training institutions. The skill sets given by educational and training institutes do not always meet the needs of employers.

Recommendations: –

1. Identifying future employment prospects and segmenting them according to the demand and feasibility of training applicants is the first step in skill development.
2. Private players can leverage technology to automate, refine, and scale skill-based training and certification methods.
3. Making better connections between the many players in the process, as well as setting essential deliverables and a clear chain of accountability, will aid in the effectiveness of such training programmes.
4. Simultaneously, efforts should be made to improve the accessibility of such training programmes.

Conclusion: –

As India strives to be one of the world’s most successful economic growth stories in the twenty-first century, it is critical that it ensures that its rapidly expanding workforce is capable of dealing with oncoming shocks and finding acceptable employment. And, rather than waiting until tomorrow, today is the time to address India’s problem of untrained workers and correct its skilling projects.

Gist of Yojana January 2022:- Download PDF Here