EducatorIAS

   To recover indian economy five areas that, would determine our ability to step up and sustain India’s growth in the medium-run: (i) human capital, in particular education and health; (ii) productivity; (iii) exports, which is linked to raising India’s role in the global value chain; (iv) tourism; and (v) food processing and associated productivity gains. (i) Human Capital: The Importance of Education and Health 8. Investing in people adds to the stock of skills, expertise and knowledge available in a country, and that is critical to maximise its future growth potential. The assignment of importance to education dates back to Plato, Aristotle, Socrates and Kautilya. Its significance for economic development has received progressively increasing attention in recent decades, especially in the work of several Nobel laureates, including T.W. Schultz, Gary Becker, Robert Lucas and James Heckman. There has come about an explicit recognition of education as human capital in endogen...

Climate Change - The Challenges for Indian Agriculture As in many parts of the world, drastic changes in climatic conditions have also been observed in India and these include impact on onset and withdrawal dates of monsoon and the incidence of extreme events (IPCC, 2019 and GoI, 2020). Consistent with models of climate change, the number of dry days as well as days with extremely high levels of rainfall have increased in India - more intense droughts; downward shifts in average rainfall by 59 mm since 2000 ( Chart 1a ); higher frequency of cyclones - India was hit by 8 cyclones in 2019 which is the highest since 1976 ( Chart 1b ); high variation in the number of subdivisions receiving excess/normal and deficient/scanty monsoon rains ( Chart 1c ); and an increase in the extent of crop area damaged due to unseasonal rains and heavy floods ( Chart 1d ). Global warming has also led to a sharp rise in the annual average temperature in India by 1.8°C between 1997 and 2019 as compared to a 0...

Macroeconomic Impact of COVID-19 COVID-19’s epidemiological dynamics are still rapidly evolving in India, rendering difficult an accurate assessment of its full macroeconomic effects. In this scenario, an approach employing a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model built on New Keynesian foundations provides a tentative and proximate assessment of the likely impact of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown on the Indian economy. The model has three main economic agents, viz., households, firms and the government. COVID-19 and the lockdown can impact the economy through multiple channels (Eichenbaum et al., 2020; Faria-e-Castro, 2020; Yang et al., 2020). Because of lockdown, households have to stay at home and therefore, reduce labour supply to firms; consumption falls due to non-availability of non-essential items and fall in income; and restricted people-to-people contact stalls the momentum of the pandemic. The model is calibrated 2  so that infections peak around the s...

ENVIRONMENT 

    On 20 June 2020, India was elected as a non-permanent member to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for another two-year term from January 2021. This will be India’s eighth time at the UNSC, on a non-permanent basis without veto powers, as it pursues United Nations (UN) reforms for a permanent seat. India will replace Indonesia, whose term ends at the end of 2020, on the UNSC and it will join Vietnam as one of the two non-permanent Asian members. The triumph was foreordained since India was the only country vying for the seat from the Asia-Pacific region. This certainty did not make India complacent. The Ministry of External Affairs crafted a plan titled NORMS (New Orientation for a Reformed Multilateral System) that focused largely on reforming multilateralism. The path to the seat might have been the easiest time at the UNSC for the next few years as the body deals with a flurry of global challenges, including a pandemic that will require multilateral coordination...

Strengthening Financial Inclusion in the country has been one of the important developmental agendas of both the Government of India and the four Financial Sector Regulators (viz. RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and PFRDA). Financial literacy supports the pursuit of financial inclusion by empowering the customers to make informed choices leading to their financial well-being. 2. Subsequent to completion of the period of the first National Strategy for Financial Education (NSFE: 2013-2018), a review of the progress made was undertaken by the Technical Group on Financial Inclusion and Financial Literacy (TGFIFL- Chair: Deputy Governor, RBI) under the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC-Chair: Hon’ble Union Finance Minister). Based on the review of progress made under the Strategy and keeping in view the various developments that have taken place over the last 5 years 1 , notably the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) 2 , the National Centre for Financial Education (NCFE) in consultati...

  The world is going through a difficult, uncertain and unpredictable time. The COVID-19 has put the lives of billions of people at risk, resulting in over 12 million cases and killing more than half a million people around the world so far. The consequences have been devastating with global order uncertainty and economic recession. It has affected the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, increasing the threat of food security, gender violence and disruption in education as well as rising issues of traditional and non-traditional security. This situation is partly attributed to the lack of a global leadership and shortcomings in global cooperation and international organisations’s ability to formulate a global response to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.   As most of members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are developing countries, their sufferings are severe due to the higher levels of...

  Environment issues are currently at the centre of a heated debate. Even the Congress President, Sonia Gandhi, felt impelled to write on the issue (The Hindu, Editorial page, Stop the dismantling of environmental rules, August 13, 2020). As a former Environment Minister in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) dispensation, I feel that environment issues should be above political dissonance, and to this end attempt to highlight critical facts which need to be flagged for public knowledge. To politically weaponise environmental issues is unproductive and unacceptable. How India fares It may be politically convenient — but not presenting the complete picture — to express shock at India being ranked at “177 out of 180 countries” in the Environmental Performance Index Report. Besides, in the June 2020 EPI, India’s rank stands improved at 168, not 177 which is the 2018 rank. The Environmental Performance Index has been developed by two U.S. universities (Yale and Columbia) in collabora...

  Democracy and its changes : The ‘democracy’ that a major part of our world swears by comprises free and fair, multi-party, fixed-term elections based on universal adult franchise in its ideal state. A contestant party winning the majority of votes represents the will of the electorate and gets to form the government; others sit in the opposition until the next election. Simple. Its simplicity also conceals some of its structural flaws. The ‘majority of votes’ actually boils down to the majority of seats in the legislature which, in 99% of the time, comes riding a minority of votes. Rarely is a government formed backed by a majority of votes won in a free and fair election. Rajiv Gandhi’s formidable, highest-ever majority in Lok Sabha in 1984 was still short of a majority of votes by about 2%. Narendra Modi in 2014 had the backing of 31% of the votes cast and in 2019, of just about 40%. In 2016, Donald Trump won the presidential race in the U.S. with a deficit of over 2.5 million ...