Daily News Analysis 12th October 2018

Daily News Analysis (Prelims + Mains) – 12th October 2018

General Study – I

Topic:

Role of women and women’s organization, population and associated issues, poverty and developmental issues, urbanization, their problems and their remedies

What is the issue?

The #MeToo movement is gathering pace in India in recent days, with women calling out influential men for alleged sexual harassment.

#metoo Movement

The ‘MeToo’ movement was founded in 2006 by Tarana Burke.
It was to help survivors of sexual violence, by creating a community of survivors who move forward together.
The #MeToo spread virally as a hashtag used on social media in an attempt to demonstrate the widespread prevalence of sexual harassment in the workplace.
It started gaining national attention in October 2017 in the U.S, after allegations of sexual assault by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein
As women increasingly speak up on harassment experiences, the general criticism is about the delay in the reporting.
But it is to be understood that the dominant status of men in workplaces i.e power and privilege, the very lack of understanding on what constitutes sexual harassment, the social stigma associated with the instances, the lack of trust on people to share this, the lack of awareness on the legal recourses available and above all the emotional trauma out of the incident, significantly, silence women from opening out.

The pros of #Me Too are:

It highlights that women in India cannot be taken for granted.
It checks the patriarchal culture of looking down upon women.
It empowers women to share their secret agony with the other people (of both genders) to empathise with them.
Earlier, to say something of rape or inappropriate behaviour done towards the woman was a taboo, now it is no more.
Women are able to megaphone their humiliation for the higher-ups in the power structure to listen to.

The Cons of # Me Too are:

Belated grievances with no evidence in hand may ruin someone’s career, it may also lead to suspicion in the public eye.
Highly-egregious women who want to reach higher perches may succumb to the wants of some men voluntarily, later blaming them only to malign them in the public in itself would become a wicked-process.
Some women may frivolously make complaints on men in public-position and keep quiet after taking ‘Hush-money’. This bad practise may creep-in. This is not an unknown thing, it is being done to an extent in western countries.

Conclusion:

Historically women are wronged. They being the weaker sections, they are exploited. So, their genuine grievances should be heard. Now, they are empowered under many sections in the Indian Penal Code.
The Constitution of India also grants equal rights and privileges.
Women should show empathy on the other women and also good-will to men who are decent and well-behaved.
There are certainly some young men in the above said fields of films, media and corporates who are equally sufferers and exploited lot.
Let their suffering be favourably heard. In this milieu (of all the happenings), politicians of the country should not be spared. #Me Too is a wake-up call for politicians of all hues.

General Study – II

Topic:

Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.

Human Capital Index

The World Bank released today a Human Capital Index (HCI) as part of the World Development Report 2019.

Broader theme of the World Development Report (WDR) this year is “The Changing Nature of Work”.

As part of this report, the World Bank has launched a Human Capital Project (HCP).

The HCP programme is claimed to be a program of advocacy, measurement, and analytical work to raise awareness and increase demand for interventions to build human capital.

There are three components of HCP-

a cross-country human capital measurement metric called the Human Capital Index (HCI),
a programme of measurement and research to inform policy action, and
a programme of support for country strategies to accelerate investment in human capital.

The HCI has been constructed for 157 countries. It claims to seek to measure the amount of human capital that a child born today can expect to attain by age 18.

The HCI index values are contended to convey the productivity of the next generation of workers, compared to a benchmark of complete standard education and full health.

The HCI has three components:

Survival, as measured by under-5 mortality rates;
Expected years of Quality-Adjusted Schoolwhich combines information on the quantity and quality of education (quality is measured by harmonizing test scores from major international student achievement testing programs and quantity from number of years of school that a child can expect to obtain by age 18 given the prevailing pattern of enrolment rates across grades in respective countries); and
Health environmentusing two proxies of (a) adult survival rates and (b) the rate of stunting for children under age 5.

The key observations regarding HCI for India in the Report are as under:

Human Capital Index:

A child born in India today will be only 44 per cent as productive when she grows up as she could be if she enjoyed complete education and full health.
The HCI in India for females is marginally better than that for males.
Further, there has been marked improvement in the HCI components in India over the last five years.

Probability of Survival to Age 5: 96 out of 100 children born in India survive to age 5.

Expected Years of School: In India, a child who starts school at age 4 can expect to complete 10.2 years of school by her 18^th birthday.

Harmonized Test Scores: Students in India score 355 on a scale where 625 represents advanced attainment and 300 represents minimum attainment.

Learning-adjusted Years of School: Factoring in what children actually learn, expected years of school is only 5.8 years.

Adult Survival Rate: Across India, 83 per cent of 15-year olds will survive until age 60.

Healthy Growth (Not Stunted Rate): 62 out of 100 children are not stunted. 38 out of 100 children are stunted, and so at risk of cognitive and physical limitations that can last a lifetime.

Gender Differences: In India, HCI for girls is marginally higher than for boys.

There are serious reservations about the advisability and utility of this exercise of constructing HCI. There are major methodological weaknesses, besides substantial data gaps.

Differences between HDI and HCI methodology

UNDP constructs Human Development Index (HDI) for several years. The HCI uses survival rates and stunting rate instead of life expectancy as measure of health, and quality-adjusted learning instead of merely years of schooling as measure of education.

HCI also excludes per capita income whereas the HDI uses it. Two significant changes from HDI are exclusion of income component and introduction of quality adjustment in learning.

Exclusion of income element and introduction of quality adjustment makes HCI far less representative of Human Capital Development than the Index claims it to be.

General Study – II

Topic:

Issues relating to poverty and hunger.

Context: 1 in 5 Indian children ‘wasted’, says GHI

At least one in five Indian children under the age of five are ‘wasted,’ which means they have extremely low weight for their height, reflecting acute under-nutrition, according to the Global Hunger Index 2018
The only country with a higher prevalence of child wasting is the war-torn nation of South Sudan
India has been ranked at 103 out of 119 countries in the Index, with hunger levels in the country categorised as “serious”
India’s ranking has dropped three places from last year, although the Index says its results are not accurately comparable from year to year and instead provides a few reference years for comparable data. The 2018 scores reflect data from 2013-2017.

Main Indicators:

Four main indicators are used to calculate hunger levels in the report, which is a peer-reviewed publication released annually by Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide.
1. Undernourishment:It is the share of the population which is undernourished and reflects insufficient caloric intake.
2. child wasting (low weight for height)
3. reflecting acute under-nutrition; child stunting (low height for age)
4. reflecting chronic under-nutrition; and child mortality

Key observation:

The percentage of undernourished people in the population has dropped from 2% in 2000 to 14.8% in 2018.
The child mortality rate has halved from 2% to 4.3%
child stunting has dropped from 2% to 38.4%
the prevalence of child wasting has actually worsened in comparison to previous reference years. It stood at 17.1% in 2000, and increased to 20% in 2005. In 2018, it stands at 21%.
South Sudan’s child wasting prevalence is at 28%.
Child wasting is high across South Asia, constituting a “critical public health emergency”, according to UN organisations.

About Global Hunger Index:

Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has recently released the Global Hunger Index (GHI) report.

General Study – III

Topic:

Effects of liberalization on the economy, changes in industrial policy and their effects on industrial growth.

Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The Prime Minister attended and delivered an address at the event to mark the launch of the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Components of “Industry 4.0” actually have the ability to transform the present and future of human life.

This Centre is the fourth in the world after San Francisco, Tokyo and Beijing, opens the door to immense possibilities in the future.

Industry 4.0

It is also called as fourth industrial revolution and emerging globally as powerful force.
It is characterized by increasing digitization and interconnection of products, value chains and business models with help of technologies like cyber-physical systems, the Internet of things, cloud computing and cognitive computing.
It is convergence of real and virtual worlds. It is the next phase in bringing together conventional and modern technologies in manufacturing.
It will result in “Smart Factory”, which is characterized by versatility, ergonomic design, resource efficiency and direct integration with business partners.

Vision of a USD 5 Trillion Indian Economy

The Working Group tasked to develop a roadmap towards achieving a 5 trillion-dollar economy by 2025 has prepared its report and it is being circulated to the stakeholders for further suggestions.

The Working Group was constituted by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry with participation from government and industry.

The current structure of the economy and the emerging dynamics provide us grounds to target achieving

1 trillion dollars from agriculture and allied activities,
1 trillion dollars from manufacturing and
3 trillion dollars from services.

The Government has several ongoing initiatives across sectors focused on growth.

In agriculture the Government is aiming to reorient policy focus from being production-centric to becoming income-centric. The emphasis on incomes provides a broader scope towards achieving the needed expansion of the sector.
The proposed Industrial Policy 2018 provides an overarching, sector-agnostic agenda for the enterprises of the future and envisions creating a globally competitive Indian industry that is modern, sustainable and inclusive.
The Champion Services sector initiative is also under way to accelerate the expansion of select service sectors.

Topic

Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization, of resources, growth, development and
employment.

Special Central Government Package for Footwear and Leather Sector

Special package for employment generation in leather and footwear sector. The package involves implementation of Central Sector Scheme – Indian Footwear, Leather & Accessories Development Programme (IFLADP) with an approved expenditure of Rs. 2600 Crore for 2017-20.
The scheme aims at development of infrastructure for the leather sector, address environmental concerns specific to the leather sector, facilitate additional investments, generate employment and increase production.
Enhanced Tax incentives will attract large scale investments in this sector and reforms in labor laws taking into account the seasonal nature of the sector will support economies of scale.
In a major boost to the leather industry in Tamil Nadu under the IFLADP four projects with a total outlay of 107.33 crore have been approved by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) to facilitate upgradation of infrastructure, job creation and environmental sustainability.

Topics for Prelims

Industry-tailored Student Internship Programme

NITI Aayog and IBM will together bring first-of-its-kind internship programme for students selected by Atal Innovation Mission (AIM).

The internship will see 38 students receive a two-week paid internship, and 14 teachers from Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL) across the length and breadth of the country including from states such as Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Andaman & Nicobar and others, to come together and ideate, collaborate and innovate.

These students will be equipped with the skills for new collar careers in areas like artificial intelligence, Internet-of-Things, cybersecurity, cloud computing and blockchain.