IASbaba’s Daily Current Affairs – 11th February 2017

Archives

INTERNATIONAL 

TOPIC:

General Studies 2

• Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.
• Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests

General Studies 3

• Effects of liberalization on the economy, changes in industrial policy and their effects on industrial growth
• Issues relating to intellectual property rights

Israel and Palestine Crisis 

Introduction

Israel is the world’s only Jewish state, located just east of the Mediterranean Sea. Palestinians, the Arab population that hails from the land Israel now controls, refer to the territory as Palestine, and want to establish a state by that name on all or part of the same land. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is over who gets what land and how it’s controlled.

Settlement and issues:

Settlements are communities of Jews that have been moving to the West Bank since it came under Israeli occupation in 1967. Some of the settlers move there for religious reasons, some because they want to claim the West Bank territory as Israeli land, and some because the housing there tends to be cheap and subsidized. Settlements are generally considered to be a major impediment to peace.

• Settlements create what Israelis and Palestinians call “new facts on the ground.”
• Palestinian communities are split apart and their connection to the land weakened, while Jewish communities put down roots in territory meant for Palestinians.
• In effect, it blurs or constrains the boundaries of any future Palestinian state.
• For some settlers, this is the point: they want the West Bank fully incorporated as Israeli territory and are trying to make that happen.

Since Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem five decades ago, about 140 settlements have been built in Palestinian territories that house more than 600,000 Jews. Despite frequent international criticism, successive governments have thrown their weight behind the settlement lobby.

Mr. Netanyahu, who is dependent on the right-wing coalition parties for his government’s survival, has played along. Last month, his government approved plans for 2,500 new settler homes in the West Bank.

Recent changes and the concerns

Israel’s parliament voted on a bill that expropriates private Palestinian land in the West Bank.

• The passage of legislation by Israel that would legalise nearly 4,000 Jewish settler homes on private Palestinian lands in the West Bank flies in the face of international law and norms.
• That the vote comes weeks after the UN Security Council demanded that Israel stop all settlement activity in the Occupied Territories, and an international conference attended by more than 70 countries urged both sides in the conflict to resume talks, shows Israel’s disregard for international opinion and institutions.

Impact

• The legislation allows the Israeli government to expropriate private Palestinian land if the land-owners are unknown.
• If known, they will be compensated in cash or kind. However, the legislation, which for the first time since the annexation of East Jerusalem seeks to extend Israeli law to the West Bank, can be overturned by the judiciary.

Israel’s Attorney-General has said he wouldn’t defend the bill in the high court as it is “unconstitutional and violates international law”.

However, this is unlikely to stop the ideology-driven settler movement and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from taking more Palestinian land.

The Netanyahu government has shown no particular interest in resuming negotiations, while its right-wing allies are boasting of expanding Israeli sovereignty to “Judea and Samaria”, the biblical names for the West Bank.

Conclusion

Now Israeli authorities feel emboldened by the election of new U.S. President. That would make peace yet more distant in West Asia.

The primary approach to solving the conflict today is a so-called “two-state solution” that would establish Palestine as an independent state in Gaza and most of the West Bank, leaving the rest of the land to Israel.

Though the two-state plan is clear in theory, the two sides are still deeply divided over how to make it work in practice.

Further reading: http://www.vox.com/cards/israel-palestine/intro

Connecting the dots:

• The history of Israel-Palestine conflict has roots in past. How difficult is a permanent solution to the crisis in light of the new developments? What can be India’s role?

AGRICULTURE

TOPIC: General Studies 3

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

Budget 2017-18 and agriculture

Highlights

• The agriculture growth is expected at 4.1% following normal monsoon in 2016. This comes after dismal 1.2% increase in 2015-16, and a contraction of 0.2% in the year before.
• The Union budget gave a push to market reforms in agriculture, increased funding for crop insurance and set a higher target for farm credit. The move is to tackle distress in rural India.
• NABARD, the apex rural bank, has been charged with implementing schemes to improve access to irrigation and develop the dairy sector.
• However, the government’s goal of doubling farm incomes in five years has still not been clarified regarding how it is expected to be done at a time when farm incomes have plunged due to lower crop prices due to demonetisation.

Budget braves

• The ‘Transform, Energise and Clean India’ TEC agenda of budget may seem like a new term but is, in fact, a continuation of various earlier initiatives of the Government.
• As per the Finance Minister, the budget for 2017-18 is on 10 important sectors, including farmers, infrastructure, digital economy and tax administration to transform, energise and clean India.
• Total allocation of Rs. 1.87 lakh crore for rural, agri and allied sectors is a welcome increase of 24% over the previous year.
• Along with it, the focus on development of rural infrastructure in the form of roads and a higher allocation for housing will energise the rural economy.
• NABARD sponsored research shows that rural roads can be virtually compared with the nerve system of a nation which enable building a healthy and equitable society.
• Though the overarching theme of doubling the incomes of farmers in five years involves lot of policy decisions and many pre-requirements, the budget has best tried to address some of them at a time.

The three major aspirations of the Indian farmer are

1. Irrigation

   • Improving irrigation efficiency is critical for agriculture since India only has 2.4% of the world’s total geographical area, an 18% of the world’s population, but only 4% of the world’s total fresh water resources
   • To increase focus on irrigation, NABARD has been provided with an additional Rs. 20,000 crore under the Long Term Irrigation Fund (LTIF).
   • Alongside, a separate allocation of Rs. 5,000 crore has been made to push the micro irrigation agenda to achieve the goal, ‘per drop more crop’.

2. Crop insurance

   • The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana has been provided an enhanced allocation of Rs. 9000 crore.
   • The scheme will target to cover 40% of the crop area next year and 50% year after.
   • As per the current scheme, the government had allotted Rs 5,500 crore under crop insurance for both Rabi and Kharif products.
   • Under the Fasal Bima Yojana, farmer’s contribution towards premium has been decreased to as low as 2% to be paid by farmers for kharif crops, and 1.5% for rabi crops making it possible to include the small and medium farmers to avail crop insurance.
   • GIC and foreign reinsurers receive significant share of premium from crop insurance in India. Pre-agreed formulas are applied to determine sum insured and the related loss in each season.

3. Continued income during lean season

   • For a non-farming period or lean season, the animal husbandry sector has been given encouragement.
   • NABARD has also opined that development of dairy is critical to bringing sustainability to agriculture.
   • There are numerous examples where farmers have shown their ability to manage inclement weather and market vagaries by investing in dairy as an alternate mode of income.
   • The dairy cooperative network includes 254 cooperative milk processing units, 177 milk unions covering 346 districts and over 1,55,634 village-level societies.
   • Till March 2013, about 15.1 million farmers have been brought under the ambit of village level dairy corporative societies. Yet, about 80% of this milk is being collected and distributed by unorganised sector in the form of ‘doodhiyas’, local sweet shops.
   • In Budget 2017-18, Livestock got a boost with the proposal for a Dairy Processing Infrastructure Fund of Rs. 2000 crore which would grow to Rs. 8000 crore in three years.
   • This allocation will allow NABARD to finance modernisation of milk processing units, encourage new bulk-milk cooling units, improve milk production and increasing modernisation of breeding facilities.

Focus on soil

• The Budget highlights the importance of soil health which is critical to farm production and productivity.
• Agriculture in many parts of India has been affected and soil has been impaired due to wrong usage of fertiliser.
• The proposal to create minilabs for soil testing continues the existing drive on Soil Health Cards.

Agri marketing

• The central government will urge state governments to delist perishables such as vegetables and fruits from Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees (APMCs) via amending Essential Commodities Act and allow farmers to sell such items directly to consumers to get a better price.
• Each e-NAM will be provided with Rs. 75 lakhs for cleaning and packaging of farmer produce.
• Also, additional 335 e-NAMs will be added to the 250 created in 2016-17.
• In an innovative move, the Budget seeks to integrate e-NAMs with commodity exchanges and enact a model law on contract farming.
• This model law will help the farmers get better value for their produce.

Off farm sector boost

• The growth of rural sector also depends upon the off-farm sector development which includes all economic activities such as household and non-household manufacturing, handicrafts, processing, repairs, construction, transport, trade, communication, community and personal services in rural areas.
• To boost this sector of rural economy, important proposals for skill building, developing over 600 district Prime Minister’s Kaushal Kendras, India International Skill Kendras and SANKALP (Skill Acquisition and Knowledge Awareness for Livelihood promotion Programme) are being promoted.

Agri credit

• The budget has set a target for disbursing Rs. 10 lakh crore ground level farm credit, up from Rs. 9 lakh crore in 2016-17.
• The challenge lies in the fact that more equitable spread of this agri credit is required as 40% of agricultural households still do not have access to banks. Hence, the credit flow is targeted to the underserved area.
• The banking sector has been demarcated its role for inducing more financial inclusion.
• To support it, there has been increase in Financial Inclusion Fund which will allow for more thrust on higher financial literacy and support the digitisation initiatives.
• Additionally, Rs. 1900 crore for three years are provided to Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies, the lowest tier of India’s rural cooperative credit structure, to bring digital banking to rural doorstep.
• Computerisation of PACS will bring in more transparency in their working.

‘Budget is not just a collection of numbers, but an expression of our values and aspirations’ is a very apt statement defining agriculture and rural economy boost given by budget 2017-18.

Connecting the dots:

• Budget 2017-18 gives appropriate importance to rural and agricultural economy. Do you agree? Give reasons.

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