IASbaba's Think Learn and Perform 2017, UPSC Mains Answer Writing
SYNOPSIS: IASbaba’s TLP – 2017 : UPSC Mains General Studies Questions [19th Sep, 2017]- Day 52
Archives
1. “Investing in women’s lives is an investment in sustainable development”. In the light of the given statement, examine the importance of the ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’ scheme and the ‘Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana’.
Introduction:
A proverb goes by if u educate a man, u will educate an individual but if u educate a girl, u are educating a family. This proverb proves the weight a woman carries in family and society but we are yet to provide the necessary space for her to explore her abilities.
Body:
How investing in her is investment in sustainable development:
- Family and health: She grows up to be healthy educated women, who provide healthy family and society.
- Environment: They are more connected to environment, so helps in protecting environment.
- SDG: Gender equality, malnutrition, inequality are addressed as per SDG.
Beti Bachao Beti padhao:
- Female feticide: Prevent gender biased sex selective elimination.
- Protection: Ensure survival & protection of the girl child
- Education: Ensure education of the girl child.
- Equality: Implement a sustained Social Mobilization and Communication Campaign to create equal value for the girl child & promote her education.
- Schemes: Ensure service delivery structures/schemes & programmes are sufficiently responsive to issues of gender and children’s rights.
Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana:
- Subpart: Of Beti Bachao Beti padhao.
- Bank Account: Small deposit scheme for girls below 10.
- Withdrawal: Can withdraw once she turns 18 50% of amount which ensures no child marriage.
- Financial support: It is to support her higher education, marriage expenses etc.
Conclusion:
These schemes are first step in creating awareness about importance of girl child. More than all this, behavior and mindset has to be changed that girls are burden on the family and there education is not important. They have be given equal importance, respect and value with boy child.
Best Answer: Rahul skanda
2. For a country sitting at the cusp of a demographic disaster, it is imperative to unleash the entrepreneurial energy of its marginalized and weaker sections. Discuss. Also examine the provisions of the Stand Up India Loan Scheme in this regard.
Introduction:
India is going to be the youngest country in the world which huge population working age group. This can also be turned into disaster if not utilized properly. The weak and marginalized sections should be brought into entrepreneurial fold in order to cash in.
Body:
How bringing weak and marginalized section consisting of women, SC and ST’s will help:
- State expenditure: The social expenditure can be reduced and more can be spent on capital expenditure.
- Employment: It will create additional employment and opportunities that will bring in their own expertise and treasures of knowledge known to them from generations.
- Equality: Brings equality and those to main stream and help in growth and development of country since women consist of 50% and their expertise will help.
- Health and education: It will promote better health and education among them and increase man power potential of country.
Stand up India scheme:
- Financial loan: scheme at promoting entrepreneurship among women, SC & ST.
- 10 lakhs to 1 crores: to at least 1 SC or ST and 1 women per branch.
- Greenfield enterprises: It is should be for setting up Greenfield ventures.
- Majority shareholder: In case of non-individual, majority shareholders should be SC or ST or Women.
Conclusion:
Through this scheme, government is trying to utilize the hidden potentials of the country. Reports also tell bringing women to mainstream will increase GDP by 2%. It will also help achieve Fundamental rights of equality, DPSP’s among others along with SDG’s.
Best Answer: Gurpreet Singh
3. A house is a security that allows every individual to flourish under a sense of dignity. Elucidate. Also examine the significance of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana in ensuring the social dignity of an individual.
Introduction:
Sustainable Development Goal number 11 targets ensuring access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums by 2030. The country is estimated to have a shortage of nearly 20 million housing units needed by the rural and urban poor. The economically weaker sections (EWSs) and lower-income groups (LIGs) account for 96% of the urban shortage.
Owning a house provides sense of dignity:
- Security and privacy- Incidence to poverty, diseases and crimes gets reduced.
- Status symbol in society
- Can be kept as collateral during times of emergency.
- It provides a sense of belongingness and provides confidence to the family residing in it.
- Helps in better development of family as a whole.
- Access to government services like health, cheap loans, education, employment, PDS etc. is improved greatly, if one has a living space of his own.
Significance of PMAY:
The Housing for All mission envisions a multitude of strategies such as tax rebates, monetary support, relaxed development regulations, discounted interest rates, etc. to provide Housing for All by 2022. PMAY seeks to build 2 crore houses in urban aras and 4 crore houses in rural areas.
- One of the major road block in not able to own a house has been its unaffordability. PMAY overcome this challenge through innovative measures like credit-linked subsidy scheme, credit linked beneficiary-led individual house construction, providing a 4% interest rate rebate on housing loans of up to Rs 9 lakh etc.
- By providing infrastructure status to housing, the real estate sector has got a boost to build more houses in all categories including for the groups like EWSs and LIGs.
- PMAY includes a component of transformation of slum areas by building houses in collaboration with private players. This would be of great significance for scores of people living in urban slums. It would provide them not only dignity, but good health and socail security too.
The scheme, thus occupies a central position in empowerment of weak and vulnerable sections in Indian society.
Certain challenges which needs to be resolved:
- Lack of awareness among the poor and illiterate people about the scheme.
- Lack of legal documents of land available to the people living in the slums therefore they don’t get loans easily.
- Limited availability of land and pricing is hindering the technical advancement in construction.
Conclusion:
The PMAY scheme will be truly transformative if implemented in true spirit. Steps like timely disbursal of loans for house construction, transparency in beneficiary identification, empowering of the local bodies so that they can generate awareness etc must be taken if the scheme has to be a successful one.
Best answer: Tshrt
5. The provisions of the Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Loan Scheme will go a long way in unleashing the true potential of small businesses in India which will have many positive spillovers. Do you agree? Examine.
SYNOPSIS:
Non-Corporate Small Business Sector (NCSBS) is the economic foundation of India. Formal or institutional architecture has not been able to reach out to them to meet the financial requirements of this sector. They are largely self-financed or rely on personal networks or moneylenders.
According to NSSO Survey (2013), there are 5.77 crore small business units, Providing access to institutional finance to such micro/small business units would turn them into strong instruments of GDP growth and also employment.
MUDRA has been formed with primary objective of developing the micro enterprise sector in the country by extending various supports including financial support in the form of refinance, so as to achieve the goal of “funding the unfunded”.
PROVISIONS OF THE SCHEME AND SPILLOVER EFFECTS:
- The various loan offerings under Mudra- like shishu, tarun, kishor can increase the next phase of growth for MSME sector and increase their capacity for employment it can ensure Governments aim of ensuring job growth across sector.
- The increased infrastructural capacity can ensure the vision of Make in India from rhetoric to reality.
- The provision of refinance via banks without collateral security can encourage many credit borrowers from non formal lending to formal lending via banks thus ensuring Formalization of informal economy.
- A minimum of 60% loans are given to 1st time entrepreneurs (youth and women) will encourage self entrepreneurship and help in both vision of startup India, stand up India missions and transform the youth from job seekers to job creators/givers.
- The positive spill over from this would also be increased employment in villages due to increased credit disbursal from microfinance institutions preventing distress migration to cities and also acts as a major fillip to Rurbanisation program of the Government.
- This will also increase innovation in the moribund MSME sector and aid in competitiveness amongst them which would also increase the manufacturing share in GDP which has been stagnant from a long time.
However the RBI report of the last quarter of 2016-17 has said that credit disbursal under MUDRA has been only 64% of the set target and also cautioned against disbursal without collateral can become NPAs to the banks which would set off a negative chain reaction. Hence caution must be exercised.
BEST ANSWER: ANKITHA
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Introduction
The Youth represent the most dynamic and vibrant segment of the population. India is one of the youngest nations in the World, with about 65 per cent of the population being under 35 years of age. While most of these developed countries face the risk of an ageing workforce, India is expected to have a very favorable demographic profile.
It is estimated that by the year 2020, the population of India would have a median age of 28 years only as against 38 years for United States, 42 years for China and 48 years for Japan. This ‘demographic dividend’ offers a great opportunity. However, in order to capture this demographic dividend, it is essential that the economy has the ability to support the increase in the labour force and the youth have the appropriate education, skills, health awareness and other enablers to productively contribute to the economy.
Reasons behind the Jobless growth
- In India, growth is attributed to service sector, whereby both employment and wages have seen a rise. But as figures say, the biggest employing sector in India is the Agriculture sector, employing 45% of the population but contributing 15% to the GDP, whereas Service sector is the biggest contributor to the GDP but employs less than 30%. IT and Financial services are drivers of service sector growth in last 2 decades however both of these sector are not employment intensive.Thus contributing to jobless growth in India.
- Labour –intensive manufacturing sector did not become the engine of growth in India. In fact, it was the knowledge-intensive services sector which along with some segments of capital intensive manufacturing was the engines of growth in India. But these sectors by their nature were not employment-intensive.
- Stagnation in manufacturing output and employment and contraction of labour-intensive segment of the formal manufacturing sector: (Due to)
(a) Excess rigidity in the formal manufacturing labour market and rigid labour regulationshas created disincentives for employers to create jobs
(b) Industrial Disputes Act has lowered employment in organized manufacturing by about 25% (World Bank Study)
(c) Stringent employment protection legislation has pushed employers towards more capital intensive modes of production, than warranted by existing costs of labour relative to capital
Therefore, the nature of the trade regime in India is still biased towards capital-intensive manufacturing.
- The nature of Indian manufacturing is not employment-friendly. Most of them are automated and any employment is highly skilled. Thus they Have contribute to growth, but not necessarily to employment.
- The labour intensity of MSME is four times higher than that of large firms. – but they are not treated well in India they have poor access to credit and they are plagued by many serious problems which has limited there growth potential.
- Impediments to entrepreneurial growth in small firms (such as high costs of formalisation) along with a long history of small scale reservation policy which has prohibited the entry of large scale units in labour intensive industries.
- The tax incentives, subsidies, depreciation allowance all are solely linked to the amount invested and not to the number of jobs created.
- Sluggish process in education and skill levels of workers.
Why Imparting skills to the burgeoning youth population is imperative?
- India has a competitive growth rate as compared to several developing countries . But for the growth to translate into development , skill training for the youth becomes necessary.
- Indian education system is flawed at many levels where there is little connection between theory and practice. To bridge this gap and make the youth employable, skill training is of great importance.
- In the present age of Artificial Intelligence the World Bank has predicted that 69% of the jobs in India will be lost to AI by 2030. So the youth should be adequately trained in alternative employments to cover the huge job losses.
- Skilled youth will venture in different sectors of the economy – food processing, agri-marketing, tourism etc. New business opportunities will be discovered and converted.
- Availability of cheap skilled and semi-skilled workforce in India will attract manufacturing industries from across the world.
- Skills imparted to women will empower them financially. Self help groups, NGOs etc on the lines of Lijjat Papad, SEWA can come up.
- Disadvantaged sections of society – SC, ST and OBCs will be able to compete and secure decent livelihoods for themselves.
The various initiatives which aims t imparting skills to different target groups
- Skill India mission- this aims to promote skills among 40 crore youth in India in different skills by 2020
- Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojna- this is a government of India initiative for recognition and standardisation of skills .
- Nai Roshini Scheme- this is a skill development scheme for the Jammu and Kasmir region to promote employment in those regions.
- USTAAD Scheme is for the artisans and artists of the minority and backwaaard classes to help them improve and market their skills.
- Deendayal Grameen Kaushalya Yojana: rural youth, SC, ST and women.
India has an excellent advantage of demographic dividend which can be utilized only when the youth of the country are skilled. Lack of skills leads either to unemployment or underemployment which which not only lead to jobless growth but also widespread disparity.
Best Answer: NKY
