60 Days Plan: UPSC IAS Prelims 2019 – Economics and Current Affairs (Day 10)

The Lorenz Curve (the actual distribution of income curve), a graphical distribution of wealth developed by Max Lorenz in 1906, shows the proportion of income earned by any given percentage of the population. The line at the 45º angle shows perfectly equal income distribution, while the other line shows the actual distribution of income. The further away from the diagonal, the more unequal the size of distribution of income.

Statement 3 is wrong: In Gini coefficient, Maximum inequality is signified by 1 and absolute equal societies are shown by 0.

Both the given statements are correct.

“Aajeevika Grameen Express Yojana (AGEY)” as part of the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM):

The Self Help Groups under DAY-NRLM will operate road transport service in backward areas. This will help to provide safe, affordable and community monitored rural transport services to connect remote villages with key services and amenities (such as access to markets, education and health) for the overall economic development of backward rural areas. This will also provide an additional avenue of livelihood for SHGs. 

The Mahalanobis Growth Model had to components;

(i) more emphasis on industrialization and

(ii) emphasis on heavy goods industries which was believed to help us attain self-sustained/ self-reliant growth and also leading to a consequent trickledown effect.

Indicative Planning (8th Five Year Plan) was not a part of Mahalanobis Growth Model.

Statement 1 is wrong: Capitalist economy creates income inequalities not equalities

Unemployment in India is caused by a range of factors:

(1) Slow growth in agricultural and industrial productivity.

(2) Slow expansion of manufacturing sector

(3) Concentration of investment in capital goods industry.

One of the most important objectives of economic planning in India was to create employment
opportunities for the rising labour force. To meet this goal several initiatives were undertaken –
expansion of heavy industries, cottage and small industries, agriculture and related activities etc.

Statement 1 is wrong: Since foreign good in the market will be reduced in the market, the choice for domestic consumers will be limited.

Statement 4 is wrong: Since import goods will be restricted, the forex will be saved.

Unemployment is a phenomenon that occurs when a person who is capable of working and is actively searching for the work is unable to find work.

The minimum amount of unemployment that prevails in an economy due to workers quitting their previous jobs and are searching for the new jobs is called Frictional Unemployment.

Cyclical unemployment is due to deficiency or fall in effective demand from consumers which leads to fall in production and low demand for labour.

Voluntary unemployment refers to a situation where workers are either not seeking for work or are in transition from one job to another (quitting one job in search of another better job).

Involuntary unemployment refers to a situation where workers are seeking work and are willing to work but are unable to get work.

Structural unemployment refers to a situation which arises due to change in the structure of the economy. Example: An economy transforms itself from a Labour intensive economy to a Capital intensive economy.

Seasonal unemployment occurs during certain seasons of the year. In some industries and occupations like agriculture, holiday resorts etc., production activities take place only in some seasons.

Statement 1 is wrong. As per the World Bank, the share of services in global employment has
increased by 15 pp from 35.9 per cent in 2001 to 50.9 per cent in 2010. Among the top 15 services producer countries, the share of services in employment is high, contributing more than two-thirds of total employment in 2014.

Statement 2 is Correct. As per the economic survey 2016-17, the percentage contribution of India’s
service sector to its GDP is 53%. The percentage contribution of China’s service sector to its GDP is 49.7%.

In economics, geography, demography and sociology, the dependency ratio is an age-population ratio of those typically not in the labor force (the dependent part ages 0 to 14 and 65+) and those typically in the labor force (the productive part ages 15 to 64). It is used to measure the pressure on the productive population.

Consideration of the dependency ratio is essential for governments, economists, bankers, business, industry, universities and all other major economic segments which can benefit from understanding the impacts of changes in population structure. A low dependency ratio means that there sufficient people working who can support the dependent population. A lower ratio could allow for better pensions and better health care for citizens. A higher ratio indicates more financial stress on working people. While the strategies of increasing fertility and of allowing immigration especially of younger working age people have been formulas for lowering dependency ratios, future job reductions through automation may impact the effectiveness of those strategies.

The share of women in India’s workforce has fallen dramatically— from about 35% to 25% since 2004. The fall is even sharper if you look at women in the age group of 15-24. According to a report of the International Labour Organization, India’s female labour force participation rate (LFPR) fell from 35.8% in 1994 to merely 20.2% in 2012. It has fallen for other age groups as well.

Statement 3 is wrong: Poverty and Hunger were joined in MDG but they are separated in SDGs

Self explanatory

The Baba Kalyani committee constituted by the Ministry of Commerce & Industry to study the existing SEZ (Special Economic Zone) policy of India submitted its report to the government recently.

Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP)

• IDSP is a disease surveillance scheme under National Health Mission, under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in India, assisted by the World Bank.
• The scheme seeks to set up a Central Disease Surveillance Unit and a State Surveillance Unit in each State where data is collected and analyzed.
• The IDSP portal is a one stop portal which has facilities for data entry, view reports, outbreak reporting, data analysis, training modules and resources related to disease surveillance.

Presently NSAP comprises of the following five schemes:-

1. Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme (IGNOAPS): Under the scheme, BPL persons aged 60 years or above are entitled to a monthly pension of Rs. 200/- up to 79 years of age and Rs.500/- thereafter.
2. Indira Gandhi National Widow Pension Scheme (IGNWPS): BPL widows aged 40-59 years are entitled to a monthly pension of Rs. 200/-.
3. Indira Gandhi National Disability Pension Scheme (IGNDPS): BPL persons aged 18-59 years with severe and multiple disabilities are entitled to a monthly pension of Rs. 200/-.
4. National Family Benefit Scheme (NFBS): Under the scheme a BPL household is entitled to lump sum amount of money on the death of primary breadwinner aged between 18 and 64 years. The amount of assistance is Rs. 10.000/-.
5. Annapurna: Under the scheme, 10 kg of food grains per month are provided free of cost to those senior citizens who, though eligible, have remained uncovered under NOAPS

It was launched Directorate General of Foreign Trade.

The objective of the Niryat Bandhu Scheme is to reach out to the new and potential exporters and mentor them through orientation programmes, counselling sessions, individual facilitation, etc., for being able to get into international trade and boost exports from India.

• Statement 1 is correct. GNI (Gross National Income) refers to income generated by Nationals of a country. The above table indicates that the GNI in both constant and current prices has seen a gradual increase in the last 5 years based on 2011-12 seris.
• Statement 2 is correct. NNI (Net National Income) refers to the National Income calculated after subtracting the depreciation of the fixed capital. NNI has seen a steady increase in both constant and current prices in the last 5 years.
• Statement 3 is wrong. As per the above table Per capita income has seen a steady increase in the last 5 years.

Note: The questions in Prelims from National Income chapter are mostly based on trends. Hence, look out for the trends of National Income measures for the last 5 years.

The South Pole–Aitken basin is an impact crater on the far side of the Moon.

Von Kármán is a large lunar impact crater that is located in the southern hemisphere on the far side of the Moon.

Engel’gardt is a lunar impact crater on the far side of the Moon, located to the north of the huge walled plain Korolev.

Source: In news due Chinese unmanned lunar probe Chang’e 4 on the far side of the Moon.

The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), located near Pune (Narayangaon) in India, is an array of thirty fully steerable parabolic radio telescopes of 45 metre diameter, observing at metre wavelengths. It is operated by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, a part of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. At the time it was built, it was the world’s largest interferometric array offering a baseline of up to 25 kilometres (16 mi).

Gaia is a space observatory of the European Space Agency (ESA) designed for astrometry. It consists of two space telescopes and ten mirrors of different shapes and sizes to collect, focus and direct light into Gaia’s science instruments for detection.

The Spitzer Space Telescope (SST), formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), is an infrared space telescope launched in 2003 and still operating as of 2019. It is operated by NASA and Caltech.

The ecological footprint measures human demand on nature, i.e., the quantity of nature it takes to support people or an economy. It tracks this demand through an ecological accounting system. The accounts contrast the biologically productive area people use for their consumption to the biologically productive area available within a region or the world (biocapacity, the productive area that can regenerate what people demand from nature). In short, it is a measure of human impact on Earth’s ecosystem and reveals the dependence of the human economy on natural capital.

The biocapacity or biological capacity of an ecosystem is an estimate of its production of certain biological materials such as natural resources, and its absorption and filtering of other materials such as carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. “Useful biological

Biocapacity are expressed in terms of global hectares per person, thus is dependent on human population. A global hectare is an adjusted unit that represents the average biological productivity of all productive hectares on Earth in a given year (because not all hectares produce the same amount of ecosystem services). Biocapacity is calculated from United Nations population and land use data, and may be reported at various regional levels, such as a city, a country, or the world as a whole.

PARIVESH (Pro-Active and Responsive facilitation by Interactive, Virtuous and Environmental Single-window Hub) is a Single-Window Integrated Environmental Management System.

It has been rolled out for online submission, monitoring and management of proposals submitted by Project Proponents to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MOEFCC), as well as to the State Level Environmental Impact Assessment Authorities (SEIAA), to seek various types of clearances.

The system has been designed, developed and hosted by the MOEFCC with technical support from National Informatics Centre, (NIC).

While India’s economy in the past two decades has seen an annual average GDP rate of 7% – low pay and inequality persist according to the India Wage Report: Wage policies for decent work and inclusive growth, published by the International Labour Organization.

Vivekananda was born Narendranath Datta in a Bengali family. He was a chief disciple of the 19th-century Indian mystic Ramakrishna.

Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission.

Bartaman Bharat meaning “Present Day India” is an erudite Bengali language essay written by him, which was first published in the March 1899 issue of Udbodhan, the only Bengali language magazine of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission. The essay was reprinted as a book in 1905 and later compiled into the fourth volume of The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda.

Vivekananda was one of the main representatives of Neo-Vedanta, a modern interpretation of selected aspects of Hinduism in line with western esoteric traditions, especially Transcendentalism, New Thought and Theosophy.

In the words of social reformer Charles Freer Andrews, “The Swami’s intrepid patriotism gave a new colour to the national movement throughout India. More than any other single individual of that period Vivekananda had made his contribution to the new awakening of India”

Sri Aurobindo regarded Vivekananda as the one who awakened India spiritually.

Mahatma Gandhi counted him among the few Hindu reformers “who have maintained this Hindu religion in a state of splendor by cutting down the dead wood of tradition”

Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, said “Vivekananda saved Hinduism, saved India”

According to Subhas Chandra Bose, a proponent of armed struggle for Indian independence, Vivekananda was “the maker of modern India”.

Rabindranath Tagore told French Nobel laureate Romain Rolland, “If you want to know India, study Vivekananda.

His main work, Raja Yoga, consists of talks he delivered in New York

In 2012, a 3-day World Congress of Religions conference was organised by the Institute of World Religions (of the Washington Kali Temple), Burtonsville, Maryland, in association with the Council for A Parliament of World Religions, Chicago, Illinois to commemorate 150th birthday of Swami Vivekananda.

Source: https://www.thehindu.com/society/history-and-culture/the-footprints-of-the-youth-icon/article24817062.ece

Source: https://www.thehindu.com/society/history-and-culture/sunday-quiz-on-poets-and-poetry/article24724377.ece

Source: https://www.thehindu.com/society/motivational-speaker-dhanya-ravi-doesnt-allow-a-rare-genetic-disease-to-stand-in-her-way/article24715374.ece

Kummi Pattu is of Tamil Nadu.

Source:

• https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/music/music-for-all-occasions/article24705745.ece

• https://www.culturalindia.net/indian-music/folk-music.html

The Battle of Colachel was fought on 10 August 1741 between the Indian kingdom of Travancore and the Dutch East India Company, during the Travancore-Dutch War.

Travancore, under Raja Marthanda Varma, defeated the Dutch East India Company. The defeat of the Dutch by Travancore is considered the earliest example of an organised power from Asia overcoming European military technology and tactics.

The Dutch never recovered from the defeat and no longer posed a large colonial threat to India.

It was the first time in Indian history that a native army defeated a European force. It was even more unique because an army with firearms lost to an army without one.

Source: https://www.thehindu.com/society/history-and-culture/chennai-sees-battle-of-colachel-re-enactment/article24689975.ece