PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU (PIB) IAS UPSC – 22nd February to 28th February – 2021

IASbaba's Press Information Bureau, UPSC Articles

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Vice President calls for ending low representation to women in Parliament and legislatures

(Topic: Parliament and State Legislatures, structure, functioning, conduct of business, powers & privileges and issues arising out of these)

Inclusion of all sections of society in parliament means better, stronger and more representative democracy that works to preserve, protect and assure the rights of people for the overall development of the nation. The parliament of India still lacks inclusive representation especially of women and minorities.

Representation of women:

India has had a long-serving woman prime minister and speakers of the House. Yet its record of women parliamentarians is woefully poor. Only the 15th, 16th and 17th Lok Sabha changed a previously stagnant representation of under 9% recorded by Indian women MPs since Independence.

The 17th Lok Sabha has the highest number of women MPs (78) elected in the 2019 polls. In comparison, the last election data shows that in 2014, 11.23 per cent of women won, and in 2019 it is around 14.58 per cent, but it is still far below the actual population of women i.e. 49%. Representation of women in Rajya Sabha is also very less with only 26 members out of 235. So, on grounds of fairness, this is an anomaly.

According to Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and UN Women report — Women in Politics 2019, India stood 149th in a 2019 list of 193 countries ranked by the percentage of elected women representatives in their national parliaments, trailing Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan and dropping three places since 2018, while the world average was 24.3% as on January 1, 2019.

Representation of minorities:

India is the largest democracy in the world, yet there is very little representation of all communities, given their population. In India, religious minorities other than Muslims find better representation in the Lok Sabha. Sikhs have a representation score of 0.3 percentage points while Christians, Buddhists and Jains also have equitable representation as per their population.

According to Census 2011 estimates, Muslims in India accounts for over 14% of the country’s total population. A proportionate representation of the community in the Lok Sabha, at present, would amount to at least 77 parliamentarians but the number of Muslim lawmakers in the 17th Lok Sabha is just 27.

Various factors limit minority representation:

Political parties not giving tickets to minority candidates due to Communalization of politics.
Delimitation and reservation of constituencies by Election commission: Minority tend to get fielded in seats with larger concentrations of minority voters. Some of these seats are reserved, thus limiting their demographic advantage

Measures to address these issue:

Minimum 33 % quotas for women in Parliament.
Reservation for women in political parties: Like Norway, Sweden and France, India should have an Election Commission-led effort to push for reservation for women in political parties.
Awareness, education and role modelling that encourage women towards politics.
Need for greater political will for more inclusivity of minority and women.
Delimitation and reservation of constituencies to be done considering the minority population.
De-communalization of politics is need of the hour.
Political parties, especially Regional parties should consider representation of minorities while giving tickets.
Ruling parties, irrespective of their composition, should work beyond the lines of gender, religion and cast.
Existing dedicated ministries and national commissions for minorities and women should be strengthen.

There is documented evidence both at the international level and at the gram panchayat (village) level to suggest that a greater representation of women and minorities in elected office balances the process and prioritizations that elected bodies focus on. A fully representative Parliament leads to a progressive society, with equality of opportunities among all citizens for a better future of a democratic society.

Why do we need women in power?

As representatives, we need women

To eliminate the systemic biases and structural barriers that keep our girls out of the tech industry, our victims of gender-based violence in fear and our women’s sports teams under-funded.
To dismantle structural barriers, the responsibility falls on working women who have successfully overcome constraints to open the gates for other women.
To design laws that encourage better education for girls.
To secure financial independence and formal employment for women.
To push up our abysmal female labour force participation rates.
To ensure that female hygiene products are not taxed as luxury goods.

In addressing systemic biases, exposure to women in office weakens stereotypes about gender roles. Watching women in leadership positions reduces the negative perceptions men have about their effectiveness as leaders. It also induces men to dream better dreams for their daughters, and that is no mean feat.

Over the past few decades, women have made their mark as effective managers, bankers, professors, corporate leaders, lawyers, doctors and civil servants. These are women who know how to solve problems, get things done and manage multiple responsibilities. Electing able women professionals will help us simultaneously achieve better representation and expertise.

Note:

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay was the first Indian woman to contest an election.
A postal stamp has been brought out in memory of late Smt. Eashwari Bai
- Smt Eashwari Bai’s contributions to the political and social spheres are truly laudable and left a deep imprint on the public mind
- She had been the voice of the people as an opposition leader. She constantly advocated the cause of Children, NGOs, Teachers, Agricultural labourers, and the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes

City Innovation Exchange (CiX) Launched

(Topic: Government schemes and policies)

By: Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs

The CiX will connect cities to innovators across the national ecosystem to design innovative solutions for their pressing challenges.
The platform will ease the discovery, design & validation of solutions through a robust, transparent and user-centric process that will reduce barriers for innovators and cities to discover fitting solutions.
Built on the concept of ‘open innovation’, the platform will help in the flow of ideas ‘outside in and inside out, enhancing the skills and capacity required to deliver smart urban governance.
Through interaction with Academia and Businesses/Startups, the platform will benefit cities in the transfer of ideas from ‘labs’ to the real environment.
Similarly, by helping urban governments interact with citizens, the platform will ensure the adoption of tested solutions that will be impactful and sustainable.

Benefits:

The CiX platform will be a significant addition to the growing innovation ecosystem of India and focuses on fostering innovative practices in cities.
CiX, through an ‘open innovation’ process, engages with innovators to design-test-deliver on solutions to pressing urban challenges.
This initiative is among the ongoing efforts to realize PM’s vision of New and AtmaNirbhar Bharat, by making cities more self-reliant and enabled to meet the needs of and provide services to their citizens.
The platform in due time will help our cities in adopting solutions that will enhance the quality of life for their residents and significantly improve the Ease of Doing Business.

National Urban Digital Mission (NUDM) & Several Digital Initiatives Launched For Transforming Urban Governance

(Topic: Government schemes and policies)

National Urban Digital Mission will create the ideal space to harness immense synergies from the domain of urban and technology towards creating a citizen-centric governance that reflects Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s vision of ‘minimum government and maximum governance’.

Ministry: Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

Motto: To deliver on the promise of serving all citizens andthis is what sabkasaath – sabkavikas – sabkavishwas means for urban India today: enhancing the capacity of every city and town to serve citizens, build partnerships, and solve local problems locally.

The National Urban Digital Mission (NUDM) will create a shared digital infrastructure for urban India, working across the three pillars of people, process, and platform to provide holistic support to cities and towns. It will institutionalise a citizen-centric and ecosystem-driven approach to urban governance and service delivery in 2022 cities by 2022, and across all cities and towns in India by 2024.

NUDM will create a shared digital infrastructure that can consolidate and cross-leverage the various digital initiatives of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, enabling cities and towns across India to benefit from holistic and diverse forms of support, in keeping with their needs and local challenges.
NUDM is citizen-centric, ecosystem-driven, and principles-based in both design and implementation. NUDM has articulated a set of governing principles, and inherits the technology design principles of the National Urban Innovation Stack (NUIS), whose strategy and approach was released by MoHUA in February, 2019. The principles in turn give rise to standards, specifications, and certifications, across the three pillars of people, process, and platforms.

India Urban Data Exchange (IUDX): The India Urban Data Exchange has been developed in partnership between the Smart Cities Mission and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru.

IUDX serves as a seamless interface for data providers and data users, including ULBs, to share, request, and access datasets related to cities, urban governance, and urban service delivery.
IUDX is an open-source software platform which facilitates the secure, authenticated, and managed exchange of data amongst various data platforms, 3rd party authenticated and authorised applications, and other sources.
As the number of cities on IUDX expands, this will scale up to uniform and seamless sharing between data producers and data consumers across urban India. IUDX is designed to address the problem of data silos, both within and across cities.
Cities generate large volumes of data, which are recorded by a wide range of entities, both within government and across industry, academia, and civil society. The combination of these datasets can enable rapid innovation, as well as a better understanding of and planning for urban needs and challenges.

IUDX creates a secure and reliable channel for data producers or owners to share their data, with complete control over what is shared and with whom, in order to enable sharing while addressing security and privacy protections by design.

SmartCode Platform: SmartCode is a platform that enables all ecosystem stakeholders to contribute to a repository of open-source code for various solutions and applications for urban governance.

It is designed to address the challenges that ULBs face in the development and deployment of digital applications to address urban challenges, by enabling cities to take advantage of existing codes and customising them to suit local needs, rather than having to develop new solutions from scratch.

As a repository of open-source software, the source code available on the platform will be free to use without any licensing or subscription fees, thus limiting costs to those involved with customising the code and developing a locally-relevant solution.

New Smart Cities Website ver. 2.0 and GMIS: In order to better connect with people on the Smart Cities Missions efforts and achievements, and to make it easier for ULBs and citizens to access resources related to their work, the Smart Cities Mission website has been redesigned to serve as a single stop for all Smart Cities initiatives. The Geospatial Management Information System (GMIS) is integrated with this website. The website creates a single window hub for Smart Cities Mission. A portal that works as a gateway to all the platforms and initiatives launched under the Mission.

Government notifies Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021

(Topic: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation)

In a long anticipated move, the government notified guidelines that seek to provide a grievance redressal mechanism for users of digital platforms of all kinds — social media sites, messaging apps, over the top (OTT) streaming services, and digital news publishers.

The Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 mandate that social media and messaging platforms will have to adhere to new requirements in assisting investigative agencies of the government.

What are the new rules?

The broad themes of the guidelines revolve around grievance redressal, compliance with the law, and adherence to the media code.
Social media platforms like Google or Facebook, or intermediaries, for instance, will now have to appoint a grievance officer to deal with users complaints.
intermediaries have to appoint a ‘Chief Compliance Officer, who will have to ensure that the rules are followed; the officer “shall be liable in any proceedings relating to any relevant third party information, data or communication link made available or hosted by that intermediary.
The intermediaries will also have to appoint a nodal contact person for “24×7 coordination with law enforcement agencies
The other key requirement is that such a social media intermediary would have to “enable the identification of the first originator of the information on its computer resource” as may be required by a judicial order.
This means , a problematic message, that is considered “an offence related to the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign states, or public order, or of incitement to an offence relating to the above or in relation with rape, sexually explicit material or child sexual abuse material”, will have to be traced to its initiator on messaging applications like WhatsApp and Signal.
For digital publishers of news and current affairs as well as video streaming services, an identical three tier structure for grievance redressal has been mandated.
This structure will look into grievances in relation to a Code of Ethics, which is listed in the appendix to the rules. Among other things, the Code of Ethics includes the ‘Norms of Journalistic Conduct’ as prescribed by the Press Council of India, as also content that shall not be published “content which is prohibited under any law for the time being in force shall not be published or transmitted.
The guidelines also require streaming services to classify content based on its nature and type. So, for instance, content “for persons aged 16 years and above, and can be viewed by a person under the age of 16.

Context and need of guidelines

A 2018 Supreme Court observation and a 2020 Supreme Court order in Sudarshan TV case, in addition to discussion in Rajya Sabha once in 2018 and then through a report laid by a committee in 2020 asked the need for coming up with rules to “empower the ordinary users of digital platforms to seek redressal for their grievances and command accountability in case of infringement of their rights”.
the government said that it wanted to create a level playing field in terms of rules to be followed by online news and media platforms vis-à-vis traditional media outlets.
Citing instructions from the Supreme Court and the concerns raised in Parliament about social media abuse, the government released guidelines.
The big push came in the form of the violent incidents at the Red Fort on January 26, compromised our honour on republic day, following which the government and Twitter were embroiled in a spat over the removal of certain accounts from the social media platform.
Section 79 of the Information Technology Act provides a “safe harbour” to intermediaries that host user-generated content, and exempts them from liability for the actions of users.
The new guidelines notified on Thursday prescribe an element of due diligence to be followed by the intermediary, failing which the safe harbour provisions would cease to apply.
The recent campaign of misinformation on media during the CAA protests, farmers protests, toolkit case, Sudarshan tv case calls for more responsible regulation of these platforms. Social media is used to tarnish image of India is a matter of concern
Government can regulate some content but it has to be in reasonable limits. Self-regulation by OTT and social media platforms is the best way forward. OTT platforms are providing very explicit porn content with no option of parental regulation. It is creating more problems of sexual abuse and harassment.
Social media and OTT platforms are too big to control in terms of the information they generate, this does not mean that regulation cannot be done. A more proactive vigil and accountability from big platforms like Facebook and twitter will pave way for the harmonious balance of oversight.
In the times of daily abuse, rape threats, hatred and unregulated pornographic content, social engagement has become matter of responsible and careful behaviour. We should not ignore elephant in the room and tame the giant before it goes out of control.

Cabinet approves

Production Linked Incentive Scheme for Pharmaceuticals: The Scheme will

Benefit domestic manufacturers

Is expected to contribute to the availability of wider range of affordable medicines for consumers

Promote the production of high value products in the country and increase the value addition in exports. Total incremental sales of Rs.2,94,000 crore and total incremental exports of Rs.1,96,000 crore are estimated during six years from 2022-23 to 2027-28.
The scheme is expected to generate employment for both skilled and un-skilled personnel, estimated at 20,000 direct and 80,000 indirect jobs as a result of growth in the sector.
Promote innovation for development of complex and high-tech products including products of emerging therapies and in-vitro Diagnostic Devices as also self-reliance in important drugs.
Improve accessibility and affordability of medical products including orphan drugs to the Indian population. The Scheme is also expected to bring in investment of Rs.15,000 crore in the pharmaceutical sector.

The scheme will be part of the umbrella scheme for the Development of Pharmaceutical Industry. The objective of the scheme is to enhance India’s manufacturing capabilities by increasing investment and production in the sector and contributing to product diversification to high value goods in the pharmaceutical sector. One of the further objectives of the scheme is to create global champions out of India who have the potential to grow in size and scale using cutting edge technology and thereby penetrate the global value chains.

Production Linked Incentive Scheme for IT Hardware: The scheme proposes production linked incentive to boost domestic manufacturing and attract large investments in the value chain of IT Hardware. The Target Segments under the proposed Scheme include Laptops, Tablets, All-in-One PCs and Servers.

The Scheme shall, extend an incentive of 4% to 2% / 1% on net incremental sales (over base year i.e. 2019-20) of goods manufactured in India and covered under the target segment, to eligible companies, for a period of four (4) years.
The scheme will enhance the development of electronics ecosystem in the country. India will be well positioned as a global hub for Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) on account of integration with global value chains, thereby becoming a destination for IT Hardware exports.
The scheme has an employment generation potential of over 1,80,000 (direct and indirect) over 4 years.
The Scheme will provide impetus to Domestic Value Addition for IT Hardware which is expected to rise to 20% – 25% by 2025