📰 Jobs increased by 29% since 2013, says survey
Quarterly Employment Survey covered 10,593 firms across 9 sectors
•The All-India Quarterly Establishment-based Employment Survey, in a report released on Monday, said that the overall employment numbers had increased by 29% from the base year of 2013-14.
•However, in the first quarter of this fiscal (April-June 2021), 27% of the establishments surveyed reported pandemic-related retrenchment.
•The report, released by Labour and Employment Minister Bhupender Yadav, covered 10,593 firms that employed more than 10 workers and were spread over nine sectors that account for 85% of the total employment in such establishments.
•Overall, employment stood at 3.08 crore in the first quarter, up from 2.37 crore as reported in the Sixth Economic Census (2013-2014).
•All but two sectors — trade and accommodation & restaurants — saw an increase in employment over the period.
•The report said the IT/BPO sector had the most impressive growth (152%), followed by health (77%), transport (68%), financial services (48%), construction (42%), education (39%) and manufacturing (22%).
•Manufacturing was found to account for 41% of the establishments, followed by education (22%) and health (8%).
•There was a decline in employment in trade (25%) and accommodation and restaurants (13%), which Mr. Yadav said could be attributed to the second wave of the pandemic that was at its peak during the survey.
Dip in female workers
•The number of female workers showed a decline too, from 31% in the Sixth Economic Survey to 29% as of the first quarter of the quarterly employment survey.
•Speaking about the importance of the survey, Mr. Yadav said: “Evidence-based policy making and statistics-based execution is the major focus of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi.”
•He added that this survey and others covering unorganised sectors being conducted by the Labour Survey would help in policy-making.
•Mr. Yadav said while 27% of the establishments reported pandemic-induced retrenchment, the silver lining was that 81% of the workers had received their full wages during the lockdown (March 25 to June 30, 2020).
Useful for policy-makers
•Earlier, Labour and Employment secretary Sunil Barthwal said having contemporary data was useful for policy-makers and this survey would help other government departments and Ministries as well.
•Mr. Barthwal said the survey would help the public as well as they could focus on learning skills that are found lacking in the workforce.
•He said when the government was coming up with COVID-19-related welfare schemes, like the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana, the only data available was from the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation and the Employees State Insurance Corporation, or “administrative data”.
•“Soon, field surveys will start for the unorganised sector as well,” Mr. Barthwal said.
•The Labour Bureau, with the expert group for all-India surveys under Prof. S.P. Mukherjee, is also carrying out surveys on migrant workers and domestic workers.
•A senior Ministry official said these surveys would be significant in policy-making in general and in framing a “national employment policy” soon..
It intercepts and destroys unmanned aerial target mimicking enemy aircraft
•The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) on Monday successfully tested a new version of Akash Surface to Air missile Akash Prime from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur, Odisha.
•“In comparison to the existing Akash System, Akash Prime is equipped with an indigenous active Radio Frequency (RF) seeker for improved accuracy. Other improvements also ensure more reliable performance under low temperature environment at higher altitudes,” a DRDO statement said. A modified ground system of the existing Akash system had been used for the flight test, it stated.
•In its maiden flight test after improvements, the missile intercepted and destroyed an unmanned aerial target mimicking enemy aircraft, the DRDO noted.
•Congratulating the team on the successful flight test, DRDO Chairman Dr. G. Satheesh Reddy said Akash Prime would further boost the confidence of the Army and the Air Force.
📰 An institution’s right to govt. aid is not a fundamental right: SC
The Bench clarified that if the government made a policy call to withdraw aid, an institution cannot question the decision as a “matter of right”
•The right of an institution, whether run by a majority or minority community, to get government aid is not a fundamental right. Both have to equally follow the rules and conditions of the aid, the Supreme Court held in a judgment on Monday.
•“Whether it is an institution run by the majority or the minority, all conditions that have relevance to the proper utilisation of the grant-in-aid by an educational institution can be imposed. All that Article 30(2) states is that on the ground that an institution is under the management of a minority, whether based on religion or language, grant of aid to that educational institution cannot be discriminated against, if other educational institutions are entitled to receive aid,” a Bench of Justices S.K. Kaul and M.M. Sundresh said referring to the court’s historic T.M.A Pai decision in its judgment.
•The Bench clarified that if the government made a policy call to withdraw aid, an institution cannot question the decision as a “matter of right”.
•A grant of government aid comes with accompanying conditions. An institution is free to choose to accept the grant with the conditions or go its own way, it said.
•“If an institution does not want to accept and comply with the conditions accompanying such aid, it is well open to it to decline the grant and move in its own way. On the contrary, an institution can never be allowed to say that the grant of aid should be on its own terms,” Justice Sundresh, who authored the judgment for the Bench, observed.
•The court explained why institutions cannot view government aid as a “matter of right”.
•Firstly, government aid is a policy decision. It depends on various factors including the interests of the institution itself and the ability of the government to understand the exercise.
•“Financial constraints and deficiencies are the factors which are considered relevant in taking any decision qua aid, including both the decision to grant aid and the manner of disbursement of an aid,” the court noted.
•“Once we hold that right to get an aid is not a fundamental right, the challenge to a decision made in implementing it, shall only be on restricted grounds. Therefore, even in a case where a policy decision is made to withdraw the aid, an institution cannot question it as a matter of right. Maybe, such a challenge would still be available to an institution, when a grant is given to one institution as against the other institution which is similarly placed,” the court said.
•The judgment came in an appeal filed by Uttar Pradesh against a decision of the Allahabad High Court to declare a provision of the Intermediate Education Act of 1921 unconstitutional.
📰 PM Modi launches Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission
Under this, every citizen will now get a digital health ID and health records digitally protected
•A campaign of strengthening health facilities that had been going for the last seven years was entering a new phase today, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi while launching the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission via videoconferencing on Monday.
•“Today we are launching a mission that has the potential of bringing a revolutionary change in India’s health facilities”, he stated.
•The Arogya Setu app helped a lot in preventing the spread of corona infection, he noted and lauded Co-WIN for its role in making India achieve a record administration of about 90 crore vaccine doses, under the free vaccine campaign.
Use of technology
•Referring to use of technology in health, he pointed out that there had also been an unprecedented expansion of telemedicine in the corona period- so far about 125 crore remote consultations completed through e-Sanjeevani. “This facility is connecting thousands of countrymen living in farflung parts of the country every day with doctors of big hospitals of cities while sitting at home,” he observed.
•The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission would now connect the digital health solutions of hospitals across the country with each other.
•A release issued by the Central Government stressed that the mission would not only make the processes of hospitals simplified but also increase ease of living. Under this, every citizen would now get a digital health ID and health records digitally protected.
Holistic health model
•The Prime Minister highlighted that India was working on a health model that was holistic and inclusive. It also stressed on preventive healthcare and, in case of disease, easy, affordable and accessible treatment. Unprecedented reforms in health education was on. A much larger number of doctors and para-medical manpower was being created now compared to 7-8 years ago.
•“A comprehensive network of AIIMS and other modern health institutions is being established in the country and work on establishing one medical college in every three Lok Sabha constituencies is going on,” he remarked.
•Mr. Modi emphasised on strengthening the health facilities in villages. He pointed to the strengthening of primary health centre networks and wellness centres. More than 80,000 such centres have already been operationalised.
📰 High water: on growing challenge from tropical cyclones
India must create a social safety net to manage the fallout of cyclonic storms
•Tropical cyclones laden with moisture and accumulated energy pose a growing challenge, as they have the propensity to inflict heavy damage to lives and property. As the annual monsoon retreats, thousands are left assessing the impact of cyclone Gulab, a rare event for September, on coastal Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and other areas inland. This weather system, with a gusting wind speed of 70 knots at landfall, appears to have been less intimidating than cyclones Yaas and Tauktae, although it continued to keep the seas unsafe for fishermen all along the coastline north of Andhra Pradesh, after moving overland. There have been some distressing deaths and inevitable material losses for many, and the focus must now be on relief and rehabilitation; in the recovery phase of COVID-19, the weather system has upended life for many, disrupting key inter-State road links and leading to the cancellation or diversion of several trains. The imperative is to reach out to those affected by Gulab with food, shelter and health-care support, deploying the many administrative capabilities acquired during the pandemic with the same alacrity. The welcome concern for public health and economic security must lead to stronger institutional responses to natural disasters too.
•The northern Indian Ocean, of which the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal are a part, experiences only a minority of tropical storms annually, at about 7% of worldwide events, but their destructive impact on the subcontinent is severe due to a dense population and poor capacity to absorb large quantities of rainfall dumped in a short period over cities and towns. Financial arrangements to insure the population against material losses also remain weak, and as the experience in West Bengal with cyclone Amphan demonstrated last year, relief measures can easily fall victim to corruption. The influence of climate change on cyclone characteristics in a world that is heating up due to accumulation of greenhouse gases is an ongoing topic of study. The IPCC, in its scientific report on 1.5° C warming, said with a high degree of confidence that changes in the climate system, including the proportion of tropical cyclones, would experience a larger impact from increasing warming. Research evidence shows more cyclones forming over the Arabian Sea when compared to the Bay; overall there were eight storms of concern to India in 2019, and five last year, Amphan being a super cyclone. The Centre and all States cannot afford to allow large-scale losses to communities to continue each year, and, going beyond disaster response, must put in place institutional structures and insurance systems for financial protection. Cities must prepare to harvest every deluge that brings vast quantities of water, so vital to sustain mass populations.
📰 Revitalising PM-KUSUM
We can unlock the scheme’s promises in many ways
•The Union Minister of Power, New and Renewable Energy recently reviewed the progress of the PM-KUSUM scheme and reaffirmed the government’s commitment to accelerating solar pump adoption. Launched in 2019, PM-KUSUM aims to help farmers access reliable day-time solar power for irrigation, reduce power subsidies, and decarbonise agriculture. But pandemic-induced disruptions, limited buy-in from States, and implementation challenges have all affected the scheme’s roll-out. In a year when patchy and delayed monsoons have hit kharif crops in most of the country, PM-KUSUM assumes increased significance. So, how can we unlock the various opportunities it promises?
Barriers to uptake
•PM-KUSUM provides farmers with incentives to install solar power pumps and plants in their fields. They can use one of three deployment models: off-grid solar pumps, solarised agricultural feeders, or grid-connected pumps. Off-grid pumps have been the most popular, but the nearly 2,80,000 systems deployed fall far short of the scheme’s target of two million by 2022. Barriers to adoption include limited awareness about solar pumps and farmers’ inability to pay their upfront contribution.
•Progress on the other two models has been rather poor due to regulatory, financial, operational and technical challenges. Only a handful of States have initiated tenders or commissioned projects for solar feeders or grid-connected pumps, according to our study. Yet, both models are worth scaling up for they allow farmers to earn additional income by selling solar power to discoms, and discoms to procure cheap power close to centres of consumption.
•We propose five steps for tackling the myriad challenges linked to PM-KUSUM’s implementation. First, extend the scheme’s timelines. Most Indian discoms have a surplus of contracted generation capacity and are wary of procuring more power in the short term. Extending PM-KUSUM’s timelines beyond 2022 would allow discoms to align the scheme with their power purchase planning.
•Second, create a level playing field for distributed solar plants. Selling surplus power to discoms is one of the main attractions of grid-connected models. Yet, discoms often find utility-scale solar cheaper than distributed solar (under the scheme) due to the latter’s higher costs and the loss of locational advantage due to waived inter-State transmission system (ISTS) charges. To tackle the bias against distributed solar, we need to address counter-party risks and grid-unavailability risks at distribution substations, standardise tariff determination to reflect the higher costs of distributed power plants, and do away with the waiver of ISTS charges for solar plants.
•Third, streamline land regulations through inter-departmental coordination. Doing so will help reduce delays in leasing or converting agricultural lands for non-agricultural purposes such as solar power generation. States should constitute steering committees comprising members from all relevant departments for this purpose.
•Fourth, support innovative solutions for financing farmers’ contributions. Many farmers struggle to pay 30-40% of upfront costs in compliance with scheme requirements. Further, they cannot access bank loans without collateral. While some States have increased subsidy support, this solution is not scalable. To ease the financial burden on farmers, we need out-of-the-box solutions. Consider Karnataka’s pilot of a farmer-developer special-purpose vehicle to help farmers install solar power plants on their farms. Another promising example is a community-owned model piloted in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, which could help marginalised farmers own and access off-grid pumps with limited upfront contributions.
•Fifth, extensively pilot grid-connected solar pumps. Current obstacles to their adoption include concerns about their economic viability in the presence of high farm subsidies and farmers’ potential unwillingness to feed in surplus power when selling water or irrigating extra land are more attractive prospects. Further, the grid-connected model requires pumps to be metered and billed for accounting purposes but suffers from a lack of trust between farmers and discoms. Adopting solutions like smart meters and smart transformers and engaging with farmers can build trust and address some operational challenges. But piloting the model under different agro-economic contexts will be critical to developing a strategy to scale it up in an economically and operationally sustainable manner.
•These measures, combined with other agriculture schemes and complemented by intensive awareness campaigns, could give a much-needed boost to PM-KUSUM. If successful, the scheme can generate hundreds of thousands of jobs, vastly reduce the carbon footprint of Indian agriculture, and result in oil import savings.
📰 Measuring regional diversity
The National Institute Ranking Framework’s calculation of regional diversity in educational institutions is inaccurate
•The National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF) is a methodology adopted by the Ministry of Education to rank higher educational institutions in India. On September 9, the Education Minister released the sixth edition of the NIRF rankings. The NIRF formulates the ranking on the basis of five parameters. Each of these has one to five sub-parameters. This article discusses one of the sub-parameters (Region Diversity) of the parameter named Outreach and Inclusivity.
Problematic formula
•The NIRF calculates regional diversity inaccurately because it takes into account only the percentage of students enrolled from other States and countries at that particular institution. The formula that it applies is this: RD = 25 × fraction of total students enrolled from other States + 5 × fraction of students enrolled from other countries. This formula calculates the regional diversity of States not on the basis of State-wise representation by students at the institution, but on the basis of the percentage of total students enrolled from all States except the State the institution is located in. This is problematic. Let’s say that there are 100 students in total at an institution in New Delhi of whom 99 belong to Uttar Pradesh. The formula will show that the institution is extremely diverse because 99% of the students are from ‘other’ State(s), which is misleading.
•To improve accuracy, the NIRF should ask two questions. One, from how many States have students come to study at the institution? The answer to this will give us what we can term as horizontal regional diversity. Here, we take a bird’s-eye view of the geographical area of India and then we count the States represented by one or more students studying (or enrolled) at the institution. However, this alone will not help comprehensively assess regional diversity. Even if all 29 States are represented at the institution, we won’t know how many students are from towns and villages, how many are from non-metropolitan big cities, and how many are from metropolitan cities.
•Horizontal regional diversity can be more comprehensively assessed by asking a second question: what is the size of the hometown of the students? This can be termed as vertical regional diversity. Its calculation will show us how many students have come from Tier I, Tier II, Tier III cities and towns, and villages from within each State.
Comparing two institutions
•For a clearer understanding of horizontal and vertical diversity, let us compare the demographic data of the Faculty of Law, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, and of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru.
•Under ‘Region Diversity’ in the NIRF rankings, Jamia scored 17.75 out of 30 and NLSIU scored 27.04. At Jamia, there were students from 15 States. Of them, 76% came from U.P. (44.7%), Delhi (16.1%) and Bihar (15.25%). No student came from Arunachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu or Telangana. Only 1.4% of the students were from south India (comprising five States, Puducherry and Lakshadweep). Clearly, horizontal regional diversity is weak. On the other hand, Jamia’s performance on vertical regional representation is impressive because 43% of the students came from small cities, towns, and villages, though only from 15 States.
•At NLSIU, only 18% of the students came from small cities, towns, and villages. The institution is primarily accessible to students from metropolitan and non-metropolitan big cities, though the students came from 24 States. Thus, it performs well on the horizontal front but weakly on the vertical.
•How does the NIRF intend to calculate such diverse regional diversities? Even if the concept of vertical and horizontal diversity is incorporated into the parameter, the NIRF cannot brush under the carpet the methodological challenge of determining what place (city, town, village) a student comes from — should it be the place at which the student was born, the place of current residence, the place where high school was completed, or the place at which the student’s father/mother was born?
•The NIRF rankings make the positional goods the institutions have to offer more transparent to students, parents, funders, and the government. Incidentally, on the basis of the five parameters, the ranking creates a transparent hierarchy of higher educational institutions in India. The least we can therefore ask for is more accurate parameters. The policy questions above must be answered by the NIRF. This article intends to only evoke scholarly scepticism about the accuracy of regional diversity, as calculated by the NIRF. And ideally, it should also lead readers towards asking how other parameters can be made more accurate.
📰 The Quad could end up running out of steam
It has too many items on its agenda, and with the announcement of AUKUS, faces the danger of becoming a talk shop
•Coming on the eve of the first in-person Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) summit in Washington DC, the new Australia-U.K.-U.S. (AUKUS) trilateral security partnership appears to be sending a subtle message to the Quad: shape up or become irrelevant. The announcement of the AUKUS and the recent outcome of the Quad summit indicate that AUKUS will go on to form a key security arrangement of the Indo-Pacific region, thereby potentially forcing the Quad to recede to the background in a struggle for attention, political will, and resources. But before we get to the implications of AUKUS on the Quad, let us briefly examine how AUKUS is also useful to the Quad.
A reassurance to allies
•Still reeling under intense international criticism in the way the United States withdrew its forces from Afghanistan resulting in a humanitarian disaster, AUKUS seeks to unambiguously signal U.S. President Joe Biden’s commitment to U.S. allies especially in the Indo-Pacific.
•In some ways, AUKUS helps reassure its allies of the U.S.’s security commitments and underlines Washington’s pivot to the Indo-Pacific. Second, the deal and particularly the sharing of American nuclear submarine technology with Australia will help Canberra overcome past hesitations about taking on China with more conviction. Third, notwithstanding the point that AUKUS may set alarm bells ringing for the Quad, AUKUS is still a shot in the arm for the larger Indo-Pacific agenda of which India, the U.S., Japan, Australia, among others, are key partners. In other words, AUKUS will help the Quad’s declared aim of keeping the Indo-Pacific region free, open and inclusive thereby contributing to its core agenda.
No replacement, but...
•AUKUS may not replace the Quad and yet it appears that AUKUS has ventured where the Quad has been reluctant to make forays into — the military domain. More so, AUKUS also exposes the inherent, also self-imposed, limits of the Quad, i.e., its inability and lack of desire to give itself any military role. The focus of the recently-held Washington summit, on challenges ranging from COVID-19 to climate shows that the Quad is unlikely to take a security-dominated turn; that is precisely the vacuum AUKUS seeks to fill.
•The larger question then is whether the Quad is losing its steam. For sure, the Quad seems to offer no clear purpose which, as a result, leads to too many items crowding the agenda. It neither has a secretariat or a charter, like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), nor a clear set of activities such as AUKUS. The ever-growing list of focal areas of the Quad will eventually make it a less than useful deliberative forum.
•Put differently, with too many items on its agenda, the Quad faces the danger of becoming a talk shop with very little actual work. What is ironic is that all the Quad members have security/military considerations in mind vis-à-vis China while engaging the Quad platform, but no one seems to be keen on framing it in such a manner, as is evidenced by the summit’s joint statement (North Korea and Myanmar find mention in the statement though, not China). There is little interest in properly institutionalising the Quad nor has the objective for ‘Quad Plus’ been purposefully pursued.
•Let me put this somewhat differently: Indo-Pacific remains a grand strategic vision, AUKUS has the potential to become a major military/security arrangement in the Indo-Pacific, and the Quad/Quad Plus could end up becoming a talk shop within the Indo-Pacific.
New Delhi’s hesitations
•New Delhi has taken the stand that “there is no link between the AUKUS and the Quad” just as it had argued earlier that there is no link between the Malabar naval exercises and the Quad even though the Quad membership is replicated in the Malabar exercises and two-thirds of the AUKUS form 50% of the Quad.
•Technically, New Delhi’s stand is accurate — just because there is a striking similarity in the membership of these forums, they are not the same institutional architecture. And yet, if one were to go beyond such technicalities, it is evident that these groupings share a larger vision about the Indo-Pacific, i.e., addressing the challenge from China, and the desire for an open and free Indo-Pacific. Be it AUKUS, which enables Australia to stand up to Chinese bullying or provides the United Kingdom — its aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, the flagship of the U.K.’s Carrier Strike Group, is in the region — with a more prominent, and desirable, role in the Indo-Pacific or the annual Malabar exercises which focus on the Indo-Pacific or the Quad, their common geopolitical theatre is the Indo-Pacific. So while they are not technically related to each other, there is a broader reality that unites them all. There is no point in refusing to accept that self-evident reality.
•There is also little doubt today that the Indo-Pacific is of great importance to India for a number of reasons. For one, given the continental challenges it faces including from the new developments in Afghanistan, New Delhi would do well to shift some attention to the maritime sphere. Second, at a time when India is continentally pressed against a rock and a hard place, an opportunity has presented itself for India — in the form of growing global interest in the Indo-Pacific — to be at the centre of a new geopolitical churning which it must make use of for its own security and prosperity. Third, it is also a major way of bringing together like-minded states to check Chinese hegemony in the region.
•Given this context, if AUKUS potentially overshadows the enthusiasm around the Quad, it would be disadvantageous to India’s interests in the Indo-Pacific region. Other Quad counties are either on the AUKUS or are alliance partners; India is neither. Eventually, therefore, the Quad faces the potential challenge of becoming a talking shop without an actionable mandate. More so, bereft of any defence arrangement, the material returns from the Quad over time would also be minimal.
Indo-Pacific engagement
•This situation is made worse by India’s hesitation about joining major regional economic frameworks. India, for instance, is neither a member of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership nor can its trade relations with the Indo-Pacific countries rival those of China. So, given our rather weak economic influence and performance in the Indo-Pacific region, what might help the country is being part of a security arrangement which can take care of its regional defence/security concerns. Even before AUKUS, India’s current engagement of the Indo-Pacific was neither capable of contributing to its national security nor promoting its economic influence in the region. And now, AUKUS may have further shrunk the potential space available for the Quad, and India, to play a serious role in the region’s security architecture.
Sources of India’s hesitations
•Even though it is not just New Delhi which is hesitant about the Quad venturing into the security/military domain, India has been hesitant about the Quad moving beyond the non-military issues. So, what are the sources of New Delhi’s hesitation regarding a robust role for the Quad in the security/military domain? One could advance two hypotheses in this regard. One, India’s traditional reluctance about military alliances and the desire to maintain strategic autonomy. New Delhi fears that militarising the Quad could undo this jealously guarded tradition. It is, however, possible to explore military utility for the Quad without making it a formal military alliance. More so, exploring mutually beneficial military and security cooperation within the Quad framework need not contradict the principles of strategic autonomy. The operative part of ‘strategic autonomy’ is autonomy, not strategic.
•The second hypothesis has to do with domestic political considerations: The Narendra Modi government is keen to avoid any military overtones for the Quad due to potential Chinese reactions to it. Recall how India and Australia had for many years soft-peddled the forum for fear of provoking China. Australia seems to have overcome its hesitation, but has India done so? For the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government, any heat on the Line of Actual Control with China in the run-up to crucial State elections next year and then the 2024 parliamentary election would be unwelcome. This seems, therefore, to be a case of domestic political considerations trumping the pursuit of strategic necessities.
