Important topics and their relevance in UPSC CSE exam for October 26, 2024. If you missed the October 25, 2024 UPSC CSE exam key from the Indian Express, read it here.

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance

Mains Examination: General Studies II: India and its neighbourhood- relations, Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.

What’s the ongoing story: PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi, who met visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday, said that Berlin has decided to increase the number of visas for skilled Indians from 20,000 to 90,000 per year.

Key Points to Ponder:

•  What is the status of the India-Germany relationship?

• What is Green hydrogen?

• What is the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war and conflict in West Asia on India and Germany?

• What is a mutual legal assistance treaty?

• What are the Intergovernmental Consultations?

• What are the challenges of global forums of the 20th century like the UNSC?

Key Takeaways:

• The two leaders later held bilateral talks, where they discussed the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and the conflict in West Asia among other issues. India and Germany signed pacts on mutual legal assistance and classified information, and a roadmap on green hydrogen.

• Modi highlighted the growing cooperation between India and Germany in the defence and security sectors, citing it as a symbol of their “deep mutual trust”.

• Modi defined India-Germany ties as a transformational partnership of two capable and strong democracies and not a transactional relationship.

• After the talks, eight documents were signed — mutual legal assistance treaty on criminal matters, agreement on the exchange and mutual protection of classified information, Indo-German green hydrogen roadmap, roadmap on innovation and technology, and declarations on employment and labour, R&D on advanced materials, green urban mobility and skill development.

• Modi said they agreed that the global forums established in the 20th century were inadequate to address the challenges of the 21st century. “There is a need for reforms in multilateral institutions, including the UN Security Council,” he said.

• He also welcomed the ‘Focus on India’ strategy announced by Germany.

Do You Know:

• Addressing reporters alongside visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that Germany has decided to raise the annual visa quota for skilled Indian professionals from 20,000 to 90,000.

• While this fourfold increase will enhance economic and professional ties between the two countries, the move is also designed to make up for labour shortage that Germany might be facing owing to an ageing population.

• In 2014, around 27% of the German population was 60 and above, a number that is expected to touch 35% by 2030, as per statistics. The increased quota will come in handy in labour-intensive sectors such as nurses and elderly care, childcare, truck drivers and middle-level jobs in the engineering and IT sectors.

• Talking of the migration and mobility agreement that India and Germany signed in 2022, Baerbock said they have recorded a 25% increase in the number of students and professionals coming to Germany, and the potential is even higher.

• There is also an increased realisation in Germany to not repeat the mistakes during the previous large-scale migration to the country — in the 1960s and ’70s. Heil said. “We tried to hire a workforce, but we got human beings,” he said, adding that for those immigrating now, they offer “health insurance, universities without fees and a lot of respect”.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

????Ageing population, labour shortage: Why Germany needs Indian workforce

????C Raja Mohan writes: In German chancellor’s India visit, a chance for deeper ties with Berlin

 

Previous year UPSC Prelims Question Covering similar theme:

1. The Security Council of UN consists of 5 permanent members, and the remaining 10 members are elected by the General Assembly for a term of (UPSC CSE 2009)

(a) 1 year (b) 2 years (c) 3 years (d) 5 years

Previous year UPSC Mains Question Covering similar theme:

Discuss the impediments India is facing in its pursuit of a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. (UPSC CSE 2015)

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance.

Mains Examination: General Studies I, II: Geography, Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.

What’s the ongoing story: Locked in a military standoff along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh following Chinese incursions over four-and-a-half years ago, India and China have taken the first step to repair bilateral ties by starting the process of disengaging troops at two of the seven friction points in the region to restore patrolling rights of each there.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What is the status of the India-China relationship?

• What are the land border challenges along LAC?

• What are the other challenges in the India-China relationship?

• What are the security concerns for India?

• Map Work: Depsang Plains, Demchok, LAC, Galwan Valley, Gogra, and Pangong Tso.

Key Takeaways:

• Currently, the two sides are removing temporary structures built over the past four-and-a-half years, sources said.

• The current agreement, sources underlined, is only on restoring patrolling rights in the Depsang Plains and Demchok areas and disengagement is taking place at only these two friction points — the problems there are called legacy issues and predate the 2020 Chinese incursions.

• This agreement is important because the Chinese side, until a year ago, showed reluctance to even discuss Depsang Plains and Demchok while it agreed on disengagement at other friction points — PP 14 (Galwan valley), PP 15 (Hot Springs), PP 17A (Gogra), north and south banks of Pangong Tso.

• “Troops from both sides will fall back to pre-April 2020 positions, and then patrolling will commence in the two areas,” the source said. “Patrolling on either side will also resume as was being done before April 2020.”

Do You Know:

• The Line of Actual Control (LAC) is the demarcation that separates Indian-controlled territory from Chinese-controlled territory. India considers the LAC to be 3,488 km long, while the Chinese consider it to be only around 2,000 km.

• It is divided into three sectors: the eastern sector which spans Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, the middle sector in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, and the western sector in Ladakh.

• P. Stobdan writes: A move towards de-escalation and de-militarisation will be contingent on the overall improvement in bilateral relations. In 2017, the Doklam standoff was resolved ahead of the BRICS summit. The Galwan standoff was resolved during the SCO summit in 2022. The announcement this time, too, appeared more of an optics ahead of the BRICS Summit to prepare the ground for a meeting between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping in Kazan.

• “There is no question about achieving a breakthrough or trust between India and China. The issue is about each other’s interests. The Chinese may have achieved some strategic and military successes through the boundary standoffs in Ladakh but New Delhi has shown it can deal with the situation through its diplomatic fortitude and maturity.”

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

????India-China LAC agreement is welcome – but is it a breakthrough?

????India-China LAC Agreement: What this means, why experts are advising caution

Previous year UPSC Prelims Question Covering similar theme:

2. ‘Hand-in-Hand 2007’ a joint anti-terrorism military training was held by the officers of the Indian Army and officers of the Army of which one of the following countries? (2008)

(a) China

(b) Japan

(c) Russia

(d) USA

Previous year UPSC Mains Question Covering similar theme:

“China is using its economic relations and positive trade surplus as tools to develop potential military power status in Asia”. In the light of this statement, discuss its impact on India as her neighbour. (UPSC CSE 2017)

 

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance

Mains Examination: General Studies II: Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests

What’s the ongoing story: Kanti Bajpai writes: Politics is largely a series of public performances. The more public the performance, the more it is staged and theatrical. The just-concluded BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, was an international performance by its five original members and the new members of the grouping.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What is BRICS?

• Which are the recently added countries to BRICS?

• What are the outcomes of the Kazan summit?

• What is the significance of BRICS for India?

• What are the various initiatives of BRICS?

Key Takeaways:

• The American anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, wrote a book on Indonesian society in which he described a “theatre state”… The point instead is that the state is theatre: It performs its own power and legitimacy through spectacular public demonstrations and thereby signals what it wants and stands for.

• The BRICS Summit, and summits all over the world, are theatre in this sense. Their performance is a demonstration of their power and legitimacy, and it is a signalling.

• The first performance is the staging of BRICS. Every year, BRICS must demonstrate its continued existence and cohesion and, therefore, its raison d’etre and seriousness.

• The second performance, related to the first, is the staging aimed at one’s domestic audience — by far the most important audience. Here, the aim is to provide a moment and space in which the leader and his officials signal the majesty and competence of the state to their own public.

• The third performance of the BRICS Summit is to stage its anti-Westernism and specifically anti-Americanism. Our playful Goldman Sachs impresario who coined the term BRICS did not intend to birth an anti-American grouping. But that is what BRICS is and has been since its inception.

• For Moscow, the Kazan summit was intended to tell the Americans that Russia is not isolated despite the sanctions and condemnations since February 2022. For Beijing, the summit conveyed that China is the alternative leader of the world, and it even has the grudging backing of India, a US strategic partner. For Delhi, the summit is a signal to the Americans that India has other potential partners, and Washington should not take it for granted.

• BRICS’ stance against the US and its allies may be diplomatically polarising, but it is also the promise of checks and balances in the international system. For many smaller countries, a balance-of-power world is a more comfortable world even if it means a degree of polarisation between two or more camps.

• The positive externality, to use the language of economics, of big power rivalries is that it creates room for manoeuvre for smaller states.

Do You Know:

• BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the original five members who were large, non-Western economies. On January 1 this year, BRICS admitted four new members: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. The organisation now represents almost half the world’s population and almost one quarter of the world’s economy.

• The acronym BRIC was first used in 2001 by Goldman Sachs in their Global Economics Paper, ‘The World Needs Better Economic BRICs’. The paper projected that Brazil, Russia, India, and China would be among the world’s largest economies in the next 50 years or so.

• As a formal grouping, BRIC started after the meeting of the leaders of Russia, India and China in St. Petersburg on the margins of the G8 Outreach Summit in 2006. The grouping was formalised during the first meeting of BRIC Foreign Ministers on the margins of the UNGA in New York in 2006.

• The first BRIC Summit was held in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in 2009. It was decided to include South Africa at the BRIC Foreign Ministers’ meeting in New York in 2010, and accordingly, South Africa attended the 3rd BRICS Summit in Sanya, China, in 2011.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

????PM Modi attends BRICS Summit in Russia: What is the group, its significance for India

????BRICS Summit at Kazan: The takeaways for India, Russia and China

Previous year UPSC Prelims Question Covering similar theme:

3. With reference to a grouping of countries known as BRICS, consider the following statements: (UPSC CSE 2014)

1. The First Summit of BRICS was held in Rio de Janeiro in 2009.

2. South Africa was the last to join the BRICS grouping.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 only

(b) 2 only

(c) Both 1 and 2

(d) Neither 1 nor 2

Previous year UPSC Mains Question Covering similar theme:

India has recently signed to become a founding member of the New Development Bank (NDB) and also the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). How will the role of the two Banks be different? Discuss the strategic significance of these two Banks for India. (UPSC CSE 2014)

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Economic and Social Development – Sustainable Development, Poverty, Inclusion, Demographics, Social Sector Initiatives, etc

Mains Examination: General Studies III: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilisation, of resources, growth, development and employment; Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment

What’s the ongoing story: Pushpendra Singh writes: On Wednesday, the Supreme Court came down heavily on the Centre and the governments of Delhi and its neighbouring states for their failure to take strict action against farmers who set crop stubble on fire. The Court cited Article 21 of the Constitution and underlined that people have a right to live in a pollution-free environment.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What are the provisions of Article 21?

• What are the reasons for pollution in Delhi NCR?

• How far stubble burning is responsible for air pollution in Delhi?

• Suggest measures to resolve the issue of air pollution related to stubble burning in Delhi.

• What are the major air pollutants?

• What are the actions taken by the government to combat air pollution?

Key Takeaways:

• Pushpendra Singh writes: On Wednesday, the Supreme Court came down heavily on the Centre and the governments of Delhi and its neighbouring states for their failure to take strict action against farmers who set crop stubble on fire. The Court cited Article 21 of the Constitution and underlined that people have a right to live in a pollution-free environment.

• Besides crop-stubble burning, the main sources of pollution in the Delhi-NCR are local traffic, industries, construction works, sweeping of roads and local biomass burning.

• According to government data, stubble burning contributes 5 to 30 per cent to NCR’s pollution load during this period. Most such incidents take place in Punjab and Haryana.

• Besides crop-stubble burning, the main sources of pollution in the Delhi-NCR are local traffic, industries, construction works, sweeping of roads and local biomass burning. According to government data, stubble burning contributes 5 to 30 per cent to NCR’s pollution load during this period. Most such incidents take place in Punjab and Haryana.

• The genesis of the problem lies in the Sub-soil Water Conservation Acts passed in 2009 by the Punjab and Haryana governments. These laws prohibit paddy sowing before mid-June. Their purpose is to ensure sowing closer to monsoon and conserve groundwater in the process.

• Delayed sowing, however, results in delayed harvesting. The crop cycle is delayed by two to three weeks. After harvesting, farmers traditionally had a window of about four to six weeks to sow the next rabi crop, mainly wheat. This window has shrunk by half in the past 15 years.

• Stubble burning is ecologically harmful. It leads to the depletion of nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, potassium and other micronutrients that are essential to soil health.

• The most eco-friendly solution is to harvest paddy manually. After manual harvesting and threshing, the residue is used as fodder. A part is also set aside as bedding for animals in the winter.

• To encourage farmers to harvest paddy manually and manage the stubble subsequently, the governments should pay them what it costs to do so — about Rs 4,000 per acre. MGNREGA funds could be used to partly finance this shift.

• Penalising farmers and subsidising costly fossil fuel-guzzling machines shouldn’t be the solution to NCR’s pollution crisis.

• A return to manual harvesting will save water and curb pollution. In other words, the benefits of paying farmers to switch to manual harvesting extend beyond improving Delhi-NCR’s air quality.

Do You Know:

• Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) is a set of emergency measures that kick in to prevent further deterioration of air quality once it reaches a certain threshold. Stage 1 of GRAP is activated when the AQI is in the ‘poor’ category (201 to 300).

• The GRAP was first notified in January 2017 by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. This was based on a plan that was submitted by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in November 2016.

• According to the notification, the task of implementing the GRAP fell on the now-dissolved Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority for the NCR. From 2021 onwards, the GRAP is being implemented by the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM).

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

????Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP)

????Delhi’s pollution crisis: A perpetual emergency

Previous year UPSC Prelims Question Covering similar theme:

4. In the cities of our country, which among the following atmospheric gases are normally considered in calculating the value of Air Quality Index? ( UPSC CSE 2016)

1. Carbon dioxide

2. Carbon monoxide

3. Nitrogen dioxide

4. Sulfur dioxide

5. Methane

Select the correct answer using the code given below:

(a) 1, 2 and 3 only

(b) 2, 3 and 4 only

(c) 1, 4 and 5 only

(d) 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5

Previous year UPSC Prelims/Mains Question Covering similar theme:

Describe the key points of the revised Global Air Quality Guidelines (AQGs) recently released by the World Health Organisation (WHO). How are these different from its last update in 2005? What changes in India’s National Clean Air Programme are required to achieve revised standards? (UPSC CSE 2021)

 

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Indian Polity and Governance – Constitution, Political System, Panchayati Raj, Public Policy, Rights Issues

Mains Examination: General Studies II, IV: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation; Ethics

What’s the ongoing story: At the end of last month, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare released draft Guidelines for the Withdrawal of Life Support in Terminally Ill Patients to operationalise the Supreme Court’s 2018 and 2023 orders on the right to die with dignity for all Indians.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What is euthanasia?

• How euthanasia is different from assisted dying?

• Evolution of the concept of living will in India

• What are the ethical issues concerning euthanasia?

• What is a living will?

• Active Euthanasia and Passive Euthanasia-compare and contrast

• What is the Right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution of India?

Key Takeaways:

• There is no dedicated legislation in India on withholding/ withdrawing life-sustaining treatment. But the Supreme Court’s judgment, and now the draft guidelines published by the Ministry, make it clear that withholding/ withdrawing life-sustaining treatment is legal in India under a defined framework.

• The guidelines provide a pathway for state governments and hospitals to put in place key mechanisms required by the Supreme Court’s order. These include:

— Setting up of Primary and Secondary Medical Boards at the level of the hospital, which will determine when further medical treatment may not be beneficial to a terminally ill patient;

— Nomination of doctors by the district Chief Medical Officer or equivalent to hospital-level Secondary Medical Boards, which will confirm or reject the opinion of the Primary Medical Boards.

• Withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment refers to discontinuing life-sustaining medical interventions such as ventilators and feeding tubes, etc., when these no longer help the condition of the patient or prolong their suffering.

• Life-sustaining treatments are medical treatments that artificially replace bodily functions essential to the life of the person. These interventions are withheld or withdrawn with the intention of providing comfort care, allowing the underlying illness to take its course, while providing symptomatic relief.

• The right to refuse medical treatment has always existed in common law, even if it results in death. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Common Cause vs Union of India (2018), it is also recognised as a fundamental right under Article 21 (Right to life and personal liberty) of the Indian Constitution.

• The withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment takes place either through informed refusal by a patient with decision-making capacity or through an advance medical directive (or a ‘living will’, which is a document that specifies what actions should be taken if the person is unable to make their own medical decisions in the future)

• For a person without decision-making capacity who does not have a living will (details below), the decision to withhold or withdraw treatment can be considered when the treating physician determines that there is no reasonable medical probability of recovery from a terminal or end-stage condition, or vegetative state — and that any further medical intervention or course of treatment would only artificially prolong the process of dying.

• The withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment also includes ‘do-not-attempt-resuscitation’ orders. The order is issued by the treating physician, who is well versed with the medical condition of the patient, in consultation with the patient or their family or surrogate decision-maker.

• It is crucial to note that when a do-not-attempt-resuscitation order is in place, every effort should be made to continue treating the underlying condition of the patient. The order is limited to not initiating resuscitation efforts.

• Withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment does not mean that the doctor is abandoning the patient. It is about recognising when medical interventions are no longer beneficial, and will only lead to the prolongation of suffering. Withholding or withdrawal will lead to palliative care aimed at managing pain and suffering to ensure that the patient is made as comfortable as possible.

• To enforce the right to die with dignity, the Supreme Court in its 2018 judgment also laid down the framework for making advance medical directives or living wills. However, the process was complex, and the court simplified it in its 2023 judgment.

Do You Know:

• Euthanasia, which comes from the Greek words meaning “a good death”, refers to the practice under which an individual intentionally ends their life. Euthanasia falls under the category of assisted dying.

• Euthanasia can be categorised as active or passive. Passive euthanasia is far more common and usually entails withholding lifesaving interventions with the consent of the patient or someone on their behalf. Active euthanasia is legal in only a handful of countries and necessitates deliberately using substances or forces to end the life of another person.

• The Supreme Court allowed passive euthanasia while recognising the living wills of terminally ill patients who could go into a permanent vegetative state, and issued guidelines regulating this procedure.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

????Explained: The law and the ground realities of passive euthanasia in India

????How to ensure dignity for the terminally-ill

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: General issues on Environmental Ecology, Biodiversity and Climate Change – that do not require subject specialisation

Mains Examination: General Studies III: Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment

What’s the ongoing story: Biodiversity is declining more quickly inside key protected areas than outside them, according to a new study. The findings, which raise questions about the ongoing conservation practices, suggest that merely designating more areas as protected “will not automatically result in better outcomes for biodiversity”.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What is biodiversity?

• What is the  Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII)?

• What are the critical biodiversity areas (CBAs)?

• What is the role of climate crisis in the decline of biodiversity?

• How human activities are contributing to the decline of biodiversity?

• What were the outcomes of Biodiversity COP 15?

• Map work: Conkouati-Douli National Park

Key Takeaways:

• The analysis was carried out by the Natural History Museum (NHM), based in London, and published on Monday.

• Dr Gareth Thomas, head of research innovation at NHM, told The Guardian, that the study’s findings should be “a wake-up call” to policymakers and enforcers of the legislation that it was not enough just to designate an area as protected. “The ministers and policymakers need to know it is not about just hitting a number,” he said.

• The researchers involved in the study examined the Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII), which estimates how much of a region’s natural biodiversity is still left on average, according to the NHM website.

• They found that the index has decreased by 1.88 percentage points globally between 2000 and 2020.

• The researchers also examined critical biodiversity areas (CBAs) — ecosystems and areas such as wetlands that are crucial for biodiversity — 22% of which is protected. They found that “within those critical areas that were not protected, biodiversity had declined by an average of 1.9 percentage points between 2000 and 2020, and within the areas that were protected it had declined by 2.1 percentage points,” according to a report by The Guardian.

• One of the primary reasons for the decline is that many of the protected areas are not designed to safeguard the whole ecosystem but only certain species. This means that complete “biodiversity intactness” is not a priority, according to the study.

• The researchers also said that these areas could have already been witnessing degradation, which is why they were declared protected in the first place. They pointed out that region-specific analysis is required to determine why these landscapes are deteriorating.

• Another threat to the protected areas is oil, gas, and mining concessions — land granted by the government to companies which explore for and produce oil, natural gas, and other hydrocarbons. For instance, more than 65% of the Conkouati-Douli national park, which is one of the most biodiverse protected areas in the Republic of the Congo, is occupied by oil and gas concessions, The Guardian report said.

• The climate crisis also has a role to play. The researchers said that more frequent and intense droughts and wildfires have severely impacted the protected areas.

Do You Know:

• The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity defines biodiversity as: “The variability among living organisms from all sources, including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part: this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems.”

• The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, in their 2022 report, lists five direct anthropogenic drivers of biodiversity change – (i) Pollution, (ii) land/sea use change, (iii) direct exploitation and extraction of resources, (iv) climate change, and (v) invasive alien species.

• The state of biodiversity in the world today is dire, and the response of the global community to this has been much slower and less organised than the response to climate change. This could be in part because biodiversity loss has been harder to define and measure as compared to climate change. The narrative and action around biodiversity conservation is now growing as the scale of the current crisis becomes apparent to everyone.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

????A brief history of biodiversity and our current crisis

????Biodiversity: What is it, and why does it matter?

Previous year UPSC Prelims Question Covering similar theme:

5. The most important strategy for the conservation of biodiversity together with traditional human life is the establishment of (UPSC CSE 2015)

(a) biosphere reserves

(b) botanical gardens

(c) national parks

(d) wildlife sanctuaries

Previous year UPSC Mains Question Covering similar theme:

Rehabilitation of human settlements is one of the important environmental impacts which always attracts controversy while planning major projects. Discuss the measures suggested for mitigation of this impact while proposing major developmental projects. (UPSC CSE 2016)

 

Syllabus:

Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance

Mains Examination: General Studies II: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

What’s the ongoing story: Harish Damodaran writes: Multiple indicators — reverse migration, two-wheeler sales, rural employment — show that Indians increasingly have less confidence in the future. The animal spirits of millions need to be revived.

Key Points to Ponder:

• What are the problems faced by youth in India?

• Why there is an attitude of pessimism about the future among the Indian population?

• What are the pros and cons of revadi culture?

• What steps need to be taken by the government to bring back the animal spirit?

Key Takeaways:

• That unalloyed optimism — the hope of scaling a higher economic and social position at a mass scale — is clearly missing today. It’s borne out by a simple statistic that can be a proxy for migration: The number of passengers carried by the Indian Railways. That peaked at 8,439 million in 2018-19 and collapsed to 1,250 million in 2020-21 (when Covid struck), before recovering to 3,519 million in 2021-22, 6,396 million in 2022-23 and 6,730 million in 2023-24. The last figure is still lower than even the 6,920 million of 2008-09.

• Equally revealing is the share of India’s workforce engaged in agriculture, which fell from 64.6 per cent in 1993-94 to 58.5 per cent in 2004-05 and then sharply to 48.9 per cent in 2011-12. The latter decline took place in absolute terms, too, from 268.6 million to 231.9 million.

• The farm sector’s share in the country’s employed labour force continued to drop, albeit at a slower pace, to 42.5 per cent by 2018-19. But there’s been a reversal since, with the ratio rising to 46.5 per cent in 2020-21 and hovering at 46.1 per cent for 2023-24, even after the full restoration of economic activity post the pandemic.

• The data on falling railway passenger numbers and agriculture turning into an “employment sink” — absorbing surplus labour, rather than releasing it to other more productive and paying sectors of the economy — tells us two things.

• First, while aiming for an ever-rising standard of living may be considered an inherent human urge, its manifestation isn’t inevitable for all times or universal across classes. The natural tendency, when the future doesn’t seem so inviting, is for people to temper expectations and stay where they are.

• Second, there is an economic cost to such inertia and risk aversion beyond the individuals concerned.

• My colleague Parthasarathi Biswas did a story on farm labour shortages in Maharashtra — how the state government’s Ladki Bahin Yojana scheme, providing Rs 1,500 per month to women from families with annual income below Rs 2.5 lakh, has led many agricultural workers to go less to the fields.

• There’s been a lot of talk in recent times about how free foodgrains, electricity, water, bus travel and cash transfer schemes (like Ladki Bahin) have promoted all-round indolence.

• If going back to farms, pulling children out of private schools, adopting a chalta hai attitude and non-aversion to living off revdis is indicative of a general pessimism about the future, it has implications for consumer sentiment and spending.

• India is not alone here. A recent survey of Chinese people revealed only 47 per cent to be hopeful about their prospects over the next five years. That ratio was 73 per cent, 68.8 per cent and 60 per cent respectively in the previous surveys for 2014, 2009 and 2004 conducted by the same researchers at Harvard and Stanford universities.

• The difference, however, is that tang ping is happening in an economy with an annual per capita GDP of $12,600, whereas India’s $2,500 is too small to afford chalta hai. A fresh episode of optimism is required to revive the aspirations and animal spirits of the millions who are, in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s words, India’s “neo-middle class”.

Do You Know:

• With the massive increase in educational attainment, the unemployment problem in India is becoming centred around educated youth, who account for nearly two-thirds of total unemployment. This process has been continuing for the last several decades.

• The unemployment rate rises with a rise in education levels — 28 per cent among graduates and above (the proportion of women being higher). This has declined from 35.4 per cent in 2018. The report notes the qualifications and skills mismatches, particularly at higher levels of education.

• Improving the quality of education and imparting appropriate skills in active partnership with the private sector will continue to be a priority in coming years. Paradoxically, the proportion of youth not in employment, education and training (NEET) is quite high at around 28 per cent in 2022, with the share of females being around five times more than males. This group requires more policy focus.

Other Important Articles Covering the same topic:

????Why youth unemployment is India’s biggest challenge

Previous year UPSC Mains Question Covering similar theme:

Most of the unemployment in India is structural in nature. Examine the methodology adopted to compute unemployment in the country and suggest improvements. (UPSC CSE 2023)

 

For any queries and feedback, contact Khushboo Kumari

The Indian Express UPSC Essentials brings to you the October issue of its monthly magazine. Click Here to read. Share your views and suggestions in the comment box or at manas.srivastava@indianexpress.com

Subscribe to our UPSC newsletter. Stay updated with the latest UPSC articles by joining our Telegram channel – IndianExpress UPSC Hub, and follow us on Instagram and X.