Daily Editorial Discussion

13 July,2017

Flood in Assam

• Context Flood in Assam, death toll has crossed 40.

• Lakhs have been put off their normal stride, with tens of thousands displaced from their homes.

• The deluge has circled vast parts of the Kaziranga National Park,

• . There are dramatic images of a rhinoceros walking through the streets.

Kajiranga National

Park

Issues related to Assam Floods

• short-term measures can have no lasting impact on the Brahmaputra’s course each year,

• as several factors influence its tendency to overrun its banks in the June-July season.

• course from the Himalayan ranges has been bringing lots of sediment,

• raising its bed above the level of the plains.

• The Brahmaputra has the second highest sediment transport

• per unit of drainage area in the world.

• With aberrant climate and intensive monsoonal flows, flooding poses a major challenge.

Continue…

• it enters the State as a single channel but has a wide,

• braided course later

• shrinks near Guwahati before expanding again

Suggestions

• On the ground, previous attempts at finding solutions appear to suffer from lack of attention to longer-term measures, such as better river management.

• The focus of civil society has been confined to immediate relief and rehabilitation.

• The government, on its part, must go beyond the necessary restoration of infrastructure such as embankments, bridges, buildings and communications structures.

• Relief measures will have to sensitively handle the tensions around identity conflicts between those claiming ethnicity vis-à-vis settled Bengalis.

• remote sensing can help identify the most vulnerable areas and where remedial measures could work most effectively.

Way forward

• A return to normality must now await abatement of the rising waters,

• comprehensive relief plan by the Assam government with help from the Centre and the specialised units of the disaster response forces.

Utility

• What are the major causes of floods in Assam? What measures should be taken to floods in Assam? Discuss.

• Paper 3

• Disaster Managment

India-China

India-China

• Tri Junction

• Changing status quo

• Friendship Treaty with Bhutan

• For China ―territorial sovereignty‖;

• for India ―security implications

• China’s sensitivity over Tibet

• Geopolitics, other side off balance.

• Mistrust and Aggressive Tone

• Need Conflict Management

• China-USA, Relationship not so adverse now

India-China

• China’s President and Japan PM Meet in G20 summit

• Positive to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

• The West is unlikely to “unconditionally stand on the side of India.

• Taint China’s image

• undermine the internationalism surrounding the Belt and Road discourse.

• anti-Chinese sentiment in India

• Pakistan as its sole partner, Beijing prefers a wider profile in the subcontinent.

• two-front situation

Air-India Disinvestment

• Air India’s disinvestment,

• first attempted by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, is being revived.

• The sale bid the last time was a flop, shelved prematurely after all the bidders were either disqualified or dropped out.

• The many factors that were and may still be at work against the sale are not widely understood.

• Unless overcome, they may again endanger the sale.

Continue..

• In May 2000, bids were invited for a 40% stake in Air India, with a cap of 26% on foreign investment.

• The airline had reported losses for six straight years, had $70 million debt on its books and was fast losing traffic.

• More than 18,000 workers were on its rolls for a fleet of just about two dozen planes. Its employee-aircraft ratio,

• 750, was among the worst. Singapore Airlines, in contrast, had 91 employees per aircraft.

• Inefficiency, typical in a government-controlled set up, was bleeding Air India.

• Yet, the quantum of stake on offer made it clear that the government intended to retain a crucial stake, appoint its own directors and continue to have a say

Previous Examples

• foreign airlines. Lufthansa, Swissair, Emirates, British Airways and Air France-Delta

• required foreign airlines to team up with a local partner

• Hinduja and Singapore airlines-Tata

• But….

• Now Tata can procced owner of air India before nationalization of air India in 1953., they also withdrew

• Although Air India’s fleet — which includes its subsidiaries — has now grown to around 150 aircraft, it has lost traffic and market leadership to competition.

Suggestions for Air India Disinvestment

• Air India’s debt, now about $8 billion, is growing unsustainably.

• It was bailed out with $5.8 billion of taxpayer money in 2012.

• Reduced government interference and increased competition.

• The rules should provide foreign airlines a level playing field.

• Sharp scrutiny of objections can expose and thwart hidden vested interests.

• Selling only a part of the government’s holding will not free Air India of the ills of public ownership.

• The government will have to exit the airline cleanly and completely.

• The reform demands political courage, economic wisdom and business-like shrewdness.

Ageing Issues

• India has a young population with a median age of 27.6 years.

• not a hot-button public policy issue.

• But that would ignore the higher proportion of the elderly in the southern states and among affluent sections elsewhere.

• While the under-14s account for 28% of India’s population, about 66% are in the age group 15-65. That leaves 6% of the population who are 65-plus.

• number of working age persons per senior citizen is thus 11,

• a far cry from Japan’s 2.1.

• But, while the problem lacks urgency, this is the right time to act.

• National Pension System’s architecture of funded pensions while the country is still young,

• Need other measures like this

Continue…

• seniors could be differentiated into three categories:

• those who can still work, even if not at the same pace as a youngster,

• those who cease to work

• but still retain sufficient health to retain a zest for life and would spend liberally

• if they could insure care for the third phase of not being able to look after themselves.

• Such differentiation of the elderly is the key to opening up new markets for assorted products and services,

• spanning healthcare, obviously, skilling, entertainment and insurance and annuities.

Some issues

sense of alienation

increasing dependence

less focus on old age related ailments.

Housing issues

Issues related to accessibility in public transport, public buildings

Utility

• Paper 2

• Examine the problems faced by elderly in India and measures needed to address problems faced by them.

IT companies In India

• The IT industry reality is that routine jobs are being made redundant by automation and artificial intelligence.

• From being largely a foreign demand-driven industry,

• Indian IT will in the coming years depend a lot on domestic demand.

• The government is in denial about the IT job cuts.

• If you deny that something is amiss, you will not apply your mind to try and find a solution for it.

• Not only is a huge amount of code writing ceasing to be a human effort, intelligent machines are solving routine problems and responding to developing situations not just as well as humans but often better.

Difference between Indian and foreign firms

• Microsoft has 121,500 on its rolls, TCS 287,200, are also hiring and firing simultaneously at a faster pace.

• Both are seeking to reshape themselves by responding to technology changes, foremost among them being the rise of cloud technologies and

• transfer of data and applications to the cloud.

• There are also key differences between Microsoft and leading Indian information technology (IT) firms.

• Microsoft is a product firm with globally dominant solutions like Windows and Office whereas the proprietary revenue of Indian leaders is minimal.

• They sell the mainly commoditized services of their staff.

• Another key difference is whereas Microsoft is laying off more than hiring, the Indian leaders are still net hirers, hiring more than laying off.

Concerns

• The reality is that technology is changing the world unrecognisably and at a breakneck speed.

• are Indian IT firms changing fast enough?

• In view of the star status that they had come to acquire for being large-quality job creators (a status they will now likely lose),

• is the government correctly perceiving the changing reality and offering the right kind of support?

Illustration

• It is not as if algorithms are making software engineers entirely redundant; their job now is to keep writing newer and better algorithms.

• The role that intelligent computer systems play is illustrated by the allegation that Facebook and Google have allowed themselves to be biased in the way they have highlighted trends in news or fake news.

• Few have bought their argument that computer systems identify the trends and they have had to change things.

• True, it is machines which select and highlight what is trending, but somebody has told the machine where to look for what.

Continue…

• So the reality is that algorithms will now do a lot of what humans used to do but humans have to rewrite the algorithms periodically.

• So you will keep needing software engineers

• but fewer ones and those of a higher order who can innovate to solve problems like helping a client to improve the functioning of its supply chain and thereby bettering its profit margins.

Suggestion to save IT Industry

• The nature of engineering colleges has to change in order to meet this changing need for engineering skills.

• If this is to happen across the board in the country then the best results can be achieved by the colleges, the employers (IT firms) and the government joining hands.

• What is needed is a national programme to improve the quality and sophistication of engineering skills produced in the country.

• extensively fed by domestic demand with the government strongly promoting digitistion

• country's businesses to handle the Goods and Services Tax.

Way forward

• From being largely a foreign demand-driven industry, Indian IT will in the coming years depend a lot on domestic demand.

• As a result, average salaries for India-based engineers are likely to be lower than what they have been while catering to overseas clients.

• Simultaneously, scope for posting at the client's facility, which attracts higher salaries, is going down.

• On the other hand, salaries in startups which have to journey through creative chaos, will be high but volatile.

Utility

• Analyze the reasons behind poor performance of Indian information technology (IT) Sector in recent years. What do you think Govt. Should do in this regard ?

• Paper 3

Can India become first world country

• whether India can achieve 10% growth given the wide range of reforms underway, such as GST, bankruptcy laws, privatisation and digitisation impelled by demonetisation. ?

• But maybe we should ask an entirely different question – what will it take for India to become a First World nation?

• Such a question is about matters more important than mere economic growth.

• It is about freedom, rule of law, justice, separation of religion and state.

• Such a question can reset our expectations and start a meaningful conversation about what we want to be as a nation.

Why not first world Country ?

• Transparency International has ranked Indian governments as the most corrupt in the Asia-Pacific region.

• Our businesses, despite being one of the world’s best, continue to be let down by our governance system.

• We continue to rank close to the bottom on ease of doing business.

• We remain one of the least free countries in the world.

• We do not protect private property.

• We do not have credible rule of law.

• The concept of justice is largely fictitious.

• infrastructure. Our school systems are dysfunctional.

• And we continue to be one of the world’s poorest countries.

Suggestions

• Policies in India are not transparently designed and do not consider unintended consequences, implementation issues including strategic behaviour, or costs and benefits.

• We need legislation to embed a world class policy making process into every decision.

• Second, we need to redesign our governance system.

• Today, neither ministers nor bureaucrats are accountable.

• They see themselves as rulers.

• We need to invert this mindset and hold our servant – the government – to account.

Way forward

• No First World country has India’s antediluvian, super-centralised IAS-type tenured service to govern everything.

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi should replace all such services with a contractual modern bureaucracy in

• which the best talent is hired from the open market for specific roles, paid well, and terminated without notice for failure to deliver.

• Even more urgently needed is electoral reform.

• Next, we need to reform local government.

• Elected councillors must be empowered to hire the chief executive officer of their municipality from the open market on conditions similar to those outlined above for the general bureaucracy.