UPSC results: The story of aspirational India

                      G Sreedathan

This year’s Union Public Service Commission Civil Services examination results were unique in many respects.  It’s the first time that a Dalit girl topped the exam. That too in her first attempt. The second rank holder is from Jammu and Kashmir. Among winners there are many who have come from extremely poor and harsh surroundings. The results in a way present a real picture of aspirational India.

Twenty-two-year-old Tina Dabi, the topper, has created history. Tina has opted for the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), with Haryana as her cadre preference. “I opted for Haryana because it presents such an interesting example, where you have a lot of economic progress but when it comes to social indicators you are lagging behind, and that is a very big paradox.”  She wants to empower women.  Although Tina was born in Bhopal, she completed her schooling and higher studies in Delhi’s Convent of Jesus and Mary. Both her parents are engineers. Though she is a Dalit, she belongs to a middle class family. Yet it’s very important as BJP MP succinctly stated. Raj tweeted, “Napoleon said that without opportunity ability can’t be cultivated. Dalit girl topped IAS & this could not have been possible 40-50 yrs back.”

The second position was secured by Athar Aamir Ul Shafi Khan from Jammu and Kashmir, and the third position by Jasmeet Singh Sandhu, a Delhi Sikh. Khan’s victory is significant not only because he hails from Kashmir but he is the only Muslim whose name figures among the top 100 ranks. Out of 1,078 successful candidates, only 34 are Muslims. It’s the second time that candidates from J&K clearing the UPSC in flying colours. In 2010, Dr. Shah Faisal of Kashmir came first at the national level, sending a strong message for peace in the Valley. Besides Khan, six other Valley aspirants have also cracked the examination. This is a remarkable feat.

Another Muslim boy who secured a place in the rank list is Ansar Shaikh, son of an auto-rickshaw driver.  He is the son of his father’s second wife and according to him has seen poverty and domestic violence from close quarters. His mother works in fields and the family lives in a rented home at Shelgaon in Jalna - a dictrict place in Maharashtra's Marathwada region. His father used to beat his mother and his two sisters were married off at the age of 14 and 15.

Another inspiring story is that of 26-year-old Pranjal Patil, a visually challenged aspirant, who cleared the exam at one go. Pranjal was blinded at the age of six when her classmate poked a pencil in one of her eyes. Eventually, her other eye was also damaged.

There are a few more aspirants who have come from very impoverished milieu and cracked the exam. A few years ago, Sopan brought out an issue on successful candidates of UPSC exam drawn from rural backgrounds. Some of them were children of rickshaw pullers and tea vendors.

I am reminded of a friend who cracked the UPSC exam a few years ago. He hails from an impoverished village in Maharashtra. He gave the name of a backward district in Odisha as his option. He is now collector there. His innovative initiatives have changed the lives of thousands of poor tribals in his district

Soil Testing: Fundamental to sustainable agriculture

                                                             SANJU VERMA

Mother earth is so far the only place of living organism in the Universe to live, as no other planet in the solar system or otherwise in the whole of Universe, there is any evidence of life. Air, Water and soil are the pre-requisite for existence of life, which also include human beings.

For Human beings and other animals air is compulsorily required for combustion to generate energy from food to continue life. Generation of food is entirely dependent on water and soil, which is found on the upper crust of earth.

Like the quality of air, quality of water and soil is also important for sustaining life on earth. Thus sustainability of any human activity is of paramount importance in the modern world, as our forefathers have mindlessly exploited the resources provided by mother land.

Agriculture is the core vocation of mankind and without it nothing could be perceived. But in yesteryears, with an urge to have more produce from smaller prices of lands farmers used excessive chemicals and fertilizers and have thus destroyed the quality of soil. Now a big question looms, as to how sustainable is the current course of agriculture in India.

Keeping this in mind, the government launched a national scheme of scientifically testing the soil quality and accordingly farmers are suggested to use limited fertilizers. The method is well recognised as a sound scientific tool to assess inherent power of soil to supply plant nutrients.

The benefits of soil testing have been established through scientific research, extensive field demonstrations, and on the basis of actual fertilizer use by the farmers on soil test based fertilizer use recommendations.

Soil testing was initiated in the country in the beginning of planning era by setting up of 16 soil testing laboratories during 1955. Government of India has been supporting this programme during different plan periods to increase the soil analysing capacity in the country. The numerical strength does not, however, decisively indicate the quality and success of the programme. Planners and agriculturalists have recognised the utility of the service fully but it suffers due to inadequate scientific support in its execution.

Thus the present government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given a special emphasis on the scheme. Modi personally called upon the farmers to participate in the scheme. He has also urged the schools and colleges to come up in a big way and use laboratory during holidays to test soil.

However, despite constraints, the scheme is bearing fruit up to some extent with its limited resources however another major limitation is the illiteracy factor among the farmers for whom the entire scheme is dedicated.

With about 12 crore farm holdings in the country, soil analysing capacity of 4 crore samples annually is required to enable analysis of each holding once in three years. In Haryana renewal of SHC is required after every five years while soil fertility map is also being prepared. All these require a massive expansion in soil testing programme in the States.

However, a few of the States including Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh have made commendable progress in soil testing programme in various ways such as expansion of soil testing facilities, popularisation of the programme in campaign mode, development of soil fertility maps and use of information technology in delivering soil nutrient status and appropriate recommendation to farmers.

Market Linkages for Farmers

                                                       Vijay Uppal

The farming sector has been in the news of late for all wrong reasons. In many areas in the country, the sector has been reeling under a massive scarcity of water. Above all these, the farmers across the country are not able to generate enough revenue out of their produce.

The stunning facts are as follows:-

Vegetable/Fruits/Milk	Approx. price (at which farmer sells)	Approx. Price (at which you buy)
Potato	Rs. 4-8/- per kg.	Rs. 15-20/- per kg.
Tomato	Rs. 8-12/- per kg.	Rs. 25-35/- per kg.
Apple(H.P)	Rs. 30-40/- per kg.	Rs. 100-125/- per kg.
Capsicum	Rs. 15-20/- per kg.	Rs. 50-60/- per kg.
Milk	Rs. 18-25/- per ltr.	Rs. 40-45/- per ltr.

Shocked? But this is true.

A farmer who produces vegetables, fruits, milk, etc. and toils in the field for hours in extreme weather conditions is getting only ¼ or 1/5 of the price at which you are buying in cities as a consumer.

Who is making the money and why the farmers are being exploited?

It is the middle man / Aadhti who is making the real money. The common farmer is unlike the AMUL scenario where farmer co-operative societies are very well organized (thanks to the pioneering efforts of Mr. Verghese Kurien). The farmers do not have the capacity to hold the vegetables, fruits, milk stocks (because of the perishable nature of these products) in order to fetch the right price. Whenever, the farmer sees that the shelf life of his produce is getting over, he under prices his product and sells it to the greedy middle man. This middle man is always on the look-out for an opportunity to exploit the farmer during such a situation.

In fact, it has been seen that the middle men create a cartel through which they buy the fruits and vegetables and other farm produce at a very low price from the farmer.

What are the solutions?

The solutions (to this growing disparity of income of the farmer) are as follows:-

1.     Farmers producing same variety of vegetable and fruits should form small groups / co-operatives of 50 to 100 farmers each in every region and collectively negotiate the fair price of their farm produce with the middle man /  aadhti.

2.     The institutional buying can be directly linked to the farmers or farming community. e.g. in Delhi / N.C.R the requirement of baby corn in 5 star / 3 star hotels is approx. 1000kgs per day. The consumption can be met easily by a group of farmers sitting in Uttarakhand. The only catch is that these farmers in Uttarakhand need to be collectively represented by any of the NGOs or a transparent Marketing Agency.

This type of a scheme, if introduced properly can eliminate the process of farmer going through multiple middlemen and only one agency with reasonable margin can take care of marketing the farm produce of farmers from Uttarakhand or Western UP.

The way to go forward is to encourage a group of farmers to produce high yield value added vegetables and fruits like Olive, Yellow/red Capsicum, Cherry tomato, Broccoli and Mushroom.

3.     At a later stage, this agency can install a mini food processing plant to semi process vegetables (at the farms) like Baby corn, Yellow/red Capsicum, Cherry tomato, Broccoli and Mushroom etc. Also, the farmers collectively can invest in refrigerated vans in order to ensure smooth transportation of highly perishable products to far off places.

4.     Another solution is that with the Ayurveda products gaining in demand and brands like Patanjali becoming household names, it makes sense to grow herbs, medicinal plants like Jatamasi, Neem, Haldi, Tulsi, Gilohi, Aloevera etc. Also, the aromatic plants can be grown whose market price is beyond the farmers’ expectations.

Yes, people are noticing disparity in farmers’ income, but the way to go forward is to explore and implement the above solutions in the right manner.

People’s movement on water only way out!

                                                         K.A.Badarinath

A peoples’ movement to conserve fresh water is perhaps the only way to address the key issue of shortages in this vital resource.

If the sheer abuse of this scarce resource is any indication, we are bound to face water riots in parts of this country as seen sporadically owing to localized shortages in some parts.

Warning bells, red herrings and wakeup calls seem to have not worked thus far on judicious utilization, conservation and development of water resources as per a design in last 67 years of independence.

At every level, each sector has shown utmost disregard for managing our fresh water resources while the population continues to expand beyond 1.22 billion with no let up on either usage or abuse.

Last Sunday, in his “mann ki baat”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi did make out a case for peoples’ movement for managing and developing water resources. This was in response to some engineering and medicine students taking a stand to have a bath only when required and with minimum water.

Apart from people’s movement for scientific water usage of water, policy intervention is what’s most important to move up the ground water level. The government’s campaign to develop 50,000 check dams and village-based water storage centres is worth pursuing if we were to manage water shortages that could virtually catapult into a crisis unmanageable in few years.

Water management, usage, conservation and development is not an issue faced only by a populous country like India. US space agency, NASA findings suggest that more than half the 37 largest aquifers globally are fast depleting and virtually beyond redemption.

As per NASA satellite imaging and studies, water table in India continued to deplete by 0.3 metres each year thereby seeking policy makers to sit up and search for solutions.

Hence, Prime Minister Modi’s call for deriving more in terms of farm output from every drop of water cannot just remain a slogan. Technological intervention that would mend the way we use our precious natural fresh water resources is the immediate necessity.

World Economic Forum and UN’s water development report have pointed to the fact that water would be the biggest challenge for humanity, given that fresh water shortages would touch an alarming 40 percent globally in 15 years.

If this were to happen, it would be a larger problem than terrorism or armed conflicts happening in parts of the world.

From India’s point of view, re-designing our farming techniques, industrial and domestic consumption of water should be relooked at to provide comprehensive solutions for impending water crisis.

Apart from check dams, the government at centre and states should take the lead in reviving the water bodies that have dried up or desilt our lakes, rivers and flowing water resources. Secondly, linking rivers for replenishment and judicious usage must be hastened up. Suresh Prabhu as a central minister in erstwhile Vajpayee government did make several important suggestions apart from drawing up a holistic plan. This needs to be dusted up immediately and put into action.

Thirdly, as experimented in several villages of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Maharastra, building water banks can be done immediately. Only members of these banks can withdraw water as per a community policy that can be put together locally.

Fourthly, involving the communities, non-government organisations, youth & students apart from gram sabhas in water management is of paramount importance.

Fifthly, one needs to consider an effective pricing policy towards water only to dissuade companies and commercial establishments from exploitation of this vital resource. For drinking purposes, no one what so ever should be charged as a matter of human right.

Banking the women

                                                         Lakshmi Singh

With access to financial services like bank accounts, loans, etc, women’s bargaining power in society increases 

Our country is positioned at the 29th rank among 146 countries across the globe on the basis of Gender Inequality Index.  It is ironical that a country, which has recently acclaimed the status of the first Asian country to accomplish its Mars mission in the maiden attempt,  There has been amelioration in the position of women, but their true empowerment is still awaited. While the world has achieved progress towards gender equality  and women’s empowerment under the Millennium Development Goals, women and girls continue to suffer discrimination and violence in every part of the world. Women are considered a taboo and still are not allowed in a few temples with nationwide debates discussing this. Experts say that women can achieve gender parity only by 2135. 

We all know that women constitute half the population and so their equal participation in society is imperative for sustainable development. As long as a financial security is not achieved, their emancipation becomes impossible. Financial inclusion plays a crucial role in helping provide numerous benefits through the strengthening of the banking system. In countries like Mexico, Government has made schemes for women which are directly connected to their bank accounts.

There is no denying that the banking sector plays a critical role in bringing financially excluded people into the formal financial sector. Many government initiatives towards financial inclusion are implemented through banks.

In one of the Financial and Digital Inclusion Project report India ranked ninth among 21 countries in financial and digital inclusion efforts. This was based on four dimensions of financial inclusion: country commitment, mobile capacity, regulatory environment, and adoption of traditional and digital financial services.

The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), the biggest financial inclusion initiative in the world, is a case in point. PMJDY is enabling citizens at the grassroots to perform financial transactions and keep their hard-earned money safe. A year after the scheme was implemented, its success has highlighted the enormous role that financial inclusion programmes can play in the growth of the economy. Today, atleast 17.5 crore bank accounts have been opened in which women have deposited more than Rs 22,000 crore in them. Moreover zero-balance accounts under PMJDY have declined from 76 per cent to 45.74 per cent since its inception.

 Many of the private sector banks have come forward in the rural markets through microfinance institutions.

Some of the State governments like Rajasthan have taken the lead. In Rajasthan, financial inclusion forms a critical component in the form of  Bhamashah Yojana that connects itself  with women’s empowerment. The scheme was launched in 2008 based on the premise that conditional and direct transfer has the highest impact of government spending on poverty reduction. Monetary benefits to which families were entitled under a number of welfare schemes were transferred to the bank accounts of the women in the family.

It was the first direct benefit transfer scheme in the country. At that time, 50 lakh families were enrolled and 29.07 lakh bank accounts were opened under which Rs 161.49 crore had been transferred in 10.76 lakh accounts.

In 2014, the Bhamashah initiative was refurbished with a broader coverage of gender empowerment, financial inclusion and family-based benefits. It now provides end-to-end delivery system for individuals and various family-based benefits of the government’s social welfare scheme like the PDS, pension funds, health insurance, MNREGA and scholarships through a centralised e-government platform by leveraging the enhanced electronic infrastructure of the state.

These transfers are made to the bank account of the woman of the house through the Bhamashah smart card, which also provides biometric identification of family members. The card is also a co-branded debit card with the participation of several banks.

Many of the NGOs have taken active step in this direction. The Mahila banks in a state like Jharkhand where women are not considered other than child rearing is an innovative solution in a dominant patriarchal society.

Alternative for India Development (AID), an Indian NGO that works to better the lives of tribal communities. AID established Mahila Bank in 2007. Mahila Bank is a unique twist on the mobile banking trend that had been sweeping the development sector. Instead of simply providing accounts to women across these communities, AID employs women from the community to manage local ‘branches’ in easy to access locations. When applying for a bank account, these branches use biometric technology to ensure the bank accounts are secure and may only be accessed by the owner.  Additionally, AID employs a cadre of local women who provide training, and lead community meetings in the scattered villages across Jharkhand on the various schemes available and why banking is important.

The merits of financial inclusion are deeply rooted in citizen empowerment.  Financial inclusion can be a powerful agent for strong and inclusive growth of women and their empowerment

Street children falling victims to drug menace

                         Lakshmi Singh

 A study suggests 27 per cent of call centre workers in the country use drugs. Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh today have the highest number of school children using drugs.

Drug menace among children belonging to the upper class is not a new phenomenon. Earlier, Goa was a hub of drugs. Even in some high-end parties in major metros, drugs keep guests on a high. Use of cocaine and mind-altering amphetamines has become very common.

Technology has also helped spread and access to drugs. You can order it via internet and get it home-delivered. India is now a hub of drugs sold through illegal internet pharmacies and courier companies.

A study suggests 27 per cent of call centre workers in the country use drugs. Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh today have the highest number of school children using drugs. About 70 per cent of the youth in Punjab are addicts.

What is alarming is tobacco, cannabis, inhalants, sedatives, heroin and opium are some of the common items which are consumed among children on streets, according to a study by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.

Some of the findings of the study were that over 50 per cent children living on streets reported bad or very bad relationship or no relationship with the family.

The percentage of inhalant users  was higher in the children living on streets than in children living at home and the lifetime and last one year usage of opium was higher in the children living on streets than in children living at home.

The study "Assessment of pattern, profile and correlates of substance use among children in India" conducted through the National Dependent Treatment Centre at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, covered 135 sites across 27 states and two Union Territories with a sample size of 4,024 children.

If declining agricultural incomes and increasing unemployment have made drug addiction a culture in the states like Punjab, the irony of street kids are broken homes which forced them to reach the capital to get addicted into drugs due to torture by police and poverty.

Drugs are so easily available to school kids to street kids. The natural drugs like marijuana and hashish are mostly famous among teenagers as it fits their monthly pocket money. What has revolutionised the market are more lethal synthetic substances, popular with a generation that now experiments with cocktails simply put, a mix and match of drugs.

Until a few months earlier, a new and cheap drug Mephedrone, commonly called meow meow was legally available and could even be ordered online. A poor man’s cocaine, this white powder cost just Rs.150 per gram. With almost 80,000 children between the ages of thirteen and sixteen believed to be addicted to meow meow, the drug was banned in February this year. But the market for Cocaine, which costs Rs. 3,000 for a gram is only expanding, with increasing popularity amongst the rich and glamourous. It is also one of the most dangerous, laced with unknown substances, including powdered glass. The purer it is, the higher it costs. If you want the best, you could even be paying Rs. 20,000 per gram.

Most of the kids who were found selling books flowers, clean cars, beg and steal at the traffic signals in Delhi were aged between the age of 8 and 17 years. A survey conducted by the NGO Salaam Balak Trust says that most of the kids reached the capital to either escape an alcoholic father or a step mother who was to push them into prostitution. They took a train to Delhi, got snuffed by gangs roaming the platforms and since then, it has been a story of rape, torture, drugs and starvation.

The National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) came out with shocking figures of crimes against children: 5,484 children were raped and 1,408 others killed in India last year. In the Capital alone, 29 children were murdered and 304 raped in 2010. But these figures do not include even a fraction of crimes committed against street children. "Not even 10% cases of rape, sodomy or murder of street children are recorded. Who is going to file an FIR for these children who have been abandoned by society and trapped by gangs?" asks Prabhakar Goswami, Director of i-India, a Jaipur-based NGO which runs a helpline for street children.

The NCRB figures are based on FIR and daily diary reports and, therefore, hide more than they reveal as the worst victims of child abuse are not counted at all. "Street children are abuse physically, mentally and sexually on a daily basis. They get trapped in a cycle of abuse that leads to drugs and crimes, but no one is bothered," says Sanjay Gupta, Director of Chetna, an NGO working for street children in Delhi. "In Delhi, there are at least five lakh street children, but in government records, less than 50,000 exist."

More than 20,000 people have committed suicide due to drug addiction related issues in the last 10 years. There’s an urgent call to treat this as the epidemic. Else rural or urban, this calls for urgent attention or else we’ll soon be facing India’s lost generation.

A good U-turn

                                              Mukesh R

Narendra Modi government was in news recently for taking U-turn on its stand on the previous UPA’s flagship programme for rural employment MGNREGA. But thankfully, it was not a bad U-Turn. In one of his speeches in parliament Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said, his political acumen says, he should continue with the MGNREGA.

According to media reports that cited a circular, the proposal was to amend the NREG Act by restricting the area of work and altering the labour-material cost ratio. The plan was to limit the scheme that guarantees 100 days of employment to the rural poor to just 2,500 blocks as against 6,500 blocks. Further the wage-material cost ratio was to be altered in favour of material - from 60:40 to 51:49. What this means is that until now 60 percent of the expenditure was spent as wages and 40 percent as cost of material.

As per the proposal, the spending on wages would drop to almost the same as that spent on material, which would mean a reduction in the funds set aside for wages. Moreover, there were also plans to curtail the central government's fund disbursal to states, with Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah even seeing the allocation to the state being halved.

These were the proposals made by former Rural Development Minister Nitin Gadkari. Now new minister Birender Singh has told Rajya Sabha that there will not be any change in the scheme.

"There is no ambiguity about the government's intention. The scheme will continue in all the 6,500 blocks," Singh said, allaying all apprehensions that the new government may be killing the scheme.

According to a PTI report, he also said all necessary funds have been released and assured the 60:40 ratio on labour and material would not be altered.

What prompted this U-turn from the proposed amendments is a hue and cry raised by a section of economists, rights activists and other political parties. According to a Firstpost report, the economists, including Jayati Ghosh of JNU and Anirban Kar of Delhi School of Economics, had shot off a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him not to make changes to the scheme that provides livelihood for about 50 million households.

Whatever the reason, the change in stance is welcome because going ahead with the decision to alter the scheme would have been a flawed one given the signs of weakness in India's rural economy.