THE HINDU Editorial notes
September 6,2019
1) Teaching in the time of consumerism
- This article talks about the current state of teaching and school teachers in India.
- Public perception of school teacher is quite negative in many parts of the country,low popularity of school teaching has been linked to changing social ethics and state policy over the last three decades.
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- Parents nowadays see the children's school life as an investment for which they demand best value.Children come to school with a lot of baggage from their home ,while parents are busy dealing with their own work life, coupled with recent advances in technology which has reduced socialization to a considerable extent.
- Despite these changes and difficulties ,there are several thousand teachers who are committed to their duty
- Although quality of teachers in schools is a long term issue, it has severely worsened Post privatization reforms (1991) after which a lot of teacher training institute mushroomed, National Council of Teacher Education (NCTE) which was originally a consultative body was now tasked with regulatory powers and to approve licenses,but this system itself became mired in corruptions and ended up as licence raj system
- Supreme court on receiving petition related to hundreds of bogus institution , constituted Justice J S Verma committee in 2012 but its recommendation were hardly considered.
- One of the recent steps taken by the government to fill quality gap in teaching profession is to go for a Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) ,this test had only marginal difference .
- To make up for poor education background of aspiring teacher candidates ,the government recently came up with a proposal to integrate 4 year academic courses with teacher training courses to build a strong base for teacher training, it's success depends on the institutional framework.
- All these measures however could not compensate for the loss of trust between teachers and children which has been gradually eroded by changing social ethos and consumerist culture.
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2) Putting the pedal to the metal
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- The automobile industry is no stranger to cyclical ups and downs .But the current slowdown is serious for the following reason:-
- The entire segment of auto Industry from two wheeler to cars and heavy vehicle are affected
- The unplanned manner and implementation of reforms measures by Government such as short term deadline to transition to transit to low emissions BSVI standards from current standards of BSIV by april 2020,this caught the industry offguard as their inventory stock has lot of BSIV vehicles.
- A slew of incentives and tax rebates to the futuristic E-Vehicles has been mentioned while there is complete apathy for Internal combustion engines vehicles
- The Finance minister's recent slew of measures such as increasing depreciation rate and replacing old government vehicles with new purchases are more of damage control in nature and do not provide much succor to the ailing industry
- As a starter ,The government must reduce GST on BSIV vehicles from current 28% to 18% which has been lying idle in inventory, ever since government thrust towards BSVI and EV vehicles.
- This tax reduction will boost demand and will ensure that production capacity kicks in again in the ailing industry
Read more about current automobile industry slowdown faqs for upsc,here
3) A weak chase
- On September 3,Bangladesh Bhutan Nepal and Thailand became the first four countries in the World Health Organisation south east asia region to have successfully control Hepatitis B
- In India despite the introduction of hepatitis B vaccine in the universal immunization programme in 2002 and scaling up it nationwide in 2007 still about 1 million people in India become chronically infected with Hepatitis B virus every year
- As of 2019 an estimated 40 million people in India were infected
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- Hepatitis B infection at young age becomes chronic and results in premature deaths annually from liver cirrhosis liver cancer
- Hepatitis B birth dose given in the first 24 hours helps prevent vertical transmission from mother to child but it is shocking that even in institutional deliveries , hepatitis B birth dose has not been provided
- The government must create adequate awareness among the health professional and mid wife workers regarding the vaccines open vial policy(ie storage and expiry period of vaccine)
- To accelerate the hepatitis B control efforts , the government must identify high risk areas and should ensure adequate availability of vaccine in those regions.
Read more about Hepatitis faqs for upsc ,here
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4) Interesting but risky
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- RBI has finally mandated banks to link their lending rates with any of the external benchmarks ,this comes after reports of banks not reflecting reductions in repo rate(rate at which banks borrow from RBI) in their lending rate
- The banks has been provided with choice to choose from the following benchmarks : 3 month /6 month bond yield set up by Financial benchmarks India (or) RBI Repo rates
- The banks are also provided with necessary leeway to accommodate credit risk through spreading of the interest rates.
- Earlier in 2015 RBI introduced marginal cost of funds(MCLR) based lending rate wherein the banks can decide their own lending rates provided they are above a given threshold
- Through this recent move,RBI hopes there will be credit uptick and in turn revival of economic growth ,however the ultimate success will be determined by consumer confidence to spend and conviction by Industry to invest
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