GS Analyst: Daily Current Affairs

Context:

Senior Citizens form an important group within any society, their contribution, experience and values help shape it up. Also caring and looking after them becomes important part of societal responsibility. Accessibility and public spaces are crucial areas where emphasis needs to be paid.

1. Lack of Assistance and Consideration in Travel Situations:

   - Absence of Flight Information: Airlines fail to communicate delays adequately, leaving senior citizens unaware and inconvenienced at the airport.

   - Limited Access to Lounges: Challenges faced while attempting to access travel lounges, reserved for certain club members and credit card holders, due to long queues and overcrowding.

   - Boarding Discomfort: Unpleasant experiences during boarding, including the struggle to find seats, confrontations over seat reservations, and inadequate assistance during the boarding process.

2. Unpleasant Boarding Experiences in Public Transportation:

   - Bus and Train Ordeals: Seniors encounter difficulties while boarding buses and trains, facing a lack of seating, pushing, shoving, and a disregard for their needs.

   - Elevator Etiquette: Describing the challenges faced when boarding elevators in India, especially during peak hours, with a focus on the behavior of citizens towards women and the disabled.

   - Civic Sense Decline: Observations on the declining civic sense, where even educated individuals display uncaring behavior, lacking consideration for elderly citizens or those with disabilities.

3. Call for Cultural and Educational Changes to Foster Kindness:

   - Importance of Early Education: Advocacy for incorporating values of empathy and consideration in the school curriculum, citing examples from Japan where children are taught to care for the elderly and differently-abled.

   - Reinforcement of Queue System: A call for strict enforcement of the queue system at various public spaces, emphasizing its necessity at airports, train stations, ticket counters, and other service points.

   - Promoting Kindness and Politeness: Drawing inspiration from courteous practices observed in the United States, the need to consciously instill kindness and politeness in societal behavior to create a more compassionate and considerate culture.

Context:

Democracy is a vibrant idea with multitude of voices and opinions. The functioning of it under the constitution demands that all such voices are given space. In this aspect Civil Society plays a vital role. It not only furthers the voice but also act as an agent of maintaining popular sovereignty.

1. Popular Sovereignty in Constitutional Discourse:

   - Revolutionary Potential: The revolutionary potential of the Indian Constitution lies in the concept of popular sovereignty. Constitutionalism developed as a result of inter-generational discourse in Indian political thought during the pre-founding colonial period.

   - Inter-generational Discourse: The decades-long process of dialogue among political actors that led to the enactment of the Constitution, focusing on the character of the envisaged republic.

   - Preamble's Anchoring: Analyzing the explicit anchoring of the republic's legitimizing ends in the Preamble, emphasizing justice, liberty, and equality for all Indian citizens.

2. Elite vs. Non-Elite Spheres in Civil Society:

   - Inert Elite Public Sphere: Observing the inertia of the traditional elite public sphere, influenced by the western tradition, in the face of challenges to prevailing constitutional governance.

   - Forceful Democratic Claims: Recognizing the forceful democratic claims to popular sovereignty originating from the non-elite counter-sphere, encompassing social movements, farmers, labor groups, and human rights activists.

   - Need for Equality: Emphasizing the necessity of according complete equality to counter-sphere political actors within civil society for the liberatory potential of democratic forms of popular assertions.

3. Civil Society for Pluralism: Gandhi and Ambedkar's Perspectives:

   - Ambedkar's Framing of the Preamble: Exploring B.R. Ambedkar's framing of the Preamble as heralding a way of life that recognizes the inseparability of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

   - Gandhi's Notion of Swaraj: Understanding Mahatma Gandhi's conception of Swaraj as a creative process of self-realization and the means to achieve it through 'satyagraha' (truth force and love force).

   - Pluralist Civil Society: Advocating for a pluralist civil society structured on the free and equal participation of every community, fostering honest and introspective dialogue for mutual understanding.

Context :

The vision for amrit kaal and viksit bharat must pay emphasis on inclusive growth and better convergence of Government schemes. For instance better convergence between MGNREGA and PM-Awas-G can yield rich dividends. 

1. Post-Covid Economic Recovery and Agricultural Sector Analysis:

   - GDP Growth and Inclusive Recovery: Recognition of India's impressive post-Covid recovery with over 7% GDP growth for consecutive years, yet a deeper examination of the agriculture sector's crucial role in inclusive growth.

   - Macro-economic Performance Comparison: Comparative analysis of India's real GDP growth, CPI inflation, multidimensional poverty reduction, and unemployment rates during the Modi government (FY15-FY24) and UPA government (FY05-FY14).

   - Agricultural Sector Challenges: Noting the challenges faced by the agricultural sector, with a focus on the deceleration in agri-GDP growth and the increased share of agriculture in the labor force post-Covid.

2. Inclusive Growth Strategies and Fiscal Policies:

   - Fiscal Consolidation Moves: Acknowledging the Finance Minister's budgetary provisions for FY25, emphasizing fiscal consolidation by reducing the fiscal deficit from 5.8% to 5.1% of GDP.

   - Rationalizing Subsidies: Advocating for the reorientation of doles and subsidies towards sustainable development expenditures and fiscal consolidation, with specific attention to fertiliser subsidy reduction and the need for major rationalization in other welfare subsidies.

   - Development Expenditures and Environmental Sustainability: Proposing a shift in focus towards sustainable development expenditures, including agri-R&D, micro-irrigation, rural infrastructure, agri-marketing, and investments in building efficient value chains.

3. Strategies for Inclusive and Sustainable Growth in Amrit Kaal:

   - Budgetary Allocations: Examining the budgetary allocations for the Department of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, recognizing the growth potential of these sectors within agriculture.

   - Integration of MGNREGA and PM Awas Yojana: Commending the significant increase in PM Awas Yojana (Gramin) and proposing synchronization with MGNREGA to ensure rural households have decent shelters, contributing to the vision of Ram Rajya in rural areas.

   - Tackling Child Malnutrition and Nutritional Security: Advocating a shift from food security to nutritional security and emphasizing the need for an agriculture system resilient to climate change while protecting soil, water, air, and biodiversity.