28 Aug 2019: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

A.GS1 Related
SOCIAL ISSUES
1. Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Himachal top India’s child well-being index
C.GS3 Related
ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY
1. Rare tarantula sighted in Villupuram district
2. 5 mn hectares of land set to be rejuvenated
ECONOMY
1. New guidelines are in for e-tailers
2. Review capital framework every five years, says Jalan Committee
D. GS4 Related
E. Editorials
ECONOMY
1. RBI transfer ‘surplus’ to government
2. PM Ujjwala Yojana- Cooking with gas, not wood
3. Development Banks
F. Tidbits
1. Oil firms to hike petrol, diesel prices from April
2. Astra Rafael opens facility for defence communication system
3. Indian Bank opens MSME processing centre
G. Prelims Facts
1. Congo fever
H. UPSC Prelims Practice Questions
I. UPSC Mains Practice Questions

A. GS1 Related

Context:

Child well-being index, a tool designed to measure and tracks children’s well-being comprehensively has been released.

Details:

• The report released by the non-government organisation World Vision India and research institute IFMR LEAD.
• The report is an attempt to look at how India fairs on child well-being using a composite child well-being index.
• The India child well-being index is a crucial report that can be mined both by the Government and civil organisations to achieve the goal of child well-being and we will use this report effectively.
• This report provides insights on health, nutrition, education, sanitation and child protection.
• The dimensions of the index include healthy individual development, positive relationships and protective contexts.
• Focusing on the three key dimensions, 24 indicators were selected to develop the computation of the child well-being index.
• The report highlights the multi-dimensional approach towards measuring child well-being — going beyond mere income poverty.

Significance of the report:

• The report is important considering that 40 per cent of the country’s population is made of children between the ages of 1 and 18.
• The report, calls for States to look at their respective scores on the dimensions of child well-being, and to prepare for priority areas of intervention with specific plans of action.
• It also hopes to trigger policy level changes, seek better budgetary allocations and initiate discussions with all stakeholders, which can help in enhancing the quality of life of all children in the country.
• One of the primary objectives of this index is to garner attention to the under-researched theme of child well-being in India, and inspire further academic and policy conversations on related issues.

Performance of the states:

• Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh and Puducherry topped the charts in the child well-being index.
• Meghalaya, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh featured at the bottom.
• Among the Union Territories, Puducherry led the way and Dadra and Nagar Haveli featured at the other end.
• Kerala bagged the top spot due to its exceptional performance in health, nutrition and education facilities.
• Kerala also performed better in addressing malnutrition and ensuring child survival and access to a healthy environment in terms of clean drinking water and sanitation facilities.

Way forward:

Children have the potential to transform the country, but if neglected, they will exacerbate the burden of poverty and inequality. It is imperative that all stakeholders prioritise and invest in the well-being of children. The research has brought to the fore compelling insights on child well-being in India. Some of the key indicators that need to be studied in the future include mobile usage, digital access, financial literacy, mental health and quality of relationships per se, between parents/peers and children.

C. GS3 Related

Category: ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY

1. Rare tarantula sighted in Villupuram district

Context:

• India for the first time will be hosting the 14th session of the Conference of Parties (COP-14) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) from September 2 to 13, 2019.
• A week ahead of a United Nations conference in Delhi that will see experts from over 90 countries deliberate ways to combat desertification, Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar has said that India had committed to rejuvenate 50 lakh hectares (5 million) of degraded land between 2021 and 2030.

Concerns:

• India faces a severe problem of land degradation, or soil becoming unfit for cultivation.
• About 29% or about 96.4 million hectares are considered degraded.

Details:

• It was underlined that the 5 million hectares were part of the Bonn Challenge commitment. It’s going to be combination of restoring forest land as well as cultivable land.
• In January 2019, India became part of the “Bonn Challenge”, a global effort to bring 150 million hectares of the world’s deforested and degraded land into restoration by 2020, and 350 million hectares by 2030.
• At the UNFCC Conference of the Parties (COP) 2015 in Paris, India also joined the voluntary Bonn Challenge and pledged to bring into restoration 13 million hectares of degraded and deforested land by 2020, and an additional 8 million hectares by 2030.
• India’s pledge is one of the largest in Asia.
• Schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, Soil Health Card Scheme, Soil Health Management Scheme and Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana are seen as prongs to tackle this land degradation.

Context:

The government is planning to come out with a national e-commerce policy to facilitate achieving holistic growth of the sector.

Details:

• The consumer affairs ministry has decided to frame the rules to implement the Consumer Protection Act and asked stakeholders to submit their views by 15 September, 2019.
• The ministry has also sought views on the draft guidelines on e-commerce by the same date.
• The government has said that the guidelines drafted for e-commerce firms will be made mandatory under the new Consumer Protection Act.
• It is said that stringent action against violators will be taken by a regulatory authority in order to protect consumer interest.
• MP’s view that e-commerce guidelines should be incorporated as part of the rules under the new law has been accepted.
• As per the draft guidelines on e-commerce, the companies are required to submit a self-declaration to the ministry stating that it is conforming with the guideline.

Guidelines:

• The proposed guidelines for e-commerce firms entail a 14-day deadline to effect refund request, mandate e-tailers to display details of sellers supplying goods and services on their websites and moot the procedure to resolve consumer complaints.
• Among key guidelines, the e-commerce companies will also be required to ensure that personally identifiable information of customers are protected and should not directly or indirectly influence the price of the goods or services and maintain a level playing field.
• The Consumer Protection Bill 2019, passed recently in Parliament, seeks to establish CCPA and also envisages simplified dispute resolution process, deals with ‘product liability’ and provides for stiff punishment to check misleading ads and adulteration.
• Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA), will take action against violating e-commerce firms.
• The proposed rules outline that a promoter or key management personnel should not have been convicted of any criminal offence punishable with five years imprisonment.
• The companies should also comply with the provisions of IT Rules, 2011. They are also required to display on their websites details about sellers supplying goods and services.
• Guidelines require the companies to also mention safety and health care information of the goods and service advertised for sale and give information on payment methods.
• Even though the Supreme Court in 1995 had suggested strongly to protect the consumer interest in health area, at present, the health sector has been kept out of the ambit of the law.

Conclusion:

• The move comes even as the government has tightened norms for e-commerce firms having foreign investment.
• Consumers face difficulty in holding e-commerce firms accountable in case of fake products as platforms do not disclose seller details or their general terms. These guidelines if enforced will change that.

The e-commerce sector in India has been witnessing an explosive growth fuelled by the increase in the number of online users, growing penetration of smartphones and the rising popularity of social media platforms. According to a February 2019 Morgan Stanley report, India is adding one Internet user every three seconds and the e-commerce sector in India is estimated to reach $230 billion by 2028, accounting for 10% of India’s retail.

Context:

The Bimal Jalan-led panel has recommended a review of the Reserve Banks Economic Capital Framework (ECF) every five years.

Details:

• The committee constituted by the RBI to propose a suitable profits distribution policy, has suggested that the framework may be periodically reviewed after every five years and that an intermediate review may be considered if there is a significant change in the RBI’s risks and operating environment.
• The panel recommended aligning the central bank’s accounting year with the financial year which could reduce the need for paying interim dividend.
  • It could reduce the need for interim dividend being paid by the RBI.
  • The payment of interim dividend may then be restricted to extraordinary circumstances.
• The committee also recommended that the RBI should put in place a framework for assessing the market risk of its off-balance sheet exposures in view of their increasing significance.
• The panel suggested a clearer distinction between the two components of economic capital — realised equity and revaluation balances — mainly because of the volatile nature of the revaluation balances.
• The committee observed that even if the RBI’s economic capital could appear to be relatively higher, it is largely on account of the revaluation balances which are determined by exogenous factors such as market prices and the central bank’s discharge of its public policy objectives.
• Going forward, the Jalan panel said that the financial resilience of the RBI may be articulated by the central board in terms of the risk protection desired for its balance sheet.
• The committee recommended that that the minimum level of realised equity to be maintained should be the sum of the monetary and financial stability risks, credit risk and operational risk.

D. GS4 Related

E. Editorials

Context

• Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Board has approved a transfer of Rs 1,76,051 crore to the government, including a surplus or dividend of Rs 1,23,414 crore, and a one-time transfer of excess provisions amounting to Rs 52,637 crore.

Bimal Jalan Committee

• The outflow from the RBI’s reserves was limited to this amount only because the Bimal Jalan Committee, appointed to recommend the economic capital framework for the RBI, decided to keep a major part of the reserves locked up and out of the reach of the government while opening up the remainder with strict stipulations.
• The Committee has recommended, and rightly so, that the Currency and Gold Revaluation Reserve Account (₹6.91 lakh crore as of June 30, 2018), at least half of which was eyed by the government, represents unrealised gains and hence is not distributable to the government.
• In the case of the Contingency Reserve (built out of retained earnings), which was ₹2.32 lakh crore as of the same date, the committee said that it should be maintained within a band of 6.5-5.5% of total assets.
• It left it to the RBI board to decide the precise percentage it was comfortable within this band and transfer the excess to the government. As it happened, the board, in its meeting, decided to peg this ratio at 5.5% thus enabling it to transfer a sum of ₹52,637 crore to the government immediately
• The committee should also be complimented for clearly specifying that the revaluation reserve cannot be used to bridge shortfalls in other reserves.

The RBI transfers its surplus to the government every year. So what is special about the pay out this time?

• Yes, the RBI does transfer its surplus annually to the government, the owner of the institution, after making adequate provisions for contingencies or potential losses. The profit that is distributed has varied, averaging over Rs 50,000 crore over the last few years.
• The RBI Board accepted the recommendations of a committee headed by former Governor Bimal Jalan on transfer of excess capital. Based on the panel’s report, the Central Board decided to transfer a surplus of Rs 1.23 lakh crore and Rs 52,637 crore of excess provisions made over the years
• This marks the first time the RBI will be paying out such a huge amount, a one-off transfer.

How does a central bank like the RBI make profits?

• intervenes for instance to buy or sell foreign exchange; Open Market operations, when it attempts to prevent the rupee from appreciating; as income from government securities it holds; as returns from its foreign currency assets that are investments in the bonds of foreign central banks or top-rated securities; from deposits with other central banks or the Bank for International Settlement or BIS; besides lending to banks for very short tenures and management commission on handling the borrowings of state governments and the central government.
• The RBI is a “full service” central bank— not only is it mandated to keep inflation or prices in check, it is also supposed to manage the borrowings of the Government of India and of state governments; supervise or regulate banks and non-banking finance companies; and manage the currency and payment systems.
• Its expenditure is mainly on the printing of currency notes and on staff, besides the commission it gives to banks for undertaking transactions on behalf of the government across the country, and to primary dealers, including banks, for underwriting some of these borrowings.

Why are these called transfers to the government, rather than dividends?

• That is because the RBI is not a commercial organisation like banks and other companies owned or controlled by the government to pay a dividend to the owner out of the profit generated. Though it was promoted as a private shareholders’ bank in 1935 with a paid-up capital of Rs 5 crore, the government nationalised it in January 1949, making the sovereign the “owner”.
• What the RBI does is transfer the surplus — excess of income over expenditure —to the government.
• Under Section 47 of the RBI Act, “after making provision for bad and doubtful debts, depreciation in assets, contributions to staff and superannuation funds and for all other matters for which provision is to be made by or under this Act or which are usually provided for by bankers, the balance of the profits shall be paid to the Central government”.
• This is done in early August by the Central Board.

Is it right for the Government to request RBI to share its profits?

• In principle, it could be argued that the government as sovereign owns the RBI and hence there is nothing wrong if it decides to tap the central bank’s reserves.
• Yet, that it actually chose to do so is unfortunate because these reserves represent inter-generational equity built up over several years by the RBI by squirrelling away a part of its annual surplus.
• It is morally unacceptable that any one government can swallow even a part of such funds to help meet its expenditure in a particular year.
• The reserves, as the Jalan Committee has pointed out, represent the country’s savings for a ‘rainy day’, which is a monetary or financial crisis.

How do other central banks manage the transfer of surplus?

• Like in India, central banks in both the UK and US decide after consultations with the government.
• But in Japan, it is the government that decides.

What can the government do with this huge surplus?

• Normally, the money is transferred to the Consolidated Fund of India from which salaries and pensions to government employees are paid and interest payments done, besides spending on government programmes.
• The large payout can help the government cut back on planned borrowings and keep interest rates relatively low.
• Besides, it will provide space for private companies to raise money from markets.
• And if it manages to meet its revenue targets, the windfall gain can lead to a lower fiscal deficit.
• The other option is to earmark these funds for public spending or specific projects, which could lead to a revival in demand in certain sectors and boost economic activity.

Why do central banks hold back on transferring large amounts?

• Especially after the global financial crisis when central banks had to resort to unconventional means to revive their economies, the approach has been to build adequate buffers in the form of higher capital, reserves and other funds as a potential insurance against future risks or losses.
• A higher buffer enhances the credibility of a central bank during a crisis and helps avoid approaching the government for fresh capital and thus maintain financial autonomy.

Introduction

Please read about the scheme Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana here.

Illiteracy and misinformation the core problem

• Few people in the rural set up believed food cooked on a chulha was healthier and tastier. In contrast, rotis cooked on gas cause indigestion
• They view that cooking with solid fuels was healthy for the person cooking too: fumes purified the eyes because they caused tears, and in blowing into a traditional stove, a woman did kasrat (exercise).

Using cleaner fuels such as LPG is essential to reduce rural air pollution and improve health. What can policymakers do to achieve exclusive use of clean fuels in rural India? Three strategies could work:

• Communicating the harms of solid fuels and the benefits of cleaner fuels;
• Reducing the cost of LPG cylinder refills in rural areas; and
• Promoting gender equality within households, particularly in cooking and related tasks.

Information outreach need of the hour

• A large Anti-Tobacco Style Campaign communicating that solid fuels harm respiratory health may change these beliefs. Similarly, advertisements that food cooked on gas can be as tasty and healthy as food cooked on a chulha would be helpful.
• Reducing LPG prices in rural areas, where residents are poorer and solid fuels are easier to access, would also help. One way is to build on the targeting experience of the National Food Security Act.
  • Under this Act, 75% of rural households are classified as priority households and entitled to subsidised rations. Another 10% of extremely poor households are classified as Antyodaya households, eligible for higher grain amounts at even lower prices.
  • If priority households could become eligible for even higher subsidies in a revamped LPG pricing regime, and Antyodaya households could become eligible for LPG cylinders free of cost, exclusive LPG use would likely be higher.
• Finally, public policy must recognise that in households men should take be taking equal responsibility along with the women
  • Men rarely cook or make dung cakes in rural households. Current Ujjwala messaging, which focuses on the benefits of clean fuels for women, reinforces this inequality.
  • Advertisements showing that gas is so good that even men can cook with it will challenge both misinformation on LPG and gender inequalities in household tasks.

Context

• Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s press conference, announcing a slew of measures to boost the economy and financial market sentiments, had an interesting idea of setting up a development bank.

What are development banks?

• Development banks are financial institutions that provide long-term credit for capital-intensive investments spread over a long period and yielding low rates of return, such as urban infrastructure, mining and heavy industry, and irrigation systems.
• Such banks often lend at low and stable rates of interest to promote long-term investments with considerable social benefits.
• Development banks are also known as term-lending institutions or development finance institutions.

How are funding requirements met?

• To lend for long term, development banks require correspondingly long-term sources of finance, usually obtained by issuing long-dated securities in capital market, subscribed by long-term savings institutions such as pension and life insurance funds and post office deposits.
• Considering the social benefits of such investments, and uncertainties associated with them, development banks are often supported by governments or international institutions.
• Such support can be in the form of tax incentives and administrative mandates for private sector banks and financial institutions to invest in securities issued by development banks.

Development banks and Commercial banks

• Development banks are different from commercial banks which mobilise short- to medium-term deposits and lend for similar maturities to avoid a maturity mismatch — a potential cause for a bank’s liquidity and solvency.
• The capital market complements commercial banks in providing long-term finance. They are together termed as the Anglo-Saxon financial system.

Types of banking models

• Historically, in the U.K. and the U.S., such a debt market took root to fund expansion of the market economy and colonial investments in the 19th century, such as financing of railways worldwide. This market was mostly sweetened by fiscal sops to promote Britain’s global political and commercial interests.
• Industrialization of continental Europe and Asia was, however, financed under the aegis of German-type universal banks (providing long- and short-term credit) and state-sponsored (or guaranteed) development banks underwriting the risks of long-term credit.
• For instance, the earliest and ubiquitous saving institution, namely the post office bank (mostly government-owned and managed), mobilized national savings and channeled them into development banks for long-term investments whose social rates of return were higher than the assured interest rates for depositors.
• Alexander Gerschenkron, a Ukrainian economic historian at Harvard University, famously theorised that the greater the backwardness of a country, the greater the role of the state in economic development, particularly in providing long-term finance to catch up with the advanced economies in the shortest possible time.

USA’s Economic Depression

• In the context of the Great Depression in the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes argued that when business confidence is low on account of an uncertain future with low-interest rates, the government can set up a National Investment Bank to mop up the society’s savings and make it available for long-term development by the private sector and local governments.

How it all started in India?

• Following foregoing precepts, IFCI, previously the Industrial Finance Corporation of India, was set up in 1949. This was probably India’s first development bank for financing industrial investments. In 1955, the World Bank prompted the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI) — the parent of the largest private commercial bank in India today, ICICI Bank — as a collaborative effort between the government with majority equity holding and India’s leading industrialists with nominal equity ownership to finance modern and relatively large private corporate enterprises.
• In 1964, IDBI was set up as an apex body of all development finance institutions.

Government’s Role in Financing

As the domestic saving rate was low, and capital market was absent, development finance institutions were financed by

• lines of credit from the Reserve Bank of India (that is, some of its profits were channelled as long-term credit); and
• Statutory Liquidity Ratio bonds, into which commercial banks had to invest a proportion of their deposits.
• In other words, by sleight of government hand, short-term bank deposits got transformed into long-term resources for development banks.

Fall of development banks

• However, development banks got discredited for mounting non-performing assets, allegedly caused by politically motivated lending and inadequate professionalism in assessing investment projects for economic, technical and financial viability.
• After 1991, following the Narasimham Committee reports on financial sector reforms, development finance institutions were disbanded and got converted to commercial banks.
• The result was a steep fall in long-term credit from a tenure of 10-15 years to five years.
• The development of the debt market has been an article of faith for over a quarter-century, but it has failed to take off — as in most of Europe and industrializing Asia, where the bank-centric financial system continue to prevail.

Examples from the world

• China’s Development Banks — the Agricultural Development Bank of China, China Development Bank, and the Export-Import Bank of China — have been at the forefront of financing its industrial prowess.
  • After the global financial crisis, these institutions have underwritten China’s risky technological investments helping it gain global dominance in IT hardware and software companies.
• Germany’s Development Bank, KfW, has been spearheading long-term investment in green technologies and for sustainable development efforts requiring long-term capital.

Conclusion

• In this light, the Finance Minister’s agenda for setting up a development bank is welcome. However, a few hard questions need to be addressed in designing the proposed institution. How will it be financed?
• If foreign private capital is expected to contribute equity capital (hence part ownership), such an option needs to be carefully analysed, especially in the current political juncture.
• The design of the governance structure is fraught with dangers with many interest groups at work. One sincerely hopes that the political and administrative leadership carefully weigh in the past lessons to lay a firm foundation for the new institution.

F. Tidbits

• State-owned oil marketing companies (OMCs) are set to increase the prices of petrol and diesel with effect from April 2020.
• The prices are being increased to recover over Rs.30,000 crore of investments made by these firms in upgrading their refineries to meet the BS-VI standards.
• State-owned OMCs have so far invested over 30,000 crore in upgrading their refineries to produce cleaner BS-VI fuels after the government, in 2016 decided to meet the global best practices and leapfrog to BS-VI, skipping BS-V norms.
  • BS-VI emission norms are equivalent to Euro VI, to be effective from April 1, 2020.
• OMCs state that a lot of investments have gone into upgradation to BS-VI. Besides, additional operating expenses have to be incurred to run those units as hydrogen has to be produced.

Read more about BS-VI standards

• A state-of-the-art 20,000 sq ft facility of an Indo-Israel joint venture to design, develop and manufacture tactical communication systems for the armed forces has been inaugurated.
• Astra Rafael Communication System (ARC) has positioned itself to become India’s first private sector firm to manufacture cutting-edge software defined radios in multiple variants.
• The initial focus will be software defined radios and supplies to the defence forces.
• The 51:49 Joint Venture between Astra Microwave and Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems also, in the future intends to develop and manufacture a wide range of advanced equipment for export.
• The facility is located at the Hardware Technology Park and is executing a $30 million order from Rafael, which it received from the IAF.

• Indian Bank, has inaugurated the MSME CPC (Centralised Processing Centre) of Chennai South Zone by bringing all its 72 branches into its fold.
• As a part of macro-level organization restructuring, MSME vertical and centralized processing centers have been established by the bank to give a boost to its MSME portfolio.
• The bank has deployed skilled manpower in the CPC to improve credit quality and shorten transaction processing time.

G. Prelims Facts

• Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) virus, commonly known as Congo fever spreads through ticks in humans.
• Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF) spreads to humans either by tick-bites, or through contact with viraemic animal tissues during and immediately post-slaughter.
• Human-to-human transmission can occur resulting from close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected persons.
• Ticks of the genus Hyalomma are the principal vector of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever.
• It is a viral haemorrhagic fever.
• CCHF outbreaks have a case fatality rate of up to 40%.
• CCHF is endemic in all of Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East and in Asia.
• It can be responsible for severe outbreaks in humans but it is not pathogenic for ruminants, their amplifying host.
  • Ruminants are mammals that are able to acquire nutrients from plant-based food by fermenting it in a specialized stomach prior to digestion, principally through microbial actions.
  • The hosts of the CCHF virus include a wide range of wild and domestic animals such as cattle, sheep and goats.
  • Many birds are resistant to infection, but ostriches are susceptible and may show a high prevalence of infection in endemic areas, where they have been at the origin of human cases.
• Onset of symptoms is sudden, with fever, myalgia, (muscle ache), dizziness, neck pain and stiffness, backache, headache, sore eyes and photophobia (sensitivity to light). There may be nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal pain and sore throat early on, followed by sharp mood swings and confusion.
• After two to four days, the agitation may be replaced by sleepiness, depression and lassitude, and the abdominal pain may localize to the upper right quadrant, with detectable hepatomegaly (liver enlargement).
• It is difficult to prevent or control CCHF infection in animals and ticks as the tick-animal-tick cycle usually goes unnoticed and the infection in domestic animals is usually not apparent.

H. Practice Questions for UPSC Prelims Exam

Q1. Consider the following statements about Mitra:

1. Mitra is a lunar impact crater.
2. It is on the edge of another crater called Mach.

Which of the given statement/s is/are correct?

a. 1 only
b. 2 only
c. Both 1and 2
d. Neither 1 nor 2

See

 Q2. Consider the following statements about Congo Fever:

1. Congo fever is a viral haemorrhagic fever.
2. Ticks of the genus Hyalomma are the principal vector of Congo fever.
3. Human-to-human transmission can also occur.

Which of the given statement/s is/are correct?

a. 1 only
b. 2 only
c. 1 and 2 only
d. 1, 2 and 3

See

 Q3. Consider the following statements:

1. BS-VI emission norms are equivalent to Euro VI emission standards.
2. India decided to transition from BS V norms to BS VI norms with effect from April 1, 2020.

Which of the given statement/s is/are correct?

a. 1 only
b. 2 only
c. Both 1and 2
d. Neither 1 nor 2

See

Q4. Consider the following statements:

1. Bimal Jalan Committee was constituted by the government of India to review of the Reserve Banks Economic Capital Framework (ECF) and propose a suitable profits distribution policy.
2. The committee’s recommendations are binding on RBI.

Which of the given statement/s is/are correct?

a. 1 only
b. 2 only
c. Both 1and 2
d. Neither 1 nor 2

See

1. Illiteracy and misinformation are the core problems coming in the way of successful implementation of PM Ujjwala Yojana. Discuss and suggest measures overcome the issues. (15 Marks, 250 Words)
2. What are development banks? Can development banks re-industrialize India and de-stress the banking sector? Discuss. (15 Marks, 250 Words)

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