ALL QUESTION PAPERS of UKPCS -2012 MAINS

ALL QUESTION PAPERS of UKPCS -2012 MAINS

Language

History Of India, National Movement Society & Culture

Indian Polity, Social Justice & International Relation

Geography Of India & World

Economic & Social Development

General Science & Technology

General Aptitude And Ethics

ALL QUESTION PAPERS of UKPCS -2012 MAINS

Language
History Of India, National Movement Society & Culture
Indian Polity, Social Justice & International Relation
Geography Of India & World
Economic & Social Development
General Science & Technology
General Aptitude And Ethics
- See more at: http://samvegias.com/2016/02/07/all-question-papers-of-ukpcs-2012-mains/#sthash.T7sSqii0.dpuf

ALL QUESTION PAPERS of UKPCS -2012 MAINS

Language
History Of India, National Movement Society & Culture
Indian Polity, Social Justice & International Relation
Geography Of India & World
Economic & Social Development
General Science & Technology
General Aptitude And Ethics

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- See more at: http://samvegias.com/2016/02/07/all-question-papers-of-ukpcs-2012-mains/#sthash.T7sSqii0.dpuf

Are we neglecting India’s rich marine biodiversity?

In India, while our conservation policies are geared towards terrestrial biodiversity, there are many marine species that are not protected

A short visit to San Francisco got me thinking about the way we look at marine biodiversity in India. Along with the Golden Gate bridge and Alcatraz island, one of the most iconic attractions of this lovely coastal city is a handful of loud smelly creatures that have tourists enthralled on a daily basis.

On my jaunts around the city I found myself gravitating to Pier 39. Here, a colony of sea lions has made the edge of Fisherman’s Wharf its home since 1989. The subject of much scientific study and research, no one is quite clear why the sea lions arrived in this particular area or why they continue to live here.

Shortly after an earthquake hit San Francisco back in 1989, the sea lions began taking up residence at the pier and forming a colony and soon they became part of the city’s landscape.

Over the years, the city has learnt to celebrate its sea lions. And now there is an interpretation centre devoted to the sea lions right above the pier that educates children and adults about the difference between seals and sea lions, their relevance to marine biodiversity and the story of Pier 39. All this as you hear the loud lazy animals grunting and barking right below.

Of course the sea lions weren’t always welcome guests. The boat owners were not too happy about having to avoid the sea lions in order to reach their boats. Ultimately, for the safety of the boat owners, it was decided to leave the dock to the sea lions. Boat owners who owned dock slips were relocated elsewhere in the Pier 39 marina.

The weight of the sea lions—running into thousands of pounds—caused the K-Dock area to submerge, become waterlogged and eventually fall apart. In an attempt to repair the dock, floats were built on which the animals could rest, indicating just how the animals had won the hearts of the locals.

The Marine Mammal Center’s biologists believe that the sea lions have chosen to inhabit Pier 39’s dock because there’s plenty of food nearby in the bay and the absence of natural predators keeps them safe. Also, the docks are easier to haul out on, more comfortable and more protected from storms than a rocky beach.

But the naturalists studying the sea lions have observed that in spite of the protective environment, the number of animals visiting this part of the Bay area has declined; it is speculated that the impact of climate change could be disrupting their natural migratory cycles. Along with this, plastic in the oceans is another big threat; quite often, sea lions get entangled in packing nets or fish nets and need to be rescued.

Not far from the sea lion centre is the San Francisco Aquarium Of The Bay with its collection of all the local marine wildlife on display. With a touch pool for kids and a walk-through where you can experience leopard sharks swimming above your head, the aquarium makes you look at the marine world in childlike wonder. The centres play an important role in educating people about the local biodiversity and the need to conserve them.

As I walked around the Bay area, I realized there is so little we know about marine diversity back in India. In fact, there are very few conservation education centres that celebrate or educate us about life in the oceans. This, in spite of the fact that we have over 7,000km of coastline and 12,000 species spread across different taxa from crustaceans to birds to reptiles and mammals.

Two incidents that happened in the past one month indicate just how deep our ignorance of the marine world runs. In January, as many as 90 short-finned pilot whales were washed ashore, on the coast of Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu. While some attempts were made to push the beached whales back into the water, eventually at least 45 succumbed. Scientists are still not clear about what exactly happened that caused these animals to die en masse. In another incident, a 30 feet-long whale got beached at Juhu, near Mumbai. While stranding of whales is not uncommon, mass beaching continues to baffle scientists even now.

The next crisis facing the natural world will be in our oceans and seas. According to a report released by the World Economic Forum in January 2016, there will be more plastic in the sea in 2050 than fish. Already fishermen across India report a decline in catches—both in terms of quality and quantity—which should be a cause for concern.

In India, while our conservation policies are geared towards terrestrial biodiversity, there are many marine species that are not protected. And the crisis facing our seas will affect not just tiny creatures, but thousands of fishermen who live off it. I left California with a love for sea lions and a firm resolution to get to know the marine biodiversity back in my own country a bit better

Removing constraints in higher education The argument that foreign investment benefits only a minority is flawed

Removing constraints in higher education

The argument that foreign investment benefits only a minority is flawed

The Global Education Meet (GEM), which was convened in Kerala last week, caught the headlines for the wrong reasons. At the venue of the meet, Students’ Federation of India (SFI) activists assaulted the vice-chairman of the state’s higher education council, T.P. Sreenivasan. The motive: To prevent acceleration of ‘commercialization’ of education.

The resistance to privatizing education and foreign investment is often based on two flawed assumptions. First, privatization inevitably leads to profiteering and compromises education, and second, public institutions always do a better job.

While the merits of GEM’s specific approach of establishing International Higher Education Zones—a kind of special education zone—are debateable, the fundamental clash of ideas on display in Kerala is telling. The protesters claimed that inviting foreign investment and foreign universities to Kerala would facilitate a “global trade in education” and would be pointless as this would benefit only a minority of students. These arguments are both atavistic—pointing to a belief in an isolated, idealized form of egalitarianism that is unworkable in practice—and indicative of the manner in which those flawed assumptions can lead people to ignore the experiences of the countries that dominate higher education globally.

The establishment of big universities with state-of-the-art facilities may not serve the purpose of educating and training every one of the multitude of India’s youth. But they raise the bar by creating healthy competition. And they have beneficial spillover effects. They can lead to establishment of enterprises, which thrive from the human resources in the given area and potentially drive the entire city’s urban growth, provided it is integrated with the city and not walled off from it. Silicon Valley benefiting from Stanford academia and Boston from Harvard and MIT are cases in point.

The structural issues inherent in India’s current higher education system—walled off for decades—are the reason for the demand-supply gap in its skill market. Private institutions account for almost two-thirds of the higher education in India (according to a 2011 report by Ernst and Young and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry). Some of them even provide the finest education in the country. Despite this, barriers are present at every level for these institutions—entry, operation and exit.

Private universities and deemed universities currently have no power to affiliate colleges, fix salaries of their faculty or even include courses in their colleges. This privilege lies entirely in the hand of the state or central university. The control of these universities, in turn, lies in the hands of the University Grants Commission (UGC), the professional councils and the government (centre and state).

Restrictions also exist on entry of foreign universities, foreign faculty and foreign collaboration. Though 100% foreign direct investment (FDI) is allowed in the education sector, the provision comes with riders. Not-for-profit principle and permitting only Section 25 companies with no foreign investment to invest in technical institutes are just a few of them. If these bottlenecks do not scare away interested foreign institutes, they can engage in exchange programmes, distance education and faculty exchange programmes with existing Indian institutes.

If India has to accommodate its rising need for higher education, granting autonomy to private institutions, liberalizing laws for foreign entrants and decentralization are a necessity and not a leisurely choice.

According to World Economic Forum’s latest report The Future of Jobs, 65% of current primary schoolchildren will end up working in completely new jobs that do not exist yet. An evolving dynamic course structure should be framed through a symbiotic association with both private and foreign partners if India has to keep pace with the world of nanotechnology, biotechnology, robotics and space research.

Research has to form an essential part of the curriculum and be linked with the industry’s requirements. The Digital India fund set aside for education may be effectively used for complementing these objectives through information and communication technology (ICT) and massive open online courses (MOOCs).

With half the population of India falling below the age of 29 and the age distribution chart swelling up considerably after 15 years, there is no better time to look at and revive the higher education sector in India. The land of Nalanda, Vikramasila and Taxila, which featured vividly in the accounts of travellers like Hsuan Tsang, I. Tsing and Strabo, currently has no varsity in the world’s top 100 ranking. Higher education in India needs more than just reform. It requires a revolution.

Will private and foreign entrants help in reviving the higher education system in India? 

India ratifies key international convention on nuclear accident compensation

India ratifies key international convention on nuclear accident compensation

The ratification makes India part of a global legal regime that has established a standard for compensation of victims in the event of a nuclear accident

Clearing the decks for US and other foreign companies to invest in its potentially vast nuclear energy market, India ratified an international convention on nuclear energy accident liability, seen as the final piece in its efforts to address a major concern of foreign nuclear suppliers.

Clearing the decks for US and other foreign companies to invest in its potentially vast nuclear energy market, India ratified an international convention on nuclear energy accident liability, seen as the final piece in its efforts to address a major concern of foreign nuclear suppliers.

A statement from the Indian foreign ministry late on Thursday said India has submitted the Instrument of Ratification of the Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC) for Nuclear Damage to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This makes India part of a global legal regime that has established a standard for compensation of victims in the event of a nuclear accident.

Ambassador and permanent representative of India to the United Nations (Vienna), Rajiva Misra, handed over the Instrument of Ratification to acting director general of IAEA Juan Carlos Lentijo in Vienna on Thursday, a statement said.

International nuclear reactor makers such as General Electric have been reluctant to set up plants in India because of a 2010 domestic liability law that makes equipment suppliers accountable for accidents and not the plant operators, as is the global norm.

Last year, India launched an insurance pool with a liability cap of Rs.1,500 crore ($225 million) to cover the suppliers’ risk of potential liability.

“This marks a conclusive step in the addressing of issues related to civil nuclear liability in India,” the foreign ministry said after the document was handed to IAEA in Vienna.

India has signed a preliminary “early works agreement” with US equipment manufacturer Westinghouse Electric Co. Llc in 2013, following the conclusion of the landmark India-US nuclear agreement in 2008 that gave India the opportunity to enter the global nuclear scene after a gap of 34 years. But no US company has been willing to invest in India’s nuclear power market for fear of the liability clause in its domestic law.

India has plans to construct many nuclear power plants to fuel its economic growth. The size of the Indian nuclear power market is estimated at $150 billion by various accounts.

Russia is building six reactors in southern India and is in talks for another six.

During the just concluded visit by French president Francois Hollande, India and France signed a reworked pact to build six nuclear plants at Jaitapur in Mahararashtra.

Reveal answer books, interview marks: Supreme Court to PSCs

The Supreme Court ruling asking two public service commissions to disclose answer papers and marks obtained during interview may set a precedent for the touch-me-not Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) that selects India’s bureaucracy through competitive exams but suffers from a long-standing criticism of lack of transparency and public scrutiny.

On Thursday, in a landmark judgment, the apex court asked the Kerala Public Service Commission and Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission to disclose answer papers and marks tabulated during the oral interviews.

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• Reveal answer books, interview marks: Supreme Court to PSCs

The Supreme Court judgment will go a long way in reposing faith in the system and establish accountability, said Sriram Srirangam, director at Sriram’s IAS, a civil service coaching school. “Civil Service exams conducted by UPSC is one of most high stake exams in the country not just from the point of view of the career of students but also in terms of economic and social policy-making as it’s the bureaucracy that’s runs the county effectively,” he said.

Srirangam said civil service aspirants are always confused about what kind of answers could get them better marks. “When a candidate is preparing for the best career option in the country, he needs to know how he performed in the exam and how his answer papers have been evaluated. “How will an exam conducting body establish transparency and accountability without disclosing answer papers and marks obtained?” he asked.

In the Thursday ruling, the Supreme Court said: “So far as the information sought for by the respondents with regard to the supply of scanned copies of his answer sheet of the written test, copy of the tabulation sheet and other information, we are of the opinion that the view taken in the impugned judgment with regard to the disclosure of these information, does not suffer from error of law and the same is fully justified.”

“Disclosing the marks and the answer sheets to the candidates will ensure that the candidates have been given marks according to their performance in the exam. This practice will ensure fair play in this competitive environment, where a candidate puts his time in preparing for the competitive exams,” the court observed.

Public service commissions both at the Union and state levels have long faced criticism over their refusal to disclose marks obtained in entrance exams for government jobs.

Pramod Kumar, a civil service aspirant in Delhi, said if Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) can disclose the answer papers of joint entrance exam (JEE), why can’t UPSC do the same for civil service exams and other high stake entrance exams that it conducts.

“The long standing demand from the civil service aspirants’ community is for a transparent exam where every candidate knows what he scored and where he faltered. If USPC is in charge of giving country IAS (Indian Administrative Service), IPS (Indian Police Service) and IFS (Indian Foreign Service) officials, then it must operate like a glass house,” Kumar said.

On Thursday, hearing appeals from the Kerala and Uttar Pradesh public service commissions against the decision of the respective high courts, the Supreme Court ruled that such disclosure of answer papers and mark sheets of interviews if asked for “do not suffer from error of law”.

MGNREGA: The wrong answer to rural distress

A permanent entitlements strategy does little to address the real problems

A political fist fight has broken out on the 10th anniversary of the landmark Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which guarantees 100 days of work a year to every rural household. Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a stinging speech last year described the rural jobs scheme as a monument to the failures of the United Progressive Alliance government. His government is now indicating that it will increase spending on the scheme in this year of a second successive drought. The Congress has hit back with accusations of hypocrisy.

MGNREGA is the biggest single public works programme in the world. It provides employment to around one in every six Indian families, according to the World Bank. The vocal defenders of the scheme point to its range of achievements—from empowerment of the rural poor and a push to financial inclusion to the rise in rural wages and prevention of urban migration. But these are unintended consequences that may have also emerged had other solutions such as direct cash transfers been given a fair chance.

As with any other policy intervention, MGNREGA has to be assessed in terms of its own policy goal, as defined by the 2005 law that established the scheme. The law says it seeks to “provide for the enhancement of livelihood security of the households in rural areas of the country by providing for at least one hundred days of guaranteed wage employment in every financial year to every household…” The main challenge that the scheme sets out for itself is clearly to provide livelihood security to rural households. There are two questions that defenders of the rural jobs scheme need to answer. First, is there indeed greater livelihood security in the villages 10 years on? Second, wouldn’t direct income support through cash transfers be a better way to reach the goal?

Successive governments have spent an estimated Rs.3.1 trillion on MGNREGA schemes over the past decade. This is not a small sum of money, especially if spending in past years were to be converted to current prices to take care of inflation. The impact of such spending would have been far higher if the money had been used for rural infrastructure that would have raised productivity as well as helped the structural transformation of the rural economy.

This does not mean that the government should not spend on public works when there is rural distress. There is right now a strong case for higher government spending to ease the pain in Indian villages. Even the colonial government understood this: public works were funded during the terrible droughts of the 1870s. This newspaper supports higher rural spending in drought years. MGNREGA is something quite different. It is a permanent scheme that is not linked with the state of the rural economy. Those who ask whether critics of MGNREGA would want the government to cut back on help in a year of rural distress are essentially setting up a straw man.

Few care to remember today that India is just coming out of an inflation crisis. One part of the sorry tryst with high inflation is that MGNREGA pushed up rural wages without having much of an impact on rural productivity. Basic economic reasoning tells us that inflation accelerates whenever nominal wages rise faster than productivity. It is also well known that inflation hits the poor the hardest. Paradoxically, the delinking of rural wages from productivity acted as an incentive for farmers to replace men with machines.

Rural India is once again in the grip of immense distress. As B.R. Ambedkar pointed out nearly a hundred years ago, the real solution to rural distress is to be found in rapid industrialization as well as urbanization. The entitlements strategy of the United Progressive Alliance was supposed to provide a permanent cure to the sort of rural distress that India is currently battling. MGNREGA should be judged in terms of what it set out to do rather than its unintended consequences.

Has MGNREGA achieved its policy goal in the past 10 years? 

MSP for Copra for 2016 season

MSP for Copra for 2016 season

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, has given its approval for the Minimum Support Prices (MSPs) for Copra for 2016 season. The decision is based on recommendations of Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP). CACP, which is an expert body, takes into account the cost of production, overall demand-supply, domestic and international prices, cost of conversion of copra into coconut oil, the likely effect of the Price Policy on the rest of economy, besides ensuring rational utilization of production resources like land and water, while recommending MSPs.

The Minimum Support Price (MSP) for Fair Average Quality (FAQ) of “Milling Copra” has been increased to Rs.5950/- per quintal for 2016 season from Rs. 5550/- per quintal in 2015. Also, the MSP for FAQ of “Ball Copra” has been increased to Rs.6240/- per quintal for 2016 season from Rs. 5830/- per quintal in 2015. The MSP of Copra is expected to ensure appropriate minimum prices to the farmers and step up investment in Coconut cultivation and thereby production and productivity in the country.

The National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Limited (NAFED) and National Cooperative Consumer Federation of India Limited (NCCF) would continue to act as Central Nodal Agencies to undertake price support operations at the Minimum Support Prices in the Coconut growing states.

Besides increase in Minimum Support Prices (MSP) for Copra, Government has taken several other farmer friendly initiatives over the last one year. These, inter-alia, include the following:

A new crop Insurance scheme for farmers’ welfare, namely, the ‘Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana’ has been introduced under the scheme, there will be a uniform premium of only 2% to be paid by farmers for all Kharif crops and 1.5% for all Rabi crops. In case of annual commercial and horticultural crops, the premium to be paid by farmers will be only 5%.There is no upper limit on Government subsidy.

Government has also created portal on crops insurance in order to keep farmers better informed.

A Scheme to issue Soil Health Card to every farmer has been introduced. Soil health management in the country is being promoted through setting up of soil & fertilizer testing laboratories and implementation of organic f Government has also framed guidelines under Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojna (PKVY) to promote organic farming and develop potential market for organic products.

The Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana, has been launched with the objective of creating sources of assured irrigation.

A dedicated Kisan Channel has been started by the Doordarshan to address various issues concerning farmers.

An initiative is being taken to set up a National Agriculture Market (NAM). This would enable farmers to overcome the impediments in marketing of agricultural produce and get better price discovery. A common e-market platform is being created and would be provided free of cost to the States/UTs that undertake to introduce a single license for trading in the whole state, a single point levy of market fee and permit e-trading Government is also encouraging formation of Farmer Producer Organisations.