Daily Current Affairs

Cabinet approves a new centrally sponsored Scheme - PM SHRI Schools (GS Paper 2, Governance)

Why in news?

Recently, the Union Cabinet approved a new centrally sponsored scheme - PM SHRI Schools (PM ScHools for Rising India).

 

Details:

• This will be a new scheme for development of more than 14500 schools across the country as PM SHRI Schools by strengthening select existing schools being managed by Central Government/ State/ UT Government/ local bodies.
• PM SHRI Schools will showcase all components of the National Education Policy 2020, act as exemplar schools and also offer mentorship to other schools in their vicinity.
• The PM SHRI schools will deliver quality teaching for the cognitive development of students and will strive to create and nurture holistic and well-rounded individuals equipped with key 21st century skills.

 

Implementation:

• Scheme of PM SHRI  schools (PM ScHools for Rising India) is to be implemented as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme with a total project cost of Rs. 27360 crore which includes a central share of Rs. 18128 crore for the period of five years from year 2022-23 to 2026-27.

 

Key features:

• PM SHRI will provide high-quality education in an equitable, inclusive and joyful school environment that takes care of the diverse background, multilingual needs, and different academic abilities of children and makes them active participants in their own learning process as per the vision of NEP 2020.
• PM SHRI Schools will provide leadership to other schools in their respective regions by providing mentorship.
• The PM SHRI  Schools will be developed as Green schools, incorporating environment friendly aspects like solar panels and LED lights, nutrition gardens with natural farming, waste management, plastic free, water conservation and harvesting, study of traditions/practices related to protection of environment, climate change related hackathon and awareness generation to adopt sustainable lifestyle.
• Pedagogy adopted in these schools will be more experiential, holistic, integrated, play/toy-based (particularly, in the foundational years) inquiry-driven, discovery-oriented, learner-centred, discussion-based, flexible and enjoyable.
• Focus will be on learning outcomes of every child in every grade. Assessment at all levels will be based on conceptual understanding and application of knowledge to real life situations and will be competency-based.
• Assessment of the resources available and their effectiveness in terms of availability, adequacy, appropriateness, and utilisation for each of the domains and their key performance indicators will be done and gaps will be filled in a systematic and planned manner.
• Linkage with Sector Skill Councils and local industry for enhancing employability and providing better employment opportunities will be explored.
• A School Quality Assessment Framework (SQAF) is being developed, specifying the key performance indicators to measure outcomes. Quality evaluation of these schools at regular interval will be undertaken to ensure the desired standards.

 

Major illustrative interventions of Scheme of PM SHRI Schools are:

• Quality and Innovation (Learning Enhancement Programme, Holistic Progress Card, Innovative Pedagogies, Bagless days, Internships with Local artisans, Capacity building etc.)
• Beneficiary oriented entitlements under RTE Act. 100% of PM SHRI Schools will receive Science and Math Kits.
• Annual School Grants (Composite School grants, Library grant, Sports grant)
• Early Childhood Care and Education including Balvatika and Foundational Literacy and Numeracy
• Equity and Inclusion including provision of safe and appropriate infrastructure for girls and CWSN.
• Encouraging flexibility in choice of subjects offered to students.
• Encouraging mother tongue/local languages as medium of instruction using technological interventions to help bridge language barriers.
• ICT, smart classrooms and digital libraries for using digital pedagogy. 100% of the PM SHRI Schools will be covered under ICT, smart classrooms and digital initiatives.
• Strengthening of existing infrastructure
• Vocational interventions & Enhancing internship / entrepreneurship opportunities especially with local industry. Mapping of skills with developmental projects/nearby industry and develop courses/curriculum accordingly.
• Saturation approach will be adopted to develop these schools with all modern facilities. Science labs, Library, ICT facility and Vocational labs etc. will be provided to all the schools.
• Green School initiatives

Further, the scheme envisages convergence with existing schemes /Panchayati Raj Institutions/ Urban Local bodies and community participation for infrastructure upgradation of the school and creation of facilities.

 

Implementation strategy:

1. PM SHRI Schools would be implemented through the existing administrative structure available for SamagraShiksha, KVS & NVS. The other autonomous bodies would be involved on specific project basis as required.
2. These schools shall be monitored vigorously to assess progress and understand the challenges faced in implementation of National Education Policy 2020.

 

Selection Methodology:

• Selection of PM SHRI schools will be done through Challenge Mode wherein Schools compete for support to become exemplar schools. Schools would be required to self-apply on the online portal. The portal will be opened four times a year, once every quarter, for first two years of the scheme.
• The Elementary schools (Class 1-5/1-8) & the Secondary/ Sr. Secondary Schools (Class1-10/1-12/6-10/6-12) managed by Centre/State/UT Governments / local self-governments having UDISE+ code would be considered for selection under the Scheme.  Selection would be done through a three-stage process with definite time lines, which is as follows: -

1. Stage-1: States/UTs would sign MoU agreeing to implement NEP in entirety with Centre laying down the commitments for supporting these schools for achieving specified quality assurance as PM SHRI schools.
2. Stage-2: In this stage, a pool of schools that are eligible to be selected as PM SHRI Schools would be identified based on prescribed minimum benchmark through UDISE+ data.
3. Stage-3: This stage is based on the challenge method for fulfilling certain criteria. Only the schools from the above eligible pool of schools would compete to fulfill the challenge conditions. Fulfillment of conditions would be certified by States/KVS/JNV through physical inspection.

• Maximum two schools (one Elementary & one Secondary/Senior Secondary) would be selected per block/ULB with upper limit of number of total schools across India.Geo-tagging of schools for the selection and monitoring of PM SHRI schools will be done.
•  The services of Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG-N) will be taken for geo-tagging and other related tasks. An Expert committee would be constituted for final selection of schools.

 

Quality Assurance of PM SHRI Schools:

• Showcase of NEP 2020
• Student registry  for tracking enrolment and learning progress
• Improvement in learning outcomes of each child to achieve levels above state and national average
• Every middle grade child exposed/oriented to cutting edge and 21st century skills
• Every secondary grade child passes out with at least one skill
• Sports, Arts, ICT for every child
• Sustainable and Green schools
• Each school linked/connected to Higher Education Institutions for mentoring
• Every school linked/connected to local entrepreneurial ecosystem
• Every child counselled for psychological well-being and career
• Students will be rooted to knowledge and heritage of India, proud of civilizational ethos and values of Bharat, aware of India's contribution to the world, conscious of duties towards society, living beings and the nature, communicatively competent in Indian languages, respecting inclusivity, equality and unity in diversity, sense of service and furthering the spirit of  'Ek Bharat Shreshth Bharat'.
• Character-building, citizenship values, fundamental duties and responsibilities towards nation-building

 

Way Forward:

• More than 18 lakh students are expected to be direct beneficiaries of the scheme. Futher impact will be generated through the mentoring and handholding of the schools in vicinity of PM SHRI schools.

 

Albania breaks diplomatic ties with Iran over 'cyberattack'

(GS Paper 2, International Relation)

Why in news?

• Recently, Albania’s Prime Minister accused Iran of directing a cyberattack against Albanian institutions on July 15 in a bid to “paralyse public services and hack data and electronic communications from the government systems”.

It was the first time Albania spoke about the alleged attack.

Issue:

• Albania broke diplomatic ties with Iran over an alleged cyberattack against the government, prompting rebuke from US, which vowed to hold Iran accountable for targeting its NATO ally.
• Albania and Iran have been bitter foes for years, stemming from Tirana’s hosting of the Iranian opposition group the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK) on its soil.

 

Albania & MEK Group:

• Albania agreed in 2013 to take in members of the exiled group at the request of US and the United Nations, with thousands settling in the Balkan country over the years.
• Following the collapse of its communist government in the early 1990s, Albania has transformed into a steadfast ally of the United States and the West, officially joining NATO in 2009.
• The MEK backed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1979 revolution that ousted the Shah but rapidly fell out with the new Islamic authorities and embarked on a decades-long campaign to overthrow the regime.

 

MEK Summit and cyberattack:

• The MEK regularly hosts summits in Albania that have long attracted support from conservative US Republicans, including former Vice President Mike Pence who delivered a keynote address at an event in June.
• In July, the group postponed another summit citing unspecified security threats targeting the event.
• The summit was called off “upon recommendations by the Albanian government, for security reasons, and due to terrorist threats and conspiracies”.
• The gathering was supposed to be attended by or joined online by various high-profile political delegations, including hundreds of lawmakers from six continents.

 

Earlier instances:

• Iranian opposition groups in exile have accused Tehran of targeting their events and personnel for years.
• In 2018, Belgian police thwarted a terrorist attack that was supposed to target an Iranian opposition rally outside Paris, after which an Iranian diplomat was convicted for supplying explosives for the plot.
• Albania has expelled a string of Iranian diplomats from the Balkan country over the years, including Tehran’s ambassador to the country in December 2018.

 

How ideology muddled inflation control in India

(GS Paper 3, Economy)

Context:

• The Governor of the Reserve Bank of India reportedly stated that the inflation rate would be brought to its target level of 4% within 24 months.
• It had been above this level for 34 consecutive months already. If the prognosis is correct, by 2024 it would have remained off target for close to five years.
• Approach to inflation:
• In the United States and the United Kingdom, the inflation rate has been off target for a lesser period, but it has lately run at rates close to four times the target.
• Though the characteristics of India’s economy vary substantially when compared to those of the industrialised West, their governments follow the same approach to inflation control, termed ‘inflation targeting’ and implemented by their central banks.

 

Based on Anglo-American economics:

• The approach to inflation currently favoured in Anglo-American economics is the result of an evolution lasting close to a century.
• In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, the world faced an unprecedented crisis with the capitalist economies plunging into depression.
• The central banks were rendered helpless, for monetary policy, the preferred macroeconomic instrument, proved to be impotent under the circumstances.
• The profession responded momentously, through the publication by J.M. Keynes of ‘The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money’.

 

Socialization of Investment:

• It provided the insight that at times, capitalist economies would require “the socialisation of investment”, by which he meant that the state would have to shoulder the burden of maintaining demand in the economy through its fiscal policy.
• At some level, the message that when private investment was depressed public investment must take over, is no more than an application of economic accounting, but the proposal triggered an ideological backlash.
• Not all economists of the time were well disposed to the government intervention and larger public deficits, even when temporary, that was being advocated.

Hitler, through greater public spending on roads and armaments, showed that a market economy would respond to a Keynesian stimuli, and nothing like the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic followed.

Impact of ‘oil shocks’:

• The Keynesian principle continued to work after the war, when the reconstruction of Europe meant that aggregate demand was maintained by public spending on the infrastructure that had been destroyed.
• The consequent unprecedented rise in living standards came to an abrupt end, though, with the two ‘oil shocks’ of the 1970s, when the petroleum exporting countries combined to hike the price of oil. This both sucked demand out of the oil importing countries and gave rise to inflation in them.
• Stagflation, a combination of inflation and stagnant output, followed. It is indeed correct that ‘The General Theory’ was unprepared for this phenomenon, but a complete explanation of it was quickly provided by the Keynesian economist Nicholas Kaldor, and possible solutions identified.
• This did not receive wide enough acknowledgement, however, and a revival of pre-Keynesian economics, with its assumption of a self-regulating economy, occurred.
• Its leader, Milton Friedman, argued that in an unfettered market economy, unemployment would tend towards the ‘natural’ level, where presumably everyone who wishes to work would be working.

 

Inflation targeting:

• Accordingly, public policy should not target unemployment, attempting which could destabilise the economy, and focus on inflation alone. And, inflation was solely a function of money supply growth which must always be controlled.
• Friedman’s assertion of the optimality of the market gained impetus after the collapse of the former Soviet Union. His diagnosis of inflation led to a clamour for central banks to be made independent of politicians and given an exclusive mandate to target inflation.
• The arrangement came to be known as inflation targeting, with the claim that the central bank can fine tune inflation by moving the interest rate. The Anglo-American orientation of India’s policy makers meant that this view of inflation control came to be adopted in this country too.

 

Current scenario:

• The allure of inflation targeting is the implicit premise that the authorities, in this case the central bank of a country, will now be both devoted to and capable of controlling inflation.
• Inflation in the U.S. and the U.K., the epicentres of the Friedmanite revolution in economics, is far higher than the targets set for their central banks by their governments.
• The current situation shows inabilityon the part of the central banksof these countries, to do anything in the face of an inflation sparked off by a rise in commodity prices, notably the price of oil and food.
• Faced with high inflation, Europe’s policymakers exhort that central banks should raise the interest rate further, even if it means triggering a recession.
• A recession works to lower inflation when it does by lowering output, and thereby demand; it cannot increase supply, a shortfall in which had caused the inflation to start with.

 

Failure of monetary policy measures:

• In the face of the evident failure of monetary policy in controlling inflation globally today, central bankers concerned with retaining their relevance make a renewed case for it by arguing that by pursuing a high-interest-rate policy, central banks can ‘anchor’ the expectation of inflation, and thereby inflation itself.
• A central bank can dampen expectations of a depreciation of its national currency so long as it holds sufficient reserves of the dollar.
• No central bank holds stocks of petroleum or wheat. Therefore, it can never directly influence commodity prices.
• Having established itself by arguing that Keynesian economics has no explanation of stagflation, the challenge to it finds its own remedy for inflation discredited.

 

Conclusion:

• In India, there exists published research demonstrating that household expectation of inflation, based on data released by the Reserve Bank of India, is not a determinant of it.
• This makes it difficult to claim that inflation targeting, which is supposed to work via the central bank’s ‘anchoring’ of expectations, works in India.

 

Time for a Indo-US joint space exercise

(GS Paper 2, International Relation)

Context:

• India and the U.S. will undertake joint military drills in October in Auli, Uttarakhand. Auli is at an altitude of 10,000 feet and some 95 km from the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
• The time is ripe for the inaugural India-U.S. joint space military exercise.

 

What it translates?

1. First, this single act will push India’s defence partnership into a new orbit.
2. Second, it will send a strong message to a common adversary.
3. Third, it will have other ripple effects for the wider Quad.

• Space has been singled out as a critical area of cooperation in the recent Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) meeting between India and the U.S.
• For the first time in history, both countries are jointly staring at a common adversary.

 

Space as a military domain:

• In 2019, the U.S. stood up its space force as a branch under the department of the Air Force. At the time, it became the world’s only independent space force.
• In India, historically, space has remained the sole jurisdiction of its civilian space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
• However, the successful demonstration (dubbed Mission Shakti) of anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test in 2019 changed things forever. In 2019, India conducted its first ever simulated space warfare exercise (IndSpaceX) with an eye on Chinese threats.

Furthermore, the launch of the tri-service Defence Space Agency (DSA) has permanently taken the military away from the shadows of civil space. The government has also set up the Defence Space Research Agency (DSRA) to help develop space-based weapons for the DSA. Space is as much recognised as a military domain as land, water, air and cyber.

Fourth domain:

• India and the U.S. do drills on land, in air and at sea, which could be extended to fourth domain, space.
• It will have actionable spill overs for the Quad, transform the moribund DTTI from a talk shop and send the right message to the adversary.
• The lowest hanging fruit would be a joint anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test. It is essentially a missile launched from the Earth’s surface to destroy a satellite passing overhead. Both countries have demonstrated capability in this.
• The test would be against a simulated orbital target as that does not create space debris and is not included in the wording of the U.S. moratorium.
• Eventually, this will lead to other space military collaborations such as directed energy weapons, rendezvous and proximity operations (RPOs),co-orbital ASATs (in space micro satellites as a kinetic kill option), etc.

 

Space programmes:

• France conducted its first space military exercise, ASTERX, in 2021.
• China is marching ahead to the Cis-Lunar space (region beyond the geosynchronous orbit) with an ambition to establish a permanent presence on the Moon by 2024.
• The doctrine in space is still evolving with the U.S. urging partner countries to lay down rules and norms. China and Russia have released a draft binding treaty of their own.
• Red lines and norms will eventually emerge but until then it provides an ideal new theatre to push Indo-U.S. military collaboration forward.
• Space has assets that form the bedrock of the modern economy, GPS (PNT — position navigation timing), telecom networks, early warning systems for missiles and weather forecasts all are enabled by satellites in GEO or LEO orbits.

 

Pushbacks for India:

• First, it will provoke India’s eastern neighbour and compel them to draw a new redline.
• Second, our eastern neighbour will use our western neighbour as a proxy state.
• Third, it will derail the ongoing Core Commanders dialogue in Ladakh.
• Fourth, the United States cannot be trusted.
• Fifth, it will fastback militarisation for space.

 

Way Forward:

• Changing times now require India to innovate on doctrines, technologies and deterrence. Xi Jinping is on his way to building a “world-class” Chinese military by 2049.

If India is to become a space power and if the Indo-U.S. partnership is to become the alliance of alliances, then imaginative steps will be needed.