Daily Current Affairs

India Inc. needs a neurodiverse workplace (GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)

Context:

• The words such as “inclusion” and “diversity” have assumed importance in the vocabulary of most organisations.
• It is no wonder then that organisations are building a more inclusive workforce by hiring employees from different ethnic groups, across gender and social backgrounds.
• Yet, lacking in this exercise is the absence of workers suffering from neurodiversity.

 

Significance of diversity:

• A 2019 McKinsey study revealed that companies with gender diversity were 25% more likely to have above-average profitability while those with ethnic diversity out-rival their competitors by 36%.
• Another report titled ‘India’s Best Workplaces in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion 2021’ states that diverse teams perform better, boost leadership integrity, heighten trust in the organisation’s management and multiply revenue growth.

 

What is neurodiversity?

• Neurodiversity in the workplace refers to including people with neurodivergent conditions such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorders, dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia and Asperger's Syndrome.
• Neurodiversity is a notion that every person interacts and experiences their surroundings differently; there is no right way of thinking, learning, or/and behaving. These differences should not be construed as defects or disorders.
• It is, therefore, unjust that even with all the necessary skill sets and degrees, these persons are denied a job because they may react to situations differently from non-neurodiverse persons. While part of the problem could be lack of awareness about neurodivergent conditions, it is time organisations created a more accommodating environment.
• According to a recent report, nearly 2 million people in India suffer from this neurological and developmental disorder and are therefore identified as autistic.
• Nearly 20% of the world is neurodiverse. In the U.S., it is estimated that 85% of people on the autism spectrum are unemployed compared with 4.2% of the overall population. Hence, there is an urgency to create a work environment that welcomes neurodiverse individuals.

 

More efficient and creative:

• Organisations embracing neurodiversity enjoy a competitive edge in several areas such as efficiency, creativity, and culture.
• A study by JPMorgan Chase shows that professionals in its ‘Autism at Work’ initiative made fewer errors and were 90% to 140% more productive than neurotypicalemployees. Moreover, studies have shown that teams with both neurodivergent and neurotypical members are far more efficient than teams that comprise neurotypical employees alone.
• Neurodivergent individuals possess excellent attention to detail and an uncanny ability to focus on complex and repetitive tasks over a more extended period than their neurotypicalpeers.
• A study by the University of Montreal found that in a test involving completing a visual pattern, people on the autism spectrum could finish their task 40% faster than those who were not on the spectrum.
• Additionally, people with dyslexia havemore robust spatial reasoning,they can think about objects in three dimensions and analyse such objects even with limited information. They have problem-solving capabilities which allow them to see multiple solutions to a problem. They are often out-of-the-box thinkers with average or above-average intelligence.

 

Neurodiversity hiring programmes:

• Companies such as Deloitte, Microsoft, SAP, JPMorgan Chase, and E&Y have introduced neurodiversity hiringprogrammes. Indian-origin companies Hatti Kaapi and Lemon Tree Hotels have also included a neurodiverse workforce.
• Human resources and leadership teams must work together to ensure that the workplace is mindful of and cooperative towards neurodiverse individuals.
• The process of building an inclusive culture includes customising interviews, ensuring day-to-day assistance for these specially abled individuals, and providing proper infrastructure so that they can perform at their optimal levels.
• Thus, organisations must not only remove barriers that obstruct the progress of such individuals but also create conducive conditions for them to achieve their true potential.

 

Right environment:

• Mentorship programmes can benefit some, while others might require professional training on shared social and communication skills.
• Many employees with neurodiversity may find the hustle and bustle of a traditional office disturbing. Therefore, neurodivergent friendly offices catering to the employees’ diverse sensory responses can help ensure that these employees are comfortable in office spaces.
• However, creating the right environment is an ever-evolving exercise that requires openness and a will to change on the employer’s part. This flexibility can result in exceptional benefits with minimal or no additional costs.

 

Way Forward:

• To ensure higher profitability and be respected as a responsible employer globally, companies need to widen their definition of inclusivity by providing higher participation of a neurodiverse workforce.

 

New ICC rules

(Miscellaneous)

 

Why in news?

• The International Cricket Council (ICC) has come up with a host of changes in the rules on playing conditions of cricket. The changes will come into effect on October 1.
• The men’s T20 World Cup, to be held in Australia from October 16 to November 13, will be played in accordance with the new rules.
• The ICC Chief Executives’ Committee has ratified the recommendations from the Men’s Cricket Committee, led by former Indian captain SouravGanguly. The changes were approved by the Women’s Cricket Committee too.

What are the significant changes?

• The practice known as ‘mankading’, a batter being run out by the bowler while backing up too far from the non-striking end has been destigmatised. It has been removed from the section on Unfair Play to the one on Run Out.
• ‘Mankading’ became a topic of discussion after R. Ashwin ran Jos Buttler out in such a manner during an IPL match at Jaipur three years ago.
• It has been considered against the spirit of cricket, a game which has traditionally valued ethics highly, sometimes at the cost of losing a considerable advantage or even a match.
• West Indies fast bowler Courtney Walsh had famously refused to run Pakistan’s SaleemJaffar out by ‘mankading’ in a match at the 1987 World Cup in Lahore. The host had needed two off the last ball when Walsh stopped and warned Jaffar.
• ‘Mankading’ is once again dividing opinions after India’s Deepti Sharma ran England’s Charlie Dean out in the third Womens One Day Internationals (ODI) at Lord’s.

 

Other changes:

• Other changes include the banning of the use of saliva to polish the ball. The ban had already been in place, as a temporary measure, following the COVID-19 outbreak.
• Additionally, some part of the batter or the bat has to remain within pitch. If the batter goes beyond the pitch, the umpire could call it a dead ball. Conversely, if a ball forces the batter to leave the pitch, it will be a no-ball.
• Also from now on the new batter, coming in at the fall of a wicket, should be ready to face the music from ball one: it doesn’t matter if the batters have swapped ends before the catch is taken. Earlier, if the batters had crossed, the new batter would have walked up to the non-striking end.
• In precarious situations, the previous rule would have made life a little easier, especially for a tail-end batter.
• The new batter will also have a little less time to reach the middle.
• The time to take strike has been reduced, for Tests and ODIs, to two minutes, from three. The 90-second deadline stands for T20 Internationals, though.
• A penalty of five runs will be awarded to the batting side for an unfair and deliberate movement while the bowler is running in to bowl. Besides, that ball will be called a ‘dead ball’.
• The ball can now also be deemed dead when a bowler attempts to run down the striking batter who comes down the wicket before the former enters the delivery stride.

 

What about the use of hybrid pitches?

• The hybrid pitches could now be used for ODIs and T20Is, for men and women if both the rival teams agree.
• At present it is used only in women’s matches. The hybrid pitches are made of natural grass (predominantly) and artificial fibre.

 

What about penalising a team for poor over-rate?

• The penalty already in force in T20Is since January 2022 will be adopted in the ODIs as well, but only after the completion of the ICC Cricket World Cup Super League (2020-2023), which is part of the qualification process of the 2023 World Cup (ODI).
• If a team fails to bowl its overs in the given time, an additional fielder will have to be placed inside the 30-yard circle, for the remaining overs. That could make saving runs tougher for the fielding side.

 

Police Reforms in India

(GS Paper 2, Governance)

Context:

• Sixteen years ago, on September 22, 2006, the Supreme Court gave a landmark judgment on police reforms.
• The police fraternity has since been observing September 22 as Police Reforms Day.

Concerns:

• It was generally felt that a new era would begin for the police; that it would become accountable and people-friendly, and that it would give primacy to upholding the rule of law.
• There has been some half-hearted compliance with the judicial directions but generally, the states have shown indifference to the issue of police reforms. 

Need for police reforms:

Colonial legacy:

• The Prime Minister, in his Independence Day speech, gave a clarion call for erasing all the vestiges of colonialism. The Police Act of 1861, which governs substantially the functioning of police even today, is a symbol of colonial rule.
• The Police Act of 1861was promulgated to have a police that would be “politically useful”, one which would ensure the dominance of the imperial masters over a subject people. Significantly, the British devised a system of different policing for themselves, where police officers, according to Lord Denning, were “answerable to the law and the law alone”.
• But, for Indians, they followed the Irish model, which enabled the executive to have complete authority over the police. Unfortunately, the system has not been changed even seven decades after Independence.

 

Economic Impact:

• India have one of the fastest growing economies in the world. However, what most people do not realise is that this progress would have been even faster if the country did not have such serious challenges to its internal security, which sapped the economy of the country.

• According to the Institute for Economics and Peace, violence cost the country 7 per cent of its GDP in 2020. Economic development depends on sound law and order and India can have good law and order only if it have professional police.

 

Political impact:

• India is proud of its democracy. However, it has been vitiated by the infiltration of persons of questionable background.
• The percentage of such people in Parliament has been showing a steady upward trend. It was 24 per cent in 2004, 30 per cent in 2009, 34 per cent in 2014 and 43 per cent in the last election held in 2019.
• The police, under the circumstances, feel hamstrung in taking action against this segment of people and their supporters who have a shady background and who may one day devour the very system that has placed them in power.

 

Internal security challenges:

• The police are not able to deal with the internal security challenges as effectively as they should. Jammu & Kashmir has been witnessing unrest for the last 30 years; the Maoist problem has been festering for more than 50 years and there have been multiple insurgencies in the Northeast for more than 60 years. It is not that these problems cannot be contained.
• Unfortunately, it have no internal security doctrine with the result that the problems are tackled as per the perception of the ruling dispensation at any given point in time. The state police forces are in shambles and find themselves incapable of tackling these problems decisively.

 

Lack of confidence:

• The people, in general, do not have confidence in the police. This is particularly true of the lower strata of society, who feel that there is one law for the poor and another for the rich and powerful. This has to change.
• It will only happen if the police are insulated from the influence of those with political or financial clout.

 

Law & Order:

• The law and order problems are becoming more complex with every passing year. Organised crime has acquired international dimensions. Arms trafficking and drug trafficking do not observe any borders.
•  Cybercrimes are increasing in geometrical progression. These problems require a very high level of sophistication and expertise on the part of the police.
• They would be able to achieve that only if the politicians stop looking at the police as an instrument to promote their narrow partisan ends.

 

Lack of infrastructure:

• The police are not able to deliver partly because of poor infrastructure. There are huge deficiencies in human resources.
• Overall, there is a vacancy of more than 5,00,000 personnel. These must be filled. There is huge scope for improvement in transport, communications and forensics as well.

 

Working conditions:

• The poor housing conditions and long working hours have an adverse impact on police performance. The National Police Commission had recommended 100 per cent family accommodation for all non-gazetted police personnel. The satisfaction level today is hardly 31.24 per cent.
• According to the Status of Policing in India Report, 2019, an average policeman works for 14 hours a day and does not get any weekly off. This takes a heavy toll on his mental and physical health. They should have 12-hour shifts straightaway and gradually aim to achieve eight-hour shifts.

 

Technology inputs:

• There is enormous scope for technological inputs into the functioning of the police. These inputs would act as a force multiplier.
• The Prime Minister, while addressing senior police officers of the country at Lucknow in November 2021, called for the setting up of a high-powered technology mission to adopt future technologies for fulfilling grassroots policing requirements. This needs to be taken up as a priority.

 

CBI & IB:

• The police reforms must extend to its different wings at the Centre also. It is very strange that the CBI does not have statutory support and that this powerful organisation, created on the basis of a resolution passed on April 1, 1963, derives power to investigate from the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946.
• It is an anomalous arrangement. Another powerful organisation, the Intelligence Bureau, which was set up through an administrative order in 1887, also needs a statutory basis.

 

Way Forward:

• The future of India is linked with police reforms. If the country is to progress and emerge as a great power, there is no alternative to radical reforms in the police.

 

Limits of free monetary policy

(GS Paper 3, Economy)

Context:

• The Centre, under section 45ZA of the RBI Act, 1934, has fixed the CPI inflation target at 4% with an “upper tolerance limit” of 6%.

 

Inflation targeting policy:

• When, in May 2016, India adopted inflation targeting as a policy goal enshrined in law, it also embraced the idea of central bank “independence with accountability”.
• Under the new statutory framework, the central government would, in consultation with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), set an inflation target based on the consumer price index (CPI) once every five years. The RBI was entrusted with the responsibility of meeting this target (“accountability”), for which it would be given “independence” in the conduct of monetary policy.
• But in the situation that the economy today is in, the RBI is struggling to be accountable and, at the same time, having to increasingly depend on the government for fulfilling its mandate.

 

Failure of accountability:

• The Centre, under section 45ZA of the RBI Act, 1934, has fixed the CPI inflation target at 4% with an “upper tolerance limit” of 6%. However, actual year-on-year inflation in 2022 has ruled above 6% every single month from January to August.
• If it does so in September as well, the RBI, under section 45ZN of the same law, will have to submit a report to the Centre on “the reasons for failure to achieve the inflation target” and “remedial actions proposed to be taken by the Bank”.
• In this case, “failure” is defined as inflation being more than the upper tolerance level of the target “for any three consecutive quarters”.

 

Trend from April 2014 to August 2022:

• During the Narendra Modi government’s first term, roughly from April 2014 to March 2019 (Modi 1.0), CPI inflation was above 6% only in 6 out of 60 months. Moreover, 5 of those 6 months were in 2014, well before the RBI Act was amended to provide a statutory basis for inflation targeting.
• Overshooting of the inflation target has been more during the Modi government’s second term (Modi 2.0). In the 41 months from April 2019, inflation has exceeded 6% in as many as 21.
• In other words, a failure rate of over 50%, as against 10% during Modi 1.0. Also, average CPI inflation was 4.5% during Modi 1.0, whereas it has been 5.7% so far in Modi 2.0. 

Reason for this situation:

• There’s a simple reason for the RBI’s “failure” to adhere to its inflation-targeting mandate. It has to do with food and beverage items, which have a combined 45.86% weight in the overall CPI.
• During Modi 1.0, food inflation was lower than general inflation in 38 out of the 60 months, with the former averaging just 3.5%. Thus, while inflation overall was benign (average of 4.5%), food inflation was even more so.
• It has been quite the other way round during Modi 2.0, with average CFPI inflation, at 6.3%, more than the 5.7% for general inflation. Also, food inflation has been lower than CPI inflation in only 21 out of 41 months.
• While CPI inflation has risen and overshot the 6% target, especially in recent months, the acceleration has been all the more for food inflation since late-2021. The latter has also tended to exhibit greater volatility during Modi 2.0.
• Simply put, both the “success” of inflation targeting in Modi 1.0 and “failure” in Modi 2.0 has been largely courtesy of food prices.

 

Monetary dependence:

• That links up to the second issue of monetary policy independence,which basically refers to the central bank being insulated from government interference or electoral pressure in setting its interest rates with a view to achieving low and stable inflation. 
• The preponderant weight of food items in the Indian consumption basket and hence its CPI, in contrast to developed countries where their shares are hardly 10-25%  makes inflation that much less amenable to control through repo interest rate or cash reserve ratio hikes. The RBI, then, is forced to rely more on government action to meet inflation targets.
• Far from acting independently using monetary policy tools that seek to curb demand by raising borrowing costs for firms and consumers, it has to depend on “supply-side” measures by the government. That translates into monetary dependence, not independence.

 

Supply side action by GoI:

• In the last one year, the effective import duty on crude and refined palm oil has come down from 30.25% and 41.25% to 5.5% and 13.75%, respectively. It’s been even sharper, from 30.25% to nil for crude soyabean and sunflower oil.
• On May 13, 2022the government banned exports of wheat. This was extended to wheat flour  includingatta, maida and rava/ sooji (semolina) in August.
• On September 8, exports of broken rice were prohibited. Besides, a 20% duty was imposed on shipments of all other non-parboiled non-basmati rice.
• On May 24, sugar exports were moved from the “free” to “restricted” category. Further, total exports for the 2021-22 sugar year (October-September) were capped at 10 million tonnes, which was raised to 11.2 million tonnes on August 1. The export quota for the next sugar year is yet to be announced.
• On August 12, the Centre directed states and union territories to force pulses traders/millers to declare their stocks of tur (pigeon-pea) and upload this information on a weekly basis.

 

Implications:

• The framework of inflation targeting and central bank “independence with accountability” worked well during Modi 1.0. That period was characterised by benign food (and fuel) prices, both domestic and globally.
• The RBI could, therefore, act in almost splendid isolation and pursue its goal of price stability without being constrained by government intervention or even fiscal policy.
• Things have been different in Modi 2.0. The last two years or less have seen a resurgence of inflation, driven mainly by supply-side factors;from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine to extreme weather events. The last includes excess rain during September-January 2021-22, the heat wave in March-April and the deficient monsoon in the Gangetic plain states this time.
• These  along with skyrocketing prices of fuel, which have a 6.84% weight in the CPI, over and above the 45.86% of food, have rendered the RBI’s demand-side toolkit to fight inflation ineffective.