News Analysis 29 Sept, 2022

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

1. Permanent membership of the UNSC is another story
2. Story of India’s Dairy Sector
3. India’s Geospatial Sector

Theme : Agricultural Marketing,  Important International institutions, agencies and fora-their structures, Agricultural Marketing, Awareness In The Fields Of It, Space, Computers, Robotics
Paper : GS - 3, GS - 2

UNSC :

• The Security Council was established by the UN Charter in 1945.
• It is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations.
• Its primary responsibility is to work to maintain international peace and security.
• The council is headquartered at NewYork.

 TABLE OF CONTENT

1. Context
2. UNSC
3. Mandate of UNSC
4. How can India use UNSC to  protect its interests?
5. Present scenario of UNSC membership
6. How does the membership change?
7. Road Ahead

1. Permanent membership of the UNSC is another story.

Theme : Important International institutions, agencies and fora-their structures

Paper : GS - 2

Context : There is a buzz in India about the prospects of the country becoming a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

UNSC :

• The Security Council was established by the UN Charter in 1945.
• It is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations.
• Its primary responsibility is to work to maintain international peace and security.
• The council is headquartered at NewYork.

• The council has 15 members:

  • Five(5) permanent members

  • Ten(10) non-permanent members elected for two-year terms

• Each year, the General Assembly elects five non-permanent members (out of ten in total) for a two-year term.

• The ten non-permanent seats are distributed on a regional basis.
• The council’s presidency is a capacity that rotates every month among its 15 members.
• Permanent members: United States, the Russian Federation, France, China and the United Kingdom

Mandate of UNSC :

• Ensuring international peace and security
• Recommending the admission of new UN members to the General Assembly (UNGA)
• Approving any changes to the UN Charter
• Establishing peacekeeping operations
• Enacting international sanctions
• Authorizing military action

How can India use UNSC to  protect its interests?

• Veto: India needs to be circumspect about vetoes.
• Support to Russia: Russians have bailed India out on many occasions on the question of Kashmir.Russia helped India by vetoing unfavorable resolutions during the war of Bangladesh liberation in 1971.
• Negative vote: We must rule out either Britain or America from casting a negative vote against Pakistan
• Chinese hostility: India can be sure of Chinese hostility towards India for a long time.

Present scenario of UNSC membership :

• G4: There are four declared candidates for permanent membership: India, Japan, Brazil and Germany, called the G-4.
• Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean are unrepresented in the permanent category at present.

• Africa’s claim for two permanent seats: It has wide understanding and support

  • Africans are yet to decide which two countries these are to be.

• India:

  • India can discount Pakistan’s opposition.

  • China will not support India nor will it ever support Japan.

  • India will have to be a package deal involving countries from other groups.

• Brazil: It has regional opponents and claimants.

• Germany: Italy is firmly opposed to its claim.
• Germany and Japan: Both Axis powers during the Second World War, that would leave out only Italy, the third founding member of the Axis group.

How does the membership change?

• Amendment: Changing the membership of the Council requires amending the Charter.
• Two-third of total membership: It involves consent of two-thirds of the total membership of the U N, including the concurring votes of P-5.
• Veto power: Each of the five has a veto.
• Non-permanent seats: The Charter was amended once in the 1960s to enlarge the Council by additional non-permanent seats.
• Consensus: Even if the proposal to add a few non-permanent seats only, it would be adopted with near unanimity or even by consensus.

Road Ahead :

• Semi-permanent members: A distinguished group of experts suggested that a new category of semi-permanent members should be created.Countries would be elected for a period of eight to 10 years and would be eligible for re-election.
• Membership without veto: If India is offered or manages to obtain permanent membership without veto, we must grab it.

 TABLE OF CONTENT

1. Context
2. Significance of Dairy Sector
3. Challenges to Dairy Sector
4. Steps needed for Improvement
5. Case Study: AMUL: Cooperative Model
6. Government Initiatives
7. Road Ahead

2. Story of India’s Dairy Sector.

Theme : Agricultural Marketing

Paper : GS - 3

Context :
India is witnessing the spread of the Lumpy Skin Disease infection and At the same time, India also hosted the World Dairy Summit 2022 after a gap of 48 years.

Significance of Dairy Sector :

• Acts as a buffer: Milk animals act as a buffer for farmers during droughts and flood conditions. Also, milk animals are more evenly distributed among farmers than on agricultural land.
• Not a seasonal occupation: Dairying is not a seasonal occupation like farming as milk and milk products can be produced throughout the year thus leading to the year generation of income.
• Highly nutritious: Milk is considered a ‘Whole meal’. Dairy products are highly nutritious with high amounts of proteins and calcium, thus helping tackle malnutrition in India. For this reason, several state governments are trying to add Milk to their school’s Mid-day meal scheme.
• Huge Employment Generation: the dairy sector employs around 80 million people from milk-producing farmers in rural areas to milk distributors in urban areas.
• Promotes women empowerment: most of the milking work in rural areas is done by women. They also work as collectors and suppliers of milk to village milk collection centers. This helps rural women earn some income and automatically promotes women empowerment.
• Boosting other sectors: the dairy sector promotes the growth of multiple other sectors like fodder industries, organic manure manufacturing, and food processing industries like Curd, cheese, paneer manufacturing.

Challenges to Dairy Sector :

• Low productivity of Indian dairy animals: Improving the productivity of farm animals is one of the major challenges. The average annual milk yield of Indian cattle is 1172 kg which is only about 50% of the global average.
• Disease outbreaks: The Frequent outbreaks of diseases like Food and Mouth Diseases, Black Quarter infection, Influenza etc. continue to affect Livestock health and lowers productivity.
• Limited success in cross-breeding: Crossbreeding of indigenous species with exotic stocks to enhance the genetic potential of different species has been successful only to a limited extent.
• Supply Chain issues: which include collection, pasteurization and transportation of milk in a safe environment. Since 60% of the dairy industry lies in informal dairy, it becomes difficult to ensure regular flow and quality of milk. That is why the adulteration of milk remains a perennial issue in India.
• Unorganized Nature: The unorganized nature of the dairy farming industry has resulted in minimal penetration of technological progress within the sector. This has further led to consistently high wastage as well as a lack of standardization in terms of quality and quantity.
• Data Deficiency: Informality of the sector also leads to a lack of data regarding total milk production, wastage of milk, and financial flows in the sector which further inhibits the formalization of the sector.
• Low returns: there have been perennial complaints from milk farmers about low milk purchase prices paid to them by milk companies as compared to the final milk price in the market. This leads to the cornering of profits by companies while actual producers get poor returns.

Steps needed for Improvement :

• Improving artificial insemination: to improve cow breeds and thus better milk yield per animal.
• Improving animal fodder: designing animal fodder on scientific lines rather than old dry grass-based fodder.
• Improving Vaccination coverage: of milch animals against several diseases to prevent the frequent disease outbreak in an animal thus maintaining a sustained and healthy supply of milk.
• Ensuring more prices to farmers: as they are the actual producers of the milk. For this, rather than giving more weightage to fat percentage in milk as a determinant of milk price, more quantity and quality to be taken as parameters.
• Price support: to farmers to improve animal fodders, ensure vaccination and afford veterinary services on time. This ensures animal health and productivity and thus farmers’ prosperity.
• More cooperatives: Forming new cooperatives of farmers to more formalization of the dairy sector and thus better milk quality and quantity in the market. It will also generate more data that can be used in further planning in the dairy sector and hence better resource mobilization.
• Improve cold storage and transportation: more refrigerated trucks must be employed for a faster and fresh delivery of dairy products.
• More dairy sector-related research: should be promoted from production to logistics. Production data analysis and demand analysis should be done to cater better to the needs of the producers and consumers.
• Promote more start-ups: and new private dairies in the dairy industry like Country Delight, fresh to home, big basket etc. This will help increase competition in the market and thus break the monopolies of a few big names and bring down prices.

Case Study: AMUL: Cooperative Model :

• Anand Milk Union Limited or AMUL has created its name and reputation over the years delivering quality milk products to the entire country and now the world. 
• Amul’s story started in 1946 with inspiration from Sardar Patel, when farmers established a cooperative named ‘Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers Union Limited’ (KDCMPUL) in a village called Anand.
• Amul has a three-tiered structure. First, every milk producer in the village is a member of the Village Dairy Cooperative Society. These members elect their representatives. These representatives together manage District Milk Unions, which form the second tier.
• These district milk unions take care of milk and milk products and their processing. They sell these products to the State Milk Federation which forms the third tier. State Milk Federation then acts as the distributor that sells or facilitates the selling of the products in the market. The revenue gets shared downwards in a similar fashion.
• The dairy is in control of the villagers themselves. Farmer organizations come together under one umbrella of Amul and directly sell products to consumers through the state milk federation.
• This elimination of intermediaries could ensure a good quality product at a competitive price. This provided a stable income for marginal farmers in lean seasons as well because there are no intermediaries to take the chunk.
• This model has become a case study in business schools. It showed the success of cooperatives. It showed how the benefits trickle down from the market to the producer at the bottom of the pyramid. Recently, Union Cooperative minister Amit Shah commented that the Amul model can go beyond the milk and dairy sector and produce great results in other sectors also.

Government Initiatives :

• Dairy Processing and Infrastructure Development Fund: The scheme aims to provide a subsidized loan of @6.5% to capital-stressed milk cooperatives for primarily replacing their decades-old chilling and processing plants and addition of value-added product plants.
• Animal Husbandry infrastructure development fund: This scheme aims to help to increase meat processing capacity and product diversification thereby providing greater access for unorganized Dairy producers to organize the Dairy market.
• National Programme for Dairy Development: The objective of the scheme is to create and strengthen dairy infrastructure for procurement, processing and marketing of milk and milk products by the State Implementing Agencies (SIAs) i.e. State Cooperative Dairy Federations/ District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union.
• Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana: PM Kisan SAMPADA Yojana is a comprehensive package which will result in the creation of modern infrastructure with efficient supply chain management from farm gate to retail outlet.
• Kisan Credit Cards (KCC) to Livestock Farmers: The Kisan Credit Card scheme aims at providing adequate and timely credit support from the banking system under a single window with flexible and simplified procedures to the animal husbandry and fisheries farmers for their working capital requirements. 

Road Ahead :

• With start-ups entering the industry and addressing gaps in livestock management and supply chain, the situation is beginning to change, ushering in a new era of growth for the industry, rooted in digitalisation.
• The need of the hour is to address these challenges holistically to usher in ‘White Revolution 2.0’ in India and achieve the target of the government of a liquid milk production capacity of 255 MMT by 2022.

TABLE OF CONTENT

1. Context
2. India’s Geospatial Sector
3. Challenges
4. Recommendations

3. India’s Geospatial Sector.

Theme :  Awareness In The Fields Of It, Space, Computers, Robotics

Paper : GS - 3

Context :
New guidelines deregulated the Geospatial sector for Indians last year.

India’s Geospatial Sector :

• India has a robust ecosystem in geospatial, with the Survey of India (SoI), the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), remote sensing application centres (RSAC)s, and the National Informatics Centre (NIC) in particular, and all ministries and departments, in general, using geospatial technology.
• However, the full benefits have yet to percolate to the public; neither is there much contribution to the nation’s GDP.
• The Prime Minister’s speech during Independence Day and mention of geospatial in the Union Budget have created the necessary buzz.
• The last year has also witnessed some activity on the ground.
• The most noticeable was the over subscription of the initial public offering of MapmyIndia.
• The other noticeable activity was the launching of a city mapping programme by Genesys International in India.
• Such an aggressive stance by investors for geospatial was not seen in the earlier regime; it is certain that the new guidelines have played a role.

Challenges :

• Lack of demand: There is no demand for geospatial services and products on a scale linked to India’s potential and size.This is mainly due to the lack of awareness among potential users in government and private sectors.
• Lack of skilled manpower: The other hurdle has been the lack of skilled manpower across the entire pyramid.
• Unavailability of foundation data: The unavailability of foundation data, especially at high-resolution, is also a constraint.
• Lack of clarity on data sharing: The lack of clarity on data sharing and collaboration prevents co-creation and asset maximization.
• Lastly, barring a few cases, there are still no ready-to-use solutions especially built to solve the problems of India.

Recommendations :

• Publish policy document: First and foremost is the need to publish the entire policy document and make government and private users aware of things.
• Data sharing protocol: The data available with government departments should be unlocked, and data sharing should be encouraged and facilitated.
• Standards: The Government needs to invest in developing standards and must mandate the adoption of standards
• Foundation data: While different types of data will be produced on a project-to-project basis, there is a need to generate foundation data across India.
• This should include the Indian national digital elevation model (InDEM), data layers for cities, and data of natural resources.
• Local technology and solutions should be promoted, and competition should be encouraged for quality output.
• As the new guidelines prevent high-accuracy data being stored in overseas clouds, there is a need to develop a geospatial data cloud locally and facilitate a solution as service.

3. India’s Geospatial Sector.

Theme :  Awareness In The Fields Of It, Space, Computers, Robotics

Paper : GS - 3

Context :
New guidelines deregulated the Geospatial sector for Indians last year.

India’s Geospatial Sector :

• India has a robust ecosystem in geospatial, with the Survey of India (SoI), the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), remote sensing application centres (RSAC)s, and the National Informatics Centre (NIC) in particular, and all ministries and departments, in general, using geospatial technology.
• However, the full benefits have yet to percolate to the public; neither is there much contribution to the nation’s GDP.
• The Prime Minister’s speech during Independence Day and mention of geospatial in the Union Budget have created the necessary buzz.
• The last year has also witnessed some activity on the ground.
• The most noticeable was the over subscription of the initial public offering of MapmyIndia.
• The other noticeable activity was the launching of a city mapping programme by Genesys International in India.
• Such an aggressive stance by investors for geospatial was not seen in the earlier regime; it is certain that the new guidelines have played a role.

Challenges :

• Lack of demand: There is no demand for geospatial services and products on a scale linked to India’s potential and size.This is mainly due to the lack of awareness among potential users in government and private sectors.
• Lack of skilled manpower: The other hurdle has been the lack of skilled manpower across the entire pyramid.
• Unavailability of foundation data: The unavailability of foundation data, especially at high-resolution, is also a constraint.
• Lack of clarity on data sharing: The lack of clarity on data sharing and collaboration prevents co-creation and asset maximization.
• Lastly, barring a few cases, there are still no ready-to-use solutions especially built to solve the problems of India.

Recommendations :

• Publish policy document: First and foremost is the need to publish the entire policy document and make government and private users aware of things.
• Data sharing protocol: The data available with government departments should be unlocked, and data sharing should be encouraged and facilitated.
• Standards: The Government needs to invest in developing standards and must mandate the adoption of standards
• Foundation data: While different types of data will be produced on a project-to-project basis, there is a need to generate foundation data across India.
• This should include the Indian national digital elevation model (InDEM), data layers for cities, and data of natural resources.
• Local technology and solutions should be promoted, and competition should be encouraged for quality output.
• As the new guidelines prevent high-accuracy data being stored in overseas clouds, there is a need to develop a geospatial data cloud locally and facilitate a solution as service.