 Dear viewers, thank you for actively participating in Main Storming Scholarship Test. We got a tremendous response from you and evaluation of your answers is currently going on. The results will be published in coming days and the date of publication of results will be announced in Hindu News Analysis. And the link for reference material for day 3 question is given in the description and also in the comment section. The reference material link will be enabled after 9pm today. With this, let us move on to Hindu News Analysis. The list of topics chosen for today's discussion along with the page numbers is given here for your reference. Let us take up this comment column from today's newspaper. In this news column, the author tries to explain the two programs of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. The two programs are Faced Manufacturing Program and the Production Linked Incentive Scheme. So let us discuss these two schemes in detail and issues surrounding them. The relevant syllabus is given here for your reference. See, in 2016-17, Ministry of Electronics launched the Faced Manufacturing Program to promote indigenous manufacturing of mobile phones, their sub-assemblies, parts or inputs of sub-assemblies. So this scheme is aimed to promote domestic production of mobile phones by providing tax relief and other incentives on components and other accessories. So simply put, this scheme aims to make India a mobile manufacturing hub of the world over a period of next few years. So the author says that this PMP scheme incentivized the manufacturing of these accessories by increasing the basic customs duty on the import of these accessories. So which means, so government is giving incentives to manufacture the mobile phones in India rather than importing them from neighboring countries. So the production increased from $13.4 billion to $31.7 billion in 2019-20. Though the production has increased significantly, the author cites poor value addition domestically. So as per annual survey of industries that is ASI, in 2017-18, the value addition for surveyed firms ranged from 1.6% to 17.4%. And most of the firms' value addition is below 10%. So in majority of these surveyed firms, more than 85% of inputs were imported. So what companies are doing is, they are importing the inputs from China, South Korea, Vietnam and they are just assembling those inputs in India. So it led to India becoming an assembling hub rather than manufacturing hub. So in case of other countries like China, Vietnam, Korea and Singapore, they have exported more mobile phone parts than imports. So this indicates the presence of value addition facilities in those countries. So in those countries, companies were first manufacturing the input products and then they are assembling the input products into mobile phones. So according to the author, in India during 2019, import of mobile phone parts were 25 times the exports. This clearly indicates that while faced manufacturing program increased the value of domestic production, much needed to be done to improve local value addition. And not just that, last year, Taiwan contested the PMP tariffs in WTO. So if WTO decides against the PMP tariffs offered by India, then Indian market will be flooded with imports of mobile phones. This will further trouble the local assembly of mobile phones. And there is one more scheme called production-linked incentive offered by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. So under this scheme, a financial incentive is offered to large scale electronics manufacturers to boost domestic manufacturing. It also aims to attract large investments in the electronics value chain including mobile phones, electronic components and assembly testing, marking and packaging units. So under this scheme, a incentive of 4-6% on incremental sales of goods manufacturing in India are covered and incentives are offered for a period of around 5 years. The base year is 2019-20. So if a company improves their sales compared to financial year 2019-20, those extra sales will be given an incentive of around 4-6%. And author says that even under this scheme, focus remained on increasing value of domestic production and not on local value addition. Here author cites a study which says that effective cost with subsidies and other benefits of mobile phone manufacturing in India including PLI is much more than that of China. See for example, without subsidies, if a mobile phone costs around 100 rupees, then the effective cost which includes subsidies is around 79 in China, 89 in Vietnam and it is around 92 in India. So even after offering schemes like PMP and PLI, the cost of mobile phone manufacturing is still high in India compared to Vietnam and China. So because of this reason, it is very unlikely that mobile manufacturing companies will move from China to India. Even if they move out of China, Vietnam is offering a better alternative compared to India. And according to author, domestic firms have been nearly wiped out from the Indian market. Also their exports in last years is awful compared to foreign firms like Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, etc. So domestic firms might not be able to take advantage of PLI policy and grab a sizable domestic market share. And finally the author stresses on need for supply chain co-location. See in a mobile manufacturing ecosystem, the manufacturing company should co-locate or share facility with its suppliers. For example, Samsung has huge investments in both Vietnam and in India. But in Vietnam, Samsung has co-located with its foreign suppliers to produce intermediate inputs. But in India, Samsung has not co-located its supply chain. So it is getting intermediate products from foreign countries and just assembling them in India. So the author feels that Indian policy should focus on moving assemblers and component manufacturers together. So this will encourage domestic value addition and hence import substitution. So this is all about this news article discussion. Let us move on to next news article. Let us take up this news article which talks about recently approved STARS project. See STARS stands for Strengthening, Teaching, Learning and Results for States. It is a centrally sponsored scheme under Ministry of Education. See what is the objective of this scheme? See the STARS project will support the states in developing, implementing, evaluating and improving interventions with direct linkages to improved education outcomes. See STARS program also encourage schools to work transition strategies for improved labour market outcomes. This project is partially funded by World Bank. Additionally know that the overall focus and components of STARS project are aligned with objectives of national education policy of 2020. The project envisions improving the overall monitoring and measurement activities in Indian school education system through interventions in selected states. Another important objective is to support Ministry of Education's effort to establish a national assessment centre called PARAC. PARAC stands for Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for holistic development. Its task is to leverage the experience of states selected for the STARS project by collecting, curating, sharing these experiences with other states through online portals and social media. Further, STARS project includes a contingency emergency response component. So this would enable it to be more responsive to any natural, man-made and health disasters. Simply put, because of COVID-19, entire education system in India is in chaos. So under the STARS project, an emergency response component is added to prepare for future disasters. So this component helps the government in responding to situations leading to loss of learning such as school closures, infrastructure damage, inadequate facilities, etc. And coming to its implementation, STARS project covers six states, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala and Odisha. So these states will be supported for various interventions for improving the quality of education. Besides this project, a similar project funded by ADB, that is Asian Development Bank, will be implemented in Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Assam. So all these states will partner with other states for sharing their experiences and best practices. See in exam point of view, we have to know what is STARS, it comes under which ministry, what are the objectives and what are the important components. We have talked about emergency response component today. So these are the important things regarding STARS project. Let us move on to next news article discussion. This oped article is with reference to shift in RBI's approach, wherein RBI is shifting away from its rigid inflation targeting policy. The article also talks about the Philips curve and its relevance in the present context. So today we will try to understand why is RBI shifting away and what is Philips curve. The relevant syllabus is given here for your reference. See like RBI which is central bank of India, federal reserve is the central bank of USA. So after COVID struck the US economy, the federal reserve has indicated that it will no longer raise interest rates in anticipation of inflation. So what does it mean? Why do we raise interest rates when inflation is coming? We will try to understand now. Why central banks raise interest rates in anticipation of inflation is to handle demand pull inflation. See in demand pull inflation there is more demand as a result the prices of goods will rise. So what happens in demand pull inflation is there will be more money supply in the economy. When there is more money supply it results in more money with the public chasing less number of goods. So when the sellers are unable to meet the increase in demand by additional supply the prices of goods will increase. See for example there are 100 mobile phones in market and there are 100 people who are ready to buy those 100 phones. So demand and supply are matching. For example the demand has increased it means now 150 people are ready to purchase mobile phones but still only 100 are available. So then what happens demand is more supply is less so automatically the prices of goods will increase. So to handle such inflation RBI generally increases the key interest rates like reporate. So when reporate is increased that is banks borrowing from RBI automatically banks will also increase the interest rate for consumers. So money available with the public in the form of loans will be decreased. So this will control the credit supply in the economy and the inflation is expected to be brought under control. But author observes that COVID has changed this thought. Very recently the consumer price inflation that is CPI for the month of September has been released. So according to it the CPI in September is around 7.34% which is higher than the final estimate for August. For August the CPI was 6.69 so the inflation is increasing. Here author states that though the economic output that is GDP contracted by more than 23% in the first quarter of this year the inflation rate did not come down. So at this stage what RBI has to do is the question. So should RBI increase the interest rates or should it keep them unchanged. So what happened was in the recent monetary policy committee meeting which was held in last week all the members of MPC voted for keeping the policy reporate unchanged. So they are not decreasing or increasing the reporate. So this is what author calls as shift from rigid inflation targeting policy. See our inflation target is 4 plus or minus 2%. So maximum is 6, minimum is 2. But we have observed that inflation is more than 7. Still RBI is not increasing reporates to control inflation. Had RBI followed inflation targeting rigidly it should have raised the policy reporate. But RBI is not increasing the reporate. So this is today's main point of discussion that is RBI is changing its rigid inflation targeting policy. And next the increase in CPA inflation is mainly because of food prices along with imported inflation. See when the general price level rises in a country because of the rise in prices of imported commodities such inflation is called as imported inflation. So as a result of these factors the author states that a macroeconomic contraction nothing but GDP growth reduction need not lower inflation. So until now we thought that whenever GDP falls automatically inflation also falls. But this time what is happening is completely reverse. Macroeconomic contraction we are witnessing but inflation is also rising on the other hand. So all the economic models which we are using currently have become irrelevant due to new economic realities. So we should have a more broad based model which can reflect the current economic realities. Then author talks about Phillips curve. He says that if the Phillips curve exists inflation should have come down. So what is Phillips curve? See Phillips curve shows that inflation and unemployment have a stable and inverse relationship. Which means more inflation than less unemployment. Less inflation than more unemployment. See according to this concept with economic growth comes inflation which in turn should lead to more jobs and less unemployment. As you can see in this graph when inflation is higher unemployment is around 3%. But when inflation came down to 2% unemployment is 6%. But what happened during COVID-19? People lost their jobs which means more unemployment but still inflation is increasing. So author concludes that Phillips curve does not hold for the present times. So that is why the US Federal Reserve has indicated that it will no longer raise interest rates in anticipation of inflation. And RBI also appears to have followed the same strategy by not raising the key policy report. So these are some of the information with reference to analysis of this news article. We have talked about the shift in RBI's approach towards inflation and how current economic models have become irrelevant. And also we ended with talking about Phillips curve. So to know more about RBI's role in inflation targeting and other GDP measures. Please watch our 9th and 10th October Hindu news analysis to get more detailed understanding of this topic. The practice question will be discussed at the end of session. This opiate column talks about three incidents of violence, inhumanity and blatant discrimination which highlight the problems of caste, race and gender. The first one which caused global uproar the murder of George Floyd who was killed by a white policeman when he was pinned down on the road. Second an employee of Cisco systems belonging to scheduled caste faced discrimination in companies American headquarters. And third a female doctor at Ames Delhi belonging to depressed classes attempted suicide because of the harassment by a senior on caste and gender grounds. And many of us are already aware of Hatra's incident. And on daily basis we come across lot of such incidents which are highly discriminatory. So author states that one of the ways to tackle and eliminate such evil discriminatory practices is by enforcing accountability. So there must be institutional accountability as such discrimination and inhuman acts mostly happen in the campus. And with reference to caste discrimination we have SCST prevention of atrocities act of 1989. And with reference to sexual harassment at workplace there is sexual harassment of women at workplace act of 2013. But many times it was found that the supervisory authorities in those institutions are more into protecting the company's reputation rather than standing by the victim. Therefore it is very important to have necessary arrangements to ensure institutional accountability. So next there must also be a robust victim friendly reporting environment so as to adequately deal with such offenses. There should be crime victimization service wherein all the stakeholders like employees, students or participants should be involved. This is very important as only very few take it to formal reporting like reporting to police or to internal complaints committee. So from this news article what can be inferred is even though we are having lot of legislations to protect depressed classes women from discrimination, enforcement wise they are not satisfactory. So these examples can be used in our main answer writing. So these are some of the points which can be taken from this news article. Let us move on to next news article discussion. Next let us take up this news article from page one. The news is that Supreme Court upheld Tamil Nadu government's authority to notify an elephant corridor. The news also talks about Sigur Platu which is ecologically fragile. In this context let us see what is an elephant corridor, what is a keystone species and also a little geography about Sigur Platu. The relevant syllabus is given here for your reference. See we all know that elephant is recognized as national heritage animal and also given strict level of protection under schedule one of Wildlife Protection Act of 1972. Despite that the Asian elephant is in a lot of trouble in these days. See we have discussed Asian elephants in our 19th August Hindu news analysis. That day we saw the distribution of elephant in India, the threats faced by them and also their distribution across the country. We also talked about Project Elephant which is a centrally sponsored scheme launched in 1992. And through this scheme government helps in protection and management of elephants. It also ensures the protection of elephant corridors and elephant habitats for the survival of elephant population in the wild. So what is an elephant corridor? First we will see what is wildlife corridor. See wildlife corridor is an inherent geographical linkage which facilitate movement of tigers or other wild animals from one source area to another. So when we say elephant corridor it is a linkage between two sources which facilitate the movement of elephants. So elephant corridors can be defined as connections, linkages or connections which allow elephants to move between secure habitats without being disturbed by humans. But because of humans ever growing need for land and due to developmental activities like laying roads, railways, agriculture, mining the natural spaces of elephants have declined a lot. So if more forest is fragmented the farther an elephant herd has to roam in search of food and water. And as the forest lands continue to be lost these relatively narrow and linear patches of vegetation nothing but elephant corridors form vital linkages between larger forest patches. So elephants can move from one forest patch to other forest patch in search of food. Further we should know that elephants are genetically programmed to never inbreed within their birth family. So they have to move around between different gene pools to reproduce. So these corridors aid this process by helping different elephant populations to intermingle which is essential for ensuring their survival. So you can understand that elephant corridors are very important to have a surviving population of elephants. And know that these corridors are notified by concerned state governments wherever elephant ranges are present. We also said that elephant is a keystone species. So what is a keystone species? So whenever we say keystone species it means an organism which helps us to define an entire ecosystem. So without its keystone species the ecosystem would be dramatically different or cease to exist altogether. And not just that these keystone species have very low functional redundancy. See it means that if a keystone species disappear from the ecosystem no other species would be able to fill its ecological niche. So the ecosystem would be forced to radically change allowing new and possibly invasive species to populate the habitat. But don't think that keystone species will always be the largest animal in the ecosystem. See keystone species can be as small as fungi to as big as an elephant. As we just said they are not always the largest or most abundant species in an ecosystem. So as elephant is a keystone species they play a very important role in maintaining the biodiversity of ecosystems. For example when elephants eat they create gaps in vegetation. These gaps allow new plants to grow and create pathways for other smaller animals to use. They are also one of the major ways in which trees disperse their seeds. Some species entirely rely upon elephants for their seed dispersal. So from this you can understand that elephants play a very vital role in maintaining the biodiversity of an ecosystem. And today's news article also talks about Sigur Plateau where the elephant corridors are present. See Sigur Plateau is located at the center of Nilgiri Hills and Eastern Guards. It is a crucial area of wildlife habitat as it links two regions Western Guards and Eastern Guards. And coming to its forest type it contains dry deciduous forests. And the Sigur Plateau is bounded by Moyar Gorge in the north, Moyar river on the east, Vayanad in the west and Nilgiri in the south. And there are five major streams in the Sigur Plateau which are Moyar, Sigur, Avarahala, Kedahala and Gundatihala. All these rivers originate in Nilgiri Plateau. And very importantly we have to note that this Sigur Plateau connects Western Guards and Eastern Guards thereby sustaining elephant population and their genetic diversity. So this is all about the discussion of this news article. We have talked about elephant, what is an elephant corridor, what is a keystone species and the geography of Sigur Plateau. See we all know that the Nilgiri's and Western Guards are very known for biodiversity. But in the recent years in the name of development, a lot of encroachments have been made which led to reduction of biodiversity. So government has to ensure that the development activities will go hand in hand with wildlife and their diversity. Let us move on to practice questions discussion session. Consider the following statements. Four statements are given here. The Moyar Gorge separates this Plateau from Mysoregine. Statement 2. It connects Western and Eastern Guards. Statement 3. The west part of Sigur Plateau consists of dry deciduous forests. While eastern part has more scrub jungle. Statement 4. The area has been identified as a crucial corridor for Indian elephant. Which of the following Plateaus are being referred in the above statements? See we all know that the answer is option B. Sigur Plateau. See in options A, C and D, clearly they reflect the geographical areas. For example, Meghalaya which is in northeastern part of country. But the second statement says that it connects western and eastern Guards. So option A can be eliminated. Option C, Chodanagpur Plateau. Again same logic and even Malwa Plateau. Option C and D are in central part of India. So they cannot connect western and eastern Guards. So the answer is option B. Sigur Plateau. Consider the following statements with reference to Keystone species. Statement 1. It refers to those species which have an extremely high impact on a particular ecosystem relative to its population. Here statement 1 is correct. Statement 2. They are always the largest or most abundant species in an ecosystem. Be careful. Statement 2 is incorrect because Keystone species are not always the largest species. We have said that even fungi can be a Keystone species. So statement 2 is incorrect. Correct answer is option A, 1 only. Consider the following statements with reference to Sigur Plateau. Statement 1. It is a part of Karbi Meghalaya Plateau. Statement 2. The area has been identified as a crucial corridor for Indian elephant. Which of the statements given above is or are correct? We all know that statement 1 is incorrect because Sigur Plateau is in southern part of India. And statement 2 is correct. So correct answer is option B, 2 only. Which of the following is best described with reference to Phillips curve in economics? Correct answer is option D. That is inflation and unemployment have a stable and inverse relationship. If you see option A talks about Cousinets curve. Industrializing nations experience a rise and subsequent decline in income inequality. And statement B talks about Laffer curve. Sometimes cutting tax rates can increase total tax revenue. And option C talks about Lorenz curve. These curves along with their derivative statistics are widely used to measure inequality across a population. So correct answer is option D. Consider the following statements regarding STARS. Statement 1. It is a centrally sponsored scheme of Ministry of Education to improve overall monitoring in the Indian school education system. Yes, statement 1 is correct. Statement 2. The project has a contingency emergency response component to enable government to be more responsive to any natural man-made and health disasters. Yes, statement 2 is also correct. So correct answer is option C, both 1 and 2. Consider the following statements regarding the production linked incentive scheme. Statement 1. It aims to attract large investments in the electronics value chain including mobile phones, electronic components by giving incentive on incremental sales of goods manufactured in India. Yes, the statement 1 is correct. Statement 2. It is implemented by Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises. No, the statement is incorrect because PLI scheme is implemented by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. So correct answer is option A, one only. With this, we conclude today's news analysis. If you like today's session, click on the like button, show your appreciation in the comment section and don't forget to subscribe to Shankar Iyer's Academy's YouTube channel. And we hope to see you in our next video. Thank you.