E-Commerce vs Offline Retailers

                   E-commerce (electronic commerce or EC) is the buying and selling of goods and services,  over an electronic network, primarily the Internet. The nation wide growth in smart phone and internet usage has fuelled a jump in online shopping.

• According to the survey by the industry body, the Delhi-NCR see a decline in footfalls of about 55%.
• In 9 major cities 59% of total malls space remain vacant, malls are suffering with less occupancy and more vacancy depending on the location - poor location,poor designs,poor parking places.
• For some malls even the construction quality is poor, due to this they lie somewhere in good performing and bad performing malls.
• Small scale household business is also using social networking sites eg: facebook,whatsapp etc as platform for their products at attractive prices.

 Major factors contributing to the situation:

• Online shopping.
• High intrest rates.
• Inflation.
• Economic slowdown.

Steps to be taken by Offline retailers:

• Attractive offers and assured gifts on festive seasons.
• Developers should give rent-free period for specific periods.
• Offine retailers should settle a link with e-commerce players like Amazon,Flipkart,snapdeal etc., 
• Provide door delivery.

Indian Farmer Suicide Epidemic

                        Farmers are the original environmentalists. As farmers with their families whose livelihood and way of life are very close to land and depend on the environment to creat a healthy place to live as well as the right conditions to grow crops and raise livestock.
                           
                         Agriculture is the backbone of Indian economy. Farmers play a major role in this sector but, Now-a-days many farmers are commiting suicide blaming many socio-economic factors and failure of seasonal cycle.
Reasons behind farmers suicide
          Reports from different districts shows ther is increase in suicides day-by-day

1. Due to prolonged dry spell the crop withered and this made it difficult to comeout of the debt trap for farmers.
2. Suicides are among them who grow commercial crops like maize and cotton.
3. Farmers could not overcome the crop failure and their efforts to salvage the crop didnot fructify
4. Increase in input cost/farm production cost and mechanisation cost forcing them to go into distress with non-availability of market price to their produce.
5. Unable to pay exorbitant intrest amounts to money lenders.
6. Socio-economic factors:

• Non-availability of bank loans.
• Natural calamities like droughts and hail stroms.
• Lack of scientific advice from authorities concerned.
• Lack of knowledge on best practices and profit maximisation approach is needed to be addresses.

Suggestions

•  Agriculture research strategy should be shifted from crop-centric research in irrigated area to location-specific cropping system in drylands,hills and tribal areas.
• Agriculture research should also take climate change into consideration , which continues to be a major area of concern.

Measures

• To help those struck in despairing situations that drive them around them to attempt suicide, Aarogya sri Health care Trust has launched a round-the-clock suicide prevention councelling cell.This will function out of existing 104 call center at koti.
• Mark should be given to the pesticide and seed  inorder not to comprimise the quality.

Child marriages still shaming Kerala

Despite its hugely applauded human development indices and other laurels, child marriages in Kerala are still prevalent. This is evident from the recently released Census 2011 data.

What else the data say?

• There were 23,183 married girls below the age of 15 years in the State. That is, 0.604% of all girls in the State aged between 12 and 15 had entered wedlockprematurely and illegally. As many as 10,175 children were born to these child brides in the State.
• Malappuram, the most populous district in the State, logged the highest number (3,615) of married girls below age 15. But in percentage terms, this is below the overall State average (0.604).
• The districts exceeding the State average are Pathanamthitta (0.808 pc), Alappuzha (0.735 pc), Thiruvananthapuram (0.730 pc), Kollam (0.667 pc) and Kannur (0.665 pc). While Malappuram had a 0.594% incidence, Thrissur had the lowest figure of 0.493%.

These figures show that detecting and stopping child marriages are still a huge challenge to the dozens of Child Marriage Prohibition Officers (CMPOs) who have been appointed in the wake of enactment of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act in 2006

Life expectancy analysis

Life expectancy is a statistical measure of how long a person can live, based on year of birth and current age. As per the present day statistics Life expectancy is increased when compared to 2009 reports.

This figure increased by 6.9 years for men and 10.3 years for women between 2009-2013. Life expectancy figure depends upon the disorders caused to health . In 2013, the top 10 causes of disabilities adjusted life years in both sexes in India wew from ischemic heart diseases, Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lower respiratory tract infection,tuberculosis,diarrhoea,stroke,road injuries etc,.

  In 1990 the figures were 57.25 for men and 59.19 for women.This rose to 64.16 and 68.48 by 2013 and 67.3 for men and 69.6 in 2015. This big jump in the life expectancy is in keeping with the development of the country. But the thing we can observe here is that the leading causes of health loss is changing from time to time. In Inida transition and inheriting some of the diseases are seen in the developed countries.

How to tackle the disease burden:

• Better Health planning
• look for risk factors for diseases and workout to overcome( This will help in overcoming major diseases).

   

Can we reduce Inequality

When we come to Inequality... income inequality is because of difference in capabilities,extra incentives towards rich. when a poor person want to overcome inequality it became highly impossible for him to survive among elites. Because life chances of a person is decided and determined by his birth. His education, health and wealth will remain impoverished,which continues to block chances for billions of world's poor people to improve their life situation(regardless of their potential and hardwork). But, children and grand children of rich will largely replace their parents and grand parents in the steep economic ladder.

               In recent times there is evidence of rapidly growing inequalities between and within nations. Inequality is inevitable part of surge of economic growth, But in fact inequality is the product of deliberate economic  and political policies.In India tax exemption to corporate India in every recent budget of around five lakh crore rupees could substancially finance India's education,nutrition and health care gaps.

              Extreme poverty are bad for growth, robust and lasting growth requires reducing inequalities. But in India, as in much of the world today, market fundamentalism and powerful economic elites still determine state priorities and resist policies for a more equal world. The world therefore remains one in which however hard poor people, women and socially disadvantaged communities toil, to survive with dignity remains a distant, often impossible dream.

   There will always be a solution, we have ways to dam the surging tides of inequality :

• Raising and enforcing statutory wages
• Expanding taxation of  the rich 
• Enhancing public investment in education,health and small farm agriculture
• Enlarging social protection for the aged,infirm and disabled
• Enhancing maternity and child benifits
• Protecting indigenous and socially disadvantaged groups
• Ensuring water,sanitation, and basic utilities to the poor and urban slums
• Protecting the rights of workers

Can we bring back Illegal Money

Black money, undisclosed illegally held funds estimated at 120 lakh crore,this amount is about 60 times the annual revenue from income tax in the union budget.The black money is not just a mere avoiding of taxes,It is infact a major systemic crime denying the opportunities to share the wealth for the benifit of the poor.
Indians tax laws donot have any clear definition of the term Blackmoney.
generally it is referred to as Blackmoney in two scenarios:

1. Earned by illegal activities
2. Money on which tax have not been paid

Billions of BlackMoney have been siphoned out of India over decades by corrupt polititians and businessmen; it lies securely in the vaults of swiss banks. They are no longer exist in swiss bank, but have put to use in India's murky realestate market and in state and national elections also.

Can polititians be believed and entrusted?

• PM has appointed special investigation team to look into blackmoney issues.
• Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has spoken several times about asking swiss authorities to make available to Indian account holders and sums they hold.

Once this government cracks the whip and bring this money home,India will cease to be a poor country and will take its rightful place among the super powers of the world. But the polititians here will be ready to whip outrage over BlackMoney as long as no policy changes are involved.

           The systems and loopholes have made such largescale embezzlement possible.The business standards urgued that, The biggest step govt should take on ending the black money is to make it more difficult for the people to bring back the BlackMoney to India. and the tough financial reporting standards in place for banks and individual ensures harsh laws to check illicit floes are rarely used.

Despite the tough laws, illicit flows out of country became rampant.
India's numerous laws:

• India creats database that links tax records , aadhar numbers, bank transactions - the space for generating illicit funds - will narrow.
• Black Money bill of 2015 passed ( but inadequate to secure the return of $1.5 trillion deposited  in about 90 countries).
• The civil and criminal liabilities for holding black money range from rigorous imprisonment for not less than three years upto seven to 10 years, along with fine.

Taking Right steps:

1. The CBI filing FIR receipt of illegal accounts through Intelligence sources and obtain a letter of request u/s 166 A of the criminal procedure code from a designated court and can confiscate the account through swiss cooperation under International judicial assistance in criminal cases
2. The Germany and French method of  obtaining records of particular bank.
3. U.S method to arrest senior bank officers based in Washington-DC on charges of espionage to pressurise swiss authorities into giving 5000 names of U.S citizens.
4. Invoking the resolution of the UN convention against corruption.

This requires parliament to pass a law & thereafter, bilateral discussions with each of these countries to get hold of the accounts.

Radical Solution for Corruption Scandal

        This article is related to solution for how to stop corruption, actually not stopping it but reducing it. And Empowering  public to root out corruption in its basic form

          If u can't stop anything happening in the society,economy,juditiary , just legalise it.

        In case of corruption giving bribery should be made legal inorder to decrease it. This should be done only in case of services that a citizen is entitled to , i.e., "Harassment Bribe"

        It should be legal to pay this kind of bribe - But illegal to accept it.

It would be still illegal for a big company to pay a bribe to win a government contract, the illegal business owners leeway into getting their clearances without any fear of punishment.

       Once the demand for a bribe has been satisfied and the service received, One presumes that the bribe giver may be intrested in cooperating in getting the bribe taker caught,knowing that he/she will not face any punishment.

Person is using bribe as a medium to overcome harassment but is still not exposing it for the fear of persecution. Now by making bribe legal,it makes the same person to overcome harassment and still getting a chance to expose it. 

          But in case of  poor and population near to poverty line will expose themselves to unequal treatment as their work go undone unable to meet the demands of bureaucrat.

Here, it should be made clear that, it should be illegal to pay other types of bribes.

         There might be a chance that the bribe giver may deny to cooperate in getting the bribe taker caught and the practise may still continue backstage, but the situation mat not go worse than the current situation.

Corruption's BlameGame

This Article is very much limited to emphasising more on the role of polititians,bureaucracy but there are also many regions as well and it is justified blaming country's Economic boom too.

            Corruption in India can be traced back to the country's colonial past. The British Raj period, beginning in 1858, excluded Indian citizens from political participation.

The 1923 Official Secrets Act made it an offense for officials to reveal state information to citizens, ostensibly to protect military and government intelligence which becomes root cause of dominance leading to self actions never questioned by people.After India gained independence in 1947, heavy economic regulations,the 1951 Industries Act, required all new industrial operations to obtain a license from the central government. The policy limited foreign investment and stifled competition, and bribery became part and parcel of doing business.This is because of  government's excessive oversight of the economy. Now, we can say that, "the roots of India's corruption came from the proliferation of licenses," In someway or the other the institution of licenses and permits was responsible for creating corruption on a massive scale. For example, the late-1980s Bofors scandal, in which then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and other politicians were accused. Many observers considered the scandal to be a main reason the Gandhi-led Congress Party was voted out of power in 1989.

                But irony here is citizens being themselves a reason for corrupted India are not ready to accept corrupt polititians and expecting corruption-free society but failed to control GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS  

         

                  Blame the bureaucracy and weak institutions because these  small-scale "harassment bribes" (payments for essential social services) pervades to scandals on a national level. At least 42 percent of young Indians have paid a bribe, according to a 2012 Hindustan survey.

       

Government's Measures to combat Corruption:

• An increasingly activist judiciary has also taken a stronger stance against corruption; in early 2011, the Supreme Court asked all trial courts in the country to fast-trackcorruption cases.
• The first major law to combat government malfeasance was the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA) of 1947
• India's government has made a few attempts at the federal level to combat corruption. The 2005 Right to Information Act allows citizens to request access to any public record and, if approved, receive it within thirty days.
• Technology has also helped. Some states like Gujarat have implemented online systems for state contract bids, allowing for greater transparency.
•  The government is also devising an electronic ID system, which would allow poor citizens to avoid intermediaries and receive aid directly through a bank account.

   

   

Hello, i'm Charitha Amballa ,
Aspiring for civil services India.
My posts are all about topics related to current societal norms,current events,etc I can say these posts will b usefull to make updates for the same civil aspirants. I will update the posts described by my own words,my thoughts about the present situations about the respective topic.
Thankyou.

Problems faced by Single woman

 Q) Critically discuss various hardships faced by single mothers in Indian society, and also examine what institutional and legal support exist for them. (200 Words)
A)The natural guardianship of a minor was the father and after him "the mother" ,but in the absence of father however guardianship responsibility shifts to mother. But now a days single mother have continued to face bureaucratic red tape and harassment.
Single mothers are young and never married without high school education nor the expected parenting skills and she even face financial problems because of low wages for women as compared to men. Eventually sole mother's employment leads to slow economic development.we can say that she is vulnerable to the societal harassment.Middle class single mother is generally confronted with financial uncertanity due to divorce or lack of child support from child's father.
She fights all odds to lead a life of dignity and this stress will effect on child care and it weakens mother's immune system.absence of father aids in the difficulty of appropriate discipline. single mother live with the competing priorities of earning money and providing caring services to her child.And even in the cases of providing care she is being denied by the insurance policies and savings accounts as she cannot include her child under the nominee name without child father's approval.
A normal family should have father,mother and an offspring. But a mother alone can strive hard for the physical well being of a child but she cannot help her child's mental well being as he/she will feel alone and depressed without father in the family because she faces problem when applying for documentation starting from birth certificates ,school admissions ,application for passports. Most of these agencies insist on the father name being mentioned giving his permission.So in order the single mother get out of all these odds Institutional and Legal support should persist for her.
Institutional and legal support:
1) seeking higher education is not easy to cover high costs of college.Single mothers are eligible for some scholarships like -
i. College scholarships.
ii. Nursing scholarships.
iii. Children Scholarships.
2) Help from family courts.
3) Private child support agencies.
4) Pension for widow mother and single mother.
5) Legal seperation resources( incase of clashes ).

If at all this needs any updates,addings... U can add for it