National Issues

Answer : Rather than looking separately at urban and rural areas and what matters to each of them, it is vital to look at the linkages between them: it is from here that lasting change will come. The classification that divides people into either ‘rural’ or ‘urban’ is often used when policies are being developed but it may be misleading and unhelpful. Links exist between rural and urban locations in the same way that links exist between people and their activities.

These links are not only key components of livelihoods and of local economies, they are also ‘engines’ that drive economic, social and cultural transformations. Rural-urban interactions include: Linkages across space (such as flows of people, goods, money, information and wastes), and Linkages between sectors (for example, between agriculture and services and manufacturing).

Rural-urban interactions can also include ‘rural’ activities taking place in urban centres (such as urban agriculture) and activities often classified as ‘urban’ (such as manufacturing and services) taking place in rural settlements. Urban centers and especially small towns can play an important role in linking rural food producers to urban consumers, but this requires supportive national policies and strategies. At the local level, it requires local governments that have financial and technical capacity and are accountable to their citizens.

Rurban areas are also emerging along industrial corridors, combining cities of different sizes and villages between two distinct city clusters, to create an extended urban region. For example, many such settlements connected to textiles and light manufacturing stretch along NH 45, from Bangalore to Salem in southern India. Such spaces blur the inter-urban boundaries while facilitating integration of the rural with urban. In these rurban areas, the economic activity is not just non-farm but also agricultural, with returns from farm, and remittances being invested in services like transport and retail trade. Even in large cities, stringent land-use regulations and urban-density policies can push firms beyond the formal city boundaries.

In this context, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Rurban Mission was launched by the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) in 2016 to deliver integrated project based infrastructure in the rural areas, which will also include development of economic activities and Skill Development. It was designed to deliver catalytic interventions to rural areas on the threshold of growth. The Mission aims at development of 300 Rurban clusters, in five years. Under the mission, the Central government in coordination with the district administration has taken measures to bring about multi-layered phased development of the rural gram panchayats and villages on the lines of urban cities with proper civic amenities keeping the soul of villages intact.

Designs for central schemes must not impose restrictions by typology of location because services in rurban areas need a fit-for-purpose approach. For example, Swacch Bharat Mission-Grameen focuses on constructing twin-pit latrines on priority basis in rural areas, but many rurban spaces where the use of septic tanks was already high at the start of the mission, would have been served better by efficient septage and fecal waste treatment management. Therefore, it is avoidable to hard code central scheme interventions by specifying technologies for urban and rural spaces.

The approach should be to allocate funds from different schemes to fill the gap in key infrastructure and bridge the service vacuum between rural and urban. The Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Rurban Mission (SPMRM) is a step in this direction, but its location within the Ministry of Rural Development limits its ability to aid ‘urban’ spaces. Therefore, in order for inclusive growth there is a need to bridge the gap between Bharat (Rural India) and India. Thus, there is a need for developing a sustainable rurban India to the centre of the development model.

As cities and their associated economic engines are beginning to be viewed, not in isolation, but as connected to their peripheries and as a part of a wider city system throughout South and South-East Asia, this is a good time for the government to introduce an integrated approach to the urbanisation, bridging the artificial divides of the 11th and 12th schedules. It is time to build mechanisms that can facilitate inter-ministerial interlinkages and it might even be prudent to imagine a single ministry of local governance in the long run. For now, a category-agnostic approach to Central schemes and an architecture that allows States to respond flexibly would enable India to leverage the latent opportunity in rurban spaces.

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Answer : India is a land of diversity comprising individuals from different communities, backgrounds, religions, etc. What one eats, how one speaks, differs from region to region. In this diversity, we Indians often look for symbols and objects that unite us. The national anthem, national animal, national song, national flower are pertinent examples. It is famously said, that in India language changes every few kilometres just like the water. Therefore, unlike the other national symbols the choice of a ‘national language’ for India has been difficult and has witnessed violence and heated debates.

Language has always been the landscape of political power-plays since the bygone era. History testifies how a language broke barriers to unify people with the same tongue and even built barricades of resistance when it came to protecting the sanctity of its pristine form. UNESCO declared February 21 as the International Mother Language Day in 1999 in a tribute to the language movement by the Bangladeshis. The country stands witness to one of the very rare incidents in history where people sacrificed lives to uphold the dignity of their mother tongue and preserve their cultural heritage.

The resistance to the Centre’s three-language formula has its roots in a 50-year-old controversy. The system of teaching Hindi took the shape of a policy in an official document, christened National Policy on Education, 1968. It stated that in the non-Hindi-speaking states, Hindi should be studied along with the regional language and English.

The 1968 NPE was to promote the language and contended that, “in developing Hindi as the link language, due care should be taken to ensure that it will serve, as provided for in Article 351 of the Constitution, as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture of India. The establishment, in non-Hindi states, of colleges and other institutions of higher education which use Hindi as the medium of education should be encouraged”.

According to C Rajagopalachari in ‘Swarajya’, “While I strongly protest against making Hindi the official language of India, I equally strongly recommend the inclusion of it in the school curriculum everywhere. English is compulsory in many European states on account of its importance. So also must Hindi be studied by people of all parts of India on account of its importance… But this does not mean that the great injustice should be perpetrated by imposing Hindi as the official language of the administration of India.”

But Rajagopalachari has definitely not found many supporters in new India, where the politics of Hindi is too powerful to rebuff. Its influence in north India has almost cornered Urdu, Maithili and Punjabi, rendering them toothless in this fight for prominence — although in the case of the latter three it is more like a peaceful co-existence.

Hindi has been the language of some of the greatest writers of all times, including Surdas, Munshi Premchand, Jaishankar Prasad, Bharatendu Harishchandra, Krishna Sobti, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar and Devaki Nandan Khatri, among others, who have proudly used it as a medium to further their reformist agenda, and, in doing so, took it to an elevated level. However, till recently, Hindi literature was fighting a slump till the advent of digital media. Like all things rosy and glorious associated with a new medium, the rise of online publishing and social media appears to be inadvertently beneficial for Hindi authors and its readers, especially in the pulp fiction category.

It was in 1918 that Mahatma Gandhi had called for Hindi to be given the status of the country’s national language. He had said all talks of a ‘swarajya’ would be meaningless unless Hindi was provided national language status and other regional languages were given their adequate importance.

The Assembly was divided on this issue and it seemed that this debate would result in breaking down of the Assembly’s unity. Therefore, a compromise called the ‘Munshi-Ayyangar’ formula was evolved and accepted. It stated that for a period of 15 years, English would continue to be used for all official purposes and the parliament could substitute it later with Hindi.

Every year, September 14 is observed as Hindi Diwas because on this day in 1949, the Constituent Assembly had adopted Hindi written in Devanagari script as the official language of India. Seven decades on, Hindi has 551 million speakers in India, making it the largest spoken language. However, its evolution as a popular communication medium has often sparked controversies over alleged attempts to impose its supremacist regime over other Indian languages.

Despite Hindi’s official status there is still a lack of unanimity on the positives of encouraging all citizens to acquire basic skills in the language. The recent resistance to the Centre’s three-language formula is testimony to the many challenges that lie ahead for making Hindi more acceptable in states where it is not the preferred communication medium. But despite the bitter resistance to Hindi in some parts of the country, it continues to be the most precious symbol of Indian identity.

It has been rightly said that India is like a beautiful carpet woven in a design that has a language of diverse cultural representations woven by knots tightly holding the entire fabric of the nation. The beauty of this carpet is besmirched if one culture or language is given more importance than the other. Instead, all languages should be treated with equal respect and promoted. A step towards it has been taken by the Supreme Court recently, where it made its judgments available not only in Hindi but also in other regional languages.

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Answer : Our country India has always been famous for gaining education since the Vedic period. In ancient times, India had the ‘gurukula’ system of education in which anyone who wished to study went to a teacher’s (Guru) house and requested to be taught. If accepted as a student, the guru allows the student to stay at his place and helps in all activities at home. This not only created a strong tie between the teacher and the student but also taught the student everything about running a house.

The guru teaches the student everything that he wants to learn, from Sanskrit to the Holy Scriptures and from Mathematics to Metaphysics. The student stayed as long as he wished or until the guru felt that he had taught everything he could teach. All of the learning was closely linked to nature and to life, and not just confined to memorising some information.

Until the 17th century, India was considered one of the richest countries in the world. However, due to the arrival of the foreign colonizers and the wrong policies of the then rulers, India lost almost all its richness – wealth-wise as well as knowledge-wise. Originally, Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay brought the modern school system to India, including the English language, in the 1830s. The educational program was restricted to the so-called modern subjects such as science and mathematics, and subjects like metaphysics and philosophy were considered unnecessary. The teaching was confined only to classrooms and the link with nature and the close relationship between the teacher and the student was broken.

Mahatma Gandhi realised the hidden danger of English education and the European patterns of life. He exposed their illogicality and impracticability in his thought-provoking work ‘Hind Swaraj’ in 1905. It was the first logically valid and intellectually sublime attack on Eurocentrism. He exposed the logical inconsistencies of methodological monism and he preached methodological pluralism in every form of human knowledge.

The Eurocentric intellectuals criticized Gandhi severely in India and abroad. But, Macaulay was absolutely correct because he could create educated Indians with an unconditional submission to Eurocentric enslavement. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, was an ardent admirer of Eurocentrism. Gandhi and his teachings came to be treated as academic untouchables by the Indian academic community, and hence, we followed the Eurocentric paradigm in our system of education.

Naturally, there should be a paradigm shift from the learning of abstract ideas to concrete and contextualised pragmatic knowledge. The present system of education insists that students mug up theories devoid of pragmatic use as part of their curriculum, which creates a lethargic mindset in the students. There are many students who secure a bachelor’s degree in technology only to do the job of an office assistant, which never provides a chance to use what they learnt as part of their curriculum. Education is treated as end to get jobs and live luxuries life.

Such a state of affairs creates a feeling of alienation among them and they become lethargic in life. This is one of the bad outcomes of the present system of education as it bifurcate the courses of study into job-oriented courses and job-alienated courses. Hence, it creates the false notion that job-oriented courses are better because they guarantee good jobs. ‘Good jobs’ usually mean the jobs which ensure more security and financial gains for the candidate. This is the reason behind the rat race for getting admission to the so-called professional courses.

The Indian government has adopted the path of neo-liberalism in the higher education sector in recent times. Examples of neo-liberal policies include moving towards market-linked fees and performance-based grants. It would intensify the marketization and commodification of higher education in the country.

Therefore, the vision statement of the new National Education Policy 2020, formulated by a committee headed by Dr K. Kasturirangan, foresees a major change in the processes of the generation, dissemination and use of knowledge in society. It aims at a paradigm shift from the Euro-centric monolithic structure of education to a pluralistic contextual structure. The NEP envisions a shift from a stagnant knowledge society to a vibrant one.

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Answer : ‘The future of India lies in its villages’. This famous statement by Mahatma Gandhi seems like a distant dream in contemporary India. While on one hand we talk of self-sufficiency in food production and overflowing grain storages, yet on other hand there are stark instances of deplorable malnutrition and starvation deaths. The rural India, which supports a huge population in terms of employment, finds itself at the lowest rung of the society in terms of wages and per capita income and income security. This glaring reality faces India at the time when it boasts itself to be one of the highest growing economies of the world.

The disparities between Urban and Rural India are perceptible in all spheres of human life-economic and non-economic. According to the Census (2011), India has more than 6 lakh villages where reside about 69% of its 121 crore population and remaining 31% population lives in urban India. Despite this, there is a wide gap between rural and urban India in terms of technology, living condition, economic empowerment, etc. Many in rural India lack access to elementary education, nutrition, health care, sanitation, land and other assets and they are stuck in the vicious cycle of poverty. In rural India, Infant Mortality is quite high along with low Life Expectancy at Birth Rate.

Agricultural sector on which depends the majority of rural India sees the growth rate of 2-3% only while secondary and tertiary sector serving the urban population are growing at the rate of 8-12%. This growth rate is already under siege due to climate change and subsequent ill effects on agriculture. Due to this, there is a large-scale out-migration of labour force from rural to urban areas in search of employment and a prospect of better living conditions. Additionally, the condition of women in rural and urban areas also has stark contrasts in terms of early and child marriage, inadequate educational and employment opportunities, etc. being entrenched in rural psyche more than the urban landscape.

Therefore, the question arises as to what went wrong that India’s ever-widening Rural-Urban divide is ballooning incessantly. Some of the factors which contributed to this huge chasm between ‘India’ and ‘Bharat’ are overdependence of rural population on agriculture, lack of alternative employment opportunities in secondary and tertiary sectors, trickle down model of development and neglect of basic economic and social infrastructure for rural areas to name a few. With this, there is a skewed presence of better roads, infrastructure, hospitals, educational institutions and job opportunities in urban areas as compared to rural areas. In addition, many of the governmental schemes focused more on the urban landscape at the cost of rural population.

So, the need of the hour is to overhaul this urban bias and give precedence to the population living in our villages. It is pertinent for government to formulate policies and plans keeping in mind the aspirations of rural areas. Also, it is imperative to overhaul the agricultural sector gainfully so that the disguised employment prevalent in this sector can be curtailed effectively. Moreover, a new paradigm shift is required to employ the rural population in various semi-skilled and skilled sectors so that the general living standard sees a positive upturn in rural areas too.

India can no longer ignore the bulk of its population living in its village. It will be required to provide better living standard, infrastructure, employment and land reforms urgently or else it risks a social revolution, which can overturn the precarious status quo it has been maintaining for so long. Indian government must aim to achieve a symbiotic relationship across the urban and rural landscape for the ultimate gain of Indian citizens.

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Answer : Industrialization is considered to be one of the indicators of development of a country. It grants the country the status of a power to reckon with, making its presence felt in the global economic platform.

Throughout the year much preparation runs in the background to ensure that the country has an industrial output to boast about at the end of the fiscal year. But in their attempts to expand industries at a manic pace, the government seems to have forgotten, deliberately or otherwise, that about 80% of our population is dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. Recent figures have shown that India’s agricultural growth rate in 2010 was a meager 5%. That means unlike the industrial sector the agricultural sector cannot satisfy the current market demands as the government is keener to improve only industries.

When the government decides to implement any large-scale industrialization project without thinking twice as to whether it will actually benefit the people who’re its supposed beneficiaries, it is these very people who end up suffering and losing the most. Most of these industries are often planned in the underdeveloped parts of the country where the people have been thriving on agriculture for several generations. When industrialization takes place without a proper understanding of the needs of these people, it benefits only a handful, namely the companies, the investors and the government.

And in most cases, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Sometimes the government knows that unplanned industrialization will lead to chaos but in order to woo corporate houses and get them to make maximum investments in the country, they take away the lands of these farmers. The government in this case knows that the farmers have no basic knowledge of how an industry works and how they will be benefitted from the whole exercise. It takes advantage of their illiteracy and inexperience in dealing with crafty politicians and bureaucrats and feeds them all sorts of lies and false promises of more development and job opportunities to get them to sell their lands to the companies.

Sometimes the farmers don’t even get to do paperwork but have their lands unlawfully snatched away. Those displaced don’t get their promised jobs in the newly constructed factories because, let’s face it, these farmers have almost zero industrial skills and education. They can till lands like no other but to teach them to use complicated machines will take time. So the industries prefer employing people who have prior knowledge of working in factories to hiring these inexperienced farmers. And hence the country descends into anarchy when industrial development takes place with no measures for ensuring rehabilitation and securing job opportunities for the farmers.

The recent spate of violence in Ratnagiri over the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant project and the protests and resulting massacre in Nandigram and Singur indicate people’s frustration and anger at having their agricultural lands taken away for non-agricultural purposes. In Jaitapur, the government wants to build a 9900 MW nuclear power plant and claims that hundreds of thousands of Indian homes will be lit up as a result. But the villagers fear that the earthquake prone Madban plateau where the project will be built is a dangerous place for a nuclear power plant construction as the government has taken no steps to ensure proper disposal of nuclear waste or protection against any nuclear disaster.

Another region which is a political minefield in this country is the mineral-rich state of Orissa. Companies like TATA, Jindal, Posco, Vedanta Group, Arcelor Mittal etc. are big players here, especially in the mining and minerals industries. The land allotted to their projects is in the forests and agricultural belt. But the region is mostly inhabited by tribal people whose main source of income is the forests.

The government claims that there are no official records that prove that the lands are actually the tribal people’s property. There is no line of communication between the government and the tribals. Hence these people find their forests and homes massacred in the name of development. The government or the corporate houses turn a deaf ear to their plights.

Agitations are being staged in different parts of the world and social activists are joining them too. The government is also taking recourse to violent measures to force them into submission. One of the major grievances of the people who are helping the Naxalites in their battle against the Union of India or directly taking part in it is the government indifference to their misery and forceful conversion of agricultural land into industrial land.

If industrialization is meant for greater development then why do these people go against it? It’s because in India, industrialization mostly takes place in an unplanned way with no thought given to sustainable development. The government’s only concern is improving the country’s GDP. It feels that industries are needed to meet the growing demands of the burgeoning population. But it forgets that these farmers are also a part of this population and their needs cannot be overlooked in the name of greater good. Loss of agricultural land might lead to food inflation which is rampant in many industrially developed countries.

Industrialization is no doubt very important but if poor farmers tend to get excluded from the group of beneficiaries then it ceases to lose its significance.

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Answer : Everyone is aware and accepts the fact that India is undergoing crisis and it is affecting the citizens of the country indirectly. We are facing a down surge on our economy as well as the moral grounds, but the topic under discussion is whether the crisis situation that India is undergoing is due to the loss of morality or the fall of the economy. We have different groups of people who believe the moral and economic crisis. We can check through a few points in favour of both the concerns that have hit our country.

The unstable Governance so far had been one of the main reasons for the economic crisis in the country. Lack of strong supporting policies to strengthen the international trade relations is quite evident. The fear of privatisation is a resultant of the economic crisis. We are slowly getting back into the age of modern slavery by welcoming the MNC culture.

While corruption is an important issue the more important issue plaguing the nation is lack of employment opportunities.In the pre 1991 economic regime the priorities were subsidised food to the poor, creating employment opportunities through public or private sector, giving enough subsidies to the farm sector to avoid shortage of food grains etc.The progress was not spectacular but was very slow and steady.Post 1991 the economic growth has gone up many times and this year even 7% growth is considered lower because the expectations are 9-10%.It is true that higher economic growth is required if the nation has to prosper.However a 7% growth is not to be scoffed at considering most economies in the world are registering 3-4%.The problem facing India is the content of the 7% growth.Not enough employment is being created and even the farm land which is acquired by displacing hundreds of farmers is unable to create enough employment.

But the main crisis today is of morals. In the freedom struggle people with a steady income in their profession gave up their jobs and joined Mahatma Gandhi in spite of personal loss to themselves.It was all missionary zeal. Today hardly anybody who is reasonably successful in his vocation would like to leave that and join politics and public life.The result is all the political parties are saddled with people for whom politics is their main business. Anna Hazare cannot succeed by getting a Lokpal appointed because the ultimate power is with representatives of people and unless the moral status improves we will always have a second class Government and not a first class one.In the Western countries also there is corruption.But the public at large is not affected because the police, the courts, schools, hospitals etc. do not extort money from the poor man. Corruption is confined to the higher echelons.

Till politicians are blatantly corrupt, the bureaucrats right from the secretary level to the clerks make money and a corrupt politician cannot obviously act against them.If all this continues as it is, democracy itself will be in danger.

Moral and ethics have become epics in India. With the westernization, the present generation is flown like a dry leaf in the direction of wind. We can hardly find people who value our customs and traditions which are the basis of India. We are slowly forgetting the human values and humanity has lost its voice in front of the monetary gains. We can precisely say that India is passing through a tough time right now. Both moral and economic crisis has hit India to its severity. Instead of wasting our time debating which one is more fatal, we need to gear up and restrict the spread of its fatal flaws further. We also need to concentrate to rectify the wear and tear these crises have caused on the pride and reputation of our beloved nation.

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Answer : A person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actually possess is called hypocrite, especially a person whose actions belie stated beliefs. We learn about civics and citizenship, and yet are often asked-and ask ourselves-why we have such a strong sense of family, but such a poor sense of a larger community: How can our homes be so clean, and our streets so littered with garbage?

Clearly, there are thousands of Indians who would justifiably take offence at being called hypocrites, and for good reason. But they are a minority in today’s India.

Every day, in every sphere-business, politics, social work or sports- across the length and breadth of this country, millions of Indians indulge in acts of hypocrisy that collectively add up to an epidemic.

And yet, it seems that there was some noble past, a link between thought and action, where values were cherished. The signs are there: in the sublime music, in our dance forms, in the incredibly sophisticated material about human spirituality, and so on. So, how can a country with so much collective wisdom and spirituality be broken in so apparent a fashion?

It feels that we got massively unhinged somewhere along the way. What is left today is only a frustrating graffiti of greatness: each artifact by itself a tantalizing glimpse into a life that was, but somehow dismembered, leaving more questions than answers.

We have lost a sense of individual agency in our thoughts and actions. Like children of overachieving parents, we seem overwhelmed by the legacy of great ideas in our society. It’s almost like we need to exfoliate these oppressive layers of crusted wisdom that have settled upon our consciousness, and discover our own morality for ourselves. It’s time to see the relationship between values, thoughts and actions and agitate over the inconsistencies that we see in ourselves. To acknowledge that words like “honesty” and “caring” and “respect” are most powerful when displayed in action, not recited by rote.

Getting rid of these layers takes an enormous amount of introspection, a ruthless sense of honesty, and the courage to act upon the schisms when we encounter them. These will be painful.

But if we had the perspective to consider our actions, and the courage to correct ourselves, we could rekindle the greatness that our society seems to have once had. And maybe rediscover our moral compass, one person at a time.

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Answer : Apart from the rich culture and diverse arts presence, India has tremendous experience in different sporting activities such as athletics, cricket, shooting, hockey, chess, badminton, boxing, golf, kabaddi, wrestling, swimming etc. Besides this the country has respectable traditional sports such as boat racing, kushti, gilli-danda and others. But the most popular sport in the country is cricket. The sad part is that politicization of sports in India has increased manifold, in recent years. It has proved injurious and degrading for sports. If sports are to get back its lost innocence, it must no doubt be freed from this unnecessary, mindless political influence. However, it becomes necessary to examine the causes behind such politicization over the years. It is really shocking to see politicians and ex-bureaucrats holding positions as Chairman and Committee members for several decades most of them having no clue about the sport in general. With the government of India pumping several crore rupees into the various sports bodies for promoting sports and encouraging the sportsmen, these sports bodies have become fertile ground for the politicians and ex-bureaucrats to make money.

Dynasties seem to rule Indian sport.There are many examples that show how politicians and their families run committees as if it’s a family get together. A glaring example is that in 2008, Kamakhya Prasad Singh Deo stepped down as president of the Rowing Federation of India. He was replaced as president by his cousin, CP Singh Deo. When CP Singh Deo ended his term, he was succeeded by his wife Rajlaxmi Singh Deo. This is just one story. Several such stories are doing the rounds.

Even though, huge amount is spent on training and grooming of the players we still have not been able to achieve the desired results. The prime reason for poor performances is corruption & political interference. Due to this many time a good player is left out. The government and the Respective athletic boards are the main culprit for letting down India. Most of them are corrupt, lack professionalism and very biased. However the fundamental problem lies in the absence of a sporting culture in India.Sports in India are considered a secondary and supplementary activity. This explains to a large extent, the apathy on the part of the government machinery towards sports. The corporate indifference too stems from the fact that they are not sure that the sponsorship money will be efficiently used in promoting the game and the welfare of the players.

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Answer : Various reasons have been offered to explain why farmers commit suicide in India, including: drought, debt, use of genetically modified seed, public health and government economic policies. There is no consensus on what the main cause might be but studies show suicide victims are motivated by more than one cause, on average three or more causes for committing suicide.

A study conducted in 2014 found that there are three specific characteristics associated with high risk farmers: “those that grow cash crops such as coffee and cotton; those with ‘marginal’ farms of less than one hectare; and those with debts of 300 Rupees or more.” The study also found that the Indian states in which these three characteristics are most common had the highest suicide rates and also accounted for almost 75% of the variability in state-level suicides.

A 2012 study did a regional survey on farmer’s suicide in rural Vidarbha (Maharashtra) and applied a Smith’s Saliency method to qualitatively rank the expressed causes among farming families who had lost someone to suicide. The expressed reasons in order of importance behind farmer suicides were - debt, alcohol addiction, environment, low produce prices, stress and family responsibilities, apathy, poor irrigation, increased cost of cultivation, private money lenders, use of chemical fertilizers and crop failure. In other words debt to stress and family responsibilities were rated as significantly higher than fertilizers and crop failure. In a different study in the same region in 2006, indebtedness (87%) and deterioration in the economic status (74%) were found to be major risk factors for suicide.

Studies dated 2004 through 2006 identified several causes for farmers suicide, such as insufficient or risky credit systems, the difficulty of farming semi-arid regions, poor agricultural income, absence of alternative income opportunities, a downturn in the urban economy which forced non-farmers into farming, and the absence of suitable counseling services. In 2004, in response to a request from the All India Biodynamic and Organic Farming Association, the Mumbai High Court required the Tata Institute to produce a report on farmer suicides in Maharashtra, and the institute submitted its report in March 2005.The survey cited “government apathy, the absence of a safety net for farmers, and lack of access to information related to agriculture as the chief causes for the desperate condition of farmers in the state.”

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Answer : The sports can be promoted only if it can be detached from the politics and give way to deserving candidates in the sports federations who understand the sport and are enthusiastic about it beyond their vested interests. The sports federations should be accountable to public, parliament etc. and transparent in its functioning. Various sports are being promoted by various regimes since ages. The question of transparency and accountability is also not new either. The misuse of technical innovations in pharmaceutical sector for new drugs is visible in various sport competitions. The desire to win has passed all barriers of ethics and real spirit of sportsmanship. Also, reforms have been impeded by politicization of sports in India where most of the sports committees are headed by the politicians who have very little experience in that area and who understand very little about the need of sports persons.

Union Minister of sports and youth affairs, Ajay Maken prepared a draft National Sports (Development) Bill 2011 sports bill with the aim to bring transparency and accountability in the functioning of National Sports Federations (NSF). This bill seeks to restrict the tenure of any office bearer to maximum 12 years i.e. 3 terms and this bill will make it compulsory for sports federations to reserve 25% of seats to sportspersons in the controlling committee/board. Also, this bill seeks to bring Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) under the purview of Right to Information Act (RTI). The cabinet ministers who were opposing this bill include Minister of New and Renewable Energy Farooq Abdullah who is heading the cricket association of J&K, Sharad Pawar who is President of ICC, Praful Patel who heads ‘All India Football Federation’, C.P. Joshi who heads Rajasthan Cricket Association, Arun Jaitley who heads New Delhi & District cricket association.

The enforcement of vested interests of senior ministers is restricting the badly needed reforms in sports. This raises serious questions about the intention of the politicians to look beyond their vested self-interest and reform National Sports Federations. The poor performance of these federations can be attributed to the stubbornness of politicians to change their mind set and restricting sportspersons from taking part in the decision making independently which can change the face of the sporting bodies in the country.

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Answer : Terrorism over the years has come of age. It has become all pervasive including land, air, sea, cyber and psychological space. Earlier the civil population had been relatively unaffected by the terrorist attack through air. However, the situation over the years has changed and ever so drastically after the 11 Sep attacks in the US.

There is a growing body of research, especially since the 9/11 attacks, on the effects of terrorist attacks on civil population.Numerous studies have now been conducted on the socio, economic and psychological effects of terrorism on civil population.These studies have looked at how terrorist attacks affect people’s mental health; with particular attention paid to the incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder following terrorist attacks.

Increased rates of depression and substance abuse have also been studied as indications of the psychological effects of terrorism.Another aspect has been on the social psychological effects of terrorism, such as the impact of terrorism on xenophobia within a society, on group stereotypes, and on the attitudes and ideological orientation of the targeted population.There have also been some studies on the economic effects of terrorism.

These studies have investigated the immediate economic damage caused by terrorism, and the effect on variables such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), unemployment, foreign direct investment (FDI), and the tourism industry.Finally, within the field of political science there is an increasing amount of literature about the political effects of terrorism, mostly focusing on the impact of terrorist attacks on public opinion, elections, government policy, and peace processes.The big question is whether and under what circumstances terrorism works. Terrorist attacks are deliberately designed to instill fear and intimidate a civil population in order to achieve a political objective.But how successful are terrorist groups in achieving their political objectives?There is no agreement among scholars on this critical issue.While some have highlighted the political gains that terrorist groups have achieved, others have argued that terrorism often backfires politically and is not an effective strategy against democratic states.

One of the key objectives of terrorism, then, is to demoralize the targeted society-to induce a widespread sense of helplessness and hopelessness and feeling of despair among members of the society.If the targeted society does not become demoralized, terrorism fails in this respect.

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Answer : Fashion is the prevailing style, custom or a popular style of clothes, hair, etc. of a particular time or place. A popular way of behaving and doing an activity also constitutes fashion. The business of making or selling clothes in new and different styles is also fashion. The fashion industry embraces both clothes made by individual designer for a small and wealthy clientele-also known as haute culture and garments produced on wider commercial basis-sold in high street shops, chain stores, departmental stores or by mail order.

The present-day youth are in the haute culture of wearing mix of western and Indian trends because of coming up of sprawling call centres, BPO centres, IT parks, mega markets and mall culture. Perhaps the setting up of the multinational company’s offices in India is one of the reasons of fashion boom in India. Men’s fashion draws a lot from films. The young boys not only imitate the glamour of men’s clothes but also their hairstyle. In fact a young boy imitates actors and famous cricket stars like Tendulkar and Dhoni. TV serials and advertisements are the other source which is closely watched by the youth. The branded names in men’s wear sold at famous shops in big arcades, malls, plazas and markets attract the young boys and girls in large number every day.

Fashion designing offers vast opportunities for learning the skills from famous institutes like National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Indian Institute of Fashion Technology (IIFT), Pearl Fashion Academy (PFA), etc. Many Indian universities offer diploma, graduate and postgraduate courses in fashion and cosmetic designing. Such learning helps improve the creative skills and provides a cutting edge technology in designing. The Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) holds the fashion extravaganza to offer a platform to the exponents of Indian fashion industry and to give them right opportunities for displaying their skills and marketing their creations to the outside world for a high profit. There are also perennial features like the Lakme India Fashion Week that show glitz, superb designs and new designers to display their skills on the ramp shows.

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Answer : India being a developing country many more challenges than most of the developed countries in the world. It faces the daring challenges of hunger, population explosion, poverty and illiteracy, problems that have been affecting its growth in the last sixty years. But the threat that is the most menacing of all is that of terrorism.

There was a time when terrorism was a distant concept and to some extent was confined to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Then it started spreading. The next core area was north eastern India. Although the frequent rupture of attacks has considerably reduced, these spots still continued to be terrorist hotbeds. Indians today are barred from visiting these beautiful places of their own country.

Previously the country bled when the 2008 Mumbai attacks took place. There were more than ten coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across Mumbai, India’s largest city, by Muslim terrorists from Pakistan. The attacks, which drew widespread condemnation across the world, began on 26 November 2008 and lasted until 29 November, killing at least 173 people and wounding at least 308.

The saddest thing is that India faces terrorist threats not only from outside forces but also from within. One such instance is present day Bengal. Massive terrorist activity was carried out by the naxalites in Bengal during the pre communist era. In the present perspective Bengal has become the seat of active terrorist activity. Every day when we see the news channel there are hundreds of killing everywhere by some terrorist groups, especially in the regions where the socially backward class dwell.

Being in a threat India has developed certain measures to curb terrorism like making more strict laws like POTA (Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act) and keeping an eye on the sources from which money is drained to the assistance of terrorist activities.

Terrorism has become a global threat and needs to be controlled from the grass root level to the international level to make the world a better place to live in.

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Answer : There are several issues I would like to address if I become the prime minister of India.

First of all, I shall try my level best to make my country a strong and self respecting nation. India will be a great power and no other country will dare attack India.

The second thing I will do will be the fullest and genuine attention to the poorest and the lowliest. I shall endeavour to give full employment to at least one member of each house-hold. It will be my attempt to keep the prices under control. I shall try to stream­line the public distribution system further and supply the essential commodities to the poor at subsidized rates. I shall try to make the taxation system more useful and rational.

Moreover, I shall devote my energy, is the education system. The examination system will be over-hauled, so that there is no copying and the real merit of a student is readily discernible. Much more attention will be given to admission to professional colleges on the basis of merit. There will be reservation only on economic grounds and not on caste basis.

In addition to it, my fullest attention will be the population control. Without it, our country will be ruined. Then I shall also take care of important and pro­ductive fields like agriculture, industry, oil production, mining, increase in exports etc. Above all, I shall try to raise the moral standard of the people and make them more patriotic. I shall also try to root out evils of terrorism, communalism, provincialism, drug-taking, dowry system, drinking etc.

In India now much more attention is being given to child health and education. Still, it is not enough. Still, the girl child is greatly ignored, especially in poor families and rural and tribal areas. The sex determination tests have played havoc with the girl children. Even their right to life is taken away from them before they can see the light of the day. Childhood is the other name of heaven. Let us substantiate it.

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