How to begin with UPSC preparations : Books /Magazines/ Websites

The first and foremost thing you need to do UPSC studies is NCERTs ...

Here is the list of must do NCERTs

History – Must Read NCERT Books

• —6th – Our Pasts 1
• —7th – Our Pasts II
• —8th – Our Pasts III – Part 1, Part 2
• —9th – India & the Contemporary World 1
• —10th – India & the Contemporary World II
• —11th – Themes in World History (Focus on –Industrial Revolution)
• —12th – Themes in Indian History I, Themes in Indian History II, Themes in Indian History III

Geography – Must Read NCERT Books

• —6th – The Earth : Our Habitat
• —7th – Our Environment
• —8th – Resources & Development
• —9th – Contemporary India 1
• —10th – Contemporary India 1I
• —11th – Fundamentals of Physical Geography, —11th – India – Physical Environment
• —12th – Fundamentals of Human Geography, —12th – India – People & Economy

Economics – Must Read NCERT Books

• —9th – Economics
• —10th – Understanding Economic Development
• —11th – Indian Economic Development
• —12th – Introductory Microeconomics
• —12th – Introductory Macroeconomics, —Class XII – Supplementary reading material in Economics – Introductory Macroeconomics

Political Science – Must Read NCERT Books

• —9th – Democratic Politics I
• —10th – Democratic Politics II
• —11th – Indian Constitution at Work
• —11th – Political Theory
• —12th – Contemporary World Politics (–8th – Environment & Natural Resources)
• —12th – Politics in India Since Independence

Sociology – Must Read NCERT Books

• —12th – Social Change & Development in India

Culture/Fine Arts – Must Read NCERT Books

• —11th – An Introduction to Indian Art

Science – Must Read NCERT Books

For science, aspirants are advised to go through at-least these selected chapters from the mentioned standards.

• —6th – ◦9: The Living Organisms & their Surroundings
• —7th – ◦7: Weather, Climate & Adaptations of Animals, ◦9: Soil
• —8th – ◦1: Crop Production & Management, ◦5: Coal & Petroleum, ◦7: Conservation of Plants & Animals, ◦12:  Friction, ◦18: Pollution of Air & Water
• —9th – ◦14: Natural Resources
• —10th – ◦14: Sources of Energy, ◦15: Our Environment, ◦16: Management of Natural Resources
• —12th (Biology) – ◦Unit X: Ecology (13 – Organisms & Population, 14 – Ecosystem, 15 – Biodiversity & Conservation, 16 – Environmental Issues)

After NCERT is done you can dig deep into the OCEAN

• History - 

for history you can do Modern Spectrum RAJIV AHIR for prelims ...apart from that one can also prefer GROVER

for MAINS ...u need extensive reading ...sky is the limit ...still you can go for BIPAN CHANDRA Part 1 and Part 2 ....India before Gandhi and India After Gandhi by Ramchandra Guha could be done.

• Geography

for prelims Geography ...one can do GC Leong ISC certified Physical geography ...and a good ATLAS of Penguin publications should be referred ....for Mains NCERT will be suffice.

• Economics

for Economics prelim i recommend SRIRAM IAS notes along with Ramesh Singh of Tata Mcgraw Hill publications

for Eco Mains ..having hold on newspaper is very important ...i would recommending following Economic Times or Business Standard or Mint (selective reading)

• Political Science

for Polity ...Laxmikant is the Bible ...need to done byheart ...20 readings minimum for Prelims

for Mains i would recommend visiting prsindia.org for continuos tracking of all kinds of legislations proposed,drafted and passed in Parliament along with reports of various Committee reports .....

along with this reading newspaper editorials relating to Consitution, Judicial court judgements, etc need to be studied

• Sociology

for GS MAINS following books are recommended

• Indian Society – Ram Ahuja
• Social Problems in India – Ram Ahuja

• Fine Arts

for culture i would recommend referring to CCRT website, NIOS culture notes are good and current culture events should also tracked selectively

• Science

for Mains , emphasis must be given on current science events lke achievements of ISRO , inventions by BARC,DRDO and various Indian institutes...apart from this 'major' international inventions and discoveries must also be tracked

• ETHICS

for ethics one may begin with LEXICON , emphasis has to be given on thinkers foreign and Indian thinkers .....their teachings must be reflected in the answers and case studies to earn more marks !

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Apart from all this u'll must surf a lot on Internet ...go for editorials of multiple newspaper..should follow magazines like 

Yojana

Kurukshetra

DowntoEarth

Science Reporter etc.

.....should also follow VISION notes , insightsonindia , mrunal.org, gktoday , etc. and offcourse my blog :)  

P for Pulses !!!

Background !!

India consumes around 23 million metric tons (MMT) of pulses. This is an aggregate of a variety of pulses including gram (chana), tur or arhar, mung, masur and urad. Pulses are the main source of protein for a very large number of people in the country - each 100 grams contains about 32 grams of proteins and several amino acids not made by the body. So, it is an essential part of Indian meals. Naturally, India is the largest producer and consumer of pulses in the world.

Phir kya hua ?

But India's production of pulses has stagnated at around 18-19 MMT for several years now. The shortfall between production and consumption is made up by imports, mainly from Canada, Myanmar and some African countries.

This balance has been maintained at a huge cost to the people. A population growing at the rate of about 2% per year in the past decade should have quickly overtaken the pulses rate of growth which was less than half of that. This has not happened because the amount of pulses consumed per person has relentlessly declined over the past several decades.

From about 61 grams per person per day in 1951 to about 42 grams in 2013.

This year the balance has been rudely and dramatically upset. In 2014-15, production of pulses was clocked in at 17.4 MMT - a decline of 2.4 MMT or 12% over the previous year. 

This was caused by various factors including 

• unseasonal rains, 
• pests, 
• unprofitable prices for offered to farmers even as import duties were waived.

 

Who are to blamed for the price rise ? the TRADERS ?

• This decline appears to have been seized as an opportunity to make a quick killing by traders - both domestic and global. 
• There are reports of pulses stocks lying in warehouses at ports as traders wait it out and allow shortages to pump up prices even more. 
• And, exporters in touch with producers from Canada (mainly lentil or masur), Myanmar (mainly tur) and Australia (mainly chickpeas or Kabuli chana) have hiked up the rates because India is the biggest player in the pulses import market.

So, in 2014-15, India has imported 4.6 MMT pulses, up 31% compared to the previous year. International prices have risen in tandem from Rs 32 per kg to Rs 50 for chana, from Rs 56 to Rs 75 for lentil, from Rs 40 to Rs 90 for tur, and from Rs 50 to Rs 77 for urad between October 2014 and August 2015 according to the latest agriculture ministry profile.

What is government doing ?

·    The government on its part is tinkering around at the periphery by ordering about 7000 metric tonnes of pulses in the international market and "invoking" the Rs.500 crore price stabilization fund to subsidise transport of pulses stocks from ports to retailers. .... Plus raids on hoardings !!

What experts suggest ?

Experts have called for a new impetus to pulses production with new seeds, better pest control, better support prices and a much better organized market so that the future expected requirement of pulses can be met. Otherwise India faces a protein famine in the coming years.

Moral of the Story !!

• A lasting solution, of course, lies in rationalising farm policy, with imports and exports as a vital ingredient of it. 
• Right now, with farmers getting Rs 15,000 per hectare of subsidies for growing wheat and rice, and none for pulses – which actually helps fix nitrogen levels in the soil – it is obvious the incentives structure is all wrong. 
• Indeed, pulses have a double risk as they are grown on largely unirrigated land (drought risk) and on most occasions, with market prices falling below the minimum support price, there is significant market risk as well. 
• Instead of a difficult-to-run price stabilization fund (temporary solution), it would be better to either build up buffer stocks (long term solution) to prevent this kind of price surge, or to give crop-neutral cash subsidies to wean farmers away from wheat and rice. 
• Any policy that does not address these issues will have only a short term impact.

Present Agricultural Market in India - Model APMC Act - Karnataka Model - need for National Market for Agriculture and ideas

How fragmented are agricultural markets in India? How should they be unified? Consider each in turn.

1. Characteristics of agricultural markets: Three key features characterise agricultural markets.

A. Thousands of markets: 

• India is one country, comprising 29 states. But in agriculture, it has 2,477 principal regulated markets and 4,843 sub-markets, created by the agricultural produce market committees (APMCs). This fragmentation, reflected in wide inter-state and intra-state farm-price differences.

B. Restrictive regulations and broad scope: 

• APMCs make the first sale of agriculture produce outside the notified market yards illegal. 
• Many state governments have brought within the purview of these Acts, not only to cereal, pulses and edible oilseeds, but also fruits and vegetables and so on.

C. Many, non-transparent levies and charges: 

• APMCs allow the imposition of levies and other market charges on every first sale of the commodity produced. 
• Being statutory levies/fees, these are treated akin to the taxes, rather than the fees charged for the services provided. 
• However, they are not credited to the consolidated funds of the respective states, escaping the audit and scrutiny of regular expenditure.

Role of Commission Agents

• In addition to these levies charged by the states, commission agents appointed by the APMCs charge a market fee. Though the APMC Acts in most states bar commission agents from deducting this market fee/commission from the seller, their incidence falls on the farmers since buyers incorporate that in their bids. Thus, farmers have benefited little from the APMC. In fact, the law has tended to help commission agents. The Act has also triggered distortions in the price-discovery process at the national level.

• Commission or adat payable to licensed commission agents constitutes a major transaction cost, which is generally around 6 per cent of the sale price for fruits, vegetables and other perishables and about 2 per cent for non-perishables. The commission charged is, unlike direct taxes, levied not on net income, but on the entire value of produce.

These APMC taxes and commission agents' fees differ from state to state and together distort markets substantially with significant impacts on farmers and consumers. 

Distortions in MSPs !!

• Taxes and other incidentals as a percentage of the minimum support price (MSP) range from 3 per cent in West Bengal to 19.5 per cent in Andhra Pradesh in case of rice/paddy and from 0.8 per cent in Gujarat to 14.5 per cent in Punjab in case of wheat.

2. Model APMC Act

In 2003, recognising the importance of removing trade barriers and creating a common market, the union Ministry of Agriculture formulated a model APMC Act for adoption by the states.The model APMC Act provides some freedom to the farmers to sell their produce directly to the contract-sponsors or in the market set up by private entities. But it has two serious limitations. 

• First, the contract sponsors or the private entities setting up markets are required to pay the market fee to the notified APMCs, even if they provide no services. This is akin to the tax charged by the APMC.

• Second, though the model APMC Act provides for the creation of markets by private sector, it is inadequate to create competition. The owner of the private market still collects the APMC fees/taxes, for and on behalf of the APMC, in addition to the fee that he might charge for providing trading platform and other services, like loading, unloading, grading, weighing and so on.

3.Karnataka model

• Karnataka has taken steps to provide for the common registration of the market intermediaries. Out of the 155 main market yards and 354 sub-yards, 51 yards/sub-yards have been integrated with the single-licensing system. 

• Rashtriya e-market Services Ltd (ReMS), a joint venture created by the state government and NCDEX Spot Exchange, offer modern facilities for grading, dissemination of prices for different grades of the commodities in different market yards/sub-yards, weighing, loading, unloading and scientific warehousing. 

• Electronic auction platform and scientific grading and warehousing facilitate warehouse-based sale of produce and commodity funding based on warehouse receipts. 
• The wider geographical scope has enabled private sector investment in marketing infrastructure and has certainly provided the farmers more choices to sell their produce. 
• However, there is scope for further reducing intra-state price differences by extending common registration to the remaining market yards/sub-yards.

4. Road map for creating national market for agricultural commodities

The Union Budget of 2014 recognises the need for setting up a national market and stated that the central government will work closely with the state governments to reorient their respective APMC Acts to provide for the establishment of private market yards/markets.

• One possibility would be to incentivise the states (via, say, NITI Aayog transfers) to drop fruits and vegetables from the APMC schedule of regulated commodities. ( latest ...many states have done this on request of Central Govt.) 
• This could be followed by cereals and then other commodities. 
• Similarly, they could be incentivised to create state-wide common markets by providing for common registration of market intermediaries across market-yards/sub-yards within the state on the lines of the Karnataka model. 
• They could also be exhorted to provide policy support for setting up infrastructure, making available land and so on for alternative or special markets in private sector, since the players in the private sector cannot viably compete with the APMCs in which the initial investment was made by the government. 
• Foreign direct investment in retail could also be part of the policy mix to address supply-chain inefficiencies.

The above part is what is mentioned in Economic Survey, other than this some ideas towards how a National Market for Agriculture must be are as follows :-

• One, the national market should guarantee each farmer freedom of pricing and freedom of access. The wheat farmer in Haryana should be free to sell directly to a trader in Tamil Nadu if the prices offered are better. There should be new kinds of commission agents, such as Farmer Producer Organisations and cooperatives, for better aggregation.

• Second, it should move farmers from old-style bargaining to the exercise of choice. As consumers, we have moved from haggling the price of one kilo rice with the local grocer to shopping at the supermarket where with the price is fixed but we can see all available choices and take an informed decision. If we don’t like one supermarket, we can go to another. Farmers too need a transparent market where the selling decision becomes matter of unilateral choice rather than give and take between two parties.

• Third, it should encourage flow of financing into commodity storage by farmers. Negotiable warehouse receipts can provide the collateral to finance farm production at minimum interest rates, which will increase a farmer’s competitiveness. He will be freed to concentrate on efficiency of production.

• Fourthly, it should transmit price signals correctly. Production will go where the profit is, and profit is where people want production. Unfortunately, these price signals get distorted by government interference in supply management. Had the Cotton Corporation of India not procured cotton in 2014 – a year of oversupply and let prices reach their own level – farmers would have got the message and shifted acreage next year to groundnut or castor, where demand was high.

• And finally, the national market should seamlessly connect cash, forward and futures markets so that farmers make selling decisions most advantageously. 

  

Moral of the Story !!!

• Alas, it is easy to say what states must do but much more difficult to ensure that states do so. After all, there is some underlying political economy that has prevented individual states from achieving unified markets in the first place.

• In Indian lore, the farmer has been romanticised, while the money-lender as the iconic middle-man has been pilloried. The middle-men responsible for fragmenting agricultural markets and victimising the farmer have largely escaped scrutiny. That may explain the travesty, 68 years after independence, of many agricultural Indias.