Editorial 1 : Weather Resilience
Context: To make India more climate-resilient, India Meteorological Department’s upgrade is necessary
Introduction: The weather forecasting upgrade planned by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) is long overdue.
Need for upgrade in IMD
- In the past 10 years, the IMD’s ability to make long-range predictions over broad regions has improved appreciably. Yet, there are several days when predictions go wrong, especially during monsoons.
- The challenge today is not to predict average rainfall or temperature over the season, month or week but the extreme weather events throughout the year.
- Weather forecasters need to find ways to alert citizens and authorities about copious rainfall at hyper-local levels.
- Administrators have often been caught off guard by the fury of the elements.
- The problem is that predicting intense rainfall is virtually impossible today. Large gaps in knowledge will have to be plugged to make the country climate-resilient.
The Neo upgrades and improvements in IMD
- The previous improvements in IMD focused on augmenting infrastructure, the latest endeavour need to be directed at developing computer simulated models tailored to local specifics.
- This requires data collectors to narrow their focus to district, block, panchayat, village or even ward and street-levels.
- The scientists need to be equipped with a denser network of measuring instruments.
- AI can also be used to improve the accuracy of weather forecasts based on digitised weather records.
- Research conducted by universities and institutions should be tapped.
Way Forward
- Mainstreaming information on erratic weather would require training a cadre of communicators conversant with local economic and cultural idiosyncrasies.
- For the IMD’s work to be fully effective the information will need to be disseminated to the most vulnerable sections of the society.
Editorial 2 : A System to Bank on
Context: 10 years of PM Jan Dhan Yojana and financial inclusion
Introduction: Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) is a mass financial inclusion scheme to include all unbanked households in a time-bound manner, with the help of technology (the JAM trinity).
Financial Inclusion
- Financial inclusion has been a key tool used by policymakers and governments globally to reduce inequalities, strengthen livelihoods of people at the bottom of the pyramid, and spur growth.
- Financial Inclusion in India
- Today, more than 80% of adults have a formal financial account, compared to around 50% in 2011.
- The gender gap in account ownership has been significantly reduced through the basic savings bank deposit accounts aimed at individuals.
- So far, banks have opened around 53 crore PMJDY accounts with a balance of Rs 2.31 lakh crore, increasing more than three times from 14.7 crore accounts with Rs 15,670 crore deposits in March 2015.
Impact of Jan Dhan accounts
- The positive aspects of Jan Dhan accounts include insurance coverage, overdraft facility, and impact on saving habits & social implications with decreased thefts.
- There is both a statistically significant and an economically meaningful drop in consumption of intoxicants such as alcohol and tobacco products in states where more PMJDY accounts were opened.
- Plugging the leakages via direct benefit transfer.
- It has helped in digitalisation, e-commerce and payment systems.
Interventions to address the current barriers to financial inclusion
Four major pillars covering both supply-side and demand-side interventions
- There is a need to strengthen the ecosystem and enablers that drive financial inclusion.
- Focus on promoting private-sector involvement in financial inclusion through partnerships.
- Enhance the capacities of individuals and small enterprises through incubation and imparting financial literacy, and promote gender-inclusive financial services and programmes.
- There is a need to increase penetration of financial products and services like micro-insurance and credit in a cost-effective manner.
- The recently launched Unified Lending Interface will be a game changer in providing credit-products as it aims to make the lending process more efficient in terms of cost reduction, quicker disbursement, and scalability.
- There is a need to focus on strengthening the consumer protection framework to maintain the trust of consumers in new and complex digital products and devise inclusive regulations and policies that maintain a fine balance between protection and innovation.
- The people who are part of the PMJDY are those who are new to the financial system and have seasonal and erratic income streams. Thus, it is necessary to have a customer-centric product design, taking into consideration the lifecycle needs of customers at every stage.
Way Forward: It is imperative for future government programmes to explore the interlinkage of PMJDY accounts with beneficiaries of other government schemes to have a holistic approach for a continued economic empowerment of all.