WE ARE LIVING IN A DEVOLOPING COUNTRY , INDIA , HAVING ALL THE SHADES OF LOSSES AND GAINS DESCRIBING OUR ECONOMIC STATUS OF THE COUNTRY . WHENEVER WE TALK OF POVERTY , THE FIRST CHARACTER CAME IN TO OUR MIND IS A ‘POOR’. BUT , IS POOR ANOTHER WORD FOR POVERTY ? , ARE THESE WORDS SIMMILAR TO EACH OTHER ? . THE ANSWERE IS A BIG NO ! , THESE TWO TERMS ARE DIFFRENT ALTOGETHER. POOR ARE THOSE WHO HAVE LITTLE OR NO POSSESIONS OR MONEY TAKEN AS A GROUP , WHEREAS , THE POVERTY IS THE QUALITY OR STATE OF BEING POOR OR INDIGENT WANT OR SCARCITY OF MEANS OF SUBSISTENCE INDIGENCE NEED . IN SHORT , POOR IS THE PERSON AND THE POVERTY IS THE STATE OF THAT PERSON .

DO YOU THINK ‘POVERTY’ IS LIMMITED TO THE POOR PEOPLE ? OR IS IT MORE THAN THAT ? . THIS TIME THE ANSWERE IS YES ! , IT IS MORE THAN THAT , IT IS MUCH WIDER TERM THAN WHAT YOU ARE THINKING NOW . THE IDENTIFICATION OF THE POVERTY IS DONE BY SOME ELEMENTS ,MALNUTRITION , HIGH LEVEL OF INFANT , MATERNAL MORTALITY , THE INCIDENCE OF DISEASES LIKE CHOLERA , TYPHOID AND MALARIA .FIRST , LETS TALK ABOUT PUBLIC HEALTH , THE SECTOR WHICH IS NOT GIVEN MUCH IMPORTANCE , BUT , THIS SECTOR IS HIGHLY PROMINENT . THE EVIDENCE OF THIS IS SEEN BY US IN ‘COVID-19’ , HOW OUR HEALTH INFRASTRUCTURE IS AND EARLIER , NO INVESTMENTS WERE MADE IN THIS SECTOR , NOW FUNDS ARE ALLOCATED FOR THE INVESTMENT IN THIS SECTOR AND IT IS BOOSTED WITH HUGE INVESTMENTS . THEN , WHY NOT TO DO EVERYTHING 0N TIME ? WHY DO WE NEED TO WAIT FOR OBSTACLE ?.

IN 1923 , POVERTY WAS ONE OF THE GREATEST BARS TO SANITARY IMPROVEMENT . BAD SANITARY CONDITIONS DUE TO WHICH POVERTY AND SICKNESS REACT UPON EACH OTHER AND TEND TO DIMINISH THE VITAL POWER OF THE PEOPLE AND THEIR CAPACITY FOR IMPROVEMENT. PHYSICAL WEAKNESS OF WORKING UNDER AGE MOTHERS , THE INADEQUATE NOURISHMENT OF INFANTS , INSANITORY AND OVERCROWDED SURROUNDINGS ADDING MORE THIS ELEMENT . THE SOLUTION TO THIS IS TO SPREAD GREATER PUBLIC AWARENESS . THERE IS A NEED TO INCREASE AWARE THE PUBLIC ABOUT POVERTY AND SANITATION . ACTIVE SUPPORT CAN BE GATHERED FROM THE INDUSTRIALISTS AND OTHER LEADING EMPLOYERS . BUT , ABOVE ALL , THE FACT BEHIND THE SUFFERING OF POVERTY BY INDIA IS NOT THE BAD SANITARY CONDITIONS BUT THE WORST ECONOMIC CONDITIONS .

IDEOLOGY IS ALSO A CONTRIBUTIONG FACTOR TO THE POVERTY , AS , IN INDIA , PEOPLE ARE MORE CURVED TOWARDS THEIR CULTURES AND ARE EMOTIONALLY ATTACHED TO IT . DUE TO WHICH THEY END UP LOOSING THE PRACTICALITY , DOING THINGS WHICH IS DIMNISHING CHANCE OF INDIA BECOMING A DEVOLOPED COUNTRY . IT IS ALSO ARGUED THAT POVERTY IN INDIA IS PRETTY MUCH DISTINCT FROM WEST . RELIGIOUS CUSTOMS ARE BECOMING THE BARRIER. IT IS JUST THAT WE NEED TO WOVEN PRAGMATISM IN OURSELVES TO MINIMISE POVERTY IN OUR COUNTRY .

OVER GROWING OF POPULATION IS ANOTHER CONTRIBUTING FACTOR TO THE POVERTY INCREASE , HERE COMES THE CHANGE IN THE MEANING OF THIS WIDER TERM . IT IS DESCRIBED BY THE VULNERABILITY OF INDIA DUE TO NATURAL SHOCKS FOR EXAMPLE FAMINES AND PANDEMICS ETC. IN 1903 INDIA FACED THE PROBLEM OF HEALTH AND NUTRITION , AS WE ARE AWARE HOW THESE TWO TERMS ARE CLOSELY BOUND TO THE ECONOMIC ORGANISATION OF THE SOCIETY . NUTRITION IS SUCH A SIGNIFICANT FACTOR , A FOUNDATION FOR HUMAN DEVOLOPMENT , ONLY AN ADEQUATE NUTRITION CAN DO . ERADICATION OF POVERTY WILL ONLY SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF NUTRITION MAKING EVERYTHING FALL IN ITS PLACE.

OVERPOPULATION HAS ALSO LED TO UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE COUNTRY , THERE IS LOSS OF JOBS IN THE COMPANIES , THIS IS LOSS OF JOBS IS ALSO A KIND OF POVERTY , WHICH , THE STATES IN INDIA ARE FACING SPECIALLY KERELA . IN KERELA , THE LITERACY RATE IS THE HIGHEST AMONG ALL THE STATES BUT THE UNEMPLOYMENT HIGHEST ON THE SCALE HAVE YOU EVER WONDER WHY ? BECAUSE THE LITERACY RATE IS THIS MUCH HIGH THAT THE JOBS AVAIBLE DOESN’T SUIT THE QUALIFICATIONS OF THE PEOPLE , THEIR CAPABILITY IS THIS MUCH HIGHER THAT THEY REFUSE TO DO BECAUSE THE JOB IS NOT RIGHT ACCORDING TO THEIR EDUCATION . HOW IT IS CONNECTED TO THE POVERTY ? THE ANSWERE IS HIDDEN IN THIS SET OF WORDS , THE UNEMPLOYMENT IS THE INPUT AND POVERTY IS THE OUTPUT OF THE UNEMPLOYMENT .

POVERTY CAN ONLY BE ERADICATED BY FOCUSING MAINLY ON THE SOCIO – ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF THE COUNTRY.

There are a lot of things that we take for granted in our day-to-day lives. Like maybe you were supposed to be right now even for those of you who are students or business owners, freelancers or part timers, there is no doubt that you in some way work around or are influenced by the 40 hour work week people arrive at work at 9:00 AM. Go home at 5:00 PM Monday to Friday and this is pretty much the standard arrangement among state vast array of professions and equally vast array of countries and companies that why what is going on here. Industry, technology and culture have all drastically changed since this arbitrary figure was introduced. Yet it has stood the test of time. So is 40 hours really the optimal work week? How is this filled out, and are there alternatives that are based more in economics rather than tradition?

The 40 hour work week has not been around forever, so before we start to explore alternatives, it’s important to understand how we got here. Our working lives are mostly determined by the value that we add the concept of having a set job with a contract in a set of expectations is a surprisingly modern concept. Of course, ultimately started from need to literally put food on the table. The days of Hunter gatherers and eventually developed into farming. Most societies that have existed from the Egyptians to Renaissance era Europe. People were primarily farmers. The working hours on a farm are very fluid. There are days and even entire seasons where pretty much nothing needs to be done. Then of course there are times of massive activity around harvesting and planting. But the take away from this is that a 40 hour work week would just not function in this type of environment, and that’s not to say that farmers need to put in more hours, although they definitely do, but it’s more so that clocking in at 9:00 AM and then clocking out at 5:00 PM just wasn’t going to work when animals need to be fed at 5:00 AM and rounding up cattle can take weeks at a time. The other key point is that there is a pretty serious point of diminishing returns on farming man hours, so long as a farmer gets done at what needs to be done, they aren’t going to get much more output from putting in any extra hours. You can’t harvest more week then what is growing in your field and even a 100-hour work week is not going to make a cow grow any faster.

This all started to change of course during the Industrial Revolution all of a sudden workers were moving into industrial settings on mass and into roles where they got out what they put in someone in a glass blowing factory could produce more jars in 12 hours than they could in six hours and a coal miner could dig more coal if they work six days a week rather than five days. So, the pressure was getting more people to work more hours to make more. Output industry at this time was still very labour intensive. The ultimate limitation on output was actually how many hours they could get people to work. This continued on for some time, but slowly and steadily technology did improve. All the while there was tension between the factory owners that control the land and capital and the workers that controlled the labour in the factors of production. If any of these factors went missing, production would stop. Things like labour strikes were kind of bad for everyone, but they were essential in pushing the agenda of workers with limited individual negotiating power. One of the big things that they do in the go she ate Ng was working hours working 14 hour days was great for outlook, but less great for workers sanity and safety, especially when you consider that they were working pretty much around the Clock and in amongst steam powered cast iron meat grinders by the late 1800s US Congress and individual states were starting to pass laws that mandated a maximum 8 hour workday, which sounded great, but of course factory owners lobbied hard against this. They argued that if something took 12 hours of constant work to manufacture, then it would no longer be possible to make.

In the US, and they would be ought to take their business overseas. Sound familiar. This led to most of these laws being built with so many allowances and loopholes it was pretty much business as usual. It’s actually going really make much progress for the next few decades, and it was only turned around by the decision of an unlikely champion of the working man. Henry Ford rolled out the 8-hour working day across all of these factories in 1914, much to the shock of his competition is workers and the government. This is also coming along with a sweeping pay rise to $5 per day, which at the time was pretty significant. The idea behind this was that even workers had more money in their pockets. And more hours in their day they would have more ability to go out and consume up. Until this point, economics was primarily determined by how much could be produced. The bottleneck of society was its industrial potential, but with the rise of heavy industry and production lines, these had shifted to consumption, making all the Ford model Tees in the world was useless. If nobody would buy them and you hours also had some much more tangible benefits for the company, it made them the place to work. Think of it in the modern world working at Google or Goldman Sachs is anecdotally seen as professional Nirvana. In the 1920s that was forward, they were on the cutting edge and they treated it and pay their employees. Well. This meant that they could attract the most experienced technicians, which in the age of production lines were starting to come up more and more important, the profits of the company soon jump from around $30,000,000. A year, two $60,000,000, to get it. This is, of course, due to a variety of factors. Big one was their new pool of experienced and motivated workers. Now, so far all looks like working hours have adapted to the needs of the day. Farm workers worked around farm. Judy’s early industrialists worked around. Early industry and modern industry just worked around modern industry. Office workers are kind of just followed suit so how is it decided that this is how we work? A 40 hour work week has a simple elegance to it. It divides working days neatly into three with eight hours to work. 8 hours of recreation, and 8 hours to sleep and it still has two days off a week for people to go out and be good little consumers. Outside of this the 40 hour work week has kind of mandated the 40 hour work week. If a company is engaged in any type of business to business, relationship is going to need to be able to accommodate deliveries or sales orders. At the time they are processed, which will be between 9:00 and 5:00, but it is easy to tell that this isn’t always the best arrangement, but those of you who work in a normal office environment think on how much of the day is actually spent on task. The figures vary wildly. Study to study an industry to industry, but most research notes that modern office workers only spend about 45% of their working hours on their primary task. The rest is made up of things like lunch and coffee breaks, meetings, distractions, and the infamous task of trying to look busy. Obviously, some of these in celery duties. But in many ways, office workers are a lot more like farmworkers number. How many hours in account? And putting up the office, they’re only going to be able to produce one quarterly report per company per quarter and times between those reports. They might not have anything to do at all. There are exceptions, of course. Things like sales, ad rolls with billable hours can benefit from more time in the office, but that’s not most workers. Most workers have a task they do, and so long as that task is done, they have justified their existence. Now this all causes the first major. The plight of the seasonal worker takes that corporate account again. They will be expected to come into the office 40 hours a week, but for a lot of that time there won’t be much for them to do at all between major reporting dates, there will be a lull in their responsibilities in the same way that farmers had a lull in their responsibilities between planting and harvesting. Of course, as we saw earlier, the farmers would just pull back on their hours during these levels, but accounts can’t really do that if they’re not there from 9 to 5, bosses possible start asking questions during major recording periods. Corporate accountants will be tasked with putting together major reports for investors. Regulatory bodies, or even just the companies I management and those tasks could very easily consume more than 40 hours a week. We refinery is happy to work 70 hour weeks during harvest because they can go back to work in 20 hours a week. Once they’ve done, an accountant might be less thrilled about that arrangement because they will only ever be able to go back to the standard 40 hour week despite overworking the poor accountant. It’s actually very bad for morale. Humans are very outcome driven animals.

Most research notes that people don’t actually mind putting in long hours, which even outcome like presenting or finishing a harvest because they can’t deal a sense of pride. Accomplishment in their work once it’s done, what they do hate is what some time spent doing very little interspersed with peaks of massive stressful expectations.

The statement linking technology negatively with free thinking plays on recent human experience over the past century. Surely there has been no time in history where the lived lives of people have changed more dramatically. A quick reflection on a typical day reveals how technology has revolutionized the world. Most people commute to work in an automobile that runs on an internal combustion engine. During the workday, chances are high that the employee will interact with a computer that processes information on silicon bridges that are .09 microns wide. Upon leaving home, family members will be reached through wireless networks that utilize satellites orbiting the earth. Each of these common occurrences could have been inconceivable at the turn of the 19th century.

The statement attempts to bridge these dramatic changes to a reduction in the ability for humans to think for themselves. The assumption is that an increased reliance on technology negates the need for people to think creatively to solve previous quandaries. Looking back at the introduction, one could argue that without a car, computer, or mobile phone, the hypothetical worker would need to find alternate methods of transport, information processing and communication. Technology short circuits this thinking by making the problems obsolete.

However, this reliance on technology does not necessarily preclude the creativity that marks the human species. The prior examples reveal that technology allows for convenience. The car, computer and phone all release additional time for people to live more efficiently. This efficiency does not preclude the need for humans to think for themselves. In fact, technology frees humanity to not only tackle new problems, but may itself create new issues that did not exist without technology. For example, the proliferation of automobiles has introduced a need for fuel conservation on a global scale. With increasing energy demands from emerging markets, global warming becomes a concern inconceivable to the horse-and-buggy generation. Likewise dependence on oil has created nation-states that are not dependent on taxation, allowing ruling parties to oppress minority groups such as women. Solutions to these complex problems require the unfettered imaginations of maverick scientists and politicians.

In contrast to the statement, we can even see how technology frees the human imagination. Consider how the digital revolution and the advent of the internet has allowed for an unprecedented exchange of ideas. WebMD, a popular internet portal for medical information, permits patients to self research symptoms for a more informed doctor visit. This exercise opens pathways of thinking that were previously closed off to the medical layman. With increased interdisciplinary interactions, inspiration can arrive from the most surprising corners. Jeffrey Sachs, one of the architects of the UN Millenium Development Goals, based his ideas on emergency care triage techniques. The unlikely marriage of economics and medicine has healed tense, hyperinflation environments from South America to Eastern Europe.

Indian industry has welcomed the defence ministry’s move to stop import of 101 defence items in a phased manner. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh yesterday announced to put 101 items on import embargo to boost indigenisation of defence production.

Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) director general Chandrajit Bannerjee welcomed the curbs and the announcement that 52,000 crore rupees will be earmarked for procurement from domestic manufacturers. He said, defence minister’s announcement for negative import list of defence systems and platforms marks the launch of a ‘new glide path’ for AtmaNirbhar Bharat.

FICCI has described it a great leap forward for Atmanirbhar Bharat program in defence production. FICCI’s defence committee head SP Shukla said earmarking of 52,000 crore rupees for domestic capital procurement fulfils a request by the industry chamber to provide long-term visibility on defence procurement plans. Chairman and managing director of Bharat Forge Baba Kalyani said the announcement is a strategic step that will propel the Atmanirbhar Bharat narrative and bolster Indian defence equipment manufacturing industry.

He said the growth of the domestic industry especially the MSME sector, will lead to self-reliance, reduced expenditure on imports, saving of foreign currency, creating job opportunities, revival of consumption and ultimately getting us closer to the common goal of 5 trillion economy.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched one lakh crore rupees agriculture infrastructure fund to give a leg up to post-harvest management and marketing of agricultural produce. Speaking on the occasion, Mr Modi said the scheme will provide better warehousing and cold storage facilities for farmers. He said new jobs will be created as food processing and post-harvest facilities are set up in rural areas.
 
Prime Minister said, the scheme will enable startups to scale up their operations and India to build a global presence in organic and fortified food. The fund was launched with 1,128 crore rupees of new loans disbursed to more than 2,200 cooperative societies. During the event, the Prime Minister also transferred 17,100 crore rupees to more than 8.5 crore farmers under the PM-Kisan direct income assistance scheme.
 
Under the infrastructure scheme banks and financial institutions will provide one lakh crore in loans to cooperative societies, farmer producer companies, self-help groups, entrepreneurs, startups and infrastructure providers. The objective is to provide medium to long-term debt financing for setting up of post-harvest infrastructure and community assets for marketing of farm produce.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will today inaugurate and dedicate to the nation submarine Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) connecting Chennai and Port Blair through video conferencing. The foundation stone for the project was laid by Mr Modi on 30th December 2018 at Port Blair. The submarine cable will also connect Port Blair to Swaraj Dweep, Little Andaman, Car Nicobar, Kamorta, Great Nicobar, Long Island, and Rangat. This connectivity will enable delivery of faster and more reliable mobile and landline telecom services to Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
 
Enhanced telecom and Broadband connectivity will boost tourism and employment generation in the Islands and also give an impetus to the economy and raise standards of living. Better connectivity will facilitate delivery of e-Governance services like telemedicine and tele-education. Small enterprises will benefit from opportunities in e-commerce, educational institutions will utilize enhanced availability of bandwidth for learning and knowledge sharing.
 
Once inaugurated, the submarine Optical Fibre Cable link will deliver bandwidth of 2×200 Gigabits per second, Gbps between Chennai and Port Blair, and 2×100 Gbps between Port Blair and the other islands. Provision of reliable, robust, and high-speed telecom and Broadband facilities in these Islands will be a landmark achievement from the viewpoint of consumers, as well as for strategic and governance reasons. 4G mobile services, which were constrained due to limited backhaul bandwidth provided via satellite will also see a major improvement. Business Process Outsourcing services and other medium and large enterprises will also reap the benefits of better connectivity.
 
The project is funded by the Government of India through the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) under the Department of Telecommunications in  Ministry of Communications. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) executed this project while Telecommunications Consultants India Limited (TCIL) is the Technical Consultants. About 2,300 Kilometers of Submarine Optical Fibre Cable has been laid at a cost of about 1 thousand 2 hundred 24 Crore rupees and the project has been completed in time.