State legislatures in India play a crucial role in the country’s federal system, exercising significant powers and responsibilities. Here’s an evaluation of their legislative, financial, and oversight functions:

Legislative Functions:

Introduction and Passage of Bills: State legislatures introduce and pass bills on various subjects, including agriculture, education, healthcare, and law and order.
Debate and Discussion: Members engage in debates and discussions on bills, which helps shape public opinion and influences the final outcome.
Representation: State legislatures provide a platform for elected representatives to represent their constituents’ interests.
Financial Functions:

Budget Presentation: The state government presents its budget to the state legislature for approval.
Budget Discussion: Members debate and scrutinize the budget, making suggestions and amendments.
Approval: The budget is passed or rejected by the state legislature.
Oversight Functions:

Scrutiny of Government Policies: State legislatures hold the state government accountable for its policies, programs, and decisions.
Committee Work: Various committees are formed to examine specific issues, such as education, health, or revenue.
Public Hearings: State legislatures hold public hearings to gather information and opinions from stakeholders.
Comparison with other countries’ legislative bodies:

United States: The state legislatures in the US have more powers compared to India’s state legislatures. They can initiate revenue bills, impeach state officials, and conduct investigations.
Canada: Provincial legislatures in Canada have similar powers to Indian state legislatures, but they have more autonomy in governing certain areas like healthcare and education.
Australia: State parliaments in Australia have limited powers compared to Indian state legislatures, with more emphasis on advising the federal government.
Strengths of Indian state legislatures:

Representation: State legislatures provide a platform for local representation and representation of diverse interests.
Scrutiny of Government: State legislatures can hold the state government accountable for its actions and policies.
Flexibility: State governments have the flexibility to experiment with innovative policies and programs.
Weaknesses of Indian state legislatures:

Limited Powers: State governments have limited powers compared to the central government.
Corruption and Dysfunctionality: Many state legislatures face issues like corruption, defections, and lack of coordination between parties.
Inefficient Processes: Bureaucratic hurdles and slow decision-making processes hinder the effective functioning of state legislatures.
To improve the effectiveness of state legislatures in India:

Strengthen Committee System: Empower committees to conduct thorough investigations and make recommendations.
Enhance Transparency: Increase transparency in financial transactions and policy-making processes.
Improve Representation: Ensure fair representation of diverse interests and demographics within each constituency.
Capacity Building: Provide training and capacity-building programs for members to enhance their legislative skills.
In conclusion, while Indian state legislatures face challenges, they play a vital role in shaping public policy and holding the state government accountable. By strengthening their legislative, financial, and oversight functions, they can become more effective in serving their constituents and contributing to India’s democratic growth.

Answer: While disasters threaten the well-being of people from all walks of life, few are disproportionately affected, e.g., people with disabilities. They are especially vulnerable when disaster strikes not only due to aspects of their disabilities, but also because they are more likely to experience adverse socio-economic outcomes such as higher poverty rates. Disasters and poorly planned disaster response and recovery efforts can exacerbate these disparities, leaving persons with disabilities struggling to cope even more both during and after the emergency. Disproportionate impact of disasters on Persons with Disabilities (PWDs):

• Persons with disabilities are too often excluded from early-warning systems and evacuation processes, which may prevent them from fleeing a disaster in a safe and timely manner.
• Greater risk of being separated from their usual carers and assistive devices while fleeing, which could exacerbate their vulnerabilities during displacement. This adds to their trauma and delays recovery. For instance, following the 2004 tsunami, many people with disabilities in India, including children with intellectual disabilities, were left destitute after being separated from family members.
• The stakeholders and service providers working in the field of disability, often confront systemic gaps and challenges. For instance, there is near absence of appropriate disability- sensitive and disability-responsive policies, inadequate planning, etc.
• Also, the evacuation centres often lack necessary assistance and medical services required by people with severe disabilities and high care needs.
• PWDs are more likely to face discrimination and exploitation during and after the disasters, especially when the resources are scarce.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) 2006 and Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, 2015-30 recognizes the disproportionate impact of disaster on PWDs and puts an obligation on the members to take concrete measures. India ratified the CRPD in 2007 and has taken following steps to make disaster management inclusive:

• National Disaster Management Guidelines on Disability-Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction (DiDRR), 2019: From mitigation to relief and rehabilitation, the guidelines consider almost all the areas of disaster management to make the entire process equally participative for the differently abled population. It also marked the responsibilities of ministries and departments from national to local level for carrying out inclusivity in disaster management.
• National Disaster Management Plan (NDMP): It contains a dedicated chapter on ‘social inclusion’ for such ‘more vulnerable’ sections of the population.
• Accessible India campaign: Its objective is to make it convenient for PWDs to access administrative buildings and transport, among other things. This will further strengthen the capacity of the differently abled to tackle disasters.

All these constructive steps initiated by the government are stepping stones in India’s journey towards becoming a disability inclusive society. These measures also open up possibilities to take the movement forward, introducing more need-based and disability sensitive strategies. The core principle to bring inclusivity in disaster management should be participation of the PWDs in planning process, non-discrimination and increased accessibility.

Answer: The National Programme of Mid-Day Meals (MDM) in schools is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) of the Ministry of Education, aimed at providing meals to students with a view to enhance enrolment, retention and attendance of children while simultaneously improving nutrition at all levels. It is the world’s largest school feeding programme, as the children covered under the MDM scheme are entitled to meals under the National Food Security Act, 2013. Apart from increasing enrolment, as per the government data, in the year 2018-2019, the MDM scheme served about 9.17 crore children in 11.35 lakh schools across the country before it was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, India has recently slipped to 101st position (out of 116 countries) in the Global Hunger Index, 2021, from its earlier position of 94th (Global Hunger Index, 2020). As per the data released by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, over 33 lakh children in India are malnourished and more than half of them fall in the ‘severely malnourished’ category. These highlight the ineffectiveness of the MDM scheme. Various reasons for the ineffectiveness of the MDM scheme are:

• Poor infrastructure: The MDM scheme suffers with respect to inadequate infrastructure in terms of cooking shed, water supply, utensils etc.
• Corruption and leakages: The CAG’s performance audit report of the MDM, 2015, found financial mismanagement by the then HRD ministry, diversion of funds by states and fake enrolments.
• Social discrimination: A study by the Institute of Dalit Studies in UP, Bihar, West Bengal, e.tc, found that social discrimination was prevalent in several schools on the basis of caste while preparing and serving food to students.
• Meagre allocation of resources: Salary of cooks and helpers is too low to incentivize them for proper implementation of the scheme.
• Quality of food: There have been reports that children were fed substandard or adulterated food leading to food poisoning at times.
• Inadequate monitoring: There are provisions for regular social audit, field visits and inspections but these are seldom carried out. Further, field visit reports are not available after FY14 and monitoring institutions’ reports are not available after FY15.

Remedial measures required to make the MDM more effective include the following:

• The government needs to establish a system to ascertain that the guidelines related to stipulated nutritional requirements in the meals are followed.
• There is a need to narrow the gap between enrolments versus actual number of children availing the MDM scheme.
• Monitoring and supervision mechanisms should be implemented effectively. The state government needs to strengthen the internal controls at all levels by building proper data systems to track the scheme.
• Quality of cooked food served needs to be enhanced through periodic training of cooks-cum- helpers on aspects of hygiene and health. In this context, Self-Help Groups can be roped in to ensure quality standards.

A comprehensive, periodical and systematic orientation is pertinent to sensitize all stakeholders including policy makers, implementers, teachers, central level officials and community members to make this scheme successful.

Answer: The government has undertaken various initiatives such as the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Right To Education Act, 2009, Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao scheme, Swachh Vidyalaya campaign, Swayam Prabha TV channel, Mid-Day Meal scheme, Samagra Shiksha programme etc. These initiatives have led to the attainment of various goals in the education sector, including:

• Universal enrolment has been achieved at the primary level.
• The annual average dropout rate at the primary level has come down from 9.11% in 2009-10 to only 1.5% in 2019-2020.
• The number of out-of-school children has shown significant reduction in the 6-14 years age group, from 134.6 lakh in 2005 to 35 lakh approximately in 2021.
• As of 2019-20, 97.5% of schools in India had established facilities for safe drinking water on the school premises, a substantial increase from 59% in 2017-18.
• About 95% of schools have functional toilet facilities on the premises.
• A remarkable improvement is seen from only 54.6% of schools with electricity in 2012-13 to 83.4% in 2019-20.
• Nearly 85% of schools have designated rooms for libraries and readings.

However, the education sector is still reeling from learning poverty. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, about 53% of children were not able to read a simple text by the age of 10, unfortunately, due to the pandemic, this has shot up to 70%. Further, there are persisting inequalities in the education system. For example, students from SC/ST backgrounds have had a higher dropout rate, the percentage of women who have completed at least ten or more years of schooling remains abysmally low at 41% as against 50.2% for men and only around 38.5% of schools in India having functional computers with mere 22.18% having internet access despite steep improvements. Thus, interventions are required to tackle the various issues plaguing the education sector in India: Learning poverty:

• Ensure clear goals and measures for literacy: National goals should be set with an understanding of how students are currently doing, and accordingly, achievable goals and interventions should be developed.
• Ensure effective teaching for literacy: Teachers need to be supported with learning materials and guides that have a step-wise plan, which strongly emphasize practicing specific-classroom skills.
• Teach children first in their local language: Students who are taught in their mother tongue in the early years have higher comprehension skills, thereby improving learning abilities in the future.
• Improve monitoring and accountability: State governments should develop and formulate robust mechanisms to enforce regulations on teachers’ qualifications, teacher absenteeism and learning outcomes.
• Individualized tracking: An electronic national educational registry for tracking each child’s learning outcomes will help monitor students requiring remediation, special attention as well as those who drop out after the elementary education level.

Persisting inequalities:

• Micro-planning by targeting an area: Contextualized strategies to promote distance learning are needed to ensure that the most marginalized children do not drop out.
• Adopting Minimum Levels of Learning (MLoL) framework: This will involve setting MLoL for all students with clear guidelines on the role of the teachers and the curriculum.
• Sensitisation and training of teachers: These are required as their attitude and competence directly determine the school experience of students, especially those from the marginalized sections.
• Reducing the digital divide: There should be an increase in access to technology through free or subsidized data for educational purposes and existing learning applications should be customized to work on slower internet connections.

Accessible and affordable education should be the priority of the government, since education directly impacts other issues such as poverty, inequality, low economic growth etc.