Democracy in India

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Question
ICSEENIPO12030291

What is a reserved constituency in the Indian electoral system ?

Solution

A number of seats in the Parliament of India, State Assemblies, Municipalities and Village level institutions are reserved for Dalits or Scheduled Castes (SC) and Adivasis or Scheduled Tribes (ST). Candidates of General category are not eligible to contest from these constituencies. All voters are to vote for one of the candidates (from Scheduled Castes or Schedule Tribes).

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Question
ICSEENIPO12030312

Discuss the measures should be taken to meet the challenge of political violence in India.

Solution

The measures:
i. Proper Education and Political Socialisation: Inculcation of the Psychology of peace and non-violence in the minds of the people through meaningful political education and use of the formal and non formal means of political socialisation can help us to check political violence. 
ii. Controlling inequalities and evils - Poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, ignorance, under development and communication all act as sources of violence in politics.
iii. Job Oriented Education- Right education helps in getting job thus keeping them way from being engaged in violence. 
iv. Efficient law and order system - The police administration must be made transparent efficient, responsible and accountable. 
v. Stopping political corruption - It must be eliminated by adopting proper laws and implementing strictly. 
vi. Prevent criminalisation of politics - No person with criminal records should be allowed to contest elections. 

Question
ICSEENIPO12030313

Give any six factors responsible for regional imbalances in India. 

Solution

The factors are mentioned below :
i. Historical Factor: Historically, regional imbalances in India started from its British regime. The British rulers as well as industrialists started to develop only those earmarked regions of the country which as per their own interest were possessing rich potential for prosperous manufacturing and trading activities. British industrialists mostly preferred to concentrate their activities in two states like West Bengal and Maharashtra and more particularly to three metropolitan cities like Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai. They concentrated all their industries in and around these cities neglecting the rest of the country to remain backward.

ii. Geographical Factors: Geographical factors play an important role in the developmental activities of a developing economy. The difficult terrain surrounded by hills, rivers and dense forests leads to increase in the cost of administration, cost of developmental projects, besides making mobilization of resources particularly difficult.
Most of the Himalayan states of India, i.e., Himachal Pradesh. Northern Kashmir, the hill districts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh and other North-Eastern states, remained mostly backward due to its inaccessibility and other inherent difficulties. Adverse climate and proneness to flood are also responsible factors for poor rate of economic development of different regions of the country as reflected by low agricultural productivity and lack of industrialization. Thus these natural factors have resulted uneven growth of different regions of India.

iii. Locational Advantages: Locational advantages are playing an important role in determining the development strategy of a region. Due to some locational advantages, some regions are getting special favour in respect of site selections of various developmental projects. While determining the location of iron and steel projects or refineries or any heavy industrial project, some technical factors included in the locational advantage are getting special considerations. Thus regional imbalances arise due to such locational advantages attached to some regions and the locational disadvantages attached to some other backward regions.

iv. Inadequacy of Economic Overheads: Economic overheads like transport and communication facilities, power, technology, banking and insurance etc. are considered very important for the development of a particular region. Due to adequacy of such economic overheads, some regions are getting a special favour in respect of settlement of some developmental projects whereas due to inadequacy of such economic overheads, some regions of the country, viz., North-Eastern Region, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar etc. remained much backward as compared to other developed regions of the country. Moreover, new investment in the private sector has a general tendency to concentrate much on those regions having basic infrastructural facilities.

v. Failure of Planning Mechanism: Although balanced growth has been accepted as one of the major objectives of economic planning in India since the Second Plan onwards but it did not make much headway in achieving this object. Rather, in real sense, planning mechanisms has enlarged the disparity between the developed states and less developed states of the country. In respect of allocating plan outlay relatively developed states get much favour than less developed states.

vi. Political Instability: Another important factor responsible for regional imbalance is the political instability prevailing in the backward regions of the country. Political instability in the form of unstable government, extremist violence, law and order problem etc. have been obstructing the flow of investments into these backward regions besides making flight of capital from these backward states. Thus this political instability prevailing in same backward regions of the country are standing as a hurdle in the path of economic development of these regions.

Question
ICSEENIPO12030328

What is Casteism ? 

Solution

According to D. N. Prasad, casteism is loyalty to caste translated into politics. It is an overriding blind and supreme group loyalty that ignores the healthy social standards of justice, their play, equality and universal brotherhood’.