DAILY ENRICHMENT PROGRAMME (DEP- 0043)
Today Topics List:
Madras Day
Young Indians, aging Workforce
5 Important Things about Moon Missions
INDIAN HISTORY HERITAGE & CULTURE
Madras Day
- August 22 is annually celebrated as Madras Day to commemorate the founding of Madras, Now Chennai.
- After being carved out of Madras Presidency, the state and the city are named Madras till 1969, when it was officially renamed as Tamil Nadu.
- In 1996, the City of Madras is named as Chennai.
History of Madras:
- The East India Company came to India in 17th Century, with a goal to trade here.
- In 1612, it defeated Portuguese at Swally hole and controlled the pilgrim sea route from western India to Mecca, which was resented by the Mughals.
- Thomas Roe secured an accord from Emperor Jahangir, with this EIC could trade and establish factories in India, in return for aiding the Mughals’ naval power.
- With Surat in 1608, they started establishing trading posts called forts, which started in the east coast with Masulipatnam in
- With locals opposing their presence and Dutch based in Pulicat led to tensions.
- Francis day proposed that he should be allowed to look for a fresh settlement. This led them to Madrasapatnam.
Madrasapatnam:
- Patnam or Pattinam means “a town on the sea coast”, the origin of the name Madras has invited speculation.
- One theory is that, a Fisherman named Madresan implored Day to name the City after him.
- Some claimed that the name existed even before the arrival of British.
- Madrasapatnam had been ruled by the Pallavas and Cholas. It was under Vijayanagar rulers when the Britishers came in. They appointed chieftains known as Nayakas.
- DamarlaVenkatapathy Nayak, an influential Chieftain under Venkata III, who was in charge of the area of present Chennai City, gave the grant of a piece of land lying between the River Cooum and River egmore to English in 1639.
- This was Madrasapatnam and a Fort name George was founded here.
- In the Honour of Venkatapathy’s father Chennappa Nayak, the settlement grown around St George was named
- Madrasapatnam was to its north, and the towns came to be populated soon, becoming almost combined.
- Over the years, the city grew and institutions of a mayor and a corporation were created.
ECONOMY
Young Indians, aging Workforce
- Today, while the countries around the world are witnessing an age structure that is growing old ,India is moving energetically towards its youthful age structure. It is a period of great pride because today India has the highest population under the age of 30.
- An analysis of India’s workforce by The Indian Express, sourced from the Economic Outlook data of the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), however, shows a paradox: while India may be the country with the most youthful population, its workforce is rapidly aging.
What does an aging workforce mean?
- An analysis of India’s workforce by The Indian Express, sourced from the Economic Outlook data of the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), however, shows a paradox: while India may be the country with the most youthful population, its workforce is rapidly aging.
- In CMIE’s data, youth are defined as those above 15 years and below 25 years of age.
- But since the PM spoke of those under 30 years as the youth, consider a workforce divided into three groups:
- thoseolderthan15butyoungerthan 30;
- thoseaged30yearsormorebutlessthan 45;
- and those aged45andolder.
- The share of first group has fallen from 25% in 2016-17 to 17% at the end of last financial year ; The share of middle group fell from 38% to 33% ; But the share of the oldest category has increased from 37% to 49%.
- Which means that in the past seven years, the share of people 45 years and older has gone from a little more than a third of the workforce to almost half.
How is India’s Workforce Aging?
- A good way to track this is to look at the metric called Employment Rate(ER), which shows for any population or age group, what proportion of that age group or population is employed.
- So,if there are 100 people in the 15-29 age group and only 10 are employed the ERwouldbe10%.
- The data shows that 15 – 29 years age group grew by 2.64 crore from 35.49 crore in 2016 – 17 to 38.13 crore in 2022 – 23.
- Yet, the total number of people in this age group who had jobs fell by 3.24 crore—amassive31%—from 10.34 crore to 7.10 crore.
- And the ER for this groupfellfrom29%tojust 19%.
- The data show the ER has fallen for the next age category (30-45 years) as well, albeit to a lesser extent (from 55% to 48%).
- The employment rates in this age group were much higher to begin with.
- ER has declined the least for the oldest group. This is also the only group where the absolute number of people with jobs has actually grown
- But the overall population of this cohort grew by even more, and that is why the ER has fallen to some extent.
- In the 45 years and above category, the age group of 55-59 stands out as the cohort that not only sawan increase in ER, but is also the one that registered the greatest increase in ER over the past seven years.
- Theagegroupof25-29yearsshowsarising employment rate But the absolute numbers show that there as on for this increase is in fact the sharp decline in the population of this cohort.
What does the Data say?
- The data show that even though India has a fast-growing youth population, that by itself does not guarantee more jobs for the youth.
- India’s workforce is getting older because the young are failing to make their mark in the job market, and it appears they are getting increasingly elbowed out by the not-so-young.
- Even if one accounts for the possibility that many young people may be pursuing higher studies, the trend is stark
- Other, official surveys also contain evidence that India’s un employment is the highest for the youth, and o ten rises with educational attainment.
- Unless these trends are reversed, India may continue to experience the seemingly counterintuitive phenomenon of being a youthful country with an aging workforce.
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY & HEALTH
5 Important Things about Moon Missions
- THE CHANDRAYAAN-3 mission has been generating a lot of discussion around India’s space programme, and Moon missions in general. Here are a few things you may not be aware of,
- Kalam ensured Chandrayaan – I left imprint on moon:
- Dr A P J Abdul Kalam suggested that the spacecraft carry an instrument that could be made to fall on the Moon’s surface, and a moon Impact probe hit the lunar surface and became the first Indian Object on the Moon through Chandrayaan – 1 in 2008.
- Lander of Chandrayaan – 2 was to come from Russia.
- The Chandrayaan-2 mission,which had a lander and a rover, was originally supposed to go in the 2011-12-time frame.
- India had not developed its own lander and rover. The original Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft was supposed to be a joint mission with Russia. India was supposed to provide the rocket and Orbiter, while the lander and rover would have come from Russia.
- The kind of lander and rover that Russia was developing forChandrayaan-2,however, showed problems on a different mission, forcing Russia’s space agency Roscosmos to make design changes
- The new design, however, was larger and could not be accommodated on the Indian rocket.
- Russia eventually pulled out of the collaboration, and ISRO went in for indigenous development of the lander and rover. That tooktime,andChandrayaan-2could fly only in2019.
- India’s next moon mission is not called Chandrayaan but and collaboration with Japan, called LUPEX, which is likely to be launched in 2024-25.
- European Space Agency (ESA) is supposed to be in collaboration with Russia for Luna 25, Luna 26 and also Luna 27., and a similar cooperation was going on for a Russian Mars mission as well.
- This was withdrawn due to Russia’s war with Ukraine.
- Now the planned collaboration was to be with NASA.
- Over the last decade, five countries have attempted to land on the moon – China, Israel, India, Japan and Russia.
- Only China has succeeded so far.
- The Moon missions from Israel and Japan, Beresheet and Hakuto – R respectively, were sent by private companies, which are only attempts by private space agencies to land on the moon.
- Japan’s space agency JAXA is readying to send its first Moon landing mission, called SLIM, or Smart Lander for Investigating Moon.