February 4, 2020

Topic: Immigration.

A study was recently conducted by Professor Kamaljeet Singh and Dr Rakshinder Kaur of Punjabi University.
The study is basically focused on the Malwa region and covers around 540 students, enrolled in various IELTS Institutes.

Around 70 % of the visa aspirants are from the farming community.
79% of them belong to rural areas.
A big chunk of this group hail from families belonging to either marginal or small category.
At least 56% of them own less than 5 acres of land.
24% of them own less than 19 acres of land.
The aspirants from the families of government employees form around 16.5% of the group.
Businessmen and private sector family aspirants form 8 % and 6.5% of the group, respectively.
An interesting fact that surfaced was that around 58% of the aspirants are women.
The study also highlighted that only around 36% of the aspirants’ families had the resources to fund the entire abroad scenario.
Also, around 8% of the studied were from the backward classes category.
Whereas only 2% of the aspirants belonging to the Scheduled Caste category.

( Perhaps due to reservation policy).

Agrarian crisis, in which falling water table, reducing farm yields, farm suicides etc has become q great factor for pushing the youth abroad.
Lack of unemployment avenues is again q big factor.
Some families also send their kids abroad to enhance their Social status and prestige.

(Source:- The Tribune)

Topic: Social Welfare Policies.

Under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana ( Gramin), the state government would come up with 10000 rural houses.
To cover more beneficiaries, the state seeks to tweak the definition of a kutcha house.
The roofing condition in border areas is one of the reasons for the definition to be changed.

₹ 120,000 is provided to the beneficiaries in three instalments.
MGNREGA labour of 90 days is also provided ( worth rupees 21, 690) along with rupees 12000 for the construction of a toilet.
Besides, the use of technology such as geo-tagging of Houses is also being done to improve the Transparency.
Awaasapp phone application has also been in use for uploading the geo-tagger photos.

(Source:- The Tribune)