यह नीति वार्ता चर्चा विश्व प्रसिद्ध किसान वैज्ञानिक पदमश्री भारत भूषण त्यागी के साथ है। श्री त्यागी जैविक खेती और पुनर्योजी कृषि के बीच अंतर सहित कृषि की स्थिरता से जुड़े कई मुद्दों के बारे में बात करते हैं। वह बहु-फसलीय और बहु-परत कृषि के बारे में भी विस्तार से बात करते हैं जिसका अभ्यास वे कई वर्षों से कर रहे हैं। उन्होंने एक मॉडल विकसित किया है जिसे थिंक टैंक CIPP द्वारा छोटे किसानों के लिए नीति आधारित प्रोत्साहन संरचना में विकसित किया जा रहा है।

Yatish Rajawat: You talk about meta skills and you say they are more important than a college degree. Most of these skills like better social and leadership skills, creativity and complex problem-solving skills cannot be taught from a book or are very difficult to teach. Where should people go to learn these meta skills?  Ravi Venkatesan:  The education system is catering to a world that no longer exists. A world that was stable, where there were more reasonably abundant jobs for those who were educated, a world in which information was scarce. That has changed. And so I say, there are three or four meta skills or super skills that will really matter. One is learning agility, the ability to adapt to a situation you've never encountered before. The second is an entrepreneurial mindset. Not everybody is going to be an entrepreneur, but everybody needs the capacity to see opportunities, seize them, to be tenacious, creative problem-solvers. And then, the third meta skill is life skills. Almost every problem requires collaboration within an organization, across organizations or even across sectors. So, social skills like creativity, problem-solving, collaboration, communication will become hugely important.  None of these skills can be learned in a classroom and certainly not online. The only way to learn is through real-world experiences, particularly what I call Crucible Experiences, which is take on challenges which are outside your comfort zone and in the process of figuring it out, you develop all these skills. So I look back at my life and ask: What were the Crucible Experiences? For instance, going to IIT was a Crucible Experience. I’d always lived at home; living in a hostel and competing with some really smart people was quite tough. Going to the US and with almost no money, finding a job, rapidly climbing my way up was a Crucible Experience. Everybody can learn these skills. We run a huge programme in Delhi government schools called entrepreneurship mindset curriculum, and we’ve seen million-two million kids going through the programme and learning it experientially. So it’s very doable.   Yatish Rajawat: I want to quote from your book, “to retire at 60 and spend the next 30 years vacationing will be boring and unhealthy.” Even if people at that age want to work, it’s not very easy for them to find work. That is one class. And there’s a second type, essentially a younger generation whose basic needs are already met and lack ambition. What is your advice for these two types of people?  Ravi Venkatesan: I think just focusing on the income part of the work trivialises it. Somebody asked me, ‘Who are you?’ I’m a journalist. I’m a writer, I’m an entrepreneur. I’m a scientist. So identity is something that comes from your work. You find your community through work, you learn new things, you get the experience and satisfaction of accomplishing things

Punjab did not prepare for the Covid well. On April 16th the Chief Minister said that the state was effectively out of Covid within 7 days the numbers started escalating and now on May 3, 2021 they are touching 8000 everyday. The state like the rest of the country is facing a paucity of of oxygen. Patients from Haryana and Delhi are also coming to into cities like Ludhiana and Jalandhar as there are more ICU beds in these cities.

While digital wallets are launching mega million IPOs one crucial banking sector remains warped under regulatory control. These is digital banking licenses. Policy Talks spoke to Sachin Chaturvedi a development economist and board member of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Our latest episode on “PolicyTalks”, the no-politics podcast brought to you by the Centre for Innovation in Public Policy (www.cipp.in), features Prof. Sachin Chaturvedi. Prof Chaturvedi is the Director-General of RIS, the Research and Information System for Developing Countries.  This think-tank on trade and innovation works under the Ministry of External Affairs.  He recently joined as Vice-Chairperson of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Good Governance and Policy Analysis (AIGGPA), a state-level policy-making and analysis institution in Madhya Pradesh. He is also on the board of the RBI and has recently authored a report on differentiated licenses and the entry of the private sector in banking.  In this episode, Prof Chaturvedi throws light, among others, on:  ·         Reconciling the current branch-based bank licensing model with the evolving model of branchless, digital banking  ·         India’s challenge for digital banking  ·         How RBI‘s digital initiative for SAARC will drive India’s broader global linkages   ·         Bridging the planning-implementation gap  ·         Innovations being unleased in Madhya Pradesh and Odisha

This interview comes to you from The Centre for Innovation in Public Policy (www.cipp.in), a think-and-do tank that brings together government, regulators, civil society, businesses, and solutions builders to accomplish improved citizen-centred policy outcomes. Anil Vij is the health and home minister of Haryana. Hence he holds two crucial portfolios. He has decided to delegate the acquisition and conversion of schools, hotels and private hospitals into #Covid facilities in cities like Gurgaon and Faridabad.  The situation in the state is deteriorating rapidly with patients rising rapidly and health infrastructure unable to cope up. Patients are already rushing into the state from Delhi, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh as some of its cities have a better health infrastructure. Delhi's health infrastructure is already overwhelmed.  The situation is going to get worse before it gets better.

In this edition of Policy talk, Pramod Varma - Chief Architect of Aadhaar and India stack – tells Yatish Rajawat - founder at Centre for Innovation in Public Policy - about the need for moving away from a platform economy and why increasing countries are adopting digital public goods and digital public infrastructure, a trend pioneered by India.

Salvatore Babones is an associate professor at the University of Sydney in Australia. Salvatore Babones is a quantitative comparative sociologist. He is an associate professor at the University of Sydney and the director of the China and Free Societies program at the Centre for Independent Studies. He earned his MS (mathematical sciences) and Ph.D. (sociology) from Johns Hopkins University.   He has also written a book on the ranking of  Australian Universities, so he understands comparisons and ranking methodologies. He recently wrote an article on why India's ranking on three different indices tracking democracy is falling. These indices are by the Economist Intelligence Unit (#EIU), where Indian democracy ranking has been in decline ever since Mr. #Modi first took office in 2014. The ranking fell from number 27 in the world (just below Belgium) to number 46 (two spots below South Africa). The# EIU now labels India as a “flawed democracy” characterized by “serious deterioration in the quality of democracy. Sweden’s university-based Varieties of Democracy Institute (#V-DEM) ranks India even lower, at 101st in the world for electoral democracy (two places above even Myanmar) and 97th in the world for liberal democracy (one place above Papua New Guinea). Indeed, it claims that India is no longer a liberal democracy at all, but is now an “electoral autocracy” on par with Russia. Lastly, the  American government-funded think tank Freedom House considers India to be only “partially free”, with an overall freedom rank of tied-85th in the world. It even lists the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir as “unfree”.    Babones says the challenge is not with the institutions but with the inputs that it is collecting through its surveys that are leading to this bias and crash in the ranking. In this conversation, Babones talks about the biased sample of people who are asked to answer in this survey. He says that Indians abroad or even resident Indian "intellectuals" who participate in these surveys by these three institutions are biased against #narendramodi  Modi and #BJP and this results in a poor rating on these indices. He also says that the International or more specifically the American media is creating a narrative of anti-#bjp and Anti- #Narendra #modi that has now reached epic proportions and is affect Geo- strategic relations of India with the western world.  It is affecting India's perception among not just policymakers but ordinary Americans and Europeans who think that India is now a more dangerous place to go. The political opposition to BJP by the left forces has reached a stage where they are willing to damage India's perception globally as long as they are able to damage #BJP. Do watch, share, and give your opinion about this line of thinking.

The rapid automation and development of Artificial General Intelligence are creating. AGI is differentiated from AI on the basis of its ability to do an intellectual task that only a human being could do. For instance, composing a musical symphony or writing an analytical article, or having a deeper conversation like is happening with GPT3. Brett King talks about the loss of jobs with AGI and also the opportunity that the climate crisis creates with the creation of jobs that only humans can do.  Do listen share and subscribe to the channel. And do share your views on who next to talk to? A mathematically precise definition of AGI was proposed by Marcus Hutter in 2000. Named AIXI, the proposed agent maximizes “the ability to satisfy goals in a wide range of environments”. This type of AGI, characterized by proof of the ability to maximize a mathematical definition of intelligence rather than exhibit human-like behavior, is called universal artificial intelligence.

Private or new universities are facing a perfect storm as they have to prepare for a technological shift along with regulations demanding that they wider their offerings. Polic Talks spoke to the most experienced education entrepreneur in the country Pramath Sinha. Mr. Sinha was the founding dean of ISB and helped start Ashoka University too. He recently sold a stake in Harappa Education to UpGrad. He talks to us about how universities need to prepare their students for the future and also keep pace with the change themselves. Must see for students, professors, and administrations in higher education.

A conversation with Sanjeev Sanyal, member of the Prime Minister Economic Advisory Council on Urban Policy in India. Under #Prime #Minister #Narendra #Modi there has been a shift in the way funds are being allocated for urban projects. Instead of one model rules all policy formulation, every city is getting project funding that it needs. Earlier during the #UPA era the central government decided everything and #JNNURM funded buses and water projects.  Hence , even hilly #cities got low floor buses that were unsuitable for the terrain, while water pipelines were planned, funding taken by the state government but were never laid or completed. Even the Prime Minister Awaas Yojana in urban areas is geared towards giving subsidies or loans to poor to make their own homes instead of depending upon cardboard houses made by the government. This mean the involvement of CPWD/PWD in constructing homes for the poor is going down.  According to Sanyal, Smart Cities are also being reimagined by the cities themselves and projects like redeveloping existing markets like Chappan lane in Indore or redeveloping the heritage area in Surat are being done under this scheme.  Do subscribe to Policy Talks.