1: An Engels’ Pause in an AI-Shaped World
UPSC Syllabus Relevance:
- GS Paper I: Effects of globalization on Indian society; social empowerment.
- GS Paper III: Indian Economy (Growth, Development and Employment); Science and Technology- developments and their applications and effects in everyday life; Indigenization of technology and developing new technology.
- GS Paper IV: Ethics and Human Interface (Social impact of technology).
Core Argument (approx. 750 words):
The editorial posits that the current phase of Artificial Intelligence (AI) integration into the global economy resembles the 19th-century “Engels’ Pause.” This historical period saw significant technological advances (Industrial Revolution) leading to massive productivity gains, but the profits were captured primarily by capital owners, resulting in stagnant real wages and declining welfare for the working class for several decades. The editorial argues that AI, a General-Purpose Technology (GPT), is creating a similar structural shift where productivity gains are decoupled from wage growth, leading to heightened inequality and social stress.
Key Aspects for UPSC Preparation:
1. Understanding the ‘Engels’ Pause’ Analogy:
- Historical Context: During the first Industrial Revolution, new machinery (like power looms) boosted output dramatically. However, capital owners invested in more machines, capturing the value, while the supply of labour (due to population growth and migration) kept wages low despite the growing national wealth.
- Modern Parallel with AI: AI-driven tools (e.g., in call centres, manufacturing, data analysis) are increasing worker efficiency (30-50% productivity boost as per search snippets) and cutting costs for firms. However, real wages are stagnating, and workloads are often intensified. This signifies a capital-biased technological change.
2. Manifestations of the Modern Pause:
- Productivity Without Wage Growth (The Decoupling): The value created by AI-enhanced labour accrues as profits (to owners of the AI technology) rather than flowing into higher wages for the enhanced worker. This increases the profit share in national income relative to the wage share.
- Rising Costs of Complements (Reskilling Burden): To stay relevant in an AI-driven job market, workers are forced to constantly upgrade skills through expensive courses and certifications. The editorial likens these out-of-pocket expenses to the rising cost of essential goods (like food) that offset nominal wage increases in the 19th century, leaving workers’ net welfare unchanged or worse.
- Concentration of Gains and Inequality: Companies leading the AI revolution (in the US and China) are projecting massive global GDP additions (e.g., PwC’s projection of $15.7 trillion by 2030). The benefits are highly concentrated among a few tech giants and developed economies, potentially exacerbating global and domestic inequality, especially in developing economies like India.
- Job Displacement and Transformation: AI adoption is not just complementing human tasks but displacing entire roles (e.g., in data entry, basic diagnostics, and administrative functions). This poses a significant risk of structural unemployment if the rate of new job creation from AI-enabled industries is slower than the rate of displacement, demanding large-scale, proactive government intervention.
3. Policy Responses and Way Forward for India:
- Social Safety Nets and Universal Basic Income (UBI): Policy debate should centre on wealth redistribution mechanisms, such as AI-taxes on automated processes, to fund robust social security or experimental UBI to mitigate the precarity of the future workforce.
- Education and Skilling Reform (The Investment in Human Capital): Shift from general education to a lifelong learning model focused on uniquely human skills (creativity, critical thinking, emotional intelligence) that are hard for AI to replicate. Government-funded, affordable, and decentralized skilling programs are crucial to ease the “rising cost of complements.”
- Regulating AI’s Spread: Need for policies that ensure the benefits of AI are shared more broadly. This could involve promoting worker-ownership models in AI-driven enterprises or enforcing collective bargaining rights for ‘gig’ workers operating on AI platforms.
- Ethical Frameworks: Developing a robust ethical and regulatory framework for AI (like India’s stance on responsible AI) to address algorithmic bias and ensure the technology serves societal welfare, not just corporate profit. The editorial stresses that policy inaction risks prolonged social distress, making proactive governance essential.
2: What an Empty Plate of Food Should Symbolise
UPSC Syllabus Relevance:
- GS Paper II: Government Policies and Interventions for Development in various sectors; Issues relating to poverty and hunger.
- GS Paper III: Major Crops-cropping patterns; Storage, transport and marketing of agricultural produce and issues and related constraints; Food processing and related industries in India; Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation.
- GS Paper IV: Probity in Governance (Citizen’s Charters, Transparency, Accountability); Utilitarian perspective on public welfare (Ethics of Waste).
Core Argument (approx. 750 words):
The editorial shifts focus from food security to food sustainability, highlighting the monumental problem of Food Loss and Waste (FLW) in India. It argues that an ’empty plate’ should symbolise not just hunger, but the collective failure in logistics, infrastructure, and ethical responsibility that leads to significant portions of produced food being lost or wasted. The scale of the problem is a humanitarian crisis, an economic drain, and a major environmental hazard, demanding a holistic, shared-responsibility approach.
Key Aspects for UPSC Preparation:
1. Scale and Impact of Food Loss and Waste (FLW):
- Economic Loss and Hunger: India loses an enormous percentage of its food produce post-harvest, placing it among the highest global contributors. This loss, which occurs primarily at the farm and distribution level (food loss), is a direct economic blow to farmers and a missed opportunity to feed the millions who are food-insecure or malnourished.
- Environmental Disaster (The Climate-Food Nexus): Food waste (at the consumer and retail level) and food loss significantly contribute to climate change. When organic matter decomposes in landfills, it releases methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. Additionally, the wastage represents a colossal loss of water, energy, and land resources used in production. FLW is estimated to contribute a substantial percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions.
2. Primary Causes of Food Loss in India:
- Infrastructure Deficit: This is the most significant bottleneck. It includes insufficient cold storage facilities, lack of refrigerated transport (cold chain), and poor road connectivity, leading to spoilage of perishable goods (fruits, vegetables, dairy) during transport and storage.
- Inefficient Supply Chains: Fragmented and long supply chains involving multiple intermediaries, archaic market mechanisms (APMCs), and lack of real-time inventory management contribute to delays and damage.
- Technological Gap: Limited adoption of affordable, decentralized food preservation and storage technologies, especially at the primary agricultural level.
3. Pathways to Comprehensive Solutions:
- Strengthening Post-Harvest Infrastructure: Massive public and private investment is needed for a modern, integrated cold-chain network. Focus should be on creating decentralized, village-level processing and storage units, potentially under the cooperative model. Schemes like the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana need accelerated implementation.
- Affordable and Decentralized Technologies: Promoting low-cost, innovative solutions like solar-powered cold storage units, improved food packaging techniques, and mobile pre-cooling units to extend the shelf life of produce at the farm gate itself.
- Promoting Circular Economy and Behavioural Change (Food Waste):
- Food Banks and Community Kitchens: Creating robust national networks of food banks, facilitated by digital platforms, to redirect surplus food from weddings, restaurants, and retail to the needy. The editorial advocates for governmental support to institutionalise these systems.
- Shared Responsibility: This involves consumer awareness campaigns to reduce household food waste, incentivizing restaurants and retailers to donate surplus food instead of discarding it, and mandating food waste reporting for large businesses.
- Policy and Regulatory Support: Reviewing archaic market regulations that hinder direct farmer-to-consumer linkages and promoting value-addition through the food processing industry, which converts perishable raw materials into stable, longer-shelf-life products.
Conclusion: The empty plate must serve as a symbol for immediate action. Addressing FLW is a multi-sectoral challenge requiring synergy between agriculture, infrastructure, environment, and social welfare policies to achieve India’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets.
