What to Read in Indian Express Editorial( Topic and Syllabus wise)

EDITORIAL 1: Small farmers, big impacts

Introduction

It is not enough to say that agriculture contributes only 16 per cent to India’s GDP. Nor is it sufficient to state that small farmer households earn about one lakh rupees annually.

The real picture

• 250 million people are directly dependent on farming, and there are 700 million Indians who are directly or indirectly connected to farming and the rural sector.
• Protecting the farm sector is not just a policy. It is a survival mechanism for millions, crucial to maintaining economic, social, political and cultural stability.

The subsidy issue

• The argument around agricultural subsidy and tariffs often centres on the Minimum Support Price (MSP) provided to select crops.
• In the US and much of the EU, the terminoogy and approach vary, but the issue remains the same. If India has MSP, the US has ERP, PLC, ARC and DMC.
• ERP is the Effective Reference Price, analogous to the MSP.In the US, farmers receive direct payments from the government if market prices fall below this level, and it is called PLC or Price Loss Coverage.
• Both PLC and ARC (Agriculture Risk Coverage) cover 22 major crops,ranging from wheat and corn to soybean and cotton.
• These systems are not restricted to farming alone as they also extend to the dairy sector under the Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC) programme.
• The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) provides income support via direct payments if prices fall below intervention levels, which are akin to MSPs.
• The crucial difference is that, while in India, the government procures crops at the MSP, in the US the government does not procure crops but instead pays farmers directly if prices fall below the minimum.
• Given the literacy levels, or lack thereof, and the paperwork involved with enrolling in these various EU and US policies, asking Indian farmers to transition to these systems would create another level of bureaucracy.
• Moreover, rolling out the US and EU models in India would take years, if not decades.

A comparison with US and EU subsidy

• The pressure on India to dismantle its farm mechanisms, whether MSP or tariffs, and open up to international market forceswould be justifiable, if the US and EU were not subsidising their own agricultural sectors.
• The US spends about $20 billion and the EU about $50 billion on agricultural subsidies. In fact, many of these subsidies remain hidden, while the Indian MSP system is much more transparent.
• The focus of US subsidies is large farms, whereas Indian farm policy centres on small farmers.
• US policy priorities include market stabilisation, income protection, and climate adaptation, while India focuses on supporting small farmers and landholderscol, ensuring regular upliftment of the rural economy.
• EU subsidies are targeted more toward income support, environmental goals, climate and biodiversity targets.
• In the US and much of Europe, 80 per cent of subsidies go to large farms, while in India, it is the reverse with 80 per cent going to small and medium farmers.
• The EU, in its latest budget provisions, is trying to move away from the US approach towards the Indian model, by targeting small farmers.

Way forward

• For India, the real issue is that of equitable and development-centred agreements.
• Just as the Indian MSP is clear, transparent and focused on the Indian context, the alphabet soup of CAP, ERP, PLC, ARC and DMC is tailored to the US and EU contexts.
• This perspective arises not only from economics, but also from society, politics and culture.
• Opening the entire agriculture sector to a free-for-all, when US and EU subsidies distort the market in their favour, would create a kind of asymmetric warfare, with tumultuous consequences for Indian society. The upheaval would be massive.

 

EDITORIAL 2: CBSE plans open book exams

Context

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) will introduce open-book assessments (OBE) in Class 9 from 2026-27, after a pilot study showed strong teacher support for the idea.

What are open-book exams?

• An open-book exam allows students to use approved resources like textbooks, class notes, or other specified materialduring an assessment, rather than mainly testing memory.
• The challenge lies in knowing where to look, making sense of the material, and applying it to the problem at hand. In a science paper, for instance, the facts might be in front of you, but the real test is linking them together to reach a conclusion.
• These exams evaluate whether students can interpret ideas effectively, instead of just repeating them.

History  of the OBE format worldwide

• Open-book exams have been around for decades. In fact, Hong Kong introduced them as early as 1953.
• Many colleges and universities, such as Harvard and Stanford, use open book exams in courses like law, medicine, and business to test application and reasoning rather than rote learning.
• Open book exams are common in Australian universities, especially in law and health sciences, where students need to apply laws or guidelines to complex scenarios.

The importance

• It found that many students spent only 10 to 15 minutes reading the questions and locating material, usually starting with the instructor’s handouts before moving to one or two textbooks.
• Some condensed the lecturer’s notes or borrowed “worked-example” books to navigate the paper.
• Between 1951 and 1978, studies in the US and the UK allowed textbooks, notebooks and lecture notes in open-book trials.
• They used formats ranging from short answers to multiple-choice and essays across different university courses.
• The overall findings of these open-book exams were largely the same with a positive impact on internalization rather than memorisation.
• Weaker students did better in open-book examinations and were found to measure different abilities from those measured in traditional examinations.
• During Covid-19 pandemic, as universities shifted online, many introduced open-book, open-note or even open-web exams.
• Many students struggled initially — not because of the subject matter, but because they were not familiar with the format.

Is OBE a new concept in India?

• Not really. In 2014, CBSE launched the Open Text-Based Assessment (OTBA)to steer students away from rote learning.
• It applied to Class 9 for Hindi, English, Mathematics, Science and Social Science, and to Class 11 final exams for subjects like Economics, Biology and Geography. Students were given reference material four months in advance.
• But by 2017-18, CBSE dropped the initiative, concluding it had not succeeded in developing the “critical abilities” it was meant to promote.
• Open-book formats have a stronger presence in collegiate education. The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) approved their use in engineering colleges in 2019 after an expert panel’s recommendation.
• During the pandemic, Delhi University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Aligarh Muslim University used OBEs, while IIT Delhi, IIT Indore and IIT Bombay ran them online.
• More recently, Kerala’s higher education reforms commission has proposed using the format only for internal or practical exams.

Way forward

• The move is part of a larger shift in the way schools approach assessment. While the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 does not name open-book tests, it calls for moving away from rote memorisation and towards competency-based learning.
• The goal is for students to grasp concepts, understand processes, and explain how they apply them.