The future of Energy in India
Chronology of Energy in India
India’s power sector is at an inflection point, given the government’s conviction that electricity is a critical enabler for economic growth.India, home to 18% of the world’s population, uses only 6% of the world’s primary energy. India’s energy consumption has almost doubled since 2000 and the potential for further rapid growth is enormous.
India’s economy, already the world’s third-largest, is growing rapidly and policies are in place to press ahead with the country’s modernisation and an expansion of its manufacturing. If a well-managed expansion of energy supply can be achieved, the prize in terms of improved welfare and quality of life for India’s 1.3 billion people is huge – first and foremost for the estimated 240 million that remain today without access to electricity.
Policy-makers at national and state levels are intensifying their efforts to ensure that energy is a spur, rather than a hindrance, to India’s advancement, looking to removing obstacles to investment in energy supply while also focusing on energy efficiency and pricing reform (the deregulation of diesel prices in late 2014, taking advantage of the fall in the oil price, means that all oil-based transport fuels are now subsidy-free).
Coal is by far the most important fuel in the energy mix, but India’s recent climate pledge underlined the country’s commitment to a growing role for low-carbon sources of energy, led by solar and wind power.
India seizes the centre of the world energy stage and is set to contribute more than any other country to the projected rise in global energy demand, around one-quarter of the total: even so, energy demand per capita in 2040 is still 40% below the world average.
India’s total energy demand more than doubles in our main scenario, propelled higher by an economy that is more than five times larger in 2040 and a demographic expansion that makes India the world’s most populous country.
With energy use declining in many developed countries and China entering a much less energy-intensive phase in its development, India emerges as a major driving force in global trends, with all modern fuels and technologies playing a part. Surging consumption of coal in power generation and industry makes India, by a distance, the largest source of growth in global coal use.
Oil demand increases by more than in any other country, approaching 10 mb/d by 2040. India steps up its deployment of renewable, led by solar power, for which India becomes the world’s second-largest market.
Natural gas consumption also triples to 175 bcm (although, at 8% in 2040, it still plays a relatively limited role in the overall energy mix).
Solid biomass, mainly fuelwood, is the only major source of energy that does not see a large increase. This mainstay of the rural energy economy is the primary cooking fuel for some 840 million people in India today; its use in traditional stoves is a major cause of indoor air pollution and premature death.
Its gradual (albeit not complete) displacement by alternative fuels in our projections to 2040 is achieved, thanks to rising incomes and supportive policies; these include one of the world’s largest cash transfer programmes, which subsidises the purchase of LPG cylinders via payments to individual bank accounts, rather than via an intervention affecting end-user prices.
India’s urbanisation is a key driver of energy trends: an additional 315 million people – almost the population of the United States today – are expected to live in India’s cities by 2040.
This transition has wide-ranging effects on energy use, accelerating the switch to modern fuels, the rise in appliance and vehicle ownership and pushing up demand for construction materials. Three-quarters of the projected increase in energy demand in residential buildings comes from urban areas, driving the sector’s energy use away from solid biomass (two-thirds of the total today) and towards electricity and oil (45% and 15% of the 2040 total, respectively).
Since most of the 2040 building stock has yet to be constructed, there is a tremendous opportunity for India to expand and tighten efficiency standards and ensure that future demand for energy services – notably for cooling – is met without putting undue strain on energy supply.
Successful initiatives include a huge and cost-effective programme to replace old, inefficient light bulbs with LEDs, but the scope of other efficiency measures for buildings and appliances, while expanding, is still far from comprehensive.
The “Smart Cities” programme, launched in 2015, puts a welcome emphasis on integrated planning and provision of urban services (including power, water, waste and mass transportation), although faces the considerable challenge of coordinated delivery across different branches and levels of government.
India’s need for new infrastructure underlies strong demand for energy-intensive goods, while the rising level of vehicle ownership keeps transport demand on an even steeper upward curve. Energy use in industry is the largest among the end-use sectors, its share in final consumption rising above 50% by 2040.
Industrial energy use is buoyed by substantial growth in output of steel, cement, bricks and other building materials, and by the expansion of domestic manufacturing encouraged by the “Make in India” initiative.
India’s power system needs to almost quadruple in size by 2040 to catch up and keep pace with electricity demand that – boosted by rising incomes and new connections to the grid – increases at almost 5% per year.
The power system has grown rapidly in recent years, but the poor financial health of many local distribution companies remains a key structural weakness: low average end-user tariffs, technical losses in the network, and high levels of non-payment for electricity mean that distribution company revenue often fails to cover the costs owed to generators. This has created a cycle of uncertainty for generators and held back much-needed investment in network infrastructure. The situation varies from state to state, but stimulating the necessary grid strengthening and capacity additions requires pressing ahead with regulatory and tariff reform and a robust system of permitting and approvals for new projects.
In the meantime, regular load-shedding in many parts of the country obliges those consumers who can afford it to invest in costly back-up options, and results in poor quality of service for those who cannot.
Taking population growth into account as well as the high policy priority to achieve universal electricity access, India adds nearly 600 million new electricity consumers over the period to 2040.
The vast majority of Indians continue to receive their power via the grid, but mini-grid and off-grid solutions provide more than half of the electricity supply to those gaining access in our projections, especially in areas distant from existing transmission lines or of lower population density.
Over 50% of new generation capacity to 2040 comes from renewables and nuclear, while new coal-fired plants in India represent nearly half of the net coal capacity added worldwide.
Keeping pace with the demand for electricity requires nearly 900 GW of new capacity, the addition of a power system four-fifths the size of that of the United States today. Uncertainty over the pace at which new large dams or nuclear plants can be built means strong reliance on solar and wind power (areas where India has high potential and equally high ambition) to deliver on the pledge to build up a 40% share of non-fossil fuel capacity in the power sector by 2030.
Some 340 GW of new wind and solar projects, as well as manufacturing and installation capabilities, are galvanised to 2040 by strong policy support and declining costs, although the pace of deployment is slowed by anticipated issues with networks, land use and financing.
Decentralised rooftop solar and off-grid projects account for around 90 GW of this total, but the bulk of the additions is utility scale. Balancing a power system in which variable renewables meet one-fifth of power demand growth requires flexibility from other sources (a role largely filled by gas-fired plants in our projections) and a much more resilient grid.
The share of coal in the power generation mix falls from three-quarters to less than 60%, but coal-fired power still meets half of the increase in power generation. A shift to more efficient technologies brings up average coal plant efficiency significantly.
Other measures, including the announced moves to higher standards for vehicle emissions and fuel quality, help to limit the growth in energy-related emissions of particulates, fumes and other local pollutants. Nonetheless, without a continuous focus on emissions control technologies in the power sector, industry and transport, India faces the risk of a deterioration in urban air quality.
Domestic production strains to keep pace . A large expansion of coal output makes India the second-largest coal producer in the world, but rising demand also means that India becomes, before 2020, the world’s largest coal importer, overtaking Japan, the European Union and China.
Reforms to the system of coal procurement and contracting underpin new mining investment and a more efficient allocation of coal to consumers, including an expansion of competitively-priced imports in parts of coastal India.
Growth in production is constrained by the concentrated structure of the coal industry, issues of land use and permitting, and infrastructure bottlenecks, but is sufficient to bring dependence on imports back down to current levels around 30%, from a peak of around 40% reached in 2020.
Coal demand that is two-and-a-half-times higher than today by 2040 (although still only around half the projected level in China) is the main factor behind a large rise in India’s energy-related CO2 emissions. These nearly triple to reach 5 gigatonnes in 2040, a significant contribution to the rise in global emissions over this period. Nonetheless, relative to the size of the economy, energy-related CO2 emissions fall in line with India’s pledge to reduce its emissions intensity by 33-35% below 2005 levels by 2030, and, expressed on a per capita basis, emissions remain some 20% below the world average in 2040.
Production of oil and gas falls well behind the growth in demand:
India’s reliance on oil imports rises above 90% by 2040, requiring constant vigilance as to the implications for energy security. India has a relatively small but still under-explored hydrocarbon resource base.
India is the world’s third-largest importer of crude oil, although a large and efficient refinery sector gives it a surplus of oil products, mainly transport fuels, for export. In our projections, crude imports rise to 7.2 mb/d in 2040 (second only to China), sourced predominantly from the Middle East. India’s refinery capacity is projected to rise steadily and refinery output is increasingly directed to meet rising domestic demand. Indian refiners face an ever-more competitive product export market, particularly with the envisaged expansion of refining capacity in the Middle East.
“Make in India” needs energy to work and needs efficiency to prosper:-
Putting manufacturing at the heart of India’s growth model means a large rise in the energy needed to fuel India’s development. Industry-led growth requires at least 10-times more energy per unit of value added compared with growth led by the services sector.
The additional demands on the energy system come primarily from industry, not only from energy-intensive sectors, but also from other industries that are targeted by the “Make in India” campaign such as textiles, food processing, machinery and industrial equipment. Energy use for road freight, residential consumption and for a more mechanised and productive agricultural sector also rise. To avoid that this extra demand exacerbates energy security and environmental strains requires an even-stronger commitment to energy efficiency as a central pillar of India’s energy strategy, alongside an unwavering push for low-carbon energy and high standards of pollution control.
Meeting India’s energy needs requires a huge commitment of capital:-
India requires a cumulative $2.8 trillion in investment in energy supply in our main scenario, three-quarters of which goes to the power sector, and a further $0.8 trillion to improve energy efficiency. Investment in energy supply is held at similar levels in the Indian Vision Case, but only because of a near-doubling in spending on greater efficiency.Mobilising cost-efficient investment at average levels of well above $100 billion per year is a constant challenge for Indian policy at national and state levels, requiring effective coordination between multiple institutions and levels of government (the model of “co-operative federalism”), continued efforts to overhaul
India’s energy regulatory framework had to simplify an often-complex business environment. A transparent system of approvals and clearances needs to allow viable projects to move ahead according to a predictable timetable, while safeguarding the consultation and accountability that is essential to win public consent.
India will also need to call upon a broader range of investors and sources of finance than has been the case in the past, not least in order to relieve the scarcity of long-term finance on suitable terms for low-carbon investment. Sustainable and affordable energy, underpinned by energy technology cooperation and innovation, is indispensable to India’s outlook for economic growth and poverty reduction; the carbon intensity of India’s development is also a critical barometer of the success or failure of efforts to tackle global climate change. There is a clear mutual interest, shared by India and the international community, in strong support for India’s drive to deploy more efficient and low-carbon technologies.
Trai rules in favour of net neutrality
Putting an end to the controversy over differential pricing on the Internet, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Monday ruled that differential pricing for data services will not be allowed in the country.
“No service provider shall offer or charge discriminatory tariffs for data services on the basis of content,” the telecom regulator said in its Prohibition of Discriminatory Tariffs for Data Services Regulations, which will come into effect immediately.
1. TRAI has ruled that no service provider shall offer or allow discriminatory pricing for data services based on content.
2. It has ruled against any arrangement or agreement between any service provider or any person that adheres to differential pricing for data services.
3. TRAI has allowed for special reduction of tariff for accessing or providing emergency services during times of public emergency. The authority has asked for the same to be reported within seven working days.
4. The telecom regulator has ruled that if a service provider is found violating the regulation, there will be a penalty of Rs 50,000 for each day of contravention, subject to a maximum of Rs 50 Lakhs.
5. The TRAI has argued against differential pricing of data services benefitting users. It states, “Allowing service providers to define the nature of access would be equivalent of letting TSPs shape the users’ internet experience.”
6. TRAI has clearly backed Net Neutrality by referring to ISP License agreement which reads, “The subscriber shall have unrestricted access to all the content available on Internet except for such content which is restricted by the Licensor/designated authority under Law.”
7. TRAI has also exempted intranets or closed communication networks from this regulation, but has added a caveat saying if a closed network is used for the purpose of evading these regulations then the prohibition will definitely apply.
8. TRAI has stated that it may review the regulation after two years.
In a nutshell, TRAI has ruled against differential pricing in order to keep the internet open and non-discriminatory for users. TRAINS ruling aims to delink content and discriminatory pricing as some zero-rating platforms had proposed.
Analysis:-
What makes this “victory” even more surprising was the complete asymmetry of the two sides involved. On one side was Facebook, a company whose market cap is greater than the GDPs of 144 countries, allied with a bunch of big telecom companies (telcos). They had already “won” easy victories for their platform in a number of countries, and felt India would be no exception. They had an ad campaign that estimates put at Rs.400 crore. On the other side was a motley group of free software and Internet activists, with unlikely allies such as comedy group AIB, a bunch of start-ups, and some political figures and formations.
The argument that Facebook was using appeared simple. Why should anybody deny the poor getting some access to the Internet — even if this was limited? Isn’t something better than nothing? Mark Zuckerberg not only wrote articles terming his opponents “Net Neutrality fundamentalists”, but also appeared in advertorials in the electronic media to push Free Basics. Some commentators wrote plugs for Facebook in the guise of opinion pieces, all more or less posing different variations of the broad theme that Zuckerberg’s heart beats for the Indian poor.
People’s campaign prevails
First is, of course, the energy and the creativity of the groups fighting Free Basics. They not only ran an innovative and creative campaign, but were also able to bring tech activists on to the streets. What surprised even them was the response of the people.
Facebook and their ad agencies completely underestimated the Indian public. Even if all of them do not use the Internet, they understand the difference between having access to the full Internet, with nearly a billion websites, and the so-called Free Basics platform that provides Facebook and a few other sites. They are sophisticated enough to know that Free Basics would not offer them any of the things they really want to access. No search, no email, no access to various services; no pictures or video clips for entertainment either. No access to the rich diversity of views and material on the Internet. Only a sterile walled garden where, at best, you can see what your friends are doing.
A level playing field
What is the flip side of such a platform? Other people who want to have the full Internet could still access it, so why is Facebook’s Free Basics harmful?
TRAI has correctly pointed out that the tariff principle at play is whether we can have differential pricing of data based on the content we see. If we accept this principle, what then prevents telcos from charging various websites and Internet services for accessing their subscribers? Accepting that one form of price discrimination is okay opens the door to all other forms of discrimination as well.
This is where Net Neutrality comes in. The most important characteristic of the Internet is whether it is the richest corporation in the world or an individual writing a blog, both are treated identically on the Internet. If the blogger had to negotiate with the Internet service providers (ISPs) — in today’s world the telcos — to reach the telco subscribers, she would have to negotiate with thousands of such ISPs. Telcos would then be the gatekeepers of the Internet. Only the biggest corporations could then survive on the Net. This is how the cable TV model works; for their channels to be carried, the TV channels have to negotiate with all the platforms such as Dish TV, Tata Sky, etc. If we accept that telcos can act as gatekeepers, we would then lose what has given the Internet its unique power, the ability for us not only to be consumers but also creators of content.
In its nascent phase, the big telco monopolies tried to levy a “tax” on all Internet content providers. The Internet companies were then the new kids on the block. They and the Internet user community fought back such attempts. This was the first net neutrality war, and it established the principle of non-discrimination on the Internet between different types of content or sites.
The scenario has changed dramatically today. We have the emergence of powerful Internet monopolies that are much bigger than the telcos. Not surprisingly, these companies now see the virtues of monopoly. They would like to combine with telcos to create monopolies for their platforms, ensuring that they control the future of the Internet and freeze their competition out.
Today, we have nearly a billion websites on the Internet and 3.5 billion users. This means that nearly one out of three users is both a content provider as well as content consumer. What the Internet monopolies want is that we should be passive consumers of their content, or at best generate captive content only for their platforms. This is why they have joined hands with telcos to offer various forms of zero-rating services.
Google to offer flood alerts for India
Google will make public emergency alerts for floods available in India as part its efforts to make critical information more accessible around natural disasters.
Users in India can now find ‘flood alerts’ along with ‘river level’ information for more than 170 areas in which the Central Water Commission (CWC) has active observation stations.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.
Consider this hypothetical situation: Rajalakshmi, from a remote Karnataka village spots a business opportunity.
She knows that flowers, discarded in the thousands by temples can be handcrafted into incense sticks.
She wants to find a market for the product and hopefully, employ some people to help her. Soon enough though, she discovers that starting a business is a herculean task for a person like her.
There is a laborious process of rules and regulations to go through, bribes to pay on the way and no actual means to transport her product to its market.
After making her first batch of agarbathis and taking it to Bengaluru by bus, she decides the venture is not easy and gives up.
On the flipside of this is a young entrepreneur in Bengaluru. Let’s call him Deepak. He wants to start an internet-based business selling sustainably made agarbathis.
He has no trouble getting investors and to mobilise supply chains. His paperwork is over in a matter of days and his business is set up quickly and ready to grow.
Never mind that the business is built on aggregation of small sellers who will not see half the profit .
Is this scenario really all that hypothetical or emblematic of how we think about entrepreneurship in India?
Between our national obsession with unicorns on one side and glorifying the person running a pakora stall for survival as an example of viable entrepreneurship on the other, is the middle ground in entrepreneurship—a space that should have seen millions of thriving small and medium businesses, but remains so sparsely occupied that you could almost miss it.
If we are to achieve meaningful economic growth in our country, we need to incorporate, in our national conversation on entrepreneurship, ways of addressing the missing middle.
Spread out across India’s small towns and cities, this is a class of entrepreneurs that have been hit by a triple wave over the last five years, buffeted first by the inadvertent fallout of demonetization, being unprepared for GST, and then by the endless pain of the covid-19 pandemic.
As we finally appear to be reaching some level of normality, now is the opportune time to identify the kind of industries that make up this layer, the opportunities they should be afforded, and the best ways to scale up their functioning in the shortest time frame.
But, why pay so much attention to these industries when we should be celebrating, as we do, our booming startup space?
It is indeed true that India has the third largest number of unicorns in the world now, adding 42 in 2021 alone. Braving all the disruptions of the pandemic, it was a year in which Indian startups raised $24.1 billion in equity investments, according to a NASSCOM-Zinnov report last year.
However, this is a story of lopsided growth.
The cities of Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, and Mumbai together claim three-fourths of these startup deals while emerging hubs like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Jaipur account for the rest.
This leap in the startup space has created 6.6 lakh direct jobs and a few million indirect jobs. Is that good enough for a country that sends 12 million fresh graduates to its workforce every year?
It doesn’t even make a dent on arguably our biggest unemployment in recent history—in April 2020 when the country shutdown to battle covid-19.
Technology-intensive start-ups are constrained in their ability to create jobs—and hybrid work models and artificial intelligence (AI) have further accelerated unemployment.
What we need to focus on, therefore, is the labour-intensive micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME). Here, we begin to get to a definitional notion of what we called the mundane middle and the problems it currently faces.
India has an estimated 63 million enterprises. But, out of 100 companies, 95 are micro enterprises—employing less than five people, four are small to medium and barely one is large.
The questions to ask are: why are Indian MSMEs failing to grow from micro to small and medium and then be spurred on to make the leap into large companies?
At the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), we have advocated for a National Mission for Mass Entrepreneurship, the need for which is more pronounced now than ever before.
Whenever India has worked to achieve a significant economic milestone in a limited span of time, it has worked best in mission mode. Think of the Green Revolution or Operation Flood.
From across various states, there are enough examples of approaches that work to catalyse mass entrepreneurship.
The introduction of entrepreneurship mindset curriculum (EMC) in schools through alliance mode of working by a number of agencies has shown significant improvement in academic and life outcomes.
Through creative teaching methods, students are encouraged to inculcate 21st century skills like creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and leadership which are not only foundational for entrepreneurship but essential to thrive in our complex world.
Udhyam Learning Foundation has been involved with the Government of Delhi since 2018 to help young people across over 1,000 schools to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
One pilot programme introduced the concept of ‘seed money’ and saw 41 students turn their ideas into profit-making ventures. Other programmes teach qualities like grit and resourcefulness.
If you think these are isolated examples, consider some larger data trends.
The Observer Research Foundation and The World Economic Forum released the Young India and Work: A Survey of Youth Aspirations in 2018.
When asked which type of work arrangement they prefer, 49% of the youth surveyed said they prefer a job in the public sector.
However, 38% selected self-employment as an entrepreneur as their ideal type of job. The spirit of entrepreneurship is latent and waiting to be unleashed.
The same can be said for building networks of successful women entrepreneurs—so crucial when the participation of women in the Indian economy has declined to an abysmal 20%.
The majority of India’s 63 million firms are informal —fewer than 20% are registered for GST.
Research shows that companies that start out as formal enterprises become two-three times more productive than a similar informal business.
So why do firms prefer to be informal? In most cases, it’s because of the sheer cost and difficulty of complying with the different regulations.
We have academia and non-profits working as ecosystem enablers providing insights and evidence-based models for growth. We have large private corporations and philanthropic and funding agencies ready to invest.
It should be in the scope of a National Mass Entrepreneurship Mission to bring all of them together to work in mission mode so that the gap between thought leadership and action can finally be bridged.
Heat wave is a condition of air temperature which becomes fatal to human body when exposed. Often times, it is defined based on the temperature thresholds over a region in terms of actual temperature or its departure from normal.
Heat wave is considered if maximum temperature of a station reaches at least 400C or more for Plains and at least 300C or more for Hilly regions.
a) Based on Departure from Normal
Heat Wave: Departure from normal is 4.50C to 6.40C
Severe Heat Wave: Departure from normal is >6.40C
b) Based on Actual Maximum Temperature
Heat Wave: When actual maximum temperature ≥ 450C
Severe Heat Wave: When actual maximum temperature ≥470C
If above criteria met at least in 2 stations in a Meteorological sub-division for at least two consecutive days and it declared on the second day
It is occurring mainly during March to June and in some rare cases even in July. The peak month of the heat wave over India is May.
Heat wave generally occurs over plains of northwest India, Central, East & north Peninsular India during March to June.
It covers Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, parts of Maharashtra & Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telengana.
Sometimes it occurs over Tamilnadu & Kerala also.
Heat waves adversely affect human and animal lives.
However, maximum temperatures more than 45°C observed mainly over Rajasthan and Vidarbha region in month of May.
a. Transportation / Prevalence of hot dry air over a region (There should be a region of warm dry air and appropriate flow pattern for transporting hot air over the region).
b. Absence of moisture in the upper atmosphere (As the presence of moisture restricts the temperature rise).
c. The sky should be practically cloudless (To allow maximum insulation over the region).
d. Large amplitude anti-cyclonic flow over the area.
Heat waves generally develop over Northwest India and spread gradually eastwards & southwards but not westwards (since the prevailing winds during the season are westerly to northwesterly).
The health impacts of Heat Waves typically involve dehydration, heat cramps, heat exhaustion and/or heat stroke. The signs and symptoms are as follows:
1. Heat Cramps: Ederna (swelling) and Syncope (Fainting) generally accompanied by fever below 39*C i.e.102*F.
2. Heat Exhaustion: Fatigue, weakness, dizziness, headache, nausea, vomiting, muscle cramps and sweating.
3. Heat Stoke: Body temperatures of 40*C i.e. 104*F or more along with delirium, seizures or coma. This is a potential fatal condition.