1) G20 :-
News:- G20 summit now underway in Turkey. Once the meeting is over and concrete document are out, we will publish the take away from Turkey.Meanwhile :-
- The Group of Twenty (also known as the G-20 or G20) is an international forum for the governments and central bank governors from 20 major economies.
- The members include 19 individual countries—Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States—along with the European Union (EU).
- The G-20 was founded in 1999 with the aim of studying, reviewing, and promoting high-level discussion of policy issues pertaining to the promotion of international financial stability
- It seeks to address issues that go beyond the responsibilities of any one organization
- Collectively, the G-20 economies account for around 85% of the gross world product (GWP), 80% of world trade (or, if excluding EU intra-trade, 75%), and two-thirds of the world population
- Criticism:-
- The G-20’s transparency and accountability have been questioned by critics, who call attention to the absence of a formal charter and the fact that the most important G-20 meetings are closed-door.
- Although the G-20 has stated that the group’s “economic weight and broad membership gives it a high degree of legitimacy and influence over the management of the global economy and financial system,its legitimacy has been challenged. With respect to the membership issue, U.S. President Barack Obama has noted the difficulty of pleasing everyone: “everybody wants the smallest possible group that includes them. So, if they’re the 21st largest nation in the world, they want the G-21, and think it’s highly unfair if they have been cut out.”
2)“Swayam” Initiative :-
- Launching the “Swayam” initiative of “Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry” (FICCI) women wing in Guwahati today, Dr Jitendra Singh said, the unique advantage of any women initiative is that it has a wider social and public impact, also because a woman holds stake for at least three generations, that is, the generation of her parents and in-laws, the generation of her husband and brothers, and the generation of her children.
- Appreciating the “Swayam” initiative by FICCI women, he said, it has already been launched in Delhi and other places, resulting in successful engagement of women from all sections, in big and small self-employed vocations and observed that the arrival of “Swayam” in Guwahati will open a new chapter in the growth of Northeast and at the same time also open new vistas of opportunity, not only for women alone but for the entire population of the eight North Eastern States.
3)Schemes Related to Agriculture:-
- Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY):-
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Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (Traditional Farming Improvement Programme) has been launched by Government of India to support and promote organic farming and thereby improving soil health. This will encourage farmers to adopt eco-friendly concept of cultivation and reduce their dependence on fertilizers and agricultural chemicals to improve yields
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This is a cluster base programmee.
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Groups of farmers would be motivated to take up organic farming under Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY). Fifty or more farmers will form a cluster having 50 acre land to take up the organic farming under the scheme.
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In this way during three years 10,000 clusters will be formed covering 5.0 lakh acre area under organic farming. There will be no liability on the farmers for expenditure on certification.
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Every farmer will be provided Rs. 20,000 per acre in three years for seed to harvesting of crops and to transport produce to the market.
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Organic farming will be promoted by using traditional resources and the organic products will be linked with the market.
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- Integrated Plant Nutrient Management:Soil Health Card :-
- Soil health card to farmers with establishment of soil testing facility can help farmer customize their crop according to the soil test result there by enhancing productivity and ensuring financial sustainability for farmers.
- Per Drop More Crop :-
- This is rather a concept or a theme to best utilize the available water resource and reducing wastage .
- Agriculture takes 70% of our total water consumption.Hence method like drip irrigation , sprinkler irrigation etc can help in reducing the wastage of water used in agriculture.
- Produce more in less land, less water and without any substantial top layer quality loss of soil.
- Pradhanmantri Gram Sinchai Yojana :-
- This scheme envisages to provide irrigation for agriculture in the villages through multipronge approach.
Reform Related to Agriculture can be found here Agricultural Reform
4)Porous Liquid:-Can capture Co2
- Scientists at Queen’s University Belfast have devised a class of liquids that feature permanent holes at the molecular level, in a development that could help manipulate gases in new and effective ways
- Porous materials are a jack-of-all-trades of the engineering world. Their larger surface area, lighter weight and filtering abilities are used to create high-performance batteries and supercapacitors, build lighweight supermaterials, or filter out CO2 before it leaves factory smokestacks.
- When it comes to carbon sequestration in particular, scientists have already come up with plenty of readily available materials – including clay and coffee grounds – to do the job. But while effective and inexpensive, such solid-state materials are not easily retrofitted to existing plants.
- To create a porous liquid, the scientists simply designed hollow cage molecules to place in a solvent. The solvent is chosen so its molecules are too big to enter the cages, leaving those spaces available for an external gas to fill. The resulting concentration of empty cages is about 500 times greater than in similar solutions
5)Mega Food park:-
- News – A new foodpark is opened in Telengana
- What is Food Park:-
- The Mega Food Park is an inclusive concept which is aimed at establishing direct linkages from the farm to processing and on to the consumer markets, through a network of collection centres and Primary Processing Centres. Efficient logistics facilities will connect the collection centres to the primary processing centres, which in turn will be connected to a central processing centre.
- The Mega Food Park will have a Central Processing Centre (CPC) as the nuclei of all value addition activities facilitated by Primary Processing Centres, which will act as point of aggregation and primary handling to provide ready to use raw materials to be processed further in the units to be set up in the CPC.
- Why Food Park:-
- By processing the food , the shelf life of the food increases. The food which could easily be wasted in few days after processing can stay longer and thus reducing wastage in food.
- Challenges :-
- Majority of the food park challenges are akin to other infrastructure project challenges , prominent being Land acquisition.
- Unlike other societies , for eg – USA and Europe , were processed food is consumed heavily. Indian society shows resilience in adapting to processed food. The resistance arises from the socio-cultural milieu . Processed food sells mostly in urban areas , but India lives in its villages and yet to be urbanized fully. Moreover the penchant for fresh food is quite strong in India.
- Indian corporate interest in food sector and especially food processing has not been very promising.One of reason why we have few successful Indian brands such as Brittania.
6)Aditya – India’s first dedicated scientific mission to study the sun :-
- The ambitious solar mission will study the sun’s outer most layers, the corona and the chromosphere, collect data about coronal mass ejection and more, which will also yield information for space weather prediction
- It now aims to put a heavy satellite into what is called a halo orbit around the L1 point between the Sun and the Earth. This point is at a distance of about 1.5 million km from the earth. With the excitement about the Mars Orbiter Mission yet to settle down, this could be the next most complicated feat that ISRO has carried out till date.
- In a three-body problem such as this – with the earth and sun engaged in an elliptical orbit and a relatively very light, call it massless in comparison, satellite being placed in between – there are five so-called Lagrangian points in space where the light, third body — in our case, the satellite — may be placed so that it can maintain its position with respect to the two others. One of these is the L1 point, which is about 1.5 million km from the earth.
- A halo orbit would be a circular orbit around the L1 point. The satellite will have to use its own power (spend energy) to remain in position within in this orbit without losing its way. Such orbits have not been attempted too often
- Significance:-
- Solar storms and space weather affect satellite operations. They may interfere with electronic circuitry of satellites and also, through enhanced drag (friction effects), impact satellite mission lifetimes. They also impact the positional accuracy of satellites and thus impact GPS navigational networks. Space weather also impacts telecommunications, satellite TV broadcasts which are dependent on satellite-based transmission. Hence the study of sun is significance in this regard.
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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.