GS II Topic: Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.
Delhi Declaration on Agrobiodiversity Management Adopted
The first International Agrobiodiversity Congress (IAC) held in New Delhi has adopted New Delhi Declaration on Agrobiodiversity Management.
Key features of the declaration:
- AGROBIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION: Nations must accord top priority to the agrobiodiversity conservation and their sustainable use towards achieving targets of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) relating to poverty alleviation, food and nutritional security, good health, gender equity and partnership.
- TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE: Recognises importance of traditional knowledge on agrobiodiversity of farm women and men, pastoralists and other tribal and rural communities and also their role in its conservation and use for a food and climate resilient world. It calls upon nations to develop the necessary funding, legal and institutional mechanism to ensure and facilitate their continued active participation.
- CONSERVATION STRATEGIES: Urge policy-makers and researchers to initiate, strengthen, and promote complementary conservation strategies to conserve and use agrobiodiversity. It must include wild relatives of crop to ensure a continuum between in situ, ex situ and on farm conservation strategies to combat food and nutrition insecurity as well as adverse effects of land degradation, climate change and biodiversity loss.
- MODERN TECHNOLOGIES: Researchers must employ modern technologies including, but not limited to, space, genomic, computational and nano-technologies for characterization, evaluation and trait discovery using genetic resources. Their aim should be to achieve equality, efficiency, economy and environmental security in agricultural production systems and landscapes.
- GLOBAL EXCHANGE: It reemphasizes the necessity of global exchange of plant, animal, aquatic, microbial and insect genetic resources for food and agriculture to meet the ever-growing food and nutritional needs of each country. Countries need to harmonise their multiple legal systems and prioritize the improvement of their phytosanitary capacities to facilitate safe transfer of genetic resources using latest technologies and trans-boundary partnerships.
- AGROBIODIVERSITY INDEX: It suggests developing and implementing an agrobiodiversity index to help monitor conservation and use of agrobiodiversity.
- PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTOR PARTNERSHIPS to actively invest in and incentivize the utilization of agrobiodiversity to address malnutrition, increase the resilience and productivity of farms, and enhance ecosystem services leading to equitable benefits and opportunities with particular emphasis on women and youth.
- The UN is also urged to consider declaring soon a ‘Year of Agrobiodiversity’ to draw worldwide attention and to catalyze urgent action.
GS II Topic: Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.
Competition Commission of India (CCI) to host ICN 2018 Annual Conference
International Competition Network (ICN) has accepted the proposal and decided that Competition Commission of India would host the 2018 ICN Annual Conference. This will be held at Delhi in March –April 2018. By virtue of this event, CCI has also been inducted as an ex-officio member of the steering group member of the ICN for a period of 3 years.
ICN:
- ICN provides competition authorities with a specialised yet informal platform for addressing practical competition concerns, sharing experiences and adopting international best practices.
- Its members are national competition authorities and NGA (Non-governmental Advisers) which include reputed law firms, eminent persons, and think tanks of international repute.
- The ICN holds an Annual Conference which is hosted by a member competition agency. The last such Conference was hosted by Competition Commission of Singapore in April 2016 and Portuguese Competition Authority is hosting the next conference in May 2017.
About CCI:
Competition Commission of India is a body responsible for enforcing The Competition Act, 2002 throughout India and to prevent activities that have an adverse effect on competition in India. It was established on 14 October 2003. It became fully functional in May 2009.
- CCI consists of a Chairperson and 6 Members appointed by the Central Government.
- The duty of the Commission is to eliminate practices having adverse effect on competition, promote and sustain competition, protect the interests of consumers and ensure freedom of trade in the markets of India.
- The Commission is also required to give opinion on competition issues on a reference received from a statutory authority established under any law and to undertake competition advocacy, create public awareness and impart training on competition issues.
GS II 2 Topic: Welfare schemes for vulnerable sections of the population by the Centre and States and the performance of these schemes; mechanisms, laws, institutions and bodies constituted for the protection and betterment of these vulnerable sections.
Union Government launches Pradhan Mantri Yuva Yojana for entrepreneurs
The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship has announced launch of Pradhan Mantri Yuva Yojana to scale up an ecosystem of entrepreneurship for youngsters.
- The scheme spans over five years (2016-17 to 2020-21)
- It will provide entrepreneurship education and training to over 7 lakh students in 5 years through 3,050 institutes.
- It will also include easy access to information and mentor network, credit, incubator and accelerator and advocacy to create a pathway for the youth.
- The institutes under the PM’s Yuva Yojana include 2,200 institutes of higher learning (colleges, universities, and premier institutes), 300 schools, 500 ITIs and 50 entrepreneurship development centres through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
- MSDE has plans to provide assistance to states to help align them with the Centre’s skill development agenda.
GS II Topic- Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.
Union Government launches Smart India Hackathon
The Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) has launched Smart India Hackathon 2017. It is the world’s largest digital national building initiative. It is joint initiative of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), University Grants Commission (UGC), MyGov, NASSCOM, i4c, Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhiniand Persistent Systems
- Through this initiative, HRD Ministry is keen to reach out to all technology institutions in the country and challenge students to offer innovative solutions to some of the daunting problems faced by our nation.
Important Facts
- The Hackathon aims to find digital solutions by harnessing creativity and technical expertise of over 30 lakh students from technology institutes in remotest parts of India.
- Besides, it seeks to spark several institute-level hackathons countrywide and help build a funnel for ‘Startup India, Standup India’ campaign.
- It will find digital solutions to problems in the areas of education, health, water, power, agriculture, finance, urban & rural development, energy, aviation & shipping, transport, sanitation, law & justice, sports, skill development & entrepreneurship, textiles, tourism, defence etc.
- The initiative will help to institutionalize a model for harnessing the creativity and skills of youth for nation-building.
- The Hackathon will have nearly 500 problem statements in all and will be published on innovate.mygov.in. In the first set of 250 problem statements were unveiled.
Focus Prelims- 2017
World Science Day for Peace and Development
- The World Science Day for Peace and Development is observed on 10 November 2016 across the world to raise awareness of benefits of science in our daily life.
- 2016 Theme: “Celebrating Science Centres and Science Museums”.
- It highlights the importance of science centres and museums for capacity building and to send strong messages about the importance of science for sustainable development.
- To mark the day, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) had organised special campaigns, visits to science museums for school children, etc.
Background
- World Science Day was started in 2001 by UNESCO as a follow-up to the first World Conference on Science in 1999.
- The conference was jointly organised by UNESCO and International Council for Science in Budapest (Hungary).
Union Government launches Healthy India Initiative magazine and No More Tension mobile App
It was launched by Union Health Minister J P Nadda for promotion of health and to strengthen the health communications programmes.
Important Facts
- Healthy India Magazine: It will be a quarterly magazine. It will cater to health related information and raise awareness about healthy living. The magazine will cover different aspect of health including women and child health, elderly health, daily nutritional needs, seasonal ailments, safe medication practices and home remedies for healthy living. The magazine will be made available at all the government facilities up to the sub-centre and will be available free of cost.
- No More Tension App: It will help users to manage stress and will also provide information regarding stress, symptoms and its management. The application will allow user to measure their stress level and learn various techniques like yoga and meditation to reduce stress from their lives.
Receive Daily Updates
Recent Posts
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.