World Bank cuts India’s FY17 growth forecast to 7%
The World Bank has lowered its growth forecast for India to 7 per cent from 7.6 per cent in 2016-17, citing a slowdown in consumption and manufacturing due to demonetisation and an ongoing decline in private investment and credit constraints due to impaired bank balance sheets.
The World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects January 2017 report added that the Indian economy is subsequently set to recover its growth momentum, with growth rising to 7.6 per cent in FY18 and further strengthening to 7.8 per cent in FY20.
“Unexpected ‘demonetization’— the phasing out of large-denomination currency notes which were subsequently replaced with new ones—weighed on growth in the third quarter of FY2017,” the report added. “Weak industrial production and manufacturing and services purchasing managers’ indexes (PMI), further suggest a set back to activity in the fourth quarter of FY2017.”
This was further accentuated by other economic factors, the report added, leading to a slump in the entire year’s growth rate.
“A retrenchment of private investment, reflecting excess capacity, corporate deleveraging, and credit constraints due to impaired commercial banks’ balance sheets, also had an adverse effect on activity,” according to the report. “For the whole of FY2017, growth is expected to decelerate to a still robust 7.0 per cent.”
The report, however, noted that four key reforms in India in 2016 could help growth rebound.
These, it said, were the passage of the bankruptcy and insolvency code, the liberalisation of FDI norms across sectors, the passage of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Amendment Bill, and the agreement between the government and the Reserve Bank of India on a monetary policy framework that includes setting up a monetary policy committee and agreeing on a flexible inflation target.
Pakistan to renovate Katas Raj temple
Hope Island is a graveyard for Olive Ridleys (Vulnerable -IUCN )
The turtles, which are protected under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, commence their journey from the Indian Ocean during their mating season in October and November. When they reach the Bay of Bengal, the females lay eggs on the beaches. Even as the destination for a majority is Gahirmatha in Odisha, the sandy stretches of Hope Island of the Coringa Wildlife Sanctuary have turned into a breeding area for a few hundred turtles every year.
A female lays 100 to 150 eggs in a pit dug by it carefully and leaves the shore after covering the hollow with sand. Six weeks later, the newly hatched turtles start the journey to their Indian Ocean habitat. Records show 482 turtles laid eggs here in the last year.
“Owners of mechanised boats are not taking precautions to protect the turtles. Most of them are crushed under the boats and succumb to injuries,
The Fisheries Department tried to encourage the mechanised boat owners to fit a Turtle Excluder Device (TED) to their trawl nets to allow the animals to pass, 10 years ago. Of the 422 boats, few have opted for the device due to lack of sensitisation. “The device is not available in the open market,” said S. Angeli, Deputy Director of the Fisheries department.
About :-
- Coringa Wildlife Sanctuary is a wildlife sanctuary and estuary situated in Andhra Pradesh, India. It is the second largest stretch of mangrove forests in India with 24 mangrove tree species and more than 120 bird species. It is home to the critically endangered white-backed vulture and the long billed vulture.
- Hope Island, relatively young island, it formed in the last 200 years into a 16-kilometre-long (9.9 mi) sand spit from the sand carried by the waters of Godavari delta. The area between Kakinada coast and Hope Island is known as Kakinada Bay. Hope Island protects the city of Kakinada from the strong storm surges coming from the Bay of Bengal. Hope Island acts as a sort of natural break water and provides tranquility to the ships anchored in Kakinada bay which makes Kakinada Port one of the safest natural ports in the Eastern Coast of India
SC orders audit of 30 lakh NGOs
The Supreme Court has directed the government to audit nearly 30 lakh NGOs which received public funds but consistently failed to explain how they spent the money.Besides, asking the government to initiate civil recovery proceedings against such rogue organisations, the court has ordered that any NGO found to have cooked its books or indulged in misappropriation should be subject to immediate criminal prosecution.The court has also asked the government to frame guidelines for accreditation of NGOs, the manner in which these organisations should maintain their accounts and the procedure for recovery in case they fail to submit their balance sheets.The Supreme Court demanded that the government file a compliance report by March 31, 2017.
The order is unprecedented because defaulting NGOs so far have been only blacklisted by the government. Though public funds to the tune of thousands of crores are spent on NGOs and voluntary organisations annually, the CBI had submitted that only about three lakh of about 32 lakh NGOs file their balance sheets with the government.
Study throws light on groundwater, rainfall link
According to a recently conducted study, the groundwater level in north India has been declining at a rate of 2 cm per year during the period 2002-2013, while in north-central and south India, it has increased by 1-2 cm per year during the same period. The study was carried out by a team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar.
Highlights :-
- While changes in monsoon rainfall pattern during the period of study can largely explain the total variability of groundwater storage in north-central and south India, the usage of groundwater for irrigation purposes accounts for groundwater variability in northwest India.
- The increased usage of groundwater for irrigation in northwest India is, in turn, linked to changes in monsoon rainfall pattern. In Punjab and Haryana, groundwater extraction was mainly responsible for declining groundwater storage.
- For instance, over the Gangetic Plain and other parts of north India monsoon rainfall has been declining since 1950, leading to reduced recharge of groundwater.
- Also, as a result of declining monsoon rainfall and intensive agriculture, groundwater withdrawals in the country have increased over tenfold since the 1950s — from 10-20 cubic km per year in 1950, to 240-260 cubic km per year in 2009.
National Youth Festival
National Youth Festival is organized every year by the Department of Youth Affairs of Union Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports on the birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda on January 12.
- Theme of the year – Youth for Digital India.
Nyda’s giant ice balls
Giant ice balls covered the coast along the Gulf of Ob, an arm of the Kara Sea in north-western Siberia a little over a week ago. The phenomenon was noticed in the small village of Nyda, which lies on the Yamal Peninsula just above the Arctic Circle.The icy spheres ranged from the size of a tennis ball to almost 3 feet across, covering 18 km of the coast.
Locals in Nyda say they have never seen anything comparable in the past.
However, this is not the first time this winter phenomenon has occurred. In 2013 and 2015, ice boulders had washed ashore on the banks of Lake Michigan. In March 2015, giant ice balls had washed ashore in Stroomi on the Finnish Gulf coast.
Giant ice balls or boulders are formed when water begins to freeze and is pushed ashore by wave action, according to AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Jim Andrews. A small chunk of ice in the water grows in size as it tumbles in the waves. The ice boulders form when the air is cold enough for the water to instantly freeze and the lake is cold, but not too cold. A stiff breeze helps to churn things up.
The process begins as a small chunk of ice in the shore. The tiny bit of ice slowly grows larger as it tumbles in the seas, or lakes, growing layer by layer as the water instantaneously freezes upon it. Ice boulders can only form when the air is cold enough for the water to instantly freeze. After hours of tumbling, the ice ball can become as large as a football. Deposited on the shore, the picturesque ice balled shore is a must visit as it is a meteorological phenomenon that not happen too often.
In the case of the Arctic beach along the Gulf of Ob, the tide that came in contacted a layer of frost, covering the beach in ice. As the water slowly receded, it left bits of ice that spun on the wet sand creating spheres.
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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.