News Snippet
News 1: Assam celebrates Barak, Bangla relations
News 2: Protect glacial-period coastal red sand dunes of Vizag
News 3: Connecting India’s East with the Indo-Pacific
News 4: NPCI extends UPI market cap deadline by 2 years
News 5: Important Places in News
News 1: Assam celebrates Barak, Bangla relations
Background
The first festival celebrating the linguistic and cultural ties between the Barak Valley region of Assam and the Sylhet segment of Bangladesh began evening of 2nd December, 2022.
Silchar-Sylhet festival
Southern Assam’s Silchar town is hosting the two-day Silchar-Sylhet Festival that coincides with the 75th year of India’s independence and the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Bangladesh from Pakistan.
Organized by the India Foundation, the festival underlines the commonalities between India and Bangladesh, specifically the Sylheti variant of the Bengali language and the Sylheti culture.
News 2: Protect glacial-period coastal red sand dunes of Vizag
Background
The city of Visakhapatnam is blessed with a number of sites that have geological importance. One among them is the coastal red sand dunes, popularly known as Erra Matti Dibbalu.
The site is located along the coast and is about 20 km northeast of Visakhapatnam city and about 4 km southwest of Bheemunipatnam.
Erra Matti Dibbalu
This site, spread across an area of about 20 sq km, was declared as a geo-heritage site by the Geological Survey of India (GSI) in 2014 and the Andhra Pradesh government has listed it under the category of ‘protected sites’ in 2016.
Geologists say that this site has much significance geologically, archaeologically and anthropologically and it needs to be protected for further study and evaluation.
Need for protection of this site
Primarily this site needs to be protected to study the impact of climate change, as Erra Matti Dibbalu have seen both the glacial and the warm periods, said adviser to the Geo-Heritage Cell of INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage) and former professor of Geology, Andhra University, D. Rajasekhar Reddy.
According to him, the site is about 18,500 to 20,000 years old and it can be related to the last glacial period.
“Such sand deposits are rare and have been reported only from three places in the tropical regions in south Asia such as Teri Sands in Tamil Nadu, Erra Matti Dibbalu in Visakhapatnam and one more site in Sri Lanka. They do not occur in equatorial regions or temperate regions due to many scientific reasons,” Mr. Reddy said.
The uniqueness of this site is that the red sediments are a part of the continuation of the evolution of the earth and represent the late quaternary geologic age.
With a height of up to 30 m, they exhibit badland topography with different geomorphic landforms and features, including gullies, sand dunes, buried channels, beach ridges, paired terraces, the valley in the valley, wave-cut terrace, knick point and waterfalls, Mr. Reddy said.
It is a lively scientific evolution site, which depicts the real-time effects of climate change.
The site also has archaeological significance, as studies of artefacts indicate an Upper Palaeolithic horizon and on cross dating assigned to Late Pleistocene epoch, which is 20,000 BC, he added.
News 3: Connecting India’s East with the Indo-Pacific
Background
Since 2018, India’s ‘Look East’ and ‘Act East’ policies have moved into the phase of Indo-Pacific policy and strategy.
The perception of Indo-Pacific strategy is quite different in Northeastern and eastern India as compared to New Delhi. There, the more important issues still are the need to ensure adequate security, speed up economic development, and connect better with the rest of India and select South Asian and Southeast Asian nations.
Hence, an effective way to work for a ‘free, open, inclusive, peaceful and prosperous’ Indo-Pacific is to see how these five characteristics may be made more applicable to our eastern region.
What the East wants
The Northeast which comprises seven ‘sisters’ or States and one ‘brother’, Sikkim, has been witnessing transformation as it heads towards better security conditions and development.
Recent participation in policy conversations in Imphal, helped clarify local needs and priorities. Separately, wide-ranging interactions with the intelligentsia and artists in Kolkata shed light on how this major metropolis views the Indo-Pacific from the lens of culture. A key takeaway is that by absorbing and factoring in the perspectives of stakeholders at the ground level, the Indo-Pacific policy can deliver better results.
The view from Manipur was that security conditions have improved significantly since the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in Manipur in 2017. However, the core issues behind the insurgency have remained unresolved.
The way forward was to address them substantially and accelerate the pace of development. The official perspective was that the pernicious phenomena of smuggling, drug trafficking, transnational border crime, insurgent activity, and the influx of refugees (from Myanmar) represented serious non-traditional threats.
China was viewed as a ‘constant player’ behind these nefarious activities. This has necessitated vigilance and strict action by the Assam Rifles and other security agencies.
Others representing local communities, however, expressed concern over the insensitive handling of those engaged in lawful exchanges with the neighbouring countries. A balanced view indicates that considerable scope exists for more effective and people-sensitive border management in the future.
Development as priority
The Northeast is on the right path to concentrate on economic development. More is awaited through improvement in roads linking northeastern towns and job creation for thousands of graduates produced by local universities.
Manipur needs to be promoted as the hub of medical tourism for other Indian States and neighbours such as Myanmar. The State’s research and development facilities to leverage the region’s biodiversity should be expanded.
Accelerated development requires increased investment by Indian corporates and foreign investors as well as better management.
At Kolkata, intellectuals and performers in the cultural domain from India, the U.S., Japan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh reflected on the Indo-Pacific construct’s cultural dimensions. An ambitious endeavour by 75 artists from nine countries highlighted the region’s ‘unity in diversity’ through music, dance, drama, and cuisine.
Clearly, expanding the reach of cultural diplomacy and people-to-people cooperation through greater educational exchanges, tourism, and trade is desirable.
Md. Shahidul Haque, former Foreign Secretary of Bangladesh, holds the view that moving beyond geopolitics and geo-economics, neighbours should focus on “the geo-cultural dimension” of the Indo-Pacific.
Diplomats from the region agree on the importance of expanded people-related cooperation which would lead to wider acceptance of the Indo-Pacific and consolidation of the Quad.
Two common threads have emerged from recent exchanges.
First, the growing significance of the Bay of Bengal region permeates the thinking of scholars. The concept of the Indo-Pacific seems distant, but the moment it is perceived as the outer circle of the Bay of Bengal and its littorals, it comes closer to home.
Therefore, member-states need to invest more in the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) to enhance its effectiveness.
Second, in implementing India’s Indo-Pacific strategy, voices from Northeast and eastern India must be heard. Thus, beyond ‘Look East’ and ‘Act East’ lies ‘Think and Relate East’, especially within our own country.
News 4: NPCI extends UPI market cap deadline by 2 years
Background
In a relief to UPI payments market leaders, PhonePe and Google Pay, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has extended the deadline for Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to meet the market cap deadline of 30% to December 31, 2024. The earlier deadline to meet the market cap norms was December 31, 2022.
Market share of UPI players
The extension of the deadline will mean that PhonePe and Google Pay – the two biggest players with market share of 47% and 34% as of October – will get two more years to adhere to NPCI’s guideline.
Paytm, the third biggest player in the segment, has a market share of 15%.
UPI transactions
UPI transactions, which had crossed Rs 10 trillion in May in value terms, stood at Rs 11.90 trillion in November compared to Rs 12.11 trillion a month ago, as per NPCI data.
The guidelines requiring each UPI third-party app to adhere to a 30 percent transaction volume cap were first introduced in November 2020 to ensure that UPI volumes do not get concentrated in the hands of a few players. These three players, currently, make up for 96% of monthly UPI volumes.
The implementation of the guidelines will be a positive for Paytm, as it stands to gain. However, for PhonePe and Google Pay, it is a setback.
NPCI (National Payment Corporation of India)
Founded: 2008
National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India, is an initiative of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) under the provisions of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007, for creating a robust Payment & Settlement Infrastructure in India.
It has been incorporated as a “Not for Profit” Company under the provisions of Section 25 of Companies Act 1956 (now Section 8 of Companies Act 2013), with an intention to provide infrastructure to the entire Banking system in India for physical as well as electronic payment and settlement systems.
The ten core promoter banks are State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, Bank of India, ICICI Bank Limited, HDFC Bank Limited, Citibank N. A. and HSBC. In 2016 the shareholding was broad-based to 56 member banks to include more banks representing all sectors.
Unified Payment Interface (UPI)
Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is a system that powers multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application (of any participating bank), merging several banking features, seamless fund routing & merchant payments into one hood.
It also caters to the “Peer to Peer” collect request which can be scheduled and paid as per requirement and convenience.
With the above context in mind, NPCI conducted a pilot launch with 21 member banks. The pilot launch was on 11th April 2016 by Dr. Raghuram G Rajan, Governor, RBI at Mumbai.
Banks have started to upload their UPI enabled Apps on Google Play store from 25th August, 2016 onwards.
UPI is built over the IMPS infrastructure and allows you to instantly transfer money between any two parties’ bank accounts.
News 5: Important Places in News
Singrauli
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Tsomgo Lake
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Sultanpur National Park
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Erra Matti Dibbalu
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Kaza
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Haveri
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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.
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.