Exciting discoveries have come from an international drilling project, the Deep Sea Drilling Project. Since 1968, a drill ship, the Glomar Challenger, has drilled nearly a thousand holes into the deep ocean basins, taking samples of deep-sea sediment and crust. One early discovery suggests that the Mediterranean dried up completely between 5 and 12 million years ago, leaving thick beds of sun-baked salts as evidence buried in today’s ocean floor.
From the late 1930s, new techniques have opened up in submarine geology. Gravity measurements and geotectonic imagery have allowed accurate mapping of the sea surface and the bottom structure of the oceans. The ocean floor, far from being smooth and flat, is marked by huge mountain ranges – the mid-ocean ridge that form part of a global network which extends for more than 80,000 km. In places such as Iceland, Ascension and the Galapagos Islands, the ridges rise above sea level.
The ocean floor is also cut by deep trenches which mark subduction zones and are punctuated by isolated seamounts. Because a mid-ocean ridge is submerged at very deep depths in the ocean, its existence was not even known until the 1950s, when it was discovered by Vema, a ship of the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University, that traversed the Atlantic Ocean and recorded data about the ocean floor from the ocean surface.
The mountain range was named the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. At first, it was thought to be a phenomenon specific to the Atlantic Ocean, because nothing like such a massively-long undersea mountain chain had ever been discovered before. However, as surveys of the ocean floor continued to be conducted around the world, it was discovered that every ocean contained parts of the mid-ocean ridge.
The discovery of what mid-ocean ridge systems represented, the sites of crust formation, or constructive plate margins, was a major breakthrough in earth sciences. Basaltic volcanism, upwelling of magma consisting mainly of basalt characterises ocean ridge.
Convective movements within the mantle force the overlying lithosphere move apart, allowing hot magma to reach the sea floor. At ridge crests, a zone of rifting separates regions of sea floor which are moving apart at 2-15 centimetres per year.
Because the oceanic crust cannot withstand sufficient stress to allow for variations in spreading rate and changes in convection pattern, ocean ridge consist of straight sections offset by transform faults, along which different sections of a plate slide past each other. This phenomenon is known to be caused by convection currents in the plastic, very weak upper mantle, or asthenosphere.
One of the key pieces of information came from paleomagnetic studies along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It was found that only half the rocks on each side of the ridge-axis near Iceland showed normal magnetic polarity; the remainder had a reversed polarity.
The pattern of normal and reversed polarity was manifested in a magnetic striping of the oceanic crust, mirrored on each side of the ridge crest. The alternating pattern of normal and reversed polarity rocks is produced as successive belts of lava are extruded at the site of a divergent plate margin. At the mid-ocean ridge and associated rift zones, the new sea floor is generated then carried away from the ridge-axis by lateral mantle motions.
When individual stripes were dated, it was found that the rocks became older with increasing distance from the crest. In other words, the sea floor was spreading apart. Such spreading characterises all ocean ridge where lithospheric plate divergence occurs. During the past 80 million years, the Atlantic has spread at a rate of 2 centimetres per year. About 4 cubic km of new crust is produced at mid-ocean ridge every year.
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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.