A group of scientist in Australia who have been working and gathering data for the past twenty years claim that New Zealand sits atop a previously unknown continent which is 94% underwater.
Eight GNS Science geologists headed by Nick Mortimer along with colleagues from Victoria University, the Geological Survey of New Caledonia, and the University of Sydney summarize the evidence that 4.9 million square kilometers of the South West Pacific Ocean is underlain by a submerged continent.
The lead author Dr. Nick Mortimer in a press release said that Zealandia was former part of Gondwana. It measured five million square kilometers. It took them a long time to gather data as most of it was hidden under water. However it was bounded by well-defined geologic and geographic limits, Zealandia is, by their definition, is large enough to be termed a continent.
The paper has been published in the journal of the Geological Society of America Geological Society of America’s Journal, GSA Today, New Zealand is not just a few small islands at the bottom of the world. It is actually part of a fairly large continent 94% of which is under the sea.
Though Mortimer and his colleagues have drawn a similar conclusion before, they said that this paper will be a genuine surprise to many European, Asian, American, African and Australian geologists.
The main difference between Zealandia and other continents is that it has much wider and deeper continental shelves than the usual case. The highest point of Zealandia is Aoraki- Mount cook at 3724m.
“Currently used conventions and definitions of continental crust, continents, and microcontinents require no modification to accommodate Zealandia. Zealandia is six times bigger than Madagascar and about the same area as greater India” said Mortimer in a press release.
The research shows that Zealandia is a young, thin continent with crust thickness of between 10km and 30km, increasing to 40km under parts of the South Island. Zealandia provides a fresh context in which to investigate processes of continental rifting, thinning, and breakup
“The importance of Zealandia is not so much that there is now a case for a formerly little-known continent, but that, by virtue of its being thinned and submerged, but not shredded into microcontinents, it is a new and useful continental end member,” the paper says.
“To date, Zealandia is little-mentioned and/or entirely overlooked in comparative studies of continental rifting and of continent-ocean boundaries. By including Zealandia in investigations, we can discover more about the rheology, cohesion, and extensional deformation of continental crust and lithosphere,” it adds.
Endnote
The paper thus concludes that the scientific value of classifying Zealandia as a continent is much more than just an extra name on a list. That a continent can be so submerged yet unfragmented makes it a useful and thought-provoking geodynamic end member in exploring the cohesion and breakup of continental crust
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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.