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India’s gross direct tax collections had risen 24.1% to touch ₹15.67 lakh crore, with personal income tax collections rising 29.6%, much faster than corporate income tax inflows, which are up 19.3% so far this year.
Net of refunds, total tax collections are ₹12.98 lakh crore, 18.4% higher than a year ago and constitute 91.4% of the Budget targets for 2022-23 and 78.65% of the revised estimates.
By January 10, net direct tax collections stood at ₹12.31 lakh crore, reflecting a 19.55% growth so the latest cumulative receipts numbers indicate a minor slowdown in inflows over the past month.
The provisional figures of direct tax collections up to February 10, 2023, continue to register steady growth. Refunds amounting to ₹2.69 lakh crore have been issued between April 2022 and February 10 this year.
News
DRDO asks industry to join fifth generation fighter development (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
The Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), under the Defence Research and Development Organisation, has invited Indian industry players to join the development and manufacture of the indigenous fifth generation fighter jet, the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA).
To accelerate the development and production of the AMCA, the ADA is looking for interaction with prospective firms, which are willing to participate as technology-cum-investment partners towards development and manufacturing of the AMCA, specifying that the invitation was for Indian companies only.
Based on the success of the indigenous light combat aircraft, the Centre has entrusted the Agency with the design of a new fighter jet for the Indian Air Force, which will be a fifth generation, medium-weight, multi-role and twin-engine aircraft.
India’s ambitious effort to build an indigenous fifth generation fighter, which only a handful of countries have accomplished, is in the critical design review phase and is now awaiting approval from the Cabinet Committee on Security.
In 2009, the Union government had allocated ₹90 crore for a feasibility study on designing a fifth generation fighter, with an additional ₹447 crore sanctioned later.
Agency officials said that once the project is sanctioned, the first prototype could be rolled out in three years. Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd., the production agency for the project, has already begun manufacturing activities.
The AMCA is envisaged as a 25-tonne twin-engine stealth aircraft with an internal weapons bay and diverterless supersonic intake, which has been developed in India for the first time.
It is intended to have an internal carriage of 1,500 kg of payload and 5,500 kg of external payload with 6,500 kg of internal fuel.
Last September, the Cabinet Committee on Security sanctioned the development of the LCA-Mk2, a new light combat aircraft, at a development cost of ₹9,000 crore, of which ₹2,500 crore has already been spent.
SC steps in for under trial prisoners unable to furnish surety, bail bonds (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
The Supreme Court has issued a slew of directions to ensure that undertrial prisoners who have got bail, but are too poor to furnish surety and bail bonds, are released within seven days.
The court has even suggested granting “temporary bail” to undertrial prisoners so that they can go out and arrange for bail bonds and sureties.
The order by a Bench led by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul came in the wake of a National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) report in January that nearly 5,000 undertrial prisoners were in jail in the country despite courts granting them bail.
They were either accused in multiple cases, or were simply too impoverished to comply with the bail conditions. The amicus curiae, advocate Gaurav Agrawal, said that 2,357 of these 5,000 prisoners were provided legal assistance and 1,417 were released, but the fundamental violation of the right to personal liberty of prisoners continues.
Mr. Agrawal said that meetings had been held with the Home Ministry, the NALSA and the National Informatics Centre (NIC) to devise changes in the e-prisons software used in 1,300 prisons across the country, so that these prisoners were digitally recognised as a separate category called “bailed-out- but-not-released”.
Agreeing with the urgency shown in the NALSA report and Mr. Agrawal’s suggestions, the court has issued seven directions to ensure that no bailed-out undertrial prisoner suffers prison because of poverty.
Movement to get horizontal quota for trans people gains momentum (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
Nearly nine years after the historic National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) judgment of the Supreme Court, which recognised transgender persons as a third gender and issued directions to protect their rights and dignity, a movement to secure horizontal reservation for them in public education and employment is gaining momentum.
It includes a legal battle that seeks to modify a part of the landmark 2014 judgment. Though the judgment directed the Union and the State governments to provide transgender people “all kinds of reservation” in admissions to educational institutions and in employment, the transgender community in India continues to fight for its enforcement.
But since the judgment also called for trans people to be treated as part of the Socially and Educationally Backward Classes, which ran the risk of clubbing them with OBCs, the community is seeking to ensure separate trans reservation across all categories.
However, with the Union government disclosing in a reply in Parliament that it was not considering any proposal to provide trans people with quotas, activists, scholars and lawyers that their movement for quota will only intensify now.
Grace Banu, a Chennai-based activist, is preparing to approach the Supreme Court for a clarification on the direction in the NALSA judgment that may run the risk of clubbing transgender people with OBCs on quotas.
The Delhi-based activist Jane Kaushik’s petition in the Delhi High Court for horizontal reservation is awaiting the government’s reply.
Bittu Kondaiah, an activist and Associate Professor of Biology and Psychology at Ashoka University, said the campaign for reservation would definitely intensify now.
The Social Justice Ministry had said that the law already prohibited all kinds of discrimination against transgender people.
They have created an Act, which sends a message but does not give us our rights.,” Ms. Banu, who founded and runs the Trans Rights Now Collective.
World
Biden, Lula vow to defend democracy in Americas (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
U.S. President Joe Biden and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said at the White House that the two biggest countries in the Americas have successfully seen off attacks on their democracies and will now work together on fighting the climate crisis.
Meeting in the Oval Office, Mr. Biden and Lula expressed solidarity over their similar paths. Mr. Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020, but two months later, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building of the U.S. Congress believing his conspiracy theory that he’d been the real election winner.
In Brazil, Lula defeated right-winger Jair Bolsonaro and took office this January, but a mob of Bolsonaro supporters stormed government buildings shortly after.
Mr. Biden and Lula stressed their mutual commitment to saving the Amazon rainforest and fighting global warming — efforts that Mr. Bolsonaro and Mr. Trump both sidelined.
Brazil is seeking U.S. participation in the Amazon Fund, an international scheme to finance anti-deforestation efforts in Brazil, and Lula walked away from the Oval Office voicing moderate confidence that would happen.
In a joint U.S.-Brazil statement that followed the meeting, the White House said it hoped to “work with Congress to provide funds for programs to protect and conserve the Brazilian Amazon, including initial support for the Amazon Fund.”
Lula told Mr. Biden in the Oval Office that during his 2003-2010 term as President, he had committed Brazil to drastic reductions in the deforestation of the world’s largest rainforest, which is often described as the “lungs of the world” for its massive greenhouse gas absorption.
Science & Tech
Mammalian spread of H5N1 and its pandemic potential (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
Avian influenza, or bird flu, is a highly contagious viral infection that primarily affects birds. Infrequently, the virus can infect mammals from birds, a phenomenon called spillover, and rarely can spread between mammals.
There are several different subtypes of avian influenza viruses, ranging from low pathogenic to highly pathogenic types. H5N1 is a highly pathogenic subtype of avian influenza that causes severe disease and death in birds.
This subtype has caused a number of human infections through close contact with infected birds or contaminated environments, and is often fatal.
Recent reports of H5N1 spread between mammals raise concerns about its potential to cause a human pandemic if it were to spill over and become transmissible among humans.
The H5N1 subtype has the potential to spill over to other mammals such as minks, ferrets, seals and domestic cats when the animals come in contact with infected birds or their feces or consume carcasses of infected birds and further serve as reservoirs.
It is also possible that over time, the virus could evolve to adapt to new hosts, leading to further outbreaks. Recently, scientists have been investigating a potential mammalian spillover event after a mass mortality event, which killed over 700 seals along Russia’s Caspian Sea coast where a H5N1 variant was detected in wild birds a few months ago.
In February 2023, Peru reported cases of H5N1 in sea lions and a dolphin, and a lion dying from H5N1 in a zoo. The U.K. has also reported deaths of otters and foxes due to infection by H5N1 subtype.
In the past, seals and other mammals, such as foxes, minks, ferrets and domestic cats, have been reported to be infected by H5N1 through contact with birds.
Wildlife, including foxes, coyotes and raccoons, often scavenge on infected birds or consume infected bird carcasses. However, the only recorded incidents of intra-mammal transmission of the virus have been among mink in captivity at a farm in Spain, in 2022.
FAQ
Why were the Turkey earthquakes so deadly? (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 1, Geography)
Two large earthquakes, one of magnitude 7.8 and closely followed by a magnitude 7.5, hit south-eastern Turkey, claiming at least 17,000 lives and counting, wreaking considerable damage in Turkey as well as Syria.
Nearly 200 aftershocks have followed with earthquakes of magnitude 6 being reported in the region three days after the first tremblor.
The earth’s crust is made up of roughly 15 massive segmented chunky slabs called tectonic plates which are constantly in motion.
The land on which buildings are built rests on these plates. The plates continually collide, push and grate against each other and the meeting points of these plates are made up of a series of ‘faults.’
The pent up energy from the nestling plates, along faultlines, is often released when an imbalance in pressure causes rocks on either side of the fault to re-adjust.
One set of rocks rising up relative to the other is a ‘normal’ fault, one sliding down relative to the other is a ‘reverse’ fault.
Turkey and Syria lie at the confluence of three plates — the Arabian Plate, the Anatolian Plate and the Eurasian Plate, making the region an extremely seismically active zone.
The Arabian Plate is inching north into Europe, causing the Anatolian Plate (which Turkey sits on) to be pushed out west.
The bulk of Turkey sits on the Anatolian Plate between two major faults: the North Anatolian Fault and the East Anatolian Fault.
How is govt. ramping up border infrastructure? (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Infrastructure)
At an unscheduled briefing during Parliament session this week, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar released details of the government’s projects on border infrastructure and connectivity.
It focused on initiatives in the north and east along India’s 3,488 km border with China (Line of Actual Control or LAC), including ramping up infrastructure on the Indian side in Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, as well as projects connecting India to “friendly” neighbouring states such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Myanmar.
Speaking to journalists, Mr. Jaishankar said the Modi government has “focused on rapid development of infrastructure along Northern Borders with China for obvious strategic reasons”.
This was a reference to successive skirmishes with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in Chumar in 2014, Doklam in 2017 and the ongoing standoff along the entire LAC since April 2020 when the Chinese army amassed troops along the border, which resulted in the Galwan clashes, the first such violent incident in 45 years.
Behind the debate that we often witness on the India-China border, including that of questions asked by the Opposition, one needs to look at what goes into our border preparedness.
It’s the quality of our structures, the technology involved and its maintenance, indicating that the purpose of the briefing was to counter the Opposition’s questions on the India-China situation during the parliamentary session.
An official document released, highlighted a multi-pronged approach — improving connectivity to the LAC through roads, bridges and tunnels, improving cross-border connectivity to neighbouring countries via highways, bridges, inland waterways, railroads, electricity lines and fuel pipelines, modernising and constructing integrated check posts (ICPs) at all the border crossings to smooth trade, and funding and constructing infrastructure projects in neighbouring countries.
What made MSCI act on Adani stocks? (Page no. 12)
(Prelims)
Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI), a global index provider for financial markets, announced that it will reduce the free float designations for four Adani Group companies in multiple indices.
These companies had a combined 0.4% weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index as of January 30. The decision follows MSCI’s decision to review the free float status of companies belonging to the Adani Group following investor concerns.
Apart from Adani Enterprises, the MSCI will cut the free floats assigned to Adani Total Gas, Adani Transmission, and ACC. These changes will come into effect from March 1.
Free float refers to the proportion of the total outstanding shares of a publicly listed company that is readily available for trading in the market.
Generally speaking, shares held by promoters and large institutional investors are normally not freely traded in the market.
The free float of a company can sometimes give investors a rough idea about the likely liquidity of the company's shares in the public market.
It should be noted that the weightage given to a company’s stock in certain indices is based on the company’s market capitalisation.
A company’s market capitalisation is calculated based on the free float of the company and also the market price of the company’s stock.
So, a drop in the number of freely floating shares of a company can cause a drop in its market capitalisation and reduce its weightage in indices.
Business
Registry will help expedite credit flows: Das (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The national financial information registry announced in the Union Budget is aimed at expediting loan sanctions and credit flows by offering lenders a ‘360 degree’ perspective on potential borrowers.
A lot of information is required by a bank, before a loan is sanctioned. The idea is to create one registry where, to the extent possible. The idea is to provide a 360 degree kind of information system which will be readily available to the lending institutions to ensure that it quickens the process of credit flow.
On successive interest rate increases denting demand for rate-sensitive consumption like homes, Mr. Das stressed that real interest rates (after factoring in inflation) had only just moved into “positive territory”.
Noting that the rate increases were driven by RBI’s mandate to maintain price stability, Mr. Das said market forces decide deposit and lending rates.
We had negative interest rates for the last three years and persistent continuation of negative interest rates for far too long can create instability in the financial system and have a lot of risks that have to be avoided. When interest rates are rising, there is also somebody called the depositor, his interest has to be taken into account.
Referring to the Budget’s request to regulators to hold public consultations before framing regulations and set timelines for regulatory processes, Mr. Das said the RBI already holds consultations on several issues and has some timelines in place which can be prescribed for more processes.