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India’s Unified Payments Interface and Singapore’s PayNow were officially connected, allowing for a “real-time payment linkage”.
The launch was led by a phone call between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Singaporean counterpart Lee Hsien Loong.
“Today is a special day for India-Singapore friendship and for our efforts to deepen collaboration in FinTech and innovation. The participation of my friend PM Lee Sien Loong made this... even more special.The linkage is set to ease financial transactions for the Indian diaspora.
Singapore is the first country with which cross-border Person to Person (P2P) payment facilities have been launched.
This will help the Indian diaspora in Singapore, especially migrant workers/students, and bring the benefits of digitalisation and FINTECH to the common man through instantaneous and low-cost transfer of money from Singapore to India and vice-versa.
States
ISRO announces opportunities to analyse AstroSat (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Space)
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has made an announcement of opportunity (AO) to allow scientists and researchers to analyse data from the first dedicated Indian astronomy mission, AstroSat.
The space agency has made the AO soliciting proposals for 13th AO cycle observations from AstroSat.
ISRO said that this announcement is open to Indian scientists, researchers residing and working at institutes, universities and colleges in India for 55% of time and to non-Indian scientists, researchers, Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), working at space agencies, institutes, universities and colleges around the globe for 20% time.
The AO is open for scientists and researchers who are involved in research in the area of astronomy and who are equipped to submit proposals as principal investigators (PIs) for specific target observations with necessary scientific and technical justification and those who can analyse the data, if the target is observed based on approvals.
This AO soliciting proposal for the 13th AO cycle is for Indian and international proposers as PIs to utilise AstroSat observatory time. The observations will be carried out between October 2023 to September 2024.
Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka to organise the first synchronised vulture survey in February (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The Kerala Forest and Wildlife Department, with its counterparts in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, is preparing to organise the first synchronised vulture survey in select regions of the Western Ghats.
Every year the Forest Departments in the three States were organising separate surveys at different times to count the remaining vulture population in South India.
But he added that a tripartite coordination meeting held in Mudumalai Tiger reserve in Tamil Nadu two weeks ago decided to organise the first synchronised vulture survey in Western Ghats to avoid duplications.
The survey would simultaneously be organised in the three forest divisions, including the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary, and the South and North forest divisions.
It will be conducted after dividing the Wayanad landscape, where the bird species are frequently sighted, into 10 locations.
Each of the locations will be monitored by a five-member team, comprising a vulture expert, a forest beat officer, one or two volunteers and a forest watcher.
Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary, contiguous to the tiger reserves of Nagarhole and Bandipur of Karnataka and Mudumalai of Tamil Nadu, is the lone region where vultures thrive in Kerala.
The sanctuary harbours nearly 120-150 white-rumped vultures and less than 25 red-headed vultures.The occasional sightings of long-billed vultures have also been reported in the sanctuary.
Vultures faced a catastrophic population decline during the 2000s when the species was exposed to the anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac used as a painkiller for cattle.
South Asia had about four crore white-rumped vultures until the end of the nineties. But the population has come down to less than 10,000.
Editorial
India needs a Budget for its young (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The world is indeed looking up to the Indian economy as a ‘bright star’, as the Finance Minister noted in the Budget speech on February 1.
In 2020, India accounted for 20.6% of the worldwide population of 15 to 29 year olds. Which means that in the years ahead, one out of every five workers deployed globally could be an Indian.No doubt, the rest of the world foresees a fortune in India’s young population.
The key proposals in this year’s Union budget are the following. On the one hand, there will be a considerable increase in capital expenditures, for the building of physical infrastructure, mainly in transport, energy and defence.
The figures under this head are expected to be higher by ₹3.2 trillion (or lakh crore) in 2023-24 compared to the corresponding level in 2022-23 (revised estimates).
While the growth of the tax revenues is going to be modest, the government is nevertheless committed to reducing the fiscal deficit — the shortfall in government’s receipts relative to its expenditures — to 5.9% of GDP. That could have been achieved only by reducing the spending on some other sectors.
The axe has fallen on subsidies and social sector expenditures. Compared to its previous year, in 2023-24, the Union government’s expenditure on food subsidy will fall by ₹0.9 trillion (or 90,000 crore), on fertilizer subsidy by ₹0.5 trillion, and on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) by ₹0.3 trillion.
The marginal increases in the allocations on health, education, agriculture and the Angwandi scheme are unlikely to make an impact, after taking into account the effect of inflation.
A jump in capital spending by the government, as proposed in the Budget, is a much-needed step to reinvigorate the Indian economy.
Investment (for buying new machines and building roads and factories) as a proportion of income or GDP indicates the rate at which a country’s productive capabilities are growing.
In India, this proportion rose steadily during the mid-2000s and peaked at 42% in 2007, which was even better than China’s record at that point in time.
High rates of investment translated into extremely fast rates of economic progress in the country, which lasted until the early 2010s.
Turn off the tap of urban bias in rural development (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Growth and Development)
The divide between the rural and the urban has grown due to an inherent urban bias among policymakers and institutions, including the government.
This happens because groups in urban areas are able to effectively influence these institutions in their favour. Second, the spill-over from markets in urban areas is also limited to the rural areas that are closer to urban settlements.
This is known as the spill-over effect where the development of rural areas is dependent on larger urban cores. Consequently, rural areas which are far away from the urban core not only suffer from a lack of development but also keep falling behind rural areas which are closer to the urban core.
It is for this reason that the state must step in to correct the rural-urban disparity by having in place special and targeted measures to develop rural areas.
The Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), launched in August 2019, is one such project which aims to provide access to safe and adequate drinking water to all households in rural India by 2024.
The provision of safe drinking water is an important non-food factor influencing health and nutrition. Besides enabling tap water access at the household level, it helps reduce the drudgery women and girl children have to face and ensures their safety as well.
Ensuring the “availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” is the sixth goal in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations to be achieved by 2030.
As it has been three years since its implementation at the all-India level, tracking its progress in Tamil Nadu is important; this analysis is specifically important as Tamil Nadu’s progress was better than the other States during the first two quarters of 2022.
The data for this study have been sourced from the dashboards of the website of the JJM (October 14, 2022) for the period between August 2019 and October 2022.
As there was no mention of the total number of households as of August 2019 (when the JJM started), the data for October 2022 data have been used as the base.
The district-level data reveal wider variations in providing tap water connections to rural households among districts. For instance, a significant proportion of rural households in Kanchipuram (100%), Ranipet (98.73%), Kanniyakumari (83.99%), Vellore (80.89%), and Tiruchirappalli (78.55%) districts have tap water. Coimbatore, Tiruppur, Thanjavur and Dindigul districts have also made significant progress, where more than one lakh rural households got tap water connections in this period.
Opinion
A new chapter in defence and tech (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Earlier this month, the U.S. and India inaugurated their initiative on critical and emerging technologies (ICET). The promise of this initiative, if fulfilled, could have a transformative impact on India-U.S. relations.
Since the 1960s, India has made many attempts to jump on the U.S. technology bandwagon. But all of them have failed, primarily because of the mismatch between the two countries on the purposes for which they collaborated.
The ICET is perhaps better positioned. Unlike the earlier iterations, it comes at a time when India, too, has developed technological and managerial capacities and is emerging as a major economic power.
Under ICET, the two sides have identified six focus areas of co-development and co-production: strengthening innovation ecosystems, defence innovation and technology cooperation, resilient semiconductor supply chains, space, STEM talent, and next generation telecom.
On the eve of the dialogue, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval said that the big need was to convert intentions and ideas into deliverables. This is where there has usually been a slip.
Since the 1950s, the U.S. has played a significant role in India’s development efforts and quest for technological capability. A major driver of the process was the Cold War which persuaded the U.S. to provide sweeping assistance in a range of areas to India.
While the Soviet Union emerged as a major player in areas like steel, heavy electricals, petroleum and mining, the U.S. focused on modernising engineering and management education, science and technology (S&T), and agriculture.
Among the more consequential areas of cooperation was in nuclear energy where the U.S. helped build India’s first reactors for research and power.
An entire generation of Indian nuclear scientists were trained in the U.S., including some who subsequently helped in making nuclear weapons.
But this cooperation was abruptly ended after India’s first nuclear test in 1974. The same could be said, though in a somewhat different manner, for India’s space programme.
The massive aid provided by the U.S. to modernise Indian education, especially engineering and management, should have led to a growing industrial sector, but the Indian economy stalled in the 1960s and India ended up with a system where IIT and IIM graduates ended up benefiting the U.S. economy.
The one area in which India did get lasting and important benefits was agriculture where American S&T helped trigger the Green Revolution and end an era of food shortages.
The Bangladesh War of 1971 and the 1974 nuclear tests led to a three-decade estrangement and a draconian American technology denial regime whose prime target was India, all in the name of non-proliferation.
Explainer
Vostro accounts and how they facilitate trade (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Last week, government officials informed that 20 Russian banks, including Rosbank, Tinkoff Bank, Centro Credit Bank and Credit Bank of Moscow have opened Special Rupee Vostro Accounts (SRVA) with partner banks in India. All major domestic banks have listed their nodal officers to sort out issues faced by exporters under the arrangement.
A vostro account is an account that domestic banks hold for foreign banks in the former’s domestic currency, in this case, the rupee.
Domestic banks use it to provide international banking services to their clients who have global banking needs. It is an integral offshoot of correspondent banking that entails a bank (or an intermediary) to facilitate wire transfer, conduct business transactions, accept deposits and gather documents on behalf of the other bank.
It helps domestic banks gain wider access to foreign financial markets and serve international clients without having to be physically present abroad.
The SRVA is an additional arrangement to the existing system that uses freely convertible currencies and works as a complimentary system.
For perspective, freely convertible currencies refer to currencies permitted by rules and regulations of the concerned country to be converted to major reserve currencies (like U.S. dollar or pound sterling) and for which a fairly active market exists for dealings against major currencies. The existing systems thus require maintaining balances and position in such currencies.
The framework entails three important components, namely, invoicing, exchange rate and settlement. Invoicing entails that all exports and imports must be denominated and invoiced in INR.
The exchange rate between the currencies of the trading partner countries would be market-determined. To conclude, the final settlement also takes place in Indian National Rupee (INR).
The authorised domestic dealer banks (those authorised to deal in foreign currencies) are required to open SRVA accounts for correspondent banks of the partner trading country.
Domestic importers are required to make payment (in INR) into the SRVA account of the correspondent bank against the invoices for supply of goods or services from the overseas seller/supplier.
Similarly, domestic exporters are to be paid the export proceeds (in INR) from the balances in the designated account of the correspondent bank of the partner country.
Will India witness an El Niño forecast this year? (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 1, Geography)
India is experiencing a colder than normal winter thanks to the north-south winter flow set up by the climate phenomenon known as La Niña. The La Niña itself is going on for a record-breaking third consecutive year.
Now, forecasts for the 2023 fall and winter are predicting that there is a 50% possibility for its companion phenomenon, the El Niño to occur.
El Niño refers to a band of warm water spreading from west to east in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. The years in which an El Niño occur are called ‘El Niño years’, and global weather patterns in that year tend to be anomalous in certain ways.
Similarly, a La Niña occurs when the band of water spreads east-west and is cooler. Both phenomena can have drastic effects on economies that depend on rainfall.
The first thing to note is that El Niño forecasts before spring tend to be notoriously unreliable because the climate system is quite noisy in spring — the Sun transitions across the equator, from one hemisphere to the other, creating noise in predictions. However, in a La Niña year, the tropical Pacific Ocean soaks up heat and accumulates warm water.
During the El Niño, this warm water spills from the western part of the Pacific Ocean to the eastern part. Earth has had three straight La Niña years, which means the Pacific’s warm-water volume is fully loaded and likely to birth an El Niño soon.
An El Niño year creates a miniature global-warming crisis, since the warm water spreading across the tropical Pacific releases a large amount of heat into the atmosphere.
A transition from a La Niña winter to an El Niño summer historically tends to produce a large monsoon deficit, on the order of 15%.
This means pre-monsoon and monsoon circulations tend to be weaker in an El Niño year. The vertical shear (change in the intensity of winds from the surface to the upper atmosphere) tends to be weaker as well.
This in turn can favour enhanced cyclone formation. But, of course, the global climate system is not so simple. Intraseasonal or subseasonal timescale variability in sea-surface temperature and winds is also very important for cyclogenesis over the northern Indian Ocean.
These timescales denote the durations for which certain temperature and wind characteristics persist in the pre- and post-monsoon periods. That said, the net effect is for cyclogenesis to be subdued in an El Niño year.
News
Australia to host its first Malabar naval drill this August (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
Australia will host the Malabar multilateral naval exercise, consisting of India, Australia, Japan and the U.S., for the first time this year.
The high tempo of bilateral engagement between the two countries will continue with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong scheduled to visit India early March during which officials said some major defence initiatives could be announced.
“Malabar 2023 is scheduled to be held in August and Australia will host this edition,” an official source confirmed. “The exercise is likely to be held in Perth.
Ms. Wong is scheduled to attend the G-20 Foreign Ministers meeting on March 1 and 2 and Mr. Albanese is scheduled to visit India on March 8 on a bilateral visit.
The visit comes months after the Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement came into force. The visit comes months after the Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement came into force.
The Quad Foreign Ministers are scheduled to hold a meeting a day after the G-20 meeting. Australia is scheduled to host the Quad summit later this year.
Survey of India to be arbiter as govt. privatises map making (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The Survey of India (SoI), India’s 250-year-old map maker, while no longer having a monopoly on making high-resolution maps, will remain the arbiter of maps that deal with State boundaries and national borders.
It will also maintain and provide reference stations that are vital to cartographers to prepare higher resolution maps, Sunil Kumar, Surveyor-General of India and Joint Secretary, Ministry of Science and Technology.
Last December, the Centre officially released the National Geospatial Policy of India that allows any private agency to make high-resolution maps.
Before this, the SoI made various categories of maps that, while available for nominal charges, were relatively hard to access.
Moreover, maps made for “civilian purposes” were coarser than the “defence series maps” that were more detailed but only accessible to the Defence Ministry.
It will continue to maintain CORS (Continuously Operating Reference Stations) that are necessary to create accurate digital maps.
A CORS consists of a GPS receiver operating continuously, and a stable antenna for continuously streaming raw data. Such reference stations are present all over the globe to monitor the earth’s crust to provide geodetic control, track manmade and natural structures, and facilitate accurate navigation.
While guidelines released by the Science Ministry in 2021 liberalised the making and access to geospatial services, the geospatial policy sets out goals and targets such as a high resolution topographical survey and digital elevation model by 2030.
For a long time, several departments of the government worked in silos. Digital assets created were not being effectively used. The implications of the geospatial industry is huge and it’s also a little dangerous because anything and anyone can be tracked anywhere, but India should aim to be a leader in this economy.