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India’s net direct tax collections grew 21.8% to ₹9.57 lakh crore by October 9, surpassing over half of the Budget estimates for this year, with personal income tax revenues rising 32.5% and corporate taxes increasing 12.4%.
While tax refunds amounting to ₹1.5 lakh crore have been remitted to taxpayers so far, some refunds are being withheld on the basis of pending tax demands from the past that taxpayers are being given a chance to address.
Moreover, challenges with validating bank accounts of about 35 lakh taxpayers, who may have provided incorrect bank branch codes, are also posing a hurdle.
For refunds of up to ₹5,000, the Income Tax (IT) department is not restricting payouts. However, over that threshold, taxpayers are being informed if there are any outstanding tax dues.
On tax demands in some cases being raised from as far back as 2010-11, the CBDT chairperson indicated these could be legacy cases from the time around 2011 when the IT department switched from using registers to an online system for recording assessment orders.
Editorial
Women want change, society needs change (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 1, Social Issues)
The 17th edition of the Global Gender Gap Report of the World Economic Forum (published on June 20, 2023), based on data from 146 countries, has concluded that at the current rate of progress, it will take 131 years to close the global gender gap; it is 149 years in populous South Asian countries including India.
Reservation is the most effective form of affirmative action and equity is the first step to equality. That it leads to inefficiency or incompetency is simply making excuses for not rendering tightly guarded spaces to ousted classes.
I strongly contend that women are not inferior to men. Incompetencies, even if they arise, are short term, and are removed soon after opportunity for skill building is made available.
A very astute person once asked me whether we want women to fight women. The answer is ‘no’. What women want is a level playing field where the factor of gender which is completely irrelevant but looms large, is removed from the equation.
The basic premise of advocates against reservation is that it will bring down competence. Alas, this is a completely misplaced notion as statistics show that women perform much better than men in academics, more women graduate from colleges than men, and more women enter the workforce than men.
In contrast to this trend, the number of women sharply spirals downwards in leadership positions not because of their incompetence, but because of the hegemony of men.
The Maldives, the evolution of a democracy (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The Maldives, South Asia’s smallest nation-state, sent a clear signal through its latest presidential election: democracy is thriving.
The holding of yet another free and fair election enhances the country’s international prestige. The key issues at play related to the concerns of voters, especially young voters, for their economic well-being: employment, housing and improvements needed for the tourism industry, education, and health care.
Therefore, to portray the election as a football match between China and India resulting in India’s defeat — as some western news agencies have done — is to betray ignorance of how this nation of 1,192 islands functions. Luckily, the people of Maldives know better.
The old era, when Maumoon Abdul Gayoom ruled as the President from 1978 to 2008, gave way to a multiparty democracy under a new constitution. Mohamed Nasheed, a charismatic but mercurial leader, became the first directly elected President.
He did not complete his five-year term and ended up sharing it with Mohamed Waheed Hassan. Abdulla Yameen, the most pro-China president so far, served his full term (2013–18), followed by Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, the candidate of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) and the architect of ‘India First’ policy, who served from 2018 till now.
Following his defeat, he will hand over the presidency to the clear winner — Mohamed Muizzu, the opposition candidate backed by an alliance of the Progressive Party of Maldives and the People’s National Congress. The mayor of the capital city Male, Mr. Muizzu will be sworn in as the new President next month.
Opinion
We need evidence-based traditional medicine (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
The case filed by a manufacturer of indigenous drugs against a medical practitioner on the grounds that his social media thread affected their business has become a cause celebrè in medical circles.
Without going into the specifics of this particular case, let us examine certain general aspects.
It is a fact that irrespective of the advances of modern medicine, several systems which lay claim to healing, and which all fall under the broad category of alternative medicine, exist. Certain systems such as Ayurveda, Unani, and Siddha have their own pharmacopeia in India.
It is important to note here that modern medicine is not allopathy (which means “opposed to symptoms”), a term coined by Hahnemann in the 18th century, and used pejoratively, to differentiate it from his newly invented system, homeopathy.
Modern medicine really became science-based only from the late 19th century when advances in technology made not only the study of the functioning of the human body in health and disease more accurate, but also led to safe anaesthesia and surgery.
Later, this process led to marvels such as dialysis for kidney failure and the heart-lung machine which made surgery on the heart a daily affair.
Text & Context
The impact of Claudia Goldin’s work (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
On Monday, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences for 2023 was being awarded to Harvard University Professor Claudia Goldin for “having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”.
Her work, it said, is the “first comprehensive account of women’s earning and labour market participation through the centuries”. Professor Claudia Goldin is only the third women to have won the prize (for Economics) and the first to do it solo.
Professor Goldin trawled through the archives of about 200 years of the United States to demonstrate how and why gender differences in earnings and employment rates have changed over time.
The most significant of her observations was that female participation in the labour market did not exhibit an upward trend over the entire period, but rather a U-shaped curve. In other words, economic growth ensuing in varied periods did not translate to reducing gender differences in the labour market.
She demonstrated that several factors have historically influenced and still influence the supply and demand for female labour.
These include opportunities for combining paid work and a family, decisions (and expectations) related to pursuing education and raising children, technical innovations, laws and norms, and the structural transformation in an economy.
According to her, the most important in the unequal paradigm “is that both lose”. She told Social Science Bites blog earlier in December, “Men are able to have the family and step up because women step back in terms of their jobs, but both are deprived. Men forgo time with their family and women often forgo their career”.
News
India, Italy sign defence agreement (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
India and Italy signed a defence cooperation agreement to promote cooperation in varied defence domains such as “security and defence policy, R&D, education in military field, maritime domain awareness, sharing of defence information and industrial cooperation, including co-development, co-production and setting up of joint ventures”. This came after talks between Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and his counterpart Guido Crosetto in Rome.
Mr. Singh is on a visit to Italy and France from October 9 to 12.
First test flight of Gaganyaan mission scheduled on Oct. 21 (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will execute the first of multiple test flights ahead of the Gaganyaan mission — India’s first manned mission to space — on October 21, Jitendra Singh, Minister of State for Space, Science and Technology.
The test will be conducted at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota and is intended to test the ‘crew module’ or the part of vehicle where the Indian astronauts will be housed.
The test involves launching the module to outer space and bringing it back to earth and recovering it after touchdown in the Bay of Bengal. The Navy personnel have already started mock operations to recover the module.
Along with the crew module, there will also be a ‘crew escape’ system. If the spacecraft while ascending into space faces a problem, this escape system is expected to separate and bring the crew safely back to sea from where they will be picked by the Navy personnel.
In the first of this tests called, Test Vehicle Abort Mission (TV-D1), the module will be identical to the one deployed to space, except that it will be ‘unpressurised.’
World
What is Hamas, the Palestinian militant group? (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
“We have decided to put an end to all of the occupation’s crimes. The time is over for them [Israel] to [continue to] act without accountability,” said Mohammad Deif, the shadowy commander of al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, on October 7.
His audio statement was telecast on TV after Hamas launched an unprecedented attack that caught Israel by surprise. Thus, we announce the ‘al-Aqsa Flood’ operation.
The rest is history. Hamas carried out its largest attack on Israel from Gaza, killing at least 900 people and leaving the bloodiest blow to Israel in decades.
In response, Israel has declared war on the outfit, killed over 700 Gazans in air strike and is preparing for a major ground offensive. The Palestine issue is back to the fore of the West Asian cauldron.
The roots of Hamas go back to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood, established by Egyptian Islamist Hasan al-Banna in 1928, made a presence in the British-ruled Palestine in the 1930s.
Its focus had been on reorienting Muslim society, while the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), founded in 1964, championed the Palestinian nationalist sentiments.
Business
IMF raises India’s FY24 GDP growth forecast to 6.3% (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) raised India’s economic growth forecast for the current fiscal year to 6.3%, from 6.1% earlier.
The IMF expects retail inflation in the South Asian nation to quicken to 5.5% in 2023/24 before easing to 4.6% in 2024/25.
Growth in India is projected to remain strong, at 6.3% in both 2023 and 2024, with an upward revision of 0.2 percentage points for 2023, reflecting stronger-than-expected consumption during April-June.
The RBI has projected CPI-based inflation for the current fiscal year at 5.4% while GDP growth is seen at 6.5%. Monetary policy projections are consistent with achieving the Indian central bank’s inflation target over the medium term. India’s current account deficit is expected to remain at 1.8% of GDP in FY24 and FY25.
The Fund cut its growth forecasts for China and the euro area and said overall global growth remained low and uneven despite what it called the “remarkable strength” of the U.S. economy.
The IMF also left its forecast for global real GDP growth in 2023 unchanged at 3.0%.
State-owned NBFCs put under PCA norms (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Reserve Bank of India said the strict supervisory norms under the Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) Framework will apply to state-owned non-banking financial companies from October 2024.
Some of the major government non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) include PFC, REC, IRFC and IFCI.
Being put under the PCA framework means restrictions on dividend distribution/remittance of profit; promoters/ shareholders to infuse equity and reduction in leverage; and restrictions on taking on other contingent liabilities on behalf of group companies.
The objective is to enable supervisory intervention at the appropriate time.
Science
Something changed about cyclone formation in the 1990s, says study (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 1, Geography)
Numerous studies have reported trends in various climate variables over the Indian subcontinent. A decreasing trend in the amount of monsoon rainfall for more than six decades is one.
Others include intensifying trends in the occurrence of extreme rainfall events, droughts, heatwaves, and cyclones. The period over which these trends have been estimated vary but global warming has always been invoked as the prime suspect.
A question that isn’t getting as much attention as it deserves to in this milieu is: are these really trends, or are they shifts or decadal cycles?
(A shift is a jump from one state to another, such as a quick transition from one amount of rainfall to another. The best example is seasonal monsoon rainfall: it tends to remain above the long-period average (LPA) for about 20 years and then shifts to a state of less rainfall than the LPA for a similar duration.)
The question matters because trends, shifts and decadal cycles portend important differences in the way we plan the use of our resources, including water, crops, energy, etc.
A common term used by climate scientists these days is ‘anthropogenic trend’. ‘Trend’ of course implies that there are climate variables moving in one direction, like the continuous increase in temperature.
The ‘anthropogenic’ suffix presumes that these trends are occurring within human lifetimes. As such, the duration over which a variable needs to evolve for its behaviour to be called a ‘trend’ is not always clear.
Climate scientists also use the term ‘secular trend’, which is to say that a variable has been increasing for a certain period within a longer span, such as for 30 years in a 100-year period.