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India’s net Direct tax collections in 2022-23 have risen to ₹7.45 lakh crore, more than half this year’s Budget targets by October 8, rising 16.3% over the tax inflows during the same period a year ago, the Finance Ministry said on October 9, 2022.
Based on provisional data, net personal income tax collections grew 17.35%, rising faster than corporate income tax collections that were up 16.29% net of refunds. Securities Transaction Tax (STT) collections combined with personal income tax receipts, grew at a more moderate 16.25%.
Underlining that Direct Tax collections continue to register steady growth, the ministry said that tax refunds have jumped 81% over the preceding year to touch ₹1.53 lakh crore.
Gross direct tax collections had reached ₹8.98 lakh crore by Saturday, 23.8% more than the corresponding period of 2021-22. After adjusting for refunds, net direct tax revenues now constitute 52.46% of the total Budget Estimates for 2022-23, the ministry said.
Net direct tax collections had crossed ₹7 lakh crore by September 17 and were 23.3% higher at the time, so there appears to have been a moderation in tax inflows in the intervening three weeks.
Gross revenues from direct taxes were at ₹8,36,225 crore on September 17, reflecting a 30.2% growth. Corporate tax revenues constituted little over half of the total net tax kitty at that point, as per an earlier statement from the Finance Ministry.
Sunday’s statement from the ministry about direct tax collections did not share absolute numbers on corporate and personal income taxes received so far. No details were released about advance tax collections either, which had risen 17% by September 17 to hit ₹2,95,308 crore.
Fatalities among UN Peacekeeping Forces rising (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
The number of fatalities among United Nations Peacekeeping Forces (UNPKF) in direct attacks is growing, said U.N. Undersecretary General Jean-Pierre Lacroix in an interview to The Hindu, when he visited Delhi last week to discuss the need for more “robust” mandates and better equipment, training and technology with Indian officials.
Mr. Lacroix’s visit to the region came amid a number of attacks by anti-U.N. groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where two Indian soldiers were among those killed in the last few weeks.
India is among the highest contributors of troops to the UNPKF, and has lost 179 soldiers in the past six decades, the highest fatality suffered by any country among “blue helmets”, and has been demanding a greater say in the decision making on U.N. peacekeeping missions.
Many of our peacekeeping operations are in an environment that is deteriorating, both from the point of view of the political environment, but also the security environment.
And I think that’s because the political efforts to solve conflict are not moving forward in most of these situations, and the threats against our peacekeepers, against the population we’re protecting are increasing.
In many of our operations, particularly the big operations in Africa, we are facing groups that are either terrorist groups or criminal groups and they’re not interested in peace, they’re not interested in stability, they’re interested in chaos.
That’s why our peacekeepers are facing threats in a way that is really, quite increased. And it means that we have to adapt, so as to better protect our peacekeepers, but also better protect the population we are serving.
And I think this is an important theme of discussions with countries such as India and other countries that are providing high numbers of peacekeepers.
The ultimate decision-making process is at the U.N. Security Council, and whether the Security Council needs to be reformed or not is an issue for our member-states to decide, not for the U.N. Secretariat.
We all need to sort of step up our efforts to make sure that our peacekeepers are better equipped, trained and prepared. Peacekeeping has its limitations. It’s not war. It’s not peace enforcement.
But we have mandates to protect civilians, and we have to have “robust” mandates, which require our peacekeepers to be proactive and to be able to go after all these armed groups. So it requires a robust posture, a robust mindset.
City
SwachhSurvekshan 2022: why Capital continues to score poorly (Page no. 2)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
Despite spending a combined estimate of ₹3,119 per capita on sanitation services, Delhi’s three erstwhile municipal corporations – North, South and East – continue to rank poor in the SwachhSurvekshan 2022 (annual cleanliness survey), while the city of Indore, which spent an estimated ₹4,073 per capita, has retained the top spot in the rankings for the sixth consecutive year.
The latest cleanliness survey was completed prior to the merger of the three civic bodies in May this year. Officials at the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) expressed varying views over the struggle of the civic body to gain better rankings, with some stating that the funds allocated for sanitation purposes were insufficient.
The larger problem lay in the improper segregation of waste, which was a result of poor enforcement of solid waste management rules, and minimal public awareness.
The latest cleanliness rankings, which featured 45 cities, placed the erstwhile North, South and East corporations at 37, 28 and 34, respectively; in the 2021 rankings, the three civic bodies stood at 45, 31 and 40, respectively, out of 48 cities. The 2020 rankings also show a similar trend with the South corporation retaining its 31st rank, while the remaining civic bodies found themselves in the bottom 10 (out of 47).
The latest survey – which saw its maximum score being increased to 7,500 from its previous year’s total of 6,000 – is based on three parameters: service-level progress (SLP) based on the data provided by urban local bodies; certification based on waste management, sanitation – garbage-free city (GFC) and open defecation-free categories (ODF) – and citizens feedback and engagement (citizens’ voice category).
Going by the 2011 Census figures, the erstwhile East Delhi corporation spent roughly around ₹6,200 per capita for a population of 17 lakh, which is smaller than that of Indore.
However, the East corporation found itself in the bottom 10 of this year’s rankings. There has to be a strong will to enforce change but this is clearly missing in our [MCD’s] case.
According to Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC) Commissioner Pratibha Pal, the “golden rule” that continues to contribute towards the SwachhSurvekshan ranking was ensuring 100% segregation of waste at the source.
We started by segregating waste into two categories – wet and dry -- and currently we are doing it in six categories. This includes wet, dry, plastic, domestic hazardous, sanitary waste and electronic waste.
It is a mandate from the IMC for people to segregate their waste into these categories,” said Ms. Pal, adding that this was followed by ensuring that 100% of the waste is collected and further processed on a daily basis.
Editorial
Why India Inc. is not taking a Hanuman leap (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
In a meeting held with the country’s corporate leaders on September 15, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman drew attention to an important aspect of the economy. She rightly flagged concerns about sluggish corporate investment, despite the government’s business-friendly stance, including a reduction in the corporate tax.
The reduction, effected in 2019, lowered the rate for existing companies to 22% from 30% and for new manufacturing companies to 15% from 25%. However, the corporate investment rate, i.e., investment as a share of the national income, has barely budged.
Ms. Sitharaman challenged corporate leaders to invest, asking rhetorically whether, like Hanuman in the Ramayana, they needed to be reminded of their inborn strength. The analogy is mismatched, though.
For, while Hanuman was so devoted to Lord Rama that he was ready to risk his life serving him, private firms are driven by profit expectations.
Managers are averse to risk, and unlikely to rush to invest based on exhortation from a Minister if they do not anticipate enough profits. Private investment accounts for close to 75% of total capital formation in the economy; its revival therefore is essential for sustained growth of the economy.
The Narendra Modi government’s first pronouncements in 2014 had conveyed that it desired a shift away from a state-driven model of economic development.
This much was apparent in its slogan ‘minimum government’. If this was to be, the private sector would take the lead in driving the economy.
Mr. Modi had a reputation as a business-friendly Chief Minister of Gujarat. Upon reaching Delhi, he emphasised that his government would improve the ease of doing business in India. This by itself is a worthy objective, as anyone familiar with the working of the regulatory apparatus in India would agree.
As private capital formation last peaked in 2011–12, its decline is something that the present government inherited. However, it has had no success in turning it around.
Though it has not allowed public investment to slip, that has not been enough under the circumstances. Either ideological predilection regarding the size of the government or the straitjacket imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act have held back the government from expanding it.
We can see with hindsight that the government misread the situation prevailing when it came to power, and thus failed to recognise its own role at that moment.
The fate of chips will determine the fate of nations (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
A human hair is 50-180 microns whereas the novel coronavirus is 0.1-0.5 microns. In comparison, today’s most advanced chips are about half the size of the novel coronavirus in diameter and are shrinking rapidly.
The fate of nations depends on this infinitesimally small piece of silicon, which can devastate and shape our lives in myriad ways.
Let us consider three different scenarios. First, Apple’s new A16 chip has over 16 billion transistors in it. And Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s leading manufacturer of chips, placed over one quintillion (that’s 1 followed by 18 zeros) transistors on just the iPhone chip. Every message we send, every picture we take, every call we make depends on one chip or the other.
Apple buys its chips from Cirrus Logic, Kioxia, Skywords and TSMC. It designs these in-house, and the super complex processes that run the iPhone operating system makes Apple a force of nature.
But even a trillion-dollar company like Apple is not able to manufacture its own chips. A16 is made by a single company, in a single building called Building 18 in Taipei. TSMC’s fab is perhaps the world’s most expensive and valuable factory.
Chips today are manufactured in just a handful of nations: Taiwan, South Korea, the U.S., Japan, the Netherlands, and China.
Second, Russia appears to be unable to dominate Ukraine in the war, one of the reasons being that it is using more brawn than brain. Ukraine is using precision-guided missiles to fight Russia, which it recently procured from its Western allies.
These missiles are powered by chips. While Russia has some precision-guided missiles, it is unable to manufacture these at the scale required because of Western trade sanctions.
Whatever Russia has is a combination of some chips stolen, some made indigenously and some imported in the past, claim Ukraine and U.S. officials.
The U.S. government’s famous Entity List ensures that this technology does not reach China and Russia and they cannot get ahead in the chips race.
Third, earlier this year, Toyota temporarily shut down production at assembly lines at five domestic group plants in Japan due to the shortage of chips. If you want to buy a new car in the U.S., the waiting time is really long.
Opinion
The coalition of the world (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
The League of Nations, set up in 1920, was the first intergovernmental organisation with the aim to promote international cooperation and outlived its utility with World War II.
The United Nations claims to be the one place where all the world’s nations can discuss common problems and find shared solutions that benefit all of humanity. Now, 75 years later, rising conflict situations suggest it is time to go back to first principles of the Charter.
The United Nations Secretary General (UNSG), AntónioGuterres, made a candid assessment of global governance. He addressed the United Nations General Assembly and said the “world is in big trouble”, “gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction”, even the “G20 is in the trap of geopolitical divides”.
“In a splintering world, we need to create mechanisms of dialogue to heal divides” and “only by acting as one, we can nurture fragile shoots of hope” for a “coalition of the world”. This is a call for fresh thinking.
India’s Presidency of the Group of 20, UN Security Council (UNSC) in 2022, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in 2023 when major powers are not even talking to each other and India alone, now the fifth largest economy, is interacting with each of them, presents a historic opportunity.
The gridlock does not flow from bilateral relations but from the way international cooperation is being re-defined.
First, multilateralism is under challenge even by its proponent, with the United States opting for partnerships, with the most important areas being the worst affected.
The G7 Summit, held in June, endorsed the goals of a cooperative international Climate Club to accelerate climate action outside the UN.
The dispute settlement mechanism of the WTO without the quorum of its members has rendered the institution dysfunctional.
Despite the G7 having accepted the need for transfer of funds at Rio in 1992, because of their role in creating the climate crisis, the promise made in 2009 to provide at least $100 billion per year in climate finance remains unfulfilled.
Second, China has opted for rival set of multilateral institutions. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) seeks to achieve policy, infrastructure, trade, financial, and people-to-people connectivity by building a new platform for international cooperation to create “new drivers of shared development”, and covers half the world population with one-third the GDP and investment of $930 billion.
China’s Global Development Initiative, 2021, and linked Global Security Initiative, 2022, is developing a conceptual frame responding to an urbanising world, i.e. digital governance and non-traditional security, which the international system has not covered.
Explainer
The action plan against Delhi’s air pollution (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The story so far: A revised action plan to fight the serious challenge of airpollution in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR) has come into force after a sudden dip in air quality in the capital and its neighbouring areas.
On October 6, the first stage of the revised Graded Response Action Plan, or GRAP, was implemented, with the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) asking the authorities in Delhi-NCR to enforce strict measures, including a ban on all construction and demolition activities in plots of sizes equal to or more than 500 square metres that aren’t registered on government-mandated web portals.
To deal with the multi-faceted risks linked to air pollution, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) submitted a list of measures to address different levels of air pollution to the Supreme Court in January 2016.
These measures coalesced into a Graded Response Action Plan — a set of anti-air pollution measures followed in Delhi and its vicinity according to the severity of the situation.
The GRAP was approved by the SC after modifications and notified by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change on January 12, 2017, for the “prevention, control and abatement” of air pollution in Delhi-NCR.
The Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA) was the designated agency to implement the plan.
With multiple State and central bodies working on the problem, a need was felt to consolidate resources to efficiently tackle the problem of toxic air.
In 2020 and 2021, ordinances were promulgated for the constitution of a commission for “better coordination, research, identification, and resolution of problems related to air quality” in the NCR and adjoining areas in Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
On August 12, the Commission for Air Quality Management in NCR and Adjoining Areas Act, 2021 received the President’s assent. The Centre dissolved EPCA and set up the Commission for Air Quality Management in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas.
The powerful body, which coordinates with other States to plan and execute strategies to prevent and control air pollution in the NCR, has been enforcing the GRAP since 2021.
On August 5, the Commission for Air Quality Management issued statutory directions for the implementation of the revised schedule of the GRAP.
Under the revised action plan, restrictions on polluting activities will be dependent on Air Quality Index (AQI) rather than PM2.5 and PM10 concentration. Measures can be taken up to three days in advance based on forecasts, the revised plan states.
The programming languages running the crypto- economy (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The crypto ecosystem sits on top of distributed ledgers, which are broadly calledblockchains. Apart from recording and verifying transactions, some crypto blockchains like Ethereum let users launch agreements or special actions that execute on their own. These are known as smart contracts and to create them effectively, programming languages are a must.
Crypto exchanges, decentralised apps (dApps), the automated buying or selling of orders, and even NFT-based games often rely on smart contracts to run smoothly.
A smart contract failure can cause platform outages, and exploitation of the codes could devalue the entire ecosystem. Programming languages thus, help crypto platforms and protocols run effectively.
C++ is a programming language commonly associated with Bitcoin. While the Bitcoin whitepaper explaining the peer-to-peer electronic cash system is written largely in English, the Bitcoin Core software, which makes transactions possible, uses C++.
It is maintained by a community anyone can join by running Bitcoin Core full nodes. It is hailed for being an accessible programming language that users of Java, C, and C# can easily learn due to existing similarities.
It is also one of the most used programming languages, playing a role in the development of operating systems like MacOS and Windows, gaming devices, search engines, and even machine learning. C++ is a major influence for many other programming languages in use today.
However, some see C++ as an outdated programme. Mark Russinovich, Microsoft Azure’s CTO, recently asked developers to stop using C and C++.
Solidity is the programming language mainly used on the blockchain platform Ethereum. Some of its developers are Ethereum co-founders.
The language is influenced by C++, Python, and JavaScript. It is also known as a ‘curly bracket language’ as it uses the flower bracket special character.
In recent times, with the Ethereum transition to a proof-of-stake model, programming skill in Solidity is expected to be in high demand. Parts of the Ethereum ecosystem also support several other programming languages such as Python, Ruby, Rust, Java, and more.
News
Indian Navy to join Malabar exercise and International Fleet Review in Japan in Nov (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
Japan will host the 2022 edition of the Malabar naval exercise consisting of India, Australia, Japan and the U.S. in the second week of November, according to official sources.
Indian Navy will also participate in the International Fleet Review (IFR) being hosted in the first week of November to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force (JMSDF), an official source said.
This is the latest in a series of bilateral and multilateral exercises in which the Indian armed forces have taken part recently.
End of October, the India-U.S. bilateral Army exercise ‘YudhAbhyas’ is scheduled to take place in the high altitude areas of Uttarakhand, around 100 km (aerial distance) from the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
“The initial and final planning conferences for Malabar have been completed. The exercise is scheduled to be held from November 8 to 18,” a second official source said.
While the Navy has not yet given details of its participation, two frontline warships and a P-8I Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA) are likely to be deployed, it has been learnt.
Australia is keen to host the exercise but that has not yet been accepted by the partner countries, two official sources stated. Australia was included as a regular member in Ex Malabar in 2020.
The IFR to be held in the first week of November is being conducted during the 18th Western Pacific Naval Symposium (WPNS) ‘strategic discussion’ and ‘plenary session’ being hosted by Japan from November 5 to 10, according to a statement by the Royal Brunei Navy.
However, it is not yet clear if India would be taking part in the WPNS. A decision from the Defence Ministry is awaited, said a defence source in the middle of last week.
A WPNS workshop 2022 was hosted by Japan in June and it saw the participation of the 20 WPNS member nations, which includes Australia, Japan and U.S., and six observer nations: Bangladesh, Colombia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and U.K., according to the Royal Brunei Navy.
While the engagement with the Quad countries and the Indo-Pacific countries continues, India had sent an Army contingent for the multilateral strategic and command Exercise Vostok – 2022 in the Eastern Military district in Russia in early September, which also saw the participation of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
India is currently hosting the multilateral anti-terror exercise ‘Manesar Anti-terror 2022’ under the ambit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure scheduled from October 8 to 13.