Measures taken by the Government for gender equality/socio-economic development/empowerment of women

Measures taken by the Government for gender equality/socio-economic development/empowerment of women

According to the National Sample Survey Report (2011-12), the workforce participation rates of male is 54.4% and female is 21.9%. As per the India Country Report, 2015 by Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation on the Millennium Development Goals, the percentage share of females in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector during 2011-12 increased to 19.3% which is higher than 18.6% reported during 2009-10 by National Sample Survey Organisation.

Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner and Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation are involved in collection and dissemination of data covering wide range of issues that affect women’s empowerment. The report titled “Women and Men in India – 2015” by Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation, Government of India highlights the status of women covering health, education, work and decision making along with social obstacles in women’s empowerment.

The Ministry of Women and Child Development is administering following schemes for gender equality/socio-economic development/empowerment of women:

i. Swadhar and Short Stay Homes to provide relief and rehabilitation to destitute women and women in distress.

ii. Working Women Hostels for ensuring safe accommodation for working women away from their place of residence.

iii. Support to Training and Employment Program for Women (STEP) to ensure sustainable employment and income generation for marginalised and asset-less rural and urban poor women across the country.

iv. Rashtriya Mahila Kosh (RMK) to provide micro-finance services to bring about the socio-economic upliftment of poor women.

v. National Mission for Empowerment of Women (NMEW) to strengthen the overall processes that promote all-round Development of Women

vi. Rajiv Gandhi National Creche Scheme for Children of Working Mothers (including single mother) to provide day care facilities for running a crèche of 25 children in the age group 0-6 years from families having monthly income of less than Rs 12,000.

vii. One Stop Centre to provide integrated support and assistance to women affected by violence.

viii. Scheme for Universalisation of Women Helpline intended to provide 24 hours immediate and emergency response to women affected by violence.

ix. Sabla Scheme for holistic development of adolescent girls in the age group of 11-18 years.

x. In order to strengthen the process of gender budgeting the Ministry of Women and Child Development has been undertaking various capacity building measures for the officials of the State Governments by organising training programs/workshops regularly.

In order to improve employability a separate Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship has been created.

Equal Remuneration Act, 1973 provides for payment of equal remuneration to men and women workers for the same work of similar nature without any discrimination. In order to ensure social security to the workers including women in the unorganised sector, the Government has enacted the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act 2008.

The Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 regulates employment of women in certain establishments for a certain period (12 weeks) before and after childbirth and provides for maternity and other benefits.

Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana (IGMSY) Scheme is being implemented as Conditional Maternity Benefit for pregnant and lactating women to improve health and nutrition status to better enabling environment by providing cash incentives to pregnant and nursing mothers to partly compensate wage loss both prior to and after delivery.

The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 has been enacted, which covers all women, irrespective of their age or employment status and protect them against sexual harassment at all workplaces both in public and private sector, whether organised or unorganised.

- See more at: http://samvegias.com/measures-taken-government-gender-equalitysocio-economic-developmentempowerment-women/#sthash.9di6a7f5.dpuf

The same old script of India-Pakistan ties

Even if the ties seem to be on an upswing, the process can derail anytime

As a young British diplomat, Sir Harold George Nicolson participated in the Paris Peace Conference (1919) held in the aftermath of the World War I. Giving an account of the conference in his book Peacemaking 1919, Nicolson writes: “I learnt from this erratic but brilliant statesman [David Lloyd George] that apparent opportunism is not always irreconcilable with vision… that volatility of method is not always indicative of volatility of intentions.” Lloyd George served as the prime minister of the UK between 1916 and 1922. The current National Democratic Alliance government would require a diplomat-wordsmith like Nicolson to justify the spate of flip-flops on Pakistan.

To be fair, confusion over the Pakistan policy has not been a monopoly of the current government. All the previous governments in recent memory have been equally, if not more, clueless in dealing with India’s most difficult neighbour. The dialogue held between Ajit Doval and Lt General (retd) Naseer Janjua—the national security advisers (NSA) of India and Pakistan respectively—accompanied by the foreign secretaries on 6 December in Bangkok has capped the latest round of the same old game involving recurrent phases of engagement and disengagement.

The NSA-level dialogue was preceded by a “pull aside” meeting between prime ministers Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of the Paris climate change summit. Sushma Swaraj, the minister of external affairs, is on a trip to Islamabad to attend the Heart of Asia conference, which focuses on regional cooperation with a strong emphasis on stability in Afghanistan. The Bangkok talks were intended to resume the bilateral engagement in order to pave the way for Modi’s participation in the 19th Saarc (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) summit scheduled to be held in Islamabad in 2016.

The constraints that led to the cancellation of NSA-level dialogue in August were overcome by a mix of improvisations and compromises. The August dialogue was called off because Pakistan was not ready to honour India’s twin conditions of a) no meddling by the Hurriyat, a Kashmir-based organization with a separatist agenda, and b) restriction of the NSA-level talks to terrorism alone (leaving out Kashmir). The former was made clear to Pakistan through the cancellation of foreign secretary talks in August 2014 following the meeting between Hurriyat leaders and Abdul Basit, Pakistan’s high commissioner to India. The latter was enshrined in the joint statement released after the two prime ministers met in Ufa, Russia, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit held in July this year. There was also a third issue. The Pakistan Army was not confident about pitting Sartaj Aziz, the former NSA of Pakistan who is an economist by training, to face Doval, a career intelligence officer with a sterling reputation.

The venue of Bangkok helped Pakistan avoid the political compulsions of meeting the Hurriyat leaders. India yielded—and this simply cannot be stated differently—on Kashmir. New Delhi realized—after the experience of Ufa—that avoiding Kashmir in any joint statement is politically untenable for the Pakistani establishment. The third issue was resolved by replacing Aziz with Janjua as the NSA.

It is being claimed by many that the ‘Bangkok process’ was decided in the brief meeting held between Modi and Sharif in Paris. This is highly unlikely because the only Sharif who takes these decisions in Pakistan is Raheel Sharif, the Chief of Army Staff. Moreover, the resumption of NSA-level dialogue had been on the cards since the appointment of Janjua—believed to be close to Raheel Sharif.

With the initial hurdles now overcome, it will not be surprising to see the resumption of the composite dialogue process—the template for full-fledged bilateral talks—in due course of time. Aziz, who retains his role as foreign affairs adviser to prime minister Sharif, has said that he will explore such possibilities in his meeting with Swaraj on her Islamabad trip.

Even though things may seem to be on an upswing, the process can derail anytime. It is unrealistic to expect Pakistan to withdraw support to anti-India terrorists in the near future or to expedite the 26/11 trials. The lack of clarity over the objectives on the Indian side does not help either. The government should achieve some results quickly or else hire a Nicolson to offer better explanations than the verbal jugglery on display by the current lot of spokespersons.

Will the resumption of dialogue with Pakistan help address issues of terrorism?

- See more at: http://samvegias.com/2230-2/#sthash.nQzN0ryG.dpuf

The economics of demographic shifts

Ageing strikes at the very roots of the welfare state and the social contracts on which democracy rests

There is a growing sense, in the wake of the recent global financial crisis, that mainstream macroeconomic frameworks are inadequate in explaining the real world. Arguably, the forces of globalization, the neglect of financial markets and demographic change have undermined these frameworks.

Of these, demographic transition is perhaps the most profoundly underestimated force. Ageing strikes at the very roots of the welfare state and the social contracts on which social democracy rests. This has recently begun in advanced economies. It is just a matter of a few decades before its impact is felt across the globe.

Human history can be broadly divided into five demographic stages. In the beginning, human populations were sparsely distributed during the hunting and gathering phase that lasted right up to the end of the last ice age around 10,000 BC. Population densities never exceeded 1-2 persons per square mile. Survival was a full-time profession for everybody. There was no such thing as division of labour or economic growth. This began during the second stage with the Neolithic Revolution and the discovery of agriculture that facilitated the generation of a ‘surplus’ over and above what was required for daily survival.

The origins of social stratification, urbanization, civilization, the State and empires can all be traced to the Neolithic Revolution. Technological change, its dissemination, and consequently productivity shifts, were however slow where progress was measured in centuries.

Aggregate gross domestic product (GDP) therefore grew at very low rates over an extended period, with the standard of living improving very slowly over time. Economic growth was more a function of population increase than productivity growth. Birth rates were high, as were death rates. This resulted in a large, young, dependent population that consumed but did not contribute to economic activity. The constraints on economic growth were therefore on the supply rather than demand side. War, famine and pestilence led to periodic sharp declines in both population and output, followed by long periods of slow recovery. This pattern persisted right up to the 17th century.

The third stage began in the 18th century with the Industrial Revolution. A continuing technological revolution facilitated rapid population growth through rapid upward shifts in human productivity. This was made possible by a sharp fall in death rates on account of improvements in public health, with the birth rate adjusting only slowly. A virtuous cycle of rapid supply and demand growth ensured that both aggregate and per capita GDP, and with it standards of living, grew at unprecedented rates.

Extant macroeconomic theories are the product of this third stage. They now need to adjust to the next two stages where birth rates first approach replacement rate, leading to a levelling off of population growth, and then fall below the replacement rate.

Humans are the only species where prosperity beyond a certain point leads to demographic decline rather than to rapid, unsustainable expansion of the species. Several European countries and Japan have entered the fourth stage, characterized by declines in aggregate GDP growth. The slow recovery from the global financial crisis must be seen not simply as a balance-sheet recession, but also through the prism of ageing.

Beyond the fourth stage lies a possible fifth stage, where productivity growth may be inadequate to prevent negative aggregate GDP growth, although per capita GDP may well continue to grow at robust rates. A shrinking working population leads to a large dependent population, this time aged instead of young, that consumes but has traditionally contributed little to economic activity. In a closed economy, this would lead to lower growth because of problems on both the supply and demand sides. While these constraints can be substantially mitigated in an open, globalized economy, attempts to overcome demand constraints through leveraged consumption are not sustainable in the long run. Indeed, this was one of the underlying causes of the recent global financial crisis.

The peculiarity of the fourth and fifth stages is that hourly productivity per worker does not decline because of the continuing technological revolution. However aggregate production, the production possibility frontier, may decline.

The ageing process works itself through the economic system in surprising ways. The likely impact on fiscal policy is widely acknowledged. Social contracts underlying the welfare state may need to change, retirement ages pushed back, and the healthcare system shift from curative to preventive with greater onus placed on individuals for their own health outcomes.

The impact on financial markets, monetary policy and on inequality however needs fuller consideration going forward.

It is possible that we have only seen the tip of the iceberg called ‘savings glut’ that tends to keep the cost of capital and interest rates low. Workers need to save more and more for retirement, as a shrinking tax base weakens the State’s fiscal capacity. With trend growth declining, and savings rising, central banks may be constrained to keep interest rates low.

There has been much talk about rising inequality, such as that centred around the influential work of Thomas Piketty, on account of the increasing returns to capital relative to labour in a globalizing world. But as the world ages, and the number of workers falls, the returns to labour would rise as the proportion of those buying assets (workers) shrinks and that of sellers (retirees) increase. Would this then reverse the current trend of relative returns to capital and labour? What would this imply for income inequality and tax policies going forward?

- See more at: http://samvegias.com/economics-demographic-shifts/#sthash.nCHVWws8.dpuf

The unsustainable growth

Development happens when society successfully organizes resources to achieve the common good in a sustainable manner

Many years ago, work had to be stopped one afternoon, at one of the spanking new facilities of the IT (information technology) firm that I was associated with. There was no water in the campus, and 3,000 people certainly could not work without water. There was no civil water supply to that area, so the water was sourced from the campus borewells and by buying from water suppliers. During summer, borewells would run dry, so most of the water was bought. The vendors had stopped supplying water since that morning.

Our desperate investigation revealed that there was blockade by the local community near the sources of water. The conflict was on the most fundamental of issues—the water suppliers were sucking the sources dry and everything was at stake for the community. While they did reach a commercial settlement, it was fragile, given that those water sources were absolutely integral to the life and livelihood of that community.

Arising from a deep commitment to environmental sustainability, we were using water responsibly. For example, we reused a lot of our water discharge, were doing maximal rainwater harvesting, our per capita water consumption was reducing every year. But that incident told us how inadequate our perspective was. It triggered our efforts to trace all the water that we used right to its source, and to try and understand the issues along the entire source-to-use path. What we discovered left us much better informed and therefore much better prepared to make sure that there is no disruption of operations because of water. At the same time, it has left us feeling quite helpless. This is a multi-billion dollar, globally successful corporation, which felt quite helpless. Let me narrate a specific case to explain this.

A source-to-use mapping of water for the facility on Sarjapur Road in Bengaluru brought the following things to light. Seventy percent was sourced from suppliers who purchased the water mostly from farmers in about a 30-km radius. The borewells in their farms had turned into an additional source of income. Not just us, but most of this part of the city was buying water from those sources. No surprise that the water table in those areas was dropping rapidly, reducing the water availability for the local community. This led to tensions within the community, which continues unabated even today.

It was clear that we were entangled in a web of problems of water, like everyone else near and in the city. Gradually, a community group of business organizations, residents associations, non-government organizations and academic institutions was formed, to attempt to deal with the complex set of issues involved. One of the first attempts was to map and monitor the aquifers of Bengaluru. This was upon learning that while the city was 60% dependent on ground water drawn from the aquifers, no one had a clue about what these underground reservoirs of water were like, i.e. location, amount of water, rate of depletion and recharge.

This project will take years to complete. In the meanwhile, the exploding metropolis continues to suck away at its ground water, completely dependent on it, and yet without the foggiest notion of how long it can last. This is worse than wanton mismanagement of the cities’ most important common property resource. The helplessness that I talked about arises from the collective inability of the interested group to change anything at the fundamentals of these issues. And there are other burning issues on water, such as vanishing lakes and the inequity in access to water.

The tragic flooding in Chennai last week reminded me of this whole experience of ours. If you look at the satellite pictures of Chennai from the late 1990s to today, you can see the reason for the floods. The earlier pictures will show a continuous arc of ponds, lakes and wetlands, across Chennai. These have completely vanished by now, vanquished by construction. The water from the heavy rain has merely found its natural place, which we are calling flooding. The Chennai floods and the experience that I have narrated merely emphasize the fundamental importance of common property resources and public goods. As does the air quality issue in Delhi.

These crises in Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru and other cities are not due to “too much development”, but just the opposite. Development happens only when a society successfully organizes people and resources to achieve the common good in a sustainable manner. The failure to protect our land, water, forests, air and public spaces from overuse and destruction is a brewing crisis that is likely to result in even greater calamities in the future. A key part of the problem is our inability as a society to act sensibly and collectively. This failure infects our attempts at educating our children, providing healthcare to the needy and protecting the environment.

In the rush to get rich quick at any cost, we jeopardize ourselves and future generations. The independence movement was marked by great sacrifice and the ability to act collectively towards a common purpose. We need something similar all over again.

- See more at: http://samvegias.com/the-unsustainable-growth/#sthash.Cz6xnaLv.dpuf

Himalayan Tsunami in Uttarakhand, Dopper Weather Radar

What is cloudburst?

• Extreme amount of precipitation
• in a short span of time.
• creates flash-flood conditions.
• Often accompanied by thunder and lightning.

Why cloudburst?

• A cloudburst can occur anytime and at any place which is affected by convective weather systems.
• India surrounded by oceans from three sides. Hence favorable location for convective weather systems.

Convective weather system in:	result
Bay of Bengal	rainfall over the Indian subcontinent
Western Pacific Ocean	Diverts rain-bearing winds away from the Indian subcontinent.

• During Cloudburst, massive coagulated clouds with heavy water content hover, over a very small location.
• The dead weight of the cloud is so massive and unbearable that it simply collapses under its own weight=>extreme precipitation within a short span of time=>flash flood.

Additional factors

MONTH	WHAT HAPPENED?
March April May 2013	heavy snow in Himalayas
14-16 June 2013	Non-stop Intense rainfall. It helped the snow to melt fast from Chorabari Glarier. but How can water help ice melt? Water has a higher heat capacity than air. The molecules in liquid water are more tightly packed than the molecules in air Therefore, when water molecules touch snow=> greater rate of heat transfer. (Compared to when air touches the snow) This accelerates the process of snow melting. e.g heavy snow melting from Chorabari glacier=> water level increased in the river Mandakini and Chorabari Lake.
16 June 2013	Cloudburst over Chorabari Lake. Lake exploded from water. => flash floods.

• These flash floods washed the mud, stones and slush (Partially melted snow) from mountains into rivers.
• Bhagirathi, Alaknanda and Mandakini rivers were already flowing with lot of water (due to snow-melting).

Now imagine two situations:

1. Police uses water cannon on the mob.
2. Police mixes stones, ball bearings and ice cubes into their water tank and then uses water cannon on the mob. This time, you know the water will hurt a lot more.

Same way, the rivers filled with mud, snow, ice- rushes through the hills and cliffs- they will cause more erosion, sweep away whatever comes in their way. Thus, all those shops, hotels, apartments were constructed very close to the river banks got washed away.
Additionally landslides destroyed the road network in the mountains hence relief couldnot reach on time.

Why Himalayan Tsunami is a man-made disaster?

Cloudbursts have happened in past also, but the amount of death and damage in Uttarakhand is unprecedented. Why?
#1: Roads causing landslides
Himalayan Mountains will remain steady if not tampered with much. But

1. the huge expansion of roads and transport.
2. heavy machines plying the earth everyday.
3. Even dynamites are used to cut the mountains and make roads.

^All these activities had already rendered the mountains unstable. Then rainfall=>landslides. roads blocked=rescue force can’t go in, victims can’t go out.
#2: Too much construction

1. In 2012, Ministry of Environment and Forests gives a notification under Environment Protection Act. This notification declares the region Gaumukh and Uttarakashi, along the Bhagirathi river, as an eco-sensitive zone. Meaning following activities had to be banned:
   1. Hydro project in Bhagirathi = too many hydropower projects, changing river courses, poor structural safety
   2. Mining= use of dynamites, weakened the mountains
   3. Construction activities, especially hotels and resorts, guest houses and travel lodges on the river bed.  Everyone trying to make mint money from pilgrims/tourists yet none of them were build with sound engineering or structural safety.

#3: Fragile Polity of the State

• Uttarakhand has seen 6 different Chief Ministers within last 13 years. Meaning average tenure of a CM is ~2 years.
• This has resulted in lack of continuity and failure in getting a firm grip on the issues plaguing the state- including disaster management.
• Successive CAG reports have made scathing remarks on the lack of disaster management preparations in the Uttarakhand state. Yet no action was taken.
• political fragility has resulted in ad-hoc and unplanned development.
• Successive governments have failed in creating any sort of medium term or long-term plan or vision for the state.
• To put this in other words, when governments change too quick- the main goal of MLAs and Ministers is how to extract maximum cash from builders, mining mafias and corrupt bureaucrats who want transfer-posting in plump position. Hence, Disaster management doesn’t even come in their top-100 priority list of such politicians.

#4: Careless organizations

IMD	IMD was unable to alert State-authorities in time. It didn’t have Doppler radars in the Himalayan region to predict onset of cloudbursts. Only after this disaster happened, Dept. of sci.tech now talks about setting up Doppler radars in the region.
NDRF	National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) was formed after Tsunami in 2003. but has grossly failed both in planning and implementation. It didn’t even have sufficient life-jackets in Rudraprayag.

Overall, there was no accountability and no coordination.

Can we Predict Cloudbursts?

• Nephology=study of clouds
• But unlike cyclones, forecasting a cloudburst= mission almost impossible.
• Cloudburst can occur even outside the monsoon seasons (e.g. March to May, if the weather conditions are right).
• A cloudburst can occur @anytime @anyplace in a short span of time. (but it usually favors mountainous regions)
• The specific location and time of cloud burst can be predicted in NOWCAST mode only, i.e. a few hours in advance.
• To detect these sudden developments, you need a Doppler Weather Radar (DWR).

Doppler Weather Radar (DWR)

By and large, Meteorologists use there are three different types of weather radars:

RADAR	UTILITY
conventional	gives information only about the rainfall estimation
Doppler	Measuring rainfall, winds and clouds.
polarisation radar (or multi-parameter radar)	measure , winds, rainfall (including shape and number of raindrops)

• One Doppler Weather Radar costs ~10 crore, can cover an area ~400 km.
• IMD wants to modernize its Radar system. BHEL is manufacturing S-Band Doppler Radars for IMD. They’ll be setup a 12 locations across India, including Mumbai.
• And since the Uttarakhand Tragedy, now Department of Sci-Tech is setting up Doppler Weather radars in Himalayas

Benefits of Doppler Weather Radar?

1. Radar uses the Doppler Effect in microwaves. When Microwaves are reflected from objects at different times, this Radar detects their relative position. Thus Doppler Radar can detect even tiny water particles in clouds and in which direction they’re moving.
2. Doppler radar has a detection range of ~400 kms. It can transmit information about a cloud, its distance from land, its composition, which direction it is moving and even minute details like the number and size of water droplets found in a cloud.
3. We can predict the amount of rainfall to an area, 2-3 hours in advance. Thus, if a flood-like situation is likely to happen in Mumbai, BMC could be alerted to avert a 2005-like disaster.
4. can predict thunderstorms as well.

Crisis Mapping

• Crisis mapping is the real-time data gathering and analysis during natural disaster or riots, elections etc.
• During Uttarakhand tragedy, International Network of Crisis Mappers came to help.
• These crisis mappers monitor different channels of information on Uttarakhand. Example

• official sources,
• blogs, social media, facebook twitter
• NGOs
• news media

Using such data, the Crisis Mappers generate ‘situation reports’
They also update with vital information an online crisis map set up by the Google: (http://google.org/crisismap/2013-uttrakhand-floods? gl=in)

• ^That google crisis map has information on rescued people, cleared areas, people stranded, relief camps, medical centres, road networks and so on.
• Thus, crisis mapping helps bridge the gap between

1. information-seekers vs providers
2. government vs public
3. situation on the ground vs action that needs to be taken

• Ushahidi = open-source platform for crisis mapping during 2010 Haiti Earthquake. They even had an international SMS number was created for people to input information relating to the quake.

- See more at: http://samvegias.com/himalayan-tsunami-in-uttarakhand-dopper-weather-radar/#sthash.We6KGXso.dpuf

The economics of GST, hostage to politics

GST will make it possible to integrate India into a common market

The complicated political bargaining that has held up the introduction of the goods and services tax (GST) as well as the arcane discussions about its revenue-neutral rate sometimes draws attention away from the big picture argument about why the Indian indirect tax system needs to be overhauled.

A new paper released this week by the finance ministry on the GST structure does a very good job of explaining the current view on some of the more technical parts of the debate. But it also shows how several years of political bargaining has diluted the original design of what a 2009 report by the task force headed by Arbind Modi repeatedly referred to as a flawless GST.

One result is that the revenue-neutral GST rate, or the rate that will leave the government with the current level of tax collections even after moving to the new tax, has gone up by some 3.5 percentage points compared to the 12% originally suggested in 2009, with 2% of it meant for the third tier of government.

The analytical arguments for the GST are powerful. It will generate efficiencies by, in effect, taxing only final consumption while eliminating all taxes on production and distribution. The abolition of taxes on the movement of goods between states will end the unnecessary fragmentation of Indian production. The efficiency of the tax system would be optimized. Many of these points have been drilled into the national debate by economists.

The way the finance ministry has framed the issue in its new paper is definitely interesting. Two big political points have been made. First, a GST will improve governance by creating incentives for the reduction in corruption.

For example, a company will need documentation from a supplier if it is to claim tax credit, and in general, the new tax will create a proper paper trail of transactions across value chains, reducing the black economy. It thus stands to reason that real estate, a fount of corruption, must be brought under GST.

Second, and this is something that GST supporters have argued all along, a tax with a single rate and imposed on a common base will in effect integrate India into a common market, more than six decades after political unification into a republic. The advantages of a single market are thus not only economic but also political, while the dual structure of the Indian GST will ensure that the states maintain their fiscal independence (though this newspaper would also like the initial idea of a share of GST revenue going directly to cities and villages to be pursued more energetically).

There are still two tricky issues. The 2009 report by the Modi committee had quite explicitly argued that the switch to a flawless GST would benefit the poor and not be regressive. Arvind Subramanian and his colleagues at the finance ministry, on page 28 of their new report, seem to be explicitly making the opposite point. “It is worth emphasizing that the GST is intrinsically a regressive tax and the higher the rate, the greater the regressivity.” This is a tactical argument for keeping the GST rate close to international levels, but also means that India needs to increase its direct tax collections to ensure that there are no perverse distributional effects in its overall tax system.

It is now more than a decade since a national value-added tax was first proposed in 2004 by a task force appointed to examine the implementation of the landmark Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act of 2003. It is fair to say that India will not end up with a flawless GST, but at least silly ideas like the 1% tax on inter-state transactions should be buried.

The GST bill is once again being held hostage in parliament, despite there being broad bipartisan agreement about its necessity, this time by an independent court decision in the National Herald case. National interest is once again hostage to the politics of the day.

Should the opposition parties cooperate with the government in passing the GST bill during
this winter session?

- See more at: http://samvegias.com/the-economics-of-gst-hostage-to-politics/#sthash.6P6gkPmc.dpuf

National Mission for Electric Mobility

National Mission for Electric Mobility

Government of India approved the National Mission on Electric Mobility in 2011 and subsequently National Electric Mobility Mission Plan 2020 was unveiled in 2013. As part of the mission, Department of Heavy Industries has formulated a scheme namely FAME – India (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles in India). The Phase-1 of the scheme shall be implemented over a 2 year period i.e. FY 2015-16 and FY 2016-17 commencing from 1st April 2015 with an approved outlay of Rs. 795 Crore. Initial seed money of Rs. 75 Crore has been allotted in the Current Financial Year (2015-16). The scheme shall have 4 focus areas i.e. Technology Development, Demand Creation, Pilot Projects and Charging Infrastructure. The thrust for the Govt. through this scheme will be to allow hybrid and electric vehicles to become the first choice for the purchasers so that these vehicles can replace the conventional vehicles and thus reduce liquid fuel consumption in the country.

The scheme will provide a major push for creation of a viable ecosystem of both hybrid and electric technologies vehicles in the country. Government is in the process of setting up public charging stations in various cities where the population of electric vehicles is growing. Government is coordinating with various enabling agencies such Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), Oil and Marketing Companies (such as Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum) to support installation of such charging stations at their facilities (Metro Stations and Petrol Filling Stations). Further, Government has started pilot projects on renewable energy based fast charging stations. Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) and Rajasthan Electronics and Instrumentation Limited (REIL) have been entrusted to develop prototypes of such stations which could be deployed in future.

Pure electric vehicle produces around 35%~45% lower CO2 as compared to equivalent gasoline vehicle in India based on the fact that most of electricity produced is obtained predominantly from coal, natural gas and oil (75%~85%). In future in view of more and more renewable energy based electricity production in the country, electric vehicles are going to emit lesser CO2 on a Well-to-Wheel basis.