The richest 1% of Indians now own 58.4% of wealth

The richest 1% of Indians now own 58.4% of wealth
The share of the top 1% is up from 53% last year, shows a Credit Suisse report
The richest 1% of Indians now own 58.4% of the country’s wealth, according to the latest data on global wealth from Credit Suisse Group AG, the financial services company based in Zurich. Credit Suisse has published the report every year since 2010.

The share of the top 1% is up from 53% last year. In the last two years, the share of the top 1% has increased at a cracking pace, from 49% in 2014 to 58.4% in 2016. The accompanying Chart 1 has the details.

Does that mean the trend of the very rich getting richer is because of the Modi government? Not really—as the chart shows, the share of the top 1% in the country’s total wealth improved from 40.3% in 2010 to 49% in 2014. But the numbers do suggest that the very rich are expanding their share at a faster clip now. The richest 10% of Indians haven’t done too shabbily either, increasing their share of the pie from 68.8% in 2010 to 80.7% by 2016. In sharp contrast, the bottom half of the Indian people own a mere 2.1% of the country’s wealth.

Data from Credit Suisse shows that India’s richest do well for themselves whichever government is in power. In 2000, for instance, the share of the richest 1% was a comparatively low 36.8% of the country’s wealth. In the last 16 years, they have increased their share from a bit more than a third to almost three-fifths of total wealth.

Very clearly, most of the gains from the country’s high rate of economic growth have gone to them.

How does India compare with other countries? Well, the Credit Suisse numbers confirm what we see on a daily basis—that India is one of the most unequal societies. Consider this: while the top 1% in India own 58.4% of the country’s wealth, the top 1% in China own 43.8%, in Indonesia they own 49.3%, in Brazil 47.9%, in South Africa 41.9%. Chart 2 has the details. But perhaps our richest need to try harder—the top 1% in kleptocratic Russia own 74.5% of the nation’s wealth.

For Modi’s smart-city vision to become a reality, India needs smart villages first

Increasing rural-urban divergence in fertility due to poor education levels and low incomes in villages is slowing India’s urbanization, says a research paper

Among the cities selected for Modi government’s smart cities project, Uttar Pradesh accounts for the most. The move seems justified, given the fact that it is India’s most populous state. However, if urbanization performance were to be a benchmark, there is reason to be sceptical about the prospects of these smart cities.

Between the 2001 and 2011 census, share of population living in urban areas in Uttar Pradesh increased from 20.7% to 22.3%, a rise of merely 1.5 percentage points. Kerala, which was the best performer, increased its share from 25.9% to 47.6% during this period. Other states with commendable track records were Goa, Nagaland, Tripura and Andhra Pradesh, whereas Bihar, Meghalaya and Himachal Pradesh showed the least growth in their urban population share.

What explains such divergence in urbanization performance of states across India?

The intuitive explanation of weight of non-farm economy in a state’s GSDP does not seem to answer all questions. While some of the better performing states such as Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala have a higher weight on non-farm sector in their GSDP, there does not seem to be a one-to-one relation between the two variables. For example, Odisha has a higher share of non-farm economy, but it fares poorly in terms of urbanization. For Andhra Pradesh the reverse seems to be true.

Click here for enlarge

A recently released paper by Chinmay Tumbe, an assistant professor of economics at IIM-Ahmedabad, has shown that state-wise divergence in rural-urban population growth might be the key factor behind difference in pace of urbanization in India.

Tumbe underlines the fact that cities in northern India have been experiencing a faster growth in population than those in the southern parts of the country. Despite this, it is the south which has progressed faster in terms of share of population living in urban areas. The solution to the puzzle lies in the rural-urban differential in natural rate of growth of population in northern and southern India, Tumbe argues. What this means is despite urban population rising faster in the north than the south, the share of urban population in the north has fallen behind that of the south because a much-faster rise in rural population has brought down the share of urban population.

The increasing divergence between rural-urban natural rates of growth of population is because birth rates have come down at a much faster pace in cities than in villages, whereas decline in death rates have become more or less equal.

While the increasing gap has been a pan-Indian phenomenon, its magnitude is much larger in the northern parts of the country, statistics given in the paper show.

Click here for enlarge

Click here for enlarge

Click here for enlarge

Tumbe takes the well-established factors of income and education gap to explain the population growth gap. A lot of research shows that education increases awareness about contraception methods and also increases the opportunity cost of child birth in case of women. Higher income families are known to have fewer children as they can spend more on their education and thus make up for the lost quantity in quality in terms of future income from children. Tumbe’s econometric exercise taking rural literacy as a proxy for education and agricultural productivity as a proxy for income turns out to be statistically significant and explains 26% of fertility difference between the north and south.

The first part of this data-journalism series had highlighted the role of circular migration behind India’s slow pace of urbanization and argued for providing better infrastructure for women in cities to facilitate urbanization growth in India. The arguments presented here underline the need for bringing down fertility rates by improving income and education levels in cities. The short point is, if India is really interested in having smart cities in the near future, it must make its villages smarter as well.

‘World Sanskrit Award’

Thailand’s Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn was presented with the first ‘World Sanskrit Award’ for her exemplary contribution for the promotion of the language for the year 2015. Besides, American linguist and Indologist Prof. George Cardona was also presented with this award for the year 2016. They were bestowed with the award by Vice President Hamid Ansari at a function held in New Delhi.

About World Sanskrit Award The award was instituted by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). It was announced by the Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj during her inaugural address in the 16th World Sanskrit Conference in Bangkok in June 2015. It is presented to eminent Sanskrit scholars to recognise their outstanding contribution to the study/research/ teaching in Sanskrit language and literature.

PM Modi launches affordable housing scheme for poor: 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the government aims to provide house to every Indian by 2022.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched the Pradhan Mantri Gramin Awas Yojana (PMAY-G), flagship housing for all scheme in Agra, Uttar Pradesh. 

Under PMAY-G Government aims to provide affordable, environmentally safe and secure pucca house to every rural household living below the poverty line by 2022. 

Features of Scheme

 PMAY-G is part Union Government’s flagship ‘Housing for All’ scheme and has replaced previous rural housing scheme Indira Awas Yojana The beneficiaries for this scheme will be selected through a completely transparent process using the Socio Economic Census 2011 data and validating it through the Gram Sabha. 

It uses ICT and space technology to further confirm correct selection of beneficiaries and progress of work. Under it, financial assistance will be provided for construction of dwelling units and upgradations of existing unserviceable kutcha houses. 

The entire payments will be done through transparent IT/DBT mode with Aadhaar linked Bank accounts with consent, to ensure complete transparency and accountability. The unit cost for houses has been increased with convergence of a minimum support of nearly Rs. 1.5 lakh to Rs. 1.6 lakh to a household is available. If the beneficiary desires, then there is also a provision of Bank loan upto Rs. 70,000. PMAY-G will be also serve as a major step forward in bringing together Skill India, Make In India, IT/DBT Aadhaar platform, Digital India and Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana. The scheme allows over 200 different housing designs across country based on a detailed study of housing typologies, households’ requirements and environmental hazards. It will provide skilling for 5 lakh Rural Masons by 2019 and envisages large scale use of local materials. Houses built under the scheme will have cooking space, electricity provision, LPG, toilet and bathing area, drinking water etc through convergence.

India ranks 20th on Climate Change Performance Index

CCPI underlined that countries like India are making "great efforts" in the fields of renewables and energy efficiency

India has been ranked 20th on Climate ChangePerformance Index (CCPI) 2017, which underlined that countries like India are making "great efforts" in the fields of renewables and energy efficiency.

With the historic Paris Agreement having recently entered into force, the latest CCPI confirms a boost for renewable energy and positive developments in energy efficiency.

The publication was issued by Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe.

While these encouraging trends are happening on a global scale, the necessary energy revolution is still happening too slowly, the publication said.

"Morocco (rank eight) continued its upward trend. With massive investments in renewable energy and ambitious mid-term and long-term targets, Morocco is a frontrunner in Africa,” the publication said.

"Positive trends are seen as well among emerging economies of G20 like India (rank 20), Argentina (36) and Brazil (40), which all improved their ranking," it said.

It said some developing countries like Morocco, India, and South Africa are starting to catch up and are already making great efforts in the fields of renewables and energy efficiency.

In terms of climate policy, it said India, Sweden, Luxembourg, Norway, and Germany managed to hold their positions.

"All countries are now expected to put forward national emissions reduction plans, and the G20 countries have to take a leading role in doing so by 2018.

"Although, India belongs to the ten largest CO2 emitting countries, per capita emissions are still relatively low, resulting in a good performance in this category," it said.

National experts value that the Indian government runs one of the largest renewable capacity expansion programmes in the world, which leads to a good policy performance for the country, it said.

Canada (55), Australia (57) and Japan (60) are in the bottom group (rated "very poor") of the index while Japan once again dropped two places as national experts criticize their government for a very poor climate policy.

The Climate Change Performance Index is an instrument designed to enhance transparency in international climate politics and aims to put political and social pressure on those countries which have, up until now, failed to take ambitious action on climate protection.

On the basis of standardised criteria, the index evaluates and compares the climate protection performance of 58 countries that together are responsible for about 90% of global energy-related CO2 emissions.

Jan Burck, Germanwatch, key author of the CCPI comments said that the conditions for a global energy revolution have never been better.

"Due to the falling costs of renewable energy and efficiency technologies, national governments have no more excuses not to enshrine the Paris Agreement into national law.

"Besides the vast development of renewable energy, we see positive signals that fossil fuels increasingly are put on the defence. So far, falling oil prices did not cause an increase in demand for the energy source while a growing number of countries are starting to turn their backs on coal," he said.

new ‘super Earth’ type exoplanet named as GJ 536b

Scientists have discovered a new ‘super Earth’ type exoplanet named as GJ 536b orbiting a very bright star near to our Sun. The planet was jointly detected by Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) and the Geneva Observatory. 

Key Facts The exoplanet GJ 536b has a mass of around 5.4 Earth masses. It is orbiting a star much smaller and cooler than the sun It is not within the star’s habitable zone and has short orbital period of 8.7 day. The luminosity of its star makes it an attractive candidate for investigating its atmospheric composition. Besides, the planet’s short orbital period would come handy in conducting future studies of biological activity. 

How GJ 536b was discovered? It was detected using the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Seeker) spectrograph on the 3.6M ESO Telescope (La Silla in Chile) and HARPS North on the Telescopio Nacional Galileo (TNG) Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Garafia in Spain). HARPS is a second-generation high-precision radial velocity planet finding spectrograph. It is the most successful planet finder after the Kepler Space 

Observatory Astronomical terms Exoplanet: It is a planet that does not orbit the Sun and instead orbits a different star, stellar remnant, or brown dwarf. It is also termed as extrasolar planet. 

Super-earths: They are extrasolar planets which are larger than the Earth. However they have mass substantially below the solar system’s giant planets namely Neptune and Uranus.

India becomes associate member of CERN

Becoming an associate member of CERN will enhance participation of India’s young scientists and engineers in various projects

ndia on Monday became an associate member of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), the world’s largest nuclear and particle physics labaratory.

The agreement was signed on Monday by Sekhar Basu, chairman of Atomic Energy Commission and secretary of Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), and CERN director general Dr. Fabiola Gianotti at the DAE’s office here. Last year, the Union cabinet green-lit the proposal for India officially entering the Geneva-based body, following which the CERN Council accepted India as an associate member.

India had ‘observer’ status till September this year, when the CERN Council adopted a resolution upgrading its position. “There are three major activities going on in our laboratory—accelerators, detectors and computing. Indian scientist fraternity is good at all the three areas; hence we have taken decision to upgrade the status,” Gianotti told reporters here.

Becoming an associate member of CERN will enhance participation of young scientists and engineers in various CERN projects. It will also open opportunities for Indian industries to participate directly in CERN projects, Gianotti said. The industries now can directly bag contracts for specified requirements of CERN.

Earlier, the supply of required material, components and services was in the form of kind (without any charge). Now, the companies can directly bag the order and provide the services, she added.

After becoming an associate member, India also has to contribute a certain amount of money for research activities. “This would involve annual contribution of 11.5 million swiss frank from Indian government to CERN,” Gianotti said.

The membership comes at a time when there was criticism within the scientific community over the delay in India accepting the membership. Pakistan became an associate member of the body in 2014. The organisation is the world’s largest nuclear and particle physics laboratory, where scientists and engineers are probing the fundamental structure of the Universe using the most sophisticated scientific instruments and advanced computing systems.

Presently CERN has 22 member states, four associate member states, and the observer status is given to four states and three International Organisations.

“We already have met some industries in Bengaluru and talks were more related to computing. We will explore more in India and what can be contributing to CERN,” said Gianotti.