Great achievement,congratulations for great career.Your politeness,sincerity,and hard work had resulted in such high rank (52)

Great achievement,congratulations for great career.Your politeness,sincerity,and hard work had resulted in such high rank (52)

Shame of debt, steep costs driving farmers to suicide: RBI-commissioned study

The RBI-commissioned study listed faulty crop choices and aspirational consumption patterns as other major factors leading farmers to commit suicide

The study observed that close to 270,000 farmers have committed suicide in the past 15 years.

Shame arising out of inability to repay loans taken from relatives and acquaintances is a key reason for farmers resorting to suicide, a study commissioned by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) found.

The study titled “Lives in debt: narratives of agrarian distress and farmer suicides”, conducted by researchers at Shiv Nadar University and published in the latest issue of Economic and Political Weekly, listed faulty crop choices, rising input costs, and aspirational consumption patterns as other major factors driving suicides, following field investigations in two of the most suicide-prone districts in India—Yavatmal in Maharashtra and Sangrur in Punjab.

The findings come at a time when a farm debt waiver in Uttar Pradesh has sparked demand for similar relief in these two states. In Punjab, despite a record harvest, farmer suicides have continued.

Despite formal credit to farmers growing tenfold between 2001 and 2012, commercial banks have “deepened” credit instead of “widening” it, making loans more accessible to farmers with large landholdings, the study said, adding that “it (the surge in formal credit) was insufficient to rule out the predominance of non-institutional sources”.

Citing data from the National Crime Records Bureau, the study observed that close to 270,000 farmers have committed suicide in the past 15 years, and despite wide differences in cropping patterns and access to irrigation, the crisis in farming is strikingly similar in districts like Yavatmal (rain-fed cotton belt) and Sangrur (irrigated region growing three crops in a year).

In Yavatmal, the survey showed that small and marginal farmers (owning less than 2 hectares) who lacked non-farm sources of income were most likely to commit suicide.

“The shame associated with one’s inability to repay is immense in a village society and it is all the more acute if money is borrowed from relatives,” the study observed.

In Sangrur, the study found that most families where a farmer suicide took place had outstanding debts over Rs200,000. Many families were indebted to traders and commission agents and had exhausted all formal credit channels, the study found.

It further said that crop choices in these districts were not in tune with the agro-climatic features of the region. Cultivation of Bt cotton in Yavatmal where rainfall is unpredictable and growing rice in Sangrur where water tables are depleting has put farmers under considerable stress, according to the study.

The researchers observed that a Bt cotton farmer is barely able to meet the rising costs of cultivation, let alone generate a profit sufficient to sustain the household. In Punjab, a highly input-intensive farming and low support prices that did not keep pace with production costs have meant little surplus left with farmers to repay loans.

While consumption expenditure of small farmers usually exceeds their income from farming, the mismatch is higher in Punjab, the study said, adding the state tops in purchase of consumer durables often financed by loans form non-institutional sources.

Due to massive defaults caused by repeated crop failures, “the most frightening point emerging from the field study is the exhausting of informal sources of credit” leading to a situation where moneylenders prefer buying out assets of farmers than mortgaging them, the study said.

It suggested several interventions, including discouraging loans to crops not suited to the ecology of a region, restructuring of loans into smaller instalments, and introduction of cashless loan components to avoid diversion of loans towards consumption expenditure, as possible measures to curb suicides.

Criticising the pitifully low public expenditure on agriculture (less than 1% of the GDP), the study said “an economy driven by jobless growth, compulsive migration” (from rural India) creates new “serfs” in informal services and construction, “while existing rural and agrarian problems remain unresolved”.

Environment ministry panel defers clearance to 600 MW Tawang power project

Environment ministry’s forest panel defers clearance to the 600 MW Tawang hydroelectric project, noting that it could severely hit the biodiversity in the region

Representational image. The Arunachal Pradesh government had sought a diversion of 187.20 hectare of forest land for construction of the Tawang hydroelectric project stage-I (600 MW) on Tawang Chu River in Tawang district by the NHP

The expert forest panel of the environment ministry has deferred clearance to the 600 megawatt (MW) Tawang hydroelectric project in Arunachal Pradesh until a study is conducted on it, noting that the location is a vital wintering ground of the black necked crane, an endangered species, and other birds.

The decision came at a 16 May meeting of the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) of the ministry of environment, forest and climate change (MoEFCC). 

The Arunachal Pradesh government had sought a diversion of 187.20 hectare of forest land for construction of the Tawang hydroelectric project stage-I (600 MW) on Tawang Chu River in Tawang district by the NHPC Ltd.

The project, whose estimated cost is about Rs4,824 crore, would also result in about 200,000 trees being felled. The trees include threatened plant species.

“FAC after thorough deliberation observed that BNHS (Bombay Natural History Society) had represented to the members of FAC that Tawang valley in Arunachal Pradesh is very high in biodiversity having several critically endangered species as well as several endemics. The particular location of the project is also vital wintering ground of Black Necked Crane,” noted the minutes of FAC’s meeting, which were reviewed by Mint.

Black Necked Crane, an endangered bird, is a protected bird under India’s the Wildlife Protection Act 1972. It is also counted as a ‘vulnerable’ species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), an international NGO working on environment and conservation issues. 

“These birds require quality wetlands. The proposed project (even if it is river run off project) has an ability to significantly alter the wetland characteristics thereby significantly affecting habitat of Black Necked Crane and in worst case scenario losing one of the finest wintering habitat of the species,” FAC held.

The expert committee also noted that the proposed area has been identified as an important birding area by BNHS.

“The view point of BNHS was taken into consideration and same was discussed with user agency. After detailed deliberation and discussion with user agency it is recommended that a study in this regards shall be conducted through Wildlife Institute Dehradun at the cost of user agency. The case shall be deferred till the study is conducted,” said FAC.

Not just birds, the area is also home to important animals like barking deer, sambar, wild yak, serow, goral, wild boar, red panda, clouded leopard, snow leopard and musk deer.

The project is among the 11 proposed hydropower projects totalling 2802.20 MW capacity in the ecologically sensitive Tawang River Basin (TRB) in Arunachal Pradesh. This particular project had first come to FAC in 2011 but has been pending since then for varied reasons.

Harnessing of hydro power potential has been on top of the central government’s agenda for nearly a decade now. The government wants to establish prior user rights on rivers that originate in China and fast-track overall development of north-east India.

As per official estimates, north-east India has a hydropower potential of about 65,000 MW and of that nearly 50,000 MW is in Arunachal Pradesh, which is claimed by China in almost its entirety.

But environmentalists have repeatedly opposed such large-scale projects, saying that they could severely hit the biodiversity-rich north-eastern region, resulting in irreversible environmental damage.

“Arunachal Pradesh is the richest biodiversity area in whole of India. But the destruction has already started and is getting faster now. Whatever little dissent people have expressed has been squashed,” said ornithologist Bikram Grewal. “They (government) are pushing everything in name of national security, defence and progress...Sadly it is anything but progress. If conservationists can stand their ground it will be a major achievement. But this seems difficult at the moment.

ISRO braces to tame GSLV Mark-III that could launch Indians into space

The Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III (GSLV Mk- III) is heaviest rocket ever made by India that is capable of carrying the heaviest satellites till now

An indigenous rocket as heavy as 200 full-grown Asian elephants could well be the one taking “Indians into space from Indian soil” as the country inches closer to joining the big boy’s space club.

Standing tall on the rocket port at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh is the country’s latest rocket called the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III (GSLV Mk- III), the heaviest rocket ever made by India that is capable of carrying the heaviest satellites till now.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) enters into a bold new world muscling its way to make its mark in the world’s heavy weight multi-billion dollar launch market. “We are pushing ourselves to the limits to ensure that this new fully self-reliant Indian rocket succeeds in its maiden launch,” ISRO chairman A S Kiran Kumar said. It is the maiden experimental launch of GSLV-Mk III earlier named Launch Vehicle Mark-3, but if all goes on well in a decade or after a slew of at least half a dozen successful launches, this rocket could be India’s vehicle of choice to launch “Indians into space, from Indian soil using Indian rockets”.

This heavy lift rocket is capable of placing up to 8 tons in a low Earth orbit, enough to carry India’s crew module. ISRO has already prepared plans of hoisting a 2-3 member human crew into space as soon as the government gives it a sanction of about 3-4 billion dollars. If the human venture materialises, India would become only the fourth country after Russia, the US and China to have a human space flight program. Incidentally ISRO asserts the first Indian to go into space could well be a woman! “In principle, it will be the GSLV Mk-3 or its variant that will be human rated in future,” Kumar confirms.

In the intense pre-monsoon heat, India’s rocket port is buzzing with feverish activity as engineers from the Indian space agency get set to launch an all new indigenously-made rocket. It is the heaviest fully-functional rocket to reach the launch pad weighing 640 tons or almost 5 times the weight of a fully loaded Jumbo Jet airplane.

The new rocket is capable of carrying satellites of four ton class into the geosynchronous orbit and opens a whole new window through which ISRO can now explore the universe. It is estimated that the new rocket costs a whopping Rs 300 crore but the country would end up saving almost as much when an Indian launcher is used to place New Delhi’s communication satellites.

Today India uses the French Ariane-5 rocket launched from Kourou in South America to place its heavy 4 ton class of communication satellites. Kumar asserts that the GSLV-Mk III is a rocket designed and made in India from scratch and hence engineers from ISRO are very keen to tame this new monster in its very first attempt. Not an easy task, since India’s track record suggests that maiden launches of its rockets often end up in failure.

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) failed on its maiden launch in 1993 and since then it has had 38 consecutively successful launches and the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mk-1 (GSLV Mk-1) failed in 2001 and since then it has 11 launches with half of them successful. Space fairing is a very risky business and all nations the US, France and Japan and even the new private companies have had failures in recent times like the spectacular Falcon-9 rocket in 2016. Hopefully, the GSLV-Mk III will break that jinx. India already has two operational rockets—the workhorse PSLV that can hoist satellites of 1.5 tons into space and was the preferred vehicle for India’s maiden mission to Moon and Mars.

The second— the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark II can hoist 2 ton class of satellites and because of its repeated failures it was dubbed ‘the naughty boy of ISRO’. Between them, ISRO has done 50 launches and recently even earned a world record by successfully placing 104 satellites in orbit.

The new GSLV-Mk III is an all new vehicle designed and developed in India and in 2014 a sub-orbital successful test of this vehicle was conducted to understand how it performs in the atmosphere. The rocket never went into space but helped test India’s future astronaut capsule. It had a dummy cryogenic engine and was a single stage vehicle. Even though the GSLV-Mk III is 43-m-tall, making it the shortest of the three big Indian rockets, it carries a huge punch as it weighs almost 1.5 times heavier than India’s next biggest rocket the GSLV Mk-2 and almost twice as heavy as India’s PSLV. This monster rocket has an elegant design and is capable of carrying loads equal to the weight of two sports utility vehicles or SUVs into space.

The massive first stage along with strap-on boosters weighs 610 tons and comprises multiple engines all firing nearly simultaneously. It is the second stage which is all together a new animal for this mammoth rocket, it is a novel Indian cryogenic engine that weighs about 30 tons.

The new cryogenic engine is being tested on a fully functional rocket for the first time and it is the development of this technology that uses liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen as propellant is what took more than 15 years for Indians to master. There is a lot of excitement at the rocket port as Kumar says “a whole new rocket and an entirely new class of a high through put satellite system is all set to be launched”

Great Barrier Reef bleaching worse than first thought

Great Barrier Reef suffered its most severe bleaching on record last year due to warming sea temperatures during March and April

Coral bleaching on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is worse than first thought and the impact will accelerate unless global greenhouse gas emissions are cut, scientists said Monday.

The 2,300-km (1,400-mile) World Heritage-listed reef suffered its most severe bleaching on record last year due to warming sea temperatures during March and April.

Initial aerial and in-water surveys showed 22% of shallow water corals were destroyed in 2016, but it has now been bumped up to 29% and with the reef currently experiencing an unprecedented second straight year of bleaching, the outlook is grim.

“We’re very concerned about what this means for the Great Barrier Reef itself and what it means for the communities and industries that depend on it,” Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) chairman Russell Reichelt said.

“The amount of coral that died from bleaching in 2016 is up from our original estimates and, at this stage, although reports are still being finalised, it’s expected we’ll also see an overall further coral cover decline by the end of 2017.”

Bleaching, which occurs when abnormal conditions such as warmer sea temperatures cause corals to expel tiny photosynthetic algae, draining them of their colour, also extended to deeper corals beyond depths divers can typically survey.

But mortality of those reefs could not be systematically assessed.

The most severely impacted region was an area north of the popular tourist town Port Douglas, where an estimated 70% of shallow water corals have died.

Cairns and Townsville, also hugely popular tourist destinations, are among the regions hardest-hit from the 2017 bleaching event, although southern parts of the natural wonder escaped the worst.

Corals can recover if the water temperature drops and the algae are able to recolonise them, but it can take a decade. The reef is already under pressure from farming run-off, development and the crown-of-thorns starfish, with the problems compounded this year by powerful cyclone pummelling the area.

Reichelt said the storm impacted a quarter of the reef but a complete picture for 2017 would not be available until next year. The GBRMPA hosted a summit last week of more than 70 of the world’s leading marine experts to work on a blueprint on how best to respond to the threats.

Among options explored was developing coral nurseries, strategies to boost culling of crown-of-thorns starfish, expanding monitoring systems and identifying priority sites for coral restoration.

Key to the talks was the need to slash greenhouse gas emissions to prevent warming sea temperatures.

“The Great Barrier Reef is a large and resilient system that’s previously shown its capacity to bounce back, however the current changes are undermining the resilience of the reef,” said Reichelt. “Summit participants voiced their strong concern about the need for global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the driver of climate change.”

The world’s nations agreed in Paris in 2015 to limit average warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels, by curbing fossil fuel burning.

What India can learn from Israel

India has much to learn from Israeli’s application of hard power, who are living in a part of the world where most of their neighbours don’t even acknowledge their right to exist

The year 2017 marks important anniversaries for Israel: the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the first official British declaration recognizing the need for a Jewish state; 1947 when the United Nations passed a resolution in support of a Jewish state, a year before its creation; and 1967, which saw the Six-Day War resulting in an overwhelming Israeli victory over Arab aggressors, establishing Israel’s control over all of Jerusalem, West Bank, Gaza, Golan, and Sinai.

This year also marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between India and Israel. To commemorate this important anniversary, and by remarkable coincidence coinciding with all these other important anniversaries, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to visit Israel on 4-6 July, in what will be another first: the first time ever that an Indian prime minister will visit Israel.

It’s noteworthy that the customary add-on, a visit to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, is being skipped. This signals in no uncertain terms that India no longer hyphenates Israel and Palestine and acknowledges what has been evident below the radar screen for years, the enormous importance of the India-Israel bilateral relationship. Whether it’s military cooperation, trade or combatting Islamist extremism in their respective neighbourhoods, Israel is fast becoming one of India’s staunchest and most important partners. Credit for the ramping up of this long overdue boost to the relationship is due both to Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A recent visit to Israel reinforced all of the reasons I already believed India and Israel are natural partners. That begins with the natural affinity and warmth between the two peoples. Israelis love to travel to India and love seeing Indians in their own country.

India is perhaps unique in having a long history of Jewish migration without any persecution of the Jews from the indigenous population. Anti-semitism came to India with the arrival of European colonizers and in fact it was the Maharaja of Cochin who sheltered members of the ancient Jewish settlement when they were marauded by the Portuguese. Much later, Baghdadi Jews played an important part in Bombay’s rise as a modern metropolis and commercial centre. Indeed, one of the so-called original merchant princes of Bombay was David Sassoon, a Baghdadi Jew. As it happens, about 80,000 Indian Jews have settled in Israel and are great ambassadors for India there. They contribute to India’s soft power in the Israeli consciousness which is considerable.

In the opposite direction, India has much to learn from Israeli’s application of hard power, living as they do in a part of the world where most of their neighbours don’t even acknowledge their right to exist and many are trying actively to wipe them off the map. India too faces existential threats but for too long, our political elite were both unwilling to acknowledge this fact and to draw the correct lessons from the Israeli experience.

In conversations with senior Israeli military and security officials, it became clear that the Israeli approach is to balance strength and military and strategic superiority and a focus on deterrence on the one hand, with the ability to be compassionate and emphatic on the other. Thus, it is little known that on Israel’s northern border with Syria on the Golan Heights, where civil war is raging between government and rebel forces, those in need of medical care, often injured in the shelling and firing, cross over to the Israeli side and get treated at Israeli hospitals free of cost. These were people who grew up thinking of Israel as their mortal enemy that needed to be destroyed.

It’s striking that Israeli settlers have ventured right up to the UN administered buffer zone between Israeli occupied Golan, neighbouring Syria and Lebanon, confident that Israeli forces will protect them. There’s a good reason: as several security officials said, their goal is to ensure life is as normal as it can be for those they protect.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Jammu and Kashmir, where indigenous Pandits were driven out while the Indian state looked the other way and in which it’s not even legally permissible for non-Kashmiri Indians to settle there. Nor can Indian security forces guarantee safety in regions affected by Maoist and other insurgencies.

India could well take a cue from how Israel maintains stringent external and internal security, allowing Israeli settlements right up to the border of conflict zones. In India, by contrast, we seem to be in perennial reaction mode, trying to contain situations as they’re unfolding rather than pre-empting trouble before it happens.

Israelis understand that genuine compassion and empathy even toward those bent on destroying them comes from a position of strength, not of weakness. But all of this requires political will and a deeper commitment and investment to our military and security establishment. The former requires that there be a broad political consensus that India faces existential threats from within and without. The latter requires taking these existential threats we face seriously as the Israelis do theirs.

In 1967, Israel faced a threat to its very existence from Arab neighbours and vanquished its enemies. In 1962, India faced abject defeat at the hands of Chinese neighbours who continue to occupy some of our territory. When will India get its act together and learn from Israel?

Who are the biggest buyers of gold in India?

World Gold Council says India’s gold demand was what supported the global market in Q1 2017, but where in India does the gold go to?

The latest report from the World Gold Council says that gold demand from India was what supported global gold demand in the first quarter of 2017. Indian purchases of gold jewellery in the first quarter of 2017 accounted for a little over a fifth of world jewellery demand. That is completely out of proportion to India’s share of world gross domestic product (GDP), which is around 3% or so, in current US dollars. During Q1, 2017, India’s demand for gold jewellery was 92.3 tonnes, compared to 22.9 tonnes for the US. Investment demand for gold in the form of bars and coins was 31.2 tonnes in Q1 2017, compared to 16.2 tonnes for the US.

India’s hunger for gold is not surprising—people have been complaining about the “drain of gold” into India for ages, starting with Pliny the Elder, the Roman writer of the 1st century AD. But where in India does the gold go to? And who are the people who buy all this gold jewellery?

The short answer to the first question is, in one word: Kerala. For a longer answer, turn to Chart 1, which shows the monthly per capita expenditure on gold ornaments among the Indian states. The data have been taken from the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO)’s survey on Household Consumption of Various Goods and Services in India, 2011-12. Only data from the states have been taken here and Union territories have not been included.

The first thing that catches the eye in the chart is how different Kerala is from the rest of India in terms of spending on gold ornaments. For instance, not only does rural Kerala top the rankings for spending on gold ornaments, its per capita spending is six times higher than the state that ranks number 2—Goa. Indeed, rural Kerala’s per capita spending on gold ornaments is far ahead of the total per capita spending of all the other six top states by gold consumption shown in the chart.

Click here for enlarge

Urban India, being richer, spends more on gold ornaments than rural areas. Nevertheless, here too urban Kerala ranks first by a mile among the states. To be sure, Kerala has relatively high per capita income, but it’s certainly not so different from other Indian states as the gold consumption data suggests. Cultural factors must be behind its status as an outlier. It is no wonder then that the Kerala chief minister wants a low goods and services tax (GST) for gold.

At the other extreme are the states with the lowest per capita expenditure on gold ornaments. As the chart shows, the north-eastern states figure prominently in this list—again the reason is likely to be cultural factors rather than poverty. It’s likely though that poverty is the factor behind states like Bihar and Jharkhand having low per capita gold consumption.

What about the second question—who buys all this gold? Well, the rather obvious answer is it’s the rich. Chart 2 has the details. The population is divided into 12 fractiles depending on their consumption. Fractile 12 is the top 5% in terms of consumption, fractile 11 the next 5%, fractile 10 the next 10%, fractile 9 the next lower 10% and so on, with fractile 1 being the lowest 5%. In other words, the fractile classes used are the percentile classes 0-5%, 5-10%, 10-20%, 20-30%, 30-40%, ..., 70-80%, 80-90%, 90-95%, and 95-100%. These fractiles are taken separately for rural and urban India.

As the chart shows, the richest 5% in rural India spend 6.2 times more on gold ornaments than the next 5%. In urban India, this multiple is 3.9 times. Sure, even the poor buy some gold jewellery. But note how much more the top 5% spend on gold ornaments compared to the middle percentiles. Clearly, the people who will benefit the most from a low goods and services tax (GST) rate on gold will be the rich.