#GS3 –01. $7 trillion target for Indian economy

India can become a $7 trillion economy by 2030. That means it will almost double its GDP in the next six years.India is to grow at or over 7% in the current fiscal year and the next. India is in a better place economically due to the government’s massive infrastructure spending (which grew 3.3 times in the last 10 years), healthy financial sector, strong household financial health, comfortable forex reserves, an inflation that is under control and a fiscal deficit that is trending lower.
-MoF’s Review of Indian Economy

Growth in India is projected to remain strong at 6.5% in both 2024 (FY25) and 2025 (FY26), with an upgrade from October of 0.2 percentage points for both years, reflecting resilience in domestic demand.
-IMF

Note : Despite India’s relative advantage to other large economies,there are factors that will come in its way. There has been a secular decline in the growth of developed economies due to inflation and environmental factors.Also, the world is becoming increasingly protectionist,with nations raising their trade barriers.Both factors will have a direct bearing on the growth of exports, a critical element if India has to grow fast. Then there are the geo-political flare-ups that typically fuel inflation and smother growth.

#GS3 — 02. Snow Leopards

The first scientific survey of the snow leopard in India shows the country is home to 718. The exercise, conducted from 2019 to 2023, covered approximately 120,000 sq km of snow leopard habitat across the trans-Himalayan region, including Ladakh,Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.
-Commentary in News

#GS3 –03. Budget Figures

The Indian government budgeted to spend around ₹45.03 trillion during the year and it expected its total earnings to be around ₹27.16 trillion. The GDP this year is expected to be ₹296.58 trillion. Taking this into account, the ratio of total debt and liabilities will be 85.3% of the GDP.
-Commentary in news

#GS2 –04. Deepfakes

Deepfakes are not new. But thanks to rapid advances in generative artificial intelligence(AI), they have over the past year or so become so much easier to create. What was once a niche capability only available to teams with access to massive training data sets and advanced programming capability can now be generated by you and me using anyone of a number of off-the-shelf AI services.

The real worry, of course, is the effect that all this will have on society. Given how easy it is to generate videos that portray political candidates in an unflattering light, it seems inevitable that we will see them deployed at scale during elections—both by political opponents as well as unfriendly countries that will have no problem deploying teams of hackers to destabilize their enemies.With over half the world voting in an election this year, there is a serious concern around the effect that deep fake proliferation could have on democracy.

-Commentary in news

#GS2 –05. Discipline in Legislatures

Tax revenues have soared so much that they’re now 0.3% of GDP higher than budgeted. This buoyancy will likely fund a rise in subsidies and any special spending packages announced on budget day. Capital expenditure is expected to

show a rise in 2023-24, but not by as much as budgeted (22% year-on-year versus 36%). All considered, the fiscal deficit is likely to be in line with the budgeted 5.9% of GDP in 2023-24.

Taxes are likely to grow quickly in 2024-25 as well (we assume tax buoyancy of 1.1%). After all, structural benefits, such as those made possible by digitization and better tax information, are likely to help for many years. Capital receipts may also increase post elections if some pending disinvestment comes through as a policy priority.

The government could shave current expenditure after elections, perhaps by cutting in half the increase since pre- pandemic levels (as a proportion of GDP). Meanwhile, we expect capex to remain unchanged as a percentage of GDP in 2024-25. All of this is likely to lead to a fiscal deficit of 5.3% in 2024-25, signalling that the government is committed to its fiscal consolidation path (of a 4.5% deficit by 2025-26).

-HSBC Chief Economist Pranjul Bhandari

#GS3 –06. Need for LItigation Policy

In the Doing Business rankings of the World Bank (now stopped), India fared very poorly on its component of contract enforcement—i.e. adjudication. In this context, the judiciary has called out the government’s dichotomous approach in blaming courts for restricting ‘ease of doing business’ despite being the biggest litigant itself and seeking needless adjournments repeatedly. There is no litigation policy formulated by the government, while talks have been going on for over 13 years. If Viksit Bharat is our goal, a developed India, we need to get our act together. This includes the government reducing unnecessary litigation.

Issues which should ideally be decided by central and state governments are not being addressed and are being passed on to the courts to decide. Ludicrously, these include suits filed by one government agency against another, which should have been sorted out within government circles. Furthermore, there are issues like an urban dog menace, pollution and same-sex marriage, all of which should ideally be dealt with by the administration and legislature.

Over half a century ago, in November 1973, while adjudicating the sad case of a railway employee’s held-up wages, Justice V.K. Krishna Iyer made a stoic observation: “In this country, the state is the largest litigant and the huge expenditure involved makes a big draft on the public exchequer. In the context of expanding dimensions of state activity and responsibility, it is not unfair to expect finer sense and sensibility in its litigation policy, the absence of which in the present case led the Railways to callously and cantankerously resist an action by its own employee by
urging a mere technical plea which had been pursued to the highest court and had been negatived.

-CUTS International Secretary General Pradeep S. Mehta

#Essay–#GS4 –07. Integrity

In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence and energy. If they don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.

-Warren Buffett

#Essay–#GS3 –08. Climate Change

There’s one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent threat of a changing climate.

-Barack Obama

#Essay–#GS2 –09. Interdependence & India
We live in an interdependent world. An isolated India is not in our interest.

-PM Modi

#Essay–#GS4 –10. Life and Problems

Life is a school and problems are the curriculum.