9 PM Daily Current Affairs Brief – 17 March 2017

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Live Mint

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[1]. Job creation is vital for a new India

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Front Page / NATIONAL

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[1]. Health spending to be 2.5% of GDP

 

The Hindu

 

Context

Centre announces new policy with an ‘assurance’ of health care for all

 

What has happened?

The Centre cleared the long-awaited National Health Policy 2017, which promises to increase public health spending to 2.5% of GDP in a time-bound manner and guarantees health care services to all Indian citizens, particularly the underprivileged.

 

Key Points

• Advocates a progressively incremental assurance-based approach to health care provision
• The government will pursue ambitious targets like reducing Under-Five Mortality to 23 by 2025 and Maternal Mortality Ratio from current levels to 100 by 2020, and Infant Mortality Rate to 28 by 2019.
• It also seeks to reduce neonatal mortality to 16 and stillbirth rate to “single digit” by 2025

 

View of the rights- based activists

Failure of the Govt. to make health a fundamental right makes this policy an empty promise

 

[2]. GST laws ready for Parliament, State Assemblies

 

The Hindu

 

Context

15 per cent cap on cess rate for aerated drinks, luxury cars

 

What has happened?

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council has approved:

• Ceiling on Cess:15 per cent ceiling on the cess to be levied on aerated drinks and luxury cars over and above the maximum proposed GST rate of 28 per cent
• Enabling Laws: The enabling laws for state and union territories to adopt the new indirect tax regime

 

Ceiling Rates for De-merit goods/ Sin goods

The Council approved the ceiling rates for the cess to be levied on top of the maximum GST rate of 28% on demerit or sin goods

 

GST Roll-out:Tentative roll-out date of GST is July 1

 

[3]. Industries get 6 months for retrospective green nod

 

The Hindu

 

Context

Environmental Clearance (EC) for the violators

 

What has happened?

• Union Environment Ministry has given a six-month window and a “one-time opportunity” to industrial projects functioning without environmental clearance (EC) to apply for a back-dated green certificate

 

• The reprieve is for projects that started the work on site, expanded the production beyond the limit of EC or changed the product mix without obtaining prior EC

 

Some Conditions for Clearance

• Categorizing all projects as ‘grade A,’
• Highest level of scrutiny now required

 

[4]. CAG pulls up I-T Dept. on shell companies

 

The Hindu

 

Context

The firms allegedly indulged in concealed unaccounted-for income and generated black money

 

What has happened?

The Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) has pulled up the Income Tax Department for not putting to use the tools at its disposal for effective action against shell companies that conceal unaccounted-for income and generate black money

 

Backdrop

The auditor had sought details from the I-T Department in Mumbai on the assessees and the ultimate beneficiaries, but despite reminders, the data were not provided

 

CAG Report

• State department’s website had a list ofsuspicious dealers who had issued invoices involving tax evasion
• The accused claimed and got input tax credit against the declaration of fake tax invoices without actual transactions involving the sale and purchase of goods
• To evade detection, payments were made against the invoices by cheque or bank transfers and the amounts were later withdrawn from the accounts of hawala operators.
• The CAG relied upon the MSTD data for analysis and found that the Income Tax Department had not even scrutinised all the assessees featuring on the list
• The information regarding bogus purchases was not passed on to assessing officers
• Shell companies: These companies are used to generating bogus bills showing inflated expenses on various counts. They receive payments through the banking channel to project the transactions as genuine, and then return the rest to the ultimate beneficiaries after charging a commission
• Unscrupulous tax consultants and chartered accounts are also involved in the setting up of such entities
• The auditor found that assessees had either not filed their returns, or had disclosed meagre or no income, or had stopped filing the returns

 

Recommendations

In cases of false disclosure, the department should have moved the Settlement Commission for withdrawal of immunity to the applicants.

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Editorial/OPINION

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[1]. Leaving no one behind

 

The Hindu

 

Context

The Vision 2030 document should formulate a disability-inclusive development agenda

 

Backdrop

• The National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) is formulating a Vision 2030 document
• This document is coterminous with the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), all 17 of which equally affect persons with disabilities as they do any other citizen

 

What can be done?

• Disability is still seen as an opportunity for dispensing charity rather than as a development or a human rights issue
• The knowledge of MPs and State legislatures must be refreshed on the rights, needs and issues of persons with disabilities based on the changing disability landscape, the UNCRPD, and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016
• The NITI Aayog must invest effort in building awareness for NGOs, academics, civil society, the private sector, etc., in order to articulate a disability-inclusive development agenda
• Persons with disabilities must be seen as integral to the decision-making process and not as an afterthought
• They must be mentioned in the outcome metrics defined for each goal, target or indicator, and these matrices must elaborate specific strategies for persons with disabilities
• There must be seven-year checkpoints for ministries or departments to assess the outcomes
• Fair and adequate representation of disability groups during the consultation process is imperative
• The NITI Aayog has mapped each goal to a nodal ministry and each target with the government’s key programmes and departments to make these targets accountable and realise them within a specified time period
• Specific budgets need to be allocated across initiatives and ministries to address the needs of persons with disabilities
• The NITI Aayog too must have a dedicated cell which acts as a focal point and works with all ministries to monitor implementation and track progress across all initiatives for persons with disabilities
• Data Collection for the Disabled:
  • The document must insist that data for persons with disabilities are appropriately collected, maintained and disaggregated including all government initiatives that capture any data related to population or human resources or human development, including employment, education, poverty and hunger.
  • All data must be available in the public domain, and published in an accessible format and in a timely manner

 

Conclusion

• It is important for India to have the addition of a universally accepted disability question(s) on all existing data instruments
• The UN recommends the Washington Group Short Set of Questions on Disability, while India has been using a different question. A standard question needs to be developed, taking into account the socio-cultural sensitivities of people with disabilities and their families
• The NITI Aayog should call for a national-level consultation with cross-disability groups and arrive at a consensus on the right question, which should then be unified across all data instruments of all sources of demographic information, including the impending Unique Disability ID, the population census, civil registration, sample surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation, Sample Registration System and for all social schemes

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Economy

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[1]. Start-up firms may soon find it easy to wind up

 

The Hindu

 

Context

To enable faster exit for start-ups and to bring the winding up process in line with global best practices, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) has written to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) to notify start-ups as ‘Fast Track firms’

 

What has happened?

• Once start-ups are notified as ‘Fast Track firms’ “they can wind up business within 90 days of making an application for the same
• Fast Track firms will be start-ups with simple debt structures or those meeting certain criteria that will be specified

 

The Bharat Navodaya: Start-Up India Reform Report

• Recommended expediting the company winding up process in India
• Backdrop:The Report was prepared by the Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy-chaired Alternative Investment Policy Advisory Committee (AIPAC) following a request from capital markets regulator SEBI
• According to the report said expediting the company winding up process in India would require the notification of Sections 304-323 of the Companies Act, 2013, relating to voluntary winding up
• Carry Forward: It is recommended that the unutilized losses of an eligible start-up, which is being wound up, should be allowed to be carried forward and set off by the founder of that start-up, against the profits of a new eligible start-up set up within a period of three years from date of winding up of the failed start-up
• Start-ups and venture capital investors expressed concerns that the process of winding up a company is extremely long and cumbersome, adding to the risk of starting up and operating an enterprise as well as wastage of invaluable human capital

 

The Government: To facilitate easier exit for firms the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India has been constituted and the provisions regarding corporate insolvency resolution have been implemented on December1, 2016

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Indian Express

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Live Mint

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[1]. Job creation is vital for a new India

 

The Hindu

 

Context

An inclusive India would be one where good jobs are available to all people everywhere, including Dalit men and women in the backwaters of India’s heartlands

 

Dire Straits

• The employment elasticity of the Indian economy—the numbers of jobs it creates with economic growth—has been declining in the last few years
• India’s rate of job creation is only two-thirds of the global average

 

Joint Reports by the Confederation of Indian Industry and Boston Consulting Group:

First Report:India: Growth And Jobs In The New Globalization

Context:Looks at global forces that are creating unemployment and increasing inequality around the world

Reasons:

Capitalization: Capitalization of production systems, with increasing automation, is reducing jobs for workers, and producing more wealth for owners of capital than for workers in production systems

Financializing: Financializing of economies, with even more money being made from purely financial assets, has turbo-charged the increase in inequalities in incomes and wealth around the world

Industry 4.0: Automation technologies are more flexible, and less dependent on labour enabling production systems to be localized within developed countries markets

• (What is Industry 4.0?:The current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. It includes cyber-physical systems, the Internet of things and cloud computing. Industry 4.0 creates what has been called a “smart factory)

Pressure on Governments: Pressure on governments everywhere to generate more jobs within their own countries, production systems are likely to become more local and less globally interconnected than they have been in the past 20 years

Recommendation:

Each country must develop its own job-creation strategies with the participation of domestic stakeholders because, while technology is universal across countries, social and economic conditions vary

Second Report:Future Of Jobs In India, Enterprises And Livelihoods

Context:

• Focused on India
• It takes a broad systems’ view of the process of job creation, including societal forces that will make technology adapt to societal needs

Recommendation:

• Job creation must become an overarching goal for government along with economic growth, which it has not been so far
• Plans at all levels of government—at the Centre, in the states, and in cities—must be directed towards creating ecosystems that generate better livelihoods and jobs, and progress must be measured accordingly

Recommendations of both the reports:

Both reports recommend strategies for:

• Strengthening clusters and networks of small enterprises which can create more widespread employment and with less capital investment than large factories
• Developing life-long learning systems that will enable people to learn new skills “just-in-time” when the content of their work changes, which it will often in future when new technologies are applied and new industries emerge
• Re-framinglabour law reform from a paradigm of more flexibility to “hire and fire” to a paradigm of better social security systems, without which societies will not allow employers more freedom to shape contracts with those who work in their enterprises
• Providing easier access to finance for micro-enterprises.

Both reports also highlight the Brahma face of technology as a creator of jobs, while recognizing its Shiva face of a destroyer of jobs at the same time

Author Suggests

• India must pursue more growth in manufacturing and build infrastructure
• It must vigorously pursue other avenues too. India has a large growth opportunity in natural produce sectors—food, fruits, vegetables, dairy, poultry and fish. Rural and urban economies support each other through natural produce supply chains
• Natural produce enterprises can generate jobs around the country
• India has enormous and diverse assets of natural beauty, heritage and culture, spread across all its states
• Therefore, another sector where India has huge, insufficiently tapped potential for widespread generation of livelihoods is tourism and hospitality
• Some other sectors with large potential for more enterprises and sources of livelihoods around the country are healthcare, renewable energy, water and sanitation

Conclusion

Since jobs emerge from a healthy jobs ecosystem and cannot be sprinkled into the economy from above, many stakeholder groups must participate in systematic processes at the Central, state and city levels for finding and implementing solutions together

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