Indian Economy and Government current

1. PRADHAN MANTRI AAWAS YOJNA
(PMAY)

2. PMAY
 Earlier known as “Housing for all”. It aimed at
providing housing to 20 million people.
 00-01-02 is now 00-03-06
 While families with an annual income of Rs.3 lakh
can avail of economically weaker section (EWS)
housing as compared with Rs.1 lakh earlier, the
ceiling for low-income group (LIG) housing has
been raised to Rs.3-6 lakh from Rs.1-2 lakh.

3. OBJECTIVE
 (i) Rehabilitation of slum dwellers with
participation of private developers using
land as a resource;
 (ii) promotion of affordable housing for
weaker section through credit linked
subsidy;
 (iii) affordable housing in partnership with
public and private sectors;
 (iv) subsidy for beneficiary-led individual
house construction.

4. It will cover 4,041 statutory
towns—places with a
municipality, corporation,
cantonment board or notified
town area committee.
Initially focus on 500 class I cities
(those with a population of more
than 100,000).

5. Land as a resource: A win win situation
for all
 Tightly crowded dwellings, with minimal
access pathways and
 No common recreation space
If the space is not left, It would create
more density and more families are
worse off.

6.  Weaker Section Subsidy: For loans up to
Rs 6 lakh, PMAY offers a subsidy of 6.5% in
the interest rate for a tenure of 15 years.
 Why Subsidize from govt coffers? Use
Cross Subsidy. The same locality can be
priced differently.
 Govt should spend more on transportation
or peri urban areas.

7. Affordable Housing in
Partnership: a subsidy of Rs
1.5 lakh per EWS house
35% of the houses must be
of EWS category

8. Beneficiary-led Individual House
Construction: It applies to
individual houses,
Beneficiaries must first be part of
their city’s Housing for All Plan of
Action
Entitle only for owner with titles.

9. PMAY proposes to set up a technology
sub-mission to look into technologies
and materials for faster and better
quality construction.
The focus on innovative technologies,
green buildings and use of
earthquake-resistant technologies.

10. NEED FOR
Opening up new peri-urban areas to
connect them by high-speed transit to
the rest of the city.
New Low Cost Rental Housing Policy
where tax benefits can be provided to
low cost housing developers.
Need to revise the Floor Space Index
on rational basis.

11. HYDROCARBONS EXPLORATION
LICENSING POLICY (HELP)
By: Harveer Singh

12. EARLIER
 New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP)
introduced in 1997-98.
 Aim was to provide an equal platform to both
Public and Private sector companies
 Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) as a
nodal agency for its implementation.
 It had various rounds under which various blocks
were auctioned off on the basis of Profit sharing
model.

13. NELP LED TO
Administrative inconvenience
Gold Plating of the Cost
Disputes
Low Production and
Exploration

14.  GOI Approved the Hydrocarbon Exploration and
Licensing Policy (HELP) in March 2016.
 Four main facets of this policy are:
 Uniform license for exploration and production of all
forms of hydrocarbon,
 Open acreage policy,
 Easy to administer revenue sharing model and
 Marketing and pricing freedom for the crude oil and
natural gas produced.

15. POLICY HAS
Revenue Sharing Mechanism
The uniform licence: explore
conventional as well as
unconventional oil and gas resources
including CBM, shale gas/oil, tight gas
and gas hydrates under a single
license.
Open Acreage Policy

16. POSSIBLE BENEFITS
bring substantial investment
Easy and Transparent
Easy to Administer
Would lead to more exploration
 lower royalty rates
 royalty rates decreases from shallow
water to deepwater and ultra-deep water.
 cess and import duty will not be
applicable

17. WTO NAIROBI

18. THE DOHA MANDATES
 Agriculture,
 Market access for industrial goods (called “non-
agricultural market access” or NAMA),
 Services,
 Rules in areas of anti-dumping, subsidies and
countervailing measures, regional trade
agreements, environment, developmental issues,
 Special incentives for the poorest countries.
 Outcomes in all these areas are premised on a
single undertaking implying that nothing is agreed
until everything is agreed.

19. SINGAPORE “NEW” ISSUES
 (Investment, competition policy, government
procurement and trade facilitation).
 Trade Facilitation was dropped from the Doha agenda
at the fifth ministerial conference in Cancun, Mexico, in
2003.
 Same trade facilitation was later put back on the agenda
in July 2004 on the promise that the developing
countries will be provided enhanced special and
differential treatment flexibilities and would have to make
less-than-full reciprocity commitments.
 TFA became primus inter pares.
 (TFA) was concluded at the WTO’s ninth ministerial
conference in Bali, Indonesia (2013).

20. the Bali ministerial declaration
mandated members to negotiate
binding decisions on not only the nine
best-endeavour outcomes but the
remaining issues, including trade
distorting domestic subsidies in
agriculture, by the 10th ministerial
conference.

21. NAIROBI MINISTERIAL DECLARATION (10TH
MINISTERIAL)
 special safeguard mechanism (SSM) for developing
country members (for protection against sudden
imports),
 public stockholding programmes for food security,
and export competition, and cotton in agriculture;
preferential
 rules of origin for least-developed countries (LDCs)
and implementation of preferential treatment in
favour of services
 LDCparticipation in
 services trade.

22. THREE DECISIONS UNDER THE
REGULAR WORK OF THE GENERAL COUNCIL
Work program on small
economies,”
TRIPS [trade-related aspects of
intellectual property rights] and
situation complaints
Work program on electronic
commerce.

23. CHALLENGES FOR WTO
 The organisation back into the hegemonic
grip of the trans-Atlantic powers
 Significant issue in agriculture and Services
not addressed.
 Need to work on inclusionary issues:
Agriculture, LDC, Market Access,
Permanent solution on Food Stockholding
etc.

24.  World trade growth is sub 3% in last 5
years.
 Balancing the worrying Rise of
Protectionism and Overcapacity of some
countries (China Steel Dumping).
 Need to work on NEW Issues: Clean Energy
and Green Life related Technology.
 Trade Facilitation agreement in Services.

25. YUAN AS ELITE CURRENCY

26. SDR
 IMF’s elite reserve currency basket that is
Special Drawing Rights (SDR) includes
 US Dollar
 Euro
 Japanese Yen
 British Pound
 SDR is a part of Forex of countries to
diversify the risk associated with one
currency.

27.  Yuan also known as the Chinese
Renminbi (RMB).
 IMF’ s executive board after a 5 yearly
review concluded the high importance of
Renmimbi in the global trading and financial
systems.
 It fits the Export Criterion and Freely Usable
Currency Criteria.

28. IMPLICATIONS
 The inclusion of the RMB will enhance the
attractiveness of the SDR by diversifying the
basket and making it more representative of the
world’ s major currencies.
 Big political victory for China as Yuan’ s desirability
as a reserve currency for investors will increase.
 It will also undermine the hegemony of the dollar as
a global reserve currency .
 Integration of the Chinese economy into the
global financial system.

29. ROAD RATIONING

30. Air pollution claims at least
10,000-30,000 lives a year
in Delhi.
Air pollution is one of the
top 10 killers in the world
and the fifth leading cause
of death in India.

31.  2007 by Lucas Davis of the University of Michigan
concluded: “Across pollutants and specifications
there is no evidence that the program has improved
air quality. The policy has caused a relative
increase in air pollution during weekends and
weekday hours when the restrictions are not in
place, but there is no evidence of an absolute
improvement in air quality during any period of the
week for any pollutant.”

32. MEXICO
City residents began to buy
extra cars with convenient
number plates, mostly Old.
Shift from Cars to Taxis, not to
Metros.
After 2 months of application,
Petrol Sales went Up

33. THINK ABOUT
 Parking v/s Traffic
 Interstate Vehicle Transport/ Registration of Cars
elsewhere
 the frequency and network of Public Transport
 pedestrian infrastructure
 Sideways, Crossings, Lighting , Safety etc

34. OXFAM REPORT

35. RIFTS OF THE WORLD
Informed public and mass
populations ( Edelman’s Trust
Barometer)
Developing and Developed
countries.
Poors and the Rich
Shia and Sunni in Arab

36. 62 people own same wealth as bottom
half of the world.
Richest 1% own more than what other
99% own.
The Wealth of the richest 62 people
risen by 44% in last five years since
2010.
 Means an increase if half a trillion dollar

37. Wealth of bottom half fell by
around Tn Dollars.
Average annual income of the
poorest 10% had risen by just
$3 each year for last 25 years
of prosperity.

38. THE WEALTHY FEW
Year No. of people
whose wealth is =
bottom half
2010 388
2011 177
2012 159
2013 92
2014 80
2015 62

39. WHAT LEADERS MUST DO
Pay workers living wage and close
the gap with executive rewards.
Promote Women’s Economic
Equality and Women rights
The system of Medicine pricing
should be changed

40. Use Progressive public spending.
Develop a global approach to end
the era of tax havens.
$7.6 Tn of Individual wealth is
held offshore. (Global Spider Web
of Tax protection)

41. SHYAMA PRASAD MUKHERJI
RURBAN MISSION

42.  Mission Aims at development of rural growth
clusters which have latent potential for growth
 to drive economic, social and infrastructure
development in rural areas.
 The clusters will be geographically contiguous
Gram Panchayats with a population of about 25000
to 50000 in plain and coastal areas and a
population of 5000 to 15000 in desert, hilly or tribal
areas.

43.  These clusters would be developed by provisioning
of economic activities, developing skills & local
entrepreneurship and providing infrastructure
amenities, i.e. a cluster of Smart Villages.
 The mission aims to create 300 such Rurban
growth clusters by 2019-20, across the country.
 The government allocated 5142.08 crores for this
mission.

44.  the demography, economy, tourism and
pilgrimage significance and transportation
corridor impact would be considered .
 The funding for Rurban Clusters will be through
various schemes of the Government converged into
the cluster. The SPMRM will provide an additional
funding support of upto 30 percent of the project
cost per cluster as Critical Gap Funding (CGF) as
Central Share to enable development of such
Rurban clusters.

45. 14 COMPONENTS
 Skill development training linked to economic
activities, Agro Processing/Agri Services/Storage
and Warehousing, Digital Literacy, Sanitation,
Provision of piped water supply, Solid and liquid
waste management, Village streets and drains,
Street lights, Fully equipped mobile health unit,
Upgrading school /higher education facilities, Inter-
village road connectivity, Citizen Service Centres-
for electronic delivery of citizen centric services/e-
gram connectivity, Public transport., LPG gas
connections.