Table of Contents
Debate, questions, but no answers
• No confidence motion did not lead to concrete answers from PM
• Government has given up on reforms and gone back to the days of a dirigiste* economy.
• The government seems to have discovered the virtues of control, import substitution, price control, quantitative restrictions, non-tariff barriers, retrospective taxation, and punitive laws.
**Dirigiste – relating to a system in which a government has a lot of control over a country’s economy
• The Index of Industrial Production was a low 2.6 % between December 2016 and October 2017.
• In March, April and May, the growth rate faltered again — 4.6 per cent, 4.8 per cent , and 3.2 per cent, respectively.
• The slowdown is primarily in manufacturing.
• Growth in bank credit to industry has been about 1 per cent in most
months, and sometimes even going into negative territory.
• The worst sufferers of credit denial are the small and medium enterprises.
• In March 2018, the NPA ratio of banks had climbed to 11.6 per cent of their advances, up from 10.2 per cent in September 2017.
• The Centre for Monitoring of Indian Economy reported that the number of persons employed in 2017-18 was 406.2 million — lower than the 406.7 million employed in 2016-17
• Wholesale inflation in June was 5.8 per cent, the highest in more than four and a half years.
• Economic survey – real agricultural incomes have been stagnant since
2014.
• The current account deficit climbed to 1.87 per cent in 2017-18, which is the highest since 2012-13, and is poised to cross 2 per cent in 2018-19.
• The rupee has been in a free fall, going from Rs 64.50 to a dollar on June 23 to Rs 69.05 on 24 July.
• The government will struggle to meet the fiscal deficit target of 3.3 percent in 2018-19.
• Demonetisation, poor implementation of the GST, and tax terrorism.
Lahore — This way to Islamabad
PUNJAB – 297 seats
PML-N 129
PTI 123
SINDH – 130 seats
PPP 76
PTI 23
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa- 97 seats
PTI – 66
Balochistan – 65 seats
BAP 13
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal 9
Independents 5
BNP 5
PTI 4
Taliban Khan or Imran Khan?
Narendra Modi’s hand of friendship has been as firmly slapped away by the military men next door. Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s approach for peace was wasted similarly when he travelled across the Wagah border in that gilded bus in the winter of 1999.
• Imran Khan had a playboy image earlier
• Under the influence of his third wife – Bushra Manika – he has turned very
religious
• In militant Islamist tones he speaks against America, feminism,
westernisation and the global war on terrorism.
• Relations with India – shall be handled by army and not Imran Khan
All roads to India may lead through Pak army
• Pakistan army has actively manipulated the 2018 elections, in connivance
with the judiciary and by controlling the media.
• Imran is unlikely to even attempt reconciliation with India – like Nawaz
Sharif did.
• The diplomats and politicians would be completely subservient to the
generals, be it the issue of Kashmir or of any other peace initiative with
India.
• The obvious temptation in India would be to open direct channels with the
Pakistan army , something India was unwilling to do till now.
• The unexpected level of popular support across Pakistan may lead to
Imran asserting his independence from the generals on the India front
• Elections in India in 2019 – window of opportunity is closing fast
Lynch State
• Lynching is a Hindi belt problem.
• It is to do with the feeling among many Hindus that a BJP government in the state is an open invitation to beat up and/or kill Muslims.
• Social media helps recruit an instant mob, who get their thrills from beating up Muslim men.
• We have perfectly adequate laws in the IPC to deal with the problem.
• It is not the lack of laws but a lack of will to enforce the law which is the issue
• State-level policing has been a scandal for decades – favouritism, criminals protected, impunity for MLAs/MPs
• Broken judiciary at the local levels
• The State does not function to maintain law and order in an impartial way.
• Centre issuing an advisory or passing a law. – ineffective
• The challenge is to restore good governance, making police independent of local political authority, rebuilding the judiciary at the local level, to reinvent the local State.
Physician on the frontline
• Out Patient Opioid Assisted Treatment (OOAT) Clinics by Punjab Govt in all CHCs
• Trained medical staff to treat the heroine and opium addicts on daily basis without getting admitted to the hospital.
• Counselling would also be provided to the addicts to sensitise them of the draw backs of the addiction
• Online tracking of patients suffering from drug addiction in OOAT clinics has already been implemented on the basis of Unique Identification Number (UID) number which is provided to every patient.
• The centres are understaffed – huge patient inflow
• Over 17,000 patients who registered for the OOAT programme since its launch last year, 12,000 were in June and July alone.
• 93 clinics are functional in the state.
• “Some say they take up to 80 tablets of Tramadol a day. It leaves me numb because a normal person can’t withstand more than one or two tablets… and here they talk of 80 to 100 tablets”
• The centres see fewer women patients because of the social stigma attached to admitting to drug use.
Catching the sun at Bhadla solar park
• Bhadla Solar Park is one of the largest solar parks in India which is spread over a total area of 10,000 acres (~45 square km) in Bhadla, Phalodi tehsil, Jodhpur district, Rajasthan
• The park is proposed to have a capacity of 2,255 MW.
• The region has been described as “almost unliveable” due its climate. (48 C)
• Large solar parks are designed to evoke the wonderment that dams and huge power plants did in the 1960s and 1970s.
• From the middle of one of the blocks, all that the eye can see in every direction are gleaming silicon surfaces of solar panels.
Bhadla is about 200 km north of Jodhpur and about 320 km west of Jaipur.
• Lowest bids for Phase 3 and 4 of the park – Rs.2.44 and 2.6per kWh
• 30 per cent of the workforce, especially those involved in construction, come from neighbouring villages.
• solar parks are not particularly labour-intensive. They are relatively simple in design as well. Of all the different means of power generation, solar parks are probably the least complicated to
operate.
• The per unit price of solar generated electricity used to be close to Rs 15 while thermal plants were able to sell power for between Rs 3 and Rs 6 per unit.
• The state government had already installed power evacuation infrastructure – transmission lines, transformers to carry power to the grid.
• Biggest factor was availability of land – large amounts of government-owned barren land that was ideal for the development of solar energy
• Availability of radiation throughout the year
• The Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission, also known as National Solar Mission, is one of the eight key National Missions which comprise India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC).
• NAPCC was launched on 30th June 2008 which identified development of solar energy technologies in the country as a National Mission.
• The mission was approved on January 11, 2010 by the government.
• The Mission has set the ambitious target of deploying 20,000 MW of grid
connected solar power by 2022, which was revised to 1,00,000 MW by
2022 during June 2015.
• 40 GW Rooftop and 60 GW through Large and Medium Scale Grid Connected Solar Power Projects.
• India has achieved 20 GW (giga watt) cumulative solar capacity in 2018,
achieving the milestone four years ahead of the target for 2022
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