The Hindu Editorial Analysis | 11th March’20 | PDF Download

Market mayhem

• S&P BSE Sensex in terms of points, suffered its worst single-day fall: 1,942 points or 5.2%
• Global market rout induced by an oil price plunge
• Investors are looking to exit equities for now with whatever gains they can muster, or worse in a bid to cut their losses.
• FII have turned net sellers of their Indian equity holdings Widening coronavirus outbreak threatens to push the world into its worst downturn since the 2008 financial crisis
• Any failure to expedite the resolution at Yes Bank runs the risk of undermining wider banking sector stability.
• U.S. Federal Reserve last week made an emergency cut in its benchmark interest rate.
• The RBI and the Centre should take measures to ensure adequate liquidity to help bolster sentiment

Scoring low

• Irony founder-leader of the International Solar Alliance has not yet electrified a significant number of government schools.
•  Report: Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resource Development
• Data for 2017-18
•  Only 56.45% of government schools had electricity
•  56.98% a playground
• Almost 40% lacked a boundary wall
• UP: almost 70% of schools lacked electricity
• Insights from the district information database as of end-2019
•  Neglect of toilet construction for divyangs
•  Failure to build toilets for girls in a third of secondary schools
• Failure to build laboratories for higher secondary science students
•  Mission-mode approach to school infrastructure
• Solar power can be installed in schools and toilets built for all students in 100 days.
•  Community participation can make sure that the objectives are satisfactorily met.
•  Find attached playgrounds for kids
•  A public school system that guarantees universal access, good learning and all facilities has to be among the highest national priorities.

India needs all hands on deck

•  On February 6, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognised the Pune-based National Institute of Virology (NIV) as one of the 15 laboratories that would provide reference testing support for the novel coronavirus.
• COVID-19 cases remained constant at three for nearly a month in India, but now it is going up steadily.
• Anticipating such a scenario, more labs are screening COVID-19 samples now.
• Besides the 52 labs belonging to the Viral Research and Diagnostic Laboratories network of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), 10 labs under the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) have been included for testing COVID-19 samples.
•  Till recently, all the 52 labs were allowed to only screen samples; only NIV was authorised to confirm positive cases.
• NIV is the only lab in India which has a bio-safety level-4 (BSL-4) facility to culture pathogenic, novel viruses, study the origin of such viruses and provide a comprehensive characterisation of them by sequencing the entire viral genome.
• When the entire genome is sequenced it helps researchers understand the arrangement of the four chemical entities or bases that make up the DNA or RNA.
•  Sequencing the genome of SARS-CoV-2 will help us understand where the virus came from and how it spread.
• About a dozen labs have a BSL-3 facility to inactivate the virus and sequence the genome using advanced equipment.
•  They also have the expertise to undertake such work
• China was completely unprepared when the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) struck in 2002-2003.
•  The outbreak infected over 8,000 people globally and killed nearly 800.
•  The bird flu (H5N1) outbreak that followed in 2003 underscored the need for influenza detection and response in China.
• This led to a collaboration between the Chinese National Influenza Center and the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2004 to build capacity in influenza surveillance in China.
•  For the next 10 years the collaboration worked in many ways: it led to developed
• human technical expertise in virology and epidemiology
•  a comprehensive influenza surveillance system
• strengthened analysis
• the dissemination of surveillance data
•  improved early response to influenza viruses with pandemic potential
• By 2014, the national influenza surveillance and response system included 408 labs and 554 sentinel hospitals.

 A  progressive system of taxation

• As a concept, ‘dividend’ has been in existence since the inception of the Income Tax Act.
• Any shareholder in a company is entitled to dividend as a return on investment.
•  Dividend covers various elements of payouts from a company and seeks to tax those at some stage.
• The question is: at what point should the dividend be taxed and how?
• The matter assumes significance since corporates pay tax on their profits and any tax on the distribution of post-tax profits amounts to double taxation.
•  The Finance Bill, 2020 has reverted to the classical system of taxing dividends (in the hands of the shareholders).
• The Bill seeks to withdraw the dividend distribution tax (DDT) payable by the company.
• Three methods of taxing dividend
• Classical system: the dividend was taxable in the hands of the shareholder, subject to the then available deduction under Section 80L for a maximum of ₹12,000.
•  Simplistic system or DDT regime: taxing dividend in the hands of the distributing company.
•  Some countries follow the imputation system.

NEWS

• Scindia meets Modi, quits Congress
•  COVID-19 cases surge in country  
• Fourteen more people have tested positive for COVID-19 — eight in Kerala and three each in Karnataka and Maharashtra
•  1,000 police personnel on alert in Coimbatore

•  Following fresh communal tension in Coimbatore on Tuesday, security has been stepped up with 1,000 police personnel along with Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel maintaining vigil in the textile city.
•  The vigil was mounted after the Hindu Munnani said in the morning that it suspected that a failed attempt was made to hurl a ‘petrol bomb’ at its head office in Kattoor in the city.
• IAF plane returns from Iran with 58 Indians  
• The Indian Air Force (IAF) C-17 Globemaster aircraft with Indians evacuated from COVID-19-hit Iran landed at Hindon Air Force Station on Tuesday morning.
•  Defence officials said 31 women, 25 men and two children were brought back. The aircraft also carried 529 samples for investigation.
• About 2,000 Indians are living in Iran, a country that has witnessed increasing numbers of coronavirus cases in the last few days.
•   The External Affairs Minister said the government was working on bringing back more Indians from Iran.
• Oil Marketing Companies cut petrol and diesel prices
•  The state-owned oil marketing companies (OMCs) have reduced the prices of petrol and diesel by 30 paise and 25 paise a litre respectively as international crude oil price fell.
• LPG scheme closed, but only 3 States have gone kerosene-free
• A parliamentary committee has said only three States and five Union Territories have become kerosene-free, though the government last September met the target of eight crore LPG connections under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana.
• The report of the Parliamentary Committee on Petroleum, which was tabled last week, points to the gap between the continuing use of kerosene and the claim of 97% LPG coverage nationwide.
• The committee is headed by BJP member Ramesh Bidhuri.

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