Daily PIB Analysis For UPSC/IAS | Free PDF Download- 22nd+23rd October 2018 -

Table of Contents

USA-India

- President Trump’s administration is rewriting rules for the H1B guest worker visas.
- H1B programme provided US entry and jobs to professionals from across the world.
- It inadvertently also paved way for more than a million Indian students and skilled professionals to eventually become US citizens, even though it was not meant for that purpose when introduced in 1990.
- Norms are also being changed for spouses of H1B visa holders on dependent H4 visas.
- Their work authorisation permit, granted in 2015 under former President Barack Obama, is being spiked by Trump administration, leaving an estimated 1,00,000 Indian H4 spouses in the lurch.
- The administration is also considering tightening provisions authorising international student stay in the US.
- It wants to restrict the F1 student visa for a course-specific time period, with a designated departure date that would compel them to leave the country after they finish college.
- India sends the 2 nd largest contingent of students to the US after China, and many of the 1,86,000 Indian students currently in America intend to eventually join the workforce en route to permanent US residency and citizenship.
- The charitable explanation for all these moves is the Trump dispensation wants to curb misuse of H1B visas and curtail student overstays.
- A more reasoned reading is that such steps are in keeping with Trump’s ‘America First’ pledge and the promise that American workers will have first dibs at American jobs.
- It is aimed at maintaining the primacy of nativist white population that will otherwise be overrun by the inevitable browning of America by hungry and hardworking immigrants.
- New Delhi has said it is engaging closely with Trump administration over measures that affect professionals and students from India more than from any other country – simply by virtue of its huge population and the nature of a large workforce that goes legally to America.
- New Delhi should open negotiations for a passage for its skilled workforce that otherwise stultifies at home for lack of opportunity, using facts, data and the argument that Indian immigration is a winwin for both countries.
- Back when it was introduced in 1990, it was meant to address worker shortages in the US in specialty areas such as computer engineering and software services.
- Over the next decades, Indians snagged more than 50% of the 65,000 (and later 85,000) H1B visas granted annually on an extendable 3+3 year basis.
- Having mandatorily paid social security taxes many Indian professionals – more than a million by some estimates –are on track to become permanent residents, and later, citizens.
- Many remain in limbo because of a per country limit that enjoins that no more than 7% of green cards (which allow permanent residency) may be issued to natives of any one country in a fiscal year.
- This puts Indians, whose potential immigrant contingent is large, at a disadvantage.
- Still, many Indians stay on in the US regardless because the United States provides a good ecosystem for professional success.
- Indians in the US, even those in green card limbo, are acknowledged to be the most dynamic ethnic group in the US – model immigrants.
- Surveys show they have the highest education attainments and income levels of all immigrants, including white, nativist Americans – who in fact turn out to be relatively poorly-educated and low-income.
- Indians who graduate from being students and guest workers to immigrants to US citizens have contributed heftily in terms of taxes, enterprise, innovation and job creation – all to the betterment of the United States.

Exporting its services through movement of natural persons, part of the WTO’s General Agreement of Trade in Services, should be as much a priority as exporting goods.
Much of this has been stymied by Washington with its insistence on broadbasing (and now narrowing) its immigrant human capital, which effectively discriminates against large population countries such as India.
In India too, critics of immigration who often taunt those heading to greener shores need to realise that increasing India’s global workforce, not just in the US but also in other countries with low population density, low birth rates, and adverse demographics, adds to New Delhi’s global heft.
Financial remittance and benefit aside, immigration is what puts internationalist Indians in plum positions, such as the CXOs of multinationals and leaders of multilateral organisations, besides setting the improbable scenario of a Nikki Haley vs Kamala Harris presidential election faceoff in 2024.

Stubble Burning

Burning crop stubble leads to release of harmful pollutants into the atmosphere, including particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micron across.
The governments of Punjab and Haryana, besides the Centre, must take coordinated steps that go beyond preaching.
Making Happy Seeders—machines that cut and lift the crop stubble, sow the wheat and deposit the straw over the sown area as mulch—available is the main task.
Strategy:Carrot and Sticks
The severest of graded penalties should escalate to nonprocurement from areas where farmers burn stubble.
Farmers resort to burning the stubble as it is easy and the costs are low.
Also, they detest paying an additional charge for hiring combine harvesters to remove the stubble.
However, the ancillary costs are significant, given that stubble burning makes the soil less fertile and pushes farmers into using more fertilisers, water and power for the same area.
The need is for governments to create better awareness and also price these inputs appropriately so that farmers internalise some of the cost of burning crop stubble.
The additional funds required for providing incentives should be recovered, at least in part, from the increased cost of inputs, whose use goes up with burning crop residue.
Let startups create a business model in which they take money from the government for every hectare of wheat sown using a Happy Seeder.
If farmers still refuse to make use of available alternatives to crop burning, penalties should kick in.

Election Commission of India

The full Election Commission of India led by Chief Election Commissioner O P Rawat held a meeting with representatives of political parties in Hyderabad today to review preparedness for the upcoming Telangana Assembly elections.
It held separate meetings with the representatives of all recognised political parties, including BJP, BSP, CPI, CPI(M), Congress, MIM, TDP and TRS.
The 11-member high level team, including Election Commissioners Sunil Arora and Ashok Lavasa, reached Hyderabad this evening on a three day visit to the state.
Telangana is scheduled to go to polls on the 7th December.
The high level team will be in Hyderabad for next three days and review the poll preparedness like deployment of personnel, measures to ensure fair elections, and relevant training to the poll personnel.

Delhi Petrol Pump Strike

Around 400 petrol pumps and CNG dispensing units remained shut in the national capital today in protest against the Delhi government’s refusal to reduce VAT on fuels.
The Delhi Petrol Dealers Association said, the pumps will remain closed till 5 AM tomorrow.
Last month, the central government slashed the rate of petrol and diesel by 2 rupees and 50 paise per litre each. This was followed by reduction of VAT by various states, including Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.
However, the Delhi government refused to reduce VAT. As a result, fuel became more expensive in Delhi than in the two bordering states.
Hitting out at Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for not reducing tax on fuel, Delhi BJP President Manoj Tiwari said, 100 out of 400 petrol pumps in the city are on the verge of closure as customers have started buying fuel from neighboring states.

CBDT

The number of Income Tax returns filed in the last 4 financial years has registered a growth of over 80 per cent.
The number was 3.79 crore in the financial year 2013-14, which has increased to 6.85 crore in 2017-18.
According to direct tax statistics released by the CBDT today, the number of taxpayers showing income above 1 crore rupees has also registered a sharp increase of 60% in four years.
The CBDT said, there has been a constant growth in direct tax-GDP ratio over the last three years.
The ratio of 5.98 percent in the financial year 2017-18 is the best direct tax GDP ratio in the last 10 years.
More or less this reflects that the Indian economy is strengthening day by day, though there are still worries that the ratio of tax to GDP is still 5.98 per cent in 2017-18, its mean we still have a long way to go. The average ratio of OECD countries are usually about 9 per cent similarly we have to, in that case, look to try and see where untapped income can be taxed.

MEA

India and Croatia signed two agreements to strengthen cultural and diplomatic cooperation between the two countries.
The agreements were signed after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj met Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Croatia Marija Pejčinović Burić in New Delhi this afternoon.
Both leaders discussed ways to step up cooperation in trade and investment, health, science and technology, education, tourism and culture.
Minister Burić reiterated Croatia’s support for India’s accession to the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

Both sides affirmed their commitment to fight the scourge of terrorism, its financing and safe havens.

New Delhi has asked Islamabad to stop supporting and glorifying terrorists and terror activities against India and its other neighbours.
India has termed Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s remark about the situation in Kashmir as deeply regrettable.
External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said, instead of making comments on India’s internal affairs, Pakistan leadership should look inwards and address its own issues.
Mr. Kumar said, Pakistan should serve the interest of the people of the region by taking credible action against all kind of support to terrorism and terror infrastructure from all territories under its control.
He also said, Pakistan’s deceitful stand on dialogue, while supporting terror and violence, stands exposed to the whole world.
India has taken a lead over other nations in delivering equipment to France for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) research project which is aimed at generating energy through nuclear fusion.
ITER-India project director Sirish Deshpande, on the sidelines of an event in Gandhinagar said, of the total shipping load delivered so far, almost 40 per cent of load has been delivered from India.
35 nations are collaborating in southern France, to build the world’s largest tokamak, a magnetic fusion device designed to prove the feasibility of fusion energy based on the same principle that powers our Sun and stars.
The experimental campaign at ITER is crucial for the fusion power plants of tomorrow. Thousands of engineers and scientists have contributed to the design of ITER since the idea launched in 1985.
India, China, Japan, Korea, Russia, US and the EU are the member countries engaged in a 35-year collaboration to build and operate the experimental device.