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• The Goods and Services Tax Council met last Saturday for the second time within a fortnight (पखवाडा).
• This time it refrained from further rate rejigs (बदलाव).
• GST positive points
1. expanded India’s tax base
2. brought more firms into the formal economy (औपचारिक अर्थव्यवस्र्ा)
• Challenges
1. revenues have slipped somewhat after peaking at
₹1.03 lakh crore in April 2018. 2. The first three months of this financial year
₹94,016 crore,
₹95,610 crore and
₹96,483 crore,respectively
₹1.lakh crore
• The steep rate cuts effected on several items in the last Council meeting were to kick in from July 27, so their full impact on revenue collections may take more time to unfold.
• Revenue loss from the most recent tax cuts may be 0.04-0.08% of GDP annually.
• This is marginal at best, and could be offset by stronger consumption-led growth and better tax compliance.
• Setting up a ministerial group to look into the problems faced by MSMEs
• Firms with an annual turnover of less than ₹5 crore constitute 93% of the registered taxpayers under the GST.
• Change: Returns filing quarterly.
• Push digital payments by offering a cash-back to consumers using RuPay cards or the UPI platform. The pilot project proposes 20% cash back on GST component of transactions.
Confrontation in Dhaka
• Trigger: Dangerous driving cost the lives of two students in the last week of July — they were run over by a bus — which triggered mass rallies of students across the centre of the capital.
• The award-winning Bangladeshi photographer and activist, Shahidul Alam, documented the protests and also the violence with his camera.
• Far wider set of concerns: ‘the looting of banks, the gagging of the media, extrajudicial killings, disappearances, bribery, corruption’.
• The United Nations has said that it is “deeply concerned about the reports of violence” during the protests for road safety in Bangladesh and has appealed for calm.
– Contemplating (विचार करना) no Brexit
• As Brexit draws closer, there is growing desperation among the British.
• The Brexit process is proving to be emotionally and economically wrenching for the British.
• A second referendum
• Core: immigrants stealing jobs. True or false?
• A city like London cannot run for a day without them.
• For instance, the £8 billion sandwich industry, a home-grown mega success, runs mostly on East European labour.
• It has been a member of the European Economic Community and later the EU for a greater part of the post-Second World War period.
• If a key member like the U.K. should leave, one wonders how long the EU, not yet a state, will last.
• With great prescience Jawaharlal Nehru successfully cast India as a union (संघ) — not as a federation — of States with a strong Centre, enabling us to hold together.
– Jaitley to return to work soon
• The Finance Ministry said on Tuesday that Union Minister Arun Jaitley is expected to return as Finance Minister this month.
• “Preparations are under way for Mr. Jaitley’s return in August, but the exact date can’t be confirmed at the moment,” the Ministry spokesperson told The Hindu.
• Mr. Jaitley had undergone a kidney transplant surgery on May 14, following which he stayed at home. Piyush Goyal, Railway and Coal Minister, was given the additional charge of Finance.
• Mr. Jaitley has been active on social media during his bed rest, having written blogs on topics such as the GST, the no-confidence motion and the National Register of Citizens.
– Court pulls up NRC official, Registrar General of India
• Mr. Hajela and Mr. Sailesh gave comments to newspapers early this month about the manner, documents and modalities for hearing the claims and objections.
• In a specially convened hearing on Tuesday, a furious Supreme Court Bench threatened to send Assam National Register of Citizens (NRC) coordinator Prateek Hajela and Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India Sailesh to jail for contempt of court.
• The government is preparing a standard operating procedure (SOP) to deal with the claims and objections. It has to submit the SOP to the Bench for approval.
• The Bench had given the government time till the middle of August to frame the SOP and fixed August 16 to hear submissions on it.
SC slams Bihar on rapes at shelter home
• The Supreme Court on Tuesday slammed the Bihar government over the horror at a girls’ shelter home in Muzaffarpur, where many of the children were found to have been sexually abused over the years.
• “People pay taxes and their money is being used for these things?” Justice Lokur asked the Bihar government.
• The court observed that some of the funding from the State to the NGO, run by the politically connected accused Brajesh Thakur, dates back to 2013.
• The court issued a national ban on the media from publishing or displaying photographs of minor victims of sexual abuse even in blurred or morphed forms.
• Justice Lokur referred to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, which show that a woman is raped in India every six hours.
Major, 3 soldiers killed in J&K
• Four Army personnel — a Major and three soldiers — and two militants were killed in a gunfight as a large group of infiltrators tried to breach the Line of Control and enter the
Kashmir Valley in the Gurez Sector of Bandipora on Monday night.
• From top left) Major Kaustubh Prakash Kumar Rane and rifleman Hameer Singh, rifleman Mandeep Singh Rawat and grenadier Vikram Jeet Singh, who were killed in Gurez, north Kashmir, on Tuesday.
SC now has 3 women judges
• With the swearing-in of Justice Indira Banerjee, the Supreme Court on Tuesday, for the first time in its history, has three sitting women judges.
• Justice Banerjee was sworn in by Chief Justice Dipak Misra along with Justices Vineet Saran and K.M. Joseph.
• The two other women judges are Justices R. Banumathi and Indu Malhotra, the first Supreme Court woman judge who was directly appointed from the Bar.
• Justice Banerjee is the eighth woman judge in the Supreme Court since Independence. Among the three sitting women judges, Justice Banumathi is the seniormost.
Government introduces 4 GST amendment Bills
• The government on Tuesday introduced four Bills seeking to amend the Goods and Services Tax (GST) laws that will make return forms simpler and raise the turnover threshold for availing composition scheme to ₹1.5 crore.
• Finance Minister Piyush Goyal said the amendment Bills — the Central GST (Amendment) Bill, the Integrated GST (Amendment) Bill, the GST (Compensation to States) Amendment Bill and the Union Territory GST (Amendment) Bill — were primarily aimed at helping the MSME sector and small traders.
• Mr. Goyal said the threshold for composition scheme was being raised from ₹1 crore to ₹1.5 crore.
Railways’ focus misplaced: CAG
• The focus of Railways’ modernisation plans for its stations is mainly on improving the façade and passenger facilities, rather that removing bottlenecks to ensure timely movement of trains.
• The latter should be one of the most important parameters to judge the quality of service being provided to the passengers, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has said in its report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday.
• Of the 2,436 trains handled by the 15 stations as of March last year, 638 are being run with 24 or more coaches every day. To accommodate these longer train rakes, there should be platform of adequate length and adequate facilities of stabling and washing pit lines, it said.
Trump warns world against doing business with Iran
• U.S. President Donald Trump warned countries against doing business with Iran on Tuesday as he hailed the “most biting sanctions ever imposed” , triggering a mix of anger, fear and defiance in .
• “Anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States. I am asking for WORLD PEACE, nothing less.”
• Within hours of the sanctions taking effect, German automaker Daimler said it was halting its business activities in Iran.
• But the second tranche on November 5 covering Iran’s vital oil sector could be far more damaging — even if several key customers such as China, India and Turkey have refused to significantly cut their purchases.
• “They want to launch psychological warfare against the Iranian nation,” Mr. Rouhani said. “Negotiations with sanctions doesn’t make sense.”
Banks take about ₹70,000-cr. hit due to frauds in last 3 years
• Indian banks reported a total loss of about ₹70,000 crore due to frauds during the last three fiscals up to March 2018, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Tuesday.
• The extent of loss in fraud cases reported by scheduled commercial banks (SCBs) for 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18 was ₹16,409 crore, ₹16,652 crore and ₹36,694 crore, respectively, Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla said in a written reply quoting RBI data.
• On stressed assets, he said the spurt was due to aggressive lending practices, wilful default, loan frauds, corruption in some cases and economic slowdown.
• Mr. Shukla said the RBI had issued directions to banks in June 2017, instructing them to file applications for initiation of corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP) under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) in respect of 12 borrowers.
‘Govt. to fill top posts in PSBs soon’
• The government will expedite the process of appointing the chiefs of several public sector banks
• PM-in-waiting quizzed by Pakistan anti-graft body
• Tokyo 2020 to deploy facial recognition
• Planet at risk of becoming a ‘hothouse’
• The world is at risk of entering “hothouse” conditions where global average temperatures will be 4-5 degrees Celsius higher even if emissions reduction targets under a global climate deal are met, scientists warned this week.
• Scientists from the Stockholm Resilience Center, the University of Copenhagen, Australian National University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said it is likely that if a critical threshold is crossed, several tipping points will lead to abrupt change.
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