Daily Mains Practice Questions 24-01-2023

1) KEY POINTS

·        India has emerged as the second-largest start-up hub globally and has achieved spectacular growth in a short period.

·        Further, the emergence of India in the global economic scenario has created more opportunities for start-ups.

·        The sector where technology adoption was most apparent was insurance, which saw the shift towards hyper-personalised products, digital on-boarding.

·        Though start-ups have good opportunities, the challenges in the financial sector and the regulatory framework are posing roadblocks to the growth of start-ups.

·        The synchronous tightening of monetary policy by the central banks of major nations led to a global liquidity squeeze, which, coupled with other global incidents such as the Russia-Ukraine war.

·        The top three sectors that received the maximum funding were alternative lending, genomics, and payments.

·        There are certain expectations from the Union Budget 2023 for start-ups. First, there needs to be a reduction in the compliance burden on start-ups to promote ease of doing business. Furthermore, reforms are needed in the capital gains taxation of start-ups.

·        Also, the weighted deduction for employment generation should be considered. Moreover, taxation for ESOPs should happen at the time of sale and not before that. These changes will help start-ups flourish in the future.

2) KEY POINTS

·        The Central Government recently announced an incentive scheme for promotion of RuPay debit cards and low-value BHIM-UPI transactions (person-to-merchant) for the current FY 2022-23.

·        Physical currency not only continues to be relevant, but the demand is also growing as the cash-GDP ratio shows.

·        India’s shadow economy  production of and trade in goods and services that are deliberately concealed from public authorities — requires cash to survive and prosper.

·        World Bank reveal that we still have an unbanked adult population of 22 per cent and only 35 per cent of adults used their accounts to make or receive a digital payment in 2021.

·        Real estate deals are difficult to cut without cash. A survey recently conducted by LocalCircles, a community social media platform, revealed that property transactions were the top area of cash usage.

·        The culture of cash has deep roots in India and tax avoidance became a habit among its wealthiest and well-off chiefly because of the steeply progressive tax rates in the earlier decades.

·        Habits like hiding income from the government to avoid paying taxes change slowly. Worse still, it may not change given the direct tax rates and the compliance burden imposed by GST.

3) KEY POINTS

·        Ask any industry  and they will agree that collaborations happened in the past too, but they were not highlighted.

·        For example, almost 20-30 years back ONGC employed a technical consultant for its most successful asset Mumbai High, but it wasn’t talked about much.

·        For example rapid digitisation is taking place and Indian companies are quick to adopt it through collaborations.

·        For coping with energy transition, collaboration is the accepted norm. Collaboration also works in situations like what is happening at present with Russia.

·        It works for India too as lot of new refineries are going on stream in the Middle East, thus there will be enough diesel available.

·        India has to compete. It can sell some diesel in the Mediterranean market. In Europe things are changing very fast and the shift to EV will be done by 2030.

·        India is one of the countries with which the West is engaging to conclude a partnership on energy transition this year during the country’s G20 Presidency.

·        While all these sound good on paper, the key is implementation and this can happen only if a focussed approach is adopted.

·        In some cases the governments need to take the initiative, but in most cases it is purely commercial – company to company. So, a lot depends upon the strategy of the companies.

Q. 2

Q. 1

Q 1

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