CURRENT AFFAIRS
31 January 2021
NATIONAL NEWS:
A) India running world’s biggest COVID-19 vaccination programme: Modi on Mann ki Baat.
The country was very unhappy and disappointed to see the insult to the national flag, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his monthly radio programme, Mann ki Baat. Mr. Modi said Made-in-India vaccine has not only made India self-reliant (Atma Nirbhar) but also has filled us with self pride. He said that whenever he addressed the citizens via this programme, he felt like being present amidst the people, talking about little things in life. He spoke about Pongal, Bihu, Makar Sankranti, Republic Day celebrations, Padma Awards and good news from cricket. As he read messages from listeners in Uttar Pradesh and Madurai, Mr. Modi said that he gets messages from world leaders about India’s contribution. The stronger and more self sufficient India becomes, the more we can serve humanity, he said. The PM used the example of the message from the Brazilian President to illustrate how Ramayan has left a deep imprint in different parts of the world. The Prime Minister spoke about the initiative of ‘India 75’ for young writers. Details of this initiative will be on the Human Resource Ministry website. PM Modi also lauded an artiste from Midnapore and a young daughter from Odisha, Bhagyashree, for their innovative art and craft. He mentioned about a school in Jharkhand where the principal has converted walls of the school and villages as learning boards with paintings. He mentioned about how Chile, thousands of kms away, celebrates Indian tradition of yoga with over 30 institutes. Chile is celebrating November 4 as national Yoga Day. The PM spoke about a listener’s request about Road Safety week, mentioned interesting slogans used by Border Roads Organisation and asked people to send innovative slogans. Mr. Modi mentioned about the benefits of FasTag on highways.
B) Govt. will take every step to fulfil people’s expectations, says PM.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi termed the current Budget Session the first of this decade and an opportunity to fulfil the dreams of freedom fighters, even as 18 political parties announced a boycott of President Ram Nath Kovind’s address to both Houses of Parliament on the contentious agriculture reforms laws. The last year was also a year which saw not one but several mini-budget-like packages announced as we dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic, and this budget is to be seen as part of that series of mini-budgets presented by the government last year, said Mr. Modi, offering key hints on the Union budget to be presented on February 1. Mr. Modi added that the government would take every step to fulfil the expectations of the people and hoped that all members of Parliament would direct their energy to this goal. The Budget Session of Parliament will be held between January 29 and April 8, with a recess from February 15 to March 7. The continued protest by farmer unions on the three agriculture-related laws cleared by Parliament in the last Monsoon Session is expected to make this a stormy session.
C) BJP chief says Tamil Nadu has benefited a lot under the Modi government.
BJP national president J.P. Nadda on Saturday officially announced that the party would fight the ensuing Assembly election in Tamil Nadu with the ruling AIADMK. Kick-starting the party’s election campaign from Madurai, Mr. Nadda declared that the BJP had decided to go along with the AIADMK and other like-minded parties in the coming election. He said the AIADMK had regional aspirations, while also assimilating national ones. The Prime Minister has showed dynamic leadership quality in COVID-19 management, vaccination and security of the nation, he said. Stating that Tamil Nadu needed mainstreaming, he said it was possible only with the BJP. All issues faced by the State can be addressed by Mr. Modi. Mr. Nadda listed out various benefits Tamil Nadu enjoyed under the Modi government. With the right person in the right place, right decisions are being taken, he said. As against ₹94,540 crore given to Tamil Nadu by the UPA Government under the 13th Finance Commission, the Modi government gave ₹5.42 lakh crore for the development of the State under the 15th Finance Commission. The Centre has given funds for the development of the textile industry and the defence corridor, aimed at economic development. According to him, Tamil Nadu got a good share of funds under schemes like Swachh Bharat, Jan Dhan and PM’s Ujjwala scheme, meant to empower women and the common man. The needs of Tamil Nadu were taken care of through big projects like Metro rail, monorail, ₹20,000 crore investment in the Railways, 12 smart cities and AIIMS. Besides spending ₹1,200 crore on the AIIMS in Madurai, the Centre would be incurring a recurring annual expenditure of ₹2,000 crore on it, he said. A total of 100 medical students and 100 paramedical students will pass out every year from AIIMS, he said. The BJP leader said the DMK was against Tamil culture and was anti-national as it had rejected all national aspirations and did not support them.
D) China still ‘largest source of critical items’ for India.
China still remains the largest source of critical imports for India, from mobile phone components to pharmaceutical ingredients, and India is working on a multi-pronged strategy to reduce this reliance, which is a bigger concern than the imbalance in trade. The trade deficit is not in dollars, it is in overdependence, said Sanjay Chadha, Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, speaking at the All India Conference of China Studies (AICCS), organised by the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS) Delhi and Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M). A mobile phone requires 85% content coming from one country. If China were to stop the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for penicillin, we would not be able to produce it in this country. When somebody controls your production, that is a sentiment which raises concern. Mr. Chadha said that India was working on a multi-pronged strategy to reduce this dependence, ranging from the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme to boost domestic manufacturing, a global effort involving India’s foreign missions to find alternatives to China, and the use of free trade agreements (FTAs) with other trading partners. COVID-19 had helped accelerate this change. When production in China was hit early in 2020, although its economy would recover by the summer and become the only major economy to avoid contraction last year, India shared with its foreign missions lists of items critically dependent on China, following which the missions linked up with suppliers in their countries. Mr. Chadha, however, sounded a note of caution, suggesting this process was at the beginning, not the end. Mr. Chadha said this was not so much a China obsession as it is to try and make supply chains resilient, either by way of adding or diversify sources. China still remained the biggest source of India’s imports, but imports last year fell 10.8%, the lowest since 2016. Two-way trade in 2020 reached $87.6 billion, down by 5.6%, while the trade deficit declined to a five year-low of $45.8 billion.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
A) U.K. sees smooth vaccine supplies after EU addresses ‘mistake’
Gove said Johnson was very clear in the call to stress that the U.K. has contractual arrangements with pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca and Pfizer. The British government said Saturday that it does not expect any disruptions to its orders for coronavirus vaccines after the European Union emphasized it would not trigger an emergency provision of the Brexit deal as part of its strategy to monitor export of doses produced in the EU. Cabinet Minister Michael Gove said the government expects the vaccines to be supplied as planned after the EU addressed the mistake in its proposal to tighten export rules for COVID-19 vaccines produced in the 27 member nations. The U.K. government complained late Friday that the bloc had invoked an emergency clause in its divorce deal with Britain to introduce controls on exports from EU member Ireland into Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K. After a call between Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the EU’s executive commission, the EU said it was not invoking the article of the Brexit agreement allowing either side to override parts of the deal. Mr. Gove said Mr. Johnson was very clear in the call to stress that the U.K. has contractual arrangements with pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca and Pfizer. President von der Leyen was clear that she understood exactly the U.K. government’s position, so we expect that those contracts will be honored, we expect that vaccines will continue to be supplied, he added. While the U.K. has made progress in its campaign to vaccinate the population against the coronavirus, the EU has faced complaints and criticism for its slow start. Concerns over the pace of the rollout across the EU’s 27 member nations grew over the last week after British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca said it could not supply EU members with as many doses as originally anticipated because of production capacity limits. AstraZeneca Chief Executive Pascal Soriot has said that vaccine delivery figures in the contract with the EU were targets, not firm commitments, and the company was unable to meet them because plants in Europe had lower than expected yields from the biological process used to produce the vaccine. However, the European Commission suspected that doses meant for Europe might have been diverted from an AstraZeneca plant on the continent to the U.K., where two other company sites are located. The EU also wants doses at two sites in Britain to be made available to European citizens.
B) U.S. lobby group urges India not to tighten foreign e-commerce rules.
A U.S. lobby group that represents firms including Amazon.com and Walmart has urged India not to tighten foreign investment rules for e-commerce companies again, according to a letter seen by Reuters. India is considering revising the rules after traders in the country accused Amazon’s Indian division and Walmart’s Flipkart of creating complex structures to bypass investment regulations, Reuters reported this month. The U.S. firms deny any wrongdoing. India allows foreign e-commerce players to operate as only a marketplace but local traders say the U.S. giants promote select sellers and offer deep discounts, which hurts business for smaller local retailers. In 2018, India changed its foreign direct investment rules to deter foreign firms offering products from sellers in which they have an equity stake. The Centre is now considering tightening those rules again to include sellers in which a foreign e-commerce firm holds indirect stake through its parent, Reuters reported. Citing the Reuters story in a January 28 letter, the U.S.-India Business Council, part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, urged the Indian government not to make any more material restrictive changes to e-commerce investment rules. Any further changes in FDI rules would limit e-commerce firms from leveraging their scale, USIBC said in the letter seen by Reuters. USIBC also asked India’s Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) to engage in substantive consultation with companies on e-commerce regulation. USIBC and DPIIT did not respond to a request for comment. After the Reuters story was published last week, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), which represents millions of brick-and-mortar retailers, said it has received assurances from India’s commerce minister that policy changes were in the offing.
