Current Affair 1:

Data and reports roundup:

 

1. Survey of Foreign Liabilities and Assets of Mutual Fund Companies – 2021-22
2. Internet in India

Report: 1

Brief about the study:

This survey by the RBI is used to collect basic information regarding the asset management companies (AMCs) and mutual fund companies pertaining to the assets and external liabilities. This is important to collate and compile basic statistics regarding the performance of the financial system. The data released is only at the aggregate level and utmost secrecy is maintained regarding the institution-wise data.

Key highlights:

For Mutual Funds (MF) companies

1. Due to the surge in units issued to non-residents, the foreign liabilities of MF businesses increased by USD 3.4 billion during 2021–2022. As of March 2022, they were USD 17.7 billion (at market value).
2. Due to an increase in their equity holdings, MF businesses’ foreign assets climbed by USD 3.6 billion over the year, reaching USD 6.5 billion in March 2022.
3. As a result, MF businesses’ net foreign liabilities, which were USD 11.3 billion in March 2022, were nearly unchanged from a year prior.
4. Non-residents of Singapore, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the United Kingdom (UK), the United States of America (USA), and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) jointly had a share of roughly 44% of the total MF units held abroad, both at market value and face value.
5. For MF companies, the USA and Luxembourg remained their top international investment destinations.

For Asset Management Companies

1. In March 2022, AMCs’ foreign liabilities and assets totaled USD 5.7 billion and USD 0.1 billion, respectively, which was roughly the same as the previous year.
2. Guernsey and Singapore received more than 95% of the very modest foreign investments made by AMCs.
3. Non-residents of Japan and the UK jointly own close to three-fourths of FDI among AMCs.

 

Report: 2

Key Highlights:

• According to the survey, there are currently 692 million active internet users in India. A large portion of growth is still being driven by rural India (351 Mn users with 37% penetration), as urban India (341 Mn users with 69% penetration) appears to have reached a plateau.
• By 2025, it is projected that India will have 900 million internet users, with rural expansion driving this increase.
• Goa and Bihar have the highest and lowest internet penetration rates, respectively, among the states.
• In terms of gender distribution, male internet users outnumber female users in India, with about identical gender ratios across urban and rural users.
• The top three online activities in India, according to use cases, are entertainment, communications, and social networking.
• While OTT service prevalence in rural India is on par with that in urban India, other digital service penetration—including online gaming, digital commerce, and digital payments—remains biased in favour of urban users.
• Currently, 762 million Indians—63% of whom live in rural areas—have not yet adopted the internet. The main impediment, coupled with ignorance, is still “difficulty to understand the Internet,”, especially in rural India.

Current Affair 2:

National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA)

 

Recently, NRAA Proposes Policies to Boost Growth of Rainfed Agriculture.

As per the policy, few recommendations to accelerate the growth of rainfed agriculture:

1. Release new climate-resilient varieties suited for rainfed regions
2. Promoting integrated farming systems (IFS)/integrated livelihood system (ILS): Promoting IFS, which synergistically integrates two or more enterprises (agronomic crops, horticultural crops, livestock, aquaculture, poultry/ducks, apiculture, and mushroom cultivation), can offer improved income, resilience, and soil carbon sequestration potential.
3. Improve system productivity: Increasing demand for food and processed commodities with a faster demand for high-value commodities (such as horticulture, herbal & medicinal, dairy, livestock, and fish) will require a shift from season-centric productivity enhancement to system- production through a holistic research and development approach.
4. Improve farm power and mechanization: Develop and adopt strategies to raise farm power consumptions to 2.5 kW/hectare in rainfed areas with at least 70-80 tractors (or equivalent) per 1,000 hectare to assure timeliness and quality in field operations.
5. Revival of millet-based cropping systems: Millets can be cultivated and they are adaptable to a wide range of climatic conditions and marginal conditions of soil and irrigation. The alarming levels of malnutrition in the country, particularly in rainfed areas demand a “millets for millions'' program linking production and consumption in the same region.
6. Improve water use efficiency: Investments in water resource management in rainfed areas have the potential to be highly inclusive, resulting in high social rate of returns, besides addressing multiple issues of droughts, low productivity, insecurity against unreliable rainfall, poverty, and nutrition.

As per the recent draft report of NRAA, we will see all important things relevant for exam.

The context of rainfed agriculture

1. Currently, rainfed agriculture, which is rain-dependent, accounts for 55 per cent of the net sown area (139.42 M ha), and
2. 61 per cent of India’s farmer population.
3. Presently, it accounts for around 40 per cent of the total food grain production,
4. (85, 83, 70 and 65 per cent of nutri-cereals, pulses, oilseeds and cotton, respectively);
5. supports two-thirds of livestock and 40 per cent of the human population. Further, the livelihoods of 80 per cent of small and marginal farmers is impacted.

The National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA) was formed in 2006 as an expert body of the Ministry of Agriculture to provide “knowledge inputs regarding the systematic upgradation and management of the country’s dryland and rainfed agriculture.”

Current Affair 3:

IMD, Government of Japan and UNDP launch a project to accelerate climate action in India

Source Link

 

News:

India Meteorological Department (IMD), the Government of Japan, and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) announced a new initiative to accelerate climate action in 10 states and Union Territories across the country.

 

To be rolled out in partnership with the IMD at the Ministry of Earth Sciences and the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), the initiative will support Nationally Determined Contribution (NDCs) to achieve net-zero emissions and ensure climate-resilient development.

The launch comes within a week of the Cabinet approval of India's updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDCs) to be communicated to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Under the initiative, UNDP will work with IMD to promote climate resilience and MNRE to promote climate mitigation by:

1. Deploying clean energy infrastructure and low-emission technologies in key sectors including Transport, Health, Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), and Agriculture.
2. Demonstrating resilient climate planning at the grassroots through climate information flow systems for 30 Gram Panchayats.
3. Promote green jobs and green entrepreneurship in sectors like Renewable Energy by providing skilling and training to 2000+ people.

The project will be rolled out in the states and Union Territories of Bihar, Delhi-NCR, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Sikkim, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh between 2022-23.

At the COP26 summit in Glasgow in November 2021, India pledged to cut the country's total projected carbon emission by 1 billion tonnes by 2030, install 500 GW of non-fossil energy capacity by 2030, reduce the carbon intensity of the nation's economy by less than 45% by the end of the decade and net-zero carbon emissions by 2070.

Current Affair 4:

Arctic Is Warming Nearly Four Times Faster Than the Rest of the World

 

As per the new study: Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the rest of the world over the past 43 years (Arctic amplification). This means the Arctic is on average around 3℃ warmer than it was in 1980.

Why is the Arctic warming so much faster?

1. A large part of the explanation relates to sea ice. This is a thin layer (typically one metre to five metres thick) of sea water that freezes in winter and partially melts in the summer.
2. The sea ice is covered in a bright layer of snow which reflects around 85% of incoming solar radiation back out to space. The opposite occurs in the open ocean. As the darkest natural surface on the planet, the ocean absorbs 90% of solar radiation.
3. When covered with sea ice, the Arctic Ocean acts like a large reflective blanket, reducing the absorption of solar radiation. As the sea ice melts, absorption rates increase, resulting in a positive feedback loop where the rapid pace of ocean warming further amplifies sea ice melt, contributing to even faster ocean warming.
4. This feedback loop is largely responsible for what is known as Arctic amplification, and is the explanation for why the Arctic is warming so much more than the rest of the planet.

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