Friday Factly 1 January 2021

General Studies-1

Gender comparison/gap

• According to the 2018 edition of the All-India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE), for the first time, there were as many women as men in BSc programmes — of 48.19 lakh students enrolled, 50.7 per cent were men and 49.3 per cent women.
• Their presence at the Master’s level was the highest ever — in 2017-18, for every 100 men who enrolled for MSc, there were 171 women
• The difference in choice of subjects comes into play at the school level. A greater proportion of the male toppers (96%) chose Science in Classes 11 and 12 as opposed to 71% for women.

General Studies -2

Indian State-Level Disease Burden Initiative, published in Lancet:

• Total number of deaths due to air pollution in India in 2019 were around 1.67 million—of which, 0.98 million deaths were due to ambient particulate matter pollution and 0.61 million due to household air pollution.
• India’s economic loss due to air pollution was estimated to be around $36.8 billion, or nearly 1.4% of the 2019 GDP.

General Studies -3

Asia’s technological rise

• Over the last decade, the region has accounted for 52% of global growth in tech-company revenues, 43% of start-up funding, 51% of spending on research and development, and 87% of patents filed, according to new research by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI).

Standing Committee Report on tax disputes:

According to the Standing Committee on Finance, there were 4,83,000 direct tax disputes pending before the Commissioner (Appeals), the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, High Courts and the Supreme Court with the disputed amount of ₹9.32-lakh crore towards the end of November 2019.

If the amount not under dispute is added, the value of outstanding demands increases to almost ₹13-lakh crore.

But 95 per cent of the total outstanding demands valued at ₹12.4-lakh crore is ‘difficult to recover’.

Farm Incomes:

• The gap between the agri-income of a farmer and that of a non-agriculture worker increased from ₹25,398 in 1993–94 to ₹1.42 lakh in 2011-12. There is widespread feeling of agrarian distress.

Women/Marginalised empowerment through MGNREGS

• According to official data from the MGNREGS State Mission of Kerala, of the 15,961 recently elected village panchayats members, 2,007 are MGNREGS workers

Covid-19 shaping offices

• ‘WFH on the rise, net office space leasing dips 44%’

MSP

• According to the PRS, 43% of wheat, 36% of rice, 12% of cereals and 1% of coarse grains are procured at MSP.
• Agriculture
• A study by ICRIER conducted with OECD showed that over the period 2000-01 to 2016-17, Indian agriculture was implicitly taxed (export control, mandi regulation, stock limits etc.) to the tune of almost 14 per cent of its value.
• Brain drains
• More than half of the first rankers in Class 10 and Class 12 examinations during the two decades of 1996-2015 had migrated and were studying or employed overseas. (Indian express report).

Digital gap

• ASER 2020 highlighted that access to smartphones has almost doubled since its 2018 survey—11% respondent households purchased a new phone to support children’s education.
• Another report published by Right To Education Forum shows points that the digital divide was wider for girls; only 26% of girls could access mobile phones as against 37% boys.

Agriculture subsidies:

• In 1950-51, agriculture’s share in the country’s GDP was 45%, the share of the workforce dependent on the sector was close to 70%.
• Today agriculture’s share in GDP is below 16%, but almost 50% of the country’s workforce depends on this sector.
• As per India’s latest notification, for 2018- 19 the subsidies provided were slightly more than $56 billion. In most of the recent years, the largest component of India’s subsidies ($24.2 billion, or 43% of the total) are provided to “low income or resource poor farmers”, a terminology that the AoA uses.
• India has notified that 99.43% of its farmers are low income or resource poor. According to the agricultural census conducted in 2015-16, these are the farmers whose holdings are 10 hectares or less
• America provided $131 billion in 2017 and the EU, nearly €80 billion (or $93 billion) in 2017-18.
• India’s farm subsidies in 2017 were 12.4% of agricultural value addition, while for the U.S. and the EU, the figures were 90.8% and 45.3%, respectively.

Unemployment

PLFS survey on urban unemployment:

• Urban jobless rate rises to 9.1% in Jan-Mar from 7.9% in Oct-Dec ’19 (marginally lower than 9.3 per cent in January-March 2019).
• Female unemployment rate in urban areas was recorded in double digits at 10.5 per cent and for male it was 8.7%.
• Labour force participation rate rose to over a five-quarter high of 37.5 per cent, as against 37.2 per cent in the previous quarter.

Digital infrastructure/IT BPM economy

• Mobile broadband speeds in India are barely 31% globally (Speedtest.net, October 2020).
• IT-BPM economy in India contributes an incredible $167 billion, with exports reaching $126 billion (India Brand Equity Foundation)
• According to NASSCOM, around 40% of Indian start-ups were forced to stop their operations.

Environment

• This year is second hottest on record after 2016, as per WMO’s provisional report on the State of the Climate 2020 published on December 2. It said that the lockdown has cut emissions of many pollutants and greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. But any impact on CO2 concentrations is not much.
• Our planet was warmer by around 1.2 Degree Celsius from January to October 2020 as compared with the pre-industrial average measured between 1850–1900.
• Rise in ocean heat content (OCH) in 2019 was the highest recorded yet in comparison with data collected since 1960.

Leopord Population:

India’s leopard population increases by 60% in 4 years

Climate Change:

A recent report by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water found that 75% of districts in India, home to over half the population, were vulnerable to extreme climate risks.

India witnessed 250 extreme climate events between 1970 and 2005, the country recorded 310 extreme climate events after 2005 alone. Further, between 1990 and 2019, India incurred losses exceeding $100 billion

Drought-affected districts have increased by an yearly average of 13 times over the last two decades. The frequency of cyclones has also doubled. Over 40% of Indian districts now show a swapping trend: flood-prone areas are becoming drought-prone, and vice-versa