Friday Factly 17 December 2021

GENERAL STUDIES 1

Inequality in total national income

India stands out as a “poor and very unequal country, with an affluent elite”, where the top 10% holds 57% of the total national income, including 22% held by the top 1%, while the bottom 50% holds just 13% in 2021, according to the World Inequality Report 2022

Inequality in labour Income

• Men in India capture 82% of labour income, while women earn just 18%, according to the first-ever estimates of the gender inequality in global earnings presented in the World Inequality Report 2022 released earlier this week.
• The female share of the total labour income is the national aggregate labour income earned by women relative to the total aggregate of labour income within a country.
• In a country with perfect equality between women and men, the female labour income share would be 50%.
• Eastern Europe has the highest female labour income shares, with the average female share near 41%.
• Moldova has the highest female labour income in the world at 45%.

Poverty

According to the Global MPI 2021, India ranked 66 out of 109 countries

GENERAL STUDIES 2

Undertrials:

• The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reports show that in almost all the states of the Indian Union, irrespective of the party holding office, religious minorities are over-represented in jail
• During UPA II, Muslims represented 21 to 22.5 per cent of the “undertrials” and under NDA II (from 2014 to 2019) 19 to 21 per cent.

Trade:

Bangladesh shares a very strong commerce bond. India’s Foreign Secretary recently said that Bangladesh is India’s largest trade partner in South Asia, and mentioned that the bilateral trade between the two countries grew at a rate of 14%, from $9.46 billion in 2019 to $10.78 billion in 2021, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. Indian government records state that in the Financial Year 2019-20, India’s exports to Bangladesh were $8.2 billion and imports were $1.26 billion.

GENERAL STUDIES 3

Agriculture:

The Ashok Dalwai committee on secondary agriculture estimated that an investment of ₹89,375 crore is needed for storage and transportation facilities for primary agricultural produce.

Cumulative emission around the Globe:

The U.S., Russia, the U.K., Japan and Canada account for 10% of the world’s population, but 39% of cumulative emissions, while China, India, Brazil and Indonesia account for 42% of the world’s population but just 23% of cumulative emissions.

Cyber Security

A 2020 estimate said that Indian enterprises alone might have suffered losses of more than ₹1.25 lakh crore due to ransomware, malware, and other security breaches.

Logistics

• Logistics Performance Index 2018 issued by the World Bank, India ranked at 44 with a score of a mere 2.91 in infrastructure (Germany ranked one with a score of 4.37).
• Infrastructure gap that manifests itself in high logistics- related costs in India(13 per cent of GDP vs 7 per cent for developed nations)
• The country faces a skewed logistic modal mix with nearly 71 per cent of all freight transport being done by roads. Highways only account for 2.2 percent of the entire road network but carry 40 per cent of all freight traffic. It takes nearly 22 hours to travel by road from New Delhi to Mumbai but a similar distance between Beijing and Shanghai can be covered in 12.5 hours.
• The Railways’ share in freight transport has dropped from 89 per cent in 195051 to only 18 per cent in 2020. The average speed of a freight train in India is only 25 km/hour with a permitted axle load (freight capacity of wagons) of 20.1 tonnes.
• The US, which has a vast rail network like India’s, runs its freight trains at an average speed of 38 mph (60 kmph) and permits an axle load of nearly 30 tonnes.
• According to the Ministry of Civil Aviation’s Annual report 2019-20, India has 23 domestic Mcargo terminals and 20 international cargo terminals which handled a total of 3.56 million tonne (mt) of cargo in 2018-19. In contrast, the Shanghai Pudong International Airport in China alone handled 3.63 mt of cargo in 2019.
• It is estimated that India would require $1.4 trillion for investing in infrastructure in 2020-25M in order to become a $5 trillion economy