Daily Prelims Notes 27 September 2020
- September 27, 2020
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN
Table Of Contents
- Article 270 and history of cess
- Right to strike
- Human challenge trial
- Cloud Computing
- Central road fund
- Disinvestment
- Health in India
1. Article 270 and history of cess
Subject: Polity
Context:
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, in its latest audit report of government accounts, has observed that the Union government withheld in the Consolidated Fund of India (CFI) more than ₹1.1 lakh crore out of the almost ₹2.75 lakh crore collected through various cesses in 2018-19.
Concept:
- The Union government is empowered to raise revenue through a gamut of levies, including taxes (both direct and indirect), surcharges, fees and cess.
- While direct taxes, including income tax, and indirect taxes such as GST are taxes where the revenue received can be spent by the government for any public purpose in any manner it deems appropriate for the nation’s good, a cess is a earmarked tax that is collected for a specific purpose and ought to be spent only for that.
- Every cess is collected after Parliament has authorised its creation through an enabling legislation that specifies the purpose for which the funds are being raised.
- Article 270 of the Constitution allows cess to be excluded from the purview of the divisible pool of taxes that the Union government must share with the States.
History of cess
- 42 cesses have been levied at various points in time since 1944.
- Post Independence, the cess taxes were linked initially to the development of a particular industry, including a salt cess and a tea cess in 1953.
- Subsequently, the introduction of a cess was motivated by the aim of ensuring labour welfare. Some cesses that exemplified this thrust were the iron ore mines labour welfare cess in 1961, the limestone and dolomite mines labour welfare cess of 1972 and the cine workers welfare cess introduced in 1981.
- The introduction of the GST in 2017 led to most cesses being done away with and as of August 2018, there were only seven cesses that continued to be levied.
- These were Cess on Exports, Cess on Crude Oil, Health and Education Cess, Road and Infrastructure Cess, Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Cess, National Calamity Contingent Duty on Tobacco and Tobacco Products and the GST Compensation Cess.
- And in February, Finance Minister introduced a new cess — a Health Cess of 5% on imported medical devices — in the Finance Bill for 2020-2021.
Subject: Polity
Context:
Three Codes on labour law were passed by Parliament, amid strident criticism and vociferous protests by many trade unions.
Concept:
- The right to strike in the Indian constitution set up is not absolute right but it flow from the fundamental right to form union.
- As every other fundamental right is subject to reasonable restrictions, the same is also the case to form trade unions to give a call to the workers to go on strike and the state can impose reasonable restrictions.
- Supreme court held that the right to strike or right to declare lock out may be controlled or restricted by appropriate industrial legislation
Changes
- The Code on Industrial Relations prohibits strikes and lock-outs in all industrial establishments without notice.
- No unit shall go on strike in breach of contract without giving notice 60 days before the strike, or within 14 days of giving such a notice, or before the expiry of any date given in the notice for the strike.
- Further, there should be no strike during any conciliation proceedings, or within seven days of the conclusion of such proceedings; or during proceedings before an industrial tribunal or 60 days after their conclusion or during arbitration proceedings.
- Similar restrictions have been given on the employer from announcing a lock-out.
- The Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, had placed such restrictions on announcing strikes only in respect of public utility services.
- However, the present Code extends it to all establishments.
Subject: Science and tech
Context:
In January, London will begin the world’s first human challenge trial. Participants will be vaccinated with a candidate vaccine and then wilfully exposed to novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) a month or so later. Over 38,000 people from 166 countries have already volunteered to participate in such studies.
Concept:
- Human challenge trials are trials in which participants are intentionally challenged (whether or not they have been vaccinated) with an infectious disease organism.
- This challenge organism may be close to wild-type and pathogenic, adapted and/or attenuated from wild-type with less or no pathogenicity, or genetically modified in some manner.
- Human challenge trials have been performed safely in tens of thousands of people in the last 50 years and have helped accelerate the development of vaccines against typhoid and cholera. Such a study was also conducted for Zika virus.
- The yellow fever experiments conducted in the early 1900s helped prove that mosquitoes transmit the virus causing yellow fever. The human-challenge studies have generally been used for testing less deadly diseases such as influenza, dengue, typhoid, cholera and malaria.
- In May the WHO approved human challenge trials and NIH too is developing two viral strains through Colorado State University that can be used in human challenge trials.
Subject: Science and tech
Context:
Using openly accessible satellite data and a cloud computing platform, an international team has developed a powerful tool for a near real-time mapping of flood extent.
Concept:
- Cloud computing is the delivery of different services through the Internet. These resources include tools and applications like data storage, servers, databases, networking, and software.
- Rather than keeping files on a proprietary hard drive or local storage device, cloud-based storage makes it possible to save them to a remote database.
- As long as an electronic device has access to the web, it has access to the data and the software programs to run it.
- Cloud computing is a popular option for people and businesses for a number of reasons including cost savings, increased productivity, speed and efficiency, performance, and security.
Subject: Economy
Context:
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has mooted an investigation against the Central government’s accounting officials for incorrectly recording ₹10,250 crore of cess receipts from additional excise duties on petrol and diesel, as non-tax receipts for the exchequer in 2018-19.
Concept:
- The Central Road Fund (CRF) is a non-lapsable fund created under Central Road Fund Act 2000.
- It is procured out of the out of cess/tax imposed by the Union Government on the consumption of Petrol and Diesel.
- CRF should be used to develop and maintain National Highways, State roads (that have economic importance with inter-state connectivity), rural roads, railway under/over bridges etc, and national waterways (waterways from 2017 onwards only).
- The CRF was replaced with a Central Road and Infrastructure Fund (CRIF) through amendments introduced in the Union Budget for 2018-19.
Subject: Economy
Context:
The strategic sale of four public sector units to other public sector entities in 2018-19 by the Central government has been sharply criticised by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India in an audit, tabled in Parliament.
Concept:
- Disinvestment means sale or liquidation of assets by the government, usually Central and state public sector enterprises, projects, or other fixed assets.
- The government undertakes disinvestment to reduce the fiscal burden on the exchequer, or to raise money for meeting specific needs, such as to bridge the revenue shortfall from other regular sources. In some cases, disinvestment may be done to privatise assets.
- However, not all disinvestment is privatisation.
- Some of the benefits of disinvestment are that it can be helpful in the long-term growth of the country; it allows the government and even the company to reduce debt. Disinvestment allows a larger share of PSU ownership in the open market, which in turn allows for the development of a strong capital market in India.
- There is a separate department under the Ministry of Finance which handles all disinvestment-related works for the government.
- On 10 December 1999, the Department of Disinvestment was set up as a separate department and later renamed as Department of Investment and Public Asset Management.
- Disinvestment targets are set under each Union Budget, and every year the targets change. The government takes the final decision on whether to raise the divestment target or not.
- As per the latest policy, disinvestment now covers two types: (1) disinvestment through minority stake sale and (2) strategic disinvestment.
- Public Sector Undertakings are the wealth of the Nation and to ensure this wealth rests in the hands of the people, promote public ownership of CPSEs;
- In the case of disinvestment through minority stake (share) sale in listed CPSEs, the Government will retain majority shareholding, i.e. at least 51 per cent of the shareholding and management control of the Public Sector Undertakings;
- Strategic disinvestment by way of sale of substantial portion of Government shareholding in identified CPSEs up to 50 per cent or more, along with transfer of management control.
Subject: Economy
Context:
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation has released the report of a survey titled ‘Health in India’, whose main objective was to gather basic quantitative information on India’s health sector.
Concept:
- The report is based on information collected through NSS Schedule 25.0 (Household Social Consumption: Health) spread over the entire Indian Union.
- The survey defines ailment as any deviation from a person’s state of physical and mental well-being. The ‘Proportion of Persons who Responded as Ailing’, or PPRA, in a 15-day period when they were approached by the surveyors, were registered as those suffering from ailments.
- The survey shows that women remain more susceptible to suffering from ailments than men. In rural India 6.1 per cent of males said that they were suffering from ailments, while 7.6 per cent of rural women said the same. While 8.2 per cent of urban males said that they were sick, 10 per cent urban females said the same.
- Around 7.5 percent of Indians reported that they were suffering from ailments, as per the survey. The difference in people suffering from ailments in rural and urban India was stark. While in rural India only 6.8 per cent said that they were suffering from an ailment, this number in urban India was 9.1 per cent.