Friday Factly 8 October 2021

GENERAL STUDIES 1

Inequality:

• According to Hurun Rich List India has 1,007 individuals with over Rs 1,000 crore, with 179 of them joining this distinct listing for the first time in 2021, when the country was yet to come out of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) lockdown.
• India had added 40 new billionaires in 2020. The list ranked Mukesh Ambani as the country’s wealthiest with a net worth of $83 billion. He registered a 24 per cent growth in his wealth.

GENERAL STUDIES 2

Malnourishment

Large-scale surveys, like the Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS) and National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS), show that about one third of children under five years of age in India are stunted, a third of them are underweight, and almost two out of 10 children are nutritionally wasted; many of these children suffer from multiple anthropometric deficits. The CNNS also highlights the emerging problems of overweight, obesity and micro-nutrient deficiencies.

Refugee:

According to the UN, over 82.4 million people were forced to leave their homes in 2020 and more than 20 million of them are refugees. Over 200,000 of these refugees are currently in India.

GENERAL STUDIES 3

Debt:

• According to the report, the average debt per household in rural India is Rs 59,748, nearly half the average debt per household in urban India.
• A key indicator of access to credit is the incidence of indebtedness (IOI) — the proportion of households having outstanding loans on June 30 of the year in which the survey is conducted (2019 in this case).
• As per the latest AIDIS report, the IOI is 35 per cent in rural India — 17.8 per cent of rural households are indebted to institutional credit agencies, 10.2 per cent to non-institutional agencies and 7 per cent to both.

Microfinance

• As per RBI’s consultative document notes, 31% of microfinance is provided by NBFC-MFIs, and another 19% by SFBs and 9% by NBFCs.

Public Debt:

• India’s public debt (combined liabilities of the Central and State governments) to gross domestic product (GDP), at constant prices, increased to a record high of 100.86 per cent in 2020 as against 76.86 per cent in 2014, as per the data from the Reserve Bank of India.
• India has become the most indebted nation after Brazil and Argentina among the emerging market economies. In South Asia too, India is the most indebted after Bhutan and Sri Lanka. Interestingly, Brunei, United Arab Emirates, and Russia have low debt-to-GDP ratios with 2.46 per cent, 19.35 per cent, and19.48 per cent respectively.

Asset monetisation

• The government is expecting NMP to collect ₹96 trillion by leasing several assets to private players over four years ending 2024-25. It is expected to fetch around ₹0.88 trillion in FY22, ₹1.62 trillion in FY23, ₹1.79 trillion in FY24, and ₹1.678 trillion in FY25.
• Capital expenditure jumped to ₹39 trillion against the Budget target of ₹4.12 trillion in FY21. For FY22, the government plans to spend ₹5.54 trillion — 34.5 per cent higher than the budgeted amount in FY21.
• Also, due to shrinking revenue in FY21, the total borrowing of the government was increased 2.3 times — from ₹96-lakh crore to ₹18.49-lakh crore in FY21.
• However, it is expected to decline to ₹07 trillion by FY22.
• Due to a steep rise in borrowings and capital expenditure, the fiscal deficit that was expected to be 3.5 per cent of GDP has reached 9.5 per cent in FY21. It would be 6.8 per cent of GDP in FY22 as the economy is showing signs of recovery from the effect of Covid-19.
• The elephant in the room is rising debt, projected by the government to reach ₹ 87 trillion by march 2022. The World Bank is projected that it would increase to 87.5 per cent of GDP at the end of 2021-22 and 89.2 per cent at the end of 2022-23. The increased borrowing has raised the interest burden The ratio of interest payment to revenue receipts is projected at an all-time high of 45.3 per cent in FY22. Almost half of the revenue is going towards servicing old debts.

Farm Income

Infrastructure:

According to the Task Force on NIP, India will need to spend $4.5 trillion on infrastructure by 2030 to realize the vision of a $5 trillion economy by 2025

Desertification:

• Desertification could displace 700 million people by 2050 triggering food insecurity and conflicts. As per the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (unccd), is degra-ding 12 million ha of productive land across the world every year..
• Just 10 states account for nearly 65 per cent of India’s total area under desertification.
• Over 25 per cent of India’s land area is undergoing desertification. Of the 30 states*, 26 recorded an increase in the area under desertification between 2003-05 and 2011-13

Informal Sector:

The informal/unorganized sector in India accounts for roughly half of the total value added in the economy (52.4 per cent in 2017-18), and employs around 90 per cent of the labour force.

Farmers:

• The last Agriculture Census for 2015-16 placed the total “operational holdings” in India at 146.45 million.
• National Statistical Office’s Situation Assessment of Agricultural Households
• (SAAH) report for 2018-19. It pegs the country’s “agricultural households” at 93.09 million. In short, India officially has anywhere from 90 million-plus to almost 150 million farmers.

Food Security

• Food wastage in India exceeds ₹ 1-lakh crore
• The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World’ report, estimates that around a tenth of the global population was undernourished last year. But the proportion of the undernourished population declined from 21.6% during 2004-06to 15.4% during 2018-20.