Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams - 03 February 2022

::National::

Opposition urges Kerala govt to withdraw Silverline project

A day after the announcement of 400 high-speed Vande Bharat trains in three years in the Union budget, Opposition parties and environmental activists have asked the Kerala government to drop the idea of the Silverline high-speed rail project.
The Opposition said while the Silverline trains, also called K-Rail, could run at a top speed of 200kph (kilometres per hour), Vande Bharat trains could run at 180-200 kph, which could be a good alternative and prevent mass displacement of people.
“Both Silverline and Vanda Bharat trains will run at the same speed, and railways will bear expenses of new trains. It is high time the state should reconsider its project, which will leave environmental degradation and mass displacement,” said Opposition leader V D Satheesan.
Senior leader and Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor, who earlier courted controversy for not toeing the party line on the Silverline project, also said Vande Bharat could be a good alternative, and the state government should study it in detail. “If Kerala gets a good number of these trains, it will meet the demand put up by the state government for a speedy transport line and also a solution to concerns raised by the opposition about the financial burden and environmental issues arising out of the project,” he tweeted.
The state government’s ambitious high-speed rail project ran into trouble after main opposition parties and green activists opposed it vehemently. The ₹63,940 crore project seeks to develop a high-speed rail corridor connecting Kasaragod in the state’s north to Thiruvananthapuram in the south. Total land required for the project is 1,383 hectres and out this 1,198 hectres are private land.
The rail line will bring down the travel time between Kasaragod and Thiruvananthapuram, covering 529.45 km, from 12 hours to four hours. It will be completed by 2025, said Kerala Rail Development Corporation Ltd (KRDCL), the nodal agency for the project. But the Union government is yet to approve the project, and no social and environmental impact studies have been held so far.

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::International::

Joe Biden orders nearly 3,000 US troops to Eastern Europe to counter Russia

The United States will send nearly 3,000 extra troops to Poland and Romania to shield Eastern Europe from a potential spillover from the crisis over the massing of Russian troops near Ukraine, US officials said.
Russia has denied plans to invade Ukraine but signalled it was in no mood for compromise on Wednesday by mocking Britain, calling Prime Minister Boris Johnson "utterly confused" and accusing British politicians of "stupidity and ignorance".
A Stryker squadron of around 1,000 US service members based in Vilseck, Germany would be sent to Romania, the Pentagon said, while around 1,700 service members, mainly from the 82nd Airborne Division, would deploy from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Poland. Three hundred other service members will move from Fort Bragg to Germany.
US President Joe Biden said the deployment was consistent with what he had told Russian President Vladimir Putin: "As long as he is acting aggressively we're going to make sure we can reassure our NATO allies and Eastern Europe that we're there," he said, according to media reports on Twitter.
The objective, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said, was to send a "strong signal" to Putin "and frankly, to the world, that NATO matters to the United States and it matters to our allies".
Poland's Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said the US deployment was a strong sign of solidarity. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also welcomed it, saying the alliance's response to Russia was defensive and proportional.
Efforts to reach a diplomatic solution have faltered, with Western countries describing Russia's main demands as non-starters and Moscow showing no sign of withdrawing them.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he would discuss the crisis with Biden in the coming hours and may travel to Russia to meet with Putin. The priority was to avoid tensions rising, Macron said. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he would meet Putin in Moscow soon, without giving a date.

::Economy::

Tax on income doesn’t make crypto legal: CBDT chairman

The Budget proposal to levy 30% tax on the income from virtual digital assets, including cryptocurrencies must not be construed as the government’s regulatory approval to them, Central Board of Direct Taxes chairman J.B. Mohapatra said in an interview, adding that the latest provision of tax deducted at source (TDS) on such transactions would help in tracking their reach in system.
“Just because an item is getting taxed does not ipso facto make it legal,” Mohapatra said a day after the budget, responding to arguments that because it will now levy a tax on crypto assets, the government has , in effect, recognised them. Currently, cryptocurrencies are unregulated in India.
Explaining the fineprint of budget later that day she explained the intent of the proposal: “Every individual cannot be minting currency. Is it not illicit? When illicit currency is coming in this country, don’t we catch then? So, currency cannot be issued by everybody… It has to be driven by the central bank of the country. And what we announced today is, the Reserve Bank of India [RBI] will come up with the digital currency. That’s one thing. Now, outside of which [digital] assets are sold, value is created, nothing stops me from taxing them.”
CBDT chairman said the 30% “crypto tax under special provisions of 115BBH… will help us in finding out the true status of that particular sector… With regard to TDS on crypto transactions that will give us an idea of penetration of the market across investors… that how deep and how expansive is this business.” The move will help to track the quantum of crypto business generated.
The finance minister on Tuesday announced TDS on transactions of crypto assets. “Further, in order to capture the transaction details, I also propose to provide for TDS on payment made in relation to transfer of virtual digital asset at the rate of 1 per cent of such consideration above a monetary threshold,” she said in her Budget speech.

Three questions which capture India’s medium-term economic challenge

Immediate analyses of the Union Budget are always focused on the headline numbers which the document contains. While these numbers are important , it is essential to take a big picture view of the economy to examine the validity of the budget’s larger premise. Such an exercise is best conducted by putting statistics within and outside the budget in a larger context. Here are three questions which try to do this.
By prioritizing long-term growth via a capital spending push, the budget has underplayed the need for urgent steps to boost short-term consumption demand.
An important statistic which was released a day before the Budget was presented, and therefore did not get as much attention as it should have, was a further downgrading of India’s GDP growth in 2019-20 from 4% to 3.7%. This underlines the importance of realising that just achieving pre-pandemic levels is going to be of little help for the economy. How did India’s pre-pandemic slowdown affect private demand? The answer to this question is important because there was hardly any official acknowledgement of a demand-side problem in the economy before the pandemic struck.
The National Statistical Office (NSO) release which gave the first and second revised estimates of GDP for 2020-21 and 2019-20 also gives a detailed break-up of private final consumption expenditure (PFCE) from 2011-12. A comparison of compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of various PFCE sub-components in the pre- and post -demonetisation period – a lot of independent economists believe that demonetisation marked the beginning of a squeeze on the informal sector and contributed to the economic slowdown – shows that the post-demonetisation phase saw a deceleration in spending growth on everything except non-durable goods. Statistics given in the same document also suggest that the consumption demand of the rich did not suffer as much as the poor. Growth in final consumption expenditure of resident households in “rest of the world” (as it is defined)– this includes spending on things such as foreign holidays and imported consumer goods and is largely undertaken by the rich – actually increased in the post-demonetisation period.

::Sport::

China pick PLA man in Galwan Valley clash as a Winter Olympics torch-bearer

A People’s Liberation Army (PLA) regiment commander who was involved in the deadly June, 2020 clashes with Indian army personnel in the Galwan Valley was chosen by China as an initial runner in its torch relay for the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Chinese authorities picking Qi Fabao at the start of the crunched three-day torch relay to return attention to the border standoff that resulted in multiple casualties and led to months of tension between the two countries. Chinese media reported that Qi was honoured by the country’s military after he was grievously injured in the clash. According to China’s Global Times, China’s four-time Olympic short track speed skating champion Wang Meng handed the torch to Fabao after the relay opened at the Olympic Foreign Park.