Daily Mains Practice Questions 17-04-2023

KEY POINTS

·        India is poised to become the world’s most populous country in 2023. With such a thickly inhabited land, enabling infrastructural facilities becomes indispensable for fostering growth.

·        Recent data published by Central Electricity Authority (CEA) highlights that around 10,022 electrical accidents were reported and approximately 55 per cent of these were due to faulty electrical installations.

·        A possible solution to mitigate such losses is by adapting a strong approach towards integrating utility services that include electricity, gas supply, water supply, transport, etc. with urban planning, while keeping the security of its citizens at its core.

·        With costs being a major deciding factor in urban planning, integration of services is a possible solution to combat the cost vs quality trade-off.

·        As large-scale urbanisation is undertaken, converging energy management and urban planning will play a crucial role in carving out a path for net zero emissions.

·        With the help of integrating utility services, urban planning will offer higher efficiency, alignment between city planning and capital allocation, thereby, improving customer satisfaction as well as safety.

·        Considering the scale of India’s geography and population, urban planning requires massive restructuring of policies in order to ensure a long-term, successful, sustainable, safe and secure future of its citizens.

KEY POINTS

·        The Mudra Yojana, now completing its 8 years, incidentally, happens to have contributed immensely to inclusion of several communities that have traditionally been underrepresented as an entrepreneur.

·        There is also the case that a more diversified set of entrepreneurs will result in breaking down of any barriers or any form of discrimination on any dimension of candidates thereby leading to a healthier labour market.

·        The essence of any business is the ability to find capital which can then be put to use for productive purposes by combining other factors of production.

·        Marginalized communities, especially those who are economically disadvantaged often find it difficult to meet unforeseen expenses or make discretionary purchases.

·        A good example from recent memory comes of a girl who had managed to set up a business and her parents were against her undertaking any form of outside economic activity.

·        This is precisely why a scheme like Mudra was important as it addressed a key constraint for the Indian economy, particularly the MSMEs that often struggled to find structured finance to undertake businesses.

·        In many ways, Mudra opened up the doors of Indian banks to the real India for the first time and with the government backing these loans.

KEY POINTS

·        The BRICS countries, God bless them, are even meeting in August to discuss a BRICS currency, unmindful of the fact that China will want its yuan to be that currency and that India will say over my dead body. What the other three say won’t matter.

·        China can huff and puff all it wants but it won’t be able to blow the American house down.

·        Indeed, it would do well to hark back just 25 years when everyone thought the euro would replace the dollar as the global currency, or at least be an effective substitute.

·        China has a $16 trillion economy and it dominates world trade. It has a large but untested military machine. It has started acquiring gold in large quantities.

·        The Chinese are saying America has ‘weaponised’ the dollar. It has also flooded the world with dollars.

·        The answer perhaps lies in its soft power built on its values and the institutions that uphold those values.

·        Britain was a brutal coloniser but there was a time when everyone wanted to be like Britain.

·        Now everyone wants to be like America which, too, has been brutal in its pursuit of commerce but much nicer in many other ways than Britain ever was.