Story: Baby Camel and Mother story 11

A mother and a baby camel were lying around, and fortuitously(suddenly,एकायक) the baby camel asked, “mother, may I ask you some questions? Mother said, “Sure! Why son, is there something bothering you? Baby said, “Why do camels have humps?” Mother said “Well son, we are desert animals, we need the humps to store water and we are known to survive without water”. Baby said, “Okay, then why are our legs protracted(long.लम्बा) and our feet rounded?” Mother said, “Son, obviously they are meant for walking in the desert. You know with these legs I can move around the desert better than anyone does!” Baby said, “Okay, then why are our eyelashes long? Sometimes it bothers my sight”. Mother with hubris(pride,गौरव) said, “My son, those long voluminous(thick,मोटा) eyelashes are your vindicatory(protective,रक्षात्मक) cover. They help to intercede(protect,रक्षा करना) your eyes from the desert sand and wind”.

 Baby after thinking said, “I see. So the hump is to store water when we are in the desert, the legs are for walking through the desert and these eye lashes protect my eyes from the desert then what in god’s name are we doing here in the Zoo!?”

 Moral: deftness(Skills,कौशल), knowledge, abilities and experiences are only germane(useful,सार्थक) if you are at the pertinent(right,सही) place.

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Birbal’s Khichri (Rice) story 6

On a cold winter day, Akbar and Birbal took a walk along the reservoir(lake,झील). A thought came to Birbal that a man would do anything for money. He articulated(expressed,व्यक्त) his feelings to Akbar. Akbar then put his finger into the lake and immediately alienated(removed,हटाना) it because he trembled(shivered,कंपकपी) with cold. Akbar said, “I don’t ponder(think,सोचना) a man would spend an exhaustive(entire,सम्पूर्ण) night in the cold water of this lake for money.” Birbal replied, “I am sure I can find such a person.” Akbar then challenged Birbal into finding such a person and said that he would reward the person with a thousand gold coins.

Birbal searched far and wide until he found a Impecunious(poor,गरीब) man who was desperate enough to accept the challenge. The poor man entered the lake and Akbar had guards posted near him to make sure that he really did as promised. The next morning the guards took the poor man to Akbar. Akbar asked the poor man if he had indeed spent the night in the lake. The poor man replied that he had. Akbar then asked the poor man how he managed to spend the night in the lake.

The poor man replied that there was a street lamp nearby and he kept his attention affixed on the lamp and away from the cold. Akbar then said that there would be no reward as the poor man had survived the night in the lake by the ardency(warmth,गर्मी) of the street lamp. The poor man went to Birbal for help.

The next day, Birbal did not go to court. The king wondering where he was, sent a messenger to his home. The messenger came back saying that Birbal would come once his Khichri(Rice) was cooked. The king waited hours but Birbal did not come. Finally, the king decided to go to Birbal’s house and see what he was up to.

He found Birbal sitting on the floor near some burning twigs and a bowl filled with Khichri(Rice) hanging five feet above the fire. The king and his attendants couldn’t help but laugh.

Akbar then said to Birbal “How can the Khichri(Rice) be cooked if it so far away from the conflagration(fire,आग)?”

Birbal answered, “The same way the poor man received heat from a street lamp that was more than a furlong away.”

The King understood his blunder(mistake,गलती) and gave the poor man his reward.
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The Monkey and the Wedge story 5

There was once a merchant who employed many carpenters and masons to build a temple in his garden. Regularly, they would commence(start,शुरू) work in the morning; take a break for the mid-day meals, and return to resume work till evening.  One day, a conglomeration(group,समूह) of monkey arrived at the site of the building and watched the workers leaving for their mid-day meals.  One of the carpenters was sawing a giant(huge,विशाल) log of wood. Since, it was only half-done; he placed a wedge(कील) in between to inhibit(prevent,रोकना) the log from closing up. He then went off along with the other workers for his meal.  When all the workers were gone, the monkeys came

 down from the trees and started jumping around the site, and playing with the instruments.  There was one monkey, who got avid(curious,उत्सुक) about the wedge placed between the log. He sat down on the log, and having placed himself in between the half-split log, caught hold of the wedge and started pulling at it.  All of a abrupt(sudden,अचानक), the wedge came out. As a consequence(result,नतीजा), the half-split log obstructed(closed,बंद) in and the monkey got caught in the gap of the log.  As was his fate(destiny,भाग्य), he was severely wounded.  The sagacious(wise,बुद्धिमान) indeed utter(say,कहना):One, who interferes in other's work, surely comes to compunction(grief,शोक).

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REFUTES

The Delhi High Court is hearing the issue on August 10 in response to a Delhi-based union’s petition which refutes the claims of Uber and Ola — as not being employers of drivers but only providers of work.

What is refutes means ….. it means to declare not to be true,false or in hindi(खंडन)

Synonyms: contradict, disaffirm, disallow, disavow, disclaim, disconfirm, disown, gainsay, negate, negative, deny, reject, repudiate

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Amnesty by another name

The Income Declaration Scheme (IDS) announced in the 2016-17 budget closed on September 30, after remaining open since June 1. The finance ministry has announced that 64,275 people have come forward to declare Rs 65,250 crore of black money. This is the largest amount declared as black money in the history of Indian taxation. Naturally, the government claims this to be a big achievement, more so since the response in the first three months was tepid(slow,मंद).

The average amount of black income per declaration is about Rs one crore. This is indeed low when there is daily news about people being caught with hundreds of crores of rupees of black incomes. It is likely that either the big earners of black incomes have not come forward or declared a negligible part of their black money. It is reported that the income tax officers pressurised people under their charge to make declarations in the last three weeks. So, either they coerced(forced,मजबूर) the small fries, or the big fellows declared a miniscule(small,छोटा) amount. Also, many of the black income earners do not pay any tax. So they do not come under any income tax circle and, therefore, would not have been under any pressure.

The last disclosure scheme was announced in 1997 — the Voluntary Disclosure of Income Scheme. Under it Rs 33,000 crore was declared and tax of about Rs 10,000 crore was collected. The 2016 scheme is also a “voluntary” programme, even though it is not called that. The 1997 scheme was called an amnesty scheme because of the low tax that had to be paid. But this time, it is not referred to as an amnesty because a higher rate of tax is being charged. The government had also given an undertaking to the Supreme Court in 1997 that it would not initiate any more amnesty schemes. The reason being that an amnesty scheme is unfair to the honest tax payers while those evading(remain,बचे) taxation get a concession for declaring their past income.

But the IDS is also an amnesty scheme because the penalty charged under it is less than what was being charged for tax evasion before the scheme was launched. Before June 2016, if a person’s income was found to be black, the penalty was 100 per cent to 300 per cent of the tax evaded. Since the tax rate is 30 per cent, the penalty worked out to 30 per cent to 90 per cent of the income evaded; under the IDS, the penalty is 15 per cent of the income. In this sense, the IDS runs counter to the government’s commitment to the Supreme Court in 1997.

The comparison of the 1997 and the 2016 schemes does not show the latter in a favourable light. This author estimates the current size of the black economy at 60 per cent of the GDP; at current prices, it would be Rs 90 lakh crore in 2016-17. Thus, what has been declared is roughly 0.7 per cent of the black income generated this year. The declarations under the 1997 scheme was roughly five per cent of the black income generated that year.

From the black incomes generated every year, a part is consumed and the rest saved. Over time, the accumulated savings become much larger than the annual income. For the rich, the savings from incomes are high, so the black wealth accumulated is much larger than their annual black incomes. Data suggests that only a small part of these black savings are declared under the amnesty/declaration schemes. Thus, barely 0.2-0.3 per cent of the black wealth has been declared in the 2016 scheme. The number of declarations in 1997 was over four lakh; now, surprisingly, it is a sixth of this number. The number of businesses, professionals, corrupt officials and politicians has risen over time. So, the number of people with substantial black incomes and wealth should have been several times the number in 1997. Even if it is assumed that the top one per cent of the population generates substantial black incomes, the numbers should have been close to 13 million.

The government has announced that it would not reveal any of the data collected through the scheme to any agency; not even the CAG. This is strange since CAG is a statutory body with powers to audit the accounts of the government. It is the CAG that pointed to the various infirmities in the 1997 scheme. Giving data to the CAG does not violate any confidentiality.

It needs to be assessed whether those declaring their black incomes are doing so correctly. They could be misdeclaring their recently purchased gold as that bought 20 years ago at one tenth the cost and thereby turning 90 per cent of their black wealth into white. Only an assessment by an independent auditor will help unearth such manipulations.

There can be several reasons why the IDS has garnered(collect,इकठा) much less than it should have. If “round tripping” can be done at five per cent to 10 per cent of the amount of the funds, why pay 45 per cent under the IDS? Further, if the government, promises not to resort to vigorous(healthy,जोरदार) pursuit of businessmen — under “ease of doing business” — they may be under no pressure to come clean. A person who has hoarded black wealth can only be caught in a raid; such a person will not declare black wealth voluntarily unless there is a cost to not declaring. The “success” of the IDS scheme in the last three weeks also suggests that if the income tax department applies pressure, black money can be unearthed. The government seems to be trapped between unearthing black money and not applying pressure on businesses. Why this dilemma(uncertainty,दुविधा)

?

courtesy:indian express
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No proof required: A data dependent MPC

The recent decision by the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to lower the repo rate by 25 bps to 6.25 per cent has been met with criticism and skepticism(doubt,संशयवाद). Some analysts have gone as far as to assert that there has been faulty judgment.

This criticism and commentary is all part of a healthy democratic system. Also fair is that some critics (like myself) find fault with the criticism of the critics, and even find it unfair. As it happens, I also think that the RBI-MPC is unnecessarily using some very faulty tools. Just to put my cards on the table, I believe that the MPC and RBI Governor Urjit Patel have reached the best decision that was possible with the data they had. Historically, except for occasional lapses, the RBI has been a data dependent institution, and it is encouraging to see that the tradition is being strongly reinforced(strengthen,मजबूत) by the MPC.

Questioning of the MPC decision has proceeded along the following lines: First, and most importantly, that the inflation rate is too high to warrant a rate cut. The last four year-on-year headline inflation numbers have been as follows: 5.5 (April 2016), 5.8, 6.1 and 5.1 per cent (August 2016). The target of the RBI is five per cent for March 2017. So how can the MPC cut rates now, and that also with a unanimous(united,एकमत) vote?
Surely, and unlike Raghuram Rajan, the MPC is giving in to political pressure (Ministry of Finance) and major corporates (who always want interest rates to be cut). Further, the MPC is emphasising growth over inflation, that is, they have all turned doves.

It is likely that the unfortunate manner in which Rajan was not reappointed is colouring perceptions and interpretations of many commentators. For the fact remains that rather than being different than Rajan, the MPC (and Patel and RBI) are doing what Rajan would have done. How do we know that?

We know that from the second criticism by the “experts”. A popular conclusion of the experts is that the RBI has softened because it has reduced the real policy rate range from 1.5-2 per cent to 1.25 percent, that is the RBI was now targeting a 1.25 percentage points gap between the repo rate and CPI inflation. This was articulated(expressed,उल्लेख) by MPC RBI member Michael Patra in the press conference following the MPC decision.
So the experts are right in stating that the real policy rate is now 1.25 per cent.

But the experts are very wrong in deducing(conclusion,निष्कर्ष) that this is a change in policy. Look at the following headline after the June policy meeting of the RBI under Rajan: “Will have room to cut rates if inflation stays at 5 per cent” (IE, June 9). The article goes on to quote Rajan: “If we get confident of achieving five per cent inflation target by March 2017, then we will get more space to cut.” What the RBI and MPC did on October 4 was a continuation of the RBI policy. There has been enough data on food prices, especially of pulses (and fruits and vegetables), to suggest that the next six-month course of such prices is at best stable at current levels, and likely to be lower because of the influence of good weather and increased acreage, and prospects of higher yields(return,मुनाफा), for an “inflation-elastic” crop like pulses.

This assessment, and forecast, has no relationship with being dovish, or looking at growth more than inflation, or giving in to the demands of industrialists and/or the Ministry of Finance. Indeed, if the MPC members had not unanimously agreed to cut rates, they would likely have had egg (and worse) on their faces next week when the CPI data for September is scheduled to be released — a figure around 4.3 per cent year-on-year headline inflation will not be entirely surprising. The simple point is all of us are rightly expecting the MPC to be responsible — and when they do act responsibly, by cutting rates in the face of considerable evidence, let us not besmirch(disgrace,गन्दा) their honour, or intelligence, by attributing to them false motives.

But the MPC has room to improve. A central feature of all inflation targeting regimes, and all bankers, and all economists, is that the key to lowering inflation rates is the lowering of inflation expectations. In the case of already low inflation, the goal is to keep expectations stable. And as we now know for some developed economies (Japan, Europe), the key to successful monetary policy is to raise inflationary expectations.
In the first MPC-RBI policy statement, one finds the following statement on inflationary expectations, and how important and influential they are: “Households reacted to the recent hardening of food inflation adaptively and raised their inflation expectations in the September 2016 round of the Reserve Bank’s inflation expectations survey of households.”

Given the importance of inflationary expectations, one would think, and believe, that central bankers would strive to make sure that they measure properly such expectations. Or at least measure them to the best of their ability. It is not clear that the RBI has ever fulfilled this mandate. In January 2015, at the beginning of this rate-cut cycle, the RBI cited(mentioned,उल्लेख) the results of its most recent inflation expectation survey (RBI-IES, December 2015), as supportive of a rate cut (25 bps from 8 to 7.75 per cent). This survey had shown a decline in one year forward expectations to 9.3 per cent from 13.5 per cent at the end of the previous quarter (September 2015). I had this to say: “Since when was high expectation of inflation of nine per cent low enough to warrant a rate cut? I fully agree that interest rates should be cut — but not because a junk RBI survey shows a decline in inflation expectations to a high nine per cent level. Better to junk junk than to offer it as an explanation — it makes all of us look bad”.

One and a half years later, and with an MPC in place, there is no change in this one bad habit of the RBI — the bad habit of using a junk survey, a junk result, to justify its otherwise very sound reasoning. Don’t take my word, or believe me, but do peruse(think,सोचना) the chart. There are two lines in the chart — actual year-on-year CPI inflation for each quarter, and the year ago forward expectation for the same quarter. For example, at the time Rajan cited the junk survey in January 2015, year-on-year inflation in 2014Q4 was 4.1 per cent. The forecast of the junk survey for this same quarter was 13.5 per cent!

Note also that there is no learning by doing on the part of the survey respondents. As inflation has declined, the forecast error (gap between forecast and actual) has widened, and to a near double-digit magnitude. It is intellectually embarrassing to even report these data, let alone use it.

The MPC is a new and progressive institution. The reasoning behind the vote, and the vote, of each MPC member will be made public 14 days after each meeting. We already know that it was a unanimous vote to cut. Let us hope that none of the members cite junk inflationary expectations.

courtesy:indian express
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know your english

“So, how was the meeting? Was it as dull as usual or did people...”

“It was quite lively for a change. A few old men whom I’d never seen before piped up. They had a lot of things...”

“Piped up? Does it mean that they spoke... they had things to say?”

“That’s right! When you ‘pipe up’, you interrupt others and say something. You speak quite unexpectedly. Someone from the back row piped up, ‘How long do we have to sit in these uncomfortable chairs?’ Everyone laughed.”

“I’m sure Rahul will pipe up when he realises that his letters are not being taken seriously. That reminds me, I need to call him. Can I borrow your phone?”

“Borrow my phone? Where’s yours? Did you lose it?”

“I don’t think so. It could be quite possible that I left it in Rahul’s house.”

“You don’t normally use ‘could’ or ‘can’ before ‘possible’. You normally say, ‘it is possible’ and not ‘could be possible’ — especially when you’re talking about a past event.”

“So, I have to say, ‘It’s quite possible that I left the phone in Rahul’s house’.”

“Good! It’s quite possible that they went to the wrong hotel.”

“Talking about hotels, did you and Ajit go to the new restaurant yesterday?”

“Yes, we did. The food wasn’t anything great, but we managed to...”

“You should worry about the food only when you are paying for it. Last night’s dinner was Ajit’s treat, wasn’t it?”

“That’s what I thought. But when the bill arrived, he said we should go Dutch.” “Go Dutch? What does it mean?”

“When you go Dutch, you agree to share the cost of something with someone. You end up paying half the amount.”

“I can understand college students going Dutch when they go to a restaurant. But why would people with good jobs go Dutch? It doesn’t make sense. Both of you have money.”

“Let’s just say that Ajit is very careful with his. He always insists on going Dutch.”

“When Shekar took Gayathri to a movie, she insisted that they go Dutch.”

“Good for her. Is Gayathri the person who keeps saying ‘good morning’, no matter...”

“That’s right! Like many people in our country, she says ‘good morning’ at three o’clock in the afternoon. But it’s okay, right? Especially, if you happen to be seeing the person for the first time that day.”

“No, it’s not okay. You usually wish someone ‘good morning’ before noon. Anything after twelve o’clock, you usually say ‘good afternoon’ or good evening’. Depending on what time of day it is.”

“So ‘good morning’ has nothing to do with whether you’re seeing a person for the first time or not?”

“No, it doesn’t! If I see you for the first time at two o’clock in the afternoon, I have to wish you ‘good afternoon’, and not ‘good morning’. That’s what a native speaker would do. If you wish someone ‘good morning’ at three o’clock in the afternoon, he’ll probably think you’re trying to be funny!”

courtesy:the hindu

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DOWNLOAD MONTHLY PDF OF SEPTEMBER

 Now you can download monthly pdf of SEPTEMBER month.these articles are not only for english but also it will expand your current affairs.this ebook also contains exclusive articles from know your english.

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The bane of a bumper crop

Every day, around 3 p.m., hundreds of lorries loaded with onions queue up at the new agricultural market complex at Lasalgaon, around 45 km from Nashik, waiting for the afternoon auction to begin.

As a group of traders approach, the farmers drop their produce at their feet, as if to tempt them into bidding high. The traders halt and look over the merchandise. A market committee employee calls out the reserve price: “400!” Eyes roll, unspoken words seem to pass between the traders. Then the bidding starts: “1!” “11!” “13!” “17!” In less than 30 seconds, the auction is over. The farmer gets 17 rupees over the reserve price, Rs.417 per quintal (100 kg). A pittance(small amount,अल्प भाग) at any given time, more so now when compared to prices last year.

A trader-controlled market

No matter how united the farmers are, no matter how hard they fight for a better price, they turn into mute spectators in front of the traders when auction begins. The auction is dictated by the traders with money and considerable political clout. Traders decide the price, farmers accept it without protest.

The market complex has a huge parking space for the lorries. Sometimes there are up to 1,000 vehicles at a time. The otherwise deserted place comes alive twice a day. The first auction of the day starts at around 10 a.m. and the second at 3 p.m. Depending on the number of vehicles, the auction can stretch from an hour to three hours.

Once the rate is fixed, the group of traders moves immediately to the next vehicle. The farmer, left with the price decided by the group, starts collecting the onions he has dropped on the ground. An official from the market committee approaches him with a receipt, bearing the auction rate, trader’s name and farmer’s name. With a receipt in hand and onions in the vehicle, the farmer then proceeds to the godown where the weighing process takes place. As per the rules laid down by the market committee, the farmer must get the payment before the end of the day, which is largely followed.

After the produce is dropped off at a shed in the complex, the traders take control of it. Workers start segregating(separate,अलग) the onions according to the quality and the packaging begins. Vehicles are loaded with the produce to be sent off to cities or to different States. Traders then get into a huddle to firm up the retail price of the produce — adding their profits — with nary a concern for the farmer and the price demanded by him. The operation is bloodless and smooth.

Barely breaking even

While onion is one of the major crops in this belt, farmers also cultivate grapes, soya bean, sugarcane, and ginger. Speaking out against the cartel of traders is not easy when the farmer is dependent largely on the onion crop, as it may result in traders ganging against him (or her) by dropping rates for his produce.

Official data from the Lasalgaon Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) says that this year’s prices — between Rs.500-Rs.800/ql., down from Rs.970-Rs.3,786/ql. — are the lowest in the last five years. This year, Rs.1,020/ql. (in June) was the highest rate given to farmers, compared to Rs.6,326/ql. in 2015-16, and Rs.2,626 in 2014-15.

Growing onions costs between Rs.50,000 and Rs.80,000 per acre, and a cultivated acre yields(give,देना) not more than 100 ql. With this year’s average selling price at Rs.728/ql., an acre’s worth of onions would get the farmer around Rs.72,800. This sees some farmers barely break even; many lose money.

Small wonder that Milind Darade, who owns 13 acres of land, is furious(angry,गुस्सा). “This is the only industry where producers have no right to decide the price of their product,” the onion farmer from Karanjgaon, Nashik district, says. “Isn’t it cruel? Shouldn’t we get angry?” The week before The Hindu caught up with him at the Saikheda sub-market committee, Darade was given a humiliating price for his produce: Rs.5/ql., or 5 paisa/kg. If that was not bad enough, Maharashtra’s Minister for Co-operation, Subhash Deshmukh, said on a live television show that his onions were rotten. “Let me give you some information,” he says indignantly(angrily,गुस्से से), “this is the onion you eat at a restaurant. Just peel off two layers and you would wonder whether it was really rotten.”

Darade has preserved the official paper from the market committee with the offered rate; he has laminated it to ensure it doesn’t get dog-eared. He says that he was so angry that he refused to sell his onions and brought the load, some 10-11 ql., back to his farm to use as fertiliser. But, he says, “When I calmed down, it dawned upon me that I must use it to highlight the plight of onion farmers.”

Supply-demand mismatch

Simplistically put, there was a shortage last year, and this year has seen record onion cultivation. Abundant(plentiful,प्रचुर) supply has brought the prices down. The farmers, though, are used to this kind of fluctuation. They don’t blame the bumper crop and supply-demand equation; they say it’s the traders who are conspiring(plot,साजिश) against them and the government has done little — or the wrong things — to help.

To understand the current crisis for farmers, we need to step back a little.

India has three onion crops a year. Early kharif (the crop sowed in the monsoon) onions come to market between October and December. Onions from the rangda, or late kharif, crop arrive from January to March. The winter or rabi crop is up for sale from April to May. Usually, some parts of the rabi crop are stored for a few months to fill the gap from May to October. Traditionally, prices rise from July to October; official data show that wholesale rates rise by as much as Rs.1,000/ql., even Rs. 1,500, later reflected in the retail market with an increase of Rs.5-Rs.10/kg for consumers.

In 2014-15, the onions took a hit following a hailstorm in North Maharashtra which, in turn, affected their storage value. With many rotting, the onions that did make it to market commanded high prices.

Then the drought of the summer just past played a role too; many sugarcane farmers switched to the less thirsty onion this year. “The onion cultivation area in the State has almost doubled in year 2015-16,” says Nanasaheb Patil, Director, National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd. (NAFED). “Farmers hoped that they will get last year’s rate — close to Rs.3,000-Rs.4,000/ql. — which did not happen, as production increased in huge proportions.”

India is the world’s second-largest onion producer (after China) with 26.79 per cent of the planet’s land under onion cultivation and 19.90 per cent of its production. Maharashtra is India’s largest producer, with a 32.45 per cent share of total onion production, and in turn, Nashik district in north Maharashtra accounts for with 41 per cent of the State’s onion harvest. According to the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCIS), India produced 203.33 lakh metric tonnes (MT, 1,000 kg) of onions in 2015-16, up from 189.28 lakh MT in 2014-15. Lasalgaon, Asia’s biggest onion market, received around 32,680 MT in the previous fiscal year. Five months into this year, it has received 10,874 MT.

To make matters worse for Maharashtra’s farmers, other States — notably Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka — have reported higher onion yields.

Holding on for a better day

Aside from the production glut(overload,भरमार), another important factor was a 40-day strike by traders in July and August, opposing the State government’s decision to free agricultural market committees from government regulations. With no outlet for their rabi onions, farmers had no option but to store them and wait for the strike to end. In addition, thanks to the low prices, some farmers are choosing to not bring their onions to the markets, and instead are storing them away hoping an artificial scarcity(shortage,कमी) later in the year will pay off for them.

This strategy, however, comes with its own dangers: that of the crop rotting or the onions sprouting. Malti Bodke of Bhuse village points to her rotten onions with disgust. “How long can we store them? It’s been almost four months. Once the onions start sprouting, they lose weight, and it becomes difficult to get a higher price.”

The farmers also say that the traders are colluding(plot,षड्यंत्र) to cheat them. “It’s a cartel of traders which decides the rates and once the market reopened, they ensured prices didn’t cross Rs.1,000/ql.,” says Rajaram Fafale, from Maralgoi village.

The strike gets blame for the glut. But did trade actually stop? Officials and traders seem to want consumers to believe that, but farmers say it never really stopped. Darade says that opportunistic traders discreetly(carefully,सावधानी से) approached farmers and “quoted lowest possible rates. Farmers, thinking it was better to sell, even at a low price, rather than keep them and let them rot, did sell”.

Three years ago, when the farmers were getting Rs.4,500-Rs.5,000/ql., retail onion prices reached Rs.90/kg., which resulted in protests from the then-opposition parties, as well as consumer organisations, in Delhi, Mumbai and other major cities, accusing the United Progressive Alliance government of failing to protect consumers.

The government’s first step was to increase the Minimum Export Price (MEP) to $1,150/MT. This made it difficult for Indian exporters to compete in international markets; whatever stock was available was diverted to the domestic market, which brought prices down. By March 2014, when the late kharif crop got to market, prices had dropped to less than Rs.1,000/ql. in the wholesale market, and consumers got theirs at Rs.20-Rs.25/kg.

This may have played out well for consumers, but has had other consequences(result,परिणाम) for the industry. “There is absolutely no consistency in our approach towards onion exports,” says NAFED’s Patil. A look at MEPs between December 2010 and December 2015 bears him out: the figure has fluctuated wildly, dropping to $0 in May 2012, and with a high of $1,150 in November 2013. “It only enrages our customers overseas,” says Patil. “They are left with absolutely no guarantee of quantity and price of onions exported from India. These customers have instead chosen Pakistan, China and Iran, and we have lost guaranteed markets.”

Patil says that the government’s decision to placate(calm,शांत) enraged(angry,नाराज़) urban customers has lost it both its farmers’ support and its overseas markets. The onion, he says, is no longer an agricultural commodity, it has become a political symbol.

An MSP for onions?

Assuming the government has to balance the needs of consumers with those of producers, what else could it have done to ensure that farmers get some return on their labour?

The National Horticulture Research & Development Foundation (NHRDF) keeps track of potential harvests by collecting information on each district. This year, despite being aware of the possibility of a bumper crop, the government appears to have failed to take any measures to protect farmers. The NHRDF’s estimates say the rabi onions should be selling at around Rs.818/ql., which is significantly higher than what farmers are managing to get. If the government chose to use its Price Stabilisation Fund, it could subsidise the crop, paying, say, Rs.500/ql.

What the State government has announced this week by way of relief — Rs.100 per quintal, up to a maximum of 200 quintals, or a maximum of Rs.20,000 — has, to put it mildly, failed to enthuse farmers. Every farmer The Hindu spoke to called the measure not just inadequate(insufficient,अपर्याप्त) but practically a mockery of their plight.

Fafale, who sold 10 ql. at Lasalgaon for Rs. 220/ql., or Rs 2.2/kg., greeted the news with scorn. “Now I will get one rupee more. What a relief!” he says sarcastically. “We aren’t begging in front of the government. What we are asking is our right. How does this government conclude that this much of money is sufficient as financial aid? Who advises them? Have they bothered to check the ground reality?”

One of the major demands the farmers have is for the government to introduce a Minimum Support Price (MSP) for onions, as it has for sugarcane. “Why don’t the officers understand that we are not independent and traders enjoy a free run here?” says Darade. “Unless an MSP is announced, we cannot be sure of a certain minimum profit. Why this neglect?”

Western Maharashtra, the State’s sugar belt, has seen, in recent times, sugarcane farmers agitating(incite,उत्तेजित for an increased MSP. It became an electoral issue in 2014 when the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) suffered major defeats in the Assembly polls in the region considered a bastion for both.

The Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana (SSS; its name means ‘organisation for farmers’ self-respect’), led by Raju Shetti, which was in the thick of the agitation, is now part of the State government and Shetti is an MP. While the SSS has stage limited protests in the State’s onion belt demanding an MSP, it has not been able to take the protests to a wider audience. With the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena regime, as with the previous Congress-NCP rule, the MSP for onions issue is far from being solved.

In the village of Bhuse, Ramdas Bodke, 65, is philosophical. “I have seen many seasons and farming has never been easy. We know how to tackle nature. What do we do with man-made problems? We farmers feed the world, but now we wonder whether we will have food cooked at home.” He lapses into silence for a minute, and then his tone turns bitter: “Did the government discuss its proposal to hike MLA salaries for even a day? The government takes an instant decision to increase the salary of MLAs, but it takes a long time to decide about farmers. This is injustice. But there is no one to give justice to farmers.”

As for the urban consumers and their agitations, farmers mince no words when the topic comes up for discussion. Turning towards me, one of them asks, “You get agitated when prices skyrocket, but have you ever wondered what happens when prices hit rock bottom? Why don’t you come out on the streets demanding a fair price for us?”

courtesy:the hindu

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Lend aggressively but responsibly

Developing countries today target high growth through investments in infrastructure, modernization and expansion of manufacturing and service facilities, and in agriculture and allied areas. At the same time, they seek to enable disadvantaged sections to upgrade their standard of living. In this, the developing countries expect financial institutions to act aggressively as well as responsibly.

The global financial structure, as it is evolving, is a technological marvel. Assets originating at the base are securitized, packaged in different forms for sale to investors all across the globe. These assets, if infected with a high probability of default, will always carry the germs of a systemic crisis. The lending agencies therefore have an enormous(large,विशाल) responsibility; while a high-growth economy offers opportunities for profits, lenders need to be (despite insistent pressures from powerful borrowers and politicians) extremely cautious and desist from taking on high-risk assets.

A good example in this regard is the subprime crisis in the US during the decade just gone by. The lending ambience was congenial(favourable,अनुकूल) : a continually rising property market, a flood of liquidity fed by an upsurge in global savings and an accommodating credit policy. The lenders had two options: low profit, low risk from sound but relatively few mortgage assets, and high profit, high risk from high risk but abundant(excessive,अत्यधिक) mortgage assets.

Lending agencies chose the second option—a choice dictated by the inexorable(harsh,कठोर) logic of a profit-driven market economy. They lured(entice,लुभाना) subprime borrowers with a slew of “innovations” to create assets at any cost: progressively relaxing margin money, dispensing with the requirement of income investigation and dismissing borrower concerns about unexpected shortfalls in their disposable incomes. All this they did, not out of any philanthropic(generous,परोपकारी) zeal but out of the urge(force,मजबूर) (given the opportunity) to make quick profits. The major premise underlying their behaviour was that if the property market collapsed, leading to a systemic crisis, the state could not but step in, as it had indeed done several times in the past.

State intervention in a crisis is a must, but the challenge before any polity is to intervene before the crisis erupts and to do so in a manner that helps the lending agencies generate a sustainable level of good assets. Such intervention must be planned and designed such that a balance is struck between the aspiration of marginal borrowers (to create and own assets) and the continued viability of lending agencies—critical for the efficiency and stability of any financial system. If we are to grapple(fight,लड़ना) with the recurring problem of non-performing assets and continue uninterruptedly with pushing social sector lending and infrastructure development, the polity has to act innovatively: There has to be a partnership, so to speak, between the state and the financial system.

But what kind of a partnership? Two points need to be made here. The plea for state participation is not to seek a return to the “loan mela” days of political patronage, to open the purse strings for subsidies, to interfere with the credit decisions of lending agencies, or to justify the oft-talked about practice of lending at political behest. This is a plea for selective public investment aimed at enhancing(increase,बढ़ाना) the viability of private sector projects and the income and employment potentials for the disadvantaged sectors.

Take housing, for instance. Our desire to have a pool of affordable houses has hardly made any headway, primarily because of the prohibitive cost of land. The state has to do some out-of-the-box thinking to clear the hurdles(problem,बाधा) in the availability of land at a reasonable price. The flow of funds from the state and the lending agencies, made available in tandem(one behind other,एक के बाद एक) and planned and targeted at select locations, should be the basis for this partnership.

A second point. Admittedly, we have to push private sector investments into different types of infrastructure projects, industry and agriculture for sustaining growth and generating employment. In this regard, a good many projects are clearly viable and remain good candidates for institutional funding, even as several others continue to inhabit the penumbra zone. Given the technological complexities and demand in today’s dynamic global economy, and with the kind of in-house skills currently available, the projects of the latter variety do not lend themselves to easy appraisal. It is also next to impossible for individual lending agencies to cost-effectively build in-house skills for the accurate evaluation of these projects. If investments in all key sectors are to be pushed aggressively, we must have special institutions with the mandate to assess these projects and to provide such critical financial assistance as can induce the lending institutions to lend appropriately to them.

We had set up development finance institutions in the early stages of our industrialization in the 1950s and early 1960s; nearly 75% of the cumulate private investment was canalized through these. However, we committed the grievous(serious,गंभीर) mistake of scrapping these institutions in the 1990s. On the other hand, China, years after it had switched over to a market economy, set up its National Development Bank in 1995; the institution is estimated to have financed over 60% of the total private investment in that country since then. Brazil is another illustrious example in this regard, while even Germany and Japan are continuing with these types of development banks.

Back home, in India, we must recognize that, without the critical support, financial and otherwise, that such national-level development finance institutions can provide, our objective of creating a sustainable level of good assets and maintaining a steady rate of growth is bound to remain hamstrung.

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One-dollar labs for the ‘citizen scientist’

Frugality(economical,कमखर्ची), crafting inexpensive knock-offs and making do with little may be the ethos(character,प्रकृति) of India’s pharmaceutical industry, its manufacturing sector and the spirit with which our scientists conduct their research but an Indian-origin bio-engineer at Stanford University has just won one of America’s grandest prizes — the MacArthur ‘Genius’ grant — worth Rs.4 crore for designing a $1 microscope.

Towards do-it-yourself science

Manu Prakash from Rampur, Uttar Pradesh and an engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, has made a name for fashioning ingenious(simple,सरल) devices that make the essence of science — observation and experiments — accessible to those who can’t afford expensive instruments.

His best-known is the ‘Foldscope’, a microscope that can be fashioned out of paper that comes pre-fixed like in a jigsaw puzzle set. Most of these kits have been distributed free so far and the aim is to have it cost less than a dollar. The kits come with a glass slide that can be slipped into the do-it-yourself microscope and can be used to check for microbes in a soil or water sample, closely observe the anatomy of a water lily or the striations of an earthworm.

Another of his inventions, according to a press statement from the MacArthur Foundation, is a sticker-like microfluid chip that can be used to collect thousands of nanolitre-sized droplets of saliva from mosquito bites in order to test for pathogens. Dr. Prakash also recently demonstrated a novel diagnostic tool, a “water computer”, which involves building a computer out of tiny(small,छोटा) air bubbles travelling in a microfluidic channel.

India has been an early adopter of his devices. The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) has signed a Rs.1.5-crore agreement with the Prakash Lab at Stanford University to procure 10,000 Foldscopes that could then be given to schools, colleges, forest field officers and help encourage an interest in field observation and research. Already workshops with schools, students and colleges in Delhi, Guwahati and Kaziranga (Assam) have enthused students and teachers, says Shailja Gupta, a DBT official who coordinates the Foldscope programme. “I’ve used it, my daughter likes it. The charm of the device is that anyone can use it to see their surroundings differently… the microbes on your food for instance,” she says.

Earlier this year, Dr. Prakash’s lab came up with a new device that modifies a child’s toy, whirligig, into a device called a ‘paperfuge’ that — he and his colleagues claimed in a June research paper — could be used to “isolate malaria parasites in 15 minutes from whole human blood”. The device can be used to separate pure plasma in less than 90 seconds.

Just what India needs

Expanding the materials used could mean new kinds of devices that don’t need electricity to develop point-of-care diagnostics, especially in resource-poor settings, the paper added. India accounts for over 17 per cent of the world’s population while spending less than 1 per cent of the world’s total health expenditure.

The healthcare expenditure stands at 4.1 per cent of its GDP, which is among the lowest in the world, and dealing with challenges like these requires affordable interventions, something that both public and private healthcare experts have repeatedly emphasised through the years. “If there were more devices like Prakash’s, there’d be uses for them that we can’t yet envisage(imagine,विचारना),” says Ms. Gupta, adding, “We are exploring options like a manufacturing facility to scale up these devices.”

Dr. Prakash’s approach to engineering allows a wider range of professionals to become so-called ‘citizen scientists’ and bring new facts about nature and solutions to technical problems to the fore. The Foldscope allows images of samples to be relayed via an app to a central site that stores information, about an intriguing(fascinating,लुभावना) microbe or a new earthworm or the beginnings of a new plant infection from a place that may be otherwise inaccessible to scientists.

“It certainly isn’t a replacement for the lab microscope,” says Vibha Narang, coordinator of the Botany Department, Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College, Delhi, “but we saw a lot of fervor(enthusiasm,उत्साह) among school students.”

Her college was part of a workshop organised by the DBT and Dr. Prakash to explain the Foldscope. “But for collecting samples during a field trip or a quick survey, I think this is a very handy device,” she adds.

courtesy:the hindu

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