Republic Day Parade, 2021

• The Republic Day parade of 2021 will feature the newly acquired Rafale fighter jets. The Rafael Jets will be a part of the Ekalavya formation.
• The vertical Charlie formation is when an aircraft flies at a lower altitude and conducts rolls before stabilizing at a higher altitude.

About the Parade

• The Republic Day parade marches from Rashtrapati Bhavan to India Gate along the Rajpath.
• The first Republic Day parade was held in 1950.
• The chief guest of the first Republic Day parade was the then President of Indonesia Sukarno.
• Prior to the parade, the Prime Minister lays a floral Wrath at Amar Jawan Jyoti.
• The Amar Jawan Jyoti is a Memorial to the fallen soldiers at the India Gate. Following this 2-minute silence in the memory of the soldiers is observed.
• Republic Day parade begins with flag hoisting by the President of India and the Independence Day parade begins with the flag hoisting by the Prime Minister of India.

Awards at Republic Day Celebrations

• Awards presented during the Republic Day celebrations are Kirti chakra and Ashok Chakra.
• These awards are presented by the President of India.

Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar

• The award is formerly known as the National Child Award for Exceptional Achievement.
• This is the Highest Civilian Honour in India that is given to exceptional achievers under the age of 18.
• A child must be an Indian Citizen and reside in India in order to get the award.
• The Ministry of Women and Child Development instituted the purashkar in 1996.
• This Pushkar recognizes the children with exceptional abilities and outstanding status in fields including the arts, culture, academics, research, social service, design, innovation and sports.
• The President of India confreres the award in the week preceding the Republic Day.

Budget during COVID-19

• India’s GDP is estimated at ? 200 lakh crore.
• The first priority for spending should be health and infrastructure.
• India has only five beds for 10,000 Indians and ranks 155th on bed availability in the Human Development Report of 2020.
• Experts opine that the government should increase healthcare spending from 1.5% of the GDP to 2.5%.
• The National Infrastructure Pipeline https://www.aspireias.com/daily-news-analysis-current-affairs/National-Infrastructure-Pipeline aims to invest ? 111 lakh crore by 2025 in over 6,800 projects.
• The proposal to set up a Development Finance Institution is still on the anvil.
• The Chinese government has entered into building social housing projects. As pointed out by the economists in India Today, expenditure on infrastructure can have a large multiplier effect on economic output.
• Suggestions have been made for the introduction of an urban employment guarantee scheme along the lines of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. This will be far better than direct cash transfers.
• The stumbling block to budgetary efforts to spend can be the resource crunch.
• Despite historic lows in fuel prices, the government chose to increase fuel prices to record levels.
• The Goods and Services Tax has been a big source of revenue.
• There is a strong case for reducing the GST tariff.
• Cess or surcharge can be levied on the super-rich.
• Disinvestment must go on at high speed.
• The average tariff must come down to 10% from its current level of 14% by 2024, as suggested by Professor Arvind Panagariya.
• He wrote: “With several key reforms – new labour codes, new farm laws, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, low corporate profit tax, single nationwide GST and widespread digitisation – already in place, the addition of privatisation and trade liberalisation would nearly guarantee a double-digit growth and millions of additional well-paid jobs for the masses in the post-Covid-19 decades.”
• Ms. Sitharaman has left significant imprints in the Budgets she has presented. The lowering of corporate tax rates, the introduction of the option to choose the tax rate both for companies and for individuals up to fixed monetary limits, the introduction of the Vivid se Vishwas scheme without sacrificing revenue, and the structured infusion of fiscal stimulus without accelerating inflation all point to a right approach to Budget-making.
• We can expect a never-before Budget to be presented to meet the crisis created by COVID-19. The super-rich must co-operate without insisting on tax concessions.

Inequality Virus Report: Oxfam

• Indian billionaires increased their wealth by 35% to ?3 trillion during the lockdown, ranking them behind their counterparts in U.S., China, Germany, Russia and France, says the “Inequality Virus Report” brought out by Oxfam, a non-profit organisation.
• The rise in fortunes of the top 100 billionaires is enough to give every one of the 138 million poorest Indian people a cheque for ?94,045, the report released on the opening day of the World Economic Forum in Davos said.
• The wealth of just the top 11 billionaires during the pandemic could easily sustain the MGNREGS or the Health Ministry for the next 10 years, it said underscoring the deepening inequalities due to COVID-19 where the wealthiest escaped the worst impact of the pandemic while the poor faced joblessness, starvation and death.

• Mukesh Ambani, who emerged as the richest man in India and Asia, earned ?90 crore an hour during the pandemic when around 24% of the people in the country were earning under ?3,000 a month during the lockdown.
• The increase in his wealth alone could keep 40 crore informal workers out of poverty for at least five months, the report said.
• It recommended reintroducing the wealth tax and effecting a one-time COVID-19 cess of 4% on taxable income of over ?10 lakh to help the economy recover from the lockdown.
• According to its estimate, a wealth tax on the nation’s 954 richest families could raise the equivalent of 1% of the GDP.
• According to the report, only 6% of the poorest 20% have access to non-shared sources of improved sanitation, compared to 93.4% of the top 20%. As much as 59.6% of India’s population lived in a room or less, which meant that protocols necessary to prevent the spread of COVID-19 cannot be followed.
• Till October, 32 crore students were hit by closure of schools, of whom 84% resided in rural areas and 70% attended government schools.
• Oxfam India’s survey across five States said that close to 40% of teachers in government schools feared that a third of the students would not return once schools reopened. It was estimated that out- of-school rates would double in a year. Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims were likely to see a higher dropout rate. Girls were also most vulnerable as they were at risk of early and forced marriage, violence and early pregnancies, it noted.
• Unemployment of women rose by 15% from a pre-lockdown level of 18%, which could result in a loss of India’s GDP of about 8% or ?15 trillion.
• Women who were employed before the lockdown were also 23.5 percentage points less likely to be re-employed compared to men in the post lockdown phase.

Green Tax

• The Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways has approved a proposal to levy a ‘green tax’ on old vehicles.
• Personal vehicles will be charged a tax at the time of renewal of Registration Certification after 15 years.
• The policy will come into effect from April 1, 2022.

Provisions

• The levy may differ depending on fuel (petrol/diesel) and type of vehicle.
• The proposal will now go to the States for consultation before it is formally notified.
• It includes 10-25% of road tax on transport vehicles older than eight years at the time of renewal of fitness certificate.
• The proposal on green tax also includes a steeper penalty of up to 50% of road tax for older vehicles registered in some of the highly polluted cities in the country.
• Revenue collected from this tax will be kept in a separate account and will be used for tackling pollution, and for States to set up state-of-art facilities for emission monitoring.

Exemptions to Green Tax

• Vehicles like strong hybrids, electric vehicles and alternate fuels like CNG, ethanol, LPG etc to be exempted;
• Vehicles used in farming, such as tractors, harvesters, tillers etc be exempted;

Positives of Green Tax

• It will dissuade people from using vehicles which damage the environment
• It will motivate people to switch to newer, less polluting vehicles
• Green tax will reduce the pollution level, and make the polluter pay for pollution.

Other proposals

• The Ministry also approved a watered-down policy of deregistration and scrapping of vehicles, bringing only those vehicles owned by government departments and PSUs and are older than 15 years under its ambit.
• In 2016, the Centre floated a draft Voluntary Vehicle Fleet Modernization Programme that aimed to take 28 million decade-old vehicles off the road.