Daily Hindu Editorials

💥 Why measuring inequality is not the same as measuring changes in the level of poverty in India In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion on increasing inequality within several countries of the world, including India, particularly after the publication of Thomas Piketty’s book on inequality. It is true that rising inequality has adverse economic and social consequences. The Gini coefficient or other measures of inequality are being used to examine trends in inequality. In this column, we examine the trends in inequality and show that the poverty ratio is equally important as the Gini coefficient in analysing issues relating to growth and distribution. 👉 Consumption inequality Generally the Gini coefficient, which lies between 0 and 1, is used for measuring inequality. The Gini coefficient of consumption expenditure for rural areas declined marginally between 1983-84 to 1993-94 (from 0.304 to 0.286) while it recorded a marginal rise during the high growth...

💥 There is no such thing as total failure; ISRO should learn from its satellite launch problem The loss of communication between the ground station and the Indian Space Research Organisation’s latest satellite after its launch on March 29 is deeply disappointing. ISRO’s mission aimed to place the communication satellite, GSAT-6A, in space. However, shortly after the second orbit-raising operation, the ground station lost track of the satellite on March 31, when it was on course for the final firing. Understanding why this happened is crucial. A launch operation can be simplified into the initial three stages, during which the satellite is boosted to different heights by the launch vehicle and then placed in a geosynchronous transfer orbit. This is an elliptical orbit into which a satellite is placed initially before being transferred into a geosynchronous orbit where it maintains a position above a fixed longitude. During each of these stages, a part of the rocket completes its ...

💥As the GST e-way bill system is scaled up, the authorities must remain flexible After an aborted attempt in February, the government has finally managed to successfully roll out the e-way bill system for tracking the movement of goods under the Goods and Services Tax net from April 1. No major execution challenges have been reported by businesses so far, and the IT backbone that generates the e-way bills — that are now required even before goods are loaded for transport — has so far held up without glitches. On the first two days of the e-way system, which included a Sunday, 5.5 lakh e-way bills were generated, and the GST Network has said that the system is now geared to cope with a much higher capacity. Equally heartening is the revival in GST collections, that had dipped to ₹83,716 crore in November 2017, after a fairly robust ₹90,000 crore-plus inflow for the first three months of the new indirect tax system. As per final data released by the Centre on Monday, collections f...

💥Among the many diplomatic devices countries possess to express outrage, expulsion is the least disruptive Among the many hazards that diplomats face today, the most ancient one is expulsion, also known as declaration of a diplomat as persona non grata. It is the most effective bloodless punishment as the person concerned is removed lock, stock, and barrel from the scene, never to return. The diplomat concerned may not be guilty of omission or commission or even aware of the reason why he is being expelled. He becomes a mere pawn in international disputes or he may even be a victim of a symbolic protest or a reciprocal action. 👉The Russia example Russia now, like the erstwhile Soviet Union, may well be the country whose diplomats have perhaps suffered the largest number of expulsions. The recent coordinated expulsion of over 100 Russian diplomats by more than 20 countries is huge even by the standards of the coldest days of the Cold War. Basically, it was an act of ...