Solutions to Change

By Sivakami Prasanna, ( Image source: Business World) At the time of India’s independence subsidies were necessary as they were important for the small and marginal farmers to access inputs and to encourage them to adopt new technology. But now subsidies are slowly outliving their utility. Subsidies given to the agricultural sector of India have increased from `50,440 crores in 2000 to `1,08,682 crores in 2010. Total subsidies that were given to the agricultural sector in the year 2018 was `57,600 crores. The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare is divided into three departments and in 2018 the grants were divided as following: 1. Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare: 81 per cent 2. Agricultural Research and Education: 14 per cent 3. Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries: 5 per cent While 81 per cent of the grants go for providing agricultural subsidies, only 14 per cent are allocated for investments in agricultural research. Subsidies have...

by Rajesh K P, ( Image source: icelandreview.com) India is home to 14 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world, and given the role of pollution caused by vehicles, there is a greater emphasis on moving to green energy sources. Electric vehicles are seen as a sustainable alternative to the traditional vehicles which rely on fossil fuels. Indian policy on electric vehicles targets the introduction of such vehicles in most commonly used means of transportation. Based on 2016 data, 79 per cent of vehicles on Indian roads are two wheelers (NITI Aayog 2018). Three wheelers, trucks and buses take up another 7 per cent. Most of the advanced technologies in electric vehicles are available in premium cars segment (cars priced over `10 lakhs and above), which is only 2 per cent of the total vehicle population. India’s Electric Vehicle policy aims at developing technology to suit two-wheeler and three-wheeler segments, which addresses a significant portion of India’s transportation...

By Angela Cicily Joseph, ( Image source : Pixabay) The Sputnik moment came when DeepMind’s artificial intelligence system AlphaGo defeated Go’s world champion, Lee Sedol by a marvellous 4 games to 1. Eighteen months later, AlphaZero was released by DeepMind. Unlike AlphaGo, human experts did not train AlphaZero. Instead, it taught itself and was able to not only defeat its predecessor but also other systems. Few months later, countries started investing and announcing national AI strategies. While the race to develop artificial intelligence has gathered momentum with countries like China and the United States of America being leagues ahead, the other countries need to catch up for better economic and political prospects. With an automated world, the developing countries will have less demand for their typical supply of unskilled labour. With AI systems being trained to come up with policy recommendations, countries will have to prepare for a daunting political future. ...

By Rajesh K P, ( Image source: DNA India) Private investment plays a significant role in a capitalist economy. Capitalist economies that are growing are really concerned about the amount of investment that flows in. India with its stunning growth rates after embracing the global order saw a rise in investment from the household sector as well as from private institutions. Understanding growth and understanding policies to promote growth also involve an understanding of investment — how it is formed and what factors control it. There are theories of investment trying to explain why economies behave the way they are. The unpredictable nature of global economy makes the debate over the ‘most suitable’ theory interesting. We will see the part played by investment in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of India during its growth years. We will also inquire whether we should focus on investment, given the signs of GDP growth slowing down (MoSPI 2018). Keeping that in mind, a sn...

Anupama Ghosh, In the last few weeks, Bitcoin has burst back into the public discourse, following a huge surge in its price. The price, which began the year at under $4000 per bitcoin, reached $12,000 in June 2019. This has led many to speculate a potential return to the highs it saw in its price towards the end of 2017. For many, bitcoins and cryptocurrencies have been major technological revolutions that the world has seen over the past few years. The fact that a lot of demand for cryptocurrency stems from countries experiencing high inflation and currency devaluation attests that bitcoin has emerged as a viable alternative to people reeling under economic duress. In 2009, bitcoin was first introduced as an open-source software by anonymous programmer or group of programmers, under an alias Satoshi Nakamoto. Its novelty of being not controlled by any network, government, bank or corporations made its adoption easier in countries where people were dismayed by increasingl...

By Darshana S Nair, ( Image source: Future of Jobs Report, 2018) Remember those sci-fi movies in which machines take over the world, and all those times when we thought it was impossible? Well, it is time to think again. Once called the future of computer science, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has evolved into our reality in just ten years. Gone are the days when you had to slog for hours in the factory, manually lifting objects, maintaining ledgers and standing in long queues to clarify doubts. A lot of these tasks have become automated. AI systems replacing modern manual labour, leading to risk of technological unemployment is a future possibility. On the one hand, studies by labour economists suggest that one more robot per 1000 workers would reduce the employment to population ratio by about 0.18–0.34 per cent and wages by 0.25–0.50 per cent. On the other hand, according to a survey conducted by Deloitte consulting firm, workforce reduction was ranked the lowest at 22...

By Meenakshy Menon, (Image source: The Hindu) The post TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Indian economy was thought to have lesser investments and an “anti-competitive effect in the market”. However, an increased amount of investments in Research and Development sector and the entry of a number of pharmaceutical companies into the market in the recent years have proven these predictions wrong. The TRIPS agreement consists of the trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (IPRs) and aims to protect and enforce the IPRs. It also aims to ensure that it does not become a barrier in international trade. The agreement came into existence via the Punta Del Este Declaration during the 8th round of multilateral trade agreements in Uruguay in 1995. When the topic of India and TRIPS agreement comes together, the discussion mostly takes a unilateral turn focusing on one sector specifically; the patents for the drugs in the pharmaceutical industr...

By Namrita Shankar, Image source: Forbes Artificial intelligence (AI) is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. These processes include learning (the acquisition of information and rules for using the information), reasoning (using rules to reach approximate or definite conclusions) and self-correction. Particular applications of AI include expert systems, speech recognition and machine vision. AI is usually classified as weak and strong. Weak AI, also known as narrow AI, is an AI system that is designed and trained for a particular task. Virtual personal assistants, such as Apple's Siri, are a form of weak AI. Strong AI, also known as artificial general intelligence, is an AI system with generalised human cognitive abilities. This means that when presented with a task, a strong AI system is able to find a solution without human intervention in a fraction of the time taken by human beings. Before moving on to how AI c...