- Modi announces ₹100 cut in LPG refill price
- The prime minister on Friday announced a reduction in domestic LPG prices by rupees 100 a cylinder.
- This will significantly ease the financial burden on millions of households across the country.
- This is the second reduction in cooking gas prices in six months.
- The revision brought down the prize from nine year high of rs 1103 per 14.2 kg cylinder to rs 903.
- To tackle the issue of solid fuels, the Government of India launched the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana in 2016. It is a scheme of the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas for providing LPG connections to women from BPL households, SC/ST, PMAY, AAY, most backward classes, tea garden, forest dwellers and those residing in islands.
2. India’s sub optimal use of its labour power
- About 90% of the working Indian population earns its livelihood through informal employment that is characterised by little or no job security and low employment benefits.
- Whatever is happening to the GDP growth rate depends on what is happening to the labour market.
- Overall the labour force participation rate has gone up steadily to 58.35% in 2021-22 starting at 52 .35% in 2017 18.
- While the fraction of the self-employed who are employers has gone up marginally by less than one percentage point during the said period. The bulk of growth in self-employment has come from the rise of unpaid family workers.
- At the most aggregate level the all India average real daily earnings increased by round rs 10 between the said period, which is a 4% increase.
- LFPR is the percentage of the working-age population (aged 15 years and above) that is either employed or unemployed, but willing and looking for employment
3. EC, ChatGPT-maker held talks in February on misuse of AI
- Representatives from open AI met officials from the Election Commission in February to ensure that its platform was not misused during the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
- It also held a roundtable discussion with civil society representatives in India on the upcoming elections.
- The Election Commission is looking to collaborate with the developer of ChatGPT.
- OpenAI was set up in December 2015 as a non-profit AI research organisation whose goal was to develop “artificial general intelligence,” or AGI. AGI is essentially software that is as smart as humans.
4. Centre tweaks PM solar free electricity scheme
- The Union government has tweaked the new rupees 75,000 crore Pradhan Mantri Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana.
- The scheme will now only contribute up to 60% of the costs from an initial plan to fully subsidise the installation of 1kW-3kW solar systems in 1 crore households.
- Households interested in awaiting the scheme’s benefits will have to fork out the balance amount and pay a minimum of rupees 20,000 depending on the power capacity of the installed system.
- Only houses with a suitable roof and an existing connexion to the grid will be eligible for the scheme and consumers still have to pay for all the net power supplied and consumed via the grid.
- The objective is to deliver 300 units of ‘free electricity’ monthly to 1 crore households via rooftop solar setups. At present rates, there will be a subsidy of Rs 30,000 for 1 kW systems, Rs 60,000 for 2 kW systems, and Rs 78,000 for 3 kW systems or higher.
5. Small savings interest rates left unchanged
- The centre decided to keep the returns offered on various small savings schemes unchanged for the April to June quarter.
- Rates on most schemes have been raised over the last six quarters but the return on the public provident fund has frozen at 7.1% since April 2020.
- The returns on the Sukanya Samridhi account scheme introduced by the prime minister in 2015, which are also tax free, were raised to 8% in April 2023 and further to 8.2% for the current quarter.
- Small savings have emerged as a key source of financing the government deficit. They are the major source of household savings in India and comprise 12 instruments. The depositors get an assured interest on their money. Collections from all small savings instruments are credited to the National Small Savings Fund (NSSF).
