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A health Warning (The Indian Express)

Mains Paper 5: Polity
Prelims level: Health
Mains level: Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services

No budget for farmers (The Indian Express)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: Macro-economic effect
Mains level: Issues related to direct and indirect farm subsidies and minimum

Tax and expenditure reform(The Indian Express)

Mains Paper 4: Economy
Prelims level: Tax expenditure policy
Mains level: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization of

Distributing the r ewards of reform (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Economy
Prelims level: Union Budget 2019
Mains level: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization of

The return of targeted cash transfers (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 1: Economy
Prelims level: Minimum income guarantee
Mains level: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization of resources, growth,

For the farmer, things to Do (The Indian Express)

Mains Paper 5: Agriculture
Prelims level: agricultural income level
Mains level: Economic growth and development

Why cash transfers will not solve the crisis in agriculture (Live Mint)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: Kalia scheme
Mains level: Cash transfers benefits and shortcomings

Not kosher: on Chanda Kochhar case (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Ethics
Prelims level: Not Much
Mains level: Ethical and moral values in corporate governance

The regional great game (The Indian Express)

Mains Paper 4: International Relations
Prelims level: Chabahar port
Mains level: Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving

Why government must spend more (The Indian Express)

Mains Paper 4: Governance
Prelims level: Economics parameters
Mains level: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization of

End of an era (The Indian Express)

Mains Paper 3: International Relations
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level: Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing

Transformation through tech can drive jobs growth (Live Mint)

Mains Paper 2: Economy
Prelims level: Job growth
Mains level: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization of

Stormy weather awaits India in 2019 (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 1: International Relations
Prelims level: Not Much
Mains level: India and its neighbourhood relations

Betrayal of the Mahatma (The Indian Express)

Mains Paper 5: Ethics
Prelims level: Not Much
Mains level: Human Values

Tyranny of the majority (The Indian Express)

Mains Paper 4: Indian History
Prelims level: Mahatma Gandhi
Mains level: Various public figures and their ideas

Waste-to-Energy plants that use solid waste as feedstock pose threat to environment (The Indian Express)

Mains Paper 3: Environment
Prelims level: Waste to Energy plants
Mains level: Environment Impact assessment

Think universal basic capital (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Economy
Prelims level: Universal Basic Capital
Mains level: Economic growth and development

Clearer TV: on TRAI's order on broadcasting, cable services (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 1s: Governance
Prelims level: TRAI
Mains level: TRAI regulations highlights on tv viewership

Rule-taker to rule-maker (The Indian Express)

Mains Paper 5: International Relations
Prelims level: G 20
Mains level: Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India

Context

•  In 2022, India will be host to the G20, or Group of 20 nations, the world’s most influential economic multilateral forum.
•  It is the agenda-setting forum that develops and guides rules of global economic governance.
•  The G20 leaders-level dialogue came into being during the western financial crisis of 2008, when the large developing economies including India and China, helped fund the G8 countries out of the crisis.
•  The G20’s rotating presidency ensures that no one country dominates the agenda. Instead, the G20 host sets an annual agenda, wielding vast direct and indirect influence on nations’ economies.

Is India ready for this leadership?

•  India is ready. Indian business and industry is becoming a noteworthy competitor globally.
•  The country’s domestic economy is starting to pick up, thanks to structural economic reforms.
•  The central government is economically stronger, and the states are starting to learn about economic independence, making them more aligned with their global counterparts.
•  India is more internationally engaged but less so geo-economically.
•  Its narrow focus is on the World Bank, IMF, WTO and foreign investment issues.
•  But India has much to contribute on issues like reconfiguration of global financial regulations, design of a new framework for trade in services and the digital economy and establishing better cross-border standards for transparency in financial flows.
•  To make its G20 year a success, India has to address organisational challenges, where the country has an infrastructure, management and intellectual gap.

What India needs to?

•  G20 presidency brings together several global leaders, their attending delegations, and independent experts.
•  Unlike the Olympics and more like Davos, this effort is focused on a small but powerful group which expects good airports, accommodation, conference facilities, and communications infrastructure all year round.
•  The president of the G20 is tasked with leading and managing the global economic agenda for the year.
•  This is typically undertaken by the finance and foreign ministry and a special appointee as G20 sherpa, which together act as the secretariat to the G20 presidency.
•  In India, the ministries have fine officers with this knowledge, but they are overworked and limited by their short tenures.
•  Global economic governance is no single ministry’s mandate. For example, the ministries of commerce, energy, agriculture have deep stakes in the emerging global economic architecture.
•  The RBI and SEBI play a crucial role in contributing to the formulation of global financial regulations. They all have to work as one.
•  The logistical exercise is monumental, and unprecedented for India. While India has organised annual conferences like Vibrant Gujarat, the G20’s all-year requirements are more intense and sophisticated.
•  It needs an energetic secretariat to organise over 150 high-level ministerial, sub-ministerial and sub-forum meetings through the year; at least 50 task forces lead scores of meetings including those by sub-forums for think tanks and business
•  Intellectually, India is constrained on capacity. There is limited expertise within think tanks or academia on this subject.
•  It requires deep inter-disciplinary research on the international monetary system, global financial architecture, global trading system, and global climate, energy and sustainability issues.
•  This restricts India to being a passive rule-taker, not rule-maker or designer of global economic rules.
•  Consequential economic decisions are then driven by the West, and increasingly by China neither of which are suitable for an India that should be a leading thinker of the new global economic era.

Way forward

•  Hosting a successful G20 presidency in 2022 then, is a welcome challenge.
•  Preparations must begin now.
•  Like other countries, the government will have to work together with its think tanks, businesses and civil society to develop a working mechanism and an agenda for 2022.
•  India is a growing, emerging economy but leads no global economic forums.
•  As former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan said at the inauguration of India’s first official G20 sub-forum, the Think20 meeting, led by Gateway House in 2015, “those who hold the pen, write the rules”.
•  The time has come for India to both hold the pen and write the rules for a more equitable global economics and governance.

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