Editorial 1. A New Trade Strategy
Context:
- India’s t export performance has made a critical contribution to its economic growth in recent times.
- Despite global economic woes, India’s overall exports, merchant and services combined, grew at 17.33 per cent to $641 billion during April-January 2022-23 compared to $547 billion during the same period last year.
- This comes after India witnessed an unprecedented growth of 45 per cent with exports touching $422 billion in 2021-22. During this period, India has demonstrated its capability to navigate successfully through the “storm” – of post-pandemic supply-chain woes as well as geopolitical factors — and its resilience has stunned the world.
Policies of government which promote India’ s export:
- The country’s exports performance was not an accident but was the result of well-crafted trade policy interventions, their efficacious implementation, and a host of other initiatives to create a conducive ecosystem to promote exports.
- Export facilitation ensured the effective conceptualisation and implementation of a bundle of export promotion schemes such as the
- Market Access Initiative (MAI),
- Remission of Duties and Tax on Exported Products (RoDTEP),
- Trade Infrastructure for Exports Scheme (TIES) and Interest Equalisation Schemes on pre- and post-shipment rupee export credit, among others.
- This export promotion strategy has led to a sustainable rise in India’s exports.
- The focused approach to capitalise on the country’s inherent strengths has led to a transformation of its export basket. For instance, toy exports from India rose to Rs 1,017 crore in April-December 2022 from merely Rs167 crore in April-December 2013.
Role of Production-linked Incentive (PLI) in changing dynamic of export:
- The Production-linked Incentive (PLI) scheme has been a game changer. It has not only transformed India into a manufacturing hub but has also curtailed its burgeoning trade deficit in electronics and other manufactured goods.
- With an outlay of over Rs 2 lakh crore, the PLI scheme, launched in March 2020, initially targeted manufacturing mobile phones, electrical components and medical devices, and was later extended to 14 manufacturing sectors.
- As a result, electronics manufacturing attracted a massive investment and its exports have grown rapidly by over 55 per cent annually. Exports of mobile phones alone may reach $10 billion during the current financial year.
Improving the logistic efficiency to enhance export competitiveness:
- Logistics, a critical stumbling block in India’s exports competitiveness, has been proactively addressed in the Union budget 2023-24.
- Capital expenditure allocation has been sharply increased by 33 per cent to a record Rs 10 trillion on the development of rail, road, air, and ocean infrastructure, which would go a long way to make export logistics efficient.
- It will also integrate Indian production systems with global value chains (GVC), boosting exports.
Challenges ahead in export sector
- Fears of a slowdown and an imminent recession threaten the world economy. India’s exports are expected to be adversely impacted by the global economic slump.
- The IMF has forecasted world trade to grow at 2.3 per cent through 2031, compared to projected global GDP growth of 2.5 per cent (based on BCG’s global trade model).
- This requires India’s trade strategy and policies to be forward-looking to overcome emerging challenges.
- Earlier, trade policy announcements were largely confined to short-term measures, focused on a few incentives with little strategic intent.
How to counter their challenges to promote export(Way forward)
- Rationalisation of work allocation within the Ministry of Commerce and restructuring of its divisions and subordinate offices with futuristic objectives is likely to transform India’s institutional mechanisms to promote exports.
- Adopting the latest technology in the collection, assimilation, processing of data and making available real-time information across stakeholders has bridged the information gap between the exporters and the various government departments.
- In recent years, the Ministry of Commerce has been actively engaging with state governments and at the district level for speedy and effective implementation of policy measures to promote exports.
- Each of the Indian states was asked to prepare an export promotion strategy involving not only the identification of potential products and markets but also the bottlenecks in realising their full exports’ potential.
- Moreover, the proactive involvement of Indian missions abroad not only in market identification but also in facilitating product entry has been a strategic transformation.
- The Ministry of Commerce has re-examined all the FTAs and is in the process of engaging in newer ones to benefit India.
- Recently, India negotiated new FTAs meticulously with unprecedented speed and acumen with UAE, Mauritius and Australia and it is in the advanced stages of negotiations with the UK. It is also actively exploring new trade agreements with the EU and US.
- The trade policy is increasingly charting out the path to achieve $1 trillion in exports by 2030.
Editorial 2. Climate change might lead to more wildfire-inducing ‘hot lightning’ strikes:
Recent Context:
- As per the recent study published in in the journal Nature Communications; Soaring global temperatures could lead to more “hot lightning” strikes in many parts of the world. It added that this type of lightning is more likely to ignite wildfires than typical lightning.
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What is lightning and how does it occur?
- Lightning is a rapid and massive electrical discharge that takes place between storm clouds and the ground, or within the clouds themselves. Scientists believe that for lightning to occur, positive and negative charges must separate within a cloud.
- This happens, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), when the water droplets in the bottom part of the cloud are moved upwards, where the much colder atmosphere freezes them into small ice crystals.
- As these small ice crystals continue to go up, they gain more mass and eventually become so heavy that they start to fall down to Earth.
- This causes a system in which ice crystals going down collides with the water vapours coming up, leading to the accumulation of positive charges on the top of the cloud and negative changes gathering at the base, while the atmosphere between them in the cloud acts as an insulator.
- When the positive and negative charges grow large enough, their strength overpowers the insulating properties of the properties. As a result, the two kinds of charges meet with each other and produce lightning.
- Although most of the lightning takes place within the clouds, sometimes it is directed towards Earth also. With the base of the cloud becoming negatively charged, positive charges start accumulating on tall objects, like trees, poles and buildings.
Lightning: A major cause of triggering wildfires :
- According to the researchers, lightning is a major cause of triggering wildfires and is responsible for producing the largest wildfires in some regions, including the Western United States.
- Lightning-caused wildfires are dangerous as they spread rapidly before a strong response can be implemented and release substantial amounts of carbon, nitrogen oxides and other trace gases into the atmosphere.
- Although previous studies have demonstrated that climate change might lead to an increase in lightning strike incidents, the latest research is the first time that scientists have focused on the relationship between “hot lightning” strikes and rising global temperatures.
What are the findings of the latest study?
- The researchers analysed 5,858 selected lightning-ignited fires based on satellite images of US wildfires between 1992 and 2018 and found that approximately 90 per cent of them might have started by “hot lightning” strikes.
- Also known as long continuing current (LCC), this type of lightning strike can last from around 40 milliseconds to nearly a third of a second.
- Explaining why “hot lighting” has more potential of triggering a wildfire than typical lightning, , co-author of the new study, explained that “Lightning with continuing currents can transport more energy from cloud to ground than typical lightning.
- When lightning with continuing currents attach to ground or vegetation, they produce more Joule heating and higher temperature than typical lightning, increasing the probability of ignition.”
- As per the study , the frequency of all cloud-to-ground strikes might increase to nearly eight flashes per second, a 28 per cent jump.
- Higher probability of wildfire ignition for lightning with continuing current than for typical lightning. In turn, we have obtained that the ratio of lightning with continuing currents to total lightning could change due to climate change.
Conclusion:
- Therefore, as per study, the sensitivity of lightning-ignited wildfires under climate change will depend not only on changes in lightning and meteorology but also on changes in the occurrence of lightning with continuing currents,” Pérez-Invernón said.
- The areas that might witness a significant increase in wildfires triggered by the LCC strikes are Southeast Asia, South America, Africa, Australia, North America and Europe.
- The researchers predicted this after accounting for changes in precipitation, humidity and temperature.
- However, many northern polar regions might see a decrease in wildfires as rainfall is projected to increase while “hot lighting” rates remain constant.
- Moreover, they have also examined how this form of lightning might affect the incidents of wildfires across the world.