Rs21,000
What is it? The wage ceiling for mandatory Employees’ Provident Fund coverage that the Central government is considering. It’s Rs15,000 at present.
Why is it important? The move will bring 6 million more employees under the mandatory social security plan which includes PF, pension and insurance, with each employee contributing 12% of salary monthly to the EPF. Those in the organised sector, earning upwards of the salary, can opt in voluntarily. The cost to the Union government would be an extra Rs1,617 crore, at Rs5,659 crore a year. According to last reported numbers, the PF portion of the corpus was Rs360,000 crore.
Tell me more: The EPFO had suggested a threshold increase to Rs25,000 but it would have raised the cost to the government by Rs2,708 crore.
Rs6.24 crore
What is it? The total value of fake Indian currencies seized by various law enforcement forces after demonetisation and introduction of new notes in November 2016.
Why is it important? Following reports of fake currencies flooding the market after demonetisation, some replicating crucial security features on the new Rs2,000 notes, the government reassured it was still easily identifiable and furnished the seized numbers as proof. The volume of fake notes exceed thousands.
Tell me more: In a Rajya Sabha reply, the home ministry also assured demonetisation of new currency notes was not on the cards.
500,000 tonne
What is it? The volume of raw sugar that was allowed to be imported duty-free.
Why is it important? This is over 3% of the sugar production in the October-February (full year: October-September) period of 2016-17 marketing year. Sugarcane supply hit by drought in major producing states of Maharashtra and Karnataka has led to a fall of 19% compared to 2015-16, leading to the import.
Tell me more: The move will raise global sugar prices given India’s status as the second-largest sugar producer and an exporter till last season.
12
What is it? The number of unicorns founded by alumni of Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), according to a report by UK software firm Sage.
Why is it important? That ranks IITs fourth in the list, after Stanford (51 unicorns), Harvard (37) and University of California (18). For long, IITs were criticised for not producing enough entrepreneurs, but that has been changing in the last few years. According to one count, 60% of all start-ups that have Series A venture funding have founders from IIT/IIM. Set up as engineering training institutes, IITs have been expanding their scope over years, and now plan to offer MBBS courses as well, starting with IIT Kharagpur.
Tell me more: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and University of Pennsylvania, which follow IITs in the list, have led to nine unicorns each. Unlike others in the list, IITs are a group of institutions, having over 60,000 students, all campuses put together. Stanford has about 16,000 students, Harvard 22,000 and MIT 11,000.
$3.6 billion
What is it? The investment Indian Railways will need to achieve a solar energy target of 5GW by 2025, according to a study by Council on Energy, Environment and Water.
Why is it important? Railways is a big consumer of electricity, and its move to solar will help India in achieving its larger renewables energy target, besides helping with its INDC commitment of 40% non-fossil fuel installed power capacity. Railways uses close to 2.4% of the country’s total electricity consumption, and it’s growing at 5% a year.
Tell me more: The report estimates that 1.1GW of 5GW would come from rooftop and the rest from utility scale projects. Railways has an installed capacity of 16 MW of solar as of March 2017, and is in the process of commissioning 255 MW of rooftop solar projects.
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