Sammy's Blog

Indians are always very much obsessed with Pakistan and vice versa. Every time people from both country are comparing with each other.  Let's see where India and Pakistan stands today. 1. Population (Dec 2020) India - 1.387 billion Pakistan - 223.02 million India is roughly 6.2 times bigger than Pakistan. 2. GDP PPP (2019, World Bank) India - $ 9.612 trillion Pakistan - $1.058 trillion India is roughly 9 times bigger than Pakistan. 3. GDP per capita (UNCTAD data) India - $2239 Pakistan - $1193 4. Military Expenditure (SIPRI Report) India - $71.1 billion (2.4% of GDP) Pakistan - $10.3 billion (3.9% of GDP) 5. Forex Reserve held by Central bank(11 Dec 2020) India - $ 578.57 billion Pakistan - $ 13.3 billion India is roughly 45 times bigger than Pakistan.  6. Merchandise Export (2019) India - $ 322 billion Pakistan - $ 20.8 billion India is roughly 15 times bigger than Pakistan. 7. Services Export (2019) India - $214.36 billion Pakistan - $ 5.78 billion India is roughly 37 times ...

India's air passenger traffic stood at 341.05 million in FY20, a CAGR of 11.13% from FY16 - 20. Domestic passenger stood at 274.50 million. The freight traffic grew at a CAGR at 5.32% during FY16-20 from 2.70 MT (million tonnes) to 3.33 MT. The top Indian airports based on Air passenger Traffic in FY20 are - 1. Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi (DEL) - 67.30 million 2. Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, Mumbai (BOM) - 45.87 million 3. Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru (BLR) - 32.36 million 4. Chennai International Airport, Chennai (MAA) - 22.27 million 5. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, Kolkata (CCU) - 22.01 million 6. Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, Hyderabad (HYD) - 21.65 million Among top 50 busiest airports, USA has 15, China has 9 and India has just 2 (New Delhi and Mumbai). USA's Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport is World's busiest with 110.53 million passengers in FY20. ...

India's proven reserve is around 4.73 billion barrels (0.3% of the World). This reserve can only sustain 2.9 years based on India's current consumption. India's current crude oil production is 1.01 million barrels per day (7.8% of proven reserves). In FY20, India's crude oil production was 30.5 MMT. This means India's 96% of petroleum needs are mitigated through imports. India's refining capacity is 249.37 MMTPA (million metric tonnes per annum) of crude oil. This has increased 4 times compared to 62 MMTPA in 1998. Reliance's Jamnagar Refinery has current capacity of 35.2 MMTPA, which is largest in the World. The top nations in terms of oil refining capacity (million barrels per day) are- India consumes 4.44 million barrels per day as of 2016. So the excess oil India exports to other nations. Refined oil is India's largest export. But to protect India's energy security, strategic reserves were planned. To manage the strategic reserves, ISPRL (Indian ...

In Fortune Global 500 list of 2020, only 7 Indian companies made it to the list. This list featured all public listed companies. The 500th company to made it to the list is Shanxi Jincheng Anthracite Coal Mining Ltd. with a revenue of $25.3 billion. The biggest company from India is Reliance Industries Limited with total revenue of ₹615854 crore or $ 86.26 billion. This means India has no company with revenue over 100 billion USD. The countries with companies having revenue more than $100 billion are - USA (32 companies) China (16 companies) Japan (6 companies) France (3 companies) Netherlands and Russia (2 companies) Italy, UK, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland and Taiwan (1 company) This means India has only 7 companies with revenue more than $25 billion. There is also Fortune India 500 list featuring India's top 500 publicly listed companies. Some of the remarkable companies are - 1. Reliance Industries Limited (₹615854 crore, $ 86.26 billion) 28. HCL Technologie...

Well, under PV Narasimha Rao when LPG (Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization) reform was introduced in 1991, India faced so many problems economically. Our Forex reserve was all time low. So a new change would not impact much initially. But it helped India in long run to eradicate poverty. So under Rao’s first year India’s GDP just grew 1.1%. Under his 5 year tenure the GDP grew at 5.1% rate. The economic policies are little bit stable when A.B. Vajpayee took office and India’s GDP grew 5.9% over his 6 year tenure. When Manmohan Singh took office he delivered 7.7% growth over ten years. During Singh’s tenure he faced the financial crisis of 2008 that damaging  financial  institutions globally, culminating with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15,  2008 , and an international banking  crisis . There was no planned lockdown due to any virus outbreak but the financial crisis impacted Indian stock market and forex reserve. BSE Sensex was 2020...

Below are the list of major G20 nations by agricultural labor force. In India, around 44% of people are associated with agriculture and agriculture contributes 15.4% of our GDP. One hand agriculture is the primary source of livelihood on the other hand we are the worst performer among G20 nations in Global Hunger Index. Some of the countries with highest share of agricultural population are - Ethiopia (73%), Gabon (64%), Gambia (75%), Ghana (45%), Kenya (61%), Laos (73%), Mozambique (75%), Senegal (78%), Sierra Leone (62%), Somalia (71%). Just a small comparison- India is World's largest rice exporter with 35.2% of total rice export of the World. The total export value was $7.1 billion in FY19. India's Automobile component export worth $15.16 billion in FY19. India just has one company in Top 100 in " Automotive News Ranking ", named Samvardhana Motherson Automotive Systems Group B.V. ranked #21 in terms of total revenue (worth $11.765 billion in 2018).

 It's been a year since CAA was passed. Even after a year, no Indian has lost citizenship due to CAA. But many lives lost due to misinformation spread by oppositions for their political gains. Now lets understand CAA a little better. First and foremost CAB/CAA has nothing to do with Indian Citizen. It is only ammending Article 5 (Citizenship Act, 1955) of Indian constitution. In India, you can be citizen by 5 ways - By birth, By decent, By Naturalisation (CAA applicable to only this), By Registration, By incorporation of territory. The Act allows a person to apply for citizenship by naturalisation, if the person meets certain qualifications. One of the qualifications is that the person must have resided in India or been in central government service for the last 12 months and at least 11 years of the preceding 14 years. For the specified class of illegal migrants (persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Buddhists and Zoroastrians/Parsis from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Banglades...

India’s Capital Goods manufacturing industry serves as a strong base for its engagement across sectors such as Engineering, Construction, Infrastructure and Consumer goods, amongst others. The capital goods industry in FY 2018 -19 had an overall production figure amounting to $13.6 bn. Capital Goods industry in India provides approximately 1.4 million direct and 7 million indirect jobs. The Capital Goods in India has a market size of $ 43.2 bn. The industry is divided into 10 sub-sectors where Electrical equipment ($ 24.2 billion) is the largest sub-sector followed by Process Plant equipment ($3.7 billion), and Earthmoving & Mining machinery ($3.3 billion). Escalator and Elevator makers Johnson Lifts and Escalators (Only India based company, Plant - Oragadam, near Chennai) Otis (Plant - Bengaluru; new plant opened - 2012) Schindler (Plant - Chakan, near Pune; opened - 2017) Mitsubishi (Plant - Bengaluru; opened - 2016) Fujitec (Plant - Chengalpattu near Chennai, opened - 2010) Kone...

The total road network of India at end of FY16 is 5603293km. The total road length of the country increased significantly from 3.99 lakh kms during the period 31st March, 1951 to 54.02 lakh km during the period 2013-14 to 54.72 lakh kms upto the period 31st March 2015, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 4.2% during the year 1951 to 2015.The highway data has been maintained by Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH). The net length of national highways at end of financial year has shown below - NHAI has accomplished construction of 3,979 km of national highways in the financial year 2019-20. This is the highest ever highway construction achieved in a financial year. By FY21, the total highway length reached  151019 km. Out of total roads, India's net length of highway is 2% but it carries almost 40% of total traffic. MORTH and NHAI has given a special naming convention to highways. All odd numbered highways move East-West and all even numbered highways m...

Around 700 million people in India gained access to electricity between 2000 and 2018. The Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY) of UPA and Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) of NDA helped India to achieve this target. Indian installed capacity was mere 159.4 GW as on 31 March 2010 which grew 2.35 times in next 10 years to 370 GW by 31 March 2020. As of 31 March 2020, India has World's 3rd largest installed capacity. Electricity production reached 1,252.61 billion units (BU) in FY20. India was ranked fourth in wind power (38.1 GW), fifth in solar power (35.7 GW) and fourth in renewable power installed capacity as of Mar 2020. The total installed renewable power is 132 GW (32%) and excluding hydropower is 82 GW (22%). India ranked sixth in the list of countries to make significant investments in clean energy at US$ 90 billion. After signing the Paris Climate Deal, India is committed to install 175 GW of renewable energy by 2022. Between April 2000 and March 2...

 As we are going towards Tokyo Olympic next year, let's see how we performed in Asian and World Championships in 2019. Archery Asian (Bangkok, Thailand) 1 Gold, 2 Silver, 4 Bronze World ('s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands) 0 Gold, 1 Silver, 2 Bronze Athletics Asian (Doha, Qatar) 3 Gold, 7 Silver, 7 Bronze World (Doha, Qatar) 0 Gold, 0 Silver, 0 Bronze (Created 3 new National Records) Badminton Asian (Wuhan, China) 0 Gold, 0 Silver, 0 Bronze World (Basel, Switzerland) 1 Gold, 0 Silver, 1 Bronze Boxing Asian (Bangkok, Thailand) 2 Gold, 4 Silver, 7 Bronze World (Men : Yekaterinburg, Women : Ulan-Ude, Russia) 0 Gold, 2 Silver, 4 Bronze Cycling   (As this is new sport, considering Junior Asian and World Championship performance of Track Cycling. There are also BMX, Mountain and Road Cycling) Asian (Jakarta, Indonesia) 4 Gold, 4 Silver, 2 Bronze World (Frankfurt, Germany) 1 Gold, 1 Silver, 1 Bronze Fencing Asian (Chiba, Japan) 0 Gold, 0 Silver, 0 Bronze ...

QS World University Rankings is an annual publication of university rankings by Quacquarelli Symonds. QS World University Ranking in Engineering and Technology (2020) #44 - IIT Bombay #47 - IIT Delhi #86 - IIT Kharagpur #88 - IIT Madras #103 - IISc Bangalore #156 - IIT Roorkee #233 - IIT Guwahati #342 - Delhi Technological University (formerly Delhi College of Engineering) US has 14 universities in Top 50, followed by UK and Mainland China (5), Japan (4). Singapore's Nanyang Technological University (NTU) ranked Top in Asia. Global MBA Ranking (2021) #50 - IIM Ahmedabad #54 - IIM Bangalore #79 - IIM Calcutta #93 - Indian School of Business QS World University Ranking (2020) among BRICS nations, China has 11 Universities in Top 25, followed by India (6), Russia (5), Brazil (2) and South Africa (1).

India aims to become a $1 trillion digital economy by 2025 and digital infrastructure will play a key role in this journey. The first step was Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhhan Yojna. Launched in 2014, PMJDY has opened over 318 million bank accounts and issued 290 million RuPay cards by June 2018. Linking of Aadhar (UIDAI) to bank accounts makes the system less vulnerable. JanDhan- Aadhaar-Mobile or "JAM Trinity" to be precise is helping India to go digital. Almosr 870 million bank accounts were linked to Aadhaar by Feb 2018, compared to 399 million by April 2017 and mere 56 million by Jan 2014. To give a new dimension to Indian digital Economy "Unified Payment Interface" (UPI) was launched by NPCI on April 2016. This has given an extra push when PM Modi declared Demonetization in Nov 8, 2016. By 2020, India's number of registered Mobile Money account jumped 95 times since 2014, as per IMF report. The UPI transaction and values (taking 1 USD = ₹70) In Nov 2020, Unified P...

In FY19, Indian Railways carried 1.157 trillion passenger-km. This makes it the busiest railway system in the World. In 2019, IR carried 8.44 billion Railway passengers, more than anywhere in the World. In FY18, Indian Railways carried 1.16 billion MT of freight, which is 4th highest in the World. To make Indian freight transport more efficient Govt. is making "Dedicated Freight Corridor". In short, 13452 passenger trains and 9141 freight trains plying 23 million travelers and 3 million tons of freight daily. As of March 2019, Indian Railways' Rolling Stock consists 289 thousand freight wagons, 74 thousand passenger coaches and 12 thousand locomotive engines. Indian Railways track length over years- In terms of revenue, Indian Railways is at 4th position with a net revenue of US$ 28.8 billion (2018). Germany's Deutsche Bahn is at top with net revenue of US$ 51.14 billion (2018). India's current Railway electrification is at 39866 km (FY20) which doubled from 19854...

India in her early days of independence followed socialism. India’s GDP from 1951 till 1991 (when India’s economy was liberalized) grew at a dismal rate of 3.5%. This slow rate of growth is called “Hindu Rate of Growth”. This is the time when India was bound with License Raj. After liberalization, India’s GDP started growing at a rate of 6-8% per annum. People are getting angry these days when Govt. is selling stakes of so called PSUs. Now, let see how efficient the PSUs are in our country. First comes in the list is BSNL. In the early days when VSNL introduced internet in 90s, to get an internet connection one had to wait 5-7 months. For a dial-up connection, people had to pay close to 1000 rupees per month. Then Hutchison Essar, Airtel and Reliance came with their own telecom network in early 2000s and that change the whole scenario. The telecom was penetrated within the mass with a much cheaper call and data rate. As of June 2020, the biggest networks in mobile subscribers in In...

India's R&D investment is dismal 0.5-0.8% of the GDP for past 15 years. This is way below EU average of 1.76% and World average of 1.78%. R&D investment (UNESCO Institute of Statistics) in PPP terms (2018) USA - $476.5 billion (2.7%) PR China - $370.6 billion Japan - $170.5 billion Germany - $109.8 billion South Korea - $73.2 billion (4.3% - Highest in the World) France - $60.8 billion India - $48.1 billion (0.7%) UK - $44.2 billion Brazil - $42.1 billion Russia - $39.8 billion In the $48 billion investment, private invested $17 billion, Govt invested $29 billion and universities $2 billion. Based on the report released by WIPO, total patents filed by Indians in 2017 are 27985 among those only 7496 are granted. India has just 156 R&D professionals per million population, whereas for US it is 4300 and for China it is around 1180. According to an OECD report, in 2014 people graduated with a PhD in India is 24300, which is 4th largest in the World. India govt should bring ...

"Data is the new oil" Clive Humby, UK Mathematician 2006- Cross Border Data transfer is the movement or transfer of information between servers across country borders. Recently, Nikkei Asia Team published a report with help of International Telecommunication Union & US data analytics company "TeleGeography". Out of 485.66 million Mbps of data flow, China now accounts 23% of all cross border data and nearly twice the share of US (12%). India is at 4th position. The rank of top 5 nations are - China + Hong Kong - 111 million Mbps USA - 60 million Mbps UK - 51.22 million Mbps India - 32.97 million Mbps (6.8%) Singapore - 8.11 million Mbps In 2001, US had 45% of the World's cross border data. India's share rose 20000 times since 2001. According to McKinsey, the cross-border bandwidth in use grew 148 times between 2005-2017, a proxy for the surge of information on the move. As data use and movement rises, governments and citizens have taken interest. The Orga...

First of all look at the Forex reserve of China from below list. It increased till $3.84 trillion in 2014 and then started decreasing. That high rise was named "Peaceful Rise" ("Heping Jueqi") under Hu Jintao. Then came Xi in power in 2013 and opened "One Belt One Road" initiative. This was nothing but the "SuperPower" dream by giving loans to economically weaker countries from their excessive forex reserves. This is the point when China is putting more money than India in the economically smaller South Asian countries. Now you may say why India cannot support them with more money than China. The answer is India doesn't have that much Forex reserve. India's current Forex reserve is $575.29 billion (Nov 20, 2020) which rose from $304.2 billion in March 2014. Now you can ask why India cannot achieve high Forex reserve but China did? Well, China's economic liberalization happened under Deng Xiaoping in 1977 and for India it happened duri...

After WWII, United Nation was formed. The five permanent members are Russia, the U.K., China, France and the United States and these countries can veto any substantive resolution. India is one of the 51 Founding Members of UN. In 2021, India is becoming Non-Permanent member of UNSC after garnering 184 votes in the General Assembly that consists of 193 members. This is India’s non-permanent membership for the 8th time. Though India is a founder member, India was never part of Permanent 5. Thus India alongside Brazil, japan and Germany formed G4 nation. This group will support each other to make it to Permanent Membership. Below are the reason I want mention why India can become a UNSC permanent member. India is the first country outside P5 to carry out peaceful nuclear test (Operation Smiling Buddha, 1974). Roughly 1.75 million (WWI) + 2.5 million (WWII) Indians fought for the British in 2 World Wars. India has successfully test fired ICBMs and IRBMs. India became 4th country t...

India's electronic sector grew from US$ 29 billion in FY14 to US$ 70 billion in FY19. This accounts for 3.3% of global electronic production. From 2 mobile manufacturing units in 2014 to 268 units in 2019, 95% of mobile sold in India are "Assembled in India". This sector is huge beneficial to Prime Minister Modi's "Make in India" program. India also became 2nd largest Mobile manufacturer surpassing Vietnam. India's mobile manufacturing share in World is 18%, though huge of them is Assembled End Product(AEP). India is manufacturing only 12% of Semi knocked down (SKD) components. The volume increased from 60 million in 2014-15 to 225 million in 2017-18. The Mobile assembly plant in India are- Micromax - Bhiwadi (Rajasthan), Rudrapur (Uttarakhand) Samsung - Noida, UP - Largest Manufacturing unit outside South Korea with an initial investment of ₹4195 crore. Lava - Noida, UP Apple - Foxconn (Chennai), Wistron (Kolar and Chennai), Pegatron (future by 2022), F...

Excerpts from "When China Rules the World" by Martin Jacques. #China #India  

India is World's 2nd most populous country. Apart from that where India stands globally right now - 2nd largest Rice and Wheat producer. 2nd largest Steel, Coal and Aluminum producer. 4th largest Motor vehicle (passenger and commercial vehicle combined) manufacturer, largest 2-wheeler manufacturer. 3rd largest Energy producer. 4th largest Wind Energy and 5th largest solar energy producer. The Indian film industry generated 3rd largest overall revenues (2019) in the World. 6th largest manufacturer based on value added and one of the leading IT industries in the World. 2nd most no. of cities with a MRT (Mass Rapid Transit). 7th largest Service exporter with net worth of USD 214.76 billion. 3rd most no. of Tech Unicorns (start ups with valuation of over USD 1 billion). 7th most no. of entries in Forbes Global 2000 in 2019. Among 6 nations with multiple satellite launch capability, self developed cryogenic engine, operates extra-terrestrial probes and recoverable satellite capability. ...

 Back in 1947 when we are free literacy rate was 12%, nominal GDP was somewhere 30 Billion USD, only 1500 villages were electrified, life expectancy was mere 32 years. But in next 73 years India has become World’s 5 th largest economy in Nominal terms and 3 rd largest in PPP terms, the literacy rate is over 80%, life expectancy grew to 70 years and electricity reached close to 100% (barring a few remotest villages in Kashmir and Chhattisgarh). India is far from a perfect nation but let’s appreciate what we have achieved so far and what is there to achieve. Back in those days India barely had only one home-grown car company (Hindustan motors). But from there today India has become World’s 4 th largest Car maker behind China, USA and Japan. In militarily, India was first nation outside Security Council to test the nuclear bomb. India is among 4 nations to achieve nuclear triad. But the Public sectors like HAL, DRDO, BEL, BDL needs more support and more investment towards R...