Sammy's Blog

  India and ASEAN nations differ significantly in science and technology across sectors like space, supercomputing, AI, biotech, and R&D. Here's a more holistic comparison including advanced tech domains: 1. Space Technology India is far ahead. ISRO has a complete ecosystem: launch vehicles (PSLV, GSLV), planetary missions (Chandrayaan, Mangalyaan), satellite manufacturing, and commercial arm NSIL. India is one of the few countries with independent access to space and upcoming ambitions like the Gaganyaan human spaceflight and a Venus mission. In ASEAN, only a few countries have modest capabilities: Vietnam and Indonesia operate Earth observation satellites and are building capacity. Malaysia has launched micro-satellites but depends on foreign launch providers. Singapore leads in private space startups but lacks a space agency. Verdict: India is decades ahead in sovereign space capabilities. India even launched satellites for Singapore & Indonesia. 2. Supercomputing I...

India - Pakistan - Bangladesh: A small comparison 

 As Paris Olympics is over, I want a few changes which can better our chances in the upcoming Olympics. 1. Transition from Junior to Senior - Only a small amount of our Junior World medalists can develop into Senior medal contender Exm - Jeremy Lalrinnunga is Youth World Record Holder, so are Rizki Juniansyah🇮🇩 & Karlos Nasar🇧🇬. Latter won Golds in Paris OG, whereas Jeremy is yet to break PB for the past 4.5 years. Komalika Bari could be another example as she became 2 time age-group Archery World Champion but whom she has beaten (Sonoda Waka🇯🇵 / Elia Cañales🇪🇸) has more achievements than her recently. 2. Underperformance at crucial moments - Indian athletes played a total of 5 Bronze medal matches in Paris OG but won 2 (Men's Hockey & Aman in Men's 57kg FS) but lost 3 (Skeet Mixed, Archery Mixed & Badminton MS) - this aspect should be improved in future Handling the pressure in key situations is one aspect I want Indian athletes to improve. 3. Focus on qual...

In 2020, India ranked 6th in the World (4th in Asia) in terms of Global sales of Chemicals and Petrochemicals. It contributes ~2.5% of Global chemical sales. India is 3rd largest consumer of polymers, 4th largest producer of Agrochemicals, 2nd largest manufacturer of dyes. Chemical industry contributes ~1.4% of national GVA, 8.8 % of manufacturing GVA (Gross value Added), 11.3% of India's export. Indian chemical industry is estimated to be worth US$ 178 billion (demand).  The production of Chemicals is worth US$ 166 billion, Import - US$ 51 billion and Export - US$ 39 billion, based on 2020 estimates. India is ranked 3rd in import, 4th in export for past 5 years. India has petroleum-refining capacity of over 194 Million tonnes per Annum (MTPA). The world's largest grass root refinery with 32 MTPA capacities is located in India. It has a number of gas cracker complexes with downstream facility producing 8 MTPA plastics and polymers. India produce 21 MTPA of Urea; and has the wid...

 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 1. Johnson Lifts and Escalators (Only India based company, Plant - Oragadam, near Chennai) 2. Otis (Plant - Bengaluru; new plant opened - 2012) 3. Schindler (Plant - Chakan, near Pune; opened - 2017) 4. Mitsubishi (Plant - Bengaluru; opened - 2016) 5. Kone (Plant - Sriperumbudur near ...

India automobile manufacturing come through a tough patch of socialism and License Raj. When India gained independence, Hindustan Motors was the only Indian car maker in India. The Nehruvian Socialism had a pretty bad impact on Indian Automobile sector. In 1954, Ford & GM down their shutters due to License Raj. Things started to shape when Sanjay Gandhi planned to manufacture car in India. Maruti Udyog Limited was formed with JV along side Japanese automobile maker Suzuki. Maruti 800 was the first car that rolled out from the newly formed JV. This rose the Indian car sales to 1 lakh in 1985. This rose to 2 lakh in 1989. It take 15 years to increase the value 5 times when 10 lakh cars were sold in 2004. By 2010, 25 lakh cars were sold in India. 1991 was considered as a remarkable year for Indian economy when Indian economy is liberalized to the foreign investors. The first 3 foreign companies to come to India are - Ford, General Motors and Hyundai. In 1960, SIAM (Society of Indian A...

Japan always stood as a "Special" friend to India. Cultural exchanges between India and Japan date back to the 6th century with the introduction of Buddhism to Japan from India, via China and Korea. Indian monk Bodhisena went over to Japan in 736AD to spread Buddhism. During World War 2, Japan helped Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose to form "Azad Hind Fauj" (Indian National Army). Later, Mr. Radhabinod Pal was appointed as one of three Asian judges appointed to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the "Tokyo Trials". Among all the judges of the tribunal, he was the only one who submitted a judgment which insisted all defendants were not guilty. India-Japan diplomatic relation was established in 1952. Back in 80s and 90s when India opened up for foreign companies, Japanese conglomerates specially the high tech automotive companies opened JV in India. Among them Hero Honda, Kawasaki Bajaj, Hyderabad Allwyn-Nissan, TVS-Suzuki, Mitsubishi-Hindustan...

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...