Explanation:

 What is the ‘sandbox approach’?
Fintech innovations are not risk-free, and their transformative implications are being scrutinized by regulators, including the Financial Stability Board. Regulators are exploring ways to apply innovation responsibly – ways to manage systemic risks that may arise from technological change.

Although publicized as novel, the “sandbox” is not a new concept; it is just a new expression. Quite sometime back in many developing countries, regulators adopted a flexible “test and learn” approach to foster innovation.

The sandbox approach gives limited authorization for fintech startups to test new products and models with a small number of actual users in a simulated environment.

This gives them more time to build and test business ideas, instead of spending time navigating complex financial services regulations. Focusing on regulatory compliance eats up seed capital before anyone knows whether an idea could work and be scaled up.

Piloting a product or business model in the sandbox will help companies manage their regulatory risk during testing. Restricting transaction size will limit any large adverse consequence of product or model failure.

Globally, regulatory sandboxes have been introduced in the U.K., Singapore, Australia, Malaysia and UAE. All these countries have so far created a sandboxed environment to support financial institutions (FIs) and fintech firms.

Four Waters is the brainchild of the late T. Hanumantha Rao, an engineer who implemented it in this village between 2001 and 2004 under the Drought Prone Area Development Programme. In the Four Waters concept, the central focus is on using rain water, surface water and groundwater, and maintenance of soil moisture at a high level. It provides crops with protection from extreme heat and lack of irrigation.

Worldwide, the standard way of waste managemen is to unload the waste in windrows, not high heaps.

Windrows are long low parallel heaps of waste, not more than two metres high, which are designed to achieve the best conditions for aerating the waste. Only parking-lot type management is required to guide incoming vehicles on where and how to unload their waste, moving slowly forward and leaving the waste behind in a long row. Enough space is left between rows for a lifting tractor or earthmover to drive through and turn the waste in the windrow.

The outer aerated waste should form the inner core of a new windrow, and the airless centre of the old heap now on the outside. Weekly turning of the waste, repeated at least four times, ensures that all parts of the waste are fully decomposed, like leaves on a forest floor, turning dark brown and with a sweet earthy smell. The process can be speeded up by the addition of composting bio-cultures (fresh cow dung or substitutes available in the market).
? Fresh waste windrows heat up inside, to about 55°C to 60°C in three to four days. After four turnings, there is about 40 per cent weight loss as moisture content declines and also about 40 per cent volume reduction. After this, no leachate or methane or smelly gases are released, and this fully stabilised waste is called compost, rich in microbes as well as humus, both wonderful for soil vitality.