Context: India and the majority of the members of OECD-G20 Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) have joined a new two-pillar plan to reform international taxation rules.

• The two-pillar plan - inclusive framework tax deal on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS)- seeks to reform international tax rules and ensure that multinational enterprises pay their fair share wherever they operate.

Key Points

• The signatories of the plan amounted to 130 countries and jurisdictions, representing more than 90% of global GDP.
• The new framework seeks to address the tax challenges arising from the digitalisation of economies.
• It also seeks to address concerns over cross-border profit shifting and bring in subject-to-tax rule to stop treaty shopping.
• Treaty shopping is an attempt by a person to indirectly access the benefits of a tax treaty between two countries without being a resident of any of those.

Two Pillar Plan
First Pillar: It will ensure a fairer distribution of profits and taxing rights among countries with respect to the largest MNEs, including digital companies.

• It would re-allocate some taxing rights over MNEs from their home countries to the markets where they have business activities and earn profits, regardless of whether firms have a physical presence there.
• According to OECD, more than USD 100 billion of profit are expected to be reallocated to market jurisdictions each year.

Second Pillar: It is about minimum tax and subject-to-tax rules (All sources of income liable to tax without taking account of tax allowances).

• It seeks to put a minimum standard tax rate among countries through a global minimum corporate tax rate, currently proposed at 15%.
• This is expected to generate an additional USD 150 billion in tax revenues.

Expected outcomes

• If implemented, countries such as the Netherlands and Luxembourg that offer lower tax rates, and so-called tax havens such as Bahamas or British Virgin Islands, could lose their sheen. 

Significance

• It will ensure that large multinational companies pay their fair share of tax everywhere.
• The two-pillar package will provide much-needed support to governments needing to raise necessary revenues to repair their budgets and their balance sheets while investing in essential public services, infrastructure and the measures necessary to help optimise the strength and the quality of the post-Covid recovery.

Impact/implications on India:

• India will have to roll back the equalisation levy that it imposes on companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook when the global tax regime is implemented. 

India’s Stand

• India will have to roll back the equalisation levy that it imposes on companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook when the global tax regime is implemented.
• It is aimed at taxing foreign companies which have a significant local client base in India but are billing them through their offshore units, effectively escaping the country’s tax system.
• The levy at 6% has been in force since 2016 on payment exceeding Rs 1 lakh a year to a non-resident service provider for online advertisements.
• India favours a wider application of the law to ensure that the country won’t collect less under the proposed framework than it gets through the equalisation levy.
• India is in favour of a consensus solution which is simple to implement and simple to comply with.
• The solution should result in allocation of meaningful and sustainable revenue to market jurisdictions, particularly for developing and emerging economies.
• The Two Pillar Plan justifies India’s stand for a greater share of profits for the markets and consideration of demand side factors in profit allocation.

Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS)

• BEPS is a term used to describe tax planning strategies that exploit mismatches and gaps that exist between the tax rules of different jurisdictions.
• It is done to minimize the corporation tax that is payable overall, by either making tax profits ‘disappear’ or shift profits to low tax jurisdictions where there is little or no genuine activity.
• In general BEPS strategies are not illegal; rather they take advantage of different tax rules operating in different jurisdictions.
• BEPS is of major significance for developing countries due to their heavy reliance on corporate income tax, particularly from multinational enterprises (MNEs).
• The BEPS initiative is an OECD initiative, approved by the G20, to identify ways of providing more standardised tax rules globally.

OECD: It is an intergovernmental economic organisation, founded to stimulate economic progress and world trade.

• Most OECD members are high-income economies and are regarded as developed countries.
• G20: It is the leading international forum for economic, financial and political cooperation of large economies.
• India is a member of G20, however, not a member but a key partner of OECD
• The OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework was established in 2016.
• India has ratified the Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to Prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting ("Multilateral Instrument" or "MLI") - outcome of the OECD/G20 Project to tackle BEPS

Context: Vaccinating huge population of India is indeed a big challenge. Leveraging drone tech for medicine delivery will certainly help. Progress of the research and challenges involved.

• In this article we discuss how drones help in to solve logistical challenges related to medicine delivery.

Background

• Recently, images of healthcare workers carrying covid-19 vaccines to remote villages in hilly Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir went viral on social media. In some cases, they had to trek for hours through arduous terrain.
• It’s possible to hope that such treks may soon no longer be required, if experiments to deliver vaccines, and other life-saving medical payloads, with drones are successful.

Present situation

• Presently in India, multiple private startups are now working with the government to test the feasibility of using drones to deliver medical payloads over longer distances.
• At present, it is said, they may not prove to be cost-effective—though this is still being worked on—but they certainly would be time-efficient.

Usage in medicinal logistics
Drone technology in India is being leveraged in two ways for medicinal logistics:

• One is for direct delivery wherein the medicines or blood samples are delivered directly to an individual or a hospital. In this case, the entire distance is covered by the drone.
• Other method is using drone only for the last-mile delivery. In this case, drones are used as a bridge between medical warehouses and government primary health centres, or PHCs. This case entails usage of a combination of a four-wheeler vehicle and a drone. The vehicle carries the drones and payloads (10-15kg), covering large parts of the distance to a location. The drone is used for last-mile delivery.

BEAM Committee

• Two years ago, Union govt. set up the BEAM (BVLOS Experiment Assessment and Monitoring) committee. The government had constituted the BEAM committee’ to invite Expression of Interest (EOI) to undertake BVLOS experimental flights of drones.
• EOI from more than 30 entities and selected 20 consortiums for the experiments.
• Recently, the Union ministry of civil aviation granted conditional exemption to these consortiums from the Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Rules, 2021 to conduct “Beyond Visual Line of Sight”, or BVLOS, experimental flights to test out the use of drones for delivery of food and medical packages.

Approvals required

• The main requirements to enable the use of drones for delivery or logistics is permission to fly beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS operations) and permission to carry and drop payloads.
• The rules do not place an outright prohibition on the use of drones for delivery but these types of operations are permitted only with very specific approvals from the DGCA (directorate general of civil aviation)
• Another route is through conditional exemptions, which can be granted by the ministry of civil aviation.

Challenges

• High-wind speeds: A key challenge is operating the drones in high wind speeds.
• Poor internet connectivity: The other issue is operating in a bad internet connectivity region. Currently, 4G networks are used to send commands to the drones.
• Temperature control: Apart from weather and network constraints, the trickiest logistical challenge in medicine delivery is temperature control. A medicine delivery drone will need temperature-control mechanisms to maintain the shelf life of supplies. Take, for instance, the covid-19 vaccines: Vials of both Covishield and Covaxin need to be kept at a storage temperature range of 2-8 degrees Celsius.
• The government and drone operators will also have to reach an agreement on emergency airspace usage for vaccine transportation.

Global examples

• Internationally, Zipline, a US-based drone delivery startup founded in 2014, has changed the way blood and medical supplies are delivered to remote communities in Rwanda. In early 2021, Zipline announced that it was partnering with the government of Ghana to deliver covid-19 vaccines.

Suggestion

• India must look beyond the current regulations. Once there is enough regulatory support for long-range drones that can fly up to a range of 100km, for example, and bigger payloads, trucks and four-wheelers will become redundant. We need is to create a favorable ecosystem where things can actually go forward.

Road Ahead

• Vaccinating over a billion people is a huge challenge for the government, which is primarily relying on the extensive railway network, besides road and air transport to distribute vaccines even to the remotest parts of the country and hilly regions. Drones can come in handy.

Context: Recently, the scientists at the DBT-Institute of Life Sciences and SRM-DBT Partnership Platform for Advanced Life Sciences Technologies have decoded the genome of a Salt-secreting Mangrove Species ‘Avicennia marina’.
About Avicennia Marina

• It is one of the most prominent mangroves species found in all mangrove formations in India.
• It is a salt-secreting and extraordinarily salt-tolerant mangrove species that grows optimally in 75% seawater and tolerates >250% seawater.
• It is among the rare plant species, which can excrete 40% of the salt through the salt glands in the leaves.
• It extraordinary feature is its capacity to exclude salt entry to the roots.

Key highlights of Genome Decoding

• It reports the assemblage of a 456.6 Mb of the estimated 462.7 Mb A. marina genome (98.7% genome coverage) in 31 chromosomes derived from 88 scaffolds and 252 contigs.
• The percentage of genomes in gaps was 0.26%, thereby proving it to be a high-level assembly.
• The A. marina genome assembled can be considered as a reference-grade genome reported so far for any mangrove species globally and the first report from India.
• It identi?ed 31,477 protein-coding genes and a “salinome” consisting of 3246 salinity-responsive genes and homologs of 614 experimentally validated salinity tolerance genes.
• The study reported identi?cation of 614 genes, including 159 transcription factors, which are homologous to the genes that were functionally validated for salinity tolerance in transgenic systems.

About Mangroves

• They are a unique group of species found in marshy intertidal estuarine regions and survive a high degree of salinity through several adaptive mechanisms.
• They only grow at tropical and subtropical latitudes near the equator because they cannot withstand freezing temperatures.
• They are the only trees in the world that can tolerate saltwater, excreting the excess salt through their leaves.

Importance of Mangroves

• They are important resources for the coastal region and are of great ecological and economic value.
• They form a link between marine and terrestrial ecosystems, protect shorelines, provide habitat for a diverse array of terrestrial organisms.
• They stabilize the coastline, reducing erosion from storm surges, currents, waves, and tides.
• They are hotbeds for animal life, both below water and above ground and this biodiversity makes ecosystems more resilient to disease and death.
• They are prolific sequesters of carbon dioxide and are therefore integral for combatting climate change.

Causes of destruction of Mangroves

Shrimp Farming: It is fuelling the clearing of mangrove forests.

• The shrimps are raised in large deposits of waste, bits of feed, pesticides, antibiotics, and chemicals which are often siphoned off or washed out into the ocean, harming neighboring ecosystems.

Sea Level Rise: The rising sea levels, caused by the climate crisis, also pose a significant threat to mangrove forests.

• The rising sea levels wash away mud, depriving mangroves of the soil they thrive in and eventually leading to the mangroves dying from oxygen deprivation.

Invasive Species: They are threatening mangroves and are looking to undermine their ability to regenerate themselves and impact their unique wildlife varieties.

Context: The US President signed an executive order calling on the Federal Trade Commission to curb restrictions imposed by manufacturers that limit consumers’ ability to repair their gadgets on their own terms.

• The UK, too, introduced right-to-repair rules that should make it much easier to buy and repair daily-use gadgets such as TVs and washing machines.

What is the right to repair movement?

• Activists and organisations around the world have been advocating for the right of consumers to be able to repair their own electronics and other products as part of the ‘right to repair’ movement.
• The movement traces its roots back to the very dawn of the computer era in the 1950s.
• The goal of the movement is to get companies to make spare parts, tools and information on how to repair devices available to customers and repair shops to increase the lifespan of products and to keep them from ending up in landfills.
• These electronic manufacturers are encouraging a culture of ‘planned obsolescence’ — which means that devices are designed specifically to last a limited amount of time and to be replaced. This, they claim, leads to immense pressure on the environment and wasted natural resources.
• Right to repair advocates also argue that this will help boost business for small repair shops, which are an important part of local economies.
• If a manufacturer has monopoly on repairs, then prices rise exponentially and quality tends to drop.

But why do electronic manufacturers oppose this movement?

• Large tech companies, including Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Tesla, have been lobbying against the right to repair.
• Their argument is that opening up their intellectual property to third party repair services or amateur repairers could lead to exploitation and impact the safety and security of their devices.
• Tesla has fought against right to repair advocacy, stating that such initiatives threaten data security and cyber security.
• Interestingly, Apple co-founder has recently voiced his support for the movement.
• These companies are constantly claiming that they are working towards greater durability themselves.

• Lionel Messi-led Argentina beat Neymar’s Brazil 1-0 to win the Copa America final match, held at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro.
• With this win, Lionel Messi has secured his first major International trophy.
• The 2021 Copa America was the 47th edition of the annual international men’s football championship organised by South America’s football ruling body CONMEBOL.
• Earlier the tournament was scheduled to be held in July 2020, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• It was the first time since 1991 that no guest nation took part in the tournament.

• International Cricket Council (ICC) CEO Manu Sawhney has resigned from his position on July 08, 2021, with immediate effect. 
• Geoff Allardice will continue as the Acting CEO of ICC, until fresh appointment.
• Sawhney replaced Dave Richardson as the CEO of ICC in 2019 for a tenure till 2022.
• It must be noted that ICC had suspended Sawhney since March 2021, due to a disciplinary inquiry after he came under scrutiny for his “abrasive behaviour” with colleagues.

• The Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Shri Nitin Gadkari, inaugurated India’s first private Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) facility plant at Nagpur in Maharashtra, on July 11, 2021.
• The plant has been set up on Kamptee Road near Nagpur Jabalpur Highway, by Baidyanath Ayurvedic Group, the makers of Ayurvedic medicines.
• Once operational, this LNG filling station in Nagpur will be first such facility to operate on commercial basis.
• LNG is a clean, pollution-free and cost effective liquid fuel, which is also easy to store and reduces the logistics cost.

• In Tennis, Novak Djokovic defeated Matteo Berrettini in the Wimbledon final, 6-7(4-7), 6-4, 6-4, 6-3, to win his sixth Wimbledon title and 20th Grand Slam trophy. 
• With this win, he has equalled his total major men’s singles titles record with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, with each of them winning 20 titles.

Complete List of Winners

• Men’s Single – Novak Djokovic (Serbia) defeated Matteo Berrettini
• Women’s Single – Ashleigh Barty (Australia) defeated Karolína Plíšková (Czech Republic)
• Men’s Double – Nikola Mektic  and Mate Pavic defeated Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos
• Women’s Double – Hsieh Su-wei  and Elise Mertens defeated  Veronika Kudermetova and Elena Vesnina
• Mixed Double – Neal Skupski and Desirae Krawczyk defeated Joe Salisbury and Harriet Dart.

• India’s first cryptogamic garden, with around 50 different species grown, has been inaugurated on July 11, 2021, in Deoban area of Dehradun in Uttarakhand.
• The garden is situated at a height of 9,000 feet, and is spread over an area of three acres.
• Cryptogams are the non-seed bearing plants. These primitive plants do not reproduce through seeds.
• For example algae, bryophytes (moss, liverworts), lichens, ferns and fungi are the best-known groups of cryptogams that require moist conditions to survive.

• The United Nations designated 12 July to be observed as World Malala Day, on July 12, 2013, in honour of the young Pakistani human rights activist, Malala Yousafzai.
• July 12 also marks the birth anniversary of Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Prize laureate.
• On her 16th birthday, on 12 July 2013, Yousafzai delivered speech at the United Nations (UN) headquarters on the need for gender equality in education, following which the day was declared as the World Malala Day by the UN.

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi received the first copy of the book titled ‘The Ramayan of Shri Guru Gobind Singh Ji’ authored by Late Baljit Kaur Tulsi.
• The author is the mother of Rajya Sabha MP and noted lawyer Shri KTS Tulsi Ji.
• The book has been published by Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi.
• Guru Gobind Singh was the tenth and last of Sikh gurus in human form. He was born in Patna in 1666.
• He was a spiritual master, warrior, poet, and philosopher, who was enthroned at the ‘Guru Gaddi’ at the age of 9 after his father Guru Tej Bahadur Ji, the 9th Guru.