Plastics could, likewise, be broken down into constituent chemicals that are combined as desired to produce useful things. The ability to edit genes would help mobilise nature in this cause as well. Bacteria and viruses could ingest one set of chemicals that humanity wants to eliminate and extrude another set of chemicals, of practical value.
In the wake of one of the worst train accidents last Friday at Balasore, Odisha, journalists have turned an unsparing spotlight on rail safety. Many unsavoury features of Indian Railways now stand exposed in the glare of public scrutiny, ranging from the systematic underfunding of the rail safety fund and the snail -pace rollout of the rail safety mechanism, Kavach, to the damning CAG report on train derailments, and the sorry state of the Railways' finances.
BRICS on a mini-lateral level is focusing and yielding rather significantly on what other major groupings and multilateral organisations are aiming at. It has begun to provide an alternate avenue of cooperation from trade, and finance to resolving regional and global issues to counter-terrorism and capacity building. But, it is not free of issues.
The way to make AT1 bonds attractive again is to clarify the insurance-linked role that sets them apart from pure debt, revert to valuation as per the time period of call options, and vastly improve banking supervision via enhanced management of banking data.
The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) announcement of withdrawal from circulation of the ₹2,000 currency notes has caused much incredulity. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin quipped, “500 doubts, 1,000 mysteries and 2,000 blunders”, and Rajya Sabha member P. Chidambaram said, “Demonetisation has come full circle”. The Union government has distanced itself from the decision by letting the RBI announce it.
Indian agriculture is a gamble on the Monsoon. This cliché would have been sufficient ground for the Goods and Services Tax authorities to slap a tax of 28 per cent on the value of crop output if agriculture had not been kept out of the ambit of GST.