India’s landmark Oman trade deal deepens Gulf push
India and Oman signed a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) on Thursday, seeking to strengthen economic and strategic engagement with the Gulf and deepen India's footprint in the region. The pact—India’s second deep trade agreement with a Gulf nation after the UAE—aims to lock in market access, services mobility, and investment footholds beyond transactional trade. For Oman, this is only its second bilateral trade deal after its agreement with the US in 2006.
The CEPA was signed by Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and his counterpart Qais Al Yousef during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two-day visit to Muscat. Goyal noted that the deal will act as an enabler for an ambitious future by addressing trade barriers and simplifying rules.
Duty-Free Access and Tariffs Under the agreement, Oman has offered zero-duty access on 98.08% of its tariff lines, covering 99.38% of India’s exports by value. Immediate tariff elimination will apply to 97.96% of these lines. While petroleum products (India's largest export to Oman at $1.43 billion) are already largely duty-free, key sectors such as engineering goods, chemicals, and mineral products (including coal and mica) will benefit directly from the new tariff reductions.
In return, India has offered tariff liberalization on 77.79% of its tariff lines, covering 94.81% of imports from Oman by value. However, India has excluded sensitive sectors from these concessions, including:
- Dairy, tea, coffee, and rubber.
- Tobacco, bullion, and jewellery.
- Footwear and sports goods.
Services and Professional Mobility A significant feature of the CEPA is Oman’s ambitious services commitments, offering market access across 127 sub-sectors. The deal includes:
- 100% Foreign Direct Investment (FDI): Oman has committed to allowing 100% FDI by Indian companies in major services sectors.
- Professional Mobility (Mode 4): The agreement ensures greater mobility for Indian professionals, providing higher quotas for intra-corporate transferees and extended stay periods of up to two years for contractual service suppliers.
- Liberalized Entry: Professionals in accountancy, taxation, architecture, medical, and allied sectors will receive easier entry into the Omani market.
Economic and Strategic Impact Bilateral trade between the two nations stood at $10.6 billion in 2024-25, with Indian exports at $4 billion and imports at $6.5 billion. Experts suggest the deal will particularly benefit India’s MSME clusters and farm producers, helping them become globally competitive suppliers to the Gulf and the wider Gulf-Africa region.
The Oman CEPA marks the sixth such pact signed by the NDA government since 2014, following deals with Mauritius, the UAE, Australia, the European Free Trade Association, and the UK. Strategically, the deal strengthens India’s presence in a critical maritime and energy corridor at the mouth of the Gulf.
Lok Sabha Passes VB RAM-G Bill to Overhaul Rural Jobs Scheme Amid Opposition Uproar
The Lok Sabha on Thursday passed the Viksit Bharat–Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill, 2025 (VB RAM-G), marking a sweeping overhaul of India’s two-decade-old rural jobs framework. The bill, which seeks to replace the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005, was approved by a voice vote amid intense protests and chaotic scenes in the House.
Key Changes and Provisions
The new legislation introduces several fundamental shifts from the UPA-era MGNREGA:
- Work Guarantee: The bill increases the statutory guarantee of work from 100 days to 125 days per rural household per year.
- Funding Model: Under MGNREGA, the Centre paid 100% of wage costs. The new scheme shifts this to a shared model where the Centre funds 60% and states bear 40% of the costs in most regions. North-Eastern and Himalayan states will have a 90:10 funding ratio.
- Agricultural Alignment: To resolve the "chronic problem" of the jobs scheme competing with private farm labor, no work will be executed during notified peak agriculture seasons.
- Normative Allocation: The Centre will now determine annual state-wise "normative allocations," a move away from the previous demand-driven model.
Government Rationale
Rural Development Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan defended the bill, asserting that the old framework no longer reflects the reality of a changing rural India, where poverty rates have plummeted from 25.7% in 2011-12 to 4.86% in 2023-24. Chouhan argued that mandating states to share wage costs would ensure efficiency, better asset quality, and more meaningful participation from state governments, who he claimed often failed to honor their previous funding commitments for materials. He further stated that the mission reflects the concept of "social inclusion" and serves as a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi’s quest for village welfare.
Opposition Protest and Criticism
The passage of the bill was marked by significant unrest. Opposition MPs staged a vociferous protest, shouting slogans and tearing copies of the bill. Their primary grievances included:
- Removal of Gandhi’s Name: Critics slammed the decision to drop Mahatma Gandhi's name from the scheme. West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee expressed "deep shame" over the move, while Congress leaders accused the government of changing names at its whim.
- Financial Burden on States: Priyanka Gandhi Vadra argued that shifting financial liability to states would cause the scheme to "gradually end," hurting the poor.
- Centralization: Economist Jean Dreze and groups like the NREGA Sangharsh Morcha warned that the bill concentrates power in the hands of the Centre, turning a guaranteed employment right into a discretionary, budget-capped program.
Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge described the legislation as the "systematic murder of the world’s largest employment scheme". Despite the uproar, the bill has now moved to the Rajya Sabha for further discussion and passage.
Analogy for Understanding: Replacing MGNREGA with the VB RAM-G Bill is like upgrading a neighborhood safety net into a shared insurance policy. While the "coverage" (working days) has increased, the "premiums" (costs) are no longer paid solely by the head of the house (the Centre) but are now split with the family members (the states), and the policy only activates during specific times of the year to ensure it doesn't interfere with the family business (agriculture).
Try out fog harvesting
It’s a nature-based fix that can ease water stress
By Priyanka Vadrevu
India’s complex hydrology, spanning mountains, plains, and coasts, is increasingly under pressure from changing rainfall patterns and growing demand, leading to chronic water stress. While traditional solutions like dams and desalination are expensive and energy-intensive, a simple, nature-based solution called fog harvesting (also known as fog collection or fog catching) is emerging as a viable alternative.
The Mechanism and Technology Fog harvesting is an elegant process where large meshes are mounted on hills or in cloud-frequent corridors. As fog passes through these meshes, water droplets condense on the fibers, merge into larger drops, and run down through gutters into storage tanks. The technology is entirely passive, requires no energy, and relies on gravity to move the collected water, making it ideal for remote domestic or agricultural use.
Efficiency and Yield Where fog is frequent and persistent, a single collector can produce several hundred liters of water a day. In some optimal conditions, outputs can reach up to 1,000 liters per day per meter of mesh. Successful systems have already been deployed in countries such as Peru, Chile, Eritrea, and South Africa, providing clean water to communities in arid and foggy regions.
Potential in India Fog harvesting has significant potential across several regions in India, including:
- Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Sikkim.
- West Bengal and Meghalaya.
- Parts of the Western Ghats and even semi-arid rain shadow regions.
Implementation Requirements For the technology to succeed, a localized approach is necessary. High-resolution satellite data should be used to map fog corridors, which typically occur at altitudes between 600 and 1,200 meters. While the infrastructure is simple, it requires consistent maintenance, such as:
- Cleaning the mesh and gutters.
- Disinfecting storage tanks to ensure water quality.
- Community involvement to manage long-term sustainability.
Integration with Water Systems Fog harvesting is most effective when integrated with other sources like springs, rainwater, and groundwater recharge to ensure a steady supply during non-foggy periods. While it is not a "cure-all" for every water challenge, it offers a practical, low-cost adaptation to ease the burden on water-stressed regions.
Analogy for Understanding: Fog harvesting is like setting a "water trap" in the clouds; rather than waiting for the rain to fall to the ground, it captures the moisture while it is still floating in the air, acting like a giant sponge that squeezes water out of the wind.
CCI to Probe IndiGo for Large-Scale Flight Disruptions
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) announced on Thursday that it will investigate complaints regarding IndiGo’s massive flight disruptions that occurred earlier this month. While the antitrust watchdog did not specify the exact nature of the competition law violation, the complaints involve an alleged violation of Section 4 of the Competition Act, which deals with the abuse of a dominant position by a firm.
The Scope of the Probe The regulator's decision follows widespread criticism of the airline on social media and in Parliament after it cancelled more than 5,000 flights, upending air transport during the peak winter holiday and wedding season. The CCI intends to ascertain if IndiGo, which holds a 65% share of the domestic market, used its dominance to restrict services or impose unfair conditions on passengers. This action adds to the airline's regulatory troubles, as it is already facing a show-cause notice from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) regarding the same crisis.
Root Causes and Recovery IndiGo has attributed the disruptions to a combination of factors, primarily a shortage of eligible crew following the implementation of new government norms aimed at increasing pilot rest and reducing fatigue. In a message to staff, IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers assured that operations have now fully normalized, with the carrier operating over 2,200 flights a day. Elbers noted that the focus has shifted to strengthening resilience and rebuilding trust, and the board has appointed an external aviation expert to hold a root-cause review.
Market and Expert Reaction The operational meltdown has had a severe impact on the company's valuation. IndiGo’s parent, InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, has become the worst-performing stock to enter the BSE Sensex in 15 years, with the stock falling 15.7% over the past month.
However, some legal experts caution against the CCI's involvement. Naval Satarawala Chopra, a partner at Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co., warned that using abuse of dominance provisions to police operational lapses "blurs the line between sectoral regulation and antitrust enforcement" and could shift the watchdog's focus away from protecting competition toward addressing general consumer dissatisfaction.
Analogy for Understanding: The CCI probe into IndiGo is like a traffic regulator investigating a dominant bus company not just because its buses broke down, but to see if the company used its massive size to ignore passenger rights while they were stranded, potentially turning a service failure into a legal abuse of power.
All that cheap Chinese stuff is now Europe’s problem
President Trump’s crackdown on Chinese imports in the U.S. has redirected a tsunami of cheap goods into Europe, much of it pooling in the spare rooms and backyards of Chinese immigrants. This shift is part of a "shadow logistics network" that has helped power China’s trade surplus past $1 trillion for the first time this year.
The Rise of Family Warehouses
Chinese e-commerce companies are moving away from traditional drop-shipping models, which can take weeks to arrive, and are instead renting local storage to ensure faster delivery. While giants like JD.com are leasing massive commercial spaces, smaller merchants are utilizing "overseas family warehouses" run by immigrants who use social media to coordinate logistics.
- Profiles in the Shadow Network:
- UK: Xue Er, a stay-at-home mother, built a 320-square-foot shed in her backyard to store clothes and furniture for Chinese merchants, earning between £3,000 and £5,000 in a good month.
- France: Eva Lin, based in a suburb of Paris, is paid to store and package jewelry and homewares for e-commerce platforms, often working under high pressure to meet 24-hour shipping windows.
- Germany: Cao Ying runs a 1,000-square-meter facility in Wuppertal that handles up to 1,000 packages a day.
Economic Drivers and Loopholes
The redirection to Europe is driven by the erosion of the U.S. market, where tariffs on Chinese imports now average 47.5%.
- The Loophole: In the EU, packages under €150 are exempt from customs duties, while the U.K. threshold is £135.
- The Cost: Family warehouses often charge as low as 70 cents per package, which is significantly cheaper than commercial alternatives and offers more flexibility for storing goods like counterfeits.
Logistics and the "New Silk Road"
This trade flow is supported by a new generation of cargo airlines. For example, My Freighter, an Uzbekistani airline, now operates 200 flights monthly between China and Europe, hauling over 8,000 tons of e-commerce packages for platforms like Temu. Major cargo hubs have shifted to secondary airports like Liège in Belgium and East Midlands in the UK, which offer less traffic and fewer nighttime noise restrictions.
Safety and Regulatory Backlash
The influx has not been without controversy:
- Safety Concerns: A joint investigation by European consumer groups found that 70% of 100 items tested from platforms like Shein and Temu were non-compliant with EU regulations, including toys with choking hazards and electronics that overheated.
- Illegal Items: French prosecutors recently investigated Shein after child sex dolls and brass knuckles were found listed on its site.
- New Fees: In response, the EU has agreed to impose a €3 fee on all imported small packages starting in July 2026, with plans to close the duty-free loophole entirely by 2028.
Analogy for Understanding: The "family warehouse" system acts like a distributed biological filter; rather than goods flowing through a single, massive government-regulated "organ" (a major port or commercial warehouse), the trade is broken into millions of tiny capillaries (private homes), making it nearly impossible for traditional customs "antibodies" to track or stop the flow of goods.
Parliament has cleared the Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Bill, 2025, marking a landmark shift by opening nuclear power generation to private firms. The legislation was passed by the Lok Sabha on Wednesday and received Rajya Sabha approval on Thursday amid Opposition concerns over private sector entry and supplier liability. The Bill now requires the President's assent for enactment.
Dismantling a Decades-Old Monopoly
The Bill dismantles a decades-old monopoly that previously permitted only government-owned companies to operate nuclear plants. Under the new law, any company or joint venture is permitted to construct, own, operate, and decommission nuclear power plants or reactors within the country. This move is intended to support India’s strategic goal of achieving 100GW of nuclear capacity by 2047, a significant jump from the current capacity of approximately 8.7–8.8GW.
Regulatory and Legal Consolidation
The SHANTI Act subsumes and replaces the Atomic Energy Act of 1962 and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act of 2010. The government argued that the previous regime relied on broad executive authority and lacked a comprehensive statutory framework for safety across the full nuclear life cycle. Key structural shifts include:
- Statutory Regulator: The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) is granted statutory status, giving it the clear legal authority to inspect facilities, investigate incidents, and issue binding directions.
- Unified Statute: The Bill consolidates regulation, enforcement, civil liability, and dispute resolution within a single law to reduce compliance uncertainty.
- Retained Central Control: While generation is open to private players, core sensitive functions—including fuel enrichment, spent-fuel reprocessing, and heavy water production—remain exclusively under Central government control to mitigate external risks.
Liability and Global Alignment
To facilitate domestic and foreign partnerships, the Bill removes key uncertainties regarding liability. It excludes suppliers of components and fuel from liability in the event of nuclear incidents. Additionally, it sets a cap of 300 million Special Drawing Rights (SDR) on the liability of an operator in case of an accident. This alignment with the Vienna Convention and global norms is intended to make nuclear projects easier to insure and attract private capital.
Strategic Importance
As the usage of coal declines, nuclear energy is expected to provide the base-load stability for the power system. This is considered essential because other clean sources, such as wind and solar, are intermittent and can cause grid instability. Atomic Energy Minister Jitendra Singh stated that with this legislation, India has assumed a "first line" global role and is offering cues for other nations to follow.
Analogy for Understanding: Opening the nuclear sector via the SHANTI Bill is like allowing private airlines to operate at a national airport that was previously reserved for the military; while private companies can now own and fly the planes (build and operate plants), the government remains the sole provider of the high-security radar and air traffic control (fuel enrichment and reprocessing) to ensure the system remains safe and under strict supervision.
Food delivery sees a 27% increase in employment
India’s food delivery sector directly employed 1.37 million workers in 2023-24, a significant increase from 1.08 million in 2021-22. According to a recent study by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and investment group Prosus, the sector is expanding at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.3%, comfortably outpacing India’s overall employment growth rate of 7.9% during the same period.
Economic Contribution The study highlights the sector's rapid financial scaling:
- Gross Value of Output (GVO): The total turnover was estimated at ₹1.2 trillion in 2023-24, more than doubling from ₹613 billion in 2021-22.
- Gross Value Added (GVA): This was estimated at ₹476 billion, equivalent to 0.2% of the national GVA.
- Growth Pace: The sector's GVA grew at 16.9%, nearly twice as fast as India’s overall economic growth over that period.
Market Dynamics The sector is currently dominated by two major platforms: Swiggy and Zomato. These platforms have become a vital source of income for urban and semi-urban individuals seeking flexible employment, even though the food delivery workforce accounts for only 0.2% of the total national workforce.
Gig Worker Concerns and "Job Distress" Despite the high growth numbers, representatives for gig workers argue that the statistics mask significant "job distress".
- Working Conditions: Sunand, president of the Delhi-based Rajdhani App Workers’ Union, noted that delivery partners continue to work 12–14 hours a day for abysmally low incomes.
- Rate Cuts: Unions claim that platform companies are implementing continuous cuts in rate cards.
- Unemployment Driver: Representatives suggest that the surge in people engaging in food delivery is actually a consequence of rising unemployment in other sectors rather than a preferred career choice.
Analogy for Understanding: The growth of the food delivery sector is like a fast-expanding reservoir; from the surface, the rising water level (employment numbers and turnover) looks impressive and full of potential, but for the "divers" (the gig workers) at the bottom, the increasing weight of the water creates immense pressure that isn't visible to those standing on the shore.
India’s RDI Fund: We just cannot afford to miss our R&D moment
In recent months, India’s R&D capability has become a matter of national debate, and the government’s announcement of its Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Fund signals the right intent. This should be viewed as an opening to a larger redesign of how the country organizes and governs R&D. While India does not lack ambition, it is hindered by an underlying architecture plagued by data gaps, slow translation cycles, regulatory friction, and limited patient capital for DeepTech.
A Dual-Engine Architecture The ₹1 trillion RDI scheme, operationalized through the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), marks a pivotal shift. It provides India with a dual-engine innovation architecture: ANRF grants for early-stage discovery and low-technology readiness level (TRL) science, combined with a patient-capital RDI Fund for translation, scaling, and commercialization at higher TRLs. This structure fills a long-standing gap by connecting scientific discovery with scalable enterprise adoption.
The Competitive Gap Despite having a strong pool of tech talent, India’s R&D intensity is just 0.7% of GDP, significantly lower than China (over 2%) and the US, South Korea, and Israel (over 3%). In an era where scientific depth determines a nation’s sovereignty, India cannot continue to rely on external R&D and intellectual property. A high-intensity domestic ecosystem is essential to secure strategic autonomy and future-proof growth against external shocks.
Roadmap for Measurable Outcomes To move from aspiration to value capture, the R&D operating system requires a careful redesign:
- Global Data Architecture: Policy must transition from assumptions to clear visibility and real-time measurement.
- Science-to-Market Pipeline: India must accelerate technology transfer and procurement policies that privilege Indian innovation.
- Regulatory Sandboxes: DeepTech needs environments that enable risk in areas like compute, space, and AI safety.
- Patient Private Capital: The government must "crowd in" private investment to create a multiplier effect for long-horizon tech projects.
Conclusion India stands at a pivotal moment; it cannot aspire to be the world’s AI factory without first becoming an R&D powerhouse. The RDI Fund is a decisive move to shift from cost-led participation to invention-led value capture, but success depends on how well the broader ecosystem—regulation, incentives, and capital—is redesigned around it.
Analogy for Understanding: Redesigning India’s R&D is like building a high-speed rail system; the RDI Fund provides the massive engine and fuel (capital), but for the train to actually reach its destination (the market), you must first lay down standardized tracks (data architecture) and remove the roadblocks (regulatory friction) that currently keep the train stuck in the station.
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