Morning Brief: Government To Merge Three Banks, Form India’s Third Largest Lender; One Manual Scavenger Dies Every Five Days; And More

Good morning, dear reader! Here’s your morning news brief for today.

Government To Merge Three Bank, Create India’s Third Largest Lender

To reduce the amount of capital it needs to pump in and help clean their balance sheets, the government has proposed to merge three lenders it owns—Bank of Baroda, Dena Bank and Vijaya Bank. If the government goes ahead with its plan, the resulting entity will be the third largest lender in the country after State Bank of India and HDFC Bank. It will have a total business of over Rs 14.82 lakh crore. While two of these banks are relativity strong, one is weak.

This development comes after the government merged the State Bank of India and its five subsidiaries, increasing the bank’s assets and helping it cut the cost of operations. The government has chosen to merge the three banks is because all of these use the same core banking system—Finacle from Infosys. Among the three, Dena Bank has the highest gross non-performing assets as a percentage of total assets. Its capital adequacy ratio stood at 10.6 per cent.

One Manual Scavenging Death Every Five Days

On an average, one person has died every five days while cleaning sewers and septic tanks across the country since 1 January 2017, data collected by the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis, a welfare body for sanitation workers, shows. The body has collected data using newspaper reports and numbers provided by some states, reports the Indian Express. According to its data, at least 127 manual scavengers have died since 2017.

This has come to light after the death of six people working as manual scavengers in violation of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers Act was reported in Delhi last week. Given that the body depends on non-official sources for its data, the number could be an underestimation, experts said. As per the data submitted by the minister of housing and urban affairs Hardeep Singh Puri in the Rajya Sabha, the highest number of such deaths are reported in Tamil Nadu. At least 144 of the 323 deaths reported across the country since 1993 were in Tamil Nadu, 59 in Karnataka and 52 in Uttar Pradesh.

While Parrikar Battles For Life In Hospital, Congress Seeks To Take Power

At a time when Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar is battling for life at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi, the Goa unit of the Congress has alleged that administration in the state has collapsed and staked claim to form the government. State leaders of the Congress, which has 16 members in the 40-member Assembly, sent a letter to Governor Mridula Sinha on Monday and urged her to invite the Congress to form the government. Leader of Opposition Chandrakant Kavlekar said he has the support of legislators from other parties.

This comes after the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, an ally of the BJP in Goa which has three legislators, demanded that Parrokar hand over charge of the government to the most senior minister in the state. However, another ally, the Goa Forward Party, has opposed the demand. The BJP has held a closed-door meeting of party MLAs, former legislators and core committee members.

Soldier Killed By Terrorists In Kashmir

A Territorial Army soldier, who had returned to his home in south Kashmir's Kulgam for the last rites of his son, was killed by terrorists on Monday. Identified as Lance Naik Mukhtar Ahmad Malik, the soldier was a commander of a disbanded counter-insurgency group ‘Ikhwan’ before joining the Territorial Army. Even as the family mourned the soldier's death, separatist leaders Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik asked people to observe a shutdown against the killings of three Pakistani terrorists by the security forces.

This is not the first case of an off-duty soldier being killed by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists in Kashmir. In the last two years, terrorists in the valley have murdered multiple off-duty army and police jawans visiting home. In November 2017, terrorists abducted and killed a 23-year-old Territorial Army jawan in Shopian district. In June this year, army man Aurangzeb was abducted by terrorists from a private vehicle when he was going home for Eid and killed in Pulwama district.

Elon Musk Unveils First Tourist For SpaceX’s 'Moon Loop'

Elon Musk, who recently made news by smoking weed while on-air, has revealed that Yusaku Maezawa, a billionaire and founder of Japan’s largest online clothing retailer Zozotown, will be the first private customer to ride around the Moon on SpaceX’s massive rocket, the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), which is currently under development for future crewed missions. The timeline for this launch remains unclear. However, it could come as early as 2023, reports have said.

If Musk goes ahead with the plan, this could be the first visit to the Moon by humans since Apollo 17 landing by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1972. Only 24 humans, all US citizens, have visited the Moon. Apart from revealing the first passenger, Musk has also unveiled new artist impressions of the BFR and the spaceship which will orbit around the Moon.

From Swarajya

Not Just EVs, Government Must Be Open To Multiple Transport Options: India needs to build a strong public transport system and keep multiple options open rather than blindly investing on the EV ecosystem.

Rupee Slide Capital-Outflow-Induced, Remedy Is To Boost Capital Inflows: It is irrational to counter a rupee depreciation led by capital outflows through physical controls. The logical counter to net outflows of capital is to encourage longer-term capital inflows to stem any excess drop in the rupee.

Aligning Today’s Education With The Probable Reality Of Tomorrow: The present system is not able to create human resource as asset and it’s time to adopt the change and introduce education reforms.

We hope you enjoyed reading our morning brief. Have a great day ahead!