Current Affairs: 15th Sept 2025

• Centre reopens PLI scheme for white goods till Oct. 14, cites market growth

Context: The Union government has reopened the application window for the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for white goods, it said on Sunday, citing market growth and growing industry confidence following the success of earlier rounds of the scheme.

• “The application window for the PLI Scheme for white goods (Air Conditioners and LED lights) is being reopened based on the appetite of the industry to invest more under the scheme, which is an outcome of the growing market and confidence generated due to manufacturing of key components of ACs and LED lights in India under the PLI for white goods scheme,” the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

More investments

• The application window for the scheme will remain open between September 15 and October 14.
• The release further said that in order to avoid any discrimination, both new applicants as well as existing beneficiaries of the scheme who want to invest more would be eligible to apply, subject to the guidelines.
• So far, the Ministry said, 83 applicants with committed investment of ₹10,406 crore have been selected as beneficiaries under the scheme. “The investments will lead to manufacturing of components of Air Conditioners and LED lights across the complete value chain including components which are not manufactured in India presently with sufficient quantity,” it said.
• The Union Cabinet had given its approval for the PLI scheme for white goods for the manufacture of components and sub-assemblies of ACs and LED lights in April 2021. The scheme was to be implemented over seven years, from the financial year 2021-22 to 2028-29, with an outlay of ₹6,238 crore.

• House panel says govt. must explore feasibility of licensing requirements for AI content creators

Context: A parliamentary committee has recommended that the government explore the feasibility of licensing requirements for AI content creators and making labelling of AI-generated videos and content mandatory, as part of efforts to combat the spread of fake news.

• The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology, chaired by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Nishikant Dubey, also asked the government to devise legal and technological measures to identify and prosecute individuals and organisations disseminating such content.
• The committee’s draft report was recently submitted to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and will be tabled in Parliament during the next session. It also called for “close coordination between the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), and other Ministries and departments”.
• While the committee’s suggestions are not binding, its recommendations are often accepted by the government.
• The panel noted that MeitY has already constituted a nine-member body to examine challenges arising from “the issue of deepfakes”.
• Two ongoing projects in this regard include fake speech detection using a deep learning framework and the design and development of software to identify deepfake videos and images, it said.
• The report observed that advances in technology, particularly in AI, could provide tools to address concerns over fake news. However, the Ministries concerned had conveyed that AI, in its current form, cannot be used for fact-checking as it relies on pre-existing information available online. Instead, AI could help flag potentially fake or misleading content for human review, the committee said.
• “AI and machine learning (ML) technologies are increasingly being employed to enhance the ability to detect, verify, and prevent the spread of misinformation and disinformation,” the committee noted, adding that several research projects and initiatives are exploring such uses.
• Calling fake news a “serious threat” to public order and the democratic process, the committee recommended amending penal provisions, increasing fines, and fixing accountability. It also favoured the mandatory presence of fact-checking mechanisms and internal ombudsmen in all print, digital, and electronic media organisations.
• At the same time, it stressed that such measures should evolve through consensus-building among media bodies and other stakeholders.

• 99% of goods in 12% GST bracket moved to 5%, says Sitharaman

Context: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said here on Sunday that the GST regime had benefited both the people and the State governments.

• Speaking on “Tax reforms for rising Bharat” at a joint conclave of the Trade and Industries Association, she said that in the latest GST reforms, 99% of all the goods in the 12% GST bracket had come under the 5% bracket. “This is a reform which touches the lives of all 140 crore people. The GST rate cuts in the range of 10-13% will reduce the expenses for people and they can use that extra savings elsewhere,” Ms. Sitharaman said.
• She expressed confidence that the companies would pass on the benefits to the consumers.
• “When the GST was introduced in 2017, there were 65 lakh taxpayers. Today there are 1.51 crore taxpayers,” she said.
• “The gross GST receipts which were ₹7.19 lakh crore in 2017 has now touched ₹22 lakh crore. On average, per-month GST collection is ₹1.9 lakh crore or ₹2 lakh crore for Central and State governments which is divided in the ratio of 50:50. If the monthly GST collection is ₹1.8 lakh crore, ₹90,000 crore goes to the States and ₹90,000 crore comes to the Centre. Out of the Centre’s ₹90,000 crore, 41% goes to the States.”
• Ms. Sitharaman said that almost eight months of work had gone into the GST 2.0 reforms and the rate rationalisation had been effected with the cooperation of the Finance Ministers of all States in the GST Council. “GST rates for over 350 items have been reduced,” she noted.
• “Systems have been simplified so that GST registration can be done in three days,” Ms. Sitharaman said. “Another major step is addressing the product classification problems in GST 2.0,” she said.
• “Now we have brought all food items at 5% or 0%. So there is no classification problem. We have brought similar classification for one type of goods. We worked on it for eight months looking into each item and what category it should be classified,” Ms. Sitharaman said.
• She said the cut in personal income tax rates, bringing in the new Income Tax Act and the GST reforms had all been done in a span of eight months.
• Speaking at the event, A.R. Unnikrishnan, chairman of the CII Tamil Nadu State Council, and G.S.K. Velu, chairman, Federation of Indian Chambers Of Commerce and Industry and Tamil Nadu State Council, welcomed the GST reforms.
• Linesh Sanatkumar, president, Hindustan Chamber of Commerce, said the increase in GST rate of paper and paperboard to 18% from 12% had come as a major shock.
• Tamil Nadu Traders Association president A.M. Vikramaraja flagged the issue of harassment of traders by some GST officials and sought formation of a committee to address the issue.

• PM inaugurates India’s first bamboo-based ethanol plant

Context: Golaghat facility billed as world’s first green bamboo bioethanol plant; ₹7,230-crore polypropylene project also initiated at Numaligarh Refinery; the facility aims to reduce dependence on fossil fuels

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi underscored the need for India to be self-sufficient in energy. He was speaking after inaugurating the country’s first bamboo-based ethanol plant in eastern Assam’s Golaghat district.
• He laid the foundation stone for a ₹7,230-crore polypropylene plant at the Numaligarh Refinery. The project will be established near the ₹5,000-crore bioethanol plant, a “zero-waste” facility described as the world’s first to produce ethanol from green bamboo.
• Terming the bioethanol plant a step toward ensuring energy security, Mr. Modi said the facility aimed to promote clean energy and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

• “Assam is a land that supports India’s energy efficiency. The petroleum products from Assam are accelerating the development of India.
• “India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world now. Our energy needs have been increasing with our Viksit Bharat dream. We spend crores of rupees on imports as we are dependent on other countries for energy. We want to change this by trying to achieve self-sufficiency in energy,” the Prime Minister said.

Deep-water exploration

• “While we are focusing on hydrocarbon exploration, we are also laying stress on green energy like solar,” he said, highlighting the country’s national deep-water exploration mission to look for hydrocarbons under the sea. Referring to the bioethanol plant, Mr. Modi said it would benefit local farmers and tribal communities.
• “The government will help them grow and procure the products to ensure a win-win situation,” he said. He criticised the erstwhile Congress governments for penalising people for cutting bamboo, which was earlier categorised as a tree. He said the BJP government removed the ban on bamboo cutting and stressed that the decision was helping the locals in this part of the country.
• Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) officials said five lakh tonnes of green bamboo would be sourced yearly from four northeastern States, including Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, to produce 48,900 tonnes of ethanol, 11,000 tonnes of acetic acid, 19,000 tonnes of furfural, and 31,000 tonnes of food-grade liquid carbon dioxide. A joint venture of NRL and Finland’s Fortum and Chempolis OY, the plant is expected to give a ₹200-crore boost to Assam’s rural economy.

• India must invest more in accelerating diversification of food production: FAO Chief Economist Maximo Cullen

Context: About 40.4% of the Indian population (approximately 60 crore people) are unable to afford a healthy meal, says Maximo Torero Cullen, Chief Economist, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.

• Dr. Cullen said the number was a significant decrease from the FAO’s assessment in 2023 that 74.1% of India’s population was unable to afford a healthy diet in 2021.
• He said India needed to start to invest more in accelerating the diversification of food production.
• Dr. Cullen said India played a crucial role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals of zero hunger by 2030 because of the level, size, and population of the country.
• “Reduction of hunger in India affects the world and affects, of course, South Asia. So India, I think, has a huge role to play. That’s why we believe it’s so important that they continue and accelerate the transformation. India needs to move to the higher level — that is access to healthy diets, which right now is 40.4% of the population. So we need to improve that even more and also to find ways to assure this today and tomorrow,” he said.

• “The Green Revolution played its role, but now it’s time to do more. So don’t forget about it, but do more. We need to do more,” Dr. Cullen said.
• On the FAO’s assessment in 2023 that 74.1% of India’s population was unable to afford a healthy diet in 2021, he said that in 2024, the percentage of the population that could not afford a healthy meal was 40.4.
• “The methodology is improved. So yes, there is an important decrease. So the number to compare is basically to look at the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World [SOFI] of this year to look at the previous year’s number. But yes, there is a significant improvement, but still it’s too high. Healthy diet is diversity. It means fruits and vegetables, proteins, and also means cereals. More than 40% of the country’s population cannot afford a healthy diet. So it’s a minimum cost to healthy diet,” the FAO Chief Economist said.

Address the situation

• Dr. Cullen added that the immediate step the Indian government should take to address the situation was diversification.
• “India needs to start to invest more in accelerating the diversification of production. To move from cereals to high-value commodities. Pulses could be an option because they are more nutritious, they also have proteins. So pulses is an option and this is very consistent with your culture. But India should move more to fruits and vegetables and that requires an effort because you will need to substitute at some point,” he said.

Tariff war

• On the tariff war, he said the first problem of tariffs was inefficiencies.
• “You will be more inefficient in the way you move commodities. Because before you were optimising the world, now the world is segmented. The world that wants low tariffs, but the world that has now high tariffs. The second issue is uncertainty. The changes of tariffs every day has created a lot of uncertainty and that complicates markets. Although markets have already learned how to manage this uncertainty, so things don’t change too much,” he said.
• He, however, said the impact of food insecurity due to tariffs was not so high, but inefficiencies would be high.
• “But assume they get into a situation where you play tit-for-tat, then this could be very dangerous. It’s not happening at this point, countries are not responding. So let’s see how it evolves, but uncertainty and inefficiencies will make us less resilient for sure, because we will have less places where to have food access because of the tariffs. It will affect farmers, it will affect the smallholders, especially will affect the farmers who are more linked to the markets. But what will happen at the end is that you will have a segmented trade,” he said.