Farm laws, Retail Direct Bond and Googly?

 Article 9: Farm laws, Source: Economic times

Farm laws= 1. First farm law says that farmers can now engage in a trade of their agricultural stock with anyone outside the government's decided markets.

2. Second farm law says that farmers can engage in an agreement like contract farming direct with the buyer to sell the produced corps with a pre-determined price.

3. Third farm law says that it restricts the power of government with respect to production, supply, and distribution of commodity essentials.

Earlier when farmers were to sell their crops, they had two options. The first is to directly sell it to the government. The second is to sell it in a government-decided Mandis in the presence of state officials at a minimum support price. MSP is usually higher than the market price. The problem here is if the farmers try to sell their crops before or after the specified date, GoI would not buy, and not every village has government-designed Mandis. Also sometimes the government announced the date after the two months of the harvest which makes it difficult for farmers to sell it at MSP and to solve this, farmers need to stock their crops in cold storage for which they have to book a minimum of 50000 quintals of crops. This makes it next to impossible for marginal farmers to do so as expenses increase heavily and they could not afford it. Therefore to sell their crops, farmers have to sell them to the middleman which gives them a very low price. 

Despite being the good intentions of the laws to help the farmers, Farmers started opposing them as they feared the private players, and also middlemen and big farmers strongly opposed the laws. Hence government has to withdraw the laws.

Because of withdrawn, it impacted FDI & FPI, global investors who were willing to invest in the agriculture sector, private companies. Hence India lost a good chance of money inflows from investors. Farmers also lost a good chance to reduce their expenses. 

Farm laws | FinnacleShahClasses

Article 10: Bhaiya, bond kaise lagaya? Source: economic times

As RBI has initiated a retail direct bond scheme, retailers rushed into it regardless of interest rate risk and mark to market losses. Advisors tried to caution investors about the risks and inversely proportional relation of bond price and market interest rate. As of now, retail participation in bonds is not as it is in equity but lately, there is an improvement. 

The attractive thing about this scheme is tax rebates but as of now, there is no mention of rebates as RBI is still thinking about it. Also, other instruments like FD, Debt mutual funds give a decent return of 6% to 8% and investors are liable to pay tax on capital gains and coupon payments if sold bonds before maturity. Hence it is not much lucrative as it seems. Investors who subscribe to NPS and take insurance have decent exposure to government bonds as the insurance companies are mandated to invest huge portions of their assets in bonds.

One of the ways to make it lucrative is to make it highly rated bonds like AAA and it should be traded on exchanges through brokerages.

Bhaiya, Bond kaise lagaya? | FinnacleShahClasses

Article 11: Googly? Source: Economic times

Google reduced the commission for in-app purchases to 15% because there was mounting pressure from Indian developers.

Earlier, the commissions were 30% but to help and support developers google reduced it, and also there is a reduction in service fees to 10% in the media experience programs.

Some Indian internet entrepreneurs berated Google that it doesn't allow other payment mechanisms like phone pay, Paytm, etc which charged them low, thereby harming their business.

Googly? | FinnacleShahClasses