1. India and Switzerland sign two MoUs in the field of Railways.
India will collaborate with Switzerland for developing trains which will tilt on approaching a bend, just like a motorbike on a winding road.
A memorandum of understanding was signed today between the two countries in this regard.Such trains are now operational in 11 countries — Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Finland, Russia, the Czech Republic, the UK, Switzerland, China, Germany, and Romania.
Explaining how the tilting trains work, officials said that as a train rounds a curve at speed, it causes objects to slide about."While it makes seated passengers feel squashed by the armrest, standing passengers tend to lose their balance. The design of the tilting trains counteract this," an official said.
During a curve to the left, the train tilts to the left and vice versa, the official said.The railway ministry signed two MoUs with the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport and Communications of the Swiss Confederation for technical cooperation in rail sector in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
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The first agreement is a follow up on bilateral cooperation in rail sector discussed in the meeting held between Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu and the Swiss Ambassador in July 2016.
The MoU aims at cooperation in the areas of traction rolling stock, electric multiple unit and train sets, traction propulsion equipment, freight and passenger cars, tilting trains, railway electrification equipment, and tunnelling technology, among other things.
The second MoU was signed between Konkan Railway Corporation Limited (KRCL) and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology which will help the former in establishing the George Fernandes Institute of Tunnel Technology (GFITT) at Goa especially for assimilation and dissemination of knowledge in the field
of tunnelling, the officials said.
2. India and China submitted proposal to WHO for elimination of trade-distorting farm subsidies.
India and China have jointly submitted a proposal to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) calling for the elimination - by developed countries – of trade-distorting farm subsidies as a prerequisite domestic support negotiations.
Disclosing this, an official statement said, “This is an important proposal by India and China in view of the ongoing negotiations for the upcoming 11th Ministerial Conference (MC) of the WTO to be held in Buenos Aires in December 2017.” The statement added, “It counters the efforts by some countries to target the subsidies of the developing countries while letting the developed countries retain their huge farm subsidies.”
The MC is the WTO’s highest decision making body. As per the joint paper (submitted to the WTO on July 18), developed countries, including the United States, the European Union, and Canada, have been consistently providing trade-distorting subsidies to their farmers at levels much higher than the ceiling applicable to developing countries, the statement said.
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In WTO parlance, the most trade-distorting form of farm subsidies are termed Aggregate Measurement of Support (AMS) or ‘Amber Box.’ The joint statement further added that developed countries have more than 90% of global AMS entitlements amounting to nearly $160 billion.
Most of the developing countries, including India and China, do not have AMSe ntitlements. ”Elimination of AMS, India and China believe, should be the starting point of reforms rather than seeking reduction of subsidies by developing countries, some of which like India provide a subsistence amount of about $260 per farmer per annum compared to over 100 times more in some developed countries, the statement said.