My name is Byszek, I work in Red Hat on system D upstream development and also I maintain the system D package in Fedora and a bunch of other packages and I'm active in Fesco. And this talk is about a new approach to how we could generate our need or the images. So a short disclaimer that I don't want to say that the stuff that we did before is bad. I think there were reasons, very good reasons to do things the way that they were done, but the technology landscape has changed a bit and I think it's good to think about the new approach. So what is the need and why do we need it? When the kernel initially boots, the bootloader can pass an extra file system to it and this file system is unpacked by the kernel and serves as early user space. Before the real root is mounted. And the main goal of this early user space is to mount the real root file system. The kernel obviously can mount file systems and can often do this also for the root file system on its own. But nowadays we like to have a RAID array and on top of this RAID array maybe put an encryption layer and on top of this encryption layer some LVM structure. And this is too complicated for the kernel and it needs help from the user space to arrange such a storage stack. And this is what the unitRD does and then it from the unitRD we transition to the mount the real root file system and transition to it and then execute the real unit in this real root file system. And in this talk and in system2d documentation we say unitRD even though technically it's an unitRMFS. So an unitRD is a slightly older version of this idea that you have a in-memory block device and read files from this block device. And with an unitRMFS we kind of do away with the block device part and just unpack and archive into a temporary file system and access files from memory without a block device. Yes, I'm using Bimmer. I like it a lot. So let me talk about the current approach that we use everywhere in Fedora. We have Dracut and Dracut is a complicated beast because it labels itself as generating unitRMFS infrastructure and I think it's fair to divide it into like four parts. So first Dracut decides what should go into the unitRD and so you have Dracut modules that provide some functionality and you select which ones should be available in the module in the unitRD image. And there are also mechanisms for dependency resolutions between modules and you know automatically pulling in other stuff when appropriate. Then Dracut provides a bunch of helpers to create the image and the very important one is Dracut install which installs a binary but it doesn't just select a binary. It looks at the binary figures out which libraries this binary is linked to and recursively pulls in those libraries so that actually we can start the binary in the IntRMFS. There are helpers to install kernel modules, Udev rules, arbitrary files and so on and so on. So in general the approach is to construct the image file by file dependency by dependency to make it as small as possible. And then Dracut creates a CPO archive from this and zips it up and the image is ready. And once we reboot into this image Dracut has an execution queue. So it waits and reacts to events and does things. And there are helpers to also do various things in the unitRD so Dracut has a bunch of scripts and hooks and things that happen in response to those events. And one of the modules that we use is a module that installs systemd. So Dracut has Udev and has systemd in the IntRD and of course systemd needs to support running in the IntRMFS and actually many of the things that Dracut now does in the IntRD are done through systemd. So, you know, this is the question whether we need, I mean, what do we need an execution queue that's provided by Dracut to manage an execution queue inside of systemd. And you know, can we simplify all that. So, you might think that the IntRD is super special. But to some extent, this used to be true. I mean, we used to use, we as in, it's like in general in Linux, I'm not sure in federal actually. Binary is linked to K-Lipsy not G-Lipsy and some very strange things were done in the IntRD. For example, busybox was used and so on. Nowadays, we generally just install normal binaries. So if we take Fedora image that is used for example in a VM and pack it up as an IntRD, it will almost work. The kernel expects slash init sim link instead of, well, a slash init binary instead of has been init. And that's how the kernel knows that it's an IntRD image, not a normal operating system. And that's pretty much it as far as the kernel is concerned. And systemd checks for the presence of the IntRD release file instead of OS release. And then it behaves slightly differently. So for example, it will start a different set of units by default. And as I said, the systemd is also present in the IntRD and systemd likes to set up the environment very early on. So it will mount like proc slash dev slash sys and if programs are executed later on in the IntRD, they are executed in pretty much the same environment as they would be in the host system. Because the exact same systemd code is used to set up this environment. So this wasn't necessarily true in the past. I mean it probably was pretty much untrue. But now there isn't that much of a difference. Oh, and I wanted to mention that we use IntRD twice during a normal lifetime of a system. First during boot and then we transition back to the IntRD for shutdown. And the reason for this is that if we build up this complicated storage stack or do some other preparation during boot, then the root file system is mounted on top of this set of block devices. And we cannot unmount them. We cannot properly clean them up until we have unmounted the root file system. So we switch back to an IntRD image and undo everything we did during boot up. So it's, I mean, not only is the IntRD image very similar to a real environment, we switch back and forth regularly between IntRD and the real file system. And I want to say that, you know, like there is no functionality that we would require in the IntRD that we wouldn't want in the host. So all kinds of storage, right, and in particular if we are able to mount, I don't know, degraded radar arrays in the IntRD, we also want to do this in the real system for debugging and I mean it will be strange not to be able to anyway. All kinds of file systems, networking stuff. If we need it here, we also need it in the real system. And not to the same extent, but to a large extent, everything that we do in the host, we also may want to do in the IntRD. So as an example, you might say, well, we don't need Bluetooth and sound in the IntRD, but I don't think this is true. If we enter emergency mode because our disk doesn't boot and we need to debug stuff and our keyboard is on, it's a Bluetooth keyboard, then most likely we want Bluetooth. And two days ago during Matthew Miller's talk, there was a question about the state of accessibility in Fedora. I assume that if you have a screen reader that you use during normal lifetime of the machine, you probably also want it in the IntRD so that you can type in a password or debug things. And this pulls in at least the sound stack and probably various other things. So at least in principle, we need to be prepared to put arbitrary stuff in the IntRD. People commonly ask for SSH to be activated if we enter an emergency mode in the IntRD and so on and so on. So, yes, and this wasn't true in the past, but nowadays we do things through binaries and through demons that do and not necessarily scripts. So we would use the same binaries in the IntRD as on the host. So, I said the track code is those four areas and I want to replace this by a different scheme. So the configuration mechanism will be just a list of RPMs. Let me do this in a kind of a hand wavy fashion for now. So I have some list of RPMs and I create the image by calling dnf install dash dash install root and zip this up into a CPIO archive. And once we reboot into this image, we have an execution queue. We don't need to track which one we can just use system B and let system D do its job. And now all the rest, there's a solution plain old ordinary RPMs and they in general provide all the functionality that we need. So, I mean, people have been talking about this for a while, using an approach more like this, but I mean, like the thing that comes up the most is that the resulting image would be too large. So I hope I'll have time for some Q&A at the end, but let me kind of primitively answer some possible questions now. So if we have RPMs that are too large, then the answer is to split them up. This doesn't benefit just this use case, but it benefits, you know, like container images, cloud installations, live CDs, cloud packs, embedded devices and so on. Or if the RPM has too many dependencies, we actually have a council objective to minimize stuff and you know, we have graphs and so on. So people try to make things, I mean, to reduce the dependency tree. And again, if we do it there, it helps here and vice versa. And if some RPM doesn't work in the interd, since the interd is pretty much a normal, I mean, looks like a normal system, then I would say that this RPM is broken. I mean, maybe it will also be broken in a container or in some other minimal installation and just needs to be fixed. So what does this give us? Well, the installation becomes trivially easy and RPM is very good at installing files. And we don't need a separate mechanism to do dependency resolution. We just specify some top-level list of packages and the dependencies get pulled in. And actually with track with this is a common problem that some new files added to an RPM, the packages, maintainers of this RPM, add this file and take care of changes that need to be done. And then this needs to be rediscovered by track with maintainers because how would track with no unless it's a library that is pulled in for linkage. And we need to add this information to track with. And when we install things from RPMs, we don't pull files from the host. So right now, if there's a corrupted binary somewhere, it will be pulled into the InterMFS image. Images are reproducible, right, because from the same recipe we should get outputted as bit for bit identical in every case. And in general we kind of simplify things because instead of having bar scripts that manage other bar scripts, just use DNF. And we stop wrapping our binaries in shell helpers and shell execution queue and so on. And the last two items are kind of social things. So, right now, if we if we find some issue during boot, the package, the new version of package a does not work with the current version of package B. There are at least three parties involved so maintainers of a maintainers of B and maintainers of track would because the environment is so special that we can't necessarily say what is the source of the of the issue. And by just using normal RPMs in a normal environment, we we do this to two. So it's either a bug in A or a bug in B and it needs to be solved there. So we stop centralizing the management of track with bugs or either the bugs and let package maintainers handle them in most cases. And finally, whatever we do to make things better, it is also using other contexts. I mean, like in the spirit of open source. So, this was like my motivation, my overview, and now I want to talk a bit about my approach how to implement this. And I want to make a disclaimer that, as I said, it's basically DNF install from existing packages some minimal cleanup and you know like the minor additions that need to be added to to create an image and then this is zipped up with CPIO and compressed so I'll be talking about an implementation but it's it's a really minor thing. So mkli is a Python program that was created for the purpose of testing system beyond different distributions so it's like a a small helper that will call for example DNF to install Fedora packages or it will call Pacman to install packages and so on. So it doesn't I mean it sets up a temporary device and area to do the installation but the actual installation is done by program specific to some distribution and the normal use with mkli is then to actually build the the program like system D that you want to test in this freshly installed environment and install it there and boot it for this use case I mean for this case of interdice I'm not interested in the second step so I'm just using mkli to to call DNF and create an image and I added functionality to mkli to create CPIO archives and to compress them with z standard you might ask why the second part is necessary well my images are a bit bigger than the images we have currently and I'm compressing them with xz was noticeably slow so so I thought that it's best to kind of hide this by switching to z standard and I considered some alternatives I couldn't make them I mean I talked with QE and G developers and I had very good responses but I mean it's my use case wasn't covered natively as far as I could see and but I think it could be made to work with some some maybe some even very minimal changes to QE I also looked at OS build so I think that the implementation is not so important because it's really not that much functionality so I mean maybe even if the scheme is adopted maybe a different approach will be used in the end and this doesn't matter so much and now I want to do a demo but this would mean that I would need to share a different different screen so yes I'm saying to Neil yes I think I want to motivate you to provide the necessary functionality I couldn't figure it out but I'm sure it's possible so I will try to build an image for my machine so the command that I'm calling is sudo I need privileged because mksi needs to set up a loopback device and it requires privileges mksi the f means that I want to override the existing file that is already there this is the output file name and I'll call this first with summary and summary doesn't actually do anything it brings out what would be done so I'm installing for Fedora version 34 output format CPIO the output file name and here's my package list and well okay let's now do this for real this calls DNF and DNF let's refresh the cache so let me drop it to the list of RPMs so those were the RPMs that were specified there you'll notice that I specified like some file paths so DNF of course turns this into program package names so I specified like the checker for XFS and XFS problems and so on dependency help I'm a visual Fedora thing low and DNF installs this X files there's some cleanup being done and kernel modules are injected in a slightly different manner and I get an image so that's it more or less I cannot put this image right now because well this would break the presentation so let me return to the previous screen so so this builds an interd image for my machine I could build an interd image for for a different for a different version of the kernel by specifying overriding the version of the kernel package and I can also specify a release version and so on so if I want to build an image for Fedora or for a different version of Fedora of course this works I just need to specify I need to pass some arguments to DNF this all works nicely and so I said that the images are bigger so the image that I built with a VM and bash and a bunch of other things it's about twice as big as the image that Drakut builds on my machine and if I unpack it it is the difference is more than two so I mean Drakut is 77 megabytes unpacked my image is 165 megabytes and if I actually look at the files that are there the biggest difference is that I have 77 megabytes of kernel modules while Drakut selects only 5 megabytes sorry there's some farm equipment moving around hopefully it will go away and this is because I want to take everything to this in the kernel core RPM it has a bunch of modules on the other hand Drakut pulls in modules one by one the things are necessary I think that kernel maintainers are better well know more about the kernel and they could provide some small kernel sub package that would have the basic set of modules that are needed for most machines and this would be better than trying to figure out what is the appropriate list in particular because kernel modules can be provided as modules or they can be built in new modules appear over time and so on it's like with any other package it's better for the maintainers of this package to decide what should be split into which sub package there are some actual binaries so this difference is about two times and this is because basically those are the same binaries except that in my image there is more of them but this is kind of easy to fix because if we split RPMs maybe there are usually no direct dependencies but there are some binaries and it's kind of easy to split binary with multiple programs into sub packages with libraries this could be more complicated because you have dependencies right and in particular those binaries that are present in those images there is a bunch of binaries from systemd and systemd is being split over time into multiple sub packages for various other reasons maybe we will need to do it more and this is because there is a bunch of binaries from systemd and systemd is being split over time and there is a bunch of binaries from systemd maybe we will need to do it more but I think it shouldn't be too hard and then the actual list of libraries and their size and also this means that the libraries that we get is very similar and I have 11 10.5 megabytes more in user share and one of the items that surprise me is that there is 3 megabytes of license files 5 megabytes of zone info data zone info is actually there was a proposal to stop pulling in zone info right now it is pulled in from gilipc and gilipc doesn't really need it so maybe it seems that this will go away on its own and then there is some stuff like certificates and terminal info I don't know we might need it or not it doesn't say smaller things and surprising to me is that jacquard does not install the hardware the binary version of the systemd hardware database and I think I think this is wrong because it's not really an error in jacquard it's on purpose because the idea was that you start with some minimal set of udev rules in the interd and then transition to the real system and then you have more rules there and you redo hardware detection I'm trying a simpler approach where we start with the full set of udev rules that are specified by packages that are installed and well this means that we need the hardware database but this also means that things are described and behave as expected earlier on in some cases so that's it about the implementation and now I will talk a bit about where I want to go with this so we put images on the host because we need to customize the components that go into those images and this also means that the images on every host are on every machine are slightly different and they cannot be signed locally on those machines but you need your own signed infrastructure if we want to have distribution-wide signatures this is fundamentally incompatible and if we are building images from our pms they are produceable and they are the same on every machine well if we use a specific template they are the same so I want to be able to create images in Koji or somewhere in the centralized infrastructure and sign them like we signed the kernel or the bootloader this is not complicated but I haven't answered how to deal with the problem of local customizations and I have an idea how to make this work so let me do another demo I have to switch the screen again system D has this feature it has been out for a while but maybe it's not widely known it's called sys-ext it's very hard to pronounce so I was testing this before so let me undo my status I have no extensions and I also, for the purposes of this demo I installed clang so I don't have clang I don't have the clang package installed and what is system D extension it's a small file system it's a small file system that contains just slash user and at runtime system D will mount the contents of this slash user partition on top of our existing slash user directory so I mean it's easier to do than to say so first let me show this file here you can see that it's less than a megabyte and I will mount it to a temporary directory to look at the contents and if I find on this you can see that it has slash user and a bunch of files that correspond to the contents of the clang RPM if I unmount this so let me do this once again clang is not present and now I will I will tell system D to merge the extensions so what it does it looks in a set of directories like varlib extensions and any that are found are merged into user so if I now look how user is mounted it's an overlay FS so system D is just doing some mount namespace tricks to make the contents of this extension visible and as you can guess I have clang now available if I unmerge things well my user is not a mount point anymore I mean I have normal LVM on on the root drive and no clang again and I can have multiple extensions like this so is this please let me know in the chat if this explanation is kind of sufficient as a small introduction so let me continue so we have this we can do those extensions now the important part the important feature that is useful for the entire D is that those this is done at runtime we kind of build the slash user directory from multiple parts and this is not done before we boot into the system but it's running so returning to the problem at hand I want to be able to customize images and I want to do this centrally so the system D that is running in the entire D can load extensions on its own so the idea is that we would build the kernel as we do in the distribution infrastructure we would build an entire D that matches the kernel also sign it and then build some curated set of system extensions like for example networking or for ice fuzzy or for SSHD in the interface and so on and each one would be signed again because it's built from distribution packages so we trust the contents and then at runtime the boot loader or the firmware loads the kernel and the entire D and verifies the signature on them passes control to the well the kernel and the kernel starts the contents of the entire D and then in the entire D we load we get some list of extensions we verify signatures of them and mount them to make this quick the extensions would be would provide integrated verification with the so the way that the works is that you have a block device with two partitions one is the data partition where you have some files and files and a second partition where you have hashes that verify the block in the data partition has a short hash in the hash partition and this gives us a long list of hashes and then we have another set of hashes that hash those hashes and then another layer of hashes that hashes so we build a tree of hashes and in the end we end up with one hash that verifies the next layer of hashes and then this last layer of hashes verifies the data partition so in the end we have one hash that we need to verify externally this hash would be signed and verified by system D it would be signed during the build but verified by system D before loading the extension and then the kernel would do the rest of the verification and because this is done I mean doing this with DM verity is nice and quick because we don't need to verify everything we just verify the blocks that are loaded when they are loaded and this all together this gives us a mechanism to build a full chain of trust for everything that we load in the interd. So current status so well I use the QMO virtual machine for development this works nicely my laptop also boots nicely I have LVM and I have full description with Lux emergency mode also works and this was actually very simple to do because I could say that I want to add the debug shell service to the emergency target and without any further work I get this for free hibernation and resume also works I didn't test the fancy stuff like networking setup of networking or networking file systems and so on but I mean they work in the host so in principle they could and should work also in the interd some parts are completely missing so in particular I mentioned that we switch back to the interd for shutdown and I sound like this will need to be done in this scheme too but it can be done in a simpler fashion because right now the way this works is that when we are booting the track will zip up the interd image that it was booted with stored in memory for the lifetime of the system and then unpack it again at shutdown so I want to do just this last step so skip the zipping part and unpack a file from the file system for shutdown we don't need to match the version of the interd that we shut down with the version that we booted the machine with yeah so I mean there is thousands of things that can be figured out I mentioned that I made some requests to MKOSI and they have been merged and also to system D this is the biggest parts are done there are still some minor things to do and a big chunk of work will be in packaging if this is to be made really possible in particular the kernel RPM needs to be split better because right now there is kernel core, kernel modules and kernel modules extra and kernel modules internal and the way that the kernel core is the actual image which I don't want and it also has modules but all of them in one big chunk and instead I think it should at least be split I mean at least the module should be the kernel image should be split into a separate RPM for example if we have a direct kernel boot with KVM we need the kernel image on the host and the kernel modules inside of the guest and right now the kernel package does not make it easy you have to install both to get the files and there is plenty of minimization work to be done in particular when you look at the list of packages that gets installed there is debas and it's pulled in by systemd I think it's reasonable to not pull in debas and this means that certain things will not work in the entire debas those are mostly like higher level user-related functionality so that should be okay we have a bunch of libraries in two copies like PCRE and PCRE2 Leapcap which is tiny but it's also annoying to have it twice Shadows utilities is a big package and it's completely unnecessary because it will never create additional users in the EDRD while it's running and even if we were to create some user we wouldn't need to set the password for the user Utilinux is being split up already and there are some strange things being pulled in for dependencies so like the full set of repositories and depends on data that gets fixed and an important one is crypto libraries it seems that we will finally have OpenSSL3 with a nicer license and this means that we will be able to well for example in systemd we use LeapGcrypt because we don't want to link to OpenSSL in all cases because Debian does not treat OpenSSL as a system library and with this upcoming version 3 of OpenSSL this stops being an issue and hopefully we can have just one crypto library required by systemd and then maybe we could have just one crypto library in the EDRD image and also in other minimal installations so polkit is probably unnecessary and if all those things are done then the size of the image should drop nicely and it will be actually pretty close to a to the size of the track with the image and well that's all that I have so to summarize I have built intramfs images directly from system packages use systemd use rpms and sign and verify everything in central distribution infrastructure so I don't know questions do I have Q&A so what about using fsverity instead of dmverity I don't know I will look into this sorry I cannot answer this right now at all how do we deal when people install drivers and things afterwards well so basically it's just that if you add an iskazi mount and you need it in the interd you would also pull in some additional extension in the interd that would be present and it would deal with that so my idea is that right now when we we have multiple intrad images for example for multiple versions of the kernel each one is a complete set of things on its own but the extensions they could be shared between multiple versions of the interd so maybe we could use the space that we have more efficiently so basically the idea is to add extensions what about live media I don't know maybe live media would use a different recipe I don't know enough about live media how are we supposed to deal with third party drivers and such well so first of all even if the scheme is adopted the old scheme wouldn't go away and even if we have centrally built images you can always build an image locally so it wouldn't be signed maybe so one option is to say that well it wouldn't be signed and you build it locally and you're not worse off in any way than right now another option would be to say that if those third party drivers are distributed by somebody else they could sign it and the user could add another signature to trust to local setup but well I don't think that this thing is significantly worse for third party drivers you would probably need to build the image locally and then you just lose the central signing but that's it okay so I hope I have answered the questions and well that's it I guess thank you for attending and thank you


Next question is from Jack Michael. What are some good high protein or just healthy meal or snack ideas for someone on a college budget? Yeah. You know, there's a myth that if you're on a budget, you can't eat a diet that is conducive for building muscle and being lean. That is totally false. In fact, every college student or person that I've worked with with this challenge, oftentimes when I look at what they're eating, I'm like, you're eating out four times a week or once a day. Like, why don't we try removing that? And then Starbucks on top of that, which is seven, eight bucks. Yes.   He did this thing. Oh, Cully Muscle? Yeah, yeah, that guy. He did the thing of like top ramen and chicken thighs. Yeah. You could get jacked off of that. Now, I don't think that's the most ideal diet for people, but I do think that there is this myth that eating healthy is so expensive. Because I think what we do is we compare Safeway to Whole Foods.  Well, okay, yeah.  Ground meat? Yeah, like, come on, that's cheap. Yeah, dude, stop buying the aged prime rib, you know, at the Whole Foods. Like, literally, bulk, ground beef, rice, frozen vegetables. And bone broth. Like, you have that right there covers quite a bit. So you could buy bulk ground beef, you could buy bulk chicken thighs or chicken breasts, canned fish, so tuna fish is very inexpensive. You could buy rice, which is one of the least expensive foods on the planet, very easily digestible source of carbohydrates, potatoes, very inexpensive, certain fruit, very inexpensive, frozen vegetables. Frozen vegetables are very easy, very inexpensive.  And there you go.  I think this question gets asked too a lot because of how much, you know, we promote organic whole natural foods. And I think we've talked about this a long time ago, we haven't talked about this in a while, that if we had a order of operation here, right? Of like, what's most important? Organic food isn't number one, right? So I think that that's something to be clear about. Like, if I had a kid who just absolutely every 10 cents difference makes counts and I'm trying to get him from eating McDonald's and fast food off the 99 cent menu and you want to build muscle or you want to be fit, you know, regular ground beef that's not organic, that's fine. And I'm not saying that that's ideal or what I even eat. But if it came down to, I've got a choice with this kid who's broke that I can't buy. If he's trying to find money under his couch or something, then yeah, I would do that. Organic food doesn't come above eating balanced good diet. Correct. Balanced good diet is a higher priority even if it's not organic before that. You're right, but I will say this. Nowadays, grass fed, organic, the market has grown so much that you actually get pretty good prices. You could look out for good deals. Butcher box, a company that we work with. Great prices for grass fed type of meats. But yeah, at the end of the day, I mean literally buy in bulk, ground beef, chicken thighs, chicken breast, buy in bulk rice, buy in bulk frozen vegetables, some fruit, you are set, you are good, you have nothing to worry about. And you'll actually save money. I promise you, you'll save money doing it this way and you'll have a great muscle building, fat burning, healthy type of diet.


Girls freeze during soccer game as they hear unmistakable sound. Parents at a high school soccer game were initially confused when every player on the field stopped playing and turned towards the left side of the field. At first they weren't sure what was going on, then they heard an unmistakable sound and saw what all the teens were looking at. The Siebel soccer park in Great Falls, Montana is where the Great Falls High and CM Russell teams play the majority of their home games. The park has inspired a tradition. Thanks to its location, after a video emerged online of the unique practice that's now become common at the park, it quickly garnered a lot of attention. At 4.30pm on a Tuesday afternoon, the Bison Girls were hosting Butte in a class AA playoff game where a familiar sound was heard in the distance. Immediately in the middle of the one-nothing game, both teams froze and the head referees stopped the play clock for a minute. One spectator filmed the incident, which was so simple yet so powerful a gesture. The sound that brought the game to a halt was the national anthem, which plays over the speaker system at Maelstrom Air Force Base, directly across the street from the park. Every day at 4.30pm, the anthem plays as the United States flag is lowered from its perch, overlooking the base and the city, Montana Sports Reports. Usually, the teams are only practicing when the anthem plays and they stop to honor the flag. However, on this particular Tuesday when the anthem played at 4.30pm, just as it does every day, the girls on the field were in the middle of the one nothing game. Much to the surprise of the onlookers, the head referees stopped the clock and the girls knew what to do. Both teams turned toward the flag and some players placed their hands over their hearts. The audience then followed suit. The audience at Siebel Soccer Park followed suit, standing to honor the flag and our anthem. The teams didn't always interrupt their activities for the anthem, however. As CMR girls' coach Willie Payette explained, it's a tradition that started when they took over the Russeller program and moved practice to the Siebel Soccer Park. After becoming the coach of CM Russell High School, girls' soccer and moving the team's activities to the park, he took notice of the daily tradition at MAFB and decided to make it part of his team's practice. Now with the new location and the playing of the anthem, the bison and rustlers stop whatever they're doing, which is usually just practice, face east with their hands over their hearts, stand at attention, and pay their respect to the flag. Only after the anthem is finished do activities resume. Payette says the tradition isn't meant to be a political statement, but rather a sign of respect to the service members at Maelstrom and beyond. I have our team stop, stand at attention, and honor the anthem, Payette said. Then we go back to practice. We all stand and show respect. He added that the unique tradition will continue for as long as soccer games are played in the afternoon at Siebel Soccer Park. The national anthem stands for the liberties that many in this country take for granted, but it's gotten a lot of disrespect, storing controversy over the years. Instead of standing in honor of those liberties and ideals, many have protested the anthem for the times they feel the country's fall in short of realizing them. That's not the case everywhere though, as the surprise spectators at the soccer game saw. Even in the middle of the game, these girls remembered what's really important, showing respect for our anthem and our flag honors the people who fought for our freedom. Kids, especially teens, do the darndest thing sometimes. And that includes an abundance of instances in which they choose to do the right thing. Usually, those aren't the kids making headlines though. While kids behaving badly will always manage to get attention, there are plenty of other teens who know to do the right thing. All too often, these youngsters fly under the radar, not drawing the praise they deserve. But every once in a while, the spotlight shines brightly on them when they do something particularly awesome. In a world filled with news about kids doing the wrong thing, it's nice to see a story about teens like these girls who do the right thing. They could certainly teach a few adults about respecting the flag and people who keep us safe. Good job, girls.


There are two files, questions are kept as split. In the next few minutes, what we are going to do today is look at the public finance and budget related questions alone from the previous year. We have taken questions from the past five years to up to 10 years whichever is relevant in the concert. Before 10 years there would have been a current affairs of that particular year, so we have not chosen such questions. Whatever is relevant and stands good even for today, those kinds of questions have been selected. Many of which you would have already seen through the examination, you would have gone through the previous year questions. But this is to give you an exposure which are all the areas where the questions can come in the public finance. So yesterday we saw some budget related data also. So how they have asked upon the components upon the data upon the formula and it's not a very exhaustive. I wouldn't say every part we have covered but whatever we could do in the next couple of hours we will be able to try to do. So is the screen visible to the last row? So this question of the previous year basically a current of our kind of a question only. So they are asking about the trust and the investment of the infrastructure investment trust. And whenever we say about the earnings we always talk about the taxes. When we talk about the income we are going to talk about the taxes. But what is getting taxed is sometimes the government can give exemption to certain things. Sometimes it can bring newer things into the income tax or any kind of taxation. So therefore they have given two statements here. Interest income from the deposits in the infrastructure investment trust. Distributor to the investors is exempted from tax but the dividend is taxable. So is the statement right? Even yesterday we studied something about this. Yes or no? The statement is wrong. Why is it wrong? Dividend distribution tax is not there but interest will be taxed. So oppositely it should have come in the statement. So therefore the statement is wrong. So it should have been written as dividend income from the deposits is exempted from tax. But the interest is taxable. So it should be in the opposite direction. Therefore the statement is wrong. The second statement, invits are recognized as borrowers under the Securitization and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act 2002. First if we have to call this invit coming under the Surface Act we should know the significance of Surface Act. What is Surface Act? That's giving enormous power to the banks to recover the bad debt. That's what we have studied. So non-performing assets will be there. Whenever it is there through the Surface Act there are asset reconstruction companies or intermediaries who will go and recover. Say for example if a farmer has taken the loan on the tractor bank will send people to go and recover the tractor which we have seen in many movies also and then this is what is also becoming one of the reasons for the farmers suicide and other things which we have studied. So we want to mention that it is the enormous power given to the banks. And now why we are talking about that particular thing when we are talking about the infrastructure investment trust. So first we need to understand this trust is something like a company which is standing between the investors and the projects. Infrastructure projects need heavy amount of capital investment. So you all will be familiar with the word mutual fund. So it is like you are going to invest in different types of activities. One of the activities is you are all the investors. You can be individuals, you can be institutions, you can be bank, you can be anybody and you people come and give the money to the infrastructure investment trust. The trust is going to take the money and go and invest in the infrastructural development projects. That's where when the projects are happening in a very good way we get the share income and that is being given to you in the form of the dividends. So if it is all the institutions, if it is all individuals, we will share with you the dividends. But what if the bank is coming and investing in this kind of trust and what happens when this project fails. In such case how the bank will be able to recover the money from the trust. So in those kind of situations we have to bring in this, it will be treated as a borrower's under the surfacing act. So if a farmer is borrowing from the bank and he is going as a default he will be put under surfacing act. Similarly the trust is borrowing from the bank in which case if they default that will also be brought under the surfacing act. So therefore that's being recognized. Actually you will see that invits are sitting under SEBI. When you say SEBI, SEBI has its own set of rules and regulations. Surfacing act is coming under banking system which comes under RBI. You always say RBI has a set of rules for the financial system, SEBI has a set of rules for the stock market. But this is an overlap of both the systems coming into the picture. So then we have the second question. India accounts for 3.2% of global export of goods. Many local companies and some foreign companies operating in India have taken advantage of the production linked incentive scheme. First statement, if you are not very sure of the data, mostly this is why we study some data from the budget. This was not true in that particular year. The data was not true. So where and all you have to be cautious about the data, such kind of questions will be alerting you to look at it. So then we have the second thing. Yesterday also we studied about this production linked incentive scheme. This is true. So statement one is wrong, statement two is correct. So now this is your hardcore the borrowing of the government. A share of the household financial savings goes into government borrowings. Is it true? How does it go? Household financial savings goes into the post office or elsewhere. That will also be going as the borrowing for the government. Data securities issued at market related rates and options form a large component of internal debt. Is it true? Data securities you can call them as the government securities. So government securities are issued. You people buy it. See this is the two things which we discussed yesterday. One was we said indirectly it will go to the post office. It will take your money. Another one is it will directly give the securities to you and you will be buying it. So the second one is the direct form. The first one is the indirect form. Both are true. Right? And you also remember we studied that market borrowing is the largest way by which the government is mobilizing the money for the borrowing. So both the statements are correct. Why we got a doubt that it is not true? It is a large component of internal debt also. What is the problem of calling it as an internal debt? It is a main source. See whichever is called as large means it is the biggest one in the descending order. So if I say today income tax is one of the larger components of the taxes of India of course it is because it is on the top. Very closely GST is following. One by say difference. But still I will say I will call large component of the tax revenue of the government. So if the language is written as an auction forms the large component then it becomes difficult. It means it is the only thing. So the statement is not B. It is a large component of internal debt. So in such case also you can still accept it as it is meaning like it is one of the largest components of the internal debt. So are we clear with this question? So which of the following is likely to be the most inflationary in its effects? Ajay, what is the answer? Anyways we have four options here. We have repayment of public debt, borrowing from the public to finance a budget deficit, borrowing from the banks to finance a budget deficit, creation of new money to finance a budget deficit. So obviously we know monetization of the deficit is what is going to result in the most inflationary in its impact. Why repayment of public debt is not as inflationary as this? That is also going to put in money in the hands of the people is it not? Second thing is borrowing from the public. So we are taking away the money from the hands of people agreed. Borrowing from the banks to finance a budget deficit there will be a limitation to do it. So it won't be that enormous like the other thing. But between the A and the D why are we choosing D? The increase of money supply but to balance that the production has to be somewhat good. They are not. One thing is repayment of public debt is I would have given 100 rupees to the government. Government is giving me back some amount along with it. So to the amount what I gave only it's going to give me back the rate of interest. But the last one is the extreme one. It's not having any basis to do it. Just to meet out with the deficit it's going to go for the creation of the new currency. Therefore though the A is also one of the right answers we choose D as the most appropriate answer. So now you have to tell in India which of the following can be considered as public investment in agriculture. Some are policies, some are investments. Investments means I am talking in terms of the capital investments. The assets kind of a thing. Which of the following you think will be an answer? First one, is it a asset? No, computerization of primary agriculture credit societies. Yes, it is a social capital development. No electricity supply to farmers. No waiver of agricultural loans. No setting up of cold storage facilities. Now we have to see options what UPSC has given us. Sometimes we will be narrowed down to do things. Ajay, I want a replacement of the file. This will not help. Answers I take and give it to you, it will be useful. So here are in this question 2, 3 and 6. 6 and 2, we know that it is for sure. And we didn't have other option other than choosing the C by the elimination technique because we don't want to answer everything together and this file we want to eliminate, waiver of agricultural loans and all may not be considered as the public investment. Therefore, we end up with the answer 2, 3 and 6. What I will do is still I get my revised file without the answers. I have another set of simple questions which we will be going through. There will not be any answers in this. Once I get it, I will again start with that. So, yes, social capital is basically health and education. It's establishing the schools, establishing the hospitals. They all can be called as the social capital. It can also be resulting in the creation of human capital. It's basically the welfare measures. For the agriculture, it won't be very suitable. Maybe you can give them some skills in the post harvesting facilities and make them a better person. So in which case the human capital is improving or you are giving some evening education to the farmers, social capital. So like that. There is a problem with this. Telecommunication, all of these things. If you are installing the equipments and other things, it will fall under the manufacturing. As such, supplying and other things will sometimes come under the servicing. Telecommunication towers are all into the secondary sector. As such, what you are giving as a service will all be taken under the tertiary sector, service sector, like that. Supplying of the pre-electricity. See, it's only like a subsidy. As such, if you see, it's a subsidy. It won't be called as a public investment. It is public only, but you don't want to call it as an investment. You want to call it as a subsidy, which they should have actually paid, but they are not paid. So it is a subsidy. So now we will come to the small basics, which you already may be knowing many of these things. Which one of the following is not a source of public revenue? Subsidy. Subsidy. It's part of your revenue expenditure, not the revenue receipts. So then we have redistribution of income in a country which is the best brought about through, what is your suggestion? We need to have an equality, betterment of the equality. That's the meaning of it. Progressive taxation combined with progressive expenditure. Progressive taxation combined with regressive expenditure. Regressive taxation combined with regressive expenditure. Regressive taxation combined with progressive expenditure. A. B. C and D ruled out we don't want to have a regressive taxation at all. Already we are suffering enough with our GST. So we don't want to have this. But first two things, out of which the most appropriate will be A. That's right. So spending should also happen as your level of income is becoming higher. Taxation should also happen as your level of income is becoming higher. So that means we are not meaning the household that is spending or it is the government. Everybody, you should spend according to your capability. Income level. Government should progressively spend or people should... It is basically your households only. See progressive taxation is as your level of income is increasing. You are going to pay more taxes. Less income, less taxes, less spending. More income, more taxes, more spending. They are not even trying to talk about the expenditure tax here. They are only asking you to spend to the level of your income so that the taxation and the understanding of the economy will be better. People who are very highly having income, they should be spending more. They should be spending more. A rich person, see whatever we spend on the food, the clothing and other things, beyond a certain extent we won't be able to spend for any family. But there are ways of luxury and all which the higher income people will be able to spend. So we expect the higher income people to spend more. But the other way round will start happening. Higher income people will spend up to certain extent and they will go into the mode of savings. Lower income people, all their income they will spend because already they have only very less income in their hands. But everybody should do some savings. That will also be inbuilt into this concept. Unless we do the savings, we won't be able to mobilize the investment. So now we are convinced with this second question. Which of the following is not a tool of fiscal policy? Please read all the answers. What is fiscal policy first? Governments policy which is related to the budget. Either the receipts of the budget or upon the expenditure of the budget. Anything you mention, yesterday we saw one graph, the organogram kind of a diagram. Anything you mention upon it will be a fiscal policy. So now we have to go back and see public expenditure is it a tool of fiscal policy? Yes. Interest rate, is it a tool of fiscal policy? Where does this come? RBI. So that's the concept of monetary policy. Deficit financing? Yes, we do. We have five different sources of borrowing. We take from different sources. Taxation is definitely a tool of fiscal policy. So here we are going to answer this as interest rate. The fiscal policy is concerned with which of the following. The volume of currency that banks put in the economic system. The policy regarding taxation and government expenditure. Policy for regulation of stock markets. Policy for countries relations with IMF. This is B. Now you have to tell answer for this. Compact revenue deficit, fiscal deficit will always be what? More or less same all of these. This is not okay. Will always be what? Fiscal deficit and revenue deficit will be the same. This is ruled out. This is ruled out. Now we are left with the two options. More or less. Fiscal deficit will always be more. Yesterday's data, we remember. How much was fiscal deficit? Exam is coming right? 5.1 percentage. How much was the revenue deficit? 2 percentage. They wanted to reduce it from 2.8 percentage to 2 percentage. Is it not? So fiscal deficit will always be larger than the revenue deficit. Why? We have total expenditure in case of your fiscal deficit. But we have only revenue expenditure in case of your revenue deficit. So totality is fiscal deficit. A part of it will be revenue deficit. So it will be always more. Now you can give some simpler answer to this. Fiscal deficit refers to what? Total expenditure minus total revenue receipts. Total expenditure minus revenue receipts plus NDCR. Revenue deficit minus interest payments. Total expenditure minus revenue receipts plus capital receipts. What is the answer? So this is last year's question. Fiscal deficit of the union government had reached 9.2 percentage of GDP during the pandemic. 2021. Fiscal deficit has moderated to 7.7% of GDP in financial year 2022. Revenue collection over the last two years has gone down. What is your answer? 2023 question. Fiscal deficit it went high. It touched up to 9.1%, 9.2 percentage. But because of fiscal deficit, did the GDP get moderated? That's the second point. Do you agree or not? No. Revenue collection over the last two years has it gone down? Slowly it is recovering after 2020. So therefore, answer is only one. No, no, no. Yeah, that's only A. How do I know this? So the answer is A, only one. This, which one are the following is generally known as the twin deficit? Fiscal deficit. Fiscal deficit and the current account deficit. I think there is a spelling mistake. Two A's have come. But anyways, we have fiscal deficit and the current account deficit being called as the twin deficit condition for the country. What is the effect of deficit financing? Reduction in taxes, increase in wages, increase in money supply, decrease in money supply. What will happen because of deficit financing? Deficit financing is you are going to borrow from different sources and you are going to finance it. But what will be the impact of it? Increase in money. The term revenue neutral rate was in news recently related to what? Goods and services tax, foreign portfolio investment, disinvestment of public sector units, foreign direct investment. We were mentioning about this in yesterday's class. Did we mention something like the governments are targeting towards the 15 percentage of the GST? On an average, we said 0%, 28%. There are different percentages. But they all are targeting towards the 15 percentage. That is what is called as revenue neutral rate. I was earning earlier this much as a state. On an average, I was getting 15 percentage. Now again, am I getting back my 15 percentage or not in the new GST regime? So, I want to find it out. So, that is what is this revenue neutral rate. So, this is the answer for this. It is related to the goods and services tax. Consider the following actions of government. Reducing the tax rates, increasing government expenditure, abolition of gradually. In the above context of economic slowdown. Remember the context. Which of the above functions can be considered as part of fiscal stimulus package? You are all very familiar with the word fiscal stimulus. So, what should you do when there is a slowdown? You should reduce the tax rates, increase the government expenditure. So, the answer is A, 1 and 2. Pension, gradually. The savings what you do along with your salary. There are different ways how the government employees are allowed to do the voluntary savings. Like for the health insurance. So, we keep some amount of our money with the government. At the time of the retirement, we will be getting it. So, those kinds of savings. Now, the question. Yesterday's class, we did this. If primary deficit is 0, then amount of borrowing will be equivalent to what? Can we first write the primary deficit formula? Can somebody tell me the formula for primary deficit? Fiscal deficit minus interest payments is equivalent to PDG. So, now they are saying primary deficit is 0. Then what will happen? How did it become 0? Both the values were equal. So, fiscal deficit is the borrowing which we know, DCR. Yes or no? We know that fiscal deficit is the borrowing. So, the interest payment is equivalent to the fiscal deficit which is why your primary deficit became into 0. Do we understand this? So, the answer is just equal to the amount of borrowing which is what is the fiscal deficit will be equivalent to the interest payment. This is a static question. We had been repeatedly mentioning where we got the budget documents yesterday. So, this is Department of Economic Affairs. Now, you can tell which one of the following are included in the capital budget of the government of India, expenditure on acquisition of armets like roads, building, machinery, loans received from the government, loans and advances granted to the states and union territories. Capital budget will have two things. Is it not? What are they? Capital receipts and capital expenditure. This one is capital expenditure. Is it not? This is capital expenditure. Loan received from the government, maybe from other governments, other countries' governments. We can, it's called as capital receipts. So, we should keep it under DCR. It's one of these sources of the DCR. Loans and advances granted to the states and union territories will be placed under capital expenditure. So, now we go see the answer. All of these. I'm slightly worried about the word grants. Instead of grants, it should be written as loans and advances given to the states and union territories because we don't want to place the word grants under capital afford. Conditional grants. Conditional grants. It will come under capital. It will come under capital. That is also not mentioned there. It's just to written as loans and grants. We don't make use of the grants word that loosely in the examination but I don't have an option here to choose. In my answer, what should have come actually, one and two, it should have come but I don't have an answer here to choose. Therefore, I am going towards all of the above. So, this you can give the answer out of the ABCD. Ministry of Industry, CSO, RBI, Ministry of Finance. What is what? Ministry of Industry will be doing what? We know at least one thing. Ministry of Finance does economics. That much we know. So, let us pick D to 2. So, we are left to between B and C. Out of this, we know RBI does on currency and all if it comes, it will go to RBI. So, C to 1. Oh, that is also fixed. So, both are the same. Now comes the question. CSO is doing national account statistics. That also we know. So, therefore, B to 4. B to 4. So, B will be the answer. Which of the following is not included in the priorities of the Indian budget? 2020-23, Gati Shakti, inclusive development, productivity enhancement. That's a small spelling mistake there. And investments, sunrise opportunities, energy transition, climate change, disinvestment, none of the above are more than one of the above. What is the answer? Which is not included in the priorities? Question is not question. Answer is disinvestment. Right? You can answer none of the above because the question is negative question. Which of the above are included means then you can say more than one of the above, but the question is a not question. Therefore, you have to answer one of it, which is disinvestment. Which of the following is not one of the priorities termed the Saptarishi adopted in the union budget for financial year to guide the country towards Amrita Kaal, thus providing a blueprint for an empowered and inclusive economy, population control. We had Garib, Yuva, Naari Shakti and Anna Dutta. We are not seeing green growth is all towards a sustainable development of our Amrita Kaal, truth power reaching the last mile, inclusive development is reaching the last mile. So population control is not included in this. A large part of the fiscal deficit in union government budget is filled by what? A large part of the fiscal deficit. Domestic borrowings, that's right. Who can levy agriculture income tax in India? There's no agriculture income tax, but who can levy it? Huh? There's so many answers. Badge fourth, where are you? I'm starting again my story. We studied finance commission. We had a union list. We had a state list. We had a concurrent list. But who will be doing this is only state government, right? This is one index which you have to memorize, which we didn't mention in yesterday's class, but it's being actually given by RBI, the bare necessities index. This is a factual thing. So I have to tell you what is wrong in this. The bare necessities index doesn't have six dimensions. It has five dimensions. And bare necessities index has been done in two years, 2012 and 2018 based on the NSSO data. So other two statements are right. They have indicators, 26 indicators, and they come up with both the rural and urban regions, but two and four are wrong for the above reasons. So the answer will be one and three. Tax on sale of inherited property. If you're selling a property and if you're getting some amount out of it, what will be levied upon it? It will be the capital gains tax. Under constitutional provision of tax assignment in India, which of the following is a tax exclusively imposed and collected by the states? This is again land revenue. Which type of tax will help in reducing income disparities? Progressive taxes. We'll read the statements. Direct taxes are those taxes in which impact is on one person and incidence on the other person. Indirect taxes are those taxes in which impact and incidence are on the same person. They have swapped it, right? The burden of indirect taxes can be shifted. Why the indirect taxes are termed the regressive taxing mechanism? They are charged at higher rate than direct taxes. They are charged the same rates for all income groups. They are not charged the same rates for all income groups. None of you go. Option B. Actually regressive means when the income level is increasing, the tax rate is decreasing, but you don't even have to be saying it is decreasing. Even if you put the same rate upon everybody, that will also be resulting in the meaning of becoming regressive, which is why most of our indirect taxes are regressive in nature. Consider the following demographic performance for us in ecology, governance reforms, stable government, tax and fiscal efforts. For the horizontal tax devolution, the 15th Finance Commission used how many of the above population areas other than population area and income distance. Population has been already given in the question. Area is the second which is given in the question. Income distance is also given in the question. 5, tax and fiscal efforts, for us in ecology, demographic performance. And this is what we have done with this. That is my other question. So we are coming back to the first poll what we had. This we finished. This we finished. Okay, sixth question. Which of the following factors or policies were affecting the price of rise in India in the recent past? Minimum support price, governments trading, governments stockpiling, consumers subsidies. You are able to see the question and the answers. You need to have one, definitely, right? We need to have four. So what do we have as an answer? Stockpiling, one, two, three and four, all the above. Government has to trade, government has to distribute, government has to stock. So the answer is D. So with reference to the international trade of India at present, which of the following statements are all correct? India's merchandise exports are lesser than its merchandise imports. Is it true? Exports are less than imports. Is it true? Exports are less than imports. That is why we are ending up in deficit. India's imports of iron and steel, chemicals, fertilizers, machinery have decreased in recent years. Import has decreased. India's exports of services are more than its imports of services. That is true. India suffers from an overall trade or current account deficit. That is true. So where do we have the answer? One, three and four only. This is a finance related thing, disputable question, but anyways. In the context of Indian economy, non-financial debt includes which of the following? Housing loans owed by households amounts outstanding on credit cards, treasury bills. They are all, all the three are the answer for the non-financial debt. There are some classifications for financial debt and the non-financial debt. We will not be having issue with housing loans or with the treasury bills, but we will have issue with amount outstanding on credit cards. But UPSC gave the answer only as all the above three. So we are just going ahead with UPSC's answer. With reference to the Indian economy after 1991 economic liberalization, consider the following statements. Worker productivity increased in urban areas while it decreased in rural areas. Is it true? Worker productivity has decreased in rural areas. The percentage share of rural areas in the workforce is steadily increased. Steadily increased. We have to be careful with such words. In rural areas, the growth in non-form economy increased. That is true. For sure we can say. The growth rate in rural employment decreased. That is false. Where is our answer? Only three. Most of India's external debt is owed by governmental entities. Is it true? Government has very little external debt. Only the countries, the companies, borrowers, they have larger amount of external debt. So that's not true. All of India's external debt is denominated in US dollars. Is that true? That's also not true. So neither one, not. The economic cost of food grains to the food corporation of India is minimum support price and bonus if any paid it to the farmers plus what? Food corporation of India is doing what? It's procuring the food grains, it is storing it, it is transporting and distributing it to the states. So these are all the activities. So the answer is C. The question, purchasing power parity exchange rates are calculated by comparing the prices of the same basket of goods and services in different countries. Is the definition true? That is true. In terms of PPP dollars, India is the sixth largest economy in the world. Is that true? We are third largest economy right now. So statement two is wrong. So we are having A1. Among the agricultural commodities imported by India, which one of the following accounts for the highest import in terms of value in the last five years? Vegetable oils. Food inflation we can understand yesterday we were discussing about it. Fiscal responsibility and budget management review committee has recommended a debt of 60% rate for the general government combined. 40% rate for the central government, 20% for the state government. Is it true? That is true. The central government has domestic liabilities of 21% of GDP as compared to the 49% of GDP of the state governments. They have toppled the numbers. Central government actually has up to 49% a state governments have lesser. So second statement is wrong as per the constitution of India. It is mandatory for a state to take the central government's consent for raising any loan if the farmer owes any outstanding liabilities to the later. That is also true. So what is the answer? One and three C. With reference to the governance of the public sector banking in India, consider the following statements. Capital infusion in two public sector banks by the government of India has steadily increased in the last decade. Is it true? No. To put the public sector banks in order, the merger of associate banks with the parent state bank of India has been affected. That is true. The answer is B2 only. Consider the following statements. The quantity of imported edible oils is more than the domestic production of edible oils in the last five years. Is it true? It is true. The government does not impose any customs duty on all the imported edible oils as a special case. That is not true. They don't exempt them all the time on all these kinds of words are always troublesome for us. So what will be the answer? One only. One only. Again, tax revenue as a percentage of GDP. How much did we see yesterday? Tax revenue as percentage of GDP. I told you one tax to GDP ratio. 11.7 percentage has steadily increased in the last decade. Can we call it as a steady increase? There were ups and downs. So that's not true. Fiscal deficit as a percentage of GDP of India has steadily increased in the last decade. Is it true? No. Because we saw the fiscal deficit coming up to 3.3 percentage and suddenly went up to 9.2 percentage. Now again coming down to 5.1 percentage. So neither one nor two. Which of the following have occurred in India after its liberalization of economic policies in 1991? Shara of agriculture in GDP increased enormously. You have a very good opinion about it? No. Shara of India's exports in world trade increased. Very peaceful statement. Yes. FDA inflows increased? Yes. After liberalization we got. India's foreign exchange reserves increased enormously? I don't want to say enormously. So what will be the answer? We'll see what answer can we do. First should be ruled out. So A is ruled out. D is ruled out. So we are left to only with 2, 3 and 4. 2 is true. 3 is true. What do you want to answer? 4. We did. Because it's a large period which they are referring to. At the time of 1991 we had very less reserves. Today we have 600 and plus US dollar billion. So we want to agree it as B. I think which we answered already this 19th question. There has been a persistent deficit budget year after year. Which of the following actions can be taken by the government to reduce the deficit? Reducing revenue expenditure. Introducing new welfare schemes. Rationalizing subsidies. Reducing import duty. You want to reduce the deficit. What should you do? We should reduce the revenue expenditure. Yes. If there is no introduction of new welfare schemes you should reduce subsidies, rationalize. If you reduce the import duty more imports will happen. So that's not okay for us. So again the deficit will increase. So 1 and 3 only. I think same question was repeated in UPSC itself. Except for the last option changed. You can see that expanding industries. So again we are going to choose the answer. Reducing the revenue expenditure. Rationalizing the subsidies. But we should not go for expanding industries. Which will again result in increase in the government's expenditure. So the answer will be A. 1 and 3 only. But this has been repeated by the UPSC itself in two different years. Which is why the question has also got repeated here. This is one important understanding required for us. The rate of growth of real GDP has steadily increased in the last decade. Is it true? Real GDP. Again the word steadily. Real GDP we can't say. What we are talking today. This 7 percentage, 5 percentage. That is the data. The second thing is GDP at market prices has steadily increased in the last decade. Yes. No. Obviously yes. There is no other answer to it. It's only for us to understand that. Every year India's GDP is growing at least by a few thousands of crores. Is it not? At least few thousands of money. Compared to the previous year. We didn't get an year where we said that there was a negative growth for a consequence. Though we were discussing about economic recession, depression and other things. Even then India's consumption kept it at least from between 3 percentage to 7 percentage of the growth rate. If you have even 1 percentage growth rate then we are going to call that the GDP at market prices has steadily increased. But the steadily word is again a doubtful word. Last decade. Should we reject both? We reject both. If this is a steadily word is not there. You can actually accept this statement. GDP at market prices has increased in the last decade. Steadyly increased in the last decade. I think you should also agree to this word steadily. Every year on here. See I will tell you a number you can assume by this. 100 becomes 102, 105, 107, 110, 115. The difference or the extent to which it would have expanded could have been different. But it was always increasing. We understand what we are talking, right? It was a stepwise increase. But I wouldn't be able to measure this height of the steps that much only I won't be able to do. But it was an increase. Definitely it was an increase. So maybe we can accept it and say what? 2 is right? No. GDP growth rate has decreased. But we didn't say negative. Whole-style price index would have said negative. Even the CPI would have said close to 2% Today India is earning 100 rupees. Next year India will be earning 98 rupees. That's what my father said in the last 10 years. Last year and also remember one more concept. When we are talking about GDP growth rate. Not at the real concept. Real is not available. I am not getting into this real thing. I am talking about the market prices. I am comparing it only with the previous year. I am not going and comparing myself with the base year. Base year question I directly rejected. The first statement is wrong. I agreed it well. But the second statement every year is India is showing some improvement or not. Yes. One year maybe it is 5%. Another year maybe it is 7%. Another year it may be 3%. Or it may be 4%. But there was an improvement in India's GDP compared to the previous year. Steadyly means if you want the rate to be remaining at 4%, 5%, and if you want to call that as a steady, then the answer is wrong. But if there is an increase compared to the previous year, the answer is right. So now what do we agree? Two can be agreed. If the rate is 2%, 2% and the GDP is... Steady in two ways you can give the interpretation. One is constant. Constant is what? All the 5% age. Steadyly means 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, 6%, 7%. That is also a steady increase. So which is what is expected here? If we look at it, we are not able to make out very clearly. So what is your interpretation? Do you want to call it as always it is 5% age growth rate as a steady? Or do you want to call it as steady increase means 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, 6%, 7%. So the second way. So slowly it is increasing. So in the last decade means we should also see in which year this question was asked. 2014. 2014 will answer it as wrong. Sometimes it was reminding the stagnation. Then slowly only it increased. 2014 and now 2004 the growth rate was very good. In 2007-08 the growth rate actually came down. Then again only it started recovering. So let's say neither one nor two. But for the current period. Amritha Kaal. I want to say something. 2014 to 2024. Maybe we can agree for the second point. Politically we can agree to it. With reference to the union budget, which of the following are covered under non-plan expenditure? This is the old data. That's why they are discussing about the plan and the non-plan. But still you can answer. Which of the following are covered under non-plan expenditure? Defense, interest payments, salaries and pensions and subsidies. What is your answer? Only defense. What are these things? Capital expenditure or revenue expenditure? All of these things are capital expenditure? Interest. Interest is what? Salaries, pensions, subsidies, defense expenditure. If it is a maintenance it can be revenue. If it is the original outlay then it is the capital. But for defense also I will tell you. The earlier the classification was kept only under non-plan. Defense, capital also they never kept under planned. What is the convenience of placing it under non-plan? Anytime you can actually increase it. So, defense was a requirement. So, all of these items whether it is capital or it is revenue it was kept under non-plan expenditure. You follow? So, the answer would be 1, 2, 3 and 4. The reference to the balance of payments which of the following constitute capital account? Direct answer. Balance of trade, foreign assets, balance of invisible, special drawing rights. Capital account, current account and capital account. What is there in the current account? Current account, capital account, foreign assets and SDR. So, answer will be 2 and 4. There is no answer. Very good. Probably the question was current account instead of capital. Do I have an answer for the current account? Yes, it is current account. It is not capital account. Let us change the question and answer it as 1 and 3. This is a very generic question. In India deficit financing is used for raising resources for economic development, redemption of public debt, adjusting the balance of payments, reducing the foreign debt. Adjusting the balance of payments with deficit financing. You are combining external sector policy with the fiscal policy. You want to do the redemption of public debt? Reducing the foreign debt. Oh my God. My entire essence of yesterday's class went into waste. You remember we discussed something on the external sector and I told you external debt cannot be paid by GDP. Did I tell you? Because you cannot convert the Indian rupee into dollars easily unless and until you have an economic activity related to it. So, you cannot reduce your foreign debt by borrowing from internally inside the country. Do not assume that you can borrow from one country and give it to another country. Do not go to that international level. So, basically and also we know that deficit financing is something which is depending upon the market borrowings, which is the major thing. With that you will not be able to reduce foreign debt. You will not be able to adjust the balance of payments and all. If you want to say something very indirect then you can attempt all such things because you can say that the government is borrowing then it is doing capital expenditure. Then the exports are increasing therefore you are adjusting the balance of payments. Of course you can say such things but here the answer is economic order. Basically you are promoting what? Capital expenditure which is going to be resulting in your economic development. So, that is the answer given by UPSC. I think this we have already discussed. Which of the following constitute a capital account? Now comes the question on capital account. Foreign loans, FDI, private remittances, portfolio investment. Loans, is it right? Capital account what are the two headings which we know? Current account capital account. Under capital account what are the things which we know? Short term capital account, long term capital account. Under the long term capital account we will have foreign loans, FDI, FPI. What is this? This will come under current account, services account, transfers, unilateral transfers. So, this is the foreign private remittances. So, this is a current account variable. So, you have to answer it as 1, 2, 1, 4. What is that in the short term capital account then? What are all the FDs which are coming from the NRI people? That will be placed under the short term capital account. What is our answer? 1, 2, 1, 4, B. This is a very static database to question. Right? So, in India in the overall index of industrial production the indices of 8, 4 industries have a combined weight of the 7.9 percentage. Which of the following are among those 8, 4 industries? 1 to 4. So, you need to memorize the data about index of industrial production which will help you to answer it. So, let us see. Which of the following measures would result in an increase in the money supply in the economy? What should you do? Purchase of government securities from the public by the central bank. Deposit of currency in the commercial banks by the people. Borrowing by the government from the central bank. Sale of government securities to the public by the central bank. Purchase of government securities. Purchase of government securities. If I am the government, I purchase all the government securities back from you. I will be giving you money. So, that will increase in the money supply. If you people come and deposit the currency in the bank. Then money will not be there with you. That is not the answer. Borrowing by the government from the central bank RBI. Obviously, it will come and channel it out to the people. So, so far we have a say in 1 and 3. Sale of government securities is not an answer because if I sell again, I will take money from you. So, the question is increase in the money supply. So, the answer is only 1 and 3. This is a earlier year question. What are the recent policy initiatives of government of India to promote the growth of manufacturing sector? NIM is at an all its older concepts. Of course, it was there providing the benefit of single window clearance which helped them very much. Establishing the technology acquisition and development fund. So, the answer was all D. All the three were helping to improve the manufacturing sector. In India, which of the following have the highest share in the disbursement of credit to agriculture and allied activities? Scheduled to commercial banks, that's right. Why are we not choosing cooperative banks and regional rural banks? The total amount what they will be able to mobilize as a deposits will be much lesser than the commercial banks. Though they both are supposed to be giving the money only to the agriculture sector, mostly to the agriculture sector. They won't be able to mobilize as much money as the scheduled commercial banks do. And how do the scheduled commercial banks give money to the agriculture sector? I need one word. Priority sector lending. So, there is a norm given by RBA that you must give some percentage of your credit, 18% to the agriculture. Consider the following actions which the government can take. Devaluing the domestic currency. Devaluation will result in what? Usually promotion of what? Troubling of what? The moment you hear the word devaluation of domestic currency, it will result in promotion of exports and hurting the imports. Reduction in the export subsidy. Adopting suitable policies which attract a greater FDI and more funds from FIIs. Which of the above actions can help in reducing current account deficit? One will definitely help because it's going to promote exports and it will be helping to reduce the deficit. Should we reduce the export subsidy? No, we shouldn't do that. Adopting suitable policies which attract greater FDI and more funds from FIIs. Will it help us to reduce the current account deficit? There are two types of answers to it. What do you want to answer? I don't have an answer called as one only. So, one and three. Why one and three? I am agreeing here because when you get in more FDI, you will be able to produce more commodities and go ahead for export promotion or import substitution where all the key words, is it not? Export promotion or import substitution. When you do both of these things, current account deficit will come under control. Mathematically, if you ask me FDI, FIIs increasing, will it increase current account deficit? I will answer directly yes. Why? If you don't do export promotions, if you don't do import substitution, your inflows of FDI assume that everything you are domestically consuming. That is also good because import substitution happens but it has to happen. If it is not going on well, the unit came inside India but it didn't perform. Anything of such sort will be a problem because you have to give back whatever amount you had taken in the form of the investments under the services account of your current account. So, when you are bringing in FDI, you have to give back the profits over there. When you are bringing in FIA, you have to pay back the dividends through the services account under the current account. So, mathematically, this kind of larger FDIs may result in the expansion of the current account deficit but we have to make use of the FDI and FIA in such a way that we are able to do the export promotion or the import substitution. The context of Indian economy, consider the following statements. The growth rate of GDP has steadily increased in the last five years. Again, we are getting into trouble with the word steadily. The growth rate in per capita income has steadily increased in the last five years. Do you want to agree? Either one. Either one not. India has experienced persistent and high food inflation in the recent past. What would be the reasons? First one, due to a gradual switch over to the cultivation of commercial crops, the area under the cultivation of food grains has steadily decreased in the last five years by about 30%. Is it true? 30% and all it didn't shrink. As a consequence of increasing incomes, the consumption patterns of the people have undergone a significant change. Is it true? Yes, people are wanting more different taste. The food supply chain has structural constraints. Is it true? It is true. So, two and three. So, the answer will be B. So, these are the questions which we thought we will discuss today. I will post both the folders into the group. So, though we wanted to do the discussion only with the public finance and the budget, we can see that we have gone a bit of spillover with our external sector which are all getting connected with the government in the questions we brought in all such questions. Almost 60 questions today we were able to look at and then at least half of it we can answer directly. Some of them we may take some time to think through and then we will be able to answer. But it will give you at least one idea. They ask you trends in the fiscal deficit, revenue deficit, GDP, per capita income, all these macroeconomic indicators. So, have a look at the data, remember the trends and then go for the exam. The other thing is they can ask you anything about the schemes, anything which is related to the current affairs. So, please be very thorough with that Amrith Kaal related strategy. Any time they can ask you a question upon it, the Saptarishi and all such things. Atman Nirbhaar Bharat. So, all the stalwart programs of the government you have to be very, very thorough with. Other than that, schemes related questions I didn't bring it inside this. It is all only mostly factual which you may have to remember and write. But GDP, trends, patterns, per capita income, trends, pattern, deficit concepts, trends and patterns. Also, we wrote one yesterday on descending order of our tax revenue receipts, starting from income tax, then the GST, then the corporate profit tax. So, we had an order, so that also had been asked in several years in the previous time with a decreasing order, increasing order like that they will ask questions. So, these are the possible ways how they can be answered. I hope this will be useful for you to take it forward as a revision for the questions. And next week we are having this exam based on whatever we have studied so far. We are also seeing the questions how it would be. So, those who are part of our classroom program, you will have the exam on 11. Those who are not part of the classroom program, you will have the exam on 9 because there is a pre-fit program coming from 11th onwards or in the subsequent week. So, we want to give some scholarship to the students who are doing very well in the budget. So, there will be 100 questions only upon the budget, whatever we have studied in the class so far. I will share the PPT also in the whatever group we have telegram groups. And these documents will also be shared. The questions today what we discussed will also be shared. So, the examination will be there in the subsequent week. Scholarship will be given to the outside students. You can all make use of the opportunity to get thorough with the budget. And regarding the pre-fit, if you are all GSPCM students, some of you wanted to come and write here directly. Whereas B were suggesting it to write it through the online mode. Online mode could be easier. Why we thought I will tell you the rationale. Different batches are writing the pre-storming in the different dates. Assume that you are a batch one and two and you are coming on Monday morning to write it. Monday early morning either you will have to write the pre-fit coming here or in the afternoon. So, you will write the pre-storming, you will attend the discussion, you will write the pre-fit, you will attend the discussion. When will you go home and study for yourself? So, we were having all these concerns every single day for you. It is one day. For us it will be like every single day we will be dealing with batch after batch of students with giving with the pre-fit. The idea is not to say no, mainly because the pre-storming which has started already from like a month ago or so for many of you from December for some of you. You may be reading history for tomorrow's pre-storming test. Whereas the pre-fit will start with the geography. So, there will be a difference in the subjects for the preparation also. So, you have to plan everything judiciously and rationally. The time left with us is very less. So, instead of like thinking that you have to come here and write for pre-fit in the afternoon, pre-fit is again is a daily exercise. It is not a thing like where you can plan and sit and study for a week and then write the pre-storming. So, it is really a daily exercise. You have to run on your heel if you want to be properly writing the pre-fit every single day without missing. It has its own advantages. But you along with doing with the sessions and then writing the pre-storm and then preparing the current affairs some of you may be still in CSAT, some of you may be still in the optional. We would suggest you to go for online pre-fit. That's my suggestion. But still we have kept the two to five slot in the afternoon so open for you people to come and write the pre-fit. But save your time, save your energy. Rationalize your time at the best and then do the exam preparation. Now, if you are online, I will go and see you in an instant. If you are online, then yes. Then, I will ask you a question. The question paper will make it available for you people in case if it is required. We will make the portal available for GSPCM students. Don't worry about the question paper availability. That is a worry. Definitely, we will address the concern. Because it will impose a discipline. You are supposed to write between 7 to 8, you write it. That's all. You won't be able to rewrite the examination. That much we can block. But we can make the question paper available to you. You won't be able to answer, but you can see the question paper. That we can do. You want to ask something. You want the question paper. People have told me that online is better. Yes. But for yourself. It's a daily way. But how are we going to do it? Actually, we are not in a mode to offer you both. That also we didn't think. Pre storming itself will give you a lot of pressure. Because every week you have a plan to prepare a particular syllabus. You will be having a sequence in which it is going. History one, history two, full history, geography one, geography two, full geography like that. You have a sequence in which it is going. But prefiter for the students who studied with us in the last year. They would have completed the course. They want to come and revise every day. They want to have a 60 day package in which they want to do it. But it is that we didn't want to exclude you people also. You may be thinking I also want to do it online. I also want to do it every day. So we are offering it to you. It is not a compulsory thing that you must write. If you are comfortable with it. If it is not putting pressure on you. If you think you are getting some benefit out of it. I'm talking my heart out. I don't want to put much pressure because this is an examination period. We have to plan our time judicially. We are doing 10 things at a time. We know what are our strengths, what are our weaknesses. Some people will be good in geography. Some people will be very weak in history. So you have to see where you are good at and where you have to strengthen. If you want to write the prefiter only for the history and then strengthen yourself, you write no. We are not asking you to do every single day thing. All the resources are at your disposal. We are giving you pre-storming. We are giving you prefit. Everything is open for you. We are giving you a lot of entire resources. But don't put the pressure on yourself that you have to do only this, that or both. And then wonder like at the end of the evening, I don't have time to study. So accordingly you plan. Pre-fit is given to you online. Enjoy the examination when you have time. Evening time or whichever they are getting. In the online they will keep it for one full day open. If you come offline, they will give you only a few hours open. They will give you a particular time. So then you have to travel from your home and come here in the particular train. Already you would have come for the class in the morning.  This is not a weekly affair, every day affair. So you have to be here all five days in the afternoon.  We are not restricting you from doing anything. We are wanting you to do more. As many questions as you are doing, the more confidence you will get. And the question paper is going to look at another revision paper. That is what we want you to have the feeling. You should never have any less confidence when you get into UPSC. Whatever we prepare today, UPSC will give its surprise on the day. Whatever, however much. But what we can train you towards is the level of confidence. You have studied everything, current affairs, static part, everything. You have done so many questions. So on the day of the examination you will have a feel, ok, I have studied. I will write. So in the question paper, 25 to 30 questions you will attempt directly. First all of the things are going to be only this experience which you gathered in doing the answers. Beyond 30 questions, you won't be able to attempt anything directly. After that it is only your accumulation of knowledge, experience or sharing. One-one question wherever you have attempted in any subject, other than logic in your subject to help and approve it. It is only going to be interlinkage of the subjects over there. That is why we are saying you work according to your convenience. There is no doubt and no question. We are offering you all types of exams. But you rationalize. This is what we want to tell from our side. So do the exam in the next week. At least to see how many questions we are able to do it. You just do it. Don't worry about anything. Through the question paper if you are learning 2-3 more questions, well and good. Why are we doing this previous question? Some years UPSC did toe copies and paste. You saw that expanding industries question, right? Similarly, very similarly. So you will be very familiar with the questions. Reading the yes questions or not questions. So they are all coming only by training into your mind. That's why we always say the key of the answer. Though you don't know anything in economics also. You'll be still able to answer at least 5 questions in the question paper. What we gave today to a common man also if you give. That's because that is the charm of UPSC. Looking at the question with some kind of a common sense in the logic. You will still be able to answer it correctly. So it is a collective knowledge. Common sense, rationality, everything put together. It is your inner character. It is not just your knowledge. So train your character to get accustomed to the UPSC question paper. That's what we are doing repeated, right? Thank you everyone. Good day.


For anybody that is watching that maybe believes the accusations and the challenges, what would you say to them? I would say to them to use their minds and use their brains and don't judge me based on my personality or whether you like me or not, or don't be emotional about this. Let's be very logical.  You must believe that me, Andrew Tate, a man with no criminal record who has never been convicted of any crime in any country ever at the age of 35 when he already had a net worth in excess of $250 million, decided to start organ to form an organized criminal group and begin human trafficking. It's clearly not my personality profile because I don't have a criminal record. And it's clearly not a financial motivation because I'm already rich. He decided to human traffic. His friends near him who had Tik Tok accounts who are now defending me saying he didn't human traffic me.  Let him go. If you believe that story that without financial motivation and without any other motivation and the fact that I've never been a criminal before, I decided to somehow human traffic people close to me who are now defending me desperately saying this is unfair and corrupt and he should be let go.