All right, good afternoon and evening to everyone in Asia Pacific and good morning to all in Europe and very, very early morning to some of those from the US. I'm Julian Gordon, I'm the VP Asia Pacific for Hyperledger, and I'm delighted to be here today introducing this special in depth Hyperledger member webinar with Bondi value on their bond blocks bond exchange. The flow for today is we will start with introductions, then a special presentation on bond blocks by Raj Kannon, who is the co founder and CTO of Bondi value, followed by a distinguished panel with Q&A. And what an amazing panel we have with us today, a truly expert lineup of leaders in blockchain and capital markets. And they're all part of the team that made the world's first blockchain based bond exchange possible, bond blocks bond exchange, which allows investors to trade $1,000 fractions of traditional wholesale bonds. So please sit back and get ready to listen to this discussion of how Bondi value democratize corporate bond trading using enterprise blockchain. And how the team solve the tech regulatory and accessibility challenges to open up this international trillion dollar market to individual investors and how you can get involved. If you have any questions during the webinar, please use the Q&A function in the root zoom chat just at the bottom down here, and submit them there. We're going to gather questions and some we will answer during the during the discussion. And then we'll also have a Q&A at the end. I'd like to ask each panelist to briefly introduce yourselves and your role in this area in this area will go alphabetically. So starting with Arjit. So Arjit, could you please introduce yourself please Arjit. Sure. Thank you, Julian. My name is Arjit Das and I'm head of digital asset innovation technology at the Northern Trust based out of Chicago. And my background is I've been in the industry with technology finance and banking for about 30 years across different different banks have had different roles. But what I currently do is I lead a team of developers and technologists who focus on emerging technologies and how it's relevant to our business. And in that context, we had the pleasure to work with Raj and Rahul and the others in the team to come up with what you were describing Julian on speed and exciting journey and looking forward to talk more about it. Thank you. I'd like to know Arjit is up at four o'clock in the morning. One way from Chicago, I believe. So thank you. And I think next I'll go to Raj alphabetically. Thank you. All right. I was just wondering if you're going to get the alphabetics right. Hi everyone. Thanks so much. It's great to see such a big participation and thanks Julian for bringing this panel together. So I'm the co founder and CTO at Bondi value. I have worked over the last, maybe 25 years across various technology roles in finance across both technology companies and financial services companies. And it includes from hardcore development architecting solutioning all the way through to more business focused roles like product management, pre sales, marketing, and ultimately my last role is to head treasury markets technology at DBS Bank's Hyderabad Center. So at Bondi value, of course, I manage all of the technology but also occasionally where the business act as needed. Okay. Thank you Roger and you're based in India right. I'm based in India. And then, Ryan, could you give it. Hi everyone. Great to be here. Good morning. Good afternoon. So I'm based in London. And I'm the global head of DLT and digital innovation at Citibank security services division. I'm responsible for internal and external initiatives covering a broad range of digital technologies, including things like tokenization and digital assets. So it's really good to be here today I think I'm in the minority I'm not the technologist. My background is is operations and products. My role currently sits within the front office products organization at Citibank, but obviously we reach out across our organization across our own two partners. Okay. Thank you, Ryan. So what I was asked to do now is to start the event is kind of set the scene by giving a very brief explanation of blockchain technology and why it's so key to making all what we're going to talk about today possible and how the hyperledger fits in and how that supports the amazing work by Bondi value and I'm going to do that by just quickly sharing a slide or two. Yeah, they're there. Share that with everyone. Can you all see that. Can you see my slide. Yes. Yeah. So, so on this slide. And as I said, I'm going to give a quick brief explanation of blockchain technology, and where hyperledger fits in, and how that supports the work that we're doing today. So on this slide you can read a very simple description, but I think covers block chance blockchain technologies allow multiple different parties to securely interact with the same universal source of truth that they can all trust. So the key here is trust. Once you have trust between multiple parties, you can create many exciting new business opportunities, and you can vastly improve many existing operations. In very brief, blockchain is a decentralized ledger that allows all users to see one universal source of truth. Once something is written on to a blockchain, it cannot be tampered with. It is immutable, the ability to protect against fraud and accuracies and to streamline operations cut costs and approve efficiencies is revolutionary. And that's what we're seeing today in enterprise blockchain. And in the bond blocks case, you'll hear from Raj, who's going out going to present after me on the on bond blocks. The many benefits of using blockchain, including the battle ability to settle at t plus zero so that's instant settlement of bond transactions. There is no read for reconciliation as on a blockchain. Everyone is working with one immutable universal source of truth. And then he will show how blockchain gives the ability to create new products such as fractionalized bonds. So that's that's blockchain. Also, we want to be clear what type of blockchain we are discussing today, which is enterprise blockchain is what we're using today. I've kind of, and I think one of the best ways to do that is to look at the, at the history of blockchain. So I kind of put it into three phases. 2008 was Bitcoin. And that was the amazing Satoshi whoever she they were, we don't know, right. And they pulled together that white paper and created Bitcoin, which is a cryptocurrency. And then after five years, we had the third, the second kind of phase I look at was a theorem that was the genius of italic and the vision of a one well computer. And that's also another key thing was the invention of the smart contract, putting logic on top of our blockchain. So, but those both are permissionless. And that was a challenge for for businesses and for for enterprises, one in terms of regulatory concerns one in terms of performance at that time. Businesses and I was around that time 2002 1516 said that we'd like to create enterprise blockchain, which has a kind of KYC we know who's involved in it. There's no mining. And it's fit for purpose for businesses at that time. At that time, there were a number of efforts going on being developed around the world and high pleasure became a place along within the next foundation where people came together and started developing DLTs, or enterprise at DLTs, what we call in permission. So it has the KYC, all parties are known. It's in a controlled environment improves performance and is better from a regulatory perspective. So make sure we understand we're not looking at cryptocurrency here we're looking at enterprise blockchain. And I'm just going to show you very quickly this is all the technologies within hyper ledger ultimately an open source software initiative from the next foundation. And we have a number of different platforms and today we're going to be looking at sawtooth which can see up on the top right hand there. Raj, that was a quick covering of blockchain and our technologies and what enterprise blockchain is I'm now going to pass you over to show how you are using this technology today. All right. Thank you so much, Julian for that introduction and really setting this up in terms of what's a blockchain and the benefits of a blockchain and the evolution itself. So what I would like to do today is to talk a little bit about the bond block solution. I hope you can see my screen. So, and then talk, spend a little bit of time explaining what is bond blocks, but I would like to dive in a little more into how bond blocks itself is implemented and how the underlying ledger works. So with that, I'll just get into who we are at bondy value and we are a team of technologies and we are best defined by our vision, which is a world where more investors can trade bonds on the go, without restrictive minimum investments and we'll just talk a little bit about that in a moment. And we have implemented this via a fully regulated bond exchange that's based on blockchain and of course we'll talk a lot more about this as we go forward. So some of the key pain points in the existing bond markets, the bond market technology has not changed significantly in the last several decades, even though the underlying bonds have issuances or trading of bonds as exploded like, you know, maybe a hundred times over, right? Trading still happens over phone calls. The minimum ticket sizes of bonds are typically in the US dollar 200,000 range, which makes it inaccessible for millions. It's also predominantly non-exchange traded, which hurts price transparency and also it's largely illiquid. So other asset classes, stocks, products, commodities, etc, which are all OTC non-exchange traded, have moved to electronic exchanges and we want to make bonds the next to trade on exchanges. The complexity of bonds requires deep domain and technology. So that's why it has not really happened to the extent it should and that's where the bond blocks bond exchange comes into being. So we are live today.  It's transparent and it's fair as an exchange. Just a couple of things. You can see our live pricing on both Refinitiv and Bloomberg. So it's available on all queue if you're familiar with that. There are also dedicated pages that you can find. So what is bond blocks? It's the world's first fractional bond exchange where you can actually trade a minimum of $1,000. We are regulated by the MAS and we follow like any of the regulated exchanges. We are not direct to consumer. We are not crypto. We work through our partners, our trading members. So it's a B2B2C model where banks, asset managers, new B2C fintechs, brokers, market makers, etc. are members and then some of them like banks or brokers can provide indirect access. In order to create, facilitate this market, they can integrate to us via various mechanisms including full scale integrations to their existing platforms via APIs. Or we also have a very quick go to market ability for them using our readily deployable trading applications. We are integrated with global custodians and they act to safeguard all the client monies and assets on the exchange. So with both Northern Trust and Citi who as I'm sure all of you are aware are probably the largest custodians in the world. And of course we're very honored to have Orijith and Ryan on this panel and they'll be able to share a lot more of their experience as well. So how does this work? So I wanted to use a couple of examples or a couple of the flows that we have to give you an insight into how this works. How does T plus zero or instance element work? How does the fractionalization work, right? And what is the kind of anonymity we have? So with that, let me start by talking about fractionalization. So the fractionalization of bonds conceptually is very much like depository receipts if you're familiar with it. So if you look at what happens, a market maker who's a member on our exchange can bring in a bond, let's say 200 K of HSBC perpetual bond by transferring it to our custodians. And then the custodians then custodize and safeguard the bonds and they confirm receipt of this to the blockchain, right? So this actually is in the form of a transaction to the blockchain and they just confirm it to their nodes. When that happens, I'm just going to segue into what then happens under the hood. So we use hyper ledges or two. And what then happens under the hood is that the transaction gets distributed to all the nodes in the network. One of the nodes we use PBFT consensus. So we've looked at various consensus and PBFT is both non-forting, so we want to wait like existing exchanges on crypto that are on proof-of-stake blockchains, right? Where they have to wait, it can port, so they have to wait for much to get created. So PBFT has a fun thing about so-called Byzantine port order and so it defends the network. So the node, one of the nodes plays the role of a leader and this is rotational and it distributes, it orders these blocks, orders these transactions into blocks and distributes it to all nodes. And then the transactions are executed by all nodes. So in a blockchain system, it isn't that one node executes the transaction and just sends the results to everyone. All nodes actually execute and this is how it defends itself, right? And then just traditional databases where data can just get passed across to each other. All nodes then compare results with each other and a node will then begin to commit only if two thirds of the network greater than two thirds have identical results. So it ensures that no nodes can have or a set of nodes if they have changed the way transactions are processed, right? So the network can still defend itself against that, right? And each node then commits that block to its ledger. So if you go back to our use case, the custodian has passed this transaction. It's gone to all the nodes. The consensus process has run and then what then happens is that the ledger gets updated and one-to-one backbone blocks are created on the blockchain. So all the ledger and all the nodes update and you can see there's an anonymous account for the market maker. We don't store PII or anything else on the blockchain and this is $200,000 are available off that bond but in fractions of $1,000, right? And one of the really cool things about some of the blockchain networks including Sawtooth is that you can each node will then send out events. So anybody connected to that node will actually receive that update instantaneously via events. The cache component also works the same way. So if a member wants to sell or buy bond blocks, they can transfer cash to our custodians and the custodian follows the same process. The network follows the same process to create that cache holding in their bond blocks accounts. We also allow for bonds to be funged back. So we call it a dual fungible structure. So they can be funged in and in a similar process if a market maker wants to take the $200,000 back to the secondary market, they can do so. And the custodian then confirms the transfer to the network and all the nodes update and the ledger is again updated. So we'll take a look also at the trading flow, right? So in the trading flow, firstly, I've just depicted a market maker account and a member who can be a bank or broker who's allowing indirect access to their clients. So the client now has funded their account with $1,500. It's all there on the blockchain. The market maker then places an order and they don't need to place a $200,000 order. They can place multiple orders and as low as $1,000. The members client places an order through the member to buy for $1,000. And then the exchange, like any other exchange, we use a central limit order book and we match orders, right? And so you'll see that these two orders match and we then send a confirmation of the trade to the blockchain. So in today's market infrastructure, typically these confirmations, they have to be sent to multiple participants because every participant maintains their own set of records and so on. And it kind of takes a long time for all of that to reconcile and process, which is why you end up with that T plus two settlement. The magic of our setup and the underlying blockchain is this, right? So once the confirmation comes in, the ledger and all the nodes update, why are the same consensus process and transaction execution process? The settlement is instantaneous because we all of us have the same single source of truth. And immediately the market makers account and the members client account shows those updates. And as always, the blockchain can efficiently communicate this out instantaneously via events to all participants. So the member within a few seconds and the market maker within a few seconds and can see that on whatever interface they are using to connect to the exchange, right? So from our perspective, the blockchain basically provides, and Julian had spoken about it. It's not a single source of record, but it's just the way that single source of record, which is distributed securely this process securely, it's immutable, etc. And, you know, for us, we also found that it's really super efficient way of communicating the transactions changes to the ledger to all participants. Of course, the benefits, it improves efficiency, it's increases trust, and therefore it reduces reconciliation efforts resulting in that t plus zero settlement. It also enables new models of execution. So we just saw the fractionization flow as well. So with that, I wanted to talk a little bit about the challenges of doing this. The proof of concepts are easy, right? It took us maybe a couple of people a couple of months on the outside to learn something new, and set up something try out a couple of transactions, see how the ledger updates. And typical small proof of quick proof of concepts will result in you figuring out whether it's how usable it is, but it really it's not usable outside of the proof of concept. Production is really hard, right? So why is production hard? What you want is this screen, what you want your clients to experience is something like this, right? In order to achieve this, you need to follow all the other good practices that you follow for your other applications. So you need to be able to have the application have high availability, have monitoring, you know, be able to deploy updates to the application itself, and so on and so forth like reporting. So what we have done to achieve this and this is where it then took us, let's say a couple of dozen engineers like a year and a half to get there. And this is to build this and we use cutting edge serverless technology on top of our blockchain network to synchronize it with external databases to combine data to provide rich, very enriched data to the front end, and all of this from the back all the way from the blockchain all the way through to the front end is all even driven so you get things as in when they happen instantaneously. So what are some of the challenges and lessons learned? This is something that's really critical. This technology paradigm is still new. Oftentimes today with a lot of new-ish technologies, some of them we say technologies are new, they're five, six years old still. So if you take on the front end, you take ReactJS, you take NodeJS, you take Java, right? You can just go to Stack Overflow and you find almost all kinds of solutions, right? This paradigm is new. There aren't that many people who have experienced it to the degree that you actually get answers easily. So in our case, we have actually gone through several hundreds of thousands of lines of logs, have gone through the actual board, have compiled and built the underlying platform because this is all open source, made some changes and seen how that works. So you need to have that level of commitment. The deployment of updates, again, it requires a coordinated effort because now every node operator needs to have the same transaction process work the exact same way otherwise the consensus will fail. So if you had a web app, you could simply make updates anytime either if you find a defect or if you want to quickly add some new features. But in the case of blockchain network, you've got to be a lot more deliberate, right? So what you need to have is really good robust processes, agreements, guidelines between all of the node operators and also ensure you have to take a lot of care that your smart contracts are really well designed, reviewed, tested before every production release. There's very little way to go back once you go forward right on this. The blockchain may not be the best execution platform for very complex transactions. So it all depends on your use case, of course, but oftentimes we get asked this question of TPS, right? And it kind of reminds me of in India we always ask questions and whether we look and look at a Ferrari or whether we go to buy, you know, like your family said, we ask how much mileage does it give, right? So that question is probably relevant is you have to treat it as horses for horses. But having said that, there are a couple of things to note, right? If you have a network of, if you have five nodes, five computers, then you're, you know, and you had a web application, you can actually distribute requests across all five and they'll handle different requests. In the blockchain network, all five are actually executing the same transaction. And having said that, this way of executing the same transaction and then updating the ledger at different, that's maintained with different participants, it brings great efficiency. That's why we're able to go from T plus two to T plus zero. So that's really the benefit, right? And therefore you need to balance what work you do on, what work you do off the chain. I think about that the data in our network is anonymized. So we need to be able to combine both off chain data and enrich it, sorry, on chain data and enrich it with off chain data, we need to be able to integrate it with our existing applications existing infrastructure So you need to account for that. If you really want to go to production. And lastly, you need to think of how would you do disaster recovery, how would you maintain availability. So as a regulated exchange, we have certain obligations to our members, right? So a certain recovery time objective that might be, let's say four hours at the most. But of course, if anything is done, then our entire market is disrupted. It also causes other issues in terms of trust and so on. So you need to plan for how you would take care of that. How do you monitor your network? How do you automate recovery? How would you automate reconcilations if you're using your external database and the ledger and so on. So this is what it will take for you to get from the POC to production. That I'd like to stop here and then you can reach me at this. If you have any questions, I'll try to answer a few during the course of the panel as well. But I'd like to get back to Julian now and thank everyone for listening to me. Julian, over to you. Exactly. That was a great, great presentation. Thank you for the challenges opportunities while using using sawtooth. That was really, really, really good. Thank you. So now what we're going to do in the next 15, 20 minutes, we're going to talk to the panel. Yeah. And then we're going to take some cue. I see a bunch of questions coming in. So please continue those questions, some technical some of the business, please. And I'll ask the panelists those questions as well. But I'm going to first start with, and I think I'll start with our jet because he's more fresh and early than all of us. So where do you see a blockchain being imperative and proving and reinventing the financial infrastructure. It's kind of like what we're doing, but one debate is done. Yeah, thank you, Julian. And the excellent presentation, Raj. This was, this was great. So, yeah, blockchain as as we in the financial industry all recognize this probably a game changing technology and we first got from more than trust point of view involved in this five plus years ago. When we began to recognize that, you know, you have a technology which gives us the ability to, to share information, but also share operational processes in a trusted immutable manner across various parties and if you really look at a macro level financial institutions, really do that they have established operational procedures they have data and they share that amongst different parties. And because traditionally these methods of sharing has had to have reconciliation layer on top of it, and other operational processes, it has sometimes been cumbersome. But with blockchain we recognize that that there is perhaps the ability to do that very efficiently with the network itself so how do you recognize that we made our first foray into this blockchain world with an application in the private equity space and then we used hyperledger fabric to develop that this was, I don't remember exactly what five or five or so years ago, we launched it live with the private equity funds, and we leverage this capability of blockchains to bring some efficiencies into the capital call process for private funds. Since then, obviously, lots of different things have happened and and when Raj and Rahul came up with this fantastic use case for blockchains. We were very excited to be part of it, but coming back to your question, the fundamental disruption that we see here is, at least I see here is that you for the first time, you have the ability for different institutions and participants to trust the operational processes without the need for a central party to endorse it so once you have all the different participants agree that they're going to operate on a certain set of data in a certain way, and that is distributed across the network. The role of the central party is somewhat diminished, and that gives rise to lots of different ways in which we can get operational efficiencies. We do not have to spend so much time and effort on reconciliation processes, and it also gives rise to newer products like the fractionalization of bonds that Raj talked about. But there's other products that is going to come up. So I do think this is a game-changing technology and no one can really predict the future, so we'll have to see and go along the journey of this exciting story as it unfolds. Yeah, excellent. So yeah, a lot happening there, right? So, Ryan, would you want to add to that? Yeah, sure. So just to comment on Arrogit's view and then also just to add some additional views from me. So I very much agree with Arrogit's assessment. So blockchain is really about sharing real-time data across an ecosystem in a mutable and trusted way because it's really about breaking down data silos. And if we can move to a world where a value chain is sharing the same set of data, then we can start to synchronize processes across us. So processes today are supported sequentially along a value chain. There's lots of duplication. There's lots of messaging and reconciliation to keep entities in check. It's feasible that actually those workflows could be deployed centrally onto a blockchain and each of those entities enrich the transaction in line with their own service provision. So that's a really, really interesting concept. Clearly, that can speed up informational flow, speed up settlement as we're seeing in Bondi value, but also make the end-to-end transaction life cycle significantly more efficient as well. Just to add a couple of additional thoughts. So one use case of blockchain is tokenization as we're seeing here with Bondi value and Bondi value really leading the charge here with regards to bonds. But that concept can also be extremely interesting for other asset classes, things like alternative assets, private equity, for instance, that have significantly longer and less efficient transaction life cycles. So there's a really interesting near-term opportunity to make those kinds of investments significantly more efficient. And I think the final thing I'd add here is that the way blockchain is being deployed in some use cases is effectively creates a always-on 24 by 7 cross-border network. So this has the potential to really change market structure and it's feasible in the medium term. We could start to see markets operating cross-border 24 hours a day and settling same day, maybe even real-time. So that's a really interesting concept. This is not just about investment flows in country. This is cross-border investment flows and it could really have a revolutionary impact on all of our business models. Yeah, I think from what I see, multi-CVDC seems to be the thing, right? This is going to be the wholesale CVDCs could revolutionize how settlement done real-time. There's a lot of work almost done here at HKMA, but the MAS is also working on that. So yeah, a lot of possibilities. So what do you think? Raj, do you want to add to that? Any thoughts yourself there? I think both Ryan and Rajit have covered it. I think some of the use cases that we talked about are totally enabled because of the power of this framework. Okay, so we know it's the right thing. It's happening here and bonds, but I think lots of other places. Actually, in a previous webinar, we talked about that bonds are kind of always been underrepresented and difficult to get to. And that's what this is obviously enabling more people to get access to bonds. But it's been a challenge, surely. There's been some challenges. What have been the challenges from a technology perspective, from a custodian perspective? So maybe I'll start with Ryan on that one, right? What do you see the challenges, obviously, on this? Yeah, I mean, there has been challenges naturally. I think one of the key challenges for us all is just the sheer fragmentation of use cases and technologies and standards across the globe. As an industry, we've been pretty good at getting to standardized messaging and workflows and market practice over the years. There's not one type of blockchain. There's many different types of blockchain and there's many different ways that those protocols are implemented. And on top of that, there's many different market practices and standards that define how that network is used, right? So what we're seeing is we're seeing a huge number of use cases with a large number of implementation types, a large number of protocols, and that can be quite daunting. Right, so certainly for investors that might just want to get access to the asset and are not really concerned by the technology, right? So I think the challenge for us all certainly as service providers is to really try and abstract that complexity and build solutions that connect our clients into those markets in a scalable and streamlined way. And potentially make them backward compatible as well. Okay, so if clients do not want to change how they communicate, they do not want to change the formats they use, then they should be able to continue with them changing their own time that still get access to the market. So I think that's really key to ensure that we can minimize the barriers to adoption and allow these new networks to scale. And I think the other thing I just highlight here is just regulatory uncertainty. Okay, so I think naturally regulators are interested in anything new. What we need to try and differentiate here is the asset class and the services that are being provided from the technology itself. So clearly if the asset class is new, if the services being provided a new, that should require an in-depth regulatory dialogue. But actually if just the technology is different, okay, then actually there should be a very close discussion of regulators to help them understand actually the nature of the services are the same, but the underlying technology may be different and helping them to understand what that means. So I think it's incumbent on us all to really work with regulators as this ecosystem evolves to help them to understand really where the key risks are and where they need to focus their minds. Okay, I think the regulator is key and I think we'll talk about the maybe a little, you know, this went through a sandbox. I think that may be a key to a success. So, Arajit, do you want to maybe add to those? I'm sure you've had similar and other challenges. Yes, and I agree with everything that Ryan was saying there. The regulatory challenges are there. Less so for an existing asset class as he says, if you start, you know, talking about completely new asset classes is a lot more challenging. But for me, I have more of a technical lens and my problems that I had to solve was one or other standards that Ryan already mentioned, because not only are there so many different types of blockchains, but there's like different ways of interacting with them. There's all sorts of network requirements, which are different, et cetera, et cetera. But just following up on something that Rod said that, you know, lab is easy, production is hard. I mean, and boy, did we find that out when we were trying to deploy this thing, right? And also for a private equity application that we did, because it works great in a quote unquote sandbox lab environment. But the moment you try even installing it in a production environment or even a production like environment, enterprise environment is very challenging. You start off by saying that, oh, I can't connect to anything because all my firewalls and proxies and everything block all connections. You know what, I try to install Hyperledger, it wants to go pull something down from GitHub and we can't do that. And then, then, you know, once you got it up and running, et cetera, then you realize that, you know, oh, now I can just let it run in isolation, because, you know, if you remember the use case, there are two legs to this. There is the real world quote unquote real world fiat leg. And then you have the blockchain leg and we have to meet somewhere, right? So now you can just have this little thing on the side, it's got to become part of your enterprise, you know, overall mesh and, you know, to connect them together again become extremely challenging from a technology point of view, while maintaining that abstraction that Ryan was talking about so that you don't have to redo this for every single different type of blockchain that you start connecting with. So architecting all of that, getting it through the information security groups, understanding all the different protocol subtleties that are needed. The operational oversight, the monitoring, the triggers, because our operational groups and support groups have to understand, you know, what triggers are relevant in this environment to react and what are being or not because it's not like traditional systems. So I can go on and on and on, but there were a lot of challenges. So anyone who wants to undertake this journey, and if you've seen something that works great in a demo environment, don't be fooled. When you take it into a real production environment, you've got work to do. It works. It works eventually with this blood sweat and tears involved. Excellent. Excellent. So it is a challenge, right, but hopefully a worthwhile challenge, right. So you've looked at lots and lots and lots of lessons from there. And actually what it seems to be I hear again is integration integration seems the issue. So you have so maybe somebody else can ask this you are in a you have your own corporate enterprise. It's kind of standards blockchain probably doesn't fit sweetly into into the enterprise architecture framework. Is there anything who would advise anyone about how to do that or help in that kind of environment how they can Yeah, I mean, lots of communication and education of the different enterprise teams early in the process is helpful because, you know, in a larger institution and, you know, not interested fairly large institution, not as large a city bank but but we have lots of different areas which have oversight about different things and not all of them have the same level of understanding of the technology. We're talking about within the technology groups right so you've got the information security group you've got the network group etc etc so lots of communication education explanation transparency as to exactly what you're trying to do helps alleviate people's problems. It's like, you know, really shining the light on on. There's no mystery here. This is not magic. It's not witchcraft. You can look inside and this is what's happening and then people start getting to be comfortable. A lot of that is relationship and education and showing people what what's happening on the front of the foot so that they can start getting comfortable that's how you navigate the corporate groups. So we've got the way I look at this two elements here this the technical services that are developed to connect into these networks but also integrating to existing enterprise technology that that's one element of it. And that takes really. We need to really engineer that stuff where we need to make it future proof because these technologies are going to change over time. The second part which is probably slower is understanding how existing enterprise policies need to change for this technology. And that that takes as I would say that takes a lot of blood sweat and tears and communication with key stakeholders across the firm. So they understand exactly why this is different. This is not bad. This is just different. This is the stage where we understand which policies need to change why they need to change and how they need to change so that so that does take time. Yeah, do you want to add more to that right. As I was speaking, you know, I was, I couldn't help smile because I just give an example of some of the challenges right so almost right before we went production last year, right, we were waiting for quite a long time with the Northern Trust, and we heard that every now and then their notes would stop syncing up. Right, and we looked at the network configuration so we went back to sort of the usual suspects right but but it took us literally looking at you know, thousands and thousands of lines logs to figure out that there was a difference between our transaction person what is deployed there right and in the minute we sorted that out, we were able to go really comfortably into production because until that point right there was always this thing that why is this happening, right and we never had answers. We really had to begin we really had to look at what sort of itself was doing that to look at what we were doing. We were immediately just reviewing the code and sorry the logs and you know these are logs that are really hard to read because they are voluminous and you really need that volume of logs to have the level of detail you need to begin. So that's that's that's an example of some of the difficulties, you know many other cases like I said, you can just type into Stack Overflow and say this is what is happening I get five answers and we'll be able to figure out if there are no answers and stop Stack Overflow or any of the other forums yet because this requires that level of experience and you have to go through the blood sweat and tears that as you talked about. Exactly this is all new right there's no new but there's no book to refer to right. We're all learning as we go as we go along right. So, so actually I think we're going to go to the Q&A now we have about 10 minutes left. So, actually, if you guys want to have a look at the panelists at the questions, but I think I think one is it seems to come up is specifically, maybe we'll talk specifically you know what which bonds are what kind of bonds are now fractionalized on bond blocks. Right. So, so as on now, we, we are looking or we have fractionalized a number of bonds that are largely investment grade their US dollar or single dollar issuance is right. We have about 20 I think at this time listed, but we keep listing continuously every month and, and we have a certain criteria for the type of bonds that can be listed on the exchange. So we do not, you know, we look at, we look at bonds that are are have a reasonable level of liquidity in the second mark, secondary market so that they, they are available to our participants on as needed. And we also look at, you know, the investment, the creditworthiness of the issuer, the kind of issuance, obviously the currency, the sector, and so on and so forth. And we continuously keep adding every month. So our goal is to have maybe 100 bonds of the top bonds listed on on the exchange over the course of the year. Another direct question is how do they go and how do they go and see it? I presume they could there's a demo on site online and they can just to see the bonds or to see a demo of our application. Yeah. How do you how do you trade how do I how do I how do I want to trade. I just posted an answer. You can reach out to me and of course we will make some of this available to experience over a period of time on our site but anybody interested can reach out to me so I just responded with my idea. Reach out, they'll organize a demo for you. Actually, an interesting question here is this is obviously an operations play and it creates a new opportunities but is there any, how does it affect liquidity to will it help the quality or is that not known yet in bonds? Maybe I'll take the first stab at this right so so certainly operations and settlement efficiency is one of the benefits which is the people are zero but if you look at it, we spoke about many of these bonds being at a minimum trading lot, trading lot size of 200k right and on the exchange you can actually trade them by them at $1000 minimum, which we believe will actually significantly increase liquidity as well. So, also other factors right it's exchange traded you know you as a client, you don't have to trade over the phone call you can see the price you can make decisions you can click and buy. So I think all of this will exchange will increase liquidity. Okay, now the question that they're all asking is how does this compare with. Why do you not choose quarter or fabric or other DLCs was that why why why saw teeth. So, good question, I think so on the every blockchain has its own advantages has its own disadvantages has its own has use cases that has suited to that right so if I take something like code up, for example, then code as a blockchain. It is, it's very peer to peer in the way it works right so, so if two participants want to exchange assets, they, they actually each signed that contract, and then, and then the, you know there's a note and network of notaries that will then ensure that they're not burning burning more assets than they have, and then, and both of them then can settle that. So there is, it is, it's very peer to peer is very for me, it's like how the OTC markets work in a way right so for an exchange or traded we needed some blockchain platform that allow us to have this all to all kind of platform right so you're not going peer to peer and and so the hyper ledger family in general accomplishes that but saw to just to talk about sort of like why we chose sort of I think we're also lucky on a couple of fronts on sort of a it went to version one which is so when it starts getting somewhat stable at the time we started working on it. And then PBFT on sort of also came out around the same time, but fundamentally sort of this relative to many of the other blockchain networks it's very simple to simpler to deploy right it's got only one note type so I mean you don't have to fight about what kind of nodes you are going to install and allocate to whom, but also that one kind of node and there's one point of connection to other notes. So, if you take fabric then you, you, you have peers the peers have to connect with each of the other peers to get agreement to get validation of the transaction and then they send it for offering and then they're committing care so you kind of have a lot of points where you have to open up the networks, not so in in sort to much simpler to install got it's got inbuilt, you know, it's got permissioning a lot of these blockchains already to have. So it's got good support for permissioning it's got a good event framework, and it's got a good transaction processing framework as well. Okay, now we've got five minutes left so one quick question, maybe it may be a custodian question it says, how do you manage the coupons on a bond. I'm not sure maybe that's too specific. How do you manage coupon payments and the underlying bonds. I presume that's. I think I'll let Arjeet, he's done a few of these now. Yeah, I mean, from the, from the business angle we can jump in right but but from the, from the technical flow angle is no different from from the other flows right so you the picture that Raj showed earlier where you had an event like transfer for bonds similar event would happen to the custodian which would be a coupon payment and coming from the depository. And then that would trigger the same sort of flow that he showed in this diagram which is a transaction to the blockchain informing the blockchain that this has happened and then there is internal algorithms that you have Raj in your system which then sends that transaction and make sure that the right participant gets the right part of it. So from the custodian point of view it's very similar to all the other flows that we have. Okay, I think that makes sense, definitely. So we've got another four minutes left I'm going to start with with a kind of round Robin question right. Kind of mark out of 10. So how far we on this journey I mean this journey specifically for for bond blocks is about providing comprehensive access for retail investors to the global bond markets. So out of 10, where do you think we are today. And actually, this is something else in five or 10, 10 years time how far do you think we'll be out of 10. So, I'm going to start with our agit specifically for for this use case. I think blockchain in general I would say we're, we are at a one because we are just getting started. We haven't quite hit the inflection point of where you have enough participants to really start changing the way the entire market behaves. So I would say at a one and your second question was five years from now. It's hard to say I mean, but, but it's probably going to be a five, if I would guess. Yeah, I agree with that. I think we're at one. I think what we're starting to see now is we're starting to see real interesting use cases in production such as bonding value. We're also starting to see some countries change issue a law to allow native digital assets to be issued rather than tokenizing assets that already exists so that's a really interesting evolution. Probably not as optimistic as our jet in five years time I think we'll probably still be around three maybe four if we're lucky I think this has got a real long way to run. I think it's also important to understand that in the short to medium term the world's about to get a lot more complex. We as in the service providers need to invest to connect into these networks and build solutions, but in the longer term, it will result in a much more efficient transaction life cycle and significant cost reductions as well. Okay, so that was so we got that was a three to four right. I was a one to start with was it one to three. Yeah, but a one to five. So, Roger you positive. This is a bit dicey to ask this under the circumstances, but yeah, I think I'm not positive on on their blockchain is is so I think today we are of course I you know in the early stages of that. And we also have to remember that this is technology that that many of the fundamentals have been there the algorithms for many of these have been there from the 70s or 80s. Right. So I think we sometimes if you take a five 10 year look at it, we are only 40 years since when some of the building blocks have come in right and I think a progress and various other fields will also influence this. I think we are somewhere in the two to three mark right now. And if you get to six in a few years from now we're we are doing pretty well.  So, excellent. It's not going to show that it's on the technology side. You tend to be maybe more optimistic and I was just going to say that I mean that divided me and start right the technologies are always like we're going to change the world. The custodians are practical right is that right. I think pragmatic. Things are going I did a webinar the other day was someone had a minus figure in five years for something else. This is all good. So this is progression right so and I think it's a great it's a great story and you know an amazing thing to have this live and thank you everybody here you know obviously this is for attending this this webinar. Thank you, Raj. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you everybody for attending. We've got tons of questions we'll see whether we can get to all of those afterwards. So I think I'm going to wrap it up here. Thank you everyone. Take care. Keep safe and hopefully see you soon. Take care. Cheers. Bye.


Welcome to the Hindu News Analysis by Shankar Ayes Academy for the date 10th of August 2020. The list of news articles taken up for today's analysis is given here for your reference. Let us now begin our analysis. This editorial talks about the relationship between India and US since India's independence. This editorial will give you a very brief idea about the events surrounding India-US relationship. So let us look at the events now and we shall also see the recommendations given by the author of this editorial on how to improve India's relationship with US. The relevant syllabus is given here for your reference. First let us discuss on India-US ties. We can say that from the period 1947 to 1971 was a period of both harmony as well as discord in US-India relations that is both friendly and unfriendly. First the author starts this editorial by telling about the support given by US for India's independence. Then in 1950 another event marked the friendship of US and India. It is that the US had plans to remove China as a permanent member at the United Nations Security Council and put India in its place. But if you see this offer was reportedly refused by the then Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru by telling that India is not going to have the seat at the cost of China because if you see there were some domestic issues happening in China. Then in 1953 during the Cold War US felt that India was moving more towards Soviet Union and China especially in the Korean War. So this made US to turn to Pakistan for support. In this regard the author tells that United States made Pakistan a member of Seattle that is Southeast Asia Treaty Organization and also a member of Cento that is Central Treaty Organization and it liberally gave aid and amendments to Pakistan and Pakistan used all these against India in the subsequent wars with India. Also it was with US support that Pakistan could raise the Kashmir issue at the United Nations Security Council. Next in 1961 the non-alignment movement came into force. If you remember we have discussed about this non-alignment movement in our 24th July the Hindu News Analysis. So by this non-alignment movement coming into force India formally proclaimed neutrality in the developing Cold War between US and Russia and this slowly damaged the US-India relations throughout the Cold War. But if you see still it was not the end of the ties between India and US because if you see in 1962 the United States helped India to establish one of the first Indian Institute of Technology that is IIT at Kanpur and then if you see in 1962 Indochina War US supported India in the conflict recognizing McMohen Line as the border. So not only in the strategic front and even in the social infrastructure front US also helped India in terms of agriculture which resulted in the Green Revolution in India and we know how this green revolution transformed India from a food scarce country to a self-sufficient country within a decade. So you can see that US helped India but the support of US to India was not consistent throughout this period. Why because if you see 1971 war between India and Pakistan the United States supported Pakistan. Here US was not happy with India when India signed a 20 year treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union. This is because United States thought that India deviated sharply from its previous position of non-alignment in the Cold War. Also if you see by 1970s US supported China's membership again in the United Nations Security Council and it also entered into a strategic partnership with China. All this happened when there was a change in the leadership in China which was favorable for the United States. The author also talks about how China then betrayed India despite India's supports to China by not willing to take that permanent membership in the United Nations Security Council as we saw earlier. Now the period from 1974 till 2001 was not favorable for India US ties. Why because we know that in 1974 India detonated its first nuclear device and India became the first nation outside the five permanent members of United Nations Security Council to have declared nuclear capabilities. So this further pushed US away from India and if you see in 1978 US ended all nuclear assistance to India when India refused to allow inspections of all its nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency. And amidst all these issues between India and US India faced the worst economic crisis in 1991. At that time if you see India forced United States to recommend the International Monetary Fund that is IMF to provide loans for India and in return if you see India gave permission to refuel the United States Air Force planes during the first Gulf War when Iraq occupied Kuwait. Then if you see in 1998 when India again tested its nuclear devices US again imposed economic sanctions on India. But shortly in 2000 the then United States President Bill Clinton made the first US presidential trip to India since 1978. And this initiated the phase of friendship between India and US. This trip indicated the shift of US's regional orientation away from Pakistan to India. Now in 2001 when US lifted the sanctions that was imposed on India after the 1998 nuclear test it was evident that US was leaning more towards India. And if you see in 2005 series of agreements like the energy security dialogue then a new framework for the defense relationship then the civil nuclear cooperation initiative were all started. And under the civil nuclear cooperation initiative India agreed to separate its civil and military nuclear facilities and place all its civil resources under the safeguards of International Atomic Energy Agency. Then if you see in 2008 the nuclear suppliers group allowed an exemption to its rules to permit India to engage in nuclear trade for the first time in three decades. Then if you see in 2014 there was an MOU between the export import bank and an Indian energy agency which supported India to develop low carbon energy alternatives. And this was also like in a way to aid US renewable energy exports to India. Then if you see in 2016 the United States elevated India to its major defense partner. And there was a series of agreements following this announcement. In 2018 during a 2 plus 2 dialogue between the India and US the communications compatibility and security agreement that is Comcast was signed. Then if you see in 2019 very recently both sides also signed an industrial security agreement that allows the transfer of defense technology. If you see this industry security agreement or the industrial security annex is a part of the general security of military information agreement between India and USA. If you see there are four foundational defense agreements which USA usually has with its partners. JSOMIA then LEMO that is Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement. Then Comcast that is Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement and finally BECA which is the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geospatial Cooperation. Now India and US has signed the first three agreements and the fourth agreement BECA is yet to be signed. So in 2019 this industrial security annex was a part of this JSOMIA agreement. So you can see that at present the ties between India and US is really good. In this juncture the author tells that the success of the future bonding between India and US will depend based on the outcome of the US presidential elections that is to happen this November. He tells that the left wing and the liberals in the United States politics are highly critical of Indian government. Why because if you see India's plan to purchase the S-400 air defense missile system from Russia and also if you see India refused America's request to send Indian troops to Afghanistan. So all these have angered the United States officials despite the good relations between India and US. So this is in brief about the history of India-US ties that you can get to know from this editorial. Now let us come to the second part of the editorial where the author gives the recommendations to improve the present India-US ties. The author tells that India should understand that the relations between India and US require certain given take on both the sides. So what India requires and what India should give back. The author tells that India needs military equipments from US which US can supply to fight a battles against China on our border. Then if you see India needs the support of United States and its ally Israel in cyber warfare and also in satellite mappings of China and Pakistan and also in hard intelligence on terrorists whom we are fighting at our borders. Also if you see India needs technology such as thorium utilization, desalination of seawater, hydrogen fuel cells etc. So these are some of the requirements of India from United States. Now what India should give back to United States. The author tells that first India should help US by sending more troops gradually to Afghanistan and relieve US troops to go home because if you see for a long time US has been involved in Afghan politics. Secondly the author tells that India should develop the Andaman and Nicobar and also the Lakshwadeep islands as a naval and air force base with United States support and allow US to share these bases. Thirdly the author tells that India should also promote bilateral trade. We know that the generic medicine industry is strong in India and India should make use of this opportunity in its exports. And finally the author tells that India needs to build trust with the United States such that the given take will benefit both these sites. But here the author also tells that India needs to be careful on certain fronts. For example when it comes to the economic relations with US the author tells that indiscriminate flow of the FDA from US to India should be avoided. And author also cautions that India should not provide the US with our troops to enter Tibet or to be involved in the Hong Kong or the Taiwan issues because there is always a possibility of a leadership change in China which can be India friendly. It means that the author tells that India should not let US to involve in its bilateral relations with China. So these are some of the precautions discussed by the author. Finally the author concludes by telling that in the long run India US and China should form a trilateral commitment for world peace provided the current Chinese international policies undergo a healthy change. This is all about the discussion of this editorial. To summarize we have seen about the history of the relationship between India US ties since India's independence and then we saw about the recommendations given by the author to improve the present India US ties. This discussion will be very much helpful to write answers in your general studies paper 2 on questions related to India US ties or on questions related to the policy of the developed country that is US on India's interests. Now have a look at this practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. This news article is related to the domestic affairs of the neighboring country of India which is Sri Lanka. In this analysis we will see about the recent parliamentary elections in Sri Lanka then the timeline of Sri Lankan polity from the end of Sri Lankan ethnic conflict till date and then we shall also see the two important issues related to Tamil population in Sri Lanka. The syllabus that is relevant to the analysis of this news article is given here for your reference. See on 5th of August 2020 that is five days back the Sri Lankan parliamentary elections took place know that Sri Lankan parliament is a unicameral body that is it has only one house. The strength of the parliament is 225. The members of the parliament are elected by the system of proportional representation. They are elected for a term of five years with universal suffrage. Now the news is that the party led by Mahindra Rajapaktsa has secured nearly two-thirds majority in the recent parliamentary election. The name of his party is Sri Lanka Podujana Perumana. If we go through the election results the party in itself has not secured the two-thirds majority but along with its coalition it has secured nearly two-thirds majority. Here coalition refers to the alliance nothing but the support of two or more parties to the main party. In case of such support the new parliament can bring in sweeping changes to the constitution because it has two-thirds majority. Reports are saying that one of the main amendments targeted by the new parliament will be revoking the 19th constitutional amendment. If you see this amendment was enacted in 2015 by the Sri Lankan parliament at that time Ranil Vikram Singhay was the prime minister and Maitri Palasiri Sena was the president. The 2015 amendment reduced the terms of the president and the parliament from six years to five years and it stated that no person who has been elected twice to the office of president shall be qualified again to be elected to the presidential office. So you can understand that why Mahindra Rajapaktsa could not become the president again in the present legal setup. This is because he already held the presidential office twice from 2005 till January 2015. So as a result till the constitution is amended to his favor it can only be the prime minister. So you can see that this 19th constitutional amendment plays a significant role in the present Sri Lankan polity because it curtailed the powers of the president and it distributed the powers more evenly with the prime minister and other democratic institutions. Now as per news these developments will be altered by the new parliament. So this is all about the recent parliament elections in Sri Lanka. Now let us come to the second part of this discussion which is about the timeline of Sri Lankan polity since the end of Sri Lankan ethnic conflict till date. See the period from 2006 till the end of May 2009 was the last face of the ethnic conflict that happened in Sri Lanka. As we know Mahindra Rajapaktsa was president from 2005 till January 2015. Then if you see Maitri Palasiri Sena became the president from 2015 till November 2019. And since November 2019 the brother of Mahindra Rajapaktsa who is gotter by Rajapaktsa is the current president of Sri Lanka. See in 2018 there was a brief crisis in Sri Lanka. Why? Because in October 2018 to be specific the then Sri Lankan president Maitri Palasiri Sena replaced the then prime minister Ranil Vikramasange with Mahindra Rajapaktsa as the prime minister. However if you see Mahindra Rajapaktsa failed to form a government that commands a parliamentary majority. So again Ranil Vikramasange resumed office. But if you see in November 2019 Ranil Vikramasange resigned and Mahindra Rajapaktsa became the prime minister in the same month. And he was also the member of parliament in Sri Lanka at that time. Now after winning the elections Mahindra Rajapaktsa has become the prime minister again. Know that during the past when Mahindra Rajapaktsa served as the president, Gotabaya served as the secretary to the Ministry of Defense from November 2005 till January 2015. And it is reported that Gotabaya Rajapaktsa was instrumental in ending the three decades long ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka through skillfully coordinated military strategy. And if you see the country of Sri Lanka calls this ethnic conflict as terrorism as per its narrative. Now there are concerns on issues related to the Tamil population who are minority in Sri Lanka. And this ethnic conflict was related to this Tamil population. So let us see the two issues for Tamil people at present in Sri Lanka. The first issue is related to the development and rehabilitation. And the other is devolution of powers as per the 13th constitutional amendment. This 13th amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution is based on Indo-Sri Lankan accord of 1987. And the amendment made Tamil as one of the official languages in Sri Lanka. See some of the key provisions of this amendment have not yet been implemented. In fact if you see there is opposition from the top leadership to implement them. Here the main provision is devolution of land and police powers to the provincial councils in Sri Lanka. If you see the demand from the side of the Indian government and the Tamil people in Sri Lanka is to implement this devolution provision. So we have to see how this unfolds in the days to come. So this is all about the discussion of this news article. This analysis would have provided you a crisp idea about the domestic affairs of the country of Sri Lanka which is one of our neighboring countries. We saw about the recent parliament elections and then we saw about the timing of Sri Lankan polity where the Rajapaksha brothers have played a significant role during the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict till date. And finally we saw two important issues related to the Tamil population in Sri Lanka. If you see there are main questions related to India's neighboring countries. So it is important as a new PSE aspirant to know about the domestic affairs of the neighboring countries in brief so that you will have an idea about the current affairs that is happening in those countries. Now have a look at this practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. This news article speaks about the conferment of senior advocate status in Supreme Court. In this discussion we shall discuss the different types of advocates in the higher judiciary especially the Supreme Court. The syllabus that is relevant to the analysis of this news article is given here for your reference. See broadly there are three types of advocates in the Supreme Court, senior advocates, advocate on record and other advocates. According to the Advocates Act of 1961 there are two types, senior advocates and other advocates. So let us see all these three types of advocates. According to this 1961 Advocates Act an advocate may with his consent be designated as a senior advocate. If the Supreme Court or a High Court is of the opinion that by virtue of his ability he deserves such a distinction. And once designated the senior advocates shall be subject to such restrictions prescribed by the Bar Council of India. For example if you see once an advocate becomes a senior advocate he or she is not entitled to appear in the Supreme Court without an advocate on record which means they should always be accompanied by a junior advocate. So who is this advocate on record? See this category is not mentioned in the Advocates Act of 1961. That is why I told that as per this Act broadly there are two types. In order to get the status of advocate on record an advocate has to appear and clear the advocate on record examination. And once they become advocate on record then they can file an appearance or act for a party in the Supreme Court. Thereby you can understand that these are the people who are eligible to file a petition and practice in the Supreme Court. And the remaining advocates who are registered in any Bar Council are called as other advocates. And these advocates can appear and argue any matter in the Supreme Court but if you see they cannot file any document or matter in the Supreme Court. So know this difference. So from this discussion you can tell that the advocate on record plays an important role in filing the cases before the Supreme Court. And if you see they can either work independently or work under a senior advocate. So these are the three types of advocates that you need to know. And talking about the conferment of the designation of senior advocate if you see in 2018 the Supreme Court came up with guidelines to regulate the conferment of the designation of senior advocates. For this purpose a permanent committee called Committee for Designation of Senior Advocates was set up and this committee is chaired by the Chief Justice of India and this consists of two senior most judges of the Supreme Court. Then it also consists of Attorney General and a member of the Bar nominated by the above members. And this committee will look into the applications regarding the conferment of the senior advocate designation. And as per the guidelines this committee is supposed to meet twice an year to look into the application. But if you see this committee has met only once after these guidelines came into force. And this is the reason why in this news article a senior advocate Indira Jaising has urged the Supreme Court to brush off its inertia. That is not to stay idle and start inviting applications from the lawyers for the conferment of senior advocate designation. So this is all about the discussion of this news article. To summarize we have seen three different types of advocates in Supreme Court. Senior advocates advocate on record and other advocates. Very rarely you might get a question but try to know about the different designations that are present in the higher judiciary from knowledge perspective. Now have a look at this practice question. Let us move on to the next news article. This question related to the borrowings of the central and the state government has been framed based on this news article which talks about the increase in borrowings of the state government of Tamil Nadu. The rise in borrowings is due to the fall in the revenue of states due to lockdown and also due to the reduction of GST collections. So the question is are there any constitutional provisions which enable the center and the states to borrow from the market? The answer is yes. Articles 292 and 293 talk about borrowing of central and state governments respectively. First let us look at article 292 as per this article the central government can borrow either within India or outside India upon the security of the consolidated fund of India. The limits of such borrowings will be fixed by the act of parliament. Similar to this article 293 states that the state governments can borrow within India upon the security of the respective consolidated fund of the states. Here you can see that the executive power of a state extends to borrowing only within the territory of India upon the security of the consolidated fund of the respective states and the limits of such borrowings will be fixed by an act of the respective state legislatures. But if you see when a state wishes to borrow from abroad that is outside India then it can be done only upon the security of consolidated fund of India. However if you see in 2017 the union cabinet approved to allow financially sound state governments to borrow directly from the bilateral official development assistance partners for implementation of vital infrastructure projects. So this move will facilitate the state governments to directly borrow from the external bilateral funding agencies and the concerned state governments will have to furnish guarantee for the loans that they receive. Also if you see the government of India will provide counter guarantee for the loan. Next if you look at the same article 293 it says that a state can't raise any loan without the consent of the central government if there is still outstanding part of any loan that has been made to the state by the central government. So these are some of the provisions in Indian constitution that enable the central and the state governments to borrow from the market. As we already said due to reduced tax collections and revenue generation the state governments are borrowing more this year so this is going to increase the fiscal deficit of the states significantly. We saw many times in the recent past about what is meant by fiscal deficit in simple terms when the government's non-borrowed receipts fall short of their entire expenditure then they have to borrow money from the public to meet the shortfall. So this excess of total expenditure over the total non-borrowed receipts is called as fiscal deficit. For example assume that the government wants to spend 100 rupees this year but it has only 80 rupees now so the government borrows 20 rupees from the market and this borrowing is called the fiscal deficit. See to arrest the high borrowings and to enforce fiscal discipline the FRBM Act was enacted. This Act mentions certain limits for borrowings for both the central as well as the state governments. The limit for the state governments is three percentage of the respective GSDP that is gross state domestic product and this limit was raised to five percentage by the central government owing to sharp decline in the revenue and tax collections due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. So these are some of the information that you need to know related to the borrowings of the central government as well as the state governments. In particular we saw about the state governments in this news article discussion. Now with this information let us look at this question it is a two statement question and you need to choose those statement or statements that are incorrect the first statement tells that the central government can borrow either within India or outside India upon the security of consolidated front of India and the second statement tells that a state can raise loan only with the consent of the central government if there is still outstanding any part of loan made to the state by the central government. As we saw during our discussion both these statements are correct but treat the question carefully this question demands you to choose those statement or statements which are incorrect so here the correct answer is option D neither one nor two so always in the exam all be careful to read the question twice or thrice to know what the question actually demands whether the correct statements or the incorrect statements. Now let us move on to the next news article look at this question about agriculture infrastructure fund which has been framed based on this news article. See this news article talks about the new financing scheme of the central government under the agriculture infrastructure fund the news says that the prime minister of India has formally launched the agriculture infrastructure fund and the financing scheme under this fund this news article also tells that the sixth installment under the PM Kisan scheme was released in this context try to know about this agriculture infrastructure fund which was approved as part of the 20 lakh crore rupee stimulus package announced by the central government in response to the COVID-19 crisis and you know that PM Kisan is an ongoing scheme of the central government that is implemented since 2018. Now let us discuss about agriculture infrastructure fund see it is a Pan India central sector scheme this scheme will provide a medium to long term debt financing facility for investment in viable projects the viable projects include post harvest management infrastructure and community farming assets so here the financing will be done through the interest subvention and financial support know that the duration for the scheme is from the fiscal year 2020 till the fiscal year 2029 for a period of 10 years under this scheme 1 lakh crore rupees will be provided by banks and financial institutions as loan to the beneficiaries the list of beneficiaries is given here for your reference and if you see the moratorium for repayment under this financing facility may vary subject to a minimum of six months and a maximum of two years know that all the loans under this financing facility will have an interest subvention of three percentage per annum up to a limit of two crore rupees and this subvention will be available for a maximum period of seven years further if you see credit guarantee coverage will be available for the eligible borrowers from the scheme under the credit guarantee fund trust for micro and small enterprise scheme for loans up to two crore rupees in case of farmer producer organizations who are one of the beneficiaries under the scheme the credit guarantee may be available from the facility created under the farmers producer organizations promotion scheme and know that this farmers producer organization promotion scheme is under the department of agriculture and farmers welfare now coming back to this fund this fund will be managed and monitored through an online management information system platform nothing but an MIS platform it will enable all the qualified entities to apply for loan under this fund so this is in brief about this agriculture infrastructure fund that you need to know from exam perspective with this information let us look at this question about agriculture infrastructure fund it is a three statement question and you need to choose those statement or statements which are correct look at the first statement this fund speaks about the aim of the scheme which is a correct statement now look at the second statement it tells that only primary agricultural credit societies marketing cooperative societies farmer producer organizations and self-help groups are eligible to get loans from the fund this is an incorrect statement not just this four there are basket of beneficiaries which we saw during our discussion now look at the third statement it tells that it is a centrally sponsored scheme just by reading this part you can tell that this statement is incorrect because we saw that it is a central sector scheme so the correct answer to this question is option one only let us move on to the next news article this question about river Kaveri has been framed based on this news article this news article mentions about some of the important rebutaries and water reservoirs of river Kaveri and if you see this question has been inspired from both these previous year UPSC prelims questions which appeared in the year 2015 and 16 we had question on the tributaries of river Godavari in 2015 and that of Brahmaputra in the year 2016 and it has been quite some time that UPSC has not asked questions about the tributaries so you can expect a question on tributaries of any river for that sake so in this context it is important for you to know about the important tributaries and the important water reservoirs that are located in the Kaveri river basin some of the important tributaries of Kaveri river include Kabini, Lakshman Tirtha, Harangi, Swarnavati and Arkavati which all join river Kaveri in the state of Karnataka and if you see there are three important tributaries that join the Kaveri river in the state of Tamil Nadu which are Bhavani, Noel and Amaravati so these are some of the major tributaries of river Kaveri and if you see some of the major water reservoirs in Kaveri river basin are Hemavati dam then Harangi dam then Kabini reservoir then Krishna Raja Sagar reservoir all of which are located in the state of Karnataka and we have the Bhavani Sagar reservoir and Mehtur dam which is also called as Stanley reservoir both of which are located in the state of Tamil Nadu so these are some of the major reservoirs in Kaveri river basin and this map gives you a clear idea about the major tributaries and the water reservoirs that are located in Kaveri river basin try to spot the left bank and the right bank tributaries of Kaveri river basin by yourself now if you look at this question it is a straightforward question here all the three rivers that I mentioned here are tributaries of river Kaveri the questioners which of the following is are the tributaries or tributaries of river Kaveri here all three are correct Kabini, Akavati and Amaravati so the correct answer is option D 1 2 and 3 next let us look at this question on Loya Zirga that has been framed based on this news article which mentions about this term here the question is the term Loya Zirga is sometimes mentioned in the news in the context of the affairs of the correct answer here is option C Afghanistan as you can see in this news article this news article tells that Loya Zirga is basically a traditional Afghan meeting of the tribal elders they are conducted sometimes in order to decide certain controversial issues from this news article you need to know in brief about the domestic affairs of the country of Afghanistan if you remember during our 18th May 2020 the Hindu news analysis we have discussed in detail about the recent domestic affairs of the country of Afghanistan in that discussion we saw that on 29th of February US Taliban peace deal was signed and as a part of this deal it was agreed that up to 5000 Taliban prisoners and up to 1000 prisoners of Afghan government would be released by 10th of March 2020 but if you see it did not happen this issue kept on lingering for some time and now there is some consensus about this and Afghan government and the Taliban have decided to hold peace talks after the Afghan government's decision through this three-day Loya Zirga to release about 400 Taliban militants so the Afghan government is now hopeful that Taliban will come for peace talks with it so we request you to watch this 18th May the Hindu news analysis to know more about the domestic affairs of the country of Afghanistan it is also quite important to know from exam perspective because Afghanistan is crucial for India's relations with Central Asia and beyond which also includes Russia so the correct answer for this question is option C Afghanistan now let us look at this news article which mentions about one of the initiatives taken by the state government of Tamil Nadu see three weeks before the state government of Tamil Nadu launched its own television channel called as Kalvi TV in English it means education channel it is similar to the Gyan Darshan of Durdarshan TV due to the COVID-19 pandemic all sorts of education including the school education is affected so this is the reason why Tamil Nadu government came up with this Kalvi TV initiative now in order to make this more accessible the school education department of Tamil Nadu state has decided to telecast lessons in sign language so the lessons are being prepared for the students of all classes as a part of V.Tipaldi which means school at home initiative in order to ensure remote education to the students of Tamil Nadu and I hope that many other states might have also come up with such initiatives try to mention the initiatives taken by your respective state governments in the common section and you can mention such initiatives in your mains answers especially in your general cities paper too on questions concerned with education sector now let us move on to the next discussion now let us look at both these news articles the content and the context of which we have discussed in our yesterday's analysis this first news article is about ammonium nitrate and next if you look at this editorial it is about the recent air crash that happened at Koli code international airport in the state of Kerala so we request the viewers to look at yesterday's analysis for both these news articles and these are self-explanatory just try to have a basic understanding about both these news articles now let us move on to the practice questions discussion session look at this question on united nation security council it is a two statement question the first statement is the non-permanent members are elected for two year terms and the second statement tells that India will be a non-permanent member for the term beginning january 2021 both the statements are correct India will be a member from jan 2021 till the end of 2022 this question asks you to choose the correct statement or statements hence the correct answer is option c both 1 and 2 now look at this question three places are given arrange the following from south to north it is a map based question the three places are park bay park straight gulf of manar here the correct answer is option b from south if you see gulf of manar to the north of gulf of manar is park bay and to the north of park bay is park straight so the correct answer is option b 3 1 2 this question is about senior advocates the question is the designation of senior advocates to the advocates in supreme court is conferred by here the correct answer is option d none of the above it is based on the committee for designation of senior advocates with this we come to the end of the analysis of all the news articles taken up for today's discussion and also the practice questions discussion session if you like the video press the like button comment and share and do subscribe to shankar ias academy youtube channel for latest videos and updates stay focused and motivated friends thank you