Can the Budget ensure safer trains?

Top of the Morning

Welcome to Top of the Morning by Mint, your weekday newscast that brings you five major stories from the world of business. It's Monday, July 22, 2024. My name is Nelson John. Let's get started:

Last Friday, a global tech blackout hit airports, hospitals, banks, and more. As more systems rely on a few tech service providers, can we avoid future blackouts? Blackouts can recur due to human errors like faulty code or incorrect updates. Tech firms regularly push updates to fix issues, but unknown bugs can slip through. Cyberattackers exploit these bugs, making global blackouts a recurring risk. Complete insulation from blackouts isn’t possible, but resilience is. In today’s Primer, Mint’s tech correspondent Shouvik Das explains what happens during a cyberattack and how you can stay safe from one.

A train accident in Uttar Pradesh’s Gonda district on Thursday afternoon - just five days before the Union budget - has left four passengers dead and over 30 injured. This accident was not the first in recent times. In fact, over the course of the last year, India has seen a string of major train accidents - the biggest one being the derailment of the Coromandel Express in Odisha’s Balasore district last June. So how is the government planning to ensure a safer Indian Railways for its passengers? The Railways budget allocation has risen from 0.3% of GDP in 2018-19 to 0.8% in 2024-25. However, much of the capital expenditure has gone towards new lines, track renewals, and rolling stock, with less than 20% allocated to safety. This neglect has coincided with several fatal accidents. Payal Bhattacharya from Mint’s data team explains why a big budget for the railways does not really guarantee safety.

This summer, the country saw one of the harshest heatwaves in recent memory. Our cities are getting hotter day by day while rampant climate change disturbs weather cycles. To counter this, the government is planning to promote urban forests. A senior environment ministry official told Mint’s Puja Das that the plan is a part of Modi 3.0’s 100-day agenda.Under the Nagar Van Yojana (NVY) scheme launched in 2020, the ministry aims to boost urban biodiversity to mitigate pollution, provide cleaner air, reduce noise, and harvest water. Urban forests are also expected to address issues like the rising mosquito population and monkeys encroaching on cities due to dwindling green spaces.

The story of COVID-related deaths is not over yet. A new study by researchers from several universities, including Oxford, pegs the number of “excess deaths” at 1.19 million. That’s almost 12 lakh lives we’re talking about. What are excess deaths? The term refers to the difference between the number of lives lost in an unusual period (like a pandemic year) and a normal year. Published in the Science Advances journal on 19 July, the study indicates that life expectancy at birth was 2.6 years lower and mortality 17% higher in 2020 compared to 2019. This data is based on a subsample of 14 states and Union Territories. The report has been rejected by the government for its methodology. So what was the methodology and what key insights does the report bring to the table? Mint’s data editor Tanay Sukumar explains.

L&T Finance, a subsidiary of engineering group Larsen and Toubro, has been in the NBFC game for nearly three decades. But despite its long presence, the company remains lower down the order. Almost 94 per cent of its loan book is retail loans and stands at around 86,000 crore rupees. To put it in perspective, Mahindra Finance, which started three years before L&T Finance, in 1991, is well ahead with assets under management of ₹1 trillion at the end of the last fiscal year. Bajaj Finance, which started out in 1987 as Bajaj Auto Finance, an NBFC focusing on two- and three-wheeler finance, has eclipsed them both with an AUM of ₹3.3 trillion as of 2023-24. Sudipta Roy, a finance professional with over two decades of experience, has been brought in as the CEO. Roy would be expected to turn the company’s fortunes around. Mint’s Shayan Ghosh takes a deep dive into the company’s strategies around increasing regulations and integrating AI into its risk management.

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