Updates on Indian & Global Economy

1. The Union cabinet on 21st Oct approved a plan to disburse ₹3,737 crore to central government employees before Dussehra to boost spending in the festive season. The move will benefit more than 3 million non-gazetted employees, including those in autonomous central organizations, Union minister Prakash Javadekar said after a cabinet meeting.
2. According to a report based on a study published in The Lancet, more than 1.67 million deaths were linked to air pollution in India last year, including 116,000 babies who died in their first month of life.
3. Singapore is leaving no stone unturned to build its city of the future, Tengah. Solar-powered air-conditioners, vacuum garbage collection, subterranean roads for electric vehicles, urban farms and green architecture are all part of the Southeast Asian nation’s ambitious housing project started to promote sustainability in energy, water and waste. 
4. Tekion, a cloud technology startup founded by former top Tesla Inc. executive Jay Vijayan, has raised $150 million from investors led by private equity firm Advent International, valuing the company at more than $1 billion. It has entered the unicorn club.
5. A new report from the OECD, a think-tank, shows that travel restrictions introduced in response to the pandemic caused migration to rich countries to fall by half in the first half of the year, compared with 2019. The sharpest declines occurred in East Asia and Oceania. Some countries in the region, including Japan, South Korea and New Zealand have just about stopped accepting new immigrants entirely. In America, severe restrictions were not introduced until March. Most European countries halted migrant flows around the same time as the United States. There is one country where immigration has not fallen much: Sweden. 

Notes:

*The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal.

*Tengah is a planning area and future Housing & Development Board town located within the West Region of Singapore. 

*A unicorn is a term in business world to indicate a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion. The term was coined in 2013 by venture capitalist Aileen Lee, choosing the mythical animal to represent the statistical rarity of such successful ventures.

*The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED) is an intergovernmental economic organisation with 37 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade.