New Delhi, Dec 16: The main macro drivers remain healthy and India’s GDP growth is likely to move closer to the trend growth of 6.5-7 per cent this fiscal, a Crisil Insight report said on Monday.

Trend GDP growth is the average sustainable rate of economic growth over time.

Private consumption growth in the country has fared better than last year in the first half of the current fiscal (FY25).

“While investment growth has moderated relative to last year, its share of GDP remains higher than the pre-pandemic decade,” the report mentioned.

Technical factors contributed to an above-trend GDP growth last year. They are expected to have a moderating effect on GDP growth this current fiscal as they normalise.

“GDP growth had averaged 6.6 per cent in the pre-pandemic decade. This fiscal is likely to see GDP growth move closer to trend growth of 6.5-7 per cent,” according to the report.

It is worth noting that the main macro drivers of growth remain healthy. Private consumption grew 6.7 per cent on average in the first half of this fiscal, compared with 4.1 per cent in the corresponding period last year. Its share in GDP at 56.3 per cent this fiscal has been higher than 56.1 per cent in the pre-pandemic decade.

The Wholesale Price Index (WPI) inflation has also been normalising. The last fiscal saw a decline in WPI inflation to -0.7 per cent.

This fiscal WPI inflation has averaged 2.7 per cent, closer to the pre-pandemic 5-year average of 3.2 per cent. In November, India’s annual rate of inflation based on WPI eased to 1.89 per cent, compared to 2.36 per cent in October, as the rise in food prices slowed during the month with the fresh crop arriving in the market.

“We expect improving consumption demand to drive growth momentum this fiscal. In particular, agriculture and rural demand are poised to improve after a healthy monsoon. This means growth will be more balanced this fiscal, even if it is lower than last year,” said the Crisil report.

New Delhi, Dec 16 Swachh Bharat Abhiyan or Clean India Mission has driven toilet cleaner usage in Indian households by 53 per cent in 2024, according to a report.

The report by Kantar, a market research firm, showed that the country has seen a dramatic rise in the use of toilet cleaners and floor cleaners. From 19 per cent and 8 per cent, respectively of households using these in 2014, it more than doubled to 53 per cent using toilet cleaners and 22 per cent buying floor cleaners in 2024.

Launched by the government on October 2, 2014, the Swachh Bharat Mission is a country-wide campaign initiated to eliminate open defecation and improve solid waste management and to create Open Defecation Free (ODF) villages.

The report attributed the growth of toilet cleaner usage in households to the mission’s success, coupled with marketing efforts. It said the mission significantly improved hygiene awareness and product penetration, particularly in rural areas.

As per the report, over 128 million new households have been added in the toilet cleaners, and 52 million homes in the floor cleaners segment.

The report said the surface cleaner market is about Rs 4,200 crore, with toilet cleaners accounting for half the segment at Rs 2,000 crore.

Kantar said the category was largely urban-centric a decade ago — that’s changed drastically.

A decade ago, 82 per cent of households that bought toilet cleaners were in urban areas, it was 90 per cent for floor cleaners.

“Urban is no longer the dominant source of the category with rural contributing to 52 per cent,” said K Ramakrishnan, managing director, South Asia, world panel division at Kantar. “Clearly, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan drove the importance of cleanliness to the Indian households, and simultaneously helped manufacturers to drive penetration of household hygiene categories as well.”

Since its inception in 2014, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has led to over 500,000 villages achieving ODF (Open Defecation-Free) plus status with rural sanitation rising from 39 per cent to 100 per cent.

Suchir Balaji, a former researcher at OpenAI, allegedly took his own life in his apartment in San Francisco, according to the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. In an interview with The New York Times in October, the 26-year-old Indian American man expressed worries about OpenAI violating copyright law.

Found Dead In His Apartment

A representative from the San Francisco Police Department verified that the young researcher was discovered deceased in his Buchanan Street apartment on November 26. After officers and medics were summoned to his home in the city’s Lower Haight district for a wellness check after concerns were raised by his friends and colleagues. Officers discovered Suchir Balaji deceased. Police have reported that no signs of foul play have been discovered and ruled possibility of suicide.

A TechCrunch report states that the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) has recognized the deceased as Suchir Balaji, 26, from San Francisco. The cause of death has been established as suicide. The OCME has informed his relatives.

Who was Suchir Balaji?

Suchir Balaji was a 26 year old AI researcher who studied computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, before working at OpenAI. He interned at OpenAI and Scale AI while in college.

During his early days at OpenAI, Balaji worked on WebGPT, and later went on to work on the pretraining team for GPT-4, reasoning team with o1, and post-training for ChatGPT, his LinkedIn states.

Balaji quit OpenAI after working at the company for four years. He told The New York Times that he realised the technology would bring more harm than good to society, his main concern being how OpenAI allegedly used copyright data.

Balaji expressed his concerns in an X post in October, saying, “ initially didn’t know much about copyright, fair use, etc. but became curious after seeing all the lawsuits filed against GenAI companies. When I tried to understand the issue better, I eventually came to the conclusion that fair use seems like a pretty implausible defense for a lot of generative AI products, for the basic reason that they can create substitutes that compete with the data they’re trained on.”

The day prior to the discovery of the OpenAI whistleblower’s death, a court document allegedly identified him in a copyright case filed against the company. OpenAI, in a gesture of good faith, stated that it would review Balaji’s custodial file concerning the copyright issues he raised.