📰 Indo-Russian war games in Oct.
Details being worked out for first bilateral exercise involving the three services
•India and Russia have begun discussions to work out the modalities for their first tri-service military exercise to be held in October. It will also be India’s first bilateral military exercise with any country involving all three services.
•“The Indra exercise is scheduled from October 19 to 29. The Final Planning Conference (FPC) will be held from September 12 to 15 in Russia. All logistical issues and modalities will be finalised here,” an Army source told The Hindu .
•In April, the two countries decided to upgrade Indra from an individual service exercise into an integrated tri-service.
•“The aim of the exercise is to carry out joint exercises for suppression of international terrorist activities under the United Nations mandate,” the source added.
•The Army will send about 350 soldiers from the infantry, artillery and armoured streams.
Heavy equipment
•While the soldiers will take with them infantry weapons, ammunition, radio sets and related equipment, the issue of taking T-72 tanks and other heavy equipment will be decided in the FPC.
•The Navy is fielding two ships, a stealth frigate, INS Satpura , and an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) corvette, INS Kadmatt , along with two on-board helicopters. The naval component is likely to include an ASW component, the details of which are awaited.
•The Air Force, which flies a large number of Russian aircraft, is likely to share fighter jets of the host. Details of contingent and other support elements would be decided in the planning conference.
Finding synergy
•“This will be an opportunity for India to synergise jointness between its services and see how other countries function jointly,” one defence official said referring to India’s efforts for tri-service integration.
•The headquarters of the Integrated Defence Staff under the Defence Ministry is leading the exercises from the Indian side.
📰 All set for NIRF ranking exercise next year
•The Centre has set the ball rolling for a more comprehensive ranking of higher educational institutions in the next round of the National Institutional Ranking Framework in 2018.
•The idea: instead of institutions choosing to take part in the exercise, they are being auto-registered through a large online database — the All-India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) portal — of institutions available with the Ministry of Human Resource Development.
•The institutions, however, have to provide details like patents, publications, research projects and campus placements that are not available on the portal.
Variety of parameters
•The NIRF — begun in 2016 — ranks higher educational institutions in India on the basis of a variety of parameters. The idea is to be able to gauge their relative standing and also help students make informed career choices.
•The 2016 and 2017 NIRF lists reflected the ranks of only those institutions that had taken part in the exercise. The number was about 3,300 in 2017.
•Among universities, Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore was ranked first and Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi was second.
•Miranda House in Delhi was ranked India’s best college. Many top colleges like St. Stephens College, Delhi; Hindu College, Delhi; Delhi School of Economics; Ramjas College, Delhi; and Hansraj College, Delhi, did not take part in the exercise. With the changed process, such institutions will be part of the next year’s list.
•With this, the number of institutions that will figure in the NIRF exercise is expected to jump three-fold to at least 10,000, an official said.
📰 Income limit raised for creamy layer
•The ‘creamy layer’ ceiling for OBC reservation has been raised to Rs. 8 lakh per year, according to an official order issued on Wednesday.
•“It has now been decided to raise the income limit from Rs. 6 lakh to Rs. 8 lakh per annum for determining the creamy layer among the Other Backward Classes,” the order issued by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) said.
•In 1993, the limit was kept at Rs. 1 lakh. It was raised thrice — to Rs. 2.5 lakh in 2004, Rs. 4.5 lakh in 2008 and Rs. 6 lakh in 2013.
•Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had on August 23 announced that the Union Cabinet had been formally apprised of the decision to increase the limit for Central government jobs.
•Mr. jaitley had said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had hinted in Assam that the bar defining creamy layer would be raised.
•“These measures are part of the government’s efforts to ensure greater social justice and inclusion for members of the Other Backward Classes,” an official release issued recently said.
📰 Petrol, diesel should come under GST, says Pradhan
Minister rules out intervention in daily pricing; non-committal on cutting taxes
•Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Wednesday ruled out any government intervention to disrupt the daily revision in petrol and diesel prices despite the ₹7.3 per litre spike since July, saying the reform will continue.
•Saying that many States had drastically increased value-added tax, he said, “It is high time that the GST Council considered bringing the petroleum products in the ambit of GST.”
•He, however, remained non-committal on cutting taxes to soften the blow of the relentless rise in prices since the government need to finance huge infrastructure and social projects has to be balanced with consumer needs. Terming the criticism of a spike in rates as unfair, he said the drop in prices for over a fortnight after the daily price revision was introduced has been ignored and only the “temporary” phenomenon of a rising trend was being highlighted.
•India relies on imports to meet 80% of its needs and so domestic fuel rates have been aligned to the movement of equivalent product prices in the international market since April 2002. Previously, the rates were changed every fortnight but since June 16 they are being revised daily, Mr. Pradhan said, adding that the daily revision immediately passes on the benefit of any reduction in international oil prices to consumers and avoids sharp spikes by spreading them in small doses.
•“The government has no business to interfere in day-to-day operations of oil companies... government will interfere only to improve operational efficiency of oil companies,” he said after meeting the heads of state-run firms.
•He was replying to questions from presspersons on whether the government plans to stall the daily price revision in view of the spike in rates.
•Mr. Pradhan said the global prices had risen due to factors such as the hurricanes in the U.S., and there were already indications of a “softening in the rates”. “As a result of these hurricanes, 13% of U.S. refinery capacity was shut down,” he said. Asked if the government would cut excise duty, he said, “That is a call the Finance Ministry has to take but one thing is very clear — we have to balance developmental needs with consumer aspirations.”
•“We have to fund massive highways and road development plans, railway modernisation and expansion, rural sanitation, drinking water, primary healthcare and education. Allocations on all these heads has gone up significantly. Where do we get resources for these?”
📰 Workers to get unique number
Govt. yet to give identity numbers to all EPFO subscribers, say unions
•Every worker in the unorganised and organised sector will get a unique identification number that will make it easier for them to get benefits under different social schemes, the Union Minister for Labour and Employment, Santosh Gangwar, said at a labour seminar in Bareilly on Monday.
•Mr. Gangwar said the idea of introducing a specific number for more than 40 crore workers of the unorganised sector was part of the labour reforms the NDA government had announced soon after it came to power. All the prominent labour unions have been invited to Delhi for consultations on labour reforms, he added.
•Tapan Sen, CPI(M) MP and general secretary of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions, expressed scepticism about the idea. “The idea of a unique number to workers sounds good on paper but there should be some basis to a proposal like this. The government already has sufficient data about the 4.15 crore subscribers of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation. But so far it has been unable to allot unique numbers to all of them. How then does it plan to go about providing unique numbers to the 45 crore workers in the unorganised sector? This does not sound like a sincere proposal,” Mr. Sen told The Hindu .
•Harbhajan Singh, general secretary of the Hind Mazdoor Sabha (HMS), described it as “fooling the people”.
•“How can you even talk about giving identification numbers to workers in the unorganised sector when you don’t even know how many are there in which sector and in which State?” Mr. Singh said.
•Mr. Gangwar said that his ministry was working towards compressing 44 labour laws into four codes – one each for wages, industrial relations, social security, and one for occupational safety, health, and working conditions.
📰 RBI is not comfortable with bitcoins, says Sen
Calls them ‘private’ cryptocurrencíes
•The Reserve Bank is uncomfortable with “non-fiat” cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the central bank’s executive director Sudarshan Sen said on Wednesday. “As regards non-fiat cryptocurrencies, I think we are not comfortable,” Mr. Sen said, addressing the India Fintech Day conference here.
•Elaborating on what a non-fiat cryptocurrency is, Sen said, “Bitcoins for example. That’s a private cryptocurrency.”
•The fiat cryptocurrency was a digital currency which would be issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in place of the physical one at present, he said, adding that the central bank was studying this aspect at present.
•“Right now, we have a group of people who are looking at fiat cryptocurrencies. Something that is an alternative to the Indian rupee, so to speak. We are looking at that closely,” Mr. Sen said.
•The RBI has been repeatedly cautioning everyone about the usage of cryptocurrencies, flagging a slew of concerns. It had stated that Bitoins posed potential risks.
Recent spurt
•According to some media reports, there has been a growing number of investors in such currencies over the last few years, especially with the huge spurt in the value of a few of them since the Trump administration came in the U.S.
📰 TRAI chief calls for zero cost for digital transactions
‘It is essential for sustained growth of such transactions’
•While calling for eliminating costs associated with digital payments for a sustained growth of such transactions, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Chairman R.S. Sharma emphasised on the need for a speedy solution to issues of data ownership and privacy.
•“If we want to have a sustainable digital transactions system, we must ensure that MDR or merchant discount rate is zero, especially for small value transactions because that is where the tipping point will come,” Mr. Sharma said.
•Mr. Sharma said we are moving to a data world and data has become extremely important. Data has two important properties — it is sharable without diminishing and is boundary-less in nature. This raises a very serious issue of who owns data or data ownership, he said. “That is important…If you look at agreements of all these technology firms; they have policy called data privacy policy. One would think this policy is given to me (user) to say that how will I (the company) protect the privacy of your data. It is not that. It is a policy that says how a company can use/misuse or share users’ data.”
Data privacy
•“Then there is data privacy. Once the data goes out, what can be done with that data… People are concerned about Aadhaar. People should be concerned about other things, for example, mobile is 100 times more dangerous than Aadhaar. Aadhaar does not emit your data, it’s just a number,” he said.
📰 Corporate debt, a drag on economy
‘Over a fifth of large firms did not earn enough to pay interest on their loans’
•India’s cash crunch and confusion over the introduction of a national sales tax were initially blamed for pulling economic growth down to its weakest pace in more than three years. But that is masking a more debilitating factor affecting the economy — corporate debt.
•Thomson Reuters data, based on the latest annual earnings reports, shows India’s corporate debt rose to a seven-year high at the end of March. More than a fifth of large companies did not earn enough to pay interest on their loans and the pace of new loans fell to the lowest in more than six decades.
•The Indian government reported on August 31 that annual GDP growth in the quarter ended June dropped to 5.7%, an envious pace for many countries but India’s weakest since early 2014.
•It was blamed on attempts by the government to flush out money hidden from the tax man, which caused a cash crunch, and the introduction of a general sales tax (GST), which prompted businesses and consumers to hit the pause button.
Soured loans
•But Indian business executives say they are more concerned about the impact of soured loans on bank balance sheets, which prevent them from getting the full benefit of central bank rate cuts. That is sapping India’s economic vitality, they say.
•Since January 2015, the central bank has cut policy rates by 200 basis points, or 2 percentage points, but commercial bank benchmark lending rates have come down less, by about 120 basis points.
•“Interest rates are still very high,” said A. Issac George, chief financial officer of GVK Power & Infrastructure Ltd. He said his firm’s borrowing costs have remained unchanged at about 11%.
•That makes it tougher for the conglomerate to lower its net debt of around ₹179 billion ($2.80 billion).
•GVK’s earnings covered just half of its debt servicing costs, Credit Suisse data shows, below the 1% threshhold typically seen as a bare minimum.
•Thomson Reuters data shows net debt for 288 companies with a market capitalisation of more than $500 million, covering most big firms in India, has hit at least a seven-year high of ₹18 trillion ($281 billion). Soured debt was 12% of total loans held by lenders at the end of March.
•Another Thomson Reuters analysis showed more than a fifth of 513 Indian companies had interest cover of less than 1%.
•New loans are also hard to come by. On an annual basis, the pace of new loans in the year to the end of March, fell to the lowest since the fiscal year ended in March 1954.
•The impact can be seen in the GDP data. Gross capital formation, a gauge of private investment, fell to less than 30% of GDP in the June quarter, from 31% a year earlier and 38% a decade ago.
📰 India has ‘narrow’ pool of mustard varieties, say agricultural scientists
•Slamming activists for spreading “misinformation” on genetically-modified (GM) mustard, India’s premier association of agricultural scientists has said that India has a “narrow” pool of mustard varieties.
•That India had over 9,000 varieties of mustard and was the “centre of origin and diversity (of mustard) ” was among the key arguments made by Prashant Bhushan in the Supreme Court, as part of a petition by activist Aruna Rodrigues.Earlier a Supreme Court-appointed Technical Advisory Committee had also recommended a stay on GM mustard citing the breadth of India’s genetic diversity in mustard and that introducing it would lead to “irreversible” contamin- ation.
•“Contrary to GM basher’s (sic) propaganda – that very high diversity is available in Indian mustard – scientific analysis has shown that the Indian gene pool of mustard is very narrow… as a consequence, in spite of extensive efforts by our plant breeders – there is very little impact of pure-line breeding on mustard yields in recent years,” says a report by the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS), a 600-member body of agricultural scientists.
•In June, a 230-member quorum of the NAAS had passed a resolution unanimously supporting the commercial release of Dhara Mustard Hybrid 11 (DMH-11), a transgenic food crop that had been cleared by the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) for commercial release.
•“The base is narrow and that’s why we need hybrid technology for developing better mustard varieties,” Panjab Singh, president, NAAS, told The Hindu . Though there were wild-related species, these were largely untenable for commercially extracting oil, he added. Unlike in wheat, for instance, where the male and female can be crossed to make a wide genetic range of hybrid seeds, mustard is a self-pollinating plant that isn’t amenable to such crossings. DMH-11 uses a combination of genes from a soil bacterium that makes mustard amenable to hybridisation. The NAAS also refuted claims that non-GM varieties of rapeseed (a sister species of mustard and an oilseed) in Europe out-yielded GM varieties grown in Canada.
•In a rejoinder, a coalition of activists slammed the NAAS report and accused it of being a “public relations” agent.
•“The source of the number of species is the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (an agriculture ministry body)… It is unscientific for a scientific body to ignore the diversity that exists, and the implications on that diversity from GM mustard,” the Coalition for GM-Free India said in a statement.
