AAPI: September 2019

DELHI, 20th September 2019

Index of this Newsletter

INDIA

INDIA & THE WORLD

21.1. Panasonic may set up li-ion battery module assembly unit in India
21.2. Iran suggests to sign preferential tariff agreement with India
22.1. Toni Morrison (1931-2019): Making blackness visible
22.2. Governors, Chief Ministers, State Ministers Launch Poshan Maah in Different States
23.1. The Chinese conundrum facing Indian policymakers
23.2. India-France to jointly build, run space-based ship tracking system
24.1. Russia plans to set up more than 20 nuclear power units in India in next 20 years
24.2. Amazon's bet on AI brings it big business and serious competition in India
25.1. A Jew’s death wakes up Kochi’s history
25.2. 38 minutes is all it takes for P.V. Sindhu to create history

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DELHI, 20th September 2019

NEWSLETTER, 20-XI-2019

INDIA

– GENERAL POLICY, INFRASTRUCTURES, COUNTRY FINANCES, ETC.

1.1. A short history of Indian economy 1947-2019: Tryst with destiny & other stories

Livemint, 14 Aug 2019

Reflecting on what shaped economic policy and the transition to millennial India, Mint brings you a curated history of the economy since 15 August 1947

Independence brought dreams of not just individual, but also economic, social and political freedom. Seventy-two years later, these ideals have undergone a transformation as India seeks to join the $5 trillion club. Reflecting on what shaped economic policy and the transition to millennial India, Mint’s editors bring you a curated history of the economy since 15 August 1947. In a snippety, easy-to-read format, we examine the influences of each era—socialism, post-socialism, liberalization and after. Mint’s Short History of the Indian Economy since 1947 gives you a glimpse into the making of a billion aspirations and opportunities.

An ancient land has a new beginning as a country facing monumental tasks

India’s independence was in itself a turning point in its economic history. The country was hopelessly poor as a result of steady deindustrialization by Britain. Less than a sixth of Indians were literate. The abject poverty and sharp social differences had cast doubts on India’s survival as one nation. Cambridge historian Angus Maddison’s work shows that India’s share of world income shrank from 22.6% in 1700—almost equal to Europe’s share of 23.3%—to 3.8% in 1952. As former prime minister Manmohan Singh put it: “The brightest jewel in the British Crown" was the poorest country in the world in terms of per capita income at the beginning of the 20th century.

India’s economic model: the state’s primacy over individual enterprise

Prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s development model envisaged a dominant role of the state as an all-pervasive entrepreneur and financier of private businesses. The Industrial Policy Resolution of 1948 proposed a mixed economy. Earlier, the Bombay Plan, proposed by eight influential industrialists including J.R.D Tata and G.D. Birla, envisaged a substantial public sector with state interventions and regulations in order to protect indigenous industries. The political leadership believed that since planning was not possible in a market economy, the state and public sector would inevitably play a leading role in economic progress.

The very first budget, and the defence of fiscal federalism

A lawyer, economist and politician who served as independent India’s first finance minister, R.K. Shanmukham Chetty tabled the country’s first Union budget in Parliament on 26 November 1947. He was also India’s delegate to the World Monetary Conference at Bretton Woods in 1944, a consequential gathering of economists towards the fag end of World War II which set up the global financial architecture that governs the world to this day. In the Constituent Assembly, Chetty made several interventions in defence of fiscal federalism, an issue which would prove significant for his home state of Tamil Nadu in the decades ahead.

Planning, commissioning, executing the programme to hasten growth

India set up the Planning Commission in 1950 to oversee the entire range of planning, including resource allocation, implementation and appraisal of five-year plans. The five-year plans were centralized economic and social growth programmes modelled after those prevalent in the USSR. India’s first five-year plan, launched in 1951, focused on agriculture and irrigation to boost farm output as India was losing precious foreign reserves on foodgrain imports. It was based on the Harrod-Domar model that sought to boost economic growth through higher savings and investments. The plan was a success, with the economy growing at an annualized 3.6%, beating the target of 2.1%.

The free-market proponent who cried wolf on policy—but was proved right

A student of the libertarian economist F.A. Hayek, B.R. Shenoy was an influential early advocate of free market liberalism. In a celebrated dissent note, he warned that the second five-year plan’s dependence on deficit financing to promote “heavy industrialization" was a recipe for trouble. Government control over the economy would undermine a young democracy, he said. Shenoy was proved right when India faced an external payments crisis a year after the plan period began. He was also critical of the Nehru government’s penchant for import substitution. Though ignored in his lifetime, his ideas outlived him and became part of India’s mainstream economic doctrine.

The man who gave India modern statistics and the swadeshi spirit

The second five-year plan (1956-61) laid the foundation for economic modernization to better serve India’s long-term growth imperatives. Launched in 1956, it was based on the Mahalanobis model that advocated rapid industrialization with a focus on heavy industries and capital goods. Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis was perhaps the single most important individual in directing Indian development planning. He was the chief adviser to the commission from 1955, founded the Indian Statistical Institute, and is considered the father of modern statistics in India. The Mahalanobis plan was, in a way, an invocation of the spirit of swadeshi or self-reliance.

After throwing off the yoke of the British Raj, the licence Raj begins

The second five-year Plan and the Industrial Policy Resolution 1956 (long considered the economic constitution of India) paved the way for the development of the public sector and ushered in the licence Raj. The resolution set out as national objective the establishment of a socialist pattern of society. It also categorized industries into three groups. Industries of basic and strategic importance were to be exclusively in the public sector. The second group comprised industries that were to be incrementally state-owned. The third, comprising mostly consumer industries, was left for the private sector. The private sector, however, was kept on a tight leash through a system of licences.

Bad stock and the story of India’s first big financial scam

More than 60 years ago, a debate in the Lok Sabha exposed a nexus between the bureaucracy, stock market speculators, and small businessmen. The subject was the Mundhra scandal, free India’s first big financial scam, raised by Feroze Gandhi, Nehru’s son-in-law. Gandhi had found evidence that under governmental pressure, Life Insurance Corporation had bought fraudulent stock worth ₹1.24 crore—the largest investment the public-sector entity had made in its short history—in six companies owned by Kolkata-based Haridas Mundhra, without mandatory consultation with its investment committee. It led to the resignation of then finance minister T. T. Krishnamachari.

From Bhakra-Nangal to Bhilai, the temples of a modern India

Nehru identified power and steel as the key bases for planning. He described the 680ft Bhakra multi-purpose project on the Sutlej river in Himachal Pradesh as the new temple of a resurgent India. The politics of big dams aside, the huge Bhakra-Nangal dams are among several hydel projects India built to light up homes, run factories, and irrigate crops. The second plan set a target to produce 6 million tonnes of steel. Germany was contracted to build a steel plant in Rourkela, while Russia and Britain would build one each in Bhilai and Durgapur, respectively. The Indian Institutes of Technology and the Atomic Energy Commission were the other “modern temples".

The onset of economic troubles and the death of a nation builder

The quest to quickly industrialize had caused a large reallocation of funds away from the farm sector. Agriculture outlay was nearly halved to 14% in the second Plan. Food shortages worsened, and inflation spiked. Imports of foodgrains depleted precious foreign exchange reserves. Chakravarti “Rajaji" Rajagopalachari, a one-time-friend-turned-critic of Nehru, was a staunch proponent of economic freedom. He fell out with Nehru on the question of excessive state involvement in the economy. On 27 May 1964, Nehru died, but, despite criticism then and in later years, he had cemented his legacy as a modernizer.

It took a war hero to rethink the direction of India’s policymaking

Lal Bahadur Shastri, a minister without portfolio in Nehru’s cabinet, succeeded him as prime minister on 9 June 1964. The war with China had exposed India’s economic weakness. Chronic food shortages and price rise convinced him that India needed to move away from centralized planning and price controls. He renewed focus on agriculture, accepted a larger role for private enterprise and foreign investment, and trimmed the erstwhile Planning Commission’s role. India’s victory over Pakistan in the 1965 war gave him the political capital to consider economic reforms of the kind that took place 25 years later, P.N. Dhar wrote in Indira Gandhi, The ‘Emergency’ And Indian Democracy.

After the Green Revolution, the shift towards an Evergreen Revolution

Shastri’s focus on food security arose from the fact that in the 1960s, India was on the verge of a mass famine. Food aid imports from the US, on which the country was reliant, were beginning to hit India’s foreign policy autonomy. That was when geneticist M.S. Swaminathan, along with Norman Borlaug and other scientists, stepped in with high-yield variety seeds of wheat, setting off what came to be known as the Green Revolution. Swaminathan is now an advocate for moving India towards sustainable development. He champions environmentally sustainable agriculture, sustainable food security and the preservation of biodiversity. He calls this an “evergreen revolution".

Getting the bread and butter of the dairy business right

Following the success of the Green Revolution, Shastri turned his attention to the dairy sector, particularly the cooperative movement in Gujarat’s Anand, led by Verghese Kurien. He helped Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers’ Union Ltd expand its work, ushering in the White Revolution. In the years that followed, the government’s Operation Flood led to a rapid increase in milk production. Self-sufficiency in the dairy sector was achieved entirely through the cooperative movement, which has spread to more than 12 million dairy farmers across the country. Decades later, Amul, the brand started by cooperative farmers in Anand, remains a market leader.

A shaky economy forces annual plans in place of the five-year plan

India suspended five-year plans briefly, drawing up annual plans between 1966 and 1969 instead. This was done as the country was not in a position to commit resources over a longer period. The war with China, the below-par growth outcomes of the third Plan, and the diversion of capital to finance the war with Pakistan had left the economy severely weakened. The vital monsoon rains had once again played truant during the 1966-67 season, worsening food shortages and causing a sharp spike in inflation. The constant need to import foodgrains or seek foreign aid also posed a serious risk to India’s political economy.

The state’s takeover of banks opens a new account

The 1960s was a decade of multiple economic and political challenges for India. Two wars had caused hardships for the masses. The death of Nehru and Shastri in quick succession had caused political instability and triggered jockeying for power within the Congress. Indira Gandhi’s rupee devaluation had led to a general price rise. The result? Congress returned to power with a truncated majority after the 1967 general elections and the party lost power in seven states. In response, Gandhi nationalized 14 private banks on 20 July 1969. The main aim of the move was to accelerate bank lending to agriculture at a time when big businesses cornered large chunks of the credit flow.

The effect of making political gains from economic moves

Gandhi’s draconian move, aimed at aligning the banking sector with the goals of socialism, had made her the darling of the masses. Bank nationalization helped boost farm credit and lending to other priority sectors. Financial savings jumped as banks were made to open branches in rural areas. Without competition, however, the lenders became complacent. Further, politically-influenced lending decisions led to crony capitalism. These banks competed to please their political bosses, instead of focusing on project appraisals. Today, state-owned banks are creaking under a nearly ₹10-trillion mountain of bad loans, which represent about 90% of the total dud loans.

Indira Gandhi’s move on the rupee and the effect it had on Gulf nations

On 6 June 1966, Indira Gandhi took the drastic step of devaluing the Indian rupee by a sharp 57%. The rupee fell to 7.50 per US dollar from 4.76. This was done to counter India’s significant balance of payments crisis. The country’s apathy to foreign investments and neglect of the exports sector meant that it ran constant trade deficits. The devaluation aimed to boost exports amid limited access to foreign exchange. Instead, it accelerated inflation and drew wide criticism. India’s move had implications for other countries as well. Oman, Qatar and the UAE, which used the Reserve Bank of India-issued Gulf rupee, had to come up with their own currencies.

The Janata years: Demonetization 1.0 and the exit of Coca-Cola

Angry Indians punished Indira Gandhi for imposing Emergency. The Janata Party came to power after the 1977 elections. Prime Minister Morarji Desai withdrew the legal-tender status of ₹1,000, ₹5,000 and ₹10,000 banknotes in a crackdown on illicit wealth. The legalization of strikes, outlawed by Gandhi, and reinstatement of trade unions affected economic activity. George Fernandes, the symbol of resistance during Emergency, was made industries minister. He insisted IBM and Coca-Cola comply with the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act that mandated foreign investors cannot own over 40% in Indian enterprises. The two multinationals shut their India operations.

Indira Gandhi returns, this time with a reformist bent of mind

Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980 after the Janata Party government, riddled with inherent contradictions, unravelled. Gandhi, a left-leaning populist until the 1970s, initiated big-ticket economic reforms in order to secure an International Monetary Fund loan. The sixth five-year plan (1980-85), in essence, pledged to undertake a string of measures aimed at boosting the economy’s competitiveness. This meant the removal of price controls, initiation of fiscal reforms, a revamp of the public sector, reductions in import duties, and de-licensing of the domestic industry, or in other words ending the licence Raj.

Amartya Sen: new measures for problems of inequity, welfare

Known and feted internationally for his work on welfare economics, Amartya Sen has been working in India, the US and the UK since the 1970s. In 1998, he received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. He’s long been a critic of India’s model of development that tends to ignore the needs of the bottom of the pyramid. Now a professor at Harvard, his popular books such as The Argumentative Indian made economics accessible to the ordinary reader. He proved that gross national product was not enough to assess the standard of living, a finding that led to the creation of the UN Human Development Index, now the most authoritative source to compare welfare of countries.

In son rise, Rajiv Gandhi takes the mantle, and raises hopes

Rajiv Gandhi, a pilot by training, took over as prime minister after his mother Indira Gandhi was assassinated in October 1984. He was 40 then, and represented the hopes and aspirations of a young India. He recognized the need for economic reform if India were to shed its reliance on foreign aid and loans. He built up a team comprising squeaky-clean politician V.P. Singh, technocrat Sam Pitroda, and market economist Montek Singh Ahluwalia. The 1985-86 budget lowered direct taxes for companies and raised exemption limits for income tax. He is widely credited for ushering in the information technology and telecom revolutions in the country.

A small car that drove the rise of a new middle class and consumption

In 1983, the first Maruti car rolled off the assembly line in Gurgaon. Prime minister Indira Gandhi handed over its keys to Delhi’s Harpal Singh that November. It was a project mired in controversy—conceptualized by Indira’s son Sanjay, but so ridden with flaws that the government finally signed a joint venture with Suzuki of Japan to produce the vehicle. It was a real people’s car—fuel efficient, affordable and easy to drive, a far cry from the clunky cars Indians were used to till then. The Maruti 800 and the demand for it signalled the rise of a new Indian middle class. It would take 20 years for a similar revolution to disrupt aviation—courtesy Air Deccan.

Hostile takeovers meet their match in connected families

India has never encouraged hostile takeovers, with its businessmen, regulators and the government working in tandem to prevent them. As the Indian government relaxed capital markets in 1982-83 to get more foreign money, particularly from non-resident Indians, London-based Lord Swraj Paul acquired significant shares from the open market in domestic chemical manufacturing company DCM Shriram and engineering group Escorts. The families of the promoters had very small holdings, but their influence in the circles that mattered was large. So, they managed to stave off Paul’s hostile takeover. It’s a pattern that’s been seen often since.

Bhopal: the danger and reality of large industrial accidents

The 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy brought to the fore the real possibility of industrial accidents on a massive scale and the importance of regulatory oversight. At the centre of this tragedy—the effects of which are still felt by the local population—was the US-based Union Carbide, now owned by Dow Chemicals. On the night of 2 December, at least 40 tonnes of poisonous methyl isocyanate gas leaked from the plant, killing at least 4,000 people and permanently disabling thousands more. The then chairman of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson, managed to flee India in controversial circumstances. The victims, meanwhile, were given a pittance in damages.

The fiscal deficit as a permanent feature on India’s economic map

Acritical feature of the Indian economy has always been its high fiscal deficit—an outcome of the government spending more than its income. Much of the government spending is on servicing interest cost of borrowings; defence; pensions; subsidizing food, fertilizer and fuel consumption; and schemes directed at housing, poverty, health and cleanliness. A large portion of the government’s capital remains locked up in its own companies and holdings, which it is unable to sell. The Indian economy, thus, continues to suffer from good capital chasing bad, and a lack of political will to implement bold reforms.

The economist with policy ideas ahead of their time

The first Asian woman to get a PhD in Economics from Harvard back in 1960, Padma Desai is best known for a critique of India’s erstwhile planned economy. Her early 1970s book, co-authored with husband and fellow economist Jagdish Bhagwati, on India’s industrial and trade policies had a profound impact on professional thinking and policymaking in India in the 1970s. Manmohan Singh, after becoming prime minister in the 2000s, would go so far as to say: “When in 1991 our government undertook sweeping reforms in our industrial and trade policies, we were only implementing ideas that Jagdish and Padma wrote about two decades earlier."

The golden moment that brought down the last pillars of socialist India

The signs pointing to India’s 1991 economic crisis, its worst ever, were long evident. The country, for the first time, had to sell 20 tonnes of gold to investment bank UBS on 30 May that year to secure a $240 million loan. It pledged gold three more times after that sale, shipping 46.8 million tonnes of the yellow metal to secure $400 million in loans from Bank of England and Bank of Japan. All this gold was repurchased by December that year. The Narasimha Rao-led government with Manmohan Singh as finance minister took over on 21 June 1991 and launched a raft of economic reforms, including the dismantling of the licence Raj.

A two-step, two-day operation to lower the value of the rupee

The rupee was devalued for the first time by 57% on 6 June 1966 to shore up exports. The move was triggered by the 1965 Indo-Pak war, after which the US withdrew aid to India. The next devaluation, however, proved to be far more eventful: On 1 July 1991, the Reserve Bank of India lowered the value of the currency by 9%, and then by 11% just two days later. This was when the economy was facing its worst crisis, and the country’s foreign exchange reserves could pay for only three weeks of imports. Devaluation is no longer a real option for governments and policymakers as exchange rates are determined by markets. Currency value is now calibrated by the central bank.

Reformist returns as a champion of redistributive economics

Finance minister in 1991, Manmohan Singh became prime minister in 2004 but he was not quite the same reformer. His government launched the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in February 2006 in 200 most backward districts, which was later expanded to cover all rural districts. The scheme aimed to enhance livelihood security by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a fiscal year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. The 10 years when Singh was prime minister were also a time of high growth and expansion of the economy as loan rates softened.

Of bulls, bears and market watchdogs: A cautionary tale

In liberalizing India, investments in the stock market became a means to make a quick buck as well as compensate for falling savings rates—and with this boom came white-collar crime and strengthened regulations. In April 1992, Indians were introduced to the term ‘stock market scam’ when stockbroker ‘Big Bull’ Harshad Mehta was caught using the government bond market to fund his purchases. It was a scam pegged at₹4,025 crore, and accelerated the rise of the Securities and Exchange Board of India as it exists today. This and subsequent scandals led regulators to tighten the screws, bring more transparency, and use technology to eventually reform Indian markets.

Clubbing together for a fight that didn’t really happen

After 1991, the Indian state tried to shed its diffidence about foreign capital and attract investments. The ‘Bombay Club’, an informal grouping of politically connected, old-school Indian industrialists who felt threatened by deep-pocketed multinationals, sought protection from the government and got some allowances. The club—whose face was Rahul Bajaj—represented a sense of insecurity and a desire for status quo, the struggle between the entrenched and the innovative. But in time, many of those who stridently opposed reforms have built themselves into stronger and bigger companies, competing with global leaders in their segments.

Sowing the seeds for the nation’s economic growth surge

In the Union budget for 1999-2000, then finance minister Yashwant Sinha took forward an idea he had seeded in his 1990-91 budget—disinvestment in public sector enterprises and downsizing the government. “We are making an immediate beginning by abolishing four secretary-level posts through a process of merger and rationalization of central government departments," he said. Till date, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government of which Sinha was a part remains the only one to have carried out privatization of state-owned companies in an upfront manner. Through the 1999-2000 budget, Sinha also rationalized interest rates, stoked the housing boom, and triggered India’s growth surge.

Part of the economic dream team that Prime Minister Narasimha Rao formed in 1991, Manmohan Singh, as finance minister, carried out several structural reforms that liberalized India’s economy,

Circumventing the sell-by date of public sector enterprises

Dependent on the support of the Left parties in the Lok Sabha, Manmohan Singh during the first United Progressive Alliance government (2004-2009) had no room to privatize public sector companies. With limited options to raise resources and an ever-expanding social sector budget, Singh resorted to selling 5% to 20% stake in state-run companies through initial public offerings or secondary issues. The government was able to raise funds without selling a majority stake in its firms, while increasing retail participation in the stock market. Now answerable to public shareholders, state-run firms are focusing on improving corporate governance and becoming cost-conscious.

The bellwether as the weather vane for the state of the economy

The rise of the Indian economy is best reflected in BSE’s Sensex, the 30-share benchmark index. The 30 component companies represent all sectors of the economy. From 1,955.29 points in 1991, the year India ushered in economic reforms, the Sensex touched an all-time high of 40,312.07 points on 4 June this year with expectations of big-ticket reforms from a government with a massive majority driving the optimism. Even as rising taxation on capital gains continues to dog the markets, India, a country so far obsessed with cash-driven gold and real estate, is slowly veering towards investing in a formal and organized equity market.

When the world became Indian companies’ corporate oyster

Ten years of economic liberalization unchained Indians, and the first decade of the 21st century reflected that. Thus it came to be that a much smaller Tata Steel acquired the UK-based company Corus for an eye-popping $13.1 billion in 2007. The Aditya Birla Group’s Hindalco Industries Ltd followed this up with a $6-billion buyout of US-based Novelis in 2007. The next year, Tata Motors bought Jaguar-Land Rover for $2.3 billion. Bharti Airtel bought out Zain Africa in 2010, coughing up $10.7 billion. It was an era of multi-billion dollar acquisitions. The frenzy has since ebbed but not the aspirations.

R.H. Patil, the man who tamed the wolves of Dalal Street

In the early 1990s, the Harshad Mehta (pictured) scam had just rocked the country and the Bombay Stock Exchange, now BSE, was under the iron grip of a coterie of powerful brokers. Reforming the country’s capital markets was becoming a dire necessity. Enter Ramachandra H. Patil, who helped set up the National Stock Exchange of India and other institutions that changed the face of India’s capital markets. In his words: “Indian capital market around the early 1990s was akin to the Stone Age." The absence of entry barriers and a tech-driven, computer-based trading exchange, which everyone takes for granted these days, would not have been possible without Patil’s contributions.

The overnight note-ban on an unsuspecting nation

Few announcements by an Indian prime minister have had as long-lasting and wide-ranging an effect as the one made by Narendra Modi at 8pm on 8 November 2016. In his address to the nation, he said ₹500 and ₹1,000 banknotes, amounting to 85% of the currency in circulation by value, were no longer valid. “Today, I will be speaking to you about some critical issues and important decisions. Today I want to make a special request to all of you," Modi said. “To break the grip of corruption and black money, we have decided that the five hundred rupee and thousand rupee currency notes presently in use will no longer be legal tender from midnight tonight."

Going down: the planned demolition of a long-condemned institution

Within eight months of taking over as Prime Minister on 25 May 2014, Narendra Modi replaced the Planning Commission with NITI Aayog (NITI stood for National Institute for Transforming India, in line with Modi’s penchant for acronyms). The Planning Commission was a Soviet-style body that drew up five-year plans for the country and played an advisory role in formulating allocation of central funds to each state. NITI Aayog now serves as the government’s think tank, formulating medium- and long-term strategies and breaking them into year-wise plans after consultation with the states.

Bringing in a code of conduct to help provide for sick promoters

India is a country with sick companies but no sick promoters—the result of a system that hasn’t held the influential promoters of large companies to account. To change that, the Modi government introduced the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC). The code made it possible for lenders to oust errant promoters from a company and hand it over to financially sound owners. The success of the IBC is questionable, but it has created a sense of responsibility among promoters. However, there are still cases of promoters trying to retain control of their companies through the back door and others like Nirav Modi fleeing the country after defaulting on large loans.

The blanket tax regime that made India one country, one market

The Narendra Modi government has put improving ease of doing business high on its agenda. As part of this, in July 2017, it implemented the goods and services tax. India is now one of the few countries to have an indirect tax law that unifies various central and state tax laws. In spite of a lot of teething troubles and the increased compliance burden on companies, particularly traders and small and medium enterprises, the new system has removed tax barriers across states and created a single common market, ensuring a free flow of goods without trucks being halted at borders for payment of interstate levies.

A country beginning to consider startups as a new business model

Over the past decade, a number of startups have mushroomed across India as young entrepreneurs experiment with ideas in digital payments, online retail, on-demand delivery, education, software and more. One of India’s first startups and early unicorns, Flipkart, which was founded by two former Amazon employees in 2007, was valued at over $21 billion when US-based Walmart acquired a 77% stake in it in 2018. The number of unicorns, or new businesses valued at over $1 billion, has also risen every year. The rise of startups has created a new ecosystem of angel and venture funding, and incubators and accelerators—as well as new patterns of consumption in society

1.2. Which is India’s best-policed state?

Livemint, 04 Sep. 2019, Vishnu Padmanabhan

The performance of police personnel across states in India is constrained by resources and plagued by attitudinal issues, a new study suggests

In the recently-released film, Article 15, the Indian police is depicted as dysfunctional, prejudiced and corrupt. It was a depiction that won the film critical acclaim but also a depiction grounded in the truth, according to a new study on the Indian police. The study conducted by the non-governmental organization, Common Cause and the Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) suggests that India’s police force is severely hindered by inadequate staff, infrastructure, and budget but also riddled with prejudices.

The basic input for any police force is its people and its resources. On both these fronts, Indian police forces are struggling and India has one of the weakest police forces in the world. Within India, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Bihar have India’s most inadequate police forces, according to a police adequacy index computed by the Common Cause and CSDS team.

The police adequacy index captures police strength in terms of personnel, infrastructure, and budget allocations for the years 2012-16 (the latest years where comparable data is available) and reveals how Indian police forces are hamstrung on all these measures. For instance, Uttar Pradesh’s low score is driven by police vacancies while Chhattisgarh’s is a result of weak infrastructure. India’s best police forces are in Delhi, Kerala, and Maharashtra, the study suggests, though this is only a relative judgment.

The data shows that poorer states tend to have weaker police forces. The police adequacy index is strongly correlated with the proportion of the state’s population living in poverty (measured here using the multi-dimensional poverty index calculated by researchers from the University of Oxford), showing that the rule of law and prosperity are inextricably linked.

Inadequate resources have real and grim consequences. The researchers surveyed 12,000 police personnel across 21 states between February and April 2019 to find that 41% of police personnel have been in situations where they could not reach a crime scene because of lack of staff while 46% have experienced a situation where they needed a vehicle but none was available.

Beyond resources, Indian police performance could also be affected by attitudes within the police. For a start, there are significant differences in how the police believes it should function. Across India, 44% of police personnel believe criminals should be punished by the police themselves, via extra-judicial means, rather than subject them to a legal trial. Here, too, there is significant variation across states. For instance, in the insurgency-affected states of Nagaland and Chattisgarh, the proportion of police favouring extra-judicial means exceeds 60%. Bihar, with an infamous history of custodial deaths, follows close behind at 60%.

Another major attitude issue is discrimination against women and minorities. The report reveals that around one in two police personnel across India feel that men and women are not treated equally within the police force. Little wonder then that only 7.3% of all police personnel across India were women in 2016. Some states perform worse than others: the male policemen of Bihar, Karnataka and Maharashtra for instance, hold the strongest biases against women. These attitudes also spillover into how police handle gender-based violence. Nearly 40% of police personnel believe that gender-based violence complaints are highly likely to be false or motivated.

Unsurprisingly, women remain wary of the police force. Data from the previous round of the report published in 2018, which focused on the public’s perception of Indian police, revealed that 32% of women were distrustful of Indian police personnel (compared to 28% of men).

Overall trust in the police force remains low. This and other surveys have revealed that the Indian public is more distrustful of the police than the army, courts and government. One reason for this lack of trust could be India’s growing police-criminal-politician nexus. Over the last twenty years, India’s politics has become more criminalized and with it India’s police has become more politicized. The latest State of Policing survey finds that 28% of India’s police personnel had faced pressure from politicians in criminal investigations. Such undue influence could not only be eroding the public’s trust in the police but could also be driving the institutional neglect towards police working conditions and attitudes.

2.1. Opinion | The right way to threaten Indians into driving well

Livemint, 09 Sep. 2019, Manu Joseph

Authorities will learn a lot from a national mystery: Why don’t Indians spit in the Delhi Metro?

Observe the guy who has been driving like a moron and has finally crashed—he is stunned. It is the same expression on the man who is driving on the wrong side of the national highway and sees a truck coming at him—he is baffled.

Only the cow, which crosses the road like an Indian, is not surprised by things. Human Indians, on the other hand, are constantly startled by the most natural outcome of their actions. In fact, the national emotion of India is surprise. A few days ago, when the government finally increased fines for traffic violations by many times, Indians were, again, baffled.

The move to make fines hefty is an excellent idea. Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari justified the high fines by saying he wants Indians to fear the law. This is part of an on-going reformation of Indians. Keep the nation clean, pay taxes and don’t drive like a moron. But Gadkari missed an important step between threatening Indians and getting them to do the right things.

First, let me invoke a national mystery: Why is it that Indians do not spit or litter when they are in the Delhi Metro system? The same people who have no notions of civic respect, who in fact demonstrate a conscious disrespect for public spaces, surrender their feral freedoms on the Delhi Metro. This phenomenon holds across all filthy cities that are building or expanding modern Metro systems.

I believe that we can understand civic order in the Delhi Metro without the hilarious hypothesis of the sweet conscientious Indian.

When Delhi Metro opened its shutters, it was an extraordinary service and unprecedented in a nation that had until then viewed good design and air-conditioning as too much of a luxury for the majority. (Even the private sector had that view. Once, a top executive of a call centre in Gurgaon told me: “The swanky office is to impress the foreign client. Some of our people who work inside, I know they would be happy in a cowshed.")

Initially, the poor among commuters were mildly intimidated by the Delhi Metro. It was the first time that they had been allowed entry into a space that had escalators, automatic doors and clear instructions pasted everywhere. Yet, they were not in a swanky mall, they were not trespassers trying to steal cool air or glimpses of the rich. Those days, labourers and maids were so overwhelmed that they whispered instead of speaking aloud. Now, they have got used to the service.

The Delhi Metro was, and still is, the anti-matter of India. Trains arrived when the electronic board said they would, even when the time displayed was not divisible by five or 10. As the Delhi Metro was excellent at most things it did, commuters took seriously its threat of heavy fines for spitting and throwing garbage. The system conveyed that if it can run such a good service, it also knows how to fine.

The nature of stature is that it is something people grant and then they are awestruck by the very thing they themselves have granted. Delhi Metro has stature. Also, the trains and the platforms are so well designed that commuters have very little reason to violate its codes.

Of course, there are moments when India triumphs over the Delhi Metro, but most of the time the Metro prevails. Because it first created all the facilities, and then tutored, pleaded, threatened and implemented its threats.

Indian roads, on the other hand, are poorly designed and managed. Most countries in plain sight look richer than they really are. Indian roads make India look much poorer than what it is.

I live in Gurugram, where traffic signals hide behind trees, most roads do not have markers for pedestrians to cross and, like most Indians, they never really cross the road; rather, they flee death with that sheepish expression of being encroachers in their own city. And, the face of the government, the cops, elicit no respect, not only because of their reputation, but also because of how they look, their cheap uniforms and how they wear those uniforms, and how they place barricades squeezing dense traffic into zig-zag formations, India’s definition of “security", and how they sit on the roadside on plastic chairs, their large paunches like babies on their laps; and how six of them hide under flyovers to pounce on motorists in the great game that is the Indian daily life.

What India’s traffic system has not learned from Delhi Metro is that for a threat of fines to be effective, you should first win the respect of those you threaten.

This is exactly the reason why the Swachh Bharat movement, too, has had very little success. Why Mahatma Gandhi failed in this matter is very different from why Narendra Modi might. Gandhi commanded immense respect, but he failed because the greatest ambassador of political disruption and civic disorder cannot simultaneously be an icon of order. And cleanliness is entirely about order. Modi is a far more influential icon of order, but his cleanliness project may yet be doomed because its agencies have not won the respect of Indians through the excellence of their services.

Order makes Indians unhappy. They will use any ruse to romanticize and pursue chaos. If the government does not build its stature, its high fines will not control the wizards of chaos. The same incompetence of the system that designs bad roads will ensure that the market forces of bribery will enable cops and motorists to arrive at a happy equilibrium.

Manu Joseph is a journalist, and a novelist, most recently of ‘Miss Laila, Armed And Dangerous’

2.2. Opinion | Price controls can do more harm than good

Livemint, 02 Sep. 2019

Caps on the prices of hygiene products would be ill-advised. While many life-saving drugs can justifiably be kept artificially cheap, the idea cannot be applied to most other markets

The government is thinking of bringing essential products such as sanitary napkins and hand wash agents under its price control regime, say reports. The objective would presumably be to make such products affordable to people at large, so that basic hygiene standards are upheld and nobody’s health suffers. This is a noble cause, but the method that has been suggested to achieve the aim is not appropriate. Put simply, a price cap imposed on a product can make it unremunerative for its manufacturers to sell, leaving them with no choice but to pull out of the market. An example of this is visible in the Indian market for coronary stents used in heart surgeries. Some makers of specialized and other premium stents have withdrawn their offerings in response to a state-ordered price ceiling. Selling these at lower rates, they say, does not make commercial sense for them. As a result, according to various surgeons, patients in need of superior stents are forced to make do with cheaper alternatives that risk exposing them to health complications.

Many healthcare products such as pharmaceutical drugs require years of research and millions of dollars to develop. Large sums of money need to be invested in their development, though there is always the risk of a new medicine failing to pass human trials. As an incentive to keep at it, such firms are granted patents for their formulations that let them charge high “monopoly" prices if and when they are launched. The actual cost of making drugs, however, is typically only a tiny fraction of the retail price. So, once the initials costs have been recovered over the span of some years, these tend to yield bumper profits. If these happen to be life-saving pills, then a government would be justified in capping their prices in the public interest. So long as their cost of production is lower than the price caps—which is usually the case—companies would keep selling them.

What Indian pricing policy needs is clarity on outcomes. Ensuring the cheap availability of old but essential drugs is easily done without any adverse consequences for public health. However, if the role of pricing products is taken away from companies in markets with vastly differing dynamics, the results could be poor. Take the case of sanitary pads. They sell in varying grades of quality, offering women with varied budgets a range of options. The market for these products is not short of competition. The rivalry of companies trying to outdo one another on sales is enough to guarantee that no single brand can get away with charging too much. When there is demand for cheaper variants, a new entrant would fulfil it, which would push existing brands to contain costs and reduce prices. In such a scenario, an arbitrary maximum retail price set by the government would distort the market by turning innovative products that use expensive input materials unprofitable. Should premium choices vanish, it would spell a net welfare loss for Indians. As for the poor who find even the cheapest available sanitary pads unaffordable, the government could intervene in other ways. It could use public funds to subsidize low-cost napkins for mass distribution, for example. In general, it is best to rely on market forces to have people’s needs met. The government’s heart may be in the right place, but price caps in open markets are likely to do more harm than good.

3.1. Why business has its back to the wall

Livemint, 18 Aug 2019, Deborshi Chaki

Steps are needed to get businesses to invest, banks to lend, consumers to spend, and taxman to be circumspect

While the problem of mounting unserviceable debt has dragged on for several years, a slew of steps announced by Modi govt, ostensibly to clean up the system, further added to the uncertainty

MUMBAI: On 12 August, when Gujarat-based Sintex Plastics Technology Ltd announced the sale of its overseas businesses to a clutch of private equity investors, life came full circle for its promoters. In July, the company had defaulted on ₹86 crore of debt repayment—something that was previously unthinkable for a company that owns the famous trademark Sintex, synonymous with rooftop water tanks. The default, a relatively small amount given the company’s past financial profile and scale of operations, was a tell-tale sign of how bad things were inside India’s business houses.

The promoters, the Patel family, had already pledged more than 80% of their holdings in the group and had been in the market to refinance existing debt for more than a year with little success. “Left with no choice, we had to sell our crown jewels," Amit Patel, managing director of Sintex Plastics, told Mint. “The high cost of debt and the adverse market conditions made it simply impossible to go on and we were forced to sell (even) the profitable units."

Amit Patel, maintains that he has spent the greater part of his life building the group from a single textile unit in the early 90s. He now thinks the good days may not be back any time soon. “I don’t see us investing in building assets in the foreseeable future and we will continue with only two business divisions like we did a decade ago. The financial distress has impacted us immensely at a personal level as well. The stress gets too unbearable at times for your body and mind."

Like Sintex, similar stories of acute financial distress continue to unfold across the length and breadth of corporate India as weakening consumer confidence, an uncertain business environment, and regulatory risks take their toll, forcing businesses to downsize and, in some cases, pull down the shutters.

Early March quarter earnings indicate that the Indian economy has slowed down further with the much-awaited revival in earnings growth nowhere in sight. A Mint analysis of corporate results for the quarter ended 31 March showed that slower sales have dragged profits down to its slowest in at least 13 quarters. Another Mint analysis of 1,284 companies for the June quarter shows aggregate profit, adjusting for one-time gains or losses declined by 5.23% from a year ago. Net sales grew by just 4.6% during the quarter. Sector after sector—consumer durables, packaged consumer goods, passenger vehicles, and real estate—is facing slowing sales and displaying visible signs of a sluggish economy.

The situation is particularly grave for non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) and real estate, both of which are interlinked in multiple ways and are at the heart of the endemic economic slowdown. What started as a short-term contagion with the Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) Group’s collapse last year, now threatens to turn into a systemic fault line. Numerous NBFCs are desperately seeking to refinance past borrowings with limited success. The backlash has caught several prominent industry names, such as Dewan Housing Finance Ltd, on the wrong foot.

Even as the current situation—led by a combination of factors such as mounting debt, the impact of goods and services tax (GST), and growing tax vigilantism—has derailed economic growth, the government has maintained a studied silence. Given that many feel this downbeat feeling is here to stay, what can be done to quickly get consumers to spend, businesses to invest, and banks to lend?

Past is not past

So, how did things get so bad? The genesis of the current situation can be traced to the economic stimulus put in place in the months following the 2008 financial crisis, feel experts. “Lenders, especially public sector banks (PSBs), were encouraged to lend generously to the private sector to boost liquidity and demand," said the former chairman of a large PSB, requesting anonymity. “It was a heady cocktail of easy money and sky-high ambitions and almost everyone lined up to fund expansions. Often, loans were sanctioned on the basis of projections of cash flows, much of which turned out be inaccurate and unsupported by the accompanying economic growth," he added.

Viability of projects suffered due to a variety of reasons, which included delays in approval, land acquisition, power purchase agreements (PPAs), and so on. The period also witnessed numerous scams related to natural resource allocation and court cases, which further discouraged private sector from loosening its purse strings. But even as banks increased funding and the government stepped up public spending to revive growth—primarily through a consumption-led boost—an inadvertent outcome was spiralling inflation, which further went out of control due to the rain deficit during the monsoon. The rate of inflation started flirting with double digits in the subsequent months.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) responded, as it typically does, with 13 consecutive rate hikes between FY11 and FY13. While the rate hikes presumably helped moderate inflation, it also led to a significant rise in the corporate sector’s financing cost, which had over-leveraged itself to the hilt. “Many firms found it hard to service the high level of debt they had accumulated as their finance cost went through the roof," said Mahesh Singhi, founder and managing director, Singhi Advisors, a Mumbai-based investment bank.

As the stress started showing, and often overwhelming corporate balance sheets, RBI began an asset quality review (AQR) programme for lenders in 2015, a vigorous review of their books of accounts, which laid bare large tranches of bad loans in the system. The central bank was worried (and rightly so) that banks were resorting to ever-greening of accounts by postponing bad-loan classification. By fiscal 2017-18, the banking sector’s gross non-performing assets (NPAs) had touched a whopping ₹10.3 trillion and at least 11 PSBs had been placed under the Prompt Corrective Action ( PCA) framework, leading to a further decline in lending.

Former chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian referred to it as the twin balance-sheet problem—over-leveraged corporate books and bank accounts contaminated by bad loans—in one of his annual Economic Surveys. “It a known fact that any fast-growing economy like India will undergo transient phases of moderation and slowdown," maintained Singhi. “We need to understand that the current economic situation is cyclical in nature and in a corrective phase," Singhi added. The problem is compounded when a cyclical problem turns structural in nature, something that currently seems to be plaguing the Indian economy.

While the problem of mounting unserviceable debt has dragged on for several years, a slew of regulatory measures announced by the present government, ostensibly to clean up the system, further added to the uncertainty, even as the long-term benefits remain debatable.

For starters, the government’s shock to the system through demonetization nipped nascent growth resurgence in 2016. This was followed up with a flawed GST structure in 2017, which remains a work-in-progress even now. The numerous tax slabs under the GST have also brought significant compliance costs, especially for small and medium enterprises, further eating into their bottom lines.

A crisis of confidence

RBI, bowing to popular demand, has now reduced interest rates by 110 basis points in the past seven months. This was expected to kick-start corporate borrowing and rekindle household demand for consumer products and housing. Unfortunately, that is yet to materialize.

So, why aren’t banks lending despite having the means to do so in a benign interest environment? “It’s a crisis of confidence and not necessarily a problem with liquidity," says Amit Patel of Sintex. “Lenders who have had years of business relations with clients are refusing to lend any more as there is not enough confidence that the business environment will improve in the near term and repayments will happen on time," he added.

Amitabh Chaudhry, chief executive and managing director of Axis Bank, agrees. “This time, there are no sectoral NPA issues, if you forget real estate and NBFCs for a moment. It is just business groups that are either leveraged at the operating company level or promoter level which seem to be falling into troubled times," Chaudhary recently told Mint in an interview. “And then, the economy is not helping. A lot of these assets (loan accounts) have been identified for exits sometime back, but we cannot exit them because the promoters or the operating companies don’t have the money to repay."

Industry leaders maintain that the solution lies in a combination of immediate and long-term measures by the government. “The most obvious and welcome first-aid would be some temporary relief on the GST front, either by modifying the slabs, or, if that is not possible, by removing the cess," Anand Mahindra, chairman of Mahindra Group recently told investors at the group’s annual general meeting. “Another suggestion would be a re-look at the registration fees which have gone up very substantially and a roll-back of the increases in road tax mandated by the state governments after the introduction of GST," Mahindra said.

According to Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers estimates, the auto slowdown has resulted in an 8% loss in GST collection in the first six months of 2019. Just to catch up with the FY19 GST collections, the auto industry will need to grow at a rate of at least 7% in the remaining eight months of FY20.

Mahindra is not alone in pointing to a demand slowdown, which is visible across rural and urban India. Amit Burman, chairman of Dabur India Ltd, told Mint: “While rural demand and sentiments have been hit by the agrarian crisis, the urban consumers have tightened their purse strings and are today spending less. There are two big things that I would expect the government to work on: First, higher spending on infrastructure. We need some big-ticket spends to boost connectivity with the remotest parts of the country. Also, this would have a multiplier effect on job creation, particularly in the hinterland. We sincerely hope the government will ease the agrarian crisis through a fiscal stimulus that may put more money in the pockets of rural consumers."

Regulatory quagmire

The government can help with another contributing factor to the slowdown: regulatory tightness. Heightened tax vigilantism since demonetization had led to further uncertainty and fear psychosis. “There is a genuine fear that the tax man will be at your doorstep at the slightest suspicion and subject you to untold harassment, as highlighted by Cafe Coffee Day founder V.G. Siddhartha’s death," said the chief executive of a multinational company, requesting anonymity. There are many anecdotal stories about harassment around taxation doing the rounds; experts agree that such a situation is not healthy for business as usual.

To be sure, many business leaders have been vocal on the issue. In a recent interview, T.V. Mohandas Pai, a former director at Infosys Ltd, alleged that tax officials who have to meet their annual tax collection targets put pressure on companies to pay up even if they do not concur with the amounts demanded, which leads to litigation.

Even Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairperson and managing director and founder of Biocon Ltd, has spoken of tax authorities deploying pressure tactics. Mazumdar told The Telegraph “a government official" called her recently and told her not to speak about issues such as “income tax harassment". Clearly, something needs to be done to calm the waters here.

To conclude, the current economic quagmire seems to be intractable—farm crisis, jobs stagnation, demand slowdown, global trade wars hurting exports, fractured balance sheets (of banks, NBFCs and corporates), which need to be nursed back to health, infrastructure deficit, and so on. However, hope always trumps despair. The only catch is that the wellspring of such optimism now lies at the government’s doorstep.

3.2. What hurts ease of living in India

Livemint, 02 Sep. 2019, Sanjay Kumar, Pranav Gupta

Citizens across urban and rural India find it difficult to get work done in government offices without connections or giving bribes, survey data shows

In an attempt to curb bureaucratic corruption at the apex of India’s administrative structure, the Narendra Modi-led Union government has ‘forcibly retired’ many senior bureaucrats after coming back to power. While this may be helpful in reducing grand corruption and could have some domino effect on the lower tier staff, direct interventions aimed at the local bureaucracy are required for curbing petty corruption that bedevil the citizen-state relationship.

A survey conducted by Lokniti-CSDS (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies) in twenty states over two years (2017-2018) and involving 40,772 respondents to study state and society between elections found that an overwhelming majority of respondents found it difficult to get work done at government offices without bribes or connections. Further, trust in government officials in the country seems to be low and people prefer going to political representatives for getting their work done.

To make it easier for citizens to access welfare programmes and government services, the Union government would have to work with states for removing bureaucratic hurdles and reforming the local bureaucracy. And the task won’t be easy, the survey results suggest.

In the survey, respondents were asked whether getting work done in government offices required connections/networks and bribes. Only around one-fourth (28%) of the respondents believed that work could be done without connections or paying bribes. On the other hand, more than four out of ten (43%) said that bribes were important and around one-fourth (24%) thought that prior connections or networks were required to get work done.

There is no difference between urban and rural India on this matter as respondents from both areas reported that connections and bribes were very common. This indicates that while the extent of corruption/scale may vary based on the stakes involved, its incidence is almost ubiquitous in the public sector.

The prevailing socio-economic divides also shape citizen-state transactions. Six-out of ten respondents (60%) agreed that government officials are likely to treat rich people better. Even the upper classes seem to be conscious of an undue advantage as a similar proportion among them felt that officials favour the rich. Public opinion on caste bias seems to be more divided as an almost equal proportion of respondents either said that officials favour upper castes (40%) or treat them similarly to Dalits (41%).

The perception about certain sections enjoying a better experience at government offices can be attributed to a combination of factors including but not limited to discrimination, quality of applications/paper work, differences in reasons for approaching the government etc.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that citizens tend to hold relatively low trust in the civil service. In the State of Democracy in South Asia (SDSA) survey 2013 conducted by CSDS among a national representative sample, respondents were asked about trust in various public institutions, and on multiple levels of government and officials.

The results showed that only about half of the respondents (53%) said that they had great deal or quite a lot of trust in the civil service. Trust in most other institutions was much higher.

In fact, in the 2017-18 survey most citizens reported that don’t even think of approaching government officials if they have difficulty in getting any important work done. Only around one-tenth respondents in both urban (12%) and rural areas (8%) said they would first think of approaching a government official.

Most respondents said they would approach their local councillor or ‘sarpanch’ (village head). Others said they would approach elders outside their family. The low figure for government officials is presumably also because people anticipate difficulties in government offices if they fail to get work done in the first attempt.

The centre and most states have been taking steps to make the local bureaucracy and front line staff more accountable, efficient and responsive to the citizens. These include reducing vacancies, outsourcing some tasks to private firms, and opening up grievance cells in government departments. Further, many states have introduced technology-based interventions to reduce bureaucratic discretion and make processes transparent and quicker. For instance, portals that allow citizens to directly apply for public services and schemes eliminate the need to visit a government office although many services still require physical presence across states.

The scaling-up and successes of these interventions is likely to determine the extent to which Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be able to fulfill his promise of ‘ease of living’.

Sanjay Kumar is a professor and currently director of CSDS, and Pranav Gupta is a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, US.

4.1. GAIL to invest Rs 45,000 crore ($6,25 bn) in expansion of pipelines, city gas network

IBEF, Aug. 21, 2019

Gail India Ltd, a state-owned gas utility plans to invest over Rs 45,000 crore (US$ 6.25 billion) over the next five years to develop the National Gas Grid and city gas distribution network.

According to chairman Mr Ashutosh Karnatak, at present, the company is growing its natural gas pipeline network by completing more than 5,700 kilometres of major projects.

GAIL presently operates 11,000-km of pipeline network and markets two-thirds of all-natural gas sold in the country.

Investments that are worth over Rs 45,000 crore (US$ 6.25 billion) are envisioned in coming few years, across major cross-country pipeline projects along Urja Ganga Project, Koch-Kootanad-Bangalore-Mangalore, Indradhanush North East Gas Grid and further crucial pipelines connecting supply and demand centres envisaged under the National Gas Grid.

Out of total investment, Rs 32,000 crore (US$ 4.44 billion) would be utilised into pipeline laying and another Rs 12,000 crore (US$ 1.66 billion) in city gas distribution (CGD) networks for retailing of CNG to automobiles and piped natural gas to household kitchens. Investments would also go into the development of petrochemical plants.

GAIL is currently handling up to 400 CNG stations and give out a record 10 lakh piped natural gas (PNG) connections to household kitchens in the next 3-5 years.

It is quickly developing infrastructure to help the government boost a gas-based economy by increasing the share of natural gas in the energy basket to 15 per cent by 2030 from current 6.2 per cent.

The company is constructing a 2,655-km gas pipeline from Jagdishpur in Uttar Pradesh to West Bengal and Odisha.

'Pradhan Mantri Urja Ganga' project also known as Jagdishpur-Haldia & Bokaro-Dhamra Natural Gas Pipeline (JHBDPL) project, was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July 2015.

The pipeline would be expanded to Guwahati by laying an additional 750-km line. At Guwahati, it would relate to the forthcoming 1,500-km 'Indradhanush' pipeline network created to operate in northeast by the public sector oil and gas majors.

Karnatak said the company's board has authorised the utilisation of active assets and premises of LPG plant at Usar in Maharasthra by transforming it into 500,000 tonnes polypropylene complex at an investment of around Rs 8,800 crore.

This is one of the first kind project in India. GAIL Board has also accepted setting up of 60,000 tones polypropylene unit at the current petrochemical facility at Pata in Uttar Pradesh.

Polypropylene is utilised in a range of applications, including packaging of consumer products, plastic parts of various industries including the automotive industry, special devices like living hinges, and textiles.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

4.2. Spectrum auction: Govt sets 5G ball rolling, calls bids for auctioneer

IBEF, Aug. 27, 2019

The Union government set the ball rolling for the upcoming spectrum auctions on Monday by inviting bids for selection of agency to conduct the airwave sale in various bands, including 5G, by the end of the year.

Issuing notice for request for proposal (RFP) or tender document, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said the deadline for submission of bids would be September 25.

“Usually from the date of selection of the auctioneer, it takes about 60-90 days for the auctions to commence,” Rajan S Mathews, Director General, Cellular Operators Association of India, said.

The guidelines for auction of spectrum in 700 megahertz (MHz), 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1,800 MHz, 2,100 MHz, 2,300 MHz, 2,500 MHz, and 3,300-3,600 MHz bands will be announced separately, the notice said, while pointing to the availability of 8,093 MHz of airwaves in multiple bands.

“Notice for RFP for selection of agency for conducting e-auction of spectrum in various bands was issued by DoT on August 26,” an official release said.

The auctioneer will design, structure, and implement the overall process of e-auction, according to the government requirement, to achieve the objectives of ensuring a transparent and fair auction and selection process, optimise revenue received, and promote growth of telecom services.

In June this year, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had said the government will hold spectrum auction for 5G and other bands in the current calendar year.

The notice issued by DoT on Monday said the bid evaluation will be in three parts pre-qualification, technical, and financial. The normal tenure of the contract for the selected auctioneer would be three years, with provision of a one-year extension by mutual consent, it said.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

5.1. By 2020, Telangana to have 5 GW solar power capacity

IBEF, Sep. 04, 2019

Telangana is planning to achieve 5 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity by 2020, and the state is planning to release a tender for setting up of around 1000 MW (1 GW) of solar power generation capacity.

In 2014, the state, which was formed off the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, presently has a total installed capacity of around 3,800 MW and after Karnataka it has the second highest solar capacity in the country which includes the grid-connected and standalone rooftop solar units.

The state government is in a phase of finalising the tender of 1000MW solar capacity and expects to reach the targeted 5 GW capacity by 2020 which will include some rooftop solar units and some standalone installations, said Mr. Ajay Mishra, Special Chief Secretary, Energy, Telangana.

In the solar park model, huge capacity comes up at a single location, making its management slightly harder and requiring extra evacuation infrastructure. So, instead of the solar park model, state has embraced decentralized distributed solar installation ventures.

Barring one Project, in which more than 100 MW of solar capacity is located, most of the projects have been awarded and installed on a de-centralized distributed model and rather than concentration of projects at one area as in solar parks, state had distributed projects across over more than 180 areas.

"By opting for a distributed solar installation model, the state had managed to save about â‚¹450 crore, which would have otherwise required to strengthen the transmission and distribution network," Mishra said.

The state is also planning to modify its solar power policy as it is expected that the new projects that are tendered out, come up at attractive prices, factoring the drop-in cost of solar modules and related equipment.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

5.2. IOC to invest Rs 2 trn in 5-7 yrs ($28,6 bn), develop a new energy storage technology

IBEF, Aug. 29, 2019

Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) will invest Rs 2 lakh crore (US$ 28.62 billion) over the next five to seven years, the company's chairman told shareholders on Wednesday. The company is also at an advanced stage of developing a new energy storage technology.

"Indian Oil has planned a Rs 2 lakh crore (US$ 28.62 billion) investment in the next five to seven years, to evolve into a future-ready corporate that provides comprehensive energy solutions," Chairman Sanjiv Singh told shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting.

These investments will be made across refinery expansions, petrochemical capacities, and pipeline projects.

IOC is also at an advanced stage of developing a new battery technology, which "will be something beyond lithium and involve something that is available in abundance in the country", Singh added. The refiner looks to set up an electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant and is in talks with auto manufacturers to test its new technology.

Company officials also added that they were open to partner with auto manufacturers to set up the planned facility. "The break-even for such technologies is 1 gigawatt," said S S V Ramakumar, director for research and development (R&D). He added: "It is not decided in what phases the 1-gigawatt capacity will be developed."

On the planned mega refinery in Maharashtra, Singh said a new location in Raigad district had been identified and the process to notify the same was under way. IOC is one of the three domestic partners who will be developing the mega refinery, along with Saudi Arabia’s Aramco and Abu Dhabi's ADNOC.

On concerns over the availability of BSVI fuel for automobiles, Singh added that the company's refineries will start producing the required fuel 2-3 months before the April 2020 deadline.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

- AGRICULTURE, FISHING & RURAL DEVELOPMENT

6.1. Flipkart bets big on grocery segment, plans to scale service across India

IBEF, Aug. 13, 2019

Betting big on grocery segment, Flipkart is planning to scale its service across India, including tier-II and-III cities, in the next five years.

Currently, the Walmart-owned firm delivers groceries in five cities, including Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi NCR, through Flipkart Supermart, its online grocery store initiative. Grocery is presently a US$ 400 billion market, being the biggest part of the overall retail segment in India, though the penetration of online grocery is just 1 per cent. It expects grocery to be one of our top categories in the next 3-5 years.

The firm is collaborating with farmers, sellers, producer organisations and local micro, small and medium enterprises to create a sustainable ecosystem.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

6.2.1. Amazon opens its largest campus building in Hyderabad

IBEF, Aug. 22, 2019

Amazon.com Inc. on Wednesday opened its largest campus building globally in the south Indian city of Hyderabad as it prepares for an expansion and battle with Walmart Inc. in one of the world’s fastest-growing retail markets.

The Seattle-headquartered company is making an ambitious push in India, the last major retail frontier still primarily reliant on small-scale neighbourhood and mom-and-pop stores. “E-commerce is so small in India relative to the total consumption, less than 3 per cent,” said Mr Amit Agarwal, Amazon’s Country Manager for India.

The largely untapped country is critical to the global domination plans of both Amazon and Walmart, the latter of which spent US$ 16 billion last year to buy India’s biggest startup, retailer Flipkart Online Services Pvt. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has so far pledged US$ 5.5 billion for its India operations.

Built in Hyderabad over three years, the new campus is Amazon’s first owned building outside of the United States, spans 1.8 million square feet of office space and will accommodate 15,000 workers. “The largest buildings in Seattle house about 5,000 employees,” remarked John Schoettler, vice president of Amazon’s Global Real Estate and Facilities. He said the campus was Amazon’s largest in the world but has plenty more room to grow.

“This facility will build services globally,” Agarwal added, citing examples like AWS, Kindle, Alexa, Amazon.in and Amazon Home Services, which is “innovating on things like doorstep pick-up and electronics repair.”

At the same time as it’s inaugurating its new Indian hub, Amazon is investing on other fronts within the nation. It is in negotiations to buy a 10 per cent stake in one of India’s largest brick & mortar retailers, Future Retail, people familiar with the matter have said. Local media have also reported that Amazon is eager to add food delivery to its Indian repertoire and is negotiating with multiple food companies to kick-start that line of business.

Amazon started its retail operations in India in 2013 and has since added several services to boost sales, including an expansion into producing Bollywood originals to boost its Prime Video loyalty program in the movie-loving country. Prime membership in India has doubled over the past 18 months, according to Agarwal, and he still sees “tremendous growth” going forward.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

6.2.2. Amazon launches military veteran employment programme in India

IBEF, Aug. 27, 2019

Amazon India on Monday announced the launch of a Military Veterans Employment programme that it said will create hundreds of opportunities for military veterans and their spouses across Amazon India's Fulfilment Centres, Sort Centres and Delivery Centres in the country.

Amazon India is partnering with the Office of the Director General of Resettlement (DGR) and the Army Welfare Placement Organisation (AWPO) to create continued work opportunities for military families across the country, it said in a statement.

Amazon relates to and respects the principles and work ethics of those who have served, and believes they have the ability to think big, invent and simplify on behalf of its customers, it was stated.

Over the years Amazon India has hired military veterans into various roles across the company in Transportation, Customer Fulfilment, Facilities Management and Security Operations to name a few, said Akhil Saxena, Vice President Asia Operations, Amazon.

"We are very happy to build further on these efforts and partner with DGR and AWPO to help create hundreds of fulfilling and exciting career opportunities for our military families who have relentlessly served the country," Saxena said.

With two pilot programmes underway, Amazon is confident of scaling the Military Veterans Employment Programme and extending its engagement to hire remarkable talent from the Army, Air Force, Navy and Police families in the future, he said.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

7.1. Social commerce start-up Meesho raises US$125 million led by Naspers

IBEF, Aug. 13, 2019

Meesho, a social commerce start-up, has raised US$125 million in investments led by Naspers Ventures, the company said on Monday. The round saw participation from Meesho's existing investors SAIF, Sequoia, Shunwei Capital, RPS and Venture Highway. Former Vodafone Group chief executive Arun Sarin has also put money.

Meesho's valuation and the percentage stake bought by Naspers were not disclosed. The four-year old start-up has raised about $200 million in external funding to date.

The announcement comes barely two months after Facebook invested in the company, in what was the social media giant's first direct investment in a domestic start-up. To be sure, Facebook acquired Bengaluru-based software start-up Little Eye Labs back in 2014.

In a press statement, Meesho said the funds will help the company attract customers in non-metro regions, which is its focus audience, bring more women sellers onto the platform, and invest in technology. Currently, the company has 2 million "social sellers" from 700 towns and cities across India. It also caters to 15,000 suppliers in traditional manufacturing hubs, offering them a new channel for sales.

Meesho, which essentially connects buyers and sellers over platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook, was started by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi graduates Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal in December 2015. The platform provides product cataloging, logistics and payment tools and is said to be the largest social selling platform in the country today. The product categories it caters to include apparel, home, wellness and electronics items.

It is believed that social commerce is the next frontier in e-commerce, mainly because it allows almost anyone to start selling online from the comfort of their homes. The model is said to be popular with women homemakers who look to make an extra buck, an audience which is also the main target of Meesho.

"Over 90 per cent of Indians either can't or won't use it in its current form. They want online shopping that enables them to buy from small businesses they trust. Meesho provides a way for these customers to get what they need, and we believe it is the future of online shopping for the next 500 million consumers," said Aatrey.

For Naspers, the deal is a major cheque in a new domestic start-up in the recent past. The Cape Town-based investment group is a large investor in PayU India, Swiggy and Capital Float, and has stakes in OLX and Byju's, among other bets.

"Globally, Naspers identifies big areas of consumer spend that have not yet been significantly disrupted by technology and India e-commerce certainly fits the bill. We were attracted to Meesho because the team have built a uniquely Indian solution that utilizes the reach and scale the internet enables, and harnesses and makes it available for small sellers to better serve customers no matter where they live, for the benefit of all," said Ashutosh Sharma, head of India investments at Naspers Ventures.

"The phenomenal growth they are already experiencing shows that Meesho has hit a sweet spot in the market and is well-poised to serve the next 500 million online shoppers in the country," added Sharma.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

7.2. Amul to add over 50 dairy products in the next two years

IBEF, Aug. 26, 2019

The 'Amul' brand, which is marketed by the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), is planning to introduce 40-60 new value-added dairy products over the next two years. This is expected to help Amul reach Rs 50,000 crore (US$ 6.95 billion) turnover by year 2021.

According to Mr. Jayen Mehta, Senior General Manager, Planning and Marketing, GCMFF, the plan is to present at least two new products every month over the next two years.

The new products will be introduced regionally first and then across the country. Sweet-meats, having longer shelf-life, are being considered as a segment quite aggressively. The launches that comprises of peda, a sweet-dish which is popular in North India, and nan-khatai, a shortbread biscuit popular in Surat. In last four years, Amul has increased its product range and launched over 100 products which are mainly dairy-based.

According to Mehta, “We have a pipeline of 40-60 new products — two new products a month for the next two years. We are expecting a Rs 50,000-crore (US$ 6.95 billion) turnover by 2021.”

Amul has reported a turnover at Rs 33,150 crore (US$ 4.60 billion) in FY19. In FY20, it is focusing on reaching the target turnover of Rs 40,000 crore (US$ 5.56 billion).

Milk sales accounts for 50 per cent of the brand’s turnover.

Amul buys 230,00,000 litres of milk every day from farmer organizations across India. Approximately, 30,00,000 litres per day is obtained from outside Gujarat. Milk procurement is also estimated to see a jump of 8-12 per cent this year.

Amul expect to increase its shore-up-exports to 20-25 per cent from present Rs 1,000 crore (US$ 0.13 billion) turnover.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

8.1. Govt's Khadi Village turnover crosses Rs. 74,323 crore ($10,33 bn) in 2018-19

IBEF, Aug. 22, 2019

The Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) announced its turnover that has crossed Rs. 74,323 crores (US$ 10.33 billion) in 2018-19 with the sale of Khadi products seeing a growth of over 145 per cent since 2014-15.

According to the statement issued by the KVIC, the Khadi production, which was Rs 879.98 crore (US$ 120 million) in 2014-15, rose to Rs 1,902 crore (US$ 260 million) in 2018-19, an increase of more than 100 per cent, and its sales witnessed a growth of over 145 per cent, from Rs 1,310.9 crore (US$ 180 million) in 2014-15 to Rs 3,215.13 crore (US$ 440 million) in 2018-19.

The Village industries touched a turnover of Rs 71,123.68 crore (US$ 9.88 billion) in 2018-19 in comparison to Rs 31,965.52 crore (US$ 4.44 billion) in 2014-15, with a growth rate of 123 per cent.

Khadi fabric production has made an average jump of 62 per cent in the last five years, that is, from 103.22 million square metres in 2014-15 to 170.80 million square metres in 2018-19. In the fiscal 2014-15, the share of Khadi in total textile production was 4.23 per cent, which, in the year 2018-19, has increase up to 8.49 per cent.

The KVIC had delivered over 32,000 new model charkhas (spinning wheels) and 5,600 modern looms in last three years, of which effect is seen as an increase in the Khadi production.

During this duration, 376 new Khadi institutions have been introduced, alongside with over 40,000 new Khadi artisans. The KVIC has also generated employment through Khadi in the farthest parts of the country such as Leh, Ladakh, the Kaziranga forest, the Sundarbans in West Bengal etc.

First time textile corporates like Raymonds, Arvind Mills and Aditya Birla Textiles have entered in Khadi sector for marketing and increase Khadi sales.

The KVIC also took major PSUs into the Khadi-fold for purchasing Khadi gift coupons for their employees, which has given business of over Rs 100 crore (US$ 14 million).

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

8.2. Kerala Agricultural University develops a new Vetiver variety for soil conservation

IBEF, Aug. 23, 2019

Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) has recently developed a new variety of Vetiver. This variety would be ideal for both oil yield and soil conservation.

Vetiver or Ramacham, is an aromatic plant having medicinal property. This plant is being cultivated in Kerala for oil yielding along the coastal regions of around 600 acres in Chavakkad and Ponnani areas in Thrissur.

The University has discovered a new south Indian type Vetiver accession with profuse root growth for soil binding in sloppy lands and coastal areas.

South Indian Vetiver variety is believed to be of the best quality for oil production as it assists production of around 20-25 kg oil from more than five tonnes of root.

The new Vetiver type is perfect for hedge planting in soil conservation because of its non- flowering nature, good growth performance, high root penetration and ability to tolerate drought.

The new type has got its approval by the University level variety evaluation committee and is to be presented before State Level Variety Release Committee before it is promoted for soil conservation.

The properties of the new Vetiver variety (ODV-7) which is suggested to be named ‘Bhoomika’ due to its properties like soil binding leading to enhanced growth, tillering, root yield, root spread and oil content that is more than the already released variety ODV-3.

It can be planted alongside contour lines in hills, along sloppy areas, drainage channels, ponds, as protective partitions in terraced fields and as border plant for roads and gardens. It can also be grown as an aromatic crop for root and oil production in open areas with good sunshine.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

9.1. With 10 unicorns, Delhi-NCR is the new startup capital of India: Report

Livemint, 10 Sep. 2019, Nandita Mathur

The Delhi-NCR region now counts more startups and unicorns than Bengaluru and Mumbai, says a report released by TiE Delhi-NCR and consulting firm Zinnov on Tuesday
With suitable govt interventions, Delhi-NCR could become one of the top 5 global startup hubs, says report

New Delhi: Move over, Bengaluru and Mumbai, Delhi-NCR is the newest hotspot for startups and unicorns in India.

The region that comprises the national capital and adjoining cities of Gurugram and Noida now counts more startups and unicorns than Bengaluru and Mumbai.

Delhi-NCR is home to 10 unicorns, or those with a valuation of at least $1 billion, with at least one added each year since 2013, compared with the nine and two unicorns that Bengaluru and Mumbai had added, respectively, in the first half of 2019, according to the “Turbocharging Delhi-NCR Startup Ecosystem" report issued by TiE Delhi-NCR and consulting firm Zinnov on Tuesday.

A total of 7,000 startups were founded in Delhi-NCR since 2009, according to the the TiE-Zinnov report.

Bengaluru—considered India’s “Silicon Valley"—had 5,234 startups in the same period, followed by Mumbai with 3,829 and Hyderabad with 1,940 startups.

With 10 unicorns, the cumulative private market valuation of startups in the Delhi-NCR region is currently $46-56 billion, followed by Bengaluru at $32-37 billion followed by Mumbai at $10-12 billion. Some of the unicorns in the Delhi-NCR region are MakeMyTrip, Info Edge and Indiamart.

The pace of founding new startups has, however, slowed over the past two years across India, including in the Delhi-NCR region, according to the report. The reasons include lack of affordable co-working spaces, less number and quality of accelerators and incubators, shortage of technical talent, lack of seed and early-stage funding and low corporate participation.

Rajan Anandan, president of TiE Delhi-NCR, said accelerating growth of the ecosystem will require “a lot more seed and early-stage funding, creating more affordable co-working spaces, increasing the number and quality of accelerators and incubators, developing deeper pools of technical talent and developing sector-specific policies".

The report said that with suitable government and private sector interventions, Delhi-NCR could become one of the top 5 global startup hubs, with 12,000 startups, 30 unicorns and a cumulative valuation of about $150 billion by 2025.

Unlocking the true potential of the Delhi-NCR startup ecosystem would require focusing on several core areas including building “three world-class affordable startup hubs, one each in Delhi, Noida and Gurugram" along the lines of T-Hub set up in 2015 by the Telangana government. The report said there is a need to boost seed and early-stage investments in Delhi-NCR.

Another key area, the report says, would be prioritizing 10 horizontal and vertical sectors to leverage inherent advantages of Delhi-NCR. Some key sectors are consumer tech and consumer products, e-commerce, travel and hospitality, and education and edtech.

Anandan said Delhi-NCR would also need to have sector-specific “centres of excellence" (CoEs) for each priority sector, augmenting the CoE with sector-specific sandboxes and a panel of policymakers to improve ease of doing business. He said that corporate participation needs to be increased as low corporate participation in local ecosystems limits access, reduces opportunities and awareness to new technology.

Another suggestion was to build Delhi-NCR as a hotbed for electric vehicles (EVs). The recommendations included introduction of a digital window to expedite the recertification process for EVs (including e-bikes) and setting up a special EV cell in Delhi for planning and setting up of charging infrastructure, working with incubators and manufacturers to support startups and providing land at subsidized rates to startups for setting up a manufacturing hub of EV and battery units.

The government has placed emphasis on the expansion of the EV industry, which it believes would help cut rampant pollution afflicting major cities and also reduce costly imports of crude oil.

Anandan recommended the setting up of three world-class startup hubs, one each in Delhi, Noida and Gurugram, which would be designed to provide infrastructure for co-working spaces for start-ups and investors, and a place for community events, meetings and networking sessions. For instance, T-Hub has become a central location for startups, corporates, investors and mentors to meet, network and operate.

Amitabh Kant, chief executive officer of government think tank NITI Aayog, who released the report, assured the startup community of the government’s continued support in setting up incubation centres in the region. He pointed out that six Indian cities—Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune—are among the top 100 startup hubs globally and except the US, no other country has more than five cities on the list, making India a broad-based startup ecosystem.

9.2. RIL schemes to launch of 'new commerce' venture during Diwali

IBEF, Aug. 26, 2019

Reliance Retail Ltd plans to launch its “new commerce” venture during the Diwali.

This venture “new commerce” is company’s offline-to-online initiative, which would create a link between producers, traders, small merchants, brands and consumers through use of technology.

Retail arm of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has been working on this new commerce plan for almost two years. At present, it only operates in neighbourhood stores, supermarkets, hypermarkets, wholesale, speciality and offline stores.

According to source, “Reliance Retail is planning to launch its e-commerce venture in two phases—one, a soft launch around Diwali, and then a full-fledged launch by December-January. A Diwali Dhamaka launch plan may entail discounts that other online retailers also offer."

RIL is primarily focusing at the consumption basket which includes daily staples, soaps, shampoos and other household items.

The company is approaching local merchants and offering them an online-to-offline (O2O) marketplace. This business model was first initiated by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. which is a Chinese e-commerce giant. As per this O2O model, a consumer has option to look up the product or service online and then buy it from physical or offline stores. This allows the company to work with merchants, who in return, will provide to the local demand but also help Reliance Retail save costs and enter areas currently outside the purview of online retailers.

A retail consultant told that “RIL will be using kirana stores for keeping their wares and for last-mile delivery. So, they become part of the supply chain. Also, since Reliance Retail is fully home-grown, they don’t have any FDI regulations to follow. They can keep inventory."

Reliance Retail plans to reach as many as 30 million neighbourhood stores through the venture.

The company will provide discounts and offers to test the market and study the consumption pattern like who lives where and who is interested in buying what.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

10.1. Ikea India opens online store in Mumbai

IBEF, Aug. 20, 2019

Ikea which is a major Swedish home furnishing brand has launched its online store in the Mumbai city offering more than 7,500 products.

According to the source, the online store is a part of its new multichannel line to reach 100 million customers in the next three years.

The multichannel store will offer smaller format stores, and a big format store in Navi Mumbai.

According to Ikea India CEO Peter Betzel, India's retail landscape is transforming at a scale and pace not seen before that is mostly driven by growing urbanisation and changing customer behaviours. So, Ikea is also changing its approach to be a key partner of India’s journey. This mark as first digital approach with Mumbai being amongst the first few markets worldwide, where it is bringing alive this transformation.

The online store will extend 1,000 products priced below Rs 200, it said adding that all the prices are the same across India, both in offline store and online.

In India, Ikea presently has more than 55 suppliers with 45,000 direct employees and 400,000 people in the extended supply chain.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

10.2. Centre to invest Rs 25,000 crore ($3,57 bn) in fisheries in 3-5 years

IBEF, Sep. 05, 2019

As a part of Blue Revolution project, the Union government has planned to invest Rs. 25,000 crore (US$ 3.57 billion) in different segments of the fisheries sector in the next three to five years.

"We are looking at three types of support by way of infrastructure development in harbours; extending subsidies to joint venture projects to set up hatcheries/nurseries/quarantine facilities as well as viability gap funding to establish processing plants, and cold chain facilities at harvest or landing sites, said Ms. Rajni Sekhri Sibal, Secretary, Department of Fisheries.

This amount will be disbursed under different schemes such as Pradhan Mantri Sampada Yojana and World Bank schemes. The government has already started a fishery infrastructure development fund with Rs. 7,300 crores (US$ 1.04 billion), which is an interest subvention scheme, she said.

The contribution of inland fisheries is only 50 per cent of the total fish production. Thus, the government plans to expand the potential by covering reservoirs, wetlands, rivers and streams in different parts of the country.

As per the statement given by Ms. Sibal, "We are planning to promote cold water fisheries in the entire Himalayan region to rear high-value fish varieties. We will soon sign an MoU with Iceland and Denmark to breed trout fish, a high-value variety. We have already signed an MoU with Norway in this regard."

As the contribution of inland water fisheries is low, the government intends to double its production to six million tonnes from the present three million tonnes in next three to four years. Quality of seeds and feeds, aquatic animal health laboratories and quarantine facilities are needed to meet the intended target.

The maintenance of Indian seafood is a major issue which require focus on ensuring the quality, disease control and traceability of marine food products from "farm to fork" or from "catch to consumer".

The government will soon introduce a set of new protocols that will be focused on preparation of feed and certification of seed. This will help double Indian seafood exports from over Rs 47,000 crore (US$ 6.72 billion) in five years.

This will ensure that "our waters are utilised by our own fishermen."

There is a clear definition in the bill regarding the size of fish to be caught. The Bill is expected to be introduced in Parliament by the end of this year. Proposals are also there to issue unique license numbers and insurance for fishing trawlers and crew by levying a small fee. The revenue from this will be used for safety measures of the fishing community.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

- INDUSTRY, MANUFACTURE

11.1. Daimler India exports 25,000 commercial vehicles as global demand grows

IBEF, Aug. 14, 2019

Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV) on Tuesday announced that it had exported 25,000 vehicles from India. The milestone vehicle, a Fuso FJ 1823R, was shipped to Saudi Arabia.

The company said that its Oragadam plant, in Chennai, is the only location worldwide which produces engines, transmissions, trucks and buses catering to four brands – BharatBenz, FUSO, Mercedes-Benz and Freightliner.

"The milestone of crossing 25,000 units in exports illustrates the demand & acceptance of our products in global markets. It stands testimony to the quality and efficiency of the products that are built in India by Daimler. With new markets constantly getting added to our export fold, our Indian operations will continue to play a strategic role in Daimler’s growth story," said Satyakam Arya, MD and CEO, DICV.

DICV’s exports increased by 8 per cent to 7,054 trucks in 2018 as compared to 6,553 units in 2017. Its parts business has also grown with over 100 million parts being exported to other Daimler entities. DICV also has a warehouse capacity spread over 2,195 sqm that has a monthly pallet handling capacity of 3,000 and container handling capacity of 100 at its facility in Oragadam.

The company now supplies vehicles to 50 countries in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia - Chile, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Rwanda, Ghana and Egypt to name a few. Overall, more than 25,000 vehicles have been delivered since the start of DICV’s exports business in 2013.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

11.2. Indian pharmaceutical companies gain from easing pricing pressures

Livemint, 09 Sep. 2019, Clifford Alvares

Indian pharma firms are trying to sweeten the revenue pie by rolling out new drug application products in US
Much of the future recovery would depend on the consolidation in the US and other overseas businesses, which is likely to be slow

The June quarter results of Indian pharmaceutical firms were encouraging, reflecting that the top companies are on a path to recovery.

First quarter FY20 revenues of 10 leading pharma firms rose by about 13.3% from the year-ago quarter. They also focused on cost control, which resulted in Ebitda margins expanding by 98 basis points year-on-year to 20.7%. Ebitda is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Net profit of these companies rose 22.7%.

The slightly better performance comes following easing headwinds in the US generics market. The high-pricing pressure that marred the firms’ growth in the US seems to be softening, note analysts.

A good thing is that channel and distribution partners in the US have been consolidating, leading to some easing in pricing. Besides, Indian pharma companies are trying to sweeten the revenue pie by rolling out new drug application products in the US. A stable currency and new drug launches compensated for some of the generic price erosion.

Some pharma companies have also been bagging one-off sales, which helped bolster revenues. “The results have been a mixed bag for pharma companies. However, the key trends were the pricing pressure in the US remains moderate, i.e., from low to mid-single digit. Performance of Indian pharma companies have also improved in the US with multinational companies moving out of non-viable products, which has seen one-time business opportunity for Indian pharma companies as well as due to frequent shortage of plain vanilla generic drugs in US," says Krishnanath Munde, pharma analyst at Reliance Securities Ltd.

The domestic business has been a mixed bag as well. Revenues of some pharma companies grew in low-double digits, particularly Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd and Lupin Ltd. However, it’s the branded-generics business that has been the counterbalance for these companies. Growth in the generic-generic business, where there is less pricing power, has been slow, but has still kept margins healthy.

Thankfully, the impact of the Jan-Aushadhi stores has not been much in the past quarter, but could pose some competition going ahead. Largely, the management commentary for the domestic business has been optimistic, with most pharma firms expecting revenue growth of about 10%.

Much of the future recovery would depend on the consolidation in the US and other overseas businesses, which is likely to be slow. Besides, since drug development and launches differ from company to company, that would be a key factor to watch out for from an investment perspective.

12.1. Make in India plan in works to attract medical device companies

IBEF, Aug. 19, 2019

The government is sewing up an arrangement to lure the medical devices industry to Make in India, along the lines of telecom and electronics, trying to cut dependence on imports and lower costs.

Niti Aayog, the government’s research organization, has begun work on the plan, which comes as the US competes with India over value controls forced on medicinal devices to make them moderate. "The Aayog will soon come out with a guide to promote improvement of medical devices under the Make in India initiative.

The mega plan is to in the long run make India a manufacturing hub for medical devices of worldwide standards that considers the domestic and overseas markets

The products would be diagnostic devices to screen for cancer and heart diseases and later pacemakers, ventilators, dialysis machines and CT scanners, among others, would be included.

The plan being considered for medical devices is like the incentive package that gives capital subsidy of up to 25 per cent for the electronic business and has helped boost local production of mobiles in the country.

India's medical device market is the fourth largest in Asia — after Japan, China and South Korea — at over US$10 billion and is anticipated to develop to US$50 billion by 2025.

Right now, India has 750-800 medicinal device producers, with a normal investment of Rs 170-200 million and a normal turnover of Rs 450-500 million.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

12.2. Chinese smartphone makers ringing in more investments into India

Livemint, 29 Aug. 2019, Navadha Pandey

While some firms are planning to ramp up production capacity in India, others are focusing on R&D
Out of the top five smartphone sellers in India, four — Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo and Realme — are Chinese

New Delhi: Chinese phone makers that have tasted blood with deep discounts, flashy ads and online offers in India are thirsting for more, as record shipments and rising price points prompt them to pump up investments.

Smartphones have stood out as one of the rare bright spots in India’s economy that has seen cooling demand for automobiles and fast moving consumer goods in a prolonged slowdown. And Chinese firms are cashing in.

As of June-end, out of the top five smartphone sellers in India, four are headquartered in China—Xiaomi (28.3%), Vivo (15.1%), Oppo (9.7%) and Realme (7.7%). South Korea’s Samsung has a 25.3% share of the Indian market.

Market leader Xiaomi, which had one manufacturing unit in India in 2015, now operates seven facilities. Last year, the company also hosted global component suppliers for a three-day tour of Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh to explore investment opportunities and to set up a local components ecosystem.

Xiaomi’s shipments grew by 4.8% year-on-year to 10.4 million units in the June quarter, and it expects to post better sales in the three months ending September, which includes the festive season.

“Growth in India is coming from two places; existing users are upgrading to better smartphones, and one big trend we are seeing is that most second- or third-time smartphone users are picking up more expensive devices," Raghu Reddy, head of categories and online sales at Xiaomi India, said. “The reason is they are now demanding more from their devices. As a result, they are willing to move to higher price points. That is the reason why the overall average selling price of the market is also trading upwards."

Smartphone brands from China’s BBK Electronics also are lining up investments to get a bigger slice of the market. Vivo plans to spend ₹7,500 crore to expand its manufacturing capacity not only to cater to the Indian market, but also for exports. Oppo, too, is looking to double its manufacturing capacity by 2020 to roll out 100 million smartphones every year at its Greater Noida plant.

“India is an important market and (it) is growing. We want to be a strong player here," Nipun Marya, director of brand strategy at Vivo India, said. “The entire ₹7,500 crore investment would be deployed in phases to develop a new 169-acre land parcel adjacent to the Yamuna Expressway (on the outskirts of New Delhi). Marya did not give a time frame for the investments.

For premium phone maker OnePlus, which also is part of BBK Electronics, India accounts for 40% of global revenue. India will also be the first country where it will launch its smart TV.

On Monday, OnePlus announced an investment of ₹1,000 crore for a research and development facility in Hyderabad. The centre will drive its research in artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop upgraded products. OnePlus, which has 12 stores, wants to take the store count to 25 by 2020-end.

Analysts said Chinese players will get even more aggressive as India, unlike China, is still a largely under-penetrated market for smartphones, and there is huge room for growth.

“While smartphone sales in China account for over 90% of all mobile devices sold, India is still a largely under-penetrated market, with 400 million smartphone users in a country of over a billion people," Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner, said. “Moreover, in this highly competitive market, Chinese players have managed to build brand loyalty and are expanding through retail touch-points."

13.1. HPCL to invest Rs 74,000 cr ($10,28 bn) in five years

IBEF, Aug. 22, 2019

Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) intend to invest an amount of around Rs 74,000 crore (US$ 10.28 billion) in the next five years to expand capacity.

According to Chairman Mr Mukesh Kumar Surana, the Navaratna company plans to invest around Rs 14,900 crore (US$ 2.07 billion) in the current fiscal. This investment will be focused on improving refining and marketing through expansion of refining capacity, supply chain capabilities and customer reach.

The company plans to scale up its footprints in natural gas and expand overseas market along with its presence in petrochemicals. The company, which currently owns and operates three refineries, has assumed capacity expansion at refineries at Visakhapatnam and Mumbai.

The transformation of the Visakhapatnam refinery will improve capacity from 8.33 million tonnes to 15 mt. The capacity of the Mumbai refinery is also being enhanced from 7.5 mt to 9.5 mt.

Surana added that the 9 mt greenfield refinery-cum-petrochemical project coming up at Pachpadra in the Barmer district of Rajasthan has accomplished considerable progress.

The company is in process of laying a thrust on pipeline network expansion. Ongoing pipeline projects with total estimated investment of Rs 5,555 crore (US$ 0.77 billion) are in different stages of completion.

The company also intends to develop second-generation ethanol production facilities, and market compressed biogas. Its net profit for fiscal 2019 stood at Rs 6,029 crore (US$ 0.83 billion) and gross refining margins (GRM) averaged at US$ 5.01 a barrel.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

13.2. What are the key reasons behind India’s rising electronic exports?

Livemint, 03 Sep. 2019, Harsha Jethmalani

In last few years, the government has launched a slew of schemes to boost local manufacturing of electronic goods

Value of domestic manufacturing/assembly of mobile phones has jumped nearly eightfold from $3.1 billion in FY15 to $24.3 billion in FY19

Amid the gloom in India’s economic data, one bright spot that has emerged is the rising trend in exports of electronics. Total production of electronic goods in value terms more than doubled from $31.2 billion in FY15 to $65.5 billion in FY19, led by mobile phones, shows data from the Reserve Bank of India’s annual report issued on 29 August.

Value of domestic manufacturing/assembly of mobile phones has jumped nearly eightfold from $3.1 billion in FY15 to $24.3 billion in FY19 (see chart).

What is driving electronic exports at a time when the overall export outlook is subdued? Are the government’s exports-oriented policies for electronics bearing fruit? Or did India just get lucky, gaining from the trade tussle between China and the US?

According to Sonal Varma, chief economist for India and Asia ex-Japan at Nomura Holdings Inc., “India’s electronic exports started to do well before trade tensions between the US and China escalated. India started to become an alternate production destination because of pull factors such as potential domestic demand and government policies to boost electronic exports. Along with that came the push factor—trade tensions between the US and China. We expect this positive trend in India’s electronic exports to continue."

In the last few years, the government has launched a slew of schemes to boost local manufacturing of electronic goods. These include Phased Manufacturing Programme for mobile handsets and related sub-assemblies/components manufacturing, National Policy on Electronics 2019, Electronics Manufacturing Clusters scheme and Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme. Some countervailing duties were also announced to discourage imports of electronic goods.

Although the export numbers look impressive, analysts at Spark Capital Ltd point out that value addition is limited. “India has become the 2nd largest producer of mobile phones, replacing Vietnam. Notably, we reckon that the net value add is only in the high single-digits at present, since most of components of mobile phones are imported, and only assembling takes place in India. However, some companies have started manufacturing printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) units in India, taking the value add to ~15%," they said in a report on 28 August.

Nonetheless, the rise in electronic exports bodes well for India’s balance of payments and its stretched trade deficit. “A shift in the nature of telecom imports i.e. from built-up units to intermediate supplies, likely feeds into exports of electronics, including consumer items. This, over time, might help narrow India’s current significant net electronic import position," said Radhika Rao, economist at DBS Bank Ltd.

14.1. Robots are coming for India’s shop floors

Livemint 10 Sep. 2019, Leslie D'Monte

A mix of robotics, AI and IoT is making the Indian factory smarter. How will the shop floor look 10 years from now?
While India may have missed the manufacturing bus of the 1980s and 1990s, the bus has now become more advanced. And the edge lies in industrial IoT, robotics, AI and 3D printing

Bengaluru: Three years ago, TAL Manufacturing Solutions Ltd, a unit of Tata Motors Ltd, showcased a robot called BRABO at the “Make in India" week in Mumbai. Short for “Bravo Robot", BRABO was touted by the company as the first “Made in India" industrial robot, and is designed to lift loads of up to 10 kilograms.

Mahindra and Mahindra LTd already has a “robotic weld line" at its factory in Nashik, which now caters to many of its products including the Marazzo and the XUV300. Tata Motors, too, uses robots in its Pune factory, while Godrej and Welspun run their shop floors with the help of an Intelligent Plant Framework, which enables tracking of machinery and productivity on the floor in real time.

Maruti Suzuki India Ltd has numerous robots employed at its Manesar and Gurugram car factories, with more than 2,000 robots working at the weld shop in its Manesar facility alone. Manjushree Technopack Ltd’s Bidadi (in Bengaluru) manufacturing plant also has more than a dozen of its packaging machines connected to a network, providing monthly updates on maintenance issues.

Automation, of course, is no stranger to shop floors. Many factories all over the world and India have been using computer numerical control (CNC) machines for years. These machines allow operators to feed a program of instructions directly into a mini-computer via a small board, similar to a traditional keyboard. After loading the required tools in the machine, the rest is done automatically by the CNC machines, which use these instructions to control machinery such as the grinder, milling machine, and lathe. But next-gen automation is likely to be vastly different on one score: it will either make humans redundant or vastly alter the necessary skill set that is required to hold on to one’s spot on the shop floor. A human-machine interface, or HMI, may eventually make the good old CNC machine voice-activated, for example, allowing an operator to just speak instructions.

These oncoming changes will leave long-lasting impacts on India’s labour force, particularly in some sectors—automotive, textile, and banking and financial services, apart from information technology—which have become far more attuned to global shifts due to the nature of modern supply chains. The “smart factory" will, in all likelihood, change the popular conception of what a shop floor looks like.

An army of robots

The number of robots in use worldwide multiplied threefold over the past two decades to 2.25 million, according to a June 2019 report by Oxford Economics. Trends suggest the global stock of robots will multiply even faster in the next 20 years, reaching as many as 20 million by 2030—with 14 million in China alone, the report adds.

India is way behind at the moment. But things can change very quickly. The automotive industry, which is currently racked by a slowdown, is a great example. In the face of stagnation, firms that had begun to ramp up their robot density (robots per 10,000 workers) in the mid-2000s have now merely chosen not to rehire a bulk of the short-term, rotational, low-skilled contract workforce. According to a 22 January 2019 report by the International Federation of Robotics, India’s automotive sector was the main customer for industrial robots, accounting for as much as 62% of the total supply.

“On average, each newly installed robot displaces 1.6 manufacturing workers," the report says. Despite these rapid changes, industry players like Harshvendra Soin, chief people officer at Tech Mahindra, say: “We believe the future will be more human than we think." However, some factories are now beginning to acquire the capability for “lights out" production—meaning, they can operate without the presence of human workers. In fact, Japanese robotics firm FANUC, which is considered to be the poster boy for such factories, has been operating a “lights out" factory with robots since 2001.

Unique quandary

India is in a unique quandary. While the country needs to find jobs for its booming population, the globally competitive opportunities are almost entirely in smart manufacturing, most of which require less human hands per unit of output. “The conventional ways of doing incremental business will no longer suffice. India needs to push its people to adopt disruptive ways of doing business," said Ashutosh Sharma, secretary, Department of Science and Technology at the 4th Confederation of Indian Industries Smart Manufacturing Summit, held on 26 October 2018 in Delhi.

While India may have missed the manufacturing bus of the 1980s and 90s, which powered China’s growth, the bus has now become more advanced. And the competitive edge lies in artificial intelligence (AI), industrial Internet of Things (IoT), wearables, robotics and additive manufacturing (better known as 3D printing), which are all set to fundamentally transform global production.

In any case, automation on the shop floor is now being taken to new levels. Machines develop faults like parts getting worn out or equipment not getting calibrated properly. An operator could, thus, waste a lot of time trying to locate the origin of the problem. It’s here that automation is being combined with AI and IoT on the shop floor to resolve such issues.

AI, for instance, can be integrated with CNC machines to enable self-diagnosis. Thus, when a fault develops, it will be detected and the software will try and solve the problem. Apart from using the data that is collected thus for diagnostics, a more advanced AI system could analyze that data and alter the settings of the machine to optimize a prototype being manufactured.

According to a 10 May blog by Craig Lyjak, EY Global Smart Factory leader, the smart factory is no longer a futuristic vision. It is the heart of the broader Industry 4.0, or the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which refers to the gradual combination of traditional manufacturing and industrial practices with digital technologies. The most prominent of these technologies, according to Lyjak, include computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE) software, cloud computing, IoT, advanced sensor technologies, 3D printing, industrial robotics, data analytics, AI and machine learning (ML), and enhanced machine-to-machine (M2M) communications.

These technologies are already showing impressive results both globally and in India. In 2016, The Times of India reported that the country’s first “self-aware" factory was being set up in Bengaluru at the Indian Institute of Science’s Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing with seed funding from the Boeing Co. The factory is enabling data to be continuously collected and monitored, from both sensor-fitted machines and digitally connected wearables in order to provide real-time insights about every movement and process taking place on the factory floor. The factory remains a “work in progress".

On its part, German auto-component maker Bosch’s Bidadi plant has cobots, or collaborative robots, working alongside humans. GE’s Chakan (in Pune) factory’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is linked to the manufacturing execution system (MES). Equipment efficiency is monitored in real time to decide production schedules like availability of forks or lifts, raw material trucks, workers and machines while sensors (read IoT) send warnings on possible breakdowns.

Digital factories

While the Indian automobile industry is unquestionably at the vanguard of the oncoming change, other companies are not entirely untouched. Mondelez India describes its Sri City (in Andhra Pradesh) unit as an “integrated digital factory", one which can pack 6,300 chocolate bars a minute, while Jaipur Watch Co. has added a new collection of stainless steel watches that were 3D printed.

Lyjak cites the example of Microsoft Dynamics’ integration with smart factory processes and technologies as a case in point. Microsoft Dynamics’ Remote Assist application, for instance, combines Microsoft HoloLens (a self-contained, holographic computer) with mixed reality, video calling, annotations, and file sharing to enable experts to remotely troubleshoot complex problems and help technicians. This saves time, reduces travel costs and improves operational efficiency on the shop floor.

Further, AI is used to optimize the multi-robot fulfilment system in Amazon warehouses. The average cost for a spot welding robot, according to the report, is projected to decrease by 22% by 2025, and robots-as-a-service models are beginning to appear.

Although bringing AI onto the shop floor would require a massive capital investment, the return on investment (ROI) is higher, according to SaaSnic Technologies. AI and ML, for instance, can test numerous demand forecasting models with precision, while automatically adjusting to different variables such as new product introductions, supply chain disruptions or sudden changes in demand. Using AI systems, every single part of a product can be tracked from when it’s first manufactured to when it is assembled and shipped to the customer.

Walmart, for instance, cut its physical inventory from one month to 24 hours by using drones that fly through the warehouse, scan products, and check for misplaced items. Using algorithms that learn from experience to optimize logistics, BMW tracks a part from the point it was manufactured to when the vehicle is sold—from all of its assembly facilities across the world. In finance operations, AI can close operations and automate monthly, quarterly and year-end processes. Using ML, bots can learn from human inputs to make better judgments and adapt to the behaviour patterns of accounting professionals.

The future office

Smart robots also assist shop floor operations indirectly by increasing employee satisfaction and appealing to a millennial mindset. A couple of months ago, for instance, Indian IT services provider Tech Mahindra introduced a Human Resource (HR) humanoid at its Noida Special Economic Zone Campus in Uttar Pradesh. Christened K2, this was the second HR humanoid (a robot that resembles a human) from the Mahindra Group company—the first was launched at its Hyderabad campus in May.

K2 can address HR-related employee queries and even handle personal requests for actions like providing payslips, tax forms, etc. With the help of AI, K2 can start a conversation without any need for wake-up commands. It can even converse with differently-abled employees by responding to queries with a text display along with speech. Tech Mahindra now plans to deploy the next humanoid at its Pune campus.

Despite the immense potential benefits of enhancing ERP systems with AI, there are risks with regard to sharing of sensitive data and regulations that need to be considered, such as the European Union general data protection regulation (GDPR), besides the loss of jobs to automation and robots. That said, the benefits may outweigh the risks if governments devise sensible privacy regulations, and revamp labour policies to factor in the impact of these new technologies on the workforce.

As an example, Tech Mahindra, which has already implemented an AI-based facial recognition (which typically raises privacy invasion concerns) system to register the attendance of employees, claims it has “drastically reduced the time spent by an associate in updating the timesheet". The company also has Talex—an AI-driven marketplace of talent that maps skills of the existing talent pool.

But the increasingly common use of AI and robotics in the Indian context may lie inside the e-commerce package. Gurugram-based AI-powered robotics firm GreyOrange’s Butler, for example, is an autonomous robot that uses goods-to-person technology for inventory storage and order picking. It populates the many warehouses that have come up across the country in order to fuel the e-commerce boom. Butler runs on a software platform that uses AI algorithms and ML, which optimize path planning, maximize storage, and accelerate order fulfilment.

The final piece of the puzzle is the ability to hire these intelligent machines on contract, like workers. As a precursor for what may become commonplace soon, US-based Hirebotics allows firms to hire cloud-connected robots. The hourly wage starts at $15 per hour and they can work a minimum of 80 hours a week—and, they neither tire nor need bathroom breaks. Of course, companies have to give Hirebotics a 30-day written notice if they fire any robot. What these robot work contracts show is this: the future is already here.

14.2. Toyota, Suzuki forge deeper ties by buying stakes in each other

Livemint, 28 Aug. 2019, Malyaban Ghosh

Toyota will acquire a 4.94% stake in Suzuki for about 96 bn yen; the latter will buy shares worth 48 bn yen in Toyota
Toyota has started exporting some of Suzuki’s products such as the Alto

New Delhi: Toyota Motor Corp. and Suzuki Motor Corp. deepened their ties by buying small stakes in each other as the two Japanese companies attempt to negotiate the disruptive changes that threaten to alter the existing order in the global automotive industry.

While Japan’s biggest automaker Toyota will acquire a 4.94% stake in Suzuki for about 96 billion yen ($907 million), the latter will buy 48 billion yen worth of shares in Toyota, the companies said in a joint statement on Wednesday.

The equity cross-holdings are aimed at expanding their collaboration that began more than two years ago and will help the companies pool their resources to adapt to a world where on-demand rides, electric vehicles and autonomous cars are changing the industry landscape in ways that few could have anticipated even a couple of years ago.

Apart from manufacturing electric and hybrid models, both companies now plan to jointly develop autonomous driving technology.

Some industry experts said the move to invest in each other may potentially lead to an eventual merger of the two companies.

“This may be a prelude to a bigger participation from Toyota in the stocks of Suzuki Motor. This collaboration will be key for Suzuki to sustain in a world where technology in the automobile sector is evolving rapidly and the company doesn’t have deep pockets," said a person who was associated with Suzuki’s Indian unit for over a decade. “When collaboration between two large corporate entities leads to an equity investment, then it does indicate a certain future."

Toyota and Suzuki first came together in 2017 to develop affordable hybrid and electric vehicles for the Indian market. Toyota had then agreed to supply its hybrid technology to Suzuki as part of the alliance. Subsequently, the companies agreed to sell each other’s products in India and overseas markets.

The partnership will now widen to new areas.

“The two companies plan to establish and promote a long-term partnership for promoting collaboration in new fields, including the field of autonomous driving. The execution of the capital alliance agreement is a confirmation and expression of the outcome of sincere and careful discussions between the two companies, and it will serve for building and promoting their future partnership in new fields," according to the joint statement issued by Toyota and Suzuki.

In December 2009, Volkswagen AG bought 19.9% in the Osamu Suzuki-led company for $2.5 billion, but the alliance soured after the Japanese automaker accused the German company of seeking to control it and filed for arbitration in 2011. An arbitration court ordered Volkswagen to sell its holdings to Suzuki.

The current collaboration between Toyota and Suzuki is different from the one with Volkswagen since both companies have tested the alliance by working together in the past two years and that has been followed by a decision to invest in each other, according to Puneet Gupta, associate director of consulting firm IHS Markit.

“Suzuki needed support to survive in the future and nothing can be better than Toyota since it’s Japanese and there are lots of white spaces where both can complement each other," Gupta said. “If Suzuki, in the long term, is taken over by Toyota, then exchanging a small stake in each other is a good beginning or a first step. Right from dealers to suppliers around the world, (everyone) will get a clear indication that both companies will have a common vision and there will be a lot of synergies."

Toyota and Suzuki are already developing a C-segment sport utility vehicle for the Indian market. The former has also started exporting some of Suzuki’s products such as Alto, Swift and Ciaz to African countries. Suzuki’s India unit has also formed a team of senior executives to oversee development of projects in collaboration with Toyota and gear up for challenges the company may face in the next decade.

15.1. The iPhone’s Make in India story

Livemint, 29 Aug. 2019, Bloomberg

In recent months, workers at an Andhra factory began testing and assembling Apple’s iPhone X, which will be sold in India first and eventually exported
India has become an important manufacturing base as Foxconn looks to diversify its operations beyond China

Bengaluru: On a steamy summer morning, dozens of buses pull up outside a cluster of low-slung, blue buildings in Andhra Pradesh. Women dressed in colourful salwar kameezes disembark, their dupatta billowing as they make their way past hibiscus bushes and posters proclaiming, “Our aim, no accident."

The night shift at Foxconn Technology Group’s mobile phone plant in Sri City is ending, and thousands of young women are punching out as others stream in to replace them. One of the arrivals is Jennifer Jayadas, a tall, slim 21-year-old who lives several miles away in a two-room hut with no running water.

After gobbling down a free breakfast of chapatti with a potato-and-pea curry, she dons a checked white hat, apron-shirt, static-resistant footwear and tiny finger gloves. Then Jayadas takes her place at a testing station where she will spend the next eight hours making sure the volume, vibration and other phone features work properly. “Smartphones used to be all made in China," she says. “Now, we make them here."

Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., opened its first India factory four years ago. It now operates two assembly plants, with plans to expand those and open two more. India has become an important manufacturing base as the Taipei-based company looks to diversify its operations beyond China.

Succeeding in India has become all the more urgent since US President Donald Trump launched a trade war last year and announced tariffs on thousands of products manufactured in China, including the gadgetry Foxconn makes for Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and others.

In late August, Trump ratcheted up the rhetoric—ordering American companies to start pulling out of China and citing a national security law as justification. He backed off two days later, but many companies have resigned themselves to an inevitable and costly rethinking of their global supply chains.

“It’s a good business principle not to put all your eggs in a single basket," says Josh Foulger, who runs Foxconn’s India operations.

“We have to find viable and reliable alternatives. Obviously the alternative location has to be competitive. We can’t put a factory in Mexico for manufacturing mobiles. It might have worked 10 years ago, it just won’t work today."

Foulger, 48, grew up in Chennai and attended the University of Texas in Arlington, before returning to India in the mid-aughts to set up manufacturing for Nokia. He joined Foxconn four years ago to help founder Terry Gou establish assembly plants in India, now the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market.

Foxconn’s first India facility started in 2015 in Sri City, a special economic zone where goods can be imported and exported with limited red tape and foreign companies make everything from diapers to train carriages. Foxconn’s plant employs almost 15,000 workers—about 90% of them women—and assembles phones for various manufacturers, including local best-seller Xiaomi. In recent months, workers began testing and assembling Apple’s iPhone X, which will be sold in India first and eventually exported.

A second mobile phone factory opened in 2017 in Sriperumbudur, about two hours by road from the first facility. It employs 12,000 and is partially automated. “By 2023," Foulger says, “both factories will be much larger and we’ll add two more locations."

Foxconn currently ships parts in from China, but hopes one day to manufacture displays and printed circuit boards locally. Foulger is angling to capture a third of the domestic smartphone market and 10% of the global one (up from a 2.5% share today). Eventually, he plans to add other products, including Amazon Echo speakers, to the mix. “Until now, India has made for India," he says. “Soon India will make for the world."

Seated in an office overlooking the hubbub of the Sriperumbudur plant, the strapping, bearded executive ticks off India’s pluses: labour costs that are half that of China’s, a vast pool of workers including talented engineers, a government eager to help.

Earlier this year, Foulger spent an hour laying out his 2030 targets with Gou, who he says told him: “I’ll be 100 and coming to visit your factories."

They have a staunch partner in the current National Democratic Alliance government which is under pressure to bring down the jobless rate. The government’s four-year-old “Make in India" policy seeks to turn the country into a manufacturing power by offering incentives to foreign companies to open factories. “The plan is to expand India’s $25 billion phone manufacturing to $400 billion by 2024," says Pankaj Mahindroo, who heads the Indian Cellular & Electronics Association. “A substantial portion of it will be for the export market.

There’s a long way to go: A mere 700,000 electronics manufacturing jobs have been created since Make in India started, according to Mahindroo’s industry group. Skilled workers such as industrial designers are in short supply, and there isn’t yet much of a supplier network providing crucial components such as batteries, semiconductors and processors. “India is not there yet," says Anshul Gupta, a senior research director at Gartner India. “But things are beginning to fall in place. India can bolster its manufacturing capacity and help the world cut its reliance on China."

Foxconn was integral to China’s transformation into a manufacturing colossus, and Gou has told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that Foxconn could help India do the same. But it took China 30 years to get there. “China’s advantage was its massive labour pool that could produce quite cheaply, and they built on that by investing heavily in logistics and transportation," says Andrew Polk, a founding partner with Trivium China, a Beijing-based research firm. “Even as their labour pool advantage is dissipating, they have invested in processes and systems so they can produce efficiently at scale and get the goods to the market."

Catching up will require the Indian government and private sector to invest heavily in roads, rails, ports and other infrastructure. “When China did it, global supply chains were fragmented and there wasn’t another China," Polk says. “India will not only have to get it right but they have to get it right in a way to better China, and trade wars can only help at the margins."

China also had the benefit of being able to grow without worrying too much about the environmental impact. With concern about climate change growing, “that’s not going to fly these days," he says.

As a two-decade veteran of supply chains in India and elsewhere, Foulger is painfully aware of the challenges. “I can twirl my mustache and say, ‘India can replicate China,’" he says. “The reality is that we have shortcomings." While the state government provided land, water and power connections for the Sriperumbudur facility, Foxconn, Dell, Flextronics and other companies banded together to build the industrial park for their factories. Even so, Foulger still needs to ferry in water for his thousands of workers because Chennai city and nearby areas have a severe water shortage.

Foulger decided early on to recruit mostly women. Female factory workers are commonplace in China, but unusual in India, where rural women are typically consigned to unpaid household or farm work. Women in this region weren’t even allowed to work at night in factories until the local government and the courts intervened four years ago.

It was Foulger’s mother who planted the idea and persuaded him to give women the opportunity. A teacher whose students often hailed from underprivileged backgrounds, she told him girls are curious, hard working and committed but family circumstances prevent them from going to college. Many are forced to start work early or are pushed into marriage and child rearing at a young age.

Foulger says that because most Indian manufacturers prefer to hire men, it was easy to hit his hiring targets. But he’s had to make accommodations. For instance, the air conditioning had to be turned up to 26 degrees because the woman have never experienced it before. A line manager brought up the issue of sanitary hygiene, and Foulger was initially hesitant. What would be the reaction in their villages, he wondered? Still, he listened and had sanitary pad dispensers installed in the washroom. Foulger also has to pay for extra security for his female recruits and provide buses and dormitory accommodation for those who live far from the factories. But he says it’s well worth the extra cost because “women work hard and appreciate the chances given to them."

Over the years, Foxconn has been criticized for grueling working conditions at its China factories. A string of suicides of young migrant workers earlier this decade shocked the world and prompted the company to create a help hotline, boost pay and install safety netting to discourage jumpers. In August, Foxconn fired two executives at a Chinese plant that assembles devices for Amazon after a labour group alleged it slashed wages and flouted laws to help deal with rising US tariffs.

During visits to Foxconn’s two India factories, there was no visible sign of sweat-shop conditions. Workers there mostly complain about the monotony. From the minute they enter the shop floor to the end of an eight-hour shift, work repeats in a relentless cycle. The daily production target has to be met at all costs. Row upon row of women put together each phone part by part, inspecting each handset for visible defects. Shivaparvati Kallivettu, 24, spends her days testing the phone’s audio and examining batteries and SIM card trays, explaining that her main respite comes every morning in the factory canteen when she has breakfast with four close friends.

Most women take the jobs with specific goals in mind, such as sending their kids to better schools or clearing family debt. The pay hoists them over the poverty line. Jayadas gets about₹9,000 monthly ($130, which is about a third of the average Chinese factory wage), free bus rides and two wholesome meals. To help avoid tedium, the company teaches workers at least 10 skills in the testing, packing and assembly sections of the line so they can be rotated to different jobs. Still, many of the workers treat the job as a stop-gap. Recently, 400 women failed to show up for their daily shift. Managers discovered they were all taking the government’s teacher recruitment exam—a job that pays a third of what they make at Foxconn but provides less tangible compensations.

After her shift, Jayadas boards the bus, reaching her home a little before 4pm. She helps with the cooking, then fetches 12 buckets of water from a street tap for the family’s daily needs. Her father’s income repairing radios and DVD players is meager and erratic, and her entire paycheck goes to her parents. “First, the house has to be fixed," Jayadas says gesturing toward the flimsy roof and decrepit walls. “Then, I want to save up for a beautician’s course."

15.2. Vivo lines up Rs 3,500 crore ($480 million) investment in India

IBEF, Aug. 28, 2019

Chinese smart phone maker Vivo is planning to invest around Rs 3,500 crore (US$ 480 million) in India into capacity expansion and other projects in future, taking up the total investment commitment the company made in India to Rs 7,500 crore (US$ 1.04 billion). The company will start operations in an expanded facility next month to add manufacturing capacity of 8.4 million units, with an investment of Rs 400 crore, from the committed investment.

"We have been bullish about India from the beginning. So far, we have invested around Rs 400 crore in our manufacturing facility. We have an annual capacity of 25 million units," said Mr Nipun Marya, director, Brand Strategy, Vivo India. He did not put a timeframe for the investment.

At present, it is running at full capacity in the existing facility and the company has picked up a 169-acre land in Greater Noida a few months back. It has started works from the Rs 7,500 crore (US$ 1.04 billion) investment commitment by investing around Rs 400 crore into a new facility to add 8.4 million more smart phones, which will be operational next month.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

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16.1. Japan joins a band of Asian countries to tap into Indian tourism market

IBEF, Sep. 09, 2019

For many Indians, Japan is all about Samurai, Sumo wrestling and Suzuki and their holidays are all about the Alps or London and Paris. That is what the Japan National Tourism Organisation (JNTO) hopes to change. With a sharply targeted campaign, including a Facebook contest that busts myths about lack of Indian food in Japan or paucity of destinations, it is going all out to win over the Indian traveller.

Japan joins a band of Asian countries, including Taiwan and Korea among others to tap into the Indian wanderlust. "We are actively promoting the destination as there is a huge potential in the Indian market," said Yusuke Yamamoto, JNTO's executive director in India. Last year over 150,000 Indians visited Japan registering a growth of 14.6 per cent over the previous year.

This push comes in the backdrop of Japan's recent tension with South Korea. Nearly 75 per cent of all its overseas visitors come from East Asian countries. But recent events have impacted the flow. Yamamoto hopes increased air connectivity with India and engagement with local travel partners will help. Japan's All Nippon Airways is launching a Tokyo-Chennai service in October while Japan Airlines will begin its Tokyo-Bengaluru flight next summer. "Indian tourists like the cherry blossom season but now we are promoting travel in autumn and winter too," he said.

Tourism authorities of South Korea and Taiwan too stepped up their game. While Korea Tourism Organisation has engaged with bloggers and celebrities to broaden the appeal, Taiwan Tourism Bureau (TTB) is advertising on Mumbai metro coaches. This is part of a promotional effort that includes tie-ups with media companies and the multiplex chain Inox for a television series in Taiwan. Over the past year TTB has increased its annual marketing budget for India by six fold to US$ 1.2 million.

"Seasoned travellers are looking at unconventional destinations like Japan or Taiwan. We work closely with tourism boards and help drive demand to these destinations," said Sharat Dhall, chief operating officer (B2C), Yatra.com.

A recent Bloomberg report said that South East Asian countries have reported a decline in Chinese tourist arrivals. Though smaller in size, the Indian outbound industry is expected to compensate for some of the loss. Even Vietnam Tourism is looking India-ward. Vietjet has announced direct flights from Delhi to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City from December. "India is one of our priority markets," the airline's vice president Nguyen Thanh Son said.

Hong Kong, which has in recent weeks witnessed political turmoil has been active too. The Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) is wooing the corporate traveller. Over 50 hotels are part of its reward programme that includes complimentary meals and experiences such as tai chi lessons and lion dance shows. "Between January and July, we registered a total arrival of 234,368 Indian visitors to Hong Kong which is a growth of 1.7 per cent over the same period last year. During the same period last year we also saw a strong double digit growth in meeting and incentive group travel segment from India," the HKTB said.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

16.2. IndiGo to grow at 30 per cent a year, fly more international routes: CEO

IBEF, Aug. 28, 2019

IndiGo, India's largest airline, operated by InterGlobe Aviation Ltd., expects to see a growth at 30 per cent a year over the next few years, said Mr. Ronojoy Dutta, CEO of the airline, said in sixteenth annual general meeting on Tuesday.

According to Dutta, chief executive of the airline, "We expect that half of that growth will go international, half will go domestic." He is positive about the international operations of the airline.

The company is also looking at wide body aircraft other than Airbus A321 XLR for its international operations.

It presently operates Airbus A320 Neo, Airbus A320 CEO, Airbus A321 aircraft, which connects domestic as well as nearby international destinations.

The airline presently has around 238 aircraft in its fleet comprising of ATRs and narrow body aircraft. The airline is looking at wide body aircraft.

Dutta told shareholders that related-party transactions (RPTs) of Rahul Bhatia-led InterGlobe Enterprises (IGE) with the airline amount to less than 1% of the total annual turnover of the company, currently at around Rs 30,000 crore. According to Dutta, the present value of RPTs (between IGE and IndiGo) is about Rs 156 crore. All RPTs had been approved by the audit committee.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

17.1. India's software industry to touch US$ 80 billion by 2025

IBEF, Aug. 22, 2019

As per Dr Omkar Rai, Director General, Software Technology Park of India (STPI), talking at the fifteenth India Innovation Summit 2019 organised out by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in Bengaluru, the global software product industry currently stands at US$ 511 billion, of which India's share is US$ 8.1 billion however the goal is to take India to US$ 80-90 billion by 2025.

So as to develop as a global power, India needs to move in the direction of turning into an innovation economy. Bengaluru has been generally referred to as one of the fastest developing technology hubs and start-up capitals in the world. Bengaluru is positioned eleventh Best Global Start-up Ecosystem, according to the Start-up Blink Start-up Eco-System Rankings Report 2019, moving from rank 21 in the year 2017. The department is drafting another approach on technology and innovation with the view to address the new age difficulties in regulation for innovation.

India's IT service industry currently stands at US$ 177 billion with exports amounting to US$ 136 billion and the industry employees around 4.1 million people. It is the goal of the Government of India to change the country from an IT administration Industry to a product nation. The National Software Product Policy 2019 which has been affirmed by the Union Cabinet intends to gain by the quality of India's IT industry so as to make the country a software product nation.

STPI is opening 28 Centres of Excellence (COE) in rising technologies at an investment of more than Rs 400 crores (US$ 5.73 million). Five such centres are presently operational and in two years, every one of the 28 will be operational. Emerging technologies, for example, AI, IOT, Medical Electronics, IOT in agriculture, automotive electronics will be the focal point of the COEs.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

17.2. Dr Reddy’s new US drug pipeline is keeping investors’ pulse ticking

Livemint, 11 Sep. 2019, Clifford Alvares

Relaunching some of its older drugs in the US is on the cards. This would provide a fillip to the North American biz
The main reason is the swelling pipeline of drug launches in the US

Shares of Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd have been convalescing. The stock rose 8.5% this past week, contrasting with the Nifty 500 index’s 1.9% gain, as investor hopes of a further US recovery heightened. Note that in end-August, the shares had fallen about 15% from their highs in May. The recent improvement in sentiment, therefore, is welcome.

The main reason is the swelling pipeline of drug launches in the US. In FY19, Dr Reddy’s launched 24 new drug applications in the US, up from 14 in FY18. The management has lined up around 30 new launches for FY20. Besides, relaunching some of its older drugs in the US is on the cards. This would provide the requisite fillip to its North American business.

“DRL has various drugs (Kuvan, Ciprodex, Remodulin), a US$15 mn-35 mn opportunity, which should help its base US sales continue growing," said analysts at Credit Suisse Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd in a note to clients.

This follows the disappointing delay in the launch of two of its high-value products, Copaxone and NuvaRing. In fact, it received a Complete Response Letter from the US Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) for NuvaRing, which means that the product is not yet ready for approval. Further, clarifications regarding the product could take over a year.

Despite the setback, though, analysts said some of the company’s other launches may counter the delay as they, too, seem to have substantial revenue potential. “The overall US pipeline for DRL is still very strong (104 pending ANDAs). Even without Copaxone and NuvaRing, DRL could hit sales of $1 billion by FY22 in the US, vs. US$865 mn in FY19," said the Credit Suisse report.

Besides, this will reduce its dependence on a few drugs in the US market, said analysts. “In addition, from the perspective of future launches, we believe that the consensus view of Dr Reddy’s growth depending on just a few products is unjustified," said analysts at Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd in a note to clients.

Note, though, that there has been a price erosion in the US generics market in most segments in FY19. Hence, even as some of the new launches have limited competition, revenue potential could be at risk if price erosion is significant.

Note further that any delay in launches or inspection by US FDA must be tracked.

18.1. Opinion | Educational reforms require teachers to play a central role

Livemint, 28 Aug. 2019, Anurag Behar

The principle that education needs efficient teachers must manifest itself in every policy action

The late evening drizzle did not dampen the spirit of the teachers. There were 45 of them, from public (government) schools around Chamba in Uttarakhand, gathered for a dialogue on the draft National Education Policy 2019 (NEP) at our Teacher Learning Centre. At 7pm, no one seemed in a mood to end the session, having started at 5, though many of them had a long ride ahead back home along the winding mountain roads.

During those two hours, the group discussed the NEP, often expressing how its aspects were resonant with their aspirations and hopes. Their worry was how much of it will get implemented. Most of them did mention that given the size and expansive nature of the NEP document, they had read only those topics that were of interest to them. Their one peeve seemed to be that with the introduction of breakfast at school for all students, in addition to the currently available “midday meal", they may have to spend more time supervising the kitchen—though they did acknowledge that breakfast was much needed for their students.

Over the past two and a half months, while the NEP has been up for public comment, I have met many groups of public-school teachers across India. Most reactions have been very similar to the group at Chamba. A few peeves, but an overall sense of satisfaction with the NEP. Why are public school teachers reacting in this way?

The answer is quite straight forward. The NEP gives the teacher the importance that she or he deserves in education. One key underlying principle of the policy is that education is a social-human process and, therefore, good education requires high-capacity, engaged teachers. This principle manifests itself in specific policy actions on every front; let me list a few of these.

First, how can we expect teachers to remain engaged and motivated if the most basic physical working conditions are inadequate to appalling? If they don’t have access to functioning toilets and running water, electricity supply is disrupted, and not even a small working space to themselves? If we respect the profession of teaching, then it will first reflect in the education system providing them these basic things.

Second, their struggle to get even the most rudimentary of learning resources and material must be put to a stop. All teachers will have adequate learning material to transact the curriculum. This ranges from books and experimental kits to pencils and paper.

Third, teachers must not be given other tasks. They must be allowed to focus on their teaching and on their students. Teachers will not be pulled out for other kinds of work such as surveys, distribution of public services, local elections, etc. Repetitious data demands on the teacher from the system will be eliminated by intelligent use of information technology.

Fourth, an adequate number of teachers will be appointed. Today, an estimated 2 million teaching jobs are vacant across the country, while we altogether have 9 million teachers. That’s a large deficit. Teachers are handling more students than they can, across multiple grades, and often teaching subjects that they have themselves not studied. This will be addressed immediately.

Fifth, teachers must not face discriminatory service conditions. Lakhs of “para-teachers" across the country perform the same role as other teachers in their schools, but get paid half to one-fourth. All such cadres of teachers will be regularized—given service conditions and compensation equivalent to other teachers, after going through the relevant qualifications where required. Also, compensation and service conditions will be equalized across primary to high school.

Sixth, teachers will be provided support for professional development and growth. This will be based on their own needs and not driven by some centralized, impersonal system. This will entail providing sustained high-quality education and opportunities for peer learning. It will also mean objective assessment of their work and recognition for good work, enabled by development-oriented supervision. This in turn will be enabled by appropriate capacity development of school leaders and other leaders of the education system.

Seventh, the culture of the education system—including in schools—will be based on trust, and will empower and enable teachers. It will foster creativity and initiative, and curricular innovation. Teachers will be treated as valued professionals, not as the bottom-most rung in the vast government hierarchy. This will reflect in the daily behaviour of the education system’s leaders.

Eighth, the teacher preparation system (B. Ed), which has about 18,000 teacher education institutions (TEI), will be overhauled to eliminate rampant corruption and dysfunction; TEIs that are nothing more than “degree-selling-shops" will be shut down. The curricula will be re-imagined—appropriate to the complex and critical role that teachers play, and all TEIs will have high-quality teaching-learning.

All this is music to the ear of teachers, as it should be. And, therefore, the natural question is whether all this will get implemented. My view on that matter is the subject for another column.

Anurag Behar is CEO of Azim Premji Foundation and also leads sustainability initiatives for Wipro Ltd

18.2. Opinion | The popularity and regulation of competitive eSports

Livemint, 14 Aug. 2019, Rahul Matthan

The industry has more in common with entertainment than sport and India is an ideal market

When you think of an elite athlete, the image least likely to leap into your mind is that of a teenager playing video games in front of a computer. And yet, when 16-year-old Kyle “Bugha" Giersdorf won the finals of the Fortnite World Cup at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing Meadows, New York, it was hard to think of what we were witnessing as anything other than a massive global sporting event.

Perhaps it was the prize money of $3 million, more than has ever been paid to the individual winner of any video game tournament (and in absolute terms, just $800,000 less than what the winners of this year’s US Open singles finals will take home when they play later this month in the very same stadium). Or perhaps it had something to do with the size and global nature of the audience—23,771 watching in the stadium and millions more streaming it live around the globe through Twitch and YouTube.

For those who have never heard of it, Fortnite is a massively multiplayer video game in which 100 contestants at a time fight on a virtual island in a setting strangely reminiscent of a Hunger Games tournament. They fight with each other, Battle Royale style, until there is just one player left standing. It is not dissimilar to other games based on a similar format—PUBG and Counter-Strike, for instance—but because its characters are cartoonish, parents seem to have less of an objection to its content. Fortnite has an estimated 250 million players around the world, making it the most popular addition to the pantheon of electronic sports (eSports).

Gaming is huge today in a way that it has never been before. In 2017, viewers logged a total of 355 billion minutes on Twitch. Of the 2.2 billion gamers on the planet, 380 million were eSports viewers—of whom 165 million were regular viewers. It has become such a serious spectator event that the 6th Olympic Summit in Lausanne seriously considered granting competitive eSports the status of a sporting activity, based on, among others, such considerations as how intensively players trained for it.

Despite its rapid growth in recent years, eSports still lacks a central governing organization. This has given rise to several challenges that could have serious consequences on the industry if not addressed early on. For instance, there is a need to address issues around the protection of players from commercial exploitation. The average age of contestants at the Fortnite World Cup was 16, with the youngest finalist no more than 13. While minors enjoy special protection under the law in most jurisdictions, they have limited autonomy when it comes to deciding which eSport franchise to sign up with. In most instances, parents and legal guardians, who are supposed to decide for them, have no idea what eSports is about. Despite their best intentions, they may not be the right people to take decisions in their children’s best interests.

As new as it is, the gaming industry is already rife with betting and match-fixing. Gamers use nicknames and avatars while playing, making it next to impossible to accurately identify each gamer. In the Fortnite World Cup, 196 players were disqualified for illegally playing in the qualifiers for different regions but it is possible that several others escaped detection. With players located in different countries (with divergent laws and standards on the legality of different types of gaming), it will be virtually impossible to determine what law should apply and which court is competent to adjudicate.

Once eSports is elevated to the level of a traditional sport, we will have to regulate the use of performance-enhancing drugs in gaming tournaments. When that happens, it will be important to recognize how different this activity is and that the type of performance that is being chemically enhanced is different from everything that doping agencies are used to dealing with in the context of more physical sports. That said, the likelihood of substance abuse is as high and deserves to be appropriately regulated in the interests of the players and the sport at large.

Today, none of the gamers participating in elite eSports tournaments around the world are from India. As a result, one might question the timing of this entire article as being a tad premature. Given the explosion of mobile data and smartphones over the last three years, I have no doubt that it is only a matter of time before Indian gamers hit the eSports big league.

The industry has more in common with entertainment than sport and given that revenues are driven much more through viewership rather than active participation, India is an ideal market. We are voracious consumers of entertainment and we enjoy a good battle as much as anyone else—be it cricket or the latest flavour of reality TV. I have no doubt eSports will flourish in the subcontinent.

That being the case, we’d do well to be prepared to regulate this space appropriately. We need to understand the differences between eSports and traditional sport, appropriately tuning our regulations to account for that. It would not do for us to force-fit our new eSports regulations into one of the pigeonholes we have already created to regulate traditional sports. Instead, we need to appropriately address issues unique to the industry.

While no one really thinks eSports will de-throne cricket in this country, who knows?

Rahul Matthan is a partner at Trilegal and author of ‘Privacy 3.0: Unlocking Our Data Driven Future’

19.1. Aster Healthcare to invest Rs 1,000 crore in five new hospitals (2,000 beds)

IBEF, Aug. 21, 2019

Aster DM Healthcare, the Kochi-based, is one of the few publicly traded hospitals chains in the country. The company plans to increase over 2,000 beds at an investment of over Rs 1,000 crore in the upcoming next two to three years in five new places outside Kerala.

The hospital chain, which began as a drug distributor in 1987 in Dubai, plans to add one more facility each in Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai and two more in Andhra.

The chain presently manages six hospitals in the country with 4,500 beds, of which 3,000 beds are in Kerala and the rest in three other states. It additionally operates 1,000 beds within six hospitals in the Gulf which is its cash-cow with over 70 per cent of the revenue flow, covering all GCC countries.

Aster by now runs two facilities with 500 beds in Bengaluru, one each in Vijayawada and Gutur in Andhra and a 300-bed facility in Kohlapur in southern Maharashtra.

Of about 38 per cent that are owned by Dr Moopen and his family, who is also founder and chairman of the group. Aster counts in PE majors Olympus Capital which owns around 23 per cent and True North which had held 10.4 per cent but had sold 7 per cent in June as its investors.

According to Dr Moopen, the 500-beds Chennai facility will be effective over the next 30 months and the addition of the Rs 1,000 crore capex plan does not incorporate the 500-beds upcoming facility in the Kerala capital Thiruvananthapuram.

Aster is the largest facility in Kochi with 670 beds and was in news recently after it successfully treated a youth for the deadly Nipah virus. The patient was wheeled in early June with the symptoms of the deadly virus, which had taken 18 lives last year in state. After being treated for 53 days, the patient went home on July 23 and credit goes to this hospital. The state has not reported any other Nipah case this year.

According to Dr Harish Pillai, chief executive at Aster India, the company is keen for expansion so it plans to enter market in Mumbai and tap the growing heath tourism, but it still lack a ready infrastructure and the extremely high rentals are a roadblock for them.

Bu for now they are focused on entering Kolkata and Pune.

The Aster DM Group, which runs 25 hospitals, 115 clinics and over 231 pharmacies in nine countries, is also preparing to launch a large clinical lab chain in Bengaluru as a new vertical. As per Moopen, they have already hired the top management and will start operations soon.

The recommended lab will compete with SRL Ranbaxy, Dr Pathlabs, and Way2health.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

19.2. Sun Pharma to make upfront payment worth Rs 240 crore to CSIR-IICT Hyderabad for new drug compounds

IBEF, Aug. 16, 2019

India’s largest drug producer, Sun Pharma entered into a global licensing agreement with Hyderabad based CSIR Indian Institute of Chemical Technology. This patent is related to certain therapy areas with multiple indications. This has come at an upfront payment of Rs 240 crore (US$ 33.6 million) by the Sun Pharma to the institute and according to the terms of the agreement CSIR, Hyderabad will also be given royalties on net sales from the commercialization of these products.

This comes as the global enhancement by the Sun Pharma in speciality pipeline and will help to broader the strategies by developing new drugs. CSIR-IICT is famous for its enriched research and this collaboration will help Sun Pharma to address the unmet needs of patients globally.

According to Sun pharma, this agreement will enhance its presence in pre-clinical candidates to Sun Pharma’s global specialty pipeline. R&D spend was reduced in the quarter end June 2019. Its R&D investments for first quarter of 2020 was Rs. 422 crores (US$ 58.65 million) compared to Rs 500 crores (US$ 69 million) for first quarter of FY19.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

20.1. India introduces flexible e-tourist visa with lower fee for lean season

IBEF, Aug. 21, 2019

India introduced a flexible e-tourist visa regime based on tourist footfall, with higher fee for July to March peak season and a considerably lower fee if the visit to the country falls during April to June lean period.

Speaking at the inauguration of a meeting with state government representatives on tourism on Tuesday, Minister Mr Prahlad Patel said the move was to encourage tourists to visit India.

"India to offer 30-day e-tourist visa with US$10 fee during lean period April to June and US$ 25 fee during peak tourism period from July to March," he said.

A new five-year e-tourist visa will be introduced with $80 fee and a one-year e-tourist visa with US$ 40 fee, Patel said.

"For Japan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, lean period visa fees are US$ 10 and for e-visa of 30 days, 1 year and 5 years is US$ 25," he said.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

20.2. India’s Chandrayaan-2 is phenomenally exciting: Lewis Dartnell

Livemint, 16 Aug. 2019, Nitin Sreedhar

Astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell speaks to Lounge about India’s second lunar mission and looking for life on Jupiter’s moon
The London-based author and research scientist believes the very tools humans designed to extract resources from the Earth are now damaging the planet

Over the past 20 years, Earth Overshoot Day—which marks the date by which human population exhausts nature’s budget for every year—has moved up three months to 29 July, the earliest ever, according to the international research and sustainability organization Global Footprint Network. As an official statement explains, this means that humanity is “currently using nature 1.75 times faster than our planet’s ecosystems can regenerate, equivalent to 1.75 Earths."

These continued massive hits on the planet’s future regenerative capacity have made the search for life on other planets and solar systems all the more vital in recent years. Lewis Dartnell, professor of science communication at the University of Westminster, researches in the field of astrobiology—which studies the origins, evolution, and future of life in the universe.

The London-based author and research scientist, who was recently in India as part of British Council’s GREAT Talks series, believes the very tools humans designed to extract resources from the Earth are now damaging the planet. The numbers back it up: “the Global Footprint Network says carbon emissions from burning fossil fuel alone comprise 60% of humanity’s ecological footprint". Dartnell explains over the phone, “We are extracting our natural resources too quickly and they are not being replenished. We are not recycling enough," explains Dartnell.

The astrobiologist talks about the search for life beyond the moon and Mars, how small, individual decisions could have a big say in the Earth’s future, and the significance of India’s ‘Chandrayaan-2’ mission for further space exploration. Edited excerpts:

How significant is astrobiology as a field of science?

Astrobiology is very interdisciplinary. It involves biology as well as chemistry, geology, earth sciences and planetary sciences. There are many different opportunities for science to get involved in this search for life beyond the earth. I think the discoveries that it promises, or is trying to accomplish, can be deeply profound. If you find life on Mars, for example, that would be a hugely significant scientific discovery, one of the most important discoveries in human history.

How interesting is ‘Chandrayaan-2’ for you, given that it will be conducting experiments near the moon’s south polar region?

India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission is phenomenally exciting. No one has landed near the south pole or the lunar pole, so that will be a first-ever that India achieves. So, it’s technologically very exciting as a mission as we explore space, but also scientifically it promises very exciting results because it will be looking for water ice in permanently shadowed, cold craters by the south pole. That ice will be very important in supporting human missions to the south pole and supporting a moon base with astronauts. They will be able to melt that lunar water (ice) and drink it, and also split the H2O to get oxygen, which they can then breathe.

After the moon and Mars, what do you think is the next big frontier in not only the search for extra-terrestrial life, but for habitable planets beyond earth?

Within astrobiology we are very interested in Mars as our next-door neighbour planet, but also other places in the solar system. So, Europa is one of the moons of Jupiter and we think Europa also offers a habitable environment and conditions suitable for life.... So that is one of the targets in the solar system that we are keen to look at, while with our robots, space probes and using our telescopes, we are hoping to discover more and more earth-like planets in our galaxy. Astrobiology has come a long way. In the last 15-20 years, we have made some very important discoveries about life on earth. There’s a lot still which we are trying to explore now.

Your latest book ‘Origins: How The Earth Made Us’ looks at our planet’s geological history. How interesting a case study is the Indian subcontinent, given its varied mineral deposits and rich fossil record, in learning more about the evolution of the Earth?

With Origins, the one chapter at the beginning is about human evolution, but 90% of the book is about history and how the Earth has influenced the development of our civilization and our society.... I talk a lot about India in Origins. I talk about how India created the Himalayas by contact or collision of India moving north to Eurasia and colliding.... The Himalayas have been hugely influential in determining the climate of the entire earth over the last few tens of billions of years. There’s a chapter about the monsoon winds—across the whole of the Indian Ocean and how that determined a great deal of trade and communication, exchange of ideas across Eurasia by sailing ships—and about how the wind created by fundamental processes on the Earth have enabled humans to move around the planet and exchange ideas, knowledge and technology with each other. I also talk about the Deccan Traps and how a huge volcanic province that erupted, in a particular chapter (in the book) on earth’s history.

A recent Global Footprint Network report says that by July-end, mankind had already used up its allowance of natural resources for 2019? What is your reaction to that?

I am familiar with those studies. In essence, the story of humanity is a story of us getting better and better at making tools and extracting what we need to support ourselves from the local environment. That has progressed through hundreds and thousands of years of our history. But we are now creating a problem for ourselves and for the entire planet because our tools and our technology have become too powerful and influential. Our population has grown to cover the whole world... It’s not just a problem with climate change and global warming but many different problems that arrive, I also believe, from humans exerting too much influence on the planet with technology.

How vital is it for every individual to calculate their ecological footprint?

We can’t, as individuals, be lazy and then rest on our laurels waiting for national governments to start making big policy decisions about recycling or using more renewable energy, or controlling pollution or overuse of natural resources. We have to make individual decisions, each of us, about our own lifestyle because a lot of little contributions all add up very quickly. Each of us have the responsibility to look at our own lifestyle and try to be more sufficient with the energy, the resources we use and the impact we have on the planet in terms of how often we fly or where our food comes from.

INDIA AND THE WORLD

21.1. Panasonic may set up li-ion battery module assembly unit in India

IBEF, Aug. 16, 2019

Japan's Panasonic Corp. is investigating chances to set up an office for collecting lithium-particle (li-particle) battery modules in India

With India preparing its guide for progress to electric versatility, leading global producers of lithium-ion batteries are investigating chances to initially fabricate assembly units, even as they in the end plan huge scale manufacturing of lithium-ion cells in the country.

Almost all electric vehicles (EVs) in India keep running on imported batteries, generally from China. At present, a lithium-ion battery represents 40 per cent of the total cost of an EV. Lithium likewise has different uses, for example, in cell phone batteries and solar panels.

As EVs gain prominence in the domestic market, multinational companies in the battery manufacturing space first need to test the potential of the Indian market by gathering modules or battery packs.

Panasonic will initially assemble batteries for two-and three-wheelers as the Union government needs to push for a move towards electrification in these two segments. The Japanese organization will likewise invest into setting up charging stations and telematics platform for electric three-wheelers.

Given the changing global energy landscape, India has set up a National Mission on Transformative Mobility and Battery Storage. An inter-ministerial steering panel has additionally been set up which is led by NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

21.2. Iran suggests to sign preferential tariff agreement with India

IBEF, Aug. 29, 2019

Iran will soon sign a preferential tariff agreement with India that will slash tariffs on a large number of traded goods, Iranian ambassador to India, Ali Chegeni said on Wednesday.

Many important items will be made zero duty as part of the deal, with a commitment to reduce tariffs on many others, he said, addressing Indian investors at the PHD Chamber of Commerce.

Till now, four rounds of negotiations have been completed and the last one was held in March in Tehran where both countries discussed a draft text of the pact. Sources said the next round will soon be held in New Delhi.

Along with the trade deal, a bilateral investment protection agreement and a double taxation avoidance agreement are also in the works and Iran is confident of signing off on all three deals by end-2019, diplomatic sources said.

Betting on trade

Bilateral trade stood at US$ 17 billion in 2018-19 with exports from India at only US$ 3.5 billion.

Apart from petroleum, major imports from Iran, include fertilisers and chemicals, while exports include cereals, tea, coffee, spices and organic chemicals.

India is the 5th largest source of imports for Iran, while being the 6th largest destination of exports. "While the majority of outbound trade from Iran continues to be crude oil and related items, non-oil exports from Iran to India rose by 18 per cent in 2018, as compared to the year before," Economic Counsellor in the Iranian Embassy Asghar Omidi said.

While Indian exports of man-made textiles are slowly increasing, Indian companies have been unable to use market access in pharmaceuticals, according to the Federation of Indian Exports Organizations.

Tehran also remains hopeful of initiating a rupee trade mechanism with India, and later expanding it to include Russia, commerce department officials said. New Delhi had also been hopeful of using the domestic currency to pay for Iranian crude.

While experts and traders have suggested the mechanism as the best possible way to cut India's dollar exposure as well as shore up the value of the rupee, which has continued to plummet, the recent sanctions have also put off optimism from India.

Investment tangle

Tehran continues to command the titles of the 2nd highest proven reserves of natural gas and 4th largest crude producer globally.

While Indian businesses are keen to capitalise on Iran’s 82-million market, the economic sanctions imposed by the United States that are currently in place have dampened the mood.

As a result, Iran has instead channelized Indian interest in trade and investment into the Chabahar port, which remains outside the purview of sanctions.

"The more than 600-km long railway between Chabahar port and the major city of Zahedan will open by early-2021," Chegeni said.

Overall, Iran maintains the sanctions to be unilateral and have been assured by India that New Delhi only recognises international sanctions and not those of a single country.

Iran has also made a bid to capture Indian investments in its infrastructure expansion programme spread across rail, road and port development.

It has also called for investments in food processing and renewable energy, particularly in solar and wind energy.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

22.1. Toni Morrison (1931-2019): Making blackness visible

Livemint, 16 Aug. 2019, Somak Ghoshal

Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, who passed away recently, was a pioneer of black writing in the US
Her powerful body of work touched the lives of people beyond her community and in countries far away from hers

In 1998, when I enrolled to study English literature as an undergraduate student at a college in Kolkata, I was a naive reading enthusiast, star-struck by Arundhati Roy, whose Booker-winning debut novel had appeared a year ago, and singularly unprepared to face the drudgery of the syllabus that was then taught by institutions under the University of Calcutta.

Although the curriculum wasn’t uniformly dull, it was deadening in its overwhelming focus on white male writers from Britain. The only concession to Indian writing in English was R.K. Narayan; we hadn’t ventured into the brave new world of translation studies yet. I don’t recall a more cheerless chore in my intellectual life than having to write thoughtful essays on The Guide. I could hum every tune from the movie adaptation of the novel—starring Dev Anand and Waheeda Rahman—in my sleep but that talent wouldn’t get me anywhere with the examiners.

In search of worthy diversions, and to expand my horizons beyond the confines of early 20th century British literature, I began to hang out amongst the shelves of the American Centre library in Kolkata. And it was there, among rows of neatly-bound books, that I first encountered Toni Morrison, who died on 5 August.

Youth is easily susceptible to the spell of genius. In one’s vulnerable 20s, when the mind is hungry for novelty, a stylist like Morrison could punch one in the gut, leave one reeling from the shock of discovery. I remember reading, in a breathless daze over a month, every book of hers published until then, even pushing my friends towards them. But it was only after her death last week that I realized the extent to which her impact on my life had remained undiminished even after two long, eventful decades.

In the intervening years, I did not manage to keep up with Morrison’s later novels, but I don’t think I had read many books that surpassed the avant-garde brilliance of Beloved (1987), the novel which propelled her to international fame, especially after a motion picture adaptation featuring TV show host Oprah Winfrey was released in 1998. Just as fresh in my mind is the incantatory prose of Song Of Solomon (1977), which led me, first, to the magic of the Old Testament, and then into the perfidious heart of the human condition.

Beloved was my first brush with Morrison’s writing, though the best starting point for new readers of hers may be The Bluest Eye, her first novel, which appeared in 1970. At the time, she was working as an editor with Random House (a job she kept for nearly 20 years), bringing up two sons as a single mother, and waking up at the crack of dawn every day to write. The Bluest Eye was inspired by a girl Morrison knew in school, while growing up in Lorain, Ohio, who desperately wanted to have blue eyes. Indian readers familiar with centuries of oppressive standards of feminine beauty—fair skin, in our case, over everything else—will understand Pecola Breedlove’s tragic desire to look like her idol Shirley Temple. The histories of segregation and untouchability are entwined in ways we don’t often reckon with.

Throughout her career, Morrison wrote about black lives with fierce pride, more so after the election of Donald Trump as the US president in 2016. She deplored the title of Ralph Ellison’s classic novel, Invisible Man. Invisible to whom? she had once retorted in an interview. The insidious trail of racism, which connects the centuries-old slave trade with institutional discrimination against blacks in the US even today, runs through her books.

As she wrote in “Home" in her final collection of essays (Mouth Full Of Blood): “The overweening, defining event of the modern world is the mass movement of raced populations, beginning with the largest forced transfer of people in the history of the world: slavery." This process, articulated by her with such conviction, continues to play out across the globe. The exodus of the disenfranchised and the marginalized is the new normal.

Apart from her unfailing sense of social and political justice and strident championing of women’s rights, Morrison brought to her writing the inimitable stamp of craft. Beloved is perhaps her most stylistically daring novel. Narrated by the ghost of an infant black girl, who is killed by her mother to protect her from a life of slavery, the story is drawn from a real-life incident Morrison chanced upon while researching The Black Book(1974). A first-of-its-kind anthology, the latter put together images and texts related to the black experience in the US, linking it to the nefarious activities of European slave traders and the migration of populations from Africa to the Americas as bonded labourers. The book’s rich visual documentation included images of public lynching of black people, watched by casual groups of white people, in broad daylight. The chronicles of these spectacles have a chilling resonance in India, where incidents of mob lynching persist into the 21st century, and are now circulated and viewed on electronic screens.

In Morrison’s hand, horrific slices of history—such as a mother being forced to kill her baby—turned into contemporary epics, capturing realities that remain familiar to people living in inhuman poverty in many parts of Asia and Africa.

In Sula (1973), the eponymous black heroine leaves her hometown in Ohio, opposing the conventions of her social and economic class. When she returns home after years, she brings in her wake her indomitable spirit of rebellion. And like all such women in most parts of the world even today, Sula is greeted with censure and contempt from her neighbours for daring to break away from the fetters she was born with.

In the years since I first read Morrison, African-American literature has established its place in university curricula across India. The idea that literature can act as a tool to address, archive and expiate the wrongs meted out to the historically exploited has segued into a growing interest in Dalit writing in English and translations. With a legacy like Morrison’s hovering over us—of a writerly life that was devoted not only to making blackness visible but also to making it a seamless part of human history—the duty of writers, readers, publishers and scholars is now clearer than ever.

Somak Ghoshal is books editor, Mint.

22.2. Governors, Chief Ministers, State Ministers Launch Poshan Maah in Different States

IBEF, Sep. 05, 2019

Under POSHAN Abhiyaan, this September is being celebrated as the Poshan Maah across country to address the malnutritional challenges. Rastriya Poshan Maah or National Nutrition Month is being launched across the country. With Women & Child Development as the nodal Department, a month-long activities focussing on antenatal care, anaemia, growth monitoring, girls' education, diet, right age of marriage, hygiene and sanitation, eat healthy as themes are being showcased in form of food melas, rallies, school level campaigns, anaemia test camps, recipe demonstration, radio & TV talk shows and seminars all across country.

The month-long intensive event plans to bring about convergence amongst various ministries/departments to rally people’s opinion and participation to reduce and finally eliminate malnutrition from the country. Poshan Maah aims at making people aware of the importance of nutrition and giving individual access to government services to support supplement nutrition for their children and pregnant women/lactating mothers.

This year Poshan Maah focuses on five critical components - 'First 1000 days of the Child, Anaemia, Diarrhoea, Hand Wash & Sanitation and Poshtik Aahar (wholesome meal with diet diversity)', called 'Paanch Sutras'.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

23.1. The Chinese conundrum facing Indian policymakers

Livemint, 20 Aug. 2019, Sneha Alexander

In the midst of an intensifying trade war between the two global economic giants, India’s exports to China have grown faster than exports to the US

Peeved by China’s attempts to drag the Kashmir issue to the United Nations Security Council, a traders' guild in India has issued a call to boycott Chinese goods and services and to raise tariff walls on them. This is not the first time such calls have been made, and this is unlikely to be the last.

However, there are several reasons why India should be cautious about taking drastic steps on the trade front that may end up being counter-productive for the Indian economy. The data on recent trade patterns show that the trade conflict between the US and China has actually helped India gain a bigger toehold in the Chinese market. Although exports to the US haven’t gone up much, exports to China have ballooned over the past year, as a 29 July SBI research report pointed out.

Although value of Indian exports to China are still much lower than that of exports to the US, the importance of China as an export market has gone up over the past few years. As the trade war intensifies and China boosts its domestic consumption to rebalance its economy, this market would continue to be an important one for Indian producers.

Part of the increase in exports to China could be linked to the newly erected tariff barriers. In sectors where China imposed tariffs on US goods and services in the past fiscal year such as live animals and animal products, vegetable products, and plastic and rubber, Indian exports to China grew by 335%, 134%, and 93.7% respectively in 2018-19 compared to 2017-18 although it is worth noting that in sectors such as base metals which also saw the imposition of retaliatory tariffs, Indian exports fell. In sectors where such tariff walls have not been raised such as gems and jewellery and footwear, Indian exports either fell or grew at a relatively slower pace.

Although India’s share in Chinese imports is rising, it still remains small, accounting for less than 1% of Chinese imports in 2018, the latest year for which such data is available from UNCTAD. India’s share in American imports was slightly higher at 2.1% for the same year.

Given that the US accounts for a large share of Indian exports in labour-intensive manufacturing (22%) goods, the failure to expand in the US has meant that India’s overall share in global labour-intensive manufacturing exports has not moved up. As countries such as Bangladesh and Vietnam have moved in to occupy the markets China has vacated, India’s share in such exports saw a small dip in fiscal 2018. This is despite an increase in exports of such goods to China, which still accounts for only a small share (3.6%) of India’s labour-intensive manufacturing exports.

The classification of labour-intensive industries here is based on UNCTAD’s classification of labour-intensive and resource-intensive imports, and includes such industries as textiles, footwear, and leather.

This also denotes an opportunity for India to raise both growth and employment over the long run, albeit one that it has consistently missed.

Will the Chinese market be more lucrative for such exports in the coming years as India increasingly becomes the target of protectionism from advanced economies including the US? We shall have to wait and see how that plays out but as an earlier Plain Facts column had highlighted, fellow emerging economies have been less unkind to India compared to the advanced economies when it comes to protectionist measures.

This is not to suggest that India should abandon hope of capturing a greater pie in advanced markets. However, India’s recent trade performance does indicate that markets such as China could offer additional opportunities as the trade war intensifies even though India’s trade deficit with China still remains large at $53.6 billion in fiscal 2019 (compared to $63.1 billion in fiscal 2018).

This also suggests that India should be cautious in endorsing the US-sponsored clampdown on Chinese tech firms such as Huawei as part of its overall trade-cum-tech warfare against the emerging superpower in the neighbourhood.

What complicates matters further for India is that several Indian internet firms which have mounted a challenge to the dominance of American tech companies in India’s internet economy are being backed by Chinese firms (e.g. Ola, backed by Chinese ride-sharing firm Didi, which is taking on Uber, and Alibaba-backed BigBasket which is battling Amazon).

Moreover, much of manufacturing in India is dependent on China for capital goods and industrial supplies, as a previous Plain Facts column had pointed out.

To be sure, India must also keep a close eye on currency movements which can change the cost-benefit matrix for the economy significantly. For instance, if the yuan continues to depreciate, the rupee might need to fall in tandem if Indian exports are to remain competitive vis-a-vis Chinese goods and services in both Chinese and global markets.

As the two largest global economies intensify their trade and geostrategic conflict and abandon the WTO rulebook, the road ahead won’t be easy for countries such as India. But the conflict also opens up new opportunities for India.

To survive and thrive in this brave new world, India must avoid policy adventurism and think through the costs and benefits for the economy as it frames new rules of engagement with its trade partners.

23.2. India-France to jointly build, run space-based ship tracking system

IBEF, Aug. 26, 2019

The world's first space-based Automatic Identification System (AIS) to monitor merchant ships on real-time basis will be built and operated mutually by India and France, the French space agency (Centre national d'études spatiales or the National Centre for Space Studies — CNES) said.

CNES President Dr. Jean-Yves Le Gall and Dr. K Sivan, Chairman, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), signed an agreement recently to start developing and production of a constellation of satellites on which studies have been in progress for over a year.

The settlement between the two space agencies was signed during Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi's visit to France.

Region critical to the deliberate interests of India and France, the several crucial Sea Lanes of Communications pass through the Indian Ocean.

As CNES said in an announcement that, the constellation carrying telecommunication (AIS), radar and optical remote-detecting instruments will be equipped for monitoring ships in the Indian Ocean.

By benefiting a wide scope of French economic interests, the system will cover a wide belt over the globe.

The International Maritime Organization's International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) requires AIS to be fitted on board all boats of 300 gross tonnage and upwards connected on international voyages, cargo ships of 500 gross tonnage and upwards not locked on international voyages and all passenger ships independent of the size.

Satellite based, AIS is intended to give data about a ship to different vesels and to coastal authorities.

Long-Range Identification and Tracking system (LRIT), can anticipate the position of a ship every six hours or at least four times each day while the terrestrial based AIS has an inclusion scope of 40 nautical miles.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

24.1. Russia plans to set up more than 20 nuclear power units in India in next 20 years

IBEF, Sep. 05, 2019

Russia on Wednesday said that it is planning to set up more than 20 nuclear power units in India in the next 20 years.

Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi, who arrived in Russia's Far Eastern city of Vladivostok earlier today, gave a joint statement at the 20th Annual Summit between the two countries, along with Russian President Mr Vladimir Putin by side.

The two sides exchanged numerous agreements, including military and technical cooperation, energy and science, LNG Business and LNG supplies, and natural gas, in the presence of the two leaders.

"I'm honoured to be the first-ever Indian Prime Minister to be coming to Vladivostok. I thank my friend, President Putin for inviting me here. I remember Annual Summit of 2001, first one held in Russia when he was President and I had come with former Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee's delegation as Gujarat Chief Minister," the Prime Minister said in the joint statement.

The leaders, on the occasion, noted that the friendship between India and Russia is not restricted to their respective capital cities. "We have put people at the core of this relationship," the Prime Minister added.

Meanwhile, Putin, on his part, said that both countries share similar perspectives on certain aspects of international issues. The President also recalled that he met Prime Minister Modi on the sidelines of the G20 summit recently held in Osaka, Japan, and the Shanghai Cooperation Council (SCO) in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek.

"Russia and India today signed MoUs in various sectors, including civil nuclear and LNG. Regarding the Kundakulam nuclear power plant, the first and second units are working. The third and fourth are under construction. In addition, we have also decided to set up more than 20 Russian-designed nuclear units in India in the next 20 years," Putin said.

"I am also looking forward to meeting the Indian Prime Minister at the 11th BRICS Summit that is scheduled to be held in Brasilia, Brazil," he added.

Meanwhile, a proposal was also made between India and Russia to have a full-fledged maritime route that serves as a link between Chennai and Vladivostok.

"We (India and Russia) both are against outside influence in the internal matters of any nation," Modi stressed in an apparent reference to Pakistan's diabolic attempts of internationalizing the Kashmir issue.

The Prime Minister further said that Moscow's decision to confer him with the highest civilian award of the country--the Order of the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-- is a matter of honor for him as well as the people of India.

Upon his arrival, Modi received a Guard of Honour at the Vladivostok International Airport.

Following, he met the Russian President and paid a visit to the 'Zvezda' Shipbuilding Complex and spent "quality time" together onboard a ship as part of a special gesture to further cement cooperation with "a valued friend", according to the Prime Minister's Office.

Modi along with Putin will be addressing the 5th Eastern Economic Forum, wherein the former would be batting for more investment and business ventures.

In his departure statement ahead of his visit to Russia, Modi had said that strong bilateral partnership is complemented by a desire to promote a multi-polar world.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

24.2. Amazon's bet on AI brings it big business and serious competition in India

IBEF, Sep. 11, 2019

In a battle to dominate cloud computing services, Amazon Internet Services, which provides Amazon Web Services' (AWS) technology in India, is taking on rivals Google and Microsoft by wooing customers with its artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies. These customers range from top start-ups like bike sharing firm Yulu, hotel network OYO and tea retailer chain Point, to large conglomerates such as Aditya Birla and Tata Motors. Amazon is helping them drive cost savings, accelerate innovation, speed up time-to-market and expand their geographic reach.

"We have hundreds of thousands of customers now in India using AWS to scale up. Whether you are a start-up or a large enterprise, we have programmes to support you," says Madhusudan Shekar, head of digital innovation, Amazon Internet Services. "We are seeing growth across all industries, from large enterprises like Tata Motors and Aditya Birla Group to startups including food tech firm Swiggy."

Indian customers are using Amazon's technologies for applications such as demand forecasting, image recognition, natural language processing, fraud detection and AI chatbots.

One such customer is micro-mobility platform Yulu that is solving traffic congestion and air pollution issues in the country by providing bikes and micro-light electric vehicles. The start-up currently has cycles and is tying up with corporate parks and societies in Bengaluru to provide Yulu Zones for last-mile connectivity. The firm's entire mobile platform runs on AWS, which it chose to launch its business, for the speed-to-market and lower upfront costs that AWS offered.

Yulu has improved service efficiency by 30-35 per cent using the prediction model and AWS data lake, a centralised repository that allows one to store all the structured and unstructured data at any scale. "We chose AWS, as we wanted the data to reside inside the country and be closer to us. Also, there are a lot of services that Amazon provides," says Naveen Dachuri, co-founder and chief technology officer of Yulu. "Most of our time is now involved in doing the things that we want for our business."

The company said AWS Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Region is designed and built to meet rigorous compliance standards, providing high levels of security for all AWS customers. As with every AWS Region, the Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Region is compliant with applicable national and local data protection laws. Customers have the assurance that the content stored in the Asia Pacific (Mumbai) region will not move to another region unless legally required to do so or the customer moves it.

The small town market

AWS is also finding traction for its technology from customers in tier-2 and tier-3 cities. MyTeam11, a Jaipur-based sports fantasy platform that was started by two BTech graduates, has over 15 million users now.

It was the title sponsor of the India-West Indies series in August this year. When the team anticipated an increase in traffic during the India-West Indies series, it chose AWS. The result was increased scalability, availability as well as improved end-user experience for MyTeam11's customers.

Rajkot (Gujarat)-based software company Veni Infotech is using AWS to develop core features of MineApp, a social networking app created by the firm. It used Amazon Rekognition, a deep learning image analysis service, to analyze the images, videos, and restrict users from uploading any illicit content.

AWS is also wooing a lot of large enterprises in the country. In mid-April last year when a major fire broke out in national spot exchange NCDEX e-Market Limited's (NeML) Data Centre in Mumbai, operations in Agri commodities had to be suspended temporarily. The organisation was able to migrate to a cloud computing alternative like the one offered by AWS with full capacity. Another large customer Tata Global Beverages which focuses on products such as tea, coffee and water, claims to have reduced it's time-to-market leveraging AWS Cloud. It realised a 15 per cent reduction in its infrastructure hosting and managed services cost.

According to Mr. Manoj Chandra Jha, lead analyst at technology research and advisory firm ISG, what differentiates AWS is that it offers the largest breadth of services. "Also, it has a strong focus on emerging technologies like AI and ML, and has continued investment in developing a strong network of thousands of partners and an ever-expanding global presence including 69 Availability Zones (isolated locations within data centre regions) across 22 regions in 30 countries," said Jha.

The growing adoption of big data, analytics, AI and Internet of Things is expected to push cloud spending in India to grow 30 per cent per annum to reach US$ 7.2 billion by 2022, according to a report by IT trade body Nasscom. By the same time frame, global cloud spending is projected to grow at 16.5 per cent per annum to reach US$ 345 billion as compared to around US$ 187 billion in 2018.

Jha of ISG says that AWS has been an "undisputed leader" for a long time but providers like Microsoft and Google are challenging the norms, which is a great sign for the industry and AWS as well, to raise its bar. "We don't expect an immediate change in the pecking order yet. However, individual provider strategies are increasingly interesting as they continue to evolve."

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

25.1. A Jew’s death wakes up Kochi’s history

Livemint, 09 Sep. 2019, Nidheesh M.K.

The passing away of Sarah Cohen, 96, marks the end of a chapter in Kochi’s 2,000-year-old tale of multiculturalism
Cohen’s demise leaves behind many questions like how does one explain Kochi’s tolerance and multiculturalism, and what can modern India glean from it?

The locals as well as the tourists usually stop for a moment as they pass by a small house couched next to the entrance to a cluster of lanes called Jew Town, in Mattancherry, in Kerala’s coastal town of Kochi. For the tourists, the house can immediately pique curiosity—with its gates neatly decorated with the Jewish star of David, its bars painted white and blue like the Israeli flag, and Hebrew lettering adorned across the entire inner wall.

For the locals, too, it is a house close to their hearts. For decades, they have seen a diminutive woman lounge in a wooden recliner inside the house, selling hand-made embroidery covers and Jewish kippahs (skullcaps).

The house belonged to Sarah Cohen, who would have celebrated her 97th birthday last Wednesday (28 August), if she had been alive for five more days. With her passing the previous Friday, Jew Town now mourns the loss of its senior-most, beloved and, perhaps, most photographed “Paradesi (foreign) Jew". The Jew town has now only two Paradesi Jews left, who are away from town most of the year, visiting kin who now live all across the world. Effectively, one chapter in the collective history of Jew Town came to an end that weekend.

Celebrated writer Salman Rushdie had predicted this day in his novel The Moor’s Last Sigh, parts of which are based in Kochi. It is “an extinction to be mourned; not an extermination, such as (it) occurred elsewhere," Rushdie wrote, in reference to the warm reception Jews got in Kochi, compared to the hostility they faced in many other places. It is, he added, “the end, nevertheless, of a story that took two thousand years to tell".

Many things have changed over those 2,000 years, but the monsoon winds and spice markets, set up by the traders who latched on those winds to navigate the world, still remain. The Jews, too, had originally followed the sea winds and the spices—some fleeing persecution, and some for business.

But those ancient bonds are now fraying. Only an estimated 4,000 Jews remain in the entire country, mostly in Mumbai and Kolkata. New India’s Jewish connection is with the state of Israel, with political and security ties rapidly expanding following a pivot in the country’s foreign policy which began in the early 2000s.

The people, though, are fast disappearing. Markers like the Sassoon Docks in Mumbai (named after illustrious British-era entrepreneur David Sassoon) and the searing writing of post-colonial poet Nissim Ezekiel are vague reminders of a centuries-old connection.

Sarah Cohen was one such link, who welcomed any and every visitor into her home, just the way Kochi had opened its doors for her ancestors.

Cohen’s absence from the bylanes of old Kochi leaves behind a void filled with many questions: How does one explain the city’s tolerance and multiculturalism, and what can modern India glean from it? And what happened to the lives of the Jews as Kochi swiftly transformed from a small fishing village into a modern cosmopolitan city?

A diversity Disneyland

Kochi has a long history with the rest of the world. Traditionally, it has been a place where seafarers from South-East Asia, West Asia, Europe, Africa and China met. The descendants of the traders made the city into a melting pot of cultures, a diversity Disneyland.

“One story has it that the Jews first came to Kodungallur, the capital of Chera Dynasty close to Kochi, on the ships of King Solomon (1st century BC). They are typically called the Malabari Jews or Black Jews," said M.G.S. Narayanan, a Kerala-based senior historian and former chairman of Indian Council of Historical Research.

“A second generation of Sephardic Jewish settlers came sometime in the 15th century, after they were expelled during the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions. They called themselves the ‘White Jews’ or, in local parlance, the Paradesi Jews,"he added.

Kochi’s acceptance of Jews, and their assimilation into the city, is a testament to the tolerance long associated with the town, a stark contrast to the conflict-ridden social history of migration in India and elsewhere in the world.

According to most local stories, the migrant settlers were mercantilists in the spice trade when they came, and were largely accorded high esteem by local monarchs. Historical evidence shows how Chera king Bhaskara Ravi Varma bestowed them with copper plates as gifts, and accorded privileges such as tax exemption and religious freedom “as long as the world and the moon exist", according to Narayanan.

In 1344, they built India’s oldest Jewish temple, Kochangadi Synagogue. During the Portuguese invasion, they were granted sanctuary by the Hindu Rajah (king) of Kochi, Keshava Rama Varma. The Paradesi synagogue and the Jew Town neighbourhood were also built on the land granted by Varma. In the post-colonial era, the Jewish professionals returned the favour by building the city’s first street lamps, the ferries, and so on.

Some 15 different ethnic communities still call Kochi their home. Their ancestors can be traced back to the Romans, Egyptians, Chinese, and Persians, among others. There are Indian “others" too, from states such as Gujarat and Karnataka, who continue to make the city tick.

The keeper of the local Jain temple is a Hindu Vanniyar. In the Marathi temple close by, the keeper is a Konkani-speaking Kudumbi, a community which supposedly fled Goa when the Portuguese invaded. During Christmas, when the whole town erupts in a carnival, the temple pooja (worship) is offered by the Christian festival organizers, and everybody from Christians to Muslims make large rangolis in front of the temple. It has been like this for centuries.

A causal evening walk by the beach will bring one across a stretch of Chinese fishing nets, a remnant of the spice-route era, that lay ensconced next to Russian tattoo-makers, next to European clubs, next to Muslims selling beef, next to the strictly-vegetarian Konkani bankers, next to Gujarati traders, next to Hindu temples, and so on.

“We call it a cultural mosaic," said K.J. Sohan, a long-time chronicler of Kochi’s many stories, and a former mayor of the larger Ernakulam town. “We are the opposite of a world riddled with ethnic conflicts. We are a cosmopolitan, secular town that includes everyone," said Sohan.

“Look at this building," he said, pointing to the front entrance of a cooperative bank. “It (the bank) was founded 73 years ago by V.S. Dara Singh, a north Indian freedom fighter and trade union leader, who even won as a Congress legislator from here. Today, can you imagine a north Indian contesting election in south India?"

Multicultural fabric

As one reaches Cohen’s house, Kashmiri traders just next door are busy selling pashmina shawls under a painted board that reads Shalom (the Hebrew word for peace). A recent book One Heart, Two Worlds chronicles in detail the stories of Kochi’s Jews. Cohen is a prominent presence.

“Sarah and her husband Dickey, a reputed lawyer, were neighbours who fell in love and got married. The couple had no children. But their home in Jew Town was an open house for parties," according to the book.

Cohen’s two handymen were Thaha Ibrahim, a Muslim street hawker, and Selene Xavier, a Christian cook.

“Thaha, who ran errands for the family from a very early age, eventually became a part of the family," said Rocky, a family friend. “Given the Arab-Jewish rivalry, outsiders were often surprised (to see) a Jew accepting a Muslim and vice-versa," he said. “But to us, it was natural."

When Thaha, who was still roaming around the house showing visitors Cohen’s embroideries, finally made an appearance, he said: “I can hardly speak. It is my third day without proper sleep," he said. But he couldn’t stop sharing a memory or two about Cohen.

“She said something before she died. I thought she was saying Kanji (rice soup). Only after her death, I came to know that Jews have a system of placing stones during the burial. So, she was probably saying Kallu (stone). She knew she was dying," said Thaha.

He is aware of the hostility between Jews and Muslims. “There are no good Jews and bad Jews, sir," he said when asked about it. “There are only good people and bad people."

The exodus and decline

The disappearance of the Paradesi Jews in Kochi reportedly started with the founding of Israel, the promised land for the community, right after the Second World War. “They always wanted to go home. So, when their homeland was available, they started migrating back one by one," said Narayanan.

Sohan said the strengthening of the Mossad (Israel’s secret service) played a big role in this transformation. “They came here and very secretly arranged transit back to Israel. I had a White Jew classmate who always talked about crossing all the mountains and the sea between here and Israel. When he finally went, we didn’t even know!"

However, in recent years, he says, the Parades Jew migratory route has shifted to countries such as the US and England, rather than Israel, in search of better educational prospects and jobs, mirroring the path taking by their Anglo-Indian neighbours in the town.

“After the Jews, the Kachi Memon community, who are mostly into trading and stock exchange, will probably vanish within 25 years," Sohan said.

The city is also seeing cracks in its vaunted chapter of tolerance, with the advancement of fundamentalist Hindu and Muslim outfits. Minor skirmishes had erupted after the Babri Masjid demolition. Caste wars are still playing out, even among the Jews. The Black Jews and White Jews also do not always see eye-to-eye, similar to the so-called upper and lower castes within Hinduism, especially when it comes to marriage.

Economic opportunities with the city have unmistakably dwindled. Kochi can arguably called the hub of urban poverty in modern day Kerala, after the loss of hundreds of jobs kept alive by the once-thriving port.

“Most of the people in the city were employed in some port-related activity. The loading and unloading of goods on to ships, which had to be manually done, provided many blue-collar jobs," Sohan said.

“The first shift came with container ships and then customs started doing house-audit (at the factory site) instead of at the ports. Earlier, companies would have big storage spaces (at the port), which would be manned by a huge labour force."

“Next came the shift toward strategic supply of goods by trains, instead of via ports, by the Indian state. Other suburbs of Ernakulam city, such as Angamaly and Eloor, were picked for storage godowns and supply as they were strategically tied to railway lines. Earlier, all of these used to be imported via the Kochi port," Sohan added.

Clearly, like the journey of Cohen’s community, the city’s progress has also reached a dead end. But much like how her wrinkles and laughter are etched on to the minds of Kochites, the boats still resting on the sea preside over the city, along with the many memories of its once prosperous sea routes and the once-eventful spice trade.

Cohen’s body was laid to rest last Sunday in a corner of the “Jew Cemetery" in Mattancherry. During the day, Yaakov Finkelstein, her grandnephew and the present consul general of Israel in Mumbai, placed a fistful of earth from Israel over the coffin. “It is the end of an era," he later tweeted. And just like that, a 2,000-year-old story came to a close, with a few banal characters, as a tweet.

25.2. 38 minutes is all it takes for P.V. Sindhu to create history

Livemint, 25 Aug. 2019

Sindhu became the first Indian to win the World Championships gold by beating Nozomi Okuhara of Japan
It was third time lucky for Sindhu who lost to Okuhara and Carolina Marin of Spain respectively in the 2017 and 2018 finals to settle for a silver twice

BASEL (SWITZERLAND) : P.V. Sindhu on Sunday scripted history as she became the first Indian to win badminton World Championships gold by beating arch-rival Nozomi Okuhara of Japan in a lop-sided summit clash here on Sunday.

The Olympic silver-medallist Indian won 21-7 21-7 in the final that lasted just 38 minutes.

Two years after being robbed off the gold by Okuhara in an epic 110-minute final at Glasgow that was considered as one of the greatest battles in badminton history, Sindhu finally exorcised the ghost of that heart-wrenching loss with a completely dominating win over the same opponent.

"Last time, I lost in the final, before that also I lost in the final, so it is a very important win for me. I want to thank the crowd for supporting me. I won it for my country and I am very proud being an Indian," Sindhu said after the match."A big thanks to my coach Kim and Gopi sir and my supporting staff and I dedicate this win to my mom, it's her birthday today," she added.

It was third time lucky for Sindhu who had lost to Okuhara and Carolina Marin of Spain respectively in the 2017 and 2018 finals to settle for a silver twice.With her fifth medal of the World Championships, the 24-year-old Indian was already one of the greatest ever women's singles players in the showpiece event's history. She had won a bronze each in the 2013 and 2014 editions.

Sindhu is now the joint highest medal winner in women's singles in the World Championships history with former Olympic champion Zhang Ning of China who has won an identical 1 gold, 2 silver and 2 bronze between 2001 and 2007.

Prakash Padukone became the first Indian to win a medal in World Championships with a men's singles bronze in the 1983 edition while Saina Nehwal bagged a silver and a bronze in 2015 and 2017 respectively in women's singles.

Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa also won a bronze in women's doubles in 2011 while B Sai Praneeth was the latest to join the club as he settled for a bronze in the men's singles in this edition on Saturday.

The fifth seeded Indian, who enjoyed a 8-7 head-to-head lead over third seeded Okuhara ahead of Sunday's contest, was simply unstoppable as she dished out an attacking game right from the start to race to 8-1 lead.The Indian targeted the deep corners and unleashed her big smashes to gather points at will.

A precise net shot helped Okuhara to snap Sindhu's run of straight eight points but the Indian quickly got the control back when Okuhara went wide and then unleashed two good-looking smashes to enter the break with a massive 11-2 lead.

Okuhara tried to step up the pace but an alert Sindhu was up to the task. The Indian targeted Okuhara's forehand corner to take two more points.

Sindhu used her height to produce those attacking clears which Okuhara could not negotiate. At 16-2, Sindhu committed a couple of unforced errors before again taking control of the match.

Sindhu eventually grabbed as many as 13 game points when Okuhara went long and she sealed the first game with a body blow which her rival sent out.

In the second game, Sindhu continued her rampaging form, grabbing two quick points before Okuhara earned a point with a cross court smash.

Okuhara had no answer to Sindhu's razor sharp returns. The Indian made the Japanese run to the deep corners with her acute angled returns and then swiftly followed them at the net to make life difficult for her opponent.

Okuhara seemed clueless as she ended up hitting the nets or missing the lines to allow Sindhu grab 11-4 lead at the interval.

Nothing changed after the breather as a relentless Sindhu kept her stranglehold on the Japanese, who crumbled under pressure.

At 16-4, Sindhu made a couple of rare errors when she hit long but that did not matter as she pounced on a weak return from Okuhara and sent it to the backline and then left her rival stranded with another powerful smash.

Sindhu grabbed the match point when Okuhara went long again and sealed the title when another superb return before throwing her hands in the air in celebration.

With Sindhu's gold and Praneeth's bronze in this edition, Indian shuttlers also continued the six-year streak of winning at least one medal in the prestigious event.

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AAPI

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Thursday 19 September 2019

NEWSLETTER, 20-XI-2019

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NEWSLETTER, 20-XI-2019

– GENERAL POLICY, INFRASTRUCTURES, COUNTRY FINANCES, ETC.

- AGRICULTURE, FISHING & RURAL DEVELOPMENT

- INDUSTRY, MANUFACTURE

- SERVICES (Education, Healthcare, IT, R&D, Tourism, etc.)

INDIA AND THE WORLD