AAPI: February 2020

DELHI, 20th February 2020

Index of this Newsletter

INDIA

INDIA & THE WORLD

21.1. Indian Navy Launches 'Operation Vanilla' to Provide Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief at Madagascar
21.2. Zydus & CMS enter pact for Desidustat in Greater China
22.1. Sun shines for Adani as Total buys 50% in solar business for $510 million
22.2. States’ economic performance has gone south
23.1. India-Brazil set target of US$ 15 billion trade by 2022
23.2. Togo hands over letter of engagement to NTPC as PMC for about 300 MW solar power projects in Togo
24.1. Stories of Indian women athletes who dared
24.2. How India must tackle China’s killer bug
25.1. Brain tech is coming of age, but will it make you smarter?
25.2. AI, Machine learning chip in to fight climate change, protect environment

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DELHI, 20th February 2020

NEWSLETTER, 20-II-2020

INDIA

– GENERAL POLICY, INFRASTRUCTURES, COUNTRY FINANCES, ETC.

1.1. The Indian Constitution, in numbers
Livemint, 20 Jan. 2020, Vishnu Padmanabhan, Pooja Dantewadia

Nearly 70 years after it first came into effect on 26 January 1950, the Constitution of India—which is a 146,385-word tome—has outlived most peers

In the recent student-led protests, the Indian Constitution has been a recurring theme. Protesters are loudly reading out the preamble of the Constitution in defiance because they believe that fundamental Constitutional principles are being weakened by the ruling government. This is not the first time that there have been existential fears about India’s Constitution. But so far, it has endured, nearly 70 years after it first came into effect on 26 January 1950.

The longevity of India’s Constitution is remarkable, especially when compared with the global experience of national Constitutions. In their 2009 book, The Endurance of National Constitutions, American scholars Zachary Elkins, Tom Ginsburg and James Melton show that, on an average, Constitutions have lasted only 17 years since 1789. Within this, Constitutions in the post-colonial countries, which gained independence after World War II, have been particularly fragile. Pakistan, for example, has had three different Constitutions and large periods of rule without any Constitution. Among the 12 Asian countries that gained independence soon after World War II and drafted Constitutions, only three Constitutions have survived—India’s, Taiwan’s and South Korea’s.

Scholars attribute the Indian Constitution’s endurance to its design and the care with which it was crafted. Starting before independence in 1946, an elected constituent assembly of nearly 300 members spent four years debating and defining every aspect of the Constitution—from the idea of India itself to the finer intricacies of federalism. The final product reflected these lengthy deliberations. India’s Constitution is a 146,385-word tome, longer than most novels and comfortably longer than any other Constitution in the world, according to data from the Comparative Constitutions Project (CCP), an international non-profit database on global Constitutions.

Despite its length, India’s Constitution is not the most comprehensive in the world. All Constitutions establish the principles and framework for governance—but they can vary in depth and breadth. Almost all Constitutions, for instance, mention the military or armed forces, but fewer Constitutions refer to artists or the arts. According to CCP, there are 70 major topics that Constitutions around the world typically cover. No Constitution covers all 70 topics, but some Constitutions come close. The Constitutions of Kenya and Zimbabwe, for instance, cover more than 80% of these topics. India’s Constitution is sparser (covering 60% of topics), but in line with the global average in coverage (58%).

A central function of the Constitution is to separate and delegate between the three branches of governance: legislature, executive and judiciary. The way Constitutions do this ultimately defines a country’s politics, society and even economics. For instance, in a 2004 study, economists Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini found that Constitutional rules which establish a parliamentary form of democracy tend to be associated with better economic performance and better growth-promoting policies compared to Constitutions which establish presidential systems.

In India, the choice between a parliamentary system and presidential system was debated by the constituent assembly. In his book, India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy, historian Ramachandra Guha suggests that the framers believed that given its diversity, the country needed a strong government. They felt only a parliamentary system could provide this. So, based largely on the UK parliament, India adopted a system where the elected legislature is responsible for enacting laws, the executive serves as the administrative head of the government, and an independent judiciary is responsible for upholding laws.

Many other countries share similar systems, but the amount of power held in each branch can vary significantly. To quantify these differences, CCP has generated composite measures of legislative power, executive power and judicial independence for 190 countries based on their Constitutions. According to this analysis, India’s legislature, for instance, has less power than Pakistan’s and the US’s, but more power than the UK’s. Taken together, India’s legislature has less power than the average across the 190 countries, but its executive has more power and judiciary has greater independence than global averages.

Another basic purpose of any Constitution is the rights it enshrines for citizens. For this, the Indian framers drew inspiration from myriad influences, including the American and French Constitutions. But where the American Constitution grants 35 rights, the Indian Constitution grants 44, as per CCP data. This, though, is still less than the global average of 50 rights.

A few of these Constitutional rights, such as the right to education, only came after Constitutional amendments. This flexibility in amending the Constitution is considered to be one of the biggest factors for the Indian Constitution’s endurance. Since its inception, the Indian Constitution has been amended 103 times, with the most recent amendment coming in August 2019 (the reorganization of Jammu and Kashmir). In contrast, the American Constitution was last amended in 1992 for only the 27th time.

India’s Constitutional flexibility was a deliberate strategy by the framers, who were cognizant of both the nascent tryst with Constitutional ideas in the country and the deep cleavages in Indian society, according to researchers. The Supreme Court’s ruling in the famous Kesavananda Bharati case, which held that the basic doctrine of the Constitution cannot be altered has, however, ring-fenced the extent of flexibility the Constitution provides.

In the final analysis, the Indian Constitution’s resilience could be explained by its ability to embody a principle of accommodation, suggest Elkins, Ginsburg and Melton of The Endurance of National Constitutions. “It is Constitutional alchemy when groups with conflicting agendas believe they are better off with existing rules than in overturning them, and therein lies the key to India’s Constitutional endurance," write Elkins, Ginsburg and Melton.

For the protesters on the streets currently, it is this alchemy that is now under threat.

Sriharsha Devulapalli contributed to this story.

1.2. India’s slow growth is a drag on the world: IMF

Livemint, 20 Jan. 2020, Asit Ranjan Mishra

Fund slashes India’s FY20 growth forecast to 4.8%, also trims global outlook
'Growth in India slowed sharply owing to stress in the NBFC sector and weak rural income growth,' said IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath

New Delhi: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Monday slashed India’s growth forecast by 1.3 percentage points to 4.8% for 2019-20, prompting the agency to also trim its global growth estimates as a result.

IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath said growth in India slowed sharply “owing to stress in the non-bank financial sector and weak rural income growth".

“We project global growth to increase modestly from 2.9% in 2019 to 3.3% in 2020 and 3.4% in 2021. The slight downward revision of 0.1 percentage point for 2019 and 2020, and 0.2 percentage point for 2021, is owed largely to downward revisions for India," she said in IMF’s World Economic Outlook (WEO) update.

While the Indian government’s statistics department and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have estimated growth in 2019-20 at 5%, rating agency Moody’s Investors Service has projected growth at 4.9% for the fiscal.

The IMF report, however, projected India’s growth to revive in 2020-21 to 5.8%, 30 basis points below its October estimate, “supported by monetary and fiscal stimulus as well as subdued oil prices".

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, scheduled to present her second budget on 1 February, is expected to increase infrastructure spending and boost rural expenditure to revive growth, which slowed to a six-and-a-half-year low of 4.5% in the quarter ended 30 September.

IMF in its Article IV consultation report on India released last month said the Indian government should avoid a fiscal stimulus to boost the economy and, instead, opt for an easier monetary policy. “In the near term, given the cyclical weakness of the economy, monetary policy should maintain an easing bias, at least until the projected recovery takes hold. Fiscal stimulus should be avoided, given (that the) fiscal space (is) at risk and revenue losses from the recent corporate income tax rate cut should be offset. In the event of a more severe economic slowdown than currently envisaged, any fiscal stimulus should be temporary, focusing on measures to boost near-term growth, such as immediate investment expensing or public infrastructure spending," IMF had said.

However, retail inflation has picked up since and RBI has paused its monetary easing cycle. Retail inflation touched a five-and-a-half-year high of 7.35% in December, breaching the central bank’s tolerance limit of 6%. This may constrain RBI from not only further monetary easing in its policy review on 6 February, but may also force it to rethink its accommodative policy stance.

D.K. Joshi, chief economist at Crisil Ltd, said the IMF growth projection for India shows economic downturn is quite entrenched. “Monetary policy having run its course, the government should spend wisely to support economic recovery," said Joshi.

IMF, in its WEO update, raised China’s growth estimate by 20 basis points to 6% for 2020, reflecting the signing of the phase I trade deal with the US.

Despite several headwinds, IMF said some indications have emerged towards the year-end that global growth may be bottoming out. The report, however, warned that downside risks remain prominent, including rising geopolitical tensions, notably between the US and Iran, intensifying social unrest, further worsening of relations between the US and its trading partners and deepening economic friction between other countries.

“The pickup in global growth for 2020 remains highly uncertain as it relies on improved growth outcomes for stressed economies like Argentina, Iran, and Turkey and for underperforming emerging and developing economies such as Brazil, India, and Mexico. A materialization of these risks could lead to rapidly deteriorating sentiment, causing global growth to fall below the projected baseline," cautioned IMF.

2.1. Why India has the fastest-growing cities

Livemint, 27 Jan 2020, Kadambari Shah , Vaidehi Tandel , Harshita Agrawal

Kerala’s Malappuram is the world’s fastest-growing city. What explains this surprise in a state with low birth rates?
If all areas having more than 5,000 people are classified as urban, India will be 47% urban. And Kerala? It goes from 16% administratively urban in 2011 Census to almost 100% urban

Mumbai: A recent estimate put out by The Economist magazine claims that three of the world’s 10 fastest-growing cities (by population, based on 2015-20 projections) are in India.

All three—Malappuram, Kozhikode and Kollam—are in the state of Kerala. This is intriguing. As per the 2011 Census, Kerala had the lowest decadal population growth rate in the country at 4.6%. That is unlikely to have changed by any significant degree in the years since. Hence, Kerala is, quite literally, the last state in the country that should be the site of urban growth driven by a population boom.

There are two other reasons that could be driving urban growth in Kerala and, particularly, in these regions: high in-migration and high rates of conversion from rural to urban areas. The last reason seems to be the most likely one though.

The rapid transformation of India from a country of villages to a country of cities, which is still officially unacknowledged, is at the heart of the Kerala mystery. Essentially, the overwhelming factor is not that more people are being born. The perceived boundaries of certain cities, known as urban agglomeration that includes densely built-up areas outside the official municipal boundary, is expanding. And fast.

In several parts of the country, non-farm work already dominates. More than 50% of Kerala’s workforce, for example, is engaged in services jobs. These geographies should ideally be recognized as cities. This relatively slow, yet long-awaited, transformation is happening at a much faster pace in some states, such as Kerala.

This has implications for how we manage and service these areas—and wide-ranging consequences when it comes to access to economic opportunities and overall quality of life.

Cities are, after all, not just densely populated areas within the confines of an arbitrary administrative boundary. They are an agglomeration of firms and workers. Urbanist Alain Bertaud refers to cities as labour markets. Hence, the actual limits of cities may at times go beyond administrative limits.

The Economist, in taking population projections using inhabitants within the urban agglomeration—which includes the area within the municipal limit along with the contiguous built-up areas outside municipal boundaries (which can be identified with the help of satellite images)—also acknowledges this fact.

Thus, the growth witnessed in Kerala is on account of areas around municipalities becoming more populous and denser, with residents moving away from non-farm jobs, particularly over the last three decades. This transformation has been showing up in an official category called the “census town".

Census towns are areas that the census classifies as urban because they have more than 5,000 people, a density greater than 400 persons per sq. km, and 75% of the male working population in non-agricultural activities. However, census towns are governed by rural local bodies (RLBs) or Panchayats. Between 2001 and 2011, Kerala added the highest number of census towns to its urban settlements and the urban agglomeration areas of Malappuram, Kozhikode and Kollam added 37, 38 and 23 census towns, respectively. This pattern of growth is occurring in several other states as well.

A 2018 study finds that 1,373 of the existing 3,892 census towns share a common boundary with larger cities. This phenomenon of peripheral urbanization is also supported by evidence collected from satellite data that allows us to track built-up area growth over many decades.

(Graphic: Sarvesh Kumar Sharma/Mint)

Hidden urbanization

This raises practical questions of urban governance. Here is the problem: there is a substantial difference between the share of urban population according to the 2011 Census and the share of urban population that is “administratively" urban, that is, which is governed by an urban local body (ULB).

The decision of which places are to be governed by ULBs is taken by state governments, with state municipal Acts providing guidelines. According to the 2011 Census, India is 31% urban, whereas just 26% of the total population is administratively urban. The 5-percentage-point gap between the two definitions accounts for approximately 53 million people, roughly the population of South Korea.

The problem of exclusion from urban governance does not stop with census towns. Some studies state that the definitions used by India may result in undercounting its urban population. A 2019 paper (bit.ly/2019paper) in the Journal of Asian Economics shows that if we use a population threshold of 5,000, that is, if all areas having more than 5,000 people are classified as urban, India will be 47% urban. And Kerala? It goes from 16% administratively urban as per the 2011 Census to almost 100% urban by this definition.

The 5,000-plus threshold criterion is no more arbitrary than the threefold classification of 5,000-plus population, 400-plus population density, and 75%-plus non-agrarian male workforce that the Census of India has been using since 1961. Ghana and Qatar use the 5,000-plus criteria too.

Moreover, urbanization rates at the state level estimated using the census or 5,000-plus criteria correlate better with indicators like the gross state domestic product or the share of population working in services jobs, compared to urbanization rates estimated using just the administratively urban criteria.

Why it matters

This matters a great deal. ULBs and RLBs provide very different kinds of goods, services and management. The 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments contain the XIth and XIIth Schedules listing the powers, authority and responsibilities of Panchayats and ULBs, respectively. Items listed for ULBs and not RLBs include: town planning, slum improvement, public amenities including street lighting, parking lots, bus stops, solid waste management, building regulations and fire services.

An urban area governed by a ULB rather than an RLB could potentially benefit from a 147% increase in road length per sq. km, a 128% increase in water storage capacity in kilolitres per capita, a 25% increase in the probability of establishing a higher education institution, and an 11% increase in hospital beds per capita.

Even when amenities and services are available in de facto urban areas, the quality may be worse than it would have been under a ULB. Roads are a good example. The NYU-UN Habitat Atlas of Urban Expansion measures the quality of roads in several Indian cities in the pre-1990 period compared to peri-urban expansion areas between 1990 and 2014.

The quality drops off sharply due to the unplanned nature of the growth in the peri-urban areas. For instance, the average road width in the Kozhikode 1990-2014 expansion area was 4.03 metres, compared to 9.84 metres in its pre-1990 area (which was within the municipal boundaries).

Roads are critical in determining the efficiency of labour markets since they are the primary means by which workers can access jobs and firms can access markets as well as employees. Better quality of roads means workers can potentially access a greater number of jobs in different locations and the catchment area of potential employees for firms increases, which in turn enhances the productivity of cities. Besides, roads not only carry transport but can also house trunk infrastructure like sewerage lines or storm water drains.

While de facto urban areas everywhere may potentially be suffering adverse consequences of being denied a ULB status, de facto urban areas around large cities or big towns are particularly vulnerable because they are under intense pressure from the spillover growth and expansion that comes out of large cities. Imagine the outskirts of a Delhi or a Mumbai or a Bengaluru.

People who want to access the better-paying jobs that are available within cities or towns may prefer to reside in these peri-urban areas because housing is cheaper. Firms, especially industries, may prefer to locate in peri-urban areas to avoid emission norms and standards.

The economic fallout

If we compare the maps of Kozhikode and its surrounding areas in 1975 and 2014, we can see built-up growth spilling over municipal boundaries into peripheral areas that are governed by Panchayats (see chart).

What happens to growth in neighbouring districts? Malappuram is to the south of Kozhikode district. In the chart, it lies south of the dotted line that demarcates Kozhikode district. It is evident that in 2014, urban growth was contiguous across the two districts, traversing municipalities, census towns and Panchayats.

It makes the case for looking at areas with large populations and contiguous built-up areas as a single large city or metropolitan area, rather than separate towns and villages, as they may already be functioning as a unified urban area.

All of this isn’t just about playing the long game by giving people the local administrations they need to improve their lives and boost growth. There are immediate potential gains for cash-strapped governments too. ULBs have greater revenue raising powers than RLBs.

A 2011 report on India’s municipal finances estimated that ULBs raised about 8.5 times more tax revenues than Panchayats. More ULB governance, therefore, will mean increased revenues. This could set up a virtuous cycle with ULBs spending that revenue on providing more and better goods and services, thus boosting growth and productivity which feeds into higher revenue.

Of course, governance in India is never exactly simple. The challenge is that even the existing ULBs do not spend enough on basic goods and services. India’s municipal funding as a share of gross domestic product is among the lowest globally—at 1.9%. The high-powered expert committee report on urban infrastructure and services found that ULBs spend only around 28% of what is needed for efficient management of services.

So, why aren’t we even taking the first step of recognizing more of India as urban? Losing access to centrally sponsored schemes that are targeted at rural areas, like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme or Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, is one of the main reasons why rural political leaders as well as rural residents resist conversion from RLBs to ULBs. Anecdotal evidence and qualitative research also throw light on other reasons for resisting conversion—fear among residents that they may have to pay higher taxes, say, or fear among local politicians that they may lose power and access.

Given these entrenched fears, ensuring that places get the governance set-ups most appropriate for them is a major policy conundrum. If policymakers get the solutions right, the benefits will go far beyond pride of place on an Economist graph.

Kadambari Shah is senior associate, Vaidehi Tandel is junior fellow and Harshita Agrawal is associate at IDFC Institute.

2.2. Can UBI (Universal Basic Income) reignite the economy?

Livemint, 29 Jan 2020, Surbhi Bhatia, Vishnu Padmanabhan

Variants of universal basic income could boost consumption but will first need to overcome significant fiscal and administrative challenges

Amid a consumption slump, several economists have called on the government to “put money into people's hands". Some have even suggested the government to do that literally: through unconditional, regular payments to citizens as part of a universal basic income (UBI). But is implementing UBI financially and administrative feasible? And would it even work?

Unlike developed countries, where UBI is being proposed to insulate citizens from the disruption of automation, developing countries view it as a measure to boost income and alleviate poverty. In India, the idea of a national UBI emerged with the 2016-17 Economic Survey. The survey laid out the blueprint for a ‘quasi’ UBI, proposing ₹7,620 per year to 75% of the population. In 2019 prices, this would cost the Indian government around 4.5% of GDP. Since then, others have proposed versions of the same concept that differ significantly in both scope and cost.

Economist Reetika Khera, for instance, has kept women at the centre of her version suggesting that basic income be first transferred to pregnant women, children, the widowed, the elderly and the disabled before being extended to the rest of the population.

In contrast, Maitreesh Ghatak and Karthik Muralidharan have suggested making basic income truly universal and unconditional but cap the total cost to 1% of GDP. This results in smaller monthly transfers ( ₹110 per person per month) but still significant enough to reduce poverty, improve financial inclusion and boost female empowerment.

Others have approached UBI as an alternative to existing subsidies and government spending. For instance, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) suggested that if subsidies were eliminated, the government could provide all Indians with ₹2,600 (in 2011-12 prices) every month.

Using a similar approach, Mint crunched the numbers to estimate the costs of various versions of UBI. We find that some versions, such as a pure UBI which provides all Indians with ₹1,215 per month (based on the latest estimated poverty line), would be prohibitively expensive (more than 10% of GDP and exceeding the centre’s tax revenues). But other versions could be potentially affordable and cost less than 3% of GDP (the potential savings from rolled-back subsidies). The Congress brainchild Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY), for example, which proposes ₹6,000 a month to the poorest 20% of households, would cost less than 3% of GDP but would be costly if it had to become universal. Similarly, the Economic Survey proposal could be feasible if it is limited to just poor households - but any larger version would quickly become too expensive.

All these calculations assume a basic income programme implemented nationally and funded entirely by the centre. But the states, too, can take the lead. Telangana’s Rhythu Bandhu scheme, for instance, which provides Rs. 8000 per acre per year to landholding farmers, preceded the current national-level farmer cash transfer scheme (PM Kisan). But for states to implement a larger-scale UBI on their own could be difficult. For instance, a basic income pegged at a state’s poverty line and targeting the state’s poor would significantly eat into state expenditures and poorer states would bear the greater burden (e.g. it would cost Bihar nearly 20% of its state GDP). Consequently, almost all proposed UBI programmes have incorporated a cost-sharing mechanism between the centre and state governments.

But even if states and centres do find the finances, implementation is a challenge. For a start, identifying the poor in India has been a perennial problem. Programmes and subsidies designed for the poor often end up being disproportionately used by the rich. An increasingly popular solution is to use the data from the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) to exclude obviously ineligible beneficiaries. The Economic Survey’s UBI proposal suggested excluding beneficiaries based on SECC data on asset ownership (e.g. cars or air-conditioners). But even this system is not fool-proof. SECC data, collected in 2011, is now dated but there are also questions around its accuracy.

Moreover, even if the poor are correctly identified, getting money into their hands can be difficult. Despite a national push to increase the coverage of bank accounts among the poor, usage of bank accounts remains weak. For instance, the World Bank’s World Findex Survey found a big gap between account ownership and usage in India. Nearly 80% of adults owned an account in 2017 but almost half of these accounts were inactive (no deposit or withdrawal in the previous year). This gap is even higher for the poorest 40% of the population.

These considerable fiscal and administrative challenges could explain why there have been only a handful of UBI experiments across the world. Consequently, many questions about UBI remain unanswered. By definition, any version of UBI will immediately increase incomes but less is known about the long-term effects on local markets and the economy. Evaluations of other cash transfer programmes, though, hint at the promise of UBI. According to one review, studies across the world have shown that giving people cash does not result in the commonly perceived negative effects. When given cash, people do not waste it on alcohol or drugs and neither are they less inclined to work. Instead, they seem to, depending on their circumstances, spend it on different items ranging from food to education to assets. In India, then, where the poor face varied constraints and financial volatility, a large-scale UBI-type programme may be one way to smooth consumption, alleviate poverty and give the economy the demand boost it needs.

3.1. Capex of I. Railways for 2020-21 pegged at all-time high Rs 1,61,042 crore ($23,04bn); the emphasis is on continued capacity enhancement through accelerated investment and execution

IBEF, Feb. 05, 2020

The aim of the Government is to make Indian Railways the growth engine of the economy. The emphasis is on continued capacity enhancement through accelerated investments and execution. Five measures relating to Railways have been highlighted in Budget speech.

Setting up a large solar power capacity alongside the rail tracks, on the land owned by the railways. A proposal is under consideration.
Four station re-development projects and operation of 150 passenger trains would be done through PPP mode. The process of inviting private participation is underway.
More Tejas type trains will connect iconic tourist destinations.
High speed train between Mumbai to Ahmedabad would be actively pursued.
148 km long Bengaluru Suburban transport project at a cost of Rs 18,600 crore (US$ 2.66 billion), would have fares on metro model. Central Government would provide 20 per cent of equity and facilitate external assistance up to 60 per cent of the project cost.

To this end, Government has increased investment and introduced modern technology while focusing on safety, speed and service to passengers.

Capex of Indian Railways for 2020-21 has been pegged at an all-time high of Rs 1,61,042 crore (US$ 23.04 billion). Capex for the year 2019-20 is Rs 1,56,352 crore (US$ 22.37 billion) (RE), which is 17.2 per cent higher than the previous year. The target of new lines, gauge conversion and doubling/tripling etc. for 2020-21 is 3750 Route Kms against 3150 Route Kms in 2019-20. Electrification of the entire Broad-Gauge network is to be completed by 2023-24. In 2020-21, Electrification of 6000 Route Kms has been targeted. In the Budget Estimate (BE) 2020-21, the freight loading of Indian Railways is kept at 1265 MT which is 42 MT (i.e. 3.4 per cent) incremental over Revised Estimate (RE) 2019-20. Average freight lead has been kept at 553 km, and originating passengers kept at 8792 million.

Railways now plan to induct latest technology for Signalling & Telecommunication system. Under modernization plan of Railway signalling system, it has been decided to implement Centralized Traffic Control (CTC) system on Indian Railways. This will increase operational efficiency. In first phase CTC will be implemented on 1830 KMs over 8 Zonal Railways on sections provided with Automatic Block Signalling system. Further, in the second phase, CTC will be implemented over balance 8 zonal Railways along with Automatic Block Signalling system. Government has initiated the upgradation of the decades old signalling system into an Automatic Train Protection System, which will be a mix of proven international technology as well as indigenously developed systems with an impetus to Make in India.

Facilitating private participation in Railways to build a seamless national cold supply chain for perishables, inclusive of milk, meat and fish, the Indian Railways will set up a "Kisan Rail" - through PPP arrangements. There shall be refrigerated coaches in Express and Freight trains as well.

Capital Expenditure, Revenue Receipts, Revenue Expenditure & Operating Ratio of Indian Railways is as follows: -

Capital Expenditure of Indian Railways:

Capital Expenditure Rs 1,61,042 crore (US$ 23.04 billion) which is higher than Revised Estimate (RE) 2019-20 by Rs 4,690.03 crore (US$ 671.06 million). This is 2.99 per cent higher than RE 2019-20.
Gross Budgetary Support (GBS) (excluding Nirbhaya Fund) at Rs 70,000 crore (US$ 10.02billion) includes Rs 5,000 crore (US$ 715.41 million) towards Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh (RRSK) and Rs 18,500 crore (US$ 2.65 billion) as IR’s share from Central Road and Infrastructure Fund (CRIF). GBS in 2020-21 is 3.19 per cent more than RE 2019-20.
Nirbhaya Fund at Rs 250 crore (US$ 35.77 million).
Internal Resources at Rs 7,500 crore (US$ 1.07 billion) (Depreciation Reserve Fund (DRF) -Rs 1,000 crore (US$ 143.08 million), Development Fund (DF) -Rs 1,500 crore (US$ 214.62 million) and RRSK-Rs 5,000 crore (US$ 715.41 million)).
Extra Budgetary Resources (EBR)-IRFC at Rs 30,000 crore (US$ 4.29 billion).
Extra Budgetary Resources-Institutional Finance (EBR-IF) at Rs 28,000 crore (US$ 4.01 billion).
Extra Budgetary Resources (EBR)-PPP at Rs 25,292 crore (US$ 3.62 billion).

Revenue Receipts of Indian Railways:

Passenger earnings at Rs 61,000 crore (US$ 8.73 billion).
Goods earnings kept at Rs 1,47,000 crore (US$ 21.03 billion).
Other Coaching earnings and Sundry other earnings kept at Rs 6,500 crore (US$ 930.03 million) and Rs 11,013 crore (US$ 1.58 billion) respectively.
Gross Traffic Receipts are thus kept at Rs 2,25,613 crore (US$ 32.28 billion). This is 9.6 per cent above RE 2019-20.
Total receipts of Indian Railways are thus kept at Rs 2,25,913 crore (US$ 32.32 billion).

Revenue Expenditure of Indian Railways:

Ordinary Working Expenses (OWE) kept at Rs 1,62,753 crore (US$ 23.29 billion).
Appropriation to DRF kept at Rs 800 crore (US$ 114.47 million).
Appropriation to Pension Fund from Revenue kept at Rs 53,160 crore (US$ 7.61 billion).
Miscellaneous expenditure kept at Rs 2,700 crore (US$ 386.32 million).
Thus, the total revenue expenditure of Indian Railways has been kept at Rs 2,19,413 crore (US$ 31.39 billion).

Operating Ratio of Indian Railways:

Operating Ratio comes to 96.28 per cent against 97.46 per cent in RE 2019-20. The 'Net' of revenue over expenditure thus comes to Rs 6,500 crore (US$ 930.03 million) which has been appropriated to DF (Rs 1,500 crore [US$ 214.62 million]), and RRSK (Rs 5,000 crore [US$ 214.62 million]) for supplementing Indian Railways' capital expenditure.

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

3.2. Nirma Group announces acquisition of Emami Cement for Rs 5,500 crore ($787 Million)

IBEF, Feb. 07, 2020

Nirma Group will acquire Emami Cement Limited (ECL) for an enterprise value of Rs 5,500 crore (US$ 786.95 million). At present, ECL operates one integrated cement plant in Risdah, Chhattisgarh; and grinding units in Bihar, West Bengal and Odisha with a total installed capacity of 8.3 million tonnes per annum; and with mining leases in Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh.

The acquisition is made through Nuvoco Vistas Corporation Limited, which is a subsidiary of Nirma.

This acquisition will increase the Nuvoco's total cement capacity in Eastern, Northern and Western India to 23.5 million tonnes (which includes the ongoing capacity expansion project in its Jojobera plant) and over 60 ready-mix plants. The combined operations will cover three facilities in Chhattisgarh, two each in Rajasthan and West Bengal, and one each in Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Haryana. Nuvoco's cement sales will spread across 12 states: Chhattisgarh, Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, NCR region, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.

Mr Hiren Patel, Chairman of Nuvoco, said, "This acquisition is a momentous and transformational step in Nuvoco's journey to becoming a major building materials company in India delivering superior performance. Emami Cement will enable us to take our Cement business to the next level and continue to serve our customers with innovative and high-quality products that they trust".

Nuvoco Vistas Corporation Limited, a Nirma Group company, is a leading manufacturer and retailer of building materials. Presently, the company is amongst one of the major players in Cement in East, Central and North India with an installed capacity of around 14 MTPA.

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

4.1. L&T Construction arm bags power T&D projects in India and abroad

IBEF, Feb. 11, 2020

The power transmission and distribution (T&D) business of L&T Construction has secured orders from clients in India, the Philippines and Saudi Arabia.

According to the company filing to the exchanges, these projects are estimated to be in the range of Rs 2,500-5,000 crore (US$ 357.70 – 715.41 million).

The company has received orders to construct a 380-kV substation with an associated 230 kV cable network and establish 380 kV and 230 kV transmission line corridors in Saudi Arabia. The company also received another order from a customer in West Asia to construct EHV overhead lines, the filing added.

The business has won an order to construct a 500-kV substation in association with a local player in Philippines, which will support the growing demand for electricity in the metropolitan area of Manila.

In India, company received an order in Gujarat to construct a 765-kV double circuit transmission line that will help transmit power from renewable energy sources, added the filing. It has additionally bagged an order to build a 20 MW floater solar power project at a reservoir of NTPC’s Auraiya Gas Power Plant in Uttar Pradesh.

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

4.2. The 21st century’s big challenges

Livemint, 13 Jan. 2020, Vishnu Padmanabhan

In the coming decades, humanity will need to address a climate crisis, stagnating productivity and ageing populations among other challenges

Events in West Asia have raised the spectre of the 21st century’s first World War. Preventing the US-Iran conflict from escalating might be the world’s immediate challenge in 2020 but, taking the long view, several, more critical challenges remain unresolved. For all the progress made so far, addressing these challenges will define our future. We highlight 10 below.

Climate crisis

From fires to floods, the world has been ravaged by disasters in recent years. Though they are natural calamities, the cause is man-made. Emissions from human activity have driven rising temperatures across the world. This, in turn, is disrupting weather patterns and increasing the frequency of extreme weather events. If left unchecked, emissions could cause global average temperatures to increase by over 4 degrees Celsius (°C) above pre-industrial levels by 2100, according to Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific group tracking climate change. Even in the best-case scenario, with an active response towards reducing emissions, it would limit the increase to just 2.8°C and still inflict a heavy toll on the environment and humanity. Achieving 1.5°C, as established in the Paris Agreement, will require much more global commitment and coordination (Chart 1).

Air quality

The same emissions that clog up the atmosphere also clog up our lungs. And while much of the rich world has cleaned up its air, in India and other poor countries, breathing itself has become fatal. The death rate from pollution is steadily increasing in India and other low-income countries, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), a global population health research centre. Though a daunting task, tackling air pollution is not impossible. China, for instance, used to have the highest rates of pollution-related deaths in the world but this has steadily improved over the last decade (Chart 2).

Sustainable growth

Both the climate crisis and pollution have been driven by a relentless quest for growth. Yet, it is this growth that has generated unprecedented prosperity and improved the lives of millions. Now governments will have to balance growth with the environment. And this task will only get harder as growth dries up across the world. According to one projection, average growth rates for almost all the major economies are expected to steadily decline in the coming decades (Chart 3).

Productivity stagnation

Growth is slowing because its key engine is fizzling out. Whether it’s the conveyor belt or the computer, long-term growth is ultimately driven by innovations and processes that use labour and capital more effectively. But these innovations and processes, known as total factor productivity (TFP), are drying up. Globally, TFP growth rates have fallen in recent years, apart from India. High productivity growth in India, however, reflects issues with the way output is measured in the country rather than productivity improvements (Chart 4).

Income inequality

One immediate effect of stagnating productivity is on wages. In many parts of the world, workers’ wages have not increased much over time, especially when compared with the top earners, and inequality has risen significantly. One estimate suggests that 44% of the world’s wealth is owned by just 1% of its population. How this inequality is tackled will define politics in the 21st century (Chart 5).

Automation-led disruption

Another risk for workers is automation. A 2013 study estimated that nearly half of all jobs in the US could be automated in the coming decade. Building on this model, the World Bank estimated that 43% of India’s employment is vulnerable to rising automation. An International Monetary Fund study found that women could be hurt more than men. Even if these estimates are exaggerated, the risks of automation eating up jobs remain. Whether it’s through basic income or retraining, governments will need to find ways to manage this transition (Chart 6).

The globalization backlash

After years of increasing globalization, the tide seems to be turning. Trade wars are escalating, borders are getting tighter and nationalist governments are growing in popularity. All this will have important implications for global value chains that underpin the world economy. But, more ominously, rising nationalism could affect both domestic and international security by fuelling internal and external conflict (Chart 7).

Big tech dominance

Over the last decade, a handful of technology firms—Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft—have grown in both size and clout. From communication channels to entertainment, their services now underpin much of human activity. But their universal pervasiveness also raises big questions—especially on privacy infringements, market power and political influence (Chart 8).

Ageing populations

By 2100, the United Nations estimates that there will be 11.2 billion humans on the planet. And more than half will be aged 42 or above. In India, the median age will be even higher at 47. As fertility rates fall and healthcare improves, the world will get much older. Ageing populations bring a host of challenges for economies and societies. Labour forces shrink, while public finances and healthcare systems get strained (Chart 9).

Lifestyle diseases

Prosperity and shifting demographics will also change the nature of public health threats. In the 20th century, lack of food was the defining nutrition issue; in the 21st century, there may be too much of it. According to IHME, obesity is already one of the biggest risk factors to public health and this will only increase as societies get richer (Chart 10).

More generally, as the diseases associated with poverty are eliminated, those associated with prosperity, such as blood pressure and high sugar, are likely to grow.

This is the concluding part of a two-part series on the achievements and challenges of the 21st century.

5.1. An SOS from Bharat’s poorest citizens

Livemint, 3 Feb 2020, Sayantan Bera

The budget barely increased funding to social welfare schemes at a time India’s poorest desperately need succour
At the beginning of every financial year, social schemes start with arrears, leading to delayed payments. To break this vicious cycle, funding needs to be increased

MUZAFFARPUR (BIHAR): "Dena hi padega BDO, dena hi padega Har haath ko kaam aapko, dena hi padega."(You have to, oh BDO, you have to You have to give work to every hand)

On a sunny afternoon on 24 January, a few hundred women—many of them widows and over 60 years old—took over the lawns of the Mushahari block office in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district, known as much for its litchi orchards as for undernourished children succumbing to encephalitis.

The women sang at a languid pace, urging the BDO, short for block development officer, for work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). The voice of lead singer Mandesree Devi, a frail-bodied and greying woman not more than five- feet tall, wafted across the grounds like a lullaby. There was no urgency in her voice or in those who followed her in chorus.

They have done this many times before—at the block and district headquarters, at the state capital in Patna and more than a thousand kilometres away at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. They know the Indian welfare state takes time to wake up from its slumber.

“After a lot of running around, we got 26 days of work this year," said Mandesree. That is far short of the 100 days promised under the central scheme that seeks to shelter vulnerable households from seasonal unemployment and income shocks.

As India grapples with an economic slowdown—gross domestic product (GDP) growth fell to 5% in 2019-20, the slowest in 11 years—leading to fewer jobs, stagnant wages and widespread hunger in the hinterland, the employment guarantee scheme could have been a valuable safety net. Instead, suicides by daily wage earners—the most vulnerable among all occupational groups—doubled to 30,000 in the four years to 2018, according to latest numbers from the home ministry.

poor wages under the rural jobs scheme and a delay in payments have driven men out of the scheme, leaving only women and the old behind

According to the Socio-Economic Caste Census 2011, 56% of rural households or an estimated 500 million people constitute India’s landless poor. For them, cracks in existing welfare schemes—from employment guarantee and maternity entitlement to pensions for the old, widowed and disabled—coupled with a dearth of day jobs and rising food prices has meant fewer meals and a diet shorn of nutrition. Between 2011-12 and 2017-18, consumption expenditure of rural families, including on daily staples, fell by a sharp 9%, showed a leaked government report.

There were ample reasons for the Union budget—presented on Saturday— to address this rural misery, and to kick- start demand and consumption. However, it sharply reduced funding for the rural jobs scheme—from ₹71,000 crore in 2019-20 (Revised Estimate) to ₹61,500 crore next year (Budget Estimate).

The budget also slashed the food subsidy bill by a staggering ₹69,000 crore, despite worsening food security situation in villages. In fact, the Economic Survey released on Friday advised the government to reduce coverage under the National Food Security Act, 2013, to the bottom 20% of India’s population, compared to 67% now.

The budgets for social security pensions ( ₹9,200 crore) and maternity schemes ( ₹2,500 crore) were kept unchanged. And sadly, even for the Mid Day Meal Scheme for school-going children, the Centre spent ₹1,100 crore less in 2019-20 than what it had planned; similarly, it spent ₹2,100 crore less for supplementary nutrition for children under 6 years of age (Anganwadi scheme).

“The poorest seem to be hit in every possible dimension…in the medium to long term we are looking not just at a nutritionally deficient, but a mentally-stunted society," said Rajendran Narayanan, assistant professor at the Azim Premji University in Bengaluru. He added that welfare schemes like MGNREGS are seen from a technical perspective (for example, making Aadhaar mandatory and linking it to bank accounts) rather than fixing basic problems like low wages and payment delays.

Living on the edge

Across India, families who managed to find employment under MGNREGS, on an average worked for just 42 days in 2019-20 (till 1 February); the average days of employment provided under the scheme is likely to fall to its lowest in five years. A fund crunch also delayed wage payments; currently, 15 states have no money to implement the scheme in February and March. Mandesree and several other women who protested at the block development office are yet to receive the full payment for the two weeks they worked in December.

Later that day as the women started to leave, I met Dinesh Thakur who despite being blind, walked seven kilometres to the block development office with his wife Sita Devi and their granddaughter Priya. Years back, Sita had worked under the rural jobs scheme but never received the ₹12,000 due to her. The head of the village panchayat claimed the attendance sheet was stolen from his car. Sita did not think MGNREGS was worth the effort.

A blind Dinesh Thakur and his wife are struggling to run a family on a paltry ₹400 per month disability pension

But after Thakur’s migrant son stopped sending money last month—his apprenticeship as a carpenter in Mumbai paid poorly—they were worried. The couple walked to the protest venue and back, three hours in all, to find if MGNREGS can help them in these difficult times.

At Balrakisun village in Turki block, about an hour’s ride from the protest site, women were on the edge. A crowd of more than 50 people had gathered late that evening. Low wages under MGNREGS— ₹177 per day compared to both market wages ( ₹350) and stipulated minimum wages ( ₹380)—has driven able- bodied men out of the scheme. In these parts, the only ones interested in MGNREGS are the old, women and widows. Even that is largely driven by a local advocacy group MGNREGA Watch, which helps landless families enrol under the scheme and force government officials and elected panchayats to approve work orders.

Sumantra Devi could barely hold her tears. Her husband is bedridden with tuberculosis. She now takes her 13-year-old son to the brick kiln for a paltry wage of ₹120 per day—even that reprieve is not available when it rains, leaving her to do odd jobs for a pittance. Sumantra worked for close to a month in the jobs scheme but did not receive the full payment. “I have no money to buy the fruits and eggs the doctor prescribed," she said sitting next to her ailing husband, inside a cold and dimly-lit room.

Fact is, funding for MGNREGS was choked after Prime Minister Narendra Modi called it “a living monument of failures" of past governments to reduce poverty. At the beginning of every fiscal year, the jobs scheme kick-starts with pending wage arrears of ₹10,000 crore and by December the funds are nearly exhausted. “To break this vicious cycle and ensure that MGNREGS wages do not fall far below market rates, funding has to be raised significantly," said Jean Drèze, visiting professor of economics at Ranchi University.

The missing egg

The Anganwadi (childcare centre) at the Ashapur Bhavani village is a sight to behold. Under the centrally-sponsored Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme, Anganwadis were set up to serve nutritious food to children below 6 years of age, and to provide take-home rations for pregnant and lactating mothers. It is also meant to be a playschool for children from poor families.

Monica, 3, has not received the one egg due to her every week at the local Anganwadi

But at noon it wore a deserted look. Dirty jute mats were spread on an open porch; packs of syringes and gas cylinders were scattered in an adjacent room. A few children were dragged from the street after the Anganwadi in-charge Kumari Shobha arrived at 12.30pm. Food was yet to be cooked. For two months now, the facility has not served the one egg due to every child once a week. The weighing scale was broken. Desserts like kheer and halwa served to children were prepared without milk, complained a parent.

The register showed 26 children were enrolled; the day’s attendance was already filled up by the in-charge, even before she reached the centre. An embarrassed Shobha said her monthly salary is due since November last year. She also showed the register which records pregnancies. Twenty-one first pregnancies were recorded over the past year but only three women received a portion of the ₹5,000 financial assistance under the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana.

In his address to the nation on 31 December 2016, Modi announced that pregnant mothers across India will receive a financial assistance of ₹6,000. This was mandated under the food security Act but never implemented. However, when the scheme took shape in August 2017, the promised assistance was scaled down to ₹5,000 per woman and restricted to only the first pregnancy, in a violation of the 2013 Act.

Devkali Devi, 65, who stays alone, can barely survive on a 5kg per month food dole from the government.

A right to information application found that only 24% pregnant women benefitted from the maternity scheme (or received at least one instalment) in 2018-19. Less than 10% pregnancies were covered in Bihar.

Before the food security Act mandated it, there was nothing for pregnant women in the informal sector (while those in the formal sector are entitled to 26 weeks of paid leave), said Reetika Khera, associate professor at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. “Undernutrition has an inter-generational dimension—weak and poorly fed mothers are likely to give birth to undernourished children. Cash support can help meet their special health and nutrition needs," she added.

Mothers who are in their second or third pregnancy are entitled to a cash assistance of ₹1,400 for institutional births, under the centrally-funded Janani Suraksha Yojana. In Bihar, that money barely covers the costs of childbirth.

“I spent ₹2,000 when my child was born," recounted Soni Devi, who now carries her six-month-old child to MGNREGS work sites. The money, Soni said, was spent in paying the village health worker ( ₹200) who took her to the hospital, the nurse who cleaned the baby after birth ( ₹500), hospital staff who prepared her papers ( ₹200) and medicines ( ₹500), among others.

Princely sum

Thakur, the blind man mentioned earlier in this piece, gets a disability pension of ₹400 per month under the National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP) meant for the old, widows and the disabled. But Thakur’s younger brother, who is gradually slipping into lunacy also due to his deteriorating eyesight, did not make the cut.

“I visited the block development office to apply for his pension. But since he can see a little during the day (but nothing after sundown), I was asked to come back when he goes fully blind," said Thakur.

NSAP provides a monthly pension to 33 million individuals but the Centre’s contribution is capped at ₹200. The amount has remained unchanged since 2006. “This is ridiculous for a scheme which supports the most vulnerable," said Drèze, the economist. “We repeatedly appealed to the finance ministry to raise pensions to at least ₹500 per month, but the government is more interested in pushing contributory schemes." According to Drèze, it is unfair to expect landless families living from one meal to the next to contribute for a pension 20 years down the line.

No one knows the contours of fairness better than 65-year-old Devkali Devi. Some years back her husband Ganga Paswan, a rickshaw puller, died in a road accident. Ever since, she has been living alone in a thatched outhouse. Devkali’s bed is a pile of hay and her only comfort is a tattered shawl. “How can I survive on 5kg of (subsidized) grains and ₹400 pension… Is it time for me to go?" she asked.

5.2. President of India Inaugurates 34th Surajkund International Crafts Mela; Urges Everyone to Transform the Philosophy of 'Buy Local for a Better Tomorrow' Into a Movement

IBEF, Feb. 03, 2020

The President of India, Shri Ram Nath Kovind, inaugurated the 34th Surajkund International Crafts Mela in Surajkund, Haryana today (February 1, 2020).

Speaking on the occasion, the President said that occasions such as Surajkund Mela provides ordinary craftsmen and artisans real recognition and value for their skills. It also provides them an excellent opportunity to display and sell their products directly to customers. The Surajkund Mela has saved India's various remarkable craft traditions from extinction. For many craftsmen, artisans and weavers, this fair is major source of their annual income.

The President said that we should be proud of the items made by craftsmen of our country. He reiterated mantra of 'Buy local for a better tomorrow'. He urged everyone to transform the philosophy of 'Buy local for a better tomorrow' into a movement. He said that by using locally manufactured products, we would be able to help the small entrepreneurs in our area to a great extent.

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. Jeff Bezos pledges $1 billion, pulls out all stops in India charm offensive

Livemint, 15 Jan 2020, Suneera Tandon

Bezos pledges the money to help take small businesses online in bid to counter criticism

Around 3,000 SMBs, startups, and tech solution firms from across India attended the Smbhav event on Wednesday

New Delhi: Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos pledged $1 billion in new investments to help take small Indian businesses online, as the world’s richest man pulled out all the stops to woo merchants and the government amid regulatory scrutiny and protests by traders.

The investments, said Bezos in a chat with Amazon India country head Amit Agarwal, will touch as many as 10 million small and medium businesses, including manufacturers, resellers, local offline shops and brands.

“This initiative will use Amazon’s global footprint to create $10 billion in Indian exports by 2025," Bezos told a hall packed with Amazon executives and businessmen, who sell on its marketplace, and industry stalwarts at the company’s first Smbhav summit for small businesses.

As many as 3,000 small and medium businesses (SMBs), startups, and technology solution companies thronged the venue in Delhi from across the country to attend the two-day event, cheering Bezos as he spelt out his vision for India.

In another part of the city, a group of traders protested Amazon’s policy of offering deep discounts on products, a strategy the traders claim is aimed at bankrupting them and cornering market share. They held up posters that read “Amazon Go Back".

But at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, the venue of the summit, thousands turned up to hear about the services offered by the e-commerce giant that has committed investments worth $5.5 billion since entering India in 2013.

“We are doing this now because it’s working. And when something works you should double down on it," Bezos said, explaining his decision to invest in India and small businesses.

Amazon is currently battling Walmart-owned Flipkart in India’s small but burgeoning e-commerce market. The Smbhav summit is aimed at attracting more sellers and partners into its fold, especially as Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries steps up efforts to digitize millions of kirana stores in India.

As part of its investments, Amazon will expand the reach of its existing Digital Haats in 100 cities, villages and communities that will help provide services such as e-commerce on-boarding, cataloguing and warehouse space for small businesses.

Amazon will also expand its Amazon Easy programme, which helps kirana shops set up kiosks to provide assistance to their customers in choosing the right product, place an order on Amazon and earn a commission in the process.

Amazon has been putting more resources to assist small businesses globally as well.

In 2019, the company launched 150 tools and services to help independent small and medium-sized businesses grow their sales in Amazon’s stores.

“New tools and services, along with infrastructure, programmes, and people, are part of the more than $15 billion Amazon is on track to invest this year to empower independent small and medium-sized businesses selling in Amazon’s stores," the company said in August.

“At the end of the day, in the global supply market, as also in India, SMBs are a large part of the vendor base for any retailer, including for e-commerce players," said Ankur Pahwa, EY India’s e-commerce and consumer internet leader. “Ultimately, the move to support digitization will help people move from offline to online from a transacting point of view. A lot of people in India are online, but they don’t transact. This can be seen as a case of assisted commerce for vendors to bring their products online and to help them transact online."

This, Pahwa said, will help create opportunities in logistics, warehousing and better utilization of existing SMB infrastructure and digital data. This helps Amazon continue to create a strong ecosystem for retail and expand the online user base in the long term, he said.

The announcement comes as the retailer battles protests by small and medium businesses that have accused the company of unfair trade practices, including the use of deep discounts and giving preference to select sellers.

Earlier this week the Competition Commission of India ordered a probe into alleged competition law violations by Amazon and Flipkart over these complaints.

But Amazon remains unfazed. Gopal Pillai, vice president for seller services at Amazon India, said, “If we don’t create a level playing field or have a thriving marketplace, we would not have seen so many sellers on our platform. Numbers are telling a different story. We are always open and willing to talk to anyone."

On the order passed by the competition watchdog, Pillai said that while he was yet to fully read the report, “we do not take any of these things lightly. We are compliant and will always be compliant. Even though it may have an impact on the business, we take compliance as the number one priority for us".

Despite a surge in revenue and growth, Amazon India’s wholesale and marketplace entities posted a loss of around ₹5,800 crore in FY19. The company has also invested in offline retailers in India. Last August, Kishore Biyani’s Future Group said Amazon had agreed to pick up a 49% stake in Future Coupons, which holds about 7.3% in Future Retail Ltd, through convertible warrants. It also owns a small stake in Shopper’s Stop.

Earlier this week, Amazon infused ₹1,355 crore into its digital payments venture Amazon Pay India Pvt. Ltd and an additional ₹360 crore into Amazon Wholesale (India) Pvt. Ltd.

6.2. Soil Health Card scheme of Central Govt: A success story; In second phase 11.69 crore Soil Health Cards distributed to farmers in two years

IBEF, Feb. 06, 2020

The Soil Health Card scheme launched by the Modi Government during the financial year 2014-15 with a view to address the decline of soil nutrients, has started reaping fruit. In the second phase of the scheme 11.69 crore Soil Health Cards have been distributed to farmers in the last two years.

Under the guidance of the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi and directions of the Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Shri Narendra Singh Tomar, the Ministry is issuing the Soil Health Cards. This has enabled the farmers to understand the soil health parameters and improve its productivity by judicious application of soil nutrients.

A study conducted by the National Productivity Council (NPC) says the application of Soil Health Card recommendations has led to a decline of 8-10 per cent in use of chemical fertilizers and also raised productivity by 5-6 per cent.

Under the Central Government's Soil Health Card Scheme Phase-I (Years 2015 to 2017) 10.74 crore cards were distributed, while under the Phase-II 11.69 crore cards have been give away during the period 2017-19.

In the current financial year, a pilot project "Development of Model Villages" is being implemented under which the sampling and testing of cultivable soil is being encouraged in partnership with the farmers. Under the project a Model Village has been selected for aggregation of soil samples and analysis of each agricultural holding. As part of the scheme 13.53 lakh Soil Health Cards have been distributed during the year 2019-20.

For the setting up of Soil Health Laboratories under the scheme the states have been sanctioned 429 static labs, 102 new mobile labs, 8,752 mini labs, 1,562 village-level laboratories and strengthening of 800 existing labs.

The scheme provides for the analysis of soil composition by the State Governments once in every two years so that remedial steps can be taken to improve soil nutrients. Farmers can track their soil samples and also obtain their Soil Health Card report.

While the Soil Health Management Scheme has turned out to be a blessing for the farmers, it is also creating jobs for the agrarian youth. Under the scheme village youth and farmers up to 40 years of age are eligible to set up Soil Health Laboratories and undertake testing. A laboratory costs up to Rs 5 lakh (US$ 7154.09), 75 per cent of which can be funded by the Central and State Governments. The same provisions apply to Self Help Groups, Farmers' Cooperative Societies, Farmers Groups and Agricultural Producing Organisations.

Interested youth farmers and Organisations can submit their proposals either in person to the Deputy Director (Agriculture) / Joint Secretary (Agriculture) or in their offices in respective districts. For details visit websites agricoop.nic.in or soilhealth.dac.gov.in or dial Kisan Call Centre (1800-180-1551).

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

7.1. 186 Agri products testing laboratories set up by APEDA

IBEF, Jan. 21, 2020

Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) has added 135 laboratories to existing 51 recognized laboratories. With this initiative APEDA recognition of laboratories has reached 186 laboratories across the country. The number of laboratories has increased in states with exporting potential like Maharashtra (35), Gujarat (23), Andhra Pradesh & Telangana (10), Tamil Nadu (23) and Karnataka (17). Laboratory testing requirements are crucial in agri export supply chain.

For increasing the laboratory network further, APEDA has taken a policy decision for simplification of APEDA recognition of laboratories. It has been decided that the laboratories which are NABL accredited will be recognized by APEDA and same will be added in the network of APEDA recognition laboratories. This will enable APEDA to continuously expand its recognition network of laboratories across the country and will enable the exporters to have an easy access to the laboratories for testing of APEDA scheduled products for exports.

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

7.2.1. APEDA organizes first ever awareness programme on Agri Exports in A&N Island

IBEF, Feb. 05, 2020

An awareness programme was organized by Agriculture and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), Ministry of Commerce and Industries, Government of India along with the Directorate of Industries of the Andaman & Nicobar Islands (A&N Islands) in Port Blair on 31st January, 2020 to examine ways to promote the exports of agri products and implementation of the Agri Export Policy in the Islands.

APEDA has facilitated in developing the draft state Agri Export action plan, which is now being finalized. The Union Territory of A&N Islands has designated department of agriculture as the State nodal agency and deputed Joint Director Department of Agriculture as nodal officer for implementation of the Agri Export Policy in a focused manner.

The programme held at Port Blair last week was attended by around 100 participants including concerned Government agencies and some exporters from other States. Secretary Industries, A&N Islands, Dr. Pooja Joshi along with senior officials from APEDA, Director of Industries A&N Islands, NABARD, Central Island Agricultural Research Institute, an ICAR Institute, Spices Board attended the awareness programme. Detailed presentations were also made on activities of the organizations attending the workshop.

The presentation made by APEDA elaborated on the potential of exports from the island, export requirements, financial assistance schemes provided and the activities to be carried out for the implementation of the Agri Export Policy.

Exporters from Chennai and Jharkhand elaborated on the export requirements of products from the area like fruits, vegetables and dried flowers.

The exporters also shared their experiences and assured the participants of providing linkages for exports. Export prospects of spices, coconut products and fisheries were also discussed.

The A&N Islands have the advantage of being on the sea route to the South East Asian Nations and can directly export the agri products from the islands to these countries. In the awareness programme, it was informed by the local administration that plans have been drawn to establish trans-shipment ports in the Islands to promote direct export from Islands.

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

7.2.2. APEDA Organizes Awareness Camp for Potato Exports in Agra

IBEF, Jan. 23, 2020

For the development of clusters Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) is organising meetings in the notified clusters under the Agri Export Policy announced by the Government of India. Till date meetings have been organised in 25 Product Clusters. In the last 10 days, 11 meetings have been organised to expedite cluster development. Meeting have been organised in the clusters of Mangoes in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Telangana, Banana in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, Pomegranate in Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, Onion in Maharashtra, Potato in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Punjab, orange and grapes in Maharashtra, dairy products in Gujarat and poultry products and eggs in Tamil Nadu.

Considering the potential of production of potatoes in Agra region, potato cluster has been notified under Agri Export Policy (AEP) of Government of India.

A meeting was organised on 20.01.2020 in Agra under the Chairmanship of the Chief Development Officer and was attended by Mr Rajkumar Chahar, Member of Parliament Lok Sabha constituency Fatehpur Sikri and Ms Hemlata Diwakar, MLA Agra, officials of APEDA, Government of India, Nodal officer for the cluster and other concerned stakeholders.

In the meeting it was discussed that there is a need for cultivation of processing variety of potatoes which has a demand in the overseas markets. Also, the importing countries require the produce from the pest free area along with traceability.

In order to create awareness among exporters/farmers, a workshop/BSM and training programme will be conducted in March this year by APEDA for quality production, traceability, judicious use of pesticides, in order to avoid noncompliance in export of potatoes. In the meeting held in January this year it has been decided to form a Cluster Level Committee under the chairmanship of the District Magistrate, Agra.

The meeting was followed by a visit to the potato fields in the area of Shamshabad and Fatehabad, Agra for interaction with farmers and identification of gaps across the supply chain. During the field visit, interaction with farmers was held and the gaps were identified for taking necessary interventions by concerned Central / State government agencies and other stakeholders.

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

8.1. Indian food-tech industry to touch US$ 8 billion mark by 2022: Report

IBEF, Jan. 29, 2020

In the next two years, Indian food-tech industry is expected to reach US$ 8 billion mark, clocking a CAGR of 25-30 per cent, as per the report by Google and Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The food tech space has been the fastest growing e-commerce segment in terms of reach and engagement, on the back of the rapid advancement in internet adoption and continued investments on consumer trials and delivery satisfaction.

According to the report, titled 'Demystifying the online food consumer', the major reasons for growth in the use of online food ordering apps includes a large variety of cuisines, good discounts and convenience. It said, "In fact, once users are satisfied with the service and start becoming habitual, they become more discerning about value - this behaviour is observable independent of town, class, social status, age and gender."

The peer or network advocacy is playing an important role in attracting first-time consumers to the food ordering apps.

Ms Roma Datta Chobey, Director of Travel, BFSI, Classifieds, Gaming, Telco & Payments, Google, said, "The food-tech industry is nascent but one of the fastest growing in the country. Food tech has now made its presence in more than 500 cities in India and with consumer confidence growing, there are new opportunities for the players to 'win with the consumer' in an evolving market."

Further Mr Rachit Mathur, MD and Partner, India Lead of BCG's Consumer & Retail Practice added, "Overall online spending in India is rising rapidly and expected to grow at 25 per cent over the next five years to reach over US$ 130 billion. Riding on the wave of rapid digitization and steadily growing consumption, the reach of food-tech companies has grown six times over the last couple of years and will continue to increase further."

The major hurdles faced by these app that hinder consumer adoption consist of lack of trust in the app, delivery charges, food quality concerns and lack of customisation, the report noted. "Interestingly, these observations vary based on the maturity of the market. While delivery charges is the top reason for not ordering food online in metro cities, in tier-I cities, lack of trust in apps is the primary roadblock," it added.

The report is based on feedback of about 1,500 respondents across 12 cities.

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

8.2. 39 Mega Food Parks and 298 Integrated Cold Chain Projects sanctioned under Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana (PMKSY)

IBEF, Feb. 05, 2020

The Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI) has sanctioned 39 Mega Food Parks and 298 Integrated Cold Chain Projects throughout the country to fill in the gaps across the value chain and establishing the Cold Chain Grid.

The MoFPI is focusing on building cold chain infrastructure across the country, for seamless transfer of perishables from production to consumption areas, through the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana (PMKSY), which comprises of component schemes namely (i) Integrated Cold Chain and Value Addition Infrastructure, (ii) Mega Food Park, (iii) Creation of Backward & Forward Linkages, (iv) Creation/ Expansion of Food Processing and Preservation Capacities (v) Agro Processing Clusters and (vi) Operation Greens. These schemes aim at arresting post-harvest losses of horticulture and non-horticulture produce by encouraging the creation of cold storages/ primary processing/ and transportation facilities across the country.

A State/ UT-wise list showing the approved Cold Chain and Mega Food Park projects as on date under the PMKSY is placed below:

The above information was given by Shri Rameswar Teli, Minister of State for Food Processing Industries, in a reply in the Lok Sabha today.

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

9.1. The bhujia king: Haldiram’s’ Shiv Kishan Agarwal

Livemint, 07 Feb. 2020, Omkar Khandekar

The 79-year-old chairman of the Nagpur-based Haldiram’s on how managing a family business isn’t always easy, his punishing schedule and what keeps him going

Despite my turning up at his office on time, it’s nearly 2 hours before Shiv Kishan Agarwal grants me an audience. It’s 4.30pm on a Saturday but the chairman of the Nagpur-based Haldiram’s is apparently in the thick of things, barely looking up as I walk in. His attention is on his assistant, who is peeling the many boxes of soan papdi lying on a broad wooden table between us. The mild scent of ghee and pistachios of the crisp, flaky confection is starting to take over. Shiv Kishan checks the papdi’s texture, occasionally pressing it with his thumb. Finally, he jots down the names of three of six contractors in charge of manufacturing them.

The assistant takes his leave. Shiv Kishan, surrounded by portraits of five generations of the Agarwal family and an assortment of Hindu deities, finally turns to me. What does he intend to do with these contractors, I ask. “Ab main unhe tight karunga (I will turn the screws on them)," he says blandly.

It’s a rather severe take from a man I had imagined as the Willy Wonka of the sweet, snack and namkeen business. But the quality of his products, he would tell me later, has always been non-negotiable. Shiv Kishan is 79 years old but continues to put in nearly “20 hours" of work a day. “Even when I am sleeping, I am thinking of work," he says. Naturally, he expects the rest to keep up.

The Haldiram’s brand in India, overseen from Delhi and Nagpur by members of the Agarwal family, generated close to ₹5,000 crore in annual revenue last year. Its legacy is traced to Ganga Bhishen Agarwal, fondly called “Haldiram" by friends and relatives for his pale, milk-and-turmeric complexion. The Agarwals of Bikaner made a living selling bhujia sev in a corner shop in the Rajasthan town before expanding to Kolkata in 1957.Shiv Kishan, Ganga Bhishen’s grandson, turned it into a food empire that sells 400 other varieties of namkeen, sweets, baked goods, fresh, frozen and dairy products in franchisees, food malls and corner shops across 100 countries.

It all started with a slight tweak to the traditional bhujia. “Haldiram" Agarwal, born in 1904, had joined his father’s bhujia-making business at a young age. Always the enterprising one, he had modified the traditional mothi bhujia sev into finer bariksev. It proved to be surprisingly popular. Haldiram set up his own shop in 1941—the year Shiv Kishan was born—and soon become a sought-after bhujia seller in Bikaner.

Shiv Kishan is the eldest of nine siblings, only six of whom survived. He studied until class VI, learning Marwari and basic math. Never too big on books, he was asked to help at the shop at age 11. He had learnt the art of bargaining during trips to the local grocers. “If they asked for 2 paise, you offered one and a half. If they stood their ground despite haggling, you paid up but asked them to give some more. Or took some yourself."

In 1955, Haldiram had a tiff with his family and decided to move to Burra Bazaar, a popular marketplace in Kolkata, with one of his sons Rameshwar Lal and a grandson Shiv Kishan, then 14. Being in a big city was thrilling. Shiv Kishan would sample food from the local shops—samosas, namkeen, Bengali sweets—and try replicating them. “But my uncle would stop me. They would say it’s not worth the trouble."

At 17, Shiv Kishan married a girl of his parents’ choice (“Ladki kaun dekhne jaata hai? Dekhne nahi dete." I wasn’t even allowed to see her). At 26, he was sent to Nagpur to help set up a bhujia shop for his brother-in-law Banshilal. In 1968, as now, Nagpur was a sleepy town, best known as the capital of oranges and saffron (not the edible kind). “There was nothing here," he recalls. “The roads were empty, a couple of buildings were being constructed..." But the locals were fond of a good snack. “A local Jain shop which stocked Rajasthani items would sell 100kg bhujia in 15 days. It was a big amount then."

Shiv Kishan went with two workmen, taught them the basics of bhujia-making, waited until the shop started turning profits and returned to Kolkata. Months later, he would return to Nagpur, this time with his wife and four children, after his uncle in Kolkata accused him of fudging the ledger books. His brother-in-law was happy to see him again. In Shiv Kishan’s absence, his business had nosedived.

“At 28, my life began," he says. For the first time, Shiv Kishan could work without interference from his elders. He started experimenting, introducing Bikaneri rasmalai and Bengali rasgulla alongside his grandfather’s bhujia. “Every other month, I would go to Kolkata, taste some samples," he says. “I didn’t know (how to make) the sweets but I knew the taste." His culinary memory and willingness to experiment served him well in introducing other cuisines like Chinese, Italian and south Indian in the chain of restaurants he would go on to launch.

The first year—1968—returned bumper profits of nearly ₹35,000. The brothers-in-law bought the six shops next door, brought in more workmen and introduced products like pedas, kaju katli, kalakand and assorted Marwari sweets. Their business soared.

So far, I remark, there doesn’t seem to be any female protagonist in the story.

“They would work hard as well," says Shiv Kishan. “But at home."

Having established himself in Nagpur, Shiv Kishan was itching to set up operations in the national capital. In 1983, his brother Manoharlal and he set up house and a factory a couple of storeys above a Sikh baker’s shop in Chandni Chowk. Just as they had started breaking even, the bakery was set afire by a mob in the 1984 anti-Sikh violence, destroying the Agarwals’ factory and the house above as well.

It took a few months to repair and rebuild their home. Undeterred, the brothers started afresh, setting up a new factory, working double shifts, breaking even and finally, reaping profits. The IT raids on their shops in Delhi and Nagpur too prompted them to change the way they did business, switching from cash transactions based on verbal agreements to maintaining accounts and filing taxes. “Tab se humne do number ka kaam karna band kar diya (We stopped problematic transactions)," says Shiv Kishan.

Shiv Kishan and his brothers gradually expanded across the country, launching more factories in Delhi and Nagpur, each supervised by family-led teams. By the 1990s, they had also started doing rounds of food expos abroad and exporting their products. It was a conscious decision to stick to vegetarian food in sync with their Marwari ethos, says Shiv Kishan. “The idea was, make such delicious food, even meat eaters turn vegetarian." In the financial year 2013-2014, a press release on the Haldiram’s website claims, their revenue stood at ₹3,500 crore—more than the combined revenue of Domino’s ( ₹1,733 crore) and McDonald’s ( ₹1,390 crore) in India. “It just goes to show that popularity of foreign culture cannot beat a good Indian product," the release adds.

As Haldiram’s expanded and diversified, rifts started emerging in the Agarwal family. In the early 1990s, the Agarwal siblings divided their Indian market into zones of independent operation: the north India markets to be overseen by brothers Manoharlal and Madhusudan from Delhi, the ones in the east by Prabhu Shankar Agarwal and Ashok Agarwal from Kolkata and those in the south and west by Shiv Kishan Agarwal from Nagpur. Around the same time, a bitter copyright battle began, concluding only in 2013 after a court ruling forbade the Kolkata-based operations from using the name “Haldiram’s Bhujiawala" any more. They rebranded to “Prabhuji: from the house of Haldiram’s". Their relations with their counterparts in Nagpur and Delhi, however, remain strained.

Managing a family business isn’t always easy, admits Shiv Kishan. Once his children joined the operation, there were suddenly seven more members of his family, at least three of whom work as directors, to take into confidence. “I work by my convictions," says Shiv Kishan. “When I started a dairy, my children were sceptical. It worked. Same thing happened with bread. They think too much, so they lag behind."

The namkeen business, Haldiram’s traditional forte, has faced stiff competition over the years, mainly from Balaji Wafers, the ₹2,000 crore snack giant from Rajkot. Shiv Kishan’s own relatives, who earlier manufactured for Haldiram’s, have started independent companies. The Delhi operations too have eclipsed Nagpur’s revenue, posting revenue of ₹2,619 crore in March 2018 against Nagpur’s ₹2,413 crore. “Our marketing was weak," confesses Shiv Kishan. “My children didn’t pay as much attention. I have now told them to get more professionals on board."

Apart from turf wars, the brand’s commitment to quality, something it pitches as its USP, has also come under scrutiny. In 2015, the US food and drug administration (FDA) rejected 17 of its exported products saying they “appear to be adulterated because (they) contain a pesticide chemical". Shiv Kishan, however, rejects the charge. “Those were Delhi’s (products)," he claims. “Ours were passed." Within a month of the controversy, the Maharashtra FDA had given a clean chit to the Haldiram’s group, finding “clinically no problems in its products".

Haldiram’s exponential rise hasn’t escaped its international ready-to-eat counterparts looking to grow in India. In 2019, media reports suggested that US-based Kellogg’s was looking to buy a 51% stake in Haldiram’s Delhi and Nagpur operations. The deal never came through though. “They took too much time," says Shiv Kishan. “Initially, they had offered ₹2,000 crore. Then they waited for two years, during which time our business grew. When they returned, we asked for ₹2,300 crore. They weren’t ready for it."

Shiv Kishan doesn’t regret it, nor does he plan to retire anytime soon. Work is the reason he wakes up at 5am every day, six days a week. A day after our meeting, he will be visiting Palghar, Maharashtra, for a wedding. A couple of weeks after, he is scheduled to go to Germany for work. The itchy feet and restless energy, far more evident now as we near the end of our 2-hour conversation, is what keeps him going. “All I ever wanted," he says, “was to do good work and grow."

9.2. 154 Clusters Approved During 2018-20 Against a Target of 100 Under Sfurti Scheme

IBEF, Feb. 07, 2020

Union Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises and M/o RT&H, Shri Nitin Gadkari informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply today that 154 Clusters when approved during 2018-20 against a target of 100 under Scheme of Fund for Regeneration of Traditional Industries (SFURTI) to promote traditional Industries and Artisan. In the year 2018-19, 70 proposals and in 2019-20 (till 31.01.2020), 84 proposals have been approved, which is a substantial jump over the period from 2014-15 to 2017-18, when against a target of 71 clusters to be set up during 12th Five Year Plan period, 72 clusters were approved till 2017-18.

He added that these clusters have been setup across the country including in NER and Andaman & Nicobar. As many as 54 clusters have become functional so far, out of which 51 clusters were made operational during 2019-20 (till 31.01.2020). The sectors covered under SFURTI include Khadi products, Honey & related products, Coir & related products, Handloom, Traditional dress making, Handicraft, Traditional arts like-Kalamkari, Dokra art, Aipan art, Food processing, Bamboo products etc.

The Minister also informed that the main objective of the SFURTI scheme is to organize the traditional industries and artisans into clusters to make them competitive, provide support for their long term sustainability, to provide sustained employment for traditional industry artisans & rural entrepreneurs, to enhance marketability of products etc. The scheme provides support in the form of two interventions viz. Hard Interventions and Soft Interventions. Hard Interventions include creation of Common Facility Centres (CFCs), Raw material banks (RMBs), Up-gradation of production infrastructure, Tools and technological up-gradation etc. Soft Interventions include counselling, trust building, skill development and capacity building etc.

Shri Gadkari further stated that the scheme was revamped in 2014-15 and further revised in 2017-18. Under the revised scheme, two types of clusters are set up. The maximum financial assistance provided is Rs 2.50 crore (US$ 0.36 million) for a Regular Cluster (up to 500 artisans) and Rs 5 crore (US$ 0.72 million) for a Major Cluster (more than 500 artisans). To expand the reach of the scheme, 20 more Nodal Agencies have been appointed under the scheme during 2019-20 besides the existing 8 Nodal Agencies. KVIC has also been asked to develop Honey clusters as per SFURTI Guidelines.

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

10.1. Warehousing sector to add 40 million sq. ft. space across top 8 cities this year: Report

IBEF, Jan. 28, 2020

Warehousing sector is expected to add around 40 million sq. ft. space across the top eight cities by this year, as the sector is becoming important part of integrated logistics network on the back of the technological advancement and the reform-led policy measures, according to a recent survey.

According to the study by global property consultant Savills, the warehousing space absorption across eight cities like Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Delhi and Kolkata, is expected to increase to 35 million sq. ft. in 2020.

Though, in 2019, the total supply of warehousing space stood at 37.94 million sq. ft. whereas the absorption was at 33 million sq. ft.

"Warehousing industry in India has come a long way and it's going to continue to mature as a favourable real estate asset class. The sector has witnessed a massive participation from institutional investors and developers amid rising demand from across the sector like ecommerce, retail, FMCG, 3PL (third-party logistics) , cold storage, pharma and manufacturing," Mr Srinivas N, Savills India Managing Director, Industrial Warehousing and Logistics said.

Mumbai and Delhi are expected to witness a major addition of around 8 million sq. ft. each in 2020, followed by Bengaluru and Kolkata, as per the study.

In 2019, Mumbai added 5.7 million sq. ft. while Delhi witnessed an addition of 8.1 million sq. ft.

The report added, "Delhi NCR, Bengaluru and Mumbai followed by Kolkata will be the front runners in absorbing majority of occupiers since these are sourcing and consumption hubs".

According to the study, Pune and Chennai will lead in servicing manufacturing clients' needs, followed by Delhi-NCR and Ahmedabad.

Mr Srinivas added, "Government initiatives like make In India, GST, FDI policy, corporate tax reduction, improved infrastructure of road, port, rail and airports has and will continue to impress the growth".

He further said that compliance, quality and improved specifications offerings will be the need of the hour with growing requirements at tier-II locations from organised developers.

Srinivas added that tier-II locations like Guwahati, Coimbatore, Lucknow, Jaipur, Patna, Bhubaneshwar, Ludhiana, Vapi, Nagpur and Vizag / Vijayawada cumulatively will witness a total addition in excess of 6 million sq. ft. of additional absorption.

In 2019, around 6 million sq. ft. was absorbed by manufacturing sector, whereas e-commerce and 3PL utilised around 20 million sq. ft. Sectors such as SMEs and electronic components manufacturers and auto sector rented out considerably in few cities.

"It's also important to note that there is in excess of 800 million sq. ft. of Grade 'C' and Grade 'D' stock across India which will start migrating to Grade 'A' and 'B' over the next 3 to 5 years," Mr Srinivas added.

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

10.2. An old law that’s ironically driven up onion prices

Livemint, 02 Feb. 2020, Vivek Kaul

Basically, bad weather led to a disruption in supply, which sent prices soaring. While that is the real reason for the rise in onion prices, there is a little more to it than that. Mint takes a look

High onion prices have had people across India worried over the last few months. Basically, bad weather led to a disruption in supply, which sent prices soaring. While that is the real reason for the rise in onion prices, there is a little more to it than that. Mint takes a look.

How high have prices of onions risen?

In December, onion prices rose more than threefold (see graphic) from a year earlier. This was the highest increase in onion prices in a period of five years. Even in November, onion prices had shot up 146%. The Economic Survey of 2019-20 holds the Essential Commodities Act (ECA), 1955, responsible for this. The Act “controls the production, supply and distribution of, and trade and commerce in, certain goods such as vegetables, pulses, edible oils, sugar, etc., which are treated as essential commodities". The state governments have the power to implement the provisions under the Act.

What does the Act do when prices shoot up?

When prices of an essential commodity, like onions, go up, state governments can impose stockholding limits. This leads to a situation where wholesalers, distributors and retailers dealing in the essential commodity need to reduce the inventory that they hold in order to meet the requirements of a reduced stock limit. The idea is to curb hoarding, maintain an adequate supply of the essential commodity and, thus, maintain affordable prices. This is where the law of unintended consequences strikes. Instead of ensuring prices of the essential commodity remain affordable, ECA makes it expensive.

What is the law of unintended consequences?

As Vijay Kelkar and Ajay Shah write in their book In Service of the Republic: “A government intervention that is intended to have a certain outcome will very often end up yielding a very different result. Such failures happen so often that these have been elevated to the level of a humorous ‘law’." This law has had a huge role in driving up onion prices.

How has this law sent onion prices soaring?

Heavy rains in August-September ensured that the kharif crop of onions was badly affected. This meant that the supply of onions would be impacted. The kharif crop caters to the demand for onions between October and December. On 29 September, stock limits under ECA were imposed to maintain supply. The idea was to ensure onion prices did not go up. Stock limits would ensure that onion stocks would be released into the open market and the supply would go up, ensuring prices remain affordable.

That was theory, what happened actually?

As the Economic Survey points out: “In the case of onions… most of the kharif crop… would have had to be offloaded in the market in October itself. Absent government intervention through ECA, traders would store a part of their produce to ensure smooth availability of a product at stable prices throughout the year." Of course, the law of unintended consequences struck and that did not happen, driving up onion prices in the process.

Vivek Kaul is an economist and the author of the Easy Money trilogy.

- INDUSTRY, MANUFACTURE

11.1. Bajaj Auto launches Chetak electric scooter: bookings start from January 15

IBEF, Jan. 15, 2020

Bajaj Auto announced the formal launch of its resuscitated Chetak scooter in its electric avatar, at an ex-showroom price range starting at Rs 1 lakh (US$ 1430.81).

This is the company's first offering in electric vehicles. Urbane and Premium are the two variants available in Chetak scooter.

The difference between two is that the Chetak Urbane edition with Drum Brakes is priced at Rs 1 lakh (US$ 1430.81), while the Chetak Premium edition with Disc Brakes and luxury finish is priced at Rs 1.15 lakh (US$ 1645.44). Although, both prices are ex-showroom prices and inclusive of applicable subsidies, and exclusive of insurance and road tax, Bajaj Auto said.

"The return of the legendary Chetak now in a modern electric avatar is indeed a proud moment for all of us at Bajaj Auto," said Mr Rakesh Sharma, Executive Director, Bajaj Auto.

He further added, "From 15 Jan 2020 onwards Chetak will be available in two cities and this will mark the commencement of a new era in two-wheeler mobility. We are confident that Chetak will set absolutely new benchmark standards of clean tech driven, elegant and a delightful ownership experience shaping the very future of personal commuting and building HAMARA KAL."

The bookings for Chetak will open from tomorrow onwards, in Pune and Bangalore. Bookings can be done at Chetak's website as well as through select KTM dealerships. Bookings can be made at an initial amount of Rs 2000 (US$ 28.61).

Initially, the product will be sold only in Pune and Bangalore and will be available in 13 dealerships in Bangalore and four dealerships in Pune. Display and test ride Chetaks will be available at these selective KTM dealers by end of this month, the company said.

The deliveries of the scooter will begin from the end of February 2020.

The Chetak has a range of 95km and more on sports mode, and 85 km and more on economy mode. Its 3 KwH battery can cover 70,000 km. The time required for charging it fully is five hours, the company said.

The Chetak comes with an overall warranty of 3 years or 50,000 kilometres (whichever is earlier) inclusive of the Lithium-Ion battery.

The company is also offering a home-charging station facility free of charge along with the Chetak.

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

11.2. Honda achieves export of 25 lakh scooters from India

IBEF, Jan. 29, 2020

Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI) achieved a milestone of exporting 25 lakh units to the world from India.This was achieved by the company in its 19th year of operations in the country. The company debuted the export from India with its model Activa back in 2001.In 2015, which was the company's 15th year of operations, Honda's cumulative exports crossed the 10-lakh mark."We are proud to be the number one scooter exporter from India. With an eye on 2020, Honda 2 Wheelers India aims to further consolidate its number one position in Honda's global motorcycle business while unlocking the next chapter of exports growth in the BS-VI era," said Mr Yadvinder Singh Guleria, Senior Vice President - Sales and Marketing, HMSI.

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

12.1. Hyundai Motor rolls out three millionth car from Chennai plant

IBEF, Jan. 31, 2020

Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL), the country's largest passenger vehicle exporter, on Thursday marked the production of its three millionth export car with the launch of its new sub-4 metre compact sedan Aura at its Irrungattukottai factory near Chennai.

Aura (named Grandi10 for exports) is the three millionth car introduced by the company. This is launched for the Colombian market. Though, the car was earlier introduced for the Indian market on January 21.

Mr SS Kim, Managing Director and CEO, HMIL, termed the company's latest achievement as "the fastest made-in-India 3-millionth export roll out."

In the last 21 years, cumulatively, the Chennai factory has manufactured over nine million cars both for domestic and export markets.

The company began its export journey in 1999 from the country with the first batch of 20 Santro to Nepal and achieved the first milestone of exporting 1,00,000 cars in four years and ten months in October 2004.

In March 2008, the company exported its 500,000-car followed by its one millionth car and two millionth car in February 2010 and March 2014, respectively.

The company has maintained its position as leader in the export of passenger cars from India for over the past two decades.

Currently, the company sells 10 'Made in India' models in over 88 countries that includes Latin America (33 countries), Africa (28 countries), Asia Pacific (26 countries) and Europe (1 country).

In APAC region, in particular in Saudi Arabia market, both Creta and Accent hold the segment leadership with 40 per cent and 33 per cent market share, respectively. In Nepal, Hyundai is the leading brand in the overall passenger car market with a market share of 29 per cent. In the African region, specifically in Libya, Hyundai claims the no.1 position, holding 80 per cent of the market share.

"The Chennai factory, as an export hub, will gain greater prominence with the Hyundai Motor Group. We will continue to focus on shipping assembled vehicles, parts and components in CKD format and power trains to emerging markets," said Mr Kim.

Hyundai Motor India has exported 1,81,200 units with 792 customised variants according to country-specific preference and demand in 2019.

The company has invested around Rs 24,000 crore (US$ 3.43 billion) at its manufacturing operations near Chennai over a period of two decades. An Additional investment of Rs 7,000 crore (US$ 1 billion) was also announced by the company for new product launches, new technology and powertrain enhancements.

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

12.2. Maruti Suzuki to invest Rs 4,000 crore ($ 572 Mn ) this year on new models: Ayukawa

IBEF, Feb. 06, 2020

The country's largest passenger carmaker, Maruti Suzuki India, plans to invest Rs 4,000 crore (US$ 572.33 million) this year on new product developments and plant renovations.

"We will invest around Rs 4,000 crore (US$ 572.33 million) in developing new products and modifications of the factories (in Haryana) this year," said Mr Kenichi Ayukawa, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Maruti Suzuki India.

On the first day of the Expo, the company announced its plans to work towards alternative fuel models and electrification of its future models to contribute to environment safety.

A target to sell around one million of smart hybrid, strong hybrid and electric vehicles has been set by the company for this decade.

Mr Ayukawa said, "Mission Green Million is our commitment to bring advanced powertrain technologies for Indian customers. In this mission,

'Make in India' will be our core philosophy. S-CNG and Smart Hybrid technologies on Maruti Suzuki cars have seen huge acceptance by customers".

He further added that the company has full faith in the future of the Indian automotive market and will increase its efforts for electrification of powertrains, with a technology agnostic approach.

"Our endeavour will be to offer realistic solutions for mass acceptance by customers," he said.

He added that the Gujarat plant was delayed a bit in terms of completion but is now on schedule and on track to increase the capacity by 2.5 lakh units to 7.50 lakh units this year.

Talking about the partnership with Toyota, Mr Ayukawa said that company will launch all the products in near future as all works were progressing as planned.

He said rolling out of the new Brezza by Toyota this year, and branding it, would also depend on when Toyota decides to launch the vehicle.

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

13.1. ONGC, IOC, other oil PSUs to invest Rs 98,521 crore ($14,1bn) in FY21

IBEF, Feb. 03, 2020

ONGC, IOC and other oil PSUs plans to invest over Rs 98,521 crore (US$ 14.10 billion) in the coming fiscal starting from April 1. This investment will be focused in exploring for oil and gas, refineries, petrochemicals and laying pipelines to meet needs of the world's fastest-growing energy consuming nation.

According to Budget 2020-21 documents, this investment proposed in 2020-21 is around four per cent higher than Rs 94,974 crore (US$ 13.59 billion) spending by the state-owned oil firms in the current fiscal year ended on March 31st.

The Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) leads the pack with a 19 per cent rise in its capital spending at Rs 32,501 crore (US$ 4.65 billion). This investment is focused in finding new reserves of oil and gas and bringing to production discoveries it has already made. It is developing discoveries on both east and west coast of the country.

ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), which is the top oil producer's overseas arm, intend to invest almost 10 per cent more at Rs 7,235 crore (US$ 1.04 billion) in oil and gas operations abroad. Indian Oil Corp (IOC), which is the country's top oil refiner, will increase its spending to a 17.4 per cent reaching Rs 26,233 crore (US$ 3.75 billion) with the bulk of it in expansion and upgrade of its seven refineries that produce fuel.

The company also plans to double the invest in its petrochemical business to Rs 3,387.5 crore (US$ 484.69 million) while its exploration spends quadruples to Rs 2,150 crore (US$ 307.63 million). The privatisation-bound Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) has proposed a 14 per cent increase in its capital spending at Rs 9,000 crore (US$ 1.29 billion), out of which two-third will be in its core refining business.

Since most of its pipeline grid expansion projects are nearing completion, Gas utility GAIL India Ltd will not witness any major increase in its investments at Rs 5,412 crore (US$ 774.36 million). The investment by Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL), a subsidiary of ONGC, will be same as previous year at Rs 11,500 crore (US$ 1.65 billion) in FY21.

The nation's second-largest oil producer, Oil India Ltd, will invest Rs 3,877 crore (US$ 554.73 million) next year as compared to Rs 3,675 crore (US$ 525.83 million) in current fiscal. The expansion plans of national natural gas pipeline network to 27,000 km from the present 16,200 km was laid down by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her second budget along with the pricing reforms as the government is looking at providing boost to the use of environment-friendly fuel.

A target of raising the share of natural gas in primary energy basket to 15 per cent by 2030 from current 6.2 per cent has been set by the government. The key to achieving this target is connecting the gas sources to consumption hubs. Currently, most of the gas pipelines are concentrated in the western and northern part of the country with a few lines in the east and south.

"To deepen gas markets in India, further reforms will be undertaken to facilitate transparent price discovery and ease of transactions," Ms Sitharaman had said. Presently, the price of natural gas produced domestically is fixed by a formula that averages out rates in gas surplus nations such as Russia and the US.

She added without giving an exact timeline, "Further, it is proposed to expand the national gas grid from the present 16,200 km to 27,000 km".

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

13.2. Indian pharma industry likely to grow at 10-13 per cent in FY21: Icra

IBEF, Jan. 30, 2020

According to the rating agency ICRA, Indian pharmaceutical industry is expected to grow at 10-13 per cent in 2020-21 irrespective of the challenges in the industry.

This expected growth in the next financial year is on the back of increase in demand from the domestic market because of increase in spending on healthcare along with improving access, according to Icra.

It further added that the growth in 2020-21 is also supported by the decrease in pricing pressure for the US market, new launches and market share gains for existing products and consolidation benefits, it added.

"The Indian pharmaceutical industry's growth remained stable at 12.2 per cent during H1FY2020 led by rebound in domestic growth in Q2 FY2020 to 14.2 per cent supported by seasonal factors and stable growth in chronic therapies," said Mr Gaurav Jain, ICRA Vice President & Co-Head.

He added that there were many diseases outbreak in the country during Q2FY2020, leading to the growth of the anti-infective segment.

ICRA further said that though, the margins remain healthy, pricing pressures for the US base generics business (albeit moderating), lack of limited competition products and manufacturing quality issues will continue to put margin pressure.

The margins are provided a little relief by the higher share of domestic business and operational efficiencies, it added.

The major sensitivities effecting the growth and profitability of the Indian pharma industry will be regulatory interventions such as price controls and compulsory genericisation for domestic market and continued regulatory overhang with respect to manufacturing quality deficiencies during USFDA audits, the statement said.

"The US market growth at 13.6 per cent in H1FY2020 was impacted by regulatory overhang in the form of warning letters, one-offs such as delayed shipments, voluntary recall, though few limited competition products, lower pricing pressure, volume expansion for existing and new product launches supported growth," Mr Jain said.

The statement also added that, in present, many Indian pharma companies are focusing on optimising their R&D spend, while in the past, these companies have increased their R&D spend targeting pipeline of specialty drugs, niche molecules and complex therapies.

"The credit metrics of leading pharma companies are expected to remain stable in view of future growth prospects in regulated markets and relatively strong balance sheets," Mr Jain added.

The capital structure and coverage indicators are expected to remain strong irrespective of the pressure on profitability and marginal rise in debt levels given inorganic investments, he added.

"The key sensitivity to ICRA's view remains productivity of R&D expenditure, increasing competition in the US generics space and operational risk related to increased level of due diligence by regulatory agencies," Mr Jain said.

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

14.1. Ford unveils innovation centre in Chennai

IBEF, Feb. 07, 2020

Ford inaugurated its technology and innovation centre at Ford's Global Technology and Business Centre (GTBC) campus in SIPCOT SEZ. This centre was inaugurated by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Mr Edapaddi K Palaniswami in the presence of Mr Michael Brielmaier, President and MD, Ford India.

The centre is spread across 15,000 sq. ft. and has a capacity to house around 10,000 employees. According to the company's press release, this centre highlights the importance of Tamil Nadu to Ford and reaffirms the company's commitment to India by providing job opportunities to people here.

There are many facilities available for the automotive sector at the centre such as simulation labs for virtual models and testing; extended/virtual reality labs to aid in advancement of manufacturing simulations; artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities; and a component and vehicle lab for design, development and testing, says the press release.

Mobility Experience Lab is one of the features of the innovation facility. The lab consists of simulations for Ford's Office Ride, an app-based shared mobility solution for corporate employees, which reached over five million rides since its launch in mid-2018.

Ford's mobility team, which leads the company's work in connectivity, mobility and autonomous vehicles, also has a presence at Chennai's GTBC.

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

14.2. New India service for London Gateway

Fruitnet, 31 Jan. 2020, Tom Joyce

A new service for DP World operating from London Gateway is predicted to open up more trading opportunities between the UK and India

This week, DP World London Gateway welcomed the first ship, the Al Rawdah, in a new South East India-Europe Express (IEX) service.

The IEX is the only shipping service that links the East Coast of India to the UK, opening up new trading opportunities for shippers in both countries.

The new service brings the number of direct services between the Indian sub-continent and London Gateway to three per week, more than to any other port in the UK.

Previously the only option for cargo owners was to transship in Colombo, Sri Lanka, with containers offloaded and placed in storage, before being reloaded onto ships for the journey to the UK.

The direct service will reportedly serve to increase the security of the cargo and help to preserve the integrity of the supply chain.

DP World’s head of UK ports, James Leeson, commented: “This is a strong endorsement of DP World London Gateway as a major global trading hub on key trade routes. It further underlines the tremendous opportunity we provide for our customers to realise game-changing value and accelerate their cargo deployments. Our proximity to one of the largest consumer markets in Europe helps reduce costs and carbon emissions.”

The new service, a collaboration between COSCO, Hapag Lloyd, Yang Ming, ONE and OOCL, operates nine 6,500 TEU vessels on a weekly fixed rotation calling at the following ports: Vizag – Krishnapatnam – Chennai – Tuticorin – Colombo – Cochin – Damietta – Piraeus – Rotterdam – London Gateway – Hamburg – Antwerp – Le Havre – Damietta – Jeddah – Colombo – Vizag.

15.1. Volkswagen to invest Rs 8,000 crore ($1.13 bn) in 2nd bet on India

IBEF, Feb. 05, 2020

Volkswagen (VW) plans to invest Rs 7,900 crore (US$ 1.13 billion) despite the present slowdown in the Indian market. This will be companies second investment in the country focused on taking a market pie, which is considered as one of the bright spots in the global automotive world.

The company plans to launch SUVs, sedans, electric vehicles and mini cars in the next few years to succeed in India this time after many failed attempts. VW plans to beat the competition by becoming completely local, said, Mr Bernhard Maier, the global CEO of VW. Currently, Skoda is the leader in the segment.

Mr Maier added, "India is one of the most promising markets in the world, but it is also one of the most competitive. We want to be hyperlocal here this time and get the right products at the right prices to win our share here". The company launched two new SUVs in India.

Skoda, which arrived in the country in 1999, has been the oldest company in the group, while, the parent company VW matrix arrived around 2010 with an investment of US$ 1 billion.

Although, the company achieved a low single-digit number against its 20 per cent target. The partnership along with other companies like first with Japan's Suzuki (who owns Maruti) and then with the local player Tata Motors didn’t led to any positive result leading the company to go solo for its second start.

Mr Maier said the cars from the new platform will carry a high degree of location, approximately more than 90 per cent helping the company to remain competitive.

To take on the SUV segment, company plans to launch Taigun whereas on the other hand, Skoda's car from the same platform presently offers the code name Vision IN. This will mark the company's entry into the smaller-sized SUV segment, which has been one of the most popular categories in the market.

Though, the Indian market provides opportunities for global car manufacturers, policy certainty is required from the side of the government.

The company also plans to introduce electric cars in line with government policy. Though, Mr Maier added that first issue of charging infrastructure and buyer subsidies need to be addressed then the company will enter the market.

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

15.2. M&M looking for a partner to help charge up electric dreams

Livemint, 06 Feb 2020, Malyaban Ghosh, Amit Panday, Biman Mukherji

The EV partnership includes a potential stake sale in wholly-owned subsidiary Mahindra Electric, Pawan Goenka said
M&M plans to supply and export EV powertrains to other EV producers

NEW DELHI: Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd (M&M), India’s largest electric vehicle maker by sales volume, is exploring partnerships with global manufacturers to jointly develop electric vehicles and their powertrains, managing director Pawan Goenka said.

This will include a potential stake sale in its wholly-owned subsidiary, Mahindra Electric, Goenka said in an interview on Thursday.

Unlike rivals, M&M has made its electric vehicle (EV) business a separate unit and has also set up a base for developing and manufacturing such vehicles and components on the outskirts of Bengaluru.

Goenka said the global sales volume for EVs is still low, while the number of companies entering the segment is fairly large, which includes traditional automakers as well as startups.

“Therefore, collaboration will be the key in powertrain, which means the battery, the motor, power electronics and the charger. That’s the reason we have set up Mahindra Electric as a separate company, but now we have started to see how we can get strategic partners, so that we can pool in our volumes and create an electric powertrain supply company," he said, adding that the company would function like a consortium of manufacturers.

“We are talking to various OEMs who are interested, take equity in Mahindra Electric and become partners," Goenka said.

He said the EV business was still at an early stage. “Right now everybody is in a pilot phase and if am selling 100 vehicles (EVs) per month at a loss, then I can afford it. It will get lost in my remaining 15,000 vehicles but then if I am selling 10,000 vehicles, then I cannot afford to sell at a loss."

M&M has a track record of partnering competing carmakers to develop products and platforms. In the 1990s, it tied up with Ford Motor Co. as well as French automaker Renault SA, though both the partnerships were later shelved.

In October last year, Ford and M&M signed an agreement to form a joint venture in which the Anand Mahindra-led firm owns 51% and Ford’s local unit owns the rest. Under the arrangement, Ford agreed to transfer its entire business in India, barring an engine plant in Sanand, Gujarat, and its Chennai-based Global Business Services unit to a new joint venture company.

“I think it’s important to have that partnership to make electric vehicles commercially viable. Second partnership (after powertrain) will be at the platform level and OEMs who have developed a very well-engineered platform and they are opening that platform to others to license. Third will be sharing a product under different company names," Goenka said.

M&M plans to supply and export EV powertrains to other EV producers. On Wednesday, the company launched its latest offering in the EV space, eKUV at the Auto Expo, at a starting price of ₹8.25 lakh (ex-showroom).

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

16.1. Union Consumer Affairs Minister asserts Gold hallmarking being made mandatory

IBEF, Jan. 15, 2020

The Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution today held a press conference regarding mandatory hallmarking of Gold jewellery & artefacts in India for which notification will be issued by the Department of Consumer Affairs providing a period of one year for implementation i.e. till January 2021.

Addressing the media, Shri Paswan said that the purpose of making hallmarking mandatory for Gold Jewellery and Artefacts is to ensure that consumers are not cheated while buying gold ornaments and get the purity as marked on the ornaments, they are better informed about the purity of Gold which will now be in only 3 caratage i.e. 14, 18 and 22 and corruption is removed.

Explaining the reasons for the one-year implementation period, Shri Paswan said that this will ensure that Jewellers registration process can be completed and jewellers/retailers get time for clearing their old/existing stock and also so that additional A&H centres can be set up by private entrepreneurs at various locations where demand arises and priority shall be given to districts where such centres are not present. As on 31st December 2019, there are 892 Assaying and Hallmarking centres spread in 234 District locations across the country and so far, 28,849 jewellers have been registered by Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS).

BIS (Hallmarking) Regulations, 2018 were notified w.e.f. 14.06.2018. BIS is running a hallmarking scheme for gold jewellery since April 2000. The BIS Act 2016 has enabling provisions under Section 14 & Section 16 for mandatory hallmarking of Gold jewellery & artefacts by the Central Government. This will make it compulsory for all the jewellers selling Gold jewellery and artefacts to register with BIS & sell only hallmarked Gold jewellery & artefacts. The draft Quality Control Order (QCO) for mandatory hallmarking of gold jewellery and gold artefacts was hosted on WTO website on 10 October 2019 for comments for a period of 60 days. No comments have been received on the draft QCO.

The caratage is marked on jewellery in addition to fineness for convenience of consumers, e.g. for 22 carat jewellery, 22K will be marked in addition to 916, for 18 carat jewellery, 18K will be marked in addition to 750 and for 14 carat jewellery, 14K will be marked in addition to 585. Hallmark on Gold Jeweller now has following four marks:

An awareness campaign on mandatory hallmarking for jewellers and common consumers will be organized at various locations across the country. BIS is also planning to outreach the consumers through social media and other forms.

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

16.2. Ola launches in London with over 25,000 drivers signed up

IBEF, Feb. 11, 2020

Ola, an Indian ride-hailing company, has launched its services in the UK capital, with over 25,000 drivers registered on its platform.

The Bengaluru-headquartered company said it is fully operational in London across three categories of Comfort, Comfort XL and Exec ride classes and said its focus would be on drivers, safety and a collaborative approach with local authorities and regulators.

“We are thrilled to now be live in London. This is a major milestone for our business and represents the next step in our ambitions to connect people in cities throughout the country,” said Mr Simon Smith, Head of Ola International.

He said, “We are proud of the progress Ola has made in the UK and we look forward to building on our success by offering a differentiated service to Londoners, focused on quality, safety and reliability”.

The company which initially entered the UK market in 2018, starting with Wales and then south-west England, said that the London drivers joining the platform will benefit from six weeks of zero commission and market-leading commission rates thereafter, so they can keep more of their earnings.

The company added, “Ola’s commission commitment ensures drivers always receive the best commission rate in each market. Ola will continue its collaborative approach with Transport for London and local authorities, as well as its clear focus on safety, drawing on industry-leading and global best practices.”

The company has also entered into three partnerships which are focused at driver standards across the market as it teamed up with DriveTech (Part of the AA), Mercer and Pearson in ground-breaking initiatives to offer Ola riders in London the highest standard of driving skills, and driver customer service and communication.

The partnership with DriveTech will involve their driving risk assessment to improve the level of driving skills and knowledge of all drivers on Ola in London.

A risk assessment is completed by every driver and they are also given complimentary E-Learning modules to further enhance their professional development. DriveTech Permit to Drive is given to each driver upon completing these modules, certifying their skills.

Moreover, every Ola driver in London has passed the Versant spoken English test, from education experts Pearson plc, confirming a high level of communication in English.

They have also successfully finished the Ola’s Customer Service Test, created with global selection experts Mercer, certifying they have the skills and mindset to deliver a great experience to their passengers.

The company added, “Ola is raising the standards of safety in the UK ride-hailing industry and bringing global best practice to the market. In a number of pioneering moves for the UK, Ola is launching its flagship global safety feature, ‘Guardian’, which uses AI and machine learning to automatically detect irregular vehicle activity, a ‘Start Code’ feature to ensure customers and drivers are correctly matched, 24/7 voice support for riders and drivers, and a cap of six penalty points for drivers on its platform”.

Ola is also offering its first few passengers a benefit from up to 25 pounds worth of ride vouchers for signing up in the first week after launch.

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

17.1. Candidates 7,347 Million trained under Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY)

IBEF, Feb. 04, 2020

Under the Skill India Mission, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship is implementing a flagship scheme called the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) 2016-20 with an objective to provide skilling to one crore youth under Short Term Training (STT) courses and Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) across the country in a four years period i.e. 2016-2020. Under PMKVY (2016-20), as on 17.01.2020, 73.47 lakh (appx.) (40.27 lakh STT + 33.20 lakh RPL) candidates have been trained/oriented throughout the country. The State/UT-wise number of candidates trained / oriented under PMKVY (2016-20) is given at Annexure.

Under PMKVY 2016-20, focus on employment has been significantly enhanced and candidates have been placed in various sectors and industries. Some of the provisions and initiatives are given below:

TCs/TPs are required to have dedicated mentorship-cum-placement cells for industry linkage and placement of candidates.
TPs are mandated to organize Placement / Rozgar Melas every six months with support from the Sector Skill Councils (SSCs) and to ensure the participation of local industry.
The reimbursement of last 20 per cent of training payout to TCs is linked with the placement (wage employment or self-employment) of the candidate.
With a focus on retention of placed candidates, TPs are given an incentive (Rs 3000 - Rs 5000 [US$ 42.46 - 70.77] per trainee) if a candidate is retained in employment for a period of 12 months.
Post placement support of Rs 1500 (US$ 21.23) per month per trainee is applicable for special groups and special areas for 2- or 3-month post training depending on placement within or outside the district of the domicile of the candidate.
Re-allocation of targets to TPs is based on placement achievements of previous allocated targets.
Target allocation for FY 2019-20 includes employer-led models via RFP mode to ensure participation of employers which assure at least 50 per cent captive employment, amongst other mandates.

Under PMKVY (2016-20), there are various provisions for monitoring of TCs as well as candidates. The life cycle of training process of candidates (enrolment-training-assessment-certification-placement) is tracked or monitored on real-time basis through the Skill Development Management System (SDMS) which is linked with Aadhaar enabled biometric attendance. Empanelled TCs are being monitored effectively through various methodologies such as self-audit reporting, call validations, surprise visits, social media etc. Appraisal of the on-going schemes and consequent improvements is an ongoing process.

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

17.2. Why India is falling behind in the Y2Q race

Livemint, 15 Jan. 2020, Samarth Bansal

The world faces a new scare around quantum computing, dubbed Y2Q. India’s effort to tackle this is falling short
Y2Q can put diplomatic and military secrets, or even sensitive financial and healthcare data, at risk. For now, whatever little is moving on this front in India is mainly through the govt

NEW DELHI: Two decades ago, the world faced its first big computing scare. It was dubbed Y2K, a programming bug which raised widespread concerns that digital infrastructure would crumble at the turn of the new millennium. That moment passed without any major incident, thanks in large measure to work done by India’s software coders.

Now, the world faces a new scare that some scientists are calling the Y2Q (“years to quantum") moment. Y2Q, say experts, could be the next major cyber disruption. When this moment will come is not certain; most predictive estimates range from 10 to 20 years. But one thing is certain: as things stand, India has not woken up to the implications (both positive and negative) of quantum computing.

What is quantum computing? Simply put, it is a future technology that will exponentially speed up the processing power of classical computers, and solve problems in a few seconds that today’s fastest supercomputers can’t.

Most importantly, a quantum computer would be able to factor the product of two big prime numbers. And that means the underlying assumptions powering modern encryption won’t hold when a practical quantum computer becomes a reality. Encryption forms the backbone of a secure cyberspace. It helps to protect the data we send, receive or store.

So, a quantum computer could translate into a complete breakdown of current encryption infrastructure. Cybersecurity experts have been warning about this nightmarish scenario since the late 1990s.

In October, Google announced a major breakthrough, claiming its quantum computer can solve a problem in 200 seconds, which would take even the fastest classical computer 10,000 years. That means their computer had achieved “quantum supremacy", claimed the company’s scientists. IBM, its chief rival in the field, responded that the claims should be taken “with a large dose of skepticism". Clearly, Google’s news suggests a quantum future is not a question of if, but when.

18.1. Sun Pharma: India picks up slack in Q3, specialty drug ramp-up key

Livemint, 09 Feb 2020, TR. Sree Ram

Sun Pharma is expanding its field force by 10%, most of whom may join by Q1 of FY21. This strategy is in line with other drug makers
To overcome the pricing pressure, Sun Pharma is building specialty products, which are difficult to develop and imitate

Despite being India’s largest drug maker, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd trades at a discount to its peers.

The December quarter (Q3) results can shed some light on this. Revenue rose 5% year-on-year. Sales in the US dropped 3%, reflecting a price erosion in the generic drugs business.

This lacklustre performance is made up by the India business, which clocked a healthy 13% growth. Gross profit margin expanded on better product mix. What’s more, the management sees good prospects in the domestic market. As a result, the firm is expanding its field force by 10%, most of whom are expected to join by Q1 of FY21.

This strategy is in line with other drug makers, who are stepping up focus on the domestic market. However, investors are awaiting a pickup in the US business. Here, there are no clear signs of a revival yet. “US generic business continues to be competitive and challenging," the management told analysts.

To overcome the pricing pressure, Sun Pharma is building specialty products, which are difficult to develop and imitate. Sales from these drugs reached $118 million (up 30% sequentially) last quarter, helped by a seasonal boost to certain products. Even so, analysts complain about the slow ramp-up of the specialty drugs business, which continues to incur high costs.

Close to a quarter (24%) of the R&D (research and development) expenditure of the company was incurred on specialty drugs in Q3. Considering that Ilumya, a specialty drug, hits the clinical-trials phase to get approval for treatment of an additional disease (than what it has already been approved for now) in FY21, R&D spends are projected to increase.

As such, it is difficult to gauge the progress of specialty drugs. Investors see that as a handicap. Sun Pharma maintains that the progress is in line with the industry average.

“Ilumya’s ramp-up has been slow, but we remain positive on both Ilumya and Cequa. Our doctor survey in the US highlighted that Ilumya could achieve peak sales of $300 million. The ramp-up, though, is set to be slow, occurring over the next 12 months," Jefferies India Pvt. Ltd said in a recent note.

Commensurate ramp-up remains crucial for investor sentiment. The Sun Pharma stock currently trades at 19.5 times estimated earnings for FY21, based on Bloomberg data.

18.2. Strides gets USFDA nod for anti-allergic drug

IBEF, Jan. 17, 2020

Strides Pharma Science said that it has received approval from the US health regulator for Loratadine Softgel Capsules, which is typically used to treat allergies. According to the company's filing to BSE, Strides said its "step-down wholly owned subsidiary, Strides Pharma Global Pte Ltd, Singapore, has received approval for Loratadine Softgel Capsules, 10 mg (OTC) from the United States Food & Drug Administration (USFDA)."

Loratadine Softgel Capsules is a generic version of Claritin Liqui-Gels Capsules, 10 mg, of Bayer HealthCare LLC, the filing said.

The product helps in treatment of seasonal allergy (seasonal allergic rhinitis) and other upper respiratory tract allergies.

Currently, the company is focusing on developing its private label business in the US by expanding its portfolio of products across softgels, tablets, capsules and other proprietary formats.

According to the filing, Loratadine Softgel Capsules, 10 mg (OTC) is part of Strides niche and small volume product portfolio with limited competition in the US private label market.

According to IRi data, the US market for Loratadine Softgel Capsules, 10 mg (OTC) is around US$ 50 million with only one other generic approval.

The company's oral dosage facility at Bengaluru will be responsible for manufacturing the product.

So far, the company has 102 cumulative ANDA filings with USFDA out of which approved are 68 abbreviated new drug applications (ANDAs) and rest 34 are pending approval.

The shares of Strides Pharma Science Ltd were trading at Rs 387.05 (US$ 5.53) a piece on BSE, down 0.65 per cent.

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

19.1. TCS bags US$ 1.5 billion contract from US drug firm Walgreens Boots Alliance

IBEF, Feb. 04, 2020

IT major Tata Consultancy Services has bagged a contract worth Rs 10,650 crore (US$ 1.5 billion) from pharma company Walgreens Boots Alliance, spread over a period of 10 years.

As per the contract between the two companies, TCS will be responsible in providing managed services including application maintenance and support, required infrastructure and security operations.

According to TCS's BSE filing, "Tata Consultancy Services has expanded its long-standing partnership with Walgreens Boots Alliance, a global leader in retail and wholesale pharmacy, to transform the latter's IT operating model. The contract is valued at over US$ 1.5 billion over a ten-year period".

The expansion of WBA and TCS strategic partnership is based on WBA's review of its IT operating model and vendor landscape.

Under the agreement, the WBA global IT team will focus on leading and supporting strategic technology projects that create customer value through the development of new digital products and services on its business platforms.

"The TCS strategic partnership will enhance our ability to rapidly address evolving business needs, support large-scale global technology solutions and promote investment in truly differentiating capabilities through a modernized platform," said WBA Senior Vice President and Global Chief Information Officer Mr Francesco Tinto.

The statement also added that the TCS approach will make use of artificial intelligence, machine learning and advanced software engineering to boost operational strength and enhance productivity.

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

19.2. Japan's NTT to invest estimated US$ 1.5 billion in data centres in India

IBEF, Jan. 23, 2020

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, a Japanese tech major said that it plans to invest a significant part of its US$ 7 billion global commitment for data centres business in India over the next four years.

The company also feels that there will be margin compression issues for the data centres business in India as capacity supply goes up along with an increase in competition, NTT's country chief executive for global data centres and cloud infrastructure, Mr Sharad Sanghi said.

Many corporates including the Adani Group, Hiranandanis and Reliance Industries, in last few months announced investments in data centres, because of the regulatory moves like data sovereignty which makes it compulsory for financial institutions to house their data locally.

"India is the fastest growing region for NTT and a substantial amount of the US$ 7 billion commitment will be invested here," Mr Sanghi said.

Mr Sanghi added that the overall investment is expected to be split equally between the four regions where the company operates in, with India receiving over Rs 11,000 crore (US$ 1.5 billion) amount.

He further said that the company, whose revenues have been increasing at 30 per cent every year, is aiming to increase its capacity to double in the next three years through the investments.

The company's overall capacity currently stands at 1.2 million sq ft spread across Mumbai, Noida, Chennai and Bengaluru, is expected to increase to 1.5 million sq ft, he said.

It is also planning to expand to newer locations as well and also adding to its land bank to house the facilities, he said.

The demand is coming from global hyperscalers like cloud service providers, data localisation requirements, since a greater number of enterprises are moving to the cloud, Mr Sanghi said.

The Adanis have committed Rs 70,000 crore (US$ 10.02 billion) for data centres in Andhra Pradesh, Hiranandanis have committed Rs 14,000 crore (US$ 2 billion) whereas RIL has announced a partnership with Microsoft for the same.

Mr Sanghi said that the increase in investments in the business will change the characteristic of the market, which has so far been dictated by suppliers, from 2021 onward once the capacities come on board.

The revenue is expected to increase because of the market opportunity, while, increase in the supply can lead to a short-term blip in profitability by narrowing operating margins, he added, stressing that this will not last for long time.

NTT is confident of guarding its business and growing in the face of competition, he stated, adding data centres is its core business and clients, who sign long-term contracts, partner with companies which are not into different businesses like power and realty.

He added that there will be a consolidation in the industry due to the dynamics and it will be hard for the smaller entities to survive, making it clear that NTT does not intend to opt for mergers and acquisition as a strategy but may look for inorganic routes growth in the country.

He also made it clear that aggressive pricing may not work for companies, indicating towards two incidents of companies who tried getting business using this same strategy but ended up going bust.

Mr Sangi pitched for an improvement in power supply in Noida, Chennai and Bengaluru, saying two hours of power down time per week is a worry.

NTT also launched an integrated division to look over the global data centre opportunity.

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

20.1. IHCL adds 24 hotels to portfolio so far this fiscal: CEO

IBEF, Feb. 03, 2020

Indian Hotels Company (IHCL), a Tata group hospitality arm, expanded its portfolio by adding a significant number of properties through management contracts this financial year and plans to continue to add more larger properties, including iconic assets going ahead, said a top company official.

According to Mr Puneet Chhatwal, IHCL managing director and CEO, "So far in the current fiscal, we have signed 24 hotels with an inventory of over 2,800 keys. We will be signing a few more this quarter taking the total to more than last year's numbers. We feel we are ahead of the game and so we have to focus on absorbing this growth".

The list of these 24 properties consist of four Taj hotels, two SeleQtions hotels, nine Vivanta hotels and nine Ginger hotels.

He added, "We are looking at existing brownfield assets which we can add to our portfolio without waiting for 4-5 years for them to start generating income".

A brownfield asset is a developed asset, though, it may require an ongoing capital expenditure and expansion.

Mr Chhatwal further said that the company plans to expand through big-box or larger properties under the Ginger brand as well as under other brands.

The company has already adopted the 'Aspiration 2022' strategy under which it is intending to improve margins, reducing ownership of properties to 50 per cent and monetising non-core assets.

He further added, "As a part of our strategy to become asset light, we are going to sell some of our hotels under the Ginger brand and take them back on rent so the current management stays in place. This will also be true with other hotels that are a part of joint ventures or under associate companies".

The company reduced its debt to Rs 1,900 crore (US$ 271.86 million) at present, from Rs 3,100 crore (US$ 443.55 million) in 2017 by focusing on becoming asset-light and monetisation of non-core assets.

He also said, "From the net debt to EBITDA ratio of 6.4 some years back, we have managed to bring it down to 2.11 as of FY2019 and to a further 1.76 as of December 31, 2019. We do not intend to increase the debt levels from here on".

However, no further elaboration on company's asset monetisation plans was given by Mr Chhatwal.

IHCL has reported a 25.37 per cent rise in consolidated PAT for December 31, 2019 quarter at Rs 213.17 crore (US$ 30.50 million) as against Rs 170.03 crore (US$ 24.33 million) for the corresponding period of the previous fiscal.

The consolidated total income increased to Rs 1,408.91 crore (US$ 201.59 million) for the quarter under consideration as against Rs 1,337.97 crore (US$ 191.44 million) a year-ago.

"This growth is mainly the result of our strategy to be asset light and efforts taken to improve margins," he added.

Mr Chhatwal said, "we have already signed six bungalows under Ama Stays & Trails during the current fiscal, taking the portfolio to 19 bungalows. We continue to evaluate properties and by December end of 2020, we hope to take this portfolio to 50 bungalows."

In Bombay in 1903, the company opened its first hotel, under The Taj Mahal Palace, incorporated by the founder of the Tata group, Jamsetji Tata. Currently, IHCL has a portfolio of 197 hotels, including 40 under development globally across 4 continents, 12 countries and in over 100 locations.

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

20.2. Food delivery business out of the way, Uber turns focus to car rentals, shuttles
Livemint, 11 Feb. 2020, Salman S.H.

Uber India has formed several partnerships with mobility firms to bring new vehicles on its platform
Uber has avoided owning vehicles and the new sourcing model will help it avoid asset management costs

Bengaluru: Ride hailing firm Uber is planning to offer self-driving car rentals and shuttle bus services in India to trump key rival Ola, three people aware of its plans said.

The move is part of the San Francisco-based company’s plans to expand its core mobility business in India with new products and partnerships, after exiting the food delivery business. The company has already formed a team for the foray into self-drive rentals and shuttle buses, the people cited above said on condition of anonymity.

Uber India has formed several partnerships and taken strategic initiatives with mobility firms including Drivezy, Zoomcar, Bounce and Revv to bring new vehicles on its platform, according to one of the three people.

“In Bengaluru and many other cities, Uber has started partnering with middlemen such as tours and travel operators and mobility platforms like Drivezy, Zoomcar and Revv, who can arrange taxis on a rental basis for Uber," said the person. Under this model, the Uber driver approaches Drivezy or Zoomcar, from which a vehicle is leased for 5-30 days.

Under this model, Uber does not pay the driver directly. “The platform (Zoomcar, Drivezy, Revv) earns revenue for each completed trip and pays off the Uber driver’s salary directly instead of Uber settling the pay," said the person.

The Uber team will work to bring self-driving four-wheelers from these platforms directly on to the Uber app for rentals, this person added. Ola has a four-wheeler rental product since October 2019.

Globally, Uber has avoided owning vehicles and the new sourcing model will help it avoid asset management costs. The company shut its cab-leasing subsidiary, Xchange Leasing, in 2017 due to high costs. The leasing unit partnered with manufacturers and financial institutions to co-lease vehicles to Uber drivers. Rival Ola continues to operate a leasing business, which suffered a loss of ₹162.3 crore in FY19, up 91% from the previous year.

According to the second person cited earlier, the company is planning to expand its shuttle services. “Uber has already done a pilot and plans to launch the full (shuttle) service sometime during the year in one or more cities. The plan is to offer high-capacity vehicles that can seat anywhere between 12 and 25 commuters," said the person.

An Uber India spokesperson said the company is constantly evaluating new business models. “We have recently experimented with car rental companies so that drivers and fleet partners could access these vehicles," the spokesperson said in response to Mint’s queries.

Uber ventured into the shuttle service business in Cairo in December 2018, allowing users to reserve bus seats. Since then, it has begun offering these services in several cities in West Asia and Latin America. However, entering the four-wheeler self-driving rental market will be its first anywhere.

Uber’s shuttle service will take on existing players such as Amazon-backed Shuttl, which has raised over $70 million, and operates in New Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune and Hyderabad. In February 2019, Essel Group-backed bus aggregator ZipGo had suspended its services in several cities and laid off around 60 employees after raising over $40 million.

In January, Uber India sold its food delivery business to Zomato for a reported $350 million. The transaction involved the ride-hailing firm taking a 10% stake in Zomato’s India business. Zomato and Swiggy are locked in an expensive battle where both firms continue to burn money in discounts, and Uber decided to opt out. Its US parent, Uber Technologies, is still recovering from a disappointing initial public offering in 2019, which has piled pressure on chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi to cut costs.

India has witnessed a surge in funding activity in the two-wheeler rental segment largely led by startups such as Bounce, Vogo and Yulu, which have secured an aggregate funding of $400 million.

In May, Uber announced a pilot with an electric scooter sharing platform Yulu in Bengaluru. Mint had earlier reported on Uber’s plans to integrate bike rental startup Bounce’s vehicles on to its platform. In the US, Uber lists Jump and Lime electric bikes in cities such as Atlanta, San Diego and California. In April 2018, Uber acquired Jump for a reported $100 million, after piloting the service in San Francisco in January that year.

“The barrier to entry in two-wheeler rentals is high in India," said the founder of a company in the two-wheeler rental space, asking not to be named. “There is a state-level licence for which you have to spend ₹3-4 lakh in fees for each state you want to enter and also spend money complying with the central government’s additional regulations under the Motor Vehicles Act. The acquisition-led strategy decreases financial liability for Uber, when compared to investing in assets directly."

The ride-hailing market in India is expected to touch $43 billion with an estimated 4.2 million vehicles plying on the roads by 2025, estimates from market research firm Frost and Sullivan showed. Currently, there are around 2 million vehicles in the ride-hailing segment in India that is largely dominated by Ola and Uber, according to Frost and Sullivan’s estimates.

Uber posted a $1.1 billion loss in the fourth quarter of 2019, a 24% increase from the year earlier, largely led by losses incurred in the UberEats food delivery segment. Uber’s total revenue almost tripled to $4.1 billion during the same period.

INDIA AND THE WORLD

21.1. Indian Navy Launches 'Operation Vanilla' to Provide Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief at Madagascar

IBEF, Jan. 30, 2020

Indian Navy Ship Airavat, whilst mission deployed in the Southern Indian Ocean has been diverted to Antsiranana based on request recieved from Madagascar. The ship will undertake Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief mission as part of 'Operation Vanilla' which has been launched to provide assistance to the affected population of Madagascar post devastation caused by Cyclone Diane.During the port call, the ship, in coordination with Embassy of India and Government of Madagascar is planned to undertake relief operations to provide succour to the flood affected populace. The Indian Navy Ship is geared to set up medical camp and provide food, water and other necessary relief material.The situation is being monitored and the Indian Navy is prepared to render all necessary assistance to the local population in Madagascar.

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

21.2. Zydus & CMS enter pact for Desidustat in Greater China

IBEF, Jan. 21, 2020

Pharma company Zydus has entered into a licensing pact with China Medical System Holdings Ltd (CMS) for the development and commercialisation of Desidustat, which is an innovative candidate, in Greater China.

Desidustat is a novel oral HIF-PH inhibitor used for the treatment of anemia in patients with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) not-on-dialysis and for the treatment of anemia CKD patients on dialysis in Greater China, Zydus said in a statement.

"Under the license agreement, CMS will pay Zydus an initial upfront payment, regulatory milestones, sales milestones and royalties on net sales of the product," it added.

However, no financial details about the agreement were given by Zydus and said, "The commercial terms of the license agreement are confidential."

Under the agreement, CMS will be responsible for development, registration and commercialisation of Desidustat in Greater China.

"The licensing agreement with CMS will facilitate the development and commercialisation of Desidustat in Greater China and make this innovative candidate available to millions of CKD patients living with anemia," said Zydus Group Chairman Mr Pankaj R Patel.

CKD is a serious medical condition which is an unmet healthcare need involving gradual loss of functioning of kidneys eventually leading to kidney failure, Zydus said.

Shares of Cadila Healthcare, the listed entity of the group, closed at Rs 267.25 (US$ 3.82) on BSE, down 0.69 per cent from the previous close.

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

22.1. Sun shines for Adani as Total buys 50% in solar business for $510 million

Livemint, 06 Feb 2020, Utpal Bhaskar

Total and Adani Green will be equal joint venture partners in a company housing 2,148MW of solar assets
Total also plans to buy a 37.4% stake in Adani Gas for around ₹5,700 crore

NEW DELHI: French energy giant Total SA has agreed to acquire 50% in Adani Group’s solar assets for $510 million, in one of the biggest transactions in India’s clean energy industry.

Total will own half of a joint venture company that will house the solar assets of Adani Green Energy Ltd, which has a 2,148MW solar project portfolio across 11 states, the companies said in a joint statement on Thursday. Adani Green Energy will own the balance 50% in the joint venture.

The transaction, the second major proposed investment by the French energy major in a company controlled by billionaire Gautam Adani, comes amid a tough phase for India’s clean energy sector. The renewable energy industry is facing a tight lending environment, mounting dues from utilities and record low tariffs. The low solar and wind power tariffs have made banks wary of lending to renewable energy developers as they suspect the viability of the projects.

Overall, Adani Green Energy has a renewable energy project portfolio of 6GW, including under-construction capacity. It is also a successful bidder in state-run Solar Energy Corporation of India Ltd’s tender of 8GW manufacturing-linked development project for setting up solar power capacity.

“We are delighted to extend our long-term partnership with Total to our renewable energy business," Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani said in the statement. He was referring to Total’s plan, announced in October, to buy a 37.4% stake in Adani Gas for around ₹5,700 crore.

India is running what will become the world’s largest clean energy programme with an aim of having 175GW of clean energy capacity by 2022 as part of its global climate change commitments. The country plans to add 100GW of solar capacity by 2022, including 40GW from rooftop projects.

“Total is fully engaged in the energy transition and to supporting India, a key country in the fight against climate change, in diversifying its energy mix through partnerships in natural gas and now in solar energy," Total chief executive officer CEO Patrick Pouyanne said in the statement. “This interest in over 2GW of solar projects represents a real change of scale of our presence in India’s renewable energy sector, which has very significant growth potential in the coming years. It will contribute to our ambition to deploy 25GW of renewable energy by 2025."

22.2. States’ economic performance has gone south

Livemint, 10 Feb 2020, Surbhi Bhatia

Southern states hit the hardest as rich states continued to lose economic momentum in December, shows Mint’s State Economy Tracker

Wealthier states continue to be hit harder by the economic slowdown, shows the December update of Mint’s State Economy Tracker. Southern states, such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala, have slipped to the bottom of the ladder while medium-sized states, which includes Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Odisha and Bihar, have made significant gains. Uttar Pradesh followed by West Bengal have retained their positions at the top.

The rankings, based on Mint’s State Economy Tracker launched last month, reflect the performance of state economies tracked across seven high-frequency indicators. The indicators encompass consumer demand indicators (vehicle sales, air passenger growth), financial metrics (inflation and credit growth), a barometer of industrial activity (power demand), and public finance metrics (public investments and tax receipts). The final state rankings are based on a composite score, which gives equal weights to each of the seven indicators. Most indicators reflect monthly growth over the year-ago period. In the case of vehicle sales and credit growth, the latest quarterly year-on-year growth figures have been considered. The public finance indicators reflect provisional year-to-date numbers, as reported by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG).

As questions emerge on whether or not the slowdown is bottoming out, subdued capex and low tax revenue growth explain much of the poor performance of the prosperous states in December. State’s own tax revenues, excluding state goods and service tax (SGST), has grown at a rate slower than the year-ago period for all states except Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, the current leaders on the board. In Maharashtra and Gujarat, for instance, tax receipts slumped by more than 35% in December 2019. Meanwhile, in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana public capital expenditure fell significantly (a decrease of 65% and 13% respectively). For Kerala and Tamil Nadu, their slide down the rankings comes on account of a drop in power demand especially when power demand has picked up elsewhere. A year ago in December 2018, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh were ranked first and second respectively, but since then both states have plunged to the 6th and 8th positions), respectively.

The State Economy Tracker comprises 18 states divided into three categories: 10 large state economies (2017-18 GSDP exceeding ₹5 trillion); four mid-sized economies (GSDP between ₹3-5 trillion); and four small economies (GSDP less than ₹2 trillion).

Higher rankings in the state economy tracker have been driven by a combination of factors. Uttar Pradesh’s top ranking has been driven in part by consistent growth in air traffic, tax collections, and peak power demand. On average, the small and mid-sized economies have done better on all fronts when compared with the big states.

State economic performance could be further constrained by deteriorating financial health and shrinking central transfers.

Southern states, especially, are feeling hard done by because of delayed GST compensation and terms of reference of the 15th Finance Commission (FC). But neither the budget nor the 15th FC has addressed these concerns. The FC’s changes to the tax sharing formula has lowered the allocation for all the southern states, barring Tamil Nadu.

In the long run, the Centre-state financial tussle could create tension in India’s federal structure but, more immediately, it could jeopardize any economic recovery. If state finances are constrained, public investment could remain lacklustre, especially among the richer states. For the Indian economy, which relies more on its rich states, a speedy recovery will need the prosperous states to climb up the State Economy Tracker soon

23.1. India-Brazil set target of US$ 15 billion trade by 2022

IBEF, Jan. 28, 2020

The visit of the President of the Federative Republic of Brazil, Mr Jair Bolsonaro, is a sign of the growing importance of the India - Brazil bilateral partnership said Union Minister of Commerce and Industry & Railways, Mr Piyush Goyal, during his address at the inaugural session of the India-Brazil Business Forum held in New Delhi today.

He hoped that as Brazil is one of the most important trading partners of India in the entire LAC (Latin America and Caribbean) region trade between the two countries will grow to US$ 15 billion by 2022.

The 15 MoUs signed during the visit of the President of Brazil shows the power of democracy, demography, leadership, the talent pool available in India, India's market and the aspirations of one billion Indian citizens for a better life said the Commerce and Industry Minister. The MoUs of cooperation that have been signed during the presidential visit on investments, trade facilitation, social security, agriculture, defence and double taxation makes this the most productive visit by a Brazilian Head of State.

Commerce and Industry Minister hoped that investments will also grow in the sectors of clean energy, start-ups, railways and creation of value chains between India and Brazil where goods may be semi assembled in one country and finished in another. Piyush Goyal informed that the entire Indian Railway will be fully electrified by 2024 and by 2030 the railway network in India will run completely on clean energy with zero emission.

Commerce and Industry Minister welcomed the announcement made during the visit of President of Brazil to India for visa free travel between the two countries. He added that visitors for business and tourism between two countries will benefit greatly from this.

Commerce and Industry Minister also urged that the India - Brazil Business Leader's Forum may be activated and reconstituted to make it more relevant and contemporary to businesses in both countries.

Commerce and Industry Minister hoped that India's services in wellness sector like Yoga and Ayurveda will further grow as Brazil has a strong community of Yoga and Ayurveda practitioners. Brazil has an association of Ayurveda (ABRA), a non-profit association with offices in 9 states of Brazil and members all over Brazil and the third International Congress on Ayurveda was held from 12 to 15 March 2018 in Rio de Janeiro. The conference saw participation of more than 4000 delegates, including many from India.

India and Brazil share close relationship at the bilateral level as well as plurilateral fora like BRICS, BASIC, G-20, IBSA, International Solar Alliance and in larger multilateral bodies like UN, UNESCO and WIPO stated Commerce and Industry Minister. He further said that the decade long bilateral strategic partnership is based on a common global vision shared democratic values and a commitment to foster economic growth with social inclusion for the welfare of the people of both countries.

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

23.2. Togo hands over letter of engagement to NTPC as PMC for about 300 MW solar power projects in Togo

IBEF, Jan. 29, 2020

The Letter of Engagement of NTPC as PMC for development about 300 MW Solar Power Projects by Togo was handed over here today by Mr Kondi Mani, Charge d' Affaire, Embassy of Togo, New Delhi, to Mr Gurdeep Singh, CMD (NTPC), in the august presence of Shri R. K. Singh, Minister of Power & RE (GoI) & President of ISA Assembly. Mr Upendra Tripathy, Director General (ISA) was also present.

Speaking on the occasion, Shri R K Singh expressed his happiness over the development and stated that RE project offers cheaper power. This resource must be harnessed by ISA member countries as RE makes it possible to supply electricity to people living in far-flung areas through distributed power supply model. He underlined the importance of independent regulators upon stating that under recently evolving model prepaid smart metering helps in smooth billing and collection and the governments need not invest in the projects which developers take care.

Togo is a country in West Africa and Member of International Solar Alliance (ISA). The country has set an ambitious plan to achieve universal electricity access by 2030 with focus on capacity addition in Solar Power generation. The country has taken various initiatives to achieve these targets. The country has been requesting assistance of ISA for development of Solar capacity in the Country.

ISA has been taking various initiatives to assist the member countries to develop Solar Projects. Presently there are 6 Programmes of ISA to develop Solar capacities in Member Countries which include Agricultural Pumps, Mini grids, Rooftop Solar, Large Scale Grid connected Projects etc. The Programme on large scale Grid connected Projects on Solar park model was approved in 2nd Assembly held on 30th October 2019.

Implementation of ISA Programmes are member driven and ISA Secretariat facilitates the implementation.

NTPC Limited is a Power Major and a Public Sector Company of Government of India, owning an installed Power capacity of more than 58,000 MW which include 870 MW of Solar Projects and 1062 MW under development. Apart from development of own Solar projects, the Company has been the nodal Agency for development of more than 4000 MW of Solar Projects on IPP Model.

Engagement of NTPC by Togo for PMC, based on endorsement of ISA: NTPC had submitted a proposal to ISA requesting endorsement of ISA to Member Countries to give Project Management Consultancy (PMC) to the member Countries for implementation of Solar Projects.

As per NTPC Proposal, in ISA member Countries where Solar Projects are implemented through competitive bidding, NTPC may act as a project Management Consultant (PMC). NTPC will carry out various activities for selection of Solar Project developers (SPDs) on competitive basis for setting up Projects on ownership basis and enter into Power Purchase Agreement with Government-designated entities. The scope of PMC includes presentations to the concerned ministries and other stakeholders in ISA Countries for structuring of Projects, assistance to bring out enabling policy and regulatory framework for competitive procurement of Solar Power, bid process management for selection of Project developers on competitive basis, structuring PPA, Roof/ Land leasing agreements etc. The PMC charges of NTPC will be recovered from the selected SPDs. NTPC based on the feasibility, may also develop Solar Projects by putting own equity in Countries where Feed in Tariff is in force.

ISA Endorsement of NTPC: The proposal of NTPC, after review by ISA Advisory Committee, was put on Swiss challenge for 28 days on ISA website. Subsequently, the proposal was submitted to ISA Finance Committee. Based on the concurrence of Finance Committee, the proposal has been cleared in 2nd ISA Assembly.

Based on the above, a Letter of Endorsement was given to NTPC for extending PMC services and circulated to all the National Focal Points (NFPs) of ISA Member Countries. There will not be any direct cost implications to the member countries. However, the engagement of NTPC for PMC is the sole discretion of a Member Country.

NFP (National Focal Point) of Togo, based on the endorsement of ISA has sent a communication to DG ISA for engaging NTPC for the PMC services for development of Solar PV Projects/Parks on 70 Hectares of identified land in Dapaong (Dalwak Region: Capacity More than 33 MW) and on 500 Hectares of identified land in Mango (Savanes Region: Capacity About 250 MW). Togo is the first ISA Country to avail the services of NTPC.

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

24.1. Stories of Indian women athletes who dared

Livemint, 07 Feb 2020, Bibek Bhattacharya

A new book about women sporting icons in the country shows a fresh way to analyse India’s sporting strides

You could say that the real sporting story of the last decade was that of Indian women finally getting their due. More than at any other point in independent India’s history, the names of Indian women superstars trip off the tongue: Sania Mirza, P.V. Sindhu, M.C. Mary Kom, Dutee Chand, Deepa Malik, Dipa Karmakar. They are all household names now, though some of them may feel their sporting destinies are yet to be written.

For the longest time, this wasn’t the case: We have all heard of P.T. Usha, but how many of us remember M.D. Valsamma, who won a gold medal for the 400m hurdles in the 1982 Asian Games. Valsamma and Usha were both Kerala girls who, along with their Malayali compatriot Shiny Abraham and Vandana Rao from Karnataka, made a memorable early strike at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. Emerging at a time when India’s sporting infrastructure, outside the railways and the army, was prehistoric, these girls did the country proud by participating as equals, even if they fell short of podium finishes.

She Dared—Women in Indian Sports: By Abhiskek Dubey and Sanjeeb Mukherjea, Rupa, 296 pages, ₹295.

The paradigm of historical narratives on the rise of Indian sports, outside cricket, has been to tell the story of the men. A new book by sports journalists Abhishek Dubey and Sanjeeb Mukherjea, She Dared: Women In Indian Sports, attempts to tell the stories of some of India’s best-known women athletes over the past 40 years.

Though it’s skewed towards athletes from the past decade, the authors make a dedicated effort to tell the story well, and try to give their subjects’ voices primacy. Objectivity when writing about sports is all very well, but when it comes to writing about athletes who still face everyday, casual sexism—which, in some cases, like Sania Mirza’s, is compounded with communal bigotry—their point of view needs to be given precedence.

She Dared tells the stories of 15 women and the authors succeed, to a large extent, in doing the athletes justice. The book follows a chronological path—starting with P.T. Usha and ending with Dipa Karmakar. It’s especially pleasurable to read about sportspersons such as track star Ashwini Nachappa. Nachappa is probably best known for beating P.T. Usha twice in the early 1990s—and as a “glamour girl". However, she’s a shining example of an athlete also leading a fulfilling life away from sport. After Nachappa retired, she joined the Karnataka film industry and was the toast of the silver screen for a while. Later, she teamed up with two of her athlete compatriots, Mercy Kuttan and Rao, to start Clean Sports India, to discourage drug abuse in Indian sports. Perhaps even more importantly, she started the Karaumbiah’s Academy for Learning & Sports—which doubles up as both a school and a sports academy—in Gonikoppal, a small town in Coorg. It’s perhaps ironic that her academy is named after her husband, who played junior hockey for India.

One of the most shameful episodes of modern Indian sports has been the targeting of women athletes under the infamous “gender test" to prove that they are actually women. One of the chapters tells the story of two such athletes, Santhi Soundarajan and Dutee Chand. Separated by a decade, the way their ordeals played out shines a light on the traumatic sense of betrayal they faced. Both were harassed, for lack of a better word, by the Sports Authority of India and the country’s entrenched sports bureaucracy, into giving up their careers. While Soundarajan was stripped of her bronze medal in the 2006 Asian Games and effectively ostracized, in 2014, Chand fought back with the help of allies who knew how to argue her case. Their stories are quite well known at this point, but what struck me while reading the chapter is the subtext of social bias that both women fell victim to.

The book goes on to tell the stories of many other luminaries, like Sania Mirza, M.C. Mary Kom and P.V. Sindhu. What is clear is that all the athletes featured in She Dared deserve book-length biographies of their own. The chapter-wise treatment of their incredible careers sometimes feels perfunctory, and the writers’ occasional descent into digressions and florid prose doesn’t help. The book could have generally done with better editing and closer attention to language. But the book is important, for it is only by giving the same amount of coverage that male sportspersons receive that Indian sports can become less discriminatory towards their women athletes.

24.2. How India must tackle China’s killer bug

Livemint, 27 Jan. 2020, Amir Ullah Khan , Saleema Razvi

As fears about coronavirus spread, is India battle-ready to identify, isolate and prevent the spread of this epidemic?
Barring a few states, India’s medical system is not in the best of shape. But the Indian public health machinery has shown it can fight well when it wants to

HYDERABAD: As China struggles to curtail the deadly new virus that has killed 81 people and spread to four continents, there are flashing warning lights for India.

The coronavirus epidemic was a major crisis in China even before the news came out on 10 January and alerted the Chinese leadership. The illness by then was no longer localized. In fact, it had even travelled abroad. China’s rigid bureaucracy discourages local officials from raising bad news with central bosses.

China’s health sector is so heavily compartmentalized that officials in the public health division, the disease control department, in hospital administration and drug procurement seldom speak to each other. This makes it harder to manage, or even see, a crisis in the making. Those systemic flaws appear to have played a role in the pace at which Chinese officials responded to the outbreak, and the country’s inability to address the health risks from its so-called wet markets, which are stuffed with livestock living and dead, domesticated and wild.

The real bad news is the coronavirus, which comes from a family of viruses that affect the respiratory tract, seems to be far deadlier than before. In 2002, when the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) virus hit China, it took more than 90 days to mutate and take its new deadly form. But the coronavirus seems to have achieved the capability of transmitting among humans within the first month.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has clarified that the disease only spreads from animals to humans and is not communicable between human beings. However, now questions are being raised as some among those affected claim not to have been near any animals recently.

That is why the panic within the public health machinery in China is palpable, even as human resources are being mobilized and sent to the epicentre in Wuhan, the capital of central China’s Hubei province, by the thousands.

The fact that this is happening during the Chinese New Year, when massive numbers move across the country to visit relatives, is unprecedented and will have a huge economic impact.

The big question is—how long before the coronavirus reaches India? There are already reports of a couple of suspected cases being quarantined in the country. While there is no confirmation as yet of any live cases in India, is the country battle-ready to identify, isolate and prevent the spread of this new virus? What steps do the public healthcare authorities quickly need to take to tackle this crisis on a war footing?

Truth be told, the steps India needs to take do not require rocket science. Surveillance mechanisms have to be improved—detection has to be strengthened at all major airports and along the border with Nepal. Of course, one also needs to maintain quarantine facilities at key points where adequate stock of medicines and fluids is stocked. Finally, awareness campaigns have to be launched on precautions to be taken; the public has to be made aware of the symptoms; information helplines have to be set up; and travel advisories have to be issued to the afflicted countries.

While the Indian government has already moved on some of these measures, what can on-ground experience with past crises tell us about the ground reality—and the challenges ahead?

Lessons from Nipah

Like the Chinese health bureaucracy, in India too there is remarkable time lag before diseases get identified and before they get notified, if at all. India’s medical bureaucracy is often loath to report bad news. We see that happening in case of dengue and chikungunya outbreaks in most Indian cities, where news only emerges after a few people have died and several seriously taken ill.

No wonder India ranks high globally in the burden of communicable diseases, a burden which causes approximately 10% of deaths in the country. The issue is serious considering the phase of rapid urbanization the country is going through—raising challenges to an already beleaguered and cash-crunched healthcare system.

Human resources and healthcare infrastructure are woefully below the WHO standards. The risk from communicable diseases increases manifold when other factors—environmental, socioeconomic and demographic—are considered.

The Nipah virus outbreak of 2018 in Kerala has several lessons for today’s emergency. This epidemic showed how the Indian infectious disease management infrastructure could be severely challenged. After its discovery in a small Malaysian village in 1999, the virus emerged in Kerala in May 2018, claiming 17 lives. The seriousness of the public health threat was underscored by the lack of a vaccine or even targeted treatment. This allowed the virus to spread unchecked initially.

Soon after the National Centre for Disease Control was alerted by the state, the ministry of health and family welfare along with local, state, and national agencies collaborated on a response to contain the virus. A multidisciplinary team was deployed with the main aim of preventing and controlling the infection.

This coordination and data-exchange from multiple stakeholders helped to rapidly detect infected cases, treat the patients, and helped in controlling and containing the spread of the disease. It also helped safeguard the front-line health workers who were most at risk. Also, campaigns for information dissemination and education of the public led to reducing panic and fear among the people.

The Nipah case study highlights the fact that the response worked primarily because of the infrastructure available in the state. The only other state where this is possible is perhaps Tamil Nadu. Across the country, there are major gaps in the public health system. Poor surveillance mechanisms and lack of public awareness are again in the spotlight with the re-emergence of the Nipah virus in Kerala and the persistent outbreaks of acute encephalitis syndrome, seen recently in Bihar.

The situation is compounded by healthcare facilities without equipment, doctors and drugs, not to mention the poor nutritional status and poorer sanitation status of the population. A speedy local response is crucial in infectious disease management.

Importance of diagnostics

While epidemiological research is absolutely critical to understand the manner in which diseases emerge and travel, it is also extremely important to identify and track all neglected and communicable diseases. Here, diagnosis almost always suffers from lack of availability of stock, of pathologists and medical equipment.

Existing diagnostic practices are time-consuming and expensive. Innovations for diagnostics, detection, testing, notification and treatment have always been significant variables that make a difference. Till very recently, tuberculosis (TB) diagnostics were cumbersome. Dengue and Chikungunya are fraught with danger primarily because it costs upwards of $15 (upwards of ₹1,000) to get tests done.

Till recently, most diagnostic tests required large amounts of equipment and stocks of chemicals. The lab needed an electricity connection and the samples had to be carried long distances within refrigerators or in ice boxes. Remote areas and rural health centres simply could not provide these facilities—in fact they still cannot.

All this has been replaced in various parts of the country with health ATMs— private, walk-in medical kiosks with integrated medical devices for basic vitals, lab testing and emergency facilities, and staffed by a medical attendant. Instead of large machinery and human resource requirements, most diagnostics now only need a pinprick. To detect deadly diseases like TB, for instance, the person needs to give just some sputum.

Technology has helped to some extent. Most diagnostics can now be done using smartphones and simple apps loaded on them. Health workers with very little training can now reach patients in the most remote places. With cheaper diagnostics and quicker procedures in laboratories, it is possible to hugely improve access to healthcare and a timely cure.

It is prevention, however, that is always better than identification, diagnostics and cure. Hygiene and sanitation play a huge role. The huge burden of morbidity that exists in India is related in part to unsanitary conditions and practices, unsafe and unclean drinking water, and lack of awareness and information.

Role of vaccinations

Vaccinations are among the most efficient and effective instruments for preventing diseases, operating primarily by providing acquired immunity and thereby preventing the easy spread of infectious diseases among large populations.

However, developing vaccines, especially for new and mutated strains of diseases, can take a very long time. Coupled with the time and the resources needed for mass production and delivery, vaccines cannot be seen as the only solution during fast-spreading epidemics.

India successfully repeated its success against small pox when it fought off polio with another massive immunization drive 12 years ago. From being the polio capital of the world in 2009 to one with no new cases in 2011, the Indian public healthcare machinery showed that it can fight well when it wants to.

Still, there’s a lot of work to be done. The healthcare sector needs inputs from the public and the private sectors to conduct research on improved drugs and tests to help make it easier to treat people quickly. Front-line health workers need modern supply chains and equipment as they already have the tough job of delivering medicines to the hardest-to-reach regions of the world. And importantly, medicine stocks must be maintained and supplied to all vulnerable areas on time.

In conclusion

In China, there is now a travel ban on 16 cities in the epicentre Wuhan province. Wild animal sales have been banned. Three new 1,000-bed hospitals are being built at breakneck speed in areas where the health infrastructure is rather poor. The sale of face masks has shot up and there are enormous shortages, especially problematic because medical supplies are also falling short as manufacturers rush to meet the new demand.

All overseas group tours from China have been banned by the Chinese tourism ministry and all domestic tour groups have been suspended too. The capital city Beijing has stopped all buses from entering or exiting the city. The US, Japan, France, etc. are chartering flights to evacuate their nationals from Wuhan. The gravity of the situation can be estimated by traffic managers blocking, and in some cases even destroying, roads to prevent people from travelling to vulnerable spots.

This is thankfully far removed from the situation in India, which for now needs to have a strict surveillance and monitoring mechanism at its airports. The sensitive border this time is the one we share with China and it is important that a new enemy in the form of a deadly virus doesn’t come in.

Very few tourists—just about 350,000—come from China every year and double that number visit the country from India. This vulnerable million needs to be treated with care and attention. Travel advisories would need to be issued with immediate effect to contain the spread of the infection.

The Indian diaspora (mostly students) who are stuck in Wuhan due to the travel ban by China need to be evacuated quickly. Remember, the doomsday scenario that accompanies any virus outbreak is never as bleak as it seems initially. Deadly pathogens that could cause a global pandemic have been pinging at humanity’s defence at least for a thousand years.

It is important that India—which accounts for approximately 18% of the world’s population—steps up to take responsibility, by ensuring that the spread of infectious diseases is contained. This, more than anything else, is the true mark of a superpower in the making.

Amir Ullah Khan teaches economic policy at the Indian School of Business and the Nalsar University of Law. Saleema Razvi is senior researcher at the Copenhagen Consensus Center.

25.1. Brain tech is coming of age, but will it make you smarter?

Livemint, 23 Jan 2020, Abhijit Ahaskar

Brain computer interfaces can help people with physical disabilities, but the tech has its limitations

A major limitation of the invasive variant is the electrode technology

In the 2018 sci-fi movie Upgrade, tech innovator Eron Keen used an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled chip called Stem that gives a paralysed man control over his limbs. While that was fiction, brain implants such as Stem are not too far from becoming reality.

With Brain Computer Interface (BCI), scientists and medical practitioners are already helping people with damaged limbs, eyes or ears regain sensations like touch, grasp, eyesight and hearing, by recording specific brain signals and translating them into actions.

BCI exists in two forms: the first is the non-invasive, which includes devices or electrodes that are worn on the body. The second is the invasive variant where an electrode is implanted under the scalp so it can record information directly from the neurons in the brain.

“The moment you talk about the invasive variety, it opens up a lot of possibilities. We have always had cochlear implants for cornea and ear, and pacemakers for heart. They have been fairly successful. Invasive variety can never be a mass product as it has to be entered carefully in a sophisticated medical environment only," points out Kumaar Bagrodia, founder and chief executive officer of NeuroLeap, a neuroscience startup.

A major limitation of the invasive variant is the electrode technology. According to researchers at Stanford University, existing electrodes are not meant for long-term recordings due to their large size, low channel count and poor integration with neural tissues. Stanford University is working on a new BCI that uses implants similar in size and are more compatible with natural tissues.

Elon Musk’s brain tech company Neuralink is also working on a BCI that uses flexible threads as electrodes, reducing the risk of damage to the soft tissues of the brain.

Many of the advancements in BCI have been in the non-invasive space. While the application has largely been in the field of medical science, its use is being explored in other areas as well.

Carmaker Nissan is working on a brain-to-vehicle technology that can detect, understand and respond to a driver’s brainwaves in real time. So, if a driver wants to turn the steering wheel or slow down the car, the system will anticipate it and initiate the action seconds before the average human response time.

NeuroLeap, which is based in Mumbai, is using BCI to understand the human brain and help it achieve its full potential. It provides brain function assessment using non-invasive sensors to make users more aware of their brain without asking any questions. After the assessment, NeuroLeap provides brain function enhancement where audio and visual feedback is played on a TV screen so the brain can make the correct adjustments.

But BCI headsets are far from reliable, says Bagrodia.

“For non-invasive products to become mainstream, it is important that insurance providers start looking at it in a positive way. In the US, companies like us are being reimbursed by health insurance providers and that is going to change the game," Bagrodia adds.

In addition to the issue of developing a stable and long-lasting electrode, there is a need to understand the neural data so they can be used to generate rich, reliable, and flexible motor commands. Companies like Brain-Q are turning to artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify high-resolution patterns in a patient’s brain waves and to offer personalized electromagnetic treatment.

Ranjan Kumar, founder and CEO of Entropik Tech, a Bengaluru-based emotion AI company, says technology to collect neural signals exists. There’s also tech that can create actionable signals and send them to a computer and also back to the brain.

“What is not available is the understanding of the data and what these neural signals mean in different contexts. That context in understanding is missing because the data gap is huge. There is no publicly available, large data-set of brain waves to create AI understanding. It will take a couple of years for AI to simulate what the brain wants to replicate," he said.

The promise of restoring lost movement and capability is a big deal. Whether the technology will make people smarter than they are is yet to be seen, though.

Bagrodia says it is just a matter of time when we will be seeing invasive products that can be used for supplementing or augmenting brain with data. It will augment abilities such as memory using an external device. and use of smart prosthetics.

25.2. AI, Machine learning chip in to fight climate change, protect environment

Livemint, 30 Jan. 2020, Abhijit Ahaskar

Did you know you could contribute idle computing power to help environment research projects?
Google’s flood forecasting system uses ML to give a more accurate picture of areas that will be flooded so that people can be alerted in time

NEW DELHI: Global warming-induced climate change has started taking its toll on animals, plants and even humans. Until 2019, around 14,000-25,000 pairs of breeding emperor penguins would gather every year at Halley Bay colony in Antarctica, making it the second-largest penguin colony in the world after Coulman Island, also in Antarctica. Today, the colony at Halley Bay has almost disappeared, as per a 2019 study by the British Antarctic Survey. The deteriorating air quality in large cities like Delhi, particularly during winter, has serious health implications. To be sure, as per the Centre for Science and Environment, 30% of premature deaths in India are caused by air pollution. The recent bushfire in Australia killed an estimated one billion animals and has endangered more than 100 different species.

While cutting down global emissions and switching to renewable sources of energy will help in the long run, emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and its various branches, along with internet of things (IoT), can help in the conservation of plants, animals and birds by providing more accurate climate predictions. They are also helping authorities detect acts of deforestation and poaching while some are creating awareness among masses.

Take the machine learning (ML)-based detector model by Princeton, US-based data science company Gramener, which can estimate the number of penguins from the images captured by multiple camera traps located across Antarctica. Gramener used an image dataset of penguin colonies in Antarctica that included images from more than 40 locations.

To clean up the penguin image dataset, they used multi-column convolutional neural networks (CNN). They then trained the deep learning model on Microsoft’s DSVM (data science virtual machine) platform and used Intel’s Xeon scalable processors to repurpose and benchmark it.

The model uses a density-based counting approach, which not only estimates the numbers faster but can also give more accurate results when compared with the manual counting of penguins from the images. Gramener has also used AI and data analytics to estimate population of 12 salmon species.

Another AI-driven initiative empowering environmentalists with better insights is the Elephant Listening Project, which uses acoustic sensors to listen to forest elephants in Africa. Their population has dwindled due to poaching. The brainchild of California-based Conservation Metrics, the project uses ML to more accurately identify the low-frequency rumbling sounds made by elephants to communicate with each other amid sounds made by other animals.

By using Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing services, researchers at Conservation Metrics have been able to process months of sound data in a few weeks. Both projects were supported by Microsoft’s AI for Earth programme.

Using ML to identify unique sound patterns and then using sensors to capture that data can also be very effective against illegal deforestation and poaching. San Francisco-based Rainforest Connection is making the most of it with an acoustic alert system that listens for indicators of deforestation and poaching such as sound of chainsaws, vehicles or guns that can be used to immediately alert authorities.

“Global warming has changed the way climate modelling is done. Using AI/ML is very important as it will make things happen faster. All this will require lots of computing power and, going forward, quantum computers might play an important role," said Jaspreet Bindra, digital transformation expert and author of The Tech Whisperer. IBM’s new AI-driven global high resolution atmosphere forecast (GRAF) can detect high-impact events such as tropical cyclones and thunderstorms. Predictions powered by GRAF can also be accessed on IBM’s The Weather Channel app.

Solving many of the scientific and mathematical problems related to the environment require massive computing power. UC Berkeley’s BOINC (Berkley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) is helping researchers, including climatologists, by crowdsourcing the processing resources of multiple PCs and smartphones from around the world.

Users who want to contribute can install the BOINC software on their devices. When their system is idle, the available CPU and GPU resources will be automatically channelled to power computing projects. The project has more than 310,000 participants, with the computing power of 800,000 devices at their disposal.

Among Indian companies, Gurugram-based Blue Sky Analytics is using AI-powered solutions to analyse high volumes of satellite data, ground-level measurements from sensors and ancillary public datasets to deliver real-time high resolution data on the environment. One of their solutions, Zorro, is helping with environment regulation by monitoring industrial emissions with satellite data, another called BreeZo provides information on air quality while Zuri allows compliance authorities to monitor farm fires.

AI and IoT are changing the world’s approach to problem solving. Tasks that took months earlier take a few minutes now. Environmentalists need to embrace them on a larger scale to boost their efforts.

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AAPI

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Wednesday 19 February 2020

NEWSLETTER, 20-II-2010

– GENERAL POLICY, INFRASTRUCTURES, COUNTRY FINANCES, ETC.

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NEWSLETTER, 20-II-2020

– GENERAL POLICY, INFRASTRUCTURES, COUNTRY FINANCES, ETC.

- AGRICULTURE, FISHING & RURAL DEVELOPMENT

- INDUSTRY, MANUFACTURE

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

INDIA AND THE WORLD