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Sunday 19 April 2020

NEWSLETTER, 20-IV-2020











DELHI, 20th April 2020
Index of this Newsletter


INDIA

– GENERAL POLICY, INFRASTRUCTURES, COUNTRY FINANCES, ETC. 


1. Case for work@home in the age of corona
2.1. NHAI achieves highest ever Construction of National Highways in FY 2019-20
2.2. Five months since new Motor Vehicles Act, road accidents come down by 10 per cent
3. 400 million Indians at risk of falling into poverty during crisis: ILO
4.1. Tata Power Solar bags NTPC contract for Rs 1,730 crore
4.2. L&T's construction arm wins 'large' water management orders in Karnataka
5. Opinion | The unexplored potential of learning beyond schooling


– AGRICULTURE, FISHING & RURAL DEVELOPMENT


6. 159.000 Sub-Service Areas covered with at least one bank branch under Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana
7.1. Gov. aid can help informal sector fight virus effect
7.2. Biofortified carrot variety developed by farmer scientist benefits local farmers
8. Lidl box scheme is latest retail charity effort
9. Oreo-maker to expand biscuit portfolio in India
10.1. Small businesses face existential threat as supply and demand vanish
10.2. Markets may have to brace for a sharp deterioration in economic activity


– INDUSTRY, MANUFACTURE


11. Lithium Urban Technologies, Fourth Partner Energy tie up to set up solar-powered EV charging hubs
12. Panasonic India to open 130 brand stores in tier 1 & 2 cities by 2021-22
13. India to spend US$ 1.3 billion to boost pharmaceutical production
14. National Supercomputing Mission: a transformative approach in supercomputing
15.1. More than 280 units in SEZs, manufacturing essential items like pharmaceuticals and hospital devices, are operational
15.2. Race against time to build desi ventilators


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


16.1. Dr Jitendra Singh reviews the work done in the wake of COVID-19; More than 71,000 persons enrolled so far at DoPT' se-learning Plat form iGOT
16.2. India needs an all-hands effort to check spread of Covid-19, warn scientists
17. Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) for females in higher education is higher than the National Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER)-HRD Minister
18. ISRO to launch 36 missions including 10 earth observation satellites in 2020-21
19.1. SCTIMST ties up with Wipro 3D to manufacture automated ventilators to meet COVID 19 related crisis
19.2. Dr. Harsh Vardhan launches National Teleconsultation Centre (CoNTeC)
20. Opinion | Covid-19 will topple our paradigm of economic value


INDIA & THE WORLD 

21.1. 10-fold strategy that India needs to adopt for exiting from ongoing lockdown
21.2. A game plan to revive the various covid-affected sectors of the economy
22.1. Coronavirus Competence: The Kerala Model
22.2. DST sets up task force for mapping of technologies by Start Ups on COVID-19
23. What prevents India from becoming a social development leader
24. Stimulus needed for quick revival of economy: Maruti’s Bhargava
25. Floyd Cardoz epitomized contemporary rise of fine dining


* * *

DELHI, 20th April 2020

NEWSLETTER, 20-IV-2020



INDIA

– GENERAL POLICY, INFRASTRUCTURES, COUNTRY FINANCES, ETC. 



1. Case for work@home in the age of corona 
Livemint, 16 Mar 2020, Rahul Jacob
  • Doing white-collar work from home has never been more critical. But will command-and-control bosses allow it? 
  • The major hurdle for companies turns out to be psychological rather than technical. In a highly hierarchical country, command-and-control is how most companies are managed 
BENGALURU: In the last week of February, the senior management of Bengaluru-based Zerodha Broking Ltd, a brokerage firm with more than two million customers, began discussing a contingency plan for employees to work from home.

Sooner than anyone could have envisioned, it was time to go ahead. From 4 March, work from home began to be rolled out. On 12 March, immediately after the World Health Organization’s announcement that Covid-19 was a pandemic, all of its 1,200 employees were instructed to do so.

None of Zerodha’s employees had come into contact with anyone with the virus. Since the online platform requires high confidentiality of financial transactions, the company has long used security protocols such as role-based access to documents and specific VPNs for different teams.

“We have a structure that enabled us to do it technically," said Kailash Nadh, Zerodha’s chief technology officer. “It is a developer-led approach."

On 13 March, the Karnataka government issued an advisory asking companies to adopt work-from-home policies where possible. Three of the eight Covid-19 cases in the state are tech employees. In response, some firms announced they would ask employees to work from home for a week, but in some cases this was after an employee was found to be infected with the virus.

On 16 March, Infosys Ltd said that it would extend work from home for all employees where possible.

Wipro Ltd also said it had advised employees to work from home if feasible. Many more companies will need to take such steps in large numbers—for weeks together—to help slow the unyielding march of the virus.

Zerodha Broking’s Nadh says the inability to do so reflects inertia at large companies, their more hierarchical structures and legacies of outdated technology and processes. Leading information technology (IT) companies say they are also bound by overseas customers, who need work to be done on site.

The growing urgency
Getting large numbers of white-collar employees to work from home has never been more critical. India’s low infection numbers thus far defy the exponential spread of Covid-19 the world over, suggesting that the low reported infection rates are the result of inadequate testing. Testing for the spread of the virus within Indian cities and towns as opposed to travellers arriving in the country is well below levels in the UK and South Korea.

As schools shut and restaurants are mostly empty, the workplace and the commute to work are at the front line of the battle against Covid-19. Chances are people in the age group between 20 years and 50 years are most likely to be exposed to the virus at work.

A study released on 14 March based on a region of France, one of the countries where the epidemic has moved with the ferocity of a forest fire, found that school closures for eight weeks—as Indian cities have recently adopted—had a limited effect.

When combined with 25% of the adult population telecommuting, however, such levels of social distancing “delay the peak by almost two months with an almost 40% reduction of the case incidence at the peak", according to the study.

In other words, the quicker companies adopt work-from-home practices, the better it would be for India’s war on Covid-19.

Indeed, Bengaluru, as a back-office to the world, ought to be in the vanguard. With videoconferencing made easier by companies such as Zoom, information sharing made seamless across teams by software from Google, Slack and Dropbox, even small firms are able to allow remote work very easily.

“The technology certainly exists for virtual meetings across multiple sites, and in tier-I and tier-II cities, the necessary internet bandwidth too, (but) jobs in which remote working is possible are a small subset," said Gautam Menon, a professor of physics and biology at Ashoka University.

Command and control
The major hurdle for companies turns out to be psychological rather than technical. Command and control is not just a byword for the manner in which India’s economy has been shackled for decades. In a highly hierarchical country, it is how most companies are managed.

A Bengaluru-based performance coach says that even multinational corporations (MNCs), which routinely allow work from home, have Indian managers who do things differently. “It exists only in principle. Managers (in India) don’t like it if you do it. The manager will ask you a zillion questions," she said. In one shocking instance, the performance coach added, an employee in an insurance MNC who took advantage of the work-from-home policy to take his father for chemotherapy and then dutifully logged in for a full workday was subsequently passed over for a promotion.

In a developing country such as India, the vast number of workers in the services sector can be found in small shops, in delivery businesses or in small-scale manufacturing (according to enterprise-level government survey data) where work from home is an alien concept. “It would be impossible to do this for manufacturing companies that rely on workers putting in regular shifts and where some physical coordination between different workers is required," said Menon of Ashoka University.

Apart from ritualizing hand-washing, Sundram Fasteners Ltd, the Chennai-based automotive components company, has asked factory employees to stagger lunch timings and not sit on adjacent tables. It has even emphasized the importance of maintaining a distance of four-six feet from other employees and supervisors on the factory floor.

Given that the virus is asymptomatic for as long as two weeks, “you can only do so much", said Suresh Krishna, chairman of Sundram Fasteners. He believes there has to be much more communication between management and employees, general managers and union leaders and the government and its citizens. “Every state has to do it in its own language," said Krishna.

The company has a no-travel policy for a month and also advised employees to stay away from religious congregations.

The global response
In the past month, large numbers of companies all over the world have switched to work from home. Seattle, hit by the first outbreak in the US, saw the early adoption by companies such as Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. towards the end of February.

Investment bank JPMorgan Chase and Co. asked thousands of its employees to work from home in March. Twitter Inc. made it mandatory on 11 March.

In a memo worthy of comic strip Dilbert, Apple Inc.’s chief executive Tim Cook encouraged all employees in the company’s global offices to work from home in the second week of March in order “to reduce human density and ensure those teams on site can do their work safely and with peace of mind". The offer did not apply to those at its retail stores, according to a report in Bloomberg.

Companies such as Wipro and Infosys have had to comply with work-from-home directives from Beijing after work resumed this month in China, but are still grappling with the issue in their much- larger Indian operations.

“Everyone is looking at this now," said a top executive at an IT firm, requesting anonymity. “But, the processes are not fully developed."

By contrast, the reason many MNCs, such as JPMorgan, have been able to shift to work from home is because the ability of employees to work remotely has been part of contingency planning, which is tested and certified annually.

An employee with a media company in Hong Kong, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that he and his fellow colleagues have not been to office for more than six weeks now. Yet, his workday is same as before—a mix of phone calls and on occasion video calls. When this employee misplaced his security device (office issued device with unique log ins), “within four hours, it was delivered" to his home on one of the city’s outlying islands. “If you want to flatten the curve (the rate of transmission of the virus) it’s very obvious you have to do social distancing. There is no other way," he said.

Through such measures in varying degrees and due to high levels of sanitation that involve steps such as cleaning elevator buttons several times a day, Hong Kong—despite being at the doorstep of mainland China—has managed to keep the rate of coronavirus transmission below that in countries such as Italy and the UK.

The benefits
In a letter to subscribers on 13 March, Roula Khalaf, editor of Financial Times (FT), said the newspaper’s employees in London had started to work from home.

Long before working remotely became the survival tactic that it has become today, this reporter worked from home every Tuesday in the early 2000s while working for FT in London, a privilege then extended only to working mothers. Even on days this reporter was in office, nearly all regular contributors were freelancers or foreign correspondents of the newspaper in places as far flung as northern Wales, Tokyo and New Delhi. Physical proximity is not a necessity for teamwork.

Today, MNCs such as SAP SE are in the midst of a futuristic shift away from work- from-home practice to what is labelled “Work From Anywhere", where employees work remotely in geographic locations pretty much of their choice—strength of internet connections permitting.

An article in the Harvard Business Review last August (Is it Time to Let Employees Work from Anywhere?) cites productivity gains among patent examiners in the US and travel agency employees in China, when they were allowed to work from home in different provinces or even different countries.

As far-fetched as such leaps of faith in their employees would seem to most Indian employers, responses to Covid-19 are likely to reinvent office life in semi-permanent ways.

Even in an industry as people-intensive as luxury hotels where managers must be on site to greet guests, Priya Paul, chairperson of the Apeejay Surrendra Group that owns Park Group of Hotels, says the pandemic is making her consider experimenting with a Team A and Team B on different days, if staffing permits. “It’s a very good idea if you have a large-enough team," she said.

The stress of travelling in the age of Covid-19 is likely to push organizations to assess when business travel is “non-essential", even after the pandemic abates. Sundram’s Krishna says the travel ban has not only reduced costs during difficult times for the automotive industry, but sensitized customers not to expect physical business meetings.

In conclusion
The epidemic “will not make business travel or lean global supply chains disappear", said The Economist earlier this month, but will force companies to “question the wisdom of old habits".

Zerodha Broking’s Nadh argues that allowing so many employees to work remotely will dilute what he calls the obsessive “absolute control" at overly hierarchical Indian companies. “A large number of companies will be forced to experiment with working remotely," he said. “People will pay attention to the cost savings in infrastructure and logistics. It will make a permanent impression."

In the short term, more white-collar work done remotely will hopefully save lives by slowing the spread of Covid-19. In the longer term, it might yet foster better-managed companies in India—and fewer vehicles logjammed on Delhi-Gurugram roads or those headed to the Electronic City in Bengaluru.

This would be healthy both in terms of employees’ work-life balance in India’s chaotic and clogged metros, and in responding to a changing business landscape where more decision-making needs to happen further down the corporate ladder.

Rahul Jacob covered the SARS epidemic in 2003 as the Hong Kong bureau chief of FT.


2.1. NHAI achieves highest ever Construction of National Highways in FY 2019-20
IBEF, Apr. 07, 2020

NHAI has accomplished construction of 3,979 km of national highways in the financial Year 2019-20. This is the highest ever highway construction achieved in a financial year by NHAI. The construction pace as noticed in last years has seen a steady growth with 3,380 Km construction in the FY 2018-19. Continuing the same trend with the development of 3,979 km of national highways during FY 2019-20, NHAI has achieved an all-time high construction since its inception in 1995.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has envisaged an ambitious highway development programme Bharatmala Pariyojana which includes development of about 65,000 km national highways. Under Phase-I of Bharatmala Pariyojana, the Ministry has approved implementation of 34,800 km of national highways in 5 years with an outlay of Rs 5,35,000 crore (US$ 76.55 billion). NHAI has been mandated development of about 27,500 km of national highways under Bharatmal Pariyojna Phase-I.

In order to accelerate the pace of construction, large no. of initiatives have been taken to revive the stalled projects and expedite completion of new projects: 
  • Streamlining of land acquisition and acquisition of major portion of land prior to invitation of bids. 
  • Award of projects after adequate project preparation in terms of land acquisition, clearances etc. 
  • Disposal of cases in respect of Change of Scope (CoS) and Extension of Time (EoT) in a time bound manner 
  • Procedure for approval of General Arrangement Drawing for ROBs simplified and made online. 
  • Close coordination with other Ministries and State Governments 
  • One-time fund infusion 
  • Regular review at various levels and identification/ removal of bottlenecks in project execution 
  • Proposed exit for Equity Investors 
  • Securitization of road sector loans 
  • Disputes Resolution mechanism revamped to avoid delays in completion of projects. 
Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same. 


2.2. Five months since new Motor Vehicles Act, road accidents come down by 10 per cent
IBEF, Mar. 17, 2020

According to Union minister of road transport and highways, Mr Nitin Gadkari, five months since the new Motor Vehicles Act, state like Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, and Chandigarh witnessed around 12-14 per cent decrease in road accidents.

The data was revealed from 12 states and union territories in the Rajya Sabha by the minister and comparison was on the rate of accidents with that five months before September 2019, when manifold increase in penalties on violation of traffic rules provided by the Act, was enforced.

Among other states, Delhi and Haryana showed a decrease of 1.8 percent and 1 percent accidents between September 2019 till January 2020, whereas accidents in Assam and Kerala increased by 7.2 percent and 4.9 percent respectively during the same months.

There was reduction in accidents by 5.4 per cent, 4.7 per cent, 6.4 per cent and 3.4 per cent respectively in states of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Manipur.

In 2018, Indian roads witnessed 4,67,044 accidents that claimed lives of over 1.5 lakh people, as per the data from the ministry of road transport and highways.

India ranks first in the number of road accident deaths across the 199 countries reported in the World Road Statistics, 2018 followed by China and US. As per the WHO Global Report on Road Safety 2018, India accounts for almost 11 per cent of the accident related deaths in the World.

It is expected that the introduction of the Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act, 2019 will bring down the scale of road accidents in India, by way of heavy penalties for violating traffic rules.

Among major changes, the fine for drunken driving has been increased from Rs 2,000 (US$ 28.61) to Rs 10,000 (US$ 143.08) while driving without the seat belt now incurs a fine of Rs 1,000 (US$ 14.30) as against Rs 100 (US$ 1.43) levied previously. Cab aggregators can now be fined up to Rs 1 lakh (US$ 1430.8) for violation of licensing rules.

Speeding or racing can now draw a fine of Rs 5,000 (US$ 71.51), while overloading of two-wheelers has seen 20 times jump in penalty at Rs 20,000 (US$ 286.16), including disqualification of driver’s license for three months.

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


3. 400 million Indians at risk of falling into poverty during crisis: ILO
Livemint, 08 Apr. 2020, Prashant K. Nanda
  • Economists said poverty will be a bigger challenge for India and may set the economy back by years 
  • While urban unemployment rate was 30.9%, the rural unemployment rate was over 20%, the data showed. 
NEW DELHI: As many as 400 million Indians, including migrant workers and daily wage earners, are at risk of being pushed deeper into poverty because of the covid-19 pandemic, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said.

The Geneva-based body’s warning comes at a time when the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread across India and a complete relaxation of the lockdown post April 14 looks bleak.

The forecast indicates that there may be lasting economic damage from the shock caused by the covid-19 pandemic, including widespread joblessness. Loss of wages, in turn, is likely to trigger a slump in demand.

Economists said poverty will be a bigger challenge for India and may set the economy back by years.

“Economic growth and poverty are directly linked and we now know that how rating agencies have downgraded the GDP (gross domestic product) growth rate. Besides, if unemployment data is showing that it has tripled in last three weeks, then it is easily understandable that poverty must have gone up significantly," said Arup Mitra, a professor of economics at Institute of Economic Growth in New Delhi.

India, which has a relatively high proportion of workers outside the formal workforce, needs to be on guard as workers are facing a drastic reduction in working hours, wage cuts and layoffs, the ILO said.

“In India, with a share of almost 90% of people working in the informal economy, about 400 million workers in the informal economy are at risk of falling deeper into poverty during the crisis," ILO said. “In India, Nigeria and Brazil, the number of workers in the informal economy affected by the lockdown and other containment measures is substantial. Current lockdown measures in India, which are at the high end of the University of Oxford’s covid-19 Government Response Stringency Index, have impacted these workers significantly, forcing many of them to return to rural areas," it added.


A job loss away from poverty
The ILO warning corroborates local data, which shows that unemployment rate has spiked in India in a span of weeks.

The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy’s weekly tracker survey showed that the unemployment rate shot up from 8.4% in mid-March to 23% in the week ended 5 April, reflecting job losses because of the 21-day lockdown that started on 25 March.

While urban unemployment rate was 30.9%, the rural unemployment rate was over 20%, the data showed.

Since there is no wage and income for a large portion of Indian workers, it is but natural that they are pushed into poverty, said Amarjeet Kaur, general secretary of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC).

“The lockdown and its impact cannot be restricted to just 21 days. It has a cascading impact. We are requesting companies and urging both states and the Union government to do their bit not only to protect jobs but also to protect wages. Unless wages are protected, it will lead to poverty. The ILO report is an eye-opener and a warning for all countries," Kaur added.

ILO has recommended a four-pronged approach, including focused stimulus package, support to enterprises and protection of jobs, during the current crisis.

“Without appropriate policy measures, workers face a high risk of falling into poverty and will experience greater challenges in regaining their livelihoods during the recovery period," ILO said.


4.1. Tata Power Solar bags NTPC contract for Rs 1,730 crore
IBEF, Apr. 08, 2020

Tata Power Solar will build the 300 MW CPSU-II for NTPC at an all-inclusive price of Rs 1,730.16 crore (US$ 247.55 million).

The Commercial Operation Date (COD) for this grid-connected solar photovoltaic project is set for September 2021 (18 months). Thus, the order book of Tata Power Solar stands at approximately Rs 8541 crore (US$ 1.22 billion), including external and internal orders.

“It is projects like these which demonstrate the trust in Tata Power’s project management and execution skills. This order is a motivation for us to continue focusing on delivering the best to our customers, as per their expectations,” said Mr Praveer Sinha, CEO & MD, Tata Power.

Mr Ashish Khanna, MD & CEO, Tata Power Solar and President, Tata Power (Renewables), said, “Tata Power Solar is proud to consistently win large and challenging grid-based solar EPC contracts from industry-leading public sector undertaking like NTPC. This being a DCR project, we will be building the project with our own cells and modules.”

Tata Power Solar received a Letter of Award to develop a 105MWp Floating Solar Project worth around Rs 343 crore (US$ 49.08 million) including three years O&M in September 2019. This project is considered as one of the most important floating solar projects in the country. This venture is executed on the reservoir of NTPC Kayamkulam District in Alappuzha, Kerala and is to be commissioned no later than 21 months.

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


4.2. L&T's construction arm wins 'large' water management orders in Karnataka
IBEF, Apr. 14, 2020

The Water & Effluent Treatment Business of L&T Construction has secured three Engineering Procurement Construction (EPC) water management orders from the Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development and Finance Corporation (KUIDFC).

According to the company’s statement, under the contracts it will be responsible for ‘Design, Build, Operate, Maintain and Transfer of water supply systems in Hubballi – Dharwada, Kalaburagi and Belagavi a continuous (24x7) pressurized water supply. Funds for these projects will be provided primarily by the World Bank. The order size is estimated to be in the range of Rs 2,500-5,000 crore (US$ 357.70-715.41 million).

The aim of these projects is to deliver continuous pressurized water supply (24X7) to consumers and achieve target NRW (Non-Revenue Water) by decreasing losses through the development of suitable water infrastructure and utility improvements. Around 29 lakh people will be benefited from these projects.

Under the project, company will be responsible for the design and construction of intake structures, water treatment plants, overhead service reservoirs, raw/clear water transmission and distribution pipelines, ground-level storage reservoirs, pump houses, meter installation at house connections and other associated electromechanical, instrumentation & automation works including operation and maintenance.

Company has also secured another EPC order from the Tiruchirappalli City Corporation to ‘Provide an Underground Sewerage scheme to added areas of Tiruchirappalli City Corporation Phase III’ under which laying of sewer pipelines, construction of RCC manholes, pumping and lifting stations and providing sewer connections to households is concerned. The Water & Effluent Treatment business of L&T a few months back bagged orders in UAE and cities like Pune.

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


5. Opinion | The unexplored potential of learning beyond schooling 
Livemint, 30 Mar. 2020, Rohini Nilekani

The Covid crisis should push us to re-imagine education in radical ways that we’ll be thankful for

At six, in grade 1, my daughter returned from school in a chirpy mood. “What did you study today?" I asked. She was puzzled. “I didn’t study anything," she replied, “but I learnt a lot."

Education in the time of Covid-19 offers a similar and radical opportunity: to let children learn effectively without being burdened by having to study unimaginatively.

The nation’s education system is in turmoil. While it has been disrupted before, due to wars, strikes, or floods, never has it had to stop all physical proximity. Governments, teachers, parents and students are all asking the same questions with differing levels of anxiety: What should we do now and how long will this go on?

Education analysts have opined for decades that the current schooling systems don’t work as well as they should. Education can be understood as of instrumental or intrinsic value. The education infrastructure is simply not creating the kind of learner, the kind of citizen, or the kind of workforce that society needs or individuals may want. There is a growing consensus that we mainly need to teach children “how" to learn, so that they can continually educate themselves. With the world in rapid flux due to emerging technologies, climate change and now this pandemic, everyone needs the agency to acquire new knowledge and skills on the go.

Through this crisis, there have been intense consultations between the Centre and states, between states and civil society, and among communities of schools, educators and parents. What needs to be done immediately to sustain children’s learning? What must be done if schools remain shut for a long time?

At Ekstep Foundation, we undertook a lightning survey to understand what parents, teachers and students are feeling. There is apprehension all around. For students, there is uncertainty and fear, especially at the higher grades, in this exam season. Parents are equally frustrated and cannot shoulder the additional task of teaching their children. They don’t know what or how to teach. They are also worried about letting their children spend too much time online. Lower-income parents have the opposite concerns, of a lack of access to digital devices. Teachers want to quickly find ways to stem a loss of learning among their students. Interestingly, they themselves feel inadequate in teaching their children at home. The role of parents cannot be easily infused with the authority of a teacher. It is a herculean challenge to keep young minds engaged for long. But we have no choice other than to figure out how to do exactly that. This will need a new social contract between the education system, including teachers, and the community, including parents. Roles and responsibilities will have to shift quickly.

Amazing innovations have already come about. The internet is full of options for parents to play and learn with their kids at home; to go beyond curriculum-based thinking. Many content platforms are curating content and offering it for free. Elite schools have created virtual classes and parent conferences. The government is working to increase the utility of its digital platforms such as Diksha, which bridge the physical world of the textbook with a virtual platform through a simple QR code. This allows children continued access to compatible syllabus and teacher-created content. Already, parents and teachers are adapting to this innovation, with millions of downloads and sessions on Diksha. More is on the anvil from the government.

We can choose to look at this phase as an opportunity. It is inevitable that we will need digital technology to re-imagine learning beyond schooling. Even if it is only to inspire people to do more things physically. Now is the time to let go of the technophobia, and understand the power of open digital public goods. Now is the time to make sure that children without access to digital devices are not left behind. Even if this means the state having to ensure a digital device and connectivity for each family. No doubt there are dangers involved in letting children go online unsupervised. So, now is also the time to set new normative rules and behaviours around what, how and how much children should go online to learn.

There are other creative opportunities too. Children’s ability to learn is infinite when they are engaged. During a lockdown, children could learn physics through helping in the kitchen, learn literature through storytelling or more conversations in their own languages, and understand the circular economy through changed consumption patterns in households. None of these are easy tasks, and parents across the board may reject this burden. Yet, uncommon times call for unconventional wisdom. Can we use this time to re-imagine learning itself, so that post-virus, we can implement schooling with better learning? Can we finally listen to those who have been advocating a different approach for decades? Can we restore individual agency to learn at pace, can we involve parents and communities more structurally, and can we restore the primacy of the caring teacher? Can we reinstate the primacy of critical thinking and of upholding universal human values?

This is not mere idealism. The current crisis gives a chance to transform education across the country. Let’s open this window of opportunity together, so that every child can truly feel that she did not study but she learnt a lot.

Rohini Nilekani is co-founder Ekstep Foundation, and a writer and philanthropist

- AGRICULTURE, FISHING & RURAL DEVELOPMENT 


6. 159.000 Sub-Service Areas covered with at least one bank branch under Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana
IBEF, Mar. 18, 2020

Under Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), all villages were mapped by banks into 1.59 lakh Sub-Service Areas (SSAs) with one SSA catering to 1,000 to 1,500 households. This was stated by Shri Anurag Singh Thakur, Minister of State for Finance & Corporate Affairs, in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.

As informed by banks, while 0.33 lakh Sub-Service Areas (SSAs) have been covered with bank branches, 1.26 lakh SSAs are covered by deployment of interoperable Business Correspondents (BCs).

Shri Thakur further stated that as per extant guidelines dated 18.5.2017 on rationalisation of Branch Authorisation Policy, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has granted general permission to domestic 

Scheduled Commercial Banks (excluding Regional Rural Banks) to open banking outlets (i.e. a fixed point service delivery unit, manned by either bank’s staff or its Business Correspondent) at any place in the country, without seeking prior approval of RBI in each case, subject to at least 25 per cent of the total number of banking outlets opened during a financial year being in unbanked rural centres i.e. centres having population less than 10,000 (Tier 5 and Tier 6 centres).

Shri Thakur stated that in pursuance of RBI guidelines, rolling out of banking outlets in uncovered areas is a continuous process and looked after by State Level Bankers' Committees, in consultation with the concerned State Government, member banks and other stakeholders. Banks, inter-alia, consider proposals for opening banking outlets in the light of RBI’s instructions, their business plans and their commercial viability.

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


7.1. Gov. aid can help informal sector fight virus effect
Livemint, 25 Mar 2020, Puja Mehra

Mint explains why and how the government must on a war footing help the sector cope with the debilitating economic impact of the pandemic coronavirus, coronavirus pandemic, impact of coronavirus pandemic, informal sector, Lockdowns,economic impact Covid-19 outbreak, minimum wages, Mudra loans, fiscal deficit, government spending

Lockdowns, a preventive move to slow down the spread of Covid-19, will severely hurt India’s informal sector, especially daily wagers. Mint explains why and how the government must on a war footing help the sector cope with the debilitating economic impact of the pandemic

How large is India’s informal sector?
Over half of India’s gross value added comes from the informal sector, which mostly engages informal workers. Nearly 87% of India’s workforce is informal, with no written contract, paid leave, minimum wages or terms of work as per regulations. The share of the informal sector is the highest in agriculture, followed by trade, construction, and real estate and professional services. Lockdowns will disrupt these tiny businesses, due to which the sector could suffer a cash crunch, and income and consumption shocks, forcing them to borrow at steep rates from informal lenders. Many may slip below the poverty line.

How should the govt support this sector?
The challenge for policymakers will be to design channels for delivering relief and support. Few levers are available to them for mitigating the economic impact of the pandemic and lockdowns on the informal sector. Some existing Mudra loans may have to be written off, repayments deferred and new loans extended. Tax cuts are ruled out, as the turnovers of unorganized sector firms are typically smaller than the threshold required for goods and services tax (GST) registration or payment of income tax. GST rate cuts will have limited impact, with lockdowns reducing supplies and consumption.



Should informal workers be given cash transfers?
Yes, immediately. NREGA worksites cannot operate during the lockdowns, but the government can still clear pending payments urgently. It must also provide food stamps and transfer top-up relief payments to NREGA and PM-Kisan direct benefit transfer accounts. However, it will not be able reach those informal workers who don’t have such accounts.

What’s the way out in this situation?
Besides ensuring emergency concessional Mudra loans and generous terms with forbearance, the government may have to step in as a buyer of last resort. Nearly half of the informal sector firms operate from homes with family members as the only workers. So, they can be productive during the lockdowns. The challenge is to ensure supply of inputs and access to markets. Government agencies can tap the procurement channels of rural cooperatives and self-help groups to source emergency goods such as masks from the sector.

Will the fiscal cost be a challenge for the govt?
No. To create fiscal space, the government can consider pay and pension cuts for its employees. The Seventh Pay Commission reward was based on forecast of healthy revenue growth and 7% plus GDP growth—that’s no longer the case. In extreme situations, the Centre can allow the fiscal deficit to expand and let RBI print money. Higher government spending on relief for the sector will not push up inflation, as lockdowns reduce demand.

Puja Mehra is a Delhi-based journalist


7.2. Biofortified carrot variety developed by farmer scientist benefits local farmers
IBEF, Apr. 09, 2020

Madhuban Gajar, a biofortified carrot variety with high β-carotene and iron content developed by Shri Vallabhhai Vasrambhai Marvaniya, a farmer scientist from Junagadh district, Gujarat is benefitting more than 150 local farmers in the area. It is being planted in an area of over 200 hectares in Junagadh, and the average yield, which is 40-50 t/ha, has become the main source of income to the local farmers. The variety is being cultivated in more than 1000 hectares of land in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh during the last three years.

The Madhuvan Gajar is a highly nutritious carrot variety developed through the selection method with higher β-carotene content (277.75 mg/kg) and iron content (276.7 mg/kg) dry basis and is used for various value-added products like carrot chips, juices, and pickles. Among all the varieties tested, beta-carotene and iron content were found to be superior.

National Innovation Foundation (NIF) – India, an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India conducted validation trials for this variety at Rajasthan Agricultural Research Institute (RARI), Jaipur, between 2016 and 2017. In the trials, it was found that Madhuban Gajar carrot variety possesses a significantly higher root yield (74.2 t/ha) and plant biomass (275 gm per plant) as compared to check variety.

The on-farm trials of the variety were conducted over 25 hectares of land by NIF in different states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Assam, Haryana, Punjab and West Bengal which involved more than 100 farmers where the performance of the variety (Madhuvan Gajar) was found to be appreciable in term of yield and its other properties.

During 1943, Shri Vallabhhai Vasrambhai Marvaniya found that a local carrot variety which was profoundly used for fodder to improve the quality of milk. He selectively cultivated this variety and sold this carrot in the market at a good price. Since then, he, along with family, is working for the conservation and development of this cultivar. The production and marketing of seeds of the variety are taken care of by his son Shri Arvind bhai and the average sale is about 100 quintals per annum. Around 30 local seeds suppliers are involved for the seed marketing of the variety throughout the country, and the production of seeds is being undertaken out by Shri Vallabhhai himself with a group of some local farmers.

During the early years of the development of this variety, Shri Vallabhhai selected the best plants for seed production and grew them in a small area for domestic consumption as well as for marketing. Later on, demand for this carrot grew, and he started cultivation on a large scale during the 1950’s. He also started distributing the seeds to other farmers in his village and adjoining areas in the 1970s. During 1985, he started selling the seeds on a large scale. The average yield of Maduvan Gajar is 40 – 50 t/ha and had been cultivated in Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan successfully.

Shri Vallabhai Vasrambhai Marvaniya was conferred with a National Award by the President of India at Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi during Festival of Innovation (FOIN) – 2017. He was conferred with Padma Shri in the year 2019 for his extraordinary work.

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


8. Lidl box scheme is latest retail charity effort
Fruitnet, 25 March, 2020, Fred Searle

Discounter joins fellow retailers in helping food and goods reach people under stricter social distancing measures

Lidl has begun offering food donation boxes in stores across the country as retailers rally to help community groups provide essential food and supplies during the coronavirus crisis.

The discounter is extending its “Feed it Back” scheme, which it runs in partnership with Neighbourly, as the nation embarks on the most stringent social distancing measures yet, announced by PM Boris Johnson on Monday (23 March).

The boxes will be available in store for customers who may wish to donate any food or groceries to the cause.

Donations will be distributed to a broad range of organisations across Neighbourly's extensive network of community partners including food banks, community centres, soup kitchens and more, where any donated food will be put to good use every day.

Christian Härtnagel, CEO at Lidl GB csaid: “The current situation continues to be very challenging for everyone and that’s why we’re extending our ‘Feed it Back’ scheme with Neighbourly in our stores to offer our customers the chance to help make a difference too, if they feel they are able to. In these trying times, it’s vitally important that we look to help those within our communities who are in most need of our support.”

Steve Butterworth, CEO at Neighbourly, added: "We're pleased to be able to support Lidl as they roll out this new initiative. Our network of charities and community causes are working round the clock at this time to support isolated and vulnerable members of the community with food and basic essentials. Anything that customers can donate will make a huge difference to someone in their community."

The roll out follows last week’s announcement that the supermarket will donate £100,000 to its partnership with Neighbourly as part of the Covid-19 Emergency Community Fund.

Lidl has run its ‘Feed it Back’ scheme in partnership with Neighbourly since 2017, which enables the retailer to distribute unsold surplus food to local communities, and has so far donated the equivalent of over five million meals to its partner charities.

Any community projects that are interested in partnering with a Lidl store for ongoing food surplus donation can visit www.neighbourly.com/FeedItBack or email lidl@neighbourly.com.

Asda
Lidl’s announcement follows similar efforts by the UK’s other main retailers. Of all the supermarkets, Asda has dug deepest, announcing it would donate £5m to its partners FareShare and the Trussell Trust to help the country’s most vulnerable people through the coronavirus outbreak.

This will provide over four million meals to families in poverty impacted by Coronavirus as well as allowing more than 3,000 charities to access free food over the next three months as they try to cope with a huge increase in demand.

Asda is also investing in the logistics and support services that will allow FareShare and the Trussell Trust to support families through the crisis. This includes funding for telephone, and online and food delivery systems for people unable to afford food and helping with the recruitment of 20,000 volunteers to support food banks.

Co-op
Co-op is donating £1.5m worth of food to FareShare to help boost stocks and support local communities.
The convenience retailer also announced measures to combat holiday hunger in pupils caused by unplanned school closures. Some 6,500 students across 25 Co-op Academy Schools who currently have free school meals will be given a £20 voucher for every week that schools remain shut.

Aldi
The German discounter has joined others in making an increased financial donation to Neighbourly. In addition, it has donated £250,000 to Age UK and £100,000 to the Teenage Cancer Trust.
To reward its staff for their efforts during this extremely busy period Aldi also announced its store and distribution staff would receive a 10 per cent bonus on hours worked, effective from 9 March.

Waitrose
The John Lewis Partnership is donating £75,000 to Age UK, FareShare and the Trussell Trust to help people struggling with isolation and food insecurity. 

The group has also announced new measures to support customers, including the launch of a £1m Community Support Fund as well as offering its staff childcare support and free meals at work. 

Marks & Spencer
M&S is also supporting Neighbourly with a donation of £100,000 to the Neighbourly Community Fund.
On top of this, the retailer will donate to the organisation every time a customer uses their Sparks card if they select the fund as their preferred partner.
A separate £100,000 donation has been made to the National Emergencies Trust Coronavirus Appeal.

Tesco
Likewise, Tesco is giving a 10 per cent bonus on the hourly rate of employees across its stores, distribution centres and customer engagement centres. For front line salaried managers, there will be a 10 per cent bonus on actual hours worked.

The bonuses have been backdated to 9 March and will last until 1 May, when the situation will be reviewed.


9. Oreo-maker to expand biscuit portfolio in India
IBEF, Mar. 26, 2020

Chocolate-maker Mondelez India is planning to expand its biscuit portfolio with an intent to increase its distribution reach in the country.

The company, which produces chocolates under the Cadbury brand, has a foothold in the biscuit’s category with Oreo and Bournvita Biscuits. The idea is to increase its portfolio into all biscuit categories including premium ones such as ‘indulgence’ and ‘choco bakery’. The company launched the Cadbury Chocobakes about three months back, targeting urban markets.

Most brands are targeting the choco bakery category as it is pegged to become a US$ 1-billion market over the next five years.

According to the sources, nearly 20 per cent of Mondelez India’s total sales come from rural markets that include smaller value packs of Rs 1 (US$ 0.014), Rs 2 (US$ 0.028), Rs 5 (US$ 0.071) and even Rs 10 (US$ 0.14).

In 2019, the company added nearly 242,000 stores (selling biscuits), of which 107,000 were in rural areas and the remaining 135,000 in urban areas.

According to Mr Sudhanshu Nagpal, Associate Director, Marketing (Biscuits), Mondelez India, the company is planning to increase its presence in its biscuit brands across all markets. For instance, there are distinct plans to expand Oreo’s penetration into the family biscuits category, while Bournvita Biscuits are being placed as a ‘healthy morning snack’ option. Cadbury Chocobake is being placed in the nascent choco bakery category.

“We have taken a long-term view of the country and are working on building our biscuit business accordingly. It’s not a matter of just one or two quarters in terms of putting our expansion plans in place or getting the distribution done. So, we will work out things,” he said.

The lockdown because of the coronavirus outbreak may act as disturbance in the way of quick expansion, industry sources pointed out.

This may cause in delay in launch of products by few quarters while FMCG companies are already staring at supply and distribution chain disruptions.

According to Edelweiss, in a recent report, due to panic buying because of the virus has triggered a stock-out in essentials and is also advancing demand.

“This, we believe, will benefit HUL, GCPL, Nestle, Britannia, ITC and Dabur,” it said, adding that the pandemic is likely to push the already stressed rural areas (growing at half the urban) to the brink. “Overall recovery to be delayed by at least two quarters (from H2 FY21),” it added.

Biscuits are a new category for Mondelez India, and company entered the segment with Oreo in 2011. Over the years, the company explored adjacencies by getting into licensing pacts with ice-cream makers.

A company spokesperson said the immediate concern is to “protect the health and safety of its employees”. “In parallel, we are working to ensure that we continue to make available our products to consumers across the country,” the spokesperson said, adding that the situation is being monitored daily.

Presently, Mondelez has manufacturing facilities in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, in addition to external manufacturing facilities in Ludhiana, Rajpura and Bengaluru.

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


10.1. Small businesses face existential threat as supply and demand vanish
Livemint, 08 Apr. 2020, Team Mint
  • More than a quarter of India’s 63 million micro, small, medium firms may have to shutter before summer’s end 
  • Survivability of smaller firms is also threatened by challenges of working capital shortage and lack of manpower 
Jagdeep Rangar, managing director and founder of auto parts maker Stork Rubber Products, has his hopes pinned on the end of the nationwide lockdown on 14 April. An extension would put his company in serious jeopardy, he said.

Rangar has already mentally written off April completely with almost half of the month lost to the lockdown. He is now looking at demand resuming in May but only at a quarter of the monthly average as the best-case scenario.

“Currently, our shipments are held up and there is a concern over payments from customers overseas," Rangar said. The company, which employs 45 people and clocked sales of ₹82 crore in FY2019, estimates a 15% drop in the year ended 31 March because of the decline in demand across the value chain. “We may not downsize our employee count but there is no question of hiring anymore," Rangar said.

As the country entered the 14th day of the three-week lockdown on Tuesday, stories of the acute distress faced by small businesses abounded. While, manufacturers have been hit by the double whammy of both demand and workforce vanishing overnight, prospects remain bleak for the services sector too as consumers cut down on discretionary spending.

Industry experts warn that more than a quarter of India’s 63 million micro, small and medium companies may have to shutter before the end of summer if they fail to tide over the acute cash crunch.

“Supply chain and production disruptions have impacted our business in the current season. We have a lot of surplus inventory for summer appliance categories such as air conditioners, air coolers, and water purifiers because of reduced production in February and March, said Arpit Chhabra, chief executive officer and co-founder Iotify, a technology partner to consumer durables and appliances brands. “Overall, we anticipate at least 15% less production compared to initial plans. This hits us badly because capital gets trapped in inventory," he said.

Experts maintain that survivability of smaller businesses is threatened further by the dual challenges of working capital shortage and lack of manpower. “It remains to be seen whether a large portion of the workforce that has already left for native places in the wake of the lockdown, comes back when the situation becomes somewhat normal," said the founder of a manpower staffing company. “While the government has done well in ensuring direct transfers to the needy, this will not add to demand revival per se and is only aimed at ensuring basic survival for those without any resources and rightly so" said Nachiket Naik, head of corporate lending of Arka Fincap, a Mumbai-based non-banking financial company that is part of the Kirloskar group.

“Most small businesses are seeing extended payment cycles leaving them with very little or no cash in hand" he said, adding “one way of addressing this could be to ask the banks to also extend the working capital cycle in tandem".

Industry executives argue that further tweaks in the current regulations are warranted to tide over the crisis. In March, the government decided to bear the 24% contribution of both employee and employer combined to the Employees’ Provident Fund for the next three months. EPF rules mandate a 12% contribution by both employee and employer from the monthly salary. “Though this comes as a relief to the MSME and SMEs but only businesses having up to 100 employees and 90% of them earning less than ₹15,000 per month would be able to avail this benefit," said Chetan Sangoi, member, Retailers Association of India.

“The problem is that many companies will not be able to avail this scheme because 25% of employees are administrative staff whose salary is often more than ₹15,000," added Sangoi.


10.2. Markets may have to brace for a sharp deterioration in economic activity
Livemint, 12 Apr. 2020, Clifford Alvares
  • The Indian govt’s stimulus could be at least $13 bn according to market talk which will be largely aimed at small businesses to tide over the coronavirus shutdown 
  • The pharma sector is in the limelight as the government has lifted restrictions on exports of many active pharmaceutical ingredients 
As indices have regained some lost ground, markets are now paying less attention to the sharp reduction in economic-growth forecasts. The bellwether Nifty 50 recouped about 21% from lows made in March. Investors hopes have risen that the additional stimulus to be announced will prop up the economy, and the markets.

The Indian government’s stimulus could be at least $13 billion according to market talk which will be largely aimed at small businesses to tide over the coronavirus shutdown. While this is lower than the previous ₹1.7 trillion package, it could still help alleviate some pressures these businesses are facing.

However, the economy may not get much of a boost from the stimulus measures. Global investment bank Goldman Sachs has already sharply reduced its global GDP growth forecast to a negative 1.8% in 2020.

Goldman also lowered India’s FY21 GDP growth to 1.6%, against 3.3% earlier expected. “Despite the policy support so far, and our expectations of more, we believe that the nationwide shutdown, and rising public anxiety about the virus are likely to lead to a sharp deterioration in economic activity in March, and in the next quarter," noted economists at Goldman Sachs in a client note.

In fact, the lockdown has already hurt several segments of the economy. Analysts are expecting about a 16% contraction in Q4 earnings of the Nifty 50 stocks. This is high considering that the lockdown has been in place only the last 10 days of March.

While some companies like Spice Jet Ltd which have been hit badly by the lockdown are looking for some support, the consumer non-durable sector is looking brighter as demand for staples has been showing signs of an upswing.

Companies like Coal India Ltd, however, are seeing lower coal offtake as thermal power demand shrinks due to the lockdown. Nevertheless, for the hotel industry which has been bruised badly due to the pandemic, the lower leverage of some luxury hotels seems to be a silver lining.

The pharma sector is in the limelight as the government has lifted restrictions on exports of many active pharmaceutical ingredients. This has boosted the stocks of companies like Ipca Laboratories Ltd and Cadila Healthcare Ltd.

Amid all the gloomy news on the economy though, the Indian rupee has still been remarkably resilient, largely because the fall in oil prices reduces current account pressures. Further the inflation figures to be announced on Monday could offer some relief, which could further help reduce interest rates.

That said, the apprehension around stock markets may still linger as some state governments have announced an extension of the lockdown. A worry for investors would be whether Indian markets will see positive earnings growth in FY21 if these lockdowns are prolonged. Then the historical price-earnings multiple of about 18 times for the Nifty 50 may be at risk.



- INDUSTRY & MANUFACTURE 



11. Lithium Urban Technologies, Fourth Partner Energy tie up to set up solar-powered EV charging hubs
IBEF, Mar. 18, 2020

Lithium Urban Technologies, a commercial EV fleet operator, entered into partnership with renewable energy solutions provider Fourth Partner Energy to build charging infrastructure across the country.

Both companies formed a 50-50 joint venture named Shuchi Anant Virya. It unveiled its first electric vehicle (EV) charging hub in Gurugram having capacity of charging 25-30 vehicles simultaneously. The facility will be used initially to charge Lithium’s fleet to Wipro and American Express in Gurugram.

Under the venture, Fourth Partner Energy will provide a mix of onsite and offsite solar solutions and RE trading options to power Lithium’s fleet, whereas the latter will be the anchor client offering base demand across hubs.

Mr Vivek Subramanian, Co-founder & ED at Fourth Partner Energy, spoke on the synergies between EV and PV (photovoltaic) being centred around a reduction in carbon footprint. “The global transition to electric mobility can be considered truly green only when the increased demand for energy is met by clean, renewable sources – Shuchi was formed to address this opportunity.”

Currently, Fourth Partner has a pan-India portfolio of 370 MW of solar assets for clients like Coca Cola, Walmart, Schneider, Skoda, Ferrero, TCS and McDonalds. “Partnering with Lithium helps both companies better leverage our strengths in providing sustainable solutions and cost benefits to India’s leading corporate houses,” Mr Vivek added.

The government is currently working in improving public transportation and easy adoption of EVs in order to reduce emission levels as seven of the 10 most polluted cities in the world are present in India. Under the FAME scheme, the Centre is aiming 30 per cent electric mobility by 2030.

Lithium’s all-electric fleet of over 1,000 vehicles deployed across Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Pune, Bengaluru and Jaipur provides to over 30 corporate clients including Google, McKinsey, Credit Suisse and Barclays, eager on reducing their carbon footprint as well as their transportation costs.

Mr Vikash Mishra, Head of External Relations, Lithium Urban Technologies, said, “Businesses are becoming increasingly conscious of better environmental practices. Solar-powered EV charging infrastructure will not just close the loop on procuring clean energy for electric vehicles but will also result in improved cost efficiency. The domestic EV market is expected to grow by 35 per cent annually till 2026 and fleet operators will be the first to embrace this change. Lithium is readying India for this future of shared, connected, electric mobility. With the help of Fourth Partner Energy, we are confident of enabling this transition in a zero-carbon manner.”

A second charging hub is already been set up in Pune under the JV. “The Pune facility is India’s largest EV charging hub for four-wheelers, capable of charging over 40 vehicles at a time. Shuchi plans to set up 12-15 such hubs which include a couple more charging hubs across Delhi-NCR, and at least one each in Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Mumbai,” said Mr Vinayak Kathare, Business Head at Shuchi.

The two companies plan to invest about Rs 20 crore (US$ 2.86 million) and set up 12-15 EV charging hubs in the near term.

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


12. Panasonic India to open 130 brand stores in tier 1 & 2 cities by 2021-22 
IBEF, Mar. 20, 2020

By financial year 2021-22, Panasonic Life Solutions India plans to open 130 exclusive brand stores across tier one and two markets to tailor to the increasing need of the electrical and construction material industry.

According to Mr Vivek Sharma, MD at Panasonic Life Solutions India, consumers and influencers will be able to have an experience centres as these stores will target customers as well as builders, contractors and architects. First such outlet in Hyderabad is been set up by the company and will be setting up these stores in a franchise owned and operated model.

"This unique experience of sorts would help the Indian consumer move up the ladder of comfort and choice in a category which otherwise is largely driven by electricians and is associated with crowded electrical stores," said Mr Sharma.

Company’s latest products like energy recovery ventilator, electronic automatic toilet seats, bathroom dryers, LED lighting solutions and electrical wiring devices will be showcased at these stores. The company sells its products under the ‘Anchor by Panasonic’ brand.

Panasonic Life Solutions India (formerly known as Anchor Electrical) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Panasonic Corporation.

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


13. India to spend US$ 1.3 billion to boost pharmaceutical production 
IBEF, Mar. 24, 2020

India plans to set up a nearly Rs 1 lakh crore (US$ 1.3 billion) fund to provide boost to companies to manufacture pharmaceutical ingredients domestically. This move comes after supply chain was disrupted due to the coronavirus pandemic exposed the country’s dependence on China and raised the threat of drug shortages.

The program consists of spending on infrastructure for drug manufacturing centers and financial incentives of up to 20 per cent of incremental sales value over the next eight years, according to a government statement.

Currently, India imports almost 70 per cent of its active pharmaceutical ingredients, the chemicals that make a finished drug work, from China. Hubei province, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak has been major source of these ingredients. As the world’s single largest exporter of generic drugs, India is responsible for about 20 per cent of the world’s supply.

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


14. National Supercomputing Mission: a transformative approach in supercomputing 
IBEF, Mar. 24, 2020

The 2020-21 is an important year for India’s National Supercomputing Mission (NSM). The mission was set up to provide the country with supercomputing infrastructure to meet the increasing computational demands of academia, researchers, MSMEs, and startups by creating the capability design, manufacturing, of supercomputers indigenously in India.

A first of its kind attempt to boost the country’s computing power, the National Super Computing Mission is steered jointly by the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) and Department of Science and Technology (DST) and implemented by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. 

The target of the mission was set to establish a network of supercomputers ranging from a few Tera Flops (TF) to Hundreds of Tera Flops (TF) and three systems with greater than or equal to 3 Peta Flops (PF) in academic and research institutions of National importance across the country by 2022. This network of Supercomputers envisaging a total of 15-20 PF was approved in 2015 and was later revised to a total of 45 PF (45000 TFs), a jump of 6 times more compute power within the same cost and capable of solving large and complex computational problems. 

With the revised plan in place, the first supercomputer assembled indigenously, called Param Shivay, was installed in IIT (BHU) and was inaugurated by the Prime Minister. Similar systems Param Shakti and Param Brahma were installed at IIT-Kharagpur and IISER, Pune. They are equipped with applications from domains like Weather and Climate, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Bioinformatics, and Material science.

Plans are afoot to install three more supercomputers by April 2020, one each at IIT-Kanpur, JN Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bengaluru, and IIT-Hyderabad. This will ramp up the supercomputing facility to 6 PF.

11 new systems are likely to be set up in different IITs, NITs, National Labs, and IISERs across India by December this year, which will have many sub-systems manufactured and microprocessors designed in India which will bring in a cumulative capacity of 10.4 petaflops.

Spreading out the reach to the North-East region of the country, 8 systems with a total Compute Power of 16 PF are being commissioned. 5 indigenously designed systems with three 3 PF computing power will be installed at IIT-Mumbai, IIT-Chennai and Inter-University Accelerator Centre (IUAC) at Delhi with NKN as its backbone. It also includes an indigenously build 20 PF system at C-DAC, Pune, and a 100 PF Artificial Intelligence supercomputing system. One midlevel 650 TFs system is also to be installed at C-DAC Bengaluru to provide consultancy to Start-ups, SSIs & MSMEs.

Geared to provide Supercomputing facility to about 60-70 institutions Nation-wide and more than thousands of active Researchers, Academicians, and so on, NSM has gathered momentum and is moving fast not only towards creating a computer infrastructure for the country but also to build capacity of the country to develop the next generation of supercomputer experts.

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


15.1. More than 280 units in SEZs, manufacturing essential items like pharmaceuticals and hospital devices, are operational
IBEF, Apr. 01, 2020

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have been a significant contributor to the exports from India over the past years, contributing approximately 18 per cent of India’s total exports. During the current financial year 2019-20, the exports from SEZs have already crossed US$ 110 Billion. In the present scenario of complete lockdown in the country to curb the spread of COVI-19, SEZs units engaged in manufacturing of essential items like drugs, pharmaceuticals or hospital equipment are operational to ensure these critical supplies are not disrupted.

More than 280 units, engaged in manufacturing of essential items like pharmaceuticals and hospital devices, are operational. Besides, more than 1900 IT/ITES Units have been facilitated to enable their employees to work from home.

Development Commissioners of SEZs have been requested to ensure that there is no hardship to Developer/Co-Developer/Units and no punitive action is taken in cases where compliances like filing of QPR, APR, SOFTEX in case of IT/ITES Units etc, required to be filed by 31st March, 2020 are not completed. Further, It has also been requested that all extensions of LoAs and other compliances are facilitated through electronic mode in a time-bound manner and where it is not possible to grant extension through electronic mode or in cases where a physical meeting is required, It may be ensure that the Developer / Co-developer / Units do not face any hardship due to such expiry of validity during this period of disruption, and ad-hoc interim extension / deferment of the expiry date may be granted without prejudice till 30.06.2020 or further instructions of the Department on the matter, whichever is earlier.

All Development Commissioners are closely coordinating with the units in their jurisdiction for their smooth functioning while ensuring that all necessary precautions of work-place safety, including social distancing are scrupulously adhered.

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


15.2. Race against time to build desi ventilators
Livemint, 08 Apr. 2020, Goutam Das
  • With covid-19 on the rise, India has over a dozen efforts to make open-source ventilators. Will they be reliable? 
  • Currently, few open-source ventilator projects meet all the specifications. Medical practitioners, for now, feel open-source projects need validation from hospitals 

NEW DELHI: The WhatsApp group, “Cv19 Ventilator Splitters", buzzed after one of its 92 participants posted a picture of a 3D-printed device. It has four outlets and a pipe with a knob.

“Looks good. Time to test."

“We are trying to send this to the doctor now. Based on his feedback we’ll take a call."

“Probably we are the only team that hopes that we never have to use our creation."

This “creation", the splitter, allows one ventilator to treat four patients by splitting the oxygen flow. Ventilators are critical devices that assist people in breathing when lungs fail. Usually, one machine supports one patient. But then, these are unusual times.

Over the last many days, participants in the WhatsApp group—doctors, engineers, investors, product managers, policy makers and 3D printers—have been brainstorming to make an open-source splitter. The picture posted is version number five; different versions of the splitter have been tested in hospitals in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Jaipur and Srinagar.

“It could be the fastest and cost efficient way to save lives during the covid-19 pandemic," Pankaj Gupta, managing partner at EthAum Venture Partners, a technology accelerator, said. “We will do another round of testing in Vijaywada and freeze the design by the middle of next week," he added. He is one of the volunteers for the open-source project.

The Cv19 Ventilator Splitters group meets over a Zoom conference every day at 10pm to map their progress. The splitter project is part of a larger platform—the Covid India Initiative— with over 500 Good Samaritans to help source medical equipment and help open-source communities prototype and test their innovation.

Splitting a ventilator between patients is complicated because every lung is different. Not all doctors are comfortable with the idea. However, soon, there could be more patients needing ventilation in India than the number of ventilators available.

India currently has over 4,000 covid-19 infections and over 100 deaths. If positive cases rise exponentially in India, the demand-supply gap for ventilators could be as high as 160,000, Alvarez and Marsal, a professional services firm, projected. India currently has an installed base of 45,000 ventilators. Multinationals such as GE Healthcare import ventilators to sell. Imports are difficult because many countries are facing shortages and the global supply-chains are broken. There are around five domestic manufacturers in the country; ramping up production capacity quickly enough is a tough ask during a lockdown.

“We are way behind. We are woefully short," Amir Ullah Khan, policy analyst and a former adviser with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said. “We are now talking about 10,000 people testing positive in the next couple of weeks and deaths going up to a thousand. We have to arrest that. Even when covid-19 disappears, we would still need 100,000 ventilators because we have people dying of respiratory diseases every day," he said.

The open source movement fits in here.

Make it fast

The covid-19 outbreak has sparked over a dozen efforts to make ventilators. While the designs come in different shades, all of them have two goals—make it affordable, make it fast.

Ventilators from multinationals can cost upwards of ₹5 lakh. A sophisticated ventilator from AgVa Healthcare, a domestic manufacturer, is more economical at ₹1.5 lakh. Further stripped down versions that use only domestic components and local supply-chains can cut the bill to under ₹50,000. Open-source communities don’t charge for the intellectual property either, making products cheaper than proprietary ones.

Nevertheless, there are many questions. Can open-source ventilators be reliable? Medical devices are tested for months. In this case, people only have a few weeks to get the stuff up and running. Can these devices be safely used on patients suffering from acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)? Are the devices safe for health workers to handle considering that covid-19 is contagious? And who takes the responsibility if bugs in the software code mess up with a running machine?

Many doctors this writer spoke to said that they would exercise caution because ventilators are mission critical.

The human lung is like a series of balloons connected to a large bush of tubes, Dr Prashant Jha, head of affordable medical technologies at the School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences, King’s College, London, explained. “In ARDS, a patient has extreme difficulty in breathing and maintaining the levels of oxygen. One has to ensure that just enough air is pushed in. If you over inflate the lung, you will cause structural damage which could be lethal," he said. Controls in ventilators and how rigorously they are tested are, therefore, crucial.

As of now, scientists are collaborating with medical practitioners and hospitals of repute. The mutual endorsements, they hope, can make this work.

Scientists rise

On the phone, Srinivasan Raghavan sounds composed. “Two months down the line you may not even need our solution. It might look like we were overreacting," he said. “Regardless, it is very satisfying to know that when the country is faced with a problem of this magnitude, people can stand up. It is up-lifting."

Raghavan, a scientist at IISc’s Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, mobilized 35 people and companies such as KAS Technologies (a factory-equipment maker) to develop an open-source ventilator with minimum electronics. “Our aim is to provide air or oxygen at a certain pressure, volume, flow rate and frequency. As engineers, we do it all the time in other realms. We decided to apply that knowledge to the covid-19 problem," he said.

Raghavan consulted with Manipal Hospitals. To begin with, he was advised to build a stripped down ventilator with just a “pressure mode", a common mode most ventilators work in. In this mode, air is forced into the patient at a certain pressure during inhalation and then withdrawn during exhalation. Sophisticated ventilators in intensive care units (ICUs) have many more modes, including a “volume mode" where a fixed volume of air is forced into the patient. More the modes, more the sensors and by extension, more imports.

“We have simplified the design significantly. It has very little electronics and automation at this point. Our second version will have a bit more (it would incorporate the volume mode) and still cost less than ₹50,000," he said.

Meanwhile, a second team from IISc have come together to prototype an electro-mechanical ventilator using made-in-India components. For instance, to store and mix air and oxygen, the team reused sedimentation tanks found in household reverse osmosis (RO) water purifiers. To check pressure levels, sensors similar to those used to detect air pressure in car tyres are used.

Yet another ventilator effort is led by IIT Kanpur. This project uses a bit more electronics than the IISc teams. The ventilators, when ready, might be Internet-of- Things-enabled—meaning, they can be controlled remotely by the doctors.

Nocca Robotics, a company that makes waterless solar plant cleaning robots, was co-founded by IIT Kanpur graduates in 2017. When the covid-19 pandemic hit, Nocca came forth with an Ambu bag-based ventilator design. “Doctors told us that Ambu bags wouldn’t save any covid-19 patients. In a day, the Nocca team came up with a second design, for an invasive ventilator," Amitabha Bandyopadhyay, a professor at the IIT’s department of biological sciences and bioengineering, said. He also runs the business incubator at IIT Kanpur.

At its most basic, Ambu bags are made up of polymer and are a manual resuscitator device. Some open-source communities have now automated the manual functioning. Many doctors, nevertheless, said they would prefer a well tested and sophisticated invasive ventilator for conditions such as ADRS where patients may need to be in an ICU for over a week. In an invasive machine, positive pressure is applied through an endotracheal or tracheotomy tube to keep the lungs from collapsing.

“We have received 12 different interests for manufacturing. After beta testing, we would licence the design to manufacturers," Bandyopadhyay said. About 30,000 machines can be manufactured by May if everything goes well, he hoped. The IIT Kanpur ventilator project has advisers that include Ajai Chowdhry, one of founders of HCL, as well as Saurabh Srivastava, the co-founder of IT industry body Nasscom and the Indian Angel Network.

The retrofit

Rustom K. Bharucha is an octogenarian. He runs Bharucha Instrumentation and Control, a company that makes mechanical ventilators. Local doctors have used the ventilators to treat patients with snake bites, for instance. Why couldn’t it be retrofitted for the covid-19 scenario? Reinventing the wheel is sexy although time consuming.

Nick Booker, the co-founder of IndoGenius, a company that helps universities and government agencies across the world network with Indian institutions, teamed up with Dr Jha of King’s College, London, to start OpenBreath.Tech, a network of doctors and engineers. The duo engaged the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research and the Inter-University Centre of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune in their open-source efforts.

“We liked the Bharucha Ventilator because it was super sturdy, had no electronics in it. This means that even in the remotest parts of the world, this machine can be made using a simple lathe machine, a welding tool and screw drivers. It is easier to replicate than a machine that requires a printed circuit board," Dr Jha said.

The group, with Bharucha’s blessings, digitized the ventilator drawings (Bharucha only had paper sketches); it would be available as an open-source licence for anyone to use and tweak. OpenBreath.Tech, meanwhile, is also working on a version that would make the Bharucha Ventilator useful in ARDS cases. That includes adding mechanisms to control and adjust how pressure is generated and the volume moderated.

“This is an attempt to make a contrarian design, which is purely mechanical. We want to explore distributed manufacturing—in Asia, Latin America, Africa," Dr Jha said.

Trust matters

Back to the question around the reliability of open-source devices. A technical committee of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has mandated six essential technical features in ventilators being used for covid-19 cases. The machine should be turbine/compressor-based because the installation sites might not have central oxygen lines; the machine should have invasive, non-invasive features; finally, pressure and volume control among others.

Currently, few open-source ventilator projects meet all the specifications.

A scientist who did not want to be quoted fretted that volume control needs flow sensors. “If you integrate flow sensors, the pricing could go up by ₹20,000—just in the material cost. There is less supply since the whole world needs sensors," he said. India, he argued, therefore needs a much more knocked-down version of the specifications. “Government officials, verbally, are saying they would take whatever is made in a crisis situation. However, it’s not written. You cannot have it both ways," he added.

Medical practitioners, for now, feel open-source projects need validation and endorsement from larger organizations.

Dr Sudarshan Ballal, chairman of Manipal Hospitals, said that for reliability, hospitals would prefer trusted manufacturers getting involved. “Much of the diagnostic kits from China were rejected by European countries. There is no point in adopting something that has come in a hurry because it might cause more damage than help," he said. “The source is important. If the devices come from a Maruti, a Mahindra, a Tata, they would be more trusted."

Fact is, India wouldn’t want to lose this war to covid-19. Doctors could prefer sophisticated and time-tested machines, but it is better to be prepared with every resource, keeping every device in the armoury. Because when push comes to the shove, they could save lives.

“In a crisis, nothing is perfect and nothing ideal. As clinicians, we will use every possible machine or resource at our disposal to save as many as possible," Dr Shalini Nalwad, founding partner of ICATT air ambulance service in Bengaluru, said.



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


16.1. Dr Jitendra Singh reviews the work done in the wake of COVID-19; More than 71,000 persons enrolled so far at DoPT' se-learning Plat form iGOT.
IBEF, Apr. 14, 2020

Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh today took a review meeting of DoPT, DARPG and DoPPW through Interactive Video Conferencing regarding works done by the three departments in the wake of COVID-19. Apart from reviewing the readiness of the departments to fight the Pandemic, the Minister has asked the officers and staff that work should not suffer at all during this period.

It may be recalled that Dr Jitendra Singh had launched the National Monitoring Dashboard on COVID 19 Grievances on April 1, 2020 at the portal https://darpg.gov.in. Circulars were issued to all Central Ministries/ Departments and State Governments regarding handling of Public Grievances received in CPGRAMS on COVID-19. Daily reports on COVID-19 PG cases were submitted to the Empowered Group – 10, Prime Minister’s Office, Empowered Group of Ministers and the Minister of State for Personnel, PG and Pensions from April 1, 2020.

By April 12, 2020, Government had redressed 7000 COVID 19 Public Grievances with an average disposal time of 1.57 days. The Ministries/ Departments with maximum disposal of COVID 19 grievances are Ministry of External Affairs (1625 grievances), Ministry of Finance (1043 grievances) Ministry of Labor (751 grievances). Peak disposals of 1315 grievances/ day were achieved on April 8, 2020 and April 9, 2020.

Dr Jitendra Singh also expressed satisfaction that so far more than 71,000 persons have enrolled at the DoPT’se-learning platform (https://igot.gov.in) to combat COVID, which was launched last week and about 27,000 candidates completed the course. The target group is Doctors, Nurses, Paramedics, Hygiene Workers, Technicians, Auxiliary Nursing Midwives (ANMs), Central & State Govt. Officers, Civil Defence Officials, various Police Organisations, National Cadet Corps (NCC), Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan (NYKS), National Service Scheme (NSS), Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS), Bharat Scouts & Guides (BSG) and other volunteers.

The platform delivers curated, role-specific content, to each learner at his place of work or home and to any device of his choice. iGOT platform is designed to population scale and will provide training to around 1.50 crore workers and volunteers in the coming weeks. To begin with nine (9) courses on iGOT have been launched on topics like Basics of COVID, ICU Care and Ventilation Management, Clinical Management, Infection Prevention through PPE, Infection Control and Prevention, Quarantine and Isolation, Laboratory Sample Collection and Testing, Management of COVID 19 Cases, COVID 19 Training.

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


16.2. India needs an all-hands effort to check spread of Covid-19, warn scientists
Livemint, 18 Mar. 2020, Neetu Chandra Sharma
  • Concerns rise about magnitude of confirmed virus cases, use of public transport creating conditions conducive for community transmission 
  • Authorities in Mumbai have begun stamping the hands of people who need to be self-quarantined 
New Delhi: As confirmed cases of Covid-19 swelled to 138 on Tuesday, scientists warned that they could not rule out an underestimation of the magnitude of the viral infection.

Scientists argued that it is very difficult to say conclusively if those who have tested positive for Covid-19 are the only ones infected. Further, they said the disease might even be present in many who have not travelled to Covid-19 hotspots.

With reports of Indians leaving quarantine centres to evade treatment, with some even taking public transport—with serious implications—there is a likelihood that the real numbers are much higher than 138.

“It is being increasingly recognized that some spread of infection may be possible by people who are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic," said Lalit Kant, scientist and former head of epidemiology and communicable diseases at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

“This adds to the complexity. It is a herculean task to get a line-listing and trace all such people who may have come in contact (with an infected person) during this period," said Kant.

It is likely that undetected patients are spreading the infection and creating conditions favourable for community transmission, he added.

Dr Samit Bhattacharyya, associate professor, department of mathematics at Shiv Nadar University, said “As of now 138 cases have been identified in India which may not indicate the actual number of Covid-19 infected individuals. It may be larger than this number as it is an asymptomatic infection."

India is in stage 2 of the pandemic, characterized by local transmission among families, for instance. To ascertain if it has reached stage 3 of broader community transmission, ICMR has initiated surveillance for cases of influenza-like illness among people who have no history of travel to an outbreak country or being in contact with an infected individual.

“This exercise would provide very useful information. If community transmission is detected it would mean that we have missed getting all infected individuals or contacts in the net," said Kant.

“The numbers in India are definitely underreported because we are only testing those individuals who have a history of travel in high-risk countries like China, South Korea, France, Iran, etc or those who are close contacts of positive cases," said Harjit Bhatti, former chief of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Resident Doctors’ Association.

“In that, too, first they have to be quarantined and if they show symptoms then they will undergo testing. Coronavirus has varied profile and can causes mild or no symptoms in up to 80% cases. Though they are asymptomatic they still act as a carrier and can spread the disease. So it’s expected that we are very underreported because of extremely restricted testing patterns," he said.

Citing the findings of some international studies, Bhatti said that the real number of cases in India might be more than 3,000.

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday acknowledged that across the globe there has been a rapid escalation in social distancing measures, like closing schools and cancelling sporting events and other gatherings but testing has to be scaled up.

“We have not seen an urgent enough escalation in testing, isolation and contact tracing, which is the backbone of the response," said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO. “We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test."

The apex global health agency has expressed concern about the impact the virus could have among populations with high HIV prevalence, or among malnourished children as it moves to low-income countries. It also raised a concern over the likelihood of infection from cured people.

“People infected with Covid-19 can still infect others after they stop feeling sick, so these measures should continue for at least two weeks after symptoms disappear," said Tedros.

“The most effective way to prevent infections and save lives is breaking the chains of transmission. And to do that, you must test and isolate," Tedros said, adding that to stop the pandemic, authorities have to know who is infected.

Health minister Harsh Vardhan told the Rajya Sabha that scientists at ICMR are adopting the best possible ways to find out the transmission trends in India.

Lav Aggarwal, joint secretary in the health ministry, said the government has been transparent about the numbers. “For communicable diseases, we cannot hide the data because this will be doing more harm than good. The public should know the current situation of the virus spread," he said.

Meanwhile, Manoj V. Murhekar, scientist G and director of ICMR National Institute of Epidemiology in Chennai for community transmission surveillance, said that ICMR has been doing random testing and the preliminary data indicates that 500 samples have been tested and all of them are negative.

Leroy Leo contributed to this story


17. Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) for females in higher education is higher than the National Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER)-HRD Minister
IBEF, Mar. 17, 2020

As per All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2018-19, there are 39931 colleges in India, out of which 60.53 per cent are located in rural areas. Further, majority of the colleges provide higher education to both males and females and 11.04 per cent colleges are exclusively for females.

Additionally, as per AISHE 2018-19, females constitute 48.6 per cent of the total enrolment in higher education and the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) for females in higher education at 26.4 per cent is higher than the national GER of boys at 26.3 per cent. Also, the Gender Parity Index (GPI) has increased during the last 5 years, from 0.92 in 2014-15 to 1 in 2018-19.

The information was given by the Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ in a written 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. 


18. ISRO to launch 36 missions including 10 earth observation satellites in 2020-21 
IBEF, Mar. 20, 2020

Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Development of North-Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh said that Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has planned 36 missions including satellites and launch vehicles for the fiscal year 2020-21. In written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha today, he said that ISRO will send up 10 earth observation satellites during 2020-21. Details of the missions are as follow:


Indian Space Programme is focused on peaceful uses of Outer Space. Towards this, Space Technology should be used for benefit of the country and society, provide solutions for developmental activities and address problems of the society at large, Dr Singh added. 

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


19.1. SCTIMST ties up with Wipro 3D to manufacture automated ventilators to meet COVID 19 related crisis
IBEF, Apr. 03, 2020

Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST), an institute of National Importance of the Department of Science and Technology, has tied up with Wipro 3D, Bengaluru to jointly build up on a prototype of an emergency ventilator system based on Artificial Manual Breathing Unit (AMBU), developed by SCTIMST followed by its clinical trial and manufacture.

The ventilators can help meet urgent requirements arising out of the Covid 19 related crisis that the country is facing. AMBU bag or a bag-valve-mask (BVM) is a hand-held device used to provide positive pressure ventilation to a patient who is either not breathing or who is breathing inadequately. However, the use of a regular AMBU needs a bystander for its operations who is highly susceptible and non-advisable to be in close contact with the COVID-19 patient. Sree Chitra's Automated AMBU Ventilator with inputs from clinical faculty will assist the breathing of the critical patients who have no access to ICU ventilators.

For enabling rapid production, the device is designed with readily available components so that it becomes an alternative solution. It provides ventilation support to the needy and is an ideal solution for ventilation shortages. 

This portable and lightweight device enables positive pressure ventilation with a controlled rate of expiration, Inspiratory to Expiratory Ratio, Tidal Volume, and so on. Also, A PEEP (Positive End Expiratory Pressure) Valve can be added as an extra component to maintain pressure on the lower airways at the end of the breathing cycle, which prevents the alveoli from collapsing during expiration. The compressed gas source can also be attached to the system. The automatic device will minimize the need of support personnel in the isolation room, thereby enabling a safer and effective lung-protective operation to COVID patients.

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


19.2. Dr. Harsh Vardhan launches National Teleconsultation Centre (CoNTeC)
IBEF, Mar. 30, 2020

The Union Minister of Health & Family Welfare Dr Harsh Vardhan launched the National Teleconsultation Centre (CoNTeC) today and also interacted with Nodal Officers of Medical Colleges of States and other AIIMS of the country and reviewed the COVID-19 preparedness.

The project CoNTeC, an acronym for COVID-19 National Teleconsultation Centre, has been conceptualised by the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and has been implemented by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.

On the occasion Dr Harsh Vardhan said that CoNTeChas been made operational at AIIMS with a view to connect the Doctors across the country to AIIMS in real time for treatment of the COVID-19 patients. He further informed that the Doctors would be available in the facility 24X7 and to keep it operational 24 hrs. The boarding and lodging facility is also made available for the Doctors manning it. He said that it has been set up in the AIIMS so that the small states should also make use of the vast experience of the Doctors at AIIMS. He informed that the doctors world over are using different protocols to treat COVID-19 patients and the goal of the facility is to at least connect the doctors in the country together to discuss amongst themselves the protocols undertaken and provide the best treatment accordingly.

He further informed that the telemedicine guidelines have also been notified by the Government of India and with the help of digital platform and technology, the public at large will get the benefit not only for COVID- 19 but other diseases also. He said the ultimate purpose of starting this facility at prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences is to take the best possible treatment to the poorest of the poor of the country.

He added that India is a vast country and technology can play a pivotal role for the medical assistance to reach the poor. The poor patients in the country should not be deprived of the quality treatment in any circumstances. With the present facility, the poor would be able to get benefit of consultation form the topmost doctors of the country.

He added, “Right now the scenario is evolving world over and the present facility would be strengthened accordingly from time to time to meet the challenges.” He said that there are plans to extend the facility overseas also.

He said that continuing forward, all the medical colleges and AIIMS need to be connected together so that they can interact and help in the policy implementation for the country in the health sector. He further said that AIIMSs should become hub of activity for the district hospitals to connect with them for consultation, telemedicine, education, training, interaction and exchange of protocols between themselves. Dr. Harsh Vardhan also attended a test call at the facility to check the effectiveness of the system.

The CoNTeC is a Telemedicine Hub established by AIIMS, New Delhi, wherein expert doctors from various clinical domains will be available 24x7 to answer the multifaceted questions from specialists from all over the country. It is a multi-modal telecommunications hub through which 2 way audio-video and text communications can be undertaken from any part of the country as well as the world at large. The modes of communication will include simple mobile telephony as well as two way video communications, using WhatsApp, Skype and Google Duo.

The CoNTeC is also fully integrated with the National Medical College Network (NMCN) to conduct a full-fledged Video Conference (VC) between the 50 Medical Colleges connected through the NMCN with its National Resource Centre located at SGPGI, Lucknow.

The patient management advice offered will be standardized as per the national guidelines supplemented protocols developed by the team at AIIMS, nominated by the Director, AIIMS.

How to Contact the CoNTeC?

A single mobile number (+91 9115444155) can be dialled from anywhere in the coutnry/world by COVID-19 treating doctors to reach the CoNTeC which has six lines that can be used simultaneously at present. This number of lines can be increased in future if needed. The incoming calls will be picked up by the CoNTeC Managers, who will then handover the call to the appropriate expert doctors from the clinical domains as desired by the calling specialists managing the COVID-19 cases anywhere in the country.

The Managers will guide the callers in establishing a two-way video call using the WhatsApp, Skype or Google Duo as preferred by the caller. The callers from the NMCN network can connect anytime using the Telemedicine infrastructure at their end.

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


20. Opinion | Covid-19 will topple our paradigm of economic value
Livemint, 02 Apr. 2020, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

The crisis should open our eyes to the urgency of capital allocation that serves humanity better

The covid-19 crisis is going to upend every economic assumption that seemed valid a few months ago. It will lead to a re-examination of the current investment mantra of giving astronomical valuations to virtual companies that create intangible assets and provide aggregator services. The narrative that traditional asset-heavy companies are inflexible, slow-moving and somehow anachronistic in the digital age will be questioned.

As asset-light model has allowed many startups to scale up quickly. They have been rewarded with fancy valuations on the misleading premise that a lower share of physical assets deserves higher multiples.

Today, a small online pharmacy is valued several times a small pharmaceutical company. An online pharmacy that operates out of a single room with a few people and smart software may be working smart, but by over-valuing it, aren’t we starving a pharma company—which has to invest in research, development and manufacturing—of funds?

Ignoring manufacturing can be dangerous. The overvaluation of virtual businesses is coming back to haunt us. The covid-19 pandemic has led to worldwide shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), surgical masks, gloves, diagnostic kits, artificial respiratory apparatus like ventilators, oxygen cylinders and other appliances. India needs around 38 million masks and 6.2 million pieces of PPE, according to media reports. In the US, the Strategic National Stockpile had just 30 million surgical masks and 12 million respirators in reserves.

The world is scrambling to source critical medical equipment because skyrocketing demand is outstripping production capacities. The current crisis is a direct fallout of flawed valuation models that dissuade businesses from investing in manufacturing capacity. The acuteness of the situation can be gauged from the fact that the Indian government has reached out to automobile manufacturers such as Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Hyundai Motor, Honda Cars and Maruti Suzuki, asking them to collaborate with existing ventilator makers to raise production capacity.

Maruti is collaborating with AgVA Healthcare, an approved manufacturer of ventilators, to rapidly scale up production of ventilators to 10,000 units per month. Likewise, Mysuru-based medical equipment maker Skanray Technologies is partnering Bharat Electronics Ltd and Mahindra to ramp-up ventilator production to 30,000 per month.

Just-in-time inventory models that deter stockpiling have failed us in this hour of need. Surge-demand and binge-buying have collapsed the supply chain with dangerous consequences. Hopefully, the covid-19 crisis will lead to a reboot, bringing equilibrium in policies, business models and valuations.

India not only needs to invest in expanding manufacturing scale, we also need to inject funds in our science- and technology-based companies. That Pune-based molecular diagnostics company Mylab Discovery Solutions was able to develop a relatively cheap and more efficient home-grown test for the novel coronavirus in a record six weeks is proof of the huge scientific talent we have.

Biotech startups like Mylab need laboratories, manufacturing facilities, skilled talent and legal know-how. To fund such requirements, they are heavily dependent on private equity and venture capital firms.

Even though Indian biotech companies involved in drug discovery, vaccines, medical devices and diagnostics have proven their mettle globally, they face serious challenges in accessing capital. With just a handful of venture capital and private equity firms proactive, the bulk of the funding comes though government sources such as the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council and department of science and technology. We need to step up private investment.

If we want world-class science, we need to pay researchers in the life sciences sector better. Currently, a research scientist in the biotechnology sector in India earns almost 40% less on average than a data analytics professional, according to publicly available data.

The covid-19 crisis should also lead to a re-prioritization of medical research in the West. While non-communicable diseases and personalized and precision medicine have cornered the bulk of research dollars, research in infectious diseases has languished. This will have to change.

Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates had correctly predicted in 2015 that the greatest threat to humanity was not nuclear missiles but microbes. If only the world had taken his warning seriously, we would have been well prepared to deal with covid-19 and had fewer fatalities.

Going forward, governments will need to ramp-up investment in healthcare, and scale up production of diagnostics, drugs and vaccines. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a global alliance that finances and coordinates the development of vaccines, is coordinating development work on a vaccine for covid-19. Funding for such initiatives needs to rise multifold.

India needs strong public health infrastructure not only to respond to crises such as covid-19, but to address challenges such as preventing chronic illnesses, controlling infectious diseases, predicting outbreaks, enhancing the capacity of front-line health workers, and ensuring the affordability of essential medicines.

Covid-19 is a wake-up call, and the world will do well to pay heed.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is chairperson and managing director, Biocon



India and the World


21.1. 10-fold strategy that India needs to adopt for exiting from ongoing lockdown
Livemint, 13 Apr. 2020, Bibek Debroy, Ratan Watal

In some states/districts, curbs on gatherings, public transport, opening of malls, hotels, schools should continue

NEW DELHI: India scores high on a stringency index that has been developed to gauge cross-country government responses to covid-19. The slope of India’s case growth curve is flatter than some countries, but steeper than others. Ten states account for around 81% of cases. More than 80% of cases reported positive are in 62 districts, almost reminiscent of Pareto’s 80/20 rule. There has been no community transmission yet.

As models go, subject to their assumptions and impact of heat/humidity/herd immunity, India’s peak might be in June/July, with a final tapering in September. Ipso facto, no flattening is likely by the end of April and a call will have to be taken when there is a spike, despite extension of lockdown.

However, the economic costs of the lockdown are mounting. With a range of 6% to 6,5% gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate pre-epidemic, real growth for 2020-21 is unlikely to be more than 2%, perhaps lower. This suggests that, at least in the short-term, anything between 40 million and 50 million jobs are at stake.

As a prolonged lockdown till June/July cannot be realistically contemplated, on 1 May, one will therefore have to think of a calibrated and staggered exit strategy, with safeguards in high-vulnerability states and district hotspots.

In such states, districts, and clusters, the focus will be on averting community transmission, reducing mortality/morbidity, and averting a possible “second wave".

Ten principles suggest themselves for such a differential risk strategy.

# Enable full participation of states/districts and key stakeholders in decisions regarding a calibrated and staggered exit plan. An illustrative example is Kerala, which has constituted a state experts panel that has proposed an evaluation of districts by risk-assessment and a three-phase staggered plan. Rajasthan has also constituted a state-level committee.

# Districts have already been mandated to prepare district micro plans/crisis management plans, using a template provided by the ministry of health and family welfare and the Bhilwara model. The add-on to this district plan needs to be economic revival and a social protection package, including monitoring PM Garib Kalyan Yojana and other welfare measures.

# States can be put into five groups, based on risk assessment. A composite index or matrix for districts may be developed using key indicators related to covid-19 case load and trend dips/stability; mortality; population density; proportion of asymptomatic cases; proportion of higher risk over-60 years population and other local risk factors (disease profile, labour migration).

# The response has to be local and dynamic, responding to tracking and monitoring. The unit of assessment should go from the national, to state level, all the way to the district. One can categorize districts by “risk perception"—high risk, medium risk, and low risk (red, amber, green)—based on a combination of criteria. The high-risk districts can continue to see a near-complete lockdown till risk assessments are lowered, with assessments reviewed every week. Districts with lower risk can see a “calibrated opening".

# Some uniform principles should be applicable in districts where there is a calibrated opening. Those who can work from home should be advised to do so. There should be norms on office capacity (office capacity can only be X% to start with) to ensure adequate social distancing norms are maintained within office spaces, and there is no crowding on local transport facilities in denser urban areas, which would increase probability of re-proliferation. Everyone who leaves homes must mandatorily wear masks. Old and vulnerable populations must be advised to continue with a de facto lockdown.

# Even with calibrated opening, in some states/districts, there should be restrictions on large gatherings, public transport, opening of shopping malls, restaurants/hotels and educational institutions.

# District borders must be sealed in high and medium-risk districts. If some districts are unable to manage the virus well and there are people crossing district borders, this increases the risk for neighbouring districts. It is imperative that district borders are sealed in high and medium-risk districts.

# A staggered exit plan entails re-emergence of workers and possible resurgence of inter-state migration, implying that unified procedures for such migration will be needed.

# If supply chains are cut across districts, there will have to be exceptions. That’s why some protocols need to be standardized across the country: how much testing is done per capita and audits around this testing. This is because local officials may have an incentive to under-report the number of cases/deaths and may resist adequate levels of testing. There must be a consistent communication strategy across the country about hygiene, adequate precautions, debunking myths and fears and emphasizing the importance of avoiding stigmatization.

# Finally, a differentiated risk-based containment strategy across districts is only possible if there is enough testing to distinguish districts by risk-type. India will have to ramp up testing capacity, which is still below global norms. More generally, there are other supply side issues, with regard to personal protective equipment, masks, ventilators, fever camps, and surge in hospital capacity.

We have suggested these principles using the example of districts. However, in practice, it needs to be decentralized further down, such as hotspots within districts. Bhilwara and Dilshad Garden (Delhi) are instances where containment seems to have worked.

The covid-19 pandemic is not just a medical issue. It is a humanitarian one too, where livelihoods are at stake. That’s why the speed of economic recovery is contingent on a staggered exit.

Bibek Debroy and Ratan Watal are respectively chairman and member-secretary, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM). Views expressed are personal and not those of EAC-PM.


21.2. A game plan to revive the various covid-affected sectors of the economy
Livemint, 14 Apr. 2020, Bibek Debroy , Ratan Watal
  • A few timelines can be pushed back. For instance, the bankruptcy code can be suspended for one year. Income-tax filings can be deferred till 30 September 
  • What does one do? Here is a list of possible interventions, all in the nature of suggestions. 
NEW DELHI: If predicting the progress of covid-19 is difficult, predicting its impact on growth and employment is even more so. The state of the global economy, the course of the epidemic and the policy on lockdown (beyond 1 May) are all uncertain. Suffice it to say, out of four drivers of growth —consumption, investment, government expenditure and net exports—all but government expenditure have question marks.

Purely as a back-of-the-envelope number, for the entire year, secondary sector contribution will probably shave off almost 2% from growth. For the tertiary sector, a corresponding number would be something like 1.75% and for the primary sector, something like 0.25%. So, with a range of 6-6.5% real growth pre-epidemic, real growth for 2020-21 is unlikely to be more than 2% or 2.5%. But even this is a shade optimistic.

In decreasing order of magnitude, the sectors most affected are clearly: airlines and hotels; automobiles and ancillary industries; construction; textiles and garments; freight and logistics; oil and gas; metals and mining; power; consumer products and retail; chemicals; IT and related services; pharmaceuticals; telecom; and agriculture (including animal husbandry, horticulture).

For textiles and garments, consumer products and retail, chemicals, IT and related services and telecom, one can hazard a guess that some kind of revival will occur in Q2 of 2020-21. For construction, oil and gas, power, pharmaceuticals and agriculture, the timeline will probably be Q3. For the remaining sectors, one is possibly looking at Q4.

Outside agriculture, the impact of job losses is largely restricted to construction (of the order of 16 million); trade, hotels and restaurants (5 million); manufacturing (13 million); transportation (4 million); and mining (1 million). That’s around 39 million. In the event of India faring much worse, this number can increase to upwards of 60 million.

What does one do? Here is a list of possible interventions, all in the nature of suggestions.

■ In addition to direct transfers included in PM Garib Kalyan Yojana, consider direct income support for workers for three months. In urban India, there are an estimated 60 million contractual and permanent workers, though most work for MSMEs/SMEs and not for the corporate sector. Since most MSMEs/SMEs are not legally registered, some form of identification has to be based on GSTN (GST Network) numbers. Without identification of enterprises and workers, direct income transfers cannot work.
There are an estimated 135 million informal sector workers. There are instances (more for rural) where mapping between Socio-Economic and Caste Census 2011 (SECC) and PMJDY/Aadhaar has been done. In such cases, direct income support for targeted beneficiaries identified through SECC is an option to consider, for a limited duration of 3 or 6 months.

■ Adjusting the scope of MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) to offer employment to returning migrants. Giving one month’s advance wages through authenticated MGNREGA accounts is also possible.
  • There should be specific interventions for migrant workers, including tracking them, ensuring access to basic food, transport and healthcare and enabling them to access PM Garib Kalyan Yojana, even if not formally registered (if they are without Jan Dhan accounts, but have an Aadhaar card or Ayushman Bharat card or ration card). There should be identification, registration and formal linking of migrant workers, daily wage workers, construction workers, through e-platforms that link benefits.
  • Accelerating infrastructure building in healthcare and Make in India sectors (including National Infrastructure Pipeline), through state agencies and the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund.
  • Liquidity line from the Reserve Bank of India to banks/non-banks to help MSMEs, with credit backstop by government (can also be structured as support to large corporates who provide credit support to the supply chain). Credit guarantee fund to absorb likely non-performing loan slippage and credit costs in small business and MSME loans, despite liquidity infusion.
  • For large corporates, debt restructuring by banks, easing procedural requirements to raise private or foreign equity capital, and a transparent troubled asset relief programme-type programme of government capital infusion for select distressed companies in key sectors (travel, logistics, auto, textiles, construction, power). This needs to be independent of government, with a new institution and an independent board.
  • Capital strengthening for banks/NBFCs (rolling back regulatory capital constraints, easing capital raising procedures, TARP-type recap for stressed entities). Also, other liquidity measures such as payout of unpaid government dues, and steps to boost liquidity for banks, NBFCs and reforms in the bond market.
  • Restore and rebuild a stronger primary healthcare system, with a strong community care component, providing a protective and secure environment for healthcare professionals. Expansion of health infrastructure as an employment multiplier for doctors, nurses and para-medical staff, ASHA workers and ICDS Anganwadi workers, technicians and related services, along with skill development support.
  • short-term contingency plan involving reorientation of existing industries/PSUs/ railways/defence units for production. This should be spliced with a medium-term plan for diversification and self-reliance. This is also an opportunity for India to occupy disrupted global supply chains.
Bibek Debroy and Ratan Watal are chairman and member secretary, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM). Views expressed are personal.


22.1. Coronavirus Competence: The Kerala Model 
Dhaka Tribune, 27 Mar. 2020

All this week in South Asia, amidst immense human suffering caused by nearly two billion people retreating from the streets in panicked flight from the coronavirus emergency, two Indian leaders stood out by radiating confidence and empathetic humanity.

The more surprising statesman is Uddhav Thackeray, chief minister of Maharashtra, who radiates personal calm, and has managed to keep his state in the same condition of being. But the standout is Pinarayi Vijayan, chief minister of Kerala, whose leadership easily ranks amongst the foremost feats of governance of our times.

We are used to envying the administrative competence of super-rich countries like Singapore and Taiwan (both are coping supremely well with Covid-19) but here’s an example that is home-grown in the subcontinent… We all much to learn, and gain from Kerala.

In fact, that has been true for decades, because experts have long extolled the state’s remarkable record of maintaining high human development (on par with the developed countries) despite remaining relatively poor. In his 1992 Earth in the Balance, Al Gore wrote admiringly of “the Kerala model” the rest of the world should adopt: land reforms, women’s empowerment, universal health care and education, and rigorously democratic political awareness. To that list, we must now add disaster management.

The difference between what Vijayan has done, and almost everywhere else, is astonishing. After its first virus cases were registered in February, Kerala implemented contact tracing with route maps and patient flow charts. It quarantined people in comfort (sharing photos of meals on social media to reassure the general population) and emphasized mental health.

Vijayan began to meet the press daily, to meticulously share all available information. He increased Internet connectivity, ramped up state production of sanitizer and face masks, and began home-delivering meals. Most impressively, he decided to pump Rs. 20,000 crores into the economy, to support health, rural employment guarantees, social security and food rations (by contrast the prime minister’s package for the whole of India was only Rs. 15,000 crores).

How does all this play out on the ground? The award-winning novelist Anees Salim, who lives in the state capital, told me, “I think Kochi is handling the virus scare and the lock down with a great amount of composure. I am yet to see any panic buying. In supermarkets, where only five shoppers are allowed at a time, people wait patiently for their turn, and those who are inside the store do their shopping quickly so that others don’t have to wait for long.”

Salim said, “Only yesterday, the Chief Minister announced that no one living in Kerala would go hungry. I am sure in a difficult time like this his words have rekindled hope in millions. For Al Gore, the Kerala model may mean scientific planning and flawless implementation. For me, it means depthless compassion. If someone dies of starvation in Kerala, it will hit the headlines, there will be endless discussions on news channels, protests on the street, mayhem inside the assembly. Malayalis, being a rare breed, stand up and fight anything that is even remotely primitive.”

Can that heightened political consciousness be replicated elsewhere? I asked the brilliant young historian Manu Pillai, who said, “I think it can. But it cannot be done through shortcuts or quick fixes, though technology can certainly improve the pace. It took Kerala from the 1860s to build an infrastructure of schools, hospitals, dispensaries, midwife's services. [For other places] that kind of focus and investment on public welfare will need to be developed in the long term, even if in the short term, managerial experience and strategy could be exported outside Kerala and applied to less well-formed systems.”

To learn more about the Kerala model’s roots, I wrote to veteran editor and author Tony Joseph, who responded “The first thing that any visitor to Kerala will notice, along with the scenery: equal respect and dignity is what every Malayali expects from everyone else, no matter what the differences in occupation, income or anything else. [It results from] social, political and cultural movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially those led by the Communists, that released society from the stranglehold of a particularly virulent caste system and set it on a strong foundation of equal dignity of all.”

Joseph summed up, “the main difference in the way Kerala is handling it is the consistent, regular communication; complete transparency about the progress of the pandemic; sharp focus on the most vulnerable sections of the population and substantial allotment of funds to create a safety net for them. There has not been a single day of panic buying in Kerala because of the nature of the communication from the Government and, of course, the trust it has been able to build that it has mapped out and planned for all kinds of eventualities. [Thus] inclusiveness and active public participation are essential ingredients for any successful policy.



22.2. DST sets up task force for mapping of technologies by Start Ups on COVID-19
IBEF, Mar. 27, 2020

The Department of Science and Technology (DST) is coordinating an effort to upscale appropriate technologies and manufacturing available in India for addressing a plethora of issues related to COVID-19, as well as scout for new and developing solutions more relevant to the country to help prepare the country for exigencies arising out of COVID-19 pandemic.

DST has set up a COVID 19 Task force for mapping of technologies from R&D labs, academic institutions, startups, and MSMEs to fund nearly market-ready solutions in the area of diagnostics, testing, health care delivery solutions, equipment supplies. Some of these solutions include masks and other protective gear, sanitizers, affordable kits for screening, ventilators and oxygenators, data analytics for tracking, monitoring, and controlling the spread of outbreak through AI and IOT based solutions, to name a few.

The capacity mapping group consists of representatives from DST, Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), Startup India and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). The Task Force is to identify the most promising startups that are close to scale up, who may need financial or other help or connects or projected demand to rapidly scale up. 

Nodal officers of concerned Ministries and Departments have been requested to personally expedite the process of obtaining information on startups and other entities supported by them that have technology solutions for any important aspect of COVID-19.

As part of the mechanisms being used for rapid development, manufacturing, and deployment of relevant technology options, DST has already invited two separate sets of proposals, one each under Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB) and Technology Development Board (TDB), to support scientific solutions and commercial manufacturing of both new and existing solutions.

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


23. What prevents India from becoming a social development leader
Livemint, 20 Mar. 2020, Jean Dreze , Amartya Sen

In terms of sanitation and child nutrition, India fares worse than most of its neighbouring countries

In the first edition of An Uncertain Glory: India And Its Contradictions, we argued that India’s development strategy is fundamentally flawed—that it overlooks the central role of human capabilities, both as valuable in themselves and as means of further progress. That basic deficiency has not been removed over these years. Some gains have been made, and some new—and serious—problems have also emerged, but the basic neglect of the transformative role of empowered human beings in economic and social progress remains.

Signs of Change
The general lethargy of social policy in India has found further expression, in recent years, in a dearth of social statistics. For example, the fourth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) did not happen until 2015-16, a full ten years after the third round. In Bangladesh, by contrast, the Demographic and Health Survey (international equivalent of NFHS) has happened at regular intervals of three years or so since the early 1990s.


The release of NFHS-4 data, and just before that, of the findings of the Rapid Survey on Children (2013-14), point to an important pattern: a modest but noticeable acceleration in the progress of social indicators in the ten-year period that followed NFHS-3. To illustrate, the proportion of stunted or underweight children declined significantly during that period, at least compared with the glacial improvement of earlier periods. Similarly, there was faster progress in youth literacy rates, in child mortality rates and in maternal mortality.

Progress was, to be sure, not spectacular, but it was still significant compared with the sluggish improvements that preceded. This advance received some attention in the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index report, prepared by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) in 2018. According to the estimates presented in this report, the proportion of India’s population living in multidimensional poverty declined by nearly 50 per cent between 2005-6 and 2015-16.

It has also been observed that areas of relatively rapid progress have tended to be those where strong initiatives have occurred. Child vaccination is one example. In our earlier work, we discussed India’s abysmal record in this field, and the extraordinary inertia behind it. But we also noted some signs of positive change, notably with the mobilisation of frontline health workers, the Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs). The NFHS-4 findings point to significant progress on this front, with the proportion of children fully immunized jumping by about 30 percentage points between 2005-6 and 2015-16 in many of the lagging states—Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan among others. There is still plenty of work to do: child immunization rates remain much lower in India than in Bangladesh. But at least India is beginning to look more like Bangladesh in this respect than like sub-Saharan Africa.

One reason why this is worth mentioning is that there has been a tendency in recent years to denigrate the achievements of the initiatives in that period and to grumble about wasteful spending on social programmes such as midday meals, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), the public distribution system and the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS). 

This is an oddly biased assessment, and the evidence actually suggests that things were moving in the right direction. Rapid economic growth has of course helped, partly by raising private incomes and partly by generating public revenue. But the social initiatives of this period also deserve considerable credit. Indeed, many of these social programmes have had good results. For instance, India’s midday meal scheme has well-documented effects on school attendance, child nutrition and even pupil achievements. Social security pensions, meagre as they are, bring some relief in the harsh lives of millions of widowed, elderly or disabled persons. The public distribution system has become an invaluable source of economic security for poor households, not just in forward states like Tamil Nadu but even in problematic states like Jharkhand where it used to be largely non-functional. Of course, there is some waste in the social sector, just as there is much waste elsewhere. The lesson is not to dismantle the system but to improve it—and there is plenty of evidence that this can be done.

The Indian Enigma
Despite some accelerated progress in the decade preceding NFHS-4, India’s social indicators in 2015-16 were still far from flattering. In fact, many of them were still worse than those of India’s south Asian neighbours (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka), with the partial exception of Pakistan. To illustrate, only Pakistan now has a lower life expectancy, higher child mortality rate and higher fertility rate. In terms of sanitation and child nutrition, India fares worse than all these neighbouring countries. Literacy rates in the younger age groups are also lower in India than in all other south Asian countries except Pakistan and Nepal. Perhaps the gap is narrowing over time, but it is still there.

This is puzzling, considering that India’s per-capita GDP is almost twice as high as that of Bangladesh and three times as high as Nepal’s. We discussed this puzzle in earlier work, but a little more can be said today in the light of recent research. Briefly, there is growing evidence that India’s poor social indicators, relative to neighbouring countries with lower per-capita GDP, are closely connected with various forms of economic and social inequality.

Some aspects of that connection are reasonably familiar (for instance, the role of extreme gender inequality in stifling social progress in India), but others have now come to light. Consider, for instance, child mortality rates in India and Bangladesh. On average, they are a little higher in India. In the top wealth quintile, however, they are lower in India than in Bangladesh, and the opposite applies in the bottom wealth quintile. In other words, the relatively high mortality rate of Indian children reflects a huge mortality disadvantage of poor children vis-à-vis rich children (with mortality rates of 75 and 25 per 1,000 live births, respectively, in the 0-5 age group). A similar point, it appears, applies to pupil achievements in primary schools: well-off Indian children are doing just as well as (if not better than) well-off Bangladeshi children, but India has much larger educational disparities between the rich and the poor.

Another example is that of sanitation. This is a field where India has lagged behind not only south Asia but most of the rest of the world as well. Why so? One partial answer relates to gender inequality: Indian women are the first victims of inadequate sanitation, but they have little voice and power within the household. Of course, this may be true in many other countries as well. India, however, also has special problems related to the caste system. It is the caste system, and its obsession with purity and pollution, that creates a phobia of human waste in Indian society, where the ‘dirty’ job of emptying latrine pits is left to specific castes of manual scavengers. Naturally, Dalits are now reluctant to do this, and no-one else is willing either. During the last few years, the two-pit latrine design, which makes the task of removing human waste relatively simple and harmless, has gained wide acceptance. Despite the government’s claims, however, open defecation is still very common in India.

It is not surprising that class, caste and gender inequalities have played an important role in preventing India from becoming a social development leader in south Asia. This connection reinforces the need to recognise the extreme nature of social inequality in India. Few countries have such an oppressive social system.

Extracted from the introduction to the second edition of An Uncertain Glory: India And Its Contradictions with permission from Penguin Random House India.


24. Stimulus needed for quick revival of economy: Maruti’s Bhargava
Livemint, 13 Apr. 2020, Malyaban Ghosh
  • Maruti Suzuki chief Bhargava said that the govt should make consumer products more affordable as he hinted at tax cuts on automobiles 
  • Bhargava said also that the Suzuki Motor unit will decide on its future investment plans (capex) after studying the demand for its cars in the future 
India needs a fiscal stimulus to ride out the crisis caused by covid-19, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd chairman R.C. Bhargava said, as he joined a chorus of business leaders and economists calling for the government to announce a fiscal package to support businesses and create jobs.

Bhargava said that the government should make consumer products more affordable as he hinted at tax cuts on automobiles. He said also that the Suzuki Motor Corp. unit will decide on its future investment plans (capex) after studying the demand for its cars in the future.

India’s largest car maker is meanwhile witnessing an increasing number of queries online for its vehicles, Bhargava said, underscoring pent up demand for entry level or affordable hatchbacks in the domestic market.

“The poor who have no means of living will require direct transfer. More important than just transferring money is also to ensure that there is a demand creation in the economy. My belief is that demand creation is more effectively done by making products affordable rather than by transferring some money to everybody’s pocket since everybody is not a customer and transferring money does not create the type of demand required for industrial revival," Bhargava said in an interview on Sunday.

He said “countries are already working out big packages to stimulate economic revival and I am sure our country will do something on the same lines."

Maruti is considered a bellwether for India’s passenger vehicle industry with more than 50% market share. The automobile industry contributes almost 7-8% of India’s gross domestic product (GDP) and provides employment to millions, directly and indirectly.

Maruti and other automakers are meanwhile waiting for a decision on the status of the ongoing 21-day national lockdown.

The lockdown, which runs through Tuesday, may be lifted though in a decentralized manner based on the severity of the coronavirus outbreak in various parts of the country.

With the pandemic expected to severely hit the Indian economy, rating agencies have trimmed their outlook of GDP for this fiscal year. Moody’s Investors Service has lowered its projection for India’s GDP growth for 2020 from 5.3% to 2.5%.

Several countries such as the US, Japan and the UK have come up with fiscal stimulus packages to mitigate the impact of covid-19.

Bhargava said the current crisis is a lesson for corporates to focus on generating internal resources to withstand similar shocks in the economy in the future.

“High wages to the top management results in weakening the generation of internal resources. It is necessary for all businesses including dealers, vendors and small companies to understand the importance of building internal resources which means keeping salaries of top management as low as possible, minimizing dividend payments and putting money back into the company," he said.

According to Bhargava, companies like Maruti will try to cut down on travel of executives since lot of business can be done using video conferencing. Also, conventional advertising expenses will be reduced, and customer outreach will be increasingly made through social media and other technologies.

“At times of rapidly rising demand, some companies including Maruti develop a certain amount of fat in their working system and whenever there is a depression or downturn these companies work hard to cut out that fat and become again lean and efficient," he added.


25. Floyd Cardoz epitomized contemporary rise of fine dining 
Livemint, 26 Mar. 2020, Vivek Menezes

Floyd Cardoz made it the old-fashioned way, from a time when standalone restaurants in India meant mostly dhabas, and the idea of serving food for a living was looked down upon

The loss of Floyd Cardoz to the coronavirus deprives India of its most famous and influential 21st century culinary ambassador. Just 59 years old, the highly skilled and ceaselessly innovative chef epitomized the contemporary rise of globally significant fine dining rooted in the food of the subcontinent. He was an impressive path-breaker in New York as well as his hometown, Mumbai. Besides his beloved wife, two sons, his mother and five siblings, he leaves behind countless young chefs and restaurateurs whom he mentored and inspired across nearly four decades in the hospitality business.

Cardoz made it the old-fashioned way, from a time when standalone restaurants in India meant mostly dhabas, and the idea of serving food for a living was looked down upon. In his first cookbook, the excellent 2006 One Spice, Two Spice, he recounts, “I was named after Floyd Patterson, the late, great African-American boxer, even though I grew up on the other side of the globe, in a large middle-class household in Bombay. What’s known in the West as fusion food—different cultures together on a plate—started for me in the cradle, because fusion was, quite simply, a way of life for our family."

One day, the chef-to-be had an epiphany, “Being in the kitchen made me relaxed and happy. I was 20 years old, and having recently come to the conclusion that my degree in biochemistry didn’t mean I had to have a stifling (to me) career in medicine. I was ready to embark on something new. Maybe it was that sense of possibility bubbling up inside that inspired me to recklessly add the unexpected to that pot of curry: rosemary from the farmer’s market and part of a bottle of Reisling."

These were fateful ingredients. Cardoz’s father “declared it the best thing he’d ever eaten" and his son was given permission to attend culinary school in Mumbai—where he met his future wife—then Les Roches International School of Hotel Management in Switzerland. In 1998, Barkha and Floyd Cardoz emigrated to the US. Now the future ‘Top Chef’ started at the unglamorous bottom of the Manhattan restaurant world.

Cardoz’s big break was an entry-level job under chef Gray Kunz at the legendary restaurant, Lespinasse. His new boss (who coincidentally died from stroke earlier this month) had long experience of growing up and working in Singapore and Hong Kong, and was open to using Asian ingredients in high-end French cooking. Over much of his first decade in New York, his Indian disciple worked his way up “from chopping thousands of kaffir lime leaves into a fine powder, to chef de cuisine." When he’d ascended that far, his own India-inspired creations went on the menu.

In 1994, Lespinasse earned four stars from the New York Times, the highest possible accolade in the American food scene. As Kunz’s deputy, the young chef had arrived, and now he was approached by the celebrated hospitality impresario Danny Meyer to create something entirely new, based on Indian influences and ingredients. This was the iconic restaurant Tabla, which opened in New York’s Flatiron District in 1998. Years later, Cardoz would recall “the restaurant created a huge splash right away, thanks in large part to a three-star review in the New York Times."

In that rave, Ruth Reichl accurately pinpointed the new star chef’s trademark style, “This is American food, viewed through a kaleidoscope of Indian spices. The flavours are so powerful, original and unexpected that they evoke intense emotions." Cardoz had grown up with one kind of global food in his Goan household in Mumbai, trained rigorously in another at

Lespinasse, then created something entirely different, which combined all those ideas, influences and ingredients in order to intrigue and please the American palates he catered to in New York.

The results were consistently dynamite. On his day, Cardoz could out-cook anyone else, as demonstrated most memorably during the 2011 season of the American hit television series, Top Chef Masters. With little fanfare, he outlasted the competition, winning the final with the spur-of-the-moment creation of “wild mushroom upma polenta" braced with the very Goan combination of kokum and coconut milk.

The series played on satellite television in India, and now in his 50’s, Cardoz found he had become an unexpected celebrity back home. In 2014, he embarked on what would be the final chapter of his spectacular career, when he co-founded Hunger Inc. with Sameer Seth, Yash Bhanage and the dynamic up-and-coming chef Thomas Zacharias. Together they created and launched the wildly popular Mumbai landmark restaurants, Bombay Canteen and O Pedro (in the 2019 Conde Nast Traveller Top Restaurant Awards they ranked #2 and #8 in India respectively).

This plot twist in his career trajectory gave Cardoz immense pleasure, which spilled over to everyone who encountered him in recent years. Even more than the formal accolades, he loved the diligence with which his team sought out what he called “real food" built on less obvious ingredients, with the weight of cultural history behind it. That pride in his protégés was always palpable, and he was particularly excited about cooking alongside chef Hussain Shahzad of O Pedro, in that restaurant’s long-planned pop-up in New York earlier this year.

While there’s no doubt Cardoz’s absence will be keenly felt in both New York and India’s restaurant universe, his legacy is secure in the hands of the next generation he nurtured with such generosity and kindness.

***