Archive for June, 2014

06/06/2014

Modi’s Big Chance to Fix India – Businessweek

After five weeks of staggered voting, more than 550 million ballots cast, and almost $5 billion spent, the world’s largest democracy finally has a new leader. Yet the question that has loomed over India’s long campaign remains: What kind of leader is Narendra Modi going to be?

Narendra Modi speaks to supporters in Vadodara, India, on May 16

Modi fought an impressive campaign focused mostly on the right issues. He successfully cast the election as a referendum on who could better deliver jobs, government services, and economic growth: himself or Rahul Gandhi, the ruling Congress party’s heir apparent. The landslide victory of Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party—the biggest for any party since 1984—testifies to Indians’ hunger for decisiveness and efficiency after years of policy drift and corruption scandals.

Yet voters have little idea how Modi will govern. He has given no sign of how far he’ll challenge his own supporters on economic and social policies. Investors expecting miracles are in for a letdown, because India’s political system is bound to intervene. According to JPMorgan Chase (JPM), about 70 percent to 80 percent of regulatory and other roadblocks impeding big industrial projects aren’t within Modi’s power to remove. Even so, he needs to make progress where he can.

via Modi’s Big Chance to Fix India – Businessweek.

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06/06/2014

India Fights Electricity Theft as Modi Pledges Energy Upgrade – Businessweek

Inspectors from billionaire Anil Ambani ’s electricity provider, BSES Rajdhani Power , entered a village near New Delhi on May 21, hunting for meters that were tampered with to show artificially low power consumption. Residents stoned and beat them with iron rods, a police report shows. Inspectors visiting a nearby village in 2012 were bound and urinated on, say two company officials who asked not to be identified, because the information isn’t public.

India Fights to Keep the Lights On

The attacks highlight how hard it is for India’s power industry to stem electricity theft, which is contributing to blackouts and costs $17 billion in lost revenue annually, according to calculations by Bloomberg. It’s a big challenge for new Prime Minister Narendra Modi , who has pledged to boost energy output. Billing rates “are too low, and theft is too high. If you look at the power losses, 80 percent is theft,” says Ratul Puri, chairman of Hindustan Powerprojects , a privately held power plant operator.

The government requires electricity distributors to sell power to consumers below cost. That forces them to borrow heavily to pay power-generation companies. Distributors that sell to consumers in Delhi state, including BSES, owed 141 billion rupees ($2.4 billion) to state-run power generators as of April 30, India’s Ministry of Power says. To help electricity retailers, the government has come up with a plan that shifts some of this debt to regional governments and eases payment terms on the rest.

via India Fights Electricity Theft as Modi Pledges Energy Upgrade – Businessweek.

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06/06/2014

Creativity advances as patent filings rise – China – Chinadaily.com.cn

An increase in overseas patent applications from Chinese applicants is a positive sign for China’s innovation and economy, World Intellectual Property Organization Chief Economist Carsten Fink said.

WIPO emblem.

WIPO emblem. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to the WIPO, China’s patent office became the world’s largest intellectual property office in 2012 in terms of the number of its patent applications, but Chinese patent applicants did not file their patents as frequently abroad in other countries as did those from the United States, Europe and Japan.

Fink said that a changing picture was observed as patent filings abroad by Chinese companies and research institutions have been growing rapidly.

The WIPO found in its new study that the growth of Chinese patent filings abroad increased significantly after 2000, with a five-year average annual growth rate of 40 percent between 2000 and 2005, and 23 percent since 2005.

“That is important because on the one hand, it signals that Chinese companies really operate on the world technology frontier, and (on the other hand) it also suggests that indeed they are pushing the world’s technology frontier. That is a good sign for China’s innovation system,” Fink said.

Fink stressed that overseas patent filings weighed heavily for China’s economy and could be a positive boost.

“That will help Chinese companies to transfer their business models from the past one that relied on low wages to another one that will rely more and more on new technologies, new products and new ideas,” he said.

via Creativity advances as patent filings rise – China – Chinadaily.com.cn.

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06/06/2014

Short skirts, bad stars and chow mein: why India’s women get raped : Reuters

The 2012 Delhi bus rape case and an ever-longer list of rapes and murders in India have prompted politicians and public figures in India to cite plenty of implausible reasons why rape happens and why men brutalise women or portray women in ways that suggest they had it coming. Many people when speaking out tend to minimise the crime or rationalise it in ways that sound to ludicrous to many. We created this list of such comments more than a year ago, but it seems like it’s time to add some new entries.

(Updated June 5, 2014) Babulal Gaur again: ”This is a social crime which depends on men and women. Sometimes it’s right, sometimes it’s wrong… Until there’s a complaint, nothing can happen,” Gaur told reporters. More, from CNN-IBN: “Unless the person wants, no one can dare touch her. The item numbers in films create a bad environment,” … The minister cited the instance of a Hindi movie actress who was kissed on the cheek by a leading Hollywood actor on stage in Delhi in 2007. The actress had seen nothing wrong with it, he said. He also suggested that women learn karate and judo to defend themselves, CNN-IBN reported. (Reuters and CNN-IBN)

Samajwadi Party leader and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s uncle Ram Gopal Yadav, speaking after the recent rape and hanging of two teenaged girls in Uttar Pradesh: ”vulgarity, obscenity and violence shown on TV channels” was to blame for the multiple incidents of rape and assault in UP. He also said, “In many places, when the relationship between girls and boys come out in open, it is termed as rape.” Mulayam Singh Yadav’s son, UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, suggested that reporters look on Google to see that UP isn’t the only Indian state where rape happens. (NDTV)

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via India Insight.

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