Posts tagged ‘India’

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03/06/2013

Sonia seeks quick implementation of rural livelihood schemes

The Hindu: “Buoyed by the response to UPA’s rural livelihood scheme, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Monday sought quick implementation of Aajeevika mission across the nation especially its central and eastern parts.

Congress chief and UPA Chairperson Sonhia Gandhi with womens from various states during the AAJEEVIKA DIWAS 2013 in New Delhi on Monday. Photo: R.V. Moorthy

Ms. Gandhi’s thrust on the scheme comes at a time when Congress is bracing for Lok Sabha elections due next year and assembly elections in five states including BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh this year.

Giving a thrust to poverty alleviation in her address at the second anniversary of the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) here, Ms. Gandhi said that the empowerment of weaker sections and women has been the main pillar of our UPA government.

The Congress president also chose the occasion to announce that a special package is being prepared for North Eastern states and hilly states like Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh to give a fillip to such measures.

She said that in the next ten years, 7 crore BPL families have to be freed from poverty, which is not an easy job.

“But by adopting the Aajeevika Mission, many states have proved that through women SHGs, economical and social changes can be brought in the rural areas.

“Seeing this success, it seems that now the Aajivika Mission will have to be implemented fast across the country especially in central and eastern India,” Ms. Gandhi said.

Aajeevika was launched by Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) in June 2011. It aims at creating efficient and effective institutional platforms of the rural poor enabling them to increase household income through sustainable livelihood enhancements and improved access to financial services.

The NRLM has set out with an agenda to cover 7 Crore BPL households, across 600 districts, 6000 blocks, 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats and 6 lakh villages through self-managed Self Help Groups (SHGs) and support them for livelihood collectives in a period of 8-10 years.

Hailing the NRLM as an important programme of the UPA, Ms. Gandhi claimed that in no other country of the world, such an ambitious and huge scheme for the empowerment of women exists.

“Today everybody has proved that this programme can free women from the curse of poverty. Such an an emancipation is based on stable and self-made employment and not on the mercy and kindness of anybody.

“Our purpose is clear. We have to strengthen the women SHGs and their instruments financially,” she said.”

via Sonia seeks quick implementation of rural livelihood schemes | The Hindu.

Posted in Economics, India alert, Inequalities, Low income, Politics, poverty | Leave a Comment »

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03/06/2013

Nuclear weapons: India keeps pace with Pakistan, but focuses on China

Times of India: “China, India, and Pakistan all added 10 to 20 nuclear weapons to their arsenal last year even as the top four nuclear nations — US, Russia, UK and France — appear determined to retain their nuclear arsenals indefinitely even if they didn’t add to their inventory, the Swedish arms watchdog Sipri said in its 2013 handbook released this weekend.

NPT Nuclear Weapon States (China, France, Russ...

NPT Nuclear Weapon States (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, US) Non-NPT Nuclear Weapon States (India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan) States accused of having nuclear weapons programs (Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia) States formerly possessing nuclear weapons program (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sipri’s world nuclear forces chart showed India bumping up its nuclear warheads from 80-100 in 2012 to 90-110 in 2013, keeping pace with Pakistan, which went from 90-110 weapons to 110-120. China meantime went from 240 nuclear weapons in 2012 to 250 in 2013, while France and UK froze their arsenals at 300 and 225 weapons respectively, as did Israel at 80 weapons.

Russia and the USA were the only two countries reducing their inventories of strategic nuclear weapons under the terms of the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START) as well as retiring ageing and obsolescent weapons. However, Sipri said, they, along with the three other recognized nuclear powers, France, Britain and China, are either deploying new nuclear weapon delivery systems or have announced programs to do so, and appear determined to retain their nuclear arsenals indefinitely.

As a result, although the total number of nuclear weapons in the world dropped from approximately 19000 in 2012 to 17265 in 2013, there was little to inspire hope that the nuclear weapon-possessing states are genuinely willing to give up their nuclear arsenals, the Sipri report said.”

via Nuclear weapons: India keeps pace with Pakistan, but focuses on China – The Times of India.

Posted in China alert, Chindia Alert, Defence, GeoPolitics, India alert, Military, Politics, Technology, Territorial dispute, war | Leave a Comment »

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01/06/2013

Anna Hazare concludes second phase of Jantantra Yatra

Times of India: “Anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare today concluded the second phase of his Jantantra Yatra here, asking people to “wake up” to change a system where power has gone into the hands of “tainted” people.

English: Hon. Anna Hazare in Nanded , Maharastra .

English: Hon. Anna Hazare in Nanded , Maharastra . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“As many as 163 of our MPs are tainted. This means that the system is corrupt and needs to be changes,” Hazare said, adding, he will launch a major campaign from Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan very soon.

He asked people to realise that they hold the key in a democratic setup, and they should bring about amendments to it by voting judiciously for “right individuals”.

Hazare was addressing the last public meeting of the second phase of his campaign, ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha polls.

He asked the youths to come forward and associated themselves with his campaign.

Hazare said he lives the life of an ascetic and recalling an incident, he claimed “once some corrupt people hired contract killers to eliminate me, but they refused, saying they cannot kill a ‘fakir'”.

He said he was grateful to people of Uttarakhand for “showering their love” on him during his campaign.

In his campaign, Hazare covered nearly 50 villages and held public meetings at a number of places including Rishikesh, from where he launched his second phase, Haridwar, Nainital and Haldwani, before concluding it here.”

via Anna Hazare concludes second phase of Jantantra Yatra – The Times of India.

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01/06/2013

Sun Pharma Keeps Expanding Overseas

WSJ: “A bid by India’s Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.  to acquire Swedish drug maker Meda AB  for as much as $5 billion, could be a big plus for Sun, say stock analysts in India.

Mumbai-based Sun Pharma, which makes generic versions of patented drugs including those used for cancer treatment, has been the best performer on India’s benchmark Sensex’s 30-share index this year.

The stock has gained 42% this year to close at 1045.50 rupees ($18.45) a share on Friday. In comparison, Sensex is up only around 3% since the beginning of the year.

Analysts say a big acquisition that expands Sun Pharma’s product offerings would help it grow further. Already, Sun Pharma generates more than 70% of its total revenue from overseas units.”

via Sun Pharma Keeps Expanding Overseas – India Real Time – WSJ.

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01/06/2013

India’s economic growth at slowest rate in a decade

BBC: “India‘s economy grew at its slowest pace in a decade during the 2012-13 financial year, figures show.

An factory worker welds at an air conditioner manufacturing facility near Ahmedabad

The economy grew by 5% over the year, after having grown at an annual pace of 4.8% in the January-to-March quarter.

India was recording annual growth of 9% until two years ago, but in recent months it has seen a sharp decline blamed on a slowdown in its manufacturing and services sectors.

Foreign investors have also kept away due to delays in key reforms.

One factor is India’s weakening job market.

“Companies now want a perfect candidate. Because of the global recession they are cutting down the job opportunities.”

Falling orders and fewer jobs

According to the latest figures released by the ministry of statistics, India’s manufacturing sector grew at an annual pace of 2.6% during the latest quarter while farm output rose by just 1.4%.

The figures are in line with official estimates. In February, India lowered its growth forecast to 5% for the year, underlining the challenges it faced in reviving the sluggish economy.

Last month, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the current downturn was “temporary” and he was confident the country’s economy would bounce back to an “8% growth rate”.

However, the mood has remained pessimistic in the business community with industry leaders worried over high rates of inflation.

The slowing economy has also meant that Indian companies are putting less profit back into their businesses.

Annual capital investment growth slowed to 3.5% in the first three months of 2013, down from 4.5% year-on-year in the previous quarter.

Meanwhile, complex business regulations are often blamed for driving foreign companies away.

Foreign direct investment into India has fallen, while the amount of corporate money leaving the country is on the rise.

“The government needs to go all-out to turn around investment sentiment,” said Yes Bank chief economist Shubhada Rao.

via BBC News – India’s economic growth at slowest rate in a decade.

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30/05/2013

Why India’s identity scheme is groundbreaking

BBC: “In an audacious technological mission, India is building a near foolproof database of personal biometric identities for nearly a billion people, something that has never been attempted anywhere in the world.

A woman getting enrolled in a UID booth in Surat

Poorer Indians who have no proof to offer of their existence will leapfrog into a national online system, another global first, where their identities can be validated anytime anywhere in a few seconds.

“India will outdo the world’s biggest biometric databases including those of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the US-VISIT visa programme,” says Nandan Nilekani, the technology tycoon who heads the programme popularly called by its acronym UIDAI.

The United States’ visa programme is a biometric database of 120 million.

In comparison, the UIDAI has already registered 200 million members, less than two years after the first enrolment.

By 2014 half of India’s population will have an identity tagged to a random, unique 12-digit number.

As more and more Indians have their fingerprints taken, irises scanned and photographs clicked, UIDAI’s chief technology architect Pramod Varma describes the database structure as a “Google-meets-Facebook” scale out.

The information is stored in a fortress like data centre in Bangalore

With its internet-class open source backbone, the database will accommodate more than 12 billion fingerprints, 2.4 billion iris scans and 1.2 billion photographs.

Even more groundbreaking, once established and stored, a person’s identity can easily be verified and authenticated using a cell phone, smart phone, tablet or any other device hooked to the internet.

The information is stored in a fortress-like data centre in Bangalore with a triple layer of security, and travels in highly encrypted packets.

Many of the radical ideas for UIDAI’s technology have come from the talent the project has drawn from the Indian diaspora – tech entrepreneurs like Bala Parthasarathy of HP-acquired photo service, Snapfish and Silicon Valley returnees like Srikanth Nadhamuni, formerly with Intel.

Mr Nilekani himself co-founded and built the multi-billion dollar outsourcing company Infosys before being drafted by the government to head the project.

The programme has studied global best practices in biometric identity databases.

Unlike the United States’ social security number, which is guessable and China’s, which adds the date of birth, India’s 12-digit identity number is randomly generated.

The United States’ visa database does not factor in iris scans while India has included them to provide a greater degree of accuracy.

India’s telecom revolution leapfrogged over several stages of technology in the past decade-and-a-half to great success. Similarly, the massive UIDAI will vault over older technologies.

“By starting on a clean slate and reconfiguring the structure, we have opened up a whole new set of possibilities,” says Mr Nilekani.

The project will stay abreast of the latest in biometrics, cloud computing and connectivity.

Pilot projects using the unique number have begun in parts of India

Costs though have been kept low, first, by adopting an open policy in selecting devices and software and encouraging multiple private vendors.

Second, the project is technology-neutral, not locking in to any particular hardware or software.

If the technology architecture is unique, so is its accuracy in validating identities.

“The combination of 10-finger biometrics, two-iris scans and photograph establishes the identity of a person with over 99.5% accuracy,” says Krishnakumar Natarajan, CEO of Bangalore-based tech outsourcing firm MindTree, which is one of the firms building applications for the project.

The best of the biometric databases in the world have a single de-duplication check, to ensure that every person is identified and tagged only once.”

via BBC News – Why India’s identity scheme is groundbreaking.

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29/05/2013

Indian PM meets Japanese Emperor, discusses bilateral ties

Times of India: “Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday called on Japanese Emperor Akihito and discussed bilateral ties and issues of mutual interest.

Singh accompanied by his wife Gursharan Kaur met the Emperor and the Empress of Japan at the luncheon at Imperial Palace ahead of his meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko of Japan.

Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko of Japan. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Singh, who is on a three-day visit to Japan to strengthen bilateral strategic ties, yesterday said India sees Japan as a “natural and indispensable partner” in its quest for stability and peace in Asia.

Noting that India and Japan are among the major actors in this region, he said, “It is our responsibility to foster a climate of peace, stability and cooperation and to lay an enduring foundation for security and prosperity”.

“India’s relations with Japan are important not only for our economic development, but also because we see Japan as a natural and indispensable partner in our quest for stability and peace in the vast region in Asia that is washed by the Pacific and Indian Oceans,” he said.

“Our relationship with Japan has been at the heart of our Look East Policy,” Singh said.”

via PM meets Japanese Emperor, discusses bilateral ties – The Times of India.

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29/05/2013

A Premium Milk Brand for India’s Elite

WSJ: “India’s rich and elite like their premium services, from hopping on private jets to receiving Dior goods at their doorstep. But the simple things apply, too.

A premium milk labeled Pride of Cows counts among its consumers the cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, industrialist Mukesh Ambani’s family and Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan, according to Parag Milk Foods Private Ltd.

Parag Milk Foods, the founder of Gowardhan dairies, launched the Pride of Cows milk in July 2011, initially marketing it as a “by invitation or reference only product” to select celebrities and industrialists.

According to a 2011 survey by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, 70% of the milk consumed in the country is adulterated.

Parag Milk Foods Chairman Devendra Shah says the Pride of Cows brand functions by the rule that “happy cows give better milk.” At its Bhagyalaxmi Dairy farm in Pune, around 3,500 Holstien Friesan cows are pampered with music, showers and specially designed nutritional meals, Mr. Shah says. “The result is milk full of love and high nutritional values.”

Parag Milk says it breeds its cows with imported bull semen from North America. Feed is tailor-made for cows of different ages, and the menu is changed regularly to include fresh seasonal crops and specials.

“This way we have complete control over the breed, feed and health of our cows, which in turn leads to complete control over the quality of milk,” said Mr. Shah.

“We have implemented ‘cow comfort’ technology, wherein our cows have soft rubber mats to lie on, streaming music, air-coolers to keep them cool, automated scrubbers to clean them and regular preventive healthcare checks,” added Edmund Piper, a U.K. national who was hired as the farm’s manager four years ago.

Parag Milk Foods signed up celebrities like writer Shobha De as Pride of Cows brand ambassadors, while it can count industrialist Raj Kundra, co-owner of the Rajasthan Royals cricket team, as a fan.

“Being a British-born Indian, I’ve always missed the milk from the UK. I can’t tell you how happy I was to sample this milk – it’s world class. I can finally start drinking milk and enjoying my cereal,” says an endorsement by Mr. Kundra on the Pride of Cows website.

Pride of Cows isn’t available in shops; it’s only delivered – in insulated boxes with ice bags — on subscription. It costs 75 rupees ($1.35) a liter, making it an expensive alternative to other milk, which generally costs around 35 rupees to 50 rupees in the markets. Nestlé milk is among the other brands available in India, costing 62 rupees a liter.”

via A Premium Milk Brand for India’s Elite – India Real Time – WSJ.

Posted in Affluence, Economics, food security, India alert | Leave a Comment »

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26/05/2013

* Chinese dream is dream of whole humanity: Nepal’s former PM

English: Mr. Baburam bhattarai the 35th Prime ...

English: Mr. Baburam bhattarai the 35th Prime Minister of Nepal. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Xinhua: “Nepal‘s former Prime Minister and Vice-Chairman of Unified Communist party of Nepal (Maoist) Baburam Bhattarai said that Chinese dream is a dream of whole humanity as well as of Nepalese people.

 

The former prime minister, who is known as a Communist ideologue in his party, said in a recent exclusive interview with Xinhua, that Chinese dream is a dream of oppressed humanity of the world who has been dominated by foreign power for more than 200 years.

Referring to the significance of Chinese dream, Bhattarai said China has to play a leading role to bring peace, stability and development in the world.

In the interview, he said focus of development is now shifting to east and south Asia and China is going to lead that process through its new dream.

Comparing Chinese dream with American dream, the 59-year-old Maoist leader, said the earlier so-called western dream was the domination of world in the colonial form or neocolonialism form.

“But Chinese dream is ending of that domination and granting freedom to all people of the world and ensuring peace, prosperity and democracy to all. So Chinese dream is fundamentally different from the older day’s dream of the western world,” he opined.

The former Prime Minister Bhattarai who is known as architect of social and economic development said Chinese dream will contribute towards economic prosperity of Nepal and will ensure national independence and sovereignty as well.

Asked about Nepal’s dream, the Maoist leader who is second in command in his party, and also the key strategist during the ten- year-long people’s war, said after gaining political stability our dream of building a prosperous and develop Nepal will be realized.

“If there is political stability here and if there is correct political leadership, and if there is well balanced relations with our neighboring countries China and India, then we can develop and we can realize our dream,” said Bhattarai.

He said that after promulgation of a new constitution, Nepal will invite economic investment from both China and India and then will try to have some joint projects with both India and China.

“In that way gradually this dream of trilateral cooperation and Nepal emerging as a vibrant bridge between India and china will be realized,” he said.

Asked about the India’s unwillingness to strike a trilateral cooperation between Nepal, India and China, who gained his higher education from India said a section of people everywhere gets skeptical.

“I believe even in India, this opinion is slowly gaining momentum and soon there will be massive moments to have good relation between India and China and have a trilateral relation between Nepal. It will take some time but ultimately it will be realized, Bhattarai said.”

via Chinese dream is dream of whole humanity: Nepal’s former PM – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

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26/05/2013

* Could We Have an Indian Dream?

WSJ: “Everyone has heard of the American Dream. It promises equal opportunities and the chance for everyone to prosper through hard work. It is meant to be inclusive, and Indians are certainly among various groups to have shared in it.

It now seems there is a Chinese Dream, too. Xi Jinping has already mentioned the term several times in speeches since he became president in March. Smaller nations like Qatar and New Zealand have also recently stated their national dreams, and now even Vanuatu is striving for one.

Surely India – a vast, populous country and possible powerhouse of the 21st Century – needs its own dream. It’s not just a matter of being left out. Collective dreams are necessary to hold a people together, to inspire, to get everyone pushing in the same direction.

India had a national dream before 1947. That dream was to become an independent country, and it came true. But things have become a bit fuzzy since then. Today, if you asked someone on the street what India’s national dream is, they wouldn’t know. If you asked a politician, he may talk about it for an hour, but in the end neither he nor you would know.

The word “dream” captures the imagination, but frankly what we’re talking about is a vision that is grounded in reality, something actionable.”

via Could We Have an Indian Dream? – India Real Time – WSJ.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2013/05/03/xi-jinpings-vision-chasing-the-chinese-dream/

Posted in India alert, national dream, Social & cultural, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

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