India-China boundary talks

On the line: on India-China boundary talks

It is vital that India-China talks on the boundary question pick up speed


The meeting between the Special Representatives of India and China — National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and State Councillor Yang Jiechi — on the boundary question on December 22, the 20th so far, was unique for a number of reasons.

• The talks came more than 20 months after the last round, reflecting a period of extreme strain in India-China ties,
•  including the 70-day troop stand-off at Doklam this year. 
• Previous meetings had followed each other within a year.
•  Also, at the recent Communist Party Congress, Mr. Yang was elevated to the Political Bureau, and this is the first time the Chinese side has been represented by an SR of such seniority. 
• As a result, the two sides were best poised to move ahead in the three-step process that was part of the Agreement on ‘Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India-China Boundary Question’ in 2005 — that is, defining the guidelines for the settlement of border disputes, formulating a framework agreement on the implementation of the guidelines, and completing border demarcation. 
• The SRs were given an extended mandate after meetings between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping this year, and thus went well beyond the remit of discussing the resolution of boundary issues. 
• Above all, they were guided by the Modi-Xi agreements of 2017, including the ‘Astana consensus’ that “differences must not be allowed to become disputes”, and the understanding at Xiamen that India-China relations “are a factor of stability” in an increasingly unstable world.

It would be a mistake, however, to infer that with all these engagements the worst in bilateral ties is now behind the two countries.

 Since 2013, when the Border Defence Cooperation Agreement was signed, there has been a steady decline in relations in all spheres. 

The border has seen more transgressions, people-to-people ties have suffered amid mutual suspicion, 

and China’s forays in South Asia as well as India’s forays into South-East Asian sea lanes have increasingly become areas of contestant.

 In India, this is seen as the outcome of China’s ambition of geopolitical domination. 

In this vitiated atmosphere India views every move by China as a targeted assault — such as the 

•  the free trade agreement with the Maldives,
•  and the blocking of India’s membership bid at the Nuclear Suppliers Group. 

In turn, Beijing sees:-

•  the U.S.-India defense agreements,
• the Quadrilateral engagement with Japan, Australia and the U.S., 
• and Indian opposition to the BRI quite the same way. 
• The stand-off at Doklam was a hint of what may ensue at greater regularity unless greater attention is paid to resolving the differences for which the SR meetings process was set up in the first place.

Indian district magistrate cried while reciting his success speech, true motivation

IAS cried while reciting his success speech, true motivation for life. Must watch video .

To ban the advertisement of Condom on Indian television .

Flawed, in the name of indecencyThe government’s advisory on telecast of condom advertisements is questionable on many counts

On December 11, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued an advisory to television channels banning all “advertisements of condoms which… could be indecent/inappropriate for viewing by children” between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

The advisory was issued because it came to the notice of the Ministry that “some channels” were carrying “advertisements of condoms repeatedly which are alleged to be indecent especially for children.” 

It was later reportedly clarified that the advisory only applied to “sexually explicit” advertisements meant to “titillate” the audience. 

One must applaud the government’s decision to grant a safe harbour to advertisements which it considers “indecent”, instead of banning them altogether. 

After all, the Ministry could have paternalistically directed all channels not to disseminate any indecent condom advertisements whatsoever, no matter the time of the day or night at which they were shown. By allowing “indecent” condom advertisements to be disseminated between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., the government has empowered parents to decide what their children can and cannot watch, while ensuring that adults are not deprived of content which they are entitled to view. The idea behind this type of regulation is that when it is late in the evening, parents are likely to be at home when they can better supervise their children. The ban imposed by the Ministry is also tolerable because it has been inflicted on advertisements, or “commercial speech” which, in constitutional law, is often considered to be a form of “low value” speech. Further, the government has not banned all condom advertisements, but only those which are indecent.

Why it is flawed

However, the manner in which the advisory has been drafted is far too broad. The Ministry has advised channels to ban all condom advertisements which “could be indecent/inappropriate for viewing by children”. But how does one decide whether something “could” possibly be “indecent, inappropriate”, “sexually explicit” or “titillating”? In a famous case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Potter Stewart once said that while it is difficult to define the meaning of hardcore pornography, “I know it when I see it.” The distinction between art and obscenity is often paper thin and incredibly subjective. As Justice J.M. Harlan wrote in another case, “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.” When different people see the same condom advertisement, many may disagree over whether it is “indecent”. Some may find it funny or informative, while others may consider it obscene or distasteful. The word “inappropriate” used in the Ministry’s advisory is even more vague than the word “indecent”.

The Ministry has also made the fatal mistake of bracketing all “children” into the same conceptual category. What is suitable for viewing by a 17-year-old boy may not be appropriate for a three-year-old girl, and both may be considered “children”. It may have been a better idea for the government to have prohibited “indecent” condom advertisements during programmes that are likely to be viewed by young children such as cricket matches or cartoons. The advisory seeks refuge in a provision in the Cable Television Network Rules, 1994, which bars any advertisement that “endangers the safety of children or creates in them any interest in unhealthy practices”. But can it really be considered an “unhealthy practice” for a sexually active 17-year-old to have safe sex? Whether we like it or not, some teenagers below the age of adulthood may engage in sexual relations. Further, it is human nature which is responsible for our sexual impulse, not condom advertisements.

Narrow focus

One also wonders what place an advisory of this kind has in today’s digital India. Television programmes shown even in the early hours of the morning can now be recorded on a digital video recorder and watched at three in the afternoon. Pornography is freely available on the Internet. Do we really need to shield the teenager, who knows how to illegally download the popular HBO series, “Game of Thrones” (which has nudity and extreme violence), from comparatively tame condom advertisements? Newspapers which carry graphic columns by “sex experts”, columns which offer advice to couples with sexual problems, are available for all and sundry to read. One also wonders where the government’s priorities lie. The government believes that condom advertisements are “unhealthy” for children, but not advertisements which encourage them to consume fizzy drinks laden with high-fructose corn syrup, or junk food, low in nutritional value, all of which may have an adverse effect on the public health system. The government also has no qualms about advertisements which sexually objectify men instead of women.

Given how difficult it is to interpret words such as “indecent” and “titillating”, and in order to make their content suitable for viewing by children of all ages, an Indian television channel may now justifiably think twice before airing any condom advertisement, whether “inappropriate” or otherwise, between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., as it is always better to err on the side of caution. This “chilling effect” on condom advertisements will be detrimental to the public interest. It will mean that sexually active Indians may not be exposed to condom advertisements during prime time viewing hours, when such advertisements could have been seen by the highest number of people. Though offended by indecency and innuendo, the government must not forget that condoms can help prevent unplanned pregnancies and restrict the spread of sexually transmitted (sometimes life-threatening) diseases.

Abhinav Chandrachud, an advocate at the Bombay High Court, is the author of ‘Republic of Rhetoric: Free Speech and the Constitution of India’

India's First AC EMU in function

Introduction of India’s First Ever Broad Gauge Air-conditioned AC EMU (Suburban Train) of 12-car rake fitted with Indigenous 3-phase Propulsion system On Mumbai Suburban Section of W. Railway on 25th December 2017

Railways’ New Year Bonanza For The Nation Especially for Mumbaikars.

Introductory run is scheduled from Borivali station in Mumbai.

2 Coaches earmarked as Ladies Coaches, Certain seats are earmarked for Senior Citizens and Divyangs

RPF to be deployed in each coach to ensure safety.

Discount in the fare to be given during the introductory period of initial 06 months.

India-Pakistan relations

Time for an icebreaker: on India-Pakistan relations

The intellectual partition of India and Pakistan does no benefit to either country

In the late 1960s, shortly after the India-Pakistan war, the official in the Ministry of External Affairs handling the Pakistan desk received a strange request during his meeting with the new Pakistan High Commissioner. “I hope that you would deal with Pakistan as a foreign country,” the High Commissioner told the slightly puzzled Indian official, explaining that the familiarity of Indian officials with both language and culture of Pakistan ran counter to Pakistan’s desire to build their identity as a newly sovereign nation.

Two years apart 

While the two countries had been physically partitioned, and borders and check-posts now controlled people from crossing over, the ‘intellectual partition’ of India and Pakistan had not taken place at the time. Decades later, it would be hard for a Pakistani envoy to make such a complaint. India and Pakistan are not just foreign countries for each other, they are practically alien, with little to engage on in various spheres. The “intellectual and emotional partition” of the two countries is even more stark today, exactly two years since Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in Lahore to attend his then counterpart, Nawaz Sharif’s grand-daughter’s wedding.

To begin with, Indian and Pakistani societies have learnt to look away from each other culturally. 

The process of this partition, which began in the 1950s, 

• when poets and historians began to construct separate histories, is now complete,
•  as Pakistani students learn a language more Arabic than Urdu,
• polity that begins in 1947,
• about an ancient history that relates to foreign invaders from the country’s west more than the shared history with its east.

 On the Indian side,

•  contemporary cultural linkages have been severed, with Abida Parveen and Ghulam Ali no longer able to perform in India, 
• Pakistani actors barred from work in Indian films, 
•  a television network stopping the very popular telecast of Pakistani soap operas. 
• Sporting events are fewer, and there is little “healthy rivalry” when Indian and Pakistani teams do meet: instead a defeat becomes a national disgrace, while a victory is celebrated as a quasi-military conquest. 
• Visas are still granted for pilgrimages on both sides, but for all other travel they are tightly controlled and granted as exceptions to the rule. 
• Seldom have two countries which share language, idiom, music and religion been this closed to each other, including in times of war.

Bilateral trade, which had developed a low but steady normal, could be reduced even further now: as Indian development of Chabahar port in Iran circumvents Pakistan by sea, and an air cargo corridor to Afghanistan replaces land cargo entirely. Effectively, India is willing to double its trade costs and spend billions of dollars extra in order block out Pakistan, and Pakistan is willing to risk its trade route to Afghanistan and Central Asia, but won’t allow Indian trade to Afghanistan come through Wagah.

The only increased ‘trade’ is that of ‘trading fire’ at the Line of Control (LoC), where Pakistan attempts to push in infiltrators over the LoC into India under covering fire, and Indian troops fire back, taking also a high toll for civilians on both sides. After the 2003 ceasefire had been implemented, villagers on either side of the LoC had returned to their homes and rebuilt schools along the area. Most of that peace has been undone by the past few years of ceasefire violations, according to a study by the United States Institute of Peace called “A Line on Fire”. From 12 ceasefire violations (CFVs) on both sides combined and one civilian casualty in 2006, 2016 saw 51 dead in about 900 CFVs. The data for this year has surpassed those numbers, which includes four Indian Army soldiers killed this weekend. Yet, neither side gives credence to claims of the other. Even after the surgical strikes of September 2016, Pakistan’s government refused to accept India’s detailed account of the cross-LoC action.

The discourse on terrorism is even more divided. After the Mumbai attacks of 2008, Pakistan admitted in public statements at least that the perpetrators of the attacks would be brought to justice. Yet in the past three years, the Mumbai trial in Rawalpindi has all but ground to a halt. The Lashkar-e-Taiba’s operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi is out on bail, while 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed, out of custody last month, plans to stand for elections in 2018. On the Pakistani side, there’s growing belief that India funds groups such as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as well as insurgent groups in Balochistan. Mr. Modi’s public support for the Baloch insurgency during his Independence Day speech last year did not help. The fate of Kulbushan Jadhav, whose release from Pakistani custody in other times may have been decided by mutual negotiation and a possible exchange of personnel, is now in the hands of the International Court of Justice.


Difficult calendar

While both India and Pakistan have recently appointed new High Commissioners to Islamabad and Delhi, respectively, there is very little hope of any fresh initiative at this point. Pakistan heads into its electoral process in a few months, once the Senate elections are done in March and a caretaker government is put in place. By the time a new Prime Minister is in place there, the Indian general election campaign will begin to roll out. Given Mr. Modi’s recent attack on former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for meeting the new Pakistani envoy at a dinner during the Gujarat campaign, and suggesting collusion between the two, it is unlikely that the political atmosphere would allow for even diplomatic niceties to be maintained.

Yet, for a number of reasons, it is even more necessary for both sides to stem this intellectual partition today. India has long opposed “third-party interventions”, but the lack of dialogue with Pakistan is imposing just that, with every dispute between the two countries now being taken up at global forums: the United Nations, Financial Action Task Force, International Court of Justice, and World Bank for the Indus Waters Treaty.

Second, with the U.S. drawing India into its Afghanistan policy, and China’s stakes in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the subcontinent is becoming an area of contestation by players bigger than both India and Pakistan. Even in Afghanistan, their interests are being increasingly defined by the coalitional arcs being drawn: with the U.S., India, and Afghanistan ranged on one side; and Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan and the Taliban on the other.


The alphabet soup: 

India’s decision to stay out of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) meet in Pakistan has also complicated its standing as a regional leader. 

While alternative arrangements such as The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), the Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal (BBIN) initiative and the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) represent some parts of the region, they cannot replace the whole, and the region becomes easier to fragment, as China has managed to do by making inroads into Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

Finally, re-engagement will inevitably follow disengagement at some point, and the growing distance between the people of both countries will be much more difficult for their governments to bridge in the future. Even without bilateral talks, the two sides can explore simple engagements on the environment, medical tourism, energy pipelines and electric grids in the interim. In a world where connectivity is the new currency, and multiple alignments are replacing polar geopolitics, it is hard to justify the disconnected space that New Delhi and Islamabad are hurtling into.

Missing the pulse: on policies for farmers

Missing the pulse: on policies for farmers

Farmers, like investors, need predictability and coherence in government policies .

A 30% customs duty has been slapped on the import of chana dal and masoor dal. 

The official reasoning is clear. Cheap imports could hit farm incomes especially at a time when domestic production of pulses is at a record high and a bumper rabi crop is expected. 

With an adequate domestic stockpile of pulses and with international prices remaining low for a prolonged period, the Centre fears that traders may still prefer to import some pulses rather than buy the fresh crop from local farmers at higher prices. 

There has been a significant upsurge in imports, in the range of 30% to 46%, in four out of the first six months of this financial year. 

Chana and masoor were the key contributors for India’s pulses imports rising to over $1.6 billion between April and September, compared to $1.2 billion in the same period last year. 

The value of chana imports in this period rose 373%, while masoor grew 204% year on year. In September, masoor imports shrank 56% in value terms while chana imports grew by a little over 200%. 

Disaggregated data for the last two months are not available, but overall pulses imports have cooled off since September, with total pulses imports shrinking nearly 30% in October and about 38% last month.

The mazor concern : 

In the case of a key protein source like pulses, import duties may be counterproductive going forward. 

Just last year, while prices were soaring in the Indian market, Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed a pact to double pulses imports from Mozambique. 

A bumper crop or two will not diminish the importance of such deals in harder times.

India has dal diplomacy interests with more than 40 other countries, for whom the latest move will be of concern, 

especially since there is already 10% import duty on toor dal and a hefty 50% duty was levied on yellow peas in November.

Way forward .

Farmers, like investors, need predictability and coherence in government policies.

 Just as a duty hike on electronic goods won’t directly prop up local manufacturing or curb their consumption, hiking import duties on one dal or another won’t make farmers better-off — though traders who accumulated cheaper imports will benefit.

 The government must devise better means to shore up farm incomes without stirring up inflation or upsetting carefully cultivated food security partnerships around the world.

lalu fodder scam

Another fodder jolt: on Lalu Prasad's conviction

Mr lalu appealing for a double jeopardy but high court said that the two dist fraudster cases will be leaded  separately .

As this case is on there may be a question on double jeopardy. however the insolvency has also has a chance with the two MPs dissqualified from RS and now the extension Mr Prasad. 

Motivation

I didn't had much in my life, but I had 1 determination that,

If I cannot fly I'll run,

if I can't run I'll walk,

if I can't walk I'll crawl but not go back to my village and give up ...

                   ... . . Nawaj ud din S

163 days to go #MissionCSE2018

motivation for today's battle | 164 days to go |

One should have persistence in desire, because its not the waves which break the rocks but the  perseverance what makes the way.

Men behind the Ideas that made INDIA shine in 2017

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel described the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) - “steel frame” upon which the rest of the bureaucracy will rest — a bastion of India’s best and brightest that would ensure continuity of good governance irrespective of regime change.

But is this steel frame still as strong or if it has become rusty and weak.

The much-needed transformation is slowly but steadily rolling in. And its happening due to dynamic and dedicated IAS officers who are bringing in fresher ideas, unwilling to be stifled by red-tapism and who look forward to changing the country for the better.

list of 10 inspiring IAS officers who went beyond to make a difference in the lives of many in 2017.

1. Prasanth Nair

Photo Source

A 2007 batch IAS officer of Kerala cadre who has recently been appointed the secretary to the Minister of State for Tourism, Prasanth Nair has earned much public acclaim for kickstarting a slew of popular initiatives as the collector of Kozhikode.

His innovative ideas —

Operation Sulaimani, a decentralized participatory project to address hunger in urban areas;

Tere Mere Beach Mein, a project to tackle waste management at Kozhikode Beach;

and Yo Appooppa, an attempt to improve the quality of life of the elderly — were huge runaway successes, thanks to large and wholehearted participation of people of the coastal city and beyond.

Affectionately called “Collector Bro”, Prasanth is also famous for a unique proposal he had put forward to the people in his district. He offered a free plate of Malabar biryani to every individual who pitched in to clean a 14-acre pond in Koyilandy. Unsurprisingly, the idea was a resounding success!

More over the tourism pic upload context across INDIA which brought up the eye balls of many towards the forgotten beauty of Indian sites .

2. Poma Tudu

Photo Source

Thickly forested area of Odisha’s Nuapada district often have a very special guest — the district collector of Nuapada, Poma Tudu, who treks through the rugged terrain for more than two hours just to hear their grievances.

The fact that the forest is not only a Naxal-affected hostile zone but also a terrain infamous for man-animal conflicts did not deter Poma. Realising that the residents of these tribal villages had to travel over 90 km to reach the district headquarters and avail government services, she was determined to visit the villages herself so that they could share their grievances.

A graduate of Delhi’s Lady Hardinge Medical College, the 2012 batch Odisha-cadre IAS officer now plans to fast-track connectivity and medical services to the villages. Interestingly, Poma didn’t have to look far for a role model — her mother is the first woman in her tribal family to go to school, college and on to get a bank job.

3. Surendra Kumar Solanki

Photo Source

On the occasion of Civil Services Day 2017, the district collector of Dungarpur (in Rajasthan) Surendra Singh Solanki was conferred with the PM’s award in the category of best innovation for his unique solar lamp project that was turning poor and lesser educated tribal women from the most backward blocks of the district into green entrepreneurs.

To do this, Surendra initiated a collaboration between the district administration, IIT Bombay and Rajeevika (Rajasthan Grameen Ajeevika Vikas Parishad) to form women self-help groups (SHGs). The members were then trained and mentored to help them locally assemble, sell and repair solar lamps. These lamps were distributed to students and needy people (especially in remote areas) at competitive prices thus benefiting the masses at large.

Last year, Surendra has also set an endearing example by adopting 9-year-old Chhaya Pargi from Udaipur’s Muskan shelter home. He had learned about her plight (orphaned at an early age, she had been forced to run away from home after her aunt tried to kill her) on a routine inspection. Deeply moved, he pledged to bear all her educational and personal expenses to ensure that she got the opportunity to realize all her dreams.

4. Mir Mohamed Ali

Photo Source

In April 2017, Kerala’s Kannur became India’s first plastic-free district, that too in just five months. And the man who played a pivotal role in this sustainable transformation was Kannur’s young District Collector, Mir Mohammed Ali.

A 2011-batch IAS officer of Kerala cadre, Mir initiated a focussed campaign towards phasing out plastic carry-bags and disposables last November. At the same time, under his guidance, the district administration heavily encouraged the use of handloom-made bags made by various weavers’ cooperative societies of the district

Mir also directed heads of local bodies to take stern action against violating business establishments that continued to give away plastic carry bags and disposables such as plates and cups. His determination and hard work paid off when the appreciative public joined the effort to make Kannur the first district in the country bereft of plastic.

You May Like: Five Indian Officers Who Fought Tooth& Nail to Give Us #FreedomFromCorruption

5. Parikipandla Narahari

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A 2001 batch IAS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre, Parikipandla Narahari was recently awarded at the NCPEDP-Mphasis Universal Design Awards – 2017 in recognition of his outstanding work for persons with disabilities. But this is just one notch on the tall list of notable achievements under his belt. During his terms as District Collector (DC) in various districts across Madhya Pradesh, Parikipandla has initiated several programmes that have garnered widespread admiration in administrative circles.

For instance, he introduced e-health ideas (such as Active Tracker devices) to eradicate female infanticide and transformed Gwalior in to a ‘barrier-free’ city by building ramps and railings so that persons with disabilities, senior citizens and pregnant women do not face any problem in accessing public places.

Another brainchild of his, the Ladli Laxmi Yojana (that aims to lay a firm foundation for girls’ future by improving their educational and economic status), has become a source of inspiration for many a state, including Andhra’s Bangaru Thall and Central government’s ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’ scheme.

6. Bharathi Hollikeri

acknowledged source

Photo Source

In the recent months, pregnant and lactating women visiting primary health centres (PHCs) for antenatal check-ups in Telangana’s Medak district have been provided with a wholesome lunch on all days of the week. The best part is that this is happening without the addition of a substantial financial burden on government exchequers as the food is brought from local Anganwadi centres.

The idea of serving food at PHCs was conceived by Medak’s popular district collector, Bharathi Hollikeri, after she realised that pregnant women often missed lunch because they returned home late and tired after time-consuming medical investigations at the clinics. She also collaborated with IIT Hyderabad to conduct an extensive socio-economic survey of villages that would help identify grassroots issues.

Bharati is also responsible for many other positive transformations taking place in the district. Her surprise sanitation checks and frequent field visits have helped Medak achieved an Open Defecation Free (ODF) status. Under her aegis, the district administration has also teamed up with NGOs to provide career counselling for girl students and to encourage organic farming by setting up a Women Farmers’ Federation.

7. PS Pradyumna

Photo Source

From initiating the construction of one lakh individual toilets (under the Palle Nidra programme) to water conservation in drought-prone (under the Handri-Neeva project), PS Pradyuman is a man on a mission. His well-planned and inclusive initiatives have breathed new life into the development of the Andhra Pradesh district.

Pradyumna started ‘Palle Vanam’, a rural afforestation programme that will create natural green spots with benches and walking tracks for villagers. Another popular programme that he has initiated is ‘Nirbhaya Patrolling’, in which women cops on electric bicycles keep an eagle eye on zones covering educational institutions, bus stops and areas vulnerable to sexual harassment.

To provide the agriculture equipment on hire and microcredit to farmers, Pradyumna has also established affordable hiring centres. Moreover, to improve the service delivery systems at anganwadis, the district administration has launched the ‘Yashoda’ diploma programme that will teach them the basics of English language and computer skills alongside best practices in community mobilisation, health and nutrition.

8. Saurabh Kumar

Photo Source

A 2009-batch IAS officer of Chhattisgarh cadre, Saurabh Kumar’s unique initiative is giving the conflict-ridden district of Dantewada a new lease of life. Understanding how the lack of education and joblessness could push local youth towards a life of violence and extremism, the pro-active collector introduced counselling sessions to help students make the right career choice.

Called Lunch with the Collector, these sessions involve Saurabh and other senior officials directly interacted with students — discussing career options, clearing their doubts and bolstering their self-confidence. Unsurprisingly, this thoughtful initiative has endeared him deeply to the locals of Dantewada.

Saurabh has also received the PM’s award in the category of excellence in innovation for converting Naxal-hit Palnar village of Chhattisgarh into a cashless village post demonetisation, though it had no cellular connectivity!

9. Ronald Rose

Mahbubnagar district of Telangana has been setting quite a few development records for some time now. Villages have rapidly become open-defecation free and farmers are increasingly turning to organic methods. The district has also been in the news for successfully digging soak pits in all the houses as well as for its very successful Haritha Haaram (afforestation) programme.

The man driving this amazing transformation is the enterprising district collector of Mahbubnagar, Ronald Rose. A 2006 batch IAS officer of the Telangana cadre, Ronald had single-handedly ensured the effective implementation of government initiatives in the district and taken it to the forefront of the rural development in the state.

He is also the brain behind Divyang Solar Society, an initiative that employs differently abled persons in the production of affordable, effective, energy-efficient and non-polluting products for rural India.

10. Rohini R. Bhajibhakare

Photo Source

Recently appointed the collector of Salem district, Rohini R. Bhajibhakare is no less than a celebrity for the local people. The daughter of a marginal farmer, the petite and pertinacious bureaucrat smashed several glass ceilings to become the first woman collector of the Tamil Nadu district since 1790.

Known for her people-centric governance, Rohini conducts surprise checks in government hospitals, keeps in touch with officials through Whatsapp, gives pep talks to school students and personally visits the rural areas to listen to people’s grievances. Moreover, she has banned the use of plastic and polythene articles on the Collectorate campus, a prelude to her target of achieving plastic-free status for Salem.

Rohini also won many accolades during her earlier tenure in Madurai, where she pioneered the cause of safe sanitation and watershed development.

acknowlegement

Block chain technology | awareness in field of IT | west Bengal

Context: The West Bengal government is planning to introduce the blockchain technology to protect its documents from cyber attacks.

Key facts:

The state government’s proposed Cyber Security Centre of Excellence would be entrusted to execute the new ‘blockchain’ mechanism at various departments.

The cyber security centre will bring the best in academic, law enforcement and other sections under one roof for the best practices to counter cyber crimes.

The centre will also conduct research and development on cyber crimes for which the state government will partner with private firms.

Background:

Recently, computers at some offices of the West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Limited were crippled by ‘WannaCry’ virus, a global ransomware. Ransomware is a type of malicious software designed to block access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid.

What is Blockchain?

Blockchain is an online ledger of digitally recorded transactions which is encrypted in the form of blocks, each of which is connected by a network of computers.

How it works?

Blockchain enables two entities that do not know each other to agree that something is true without the need of a third party. As opposed to writing entries into a single sheet of paper, a blockchain is a distributed database that takes a number of inputs and places them into a block. Each block is then ‘chained’ to the next block using a cryptographic signature. This allows blockchains to be used as a ledger which is accessible by anyone with permission to do so. If everyone in the process is pre-selected, the ledger is termed ‘permissioned’. If the process is open to the whole world, the ledger is called unpermissioned.

Benefits of blockchain technology:

A blockchain is anonymous, protecting the identities of the users. This makes blockchain a more secure way to carry out transactions. The algorithm used in blockchain reduces the dependence on people to verify the transactions.

Crackdown against Bitcoins | money laundering and its prevention

The rising craze for bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that has rocketed to shocking highs, has come under the government’s lens. The government has begun a crackdown on illegal uses of this unregulated virtual currency.

Widening its probe into bitcoin investments and trade, the Income Tax (IT) department is set to issue notices to 4 to 5 lakh high networth individuals (HNI) across the country who were trading on the exchanges of this unregulated virtual currency.


Background:


While some of the countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan have declared Bitcoins as a means of payment illegal and in violation of the state law, a majority are yet to take a stand on it. In December 2013, RBI issued a warning with caution to users, holders and traders of virtual currencies, including Bitcoins, about the potential financial, operational, and legal, customer protection and security related risks that they are exposing themselves to. Bitcoins are currently unregulated in India. There are no specific legal frameworks for Bitcoins and crypto currencies in India yet.


Concerns associated with the use of bitcoins: 

Bitcoin can be an easy way to evade tax or snare unsuspecting small investors in ponzi schemes. The regulators are worried about their use for illicit and illegal activities, subjecting the users to an unintentional breach of laws against money laundering and terror finance.
Concerns also emanate from some unscrupulous entities indulging in illicit money-pooling activities—commonly known as ponzi schemes—with the promise of huge returns from investment in bitcoins and other variants, which they claim are minted through blockchain, a distributed ledger technology that was created to mint bitcoins and comprises of extremely complex algorithms with several thousand nodes for each chain.
There is a suspicion that some so-called cryptocurrencies and bitcoin investments may actually have nothing to do with any blockchain-developed virtual currency and are just new ways devised by scamsters to ride the wave and what they may be offering could be ‘e-ponzi’ schemes.

Amendments to Companies Act

The Rajya Sabha has passed the Companies (Amendment) Bill, 2017. It was adopted by the Lok Sabha in July this year. The Bill provides for more than 40 amendments to the Companies Act, 2013.

Features of the Bill: 

The amendment seeks to strengthen corporate governance standards, initiate strict action against defaulting companies and help improve ease of doing business in the country.
The major changes include simplification of the private placement process; rationalization of provisions related to loans to directors; replacing the requirement of approval of the central government for managerial remuneration above prescribed limits by approval through special resolution of shareholders and aligning disclosure requirements in the prospectus with the regulations made by Sebi (Securities and Exchange Board of India).
The Bill also provides for maintenance of register of significant beneficial owners and makes offence for contravention of provisions relating to deposits as non-compoundable.
It also provides for stringent penalties in case of non-filing of balance sheet and annual return every year, which will act as deterrent to shell companies. This would facilitate ease of doing business, and result in harmonization with Sebi, RBI (Reserve Bank of India) and rectify certain omissions and inconsistencies in the existing Act.

E-cigarettes

The government is examining the legal implications and health effects of e-cigarettes.

The Health Ministry has constituted three groups to study the various aspects of e-cigarettes. One was to study the legal implications of this e-nicotine drug induce system, another was to go into the health effects and the other was to study advocacy.


What are e-cigarettes?


An electronic cigarette (or e-cig) is a battery-powered vaporizer that mimics tobacco smoking. It works by heating up a nicotine liquid, called “juice.” Nicotine juice (or e-juice) comes in various flavors and nicotine levels. e-liquid is composed of five ingredients: vegetable glycerin (a material used in all types of food and personal care products, like toothpaste) and propylene glycol (a solvent most commonly used in fog machines.) propylene glycol is the ingredient that produces thicker clouds of vapor.


Proponents of e-cigs argue that the practice is healthier than traditional cigarettes because users are only inhaling water vapor and nicotine.


Need for regulation:
In India smoking devices are easily available through online shopping portals and with little information out in the public domain about the ill-effects of e-cigarettes there is a misconception that it is less harmful than traditional cigarettes.
Smart marketing and inadequate information on the nicotine content in e-cigarettes has created a false impression that these devices are not as harmful as regular cigarettes. In the absence of a regulation the use of e-cigarettes has grown; they are easily accessible to even the non smokers.
Along with the traditional cigarette manufacturing, there is a parallel industry of e-cigarette like devices growing in India, which is under-regulated.


Harmful effects of e cigarettes:

Although they are generally thought to be less harmful than smoking real cigarettes, because they contain no tobacco, they do still contain the addictive chemical nicotine. Scientists have confirmed that e-cigarette vapours to contain the same potentially dangerous chemicals.


Research has also confirmed that e-cigarette vapours contain free radical chemicals previously thought only to be found in tobacco cigarettes and air pollutants. Free radicals are highly reactive agents that can damage DNA or other molecules within cells, resulting in cell death. Cigarette smoke contains 1014 free radicals per puff. Though e-cigarette vapour contains far fewer free radicals than cigarette smoke – one percent as much – their presence in e-cigarettes still suggests potential health risks.

Central Road Fund (Amendment) Bill, 2017

The Lok Sabha has passed the Central Road Fund (Amendment) Bill, 2017. The Bill seeks to amend the Central Road Fund Act, 2000, through which the cess levied and collected on high speed petrol and diesel is distributed for development of rural roads, national highways, railways, state roads and border area roads.

Features of the Bill:


Inclusion of inland waterways: The Bill defines national waterways as those that have been declared as ‘national waterways’ under the National Waterways Act, 2016. Currently, 111 waterways are specified under the 2016 Act.


Utilisation of fund: Under the 2000 Act, the fund can be utilised for various road projects including: (i) national highways, (ii) state roads including roads of inter-state and economic importance, and (iii) rural roads. The Bill provides that in addition to these the fund will also be used for the development and maintenance of national waterways.


Powers of central government: Under the Act, the central government has the power to administer the fund. The central government will make decisions on the: (i) investments on national highways and expressways projects, (ii) raising funds for the development and maintenance of national highways, and rural roads, and (iii) disbursement of funds for national highways, state roads and rural roads. The Bill provides that central government will make all the above decisions for national waterways as well.


Allocation of cess: Under the Act, the cess on high speed diesel oil and petrol is allocated towards different types of roads. The Bill seeks to decrease the allocation of cess towards the development and maintenance of national highways from 41.5% to 39%. It allocates 2.5% of the cess towards the development and maintenance of national waterways.


About Central Road Fund:


The Central Road Fund was established by the government as per the Central road fund act 2000 to fund the development and maintenance of National Highways, State Highways and Rural roads.


In order to mobilise the fund, the Central Road Fund Act 2000 proposed to levy and collect by way of cess, a duty of excise and duty of customs on petrol and high speed diesel oil. The fund is utilised for the development and maintenance of National highways, State roads, Rural roads and for provision of road overbridges/under bridges and other safety features at unmanned Railway Crossings.

IIM Bill - Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

Parliament has unanimously passed the IIM Bill, 2017 that grants the Indian Institutes of Management the power to grant degrees instead of post-graduate diplomas.

Bill features :
IIMs would become institutes of national importance with power to grant degrees.
The boards of the institutes are proposed to be vested with full autonomy including the power to appoint chairperson as well as the director.
Power to review the performance of each IIM is also vested with the board.
Board to be the principal executive body of each institute.
Chairperson of the board will be appointed by the board for a period of four years.
Director of each IIM will be appointed by the board for a period of five years via a search-cum-selection panel. Once the bill becomes an act, the board is not required to seek the human resource development ministry’s approval for this.
The Board will have the power to remove a director.
The IIMs’ accounts will be audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.
There will be an IIM Coordination Forum to be notified by the central government. It shall function as an advisory body and will be headed by an eminent person.
The bill says the central government may frame rules to give additional powers and duties to the IIM Boards and, it will decide the terms and condition of service of directors although the appointment will be made by the board. It will notify the IIM coordination forum to be headed by a eminent person.
All rules and regulations framed either by the central government or the IIM Boards will need to be tabled in parliament.

science & tech

‘AIs won’t really rule us, they will be very interested in us’
The pioneering computer scientist prophesies that machines smarter than humans will emerge in the next two decades

Juergen Schmidhuber, 54, is a computer scientist who works on Artificial Intelligence (AI).

one of the pioneers in improving neural networks, his techniques, the best known being Long Short-Term Memory, have been incorporated in speech translation software in smartphones. In this interview, he speaks of developments in AI, why the fear of job loss due to AI is unfounded, and his work. Excerpts:

What is the most exciting AI project under way in the world?

I would be quite biased because I’d say what’s happening in my lab is the most exciting.

My goal remains the same as it has been for a very long time: to build a general-purpose AI that can learn to do multiple things. It must learn the learning algorithm itself (that can help it master chess as well as drive a car, for instance) — true meta-learning, as it’s called. We’ve been at it for 30 years and it’s getting more feasible over time. On this journey, we are producing less sophisticated but more useful stuff, like smartphones.

How impressed are you by AlphaGo, a creation of Google DeepMind, that now beats human Go champions?

DeepMind is a company that was heavily shaped by some of my students. Shane (Legg), one of the co-founders, was among those who worked in my lab. It’s great that you can play Go better than any human. On the other hand, the basic techniques (in making AlphaGo) date back to the previous millennium. In the ’90s, there was a self-teaching neural network by IBM that learned to play backgammon by playing against itself. So board games are kind of simple in the sense that they can use a ‘feed-forward’ network. (These are layers of neural networks arranged to mimic neurons in the brain. The programe makes decisions based on how information moves up these layers.) There are no feedback layers and they cannot ‘learn’ sequences. These principles were developed when computers were 100,000 times more expensive than today. It’s great that Go (like chess), which is so popular in Asia, is among those that machines play better.

What is Long Short-Term Memory?

It’s a technique in speech recognition and translation that many major companies — Facebook, Amazon, Samsung — are using and is based on work that we did in the early 1990s. It’s a recurrent network, a little bit like in the brain. The brain has a hundred billion neurons and each is connected to 10,000 others. That’s a million-billion connections and each of them has a ‘strength’ that indicates how much one neuron influences another.

Then there are feedback connections that make it (the network) like a general-purpose computer and you can feed in videos through the input neurons, acoustics through microphones, tactile information through sensors, and some are output neurons that control finger muscles. Initially all connections are random and the network, perceiving all this, outputs rubbish. There’s a difference between the rubbish that comes out and the translated sentence that should have come out. We measure the difference and translate it into a change of all these connection strengths so that they become ‘better connections’ and learn through the Long Short-Term Memory algorithm to adjust internal connections to understand the structure of, say, Polish, and learn to translate between them.

Given that self-driving cars are a reality, do we need AI machines to be regulated or do you think it could kill innovation?

Self-driving cars are now so well understood that you can, in certain countries, take some of them out on the roads. It’s old hat. They have been there since the 1980s and were implemented in the Autobahns. They went at 180 km/h, or thrice the speed of the Google cars, and went from Munich to Denmark on the highways. Back then, computers were 100,000 times more expensive. Now, thanks to Deep Learning (a way of organising neural networks and the zeitgeist of the field), pattern recognition since 2011 has vastly improved.

But what about people in self-driven cars who could make mistakes?

The nature of AI is that it doesn’t know. Machine learning is all about failing and learning from failure. It’s not like the perfect robots of Isaac Asimov stories. Were a car to sense a situation that could potentially lead to an accident, 99% of the time it’s going to brake hard. There will be flashing lights that will warn people in cars behind you that this car is going to brake hard and you should do the predictable thing of braking hard too and not swerving blindly. In some situations, that too may not be the perfect thing… maybe there’s another way to save a life by doing something really complicated. However, if there can’t be a fix to self-driven cars to address this and it leads to, say, one life lost per 100 million per day as opposed to 10 as of today (where manual cars are the norm), then lawmakers would move to make it mandatory to have only self-driven cars on the road. There could still be mistakes, but the law of large numbers says that on average, there will be fewer deaths from self-driven cars. This is also provided, of course, that insurance companies and such carmakers aren’t driven to bankruptcy. If better traffic is key to the better running of society, then systems will shift accordingly. In that sense, it’s no different from what has happened in the past too.

What about AI’s potential to destroy jobs?

Interestingly, people have predicted similar things for decades — for example, in industrial robots. Volkswagen and other companies had hundreds of millions of workers who lost jobs to robots. But look at countries with a high per capita presence of industrial robots — Japan, South Korea, Germany. They all have low unemployment rates. This was because lots of new, unanticipated jobs came up. Who could have thought there’s a job where people make money being YouTube bloggers? Or selling Apps? Some make a lot of money, some don’t, but it’s still a lot of new jobs. It’s easy to see what jobs will be lost but harder to predict what new ones will emerge. Societies must think of alternative ways to adjust to these new realities. There was a referendum on universal basic income in Switzerland. It failed, but still got 30% of the vote. You wait another 20 years and it could be 55%.

Do you think it will be possible for AI systems to ‘learn’ ethical and moral codes?

Anything that can be taught via demonstration can be taught to an AI in principle. How are we teaching our kids to be valuable members of society? We let them play around, be curious and explore the world. We punish them, for instance, when they take the lens and burn ants. And they learn to adopt our ethical and moral values. The more situations they are exposed to, the closer they come to understanding values. We cannot prove or predict that they are always going to do the right thing, especially if they are smarter than the parents. Einstein’s parents couldn’t predict what he would do, and some of the things he discovered can be used for evil purposes. But this is a known problem. In an artificial neural network, it’s easier to see, in hindsight, what went wrong. For instance, in a car crash, we can find which neuron influenced the other. If it’s a huge network, it will take some time, but it’s possible. With humans you can’t do this. You can only ask them and very often, they will lie. Artificial systems, in that sense, are under control.

Do you believe in the concept of super intelligence (when AI evolves to a level that far exceeds human capability)? Is there a date by which, given current progress, machines could ‘rule us’?

I would be very surprised if, within a few decades, there are no AIs smarter than ourselves. They won’t really rule us. They will be very interested in us — ‘artificial curiosity’ as the term goes. That’s among the areas I work on. As long as they don’t understand life and civilisation, they will be super interested in us and their origins. In the long run, they will be much more interested in others of their kind and it will expand to wherever there are resources. There’s a billion times more sunlight in space than here. They will emigrate and be far away from humans. They will have very little, if anything, to do with humans. It won’t be like a (dystopian) Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

But can we go extinct or be exterminated like Neanderthals?

No. So, people are much smarter than, say, frogs, but there are lots of frogs out there, right? Just because you are smarter than them doesn’t mean you have any desire to exterminate them. As humans, we are responsible for the accidental extermination of a lot of species that we also don’t know exist. That is true, but at least you won’t have the silly conflict of Schwarzenegger movies, or like The Matrix, where bad AIs live off the energy of human brains. That, incidentally, is the stupidest plot ever.

Thirty watts (what a brain produces) and the power plant used to keep the human alive is much more. When should you be afraid of anybody? When you share goals and have to fight for it. That’s why the worst enemy of a man is another man. However, the best friend of another man is also a man or a woman. You can collaborate or compete. An extreme example of collaboration may be love — that is shared goals towards having a family. The other extreme could be war. AI will be interested in other AI, like frogs are interested in other frogs.

What’s the limitation to AI now — code or hardware?

It’s a little bit about code although the basic ideas are from the previous millennium. We have some breakthroughs but the dominant theme is that hardware is getting cheaper every year. In 30 years, it’s going to be a factor of a million. Soon we will have a small device that computes as much as the human brain.

In our lab, we’ve profited a lot from hardware built earlier by companies such as NVidia. They didn’t care for Deep Learning and only about selling graphics processors to the video game industry. But then it turned out that these were exactly what was needed to make neural networks fast.

Security

Seeing through a glass darkly
To deal with the terror threat, there must be far greater sharing of intelligence among agencies worldwide

Yet another anniversary of the November 26, 2008 terror attacks on multiple targets in Mumbai has come and gone. Much has changed since then and terror has evolved into an even more dangerous phenomenon. Recent variants represent a paradigmatic change in the practice of violence.




A different genre

It is difficult to recognise the new generation of terrorists as a mere extension of the earlier lot of radical Islamist terrorists who were influenced by the teachings of the Egyptian thinker, Sayyid Qutb, and the Palestinian Islamist preacher, Abdullah Azzam, and adopted the practical theology of the Afghan warlord, Jalaluddin Haqqani. There is less theology today and the new age terrorist seems to belong to an altogether different genre of terrorism.



This is not to say that the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai were not different in the methodology and the tactics used in the September 11, 2001 attack in New York City.

Nevertheless, the spate of recent attacks in Europe and parts of Asia, from 2015 to 2017 — beginning with the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris in January 2015, the major incidents at Brussels and Istanbul Ataturk airports as well as the Bastille Day attack in Nice, France, all in 2016, to the string of attacks in London, Stockholm, Barcelona and New York, in 2017 — are very different in structure and the morphology from attacks of an earlier period.

Standing out from the crowd

A large number of terror attacks in the past three years have been attributed to the handiwork of the Islamic State (IS), and reveal its leaning towards the “nihilism” of Sayyid Qutb. It is this which distinguishes the IS from many of the other radical Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda and its affiliates. The IS’s recruitment techniques, especially its ability to proselytize over the Internet, including “direct to home jihad” as also its more sanguinary brand of violence, set it apart from earlier variants of radical Islamist terror.



Even while the IS has gained a great deal of prominence due to its brand of violence, other terror networks have continued to be no less active. For example, al-Qaeda and its affiliates. The Boko Haram in Africa has been responsible for more killings than most people would realize.

Closer home, the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network have carried out several spectacular attacks inside Afghanistan. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi have carried out several attacks inside Pakistan.

  Pakistan provides the wherewithal and the support to terror outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad to launch well-planned attacks on Indian targets.



Most of these outfits continue to adopt earlier methodologies. These have proved no less effective than those followed by the IS. The terror attack on a mosque in North Sinai, Egypt in November this year, which killed over 230 persons, is one such example. In December, the TTP was responsible for a terror attack on an agricultural training institute in Peshawar, Pakistan. Differences among terror outfits, do not, however, preclude a complicated pattern of relationships when it comes to operational aspects.

Incorrect perception

Understanding the constantly altering trajectory of terror is important before charges of intelligence failure are levelled. It has become axiomatic to attack agencies of intelligence failure whenever a major terror attack takes place. This need not be the case in every instance.

The usual charge leveled is of the failure of intelligence agencies “to connect the dots”.

Most often, this is not true. There are many other reasons for adequate intelligence not being available to prevent a terror attack.
The danger is that a wrong diagnosis could prevent further improvements in intelligence collection and analysis.



One common fallacy is that intelligence agencies have remained static, are rooted in the past, and that their personnel are inadequately trained to handle current day intelligence tasks. While there is room for improvement, it is a mistake to presume that intelligence agencies have not made rapid progress and kept up with the times. Intelligence agencies today are well-versed in the latest techniques of intelligence gathering and analysis. Agencies obtain vast amounts of information from both human and technical intelligence, not excluding signal intelligence and electronic intelligence, intelligence from satellites and photo reconnaissance, etc. This is apart from open source intelligence.



Agencies employ data mining techniques and are familiar with pattern recognition software. Today, noise and signals constitute valuable meta-data. Analysing meta-data has produced more precise information and intelligence than is possibly envisaged, and agencies well recognise the value and utility of this.



In addition, intelligence agencies have become highly adept in monitoring and exploiting open source material. Mapping and analysis of social networks is today a critical aspect of their work. This is especially useful when it comes to unearthing covert terror networks. Many intelligence agencies today have an extensive database of several thousands of terrorists and potential terrorists.



Admittedly, intelligence agencies, like many other organisations, are risk-prone. They do make mistakes. Intelligence analysts, like analysts in other fields, are particularly vulnerable. Problems also arise from inadequate sharing of intelligence across institutions and countries. All these, however, are a far cry from the charge of an inability or failure “to connect the dots”.



The real problem is that when dealing with terrorism and terror networks, no two situations in the actual world are identical. The nature of threats is such that they continue to evolve all the time. Both the 2001 terror attack in New York and the November 2008 attack in Mumbai were one of a kind with few parallels at the time. Anticipating an attack of this nature remains in the area of an “intelligence gap” rather than an “intelligence failure”. Most experts explain an intelligence gap as one denoting an absence of intelligence output while an intelligence failure is one where, based on available evidence, no warning was issued.



Newer challenges

One of the major challenges that all intelligence agencies face is a qualitative understanding of the newer, and many post-modern threats. These newer generation threats, including those by terror groups and outfits, often lie “below the radar” or beyond the horizon. Anticipating such threats and their nature requires intelligence agencies to be constantly ahead of the curve. Anticipating newer threats is only partly facilitated by today’s technical advances such as new computing and communication technologies. However, these alone are not often enough to meet today’s intelligence needs.

As problems become more complicated, and as terror networks become even more sophisticated, there has to be recognition that the situation demands better understanding of factors that are at work. Levelling mere charges or accusations against intelligence agencies of a failure to anticipate an attack by not “connecting the dots” could be misleading, if not downright dangerous. All professional analysts in whichever field they operate face the same problem as intelligence agencies, and vividly outlined by David Omand, a former U.K. Intelligence and Security Coordinator as “seeing through a glass darkly when the information available to them is incomplete or partially hidden”.



Alongside this, and to fill the gap, there is a case for far greater sharing of intelligence and information among intelligence agencies worldwide than it exists at present. This is important to prevent another terror attack on the lines of the Mumbai 2008 attack. It now transpires that certain foreign intelligence agencies had additional information about the possible attack which was not shared in time, and which led to an intelligence gap. This could have been avoided.

More important, such a situation should never arise in the future. Terror and terrorism is a universal phenomenon. Every nation is bound to share the intelligence available with it to prevent a possible major terror attack.

M.K. Narayanan is a former National Security Adviser and a former Governor of West Bengal

Ind- US relations | President Donald Trump’s new national security strategy

China a threat, India an ally: Trump
U.S. security strategy hails New Delhi’s emergence as a ‘leading global power’

VARGHESE K. GEORGE


WASHINGTON


President Donald Trump’s new national security strategy, announced on Monday, promised support for India’s emergence as a “leading global power,” while identifying China, Russia and Islamism as main threats.

“We welcome India’s emergence as a leading global power and stronger strategic and defence partner,” the U.S. strategy document said.

Enhancing India’s global standing from being a ‘balancing power’ to be a ‘leading power’ has been a stated strategic objective of the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

More cooperation

“We will seek to increase quadrilateral cooperation with Japan, Australia, and India... We will expand our defence and security cooperation with India, a major defence partner of the United States, and support India’s growing relationships throughout the region,” said the strategy document, finalised after months of internal deliberations. India finds a mention as a partner in Mr. Trump’s plans for South and Central Asia and Indo-Pacific, while China is named as a threat in both sections. The document said America “will help South Asian nations maintain their sovereignty as China increases its influence in the region.”

Many countries in the Indo-Pacific were looking to the U.S. for leadership even as “Chinese dominance risks diminishing the sovereignty of many states in the region,” it noted.

China and Russia, it says, “are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.”

The document also underscores the warning to Pakistan. “We will press Pakistan to intensify its counter-terrorism efforts, since no partnership can survive a country’s support for militants and terrorists who target a partner’s own service members and officials,” it said.

E- way bill |20th dec 2018 |the Hindu Editorial | Gs 3 current affairs

E-way bill

What is E-way bill & Rules to generate the E- way bill ? 

E way bill is an electronically generated document, required to be generated for the movement of goods of more than 50,000 INR from one place to other.

Required for inter-state and intra-state transportation. under GST regime this is necessary after 1st Feb 2018.

This is a replacement of VAT (value added tax) regime's way bill.
Way bill was a physically generated document necessary for inter-state movement of goods.


Who will have to generate the E-way bill ?

the E- way bill is required to be generated by every registered or unregistered person involved in the goods transfer regime .


The hindu newspaper article - 20th dec 2017 : 

The Centre needs to do more to ease the shift to e-way bills for transport of goods

Already grappling with the "GOODS AND SERVICES TAX TRANSITION" Businessman are now more anxious about how the E-way bill will roll out.

Every goods moving more than 10 kms will require prior registration and generation of an e-way bill through the GST Network, which will be valid for varying duration depending on the distance traveled.


The problem is that few states have implemented this system and few hasn't . This poses an interim headache for firms operating across States, as they will now face differing compliance requirements for inter-State trade and intra-State trade, depending on when individual States launch their own e-way bill systems.


The exempted ones - Over 150 items of common use, including LPG cylinders, vegetables, food grain and jewelry, will be exempt from such transport permits, which can be checked by designated tax officials by intercepting a transporting vehicle. Goods moved on non-motorised conveyance, such as carts, have been left out.


Why the gov is concerned ?

In October, the GST Council had decided to introduce e-way bills in a staggered manner from January 1, with a nationwide roll-out on April 1, 2018


After a monthly ₹90,000 crore-plus inflow in the GST’s first three months, revenue in October plummeted to just over ₹83,000 crore.


With States claiming a revenue shortfall of about ₹40,000 crore so far under the GST, the Centre, which has to fill that gap, is also feeling the pinch.

Way forward :

Budget is less than 2 months now and economic advisors feels that with the rollout of E-way bill, the nation's economy will again fell a bump in tax collection.

Plugging revenue leakages is essential, and encouragingly, Karnataka’s e-way bill experience in the first month saw very few glitches.

Given industry’s nervousness, the government must simplify the onerous rules proposed for e-way bills (a one-day validity for distances up to 100 km, for instance), ensure that the IT backbone is robust, and make inspections the exception, not the norm.