by Editor | Feb 20, 2023 | Business Ideas, Employment, Entrepreneurship, Private Jobs, Social Entrepreneur
Entrepreneurial activity has percolated through every sphere of human endeavor. Of late the students coming from Madrassas or Islamic seminaries, those who mostly look for the jobs in mosques and seminaries as Imams, Muazzins (those calling faithful for prayers through reciting azan), etc. have been currently mooted to rope in for business trainings in West Bengal by Maeeshat Foundation – a Mumbai based NGO.
The Foundation has floated the idea of pushing such youthful Islamic scholars in business activities – those who couldn’t find employment in mosques and seminaries due to limited vacancies available. It looks forward to impart crash courses on entrepreneurial activities of varied shades to them.
Danish Reyaz – the director of Maeeshat Academy (Mumbai) and popular among theocrats in the city as an emerging educational elite, says: “These youth who lie idle due to lack of job usually fall prey to illicit temptations and at times cause embarrassing situation for their parents and seniors. It also gives bad name to the institutions from where they have acquired degrees. In the end, it is Islam that bears the brunt of their trespass”
“In the past, a few among them turn out to be loose cannons and involved in nefarious activities in order to earn money through illegal channels despite knowing well that Islam prohibits earning through this route.”
Social activist, politician and president of Islam Gymkhana Mumbai Advocate Yusuf Abrahani, believes religious teachings doesn’t exclude modern education and commerce. “It’s a painful irony that most of us think that religion is solely restricted to morality and prayers, but the fact is that the Islamic teachings include trade, commerce, modern education, and also guides faithful in multifarious ways to develop scientific temperament.”
Advocate Yusuf Abrahani says Google has launched an app called Coursera with tagline – ‘Learn without limits’, which claims over three thousand courses, specializations and professional certificates that too in throwaway prices. Those interested could get their desired course from the site too.
Besides, the Imams will get crash course on modern education, science, English and mathematics in order to enable them to teach children and thus get fairly remunerated.
Training to sharpen skill
Danish says, “The motive behind this is to arrange training workshops for Imams in order to teach them English, Hindi, Mathematics, and Science up to the 5th-grade level so that they are capable of providing tuition services in mosque itself.”
This will help in connecting Muslim families to mosques and getting qualified teachers inside the mosque. This will also be a very reliable source of income for the Imaams. Additionally, the workshops will also provide training on managing small stores of provisions of daily needs like miswaak, soap, toothpaste, dates, honey, etc.
This will include training on inventory management, accounting, and customer service. The workshops will be conducted by experienced professionals with expertise in these areas.
Danish says, “We have proposed to conduct these workshops at locations convenient for Imams, such as the Mosques or nearby community centers or Schools. The workshops will be conducted on weekends or other convenient days and times, to minimize disruption to Imams’ religious chore.”
There are a plethora of Muslim habitations across the country that reel through worst poverty, such as Malda, Murshidabad, Dinajpur, Nadia in West Bengal and similar places elsewhere where this project will trigger hope for the teeming hopeless. The holy month of Ramadan is merely sixty days away and this would be an opportune moment to learn the tricks of the trade and start the work.
M Azizur Rehman, director Tarbiyah Cambridge International School in Malda laments, “Due to immense poverty the Imams in this region at times couldn’t even afford two times meal. This is quite heart-wrenching. There’s a great need to establish Maeeshat Foundation’s WB chapter to address the problem of our area.”
It’s not only Bengal but similar poverty stricken pockets across India need the Foundation’s attention.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Corporate Jobs, Employment, Investing, Marketing Basics, Markets, Online Marketing, Private Jobs, Technology, Venture Capital
New Delhi : Singapore-based social media platform BIGO Technology on Monday announced an investment of over $100 million to expand its business in India in the next three years, creating nearly 1,000 jobs.
As part of the investment, the internet company will start a regional centre by the end of this year in the country that will create employment opportunities for more than 1,000 tech professionals.
According to Jason Hu, Chief Technology Officer, BIGO Technology, as India is the second-largest market for smartphones amid growing internet infrastructure and has a huge young population, the company has taken the decision.
“India will act as a complementary centre to Singapore’s Research and Development Centre. This step is the first-of-its-kind for BIGO, and a testament to the growing need for overseas centres as our user base grows,” Hu said in a statement.
With over 40 patents in VoIP/video-related technology and over 60 patents under the process of application, BIGO Technology is one of the major companies globally in the field of app development and publishing of apps.
The company, which has built a strong team of over 100 Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts and engineers, recently received series D funding of $272 million.
In addition to the India Centre, BIGO would open two more regional research centres – one in the US and another one in MENA-Europe region by the end of this year.
The company’s live-streaming app BIGO LIVE currently has a registered user base of 200 million globally.
Another short video app from the company called “LIKE” has hit 20 million daily active users around the globe.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Corporate Jobs, Employment, Markets, Online Marketing, Private Jobs, Technology
Bengaluru : Infosys is partnering with the Community College of Rhode Island to set up a digital economy aspirations lab for training students in the US for digital jobs, said the software major on Wednesday.
“Our digital innovation and design centre at Providence in Rhode Island will help bridge the gap for design and human-centric skills and provide digital technologies to our clients,” said the city-based IT firm in a statement here.
The centre offers designers and design graduates training in digital skills, exposure to systems, platforms, strategy and organisation domains to make them employable in a digital world.
The $11-billion IT behemoth has so far hired 100 techies as part of its goal to create 500 jobs in the northeastern state by 2022.
“We have hired 7,600 American workers since spring 2017 as part of our commitment to speed up digital innovation of enterprise clients in the US,” said the statement.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, Corporate Jobs, Economy, Employment, Finance, Government Jobs, News, Politics, Private Jobs
By Saurabh Katkurwar,
New Delhi : Amid the controversy over the withholding of a report on the country’s unemployment situation, the government has cited data from provident fund records, Income Tax filings and the National Pension System (NPS), besides a possible upswing in the informal sector to show generation of crores of new jobs.
However, this does not mean there is an increase in the jobs, experts say.
During his reply on the motion of thanks on the President’s address in the Lok Sabha on Thursday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said new jobs were created in the unorganised sector, which accounts for 80-85 per cent employment, citing an increase in the sale of commercial vehicles, infrastructure building and housing activities.
He said about 1.8 crore people had enrolled in the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) in the past 15 months, and 64 per cent of them, who were below the age of 28 were first-time employees.
Modi also cited the data showing increase in the registration of employees under the National Pension Scheme (NPS) from 65 lakh in March 2014 to 1.2 crore till October 2018.
Considering the EPF enrolments as a reflector of job creation is not correct as it can be formalisation of informal jobs, said Mahesh Vyas, Chief Executive Officer of Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), a think tank.
“When a person enrols for the EPF, it does not necessarily mean that the person has got a job. It is quite likely that you have enrolled for the the EPF for the first time though you had a job for a long time,” he said.
“The law requires an employer with 20 people or more to register with the EPFO. If a firm has got 19 employees till yesterday and today 20th person joins in, then all 20 get enrolled for the first time. So it looks like employment has gone up by 20 when actually it is one.”
Another expert, who did not wish to be named, said there cannot be a correlation between EPF enrolment and job creation “since it has so many moving parts and variables, so one could interpret it differently”.
Modi also had said that new 6.35 lakh new non-corporate tax payers such as doctors must have provided jobs in past four years. The expert called it “incomprehensible” in the absence of the source of the data.
In his speech, the Prime Minister said he expected over 1.25 crore people have got jobs in the transport sector with the sale of 36 lakh commercial vehicles and 27 lakh auto-rickshaws.
He also cited setting up of two lakh service call centres, infrastructure building, hotel constructions and housing activities for the creation of employment in the country.
Vyas said if a farmer takes up a labourer’ job or moves to driving a truck, it cannot be considered a new job.
According to the CMIE statistics, India’s unemployment rate shot up to 7.4 per cent in December, 2018 and the number of unemployed increased by a substantial 11 million – the highest in 15 months.
Modi had taken a dig at the past governments for failing to establish standard system to tally employment and said only 7-8 sectors were taken into account to arrive at the employment rate when, in reality, jobs were created in 100-odd sectors.
Vyas said Modi was possibly referring to enterprise survey conducted by the Labour Ministry, which is one of the ways to estimate employment.
“That is not the best way to estimate employment and unemployment in country like India. But what the Prime Minister did not mention was that India also conducted a large house-hold survey. It is the most appropriate way of computing it and will capture all sectors. He is partially right but selective in the kind of survey done,” he said.
“The traditional way, which is a good way of calculating employment and unemployment, is the NSSO household survey,” he added.
The National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) report, which the government has withheld, said the unemployment rate was 6.1 per cent in 2017-18, post-demonetisation and was at its highest level since 1972-73 – the period since when the jobs data is comparable.
(Saurabh Katkurwar can be contacted at saurabh.k@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate Jobs, Economy, Employment, Government Jobs, News, Politics, Private Jobs
Subhash Chandra Garg
By Manish Gupta and Vishav,
New Delhi : Asserting India’s fast economic growth is not without generation of jobs, Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg said the country actually faces shortage of capital more than the scarcity of jobs.
While most Indians have a job and are earning something, the problem is that many of them may be earning lower wages or may not be employed according to their qualifications, he said.
“In fact, we have the constraint that we don’t have as much capital and funds to invest so that we can do more (create more employment). The government has invested Rs 3.5 lakh crore in capital expenditure. If we have more funds, we can invest more,” Garg told IANS in an interview.
He said generating jobs relates to economic activity, which is producing goods and services, and the surest ways to generate employment is to make the economy grow and ensure the government takes up more programs of investment in the country.
“The government has carried out innumerable programmes of investment in the rural areas whether it is the ‘Prime Minister’s Awas Yojana’ where crores of houses are being constructed or large programmes of roads in rural areas and National Highway. Every house results into employment generation. There is a large programme for expanding the LPG connections and fuel delivery. All of them have the potential of generating jobs,” he said.
India is at a developing stage and there is lot of developmental work to do like construction of roads, houses and infratsructural facilities.
“It can provide a lot of demand for many, many years to come,” he said while referring to the demand for workers in the construction industry.
The construction labourer or the mistry, too, has got skills to get employed in any kind of construction work and get a job.
“If the economic activity continues, these jobs will remain. We are scratching just the surface. We need to create thousands of cities. The city infratsructure is nowhere,” Garg added.
The Secretary said India has had the highest economic growth in the last four-five years and the growth was accompanied with job generation.
Rejecting the criticism that India was experiencing jobless growth, Garg said it would only be true if the corporate profits were increasing very high compared to the proportion available to the workers. And, the growth in corporate profits was very normal, he said.
“It’s difficult to come across people who are literally unemployed. It may be a case of lower wages, more than the case of unemployment. Raising economic activity through the private sector and via government expenditure should give boost employment,” he said.
(Manish Gupta can be contacted at manish.g@ians.in and Vishav at vishav@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate finance, Corporate Governance, Corporate Jobs, Employment, Private Jobs
New Delhi : With middle-class apathy on the rise, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley may double the income tax exemption threshold for the salaried from the present Rs 2.5 lakhs to Rs 5 lakhs while also reinstating tax-free status for medical expenses and transport allowance, providing some relief to the section already under strain since demonetisation.
Though propriety demands that not too many policy changes should be made in a vote on account budget, the BJP government is apprehensive of the possibility of a middle-class backlash in the impending general elections.
Hence the plan to streamline tax slabs, which in any case are in consonance with the coming Direct Tax Code, government sources told IANS.
The problem that may manifest itself is that the Union Budget will precede the unveiling of the Direct Tax Code Report on February 28. Tinkering with the tax rates before the release of the report will make it contentious.
The new Direct Tax Code will try to bring more assessees into the tax net, make the system more equitable for different classes of taxpayers, make businesses more competitive by lowering the corporate tax rate and phase out the remaining tax exemptions that lead to litigation. It will also redefine key concepts such as income and scope of taxation
At the moment, income up to Rs 2.5 lakh is exempt from personal income tax. Income between Rs 2.5-5 lakh attracts 5 per cent tax (see table), while that between Rs 5-10 lakh is levied with 20 per cent tax. Income above Rs 10 lakh is taxed at 30 per cent. Rs 5 lakh exemption is only applicable to individuals of over 80 years.
Also, tax free medical expenses up to Rs 15,000 and transport allowance up to Rs 19,200 per annum has been replaced with a Rs 20,000 standard deduction for those earning above Rs 5 lakh last year. This will benefit tax payers to the tune of Rs 12,500 annually which is not much but can be viewed as a sentiment buster.
A fatigued BJP dispensation realises that as the incumbent it will have to fight off varied challenges.
With acute farm distress, middle class backlash, massive spike in unemployment data and rising Dalit anger taking its toll on the BJP, it would like to unleash a slew of course correctives. The 10 percent quota for upper castes was part of this process to appease vote banks. But this was an executive decision adopted by parliament, tinkering with the tax structure similarly is a legislative decision.
Income Tax Slabs for Individual Tax Payers & HUF (Less Than 60 Years Old) for FY 2018-19 –
Income Tax Slabs Tax Rate
Income up to Rs 2,50,000* No tax
Income from Rs 2,50,000 – Rs 5,00,000 5%
Income from Rs 5,00,000 – 10,00,000 20%
Income more than Rs 10,00,000 30%
—IANS
