by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, News
New Delhi : India and Kazakhstan on Wednesday discussed expanding cooperation in hydrocarbons and nuclear energy sectors, as well as expanding the International North-South Transport Corridor by linking it to the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran rail link, an official statement said here on Wednesday.
These and other issues figured at the two-day meeting of the Inter-Governmental Commission (IGC) with Kazakhstan, co-chaired by Petroleum Minister Dharmendra that ended on Wednesday in the central Asian nation’s capital at Astana, an Indian Petroleum Ministry release said.
The Kazakhstan delegation to the talks was led by its Energy Minister Kanat Bozumbayev.
The two sides discussed “ideas for stepping up the cooperation in energy sector, trade, economic, investment, transport and connectivity, agriculture, information technology, space, healthcare and cultural spheres between the two countries,” the statement said.
“Both leaders agreed to collaborate in the oil and gas sector for mutual benefit and further strengthen the engagement by addressing issues of concerns to Indian investors, particularly in Kazakh hydrocarbon sector,” it said.
“They explored possibility of expanding the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) by linking it to the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran rail link,” it added.
This transport corridor is a 7,200 km multi-mode network of ship, rail and road for transporting cargo between India, Russia, Iran, Europe and Central Asia. It mainly involves moving freight from India, Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia via this network.
“Kazakhstan is strategically located between Europe and Asia and offers enormous business opportunities for investments. The country is rich in mineral resources, such as uranium, oil and natural gas,” the statement said.
Bozumbayev invited Indian investments in various sectors, especially in hydrocarbons, infrastructure, nuclear energy, co-production of films, food processing and information technology, it added.
Pradhan was accompanied by a delegation of officials from various ministries, the Railway Board and the state-run oil explorer’s foreign arm ONGC Videsh Ltd.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Lenin Babu,
India has made significant progress in achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by UN member-states in 2015 but finances remain an issue, a study of the country’s Voluntary National Review (VNR) submitted earlier this year indicates.
India has said that despite its significant efforts toward mobilising domestic resources, it is unlikely to gather sufficient revenues for achieving the SDGs. Availability of finances would be a key determining factor for attaining SDGs. In this context, taking benefit of the dynamic relations between the SDGs, the developing countries can harness other financial sources such as climate finances.
A review of the VNRs of Bangladesh and Nepal also indicates significant progress being made in achieving the SDGs, but here too, inadequacy of finances appears to be a limiting factor. Bangladesh has indicated it may require around $1.5 trillion worth of additional resources to fully implement SDGs. Nepal, with an annual budget of $9,990 million in 2016-17, has clearly expressed its limitations in meeting the SDG targets.
The decreasing flow of Overseas Development Aid (ODA), including grants, loans and technical assistance, from 85.7 percent of the 1999/2000 commitments to only 55.4 percent in 2014-15, contributed to 2.6 percent of GDP in 2014-15 and is, therefore, grossly inadequate for meeting the SDGs.
The nature of the SDGs was evolved in such a manner that the advancement of one goal may lead to progress in other goals as well.
For instance, Goal 2 — end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture — will have a direct bearing on Goal 3 — ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages. Therefore, financial commitments by the developed countries under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), through institutions like the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), Adaptation Fund (AF) and the latest Green Climate Fund (GEF) can offer some solace.
In July 2017, India nominated the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) as the National Implementing Entity for the overall project monitoring and implementation of multilateral climate change funding. NABARD, as the name suggests, is active in bringing transformation in climate-sensitive farm-based economic sectors.
Shifting away from traditional agencies of funding and by opting for such an action-research organisation, India has paved the way for successful pathways for convergence with the SDGs of measures to cope with climate change.
Jump-starting its function, NABARD has already facilitated the implementation of a project on resilience in vulnerable tribal areas of Odisha with a $31.63 million outlay funded by the Global Carbon Fund. Though the proposed action is envisaged to reduce vulnerability and mitigate the emission of green house gases, it will help in achieving several SDGs.
It would thus be ideal for all South Asian and other developing countries to plan such a convergence of programmes relating to climate change with the SDGs.
(Lenin Babu is a consultant with Karnataka State Women’s University, Vijayapura. The views expressed are personal. The article is in special arrangement with South Asia Monitor)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, News, Politics
New Delhi : The Indian Railways on Thursday signed two Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with Switzerland for technical cooperation and to establish George Fernandes Institute of Tunnel Technology (GFITT) in Goa.
The MoUs were signed in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Swiss Confederation President Doris Leuthard, who is on a three-day state visit.
According to Railways, the first MoU is between the Railway Ministry and the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport and Communications of the Swiss Confederation for technical cooperation in rail sector.
The MoU is a follow-up on bilateral cooperation in rail sector discussed in the meeting held between Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu and Swiss Ambassador to India Andreas Baum in July 2016.
The MOU aims at cooperation in the areas of traction rolling stock, EMU and train sets, traction propulsion equipments, freight and passenger cars, tilting trains, railway electrification equipments, train scheduling and operation improvement, railway station modernisation, multimodal transport and tunnelling technology.
The second MoU was signed between Konkan Railway Corporation Limited (KRCL) and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich.
It will help Konkan Railway in establishing the GFITT in Goa, especially for assimilation and dissemination of knowledge in the field of tunnelling.
According to Railways, the GFITT aims not only to train Konkan Railways’ own manpower for its tunnelling projects but also wishes to generate qualified and trained personnel for the benefit of other government organisations, private sector and even foreign organisations to bridge the huge gap in levels of knowledge and qualified manpower required to meet the key segment of infrastructure development in India.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
By Arul Louis,
New York : United States President Donald Trump has played the India card against Pakistan in the Afghan great game, but would that become a true trump card for India?
Earlier this week, Trump assigned a “critical” role for India in his country’s South Asia strategy for fighting terrorism, building up a safe Afghanistan and appealed for help, while at the same time warning Pakistan of repercussions for the double game of unleashing terrorists against the Afghans and the US while collecting billions from Washington.
It amounts to threatening Islamabad that Washington could pivot to India if it didn’t stop supporting “the same organisations that try every single day to kill our people”, as Trump put it.
The US move comes as the civilian leadership is unmoored after Nawaz Sharif was removed as Pakistan Prime Minister by a court order.
It also coincides with the simmering military standoff between India and China, the other power with deep involvement in the region and patron of Pakistan. How Beijing reacts would be a factor in the way things work out for India.
There are two other players in the great game, Iran and Russia, with whom the US has a hostile relationship. They can influence developments in Afghanistan and India can play a covert intermediary role between them.
Past US Presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, have in joint statements acknowledged New Delhi’s humanitarian and development assistance to Afghanistan, but what makes Trump’s statement different is that he openly incorporates India into the US strategy for Afghanistan and South Asia and juxtaposes it with his warnings to Pakistan.
Trump putting Pakistan on notice directly marks a change from the tradition of the Cold War that made Pakistan the indisputable and indispensable ally and there is a twist of irony here.
Soon after 9/11 in 2001, as the US prepared to go into Afghanistan, India offered the use of its airbases, but it was turned down and Washington decided to go with Pakistan despite its history of aiding both the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Trump’s request to India was deliberately open-ended, while stressing what is already being done. “We want them to help us more with Afghanistan, especially in the area of economic assistance and development,” he said.
New Delhi has committed more than $3 billion in aid to Kabul and has undertaken important projects like constructing a Parliament house and building major highways in the face of Taliban attacks.
And there limits to what more it can do.
India couldn’t send troops in combat or frontline advisory roles. But it already trains Afghan troops and police in India — and had one time set a target of putting 30,000 of them through the paces. Now, trainers could work in Afghanistan itself, if India chooses and the US agrees to drop its opposition driven by Pakistani sensibilities — but away from areas of direct conflict.
But it could let the US use airbases in India, though Islamabad could ban overflights and a route through Iran is out of question.
India has provided military helicopters to Afghanistan, and General John Nicholson, the US commander in that country, has recently said that Kabul could do with more of them — as well as other military supplies. New Delhi could also increase its role as middleman for supplying Russian weaponry and spares given the Washington-Moscow standoff.
In the development sphere, India could increase — and probably will — its aid to Afghanistan in cash and kind. However, it may not be able to sustain a major expansion of assistance programmes requiring the deployment of Indian citizens because that would likely require security personnel to protect them and risk direct confrontation.
A major component of India’s economic assistance to Afghanistan runs counter to US interests as dictated by the Middle East because it is linked to Iran. India is developing the Chhabahar port in Iran that will provide landlocked Afghanistan an outlet to the world using the Indian-built Delaram-Zaranj highway to the Iran border. In turn, that highway will link to the Ring Road project that connects important Afghan cities.
This will provide a significant boost to Afghanistan’s economy.
At the same time, dire strategic compulsions could make the US overcome its repugnance to Tehran and through India use the Chhabahar link to get supplies into Afghanistan.
What is behind the changed US attitude to Islamabad — and to India as a collateral — and Trump’s own reluctance to further get involved in Afghanistan? It is the influence of the triumvirate of generals, Chief of State John Kelly, Defence Secretary James Mattis and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, with personal connections to the Afghan war.
Kelly lost his son, a Marine officer in Afghanistan to a terrorist roadside bomb, making the war on the Taliban personal. Mattis was the commander of the CENTCOM that oversaw the Afghan war and McMaster as the deputy to the planning commander at the international forces headquarters in Kabul.
Both have seen Islambad’s double game. Already last month, the US withheld $50 million in aid Pakistan citing its failure to rein in the Haqqani terrorist network.
Add to that Trump’s disenchantment with China over its refusal or inability to rein in North Korean taunts and threats.
How will the military and Islamist establishments react? To acquiesce to the US is one option that may be accompanied by the diversion of Islamist terrorists to India.
The other option of defiance would depend on China. Beijing sees Washington-New Delhi ties in the larger picture — its state media has accused the West, specifically the US, of instigating war between it and India.
But Beijing has some limitations here. Beyond making up for the loss of US billions to Pakistan if Islamabad stood firm, China also has strategic interests in the region that could be endangered by terrorism: The One Road One Belt project and the likelihood of terrorism getting a boost in the Uighar region and in Central Asia.
The real danger would be a Pakistani terror push towards India with Chinese backing.
(Arul Louis is the IANS correspondent in New York, from where he covers international relations and the United Nations. He can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Saeed Naqvi,
This is a true story. I am revisiting it with a purpose: So that it collides head on with the nation’s 70th anniversary celebrations. Absolute, undiluted joy on this occasion would require total amnesia of that which accompanied independence: Partition. With some of us, these celebrations will always be tempered with Keats’ great dictum:
“Ay, in the very temple of delight
Veil’d melancholy has her sovran shrine”
Yes, that story, spread over India, Pakistan and the US. Before I share the story with you, let me first spell out the dramatis personae to simplify the narrative.
When the feudal order was breaking down, my family in Mustafabad near Rae Bareli produced two ideological streams. My father came from a line of staid Congressmen. His elder brother, Wasi Naqvi, was the first Congress MLA from Rae Bareli. My earliest memory of political activity in these 70 years is of Feroz Gandhi weaving his parliamentary seat around my uncle’s assembly constituency. This was the seat Indira Gandhi inherited, then Rajiv Gandhi and so on.
My mother’s family was more literary and, after the intellectual fashion of those days, of a more leftist bent. Her only brother Saiyid Mohammad Mehdi, our dearest “Mamujan”, caught the eye of P.C. Joshi, General Secretary of the CPI, who was then stitching together Indian Peoples Theatre and the Progressive Writers Association. Joshi whisked Mamujan away to Mumbai to share a commune with Sardar Jafri, Kaifi Azmi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Krishen Chander and a host of others.
Mamujan’s younger daughter, Shireen, with a degree from JNU, could not ignore her mother’s entreaties and married a cousin, Abbas, a gentleman to boot, settled in Dubai but, alas, of Pakistani parentage. The conditions for the marriage were clear: They would live in a neutral country, not in Pakistan. Shireen obstinately held on to her Indian passport.
Like her father, Shireen is a reader (a book in two days) and taught in a school. Abbas stuck to investment banking.
Their eldest daughter Mariam studied cinema in Canada, fell in love with a Haitian filmmaker and settled in Canada. She was confident that her Indian passport, on which she had travelled to India numerous times, would be part of the record even if she acquired her husband’s nationality.
She had goofed. She had not taken into account the dark shadow that would always hover over her head: Her father’s Pakistani nationality. That fact scratches out her Indianness. This is just a minor consequence of what the leaders of India, Pakistan and Great Britain accomplished 70 years ago. But Shireen had to prepare for worse.
When she was in the family way again, her husband had taken a transfer to the Cayman Islands. For Shireen this was a Godsend in a most unexpected way. In the ninth month of her pregnancy, she would cross over to Florida for greater gynaecological care. This is precisely what Shireen did. So, not only was little Rabab born in a world class hospital, she was doubly blessed on another score. She was born with a priceless document: The American passport. So far so good, until God revealed his enigmatic side: Rabab was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, immobile, comprehensively challenged, condemned to move only on a wheelchair.
Shireen and Rabab were able to travel to Delhi, Lucknow, Kanpur, and Mustafabad once or twice a year until collapse of the global economy in 2008 affected Shireen’s mobility. Frequent travel between Dubai and Delhi became too expensive.
When sorrows come they come in battalions. At 30, Rabab is a big, heavy girl. With tears in her eyes, her Bangladeshi nanny told Shireen that Rabab was too heavy for her to change her clothes, bathe, seat on a wheelchair and be put to bed.
Shireen and Abbas began to share these chores until the next installment of bad news. Shireen was diagnosed with leukemia.
She now faces an existential choice. Her support structure — sister, uncles, cousins, nieces are all in India. She already has an apartment next door to our daughters, her adoring nieces.
Shireen, of course, has an Indian passport and can come and go as she pleases. The problem is with Rabab’s long term visa because it is impossible to cart her back and forth, pointlessly, on a short term visa which, incidentally, is not assured either. One would have thought she can sail in with her American passport. But that is not the case. Her father’s nationality trumps all other considerations. Look, she is on a wheel chair. Doesn’t matter. She is comprehensively challenged. That does not qualify her for an Indian visa. The system is telling an invalid child that her father is her curse.
Lest you begin to chastise the present government for Rabab’s woes, do pause for a moment. The BJP regime came in day before yesterday. Stringent, sometimes inexplicable, laws were put in place by successive Congress governments.
The document that Mariam was handed by the Indian High Commission in Ottawa (when she applied for OCI card some years ago) takes one’s breath away: “As per the MHA’s OCI ruling, no person who, or either of whose parents or grandparents or great grandparents is or has been a citizen of Pakistan, Bangladesh at any time or such other country as the Central government may, by notification in the official gazette, specify, shall be eligible for registration as an overseas citizen of India cardholder. In view of the existing OCI rules, you are not entitled for grant of OCI card facility because one of your parents is of Pakistani origin.” That Mariam was born in India and, before her marriage, travelled extensively on an Indian passport is of no consequence.
I realise more than most people that these are abnormal times. In fact my career as a foreign correspondent would have been impossible without unstinted help, on a personal basis, from friends in the foreign office and in other parts of government. Additionally, visas for friends and relatives, on both sides of the border, were there for the asking. My friends were a strand in the vast mosaic that kept the nation’s sanity. Thanks to them, visiting relatives from Pakistan envied us for the friends we had. “Bhaiyya, can we buy land here?” It all seems so distant in time.
My mother, an eternal optimist, a great favourite of Shireen and Abbas, indeed our entire universe, died three years ago, firm in her belief that sooner or later mists will lift and peace will descend. She would recite the following couplet with wistfulness in the eyes:
“Bada maza us milap mein hai,
Jo sulah ho jaae, jung ho kar?
(There is great pleasure in that harmony
Which descends after a big quarrel.)
Would my mother have been able to sustain that optimism given the state of play on this, our 70th birthday?
(Saeed Naqvi is a commentator on political and diplomatic affairs. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached on saeednaqvi@hotmail.com )
—IANS
