by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Dharmasthala (Karnataka) : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday launched a veiled but scathing attack on the Congress over corruption in development funds, asking which was the “hand” that reduced every rupee of government money to 15 paise before it reached the beneficiary.
Addressing a public rally in Ujjire near Dharmasthala, a temple town in Dakshina Kannada, Modi also took a dig at the opposition for its criticism of demonetisation aimed at making the economy less dependent on cash, saying even parents limit cash given to their children because it spoils them.
Without naming Rajiv Gandhi, Modi recalled that a former Prime Minister had said that from every rupee sanctioned by the government, only 15 paise reached its beneficiary in a village.
“One of the Prime Ministers had said every rupee is reduced to 15 paise when it reaches a village after getting sanctioned from Delhi. Which ‘hand’ reduces the rupee?” he asked, in a sarcastic reference to the Congress election symbol.
He said this was not the case with his government that was committed to devote every rupee and every resource for the welfare of Indians so that fruits of development reached the beneficiaries without any scope of corruption.
Modi said cash currency had always been changing from stone coins, rubber coins, gold and silver coins in the economic history of the world and now it was the time for digital currency in the world. “India cannot lag behind.”
Beginning his address in Kannada, the Prime Minister, at the event organised by the charitable trust of the Sri Kshetra Dharmastala Rural Development Project, gave away RuPay cards to the Self Help Groups enrolled for Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana and launched their digitised cashless transactions.
He said such self-help groups, who have pledged to conduct their businesses cashlessly, have answered all those who spoke against demonetisation, questioning how was it possible to become cashless in a country where the poor and less literate have no digital connectivity.
“But today, you have answered them. Aren’t our women in rural areas educated? Twelve lakh people have pledged to make their businesses cashless. When your intentions are good, even obstacles can speed up your work. You have sown the seeds of digital India, less-cash society. I congratulate you,” Modi said.
“Even parents limit cash to their children because they think it will spoil them. That is why self-accountability is very important.”
He urged people to use Bhim App and embrace cashless transactions in the “era of honesty and integrity” where there “is no place for those who cheat the system”.
The Prime Minister urged farmers to conserve water and work with the motto “one drop, more crop”.
“By 2022, when India will celebrate 75 years of independence, can all the farmers take a pledge to cut down the urea use by 50 per cent? It will be a great service to the earth and will save farmers’ money.”
He said water conservation was a major challenge in the current days of global warming. “We need to give importance to living in harmony with nature and not think about short term gains.”
Modi urged Karnataka farmers to take up the methods of drip and seaweed irrigation methods that can help in soil and water conservation.
Modi arrived in Karnataka in the morning to take part in various public functions. He landed at the Mangaluru airport and flew to Dharmasthala in a helicopter and prayed at the Manjunatheshwara temple in Dharmasthala, about 100 km away from Mangaluru. Due to his visit, the temple administration restricted public entry till 2 p.m. on Sunday.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Business Ideas, Economy, Emerging Businesses, Employment, Entrepreneurship, Medium Enterprise, News, Politics, Private Jobs, SMEs
New Delhi : Khadi and handloom are transforming and empowering the poor by bringing positive and qualitative changes in their lives, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Sunday.
From the days of ‘Khadi for Nation’, India first saw ‘Khadi for Fashion’ and now the country was moving towards ‘Khadi for transformation’, Modi said in his monthly radio broadcast ‘Mann Ki Baat’.
“Khadi and handloom have transformed the lives of the poorest of the poor and are emerging as a powerful means of empowering them. It is playing a very important role for Gramodaya.”
He said that compared to last year, the total sales of Khadi and handicrafts increased by almost 90 per cent.
“On Gandhi Jayanti, I have always advocated the use of khadi and handloom. What has it led to? You will be glad to know that on the 17th of this month on the day of Dhanteras, the Khadi Gramodyog Bhavan store in Delhi witnessed a record sale of Rs 1 crore,” Modi said.
He said that during Diwali, the sale of Khadi gift coupons zoomed by around 680 per cent.
“One can clearly see that today, the youth, the elderly, women, in fact every age group is taking to Khadi and handloom.
“I can imagine how many weaver families, poor families and the families working on handloom must have benefited from this.”
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Banking, Corporate, Corporate finance, Corporate Reports, Economy, Finance, Markets, News, Politics
(Note Ban Series)
By Aparajita Gupta,
New Delhi : Almost a year down the line, is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream of making India a cash-less or less-cash country becoming a reality?
Industry stakeholders feel that though the note-ban drive by the government gave the necessary impetus to citizens to start adopting online payment platforms, a lot needs to be done by both the government and the industry to make it a success.
The adoption rate of online platforms was high during the demonetisation period, but it plateaued out as soon as cash became available in the system.
When the the Modi government banned high denomination notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on November 8 last year, removing an overwhelming amount of cash from the economy, people had to willy-nilly fall back on plastic or online transactions.
“The fact that 86 per cent of the cash available in the system was sucked out overnight gave an immediate boost to online/mobile payment platforms. There was a push-up factor,” Vishwas Patel, co-chair, Payments Council of India (PCI) and founder and CEO of CC Avenues, told IANS.
But once cash was back in circulation, those who earlier dealt mostly in cash went back to doing so, he said.
The PCI was formed under the aegis of Internet and Mobile Association of India in 2013 to cater to the needs of the digital payment industry.
He said during November, December 2016 and January 2017, online transactions were at their peak. In October 2016, debit card transactions stood at Rs 21,941 crore and those of credit cards at Rs 29,942 crore. Post-demonetisation, in December 2016, debit card transactions jumped to Rs 58,000 crore and those of credit card were at Rs 31,150 crore.
However, in August 2017, 10 months after the note ban, debit and credit card transaction stood at Rs 36,000 crore each, having come down substantially from the heights they achieved, but not falling back to the pre-demonetisation lows.
Patel said that after the cash flow in the system eased, small kirana shops stopped transacting through online payment channels, primarily because they did not want to take a tax number or a Goods and Services Tax number. “They do not have the wherewithal to pay taxes,” he said, adding that the “government needs to incentivise merchants, otherwise small and medium enterprises are going to go back to cash mode.”
Patel said security and trust in payment systems was something all stakeholders need to work on together. “As an industry body, we are preparing a National Negative Database of consumers and merchants so that we can reduce fraud and build trust in the eyes of consumers,” he added.
The database details would be circulated amongst payment gateway service providers, banks and card companies. “We are also working on a trust certificate that can be displayed by all merchants on their websites,” Patel added.
Vineet Singh, Chief Business Officer at Mobikwik, a payment app, said demonetisation had became a force multiplier. “It has pushed India a decade ahead towards the agenda of adopting online payment platforms. Naturally, things cooled down a bit post-demonetisation,” Singh told IANS.
Mobikwik had 3-3.5 crore users in the pre-demonetisation days and a year after note ban it has 6.5 crore. The company also witnessed a sharp rise in transactions from one million to three million within a year.
“Online payment companies in the last one year have increased their base significantly. They are experiencing healthy month-on-month growth and the adoption of online payment platforms was across all age groups,” Singh said, adding that “now everybody takes online payment seriously, which will provide a secular road towards a cash-less society.”
Vivek Belgavi, Leader, Fintech at PricewaterhouseCoopers, too said that, after cash returned to the system, people started transacting more in notes, but there was an uptick in digital transactions.
“Digital transactions have grown. But the key thing is that a lot of stepping stones for future adoption have been laid down — like the BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) app by the government. Demonetisation was the shock that forced people to move to online channels,” he said.
Belgavi said the government should give more importance to low-cost infrastructure like availability of point-of-sales machines. “Industry should offer citizens the whole ecosystem of digital transactions. They should be offered an experience that is better than cash transactions,” he added.
Dewang Neralla, MD and CEO, Atom Technologies, told IANS their online payment processing volumes had grown three times since demonetisation.
“By March 2017, our transactions had doubled and with almost 11 months gone by we still see a healthy growth of around 20 per cent on a month-on-month basis. Today we process payments of about Rs 6,800 crore per month across more than 100,000 merchants. We expect this figure to grow at least three times in the next three years.”
Online transactions are bound to grow over a period of time, but in a country which overwhelmingly ran on cash, it may be difficult to do a quick digitisation.
(Aparajita Gupta can be contacted at aparajita.g@ians.in)
(Editors: The above article is part of a series of demonetisation stories leading up to November 8, the day note ban was imposed last year)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
DMK Working President M.K. Stalin
Chennai : DMK Working President M.K. Stalin on Monday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi should rein in members of the Niti Aayog from voicing views that affect the cooperative federal structure of governance.
In a statement issued here, Stalin urged Modi to stop the members and Vice Chairman from voicing views that interfere with the cooperative federal structure of governance and social justice.
Stalin also said if Niti Aayog is to be used to centralise power and take away the power of the states then there is no meaning in Chief Ministers being members of its Governing Council.
The DMK leader was reacting to Niti Aayog Member Ramesh Chand’s views that agriculture should be transferred to the central list from the state list.
Chand was reported to have said that time has come to move agriculture from the state list to the concurrent or central list.
Stalin said when the Modi government dismantled the 65-year-old Planning Commission the slogan was cooperative federalism.
He said the central government has washed its hands of when it came to farmers debt and their suicide, and now wants the agriculture sector to be moved to the central list and has also formed a task force to recommend sectoral reforms.
Stalin said the views of Niti Aayog that there is no need for reservation in private sector employment is also an interference in state’s powers.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Corporate, Corporate Governance, Economy, Large Enterprise, News, Politics
Ahmedabad : Prime Minister Narendra Modi is slated to arrive here on Sunday, his third visit to the poll-bound state, to inaugurate the first phase of the the Ghogha-Dahej Ro-Ro ferry service between Saurashtra and the South Gujarat region.
Upon his arrival here, Modi will fly down to Saurashtra’s Bhavnagar district where he would inaugurate the Rs 615 crore, 31km “roll-on, roll-off” (Ro-Ro) ferry service between Ghogha in Bhavnagar and Dahej in Bharuch district across the Gulf of Khambhat.
He is expected to travel aboard the Ro-Ro ferry accompanied by school children.
The idea of the ferry service was first conceived in early 1960s. The foundation stone for current works was laid by Modi in 2012 when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat.
When operational, the service is expected to reduce the travel distance between Saurashtra, locate in the western region of the state and South Gujarat by 360 km, saving time and money for people frequently travelling between the two regions.
The facility will also reduce travel time by at least five hours.
Many working in the diamond cutting and polishing hub of Surat in South Gujarat belong to the Saurashtra region and the service is expected to come as a boon for them.
In the first phase, only passenger services would begin, while after the completion of the second phase, light vehicles can also be carried aboard the ferries.
Official sources claim that the second phase will be commissioned by the end of January 2018.
In the final phase, the ferries would also have facility to carry trucks between the two regions.
After his arrival at Dahej, Modi will travel to Vadodara to address a public rally at the sprawling Navlakhi Grounds.
He is slated to lay foundation stones and inaugurate projects worth Rs 1,140 crore in Vadodara before taking out a 14km road show to the Vadodara airport, and then fly off to New Delhi.
—IANS
