by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
By Brajendra Nath Singh,
New Delhi : Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling BJP face a tough challenge in the Lok Sabha elections in the coming summer in the wake of its defeat in the recent Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh and mounting worries on the economic front.
Even at the end of 2017, no one would have given the opposition a chance in the next general elections after BJP’s sweeping success in Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in the wake of demonetisation and surgical strikes on terror hideouts across the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir and its ability to come to power in other states where it was not the largest party.
However, the BJP was contained in Modi’s home state of Gujarat in the year-end Assembly elections where it was stopped short of the 100 mark, signalling the green shoots of recovery for the Congress.
The change in the last one year became evident after a united Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samajwadi Party defeated the BJP in the Lok Sabha by-elections in its strong holds like Gorakhpur and Phulpur and along with the RLD, in Kairana in Uttar Pradesh. The Congress worsted the BJP in parliamentary by-elections in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and in Karnataka.
Also, the Congress was quick to learn from BJP’s game elsewhere and surrendered the Chief Minister’s post to the JD-S in a post-poll tie up to keep the BJP out of power in Karnataka, despite the saffron party emerging the single largest in the summer of this year.
The results of the recent Assembly polls in five states, where the Congress snatched power from the BJP in the Hindi heartland, has given a major boost to the opposition parties and could be a factor in the battle for control of the next Lok Sabha.
During the year, the BJP had lost seven out of the 13 by-elections in parliamentary constituencies. Of these, it held nine since 2014. It could retain only Palghar in Maharashtra and Shimoga in Karnataka.
Since 2014, the BJP managed to retain just six Lok Sabha seats in by-polls. Besides Palghar and Shimoga, it had won Lakhimpur in Assam, Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh, Beed in Maharashtra and Vadodara in Gujarat.
In the last four-and-half-years, the party has lost Lok Sabha by polls in Ratlam in Madhya Pradesh, Gurdaspur in Punjab, Alwar and Ajmer in Rajasthan, Kairana, Phulpur and Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, Bhandara-Gondiya in Maharashtra and Bellary and Mandya constituencies in Karnataka. The BJP’s tally in the Lok Sabha has come down to 268 from 282 in 2014.
The results of the recent Assembly polls and the by-elections may have signalled the weakening of the “Modi wave” of 2014 the road ahead may not be easy for the saffron party, given the fact that major parties like SP and BSP in Uttar Pradesh are planning an anti-BJP alliance and formation of the RJD-led alliance in Bihar, the two states which send 120 of the 543 elected MPs to the 545-member Lok Sabha, where two members are nominated.
Although the BJP-led government has been counting various of its schemes including Mudra, Ujwala, Saubhagya, opening of ‘jan dhan’ bank accounts, One Rank One Pension, and decisions on demonetisation, GST and the surgical strikes across the border in Pakistan as its major achievements in last four-and-a-half-years, the issues related to farmers and impacts of demonetisation and GST, NPAs crisis have come as a major dampener for the ruling party.
Unlike in 2014, when they were the challenger at the Centre and in many states, when an untested Modi made various promises, he and his party would now face a lot of questions to answer on the “achhe din” they had offered to the electorate.
During the last election campaign, Modi had promised one crore jobs a year and depositing of Rs 15 lakh in each persons account from the black money to be repatriated from abroad. The opposition is likely to rake up the issues and demand answers over the crisis of unemployment and agrarian distress among others.
Besides, the party is also facing the heat from the VHP and RSS, which have been mounting pressure on the government for constructing a Ram temple at Ayodhya by bringing a law or ordinance. Opposition parties allege that the sangh parivar, headed by RSS, may like to raise the political temperature on their pet issues to polarise the political situation.
Although the Supreme Court has given a clean chit to the government on the Rafale fighter jet deal, the issue remains live as the Congress has been pushing for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe.
In the Hindi hearltland of Bihar, where the BJP had won 22 of the 40 seats in 2014, Chhattisgarh (10 out of 11), Haryana (10-10), Himachal Pradesh (04-04), Jharkhand (12-14), Madhya Pradesh (16-29), Rajasthan (25-25), Uttarakhand (05-05), Uttar Pradesh (71-80) and Delhi (07-07), 182 out of 225 seats came into the party’s kitty in 2014.
In the present political scenario, political analysts feel the BJP is unlikely to repeat its performance of 2014, especially in key states like Uttar Pradesh as the coming together of the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh, social equations are likely to change.
In Bihar, the ‘mahagathbandhan’ of Rashtriya Janata Dal, Congress, Hindustani Awam Morcha and Rashtriya Lok Samata Dal has already been formed. Though the Janata Dal-United has now allied with the BJP and the LJP, the grand alliance remains focussed on social engineering of Maha Dalits, extremely backward communities, along with RJD’s traditional Muslim-Yadav votebank.
In Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh the BJP has already lost power to Congress and the BJP’s numbers are likley to drop in 2019.
In Maharashtra, the BJP ally, the Shiv Sena, may cause anxiety as both the parties don’t sharing good vibes. Maharashtra is the largest state after Uttar Pradesh as it sends 48 MPs to Lok Sabha. In the last election, the BJP won 23 seats and the Shiv Sena won 18.
In Gujarat, which is considered the BJP’s bastion and the Hindutva laboratory, the state to which Modi and BJP President Amit Shah belong, it may not be easy to repeat the 2014 performance given the Congress’ fightback in last year’s Assembly polls.
Andhra Pradesh has 25 seats in the Lok Sabha. Earlier, the BJP and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) fought together, with the BJP winning two seats and the TDP 15. Now, the TDP is out of its fold, the BJP is trying to woo a new ally in the form of YRS Congress – at least post poll.
In Tamil Nadu, where it is facing heavy headwinds, the party is trying to woo the ruling AIADMK, which is itself split, to take on a formidable DMK-Congress combine in which a number of other regional parties will also find a place. The state has a tradition of voting one way and the results in 40 seats including one in Puducherry will be crucial to the national outcome.
(Brajendra Nath Singh can be contacted at brajendra.n@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Entrepreneurship, Large Enterprise, SMEs, Startup Basics
By Bhavana Akella,
Bengaluru : India witnessed a dramatic rise of eight unicorns in 2018 from among the start-ups across verticals as against a mere nine in six years from 2011 till 2017, according to IT industry apex body Nasscom.
The start-ups joining the select club for their valuation over $1 billion (Rs 7,000 crore or more) are Oyo Rooms (hospitality), Zomato and Swiggy (food delivery), Udaan (retailer marketplace), Byju’s, (edu-tech), Paytm Mall (e-tail), Freshworks (software programmer) and Policybazaar (digital insurance).
“As the start-ups that became unicorns this year are based on subscription and Software as a Service (SaaS) models, they took a few years to mature,” Nasscom Vice President (Industry Initiatives) K.S. Viswanathan told IANS.
The focus of these start-ups to acquire customers globally made them unicorns from India, he asserted.
According to the National Association of Software and Services Companies’ (Nasscom) October report on “Indian Start-up Ecosystem: Approaching Escape Velocity”, about 1,200 start-ups were added till September.
“The Indian ecosystem is adding about 1,300 start-ups every year but also seeing the demise of at least 300 of them from previous years,” Viswanathan admitted, assessing their survival rate at three to five years.
With the addition of the start-ups, about 40,000 jobs were created during the year, taking their total in the ecosystem of 7,200-7,500 firms to 1.6-1.7 lakh.
The world’s largest retail giant, Walmart, in May bought 77 per cent equity stake in the country’s earliest e-tailer unicorn, Flipkart, for a whopping $16 billion in one of the largest e-commerce deals globally.
“The Flipkart acquisition by Walmart was a shot in the arm for the country’s start-up sector,” Viswanathan said.
The investment in the native start-ups rose by a phenomenal 108 per cent annually to $4.2 billion in nine months (January-September) from $2 billion in the same period of 2017, the Nasscom report said.
By year-end, Swiggy and Byju’s raised hefty venture funds of $1 billion and $540 million (Rs 3,866-crore), respectively, indicating that global institutional and angel investors are betting on Indian unicorns.
According to the New York-based market intelligence platform CB Insights, about 60 per cent of the funds raised by Indian start-ups were invested in unicorns.
Adoption of disruptive technologies across verticals spanning education, food, health, hospitality and transportation has been driving growth of Indian start-ups.
For instance, the four-year-old Swiggy, which has raised $1.26 billion so far, has been investing in its digital platform and delivery fleet.
“One of the reasons for our success is our industry-changing innovations and focus on delivering the best consumer experience. Our delivery-only kitchens have also enabled our entry into 42 cities across the country in last six months,” a Swiggy spokesperson told IANS.
During the year, Oyo and Ola also began expanding aggressively in the international markets.
Gurugram-based Oyo said it invested on its technological prowess, sustaining demand generation across online and offline channels and identification and upgradation of properties within a short time to spur growth.
The company raised $1 billion from SoftBank and other investors to become a unicorn.
“We saw many firsts and celebrated key milestones this year. We entered three international markets — the UAE, Britain and Indonesia,” Oyo founder and chief executive Ritesh Agarwal told IANS.
Competing against the American ride-hailing firm Uber, city-based Ola forayed into international markets starting in Australia and entered Britain and New Zealand.
Food delivery and restaurant search platform Zomato, which raised over $600 million since its founding in 2008 in Gurugram in Haryana, entered the unicorn club this year, according to Nasscom data.
Zomato has been expanding overseas since 2012 and operates in 24 countries, including Australia, Britain, Canada and the US.
The start-up ecosystem and its enablers, including stakeholders and policy regulations, play a key role in the growth of any firm, said Zomato’s global head of classifieds business Oytun Calapover.
“Zomato is a great example of a homegrown start-up, which has been able to build equity not just in the home country, but overseas as well. This has been made possible by factors like government regulations and stakeholders,” Calapover told IANS.
The central government’s policies like Start-up India, Digital India and 100 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in e-commerce have helped the country become a “land of unicorns”, Calapover added.
Though the start-ups had a satisfactory year, the number of women leading some of them remained low. Of the total start-up founders, 11 per cent were women in 2017-18, up a mere three percentage points from eight per cent in 2016-17, according to Nasscom.
There is a need to advocate more women in start-ups for the government support, particularly at the seed-funding stage (early investments until they can generate revenue) and improving the ease of doing business to propel their growth, the industry body added in its report.
(Bhavana Akella can be contacted at bhavana.a@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions, Politics
By Mohit Dubey,
Lucknow : A year is a long time in politics. In Uttar Pradesh, the change of the calendar from 2017 to 2018 saw a tectonic shift in the political landscape, one that left the ruling BJP and its cadres shocked to the core. Mayawati, the Dalit powerhouse who was daggers drawn with arch rival, the Samajwadi Party (SP), since June 2, 1995, after a murderous attack on her at a guest house by its supporters, decided to bury the hatchet and join ranks with the party.
This was by far the biggest development in UP this year as Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the SP were sworn enemies for decades — using their stints in power to make flyovers next to the residences of each other, downgrade the other’s security cover, get political leaders bashed up by the police and what not. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had been benefitting from the divide and would often gleefully boast that as the “twain shall never meet” it would give the saffron camp increased seats, election after election.
Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav are now glued to each other in their hatred for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and haunted by the spectre of his again returning to power in 2019. Political observers here say that this was the “only option before the regional satraps as they fought for survival and not success anymore”. And, as the Modi juggernaut rolled on, the BSP scored a duck in 2014 and the SP managed to win only four of the state’s 80 Lok Sabha seats. The SP got under 50 seats and was booted out of power in the 2017 state assembly polls, while the BSP was reduced to 19.
The new understanding between the two seemed to have found favour with the voters who threw their lot behind the duo after which SP candidates romped home winners in the Gorakhpur, Phulpur and Kairana parliamentary by-polls. Having tasted blood, the two parties now have more or less cemented a seat-sharing agreement for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Tackling a whimsical Behenji, Akhilesh Yadav knows, is not an easy task — but he, unlike his father Mulayam Singh Yadav, is ready to bend backwards to see the alliance through.
Even BJP chief Amit Shah has conceded that the coming together of the SP and BSP would cost the party dearly in UP. The mandarins in the BJP camp, however, are now working the wires to ensure that this does not become a reality and a nightmare for them.
“From the ED (Enforcement Directorate) to the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) to other factors, all are at work — but we are determined to decimate the BJP this time,” said an informed source in the SP who is privy to the seat-sharing talks. And so, while the hostility between the Jatavs (the BSP vote bank) and Yadavs (SP’s electoral backbone) continues to simmer, hopes of the alliance arithmetic percolating down to the grassroots is not lost on both the parties.
The other significant change in the opposition camp this year was the parting of ways of Shivpal Singh Yadav from his political alma mater, the SP. A man credited with grooming the SP from scratch to three times in power finally threw in the towel after being completely sidelined by his estranged nephew and party chief Akhilesh Yadav. As a first step to breaking ranks with his party of 26 years, he formed a front but finally took the plunge and floated his own political party named Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (PSP).
While his elder brother, Mulayam Singh Yadav, has been swinging like a pendulum between both the factions, sometimes making a guest appearance at SP events and also turning up at a PSP rally, party veterans seem to be siding with Shivpal Singh Yadav, who is extremely popular with workers and middle-rung leaders. Deepak Mishra, the spokesman of the PSP, told IANS that, in a short span of time, it is “ready with its organisational structure and is upbeat about contesting all 80 LS seats in UP”.
He also termed as opportunistic the SP-BSP alliance. “We have the old guard, the real socialists, with us who have been fighting the communal forces for years,” he claimed, adding that any party or formation will not be able to take on the BJP without the PSP’s support.
Another significant churn in politics this year was caused by the floating of his own party by independent MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh, aka Raja Bhaiyya.
The Kunda legislator, for the last 25 years, has been the favourite pick and essential part of almost all governments, barring Mayawati’s. This time has decided to form his own party and contest all 80 Lok Sabha seats. Having christened his party Jansatta, he said his aim was transfer power to the people. In his initial public outings after declaring his party, Raja Bhaiyya has been wooing the upper castes by drumming up the fear of the SC/ST Atrocities Act and has openly declared the legislation was potentially a big threat to the “savarns” (upper castes).
With all political parties in the state tilting towards the OBC and Dalits, Raja Bhaiyya hopes to corner the upper caste votes from the Congress and the BJP. Insiders said his electoral foray is backed by the BJP, which feels that certain upper castes — Brahmins and Thakurs — could go to the Congress because of the Act. In such a grim scenario, they would prefer to shift the vote to Jansatta rather than the Congress.
Raja Bhaiyya’s ideological proximity to the saffron camp is well known. He has been thrice minister in BJP governments in UP.
As the year draws to a close, a lot of political activity has happened in the state, enough to make 2019 an interesting year as the race for the Delhi Durbar hots up.
(Mohit Dubey can be contacted at mohit.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
By Mohammed Shafeeq,
Hyderabad : Early Assembly elections and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) retaining power with a landslide majority earlier this month dominated the events in Telangana during 2018.
Eight months before the expiry of the Assembly’s term, the TRS government recommended dissolution of the House on September 6. Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan accepted the recommendation the same day.
Chief Minister and TRS President K. Chandrashekhar Rao’s gamble of early polls paid rich dividends as the party bagged 88 seats in 119-member Assembly. The historic alliance between Congress and its arch rival for 36 years, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) — and the formation of four-party People’s Alliance led by Congress — failed to stop the TRS juggernaut.
The Assembly elections were originally scheduled along with Lok Sabha polls in 2019 but by advancing them, KCR (as the Chief Minister is popularly known) ensured that the focus remained on his narrative of development and welfare. The welfare schemes implemented during the last four-and-a-half-years and the ‘Telangana pride’ factor due to campaigning by TDP President and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu helped the TRS sail through with flying colours.
Buoyed by the massive victory, KCR announced he will play a crucial role in national politics by bringing together all regional parties under proposed Federal Front to provide an alternative to both the Congress and the BJP. In another related key development, the TRS chief handed over the party affairs to his son K.T. Rama Rao, by appointing him the party’s Working President.
The year began with the launch of free 24-hour electricity to the agriculture sector. This made Telangana the first state in the country to provide this facility to farmers.
The year also saw the launch of two major schemes for farmers. Under ‘Rythu Bandhu’, an investment support of Rs 8,000 is being provided to each farmer per acre per year for two crops. ‘Rythu Beema’ offers Rs 5 lakh life insurance cover to every farmer.
Earlier, this month the government announced that Telangana had achieved 29.97 per cent growth during the current financial year up to November. It claimed that no other state in the country recorded such a high growth rate.
After the formation of Telangana, during the first four financial years, the state recorded growth of 17.17 percent on an average every year.
Telangana registered information technology exports worth Rs 93,422 crore in the 2017-18 fiscal, a Cumulative Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 15.6 per cent as against the national average of 10.30 per cent.
The Hyderabad Metro Rail commenced operations in September on the 16-km Ameerpet-LB Nagar line. With the 46-km now operational, the Hyderabad Metro has become India’s second largest such network after Delhi.
Leading Swedish home furnishing retailer IKEA opened its first India store in Hyderabad in August with an investment of Rs 1,000 crore on 13 acre of land in Hitec City, the IT hub.
Earlier this month, star shuttler P.V. Sindhu became first Indian to win the BWF Tour Finals. Her first gold medal of the year came after she finished runner-up in seven tournaments including World Championships, Asian Games and Commonwealth Games.
While Sindhu was battling in BWF Finals in China, her seniors and star shuttlers Saina Nehwal and Parupalli Kashyap tied the knot in Hyderabad.
Another celebrity, tennis star Sania Mirza, was in news for becoming a mother. Sania, who married Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik in 2010, gave birth to their first child, a baby boy, on October 30.
There was also a share of tragedies. Telugu actor and former Andhra Pradesh minister N. Harikrishna died in a road accident in Nalgonda district. He was the son of TDP founder and former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N.T. Rama Rao.
In the worst tragedy during the year, 57 people were killed when an over-crowded bus of Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC) plunged into a gorge near Kondagattu temple in Jagtial district on September 11.
The legal system hit the news when a special NIA court in September sentenced to death two operatives of the Indian Mujahideen (IM) and jailed a third for life in the 2007 twin bomb blast case. The blasts at an eatery and a park in Hyderabad on August 25, 2007 had killed 44 people.
Earlier in April, another special court had acquitted right-wing activist Swami Aseemanand and four others in the Makkah Masjid bomb blast case. The blast, during Friday prayers on May 8, 2007, had claimed nine lives.
(Mohammed Shafeeq can be contated at m.shafeeq@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Economy, News
By Vishal Gulati,
New Delhi : Clearing the smoke of uncertainty over the issue of a cleaner environment, India this year succeeded in its multilateral diplomacy to evolve a roadmap for the international community to decisively address climate change.
Also, India’s success in renewable energy auctions, in reducing emissions besides its largest commitment to eliminate all single-use plastic in the country by 2022, has enabled it to win accolades globally.
Even the Indian private sector is not lagging behind in joining the ranks of leading global companies that have committed to set a scientific target to be carbon negative.
Experts believe it’s a win-win situation for India as its success in the just concluded diplomatic intrigues in the coalfields of Katowice in Poland lies in promoting a more fine-tuned form of responsibility — not just among countries, but within them as well.
Eventually, the 24th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP24, produced a deal that paves the way for implementing the 2015 Paris Agreement, which is supposed to replace the existing Kyoto Protocol in 2020.
Voicing its reservations at the COP24 talks, which saw a holdback due to certain objections of the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Brazil and Turkey, India went vocal over the lack of equity in the rules relating to the global stocktaking in the rulebook that implements the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement.
In the same breath, India signaled that it is ready to update its nationally determined contributions or NDCs if other countries also do so.
Also playing a crucial role to mitigate climate change and other environmental challenges, India in June announced it would strengthen its support with a 25 per cent increase over its contribution to the $15 million Global Environment Facility’s new investment cycle.
India has committed that by 2030, as much as 40 per cent of its installed energy capacity will be based on non-fossil fuels.
India has also won global accolades for opting for green technologies.
India is on track to meet a majority of its Paris goals and become a global climate leader by meeting its targets a decade earlier, US-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) said in a report on the margins of COP24.
The Paris agreement enjoins each country to outline, update and communicate its post-2020 NDCs reflecting its ambition for reducing emissions.
According to IEEFA, India’s NDCs included three key targets: To achieve 40 per cent of electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuels by 2030, to reduce the emissions intensity of its gross domestic product by 33-35 per cent from the 2005 level by 2030 and to create an additional 2.5-3 billion tonnes of carbon sinks — reservoirs that accumulate and store carbon dioxide — through the planting of additional forest and tree cover.
R.R. Rashmi, India’s former climate negotiator and now a Fellow at The Energy Resource Institute (TERI), told IANS at COP24: “In terms of India’s efforts in reducing its emissions relative to its economic growth, it is a fairly positive story and it is more significant because the energy growth is tremendous.”
Even the World Bank praised India’s success in renewable energy auctions that delivered record-setting low prices for solar power.
“There is a great opportunity now for countries to learn from each other to accelerate the uptake of good policies,” said Riccardo Puliti, Senior Director for Energy and Extractives at the World Bank, in a report this month.
“For example, how did India structure its renewable energy auctions to deliver record-setting low prices for solar?”
A Germanwatch report says carbon dioxide emissions are rising again globally but India’s ranking has improved by three points.
But India moved to 11th rank from last year’s 14th as a result of improved performance in renewable energy, comparatively low levels of per capita emissions and a relatively ambitious mitigation target for 2030, said Germanwatch’s Climate Change Performance Index 2019.
Even India’s private sector is not lagging in committing carbon neutral targets.
Taking the lead, Mahindra & Mahindra, the leading manufacturer of utility vehicles and part of the $20.7 billion Mahindra Group, announced its commitment to become a carbon neutral company by 2040.
Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra announced this at the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS) in San Francisco in September.
Likewise, India’s Dalmia Cement Group CEO Mahendra Singhi announced at the GCAS that the company too aims to be carbon negative by 2040.
On the political front, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was selected for this year’s Champions of the Earth award — the UN’s highest environmental honour — along with French President Emmanuel Macron.
(Vishal Gulati can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)
—IANS
