by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Emerging Businesses, SMEs
By Nishant Arora,
New Delhi : With digital transformation rapidly re-defining the regional landscape in India — amid humongous amount of data being generated — many more enterprises this year looked at embracing agile, scalable and cost-friendly Cloud offerings, searching for providers with deep technological expertise to help transform their businesses.
However, while improving IT security and increasing business agility remained among the top expected benefits of Cloud by Indian enterprises, the challenges related to costs and complexities with infrastructure cannot be ignored, suggested a report by the International Data Corporation (IDC).
Compared to the Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) markets where more than 14 per cent of organisations are in the latter stages of Cloud maturity, only 10 per cent of the Indian organisations are currently in the advanced stages, IDC said, adding that most organisations in India have plans to spend maximum of their new Cloud spending on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications over the next year.
According to Sashikumar Sreedharan, Microsoft India’s Managing Director for Enterprise Commercial Business, end-customers are not only migrating workloads to the Cloud but also investing in Cloud to support new capabilities as they evolve their businesses.
“In fact, many customers are opting for a ‘Cloud-first’ approach in acquiring new IT assets. With this, Indian enterprises are now understanding the importance of incorporating Cloud technologies in their digital journey,” Sreedharan told IANS.
Nearly 88 per cent business leaders from India, polled in the Microsoft’s “Asia Digital Transformation Study”, acknowledge that Cloud technology is a critical enabler that will fuel their digital transformation.
“A whopping 92 per cent of them believe that every organisation needs to be a ‘digital organisation’ to drive growth and innovation for their business,” added Sreedharan.
Microsoft estimates that the move to digital is a massive $100 billion plus opportunity in India.
For Oracle, 2018 saw strong Cloud adoption by the Indian firms, both big and small.
“We expect this to pick up further pace in 2019. Hybrid IT environments are on the rise, and we expect this trend to continue through 2020 as well, with Indian businesses moving to the Cloud in a phased manner,” said Shailender Kumar, Regional Managing Director, Oracle India.
Most Indian businesses are currently looking to adopt Hybrid Cloud and the trend continued this year.
Hybrid Cloud is a computing environment that uses a mix of on-premise, private Cloud and third-party public Cloud services, with orchestration between the two platforms.
Nearly 43 per cent of Indian enterprises will adopt Hybrid Cloud by 2020 — from 13 per cent as of today — and the country will lead the world in Hybrid Cloud usage and adoption over the next two years, a global report by enterprise Cloud computing leader Nutanix predicted this month.
For India, 91 per cent of respondents agreed that Cloud computing has increased the efficiency of their IT departments.
“As billions more people, places and things become connected to the Internet, and more and more enterprises move their systems, software and processes to Cloud providers, the need to connect, communicate, manage and align these varying components takes on a new perspective,” explained Neville Vincent, Vice President, ASEAN, ANZ and India at Nutanix.
Gartner also predicted that that Hybrid Cloud solutions will continue to drive overall adoption in India.
However, according to Oracle’s Kumar, hybrid IT environments also bring to the fore security and interoperability risks. “Hence, businesses are now demanding a far more secure, next generation, truly enterprise-grade Cloud,” Kumar told IANS.
Jagjit Arora, Senior Director-Sales, VMware India, said that almost all organisations across sectors are in the process of digital transformation.
“From our conversations with customers across sectors, I know that appetite for Cloud in India is increasing and evolving. Customers’ interests are shifting to multi and Hybrid Clouds driven by the flexibility, agility and scalability,” said the VMware executive.
There may be a tectonic shift in Cloud adoption in India and the government too has joined the bandwagon.
According to Teresa Carlson, Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector at Amazon Web Services (AWS), retail giant Amazon’s Cloud arm, in just about two years’, there has been a significant change on Cloud adoption in the public sector in India.
“The state governments are moving really faster on adopting Cloud than the US state governments when they were exposed to the Cloud computing eight years back,” Carlson told IANS.
The company launched AWS Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Region with two availability zones in 2016.
“For the first time since launching the Mumbai region services, AWS has seen a 70 per cent increase in the accounts of Indian companies,” said Amazon Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Werner Vogels.
The momentum, said Cloud providers, is only going to increase, with more and more industry specific use cases coming to the fore.
(Nishant Arora can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
By Sheikh Qayoom,
Jammu/Srinagar : It’s been a fairly turbulent year in the state, both security-wise and politically. It saw more violence compared to last year, even though the security forces killed many militants, including some top commanders of militant outfits.
There were 587 incidents of violence during 2018 compared to 329 last year. Official figures say 240 militants were killed during the year against 200 last year.
Casualties among civilians and the security forces have also been comparatively higher. Thirty-seven civilians and 86 security men were killed in 2018 against 36 civilians and 74 security personnel killed last year.
Permanent peace eluded the state in 2018 as it has during more than 30-years of strife.
According to senior intelligence officers, there are still around 240 militants, including foreigners, who are active in the state.
“The number keeps on varying depending upon infiltration of new militants from across the line of control (LoC) and recruitment of local youth into militant ranks”, said a senior intelligence officer.
Summing up the security scenario, Lieutenant General A.K. Bhatt, who commands the Srinagar-headquartered 15 corps of the Indian Army and is the senior-most army officer in the Valley, said: “The security forces have a limited role in controlling the ground situation in the state. The final solution has to be political.”
On the political front, there was a dramatic turn in June when the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suddenly announced in New Delhi that it was withdrawing from the ruling coalition in the state, headed by the Peoples Democratic Party.
The announcement was not unexpected as the two ideologically opposed parties were ruling the state for four years through an uneasy arrangement that appeared brittle from day one since the late Mufti Muhammad Sayeed announced it in 2015.
With the withdrawal of BJP support, the Mehbooba Mufti-led coalition fell and Governor N.N.Vohra dismissed the government, even though the state assembly was kept in suspended animation for any future alliance to stake claim to power.
Vohra was subsequently replaced by Satya Pal Malik who became the first politician to be made the state governor. As compared to his predecessor, Malik chose to speak to media as often as he could to put forth his view point, sometimes to the embarrassment of both New Delhi and Malik himself.
The fist thing the new governor did was to announce local urban bodies and panchayat elections in the state. Both these democratic processes were concluded peacefully throughout the state and their conduct is considered a feather in the administration’s cap as the elected government had been shying away from conducting the elections.
With the imposition of governor’s rule, the PDP started suffering desertions as some of its dissident legislators launched an open rebellion against the party leadership. In the forefront of the dissidents was senior Shia leader and former state minister Imran Ansari who finally joined the Peoples Conference (PC) headed by Sajad Lone, himself a former minister in the PDP-BJP coalition government.
Sajad’s PC started emerging as the possible Third Front that could, in future, pose a challenge to both the PDP and the regional National Conference (NC) headed by Farooq Abdullah.
Ever since the elected government fell, rumours started doing the rounds in the state that dissidents in the PDP, the NC and even the Congress party were waiting in wings to join the Third Front. The visit of BJP general secretary Ram Madhav to the state and his meetings with Sajad Lone and dissidents kept fuelling these rumours even when Madhav said there was no immediate move to form a government in the state.
The fear of their flock being poached pushed the arch rivals, the NC and the PDP, come close to each other. In a surprise move, Altaf Bukhari, senior PDP leader and former minister emerged as the contender for the Chief Minister’s post with outside support by the NC. With the NC’s 15 and the PDP’s 29 seats, the two parties hold a simple majority in the 87-member state assembly.
The NC and the PDP said they had decided to sink their differences to protect the special status of the state as article 35-A and other constitutional provisions were being challenged to dilute this.
There were also reports that the Congress was in the loop to shoot down horse-trading in the state. The PDP president, Mehbooba Mufti, sent a fax to the Raj Bhawan seeking an appointment with the Governor to stake claim to power. The fax was never received as the Governor said later the fax operator at the Raj Bhawan was off duty due to a holiday.
Amid claims and counter-claims, Governor Malik, in a dramatic move, dissolved the state assembly on November 21, justifying this by saying that he wanted to “prevent horse-trading”.
The possibility of any dialogue between the centre and the separatist leadership remained a distant possibility during the year. In all likelihood, this will have to wait till a new government takes office at the centre after the 2019 general elections in the country.
Elections to the state assembly are also likely to be held simultaneously with the 2019 Lok Sabha elections around April-May next year.
(Sheikh Qayoom can be contacted at sheikh.abdul@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
By Parmod Kumar,
New Delhi : The Supreme Court stood out in 2017 for protecting and advancing the rights of citizens in more ways than one, but primarily by empowering them against any intrusion of their privacy by the State or the private sector as it elevated the right to privacy as a fundamental right.
The Supreme Court will be quoted not just for its verdict expanding the scope of the Right to Life by including within its ambit the sacrosanct Right to Privacy, but it will also be counted for its pronouncements that instant triple talaq was unconstitutional and sex with a minor wife in a child marriage amounted to rape.
The Year 2017 also saw the top court’s collegium finally putting in the public domain its deliberations on the appointment, transfer and elevation of High Court and Supreme Court judges with an explanation as to why a particular name was recommended or not.
This was viewed by some as the collegium throwing down the gauntlet for the executive, which is insisting on a provision in the Memorandum of Procedure (on appointments) that it can block a recommendation on the ground of national security but without elaborating on this.
The apex court did make serious efforts in making the government act on curbing advertisements and information on sex determination techniques available on the Internet but did not succeed to the extent that was expected.
In the end, virtually nothing was achieved in the matter as, even after a decade, says senior counsel Sanjay Parikh, and despite several court directions, the offending advertisements continue to appear on the Internet in violation of PNDT Act, resulting in a skewed girlchild ratio in some northern states.
All this apart, there is hardly an area impacting the life of the common people that escaped the top court’s scanner, be it clean air to breathe, making politics free of tainted politicians, baring the chilling insensitivity of the powers that be denying relief to the farmers faced with drought or not getting a just and reasonable minimum support price for their agriculture produce — leading to suicides.
Describing the 2017 as an “eventful year” with top court “standing up to the challenge” in addressing the issues of “great promise”, senior counsel C.A. Sundram said that Supreme Court has reaffirmed itself as the “final guardian” on any matter that affects the public at large.
“The court has also clearly established that with regards to any matter that affects the public at large they are the final guardians and have acted as a sentinel to protect the fundamental rights of the citizens,” Sundram told IANS.
“The decision in right to privacy is a sterling example,” said Sundram, a view also shared by activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan and senior counsel Colin Gonsalves, well-known for espousing social causes.
“I think the Supreme Court has done extraordinarily well on social issues — but only up to a point,” said Gonsalves.
The top court’s pronouncements to cleanse the legislatures of tainted law makers that started nearly a decade-and-a-half ago and mandating the disclosure of the assets and criminal antecedents continued in 2017 when it proposed setting up of courts to exclusively try criminal cases against the law makers and politicians.
It approved the setting of 12 exclusive courts to fast-track the trial of 1,571 pending cases against lawmakers. “Let us not get bogged down… let them set up 12 courts… It is not an end of it. Starting something is difficult.”
Recognised the world over for its role in protecting the environment, the Supreme Court acted decisively as it prohibited the registration of vehicles that do not meet BS-IV emission standards from April 1, 2017, banned the use of pet-coke and furnace oil in the National Capital Region and, above all, stopped the sale of fire crackers during Diwali celebrations — a step which earned it both laurels — for relatively less polluted post Diwali morning — and brickbats, with some equating the ban on the sale of fire crackers as an assault on the Hindu religion.
The top court also came to the rescue of home buyers who have been deprived of their rightful dwellings years beyond the due date by the big real estate companies.
Besides achievements, the top court had its troubled spots too — its tussle with the executive on one hand and with a section of bar on the other.
However, when the government sought to criticise the top court for its pro-active approach and stepping into its policy-making domain, Chief Justice Dipak Misra was more than candid saying that the “protections of the fundamental rights of every citizen was a sacrosanct duty of the judiciary conferred by the Constitution”.
The apex court seemingly succeeded in taming a section of the the bar seeking an SIT probe into the allegations of graft vis-a-vis a medical college involving a retired judge of the Orissa High Court, but not without its image taking a blow as it observed that its image has been damaged as “unnecessary doubts about the integrity of the institution have been created”.
(Parmod Kumar can be contacted at saneel2010@gmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Police patrolling the Mhow- Neemuch highway amid burning tyres of a truck in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh. (representational purpose only) (HT Photo)
By Saurabh Katkurwar,
New Delhi : Pavitra Singh of Punjab’s Mansa is representative of farmers across the country who were infuriated as agriculture prices collapsed for the second consecutive year, but their sufferings remained unnoticed until the June police firing in Madhya Pradesh’s Mandsaur district that killed five farmers.
The episode, which led to many subsequent protests across the country, provoked the aggrieved farmers to vent their anger over the agrarian distress, mostly caused by the November 8, 2016, demonetisation that crippled the rural economy.
Farmers were unhappy over the non-fulfillment of the 2014 campaign promise by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) that they would be able to make a 50 per cent profit over their input costs — especially as the situation got aggravated by the huge fall in prices to the extent that many couldn’t even recover their input costs.
“Leave alone the big promises, we did not even receive the MSP (minimum support price) for the grain we produced. We did not have funds for the next sowing after the demonetisation struck us. We are facing huge difficulties in repaying our loans,” Pavitra Singh lamented while speaking to IANS.
He said farmers in his area were forced to sell their rice at Rs 1,200 to Rs 1,250 per quintal as there were no takers for the MSP of Rs 1,510 fixed by the government.
Agricultural economist Devinder Sharma said the government’s farm polices, especially those related to imports and exports, went awry to a “large extent” and led to prices in the local markets dropping.
“There are two major reasons for farm distress — demonetisation and the crashing of the international market. The government imported pulses, wheat and coconut when the local production was, in fact, high. The volume of imports was more than the total agriculture budget,” he said.
Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh witnessed a number of protests this year over the slump in prices of pulses — mainly arhar (red gram) — after the government stopped their procurement.
Thus, while it had been smooth sailing on the agricultural front for the BJP government at the Centre for almost three years since it came to power in 2014, the Mandsaur firing could be seen as the turning point, with the negative cascading effects, including the consolidation of farm unions and opposition parties on the issue and some prominent allies quitting the ruling alliance.
The anger can also be gauged from the fact that the BJP suffered electoral losses in Gujarat’s cotton-belt in the assembly elections earlier this month.
Lok Sabha member and Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana leader Raju Shetty left the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in July after the government did not entertain the farmers’ demand of a countrywide loan waiver and remunerative prices for their produce.
“I had pleaded with the government to provide financial help and assure remunerative prices for farm produce. However, the government did not act. So I had no option but to leave them to ensure justice for the farmers,” Shetty told IANS.
Another big jolt was when Nana Patole, BJP MP from Maharashtra, resigned from the Lok Sabha and left the party.
While farmers across the country were mourning the death of their brethren in Mandsaur, Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh had different priorities — he chose to participate in an yoga event the very next day after the incident.
This only added to the government’s image as anti-farmer, which was quite evident during farmers’ agitations.
“We held protests in Delhi for over 100 days for our demands and many supported us during the difficult time. However, Radha Mohan Singh neither visited us nor invited us to discuss our issues,” said P. Ayyakannu, leader of 100-odd Tamil Nadu farmers who attracted eyeballs with their strange and innovative protests.
Parts of Tamil Nadu and Southern Karnataka have been reeling under severe drought for some years owing to a shortfall in the monsoon.
Barring a few exceptions, Swaraj India leader Yogendra Yadav managed to bring almost all concerned organisations under one umbrella — 184 in the recent one — to hold nationwide protests and the government was seen struggling to cope up with them.
In the mega protest held last month, around 20,000 farmers across the country hit the national capital to press their demands.
Dharmalingam, a farmer from Karnataka’s Kolar district, said the government was seen in advertisement blitzes promoting new schemes for farmers, but their benefits hardly reach those for whom they are meant.
“A number of schemes have been launched so far in order to supposedly double our income. However, none of them has had any palpable impact so far,” Dharmalingam told IANS.
(Saurabh Katkurwar can be reached at saurabh.k@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
By Sirshendu Panth,
Kolkata : Keeping up a strong anti-BJP rhetoric, West Bengal’s indefatigable ‘Didi’ gunned for Prime Minister Narendra Modi through the year, lacing her speeches and social media postings with sarcasm and choice words as her government clashed with the Centre on various issues.
From mythology to ancient Indian history, Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee left nothing untouched in letting loose incessant verbal volleys at Modi, while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) continued to increase its vote-share in various by-polls and local body elections in West Bengal.
As the BJP tried to emerge as a viable alternative to the Trinamool, Banerjee in turn endeavoured to project herself as the most prominent opponent of the Hindutva brigade nationally.
The feisty leader networked with regional leaders opposed to the Sangh Parivar — the ideological parent of the BJP as well as several right-wing outfits — and formulated decisions and actions that could give her brownie points over the central dispensation and its propelling force.
She fired on all cylinders, targeting Modi’s key policies like demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) while trying to exploit burning issues like sliding economic growth, rampant intolerance, the beef ban and cow vigilantism.
However, it was her colourful and strident attacks on Modi that grabbed the spotlight.
If she likened Modi to the greatest Sanskrit poet and dramatist Kalidasa, it was not because of the writer’s literary prowess but only a reference to an oft-told story of him “lacking intelligence as a youngster — cutting the branch he was sitting on”.
“All institutions (of the nation) are under attack. This is a dangerous game. The PM is behaving like Kalidasa, trying to cut the branch he is sitting on,” Banerjee remarked.
During another aggressive speech, Banerjee drew a parallel between Modi and demon king Ravana of the Ramayana epic.
“He claims that he has broad chest and shoulders. Even Ravana had broad shoulders. And he also had 10 heads,” she said, alluding to Modi’s drumbeating that he has a “56-inch chest”.
On another occasion, she predicted that “Barda” (elder brother) will have to bow out of office after the 2019 parliamentary polls.
Addressing a public meeting in Bankura district, Banerjee raised the pitch further, dubbing the Modi government “deaf and dumb”. But a separate barb was reserved for the Prime Minister.
“He used to call himself a ‘chaiwala’ (tea seller) before. Now he has become a millionaire ‘Paytm-wala’ (one who endorses e-wallets like Paytm).”
Demonetisation, to her, was Modi’s “shameless flop show” that she dismissed on Twitter as “visionless, missionless and directionless”.
Not in a mood to let go of any democratic mode of protest, she even knocked on the door of then President Pranab Mukherjee, urging him to “save the country from the mess” and sought a “national government” minus Modi. Banerjee was ready to accept another BJP leader at its helm and went to the extent of naming L.K. Advani, Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley as being acceptable.
While backing GST, Banerjee took the Modi government to task for rolling out the new regime with “disastrous hurry” on July 1. She called the step “another epic blunder” of the Centre.
The CBI probes into the multi-billion-rupee Saradha Ponzi scam, Rose Valley Ponzi scam and Narada sting footage controversy — in which a number of Trinamool leaders were implicated — were also bones of contention between the Trinamool and the BJP.
While Banerjee accused the central agencies of acting out of “political vendetta” on the BJP’s directions, the saffron party said it was an inquiry ordered by the Supreme Court.
Going ballistic, Banerjee threatened to slap defamation cases worth crores of rupees if the CBI did not proceed impartially.
The political battles between the Trinamool regime and the Centre even stretched to observance of red letter dates like Independence Day and Teachers Day.
When the Union Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) sent a circular to the states recommending a structured format promoting Modi’s pet “Swachh Bharat Mission” during Teachers’ Day celebrations in schools, the Mamata government shot off a counter-circular to schools saying the date needed to be observed with due reverence and solemnity as in “earlier years”.
Ahead of Independence Day, the MHRD had issued a circular specifying “additional activities”. But the state government came up with a directive asking the schools to “stop all preparations” for celebrating the day in the MHRD format.
With the Congress weakening, Banerjee kept herself busy attempting to strengthen ties throughout 2017 with prominent political leaders in the anti-BJP domain, particularly those from the regional parties.
She has been following many of them on Twitter, or exchanging pleasantries through tweets with the likes of ex-Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, senior Jammu and Kashmir National Conference leaders Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah, BSP chief Mayawati and DMK leader M.K. Stalin. She even met Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, a BJP baiter despite being an ally, though her party’s views on religion and secularism were diametrically opposed to those of the Sena.
Though Banerjee has stressed on “collective leadership” to challenge Modi, she gave enough hints at a media conclave last month that she is not averse to taking the lead in bringing together opposition parties on a single platform against the BJP in 2019.
(Sirshendu Panth can be contacted at s.panth@ians.in)
—IANS
