by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, Markets, News, Politics, Technology
By Venkatachari Jagannathan,
Chennai : The year 2017 could be said to be one of mixed fortunes for the Indian space agency as it launched the much-awaited four-tonne rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-Mk III (GSLV-Mk III); put into orbit 104 satellites in a single mission; sent up the South Asia Satellite; and also crossed the double century mark of launching foreign satellites.
With the size of earth observation satellites reducing and the future trend moving towards a constellation of small satellites rather than a large one, India’s space agency is developing a smaller rocket that can carry satellites weighing up to 500 kg.
But on the negative side, India’s long-due satellite navigation system (NavIC) faced serious problems with the atomic clocks in a couple of satellites developing problems.
The clocks are important to provide precise locational data.
The mission to put into orbit a replacement for the first of the seven navigation satellites didn’t succeed as the lighter Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) failed in its mission.
The year also saw India taking steps towards opening up the sector for private players as the government sought comments on its Draft Space Activities Bill.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had a great start with a record satellite launch and good going for the major part of the year but wound up 2017 smarting after an unexpected disaster.
In February India set a world record in the number of satellites launched in a single mission by successfully putting into orbit 104 satellites, including the country’s own Cartosat-2 earth observation satellite.
This was followed by the copy book-style launch of the South Asia Satellite, intended to serve “economic and developmental priorities” of South Asian nations, using its heavier GSLV-Mk II rocket.
In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tasked ISRO to develop a satellite for use by the SAARC countries. But Pakistan declined the use of an India-developed satellite.
One of the unique aspects of the South Asia Satellite is that ISRO decided to have electric power for it — without cutting down on the volume of traditional on-board fuel — to check its performance for use in future satellites.
In May, India scored a double success, launching its latest — and heaviest so far — 3,136 kg GSAT-19 communication satellite with its brand new and heaviest GSLV-Mk III with a cryogenic engine.
While Indian space scientists named the 640 tonne rocket “fat boy”, the Telugu media nicknamed it “Bahubali” as, like the hero in the massively successful film lifts a heavy Lingam, it carried the heaviest satellite by an Indian rocket.
The month of June saw ISRO completing yet another multiple satellite launch, putting into orbit the Cartosat satellite, Nano satellite NIUSAT and 29 foreign satellites from 14 countries.
In the process, ISRO crossed the double century mark in launching foreign satellites. India started launching foreign satellites in 1999.
The June month also saw India adding GSAT-17 to its fleet of communication satellites after it was launched into orbit by the heavy-lift rocket Ariane 5 from Kourou in French Guiana.
And there ended the tale of ISRO’s success for 2017.
The last day of August turned out to be a black Thursday for ISRO as it suffered a serious setback after its PSLV rocket failed to deliver India’s navigation satellite in its intended orbit.
The 1,425 kg Indian Regional Navigation Satellite-1H (IRNSS-1H), got stuck inside the rocket’s upper deck as the heat shield did not separate to let it out.
“The rocket heat shield didn’t separate. The satellite is inside the heat shield,” ISRO Chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar said.
“The PSLV rocket has been successful for the past several years. So, the question of design failure does not arise. It could be an issue of a failed component or a process quality issue,” M.Y.S. Prasad, a former Director of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, told IANS.
While the Failure Analysis Committee (FAC) is yet to come out with its report on the cause of PSLV’s failure, K. Sivan, Director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, told IANS that failure of the pyro elements could be the reason for the non-separation of the heat shield.
Normally, the heat shield would separate after on-board computers give the command to ignite the explosives. The explosives would then ignite and explode to separate the two parts of the heat shield joined by bolts.
He said ISRO is further tightening the allowable dispersion, or variance from the ideal performance parameter, for all the systems in the PSLV.
Meanwhile, Sivan said the preliminary design for the proposed small four-stage rocket that would weigh around 100 tonnes is ready and its feasibility study has also been conducted.
The first rocket would be ready in two years once the project gets the necessary approvals, he added.
The PSLV rocket has three variants weighing between 230 tonnes and 320 tonnes, with a carrying capacity ranging between 1,100 kg and 1,900 kg.
Looking forward to 2018, Sivan said it is going to be an eventful year with several launches, including the country’s second Chandrayaan moon mission.
Sivan said ISRO will be launching a Cartosat satellite and several foreign satellites as piggy-back with the PSLV rocket some time in January 2018.
He said the country’s heaviest communication satellite — the GSAT 11, weighing over five tonnes — would be launched next year by Arianespace’s Ariane rocket.
2017: Indian space scene in capsule
* Enforcement Directorate (ED) attached Rs.79.76 crore funds of Devas Multimedia Ltd under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) for its alleged illegal deal with ISRO’s commercial arm Antrix Corporation
* Renowned Indian space scientist U.R. Rao passed away aged 85
* Launched four-ton capacity rocket GSLV-Mk III
* Put into orbit South Asia Satellite
* PSLV rocket failed to launch navigation satellite
* Three atomic clocks in first navigation satellite failed
(Venkatachari Jagannathan can be contacted at v.jagannathan@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
By Anjali Ojha,
New Delhi : Amidst tension on both the eastern and western borders, and continuing terror attacks, India in 2017 took a step toward playing the role of the “net security provider” in the region and also pushing domestic defence manufacturing in the country.
The year also saw India getting its first full-time woman Defence Minister in Nirmala Sitharaman who, since taking over, has visited a number of installations across the country, including the forward areas. The minister also started a new norm of meeting the services chiefs daily and vowed to clear all pending projects under consideration of the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) by year-end by holding fortnightly meetings.
The year saw India bring in a new system to push the private sector in defence manufacturing in the country, with a chapter on Strategic Partnership being added to the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) in May.
The first contract under this arrangement, where an Indian private company will be selected for tying up with a foreign company to manufacture certain crucial defence equipment, is yet to be signed.
India being the largest importer of arms — accounting for 13 per cent of global arms imports between 2012 and 2016 — both former Defence Minister Arun Jaitley and his successor Sitharaman have talked about the significance of domestic defence manufacturing and the need for the country to have more local components in its military equipment.
Ceasefire violations spurted along the India-Pakistan frontier, with 771 being reported on the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir — that is under the Army’s operational control — up to December 10 this year. This is a three-fold rise compared to 228 by Pakistani forces in 2016.
Along the India-China border, while no bullets have been fired in 40 years, a 73-day stand-off was witnessed at Doklam in Sikkim over the building of a road by the Chinese military in the area that is claimed by Bhutan. Indian troops stalled the work citing the disputed status of Doklam and its proximity to a key artery in the northeast. The crisis was resolved on August 28 after both the armies retreated from the point of the face-off.
As the two nations were in a wait-and-watch mode, Indian Army tightened its preparedness at the eastern border and so did China. The period also saw a scuffle between Chinese and Indian soldiers in Ladakh and a spurt in the number of Chinese ships in the Indian Ocean.
Submarines and ships of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) have maintained a regular presence in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) in the name of conducting anti-piracy patrols, with an average of seven to eight PLAN ships in the region at any given time. But, in August, for about two weeks there were 14 Chinese Naval ships in the IOR, which has been attributed to the vessels heading for an exercise, and a changeover in anti-piracy patrol duties.
Maritime security came in the forefront of India’s defence and diplomatic negotiations with a number of friendly nations, and the trilateral Malabar naval exercise between India, the US and Japan from July 9-17 that saw China bristling.
The Indian Navy re-oriented its deployment philosophy to Mission-Based-Deployments to fit its role of being a “net security provider” in the region and had its ships in international waters from the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden in the west to the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman sea in the east on permanent deployment.
A total of 65 Indian Navy warships had been deployed at various times on anti-piracy operations till December 17, safely escorting more than 3,788 ships, including 405 Indian ships. Till date the Indian Navy has thwarted 44 piracy attempts and apprehended 120 pirates.
Maritime security also remained in the forefront of India’s diplomatic and defence engagements with a number of countries, including the US, France and Singapore, which has offered its Changi Naval base close to South China Sea to India for logistic support to Indian Navy ships.
While Malabar saw India’s prominent naval exercise with the US, India and Russia held their first ever tri-services exercise — Indra–in 2017.
The armed forces also pitched in for search, rescue and relief operations after a number of natural disasters in the country, including flood relief operations in several states, including Gujarat, Maharashtra, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Assam and Bihar, the Ockhi cyclone in Kerala and also in providing aid to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.
Some progress, though small, was made in the inclusion of women in the armed forces. The three women fighter pilots inducted in the Indian Air Force in 2016 continued their second phase of training and two more women fighter pilots — Flying Officers Shivangi Singh and Pratibha — were inducted in the force this year.
Six women officers of the Indian Navy, meanwhile, started their circumnavigation — Navika Sagar Parikrama — on an Indian-built sailing vessel, INSV Tarini, the first by an Indian all-women’s crew under sail. The expedition was flagged off from Goa in September and is likely to conclude in March 2018.
Also in September, the Indian Army announced it would induct women in the Corps of Military Police.
(Anjali Ojha can be contacted at anjali.o@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Large Enterprise, Markets, Technology
Vishal Sikka, CEO, Infosys
By Fakir Balaji,
Bengaluru : The resilient Indian IT industry, which has been going through challenging times on multiple fronts, faced disruption in 2017 from increasing automation and the boardroom spat in software major Infosys spilling into the public domain.
Though the $150-billion (almost Rs 10 trillion) software sector reconciled to single digit export growth of 7-8 per cent for the 2017-18 fiscal, demand for more automation and using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the services had put the vendors under pressure to hone the skills of their techies in the thousands and invest in new technologies to deliver on time for global enterprises.
“The Indian IT industry has been going through challenging times due to disruptive technologies, changing business models, rising protectionism, anti-globalisation and political and economic upheavals slowing its growth,” Nasscom President R. Chandrashekhar told IANS here.
Brexit and the sluggish demand in Europe also lowered the industry’s export growth from 9-10 per cent in the last fiscal (2016-17).
“The lower export outlook is a result of political and economic uncertainties impacting decision-making and discretionary spend,” the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) admitted in a statement.
Software exports contribute about 80 per cent to the industry’s revenue, with the US market generating 60 per cent of this, while the domestic market is projected to grow 10-11 per cent in 2017-18.
“Modernisation of clients’ IT operations and adoption of new technologies such as SaaS (Software As A Service) applications, cloud platforms, BI (Business Intelligence), cognitive and embedded analytics for digital projects of enterprise customers have been the industry’s growth drivers in 2017,” noted Chandrashekhar.
According to Nasscom Chairman Raman Roy, the industry has reinvented and is focused on building digital solution offerings through a combination of business model changes and investment in products and platforms.
Admitting that the industry would need bold and imaginative action to resolve issues, Chandrashekhar said opportunities were unfolding, as new sectors such as healthcare, energy, transportation and manufacturing were also adopting ICT solutions to sustain, compete and grow.
Besides traditional sectors like banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), telecom, retail, utilities, transport and logistics, a host of other verticals are investing in automation, AI, cloud computing, data analytics, machine learning, robotics and Internet of Things (IoT).
“Adoption of new technologies by traditional and new sectors like healthcare, education, gaming and entertainment, e-commerce, digital, public services and internet mobile are making the IT industry invest in skilling and reskilling their talent to sustain the momentum,” asserted Chandrashekhar.
On the flip side, innovation and tech start-ups have also faced headwinds, as angel investments and initial funding have sharply declined over the months.
“Though the ecosystem for start-ups is maturing and thriving on smart talent, raising funds to sustain growth and expand the market reach is challenging as their potential investors have become risk-averse due to uncertainty,” noted Chandrashekhar, a former Telecom Secretary and regulator.
Skill shortage in developed countries implied huge opportunities for the Indian IT industry to invest in building human capital talent and developing new platforms for digital business.
Hiring in traditional services like application development, testing and maintenance will, however, continue to decline due to automation and AI.
“The declining trend in hiring is secular and will continue due to automation, course correction and technology induced changes in the business models,” Chandrashekhar added.
Infosys, meanwhile, was rocked by boardroom battles that led to the dramatic exit of its first non-promoter Chief Executive, Vishal Sikka, in August and return of co-founder Nandan Nilekani as Chairman to steer it out of troubled times.
What began as an ethical issue for good governance the IT major is known for, had blown up into an open war between co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy and its previous Board on the buyout of a US-based software firm (Panaya) and the severance pay to its former Chief Financial Officer, Rajiv Bhansal, in October 2015.
While Sikka tried to play down the issue, terming governance lapse as media speculation, a whistle-blower’s letter to the stock market regulator (SEBI) on the $200-million Panaya acquisition deal in February 2015 forced Murthy to red-flag the issue again with the Board members, including its former Chairman R. Seshasayee and Sikka.
When an international law firm and a risk consultancy found no evidence of wrongdoing in acquiring Panaya, Murthy insisted on making their report public and advised the Board to be transparent in all its decisions.
Unable to any more take the “unrelenting, baseless, malicious and personal attacks” on him, Sikka resigned on August 18 — for which the previous Board blamed Murthy. The open spat also brought down the company’s stock by 10 per cent in a single day.
The return of Nilekani, 62, as non-Executive Chairman on August 24 led to the exit of Seshasayee, co-chairman Ravi Venkatesan and Directors Jeffery S. Lehman and John Etchemendy.
Though Murthy was relieved to have Nilekani back to guide the company, he was not happy with the latter too finding no wrongdoing with the Panaya deal or excess compensation to Bansal.
To prove that “all is well that ends well”, the Infosys Board on December 1 hired former Capgemini veteran software geek Salil Parekh as its new Chief Executive from January 2.
(Fakir Balaji can be contacted at fakir.b@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
By Milinda Ghosh Roy,
Darjeeling : Through much of 2017, the picturesque Darjeeling Hills — once a dreamy tourist gateway — simmered with violence over the revived demand for a separate Gorkhaland state.
The agitation that started against the alleged imposition of Bengali language on the locals snowballed into an intense movement for statehood, triggering widespread arson and vandalism, massive clashes, multiple casualties, political blame games and the longest-ever shutdown of 104 days that brought the entire northern West Bengal hills to a standstill.
During the May civic body polls, Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM), the leading political force in the hills for over a decade, retained its supremacy by winning the Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong municipalities, but suffered a crushing defeat in Mirik Notified Area, where the Trinamool Congress gained a two-thirds majority. The Trinamool also significantly upped its vote share in Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong.
Elated with her party making inroads in the region, West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee called it the beginning of a new era.
However, her jubilation soon turned to concern as the Gorkha locals hit the streets in early June against the West Bengal government’s three-language policy in the state schools and accused it of imposing Bengali on them.
Banerjee, in turn, accused the GJM of spreading lies to divide the Bengali and Nepali communities and vowed to take action against the board members of the GJM-run hill development body, Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA), if a special audit ordered by her government unearthed financial irregularities.
The very next day, GJM activists burnt the Chief Minister’s effigies and rallied, demanding the state government publish a written circular about not making Bengali compulsory in the hills.
GJM Chief Bimal Gurung and his followers seemed determined to revive the century-old demand for a separate Gorkhaland. The fight would continue till death, Gurung declared.
Violence erupted in the heart of Darjeeling on June 8, the day the state cabinet held its first meeting there in 45 years, when hundreds of GJM activists went on a rampage, breaking police barricades, pelting stones and torching a police outpost. By evening, the army had to be called in to stop the situation from spiralling out of control.
The GJM called a 12-hour shutdown in the hills complaining of police atrocities on their workers, even as nearly 4,500 tourists were stranded in different parts of Darjeeling and Kalimpong. Within two days of the strike, the GJM called an indefinite shutdown from June 12.
As the shutdown started, pro-Gorkhaland rallies, picketing, vandalism in government offices and clashes between the agitators and security forces became regular happenings. The situation deteriorated after three local activists were killed during clashes with police in Darjeeling and Sonada on July 7. The incensed locals held the state administration responsible for the deaths and resorted to widespread violence and arson that compelled the government to deploy the army — the second time in exactly a month.
The constant police raids at several GJM leaders’ residences, including party chief Gurung, further infuriated the hill parties. Setting aside their differences with GJM, prominent hill outfits like the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) and the Jana Andolan Party (JAP) supported the cause of Gorkhaland.
By the first month of the indefinite shutdown, thousands participated in pro-Gorkhaland rallies every day. The GJM announced a fast-unto-death while several Gorkha intellectuals including singers, filmmakers and poets registered their protest by returning awards received from state government.
On August 19, two separate bomb blasts within 24 hours in Darjeeling and Kalimpong rocked the hills. One civic volunteer was killed while two security personnel were injured in the Kalimpong explosion.
The police raids were intensified and a lookout notice was issued against Gurung and his associates under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, forcing him to abscond.
The West Bengal government’s attempt to call truce with the agitators was futile as all the prominent hill outfits and opposition political parties boycotted the first two state-convened all-party meetings and formed the Gorkhaland Movement Coordination Committee to supervise the agitation.
However, as the shutdown continued without any positive outcome for the Gorkhaland demand, cracks emerged within the hill parties and even among the GJM leadership. The JAP openly questioned the relevance of the shutdown while the GNLF said it was ready to discuss the Gorkhaland issue with the state govrnment, defying GJM’s decision that only tripartite talks between the Centre, the state and hill parties would be allowed.
But the GJM infighting came out in the open after its general secretary, Binay Tamang, and leader Anit Thapa were ousted from the party for announcing a partial withdrawal of the shutdown. The leaders, however, called the expulsion “unconstitutional” and, with Gurung still in hiding, strengthened their hold on the party.
Seizing the opportunity, Banerjee announced sops for people of the hills and appointed Tamang as the head of the Board of Administrators for carrying out development activities in the hills. After a series of seemingly “positive talks” between the two parties and an appeal from Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, the shutdown was called off after 104 days.
As the year draws to a close, an uneasy calm prevails in the hills, with police on the hunt for Gurung, who continues to send chilling audio messages from his hideout.
(Milinda Ghosh Roy can be contacted at milinda.r@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Economy, Markets, News
By Biswajit Choudhury,
New Delhi : The 70th year since Independence will go down in Indian history since the country switched over to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, realising, thereby, the vision of a unified market in a federal system that guided the nationalist bourgeoisie in joining Mahatma Gandhis struggle to liberate India from the British.
Of course, the structural reform came accompanied with pain for trade and industry caught off-guard by the rigours of new compliance procedures. Queried by corporate leaders at industry chamber Ficci’s 90th AGM here earlier this month on how GST was impacting through lower tax collections, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley put the onus on them.
“It is you from industry, who have been calling for so long to bring GSTÂ… and no sooner do these initial problems in implementing a reform of such scale appear, then you want to go back to the system we’ve had for 70 years,” he said.
The earlier system was a myriad of central and state taxes where the movement of goods was slowed down by products being taxed multiple times and at different rates.
State level taxes replaced by the pan-India GST include state cesses and surcharges, luxury tax, state VAT, purchase tax, central sales tax, taxes on advertisements, entertainment tax, various forms of entry tax, and taxes on lotteries and betting.
Central taxes replaced by GST are service tax, special additional customs duties (SAD), additional excise duties on goods of special importance, central excise, additional customs duties, excise on medicinal and toilet preparations, additional excise duties on textiles and textile products, and cesses and surcharges.
The new indirect tax regime unifying the Indian market has four tax slabs of 5, 12, 18 and 28 per cent.
It has a novel feature whereby goods and services providers get the benefit of input tax credit for the goods used, effectively making the real incidence of taxation lower than the headline taxation rate.
The second half of the year saw a radical reworking of the items within the four-slab tax structure by the supremely federal institution of the GST Council, whereby all but 50 of over 1,200 items remained in the highest 28 per cent bracket. Those retained included luxury and sin items, the cess on which goes to fund the compensation to states for the loss of revenue arising from implementing GST.
With the Council’s decisions last month, GST has been cut on a host of consumer items such as chocolates, chewing gum, shampoos, deodorants, shoe polish, detergents, nutrition drinks, marble and cosmetics. Luxury goods such as washing machines and air conditioners have been retained at 28 per cent.
Eating out has become cheaper as all restaurants outside high-end hotels charging over Rs 7,500 per room will uniformly levy GST of five per cent. The facility of input tax credit for restaurants has, however, been withdrawn as they had not passed on this benefit to consumers.
Petroleum, including oil and gas, is a strategic sector that is still not under GST, while the industry has been pushing for its inclusion so as not to be deprived of the benefits of input credit.
Including real estate is another matter pending before the GST Council.
On the functioning of the Council, Jaitley who is its head, had this remarkable insight about the way in which it had effected such large-scale rationalisation of the item rates in a short span of “3-4 months”.
“Everything has been achieved by consensus in the best spirit of cooperative federalism. There has been no politics, even from states which are controlled by opposition parties,” he told a gathering of industry leaders here.
The other side of GST was revealed through what the International Monetary Fund described as “short-term disruptions”.
With businesses going into a “de-stocking” mode on inventories in anticipation of the GST rollout from July and sluggish manufacturing growth, among other factors, pulled down growth in the Indian economy during the first quarter of this fiscal to 5.7 per cent, clocking the lowest under the Narendra Modi dispensation. Breaking a five-quarter slump, a rise in manufacturing sector output, however, pushed the growth rate higher to 6.3 per cent during the second quarter (July-September) of 2017-18.
Besides, technical glitches appearing on the GST Network portal, often unable to take the load of last-minute rush to file returns, marred the filing of returns by traders, forcing the government to postpone filing deadlines several times. The glitches also led to export refunds piling up, resulting in a grave situation of cash crunch for exporters, whose working capital was getting blocked.
In the final analysis, the GST balance sheet is provided by Gita Gopinath, Professor of International Studies and Economies at Harvard University, who is also the economic adviser to the Kerala Chief Minister.
“GST is a real reform. It is a way of formalising the economy. It is a very effective way of ensuring tax compliance, making it harder to earn black money. I mean, nothing ever goes away completely, but it just makes it harder to make it happen,” Gopinath said in Mumbai earlier this month.
The icing on the cake came with the World Bank announcing earlier this year that India had jumped 30 places in its Ease of Doing Business rankings to get among the top 100 countries on the list. Though reforms in India’s direct tax regime figured among the parameters considered in evaluation, GST had not been taken into account by the multilateral agency since their cut-off date was June 30.
(Biswajit Choudhury can be reached at biswajit.c@ians.in)
—IANS
