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Business Line, February 12, 2018 India’s “biggest” foreign policy challenge in the coming years will be to deal with an “increasingly assertive China” but New Delhi has to be more nuanced and self-confident in its approach towards Beijing, a former top diplomat said today. Former Indian Ambassador to China, Ashok K Kantha, said enhanced people to people engagement between the Asian neighbours can impart stability in bilateral relations despite differences between them. Dealing with an assertive China Addressing a conference titled “Enhancing India-China People to People Relations,” here, Kantha said China has started describing its contested territorial claims including with India as part of its core interests as “non-negotiable”. “Management of boundary question becomes more difficult. And Doklam was just the example,” he said, referring to the 75-day tense border stand-off between the two countries last year. Doklam will not be the last case when “we run into serious ...

Business Line, Amiti Sen,  February 12, 2018  Cryptocurrencies pose a major threat to the financial stability of the country, and Budget 2018-19 rightly sounded the voice of caution about them, Shaktikanta Das, Member, 15th Finance Commission, and former economic affairs and revenue secretary, said on Monday. “Crypto currencies have the potential to become Ponzi schemes. I think the Finance Minister has sounded the voice of caution against them at the right time, and I am quite sure that the government will check the whole practice,” Das said in his keynote address at a Post Budget Talk organised by  BusinessLine  and SASTRA Deemed University, Powered by FICCI. Das, who is also India’s Sherpa to the G-20, pointed out that in any country, under the statute it is the central bank (which, in India’s case, is the RBI) that is legally authorised to issue currencies for doing transactions on behalf of the sovereign. “Suddenly, in recent years, because of some...

Dawn  Baqir Sajjad Syed February 13, 2018  ISLAMABAD: President Mamnoon Hussain last Friday quietly promulgated an ordinance amending the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 with regards to proscription of terrorist individuals and organisations to include entities listed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) — in a move that would end a longstanding ambiguity over the status of Hafiz Saeed-linked Jamaatud Dawa and Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation (FIF) by firmly placing them on the list of proscribed groups. The promulgation of the ordinance was made public on Monday. The ordinance amends Sections 11-B and 11-EE of Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 (XXVII of 1997). Section 11-B sets out parameters for proscription of groups, whereas 11-EE describes the grounds for listing of individuals. Both sections would now include Sub-Section ‘aa’, according to which organisations and individuals “listed under the United Nations (Security Council) Act, 1948 (XIV of 1948), or” will b...

Financial Express February 13, 2018 The European Aviation Safety Agency’s (EASA) emergency airworthiness directive (EAD), warning of a potential “dual engine” in flight shutdown on A320neo-family aircraft powered by Pratt & Whitney PW1100G geared turbofan (GTF) engines, late last week has not only upstaged the expansion plan of the country’s fastest-growing airline, IndiGo, but has also raised some pertinent issues about aviation safety in the country. The development has forced the civil aviation ministry to come out and say it will look into all aspects related to safety. Post the EASA’s directive, Airbus has conveyed to its A320neo customers that it has halted deliveries of this aircraft type. “Product safety boards of Pratt & Whitney and Airbus, post evaluating the PW1100G-JM engine issue, have decided that all neo deliveries are on hold till further notice.” IndiGo in a statement said in the last 18 months, it has done 69 engine replacements as best p...

Financial Express February 13, 2018 The year 2017 saw many important structural reforms being implemented in the country. The introduction of GST was a landmark event and will go a long way towards achieving indirect tax reforms. Similarly, the Real Estate Regulatory Authority will bring a lot of transparency in the real estate sector, thereby affecting a large number of Indians who aspire home ownership. One reform that is both influencing and changing the way one does business in India is the introduction of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). Promoters of Indian business have taken lenders for granted and benefited from a tedious legal system (as on March 31, 2017, gross NPAs were almost Rs 8 lakh crore). IBC has changed the rules of the game and provided enough ammunition in the hands of bankers to recover dues. It was passed by Parliament in May 2016 and became effective in December 2016. Since then, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India, the regulator, ...

Financial Express February 13, 2018 The Andhra Pradesh government has issued show-cause notices to two major seed companies — Kaveri Seeds and Nuziveedu Seeds — for illegally selling herbicide tolerant cotton seeds to farmers in Kurnool and Guntur districts. The Andhra Pradesh government has issued show-cause notices to two major seed companies — Kaveri Seeds and Nuziveedu Seeds — for illegally selling herbicide tolerant cotton seeds to farmers in Kurnool and Guntur districts. In an order issued by the additional director of agriculture (seeds), government of Andhra Pradesh on January 29, both the seed companies were asked to reply within five days to the findings of an expert panel report which held them guilty of selling herbicide tolerant cotton seeds, not approved by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC). M Prabhakar Rao, chairman of Nuziveedu group confirmed receiving the notice from the AP government, but denied the allegation. He said the notices...

Financial Express Shubhajit Dasgupta February 13, 2018 Heaven forbid we have to depend on Modi, Trump, Putin or other self-serving politicians to bring about any real change.  Governments don’t change the world. People do. Heaven forbid we have to depend on Modi, Trump, Putin or other self-serving politicians to bring about any real change. There’s only you and I to do the job and the good news is that there are tens—indeed, hundreds—of thousands of others in India (and all over the world) working alongside us. Most, but by no means all, of these efforts are driven through NGOs and non-profits, and just looking around, there are so many great people doing such wonderful work that I would bet that we have long ago crossed the critical mass of positive-change-agents, which should see the process accelerate from here on. To catalyse this acceleration, I have joined as a founder member of IIT-IIT—IITians for Influencing India’s transformation—which was conceptualised ...

Financial Express February 13, 2018 Idea Cellular, the telecom arm of the Aditya Birla Group, on Monday said that it has completed allotment of 33 crore equity shares to the Aditya Birla Group entities at an issue price of Rs 99.50 per share, aggregating Rs 3,250 crore. Idea Cellular, the telecom arm of the Aditya Birla Group, on Monday said that it has completed allotment of 33 crore equity shares to the Aditya Birla Group entities at an issue price of Rs 99.50 per share, aggregating Rs 3,250 crore. This is part of the company’s plans to raise more than Rs 6,700 crore announced in January, as Idea prepares for the proposed merger with Vodafone India. “Idea Cellular Limited today completed the allotment of 326,633,165 equity shares to the Aditya Birla Group (ABG) entities, at an issue price of Rs 99.50 per share (including premium of Rs 89.50 per share) aggregating to Rs 3,250 crore,” the company said in a statement. The preferential allotment of equity shares follo...

The Wire Anuj Srivas February 12, 2018 Banking sources say the account will be declared an NPA if the telecom firm misses another interest payment by December 31. New Delhi: Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications (RCom) this week finally outlined a plan to cut its debt by by around Rs 39,000 crore, mostly on the back of the sale of assets for which the company claimed some non-binding offers had already been made. And yet, multiple bankers and ratings analysts describe the outcome of the strategic debt restructuring (SDR) process – which was invoked in June 2017 after RCom missed interest payments, prompting two credit rating agencies to downgrade its debt to default – as still uncertain. The telecom company, which has a debt of nearly Rs 45,000 crore, currently plans on reducing this to Rs 6,000 crore by March 2018. Several bankers, however, feel that the timeline may be longer. The repayment plan RCom presented this week will reportedly involve “zero write-of...

First Post David Devadas February 11, 2018 Pro-Pakistan slogans shouted in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly on Saturday are only the latest indication of just how ephemeral the dividing line between the so-called 'mainstream' and 'separatist' politics is in Kashmir. It also shows how inter-changeably religion becomes part of politics. Former house speaker Akbar Lone explained to reporters after shouting "Pakistan Zindabad" in the house that, "I am a Muslim first. My sentiments were hurt when they (BJP MLAs) were shouting 'Pakistan Murdabad' slogans. I couldn’t control my emotions and raised Pakistan Zindabad slogans." This sort of talk is condemnable, not just from a nationalist Indian perspective but also from the perspective of all those who value secular as well as inclusive society and politics in the contemporary world. It is a mirror image of the Hindutva-based rhetoric that has alienated so many. Lone, w...

The Economic Times  PTI February 12, 2018 NEW DELHI: The practice of file notings in the governmental system leads to enormous build-up of paper work and delays in decision-making and this needs to be substituted by some better methods such as parallel processing, suggests a former bureaucrat in his new book.  In "A Tide in the Affairs of Men: A Public Servant Remembers", Prateep K Lahiri talks of his days in the secretariat in the central government and in Madhya Pradesh to his varied experiences during other relevant postings.  He says that if the governments are to be "effective agents of change and be instruments for engendering speedy development and social justice, they must be unshackled from the bane of having to follow archaic rules and procedures that are a drag on decision making". In the prevailing governmental system, a major obstacle is the practice of everyone making copious notings, resulting in an enormous build-up of paper work and al...

The Economic Times  Mahmoud Habboush and Anthony DiPaola   February  12, 2018  India secured a share in Abu Dhabi's oil production for the first time after agreeing to pay $600 million for a tenth of one of the emirate's biggest offshore deposits.  State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp. and other Indian companies agreed to a 40-year contract for rights to pump crude from the Lower Zakum field in partnership with Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., according to an Adnoc statement. Adnoc signed the deal during a visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the capital of the United Arab Emirates on Saturday.  Abu Dhabi, which holds most of the U.A.E.'s oil reserves, is looking for new partners at its offshore fields as the production concession for some deposits expires next month. Partners in Abu Dhabi's fields generally receive an amount of crude oil commensurate with their stakes in return for tax and royalty payments and investment to boost ou...