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The Economic Times Hema Ramakrishnan February 15, 2018 Successive governments at the Centre and states have promised health covers for the poor. The intent is laudable, and possibly electorally rewarding. But the key challenge is to design a robust financial edifice to make such plans sustainable. That's what the craftsmen of the Budget's new National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS) must ensure.  The NHPS promises to cover 10 crore poor households, or 50 crore people, for hospital care. Every family would get a yearly cover of Rs 5 lakh for free treatment. One estimate puts the insurance premium at Rs 2,000 a family a year, taking the cost to Rs 20,000 crore, of which a slice would be borne by states.  The estimate has been contested. Insurers, too, would want to underwrite health policies only if they are priced realistically. The cost could vary, depending on the quality of hospital infrastructure, competition and governance in each state. Strengthening prim

THE HINDU KV Kurmanath February 15, 2018 As the sales season approaches for next kharif, the cottonseed firms have asked the Central government to remove the royalty (or trait value) component on the Bollgard-II claiming that the technology proved to be ineffective last season. Cotton-growing States have reported that on vast tracts the pink bollworm has developed resistance to the Bollgard-II technology, causing extensive damage to the crop. The seed firms have argued that since the technology has become ineffective to protect the crop from the pink bollworm attack, there is no point in collecting any trait fee from farmers. The Cottonseed Price Control Order (CSPCO) had fixed the trait value for BG-II at  ₹ 49 on a 450-gm packet. The seed firms collect it as part of the sale and remit the same to Mahycho Monsanto Biotech Limited (MMBL) under the licence agreement. MMBL sub-licenses the technology (which it gets from the US-based Monsanto) to the cottonseed firms in th

THE HINDU February 15, 2018 The Defence Ministry today cleared a proposal to buy 7.40 lakh assault rifles at a cost of Rs 12,280 crore for the three services, officials said. The decision was taken at a meeting of Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) presided over by Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. The defence ministry will also procure light machine guns worth Rs 1,819 crore, they said. In other decisions, a proposal for purchase of 5,719 sniper rifles for the army at a cost of Rs 982 crore was also approved. Reference:  https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/policy/defence-ministrys-nod-for-procuring-740-lakh-assault-rifles/article22743768.ece

THE HINDU February 15, 2018 NTPC, India’s biggest electricity producer, has won a tender to supply 300 megawatts (MW) of electricity to Bangladesh for 15 years. Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) had invited tenders for the supply of 500 MW power from India for a short-term (June 1, 2018 to December 31, 2019) and long-term (January 1, 2020 to May 31, 2033). NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam (NVVN), Adani Group, PTC and Singapore-based Sembcorp had submitted bids by the scheduled date of January 11. Financial bid was opened on February 11, the company said in a statement. “NVVN, a wholly-owned subsidiary of NTPC Ltd, emerged as a successful bidder (L1), both in short-term and long-term for 300 MW power,” it said. Without giving details of the rate at which power will be supplied, NTPC said supply of electricity is likely to commence from June 2018 after the commissioning of 500-MW HVDC inter-connection project between India and Bangladesh. India currently exports a

THE HINDU  S.Ronendra February 15, 2018 NEW DELHI, For a government that is keen to promote e-transactions, this is worrisome statistics: as many as 15 crore of the 230 crore e-transactions carried out just last week, which include financial and other transactions, were compromised. That’s a breach of one in every 15 transactions. That sobering revelation was made by senior officials to Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad at the ‘State IT Ministers Conclave’ here on Tuesday. Sources privy to the proceedings told BusinessLine that the Minister was informed that 40 per cent of cyberattacks today happen on financial and government websites, especially for phishing, denial of service attack and ransom-ware attack. “The maximum number of breaches happen on Gmail (Google) accounts, as the maximum number of Internet users (500 million) have smartphones that are based on Android (again Google) and apps running on them,” an official said.

THE HINDU February 15, 2018 Even as sales of herbicide-tolerant (HT) cotton seeds are being reported from across the country, the Andhra Pradesh government has served show-cause notices on Nuziveedu Seeds Limited and Kaveri Seeds for reported use of the illegal gene in some of their seed samples. The State’s Additional Director of Agriculture (Seeds) has asked the two companies to explain why, having violated regulatory protocols, the government should not cancel their licence to sell the seeds. The report cited investigations by a taskforce, which was set up to look into alleged violations in a few villages in Guntur and Kurnool districts in October 2017. Along with Telangana, Gujarat and Maharashtra, AP has widespread plantations of HT cotton, which is the third-generation cotton seed technology developed by Monsanto. In fact, a third of the 45 lakh acres of cotton area in Telangana is under illegal HT seeds cultivation. The Roundup Ready Flex contains a thir

The Hindu February 15, 2018 Markets regulator SEBI has banned seven people, including Ricoh India MD and Chief Executive AT Rajan, from the securities market for falsifying the company’s accounts. The auto-parts maker, backed by Japanese promoter Ricoh Co, did not present a “true and fair picture” in 2015-16 and ended up reporting losses of ₹1,118 crore in its financial statements for that fiscal. This led to a crash of more than 50 per cent in Ricoh India’s share price. Late on Monday, SEBI passed an interim order in which it said there was an urgent need for it to intervene. The regulator not only barred seven officials of Ricoh India, but also appointed its own forensic auditor to examine the extent of fraud in the company. The possibility of Ricoh’s accounting fraud being on the scale of Satyam Computers cannot be ruled out. SEBI believes the fraud could be larger than the estimated ₹1,118 crore. “It is quite possible that the fraud is yet to be unravelled a