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THE WIRE March 10, 2018 Shankar Waghere flings his plastic bag on the ground and hunches over on his wooden cane to gather his breath. Then he kneels down, panting, and closes his eyes. They remain shut for the next 15 minutes. It’s been a lot of walking today for this 65-year old. Around him, in the darkness, are some 25,000 other farmers. “We have to fight for our rights,” he says, sitting on the Nashik-Agra highway in Igatpuri’s Raigadnagar locality. It is the first halt of a massive farmers’ morcha that began in Nashik town on March 6, on a busy Tuesday afternoon. The farmers plan to reach Mumbai on Sunday, March 11, and encircle the legislative assembly building the day after – to protest against the state government’s failure to fulfil its promises. The Akhil Bharatiya Kisan Sabha, the farmers’ collective of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has called for this long march. One of the organisers, Ajit Navale, general secretary of the Kisan Sabha, says the go

The Indian Express March 11, 2018 Exhorting India’s commitment to free trade, Minister of Commerce and Industry and Civil Aviation Suresh Prabhu said on Saturday that the US’ decision to increase tariffs on certain steel and aluminium products was an “unfortunate development”. Prabhu’s comments come at a time when global bodies have admitted to fears of a potential “trade war” between nations that could retaliate with their own tariff impositions. “We are committed to free trade. We have definitely taken a note of it. It is a very unfortunate development and we will take it up bilaterally with all the countries. In any case we are having a meeting with all the major economies of the world who are coming to India. We will also discuss with them,” Prabhu told reporters at the sidelines of the Indo-French Partnership signing ceremony. The US administration recently announced imposition of tariffs on imported steel and aluminium, citing national security concerns and the ne

Business Line March 10, 2018 The NPA scare ratcheted up by BJP MP Subramanian Swamy is spreading. Share prices of companies that have high debt on their books and the banks that have lent them and those already suffering from a negative public perception took a sharp beating on Friday. Apart from Adani Group stocks, which have been sliding for the past three trading sessions, RCom, JP Associates, Lanco Infra, Essar Shipping, Bhushan Steel, IVRCL and Punj Lloyd saw their share prices fall between 2 per cent and 12 per cent since Swamy’s comments. Swamy’s tweet In a widely commented and shared tweet on Tuesday, Swamy said Adani should be made accountable or he would file a Public Interest Litigation in court for recovery of bank loans from him. These companies within their respective corporate groups are among the 25 most debt-heavy in India. Apart from the public sector banks’ stocks that have seen a sharp erosion in value in the wake of the Nirav Modi loan scam,

The Telegraph March 10, 2018 US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose a "reciprocal tax" on countries such as China and India if they do not match America's tariff. Trump has, in recent days, spoken a number of times about the 50 per cent duty that India levies on high-end motorbikes that Harley-Davidson, an American company, sells in India. He has repeatedly insisted that the US levies "zero" duty - or "nothing" - on motorbikes imported from India. "We're going to be doing a reciprocal tax programme, at some point so that if China is going to charge us 25 per cent or if India is going to charge us 75 per cent and we charge them nothing," he said on Thursday while levying a 25 per cent tariff on steel and a 10 per cent tariff on aluminium from all countries except Canada and Mexico. "They are 50, they are 75 or they are 25, we are going to be doing the same numbers. It's called reciprocal. It's a

The Indian Express March 10, 2018 In the light of the Budget announcement to ensure the minimum support price (MSP) for different agricultural crops, three concepts, including procurement and stocking by private parties, were discussed at a consultative meeting held in the NITI Aayog on Friday. “The third option of private procurement and stockist scheme offers great promise as it reduces the fiscal implications for the government, involves private entities as partners in agriculture marketing and improves the competition in the market,” NITI Aayog said in a statement. The first option is related to the Market Assurance Scheme, which proposes procurement by states and compensation for losses up to a certain extent of the MSP after procurement and price realisation out of sale of procured produce. The second option is related to price deficiency procurement scheme. Under this scheme, if the sale price is below a modal price then the farmers may be compensated to the diff

The Telegraph March 12, 2018 The RSS said on Sunday that building a consensus on the Ayodhya dispute was not going to be easy but stressed that a Ram temple - "and nothing else" - would be constructed in the Uttar Pradesh town. RSS general secretary Bhaiyyaji Joshi also stressed that the matter was sub judice. "It is certain that the Ram temple will be constructed at that place and nothing else can be built there, this is also decided," Joshi told reporters here on the sidelines of the RSS's Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha meeting. Confident of a favourable judgment from the Supreme Court on the matter, Joshi said the construction of the temple would begin after the court's order and it would be built on the basis of its verdict on the ownership of land. Replying to a question on spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravishankar's efforts at developing consensus between the different parties on the issue, Joshi said consensus building was not g

The Hindu March 13, 2018 In the new world order, India should give primacy to rules that will chart a path for its own sustainable prosperity The inaugural International Solar Alliance (ISA) summit underlines India’s place in the new world order. Global equitable sustainable development, which is the basis of the ISA, suggests a ‘third’ way to the inequality and environmental damage characterising the current U.S. and China-led models. This vision follows from India’s call for ‘climate justice’, which reframes climate change as a social and not a physical problem. The shift fills the gap in the thrust of the ‘Chinese dream’ and ‘America first’, both of which ignore sustainable development. In January, the big takeaway from the ASEAN-India Summit was that countries in the region questioned the benefits of China’s model of a new order and the U.S.’s commitment to the existing order and considered India as a balancing factor. This is also why China and the U.S. are seeking to

Hindustan Times March 12, 2018 The hardline activist group Sikhs For Justice has protested the taking down of its page on Facebook, alleging that action was taken at the behest of the Indian government. SFJ’s legal advisor Gurpatwant Pannun said the page, News Punjab 2020, was taken down on Facebook on Saturday but restored on Sunday after an email campaign and messages to the social media giant. While the page was accessible on Sunday evening, it was again apparently barred later in the night. Pannun said the page had nearly 100,000 followers and was the “prime platform of online referendum 2020 campaign”. That reference is to the vote the SFJ plans to organise that year. SFJ’s own page was blocked by Facebook in India in 2015, according to Pannun. As the group challenged that action in courts in the US, judges ruled on two occasions that Facebook could not be forced to carry content against its wishes. That page remains available in North America, including in Ca