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Pankaj Mishra  February 22, 2019 day Kotak is a risk-taker and a fighter but not the kind to go swinging blindly. Which is why although he’s a recent convert to “the digital way of growing our future in banking and finance,” the veteran banker is mindful that the driving point has to be the consumer and not technology-obsession. In this Outliers podcast with Pankaj Mishra from last year, the managing director and chief executive of Kotak Mahindra Bank explains why he’s convinced that technology will be the biggest changer for financial services and why “once you have conviction you need to move fast.” While he has his hands full with a court case against the Reserve Bank of India and the IL&FS rescue, Kotak’s sharply focused on his bank finding “ways of getting plugged into the future ecosystem or creating one of our own.” There are several important lessons and nuggets to be gleaned from this conversation — thanks to Kanika Berry for transcription — including Kotak’s ‘Ph...

Written by Shubhajit Roy | New Delhi | Updated: February 22, 2019 The statement is significant because China has single handedly blocked the listing of JeM chief Masood Azhar as a “global terrorist” at the UN Security Council Resolution 1267 sanctions committee for the last 10 years. As many as 40 CRPF personnel were killed after a suicide bomber rammed his Scorpio SUV laden with explosives into a CRPF bus in south Kashmir. Signalling a clear shift, China Thursday signed off on a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) statement that “condemned in the strongest terms” the Pulwama terror attack and named Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad for the “heinous and cowardly suicide bombing”. The statement is significant because China has single handedly blocked the listing of JeM chief Masood Azhar as a “global terrorist” at the UN Security Council Resolution 1267 sanctions committee for the last 10 years. At least three attempts in the last decade — in 2009, 2016 and 2017 —...

The Quint, Feb 22, 2019 The government is reportedly looking to discard National Sample Survey Office’s (NSSO) report on unemployment and use the Labour Bureau’s survey of the Mudra scheme instead. In a report, The Indian Express said the Niti Aayog has asked the Labour Ministry to present the survey’s findings by 27 February. The ministry has reportedly been asked to show data for direct employment and jobs created by spin-off as a result of availing the Mudra scheme. The development attains significance as the Modi-led government has been facing flak on being unable to create enough jobs. The sixth employment-unemployment survey of the Labour Bureau showed unemployment rising to a four-year high of 3.9 percent in in 2016-17. Late last month, Business Standard reported that the unemployment rate had zoomed to a 45-year high of 6.1 percent during 2017-18, according to the NSSO’s periodic labour force survey (PLFS). Now, the government wants to take into accoun...

Updated: Feb 22, 2019 11:29 IST Yashwant Raj, Hindustan Times As the wait continued for France to introduce a motion to add Jaish-e-Mohammad founder Masood Azhar to a list of UN-designated terrorists, the security council on Thursday condemned the Pulwama attack in the “strongest terms” and called for holding accountable sponsors of terrorism. Thursday’s condemnation was in a standard United Nations Security Council format that the body has issued for every terrorist strike it has condemned, allowing changes only to factor in country names, places and those responsible, Where an entity claimed responsibility credibly, the press statements name them, not otherwise. It was not out of the ordinary for the statement to name JeM, which had claimed responsibility, and it merely acknowledged it as is the practice. The condemnation was not different from others issued before. “The members of the Security Council condemned in the strongest terms the heinous and cowardly suic...

PTI, Feb 21, 2019  The government has asked state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) to sell out 66 of their small oil and gas fields to private firms as it brought in a new policy to boost domestic production and cut imports, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Thursday. To quickly bring all sedimentary basins under oil and gas exploration, the government dumped a two-year-old model of bidding out acreage or blocks to firms offering highest share of revenue, and brought in a new system of bidding them out on the basis of work programme such as drilling of wells and shooting of seismic with the winner's only liability being payment of statutory duties like royalty and cess, he told reporters here. ONGC and OIL, who are battling stagnation in output from largely ageing fields, have a total of 184 fields. The national oil companies have been asked to provide enhanced production profile for 66 of these fields, which contribute ...

Varun Kumar Das,  Feb 22, 2019 The scheme is far from being inclusive and will likely exacerbate already unequal social and economic conditions. The focal point of this year’s budget has been the announcement of a new centrally-sponsored scheme, the ‘Pradhan Mantri Kishan Samman Nidhi’ (PM-KISAN). This scheme assures small and marginal farm households a guaranteed annual income support of Rs 6,000. However, this scheme is hardly the first instance of agricultural income support in the country. States like Odisha and Telangana have individual state-level farm income support schemes. The amount of Rs 6,000 is less than the farm income support provided by states such as those mentioned above. Interpreting the rationale The income support estimate of Rs 6,000 per farm household appears to be an arbitrary construct. It could be speculated that this income support is to bridge the poverty gap of small farmers. However, according to the Rangarajan report on poverty...

RUSSELL MOKHIBER, February 21, 2019 The popular weedkiller glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, is on the run. Congresswoman and Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) last week called for a ban. “We need to ban all products containing glyphosate, including Roundup,” Gabbard tweeted on February 16. “It’s poisoning our people, butterflies and other insects, the land and the water.” And then again today, Gabbard tweeted: “Monsanto proves they’ll do anything to pad their pockets, including manufacturing ‘scientific studies’ to influence the EPA while destroying small farmers. They unleashed the scourge of Roundup on us and should be held accountable for the consequences.” Also last week the Guardian reported on a broad new scientific analysis showing that people with high exposures to the popular pesticides have a 41% increased risk of developing a type of cancer called non-Hodgkin lymphoma.” Last August, a jury in San Francisco award...

Published time: 22 Feb, 2019 The genetically-modified Chinese twins born resistant to HIV last year may also have mental ‘superpowers’ their creator has kept quiet – a cognitive superiority that could kick off a genetic arms race, according to new research. Lulu and Nana, the genetically-modified Chinese twins reportedly born HIV-resistant courtesy of the CRISPR gene editing tool, may also have been born with markedly superior mental abilities linked to the same gene edit. New research has confirmed that deleting the CCR5 gene – the same modification performed on the girls’ DNA – significantly improves cognition, learning, and memory in mice and men. “The answer is likely yes, it did affect their brains,” University of California at Los Angeles neurobiologist Alcino Silva told MIT Technology Review, after publishing a paper demonstrating CCR5 deactivation’s beneficial role in post-stroke recovery this week.  “Those mutations will probably have an impact on cogniti...

By Joel Rebello, Updated: Feb 22, 2019 Government-owned State Bank of India and Punjab National Bank have agreed to provide Rs 500 crore emergency funding for Jet Airways, subject to others in the consortium of lenders not objecting, said people with knowledge of the matter. This money will allow the airline to continue operations until the lenders determine the best way of restructuring the company’s debt of more than Rs 8,000 crore.  “Only SBI and PNB have agreed to step in and provide the loans,” said a person with direct knowledge of the matter. “None of the other lenders are willing to lend more.” The fresh debt is proposed to be ranked at higher seniority, which means it will be given first preference in the event of loan recovery, this person said.  RESOLUTION PLAN  “Since it will be treated on a higher pedestal on the debt waterfall, it needs an okay from other lenders,” the person added.  SBI and PNB didn’t respond to queries. Jet Air...

COL. VINAYAK BHAT (RETD)  Updated: 22 February, 2019 For nearly two decades, China has been denying rumours that its People’s Liberation Army plans to set up overseas bases, yet over the last few years, the presence of at least one base in the African nation of Djibouti has been confirmed. And now four days ago, The Washington Post reported that for at least the last three years, Chinese troops have been stationed in the Central Asian country of Tajikistan, a few miles away from its border with China and a proverbial stone’s throw from the strategic Wakhan Corridor in Afghanistan. ThePrint takes a closer look at this foreign base through open source satellite imagery to understand its significance and its international impact. Strategic significance The US Department of Defense and many of the world’s intelligence agencies believed that China would have its second overseas base in Pakistan. There have also been several rumours on the Chinese internet about s...