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The Hindu February 29, 2020 Editorial At a time when India has more or less shut down all conversations on the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and walked away from the ASEAN-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), former Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s push for regional economic integration and for India-Pakistan dialogue should be studied carefully by New Delhi. Speaking at The Hindu’s Huddle conclave last week, Mr. Wickremesinghe set out a number of suggestions. He blamed India-Pakistan tensions for bringing economic integration within the SAARC region to a “standstill”, explaining that the original purpose of the South Asian group was to build a platform where bilateral issues could be set aside in the interest of regional growth. Decrying the lack of economic integration in South Asia, and the failure of SAARC, as well as BIMSTEC (which includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand), to...

The Hindu March 01, 2020 Suhasini Haider The proposed  Afghanistan-Pakistan dialogue , facilitated by the U.S., must not cut India out of the region’s security architecture, warn experts New Delhi has signalled its acceptance of the U.S.-Taliban and U.S.-Afghanistan peace agreements in Doha and Kabul that aim to end the 18-year war in Afghanistan, by sending envoys to witness them. The two agreements set out a course for the next 14 months, including the pull-out of U.S. troops, the denial of space to foreign terrorist groups and any violence against the U.S. and allies, and intra-Afghan dialogue. However, after a closer look at the texts of the two agreements distributed to news agencies, named the “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognised by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban, and the United States of America”, and the “Joint Declaration between the Islamic Republic of Af...

The Indian Express February 29, 2020 Khaled Ahmed Avinash Paliwal of the London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in his revealing book My Enemy’s Enemy: India in Afghanistan from the Soviet Union to the US Withdrawal, has confirmed in a way what Pakistan’s Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa has already expressed through his campaign of wire-fencing Pakistan’s western border — the Durand Line. It appears that Pakistan is no longer concerned about the already-fenced border with India. It is now worried about an Indian-induced ingress from Afghanistan, as demonstrated by the arrest of alleged Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav in Balochistan in 2016. The “western (border) threat” perception has resulted in the hunting down of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), suspected of being funded by India from across the Durand Line. On January 25, the police arrested Member National Assembly (MNA) Mohsin Dawar and 30 others as they protested against the detention of MNA Man...

Business Line February 29, 2020 Poonam Khetrapal Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the 21st century’s greatest threats to health. Across the world, AMR kills an estimated 700,000 people each year. By 2050, unless urgent action is taken, it is projected to kill 10 million annually. AMR occurs when the effectiveness of antimicrobial drugs — including antibiotics — is diminished due to mutations in infectious bacteria. One of the most important causes of AMR, and the superbugs it creates, is the use of high-power antibiotics where less potent drugs would do. The WHO South-East Asia Region has made steady progress in its efforts to deal with this issue. As per the Global Action Plan on AMR, all 11 of the region’s member-states are implementing a multi-sectoral national action plan to tackle the problem. They have signed on to the Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System (GLASS), a key initiative that informs AMR-related research and decision-making. ...

Business Line February 29, 2020 Anu Acharya People in general will not worry about privacy if the value of research on their anonymised data outweighs the threats they see The Personal Data Protection Bill is reportedly doing the rounds and moving towards becoming a law. While the need for such a Bill is appreciated, I found it to be long, vague, and subject to interpretations. The current Bill appears to be the result of “mistrust” amongst the key stakeholders involved — the person or “data principal”, the company or “data fiduciary” as they call them, and the government who seems to be a superuser of data. And this begs the question: Why the mistrust? Governments are elected for a short period of time and key personnel change; similarly with bureaucrats, who are often transferred. It is important to ensure that our lawmakers and law enforcers are subject to laws that allow them to use data for very specific purposes and not have an overreach on data from private...

Business Line February 28, 2020 PTI India’s fiscal deficit touched 128.5 per cent of the whole-year Budget target in January-end, the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) said on Friday. The deficit during the same period during 2018-19 was 121.5 per cent of that year’s Revised Budget Estimate (RE). In actual terms, the fiscal deficit or gap between the expenditure and revenue stood at ₹9,85,472 crore. The government had targeted to restrict the fiscal deficit at ₹7,66,846 crore during the year ending March 31, 2020. While presenting the Union Budget to Parliament earlier this month, Finance Minister Nirmalal Sitharaman had raised fiscal deficit target to 3.8 per cent of the GDP from 3.3 per cent pegged earlier for 2019-20 due to revenue shortage. As per the CGA data on monthly accounts, revenue receipts during April-January were at ₹12.5 lakh crore or 67.6 per cent of the RE for 2019-20. This compares with 68.3 per cent of the RE in the previous fiscal. T...

Business Line February 28, 2020 PTI India and France agreed to deepen their counter-terrorism cooperation on Friday, stressing the need to deny safe havens and sources of funding to terrorists. The two countries held the 14th Meeting of Joint Working Group on Counter Terrorism in New Delhi at which a inter-agency Indian delegation was led by Ministry of External Affairs Joint Secretary Mahaveer Singhvi, while the French delegation was led by David Bertolotti, Assistant Secretary of State for Strategic, Security and Disarmament Affairs of the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs. Both sides condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, and stressed the need for strengthening international cooperation to combat terrorism in a comprehensive and sustained manner, a Ministry of External Affairs statement said. “They exchanged views on current counter-terrorism challenges including countering radicalization, combating financing of terrorism, prevent...

NDTV February 28, 2020 Reuters Washington: US intelligence agencies are monitoring the global spread of coronavirus and the ability of governments to respond, sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday, warning that there were concerns about how India would cope with a widespread outbreak. While there are only a few known cases in India, one source said the country's available countermeasures and the potential for the virus to spread given India's dense population was a focus of serious concern. US intelligence agencies are also focusing on Iran, where the country's deputy health minister has fallen ill during a worsening outbreak. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Tuesday the United States was "deeply concerned" Tehran may have covered up details about the spread of coronavirus. A US government source said Iran's response was considered ineffective because the government only has minimal capabilities to respond to the outb...

Business Line February 28, 2020 PTI Trade has never been politically neutral; it is even less so now, Jaishankar said External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, on Friday, said that there has been a visible rebalancing of the global economy in the last few decades, and the changing trade scenario is expressed in the forging of new partnerships and dependence on sourcing. Reaching international understandings on issues of trade is now more challenging than in the past, he said in a video address on ‘Asia and the Emerging International Trading System’ at the Geo-Economic Conference of the Pune International Centre here. Changing trade scenario. Jaishankar also underlined the “pulls and pressures of the international system” which he said are today most evident in the trade domain. “This very centrality underlines the extent of polarisation in what was largely perceived as a more inter-dependent existence till recently. Linkages to non-trade issues have complicated matters ...

The Hindu February 29, 2020 Reuters “As the international community works together to defeat the novel coronavirus, the United States, in consultation with ASEAN partners, has made the difficult decision to postpone the ASEAN leaders meeting,” one of the sources, a senior administration official, told Reuters. The United States has decided to postpone a meeting with leaders of Southeast Asian countries it had planned to host on March 14 due to worries about the coronavirus outbreak, two U.S. officials familiar with the matter said on Friday. President Donald Trump had invited leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to meet in Las Vegas after he did not attend a summit with the group in Bangkok in November. “As the international community works together to defeat the novel coronavirus, the United States, in consultation with ASEAN partners, has made the difficult decision to postpone the ASEAN leaders meeting,” one of the sources, a ...

The Hindu February 28-29, 2020 PTI Kabul has sent a six-member official delegation, which will begin the intra-Afghan negotiations with the Taliban soon after the peace deal with the U.S. India has accepted an invitation to witness the signing of the U.S.-Taliban peace deal in Doha, official sources confirmed. India’s Ambassador to Qatar P. Kumaran will represent the country at Saturday’s event, which will be hosted by the Government of Qatar and will be attended by representatives of about 24 countries. The decision to send Mr. Kumaran to the ceremony came even as Kabul hosted Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla who met the Acting Foreign Minister of Afghanistan Haroon Chakhansuri in the Afghan capital. “Foreign Secretary conveyed India’s support for the people of Afghanistan in their pursuit for sustainable peace, security and development,” Ministry of External Affairs Official Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said after the meeting. “They reviewed and positively ass...

NDTV March 03, 2020 Sandeep Singh India's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 4.7 per cent in October-December, in line with economists' estimates, official data showed on Friday. The government said the latest GDP estimate indicates that the economy has bottomed out.The National Statistical Office's estimates on GDP growth in the country come days after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said "green shoots" are visible in the economy, and at a time when the government has pegged the overall GDP growth at 5 per cent in the financial year ending March - the worst rate of annual expansion since the global financial crisis of 2008-09. Here are 10 things to know: The GDP growth rate in the December quarter matched the forecast of analysts in a poll by news agency Reuters, but was below a revised 5.1 per cent growth rate for the previous quarter.  The official data showed consumer demand, private investment and exports all struggling , while high...