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  Firstpost December 07, 2020 Thousands of protesters from various parts of the UK held a demonstration outside the Indian High Commission on Sunday as a show of support for farmers agitating against the Centre's new farm laws In the wake of protest in London in support of farmers' agitation in India, the British High Commission on Monday said it is in touch with the Metropolitan Police and the Indian mission there on the issue. Thousands of protesters from various parts of the UK held a demonstration outside the Indian High Commission in central London on Sunday as a show of support for farmers agitating against the Centre's new farm laws. "Policing of protests is a matter for the Metropolitan Police. We remained in close contact with both the Indian High Commission in London and the Metropolitan Police Service about the protest," a British high commission spokesperson said. The UK has a large Indian diaspora. The demonstration in London came after a group of 36 ...

Money Control December 07, 2020 Bharat Biotech's vaccine candidate was in the news recently after Haryana minister Anil Vij, who had volunteered for the trial and was administered a dose, had tested positive for COVID-19. After Pfizer and the Serum Institute of India (SII), Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech has applied to the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) for emergency use authorisation of its COVID-19 vaccine, Covaxin, PTI reported. On December 6, SII had  applied to DCGI  for emergency use authorisation for AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine in India. Earlier, the Indian arm of US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer  had become the first company  to seek a similar approval from India's drug regulator for Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine against COVID-19, after securing such clearance in the UK and Bahrain. Sources also told CNN-News18 that a Subject Expert Committee is likely to meet on December 9 to discuss applications of Pfizer, SII as well as Bharat Biotech. ...

  The Indian Express December 07, 2020 Udit Mishra If inflation rate has been outside RBI’s comfort zone for the past 12 months and RBI has also bumped up inflation forecast, then why hasn’t it raised repo rates? Dear Readers, Exactly a year ago, Finance Minister  Nirmala Sitharaman  was asked if  India was facing stagflation , which refers to a phase when an economy witnesses ‘stag’nant growth and persistently high in’flation’. The question was asked because India’s growth rate in the first two quarters of the last financial year (2019-20) had decelerated sharply to a six-year low and retail inflation — or the rate of increase in prices that we face as consumers — had shot up in November 2019. She had reportedly replied:   “I have heard of the narrative going on and I have no comments to make”. To be fair, at the time, calls of stagflation were quite premature. For one, retail inflation had gone up for just a couple of months. Moreover, the main culprits were f...

  Financial Express December 07, 2020 Sunil Jain But onus lies on the state government as it has to ensure the crop-switch takes place once Centre pays its share of costs. With the Union government and the agitating farmers failing to resolve the issue when it was not so full-blown—the Punjab government is also to blame since, at the very least, it didn’t help lower tensions—it is clear there is no real winner, no matter how the impasse ends. The Centre can’t afford to have the national capital blockaded or the agitation spreading; truck operators have threatened to join in support of the Punjab farmers who have now announced a Bharat bandh to add to the pressure on the Centre. Indeed, the farmers won’t go back till they get some meaningful concessions. More important, even if the Centre gives the farmers a written promise to continue its unlimited MSP-based procurement from the state—and hope that farmers from the rest of the country don’t demand this as well—they will continue to...

  The Print December 07, 2020 Sudhi Ranjan Sen Armed groups in Myanmar - including United Wa State Army & Arakan Army - are acting as Beijing’s proxies, Indian officials allege. Indian officials say China is assisting rebel groups that have stepped up attacks on its border with Myanmar in recent months, opening another front in the conflict between two nations already engaged in a deadly standoff in the Himalayas. Armed groups in Myanmar — including the United Wa State Army and the Arakan Army, which was designated a terrorist organization this year — are acting as Beijing’s proxies by supplying weapons and providing hideouts to insurgent groups in India’s northeastern states, according to Indian officials with knowledge of the situation, who asked not to be identified due to rules for speaking with the media. The officials said multiple security agencies warned Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government that at least four of India’s most wanted insurgent leaders were in the sou...

 The Print December 07, 2020 Snehesh Alex Philip Government sources say India-China tensions could continue to simmer at the LAC even if a temporary disengagement takes place. As winter grips eastern Ladakh, the government has asked the Army, Navy and the Air Force to stay alert and firm, and ruled out any possibility of a premature withdrawal from the Kailash ranges on the southern bank of Pangong Tso where India has the upper hand over China. Top government sources told ThePrint that right at the beginning of the tensions in May, the armed forces were directed to be prepared for any eventuality. They also said the stand-off could last longer than anticipated and the situation was expected to simmer even if a temporary disengagement took place. The sources also said China has been taken aback by India’s determined response to its aggression, which was done to establish Beijing’s global standing as a superpower against the US, and also respond to India’s fast-paced border infrastru...

  The Print December 07, 2020 Divya Patil and Anil Poonia A stronger NBFC sector, which has been struggling since a crisis in 2018 when a large financier unexpectedly defaulted, is key to helping staunch further trouble in the economy. The fortunes of India’s shadow lenders have been improving amid early signs Asia’s third-largest economy is rebounding from an unprecedented recession. Two of four indicators compiled by Bloomberg that reflect the state of shadow banks strengthened last month from October. Shares of such firms that are part of the benchmark S&P BSE 500 index jumped two levels higher. The financiers also trimmed their debt piles, helping a gauge measuring their total outstanding debt burden to improve. A stronger shadow banking industry, which has been struggling since a crisis in 2018 when a large financier unexpectedly defaulted, is key to helping staunch further trouble in the economy. The lenders provide funds to those that banks can’t reach, including some in...

 The Print December 07, 2020 Suvashree Ghosh SBI’s bad loan ratio fell to 5.28% in September end from 5.44% three months earlier, but the bank warned that it expects further $2.7 billion of loans to sour over next 6 months. State Bank of India will accelerate retail loans and expects most lenders to post stronger-than-anticipated earnings as the economy revives faster than expected, according to Chairman Dinesh Khara. “The banks were expecting worse, so they strengthened risk management significantly,” Khara, who took charge as head of the country’s largest lender in October, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Monday. “That’s why we are expected to see much better results than at the beginning of the pandemic.” SBI’s bad loan ratio fell to 5.28% at the end of September from 5.44% three months earlier, but the bank warned that it expects a further 200 billion rupees ($2.7 billion) of loans to sour over the next six months as the pandemic hurts borrowers. However, the ...

 Scroll.in December 05, 2020 Prathamesh Mulye Between April and September, the foreign direct investments into the country rose 15% year-on-year, says a CARE Ratings report. At a time when the Covid-19 pandemic was  wreaking havoc in India , foreign investors were pumping money into the country at a pace faster than before. Between April and September, when India’s economy was in a “ technical recession ,” the foreign direct investment into the country rose 15% year-on-year to $39.9 billion (Rs 29,400 crore), according to a December 4 report by CARE Ratings. “Optimism on India growth story among foreign investors combined with ample liquidity in the global market has aided flows into India,” the report said. It added that the Indian government’s reforms  like supporting the manufacturing sector  and investors’ bid to find  alternate supply chains to China  have also led to an increase in FDI into India. After all, this was the period during which the world ...

  The Indian Express December 07, 2020 Shyamlal Yadav Overall, the RTI responses show, 24 PSUs gave Rs 1 crore or more to the fund from staff salaries. Apart from over Rs 2,400 crore in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds, over 100 PSUs from across sectors have together contributed nearly Rs 155 crore from staff salaries to the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) fund, RTI records accessed by  The Indian Express  show. Oil giant ONGC, which gave Rs 29.06 crore to the fund from staff salaries, tops the list of PSUs that responded to RTI queries from The Indian Express. But the contributions also include Rs 11.43 crore from salaries at the ailing BSNL, which was unable to chip in from its CSR funds. Overall, the RTI responses show, 24 PSUs gave Rs 1 crore or more to the fund from staff salaries. The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), which manages the fund, had declined to furnish details of the contributions received. “PM C...

  The Economist December 05, 2020 What do investors know that economists don’t? T he mood on  Dalal Street, Mumbai’s version of Wall Street, is jubilant. Record highs are being achieved in one session after another on the Bombay Stock Exchange, most recently on December 2nd. The Sensex, an index of the country’s biggest 30 firms, is up by around 72% since March 23rd, the day before India went into its strict lockdown; so too is the broader-based  bse   500 . That is one of the largest rises among the world’s ten biggest economies. Share prices across all of the 79 sectors tracked by Capitaline, a data provider, have risen. Those for makers of cement products have gone up by 139%; those of carmakers by 89%; even those of real-estate investment trusts, hobbled by shutdowns, have risen by 5%. This picture seems in striking contrast to that of the economy, which sustained the deepest downturn of all large countries. In the second quarter India’s  gdp  fell by 2...

 The Indian Express December 06, 2020 Avinash Nair On December 15, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the foundation stone for the 30,000 MW project in Gujarat’s Kutch district, billed as the largest of its kind in the world. On December 15, Prime Minister  Narendra Modi  will travel to Kutch to lay the foundation stone for a 30,000 MW (megawatt) hybrid renewable energy park close to the Indo-Pak border in Kutch district. The project is billed as the largest of its kind in the world. What is this hybrid renewable energy park taking shape in Gujarat? With the Government of India committing itself to installing 175 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2022, the Gujarat government identified 1,00,000 hectares of wasteland near Khavda, 72 km north of Bhuj, close to the international border with Pakistan in Kutch, for an energy park. In April 2020, after taking into consideration the requirements of the defence forces, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) gave its approval to use 72...