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January 18, 2018 The agriculture sector is an important engine of the economy and it needs continued policy and investment support as almost half of the labour force is still supported by it, and only strong growth can dent rural poverty. With good monsoons holding the key to output and productivity, risks in the sector have not reduced over the decades. Added to these are the new challenges related to climate changes. It is essential that the upcoming Budget increase public investment and encourage private investment in the agriculture sector, according to the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. A stable and clear policy to encourage agri exports should also be laid out so as to ensure that it leads to an increase in India’s share in the global trade of agricultural products, as well as increase the income of farmers and contribute to the overall economy of the country. To put Indian agriculture on a high growth trajectory, the first and foremost step ...

NEW DELHI, JAN 18 India will need at least $125 billion to fund its ambitious plan to increase the share of renewable power supply in the countrys grid by 2022, a top government official told  Reuters , underlining the immense financing challenge ahead. India is one of the world's most important growth markets for renewable energy. Millions of Indians are not yet linked up to the power grid but as the country of more than a billion people prospers, it is experiencing surging demand. To put India's $125 billion requirement in context, global corporate funding for the solar industry - the world's fastest-growing electricity source was a tenth of that amount in 2017 at $12.8 billion, research firm Mercom says. In 2015, India said investment of $100 billion in the seven years to 2022 would be needed to meet its renewable energy goals. Installed renewable power capacity is currently about 60 gigawats (GW), and India plans to complete the bidding process by the end of...

TIMESOFINDIA.COM  |  Jan 18, 2018, 17:27 IST The 48th annual meeting of World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, is scheduled for next week and will host its usual line-up of industry veterans, globe-trotting financiers and politicians across the globe. The forum engages with the political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. It was established in 1971 as a non-profitable foundation and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. To be attended by over 3,000 global leaders, the five-day WEF meet will be held between January 22 and January 26. What's on the agenda this year: * The theme of the meeting, spread over 400 sessions, would be 'Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World', while the meeting would also see the largest ever proportion of women leaders (21 per cent) including all co-chairs being women this time including social entrepreneur Chetna Sinha from India and IMF's Christine La...

Jan 17, 2018, 11.06 PM IST NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is setting up India Cyber Science Coordination Centre (ICSCC) to create an overarching security infrastructure for capacity building and enable states and other stakeholders to keep an eye on growing e-crime. The initial blueprint outlined by the ministry officials, once formalised, will empower them with authorisations for phone interception and to give security clearances in civil aviation and other sectors, an officer of the ministry said. An online national-level platform will be created with the help of National Informatics Centre for registering complaints. Then complaints will be marked for probe to officials concerned in the jurisdiction where offence took place, ministry sources said. In the newly created Cyber and Information Security Division in the ministry, vertical heads have been recommended under a joint secretary for time-bound formation of ICSCC that would create an architecture a...

JANUARY 18, 2018 India is the second largest consumer and producer of tobacco-based products — categorised as sin goods or demerit goods — and it has become imperative for policymakers to devise measures to effectively curb their use. Over the years, governments have resorted to a mix of policies which range from monitoring the pricing and taxation regime of these products to the focus gradually shifting towards awareness campaigns highlighting the deadly effects of  tobacco  use, regulatory control laws pertaining to packaging and labelling as well as shaming and prohibiting its use in public places. Health comes first The Supreme Court recently stayed a Karnataka High Court order setting aside the 2014 amendment rules to the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 2003 that prescribed tobacco packages having pictorial warnings covering 85% of the package sp...

  Shubhajit Roy  | New Delhi |  Updated: January 18, 2018 7:41 am Having designated India as a “major defence partner”, the US should launch a government-wide “strategic advantage initiative” focused on developing New Delhi’s defence capabilities as a premier security contributor in the Indo-Pacific, and to ensure India has the capabilities to prevail in contested domains, a US think tank has said in a new report. This assumes significance as New Delhi and Washington are collaborating on “free and open Indo-Pacific” more closely in the wake of Chinese activities in the region. Led by former Foreign Secretary and India’s ambassador to the US Nirupama Rao and former US ambassador to India Richard Verma, the report was prepared under the aegis of Center for American Progress (CAP). Titled the “United States and India: Forging an Indispensable Democratic Partnership”, the report prepared by the CAP task force on US-India relations said that India should finalise, in...

KV KURMANATH  , JANUARY 17:   Incremental additions to growth in agricultural sector won’t help in doubling the incomes of farmers as envisaged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. What the country needs to do is to encourage exports and go for structural reforms in the agricultural sector, according to experts. The experts who gathered at a workshop organised by the Centre for Good Governance (CGG) and National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) felt that the focus on production based strategies should make way for efforts to increase farmers’ incomes. ‘Focus on exports’ “If we want to double the incomes of farmers by 2022, we should achieve a compounded annual growth rate of 14.5 per cent in the next five years as against 3.2 per cent in the last 20 years,” S Narsing Rao, Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister of Telangana, has said. In order to achieve that level of growth, the country should focus on exports. “Farmers should be all...

JANUARY 16, 2018 22:27 IST India’s thermal power plants, about 90% of which rely on fresh water for cooling, risk facing serious outages because of shortage of water, according to a new report by the World Resources Institute (WRI). Between 2013 and 2016, 14 of India’s 20 largest thermal utility companies experienced one or more shutdowns due to water shortages, the WRI said, and calculated that this cost the power producers more than ₹91 billion ($1.4 billion) in potential revenue from the sale of power. ‘Lost generation’ “India lost about 14 terawatt-hours of thermal power generation due to water shortages in 2016, cancelling out more than 20% of growth in the country’s total electricity generation from 2015,” the report’s authors wrote. About 40% of the country’s thermal power plants are facing great stress in terms of water availability, according to the report, defines water stress as the ratio of total water withdrawal over available supply. According to the report, n...

HYDERABAD: The number of Indians applying for employment-based EB-5 visas to the United States, which has been on the rise, is set to plummet because the US plans to increase minimum investment for such visas to up to $1.3 million, an expert has said. "The applications from India are expected to fall by around 80% if the minimum investment limit is raised from $500,000 to $1.3 million," said Abhinav Lohia, vice-president, India and the Middle East, at immigration consultants CanAm Enterprises. EB-5 visa, also known as the 'golden visa', provides permanent US residency for applicants and families upon investing a minimum of $500,000 and creating 10 jobs. The time taken to get a green card, or permanent residency in the US, through EB-5 route is 2-2.5 years while it takes 10-15 years for holders of other visas such as the H-1B to get a green card. Now, the US Congress is considering a proposal to increase the minimum investment to be eligible for EB-5 visas to $80...

PTI | Updated: Jan 16, 2018, 08.14 PM IST NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate has issued a fresh summons to Karti Chidambaram, the son of senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, in connection with its probe into the INX Media money laundering case. Official sources said that in response to the agency's second summons issued for today, Karti Chidambaram's authorised representative appeared before the agency and replied to their queries. As the agency needed further clarifications, the ED, in the fresh summons, has asked Karti Chidambaram to appear before it in person or through his authorised representative on January 18. The first summons was for January 11 when Karti Chidambaram's legal representatives appeared before the agency. Last week, the ED searched the premises of Karti Chidambaram and those associated with him in a separate money laundering case pertaining to the Aircel-Maxis deal. The central probe a...