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Indian Express, June 06, 2018 WITH UNION Home Minister  Rajnath Singh  starting a two-day visit to J&K Thursday, an internal assessment has cited “political intervention” more than “economic intervention” as the need of the hour to bring separatists to the table for a dialogue. The assessment was conducted on the recent visit by Prime Minister  Narendra Modi  to J&K. On May 26, a week after Modi’s visit, Singh offered to hold talks with Hurriyat, which sought more clarity on the terms. During his J&K visit, Singh is likely to announce measures for the “reintegration of misguided youths”, including setting up of sports facilities and generating employment opportunities. Singh is also expected to study the possibility of extending the ceasefire after Ramzan. The internal assessment had described the move to suspend military operations during Ramzan as “successful”. The decision was welcomed by all the political parties, particularly J...

Indian Express, June 06,2018 The government is studying the reports which allege  Facebook  sharing user data with at least 60 different device manufacturers, including companies such as  Apple ,  Samsung ,  Microsoft , Amazon and  Blackberry . “We are looking at the facts presented in the report and will assess how grave the situation is based on the preliminary findings,” a senior official at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology told The Indian Express. A Sunday report by The New York Times said that Facebook had entered into data-sharing partnerships with the manufacturers over the last ten years, which later came under scrutiny due to the company’s privacy protections and compliance with a 2011 consent decree with Federal Trade Commission. The report said that Facebook allowed the device makers access to the data of users’ friends without their explicit consent, even after declaring that it would no longer share such informatio...

Indian Express, June 06, 2018 While the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) has ushered in significant urgency in the bad loan resolution process, an analysis of the 12 large cases indicate that the 270-day outer limit envisaged in the law for resolution is being tested in most cases. Notwithstanding the first case of successful resolution of Bhushan Steel, which is being acquired by a Tata Group company, most resolution plans are being challenged in the Appellate Tribunals and the Courts, resulting in a breach of resolution time-limit. The Code provides for resolution process to be completed in 180 days, which can be extended by a maximum of 90 days. As the accompanying chart shows, the 270 days deadline is over in 10 out of 12 cases, while resolution has been conclusively done in only one case and 3-4 cases are near completion. These 12 large cases account for total unpaid loans, or non performing assets, of Rs 3.23 lakh crore. The finance ministry expects banks to recover...

NDTV News, June 04,2018 By Mani Shankar Aiyer Does intelligence gathering lead to intelligent decision-making? That is a question that has haunted me through my quarter century in diplomacy and later as a parliamentarian and commentator on foreign affairs, particularly on Kashmir and Pakistan. I rather hoped I would find the answer in the conversations recorded and moderated by journalist Aditya Sinha between former ISI chief Asad Durrani (1990-91) and former RAW chief Amarjit Singh Dulat (1999-2000) in a book that is making waves in both India and Pakistan:  "Spy Chronicles: RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace" . At the end, however, I am left with my question unanswered, perhaps because every time the mountain heaves between Durrani and Dulat, it produces little more than a mouse, and perhaps also because both were chiefs for only a year and a few months each, and that too three and two decades ago, respectively. But most importantly, I suspect, it is beca...

Updated: June 5, 2018, 8:40 PM IST Former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan today expressed concern over escalation of trade war between the US and China saying it would be a "lose-lose" situation if the two major economies carry out their threats. Rajan also cautioned that the situation can get "out of control very quickly" hampering global growth. The Trump administration's decision to impose tariffs on aluminium and steel imports had triggered a trade war with several countries including China, which announced retaliatory measures. "Well I think at this point the biggest risk is the combination of rising interest rates and some untoward action on trade. I think it's the perception that with all the leverage that's out there, interest rates rising are already an issue that we'll have to deal with, but that's out there. "The great uncertainty is what happens with trade, if we have a trade conflagration in the next few m...

T.T.Ram Mohan, June 06, 2018 Why we need to go through the timeline of the uncalled-for drama at ICICI Bank Finally, finally, the board of ICICI Bank has ordered a probe into allegations levelled against its CEO, Chanda Kochhar. Does this call for a celebration? No, it doesn’t. The probe comes rather late in the day. And the board is having to refer the matter to an outsider only because of its own inadequate response to the initial set of charges made nearly two years ago. These constitute lapses in governance at a bank that has been characterised as “systemically important” by the regulator. On May 30, the board of directors of ICICI Bank announced that it had ordered an inquiry by an outsider into allegations made by a whistle-blower. These allegations are not to be confused with the ones made by an investor, Arvind Gupta, in 2016. Mr. Gupta had then written to the Prime Minister, with copies to the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India and the Chairperson of the Securit...

K. Srinath Reddy, 05/06/2018 A range of policy responses is crucial to tackle the rising incidence of obesity In March, the government announced that it would release an annual “state of nutrition” report, detailing India’s level of stunting, malnutrition and feature best practices for States to scale up nutrition interventions. It is clear that India has a lot to do to tackle nutrition challenges — 26 million children suffer from wasting (a low weight-for-height ratio), more than in any other country. Yet, the country has the second highest number of obese children in the world — 15.3 million in China and 14.4 million in India. While tackling under nutrition through assurance of adequate nutrition (usually interpreted as dietary calories), we need to ensure that it is also about appropriate nutrition (the right balance of nutrients). Our policy response has to move from “food security” to “nutrition security”. New problem India must step up its efforts to fight ove...

Omer Farooq Khan, TNN,  Updated: Jun 5, 2018, 23:19 IST The World Bank (WB) has asked Pakistan to stop pursuing the Kishanganga dam dispute in the International Court of Arbitration (ICA) and instead accept India’s offer of appointing a “neutral expert”. The Pakistani daily Dawn reported on Tuesday that the World Bank president Jim Yong Kim had last week advised the government to not take the matter to the ICA. Incidentally, the bank had on November 10, 2016 even picked a US chief justice, the rector of Imperial College, London, and the WB president to appoint a chairman of the court to resolve the dispute over the dam. Pakistan had opposed the construction of Kishanganga dam, considering it a violation of a World Bank-mediated treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus and its tributaries. New Delhi believes that the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) allows it to build ‘run-of-river’ hydel projects that do not change the course of the river and do not deplete the wa...

Ronald Robertson, 06/06/2018 As the 2018 midterm elections approach in the US, Google’s power to influence undecided voters remains overshadowed by Facebook’s personal data crisis. Facebook has “taken it on the chin” for its role in the 2016 presidential election, and organizations like the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica and the Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency have dominated headlines. Yet, despite having a troubling history and collecting more personal data through more products than Facebook, Google has somehow managed to evade the public spotlight on this one. That may be changing. The US Senate Judiciary Committee recently sent Google a letter asking a series of questions about the company’s personal data protections. As one of the researchers who helped discover that search engines can substantially influence users’ voting preferences, I found the last question to be the most intriguing: “Are you aware of any foreign entities s...

June 05, 2018 10:27 IST A delegation of farmers' organisations, the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee, recently requested President Ram Nath Kovind to convene a special session of Parliament immediately to discuss India's agrarian crisis. The farmers' leaders urged the Rashtrapati to address the crisis of farm debts and guaranteed remunerative minimum support prices for farm products. Jan Kisan Andolan National Convenor Avik Saha, a member of the delegation that met President Kovind. The All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee said farmers will decide the future of India in tbhe 2019 elections. Is there any indication to that? The agrarian crisis covers two-thirds of the country and unless the ruling party (the Bharatiya Janata Party) pays serious attention and stop showing off through posters and campaigns, it is going to be an issue. How much the Opposition will be able to make it (the agrarian crisis) an issue is the ques...