Tax proposals regressive: Jayalalithaa

The Budget lacks flavour as it does not have any specific announcement of schemes to enthuse different segments, including the States, said Chief Minister Jayalalithaa.

In a statement, she said it also does not speak of the status of implementation on many schemes announced in the last two years and that the people of Tamil Nadu had higher expectations which have not been met.

Ms. Jayalalithaa, however, welcomed and appreciated the launch of many schemes based on the model of successful schemes implemented by her such as the Chief Minister’s Health Insurance Scheme, Amma Marunthagam, soil health scheme, free laptop, grinder, mixie and fans schemes.

As the Plan Expenditure has actually been increased in the Revised Estimates for 2015-16, she hoped the release of funds for States for scheme expenditure would be speeded up. She was happy to note that the Finance Minister had accepted her suggestion to do away with the Plan and Non-Plan distinction with effect from 2017-18 and focus on revenue and capital outlays. “This is a much needed reform,” she said.

Welcoming the emphasis on agriculture and rural income, Ms. Jayalalithaa said doubling farm income in five years should be done in real terms. On the irrigation front, she said Tamil Nadu stands to suffer as the Centre looks to repeat an old error.

She expressed concern over the proposal to privatise the road transport sector through Central legislation by amending the Motor Vehicles Act. “We have consistently opposed encroachment of powers of the State governments by this proposed legislation,” she said.

It was unfortunate that the Finance Minister has not eschewed the tendency to levy cess and surcharges on various items of Central taxes which are not shareable with the States. Citing levy of cess on service tax, infrastructure cess on excise duty on vehicles and a few other cess, Ms. Jayalalithaa said such steps were retrograde measures by which the Centre was trying to avoid sharing its tax proceeds with States .

The proposal to treat assignment of spectrum usage as a service and not a sale of intangible goods also eats into the tax base of State governments while enhancing the base of the Centre, she said opposing the proposal. On the whole, the tax proposals in the Budget are regressive, she said.

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The Academy Award 2016 in pictures

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Highlights of Union Budget 2016-17

Affirming that the economy is right on track, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented the Union Budget for 2016-17. Citing that the CPI inflation has come down to 5.4% from 9 plus, he said it is huge relief for the public.

Tax

Infrastructure and agriculture cess to be levied.

Excise duty raised from 10 to 15 per cent on tobacco products other than beedis

1 per cent service charge on purchase of luxury cars over Rs. 10 lakh and in-cash purchase of goods and services over Rs. 2 lakh.

SUVs, Luxury cars to be more expensive. 4% high capacity tax for SUVs.

Companies with revenue less than Rs 5 crore to be taxed at 29% plus surcharge

Limited tax compliance window from Jun 1 - Sep 30 for declaring undisclosed income at 45% incl. surcharge and penalties

Excise 1 per cent imposed on articles of jewellery, excluding silver.

0.5 per cent Krishi Kalyan Cess to be levied on all services.

Pollution cess of 1 per cent on small petrol, LPG and CNG cars; 2.5 per cent on diesel cars of certain specifications; 4 per cent on higher-end models.

Dividend in excess of Rs. 10 lakh per annum to be taxed at additional 10 per cent.

Personal Finance

No changes have been made to existing income tax slabs

Rs 1,000 crore allocated for new EPF (Employees' Provident Fund) scheme

Govt. will pay EPF contribution of 8.33% for all new employees for first three years

Deduction for rent paid will be raised from Rs 20,000 to Rs 60,000 to benefit those living in rented houses.

Additional exemption of Rs. 50,000 for housing loans up to Rs. 35 lakh, provided cost of house is not above Rs. 50 lakh.

Service tax exempted for housing construction of houses less than 60 sq. m

15 per cent surcharge on income above Rs. 1 crore

Social

Rs. 38,500 crore for Mahtma Gandhi MGNREGA for 2016-17

Swacch Bharat Abhiyan allocated Rs.9,500 crores.

Hub to support SC/ST entrpreneurs

Government is launching a new initiative to provide cooking gas to BPL families with state support.

LPG connections to be provided under the name of women members of family: Rs 2000 crore allocated for 5 years for BPL families.

2.87 lakh crore grants to gram panchayats and municipalities - a quantum jump of 228%.

300 urban clusters to be set up under Shyama Prasad Mukherji Rurban Mission

Four schemes for animal welfare.

Health

2.2 lakh renal patients added every year in India. Basic dialysis equipment gets some relief.

A new health protection scheme for health cover upto 1 lakh per family.

National Dialysis Service Prog with funds thru PPP mode to provide dialysis at all district hospitals.

Senior citizens will get additional healthcare cover of Rs 30,000 under the new scheme

PM Jan Aushadhi Yojana to be strengthened, 300 generic drug store to be opened

Education

Scheme to get Rs.500 cr for promoting entrepreneurship among SC/ST

10 public and 10 private educational institutions to be made world-class.

Digital repository for all school leaving certificates and diplomas. Rs. 1,000 crore for higher education financing.

Rs. 1,700 crore for 1500 multi-skill development centres.

62 new navodaya vidyalayas to provide quality education

Digital literacy scheme to be launched to cover 6 crore additional rural households

Entrepreneurship training to be provided across schools, colleges and massive online courses.

Objective to skill 1 crore youth in the next 3 years under the PM Kaushal Vikas Yojna-FM Jaitley

National Skill Development Mission has imparted training to 76 lakh youth. 1500 Multi-skill training institutes to be set up.

Energy

Rs. 3000 crore earmarked for nuclear power generation

Govt drawing comprehensive plan to be implemented in next 15-20 years for exploiting nuclear energy

Govt to provide incentive for deepwater gas exploration

Deepwater gas new disc to get calibrated market freedom, pre-determined ceiling price based on landed price of alternate fuels.

Investments and infrastructure

Rs. 27,000 crore to be spent on roadways

65 eligible habitats to be connected via 2.23 lakh kms of road. Current construction pace is 100 kms/day

Shops to be given option to remain open all seven days in a week across markets.

Rs. 55,000 crore for roads and highways. Total allocation for road construction, including PMGSY, - Rs 97,000 crore

India's highest-ever production of motor vehicles was recorded in 2015

Total outlay for infrastructure in Budget 2016 now stands at Rs. 2,21,246 crore

New greenfield ports to be developed on east and west coasts

Revival of underserved airports. Centre to Partner with States to revive small airports for regional connectivity

100 per cent FDI in marketing of food products produced and marketed in India

Dept. of Disinvestment to be renamed as Dept. of Investment and Public Asset Management

Govt will amend Motor Vehicle Act in passenger vehicle segment to allow innovation.

MAT will be applicable for startups that qualify for 100 per cent tax exemption

Direct tax proposals result in revenue loss of Rs.1060 crore, indirect tax proposals result in gain of Rs.20,670 crore

Agriculture

Total allocation for agriculture and farmer welfare at Rs 35984 crores

28.5 lakh heactares of land wil be brought under irrigation.

5 lakh acres to be brought under organic farming over a three year period

Rs 60,000 crore for recharging of ground water recharging as there is urgent need to focus on drought hit areas cluster development for water conservation.

Dedicated irrigation fund in NABARD of Rs.20.000 cr

Nominal premium and highest ever compensation in case of crop loss under the PM Fasal Bima Yojna.

Banking

Banks get a big boost: Rs 25,000 crore towards recapitalisation of public sector banks. Jaitley says: Banking Board Bureau will be operationalised, we stand solidly behind public sector banks.

Target of disbursement under MUDRA increased to 1,80,000 crore

Process of transfer of government stake in IDBI Bank below 50% started

General Insurance companies will be listed in the stock exchange

Govt to increase ATMs, micro-ATMs in post offices in next three years

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Banks need an autonomy stimulus

At a time when banks are in trouble globally, recent reported losses heighten the tendency to put Indian banks in the same basket. But global bank shares are falling because of an expected fall in bank earnings as interest rates become negative. In India, however, interest rates are firmly positive. In India, reported bank profits are soft because provisions are being made for weak assets. Tackling a problem at the root bodes well for the future. U.S. banks whose balance sheets were cleaned up are doing better than European banks where only cosmetic liquidity was provided.

Moreover, the asset quality problem affects only a part of the banking system, and only a particular type of loan. Non-performing assets (NPAs) that have stopped producing income are concentrated in public sector bank (PSB) loans to large corporates. Therefore the problem is limited in size and funds required to restore health are not excessive.

The sharp rise in emerging markets’ (EMs) corporate debt from 45 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2005 to 74 per cent in 2014 is a major source of global risk. It also rose in India, but is only 14 per cent of GDP. Debt is concentrated in large infrastructure firms, but even so average debt-equity ratios remain at around unity since they are low for other firms. Ignoring local detail leads to a blind echoing of global fears — a relative perspective diminishes India’s debt-related risk.

Caps on external debt reduced fluctuations in Indian interest rates compared to more open EMs. A mechanical sell-off of EM assets occurs in periods of rising global risk, as liquid portfolios are sold irrespective of a country’s own prospects. But the Indian experience in 2008, 2011 and 2013 is that they tend to return if prospects are robust. In the current cycle there are signs that domestic investors are using foreign exit to come in at a good price — a sign of maturing markets with a wider base. Indian restrictions on short-term debt have reduced chances of large cumulative cycles occurring as corporate bankruptcies create NPAs and stressed banks stop lending.

In addition, PSBs have demonstrated the ability to compete effectively and earn profits in the past. They did unexpectedly well after the 1990s reforms, and even overtook private banks on some parameters. They outperformed during and immediately after the global financial crisis. NPAs fell to 2.4 per cent in 2009-10 from 12.8 per cent in 1991. A similar recovery is possible now, even as gaps in reforms are closed.

Public and private banks

The problems of PSBs now are partly due to government interference but also to errors of judgment and to external shocks. The first two led them to participate much more than private banks in infrastructure financing. They came from a history of hand-holding large corporates in order to encourage development. The onus fell more on them after development banks were shut. They did not foresee the governance and administrative problems that delayed projects that were expected to be viable under high growth. Interest rate hikes, following the 2011 inflation peaks, also hit PSBs. A loan-based system is highly sensitive to a rise in interest rates.

Meanwhile, private banks concentrated on more lucrative and less risky retail lending. They did well in this period, and their market capitalisation overtook that of listed PSBs in 2011. But their diverse strategies did reduce risk for the Indian banking sector as a whole.

NPAs were expected to come down as the economy revived. But external shocks and domestic political logjams continue to delay recovery. Capital adequacy regulation should ideally be countercyclical with buffers built up in good times. But recovery is taking too long. Moreover, loan growth from PSBs is the slowest, possibly because of a larger share of stressed assets. Therefore it is necessary to clean up bank balance sheets. The onus is on the government as the largest shareholder. The Budget has made a contribution towards refinancing PSBs. There is little risk for depositors or of systemic spillovers.

The Indian taxpayer has, however, for long subsidised government and large private investment. Earlier this was through loss-making public sector undertakings and development banks whose loans were rarely repaid. The 1990s reform closed some of these channels, and sought to bring in a larger role for market forces. But private infrastructure investment was inadequate. So PSBs were persuaded to step in again. Even if losses are due to external causes, promoters have poor incentives when they can escape liability. A readily refinanced bank does not choose projects carefully. Moreover, relationship lending easily degenerates into corruption or gives in to pressure from powerful connections.

Onus on the government

Therefore, refinancing must be accompanied by reforms that build proper incentives. These should increase PSBs’ independence, and force promoters to share risk and potential losses, while making it easier to change management and allow equity infusion to keep viable businesses going. If loans are written off, a business can become viable as fresh equity and new promoters are more likely to come in. Banks with clean balance sheets are more willing to lend.

The problem is banks tend to stop lending to companies whose assets are declared to be NPAs. If an asset is recognised as an NPA, provisions must be made for possible losses. Therefore, before imposing an asset quality review in end 2015, the Reserve Bank gave banks new tools to make restructuring easier. It remains to be seen if these are adequate to provoke the mindset change required to aggressively revitalise projects and lend more.

Even so, it is time for change, for arbitrage-free systems with greater transparency. The government can subsidise industry if it is necessary, but this must be done upfront with the correct share of risk allocated to promoters and minimum discretion. The political system has too often taken taxpayers for a ride, with small benefits masking large hidden costs. They have the right to know what they are paying for. The SC has already asked for information on large defaulters. Stronger boards and improved governance mechanisms can ensure that PSBs make independent decisions on purely commercial grounds.

Appropriate structural change makes some monetary stimulus feasible, both to reduce the pain and in response to the global slowdown. Many negatives need positive counters.

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BJP seeking a CM candidate in Uttar Pradesh

For a BJP struggling to even appoint a party president to engage the complex caste arithmetic of Uttar Pradesh, Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani’s fiery turn in the Lok Sabha during a discussion on the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula and charges of sedition against students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has led to speculation that it could be Ms. Irani, or two other Delhi-based leaders from Uttar Pradesh, one of whom is a Union Minister.

After sweeping the State in the general elections of 2014, the party has been on a downward slope, in the local body elections and other by-elections held in the interim. It won the Muzzaffarnagar by-poll recently, but the Jat quota agitation in nearby BJP-ruled Haryana may make it difficult going for the party in western Uttar Pradesh, where it had won most seats in 2014 with considerable Jat support.

“We have to counter the mass base of both the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) with not just some arithmetic of our own, but offer a face around which the campaign can be built,” said a senior office-bearer of the party.

“Both these parties have clear leadership to offer in the State, and we cannot go to the people without that,” he added. State unit leaders have been meeting with party president Amit Shah on this issue.

The BJP State unit, despite having completed all required district-level polls to elect a president is dragging its feet as the party, both at the State and the Centre cannot make up its mind on just which way to go politically.

“Earlier, there was a thinking that a backward community person must be made State chief to give a signal that the BJP had moved beyond its upper caste moorings. Swatantra Dev Singh and Dharampal Lodh were the candidates that we were talking about. Now the consideration has moved to upper caste or such candidates as Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha, who, as a Bhumihar community man has a limited base in the State,” said the source.

With Mr. Shah set to redo his national team in by the second week of March, it will be interesting to see just who is finally Lucknow-bound.

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Will double farm income by 2022: PM

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday urged the State governments to give priority to agriculture even as he pledged to “double the income of farmers” by 2022, to mark India’s 75 years of independence.

To attain that goal, Mr. Modi said the Centre had adopted a scientific approach to farming and urged farmers to utilise the various agricultural initiatives introduced by his government.

“Today, the farmer is facing numerous challenges. The family size is increasing and land is being divided into smaller units. The share of each family member is shrinking. The farmer is wondering if in future he will have enough land to divide further...but these challenges can be transformed into opportunities,” Mr. Modi said at a Kisan Kalyan rally in Bareilly.

Fleshing out a formula for productive agriculture, Mr. Modi stressed the need to divide farming practices into three sectors, traditional farming, tree or timber plantation (along the periphery and borders of fields) and livestock rearing.

“We have to import large quantities of timber each year. If farmers plant timber on the outer edges of their fields, in 15-20 years they will see results. You can sell a tree and use the amount to get your daughters married,” Mr. Modi said.

Mr. Modi said that whenever States had taken interest in agriculture, an unprecedented growth was achieved.

The Prime Minister praised the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led government for its irrigation and farming schemes for the turnaround in the agriculture sector.

Stating that farmers could no longer sustain their families through farming alone, and were now sending their children to work in cities, Mr. Modi said to ensure the economic growth of the country, focus needed to be given to all “three pillars,” agriculture, manufacturing and service sectors. He saw tourism as an avenue for jobs in rural areas.

Listing the Centre’s steps to get better prices for farmers, Mr. Modi hit out at the State governments for misusing funds allocated for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).

He appealed to the States to use MGNREGS funds to support agriculture.

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Jaitley may announce cut in corporate tax rate

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is likely to propose in his budget on Monday the lowering of the corporate tax from 30 per cent to 29 per cent, the first cut in the series planned to bring it down over the next four years to 25 per cent. The roadmap for these cuts, along with the corresponding withdrawals of tax exemptions each year, will also be announced.

A top official source told The Hindu that the fiscal deficit for the current year will be kept within the target of 3.9 per cent of GDP and the target for the next year of 3.5 per cent has also been retained. “There will be no slippage or pause in this year or the next year… Consolidation will be in line with the commitment,” he said.

This decision, the source said, would restrict the room for government spending during the year. “The budget will not be able to accommodate all demands from everybody.” The source said the government was exploring the possibility for leveraging the assets under management of Life Insurance Corporation, Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation and the National Pension Scheme as part of the plans for recapitalising the public sector banks that have stressed balance sheets and are saddled with bad loans. The source said Mr. Jaitley could also make a small reference to the road map being planned for this proposal.

Cross-holdings among banks may be considered later

The Economic Survey tabled in Parliament on Friday recommends that the assets of the Reserve Bank of India and other regulatory institutions be leveraged for the plans to recapitalise the public sector banks that have stressed balance sheets and are saddled with bad loans.

Cross-holdings among banks could be considered later, a top official source said.

The Hindu had earlier reported that the budget would unveil a road map for big-ticket disinvestment, including strategic sales, in the state-owned companies like BHEL and the oil and defence public sector units, including ONGC, IOC, HPCL, BPCL, HAL and BEML. The government would announce increases slightly more generous than the recommendations of the Seventh Central Pay Commission. The payouts, beginning on April 1, will include arrears for three months. More than Rs. 1 lakh crore has been budgeted under the head, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said last month.

In 2012-13, LIC reported Rs. 15.2 lakh crore of assets under management. As on October 03, 2015, the National Pension Scheme (NPS) and the Atal Pension Yojana that was launched on June 1, 2015, together have total assets under management of more than Rs.1 lakh crore.

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Niira Radia enters healthcare business; Ratan Tata inaugurates first hospital

Making a comeback, PR veteran and former corporate lobbyist Niira Radia has ventured into healthcare business through a new entity Nayati Healthcare, whose first hospital was inaugurated in Mathura on Sunday by Ratan Tata.

Inaugurating the 351-bed multi super specialty hospital, Mr. Tata said, “It is heartening to see a full fledged specialty hospital being established in Mathura with considerable personal sacrifice, driven by passion and a genuine desire to serve the community.”

The hospital would provide “much needed medical help and health care facilities for the people of the region”, the Tata Group chairman emeritus said.

Ms. Radia said the hospital is poised to serve not only the population of Western Uttar Pradesh but will be the centre of excellence for the whole of North India.

The hospital would aim to reduce the physical, emotional and economic burden of illness that blights the life of ordinary people in tier II and tier III towns by taking treatment to the patients, she added.

Nayati Healthcare & Research, a multi super specialty healthcare chain, has decided to start operations in Tier II and Tier III cities.

Ms. Radia, once known as an influential corporate lobbyist, had landed in controversy few years back following the leak of her alleged taped conversations with prominent politicians, businessmen and media persons.

Subsequently, she wound up her PR business comprising among other entities of Vaishnavi Corporate Communications, which handled various clients including the Tata Group and Unitech and of Neucom Consulting which managed the account of Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries.

When asked about her past experiences, Ms. Radia asserted that she had no regrets.

“I was never a corporate communications person, never a corporate lobbyist as they keep on calling me... Success has a price but I don’t have any regrets,” Radia said.

“Do I regret (that I was) in the corporate space? I think it was a huge learning,” she noted.

About her foray into the healthcare space, Ms. Radia said, “I have found my calling.’

Talking about her business model, Ms. Radia said it would have to be “economies of scale... It is all about people”.

“We have to be sensitive to affordability,” she said, adding that the entity has not slashed prices but is only being sensible when it comes to pricing.

On financial aspect of the venture, she said they are very cautious as there is support of bank loans.

However, specific details were not disclosed.

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Clinton cruises to big win over Sanders in South Carolina

A decisive victory over her challenger Senator Bernie Sanders in South Carolina brought back momentum into former First Lady Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Two narrow victories and one massive loss to Mr. Sanders over the last month had eroded the aura of invincibility that surrounded her and Saturday’s landslide victory in South Carolina, where she won three fourth of the votes, restores that in good measure.

Awaiting 'Super Tuesday'

On March 1 – 'Super Tuesday' as it is called – 11 states will have primaries or caucuses, and could cumulatively reward her with an irreversible lead. Mr Sanders will have to keep the contests on Super Tuesday as close as possible to carry the race forward even as his efforts to make inroads into the black base of the party have had only limited success so far. Five out of six black people voted for Ms. Clinton in South Carolina, according to exit polls.

“Tomorrow, this campaign goes national,” Ms Clinton declared after the results. “We are not taking anything, and we are not taking anyone, for granted.” “This campaign is just beginning…. Our grass-roots political revolution is growing state by state, and we won’t stop now,” Mr Sanders said, after congratulating Ms Clinton.

Big boost for Clinton?

Both Ms Clinton and Mr Sanders criticised Republican front-runner Donald Trump in their responses, keeping their eyes firmly on the November general elections. "Together we can break down all the barriers holding our families and our country back,” Ms Clinton said, in a reference to Mr Trump’s promise to a build a wall along the U.S border with Mexico. “When we come together, and don’t let people like Donald Trump try to divide us, we can create an economy that works for all of us and not just the top 1 percent,” Mr Sanders said.

“We won a decisive victory in New Hampshire. She won a decisive victory in South Carolina. Now it’s on to Super Tuesday. In just three days, Democrats in 11 states will pick 10 times more pledged delegates on one day than were selected in the four early states so far in this campaign,” Mr Sanders said in a statement.

Ms Clinton has the support of a host of black leaders and has also placed herself close to President Barack Obama’s policies. Mr Sanders has been critical of Mr Obama on many occasions. The former secretary of state has also mounted a campaign against Mr Sanders, charging him with ignoring gender and race in his single-minded focus economic inequality. Mr Sanders has been trying to explain his positions in the context of his critique of the prevailing economic order. He is indeed getting a lot of traction too, but the question remains whether he can manage to pull in enough numbers to defeat Ms Clinton whose organisational network and financial strength are formidable.

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Republicans’ frantic efforts to derail Donald Trump fall flat

The scenario Karl Rove outlined was bleak.

Addressing a luncheon of Republican governors and donors in Washington on February 19, he warned that Donald Trump’s increasingly likely nomination would be catastrophic, dooming the party in November. But Rove, the master strategist of George W. Bush’s campaigns, insisted it was not too late for them to stop Mr. Trump, according to three people present.

At a meeting of Republican Governors the next morning, Paul R. LePage of Maine called for action. Seated at a long boardroom table at the Willard Hotel, he erupted in frustration over the state of the 2016 race, saying Mr. Trump’s nomination would deeply wound the Republican Party.

Mr. LePage urged the Governors to draft an open letter “to the people,” disavowing Mr. Trump and his divisive brand of politics.

The suggestion was not taken up. Since then, Mr. Trump has only gotten stronger, winning two more State contests and collecting the endorsement of Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. In public, there were calls for the party to unite behind a single candidate. In dozens of interviews, elected officials, political strategists and donors described a frantic, last-ditch campaign to block Mr. Trump — and the agonising reasons that many of them have become convinced it will fail. Behind the scenes, a desperate mission to save the party sputtered and stalled at every turn.

On Friday, a few hours after Mr. Christie endorsed him, Mr. Trump collected support from a second Governor, who said Mr. Trump could be “one of the greatest presidents.” That Governor was Paul LePage.

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Record-breaking South Korea filibuster runs beyond 100 hours

South Korean opposition lawmakers seeking to block a government-backed “anti-terrorism” bill pushed their record-breaking filibuster into a sixth straight day of speeches in the parliamentary chamber on Sunday.

The filibuster began on Tuesday and had continued around the clock for more than 115 hours by Sunday afternoon, making it the world's longest, according to the Kyunghyang Shinmun newspaper.

The marathon filibuster easily surpassed a 58-hour session by 103 members of Canada's New Democratic Party in 2011.

By Sunday afternoon, 23 lawmakers had spoken for an average of five hours each in opposition to a bill they believe will threaten personal freedoms if passed. Many carried boxes of documents to the podium at the National Assembly, some wearing sneakers.

Earlier this month, President Park Geun-hye’s office called for parliament to pass the stalled security bill, part of tough action taken by her government amid heightened tension with North Korea following its test launch of a long-range rocket this month and its fourth nuclear test last month.

The opposition wants the removal of a provision in the bill that would give South Korea's intelligence agency authority to monitor private communications.

Lawmakers from the conservative ruling Saenuri party, which controls 157 of the assembly's 293 seats, have expressed dismay that the speech-making is causing other bills to be delayed ahead of parliamentary elections due in April.

Opposition lawmaker Jung Chung-rae spoke for 11 hours and 39 minutes on Saturday, the longest speech of the filibuster thus far. Some lawmakers have come to tears during their speeches, while one of them sang and another read aloud from George Orwell's “1984,” according to a South Korean newspaper.

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Is India at an inflection point?

The first two decades of the 21st century have witnessed a great deal of unrest and turbulence in several countries across the globe, notably in West Asia. India was spared the kind of protests that marked the “Arab Awakening”, though it did confront a number of disparate protests, which cumulatively reflected a high level of discontent. Individual incidents had even then begun to spark off violent reactions.

However, it is the metastasising nature of recent agitations and protests, involving almost every segment of the population, students, peasants and the disaffected — alongside the persistent provocation from Pakistan — which is resulting in new paradigms of thought and behaviour. Whether they relate to terrorist attacks by Pakistan-based outfits such as the Jaish-e-Mohammad and the Lashkar-e-Taiba, agitations based on identity, ideology, idea-logy politics, human values and dignity, or unstructured movements dictated by rage or other considerations, they all involve a level of public mobilisation and spectacle different from what had been seen in the past.

Need for new strategies

It is evident that we have entered a new era but are probably not yet aware of its implications. They cannot, hence, be dealt with in the same manner as in the past, or by employing antiquated methods and resorting to shopworn rhetoric. Understanding the true meaning of real-time information gleaned from “data-in-motion” (such as phone calls or chat services) or from access to “data-at-rest” (text messages and videos stored in computers and cell phones) is critically important today.

For instance, almost fortnightly, or at shorter intervals, Pakistan-based terrorist outfits are carrying out assaults with still greater military precision than previously, inflicting greater casualties among both civilians and armed force personnel, all the while holding up the country to ridicule as the Indian Establishment seeks opportunities to revive anti-terror talks. Gurdaspur, Pathankot and now Pampore are hardly isolated incidents and reflect elements of a grand strategy. Only the most myopic of leaders can fail to see the writing on the wall and heed the message coming out of Pakistan. A nation fully conversant with what is taking place can hardly be misled into ignoring the truth and reality.

At another level, India is internally undergoing a baptism through fire. This has been brought on by a conflict between extremes — the politics of the Right Wing and the Left Wing; a confrontation between anti-national and irredentist elements on the one hand, and so called nationalist and identity-based groups on the other; and increasing militancy on the part of the so-called excluded and marginalised segments in pursuit of their rights. The “quota agitation” by the Jat community in Haryana exemplifies the dangers inherent in the increasing stratification of Indian society.

Following the Patidars in Gujarat and the Jats in Haryana, the Marathas in Maharashtra and the Rajputs in Rajasthan are threatening to agitate. In almost every State across the country, several among the more “backward” are about to throw their hat into the ring seeking among the Other Backward Class quotas. Finally the worst fears about the end result of the Mandal Commission recommendations appear to be coming true.

The Centre’s succumbing to the violence perpetuated by Haryana Jats could not have come at a more inopportune moment. The ineptitude displayed in handling the agitation, and the spectacle of the Centre dispatching several Army columns to quell a law and order situation in an hinterland State, tends to evoke comparisons with the “Arab Spring”.

Memories of 1968

The question as to whether India is today at an inflection point is, however, more relevant in the context of the present unrest among students of the nation’s prestigious universities. Equating the students’ unrest in Jawaharlal Nehru University and Hyderabad and Jadavpur Universities and in several of the Indian Institutes of Technology with the Paris and Nanterre students’ uprising in 1968 may sound farfetched, but there are some eerie similarities. In both cases, agitating students have used metaphors to demonstrate their opposition to the existing order. Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh were names chosen by the Paris and Nanterre students to ventilate their anger against the Fifth Republic, knowing full well that it would anger the authorities.

In current agitations across Indian universities, the names Afzal Guru and Yakub Memon mean little to most students, but they are intended to be symbols of opposition to the Establishment. Anti-national rhetoric is often the fuel that feeds demonstrations against the existing order of things. Today, the Left in India has no icon around whom they can rally students. They have, hence, chosen to join forces with other anti-Establishment groups, for whom the more outrageous the claim, the more likely it is to rile those in authority. This has little to do with “insiders” and “outsiders”.

Building a just society

It is vitally important for the authorities, hence, to discern the real meaning behind many of the actions taking place in our universities and avoid any overreaction. “Building a just society by just means” — a quote from former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru — has become crucially important in many campuses at this juncture. Nothing could be more poignant in this respect than the tragic suicide of Rohith Vemula, the Hyderabad Central University PhD student, who in his suicide note blamed his birth as “a fatal accident”. It gave an impression of the prevalence of a “dark state” mindset among those who exercise power and authority.

What cannot be ignored is that with ubiquitous access to interconnected mobile devices and other advanced communication systems, events are getting transformed in a way that could hardly be envisaged even a couple of years ago. In this milieu, failure to anticipate the intensity of anger that prevails on a particular occasion, judge the unintended consequences of a growing groundswell of protest against an incident that has captured public imagination and recognise that the diffusion of power between the state on the one hand, and people on the streets or students in campuses on the other, has become far more consequential than at any time previously — and it can have grave consequences.

What is tragic is that in an increasingly acrimonious and polarised atmosphere, political elements of all hues are by their actions further aggravating the situation. The public discourse has thus become that much more acrimonious and polarised. The Prime Minister’s statement about “conspiracies” directed against him and his government hardly helps. It only brings back memories of other Indian Prime Ministers placed in difficult situations coming up with similar conspiracy theories. Employing the provision for sedition in JNU, instead of taking time out to address social cohesion and sustain the social compact that India has striven to maintain since Independence, has been a blunder, widening the gulf between different segments of society. What is most needed today is an activist state that is focussed on preserving social cohesion and a sense of optimism to protect and enlarge the dignity of every human.

At this critical juncture, it is unfortunate that the vice chancellors of central universities have hardly covered themselves with glory. Most universities today are guilty of the charge that they are out of touch with Young India, even as student activism has reached a tipping point. Vice chancellors find themselves inadequately equipped to grapple with problems facing their universities such as social exclusion, identity conflicts, the subaltern and minority syndrome, unchecked dissent, etc. Most also lack the authority (and personality) to not only deal with students’ protests, but even determine when to call for outside support, including the police, before the situation goes out of control.

Finally, what is least required at this moment is for students across universities to be lectured on the virtues of nationalism from all and sundry. What is specifically needed are methods to deal with the current situation so as to prevent it from getting out of hand. Leaving matters to be dealt with by the police after the horse has bolted, and then blame the police for inadequacy is, however, neither a method nor the means.

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Holding the newspaper to account

Newspapers continue to play an important role in society and politics. In some respects they play an enhanced and widening role in this digital age, even as they have come under disruptive pressure of varying degrees. Typically, in India as well as in most other countries, daily newspapers have become contested, at times bitterly contested, sites where various extraneous as well as internal factors and interests are at play, often having it out. The rise of social media — its positive, corrective, and value-adding side as well as its trolling, noisy, and truth-distorting side — has increased in no small measure the daily pressure the mainstream press and professional journalists face in the increasingly contested space.

In this situation, protecting and revitalizing the core functions, standards, and values of professional journalism has become absolutely vital to democracy, to the public interest, and, of course, to the newspaper industry’s own health. Newspapers perform several roles in relation to their vast and diverse readership, and some of these have declined, faded away, or simply changed over time. But the two central functions of serious, independent journalism have remained constant — the credible-informational and the critical-investigative-adversarial. There are also derivatives of these central functions, notably the agency of the press in public education, serving as a forum for analysis, criticism, disputation, comment, and agenda building, which are all invaluable to any society. Newspapers that perform these functions effectively over the long term establish a reputation for reliability: in other words, a bond of trust forms between the newspaper and its readers and this gets strengthened over time, provided the functions, standards, and values are protected and nourished.

Demand for regulation

There is a new challenge newspapers face in many countries, including India, and this is the increasingly heard political demand for regulation of the ways of an allegedly irresponsible, wayward, and venal press. There is little question that in many cases the demand reflects, or at least draws upon, public dissatisfaction and disenchantment with the performance of influential sections of the press (in juxtaposition with the noise, froth, and mindless chatter generated ceaselessly on news television, with which the press’s performance is, from time to time, confused by the public). There is nothing wrong with regulation per se. But regulation is of two kinds — external and internal — which from the standpoint of professional journalism is like chalk and cheese.

It is in this stressful context that the institution of a news ombudsman becomes not just a virtuous option but an existential necessity and even a priority for Indian newspapers.

The Hindu is the first newspaper in the history of Indian journalism to appoint a news ombudsman — an independent, full-time, empowered professional, known as the Readers’ Editor (RE), with a clearly defined daily role in the newspaper and transparent terms of reference. And this happened in 2006, when the newspaper was 127 years old. The inspiration had come from the exemplary practice and experience of The Guardian, whose pioneering RE, Ian Mayes, had set the bar high.

Over the past decade, The Hindu has had three Readers’ Editors, all of them journalists but with different backgrounds and experiences within the profession. The first, the newspaper’s vastly experienced former chief News Editor, K. Narayanan, gave shape and meaning to the office, winning the trust of a legion of readers. The second, S. Viswanathan, a veteran correspondent with considerable field reporting experience, helped consolidate the office of the news ombudsman, focussing as much on socio-political and media and society issues as on professional matters. The third and current RE, A.S. Panneerselvan, a versatile writer with a multi-media background who has published 177 RE columns so far without missing a step, has re-energised the office and expanded the RE’s role by taking on the challenge of looking into the newspaper online in addition to the printed editions.

The Terms of Reference for the Readers’ Editor, which are the same as The Guardian’s, can be read . They go hand in hand with the newspaper’s Code of Editorial Values, adopted in 2011

What in essence is the RE’s job?

It is, to quote Ian Mayes, to work independently within the newspaper “at the interface between readers… on the one hand, and journalists and editors on the other” — with a position like that of “a referee in a football game… that can get pretty rough at times.” He adds that the news ombudsman represents “a form of self-regulation… the only kind of self-regulation that has the effect of building trust between a specific news organisation and its readership or audience, through the systematic, impartial and public handling of complaints, and through the open discussion of issues raised by readers concerning the journalism.”

What deserves emphasis here is that The Hindu’s RE, who is appointed for a fixed term by the Board of Directors of the company owning the newspaper, is totally independent of the Editor and the editorial team, yet works in their midst and with their cooperation, which is mandated by the Terms of Reference.

In practical terms, the RE oversees the process of publishing corrections and clarifications on a daily basis; attends sympathetically to readers’ complaints and concerns that his or her office receives; writes a weekly column on a range of subjects related to the newspaper’s performance, various aspects of professional journalism and best practices, the newspaper industry, the media and society, and ethical issues; and inquires into, and recommends appropriate action on, specific cases of plagiarism, other ethical transgressions, and inappropriate or unprofessional journalism that are referred to him or her by the Editor.

The RE’s is a post-publication job; he or she rarely comes in pre-publication, and even then only when the matter is referred to him or her.

The data available at the office of The Hindu’s RE reveal that between March 2006 and February 2016, as many as 70,519 communications (by email, telephone, regular mail, and fax) were received from readers. During the same period, 8,236 corrections and clarifications were published in a prominent demarcated space — the opinion page opposite the main editorial page. This is important because readers need to know where precisely to go to see the RE in action, which means visibility is the key (“visible mending” is a term of art in the RE’s trade). Not all corrections came from readers; many of them were made suo motu by the RE’s office and, interestingly, the newspaper’s journalists began to send in corrections before anyone else could point them out. In other words, self-correction has become an objective process in this newspaper, making it unlikely that major factual or contextual mistakes would escape public attention.

During the decade, close to 400 columns written by the three Readers’ Editors have been published on the same page. In effect, the REs have owned the space demarcated to them for publishing corrections and clarifications and also their independent views, findings, and, whenever they deem necessary, criticisms of the newspaper’s journalism in their columns. At the same time, care is taken not to personalise the issue by naming the journalists or other contributors, unless there are ethical transgressions or major mistakes suggesting irresponsibility.

Benefits of self-regulation

What have been the benefits of institutionalising over a decade the practice of this distinctive form of self-regulation through the work of the Readers’ Editor?

First, it has sent out the message to readers that The Hindu, which constantly attempts to hold various institutions, actors, and ideologies to account, regards itself as responsible and accountable to readers when it comes to living up to the highest professional standards and to the editorial values it proclaims.

Second, although a vocal section of readers continues to send in its complaints and concerns about the newspaper’s coverage of issues, sometimes accusing it of being “anti-Hindu,” there is tangible evidence of a shared feeling among the larger body of readers that here is a real institutional mechanism to correct serious mistakes and remedy inappropriate journalistic practices whenever they arise.

Third, I have the sense that the newspaper’s reporters, who took their time to get comfortable with the news ombudsman’s active refereeing role that some of them would have considered meddlesome, have generally come to the view that this empowered office protects them from motivated attacks, especially from the trolls in the social media.

Fourth, although there is no direct evidence on this point, it stands to reason that this form of unilateral and quick-acting self-regulation — which is not mandated by law — brings down both the incidence and the risk of litigation against the newspaper by those who feel aggrieved or offended by something it has published. The Hindu’s Vice President (Legal), for one, is of the view that the RE’s office has been able to absorb the anger of a section of readers “like a sponge.”

The Hindu as an institution committed to the highest standards and values of journalism remains firmly committed to continuing and strengthening the office of its Readers’ Editor. It takes pride in being the first Indian newspaper to have this office and make it responsive to the needs of the time. However, it has mixed feelings about being the only Indian newspaper to have an independent and regularly functioning news ombudsman — for the simple reason that this does not seem to reflect well on the priorities of the Indian newspaper industry.

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UltraTech acquires Jaypee group's cement assets for Rs. 16,500 crore

ltraTech Limited has agreed to acquire Jaypee Group’s 22.4 million tonnes of cement capacity assets for Rs.16,500 crore, making it the largest deal in the Indian cement sector.

Kumar Mangalam Birla’s cement flagship firm entered into a binding agreement with Jaiprakash Associates Ltd., for the acquisition of its identified cement plants having a total cement capacity of 22.4 mtpa and situated in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. As per the agreement these plants have been valued at Rs.16, 500 crore, according to a BSE filing. A number of foreign and Indian companies were in the race to acquire these plants.

The deal will also include a four mpta plant under implementation at a cost of Rs.470 crore, according to the filing. The acquired assets will give UltraTech access to the newer markets in Satna, UP East, Himachal Pradesh and Coastal Andhra

The acquisition, which is subject to definitive agreements and regulatory approvals as may be required, will augment UltraTech’s cement capacity to 90.7 mtpa from the current 68.3 mtpa, according to the filing.

The move comes two days after UltraTech called off a Rs.5400-crore deal to buy Jaiprakash Associates’ (JAL) 2.1 mtpa cement plant in Madhya Pradesh as new MMDR Act 2015 barred transfer of mines not allocated through auctions.

“On a proactive basis, we had taken concrete steps to divest two cement plants in MP in January 2015 but for reasons not attributable to the company, this divestment could not take place which is a matter of great concern, as this affects even groups like us which are proactively pursuing the process of de-leveraging through disinvestment,” said Manoj Gaur, Executive Chairman, JAL, said in a BSE statement.

He said that in the given situation, it has now been considered appropriate to divest a significant portion of the total cement capacity in favour of a company which is not only India's largest cement player but would also be the first cement company in India to achieve the coveted 100-million-tonne mark in the cement segment.

On Friday, UltraTech was forced to call off the deal after the Bombay High Court refused to approve the scheme of arrangement entered between UltraTech Cements and JAL, for acquisition of entire cement business along with mining rights situated at Bela and Siddhi in Madhya Pradesh.

Jaypee Group, India’s third largest cement maker with cement capacity of 28 mtpa, will be left with capacity of 6 mtpa.

The Jaypee Group has taken the decision to sell its cement assets “to effectively address the subject of debt reduction,” according to the BSE filing by the company.

Jaypee Group is determined to leverage its expertise in the fields of engineering & construction, real estate and project execution, in a committed manner and such steps would further ‘cement' its credentials of being a trustworthy organisation in the long run, Mr. Gaur said.

Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla had told The Hindu that UltraTech will maintain its leadership position in India.

Investment advisor S P Tulsian believes that the acquisition will propel Ultratech to the coveted 100-mtpa club, and ahead of its competitors.

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Live: Jaitley presents Union Budget 2016-17: 'Rs 38,500 crore for MGNREGA in 2016-17'

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presents his third Union Budget.

Here are the live updates:

11.30 a.m.:

11.30 a.m.: Total rural sector allocation Rs. 87,769 crore.

11.27 a.m.: Two schemes for digital literacy for rural India to cover 6 crore households in the next three years.

11.26 a.m.: Rs. 9,000 crore for Swachch Bharat Abhiyan.

11.25 a.m.: 5,542 villages have been electrified, more than the last three years combined.

11.24 a.m.: Rs. 38,500 crore for MNREGA. Highest ever for the rural employment scheme.

11.23 a.m.: Rs. 2.87 lakh crore for gram panchayats as per recommendation of 14th finance commission.

11.22 a.m.: Four schemes for animal welfare.

11.19 a.m.: Agricultural credit target of Rs. 9 lakh crore.

11.19 a.m.: Unified e-platform for farmers to be inaugurated on Ambedkar's birthday.

11.17 a.m.: Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana to bring 5 lakh acres under organic farming.

11.14 a.m.: 28.5 lakh hectares to be brought under irrigation.

11.13 a.m.: Govt will reorganise agricultural policy to double farmer income in five years.

11.11 a.m.: Jaitley announces the nine pillars of his Budget — Agriculture and farmers' welfare, rural sector, social sector including healthcare, education, skills and job creation, infrastructure, financial sector reforms, ease of doing business, fiscal discipline, tax reforms to reduce compliance burden.

11.11 a.m.: New scheme for BPL families for gas connections. Staturtory backing for Aadhaar platform to ensure delivery of benefits.

11.10 a.m.: CAD is 1.4% of GDP.

11.10 a.m.: FY 16-17 will have the additional burden of implementing the VII pay commission and the defence OROP.

11.08 a.m.: FY 15-16 and 16-17 will be challenging for the government.

11.07 a.m.: Forex reserves are at the highest ever levels — $350 billion.

11.05 a.m.: GDP growth has accelerated to 7.6%. CPI inflation has come down to 5.4%.

11.05 a.m.: Mr. Jaitley says the Indian economy has held strong despite a global slowdown.

11 a.m.: Arun Jaitley rises to present the Budget.

10:46 am: Mr. Jaitley's Budget speech to begin in 15 minutes.

10:43 am: Union Cabinet clears General Budget for 2016-17.

10:29 am: Cabinet meeting in Parliament ends.

10:05 am: The Sensex falls 59 points in early trade on reduced bets by cautious retail investors amid continued capital outflows by foreign funds ahead of the Budget.

9:53 am: Pre-Budget Cabinet meet to begin shortly.

9:40 am: Mr. Jaitley, MoS Jayant Sinha arrive in Parliament.

And it begins! The Budget papers arrive in Parliament. Photo: Sandeep Saxena

9:19 am: The stock markets don't seem very enthused ahead of the Budget — Sensex opens 38.86 points lower, currently at 23,115.44.

9:10 am: The Budget may be given a dash of green with many environment-friendly measures to reduce the carbon footprint, official sources tell The Hindu. The budget is likely to provide incentives to encourage local manufacture and Research & Development (R&D) of electric vehicle components, including lithium-iron batteries.

9:00 am: About 8.5 crore employees whose retirement savings are managed by the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) could get an option to transfer over a third of their EPF contributions to the National Pension System, regulated by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority or PFRDA.

8:54 am: How well do you know your budget history? Here are 11 landmark Union Budgets that you should know about.

8:45 am: Here’s a ready reckoner for some of the terms that will be a part of Mr. Jaitley’s long speech, that some of us may not be familiar with.

8:30 am: How long will this year’s Budget speech be? Which Finance Minister holds the dubious honour of presenting the longest budget speech, in terms of word count? Here’s a clue: it was an 18,650-word speech given 25 years ago!

8:00 am: Budgets are about numbers and best understood using charts and graphics. In case you missed it, here are the highlights of the previous Budget, captured in eight interactive charts.

7:30 am: The event provides us an opportunity to reflect on the proposals and promises that were made during last year’s Budget. We looked at some of them and checked the status of their implementation. Here’s what we found.

7:00 am: Here’s some interesting information. For Budget 2016-17, the government invited suggestions from citizens through Twitter for the first time, even conducting a series of polls to gauge public priorities and expectations from the Budget.

Here are some stories from The Hindu’s Focus Budget series and opinion pages:

— Suneet Reddy, MD, Apollo Hospitals, asks the Govt. to collect health insurance cess. "One viable way to do this is by collecting a health-insurance cess for general citizens including people below the poverty line and mandating subscription-based contributions from the organised sector. We need health savings funds, as part of salary savings, to create a corpus for individuals that would accrue over the long term without adding to their financial burdens." Read here.

— 'Accelerate shift to electronic payments for more revenue'. Global studies have shown the cost of cash to be between one per cent and three per cent of a country’s GDP. Given this, we are encouraged by the Government of India and RBI’s collective resolve to move to a cashless society as outlined in the Digital India vision, argues T.R. Ramachandran, Group Country Manager, India and South Asia, Visa. Full article here.

— Brotin Banerjee, MD and CEO, Tata Housing, says the GST can be a gamechanger for the real estate industry. He also says, "To achieve the objective of ‘Housing for All’, affordable housing projects should be exempted from Income Tax for seven years till 2022 and Excise and Customs Duty which constitutes 15% currently." Read here.

— 'Exempt airlines from MAT'. Ajay Singh, chairman, MD of SpiceJet, says airlines should be exempted from application of MAT till all the accumulated book losses (including unabsorbed depreciation) are set off against future book profits. "All the lease transactions take place outside India and there is virtually no tax revenue on this account to the Government of India. This section should be reinstated with additional benefits to Indian leasing companies and leasing transactions done in India. It will help in smooth leasing of aircraft and aircraft engines in India." Read full article here.

— “While new policy initiatives, which may be announced during the 2016 Budget, may provide respite temporarily, improving the long-term investment environment in India requires the government and regulators to put improving corporate governance firmly on its agenda.” Here are some reasons on why the Budget needs to focus on improving corporate governance.

— Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairman and Managing Director, Biocon, says Pharma and biotech sector must get its due in Budget. She argues that a Budget that puts PM Modi’s ambitious socio-economic initiatives into action would go a long way in pulling the nation out of its current state of despondency by pushing the development agenda for India with increased vigour and scripting a new economic growth story.

— Here’s another thought. M. Govinda Rao, Emeritus Professor, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy says, “Given the pressing need for financial prudence and the equally pressing need for increasing public investment, the Finance Minister needs to raise additional resources and rationalise and target subsidies.” Read full article here.

— “French politician Georges Bidault had in some seriousness described that “a good agreement is one which leaves all parties equally dissatisfied.” No Budget can satisfy all expectations, much less aspirations. It would be judged on whether the preferred options and the balancing act are credible and compelling.” N.K. Singh, a former civil servant and Rajya Sabha MP, writes on what he expects from this Budget.

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NASA turns to public to help humanoid robot ‘see’ better

NASA is asking coders to create algorithms to improve 3D vision of its first humanoid robot in space for maintaining the International Space Station (ISS), freeing up astronauts for critical science and repair work.

Humans use glasses to help them see better, but for robots, the fix is in their code, NASA said.

The Robonaut Vision Tool Manipulation contest offers a total of $ 10,000 in prizes for the best algorithms.

Robonaut 2, or R2, is the first humanoid robot in space, currently being tested on the ISS.

Serving as an extra set of hands for station crew members, the robot is looking to help with the more mundane or repetitive tasks that are required for maintaining the million-pound laboratory, freeing up its human colleagues for critical science and repair work.

For example, R2 manages inventory using a Radio-frequency identification (RFID) reader and fastens bolts with a drill.

While astronauts can control R2 directly, making the robot more autonomous will make work on the station and on future deep space exploration missions more efficient. One goal is to help R2 “see” better, said NASA.

In order to use a tool, R2 relies on an algorithm to determine a 3-D representation of the tool. The algorithm works with the robot’s control system and allows R2 to create a plan for grasping objects and completing its tasks.

Existing algorithms assume that high-resolution images are always available, NASA said.

New algorithms are needed that can determine differences in objects based on noisy, stereo vision data.

The objective for the contest is to create algorithms that will receive a pair of noisy stereo images of common space tools such as an RFID reader, an EVA handrail, or a softbox, among others, and determine the correct 3-D representation of the object in the image pair.

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Bees, other pollinators at risk, may hit food output

Bees and other pollinators face increasing risks to their survival, threatening foods such as apples, blueberries and coffee worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year, the first global assessment of pollinators showed on Friday.

Pesticides, loss of habitats to farms and cities, disease and climate change were among threats to about 20,000 species of bees as well as creatures such as birds, butterflies, beetles and bats that fertilise flowers by spreading pollen, it said.

“Pollinators are critical to the global economy and human health,” Zakri Abdul Hamid, chair of the 124-nation report, told Reuters of a finding that between $235 billion and $577 billion of world food output at market prices depended on pollinators.

The food sector provides jobs for millions of people, such as coffee pickers in Brazil, cocoa farmers in Ghana, almond growers in California or apple producers in China.

Ever more species of pollinators are threatened, according to the study, the first by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) since it was founded in 2012. It was approved in talks in Kuala Lumpur.

IPBES is modelled on the U.N. panel on climate change, which advises governments on ways to tackle global warming.

“Regional and national assessments of insect pollinators indicate high levels of threat, particularly for bees and butterflies,” it said. In Europe, for instance, 9 per cent of bee and butterfly species were threatened with extinction.

The study pointed to risks from pesticides such as neonicotinoids, linked to damaging effects in North America and Europe. But it said there were still many gaps in understanding the long-term impact.

“It’s definitely harmful to wild bees, and we don’t know what it means for populations over time,” Simon Potts, a co-chair of the report and professor at the University of Reading in England, told Reuters.

The study also said the impact of genetically modified crops on pollinators was still poorly understood.

And it said the amount of farm output dependent on pollination had surged by 300 per cent in the past 50 years. The western honey bee, the most widespread pollinator managed by humans, produces 1.6 million tonnes of honey every year.

Still, the outlook was not all bleak. “The good news is that a number of steps can be taken to reduce the risks,” Dr. Zakri said.

Planting strips or patches of wild flowers could attract pollinators to fields of crops, and reduced use of pesticides or a shift to organic farming could also restrict the damage.

“There are some things that individuals on the ground can do,” Prof. Potts said. Smallholder farmers in Africa could let wild plants grow on part of their land, people in cities could plant flowers in their back gardens or window boxes.

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Turning to Potter for life lessons

The news of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a stage production, based on a story co-written by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, has taken social media by storm, and sent Potter heads into a frenzy. The play picks up from where Rowling left us after the final Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. And, takes us forward to the time when Harry is an exhausted employee at the Ministry of Magic.

I, like others, cannot wait for July 31st to come, because that’s when the print version of the play will be out. I remember the buzz every time a new Potter book was announced. The 12-year-old me would start fantasising the smell of the pages, the illustrations on the cover, the plot, etc. Even as I grew up, Potter mania became something more than just a childhood thing. The story began to mean new things to me.

There are a couple of things that make Potter fiction distinct from, say, The Famous Five or The Secret Seven. Apart from the obvious fact that they are witches and wizards, the children in Potter are not just prowling around for clues. Their fight is always bigger, darker. Their misdemeanours could cost them not just house points but also their lives. They are intelligent and stand for the marginalised, in this case, elves such as Dobby and the Muggles.

Rebellion and power struggle are recurring themes.

One of my favourite books is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, where the students revolt against Professor Umbridge, who ousts Dumbledore.

Hogwarts plunges into darkness during Umbridge’s tenure. Rewards are showered on students who blindly obey. And, the school is forced to believe that the world is rosy outside, when, in reality, there is dark magic and massacres. However, the students see through the lies and practise Defence against the Dark Arts. The school witnesses a mini revolution of sorts against Umbridge. Now, who hasn’t applauded and whistled when the Wesley Twins, unleash spells to nag Umbridge?

But, hasn’t breaking rules and Potter always gone hand-in-hand? I had to fight with my folks who hid the books during exams. In school, teachers often stumbled upon students stealthily reading the Potter books in different corners. And my copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was confiscated and withheld in the staff room for weeks! In college, reading Potter became the ultimate symbol of protest. Students read out the Umbridge part to register their peaceful resistance against unfair measures by the college administration.

One of my friends tweeted the other day, “I would raise kids just to read Potter to them.” I could not agree more. Potter painted a complex picture of evil at a time when I saw things in black and white. For instance, the seventh book revealed that a part of Voldemort, the evil lord of the wizarding world, was hidden in Harry too. And, to decimate him, Harry had to destroy a part of himself. Now, is there a better way to tell children that a bit of evil resides in all of us?

The potions teacher at Hogwarts, Severus Snape, immortalised by the brilliant Alan Rickman, is the most nuanced character sketch of a villain in children’s fiction ever. We assume he is in league with dark forces because of his hatred for Harry. But, we are proved wrong, and Snape turns out to be a true fighter against Voldemort.

In a way, both the Muggle and wizarding worlds are not entirely different, and are inhabited by people who suffer from similar vices. Rowling gifted us a parallel world, but it was not to offer us an escape route, but a channel for deeper engagement with the world. As dark news begin to dominate our news channels, I realise how important it is to add a touch of magic to our Muggle existence, and fight the hatred in the world with a Patronus of happy thoughts and values, which a certain wizard with half-moon spectacles, silver beard and twinkling eyes taught us.

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Only 5.5% who earn are tax payers: Economic Survey

India is far from being a full tax-paying democracy with about 5.5 per cent of the people who earn paying tax and only 15.5 per cent of the net national income being reported to the tax authorities, according to the Economic Survey tabled in the Parliament on Friday.

The survey estimated that just four per cent India’s voters are taxpayers, though it should be closer to 23 per cent, and 85 per cent of the net national income fall outside the tax net.

The tax to GDP ratio at 16.6%, as a result, is well below that of the emerging market economies of 21 per cent and OECD average of 34 per cent. The survey, however, pointed out that the democracies with higher ratios took a long time to strengthen tax capacity. “Any harsh judgement of India’s performance must be tempered by historical differences in the evolution of India compared with other democracies.”

On the expenditure side, India’s spending on human capital, education and health, to the GDP ratio is the lowest among BRICS and lower than the OECD and emerging market economies averages. They are in fact, lower than those of comparable per-capita GDP economies such as Vietnam, Bolivia and Uzbekistan.

To widen the tax net and raise revenue for spending on India’s human capital development, the survey called for bringing rich farmers into the tax net, raising property tax rates and phasing out tax exemptions.

There should be “reasonable” taxation of the better-off, regardless of the source of their incomes, whether it is from industry, services, real estate, or agriculture, Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian told reporters after the survey was tabled.

The survey also seeks to address the question French economist and author of best-selling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century Thomas Piketty raised during his recent trip to India: Should not Indian elite pay more taxes to provide for greater spending on health and education?

If the UPA Government had not raised in the 2012-13 the threshold level of personal income tax, the survey calculated that an additional 1.65 crore income tax payers would have got incorporated.

The tax-GDP ratio would have been 0.32% higher as Rs.31,500 crore additional tax revenue would have been collected.

The survey also seeks to analyse the levels of inequality in India, which Prof. Piketty said during his visit, he is unable to assess owing to unavailability of data.

According to the survey fast growing years in the 2000s were in fact associated with rising inequality at the very top end of the Indian income distribution.

As in many countries, there has been a growing concentration of income at the top: in 2013-14.

The top one per cent, 0.5 per cent and 0.1 per cent of people in the overall income distribution (the three highest income groups) accounted for 12.4 per cent, 9.4 per cent and five per cent of the entire income of the Indian economy.

At these levels, inequality in India, it said, is comparable to that in the U.K. and lesser than in the United States.

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Mayawati, Yechury take on Smriti

The opposition that had walked out during Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani’s reply in the Lok Sabha on Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula’s suicide and the charges of sedition against students in JNU, mounted a concerted fight back in the Rajya Sabha, with rhetorical flourishes and a questioning of facts from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Bahujan Samaj Party.

BSP chief Mayawati had been demanding the inclusion of a Dalit in the panel probing the suicide of Vemula, and attacked the government for appointing a one-man judicial commission of former Allahabad High Court judge Ashok Kumar Roopanwal.

“To my question whether a Dalit member is part of the commission, the government has not answered so far. On February 24, I had asked this question. Justice Roopanwal is from the upper caste. The government’s intention is dubious,” Ms Mayawati said.

CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury took on Ms Irani on certain facts in her reply to the short duration discussion.

Mr Yechury said Vemula, in his letter written a month before he committed suicide, had said he should be given a rope, which indicated the state of his mind. “What did the university do,” he asked. “You have pushed the child to commit suicide, it is virtually a murder,” he said referring to Vemula’s death and the actions of the government preceding it.

“The Minister quoted back Macbeth at me yesterday (Thursday) saying ‘fair is foul, foul is fair’. She is making all foul fair in the way that she is twisting facts,” said Mr. Yechury.

Govt. pushed Vemula to suicide: Yechury

CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Friday confronted HRD Minister Smriti Irani in the Rajya Sabha on certain facts about the suicide of Dalit student Rohit Vemula mentioned in her reply to the discussion in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.

Mr. Yechury said Vemula, in his letter written a month before he committed suicide, had said he should be given a rope, which indicated the state of his mind. “What did the University do,” Mr. Yechury asked. “You have pushed the child to commit suicide; it is virtually a murder,” he said.

“The Minister quoted back Macbeth at me yesterday [Thursday] saying ‘fair is foul, foul is fair’. She is making all foul fair in the way that she is twisting facts,” said Mr. Yechury.

Questioning the veracity of the Facebook account that Ms Irani claimed was that of Vemula, Mr Yechury said, “Can a Facebook account be authenticated? Can ‘quotes’ from the ‘cyberspace’ be permitted without the same being authenticated?” He insisted that nothing should go on rec0ord in the House without being authenticated. Ms. Irani had quoted from a purported Facebook post by Vemula critical of Mr. Yechury and the CPI(M).

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Rich feed off subsidies worth over Rs. 1 lakh crore: Economic Survey

India’s rich feed off subsidies worth over Rs. 1 lakh crore a year that are meant for the poor, according to the Economic Survey. And this figure only considers the subsidies on six commodities, two public utilities — the Railways and electricity — and one small savings scheme, the Public Provident Fund.

“There are a fair amount of government interventions that help the relatively better-off in society. In many cases, this takes the form of explicit subsidisation, which is surprisingly substantial in magnitude,” the Survey said in a provocatively titled chapter ‘Bounties for the Well-off.’

The Survey classified the population on the basis of consumption data collected by National Sample Surveys. “Poor refer to the bottom 30 per cent of the population and the rich the top 70 per cent,” it said in a footnote. This categorises a sizeable portion of the non-poor as ‘rich’.

“These numbers are striking and have one policy implication: any tax incentives that are given, for example, for savings, benefit not the middle class, not the upper middle class but the super-rich who represent the top 1-2 per cent,” the Survey added.

Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian, the Survey’s lead author, argued that most commodities primarily consumed by the rich have a very low tax rate, in effect subsidising them at the cost of the poor. For example, the rich consume 98 per cent of the gold in the country, and yet gold is taxed at only 1-1.6 per cent (the Centre and the States combined).

The rich avail of an 88 per cent subsidy on kerosene, amounting to Rs. 5,501 crore and 86 per cent subsidy on LPG, amounting to Rs. 40,151 crore.

ATF tax lower than that of petrol

To arrive at the quantum of subsidies availed of by the rich, the Economic Survey assumed the average tax on normal commodities at 19 per cent, the Revenue Neutral Rate for the GST as recommended by the Subramanian panel, and a 50 per cent tax on energy-related commodities that serves as an “appropriate carbon tax.”

The effective subsidy availed by the rich, as calculated by the Survey, is the difference between this tax rate (19 per cent or 30 per cent) and the actual subsidy, measured as a negative number, or the (positive) tax rate on that commodity or service.

Some commodities are subsidised more for the poor than the rich, such as railway tickets (since there are different categories of tickets), but even here, the rich avail of a subsidy of 34 per cent, according to the Survey. Similarly, the tax structure has resulted in aviation fuel being cheaper per litre than petrol and diesel. “Aviation fuel is taxed at about 20 per cent (average of tax rates for all states), while diesel and petrol are taxed at about 55 per cent and 61 per cent (as in January 2016). The real consumers of ATF are those who travel by air, who essentially are the well-off,” the Survey said.

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Astronaut Scott Kelly heading home

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who returns next week after nearly a year aboard the International Space Station, has said that the secret to enduring the longest U.S. space flight is marking individual milestones, not ticking days off the calendar.

Since arriving at the space station on March, 27, 2015, Mr. Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Korneinko have served with eight different crewmates, unpacked six cargo ships, weathered two botched supply runs and participated in dozens of science experiments.

Mr. Kelly also made three spacewalks outside the $100 billion station, which flies about 400 km above Earth, and Mr. Kornienko made one.

“I’ve tried to do this with a deliberate pace, looking not really at the end, but at the next milestone,” Mr. Kelly told reporters during his last in-flight press conference on Thursday.

“I could go another 100 days; I could go another year if I had to,” he added.

Mr. Kelly and Mr. Kornienko’s stint — about 340 days — is intended to provide medical and engineering information to prepare for three-year missions to Mars.

Four Soviet-era cosmonauts flew longer missions aboard the now-defunct Mir space station. The longest flight was a 437-day mission between January 1994 and March 1995 by cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov.

“Physically, I feel pretty good,” said Mr. Kelly, 52, a veteran of three previous space flights. He said the hardest part of being in space for so long was being separated from his friends and family. Mr. Kelly’s medical tests will continue for months after his return. His identical twin brother Mark Kelly, a former NASA astronaut, is participating in a series of related studies looking for genetic changes caused by the high radiation and weightless environment of space.

The astronauts are due to depart the station on Tuesday. They will land in Kazakhstan.

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Indian components used in IS explosives: report

Products from at least seven Indian companies figure in a large supply of components that have ended up in explosives used by Islamic State terrorists, according to a study released on Thursday.

The European Union-funded 20-month-long study by the Conflict Armament Research (CAR) states that the seven Indian companies “manufactured most of the detonators, detonating cord, and safety fuses documented” by their field investigation teams. However, there was no illegality on the part of the Indian companies, the report says.

“Under Indian law, transfer of this material requires a licence. All components documented by CAR were legally exported,” the report says.

The study established that 51 companies from 20 countries produced, sold or received more than 700 components used by IS to build improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Companies from other countries such as Turkey, Brazil and the United States also appeared on the list.

The report said the IS is now producing IEDs “quasi-industrial scale”, using both regulated components and easily available items such as fertilisers and mobile phones.

The role of Turkey
With 13 companies, Turkey is the most important source of components used in the manufacture of IEDs by the IS. The components include chemical precursors, containers, detonating cord, cables, and wires.

Some of these Turkish companies have also sourced materials from companies in India and elsewhere, before the procured items that landed up in IS hands.

The report said that during the siege of Kobane, a Syrian Kurdish town, last year, Kurdish YPG militias captured detonating cord from IS.

“Solar Industries, India, produced one spool of detonating cord on 27 February 2014 and exported it to the Turkish company Ýlci, Ankara. Two months earlier, on 31 December 2012, Gulf Oil Corporation, India, had produced a spool and exported it to the Turkish company Nitromak Dyno Nobel, Ankara. Solar Industries, India, produced a further two spools, on 21 and 23 October 2012, and exported them [on an unspecified date] to the Lebanese company Maybel, headquartered in Beirut,” the report said.

However, all those Indian products landed up with the IS, through some intermediaries.

CAR also documented that Solar Industries produced detonating cord that IS forces used to make IEDs. “There is no evidence to indicate to which regional entity Solar Industries supplied the cord,” the report said.

In February 2015, a CAR investigation team in Kobane documented a spool of detonating cord produced by Premier Explosives Ltd, India.

“Premier Explosives has confirmed that it sold 6 million metres of detonating cord to the Mechanical Construction Factory, Syria, in 2009 and 2010,” the report said.

On sanctions list
In December 2011, the European Union placed the Mechanical Construction Factory on a sanctions list for acting as a front company for the acquisition of sensitive equipment by the Syrian government’s Scientific Studies and Research Center.

CAR investigators also found Premier Explosives’s detonating cord among items that Kurdistan Regional Government security forces seized from an IS cell in early December 2014 in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. “Premier Explosives has told CAR that it never supplied explosive components to Iraq,” the report said.

In Kobane, a spool of detonating cord produced by Rajasthan Explosives and Chemicals, India, was found. The company was yet to respond to the questionnaire from the CAR team.

Chain of custody
In the investigations into explosives used by IS in Kobane, they also saw “spool of safety fuse produced by the Indian company Chamundi Explosives. In the absence of serial, batch, and lot numbers, and of a manufacturing date, CAR is unable to document the item’s full chain of custody. Chamundi Explosives has stated that the company had not supplied any product to either Iraq or Syria,” the report said.

In Kobane, Kurdish forces captured plain detonators from IS forces that were manufactured by Indian company Economic Explosives.

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NASA releases mysterious ‘Moon music’ heard by Apollo 10 astronauts in 1969

NASA has made public the recording of the mysterious ‘outer-space music’ that Apollo 10 mission astronauts heard as their spacecraft flew around the far side of the Moon in 1969.

The transcript of the conversation between Apollo 10 astronauts Eugene Cernan and John Young mentioning the strange sound and the crew’s response to the phenomenon were released in 2008. However, the audio of the discussion and the sounds that the astronauts were referring to has just been made public.

They heard it on Moon’s far side

Out of radio contact with Earth and all alone on the far side of the Moon, the astronauts had not expected to hear anything on their instruments.

“You hear that? That whistling sound? Whoooooo,” Mr. Cernan is heard saying in the recording. The astronauts then mention that it sounds like “outer-space type music.”

Trio in two minds about reporting it

According to a new TV series “NASA’s Unexplained Files,” the astronauts debated whether or not to mention it to their superiors at NASA, out of fear that it could cast doubt on their suitability for future spaceflight, ‘CNN’ reported.

However, Mr. Cernan himself cast doubt on this claim. “It was probably just radio interference. Had we thought it was something other than that we would have briefed everyone after the flight,” he said.

A NASA technician on the TV show supports Mr. Cernan’s assessment that the “radios in the two spacecraft [the lunar module and the command module] were interfering with each other.”

Not all agree it was normal phenomenon

However, this explanation is disputed by astronaut Al Worden, who said that “logic tells me that if there was something recorded on there, then there is something there.”

Michael Collins, the pilot of Apollo 11 and the first person to fly around the far side of the Moon by himself, also recalled hearing strange sounds, but did not think too much of it.

Mr. Collins explained that the noise began when the radios in the two vehicles were both turned on and in close proximity to each other.

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