Government to build one crore houses for rural poor in three years

One crore houses will be built with the government’s committed financial assistance for India’s rural poor over the next three years, as part of its ambitious programme to provide shelter for all by 2022 — the 75th year of India’s Independence.

Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad announced the “very important decision” after a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday.

The minister said that 2.95 crore houses will be built by 2022 and for this a financial assistance of up to Rs.1.30 lakh will be provided to each homeless family in rural areas of the country.

The measure is part of the government’s rural housing scheme — Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana – Gramin — for construction of brick and mortar houses for all houseless and households living in temporary shelters. The houses will also be provided with basic amenities like electricity and water at cheaper rates.

Ravi Shankar Prasad said that every poor family living in plains will get Rs.1.20 lakh and those living in “hilly and difficult” areas will receive an assistance of Rs.1.30 lakh to construct a house.

“This programme will run for 6-7 years,” the minister told reporters, adding the scheme will run in two phases.

In the first phase, he said, “the government will provide assistance for construction of one crore houses in rural areas over the period of three years from 2016-17 to 2018-19″.

For this, the government would need to spend nearly Rs.82,000 crore. Out of this, Rs.60,000 crore will be provided by “budgetary provisions” and the “additional financial requirement” of nearly Rs.22,000 crore will come as loan from India’s apex development bank NABARD.

The loan will be “amortised through budgetary allocations after 2022″, he said.

The minister stressed that “transparency in the selection of beneficiaries” will be maintained in the implementation of the scheme which will be executed all over India except for Delhi and Chandigarh.

Masons to be employed for building the houses should be trained properly so that the construction is done as the per the regional requirements, Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

For identification of beneficiaries, the government will depend on the Socio Economic and Caste Census data that was issued recently, according to an statement official statement. The Census identified poor households living in temporary shelters.

The Census said that there were 2.3 crore households in rural India living in one room or less with non-concrete walls and roof.

Source : IndianMediaBook - Current Affairs

Vijay Mallya quits as chairman Sanofi India

Beleaguered business tycoon Vijay Mallya has decided to step down as the chairman of pharma major Sanofi India, nearly 33 years after he assumed the post, the company said in a statement here.

Mallya conveyed his decision not to seek re-election as a director at the company’s ensuing Annual General Meeting, said the Sanofi statement issued late Wednesday.

Mallya had first joined in December 1973 as director of Sanofi India Ltd (SIL), then known as Hoechst Pharmaceuticals Ltd. He functioned as the board chairman since December 1983.

“I have been privileged to preside over the board of this company, which started as Hoechst Pharmaceuticals Ltd. and to have participated in its phenomenal growth and prosperity over such an extraordinarily long period of time,” Mallya said in a farewell statement.

“It was gratifying that the company continued serving needy patients in India with world-class medication while ensuring consistent returns to all stakeholders.”

Mallya, who is believed to be hiding in the United Kingdom, is wanted by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with a money-laundering case. The former liquor baron — known as ‘king of good times’ — has denied that he was “absconding”, saying as an “international businessman” he is currently abroad on a business trip and was expected to return by March-end.

SIL Managing Director Shailesh Ayyangar said under Mallya’s leadership, in the past 10 years, the company’s sales grew from Rs.800 crore to Rs.2,000 crore, share price shot up from Rs.1,655 to Rs.4,358, market cap has almost tripled and the employee strength more than doubled from 1,500 to 3,700.

The SIL announced plans to induct Aditya Narayan and Usha Thorat as two new independent directors for five years from April 30, 2016. Subject to fulfilling all requirements, Aditya Narayan, 64, is slated to succeed Mallya as SIL Chairman.

SIL is listed on both BSE and NSE. Its parent Sanofi has 60.4 percent equity stake in SIL whose portfolio includes pharmaceuticals and consumer healthcare products.

In pharma, SIL has a strong presence in diabetes, being the only company with a balanced oral and insulin portfolio.

Source : IndianMediaBook - Current Affairs

Internet of Things to connect millions in rural India to mainstream

Some call it the fourth industrial revolution or “industry 4.0″; for others, the time when machines can “talk” at “smart” factories and “connected” homes to make your life better is here. But for India, Internet of Things (IoT) can bring a real revolution: empowering millions in rural areas and connecting “humans” to the mainstream.

A well-connected nation is the first step towards a well-served nation and, hence, connecting rural India to the IoT will provide the much-needed bridge between urban and rural India.

“It is a surefire way of channelling the benefits of a digital economy to the largest part of the country. IoT will enable delivery of education, health, governance and financial services to otherwise underserved areas,” Oracle India managing director Shailender Kumar stressed.

For example, most patients in rural areas do not have access to specialists. Thus, several large hospitals in the metros are beginning to offer remote consulting services in rural villages using media-rich network capabilities.

“The doctors can see and interact with patients in remote telemedicine centres, with the case history and medical data automatically transmitted to the doctor for analysis. Similarly, the IoT technology can be leveraged to offer high-quality remote education in high schools across the country,” Shailendra Kumar told IANS.

The IoT connectivity also offers a host of development opportunities to untapped areas, including manufacturing and e-commerce to market local and traditional products.

“A host of ‘localisation’ technologies can help different regions to communicate; so language is not a barrier. Relevant information and updates can be provided in local languages and scripts,” the Oracle executive added.

According to K.S. Viswanathan, vice president (industrial initiative) at apex IT body Nasscom (National Association of Software and Services Companies), as IoT emerges as the next big thing to become a $300 billion global industry by 2020, India is all set to capture at least 20 percent market share in the next five years.

“The IoT is dramatically alerting manufacturing, energy, transportation, medical and other industrial sectors worldwide,” said Viswanathan while launching the “Nasscom IoT Centre of Excellence” in Coimbatore last week.

Andhra Pradesh has taken a lead when it comes to leveraging the IoT potential in the country. The state government has approved the first-of-its-kind IoT policy with an aim to turn the state into an IoT hub by 2020 and tap 10 percent market share in the country.

“We will develop state-of-the-art IoT infrastructure that matches global standards to grab an Indian market share of $1.5 billion by 2020,” said state IT minister Palle Raghunatha Reddy as the Centre is currently drafting an ambitious policy to create an Indian IoT industry worth $15 billion by 2020.

On the global consumer front, Gartner has forecast that 6.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2016 – up 30 percent from 2015 – and will reach 20.8 billion by 2020.

As you traverse through these mind-boggling IoT numbers, where does India stand?

“We see that India will have a significant growth in IoT connections in the next four-five years,” said Mats Lundquist, chief executive officer at Telenor Connexion, Sweden-based leading enabler of connected business solutions.

Industry numbers indicate that manufacturing will be one of the main IoT drivers in the Asia Pacific (APAC) market and will be the biggest sector in IoT spending.

According to a report from global market research firm Frost & Sullivan, manufacturing contributed 30 percent of the IoT spending in 2014 and it is expected to rise up to 32 percent of total spending in the APAC region by 2020 which equates nearly $79 billion.

“Being an emerging market, India has a big potential owing to several initiatives like “Digital India” and “Smart Cities”. The next big market (for connected devices) in the world is south Asia and India holds a good position,” Apalak Ghosh, principal consultant at market research and consulting firm Cyber Media Research (CMR), told IANS.

“Eventually, south Asia will contribute to about 30-40 percent of the total connected things,” Ghosh added.

So where will the real revenue come from – the consumer or the enterprise sector?

“The Digital India initiative has created a strategic roadmap to build and strengthen domain competency and place India on the global IoT map. We believe that the enterprise sector will bolster IoT revenues,” elaborated Deep Agarwal, regional sales director (India) of US-based Zebra Technologies that builds tracking technology and solutions.

“To begin with, the revenue will first come from the enterprise sector. As the technology booms, the revenue will start coming from the consumer sector,” Ghosh added.

Since IoT is a concept of devices talking to one another, there is a lot of data transfer happening which is vulnerable to cyber threats as well.

“The cloud can work as a catalyst to make IoT work and for that, there has to be a right kind of framework that can assist it. The GRC (governance, risk management and compliance) guidelines can play an important part to make IoT work in a proper manner,” Ghosh said.

India is currently a small IoT market but with great potential. “We will definitely see a great development in the country on the IoT front in the coming years,” Lundquist pointed out.

For Oracle’s Shailendra Kumar, rural India is set to transform itself by taking the technology leap and adopting real-life solutions like IoT.

Source : IndianMediaBook - Current Affairs

Kanhaiya Kumar faces protest in Vijayawada

JNU student union leader Kanhaiya Kumar faced protests here on Thursday, with activists of the BJP and affiliated groups trying to disrupt the meeting he was addressing.

Tension prevailed at the meeting venue as protesters first stopped his convoy and later tried to disrupt the meeting organised by Left parties.

Shouting slogans against Kanhaiya Kumar, leaders and workers of the BJP, its youth wing Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha and other groups gathered at the venue.

Activists of Left parties raised counter slogans. There were heated arguments and jostling between the two sides.

Police intervened to control the situation and arrested the protesters.

Earlier, the meeting venue was shifted from a college to a hotel as the ABVP and other groups took strong objection to the management granting permission for the meeting in college auditorium.

There was tension in Siddhartha College since morning as ABVP, BJYM and other groups threatened to disrupt the meeting if it was allowed in the college premises.

They alleged that the management granted permission for the meeting despite sedition charges faced by Kanhaiya Kumar.

The student leader was accorded a warm welcome by leaders of Left parties in the evening when he reached Gannavaram airport here from Hyderabad.

Police, however, prevented them from taking out a rally.

This was second time in the day that Kanhaiya Kumar faced protests.

A youth hurled a shoe at him when he was addressing a meeting in Hyderabad. The youth, belonging to a right-wing organisation was arrested.

The leader of JNU students’ union was last month arrested on charges of sedition after alleged anti-India slogans were raised during a meeting at the JNU campus. He was later granted bail.

Kanhaiya Kumar arrived in Hyderabad on Wednesday on a two-day visit, his first outside Delhi after his release.

He, however, was denied entry into Hyderabad University to address students and pay tributes to Rohith Vemula, a Dalit research scholar who committed suicide in January.

Source : IndianMediaBook - Current Affairs

NGT appoints commissioner lawyer for Vrindavan

In a petition filed by an environmentalist charging local administration with neglecting solid waste management and failing to provide land-fill site, the NGT has asked a commissioner to visit Vrindavan without prior notice and submit reports with photographs after physically verifying facts.

The National Green Tribunal appointed commissioner lawyer Rahul Khurana will now visit Vrindavan and review the situation. The local police and the municipality were directed to make arrangements.

“The problem of solid waste management has long been hanging fire. The local authorities had contested the charges but we have presented documentary evidence along with photographs of the ground realities,” the petitioner Madhu Mangal Shukla told IANS.

Heaps of dirt and garbage still abounds and there is no scientific mechanism in place to process the solid waste, Shukla said.

The holy town is visited by lakhs of devotees and tourists every month, she said. “With connectivity provided via the Yamuna Expressway, the pilgrim pressure has gone up while the civic amenities continue to be woefully short of requirements,” said eco-activist and convener of ‘Friends of Vrindavan Jagan Nath Poddar’.

Source : IndianMediaBook - Current Affairs