Narendra Modi's thumping election victory is dividing analysts on rupee

Economy News

One of the biggest challenges facing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he begins his second term is ensuring clean air in a country that’s home to some of the most polluted cities in the world.
The country is burning up more coal to supply cheap electricity to its 1.3 billion people, resulting in polluted air across vast stretches. That’s costing lives and denting the nation’s economic productivity, prompting a policy rethink. Air pollution and how political parties plan to tackle it figured in their manifestos for the first time in national elections that ended May 23.
Efforts in the past to clean up the environment have struggled to clear the test of affordability. India’s fleet of coal-burning power plants, among the biggest sources of air pollution and a dominant provider of cheap energy, have dragged their feet over implementing emission standards, citing cost. A campaign to replace firewood with clean cooking fuel in rural homes needs to be affordable to have greater adoption.A look at what the Modi administration needs to do:
Strengthen the electricity distribution companies. Rejuvenating the power retailers will be crucial for transitioning to cleaner, although costlier electricity. Their losses rose from April to December, reversing a declining trend. Efforts to revive them during Modi’s first term have met with some progress but haven’t been completely successful.
Ensure timely implementation of emissions norms for thermal power plants. One of the reasons this process has moved slowly is a possible reluctance by lenders to finance retrofits in a sector already stressed with a mountain of bad debt. Fixing the money-losing power retailers would be key to resolving the bad loan mess.
Bring fuels, such as natural gas, under the national sales tax regime, helping them compete with dirtier options, such as coal and petcoke. Boosting local production of gas will make it more affordable and help raise its share in the mix to 15%, more than double from now.Accelerate capacity addition in renewable energy, while enabling the grid to deal with the rising flow of intermittent power.Increase use of biomass for energy to help reduce the dependence on crude oil imports and prevent burning of crop residue, a leading air polluter in northern India

Modi govt needs to review manufacturing, private sector investment

Economy News

Voters have reaffirmed faith in the leadership of Narendra Modi. His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won an absolute majority on its own in the Lok Sabha. So, a stable regime will govern the country through the next few years.
The main task before the next government must be to revive the economy. Modi campaigned on the issue of national security, which cannot be ensured without a strong economy. It is now evident that domestic consumption is slowing and farm distress is real. The manufacturing sector is not growing rapidly and export growth has been tepid for five years.
Private sector investment, especially in new manufacturing projects, has been uninspiring. Corporate earnings have been rather weak, although the stock markets are booming. The flow of foreign money into equity markets has strengthened the rupee. The global trading environment is not too encouraging.
For reviving of export growth, given the context and challenges, the new government must first restore the commerce ministry’s primacy in making the new Foreign Trade Policy (FTP). In the run-up to introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and during its implementation, this ministry was completely ignored. The finance ministry focused mainly on securing consensus in the GST Council and then on re-working of the laws to address the problems thrown up during implementation. The representations of exporters were initially dismissed summarily and later heard partially. Untold misery was inflicted on a large number of exporters by the finance ministry. An ineffective and voiceless commerce ministry was a spectator.

 Now, the latter should not hesitate to take responsibility for export promotion. It should look at the opportunities the US-China trade war throws up and strive to make peace with the United States on trade issues.

Facebook and Twitter are getting sucked into India-Pak information battle

Current Affairs

Pakistani social media campaigner Hanzala Tayyab leads about 300 ultra-nationalist cyber warriors fighting an internet war with arch-foe India, in a battle that is increasingly sucking in global tech giants such as Twitter and Facebook.

Tayyab, 24, spends his days on Facebook and encrypted WhatsApp chatrooms organising members of his Pakistan Cyber Force group to promote anti-India content and make it go viral, including on Twitter where he has more than 50,000 followers.

That ranges from highlighting alleged Indian human rights abuses to lionizing insurgents battling Indian security forces in Kashmir, a disputed Himalayan region at the heart of historic tensions between Pakistan and India.

Tayyab’s job became harder on Monday when the Pakistan Cyber Force’s Facebook account was taken down, one of 103 Pakistani accounts the social media giant said it had deleted because of “inauthentic behaviour” and spamming. Some Indian nationalist accounts have also been suspended in recent weeks.

Portraying himself as an online combatant defending Pakistan from India’s attempts to destabilise his country, Tayyab plans to continue playing his role in the broader information war being fought between the nuclear-armed foes.

“We are countering the Indian narrative through social media, we are countering the enemies of Pakistan,” Tayyab told Reuters in the capital Islamabad.


 With a combined population of 1.5 billion, India and Pakistan are hot growth markets for Facebook and Twitter, say analysts...Read More