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The markets may be jumpy and the rupee jittery to start with, but the Greek crisis offers some opportunities for India as well, writes Nandini SanyalThe Indian markets had reacted to Greek no to the EU rescue package with a profound plunge on Monday (6 July). But soon enough, the market started recovering and by by 2 pm, had clawed back most of the lost ground and lo, by the end of the day, had jumped 116 points up. The government of India asserted that India is well insulated from the crisis but rupee may be affected due to the outward flight of investment.Finance Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi said government is closely monitoring the situation as India may be indirectly impacted."We will have to see how the euro moves now. We are closely monitoring the Greece situation. There could be some reaction on the Fed rate hike likely," he said."Greece crisis might impact India indirectly," he added without elaborating.Oil, Commodity Prices To FallOil prices fell sharply on Monday after Greece rejected debt bailout terms and as China rolled out emergency measures to prevent a full-blown stock market crash, adding to worries about poor demand growth at a time of global oversupply. A strong dollar tends to pressure commodities as it makes fuel more expensive for holders of other currencies.Commodities were also sucked into market turmoil that has seen Chinese shares fall as much as 30 per cent since June due in part to an economy that is growing at its slowest pace in a generation. Chinese brokerages and fund managers have agreed to buy massive amounts of stocks to support markets, helped by China's state-backed margin finance company, which in turn would be aided by a direct line of liquidity from the central bank.But for India, low oil and commodity prices are good for Indian economy and just may bridge the fiscal deficit.Indian Economy May Just GainFalling oil and commodity prices will help the Indian economy. A weaker rupee will also mean exports may go up, especially in case of IT."This is a drama which is going to play out for sometime. We are well protected in at least three ways. Our macro- economic situation is much more stable. We have (forex) reserves. We are an economy which is still a very attractive investment destination. So I think we are relatively well insulated," said Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian."As for the crisis itself, it is going to going to be long and prolonged. Tomorrow is a big meeting of the German and the French head of the states. Let's see, it is up to Europe to respond," he said. On the likely impact of the crisis on Indian economy, he said, "In these situations what mostly happens is there is flight to dollars, to a safe haven. Rupee might also be affected by that. But nothing gets unusual at all so far.""We have been saying for months now, India has nothing to worry about, this is a European problem," said G. Chokkalingam, founder of Equinomics, a Mumbai-based research and fund advisory firm.If Markets Fall, Right Time To Bottom-fishAs everybody knows, the best time to buy in the markets is when the prices are down. That way lies profit. India's stock markets fell more than one per cent early on Monday, heading towards their biggest daily fall in nearly a month, as blue-chip stocks such as ICICI Bank Ltd declined on risk aversion linked to Greece, while IT stocks such as Infosys Ltd fell on caution ahead of quarterly earnings.Asian stocks hit a six-month trough and the euro stumbled after a Greek vote against austerity measures endangered its future in the single currency and raised the risk of a full-blown crisis in the euro zone.Even as I write, the market keeps improving, probably because the punters are picking up stocks at rock bottom prices. So a win -win for all.Take The Chance To Cherry Pick Good Cos Of Great Vintage In EuropeAs the situation turns stormy in Greece, many companies may be will downing shutters and be open to buying for a reasonable cost. India missed a similar chance in the early 2000s. China took the chances and by 2014, had invested $14 billion in Greece. May be this time, Indian entrepreneurs can fish in troubled waters.
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A great feat has been achieved without much fanfare. In continuation of the growing trend that has seen a greater percentage of girls doing better than boys in high school exams, four girls have managed to bag the top four out of five posts in the much vaunted civil services exams. And of them, Ira Singhal, has also become the first physically challenged candidate to top the UPSC exams, that too in the general category.A total of 1,236 candidates cleared the civil services exam and were recommended for appointment to the Indian Administrative Service, Indian Foreign Service, Indian Police Service (IPS) and various central services. The exams are conducted in three stages — preliminary, mains and interviews — and started on August 24 last year with 4.51 lakh candidates.“I am shocked and surprised. I want to say to everyone, let your daughters study and work. Let them go out in the world and make something of their lives,” said Singhal, 29, an IRS officer who has scoliosis or curvature of the spine.Singhal’s success follows intense struggle. She had cleared the exam in 2011 but had the government had cancelled her candidature on account of her disability.One of the reasons cited was that Singhal’s 62 per cent disability that affected both her arms would not allow her to pull, push and lift heavy packets — a quality the government felt was necessary for her to be in the Indian Revenue Service (Customs and Central Excise).Singhal took her fight to the central administrative tribunal and, after 18 months, got a favourable ruling with the bench wondering if an IRS officer really needed to lift heavy packets herself during a raid. A medical examination showed she could lift a packet weighing up to 10 kg anyway.Renu Raj, who came in second place on her first attempt, is a doctor in Kerala. Third-place Nidhi Gupta, an IRS (Customs & Central Excise) officer like Singhal, and fourth-place Vandana Rao are both from Delhi. Suharsha Bhagat, also with the IRS, was the sole male in the top five.“Though I performed well in the exam and interview, I never expected such a rank. I will use this great opportunity to serve the people well,” an elated Raj was quoted by Hindustantimes.com.“It is really a proud moment. I put in a lot of hard work and it finally paid,” said Gupta.Rao, who cleared the test on her third attempt and topped in the OBC category, said, “I called up people twice to check if I had indeed made it. It is really a result of hard work. I want to be an IAS officer and do something worthwhile for the country.”Women have been consistenly evolving for the better and from 2012 have started doing better than the men in IQ tests - for the first time in 100 years, In India, as mentioned earlier, girls have been doing better than the boys in school leaving exams - be it CBSE, ICSE ans ISC. Scientifically, women have been shown to have stronger immunity system then men and are less likely to get common illnesses. In India, despite bright exceptions, society has tended to suppress women and even now instances of female foeticide abound. Now, with governmeent efforts like #selfiewithdaughter, hopefully awareness will increase and women, especially in India, will trully come into their own.Meanwhile, one hopes Ira and her sisters will spark off a quiet revolution. Go girls!
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On most days of the week, the Supreme Court of India undoubtedly does very brave things. Let’s face it; outside the gate of the court building, any judge howsoever high is very vulnerable. He has no dedicated administrative machinery to enforce his will and no screaming hoard of rented supporters to ‘protect’ him from those he acts against. Still, the Supreme Court manages to regularly confront and defeat the forces of evil, so to speak, some of whommake the laws that he interprets. Curiously, that same bravery frequently fails the judiciary when it comes to dealing with its own. Consider the grim facts. When I joined law practice in 1980, Delhi’s trial courts could not try cases of a value greater than Rs. 50,000. Over the thirty five years since, this limit has progressively been pushed up till it has in recent years stood at Rs. 20 lakhs. In 2014, the government proposed to increase it to Rs 2 Crores, but did not leave lawyers breathless with the speed of its legislative progress. Finally, after a succession of muscle flexing one-day strikes, district lawyers struck work indefinitely on 22nd April, 2015 demanding action on the issue asap, complete with dozens of sms messages to every lawyer extolling calls to action to the sound of rousing metaphorical bugles[As an aside, no one spams my phone like my brother lawyers. Generally I get about three or four invitations to funerals and uthalas every day]. This strike continued till 8th May 2015, when the LokSahba obliged by passing the amending legislation. That didn’t mean the end of the strikes though. It meant the High Court lawyers went on strike instead! Now, you may ask why the litigant, who is the consumer of this service, would care where his case is conducted. It is true that trial courts decide cases somewhat faster than the High Court but conversely, the sagacity of the judge may well be superior in the High Court. At the end of the day though, these strikes aren’t about improving systems, or speeding up processes, or providing more effective justice.To put it bluntly, this little battle within the legal community is all about who gets to seize the revenue stream of cases valued between Rs 5 Lakhs and 2 Crores. But guess who the first victim of this family war is? More’s the pity because every service industry ought to be structured around quality of service, and not the enrichment of the service provider. For sure, that is more or less the unstated premises on which the Bar Council of India Rules were set up under Section 49(1)(c) of the Advocates Act 1961. Make no mistake, Chapter II, Part VI of the Rules make it clear that lawyers are expected to “uphold the interest of the client” and not “misuse or takes advantage of the confidence reposed in him by his client”. Even the courts have had no feelings of ambiguity on this subject. In UP Sales Tax Service Association v. Taxation Bar Association, Agra [(1995)5 SCC 716], Agra’s Tax lawyers went on strike demanding the transfer of the Deputy Commissioner (Appeals), Sales Tax, Agra, who they claimed was corrupt. The issue wound its way up to the Supreme Court which ruled that “lawyers should not resort to the strike or boycott the court or abstain from court except in serious, rarest of rare cases; instead, they should resort to peaceful demonstration so as to avoid causing hardship to the litigant public.” That didn’t work. Within five years, the Supreme Court was compelled to reiterate its message. In Ramon Services (P) Ltd. v. SubhashKapoor[(2001) 1 SCC 118], a trial court decreed a case without hearing the defense because its lawyer was on strike that day and did not show. Could an appeal court wind the case back to the status on the day before the strike? The court said that “strikes by professionals including advocates cannot be equated with strikes undertaken by the industrial workers in accordance with statutory provisions.”It said that the relationship between lawyer and client was one of trust and confidence and besides abstaining from work hampers justice too. It ruled that striking lawyers “fail in their contractual andprofessional duty to conduct cases for which they are engaged and paid.” Even this didn’t make the slightest difference. Two years later, the issue was up before the Supreme Court again in Ex. Capt Harish Uppal v. Union of India[(2003) 2 SCC 45] compelling the court to repeat itself. It said that “It is the duty of every Advocate who has accepted a brief to attend trial, even though it may go on day to day for a prolonged period. …a lawyer who has accepted a brief cannot refuse to attend Court because the Bar Association gives a boycott call.”It also said that“lawyers have no right to go on strike or give a call for boycott, not even on a token strike. The protest, if any is required, can only be by giving press statements, TV interviews carrying out of the Court premises banners and/or placards, wearing black or white or any colour arm bands, peaceful protest marches outside and away from Court premises, going on dharnas or relay facts etc. That was by no means the last of it. It added for good measure that “no Bar Council or Bar Association can permit calling of a meeting for purposes of considering a call for strike or boycott and requisition, if any, for such meeting must be ignored.” It warned defaulters of dire consequences thus: “if a lawyer… abstains from attending Court due to a strike call, he shall be personally liable to pay costs which shall be addition to damages which he might have to pay his client for loss suffered by him. Can any message be clearer than this? Significantly, the court made one exception. It condoned strikes “only in the rarest of rare cases where the dignity, integrity and Independence of the Bar and/or the Bench are at stake”. It said that only the court could decide whether any issue fit this category of rarity, for which purpose, the President of the Bar must first consult the Chief Justice before the call to strike can be given. Given the forthright nature of the ruling, we could have expected the reality on the ground to change. No such luck. Strikes continued from time to time, till PIL activists Common Cause decided to do something about it. The facts were plain enough. The Bar Association called a strike. Some lawyers said they would not abstain from work. Bar Association officers threatened these lawyers with suspension of their memberships to the Bar. Was this contempt of court? The Supreme Court had its opportunity to change the history of India’s Bar. In Common Cause v. Union of India[(2006) 9 SCC 295], the Supreme Court reiterated the legal position, but did not then pull the trigger. Instead it passed the buck, ruling that it is for the Bar Council of India (which regulates lawyers) to take disciplinary action against lawyers. It said it was the duty of every advocate to bodily ignore a call for a strike. Finally, it ordered that “a committee be constituted in that behalf to suggest steps to be taken to prevent such boycott or strike”. I need not tell you why commissions of inquiry and committees are appointed or what happens to their recommendations, if such recommendations ever do get made. A potentially defining moment ended in a tragic damp squib. The cynic could credibly argue that the legal community is considerably better at delivering honor-and-probity homilies to other than it is at putting its house in order. For my money though, what leaves me most flummoxed is the radical transformations that has occurred in our society in the way we view our relationship to our fellowmen. For 5000 years, we have believed that the individual is defined, not by his rights, but by his duties, or more properly his path of righteousness a.k.adharma. How this has transformed in less than 50 years into an overwhelming environment of rights and entitlements is quite the untold story. Perhaps our quest for a society grounded in liberal humanism is at the heart of it. When we wrote our constitution, we conferred rights on individuals, rights that we had thus far never publicly acknowledged. Laudable as these goals were, what we have actually achieved is a kind of “transfer of traditional paradigms” into our new liberal landscape. All at once, the caste based war for privilege we have witnessed throughout our long history has manifested itself in the attitudes of these new communities our constitutional structure has helped created. Lawyers are merely one such powerful community.But then, that is another train of thought, with its own devil in the Fineprint. (The author, Ranjeev C Dubey, is managing partner of the Gurgaon-based corporate law firm N South. He is the author of “Winning Legal Wars” and “Bullshit Quotient: Decoding India’s corporate, social and legal Fine Print”. He can be contacted at rcd@nsouthlaw.com or ranjeevdubey@hotmail.com).
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India is perhaps one of the few major economies in the world, where economic policies are formulated by ‘Empowered Committees’ of politicians and bureaucrats. The Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers is a case in point. This Committee has been closely involved in preparing the Goods and Services Tax (GST) framework along with the Central Government. There is little doubt that there are few subjects less political than those that impact the revenue collections of State Governments. Equally, there are few subjects less well understood by State Governments than the impacts of the proposed tax reform, despite a representative committee. This merits some introspection. Does the country need to look towards a fresh set of policy formulation processes for regulating the economy? Given the emergent need for regulating new, technologically intensive sectors such as ecommerce, a case can be made for reimagining regulations in the days ahead. Most bureaucrats are inherently defensive about the gaps in the government’s capacity to regulate the economy. When confronted with the inadequacy of extant policies, such as the absence of objective and transparent principles for auctioning natural resources, a common response is that policies should be critiqued keeping in mindthe temporal context within which they were formed. Indeed policies tend to respond to static questions rather than future scenarios – think bank nationalisation or Agricultural Produce Market Committees. To hedge for the unknown future, there seems there is no policy making tool more useful than the thesaurus – Indian policymakers have seldom felt the need for definitional certainties. This is a challenge for the ecommerce sector, which is poised to cross US$ 6 billion in revenues (ex. Tourism and Ticketing) in by 2015. As yet, there is no government department which has taken on the onus of proposing comprehensive policies for the sector. Instead authorities are simply relying on synonyms for circumscribing ecommerce. This sector is hampered by the lack of a nodal authority such as the Civil Aviation Ministry for the airline industry, which by its very existence is purposed to regulate the sector. At a stakeholder consultation meeting hosted by the Department of Consumer Affairs in September 2014, a proposition was placed on the table that “entirely new subjects of ecommerce and direct selling” should be brought under the purview of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986. The minutes of the meeting are publicly available, and indicate that ecommerce is not well understood. Similar discussions have been initiated by tax departments of various State Governments, currently mulling how best to extract revenues from the sector. Given that the sector occupies a large share of advertising, and has managed to appropriate precious media reporting space, tax departments are keenly observing developments in the sector. The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion has played an inadvertently critical role in the evolution of existing ecommerce business models, through a preventive FDI policy. Earlier this year, the Department of Consumer Affairs tried to suggest that nine nodal authorities take charge of regulating the sector. Where else in the world would such a fragmented regulatory framework be proposed? It is the equivalent of suggesting that the ubiquitous kirana stores, on account of having bank accounts, telephone lines and home delivery options, should be regulated by the Central Bank, the Department of Telecommunications and the Ministry of Home Affairs. What is admittedly daunting about ecommerce is that it will force authorities to think deeply about some hardquestions. What really is consumer protection – can it be defined objectively? Does the consumer protection policy framework dilute competitiveness concerns of SMEs? Can consumption grow in an economy which does not create new jobs through innovation? Does the lack of clarity in existing regulations, aid discretion of enforcement officials? How can businesses be protected from regulatory harassment? Are the existing means to recourse available to them – primarily through the complex judicial system, viable? What principles of ease of business does the country have to strive towards – do these necessarily entail a slew of compliance procedures that penalise businesses that do not have the capacity for paying legal and tax teams? It is unlikely that any Empowered Committee will be able to answer the above. Even if successful in doing so, a number of domain specific issues will remain unaddressed unless stakeholders are consulted continuously (and not just by soliciting comments on draft policies through online portals). A good example is a recent stakeholder consultation in Bangalore, hosted by the Retailers Association of India, in the run up to formulation of additional rules for packaged commodities. In this robust discussion between legal metrology officials andthe private sector, it was pointed out that certain Food Safety and Standards Authority of India’s regulations overlap with regulations under the Legal Metrology (packaged Commodities) Rules, 2011. As a result, dealers of packaged food items, some of them ecommerce companies, are not sure which rules to follow, which flying squads of enforcement officials to pay obeisance to. Such concerns of regulatory overlaps and consequent confusion are not uncommon – and cannot be addressed by a single government department alone.A systemic recalibration of how this country regulates is required – across all departments. The departments not only need to talk to the private sector, they need to talk to each other! In the absence of defining regulations for the ecommerce sector, the government must use the inherent technological capacities of ecommerce companies for mutual benefit. For instance, ecommerce companies acting as online marketplaces aggregating buyers and sellers – can easily give detailed reports on the sellers on their platforms to tax, metrology and other officials. Indeed ecommerce companies should themselves realise that ease of administration can be facilitated through inexpensive technological solutions. Given that existing regulations such as Value Added Tax Rules are not black and white with respect to ecommerce,businesses must hedge against hurdles by volunteering all relevant supply chain details, to various concerned authorities. In an increasingly integrated global supply chain paradigm, technology should become a friend to regulators rather than remain a foe. It is incumbent upon the private sector, to use incremental technological innovations at justifiable marginal costs to enable this. And the government should play its part in embracing and harnessing the positives of technological change, rather than burying its head in the sand and pretending its the 20th century. The suthor, Vivan Sharan, is Partner, Koan Advisory Group
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Myntra, the e-retailer giant, has decided to offer its service only in the app format, shutting down all its operations from the desktop version. The Flipkart owned platform has done detailed study before this “strategic” move, and according to the company around 70 per cent of the sales and approximately 95 per cent of the internet traffic is through mobile devices, hence the decision to go app-only. However, few apprehensions still surround the decision. E-market in India is still in a nascent stage, and although it is growing at a remarkable pace, questions arise that are the customers ready to embrace the facilities only through a mobile device. The few problematic issues are: Apps are better suited to smartphones as compared to feature phones:Although India is slowly marching towards smartphones, a vast population is still comfortable with feature phones, which do not support many applications. How viable will then this move be considering the compatibility issues. Speed of the internet, and costs incurred :Many apps consume a substantial amount of mobile data, and presently the cost of a 3G connection is still very high, raising doubts as to whether shifting to an app-only service will be beneficial in the longer run, since the costs of Internet services in India are not likely to come down in the near future. Desktop versions do offer better navigational facilities:Indians still want to compare products, and pay according to what suits their pockets the best. PCs thus offer better navigational facilities and multiple choice options. The users have a general tendency to switch to different products almost simultaneously and here Desktops trump mobile phones. The advantages of offering variety:The more the choices, the better the chances to tap into requirements. Hence, availability of both the desktop as well as mobile versions could serve the purpose better, as only compared to one platform. The company is confident enough to go ahead with the move, and the trends that will filter out in the coming days, will be an interesting watch and might just be a benchmark for others to follow.
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The bitter truth of today’s education system that we all know is that it’s broken. Parents know it, most teachers know it. The only one seems to be lagging behind in knowing these facts are the politicians. It is time they correspond to it. In today’s scenario seven out of the 10 jobs have not yet been invented for the students who are studying in school in India and the UK . So what is the point in drilling them purely on academic matters? What are their needs going to be, not only just surviving, but moving forward and making the difference to the world that most of them want to do? Notably our sages, especially from India, have always had the answer. We are now learning what it means to practice. Some of us are trying to make the education we offer reflect a new reality. Schooling needs to be at least as much about building good character as it does about achieving high academic progress. Swami Vivekananda has always been one of my heroes. His vision that in the heart of every pupil is a “divine being” awaiting release and fulfilment, it is extraordinarily reflected in the Platonic philosophical vision that beauty and goodness is innate in all. Every child is in fact bright, perfect and free. A real education must release this potential excellence. As a Headmaster for 10 years, I sought to build an educational environment where the virtues of courage, temperance, justice and wisdom could find real meaning in the lives of young people. And now, as Principal of ASIS, which represents 12 of Britain’s top Boarding Schools (www.angloschools.co.uk) I am trying to do the same here. That is why ASIS schools are giving scholarships up to 7 Crores and invite children from India to join our schools. Courage reflects itself in the ability to speak the truth and to say what you think, courageously. Those who learn to speak (preferably without note) will naturally lead and those who cannot will follow. Temperance is an ancient concept. Swami Vivekananda talked about it as ‘measure’ or moderation. I would like to take this as a learning how to overcome selfishness; how to care for those around you and to provide real service. “Take care of the service and the profits will look after themselves,” is an old business proverb, and one those youngsters setting out in the world need to hear. Justice is an alluring topic to teach young people about. It really means learning how to “do your duty”. A teacher, who does not turn up in the classroom well prepared, is rendering an “injustice” to his or her pupils. The magistrate who does not listen to the evidence before passing judgement is rendering an “injustice” too. To live justly is to live well. Corruption is rampant in modern society, and a ‘just’ man or woman will not go in that direction. Finally, there is wisdom. This is where the most profound change in education needs to take place. With the onset of ‘Google-Knowledge’, pretty much every fact can be found at the touch of the ‘search-key’. But who can understand human nature? Who knows whether a person is lying or not? Who knows whether the business risk is worth it or not? It takes wisdom, what I call wise decision-making. Only few schools are helping their pupils to differentiate between old-fashioned fact-based knowledge and wise discernment, based on principles and intuitive understanding. Just two years ago, I was asked to visit northern Iraq to talk to the Kurdish government about the future of education. There I saw nearly every state sponsored school had teaching staffs that was directed to in getting their pupils to pass academically-driven examinations. The curriculum had no philosophy, no opportunity or reflection on the important issues of life, no values-based subject discussion or dialogue. It was as barren as the surrounding desert. I would suggest that all countries should look whether their curriculums are any better; whether their teachers are equipped to open the emotional centre of the human being, which is essential in managing society in the years ahead? The OECD- PISA scores may say something about a country’s educational progress; but it is like measuring the health of a person by just looking at his brain. He has many more centres and they need nourishing too. The question I always ask parents is: what kind of human being do you want your child to become? And when I spell out the vision of what a human being is capable of (drawing Plato and Swami Vivekananda as inspirations) they almost agreed. And I expect the same response in India. In late January and early February I shall be offering an eight centre Lecture Tour, discussing a new vision for education. Honestly, I am drawing on the concept of the Dalai Lama, who once spoke in a meeting I attended: “What the world needs is an education in warm-heartedness!” “Yes,” I inwardly declared. “But what does it mean?” I have been working on a model and shall be presenting it to audiences during my lecture tour. It is both innovative and traditional. I hope it will reverberate in people’s hearts when they hear it; if it does, it stands the chance of working. Ranjit Sabikhi has been in practice as an Architect in New Delhi since 1961. He taught at the School of Planning & Architecture in New Delhi from 1959 to 1975 and has also been a Visiting Critic to the Urban Design Program at GSD Harvard University and the School of Architecture at Washington University St. Louis. The author, David Boddy, Principal, Anglo Schools International Services (ASIS)
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December 25th2014, I heard our Prime Minister Narendra Modi say: “The richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor wants good education for his child. The world today needs good teachers and India, with its immense youth power, can export teachers to the world”. Export teachers to the world. Did I hear that right? And did I hear that from a politician. Most people possibly ignored this vision, but there was a ring of nostalgia around it for me. It took me back to 1990, 25 years ago, when I joined a fledgling IT company called Infosys. Infosys was less than 100 people, and maybe a few thousand people made a living off computers those days. In one generation, this industry has grown to revenues of more than $100 billion, employs more than 3 million people and has a 55% Global sourcing share. Cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad and Gurgaon have been built around this proposition. I see the same potential in this idea mooted by our Prime Minister. To give you a perspective of the size of the market, the World has 900 million students currently in K-12 grades. With a student to teacher ratio of 1:25, this adds up to a global requirement of 36million pre-primary and primary teachers. At an average global wage of 20,000USD pa, teachers earn $720 billion annually. Can India aspire for a 10 per cent of the global market? Can we provide additional employment to 3.6 million Indians (the IT industry hires only 3.1 million people currently) and contribute $72 billion to GDP. There are 3 reasons why India can quickly become successful as a teaching super power - Firstly, the teaching industry in India is very mature. India has adopted many novel teaching methods from Montessori to International Baccalaureate. We also have our own home spun schooling systems like CBSE and ICSE systems that have been successful in creating generations of successful students and managers. These systems have tremendous credibility amongst Indians globally and are also gaining traction amongst people of other nationalities. Whereas, the IT industry had no domestic market, and had to build all its skills internationally. This made it significantly difficult for them in the initial years. Secondly, India is a hot bed of educational innovation. Innovations like Hey Math are being used as a standard in Singapore, while Planet Read’s ground breaking work on same language subtitling to improve literacy skills won Brij Kothari the Schwab Social Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2009. We have companies like EduSports that are pioneering sports education. There are numerous stories of Innovation in education in India that have the potential to change the world. Our innovation maturity is very high. Thirdly, success of initiatives like TEACH for INDIA demonstrates that young people in India are intrigued by education and looking for careers in primary education. The establishment and success of the Azim Premji University, a university focusing purely on primary education, is another indicator of the trend amongst the young and educated to work in education. Our youth are ready for the teaching revolution. To make India the Teaching Capital of the world, I have the following recommendations – The Government will need to ensure that they do not relegate teacher education to a degree and limit teaching to people who have the degree. The current approach to introduce a 5 year program after 12th or such experiments assumes that people with degrees are the only ones who are capable of teaching. If everybody hired by an IT company needed to have a computer science degree, our growth would have been much slower.To ensure quality of teachers, they will need to introduce standard Teacher Eligibility Tests. Performance in TETs should be the criteria for a person to become a teacher. The TETs can be developed on the model of the GATE or the IAS exams with subject specializations being tested for. The TETs should also be fungible across states, just like the AIEEE examinations.We need to encourage English language training and adopt a global standard as a measure of quality in English teaching. All teachers teaching in English schools need to be certified in this test.The National Skill Development programme of the Government should support organisations that skill people to pass the English tests and the TET exams creating a larger pool of capable teachers in India. I believe that implementation of these 4 recommendations earnestly and rapidly am essential to change the teaching landscape, create more competent teachers and enable us to teach the world within a decade. The author, Umesh Malhotra, is Founder CEO, Hippocampus Learning Centres
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Generic drugmaker Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd has been sued in a district court in the United States for allegedly manipulating U.S. Food and Drug Administration rules for years to keep rival generic drugs out of the market. Ranbaxy filed "grossly inadequate" applications seeking approval for its drugs and deceived the FDA into granting approvals and giving the company market exclusivity, the class action lawsuit asserts. It was filed by U.S. retailer Meijer Inc on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts. The suit also names India's largest drugmaker Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, which completed a $3.2 billion deal to buy Ranbaxy in March and is now helping Ranbaxy fix its manufacturing problems. A Sun Pharma spokesman declined to comment. Ranbaxy did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside of regular business hours. Ranbaxy repeatedly made misstatements to the FDA about the compliance status of its manufacturing plants, the lawsuit says. The FDA has banned import of drugs from all of Ranbaxy's India-based plants under a wider scrutiny of the country's $15 billion pharmaceutical industry, which is the largest supplier of generic medicines to the United States. In 2013, Ranbaxy pleaded guilty to felony charges related to drug safety and agreed to civil and criminal fines of $500 million in a settlement with the United States to resolve claims that it sold substandard drugs and made false statements to the FDA about manufacturing practices at its plants. The lawsuit says customers overpaid for Roche's antiviral Valcyte and Novartis's hypertension drug Diovan because the release of generic versions of both drugs was delayed due to Ranbaxy having wrongfully gained market exclusivity. Drugmakers that are first to file with the FDA to make a generic version of a brand name drug are entitled to a six-month market exclusivity, a huge revenue-generating opportunity that many companies like Ranbaxy compete for. The FDA in November last year stripped Ranbaxy of a tentative approval and six-month exclusivity it gave the company in 2008 for launching a Valcyte generic. Meijer has sought damages and monetary relief on behalf of all direct purchasers of drugs for which the release of cheaper copies was delayed due to market exclusivity secured by Ranbaxy, according to the lawsuit.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Beijing on Thursday (14 May) on the second leg of his three-day China visit during which he will hold talks with his Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang on Friday (15 May) on issues of mutual interests including the boundary issue and the trade imbalance. Earlier, Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his ancestral home town at the start of a three-day visit to China on Thursday (14 May) as the two Asian giants work to boost economic ties despite decades of mistrust. It was the first time Xi had invited a foreign leader to his father's home province of Shaanxi, in the heart of central China, a signal that the two may set aside suspicions over a festering border issue to sign billions in trade deals. Modi's visit reciprocated Xi's trip to India in September, when Modi took Xi to his home state of Gujurat. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is looking to clinch $10 billion worth of deals, a leading English daily of China reported on Thursday. The two countries are likely to sign deals worth $10 billion during Modi's first visit as prime minister that will also take him to Beijing and Shanghai as he attempts to attract investments for Indian manufacturing and infrastructure, the Global Times said. Jiang Jingkui, director of the Department of South Asian Languages at Peking University, told the Global Times that it was a rare practice for a Chinese leader to receive a foreign leader outside the capital city Beijing. Read Also: All Modi's China Visit Stories"It has been less than a year since Xi's maiden visit to India in September, when he went to Modi's hometown (of Ahmedabad) in Gujarat. This makes Xi's invitation to Modi to visit Xian a reciprocal gesture of goodwill," Jiang was quoted as saying. "China is a huge market. As far as India is concerned, it’s a totally under-exploited market," said T.C.A. Rangachari, a former Indian ambassador to France and Germany who worked on China affairs for more than 15 years. The sunglasses-clad Modi posed for photos near a pit of 2,000-year-old terracotta warrior sculptures in the historic northwestern city of Xian. The two leaders also visited a pagoda connected to Xuanzang, also known as Tripitaka, the monk who brought the Buddhist sutras to China from India thousands of years ago, a spokesman for India's Ministry of External Affairs said via his Twitter account. Modi was given a figurine of Xuanzang. The two sides have also agreed to speed up work on rail links in India, as China seeks to cash in on Modi's vision of a modern train system. The long-standing Himalayan border dispute, as well as recent forays by China's navy into the Indian Ocean, have overshadowed ties in the past. Some in China, which is a strong ally of India's longtime foe Pakistan, have reacted to the visit with scepticism. "Due to the Indian elites' blind arrogance and confidence in their democracy, and the inferiority of its ordinary people, very few Indians are able to treat Sino-Indian relations accurately, objectively and rationally," wrote Hu Zhiyong of the Institute of International Relations at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in the state-owned Global Times. Vikas Swarup, a spokesman for India's Ministry of External Affairs, said via his Twitter account that "surging adoring crowds" greeted Modi in Xian, posting photos taken outside a shopping centre. Modi is set to travel to Beijing on Friday, when he will meet Premier Li Keqiang. He will visit the economic powerhouse of Shanghai after that to meet business leaders.
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The Budget session of Parliament concluded on Wednesday with passage of record official business in recent years but the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government failed to ensure passage of the controversial Land Acquisition Bill as also key reform measure of GST amid stiff resistance from opposition. However, the Budget Session has proved to be most productive during the last decade with the Lok Sabha working 117 per cent of the scheduled working hours and the Rajya Sabha reported a productivity of 101 per cent, the government said. In terms of the number of sittings also, this session scored high. The Lok Sabha held 35 sittings, the highest in the last five years. Rajya Sabha held 32 sittings, next only to that of 34 in 2012. 1) Insurance & Land Boundary BillThe Modi-led government has been successful in securing Parliament’s nod for the land boundary constitutional amendment bill—which takes India’s relations with Bangladesh to a whole new level—and increasing foreign investment in insurance, but its inability to get parliamentary approval for GST and land bills far outweigh those positives. 2) Amendment to President’s SpeechThe government also faced the embarrassment of having to amend the motion of thanks to the President for his address to the joint sitting of the two Houses of Parliament. CPM leader Sitaram Yechury pressed for the amendment to register regret on the lack of action by the government to curb corruption and black money. 3) Private Members’ BillHistory repeated itself after 36 years in the Rajya Sabha which passed a private members’ bill seeking equal opportunities to transgenders moved by Tiruchi Siva of the DMK. 4) Rahul Gandhi as parliamentarianThe most valuable takeaway for the Congress party from the session was Rahul Gandhi's perceived transformation into an effective parliamentarian. The gain has been more than a windfall for the party, which had in the past requested him to speak in important debates, only to be refused. A member of the Lok Sabha for 10 years, he had never asked a question or made an intervention during zero hour. He had spoken only thrice in the decade. 5)Session In A Nutshell123 per cent Lok Sabha worked for 123 per cent of its scheduled time101 per cent Rajya Sabha worked for 101 per cent of its scheduled time 6) HitsInsurance act amendment bill, pending since 2008, passedFive out of six ordinances approvedCoal allocation, mines and minerals bills passedThe land boundary agreement bill passed 7) MissesFailed to bring the Opposition on board on land bill, GST billReal Estate bill, GST bill referred to select committeeLand bill sent to joint committee of parliamentKey NDA allies like Shiv Sena, SAD refused to back the governmentAfter 14 years, Opposition forces amendment to President’s speech in Rajya SabhaFirst time since 1970, a private member bill passed in Rajya Sabha 8) Opposition Unity The session also saw the revival of a splintered opposition which cornered the government on a host of issues, including the CAG strictures on Nitin Gadkari-linked Purti Group and the release of Kashmiri separatist leader Masarat Alam Bhat. 9) Disruptions and InterruptionsOn account of disruptions and interruptions, Lok Sabha lost 6 hours 54 minutes but made up for the lost time by giving up lunch hours and working beyond scheduled time for 42 hours 41 minutes. Similarly, Rajya Sabha has lost 18 hours 28 minutes but gained 20 hours. 10) Unsavory BehaviourCountering Rahul Gandhi on land bill, Agriculture minister Birender Singh ended up saying Madhavrao Scindia also wore expensive suits. He was forced to apologise for his statement.Twelve BJP MPs voted against GST bill. Speaker Sumitra Mahajan pulled up MoS parliamentary affairs minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy.
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