India has scrapped its 65-year-old Planning Commission, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi has accused of stifling growth with bureaucracy, replacing it on Thursday with a body he said would do more to involve the regions. The new National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) will act more like a think tank or forum, say its supporters, in contrast with the Commission which imposed five-year-plans and allocated resources to hit set economic targets. Despite being widely blamed for the slow growth that long plagued India, the Commission survived the market reforms of the early 1990s, riling Modi with its interventions when he was the chief minister of the fast-growing state of Gujarat. In a series of messages to his 9.1 million followers on Twitter, Modi said the body would replace the old one-size-fits-all approach with a "pro-people, pro-active & participative development agenda". Modi, elected by a landslide last year on a promise to revive flagging growth and create jobs, had vowed to do away with the Planning Commission that was set up in 1950 by India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. But his plans were criticised by the opposition Congress party, which wants to defend Nehru's legacy and regards Modi's vision of "cooperative federalism" as cover for a veiled power grab. NITI will include leaders of India's 29 states and seven union territories. But its full-time staff - its vice chairman, chief executive and experts - will answer directly to the prime minister. The body will have also five full-time members and two part-time members, while four union ministers would serve as ex-officio members. Noted economist Arvind Panagariya is tipped to be the first vice chairman of Niti Aayog. A Cabinet resolution setting up the new body said that Regional Councils will be formed to address specific issues and contingencies impacting more than one state or a region. The NITI Aayog will also have experts, specialists and practitioners with relevant domain knowledge as special invitees nominated by the Prime Minister. Congress leaders mocked the launch as a cosmetic relabelling exercise - the new body's acronym-based name means 'Policy Commission' in Hindi, suggesting a less bold departure than the English version does. Despite winning the biggest Lok Sabha mandate in three decades last May, Modi lacks a majority in the upper house that represents the states, forcing him to compromise to pursue his development agenda. Although he has won a series of state elections since sweeping to power in New Delhi last May, the gains will not show up until later in the Rajya Sabha, a third of whose members are replaced every two years.
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Amid fears of thousands left dead in rain-ravaged Uttarakhand, relief and rescue operations were intensified on 20 June' 2013 with eight additional IAF choppers pressed into service to evacuate stranded people in Kedarnath which has suffered massive damage in flash floods and cloudbursts. The State Disaster Mitigation and Management Centre has said that casualties in the affected areas may run into thousands with about 90 'dharamashalas' (rest houses for pilgrims) swept away in the flash floods. However, the toll has been kept officially at 150. So far, over 15,000 people stranded in Kedarnath and Govindghat on way to Hemkund Sahib have been evacuated to Joshimath relief camps through air and road routes, IG police R S Meena told PTI. Authorities are focusing on rescuing more stranded people in worst-hit areas. "Apart from the 12 helicopters already engaged in rescue operations in affected areas, eight more have been roped in for the purpose to step up the process," Meena said. Rescue efforts are being concentrated as of now on Kedarnath shrine and its adjoining areas in Rudraprayag district which has been the worst hit with about 90 dharamshalas in the temple area, where pilgrims were staying. having been swept away by the flood waters, he said. Two helicopters have flown from Dehradun to evacuate stranded people. The Army has also deployed its mountain rescue teams to evacuate the pilgrims. A large number of places are still inaccessible due to heavy flooding in Rudraprayag, Chamoli and Uttarkashi districts and it is impossible to ascertain the extent of damage caused by the calamity, the IG said. Scores of villages remain under water and cannot be tracked. Hence there is uncertainty about the casualties caused, he said, adding the devastation is massive.(PTI)
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Scientists are struggling to explain a slowdown in climate change that has exposed gaps in their understanding and defies a rise in global greenhouse gas emissions. Often focused on century-long trends, most climate models failed to predict that the temperature rise would slow, starting around 2000. Scientists are now intent on figuring out the causes and determining whether the respite will be brief or a more lasting phenomenon. Getting this right is essential for the short and long-term planning of governments and businesses ranging from energy to construction, from agriculture to insurance. Many scientists say they expect a revival of warming in coming years. Theories for the pause include that deep oceans have taken up more heat with the result that the surface is cooler than expected, that industrial pollution in Asia or clouds are blocking the sun, or that greenhouse gases trap less heat than previously believed. The change may be a result of an observed decline in heat-trapping water vapour in the high atmosphere, for unknown reasons. It could be a combination of factors or some as yet unknown natural variations, scientists say. Weak economic growth and the pause in warming is undermining governments' willingness to make a rapid billion-dollar shift from fossil fuels. Almost 200 governments have agreed to work out a plan by the end of 2015 to combat global warming. "The climate system is not quite so simple as people thought," said Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician and author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist" who estimates that moderate warming will be beneficial for crop growth and human health. Some experts say their trust in climate science has declined because of the many uncertainties. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had to correct a 2007 report that exaggerated the pace of melt of the Himalayan glaciers and wrongly said they could all vanish by 2035. "My own confidence in the data has gone down in the past five years," said Richard Tol, an expert in climate change and professor of economics at the University of Sussex in England. Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius first showed in the 1890s how man-made carbon dioxide, from coal for instance, traps heat in the atmosphere. Many of the exact effects are still unknown. Greenhouse gas emissions have hit repeated record highs with annual growth of about 3 per cent in most of the decade to 2010, partly powered by rises in China and India. World emissions were 75 per cent higher in 2010 than in 1970, UN data show.Unpanel Seeks ExplanationA rapid rise in global temperatures in the 1980s and 1990s - when clean air laws in developed nations cut pollution and made sunshine stronger at the earth's surface - made for a compelling argument that human emissions were to blame. The IPCC will seek to explain the current pause in a report to be released in three parts from late 2013 as the main scientific roadmap for governments in shifting from fossil fuels towards renewable energies such as solar or wind power, the panel's chairman Rajendra Pachauri said. According to Pachauri, temperature records since 1850 "show there are fluctuations. They are 10, 15 years in duration. But the trend is unmistakable." The IPCC has consistently said that fluctuations in the weather, perhaps caused by variations in sunspots or a La Nina cooling of the Pacific, can mask any warming trend and the panel has never predicted a year-by-year rise in temperatures. Experts say short-term climate forecasts are vital to help governments, insurers and energy companies to plan. Governments will find little point in reinforcing road bridges over rivers, for instance, if a prediction of more floods by 2100 doesn't apply to the 2020s. A section of a draft IPCC report, looking at short-term trends, says temperatures are likely to be 0.4 to 1.0 degree Celsius (0.7-1.8F) warmer from 2016-35 than in the two decades to 2005. Rain and snow may increase in areas that already have high precipitation and decline in areas with scarcity, it says. Exceptions And ChallengesPachauri said climate change can have counter-intuitive effects, like more snowfall in winter that some people find hard to accept as side-effects of a warming trend. An IPCC report last year said warmer air can absorb more moisture, leading to heavier snowfall in some areas. A study by Dutch experts this month sought to explain why there is now more sea ice in winter. It concluded melted ice from Antarctica was refreezing on the ocean surface - this fresh water freezes more easily than dense salt water. Some experts challenged the findings. "The hypothesis is plausible I just don't believe the study proves it to be true," said Paul Holland, an ice expert at the British Antarctic Survey. Concern about climate change is rising in some nations, however, opinion polls show. Extreme events, such as Superstorm Sandy that hit the U.S. east coast last year, may be the cause. A record heatwave in Australia this summer forced weather forecasters to add a new dark magenta colour to the map for temperatures up to 54 degrees Celsius (129F). (Reuters)
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Till the week ended 25 July, the monsoon was 20 per cent below the long-term average, according to government data. India received 54.2 millimetres of rain between 19 July and 25 July, against a 50-year average of 67.5 millimetres. While several states in the eastern parts received good showers, states such as Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan have been hit hard. India gets more than 70 per cent of its rain from the monsoon. If the volume of showers continues to be low in the coming weeks, experts say it will hit the country's more than 235 million farmers who depend on the monsoon for crops such as rice, peanuts, soybean and cotton, and could emaciate an already ailing farming sector. A report by research firm Crisil said that the situation was similar to the drought of 2009. That said, the meteorological department says rain will improve in the days to come, shrinking the shortfall. A ministry panel of experts will review the situation in a few days, according to agriculture minister Sharad Pawar. He said the government has taken measures to cope with the lack of rain. MELTDOWN: Arcelor Mittal's second quarter net profits fell 63 per cent. (ARCELOR MITTAL) Steel SlumpThe world's biggest steel maker is weathering tough times. ArcelorMittal's second-quarter profits fell 28 per cent owing to declining demand and prices triggered by the ongoing euro zone debt crisis. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation fell to $2.4 billion from $3.4 billion a year ago. The net income fell 63 per cent during the six months to June. Blame It On R&DBiotechnology firm Biocon's consolidated net profits for the first quarter fell 19 per cent on a sequential basis. But the Rs 79 crore profits were an increase of 12.4 per cent against the same period last year. Biocon CMD Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw said the fall was due to R&D spend. Revenues also fell 5 per cent to Rs 593 crore during this period.Campaign CurbsIndian companies slashed their advertisement budgets by about 45 per cent in 2011-12 due to high cost of credit, soaring raw material prices and weak local demand, says a survey by industry body Assocham. Sectors such as banking, telecom and insurance, which account for a lion's share of the ad spends in India, took the biggest hit. Chipping InIndia's electronics industry is set to cross Rs 10,000 crore this fiscal, said minister of state for defence M.M. Pallam Raju. He said "modernisation plans of the defence forces coupled with an extraordinary budget allocation for the defence sector" fuelled the growth of the electronics industry, which grew from Rs 5,400 crore in 2007-08 to Rs 7,948 crore in 2011-12.Deal TimeJindal Steel and Power entered a merger agreement to buy Canadian coal firm CIC Energy for over Rs 600 crore. The acquisition comes over a year after CIC ended an agreement with JSW Energy. Meanwhile, Wipro will buy Lornamead's Yardley business in the UK and some European countries. Wipro already owns the Yardley portfolio for Asia, West Asia, North Africa and Australasia.NPA Alert PATENT WAR: Apple and Samsung lock horns again. (BLOOMBERG) Rating agency Standard & Poor's said Indian banks' bad loans may increase further due to sluggishness in the economy and high interest rates. Bad loans in India's public sector banks stood at about 3.3 per cent of assets in 2011-12, against 2.3 per cent a year ago. Clash Of TitansThe Apple-Samsung wrangle is getting dirtier. Apple this week said Samsung's demand for higher patent royalty from the iPhone maker is unfair and way above what it demands from other licensees. It also claimed it was entitled to $2.5 billion in damages from Samsung over patented technology used in its gadgets. However, Samsung says its demands are quite in line with the norms prevalent in the industry. Barclays EffectJapan's biggest investment bank Nomura Holdings ousted its CEO Kenichi Watanabe and one of his top lieutenants after allegations of insider trading spread. The company hinted that there could be more information leaks than those identified by authorities. Has Nomura gone the Barclays way? It seems so.(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 06-08-2012)
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Some large economies show significantly lower growth when natural assets such as forests and water are factored into growth indicators, an index showed on Sunday, a few days before an international sustainability summit starts in Rio de Janeiro.The Inclusive Wealth Index was unveiled by the United Nations University's International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (UNU-IHDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).Scientists and environment groups have been pressuring governments to include the value of their countries' natural resources - and use or loss of them - into future measurements of economic activity to show their true future growth prospects.The idea of an expanded indicator known as GDP+ to include GDP and natural capital will be on the agenda of the Rio+20 summit from June 20 to June 22, when environment ministers and heads of state from around 200 countries will try to define sustainable development goals.The index shows the "inclusive wealth" of 20 nations, taking into account manufactured, human and natural capital like forests, fisheries and fossil fuels, instead of relying only on gross domestic product (GDP) as a growth indicator.The index assessed Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Japan, Kenya, Nigeria, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, United States, Britain and Venezuela, from 1990 to 2008.Together, these countries accounted for almost three-quarters of global GDP over the 19-year period.The index showed that 19 out of the 20 countries experienced a decline in natural capital. Six nations also saw a decline in their overall inclusive wealth, putting them on an unsustainable track, UNEP said."Rio+20 is an opportunity to call time on Gross Domestic Product as a measure of prosperity in the 21st century, and as a barometer of an inclusive green economy transition," UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said in a statement."It is far too silent on major measures of human well-being, namely many social issues and the state of a nation's natural resources," he added.NATURAL CAPITALThe index showed that even though China, the United States, Brazil and South Africa experienced GDP growth, their natural capital was significantly depleted.When measured solely by GDP, the economies of China, the United States, Brazil and South Africa grew by 422 per cent, 37 per cent, 31 per cent and 24 per cent respectively between 1990 and 2008.When their performance was assessed by the IWI, China's economy grew by 45 per cent, the United States by 13 per cent, Brazil by 18 per cent and South Africa decreased by 1 per cent, mainly due to the depletion of natural resources, UNEP and UNU-IHDP said in a statement.Six nations - Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Colombia, South Africa and Nigeria - experienced negative growth under the IWI, whereas it was positive under GDP measurements.Commenting on the report, John Sulston, chair of the Royal Society working group on population and Nobel Prize-winning scientist, said traditional measurements of wealth do not take into account the state of the world around us and the inclusive wealth index was a way of correcting this deficiency."Applying the IWI to a sample of 20 countries reveals some that are considered good economic performers are actually in the environmental red, borrowing natural resources that they just can't pay back," he added.
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With Rio +20 — the UN Conference on Sustainable Development — due in June, the world is abuzz with talks of energy and resource security and protecting environment while ensuring economic development. BW's Yashodhara Dasgupta spoke to international leaders gathered at the 12th Delhi Sustainable Development Summit organised by research organisation Teri to know their concerns, actions and views on sustainable development. Here is what they shared. Also, an interview with economist Jeremy Rifkin, who was here for a brief visit prior to the Teri summit, and a column by Bjorn Stigson, former president of World Business Council for Sustainable Development.1. MIKE RANN, Former Premier of the state of South AustraliaThe scepticism towards sustainable development comes down to complete ignorance. People have managed to con many politicians that if you take action on climate change it is bad for jobs. South Australia, the driest state in the driest continent, has shown you can have the strongest growth ever, have a drop in emissions and embrace clean industries. We have to stop listening to myth-makers and start listening to the truth.2. ANNIKA MARKOVIC, Environment ambassador, ministry of environment, Sweden We have a roadmap for 2050 where we will be free of CO2 emissions. We will also get rid of our dependency on fossil fuels. We are working hard with investments in the renewable energy sector... We believe sustainable development goals are a possible way forward where we can come together on a global initiative to pin point where we should go in important sectors like energy, food security, water etc. Sustainable cities are another important concept we take great interest in.3. CONNIE HEDEGAARD, Commissioner for climate action at the European CommissionWe are at a stage where we still have a choice. We can choose a much smarter, sustainable future. If we do it now, we can still keep our lives, our possibilities, our options, our mobility and the creative life many of us want to have. If we postpone action and wait for the consequences to grow even more enormous, we will find ourselves in a much worse situation. And it is also much more cost efficient if we start to act right now. 4. GRO HARLEM BRUNDTLAND, Former Prime Minister of Norway and member of UN secretary general's global sustainability panelThe idea that you can continue doing business as usual is flawed. Science shows this is not possible. We need to have renewable energy and not to continue warming the world... there are many solutions out there. It's not impossible to increase energy-use globally. We need to get more energy efficiency, more renewable in such a way that competition of enemies becomes difficult.break-page-break5. GHULAM MOHD MALIKYAR, Deputy director general of the National Environment Protection Agency in AfghanistanWe are a land-locked country. We have very low vegetation and forest cover. In the past 30 years, we have lost a significant portion of that cover. These challenges could affect Afghanistan and its neighbouring countries. It is difficult to restore all that within a few years. But there is hard work going on in several sectors to restore it. 6. TEWOLDE BERHAN GEBRE EGZIABHER, Director general of Ethiopian Environmental Protection Authority Small hold farmers cannot deal with climate change by themselves. Now that they are allowed to organise, local communities take decisions and implement it themselves. Land degradation is now reducing very fast in Ethiopia.7. MALIK AMIN ASLAM, Senior member of climate core advisory group to the government of PakistanFor us, the most urgent agenda is climate change and how to adapt to the problems. In the past two years, we have been hit by serious climate impacts. We are one of the high climate-risk countries. We have had 3-5 per cent of our GDP being washed away by climate change impacts. So, it is on the top of our agenda. 8. HENRI DJOMBO, Minister of sustainable development, forestry and environment, Republic of the Congo We lack electricity hugely. Hopefully, the hydropower plant we built with China will help us here. We are also using natural gas to create power. We will be able to use forest biomass to make it... Our public are not well-informed of sustainable development, but due to global and local efforts, they have an idea now. 9. MOHAMED ASLAM, Minister of housing and environment, The Maldives We focus very much on energy production and renewable energy. Fortunately, we have been able to provide reliable electricity for all our communities. But all of that is from fossil fuels. We want to convert that to renewable. Because it will contribute to global efforts and it has an economic sense for us. We spend about 35-45 cents to 1kwh power by burning fossil fuel. We can produce electricity at about 25 cents per 1 kw per hour by using solar power.10. MARIA MUTAGAMBA, Minister for water and environment in UgandaIt is a bit difficult to control industries. The majority go to wetlands thinking it is wasteland. Stakeholders such as the civil society and government try to make sure that industries appreciate these efforts so that we can utilise the space available for industries without jeopardising the ecosystem.(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 20-02-2012)
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