Mann Ki Baat: PM Narendra Modi addresses farmers on Land Bill

The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.

Abhishek Sahu, MBA 2014-16, Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur.

 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday addressed farmers in his ‘Mann Ki Baat’ series on All India Radio’, this series of audio sessions at 11:00 AM to the people of the country.In recent sessions The Prime Minister has already interacted directly with the people in the earlier five editions of ‘Mann Ki Baat’. He has dwelt upon several issues close to the hearts of the people such as Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, promotion of khadi, skill development, scholarship for disabled children, infrastructure for educational institutions, and menace of drugs..On Sunday, 22 March PM Narendra Modi addresses the farmers and assured them about the Land Acquisition Bill he said -will not let farmers down and all the concerns raised by them will be addressed. He asks farmers to raise their concerns so that he can continue to alert concerned departments to take necessary steps. PM Modi lashes out at opposition who are trying to stall Land Acquisition Bill. He says that those people don’t have the best interest of nation in their mind. He says that the new law is not pro-corporate. He tries to allay fears of farmers saying they can resort to litigation too if they wish so. Modi says that earlier law was resulting in bottlenecks. Hence new law has been drafted for speedy implementation of projects. Modi tries to go into the intricacies of the bill  to explain that they have the best interest of farmers in their mind.

Earlier he urged students to shed their examination stress and worry and develop a positive attitude. The Prime Minister also shared the ‘Mann Ki Baat’ forum with US President Barack Obama during his visit to India where the two leaders interacted with the people on a host of issues.

The programme has generated an encouraging response from citizens across the country. It is simultaneously broadcast live on All India Radio and Doordarshan channels. The address can also be heard on Vividh Bharti, FM Gold, and FM Rainbow radio. The programme would also be live-streamed on the Prime Minister’s official website.

This article has taken reference from Sunday, 22 March 2015 of FirstPost.

“Mann ki Baat” on land Acquisition Bill

The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.

Radhikesh Sahu, MBA 2014-16, Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur.

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On 22st March, 2015, Business Standard published a news about How India’s Prime Minister addresses the local farmers on Land Acquisition Bill in All-India-Radio program “Mann Ki Baat” .

Land Acquisition Bill facing severe criticism from opposition parties, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today reached out to farmers, telling them that “lies” are being spread over the measure for “political reasons” to create confusion among the farming community. The Union Cabinet will decide next steps on the Land Acquisition Bill, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said today as Parliament closed for a month-long recess in the Budget Session. The ordinance or emergency executive order that the bill seeks to ratify, lapses on April 5, during the recess.

Referring to his statement in Parliament, Narendra Modi maintained that the government is willing to consider any changes in the bill that would be beneficial for the farmers. He said that the government had decided to modify the Land Bill passed by the UPA government in 2013 after noting the shortcomings of the law and the fact that none of the states in the country had enacted the law despite the fact that it had been cleared by the central government .

He said the government has brought 13 legislation under the purview of Land Acquisition Bill which were exempted in the previous law. The farmers were to get compensation at old rates in case their lands were acquired under old provisions but the new Bill provides full compensation in this regard. The Prime Minister said that the new law will ensure that farmers get full compensation for their land. He added “Our intention is only to see that farmers benefit, their children benefit, villages benefit. So if there are any lacunae in the law, these must be addressed.

In others parts of India Political parties like the Trinamool Congress, DMK, Samajwadi Party, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and NCP helped the government pass the mines and coal bills today. The Congress had supported the Insurance bill in the Rajya Sabha. All these parties oppose the land bill, which makes it easier to make acquire land for big projects and is seen as crucial to the Modi governments reforms agenda.

 

Russia :-Next biggest threat to crude oil prices

The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.

Rakesh Ranjan, MBA 2014-16, Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur

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This is with reference to the article on March 22, 2015 in Business Standard regarding Crude oil price threat.

The biggest threat to the oil prices is neither OPEC nor Bakken shale this time. The future of oil prices will be dependent on Russian teapots .Russian teapots are using less crude ,they are freeing it up to sell abroad which will lead to the oil price hike in future .Oxford Institute of Energy studies expects a 250,000 barrel per day increase in oil exports by Russia this year. That would be equivalent to 5% growth of shipments .Rising shipments from Russia will lead to more pressure on crude which is already down by 50% in the recent time.

Russian teapots refinery produces more fuel oil than any other refineries in the world .It will take more crude in danger .The demand of crude oil will be increasing in the recent future which will put pressure on OPEC.The over pressurized OPEC would have left no choice but to increase the price of crude oil.  Few simple plants in Russia which sums up a total of 1.2 million barrels per day is creating more risk in the current price market.

The tax reform regarding the crude oil in Russia has entirely changed the process that should be followed by the oil refinery country .Even the most oil producing countries see it as a threat for the oil pricing .When the crude oil prices slide down in the international market,Russian government decided to give more tax rebate for the same which has created a market price war for the oil sector.

Flying high , with the new price rise

The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.

Abhinay Vishal, MBA 2014-16, Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur

With the advancement of Summers , people which includes mostly students are making their plans to travel to different places. The people of our country seem to upgrade themselves with their travel plans. The trend which has been observed over time shows that the travelers who used the sleeper class of Indian Railways have moved toward the AC class travels. The travelers who used the AC class travels are now moving towards air travels making the Air travelling a growing sector.

The low cost carriers these days are dominating the air travel by capturing more than 60% of  market shares along with their maintained quality and  low fares. Northstar for Expedia had conducted a survey to understand this behavior , findings of which indicate  51% of the tickets being booked for low cost carrier air flights. The money factor involved in this survey was ranked second just after the safety of the travels which shows the perception of Indian customers these days.

The general thought of replacing the train travel with the faster and comfortable air travel is the main driving force behind using the low cost air travels. Also a close analysis of the trend shows the money saved in the low cost air travel offered  is being used to stay at better hotels when the customers are travelling for their vacations. SpiceJet, Indigo and GoAir are the few carriers  which are dominating the Indian customers over the last two years and helping them to fly higher.

‘Mauka Mauka’ for the advertisers as well !!!

The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.

Shashiranjan Jaiswal, MBA 2014-16, Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur

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It’s not at all an easy task for the advertiser to grab the eyeball of their target audience during the world cup matches. They have to shell out crores of rupees to get their desired slots. But in the field of marketing you cannot let go such an opportunity where you are assured of such a huge viewership. At the end it’s all about clicking at the right time that decides your success, in cricketing jargon.

India is a nation where cricket is a religion and so are the fans who are crazy about it. While the exorbitant prices for a slot of seconds during the matches played by India vindicates this claim. The advertisers will have to pay 18-20 lakh for a 10 second slot during semi-final of the world cup, which is about to be played between India and Australia and if India reaches the final than the prices may shoot up to even 30-40 lakh for every 10 second slot. But the frenzy among the advertisers to bag the desired slot will still remain the same. So it’s not ‘Mauka Mauka’ only for the teams and the fans, its true for the advertiser as well.

Snapdeal investing to improve its delivery network, hiring more employees

The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.
Karishma Chandrapal, MBA 2014-16, Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur

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On 17th march,2015 , The Times of India published about the hiring of employees by Snapdeal. Snapdeal has grown to become the largest online marketplace in India offering an assortment of 4 million+ products across diverse categories from over 50,000 sellers, shipping to 4,000 towns and cities in India.

It published that:

E-commerce firm Snapdeal plans to hire 1,000 employees — who know particular geographies well — for their regional centres in the next two quarters, in an attempt to help the company stay closer to local sellers.

Each centre will have an M&A and an accounting team and around 500 employees will be hired in both groups. “We will follow the hub-and-spoke model and these employees will go and get the merchants from local markets,” says Saurabh Nigam, VP-HR.

Hiring will be centre-specific, so Chennai and Hyderabad in the South; Jaipur, Jalandar in the North; Surat, Ahmedabad and Pune in the West and Kolkata in the East are some of the regions identified. Snapdeal has created recruitment teams for each centre and even roped in hiring agencies for the local hiring.

Those with experience in sales will be on the company radar in these regions. As of now, 300 such employees are on board and the rest will be completed in next two quarters, adds Nigam. The company has a workforce of around 5,000 employees and is one of the largest recruiters in engineering and management campuses from the e-commerce industry.

Co-founded by Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, the e-commerce firm, along with Flipkart and Amazon, form the holy trinity in India’s $12-billion online shopping market.

Besides Softbank injecting $627 million last October, Snapdeal’s investors include eBay, BlackRock, Ratan Tata, PremjiInvest, the personal investment arm of Wipro Technologies chairman Azim Premji, hedge funds Myriad Asset Management and Tybourne Capital.

I believe that this strategy of hiring from the defined local geographies to stay in connection with local manufactures and get business from them. It will lead to quick collection of goods from manufacturers having required number of employees in different regions of the country. This will allow faster delivery with increased number of items.

Also Snapdeal is going for investing on its delivery network to strengthen its business as online shopping is all about the convenience and experience it provides.

The Times of India on 17^th March published one more article about the investment by snapdeal to strengthen its delivery network:

E-commerce company Snapdeal.com will invest $150 million-$200 million to strengthen its delivery network in the next financial year, an executive said.

The SoftBank backed company had invested in a minority stake in logistics company GoJavas, Rohit Bansal, co-founder of Snapdeal, said on Tuesday. He did not say how much the investment was worth.

Getting logistics and deliveries in place is a critical requirement for companies like Snapdeal, Flipkart and Amazon’s India unit as they fight to win over the country’s 300 million-strong urban middle class, who have come to expect free deliveries and returns as well as great deals on everything from clothes to car accessories.

It’s my personal experience with snapdeal that its delivery system is weak as compared to flipkart, myntra etc. It takes more time for delivering goods then others which serves an in convenience to the customers. For this reason people prefer other E-commerce websites and not the snapdeal. Hence, investing on improvement of its delivery network will give customers a good experience and will attract more customers to it.

References:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/jobs/Snapdeal-to-go-on-hiring-spree/articleshow/46593012.cms

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapdeal

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Snapdeal-plans-200m-investment-to-improve-deliveries/articleshow/46596327.cms

IMF’s chief voicing India’s growth prospect

The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.

Satyajit Kumar, MBA 2014-16, Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur.

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Delivering a lecture on Seizing India’s Moment at Lady Sri Ram College,    Christine Lagarde – the IMF chief said this is a special moment for India. “Just as many countries around the world are grappling with low growth, India has been marching in the opposite direction… In this cloudy global horizon, India is a bright spot,” she said.

Currently India has a projected growth rate of 7.5% in 2015-16. India is one of the fastest growing economies, fuelling global growth at a time when major economies are under stress and other emerging economies are slowing down.

Even six years after the global financial crisis, the recovery process is quite slow. As per IMF forecast, global growth since last October would be 3.5% in 2015 and 3.7% in 2016.

According to Lagarde the Indian economy will double in size by 2019 as compared to 2009. While comparing on purchasing power parity, India’s GDP will exceed that of Japan and Germany combined. In terms of output also India will exceed the combined output of Russia, Brazil and Indonesia.

The time is ripe for India to reap the benefits of the demographic dividend. More than half of India’s population is currently below the age of 25, and more than 12 million people enter the labour market every year. By 2030, India is expected to have the largest labour force in the world.

With more than one billion people of working age, India’s labour force will be larger than that of the US, the Euro Area, and Indonesia combined.

To reap the maximum benefits India must carry out structural reforms – subsidy reforms, proper implementation of the goods and services tax, making the labour laws more flexible. The government’s “Make in India” can be achieved, only if open and competitive business environment is allowed to flourish.

 

It’s time to review Community Standards

The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.

Devi Pradeep Kumar, MBA 2014-16, Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur

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Social network sites are the universal communication platform. It enables the freedom of sharing feelings with your community anywhere in the world. The best user-friendly access for everyone on a single click. It providing the better user interface to post everything to spread the message in the public domain. But recent happenings and researches are showing the dark side of expressing freedom of ‘abuse’ someone. These are re-defining the meaning of “freedom”. Many countries are facing the social-political issues. Even no individual has control over it.  Social networks are now taking it as a challenge. They look forward to taking the measures by setting new community standards. On the other hand, lack of resources to face the problems.

According to National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) survey, nearly 99 percent, reported that Facebook, had been used as a platform for abuse. 55 percent of programs that provide support for domestic violence victims reported that revenge porn was used to perpetuate abuse against those in their programs. The same survey found that 27 percent of the programs surveyed reported that abusers had used Twitter. In order to overcome this issue many social networking sites are revising their community guidelines.

On 5^th December, Reedit announced it would change its own policies to crack down on those who post unauthorized nude and explicit photos on its site. Reedit policies, the firm will not only hide the post from public view, but also lock the account of the person who posted it.

Last month Twitter came up with new community rules to prohibit users from posting of “revenge porn” intimate, and possibly explicit, images or video posted publicly without consent — to its social network.

On 15 March, The social network (1.39 billion active users worldwide) released a new version of its Community Standards. These guidelines will take some of the mystery out of what it will and will not allow. Some of these are explained below.

Authentic Identity: The company ultimately backed down, saying users can sign up with their “authentic identity,” not necessarily their legal name. The name they actually use in real life can be allowed.

Hate Speech: Facebook has listed the categories that qualified as hate speech. It includes attacking someone’s religion, race, or ethnicity. Terrorist organizations like the Islamic State have long been banned from the service. Now in addition to that, it prohibited the Supporting or praising groups involved in “violent, criminal or hateful behavior.

Content Removal: Facebook has always banned pornography. The company is for the first time explicitly banning content promoting sexual violence or exploitation, including so-called revenge porn. According to the new rules it removes pictures of people displaying genitals or focusing in on fully exposed buttocks, and restricts some images of female breasts if the nipple shows.

New Sections: Intimate images- Posting the images without permission of concerned person intended for revenge. Debilitating individuals with physical or budgetary damage, or tormenting them by presenting things planned on corrupt or disgrace them, is additionally precluded.

On the other side there were absence of assets to distinguish the content related issues. Monika Bickert, Facebook’s head of global policy management, said “We recognize this is a very challenging issue. She also explained the some of the challenges in implementing the new guidelines.

Challenges

• Facebook has no plans to automatically scan for and remove potentially offensive content. It will still rely on users to report violations of the standards. The company had review teams working at all hours of the day around the globe.
• Governments also ask Facebook to take down the posts. The transparency report, which discloses country-by-country information on government requests for user data and the removal of content.

It is the challenging time for many social networking sites. They succeeded in finding the problem and providing guidelines. Now it’s time for execution to protect the community.

References:

• The New York Times
• http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/16/facebook-explains-what-it-bans-and-why/?_r=0
• https://govtrequests.facebook.com/
• http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/03/11/twitter-updates-its-rules-to-specifically-ban-revenge-porn/

First private Greenfield airport in India

The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.

Kumaresan S, MBA 2014-16, Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur

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This is with reference to the news published in the daily news paper “Business Standard” on 16^th March 2015.

The first private Greenfield airport in India, kazi Nazrul Islam airport is expected to start its commercial operation from around the Bengali new year (April 14). The airport is located in Andal between the industrial towns of west Bengal, Durgapur and Asansol. This airport promoted by Singapore based changi Airports International has 32.2% stake on Bengal Aerotropolis Ltd (BAPL).

The calibration of all the crucial equipment installed in the facility such as equipment for weather, distance measuring, radio network and lighting has been completed by the airport authority of India. After AAI send the report to DGCA(Directorate General of Civil Aviation) ,it will take three- four weeks to get the final licence and it is expected that the India’s’ first private Greenfield airport “Kazi Nazrul Islam airport” will start its commercial operation by April 14, 2015.

“With this calibration process, we have now overcome all hurdles towards commissioning the airport” BAPL promoter and Managing Director Partha Ghosh.

To attract airlines, BAPL is offering concession on landing and parking fee and subsidy on seats and incidentally, west has waived 100% sales tax at kazi Nazrul airport for three year period this will attract more airlines to the airport.

The completion of this project will create an image for west Bengal as Industry-friendly state and this may boost up the Industrial investment by private players in west Bengal.

Another blow to Sahara !!

The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.

Anup Agrawal,  MBA 2014-16,  Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur

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On 15^th  March 2015 , The Times of India  published the news that “Sahara has been asked to pay Rs 10,000 crore to secure Subrata Roy’s bail.” This is again a serious blow to the company which is currently facing a huge financial problem and also has lost its ground since the company was found to be cheating with the people of India by offering them manipulative schemes. Currently Sahara has been asked to pay Rs forty thousand crore as a part of compensation to the people who have been cheated by the company and also ten thousand as a security deposit to secure the release of the Sahara chief Subrata Roy and two of its executive director who have been in Tihar jail for a year now.

Subrata Roy was jailed one year back after he repeatedly defied Supreme Court’s order to attend the courts hearing against Sahara group and since then he has found it difficult to secure his release from the jail. The supreme court has asked the Sahara group to deposit Rs ten thousand crore as a security to allow release of Subrata Roy but then the Sahara group of companies has not able to deposit the same.

The company is facing a huge challenge in terms of financial liability and has also tried to sell off two of its luxury hotel for an undisclosed amount to raise funds for the release of Subrata Roy which it has failed to do as of now.

The main question that comes to my mind is If Sahara is not able to deposit ten thousand crore ruppes in a one year span , how is it supposed to pay forty thousand crore to the people who have been duped by Sahara?

Reference-

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Sahara-asked-to-pay-Rs-10000-crore-to-secure-Subrata-Roys-bail/articleshow/46569784.cms