Archives for 2018

Dubai India dished out another comprehensive performance to thrash Bangladesh by seven wickets in a Super Four stage match of the Asia Cup at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium here on Friday.

Skipper Rohit Sharma led India from the front with a fluent unbeaten half-century to overhaul the paltry target of 174 with more than 13 overs to spare, after the men-in-blue rode on left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja’s magical spell of 4/29 on winning the toss and opting to chase.

The defending champions were off to a brilliant start once again with Rohit (83 not out off 104 balls; 5X4, 6X3) and Shikhar Dhawan (40 off 47; 4X4, 6X1) putting on 61 runs before the southpaw was trapped leg-before by left-armer Shakib Al Hasan in the 15th over.

Thereafter, Rohit and new man Ambati Rayudu (13) added 45 runs for the second wicket before the No.3 batsman was caught behind off pacer Rubel Hossain.

With India cruising to an easy victory, former skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni (33 off 37; 4X3) was promoted up the order and the talismanic wicketkeeper-batsman played the perfect second fiddle to the skipper, who clobbered Shakib for three sixes, one among those to get to his 36th ODI fifty.

Dhoni soon joined the party, belting two consecutive boundaries off skipper Mashrafe Mortaza to raise India’s 150 and also the 50-run stand for the third wicket.

Mortaza, however, avenged the thrashing with the wicket of the stumper, who in an attempt to finish off the innings with a six, gifted his wicket away with India just four runs shy of victory.

Dinesh Karthik (1 not out) then joined his skipper to complete the formalities in style.

Earlier, Jadeja, playing his first ODI since July 2017, wreaked havoc among the Bangladeshi middle-order that comprised the key wickets of Shakib Al Hasan (17), Mushfiqur Rahim (21), Mohammad Mithun (9) and Mosaddek Hossain (12), to help India restrict the opposition for a paltry 173, centred mainly around a 66-run eighth wicket stand between lower-order batsmen Mehidy Hasan (42) and skipper Mashrafe Mortaza (26).

Jadeja was complimented well by the pace duo of Bhuvneshwar Kumar (3/32) and Jasprit Bumrah (3/37).

Put in to bat, Bangladesh immediately found themselves on the backfoot after Bhuvneshwar and Bumrah removed the openers Liton Das (7) and Nazmul Hossain Shanto (7), respectively, with just 16 runs on the board.

Thereafter, Jadeja spun his magic around the Bangladesh batsmen which reduced them to 65/5 by the 18th over, before Mahmudullah (25) and Mosaddek steered the total past the 100-run mark with a brief 36-run sixth wicket stand.

Towards the end, Mehidy and Mashrafe batted sensibly to take the side past the 150-run mark even as the Indian bowlers came back well to restrict them to a below-par score.

Brief Scores

Bangladesh: 173 (Mehidy Hasan 42, Mashrafe Mortaza 26; Ravindra Jadeja 4/29, Bhuvneshwar Kumar 3/32, Jasprit Bumrah 3/37) lose to India: 174/3 (Rohit Sharma 83 not out, Shikhar Dhawan 40, M.S Dhoni 33) by 7 wickets.

(IANS)

New Delhi Even as the French government and Dassault Aviation contradicted former President Francois Hollande’s claim on choosing of Indian industrial partners in the multi-million dollar Rafale jet deal, the Congress party on Saturday said the French government “conceals more than it reveals”. Congress President Rahul Gandhi called it a “surgical strike” on Indian defence forces.

The statement by the French government issued here by the embassy late on Friday came after Hollande claimed in a media report that the Indian government had suggested a particular private firm for the Rafale offset contract.

Hollande was quoted in an article by a French website Mediapart as saying that the Indian government had asked the French government to nominate Reliance Defence as its India partner in the deal.

“We didn’t have any say in this matter,” Hollande was quoted by the website as saying. “It is the Indian government which had proposed this service group and Dassault who negotiated with (Anil) Ambani. We didn’t have the choice, we took the interlocutor who was given to us.”

In response to the claim, the Friday night statement said: “The French government is in no manner involved in the choice of Indian industrial partners who have been, are being or will be selected by French companies.

Dassault Aviation, the makers of the Rafale jets, in a statement, also on Friday night, said: “This offsets contract is delivered in compliance with the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) 2016 regulations. In this framework, and in accordance with the policy of ‘Make in India’, Dassault Aviation has decided to make a partnership with India’s Reliance Group. This is Dassault Aviation’s choice.”

On Saturday, Rahul Gandhi said in a tweet that the “PM and Anil Ambani jointly carried out a One Hundred & Thirty Thousand Crore SURGICAL STRIKE on the Indian Defence forces. Modiji you dishonoured the blood of our martyred soldiers. Shame on you. You betrayed India’s soul.”

The Congress party said that the the French government knows that verbal interactions between former President Hollande and Indian interlocutors were minuted and would emerge.

“Speculation of French Parliamentary hearing into Rafale and access to administration documents under France’s Freedom of Information Law 1978 rife,” Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari tweeted.

“What French government/corporate entity has just ended up doing is making Rafale procurement a veritable domestic issue in French politics also”.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in a tweet in Hindi sought to know from the Indian Prime Minister who “pocketed the money from the Rafale scam, you the BJP or someone else.”

Countering the attack, Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Union Minister Ananth Kumar tweeted: “Nailing the lie on its head — misinformation about Rafale deal, Dassault being called out by the French government.”

The Modi government has repeatedly said it was Dassault that chose its India partner for offsets and that the government had no say in the deal.

The Paris-based Dassault Aviation further said in its statement that “in accordance with India’s acquisition procedure, French companies have the full freedom to choose their Indian partner companies that they consider to be the most relevant, then present for the Indian government’s approval the offset projects that they wish to execute in India with these local partners so as to fulfil their obligations in this regard.”

“Dassault Aviation is very proud that the Indian authorities have selected the Rafale fighter,” it added stating that the partnership “between the two giants” led to the creation of the Dassault Reliance Aerospace Ltd (DRAL) joint venture in February 2017.

The deal to purchase 36 Rafale fighter jets from France was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015 and signed in 2016.

The UPA government was earlier negotiating a deal to procure 126 Rafale jets, with 18 to come in flyaway condition and 108 to be manufactured by HAL under licence.

Mediapart, whose focus of the story was about financing of a film being co-produced by actress Julie Gayet, who is said to be a “personal partner” of Hollande, for which the Ambani group had provided funds of up to $1.6 million.

It interviewed Hollande on phone in which he further said: “I intervened in this affair (Rafale) with the two prime ministers, to say that I was keen for this negotiation. Initially, the deal was supposed to be for 126 planes, then when the government changed the Indians reformulated their proposition, less attractive for us because it was for 36 aircraft only. But the manufacturing was planned to be in France, contrary to the preceding proposition, we lost on the one hand and gained on the other.”

(IANS)

Financial inclusion ranks high on the Indian government’s agenda today. The banking sector, with its legacy infrastructure and outdated modes of operating cannot meet the financial inclusion objectives unless it digitally transforms. Virtualisation and hyperconvergence have to be adopted by the banks to meet the challenges thrust upon them.

Virtualization is the creation of a virtual — rather than actual — version of something, such as an operating system, a server, a storage device or network resources. Hyperconvergence combines storage, computing and networking into a single system in an effort to reduce complexity and increase scalability.

Spurred by financial inclusion policies, the Indian banking sector is facing exponential growth in its customers, accounts and funds. There has also been profusion of payment avenues — both physical and digital.

Over the last couple of years, payment banks and digital wallets have gained wide acceptance, even popularity, with even phone companies and cab agregators jumping in. As this space streamlines, banks are furiously expanding their footprint by launching branches, kiosks and ATMs across India.

The IT departments of banks need to establish strategies and solutions to support this dramatic growth trajectory. While scalability, versatility and agility of IT infrastructure are essential, potentially unpredictable user volumes also need to be addressed. Banks today need to be able to manage multiple branch infrastructure centrally in a seamless manner and provide a secure branch application server.

Additionally, performance and user experience in every branch needs to be monitored to provide improved customer service. Distributed systems grow as retail avenues proliferate and the need for their impeccable security and availability assumes great significance.

Automated management tools powered by intelligent technologies are critical as one false step can irreversibly dent customer trust.

Virtualization and hyperconvergence can support the banking sector’s growth and expansion trajectory. By virtualising all infrastructure elements and delivering them as a service, banks can manage critical functions independent of the physical hardware.

An intelligent software layer added to the IT infrastructure helps to dynamically manage and access all elements with ease. It ensures business continuity and quick and secure data recovery as well, resulting in very little business downtime.

Flexible infrastructure permits workloads to move freely to the optimum resource anywhere, anytime. For the IT organisation, technologies such as virtualisation and hyperconvergence transform a traditionally Capex-centric budget into an Opex-centric. Infrastructure decision is made once annually without having to go through it repeatedly.

Virtualisation can also enable interesting retail business models such as Tab banking and micro-ATMs, often operated by non-banking partners, as part of rural banking. As remote branches grow, a virtualised central pool of servers and storage is crucial so that resources are highly utilised, and attractive cost savings are realised.

The business benefits of virtualised infrastructure architected for growth and managed through software are multi-fold, ranging from less time to set up new branches to lower IT overheads and lesser time to provision/modify infrastructure resources and more.

Design and implementation-readiness of infrastructure are the critical success factors for growing banks. Virtualisation makes it easy for banks to grow, handle sudden peak demands with great customer experience. Automated tools for operations help dramatic growth with stringent security and control. Financial institutions need to embrace these proven methodologies and set the stage for even higher growth in future.

[IANS]