Archives for 2018

The US has asked all countries, including India, to stop all oil imports from Iran by November as it ruled out any exemption to India and Indian companies from its reimposed Iranian sanctions regime.

“On China and India, yes, certainly,” a state department official told reporters when asked if the US has told all countries, including India and China, to stop all their imports of Iranian oil by November 4.

He said Indian and Chinese companies would be subject to the same sanctions as those in other countries. Given the huge energy needs, India and China are major importers of Iranian oil.

“Their (India and China) companies will be subject to the same sanctions that everybody else’s are if they engage in those sectors of the economy that are sanctionable, where there were sanctions imposed prior to 2015. And yes, we will certainly be requesting that their oil imports go to zero. Without question,” the state department official said on condition of anonymity.

Responding to questions, the official said these countries should start reducing the import of oil from Iran now and bring it to zero by November 4. “Without question, they should be reduced. That’s what we’ve been telling them in our bilateral meetings. They should be preparing, now, to go to zero (by November 4),” the official
said.

The official said this is part of the Trump administration’s effort to isolate streams of Iranian funding and are looking to highlight the totality of Iran’s malign behaviour across the region.

“We remain engaged with the EU-3 throughout this process, and we are going to continue to branch out in new countries and reach new partners as the weeks go forward,” the official said.

As such, this could emerge as a major topic of discussion between India and the US during the first 2+2 dialogue next week. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman would be in the US next week for talks with their American counterparts Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defence Secretary James Mattis.

The State Department asserted that there would be no waivers under the new sanctions regime. “I would be hesitant to say ‘zero waivers ever’. I think the predisposition would be, ‘No, we’re not granting waivers’,” the official said.

Noting that America’s allies are aware of its concern, the official claimed these countries want to work with the US. “I don’t want to get into the substance of each discussion I’ve had, but, for a vast majority of countries, they are willing to adhere and support our approach to this because they also view it as a threat. And it’s gotten worse since 2015, not better, on their regional activity side,” the official said.

In a recent report, the bipartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) said as international sanctions on Iran increased in 2010-2013, India sought to preserve its longstanding ties with Iran while cooperating with the sanctions regime.

In 2010, the Reserve Bank of India ceased using a Tehran-based regional body, the Asian Clearing Union, to handle transactions with Iran. In January 2012, Iran agreed to accept India’s local currency, the rupee, to settle nearly half of its sales to India.

“During 2011-2015, India reduced its purchases of Iranian oil-at some cost to its own development-in order to receive from the US administration exemptions from sanctions. India has increased oil purchases from Iran to nearly pre-2012 levels after sanctions were lifted, and in May 2016 India agreed to transfer to Iran about USD 6.5 billion that it owed for Iranian oil shipments but which was held up for payment due to sanctions,” the report said.

“India’s position has generally been that it will only enforce sanctions authorised by UN Security Council resolutions, rendering it likely that India will resist US efforts to compel it to comply with reimposed US sanctions such as those that mandate cuts in oil purchases from Iran,” said the CRS report.

India says it is disappointed with the Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy (GCTS) resolution adopted by the General Assembly because it fails to advance “meaningful” international cooperation against terrorism.

“It is disappointing to see the lack of meaningful progress even in a GCTS resolution language, which continues to reflect the inability of member states to act collectively to tackle the threats from non-state actors,” India’s Deputy Permanent Representative Tanmaya Lal said Tuesday after the Assembly unanimously adopted the resolution.

“While most of the membership represented here has experienced terror attacks, at the UN we continue to struggle to advance meaningful multilateral cooperation on countering terrorism, often due to narrow political considerations,” he said.

India did not oppose the resolution and went along with the consensus in the Assembly as Lal noted, “Any multilateral resolution has to strike a balance and a compromise.”

But India was disappointed that it has neither taken into account the developments since the previous GCTS resolution was adopted two years ago nor provided for more unified international action against terrorism.

“In the intervening period of two years terrorist networks have continued to terrorise peoples across different parts of the world, expanding their reach, propagating their ideologies of hate, recruiting across borders, raising funds and improving their use of modern technologies,” he said.

Assembly President Miroslav Lajcak, who introduced the resolution defended it saying that this “Global Strategy is not a global solution” and is “not a magic formula.”

“Because terrorism is very complex, a one-size-fits-all approach would never work,” he added.

The nine-page resolution deals with addressing conditions that are “conducive” to spread of terrorism, and helping countries develop capacities to combat terrorism, besides the generalities like condemning terrorism and apprehending and prosecuting terrorists.

Lajcak warned, “We cannot afford to underestimate the threat facing us” and there was no room for complacency because the Islamic State (IS) is weaker now than two years ago and controls smaller territory.

He said: “ISIS, Al-Qaida and their affiliates have shown that they do not represent a traditional security threat. They use methods we could only have imagined, in our worst nightmares. They have broken all laws of humanity. And they have proven themselves to be able to adapt, to new contexts and situations.”

Yoga guru Ramdev’s “swadeshi” mobile messaging app “Kimbho”, that appeared briefly in May-end claiming to take on the behemoth WhatsApp, has turned out to be a poorly-crafted business idea.

Patanjali, that posted a turnover of Rs 10,561 crore ($1.6 billion) in the financial year 2017, has been retracting its statements since the launch — first asking people to download the app from Google Play Store, then blaming extremely high traffic for its sudden death, later claiming it was just a one-day test and now asking for two more months for its relaunch.

The app disappeared from Google Play Store within a day of its launch on May 31 over security and performance concerns, leaving the country’s tech industry in a bit of shock.|

If you visit Google Play Store today, you will find at least a dozen fake versions of “Kimbho” which is a Sanskrit word and means “How are you?” or “What’s new?” — in the form of messaging app, TV, Status and what not.

The lingering question is: What was the haste to launch an app, touted as a challenge to Facebook-owned WhatsApp that has over tqo billion users globally and 200 million in India?

Famous French security researcher, who goes by the name of Elliot Alderson, called “Kimbho” a security disaster on Twitter. “This @KimbhoApp is a joke, next time before making press statements, hire competent developers… If it is not clear, for the moment don’t install this app,” Anderson tweeted.

In general course, if it is a Beta launch or a pilot run with a select group of users, the app runs for few weeks, the R&D team refines the product, the IT people plug the security loopholes, check the traffic control systems, apply scalable Cloud-based data management solutions and only then would the company push for a full-fledged launch.

“A messaging app like WhatsApp was build and sold to Facebook at the cost of $19 billion whereas the swadeshi Kimbho’s launcher Patanjali, with total net worth of nearly $2.5 billion, has zero contribution on IT solutions; hence the initiative had to flop in the first place,” Anoop Mishra, one of the nation’s leading social media experts, told IANS.

To run a world-class messaging app like WhatsApp requires top-of-the-line IT infrastructure.

“You need a team of Open Source experts, Cloud and content delivery network (CDN) experts, data engineers, an in-house team of core developers, API developers, user interface (UI) developers, in-house testing team and user data simulation team.

“You also need an outsourced hacking team which keeps finding the loopholes in the existing system which was completely missing in ‘Kimbho’ which was a poorly-scripted app,” Mishra contended.

Apart from the technical and programing infrastructure, a good messaging app requires industry-best third-party tools and scalable Cloud hosting servers to handle and respond to real-time database queries of millions of users so that the app survives the inbound traffic.

To build and run a word-class messaging app requires huge investment of time, tech expertise and money — and eventually needs 10 times more investment for handling servers, security issues and data breaches, Mishra noted.

According to Saket Modi, CEO and Co-Founder of cyber security firm Lucideus, companies nowadays are looking at products that are secure by design.

“Companies are moving from agile DevOps to agile DevSecOps, where security is now being thought of from the development phase itself,” Modi told IANS.

Lucideus was responsible for security assessments for apps like BHIM, Whats App for Payments and Google Tez.

According to Faisal Kawoosa, Head, New Initiatives, CyberMedia Research (CMR), it will not be easy for “Kimbho” to create a space dominated by WhatsApp by just being “Swadeshi”.

“The initial reviews are full of issues and concerns,” Kawoosa said.

“Kimbho” should ideally have seen a soft launch — without any comparison with WhatsApp — building on the momentum while deploying scalable, agile and secure Cloud-based solutions to make it run.

Building a world-class app perhaps needs much more effort than making toiletries or food products.

Petroleum is the taxation milch cow for the central and the state governments and it is unlikely to be brought under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) any time soon.

That’s also the view of the Vice Chairman of Niti Aayog, Rajiv Kumar. Several senior ministers have demanded that petroleum products — basically petrol and diesel — be brought under the new taxation regime.

But says Kumar: “It (oil) can’t be brought under GST. That’s because the total state and central taxes on petrol put together are around 90 percent right now.”

He told IANS in an interview here: “I can’t see how any state will take a cut so huge as the highest rate under the GST is 28 percent. A new GST band will have to be opened up — and that will be an enormous exercise.”

While supporting “in principle” the idea of bringing all items under the new indirect tax system, he said those talking about doing it now have not thought this through.

“The better way to do this is to first start reducing taxes (on petroleum products) as I have said many times in public. States impose an ad-valorem tax on oil and so they all had a windfall gain (when prices rose). There is a need to rationalize it,” he said, adding “states should especially cut taxes.”

Kumar said that both the central and the state governments should start the process of weaning themselves away from their dependence on oil taxation.

According to him, the Central government collects Rs 2.5 lakh crore as tax on oil while almost Rs 2 lakh crore is collected by the states. “From where will they compensate it?” he asks adding that if the taxes are reduced gradually, the burden on the economy will get reduced.

“Higher oil prices are like a tax on the economy. If oil prices are brought down, economic activity will also improve,” Kumar said.

“Once that is achieved, once the revenues have gone up from other sources and the economy has picked up, then you can think of bringing oil under GST. It’s not that easy,” he added.

Ever since the new tax legislation was rolled out on July 1 last year, there had been the talk of bringing it under the GST with top government officials and ministers supporting the need for such a move. The Opposition parties, of course, have been clamoring for it.

In December last year, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had told the Rajya Sabha that the Central government was in favor of bringing petroleum products under the ambit of GST after building a consensus with states.

More recently, in April, when the international crude oil prices were going up sharply, pushing the domestic petrol prices to record levels, BJP President Amit Shah told a rally in Mumbai that efforts were on to bring petrol and diesel under the GST.

From Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari to Petroleum and Naural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, almost every senior BJP minister has favored bringing petroleum products under the GST.

Among states, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has also expressed willingness to bring petrol and diesel under GST in his state if a consensus was brought about on it.

Kumar says he was in favour of such a change, but it has to be thought through in practical terms.

“I am just simply saying that let’s not trying to hurry it because you would only run into problems as there is a huge dependence on oil,” he said.

“Even electricity should be brought under GST. Everything should be under GST. But I am not sure whether it is worked out yet. Let’s agree to bring it under GST but over a period of time as is practical,” he said.