Hitting out at the Narendra Modi government for the rise in petroleum prices, the Congress on Tuesday said even though prices of petroleum products across the world have gone down with the international prices declining, excise duties have been increased many times.

“During the UPA government, the international crude oil prices were double the present rates, but our excise duties were much lower.

“Now the excise duties have been increased many times and even as the international prices have gone down, the petrol and diesel prices are soaring,” said Congress spokesperson Jaipal Reddy.

“All over the world the prices of petroleum products have gone down as the international prices have gone down,” he added.

Reddy further said: “Arun Jaitley (Finance Minister) earlier said they are not getting adequate tax collection.

“The fact is dishonest people are not paying taxes and you want to punish the poor and honest middle class people. How does he advance such an argument in public? This government has become utterly insensitive to public opinion,” said Reddy.

Fuel prices continued to rise on Tuesday, with diesel prices rising to fresh record levels across metros and petrol crossing the Rs 78-per-litre mark in the national capital.

Incidents of lynching have hurt India’s image, Tourism Minister K.J. Alphons, who is in China to draw in more tourists, has admitted.

The minister, however, said that the ban on beef has not affected tourism in the country and sought to debunk a survey showing India as the most unsafe country for women in the world.

“Well, it (lynching) shouldn’t happen. Simple. And, the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) has called them criminals. And, he told the states you have to take action because law and order is a state subject,” Alphons said on Tuesday interacting with Indian journalsits.

Asked if incidents of lynching have affected tourism in India, the Minister said: “Well, not on a big time basis…not really. But anything happening like that is bad for the reputation of the country. We won’t say it’s good for the reputation of the country.”

Has the ban on beef kept foreign tourists away from India, Alphons said that was not the case. “Not really… you see there are states like Kerala, Goa and the Northeast… these are all beef eating states.”

“These are all big tourism destinations… So people would go wherever they are comfortable

“I think we need to respect the sentiment of the people anywhere… that’s so fundamental.”

India has witnessed incidents of lynching over cow slaughter and beef eating in the country. The majority of Hindus in the country consider the animal as sacred.

Alphons is visiting China to attract Chinese tourists who currently generate some 21 per cent of tourism receipts in destinations in the world. He opened a road show in Beijing on Tuesday and will visit Shanghai and Wuhan.

Despite swelling number of outbound Chinese tourists, Indian receives only a very small fraction of them.

“Last year, 144 million Chinese were abroad, but only 300,000 came to India,” the minister said.

He said India plans to get at least 14 million Chinese tourists in the next three years.

Asked about women’s safety, an issue which is among the prime concerns among Chinese to visit India, Alphons said it was “a perception battle”.

He tore apart a recent survey by Thomson Reuters which said India is the most unsafe country for women.

“Thomson Reuters put out a story saying it’s (India) unsafe. We asked them how? They say they interviewed 540 people or something out which 43 from India.”

“You can’t ask the 43 so-called knowledgeable people of India whether India is safe or not because most of these so-called feminists would be anti-government … it is the politics of it,” he said.

(IANS)

Iran on Tuesday inaugurated its largest wind farm as part of its efforts to increase production of electricity from renewable sources.

The 18-turbine wind farm, located in Tarom county in northern Iran, has a nominal capacity of generating 61 megawatt hours of power annually, Xinhua reported.

The wind farm, built with latest technologies at a cost of around $101 million, was financed by the National Development Fund of Iran, the country’s sovereign-wealth fund.

Iran has a comprehensive plan to harness renewable energy and streamline the country’s energy mix which mainly relies on fossil fuel power stations.

True to its vision of Engineering Progress, the organization ups the ante

smartcapture

PAAMA Agrico, India’s fastest growing and innovative, Agricultural Equipment Research & Development organization engages Robotic Engineering to manufacture world-class soil titling blades used in rotovators and cultivators.

The strategic employment of robotics to take over cumbersome and hazardous, manual welding jobs has been appreciated universally. “Engaging a Robot to weld blades will enable the precision function – ensuring uniformity in production while facilitating repeatability function each time; this will in turn increase production rate, decrease cost of product, solve the labour shortage problem and increase work efficiencies by several folds.” says Mr. Vikas Marwah, Technical Director – ‎NexGen Robotic Automation Pvt. Ltd., the team that programmed and installed the Robots at PAAMA Agrico.

Meticulous Agripreneur and Founder of PAAMA Agrico, Mr. Srinivas P Kamisetty, details the objective behind this first of its kind Robotics Engineering initiative by an Agri-Equipment organization as, ” I have been studying and more importantly practicing in the agricultural industry for over a decade now and realize that most of the equipments made available to the Indian Farmers are not what their western or developed counterpart would use.” He further demonstrates that, “50% of the nation’s economy rests on agriculture income; in parallel to food production demand that is skewed upwards owing to the ever rising population rate and exports. It is the responsibility of the Agri-Tech manufacturing fraternity to enable them (Indian Farmers) with the necessary mechanization, that in its true sense will be instrumental in engineering progress at an individual level and collective contribute to the development of nation as a whole.”

It is amidst the foreplay of such dynamics of an agrarian economy that PAAMA Agrico was conceptualized to elevate the standards of Made-in-India Agri-Equipments that will provide sustainable growth propositions to users. “We are delighted to play an active role in PAAMA Agrico’s journey of etching new benchmarks as it determined to channels it efforts towards transitioning the traditional agricultural industry with cutting edge technological advancements.” further expresses Mr. Marwah.

Technological advancements in agriculture are an important element to fodder growth and engaging in robotics is an indispensible technique of driving this as it can help overcome the skills shortage and improve monitoring and enhance efficiency.

About PAAMA Agrico:

PAAMA Agrico is India’s favourite, Agricultural Equipment, Research&Development organization; founded in the year 2015 with the objective of revolutionizing traditional and time intensive farming processes with sustainable technology.

PAAMA’s research centric approach, cutting edge product features, direct communication & distribution touch-points with farmers, after sales services, dynamic leadership that bring in both global and local exposure and ability to provide invincible quality & pricing has earned it the status of being best-in-class among the Rotavators and Cultivator industry.

A make in India brand, PAAMA has its state-of-art manufacturing facility is spread over 30,000 sq ft of Factory Space on a 100,000 sft plot of land in Doddaballapur Industrial Area, Bengaluru of Karnataka. For further information please visit www.paama.in

‎About NexGen Robotic Automation Pvt. Ltd.

NexGen Robotics is formed by dedicated team of Robot engineers having worked in similar field with more than 25 years of experience. We have teamed up with robot manufacturers to give customers optimized integrated solutions. We are single source for robotic engineering solutions and services. For further information please visit www.nexgenrobotic.in

Diesel prices touched record high levels across metro cities and prices of petrol too inched nearer their all-time peak across major cities. As per the daily price notification issued by the state-owned oil firms, in Delhi, diesel price is at Rs 69.61 per litre. In Mumbai, the diesel is sold at Rs 73.90 per litre, Rs 72.46 in Kolkata and Rs 73.54 per litre in Chennai. The new revised rates are applicable from August 28, morning 6 am.

On the other hand, prices of petrol in Delhi is raised to Rs 78.05 per litre. In Mumbai, price of per litre petrol is Rs 85.47. While in Kolkata and Chennai, petrol is priced Rs 80.98 and Rs 81.09 per litre, respectively.

The rise in prices of diesel gains significance as it is mostly used in transportation of food and agricultural products and an increase in its price may lead to higher inflation. The surge in fuel prices is largely attributed to the recent rise in crude oil cost and the high excise duty levied on transportation fuel in the country.

In line with an increase in diesel prices, petrol prices too are on the rise and are nearing their all-time high levels. The all-time high petrol prices in Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai are Rs 78.43, Rs 81.06, Rs 86.24 and Rs 81.43 per litre, touched in May 29.

As per a report of PTI, petrol and diesel will not come under the purview of GST in the immediate future as neither the Centre nor any of the states is in favour on fears of heavy revenue loss.

Readying its digital payment service for India, Tez, for a global roll out, Google on Tuesday renamed the app as Google Pay and introduced new features that could soon help its Indian users get instant “pre-approved” loans from some banks.

“Building for India has often meant Google building for everyone all around the world,” Caesar Sengupta, Vice-President, Next Billion Users initiative and Payments, Google, said at its annual Google for India event here.

“At the moment, nothing is changing about the experience in India other than the name,” he said, adding that Google is working with a few of India’s top banks — HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Federal Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank — to offer pre-approved, instant loans to their customers, right from within Google Pay.

This feature will roll out to eligible users within the next few weeks, Google said.

With the roll out of this feature, eligible users will see a notification telling that that they are pre-approved.

Next, the users would have to decide how much they want to borrow, and how quickly they would like to repay.

Finally, after reviewing the terms of the loan, the bank will deposit the money in
their bank account instantly — without the need of any additional paperwork, Google said.

“In coming weeks and months, Google is making Pay even more useful through expanding the places users can pay in-store and online, expanding services for merchants, and working with the banks to provide instant loans to Google Pay users,” Sengupta said.

Google launched the Tez app in India last year and since then over 55 million people have downloaded the app and more than 22 million people and businesses actively use the app for digital transactions every month.

Google Pay works with all major banks in India on BHIM UPI (Unified Payments Interface).

(IANS)

As diesel prices touched a record high across metro cities on Monday, the Congress said that this is the distorted and horrendous definition of “aache din” and asked the government to stop giving excuse of legacy issue.

“If this is the distorted, horrendous definition of ‘aache din’, then I would like to find out which dictionary defines ‘aache din’ like this,” said Congress Spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi.

“We are talking of diesel for tractors and trucks and also because your distribution of everything is too crucial. But there is silence,” he added.

Singhvi said: “We are getting sermons from the Finance Ministry every day and the only best answer they find is ‘legacy’ issue. After four-and-a-half years, the petrol and diesel prices are touching Rs 77 and Rs 70 respectively.

“You still have to talk of legacy issue. Actually, the legacy was very beneficial to you when you came to power. You were getting oil per barrel at half the price at which we were getting,” he added.

Diesel prices touched a record high across metro cities on Monday, barring Mumbai. Prices of petrol too inched nearer to all-time peak across major cities.

In the national capital, diesel was priced at Rs 69.46 per litre, against the previous high of Rs 69.32 recorded on Sunday, according to data from the Indian Oil Corporation.

(Ians)

When it comes to IT transformation, 17 per cent of organisations in India have achieved the fully Transformed status — a much higher percentage than was observed in other Asian countries researched (4 per cent), a Dell EMC study said on Tuesday.

Respondents at the transformed companies in India were 8.5 times more likely than legacy or emerging firms to say their company almost always makes better and faster data-driven decisions, the findings showed.

A whopping 90 per cent of Indian respondents agreed that failing to embrace IT Transformation will hurt their company’s competitiveness.

“Today, Indian organisations not only realise the importance of transforming their IT infrastructure to ensure they have a competitive edge to reduce costs, but they also now know that it is crucial to turn data into business intelligence,” said Rajesh Janey, MD and President, Enterprise India, Dell EMC.

Transformed firms in India are more likely to execute the majority of application roll-outs ahead of schedule compared to lower-scoring organisations, said the study.

Over 70 per cent of Indian respondents whose organisations have achieved transformed status also report having mature digital transformation projects underway versus only 3 per cent of the Indian legacy/emerging companies surveyed.

“Indian organisations are more virtualised than other Asian organisations – 49 per cent of Indian production servers are virtual machines versus 45 per cent in the rest of Asia.

In addition to modern data centre technologies, Indian organisations are, in general, exceeding the rest of Asia in terms of automation and process evolution.

The “IT Transformation” maturity study surveyed 4,000 IT decision makers worldwide, out of which 400 were from India.

“With our expansive set of infrastructure and software technologies, Dell EMC has become a powerful ally to help any business in its IT Transformation journey to fuel digital innovation,” Janey added.

(Ians)

As the festive season inches closer in India, Vivo is focused on building brand loyalty and offering consumers innovative new “made in India” products across all price segments, a top company official said here on Tuesday.

The Chinese smartphone maker is set to launch another flagship smartphone Vivo V11 Pro on September 6.

“When it comes to the V series, Vivo has done very well. And with V11 Pro, we will take innovation to the next level in Rs 20,000-Rs 30,000 segment,” Nipun Marya, Director, Brand Strategy, Vivo India, told IANS.

“To be successful in the long term, we must have great products. That is the reason why you see so many innovations from Vivo, whether it is the elevating camera in Vivo Nex or the in-display fingerprint scanner in X21,” he added.

According to Counterpoint Research, Vivo’s India market share in terms of shipment went down to 12 per cent in the second quarter of 2018 — from 13 per cent in the same quarter last year — while that of Xiaomi’s went up to 28 per cent from 16 per cent during the same period.

Marya, however, claimed that in terms of value, Vivo is the leader in the 20K to 30K segment and overall No. 2 in the Indian smartphone market for the past 18 months.

“We have more than 50 per cent market share in the 20K to 30K segment,” Marya said, adding that what has worked in its favour is that old Vivo customers have been upgrading to new Vivo phones.

“The Indian smartphone market is increasingly becoming a ‘replacement’ market, meaning an increasing number of customers are now second time or third time smartphone buyers,” Marya said, explaining the reasons behind Vivo India’s focus on building brand loyalty.

“Moreover, the average selling price (ASP) is increasing and consumers are becoming more aware – they know what brand they want to buy and what features are their priority, and accordingly they make their choice,” he added.

According to him, the brand awareness of Vivo, which bagged the title sponsorship for five consecutive sessions of Indian Premier League (IPL) starting this year with a whopping Rs 2,199 crore bid, is 100 per cent.

“When we entered India four years ago, our initial strategy was to build awareness for the brand and that is what we did. Now we are focusing on building consideration and preference for the brand,” Marya said.

“Today everybody knows about us. But the brand awareness has to be backed by great products, great after-sales services and a good retailer network as brand awareness alone can help a company survive for a maximum period of about two years,” the company executive noted.

Vivo has long term plans in India and all its investments in the country – be it in marketing or manufacturing – offer testimony to that.

“India is a very important market for us and all the investments we have made here are from a long term point of view. We have so far invested Rs 300 crore in the Greater Noida factory which has a capacity to assemble 2 million units per month and an SMT (surface-mount technology) capacity of 1.8 million per month,” Marya said, adding that all Vivo phones sold in India are now “made in India”.

“We are now looking at expanding our manufacturing capacity in the country to meet the increasing demand of our products,” he said without divulging further details.

There are currently more than 70,000 retailers in India where Vivo phones are available and the company has more than 200 exclusive stores and two experience centres.

The company has service centres in almost all parts of the country except in Manipur, Lakshadweep and Daman and Diu, Marya pointed out.

“When we entered into India, we were very clear that we wanted to build a very strong foundation here. And four years after entering the Indian market, we stay totally committed to the country,” he said.

(Ians)

Kerala is looking to raise a World Bank loan to rebuild public infrastructure that has been ravaged by the worst floods in over a century, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said in an interview. Vijayan did not disclose the amount of money the state plans to raise from the multilateral development bank, but a state government official who is privy to the discussions said that the government is preparing a concept note to raise Rs 3,000 crore.

“We will discuss with all international agencies including World Bank. With World Bank, we are planning to begin talks. We will start the discussions without much delay. We are still at the phase of recovering from the disaster, that’s why the discussions haven’t started yet. But we will start the talks really soon,” Vijayan said.

The Kerala floods have left a trail of destruction. As many as 384 people were killed, a million others were displaced, 50,000 houses turned uninhabitable or were washed away, 80,000km of roads and 39 bridges were lost over the past two weeks because of the floods. The rebuilding exercise is officially estimated to cost the public exchequer about Rs 20,000 crore.

The talks of an international loan comes at a time when the state is reportedly at odds with the centre for not approving a Rs 700 crore aid from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to Kerala.

The Indian government has refused all offers from foreign countries, citing that it will meet the challenge through domestic resources, Mint reported on 22 August. This, along with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led centre’s decision to release Rs 600 crore against Kerala’s demand of Rs 2,000 crore as immediate assistance, has cornered the local party unit.

The centre is unlikely to object to the state raising a loan, said the official cited above, requesting anonymity. “We are in touch with the centre, they seem to agree in-principle,” he said.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a meeting with Kerala governor P. Sathasivam in New Delhi, clarified that the Rs 600 crore released by the centre is only an advance assistance, according to a statement by the governor.

Modi “assured that additional funds will be released from the National Disaster Response Fund as per laid down procedure,” the governor’s statement said.

Taking an international loan at times of crisis is not without precedence in India. Tamil Nadu availed a $100 million loan from World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) combined, after it was hit by a tsunami in 2005, that caused loss of lives and severe damage to public and private property.

The development also needs to be seen in the background of several international agencies offering to help Kerala. On 22 August, Shashi Tharoor, writer and parliamentarian from Thiruvananthapuram, informally met officials of UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), World Health Organisation (WHO), and International Red Cross, in Geneva, and explored ways to get funding for Kerala’s rebuilding.

Local politicians of Communist Party of India (Marxist), however, have long opposed neoliberal economics and free market policies, and its professed supporters including institutions such as the World Bank.

Earlier, Vijayan’s appointment of Harvard professor Gita Gopinath, who previously worked with World Economic Forum and International Monitory Fund, institutions not known for their support to socialist programmes, had triggered a controversy within the party, although it died soon when the party’s Kerala head, Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, solidly backed Vijayan.