The plan to put an Indian into space, on its own, for the first time by 2022 will create as many as 15,000 jobs, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman K. Sivan said on Wednesday.

“We estimate that the human space mission will generate about 15,000 jobs over the next few years,” Sivan told IANS here.

The ISRO wants to take up the manned spaceflight in collaboration with multiple state-run scientific institutions, academia, industry and start-ups.

The space agency aims to take Indian astronauts into space to a height of 350-400 km above the earth and orbit around the planet for at least a week by 2022. The astronauts will also be conducting experiments in space, details of which are yet to be decided by ISRO.

“The human spaceflight will be a national project and not just ISRO’s, as we will be collaborating with several institutions, academia and the industry,” Sivan told reporters here.

Rakesh Sharma, a former Indian Air Force pilot, is the only Indian citizen to travel into space so far. He was part of the crew on Soyuz T-11 launched on April 2, 1984 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, a part of the then Soviet Union.

The ISRO will be working with the Institute of Aerospace Medicine in Bengaluru for training the crew and the Indian Air Force, which will select the crew, as well as with the private sector, which will be involved in research and development, Sivan said.

The ISRO Chairman addressed the press conference in this tech hub hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in his Independence Day address in New Delhi the country’s plan to put an Indian into space by 2022 on its own.

Admitting that the space agency was “surprised” by the Prime Minister’s human space mission announcement, Sivan said the technological preparations for the project were on track since 2004.

“The announcement came to us as a surprise. We were not expecting it,” Sivan said, adding that ISRO, however, has been developing several critical technologies required for the mission like the crew module and the crew escape system.

“It is not an unrealistic schedule. We are confident of achieving it even before 2022,” Sivan said.

The opportunity of exploring space will enhance the country’s science and technological capabilities, while inspiring the youth, he added.

India’s attempt to reach space by 2022 is about six decades after a Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to journey into outer space and orbit the earth in 1961.

The US, Russia and China are the only three nations to have launched manned space flights.

The ISRO is yet to finalise the exact timeline of tests before a manned mission can take off, as it plans to have two unmanned test flights onboard a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mk 3.

In the run-up to the first manned mission, said to be the largest project undertaken by the Indian space agency, the ISRO will conduct the next unmanned test flight by 2020.

“There will be two unmanned flights before the manned mission, for which the astronaut suit is also being developed,” said Sivan.

The ambitious human space mission is expected to cost about Rs 10,000 crore, in addition to the already spent Rs 300-crore in developing the technologies for the mission, like the crew module.

Bandeppa Kashempur, minister for co-operation informed at a press conference that there are 6,000 benami accounts in the cooperative banks of the state of Karnataka and a number of Rs 50 crore is stacked in them. The reality of these benami accounts came to light when the co-operation department made Aadhar card nomination compulsory for all the accounts in co-operative banks, said the minister.

“After a complaint was filed by the grandson of a deceased elderly on whose name a secretary of the co-operative organization of Mandya availed Rs 2.30 lac loan, the issue was unearthed. A number of such incidents have taken place,” said the minister.

Mr. Kashempur also said that he had received complaints about voluntary organizations taking financial aid from the National Bank for Agriculture & Rural Development (NABARD) and lending the same for higher interest rates in the name of microfinance. The government will call a meeting of the chief of such organizations and discuss this issue.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K. Palaniswami on Wednesday said the state leads in attracting industrial investments.

Unfurling the national flag at Fort St. George, the state Secretariat here, to mark the 72nd Independence Day, Palaniswami said the state would host the second Global Investors Meet next year.

Listing the achievements of the government in the fields of industry, agriculture, and education, he added that it was due to the sacrifices of many freedom fighters that India secured its independence.

He said the contributions of Tamil Nadu in the fight for freedom – armed or non-violent – were immense.

Palanswami recalled the Sepoy mutiny against the East India Company at Vellore on July 10, 1806, owing to similar causes that triggered the 1857 revolt at Meerut.

State-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will fly an Indian astronaut into space for the first time by 2022, an official said on Wednesday.

“All the critical technologies for the human space mission are being developed. We will pursue it to put an Indian astronaut in space by 2022,” a senior ISRO official told IANS, citing the space agency Chairman K.Sivan’s statement.

Addressing the nation on the occasion of Independence Day earlier in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that an Indian would be sent to space by 2022.

So far, only the US, Russia and China have launched human spaceflights.

ISRO Chairman Sivan earlier said a mission document for India’s human space programme was in the making.

“Critical technologies are being developed for our human space programme, as it is India’s dream to put a man in space. A mission document is in the making,” Sivan had said on July 7 at an event here.

The space agency on July 5 carried out a successful maiden pad abort tests at its spaceport Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh for the safe escape of the crew in an emergency.

“The technology is very essential for our manned missions in the future,” Sivan had said.

The crew escape system is an emergency escape measure designed to quickly pull the crew module along with the astronauts to a safe distance from the launch vehicle in the event of a launch abort.

The ISRO Chairman, however, admitted that the space agency was “not close” to a human spaceflight yet.

“We are not close to that. We need to work a lot towards achieving the dream of putting a man in space,” Sivan added.

Fears over a rise in global protectionist measures, along with a strong US economy, dragged the Indian rupee to a fresh intra-day low of over 70 against the US dollar on Tuesday before recovering by a fraction at Rs 69.98.

Around 11 a.m., the rupee plunged to 70.08 — lowest-ever — against the greenback.

However, soon afterward, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is said to have intervened to curb the rupee’s fall.

The intervention aided the rupee to stabilise just a tad below 70 to a USD at 69.98 around 11.05 a.m.

“The fear of a rise in global protectionist measures along with a strong US economy pulled the Indian rupee lower to 70.08 during intra-day,” said Anindya Banerjee, Deputy Vice President for Currency and Interest Rates with Kotak Securities.

Banerjee predicted an immediate range from Rs 69 to Rs 71 per US dollar.

At 1.40 p.m. the rupee stood at 69.855 to a US dollar.

“Around 70-70.08 level, the RBI might have intervened to protect the rupee. We saw some exporters selling in the market. So, that too supported the rupee. But importers will jump into the market on every dip in the USD/INR given the turmoil in the global market,” Rushabh Maru, Research Analyst, Anand Rathi Shares and Stock Brokers, told IANS.

“A decline in the WPI also provided support to the rupee. Market will now focus on the trade balance data for further direction,” he said.

Suspected hackers siphoned off Rs 94.42 crore from the Cosmos Cooperative Bank Ltd — the second oldest and second biggest cooperative bank in India — to various foreign and domestic bank accounts, police said on Tuesday.

The bank was cyber-attacked twice, on Saturday and on Monday, according to an FIR lodged by an official of Cosmos Bank with Chaturshringi Police Station.

The complaint said the first attack took place on August 11 between 3 p.m. and 10 p.m. and on August 13 around 11.30 a.m., affecting its headquarters on Ganeshkhind Road.

A police officer said that during those hours, some unknown persons hacked into the ATM Switch (servers) at the headquarters and acquired the sensitive data of its Visa and RuPay debit card customers.

As per tentative estimates, the hackers siphoned off Rs 78 crore by 12,000 Visa card transactions and transferred it out of the country, including bank accounts in Hong Kong.

Another amount of Rs 2.50 crore from 2,849 transactions was transferred within India, details of which were being investigated, said the police.

Before the bank could react, in a fresh attack on Monday (August 13), the hackers initiated SWIFT transactions and transferred Rs 13.92 crore to the accounts of a company, ALM Trading Ltd, with Hang Seng Bank, Hong Kong. The amounts were soon withdrawn from that bank.

Established in 1906, the Pune-headquartered Cosmos Bank is the second oldest and second biggest cooperative bank in the country, enjoying the status of a multi-state scheduled bank.

Landmark reforms like RERA and GST, as also demonetization, have brought about much-needed transparency in transactions, helping the real estate sector to free itself of fraud, malpractices and other problems faced by consumers and investors. Yet, the sector needs more reforms to break free of the various ills that still plague it in order to realise its full potential as a major contributor to the country’s GDP.

The reform-oriented Narendra Modi government, which is fine-tuning and reinforcing the reforms undertaken by it to increase their on-ground efficacy, has its task cut out to free real estate from high transaction costs, especially to achieve the success of its flagship mission of “Housing for All”.

Though the interest subsidy scheme (CLSS) under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) has proved to be a big boost for first-time home buyers in the EWS, LIG and MIG category, yet high transaction costs are a deterrent to home ownership. Currently, GST, stamp duty and registration costs act as a dampener. There is an average stamp duty of six percent and it is not uniform and is much higher in some states. Further, in many cities, there is the anomaly of collector rates of property being higher than the market rates.

As such, home buyers end up paying more stamp duty and registration fee. Home buyers need to be given freedom from high transaction costs to boost sales and revive residential real estate, facing a slowdown for long. And this can be achieved by either rationalising stamp duty or simply subsuming stamp duty in GST. Similarly, while GST has imporved ease of doing business by doing away with multiple taxation, there is still a need to lower its 12 per cent rate, which is almost double the VAT and Service
tax prevalent in pre-GST era, especially when Input Tax Credit provided by the government is not having the desired effect. Further, the high GST on cement should be brought down as in the case of paints, to bring down the cost of homes.

Home buyers also need freedom from the double burden of rent and EMI, particularly as hundreds of thousands of housing projects across the country are facing long delays. Earlier, the home buyers would get possession of their homes in 3-4 years but now, in many cases, it has almost doubled, causing great hardships to home buyers in terms of dual burden of rent and EMI. Some developers are helping home buyers tide over this problem by offering schemes to pay EMI only after possession. But ready homes is a sound solution to this problem as they do not have any development risk and, moreover, home buyers save on 12 per cent GST.

That’s why ready-to-occupy homes are being lapped up by home buyers. Here, the concept of “Build and Sell” can provide a long-term solution. Under RERA, a developer can’t start his project without land and all mandatory permissions in place. Also, there is not only a ban on funding projects through customer advances by way of pre-launching of projects but there is also a strict check on (mis)utilising funds collected from customers through the implementation of the escrow account mechanism.

As such, it makes sense for developers to adopt the “Build and Sell” model which is common in advanced countries. Leading developer DLF has already announced it would adopt this model. And, if the government organises cheap bank funding for at least developers of affordable housing, many of them will take to “Build and Sell”, to the advantage of property consumers.

Red-tapism is also proving to be a big bane of the real estate sector as the unduly long time taken by authorities in giving construction permits and other multiple sanctions adds the developers’ debt, in turn increasing home costs. And, since the sanctioning authorities do not come under the purview of RERA, there is no check on project delays due to the unduly long time taken in according project sanctions and giving completion certificates.

The ideal solution to this problem is a single window mechanism for project sanctions/clearances. Since this is not happening, the government should fast-track the process of online permissions/sanctions and make this time-bound.

Last but not the least, there should be freedom from defective and fraudulent land/property titles to make property transactions easier and safer. Thus, there is an urgent need to set up a Land Titling Authority in states to prepare and maintain a digitised registry of all immovable properties. This, together with introduction of Title Insurance for providing protection against any financial loss due to title deficiencies, will considerably help in enforcing contracts and prevent property deals from falling through, thereby effectively checking high litigation due to property ownership disputes.

The transparency brought in by this will further boost the confidence of foreign investors, thereby helping in putting foreign investment in Indian real estate on the fast track.

With an eye on cutting costs and having an on-demand launch, ISRO today said it was preparing Small Satellite Launch Vehicle rockets to launch payloads in three days with the help of just three to six people.

“The interesting aspect of the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) is that it can be readied on demand with a minimum launch infrastructure,” ISRO chairman K Sivan said.

He said it takes about 300 to 400 people between 45 to 60 days to prepare major satellite vehicles.

But the SSLV would require only 72 hours and three to six people.

“We need to integrate the vehicle and launch it. It is innovative and provides an opportunity for commercial launches for other countries. Autonomy is more in this vehicle.

Already the vehicle is in the design phase… there is an opportunity for commercial launch,” he said.

Sivan revealed ISRO’s commercial plans during an interaction with reporters on the sidelines of a function to mark the 127th birth anniversary of Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, the architect of India’s space mission.

Sivan said the important demonstration flight of SSLV would be carried out sometime in May or June next year.

“The specialty of this mission is the cost of the vehicle, which is one-tenth of PSLV. The payload will be 500 to 700 KG and it will be launched in a lower orbit.

The length of the vehicle would be 34 meters, with a 2-meter diameter. It is an on-demand launch with a minimum launch infrastructure,” said Sivan.

Commercial production of this vehicle will be taken up by Antrix the commercial arm of ISRO, once the design is complete and development was ready by mid-2019, he added.

The Assam government on Friday destroyed over six lakh bottles of illegal liquor and beer valued at Rs 168.55 crore with Excise Minister Parimal Shuklabaidya crushing these under a roadroller. The Excise Department had seized the liquor in the state in 2016.

The destroyed contraband includes over six lakh bottles of Indian Made Foreign Liquor and 17,410 cases of beer.

A joint team of excise and police officials seized the consignment at four locations in Khatkhati in Karbi Anglong district while efforts to transport these to Guwahati by 14 trucks were on. Police had arrested 13 persons, all of whom have been charge-sheeted.

“After a green signal from the court, we destroyed the illegal consignment in public in Gorchuk area to send a strong message to those involved in the supply and transportation of illegal liquor,” the Minister said.

According to state records, 39,085 litres of foreign liquor is sold daily on an average in Assam. There are 1,448 licensed wine shops that sell IMFL across the state.

Apple’s new iPhone launch next month could be delayed by the virus outbreak at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) — the world’s biggest contract chip maker, the media reported on Friday.

TSMC, which makes chips for iPhones, suffered a computer virus outbreak and warned it could cause shipment delays as well as hit revenue.

“This incident has come at a sensitive period for Apple, which is preparing for its much-anticipated annual launch of new iPhone models next month after recording a market value of US $1 trillion last week,” the South China Morning Post reported on Friday.

A variant of “WannaCry” ransomware hobbled computer systems at TSMC after a supplier installed software without a virus scan to the company’s computer network. The virus caused machines to crash and continually reboot.

TSMC makes plenty of chips designed for iPhones, so Apple would be the most likely client to suffer shipment delays.

“New York-listed TSMC has said the virus outbreak will delay its chip shipments through the end of September, but expected to make a recovery by year’s end. It had to shut down virus-infected fabrication tools and automated handling systems during the outbreak at its manufacturing facilities, but restored 80 per cent of those by Sunday,” the report added.

The Taiwan semiconductor firm produces Apple’s A11 chip that is in the iPhone X.

The firm is currently making the next-generation A12 chip that is expected to be in its upcoming smartphones.

The Cupertino-headquartered company is expected to launch three new iPhone models this year.